Dan Roth 0:12 This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth. Sam Abuelsamid 0:39 I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Guidehouse Insights. Rebecca Lindland 0:42 And I'm Rebecca Lindland from RebeccaDrives. Dan Roth 0:44 I forgot to say where I'm from you're all just gonna have to find me. Unknown Speaker 0:50 Yeah, Dan Roth 0:51 just I mean, know what happens if you google Dan Roth, the guy was like, content chief for LinkedIn comes up. And strangely enough, no But he has offered to interview me for something by making that mistake and thinking anyway so one thing before we get to the show I want to keep it tight but I was looking around at when I posted the latest episode was sure was a huge delay in editing I'm sorry I was looking for that it was totally my fault I just I couldn't get to it there was just stuff and then it took a while to edit because we had we had platform problems Let me tell you if you were to hear the raw audio just the amount of like can you hear me I can hear Dan and I can hear Rebecca but I can't hear just Anyway, when I posted that episode I looked at the the metrics for our our show and can you guys guess where are our largest group of listeners is from Sam Abuelsamid 2:00 You mean for country or city like city? Dan Roth 2:04 Yeah, city? Sam Abuelsamid 2:06 I think if I recall, isn't it like in the northeast? Like where you guys are? Dan Roth 2:11 Yeah, it is ish. ish. It's funny. I don't have my other laptop down here. So I don't have it open. But yeah, you'd think it would be like Detroit or something, right? It's not. It's a town in New Jersey. Sam Abuelsamid 2:27 Then that probably means that there's a bunch of people going through a VPN or something or some, some host that's in New Jersey. Rebecca Lindland 2:37 It's born in New Jersey. Dan Roth 2:40 It's my entourage. Now, you know, Jersey, though. Like I mean, were you like Bergen County. Okay, Bergen County. I think this is. This may actually be Bergen County. Rebecca Lindland 2:50 I was born in Englewood hospital. Dan Roth 2:53 Okay, um, I don't know enough about New Jersey. Geography free to all weather this town and I forget what the name of the town is so like insured this poorly clearly. But yeah, I was just I was surprised to find that we have and there's like 406, West of Newark. Okay, well, there's a lot. Sam Abuelsamid 3:20 That meant Mendham New Jersey. Yes. Dan Roth 3:23 Yeah. Yeah, I was like, What the hell is that? It's like Sam Abuelsamid 3:26 out of nowhere. Dan Roth 3:28 Yeah, but to mendon New Jersey. I yeah, I wanted to shout them out because I didn't realize that it could be like a VPN. That's a good idea. That may be more of what it is. But Jersey is a place I've driven through and in my favorite part of Atlantic City was the target in Pleasantville. Rebecca Lindland 3:51 See there you go. Dan Roth 3:53 Which was anyway, Sam Abuelsamid 3:55 speaking of driving, Dan Roth 3:56 yeah, speaking of driving, so let's let's try this. I will give it like roughly, I don't know, 12 minutes per per person here, see if we can keep it on track. But Sam, you had a very GP time. So I think that might be a good place to start with what you've been driving. Sam Abuelsamid 4:12 Yeah. So when we last got together and recorded, I had just received the new 2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave, which was announced at the last live event that we were actually at the Rebecca in Chicago, Chicago Auto Show. So the Mojave is the first what they're calling desert rated Jeep. You know, so Jeep has had the trail rated badge for a long time this is on all the various Jeep models. You know, the the most off road capable version is gets a trail rated badge. So on the Wrangler it's the Rubicon on everything else. It's the various Trailhawk models. And you know, these get, you know, the part time four wheel drive with two range training case in a really low final drive ratio and all this stuff, you know, so for crawling over boulders and through canyons at low speeds, the desert rating, which they're putting on the Mojave and which will be coming to other Jeep models that Jeep isn't as acknowledged this will is designed more for high speed offroad operation. So, in a way it's it's most, most similar to the, the Ford Raptor, the F 150. Raptor. And, you know, obviously this the Mojave or the rather the gladiator is a significantly smaller vehicle than the Raptor. But it's the Raptor I think in terms of performance in terms of its capabilities, is really the most direct comparison to the to this Gladiator Mojave. And, to be honest, I like this a whole lot more than the Raptor even though the Raptor is a lot more powerful. I like this. I like driving A lot better than the Raptor. When I drove the Raptor. To me it felt kind of soft. You know, this was too softly sprung. It was kind of felt kind of under damped when you went around corners or even over, over bumps, you know, it felt kind of floaty. You know, this one with the Mojave was really buttoned down. You know, the ride and handling on roads was really great. But when I took it, you know, I didn't really have any desert to drive it on, unfortunately, you know, go outside, you know, out in the outskirts of town, there's, there's some, you know, some gravel roads, some dirt roads around here, and we'd had quite a bit of rain and the roads hadn't been graded recently. So you get these, these really nasty potholes in these dirt roads. And I took it across there, you know, at about 50 miles an hour and I mean, it just soaked them right up. It has this thing has really good wheel control and body control. You know, it just felt really solid really stable. And it felt like something that, you know, if you took it to Baja, or you know, to Death Valley or something like that, and you know, went racing across the desert, it would it would be fine, it wouldn't have no problem at all handling that stuff. And as I said, it's, you know, this is really a midsize truck, you know, size wise, it's more competitive with something like the Tacoma or the, the Ranger or, you know, Chevy Colorado. But, you know, in terms of its capabilities, there's really, I don't think there's anything else quite like this, you know, it's got Fox shocks, Fox dampers with remote reservoirs and the ones on the front, they actually the, you know, on the on the rear axle, the damp the reservoirs are actually mounted, you know, right on next to the main damper tube next to the shock tube. So, you have the shock tube and then the other one, you know, right next to it in parallel, the front reservoir We're actually they hadn't longer lines going to them and the reservoirs were actually mounted horizontally up underneath the front skid plate to protect them. So, you know, they've done all kinds of things like this. And, you know, one of the things I noticed is the rock the running boards, you know, instead of being down low, you know, to make it easy to step up into, they're tucked up right up against the bodies, you know, so they actually get maximum ground clearance. Yeah, Rebecca, Rebecca Lindland 8:31 I have a question. And by the way, we're doing this on zoom. So, now we can see each other, which will hopefully prevent me from interrupting I what is the reservoir for Sam Abuelsamid 8:41 So, the reservoir the damper reservoir, gives you more damper more hydraulic fluid in the damper. Okay. And, you know, when you're running when you're doing you know, this sort of off road running, you know, when the wheels are moving around a lot. The more the damper moves, the more heat builds up in the fluid and then It starts to fade, you can eventually it can boil, right and you lose your dapping effectiveness. So having that external reservoir gives more more capacity of the damper fluid and allows it to flow in and out of there and cool and keep it cooler. So it functions better over longer periods of time. Dan Roth 9:18 Right. Okay, clever. Thank you allows Jeep to charge more, Sam Abuelsamid 9:22 it does allow you to charge more. I mean, they're not the first to do this. Yeah, the the Chevy Colorado, there's the zR two version which you know, they use multimatic dampers with, which also have remote reservoirs like that. Dan Roth 9:37 So, but that seems to be like the most the straightest comparison other than the Raptor, which is larger would be the Colorado car too. But they seem like they're they're kind of different things like the Mojave seems like it's more of a like a prerunner. Then the Colorado's era too, which is more of like an For crawling and yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 10:01 the zR two is two more for rock crawling. It's more more like a Rubicon, like a gladiator Rubicon even though it has those those similar type of dampers. But yeah, I actually really enjoyed driving this thing. And, you know, the one I had had the full back roof, you know. So it's not a power roof. It's not the the Sunrider roof, which is powered. That's the one you're like, Rebecca. Dan Roth 10:29 It's the Sunrider Rebecca Lindland 10:30 Yes, that's the one that I had in Sam Abuelsamid 10:33 March. Right. So this is what the Did you have that on the gladiator or the rank? Yes. Rebecca Lindland 10:37 I had on the gladiator where it was like a cloth. Yeah, roof. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 10:42 Yeah. So this is kind of like that, but it's but it's manual. So there's just two latches at the winch. Rebecca Lindland 10:47 I was manual as well though. Sam Abuelsamid 10:49 Okay, so but so to use this one, you know, to actually open it up. It's not like you know, on my Miata where I can sit in the driver's seat, unlatch it and drop it back. This one Cuz it's up higher and the roof is longer, you actually have to get up, you know, push it back from the driver's seat and then get in the backseat and finish pushing it all the way to the back. Rebecca Lindland 11:09 In other words, you need friends. Dan Roth 11:11 That's a commit, well, no, Sam Abuelsamid 11:12 you can do it yourself. It's easy to do. It's just okay to get back there. A little Rebecca Lindland 11:17 more tedious. Exactly. It's better with friends. Sam Abuelsamid 11:22 But, you know, I really enjoyed driving it they, you know, this one, the only engine that's available in the gladiator in any Gladiator right now is the 3.6 liter pentastar, which is a great engine. I think I would have, I'd like to see FCA put a V eight in the gladiator offer a Hemi in there, or or at least offer the V six from the ram with the torque mild hybrid system on there. So you get some extra torque. It's not bad with what it's got, you know, with the 285 horsepower, but it could use a little more torque because, you know, I mean, this thing is it's fairly hefty. And there is one amazing thing that I did find when I was looking through specs, you actually can get the gladiator even in Mojave trim with a six speed manual transmission. Dan Roth 12:11 So you can even know their audience there. Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 12:13 yeah. So you can get a manual, manual Mojave. Or you know, the one I had had the the eight speed automatic. And, you know, it was equipped with all of the driver assists, you know, it had the adaptive cruise control and everything because, you know, God knows you need adaptive cruise control when you're racing through the desert. Dan Roth 12:32 You don't want to hit a cactus. Right? Rebecca Lindland 12:35 So one feature, so I used to actually do a lot of desert driving I when I lived in Saudi Arabia, and one of the key things that you have to do when you drive in the desert, is you've got to let air out of your tires. Is there any mechanism for doing that in a controlled environment automatically, you're still very manual tire Sam Abuelsamid 12:54 tire, that would be a manual process in this you know, there. There are You know, power outlets in this thing so you can bring along an inflator, right? You can bring along the compressor, and you know, you got a decent sized bed so you can put stuff like that in the bed. But yeah, you would have to, you'd have to drop the tire pressure manually. Dan Roth 13:14 That's tragedy that strikes me as a missed opportunity for Jeep. You know, just like Hummer had it back when they in like 96 when they introduced the h1 was, yeah, it was. Yeah. The CTA is right central tire inflation system. Right. But Sam Abuelsamid 13:31 that was, you know, that was something you know, that came straight from the original military of the home. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think they ever they never offered that on the h2 or h3. Dan Roth 13:42 Yeah, I that's true. Yeah. But people are used to spending money to turn up their jeeps. I'm sure there's an aftermarket solution. Sam Abuelsamid 13:49 I heard that there's somebody in Mopar that's probably working on something. Yeah. And yeah, you're right. There's probably somewhere there's an aftermarket solution for this. But Yeah, there isn't from the factory right now. Dan Roth 14:03 So what else do you have to do to drive on the sand? I've heard you got to kind of like be aggressive and just floor it, Rebecca Lindland 14:07 you got to go fast. Yeah, I think that's, that's probably that's almost the hardest thing to get used to because I was just rock crawling, you know, and that you know, really low low speed, you know, rock by rock or tree by tree and trying to you know, maneuver. And once you're in the, in the sand, you have to stay on top of the sand, you know, you can't get you can't dig yourself in. And so the way you stay on top of the sand is by going really fast. Which was really a huge difference. And you know, it's a shame because Jeep was planning a program at the end of March. I can't remember where it was supposed to be, but you know, for sand for the Mohawk, but that's the number one difference between off road dirt and off road sand is Sam Abuelsamid 14:58 Yeah, you know, it's very Similar if you're if you're running in deep snow you know I don't have much experience driving in sand but I have had a lot of experience driving and deep snow you know during my my abs and traction control development days and so you know it's a very similar kind of thing you do need to keep your momentum going. Yeah and keep the keep the wheels riding up on top that snowmobiling similar as well you want to you want to get as Dan Roth 15:24 it gets gets up on top Yeah, yeah, Rebecca Lindland 15:27 down. Yeah momentum. Anytime you're off roading momentum is really key to understand when you can, when you need to apply pressure, how much you need to apply. You've got to have a really gentle foot on that accelerator, because you can get stuck just trying to get I remember being on a G program and we were in Jackson Hole and what was supposed to be the snow course ended up being the mud course. And because it was warm, it was warmer than expected. And it was just a mess and it was fine because we had a lot of fun with it, but I I remember trying to get up this it was like a 45 degree turn. And within between two trees, the width and I was in the Grand Cherokee was the width of the Grand Cherokee. And the guy in front of me in a Wrangler, he couldn't get up there, because he left he kept chickening out, right, like as you get up there, as you're making that turn, you've got to, you've got to keep going. And that was you know, that's so so momentum, you know, understanding how much momentum you need and the fact that you you can't chickened out because you're gonna get screwed off road every Sam Abuelsamid 16:31 one one thing that helps with that is if you have a front camera and yeah, this Mojave was did have the optional grill mounted camera. So you know, as you're coming up over those, those crests you know, you can see what's on the other side, you know, display it on the center screen, right, that that definitely helps a lot. Rebecca Lindland 16:50 Well, in the in this case, it would have helped to see how close to that tree actually was. Yes, we were heading right towards the tree. Sam Abuelsamid 16:58 So, so the so the Mojave starts at just shy of $44,000. And that's what the six speed manual the one I had, which was reasonably well loaded. It wasn't it wasn't, it didn't have all the available options. Because it did have the the, you know, the soft top, the retractable soft top, all told it can do just shy of $61,000 including that 1500 dollar delivery charge that we talked about last time around. You know that that includes two grand for that eight speed automatic transmission. So, you know, that's a that's a pretty hefty option price and I don't know, there was a lot of options on this thing. But it it is a lot of fun to drive. You know, it's I don't, you know, I don't think it's a vehicle for me. The one other, you know, to the degree I would have a complaint about this thing was the fuel economy. It's rated at 17 city highway Dan Roth 17:58 got about 11 I managed to get about 15. Oh, that's pretty good. That's better than I thought you would. Yeah. Rebecca Lindland 18:05 Said the Rubicon four by four that I had was 62,000. Yeah. Why do you look on? Oh, Sam Abuelsamid 18:12 just the after after they picked up the gladiator. They dropped off the new Wrangler eco diesel. Rebecca Lindland 18:19 Oh, that's right. Dan Roth 18:21 And that's like a $5,000 engine there, right? Sam Abuelsamid 18:24 For four grand for the engine. And then you know, you have you can't get the diesel with the manual. So you have to also pay for the $2,000 eight speed automatic. Dan Roth 18:35 And that's what that's the three liter diesel that's in the Grand Cherokee two, right. Sam Abuelsamid 18:41 Yeah, it's an updated version of the diesel. So it's based on the same design the same architecture as what was previously in the Grand Cherokee. But you know, they relaunched it last year, they did a whole bunch of updates to it, relaunched it and the Ram 1500 and the Wrangler and I I would assume that at some point, it's going to be available in the gladiator as well. Is it still laggy? It's better. Yeah, there's still some lag. But it's it's not as bad. It's definitely better than it was. You know, it's it's got some of that, you know, classic diesel clatter, which you tend to hear more in in something like the Wrangler, because there's you don't have nearly as much sound insulation in there. Yeah, yeah. When you put it in something like the Grand Cherokee, you open the hood, you get to see all these sound mats, you know, under the, under the hood and on the firewall and things like that. Dan Roth 19:32 Yeah. But even in the Grand Cherokee, it was it was louder than I expected. And it wasn't it didn't sound good. It sounded kind of industrial, which is like a little out of character. I think, though, in the Wrangler, is you probably get a pass on some of that noise. And it might be one of those things like it's part of the charm like that. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 19:53 The stick. It's, it's, it's part of the character of this type of vehicle. So the one I had was You know Wrangler Unlimited. It did you know it was the it did have the the Sunrider power roof which is you know, very very nice to have, you know, just press the button and the whole thing zips all the way to the back. You know, so that's, that's a nice feature and you know, it was a Rubicon, you know, so it had the, you know, the two speed transfer case and everything. And I know when I've driven the Rubicon at the gym at the Chrysler Chelsea Proving Grounds on their off road course there, you know, one of the fun things is when you put it in four wheel drive low, you know, the way these things are geared they're geared so low that you know, at in fourth gear at 10 miles an hour, the things turning like 4000 rpm. Yeah, and, and this is what this is another difference with the Mojave. The Mojave also has that for that two speed transfer case. But because it's designed for higher speed operations You can run in for low at speeds up to about 35 miles an hour. In in the Rubicon and the other trail rated jeeps it's only up to about 1516 miles an hour is the maximum speed. And in the Rubicon or the Wrangler Rubicon, that thing I've managed to get 22 miles per gallon which is by far and away the most I've ever gotten with a Jeep you know with with any Wrangler based vehicle, so yeah, it's a diesel Rebecca Lindland 21:35 22 Yeah. Dan Roth 21:38 $9,000 Sam Abuelsamid 21:42 only six. Let's not exaggerate here, four grand for the engine. And let's let's face it, most people are going to get the automatic anyway. So, you know, you're gonna you're gonna pony up that two grand for the for the automatic on for almost everybody. That's Rebecca Lindland 22:01 so let me ask you a practical question. Why? Why is the diesel in there? Sam Abuelsamid 22:10 Well, better fuel economy obviously, but really, really more for more for towing, you know, it's okay. Yeah. Okay, so that's that one. If you're going to tow with a Wrangler, you probably want to go for the for the diesel because you know, Rebecca Lindland 22:23 better. I mean, are there better choices for towing? I don't know I i would Dan Roth 22:27 i would say I Rebecca Lindland 22:28 have to get back into my off mode Dan Roth 22:30 mode. I think that I think Wrangler Unlimited owners are probably more likely to actually tow like they're going to want to tow with it. And they're they're going to use the capability versus like a ram 1500 owner who may not tow as much even though it can probably tell more than a Wrangler. But I think that the Jeep knows its its niches right they're doing what BMW is doing is just there. filling all of the spaces with an offering I mean me personally I I think that the thing for Jeep to do is just make them all the torques and not not offer the standard pentastar but that'll boost your fuel economy but you can't really tow with the hybrid as well as you can with the diesel so I Sam Abuelsamid 23:22 call it the torque you can eat the torque you don't really give up any any towing capability. Dan Roth 23:28 But it doesn't gain towing capability with the diesel I would assume it does. Sam Abuelsamid 23:33 Yeah, I think it does. It does do a little better in telling what what the diesel certainly compared to the standard pentastar is definitely better telling and you know, the thing about towing with the diesel and you know, this is the rationale at Ford gave, you know when they launched the diesel version of the F 150. As you know, this, this one is for the people that are going to be towing all the time. You know or a lot of the time you know if you're towing is limited to, you know, 234 times a year. You know, like, you know, tell take your towing your boat from your driveway out to the lake in the spring putting it in the water and then hauling it out Dan Roth 24:10 and just rent the truck from u haul and if it slides backwards into the lake, whoops. Sam Abuelsamid 24:15 Yeah, well, no, but what I'm saying is, you know if that's kind of your, if that's your towing pattern, you know, then using you know, using the regular, you know, EcoBoost v six is fine, but the thing is with the gas engines when you're towing your fuel economy just goes right in the toilet. Dan Roth 24:31 Oh, yeah. And then the turbos get red hot and stuff. Yeah, it was. Sam Abuelsamid 24:34 Yeah. Yeah. Whereas with the with the diesel, you know, it maintains almost the same fuel economy when it's when you're towing so if you're towing, you know, every other weekend or every weekend you know, towing your horse trailer to shows or if you're a landscaper, you know, telling all your your lawn mowers around, you know, then the diesel makes a lot more sense. And, you know, I living here in Michigan, one of the Did you see you know, if you drive up north during the wintertime, you know, on Friday afternoons, you will see a lot of people towing their snowmobiles, or even in the summertime, you will see people towing their, their trailers, you know, with a couple of jet skis on their tone north, you know, Sunday afternoon bringing them back, you know, coming back home. And that's a pretty common thing here in Michigan. And so, you know, if you're doing that, you know, every weekend or every other weekend, having the diesel is actually a really good option you're going to do a lot better in that case, Dan Roth 25:30 I kind of like as a tow vehicle got it could not rank which is something I get sort of out of my system every now and then, you know, spend some time in one and I'll be like, Alright, that's that's fun now, I'm good. I've had my fix. Rebecca Lindland 25:46 I cannot imagine putting long towing miles on in a Wrangler Unlimited. Like, as much as I like them. That is a car that wears you out, but it just the new ones are so much better. They are good. I mean, I know what you mean there's somebody in my family has had a Jeep almost consistently for the last 20 years so I get it, but the new ones are so much better. They are really like it like my brother has has the JK the previous edition. Yeah, and it's I agree with you down like it's it's kind of Beasley I but but the new ones they're just I was really pleasantly surprised. I think Sam Abuelsamid 26:29 whoever did the Yeah, I think they must have taken the driving dynamics guys the handling guys. Yeah worked on the Rams and had them do some do some magic on the the new Wrangler on the jail Wrangler. It's good. It's good. Dan Roth 26:42 It's very good. The last, the last one I drove was actually a gladiator and I quite I was quite impressed with how good it was cuz I think was a gladiator Rubicon so Rebecca Lindland 26:52 which is practically glowing from you. I'm like blushing for the jeep. Sam Abuelsamid 27:00 One Gladiator Mojave with a Hellcat in it. Dan Roth 27:03 Ah, yeah. I mean, you know they're gonna do that at some point. Sam Abuelsamid 27:07 Oh yeah. They will build one to take to the GPS or Safari. Dan Roth 27:12 They're looking for it. This is hilarious. A FCA decided that they were going to move to the Netherlands to dodge taxes and now they're asking Italy for what like $6 billion. Yeah, it's like so when they need to print some money, they're gonna put the Hellcat in something. Exactly. Sam Abuelsamid 27:29 But you know this this eco diesel Wrangler was not inexpensive. came to $65,100 delivered. Dan Roth 27:40 That's a lot of commitment, man. Rebecca Lindland 27:44 I need to put you at four months free financing, right? Yeah. Dan Roth 27:47 Shame this sucker to your ankle. decade. At least at least the Wrangler is gonna hold on to it. It's gonna you're gonna Yes, but Sam Abuelsamid 27:58 yes. I'm going to Be really curious to see how they price the plug in hybrid Wrangler when it comes up later this year. It's just Rebecca Lindland 28:06 a wrong statement. I'm sorry. I've had a glass of wine so my filter is low. Dan Roth 28:13 Make that a habit for you know, like a problem I have with the, the FCA diesel is that other diesels exist now in their light duty trucks and like the Ford f150 diesel is fantastic. That's such a nice engine, and it makes the f150 just that much better. I I would just I don't even like the F series, but I would pick that I picked the Wrangler with the diesel but I guess again, like when you want the Wrangler diesel like that is a commitment and so you know what you're buying and you're buying it for a reason. So they may not be crushed up like that. I don't I don't know, but just know I'm not huge fan of that that three liter engine, that three liter diesel, but I haven't tried it. I've tried it in a while so Sam Abuelsamid 29:06 that, you know, I've driven the previous iteration of it in the RAM. And certainly in the ram it it's it felt a lot quieter a lot smoother. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a little noisier in this one. But, you know, it's it's a Wrangler. So you expect it you expect everything to be noisy. Dan Roth 29:25 Right. Exactly. So cat bothering Sam Abuelsamid 29:27 you, Lucy bothering you? Oh, Rebecca Lindland 29:29 well, I have my, my headphones on. And at first I was like, What is that noise? And then I looked down and she's just like, Dan Roth 29:40 and pets will do that. And we had a school conference today. And so the dog decides he wants to just like climb on us. So we're sitting there in the middle of the school conference and all the other nerds school parents are there too. And it's just 50 pound elaborative this jumps in my wife's lap. It's excellent like she says The things you could do in front of all the people, whatever. Sam Abuelsamid 30:03 I think I think these days people are used to that kind of stuff. Yeah, Dan Roth 30:06 that's it. So you're not going Rebecca Lindland 30:08 to go viral for anymore for having your dog or cat or kid. come in on your zoom. Dan Roth 30:13 Oh, yeah. Sorry. You know what? We blew the time limit on that one. Yes. Two cars. Yeah, that's that's true. All right. We're still doing okay then. Um, but I I really I was surprised my eyebrows went up. When Sam told me what you're driving Rebecca cuz I was just like, well, that's, that's a very like a it's a cool car. But just to be ripping around. I could just, I don't know, it just doesn't fit with all the cars that we've had lately. This one sort of sticks out so you tell us more about it. Rebecca Lindland 30:48 So I had the Toyota 86 which of course needs to be decided on Mrs. And this Sam Abuelsamid 30:55 is still also the Subaru BRC Rebecca Lindland 30:58 Oh yes, exactly. Which I not driven. This thing was just a riot. It was you had. What is the Hancock? Tony Kony, thank you the Han Kony edition. And so it's so it is beautiful like British racing green with these gorgeous bronze twisted alloy rims on them. And you know the thing is just a riot. It's it's old school, it's classic. This is a driver's car. That's it. But what I liked about it was that it didn't skimp on amenities. I mean it had really nice comfortable seats. It had a you know, Android Auto, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and it had heated seats. It had some nice amenities to it. What it didn't have, was like a great like the backup camera was in the rearview mirror. So is that tiny little thing. This the multimedia screen is seven inches. It's totally old school. And but it was kind of fun because then you you, you're reminded that your only job in this car is to drive it. And it's a six speed manual the one that I had this, the hand Coney edition, and a six speed automatic is available. But, you know, I got it in I was like, Oh, this is hilarious. Like, there's no place for your phone. There's barely any cupholders. Like. It's I mean, it is. It's really bare bones. But, man, you can just toss that thing around and it's happy. Dan Roth 32:35 Yeah, I love the 86. And to me, it still feels like a fresh face. In the sports car world. Rebecca Lindland 32:45 There's none of them around. Yes, even anywhere. Sam Abuelsamid 32:49 They are pretty rare. And you know, it's a lot of people have criticized that over the years, particularly for the engine. Dan Roth 32:57 Yeah, I've done my fair share. I think it's fine. I do too. Like, every time I drive it, I'm like, Oh, this is this is actually Okay. What I don't really like is the way that the torque delivery sort of drops off and then comes back at higher RPM. But once you learn to wring its neck, especially with the manual, it's fine. Sam Abuelsamid 33:15 Just keep it at high RPM all the time. He Rebecca Lindland 33:17 just kept. Dan Roth 33:19 Yeah, and it's geared so that you can, you can do that but you just is there's a little bit of a learning curve with it. I just love that. It's that kind of car that you you have to learn how, how it rewards you. And you have to you have to find that sweet spot to really make it sort of come alive. So that's fun, right? It's nuanced. Rebecca Lindland 33:41 Yes. Like it's like a woman or you know, you have to figure out Unknown Speaker 33:55 what the Rebecca Lindland 33:59 it's awesome that I had a great time with it. And you know, it was it was actually really fun to not see myself coming and going to, you know, have other young guys in, you know, boy racer cars pull up and they're like, Oh my gosh, a librarian is driving that thing. You know, it was just fun. And of course I I absolutely love a manual transmission and especially a good one like that. That's just so engaging, and easy. You know, I found it super easy. It's, you know, it's just it was smooth, quick shifting. You know, short throws, I thought it was great. I loved it. Dan Roth 34:38 Oh, it's very nearly like a picture perfect. sports car. I can't believe it's been around since 2012. Two. Rebecca Lindland 34:45 I know. Right. But because it was this. It was the cyan it was the sigh on Friday FRS first. And so the one that I had, it was the hand Kony as I said it's named after a Japanese highway. I 30,000 825 including destination, but it starts at 20,000. So, you know, for 30 grand, that's just a lot of weekend fun. Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 35:11 that's actually a really good value, you know, for what you are. Dan Roth 35:17 So what they've been doing is they've been consolidating equipment levels. So there's just probably not a whole lot of options yet on the Rebecca Lindland 35:27 I think there's three different kinds. There's, there's the regular 86 is the 86 GT and then the 86 and Kony and, and you're right, there's not a lot of there's there isn't a lot of room in that. I think the base I think the base price actually, of any 86 is 28,020, Sam Abuelsamid 35:45 including delivery Rebecca Lindland 35:48 rate 20 including delivery, and this was loaded at 30,800 with delivery. So a good deal under 29 you know, without delivery. Sam Abuelsamid 35:58 Yeah. Yeah. If you if you can Swing that couple extra grand it's worth it just for that green. Dan Roth 36:03 Oh, it's gorgeous, like the green and the gold wheels and the interior the interior Brown. Rebecca Lindland 36:08 The interior is is beautiful camels we'd like situation. And, and that's the other thing too is that you know again like the dashboards, the dashboards pretty bare bones, you know, it's like a it was black and you know, black to me always kind of shows all of its flaws. But the seats were super comfortable. It was really easy to adjust minimal blind spot issues for me as I sit up close. I and II don't know, the backseat was small. My 12 year old niece got in and she was she was cozy in the backseat. So, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't encourage that situation very much. But I but you know, overall, it was just, it was easy to get in and out of it's low slung. I the only I think the only thing that we should have is the summer if Dan Roth 36:55 you have any sunroof. Yeah, no, it's a car but purity. You know, it is Rebecca Lindland 36:59 Yep. Exactly. So you know, it was funny because when they told me I was getting it, I was like, Okay, this will be interesting like you say like to kind of see like, you know what it was like, but I was really sad to see it go. I definitely I definitely could have had that thing in the driveway for a longer period of time. Dan Roth 37:14 Yeah, they're a fun car. I I wish they didn't have that decklid spoiler, but now I'm getting picky on this version, like, I remember when it came out, and everybody was sort of picking apart the styling because it's not it's not real gimmicky, but I think that's one of the things that I just I love about the 86 that it's, it's pretty timeless. It's like, yes, you know, the first generation RX sevens or, you know, going back even further, like, think about a Karmann Ghia right I get just the the Carmen key was in production from like 1956 to 1974. Like Rebecca Lindland 37:51 it was funny cuz cuz Jake says my nephew Jake, Elizabeth, me, he says to me, he goes, What's with the 80s Toyota really I started laughing Dan Roth 38:02 these days. Well, Rebecca Lindland 38:02 it is the 86. But it's retro, right? Like that's what it's supposed to look like. not real. It really Dan Roth 38:08 isn't. No. I just look like it's a really clean design. I just I mean, Sam Abuelsamid 38:12 it's classic sports car proportions. Yeah, you know, long hood, the cabinet can move towards the back, you know, rear wheel drive. It's it's exactly what a sports car should be. There's no there's only one minor flaw. It should be a soft top. Rebecca Lindland 38:26 Yeah, exactly. Sam Abuelsamid 38:28 I and and they shouldn't bother putting that ridiculous little backseat in there. It's pointless. Dan Roth 38:34 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that may help out in some sort of regulatory fashion. But yes, that's true. You know, the the thing that's great about the 86 is just like the thing that's great about the Miata is it. It will teach you a lot as a driver. And its limits are low, so the stakes are low. Yes, you can have a lot of fun with it with no matter where you're driving. Yeah, just not the case with something fancy. You're even like a Mustang Mustang is gonna hurt you. Rebecca Lindland 39:03 Right? No, it's true. Especially Sam Abuelsamid 39:04 if you're leaving a cars and coffee. Dan Roth 39:06 Right exactly. Rebecca Lindland 39:09 No, I loved it for its purity. Yeah, it's just just a fun. The your only job in that car is to drive it. And I love that. Dan Roth 39:18 Okay, so yeah, everybody should get one Rebecca Lindland 39:21 more. Get one, Dan Roth 39:22 everybody should get one. And if you really want more power and LSB eight will slide right in there. Sam Abuelsamid 39:28 You can stick it lsvt into just about anything. My one more. I think it's done. Dan Roth 39:35 Yeah, I think so. All right, well, so you guys had all the fossil fuels. I under their hand used no oil. For the week I had the Nissan LEAF SL plus. And it's I it's been a long time since I've been in a leaf. So this is my first experience with the this current generation leaf and I gotta say I Really a I really like it b i think it's the best car the Nissan makes, because it's so normal, which is like it's weird to say like this thing is, it just works like a car and that's why it's the best thing that Nissan makes but it really is like they have really gotten this pretty refined. It's an affordable Evie. It does 240 250 miles on a charge. It's just easy to get in and drive and figure out it's comfy. It's it's pretty roomy. Nothing fell off. Sam Abuelsamid 40:34 That's always a good thing. Dan Roth 40:36 You know, that's a big thing when you're buying DVDs to make sure you pick one that doesn't drop pieces. Rebecca Lindland 40:41 Okay, so you have to expand upon this for me the best thing that Nissan makes, Dan Roth 40:45 or you could argue right that the GTR or the 370 z might be the best thing that they make it for talking in terms of sports cars, but it's just it's the future of automobile them in some way and they've been at it long enough that if you if you step out of, I don't know, like, say an ultimate into the leaf, there's no learning curve. You just know how to make it go the controls like you can get the eight Sam Abuelsamid 41:12 as a conventional mainstream car, right? Dan Roth 41:16 It's perfect and that's that's it goes on batteries instead of an engine. And like other e V's are concerned with all kinds of gimmickry and different, you know, screens and all the autonomous tech and some of this had some badass stuff where you know, lane centering and heads up with a Nissan pro pilot profile. Yeah. The sister just pro pilot pro pilot assist. Yeah, so and that works great. Like it took me a little while to figure out that that button is what turns on cruise control. But once I figured that out, and then figured out I could shut off things I didn't want. It was it was fun and it actually it you know centers in the lane nicely about If you cruise in the right lane, it'll follow off ramps if you're not watching it, it'll be like oh the lines go this way I must, I must be turning. So you gotta you gotta keep kind of a hand on it if you're doing that, but you know I went down and picked it up and it was still kind of cold and raw. And so I was using the heater and stuff I just I was like, I'm just going to drive this like a normal car. I'm not going to do any kind of like hypermiling nonsense or anything like that. And yeah, I had plenty of range. I used maybe 100 miles worth of range when I went and picked it up so it took a while to top that hundred miles back up on 110. But you know it has has a nice charger that comes with it where if you can find it to 20 outlet, there's enough slack on it that you know you can be pretty set in most situations. If the Nissan Dealer in town has a charging station two, so I wasn't that concerned. I could go plug it in. But it's just it's comfy. It's It's pretty quiet, the materials are nice. All the controls work well. It just it is it's just, it's a car. So if your choices like I'm going to buy, you know, a regular gas engine car, or SUV or cross over something, or I'm gonna buy an Eevee you don't have to sacrifice. You don't have to get some Infernal Machine. It's just, you know, it's just a car and I think that's what's brilliant about it is that it's just so well done. Sam Abuelsamid 43:33 Well, and that's the lesson that Nissan learned going from the first generation leaf to the second gen. You know, is the first one was designed more like a science project. You know, it had that weird styling, especially the headlights in the front. Yeah, it had some, some weird things about the the controls and your ergonomics inside. Yeah. And when they went to the second generation and made it much more normal, normal looking normal. Inside normal the way things work, yeah, and made it more like just a regular car that just happens to be electric. And I think that that's, you know, that's a good thing maybe turned off some of the some of the early adopters, but you know, there's a limit to that market anyway. I mean, if you if you want to start to grow that, that business you've got to appeal more to a mass market and that's what they did with this with the second generation and, and I think they're gonna go even further next year when they launched the new Aria, which is their their new Evie, crossover, Evie. And I think Rebecca, you hit Did you have a chance to drive the ARIA in Vegas at CES? Rebecca Lindland 44:41 We sort of did. We had a modified opportunity. It was very much a pre production vehicle on the on like a little plant track. But yeah, I mean, I think this is, you know, one of my issues with the way that EBS have been developed and marketed is We have made them to be something weird, as opposed to something mainstream. And they I think that, you know, this is what I've talked about a number of times with the Audi e Tron is it's I would rather just have it the Q six, it's just a good. It's a good luxury crossover that just happens to be electric. And the idea of just constantly promoting these vehicles as this weird electric alternative power train. I don't know, I just think if we're going to appeal to the masses, we have to start making vehicles that appeal to the masses. Dan Roth 45:36 Yeah, well, I think one of the things about the leaf that does appeal to the masses is that those are also things you can criticize it for. Right? Like it's tech as much as I found it fine and easy to use. It's not as fancy as newer, newer tech suites in other TVs, so that can feel a little antique. It Like I said it took a while to charge. It probably doesn't charge as fast as some some other cars on the market not I don't know, total range 240 miles it said, I think officially. Right, Rebecca Lindland 46:14 right. So how long did it take to recoup those hundred miles just plugging it into Dan Roth 46:21 like a day and a half? on 110 and it was on a wide extension cord I get. Oh gosh. Yeah. So that's not like that's not sort of representative. No, no, like I wasn't concerned I was like, Look the dryers right there. If I need to, I can move the dryer and plug it in, right on and run the quarter and it'll charge a lot faster. But I wasn't going to many places. So I just I just left it on on 110 slowly, but you know, 226 miles is I think the official range of it. And that's so much like, totally fine. I didn't have any range anxiety. I drove it around a couple stops when I had it. It doesn't have all wheel drive, I think, which is something that you might be looking for. It's not that sort of like, this is a superfast zero to 60 High Performance thing that it's electric. And it does look kind of cool. It looks a little different. But it's sort of straddles the line between having some of that differentiation but also just being a solid car. And you give up some of the gee whiz factor, but also it's like, I think it's about 45,000 before rebates, or tax credits, so you can get it for a you know, under under 40. You can get it in the mid 30s. And that's a pretty good deal for a car. Yeah, you give up some of the stuff but a you can get it it's in stock. You're not waiting. You have a dealer network, you have support, and it's just it works. So most people don't need all wheel drive. Rebecca Lindland 47:57 So snow tires on it and what percent woods, what rain? Would the How much would the range go down? Do you think 10% Dan Roth 48:05 I will probably more than 10% I think you would lose some range in the winter and certainly compounded with the different tires that aren't low, Sam Abuelsamid 48:14 the tires, you're probably going to lose somewhere between five and 10%. Just from the tires, you're going to lose, you're gonna lose a lot more just from cold weather driving and driving. Right? Rebecca Lindland 48:23 Yeah. But if you were to put snows on that, Sam Abuelsamid 48:27 yeah, you'd you'd lose a bit, but it I mean, it's, it's less than what you're going to lose from the other winter factors. Right. The other thing to remember about the leaf too is, you know, depending on what your needs are, what your driving needs are, if you can get by with 150 miles of range, you know, the base, you know, the, the you know, there's a couple of trim levels of the leaf, you know, that start at 31,000. Dan Roth 48:48 Right, and that's true and you don't really give up anything for that other than range, right? Like there's still just yeah, stuff which I honestly thought it was nice, but the material and stuff. It's not a luxury car. So keep that in mind, but it looks good. It felt Sam Abuelsamid 49:04 it's a mainstream compact hatchback. Yeah, it's comfy. Dan Roth 49:07 I liked it quite a bit. And with the SL pluses plenty of torque to like, you put the foot down this thing it goes to the point where it'll still shirk the wheel at your hands with torque steer, and I was getting on the highway, I was like, let's see what it can do. It's got plenty of power. Rebecca Lindland 49:23 That's awesome. I love electric vehicles for people that you know, like here in the Fairfield County area. once people start taking the train again, I love them for just going back and forth to train station because as I've said before, most of the most of the parking at local train stations require some residency usually in the same town and you know, it's a good opportunity to short drive and you can pretty much go almost all week without having to charge it and you're getting to and from the gas station for free to the train station for free. You know you're not paying for gas And I just I love that idea and I apologize if you can hear Lucy in the background she is. I don't know what she's apologize for. I don't know what she's so upset about. She just she wants your attention. I know she does. Dan Roth 50:14 Yeah, I think honestly the sort of biggest knock on it is is probably just a that it doesn't have all drive. It's not it's not a luxury car. And also, you know charging might not be as quick even though it could do DC fast charging. So I think you can put about 80% of the charge back in about 45 minutes depending on the charger. And I on a level two charger at home, it's still going to take if you're going to if it's all the way down, it's still going to take you almost 12 hours to refill it. So that's that you wait a little bit for some of that stuff, but I don't really see those as actual issues. You know, like you're charging it at home, you're not really using all of the capacity, usually when you go out Rebecca Lindland 50:59 and if you are Getting an electric vehicle, you know, a level two charger is not prohibitively expensive anymore. Yes, there's everyone's situation is different I realized that but, you know, if you have the opportunity to put one in, I think it's definitely something to consider. Dan Roth 51:16 Yeah. And I, if I recall when Nissan launched this, this, this generation they can direct you to places to get those chargers and stuff like they've Rebecca Lindland 51:28 got Amazon now. Sam Abuelsamid 51:32 You can go to people. Dan Roth 51:35 They What did they say that they had? I was really impressed with how nice and this was a couple years ago now, but I was really impressed with how well they'd thought out making that sort of ownership experience and transition easy. And saying like, No, we have these like, here's our network of, you know, contractors who install it or they seem to have it really well thought out and they put a bunch of these first gens in, you know, municipal fleets and stuff. So they They've actually got a lot of Eevee experience too so it's kind of it's proven hardware I would feel really comfortable buying this. More so than something maybe a little bit more exotic I'm kind of trying to think like the only other cars that I would trust kind of as much might be like the bolt or the like the Kona Evie and the Kona Evie is smaller the bolt is smaller these are This feels a Sam Abuelsamid 52:26 little bit the the near the Kia Niro Evie would be the you know the next closest one to something like this. Yeah, in terms of its size and its range. And, you know, if you have a 240 volt outlet in your garage, you can go buy, you know, a level two charger for 400 bucks. You can get one on Amazon or from Home Depot or Lowe's for $400 and just plug it in and you're you're done. If you don't have if you don't have a 240 volt circuit to your garage, you can you know unless you can usually get an electrician to put one in for about five or 600 bucks Dan Roth 53:01 or you can take two different circuits and strip the wires back and just you know what goes over here and once it was over there, you tie the neutrals together and do not do that. Sam Abuelsamid 53:12 Please do not do that. Unless you have in your garage. Rebecca Lindland 53:19 Not a suggestion. So, Dan Roth 53:21 yeah. Don't Don't listen to me. I wouldn't actually do that at my house. I find it. Alright, but that's the cars I like to leave I give it a pretty heady endorsement. Even though it's maybe not the sort of flashiest thing to drive. I quite liked it. So I came away impressed. And let's move on to topics. Because we were still on Well, Sam Abuelsamid 53:48 shall we? Shall we stick with electric vehicles for a moment? Dan Roth 53:50 Yeah, let's stick with electric vehicles. What do we got? Sam Abuelsamid 53:53 Okay, so, this week, there was an article in Autocar actually initially Started off I think in one of the British newspapers I can't remember exactly which one Dan Roth 54:04 said the sun when I was a tab Oh no, we don't want to promote Sam Abuelsamid 54:09 that you know what one of the knows the times it was the Sunday Times they published their annual Rich List of the richest people in Britain. And number one on the list this year with a net worth of 16.2 billion pounds was James Dyson. You know, he have hair dryers and man Rebecca Lindland 54:28 vacuum cleaners. I Sam Abuelsamid 54:31 we don't need to get into all the reasons why James Dyson Sykes James Dyson sucks. Yeah, including his support for Brexit. Dan Roth 54:39 No, I mean, I was it was a vacuum job. Rebecca Lindland 54:42 So anyway, I got it. I I did not read anything more into it. Dan Roth 54:49 I know that politically he's got some weird Sam Abuelsamid 54:54 but you know a few years back we heard you know the Dyson wanted to build electric cars. You know, they set off and you know, start a development program for an Eevee. And they made a bunch of investments say they bought up actual battery developer from based here in Ann Arbor, led by it was a company called sacd. Three was founded by Professor Emery Sastry, who was an engineering professor at the University of Michigan because she had been working on solid state battery technology. And the plan when they announced it was they were going to do an Eevee with solid state batteries and was going to have 600 miles of range and ridiculously fast charging. And after they spent a few years working on this thing, you know, they had issues which they didn't talk about in this article Dyson never really mentioned anything about the the battery technology and you know, the reality is that solid state batteries are still quite a ways out, you know, probably not to work till towards the end of the decade. But, you know, they they actually did develop the vehicle and you know, they have a running prototypes and This is the first time we've actually seen a photo of one of the prototypes, or at least the styling buck here. And in the article, he acknowledged, yeah. And if you haven't heard previously, they announced last fall that they were canceling the project. They, they were not going to go ahead with it. But Dyson acknowledged in the article that it spent 500 million pounds, that's about 620 million dollars US dollars on the development of this vehicle. And they but at the point when they cancelled it, and Dan Roth 56:34 what how much on shoes every year? I mean, okay. melda How much? How much is he worth? 13 billion pounds? Yeah, Rebecca Lindland 56:44 16 1316 billion. I think you said Yeah. In a day, it's interest. It's a tax write off. It's a blip. Dan Roth 56:52 But, so they still own the tech though, right? They haven't sort of list Sam Abuelsamid 56:57 along the tech or the motor tech, but that Dan Roth 57:01 Have something to sell. Sam Abuelsamid 57:02 Right and and they were, they were actually levered now supposedly leveraging some of the motor technology. Probably the most interesting thing about Dyson as a company, is they've done some really fascinating motor technology with switch reluctance motors, we don't need to get into the details of that. But, you know, they're very efficient motors and very powerful. And they were going to use those and use that technology in these vehicles. So they still own that technology. They still have whatever patents they had on the batteries even though you know, that's, you know, still the stop anywhere close to production yet. But, you know, he acknowledged you know, in in canceling this thing, you realize, he said he took a look at the industry and saw all these other Evie startups that were going out there, you know, producing electric cars at a loss and realized it was just going to be too risky is probably going to cost them several billion pounds more, you know, They were going to lose by introducing this thing, you know, and in the original article based on where, you know that this was excerpted from, you know, said really the only companies that you know, have any chance in this are those that have, you know, conventional vehicles to sell, you know, to subsidize this you know, if you're, if all you're selling is EBS, you're gonna have a hard time ever surviving. Rebecca Lindland 58:23 No kidding. We were doing that thing. Sam Abuelsamid 58:26 The automotive billion pounds. Rebecca Lindland 58:29 Exactly. The automotives in Europe said that he would have had to sell it for 150,000 pounds or almost $182,000 to make a profit on it but that say we could have told you that you're not gonna be able to make a profit on Dan Roth 58:44 this. And that's been the pattern though. Like that's any any of the views that have launched really have been premium and that that high end exotic, Rebecca Lindland 58:51 a lot of cleaners anyway, Dan Roth 58:54 because the bottom line, because they're like they're small entities and they Need to at least break even or make a profit or have a road to profitability to be a real business unless they're their main goal is to develop some tech and get bought out and sort of cash out. So yeah, that just seems like you as a businessman should have been able to look into that and go, here's what's going on. And yes, of course, you need the other product lines that are so at volume at profit, and much lower cost of production to sustain this other thing that sells at a loss, but the loss isn't great enough to consume all of our revenue, but I don't know. I don't have an MBA clearly so well, it you know, they Sam Abuelsamid 59:40 sell a lot of vacuum, very expensive vacuum cleaners and blow dryers. So I love the design of it. They should have been able to subsidize this thing, Rebecca Lindland 59:48 but but my Dyson animal I bought in 2007 Yeah, and it's still going strong. Yeah, we know we have I haven't needed buy another one. Dan Roth 1:00:01 That's That's true. And we have a we have a DC 21, which is like I really like the design of it. It's supposed to be compact and it's, it's a very, you know, it's very cleverly packaged. And it's one of those products that you look at and you go well they've really thought about this and it's really well designed and Rebecca Lindland 1:00:19 it's almost too well designed because normally I would have had to buy a vacuum cleaner by now. Dan Roth 1:00:24 Yeah, well and the thing was real broken I was like, well bs or that that thing was expensive as hell. I'm not gonna replace the part that broke and it was we waited for a while we used to shop back like was I'm not throwing this thing away. I'm not gonna fix it because it's just like, well, Rebecca Lindland 1:00:45 it's ironic that he's making these kinds of batteries because the other one I got my my animal vacuum cleaner. I got a handheld one for free speaking I which which is what reminded me, I and it worked out great for like the first But then now the battery doesn't charge anymore. Yeah, so definitely needs a new battery so maybe he can develop better vacuum batteries as well. Yes, car batteries use this technology. You could probably just hook it up to a die hard pack right? Dan Roth 1:01:15 weightlifting while you're at it. Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:17 A few of those portable phone charger batteries yeah 20 20,000 milliamp hour battery right plug it in Yeah, Dan Roth 1:01:25 I mean they burned down the house. Vacuum What? I got sick of the dustbuster because the testers have the they have a battery that's internally you can't get at it. And so that's that's what happens after a year of like it sits on the charger until you use it in the batteries a dies and it's so like it starts off with great vigor and it's like are so I went to Home Depot and I got a little Ryobi one that uses the drill batteries. Yeah, when the battery gets tired, just take those back recycle and get another one pop in and just it's ugly and it's it's not as spiffy as Rebecca Lindland 1:01:59 I thought that Connect Dan Roth 1:02:00 Ryobi batteries Ryobi and 18 volt thing uses the same batteries as my drill. Right? Right in their their lithium ion so they charge quick. That was my Rebecca Lindland 1:02:11 gun. I like it. Dan Roth 1:02:12 Okay, we're completely off. Rebecca Lindland 1:02:14 Alright, what else we got? Sam Abuelsamid 1:02:18 Let's see. How about Toyota yesterday Toyota? Did the vehicle reveals that they were originally scheduled to do in New York at the New York Auto Show, which obviously hasn't happened yet. Did you watch it? No, I was I was in another meeting at the time. So I was actually recording a keynote pre recording a keynote for a conference that I was supposed to speak at that is going to be virtual. So I didn't get a chance to watch the presentation. Did you guys watch it? Rebecca Lindland 1:02:48 I did not either. I Dan Roth 1:02:53 started watching it had to bounce to another meeting but they haven't posted so I think anybody can actually go and watch it. It's only about 15 minutes. But you get to see the introduced the the new Sienna and the new Benza. Yeah, I was it was a surprise that they brought the Venza back. I mean I think you guys probably knew what was gonna happen, but I was like oh yeah the Venza I actually haven't Sam Abuelsamid 1:03:18 heard anything about the Venza coming back Rebecca Lindland 1:03:20 Yeah, I didn't know it was coming back. Oh, it was ahead of its time and so now it's either gonna redo it again, Dan Roth 1:03:27 it was it had a terrible interior. Sam Abuelsamid 1:03:30 It did really awful in the first generation Venza I, I had to drive drove one down to, to South Carolina, we were doing a thing at BMW at their Performance Center down there adjacent to their factory in Spartanburg. And so drove drove a Venza from Ann Arbor to South Carolina and back. And yeah, the interior that thing was, I was actually really shocked. I remember I wrote wrote a review for auto blog at the time. And the the fit and finish of that interior was really awful. I mean, you know, everything parts, you know, things were misaligned, the trim panels, it was it wasn't bad to drive. Yeah, but it just it didn't feel like Rebecca Lindland 1:04:18 Toyota. What was going on? Sam Abuelsamid 1:04:20 I don't know. I never did really get an answer on that. Dan Roth 1:04:24 Well, it was like, What? 2008 2009? Yeah, okay. Everybody has a lot. Yeah, take money out of the interiors, or take money out of the product and the interiors is where it came from. Right, a lot of cars. But the Sienna sort of up until just now have the same quality interior same trash, because I just drove a Sienna, like the end of 2019. And I was like, This is garbage in here. And Rebecca Lindland 1:04:49 I drove one around the same time. Yeah, that's right. And it was so antiquated. Yeah, I remember I think I said something about like, the the seats couldn't fold up. properly like, I mean, it was I felt like I was driving a 15 year old car. Dan Roth 1:05:05 Yes, it was not okay. Okay, so the new one I don't know how this they've done the the seats and stuff they don't seem to have really moved the needle on. Like some sort of stolen go comm a competitor option but they've upgraded the interior pretty clearly, it looks a lot nicer. The styling the exterior styling looks a lot sharper. Seems like the internet was split on whether it looks good or bad. I think it looks good, but it's definitely it's more expressive in that modern Toyota way, which means it's kind of busy. But everything's busy these days. I don't know, I think it looks like Sam Abuelsamid 1:05:46 it's basically you know, take the new Highlander and stretch it into a minivan and that's what's what you Dan Roth 1:05:52 have here. That's that's exactly what it is. And it has all wheel drive, which I thought was cool because there's not really That many choices for great. Rebecca Lindland 1:06:03 Does that mean that the floors behind the rear axle Well, Sam Abuelsamid 1:06:08 actually what's what's interesting interesting about both of the Venza and the Luciana, only one power train, they're both they're both hybrid, only their standard hybrid standard hybrid powertrain. So it's the same 2.5 liter four cylinder hybrid system that's in the the new Highlander. And that's the only option except you can get all wheel drive and it's electric all wheel drive. So you get an electric motor at the rear axle to drive the rear wheels. So it shouldn't because the motors pretty small, didn't have any real impact on packaging at the back there too. Whatever that Rebecca Lindland 1:06:42 will be interesting because that will be a significant competitive advantage though. Yes, all wheel drive is you know, that's a that's a big if, if nothing else, it provides peace of mind and a sense of safety and security, which when you're selling a family vehicle is a top priority, obviously Dan Roth 1:07:00 Yeah, I think it's a really good move to differentiate the Sienna, especially for sure, exactly. They're all hybrids. Because a, you don't really care about performance, you're not missing any performance. Because it's a hybrid, it has plenty of torque. And really, you want to stretch every dollar. And so this is going to give you better fuel economy than the six which has plenty of power, but each gas comparatively so I think that was a smart move. And the overdrive I think, is a smart move. I do think that they probably are going to get dinged on not having some sort of real versatile way to fold the second row seats. And the third row I don't I hear your your concern, like do they fold into the floor? Or where do they go? Rebecca Lindland 1:07:47 Right, but if but like Sam said, if they are able to do something with the auto drive and have an electric and a small motor, then yeah, am I able to figure it out? But yeah, the folding seats nowadays, that's is pretty much, almost standard equipment, like expected to have seats that fold down easily, you know, really with a touch of a key. And, you know, I think that's something that it'll be interesting to see. I'll definitely watch it just to see how the seats fold. Because that should be something they highlight the currency and it doesn't really do it that well, Dan Roth 1:08:20 no, I really highlight it, which means Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:24 none of the photos on the media site show third row seats, so you don't really see any of that. One thing they do show is that it does have it does have an optional vacuum built in fact, yes. And a refrigerator Odyssey does Rebecca Lindland 1:08:38 it a Dyson. Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:39 No, I don't think Rebecca Lindland 1:08:41 so. tying it all in. Dan Roth 1:08:44 It looks like it's up in the base of the center stack though. Yeah. And so that's it's right in the middle Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:51 instead of out in the back. Dan Roth 1:08:53 Yeah. Oh, Rebecca Lindland 1:08:54 okay. So I can't not like Honda's would be original vacuum. Dan Roth 1:08:58 Right? And it does. It has a Optional refriger and they made a point to say a real refrigerator versus like some kind of cool box that uses like a, you know, tie in with the AC or some sort of like Peltier device or something. So Rebecca Lindland 1:09:10 it is beautiful, though. Yeah, I mean, based on the pictures, yeah. Some of the wood trim looks nice. Sam Abuelsamid 1:09:17 Yeah. And you know, so this isn't the only 2021 minivan with all wheel drive, you know, for 21. The Pacifica is getting an all wheel drive option again. Well, but only on the gas engine. The Pacifica hybrid still is front wheel drive only, but really all wheel drive hybrid. Dan Roth 1:09:36 And I think honestly, that's what the 2021 cnn really does is it moves itself from a sort of an ever present competitor because it's a Toyota and it's a Dan to actually being a legitimate competition for the Pacific because I really feel like the Pacific is kind of the best value best van in that space, you know, and there's just plenty of options. You know, they got you've got the Pacifica you've got the Odyssey Odyssey, the Sienna and the Sedona. So there's there's and maybe the Nissan Quest I forget. Maybe not Sam Abuelsamid 1:10:13 now. No, it's the quest is still Rebecca Lindland 1:10:16 isn't that telling our expressions right now? We're like, wait a minute. Dan Roth 1:10:19 I know. The question looks kind of cool when it came out and this wasn't a good Rebecca Lindland 1:10:25 thing. Oh, I remember. I remember writing about the Nissan Quest, that it was just it was trying to be inappropriately sexy. Like, when like wearing a miniskirt to a funeral. Like that's what I Sam Abuelsamid 1:10:39 know. is gone. Dan Roth 1:10:42 And we got kicked out of the family. That wardrobe malfunction. You know, I really feel like the Pacific is the van to buy just, it looks really good. It's comfortable. It's priced really well. There's a lot to recommend the Pacifica industry. One stumbling block that it has is that it's it's FCA. And there's a lot of people who will sort of be suspect of FCA quality and durability. And so now there's a Toyota option that offers a lot of very similar features, probably for similar money, but it's it's all new, and it's on a much better platform because the old CNS shirt like you said, it felt 15 years old. It absolutely did. Rebecca Lindland 1:11:28 This will definitely be serious competition for the Pacifica for sure. Yeah. And the Odyssey also. Dan Roth 1:11:34 Yeah, I think the Odyssey is probably still the best driving ban because it has that sort of Honda feel to it. Yeah, but I don't I don't know that many people care about that. And that the Odyssey sort of like trying to operate the tech and stuff in the Odyssey drives me bonkers, because it sucks. Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:52 So, so what do you what do you think of the Venza? So Venza for those who haven't seen it, you know, it's a two row midsize crossover. Like it's got the same hybrid powertrain is the Sienna. Yeah. So what do you think of this one? Oh, yeah. Rebecca Lindland 1:12:13 I think they had to. I mean, I think, well, I there's a few thoughts going through my head, which is why I want Danica. I think it was an incredibly crowded segment. I mean, and to be fair, I didn't I didn't watch the preview thing. So where does it fit with the Highlander? Sam Abuelsamid 1:12:39 It's smaller than the Highlander bigger than bigger than the rav4. Dan Roth 1:12:42 It's right in between the problem is it's not enough bigger than the rav4 and it's not enough smaller than I like, Rebecca Lindland 1:12:53 yeah, who was it? Sam Abuelsamid 1:12:55 One thing I think one part of, you know, where they're targeting this Yeah. If you look at the design, you know, the rav4 has that kind of boxy or chunkier design. Yeah, and you know, this is, you know, a sleeker design this is this is basically a rebadged version of the Toyota Harrier, the Japanese Dan Roth 1:13:12 market Toyota Harrier, it's a Toyota RX basically scenario. Sam Abuelsamid 1:13:17 Right? Well, and, you know, up until the current generation, our Rx, you know, the, the, our, the, the previous generations of the Lexus RX were always sold in Japan as the Toyota Harrier. When they did the current generation, it's still mechanically similar, you know, basically the same as the RX, but the the Harrier got a different design from the US market RX. And so, you know, this is, you know, a sleeker design and what I'm thinking, you know, looking at this, it's kind of, in some ways, a similar strategy to what Ford's done with the escape, where, you know, they took the escape this year and with the new generation escape, and they kind of bifurcated it and made the the escape more car like, right and you know more you know tall hatchback you know kind of thing. And then they're bringing up this Bronco sport which is the rugged off road vehicle based on the same architecture. Okay and that's gonna be you know, have that, you know kind of bronies are styling to it. And I think you know, this is kind of kind of the the Toyota escape if you will, kind of similar with Rebecca Lindland 1:14:31 the brawny one is there Ronnie one Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:34 that's that's where the rav4 would be. Although the rav4 is not not an off roader, like the bronco. Rebecca Lindland 1:14:40 rav4 TRD though Greg was a riot Dan Roth 1:14:44 Did you read? I just got my latest Car and Driver and so Ezra Dyer took one to an offer a park in North Carolina with a Wrangler. And he was like, surely the Wrangler is gonna know exactly the Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:59 way For Dan Roth 1:15:00 Rab for TRD music surely this thing's gonna get stuck with water up to the door handles and stuff and it just hung in it just like everything he there was a point where he was like in the creek in the you know the all wheel drive system overheated so he had just wait until it cooled down. And you know the rushing water helped him out there. It just it did everything is like I'm definitely gonna get this thing stuck and it sort of just tenacious than he thought it was gonna be. Rebecca Lindland 1:15:31 I had a great time with it. It was just it was I felt a little like a poser though. Dan Roth 1:15:37 Yeah, so, but I do think you're right though. The Rev though. The General rav4 doesn't really feel brawny. Like that's not what I think of, but I guess there may be space for for the Venza. It makes me think that it's gonna wind up like the the Do you remember the cord cross Tor cross Tor. Yes. So that was sort of aimed at the somewhat older more affluent buyer, or that's who wound up buying it. They thought it was going to be whatever I'd like to kind of missed the mark, but I feel like there is there is a buyer for the Venza Who wants some more style doesn't need as much utility as the rav4 offers, but also doesn't need something as large as the Highlander. So there's probably some buyers there just Rebecca Lindland 1:16:28 yeah, there's an elegance to it. I'm just glancing at it. It doesn't they they reference Apple CarPlay they don't reference Android Auto Are you kidding me? This thing hasn't even come out yet. And okay. And I think that I think the styling you know, again, we're looking at pictures, but I think the styling is really sharp. Actually, I like the back a lot. Yeah, I do too. It looks very elegant. I mean, I can see you know, this is the is definitely going to be a niche market. It's, it's a little on the feminine side. I so I could see, you know, professional women going for a car. Dan Roth 1:17:13 not terrible though, right like right now Rebecca Lindland 1:17:16 because because like for like I'm thinking for myself like the rav4 I mean, I think was a riot but it was small like I felt I wanted to be in a little bit larger vehicle for everyday use I and then and also it was it didn't feel premium enough. But then the Highlander to me is too big and kind of to family is run and such. So I think that they I hope they do the marketing correctly on the Venza I hope they don't have to, you know, car full of chicks on their way to a bar seeking a man. I mean, I think that there's, you know, there's an opportunity here because I do think that is elegant looking. I think there is there is a possibility for this thing. It's just they have to market it correctly and clearly. They have to have a clear marketing scheme for it and not just sort of throw spaghetti at the wall. They should content Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:06 and for what it's worth in the press release, it does say that it has Android Auto and Alexa support. Oh, isn't that I wonder why Dan Roth 1:18:13 that's right. They're talking about the Alexa in the little preview thing to Rebecca Lindland 1:18:19 it. Because it says technology right before your eyes behind the wheel, blah, blah, blah. In Touch we just it was Apple CarPlay compatibility seamless. Are you ever Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:27 looking at the Rebecca Lindland 1:18:28 I'm looking at the consumer website? Okay. Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:32 Yeah, media site, the press release the press kit, talks about all that stuff. Rebecca Lindland 1:18:37 All right. Well, they should update Dan Roth 1:18:38 their consumer sites. So do you think this is basically do you think it is basically like the the crossover version of the Avalon where Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:47 Yeah, I think that's actually a good a good way to describe it. So yeah, a little a little more premium looking. A little more up market, you know, relative to the Camry and You know, this would be the same thing, you know, relative to the, to the RAF. Dan Roth 1:19:05 Yeah. I don't know. It was just a cool way to just spend about 15 minutes in the middle of a day made me feel like the old days when when we had car shows you remember Rebecca Lindland 1:19:16 going to events so Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:17 vaguely remember something about that? Yeah. I have some again, someday. Dan Roth 1:19:23 Maybe. We'll see. All right. Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:28 There's still a New York Auto Show scheduled for late August. Rebecca Lindland 1:19:31 Oh, I've got to put that in my book. I forgot. Dan Roth 1:19:34 Yeah. And then there's what do Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:37 I want to go to New York in August, but yeah, that's Dan Roth 1:19:39 right. I was in New York last August. It was fine. I think it was August there was Rebecca Lindland 1:19:44 just unbelievably humid as hot and humid. It can be Dan Roth 1:19:48 Yeah. That's all right. Uh, so Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:53 we got one more Toyota before we before we leave Toyota. Dan Roth 1:19:56 Alright, let's let's talk about the last time here. Go for it. And so it is 20 years of priuses. So the Prius, which seems to be kind of dwindling in popularity a bit, but they're coming out with a 20th anniversary, Toyota Prius, to celebrate the fact that the car they sort of started at all has been around for a while. And the hilarious thing to me is that it's actually 2021 model. Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:26 Well, not only that, but the Prius actually debuted in 1997. In Japan, it's 20 years in North America. Dan Roth 1:20:34 Yeah. So I mean, those things aside, it it's not really all that different from the regular Prius. It's got like some different trim, and stuff like that, like wheels. Yeah, yeah. The I think the bigger point that I'm taking is Toyota is really still committed to electrification. But not full EBS. And so, to celebrate the hybrid, like I feel like Edison at some point in the late 90s Tirta said we're going to do this hybrid thing and then we're going to pivot the fuel cells and that pivot to fuel cells just hasn't happened. And they haven't gone back for another bite at at like a full Eevee in sort of a wholehearted way. But the Prius itself i think it's it's a worthy thing to to celebrate and to bring up because it just it really did shift the paradigm a lot and we're past the point where you remember how hated the Prius was for like five maybe 10 years Nick, nobody liked him. They were ugly. They're maybe 20 there's a lot of respect for the Prius now like it's definitely not an exciting car. No, Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:52 but it is a it is a good car in in from a technical standpoint. It's outstanding. Rebecca Lindland 1:21:58 Yeah, well Really from a marketing standpoint, one of the things that it did was it was really one of the first hybrids. That was its own model, as opposed to, you know, like the fine print like the Ford Escape Hybrid that was in a certain color, you know, or the GM and the GMC, or the Chevy Silverado that not the Silverado, the Suburbans that had like the big hybrids ever across the side of it. This was like when you pulled up in a in a Prius, like Leonard Leonardo DiCaprio, you were you were in a hybrid and everybody knew that they didn't have to look at the badging. It was Sam Abuelsamid 1:22:37 it was the quintessential virtue Dan Roth 1:22:41 signaling best You know what? You so and this is this is one of the things that I I think you wouldn't have Tesla without the Prius, probably not. Because the Prius sort of showed that, hey, this really this odd looking little car, this different technology nobody really knows about the technology, but everybody knows that this is like it's it's a green car, right? It's saving the planet. Let me buy the car. So you're welcome. Yeah. Right. And, Sam Abuelsamid 1:23:10 and that's what, that's what the model three is today. The model three is the the modern, the new Prius, you know, and it's funny, if you, you know, if you go to LA these days, or at least, you know, before the pandemic, you know, there's Tesla's everywhere, but there's, there's priuses, everywhere. But all the priuses are now taxi cabs. You know, taxi cabs in LA, the most common taxi cab in LA is the Prius, you know, and, you know, and then people who were driving priuses, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, are driving model threes now. Dan Roth 1:23:42 Well, you know, they're, they're upwardly mobile, after all, but I think it's a it's a cat has some Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. No, I think it really has had a pretty big effect on the whole market that the footprint of the Prius is a lot larger than maybe you'd consider just sort of how it developed electrification, battery technology has improved, because it's out there motor technology and just consumer acceptance. So it's kind of amazing to me that the Prius has been around for 20 years, and I expect it to not be around for another 20. Like, I think that the idea was always to sunset, the Prius, after people got used to it, Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:33 I think that may, I think that was probably the idea in the in the early days. And then there was a period, you know, around 2010 2011 2012, where they actually tried, you know, the Prius had become so popular that they actually tried to expand it into a sub brand of its own and they had a family of priuses. You had the Prius, you had the bigger Prius V, and then the smaller Prius C, and the C and the V never really caught on in the same way. The classic Prius, right, you know, and then, you know, when the the latest generation Prius came out, you know, they did what they did with the design. And, you know, it's been downhill ever since. But Rebecca Lindland 1:25:13 it was very different, though to when they when they tried to expand the brand. Sam Abuelsamid 1:25:17 Yeah, no, that's true. It, you know, the the Prius, you know, I think in part because of the way it looked, you know, was it was one of those classic, you know, vehicle designs that attracted early adopters. Yeah, and those that were virtue signaling, as I said, Yeah, and then it never, it never really broke into the mainstream. It did it started to but then it kind of stalled, especially when gas prices went down. But they took the technology that they learned from the Prius, and Toyotas put that into almost everything they build now, you know, pretty much the only thing the only Toyotas that don't have hybrid options now are the Tacoma and tundra and And I'm pretty sure that when you know the the next generation tundra is due sometime in the next year. And I would be shocked if they don't have a hybrid version of the new tundra. Dan Roth 1:26:14 Yeah, I mean, that would give them some sort of market leadership there too. But I think the key about adopting that Prius technology across the lineup is that they they saw what happened when you try to expand the Prius lineup, you know, by going smaller and larger. And at that point, you're building another brand within a brand, which is expensive and not not really smart. Especially when they also had psi on that they were trying to promote at the same time, right. So I think they they sort of got burned twice there. Where it just it didn't work. So now the idea is, well, everybody knows the Prius. Let's take that your Prius propulsion technology, and we'll put it over in the Camry and the Corolla, and we can say when we go to sell these things, hey, you know you want to you want to hybrid You want to hire hybrid, but you need a Highlander? Well, this has, you know, technology that was, you know, originally in the Prius, but we understand you need more space. So here check it out in the Nylander, same, same great taste, you know, new, larger size kinda. Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:15 And Toyota sells more rav4 hybrids now than they do priuses. Last year, they sold 400,000 rad fours, and in the US. 25% of those had hybrids, and they sold 760 7000 priuses. Dan Roth 1:27:30 I looked at the rav4 hybrid, I really liked it quite a bit. So I mean, the tech is great. It's been really, really well refined. And there's no real penalty for buying it other than cost, but the cost has come down to so it's not like it's unobtainable. Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:47 So all right. Unknown Speaker 1:27:50 What else? Oh, Priya. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:53 Dan, you want to talk about Uconnect? Five? Dan Roth 1:27:55 Yeah. So the I guess a Last week, or the week before anyway, Toyota had a little online seminar. And for those of us here in the motoring press in New England, FCA gave us a treat and they walked us through Uconnect. Five, they give us a little presentation. So a lot of the stuff that we complain about, like lack of redundant buttons and touchscreens and stuff, I had the opportunity to sort of ask them and talk about and they were very clear to say that they really do hear a lot that people want to have buttons for stuff and that they're, they're going to continue to do this. So we they had Vince Galante, Nick Kappa and Jim Palmer, give us a little presentation about what what features the Uconnect five has and one of the things that really stood out is that it's, they've simplified the graphics to make it a lot clearer, a lot easier to use. And they've they've sort of been flattened the learning curve. So I, I'm at the point where now I need to try, you know, they did a lot of UX testing. And they took those lessons, and they adjusted the way it works. And you can customize this thing. So from an owner experience, I got the impression watching the presentation that if you own one of these cars, you're gonna set that you connect up. And they've got, like favorite buttons and stuff. So you can do certain presets for the apps you want, you can move the apps around on the screen, and this is all stuff that is kind of in the current version of Uconnect as well, but they've they've refined it quite a bit. And it can support multiple displays. So you're going to see it basically the UConnect system is going to drive the instrument panel and the main screen and whatever else they dream up. They they do a lot of testing for cold weather for old age for just making the systems easier old age. Yeah. You know that that's a thing that you You really have to consider like, how are people going to use this and and and their their real goal and it was great to hear FCA say this is like, we want people to be able to sit in the car and use the system and not have a class not have it explained to, you have to figure it out. And that was great to hear, because that's one of my sort of constant complaints, right, is that these things are really there. They're too complicated. And they're there to pretty like you guys are amusing yourselves. You're not you're not making it easy to use. Rebecca Lindland 1:30:30 It's there's nothing more frustrating going through not intuitive, Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:34 right? Going through form rather than function. Dan Roth 1:30:37 Right? So they get it, they really get it and like so climate is you know, it was something that went into the screen in one version of the spec in like 2014 when they they went to the newer version of Uconnect from like, I think you connect three or whatever I forget. But then they discovered like nope, that needs to come back out with Believe us, we heard you. And now they have were at the top of the display. There's always like the ever present sort of, it's like the top of your browser window where you'll see the temperature and like your seat heater settings, and you press on that you can get like it's a shortcut, no matter where you are, you can get right to it very smart through the, you know, a bunch of menu trees. So that stuff has gotten a lot more refined. And it's running on Android with faster hardware. So that's a big shift. I don't think before it ran on Android. So that was a Q and x Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:33 before. Dan Roth 1:31:34 Right. Okay, so that was what blackberry? Yeah, yeah. So I think Android is actually a good move for them. But I wanted to sort of ping you about that, Sam, like, what the, what the benefit is of going from something like like Q and x, which was pretty, pretty good, at least a few years ago. And that was a good platform to be on to move over to Android. What does that give them? Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:58 So you know, this is This is actually Android automotive, which is a they've taken Google has taken the Android OS, you know, it was originally developed for mobile devices. And they've made a version that's optimized for automotive use, you know, to run in the automotive environment. And what's interesting is, you know, that that's part of Android automotive, you know, when when a manufacturer decides to use that they have the option to use what's called Google automotive services. So when you get an Android phone, you know, there's a package of apps on most Android phones that you know, are bundled in their Google Mobile services. So that's your Gmail, your Google Maps, search and a whole bunch of a bunch of other things to calendar. There's all those Google apps that are bundled on it every most every android phone for Android automotive. They were and they're offering what they call GPS, Google automotive services. So again, Google Maps way What else? There is a bunch of other including Google Assistant, so you get the assistant built in there. What's interesting is that FCA has chosen not to use Google automotive services not to include Google automotive services. Volvo's also bring out their next generation infotainment system is also built on Android automotive, but they are using Google automotive services. So you'll have Google Assistant built in. SCA is using Android automotive but there they've chosen to cherry pick a bunch of other services. So you have Alexa automotive built in on top of that, you have TomTom for the maps instead of Google Maps. And I forget the other ones. There's a few other services that they're building in there that aren't Google services. Dan Roth 1:33:52 over the air updates was a big thing that they talked about. Sam Abuelsamid 1:33:54 Yeah, over the air updates are available on there. And you know, the other thing is you General on Android automotive systems, you'll actually be able to download Android apps directly onto the head unit, you know, so things like, you know, your music apps, your Spotify and things like that. You can go to the Google Play store front, right from the head unit, download those apps. So you don't necessarily have to use your phone to do that. I don't did they talk at all about, you know, whether you can at five will have access to the Play Store, the Google Play store? Dan Roth 1:34:32 They didn't talk about that. Or at least I don't, I don't recall it. But they did talk about how you can add widgets and stuff like that. So I think that in the future, there's certainly going to be they did talk about how you can add features that the car didn't come with, right? You can go and sort of you can add it later. If it's a tech feature, you can you can download, you know, whatever. Like if the car didn't come with now, but it has Whatever and then you can go get that's, that's my example. I'm sure if you have you connect you have you probably have nap but you know, one little piece or if they come up with something new that you want to add, you can you can again go get it and that's a that's a real area where automakers I think all automakers are probably looking at a way to sort of extend the extend the life of their products and sort of extend the opportunity for features to be added. So that and and get people to pay for it. Which is kind of like a nice thing for them. Right. So yeah, it just overall I was really, and it's not it's been an Android. I mean, you can like five has been announced since like, early January. But I was impressed with the amount of thought they put into the system and how much they've they've sort of stripped it down from previous versions of Android because of you connect because I really I felt like that Connect was great. At first, it was really friendly because it was limited. And then they added a lot of features to it. And it got kind of bloated and crappy to use. And now they're, they're figuring out how to keep the features and make it easy again. Rebecca Lindland 1:36:10 So when is it coming out? I won't be unveil Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:13 this this fall on 2021 models starting with the 21 Pacific and some other stuff coming later this year. Rebecca Lindland 1:36:20 And is it across all brands like alpha? And, Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:24 yeah, it'll it'll be spreading across all the FCA brands. And it does. It does also still have support for both Android Auto and CarPlay in there. Dan Roth 1:36:33 So right, yeah. Rebecca Lindland 1:36:34 I think it's confusing sometimes when you hear Android Auto, Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:37 yeah, yeah. There's Android Auto auto. Automotive. Yeah. Just the the LS. Right. Dan Roth 1:36:44 Well, and that was this specific question that I asked them, because in some cars, if you're using Android Auto, or Apple CarPlay, it forces you to use Apple Maps or Google Maps, the way they've implemented it here. Apple CarPlay or Android, other projection systems don't take over the full screen, they learned that that's not the best thing to do either. Because people still want to get at the, the, you know, the functionality that's in the head unit that's not in the phone. So they have a large enough screen now where it only takes up a portion, and you still have your other phone Sam Abuelsamid 1:37:20 and that that's actually true even now on you connect for on the current yucatec for stuff, you still Yes, plug in your phone, you still have a bar, you know, a dock along the bottom edge of the screen with icons, you know, to tap to get to the various embedded functions. So you can get to, you know, the built in nav if you want and if you don't want to use Google, Google or Apple Maps. Dan Roth 1:37:45 Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm not a fan of you connect for I don't like it. So I think that this this is a good improvement. So it was it was cool to see that. they've they've updated it so thoughtfully and you know, it was all So cool that they put on a little presentation for us. So thank you. It was, it was it was nice to like chat with all our friends at FCA for a moment and and feel like we're not stuck at home. Sam Abuelsamid 1:38:14 Yeah, I actually got a demo of it from Nick at the New York are at the Chicago Auto Show and I got a video that I posted on YouTube. I'll include that in the show notes so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Dan Roth 1:38:28 Yeah, it's it's cool. And I'm you know, I think that people are gonna like it. They're gonna like some of the features in it. It does. Android Auto and CarPlay wirelessly, which is awesome. Nice like that. Rebecca Lindland 1:38:41 Yeah. And we'll talk about it next week, but it is Audi is coming out with their MIB three. So I think that we're we are starting to see a lot of improvements and a lot of changes and upgrades to the infotainment systems because it's still a relatively new thing in vehicles, you know, and each manufacturer is kind I'm trying to figure out what system is their best. So I have to write about that for something. And so we can talk about it next week. Sam Abuelsamid 1:39:06 Okay. All right. We can also talk some more about sync for next week as well. Report, which is getting OTA update capability. And so that is also a new system that's got support for, you know, the, you know, wireless Android Auto and CarPlay. But it's also got a completely new interface as well. Dan Roth 1:39:28 So that's one of the things that just the, the OTA updates. You'll hear folks say, Well, you know, Tesla's had that for like, a decade and that that's true, but I think it's taken automakers this long to realize a we can do it and do it reliably. They've been very careful about it. But there's a lot of sort of thought that needs to go into liability and who owns the data and how it's going to how it's going to actually roll out so I'm glad that they finally solved that it's not that it has been impossible on sort of mainstream automakers vehicles, it's that they've been careful. And I think that we're going to see it be robust as it goes forward. And so you know, having having issues with it failing and stuff like that. I think they've, they've gotten it to the point where we're gonna see everybody get ot updates across their lineups, especially as they change architectures now. Wasn't that Sam Abuelsamid 1:40:26 nice? The key is having an electrical architecture that can support it. Yeah. tronic architecture that could support it, and gmms new. Global be electrical architecture that's rolling out this year, has support for full ot a update capability. Ford's new stuff, you can see it from FCA and from an Volkswagen Group and everybody else's is starting to roll that out this year. Dan Roth 1:40:51 Yeah. So that's just sort of a little shorthand of demonstration of the the inertia in the industry. where, you know, they've got platforms to take a while to, to redo to make things possible. That, you know, yes, when you design it in from the start, and it's your only product, it's there and you get a jump on competition. I think everybody's sort of starting to catch up and do it really well. So that's good. I would like to go not have to go back to the dealer to upgrade my naps. That would be cool. Right? Yeah. All right. So I think I babbled enough about you connect five. So I think we're, we're done topics. Sam Abuelsamid 1:41:32 I think that's good. That's good for today. Yeah, I think that's that's good for the podcast. We'll try and get this one out in less than three weeks. Rebecca Lindland 1:41:40 Savage. I do have just one thing to add. I didn't clear this with you guys. But the the analyst community and the automotive community, a good friend of mine named Jim or like, died in a in a surfing accident last Monday. He used to work for Hyundai. He was Kelley Blue Book with me and he was just such a great guy and a friend to a lot of journalists, a lot of people in the industry and so I just wanted to say recipes, Jim. Dan Roth 1:42:11 All right. All right. I got nothing. That sucks. Rebecca Lindland 1:42:14 Does Yeah, it's a huge, it's a huge loss. He was just such a creative funny instigator. And so I just wanted it for our listeners, Jim Ehrlich is his name. And he was working at GFK at the time, but he worked for Hyundai's, so Hyundai capital, I worked for just Kelley Blue Book and a group of others and a lot of people knew him. And so it's a it's a really, it's a sad loss. It really is. And so just wanted to give him a shout out and I'm just thinking of his mom and his and his daughter. So, thank you. Dan Roth 1:42:49 Okay, thanks. Sam Abuelsamid 1:42:50 And we'll talk to you all next time. Rebecca Lindland 1:42:53 All right. Stay safe, everyone. All right. Sorry, I should have cleared that