Dan Roth  0:03  
This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth from Forbes. 

sam abuelsamid  0:07  
I'm Sam abuelsamid from Navigant research. And Rebecca is not with us right now. But later on, I will be recording some stuff with her.

It's actually Monday night right now. I'm going to be seeing her on Wednesday at where there's going to be a GM event where they're going to be making some big EV news. And after that, we'll sit down and record some stuff. They're talking about what what came out of that. We'll add that on here.

Dan Roth  0:36  
That should be exciting. Are you excited?

sam abuelsamid  0:39  
Yeah, actually, I am. You know, I'm hoping that they share with us some of the some of the technical details of their new three platform. As of right now, we haven't seen the news yet. But there was a report out earlier today, that it could be showing us as many as 12 different TVs so it'll be coming over Coming out over the next couple of years. And I, my guess is that we will not be allowed to share all the specific details on those vehicles or we probably wanted to be able to show people what those vehicles look like. Because I, I'm guessing that they will want to be trickling those out over, you know, every month or two over the next couple of years. Starting with the Hummer, Evie pickup, which is due to be revealed publicly in May. But I think that they're probably going to be sharing with us a bunch of technical information about about the batteries and the electrical system and the whole electrical platform or electrical tool, electric vehicle toolkit that they've developed for all these different vehicles.

Dan Roth  1:46  
And the 1 million foot pounds of torque or whatever. 

sam abuelsamid  1:51  
Oh come on.

It was only 11 and a half thousand foot pounds

Dan Roth  1:56  
after gear reduction

So the series that was under the Menlo,

sam abuelsamid  2:03  
no, Menlo is based on the Bev two, which is the bolt platform. Okay, so Bev three is this next generation platform that is going to be under. And the thing is, from what I've, from what I've heard so far, it's not actually a platform in the traditional sense that we think of it, you know, where, you know, it's a particular vehicle architecture. Rather, it's a set of Eevee components that they can use and mix and match and scale up and down for various vehicles. So for example, the cruise origin is based on the Bev three toolkit. And so is the Hummer Evie, which are quite radically different Vidya does seem like the part where we assume there will be radically different vehicles. We don't we don't actually know yet about the Hummer because,

Dan Roth  2:50  
I mean, if the Hummer comes out and it looks like the cruiser, yeah,

sam abuelsamid  2:53  
that would that would not be good.

So, you know, we the the presumption is The Hummer, for example, will continue to be a body on frame, you know, traditional pickup truck layout, but with you know, stuffed with batteries in between those frame rails and motors at either end, you know, whereas the cruise, you know, is a unibody design, you know, rear wheel drive, you know, that also has batteries underneath. So, you know, I think what we're what we're talking about for Bev three is this electrical architecture and set of battery battery management motors, power electronics, you know, one of the rumors that has come out is that this it'll be able to charge to 90% in 10 minutes, which, you know, presumably, if you're assuming a 65 kilowatt hour battery pack, like, similar to what's in the bolt today, you know, if it was charging at 350 kilowatts, you could do that 90% in 10 minutes, I've done the math and it were actually works out. So presumably they'll support 350 kilowatt charging and all kinds of other stuff. Well, we'll get to that later.

Dan Roth  4:06  
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's interesting. And it's always those those claims are like, yes, we can we can charge the battery this much this fast. Like, okay, that's either like awesome new battery technology and charging too much or too small battery.

sam abuelsamid  4:21  
Yeah, well, I'm guessing in this case, it's a combination of a number of factors.

Dan Roth  4:26  
I mean, 65 is not that tiny, the 60

sam abuelsamid  4:28  
fast. I mean, that's what's in the bolt today. And that's, you know, that's got 259 mile range.

Dan Roth  4:33  
Yeah. That, which is, you know, again, plenty. But yeah, so good. Well, we'll tack that on to the rest of this show. But while we're already rolling, let's talk about the cars that were rolling in. And so last week, I had the Infiniti QX 30 an O Qx 50. I'm sorry, Qx 50 edition 30. And I forgot to mention that it was the addition 30 because the name just became a mouthful, but there They're celebrating their 30th year in the US market. And so this morning, any market for that matter? Well, yeah, and this week, you've got the Q 30. The q 50. q 50. Damn it. Why don't you know 230

sam abuelsamid  5:13  
right. Yeah, I don't know

Dan Roth  5:14  
why. So, anyway, it's

sam abuelsamid  5:16  
250 edition 30 actually reading off the lemon. Roni is 2020 Infiniti Q 53.0 t edition 30.

Dan Roth  5:25  
That sounds like a decent enough car like that's it. So that's the replacement for the beloved. I say Beloved, because I, I liked it. The G 3537. Right, like,

sam abuelsamid  5:35  
right. I mean, yeah, it's this form of the vehicle has been around for several years already. And you know, you are Rebecca recently that had the Q 60, which is a coupe version

Dan Roth  5:46  
of this. She had it I've had the Q 60. before and it's That's a lovely car to look at and to sit in. It kind of sucks to dry like when they went to the queues. I'd like this next generation. Off the FM platform they they lost all their personality all their soul. And I don't mean I don't know if that's how you feel about it, but that's how I feel.

sam abuelsamid  6:10  
I wouldn't say they lost all of it, but they lost a fair bit of it. You know, I mean, it's still a very nice car to drive it is it's, it's not you know, uh you know it's not like you know, classic three series you know, like a, like an E 36 generation three series to drive but it's it's a lovely car to drive and you know, great place to spend time You know, it you know, I really liked the way it looks. Yeah design the styling is really good. This particular one has the twin turbo three liter V six, three, the 300 horsepower version, not the not the 400 horsepower version that's available also in the Q 50. But not in the edition 30

rear wheel drive seven speed automatic.

The seats in this one I thought were very nice. Very comfortable, very supportive. One thing that I thought was kind of unusual, you know, given that, you know, this is a special, you know, limited edition version. It doesn't didn't have paddle shifters, which, you know, for a modern, you know, somewhat sports sedan is kind of unusual. But, you

Dan Roth  7:21  
know, back in 1990, they didn't have paddle shifters either, right?

sam abuelsamid  7:24  
That's true. That is very true. They did not have paddle shifters. But they also didn't have anything quite like the Q 50. Then you know, you had it's true back back in 1990, when they launched an infinity brand they had just the Q 45. You know, this and this is before they named everything q for infinity, right. The q 45 was their big, their big sedan, which was similar in size and arguably in shape to the to the seven series of the time. Aside from the massive belt buckle emblem on the front of it,

Dan Roth  8:01  
but it didn't have any grill and that's like, it was so beautiful those first couple of years. Yeah, very fancy closet a badge up there. And it had that weird advertising campaign that was that weird. I remember like, just pictures of

sam abuelsamid  8:18  
the know what the heck they were trying to sell.

Dan Roth  8:20  
Yeah, um, that's if you wanted to like study 80s advertising of just like, you know, I don't even know what to say like, there because there's a few examples of it but like, I think that infinity stuff sort of leads directly to General Motors hiring people from like Procter and Gamble to sell Cadillacs. And that also didn't work. Yeah, but it's a lot of weirdness. Now, it just looks so dated, but, man that that first cue 45 was so I don't know it left it mark. Yeah, on my psyche and you know, compared to the 400 which also came out, I think came out in 89

sam abuelsamid  9:03  
they both came out within a few months of each other. Yeah, both brands actually launched publicly launched at the 1989 Detroit Auto Show, the first the first year it was became the North American International Auto Show both brands day beat had their world debut there. And they came out within a, you know, they launched within a few months of each other, you know, late at night early 1990

Dan Roth  9:27  
Yeah, I mean that that one two punch, you know, the LS 400 just put everybody on notice like this car is very good and I think it started in like under $40,000 which then was Yeah, you know, a lot of money and it was not a lot of money for a lot of car and the the ls the knock on it was always it was sort of floaty and you know, really quiet really well done, but

sam abuelsamid  9:51  
no, it was it was in no way shape or form sporty.

Dan Roth  9:55  
Yeah. He was.

sam abuelsamid  9:57  
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they had to they had totally different personalities to them in those days. Yeah.

Dan Roth  10:03  
And what else did infinity actually hit the M 30. When they launched?

sam abuelsamid  10:06  
No, the M 30 came? Oh, yeah, the sorry the M 30 was the first one that they had the coop, the M 30. Coop, which was based on the skyline, we think version of that.

Dan Roth  10:18  
I remember the M 30. With the convertible

sam abuelsamid  10:20  
with cam that came later. I came a couple of years later. So initially there was a coupe and then that got supplemented by the convertible. And then there was also the I think it was the G 20. You know, which was a smaller front wheel drive sedan, basically based on the ultimate of the time or whatever I think that might have actually been before they got the ultimate

Dan Roth  10:48  
buy for the ultimate of the G 20. I remember the G the first each one it was a slick car too. I remember that I forget what Nissan it was because that's their thing. Like they brought them over as infinities but they were all Like other market Nissan's

sam abuelsamid  11:02  
right and while the same was true of last most was true for the Lexus Yes. Yeah, the the s was basically a Camry. The the LS was it was definitely unique. And and as was the Q 45. But this is a totally different Q. And it's

Dan Roth  11:19  
sorry for the history lesson. We're just geeks. So yeah, that's it. But one thing about this Q 50. Does it have steer by wire?

sam abuelsamid  11:28  
It does have the same stir ball wire that was on the Q 60.

Dan Roth  11:31  
So is that weird or spooky? I couldn't tell whether and I didn't look it up yet. But the Qx 50 I had I assumed a head steer by wire if it doesn't, it has crappy, terrible steering, but I found it really spooky in the rain.

sam abuelsamid  11:44  
I think it's just crappy, terrible lumps during the QX. I think the Q 50. And the Q 60 are the only ones that have this job by wire system. As far as I

Dan Roth  11:53  
know. I just couldn't tell what was going on at all with the tires with the front tires

sam abuelsamid  11:58  
and other ones ones definitely better than that, you know, it's still, you know, it's, it's not great, but it's not bad. You know, especially if you put it in sport mode. You know, I mean, they're, it's all whatever feedback you have is very much simulated, you know, is there's no direct connection. But they they actually do a pretty reasonable job of simulating that feedback. And, you know, if you've got, you know, various other features on this, you know, the Driver Assist features. One thing that was interesting that was missing from this, especially in light of the fact that infinity was the first brand that I can recall that had lane departure warning, and this was back and I remember reviewing at Autoblog a, was at the Ix 30. You know, the previous before, before the, the original version of the predecessor of the Qx 5035.

The X

Dan Roth  13:01  
Yeah, okay. Yeah, x 35. See, they've screwed up with the numbers so much like, all these

sam abuelsamid  13:07  
alphanumeric names are just idiotic. And I'm glad that that at least some brands have decided to abandon them. You know, this is ridiculous.

Dan Roth  13:16  
What anybody should do is just to just, you know, give us the platform names. Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  13:22  
At any rate, the E x was the first one that had lane departure warning on there. And at that time, because it still had a hydraulic steering assist to do, you know, the lane departure prevention to do Lane Keeping Assist, they actually use the brakes to you know, did a little bit of braking on one side or the other on the rear axle. You know, in order to put a little bit of torque on the vehicle. So if you started to drift out of the lane it would, it would put a little bit of steering on on the opposite side. Yeah, rear wheel to get it back into the lane. The Q, the Q 50. Didn't have doesn't offer this, you don't have link Keeping Assist on here, which was a little unusual, because he's got adaptive cruise control and Hill Start Assist and various other things but no, no Lane Departure or Lane Keeping system. And another thing that I noticed about this vehicle, which I forgot to mention last week when I was talking about Versa is both of these and I've noticed this on other Nissan vehicles when it's full stop full speed, adaptive cruise control. So when you're in traffic in the car ahead of you come to a complete stop. You'll it'll bring you to a complete stop. But then once it stops, it releases the brakes.

Dan Roth  14:44  
It's not the only if you don't,

sam abuelsamid  14:45  
if you don't put your foot on the brake pedal, then, you know after half a second, the car will start to creep forward again. Yeah, which every other car I've ever driven every other vehicle I've ever driven, that has full speed, adaptive Cruise Control. Once it brings Karla stop, it holds the brakes on until you apply the accelerator pedal again.

Dan Roth  15:08  
Is it just like because I, I'm trying to remember.

Do they have like a separate brake hold button that you own because I find that a lot of cars have brake hold. You have to arm it like every time you start the car and I'm assuming yes,

sam abuelsamid  15:23  
it does have a brake hold. And yes, you know, every car that's got that it's it's it you have to turn it back on again after an ignition cycle.

Dan Roth  15:35  
That's dumb. Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  15:37  
Paint Oh, it always defaults to off on that. But you know, in this case here, you know, I wasn't using it. And so yeah, you have to be careful of this. You know, if you're using adaptive cruise control and stop and go traffic. After it stops, the car will release the breaks and it can start to creep forward again. So you have to watch out for that. The other thing that is unusual about this car and other infinities? Is the infotainment system set up. I can't remember if the QX has this, but I know the Q 60. Has this dual screen, yes that up? It's no. So the upper screen, you know, is normally used for navigation. And if you're using your phone, you know, Android Auto and CarPlay screens are displayed in there. And then the lower screen, you know, has various, you know, settings and controls and things like that. And you can input you know, do search for points of interest, things like that in the lower screen. And it's, it's an odd looking setup, because the top screen is a matte screen. Yeah, and it's kind of sunken in a little bit. You know, so the bezel, there's a bezel around it and it's sunken in a little bit. Whereas the screen just below it, like you know, an inch and a half below it is glossy, and flush. Yeah, it's still very Weird design choice.

Dan Roth  17:01  
I didn't understand why there's two screens. Like, why isn't there just one large screen? Not that I like it, but it just makes more sense. Like, why? My guess

sam abuelsamid  17:11  
my guess is, you know, that, like the Q 50, you know, has been around in the current generation, it's been around for about five years now. And I think when they designed it, they probably would have preferred to do a single large screen. But there were no screens that size, the automotive grade screens that size that were readily available. And so they went, I mean, that that would be the only reason I could think of why they would do it this way. You know, obviously, you know, Tesla had a Model S screen, 17 inch Model S screen, you know, so they had a bigger screen prior to this one launching. But, you know, as as we know, that is not an automotive grade screen. That's an industrial screen. They sourced for that. And it has problems, you know, with yellowing, and, you know, other other issues over time, and a lot of owners have had to have their screens replaced. And if they're out of warranty, they're very expensive to replace. Yeah, but about 2500 to $3,000 to replace. So, I think, you know, Infiniti decided they wanted to go with automotive grade parts why they went with two different parts I to you know, significantly different parts. I have no idea. But, you know, and and the other thing is, you know, the, the center console slopes up away from you, they're both touchscreens. And so the upper screen is actually kind of a long reach, you know, and so you have to kind of lean forward a lot of times to hit it, hit the touch targets on there. Fortunately, you know, they it also has center controller next to the shifter and you know, it's a rotary And job controller. So you can you can use that to navigate around that upper screen. And that one that one works on the upper screen only, but not

Dan Roth  19:09  
it doesn't control everything. So how do you that's puts the call in touch and something right? Yeah, infinity in touch. What did you think of it? I, I have my own opinions.

sam abuelsamid  19:24  
It's not the best user interface to put it mildly. It's not the worst. You know, I would, I would reserve that for, you know, some of the Lexus and to Lexus enform stuff. But it's, it's definitely nowhere. It's in the lower half of what's currently available. And, you know, once you know, once I was done messing around with the stock infinity interface, you know, just plugged in my fallen and unused Android Auto and Google Maps to navigate to enough of this nonsense. Yeah, it it got it got me where I needed to go. It's it's not, you know, the the both screens were better than what you typically find better quality than what you typically find on a Nissan vehicles. You know, particularly like the Altima and the rogue and some of the other Nissan vehicles, you know that. And then the leaf that I've complained about, you know, with dim low contrast screens, these are definitely better looking screens than that, but they're still not, you know, it's just not not a great setup with the two screens that way.

Dan Roth  20:34  
Yeah, and I'm assuming that we're just gonna see more and more that from from more companies, the screen ultimately is actually less expensive in aggregate, to replace all those centers tech controls and it's, it's not right and more flexible to you know, you can

sam abuelsamid  20:51  
Yeah, and, and what we're going to now you know, now that there are larger automotive screens, automotive grade screens available, you know, we're starting To see those coming to market, you know, and we'll see a bunch of those later this year. The new crest FCA Uconnect, five system, you know, support screens up to 12 and a half inches. And, you know, we saw one at the Chicago Auto Show. Last time I put the video in the in the post. That's not the

Dan Roth  21:21  
actually that's something you connect, it's in the RAM, right? Because I just

sam abuelsamid  21:25  
this is a new This is a new generation of okay, because I just

Dan Roth  21:28  
had a ram a few weeks ago.

sam abuelsamid  21:31  
Yeah. So that that one's based on the Uconnect four system. So this Uconnect five is actually running on Android automotive. Yeah. And, you know, it supports a bunch of different screen sizes, including a 12 and a half inch landscape display, which is what was in the new Pacifica that we were trying out Chicago Auto Show. And so, you know, that one, you know, it's it's a pretty nice interface, what they've, they've done on that one And then there's also Ford's sync four, which is coming up this fall and a bunch of new vehicles, including the Maki and probably the F 150. And speaking of the F one we saw I saw half a dozen of them on running down I 94 the other day

Dan Roth  22:15  
that's awesome. We there's been a

shot floating around of the the interior of the dash with the big screen. Yeah. Yeah, I I don't know like that so that you can the one that's actually that I tried in the room with the big screen they've taken several steps backwards in terms of usability. It's it's not as easy to figure out as it had been and in Nissan and Infiniti to, like they always had a pretty friendly system for years. And now in touch, I felt like it was not as responsive as it should be. You know, it's it makes you wait for stuff. I don't know if you found that but But I kind of got a little annoyed with it. I was like, Come on, don't don't put the screens in here and make them make me rely on them if it's not gonna be snappy, and I understand why it's not snappy, but it's still

sam abuelsamid  23:12  
like the version that's in the queue 50. I didn't have any issues with responsiveness on that one. I'm not sure how different the one that I haven't driven the QX, the Qx 50 yet. So I'm not sure how that one compares. But this one, this one was fine. I didn't have any issues with that. It's just the general user interface. That was kind of a problem a little jumbled in it. And it looks like the Q 50. Or the Qx 50. s just has a single screen setup. If I'm not mistaken.

Rebecca Lindland  23:46  
I thought I had to there were definitely like two.

sam abuelsamid  23:50  
Oh, no, you're right. There it is. Yeah, there are there are two screens. There's an upper screen at a lower screen. Yeah.

And it looks like basically the same interface. It's in the queue 50 Yeah, they're both dumb. I did the

Dan Roth  24:02  
same thing I put Actually no, I think I actually.

Yeah, I know I had my phone plugged into that one because you could use the Nissan nav with CarPlay, I believe. And so for the last couple of weeks, I've had Ford's which don't allow you to do that.

sam abuelsamid  24:22  
Yeah. And and the same was true on the Q 50. You know, using Android Auto. If you tap on the map button, it takes you to the stock embedded nav system,

Dan Roth  24:32  
right. Which, I mean, I guess that's a preference thing. I'm sure that the nav on your phone probably has more up to date maps and can often be quicker and depending on how they source their traffic information like it, there's a lot of reasons to use your phone's navigation app versus the embedded map. So it'd be nice to just have that choice versus being Do one or the other? That's Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  25:03  
All right. So, you know, the the Q 50 edition 30 was came to just over 45 grand was 45,003 20 including destination charges. So yeah, I mean, for, for that segment, it's not a bad price. It's a fairly decent value. And, you know, it's it's a nice, very pleasant car to drive, you know, it's got decent performance. You know, I think it looks great. And, you know, it's, I think, you know, it's worth taking a look at if you're looking for something in that, you know, that sort of entry premium midsize sedan segment, you know, that's got, you know, relatively sporty feel to it, but, you know, isn't isn't that hardcore? And, you know, if you want something a little more hardcore, there is there's another version of the the Q 50. Which try remember what they what they call it now

Dan Roth  26:04  
read something or other

sam abuelsamid  26:06  
yeah the fight here.

Dan Roth  26:10  
When you when you surrounded by all these names they just kind of blend into each

sam abuelsamid  26:13  
other the sport read sport 400 Yeah. Which, you know, has another hundred horsepower.

Dan Roth  26:18  
I think that's the one I drove that might have been the cube 60 the coop hydro, I don't know, it

sam abuelsamid  26:25  
was Yeah, I've driven the Q 60. Read sport. And so this is the you know, they also have a sedan version of that.

Dan Roth  26:34  
I think, you know, infinity in terms of styling, I think they're really really good. The interiors are usually really well turned out at least in the press cars. They do a good job making them nice and fancy and well equipped and I do really like their their design. Their design team does a great job. The cars are distinctive, usually distinctive.

The fly in the ointment right now. It's just

there's a G 70.

And I think the G 70 just mops the floor with

the Q 50.

sam abuelsamid  27:15  
Yeah, I think you're right. You know, and the, you know, the, the the Genesis g 70. You know, you can get a manual transmission in there. Yeah, it's it's really nimble. You know, it's, it's definitely, you know, if you're looking for something with a more definitely a more sporting attitude. It's definitely the way to go.

Dan Roth  27:36  
Yeah. And it has steering should tell what's going on at the tires. Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  27:44  
That's what happens when you actually connect the steering wheel mechanically to the to the steering link.

Dan Roth  27:48  
Yeah, I've been like sitting here trying to figure out like, okay, so if there's no actual physical connection, how would you How would you do that? You could do it with like piezo transducers. So that actually picks up the vibration and just Trent, you know?

sam abuelsamid  28:01  
uses an act. Yeah, I mean, it's all you know, it's always going to be synthetic, it's going to be simulated and it's never going to feel as good.

Dan Roth  28:08  
Yeah. And so and the reason for doing steer by wire is just the amount of real estate it frees up in the engine bay is significant.

sam abuelsamid  28:17  
Yeah, I mean, not having to have that steering column go down there, you know, alongside the engine, you know, definitely makes packaging a lot easier. And you know, it gives you the flexibility to do other things like you know, you know, automatic lane centering and you know, collision avoidance stuff that for some reason this card does not have

Dan Roth  28:38  
was it just an option that it wasn't selected? Like I'm gonna get available?

I, maybe it isn't.

sam abuelsamid  28:46  
I don't think it is available on the queue. 50. That's crazy.

Dan Roth  28:52  
That's like those are selling points. Those are things people buy now. Oh, well. Well, I was also are driving something that's a little oddly expensive and under equipped for its price I had the 2020 Ford Ranger XL t FX four. So it's you know, it's another one of those midsize trucks that it it looks good especially in this trim with it's got you know little white letter tires and this one had the spray in bedliner and it seems it's ready to go and it's definitely it's a tricky truck. So it It feels I don't want to I want to say it's it's unrefined. It's not unrefined. It's actually pretty good in terms of pickup truck

sam abuelsamid  29:41  
a little undefined. So

Dan Roth  29:42  
yeah, it's I do get a little carsick in it after a while, but I think that's mostly because this one smells like it's been smoked in. And I will say federal fellow auto journalists. Don't smoke in cars. If you do, you're a jerk. It's just it's the worst Because everything absorbs it and you can tell it does not smokers have this idea that like they're gonna chew peppermint gum and nobody will be able to figure it out like we know, we know you smoke in the cars pay for it.

