Dan Roth  0:04  
This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth. And the next time you hear from me, be the end of this episode. But Sam and Rebecca hammered out an episode. During their travels, they took to the skies to attend the reveal of the 2021 Cadillac Escalade. And you'll hear some chatter in there about the return of the Hummer name on an electric truck as well. And from there, our intrepid pair reconvened in Chicago for the Auto Show, where Sam was able to interview Joe Everhart, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover in North America. So let's begin. We go now at the Delta Lounge at La

Sam Abuelsamid  0:45  
Hello, welcome to wheel bearings Episode 139. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Navigant research,

Rebecca Lindland  0:52  
and I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:54  
And Rebecca and

I are sitting together again this morning and the Delta sky club lounge. La x

Oh dark 30

for

just leaving the Cadillac did last night to unveiled unveiled a new 2021 Escalades, and we're on our way to Chicago for the auto show where we may pick up if we have time and record some more stuff there. But, Rebecca, let's start with the escalate. We saw the new escalate last night. What do you

think?

Rebecca Lindland  1:25  
I thought it was a very nice iteration of the of the brand of that model. You know, it's interesting, talking anecdotally to people on the different coasts, on the east coast. A lot of Escalades are used in for Uber and Lyft for car service

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49  
delivery services,

Rebecca Lindland  1:50  
right? I am but on the west coast, they're more family cars. And you know, they're certainly used in that way as well but they are seen as especially if they're not black, they are seen as

Sam Abuelsamid  2:04  
referring to the color of the vehicle.

Rebecca Lindland  2:06  
Oh gosh.

Especially if the vehicle is and it's this is pre coffee, I'm literally drinking my coffee as we speak.

So, I think that that they've really have focused on the family they've tried especially the interior, the interior is absolutely stunning. And it's worthy of an escalator and the more importantly the Cadillac brand. So I think this is, you know, one of Michael Simcoe is the head designer at GM. This is one of his first iterations, we're starting to see his influence on these products, which for better for worse means it's more understated not as much of an in your face sort of design which some people may want the more you know, I'm it's an that'll be interesting to see the reception I don't mean to imply in any way that this is not a Midwestern car as well. It's just having gone from east to west coast and talk to people and totally about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:09  
Yeah, I mean, the the places where you're much more likely to see an escalator, you know, are, you know, along the two coasts, as well as you know, across the south, I think, you know, places like Texas, you know, they're also very popular. You know, we're big SUVs, especially big luxury SUVs, generally tend to be very popular, you know, and really, you know, this is this is a very important vehicle for Cadillac, you know, for the last 20 years, you know, the escalator has been, I would say, probably the most, but by far and away the most profitable vehicle for the Cadillac brand. Yeah, it's not necessarily it's not necessarily the biggest selling in terms of unit volumes. But in terms of profit margins, they probably make upwards of $30,000 per unit that they sell and running. profits it is and so it's important for them to get this right. And you know, as in the past, you know this escalator is based on the same full size SUV platform that's used for the Chevy Tahoe, suburban and the GMC Yukon,

Rebecca Lindland  4:14  
what's it called an

1100. Or, I'm

Sam Abuelsamid  4:17  
not sure what the what the code name is, but, you know, so this is this is a new platform, right? You know, it's based, it's derived from the one for the current generation full size pickups, right. And, you know, you and I both had a chance to at least ride in a couple of other iterations of this in December, I wrote in the Tahoe when GM unveiled that along with the suburban and then you got a chance

Rebecca Lindland  4:44  
to Did you get to drive the weed drug we really didn't get to drive it we they were pre production. But I did just get out of the Silverado. Okay, I which is built on the same platform.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:56  
And this is quite a bit different.

Rebecca Lindland  4:59  
Exactly. So You can't really compare the two. Yeah. But in terms of utilizing the same platform Silverado pickup track, obviously, but it'll it'll definitely be interesting. I'm very anxious to try this to see how it compares.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:13  
Yeah, so the you know, we're we're this one really differs compared to prior generations is these these new SUVs are the first full size utilities from GM to go to an independent rear suspension system.

Rebecca Lindland  5:28  
Victim Yeah, it does feel that exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:31  
Overall, the driving dynamics of this one of the tavo are vastly improved compared to before in the past we had a solid rear axle who was quote on the I think they the last generation did use coil springs on the rear end rather than the leaf springs that are used on the pickups. But now with the with an independent rear suspension is a couple of big things. First of all the right quality because you have a lot less unsprung mass, you know, you're not you don't have to move that whole axle around the, the center part of the differential, you know, is solidly bolted to the frame now, and so only the wheels move up and down. And that has some, you know, in addition to the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle, it also has some another important benefit, which is in that third row leg room, because when you have a solid rear axle, you know, the floor pan has to be considerably higher because you have to leave room for that axle to move up and down as it goes, right. Big difference. And that, you know, that was one of the huge advantages that Ford got a decade ago when when they switched over to independent rear suspension on the exhibition expedition and navigator because now, when when the differential doesn't have to move, you can make that floor pan, probably a good six inches lower. And one of the big complaints about the GM utilities has always been in that third row. You know, the seat is typically bolted straight on the floor. So when you're sitting in the third row, you'll you're always sitting with kind of a knees up attitude. Rather than more chair like yeah, positioning. And so you have much more, it's much more comfortable back there, plus the wheelbase has been stretched by Nick for four or five inches now on the new generation, so you have more legroom and more comfortable seating position, which is going to make that third row really much more useful plus the body's also a little bit longer. So you have like they said, on the the standard wheelbase version 68% more cargo space.

Rebecca Lindland  7:36  
And all three, because there was a, there was a significant amount of cargo space behind the third row. And obviously it's not, you know, copious, because you've got the third row, but it's a lot more than I've seen it, it's probably a good eight inches deeper than what I've seen in other vehicles. And you know, I'm looking at your suitcase right now. And that's going to you're going to be able fit that, you know, in that vehicle far better than you would in something else, because there are some where you have to literally stand the suitcase up, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:08  
Sideways

way. Whereas in these new ones, you can put them lengthwise and stack them side by side. So it is much more useful. Go I think

Rebecca Lindland  8:18  
there was a lot of attention to, to detail in terms of usage, and making it user friendly and doing things like recognizing how people use these vehicles. And when you have that third row when it's occupied, you still have stuff. You're not just taking, you know, what is it to seven seed or max. And, you know, you're not just taking people to and from someplace, you know, you're you're doing activities with them, they've got, you know, gear to haul around as well. And so, I think that that they did a good job really paying attention to how people are using it.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:58  
Yeah. And then you know, the other thing is addition to just the seating position. The other advantage that this new suspension gets you is they've done a lot better job of body control, one of the things at the the Tahoe reveal or background or before the actual reveal, which was at the GML, for proving grounds, we had a chance to go for a ride around the ride and handling loop at The Proving Grounds. And they took us you know, that time we went the first lap, we went around in an expedition and it was the high end expedition with the the adaptive damping system. And then we went in the Tahoe, with their optional air spring suspension, which is also available four corners print suspension, which is also available on the escalator, and it's all the other thing that they have on there is their Magna right dampers, which are a continuously variable damper that you know, adjusts, you know, almost instantaneously like you know, over 100 times a second. Wow. And so The the thing that we noticed, you know, going from the expedition to the, the, the taco, and this the same will be true of this vehicle is you know that that loop Iran has a variety of different road surfaces, you know, our train tracks, rumble strips and you know the kinds of things you're gonna see in the real world, right and in the expedition we got a lot more side to side head toss and more vertical motion to and in the Tahoe it was much more controlled there was it was much more minimal side to side motion now. You know, and it felt more supple, right? And I'm sure that in this kitten for this one, it'll be even better. You know, so that, that overall, you know, makes riding around in this thing, a much more pleasant experience. Sure.

Rebecca Lindland  10:50  
So yeah, no. And, you know, when we think about the brand overall, as you said, I mean, this is it's incredibly important from a profit Stability standpoint, but in many ways, it is the flagship. Now, you know, sedans are really not the flagships of brands anymore. And certainly CT six

Sam Abuelsamid  11:10  
is now out of production. You know,

Rebecca Lindland  11:12  
it's certainly not for consumers and so it's incredibly important to keep Cadillac especially as they transition into what what Steve Carlisle's vision. He's the president of Cadillac. What his vision is what Michael Simcoe, the designer had designed for all GM but has a very direct line to Steve and is very influential in in creating the brand. I also spent some time talking to Melissa Grady, who's the new cmo and I she has a background she came from Jaguar Land Rover, she was there for a while. And you know, she didn't. It's always interesting with GM people because they're so used to having prepared remarks. It's so true. It is, you know, but she but just talking to her a little bit about the brand I think that she does understand that balance between appreciating and building on heritage but not living in the past. And and that's, you know, hopefully something that will start to see, I was teasing her because I their predecessor I could not stand to see one more black Cadillac Escalades on wet cobblestones in Greenwich Village, because that my friends is your Uber. That is your lift that is your ride hailing.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:37  
Unfortunately, that was the that was kind of the hero image for this whole was a dare greatly.

Rebecca Lindland  12:42  
Yeah. Yeah, you

Sam Abuelsamid  12:43  
see, you know, you see these Cadillacs, you know, and he said young and kind of this foggy image, you know, and that cobblestones, Brooklyn or granite or somewhere

Rebecca Lindland  12:53  
he drove me crazy. It was like please get that thing to a baseball game. Please put a family in it. You know Show it how people use it. How personal ownership people use it, not how your liberty

Sam Abuelsamid  13:05  
so I wonder, you know, how much of that was influenced by the fact that, you know, at the time when they came up with that campaign, you know, they had moved Cadillac headquarters to New York. And, you know, when, when you're surrounded by New York, and New York people, the office, you know, because it brought in a lot of debt from New York, you know, into the company at the time, you know, in Manhattan, you know, the, when you see an escalator that is 99.9% of the time, it is going to be a black livery vehicle, either an Uber or Lyft

or black car

service. You know, and, you know, it's going to be parked out in front of some building waiting for, you know, some affluent, you know, passenger to come in, you know, get in the vehicle and go off somewhere. So, yeah, it's, I think, changing that image, you know, to, you know, move beyond that I think is going to be it's going to be crucially important for Cadillac.

Rebecca Lindland  13:57  
I think it will be because those images Are iconic, but not in a personal ownership way. And not and that was always my issue with that campaign. Besides Daring Greatly, you don't want to dare somebody to buy your car. I dare you. I dare you to buy.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:14  
Yeah, I mean, I think the sentiment behind the campaign was was reasonable when you look at the ads, but I don't think that the that message really resonated in the way they wanted it to it definitely did not

Rebecca Lindland  14:27  
it did not it there's a difference between dare greatly and and daring greatly or risk exactly and dare to be overtaking your career risk. And so, you know, I'm, I'm anxious to see how they will mark it. Both the escalator and, and just

Sam Abuelsamid  14:45  
the rest of the way.

Rebecca Lindland  14:50  
Exactly, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:50  
It'll be interesting. I also had a chance to spend some time chatting with Melissa back in December at a Cadillac business update meeting, and she expressed some of those same sounds It's so will be interesting to see how that plays out over the next year or so. right because you know there's a lot of changes happening at Cadillac right now. You know they've got you know, they've had they've got at this point now with with the launch of the escalator the new escalate this summer they will basically have a completely new lineup from two years ago,

Rebecca Lindland  15:20  
right? They're gonna have their they'll be one of the youngest lineups in on the luxury brand

Sam Abuelsamid  15:26  
coming out. The old the oldest vehicle in the lineup now is the SD five, right, which is getting a little bit of an update this year. But I think it's probably going to get a full redesign next year. Yeah. And that will that will completely revamp the lineup.

Rebecca Lindland  15:42  
It will and and you know, what's interesting about the executives that are in place now, many of them inherited these products, you know, and but they didn't they don't have to inherit,

Sam Abuelsamid  15:51  
you know, it's like three or 434 or five year life cycle time to design a product, right.

Rebecca Lindland  15:58  
So so they're, you know, they're there. Just coming in now, but But no, I thought the event itself was was good. I think the vehicle will be really interesting. I did like the fact that they did make accessible many of their executives and got a chance to talk to crystal and one of the head interior designers and she's had a great career, you know, throughout GM and, and again, understands, understands that buyer understands the needs of the consumer that's going to buy it.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:22  
Speaking of interior, what did you think of that new dashboard?

Rebecca Lindland  16:26  
So that so that it's it's an I'm sure you'll post pictures, we

Sam Abuelsamid  16:30  
saw a tease of it weeks ago,

Rebecca Lindland  16:31  
long, it's this long OLED screen and I'll let you talk about what that means. I but it was. I mean, it's, it's almost like it reminded me of the Porsche icon first, but it's almost a little bit more practical and more usable and user friendly, because it has dual. dual use it what do you call it?

Sam Abuelsamid  16:57  
dual mode.

Rebecca Lindland  16:58  
So so it's It's the perfect blend because you can either do touch screen, which is what I like.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:10  
So you know that this is an audio podcast, let's describe a little bit what this looks like. Yeah, so over the last few years, you know, we've seen this move towards the center screen, you're moving from down in the stack to being mounted up on top of the dashboard, Ray, tablet style and tablet standing up,

Rebecca Lindland  17:26  
right and almost like it can also take an afterthought sometimes if we've seen people but just to keep it in your line of vision a little bit more and, and yeah, and so you'll see it in that middle, and all sudden, you'll just see a screen kind of stood there.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:38  
So now imagine that you know, taking that and stretching it from,

you know, kind of the right side roughly

equivalent to the right edge of the, the center console, all the way across to the left edge of the dashboard, right massive display that's standing up but it's not flat,

it's curved Ray one Actually

Rebecca Lindland  18:01  
yeah continuous piece of glass

Sam Abuelsamid  18:04  
right and but while there's actually two because you've got the big one, you know, that spans you know, roughly 38 inches across, right? You know, and then in front of that there's a second smaller one. So you've got this layer at the front of the draw which is for the instrument cluster, right? And but it follows the same profile. And it's a, I think it's a really visually interesting design.

Rebecca Lindland  18:26  
It's absolutely beautiful. I mean, the the instrument cluster is is set just it's just like half an inch closer to the driver and they said they wanted it to be closer. They wanted that to stand out. And so it's this lovely layered effect. But as you say, it's almost like a like the petals of a flower where you know, one is sort of although a wider pedal that comes around and then in cases the smaller one, and it's just has this beautiful I mean the the side angle on it is just gorgeous. But then they do have in the center staff and they do have the the country trolls for climate control and, and you know, readily accessible buttons, which is nice. And I think it's both legal and safety wise. And for ease of functionality, you can just adjust the climate as you need it. So I didn't see all what else is there. So heated seats and stuff like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:17  
Yeah, I know you got all the usual amount, right. But like in those battles, yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  19:20  
just that that, that line of buttons, but I think it's, it's so clean, it looks just absolutely beautiful,

Sam Abuelsamid  19:27  
right. And so, you know, within this array, this spans in front of you, there's actually three separate displays embedded in there. So you know, the bath one, the large one is one sheet of glass and then second sheet of glass in front of that. And on the left and the right, you have touchscreens, so the there's a seven inch touchscreen on the left, you know, which lets you just toggle between the some of the different displays for the instrument cluster to go to the navigation. Yeah, driver centric, right. And so that's just a There's only a couple of things on there right and then on the right you have a big, almost 17 inch diagonal display that touchscreen and then a 14 inch instrument cluster display. Right and all three of these use what's known as OLED technology. If you've got an iPhone 10 or later or most Android you know most higher on Android phones, he's all use all LEDs and you know they also use these on a lot of high end TVs from LG.

Rebecca Lindland  20:25  
Well, LG is one that source the screen

Sam Abuelsamid  20:27  
right and and are made there are significant supplier for GML. So for those who are not familiar with OLED technology, it's different from an LCD and LCD which is what you typically have for the screens in a car. The way that works is it's actually a series of shutters that's backlit and you have a series of felt color different color filtered, shutters red, green and blue color filtered shutters that open and close. And you know when you want it off when you want it black, you know you're closing off the closing those shutters, but you know, there's always a little it's never 100 Reset, okay, there's always you know, at night, even when it's dark mode and a black mode, there's always a little bit of light bleed through there. This is one of things that Dan complains a lot about with with all these screens, you know, and justifiably so that at night, you know, it's still too bright in there, even when it's in the dark gray. With an OLED, the way it works is every individual pixel is generating its own light. So there's no backlight, no shutters, when you, when you go to black or no LED, you're literally turning off those individual pixels. So when it's black, it's white.

Rebecca Lindland  21:33  
And that's why you were saying last night that it's so you get that really rich black color

Sam Abuelsamid  21:38  
era, right? And so you get much higher contrast, but also at you know, at night, you know, in the dark, dark, right, which is where you want it you don't want those visual distractions when you're driving at night. Right. So it's, you know, it looks great, right. You know, it functions better, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and then that instrument cluster You know, because you've got this 14 inch OLED in there, you know, they're doing some interesting things in there like

the

augmented reality display. Yeah. So you can toggle between four different modes, you've got your basic gauge mode, there's a night vision mode, we still have the night vision system that's available on there. The Cadillac originally launched in 1998. Wow. And so at night, you can you can have that night vision display, you can have a standard navigation display. So you know, when you're using now, you can bring the map over from the center screen over right in front of you, right, and then there's this augmented reality navigation display, which what that does is it takes the view from the the forward facing camera and they've gone to a higher resolution forward facing camera, right? They project that in that in the cluster, and then overlay the prompts, your navigation prompts, right on that, like on the street. So you see, you see the view, okay? There's that corner where I'm supposed to turn and there's the arrow pointing right at that corner. And it's what's right in front because it's a Google Street maps. Yes, right. It's the Google. Except it's not the South Street maps. It's actually a live view from the camera as you're driving.

Rebecca Lindland  23:12  
Oh, because they showed us Google. You can get there.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:14  
Yeah, you can get the Google Street View on the on the center, just on the center,

Rebecca Lindland  23:17  
display Center and the past winners.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:18  
Yeah, but the AR display is actually alive.

Rebecca Lindland  23:21  
So that's what they couldn't demonstrate. They didn't have a camera.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:23  
Right. Yeah. Because they had this bench setup. Right. And that's crazy. So it looks I got a went through a briefing last week with with their head of infotainment, and got a demo of that. And it's, it's, it's really cool. It'll be interesting to try it out on the road to see how distracting it might be. Because, you know, you're you are. I mean, it's it's up higher than it normally would be. But it's still

Rebecca Lindland  23:50  
in your head. It's on the heads up display. That's what I asked about because that was my first thought was that it seemed like it might be distracting and so it will be interesting. Yeah. To see how that

Sam Abuelsamid  24:00  
how that works. And then you know, when you get to your destination, you know, it also, you know it like, you know, the little Google Maps pin. It actually literally overlays that on the building that your destination so you can see it. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it's a cool idea. We'll see how well it works in the real world. But it's it's an interesting approach. Well,

Rebecca Lindland  24:23  
it is, but and it also is very much a precursor to self driving. Yeah, it'll help with I mean, some of the issues with self driving is just finding that way.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:36  
Yeah, look, localizing well getting the vehicle to understand where it is in real soon in space in real time. And speaking of that, you know, the escalator along with the CT for the CT, five this year, are all getting Yeah, second generation supercruise

Rebecca Lindland  24:52  
I haven't I haven't driven supercruise yet, so I want to try it.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:55  
Yeah, I've done

it a couple times. And so this is an updated version. You know, they when they originally did it on the CT six couple of years ago, it was based on an older electrical architecture vehicle. And the reason why they haven't rolled it out to the new vehicle sooner is because it took a lot of terror to implement it. And then the CT six. And rather than go through all that, on the existing vehicles, what they did was they waited until they were updating the vehicles with this new what they called the Global be electrical architecture, they call it digital vehicle platform, which is designed with this kind of stuff in mind. It enables things like over the air software updates,

Rebecca Lindland  25:31  
so all that

Sam Abuelsamid  25:33  
to say in all the computers the harness, the way is a whole electrical system in the vehicle put together. Yeah, it's a big change but now it enables them to do this kind of stuff. And so you know when it when it launches, the spring on the CT, five and the CT four and then summer on the escalator, and then as each new Cadillac model comes out or gets updated over the next year and a half. They will add that to those as well. So they made a bunch of updates. Now one of the new features it has is auto lane change the tap the turn signal, the count of the sensor look around to see if there's anybody in the adjacent lane. If it's clear, the car will steer over and change lanes for you. You know, it's still a hands off system, right, they still have the active driver monitor system. But one of the challenges with the with the original version of that was the way it works, works very much like face ID on an iPhone, you've got infrared emitters in the steering wheel, and the steering wheel rim that light up your face with IR light so you can't see it but the IR camera can see it and it's doing gaze detection. So it's looking to make sure that you're still watching the road with the original version on the CT six, when if you were driving down the road and the sun was behind you over your shoulder, the sunlight coming into the camera would flood it and they could not see your face and so it would disengage the system. Okay. And you know the first drive I did the media drive we did. We're driving from Cleveland to Chicago, you know, left Cleveland early morning driving West and summer. All right, apparently the system kept disengaging until about half an hour into the drive when the sun got up high enough that it you know, it was no longer an issue. And it worked fine. It's crazy. And so they, they've done they've repackaged it. So from the outside, it still looks the camera on the column still looks the same. But now there's some better filtering on there. And they've inside the package, there's a hood over the camera. So they've done some stuff to minimize the the glare problem. So it should work much better. And they've expanded the the high definition map system that they use. So it's got more information it knows now which lane you're driving in, you know, so if you try to make a lane change into a lane, you know that's about to disappear or it's going to become a ramp, you know, it won't it won't do it. So it's gotten a lot smarter and they've added some a couple more radar sensors to the system. So it should be a lot more capable and it'll continue getting more k Because now they have the ability to do those updates. Right,

Rebecca Lindland  28:02  
right. Very cool. That's awesome. So the other thing that came out this week on Super Bowl Sunday was the GMC Hummer.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:12  
Yeah.

It's only been hearing for a while now that GM was gonna build an electric pickup truck. You know, they started talking about it middle of last year, after GM. early last year, GM tried to make a deal to invest in rubian. Right, and that didn't come board ended up Ford ended up making that investment. And so GM proceeded with its own electric pickup truck program. And Monday last week, they made an announcement that the Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant where they previously built the Malibu or they built the Impala and the Cadillac CT six and the Chevy Volt and various other things. Now that ctcs Productions ended, they're closing that plant temporarily retooling it from middle of next year onward, that plan is going to be dedicated to electric vehicle production. And initially, there's going to be three products out of there. The cruise origin, which we talked about last time. And the GMC Hummer, EV Yes. In pickup truck and also in an SUV form. Yes. So what do you think about this?

Rebecca Lindland  29:22  
So I think it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating turn of events for a brand that has a well established reputation as a gas guzzler. No, I mean, it's fascinating, but there's a lot of brand equity in there too. And what I was told because I said, How How did you decide, you know, how do you decide to suddenly bring back this brand in under GMC, and obviously, you know, they weren't going to bring back the Hummer. Brand by itself that involves a whole other slew of issues.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:03  
dealers.

Rebecca Lindland  30:04  
Exactly. It's, it's, you know, relaunching a brand new independent brand is completely different. And basically the whole discussion was, somebody said to Mary Barra, I think this is what they should do. And she said, Okay, that sounds great. It was a lot more than that. You know, there's understanding that there's brand equity there, and brand recognition as well. And I think, you know, it's sort of it's almost like this great comeback story in somebody remaking themselves, you know, and, and this brand that's known for one thing coming back and being something completely different.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:43  
Yeah, I think going back to 2007 2008, before the recession. You know, comer was the the poster boy for the opposite of the green. You know, this is the time you know, in 2000, starting about 2016 2008 you know, we're seeing gas prices rising,

left

for four bucks a gallon across the country. And, you know, everybody, you know, people were trying to promote hybrids and EBS. And then there was a Hummer out there, that was the opposite of everything nice. You know, it was the opposite of Prius, you know, and you had, you know, environmental activists that were going on Hummer, lots of vandalizing vandalizing the vehicles and, you know, so it represented everything that people and then, you know, when we had the meltdown, you know, and Jim went through bankruptcy. You know, a lot of people said, you know, the reason why GM went bankrupt, you know, it's because they're building all these old style dinosaur vehicles, gas guzzling vehicles, you know, they need to build more efficient vehicles. And, you know, the GM killed Hummer, right, you know, the last Hummer h3 is rolled off the line in 2010, you know, 10, almost 10 years ago. Now. And, you know, everybody, you know, and you know, at that point, you know, gas prices were high again. So it's ironic now that they're bringing it back to the TV, but actually, you know, I think it kind of makes sense because it kind of really symbolizes what GM has been talking about, you know, for a couple of years now. Yeah, Mary and Mark Royce and others have been saying, the future GM is electric, we're going to go all electric. Right. And, you know, to, to the extent that, you know, last week after the, the, the announcement of the plant retooling, you know, Paul Eisenstein was talking to tomorrow. Yeah, you know, you asked him, you know, because there were there were some photos that some spy photos that showed up of a Corvette, you know, with, like a plug on it, a prototype car, the plug on it, and he asked, you know, so you're gonna do a plug in hybrid Corvette. And, you know, rice told them, we're done with hybrids. We're going we're going moving away from internal combustion. No more hybrids, no more plug in hybrids. So if there's going to be a plug in Corvette, it's going to be an EV. Right? So Wow, this, you know, bringing back this nameplate, this brand that symbolized every everything that was the opposite of that as an electric vehicle, I think, in some ways is kind of brilliant, you know, Stephanie Brimley yesterday. Yeah. You know, she called the kind of lazy you know, I guess in some ways, you know, rather than trying to establish a new brand, you know, a little bit, but, you know, I think it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Rebecca Lindland  33:39  
I think it's economical. starting a brand new brand, or even under if you're using it as a GMC, whatever. Starting a new main play is incredibly expensive. And there's a really long runway for that. Just talk to Genesis right? And so you know, Genesis will tell you there's an incredibly long runway. So I don't think that that's an MBA. Stephanie's a super smart woman. But I don't know that that that was that was not my perspective on it. This was this was going into the stable and picking a horse that maybe had a different reputation in the last nine machiya. Right. I mean, that's the thing is that there's brand equity there. And, you know, it's also interesting, bring it under GMC, as opposed to, you know, Chevy or Cadillac. And I think and I sort of liked that idea. It's very ironic because when I was living in the Middle East, GMC is incredibly popular over there, and even more so than than it is here in many ways. Like you don't see a lot of Chevy's you see a lot of gmcs and, you know, obviously, the Middle East is the bastion of big oil

to me kit. You know, a GMC nameplate is even more ironic.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:05  
And it's you know, it's interesting that consumers, even though GMC vehicles are essentially the same Chevrolet vehicles that, you know, the trucks and the utilities, you know, that, you know, they might have a few additional features here and there, but they're effectively the same vehicle. And yet, the perception of GMC as a brand is so different from Chevrolet, you know, it's seen as a more premium brand, and their tagline is professional grade way, you know, and, you know, going back to when they killed Hummer, you know, at that time going through bankruptcy, and they're trying to decide which brands to kill, which wants to preserve, you know, the, the when they the task force, the task force came in, to work on that, you know, they wanted to kill everything, but Chevrolet Cadillac, right, and they want to kill GMC, right, and Buick, and they looked at GMC and they looked at the data and looked at the average transaction price. GMC versus the equivalent Chevrolet vehicle No,

Rebecca Lindland  36:01  
good, thanks.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:03  
That's fine. You know, very little additional engineering required, you know, so,

yeah, now look, we'll keep that good stuff. Yeah. And so yeah, I think it makes sense, you know, because it's got this more premium, this more premium perception. You know, and, you know, they've said that, you know, they expect, you know, when the Hummer, you know, goes on sale, you know, it's going to be profitable from day one,

Rebecca Lindland  36:23  
which is fascinating for an electric vehicle. Yeah. I mean, that that's, that's a bold statement.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:29  
Yeah. Well, Russ actually said that all of their new TVs are going to be profitable.

Rebecca Lindland  36:33  
Well, that's, that's also been one of one of the tenants of Mary Barra as I stand at General Motors is the business case for it. Does this make sense? And she has made tough decisions on getting the, you know, getting GM out of unprofitable markets, getting it out of unprofitable nameplates. And so you know, it's it. It shows a lot of discipline but also adherence to her perspective. on him saying, if we're not gonna do it unless we can make money at it. So, you know what she needs to be commended for that?

Sam Abuelsamid  37:07  
Yeah, no, I think I think it you know, it's it's a wise move, you know, from a management standpoint. Yeah. And you know, so now, you know, I've certainly been critical of GM, you know, recently, you know, the bad couple years ago, they talked about launching all these new zero emission vehicles, but hadn't seen anything. Right. Right now, we're finally starting to see that roll out, you know, and we all we gotta cheat was a tease of the Hummer EV will see the full they're going to unveil it in full in May, right. But you know, we saw the 20th Yeah, we saw a teaser of the front, the grill, you know, and they've kind of taken that classic comer seven slot grill and done a stylized version of it for an EV as you get these seven right vertical bars across this backlit, you know, facia, you know, and I think it's from there it looks like an interesting design and then you know, at the the announcement, the plan announcement, you know, they The backdrop that they had, you know, showed a profile of a more traditional pickup truck profile. So we'll see what the rest of it looks like. But

then then the cyber train.

Yeah. So, you know, you clearly clearly delineated cabin bed. Right, you know, but sleeker, right? Yeah. So I mean that clearly, they're going to go for more, something more aerodynamic. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the rest of it. But you know, you're not going to have this triangular monstrosity. Yeah. And then of course, the other things that they that they did reveal about it. thousand horsepower. And they talked about 11,500 foot pounds, which clearly is the torque at the wheels as you go through the gearing. It'll probably be somewhere in somewhere between 12 and 1400 foot pounds at the moment, but it's still pretty good. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, this is this is gonna be a real usable truck. Yeah. And so it's gonna be it's gonna be fascinating to watch. You know, the electric pickup truck market to see if traditional Couple buyers are really willing to go for EBS because, you know, it's it's a it's a challenging use case. You know, you can certainly stuff a lot of battery between those frame Morales of a pickup truck, you know, there's plenty of room for batteries in there. And you know, you can get a lot of nominal range, you know, but what really happens to the range when you load two or 3000 pounds in the bed or, you know, till 1012 14,000 pound trailer? Yeah. And we'll see we'll see next 12 it probably early early next year, we'll start to see you know, because you're going to have the Vivian r1 t coming up, you know, watching production around the end of this year, early next year. The F 150 Electric you know, probably sometime next few months, the the Hummer EV and then eventually the the savage rock and also you know Fisker announced plans to electric pickup truck or Karma Karma Karma.

Rebecca Lindland  39:58  
So what do you how do you Think that GM and Ford's approaches are different. Ford has not backed away from hybrids, correct?

Sam Abuelsamid  40:07  
No, not at all. They're very, very much promoting hybrids and plug in hybrids. So so will the f150 be

Rebecca Lindland  40:13  
pure electric? Or they'll be there's

Sam Abuelsamid  40:16  
going to be going to be a hybrid version, because they've got that modular hybrid system that they developed for rear drive vehicle, Simpson, and now an explorer and aviator, as a standard hybrid on Explorer, plug in on The Aviator, so they're going to take that same approach, you know, where the motor sits in between the engine and the transmission. Put that in the F 150. Also in the Mustang, you know, and I would also the bronco is going to get, yeah, so Ford is very much, you know, they're they're hedging, they're covering all the bases, right? They're doing hybrids and plug in hybrids and batteries, really. So that you know, and they've talked about the F 150 hybrid, you know, and really promoting you know, the idea that it's not just for fuel economy, but also You know, for contractors, you know, now, you know you have this power takeoff available, you know, for powering your tools and stuff. So instead of having to haul around a generator, a gas generator, you know, in the back of your truck, you can just plug right in and you have high voltage.

Joe Eberhardt  41:15  
Yeah, really pretty cool. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:17  
So, all right,

we need to get moving and head down to the gate and catch a flight to Minneapolis and then on to Chicago. So we will probably try and reconvene in the next couple of days while we're in Chicago to see talk about what we learn in Chicago. And, and we'll talk to you later.

Rebecca Lindland  41:32  
Yeah. Thanks.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:36  
And welcome back to part two of this week's show. We're sitting in an infinity q 60. coupe on the show floor of the Chicago Auto Show McCormick Place. Rebecca, what do you think so far this year show?

Rebecca Lindland  41:49  
You know, I always liked the Chicago show because it's, you actually it's pretty it's fairly slow in terms of of

Japan. Nice, but it means that you can actually see both of the products and the people that you always want to see other shows. It's just you just bounce from one meeting to another and you just end up really, I feel like sometimes I've been at auto shows and I haven't seen a car. I've just seen people which is good, I love people. But here it's a nice balance of going between car meetings, people events, and you get to see some use some cool products. They've had some some nice reveals here. Yeah, I mean when

Sam Abuelsamid  42:28  
I first came to this show in 2007, I think when I was still writing for Autoblog you know, from the first time I came here, and I remember people joking about this being the biggest little auto show in America. Because it from a pure physical size standpoint, it is the biggest auto show in the country.

Rebecca Lindland  42:47  
Is that what they count as because

Sam Abuelsamid  42:48  
I didn't know what Yeah, terms of floor space, you know, your McCormick Center here in Chicago is a huge Convention Center. And I believe that it's It is the largest in terms of square footage. auto shows, but you know, even from I mean, it's it's slowed down since 2007. But even back then, in terms of news, it was always a relatively slower show. There wasn't a lot of huge introductions here. You know, there have been some over the years. But, you know, in the past decade or so, there hasn't been a lot of huge product introductions here. But there's some and you know, it's it's, it's an interesting place. And like you say, it's a good place to, you know, to just slow down a little bit and talk to some people including little just a little earlier this afternoon, I sat down with Joe Eberhardt, the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, North America and, and we'll include that on the end live down on the end of this this episode. But, you know, in terms of turtle star with the product, I mean, what have you seen of product today? That is interesting.

Rebecca Lindland  43:50  
Well, the other thing, too, is this is the first year that Detroit wasn't before.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:54  
That's the Chicago Auto Show. Yeah. So

Rebecca Lindland  43:55  
this is they've been able to take advantage of that. So you know, so One of the, one of the products I thought was really, really cool was the Ford GT. And not just because it's the Ford GT because obviously that's exactly, but I love the fact that they just put clear coat over the carbon fiber, they also increase the horsepower by 13. But I feel you know, I just thought that was really, really cool to be able to do that and to show and showcase the carbon fiber body on this thing that was that I just thought was was really cool. And Nissan, who were hosted by showing a new power train in the frontier, I thought was a little bit interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:43  
Well, you know, and then knowledge that last night,

you know, they said, We know the frontier has been around for a long time, you know, in fact, that's part of that demonstration. They brought out the owner, Brad murf. Yeah, the local Chicago area guy that, you know, runs a delivery business. And he has a 2007 frontier that they had up on the stage last night. That just turned over 1 million miles. Yes. And, and so, you know, and they had this this 1314 year old frontier sitting there next to a brand new 2020 model that was almost indistinguishable, you

Rebecca Lindland  45:24  
get the biggest from both interior and exterior, but interior, I think the biggest difference was his has crank windows. Yes. And the new with the 2020 with their new power train actually has, you know, power windows

Sam Abuelsamid  45:40  
finally made power windows standard on the soft frontier for 2020. Up until now, manual crank windows have always been standard. You could get power windows as an option. But they were they were all the standard equipment. And so now no more manual crank windows in the frontier.

Rebecca Lindland  45:56  
So that was pretty exciting. But

Sam Abuelsamid  45:58  
also as you mentioned, They put in a new power chain new 3.8 liter direct injected v six, which should be more fuel efficient, more powerful than what they had before. And this is also a preview of the next generation frontier, which is finally coming they're going to unveil it late this year, and it'll go on sale sometime early next northernlion 2021

Rebecca Lindland  46:19  
and I did actually put up a review of the new frontier power train on Rebecca drive calm so if you want some more information on that, it's up there. It's up there on the site. I the other so when I talk about the we balance between cars and people in meetings, I had the opportunity to talk to Johan demotion donation, thank you from who's the new CEO of Volkswagen, and he had some interesting things to say about just what that brand is doing. Overall, they did show the new, refreshed Atlas. Here I am the and I actually got the chance, I think really for the first time To see the Atlas coupe is that what they're calling the cross border cross sport? Thank you. And but one of the things I asked him was, what a dealer's want, and what are they looking for? And he said dealers really want performance from the Volkswagen brand. And while there is a strong commitment to electric vehicles, I they they are starting to realize, and I think we heard this from Joe Everhart at jlr as well, that performance and EV is actually are very intertwined. Right. And as opposed to an EV being an environmentally friendly solution. It's actually a great opportunity to put some power and performance into your vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:47  
Yeah, and one of the interesting things that we're starting to see that we actually started seeing a few years ago with the launch of the BMW three and we're going to see more of going forward is that you know, starting in the You know, the 1980s you know, we had this trend away from rear wheel drive to front wheel drive, you know, largely for packaging reasons, you know, you you put the engine transversely in the front drive the front wheels, it takes up a lot less space you have more room inside the vehicle because you don't need a huge transmission tunnel for drive shaft tunnel. And you know, so most mainstream cars went from rear drive to front drive, which you know, has some traction advantages and in poor weather, but it also it has some dynamic challenges because when you're asking the front wheels to do both steering effort and tractive effort to move the vehicle, you know it it limits what you're what you can do there. And one of the advantages with going to electric electric motors are so small that you can stick a motor at either axle or both axles and you know it doesn't take up much space and so with me be the me beat the Volkswagen me be platform vehicles The first one being the ID three hatchback and Europe and we're Going to get the ID for here in North America. And that's the latest report now is originally there, I guess they're planning to launch it at the New York Auto Show in April, right. There was a report came out this morning, that it's actually going to push that back to June and the Detroit Auto Show, Johan wouldn't commit to any particular date only that it would be sometime this year. But you know, those vehicles that all the MEP platform vehicles, the default configuration is now rear wheel drive.

Rebecca Lindland  49:30  
Well, and the great thing too is that it also enhances the the looks of the vehicle to portions of the vehicle you can get ironically, you can get this long hood which of course doesn't have an engine in anymore. It's got you know, storage or something or in one case, I saw a picture of shrimp in

Sam Abuelsamid  49:49  
Oh, that was a Mustang lucky. Yes. The front trunk full of ice and put out a shrimp shrimp tray on there, basically,

Rebecca Lindland  49:59  
but I don't think you'll have was you know, and of course you were there as well talking about just what, you know what consumers want and the opportunities that that makes Wigan hat. So I hadn't sat down with him before.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:09  
Yeah, so that was interesting. I first met Johan about 1213 years ago. Yeah. And I've talked to him on a semi regular basis over the years. And it's interesting, you know, he acknowledged, you know, that, compared to, you know, like a Toyota or, you know, General Motors or, you know, a lot of the other big mainstream brands, here in North America, at least, you know, books is huge in Europe, they're the biggest automaker, globally. But here in North America, there are relatively small player in terms of volume they are and so you know, they have to be a little more choosy about what vehicles they bring to market here, because they just don't have enough volume to justify everything they might want to do. And one of the ways to hopefully grow the brand is to make vehicles that are more engaging that excite customers more, you know, and that's, you know, the You talked about the performance, you know, the design the driving dynamics of these vehicles. And, and I think that, you know, the shift towards electrification is going to help them you know, certainly, you know, cars like the GTI and the golf are, you know, are a big part of that, that strategy. And they're, they're very important to Volkswagen, but, you know, he, I think he said golf, our sales are pretty steady, what, three 400 a month, right? You know, which is not a lot, but it you know, it keeps people interested in Volkswagen as a brand. But I think the shift to electric with these MBB vehicles is going to is going to help them a lot because it they have a lot more flexibility, both in the driving dynamics, but also, you know, in being able to scale up and down power levels, right, you know, slightly larger or more powerful motors. So it'll it'll be interesting to watch over the next several years.

Rebecca Lindland  51:50  
Yeah, no, I think that will be really cool. I The other thing that we saw Toyota,

the nice shape

and then all So the Highlander hybrid yes version, which is going to hit the market soon. And then what else do we see? I'm trying to think now as I look through my pictures.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:12  
Honda showed a mid cycle refresh type bar. Okay. So they've done some little bit of styling tweaks, you know, to the the front and rear facia, it's got a bigger grill for better cooling. And it's also got a new color option is boost to blue which is a fantastic looking

Rebecca Lindland  52:30  
Yeah, that's really fun. Yeah. Oh, and then Jeep just had their Mojave

Sam Abuelsamid  52:34  
version which is Gladiator Mojave

Rebecca Lindland  52:37  
Blissett. Right. Gladiator Mojave which is specific for sand. Yeah driving at which there's a launch at the end of March which should be a lot of fun to watch that and

Sam Abuelsamid  52:48  
there I wrote on Forbes about the the gladiator Mojave and and what they're doing what Jeep is doing they for years now they've had a trail rated badge that they apply to their their really off road capable, more Right and every single model in the jeep lineup has a trail rated version on the on the Wrangler I think Wrangler I think they might all be trail rated yeah but on on the others on the Cherokee competence Renegade right it's the Trailhawk models those are the trail and they haven't trail rated badge on the fender and trail rated means that they get the you know the two range transfer case with the four wheel drive low the locking rear differential All Terrain tires, and you and I you know, we drove a couple of those at night at the the Chrysler was new event last summer at the Chelsea proven grounds. And those, you know, even the renegade Renegade Trailhawk is a very capable ball. It's amazing what that thing can do. So those are designed, you know, to for really for go anywhere, you know, going down trails, over boulders, and so on at relatively low speeds. What they're introducing now is a new version of what they're calling desert rated. Which is really it's targeting kind of like the Ford F 150. Raptor, right type of performance level. So off road high speed off road driving, you know, the desert conditions over sand or you know, even even dry desert, you know, like, you know, like

Rebecca Lindland  54:18  
in Saudi yes now that I ever drove in the desert in Saudi Arabia that never happened No, of course not.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:24  
That was not allowed me it was

Rebecca Lindland  54:26  
not allowed and I never ever, ever drove in the desert in Saudi Arabia.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:33  
So the first Jeep desert rated models is the new Gladiator Mojave and what they've done with that they've, they've done some, some interesting stuff on it. They've got these new Fox dampers on there, which you know, like, two, two and a half, two and a half inch dampers. Ford also uses Fox dampers on the Raptors, but they're different different one. These are a gessie In a higher grade damper from Fox than what Ford uses, they have external reservoirs. So what that does is it allows the fluid, the hydraulic fluid in the dampers to go into the reservoir and get cooled. So the fluid because what you have, you know, if you've got a lot of motion in the dampers, you can start to get fade, and it loses some of that damping effectiveness. And so it cools, cools the fluid in that external reservoir. And so you get better performance, you know, long distance high speed off road driving, they also added some new john stampers. So what that does is those are in the springs as you reach maximum compression. So when you get airborne, and you come down and you know, the springs compress down, those jet jumps, dampers, give some more resistance there, you know, to help keep it from bottoming out too much new skid plate new L and for extra durability for that kind of high speed running. The steering knuckles are normally cast aluminum, replaced with cast iron knuckles. For extra durability, so you know there's a few other things as well more heavily bolstered seats you know when you're bouncing around in the desert at high speeds you know you want to make sure you stay stay in place and so it's they've done some good stuff there. I expect we'll see before long a Wrangler Mojave and potentially some of the other models as

Rebecca Lindland  56:21  
well. Yeah, so that was really cool. I one of the concepts that was here that's a lot of fun is the kiya habanero concept

Sam Abuelsamid  56:29  
that was actually been around a while

they showed that they shut down the LA Auto Show oh I didn't go to LA yeah so it's it's a it's a concept that is a preview of the design direction for the next generation Nero. Right. So that's all

Rebecca Lindland  56:42  
I track. I really fine. I just I thought it was really

Sam Abuelsamid  56:46  
great looking. So you know what? Now that I think of it, it was actually they first showed it at the New York Auto Show last year, the habanero.

They unveiled it

Rebecca Lindland  56:56  
are other people we hadn't. Nobody had seen it before.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:58  
I was in New York last year. So funny.

Rebecca Lindland  57:00  
And then the, the Chevy Trailblazer. Did you see that thing?

Sam Abuelsamid  57:03  
Yeah, the Trailblazer was in LA.

Rebecca Lindland  57:05  
Okay, so that's what I hadn't seen. So

Sam Abuelsamid  57:07  
the trailblazers, a new small, lower cost, small crossover that fits in just above the tracks, both between the tracks and the equinox.

Rebecca Lindland  57:16  
So that was that having formerly had a trailblazer. I was

resigned to

Sam Abuelsamid  57:29  
a very different kind of vehicle. Yes,

Rebecca Lindland  57:31  
exactly. And then I think probably one of the last, you know, really

Sam Abuelsamid  57:36  
also, things one more thing from Chrysler is update to the Pacifica. Right, right. So you got the 2021 Pacifica which gets a little mild. Refresh, external refresh. The press release they talked about making it look a little more like a crossover.

Whatever you saw the sliding door Yeah.

You know, I? I'm unconvinced. But yeah, but the big the big news about it is that for 2021 it'll be the first model to get fit. FCA is new you connect, you connect five infotainment system, which is much more powerful than before, like much more powerful processors. It's it's running Android automotive underneath, it's got a new, it's got Alexa built in. So if you're an Alexa user, you know, you can use it just like you would use your Amazon Echo at home or any of your Echo devices. And TomTom navigation, natural language, voice recognition, whole bunch of cool features, and I've got a little video walkthrough that I did with Nick Cannon with Nick Kappa from Chrysler, and we'll post that up on YouTube and I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

Rebecca Lindland  58:49  
Okay, cool. And then the last thing that is always a highlight of any Auto Show, or the Subaru puppies

Sam Abuelsamid  59:00  
Oh my gosh, the puppy so

Rebecca Lindland  59:02  
cute. So Subaru is actually doing 40 auto shows with puppies now and they, they they collaborate with a local shelter in town. They take care of a lot of the fees and adoption fees and stuff. And they said that they have enormous success with puppies at the bring here and they rotate them out they bring their friends. It's amazing. And we also we just came from Jaguar to earlier

but they showed the Hot Wheels contrast, which is really cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:31  
Yeah, so jlr got the Guinness folks to come out and they they got got a world record for the most complex, Hot Wheels track on boosted Hot Wheels track seven, seven loop de loops, you know, they've got it set up on a ramp, they drop the car down there it goes through seven loops without any kind of boosting except for gravity. And, and so they're they're doing a contest for engineering schools. See who can come up with A more complex, Hot Wheels, Hot Wheels course. And then if they're able to do that, they're going to get $50,000 towards scholarship towards for engineering students. So they're they had some of them here at the Chicago at the Chicago Auto Show from Illinois, one of the University, University of Illinois.

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:18  
So it was really cool. It's I think it's a great example of collaborating with universities getting kids interested in vehicles I and adding classic toys like hot wheels that we all know and love.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:33  
Yeah. So. So when the when the bad stuff in the world is getting you down, don't go play with a puppy. A puppy will always make you feel better, and then go play with some hot wheels. And it'll all be good. None of the bad stuff will matter. Exactly.

All right, Rebecca, thank you so much for doing this in person. Thanks. That was fun. It's always good. And from here, we'll roll right into the interview with Joe Eberhardt talking about what Jaguar Land Rover Doing especially around electrification, what's going on China and Brexit and that'll be it for this this episode. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  1:01:06  
Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:11  
Joe, Jaguar Land

Rovers had a couple challenging years now.

Making the transitions as Yeah. As the industry changes. Yes.

Yes. Especially going into electrification is no one's telling you

to change. The I pace is a wonderful vehicle driven,

right to drive. I mean, it is a true Jaguar,

you can change. But it's it's a struggle in the marketplace. I'm particularly here in North America.

What do you see?

Yeah, what's it what's, what's the approach for Jaguar Land Rover going forward,

as it transitions into this new era of transportation and ability and

how do you how do you keep the the two brands

relevant?

Joe Eberhardt  1:01:58  
Just maybe start by taking a look back historically in our development, and when you say was struggling, I think this last couple of years, I think globally that's true to some extent for the last year, maybe at the moment. Because the hits before I've been like a significant new successful showdown since the Tata ownership of the company we have tripled our volume in a short 10 years, we have significantly increased our profitability. I said The Biggest Loser business dramatically and North America specifically, we were the fastest growing brand, actually three out of the last four years, twice with Land Rover and once with Jaguar, we went from selling you know, less than, I think was 40,000 units of short eight years ago, where we now at 130,000 units between the two brands. So I think we've actually remarkable success story for the business in North America, including the last year Where we continued to grow despite a flooded market. So I think that that speaks to the strength of the product portfolio and the strength of the brand. Now, clearly there have been some trends which have been challenging the industry in total as they have us, the shift from cars to SUVs was much faster and much more pronounced than anybody could have expected. Today, it's almost 75% SUVs versus 25% cars. That was short two years ago. One thirds, two thirds. So that trend continues and that that is challenging. We're well positioned with Land Rover to take advantage of that. We are to some degree, lucky or happy or have well planned Jaguar by having, you know the pays and F pays which have done really, really well. And coming to your specific question, we have been added the IPS which was the first battery electric SUV from an established luxury brand not counting Tesla. They were there before. And we've been able to add that and it was a gutsy move. It was a risky move, I think long term it will pay off. But in the short term it is challenging as it is for every other luxury car manufacturer. That's not Tesla. I mean, if you have that discussion with Audi if you have with others, if you will have it with BMW one sim launched their full electric vehicle Mercedes just announced they'll delay it for a year. And it's not easy to make a business case out of it. For the manufacturer and and for the customer because at the gas of price of gas at the moment in the US eight. It's a difficult economic argument, right? If you drive 15,000 miles, on average, to 50 a gallon. The advantage of the electricity is not enough to offset the incremental cost. So economically, it's a difficult argument. So the only way you can end there's a lot of questions and doubts still around range and practicality and charging times and where do I charge it? So you take all of that together. And it's a difficult sales argument. What needs to happen is people to actually get in the car, drive it and live with it. And that's why customers that do end up buying an electric car have the highest loyalty, right? Right. It's 7580 85%. Because once they live with it, they realize charging is not an issue. You have your home charger and plug it in. And you basically always have a full car right? At 250 300 mile range. You plug it in, that's all you need, and who drives more than 250 miles on a daily basis? Hopefully No. Okay. I was at the luncheon

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:52  
today was quoting from from Audi talked about some stats, you know, 98% That of single trips are less than 50 miles 30 miles you know the average daily commute driving driving for people, right?

Joe Eberhardt  1:06:07  
So I was in an IPS for a couple of months and my commute is 50 miles one way. And it was never an issue right I plugged it in at home it was fully charged and liked it and were fully charged. It was the most convenient way now when I dropped my daughter off in St. Louis thousand and 50 miles slightly different story by how often do you do that? Right. And so So anyway, long story, I think it will take time and what's required is people to actually live with it, drive it, and then spread the word because we cannot as a manufacturer, if we say it, nobody believes is Sara Lee. That's the one and the other issue is just economically it's still a difficult decision to make. So we get a lot of people that are interested in an IPS because it's new. It's It's interesting, it's exciting come in and then a sea of alar landro alar or way enough pays next to it. And they realize from a cost perspective that those maybe in the short term a little bit more attractive and walk out with that, which is okay, got me You're still selling. I still sell the car but it doesn't help the iPads. So

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:17  
yeah, there's no there's the lack of learning curve also the internal combustion engines familiar and you look and say I don't have to learn how to use that. And then the risk is significant for people who say I don't want to spend my money.

Stuart Schorr  1:07:31  
who's an early adopter? Some people are they know they thrive on being an early adopter? Absolutely. But the majority of the market most people don't necessarily want to be the first.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:41  
Early Adopters have already bought the Tesla, right?

Stuart Schorr  1:07:44  
Because I know luxury car buyers. Maybe not this time, but my next time I buy a car online electric vehicles

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:50  
innovators are 2% of the market, right? Like if you look at the technology adoption curve and that is where we have been sitting

at Marquette.

You know that we're that we sit there. So how are you first from an immediate standpoint? Is the coronavirus impacting production in China anything? feeling anything from that at all?

Joe Eberhardt  1:08:16  
Not to my knowledge. I mean, we're and I'm, I don't know the details of my colleague in China. We don't have anything that we import from China.

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:28  
And then Brexit.

Joe Eberhardt  1:08:31  
Yeah, I mean, it has happens now, right, is the first piece of clarity. But what really needs to happen is now over the next 11 and a half to 12 months, is to figure out the trade and customs union between the UK and the rest of the world, assuming that that goes well and that there will be a form of trade and customs agreement shouldn't be any impact. But having said that, it took them last couple of years to get to this point that we know how well that way. So, you know, to to think that in 1112 months everything will be figured out.

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:10  
And now you have Boris Yeah.

Joe Eberhardt  1:09:14  
We hope. I mean, we hope it will be orderly process that will conclude at the end with free trade with the major trading partners which would be in the interest of everybody right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:28  
And they the eyepiece is already assembled in Austria.

Joe Eberhardt  1:09:31  
Correct. Do you see

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:33  
perhaps additional products being assembled outside of the UK? Like you're doing some stuff in China as well?

Joe Eberhardt  1:09:39  
Right. So we have a production facility in Slovakia in nitra, which is building the discovery and we'll be building the defender that we have the partnership in Austria, which at the moment does the pace and the pace which You have a blend in China, but that blend is producing only for local production and sale. They do the Volk they're doing it except long wheelbase of discoveries for an xe is being built.

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:15  
A concerned about the Zev mandate at a California because that's really not gone away at all. And obviously California is a baby, it's a third of the US market.

Joe Eberhardt  1:10:25  
Yeah, we were we're compliant either through what we sell ourselves or through credit purchases. At this point, it's, it's well achievable. You know, the standards have changed. At the federal level, the California ones we can meet. So for the for the time being, we're good, but it's always big question what comes next that nobody knows. It's quite unpredictable, but for the time being, we should be

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:57  
as you try a couple of years back Are talked about, you know, shifting significantly towards electrification, having electrification options on every vehicle and you start to do that you've got, you know, the new book is 48 volt mild hybrid, you've got plug in hybrids on the Range Rovers. You've got the IPS and other other products coming. Do you in order to actually get consumer adoption of this? Are you looking at any

Unknown Speaker  1:11:25  
kinds of programs or

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:27  
anything to try to spur more adoption?

beyond just trying to educate people, other other manufacturers are doing things to try to reduce the friction, some of the pain points and particularly around charging, right?

Joe Eberhardt  1:11:41  
Yeah, we run a couple of pilots or have run a couple of pilots in California, where we provided a free home charger installation, for instance, which has worked really well and we have seen a significant high uptake in California as a result, we actually focused our communication on the electric sub segment to much greater degree that the home charge of pilot. We have worked with our financial services department Chase, JPMorgan Chase to through their mortgage division talk to customers at the time when they actually mortgaged their home is there to roll that rolling charging to roll into charging then and all those things start getting some traction and are a bit unusual as a tactic but have helped us improve in those pilot markets compared to the rest of the country. So based on those learnings, we're looking at rolling that out, potentially nationally, we also changed our communication approach and maybe you can talk to that a little bit to really tell people it's an electric car because at the beginning, we launched a Jaguar I pace, and nobody knew what it was. Right?

Unknown Speaker  1:12:58  
So we were being very subtle in our advertising.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:02  
Two things on to say that one. I don't think that Jaguar is a big enough company to take on the challenge of convincing the US market to start, you know, a DI electrification. I think that's we have to sort of fall in with everybody else and try and ride the wave of people as they naturally evolved into electrification market. And then it sure is, Joe said, they have to know and they decide to go shopping for an electric vehicle. They said, you know, do that research a jack was on their list, right. And so that's been our priority. And to direct mail and through advertising, we've made that a priority. So some of the new ads that we have up for I pasted chosen the beginning of the sort of like, you had to really be paying attention and they had to like figure it out. Oh, it's quiet and silent. It's electric. Oh, I get it. No, the the new ads that we have for the IPAs explicitly say this is how Jaguar makes an electric SUV exclusively show the customer plugin Get in unplugging it, and then join the car as you enjoy any car. I think it's the nice balance that we're trying. We're not trying to sell you on electrification, trying to sell you on the car, as an appealing vehicle to own and drive. We've got to make sure you know, it's also electric,

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:13  
right? It just happens to be electric. Right?

Unknown Speaker  1:14:15  
As right the reason you're buying is not because it's electric. Right? gonna leave that we're not going to solve that right ourselves, right? People who are interested in electric don't need to see it as a normal purchase. That's a I could relate to

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:28  
right do you see benefits from Formula E?

Joe Eberhardt  1:14:31  
Definitely, as that grows in popularity, it is a I want to say easy story to tell, but there is definitely some transfer there. So for instance, there was a software update now on the current IPS that's out there which will extend the range by 30 miles of the year 2030 miles and that was a direct output from the formula program. So there is there are a lot of learnings that can Be Travis right.

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:01  
And from a consumer standpoint as well, do they go to an event? You know, I mean,

that was a great event.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:07  
Yeah, but but also just what's the point of racing in general normally is it's to communicate a performance message about vehicle or about a brand. Right. So now you have a whole sport formerly raised and dedicated to communicating really, this the idea that electrification is a high performance character in the industry. So I think that's the most important part of formulate as it starts to get that word out among the new audience that electric vehicles are about high performance, right? And that's what makes them appealing especially in luxury.

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:44  
In the high castle

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:47  
with the iPads for

the iPads, for example, you know, a lot of

when you get in that car,

it feels like a like a Jaguar, man. Yeah,

Stuart Schorr  1:15:57  
it's not as how the conversation

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:59  
yeah Not dramatically different from you know, driving an F pace or any other Jaguar, which I think to a Jaguar fan is great. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:09  
but I think we think that's a selling point to it. Your average, maybe that the early adopter, but someone who anyone has reached out for electric vehicle and say, I want electric vehicle, I want this new technology, but I also want the car to look like an advanced luxury vehicle.

Joe Eberhardt  1:16:25  
And that's why I think it will take a little longer. I think it is strategically the right direction for us. But in a way, it also limits yourself somewhat. Right. Right. It takes longer,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:37  
has kind of gone

Joe Eberhardt  1:16:38  
different directions actually wondering if you thought that, you know, do you think it's better for you for Jaguar as a brand to stick with some of that familiarity? I think we almost have to because we don't have the from a brand perspective, and I'm really passionate about that in my spare time. I teach brand strategy at graduate classes at NYU I think you have to be authentic and you have to as a brand, know what you're about and then evolve that you cannot. I mean, many brands have tried that is it. This is what who I am today. Let's forget that as all bad, I'm going to be something different.

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:16  
And now more than ever. Yeah. And it doesn't because kids can just look on the internet. What you were before?

Joe Eberhardt  1:17:23  
I don't think as a result, you're authentic. I don't think it works. So for Tesla and credit to them, it was the absolute right thing to do you say? Forget all of that. We've completely definitely ripped up the rulebook and they had no legacy to

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:36  
me, they're all based on coke right now.

Joe Eberhardt  1:17:38  
Exactly. But for us to then say, oh, guess what, this is a new shiny thing, right will be the same that Tesla that we have not resonated with anybody and now, we don't as a result, get those that want something completely different. We will evolve hopefully with our customers as they make the transition. That's really the hope and event, but it will be a longer road, it will take longer. But arguably for us, it will be the more successful long term plan. So our electric cars will always be more Jaguar than just an electric car. And you will see that you saw it in the IPS already, and you will see it and then the next electric car for my switches dx Shea. So we will involve that as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:27  
And it seems like that's probably a smart thing. Because, you know, once you get to electric, you know, with with internal combustion. And you could, you could often tell, you know, from the feel and the sound, without even looking at it, what what vehicle that was, you know, based on the character of our train, you lose a lot of that with internal or when you go to electric, it becomes less of a product differentiator. So you have to figure out how you're going to separate yourself from the crowd, and maybe keeping some of those other attributes,

Joe Eberhardt  1:18:58  
maybe the right way to go. Absolutely and without talking negatively about Tesla, but their differentiation is in the electronics and the HDMI for the time being. It's certainly not in the drivability and the materials and the design of the car ownership expand the ownership experience. That's really a surface experiment. That is a very good point. And we do think that our retailers are actually a competitive differentiator, which will, which is why they are investing heavily to the tune of 1.5 billion over the last two and next three years in updating the facilities and to update their processes to make sure that that sales and service experiences adequately supportive of the product.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:45  
What one of the big issues in the past because manufacturers have tried to introduce

plugin vehicles electric

vehicles, has been some reluctance from

dealers from the retail side to actually push those vehicles because we They're now they have the potential of losing

after sales, business and service. Has that been a challenge for

Joe Eberhardt  1:20:06  
you? And not yet just because the percentage is so small, really, in terms of the overall business. But there is a new business model that retailers will have to get their head around and that we're working with them to to, to work out, there's still going to be mechanical issues in the car. Yes, there's less of them. But then they will need to provide other reasons for consumers to spend time and ultimately money at dealerships. And that's this whole experience economy, which we start to transition at the OEM level to. That's why we're spending money on curating things like alphabet fire festival, for landro, which we've done in Palm Springs. That's why we doing things like the Hot Wheels challenge here to be integrated in dealerships. Because of If we just use the old model of dealer sells a car and the customer comes back when it breaks, that doesn't work in and they still will break, but to a much lesser degree and obviously with a much larger volume of repairs, so we need to give customers other reasons to come spend time at the point of retail and connect with them through experiences through events and offer other value added services.

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:29  
She know how many jlr owners also own a Tesla.

Joe Eberhardt  1:21:34  
We don't know the exact number we have it, I can we can get that to you. It is it is a fairly sizable number, especially on the land oversight. I think more so than on the general side.

Stuart Schorr  1:21:49  
Like a Range Rover, right?

Unknown Speaker  1:21:52  
That makes sense. I mean, you know, you're an amazon customer by the coolest, most interesting thing

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:57  
and I you know, especially model Model X owners that more often than not, was not their only car in the house. You know, they typically have multiple vehicles. You know, when you're buying, you know, 1800 hundred and $40,000 cars, you can typically afford more.

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:16  
And the defender, so really exciting to have it back. It is that tell us about that.

Joe Eberhardt  1:22:24  
I mean, obviously for us, this is a really big moment. We didn't have the car for 22 years in North America. We sold a total of 7800 defenders originally, just a little fun fact 20% of those still with the original owners 23 years later, which speaks to the peel of that particular product. And the challenge then was how do we really bring that car back modernized modernize it for the current times without losing the appeal? The original bang, there's two formulas. One is you just copy what you have, right? Which, without naming competitors, many of them have done or tried to find. And that's the much more difficult way, a new interpretation that's respectful of the past, but also makes the car fit and ready for the next couple of decades. And that was the challenge to the design team. Excuse me. Absolutely. Good.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:33  
Do your thing.

Joe Eberhardt  1:23:37  
So that was the challenge given to the design and engineering team. How do you make the most capable Land Rover ever? At the same time, be respectful of the past but interpreted in the modern way, and I think they have come up with the perfect formula. We originally they were some skeptical defenders. Hold defend defense then, when they saw the pictures were like, well, we're not sure. I think those that then saw the car in person completely changed. their opinion is empty. This is this is right on works the car. So that's one you have to actually see it to to appreciate the personality, the peel, and then once you drive it, the last doubts are gone because it is, I think the best driving vehicle in our lineup at the moment. It is an incredible combination of unrolled dynamic comfort, an off road capability. It's almost the impossible that the engineering team has achieved. You can and hopefully will, will do that with a with a press launch. You can take that car on a race track and drive it as hard as any other car out there. You can then go from the racetrack in the most Challenging a froat track and then you just pull up and you cruise the highway. I mean, it's really the brilliant combination. So we're very hopeful. We're excited. And yeah, the momentum is building we have more interest than any other car that we've ever launched. We have, how many configurations was over half a million

over a half million fully configured cars?

Something like 7 million unique visitors to the website. So that is huge, huge interest and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:33  
when's it going?

Joe Eberhardt  1:25:35  
It's going on sale at the end of spring.

Stuart Schorr  1:25:40  
months away a few months away,

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:42  
just in time for summer fun.

Stuart Schorr  1:25:47  
We're very excited that far as i can f type in a defender in in the portfolio is a lot of right. Yeah,

Joe Eberhardt  1:25:54  
absolutely. And if you can't wait, you can't build a Lego defender. is

actually quite exciting. So we partnered with Lego to to make a techniques defender which is 2742 pieces. And Lego head hopes to sell 70,000 kids over a two year period and we sold 150,000 in the first three months wow one of them went to my kids for Christmas took a

12 hours to build I think

that's a nice so yeah, it's a truly David Beckham build one. john mayer

Unknown Speaker  1:26:46  
That's awesome. Alright, well Joe

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:50  
personally day,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:51  
thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dan Roth  1:26:56  
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.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai