My Vision For Embodied AI
May 12, 2026
My motorcycle’s front tire and brake pads were due for a change. Over the past few weeks, I called maybe 20 shops to get a quote on labor. Almost all of them said the same thing: about two hours, somewhere between $200 and $300.
“Can I wait on-site?” I'd ask.
“No,” they said every time. “Regulations.”
Fortunately, I eventually found a mechanic who said I could wait. He quoted me one hour of labor and a hundred bucks. Great. I made the appointment, rode over, handed him the bike, and sat down.
20 minutes later, he pushed my bike back out and took my Benjamin.
Welp - now we know why shops don’t like customers waiting on-site.
It’s one thing to charge $300 per hour. It’s another thing to quote three hours at $100 an hour, when the job takes less time than an episode of Family Guy.
In the far future, when embodied AI becomes robust enough, I want to open a garage. I already have a name for it: The Honest Garage.
We’ll only do repeatable work: brake pads and rotors, coolant flushes, differential fluid changes, filters, tires, maybe even automated battery swaps if the world has fully surrendered to EVs by then.
No, we won’t take on heroic jobs. We won’t LS-swap your Porsche 997.
But for the boring, repetitive, yet unavoidable jobs that keep the average American moving, our robots will do the work - and the customer can stay and watch.