But off of my rent,

the XL t in this trim, it's like $41,000 it has the EcoBoost 2.3 the 10 speed automatic, I just it doesn't feel like a $41,000 truck. You know, the interior materials aren't that great. The The seats are still cloth and at 41,000. Like I just feel and maybe this is I'm starting to hit that threshold

sam abuelsamid  30:45  
hard plastics everywhere as

Dan Roth  30:47  
junky plastics. It's a great 30 to $35,000 truck unless my perception of prices has been left in the dust in the last, I don't know. 12 months. It just seems like all of a sudden He's cars that don't measure up to the prices that they're they're asking and I realized that most Rangers,

sam abuelsamid  31:06  
that's actually absolutely that's absolutely true. You know, I think that this is this is actually becoming a real problem.

Dan Roth  31:12  
It's not I'm looking around the the Ranger and the other problems with the Ranger Are you know, it gets okay fuel economy can cause like 19 and a half with not really anything strenuous which is pretty good. But you know an F 150 is going to probably get there with the six to like, I it's about it just depends on how you drive it, I suppose. And there's just so much more space in the larger truck.

sam abuelsamid  31:44  
Well, and this, you know, this was the argument that Ford made when they discontinued the Ranger, you know, in North America, and they didn't know that. At the time that they dropped the old Ranger here in North America thing

Dan Roth  31:57  
was so they launched

sam abuelsamid  31:58  
this, this global Ranger, which they sold everywhere else except here. And you know, this is still basically the same truck that they've been selling, you know, in Asia and Australia and everywhere else, you know, since 2013, I think 2012 or 2013? Yeah, it did a mild update on it when they launched it in North America about a year and a half ago. But, you know, it's still basically the same truck. And the argument that Ford made, you know, back then was they said, Well, you know, we could do, you know, a smaller pickup truck, but it costs us a cost almost the same to make smaller pickup truck is just to make an F 150. And you get so much, it's not going to be much more fuel efficient. And, you know, you get so much more for your money with the big truck. And, you know, that was all through

Dan Roth  32:47  
it, right. I mean, they know business.

sam abuelsamid  32:50  
Yeah, no, you know, the but what has happened in the years since then, is that the prices on the F 150s just kept creeping up and creeping up and creeping up. Now left a big gap in there, where they could actually fit, you know, the Ranger into that gap into that price gap below the F 150. At least, you know starting starting prices, you know, like the, the XL, you know, starts at at $30,000 you know, which is you know, are actually no sorry, starts at $24,000

Dan Roth  33:23  
XL rear wheel drive like, right, yeah,

sam abuelsamid  33:26  
but even even the XL T, you know, starts at 28 Grand 28 for 60. Right, but which is which is not bad. And, you know, I drove the Ranger last summer. And, you know, the one I had was a Lariat, you know, which was like $43,000 and, you know, the truck itself is fine. It's just not worth 40 years.

Dan Roth  33:47  
And like I know they don't go out the door for that too. But like that's also a problem because if you're you sticker in your transaction price aren't too close. Like if there's too big of a Delta there then like you have missed You're losing money on them. But yeah, as a truck, it's you know, it feels solid, it drives pretty well it's well behaved. It's you know, it's not the most space efficient not the roomiest is that's just the nature of it. It's I like it better than the Tacoma, which is another midsize truck that sort of feels like it should be, you know, better than it actually turns out to be. But the Ranger doesn't have the rabid following Tacoma does. You know I think people were really excited for the Ranger and the reality of it is a little different. The back seats kind of tight it's I do have the crew cab or the super cab. I think it's the crew cab. Um, I don't have the sticker in front of me but the the got four doors.

sam abuelsamid  34:48  
Yes. Yeah. Okay, that's a crew cab.

Dan Roth  34:50  
Okay. I didn't know if they had like, you know, like, like ram does where they've got four, four doors at the back doors are tiny and then you got like four foot doors, but

sam abuelsamid  34:57  
yeah, well, they have the the super cab which has the rear hand Mr clamshell or the half doors yeah that's

Dan Roth  35:06  
I can't imagine trying well I guess if you if you don't really use the rear seats all that much or that area then then the smaller cab is worth it but everybody buys for their trucks now and it was nice to have a truck when the dishwasher decided it wanted to try to burn the house like you try finding one on a Sunday you know you're gonna have to like drive home yourself. So that was cool.

But it's it's just I don't know I just I don't feel it it's a great value next time

sam abuelsamid  35:37  
your kids try to light the house on fire it out right?

Dan Roth  35:42  
It's gonna light the backyard on fire instead. it'll burn itself out. The the truck stuff is good. I can see this as I actually liked how it's it's got that sort of burly personality because our trucks are so refined the The end I can see that that's really because this is the rest of the world truck where it sells for a lot less in a much more basic configuration. And they've cleaned this up as as well as they could for this market for for our expectations. They've done a decent job. The materials, I think in the interior aren't aren't great, and they're not going to get any better until the next year.

sam abuelsamid  36:22  
They're certainly not they're certainly not great at $40,000. No at $30,000. On the other hand, I think it

Dan Roth  36:28  
would be fine. You can just kind of shrug it off at 30,000.

sam abuelsamid  36:30  
Yeah, yeah. And if you you know, if you got an XL T, you know, and that, you know, stayed away from most of the options list. You could get out the door for under 30 grand for

Dan Roth  36:42  
this had I so I had a little trouble telling whether they had about $6,000 worth of options, but, you know, a good chunk of that like for something was listed as included, but I think it's instead included, because that's part of the FX four A package and so like the FX four is really something you're going to need most of the time like most of these trucks FX four is like a particular off road kind of configuration like you don't you don't really need that if you really need to stick or fine but you know that's next extra capability that is is I guess it's the far from me to judge but I don't see them getting that kind of use if you're gonna use it like it's there and I think it's very capable truck

the

the four cylinder was good I really like that that the turbo 2.3 in this this application is great. The tech in here is actually pretty good. So they did a good job about getting their ABS stuff in here. It's got radar cruise control, it has you know, the like the lane departure stuff and blind spot monitoring and The the backup sensors that Ford puts them in the taillights, which is slick. I like that. So there's there's a lot of good thinking around it.

It had sync three, which is not good.

Just a lot of I was counting how many times I had to press buttons to get stuff and five different taps at the touchscreen to go from the audio playback screen to climate. So I could shut off the dash fence and leave it on on fee like that's that's way too much that that should be one motion, where you reach down and you press the button. That should be just a knob that twist.

sam abuelsamid  38:45  
Yeah, it should not be in the touchscreen. Yeah.

Dan Roth  38:47  
Um, so that was horrendously annoying. I hate that part of it. The rest of it is fine. And it's it's a good truck. It'll be better the next generation, I still think the leader in this class for the so if you're a weekend warrior, the one to get is to visualize, because it's just gonna be so much more refined, it's gonna it's also going to have an interface you hate. So you might as well get the better truck. It's a little bigger, it's more comfy. It's more more efficient. The arranger probably toes better, but again, like it may take stock of your actual needs, versus like your imaginary needs. But yeah, I wasn't I wasn't in love with it.

sam abuelsamid  39:39  
Yeah. And I think, you know, I think we're going to see a next generation Ranger sooner rather than later, based on the, you know, Ford's new truck platform, which is also going to be under the bronco. So, yeah, I think part of the reason why the bronco launch came later than a lot of people expected is You know that, uh, I believe that they have, they're using the same new body on frame platform that's going under the new f 150. And then the Ranger will transition to that platform, probably in the next 12 to 18 months. Oh, really? So

Dan Roth  40:17  
they're gonna do the Ranger off the same platform as the f150. This next time around?

sam abuelsamid  40:23  
Yeah, I think they're sharing. They're sharing a lot of the underpinnings between the two. That's what they've said. So there's only going to be one basic body on frame architecture. That's, you know, anything that's body on frame is going to use the same basic architecture.

Dan Roth  40:38  
Hmm. That'll be interesting to see sort of how they do that because, I mean, I guess, components, you can make them more or less rugged, and the frame itself is probably pretty easy to

sam abuelsamid  40:50  
Yeah, make it narrower or wider. So

Dan Roth  40:54  
yeah, it's not it's not my favorite truck, but I think they've done a good job and they were out Absolutely right when they said, Yeah, okay, fine, we'll bring it here if you really want it, but you're not gonna like it.

sam abuelsamid  41:06  
Well, you know, like you said, I think, you know, if you as long as you are judicious with the options list, it's actually a pretty decent truck, you know, and as long as you keep the price, the price point relatively low, you know, but, you know, don't expect, you know, the high end versions of it to, you know, to kind of meet up with your expectation, you know, with what we've come to expect of, you know, nicer modern trucks. Yeah, certainly. Compared to a ram.

Dan Roth  41:33  
Yeah, well, and they're in they're in a tough spot. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of enthusiasm for compact cars, or, you know, midsize trucks, but I don't know that that enthusiastic, they

sam abuelsamid  41:44  
actually sell pretty well.

Dan Roth  41:46  
I wonder how they are like individuals versus like, it's a perfect thing. If you're buying if you're buying a bunch of trucks for like a small fleet, like for, you know, facility or just, you know, something that needs a fleet like it's the perfect truck for that, and it's Cuz you don't need the four wheel drive ones, you can just get the basic ones and they're, they're a little cheaper and they're a little bit more efficient than, you know, f series and so there's there's a niche for them. I just, you know, I'm curious whether Ford's actually making money on them

sam abuelsamid  42:15  
here. Oh, I'm, I'm pretty sure they are making money on it. You know, especially at these price points, you know, because a lot of the ones they sell, you know, I think they sell, you know, they don't sell that many excels. I think it's mostly XLS and lariats. I mean, the ones I see around are mostly Larry, I

Dan Roth  42:33  
think the last one

sam abuelsamid  42:34  
is the Lariat. So I think I think they do sell at a pretty good price point, and they probably make make pretty decent money for for.

Dan Roth  42:44  
Look, if you want to put it in perspective. It's like, you know, 10 or $15,000 price cut on the gladiator. Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  42:55  
Yeah, that's a good point. You know, they sold it, you know, at almost 90,000 range. Last year, and it wasn't, you know, it was, you know, not a full year of sales.

Dan Roth  43:05  
Yeah. Okay. It's that's, that's terrible. I mean, it's not f series but it's, it's not terrible.

sam abuelsamid  43:11  
Yeah. I mean, it's awesome. You know, it's just one plant, you know, and that's true. So no, I think they're doing fine. I think they're, they're happy with it.

Dan Roth  43:18  
Okay, well, I've been curious to see the next one. Because I you know, this one's pretty good. That one's probably gonna be a lot better.

How are you feeling right now you have no fever, no dry cough? No, no. None of that.

coronavirus, I'm sure has been on sort of everybody's mind and just got damaged just wash your hands. But it's had kind of an interesting impact on a few different parts of the automotive market. And so the the first thought is, you know, production no matter where you are, is going to grind to a halt if you can't get your components and the way the way we have set up our supply chain or not we but the way the industry is set up its supply chain now it just seems to me like, they've got single suppliers for a bunch of stuff. And if that part doesn't come from where it's supposed to, because the plant is shut down, there's no alternative and you're not, you're not getting it's just you're shut down. Like you're you're also

sam abuelsamid  44:22  
shut down. You're, you're not producing anything. And, and this, you know, this is already had a huge impact in China, where, you know, following the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year, about a month ago, yeah, basically, you know, week long holiday across the country, most company, most automakers, you know, told her and a lot of a lot of companies, you know, told their employees to stay home not to come back to work. The plants are kept shut down. You know, large swaths of China have basically been on lockdown for the past month while they try to you know, minimize human contact and transmission of the disease. You know, I saw a number that about 760 million people in China were basically quarantine to their homes, which is pretty amazing. But, you know, what we, you know, what we've seen is that already is in February, new vehicle sales were down 92%. So, basically the entire auto industry in China has ground to a halt over the past month. And it's you know, it's already starting to impact elsewhere. You know, Hyundai has shut down a bunch of their plants in South Korea, because they, you know, they were getting parts from some Chinese suppliers and they can't get those parts to plus, you know, they've also had some started to have some cases of coronavirus there. The plant that builds the palisade just shut down the other day because one of the employees there was diagnosed with Corona virus and so there is telling everybody to stay home. And in Japan, Honda and Toyota plant were shut down I think or I think it was Honda, Honda and other choice or Nissan. I can't remember. I forget shut down. And, you know, so far it hasn't impacted North American production anywhere GM

Dan Roth  46:17  
have to fly in parts that they otherwise wouldn't have flown.

sam abuelsamid  46:24  
Yeah, I'm not sure I don't remember seeing that.

Dan Roth  46:30  
Either way,

sam abuelsamid  46:31  
there are there are you know, there are various parts, you know, sourced from Chinese suppliers that are in a variety of different vehicles. And if this goes on, you know, much longer we probably will start to see some production disruptions here as well. So

Dan Roth  46:46  
yeah, and then there's the I did so and you were explained to me just in time doesn't stretch out that far. It's it's more more localized sort of system so that your suppliers are within a, you know, particular mileage radius. That's not You know,

sam abuelsamid  47:00  
yeah, you know, for just in time production, typically, you know, anything that any parts that are just in time, they will keep no more than about three to four hours worth of inventory in the plant. So there's, there's fresh parts coming in on a continuing basis. And typically, you know what, what we've seen happen over the last 30 years as they've transitioned towards just in time production is that as plants have been retooled and updated to support that, we've seen networks of supplier plants pop up around assembly plants, you know, usually within less than a two hour drive. And very often, you know, they, they, they basically have a campus right next to the assembly plant where there'll be a bunch of salt supplier plant plants located right next door essentially. So, you know, the transfer parts you know, sometimes in some cases goes directly, you know, by conveyors or You know, buy forklifts you know, from one plant right next door into the the automakers assembly plant. In other cases, you know, they still come in by truck, but there's you know, the trucks are coming in on a continuous basis and they have no more than a few hours of supply. So, you know, there are some parts that are, you know, still not just in time, you know, that may be coming from a particular supplier or particular vendor somewhere, but most of the stuff, you know, comes from is sourced relatively locally.

Dan Roth  48:33  
So, then, unless we wind up in shutdowns or quarantines, our industry may be okay largely maybe for a while but it just you know, it makes you think I heard I was probably online again that I was listening to I listened to them on a regular phrases and they they said you know, they may want to consider automakers may want to consider switching from Justin time to just in case and I think that's actually a bad idea to like keep, you know, to stockpile parts like maybe you want to keep some stock around, you know, always seemed, seems to make sense to me when I run my non automotive supply chain. I want to vendors and I want them geographically disparate. So, you know, I've got, I usually just split them up by coasts. So I've got, you know, an East Coast and a West Coast resource. And that seems to me like something that automakers have probably thought of So even with just in time, they may have multiple vendors for things or, you know, if they don't, then that's an issue. They've got to get some of the parts in just to sort of stockpile and keep the plants running. Because what happens if a plant shuts down? They've got a they still got to pay the labor. Right? It's expensive. They're not?

sam abuelsamid  49:56  
Yeah, yeah, you don't you don't want to play it going down. And in general, you know, the manufacturers have tried to move away from dual sourcing components. You know, because it also adds cost, you know, if you have to manage multiple suppliers, yeah. And in managing other parts coming in from different sources, so they try to avoid dual sourcing. They do it for some components, but for most stuff, it's it's single source now, not necessarily across an entire automaker, but certainly for a particular plant, you know, or particular model line. So it

Dan Roth  50:34  
just seems so shaky. Like I get the idea that it removes cost, but just it's

sam abuelsamid  50:39  
Yeah, well, I mean, the whole the whole premise of just in time, you know, is you know, it is risky, but it also kind of forces you to really keep tight control on everything. And, you know, the you know, there are advantages to it. It's not just a, you know, direct cost advantage of not having to stock inventory. But if there, if there is a problem, if you start to get some bad parts in there, you know, and if there was an issue at a supplier plant, and, you know, parts were defective, you're not going to be sitting on a huge stockpile of defective parts by the time you realize, yeah, no, that makes sense. You know, you can you can get you can get these issues fixed quickly, right? Or at least, you know, that's the theory. Yeah.

Dan Roth  51:28  
And then that's the thing, it probably, you know, in the industry is probably shifted to it, because it works better than other alternatives most of the time, and we're in one of those, like, not most of the time situations where you can't, you can't Yeah, I

sam abuelsamid  51:40  
mean, this is, yeah, this is this is one of those things that you can, you know, even even in the, you know, the old days, you know, when they were stocking, you know, several days worth of parts, you know, in a case like this, where you're talking about weeks of shutdown, you know, that still wouldn't wouldn't keep you going for very long. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, this is, and the other issue that manufacturers are going to face is not just, you know, whether they get the parts, but what is the overall impact on the economy going to be? Right. You know, if we start to have, you know, we're already seeing, you know, travel is being cut way back when companies are telling their employees not to travel. My companies said, you know, no, no, non essential travel

Dan Roth  52:28  
right now. Okay. So, I was thinking about this. I'm not usually with travel, especially with corporate travel, it's air travel. So does it now shift to vehicle travel, you know, are you going to

sam abuelsamid  52:42  
hell, they're saying no non essential travel period don't like because they

Dan Roth  52:45  
don't want to drive it either.

sam abuelsamid  52:47  
Yeah, that, you know, said, you know, unless it's absolutely essential to have an in person meeting with a client, do a conference call, you know, you don't go to conferences. You know, don't go to events, don't you? Don't go to the trade show anything where there's large numbers of people, because, you know, they, they don't want people getting sick.

Dan Roth  53:06  
I mean, it makes sense. It's the same thing is like, I will very liberally tell, you know, my my direct reports if you feel sick, do not come into the office, because I don't want to get sick, if I get sick, I bring it home to four people. And like, it's the same thing. Like, just stay the hell away from us and we'll be more productive.

sam abuelsamid  53:27  
Unfortunately, that's, you know, that's, we can do that work, right? We have that privilege. Because, you know, we're, we're in jobs where, you know, we, we get sick sick days, you know, if we, if we need to stay home for a few days or a week, whatever, we still get paid. But, you know, here in the US especially, that's a luxury A lot of people don't have, you know, one third of American workers don't have any sick

Dan Roth  53:54  
Oh, I know, especially in the you know, the industries that would probably benefit them. It's something like food service. Um,

sam abuelsamid  54:03  
well, and that's Yeah. And if you start looking at those lower wage jobs, the number jumps to 70% don't have any stick. Yeah, so all those people that are disease vectors, guess what they don't, they just gonna infect you. And they can't afford to take days unpaid days off.

Dan Roth  54:18  
Only there was something we could do about that. I'm

another thing that so that's the production side of things like that's like the car building. So, car sales, if everybody's home, or everybody's spooked, or there's just not that many cars, or we've got other stuff on our mind and sales have been falling already for the last couple of years.

There's going to be an impact to just new vehicle sales. So I would expect that 2020 is not going to look that

sam abuelsamid  54:50  
good. No, it's it's going to be a challenging year for everybody. You know, and in every industry, not not just the automotive industry. I mean, certainly airlines are To be hit really hard, but automotive is going to take a hit this year. And it's it's going to be a challenge for everybody. You know, and we've already seen companies like Apple, you know, who are the most profitable company in the world? You know, come out with a warning that they are not gonna hit. First quarter is

Dan Roth  55:19  
the guidance.

sam abuelsamid  55:20  
Yeah, their numbers. So, yeah, and we're gonna I think we're gonna see the same from pretty much everybody going, you know, in the next few weeks.

Dan Roth  55:28  
Although Edelman and I'm assuming like WebEx and stuff. WebEx is what Cisco Oh yeah, they'll be they'll be booming. All right. Google Hangouts.

And that brings me to my third sort of observation is auto shows like this is this is just firmly pounding the nails in the coffin of auto shows. They just canceled Geneva we were talking before we started recording that New York stands a good chance of getting shut down and other Adjacent industry shows there's an Intel show you you were talking.

sam abuelsamid  56:04  
Now the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference was happening later this month. And I just got a notification today that that was cancelled. The Game Developer Conference in San Francisco this week, has been cancelled. Facebook is cancelled their f8 developer conference next

Dan Roth  56:20  
month in the Bay Area. Please don't do that ever again.

Rebecca Lindland  56:23  
Yeah,

sam abuelsamid  56:24  
well, but I mean, in general, we're seeing you know, and, you know, a couple weeks ago, we saw or last week, some Mobile World Congress in Barcelona got canceled at the last minute. Yeah. So, you know, this is, you know, this is not good.

Dan Roth  56:38  
I mean, that's, that's a huge industry, that's a lot of union labor to put on the shows that is like, there's gonna be a huge triple. It's not just the show is not happening. It's all the people who make the shows happen. And so that's, that's a ton of work, and people that are affected. And if automakers sort of understand when they're coming out the other side of this like, Hey, you know, We canceled the Geneva show but our message got out there pretty efficiently actually, it cost us less if we hadn't eaten the cost because I'm sure that there was a lot of preparation in place. But if it doesn't turn out to actually hurt them to not attend an auto show, cuz it's already been the trend anyway to pull out of auto shows.

I'm not sure that the auto show actually survives. The coronavirus.

sam abuelsamid  57:28  
Yeah. Well, the Detroit Auto Show is coming up in June and we'll see what happens with that one.

Dan Roth  57:34  
Yeah, well, maybe that's the other thing too is like the there may be sort of pent up demand to get out and actually sort of go see the cars in the metal and sort of touch them and, you know, just be around them. But you know, like an auto show itself. From a press perspective. It kind of suck anyway, like you. You just want the the sort of the live shots which you can get although It is useful after that press conference happens to try to snag somebody and get an interview. And that's where like the that's to me, that's the real value of those in person interviews that you're not getting, if you're not at the show everything else, you can deliver that in just a zip file. I mean, for me going to a lot of the conferences that I go to, you know, my job as an analyst, a lot of is about talking, you know, meeting up with people and talking to them. And those in in person conversations, you know, I find are hugely valuable for the work that I do.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure it'll, it'll sort of find a balance. But, you know, we'll,

Rebecca Lindland  58:39  
we'll see what happens. We'll see who

Dan Roth  58:41  
survives. Maybe next year, the auto show landscape is different and smaller.

sam abuelsamid  58:48  
Well, even before this, you know, they had already canceled the Frankfurt Auto Show. You know, they decided that they're no longer going to do the big German auto show in Frankfurt anymore next year. It's gonna be smaller and move somewhere else. Maybe Berlin or Hamburg.

Dan Roth  59:04  
Well, the only constant is change. It's just like that's that's my way to wrap that up.

sam abuelsamid  59:11  
There was a story that popped up last week on the drive about the the legend of the Jeep, Plymouth pro angler. And if you've never heard of this thing, it is a dismal automotive jacala

Dan Roth  59:25  
back in there.

Yes.

sam abuelsamid  59:29  
Well, it jackalopes in automotive are actually not uncommon. You know, these are what we call development mules. You know, early on in the development of a new vehicle, before they build, you know, actual prototypes that look like the vehicle. They, you know, they will, they'll have a lot of the components and systems that are already being worked on things like engines and transmissions, suspension components, and they will bolt those on to existing vehicles. You'll find all kinds of weird stuff. And this particular one, when they were in the 1990s, when they were developing when Chrysler was developing the Plymouth prank angler film with Prowler, which was this, you know, kind of production Hot Rod kind of vehicle. They, they had a bunch of these engineering meals where they actually took the, the cab of a Jeep Wrangler, and they most of the front end of the Prowler and put them on the same chassis together because the the dimensions were about right, you know, for what they needed for a cab. And, you know, they were testing these things. And I remember I was working as an engineer at Kelsey Hayes time. And we rented track time at the Chrysler Chelsea proving grounds to do our abs testing and stability control testing. And, you know, I would go out there Usually a couple times a week. And I remember seeing these things out at The Proving Grounds running around you know, most bizarre thing. The the pro angler, I didn't know that they actually called him the pro angler at the time because it was never public. It was never publicly talked about what these things were. But it was obvious from looking at it you know that it was a development tool for the Prowler and apparently they built about 12 of these and they're most of them were crushed and typically these things are crushed because there's nothing there No, nowhere close to street legal. But that there's a rumor that may be one of them might still be floating around out there somewhere in somebody's collection. But yeah, I've seen I've seen some weird ones, especially out at at Chrysler Proving Grounds or some odd balls. Like when they were developing the neon Dodge Neon Yeah, original one in the early 90s. The development mules for that they had a omnis From the 1980s and they had these things and because the neon had a much longer wheelbase than the Omni you know you had they cut these things up and welded them up you know, so you had you know, they were getting the the wheels pushed out to the corners of this thing. And it was very strange looking. And there are a number of bizarre view Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:02:23  
the the, the Prowler, the Prowler was based on the Lh

and because the Lh could do front wheel drive and rear wheel drive in the same architecture,

sam abuelsamid  1:02:36  
yeah, cuz it had a long chat about it.

Dan Roth  1:02:39  
So I'm assuming that that mule that makes me think now like, if you go get a Prowler, you can probably stick a jeep. I guess it would be what? Why J. tub on it?

Yeah, yeah.

If you want to make your own, you could always roll your own that

sam abuelsamid  1:02:59  
I know White

Dan Roth  1:03:01  
Collar. The problem was an interesting exercise. I'm not sure if anybody was actually interested in it. Um, I guess they sold a bunch of them though they were. They were Chrysler at its peak. I suppose.

sam abuelsamid  1:03:15  
They sold okay expensive, I think. Yeah. And they didn't have green.

Dan Roth  1:03:22  
All they had was that 3.5 there the six they were and they were they were a little slightly like sometimes you can you can go too far. They were a little bit too much.

sam abuelsamid  1:03:36  
They're popular.

Dan Roth  1:03:37  
I'm sure they're fun you know, if you want something like your you know, your sort of Deuce coupe without actually, you know, having to worry about that particular, although I don't know like a deuce coupe now built out of a catalog is probably superduper reliable given all the sort of standard parts you're using, and the

sam abuelsamid  1:03:57  
modern crate engines and everything. The

Dan Roth  1:04:00  
trolleys probably the one that's actually not as reliable.

That's all right. Yeah, so that's what's the weirdest meal you ever saw? That wasn't?

sam abuelsamid  1:04:14  
Um,

probably the, one of the two one of the strangers did. It didn't actually look that weird looking at it from the outside. But actually, when I first started when I first started Kelsey Hayes a couple of days after my I started on the job, I had to fly up to international Falls, Minnesota where we did our cold weather testing. And I got there, got off the plane. I saw this white Dodge Caravan, and I'm looking at it. See there was something that wasn't quite right about it. I couldn't tell I couldn't put my finger on it until I got up close and turned out. You know, it had a little wider track than a caravan. The wheels are sticking out a little bit further than they should have. And the front end was a little bit longer than it should have been. And when I got up to it, I realized that they had actually sliced down along a vertical line kind of along the back edge of the the front wheel arches and basically spliced in a six inch section. And what this was was a development mule for the Ford Windstar. Oh, that's hilarious. So the Ford they had, they had about half a dozen of these things built up by Roush, Roush engineering builds a lot of prototypes and stuff for multiple automakers. So they do a lot of work for Ford especially. And so they took, they got half a dozen first generation caravan body shells, and they sliced them up and the reason why they had to put in the six inch extension in the front was because the caravan at the time was available with either a four cylinder engine or Mitsubishi v six which is a 60 degree v six But Ford had their 3.8 liter V six, which is a 90 degree engine, which was much wider than the Mitsubishi v six. And so they needed that extra space under the hood to finish anything in there. And so that's why it looked, you know, the proportions looked a little bit off. And you know, when you looked at it up, when you got up close to it, you could see the spot welds and the welds and the sheet metal, you know, where they place that in there. And then when you get inside, for some reason, they took out the original dodge instrument panel, and they put it in the instrument panel from a Taurus from a first generation Taurus, because the winstar was based on a lot of the Taurus platform components. And so when you get in the driver's seat, it the instrument cluster didn't quite line up with where the steering column came through the firewall. Yeah, well, you know, so the steering wheel was offset so you couldn't see The top half of the speedometer which was not handy when there were a lot of cops, you know, sitting around, you know, the radar guns in between the airport and the and the frozen lake where we did a lot of our testing and you know, there were there were some other oddball things about this thing too. Like, you know, they put in the the rear suspension. It had a prototype version of the rear suspension that was going to go into the,

into the Windstar, at the time Chrysler was still using, you know, just a basic solid axle rear rear end with leaf springs. And the wind star, you know, the wind star was going to have a trailing arm twist beam setup with coils and so they had all that underneath. And then the, the other thing was because when they built these up, they weren't quite sure how wide you know how everything was going to quite fit together. And which is you know, when you're building these things up by hand, you know, you kind of have to You know, work that out as you go. So the, the half shafts what the Roush guys did was they made a bunch of the half shafts were in two pieces. And, you know, they made made him made a bunch of several different lengths, you know, and basically, kind of once I got the engine in there to kind of figure out okay, what length Do we need for this? And so, you had the two piece half shaft where each half was drilled and tapped. And then there was a long stud that went through the tune. So screw it together, bottom up together and then weld around the scene between the two halves. And because of the work that we're doing, doing ABS testing, you know, so you're doing, you know, I was out on the one of the on the taxiway at international falls airport one day doing some some IMU testing asphalt stops, and I did a stop from 60 miles an hour. And you know, then what When I went to pull away, I just started to bang. And then the thing wouldn't move. What the fuck What, what's going on, and I got out, I looked around, and I saw the two halves of the one half shaft and the one side hanging down. And it turns out that what was and apparently this wasn't the first time this had happened. The the weld had broken and so the just started to unscrew the two halves startup screw from each other. And when it got when the two halves got far enough away, it would start to bend and you know, eventually would bend that stud that was holding it together and just snap, which is what happened. And so we had to go find a welding shop and I falls you know, and get the guy to fix the half shaft for us. So continuing on

Dan Roth  1:09:48  
all kinds of weird stuff up there because

sam abuelsamid  1:09:51  
oh yeah, well not so much in high falls anymore cuz nobody's doing testing up there anymore because everybody's moved over to Northern Michigan. So but up you know near near Sioux Sainte Marie, they do them sure they get some weird stuff that and over in northern Sweden

Dan Roth  1:10:09  
Yeah, I mean that's the mules are fascinating in Ford probably would have done better just completely copy that first generation tracing minivan ya know the problems they had with it

sam abuelsamid  1:10:21  
yeah the winstar was never a huge success it

Dan Roth  1:10:23  
was a it was a good try.

But yeah, I mean that just that rear axle rusting still an issue you see him I see him now rarely going down the road. I'm just like, man, I gotta pass this thing because the rear axle is just going to follow. I'm going to eat it. I my favorite was the when Volvo was developing the 850. The, the mule that they used for the power to develop a power train and sort of the engine compartment because it has very similar engine compartment dimensions was a citation.

NASCAR. Yeah.

And you know at that, that time they were building 740s that had Harrison AC. So I wonder if the x car had something to do with it?

sam abuelsamid  1:11:14  
Well, there was another one that what wasn't quite a mule. It was actually it was actually a proper prototype. The S 197 Mustang. So this was the what was going to become the 2004 Mustang. This was back in about 2001 2002 when the first prototypes became available for testing, and the This was more, you know, the camera they put on it. I don't know if you remember, there were some. There were some camouflage. There were some spy photos that popped up of some of these things. They had actually put on the, you know, it was a fastback coupe. They basically put a structure on the back to make it look like a station wagon. Like the station wagon, and then you know, covered it with all the padding and everything and, you know, on the, you know, when when the automakers would send us development prototypes, and they would always send them with car covers, you know, and they were custom car covers to fit over you know, all this stuff and you know, the cover, you know that for these vehicles, you know, set S 197 wagon on it, because it So, fit over that. Yeah. And that well, one one other interesting one back in late 80s, like 89 or so 88 or 89. At the time, Ford was considering using the what was the then new mn 12 platform for next generation Mustang so this is when they were still doing

Dan Roth  1:12:52  
i thought was the Thunderbird the

sam abuelsamid  1:12:54  
ad Yeah, yeah. So that was the the 89 Thunderbird and and such a great Cougar And, and you know, it had independent rear suspension and you know, as a fairly long wheelbase nine times a once well that was the problem it was heavy and it was expensive. But they, they they looked at using the M and 12. And they actually built a development mule. They took a Thunderbird supercool and cut the basically cut six or eight inches out of it, you know, so you had this shortened version of the super coupe and, you know, had a wider track on it and the Thunderbird said these fender flares on it. And there were some spy photos that popped up this thing running around the track one day, but that I think there was only one of those ever built, they built it up to evaluate it. And you know, that's all they ever did with it. They abandon that because they realized it was it was never going to be

Dan Roth  1:13:50  
I'm in 12 parts in a Mustang and yeah, I mean, it sounds sounds good that that car I see. I don't know how many people know about That mn 12 like they they all rusted away

but that was like a

clone of the six series BMW and they got really close

sam abuelsamid  1:14:14  
Yeah, I mean from actually was closer really to the to the eight series

Dan Roth  1:14:22  
but that car this is the one from the Fox Body Thunderbirds to the mn 12 was just really sophisticated and they were they were great on the road and you had the supercharged sx v six the super coupe for the first couple of years and then they really they put the five liter in the 4.6 that's that's a great car. They didn't age all that well, but I liked that one. A lot.

sam abuelsamid  1:14:47  
Yeah, it's still sim around once every once in a while.

Dan Roth  1:14:49  
We think, you know a lot of metal into oxide. Yeah,

sorry. Well, I think that's that's enough on our topics. Here, but you're going to talk with Rebecca, when you guys get together and then we'll splice everything together. Well, we'll do our own splicing and spot welding.

Yes, and put six more inches into the show, joining pieces that shouldn't fit.

sam abuelsamid  1:15:17  
So we're back. Rebecca and I were at the GM design dome at a tech center in Warren, Michigan this morning where GM held their Evie day and are actually their GM is actually doing a bunch of stuff all week long. They've been doing the same presentation for employees and for he did it for media today. This afternoon. They were doing it for wall street financial analysts. And at this event, we learned a whole bunch of stuff about Jim's new electric vehicle architecture and saw a bunch of the E V's that are coming to market starting next year. I think we sell what about 12 different views All together 11 of them in, in physical form and another on the screen. And what's what's your first impression of what we saw today, Rebecca?

Rebecca Lindland  1:16:10  
So my first impression when we walked into the design down, which First of all, it's such a privilege to go there, it really is just, it's really cool to you know, think of the history and everything that goes on that's been designed there. But when I first walked in, I was just immediately struck by the GMC hammers, hammers. There was two of them, which was a lot of fun. And I absolutely love the new Buicks, which I don't even think they really talked about but I very much but they were just beautiful as our overall, the designs were really elegant, very modern, without being alienating, and just overall a really, really, really beautiful job.

sam abuelsamid  1:17:00  
Yeah, I think I think overall I agree. I would say overall, they did a very good job on them. You know, and what what we saw today, as you said, two Hummers. So we saw a pickup truck, and they're bringing back the names that they used on the Hummer h2 so you've got the Hummer su t four Sport Utility truck. So this is sort of a unibody, you know, kind of shortbed pickup truck, you know, so it's, it's not, it's not going to be a truck for somebody who's looking for huge payload capacity, you know, cargo carrying capacity in the back. But you know, shorter bed I think it's probably about it's probably about a four and a half five foot.

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:39  
Yeah, I was thinking that. Yeah.

sam abuelsamid  1:17:42  
And then there's also the SUV. And we also saw a full size Cadillac SUV, so probably a little smaller than an Escalade, but not much

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:55  
now. I think was big.

sam abuelsamid  1:17:58  
Yeah. There were two Buicks two Buick crossovers a mid size and a compact crossover. Also, the Cadillac lyric, which is key with a Q and apparently that's going to be the, the style, the naming style for Cadillac going forward as big as they bring back names. That sounds like they're gonna end them all with the letter Q. So this is the SUV that we saw teased last year at the Detroit Auto Show. And we'll be seeing it. We saw it in the design dome today, but there'll be revealing it to the world about a month from now in Los Angeles, and also a Chevy midsize crossover, which is roughly about the size of a blazer.

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:43  
Yes, that is the Trailblazer.

sam abuelsamid  1:18:46  
Is that what they're gonna call the Trailblazer?

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:48  
i? i?

I can't comment. Okay, that I believe that that is going to be the Trailblazer.

sam abuelsamid  1:18:57  
Okay, and then We also they had the cruise origin there. They had the 2021 Chevy Bolt, which is coming out this fall. So this is a refresh of the blade and it stays on the current Evie architecture, which they call Bev two. And then there's also the bolt, Evie, which is finally getting the crossover version of the bolt that we've been waiting for for a while. And even then, yes, and then the cruise origin that we saw in San Francisco in January, which is also of three. So let's let's kind of go around the dome. Let's start with the

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:36  
Hummers then there was the last one.

sam abuelsamid  1:19:39  
Well, we'll get we'll get to that. Well, we'll finish off with that one. Okay, well, just just like we did this morning. What did you think of the Hummers

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:46  
so I thought the hammers were great. I mean, you know, I have I have a an affection for the brand. I I it was one it was the first vehicle I ever took in true off road. like rock climbing, sort of off roading and just had such a good time with it. I think it's, you know, I like the I like the the design language that they have brought back. It looks very similar to the h3. It has that very square, bulky field. I think it's really impressive that it is all electric but they have not compromised on the design of it. I would love to see the arrow numbers on that thing because it's just square, you know? Yeah, I

sam abuelsamid  1:20:35  
mean, it's, there's there's a little bit more rounded contouring than the old Hummers but not much. I mean, you will you will immediately recognize this thing as a Hummer. Exactly. Right, which I am. And you know, the other thing is, even if it were slick, this thing's got such a huge frontal area that it wouldn't matter anyway.

Anyway, way you look at it, you're gonna have a lot of drag.

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:58  
So the thing is that and I love that But unfortunately, they didn't show it. But because most of what we saw today would play models, but I love the fact that it's going to be the tonneau top. And you actually store those tops in the front. So you store them in the front so that that you know that that front space that normally houses the power train actually has a use for it, and a specific use for it. And as you said at the beginning, this is not designed for a work truck. This is designed very much for a week as a lifestyle vehicle. Exactly. which is again, I think it's great that they're embracing that they're not trying to make commerce something that it's not I in a terms of how people use the vehicle, but it's certainly a significant that of course it's electric.

sam abuelsamid  1:21:46  
Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, the tops you know, the target tops, you know, it's similar in configuration to if you get a hardtop Wrangler now, you know, a Wrangler Unlimited. You've got the four panel Also you can take off over each of the seats and take those off, put them in that front.

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:05  
And what's that? Let me ask it. What's the difference between a tohno and a Targa?

sam abuelsamid  1:22:09  
Talos the the cover that goes over the over pickup

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:12  
Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I misspoke. The target. rooftops. Yes, those pieces come off, which I think is really cool.

sam abuelsamid  1:22:19  
Yeah. So I think that I think Hummer fans will probably really like this thing. I'll be curious to see how much it costs. But it's, it's not gonna come cheap. But with the the kind of performance that they're promising from this thing. You know, the top end version with three motors, you know, this is going to have the part of what they showed us today was the new Evie the electrical architecture, the electric, the Evie drive architecture, the batteries and the motors. The motors are they are designed so they can scale it up and down to different power levels. And in the top end Hummer, you're going to have three 200 50 kilowatt motors at 750 kilowatts, which is about 1000 horsepower, and one in the front, one on the front and then two at the rear axle. And, you know, they've, they've said this thing's going to do zero to 60 in about three seconds, which is said for a vehicle this size. And I think that, you know, there's, there's people that are going to look at, it's gonna be fascinating to see, you know, how people compare this thing against the cyber truck. And also the rivia n r one t, which is, you know, it's quite, I think there's a ribbon is quite a different truck, but it's, it's, I think, is kind of going after the same customer base, you know, this premium lifestyle truck type of customer. What, what do you think, you know, versus something like the, like the cyber truck?

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:51  
Well, I think it's, you know, on the one hand, it's, it's, one could argue that it's a different customer on the other hand, It's not really it's that person that wants a head turning vehicle, and now wants everyone to look at them. I mean, it's, you know, the Hummer brand is very much a look at me. And the cyber truck is very much a look at me. I think that I could see a younger consumer going after the cyber track, because it's just so weird looking. Whereas the Hummer is more traditional, you know, it has more traditional Porsche proportions. And so while I think that the customer profile will be very similar in terms of mindset, and probably even income and education, I think the age difference, I think we may see a difference in the age where younger consumer is going towards the cyber truck and a little bit older consumer towards the Hummer. I think we also may see a difference on the coasts as well, which Mary Barra when she was there today top about trying to expand on the coast. But so, I think that, you know, we, we could see some competition there for the same buyer, but I do also think that they're, they're both, they're so polarizing in some ways, you know, especially the cyber chalk that could see a really totally different demographic buying it.

sam abuelsamid  1:25:26  
Yeah, I agree. I think that I think that the people that that look at the cyber truck and, you know, they just recoil at the way it's the way it appears, you know, like me, for example, I mean, you know, that, that wants that wants something like that, you know, that has that kind of capability may turn and look at the Hummer and say, that's actually more more my style. I think what suddenly that's gonna be fascinating is the the pricing on this because you know, the Cybertron They made a big deal with the fact that you know, the starting price is going to be $40,000. I don't think you're going to get one of these Hummers for probably less than 60. So it's probably going to be a quite a bit more expensive than the cyber truck.

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:15  
Yeah, which, which I think is kind of too bad. You know, because, although Let's face it, nobody's buying a $40,000 Hummer, a $40,000 Tesla, you know, that's not happening. So the starting price may be different, but I, I suspect the transaction prices are going to be the same, if not the cyber truck, selling even at a higher price. Eventually, you know, as equipped, so it'll be definitely fun to watch and of course, rivia n as well. Now rivia in their challenge is brand recognition. You know, and so GM again, was, I think very clever to bring her back Because everybody knows what it is already, and they don't have to spend the money to build a new brand up or nameplate up. But, you know, rivia n does. And so I think they could struggle a little bit in that regard in terms of building up brand recognition and dealers and, you know, they're, it's, it's a lot to build a brand. And so Vivian has some more challenges on their plate than Tesla or Hummer.

sam abuelsamid  1:27:25  
That's true, although, you know, Tesla, you know, didn't have a brand, you know, a dozen years ago. And you know, that the brand that they built around was Elon Musk, and Vivian has rj scarrans. And I think, you know, once once they start to come out a little bit more later this year, you know, and really start showing that showing those vehicles you know, as they get ready to launch production, I think, you know, there's gonna be a lot of there's gonna be a lot of interesting comparisons between skin orange and musk.

Rebecca Lindland  1:27:55  
Just RJ half a Twitter feed.

sam abuelsamid  1:27:58  
No, I don't If he does

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:00  
well, so that he needs to get that,

sam abuelsamid  1:28:03  
to the best of my knowledge, you know, from, from the interactions that people have had with him. I also don't think that he's insane.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:11  
No, no, no, I think he's lovely. I got a chance to meet him. Yeah, it's a very different character.

sam abuelsamid  1:28:18  
Yeah. All right. Speaking of building brands, Cadillac is going back to names that are abandoning the CT and x t. branding. So why don't we just dive right into the next part of this, which is, you know, Cadillac, building new brands. Back in December, I was at a business update luncheon with Steve Carlisle, the president of Cadillac here in Detroit. And he told us that one of the things that Cadillac is going to be doing is going back to names. They're dropping the CT and XT, nameplate branding. And the first new model that they're launching that has a name is this a midsize crossover electric crossover that is going to be revealed on April 2. It's called the lyric. The other Cadillacs, one of the other Cadillacs that we saw, does not yet have a name. That's the full size SUV.

What do you think of the lyric?

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:18  
I thought it was beautiful. I mean, I think that they did a really nice job

continuing the design language of vehicles like the escalator, but again, translating it into something that is electric. Something that is still is luxury oriented, modern. I love the fact that that headlamps are always going to be vertical. Now, that's really cool. Like that's a really interesting approach. And I have to tell you, I don't know if you got a chance to look at some of the materials that they're coming out with for the interior because they are Gorgeous, gorgeous. And yeah,

sam abuelsamid  1:30:03  
they've they've done a really nice job I'm not sure that hopefully that translates to the production version.

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:09  
Well it does. So there was a little display that they had and there was so much to see today but there was a little display that they had with four different What do they call those scenarios sort of things. And they're just gorgeous. Each one, they actually are embedding flowers into the, into the like the the wood and the like the the where the I don't know what what you call but like the like where everything is like piano black, you know, it's instead like on the door panels. I there's going to be that I mean it looks crazy, but there's like flowers that been like it put into the resin of this material and the woods That they chose was stunning, just stunningly beautiful. So I think that I think first of all, most of this, most of these products are all Michael Simcoe, who's now the head of design, and, you know, took over from Ed Welburn who was a legend himself. But I think that Michael really has been able to be expressive in the design language that he is bringing to all the brands, but I think obviously with Cadillacs budget, you know, from a pricing standpoint, they can put a little bit more flair into these vehicles.

sam abuelsamid  1:31:36  
Yeah, and, you know, there were some really interesting details about this for one thing, you know, because these are EBS, they no longer Nita, a big grille in the front, but they're still giving it a Cadillac face, but they've reimagined the face of Cadillac on these vehicles. And so you know, what you're going to see now is this dark area with angled lights like So kind of a pinstripe effect, you know, but also also kind of a sunburst effect, you know, the way the lines come out angle outwards from the center point, you know, from the from the seam down the center of the car. You know, it's a very interesting effect it's hard kind of hard to describe it in words right now until you see it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:20  
It is a month from now I did a terrible sketch of it while I was sitting there and basically it has these they've they've used lighting to really dramatic effect and so you do have the Cadillac emblem, which I think they they said was going to be white because you would ask that question right that

sam abuelsamid  1:32:41  
yeah, it's gonna be lit

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:42  
right it'll be lit up from the back and then the and then the comes down like the the accents are all very vertical and have this V shaped the sideways V shaped to them. And then of course, you know, the air intakes, which are Don't think they don't do they need air intakes if it's electric?

sam abuelsamid  1:33:04  
Well, yeah, I mean, there's still there's still some cooling required for the, you know, the battery thermal management. So, you'll, you'll have some air intakes, but they'll be much smaller than for an engine,

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:14  
right? But they're doing they're still doing them. They look they still look bigger, but the functionality is still there. But so it's all very, it's almost simple but at the same time, very, very dramatic.

sam abuelsamid  1:33:29  
Yeah, and we'll talk to later later in the afternoon during the q&a I talked to one of the other designers because we a couple of sub question you know, with the badge on the front being lit you know, today the the badge you know, has different colors on it as red and red and yellow and blue in the badge in the various segments of the of the Cadillac badge, yes, that and those colors are going away. It's just going to be white. Yes. And I asked, Well, why why white, you know, or you know, why not, you know, the colors and so well because Lighting regulations on the front of the car. Why does the only color you're allowed to use on the front? Oh my gosh, how except for except for except for turn signals have fun. Yeah. So that's why it's white. I mean, it's, it's kind of an interesting look, and I think we'll get we'll get used to it, you know, and then at the back, they've also done some interesting stuff with the, with the lights with the tail lights, you know, see, you've now got two sections of tail lights, there's an upper section and a lower section. You know, the lower section is, you know, just kind of the vertical lights, you know, similar to what we see on a lot of the Cadillacs today. And then the upper section is sort of a hockey stick, you know, with a horizontal segment that as it comes around the side and goes up the C pillar, you know, angles upwards, right so it's, it's, it's an interesting effect, and that's, we saw that on all three of the Cadillacs that we saw today.

Rebecca Lindland  1:34:52  
And then, right it was very consistent across, you know, the,

the language the design language, which I think was very, very consistent across the board, which is, you know, a very appealing,

sam abuelsamid  1:35:07  
right. And despite that, you know, all three vehicles had, you know, their own distinctive look. So they weren't just one design scaled up and down, they were, you know, they each had their own unique elements, but with common themes that, that tie them together as Cadillacs. And then on the inside one of the interesting details, you know, this, this one that they're going to show next month, you know, is technically labeled as a concept, but it's basically a pre production model. But, you know, like a lot of concepts it has, you know, the camera mirror system rather than big side mirrors, which obviously aren't legal here in the US yet, but hopefully by the time this comes out, they may be in usually when you have the camera mirror systems like on the European spec Audi e Tron, or other vehicles, they usually put the displays for those systems at the ends of The dashboard at either end of the dashboard like in the in the E Tron, they're actually mounted in the door panel just below where the mirror where you would normally see the side mirror,

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:08  
right? Because when I was in Abu Dhabi I drove, I drove with though, which was

sam abuelsamid  1:36:13  
weird. This one, what they've actually done is integrate it into the central mirror. So now, you know, and it's this also has the rear camera, the rear view camera mirror system that we have on a bunch of GM vehicles now. But the outers, and but they've made it wider, and the outer segments of that show the display from the side mirrors, so you see, side mirror and a wide view, you know, straight back, yeah, and then the right side mirror on the on the other side. And it's an interesting approach. And I talked to the designer about that. And he said, Yeah, you know, we're experimenting with some, some different ways to do this depending on the size of the vehicle and where we can package the displays. You know, what we're trying to do with the interior, you know, so on a smaller mid size vehicle, we I think this is a good, good approach to it. And then on the big SUV, they what they showed there because that one actually has, like the escalator that we saw recently. You know, these these two E's have a curved display that stretches across in the, in the case of the the lyric You know, it stretches from pillar to pillar as well no and the lyric, it doesn't go pillar to pillar it goes from the left side of the dash across, you know, just over the center console. Which one was pillar pillar. That was the big SUV. That one what

Rebecca Lindland  1:37:34  
oh, okay, that was stuck.

sam abuelsamid  1:37:37  
Yeah. And, and so on that one, they would have the camera displays on the outer ends of that large display. You know, they're looking at different different approaches to it, and it'll be interesting to see what, what, what ends up coming to production if it does. And then the, you know, the lyric was one of the few cars that we saw today. We're actually full vehicles, you know, had a full interior and everything that we could actually see and sit in. Whereas many of the others that we saw today were that were on display were clay model, right? So they had no interiors, right. But we saw renders of what the interior would look like. So what did you think of the big utility, the big Cadillac?

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:18  
I mean, I just, I thought it was, it was, first of all, I was struck by the size. And my first thought was, how are batteries going to propel this thing? You know, how do you put so many batteries in but then of course, when we talked and learned more about the battery system, then it became clear how they're going to do that. But no, I think I think overall, the design was beautiful. I think again, the interiors were stunning. Everything we saw today looks like an internal combustion engine vehicle, which was cool in my mind because I want to normal electric vehicles as opposed to being something that just looks weird, although the game about the cyber truck maybe that's what people want but I do think that there's an element you know, there's there's plenty of people that want to have a traditionally styled vehicle and I don't mind I don't I don't mean to say that these are boring I mean to say that it looks like a regular car and it just happens to be electric.

sam abuelsamid  1:39:27  
Right and you know, the the proportions you know, are classical is the fortune exactly, but but you know, they're I think that they've tried not to make them to traditionally style you know, each one of these represents a new design language for the side from the Hummer represents a new design language for the brand. So next one up the the Chevy crossover, you know, which is roughly the size of a blazer, you know, right size utility. The first thing I thought when I saw it, though, Jeez, those headlights look awfully familiar

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:05  
that was your Volvo

sam abuelsamid  1:40:07  
Yes, that was they the headlights you know are slim headlights with angled up bits at either end that look just like the Thor's hammer signature lights on the on current generation Volvo's. So, you know, that one was a clay and, you know, they said it's still a work in progress and that one's probably going to change somewhat. You know, so hopefully they'll come up with something maybe a little more original for the lights, the front lights on that one? Yes. What about the two Buicks I?

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:38  
I loved those? They were the ones that my I went to right away and again, I did a very poor rendering of those but they reminded me of Porsche's the front end of them look like the makaan

sam abuelsamid  1:40:55  
Actually, you know what they reminded me of? There's a Chinese Evie brand called x Pang.

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:59  
Well, that's neighborhood.

sam abuelsamid  1:41:02  
That was the first thing

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:02  
I thought, Well, I mean, think about it, they're probably, you know, the origin very well, maybe Chinese, you know, in China. So it's not entirely surprising, but I, I loved them. I thought they looked fantastic.

sam abuelsamid  1:41:16  
Yeah, well, actually, you know, because, you know, China is the biggest market for Buick. You know, that's where that's where Buick sells most of its vehicles is in China. It wouldn't surprise me if, you know, they were specifically going for a look that, you know, was more targeted to the Chinese market. And, you know, would be more familiar there. I I agree. It's, I think it's a good look. You know, it's, it's totally, it's totally different from, you know, the classic Buick style that we've become accustomed to, or even the more recent York style, you know, which is, which was heavily you know, shared with opal, right. Yeah, so this you know, there's no portholes on this thing. or anything like that. It's a it's a, it's a complete departure for Buick.

Rebecca Lindland  1:42:03  
It is. And again, I thought I liked the they had very narrow, sort of sinister looking headlamps on there. It has, I'm just looking at my at my, again, my very rough drawing of it very long, sleek lines, that same sort of Angular approach that Cadillac has, but without it being a duplicate of it, like it was distinctly different than Cadillac. So some of the same lines, some of the same approach was taken, but you end up with a quite a different looking vehicle. And so I thought that I really liked them. I thought they were really cool.

sam abuelsamid  1:42:43  
Yeah, I agree. So before we get to that last one, let's talk a little bit about the technology. Yeah. You know, one of the things that in the opening remarks, you know, Mary Barra talked about, you know, the expectation that all of these new TVs from GM are going to be profitable from the start, you know, they, they don't intend to be losing money on these things going forward, like they have in the past. And so, you know, to do that, you know, they need to be able to sell lots of these, and they need to sell them in scale. They need to make them more affordable, which, you know, they acknowledged that, you know, you V's have got to be more affordable. And they've also got to address you know, charging issues, which are also dealing with to get the cost down. They've done some very interesting engineering on these things. They've, you know, part of this, Bev, what they call in the bed three architecture is this new battery pack design, which they're referring to as altium. Which, I don't know why. But

Rebecca Lindland  1:43:48  
anyway, the ultimate

sam abuelsamid  1:43:49  
Yeah, I guess, except it's not because they know they're gonna continue moving forward and continue to evolve batteries. So anyway, you know, they've been working with us Partner LG Chem on batteries. And a key element of this, you know, because the battery is the most by far the most expensive component. Sure, Evie. And you know, so if you can get the cost of that down, that gets you a long way towards making these things, you know, pair cost parity with with internal combustion engines and the current Chevy Bolt, you know, the cells in that cost about $145 a kilowatt hour. And the the total pack, we estimate is about $220 per kilowatt hour for that design. Okay. The for the the new cells, which they're eventually going to be manufacturing in Lordstown, Ohio and this new joint venture plant that they announced with LG in December. They're using a different a little bit different cell design is cell pouch cell like we've had in the past, but it's a longer narrow or cell and it's going to be used across The board on all of these TVs, there's going to be 20 new GM EBS by 2023.

Rebecca Lindland  1:45:05  
How long How are

sam abuelsamid  1:45:06  
the dimensions that those would you say they didn't give the nice four is

Rebecca Lindland  1:45:10  
16? four by eight Yeah, probably

sam abuelsamid  1:45:12  
1618 inches long, you know, about four or five, four and a half inches wide. So it's a narrower

Rebecca Lindland  1:45:19  
and narrower and half and yeah, finish then

sam abuelsamid  1:45:22  
happen. Yeah. And it's it's it looks, actually looks very much the same cell format as the ones that Ford is using in the machi. So they're there because they're using a similar, it may not be exactly the same dimensions but it's similar longer and narrower. And that's a direction that a lot of companies are going to when I was at CES, I had a meeting with a with folks from SK innovation, another Korean battery maker, they talked about this is the direction everybody wants to go so that it can make the battery pack thinner so it doesn't have to be as tall. But what what they've done is the current balance batteries of current lithium ion batteries most most companies are using what's known as NMC, nickel manganese, cobalt chemistry. But cobalt is really expensive. And it's also kind of hard to get, you know, and the most of the cobalt that's mind is mined in Central Africa, especially in the Congo,

Rebecca Lindland  1:46:18  
and there's a lot of controversy around it.

sam abuelsamid  1:46:20  
Yeah. Under very bad conditions. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  1:46:23  
Child labor and awful things.

sam abuelsamid  1:46:26  
Yeah. Right. So because of that, you know, companies are trying to get away from using cobalt in batteries. And so this, this chemistry that GM developed with LG Chem, they've added aluminum in the backs, and they've reduced the cobalt content by 70%. And so what they're saying is that this, these cells will now be down to under 100 $100 a kilowatt hour. And, you know, so that compares to 145 on their current ones, and they're all that's, that's it. Okay, so that's a that's a significant cost reduction

Rebecca Lindland  1:47:02  
it is. And they're also working to secure raw materials sources. And so that they, they can have a little bit more control over just getting the raw materials and as well, which I think will also help control costs.

sam abuelsamid  1:47:17  
Yeah, and again, you know, like other manufacturers like BMW and Volkswagen, and I'm there, you know, they're all trying to do that, to make sure that they can control the cost. Then the other thing that GM did that you know, that while they emphasized the chemistry there, they also did some really cool stuff on the pack design side of it. Like one of the things they did is, in the past, the battery management system has been, you typically have one battery management system that governs the entire battery pack, the finished battery pack. What they've done now is they've taken that and move that down and integrated the battery management system into each of the individual modules in the battery pack can have an anywhere from eight to 24 modules in it, and each modules got about a dozen cells in it. And so they can, by doing that, they can actually control the output of the modules at, you know, at the module level, and balance those. So now what they have is the, that gives them the ability to mix different self chemistries, you know, and take a module with a different self chemistry and stick it into a battery pack and still have it work. In the past, you always wanted to have the same so, there were balanced output across all of them. And what that means is, you know, down the road when they have to service these things, they don't have to stock keep service parts stock of all the old self chemistries, you know, they can, they can update an individual module in a pack with a module that's got newer cells in it and still have it work. And then you know, once the battery is, you know, end of life for the vehicle and they want to reuse those modules for Things like stationary storage for, you know, for solar or wind farms or anything like that, they can now makes it easier for them to mix and match those modules with might have different cell chemistries in them and use them together in, you know, in a big, large battery station, you know, for for stationary storage. So all that, you know, that potentially gives GM another revenue stream down the line at the at the end of life. But, you know, by putting the battery management right in the module, they've cut the wiring in the battery pack by 80% which also reduces the cost. And, you know, now, the, you know, in the current pack design, the cells account for about 60% of the cost of the pack. So, you know, the cost, you know, the, the, the, the rest of the pack, you know, aside from the cells, you know, that brings the bolt battery pack from 145 to $220. Now, You're talking about a finished pack, that's probably going to have a cost of less than $120 a kilowatt hour. So almost half the cost of the bolt on a, on a per kilowatt hour basis. And then you know, they can, they can take these standard modules that they've got, and put them in all kinds of different ways, you know, put, you know, different numbers of them depending on the size of the vehicle and the performance they need. So, going back to the Hummer, and that big Cadillac SUV, instead of having one layer of modules in the battery pack under the floor, they have two layers of modules. So they've got 24 these modules in there to give them up to 200 kilowatt hours of capacity. Well, that's

Rebecca Lindland  1:50:40  
what I found the most impressive like from a just from my design and consumer standpoint, looking at how they can rearrange those batteries, looking at how they can put together these, you know, that six 810 or 12 module, whatever They need and be able to put them horizontally be able to put them they can put them vertically they can put them in in all different configurations and in all different spots you were when he was talking about that we'll well that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to put anything in there suddenly they can put even more I think he said something like 60 kilowatt, they could, I mean it was just tremendous how they can utilize every inch of the vehicle now and and you know, with of course, our listeners well know then that in turn helps with handling with how the vehicle drives like it there's so many benefits to being able to use it not just from a range standpoint, but also from a driver experience standpoint. When you have that kind of you know, wide stance and solid stance like that I I'm excited to drive these things.

sam abuelsamid  1:51:53  
Yeah, well one one of the you mentioned, you know, they can stack the the the cells horizontally or vertically if they do them horizontally, so they're stacked on top of each other. Now they can do a slimmer module. And you know, silver cars where they want to have a thinner battery pack to go under the floor for a lower profile car. And, you know, one of the interesting potential applications of that would be in the car you drove last week. The Corvette

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:20  
There you go. Imagine that,

sam abuelsamid  1:52:24  
though, you know, I mean, we've seen some, there were some spy folders that showed up a few weeks ago of a Corvette with a plug at the plug. And it was speculation would be a plug in hybrid. But, you know, GM has already said they're not doing any more hybrids or plug in hybrid, right? It's all battery electric going forward. And so, you know, if you've got a battery pack that's that thin, you could easily put that under the floor of, of the car, you know, and between, between the floor and then the center tunnel. You could you could put lots of battery in there and have a seat with a lot of range.

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:57  
Yeah, I mean, I think that what I came away with today They was the idea that there's a lot of flexibility in what they're doing. What did Mark say at the end there? It was, like 19. There's 19 different configurations that they can do then and all different, you know, front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, different motors, like it was just, I mean, that's kind of what my takeaway was. This is that there's a lot of flexibility here. And there's very little limitations to utilizing these batteries.

sam abuelsamid  1:53:30  
Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and speaking of utilizing these batteries, so at the end of the event after the q&a and everything, they have one more thing to show us that had been sitting there under a silk the whole morning, and they pulled the silk off of this, and it's a new cat, a flagship Cadillac sedan that they're calling silastic. ending with a yes.

So what did you think of the celestite

Rebecca Lindland  1:53:58  
You know, I'm sitting here in Looking at my notes, and I did mention handcrafted but then I wrote, oh my gosh, the back end is enormous. So it's a four door. It's a very long sedan. I just, I mean, the lines of it are very long I thought that three quarters of it was stunningly beautiful. The back and especially from our angle, and because it got better as we walked around it, but the back end was just, it was just enormous and it was this hatch back looking thing.

sam abuelsamid  1:54:37  
Yeah, I think it actually is a hatchback

Rebecca Lindland  1:54:39  
Yes. For utility is what I would, because then I pulled over the designer that we that we first met with I have her name here somewhere. I you know, I tried I asked her about it because I'm very I'm always very blunt with these things. I'm like, you gotta explain this thing to me, because I don't get it. And she was very disappointed that I didn't get it and Clearly I have an untrained and not sophisticated eye. But it just, I thought I thought the proportions of it were beautiful from the front, I love the fact that it still has that, you know, front end eye and then you know, the rakish windshield, the clean clean line, and then you get into this back and, and what she told me was that they wanted to give it more utility. And so it basically is a hatchback. It almost looks like the Audi A seven or s seven, but with an extra thing on top of the back like, right.

sam abuelsamid  1:55:40  
Yeah, I think you know, the the issue, I think, for me, at least, is that you've got this, this hatchback there, but it's basically on the sides at least, you know, it's solid metal or solid. Yes, it's, there's no, there's no glass there. So, you've got you know, the side glass goes to the back of the rear door to the C pillar, and then it stops and then it's solid after that.

Rebecca Lindland  1:56:06  
Yes. Yeah, right. The C pillar was the problem.

sam abuelsamid  1:56:09  
And so that gives it this enormous you've got this in what looks like an enormous c pillar, when you get up close, you realize there's a cut line there because it is that hatch, right? But it gives it this enormous amount of weight on the rear end tie, which, you know, from the front three quarters, this thing looks so amazing, right? And then as you move around the side and you see it and profile, that, that backend just looks so heavy. I have to tell you, and then when you look at it from straight behind, it looks great because you don't see that. Right.

Rebecca Lindland  1:56:39  
Right. The The audience was silent. Right? Yeah. When you think back when they pulled that cover off. Nobody clapped. Nobody said anything.

sam abuelsamid  1:56:54  
Yeah, they were. They were kind of stunned,

Rebecca Lindland  1:56:56  
right. I mean, that was the first it's sort of you know, Granted, this is not a cyber truck event, but you know, it still was that idea. And Mark was, you know, a few Civ about this. And everyone just sort of stared at it like, Oh my gosh, what just happened to us? Because everything else was so appealing in the dome. Everything else looked great. And then and then this Celeste, Celeste, Celeste, Celeste deck, I saw the I saw their their teleprompter and it actually said, shoe less tick. So he was supposed to pronounce it. They spelled it out phonetically for him. But you know, and the thing, the shame of it really is that from so many angles, it looks beautiful. But what again, what the designer what she was trying to tell me was that they wanted to do something different because I said, you know all you've been talking about our short overhangs, and then this thing has like three feet behind the rear wheel. And she's like, Yes, that was what we wanted. We wanted something different. It's like, wow, okay. And it just, it was very thick in the back after having this beautiful sleek feel. Then all of a sudden, you had this it. I mean, it looked like it just, it looked like something had just like been glued on to the back of it. And I think, you know, we can only hope that there's some refinement that goes on there because that wasn't okay. I wanted it to be okay. I wanted to like it. And from several angles, it looked fine. But the reality was it just it wasn't okay.

sam abuelsamid  1:58:37  
You know what I just realized that it kind of looks like is the Rolls Royce Wraith because the Wraith has these really big sea pillars but, but the Scholastic You know, it it doesn't. it sweeps down but it's got a little bit more upward curvature two, it's a little more convex. Yeah, but there is even more efforts.

Rebecca Lindland  1:58:58  
I know what you mean about the race, but the race doesn't have that extra thing. It's like the Q seven, seven, the Audi A seven doesn't have that extra thing on the back windshield. That's the thing is right so so the back when the back glass, there's like an extra thing as if to almost square it off. And, and the funny thing is that I absolutely love like the coupe SUVs, right? There's things that so many people hate and I get that, but I love them. And I said to her, you know I said I I like those coupe SUVs. And I but she said well, we wanted something lower. But the problem is that when you lower a vehicle and you don't change the proportions, those the heaviness that that becomes a muscular and athletic stance in an SUV just becomes heavy and ponderous in a sedan. And I think that's where they landed, unfortunately.

sam abuelsamid  2:00:04  
Well, so the the Scholastic is going to be hand built in low volumes. They haven't said when it's coming up and it but they did confirm that it will not be shown next month with the with the lyric. So we don't know when they're going to show this thing publicly and based on the response today it's entirely possible that before we see this thing again, it may change significantly or not.

Rebecca Lindland  2:00:34  
I do have to apologize to her name was Magali debellis. So just she's one of the chief designers under Michael Simcoe. And But no, I think it's Yeah, it'll be interesting to see to see what the next iteration is like because I do think that the response today was underwhelming.

sam abuelsamid  2:00:54  
That would be an understatement. I'm trying to go

So that's GM Evie day, you know, you will be seeing, you'll be seeing some of these vehicles coming out over the next few months and the rest of the year and into next year. As I said, the lyric will get us debut on April 2, the Hummer su T, the pickup will be on May 20. And they won't, the SUV will come later, they're not going to show the SUV at the same time, right. But you'll be able to figure out what the SUV looks like when you see that for sure.

Rebecca Lindland  2:01:30  
I think you know, the only thing that I was disappointed with today was that they did not in any way shape or form address marketing. And just even an overview of marketing. What is what is their strategy to sell these products. And I just wanted a philosophy. I didn't want individual ad campaigns. I just wanted. I wanted them to you know they have Deborah's their new cmo. I just I would have loved to have had her on Talk for five minutes, 10 minutes on

how they're going to sell these things.

sam abuelsamid  2:02:08  
Yeah, well, you know, we're still a good 18 months away from the launch of the Hummer next year, and then the lyric A few months after that. So, you know, my guess is that over the course of the rest of this year, and well into next we're going to get an ongoing, you know, I know, briefings from GM, and they'll be talking more about that. I mean, we only had two hours today to go through all this stuff. So they clearly didn't have time to discuss that strategy. And it's possible that they just haven't worked that out yet, either.

Rebecca Lindland  2:02:40  
I know, but that's what kind of concerns me because they're, yeah, they're spending $20 billion on this over the next few years. You got to figure out who is the buyer, you know, and and they did a little bit but I just I, you know, my consumer marketing mindset I would have liked to have seen A little bit of that.

sam abuelsamid  2:03:02  
And yeah, you know, and I think we will, you know,

I'm guessing that they have worked out some of that stuff, and they're just not ready to talk to us about it. Yeah, I know.

Rebecca Lindland  2:03:15  
It was great. Fascinating.

sam abuelsamid  2:03:17  
So thanks, everybody. We'll be back next week with more stuff to talk about. And hopefully we can figure out what your schedule is going to be where you're going to be at Rebecca, but until then, I'm Sam abuelsamid.

Rebecca Lindland  2:03:33  
And I'm Rebecca Lynn. Lynn. Remember,

sam abuelsamid  2:03:36  
and don't forget to give us your reviews on Apple podcasts and tell all your friends about the show and share it, you know, get more people listening. Yes. Thanks, everybody.

Dan Roth  2:03:54  
Thanks for listening to wheel bearings. Find us at wheel bearings, media and on Twitter at 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. That's feedback at wheel bearings dot media.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai