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

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

Rebecca Lindland  0:10  
And I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebeccadrives.com.

Dan Roth  0:12  
So welcome back after the holiday celebration, however you celebrated, we're, we're back. slipping off the post holiday hangover, and whatever else happened, reading a good book, whatever. So welcome. We're gonna I've still got the same car so I can't really talk about the CR v touring much more. I think I said all I needed to say about it last week. And so let's just roll into what you folks are driving. And Rebecca we were talking a little bit before we started recording, you have the you have the Lexus Alex 570. And that's, that's all interesting. We'll talk about that. But I want to know your thoughts about the 2019 Ram 1500 me limited etoro Giant truck that you can't park anywhere. How does it fit in your driveway?

Rebecca Lindland  1:05  
I have plenty of space in my driveways Actually I have two driveways I have my house it's up on a hill. Oh, so I have a lower driveway and upper driveway.

Dan Roth  1:14  
It's like the 50s like how many TVs you have? Yeah. Nobody has to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21  
we've actually got four TVs in this house right now even though there's only two of us living here. Well, I one is semi retired.

Rebecca Lindland  1:29  
The TV me one of the people living on the TV, the TV.

Dan Roth  1:35  
So I know what you do when you semi retire, you put the TV to full time.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40  
Pretty much.

Dan Roth  1:42  
All right, so even trying to talk for like a minute

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44  
for TVs or driveways

Rebecca Lindland  1:47  
or four TVs.

And a partridge in a pear tree.

No so you know. So there's a couple things. I've had this Chuck twice Actually, I had one about a year ago coincidentally. And, and I really like it. I mean, it's it's very drivable. It's great looking. It drives a lot smaller than it looks. It can be a little beastly to park because it's a big, you know, it's a big truck. What one of the things one of my pet peeves was last year, the one that I had, did not have the split tailgate they hadn't they hadn't unveiled that yet. They unveiled it in February at Chicago. And that is, I think, a big improvement. Now. I can't say I I love it. It's it's still you know, it's it's functional. It's low grade gimmicky, but it's certainly better than trying to get into the truck bed via the license plate holder, which you can even do when the truck bed door is still On the tailgate is down. So from that standpoint, it was a lot easier to use. I used to get in it did have a Tano top on it. So it wasn't like, you know, crawling in and out of a lot, but it was it just makes it improves the functionality of that pickup truck bed for people that are shorter or just older or just don't have, you know, six foot long arms. So, there was a lot of good things about that.

Dan Roth  3:27  
Yeah, there's some good one. So what's gimmicky about it?

Rebecca Lindland  3:29  
Well, it's, you know, that you can't drive with it split tailgate open. So it's not like it helps you with

Sam Abuelsamid  3:36  
you can drive with like one side of it open.

Rebecca Lindland  3:38  
So you know, it's funny, Sam because I wasn't sure about that. Because when I looked at it, it It looked there was a there was a warning sign and I interpreted that as it first I interpreted as you could you could drive with one side open. But then when we looked at it again, we're like, I don't know like to be safe. I wouldn't drive with either side open, but then it kind of limits the usability. So, so you can try with with this the shorter side open.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:07  
Yeah, I believe you can, you know, so if you're carrying Long, long objects and you know, instead of them, you know, leaning up over the top of the tailgate, right, like you would traditionally do, you can just leave that shorter side open, and, you know, have it hanging out the back. And of course, if you're going to do that, make sure that, you know, you put the red flag or something on there, you know, so that other drivers can see where the end of you know, whatever your load is, yes. Because that, you know, that does make it that you know, that that's important for safety.

Rebecca Lindland  4:35  
Yeah, for sure. It absolutely is.

Dan Roth  4:37  
But what so do you bunchy the short side to the closed side? I don't know. We don't need to talk about how we're I guess we're no

Unknown Speaker  4:45  
it stays

Rebecca Lindland  4:47  
in place

Dan Roth  4:49  
to hold itself open.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:50  
Yeah, it's, you know, when when you open it up to the sides, you know, there's kind of a latching a semi Yeah, the catch there that will hold it open. So it's not Gonna flop around as you're driving.

Rebecca Lindland  5:01  
Right? Right, it will, it will stay in place. So that was cool. I mean, you know, again, it's one of those it's it's significantly better than it than it used to be. It's not a multi gate, multi pro tailgate thing that, you know, GMC has but, but it's certainly better than it then it was the The other thing that was really remarkable about it was the the amount of room in the backseat in that second row. It was unbelievable. I mean, my brother, believe it or not, is about six, three, and he's actually shrunk a little bit in his. It's in his early 60s now. And, you know, but he said he's got the seat all the way back as far back as he can go. And there was still my brother in law who's who's six feet. He sat in the back comfortably. I mean, there was just so much room in that thing. And you know, there was just a lot of utility to it. Super, super comfortable, heated seat. cooled seats. You know, very I found the infotainment system to be really easy to use. My brother said it took him a couple of hours to get used to it and to kind of adjust to it. And to find his way around a little bit. He thought it was a little bit clumsy in places but and he drives a lot of different vehicles because he travels a lot for work and is always renting a car. So he's pretty savvy in that regard. So he said it took him a little bit longer, but I don't think that's a surprise to anybody. I think that that's, you know, pretty commonplace these days. And I did you know, one of the things that we noticed when we were driving together at one point it has, if you back up, and it thinks you're going to hit something. It practically slammed us against the seat.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:46  
I had I had the same experience when I drove around.

Rebecca Lindland  6:49  
It was so dramatic.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:53  
Yeah, it's that's the that's the rear automatic emergency braking. So when it detects an object behind you, sir It will you know it will stop. Yes. And when it happened to me I think I talked about it on the show you know, I was going into some tall grass to do some photography with it. That's right and I was backing down the this little hill and you know there was just some tall grass behind me so there was nothing nothing I couldn't run over but it the sensors detected that grass Yeah, and it just slammed on the brakes and you're right it is very abrupt

Rebecca Lindland  7:27  
it's very well so this was my brother in law is very particular about his driveway understandably and so he has those orange little sticks lining it for the snowplows and so it was one of those like little bendable iron sticks and and that's all it was like, you know we were going to destroy that thing if we hit run No, not the other way around. And, and it was just like, wow, that just like it was almost like whiplash. It was so dramatic. So really abrupt and So, you know, it'd be nice to have some kind of sensitivity there on that. But otherwise, you know, it was a really nice vehicle to drive. I mean, you know, being as small as I am, I could get in and out of it, the running boards came down very easily tucked back inside, then I certainly was able to adjust the seat and get a nice comfortable driving position. And I didn't feel like it was so big that I was uncomfortable, you know, or that I had this huge truck around me.

Unknown Speaker  8:34  
Which

Dan Roth  8:35  
I did.

But that's that's what you were talking about last week to to write like your friend with the Yeah, there's a giant mess up sort of once once you get comfortable you just they really

Rebecca Lindland  8:45  
fit exactly. well engineered ones do you know, and certainly the more modern Yeah, vehicles because, you know, I think I had mentioned a while ago now on the Honda Pilot, that the Honda Pilot and to somebody cyntha MDX as well, they drive really big and heavy and the just this the pilot, especially I just had that feeling of like, I'm the only person in a seven seater. Whereas with the RAM, I really, you know, I felt really comfortable in it and, and didn't you know, I, I definitely be a part every once in a while I parked a little bit further away just because it was easier to park. But at the same time, you know, I think I actually had more of an issue with the length of it than whether I was going to fit in a spot. So

Dan Roth  9:39  
well, it's pretty wide too though. Like it's just a they're just

Sam Abuelsamid  9:43  
all all current full size trucks are huge. They are

Dan Roth  9:48  
true. That's true. It's what's so it's so interesting that this you didn't feel like the ram drives, I guess it's a different category so it's less of a sin if a pickup truck drives And sort of, you know, weighty but you didn't feel like it was it was just like this giant massive thing. Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  10:07  
that's what the Lexus Alex high 70 is for

Dan Roth  10:13  
coming up.

Rebecca Lindland  10:15  
Okay, it was very present. I was really very pleasantly surprised. I didn't feel like that I do remember driving, not the new nissan titan but the previous edition. And that was just a beast. It was just a beast, you just you just slogged around in it. And I haven't driven the new one yet. So I'm assuming they fixed some of that. But the Nissan Titan was really I think, I would say the only full size pickup truck that I did not enjoy driving.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:43  
You know, and I think the thing about the RAM is, its suspension and steering. You know, it's driving dynamics are so much better than any other full size truck. That I think that that's a big part of why it doesn't feel as ponderous. Be sure it You know, for its size, you know, it feels comparatively nimble. You know if you can, if you can say that about a three ton truck. No, I mean, it's responsive,

Rebecca Lindland  11:10  
right? It's

Sam Abuelsamid  11:13  
just very comfortable.

Rebecca Lindland  11:14  
It is. I mean, I actually said tomorrow I've got to go up to I have to go up to Massachusetts. I'm going to be I'm going to be on the road, probably about five or six hours. And I would not have minded if I had still had the truck. You know, I think I would have been fine with that. I think I probably would have enjoyed it. Yeah.

Dan Roth  11:34  
Anytime I get one of those and the Rams especially because they just they just have a nice interior and they have that full coil spring suspension. So they're just they ride really nicely and maybe that's why it still feels maneuverable and controllable. And it's because you're not it's not bouncing you around. You know, it's soaking up bumps it to me, it feels like you know, you've got something that's just heavy. It's just big It's okay It's not I'm not complaining about it but I just am aware of the size and the bulk of it because that the the RAM is heavier significantly heavier than either the the GM pickups or the yeah series.

Rebecca Lindland  12:15  
I mean I didn't feel like it's ponderous though. And that's

Dan Roth  12:19  
Yeah, I don't know there's such as Yeah, I agree. It's not ponderous. But it's to me it feels like there's there's some mass here but sure.

Rebecca Lindland  12:27  
But I liked it. Yeah. I mean, I you know, I think again, like especially driving in, you know, we're not exactly in the open road here. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to drive it in Manhattan or anything. But you know, it was for this for for my suburban area. And you know, on the highway and on whether it was on 95 or the you know, more the two lane Merritt Parkway. It was just really well behaved, very predictable, super comfortable, great visibility. You know I just I really really liked it I did find the bed was you know it's kind of funny because we're complaining about how long it is the bed was a little bit short and but you know it's a religion

Sam Abuelsamid  13:11  
of the standard better the longer but we

Rebecca Lindland  13:13  
had those we had the standard bed okay yes but you know it that would be I guess you know on some level like okay if I have to say something I didn't like about it that that would be the only the only thing I would probably go for a longer bed but again that just makes it longer truck and then you're going into all other sorts of trouble.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:32  
Yeah, I think you know the choice there. You know if you're buying you know comes down to ours it comes down to if you're going to be towing or hauling loads, you know if if your primary use for the truck is to tow stuff and you're not going to be hauling big loads with it most of the time in the bed. You go for the shorter one. Sure. But you know if you need to, if you do need to use that bed, you know you have the option of that six foot six and a half foot bed instead of the five and a half foot bed

Rebecca Lindland  13:59  
right? And I would have I would not have minded that at all just for what we were, you know, moving around and hauling cargo kind of stuff in it. But really, it just, you know, it's just a beautiful truck. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:15  
And I think you said you had a limited Yes. So yeah, that one comes with the comes standard with the four corner air suspension as well, which further enhances the ride quality of this thing and it's already good with the coils. Yes, but with with the air suspension, it really takes it up another notch.

Rebecca Lindland  14:34  
It really does. I mean, the engineering that went into this is really impressive. It's just it is definitely an everyday driver for sure. The I can't remember exactly what we were getting for fuel economy. I'll find out for my brother. I do know that when it was delivered. It had a range of 550 miles

Dan Roth  14:55  
was Kalika 79

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
All of the the 3033

Rebecca Lindland  15:02  
Yeah, 33 gallon tank. But you know, again, that's pretty awesome if you're out, you know if you're out in Wyoming and Montana and you know, ranch country that's exactly what you need. You need that kind of rain. Yeah.

Dan Roth  15:15  
It's truck designed for truck stuff. And that's you know, I that's why I think I like it so much. There's a lot of people that do long highway slugs with their trucks and the RAM is really comfortable for that, you know, it's, they've made that trade off to Yes, it's actually two thirds of a full size SUV with a baton. Yeah. So I had to and that's that's what it

Rebecca Lindland  15:41  
was a 5.7 liter as Sam pointed out, pre show. It did have the torque in it. And so it was very I you know, it had the stop start, but really non intrusive. So Sam talk a little bit more because you certainly know better than I do about the torque.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:56  
Yeah, so this is

better CA's branding for their 48 volt mild hybrid system and it's each work is standard on the the pentastar v six and it's optional on the Hemi V eight and it's also on the Wrangler with the two liter turbo engine and they'll be getting more next year in fact there was a report out today that they the Durango is going to get the etoro Cammy available in 2020 and probably the the pentastar as well and what this is it's there's a different configurations but you know standard most vehicles for the last 60 odd years have been have had 12 volt electrical systems so you have a 12 volt alternator on your engine and your battery and all the systems in the vehicle run on 12 volts except some of the electronics around five but and what what we're starting to see now is implementation of 48 volt electrical system. So this is what we call a low voltage electrification system and They pick 48 because at 60 volts there's different regulations as far as safety, you know, for to protect, you know, anybody who's working on the truck or you know, emergency responders, things like that. So you need extra equipment required when you go above 60 volts and that's what you have, you know on full hybrid strong hybrids. Those are running like three 400 volts and battery electric 48 volts you can you don't have to do all that. But what you get is you replace the standard 12 volt alternator with a belted starter generator. And it's a it's a 48 volt generator that not only does it do some regenerative braking for you and recovers that energy and stores it in a lithium ion battery, but it also provides more more electrical power to the rest of the system provides on the Hemi it's 130 foot pounds of 130 or 180 extra foot pounds of torque on top of what the Hemi viedo Ready produces. And because you've got that lithium ion batteries, storing energy, when you do things like auto stop, start, you know, with a lot of 12 volt systems with stop start, a lot of times you'll find, especially if it's hot or cold up, you know, when the when the engine shuts off in the middle, you know, at an intersection, for example, a lot of times, you know, it's, the system is always monitoring the battery, as the battery voltage starts to drop, it'll restart the engine so that you know before it gets too low, so that you make sure that it can restart. And if that happens, while your foot is still on the brake pedal while you're sitting there at at the intersection, that's when you tend to feel the restarts the most. Okay? Because when when you're when you're applying the brakes, you know, gives the reaction torque. If the engine restarts while the vehicles moving, then it becomes almost transparent. And so one of the things the 48 volt system does is it allows you to get to You know, keep the engine off longer. So that's better for fuel economy. And because it typically doesn't restart because it can now can stay off for, you know, a couple of minutes at a time. Because of that now you can keep it off until until the vehicle until you really start ready to roll again your foots off the brake pedal. So it's a lot tends to be a lot smoother system and because it's got more power, it also restarts the engine faster. And it gets you about on the Hemi. It's usually good for about 15% extra fuel economy.

Rebecca Lindland  19:32  
Yeah, they're saying two miles per gallon 13% Yeah, improvement. It's actually it's 130 foot pounds of torque. Okay, yeah, yeah. pounds of torque.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:43  
Yeah. So, you know, the, the, you know, the improvement in fuel economy depends on which configuration you get, whether it's a two wheel drive or four wheel drive. Sure, yes, it averages out to around 15% you know, over the fleet. Some are a little bit more, some are a little bit less, but You know, it's it's a, it's a really good system that is for its relatively low cost, definitely cheaper than, you know, a strong hybrid system, it doesn't have all the capabilities of a strong hybrid system, so you're not going to be driving around on electricity alone, right. But, you know, when you're, you know, when you're going down the road, and you need to accelerate, you know, to pass somebody or, you know, to maintain speed going up a hill, you know, it can give you an extra bit of torque without having to use more fuel as well. So, even though the engines running the engine doesn't necessarily have to work as hard by itself, you can, you can use the energy from the battery and get some of that extra performance without without hurting your fuel economy.

Rebecca Lindland  20:42  
So it's about a 1200 and 5030 hundred $50 upgrade from the 5.7 v eight without it. So 5.7 is a 1395 upgrade. This is on the 2019 and then the 5.7 with he talks 2645 I think that what's remarkable about it is, you know, that is the, the transparency of it, you know, there, there's no markings on it. You don't you certainly don't really feel it when you're driving, and yet it is providing you with that better fuel economy. And you know, and certainly that better driving experience, but the regenerative braking, like, none of that was really very obvious. You know, when we were driving it for the week, it was it was impressive. And I also like the fact that I could change it. You know, I remember when it was snowing lightly when I left and so I was able just to do on the fly, and change it to four wheel drive and automatic, you know, went back to two wheel drive, and that kind of, again, that sort of engineering and functionality.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:47  
Yeah, and this is, you know, what's interesting about FCA is approach to the, you know, to to try to sell electrification because, you know, consumers, American consumers, especially in trucking SUVs. They're not, they don't really seem to be all that interested in paying extra for more fuel economy. And so they're, they're not emphasizing, you know, the fact that it's a mild hybrid. They are, you know, the Badgett as each work, you know, so they're selling, they're selling the capability, it gives you not the fuel economy, the fuel economy just comes across comes along as an extra bonus. You your, how much

Rebecca Lindland  22:24  
better is the fuel economy? Or two miles per gallon? Yeah, it

Sam Abuelsamid  22:28  
works. Overall, on average, it works. Yeah, it depending, you know, if it's a two wheel drive or four wheel drive, which configuration it works out to between 13 and 18% improvement in fuel economy.

Dan Roth  22:42  
Yeah, I want to say that we so what is it? What is its, what's its combined EPA rating?

Rebecca Lindland  22:48  
Um, you know, and I apologize, because I can't find them a Roni that took that came with it. But I want to say we were getting in the low 20s. Is that somewhere in there? I mean, you know, we weren't going hard at it, obviously. But you know, it was it was good. I mean, it was, I'll tell you right now again, I keep bringing it up, but we'll talk about but they'll that Lexus I got I'm getting like 14

Dan Roth  23:16  
Yeah, well you know it was like 1300 dollars for what amounts to probably less than six months worth of fuel that you're saving for that bump and you get extra performance out of it. That doesn't seem too bad to me like it sort of it pays back in a couple of ways, I guess if you want to.

Rebecca Lindland  23:36  
Well, and the other thing too is that, you know, I tell people that you you want to buy something that isn't going to be is it going to be out of date, you know, when you go to sell it, you know, and so that's something else to that I think you look at and think you know is this going to be is this going to make it more attractive whenever I go to sell this thing and I think it would, I think, you know, because vehicles are only going to going to be getting more efficient. And so, you know, if you go to sell this thing in five years, and it has a torque, all cars are going to have the torque now, you know, way in five years kind of thing, or at least have that, that type of, of technology. And so I think it's I think it's a wise move. I think it's a it's if your budget allows, I would say that it's a good thing to bump up to.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:28  
Yeah, it's, it's ready to 19 combined 17 City 22 Highway for a four wheel drive.

Dan Roth  24:36  
never gotten that kind of fuel economy.

Rebecca Lindland  24:40  
So we got we're definitely in that 2021 range for the highway. No,

Dan Roth  24:46  
I think it may be that

Rebecca Lindland  24:47  
you're a jerk on the road even.

Dan Roth  24:49  
That's true. That's true right to

Rebecca Lindland  24:53  
mass. You can't help it.

Dan Roth  24:55  
Let's Let's jump over to the other truck. You had the Alex 570 which is I really really like it it's super outdated but it's got that kind of quaint charm doesn't sound like a charm do quite a bit not

Rebecca Lindland  25:06  
quite as much and and what what was

it was a lot it's so ironic that I'm saying this after having just talked about how I felt like the rhabdo smaller. I felt like this that the Lexus was just a gigantic vehicle I mean it just it's I felt kind of silly in it because it's again it's one of those like I really was very conscious of the fact that the majority of the time I was the only passenger The only driver you know only occupant The only occupant of this vehicle and you know i mean this thing is so it's it's got a 5.7 liter V eight eight speed automatic it's funny because very similar to the ram in terms of the engine transmission. Yeah with their their 5.7

Dan Roth  25:57  
is weaker exam.

Rebecca Lindland  26:01  
It was it I was very conscious of the fact that it was for sure a truck for sure a truck based vehicle. Very antiquated technology. It was luxurious. I mean it's still Alexis, but you know it just kind of right

Dan Roth  26:20  
Yeah, well I'll make a big deal about their their semi annually and

Sam Abuelsamid  26:24  
you know, the LX is you know, it's the Lexus version of the Toyota Sequoia, which of course shares this platform with the number Oh,

Dan Roth  26:33  
no. Was the Prado it's the

Sam Abuelsamid  26:36  
GX is the is the LandCruiser

Dan Roth  26:39  
I thought the GX was the

client the thing before runner?

Sam Abuelsamid  26:46  
Know the

Dan Roth  26:47  
GX is the four runner right?

Sam Abuelsamid  26:49  
Is that what I just said Alex?

Dan Roth  26:51  
Yeah, no. gx is for runner Alex is LandCruiser thought

Rebecca Lindland  26:58  
I that's what that's Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  27:01  
you know what, either way they're old. Yeah.

Dan Roth  27:04  
Yeah, that's true. Korea is it I don't think it's based in the South Korea but even if it is, it's like it's a that's an old vehicle and the the Land Cruiser is also I remember when that was debuted, which was many years ago I was still writing for auto blog and I haven't written for auto blog and four plus years now. So yeah, it's been a while. I wonder if that's part of the charm that the Lexus SUVs like the traditional SUVs just don't change, and Lexus people don't care. They like that consistency, because it's not a bad vehicle. Like you said, it's just perhaps it feels feels a little antique. It's also crazy, expensive,

Rebecca Lindland  27:48  
crazy expensive. So this one that I had, which was let me take my glasses off so I can see something and doesn't have a spear right

Sam Abuelsamid  28:01  
they they all access the LandCruiser

Rebecca Lindland  28:03  
yeah cuz even looks like it either way that looks like the thing. So, this one had the luxury package which has a semi aniline leather trimmed interior, the outboard seats heated and ventilated front and second row outboard motor and the mark Levinson audio system the dual screen DVD this and that so that so the base price for this thing was $91,380 and as delivered it was 100,000 to 60. Okay and look okay, but let me tell you just a couple things. So for a for instance, the heated seats, took a good 15 minutes to heat up.

Dan Roth  28:50  
Okay. Oh, so by the time they start to get warm, you're where you need to be.

Rebecca Lindland  28:54  
You are where you need to be the heated steering wheel. Same thing it took for like the the guy spent more time being cold in that car than I do so

Dan Roth  29:04  
I wonder if that's a setting that they can adjust maybe at the dealer because that's one of the things like with with with the Volvo's you could do that with the deal. You could set this the heated seats to like scorch or like Florida warm. It depends on where you are. Sure, okay. No configuration.

Rebecca Lindland  29:21  
No, no. I mean, I the heads up display was good. I did like that. I it did have a cool that cool box in it, which is kind of clever, you know, in the center console. And so that was kind of fun. The power moonroof, I couldn't figure out how to turn it on and I kept turning off the door light so then I would go to get in it at night. And not only was it dark and cold, but the cold but it was dark as well. That you drive. Like, again, it's one of those things that it's purpose built. So what is

Sam Abuelsamid  29:57  
the what is it built for

Rebecca Lindland  30:00  
Well, it's a truck based well so I tell you so my friend Tom has one. She's actually had two in a row.

Dan Roth  30:08  
Lexus people don't care. They love him. Well,

Rebecca Lindland  30:10  
he loves it. Because the back seat that third row, you know, it's this was this was a five passenger but the third, the back cargo area is so big, it can comfortably fit his elderly dog and she can lay down in there and she has plenty of room and she's all cozy and warm. And because apparently she doesn't care that it takes forever to warm up.

Dan Roth  30:34  
Its suburban and do the same thing.

Rebecca Lindland  30:37  
I Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  30:38  
I know what else can hold up an older dog or Honda Civic. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  30:43  
She's a golden retriever here

Dan Roth  30:44  
and it's a big dog. All right. Fairfield County requires you to buy the truck that is purpose designed for a purpose you're never going to use it for it's very much like suburban boss. Okay, so this is this competes with this stuff like the G wagon or Maybe not quite, but like,

Rebecca Lindland  31:02  
Well, okay, I haven't driven the G wagon so

Sam Abuelsamid  31:07  
so so so you know, the competitive set Yeah. g wagon Range Rover would you put that in the same? Yeah, I

Dan Roth  31:14  
would I don't I'm trying to promote not not the G wagon though the other GLS

Rebecca Lindland  31:19  
I would put the GL

Sam Abuelsamid  31:27  
geoss which was core. Yeah. So

Dan Roth  31:29  
you know, because I do think like, like Land Rover Range Rover. Because the elex 570 because it's based on the linkers it's got three lockable differentials it's got a lockable center differential you can lock either axle like it's really

Rebecca Lindland  31:43  
careful. You're never going to use very so but this is the thing too is that why go up to the Lexus version of it. Why not just get the

Unknown Speaker  31:55  
anchors, right? That's the other thing too. Right.

Dan Roth  31:57  
The Land Cruiser is also super nice. It looks better. It's still pretty luxurious. And you can get that sucker up to $90,000, too. So,

Rebecca Lindland  32:05  
yeah, the Alexa, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, it was a beautiful vehicle. It looked beautiful. It was a lot to drive every day,

Dan Roth  32:17  
you know, running engine that. I mean, it says,

Rebecca Lindland  32:21  
Well, that's the thing is that I didn't feel like I was, you know, the comparison to the that emotional connection between the Ram 1500 and the and the Lexus. It was actually kind of fun to have them like compare and contrast, because they were both enormous vehicles. Yeah. But the difference in how it made me feel was really significant. Because I felt like in the Lexus, I was driving a 10 year old car, it's probably 15%. But I was very aware of it, especially when you compare and contrast it with all that engineering that we just talked about with the right

Dan Roth  32:57  
yeah, I mean, I think so. It's, it's got the interview. The Lexus feed is a good engine but it's like I think you're down about 100 horsepower compared to that that ram you know it's 383 horsepower which like that's not far off of V six territory these days and turbo V six is go past that pretty easily. And it can only tow 7000 pounds which yeah cuz you can show that with a Durango with the Hemi you don't we just

Rebecca Lindland  33:21  
i mean i i think the number one thing like if you read some of the reviews about the Lexus Alex 570 they are scorching I mean

it's like wow, people do not like this. How did you feel you

Dan Roth  33:38  
know? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just how did you feel about the infotainment it has that mouse thing on the dash I don't mind action like that. It's not bad. It's better

Sam Abuelsamid  33:47  
than the Lexus touchpad

Dan Roth  33:49  
Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  33:50  
that's it is better than the Lexus touchpad but only and it has a large screen. It does have a large screen. It jumped around so much that I You know, he said there was something really simple about it. I didn't. I don't know, you know? I mean, oh, I will tell you one of the things that drives me crazy. So and I've run into this before I wear an iPod, you know, this may be actually because I just got the Toyota Corolla where you can't it's not easy to set up the phone, but I was able to, I was able to do that pretty well, in in the 570. I didn't have as much of an issue with it. But it just, you know, it's not, it's not really where I want to be.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:40  
You know, while while you've been talking, it's looking up some specs and for what it's worth. The elex 570 engine is 383 horsepower. That's only 10 horsepower less than the Hemi. The Hemi is only 393 horsepower.

Rebecca Lindland  34:54  
I thought the Hemi was for something what so what's going on with it then like why I mean

Sam Abuelsamid  35:00  
I thought the Hemi was even even the not even the non etoro kameez feel strong. And I think I think actually probably more the torque to look up the torque numbers for the two of

Dan Roth  35:12  
them i i'm not saying that the 5.7 Hemi is like a super power powerhouse engine like that's also it's aged and it's down on power compared to all of the other engines kind of around it especially when we talk about you know, turbo charge v sixes.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:29  
Well actually, there's not that much difference in the Hemi is 410 foot pounds and the the the Lexus IS 403

Rebecca Lindland  35:39  
I think it was the calibration of it then to eat torque. I think that each work does make a deal I bet it does. It fills in that Hemi you you know it's you've got that immediate sensation of acceleration. And and, you know with Alexis I felt like I was barging in even when there was nobody on the highway. Yeah, well,

Dan Roth  36:00  
the Lexus v2 it's a it's a different it's a different kind of power delivery but if you look to the power curves it's a river company and as a dual overhead cam versus the Hemi which is you know it's it's not a Hemi it's a wedge, but it's you know, it's it's a pushrod VA and it's going to deliver its torque like a truck engine down low. Even in even at that the 5.7 Hemi still to me feels a little peaky. So yeah for whatever reason like old beats are getting old there kitten whining to

Rebecca Lindland  36:31  
me, I put it in the different modes that it comes in the ego and, and spore and you know, it was fine. I mean, I just I think that just the it was it just always felt big. I never felt like I was in an athletic that that athletic, performance oriented vehicle you know, I was in a big I was in a big truck based SUV. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  36:59  
think that's part of it. term though, like, I think it's interesting that you said that

Rebecca Lindland  37:05  
in a stone cottage, it's not.

Dan Roth  37:10  
Again, that's the thing that like you buy because of the quote unquote character, right. And then once you get into the ownership experience, you're like, Man, that was stupid.

Rebecca Lindland  37:19  
Well, and again, and the price point, you know, when you think about, like the Lincoln Navigator, you know, we think about competitive set. And you think about like the Lincoln Navigator, the BMW X seven, like, there's, you know, there's some really good vehicles out there in this size and class. Yeah,

Dan Roth  37:36  
and the way it's going to be used, I think that those are perfectly, perfectly fair to cite as competitors. I do. I'm like, I'm looking at the center console, the shot of the center console, and like there's a lot of buttons, a lot of switches, it's a knobs it's, it's complicated, because it's very capable. And I think that there, there may be a very special subset of these owners that actually take them off. Road. I think the only time I would expect to see one off road is like, you know, down on the cape with like a, an oversea and permit or something for the rich people that don't care about, you know, destroying their their hundred thousand dollars.

Rebecca Lindland  38:16  
But even the interior even some of the materials that they used, I think are dated. It doesn't give that feeling of clean, simple modern lines. You know, it just doesn't and then I also I hate those analog clocks drive me crazy. There is a second one. There is a second one that is a digital because the analog I'm like, I need to know if I'm one minute or 10 minutes behind schedule, you know,

like, I don't know what that way I just glanced at it. You're like, I don't know what that says. It's

Dan Roth  38:47  
Yeah, I mean, I think that's just that's such a holdover like I did.

Rebecca Lindland  38:53  
So you know, I don't know if they're planning on on you know, refreshing this or not, but

Sam Abuelsamid  38:57  
111 big difference. between these two is the the Lexus IS ABOUT 500 pounds heavier than the ram

Dan Roth  39:05  
Oh that'll make a big bat. Yeah Yeah, I bet that debt cuts into the toe into I was not impressed 7000 pounds is just not not that much

Sam Abuelsamid  39:14  
but it's not I guess it's it's more than most not your total more than most people would use for a light duty vehicle anyway. You know, most most people that are towing with a light duty truck or utility are probably towing a boat you know that's in the four to 5000 pound range. So 7000 pounds is actually probably sufficient for most light duty uses. You know, once you get beyond that, you know and you're in the 10 12,000 pound range or more. Most people are stepping up to a medium duty anyway you know a suit you know, Ford Super Duty or you know, the ram heavy duties or GM heavy duties.

Dan Roth  39:53  
Yeah, that makes me see

Rebecca Lindland  39:54  
if the other thing too with Alexis that dated It was my phone was still too large to fit into the slot that they had for the wireless charging patent. Wow. Yeah, and I have a Galaxy S nine plus it's almost two years old. Okay, and it was too big.

Dan Roth  40:12  
Well, this is that's I yeah, it's got to be headed for at least a significant redesign, if not complete redo at some point. Just to that's entropy that's going to keep happening to this thing. Exactly. Until they fix it.

Rebecca Lindland  40:29  
Yeah, for sure.

Dan Roth  40:30  
It's lovely. So what it looks handsome picture.

Rebecca Lindland  40:33  
It's it's very hands it's a very handsome vehicle. It is. And it's

Unknown Speaker  40:39  
I don't know that I necessarily

Dan Roth  40:42  
you don't like the grill?

Rebecca Lindland  40:43  
Well, it I mean, it's an imposing vehicle.

Unknown Speaker  40:47  
Okay, I'll give you that. It's i

Rebecca Lindland  40:50  
i far prefer the authenticity of the Land Cruiser I like the Land Cruiser is doesn't pretend to be anything. What than what It's not this is a very tarted up, Land Cruiser.

Dan Roth  41:04  
And I'd rather just have a Land Cruiser. Well, it seems like now you can get the Land Cruiser with like, you know, blacked out chrome and copper color wheels are just yeah, you can get the linkers that looks a lot more authentically rough and tumble.

You're still not going to take it anyhow. But

Sam Abuelsamid  41:22  
111 important thing to consider, though, you know, if you're comparing this to say a Range Rover, is this thing will probably run, you know, for 2030 years with nothing but oil changes, tires, whereas Range Rover probably won't.

Rebecca Lindland  41:42  
I know that's a very fair statement.

Dan Roth  41:45  
What you should do is

it's breathtaking to go unlike the Boston Craigslist and type in Range Rover or Land Rover and just sort by price low to high the amount of depreciation those things You can get yourself a 2008 I saw the last night 2008 Land Rover, know a Range Rover Sport. So, you know, the Land Rover looks on the LR four frame.

Like for

stunning depreciation. I mean, that's a special case. I'm sure that one was a complete piece of crap and had a lot of stuff.

Rebecca Lindland  42:27  
It was it flooded with.

Dan Roth  42:29  
Like, they, they depreciate like an anvil, slid off a cliff, they just like they're just trouble and everybody knows it. And once they get past a certain mileage and age, they're worthless. And yeah, that that's true. The Toyota is always going to have

I think a more satisfying ownership experience.

Rebecca Lindland  42:51  
Yeah, for sure. I mean, again, it's it's, I do think there's better choices out there. But for durability, reliability, It's hard to beat from that standpoint. I'll give it that.

Dan Roth  43:03  
I like the I like the link who's a better I'm looking at picture of it now. It's just It's way better looking the front. So,

Rebecca Lindland  43:09  
yeah, yeah, the big girls I'm not a fan of, but some people really like it. I mean it definitely, you know, it's it makes a big presence in a parking lot.

Unknown Speaker  43:19  
That's for sure.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:20  
All right. Young, it makes it as presence so I'll give it that. Yes. A lot of presence I would want to be in the presence of but yeah, you

Dan Roth  43:29  
know, some people if you look at high end goods, there's just not necessarily any taste.

So let's go from from the Alex 570 hundred thousand dollar Land Cruiser based sport utility to another vehicle based on old architecture that's a lot less expensive, so

Sam Abuelsamid  43:52  
not as inexpensive as you might hope. Well,

Dan Roth  43:56  
yeah, I think in our least

Sam Abuelsamid  43:57  
not, not my sticker. sticker. Price.

Dan Roth  44:00  
sticker price versus reality has a big Delta here. So you're driving the 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. Yeah. Which I quite like and it's got a new nose for 2020

Sam Abuelsamid  44:08  
Yeah, it got a mild refresh, you know, the new nose is definitely a lot better looking than before. You know, I mean, overall, the the Outlander Sport is not a bad looking vehicle from the outside, you know, and

Dan Roth  44:23  
on the inside?

Sam Abuelsamid  44:26  
Well, let me say this, you know, let me kind of set the stage here, you know, so the Outlander Sport, you know, this subcompact crossover segment, you know, basically same segment is Honda HRV Jeep Renegade, the Mazda CX 30. We talked about last time, you know, and a whole bunch of other vehicles in that segment. And definitely better looking on the outside now than it was before. The inside the layouts, not bad, but it definitely has that Mitsubishi cheap feel on the inside. Lot of hard plastics there are a couple of surfaces that are you know, soft touch it it didn't come across to me as bad as I remember it the last time I drove one of these or or any other Mitsubishi? Yeah. It has it has been. It has been somewhat improved. Yeah. So yeah, you know, it's, it's, it wasn't horrible, you know, and Okay, so Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So it's, it definitely felt, you know, it was I didn't hate it as much as I expected to.

Dan Roth  45:36  
That said Okay, so, so my right my take on it has always been like it drives okay. And it has decent ergonomics. It's just it just overall the A it's it's old and it feels kind of

Sam Abuelsamid  45:50  
everything is where you expect it to be for the most part which is good. You know, the screens at a decent position and everything and you know that much is fine. The ride quality is this is perfectly fine. No, no complaints there. You know, I wouldn't push it too hard through corners. But you know, I wouldn't necessarily do that with most utilities in this segment. You know, the engine, this one, the one I have is the GT, all wheel control version. So this is the the top end version of this vehicle. And it has the 2.4 liter engine, which has like 176 horsepower, roughly, which is fine, you know, it's it's got adequate performance, if you don't mind a CVT that, you know, gives you that motorboating effect, you know, doesn't try to simulate the behavior of a of a standard step ratio transmission. You know, it's, it's fine, you know, it's, it's not too noisy. You know, so, they have done a decent job on the NVH. So, you know, if you, you know, if you're really listening for it, you'll hear that, you know, as you accelerate, you know, the engine revs up to 4000 rpm and just stays there, you know, as your Your speed is increasing. But it's not. It's not real loud. So it's not that bothersome.

Rebecca Lindland  47:06  
Is that one of the improvements would you say because I think that's one of the NVH is, is one of the areas that I most I struggle with the most when it comes

Sam Abuelsamid  47:17  
to be definitely improved in NVH. So it's not. And this is one of the things that, you know, what, as I drove it, as I've been driving it, it, I don't dislike it as much as I have most of the recent Mitsubishi's I've driven. So it's definitely it's definitely better there. And actually, I can honestly say, I don't really dislike it. You know, it's fine. You know, it's a perfectly adequate, you know, compact crossover, subcompact crossover,

Unknown Speaker  47:44  
what's the price point? The problem?

Sam Abuelsamid  47:48  
sticker price on this thing is, you know, you know, in recent years, you know, Mitsubishi, I think is largely survived, on you know, being able to sell vehicles. to people who basically can't afford anything else, you know doing a lot of subprime loans you know, doing a lot of discounting this one let me find it here the this one here pretty

Rebecca Lindland  48:14  
funny to a lot of 0000 payment fully loaded

Sam Abuelsamid  48:18  
on this one's $28,920 Okay,

Dan Roth  48:23  
see that's bad. While it

Sam Abuelsamid  48:26  
doesn't, doesn't in isolation. The problem is last week last week we talked about the the Mazda CX 30. And you know, for the as much as we have complained in the past about Mazdas recent move up market and getting more premium, the CX 30 is actually very has actually got a lot of value in it. And it's actually priced surprisingly aggressively. When when I when there's a high quality pair the the the equipment on this one for just shy At $29,000 delivered it, it prices, it's comparable to the CX 30 select, which is the mid level trim of the CX 30. And I, you know, I priced it out as close as I could to a cx 30 with the same equipment, and the CX 30 was $2,000 cheaper than this on the sticker. And that's a big difference. That's

Dan Roth  49:22  
Wow. So that's a big deal. So keep in mind pricing, like you said, very aggressive,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:28  
you go to a Mitsubishi dealer and the chances of you paying sticker you know, are pretty low, you're probably going to get a pretty hefty discount on anything you buy from Mitsubishi. So you know, you could probably get this for less than the price of a cx 30 out the door. But you know, having a sticker price that high on this thing, and you know, this one was loaded, and it doesn't even you can't even get some of the features that you can get on that Mazda. You can't get things like adaptive cruise control, heads up display, you know, and and a bunch of Other features. So, you know, for the same price as this, you could get a Mazda with a lot more stuff on it. And the Mazda is a lot nicer to drive and has a vastly better interior. It's a much nicer place to spend time

Rebecca Lindland  50:13  
going to get better appreciation, less depreciation. Yeah. Yes, less depreciation as well. It's going to be worthwhile in the end. I yeah, I think that's the biggest struggle that I have with Mitsubishi, that that kind of price range is that as you say, in isolation, it's fine. But when you look at the really good vehicles that are in that competitive set, it that's it's just got to be,

Dan Roth  50:37  
so you guys, you better be fair. Okay, so you have the 2.4 GT, which is like that's the top of the line of the Outlander Sport. So if you wanted to try one of the mid level ones, to say let's compare a mid levels, you know, mid level combat crossovers, not necessarily just that the Mazda you know, the price drops down With the 2.0, as he, you're down to like, just shy of 26. So 25 795,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:05  
but again, for the price point, you can get them cx 30 select, that has more stuff on it.

Dan Roth  51:12  
Right? I don't care if you're,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:14  
if you're comparing as close as you can get to apples to apples, you know, with this versus a cx 30, or, for that matter, a lot of the other vehicles in this segment or

Dan Roth  51:22  
a CR v.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:24  
HRV. Yeah, you know, or, I mean, these are, these are, these are smaller, and wrap for. So it's, it's, it's in the HR, it's the same size and HRV or cx 30. So, you know, for the for the price, you know, at any given price point, you're going to get more equipment in the competitive set, you know, more stuff is going to be standard, you know, and they're generally going to have a nicer interior night, you know, they're, you know, more pleasant, more pleasant place to spend time, then the CX 30, which are rather than the Outlander Sport, which is You know, unfortunate. Now, as I said, chances are you go into a Mitsubishi dealer, you're going to be able to haggle down a pretty hefty discount on one of these things, you're probably, you know, unless, unless you're going in and just saying, you know, here's my, my credit card, you know, charge it or whatever, you know, there, if you if you make any effort at all, you you're probably going to get a lot lower price than that this out the door. So, you know, take that for, for what it's worth.

Rebecca Lindland  52:29  
But don't you think that's the case on a lot of these vehicles, though? I mean, that's not all. Not. Not all of them. But there is some discount Yeah, that goes on. But

Sam Abuelsamid  52:39  
my guess is the discount is going to be heavier Mitsubishi dealer that it's going to be at a Honda or a Mazda dealer.

Rebecca Lindland  52:45  
Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh, for sure. It will be but then But then I also look at you know, something like the Kia Soul, you know, or something from Hyundai. That's the thing is that there's, there's so much competition in this segment that It's just it's, it's tough to, to say to somebody, yes, you should definitely go after that Mitsubishi,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:06  
right. And and the other thing is, you know, if what you're looking for, you know, if your priority is value and getting a really low price and getting a good vehicle for a low price. The other thing you have to keep in mind is that there are now a bunch of vehicles that are in the market or coming into market in the next few months that, you know, are in the same size class that you know, kind of have some of the same level of cheapness if you will, as the Mitsubishi, but are actually a lot nicer and a lot of ways like the Honda the Hyundai venue and the Nissan Kicks, you know, that you can get those for, you know, for under 20 grand. And, you know, they are frankly I think nicer than this Mitsubishi.

Rebecca Lindland  53:51  
Well, and then of course you bring in the whole US market as well too. You know, and what can you get into two or three year old vehicle for that? 25

Sam Abuelsamid  53:59  
years. One thing Mitsubishi does have is they actually offer a really good warranty on their vehicles. So this one you know, it's got five years 60,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty 10 years hundred thousand miles on the powertrain five years unlimited mileage roadside assistance. So that's actually quite similar to, I think that's actually better than Hyundai. Now, last thing is the same powertrain warranty same 10 year powertrain warranty. Yes. bumper to bumper warranty, I think I think Hyundai is still at three years 36,000 miles, which is pretty much the industry standard these days. So you actually do get a really good warranty on this. So you know, if you have any issues, you know, it will be covered for a longer period of time.

Dan Roth  54:42  
There are reasons to buy a new car and sometimes that new car becomes a Mitsubishi. There are practical reasons for that.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:51  
Yeah, I mean, getting getting a warranty is you know, having a warranty on a new car is one of the real benefits of buying a new car versus buying a used car. And you know, because the warranty is as long as it is on this I'm not sure what Mitsubishi's policies are on, you know, warranty transfer, you know, and you sell it. But, you know, if you were to buy, you know, a two or three year old Outlander Sport, you know, used one, you know, you'd potentially still have several years of warranty coverage, you know, bumper to bumper warranty coverage on that thing, which is, you know, that's not you know, not something to be taken lightly.

Rebecca Lindland  55:27  
Yeah, no, that's not trivial.

Dan Roth  55:29  
Yeah. So how did you The other thing that's new for this car this year is the I think every, every model year Mitsubishi brings out a tweet, audio and display like an input tweak the infotainment system. And so this year is no different. There's a new eight inch they call it the smartphone link display audio with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, whatever so it has a couple of knobs. It has new touchscreen interface or new new UI How does that work?

Sam Abuelsamid  56:02  
That's fine. You know, it's it's a simple interface, you turn it on, you've got five icons on the screen, one of which, you know, there's there's no nav available on this. You know, if you want to have you have to use your phone, which is actually probably as, as good or better than most, you know, built in nav systems anyway. So you got Android Auto and CarPlay support, you know, if you want to listen to basically the, the only reason you would use the stock infotainment is if you want to listen to radio, terrestrial radio, so if you want to listen to Sirius XM, or listen to your local radio stations, you'd use that other than that there's not really anything else you know that you've got knobs, proper knobs for the climate control, which is always a good thing. You got knob, rotary knobs or volume and tuning all is a good thing. And you know, then if you want to use, you know, Android or CarPlay you have the touchscreen.

Dan Roth  56:55  
You see I keep coming back to as much as we complain that it's, you know, At the bottom of the class, right, and it's old hardware, it doesn't drive badly. It drives, you know, rising handles pretty well. It's pretty composed. There's there are some flaws like you talked about that CVT.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:13  
But even that is mitigated by the terribly improved NVH. So it's not that big a deal.

Dan Roth  57:17  
The ergonomics are good, it definitely feels old, you know, just the sort of the being in it and the quality of the materials and stuff and just the packaging. You know, it's not it's not the newest, most clever, most space efficient platform. But it's taken as a whole on its merits. Price aside, it's not the worst thing at all. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  57:41  
not it's not terrible. I didn't hate it. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  57:47  
And they're making improvements. And I think that's important too, is that if they're paying attention to feedback on things like NVH I mean, that was, you know, I when I had it, I recall it. You know, I hit a bump, and I really thought my teeth were going to fall out. And, you know, so pay attention to that kind of stuff, you know, soften some of that, put some more insulation in, like, you know, if they're, they're continuing to try to improve their product. And that

Dan Roth  58:16  
yeah, I mean, and that's what Chrysler does look at look at, look at the charger look at the challenger. They those things are ancient and they just

Rebecca Lindland  58:22  
turn a totally different purpose though. And there's not a lot of competition

Dan Roth  58:25  
for the know, they do. But the the method of keeping those things Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  58:31  
they do

Sam Abuelsamid  58:33  
it in the absence of, you know, really new vehicles, new platforms, you know, which hopefully should be coming in the next couple of years from Mitsubishi, as they start to utilize some of the hardware from the rental Nissan Alliance piece as long as that survives. You know, they, you know, they have at least done a decent job of upgrading this thing. And like I said, it's not a terrible vehicle. It's it's a decent vehicle. The biggest issue I have with it at this point is that at least based on sticker price is the the value proposition is just not there now.

Dan Roth  59:08  
Yeah. Yeah, I think and it's it's fair to say that the competition has gotten a lot stiffer, and this vehicles aged in the market and that there is a replacement coming. But in the meantime, you know, they've got to follow the same, the same playbook that AMC followed when they had Hornets. And they were like, you know, what, we don't have a new car. How do we make this new?

Rebecca Lindland  59:35  
Really aspirational?

Dan Roth  59:38  
Now they are

Rebecca Lindland  59:40  
two, I would be concerned about that to be she is just I, the dealer network.

Dan Roth  59:45  
Yeah, that is that's another I think that that's an issue that and that that may actually be both the yin and the yang of why you would buy one or why you would avoid buying one is just, you know, what dealer is close to you and are they willing to deal with you and how to You Volkswagen is cranking up plans for EV are they? Are they nervous? Are they looking for redemption after they continue to cheat with diesels for so long? what's the what's the scoop on that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:15  
Probably some of both. You know, they previously their their previously announced plan was that they want it to be selling 1 million a year by 2025. And they have now pulled that ahead to 2023 which will be interesting to see if they can actually sell that many

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:36  
kind of crazy. Can they make that money?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:39  
That well? Yeah, I mean, they should be able to buy then, you know, they'll have by 20 by middle of next year, they'll have three plants to in Germany plus one in China, building me be platform vehicles. Yeah, and I think was the number I think for next year. They were planning to be up to like 250,000 by the end of next year, they'll be at a 250,000 unit run rate annual run rate. And, you know, they want to grow that to one and a half or 2 million by 2023. And one and a half million now by 2025. And that's just the ID batched EBS that doesn't include, you know, the stuff from the other brands from you know, so, if you go and you know, everything else, you know, they could, you know, at least if they're, if, if everything pans out, they could conceivably be, you know, doing a couple of million a year,

Dan Roth  1:01:39  
I get the sense that they're completely out of their minds. That's not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:43  
entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

very aggressive plan.

Rebecca Lindland  1:01:52  
And there's also just the demand part of this equation, which I realize is different in places like China where it's just shoved onto the market. But just because you just because you build it doesn't mean they will come

Dan Roth  1:02:07  
Volkswagens very good at sort of, you know, platform engineering and you know, getting cars produced that we're not talking about, you know, a beginner here there, they I believe they can do it. It just, yeah. Where's the where's the demand? Because even you know, the China car market is sort of lagging now and Volkswagens not really a big player in China right there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:30  
Oh, no, actually the other they are in China.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:33  
Yeah. Okay, now that they're China, the China market is is very, very good for Volkswagen. It's just again that I mean, that's just seems like an awful lot because so the Chinese market is like 20 million units.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:49  
2020 2020 sorry, 23 or 24. This year 2324.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:54  
Okay, so that's still, you know, you still got to get a hefty percentage. That to be ease and again, it's different because they do have mandates and it's a communist country and that everything is just shoved on to the consumer. They're

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:07  
so authoritarian country. I don't know that I necessarily call it communist in the socialist I'm sorry, know, the authoritarian but did you? authoritarian?

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:18  
authoritarian? Yes. But there there's very strict mandates.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:22  
There are and, you know, there, you know, the, the Chinese authorities are doing a lot of things like, for example, putting heavy restrictions on how many license plates they will issue for gasoline engine vehicles, or internal combustion vehicles in a lot of the major cities. So, you know, if, if you want to get a car, you know, if you're not like one of the first hundred thousand in Beijing, you know, or whatever the number is, I think it might even be less than that. Now. You're just not even going to be able to get a license plate and drive it in Beijing. And so you'll have to go for something electrified and you know, they have, you know, the China has significantly cut back their tax incentives for buying EBS this year, since the middle of this year, you know, they eliminated the incentive on the lower price or the shorter range cars. And they slashed the incentive for the the longer range cars, those with at least 250 kilometers, so about 140 hundred and 50 miles of range in half. So it's and it's going to go away completely by 2021. So it you know, it's going to be more challenging for people to buy anything in China in the next couple of years. But that said, you know, you know, the European market is expected to get a lot stronger for the next few years, you know, starting in 2020. They are, you know, the co2 regulations are getting a lot tougher, and manufacturers are going to have to sell a lot more plugins. Vehicles In order to hit their co2 targets.

Dan Roth  1:05:03  
So yeah, let's be clear to like when they say that they're gonna sell this many electric cars, it's IDs, right? So these are full,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:11  
full battery, electrified, right. These are full battery electric vehicles. And the ID badge vehicles are the ones on the MEP platform. So they still think they're bonkers. Yeah, well, you know.

Yeah. And

Rebecca Lindland  1:05:25  
yeah, it's a big percent. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:26  
And, and the first, the first vehicle off that platform is the ID three, which is, you know, it's a golf sized hatchback. And they started production of that at their plant and look out Germany, about a month, month and a half ago. And they've already built 10,000 of these but they have not delivered any of them to customers have been renting parking lots to store these things. Because apparently, Volkswagen has had some significant software problems with this thing. So they're not actually delivering them yet. And before any of these Vehicles go to customers, they are going to have to get, you know, a full software update. And they that's going to take probably another couple of months and by the time they have the software update ready, they will have built at least another 10,000 vehicles. So, you know, they're there, they've got a real challenge with us, you know that it now looks like they're not going to start delivering these to customers, even though they're building them, they're not actually going to start deliveries to customers until closer to next summer. By the time they get all these cars updated and fixed, and then they're ready Ready to go?

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:35  
It's significant that they moved the timeline to be even more aggressive.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:39  
Well, you know, the thing the thing you also have to keep in mind is you know, a lot of places in Europe are you know, seriously looking at you know, they're seriously talking about you know, banning internal combustion engine vehicles you know, sale like sweets to Sweden, you know, is now looking at banning sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2025. You know, Norway, you know, it's doing the same thing. Denmark, the Netherlands, you know, they're all looking at bands on sales of new ice ease. And then even, you know, in other countries, you know, places like Paris, you know, are looking at banning ice vehicles from, you know, from the inner cities, you know, sometime in the 2020s. So, you know, they've already put put in bands on older diesel vehicles, and they, they want to potentially ban the icees entirely from places like, you know, central Paris, you know, sometime in the coming decade. You know, and most, you know, most of Europe is looking at, you know, eliminating internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040 at the latest, if not, you know, by 2030. So, you know, it may, it may just end up being the only option for a lot of customers in in Europe.

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:55  
There's always used cars to,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:58  
well, yeah, but, but the thing is, you know if you've got cities that like Paris that are looking at banning ice ease, even if you have a used car or if you have an old car, you won't be able to drive it into the city. It just won't be allowed.

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:11  
That is so i mean

it's it's just the the, the onus that that puts on the consumer in terms of saying you have to buy a new car. And it has to be electric

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:27  
not not necessarily it doesn't it doesn't mean you have to buy a new TV, but it means you can't drive it I see. Which you know, I mean that could push a lot of

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:36  
translates into no I mean you can resolve you have to buy a new

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:43  
necessarily you just maybe you don't buy a car at all. You buy it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:48  
That's not always practical though either.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:51  
Europe than it is here depends

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:52  
on where you live and work.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:54  
Well a lot of people in in Europe you know live you know in cities that they live in places They have access to, to a really good public transit system. I mean, that's, that's clearly not true in this country. But it is in Europe.

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:08  
Yeah. But it's still it still is it is a significant I still feel like it's a significant burden.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:14  
Yeah. I mean, it's

Dan Roth  1:09:16  
just like third socialist cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:22  
Marine Le Pen here, you say that?

Unknown Speaker  1:09:27  
Yeah, Boris Johnson kidding. You know,

Dan Roth  1:09:30  
I'm being the foot. But I do think, you know, Rebecca, you make a really good point like that. That kind of thing like congestion charges even and keeping cars out of the city core. It's going to be on the scale. It's going to be a change here in the US on the scale of like urban renewal projects, where there's going to be pain and somebody's going to have to pay for it, and in the past are seeing that the people that pay for it are not the wealthy. Exactly. But we have we have arranged our cities and to be very car centric we have in the US

Unknown Speaker  1:10:06  
Yes.

Dan Roth  1:10:08  
Yes. And and we have sort of set in place and iron clad will to just continue to create sprawl because in the cities are urban cores are dense, and they're efficient. And, you know, when you add transit to it, like, that's the best way to house people to move them around, and you create communities, and for whatever reason, people are trained to not like cities. So we want to be in the suburbs. And so we build houses some large lots, where we cut down the trees and stuff and then, you know, we've, we've created this large sprawl problem, the fix to that is like, it's either regulatory or, you know, customer opinion and probably a mix of the two. And I think that's everybody's kind of dealing with it differently. And so in Europe, they are there they're like, you know, I see what they're, they're attempting and and they seem to have some success. London seems to have had been pretty successful with their congestion charges right and keeping cars in the core.

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:05  
Yeah, they, they, they have actually been pretty successful with it for sure.

Dan Roth  1:11:10  
I liked that part of Times Square where there's no cars that's I

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:13  
know, I was so this is the thing is that you know, I think it's it's a little ridiculous to have a car in Manhattan at the same time that people that I do know that have cars in Manhattan, a number of them have children that have activities outside the city and not like far outside the city, but just like even in Brooklyn, or in the Bronx, or they'll you know, in Bronxville, like they'll go you know, they'll have to go to an outer borough and Queens for some kind of a soccer match or something like that. And that's what I have found in Paris as well is that the people that I know that live in Paris that have a car, it's that kind of family thing and and what's ironic about it is that you know, we want to try and encourage people to live in the city and yet, as you know, for live in the city, longer Yet as soon as you start thinking about children and those activities, it's much harder to do those kinds of things and, and to keep and to fulfill their activities and not have a vehicle and so then then you tend to go out of the city then, you know, suspensive

Dan Roth  1:12:18  
to like I would take transit but, you know, transit for me is super long. It's it's 300 something bucks a month

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:27  
long, it takes a long time almost always

Dan Roth  1:12:29  
breaks.

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:30  
Yeah, Austin is a good example of where it's, you know, I tried to not have I tried to not drive my car sometimes. And it just wasn't practical. In San Francisco. I almost never drove my car, I could get around with no problem whatsoever. And so, you know, it's, it's again, like I was, I was in my late 20s before I even drove in Manhattan once and because you just don't need to buy again. I think that it's very different. If you have a family and So as we try to encourage, you know, it's just it's just hard to the idea that banning, you know, banning something that millions of people still use and saying, you know, you can't use that anymore without a sufficient, incomparable alternative, you know, I had to laugh and this may get too political. I don't mean to, but that gretta who, you know, the teenager, they, you know, she was getting all sorts of praise for sailing to some meetings. It took her three weeks my group kidding me, who has three weeks of sale to a meeting. I think I appreciate what she's trying to do. But the idea that that's, that that should be praised, I think is a little ridiculous and unreal, I

Dan Roth  1:13:47  
would love to use that as excuse them, like, I can't attend your meeting.

I'm gonna sell.

It's like the key pain defense like I'm on a boat.

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:56  
So I think we have to look and say you Know what, what are some viable transportation alternatives? If we're going in this direction of, you know, and I'm talking about Europe as well, you have banning internal combustion engine vehicles. I, you know what, what I have always advocated for is I'm certainly not against TVs at all I was on the barrier to electric vehicle deployment committee. I it's more that if we make the most fuel efficient versions of what people want, already want to buy. And I think we've seen that with vehicles like the ford f 150 v six engine, you know, people willing to buy that. You just you give them a very highly fuel efficient alternative, the Ram 1500 we just talked about that a torque that was really transparent to me and definitely transparent to my brother. those are those are kinds of those are the types of technologies and efficiencies that give us a product that we still want And yet at the same time, our more fuel efficient cleaner. Give us at that better admissions, you know and in environmental positive environmental impact.

Dan Roth  1:15:11  
Yeah, I think that's part of it I think we don't solve and we're not going to solve it here either is regardless of how it's propelled, you've still got a car has been a single occupant automobile, you know, taking up that amount of footprint, whether it's easy or whether its internal combustion or whether it's a hybrid it's you still got gridlock. And sure solving the gridlock I think like that,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:34  
and that's, you know, that's a big part of the move away from cars, you know, are individually operated vehicles and you know, that there's a lot of things that fall into that that part of what's driving all this you know, they they want to move people into shared transportation options, so you don't have so many cars, you know, on are so many vehicles on the road clogging the roads and you know, Right now in this country, there's seven parking spaces for every car that we have. You know, I mean, that's what it is. It's insane. And if you look at a look at a lot of, you know, the average urban center in the United States, about 2025 to 30% of the landmass, on average is dedicated to parking cars. Now, that's, that's

Dan Roth  1:16:23  
even more of a little instead of grass or trees or housing, you know, I mean, you

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:30  
look at a place like, go back to San Francisco, Joni Mitchell show the cost of housing in San Francisco is so insanely high, in part because of limited supply. You know, and a big part of that is, you know, obviously, it's a landlocked city. So it can't expand outwards, but it can expand upwards and that's something that just started to change in the last few years. But you know, also, you know, the amount of spaces dedicated to parking cars, you know, if you could reduce that, you know, you could potentially have space for more people to live there. And, you know, be able, you know, and if you have transportation options, good transportation options that aren't cars, then you know, those people can get around and do the activities that they want to do.

Dan Roth  1:17:14  
And yeah and and San Francisco remember when you've got the proletariat living in town, guess what they do they pay taxes, which your big giant tech companies don't, right.

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:22  
But the other thing to like but look at look at the failure of Ford chariot like that. Those are the kinds of transportation alternatives that they're talking about. And yet it failed because people don't want to. People don't want to carpool with other people. The cherry It was a fancy bus, fancy name for a

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:41  
while it's a small bus. It's a small bus and it is an expensive option compared to riding you know, the, you know, the Muni in San Francisco. It was significantly more expensive. And, you know, people you know, didn't, it didn't they didn't feel it was worth the cost and so there wasn't enough demand for it. In principle, I think, you know, what they were trying to do was probably directionally correct. But, you know, it's not economically viable yet at this point and I think we're going to see options like chariot you know, these micro transit solutions start to come back around, but you know that they need to go back and refine, refine it in order to make it economically viable.

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:22  
Well, I don't I don't know that we've seen a significant increase in carpooling though, for instance.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:29  
No, we haven't, you know, I mean, all all of these is at least here in the United States. We definitely have it you know, they The only thing we've seen a significant increase in over the last decade is use of ride hailing, which is essentially taxis. You know,

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:44  
and well and the scooters and the and the E bikes

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:46  
Yeah, but even even now even that, you know, is a tiny percentage of the total trips and the total miles travel

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:54  
for sure.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:56  
For that matter even even ride hailing you know, is Still a tiny percentage of all trips. You know, it's obviously a significantly larger percentage in, you know, a lot of these urban centers. But overall of total trips, you know, it's it, you know, it's far less than 2% of total trips,

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:14  
and it's not a reasonable commute, commuting, although

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:17  
it's far, it's far too prosperous for people to use as a community as an alternative community.

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:23  
Exactly. So that's a big thing, too, is how do we get people from work from home to work effectively and efficiently? You know, and that's

Dan Roth  1:19:35  
a good economic crash, it's gonna take care of this, it's gonna unleash the creativity of the common man, the wealthy are still going to prance around and they're very expensive chariots and that's fine. They're, they're always going to be in their expensive cars we

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:47  
rarely pronounce you know,

Dan Roth  1:19:54  
but they're gonna gain laser

breast. And once once we wind up in another depression, your Good to see everybody pulled together and you know that the real creativity is going to come out and, and we will solve that problem for us. In the meantime,

we're just gonna have to get stuff done.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:13  
And in the meantime, there's one other story here related to Volkswagen, you know, and, and try to figure out how they're going to sell all these TVs. Oh, yeah,

Dan Roth  1:20:21  
this was really interesting. The portable church. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:23  
So, you know, earlier this summer I talked about, you know, when I was out in San Jose, I was driving an EV for a few days and the challenge of finding charging, you know, or getting access to charging because, you know, you had EV drivers that were parked at, you know, in front of chargers, but not actually using the Chargers, and, you know, blocking them when those of us who actually needed some electricity needed to use them. What Volkswagen has come up with here is a mobile charging solution for parking garages and parking lots. Which you know, instead stead of having dedicated spaces for EV charging what they have, they basically have like one space for EV charging and for these mobile chargers, and you can park anywhere you want, then when you get out of the car, you park your car use the app to say I need to be charged. And so they have this little tug that you know they have a bunch of batteries that are sitting there plugged in getting topped up, that are on wheels, and this little tug will go and grab one of these things autonomously drive around the parking lot, find your car, plug it plug the battery in, and then the tug. Let's go the battery goes back and gets another one takes it off to somebody else's EV so wherever you are, you know it brings the battery to you to charge your car. And then when it's done, it takes it away. And so you don't have to have dedicated parking spaces. You don't have to wire up the whole garage for parking, you know, for charging. And you know, it's one it's another one of these steps in reducing the friction in owning an EV

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:03  
I love everything about this.

Dan Roth  1:22:04  
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a really smart solution. And I, I love that they're they're tackling that sort of end to end infrastructure really infrastructure question. And and the fact that it's sort of this mobile robot that doesn't require a person brings the cost down. I will, we'll see how effective it actually is. I'm sure they'll be some teething pains but they've they've thought about

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:28  
Yeah, other than just and yeah, there's other companies working on various mobile charging solutions, like you just dropped Lincoln slack to spark charge diet.io which is another one, you know, and and there have been various others over the years and I think we're going to see more of this as as there are more ease out there. You're going to see other you know, Volkswagen also showed off a concept or announced something that they're working on a few months ago. You know, with a larger battery solution that you know, if you go on a truck you Know. And if you're parked on the street somewhere, you know, it could bring it out and charge you there as well. So there's there's a lot of different solutions to this.

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:08  
Well, and it solves so many of the issues that we have not only that you have already experienced them, but the infrastructure problem. The, you know, how do you get these things in the right places to where they need to go, that those parking spaces that we just talked about, you know, like, you see them all, and sometimes there's a big long line, and sometimes there's, they're absolutely empty. And so the efficiency and the usage, the utilization rates would just be a completely it's a completely different equation. You also don't have to get municipalities as involved. Also, you know, this solves that issue of the multifamily. The multifamily dwelling. Yeah, problem. Exactly. That is that is so prevalent, and so I think this is absolutely absolute genius. I love this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:57  
Yeah, so please, it's not a bad idea. Hopefully, we'll See this and then you know, in action and within next couple of years?

Dan Roth  1:24:04  
Well, if they've made it easy enough to get the energy back in the cars, then they can make the adoption of the cars a little easier, a little bit more. Well, a little bit freer, so

Rebecca Lindland  1:24:12  
takes away one of those significant barriers and that feeling of unknown, right, that uncertainty that so many people have with the Bs, I'm sure we'll see something like this at CES as well. Oh, yeah, someone's cutting

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:24  
out. And, you know, the whole, this whole area of reducing friction for EV ownership is something that a lot of automakers are working on. You know, this is one of the things that, you know, Ford, for example, the launch of the machi talked about with what they're doing the fordpass with aggregating multiple charging networks, so you don't have to have accounts with chargepoint ego and and electrify America and blank and everybody else. You know, you can have one interface and you just go to an open charger you plug in and you get charged for it and other times Companies are, you know, involved in actually investing in the, in the charging networks. So, you know, everybody's trying to try to fix this problem. You know, it's something that Tesla, you know, obviously was very early on with the supercharger network. And they've done a great job with that, you know, now, you know, we need networks that can you need to eliminate this friction for everybody else that that isn't Tesla.

Dan Roth  1:25:24  
Yeah, well, I think, you know, a good example is look at ATM networks, right? Like you could go across the country, and then maybe a different sort of ATM network, but your card from the east coast is going to work on the west coast. Because there's some national ones as well, and they'll, they'll figure it out and there's fees that get sort of passed along and you know, that you might get charged to use it, but you can still use your cell phone

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:47  
cell phone roamings another one. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:25:50  
yeah, exactly. So they'll figure it out. Eventually.

You know, you mentioned Tesla.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:59  
We

Dan Roth  1:26:01  
Well, I guess you too, and Rebecca brought it up. You guys have had some questions about the model three deliveries in China that are starting to happen.

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:10  
Yes. So they're starting, I think on Monday, January, I'm sorry, December 30. That they're delivering like 30 I think it was dean. Oh,

that was 15 to customer shooting to customers and 15 to employees. I think I think those other

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:27  
customers are probably employees or friends of Tesla.

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:32  
Yeah, definitely people that are going to be tolerant.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:36  
gonna complain about getting a pre production car.

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:39  
Yeah, exactly.

Dan Roth  1:26:40  
So essentially pre production. Well

let's not do this tonight.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:49  
So people are excited for Monday. there we'll leave it at that.

Dan Roth  1:26:54  
So yeah, I guess I I hadn't been paying as close attention like they got their their Their production facility up and running pretty quickly and did is it like half they are these these are are these validation cars are they? I think

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:11  
I think what they're look they are actually are is complete knocked down kits that they are shipping over from Fremont.

Dan Roth  1:27:19  
Oh, well, that makes it easier to get the lines.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:21  
Yeah. So they're, you know, they're sending over, you know, body shells and battery packs and motors and a bunch of other stuff. And they're just doing the final assembly there.

Rebecca Lindland  1:27:31  
But they do call them micu made in China model threes. I mean, its final assembly. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:39  
They're just not making they

Dan Roth  1:27:39  
understand like get and get a make improvements at manufacturing that they've added another facility and they've got to figure it out again, probably not.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:51  
I mean, you know if they if they end up implementing the same processes that they did in in Fremont and yeah, they probably going to have the same kinds of problems. I, you know, I would be skeptical until I see them make actual real progress on that.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:10  
Full sales aren't aren't going to be

there like June I think they're targeting

Unknown Speaker  1:28:16  
full sales.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:17  
So yeah, it's just it's just the start. It's the trickle. It always starts with one small flake. And, you know,

Dan Roth  1:28:25  
Tesla has, and there's plenty

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:27  
of likes in the community.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:30  
Hey, yeah, that may be a bad example.

Dan Roth  1:28:32  
Keep them coming. What's the reputation like in China? Are they because they have, honestly, they have a good reputation here in the US?

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:41  
It's all about potential. Right? That's what that's what Tesla is all about. I mean, the potential in China is enormous. As we talked about earlier. It's, you know, the, the 24 million person market. I mean, China has, you know, they've they have cities of seven and 8 million people we've never even heard of instead You know, it's it's the potential is enormous. And that's what, that's what Tesla stock valuation is based off of. So everything in Tesla is based off of his potential. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:10  
so far Tesla's sales in China have not been enormous, you know, relative to the market size. They're, you know, they're they are vastly outsold by local, domestic Chinese brands.

Dan Roth  1:29:23  
Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:24  
it's interesting, because I did bring that up in my NPR piece earlier today that I had to record about that there's so much more domestic competition, that Tesla doesn't necessarily face here in the States, but they certainly would face that in China.

Dan Roth  1:29:42  
How would I feel about the IP issue as well, like, you know, China has this reputation of being a place where IP theft happens a lot and Tesla has a lot of proprietary IP.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:54  
Well, so far, as I said, they're just shipping it over from the US. They're not actually making money. stuff there. And, you know, to be honest, you know, aside from their motors and their power electronics and the software, you know, you know, most of the rest of what they're doing, not really that particular that innovative, you know, there's nothing about their production processes particularly, you know, that anybody I think anybody would want to steal you know, the way they build body shells, mail, nothing particularly baby, yeah, but you know, the, the motor, you know, the motor designs, you know, Fact is, you know, anybody can buy it and go and buy a Tesla and tear it down or just by the Monroe and Associates tear down report, and you'll get all the information if you want to steal their IP that's, that's not that hard to do. The only the most, the most important thing they've got probably is their, their control software. And, you know, again, you know, that's, you know, just just because they're building the cars there, doesn't you know, they're not necessarily stealing in you know, the it's not going to be any more more prone to being stolen than you know people just buy a car here and pulling the software out of it.

Dan Roth  1:31:07  
Let's let's get some questions and then we'll call it a night. So last week I did see one coming on Twitter when we put out the call. It was just what was our favorite automotive holiday gift.

Anything stand out to either of you.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:26  
radar detector.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:28  
I have not traditionally given you know, automotive holiday gifts but, you know, if you're looking for something to throw on a stocking, definitely recommend you know, digital tire pressure gauge, you know, throw one of those in there. Get one of those everybody knows got a car, make sure they stick it in your glove box and that they use it regularly. Now, you know stuff from blip shift is always fun for the for the enthusiast. That's true. You know, some blip shift t shirts.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:54  
Yeah, one of my friends got me like, cargo holder thing that folded flat That like, it's kind of like a pop up. Yeah, when this black pop up Canvas things that then you if you had groceries or something, you could pop it up and put the bags in there and they went slide around everywhere. That was very practical. Yep.

Yeah, that's a good question. Just something we're very interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:15  
Yeah, I mean, those, those are definitely handy. And, you know, my wife's had those backward cars. You know, but I think that those are the sorts of things that usually you know, you're not going to wait for the holidays for that. You're going to pick one up Yeah, when you need it, I guess.

Dan Roth  1:32:29  
Yeah, my me my my thoughts and my pics are all super practical to like we're just practical people as like, snow winter tires. Yeah. small, small tool set. You know?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:41  
Yeah, actually, you know, if you're looking for something to give around the holiday times, you know, like a, you know, a nice compact blanket, you know, to put in the back of the car, you know, for if you're if you live in cold weather environments, you know, blankets and players, you know, emergency care charges. kit, you know, to have, you know, in case you get stuck and you know, maybe you know, extra, you know a battery, you know, phone battery to to keep your phone charged. You know if you get stuck somewhere.

Dan Roth  1:33:13  
What are some other questions? Sam, you said we had some to our feedback at Wheel Bearings that media email. Yes. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:20  
let's see. We had an email from Sid said pulk. He said I was sad you just my convertible. Referring to the Sebring convertible. I don't even remember talking about the Sebring convertible. It sounds like something you would have guessed. Dan,

Dan Roth  1:33:35  
I probably did. It's probably the Sebring convertible is not a good. Well, if you enjoy it more power to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:41  
Yeah, yeah, I think if if you're referring to the last generation of the Sebring convertible from the like the mid 2000s, you know, from like, 2007 or so 2008 Yeah, yeah. The one that was gracious

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:56  
basically lose his job over that.

Unknown Speaker  1:33:59  
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:03  
Yeah, that was that was the one that you could get as either a soft topper retractable hardtop. That one was bad. It was it was badly done. The 97 the first generation Sebring convertible actually wasn't wasn't a bad car, especially for the time the GX was amazing. Yeah, that one, that one was actually pretty decent. So if, if you took a fence said, We're sorry, we didn't mean to offend you that that particular generation of the Sebring convertible actually was a decent car. And that one was around for a while.

Dan Roth  1:34:31  
Let's not die on this hill if you enjoy it, man.

Enjoy it's a convertible.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:39  
I mean, if if you like something, you know, whatever you like, is great for you, you know, I mean, there's stuff that that I like the Dan doesn't like and Rebecca doesn't like, and that's too bad. I don't like anything well,

so Okay, what else together.

Rick sweat wrote in his Tell us he's been a longtime listener since the Autoblog days. He's the guy with the Suzuki joy pop k van who has K. The Japanese take k k cars. This is a little 660 cc vehicles and you know the little these little tiny bands are just hysterical. If you if you ever visit Japan seeing these things rolling around is pretty amazing. So it sounds like he he brought one over. It's also got a 17 mostess six Grand Touring and his wife drives a 17 cx five grand touring that she bought on our recommendation. Well, it sounds like sound like our kind of people. Yeah. Okay William Charles wrote into let us know he's got an Audi A seven TDI Porsche 911 s and a sprinter four by four van RV conversion. And he's Florida. Oh, here we go. Okay, I bet this sprinter gets the most cset of all. So this one's from Vanessa Pentre and She, she's in Colorado, and she's relatively new listener came to the show from my appearances on legal reports. twit network has Podcast Network and likes Rebecca's perspective.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:16  
And she definitely,

Dan Roth  1:36:18  
definitely I do as well. I do

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:21  
particularly like the perspective that she can identify with which is being of lesser physical stature. Those are my words and it does some does have sometimes have trouble hearing Dan, maybe y'all can buy him a new mic someday or at least raises volume a bunch.

Dan Roth  1:36:38  
Oh, that's good. That's good to know. That's that's summit. I'll fix it in the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:42  
fall. Yeah. And let's see she drives a Prius. Her husband has a volt and hope their next car will be a full EV but really disappointed how badly this 2014 Prius handles in general and drives in the snow and maybe worse than my previous Prius or maybe the snow is getting higher. electric car big enough for two dogs and high enough to get over the darn piles of snow left at every side street by the plow. Oh yeah, well that's that's the problem no matter what kind of car you drive, you know the trans not not that, like, you know, for getting through those big piles of snow like when the plows go by and you leave the big bank bank of snow at the end of your driveway. Yeah. Yeah, that that's where you need something like a jeep. But let's see what else What about

Rebecca Lindland  1:37:25  
that reveal? We didn't talk about the reveal. And

Unknown Speaker  1:37:28  
yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:37:32  
That thing's awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:33  
That is gonna be pricey. Turned. See? Ya, they're gonna be intrigued by these minivans. But the gas mileage is appalling law if you're interested in minivans and your you don't want bad gas mileage. definitely take a look at the Pacific at Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. Hybrid. It's got fantastic mileage.

Dan Roth  1:37:52  
Let's see it's a nice van to its, I think if you're driving a Prius, a Prius and a volt you get Pacifica it's, it's going to feel a little bit more premium.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:02  
Right? And you know that Prius is the previous The 2014 is the previous generation Prius, which Yes, it was not a good handling car, that old generation Prius, the new one is much better, you know, for but you know, for what, what they're looking for, for an EV, you know, what, you what is there out there that would, you know,

Dan Roth  1:38:25  
be I was gonna say some paragraph for that's maybe not fully but there's the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:30  
rap for the rav4 hybrid. There's also plug in hybrid that's coming next summer, the Ford Escape, hybrid plug in hybrid is coming in the spring. So both of those plugins, you know, there's also a hybrid version CR v coming early in the year. So those are, you know, those are all options, you know, but you know, if you if you really want to get through that darn pilots, no. left by the plow. You know, if you can, if you can afford it, you know, something like the Caribbean or You know, the upcoming Ford F 150 ev might be options for you there. You know, the rubian might, you know, something like an SUV sounds like might be more up your alley. And so that's that's something to consider me those are going to start somewhere probably 60 to $70,000 range so they're not cheap. But you know, as you know, as four wheel drive utility, you know, electric vehicles go, that may be your your best option in the near term.

Dan Roth  1:39:30  
You know, if you're looking for something cheap, we're talking about Mitsubishi you can get yourself an Outlander phg v. That would be really cheap. And you won't care about it rusting away to nothing. That's true, because you'll get your money out of Yeah, and honestly, it's not a terrible hybrid. I actually didn't mind it at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:48  
So yeah, so not quite interested in new electric but you probably look for a three year old something in a couple of years. So yeah, I mean, what about the Volvo XC 90 The xc 90 plugin is pretty good. The you know, the electric driving range is not enormous, you know, it's only like now 1415 miles

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:09  
higher ground. Yeah, it's now

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:10  
it is good for that.

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:12  
And to beautiful vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:14  
Yeah. Yeah. And but you know, I mean if you're looking in that in that price range, you know, there's also other options as well. You know, there's the Audi Q five plug in hybrids five, the Xbox, the BMW X five, you know, Range Rover plug in hybrids now. Yeah, so I don't know. She's just this adventure. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:40:34  
It just seems like the worst idea ever. Yeah. Electric Range Rover.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:38  
Well, you got electric jaguars? fully electric jet. Right.

Dan Roth  1:40:41  
Yeah, I know. That's, that's all Oh, actually. And that, that the IPS actually might be a really good

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:48  
pace. You know, the I pace, you know, the range is actually getting better. they've introduced a range improvement for that. That's coming for 2020. They've already launched it in Europe. You know, there's also the you know, you mentioned the Audi e Tron. Rebecca, and there's the transport back that's coming next year.

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:08  
Yeah. Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:10  
So I mean, in within the next couple of years is actually going to be a lot more options available. So if you can hold off a bit, you know, that's actually probably the best thing to do right now. And

Dan Roth  1:41:21  
I think I'd like to know a little bit more about like, sort of where Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:25  
like, what kind of what's your budget range? Yeah. Hit it hit us back with what do you like? What do you need in a vehicle? What's your, what's your price range? That kind of thing. And one, one final note here. Vanessa says, Let Rebecca know that. She wishes your mother good health and best wishes and condolences on the situation. So

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:46  
sweet. That's so sweet. She's doing much better. Thank you. That's very sweet. You have the best listeners. We do. Awesome.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:55  
Let's see.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:57  
I love the podcast, even Dan really liking Rebecca from I'm from LinkedIn California drive at 2016 BMW M to 35 is a Volvo XC 40 nice choices nine questions right now SUVs are it what body style will be the next it?

Dan Roth  1:42:15  
wagons hatchbacks I your wagon some respects Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:22  
discreet hatchbacks Do you think wagons will ever make a comeback? I hope so. But I don't it

Dan Roth  1:42:27  
I think Rebecca is probably more right with the hatch pass. You know being more discreet like that so they because it's so much easier now to go from everything has that soupy roofline and he just just make the whole back if it opened up and it becomes more practical waggons is a little bit more niche and weirdos like us like them. But I think that's a little harder. So, but you've got a whole generation that was reared in not only minivans, because you know, it's people, people my age. were sort of reared and minivans, a lot of people had minivans, and first A couple of generations, but SUVs. And so there's going to be that reaction that goes from SUVs to something else. And that that's coming.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:11  
I think we're, I think we're starting to see some of that now with, like, some of this new generation of crossovers that are kind of shifting back to being a little more car, like, you know, like the new escape sex 30. You know, that are, you know, they have some of that extra height of utilities, but they're, they're getting more of the car type of characteristics than then utilities crossovers have had for a while. Yeah. And then one last one here from Abby Becker, who we had responded to previously, but Utes and trucks in Australia and make a couple of points here, car based pickups are gone in Australia. So you know, things like the Holden Utes and the Ford Falcon Utes. You know, like the El Camino style pickups. Those are no longer in production and not available anywhere anymore. Dual cab Utes are the main market this these are, you know, Crew Cab pickup trucks you know, and one of the you know so this is like the the mid size pickups mostly, you know like the tacomas and Rangers and that sort of thing. And Abby drives a diesel Nissan Navarro d 40, which is basically the the Nissan Frontier, but heavily modified for off road with 33 inch tires, the suspension, lift, etc, etc. Main vehicles are my partner's Mazda three and a 250 cc motorbike that they use for commuting. The Mazda is for camping in long trips as in three months on the road, or the Nissan is for camping in long trips isn't three months on the road. You mentioned renting a truck when you need one. We did the math on that $21,000 to rent a truck for three months. So yeah, you know, when I think when we're talking about right information, when we let go Right to the truck, you know, we're thinking of like, a weekend, you know, or, you know, just a couple of days, you know, if you need to tell your boat from your driveway to the lake and put it in the lake, and then you know, to do that again in the fall to take it out. If you're going to be driving it driving a vehicle like this for an extended period of time, then yeah, go ahead and buy one, you know, that it makes no sense to rent it for three months. Really what we were talking Yeah, we're talking short term, you know, a couple of days, you know, a couple hundred bucks to rent one of these. So thank you for all those. There were also a couple of things that came in on Twitter today. Oh, Tim Martin, responded to dance call here. Any thoughts on the pros and cons of a two year old plug in hybrid versus a four year old Model S or bolt? mainly looking at clarity and voltas options. That's the Honda clarity and the Chevy Volt. Typical usage of 10 miles round trip commute with occasional 350 mile trip to family budget. 25 to 30 k. So, you know, in in that situation you know, I don't know what you guys think you know if you're if you're mainly you know if you're if you got a 10 mile round trip commute a plug in hybrids actually a great option you know and then you don't have any hassle when you do have that long trip

Rebecca Lindland  1:46:21  
I like to plug in hybrids What do you think? Yeah, I like to plug in hybrid a lot. I think that that two year old I'd rather have him in the two year old Honda clarity because that's a really good technology and it's new and modern technology versus a four year old Tesla but not because it's the Tesla but just because the clarity is is new and I you know, I remember driving it when it first came out and I liked the clarity a lot.

Dan Roth  1:46:50  
I I would never buy used Tesla or an new one. At this point. They get their their production and it's not because they don't Unlike the cars again, I'm impressed by the cars. I'm not impressed by their their reliability of durability in some, some have been very good. The Model S seems to have a lot of its quirks worked out but I

I have pause with that. But that's that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:15  
on the other hand, you know, I mean, if any other EV aside from a Tesla, you know, like a bolt or a nice honestly yeah the bolt bolt sounds fine to me Elisa. Absolutely Yeah, the you know, if you were to get a three to four year old one of those, you know, particularly the you know, with it with the bolt and I would say a three year old leaf like the second generation leaf. You know, you can get some screaming deals on those because, you know, depreciation on EBS tends to be very high. And so you can actually get a typically get a really good deal on a used one. And so those are actually a really good option. And you know, as long as you get the the second generation leaf, you know that with the Hundred and 50 mile range. You know, depending, you know what, what I would do is, you know, take a look at what your charging options are on that 350 mile trip, you know, if if there are, you know chameau chargers or you know other DC fast chargers along the way so that you can make that trip, then you know that that might be actually the most economical option for you. Otherwise, can plug in might be the best option. Oh, go ahead.

Rebecca Lindland  1:48:30  
I want to show kind of mileage degradation they can expect in in that range from a two or three year old battery

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:40  
and that and that time it should be pretty minimal like probably no more than three or 4%.

So,

Rebecca Lindland  1:48:48  
that's a lot less than what it had been in the past.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:51  
Yeah, they're the batteries are actually holding up pretty well. The you know, the manufacturers have done a good job on Trying to be fairly conservative with the use of the battery, you know, to, you know, to make they're trying to guarantee the durability. And you know, these things, you know, they have, you know, eight year hundred thousand mile warranties on them. Or, you know if you're in California it's a 10 year hundred and 50,000 mile warranty on the on the battery. So, you know, they should hold up fairly well. And that's transferable. Yes. Okay.

Dan Roth  1:49:29  
Yeah, see if it's one car that's gonna have to do that occasional three and if it's a three and a 50 mile round trip to family, so it sounds like probably consistent route. So if you know what you're charging is the plan ahead. You want to go fully v probably can and have those options like I think the bolt is fine. Like we mentioned leaf. I do like the vote too, but I think the clarity is probably like you. Like you said Rebecca. It's newer. Technology and it's probably

I think it's probably a little roomier.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:06  
Clarity is much roomier than apple. For sure. It's Yeah. A little harder on the eyes. But it's definitely terrible. Yeah. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:50:18  
It does look weird. It's it's like a weird cross between a 70s Buick and a Honda.

Rebecca Lindland  1:50:22  
Well, the tie and the though the tire covers are really bad on it.

Dan Roth  1:50:27  
Yeah. But you know what i would i would drive that to save fuel and co2 emissions and stuff. Like, whenever I'm old enough, I don't care what I look like on the road, so

Rebecca Lindland  1:50:43  
we can't see it. And I'm pretty sure the You're the youngest of the three of us. So that's scary.

Dan Roth  1:50:48  
I'm an old soul.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:50  
was born old. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:50:52  
that's true. I'm growing into it. I got another 40 years.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:00  
It's that's it for this week. I think we're at almost two hours. So yeah, well, I mean,

Dan Roth  1:51:11  
this is what happens when we do on weekends, right? Like we just ramble. Yeah. So you get the benefit of that listeners covers two days worth of community. If you want to have us answer your questions or attempt to you can hit us at feedback at Wheel Bearings, dot media. We're on Twitter and all the other places so you know where to find us. And thanks for listening. See you next time. Happy,

Rebecca Lindland  1:51:35  
Happy New Year.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai