Dan Roth  0:04  
This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth from Forbes. 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:08  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Navigant research. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:10  
And I'm Rebecca from Rebecca drives, maybe I should say, Lindland as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:20  
Everyone knows and loves Rebecca.

Dan Roth  0:24  
You know, at Rebecca drives, actually today, the newest piece of content is your review of the 2020 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon. So that's a good place to start. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:33  
Excellent. Well, this thing is, you know, it's tons of fun. I actually had the opportunity to go on the launch, which it's hard to believe, but it was a year ago. And that was really fun because we actually got to do some pretty serious off roading as jeeps are so capable of doing and but this time I had this thing for a week now. It's tough because you're really not supposed to be going out. You know, you're supposed to isolate in

I just got back from Las Vegas. So I really am taking this quite seriously because I could be asymptomatic. So I'm being careful about where I go. So I took the opportunity to go out on the highway a little bit up and back a bit to get a feel for it. Just what it what it's like on the highway, but then I cruise around town and you know most of Greenwich is by abiding by the rules, relatively speaking, we had to close our parks and beaches because 9000 people went to the beach last Saturday, literally 9000 it was nice last

week, so I drove around Greenwich took some pictures got a feel for it, you know, but yes, we we did have closer beaches. So um, you know, the glad I mean, first of all, it's a traditional Jeep and so it's got the great looks to it, which I really appreciate. You know, this is it's hard to redesign, a jeep and this Gladiator we have been waiting for For like 14 years from the time they first brought the concept

Dan Roth  2:06  
to every now and then like they do one for the Easter Jeep Safari, they'd be like, look what here's what you could have.

Rebecca Lindland  2:11  
Yes, exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:13  
And the other thing is they also, you know, in all those teases they never used the gladiator name they used scrambler, or some of the other names that they've had for Jeep pickups over the years. That's

Rebecca Lindland  2:23  
right. Yeah, no, exactly. So the base so the base Sport model. So one of the things they've done this interesting about the Jeep clad is that they've they've simplified the product lineup. And basically they've said look, this is not a stripped down pickup truck version of the Wrangler. You know, it's it's 31 inches longer for overall with overall length, and it starts at 35,000. That includes jeeps incredibly high or actually all FCA is incredibly high destination charge of 1400 and $95. Which is a lot of money. And I think it's one of the highest that I've seen that for like a non luxury brand. Well, I mean, right? No.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:12  
Security,

Rebecca Lindland  3:13  
maybe, maybe. So anyway, so the base, the base glad starts at 35,000. So you're, you're up in the echelon of the upper echelons anyway, and it only has one engine, it's got two 3.6 liter V six 285 horsepower, just below that for a foot pounds of torque. But it's you know, it's a lot of fun to drive. It actually comes with a six speed manual transmission, which is awesome. This one I had, unfortunately, had been upgraded to the eight speed automatic for $2,000. And you know, but it's I know, right,

Sam Abuelsamid  3:47  
it's pretty premium.

Rebecca Lindland  3:49  
Well, thanks thing, right like, I don't know, it just seems like some of these numbers were pretty high but then like the, the cold weather pack, which is the heated seats and steering wheel. That was nice. 95 which I don't think was terrible,

Unknown Speaker  4:02  
I think that should be standard

Sam Abuelsamid  4:05  
especially in a jeep. But, but you know, again, you know, heated seats and steering wheel you know, that's usually like a three $400 option on most cars

Rebecca Lindland  4:14  
but but again though this is this is it, it's remote start also. So the cold weather pack has heated front seats heated steering wheel and remote start which is not available with manual transmission.

Dan Roth  4:28  
If that makes sense. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  4:30  
Yeah, that does. And then the leather trimmed bucket seats were 1495 so those have a rear arm West rest with cupholder and full length floor console with armrests, leather wrapped, Park brake handle shift knob. I mean, leather trimmed bucket sees that seems like a lot. This is honestly something you don't you don't need to have, quite frankly because if you're going to really use this thing as it's intended to be used at all material that

Sam Abuelsamid  4:59  
you can Just hose it down

Rebecca Lindland  5:02  
on its cow. No you can hose leather down. I have I have done that myself.

Dan Roth  5:05  
It doesn't crack and crazed, like you got to condition it and stuff

Rebecca Lindland  5:09  
right? You have to treat it like skin. Right so you wash it but you have to moisturize it as well. That's another that's another podcast

Dan Roth  5:20  
but it's actually pretty good sort of analog like jeeps especially Wranglers and the gladiator they tend to be very manicured and accessorized

Rebecca Lindland  5:32  
they they do some like crazy stuff.

Dan Roth  5:35  
Yeah. And the price doesn't like the one you drove was the Rubicon so it had its it rang up to $62,000 which is a lot of money. When you consider it's not a full size truck it's not a ton of money in the pickup truck world, right.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:54  
Especially for you know these premium kind of niche right pick up rocks You know, when you compare it against something like a raptor You know, or some of the some of the other, you know, premium off road performance trucks. It's pretty it's it's not crazy.

Rebecca Lindland  6:09  
Yeah No I agree. I mean and I think that it's something that you know you can certainly trim that down and I mean it's got you know it has the tow package on it trailer tow package for 350 A it has metallic paint, you know, there's a couple of things that I mean, adaptive cruise control, sure. 795 a roll up tonneau cover for 595 three, the body color three piece hard top for 2295 so that is a rear sliding window, rear window, defroster and freedom panel storage bag.

Dan Roth  6:46  
Wow, that's for to get in body kosumi black otherwise

Rebecca Lindland  6:50  
2295 Now the thing is, though, that you know, so but in my mind, there's such a broad base, you know, I've called Jeeps, the brain Random Busboys and billionaires. And this is exactly why you can scale it down, you can get a stripped down version of the glad and it's still, it's still going to give you a lot of fun driving experience, it's still going to give you you know, off road capabilities, it's still a four by four, it's still got that 3.6 liter engine and

Sam Abuelsamid  7:19  
basically gonna give you the exact same experience if you bought a 65,000 but for

Dan Roth  7:25  
35,000 that's a good point like because we were just talking about like it starts a little steep, but it's got four wheel drive standard, which a lot like the Colorado and Canyon or Ranger don't. And by the time you get them equipped before wheel drive and their v six is that they're not that far outside of that $35,000 starting price.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:46  
Exactly. Right. The other thing too, is you need to consider you know, when you're looking at the price of something like a Jeep is the resale values. Yes. Jeep Wranglers have some of the highest resale values in the business.

Rebecca Lindland  7:59  
Yeah. You're totally right. So

Sam Abuelsamid  8:01  
even even buying a used one, you know, buying a three, four or five year old one. Oftentimes you can be paying almost the same price or not much less than a brand new one.

Dan Roth  8:11  
Yeah, you so get a better financing deal.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:13  
Yeah, especially if you're leasing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And, you know, even if you're buying, you know, if you want to replace it, you know, five years from now or three years from now, you know, you're going to be able to sell it or trade it in for and get back a lot of what you already put into it and put that towards the next one.

Rebecca Lindland  8:32  
Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I mean, that resale value is significant. And it's, uh, it's, you know, you could argue that it's a good investment, quote, unquote, in terms of getting, you know, a great vehicle that's a lot of fun to drive both on and off road and having something that's going to maintain its value for you probably better than most brands. And so, you know, I mean, I think we've talked a lot about sticker shock on average. Have brands and you know, there's no denying $62,000 is an incredible amount of money. But you can spend $62,000 in three years later have that worth $40,000 and that's not going to be the case with this Rubicon.

Dan Roth  9:17  
Yeah, that's true. And right now they're not really even even before the sort of economic breaks went on. The Gladiator wasn't quite meeting their sales projections so they were willing to deal significantly on them. So the reality on the ground is a little different than us just comparing sticker prices but yeah, we can't really we're not a like an automotive deals show so like there's a lot of work you have to do to find that actual like in reality local to you dealer price, which is usually going to be discounted in this case could be significantly discounted. So you had it on the highway, you had it around town. I my contention Is that the Wrangler is just delightful on surface streets and capable but tiresome on the highway?

Rebecca Lindland  10:11  
Yeah, you know, I think you know as I said in my review if you're buying this as a rolling office, you're doing it wrong. So you know, I think that you need to understand what this vehicle is for. And there's other jeeps like my sister's Jeep Grand Cherokee, that's fantastic on the highway. nice, quiet luxurious, a beautiful vehicle. There's plenty of jeeps out there that are highway that are highway comfortable. The Gladiator with that foe roof because the roof comes off the doors come off, everything comes off your your you feel that there's not a lot of insulation in this vehicle because of that, and that's okay. That's the compromise that you make. I will say I think the only thing I kind of missed was was not having a summary So I did like, you know, because I just had the I had the Wrangler for door with the folding roof, which I loved being able to put that back. So that was my only disappointment, especially on some of the more beautiful days. And it's kind of a lot I actually didn't try. This is terrible. I didn't try to take the roofs off. And part of it is because in this crazy world that we are in right now a girl has got to save her manicure.

Dan Roth  11:27  
is it's super easy. It's like it comes right out. It's really light.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:32  
And yeah, those panels are surprisingly light and easy to manage. Much more so than in in, you know, the JK and prior generation. Yeah,

Dan Roth  11:40  
regular. So next time, next time for sure. Next time, maybe you'll be able to take it to the beach. It looks like the perfect thing to get down in the sand to you know,

Rebecca Lindland  11:48  
oh my gosh, I know I probably would be arrested in Greenwich for taking my vessel on this on the sand but in other places. I mean, this is one of you know, I there's some great opportunities out in California and I Other places to take these things and, you know, so I think, you know, it's, it's a vehicle that I would describe as 90% perfect in that, you know, it's tons of fun. It's great for what it does. The 10% is if you try and use it for what it's not intended for, that's when you get in trouble. I think that's what 90% of the uses.

Dan Roth  12:26  
But they won't, they won't make that same calculation. They will actually enjoy this stuff. Yeah, it's like the people that go to like CrossFit and stuff they like to suffer. Thank you for the privilege.

Rebecca Lindland  12:39  
Well, again, you know, I mean, what I love and when I think about, like people like that, is my local weather guy, Gil Simmons, who's on ABC when I think about somebody like our newscasters that have to get to where they're going, regardless of whether, you know, it's like these those quote those essential workers that we talked about. This is a great vehicle that you can feel confident and secure in when you're when it's snowing outside when it's crappy outside when we've had a deluge of rain when other places around the country are flooded you know this is this is that type of vehicle that you can go and forge you know Ford water and you know Sam and I went to GM the two jeeps that what do they call that thing the Proving Ground that that day that they have, you know where you can drive everything?

Sam Abuelsamid  13:32  
Yeah, so what's new event in fact, we need to get that video from your phone and get it posted.

Dan Roth  13:38  
Oh, okay. I happen to know a guy who's like

Rebecca Lindland  13:44  
videos backed up are you?

Dan Roth  13:47  
Fine.

Rebecca Lindland  13:48  
So you know it get the Jeep is just it's it's a lot of fun. It does get a ton of looks. I mean, this was this super bright, like called punk. It's an orange. That it's just gorgeous. You hunk that's what well that's that's what they listed as pumpkin, pumpkin, metallic clear coat exterior paint. So pumpkin yes which is cute It's funny.

Dan Roth  14:12  
I that's I wonder if that's actually the one that I had to I had this the very same configuration Oh

Sam Abuelsamid  14:21  
yes, I had one

Rebecca Lindland  14:22  
like on it. Yeah it had 6000 miles on it.

Dan Roth  14:26  
I think mine had higher miles Okay, I don't know maybe they all went into the fleet that way

Sam Abuelsamid  14:33  
likely they probably ordered that orange you know a bunch of those orange ones for the press flee.

Dan Roth  14:37  
Yeah, it is. It's charming. I like I even the noise that you complained about. complain about but noted. That's another thing that like kind of pops up on the highway but otherwise isn't really a big deal around town. It's pretty quiet. It's it is the Windrush is sort of what starts above about 60 miles an hour, but yeah, I love the flat windshield the time dashboard. It really it's it's a pickup truck, like, like pickup trucks used to be, you know, and it's got that that character about it that rougher it's not really rough around the edges either they've done a really good job about sort of polishing all of the things you would criticize the older JKS for the jail is amazingly refined, but it's still got just enough of that. personality that Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  15:26  
it does.

Dan Roth  15:28  
I liked it quite a bit. Yeah. It's it's overkill.

Rebecca Lindland  15:37  
But in all the best possible way

Dan Roth  15:39  
nothing succeeds like access. I think it's fine. Um, so I guess the biggest question is in your in your Greenwich fleet, like how does it fit in and would you put it in your in your driveway?

Rebecca Lindland  15:51  
Oh, my gosh, I open it in my driveway in a second. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is one of the you can, you know, this is I have several neighbors. I think I've mentioned before my neighbor directly next door to me used to be an SCCA racer. And so you know everything I when I put the cars in my lower driveway is very visible, you can go on it my Instagram, Rebecca drives and see pictures of what I mean. But you know, inevitably I mean the number of calls that I get irate I rate I should rate the cars on the number of calls that I get from my neighbors.

Dan Roth  16:24  
Really small sample size, but that's

Rebecca Lindland  16:26  
okay. But that's okay. They're there. They're, you know, primarily guys that are buying cars. So if

Dan Roth  16:32  
you get a some demographic information, we'll tidy it up in a document.

Rebecca Lindland  16:39  
Yeah, I mean, I mean, this, you know, again, I think that this is one of those vehicles that you can't expect it to be a luxury vehicle on the highway, but everywhere else, absolutely. Tons of

Sam Abuelsamid  16:51  
Although, I mean, that's why Jeep makes the Grand Cherokee Yes, that's what I said. Other future products

Dan Roth  16:56  
and other future

Sam Abuelsamid  17:00  
Stuff like the commander, and that's coming up next, I think next year or late late next year, I think it's coming out, you know, knees, these are more premium products, you know, and they're meant for, you know, to go after, you know, kind of the Land Rover Range Rover market, you know, whereas this, this is targeting a very different audience. So you shouldn't expect it to behave the same as a Range Rover. Yeah,

Dan Roth  17:24  
exactly. The Jeep guys are funny too, though. Like every time they bring a Wrangler, then they brought when they brought the gladiator up to New England, they had the New England car writer guys all got together, they gave us a presentation about it. Every time they're up here with with the Wrangler or the gladiator whatever, somebody in the audience have raised their hand like have you ever thought of doing a version like a g wagen? That's all very luxurious and the Jeep guys just, they get this rubric smile, and they're like, we can't comment on that. But yeah, that's it. That's a good idea. I mean, I honestly think that they've they've done the sort of the cost and, you know, concept work to make a very luxurious version of the Wrangler.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:12  
Well, even now, you know, I mean, if you like the the jail ranking, you know, the four door, and when I had one year and a half ago or so, I had, you know, as a silver one, you know, for door, you know, the unlimited with the hard top and everything. And from behind, you know, from the rear view or the rear three quarter view, you know, aside from the tail lights, you know, you could very easily mistake that for a G wagen. You know, the the proportions you know, very squared off. Yeah, I mean, it very much looks like a G wagen from behind. So, you know, they've clearly been thinking about that for a long time.

Dan Roth  18:48  
Yeah. Now, let's see what they do when they need to squeeze more profit out of the market.

Rebecca Lindland  18:53  
And just just to confirm, this one also did have that SS stop, start. And that's really good. It's really transparent. And I'm I never mind stop start if it doesn't jar you awake When it restarts. This one is just it's very transparent, very quiet really well behaved.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:14  
But jeeps been FC FC has been doing the stop start stuff for a while on the trucks and the jeeps and they've pretty much nailed it, you know, and and especially if you get on, you know, get into one of the vehicles that has the torque, you know, it's even better on those. But, you know, the, the, on the V eights and V sixes, you know, with without a torque, you know, it still works really well.

Rebecca Lindland  19:38  
It does. They're, they've done a nice job with it.

Dan Roth  19:42  
All right. Cool. Fantastic. Well, let's, let's jump to the next next victim. You know, let me just I'll just talk briefly about the Hyundai Kona because I drove it a total of like 10 miles. But that man, I love that car. That's a great little runabout. I had the 20 Hyundai Kona ultimate all wheel drive. It's it's really unpretentious, but it's also really, really charming. It seems like every time I drive a Kona, like the circumstances are rather apocalyptic.

Rebecca Lindland  20:20  
What happened? Well, so it's obvious but

Dan Roth  20:26  
last time I had a Kona I, I was doing an interview in Washington State. So flew into Seattle picked up the cone as a media loan at sea tac, and then we drove it out to we stayed one night in Olympia. And in Olympia, in the at night in the rain when you try to cross an intersection and don't realize there's like these big curbs in the middle of it, you hit them.

And you, you damage the tires. And so like, yeah, so we went out for dinner and I wind up like putting this the spare on the front and everything seemed okay and then the next morning we had to go from Olympia out to Aberdeen so that's a little over an hour and Aberdeen it wasn't actually Aberdeen was monta Santo and a little south of there so that's logging country there's not as much out there and there's windy doesn't

Sam Abuelsamid  21:21  
sound like they had a place you want to be driving out of space saver spare

Dan Roth  21:26  
space saver of spare on the front and then you know as we're driving out there yeah getting some some lights from the all wheel drive system and stuff like that it's probably just confused with the rotational speeds of the tires and it'll be okay. And so we get to the place that we had to go which was this disguise who were interviewing it says his homestead in in logging country out there. No AC power no like he had a phone but no cell signal. Good luck finding it if I need a triple A or roadside assistance to come Get us. And I noticed that the back tire has a bubble in the sidewall and a slow leak like Jesus, we've got to go from here, we've got to do the interview, which is fine. Like I was like, We're here. We're good. Let's get what we came to get, and we'll sort everything out later. So, that all went fine. And then, you know, getting back to Seattle was, you know, it's a couple hours. It's just like, we're gonna buy a little Tire Inflator and we're just gonna drive and I'm going to adjust the mirror so I can watch that tire if it starts to come apart. Well, we'll punt. So this is my experiences with the Kona are like, bad stuff happens, but it's a nice little car. I really.

Rebecca Lindland  22:44  
Yeah, I had it. I had it last year. It's adorable.

Dan Roth  22:47  
It's so good looking. And it's just really friendly to drive. It's not overtly sporty, but it's not going to let you it's not going to disappoint you. If you enjoy driving cars and all the controls feel good. The ergonomics are great.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:01  
Which which power train Did you

Dan Roth  23:03  
I had the turbo the 1.6 turbo Yeah. Okay. Which you know it's it's turbo charge but it's not it's not the most muscular engine it's good engine I like it a lot but it's it's mostly there so that you're you feel something you have the pedal down and you know we were talking last week about the dual clutch the the Hyundai Kia dual clutch and this so the ultimate has that other versions of the Kona don't have the dual clutch auto but this one did. And it reinforced what I when I, you know, Babylon a little bit about what I you know how I don't like Dual Clutch transmissions. This is a good Dual Clutch it's well behaved most of the time. But what gets all of them is that low speed stuff where you're maneuvering in a parking lot or like, you know, backing into, you know, parallel parking or backing into the driveway or whatever. There's just that that low speed delay as it's figured out clutch engagement without nuking the questions that I prefer regular automatic in those situations, so just more positive. But yeah, that's I didn't drive it enough to say much more so

Sam Abuelsamid  24:16  
Well, speaking speaking of Hyundai and dual clutches, I think Rebecca was, I think it was you had somebody that asked you on Twitter earlier this week about that, you know, whether they're whether the wet clutches are dry clutches, and up until now, all of Hyundai's dual clutches they've had, they've had two Dual Clutch transmissions, a six speed that they used initially and it also is still used on the ionic and a Kia Nero hybrids and then a seven speed which is what they use with the 1.6 turbo in various applications. first launched a few years back on a sonata Eco, and they've they've had it on some of the more sporting variants, you know, with 200 100 95 in between 175 and 200 horsepower, those are all dry clutch transmissions, every single one of them. The they have a new dual clutch transmission coming out later this year. That's going into the velociter and, and the Sonata end line, and that one is going that's an eight speed and that's going to be their first wet clutch transmission.

Rebecca Lindland  25:24  
And can you explain the differences for some of our listeners, please?

Sam Abuelsamid  25:27  
Yeah, so basically, you know, the clutch pack, you know, you've got two clutches that operate in parallel and switch off one one opens up the other while the other one engages and they switch back and forth. Because a dual clutch transmission, you can think of it basically kind of like two manual transmissions running in parallel and the gears alternate. So one, one set will have the odd gear so 1357 and then and then the other one will have 2468 and the clutches engage and disengage each of those sets of gears. The clutches themselves on a dry clutch, you know, it's like an a manual transmission where, you know, there's there's no fluid around the clutch, and those tend to be in many cases they have their they have been a little bit rougher in operation but they're also more efficient and lighter

Dan Roth  26:23  
and they prefer an operation to because they don't have that fluid right to observe right? Yeah. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  26:29  
right and then the the wet clutch, which is what Volkswagen Group has typically used all their DSG and S tronic transmissions, those are all wet clutch transmissions. And so they have a hydraulic fluid that the clutches sit you know, are basically encased in, you know, they sit in a in a clutch in a fluid chamber. And so that makes the operation a little bit smoother, but it also adds a little more drag. It's not quite as efficient. You know, but but they are a little quieter and that's what you find. On VW and Audi's and others, other VW products. The probably the prime example of a bad driver is the the transmission that Ford used for a number of years on the Fiesta and the focus. And, you know, they're still trying to deal with the aftermath of that, you know, the powershift transmission was a dry dual clutch. And it was

Dan Roth  27:26  
terrible. I hated that thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:28  
Yeah, it was it was not good. That Sunday, and that's Hyundai Motor Group and dual clutch transmission.

Rebecca Lindland  27:35  
Yeah. I would have done I would have done that. But you know, my explanation would have gone over everyone's head. So thank you.

Dan Roth  27:40  
No, that's, that's fine. We can we can bring it down to the masses.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:45  
That's what I'm here for.

Rebecca Lindland  27:49  
I drove it last year. I and and one of the things that I was thinking about when I was driving around, it's just such a good it's just a good solid little vehicle. You No, it's $30,000 the one I had was 30,000 that was the ultimate and I just felt like this is a good example of a vehicle that you know you you debate about whether you're going to buy a new or used it starts at 21,000 I wouldn't get that one I would go up a little bit but you know, there's a lot of good features in it. There's, you know, advanced safety controls in it and everything but the base model and there's good you know, pretty good visibility even though you're sitting down lower, and it's more like driving a car than an SUV but I feel like it's a good compromise between for somebody that wants a little bit extra storage, but doesn't necessarily want a traditional tall or SUV.

Dan Roth  28:40  
Yeah, is the thing the sort of one criticism I guess I would offer about it isn't really even fair because it's the tight back seat, and it's not a big car, so it's not supposed to have an enormous backseat as it's roomy.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:55  
Yeah, if you need something with more backseat room, you know, there are other options. You From the Hyundai Motor Group, you know you've got the the Tucson, you know, which is a quite a bit larger, you know, interior space and also even the Niro on the kids side and now the south coast.

Rebecca Lindland  29:13  
I mean, I feel like you know, the way I describe it is it's it's a fine it's a four passenger or five good friends. Right?

Dan Roth  29:20  
It's not a bad way to look at it.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:23  
You know, as long as your your two friends that are sitting in the backseat, you know, are not particularly tall stature.

Rebecca Lindland  29:30  
Exactly. You're not going to take your rugby team with this.

Dan Roth  29:35  
Let's keep it rolling. Sam, the Toyota rav4 hybrid, yet the limited of it. That's a pretty nice vehicle. Actually.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:44  
It is. Yeah. You know, so I actually, we talked about it before I briefly had a rav4 hybrid Last summer I think in about June or July, just for like a day and a half. Because I was having an issue with it and so Toyota came and picked it up to take it off to diagnose it and left me with I think a Camry or Avalon or something. But the you know the issue I had at the time was with

with Android Auto, you know, I plugged in my phone, set it all up and I because I had a meeting over your drive shop Anyway, you know, I stopped off at their shop and swap the car I had for the rav4 plugged in my phone went to put in the directions for the location of my appointment. And as I was pulling out of the parking lot, the whole infotainment system crashed and rebooted and came back up. Android Auto restarted automatically and then about 90 seconds later, that process repeated. And it continued to do that for the next several minutes until I finally pulled over and said unplug my phone and just stuck my phone in the cupholder

pulled up Google Maps on it to give me the voice prompts for the directions for where to go. And, you know, when I got home, like, played around with it some more and it continued to do that, you know, as every time I plug the phone in, it continued, continue rebooting the system, whatever, you know, they couldn't find an issue with it. They tried it. Apparently it had it was some court with my particular phone, which is a Google Pixel three because they tried it with other Android phones and it didn't cause a problem on that particular vehicle. But sometime between then and now, there has been a software update to the system because I was doing it with the exact same phone and it worked flawlessly this time. So that out of the way, you know, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay both both work now on the rav4 No, no issues at all, which is good because the stock Toyota and tune interfaces Not good, not great. Not good. It's bad.

Rebecca Lindland  31:59  
Let's just call it what it is.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:01  
It's okay. It's bad.

Dan Roth  32:06  
Because they sell so many cars, and you think they have the money and the expertise and the will to develop something good in their system, and Honda to just who

Rebecca Lindland  32:15  
does these things bad? Who does these? That's what I want to know.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:20  
I don't know.

Dan Roth  32:21  
But anyway,

Sam Abuelsamid  32:23  
aside from that, though, the rest of the vehicles were actually really nice. I

Dan Roth  32:27  
really liked the rav4

Sam Abuelsamid  32:29  
Yeah, I mean, I like the design of the the current generation rav4, which came out a lot about a year and a half ago. And, you know, it's got that kind of nice, chunky, you know, blocky, you know, kind of rugged look to it, which I think is pretty cool. And it's, you know, in a lot of ways, it's similar to the previous generation, Highlander, you know, which also has that kind of chunky look to it very much, you know, looking more like an SUV. And, you know, for the new Highlander, they've just launched the They've got away from that look to smoother, more curving look to it, which was

Dan Roth  33:06  
to say that the new Highlander every time I see it, I have to do a double take and make sure that I'm looking at a Highlander not a rav4 which is, yeah, it's fine if the family Look, I guess, is is a good thing. But yeah, it's definitely softened up a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:19  
Yeah. But, you know, I like the look of the rav4. You know, the, what's one interesting choice that Toyota made this time around with this generation of rav4 hybrid, is that it's only available with all wheel drive. In the past, really optional. Yeah. So there's, there's you right now you cannot get a front wheel drive rav4 hybrid. But unlike the Ford Escape Hybrid, which you can get is front wheel drive or all wheel drive. On the on the escape the all wheel drive version has a traditional mechanical system to drive you know, so there's a drive shaft down the middle and drives the rear axle. Mechanically, the rav4 uses has an electric motor on the rear axle. So it's an electronic, it's an electric on demand all wheel drive system. So there is no drive shaft down the tunnel. As far as cargo space, the batteries, you know, stuffed underneath the rear seat. And so there's no impact on cargo space having the hybrid. I I'll be curious to see, you know, sometime later this summer, maybe in the fall now, when they launched the rav4 prime, which is the plug in hybrid version, which is going to have a significantly larger battery. You know how that impacts you know, from the Auto Show, taking a quick look at it, it was hard to tell, but it's respectable, you know, you lose some of the cargo space because there's some, you know, in the rav4 in the hybrid, under the roof, you got a flat rear cargo area and lift it up and there's some cavities under there where you can store it. You know, various things like if you've got wet stuff from the beach or things like that, you can store that stuff underneath there, or just, you know, just to stores put away stuff that you want to keep hidden from view. You know, overall, you know, I think I think it's a good size, it drives really well. It's got decent performance, you know, 219 total horsepower between the electric motors and the the engine. It's the same basic drive train that's actually in the new Highlander hybrid. So the Highlander, the new Highlander, they went previous gen Heil, the previous Highlander hybrids, all used a V six with the hybrid. This for the new one, they've gone down to the 2.4 liter, four cylinder 2.5 liter four cylinder, which is the same powertrain that's in this vehicle, in the RAF. You know, and even with that, you know, pretty, pretty impressive amount of power. It's rated at 40 miles per gallon overall, which is pretty impressive. You know, even with all wheel drive, you

Rebecca Lindland  35:58  
know, it's fantastic.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:00  
Yeah, you know, it's it's the most, it's the most efficient. Have any of the compact crossover hybrids? I think? I think the new h CRV hybrid is just about the same I think it's also 40 combined, but it's only front wheel drive. It's not all wheel drive.

Rebecca Lindland  36:17  
I mean, no, you know, when you think about 40 miles per gallon, what ugly cars you used to have to drive to get back?

Sam Abuelsamid  36:26  
Well, not not just ugly, but also

Rebecca Lindland  36:28  
you could

Sam Abuelsamid  36:29  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there were also very small, right, you could not get you know, a vehicle the size I mean, you can you can carry five, five adults comfortably in the RAF, you know, and and still have room in the back for cargo and everything. So, you know, now you have something that is a very practical family car, you know, or you know, to carry your friends around. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's it's still very usable.

Rebecca Lindland  36:55  
So does it does on the four wheel drive, I'm curious about that or all wheel drive does it And I know you talked about the axles. So does it go into two wheel mode and all or what's that situation? Like? It's just always in. Okay, so it's on demand.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:10  
So it's wheel slip. Alright. Yeah. So, you know, and when you're just driving down, you know, pay it, you know, drive a dry paved road. Yeah. It'll just be pulling with the front wheels. Okay, then if you start to get some slip on the front wheels, then it'll send some juice to the rear rear motor.

Rebecca Lindland  37:27  
Right. Okay, so it has like a torque vectoring kind of system or?

Sam Abuelsamid  37:30  
Well, it's just that idea. Yeah, that's sort of sort of torque vectoring. I mean, it's just, you know, distributing, distributing some of the torque front to rear just just as any contemporary all wheel drive system does, right. Yeah, that and that's kind of the distinction between all wheel drive and four wheel drive, four wheel drives a system where it's continuously splitting the power between front and rear, you know, at a fixed ratio, and it's just always there. Whereas all wheel drive, you know, it's it's constantly varying the the torque distribution front to rear,

Rebecca Lindland  38:05  
right. Yeah, no, that's interesting. I mean, and that fuel economy really is I think we sometimes take those kinds of things for granted. But that's a really, if you can get 40 miles per gallon, do you know what you averaged?

Sam Abuelsamid  38:18  
It was about 3839.

Rebecca Lindland  38:20  
Wow. And you weren't hypermiling you're trying to

Sam Abuelsamid  38:23  
No. Thank you just driving. Yeah, just normal driving, you know, yeah, run some errands, you know, and then just went and drove around for a while. You know, you talked earlier about, you know, driving around Greenwich, you know, over the last couple of weeks while we've been stuck at home. Yeah, I think, you know, I, you know, at least you know, a couple times a week, I'll just go out and just drive around. Yeah, you know, and as long as I'm just, you know, I get in the vehicle and drive around and I'm not getting out and interacting with anybody. Right, you know, sitting at home, you know, it's exactly my Anybody else? Yeah. And in fact, I've been doing that over the last couple of days with with the vehicle talk about next week, which is the Audi e Tron. In the midst of doing a range test on the E Tron see how many miles right out of a charge? Yeah. So over the last couple of days, I've gone out and driven about 50 miles a day. And so I'm about 100 miles on the current charge, and, you know, still sitting at about 57% battery stay an hour. So I think I'm on pace to hit about 200 probably about 230 miles. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's, you know, it's significantly better than what the EPA rating is, but that's, we'll talk about that next week. But they, you know, the RAV, you know, if you're looking for, you know, a compact crossover, you know, room for five, that is really fuel efficient, of course, you know, with gas at, you know, $1 70 a gallon right now. And given everything else that's going on crazy. Yeah, you fuel efficiency may not Be on the top, if it is

Dan Roth  40:02  
self sufficiency is and the more you can stretch each gallon of fuel, the less you have to stop and fill up. Which is a difference and does it feel a little weird and like doing acrobatics without a net when you go out now you're just like, man, if I get in an accident, there's gonna be a problem. Like it's, I don't know, maybe I'm freaking out quietly, not actually acknowledging it.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:30  
Yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not I'm not taking any undue risks. Yes, but

Dan Roth  40:39  
the rav4 is it's one of those vehicles that everybody loves to hate. And then just this iteration of it is a real kind of masterclass in why it sells so well.

Rebecca Lindland  40:51  
Wait, why do you think everyone lives?

Dan Roth  40:54  
And well,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:56  
you know, I think I think it was yes.

Dan Roth  41:00  
So that's that's, I guess,

Sam Abuelsamid  41:01  
consumers Just

Dan Roth  41:02  
let me let me clarify because I don't want to be out there saying like, nobody's ever heard of this before. It's on the consumer side. We we'd love to hate in the camera too, right? We all love to use the camera as some sort of like example of, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  41:19  
it's an

Rebecca Lindland  41:20  
appliance. Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:22  
But that's good. That's what most people want. And there's absolutely nothing wrong

Dan Roth  41:26  
even at that, you know, the latest crop of Toyota's have been actually from an enthusiast perspective, not bad to drive they dynamically manically before they were a mess. I talked last week about whatever car was having greasy handling and so it's the same thing they just they were mushy and not sharp and just it it part of why we didn't like them in the past was like they felt crappy to drive. These feel good to drive and they don't give anything up to do that. You get all the you know The sort of well thought out storage and other nice features but they also go down the road like the the, you know, as if the people who's tuned the steering spoke to the people who did the brakes and and the suspension as well, which wasn't always the case, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid  42:18  
Yeah. Well, you know and and the last two years The rav4 has been the number one selling Toyota brand vehicle in North America. Last year in the US. They sold 448,000 wraps.

Dan Roth  42:31  
It does everything. Well. It's like, Yes, I understand. It's a crossover kind of SUV kind of thing, but it's a wagon, and it does everything well.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:43  
And, you know, By comparison, the Camry they sold 337,000 last year. So it's 100. And that's a it's 110,000 more than the Camry and 25% of the revs that they sold in the US last year. Were Hybrid's

Dan Roth  43:00  
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:02  
Yeah, that 20% take rate on the high route. And in Europe, the the rav4 hybrid accounted for something like 54% of sales rep for sales in Europe last year.

Unknown Speaker  43:14  
Wow. So that's

Rebecca Lindland  43:15  
amazing. But but that's as you said, though, most people not enthusiasts, not amongst our colleagues. It's it's an appliance and that's okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:26  
Yeah, they want they want something nice. Yeah, they want something that's reliable that's going to start every single time you go out there, you know that is going to run for years and years and years and not give you any hassle and on the off chance that something does break and needs to be fixed. You can take it to a dealer almost anywhere and have it fixed more often than not the same day. You know, even if you get into a fender bender, you know, you can get body parts and you know, a day or two that horse you know you're not waiting six months for for parts to repair the thing. If something goes wrong, you know, not not that I would name any brand that does that. But, you know, it's, it's, it's there when you need it, you know, it gets you where you need to go every single time.

Rebecca Lindland  44:13  
Absolutely. And when you think about the vehicle that you had with all wheel drive 40 miles per gallon, I mean, that's just a fantastic, that's and what was the price point on it?

Sam Abuelsamid  44:24  
So this was the limited you know, which is the basically loaded and all together including including delivery, which was only 1100 and $20 on this one came to $41,235

Rebecca Lindland  44:39  
so that's me that's a good amount of money.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:41  
Yeah, man. But, you know, again, you know, this has all the all the options on it, you know, but even the base rav4 you know, Toyota is now including, you know, a lot of Driver Assist features, you know, keep assist and or collision, warning, pedestrian detection, all that stuff is standard equipment now on almost everything. That bill. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, you're still getting a lot of features, you know, even at $25,000. You know, this the starting price, right, sorry. 28 28,000.

Rebecca Lindland  45:11  
Yeah, and that's the thing and you're getting a nice, you know, this is a vehicle and when we talked earlier about resale value, you're certainly going to get that vehicle is going to hold its its resale value as well. Oh, you know, Toyota's Honda's those kinds of vehicles. And so, you know, when we think about, you know, which vehicle that you purchase, it's really important to consider all those factors. Now, if you're somebody that keeps your car for 10 or 11 years, it's not going to be as important. But if you're somebody that that even leasing, resale value impacts leasing, because you, you're basically paying off the depreciation. And then also, of course, if you keep your vehicles even five to six years, you're really going to, you know, there's a really good chance that you're going to depend upon that resale value to purchase your next vehicle. And so you got right

Sam Abuelsamid  45:59  
But if you are one of those people like us, you know that keep your cars for 10 or 10 or 11 years, you know that reliability that durability is even more important, you know, the fact that once you pay off that car loan, basically the only thing you're going to spend money on is, you know, whatever gas you put into it, which in the case of this thing is not going to be that much. You know, and insurance and, you know, oil changes, maybe once a year.

Rebecca Lindland  46:25  
Yeah, no, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  46:36  
Yeah. And that's, that's something that doesn't happen very often with Toyota's, they don't explode very often.

Unknown Speaker  46:43  
Not very often. Yeah,

Dan Roth  47:18  
so for good reason, they tend to be durable. And that's really what we're talking about, I guess is is durability you know, and I've seen that with the Jeep like once it's now that it's, it's got 130,000 miles on it. Now it's starting to have some of those things that just fail from old age. And so you have to you have to account for that but it's it's not quite at the end of its payments it either so I'm anticipating that there's going to be another whack You know, when when the payments and I as an owner, I really like the cars that just, you pay them off. They're not designed to just get through that period without any trouble and then just completely screwed the people who want to keep them going and not bring another car into the world, which really, completely backward from a car enthusiast perspective, but you look at what BMW does, right? They change their their service recommendations, but especially when they tilted heavily toward leasing, they moved all of the the services out past, you know, 50,000 miles or like, yeah, basically for the first 50,000 miles, it's nothing gas tires, oil, no problem. Because they know that, generally, you're not gonna have any problem with any car, you know, they've been engineered well enough that

Sam Abuelsamid  48:38  
you would certainly hope that you wouldn't have a problem, you know, those first 4050,

Dan Roth  48:42  
right. So they can differ a lot of that stuff. And what happens is that that puts a little extra wear on things. And because nobody's been in there poking around, may not have found something that would have been easy to fix. Now, it's a little more costly. And so I realized this sounds like a conspiracy theory. So I'm gonna back off a little bit You know, customer preferences are they want the thing to be trouble free, especially while they're paying a lot of money for it. And then once it goes to the secondary market, the cars that do well there, it's really telling the you can sell a very old Corolla you can sell a 20 year old Corolla for like two grand, no problem, it'll go like immediately, which is amazing to me. Cars are so old, but they're just the dirt when they're popular.

Rebecca Lindland  49:30  
While we're while we're talking about older vehicles, I do have a death in the family to report. My cousin's, I think 2008 Honda Odyssey that I talked about at home No, back in February.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:43  
finally give up the

Rebecca Lindland  49:43  
ghost did the engine seized and she had to flatbed it. I know. It was tragic. That's a bummer. I know it's gonna happen last week

Dan Roth  49:54  
is probably not how much money you can

Rebecca Lindland  49:59  
sell Yes, rest in peace to the blueberries the students. Well, anyway,

Sam Abuelsamid  50:06  
one last note on the on the rav4. I mentioned you know, the driver assists, you know that our standard, you know, on the rav4. And this is on all fours both gas and hybrid versions, they have the Toyota Safety Sense 2.0 package a standard equipment, and that includes pre collision system with pedestrian detection, Lane Departure alert with steering assist, lane tracing assist, which is basically a lane centering system, auto high beams, full range, dynamic radar cruise control, so, adaptive cruise control, which goes you know, to brings the car to a full stop when you're, you know, and stop and go traffic and roadside assist, you know, so the cameras reading the road signs and it'll flash it up, you know, on the instrument cluster in front of you, you know, whatever the speed limit is or, you know, other other alerts, it'll show that on the instrument cluster. So, you know, if you're driving somewhere unfamiliar, you're not quite sure what the speed limit is, don't worry, the system captured that and it's shutting you can see it all the time, it's gonna report back.

Dan Roth  51:07  
So central command that you're exceeding the speed limit.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:11  
I was I wasn't gonna get into that you're

Rebecca Lindland  51:15  
speaking.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:17  
So you know, even even on that base $28,000 hybrid, you know, you're still getting all that stuff and you know a lot of other a lot of other features as well. So it's, you know, it's it's actually it's a really good value. That's why they win. That's why they that's, that's why they keep selling. That's why the 450,000 people you're buying

Dan Roth  51:36  
Yeah, and and, and the sort of dichotomy was always like, well the Honda's gonna drive a little better it's gonna you're gonna have steering field and, and actual sort of like a little bit of sporty spirit to it where the rav4 is going to be a lot more numb. I don't know that that's still quite as wide a golf. It's probably still true, but the toilet has done a pretty good job of putting stuff Some life back into its cars in the last few years so I've been impressed with them.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:06  
We were talking a little bit about, you know, driving around, you know, with all these lockdowns, one group that's not driving around is racecar drivers, you know, they've been all the races have been canceled, you know, for the past month and and pretty much will be through at least into June. You know, they just announced this week that the Indy 500 has been rescheduled from Memorial Day weekend to late August. The 24 hours a month has moved from mid June to mid September. You know, most of the other races have been canceled. But that doesn't mean there's no competition to watch. You just can't watch it at the track. Have you guys ever watched any erasing or any eSports

Rebecca Lindland  52:52  
what in two? Well, the erasing

Sam Abuelsamid  52:55  
well not not electric racing. No,

Rebecca Lindland  52:58  
like oh you mean like eSports like Online eSports Yeah. Do you know if there's actually there was two documentaries. This doesn't help. The current situation. There's two documentaries on on Delta

Dan Roth  53:11  
that talked about this that I watched one day. It's fascinating. It's really popular. I mean, I know that there's a company up here in Massachusetts called hive racing. It's a really big player in eSports.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:22  
Yeah, all that's who most of the big series are teaming up with is iracing Indy cars working with iracing, emsa. NASCAR, they're all they've all partnered with iracing to put races online, they're taking the drivers,

Rebecca Lindland  53:36  
right. And video games. are they putting the drivers in front of video games essentially?

Sam Abuelsamid  53:41  
Well, what? Yeah, basically, you know, iracing has a platform, you know, that's designed for, you know, watching online Normally, you know, there's a lot of, you know, just people that participate, you know, there's racers, not professional racecar drivers for the most part. Other you know, Sim racers, right participate in in the eye Racing League in various classes, right and using their, you know, the they have their nice high end, you know, driving simulator rigs and of course, all the race teams have, you know, have these sim rigs and you've seen the one that Honda trots around to their program. Yeah, well, when you know when when hot when Honda's not doing not doing one of their drive programs or media drive programs, you know that sim I believe that sim is actually usually sitting in sages office in Torrance. Yes,

Rebecca Lindland  54:36  
I believe it is as well and

Sam Abuelsamid  54:38  
sound looks like he spends a lot of time with it. You know, and you know this this is a high end driving sim you know, so you sit in it you know, it's got a steering wheel it looks like the ones that are in the race cars, three screens set up in front of you pedal full pedals with you know force feedback actuators on the steering on the on the seat, you know, there's a full you know, four point race harness on there. So you feel the lateral longitudinal and braking forces as you're driving around. And so last weekend in lieu of the 12 Hours of Sebring, which is now going to be in November, I think, assuming things get back to normal. They emsa held their first iracing Super Sebring super Saturday Sebring race. And so they had 50 drivers, most of the full time emsa drivers, plus a bunch of the iracing. Veterans and you know, they held a 90 minute race online you can you can watch the replay, and it was it was pretty fascinating to watch. I watched most of it, you know, because they have the same, the same commentators that do radio, Oman's the radio, Oman's online feed on hi Dorf and the rest of the you know, a lot of the same year the same driver names you know, and you know, the video is great. I mean it actually is Looks,

Dan Roth  56:01  
you know, he did it like that they basically did it like a live broadcast. So it's like, yeah, it's not, it's not hard to replicate that experience of a life, right, you know, your video feed is coming from iracing instead of from the track. But otherwise, like, yeah, you know, it's got music and graphics, and I don't know, it's impressive to look at. Yeah, um, it's, it just sort of take the car is actually out of the equation, though, right, like, or does it?

Sam Abuelsamid  56:32  
Not entirely, because the, the models they have of the cars in the iracing platform, you know, they're they're very sophisticated simulation models, you know, and so, they, you know, they have, they exhibit a lot of the same behavior, you know, they try to, you know, because, you know, in a lot of cases, you know, the teams use these same simulation platforms, you know, for testing, you know, during, you know, in between races. You know, the drivers will go into the shop, when they're not out on the track, they will go on the shop. And, you know, they will practice, you know, they'll use the simulator platform to learn the tracks, you know, and actually to try out different setups. So I mean, you can go in to the, you know, these models are pretty high end models, you know, they can change spring rates and dampers and the arrow and replicate the way that you know, they've got a high degree of fidelity, you know, for how the car is actually going to behave on the track. And so the the drivers actually use this stuff to practice and to, to try out different setups, you know, they work with their engineers, and, you know, they had the teams had their engineers working with the drivers, you know, on the on iracing, you know, to change their car setups and everything you change the tires and various other settings to get the cars behaving the way they want.

Dan Roth  57:52  
Yeah, I think it's, it's really making the best of a strange situation and it gives people something to watch and weren't ratings. Pretty good, actually for

Sam Abuelsamid  58:02  
Yeah. Apparently the, the ratings for the Sebring race were, were better than for any of the actual real races. Just like that's actually better, but not just better than emsa, which is not terribly surprising, but also better than most of the real NASCAR races. So they're now looking at at actually broadcasting these not just on YouTube and Twitch, but also on TV, like on Fox Sports net, and on NBC. I mean,

Dan Roth  58:39  
if you can do racing this way, without the expense of actually going to the track, it's not that there's no expense involved.

Rebecca Lindland  58:50  
And the injury for this is a no no,

Dan Roth  58:53  
I think it extends the season in some way right like you can still have racing in the the The winter. And you don't have to fly around. It reduces the carbon footprint and all those logistics. It's a different kind of racing. But it's just like you said, Tim, it's fascinating, just to see how, how popular it was. And I think part of it too, is like people just want to check it out and see what it is.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:16  
Yeah, we'll see. It'll be interesting to see how the ratings hold up over the next couple of months. But Indy, Indy cars doing their opening race this afternoon, as we record this on Saturday morning, four o'clock this afternoon. They'll be racing at virtual Watkins Glen, which is which is gonna be interesting to watch. And then tomorrow, there's a NASCAR race.

Rebecca Lindland  59:38  
That's awesome. So I don't know if I've told this story before. So I apologize if I have but so I was talking when I lived in Saudi. I was talking to this guy that from the UK, and we were talking one time about Laguna Seca. And he was describing the track in really good detail, and I was describing the track in really good detail as well. Finally, I

Sam Abuelsamid  59:59  
looked at drove in there and he has Oh, and

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:01  
I was like, how do you know this track? So, like video games, how do you know it? I was like, cuz I bet. But it was hilarious to me and it but it's a testament to you know, just how realistic these simulators are. I mean, it's crazy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:18  
Ya know, it's phenomenal. I mean, drive driving that simulator that, you know, the Honda one, you know, places like Road America. And it's funny, I think, a couple years ago, I was at a Honda event just a couple of weeks after, I think was the the Honda Insight program in Minneapolis. And it was just a couple weeks after going to Road America for the mamas spring rally. And then I was driving an Indy car on Road America, you know, that same track so that the track was still fresh in my mind. And it was amazing how, how close it was, you know how much it was like driving on the track. That's really, although obviously the behavior of an Indy car is really radically different from the behavior you know, an insight of an insider or any of the other cars we drove, you know at Road America

Dan Roth  1:01:08  
earlier. Yeah, I if I sit down from that, I'm sure I have this addictive thing for for video games so I gotta be careful. I played so many hours of GoldenEye back in college it's just yeah

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:23  
well, the the only two games I play now I play Real Racing three on my phone all the time. You know, I play you know, do a few races every day. And then on the PlayStation four, play Gran Turismo, usually for about a half hour every evening.

Dan Roth  1:01:38  
My my 11 year old really likes Need for Speed Most Wanted, I think mostly because he likes to drive around a crash into stuff and get chased by the cops.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:49  
I prefer the games we're driving on a real track rather than the open world kind of games like Need for Speed or

Dan Roth  1:01:55  
Yeah, yeah. And I think I do as well like I like the missions and stuff. And I think what he likes is that just free driving and it's going everywhere. So now you have to do the thing and it was amazing. We pulled out of storage the, I think an original PlayStation, I think had I think it had Gran Turismo, and I think that's what he was playing but Jake from like 99 or 2000, or whenever and it still holds up, man. It's a graphics. They're not great, but that was an impressive system back in the days.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:29  
Yeah, I mean, for the for the time it was

Dan Roth  1:02:32  
here. I'll be curious to see how racing does. I mean, there's still no substitute for going to the track and when we're all able to I think that'll be like a breath of fresh air as well. But he bases Yeah, literally, it's a cool development. And I you know, be it'll be amazing when some of the first erasing stars because there's already been people have gone from erasing to actual racing, but when some of the Stars really, really start to move. And it just becomes racing, then there's no prefix that that would be cool to see.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:08  
Yeah, let me in Sony's had their their GT Academy program for several years. And there was forget who it was now one of the one of the drivers from you know that one, you know, a GT Academy challenge, you know, went on to race professionally for Toyota. And they're there. Yeah, lm It's awesome.

Dan Roth  1:03:29  
I'd like to play video games and get picked up for a race car driving Canada seems pretty good to me.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:36  
Yeah, I suspect that we're all too old

Dan Roth  1:03:38  
for that. Anything I actually want to do too old to design cars. That's

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:44  
if if Dan is too old, Sam and I are definitely at the run. I guess

Dan Roth  1:03:48  
maybe you have a younger spirit, though. Remember? Like I'm mentally about 85

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:53  
sure you were you're born old?

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:55  
Yeah. Yes. As I said when he received that totally Wow, you read much younger, like oh, Interesting I don't think she meant literally books I think she meant like you know my behaviors 100% I'm owning that

Unknown Speaker  1:04:13  
all right well let's let's

Dan Roth  1:04:18  
jump on Sam the your your company Navigant research does an AV they do multiple leaderboards but you do an AV leaderboard every year and so this is out now and it's it's in our topic list to discuss tell us sort of like what you what you do to put this together and and what you're seeing this year that's a little different than obviously don't give away the store because if people really want it, they can go buy it, but you know, what's what's that about?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:44  
So the the AV, you know, the automated driving leaderboard report is is one that we've been putting out on an annual basis for the last. This is the sixth edition. We've done now, fifth or sixth edition. And you know, it's it's awesome. And I've been somewhat controversial, because what we do is, you know, we take a look at the the leading companies in in various sectors and we do this across the different things that we research it at Navigant, you know, so, you know, things like solar providers and you know, a lot of stuff that's maybe not quite as interesting to the general audience as this particular one. But we're not just looking at the the core technology of how do you make a car go from point A to point B without a human driver? You know, we're looking at, you know, who's which companies are best positioned to actually commercialize the technology. And so, you know, we're looking at things like, you know, the technology, obviously, but what is the company's vision, their plan for what they want to achieve with this, you know, where their partners, what are their product capabilities, their production capabilities, you know, what's the go to market strategy, and, you know, score the score each of the companies on each of 10 different had 10 different criteria, and then add it all up. And, you know, this year again, way mo came out on top as that as they did last year, but, you know, they weren't always at the top even though they were, you know, they've long been probably the the overall technology leader. You know, in the past, they didn't always have you know, they, you know, since they don't make cars, you know, they they didn't have this before they had partnerships with Fiat Chrysler now Jaguar Land Rover, they, you know, they didn't necessarily have a plan for how they were going to bring it bring this stuff to market. You know, so they've got partnerships with with Avis and auto nation to service their fleet and Walmart and a bunch of other companies to use the vehicles. So it's been an interesting process every year, you know, going through figuring out which of the companies that I want to include in this, you know, and I added a couple of new companies this year dropped off a couple of companies. And one of the things that's always controversial is that Tesla usually ends up somewhere near the bottom. Have the list. How are you? I know. But, you know, based on the way that we do this thing, you know, I think that it's there legitimately down at the bottom of the list, you know, because, well, first of all, you know, I, as I've said many times before, I don't think that their technology is actually good enough to do, you know, fully automated driving. But, you know, also last year, Ilan talked that their autonomy day about having a million Robo taxi capable vehicles on the road by the end of 2020. And while they may have a million vehicles that are capable of running whatever their full self driving system is, you know, that's not real. It's certainly not ever going to be a level five system that can go anywhere. It's always going to have to be geo fenced. They don't use high definition maps, and as Robo taxis. Their vehicles are just totally unsuitable to be Robo taxis is there? Well, no no details because You know, think think about, you know, for if you're going to have a vehicle, it's going to be a taxi without a human driver. Yes. What, what are some of the things you need that vehicle to be able to do?

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:12  
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:13  
Before it pulls away, yeah, after you drop off, somebody's got to make sure the doors are closed. You know, if you know, with a human driven cab or you know, Lyft or an Uber, you know, if you get out of the car, and you don't close the door properly, you don't latch the door, the driver can always get out and, you know, reach back behind, you know, pull the door shut, right, not upright, or, you know, if you have something, you know, luggage in the trunk, and you know, you don't latch the chocolate, no problem. You take any vehicle, the Tesla builds today, they don't have power doors, you know, well, except for a Model X, which they sort of sometimes work. He kinda, yeah, but you know, I mean, the model three, which is the bulk of their volume off of what they've built, you know, it's a very conventional Little sedan. And you know, so there, it's just not suited to being a robo taxi. This is why, you know, vehicles like the cruise origin are designed with power sliding doors. This is why waymo you know, chose to use Chrysler Pacifica is, you know, because you've got power sliding doors, you've got lots of room, easy for people to get in and out of the

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:19  
thing. Well, and you can reconfigure the cabin for a you know, for suitable as you say for use cases. Right, right. I mean, I think you know, Elon Musk is he is both a futurist, he's a dreamer. He is a somebody who does these extreme tweets. And guess I'm still talking about Elon Musk. And, you know, anybody with any kind of good judgment and common sense, you can't read that tweet. And think that that's realistic. It's, you see it and you think Think that's not going to happen. It's a laudable goal, it's good to have those kinds of reaches here the stretch, the infamous stretch goal that we all know and know and love from corporate speak. And I think, you know, I think that it's, it's you know, when you look at these kinds of technologies when you look at this really few really what is futuristic in terms of full penetration of the market to have all EBS, all level five, rather all level five ABS on the road, it's, we're so far away from that and we're so far away from making that a reality, even when it comes to just what we what we could put on the on the road today if the technology was available. But, you know, at the same time, when we especially now cuz when we look at what's going on now or we can't touch each other and you can't get near each other and all these different things. things, you know, having that some of that like the self cleaning car, the antibiotic, antibacterial materials that are going in, like, all those kinds of things, you know, pandemics like this actually could speed up investment. In making this more of a reality. I realized that we're far away from your the Navigant board that we're talking about this, that automated driving vehicles board, but it's still it's interesting, thinking about what are the opportunities that this pandemic creates?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:30  
Yeah, I think, you know, there's definitely some opportunities, I think, I actually think that the reality right now because of the the economic situation, you know, we are, you know, when, when the the pandemic, pandemic does subside, hopefully sometime in the next few months, we're still going to be left with a very big economic mess that is going to absolutely not, we're not going to have an instant recovery. You know, things are not going to be back to normal in September. You know, it's It's going to be probably multiple years before the Napoli automotive market recovers fully. You know, I think, you know, the forecast, we're working on an updated forecast right now. And it's probably going to be 2023 24, before the market gets back to where it was, you know, in 2019. And it might actually be much longer depending on the responses of, you know, certain levels of government, you know, in the in the next few weeks and months. You know, if if this if the situation gets worse, much worse, which it very well may, you know, we could be talking many years before we get a full economic recovery. And one of the impacts of that is going to be, you know, companies are going to have to be taking a look at what they're, what they're investing in, in the near term and the long term and making some very hard decisions on where they spend their r&d dollars. Sure. And, you know, given the reality that, you know, Robo taxi technology is simply not ready yet. And, you know, it's, we're gonna be into the mid 2020s even if things even if this pandemic hadn't happened, we'd be looking at, you know, 2024 25 before we start to see any significant volumes of Robo taxis anyway, real Robo taxis. And, you know, so you know, real, you know, real return on investment, you know, revenues is many years out from where we are today. And companies are going to have much more pressing priorities in the near term. And it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, through the remainder of this year and into next year, if a lot of companies start scaling back some of their investments, just because they just don't have the cash to spend on it. And and prioritizing it in other ways, where there's going to be more of a near term return So, but, you know, what you said about, you know, self cleaning vehicles is crucially important. I mean, you know, you and I last fall when we were at Magna, you know, for their technology day, you know, we saw, you know, different materials that they're working on different kinds of seat structures. You know, I also wrote a blog post last week for the Navigant research site on you know, Robo taxis needing to be able to disinfect themselves. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:29  
that was fantastic. I mean, it's so true. That's what maybe that's that's and both of those things, both the magnet International Day and your blog post every it it reinforces that need for this kind of disinfecting sort of system which is fascinating.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:47  
Yeah, I mean, you know, today you know, you can get you know, little disinfecting devices UV devices. Phone soap is one company makes them there's a few others that you know, basically a little box that you can stick your phone in and flashes it with UV.

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:02  
Yeah, so I actually got one of those. Oh did you? I did I don't know that it's working. I came it came yesterday and it lights up but if it's supposed to be flashing

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:16  
mine's not Oh no, it doesn't flash it's odd continuously

Dan Roth  1:15:20  
because there is so the UV stuff that you have to be careful with that like there's a specific amount of time it needs and intensity that it needs to. To to be exposed to so like for your phone right like you're talking about a box your phone and yeah, because

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:35  
that's usually got a timer. We've had I've had one in the past for you know the electric toothbrush and take the toothbrush head and and stick it in there. After you use it and you know, close the door and then the UV light comes on and it disinfects it

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:49  
and how can you tell

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:52  
that the light Nick? Yeah, the light. Right? Tip typically there's a window on there you know, you'll see the light come on the UV light Right, yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:16:00  
I can't tell it working. But anyway, we're off topic

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:04  
to the gods, but but I mean, it actually is a relevant topic because, you know, imagine, you know, in an environment like we're in today where, you know, you're supposed to be social distancing, you know, one of the things that, that, you know, we're dealing with, you know, we get car deliveries every week, you know, the companies that manage the the press fleets, you know, drive shop and navs, and I assume the guys doing it in your neck of the woods are doing this as well, Dan, is they've they've initiated new protocols, you know, for contactless deliveries. So what they're doing is, you know, in the past, you know, they would knock on the door, and over the keys, you'd sign the loan agreement, and you give them the keys to the other one. Now, what they're doing is asking us, you know, they'll give us a call when they're on their way. We leave the keys in the car that's being that they're picking up. They will bring bring the vehicle to us. They'll wipe it down with disinfectant wipes, leave the key inside there. So there's no direct contact between us right now.

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:02  
I actually started I wiped down the keys that I got yesterday.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:06  
Yeah, well, and you know, I, when I go out to put the keys in the car, I wipe it down, you know, you know, when I get out of the car before they get there, so it's already I've already disinfected the one they're picking up, and they're doing the same for the one they're dropping off. Now imagine, you know, Robo taxis, people getting in and out of these things all day long. You know, it, you know, if somebody's driving the vehicle, you know, if you've been in a vehicle, if you're driving a vehicle, and you've got a passenger has been coughing and hacking all over the place, you know, driver can make a decision, you know, go wipe down the backseat or, you know, whatever, whatever they might decide to do. But in an autonomous vehicle, who's going to do that? You know, you you have to assume that there's no real way to detect that. So, one of the things that I'm sure that the engineers and designers working on these purpose built a V's are thinking about now Or I hope they are, is how do we disinfect these things? I mean, they've already been working on things like antimicrobial coatings on the surfaces, you know, using silver nitrate, you know, in the coatings and the paint that they use and other coatings to kill kill bacteria. But, you know, that's not that doesn't do anything typically against viruses. So they need to be thinking about how to deal with that problem. Both for taxis and Robo taxis going forward, you know, so maybe, you know, you have a UV light that comes on, you know, and, and exposes the interior of the vehicle. You know, as soon as somebody gets out before somebody else gets in, you just, you know, do a disinfectant treatment on it. You know, I don't know what the solution is. But this this is something that that the industry needs to be thinking about going forward.

Dan Roth  1:18:54  
Okay, I mean, it's the same thing with with taxis and transit and, you know, those those kind of things. Things were there. They're not easy to keep clean. And especially in a time of heightened awareness and concern. those efforts maybe need to be adjusted and fine tuned as well. You know, you get a lot of a lot of autonomous cars out there, each one of those could be could be a disease vector. Oh, absolutely. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:23  
well, just as any other vehicle, you know, can be if people are getting in and out of it. And this is one of the reasons why most cities that have transit systems, there's been almost nobody riding them. And in recent weeks, you know, the New York subways are empty. In San Francisco, Bart actually just shut down their trains because there was so little use of their trains over the last three weeks. They just stopped the train services because nobody's nobody's using them. And, you know, this is a challenge that transit services are going to face going forward. You know, when when this does subside, and people can start going out again, are people going to trust Things are they gonna want to ride and buses and trains and subways anymore? And hopefully they will. Because I mean, it's it's an important means of getting around cities. But we've got to come up with some solutions for this.

Dan Roth  1:20:14  
Yeah, yeah. I still worry about the people who get the cars around and the people whose job it is to clean the transit systems and stuff like that. It's your job, you have to be exposed to the very nature of your job. So maybe technology will find a solution.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:30  
Yeah, maybe. Speaking of technology, you know, a lot of people working from home now for the first time over in recent weeks, and you know, a lot of people getting on video conferences with zoom or Skype or, you know, Microsoft Teams or any of these other services. And, you know, it's or, you know, if you've been watching some of the news broadcasts, you know, people are do various other shows that are on TV people broadcasting from their homes instead of from studios, you know, and you get to see what's what's behind them. And this is one of the things that I don't do when I do, you know, video interviews or video conferences is I don't do them. I don't, you don't get to see what's behind me. You know, I have a green screen setup here that I use, but, you know, certain systems like zoom, you know if you guys use them yet,

Dan Roth  1:21:30  
I have use zoom.

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:31  
No, but you see poor Jennifer,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:34  
Jennifer, who?

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:36  
Well, it was somebody was using zoom clearly for one of the first times and this poor girl actually went to the bathroom. It was trending on Twitter. And it was hashtag poor Jennifer. People said, Oh, that was mean, but it was pretty funny. I mean, you didn't really actually see her face. So you got that color.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:58  
Yeah, certainly. services like zoom in particular has the ability even even without a green screen to just do automatic background replacement for you it does a pretty decent job of it. But the question is what are you going to replace that background with? Well Audi the other day published some, some photos, some images that you can use as your background, or some of these services if you want, you know, instead of showing what your what your bedroom or your living room or your kitchen looks like, you know, so they published some some pretty nice photos of an Audi TT.

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:33  
Remember, I liked that it was fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:36  
Yeah, so it's, you know, it's, it's nice, nice little thing, you know, that you can use, you can download these for free. And they they said they're going to be periodically publishing new images on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, on the Audi channels there. So keep an eye out for those if you're looking for some, some background imagery, and there's lots of other stuff out there too. That that you can use. And actually going back to, you know, the erasing. One of the things that's been popping up a lot over the last week is car companies and racing teams and stuff, publishing, black and white line drawings of their their cars and race cars and everything that you can download and print out to use for coloring for the kids so they can have, you know, have something to occupy their time.

Dan Roth  1:23:26  
I'm holding out for the background that makes it look like I'm driving an nsurl ad.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:34  
I'll have I'll have to talk to Jacob Brown, I'm sure he can arrange that.

Dan Roth  1:23:38  
That would be excellent. The other problem is we use we I've mean I've used zoom, but for the company, we tend to use slack. The paid tier of slack, you can have calls right in it, which it's actually pretty good tool for that works quite well. But we also use WebEx which Don't think you can think you can swap you can make it blur but i don't i don't think you can actually key in a packer I don't know I haven't played with they all kind of suck in their own unique way.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:10  
Yeah. So let's finish off with a couple of listener questions that we got. This is one that's actually been in the queue for more than a month now. Sorry about that. Asha. This is from Pasha Nasir at love the show. Bring back a Steve for a cameo. On Mike. Okay, the question is, what's your view on ethics in automotive journalism? The traditional journalism landscape one might be offered freebies of all sorts ranging from event tickets to merchandise to trips, we would obviously decline them as any gifts from potential subjects or sources could sway coverage or taint the image of independence of the Fourth Estate. However, I hear several automotive journalists talk about how manufacturers give journalists thousands of dollars of free stuff out of giving away press kits with iPads included at a recent product launches one blatant Example. Or what what about travel and lodging? Does wheel bearings pay for to have its staff to fly to LA for the escalated reveal? Or is GM paying for it? Do most outlets take the free flight hotel? Or do they pay their own way to guarantee editorial independence? Seems we the listener don't really hear it either way? Or if it's disclosed, it's a relative footnote. I understand that journalism is an industry that has had more than a share of down since 2008. Not everyone can be Dan Neal, but a little clarity would be appreciated. Keep up the great work. Asha,

Dan Roth  1:25:31  
does it those are all good points.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:33  
Very, very good. points. Yes. Would you like to go first, Rebecca?

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:37  
Sure. So the Audi press launch with the iPads was nearly 10 years ago. As far as I know. I haven't gotten anything more than a leaking over

Unknown Speaker  1:25:51  
a leaking.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:53  
I don't I don't even I don't even remember. iPads. I know when they did when he did that. Cross Country mileage marathon in 2008. They, in the hotel rooms when we arrived they gave these little few remember the old netbook PCs? Yeah, these these things, you know, these were very cheap. These were like, hundred dollar, you know, little notebooks.

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:19  
Now they gave iPads. Okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:21  
well, that wouldn't surprise me,

Unknown Speaker  1:26:22  
you know, they gave us So, you know

Rebecca Lindland  1:26:28  
this is controversial. I understand why, personally and we do like, you know, when when, when Sam and I went to the Cadillac reveal, we were hosted. I you know, especially me now that I'm freelance, I certainly could not afford to cover my room and board and travel for that kind of event. I have. Yeah. You know, I and, you know, for I think the We we try as much as possible to be objective. And now I, you know, to be constructive, I think whenever we review vehicles, I mean, that's my approach. I will say that I have been blacklisted from a manufacturer, because they didn't like what I wrote. And that happened to me almost 10 years ago. And it was not fair, then it's not fair now. But that's, that's what happened to me and I continue to be blacklisted by them. And I think that, you know, for me, personally, I always try and be constructive. I always try and be objective. They are hosting. It's important to remember too, that when they're hosting these events, there's there's several dozen if not more than 100 people that go to these events. This is not exclusive to one or two people. I and and i think The journalist, what I also try and do is if if I have concerns, as as I'm at that event, I will talk to them and say, Can you just go over something with me whether it's the infotainment system, I had an issue with a vehicle that actually, I was, was the steering was terrible on it. And I thought, this can't be right. And I talked to one of the engineers, and she was like, Oh, my gosh, let's let me look at it. And it turned out that they had had issues with the steering, they thought that they had corrected all of them. And I just got the one that they didn't, and they took it out. Because it was it was a pre production, which is often what we drive as well. And, you know, they gave me a different one to drive and I actually drove three of them and they all drove better than that one. So if I hadn't talked to her at that, and rather just went with the idea, I'm just gonna annihilate them. You know, it's, it's, it's I wouldn't I wouldn't have been reporting it factually, because it's not that that steering is actually not available on the road today, and certainly not in pre production. So I think that we, I personally approach it and try to be as professional as possible, try and be as constructive as possible. Ask them questions, if I've got issues with the way something is behaving in a vehicle and kind of give them the benefit of the doubt, whether I'm staying in a five star hotel, on their dime or not. They're not doing it to bribe us. It may or may be some people are bribed by that. I feel like they're doing it. You know, it's a combination of representing the type of lifestyle that some of these people stay in. You know, if I'm going to be driving a Lexus, somebody is driving a brand new Lexus is not likely staying in a two or three star hotel. So they do that to kind of reflect the type of you know, this aspirational lifestyle. So, you know, we are definitely treated very well it is a bit of an anomaly I in today's world, but at the same time when you look at what influencers are paid to, they are both paid, they're compensated for their time, which we are not. So an influencer is compensated for their time and they get all of these perks simultaneously. That's a very that is not our situation. So I,

Dan Roth  1:30:36  
I definitely understand it as sort of a it's an access journalism kind of model like so. Yes, they will invite you they will often fly you out and they will put you up and feed you and give you the presentation, give you the car. It's an event that does a couple of It puts them in control of the situation of how the vehicle is presented and experienced. But there is that sort of seamy side of it, where I think it's important to say like, Oh, so and so flew us out, they put us up. I don't think it really detracts from the objectivity of the way a lot of us do it. We're professional car evaluators.

Unknown Speaker  1:31:32  
Or you know, like, right,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:33  
or we try to be

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:34  
Yeah, also like we're not you know, I we're not reviewing the hotel. We're not reviewing the food like, so there's,

Dan Roth  1:31:42  
but but I see how that can it can color the impression and definitely

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:47  
put you in a better frame of mind.

Dan Roth  1:31:49  
Yeah. So like that kind of thing. I would much prefer they just send the cars to us come up and like have a little presentation with us. But that's more expensive to do. Right now it's not even possible. So I understand the position that car companies are in there, it's PR and so they're, they're managing PR for their product launch. It's it's makes perfect sense. Um, the journalism side of it seems a little unclean and it kind of is, in some ways. I've never gotten something as extravagant as an iPad or and I've got the hand up thumb drives that usually have the press kit on them. You sometimes you get a hat,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:31  
or these days, mostly hats, water bottles, travel mugs. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:35  
And the water bottle at that is whatever.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:39  
So like those things are, you know, the press kit on a thumb drive is immediately useful. That's like they're giving you the tool to do your job. They're giving you the the photos, the pressure leases, the information, they're also giving you access to the people that are there at the event, which is really the biggest thing and I guess the reason why car shows are important now. It's one of the few times that we get to talk with, you know, engineers, designers, you know, various other executives, you know, that were involved in the process and, you know, ask them, you know, get the behind the scenes story of, well, to the degree that they could talk share that. But you know, to try to try to get a feel for you know, what drove, you know, the decisions that created this vehicle.

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:23  
And, and they get a chance to know us also, to understand the work that we do to understand our perspective. You know, I learned I learned a lot and they learn a lot about the relationship because it is we do have relationships with these there's these people there's no denying that

Dan Roth  1:33:40  
it was just like any other side of coverage. You know, you think the people in the political sphere if you think they don't have relationships with the people they cover, and I don't mean any other kind of relationship other than like a collegial kind of like professional relationship, right. They know each other and they they'll play ball the car companies at the same way Yeah, you have established yourself as somebody who, you know, you'll you'll call it out if it's a problem. You'll also, you know, the best thing you can do is if you're if you're driving a car in the event, or even if I get one as alone, and I notice Something's Weird, I talked to the person at the car company say, Hey, I'm noticing this thing is weird. Sometimes the answer is like, yeah, it's supposed to be like that. And then you can be like, Well, my opinion is they don't like it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:26  
Or other times. Yeah, or other times. It's like the situation I had with Android Auto, you know, in the rav4. Last summer, you know, where, you know, I noticed a problem like, you know, sent a note to the PR folks and said, Hey, is this something you've seen before? And, you know, in that case, they took the car back to investigate. And, and I've had other similar situations over the years where, you know, there's been some sort of issue, you know, where they'll take it back and check it out. And sometimes it's, it's a particular problem with that vehicle that needs to be corrected. Sometimes it's, you know, it's a more broad ranging problem like it was with the Raph you know, and that get that feedback goes back to the engineering teams and they correct it. So it's you know, and you know, certainly I have given plenty of negative reviews over the years on a lot of stuff. And you know, I to the best of my knowledge I've not been blacklisted by anybody you know, most companies are still pretty responsive to me. But you know, as Rebecca said, it's you know, we try to be professional about it, you know, and you know, when it comes to the travel portion of it, you know, what, you know, what we experience is very different from what you say an Instagram travel influencer.

Dan Roth  1:35:40  
Oh my goodness, the influencer scariest.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:42  
Yeah, for us. Yes, we often get to go off to various, you know, exotic locales, you know, stay in fancy hotels, but it's like, they fly us in, you know, we get in the afternoon, go to the hotel and go up to the hotel room. You have time to take a shower, do a little work. Have some dinner, drive all day, the next day, you know, and, you know, in some cases we might be out, you know, might be leaving the same day. It's not like we get to often hang around and sit on the beach or sit by the pool for an extended period of time. You know, it's, it's more often than not, it's in and out, you know, in at most two days, you know, most most, most of the time it's, at most two nights. You know, the day we arrived, the night after the the drive, and then we're usually out oftentimes very early the next morning, and

Dan Roth  1:36:34  
I think that part of this fat part of it, to me is kind of the nonsense. I hate that part of it, mostly because it's so much travel. It seems kind of pointless to a degree other than to frame the car in a particular setting. I don't see why they couldn't do that with the same level of control. It's certainly a different atmosphere. have people come to your us HQ? You know, like, like, it doesn't have to be BMW flying you to, you know, the Black Forest. Right? Like, they could have you come to New Jersey, which is not the same thing, I guess.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:16  
And sometimes that is what they do.

Dan Roth  1:37:19  
I don't I don't personally like those launch event things. I understand why they're there. But I do think that it, it can sort of put a thumb on the scale of impressions, but I think that they're gonna put thumb on the scale of impressions, no matter what program they've run, where they run it, that's, again, that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:39  
the job. That's the job of PR people and it's our job to try to cut through that and, you know, see through that, you know, take find what's relevant in there to the product and cut through the rest of it. Yeah, and this is why, you know, I, you know, when I write reviews, I never talk I never write about that stuff. You know, I think Focus on the product.

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:00  
I respect the question, I get it. And, you know, as another example, one of my closest friends is a doctor. And when she became a doctor nearly 25 years ago,

Dan Roth  1:38:10  
our health care market Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:12  
my gosh, all right. I mean, believe me, I remember, you know, I was the official friend outside the residency for these kids. And so I used to be able to go, I mean, some of their events were unbelievable, you know, and, and that's all stopped, and I get that, but there was also very, very distinct there was patterns of abuse there. I think that there are certainly people that may abuse these privileges that we have been given. And but I think that that's weeded out a little bit. Also, you know, there's there's that kind of Frank bacon profile you know, that that, that always it's a it's a fake, fake profile of somebody you know, that always demands the most ridiculous things on these press trips and always has, you know, the shrimp and and such. And I think that there's a little bit of calling each other out on that. The as we've all talked about, the influencer crowd is a whole different animal. It's a whole different animal. I think that that's just, that's, that's a different world.

Dan Roth  1:39:13  
Well, and and so there is this friction between automotive journalists and the influencers side of things. And it the automakers are kind of caught in the middle. Because they, at the end of the day, they want their message to get out. They want their product to be framed in a light that's going to help it sell and they're they're trying to find an increasingly slippery audience. So they're gonna do those things. They're going to spend the money where they think it can have an impact, it's their job to sell the cars. So understanding that, you know, it's our job to, to report I think fairly and from a basis of, of knowledge and experience with the competitive set so they have to lend us the money. So there's that level of access that we get there. Consumer Reports buys the cars most of the time. So there's another way to do it. What is consumer reports have that a lot of these publications that are really lifestyle publications, right, like Car and Driver road and track that I mean, they're owned by the same company now and the, the, the lifestyle side of their of Hearst. So they're not hardcore like they're not, you know, an engineering magazine. They're not. Again Consumer Reports was very data driven, analytical approach. There's somewhere in between, you know, their entertainment and with a side of sort of product evaluation. So it's it's really tough. We don't we don't newsrooms don't have budget to send people around anymore. Back in the day, you read about how you know PJ I work, pitch to story and get paid like three grand to Go do a thing for a one for a single stick. It's like yeah, that's

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:04  
all and again, we don't get compensated for our time when we are on these trips. That I think is one of the major differences between us and influencers. Is that when an influencer goes on these trips, for the most part, they are often compensated. I don't know about those lifestyle trips, either. Like there's because there's sometimes influencers on our on our events, but I, you know, but I,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:30  
I think for the automakers, I don't think that they actually do pay those people. Okay. That that's

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:38  
certainly do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:38  
Yeah. Other other industries do in the auto industry, the automakers generally do not pay influencers,

Dan Roth  1:41:44  
but they are concerned with your follower count in your engagement and your numbers. Right, which don't get me out.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:50  
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And the same is true for any other journalists. They want to make sure that there's actually going to be an audience if they're going to spend the money to fly you somewhere. Let you drive a product, they want to know that there's going to be they want to have some confidence that somebody is going to see the story somewhere. And so if you you know, if you're just a, you know, a blogger in your basement, you know, that has, you know, a couple of family members that look at your blog, you're not going to get invited to these programs. And you know, but but you know, the the travel influencers that get paid for their time, the automakers don't generally pay as far as to the best of my knowledge, they don't pay those people I certainly have never received a payment from an automaker I've cost more than any, any kind of benefit.

Dan Roth  1:42:39  
For me, you got to understand they're given us cars and so the stuff happens to those cars while they're in our care that that damage magically gets fixed. automakers fit that bill. You know, they fit the bill to get the cars to us to have the fund the fleets you know, the fleet come Get that contract. So there's a lot of expense there that when you start to peel it back it does. It's definitely an access to the product and to the the players side of the industry, you can still be objective and fair. But you have to be fair, you can and you can have a personality too. But if you're constantly just complaining about whatever you don't like often you'll you'll get

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:29  
far more trouble than it's worth.

Dan Roth  1:43:31  
Yeah, it will stop inviting it you can't just come at it with only opinion you have to do research and study and you will find that like Sam, you don't write about the experience because that's not what you're there for. You write about the car. It's I'm also pretty turned off when I read those those reviews and it's like, oh, the sunrise in Majorca is beautiful and blah, blah. I don't. Who cares? Tell me about the car. And you'll find that all those launch events, they all have the same story because they're all in the same place. All the pictures Like the same, like, that's very dull. So you can sort of see right through that we've gotten into a little bit of inside baseball. I think Pasha has a really good point.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:08  
That it was a great question. Yeah. Appreciate it. And and also to answer one other part of that question. There are some publications that, that pay their own way. Like, for example, The Wall Street Journal who Dan nail works for, you know, they don't take paid trips, as far as I understand, at least they did in the past. They, I don't know if that's changed. But, you know, those, those publications, I know automotive news also does not take paid trips, you know, they, you know, they pay for their writers to go on these events. And, you know, if that's the case, you know, then you know, when when you accept the invitation, you know, there's on the registration form, there's always a thing there, you know, will will you need us to cover your travel or you be covering it, and if you're covering it, then they'll, they'll send you the bill for it, you know, and then your your employer, your publication takes care of that.

Dan Roth  1:45:03  
Yeah. And I think that's the cleaner way to do it. It's just this is a business that has had a lot of money. Journalism as a whole has had a lot of money just vacuumed right out of

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:12  
it. There's there's one here says from Mark in Bentonville, Arkansas, maybe a weird question, but wondering if some sedans have better ventilated seats than others? If yes, which manufacturers have the best backstory lives in Northwest Arkansas and have humid summers. So thinking a good ventilated car seat would make life a little more comfortable? Have you have you noticed any substantial difference in the quality of the ventilated seats from one brand to another?

Unknown Speaker  1:45:38  
Yes. Oh, I can't wait. Oh, you You haven't?

Rebecca Lindland  1:45:43  
Well, I can't think of any right now. But I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Dan Roth  1:45:46  
I think the German premium brands do it pretty well. Mercedes, in particular stands out to me. Ford seems to have decent ventilated seats as well. Those are the two that sort I can usually count on them to be okay, where you actually feel something. ventilated seats tend to be more noise than comfort to me, but I can understand how they would be a nice thing to have when it's in some more humid place. So those are those are the two standouts. So can you sell for Mercedes or Ford?

Rebecca Lindland  1:46:23  
I was thinking that she had telluride because I'm pretty sure that had been delayed, probably and I had that in late May. And on that long trip when I had to go down to the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day weekend, which was sub but it was great. I love the ones where they're graduated where you can select, you know, like, like even the Jeep Wrangler. The G Gladiator has, has three different settings for the heated seats. And I love that because then you can kind of adjust you know, based on whether you want it what you want. So I think the ventilated seats or something That are getting better and better. I like anything the fan can definitely be loud on them for sure. But I completely appreciate the question because it's a very valid one give especially given in the south.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:15  
Yeah. Yeah, I know there are some that I've experienced where the ventilation didn't really seem to have much noticeable impact. But unfortunately I cannot think of the specific brands or models off the top of my head Well, now we'll pay close closer attention to it. I wish to make a checklist of things that we need to

Dan Roth  1:47:34  
Alright, we got one more from this morning about from from Twitter that I thought was interesting. So has social distancing opened up the roads for you? Oh, yeah. Darrell, notice that the roads are wide open his area. And yeah, I could probably hit Boston in less than an hour from here.

Rebecca Lindland  1:47:53  
Yes, but and in Greenwich, we certainly have seen that. But we've also seen I mean, I saw a lot of cops because their crews to go around But not only because I can see that crime is down because it's not really exactly high here cart cars like cars with their cars left with their keys in it are still being stolen and Greenwich I can attest to that. But but you know yes you can drive faster on the on the roads but two things are happening. First of all, there's more people out because people are walking people you know, as an example, my brother in law usually has a round trip, three hour commute in and out of the city. That's not happening anymore. So he and my sister are taking the dog for a walk first thing in the morning instead. And or in the late afternoon. They're out at five o'clock. There's so many more people out so that's what I noticed yesterday driving around is is a lot of bicyclists bicyclists out there's a lot of joggers and a lot of dog walkers.

Unknown Speaker  1:48:51  
Yeah, same here.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:53  
Yeah and around here. You know, it depends on on where I am if I'm like near a grocery store There's definitely more traffic there. But you know, around other areas not so much. And one one interesting thing, there was a tweet the other day from, from Jerry Hirsch, who's the editor at trucks calm that an interesting fact about the state of the economy Big Rig truck speed at I 710. And 105 crossing in LA is normally less than 25 miles an hour from 6am to 8am. According to some of the data now shows that at that same location, the speeds are averaging 53 miles per hours commuters stay home, but the truck deliveries increase.

Rebecca Lindland  1:49:37  
Wow. And there's less pollution as well. But they're saying

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:42  
yeah, that's that's the other big thing, you know, especially in in Southern California, but, you know, and they saw this in China as well, you know, in the wake of a Chinese New Year. You know, there's always, you know, the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there's always a significant drop in Arabic. During that holiday week because people aren't commuting and not going to work. And throughout the month of February, you know, in those weeks of the lockdown after the new year, it stayed low for several weeks. And you know, we're seeing the same thing happening here and in Europe as well.

Rebecca Lindland  1:50:18  
Yeah. So we had another question i on Twitter about the Acura NSX. And sales of that. Do you want to touch that touch on that?

Dan Roth  1:50:26  
I saw that was a question as well. I have no idea. I can't afford him.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:34  
There's your answer. Well

Rebecca Lindland  1:50:37  
afford it. Yeah. The reason I bring it up is because earlier in the podcast, we are talking about resale value. And I do think that, you know, this that the NSX which is a really really fun car to drive. I mean, it's it's awesome. But I do think that there is an issue with people looking and saying, you know, the one that I drove was 100% $71,000 and Is that what you want to put your money? invest in? Is that going to retain that value? Is it going to be a good use of your funds, even if you're incredibly wealthy? I mean, clearly Daisy agrees. Doc, oh, that was your stuff. But, you know, I think that's one of the reasons why. And I think that's one of the reasons why accurate has struggled to, to sell the NSX or also hasn't been a lot of marketing around it at all, but that's not usually a barrier. I just personally think that people don't look at Acura as a as a super premium luxury brand.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:42  
Yeah, I mean, they sold the grant, they sold 238 NSX is in the US last year, which right now, is actually was an increase of 40%. They sold 170 in 2018. So, you know, it's it is a very expensive car. It's a wonderful car. Drive.

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:01  
It is it is.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:02  
But you know, it is it is expensive. And you know, it starts at I think the starting price is like 156 grand.

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:10  
Yeah, I've got 157 five. Okay. Yeah. And that doesn't include whatever destination,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:17  
right and what the one that I drove a couple of years ago that I reviewed was, you know, with the carbon package and everything was like $204,000 Wow. And, you know, you're, you're talking, you know, McLaren money, you know, low end, you know, entry level

Dan Roth  1:52:32  
competition space, I guess you would think about that. And, and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:37  
Acura doesn't necessarily have the brand cachet to compete that array, even though it is a fantastic car. And, you know, granted, you know, the plant that builds them, you know, these are hand built cars, you know, so they are expensive to manufacture, and they're very complex. You know, that plant only has a capacity of 1000 cars a year anyway, so they were never It was never meant To be as big volume as Ferrari or Lamborghini. You know, it was always more of a niche product. And I'm not sure what the global numbers are for NSX you know, it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of seven or 800. You know, so I don't think that they're using the full capacity of that plant, but you know, that the capacity is not much to begin with.

Rebecca Lindland  1:53:23  
Yeah, I, I'd written an article last year about it when I had it last summer. And then I also toured the plant. And it is it's a fantastic facility. It is all hand built. The paint shop is really cool. You can actually watch it being painted. And yeah, there's a lot of really cool things about it. But I absolutely agree. I think that the brand cachet is the number one issue when it comes to selling these types of

Dan Roth  1:53:46  
NSX the original NSX was such a good car for such a good price and this one is such a good car for a completely fair market price.

Rebecca Lindland  1:53:56  
Yes, I got to drive the original one. They had it at They had this added added event. It was super cool. It was so neat to drive the original.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:05  
I only ever drove on once back in 1991.

Dan Roth  1:54:08  
Yeah, it was amazing. Amazing. Those cars are why the Ferraris and Lamborghinis got so good because the NSX like Hey guys, yeah, we got this.

Rebecca Lindland  1:54:18  
Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:54:20  
Send us money and we'll pay for our own flights.

Unknown Speaker  1:54:25  
And we'll buy NSX Okay, send us a note.

Rebecca Lindland  1:54:32  
Well, I'll do it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:34  
I would happily parking NSX in the garage next to my Miata build the garage first and then

Rebecca Lindland  1:54:41  
I'm going to my driveway next to the Jeep Gladiator

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:45  
civic can go out in the driveway, the NSX can have the garage

Dan Roth  1:54:48  
Sounds like a plan. Right? Well Tune in next week. That actually happens. Like the car talk, guys now, um, but anyway, thanks for listening. We'll get Every next time

Rebecca Lindland  1:55:01  
Thanks everyone. Cheers. Hi.

Dan Roth  1:55:10  
Thanks for listening to wheel bearings, find us at wheel bearings, media and on Twitter as at wheel bearings cast. Remember, there's only one vowel, that's the a and cast. We're also at car review tweets on Twitter or you could just email us. That's feedback at wheel bearings dot media. Thanks again for listening to wheel bearings.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai