Dan Roth  0:03  
This is Wheel Bearings I'm Dan Roth from Forbes. 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:07  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Navigant research. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:10  
And I'm Rebecca Lindland from RebeccaDrives. 

Dan Roth  0:13  
gang's all here. It's good. So record the last time we chatted, I think you had a Toyota Sienna. Which I then got to enjoy. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:22  
I did have to seanna I guess I did you enjoy it. 

Dan Roth  0:26  
Not so much.

Rebecca Lindland  0:30  
What happened? It's just it's not a bad van. It's the only all wheel drive fan but

Dan Roth  0:37  
boy does it feel old. 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:40  
It is old yeah. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:41  
Oh, for sure. 

Dan Roth  0:43  
Yeah, that was that was my biggest takeaway was just like, wow, this thing. does feel it does. It does. So all the new Toyota's are on mostly on the new tnga architecture and they feel pretty good from behind the wheel.

This one It's okay but it just feels data solid and just like all the parts of their, you know, it has a suspension. It has an engine the steering wheel turns the wheels but nothing really works in harmony

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15  
I take out everything

Rebecca Lindland  1:16  
yeah one thing it doesn't have is any kind of old flat storage like that's what I think that's what we had talked about before was where the seats and I apologize, I don't think I've sent you the pictures, but the seats wouldn't go all the way like they wouldn't go out of the way like they just went up. It cut down I think I think I said we couldn't fit a queen size mattress. We had to like fold it.

Dan Roth  1:45  
I remember I

Unknown Speaker  1:47  
was really surprised about

Dan Roth  1:50  
Yes. So the third row does there's it falls down into the well right but the second row is just like always there I guess you can remove them but they're also very heavy.

Unknown Speaker  1:58  
It's like 50 pounds or so. And then

Unknown Speaker  2:02  
it's representative at the age I think.

Dan Roth  2:05  
Yeah and and because it's an all wheel drive fan, I noticed that the the power train makes a bit of noise like you can hear it whine a little bit Sharon's for case. But just curious to me. I try also discovered because there was writing an article about trail breaking. So it's like, well, let's see what this technique is all about. You can trailbreaker sienna.

Unknown Speaker  2:27  
It's not happy that I have to read your article. I don't know what true. Okay,

Dan Roth  2:30  
so trail braking is the racing technique where like, normally when you're driving on a track or high performance driving, you're you're taught to you scrub off all your speed in a straight line, and then you turn the wheel. So you may have to a corner, right, you're like, you slow down in a straight line. You let off the brake you turn and accelerate,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:50  
right? braking. What happens is, as you know, as you're braking, you're getting weight transfer onto the front wheels, right? Sure.

Dan Roth  2:58  
And you're only want to ask one thing. You're you're your front tires, especially at a time, so you want them to either steer or turn, but you're leaving traction on the table that way, like unused traction. So, the idea with aerobraking is you you start that breaking in a straight line, you initiate it in a straight line, but you turn and then you know, by doing that, you'll you'll upset the balance a little bit, you'll you know, you'll either understeer oversteer, and you've let off the brake pedal at that point. And that corrects the balance. So you're you're using all of your available traction. So basically, like if you're going for an exit ramp, you approach it really fast. And you wait until the last second and you break really hard and you turn the wheel and the things will do what it does, it'll either kick the back end out or it'll understeer a little bit and you let off the brake and by letting off the brake the front wheels grab again and you know you get that traction back and Boyd is the stability control really, really hated.

Unknown Speaker  3:54  
Watching the drive again.

Dan Roth  3:57  
And it's a hard took me to master you know, like you think like Heel toe shifting is hard, this is harder than you think

Sam Abuelsamid  4:03  
it is, it is challenging to get just right and you know, every vehicle is going to behave a little differently with trail braking, some respond to it, some don't. Because, you know, ultimately the grip that your tires have either longitudinal or lateral like you know, straight ahead or or side to side is a function of not only the ultimate friction of the tire, but also the normal force the weight on that tire. And when you're braking, you're unloading the, the rear axle a little bit. And you know, as you if you stay on the brakes, as you start to turn, your rear wheels are unloaded a little bit so you've got less force pushing those tires down. And so there's going to be less lateral grip so it's going to allow the back end to slide around a little bit more than it otherwise would if you get off the brakes entirely in a straight line before you turn and you know that's that's one of the cool things like with the Honda Civic Type bar that we talked about last time. You know, especially when you're driving on the track you can, it's really amenable to trail braking I was to say but the thing trail brakes nice, it's fantastic and you know you like just by the way you modulate the the brake pedal, you know, as you're going into a turn, you can, you can overcome pretty much any understeer that you might have with that thing and bring the back end around with the brake pedal. Yeah. And that's Yes, to accelerate up.

Dan Roth  5:28  
That's the thing that I don't want to go too far down that the driving technique rat hole, but like, it's the thing that is really handy with a front wheel drive car, especially because of the weight balance and everybody complains in front wheel drive. understeers basically, everything understeers because understeer is safer. Even if you really overdo it and you plow off the road knows first guess what, that's the safest way to crash. So it's, it allows you to sort of upset that balance a little bit because you're playing with where the weight is and and it apparently For really good drivers, it's faster to trail brake than it is to use that traditional method usually. So

Unknown Speaker  6:06  
what you're doing in the seanna it was, yeah. Uh huh.

Dan Roth  6:12  
Some of what it was and we also use it as a family vehicle and it excels in that respect, although it's not it's the only all wheel drive in you can buy right now. It's not really the best fan it's not it's okay to drive and certainly like my wife comments and she's she got in Skype. I want to take this on a trip. But also like I don't I it's not quite as comfortable certainly as the Pacifica which I think is probably the nicest man. That's a beautiful band. Yeah. And there's no hybrid version, like there is the Pacifica which I think is to his detriment. Although, you know, the psionic is decent fuel economy. Performance is not really anything you're gonna really get concerned about with the as long as they can all you know, keep up and stay out of their own way. drives, okay. This is not really, again, not a ton of concern. But you do notice like when you get into like an odyssey, and you go wow, this has that Honda spirit in it where I bet the Odyssey trailbreaker

Sam Abuelsamid  7:18  
probably more predictable because you don't have the all wheel drive.

Dan Roth  7:22  
Yeah, yeah, that's probably that's the thing too, like it's hard to drive. I think it's probably hard to do too much high performance driving. And this thing is completely unsuited for it. To begin with. A couple of things that I was kind of annoyed by what they're just like details like the certainly the, the interior quality, the nav system, and infotainment, not good. It got lost, which I haven't had an app system get lost in a while. That was kind of like really guys like what do you do and, you know, in their defense, maybe it was old maps or something, but still So I had the power doors on it and I dropped the kids off at school a few times. And every time my my son's getting out of the this sliding door, and like I'll press the button and it'll beep but it won't actually opens. He's got this really heavy door like back in the 70s with like the VW microbus. He's gonna like slam it shut. I was like, well, that's weird. What's going on? Well, it turns out that it protects you from yourself so much that when you leave it and drive, the power doors don't work. Right. So I'm going to the drop off line at school, and I'm like, I'm like, I'm just stopping for a minute. He's just getting out. I didn't I didn't put two and two together until the very last day.

Rebecca Lindland  8:40  
Wow. So it's interesting because I had an issue with the doors not working also. And it would beep and not do anything and right and we have to do it, man. Well, it turns out that what happened to me was at some point, the switch or the button to turn all those off is right at your knee. Yeah, jump it, I bumped it at some point. So when I went digging for the fuse box, which is actually what I was looking for, I discovered the magic button and because it just everything just stopped working and and as you say it's, there's those doors weigh a ton, nothing would the tailgate would work, nothing would work. And it's the ergonomics of where that button is that I just happened to hit it at some point in time.

Dan Roth  9:28  
So yeah, it's any van it's it's the Toyota of vans. So it's, it's good, they'll probably be trouble free and that sense. But I think if you were to shop across all of the other available vans, you know, the the Odyssey, the even the, what's the key of the Sedona Sedona that it looks pretty but it's surprisingly not as good as you think. At least the last time I drove one, which was a few years ago, but certainly the Odyssey in the Pacifica cross shop them at the Sienna if you really need all wheel drive, as opposed Was your only choice But otherwise, I would not pick that sienna. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  10:05  
I'm sorry. One of my girlfriends has the seanna I and man, that thing has been through the ringer. She's got four of my favorite little humans on the earth. That's who I went to Disney with. And they actually drove their Sienna from upstate New York all the way down and back again, without any problems at all. It probably has, I'm guessing, maybe 80,000 miles on it. 90,000. And, you know, the kids have just absolutely destroyed the

Dan Roth  10:35  
faith as they do

Rebecca Lindland  10:36  
or as they do. But to your point, you know, it's incredibly reliable. I mean, that thing just hums right along. And so, it is Detroit and living in upstate New York. I have to ask if they have our will Dr. Dave she probably does because she's a physician. And so it's one of the they have a Subaru they had a four runner, and I think they have the this one and so you know, it's one of those when you have You get to work when you have to get to the hospital you do. I'll ask her but what she should have a Volkswagen Beetle? Isn't that what the cloud driver drives

Unknown Speaker  11:06  
to the cloud?

Dan Roth  11:08  
dating myself? So

Rebecca Lindland  11:10  
I mean, the seanna is, you know, it's tons of reliability. It's a Toyota. But it's definitely time for reading. I

Sam Abuelsamid  11:18  
would expect that we'll probably see a new CNS sometime in 2020, after they launch the the new Highlander. The new Highlander should be launching either late this year or early in the new year. They showed the New York Auto Show last spring. And you know, that that updated version of the platform will probably be the basis for the new seanna you know, oh, yeah, in the past, so

Dan Roth  11:44  
that's right. I forgot the Highlander hasn't been updated either.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:47  
Yeah. So that's, you know, that's, that's coming. We you know, they they unveiled it in New York. I'm surprised that they toiler doesn't typically show new vehicles that far in advance, have launched and I can't remember if it's launching late this year or early in 20, but it's coming soon. And sometime after that, we'll probably see the seanna. In fact, we may even see the seanna at the LA Auto Show next month.

Dan Roth  12:12  
That would be that would be logical. Yeah, maybe maybe we'll expect it and then we'll be disappointed if it doesn't show up. Let's just say and they replaced it, I got a super ascent. On the other side of that, which really sort of pointed out how sort of lacking in in control integration. The Sienna was because that the super drives like all of the different groups were talking to each other, at least on one day, you know, the suspension, strokes and steering. It all kind of works a lot more in harmony. And it's a so the end the ascent doesn't have the newest version of Subarus infotainment, but it's it's better than than what was in the Santa, it's it. The last time I drove one was I guess, about a year ago and I just That the impression holds up where it's the biggest Subaru it's quite large actually but it's a little bit more narrow than some of its competitors are feels that way anyway so it's actually pretty easy to place it in parking spots and stuff. But you know three rows well thought out not a whole lot of real criticism to make in terms of it being a family vehicle other than like, it's kind of tough to go from a van to a not a van and be like, I don't I don't understand why people who need to reverse don't buy a van.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:34  
It make you know, especially if you have younger kids, you know that you have to strap into car seats. I have never understood why anyone would choose an SUV over a van. In that case, because you know the van you've got the lower floor, it's just easier to reach in and, and strap the kids in to get them out, you know, as opposed to, you know, reaching up to get them into utility

Unknown Speaker  13:57  
and veins clearly have never been granted. I'm just gonna

Dan Roth  14:03  
finish mom like really what you want as an art class?

Rebecca Lindland  14:07  
No, actually what you want is a Range Rover, but that's another story but no, I, you know, I mean, you can look back historically, and a lot of Gen Xers really like, especially well, they just like their STDs, I think because I mean, I agree with you completely. I don't have any kids. But I agree with you completely. I bet a van is much more practical.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:29  
It just goes to show you that humans are not rational when it comes to vehicles.

Dan Roth  14:33  
Absolutely not like as I'm the very tail end of Gen X like the last three years, but we, as a generation, we sort of grew up in minivans my half of Generation X to say where the earlier half generation excellent station wagons and now you're in the boomers certainly had station wagons and so boomers are my parents and I'm the upper

Sam Abuelsamid  14:55  
half of Gen X. Wow.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
I am too and I'm actually my when I took my parents on the Chrysler, Chrysler Town and Country launch in like 2006 I think it was. My mother had never been in a venue in a minivan. Really, really. She was like wow, this would have come in handy when she had eight children

Unknown Speaker  15:23  
really never spent any time in a minivan and she loved it. It was really cute actually. Yeah, it's

Dan Roth  15:28  
like that's the thing like they were the boomers were definitely stationwagon parents. And you know as a kid, we had wagons but I remember very like distinctly when the caravan came out, I was like glad things cool to my like six or seven year old. But like we we were carried around in those things. So our reaction against that certainly as parents I think has been the crossover an SUV for you know for a variety of other reasons to their popular but the ascent really like it's about the same shadow as minivan what but you give up something for that. That form factor but in its competitive set, I think it's pretty good, but I didn't really like about it was it didn't get great fuel economy because I think it has the 2.4 liter turbo in it so it was like 22 miles to the gallon it consumed more fuel than I thought it would. Because Subarus these days are generally pretty efficient, but I think without without a turbocharged engine would be kind of pokey. It was better economy but it wouldn't keep up quite as well as it does. And the CVT in it is probably also not the newest iteration because at certain situations like part throttle at like 30 miles an hour, you can feel it like hunting like I'm going to give it a little throttle and and back off when to give it a little throttle and then the backoffice like the electronic throttle was programmed weird. It couldn't just relax. This is weird pulsation.

Unknown Speaker  17:01  
I wonder if and I agree with you i could. I was the fuel economy does make sense. I haven't driven the ascent yet. But I do think that that vehicle needed a turbo, but I love that size for the Subaru brand. And it's perfect. It really is. I mean, it's exactly what super owners want. But, you know, you made me think of something else. I wonder. I've been playing around and trying to put every vehicle that I get. I've been trying to use the adaptive cruise control and pretty consistently, and I think this happened in the seanna as well or normally sorry, it was in the rav4 hybrid that I had I I get carsick.

Dan Roth  17:42  
Yeah, yeah, so Toyota's tend to do that to me to see no didn't have great adaptive cruise these the ascent actually does have pretty good adaptive cruise the eyesight system is pretty good. Their lane centering sucks, but I don't generally like lanes, anyway,

Unknown Speaker  17:56  
but I wonder if the CVT is what's making me a little bit more carsick cuz I've used adaptive who's in other vehicles and and have not gotten our sec.

Dan Roth  18:05  
I don't know, I I struggle with that too. I think it tends to do with a lot of factors. Yes. How it's going to sort of modulate the acceleration coasting when it actually has to use the brakes a lot of cars, though. They'll be when you use the adapter cruise they turn into like binary drivers, their accelerate, right? Yeah, not coasting.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:26  
Our cars, you know, a lot of the earlier ACC systems did that quite a bit, you know, they would break really hard or very abruptly, right. newer ones are a lot smoother, and, you know, they'll start gradually leading off speed earlier. You know, part of the challenge there, you know, is, you know, the customers, you know, complained in the past, you know, of ACC systems that would leave too big a gap to the car in front and then you know, they'd all get cut ends. And so, you know, as a result, you know, they because they didn't want to fall To close, you can get cut ends, and then the car would back off. And, you know, that was one of the problems that you often had, you know, newer ones, you know, tend to be a lot smoother, in part because they're, they're, you know, they've got better engine control, you know, to manage the the throttle speed and, you know, they can use the transmission and the brakes and all this to control the speed more smoothly than they then they couldn't have passed,

Dan Roth  19:26  
and I hit them with a CVT, if you're going to use the transmission as part of it, it's probably smoother because it can just, it can seamlessly go to a lower tier ratio, this new step, so it can just they can just ramp it up.

Unknown Speaker  19:40  
They're also putting those distance adjusters in a much more intuitive place now, too. Yep. And so you're able to fix because that's one of the things I run into, especially in the New York area, where people just cut in and there's such aggressive drivers and everybody follows really closely. That but I have noticed the last couple of years calls that I've had, it's much easier to adjust that gap. What is it called? You call it something much more technical?

Sam Abuelsamid  20:08  
No, just a gap. Space Krishna

Unknown Speaker  20:10  
space cushion. I like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:15  
You know, the other thing too is with Toyota. You know, some manufacturers, including Toyota, they always default, you know, each ignition cycle, it'll reset back to the maximum gap. whereas others will remember whatever the last gap you used was like in our most living, you know, if you set it up the shortest gap, you know, the next time you use it, and turn it on, that's, that's what's what you get. It remembers your preference. And Toyota always, every time it resets it back to the maximum gap, and then you have to tap it down again, if you want to shorten up that gap.

Dan Roth  20:54  
That's equal parts infuriating and probably admirably cautious.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:00  
You know, toilet is, you know, a conservative company and, you know, so they're gonna, they tend on on the side of caution with these things. But like you said it, it can be annoying, you know, especially, you know, because the, if you have the maximum gap, you know, then there's almost always plenty of room for somebody just slide into that gap.

Dan Roth  21:20  
Well, yeah, and like, if especially if you're paying for the thing, like I bought the thing, you should obey me Damn it. Yeah. And even

Sam Abuelsamid  21:25  
even if the shortest gap, none of these things are real, none of these are, you know, following close enough to be considered tailgating. You know, there, there's always more than enough room for it to stop, you know, unless unless the person in front of the panic stops. You know, there's almost always enough room to you know, to safely slow down and maintain that. Yeah.

Dan Roth  21:45  
Well see, that brings me to another thing, but I know there was Rebecca, you had another thing. So you say your other thing first. What

Unknown Speaker  21:54  
what other thing

Unknown Speaker  22:00  
It's it's a movie reference that I don't even remember what movie it's from this thing I think I think, go ahead. Oh,

Dan Roth  22:07  
I was just gonna say speaking of panic stops the the, the emergency braking systems. Have you guys ever had those just freak out and deploy like maximum stoppage? Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:20  
The opportunity the first time that happened to me was in a Subaru.

Dan Roth  22:24  
Yeah. Like sometimes you'd be closing the gap right? And you'll have to you heavy traffic or something and you go in like 30 miles an hour or something and you just, you've got enough space but you slide up on the car in front of you a little bit more than than the automatic emergency you know, the Collision Mitigation system thinks is prudent HD, ignore the beeping because you know you're doing and then all of a sudden it just goes

Unknown Speaker  22:47  
POW.

Dan Roth  22:49  
Like maximum like full power stop. And usually Holy shit. I'm gonna get run over by the truck behind me or whatever.

Unknown Speaker  22:56  
I have another experience where I feel like it's just not gonna stop in time. That's much more my feeling on when I

Sam Abuelsamid  23:04  
try try not to test them but well I think you're Dan, you're talking about automatic emergency braking, not ACC right?

Dan Roth  23:11  
Yeah. No. Breaking,

Sam Abuelsamid  23:13  
yo ACC sometimes it does feel like it's not because the maximum deceleration you're gonna get with ACC is only about point 252 point three G's. It's not going to do a panic stop with ACC. So there, you know, sometimes you you will find yourself, you know, having to hit the brakes to slow down. Yeah, but, you know, I think what Dan's talking about is automatic emergency braking, where, you know, something slows down suddenly in front of your rock Neil cuts in front of you, rather than the system hammers on the brakes.

Dan Roth  23:43  
Yeah, it just gets very confused. And you're just like,

Sam Abuelsamid  23:46  
Yeah, well, you know, what I had that actually had that happen most recently was in the RAM. Earlier this summer, I was driving the ramp 1500 and it actually happened at low speed. I was going to do some photography, the spot where I do some photography. You know, there's a path that goes off the road into some tall grass. And they it was actually the park parking sensors. were picking up this tall grass. And as I was climbing up this little hill slammed on the brakes from the tall grass from detecting the tall grass around the vehicle.

Unknown Speaker  24:24  
You know, we had an issue on Laguna Seca with this. When really in the Yes, you just remind me when you were saying that like a kind of random thing. And we were in Jeep Grand Cherokee homies. And when you come out of the straightaway, so you you coming out of the shade when you start to head up the hill? Oh, no, I like it was at Kota. It was it's the same setup where you're coming the Circuit of the Americas in Austin where you're coming down the straightaway and then as you head up the hill, it's a pretty sharp Hill. The emergency braking was stopping, thinking the hill was an obstacle. And of course you're going like 100 110. And so you know, we're we're going fast. And so they had to turn them all off because everyone was like, being thrown against the

Unknown Speaker  25:17  
car. So yeah, six.

Unknown Speaker  25:20  
Yes.

Dan Roth  25:21  
All right, well, enough about me. Um, it looks like you had the Audi Q eight, which is lovely, a lot better looking than the Subarus. And

Unknown Speaker  25:29  
I did, which doesn't,

Dan Roth  25:30  
doesn't look bad, but the Audi looks really really good.

Unknown Speaker  25:33  
You know, the QA is sort of anytime that a brand does these kind of SUV coupe like vehicles, I'm just a sucker for them. I

Sam Abuelsamid  25:45  
Q is like the least coupe like of of all of those

Unknown Speaker  25:48  
it is but it's this like, it's still a sort of the Bad Boy version of the Q seven. Right? It's kind of like that, you know, it has all of the amenities. It'll have All of the beauty and the technology and the and the fit and finish and performance and all these positives that the Q seven has buy in just ever so slightly smaller package. And just a lot of fun to drive. I mean, actually some of the pictures that I took I bit it sort of reminds me of the Lamborghini eurus like it's kind of has considered for a third of the price. And the one thing I will say I was I was shocked about on the QA was that it starts nearly $14,000 more than the Q seven

Dan Roth  26:44  
I didn't know Yeah, I didn't you gotta pay more for less.

Unknown Speaker  26:49  
Well, I so for comparison sake, so so the Q seven starts at a 53,000 which of course isn't what most of them sell for but The QA you can't even get in the door for one for less than 67,000. And by contrast, so I looked up the x five, so the x five starts at 58 nine and the x six starts at 64. Three. I mean, $6,000 more as a lot of $14,000 I just, I don't know, that that sort of that stunned my little sensibilities, but, but it was, it was beautiful. I loved it. I it's worth it. Well, you know, actually, I haven't driven Turner over the loss of my job at q seven, but from a performance from my very emotional side of things. I absolutely loved that QA. I absolutely loved it. I will say and Sam, I meant to contact you before this because you know how I was complaining how the, the x t for was just really loose and I and I don't have the right vocabulary to describe it. But it was Almost like it was too torcy like it, it jumped off the line and the steering started was a little bit frantic and not quite tied to it and just this weird sort of feeling to it. Yeah, the QA actually was almost slow off the line. Like it felt really heavy. I and, and I did like the steering because as I said before I want to talk about the x before. I like a heavier feeling to a steering but I remember sitting at a four way stop and I and I put my foot i didn't i didn't slam my foot on the accelerator. I was in a car on a country road but I just felt like I needed to really apply my foot to get the QA going. It was probably the only thing that I didn't absolutely love about it.

Dan Roth  28:52  
And all driving modes or think this sort of default are dropping

Unknown Speaker  28:59  
in Default.

Unknown Speaker  29:02  
Oh gosh, you know,

Unknown Speaker  29:05  
I just I just came out of the bubble xc 90 and I did do the different drive modes in that one.

Dan Roth  29:11  
Well, that's interesting too. Like, how does it compare because they're not they're not exact competitors, but they're certainly

Unknown Speaker  29:17  
they're not exact competitors. So any any right? It was very interesting to have the XC 90 as well. The xc 90 feels like a Greenwich mom car and the QA desson

Dan Roth  29:34  
for the Jets.

Unknown Speaker  29:36  
Now they're both beautiful. I mean, the interiors on both the vehicles are just stunning, but I felt very much like a mom in the backseat. Whereas in the QA, I just felt more like a single female badass okay.

Dan Roth  30:00  
The QA it's a little newer to say it's a little bit less ubiquitous. It's interesting looking at the pictures of the QA versus the Volvo and I think some of it probably comes down to feel. Yeah, the Volvo interior just looks a lot nicer, a lot more premium in pictures. You know, the Audi's theme with the brown seats in the black everything else just in pictures. It doesn't come across as as luxurious.

Unknown Speaker  30:26  
Yeah, I know what you mean. I yeah, I don't think it translates like that quite as much. I mean, I you know, I was sort of a sucker for the cool lights that he's done. And, and i and i also prefer a lighter interior. Anyway. The brown though that was in the QA was just beautiful. I but I do like that the XC 90 I like the fact that all the seats are exactly the same, whereas they didn't cheap out on them. The second and third row They're all they're basically the same driver seats throughout, which I did like and, you know, I think I know what you I think the I think the pictures when I'm looking back at the pictures also because the QA did the same thing. They have the same seats as well. And I think that the materials are softer and a little bit more techie than in person than the XC 90 is coming across because the XC 90 was gorgeous. It was beautiful, you know, light interior, gorgeous, soft grays, whereas the QA was a much darker interior. But yeah,

Dan Roth  31:39  
it's the QA different looks sleek, it's got that large on you. We've talked about piano black,

Unknown Speaker  31:46  
and they do provide a cloth to wipe everything down. That's good.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:52  
You didn't need to do that. Yeah, exactly.

Unknown Speaker  31:55  
And you do need that rightly so I think that the I think the Audi is A little bit more on the tech side of things. Whereas the XC 90, I may because it is a couple years older. I

Sam Abuelsamid  32:10  
know I don't think it's sad because I think it's more just, you know, the nature of what Volvo wants that vehicle to be. Yeah, the personality it has. It's not meant to be as techie, you know, or maybe as forward looking, you know, from an interior standpoint, as what Audi wants to do.

Dan Roth  32:32  
I agree. And I bet I put the Audi drives better than the Volvo

Unknown Speaker  32:36  
you know, they drive differently. I mean, the Volvo I this was the hybrid version, right? I didn't add the plug in hybrid actually, which I didn't take advantage of and i and i this is a total side note, but I do need to see about I would like to get a charging station here at home to try it out a little bit more. The hybrid was lovely. It was a nice quiet, you know, it was it was an exciting Anything. I mean, the Volvo was, you know, it was it performed really well. It was definitely a nice premium experience. And the Audi is German though. And it drives like a German car. And, you know, it drives like a German SUV. It's it's much heavier, the feeling of it was much heavier. And, you know, I'd love to get it up to a decent speed. I didn't get that opportunity. I'm probably still a little gun shy from my pull over the

Unknown Speaker  33:32  
merit. No, I got pulled over here in grad h in the when I had a little Honda Civic.

Dan Roth  33:38  
That's right.

Unknown Speaker  33:38  
Yes, I'm trying to be a little bit more careful. But you know, again, it's their to their apples and oranges. They're both really nice fruit but they are different

Sam Abuelsamid  33:50  
to what you were talking about earlier with the pricing. Yeah, as you were talking, I was looking up the prices and you know, yes. The QA starts at 67,400. But the standard powertrain and the QA is that twin turbo be six. Whereas, or is it supercharged I can't remember. If

Dan Roth  34:13  
it's turbocharged still say it's supercharged if it's supercharged.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:17  
Without it, you know, they call it a three point o t, even when a supercharged

Unknown Speaker  34:21  
TFSI.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:22  
Yeah, well, that doesn't necessarily mean anything it just means is boosted in outies. Case directly, six. I think it's actually supercharged. At any rate, the Q seven, you know, for that 53,000 starting price, it has the two liter turbo. That's it really Yes. Wow. It's getting ready to get the three point o t, you have to step up to the top prestige trim level, which has a sticker price of 68 67,008 50. So what the same engine it's actually a couple hundred dollars more. Yeah, that QA so

Dan Roth  34:58  
why would you ever want Something like the Q seven with the two point o t

Unknown Speaker  35:03  
well because it because the price point right i mean it's $14,000

Sam Abuelsamid  35:07  
yeah well you know and think think about the way you know most people that are going to buy q seven are going to drive it yeah I I've driven you know the Atlas with the two point o t and it's it's a perfectly adequate engine you know, most people buying a utility like that are not looking for high performance you know, they're looking for adequate performance and that

Dan Roth  35:30  
just think in in something that large heavy, the ea 88 right. What's the max the power that makes like 260 horsepower?

Sam Abuelsamid  35:42  
I mean, the version of me check with the one in the seven is but like the version that's in the, in the golf ours over 300

Dan Roth  35:50  
horsepower. Yeah, I was I was just counting that the golf orange

Unknown Speaker  35:57  
before you go too much on that we need

Sam Abuelsamid  36:00  
Three, eight, and in the key seven.

Unknown Speaker  36:03  
So but also on that price point, though, Sam, because that's that's the Q seven with the prestige package right? Yeah, but then but the Q eight is 67 four and then you have to add almost $10,000 for the prestige package.

Unknown Speaker  36:20  
The one that I drove was 80,006 90

Dan Roth  36:24  
it's clearly got a more prestigious prestige package.

Unknown Speaker  36:28  
I mean, it's a it's a big difference.

Dan Roth  36:33  
But that's like, Okay, so we're talking premium set of coupie. As you V's crossovers or whatever they're, like that doesn't seem out about I would raise maybe one eyebrow to look at the sticker and be like, Yeah, okay. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  36:46  
expensive. Even even the base q seven the premium. So q seven is available on premium Premium Plus and prestige. The premium with three point o t, which is optional is $60,000 Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  37:04  
I feel basically what you're saying is it doesn't matter.

Dan Roth  37:09  
The you're spending a lot. Yeah, exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:11  
If you get them. Yeah, they're they're both expensive. And yeah, yes, there's a price difference there. But it's not quite as much as what you initially indicated. But it if you if you line them up comparably equipped, and there are a lot closer together,

Dan Roth  37:28  
I think they probably also obfuscate a little bit in terms of that lineup, like the QA. He looks very good. It looks very premium. It looks You know, I think it has a little bit more presence than a Q seven, which is also good looking. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  37:45  
the Q seven is, you know, boxy are looking at the little more today, you know, especially in in its current generation in the prior generation, you know, maybe a little, a little less of that, and then the current one

Dan Roth  37:59  
yeah, so I think that they have slightly different missions, right? Different for sure reasons for being. Sure.

Unknown Speaker  38:06  
And just to finish up the discussion on the on the Compare and contrast on the XC 90, the one that I had was 86,000. So these are pricey. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  38:18  
that was the plug in hybrid. Right? He will drive inscription

Dan Roth  38:22  
or the inscription. So that's sort of I think that's,

Unknown Speaker  38:26  
that's actually, that's a good deal at 6000.

Dan Roth  38:31  
Because, okay, so you look at that car, and it's loaded for 86 K.

Unknown Speaker  38:38  
It's got shelfie for 86. Right.

Dan Roth  38:41  
So but you look at look at the Audi there's 88 K. There's probably options to go.

Unknown Speaker  38:49  
I don't think so.

Dan Roth  38:51  
Okay.

Unknown Speaker  38:52  
I didn't build I didn't build the most expensive one. I don't know. I mean, this one has

Dan Roth  38:57  
a hybrid.

Unknown Speaker  38:59  
Not a lot. You're right. It's not the one that I had had the 990 9001 50 for the prestige 5009 50 for the luxury pack, or which was leather seats, leather massaging seats, which was fabulous, extended leather package, Alcantara headliner, dual pane glass, and then there's 2750 for the adaptive chassis package. And then there was another few thousand the cold weather pack is 600. towing is 650. Polish wheels are 1000 the CD player is 100.

Dan Roth  39:42  
Freely kitchen,

Unknown Speaker  39:42  
it comes with a front filter panel. So I got that going for me.

Unknown Speaker  39:49  
I have no idea. They specified it out.

Unknown Speaker  39:53  
I'm looking at the picture. It's a color Connell. Oh, okay. I know what that is. But so Anyway,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:01  
so what it's worth the Lincoln aviator Grand Touring Black Label. Yes. is also in that mid at right price. Yes, it's it's about a similar price, although it is it is more powerful, significantly more powerful than the Volvo.

Dan Roth  40:16  
I think the aviator is probably more powerful than anything else in the class.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:21  
Except for like, a Mercedes AMG.

Dan Roth  40:25  
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm

Sam Abuelsamid  40:29  
just shy of 500 horsepower.

Dan Roth  40:32  
But like I said, you can't the price of E Tron. Right? Or, you know, not an Audi hybrids of that's where I say like the vault was a good deal because you get that you get the hybrid it's inscription trim, there's really there's no options because it's loaded. And it's it's hasn't cracked $90,000 which, yes, it's an expensive vehicle. It's a premium vehicle. But it again, it looks like a million I just maybe it's just me, but I think it looks more expensive. It is both inside and out. And this is continues to be a really good value if luxury SUVs can be considered.

Unknown Speaker  41:12  
It's a beautiful I mean, the Volvo is absolutely beautiful. And I've said before my sister drove hers absolutely into the ground. And you know, it's it's a really beautiful, elegant experience. The only thing I was very surprised about, and I actually have a little one minute video that we could I don't know if we can tack on or something is I was shocked. It has this terrible mechanical voice when it comes to, you know, like the voice recognition system. So when I press it, and I would say, you know, take me home and then it would come back with there is no address late. Yeah, but it's just awful. Like, I don't know. 2005 voice I was shocked but there's no elegance to it. It's Holly broke up the experience. And just and it was funny because I played it for my sisters too. And they were like, wait, what is that? Like, I know I got lazy or something you know or Alexa

Sam Abuelsamid  42:16  
also says this is gonna be replaced soon with a new Android automotive based system that's launching the pole star two and on the XC 40. Electric. That's That's

Dan Roth  42:27  
right. There's a website. We can play with it. Yeah, my

Unknown Speaker  42:30  
my android I did. I will say my Android Auto works seamlessly. I did have a couple of issues. I know we've talked about the Volvo system before and when I had the XC 40. I didn't have any problems with it. The xc 90 was not as intuitive. It took me a while to figure out how to turn down the radio and how to change it. Oh yeah. I think I messed up on the buttons. The first time that I did it on the steering wheel. controls. And so then I thought, Oh, that's not it. So then I didn't know where.

Dan Roth  43:05  
Yeah, because there is

Unknown Speaker  43:08  
no knob.

Dan Roth  43:08  
The knob is the fan knob. Right? Right.

Unknown Speaker  43:11  
Exactly. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:12  
And so they, they change that on the XC 40,

Unknown Speaker  43:15  
which is super annoying, because you're not going to use that

Sam Abuelsamid  43:18  
as well. Most people aren't switching back and forth, you know, all the time. And so once you figure it out, and you know, in a given car, you're probably going to be driving that same car for a while. Yeah, but the volume down. I mean, you don't change the volume a lot in your car. Well, that do. But again, once you figure out where it is, you know,

Unknown Speaker  43:37  
once you figure out where it is, of course, as with anything as with any of these controls, so

Dan Roth  43:44  
yeah, and the premium car makers are doing this a lot where they're, they're trying to change the paradigm. I'm actually looking at the photo of the XC 90 and I'm just remembering things that like when I spend a week with one of these, I spend most of the days like grabbing wiper stock shifter

Unknown Speaker  44:03  
I turned the car off three separate times today when I meant to put the gear shifter Yep, yeah, I was I was in a parking lot and it was torrential rain and I saw a spot that I was sitting there and I turn the engine off I was talking to my sister and I said oh my gosh there's a spot that's closer so I'm not going to get quite as drench and I went so I went to turn the car on and then somebody put it you know, somebody took the spot and I was like, Oh darn, and I press the button the gear slipped or by mistake or then one other time I turned out like it was it was annoying this this let's have a different gear selector thing is driving me crazy.

Dan Roth  44:45  
Well, at least they're all they're all doing the like push it forward to engage reverse which like it takes getting used to for me like he got engaged reverse but pushing forward and it's spring loaded. It comes back to like the center position, pull it back to go So they're all kind of doing the same thing. So we're trained on the sort of pull it down, like and they all go into line. So I think some of that is just what we're used to. And if you were to own it, you quickly,

Unknown Speaker  45:11  
you do get used to it, but but I still, it's I still don't like the fact that it takes me like two moves to get it into drive.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:19  
Yeah, that's that's the big issue I don't like to call those is that you have to double tap it to get it into either drive or reverse a single tap. puts you in neutral

Dan Roth  45:29  
right by the wayside. Emotion drives me bonkers,

Sam Abuelsamid  45:32  
right? Well, and if you don't do the double tap, you know, now you're in neutral and if you let your foot off the brake pedal, you're going to start rolling.

Unknown Speaker  45:40  
Yeah, that's not good either. Exactly. my driveway, my upper driveway is very steep. And it comes into almost a blind turn. Like if the person is not paying attention. If you see if you're paying attention, you can see me coming as I backing down, but I have to practice the gear selector for every car because I have to be driving I have to get going really fast. And that Volvo and you're absolutely right Sam I ended up in neutral a number of times especially when I first got it and then as you say as it as with anything you get used to it, but it still is just I feel like it is it is a bit of a safety issue. The other thing that I was very surprised about was and you know what, I have to make sure it was in the Audi Did you guys have I'm sorry. It was in the the the XC 90 the the backup camera I thought was really dark at night. I don't know if you guys had this experience at all with it.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:44  
drove the XC 90 so I don't remember how some very well

Unknown Speaker  46:47  
lit

Sam Abuelsamid  46:48  
Yeah, usually there's there's usually some sort of brightness control somewhere where you can adjust that. Oh, like yeah, display. Let me

Dan Roth  46:59  
see me You should do is find out who had the car before you so you can yell at them for the settings they left.

Unknown Speaker  47:04  
No You know what I apologize it was it was actually the Audi that had a really dim backup camera. And the Volvo had a really bright one because I took pictures of each of them because I was really surprised and I was at the same again I was at my sister's and dropping off something at night. And I was really pleasantly surprised at how well of although how much lighter it was, but the QA I was disappointed with that.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:36  
On the the topic of value, I've gone through and priced out the QA prestige with all the available options. Yes, which which adds another 20 grand to the price and ends up at 97,940 burqini 6000 for the first first year. Addition with the valco leathers

Dan Roth  48:01  
is that when you're first born

Unknown Speaker  48:08  
under 100, and it's less than the URIs, and it's much prettier. That's true.

Dan Roth  48:14  
Yours is so disappointing, like as a Lamborghini, like I

Unknown Speaker  48:16  
when I,

Dan Roth  48:17  
like Lamborghini was always the kukoc and the miyamura. And like, those two years is not to me. It's like, I don't I don't care how good it is. It's not a Lamborghini. It looks like a friggin Audi.

Unknown Speaker  48:29  
It looks like an Aztec.

Unknown Speaker  48:32  
So

Dan Roth  48:35  
I mean, and I hate the LM o double o two, but like at least that thing's just appropriately bonkers. And these Lamborghinis are not. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:46  
I just want to see what Ferrari is going to do with an SUV.

Dan Roth  48:49  
I know man. Fine.

Unknown Speaker  48:52  
Are you driving.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:55  
I had the Lexus LS 500 h That's a lovely car. It is except for that trackpad.

Dan Roth  49:03  
Oh, yeah. Which

Sam Abuelsamid  49:07  
is interesting, you know, 10 years ago, 10 or 11 years ago when they initially introduced the LS hybrid, and at that time was the LS 600. Age. You know, they paired the hybrid system with a VA, as opposed to the V six that they have this time. And yeah, it's in the review, I wrote for Autoblog at the time, you know, I made the case because it was, it was like about a 20. Almost, it was about a $16,000 premium for the hybrid on the LS back then.

Dan Roth  49:36  
Right, but it was like v 12 performance though.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:39  
Yeah, close dish, but, you know, but but it only got like three or four miles per gallon more, or if that was even though it was even less than that.

Dan Roth  49:48  
Right? Because the point was, the point wasn't the fuel economy,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:51  
right? Well, that and that was why they bashed it as an LS 600. You know, as opposed to, you know, the 460 because he had the LS 465. One at the time, and then the 600, because they were using the hybrid system as a performance enhancer, you know, to try to replicate, you know, like, the 12 performance, you know, without having to do a V 12. You know, this time, you know, it really is more of a fuel economy play relative to the standard Ls 500. And this, you know, this generation of LS first one that doesn't have a V eight engine, you know, 30 years of LS, you know, that the LS, you know, and the E s were the first to lexuses back in 1989. And this time, for the first time ever, there's no va, there's the twin turbo V six and the hybrid. And, you know, the hybrid is, you know, really significantly more fuel efficient, which is interesting, you know, they've gone this direction, and there's actually doing the same thing with the new Highlander. You know, the the Highlander. When that comes up. You know, the current generation Highlander uses the V six with its hybrid and the new one is switching to a two point four liter four cylinder to get, you know, get all the fuel economy. But you know, on the on this LS You know, this is the same power train that was in the LC 500 hybrid I drove last year I think. And you know, it's actually quite good. And it they this is, you know, this is actually quite a different hybrid system for Toyota that they put in these two in the LLC and the LS. It's a new generation. And interestingly, it's it's actually a lot like you remember the two mode hybrid system the GM had in their trucks and SUVs back 10 years ago. Yeah, this is very much like that, because you've got the two motor, a hybrid system plus a four speed planetary gearset you know, attached to that. And so, you know, higher you know, higher speeds, highway speeds, you know, it can, you know shift different ranges Toyota calls it their multistage hybrid or less This calls it a multistage hybrid, and conceptually, basically the same as the old GM two mode hybrid system. And with clutches that can, you know, lock the lock the motors, you know, at higher speeds for, you know, more efficiency, and seems like they might have actually done it, right, compared to what GM did, you know, because actually getting quite a bit better fuel efficiency, you know, and also maintaining, you know, decent performance with the thing.

Dan Roth  52:28  
And it's still an LS so beyond the trackpad, it probably doesn't have any other faults.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:34  
No, I mean, you know, this is far and away the best looking LS ever, you know, I think it's a great looking car, and it's got some of the cues that the first appeared on the LC, you know, in terms of the way they've executed the facia, and that spindle grille, you know, I think it on these two cars, it actually works really well. And, you know, at the back end, you know, more more tapered you know, at Use the word coop like but you know, more more of a fastback design than say it's a fast see pilant right. Yeah. See it? Yeah. And, and, you know, more sculpted sides. It's a much more interesting car than any prior generation of the LS. Yeah, it drives really well. And it's got some got some interesting features to it as well, like the the A das stuff that's on this thing. One of the things they've done, you know, a lot of cars now have blind spot monitor systems that use a pair of short range radar sensors in the rear corners and the rear bumper on either side. The LS actually adds a pair of the same sensors at the front corners, and it's got this massive heads up display really big heads up display. And when you're at an intersection, if somebody is approaching from either side. It will, you know, it will detect, you know, that there's somebody coming, and you'll actually see arrows flashing across the hub. In front of you, indicating which direction somebody is coming from. So if there's somebody coming from your left, you know, as your says you're about to go through an intersection, or even just make a left turn, if there's somebody coming from the left that you didn't notice, it'll pick that up, and you know, flashes bright yellow arrows in front of you, that, you know, let you know that hey, you know, pay attention. There's somebody coming there.

Unknown Speaker  54:22  
That's really cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:23  
Yeah. And you know, the other thing too, if you using the, the adaptive cruise control and Lane centering system, in the HUD, you know, it shows you where the the lane marker where the lanes are. And if you're coming up to a curve, it actually detects You know, it the graphic, you know, it's actually animates the curve, you know, to show you that you're your fault, you're going into a curve and following a curve. You know, just in case you weren't paying attention as you as you actually should be. But this little detail, touch that are kind of cool.

Dan Roth  55:01  
So how do you feel about clean centering though? Like, I've I've never, never found a system that I like,

Sam Abuelsamid  55:10  
yeah, I mean, when it when it works well when it when it's done well you know, on highway driving it can be it can be a nice add on, you know, that, you know really keeps you keeps you centered, if it's done properly, like, you know, obviously Cadillac supercruise is far away the best of the systems, you know, it, you know, just locks you into the middle of the lane and just, you know, it's it keeps you where you want to be. And it's you know, it's the only one that's currently designed as a hands off system. The system that Mercedes has on the current s class and E Class is almost as good you know, the Toyota the Lexus system is quite good. You know, if the if the if the curve, you know, is fairly mild, it'll follow it but if it starts to bend in a little tighter it will it will not stay in the lane it will drift outwards. The actually one of the other best systems out there now is the copilot 360 plus that they have on some Ford and Lincoln vehicles now, that one actually works really well. But all these systems are designed as hands on systems, they're not designed, like supercruise for hands off, they don't have any driver monitoring system. And you know, they're, they're primarily just relying on the torque sensor and the steering wheel to detect if your hands are on the wheel. And if you know if then if you take your hands off the wheel, it'll start you know, pestering you to put your hands back on the wheel. And it'll disengage eventually. Yeah, it'll eventually disengage. So, you know, it's, I think it's, it's a nice you know, it's it's a nice feature you know, for hot for long highway trips, you know, where your attention may start to drift a little bit. You know, to help you know keep the vehicle centered in the lane and like I said for the systems that are actually labeled as lane centering You know, that's that's definitely a good thing. Lane Keeping Assist, I'm less enamored with, you know, is most of them don't really work that reliably

Dan Roth  57:16  
maybe some Lane Keeping ones that I always fight with always like I get you know, I'll make a correction I'll be close enough to the line at the Give me that overzealous bit of steering input knocking off Yeah, it's something like nonlin

Sam Abuelsamid  57:29  
You know, that's that's the problem with those it's exactly that they are nonlinear the lane center and systems tend to be more linear because they're, they're trying to actually track the center of the lane and they generally won't let you get that far off the center of the lane. You know, if you know if you're, you know, if it's a little twist or more curving road, where you know, you may be trying to, you know, hit the apex is a little bit, then yes, you're definitely going to be fighting it you don't you know, you should turn off the system. When you're in those kinds of situations where you know that you're not going to be fault necessarily falling right down the center of the lane, but for just, you know, typical highway driving, it's fine. It's a nice, it's a nice addition to the system. And you know, at 996 grand, you know, it's actually cheaper than the LS 600 was 10 years ago. So I got 10 grand.

Unknown Speaker  58:22  
I'm actually getting the LS 500. All Wheel Drive tomorrow.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:27  
The hybrid or the?

Unknown Speaker  58:29  
I think it's just the gas one. It's not a sticker of 108,900

Unknown Speaker  58:36  
I know. It's got the 3.5 liter twin turbo. Okay, so yeah, that's just the gas one,

Dan Roth  58:41  
though. That engine is like I that one stomps down the road though. Yeah. I really like that into

Unknown Speaker  58:48  
the 17. And I apologize. I'm going to wrestle paper here for a second.

Unknown Speaker  58:54  
This has a $17,000 Executive package option.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:01  
That's got the nice backseat on the passenger side with the foot rest and the fridge. You can

Unknown Speaker  59:09  
know it's got multifunction massage ultra suede headliner power front seat buckles

Sam Abuelsamid  59:14  
massaging headliner. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  59:19  
misplace massive multifunction massage comma, ultra suede headliner comma, our front seat buckles and heating point for the Oxford commerce

Unknown Speaker  59:34  
we got the four zone climate concierge is so nice the extended wheelbase then right there, do they do they?

Sam Abuelsamid  59:41  
I don't think they're doing extended wheelbase anymore,

Unknown Speaker  59:43  
right? It does.

Dan Roth  59:45  
The first LS I ever got when I was writing for Autoblog was the extended wheelbase with the executive package. And like it was I didn't have a lot of experience with cars like that. We put the kids to bed and then we just went out and sat in it.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:03  
Oh, that's awesome.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:06  
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:08  
sliding rear seats with the foot rest come up and everything. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:00:11  
it was like little lazy boys in it. It really is. It's impressive car.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:14  
That's really cute.

Dan Roth  1:00:17  
Yeah, and but like so I look at the LS and I'm like okay, so the price has risen. And when that car came out, it was like, what's it like $30,000 in

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:27  
LA was ever that cheap when it was

Dan Roth  1:00:29  
it was but it was cheap. And it was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:32  
compared to the Mercedes or BMW of the era. Yes, it was definitely cheap. And it didn't

Dan Roth  1:00:37  
break like those cars. And it wasn't haphazardly assembled. It was

Unknown Speaker  1:00:43  
not cheap. Yeah, it was.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:45  
I mean, it was just it was much better value.

Dan Roth  1:00:50  
Right? And so I look at it now I'm like, well, it's it's still it's still competitive. With the S crass and the seven series that it's always competed with. But now it's like one The gang kind of where it's not that undercutting them it the Genesis does this now and and the key of Canaan headed to a certain degree where they offer that the sort of early LS recipe where it's, it's less expensive, full of, of all the features, all the nice materials engineered well. It's almost like Lexus doesn't have anything to prove anymore with it. But I almost wonder if it's also sort of lost some of that. Some of that original LS spirit like I see an early ls the first couple of generations, and they just have a presence to me that the newer ones kind of blend in like they look like it could be an Alice could be an Avalon, or yes, sometimes and maybe the early ones were

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:49  
kind of bland. They were bland, so maybe it's again, maybe it's just an A and according to the font of all human knowledge known as Wikipedia. It did actually have an initial starting price of 30 $5,000 so you were You're right. I thought it was more than that was close.

Dan Roth  1:02:03  
Wow. I'm impressed. I don't think any probably went out the door.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:09  
I remember, you know, driving that, you know, first generation LS. I was working at GM at the time.

Dan Roth  1:02:15  
It was. It wasn't it was botti wasn't it was kind of

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:19  
it was Bodie. But man, was it quiet? Yeah. It was silent in there. Yeah. You did

Dan Roth  1:02:26  
one of the ads with a record of like a little guitar Concerto in it like 50 miles south

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:31  
of Courtney other was the other ad you know where they had the champagne glasses on the engine city engine it was running you're pouring champagne into it, you know there's no vibration and then there was another one with a ball bearing that yes. ran down in the game. A lot of gaps. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:02:47  
yeah. And then as good as those ads were all of them make me think of the Saturday Night Live ads from the 70s where they perform a bris in the back of a Okay yeah yeah I just I wonder if it's it must be just me I think if you guys still feel like the LS hits the mark then it's just the answer.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:13  
yeah i mean i i think it does and a lot of ways now if only they would give it a decent you know, interface for the infotainment system then yeah, it would be a nice car.

Dan Roth  1:03:22  
I think it's got to be coming through and it has to know that it's just their system is not good.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:27  
Yeah, they they they are aware the nobody likes the trackpad.

Dan Roth  1:03:33  
But to be fair, I didn't nobody likes to accurate trackpad either.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:36  
I like Yeah, I was.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:38  
Right. I do. I like the accurate track, man.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:40  
Yeah, but here we are. We've established this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:45  
Yeah, but I do see more people coming around to my view that touchscreens do not belong in cars.

Dan Roth  1:03:49  
I definitely agree. The touchscreen snap on cars and the car that I got this week really like I got it today. And I didn't want to talk about on the podcast and I won't because I haven't wrestled into the ground yet Oh see that at all though I mean look at what Porsche is doing look at that the screens on the Audi I think it's actually have screens but like it's important to not have important stuff in the screen like I shouldn't have to tap a touchscreen and then like press little fake not buttons. So I can adjust the fan speed.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:23  
No, I I kind of agree. I agree that we have we still have to have knobs there are certain buttons that need to be there.

Dan Roth  1:04:32  
And that's not an acceptable answer all you should just set it in automatic. No, screw you. I'm paying for the thing the thing should obey.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:39  
The other thing. We've been down this road,

Dan Roth  1:04:42  
there is no Santa Claus.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:48  
pg&e Pacific Gas and Electric Yeah, the main utility that serves Northern California and Southern California Edison. Both recent months have given warnings That they would, you know, if firing if there were conditions that could lead to potential wildfires, they were going to start doing preemptive power shutdowns. You know, because one of the big fire last year I think was the paradise fire last year was actually started by john powerline that that triggered that fire. So,

Dan Roth  1:05:23  
yeah, I didn't know that those high voltage lines can actually give us sparks.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:29  
Yeah. When, when if they get too close to each other, and if they start touching or, you know, or, you know, if a lion falls, you know, that can spark off a fire. And so, you know, this week, you know, there was a forecast for very high winds in Northern California and, you know, very dry air and dry conditions out there. And so this morning, you know, we're recording on Wednesday evening, October 9, this morning, PJ and he actually did their first preemptive blackout, their first preemptive power shut down. And this morning this morning, they ship cut off power to 500,000 homes and businesses north of San Francisco Bay, you know, from Marin County all the way up and well up into northern California and across towards the Central Valley

Unknown Speaker  1:06:19  
and Sacramento because my Nia Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:22  
was the fact that I and then they expanded the area this afternoon, as most recent thing I saw was over 800,000 homes and businesses were without power. So, you know, and, you know, one of the things that came out of this as well, as, you know, prior to the power shut off, Tesla sent out a notification to all their owners to make sure that they fully charged their cars before the power went out. Because, you know, otherwise they might not be able to afterwards, you know, unless their, their home was on solar. So you know, this was You know, this is one of the potential downsides of having an EV, if you are not off the grid if you know if you don't have some other source of power, like solar, you could be stuck for a while, you know, without being able to charge your car.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:15  
Yeah, but

Dan Roth  1:07:18  
I think it's not that much different than when anytime we have, you know, we get the snowpocalypse mornings, right? And they're like fill your gas tank, because it's the power so you can't can't pump gas either. So it's certainly I think you you you're a little more on that that razor's edge with an EV because they just don't have as much energy as a car with a full tank of gasoline. There's just more energy in the gas. Whereas the you know, the EV i think is, you know, you need to make sure that's topped up so you can get a couple hundred miles away if you need to wear it. If you have, you know, three gallons of gas you're going to be able to get

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:56  
far enough away and you know, a gas station, you know, you know, some gas stations have generators, you know, to power their pumps, you know, so they keep pumping gas even if the power's out. So, you know, there there are solutions. And, you know, again, you know, today Ilan musk tweeted out that, you know, they're going to be working to add battery storage and solar to all of their supercharger stations, which eventually will help but he also tweeted out the same thing two years ago. And they've made almost no progress on that in the two years since, in fact, I saw something interesting this evening. That, let's see, somebody actually calculated you know, how many solar panels would be required for supercharger station. It takes about 300 panels to produce about 100 kilowatts, you know, and the current version to superchargers each charger each charging station, each charger chargepoint itself puts out about 100 kilowatts, so, You know, some of the bigger superchargers with 24 stalls would require 7200 solar panels.

Dan Roth  1:09:06  
So that's how much physical space with

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:08  
so we're not that's that's a lot of space you know we're not talking about just having an awning over the Chargers you know you need a significant amount of real estate to get enough power to power these chargers at their normal rate.

Dan Roth  1:09:23  
You know and then when it's cloudy,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:26  
even was cloudy you can see oh you know solar panels will still generate will still generate power just you know, at a lower rate. And you know, the other thing is that, you know, if you equip the charging stations with stationary storage, stationary batteries, you know, then you know, when it when it is sunny, you can pick that up, you know, so you don't, you don't necessarily need to have full number of panels, you know, you can have fewer panels but it still takes a lot of panels to power, high power DC fast charging stations, even if it only takes 80% of the panels. It's still a lot of politics, a lot of space.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:07  
So we have a question on Twitter. What we do, okay. If you could choose a vehicle not sold in the US, what would it be and why?

Unknown Speaker  1:10:17  
First? I'll go first. Okay, good. Well, it's not going to be true for in a little while but the Land Rover Defender.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:24  
Yeah, that's coming to the states next year.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:27  
I know. But it's been a long way.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:30  
It wasn't that long Boston that lived right near Tommen zella in Boston. And I just loved it. I would walk by that street just to go see it just to visit it.

Dan Roth  1:10:41  
Yeah, it's funny, the, the lawyer that is at the office. He saw our offices right by there. It's in Chestnut Hill, and so like around the corner, but he drives the yellow one all winter. Yellow defender.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:58  
It's amazing. Okay, So what would you do?

Dan Roth  1:11:01  
I do a Suzuki jimny.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:03  
Oh, yeah, that's on. That's a good one.

Dan Roth  1:11:08  
They're just they're so neat. And then just,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:11  
yeah. Sam for Focus ST. wagon.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:16  
Yeah, that is a good choice that there was there was a Toyota. It was a Toyota pickup truck that I used to see all the time in Saudi on. Oh, yeah. That's silex. Is it the highlights? I think so. And it's all overseas. It's definitely not here. And it's just not that it's kind of like the Tacoma I guess. But it's not I don't know. Right. And they usually, like camouflage and decked out

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:43  
is it's a pickup of choice of rebel armies everywhere.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:47  
very reliable.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:50  
They're tough and they're durable. They're reliable. And yeah, they're, they're relatively inexpensive. You know, you can keep them running forever. And, you know, there's a On the back,

Dan Roth  1:12:02  
there's a whole rabbit hole you can go down with that and it goes back like decades thinking about like motorized war material,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:14  
right like the Jeep came from

Dan Roth  1:12:17  
right with the Jeep was a very popular with access powers if they could swipe jeeps they would because the Cooper vaca was a piece of junk and just like the tanks like that the the Soviet T 34 tanks were way, way more impervious then then the German tanks So, okay, stuff

Unknown Speaker  1:12:41  
back to the question at hand. The other one. The other one I would do is the fox wagon Shaco

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:47  
it's out of production though.

Dan Roth  1:12:49  
That doesn't count though. Like you can still get one. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:12:53  
I know. But they were never put the new ones were never sold in the state.

Dan Roth  1:12:56  
I was disappointed by that

Unknown Speaker  1:12:58  
because my prom car Went to the car

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:02  
for a second, Jeff.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:04  
I don't remember. You know, what?

Dan Roth  1:13:09  
What year was the prom? What year was the shocker

Unknown Speaker  1:13:11  
always in the 80s

Unknown Speaker  1:13:13  
now the Shaco

Dan Roth  1:13:16  
I won't I won't put you on the spot, but the prom. Thanks Shaco came out in 77 I think so. It was newer than that. Yeah. So they did a second generation. I think that started in like 82. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:29  
bloods are square.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:31  
Ah, I don't remember.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:35  
Trying to figure out my prom dress. I was much more of a girly girl than

Unknown Speaker  1:13:42  
that would be. That would be my my second choice. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:47  
That's a good choice. Yeah, especially especially. I mean, either one of them. You know, they're both based off the first gen, you know, the mark one golf platform, you know, which was a really fun platform to drive and You know, if you got one of those, like the, with the 16 valve, yeah. Or even even the earlier, you know, the original GTI engines, you could, I can't remember if they were I think they were a GL, if they were GLA or a GTI. But they had essentially a, you know, the Shaco with a GTI power train in it. And the GTI suspension setup. Yeah, those those would be a hoot.

Dan Roth  1:14:22  
That sounds like a good time. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:26  
Okay, back to what we were talking about.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:31  
Thank you to William mailee for the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:34  
A das and, you know, automation and stuff.

Dan Roth  1:14:39  
Hey, we just complained about this for a little while.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:41  
Yeah, well, you know, and it just to tie into that, you know, triple A, you know, did a study recently they tested a bunch of vehicles, with you know, various systems and adaptive cruise and link keeping and, and especially automatic emergency braking, and basically, they found and pedestrian detection, they found that most of these systems did not work nearly as well as they expected them to. So, you know, I guess the the main thing I'd want to say is that, you know, all of these systems, you know, are, you know, none of them are foolproof, you know, all of them have limited, you know, some pretty severe limitations on what they can do, where they can do it, how well they can do it. And you cannot count on, you know, just because your car may be equipped with some of these systems, especially things like a B, and collision alert, just because they're equipped with them. You know, think of it as a, you know, as a nice bonus, if it works, but don't count on it. You know, you are still in control of the vehicle.

Dan Roth  1:15:47  
Yeah. I think that the triple A piece points out the naming is stupid, because it's misleading. But also there's a real education component. It's in that puts some of the burden on The delivery process at the dealers and some dealers are really good about this where they'll walk you through, but most are not all the tech in the car. Yeah, right. It's more of a premium deal. So if you're buying that that fancy Audi, or BMW or the Lexus LS, you're probably going to get walked through that stuff. But if you're buying the Nissan Rogue with pro pilot assist, I think it's what it's called, or Yeah. Anyway, yes, even we don't know the names and like, that's, that's part of the problem when you get like, branding involved. And, you know, branding is trying to really quickly convey the benefit it overreaches. You know, we went up with stuff called autopilot.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:36  
And, to their credit, Nissan, you know, at least in North America does call it pro pilot assist, right? And Volvo calls, there's pilot assist, you know, it's it's not meant to take over.

Dan Roth  1:16:49  
But I think also like people don't, it's just like the early days of ABS where people had a weird idea about what it could do, and they'd be like, I can tailgate, I can do it. This stuff because I have abs, which actually like is the opposite of how ABS works. And you have to explain like no ABS actually lengthens your stopping distance in some conditions, right? Because it's, it's going to pulse The benefit is you can steer, which was not possible with a locked wheel. So this this process is you have to, you have to experience them, you have to trigger the emergency braking, you have to trigger the like,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:27  
go out and try it all out. And that's, that's kind of hard to do with a desk, you know, and, and that's, you know, that's the fundamental problem with relying on, you know, dealers, you know, to explain this stuff, just sitting there in the showroom or even sitting in the car and having them walk you through what these things do. does not tell you how it does it or, you know, or how well it does it. You know, I think, you know, this is this is a fundamental issue, you know, people often don't get to experience these, a lot of these especially the most impact features like a B, until it's too late.

Dan Roth  1:18:02  
Well, yeah, and and when it happens when you trigger that system, it flusters the driver who's not expecting you're not experienced with it because it starts flashing lights you and beeping and you don't know what's going on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:12  
And that's one of the problems we have with ABS in the early days, you know, people would first time ABS got triggered, you know, it's like all of a sudden this pedal, the brake pedal is pulsing and, you know, people, you know, took their foot off the brake, and they

Dan Roth  1:18:23  
were looked at this, this is real loud, too. That's right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:26  
Well, and also, you know, how many of the dealers while they may have had the training or had an example how many have actually been use the system to your point like that, that they're familiar enough to explain it and and to kind of cover all the bases of all these different things that are going to happen to you in this car and all those bells and whistles and vibrations and haptic feedback above all this stuff coming at you at once?

Dan Roth  1:18:50  
Yeah, all right. That's a real problem. That's all different but every brand is different. Line dealer.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:56  
Good luck. Yeah. And you know, they don't all work the same and they all have different brands. Different brand names, and I've written about this in the past, you know that we really need to standardize these names. I mean, just ACC is an example. You know, you get, you know, I think Hyundai calls it smart cruise control, you know, Toyota calls it intelligent cruise control, you know, you have all these different names for essentially the same function, and there's variations in how they work, you know, but, you know, if we at least consolidated on the names like we've, we've done in the past with ABS and traction control, you know, then we could, that would, that would be a step in the right direction, but we can't even seem to do that. And then you know, on top of that, you know, you've got the, the names that kind of imply that it's more than it is and that's actually you know, going back to the Alexis for a moment, that's actually one of the nice things I liked about that when I was looking through the the specs, there. There, lane centering system and you know, the adaptive cruise control They're there their branding for while it is unique to branding, it's actually called copilot assist, or code co driving assistant, Ford calls, there's copilot assist, and both in both cases, you know, it's, you know, it's implying that it's there to work with you not to take over from you, which is, you know, crucially important, you know, to, you know, and Tesla is far away the worst at this, it, you know, creating this, this impression with their customers that, you know, they're selling a self driving system when it's not, it's a Driver Assist. It's meant to augment you not not to take over from you.

Dan Roth  1:20:41  
Yeah, and I think that the copilot thing still implies I think that it's, there's a level of automations it's not actually there. And it's, it's a thorny problem.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:52  
It is.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:53  
Yeah, and we think that right now they're being almost evangelized as As competitive advantages, as opposed to safety systems, so like, to your point, Sam about abs and your traction control, like, it's very specific, we know what these things are called by right now, because everyone has branded at their own and that somehow it's better than the next system when in fact, it's actually the exact same thing. But we require so much of the consumer to do their own research. And even then they may not really understand what each thing is because you have to learn it all over again, whatever they're called. And so I think, you know, it would be nice if we could sort of back away from it being used as a marketing leverage, and instead be used for what it actually is is as feature that should be standard, like, rear cross traffic alert and whatever the things they call them, but

Unknown Speaker  1:21:54  
and they'll be a good thing. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:57  
We're here for to

Dan Roth  1:21:58  
exactly. It's just Listen to our podcast because this you never gonna it's never gonna happen when you're trying to sell cars in such a competitive market. Never. They're never going to get their name straight. They're always going to confuse you. So you buy the thing, right. You know, this is a really good sort of segue into the issues of stuff of tech being oversold were. Over the last couple of weeks, we saw smart summon rollout with Tesla. And it's very clearly beta software being tested. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:30  
Unbelievable.

Dan Roth  1:22:31  
Have you seen anything? Oh my

Unknown Speaker  1:22:33  
gosh, I saw I saw a couple of videos. I saw the one where the car almost just it didn't stop.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:42  
Just barely missed a car just barely

Unknown Speaker  1:22:43  
missed the car. Right. They were in a parking lot. And then the other one that was actually really sweet, but kind of funny. was when the older guy ran after the car.

Dan Roth  1:22:52  
Yeah. Did you see that one? Yeah, so those both

Unknown Speaker  1:22:54  
Yes. I mean, it was very sweet of him. But, but yeah, obviously It's really egregious and it is just so irresponsible. And what's the point?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:08  
The point is, you know, when, when Tesla cell has been selling full self driving for the last couple of years, that full self driving package, they have not actually been able to book that revenue to their bottom line is deferred revenue until they actually deliver the feature, they're getting the cash, but you know, on their their income statement there, they can't book it as revenue yet it's deferred revenue. And

Dan Roth  1:23:33  
if they're getting the cash, where are they putting the cash if they can't put it on their revenue? are they holding it in escrow?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:42  
Well, no, they're using it but you know, it doesn't count towards their net income

Dan Roth  1:23:48  
yet. They don't have net

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:52  
net losses, they have negative net income. So you know, it's it's, it's it's accounted for as deferred income. You know, and then when they actually deliver the feature, then they then they add it to their bottom line net income.

Dan Roth  1:24:06  
Oh, that seems shady, right off the bat.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:09  
Well, I mean, actually, you know, this, you know, that's, that's not, you know, it's not an uncommon practice and a lot of areas, you know, what, when, when you're, when you're taking a deposit for something, you know, or taking payment for something that you haven't delivered yet, you know, you don't count that towards your profit. You know, that's just, that's just the way it works. You still get the cash, you know, so you have the cash available to work with,

Dan Roth  1:24:34  
right? Basically, it's like it's, it's a way to raise the money to deliver the thing,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:39  
right. So, but now that they're actually delivering these features, you know, they added you know, auto Platinum navigate on autopilot late last year. Now, they're adding, you know, this smart summon, and those are countered to, you know, as features of their full self driving and you know, so each time they add one of these features roll out one of these features, then, you know, they can take a chunk of that, depending on when you bought full self driving, it might have been 3000 or 5000 or $6,000, they can take a chunk of that revenue and count it towards you as current revenue towards their bottom line. And I think that it's totally not a coincidence that they happen to do this, you know, you know, less than two weeks before the end of the quarter, so they can count this, this deferred revenue towards their bottom line on their third quarter earnings, which are going to be announced in a week and a half,

Dan Roth  1:25:38  
which are going to be a bloodbath. Otherwise,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:41  
yes. Okay. So basically, then they've rolled this out in beta form for accounting purposes.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:49  
Yes. So that they can, they can put more money towards more cash towards their bottom line.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:57  
That's

Unknown Speaker  1:25:59  
disgraceful. unspeakable,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:01  
well, that's typical Tesla

Dan Roth  1:26:04  
there. They've also like their deliveries are up to them, right like they did they're not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:08  
worried but just barely up over q3, but they were short of what was expected or just barely up over q2. I mean, they, you know, they were up by, I think less than 1000 units, but their their mix their balton volume mix was based on all estimates was actually significantly worse than in the past their Model S and x sales were down model three total volumes were up, but the mix shifted significantly from higher margin, you know, dual motor long range units to like the short range plus units or standard range plus

Dan Roth  1:26:47  
units. So does that indicate that there's pent up demand for that cheaper model three

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:53  
Yeah, at least some some degree of it, you know, or you know, that they you know, they were able to, you know, to discuss Calcium Plus, you know, we saw, you know, in the last month, you know, through September, that they were, you know, piling on all kinds of incentives, you know, they don't do rebates in the traditional sense. But, you know, they would, you know, they were they started offering unlimited supercharging. Again, and, you know, various other incentives to get people to buy. So, you know, they managed to eke up a sliding cretinous, he got a slight increase in volume in total unit volumes, but it's all the expectations are that their actual revenues for the quarter are actually going to be down even though their volumes were up, because the transaction prices are expected to be down by several thousand dollars compared to the prior quarter.

Dan Roth  1:27:42  
Yeah, it's interesting what you say about the mix, like, just anecdotally, I see more model threes than any other Tesla.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:51  
they've sold vastly more.

Dan Roth  1:27:54  
Yeah, they're very popular. So I wonder if there's just like there's virtually no demand for the sex right now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:59  
Pretty much you have in demand is really declined substantially, both here in the US and also overseas. You know, if you look at the registration numbers for, you know, like Norway, you know where Tesla was huge in Norway for a long time. You know, and you know, the model three is actually selling pretty well there right now. But you know, s&s sales have just cratered

Unknown Speaker  1:28:24  
over there. And didn't they take a lot of the incentives off the government incentives off there, though? No, not in Norway. It wasn't in one of the Scandinavian countries

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:32  
I think it was

Unknown Speaker  1:28:34  
the another Finland and

Dan Roth  1:28:36  
what's your name and all that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:42  
So that sales are down significantly scaled

Unknown Speaker  1:28:44  
back on the incentives though, and that's, and that's gonna impact

Dan Roth  1:28:48  
it. Well, that's it's gonna bite here in the us too.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:50  
Oh, yeah. Oh, there sure it's already it's already biting here in the US. You know, and that's, that's believed to be you know, the combination of you know, the cheaper model Read that gets, you know, similar performance and, you know, similar capabilities to the s, you know, and the fact that you can't get the 70 $500 tax credit on the s&p x anymore or or even on the model three for that matter, you know, has pushed people towards the lower price models. Because, you know, the fact is, these are still more expensive than internal combustion engines.

Dan Roth  1:29:24  
Yeah, and and now we've got really formidable competition showing up as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:31  
Yeah, I mean, with the tie con and there's gonna be stuff that's going to be announced next month, the LA Auto Show will be several new TVs announced that you know, that are really going to be directly targeting Tesla. And we'll talk about those in the coming weeks. But yeah, there's there's a lot more competition coming.

Dan Roth  1:29:52  
Yeah, so well, okay. So someone

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:58  
you have a Tesla, please. Don't use smart summit I

Dan Roth  1:30:02  
said so what we talked about this in slack just briefly was like they have all the sort of screens you have to click through, right and it's like well don't use it unless you're in a private parking lot. So they actually have be more than the usual caveats

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:14  
to be you have to be when you're supposed to be within a line of sight of the car no more than 200 feet away you know only in private parking lots or driveways you know, and when there's no pedestrians around

Dan Roth  1:30:27  
so even if a that set of conditions never exist,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:31  
be well, but even if they did exist, there's there's nothing that Tesla does to actually enforce those conditions.

Dan Roth  1:30:38  
Well, yes. And if you're just a couple hundred feet from the stupid car looking at how slow this thing is like it just it's it's very cautious when just walk to the car. Even if you have

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:49  
to run through the rain. Just one through the rain.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:53  
novelty by shouldn't be

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:59  
the goal. For novelty,

Dan Roth  1:31:01  
I, like I did not sign up to participate in some rich jerks like

Unknown Speaker  1:31:10  
beta test amusement.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:11  
Yeah, baby, I was like no test tested on your estate or something didn't get away from me. And even even videos, you know, showing people using it, you know, on a private driveway where, you know, there's one video, you know, that I saw, you know, somebody backing it out of the main part of their driveway, you know, going forward into another song to the garage, it's, you know, going across the grass and everything, you know, these things are you know, running across the can't seem to distinguish grass from pavement, currently running over curbs, almost running into people. There's been numerous, you know, reports of, you know, these things you know, actually hitting other cars, you know, not near not just near misses, but actually hitting other cars or hitting the edge of hitting the, you know, the garage door frame, you know, and scraping up the side of the car.

Dan Roth  1:31:58  
You know, it's great if you own it. Tesla, because that's going to be real fun with their

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:03  
service. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:32:05  
And this is it. This is the Twitter fight, I got in with a, you know, someone I went to, like the first weekend, we were seeing all the videos. And it was like, that's, that's really that that is irresponsible, and it should be better regulated, and it should not be on the market. Because what's going to happen is that car you're going to, you're going to find it's going to fail in, you know, with with one of the set of circumstances that it's least good at detecting so it's going to hit a child or an animal or an old person or something. And it's going to be tragic, like extra tragic, you know, if it hits me that's one thing where it hits my kids that's worse, right? Like,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:47  
right and unfortunately the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is completely abdicated its responsibility for regulating, not just Tesla, the Tesla in particular, you know, in general, I you know, all These automation systems and meal in total, you know, they're they're not doing anything. You know, that's, you know, I mean not that they were doing a whole lot you know in the prior administration but even less now

Dan Roth  1:33:12  
well there was there was some sort of there was a decision that they made about something where they said like it's it's the feature is this not that and I forget what exactly it was it was just basically how it's classified by the automaker you can like tell it's called call nonsense on that couple. Yeah. Yeah. And so now that we sound like proper Luddites like this technology, and pushing it is is great. I do wish that our our regulatory system could catch up to it because I do think that a with the misleading naming and just the completely irresponsible like forcing of this stuff on the on involved public Is is dangerous and like bad things are poised to happen. And I don't I don't know what happens when that stuff does happen other than like, people shrug, I'm like, well, it's the price of progress. And that's not true.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:12  
I mean, traditionally, you know, for example, in healthcare, you know, when they've been testing new drugs, you know, when people participate in drug trials, or you know, any other kinds of experiments, they're supposed to be informed consent, you know, the participants are supposed to be or they're supposed to be informed about what the risks are, what, you know, what can happen, and, you know, they're supposed they're only supposed to give consent after they had been properly informed. The reality is that, you know, especially with this stuff, almost nobody really understands what this technology can do, what it's really capable of what it's not capable of. And, worse, you know, it's bad enough that the owners of these vehicles, you know, nominally giving their consent without really understanding the risk. But on top of that, you have all of these other bystanders around that are not they did not consent to be part of any experiment. And you know it's wrong to be running these tests you know around people who did not consent to be part of your you know, your beta test.

Dan Roth  1:35:24  
I feel like if the three of us I feel like Rebecca runs the highest risk of getting run over by one of these things because they're, they're a rich person is the highest concentration of rich people is that is the three of us. I mean, come in a close second at work is just a hill is a Tony Tony.

Unknown Speaker  1:35:41  
Yes, it is. It's very posh. I, ya know, it's,

Unknown Speaker  1:35:48  
it's, it's actually surprising. I because I think most of the examples that we see though, really egregious behavior is in California, because there's so many of them. They're, and they're also people that I think their mindset is they have a comfort level with this, you know, with with adopting technology so early,

Dan Roth  1:36:12  
I didn't notice that there is this like Stockholm syndrome where they make excuses for the stuff in the videos. It's like clearly not working in the mic. Oh, well, it got here. So

Unknown Speaker  1:36:21  
somebody pointed this out on Twitter

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:22  
wandering around looking through the parking lot like a drunken sailor.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:27  
every tweet starts out with I love my Tesla by

Unknown Speaker  1:36:32  
listening to a litany of issues, but that's what that's the early adopter mindset. Right? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:39  
You know, and, and I don't have an issue with developing this technology and, you know, rolling it out when it's ready. But the thing is, you need to, you need to develop it, you know, offline, you know, but you know, on a test track and controlled conditions, and tested and validated and make sure it's really ready before you should Customers absolutely don't ship it to customers just because you want to book some deferred revenue.

Unknown Speaker  1:37:05  
Well and I think that's one of the

Dan Roth  1:37:07  
things you do though you see

Unknown Speaker  1:37:10  
this is a test all along and with auto autopilot and I'm checking those you know finger quotes because they did ship it out to people and they are using not only owners but the general public as their as their test

Dan Roth  1:37:28  
owners like that's the crazy thing to me is the owners are like willing to do it and like

Unknown Speaker  1:37:34  
I say don't look at the guy that look at the guy that tragically lost his life and on which was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:42  
on the multiple he was another one recently

Unknown Speaker  1:37:44  
This is it. This is out in Mountain View on multiple occasions, on his commute alter way is autopilot. Now function right, it did the same thing over and over and over at exactly at the same location. at exactly the same point on the road, it's like running over the same pothole over and over and over again. And,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:08  
but he did it anyway, I'm wondering why you keep bending a wheel.

Unknown Speaker  1:38:11  
Right. You know, and it's just it's shocking. It's, it's really, I mean, it's it's, it's tragic. It really is. And it is a Stockholm. Stockholm Syndrome. It's it's bizarre.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:22  
I mean, I wrote an article earlier this year about that, after his family as Walter Wang died last year, yes, exactly after his family filed a wrongful death suit against Tesla. And while I have total sympathy for the family and their loss, you know, the bottom line is, and I think that Tesla was totally irresponsible in shipping this product. But the bottom line is, if you actually buy this product, and you try it, and you know it doesn't work and then you keep using it anyway, ultimately, you You have to take some responsibility for that. Yeah. Yes, Tesla needs to be held accountable. but so does Walter Wang. And, and any other user that gets into a crash because of technology that does not work. No. And they know it does not work going into it, you know, in his case, you know, he, not only was he where he had actually reported it to Tesla, you know, and had the car take took the car in on multiple occasions to have it checked out. And he still continued to use the system.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:34  
So we're served as the over serve mentality, right? Yeah. I was over, sir. Yeah. I mean, that's not right. It's, it's tragic. And it ends in tragedy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:44  
Yeah. And, you know, to, you know, before everybody accuses us of just bashing on Tesla, which obviously we are and rightful reasons, we're the same year the same thing applies to other automakers and you know, we referenced it before we were talking about about a Das, you know, a lot of these systems do not work as well as they should. And, you know, I think that it behooves automakers to actually make these systems better before they put them, put them on vehicles, you know, because I think that if you, you know, if you sell somebody a car that you say, has automatic emergency braking on it, but it only works in broad daylight, you know, when, you know, weather conditions are good, and, you know, you have a pedestrian walk in front of you, that's at least five foot six inches tall, you know, or whatever the criteria might be, you know, and you're only going less than 20 miles an hour. Yeah, come on. That's, that's ridiculous. You know, every automaker should be held to a higher standard with this stuff.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:47  
Right. And you're right. It's not just a Tesla thing, because you remember in the Nissan Versa. Sam, what was the issue that we have with that I

Dan Roth  1:40:56  
was a Nissan Versa.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:59  
Versa

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:01  
Yeah, I'm trying to remember now.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:04  
Engage, right, there was a speed issue like it. And I've run into this To where? Yeah, some systems give up at low speed.

Dan Roth  1:41:14  
low speed. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:15  
And they'll, they'll maybe flash one thing at you, and all of a sudden you're like, wait, what just happened? Oh, I think that I think Sam, I think I had put on, I was driving and I had put it on and I put it on cruise control or something. And it was actually, you know, it was one of those, like, all the moons hadn't aligned properly. I have not aligned them all properly with Yes. And so the system all of a sudden wasn't working, but it was not clear that it wasn't working. And so you know, and there's certainly been vehicles recently that you know, where the lane you know, certainly Departure Warning or some of the some of those don't work, because you're not going quote fast enough, you know, and we'll do Keeping systems will only start detecting the lanes when you're above about 35 miles an hour. Right. And so you know, it's again, it's, it's an education thing. And once you know that, you're fine, but you have to know that and sometimes you learn a very expensive and difficult lesson. Right?

Dan Roth  1:42:20  
Yeah. Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:22  
So we've been rambling on for

Dan Roth  1:42:26  
a good long while. Yes. So we should we should wrap it up. We answer some questions. We talked about a bunch of important stuff. I haven't had enough to speak and actually to, to wrap wood. So if anybody's still actually with us and listening, redwoods really cool and you should check it out. They're finally doing one in Boston and I was going to take the Crown Victoria and a couple weeks ago, I went to pick up pizza and it died in the intersection on the way home. So not everybody. It's the day everybody got cold pizza in the crowd came home on a hook. And it hasn't, has not started since I was checking fuel pressure doing all the diagnostic is has a dead fuel pump, which is not entertaining on that car. So I was going to bring it to rad would it's not going to matter what just gonna show up with the media car. It'll be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:17  
I'll be in Pittsburgh this weekend. I'm in Sioux Sainte Marie right now and Friday afternoon. I'm driving to Pittsburgh to speak at a conference on so that is a

Dan Roth  1:43:24  
long drive. That's like nine hours or something maybe from Sioux Sainte Marie arriving from from Detroit. So it's only about four and a half hours from there. Okay. Yeah, as I say, St. Mary's like,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:35  
I'm flying back from here. Yeah, it's a was this a lot of

Dan Roth  1:43:39  
cross? Yes. To do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:42  
Down, down and then across? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll be in Pittsburgh, if anybody

Unknown Speaker  1:43:48  
wants to look me up. And I shall be celebrating another trip around the sun on Sunday. Oh, congratulations. Thank you very much. Mine is coming up soon. We won't talk about that. Yeah, exactly. I shall be 39 again.

Dan Roth  1:44:04  
You know, and that's that's a

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:05  
five minute I'm old. 53 I don't care.

Unknown Speaker  1:44:09  
Yeah, you're a guy. It's different.

Unknown Speaker  1:44:14  
All right, everyone. All right.

Dan Roth  1:44:17  
Catch you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai