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

Sam Abuelsamid  0:07  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid. From guidehouse insights. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:11  
I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives for mixing it up on you.

Dan Roth  0:15  
Yay. We're all here for the first time. So thanks, everybody for joining us. And Rebecca, since I think this marks your triumphant return. Let's talk about what

Sam Abuelsamid  0:26  
clearly she survived the babysitting episode.

Dan Roth  0:28  
That's right. That's right. I hope you don't mind that we caught you on TV, Rebecca.

Rebecca Lindland  0:32  
No, no, that was adorable. No, I so my nephew's are the cutest little guys. They're eight and four. And they're just delicious. And I actually have my four year old nephew on tape. So my, my brother and his girlfriend live in this really cool place. And there was an Audi ra parked outside. And I heard it when it revved up. And I said to my nephew, let's go look at it. So we looked outside, we could look at the parking lot. And I was like, Look, watch it drive away. And he goes, that looks like it cheetah. So I have him on. So I was like I said, Come on over here. It's like you have to say that. So I put it. I taped him saying and he's just the cutest little thing. So now we had we had a very good time. And what's and I won't get too off track. But what's so interesting to me. So my nephew, Parker is eight. And we have very long discussions about football because we both love football. It's a shame because they're raising him as a Giants fan, which is all sorts of wrong. And it's it's actually,

Dan Roth  1:35  
it could be a Patriots fan. No. No. rivalry. There's a lot of people in New England who love the love the Giants do not like the Patriots. Anyway. Sorry. I didn't mean to say.

Rebecca Lindland  1:47  
But what's interesting when I talk to him about football, is that he doesn't have this unconscious bias that women shouldn't know about sports. It's really interesting, like he just saw and it's great. And it's just so funny to like, I'm always aware of it because I keep waiting for him to say something like, Oh, isn't that you know, you're not you're a girl. You're not supposed to know about sports. But it's it's really it's market like how kids his age just don't have that. Just by

Dan Roth  2:19  
religious people. It's Yeah, I that was that was one of the biggest turn offs was the sports dudes. So good, good turnout for you. For me. Yeah, it was the one that he was a huge turnoff. And then now my my 12 year old loves football. He's playing football. And and so he knows more than I know already. And so he's doing that. Touch Football League. flirting, like everything is like dad, we're gonna run some patterns and like you're making it so complicated. Rebecca will come up. Yeah, I'll help you understand each other. You'd like blue 42.

Rebecca Lindland  3:01  
Sorry, I

Dan Roth  3:02  
got us off track. But you're back and you you have driven the 2020 Hyundai Kona Evie and the 2020 Honda Civic Type R. So it's kind of a good dichotomy. Which Did you like better?

Rebecca Lindland  3:13  
It is. You know, it's it's always hard to say what you like better, right? Because they're so different. I mean, they both do things really, really well. So the so the Hyundai Kona electric, which is not available in every state. That's the first thing that we should make note of. So this is available in a handful. It's basically in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, mass, New Jersey, New York, Oregon.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:38  
It's all the states that follow the California is permission via

Rebecca Lindland  3:41  
great it is so their most states they're primarily on the coasts, I so you don't see them very often. But what's interesting is that they look actually exactly like a Hyundai Kona. So I saw 200 conas on the road, driving home this afternoon. And the Eevee looks exactly the same, which I really like. I think I've talked about this before, where like, I wish the Audi e Tron was just the Q six, because it just I don't want it to be weird. I want it to just be an alternative power train like it's just it's you can you can get a four cylinder you can get a six cylinder and you can get an eBay like it should all just kind of be the same. So I love that strategy by Hyundai that it's nothing weird about it. The instant torque is a blast. And I have to be really careful because on our post road where I've gotten pulled over before, it is very easy to go from zero to 60 in a split second.

Dan Roth  4:42  
I I'm one of the others who is experienced a getting pulled over on Boston post for some time. In the past.

Rebecca Lindland  4:52  
Yeah. So yeah, it's very easy to do that. So and ironically, I actually the last time I had a Honda Civic, it Wasn't a tight bar. But the last time I got a Honda Civic was the last time I got pulled over on bus. Oh, that's right.

Dan Roth  5:04  
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think

Rebecca Lindland  5:08  
it was like almost a year ago. I think now. So. So the Hyundai Kona, a couple things that I love about it. First of all, it's 258 miles of range, which is fantastic. It's actually I feel like I charged it even a little bit more than that. And but it's, you know, it's basically a tank full of gas. I mean, you can go all weekend it, I did I only have a triple charge, which I know, somebody legitimately said, you know, you should get a level two charger in your home. And I agree. But what was, so I charged it overnight. I tried it for about 16 hours, I think it was, and it actually got almost 90 miles, which, you know, 16 hours seems like a really long time. But when you think, you know, so it's I got home at seven tonight, it's 12 hours, if you leave at seven in the morning, nobody's leaving at seven in the morning to go anyplace anymore. You know, so even if you leave at nine, you're still getting 14 hours of charge. So on that 110 you know, plugging it right into the wall. It's not terrible. And and you know, that's a good amount of miles to get on a relative, you know, on a trickle charge like that. So yeah,

Dan Roth  6:16  
so where you are to like that could get you into Manhattan and out. No problem.

Rebecca Lindland  6:21  
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely. And there are some high speed chargers around. I'm hoping I get a chance tomorrow to to go and check one out and see what it's like to just charge, you know, properly. One thing I wanted to ask and this is just a general question, too, is whether I can use a Tesla charger.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:40  
No. Tesla has their own unique propriety. Their own unique one, right?

Unknown Speaker  6:45  
Yeah, that's what I

Sam Abuelsamid  6:46  
thought, Oh, you can't you can't use a supercharger.

Rebecca Lindland  6:48  
Okay, I'm going to go to there's there's a couple of restaurants on 95 that I know have Tesla chargers that were installed a couple years ago. So I'm going to go and see if they have any other chargers there like electrify America or something?

Dan Roth  7:01  
Yeah. There are apps that what is it charged

Rebecca Lindland  7:05  
for? Yeah, they do? Yeah. Yeah. And the Kona, when you put in, if you're going someplace, first of all, of course, will tell you if you don't have enough range to get there. And it'll locate chargers, okay, chargers, for

Sam Abuelsamid  7:19  
most of us do that. Now, they haven't been the nav system, they have charger information embedded in there. So you can see, you know, you can actually have it plot out your route, if you need to charge along the way, you know, to put in a detour to a charger. So you can you can do that. And the other thing you can also do is you can look in Google Maps for charging stations, if you just do if you search charging stations near me in Google Maps, it'll show you all that's out there around you. Which which networks they are. So if you have if you happen to have an ego account or a charge point or electrify America, you'll see that and I think they're also working on getting information in there about you know, whether they're, you know, whether the charges are actually available if they're occupied.

Rebecca Lindland  8:09  
Well, so I did that. I did that about probably two years ago when I had an Eevee. And there is an EB charger secretly placed somewhere in a local shopping center, because I drove all over and could not find that.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:30  
That is a problem I've experienced, especially out in California. You know, there are often you know, there'll be chargers, you know, at some mall, tucked around in behind somewhere, you know, and you have, I've driven like, when I've been in Petaluma, you know, I've driven around it the first time I went to, there's a couple of ego chargers at the Petaluma premium outlet mall, whatever. I had to drive around, like, twice before I finally found it.

Rebecca Lindland  9:01  
Yes, well, I finally left because I was like I and there was a sign with an arrow pointing in a general direction. And I'm like, I do.

Dan Roth  9:12  
Yeah. Yeah. So but that's so this is the problem with EBS. And I was talking with a friend who just did a trip from he has a an ionic. And he did the trip from like DC up to I want to say, Long Island or New Jersey or something anyway, just you know, he did charge about five times on and fast chargers for the round trip. And so the cars and the range of the cars isn't the problem. It seems the real issue is the charging infrastructure. And it's available. It's like it's actual availability and convenience. And then there's some of the nonsense that goes on with the charging fees. So they'll charge you for like the hookup or whatever for the for the electric In the loss of charging for the parking spot, so, like it winds up, it wound up being more expensive than gas?

Sam Abuelsamid  10:06  
Well, this is Yeah, so there's there's a couple of things there. You know, first of all, DC fast charging is actually expensive to do, because of the demand charges the way commercial customers are charged for electricity. And I'm not going to get into all the details, but it's inherently more expensive, the equipment's more expensive, and the utilities charge more for the electricity. The other thing is, is in some states, there's a bunch of states where you were the state regulations on electric utilities, don't allow them to sell, don't allow the charging network providers to sell electricity by the kilowatt hour, they have to charge by the minute. Don't ask me why, why. So it is just about two or three weeks ago, electrify America announced that they got approval from 23 states to switch over. So. So one of the things you may have noticed, if you've ever used DC fast charging, up until fairly recently, was when you plugged in, you got charged by the minute, regardless of you know, if you were you know, if you were at 75% charge, and you wanted to just top it off, before you head on a trip, you know, when you're when you're 75 or 80% charge, it's already ramping down the charge rate, so that it takes a long time to fill up that last 20%. And you get charged by the minute even though you're getting electricity very slowly. And that's, that's uh, you know, it can be very expensive. But now, I'm sorry, well, now, they have approval in 23 states to just charge directly per kilowatt hour. So just like you buy gas by the gallon, you buy electricity by the kilowatt hour, regardless of how many minutes it takes. And then and you buy beer

Dan Roth  11:53  
by the six pack Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:55  
And then, you know, then the other thing that they do, and they all and electrify America also dropped the session charge. So the the connection charge. So now you just hook up however many kilowatt hours, that's what you pay for. And but the other thing that most of them do is, once the charging is complete, and the battery is full, you have typically have about a 10 minute grace period. And to unplug the car and move it after that they do start charging you have parking fee if you leave it sitting there plugged in.

Dan Roth  12:26  
Oh, that's totally fair.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:27  
Yeah, I agree. Not that but not while you're actually charging.

Rebecca Lindland  12:31  
Right. Okay. So, no, I think I think all those things are true. So it was interesting. I was investigating, I'd seen these robotic chargers that like go to the car, as opposed to the car going to the charge point.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:45  
You mean like a mobile charger? Yes,

Rebecca Lindland  12:48  
yeah, the mobile charger. And they were really, really cool. But I hadn't seen anything for a while. And I had been talking to an executive about them. And he actually hadn't heard about them. So I was doing some research. And I discovered that Volkswagen actually is investing in this technology where you you can the mobile battery goes to your car, like it, you know, through through an app communicates you know, the car, it knows the car, your car is there, it goes through your car, charges it, you know, in 1520 minutes, and then goes back to like a docking station, which is so clever, because that addresses so many of the issues that we're talking about in terms of, you know, first of all, it could certainly help with things like multi dwelling, yep, your house housing, where or if you don't have a designated parking space, like imagine a street, you know, if your street parking, but each Street has two or three of these robots. This they can you know, like a street sweeper, right? They go cart, a cart a car and recharge the vehicle. So that's

Sam Abuelsamid  13:58  
basically a big battery on wheels with it, right?

Rebecca Lindland  14:00  
It's very, very clever. And I think it really, really could change the face of this challenge of how do we get charging stations in to play people that don't have a garage or don't have a place, you know, to put a charger and you know, 220 volt outlet, all those different barriers to charging and i just i think it's it's really, really cool technology. And I think we'll see it very, very soon.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:27  
Yeah, I think you know, we we actually had a forecast on you know, in our guide house in our most recent Evie charging equipment forecast that we published, I think in June, we had a forecast for that. And we actually think the adoption is going to be fairly limited because of the cost. It's going to be mostly limited to places like parking garages. So it's probably not going to be the primary method of charging, but it you know, it does, it does. It does have some it does have some interesting applications. And, you know, the other thing, you know, the manufacturers are, you know, are starting to recognize this this problem of, you know, how do you expand the market for ease beyond people that live in a house with a driveway in a garage where they can plug in? And, you know, we, we think we talked about the announcement earlier than the summer that GM made with Evie go about installing DC fast chargers, at places like grocery stores, you know, locations where people go to anyway, on a

Unknown Speaker  15:31  
fairly regular drive to make a special stop. Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:34  
Yeah. And so, you know, things like that. I mean, there's going to be a variety of different solutions. There's no silver bullet to this problem. Right. But you know, the, I think as we, as they roll out these these solutions, it'll make it easier for more people to own ease.

Rebecca Lindland  15:51  
it well. So while we're on this topic, we want to go around the garage first and then circle back to Yeah, the eBay. Okay, great. So yeah, so overall, what

Dan Roth  16:00  
I find wonderful, like we can, let's finish up with the Kona Evie, but I really want to find out about the Civic Type. Artesia?

Rebecca Lindland  16:06  
Yeah, exactly. So overall, I mean, I think that the the Kona electric I think it's a great example of a good range, fairly fast charging, I very Zippy handling. It's been really fun to drive it. I it does. When my niece, who's 12 when she was in the car with me, she's like, What is that sound, that whirring sound?

Unknown Speaker  16:32  
Maybe we all just

Rebecca Lindland  16:32  
have really good weird hearing. But that sound, she's like, the car sounds haunted. So she was not okay, with the sound that it makes at low speed. And it's just and she's right, like, it's just sort of this, you know, weird noise. And the coda does have a lovely, gentle chime when you are backing up, which obviously goes off then when you put it in Drive, I end the regenerative braking is quite aggressive. But what's weird about it, is it doesn't actually let you come to a full stop without putting your foot on the brake. Right. So like, a second before, like, it's like, it lets you do one foot driving. And but then right up until the very end, all of a sudden it kind of releases. Does that make sense?

Sam Abuelsamid  17:27  
Yeah, no, that's that's exactly what it does. And I, you know, I think that's a mistake. I think that's, you know, I mean, it's it, you know, it's Hyundai decided to do it that way, you know, they want you to, they want the drivers to actively put their foot on the brake as it comes to a stop. And I think that's the wrong solution. I think the approach that Nissan and Chevrolet take with the leaf in the bolt, right, when you when you put them in high D high region mode is a better solution, where we'll actually come to a complete stop,

Rebecca Lindland  18:01  
right? Yes, because that's, and that's what I like, because I was sort of caught off guard. And of course, you know, as we talked about before, these vehicles just get dropped off at our driveway. And we kind of have to figure all this stuff out. And hopefully, that's not going to be the case for a consumer buying them. But it's it is kind of annoying, because you know, you're sitting at a traffic light, and you've got to have your foot on the brake at all times. And

Sam Abuelsamid  18:26  
well, I think it does have a brake hold mode, doesn't it? Like there's a button on the dash sheet? Where once you once you once you come to a stop and you apply the brake? You can if you have that engaged, you can release the brake pedal and it'll just hold the pressure on the brake. So

Rebecca Lindland  18:40  
I'll look tomorrow.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:42  
Okay. A lot of other cars do.

Rebecca Lindland  18:43  
Yes. Right. Well, that's the thing too, is that I think that a lot of cars have it automatically set and so maybe I need to engage it make sure that it's engaged. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  18:53  
Yeah, it's usually not turned on by default usually have to manually press the bell. Okay.

Rebecca Lindland  18:58  
But no, but overall, though, I think it's it's a fantastic vehicle. So just real quick on the specs, the basis 37 190 that's before the 70 $500 federal tax credit, I, the one that I tested was 46,004 30. With including destination, I love the fact that it had heated and cooled seats, because there's definitely times when I didn't have to put the H back on. And so I was able to, you know, save that for the battery and, and just use my heated or cooled seats. And that was awesome. I'm averaging about four and a half miles per kilowatt. I have gotten as high as five, and I am not hypermiling at all. I mean, I'm driving it like I normally do. It was funny. I the first day I was I was nervous. Like, because I was like wow, 170 it was delivered with 170 miles and I was like, that's kind of crazy. But then the next day, the next day, I was like, You know what, it's totally normal. I can discharge it at home. It's not a big deal. So I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it's really good. The price point is definitely high because you're buying basically a hot hatch. You know, it's a it's a, it's like a crossover. I'm sorry,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:14  
it's 200 horsepower.

Rebecca Lindland  20:15  
It is 200 horsepower. Yes. 201 to be exact. So you know, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun to drive. There's plenty of there's there's plenty of that instant torque, as we said, is is all sorts of fun. So it's a good little car. I really like it. And I love the Kona no matter what flavor, I just I love that. Right. I love it. It's just it's so practical. It's practical, but I love the style of it.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:42  
Yeah. The only issue I have with the Kona is the is the backseat is tight. It's quite adults. That's fair. Yeah. But, you know, the thing is, you know, within the Hyundai Motor Group, you know, if if you need more backseat room, you can buy basically the exact same car from Kenya as the Nero Evie. It has a same battery, the same power train, it drives pretty much exactly the same. But it has about three inches of extra wheelbase compared to the Kona and correspondingly three inches more rear leg room.

Rebecca Lindland  21:17  
Right. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. I love that. Yeah. So so all sorts of fun. And Dan, as he said, I sort of driven the extreme because then I also add the 2020 Honda Civic Type R six speed manual transmission. And it's a giant picnic table wing.

Dan Roth  21:35  
Oh my gosh.

Rebecca Lindland  21:38  
So it was really funny. I, I had just, I picked it up when I got back from the Landrover defender event. So the defender we drove, we drove well over 500 miles in the course of just a couple of days. It was we had, we had two hours of extra driving because of quarantine rules in Vermont, that made us go back to New York state for the night, which we had not planned on doing. So I had done a lot of driving. And then I stopped at home because my my sister, I wanted to show my sister and my brother, the defender, and then I get I went down to New Jersey. So by that Saturday, I was, I've been beaten up, I was exhausted. And I realized that I've got the tie bar and my first thought was, wow, I am really tired and driving a manual is not my first choice. But I got in I sat in it. And I wasn't even added the parking lot. And I was like filled with adrenaline. I wasn't even out of that jail our parking lot. And I'm like, this is just so fun. The six speed is so smooth, the clutch is so quick. But it's I tend to have a fairly low catch rate. That means like, like I catch it very early on, and then have a slow release on the clutch. And it just everything about it was so smooth. And initially when I was driving to the headquarters to pick up pick up the vehicle, there was a lot of traffic and I don't know I just I must have made the traffic Gods happy cuz it all went away by the time I went to drive back and I cruised over the Tappan Zee Bridge, which was wide open. I mean, it was just it was just absolute driving. New Tappan Zee or that's that's nice. You can it's not. It's wider. there's not as many holes in the pavement.

Dan Roth  23:41  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can you can hit one of the clover leafs at the end. So race you go over the Tappan Zee and then you can hook up with the sawmill. If you want to go Well, yes,

Rebecca Lindland  23:51  
yeah, it's a little bit yeah, you you hook up with 87 you so you come from, from 287 hooks into and then as you cross over the Tappan Zee Bridge. Then you can hook up I which goes over the Hudson River for those that are not nearby, goes over the Hudson River and then you can catch the New York Thruway and Taconic all sorts of beautiful absolutes a conic. Yeah, yeah, I have to say

Sam Abuelsamid  24:17  
cloverleaf, so you can you can practice your trail braking and yeah, that car is great for trail braking. It's

Rebecca Lindland  24:23  
oh my gosh, it is it is it's absolutely awesome. So, you know, there's just what I love about it is there's just something so authentic and primal about having a manual transmission. You, you know, unless you're a total idiot, you can't be on your phone. You have to concentrate on driving. Like that's just that's what you're doing is that you are driving that car. And you know, the the downshifting is awesome, it just, I don't know. It's just it made me happy every single time I was in it every single time. It was just fun. I look in the rearview mirror. That ridiculously huge fan wing situation.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:05  
Yeah, but you know, the wing the, you know, as ridiculous as that wing is from the outside of the car from inside, it basically disappears.

Rebecca Lindland  25:13  
It does I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid  25:15  
it's concrete the way it's contoured, it follows it actually the ship that the shape of it actually follows the top edge of the rear window and the hatch. So because if you look at it, you'll see it's exactly the same profile as Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  25:29  
it didn't, it didn't intrude in my line of vision at all. It's

Dan Roth  25:32  
so typical Honda to make it practical and smart like that.

Rebecca Lindland  25:37  
It's just that this was what. So this is what I wrote in my review, which I have to publish. So and I said, I direct steering and put center responsiveness that imparts happiness often reserved for bacon or good stout.

Dan Roth  25:54  
Yeah, I would say the thing that I like about every civic, but especially the Type R is that it really is one of those trainers, you know, it's like a Miata and that sense to where it's a car that teaches you all about driving. And, you know, feedback and feeling with the machinery is doing and you set the limits of your your grip, and weight transfer, and all of those things. without really cranking up the stakes too high. You know, you could learn that kind of stuff in a Mustang, or, you know, it's something even more sporty, like a Corvette or a 370 Z, for example, but those cars are gonna get you in trouble. Yes, when you explore those, those limits, and so by the, by the time you're, you're learning through what all that stuff feels like you're, you're in a situation where you're not going to be able to recover versus, you know, something like a tight bar, which has high limits, don't get me wrong, it's it's a good performing car. But it's a little bit more benign, you know, GTI and Miata are also sort of the same way where you get all that driving enjoyment out of it, and you're you're not, you're not really risking anything to to actually extract some of that performance. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  27:04  
it has this wide, really nice planted feel to it, that it, you're right, it encourages you to kind of push your limits a little bit. But like, I never felt like I was losing it. I never felt like and of course, I unfortunately, didn't get it on track. But you know, I, I never felt uncomfortable in it. And it 306 horsepower, it's only 2.0 liter, but four cylinder I and it's just you know, you can kind of beat it, and it takes it and loves it. And it's just, yeah, I mean, that thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:40  
remarkable thing is it does that with front wheel drive, four wheel drive. That's what shocked me when I drove it is how, you know how good it feels, despite it being front wheel drive. I mean, the Honda engineers did an amazing job on that front suspension. Yeah. And you know, because there's really almost no torque steer at all, knowing and you know, it's so well balanced. It's just amazing.

Rebecca Lindland  28:04  
It is it's just so yeah, it's one of those cars, that it's just, it's a privilege to have it. I mean, I drove it every single day. I didn't care where I was going.

Dan Roth  28:16  
That's one of the good ones.

Rebecca Lindland  28:18  
Well, it's so funny, because I was when I, as I was writing my review, like, so it's not, as I said, it's not quite done yet. So I've got 120 words written and I wrote that in two seconds. Like, I just

Dan Roth  28:34  
your views are not exactly war in peace.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:40  
Trust me, it's a lot harder to write something in 200 words or less, to write 2000 words.

Dan Roth  28:44  
No, I love that brevity is great. Please continue, but like there

Rebecca Lindland  28:49  
are some cars, God bless them that it's like, Okay, what am I gonna say about this without using the word fine. You know?

Dan Roth  28:59  
Sometimes that's all that needs to be said.

Rebecca Lindland  29:04  
This was not one of them. So Jake, you're the pricing. So the pricing at 36 995? I tested 37 950. I and, you know, just worth every penny.

Dan Roth  29:18  
Yeah, I mean, that's right on top of that's right on top of a GTI. Yeah. So and it's just, it's a different flavor. But it's they're both kind of tasty.

Rebecca Lindland  29:27  
Well, what was crazy, too, and it was actually This reminded me so I stopped over at a little park to take some pictures. And these two older women clearly, I would say, early 70s. And they're kind of walking, they're both walking and they're sort of helping each other. And they come over to look at my bright blue crazy hatch. And they start talking and I said, Oh, I said it's actually a manual and the woman and this you know, 7070 she goes well, I can drive a manual of course, like, of course you can. But then we were like opening up the hatch. And it's like, look how much room there is in this thing. You put the back seats down and you can swallow anything. You buy it IKEA. I mean, that's what's really great about it too, is that it has so many different personalities that you know, it is, as we've talked about typical Honda, it's very, very practical. And yet there's so much fun to it, as well. But So yeah, those cute little ladies. They're my heroes.

Dan Roth  30:29  
Here's me stumbling home from a pub crawl. Passing the flask back and forth.

Rebecca Lindland  30:36  
They were so

Dan Roth  30:38  
good. Well, let's see what the sports car So Sam, you have it 2022 86 GT?

Sam Abuelsamid  30:44  
Yeah, I did. It's been what probably is about four years, four or five years since I drove one of these last time. And the last time I drove one, it was still called the Scion FRS. So this is, you know, the car. Rebecca, you drove it a few months ago, and I did Tony edition. Yeah, the one I had was just the standard GT and white, which is, you know, an unfortunate color kind of doll. But, you know, it is what it is. But the car itself is great. You know, it's, it's a hoot to drive and the, you know, the GTS, the loaded one, it's got the, the wing on the back and bigger 18 inch wheels, which you know, I think are, you know, a reasonable size, you know, they're not, they're not oversized, you know, the cars got great proportions. I, you know, I wish that Toyota and Subaru and other manufacturers would forget about trying to put a ridiculous little back seat in there, you know, just stop, you know, make it a nice carpeted, male, you know, package shelf and leave it at that, you know, but at any rate, the you know, it's got a six speed manual transmission, the toilet or the Subaru two liter boxer with 205 horsepower. It's got both direct injection and port injection, rear wheel drive, as you know, a proper sports car should be you know, and you know, I think this cars got great proportions script looking little car. The this one had the TRD handling package with sax dampers, and the big, bright red Brembo calipers on it.

Dan Roth  32:29  
Stupid, loud TRD exhaust on

Sam Abuelsamid  32:31  
it, it did have the TRD exhaust system, which is unfortunate, I would strongly recommend that if, you know, I highly recommend the 86. And you know, the BRC, if you're looking for a reasonably priced sports car, that that isn't a convertible, unfortunately. But definitely, you know, do don't don't get the TRD exhaust, it doesn't add any performance. And it's just annoying, this thing was so loud, you know, like, just too loud. So I would definitely go without that. But you know, everything else, you know, heated seats, you know, and so, you know, my daughter has been considering buying one to replace her 12 year old Honda Fit. And if she gets when she wants to get the GT because that's the only one that has the heated seats. There's the standard audio system in here. It does not, it's not a Toyota entune system. It's just a very basic touch seven inch touchscreen radio, four buttons on the side, you know, for power, you know, one to turn off the display. And then just pause up and down plus and minus for volume control. Very simple to use, you know, actual physical buttons not not touch sensitive, not capacitive, but the screen is capacitive. It's got support for Android Auto and CarPlay. The gearbox not quite as slick as the one in the in the type bar, but still great to drive. You know, really nicely balanced. I did find one weird little issue though, using Android Auto in this thing, which is for some reason, if I went to hit pause on something I was listening to, it would pause momentarily and then immediately resume playing. It would not stay paused,

Dan Roth  34:25  
which I really liked whatever podcasts listen to or music

Sam Abuelsamid  34:28  
or whatever else was

Dan Roth  34:30  
playing when this ends.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:31  
Yeah. But aside from that, you know, really, I didn't really have any other complaints. You know, the GT has, you know, a little more heavily bolstered seats in it, you know, that are really nicely supportive when you're driving swiftly. I won't say aggressively but swiftly. You also in the the in the GT the the base models have just two analog gauges for speedometer attack the GT The right gauge has a four inch LCD display built into it as well, you can page through and get extra extra information, get your, your trip computer on there, you can get a friction circle, you know, you can look at there's a laptimer that's built in there. So if you're doing a track day, you can, you can get that in there. So, you know, it's, it's a reasonably practical car, and between the trunk, you know, the trunk is not real deep, but it's it's actually pretty decent size. You know, you can certainly fit, you know, at least, you know, five or six bags of groceries in there. And then you know, you also have that back seat that you can also store stuff and so you know, if you've gone on a little road trip, we can get away. You know, you can throw a couple of duffel bags in the back there, too. So, you know, it's it's a fantastic car, and just this week, teasers start showing up for the reveal of the 2022 bR z excuse me, and there will be a new 86 coming as well. Not sure when Toyota is going to show their version of it, but the the br z should be revealed and full. Probably in the not too distant future hasn't really fundamentally changed in terms of the overall shape, you know, same similar kind of profile to it. Apparently will have slightly larger 2.4 liter engine with about, I think 220 225 horsepower. People are still gonna complain. Yeah, well, you know what? It's enough. It's plenty of power. I

Dan Roth  36:37  
mean, it's enough. Now look at that. So the two liter makes 100 horsepower per liter. Yeah, that's, that's, it's great. That's a lot of I get the torque dip thing. I don't I don't like it either. But just keep your foot in it. I promise to get better.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:49  
Yeah, it's Yeah, you really, I mean, that you really don't notice it. Most of the time.

Dan Roth  36:55  
You get used to it, it is it is kind of annoying, but it's also one of those cars that there's a aftermarket that can help remove some of that with a tune. And not that I recommend putting a tune on a car, or like paying a loan on and have, you know, but

Sam Abuelsamid  37:09  
200 horsepower is plenty. It's plenty for almost in

Rebecca Lindland  37:14  
that cart size and with a manual transmission as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:18  
Yeah. I mean, you should be able to have a blast with this car.

Rebecca Lindland  37:21  
Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Roth  37:23  
Well, that's, that's what another one of those cars like the type of car, right, that's, it's a trainer. Yeah, it's and it's, it's really fun to drive every time I've gotten one. It's been better than the last time, you know, like they have continually sort of improved it and tweezed it sometimes in very small ways. But it does make a difference. The last one I was in was nicer than the first one I had that. I think the first 86 I drove was a Scion FRS. And that was probably the worst way to experience that are you know that and the last one I drove was was actually pretty nice. You know, they've added some, you know, some padding and different upholstery in areas, you know, so it looks a little more premium feels better to the touch. It's comfortable. It's easy to see out of I think it looks good. It's It's fun to drive. So yeah, it's it is one of those, you know, sort of all rounders, that it's not quite as well rounded as you know, the Civic with the hatch. But it really is a car that you can use as a sports car, or you can commute in it or, you know, it does have that functional trunk. So I really like it, I hope they don't mess it up with the new.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:33  
I don't think they will I you know, I think it's, you know, I think it's going to be pretty close to the same thing. so concerned about it.

Rebecca Lindland  38:42  
For 30 31,000 I look at this car and think it's such a great weekend car. I do wish it had a convertible or at least a sunroof. But it's still, you know, our lives have changed so much that we're spending so much time more at home, that this is the kind of car that I picture, throwing a bag in and just going for a drive right just and just ending up someplace on the weekend, just to get out of your house. If nothing else, but you know, it's it's it's sort of like the anti SUV, you know, it's it's your little sanctuary that can go out go driving in it, just clear your head a little bit and, and just simplify your life a little bit. Again, get away from technology, and just go and have a good driving experience and come back and go back to the slog afterwards. But you know, for 30 grand, I think you save a lot of

Sam Abuelsamid  39:36  
1100 bucks on the the exhaust system. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When I had, you know, the the GT starts at 30 grand, you can also get the base model starting at like 27 and five, I think. And this particular one came to 34 783 delivered. Okay, so

Rebecca Lindland  39:54  
the encoding that I had was 30,008 delivered.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:57  
Yeah, so you probably didn't have the TRD ham Link package which is talking about 70 bucks, or you know, the the exhaust system which is 1100 dollars, you can you can really skip both of those the handling package and the, and the exhaust system. It's it's really good even without them. But yeah, yeah, I think you know it's it's a great car and you know if you're, if you don't need if you know if you're not a convertible person if you're a convertible person, obviously, you know Miata is the answer, obviously. But if if you don't care about convertibles, you'd rather have a hardtop. And this is an outstanding alternative to a Miata. Yeah, absolutely. He's got a, you know, most of the same traits that you find in a Miata, you know, in just a little bit different form factor. For sure.

