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

Sam Abuelsamid  0:06  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Navigant research. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:09  
And I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives. 

Dan Roth  0:11  
So welcome back from CES. You two. I watched from afar and it looks like it was a huge show and lots and lots of stuff to cover. Are you recovered? 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:20  
I managed to come back without contracting any new diseases. So I think I'm pretty pretty good shape. Yeah, that's good. 

Dan Roth  0:27  
It's been making the rounds. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:29  
Yeah, I had the disease prior to CES in the form of a very bad cold. So and hopefully, I didn't spread germs and the blister on my foot is almost healed. So I got that going for me. He said, 

Dan Roth  0:42  
You mean you didn't go in like lick door to door handles and stuff like a nice iPod for me to cough all over? 

Rebecca Lindland  0:49  
Only in the privacy of my own room.

Dan Roth  0:54  
All right, let's first talk about the cars that we had that got us maybe to and from the airport or whatever.

But Rebecca you you've been driving the two I was gonna say 2019 something but no, it's the 2020 Toyota Corolla x se the sporty one

Rebecca Lindland  1:10  
it is. So they dropped this off right around the same time that I had I swapped out the Ram 1500 pickup truck for the Corolla, and of course it was, you know, quite a dramatic change. But I was excited to drive this because I hadn't had a chance before and this is the one that I had is the x s E. I, and it's got a 2.0 liter four cylinder 16 valve with the CVT it's got this sport suspension sport drive mode. I I can't say that I noticed a significant difference in the sport drive mode. And that seems to be kind of a running theme lately. It does make a little more noise. it well. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is it's, I should say, I didn't notice anything positive particularly positive about it. So this one has the sport version has these low profile, high performance tires. And they were just incredibly noisy. And of course the CVT transmission was also rather noisy as well. And so that was a little frustrating because it definitely compromised the experience of driving this vehicle. So this one has a starting price of 25,000 for 50. And then it has the premium audio with dynamic navigation. And that was 1700 $50 1715 as an option. And then I had adapter front lighting system, which is always helpful for 450 and then I had a couple of other paint protection carpet Matt $930 destination fee for a whopping total of $29,189.

Dan Roth  2:55  
Does that seem expensive for Corona to you?

Rebecca Lindland  2:58  
I felt like It was expensive.

Dan Roth  3:01  
I i'm not i'm not challenging. It seems kind of pricey. It is the top trim, I suppose it is.

Rebecca Lindland  3:10  
And it was, you know, it was well equipped. It had heated front seats. It had, you know, a nice on large screen, it had a lot of nice amenities to it. It had wireless charging that actually fit my phone. You know, it had some really nice things to it blind spot monitoring, push buttons start by. Wow. And you know, as we've repeatedly said, Now, we give mosta a hard time about their pricing, but I definitely preferred the Mazda three to the Corolla in terms of that premium experience. I mean, the Mazda has that beautiful interior that really nice dash and, you know, I definitely have been vocal about the pricing on some of this on some of the monster product. But when you compare it to the krola I just I really felt like the monster was a better experience

Dan Roth  4:09  
I will agree there the the Corolla is good as it is and you know it's pretty good to drive so be curious how driving them back to back how much better or better at all the x so is versus the regular Corolla cuz it's a good driving car but the interior is just not it's not monster pretty

Rebecca Lindland  4:28  
good yeah and as I said I haven't driven a lower lower trim line by I do remember very distinctly talking about the Mazda three and and really feeling like I was in a premium vehicle i mean i'm not talking like BMW three series or something you know but I'm talking about just feeling like I was getting a lot of value and a lot of a lot of creature comforts A lot of you the premium experience within the car was significant in that Mazda three, and while the Corolla was very, very good, you know, I don't I certainly a long way away from the economy boxes of the past, so I don't want to dismiss that it's a very, very good vehicle. And, you know, the the experience overall was very, very good. It's just that I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm just getting old high school. They just seem, you know, I just I feel like when you start to get into that $30,000 range, first of all, there's so much available in that range within the marketplace that has more utility. And yes, I'm thinking about a crossover, but I'm even thinking of something like the Hyundai Kona, you know, or I haven't driven the Hyundai venue yet. But you know, something that is still kind of a car, but just has a little bit more room just has a little bit More presence on the road, rather than a compact car like this, it is,

Sam Abuelsamid  6:06  
well to defend the Corolla a little bit and I have driven the venue, you know, and the venue, you know, like some of the other recent, you know, subcompact utilities that have come to market, you know, that what we're seeing is a kind of a bifurcation in the small utility market between the, the really value oriented models like the Nissan Kicks and the venue, and then, you know, slightly nicer ones, like the, the CX 30. And actually, that one's a lot nicer, but, but at any rate, those value models that are coming in with starting prices, you know, in the 18 to $19,000 price range, you know, there's a distinct difference there and you know, what they have, you know, typically, you know, the hard plastics and everything, and I haven't driven the base girl, I have driven the same accessory you drove Rebecca, and, you know, I found that you know, it's driving dynamics are so much better than a Cruel of the past and I think visually it actually does have especially in the SSC trim, it actually does have a pretty good presence to it. You know, it has some things about it that I really liked. Like for example the belt line. You know when you look at it from the side you know, the belt line kind of sweeps down towards the front. And you know, in that front part of the door, basically a pillar area, you know, it that's kind of where it bottoms out there and it actually helped so I thought I found it helped a lot with visibility, you know, really opened up you know, got rid of some of the blind spots that we've traditionally had, you know, in that area, especially as they've moved away from, you know, the, the pillar mounted mirrors, you know, to getting the the side mirrors mounted on the doors that kind of opens up that corner right at the base of the a pillar.

Rebecca Lindland  7:50  
Absolutely the visibility was very good in it particularly at that a pillar point which of course for me, because I sit so close in true often will introduce On my on my line this site so that was very good. I don't mean to trash it I don't mean by any stretch I mean that's it's a very very good car it's just that there's so much competition out there in that price point

Dan Roth  8:11  
yeah i agree that you know 30 grand for a Corolla or any car in that class is really starting to push it you're solidly into you know c segment territory if the size is something you want but sometimes the size isn't what people want you know I mean, we've seen who are willing to pay more for a smaller car because bigger isn't always better and you know the ecstasy is the top of the range is the highest I think it has the highest list price at 2525 and a half thousand dollars and I drove the x le I think a while back and I was still impressed with the way it drove. I really liked the the direct steering it felt really, really way more sort of sharp and willing to turn Then I ever experienced in a Corolla that the Corolla is always been kind of dull sort of nom a definitely a good car but not real good to drive if you enjoy driving you know it's it's right that's not its mission so I was really surprised and apply

Sam Abuelsamid  9:15  
it

Dan Roth  9:17  
right and I was really surprised at how actually it's real pleasant to drive you the CVT aside I do think that that sort of hurts it in that sense you know because you get that motorboating sensation but the the way it goes down the road is is pretty pleasing. It has no good space, a good trunk. I still don't love the tech

Sam Abuelsamid  9:40  
Intune is pretty, pretty mediocre by modern standards.

Rebecca Lindland  9:44  
It's pretty brutal. The other thing too I was disappointed in was there really wasn't a lot of storage space within that center console. I there's the cubbyhole is very, very small. There's two small cup holders. It was pretty Pretty marginal from a storage standpoint from it from an interior storage standpoint also, but again, I you know, you're absolutely right, Janet, there are people that this is the perfect size of vehicle for 34 miles per gallon was fantastic, which is just about what I got, you know, that I was I was very close to getting that as well. And, you know, there's a lot of really good things about it. I think if it was even 27,000 or 26,000, I would be a little bit more enthusiastic about

Dan Roth  10:31  
it. Yeah, I can see that. And I do think to even as we say, like, you know, this is the right size for some people. Even at that size, there's a ton of competition, which makes it hard necessarily to choose because even as it's the nicest sort of most refined Corolla ever, it's still a career. Let's look at some of those lower grade materials. You can see in the interior that some other brands don't. And just I did I did like the This stuff they charge you extra for I liked the the adaptive headlights. Sure I thought they were actually really good and being able to see at night is a huge plus that's a positive. And they all have the the Toyota Safety Sense that like the safety suite of stuff standards, which I think in this class of car where you're going to get beginners all the way up to sort of like value seeking older folks. That's really I think that's a key feature to make standard is they're not charging you extra to give you the safety tech and I like that.

Rebecca Lindland  11:34  
Absolutely. I mean, again, there's, there's a lot of good things about this vehicle. And if you're looking for that compact car, and this is this is definitely it's a Toyota Corolla, so you're going to get the durability and reliability that one expect. But I would encourage our listeners to shop around as well because of course we haven't even mentioned the Honda Civic which I love I agree now, and competes directly with us. And I just think that, you know, there's so the driving experience, the dynamics of the Honda Civic, I just don't think can really be beat in this class. It's just so much fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:15  
And, you know, in Toyotas defense, you know, the SSC does started, I guess, with delivery, about 26 and a half. So, you know, that's you're looking at about $3,000 worth of options that were on that car. And, you know, even even, you know, the starting point of the SSC, it's pretty well equipped. And, you know, Toyota does put there there a dash package, standard across the board, even on the base l model, which starts, you know, at $20,000. So, you know, there there is a lot available, and there, there are more affordable variants of the Corolla available that you know, Toyota has their safety sense to package on here. You know, on Every variant of the Corolla just as they do on all of their other mainstream models now while the SSC is, you know, especially the way it was equipped the way that Rebecca drove it in the one that I drove a few months ago. You know, it's getting, you know, fairly pricey for, you know, what is a mainstream compact car, although, you know, compact today, you know, is more like mid size was 1015 years ago. I mean, you know, we're, this is the size of what a Camry was, you know, 15 years ago. So you're getting a lot more car for your money as well.

Rebecca Lindland  13:33  
Yeah. And you are certainly and again, if you're coming out of an 11 year old car, this is going to be an absolute delight.

Dan Roth  13:40  
fester. I do wish that they offered the do they offer the accessory with the manual? I don't think they do. I think the only one you know is like the L. I

Sam Abuelsamid  13:49  
believe the L maybe the Le are the only ones but they Yeah. And for those that are looking for maximum fuel economy, there's also a hybrid now. Cool hybrid. Britain, you know, which has the same styling and everything, you know, all the other good things about it, you know, and it gets 53 miles per gallon.

Dan Roth  14:07  
Yeah. And that sort of starts at

Sam Abuelsamid  14:09  
$23,000.

Dan Roth  14:10  
That's taking the wind out of the Prius. Sales

Sam Abuelsamid  14:13  
really are.

Dan Roth  14:14  
And I think that's, that was always the intent. You know, we saw a bunch of stories not too long ago, like last week or so about that, that actual thing, like pre sales are way down. But Toyota hybrid sales across the board are actually up, because they have moved the tech into the third. So normal models

Sam Abuelsamid  14:32  
hybrid is going mainstream now.

Dan Roth  14:34  
Yeah. And that was always with the Prius was intended to do was to sort of soften up the market for it. And then it was it was always intended to go away. So

Sam Abuelsamid  14:43  
fellow for a while there for Toyota, you know, really seemed to want to make, you know, Prius, you know, its own sub brand. You know, they really want to expand on Prius, you know, in the early part of this decade or the early part of the last decade, when it you know, they couldn't they couldn't build enough priuses you know, they introduced The Prius V and the Prius C. And, you know, I think they wanted to see how far they could stretch that Prius brand. And now, you know, all of those except for the standard Prius are gone. And even the standard Prius is fading fast. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  15:15  
I think it's a I think it was a critical miscalculation of the, of the equity in the Prius brand. At a time when younger buyers, Millennials who don't have that same kind of feel. I mean, Prius and Boomer are practically synonymous. You know, and so and but others don't feel like that. And so I think that if they had expanded the previous line up 10 years ago, I think they would have been in a much better shape than when they did at

Dan Roth  15:45  
Well, I was a little confused by how they did it to the previous always had that sort of interesting look. I say interesting, kind of interesting is so nice.

Rebecca Lindland  15:54  
It was very kind of you

Dan Roth  15:58  
but it was very

Sam Abuelsamid  15:59  
much a virtue signaling.

Dan Roth  16:01  
Yes, the the Prius v though like the larger one sort of looked like it belonged. But the Prius C which was my favorite Prius, by the way, just it looked like a tiny Toyota hatch it wasn't it didn't have that familiar look. So it was almost like basically a

Sam Abuelsamid  16:16  
hybrid.

Dan Roth  16:17  
Yeah, it was a bunch of products and they stay just stuck a name they took what they had stuck the powertrain in it stuck a name on it and threw it on the market. I mean, it was maybe it was a cynical move. I don't know. I'm pleased to see that that it's sort of the the tech is moved over into the regular models because it's good. It's good to drive. Now, it kind of doesn't matter. there was all kinds of like, there was a quite a hue and cry about hybrids before but a hybrid Corolla, man, that seems like a really good idea to me, and the car is good. So

Rebecca Lindland  16:48  
I agree.

Dan Roth  16:50  
The Corona itself is a sub brand and not in waste. But in reality, you know, you've got you've got a lot of choice there. So just it sounds like that. Excess is the one to avoid

Rebecca Lindland  17:02  
well just from a price point from a price and also from the those the tires did the did the experience no favors because it really added a lot of road noise without adding a lot of anything else.

Dan Roth  17:16  
Yeah. And it didn't feel sporty to you at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:19  
The eight inch eight inch wheels look good.

Rebecca Lindland  17:21  
I didn't have I didn't have something to compare it to. And it was fun to drive. It was fun to drive. It did feel sporty. When I put it in sport mode. That didn't seem to help anything. Make it louder. Yeah. You know, and by so I guess you know the sport. It's fun on by. I would have rather had different a quieter experience. I you know,

Dan Roth  17:48  
yeah. The curl itself, like all Corollas now feel they feel pretty good. They feel like they were driven by somebody who likes to drive cars when they tuning them. So that's good. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  18:00  
And there is a six speed manual available on the SEC and I think that would be all sorts of fun.

Dan Roth  18:06  
Yeah, well yeah, I'd have to drive

Rebecca Lindland  18:10  
it well. Yeah you have to drive it i mean i'm always leaning towards a manual

Dan Roth  18:14  
so having a bad manual though sometimes like well bad bad manual versus CVT I'd probably picked bad manual

Rebecca Lindland  18:19  
yeah you know, I'd rather have bad may

Sam Abuelsamid  18:23  
have had a brief drive in the the Corolla hatchback with the with six speed. It's not, it's not a great six speed. But you're right. I would take that over a CVT any day.

Dan Roth  18:37  
Well, I have one more thing I say one more observation here and that is so the SSE starts around $26,000 and yours was priced up at 30. And you you know you could get for $30,000 if you buy carefully and you want something that's kind of sporty. A VW GTI Ah, five Yeah, yeah, and I'm sorry that's no contest or a Civic Si. Again, no contest. No contest. Yeah, exactly. It's same as it ever was though. Corolla, even when they say they're sporty they're not terribly sporty. It's a good car. I'm just, you know, it's not it's not those cars. It's not what it is. Let's just move on. Sam, you are luxuriously ensconced in the 2018 Genesis gt sport. I

Sam Abuelsamid  19:31  
was briefly in Scottsdale for just a few days before heading out to Vegas for CES it's now gone and has been replaced in the driveway by by the Lincoln aviator Grand Touring but we'll talk about that one next time. So yes, it does have a low profile tires because it was it's the sport with all wheel drive and the 3.3 liter twin turbo V six whichard engine which is a lovely engine. You know, and you know, Genesis eight speed automatic transmission. Yeah, and, you know, this was a very well equipped car with, with lots of stuff in there, including a full suite of a das. And one of the things that that separates Genesis from the, the Hyundai and Kia brands is that, you know, at, you know, for my preference, it has a central control knob for the infotainment system which you know, I continue to insist is the better approach than touchscreens and I will do so till my dying day. But But now, you know, I've talked about the gap on several occasions before you know, driven it driven it previously and a couple of different variants, including the sport and you know, it, it is really one of the most underrated you know, mid size, you know, to larger luxury sedans on the market. You know, I think that you know, Hyundai deserves or Genesis I should say, Hyundai Motor Group deserves a lot of credit, you know, for what they've Done with this car, you know, it's a really handsome design. And you know, it's it's, you know, one of these fastback sedans but you know, because it's a rear wheel drive platform, it's got that you know that nice longer dash to axle ratio, you know, shorter overhang in the front you know, so when you look at it and profile, you know, it's got that sporty er look because they push the front axle forward, more, you know, they the rear seat is plenty roomy, it's not quite as as cavernous as the G 90 that you're driving Rebecca, but you know, it's still more than adequate. And you know, in the sport trim, you know, it's got these dark gray, darker gray wheels. They the grill is is kind of combination of black chrome and you know, black, mesh grill, and it's just I think it's a great looking car, a great driving car and just I really enjoyed it for the the few days I was in it again.

Rebecca Lindland  21:59  
I remember drove that in Korea before it came to the States. And it was really good. It was really, really good. I mean, I think it's the best of the trio that they have out right now. Yeah in terms of sportiness an engagement and it was it was a blast.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:18  
Yeah, I think you know, in terms of raw sportiness, you know if that's what you're looking for, in a Genesis, I would say the G 70. is probably it because it's smaller and lighter.

Rebecca Lindland  22:30  
And the ad

Sam Abuelsamid  22:31  
Yeah, this is the this is

Rebecca Lindland  22:33  
the ad is is in the middle of the three that g 70 is definitely the best Yeah, gap but the gap is better than the G 94 sportiness. But that's not what the G 90 is intended for.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:45  
Right. Yeah, the G 90 is more of the pure luxury model. You know, the gap is kind of a nice, really nice balance between the two. It's It's big, but it's not enormous. Yeah, the G 90 and you know, it's got a good size trunk and everything. So I think it's It's, it's a, it's a really nice balance. And if you're looking for something, you know, as an alternative to, say, a five series or an Audi A six or BM or Mercedes E Class, you know, and in typical Genesis fashion, you know, this gives you, you know, pretty much everything you're going to get on one of those, you know, great looks and, you know, bright driving dynamics, and at a much more reasonable price, you know, I mean, this one, you know, it's pretty much loaded up, and, you know, with delivery, it came, you know, to 58 745 you know, so less than $59,000 you know, all in you know, aside from tax, and you've got, you know, adapt cruise control, with full stop and go capability, a really nice big heads up display. You know, really comfortable seats, really nice materials inside and it's just really well executed all around. And I think it's, you know, it's a great, great sedan if that's what you're looking for. You know, unfortunately, less and less of the market is looking for a sedan like this so you know the the next new product we're going to see from Genesis is the the gv at which they have recently started releasing some some images of some teaser sketches of and I think we're probably going to see that in New York and in April New York Auto Show. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  24:27  
I think that you know, what's cool about the the G ad though is that it's, it's that vehicle that if you want as a luxurious but sporty experience on your commute, I think it delivers in that regard, as you say like it's just that really nice balance between a luxurious car and yet, if you want it to be sporty, you can push it and it will, it will happily respond. And I love that combination because you know, when you're going out with your family or something, maybe you don't want Have a really aggressive drive. And you don't have to have it aggressive. But if you're by yourself or with one of the person, you're going to the office or something, and you want a little excitement you want to spice up your commute. I think it's a great vehicle for that.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:12  
No, totally, totally agree. And you know, it's got not exceptional but decent fuel economy. Yeah, I got about 21 miles per gallon with it. Which Ford, you know, sedan with this kind of performance and the size is reasonable, you know, not not exceptional.

Rebecca Lindland  25:29  
Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah. But it's not great in today's world. Well,

Dan Roth  25:32  
I mean, Scott, what is that? 370 something horsepower. 360 something horsepower from twin turbo be six. So it got a lot of mouths to feed there.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:43  
Yeah. Yeah. Given the performance level, it's it's very reasonable. Yeah. So if what you're looking for is, you know, significantly better fuel economy. You'll probably want to wait around, you know, at least from Genesis until they start rolling out some electrified models in the next year or so.

Dan Roth  26:03  
Yeah. And they're Yeah, they're coming. Just everybody's doing it. So and yeah. I find it hard not to love the Genesis lineup, I think that they've done a really good job at translating what was great about the brands we all know and love. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, the things that made us love those brands, you know, the G, the G 70 is tidy, it drives tidy and it it just has that sort of performance DNA in it and the gap. Is that sort of mid level where it doesn't you say it does, you know, it has that sort of dichotomy. It can be that regal, long wheelbase kind of luxury car, or it can mix it up still, and I can't wait to try out the Jeannine. I haven't had a chance to do it to get one in the driveway but man does it car look good. It does. Even the bed sam i like

Rebecca Lindland  27:03  
it what I don't mind the big girl shockingly but I the G The thing with the G 90 is I talked about before is it just it's you never forget the are in a big car as opposed to the gap where I think you cat oh that's yeah that's that's fair. Yeah. You know the G 90 is it's always big and it always drives big and it always reminds you you know really around every curve that you're in a big ass luxury sedan. And you know i mean i think it's, I don't know I just say it's I like I let if if the G if you can fit your life into the G ad. I think that's arguably preferable. But the styling though I will say that g 90 styling is beautiful. I love the simplicity of the back. I like the fact that they're finally spelling out the word Genesis as opposed Just having a badge that could be any number of enviable, you know, marks, but I think that it's important that they establish the brand because I don't think they've really done that very well quite yet.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:14  
I agree. Yeah. Well, it's been a process what I think one thing I liked about both the G and the G 90, maybe slightly less so with the G 70. You know, because it's got the fender vents and everything, you know, is it it's a it's a modern, but you know, not over over designed car. Yeah. And from what we've seen of the, you know, the, the sketches that they've released of the Gve at, you know, I think it follows that same theme, you know, of keeping it, you know, fairly restrained, you know, so there's, you know, it's got its own design language, but it's not overdone.

Rebecca Lindland  28:56  
Yeah, well, I think that Luke and I can never say his last name. Crews What does it provoke? Yeah. So Dunker but look don't provoke I think that he you know, he came from Bentley Lambo Audi, I think that he does have that lovely restraint in his designs where, you know, I often equated to like when they deal with it when they're working on the clay model, just go over it one more time and just skim it back a little bit. And just that that, that restraint that just understated. I think he does that really, really well. And we're starting to see his designs and his influence on those designs, of course, along with Peter Schreier, I, you know, I but I think that that there's there's really good stuff that's going to be coming out of Genesis. Great. Yeah,

Dan Roth  29:47  
I agree. I can't wait for the SUVs and crossovers to land. That's a good pivot for us. So I'm driving the 2020 Ram rebel. eco diesel that it's a it's a lovely truck. It's a lot of truck I, I haven't built this one online, but it starts around $60,000 it has a lot of the features that, you know, we've talked about in the past it has that split tailgate, which is pretty simple. It's like elegant in its simplicity. It's not quite the Swiss Army knife that the GMC multi pro tailgate is but this is a good way to get some more functions out of a pretty simple design. So I liked that we actually took it skiing and so I just had that it was you know, could open it up like a door. You just toss all the crap in the bed and slam it. Yeah. So that's nice. It's super comfortable inside because ram does the best interiors in the D detailing is really impressive. You know, there's two different colors for the stitching. The rebel has its own color palette so it's red and white stitching and then there's red interior trim materials. It looks really good it presents really well it's very comfortable seating it's quiet going down the road. And the rebel itself has that sort of extra extra sort of aggression and its appearance uses some of the the blacked out trim and the white letter tires and the rebel graphics and stuff. I'm not sure if it has increased right height it might it does.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:27  
It's Yeah, it's got the off road tuning. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  31:31  
Where the tires on like the highway,

Dan Roth  31:33  
um, you don't have any incentive to go faster than about 70 miles. And they're not it's it, they're a little loud but not it's not particularly loud and sides. Very interesting sort of, well, well damped in the noise department. The tires is just there, those sort of more offroad knobby tire so that they're not really happy about getting pushed Too fast, they get squishy. And yeah, you're fine with that because it's just a comfortable place to be rolling along. listen to the radio. The EAC The most interesting thing to me was the the three liter eco diesel v six, which

Unknown Speaker  32:19  
I'm yeah, how was that? It's

Dan Roth  32:23  
okay. I don't get the point. I mean, I get the point that it's got like 485 pound feet of torque. But it seems really at a place in the rebel just because of its its power delivery. It's really soft off the line. And then it certainly has good torque. It's very well behaved. It starts right up when it's cold. It's pretty quiet. It's still got a little that diesel clatter I think they'd let some of that through so you know that you can hear what you've bought. Its massive matches really well with the transmission. It's very well behaved power train. I just, I wanted a little bit more off the line torque that maybe I'm just trained to like wow

Rebecca Lindland  33:08  
diesels known for,

Dan Roth  33:09  
yeah, it needs to get up a sort of a, it needs to get some head pressure up and needs to get the boost going before it really starts to put a shoulder to the work and maybe that's by design so that it doesn't tear up the transmission or spin the tires or something, it's, it's really easy to modulate the torque so that's I think, probably good. I also don't know how great this particular truck would be at towing because of the way it's it does have the air suspension, so you can put it in, you know, tow motor, whatever and it'll it'll settle down a bit. But I'm I'm just not sure that this is the right truck to be putting that torque to work, but I don't know a lot. So I don't,

Sam Abuelsamid  33:48  
I don't have expertise. I would expect that that that off the line softness that you're feeling now probably has something to do with recalibrating it, you know to really try Not to cheat on emissions. Because, you know, one of the places, you know, one of the times when you're getting the most emissions from an engine is during that initial acceleration. So my guess is that they really dial things back, you know, in that initial acceleration, you know, to minimize the particulates and minimize the NOx production in that region, because that's, that's where they're most likely to have issues with that. And, you know, yeah, FCA, you know, has, you know, they recently settled with EPA, you know, on violating emission standards with the previous generation of this engine. So, that that would be by guess what's happening there. As far as you know, why you would want this particular engine My guess is that you know, as with Ford and with GM, you know, this really is aimed at the towing market and it may not have the, you know, and you know, in the form of a three liter six cylinder may not have the ultimate towing capability. That the big VAT would have in terms of the peak. But, you know, where that where the diesels really have an advantage is in fuel economy when you are actually under load telling. And if you tell a lot, if you only tell a couple of times a year, you know, like telling your boat, you know, from your driveway to the lake in the in the spring, and then hauling it out of the lake in the fall and putting it back in storage. You know, well even you know, having, you know, yeah, in that case, you know, if that's the only time you tell, you know, and you don't really need a truck at other times, you know, borrow one or rent one. But, you know, even even if you do need to own a truck, you know, having a gas engine, you know, maybe a better option for you in those cases. But if you're towing all the time, like you know, for example, if you got a horse trailer and you're totally at the horse race horse shows all the time, or, you know, you're a landscaper, you know, that's, you know, telling a bunch of equipment, things like that, you know, on a daily basis than the difference in operating costs with the Diesel versus a gas engine are going to be huge and so that's that's where it makes sense to have the diesel you know for the average driver of one of these trucks that you know if you're not using if you don't have that kind of use case it probably doesn't make as much sense to spend that five grand on the diesel engine.

Dan Roth  36:18  
Yeah, I I can see that and the fuel economy is great it's getting 21 miles to the gallon 2122 which I was pretty impressed by all the way I have yet to go put fuel in it which may be less impressive than the cost of these diesel is a little bit more expensive than just the regular grade of fuel you'd be able to get away with and a gas engine so it is it's a really nice truck. I like it quite a bit and the ram I think deserves its position and keeps climbing in sales and they've earned it you know, I think it's it's a really well executed pickup the one big glaring issue Is the infotainment it's got this giant screen and I can't figure out how to do a damn thing anymore. I sat there and stared at it the other day trying to figure out how to like how do I just enter a destination with the nav and there's somewhere where you can make the whole screen the map but it doesn't there's not a button for it that's obvious it's and the processor is slow. So I'm trying to enter the the name of my you know, destination so you can search for it. And it's like it's lagging when I'm trying to enter

Rebecca Lindland  37:35  
the Did you try voice?

Dan Roth  37:38  
I tried a little bit and they got us there too. I just I don't know what happened with you connect because you connect has been so good for so long. It's been easy to use. This is not easy to use, and it's glossy. Yeah. And it's just crappy.

Rebecca Lindland  37:54  
My brother had similar issues. I mean, I asked him directly, I said How long did it take you to get used to it? He said it was, it was a few hours was what he said, how long I

Dan Roth  38:05  
sit there and look at it trying to figure out how do I just change from the radio to some other source?

Rebecca Lindland  38:11  
Yeah, that was definitely a initially a challenge. But then I do think that he kind of got used to it a little bit. I know. I feel like I don't know, I think I was I wasn't bad with it, which, but you know, then again, I can break anything that you need. And so if I was able to figure it out, that means that most people probably can't, is what I found, because I think very differently, or I use this stuff very differently. So I don't know, I think I think it's a known challenge, though.

Dan Roth  38:51  
Yeah, it was. It was a bit of a shock because, again, Chrysler has for so long had you connect it's been really, really friendly. And this was not anywhere near as friendly. It seems like a real. I don't want to say it's like dangerous, but it just it makes you think too much. And maybe again with more than a week in the car, it would become a non issue. But it's it's complex. Well,

Rebecca Lindland  39:18  
anything you're anything you're anytime you're distracted by it. That's a problem right there. Right. I mean, that's the thing is that it can't be a distraction. It needs to be something that's intuitive.

Dan Roth  39:31  
Yeah. And it's not it's not as it's not intuitive enough. Yeah, for my taste. But I think that's one of those things that there's always that, that friction between what those of us who have the car for a short time and to evaluate it are going to say and then those who own it, and there may be some times that after you spend some time with you actually really appreciate. I have found that I don't appreciate this off the bat, so I'll need to spend more time on it. And maybe we'll circle back next week.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:59  
Well, fortunately You have the option of saving yourself $3,000 and just, you know, not getting the rebel 12 package, you know, you know, that package that includes the 12 inch UConnect system, and you can get just the regular 8.4 inch, the one you're used to, which, as you say, I think does work better. And it retains, you know, physical controls for the climate control because what one of the

Dan Roth  40:22  
controls for climate control to it, they're hidden, they're there, they're often the side of the screen and it's got me a mode button that will cycle through and it's got temperature,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:32  
but you still have to touch some stuff on the screen, you know, I, I prefer the base setup, you know, the half inch setup that just has three big knobs, you know, at the, you know, for the temperature and the fan, and the mode, you know, and I think that system works just works a lot better. And, you know, then you have the, the, the previous Uconnect for system, you know that that has that nice clean, easy to use interface that's responsive, and I think generally works a lot better. Unfortunately, I think, you know, we're, we're going to be seeing more of this stuff, you know, these big screens, you know, I just got a, an email that came out the other day from Mark troubIe, head of Communications at Ford, you know, sent out to everybody in media, you know, some of the highlights of what's what's coming up in 2020 for them, and among those things, is, you know, all new f150 that's going to be coming later this year. And I have little doubt that one of the options in there is going to be that same 15 inch sync floor system that we saw in the Mustang machi, which is the only system it's available there. You know, at least from an interface standpoint, I think that one actually works a little better than the 12 inch Uconnect. And it does have a big, you know, big volume knob on the bottom of the screen. So that helps as well.

Dan Roth  41:56  
Yeah, so I don't want to sound like I'm opposed to the last screens, I have my issues with having a large screen in the cabin just because of light pollution. But that seems like when you pick the right screen that can be mitigated. The issue I really have is like, does it pass the Can you operate this thing without looking at it test. And that's important for secondary controls, maybe less so for the audio system other than volume in tuning. But, you know, for HVC I feel like that's, that's actually an important thing, you should be able to just reach out and grab those and just know where they are with with muscle memory.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:35  
I'll agree.

Dan Roth  42:36  
So I have to stare at the screen and figure out what to poke and and we've said this constantly, so I don't I don't want to belabor the point, but not let's belabor the point until they stop doing this.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:48  
It's bad user experience. It's terrible in many founders shouldn't be doing it.

Dan Roth  42:54  
Especially with an aging population. I feel like you know, you really need your human factors people that put up In the old suit and sit in the car and try to use the damn thing, and I'm sure they do to a certain point, but I don't I don't get how you would release something like this. And it's not just FCA, you know, we've talked about it with census, even, you know, sync took a while to get better. I mean, even I drive, it's refined now. But it's still like, it's a very deep system. And the way everything integrates with your phone now, especially with BMW is like the car is an extension of your phone, in a sense, and that that really makes all the personalization possible, which takes a lot of the work out of it. But that's really, really hard for us to evaluate because we're not we're not getting that ownership experience where the car really becomes a lifestyle device. So some I think some of our complaints are mitigated by the actual ownership experience, but I think others of them are just like it's just bad design overall, and please, fix it for a crash your stuff. I don't know. Cuz I'm trying to figure out how to do something you know the grandmother overall Other than that, like it's it's a lovely, lovely large truck. I like it looks tough. It's great on the road. It's right off road to like yeah, I mean

Sam Abuelsamid  44:16  
I've driven the rebel off road and edited it is very capable.

Dan Roth  44:21  
Yeah it has I think locking functions on the four wheel drive system and stuff like it's just this is a solid truck the complaints about the UI side it's it says it's a solid truck and I think they deserve to be making the gains they're making because it's just I'm impressed. We spent 10 minutes complaining about big screens. You guys were at CES which is I'm sure there's no shortage of big screen I never understood the big screen thing like I wouldn't big screen TVs where thing is like i don't i don't know back when it was standard def it's like you guys know there's only 525 vertical lines right? Like the larger your screen the You're gonna see the lines. But now that we have high def, I still like I don't know, I'm not as impressed by a large TV screen, as, I guess the common man, it just, it doesn't really do anything for me. I'm just like, okay, whatever. It's big TV. Moving on. But now that I've finished my editorial, what does she see? At CES? that really stood out? That was impressive. There's a few we have a few things on our list. Why don't you just pick one and go? You want to go first? Rebecca?

Sam Abuelsamid  45:27  
Yeah, I think I think you had the most interesting ride of Oh, well,

Rebecca Lindland  45:32  
yes. I mean, I I definitely hit a bucket list item very unexpectedly. And thanks to Sam because he sent on the invitation to me. I got to ride in the Goodyear Blimp.

Dan Roth  45:46  
Which old tech? That's

Rebecca Lindland  45:49  
insane. That actually was their most recent version. It was built in 2018. But I do love the fact that zepplin built it.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:58  
Yeah, I believe it actually is is technically a zeppelin now, you know, the difference between a blip and a zeppelin a blip has no structure to support. The Zeppelin does have a structure

Rebecca Lindland  46:09  
isn't always the engineer, always the engineer it is near to being a dirigible.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:16  
A George Hubble is originally is the generic term that covers all of those types of airships. So, both both blimps and Zeppelin's are dirigibles. Okay, but then, uh, you know, zepplin specifically has a structure that supports the balloon,

Rebecca Lindland  46:32  
and this does have that. It was actually I'll post some things on Twitter. I add I haven't done that yet. I'll post it on our feed. I I think that probably there was a there was a couple things that were very surprising. First of all, it is a brand new zepplin and it does have an aluminum aluminum structure around it. I there were so many surprises because I was just like, I didn't know what I was going into I comfortably seats eight or 10 people. And it has I, it actually it was incredibly quiet. And but it had windows open, which was so much fun to be able to have Windows like you're not used, you know, when you're, obviously in an aircraft, it's usually all enclosed. We could not go any higher than about 2500 feet. What they told us was that they typically try and keep it at around 3000 to 3300 or below because then the helium starts expanding in that sub up.

Dan Roth  47:34  
Obviously, when you go when you go higher than that the helium expand right?

Rebecca Lindland  47:38  
The helium starts expanding and starts mixing and that's a bad thing. So a couple things that were that were pretty significant improvements with this airship is it does have two wheels, so has a four and aft. And so when they land or when you take off, you can predict me when you land. You don't have to do that steep decline any More to grab this single unicycle wheel at the front of the vehicle, you can now land it more more horizontally, which of course is much more comfortable but also, in my mind a little bit safer to that was a really cool thing because people had told me they're like, Oh my gosh, wait till you take off. It's super scary, but it wasn't actually it was very much of just a float up a horizontal and a vertical left in a horizontal position. The other fun thing and I don't know how they do this at the very beginning of the day, but as they were moving people back and forth. It was two people on two people off very no arcanist but because I because the balloon will rise up if there's not enough weight in there. So they I believe at the beginning of the day, they hold it all down everybody and there's just how it's ropes. I mean, it's almost this super low tech.

Unknown Speaker  48:57  
I control mechanism.

Rebecca Lindland  49:01  
They load up the airship. And then throughout the day, they make sure that there's the same amount of weight so it doesn't float away. So that was kind of fun. I and then when you're up there, it's so quiet. And you know, again, like that's it's just such a different experience. It was so cool. I mean, it's people have compared it to a hot air balloon, which I've never been in by it was just lovely. It was like, I just kind of felt like I could be up there all day long. And there is a bathroom on board, which is kind of fun. It's just like a typical, you know, typical a airplane bathroom. But again, these kinds of luxuries that did not exist in other times, the cockpit was quite small, open to the cabin, so you could see it, but it was pretty narrow is pretty small, you know, pilot and co pilot, joystick control. And, you know, so there's things that are definitely taken from aviation. So Jen Goodyear, our host, they try and have 13 pilots. At all times right now they're down to 11 airship pilots. They typically travel in a crew of about 30, though. So it's a pretty, it's a pretty big effort to bring the airship to different places. I most of the people that have come from the military, you know, or some other training the our pilot actually, there's actually two women pilots of those 11. Two of them are women. One did come from the military. The other one actually, Andrea, she actually has never flown in the military. She she had started she she took got her her aviation license, and then she actually decided to try flying airships instead. And never went back, which is really kind of cool. So she's been doing it for like 15 years or 18 years or something. It was crazy. And you know, for the most part most of the people have been doing this for quite some time. And, you know, it's just really, really cool. It was it was an absolutely fantastic experience. So did they have it there just to promote some other like for some other reason? Or is it just, it's cool tech on its own that good here wanted to show off? I think it's a little bit of just cold tech on its own. I mean, Sam, did you have a backstory on it?

Sam Abuelsamid  51:20  
Not on I mean, not on why the blip was there, you know, I think Goodyear was at the show this year, actually did have a chance to meet their CTO on Monday. That's right. Yeah, we talked a little bit about what, what good years doing in the mobility space, you know, and, you know, they're making advances in their, their tire technologies. And one of the interesting things that I was not aware of, is that Goodyear is actually using soil rather than petroleum now for the in manufacturing the tread part of the tire. You know, so tire tires have always been made from petroleum, but they're they've started using oil and a couple of different models of tires. Now for the tread part. It so that's that's new, you know, they're working on trying to make tires more sustainable. You know, and they're also doing some interesting things with you know, they're doing some experimentation with having sensors that are actually built into the tire construction and but it's probably going to be a while before we start to see that in production. But what they are doing now is they're, they're looking because they they understand how the tire functions, they are able to use some of the some of the vehicle sensor data things like wheel speeds and various other vehicle sensor data. In combination, they've developed algorithms in combination with what they know about how the tire actually works, to be able to provide back better feedback into other systems in the car about you know, for example, what the road conditions are, you know what, what the friction coefficient is between the tire and the road, so you can have better control over stability control systems for example, or abs. So they're doing a lot of interesting stuff that you wouldn't normally think of, you know, for a tire maker. And one other note, I was just looking at the pictures of the new blimp online as you're speaking Rebecca and I think one of the reasons why the blimp is is so quiet now is because it is because it does have that structure you know in the past the blimps the motors that that the propel the blimp forward, were actually mounted on the gondola, which is the park underneath that you sit in. So they were there was always a lot louder. The new one because it has that structure inside the balloon. They actually mount the motors at the propellers up on the side of the balloon. So they're up and away from the gondola so that that would probably explain why it was so much quieter than you wouldn't you might have thought

Rebecca Lindland  53:55  
it was a very serene, really lovely experience. And just super cool. I mean it was it was just amazing. And it was really funny because I went with my friend Tom, who has always wanted to go up in the blimp and growing up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin like he did. He said that it used to come to some big agricultural fair there, ei or something. I don't know what it is. And I, and he was supposed to he was scheduled to go up in it as a teenager, and then the weather didn't cooperate. And so, you know, 40 years later, he was able to go up in it. And so that was really, really, it was a lot of fun to see somebody so excited as well as I was to I mean, we all had a blast. And so I it was, you know, just one of those things that you see over sporting events and everything and you know, there and there it was, the pilot did tell me, he said, You know, a lot of times he said there at the event and he goes you just can't see anything because it's so far away, but they're also So you know, it's it's tricky to to fly that thing. Because it is gas you're dealing with a natural element you're dealing with the winds and the end. You know, the weather and you've got to be really careful. I you know, there were some times where we kind of dipped in suede and lurched a little bit. And so, you know, there I'm sure there's plenty of times when it's not nearly as serene as the ride that we had over Vegas.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:25  
Yeah, I wish my schedule it allowed for me to go on a ride and that thing too. I think that would have been a lot of fun. I'm glad

Rebecca Lindland  55:33  
you can see my priorities because I ditched everything

Unknown Speaker  55:37  
on that thing. Hey, look, you're

Dan Roth  55:39  
never gonna, you may not ever get another chance. Right, you know, factly

Rebecca Lindland  55:46  
yet from an automotive standpoint, I think Sony's car was the biggest surprise Sam Woody.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:51  
Yeah. No, nobody was expecting Sony to unveil a car during their press conference.

Dan Roth  55:57  
We'll see how much of a car Like how much Sony is in that car for how much magnet because they know that like magnet partner with them in the body design and, and you look at the pictures of it, it shows real skill in form that metal and put it together. And I I'm assuming that that's Magnus expertise on display? I would say so yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:16  
You know, so, you know, magna, you know as an automotive supplier and you spent quite a bit of time with them on Tuesday. Rebecca, right. Yeah, as an automotive supplier Magna makes just about anything that goes into cars except for tires actually. That's one of the few things that you know, and and they they do full vehicle production, you know, they do cut their among, you know, in addition to supplying parts and systems. They also have a contract manufacturing division called magnetosphere and Austria. You know, which builds vehicles for a number of known brands, like for example Jaguar where they build the IPS there Y'all little thing called the G wagon, you know, Mercedes g wagon, they, the the, the Toyota Supra and WC four are built there. The Aston Martin repeat was built by Magna, you know, so there and you know many they also build the BMW or the MINI Countryman and placement are built by magnet. So there's there's a huge array of vehicles that Magna builds now

Rebecca Lindland  57:28  
as well yeah they

Sam Abuelsamid  57:30  
yeah they box here in the Cayman yeah they've done they've done boxter and Cayman production, you know, for as overflow for Porsche when they needed extra capacity. So, you know, Matt and you know, magna, you know, has partnerships with a wide variety of companies, you know, and, you know, has often built concept cars for other manufacturers and that's essentially what they did here. Sony wanted a platform to that they could use to highlight some of the various things that they produce, such as audio systems in car audio systems camera sensors that are used for both for surround you cameras but also for Driver Assist systems you know for for collision warning and other systems you know, the screen the displays and a wide variety of other components. So as I understand it, Sony went to Magna and said, Hey, we want a platform to show off all of the stuff that that we can supply to the auto industry. And you know, and Magna basically built them a car that they can install their stuff in. So that's basically the vision so you know, so I don't think that we will ever see, you know, a production Sony car, you never know. And it's, nothing's ever impossible in this business. But it's unlikely. It's mainly just, you know, something to showcase what Sony can do.

Dan Roth  58:53  
And see what exactly is that like, What does Sony wants to become more of an OEM do, they want to be the

Sam Abuelsamid  59:01  
I think it's more just more of a support to get expand their presence in the supply base. Yeah. So, you know, doing more displays, you know, in vehicle displays, you know,

Rebecca Lindland  59:13  
beyond stereo to Yeah, on audio,

Sam Abuelsamid  59:16  
right. You know, certainly doing more sensors, you know, camera sensors, especially, you know, Sony, you know, is widely considered to produce, you know, some of the best camera sensors, imaging sensors, you know, in the market. You know, most most of the better smartphones on the market today, use Sony sensors in them, you know, you know, all the all the iPhones have Sony imaging sensors in them. Most of the Samsung phones, you know, most, you know, Google pixels, you know, all the best cam all the best phones have Sony imaging sensors in them. So, you know, if you can leverage that technology to have better vision systems for cars, you know, that That's a big thing you know and there's a variety of other components that the Sony has the capability to manufacture as well

Dan Roth  1:00:09  
have Have either of you ever committed to a Sony device and the consumer level you ever had that experience? I've had I've had a few over the years

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:20  
yeah. I have two

Dan Roth  1:00:24  
Sony's and they just on the pro level to they they make great stuff. It's usually well engineered and that's that's but at the support is so I have this this little It was like is a competitor to an iPod is a network Walkman and why it's got a hard drive in it and it sounds really good. The first iPods didn't sound that great. And me being a contrarian. I didn't I didn't want to buy into the apple ecosystem, iTunes and everything. So the hardware device itself great. Sony does great hardware. The software side of it to, like, get stuff on and off of it. Not great. And they stopped support for it. So basically, you have this device, that's kind of a brick now because you have to go, you know, look on SourceForge to find it some program that you can use to load stuff on and off the little device that still works and it works great. It's fantastic. But you know, that's, that's in on the pro video side. Sony has done that before to where they've just like decided, you know what, we're not going to support that thing, that you've built your million dollar facility around anymore. Yeah, we're done with that. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:34  
unfortunately, that's all too common a problem, you know, across the consumer electronics industry. You know, if you aren't, you know, the 800 pound gorilla in any market segment. Chances are, you know, if there's software support that's required for it, you're not going to get it and that's, you know, this is one of the things that you know, as cars become more software driven, you know, that consumers need to think about you know, before they go buy a car from some upstart, you know? Are they actually getting? If it depends on software? Are they actually going to get that software? Are they going to get those updates over the life of the vehicle? And you know that that could be probably increasingly problematic,

Dan Roth  1:02:16  
right? Are they free? Or is their fee or their free for the first owner? And what about the second owners that consecutive one is like, if you if you buy a laptop, for example, and then you sell it on Craigslist? Well, how is that transfer of ownership handled? You know, if it's a two year old laptop, and it still has a warranty or something like all of those things are open questions. I suppose. The car itself looks really cool. Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:40  
yeah. No, it's good looking car.

Dan Roth  1:02:43  
I wonder who designed it that would be interesting. Over the next few months to sort of undo the the layers of that onion, and see where exactly it came from. If we might start to learn more.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:53  
My guess is it's almost entirely from inside of Magda.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:57  
Yeah, my guess is that as well as Sam mentioned, I did work with them at CES and got some deep dives into some of their technology and their some of their capabilities. It's really, I have to say it, I think Sam, you and I went back in October, and we went to their showcase. I and it's it the company continues to impress from a development standpoint from my capabilities technology. I mean, they really do touch almost every piece of the vehicle. And and it was impressive.

Dan Roth  1:03:35  
They wanted to be a car maker for a while to well, they are well, I'm gonna know what I mean. Like they almost bought Saturn fringe. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:42  
Yeah, they did have they did have an offering to buy Saturn when GM was going through its bankruptcy process. But that that deal fell through,

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:52  
you know, they operate in 28 different countries. I mean, they really do have a quite quite a, a stem to stern. Are gorilla trunk what would be the right word? sort of approach I to bumper to bumper? Yeah, so one of the fun things that I worked with, that we were showcasing was the their power trade capabilities. And they have this you know, when they come in and meet with a client or prospective client, they can actually you tell them what your requirements are. So, we want to build something for the Chinese market. And as soon as that as soon as they put that into their system, then all the regulations that dictate the Chinese automotive market are automatically loaded. And then they have whether you want to have a wheel drive or what your drive line preferences are, what kind of whether you want it to be a hybrid or not. I you know, and and then also then you can have priorities of like, eco is the most important thing with this engine or dynamic. I this Kind of list level of fuel economy so they have all these building blocks, and then they, you know, magically pop out this, what they would suggest based on your parameters. And it was just a really clever way of showing again like some of their a very complex discussion, but in a very simple manner. And so they were really we're focusing at CES on making this company better. Getting people to understand it better, and getting people more familiar with what they supply. The other part that I saw, which they had touched on when we were out there was the lighting systems and they have these super, super thin LEDs that come on these strips and basically anything that you can design, they can build it in lighting, in terms of curlicues and shapes and, and you know, like personalization, like on an electric vehicle where you don't need a grill, they can make that grill light up and like for pedestrians, they can have it flash. So if they you know, somebody's passing in front like they can or they sense somebody is there, they can actually have the grill light up and flash warning signs, lights, whatever, to help people you know to help with pedestrian crossing and animals and stuff like that and I thought that was really cool.

Dan Roth  1:06:23  
You know, the lighting, that's a great jumping off point to the other thing that we had on our list to talk about was the Audi AI me or AI.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:33  
It was come up with these weird names not quite sure how to say it. Amy was the way that they were saying it.

Dan Roth  1:06:39  
Yeah. Amy it will

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:40  
be what she not Amy what you're gonna do, Amy, but

Dan Roth  1:06:46  
it's written like a ratio. So it's AI to me. Yeah. It has lights all over it too. Because it's it's an autonomous vehicle and one of the things that they're the idea is To engage pedestrians and users through the lighting system on the car, so that seemed pretty cool. It's a good idea. There's some thinking going on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:09  
Yeah, I had a chance to go for a ride in on Monday afternoon, out he was doing some demo rides up on the roof of the parking garage at the ARIA hotel. And this is a concept that they showed last fall at the Frankfurt Motor Show is designed you know, as an urban mobility vehicle, so you know, it's a small four seater, compact vehicle. And it's optionally autonomous so you can drive it or not, when, when you switch from manual driving mode to autonomous the, you know, the the wood shelf that sits above the the instrument panel actually lifts up the steering the whole steering column, the steering wheel folds down to a horizontal position and the steering wheel and column retract underneath and then it lowers back down again. So you have no no controls there. And, you know, it's it's concept. So it's obviously far from complete, but it drove around in a pattern, you know, on the, on the roof of the parking garage. Interestingly, they put some QR codes up on the various life posts and things like that, that the system, the cameras in the car used for localization to figure out where it was and to navigate around this parking garage. And then after, after driving around for a couple of minutes, then they the Audi representative in the backseat, handed shadow Kane from the verge who was in there with me, and I pair of VR goggles that we put on. And you know, this is one of the ideas that's been talked about for autonomous cars is how you can sit back and, you know, be in any kind of environment,

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:51  
getting motion sickness, just thinking about it. Well, that was my thought.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:57  
But what they've done is They actually matched the environment that you see in the VR goggles to, to the motion of the car. So, you know, as the vehicle moves, you know, so as you're sitting still, you know, you're not you're, you're not moving in the VR environment, you're, you're, you're standing still, and you can look around. But then as the car starts to move, you, you're actually moving through that VR environment at the corresponding speed. Similarly, as you know, as it turns and so on, you're turning. One of the issues with VR with motion sickness is that mismatch between the physiological feedback that you have from your environment or the lack thereof, versus the motion that your eyes are seeing? You know, and this is, this is one of the it's an evolutionary thing, you know, where, you know, when, when what your body feels doesn't match what your eyes are seeing, you know, that's what, you know, it's a it's a reaction. It's a, it's a, you know, we've evolved to assume that, you know, maybe we've eating something that's poisonous, you know, and that's what causes us to get nauseous and throw up.

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:04  
The only thing I'm eating right now is ginger.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:11  
If the motion matches what your eyes are seeing, you know, then you have a lot less of that now, you know, don't get me. You're going

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:22  
to try this. Yeah, but I mean, really? I have to try this because the motion sickness just thinking about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:30  
Yeah, no, I agree. I, you know, I don't like using VR, you know, when I'm standing still, because, you know, I have, you know, I don't get motion sickness in cars, or when I'm flying, but I have started to get a little nauseous at times when I'm using VR. So it does. You know, I didn't have any issues with this one. So it was it's pretty interesting in that respect.

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:55  
Now, that sounds good. My mother used to tell us that she would get motion sickness when she would rock us in the room. Being chair. Yes, that come from a long line of motion sickness people. But I, I do, I am able to control it with a variety of techniques. But I think that that would be really interesting to try because I do sometimes get a little nauseous even with ACC like in the Toyota Highlander last year, so, but they are those are getting better. And so I'm sure that they're working on improving that the experience of driving in a self driving car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:29  
Yeah, and that's actually an area where there is a lot of research being done with automated vehicles is the connection between motion sickness because you're actually a lot, you're a lot more likely to get motion sickness in a car, when you're not driving than when you are, you know, when you're not in control of the situation. And so that that is a concern with with a Viz is, you know, riders in these things especially if you know, if you've got vehicles that have non traditional seating arrangements, you know, where you got lounge seating around the inside of a shuttle or something like that, you know, the, the likelihood of getting motion sickness is a lot higher. So they're working on how to mitigate that.

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:12  
Well, if any of our listeners are involved in that kind of testing, I am willing to volunteer.

Dan Roth  1:12:18  
Your barf bags?

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:19  
Exactly.

Dan Roth  1:12:21  
The idea to me is just like, oh, you could do like a curated tour you can do like, it wouldn't have to be VR, though, could just be like the audio system where the car could drive around like, Look kids, Big Ben parliament, like. Anyway,

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:36  
the other thing that we saw that I'd got to test drive at CES was from Nissan. Yes, I was going there next. Yeah, that was. Yeah, you know, it was there, what they call, he force, an F instead of an F, it's a four.

Dan Roth  1:12:53  
Because of the Star Wars tie ins, I heard that immediately and I was like, oh, they're gonna do an ad where it's like us. force and yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:13:01  
but yeah the force

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:03  
and but you know what it was it was basically Nissan's version of torque vectoring. And and they put it on. In this case we I think Sam described it best or a little before we went on the air it was it was put on the on the leaf as a test meal, but it is going to be coming out on the area that they showed at CES which is I thought was a beautiful looking vehicle inside and out. So that was that was really pretty cool. But basically what the sea force does is you know, it helps with traction, it helps with performance, and it certainly helped with speaking of carsickness reduce body motion, for sure. I mean, I went around, I went around nine times I on this very tight short track and in a donuts of configuration basically. And I was only driving for three of those laps and I was really surprised that I Did not get motion sickness at all because I have been known to. But it was pretty cool. And I think that it does, it does a good job of keeping the car much flatter on acceleration, braking, cornering. It was really good. I think I think they did a really nice job on it.

Dan Roth  1:14:18  
Why were they so resistant to the idea of a leaf with this, though, like for years, they'd said, like, we're not doing it to motor leaf. Is it just because they lost at the expectation?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:28  
I suspect it's a packaging issue, you know, just with the sizes, the leaf. You know, the problem with the, my guess is that this development mule that you're driving probably had a smaller than the normal battery size for a leaf, and only in order to fit the rear motor in there. And it's that so I would guess it's all about packaging because the new era of the production version of the ARIA so they showed the ARIA concept I think at the Tokyo Auto Last fall, and they also had it on display here at CES. It's it's kind of a rogue sized crossover. And this, you know, this is going to be Nissan's next EV I had a chance to talk to, to Kayla saamy. About you know where they're going. And the Nissan is really there for plugin vehicles they're focused on, they're all in on EBS. And they're, they're not really pursuing power split what we call a power split hybrids, you know, the Toyota style hybrids anymore. You know, going forward, you're going to have basically battery electric vehicles and their e power system, which is a series hybrid, which they have they've had in Japan for several years now on a couple of different models. And that's going to be coming here by next year as well. I think the ARIA the production area is also going to probably going to be a 2021 model, but will you know, so we'll see I think it's 2020. Yeah, I think we'll probably see the production version, maybe at the LA Auto Show this year. And then, you know, going into production next year.

Rebecca Lindland  1:16:11  
Yeah, it was, it was great, though. I mean, I think that it definitely provided a nice sense of stability to this vehicle. And I think that that's something that's important. You know, people, often that's one of the complaints about crossovers, right, even almost regardless of size is that you have that higher, higher center of gravity. And this definitely gave it some nice, some nice weight. And it does weigh almost 200 pounds more with this system in so that will definitely change some of the dynamics of it. But it was cool. I'm glad they gave us the opportunity to, you know, to test it out. And unfortunately, the test Overall, we were only able our group was only able to do the constant radius tasks. We weren't able we did do the acceleration one though, which was which was pretty good, but it was it was was almost like a casual quick thing. But it was, you know, it was cool to try it out and to do that, that to motor prototype. So that was neat. I liked it.

Dan Roth  1:17:12  
You know, we're never going to see a production version of what the Mercedes Benz a VTR avatar whatever nonsense that's been buried in there is the fact that they have a graphene battery and so that seems like the most important news there is that that that battery tech is, is something they're they're tinkering with, and we may exceed production graphene batteries at some point soon.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:37  
Yeah, I mean, there's already graphite in batteries today, you know, as part of the chemistry in there. And so, I think it's a safe bet that at some point in the next, probably, you know, five to 10 years we will see graphene in batteries and for those that aren't familiar with it, graphite graphene, they are all various molecular forms of carbon. You know, graphite has a crystalline structure. You know, it's a three dimensional crystalline structure. The distinction with graphene is it's, it's crystal structure is actually flat. So you get, basically, you can get layers, single atomic layers, that it's a flat structure that has some very unique properties. And it's also very highly conductive. Both heat conductive and electricity conductive.

Dan Roth  1:18:32  
Yeah, and it's recyclable. It's not it. That's one of the big issues with batteries right now is that there, it's hard to fully recycle a battery. And so that's the, the claim to fame right now for for graphene batteries is that they're fully recyclable. And it may not be the breakthrough that we all want the holy grail, right? The the incredible range, the fast charging the non environmentally hazardous kind of thing. I don't know that you're ever going to get there with that. But I'm really interested in this different approach or the rest of the A VTR was Yeah, I couldn't head around like the thing that so it's like tech for tech sake right? The project stuff into your hand and then you you like you make selections there like a lot of times when it's like this This displays of tech, right? It's like, people just poking at things in thin air. And then we like project little buttons and stuff. They're like, I that interface seems crappy to me. I don't know why that's like,

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:34  
I didn't understand anything the Mercedes booth.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:39  
So, just just for a little background, the name of this thing, you know that this concept was actually supposedly inspired by the movie Avatar, and they work with James Cameron and his his crew on this thing, you know, because Cameron has apparently been working on like for sequels to avatar for the last decade.

Dan Roth  1:19:59  
Yeah, you The best thing about James Cameron is that his wife has his ex wife has kicked his ass for Oscars,

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:06  
his ex wife, Kathryn Bigelow. Kathryn Bigelow. That's it. So I think that this CES, though, I unfortunately didn't get to see it nearly as much as I wanted to. But I do think that, you know, we can send you to see that marriage between automotive mobility technology. And it was funny because somebody posted something on Twitter before we left about like, our automakers going to CES really still, I didn't understand that. I was like, What are you talking about? If you don't, if you don't go? I don't know. I just,

Dan Roth  1:20:40  
you know, another piece of consumer electronics everybody owns, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:44  
Exactly. You know, a lot of automakers don't go to CES and have in the past didn't go this year.

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:51  
Right. But next year, there's going to be separate. I think building six they're building now is all automotive and GM is coming back, I've heard other people are going to get our own Hall, which there's pros and cons, of course, but it's certainly a whole lot of more room. And there's a bridge that connects that all the other halls. So I, you know, CES is certainly making a commitment to automotive and with brands like Audi pulling out of New York. You know, again, we were really starting to see a lot of disruption in the, in that show space.

Dan Roth  1:21:30  
Well, so from my perspective, as a journalist who has sometimes covered shows, I'm like the occasional journalists, you guys are much, much harder, more diligent work at it than I am. But it's, it takes its toll on you folks. Like it's just brutal to be flying around all the time. And then your coverage is maybe wide but it's it's shallow necessarily because you're only seeing what what they're they want You to see in that sense you don't get to share with a thing you know, it's just like a launch event for an automaker, same same kind of thing like you get you get flown in, you get the company line, you get to drive it around on this predetermined route he shows it off in spaceflight and like I get it like sometimes said that, like, you want control of your messaging. But it's it's somewhat less meaningful, I think. coverage in a lot of ways like being there and being able to talk to the people is super valuable, like getting the interviews, that's that's all great, but like, showing their press releases, like, Are there their press conferences is is I guess it all goes together. I don't have a great solution for it. But I think that this show spaces have maybe have limited value or the value is shifting to other other venues or other private events that they can really control versus being among the noise of something like CES where it's just jack show,

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:56  
and it's the investment I mean, they make you know the amount of money That they are charged to participate in the shows is outrageous. And really they look at it and say, what's our ROI?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:09  
Right. And, you know, the thing that's always been different about CES, you know, a lot of people blame CES for the decline of auto shows. And I don't think that that's actually fair, because, you know, see, auto shows have always been the place where manufacturers have shown off their new products, they're going on sale this year, or maybe next year, you know, but it's, it's near term real products, you know, and, and it's the place, you know, on the show floor, where you see all the stuff that they are selling today, you know, it's where consumers can go and see, you know, Ford and Volvo and Volkswagen and all these other brands in one place at one time. That said, you know, this year, or you know, CES has never been about that. It's never been about a place about selling products. You know, and with a couple of very rare exceptions, it's never been a place where manufacturers Showing off, you know, their new product that's coming to market in the near term. You know, it's always been about looking at future future looking technology and ideas, you know, silly things like, you know, the Hyundai sa one, you know, and the Mercedes Benz avatar, you know, thing, things that are way far out there, you know, for you know, but for the, you know, the traditional trade shows, you know, the auto shows, manufacturers have been pulling out of there, because, as you said, they haven't been getting that return on investment, you know, from doing the media events there. Because, as with CES, and any other trade show, you know, when everybody in your industry is there, now you're fighting, you know, for attention to, you know, to get that 15 minutes of media attention for the day. And what they want is to be able to get an entire news cycle. And so they're increasingly doing events separate from auto shows. Like for example, you know, GM showed the new story bourbon and taco last month here in Detroit, you know, at the, at the Joe Lewis or the Little Caesars arena. They did the debut their next month or you know, next week. You know, GMC is going to show off their version of the taco in in Vail. And then next month, Cadillac is going to show off the escalator in Hollywood. It's, you know, doing these standalone events, you know, they can get much more attention for that without battling everybody else for the news cycle.

Dan Roth  1:25:32  
Yeah, it makes sense in my perspective, I mean, it's just a business perspective. It just, it's a shift in the only the only constant is change.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:43  
At some point, we may see them go back to doing auto shows more again, you know, but, you know, for example, you know, at CES this year old GM actually was planning to exhibit at CES this year they were going to make an announcement about that was apparently their electric truck program. That's right. But the vehicle that they were planning to concept vehicle they were planning to show off apparently, production of construction of that vehicle got delayed during the fall because of strike. And so they weren't ready. So they pulled out. But you know, other manufacturers that have been there in past years like Volkswagen, you know, was not there this year, you know, and, you know, somebody, I think on Twitter, or somewhere somebody ping me to ask if Volvo was at CES, and Volvo has never got to CES. And in fact, now, they're not even doing traditional auto shows anymore. So, you know, it's, it's this is, you know, this is just an overall trend. And it's not just in the auto industry, even, you know, in other industries, you know, trade shows are suffering because companies, you know, you know, just as, you know, Apple used to do, you know, annual events or annual unveilings at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. That's where they unveiled the iPhone and the original iPad. They stopped going to Macworld Expo. And now Macworld Expo is gone. You know, and as it goes in other industries as well,

Dan Roth  1:27:08  
I, I'm not that alarmed by it. I think the messages will keep getting out and the less we fly around the better.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:17  
Well, Jonathan Gatlin from Ars Technica had a really good tweet about this yesterday, is committed to, to no longer go fly to events where all they're going to do is show off the new vehicle, you know, if you don't, even if you don't get to least drive it, he's not even gonna bother going.

Dan Roth  1:27:35  
Yeah, I still think the best way to get honest coverage of the cars is, you know, put them in regional fleets or do small regional events. The small regional events sort of gets you back to some of the, the issues with investment, it's probably more expensive to do it that way. Because you're you're splitting it up and you're sending people in cars in multiple places. versus having all of the people come to you in one place. Over condensed period of time. So there's,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:03  
I think it's, I think the regional drives are actually still cheaper than doing, you know, multiple waves, you know, coming to one venue, because they're usually at a lower cost venues, you know? Yeah, that's, for example, you know, Hyundai, you know, this week they're doing the media drives for the venue in Miami, you know, but they also do regional drives at various locations around the country, including here, you know, in the in Arbor area where they have their tech center and they just do the drive drive programs and the events right from their tech center, so they don't have to pay any rent for anything like that. They just have to put the cars on a truck and ship them somewhere.

Dan Roth  1:28:41  
Yeah, so hey, we got totally off topic. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:46  
discussion. Yeah, that's true. Um, we had a,

Dan Roth  1:28:49  
we had a couple of other things on the list. We're getting out towards about an hour and a half. But I did you'd Sam you got to drive. Not drive you got to ride in the index automated view. Which

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:02  
that's got it I so he index if people don't know like they're like the Russian Google, right, like pretty much Yeah, they started off as a Russian search engine company, very much like Google. And a couple of years ago, they launched the index taxi, which is their, their ride hailing service, you know, very much like Uber lift DD. And they operate that in Russia and 17 other countries. And 2017 they launched their own automated driving program, much like Google. And you know, there's there's a lot of good software engineers in Russia. And they've made some pretty, pretty rapid progress with this program. They actually came to CES last year, I wasn't able to connect with them last year, but I did get to go for a ride in one of their cars this year. Excuse me. And they had their two cars there this year, and all arise I've taken my very first trip to CES was in 2008 When I went with GM to go check out the, the Chevy Tahoe that won the DARPA urban challenge in 2007. And I went for a ride nothing that was in a course set up in one of the parking lots at the convention center. And it was driverless, there was no safety driver in there because there was no room for a safety driver with all the equipment they had in there. I was the only one in the vehicle, except for one person, one one technician in the back. But this was the first and I've taken other rides without safety drivers on test tracks. This is the first time I've been out on public roads without a safety driver. So you know, cruising around, you know, about a four mile loop around southeast side of Las Vegas, from the Hard Rock Cafe. It was about a 15 minute ride. And there was no I was sitting in the right rear seat. Nobody in front of me behind the steering wheel. There was one operator on the the front passenger seat with his hand hovering near the Kill Switch stuff anything wrong, the big red button and stop everything. But But you know, it was it was a surprisingly good ride. You know? Interestingly you know i this past week while I was in Vegas I also had four rides, in actives, automated vehicles on the lift network just just through the lift out. They have 30 cars are running 30 automated cars are running on the lift app.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:27  
I'm so bummed I never got to there was never one available when I tried.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:30  
I was super bummed. I managed to score four rides in them

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:33  
cuz you were in them. Yeah. selfish. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:39  
anyway, those have you know, a safety driver in the front passenger seat and another operator in the front seat driver in the driver's seat operator in the passenger seat. The one in the passenger seat was there to keep an eye on things answer questions for passengers a help educate people about the the self driving capabilities. And those cars. You know, as I said, you know, one of the things about those cars is in Nevada, you can get a permit to from the state to operate on public roads, but to on private property, like, for example, hotel parking lots or you know, valet areas or parking garages, you have to get a permit from each one of those, the owners of that property in order to use it. And active hasn't gone through that process of, of getting permits from every single property owner in you know, on the Las Vegas Strip and in downtown Las Vegas where they operate. Because Yandex was only going from this one venue, they did get permission both from the state to operate, driverless and also from the Hard Rock Hotel, you know, to operate in the garage. So right from the get go, you know, pulling out of the parking garage at the Hard Rock, you know, there was nobody there and I just cruise right out. And the car actually, surprisingly, was surprisingly aggressive in its driving style, which they explained to me it was, you know, it was originally tuned to operate in Russia and then later in Tel Aviv where they also do testing you know, the drivers are you know, perhaps a little more aggressive, let's say Yeah, definitely. What we are mostly here and so you know, in order to survive in that environment, the car has to be drive a little more aggressively. You know, so it it accelerated harder coming out of the parking garage when I went to make lane changes you know, a little quicker to switch lanes than you know then the active cars were in one of my rods and the active car. You know, it was you know, it started to switch lanes as it was approaching my desk or destination. And you know, it saw car coming up in the from behind in that lane at a faster speeds and it was comfortable with so it pulled back into the lane it was in till that car pass then it did the lane change. Yeah, whereas a lot of human drivers would have just said, you know, I'm just gonna assume that he's gonna he's gonna slow down or pull over to the other lane. And, you know, completed that lane change the the optic cars much more conservative in its approach. And they're, you know, they're biased towards safety, because they're operating, you know, in a high traffic environment and strap, the index car, you know, the loop we were on was early in the morning, there's very little traffic on those roads, on the roads that they chose, you know, so if there were no real challenges to it, it didn't do any unprotected left turns, things like that. So, you know, it worked. But it's hard to judge in that particular operating environment. You know, hopefully at some point I'll get a chance to evaluate. They're going to be back here in Detroit in June during the Auto Show, which is moving to June this year. One of the things that's going to be going on because, you know, we'll have better weather in June and we do in January. There's going to be a number of AV companies that are operating rides. Around the downtown Detroit area. And Yandex is one of those companies so I'll be curious to get back into it here you know and see how it behaves you know, in a little more high traffic environment should be a good time.

Dan Roth  1:35:13  
Yeah. In Detroit it's gonna have to you know what they should do? They should they should bring it to Woodward dream cruise another dream cruise. That's actually

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:22  
that's actually pretty easy because you're just going in a straight line. You know, and you know, it's been basically all you need. There is adaptive cruise control and Lane centering. One last item I want to mention the Hyundai sa one. Oh, come on. Did you did you go look at this thing, Rebecca. The what? The Hyundai sa one. The air airplane. Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:42  
yeah. That was ridiculous.

Dan Roth  1:35:44  
Yes, I agree.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:47  
With this whole urban Air Mobility

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:49  
thing. Oh, it was a huge I mean, it was full scale. Yeah. But it reminded me of something in the 40s like designed in the 40s and the It's an aircraft. I mean, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:03  
it is they're not flying cars

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:06  
don't don't even get me started because we have put together a solid podcast. But one of the things that we need to do is stop calling new what people perceive as new things that already exist. For instance, a shared ride is a carpool or already have that. Yes. This was what what Hyundai showed. And I didn't get a lot of details, but just visually, I looked at that and thought, that is an airplane. It's not a flying car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:43  
Oh, it's a cross between an airplane and a helicopter.

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:46  
We have both of those already.

Dan Roth  1:36:48  
Yes. I know. It's a large scale drone. It's you know, it's vertically.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:56  
It's not It's not even autonomous. It has a pilot

Rebecca Lindland  1:37:00  
I mean, I just I didn't understand it. And I didn't have time, unfortunately to, to.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:04  
I went to the press conference and and also a q&a afterwards. You know, this is something that's not coming until 2030. Anyway, so I just had to mention it. But you know, I don't think there's anything else that needs to be said except don't plan on, you know, using any of these kinds of EV tall aircraft anytime soon. You know, it's gonna be really inefficient.

Dan Roth  1:37:28  
commuting and airplanes to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:29  
aircraft. Oh, yes. Like, at least it's electric. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:37:36  
So the amount of space it takes up, right, it's got, it's got that wingspan. That would be it, sir. I can take off and land vertically. That's cool. It doesn't need a runway in that sense. But it's still like it's gotta it's a large physical footprint, just for the wings in the motors and it's got five motors, and then you you look at the passenger compartment or the It's tiny. It's got room for four passengers plus a pilot. I mean, come on wings on a Ford Escort and flying it around. Like, I don't know, I think these kind of things especially 2030 between now and 2030 anything could happen. I think we're better off making electrified transit a thing, and even if you're streaming catenaries around certain municipalities instead of like straight EBS, like just figure out a way to power this stuff with electricity, get it out there and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:35  
totally agree. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:38:37  
So and and it said there was interesting interesting little sort of side thread like why are Why are so many car writers fans of transit this because, yeah, we, we like to drive and so y'all are in our way.

Unknown Speaker  1:38:51  
Okay. I love that too. That was awesome.

Dan Roth  1:38:53  
But also, you can like cars and driving and also want to make sure that we preserve ecology and don't destroy our, our environment with fossil fuels like those are two things that can exist.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:08  
Well, that then you know it the more you like to drive, the less likely you are to actually enjoy a commute. Yeah. So I mean, when I was commuting to a job outside of my home, I would have much rather had the option to take a bus or a train to get to Dearborn or Detroit or Livonia than, you know, to drive there every day. Yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not fun. You know, I take my Miata to go out and drive in the countryside, you know, to have some fun. That's not something you do on a daily basis, you know, commuting to work. So, you know, having a good transit system i think is much more valuable because it does make the other stuff more enjoyable.

Dan Roth  1:39:51  
That and, you know, it's the industry recovered, right. We are attuned to the the emissions and economies of what we're doing more so than just people who just do it because it's what you have to do. And then the impact on all of the other sectors of the population like, Yeah, it's great Uber and stuff exists as a shadow public transit system for people who can afford it like this that leave all the people who can't afford it, who are unbanked today, you know, so this is our industry, we should know these things. We should cover that and by by covering it we have we wind up with opinions. And yeah, I think a lot of us wind up really enthusiastic about transit because it's, it's a good way to move around, even though we enjoy driving ourselves, you know, like, exactly. That. That's it. I'm getting off the soapbox.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:46  
All right. Just Just one one more note. While I was at CES on Tuesday afternoon, I spent a couple hours with Leo Laporte, Nick Pruitt from the twit Podcast Network, and we record several videos, some cool cool automotive tech ology there. And I will include a link to that in the in the show notes.

Dan Roth  1:41:05  
Oh, definitely yes. Anytime that those guys, anytime you have something to share from what you're doing with those guys, we should make sure that we're letting everybody know. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for joining me on this lovely windy Sunday and we'll catch everybody later on. Bye.

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:20  
Bye. Thanks, everyone.

Dan Roth  1:41:23  
Thanks for listening to Wheel Bearings, find us at Wheel Bearings, media and on Twitter as at Wheel Bearings cast. Remember, there's only one vowel that's the a and cast. We're also at car review tweets on Twitter or you could just email us at feedback and Wheel Bearings dot media

Transcribed by https://otter.ai