Is the future of housing digital?

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Hey folks, greetings and welcome along to the New Zealand Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain, and great to have Andy Patrick joining us from Argus Tracking. Welcome along, Andy, how are you?

Andy Patrick:
Thank you, I’m good, thanks. How are you?

Paul Spain:
Yeah, good, good. Great to have you on the show for the first time. So, yeah, thanks for taking time out to join us as we head in towards Christmas. We’re what, about a week away now?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Spain:
Things starting to wind down for you and your team?

Andy Patrick:
No, I don’t think we ever stop, but we will wind down, we will take a bit of time off. So yeah, it’ll be good.

Paul Spain:
Yep, yep. Everyone’s been working so hard across the tech sector, it doesn’t seem as though we get much of a chance to unplug. So yeah, any excuses is a goodie. Now for those listening in and wondering, who are you? Where do you fit into the tech world? Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, so we’re currently CEO of Argus Tracking, so we do GPS tracking for vehicles. Who, what and where are your vehicles? We cater for everyone from a one man band, like a courier or someone like that, all the way up to large government institutions or corporates. So a huge range of customers. So that’s what I currently do. I’ve got about 10 or 15 years in the tech sector here in New Zealand with various startups and various companies. I think when I look back at my whole career it has been startups initially in larger corporates and things like that, but in new industries. I worked for one in the UK for mtv. While I was there, I produced the first ever made for mobile television show.

Paul Spain:
Oh wow.

Andy Patrick:
So we shot a TV show just for mobile phones. So things like that. First ever digital team for Disney that had obviously the Internet and websites, et cetera, but it was split amongst all the different divisions. So they made a specific online digital team and I was a founding member of that. So yeah, just all the way through. And so coming back to New Zealand. Cause all that was in the uk, coming back to New Zealand, attracted straight away to that software startup space and have had some pretty great journeys and experiences in New Zealand building and helping build startups.

Paul Spain:
That’s great, that’s great. Well, it’s always a crazy, exciting, fun, stressful, you know, all of those things thrown it together. But yeah, never boring, that’s for sure. Well, before we start, of course, a big thank you to our show partners, One NZ, Spark, 2degrees, HP and Gorilla Technology. Really want to thank them and acknowledge their support that keeps us going, keeps us on the electronic airwaves. Now let’s start with sort of delving into some of the New Zealand topics before we sort of get into what’s happening globally. It’ll be going back, it must be in the direction of two months we just quietly shared some news about a little hyperscale data center that seemed to have got quietly switched on. That’s Microsoft’s first hyperscale data centre in New Zealand and I guess the first of the hyperscalers to, you know, to really turn on their infrastructure in New Zealand and.

Paul Spain:
Well, I guess, yeah, they’ve now made that formal. So I guess from, you know, from their perspective they’ve ticked the key boxes and they’ve aligned things with their PR teams and so on and you know, dates to do a big launch here. So yeah, that’s just happened in the last few days. How important do you think this is for New Zealand that we’re seeing Microsoft? And you know, of course also Microsoft’s competitors will be following in their footsteps too. But it’s Microsoft’s week I suppose for this one.

Andy Patrick:
Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean obviously they’re a massive company with data centres all around the world so. And I think New Zealanders are pretty used to data sovereignty. Not sitting within New Zealand certainly and when I’ve worked in other companies overseas, you know, we’ve had to have the data local so it gives New Zealand the opportunity to do that now. So that’s obviously great for us. I’ve always likened New Zealand too to being a doomsday bunker. If we get two giant bolt cutters we can cut the Internet cables and we can be quite self sufficient. So maybe there’s some data redundancy and storage that’s going on there, I don’t know.

Andy Patrick:
But yeah, obviously it’s great for New Zealand I think.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, look, yeah, I mean super pleasing and you know, they’ve talked about how it’s being powered by renewable energy. So you know, good, I think. Good, you know, good to see that, you know, that support of renewables, you know, coming through and you know, I see that, you know again there’s some similar sort of patterns I guess with their competitors. But yeah, the coverage we’ve seen so far and you know, press releases and so on, you know, shares a bit of that info. So you know, one thing from them was a $300 million commitment 2022 to support the development of the T hooker unit 3 which was geothermal, you know, power facility and a 10 year commitment to renewable Energy. So, yeah, look, I think, you know, really exciting. We heard a bit about it from Vanessa Sorensen when she was in on the show earlier on in the year. So, you know, congrats really, to, you know, Vanessa and, you know, the whole Microsoft Team for pulling that one off.

Paul Spain:
I know that was, you know, something that, you know, took a bit of work to, you know, twist some arms that this should happen in New Zealand. And, you know, I think there were. Some of us certainly weren’t expecting that this would necessarily happen at all until, you know, until the announcement came through. So, yeah, I think, you know, very, very pleasing for us as a country. And as you say, if someone were to grab the bolt cutters and, you know, I know a bit of tongue in cheek there, but, you know, like. Yeah, actually, you know, really good to, you know, to know that key services, you know, would be able to operate if there were some challenges with the rest of the world. And in theory there’d be a reasonable chunk of things that could, you know, tick along.

Andy Patrick:
Yes, well, I think too, the renewables was pretty key. What we’ve seen over the last year around sort of rolling blackouts, mooted. The fact that they’ve also incorporated that into their program is brilliant because it means, I mean, it guarantees, obviously the supply and keeping the centres up and running, but also it reduces the drain on the rest of New Zealand as well. And I think we. I mean, the more we see these things, you know, it’s going to get worse in New Zealand. Everyone’s talking about it. So it is a big challenge for, I guess, the government to. How do we.

Andy Patrick:
And obviously private organisations, how do we maintain power supply with. With the increases that we are putting on the grid.

Paul Spain:
That’s right, yep. Electric vehicles, data centres, all of these things put a load on the grid. So, you know, knowing that that investment is there for the years ahead in appropriate capacity and it’s not just, you know, shuffling around some existing capacity.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, it’s great.

Paul Spain:
Is really good. Now, talking of renewables and electric vehicles and so on, Fullers have introduced what I think they’re calling the world first hydrofoiling electric ferry. And look, you know, the coverage makes it look pretty slick and pretty awesome. So, yeah, I’m very curious about this. So, yeah, but there are some, I guess there are challenges in this sort of space to really make electric boats kind of work. Well, because of the, I guess because of the, you know, the drag, they’re not necessarily very efficient. So this idea of going with a hydrofoiling electric boat that seems actually, you know, pretty, pretty smart. Brings some efficiency there.

Paul Spain:
And you know, I think we’re waiting a little bit on these bigger 2 to 300 passenger electric ferries coming through. But this little 10 passenger vehicle that’s joined the fleet. The tickets on sale, $195 each. So, yeah, it’s a little bit hard to kind of get your head around how this fits together.

Andy Patrick:
Are you going to pay $195 for a trip across the harbour?

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Andy Patrick:
Business expense maybe.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe. But it’s, you know, it’s obviously there as a, you know, a bit of a piece to, you know, to attract attention and look, I think it is really important that, you know, when it comes to new technologies and innovations that, you know, we do find ways of getting started even, you know, for things that are, that might be a long way off, what the end game is and so, you know, look good on them.

Andy Patrick:
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome. I think the challenge is how do you turn it into a mass market, you know, event. So I mean, they said it was cost about $8 to charge it. So again, you know, that’s, that’s pretty cheap if you compare it to diesel. So that side of it works. But yeah, how do we get the general public on it and using it and yeah, that’s a big challenge that I don’t envy having to figure out.

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Andy Patrick:
Does it get rid of seasickness? That’s one question for me.

Paul Spain:
Well, I mean, I think there is something to be said for the hydrofoils in those regards.

Andy Patrick:
I was impressed that it managed one metre seas. That’s fairly decent. So the clearance, I can’t imagine the clearance of the boat is much higher. So the fact that it can stay foiling at one metre. Yeah, that’s great.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. The $8 in charging, I didn’t actually get my head around that unless they’ve got a really impressive price that they buy power. I’m get. I’m guessing. So this was during the trial. Yeah, they said. Or that the Herald said they were told that return Auckland CBD to Waiheke trip cost $8 in charging.

Paul Spain:
My guess is that would be per person. This, that’d be my, that’d be my guess on a journey like that. Yeah, I’m sort of doing, you know, and, and I’m not really doing all the numbers in my head, but I’m, you know, just, you know, thinking through and it’s like, that must be per. That must be Per person on board, surely. I can’t. Yeah, I can’t see any other way they would, they would achieve that. But anyway, if it’s costing, yeah, that, you know, per person and they can charge, you know, a couple of hundred bucks, then you’ve got the time component. You need something there to go back towards their initial investment.

Andy Patrick:
Yes, you’ve got that time component too. It’ll probably take half the time to get over there as well. So if you’re someone who values your time in that way, you can zip into town, be in the office, zip back again.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, it sounds pretty cool. So, yeah, I’m hopeful of a chance to try that out at some stage. But yeah, long may these sort of innovations continue. I think they’re talking about scaling up to a 100 passenger variation in the future. So, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Now I saw an interesting headline. I get pinged a whole lot of things when it comes to, you know, the role of technology in society and the good and the bad. And I was recently on the Coromandel, so I saw this headline come up around Cook’s Beach.

Paul Spain:
They’re apparently fundraising for security cameras and find this interesting. Yeah, it’s now the sort of thing, it’s actually reasonably cost effective to be, you know, to be putting in cameras and surveillance into, you know, into communities. I think they had surveyed their population there and they found residents were 80% in support of CCTV cameras along the roads and in and out of the village. So, you know, there is quite a, you know, quite a leaning towards more surveillance. You know, you can see why from a safety perspective and people are getting their homes and holiday patches kind of burgled, then, you know, this helps become, you know, part of the deterrent. But of course, as we do that, we get into a society that’s, I guess, like some other parts of the world where there’s an insane amount of cameras and surveillance. You do have the potential for untoward uses of some of that technology. So there’s a bit of a balancing act here.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, I always find it quite an interesting dichotomy, if you like, it’s the lesser evil for the greater good. Do you set up your society for the 1% bad and sort of punish in inverted commas, the 99% good? So yeah, I mean, I think, as you’ve mentioned, that there’s some clear targeting going on of empty houses, et cetera. It’s a well known holiday spot. Houses are often empty for large portions of the year. So I think that’s the thinking is that if they just monitor the one road in and out, they can narrow that down. So at least they’re not working, I don’t know, 100%. But it doesn’t sound like they want to put CCTV all over the place. It’s really just those main thoroughfares where they can catch the people.

Andy Patrick:
Because again, it seems to be people coming from out of town, if you like. Yeah. Not generally local. So good on them, I think too, the pages, they’re a little bit short of cash at the moment too. So if you’ve got a dollar and you like that area, chuck it their way. But, yeah, good on them for being proactive.

Paul Spain:
Now, one of the things we’ve talked about briefly in the past is this new bill that was coming through, the Fair News Digital Bargaining bill, and there sort of seemed to be some interesting perspectives, some saying, well, hold on, we’ve got Facebook and Google and the like really taking advantage of our local media and that they should pay. They should basically pay money to link to stories. And my maybe naive kind of view on it is that actually news sites get a lot of traffic off the likes of Google and Facebook and so on. Yes, people in some cases will just read the headlines and will stay completely on those platforms, but certainly in a lot of cases people will actually click through to their content. So it would be very interesting if all of these platforms just said, no, we’re not going to link to any online news anymore. Would you go to those platforms? Unless that’s part of your. Your daily habit. And I’ve certainly had times where part of my daily habit is going through various sites and sort of checking out the news.

Paul Spain:
Other times you kind of get busy. It’s like you maybe don’t visit or visit the same sources as much. And so those incoming links from varying directions can certainly help generate a fair chunk of traffic. But it is. The bill has been officially put on hold and this is interesting timing. So, yeah, according to Paul Goldsmith’s office that the legislation is on hold, but it comes as Australia are announcing that they’re going to create new rules, I guess, aimed at sort of, you know, strong arming the platform, you know, metas and Googles. So I think it’s going to be quite fascinating to see how it plays out. The last I read on that side were the media partnerships that I think it was meta I was reading about that they had negotiated in the last few years that basically they were going to end those partnerships and not continue paying.

Paul Spain:
And so this is where the Australian government is. Is looking to put new legislation in place to ensure that the likes of Google and Net are helping to fund Australian journalism, it looks like in the form of tax. So, yeah, it’s going to be interesting just to see how that stuff plays out. Some of these things that can be really good for a smaller country like New Zealand to be at the forefront and innovative in terms of how we, how we do things and in other cases we probably just get. Get ignored. And, you know, I think this could well be one of those situations where New Zealand probably benefits a little bit from seeing what, what works and what doesn’t work in Australia and other markets. Would you agree with that?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, I mean, it’s. Yeah. I mean, the genie’s been out of the bottle for 25 years. You know, think about it. When you first started using the Internet, if you had to pay for news, you would be perfectly happy doing that now, because that’s what you’ve been conditioned to do for 20, 25 years.

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Andy Patrick:
So they’re trying to sort of unwind the clock a bit. And I think too, it is a. It’s a really good standout example of the globalisation that’s happening with things like the Internet, that everything is almost immediately accessible and you don’t have to be in the same village to get the news or to find out things. So the whole world becomes a village. So would you stop someone, your neighbour, accessing things? Probably not. But because they’re a foreign company or a big nameless corporation, then yes. I don’t know. It’s probably above my pay grade, but I’m happy getting news as it is.

Andy Patrick:
I think too, news organisations are bringing in paywalls and things like that, so there are sort of ways around it. But yeah, Aussie are definitely more litigious than us. Much more. Here’s a rule than New Zealand Kiwis don’t tend to like rules in the same way that Aussies do. So, yeah, it’s a different environment. So interesting to see how our Parliament tweaks whatever happens in places like Australia and Canada. And youth.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. Now, also on a somewhat local front, interesting post from Nick Mowbray in the last 24 hours or so. He’s co founder at Zuru and you know, we know them as a toy company, but Zuru have kind of multiple brands now, including Zuru Tech, and Nick was sharing a video on really where they’re heading from a tech perspective. And they’ve been working on this for quite a number of years and they refer to it actually one place in their video as the factory of the future. Now that’s just kind of one, one portion of what they’re doing. But the idea is using AI, using technology to be able to design homes. And then I guess in something of a reflection of what they’ve done with toys where you know, they’ve built out, you know, massive super modern, you know, factories in China for making toys and selling them to the world where they would take a, you know, an innovative and forward thinking approach to building, building homes and yeah, quite, quite fascinating just to, you know, see a little bit of a refresh. This is something that’s been, you know, mooted for a number of years now.

Paul Spain:
And I know they’ve, you know, they’ve had a chunk of people working on this behind the scenes. But look, I’m really curious how it plays out. And when you look at the videos they’re sharing, these are not necessarily the low end budget. You know, build a home for the homeless end of the market. Now possibly this is a Tesla type approach. Start with something kind of super cool and then work your way through to where it can be really mass market. Or maybe it’s something that this is actually designed to, to really focus on those, you know, those high end bespoke, you know, homes where you can, you know, you can use, you know, design tools and so on to you know, I guess to supplant the sort of work that would, would normally be done, you know, locally by very expensive, you know, processes in terms of architecture and building and then, you know, try and deliver something of a, you know, a bespoke result. But that’s, that’s being, you know, manufactured in a much more, and designed in a much more efficient way.

Andy Patrick:
Yes. Yeah, Kiwis are interesting like this too. We, we kind of, we want to be individuals. So how do you, how do you get that across to our market? Yeah, we’re much less inclined to be wanting to live in the same house as the guy next door or the girl next door. So yeah, it can only be good. And I think they’re obviously, they’ve got a huge history, like you said, of building manufacturing plants and understanding how to build, you know, mass production. So yeah, yeah, I think it’d be awesome, but it’d be good. Yeah, the proof’s gonna be in the pudding, isn’t it? It’s gonna take them a while to get it right.

Andy Patrick:
But yeah, it’d be great to see it. I think. You know, if it makes housing more affordable, who’s gonna be against that approach.

Paul Spain:
Well, Nick’s comment was that the key is the cost, which he’s saying is a small fraction of what it costs to build today. So, you know, look, I think this has been one of the areas I’ve been excited about is the potential for us to address some of the big challenges we have in society. And if we can bring down the cost of building, then that makes it much more accessible for many, many more Kiwi families to own their own homes, which has sadly have become much harder over recent decades. So, yeah, really interesting. The other thing you mentioned, a full size commercial factory, 25 acres, currently under development and shipping test houses next year. So if you want to, you know, get on the beta testing list and order one of their first homes, it could be a bit of a risk. But I imagine if they’re going through the process, they’re going to make sure, you know, these things are up to snuff. Right.

Paul Spain:
So pretty exciting. Yeah, that’s right. You got to do it pretty well. But yeah, I can imagine there might be some parallels with Tesla. You get a pretty good product out there and then you kind of keep working on it and keep iterating and lots of companies. But yeah, it’ll be really interesting to follow this one up and see what more we can hear from from Nick and the Zuru team in 2025.

Andy Patrick:
I’d just love to see how they’re manufacturing it. Be fascinating to have a look inside there.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, They’ve got some video online on Nick’s LinkedIn, you know, post, but they’re joining up lots of dots, you know, they’re showing off sort of home automation and you know, lots and lots of, you know, I guess pieces of technology, sort of autonomous trucks moving things, you know, around a factory. And you know, it does in some ways look like a, you know, a large scale, you know, toy factory. But instead of the usual kind of conveyor belts and stuff, you got trucks moving around and you know, life size.

Andy Patrick:
Life size toys.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. And I think they were working on maybe, yeah, quarter scale prototype factory. So. Yeah, and they’ve got their own, yeah, their own software they call Dreamcatcher, which is part of how, I guess how the design takes place.

Andy Patrick:
So a quarter scale was 25 acres or is 25 acres the full thing?

Paul Spain:
I think that’s their full size commercial factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Patrick:
It’s a big building.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Patrick:
Okay.

Paul Spain:
So very, yeah, very, very. This will be a very interesting one to follow and yeah, it’ll Be fantastic, you know, if they can, you know, pull off all the things that they’re imagining. But I think, you know, the Mowbray family have been pretty successful to date, so, you know, this could well be, you know, their biggest deal yet.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Spain:
Now, just on the international front, lots and lots of things going on, as always. Drone detection system apparently being deployed a new technology in New York, because they’ve been having a few dramas with drones over recent days. Seems to be kind of, you know, big, big news all around the planet that there’s a few drones up in the air above New Jersey and New York. Do you think this whole thing’s sort of blown out of proportion? Because, I don’t know. I mean, they’re off talking to Trump and getting his thoughts, and he’s saying, oh, the government knows exactly what it is and who knows? But no one seems to have any clarity that there’s kind of any issue. It’s just people keep looking up and seeing drones and then filming them and sharing them online, which has probably been.

Andy Patrick:
Happening for the last 20 years. It’s interesting that it’s only in New Jersey, not any other state. And, yeah, I don’t know. I think probably once they dig into it a bit deeper, it might be a little less nefarious than they think. But it gives a politician 10 minutes on CNN to push their election campaign for next year. But, yeah, I don’t really know how to respond to that.

Paul Spain:
Well, yeah, fortunately, we’re not seeing any big dramas at this point other than, you know, other than the sort of media, media dramas. So, yeah, let’s. Let’s hope it stays that way. Gm, they have been running a division called called Cruise, doing robo taxi developments in the US and, and those have even been on the streets around San Francisco and so on. But they’ve, they’ve, They’ve, you know, they’ve pulled the plug on things and the cruise kind of capability they’ve been building for, you know, for their own vehicles to, you know, I guess, compete with what other automakers have been doing, those cruise capabilities, they’re bringing that stuff in house. So, yeah, quite interesting to see that they’re saying that, you know, their plan, instead of going down that track of the autonomous robo taxis, is to realign their autonomous driving strategy to focus really on advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous systems for use in personal vehicles, which, yeah, is interesting. And even before they put the autonomous, they’re leading with advanced driver assistance technologies. They’ve thrown over 10 billion into their robo Taxi into their Robo Taxi entity.

Paul Spain:
So it’s not a small investment that they’re saying goodbye to here. But, yeah, even that note that it’s focused on advanced driver assistance suggests we’re maybe further away on this than some would have us believe, put it that way.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, GM make cars, that’s what they are really good at manufacturing. So when they bought Cruise, I think 2016, they essentially decided they wanted to run a taxi company, which is not the area of expertise. So I think really what they’re saying now is we’re giving up on running taxis and being in the business of. Of running a pickup and delivery fleet to bringing all of that tech into our own vehicles and just focusing it there. So, yeah, I think it’s that, I think, is it Mary, who’s the CEO, strayed from their core business a little bit and now they’re pulling it back in and actually going, well, let’s stay. And like you say, they’re pulling it back from fully autonomous to driver assisted. And again, that’s going back to their roots.

Andy Patrick:
Where should we start this conversation and how does it benefit GM and make GM vehicles better than they are today? And also, like you say, competing with some of the others that are out there. I think Waymo is probably leaps and bounds ahead of them. I mean, they had an accident about a year ago that the GM or the crews did and that put them back. You know, they pulled all the cars off the road and tried to sort it all out, whereas Waymo hasn’t had a similar thing. So they’re going from strength to strength. So again, they’ve recognised that they’re losing position in the market, so maybe we should refocus and take that $10 billion and put it into earning that money back.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, well, they were spending, I think, 2 billion US a year, so that was never going to stop until they solved it.

Andy Patrick:
What could you do with that?

Paul Spain:
They obviously didn’t have the confidence they could solve it.

Andy Patrick:
Exactly, yeah.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, you could do a fair bit. And I guess the reality is, for a company like gm, that is not a. It’s not a trivial kind of amount at all. I’m just looking up their cap market cap, US$57.4 billion today. So to be, you know, putting kind of, you know, a chunk of that sort of size in there is. Yeah.

Andy Patrick:
And the share market, the share price rose to 2.3% or something the day that they announced that they were doing this. So clearly the investment market thinks it’s a good idea as well.

Paul Spain:
So yeah, yeah, so interesting the founder of, of crew’s original founder who you know, left, you know, a bit over a year ago.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah. Just after that accident.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. So I think, you know, that point there must have been a falling out and they thought we’ve got to take a different approach and I guess at that point they, you know, they kept spending. So they spent another $2 billion from that point. But yeah, he was posting on X saying in case it was unclear before, it is clear now GM are a bunch of dummies. So yeah, there’s no love loss.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, I think he obviously didn’t leave on good terms. You could probably. But yeah, again that transitioning from founder to that sort of high growth mode is very difficult. Not many founders do it or can do it. And so yeah, maybe that was part of the conversation as well. But yeah, look, I think probably keep an eye on and he’ll come up with his next thing shortly in a similar vein and look to build it again. So good on him.

Paul Spain:
And some of the coverage there is mentioned around who else is doing this stuff. You mentioned Waymo before. Tesla are trying to get there and in one of our earlier episodes in the last month or two I spoke about my experience with some of the Tesla sort of semi autonomous technology getting around San Francisco and also trying out the Waymo vehicle. Really, really, really interesting stuff there. So if you haven’t heard that episode. Yeah, worth jumping back and having a listen. But also mentioned is Wave. Now Wave is the company co founded by Alex Kendall who’s a Kiwi, so they were called out as one and they are now testing in San Francisco.

Paul Spain:
They’re funded by Softbank, so lots of money for them to lean in on. And there’s also Zoox which Amazon are behind in the US market and of course there’s a whole lot going on in China as well. So you know, I think we’ll continue to, you know, to see movement here but it’s still pretty hard to know exactly how it’s all gonna land and where we’ll be at in sort of 10 years. But you kind of expect that they’ve sort of solved most of the problems by then, but whether they will solve them over the next 12 to 24. I guess from GM’s perspective they decided that they probably weren’t going to because they had Honda lined up to start a robo taxi service. Right. So they were going to I guess do that in the Japanese market. And yeah, of course that I can imagine that’s all off now.

Andy Patrick:
So I can imagine the Wave guys were high fiving. If you found out that one of your biggest competitors suddenly exited the market, that’s the best news I’ve got all year.

Paul Spain:
Or is it telling you that actually you’re trying to do something that’s impossible.

Andy Patrick:
That you’ll never solve?

Paul Spain:
But I don’t know. I think Alex Kendall and the Wave crew are onto something pretty solid there from the demos, but having tried some of these things myself, I know they’re not. The reality is sometimes slightly different from. From the demo. So we’ll see now. Yeah, one more, one more topic sort of wanted to tap into. We talked about sort of surveillance cameras there. Coromandel saw a headline that they’re looking to target drink and drugged drivers in a world first trial in the uk, Devon and Cornwall.

Paul Spain:
So we’re basically the AI will be looking to identify impaired driving behavior and can then, I guess alert the authorities. So this is interesting because we have had such ongoing challenges with, in New Zealand and I think probably around the world with road toll being quite closely linked to drink driving and so on. So I’m sure there will be quite a big interest in. Can this kind of change the picture?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, I’d love to understand how the AI figures out that you are potentially under the influence. I imagine it watches how you drive, you know, if you veer more than you are expected. I like too that it can take photos without blur, up to 300 kilometres an hour. So if you.

Paul Spain:
Pretty fast camera, isn’t it?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah. If you’ve ever been to Cornwall or Devon, the roads are quite small and quite humid. Yeah, yeah. Of course there’s no way you’re gonna be going 300k, so.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. So well above spec.

Andy Patrick:
Well above spec. So. Yeah. And I liked how it said, you know, that you’d be unaware that you were being tracked or being monitored. But I don’t know if you’ve seen the picture of the unit. It’s quite a massive unit with massive high vis all around it.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Patrick:
So you’ll definitely see it, but maybe by then it’ll be too late. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, obviously anything like this that we can do to keep us all safe is a great move as well. And I mean, I don’t think necessarily the, the visual sensing is that new. And yeah, two or three years ago I was looking at construction sites, picking up humans, not wearing hard hats, things like that. So it’s been around for a while. This is obviously just a really specific Niche, target and use case, which is, you know, are going to be better for the rest of us who don’t drink and drive.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, look, I think we’ve seen machine learning be used to kind of recognize and, say, an X ray or some sort of medical record, being able to look at data and pick up to a reasonably high accuracy that there could be an issue. So, yeah, it would seem to make some sense that there probably are some uniques to how people drive when. When they’re under the influence of something. And so, look, if they can pick that up, I think there would be quite a big interest in it. So, yep, just, I guess, becomes another reason for more cameras down the street. Maybe they can come to some sort of efficiency on these things. But, yeah, there’ll certainly be some concerns as we keep coming up with more and more and more excuses to put surveillance everywhere as well. But, yeah, this seems like, yeah, certainly something that could save a chunk of lives.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Spain:
Now, there are a few other topics that was potentially gonna delve into, but I think we’d, you know, it’d be good to actually, you know, hear probably a little bit about what you’re doing, and we’ll see if we. If we get a little bit of further time at the end, Andy. But, yeah, keen to hear a little bit about, you know, Argus tracking and, you know, what you guys are doing out there and, you know, what are the sort of use cases that you’re seeing? You know, how are businesses really leaning into gps sort of in their fleets and in their vehicles? How’s that helping?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s, as I sort of said earlier, that We’ve got smaller SMBs all the way up to big corporate. So the use case is very different. If you look at that sort of entry point or the initial reason for GPS for the smaller organisations, often it’s around theft. So that’s vehicle theft, but also time theft. My drivers and my team are meant to be on site or meant to be here, and they’re not. And so how do I make sure that they are? And then people also use it. Lots of trade sort of companies use it for the invoicing. So we know the vehicle is at your place doing the job for this amount of time.

Andy Patrick:
So I can hook that directly into my invoicing and my pay systems. And so therefore, you can get that pretty clearly. So there’s those sorts of ones. And then you go all the way up to the government organisations and corporates, which are a lot more around sustainability, a lot More around sort of carbon monitoring. So we do all those sorts of things. You know, we’ve got all of the standard stats for every vehicle, you know, the carbon output, the fuel usage, all those sorts of things. And we can calculate exact carbon usage from the miles that you do and the engine revving and things like that.

Paul Spain:
Yep.

Andy Patrick:
So there’s that sort of piece also. We’re having some really good conversations with particularly government organisations at the moment around fleet reduction.

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Andy Patrick:
Okay. And the vision of Argus is around creating intelligence to elevate people, performance and planet. And so that planet bit is quite key to us. It’s a negative for us as an organisation to lose revenue, but from achieving that part of our vision, we’re quite happy with it. It’s taking another car off the road and providing that the car is coming off the road for a positive reason. Not, you know, I’ve made my entire team redundant and we don’t need the cars anymore, but rather we’ve recognised we’ve got three cars, we only need two. So there’s lots of work that we do with people around that and help show that sort of utilisation productivity piece.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I’ve heard a little bit about that recent times. And, you know, it does seem as though, yeah, technology can have a really, really big place to play when it does come to the efficiency and understanding, sort of the detailed utilisation of a fleet and being able to make much better and smarter decisions.

Andy Patrick:
Yes, yeah. And the other big piece is around sort of driver behavior. So we’re very careful to say, look, we don’t monitor drivers, we monitor cars and vehicles. So we don’t necessarily care who’s driving it. We can just tell you what the vehicle did or is doing. But, you know, it’s around building a positive driver culture around, you know, maintaining speed limits, things like that, and driving in a safe manner. You know, we’ve got some companies that, you know, on average we’re getting two speeding infringements a month with their fleet, and then once Argus was installed, they halve that and less, you know. So again, you know, that’s drivers that are used to exceeding the speed limit potentially being a bit dangerous, and now they’re being pulled back and saying, no, come on, guys, let’s do the right thing here.

Andy Patrick:
There’s lots of examples like that that we have and using Again, it’s about safety for individuals and for other road users. So those are kind of, I guess, some of the big pieces that we work. We’ve got a couple of really good partners as well. In the space that work with us around that sustainability and that utilisation, fleet reduction and also that transition to ev. So we can look at your fleet. We can tell you you’ve got 50 vehicles, but 20 of them never go more than 400k in a day.

Paul Spain:
Yep.

Andy Patrick:
Therefore there is a likelihood that you could convert those 20 into E vehicles. So it’s information like that that we can provide at a really granular level that was maybe more anecdotal for, for companies in the past and so we can again help them with their EV journey. I mean, you would have seen obviously the news this year about how EV sales are dropping and all the rest of it.

Paul Spain:
Well, I’ve seen some then I’ve seen in that just in the last few weeks, it’s sort of flipping internationally.

Andy Patrick:
Yes, yes.

Paul Spain:
And I mean the latest headline I saw was around Australia sort of doubling in terms of the uptake of EVs. But of course it just said in recent times, I was like, I was looking for a bit more data, like did it double, what, in this year? The last five years, the last 10 years? Because of course we know these things have sort of ticked up, but it does seem as though things are sort of are increasing again to at least some degree. But of course we had a big impact here in New Zealand with subsidies disappearing.

Andy Patrick:
Yes.

Paul Spain:
And of course that was always going to take the, the wind out of the sales, EV sales for a period.

Andy Patrick:
Right. It totally did. And I think what we’re seeing now is overstock of the market, which is bringing prices down. So then people are jumping back in and buying them. So I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I suspect that the manufacturing organisations are starting to reduce. I mean, well, we know they have Tesla, for example, reduced their output to keep demand high and meaning they can maintain prices. So there’s a little bit of that market dynamics piece going on.

Andy Patrick:
I think the other thing too, in New Zealand, but also wider parts of the world, obviously with a recession type attitude going on. Whether or not it’s been an actual recession is up for debate. But everyone’s been tightening their belt. So lots of people haven’t purchased new vehicles this year. They have extended the life of their current fleet. And so some of those might be starting to get to the point where actually we do need to replace these now. So you’ll see a little bit up uptick there. The other thing too though is it means that the used car market, the used car manufacturing plant has dried up this year because those vehicles are not coming into the market anymore.

Andy Patrick:
So used price for cars are going up because there’s less. The demand is there, but there’s less supply. So there’s a whole lot of dynamics sort of going on as well. And we’ve seen a lot of fleet reduction. We’ve seen a lot of companies merging, liquidations, things like that this year, more than we ever have. And we’ve seen a big change in buying patterns as well. 75% would buy outright, buy our GPS devices outright last year and preceding years. This year it’s more like 50, 50.

Andy Patrick:
So we run a sort of an OPEX rental model, sort of where you just, you know, you pay a smaller amount each month. And given the economic climate that we’re in that cash flow, maintaining that cash flow is key for survival. And so lots of companies are opting for those sorts of options. And so we’ve come up this year with two or three different pricing mechanisms to help our customers and potential customers to get GPS and then reap the benefits of that within their organisation and to help them do that. So, yeah, it’s been a really interesting, challenging year from that perspective. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
And in terms of. We’ve got people listening in that are kind of curious, like, what does it cost to get up and running? Is there a lot of kind of integration you have to do sort of software wise into people’s existing systems, or will they often just use your software, you know, entirely, and just be able to jump in for a fairly minimal kind of cost?

Andy Patrick:
Yes, is the short answer. I mean, we’ve got. There’s a company called Fleetwise that do pool booking. So we have got really deep integration with them. So if you have that as your pool booking, Argus works seamlessly with that, and there’s a couple of others as well that we work with. So from that sort of perspective, it’s. It’s a little black box. We drop it in your car.

Andy Patrick:
Takes anything from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the device in the car and things like that, and then the software’s up and running straight away and you’re off and running. So, yeah, generally what slows down the installations, the onboarding, is organizing the vehicles to be in a location to fit the devices. So, I mean, we can. We can fit big fleets very, very quickly. But there’s a big sort of project management, organisational piece that needs to happen with our customers often, and we help them with that. We’ve done it, I don’t know, hundreds of times. So we’re pretty good at helping customers do that so, yeah, you can get up and running and seeing benefits quite quickly. We’ve had someone say around August come on board within sort of 30, 60 days, sort of started seeing driver behavior improving, people not hitting excessive speeds, things like that.

Andy Patrick:
Then there’s a knock on as well to fuel efficiency because as you know that, you know, if you drive a car more smoothly but also a little bit slower, you save on fuel, things like that. So they started seeing cost savings immediately. And the other one is quite big, is around E. Rucks and rucks, the road user charges. Yeah. So we’ve got a couple of systems which manage and monitor that. So quite a few organisations will be off road driving their diesels and so obviously we can give you that down to the metre. So you can then come back and claim back those diesel miles as one piece and then the other one is actually for a big fleet is we can manage that whole setup for you.

Andy Patrick:
So now you don’t need one or two people all day every day just getting registrations or rucks and putting them into cars or giving them out to drivers to put into cars. We can automate all of that, digitise it. So those people can go from doing a fairly mundane job to actually value add within their organisation and actually start to look at ways to improve their efficiencies and their productivity as opposed to doing this. It’s obviously a necessary and a compulsory task in New Zealand, but yeah, I just think that you could spend your time better and benefit your company organisation more by doing more value add type work.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, really interesting. Well, I hope that you get a good break and that things will keep moving forward for you in 2025. Yes, thank you. Yeah, it’s been great to chat with you, Andy, on. On the show. Yes, thank you. Anything else you want to mention that we should have covered?

Andy Patrick:
We’ve got a few things coming out next year which could be quite interesting video. We’re looking at AI as I think most people should be. One of our big initiatives this year was growing outside of our traditional base. So we’ve got a few things in that area coming next year. So our traditional base being light commercial vehicles. So we’ve got a few things bubbling away in other areas. So yeah, watch this space as far as.

Paul Spain:
That’s exciting.

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, it is really good.

Paul Spain:
And where do people track you down if they’re interested in finding out a little bit more?

Andy Patrick:
Yeah, Well, I mean argustracking.com is our company website. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. And then I’ve also if you’re a SaaS person and in Startup world, I do have a little blog that I’ve been chipping away at. It’s just called Andy P. Blackops. So have a look at that. If you sort of two to five minute reads and little bits of advice about things I’ve learned over the last 10 years in SAS. So if you’re in that sort of early startup space, you may find some useful tips in there for everything from operational things through to people and capabilities and engineering, et cetera.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. Oh that’s very good. Well, good stuff. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. Now I should mention, although this is our last live kind of episode before Christmas, we actually do have some pre recorded episodes so there will be some content there to keep you occupied over the break. You know, we’ll be back early mid January with more of the sort of live episodes. If you aren’t catching the live episodes then definitely make sure you’re following us on the varying channels. So you can follow myself, Paul Spain on LinkedIn for our LinkedIn live streams, but we’re also across on YouTube, Facebook and X for the live streams as well.

Paul Spain:
And these days you can also catch us on YouTube music as well as Spotify and Apple podcasts if you’re looking out for, you know, just the audio side of course. Big thank you to our show partners to 2degrees, Spark, HP, One NZ and Gorilla Technology. And we’ll look forward to, you know, catching up in 2025. And if you’ve got any recommendations on content or topics or suggestions for 2025, we may be mixing things up a bit. So keen to hear any suggestions, feel free to get in touch via the NZ Tech Podcast website. All right, haere rā. And we’ll catch you on the next episode. Cheers.