Dan Roth  40:46  
Yeah. I do think it's funny, because I'm a person who does not really care about convertibles, but I would still pick the Miata because it's just, it's that particular, you know, feeling and liveliness and just blend of traits. So it's not that the 86 is bad, it's just different. So I'm glad that we have options and both are fun. So

Rebecca Lindland  41:15  
why not? I think you had a very interesting vehicle.

Dan Roth  41:19  
I thought it was interesting. So I had to the transit, transit 150 all wheel drive EcoBoost and I had the cargo version. So just just two seats. So like you I had a two seater. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  41:36  
Did you offer candy to children?

Dan Roth  41:37  
I do

Sam Abuelsamid  41:38  
not that's like several years ago when when my daughter move previous time I got a red Ram promaster from FCA and it was a cargo version as well. And you know, I described it in my I put the headline in my review was something like you know driving a red Italian two seater

Dan Roth  42:04  
and it's true you know, the transit is sort of part of this newer crop of vans where it's at it's actually really good to drive as far as vans go I you know, I have recently spent time in a much older Ford E series I'm sorry 350 I mean, it was a Yeah, it was was a wait

Sam Abuelsamid  42:25  
the series nothing fundamentally changed since about 1975

Dan Roth  42:29  
Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  42:30  
yeah. about it though. Like what what

Dan Roth  42:32  
was it like? Well the the transit is super well thought out you know, it's really roomy in terms of cargo it's got a really nice flat floor really square cargo area, which is

Rebecca Lindland  42:44  
still haven't reached floor you know, like

Dan Roth  42:47  
yeah, there's like you know, there's the floor is a corrugated pattern but this also had a like a matte so it was covered, it wasn't just a bare floor. And it's a little loud without any anything in it. You know, the last transit I drove as a passenger version that had a little more sound deadening and stuff, but this is a really you know, great box on wheels. And it's I was actually surprised how quiet it is on the highway. Like it's still a little boomy, cuz, you know, just resonates a bit over rough pavement. Is

Rebecca Lindland  43:18  
there a partition or anything? Or is it just

Dan Roth  43:20  
open all the way? Wow, no, it was just open all the way back. We could have filled it with balloons or

Rebecca Lindland  43:26  
do you feel like you should have like enough for hire sign on the back of it?

Dan Roth  43:29  
I should. I felt like I should have picked up like extra work. Yeah. I can make a deal with like the local Amazon drive. Exactly. It's split it How are you so efficient is my secret. But you know, the thing about that that old E series was you know, there's not as much places to put your stuff into the foot, foot boxes are cramped, because you get the giant hump for the engine and stuff, not as not as much with the transits. And so it's wider, there's a lot more room for things, the seats were actually very comfortable, the driving position was decent, visibility is fantastic. In this there's lots of cupholders and cubbies and you know, you get used to the, the handling characteristics so you can actually it's got short nose so you can sort of get out into the intersection before you cut the cut the wheel or you know, maneuvering it becomes easier and new one this one that wasn't on the last transit I drove was the has drive modes. So I preferred Eco, among all of them has drive modes for you know, like slippery conditions and just normal. But eco kind of smooths out the responses so you're not not getting that sort of head snap from the engine is to take off and add the 2.7 liter EcoBoost which is fantastic. So, you know, it's a great power train. It's a good van, it's still you know, sometimes we get a little overexcited. As car people and we look at these fans and we're like, well that's neat and kind of weird and different and I would like to own one of those. You would not want to daily this maybe the passenger version you would but the cargo.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:12  
I mean if you did something, you know, like did a conversion van

Dan Roth  45:15  
if you did a conversion or made it a camper like it's a perfect blank slate for a DIY camper. That's that's different, you know, but as it stands without much weight in it and it this is still it's a 150 but it's still like it's it rides like go work for vehicle just not bad, but it's a truck you

Rebecca Lindland  45:33  
know, I can promise you that. I've never wanted one of these.

Dan Roth  45:37  
Well, I can see

Sam Abuelsamid  45:40  
if you've ever had to move house you want one of these?

Rebecca Lindland  45:42  
Yeah, temporarily. I don't like want this in my stable have no

Dan Roth  45:47  
options. So my grandfather for years, had Volkswagen vans air cooled ones and then eventually he bought himself a brand new van again. And so there's just you know, there's there's a thread through my my appreciation for Vance. And every man sometimes I love it. Yeah, I am. I'm a man of the people. And this is just a it's a good substitute for those older funky vans.

Rebecca Lindland  46:16  
Is it the same and I should know this? I apologize. Is it about the same size as like an Econoline

Dan Roth  46:22  
on? No, it's well, it is smaller, it's big. No, it's bigger. It's

Rebecca Lindland  46:26  
bigger. Oh, it's like a 15 passenger.

Dan Roth  46:31  
So you can get a transit that's that big that's longer it's gonna have a roof but this was the low roof you know that it's the lowest roof and the the shortest one. So it's probably casts about the same Shadow as the series Econoline did. But it's a little wider. It's boxier. And it's probably a little taller. Like 1817

Sam Abuelsamid  46:54  
without which roof Did you have on yours? Cuz they rooflights

Dan Roth  46:58  
Yeah, I had just the standard roof height. So the low not the mid or the high, the low. The last one I had had the mid roof. And that was I got on a I got on the sawmill with that and you're not supposed to find the sawmill. It was it was designed by Robert Moses, well, I don't actually Sonoma anapana. Most Anyway, it was designed to keep those city folk out of the suburbs there. So they put low bridges, so buses couldn't go and they haven't been redesigned since the 30s. So you get on there and you realize, hey, that bridge looks like I'm gonna scalp the top of this thing, we're gonna get off and just take the, like surface streets. This is this one would not have that problem. You could take this in other places. But you know, the biggest deal here is it has all wheel drive, like that's new this year. And I think that was sort of the missing component for the transit was they were all rear wheel drive, which is fine with, you know, winter tires and stuff. But I think that to make it more all purpose, all wheel drive is a really killer addition to the van did seamless, and it adds that I think it adds those driving modes and and gives it more more flexibility and more capability. And I think if you're running a fleet of these things at that's, that's a that's that's sort of a motivation to buy, right versus some other vans that you know, the The promaster is a decent because their front wheel drive. So that has a certain edge, at least the smaller promaster. So I don't know if the big ones are

Sam Abuelsamid  48:31  
the big ones are also front wheel drive.

Dan Roth  48:33  
Yeah, so you have a traction advantage there. But the I think you probably lose out in some some way, versus transit, maybe in capacity or towing or whatever. They're very evenly matched. And I think actually the promaster is even a little roomier. It's just carved out a little more.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:51  
Yeah, well, the promaster is floor I think is a little bit lower than the transit because front wheel drive, you don't have a drive shaft running down the right to the back. So

Dan Roth  49:00  
very simple V max. All right. The axle on the promaster is like just a leaf spring in a rod. Yeah, basically, it's not much to it. But no I mean that the trays that I love that they sort of took the inspiration or just the basically the the exact vans from Europe that are were a little bit more maneuverable and just differently designed and brought them over here because the the kind of lines you know, they were they were good for what they were but that's a that's a truck van, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid  49:36  
Yeah. Well, these you know, these are Yoona bodies. They're they're not body on frame, like the old ikana lines were.

Dan Roth  49:41  
Yeah, just makes it better.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:43  
Yeah, it makes it Yeah, make Yeah, it's much better packaged, you know, even even though I think the floor is a little bit higher than this than the promaster. It's still way lower than the floor in the economy lines. So you actually have a lot more interior volume. Even with the same, the same footprint.

Dan Roth  50:03  
Yeah, it's easy to get in and out of all those things that you no matter after you're putting, you know, miles on both yourself and,

Rebecca Lindland  50:12  
and there's gonna be more safety features and this thing to just even like the backup camera, you know, things like that they're just gonna make it easier and safer to maneuver around in it.

Dan Roth  50:21  
Yeah, I'd had the, you know, the, the, the I did have the backup camera. The one thing I will say with the cargo version is because you don't have all the windows. So you got to be kind of careful. Yeah, big mirrors and the, the convex mirror or non convex mirror that

Sam Abuelsamid  50:38  
you don't want a concave mirror.

Dan Roth  50:40  
Yeah. Yeah. So that you could sort of see around pretty well. And it also has, like, you know, it's got the, like automated parking functions and stuff. So there's a lot to it, that when you start to dig in Ford really wants to own commercial vehicles, and they've made all of their their commercial vehicles that you know, they're all their fleet stuff is very good and very well thought out. And this is, this is no different. It's, it's a very comprehensively thoughtfully designed, van, I won't be pleased to get something a little quieter, smoother riding. But, you know, if you had to spend every day using this, it would be fine. And I think it would actually be good with a little bit of weight in it, it would smooth out the ride. So you know, it would it would. It's a it's just a good work vehicle. I'm the director of

Rebecca Lindland  51:33  
a couple of things.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:34  
Yeah, I mean, for most users, you know, unless you're getting one of these from your local u haul, you know, and picking it up empty to move stuff. Most of the commercial users certainly use this thing are gonna have stuff in there, you know, plumbers and electricians and whoever, they're gonna have tools and parts and all that, you know, they're gonna have racks in the back,

Dan Roth  51:56  
you know, for everything that rattles you hit one bump, and the whole thing is,

Sam Abuelsamid  52:00  
but still, you know, I mean, it's gonna be a little more buttoned down because you have all that that weight in the back.

Dan Roth  52:06  
Yeah, well and and you know, this they're, they're gonna take it to an upfitter you know, and get know that you know, probably do both, you know, take it to the outfitter, get the racks and stuff, and then you know, use it for years. It just, it's an evolution and work vehicles and I'm glad that it's here and that they feel the economy didn't didn't disappoint me. And I was pleased that it was getting 17 miles per gallon. 1718. So those are bad numbers for for what it was and I didn't do a ton of driving in it. And mostly around town. So on the highway, you could probably get it up above 20

Rebecca Lindland  52:41  
Did you like the 10 speed

Dan Roth  52:43  
is seamless. I like that the power train is fantastic. This this power training. Everything is just good. That's awesome. So yeah, well, I would I did not have a sports car. It was at least it was mostly a

Sam Abuelsamid  53:00  
rear wheel drive or an all wheel drive two seater that counts.

Dan Roth  53:03  
Yeah, all wheel drive to see totally. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:06  
it's nice. Nice shade of silver one turbo V six. I mean, right. Got all the right checkmarks on the on the little list that

Dan Roth  53:14  
was really brave. You can get one of these sideways. Just

Sam Abuelsamid  53:18  
two seats, a twin turbo V six, all wheel drive. It's just like a Nissan GTR.

Rebecca Lindland  53:23  
Right. Totally Tinder worthy. Yeah.

Dan Roth  53:29  
You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:30  
and you could bring

Dan Roth  53:32  
a GTR in the back. I'm just saying air mattress. I'm gonna leave it at that. Let's move on.

Okay, so why don't we circle back? We talked about ease and before we get too cold, like, do we want to talk about Rebecca's thoughts about California going all Evie cuz I you know, I think this is kind of a lot of much ado about not a whole lot with the mandate from Governor Newsome, but, you know, give us give us the outlines and will will fill fill in with our, you know, outrageous opinions.

Rebecca Lindland  54:12  
Well, so, so thinking about this. So for our listeners who may not follow the industry in the weeds like we do, I get governor Gavin Newsom of California, he announced back in on September 23, that, as of 2035, the state of California is banning the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles. So this doesn't mean that you can't buy a used vehicle because you can it's just the new ones. And you know, there was some uproar and this and that so I decided as I was thinking about this, because in in my past and hopefully future life, and I really am an analyst when I look at the industry, and that's that's my forte and so I was thinking about this and thinking about product planning, you know, this is only two to Car cycles away, basically. And so I decided to look back a little bit because as you look back, you learn what could come forward. And so I thought about, you know, 15 years ago in 2005. And I, you know, a couple of high points. This is this is available on my site, Sam

Sam Abuelsamid  55:20  
drives.com, thank you. What you want to do is you want to click on the reflections link at the top of the page. And that'll take you to the, to the article,

Rebecca Lindland  55:31  
my very first blog post. So basically, 15 years ago, Facebook was just starting out, YouTube was just launching, Nokia was the most popular phone internet was only 10 years old. And Lotus was, I had signed a deal with Tesla for these glider things. So my point of kind of going back was to think about how far we've come in 15 years. And I always look at who's in the marketplace, also demographically. So baby boomers were the dominant AI cohort, in 2005, they had just turned 60 years old, the youngest one was only 41. So you know, it was this really dynamic market in terms of technology just starting to get its wits about it. But the baby boomers were right, really in the midst of market control. So when we look at where we are today, of course, you know, the internet is now access to the internet. So human right 70% of all adults use Facebook and YouTube even more use YouTube. And the boomers are still ruining everything.

Dan Roth  56:39  
Tell me off Shrek I'm sorry, Carrie, there's actually

Rebecca Lindland  56:40  
a third last gasoline stations than in 2005, which I thought was interesting. It's actually that's good. Right? And but the thing is that what's so baby boomers actually 75 now, and this is what kind of freaked me out in 2035. The millennials, who we still think of as living in their parents, basements are throwing nonsense up 60. They're going through, they're nearing theirs. They're they're nearing, they're 60, certainly in their late 50s. So I separated the baby, the millennials into three separate groups. And I think I've kind of touched on this before, but basically, I look at them and think, okay, you can't group these people altogether, because technology has had such a profound impact on their lives. So what I call the trophy, generation, 78, to 88, the online generation 89 to 99, birth year, and then generation app, which is every kid Born in 2000s. And when we think about who's in the marketplace today, you know, it's a mixture of people, but much more so than it's ever been. And in 15 years, we're really going to be dominated by trophies by online generation, and starting to be by generation app. So we have to think about what this looks like, in 15 years. And you know, as we talked about earlier, at the beginning of the show, things like charging stations and infrastructure. And you know, how much progress we could potentially make in 15 years, I think this really could become a reality. I think that this is something that has a lot of legs to it. I think that younger people expect vehicles to be energy efficient to be to be environmentally responsible to be corporate responsible. So I think that this really has some legs to it. And it's it's not quite as outrageous as it seems when we first hear about it. So hopefully, that wasn't too much in the weeds. I'm sorry, no.

Dan Roth  58:47  
So I A Come on trophy generation. There's no more generation that has had its ass kissed than the baby boomers. And that's anyway.

Rebecca Lindland  58:55  
No, it's the trophy. It's the children of the baby boomers. Baby. They were the helicopter. They were the they were the kids that were raised by helicopter parents.

Dan Roth  59:08  
Sure, um, but I think to like, the demographics aside, I think it's, it's what do we want to invest in. And so I like the idea that like, by 2035, they're trying to sort of shape behavior with the, you know, with legislation. And, and that's, it sounds bad when you put it in those terms. But that's been very effective. And I think if we want to divorce our energy systems from the old way, and really latch on to renewables, which have shown over the last, I don't know, four or five years that, you know, renewables are cheaper than coal, which was had been the cheapest energy source for a very long time. We need to make sure that there's reasons to adopt this stuff and and ease sort of further to divorce us from fossil fuels. So I think that's good. We're always going to need cars. And it's not like they're going to completely legislate gas cars off the road. It's just the sale of the new ones new one,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:19  
you'll still be able to drive your 67 Chevelle.

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:22  
Yeah, yeah, but but the caveat that I do say at the end, and I wanted to keep this short, and I didn't want to get into it is the grid. I mean, the electric grid does need to be improved, certainly in states like California, especially where, you know, they have brownouts all the time now. So there is there. My point, the point of the blog was that I do think that from a market standpoint, and from a demographic standpoint, that the audience will be there, that people will be willing to look at EBS, and in fact, may even expect them to be there. But the grid has to be ready for them. Because I think infrastructure will come along. I think the range certainly will come along, the barriers won't be market driven, they're going to be resource driven, they're going to be things like the electric grid.

Dan Roth  1:01:14  
Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that I'm sorry, Sam, I didn't mean to interrupt. But if you look at the the sort of biggest barrier and problem other than sort of charging being difficult, like it's still a pain to charge the cars, like you were talking about earlier. The other issue is those grid operators, the Pino PG and E. One of those wildfires was sparked by a wire actually sagging, they have hooks for the the, the the ground wires, and after a while the the hooks wore through, and somebody just like a sort of study that was like, look at this hook, okay, look at how long it's been, look what they did at some point, because they knew that there was a lot of wear on this tower. And, you know, it turns out, like the sort of hook that held the wire was, like, 100 years old. Yeah, and so just collect from the infrastructure, it's like, you should have replaced that a long time ago, pg&e and you should have known that it was like that, you know, like you get paid, you have the sort of you are the utility. And, and that was irresponsible of you, and we're relying on you to keep up your part of the bargain, you know, and it's, it's that that sort of, sort of balance that we've been sort of told for a long time that consumer behavior is the real solution to climate issues. And all we have to do is adopt TVs, and, you know, everybody reduced their consumption, but really, there's a lot on the industry side that needs to come along, that has sort of been swept under the rug, and they need to do a better job about being resistant to you know, maintaining their stuff, and not just backing me out, you know, profit, you know, cost cost money, to generate all that shareholder value. And eventually, if you don't maintain your stuff, it comes back to bite you. And here we are. So I hope that it actually does drive improvements to the grid, because it should,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:14  
and I think it will, you know, and, you know, the utilities increasingly are, you know, they're recognizing, you know, the opportunities that are available with with Evie adoption, you know, to in order to sell more electricity, you know, they realize that there's a significant business opportunity for them. And so they're, you know, Mike, my employer guidehouse, you know, we do, you know, as a consulting firm, and this is not something that's not an area I work on, but as a firm, they do a lot of work with a lot of utilities, especially investor on utilities like pg&e and others. And, you know, so there's, there's absolutely a lot of interest in what do they have to do to support the adoption of EBS, because they actually want EBS to be adopted, because that's, that's a market for the power that they're producing. And, you know, but they, they, they recognize, they recognize that they do have to upgrade things in order to enable that. So, you know, part of that is things like, you know, putting in demand response systems, you know, to be able to manage, you know, where the power is going and when, you know, to, you know, when there's peaks in, in demand, you know, to be able to shut off, you know, things like some of the Chargers or reduce the power output to some of the Chargers, you know, to balance the load. So you don't have you don't run into the brownout problems. And they're, they're working on that and hopefully, you know, well before 2035, they'll have they'll have a lot of those issues sorted out there. Certainly there's enough power generation capacity available to support you know, all those TVs, but it's, it's getting it from where it's produced. To where it's being used in those vehicle batteries, that has been the challenge, and that's something that everybody's taking a look at, and, you know, doing increasingly looking at things like, you know, vehicle to grid integration, you know, this, this is something that was talked about, you know, back 1213 years ago, when we were just starting to get into this new age of ease. But, and there's been, you know, various pilot projects, but nothing has been really implemented at scale. because, frankly, there haven't been enough ease to make it worthwhile. And, you know, me, you know, there's actually 3000 separate utilities across the United States, and they all have different systems. and managing that is been a nightmare. But what's happening now is, especially as commercial fleet operators are looking towards electrification, that is, you know, potentially a really a good source, you know, to be able to do vehicle to grid integration, where, you know, vehicles that are plugged in can actually be a buffer, you know, to when there's peaks on the peak loads on the demands, on the demand side, you know, to be able to draw a little bit of power out of those batteries, and balance that out, you know, shave off those peaks. You know, there's a lot of interesting work being done there. And, you know, for those fleets, you know, that are operating in this specific area. You know, I think that's, that's where you'll start to see some of those sorts of ideas get implemented. So I think there's a lot of a lot of good opportunities for business across the board, from this stuff

Dan Roth  1:06:37  
there. What do you think, Rebecca, do you think that we're, we're are we optimist? I mean, we are clearly being our men of the people here.

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:45  
No, I think that it's, it's, it's, first of all, there's also business opportunities, because there's a lot of legitimate concern about what do we do with all these batteries. But those batteries actually have a second life to them. So I remember years ago, now I was at a Chevy Volt event. And all the tents that we were in the lighting and everything was actually using old batteries from the Chevy Bolt, which was really cool. So there's opportunity there to figure out how do we use these batteries again, what's the second life for them? So I think that there's, you know, I think there's a lot of opportunity, having lived in Saudi Arabia, obviously, I'm very aware of the role of oil, but also the limitations of oil availability. And, you know, I put solar panels on my own house, I've heavily insulated the house, so that my energy efficient energy usage is probably cut by more than half from the time that I bought the house when it really didn't have any proper insulation in it. I've no idea how they lived here without it, but I think that there's measures that everybody can take and should take, as you know, as much as you can afford to limit your own use and not waste. I mean, you know, when you think about wind, there's obviously there's challenges with wind, because it can be really inconsistent. But I think that we need to explore these resources, I was really disappointed. I remember when, in Massachusetts, they were going to put a wind farm off of the Cape Cod coast, and it didn't get passed, because we were like, I don't want a wind turbine thing. And yeah, it was,

Dan Roth  1:08:24  
I mean, there was, as usual, there's a lot of corporate chicanery behind it

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:29  
was and but you know, I think that there's, we have to look at these things as, as necessities, like cell phone towers, right, you know, I was on a walk this afternoon with my sister. And also and I looked up and near near where I went to middle school of all places, and there's a cell phone tower, like right behind the school now. And, you know, but that's why we have cell phone coverage, because we need those kinds of things. So I think that you know, there's a responsibility that that we have as as citizens of the world to take care of it to do our part in it. Certainly corporations have a responsibility to use their profits wisely to certainly maintenance for goodness sake, take care of your stuff like it's like a house right? You run it into that you can run it into the ground if you don't take proper maintenance and care and maintenance of your house. You know, houses not I mean, anyone thinks that they're going to buy a brand new house, and there's not going to be projects is kidding themselves. Right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:36  
A house is a money pit No matter if it's new or old. It

Dan Roth  1:09:39  
is. I think if you do the math to like it's not it's that's a really great metaphor, because a house is not really an investment vessel. And that it if you if you actually calculate out and adjusted dollars for inflation, you generally only break even or even when you do count, for, you know, maintenance of keeping improvements to a house over the long term, the difference is you sort of you put your put mortgage into it. And then when you need a lump sum, you sell the asset, and then you get the lump sum and because of inflation has happened over, you know, the 30 years, you've owned the house, you get a pretty decent lump sum. And hopefully at that point, you haven't been stupid and overextended yourself. So it it like it. It can be a container for wealth, but it shouldn't be your only container for wealth. And like when you when you own and run a sort of a utility. It should be the same thing like yes, there's profit to be had there. But you also have to make sure that you, you keep it up. You can't do the profit at the expense of the maintenance. Well, yeah, right. Well, you kept

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:47  
that profit to persist over the long haul, right? Just like when you think about the next quarter,

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:54  
right, that lump sum, it's gonna be a lot smaller in your house if you haven't maintained it.

Dan Roth  1:10:58  
You know, yeah, unless the market booms artificially and then you can sell any old shithole.

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:04  
So I, you know, my, the reason I wanted to write the article was because in 15 years, that people that are in the marketplace are very different. And I think that we have a responsibility utility companies have a responsibility, states have a responsibility to have the grids ready to have renewable energy ready. I, you know, the industry, we're going to, we're going to, I think continue to build and improve on ease. I mean, that, that Hyundai Kona is is a fantastic example of, of taking something that 10 years ago, was kind of weird and sort of inadequate, like, you know, the Nissan LEAF, right, it was weird, different. It had a 34 miles 74 mile, right, to this thing that again, looks exactly like any other Kona on the road. And 260 miles of range. That's impressive.

Dan Roth  1:12:05  
Yeah. And, like, honestly, that those are jobs, those are profit. Yeah. Good. Like, stop just doing the same thing over and over again, for 100 years, like, just look at, you could do other stuff, and you'll make money. For Christ's sake. All right. Um,

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:22  
just for our listeners, I have to tell you that Dan's hair was kind of nice in me the beginning. And it's now he's running it through.

Dan Roth  1:12:36  
Yeah. Look, I'm passionate about this. Um, we should all we should all eat, because doesn't really change our life, right? Which is still your driving technology, it's energy, if we can make everything electric. It's it's power agnostic at that point, because it's just electricity. So you know, it doesn't mean that we can't have fun on cars. If they're electric, it means that like, we can breathe, they just want sounds good.

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:03  
Yeah, they want to sound too fat. Yeah. But But nobody loses if the air is cleaner.

Dan Roth  1:13:09  
No, right. We're all better, except for those people who profit from pollution. Because they don't want to change what they're doing. Come on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:19  
You know, Mike, Mike, two kids are both adults now. And, you know, they, they, you know, they frequently show, you know, they're, they're stressed about the state of the world, you know, they, you know, they're, they're, they're showing signs of real anxiety, you know, because they honestly, don't think that we're gonna be able to survive as a species for another 20 years, because they look up because of what because of what we have done to this planet. So we need to, we need to make changes.

Dan Roth  1:13:53  
My kids look around, you know, my daughter's 15 and in my son's 12, and they just look around and like, what, why would you do things like that? Like, that doesn't make sense to them? Like, why, you know, like, you don't shit where you eat? Like, why would you do that? It's like, I don't have a good answer. I agree with you. And it's messed up. And you know, we've been trying to change for a long time. And, but I think that age group also has never felt more empowered to make those choices, which is really cool. The kids are gonna save us, right? I think they feel really empowered to make those changes to make good decisions to make decisions. They feel like they can you know, whether it's the the you know, who they buy from the corporate responsibility, they have that information at their fingertips, and they have the opportunity to execute on those decisions. And really rewarding is to teach him that stuff is like, you know, that is so funny because like, we we you know, make it a practice don't we don't buy from Walmart. I don't like the way they treat women. I don't like a lot of their corporate practices. I don't like the way they beat the hell out of their suppliers. Every For a cost reduction, like that's completely just nonsense, you can't make something that percentage cheaper every year. That's not how it works. But that's what they demand. And so it's like, well, I'm not just going to give them my business. And so I explain that to the kids. And then they're like, why can't we do this? We're like, I don't want to spend my money with them. Right? Like, um,

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:22  
but I like that. I mean, that's the thing is that, that is, you are empowered to do that to make those choices. And, you know, I didn't, I mean, thinking, you know, 2223 years old, you know, it's 25 years ago. We didn't feel empowered by that, right? We didn't we didn't have that kind of information.

Dan Roth  1:15:44  
Well, we're Gen X is right. So we were beaten.

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:47  
Yeah. And so. So but you know, we didn't have that kind of information. And so I think that I, I think that empowering children to be able to execute on those, you know, so that they aren't worried. So they're not concerned. So they feel like they're taking action. They feel like they're making a difference. I think that sort of feeling they have at a much younger age than we did. That's just my impression. All right.

Dan Roth  1:16:13  
Well, I'm gonna climb down off my soapbox now to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:16  
other topics. All right, we got one one more before we hit some listener mail.

Dan Roth  1:16:22  
All right. Um, I see I was looking at my hair. Let me just change one does. The Nissan Rogue rogue first drives

Unknown Speaker  1:16:34  
you to fall?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:35  
Yeah, it does. It does look really good. You know, and especially when you see it in person, you know, it's, it's a it's a really nice evolution, you know, new new direction to Nissan's design language. adopt some of what we've seen them do the last year and a half or so on the sedans on the maxima versa. And Sentra, you know, a little more, you know, sharply creased metal, you know, kind of flatter surfaces, almost kind of an origami kind of thing. But

Dan Roth  1:17:04  
did they explain the design idea behind it at all? We had a little presentation from from Nissan, so that, like, the idea is, when you're someplace and you see it drive by? It's the roofline. Yeah. Well, you know, it has this sort of hoop suggestion to it, and it looks sporty. It was an interesting idea. And when, when you when you have it explained to you, and you think about like, okay, so the idea is that you're seeing only part of the car, and it just sort of has a sporty signature to it, even as it's a CV. And so the bottom part of the body is, you know, sort of, it's not less important, but they really, you know, they emphasize that the scoop of the roofline is interesting. Yeah, you listen, whatever

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:49  
you look into, well, yeah, it looks good. It looks good, as you know, and I like, you know, again, that they're continuing with the the two tone thing, you know, the contrast and roof, color availability. You know, it's still got a little bit of that floating roof thing that Nissan has been doing for a few years, you get the black bar through the C pillar that kind of separates the roof from the pillar. So design wise, great. You know, it's a, it's a really nice update, one of the interesting things that they mentioned about the design, you know, they describe the grill, you know, for, for the last, I don't know, 678 years now on Nissan's who've had this, what they call their v motion grille, that strip of Chrome that goes under and up the sides, you know, of the grill. And they, they wanted to make the grill a little bit more prominent, you know, as has kind of been the trend in recent years, but without making it overwhelming. And, you know, so it's actually not substantially larger than what we see on some other recent Nissan's. But rather than make the that chrome strip deal much wider, you know, to get that, that visual prominence there, what they actually did was, they basically kept the the main part of it roughly the same thickness as it was before, but added the second narrow chrome strip parallel to it around the outside of it. So the overall effect is that it's a little more visually out there without being kind of, you know, too overwhelming about it. And I think it actually works really well. So I think that was actually one of the nicest visual touches, I think that they did on there.

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:30  
It's almost like a double mat on a frame.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:32  
Yeah, exactly. So design, good. Interior much better than before, you know, big, big upgrade on the interior. You know, I got a chance to drive it for a couple hours. One of the first things I noticed one of my big gripes as you may recall, a lot of Nissan's is the really low quality center touchscreens, they use the displace, you know, low contrast. They just don't look good. They're not very responsive. They They got a much they, they've got a much better display on this one. So it's a, it's a much nicer touchscreen, easily visible through polarized sunglasses, which is always a good thing, you know, was fairly resistant to glare, which has been a problem on a lot of the Nissan screens. So it definitely addressed that, you know, the power train is not radically different from before, you know, minor upgrades, but but good, you know, the NVH is definitely much improved the engines quieter than before, you know, the the structures stronger, and they did some tweaks in the suspension, you know, to improve isolation. So, you know, there's less road noise. You know, this, I think compares very favorably to a lot of other vehicles in this class. You know, so I think it is really nice to drive in. The seats are really comfortable. You know, everything about it is just, you know, significantly improved from before.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:57  
So look the same kind of

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:59  
love and I love the exterior of it. I think it looks the front end is really nice.

Dan Roth  1:21:04  
It's Yeah, they've done a really good job on the last couple of vehicles that they've restyled and redone. You know, it sounds like the same sort of improvement plan that the Versa underwent, it really impressed me as well. They took the same basic pieces and just restyled them and rethought them into a much more pleasant

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:22  
Yeah, it's, it's conceptually not different from what they had before. But everything is just executed better and more refined. And that's a good thing. The problem is this. This, this is a segment that is so competitive. I mean, this is the biggest, one of the biggest segments in the industry. Now about 4 million compact crossovers sold in the US last year. Wow. You know, almost almost a quarter of the market. Wow. And that's it. You know, you've got vehicles like the rav4 and the CRV and the escape. And there's a new Hyundai Tucson coming in probably a new Sportage not too far down the road from Kenya. And it's a it's a Jeep, you know, it's a it's a tough segment. And this is a really, really good vehicle. But there is there was nothing about it that really set it out from the crowd. You know, it's absolutely 100% competitive in every respect, almost every respect. One One thing that where I think that they made a mistake, which was not having an electrified powertrain option from the beginning, you know, Toyota last year, almost a quarter of rav4 is that they sold rav4 was their best selling nameplate in North America. They sold over 400,000 rap fours last year, hundred thousand of those almost were hybrids. And now they also have a plug in hybrid for to selling a lot of hybrid escapes. They've got the plug in hybrid coming. Honda's got a hybrid CRV, they did acknowledge that, yes, they're working on a hybrid for the road for the new road. But they didn't they wouldn't say when it's coming probably a couple of years away. That's that's really the only really thing really only real flaw I would find in it. You know, everything else about

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:11  
planning stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:12  
Yeah, everything else about it is excellent. But it doesn't jump out. You know, it doesn't leapfrog anybody. You know, it's it's fully competitive with the Rab and the CRV in the scape. And, and, you know, we're, we'll see about the Tucson you know, that, you know, certainly from a design standpoint, that one definitely steps out. But, you know, otherwise, it's really, really good.

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:36  
So the other thing that I would be concerned about for Nissan in terms of year over year sales comparisons, is they were so heavily fleet dependent, in the past. You know, I just I think that I mean, I think this vehicle looks really nice. I definitely feel like it's, it stands out from that standpoint, because I do think it's much more expressive from the front end. But from, you know, how, how much of their sales was actually retail versus, say, car rental fleets, which are in the toilet now, because nobody's traveling? I don't

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:13  
know how, yeah, how big a percentage of Rogue sales were fleet versus, you know, the sedans? I think, I think it was much more of a problem for the sedans for Nissan for Matt for

Rebecca Lindland  1:24:24  
ultimately, I felt like every time I was hanging up a rental car, that there was Nissan Xterra, but that's just like, anecdotally, but you know, I do think it's something to keep an eye on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:35  
Yeah, definitely.

Rebecca Lindland  1:24:37  
But it's, it's a really nice looking vehicle for sure.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:40  
But one other thing. Yeah. And this is not necessarily to slam Nissan or anything, but it is, you know, the pricing. You know, it's certainly, again, totally competitive, you know, starts around 26 grand, you know, the loaded Platinum that I drove, you know, you're up in that $38,000 price range. And wow, just like we've completed, you know, I think we started the complaints on that with the CX five, you know, but everybody's in that in that price range at the top of their lineups now and so,

Dan Roth  1:25:13  
you know, this is the heart of the market though. Yeah, it is. It's, it's just the hottest segment and, you know, you've got choices from mid 20s to, you know, low 40s. But to Sam's

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:24  
point, though, that price point then just invites so much competition.

Dan Roth  1:25:28  
It's absolutely super competitive. And that's where I'm, I'm picking up the, like, almost the the sense that like, yeah, it's, it's, it's good. Everything else is good. Enough,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:41  
but so is everything else. That's that's the thing is, there's nothing really about it that really stands out from a really impressive crowd. Yeah, so it's not, it's not a superstar in any way. And, you know, I think it it, it kind of kind of needs, you know, at least some superstar feature to really set it apart. And aside from maybe the design, you know, everything else about it is just, you know, as good

Dan Roth  1:26:10  
as but right? If they want to sell a bunch of Nissan financial, we'll make you a superstar. Alright, easy terms and no downpayment. Sell a zillion.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:25  
Anyway,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:27  
shall we get to Lister?

Dan Roth  1:26:30  
Of course we should. What do we what do we have what's in the mailbox?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:35  
Let's start with Elliot Johnston says, All right, Elliot, I feel like your podcast is covering the transition to electrification better than anyone. Because you always bring the story back to the reality of the customer experience. Well,

Dan Roth  1:26:46  
yeah, many people and then we are men and women,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:53  
or people of the people. Anyway, I feels like we're still in the early days of the transition to EBS. We very much so I mean, you know, one and a half percent of the market is electric. How should a buyer think about long term reliability and resale value for electrified products, for example, the Wrangler holds very value very well and is reliable for many miles and years. The new four by E hybrid Jeep is exciting from a power and torque perspective. But should buyers worry about how long a hybrid bought in 20 will either retain value in the face of rapid innovation or retain performance over the long term?

Dan Roth  1:27:31  
Rebecca, you're the analyst. What do you think?

Rebecca Lindland  1:27:33  
Um, Elliot, I think this is a really, really valid question. So it's funny I was, just before I got home this evening, I stopped and talked to a couple people with the Hyundai Kona Evie. And they were asking me about the vehicle. And I said to them, the only thing I would tell you is that you should absolutely lease any of a hybrid or electric, I just think that plug in hybrid, at least right to lease a plug in or hybrid, or, yes, because I just feel like the technology is changing so fast, that we don't really know how that resale value number is going to be, you know, and I worked at Kelley Blue Book, and that was a discussion that the residual value team often had. So I think that it's great to, to purchase this to, you know, to, as we talked about to you to try and get a zero emission vehicle on the road to limit your carbon footprint. But I would encourage people to lease online.

Dan Roth  1:28:36  
So I guess it depends on what you expect out of the car to like it because that's, I think that's sort of the same calculus that you do on a on a internal combustion car, when it comes down to it right, you do the? Am I gonna get my money out of this? Is it gonna hold its value? Or am I just keeping this to extract all the value out of it? Anyone? It doesn't really matter.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:58  
Well, so, Sam, from a battery degradation standpoint, is that something that they've addressed? Would you say for the most part?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:08  
Absolutely. On hybrids, hybrids, it's not sure. And I think to a high degree, certainly for plug in hybrids as well. You know, the performance is pretty much not gonna degrade over you know, hundred and 100 250,000 miles.

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:27  
The Nissan LEAF did have that the first gen leave had

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:30  
a lot of those issues. Yeah, battery V's are a little bit different story, especially the leaf, you know, the leaf is kind of unique in that it had an air cooled battery, as a battery electric vehicle. Most of the other battery V's out there, like the bolt and the Tesla's and most other stuff, uses a liquid cooled battery. And those tend to hold up better and because you can, it's you can do better thermal management, with with with The liquid cooled battery for heat and cool II cooling extreme cold our colleges that's that's what kills a battery. Yeah. You know for hybrids because of the way the battery is used it's used differently than it is in a battery. Evie. They tend to hold up better, even though they are air cooled, you know, getting 300,000 miles out of a hybrid battery is not at all uncommon.

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:25  
Yeah, I had talked to a guy a number of months ago that had a Prius like that. So Dan, I think I should clarify my initial response. When I'm talking about leasing, I'm talking strictly pure EBS, you know, on a hybrid, I think it's a very plug in

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:38  
hybrids, I would probably tend to agree with you. You know, it depends, you know, to think to what some of what you were saying, Dan, it depends on what your use cases, if you're like me, and you tend to keep your vehicles for 810 years or more, then I think resale value is less of an issue. And, you know, then I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't bother leasing in that case. You know, if you're somebody that wants to replace your vehicle every two, three years, then yeah, lease it.

Dan Roth  1:31:08  
But I do think that with a V's there's, it's, it's such a rapidly evolving side of the market, that leasing also sort of hedges your bets a little bit. So in five years, the cars are going to look a lot different, and five year leases long, but in three years, the options are going to look a lot different for EBS than they do now. So if you've signed on for you know, a five year or six year loan, you're almost like you're stuck with that and then at the end of it, you might want to trade it in and get a new one anyway. So yeah, I think leasing is also not only just a sort of pure financial side of it, but also it's a way for you to trade into the rapidly evolving technology with a fixed cost.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:00  
So that's not 10 on on the battery v set, also plugged both plugins on plug in vehicles. You know, there are so many new models that are coming out in the next 24 or 36 months that you know there's going to be a lot of different options that you might want to take a look at the other the other thing you know, to the resale value thing for batteries batteries generally do have significantly worse resale value. And in large part because when they're the ones that have been bought so far when they bought new they had federal tax credits on them so that was 70 $500 off that gets factored into that resale value because when you buy it used you don't get that tax credit. And so you know if you think of the net price after the tax credit then the depreciation is not as bad it's more comparable to an internal combustion vehicle but if you're looking sticker versus resale value then it looks really bad so that's something to consider. So it depends on how you know what what your use cases how long you you want to keep it you know but right now I was agreed right now is probably a better time to lease one than to buy one and and reevaluate you know in two three years you know and see what new options that are out there because there are going to be a lot of new options

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:23  
there are and one thing I would recommend also is that if you go the leasing route kind of to Dan's point as well if you go to leasing route for those two or three years that you lease that you know your payments probably going to be less than if you had bought the car so stick the the gap the chicken in the bank so that if you have a down payment then if you decide hey you know what leasing wasn't for me or I feel more comfortable the technology and I want to now buy a vehicle you know the difficulty about going from leasing to purchases you don't really have a down payment you're not turn you know you're not trading in a car so you know prepare for that think okay, I'm going to stick a little money right budget for it and so that when you go into that dealership then you can trends it makes the transition from leasing to purchase a lot easier.

Dan Roth  1:34:11  
Yeah, I do you think that you know from there's those like financial advice, folks that hate leasing and they will say it's never a good idea and you don't end up with an asset at the end of it. And it's only a cost because you're essentially rent that car

Rebecca Lindland  1:34:25  
is also not an asset. Like it's a it's an expensive,

Dan Roth  1:34:28  
it's absolutely an expensive, it turns into an asset with very little residual. I mean, it's a depreciating asset, right? It's not so you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:39  
when anybody that tells you a car is going to be an appreciating asset is a liar.

Dan Roth  1:34:44  
No, I mean even even a car that you know, something classic that winds up selling for, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars you have it, you've had to maintain it and keep it up that entire time. If you don't, you're not coming out ahead, but you know when you're in your peak earning years, like you're paying for a car pretty much no matter what, like, you've got those short periods of time where you pay off the car and you pay to keep it up. You know, a lease typically has maintenance, at least some kind of maintenance included and ease need less maintenance. So, you know, balance out your options, run the numbers and figure out you know, sort of where where you can afford it, or you can look at a ucv I think the reliability question is not really much of an issue in in, from what I've seen actually EBS have, they have fewer parts. They're still pretty sophisticated, but there's not as much to go wrong there. And I know I mean, there's one Evie brand that I would avoid. But other than that, I think that the manufacturers that are building ATVs and that are going to come to the market with V's in the next couple of years are going to have good stuff that you can you can trust at least as much as their their gas cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:05  
All right, next up, Paul W. Paul, thank you for watching me on the tech guy says I'm looking to purchase a pickup truck never had one. What are your thoughts on the Ram 1500 with the Hemi does not like a torque engine do the auto on off switch that makes the vehicle turn off at stoplights. I liked I live I live in city suburbs, and we'll use it as a daily driver currently have a 2012 jag x j with a V eight want to keep a naturally aspirated engine with power and refuse to pay $100,000 for a new car. Even the Mercedes s class has this by Turbo crap. You know, I like turbos. I have no problem with turbos.

Dan Roth  1:36:45  
I like the linear response of a naturally aspirated engine. I understand.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:51  
Although, you know, the that 286 is slightly nonlinear and it's naturally aspirated. So yeah, they'll guarantee that you're gonna get linear response. Anyway, predictable predictive a sent along a summary of what he's looking looking at its Ram 1500 Hemi Longhorn net price on the one he configured was $57,700, which is not an not an unusual price to pay for a new truck these days. So before I hand it off to YouTube to comment, I just want to say, you know, etoro is not like the other, you know, auto stop start systems that are out there. And I don't know if Paul, if you've actually test driven the torque. But you know, this is a 48 volt mild hybrid system, which you know, will actually keep the engine off significantly longer, like minutes at a time when you're stopped. And typically, you know, when you restart, it doesn't restart the engine, as soon as you release the brake pedal, it actually starts rolling on electricity, you know, this, the the starter generator actually starts things going. And then at two or three miles an hour is where it actually restarts the engine, most of the time, feels better, it's Yeah, it's actually really seamless. Most of the time, you will, aside from any thing you might hear, you generally will not feel it stopping and starting. It's it's really, really seamless most of the time. So I would definitely consider you know, if you haven't test driven if you test drove it and didn't still didn't like it, Fine, go for it. But if you haven't actually taken one for a drive, I would seriously consider taking one for a test drive and and make sure that you don't like it. Because especially since you say that you live in the city and suburbs, we use it as a daily driver, that means you're going to be doing a lot of stop and go. And that mild hybrid system will make a significant benefit in fuel economy with that thing. I mean, we're talking like 10 to 15% better fuel economy, which you know, on a truck, you know that, you know, 18 1718 miles per gallon versus 2021 miles per gallon, you're going to notice that over time. You may not care, and that's fine. But yeah, just just something to consider. You guys.

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:19  
Yeah. So Paul, thank you for the email through and Rebecca drives my website. And Rebecca drives.com Yes. I really liked the Ram 1500 when I had it back at Christmas time, my brother Larry actually spent a lot of time driving it, which was very kind of FCA to let him do that. And he loved it, you know, it had the beat engine, it had that e torque system in it and it was quite seamless. I am very conscious of that of the transparency or lack thereof when it comes to stop start, but this was really, really good. I do think, you know, driving around town, it's a big vehicle. I mean, he says that he has a jug x j, this is not that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:15  
this is on a completely other level.

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:18  
It is it is it's a completely different driving experience. But I think that, you know, overall, the, the Ram 1500 you know, driving it around the suburbs where I live, it was a big truck, but it wasn't, it wasn't ridiculous that, you know, I felt like I could park it in places and it's, it's certainly fun to be up that high. I and, and, you know, we've often talked about the interior job that they did on it. So I think it's definitely worth a test drive, it's definitely worth spending some time on. And, and Sam, I agree with you, I would go in with an open mind and test drive the torque, if you don't like it say, that's totally fine. But just go in with an open mind, I think they've done a really good job on that.

Dan Roth  1:41:00  
I, I like the Ram 1500 the last one I had was very expensive. It was like $70,000. And it had the V with the torque and you know, it does, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:15  
I,

Dan Roth  1:41:17  
I'm not sure. I'd want to daily in a sort of normal suburban urban kind of mix. But that that's neither here nor there. That's just my preference. It has its charms. It's big, it's comfortable. It's you know, relatively quiet has a lot of features. I i understand what he's saying about the ITAR and how even as smooth as it can be. It's, it's not necessarily pleasant. If you if you don't like it, you don't like it, and it takes some getting used to I remember the first few cars I had with the stop start, I would shut it off. Now I just I'm just like, whatever, I don't care. So you get used to it. But it's still something that's that's there. The, I think the differences like for 57 grand you are you going to use the truck as a truck? Because if you are, like you might consider going up to an HD. Just because it's a truck. You know,

Rebecca Lindland  1:42:23  
yeah, I think I'd be curious. And Paul, please send us a note about this, how he's going to use the truck. What is his motivation? Because I totally agree with you, Dan. I think they that I look at other people that use, you know, in pickup trucks and I think I can't really say that I would enjoy driving it every day as a daily driver in the suburbs. So yeah,

Dan Roth  1:42:46  
yeah. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna criticize for for wanting a truck and use like, Look, of course, it's fine. That's not what I'm trying to get it. If you if you want the truck, and you know, you never feel the bed, that's fine. That's your, it's your it's your your choice. So, that doesn't really bother me. It's just, I think if you're gonna use

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:10  
all this stuff we talked about in the previous segment.

Rebecca Lindland  1:43:12  
Right? Right, exactly. All the environmental, but I mean, you know, I love you know, the Toyota Tacoma has been around forever, you know that as a daily driver that down downsizing one down to midsize SUV, but that's, I don't know, I would I would go with a ram before any midsize truck. Or I would I would go with a 1500 of any truck, but I'm thinking just as a daily driver, that combination, you know, again, it depends we don't,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:39  
yeah, it depends on what you want to use it for.

Rebecca Lindland  1:43:41  
We need more information.

Dan Roth  1:43:45  
You know, I also find that if you wanted a pickup, like this, and you didn't want an auto stop start or E torque or whatever, there's there's other choices. I think you can probably get an F 150 with the coyote there. I think there's one XL t

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:05  
Yeah, you can you can get you can get the F 150 with with the five liter. Okay, and of course, you can also get the the Silverado and Sierra with a 5.3 or six liter, VA,

Dan Roth  1:44:15  
right. And so, one of the favorite trucks I had, I had like truck months here this summer, and my one of my favorites was the Silverado trail boss. And that had the 5.3 and so the trail boss is a little it's got knobby tires and stuff, but just the Silverado with the 5.3. It's, it's quieter than either the ram or the Ford. It's as light on its feet as the aluminum fork is it's actually about as light it's actually I think lighter than the F 150. And it's just like that is a quiet, smooth, good power train. It probably does have Stop, stop before It does.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:00  
It does have stuff start as does the floor.

Dan Roth  1:45:03  
And I got it. I think all the trucks have stopped start, you're gonna have to just say like the only

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:07  
one, the only one with a VA that doesn't is the non e torque Hemi. Okay, the the standard version does not have stop start which I confirmed with FCA earlier today.

Dan Roth  1:45:21  
I mean, you know, it's like, honestly, the torque, it's not that much of a performance boost. Because it's not really what it's for. In that sense. It's like an occasional sort of, you know, hole filler, where there's gaps in the performance of the powertrain, it sort of fills in that hole. But the 40 is

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:38  
more for hybrid.

Dan Roth  1:45:39  
Yeah, it helps out in some spots, but it's not like not like the way hybrids have gone, where they really they increase performance significantly. But you know, I really liked the GM trucks. So if you can, if you're a loyal ram guy, I get it. But if you can hold your nose and go over to the Chevy store, you know, and I managed to eke out like a 21 something miles per gallon, maybe even more out of the out of the trail boss driven gently

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:10  
on the highway. And very gently because yeah, I think I only got about 15 when I had a job last a couple years. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  1:46:16  
mean, it gets it gets down there in the in the city, but it also has the this one had the 5.3. And it has the dynamic Spitfire and all that which is again, seamless with the 10 speed like that. That's just that's a stellar power train. And it's, you know, efficient in its own way compared to the torque. So give those a try. I think we just sort of did a really round about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:40  
All right. Next up, Bob Kay. asked, said recently, we're talking about Volvo, talking about the Z 90 that had both a supercharger and a turbo charger. Can you explain what they are, I will do that really quickly. Both of them are designed to pump more air into the engine, because the way you make power is by taking air and fuel and burning it the more air and fuel you can combust in the engine, the more power you'll get. So a supercharger is a mechanical compressor. So it's driven by belt off the engine, and pumps, you know, as the engine revs up, it turns the compressor faster pumps more air and makes more power. It's very good for responsiveness. But as the engine gets at higher speeds, it's not so great for efficiency. And so it's typically typically as a clutch to disengage it as you get to higher RPMs also makes more noise, the turbocharger

Dan Roth  1:47:39  
makes good noise good noise

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:42  
Yes, the turbo charger. Same idea pump more arion. But rather than having a mechanical connection to the engine to drive the compressor, there is a turbine that sits in the exhaust flow the exhaust gas flow as the exhaust as you as the engine revs up. As you step on the gas pedal, you get more exhaust flow it spins up that turbine, which in turn spins up the compressor which pumps more air in it's more more efficient quieter than a supercharger. But in fact the original name of turbochargers was turbo supercharger, so technically they are both superchargers at a rate. The challenge with turbos is you can have turbo lag, especially if you have a larger turbo. But and so you know there's a delay between when you step on the accelerator and when you actually get that power. What Volvo has done and what some other manufacturers have done in the past with using both a turbocharger and a supercharger is they use the turbocharger at lower RPMs to give you that instant responsiveness and then you can use a larger turbocharger that's going to help maybe have a little bit of delay to fill it in at the top end of the RPM band. So you get supercharger and then that feeds into the turbocharger. And so you get more power overall and more seamless or tries to be more seamless. It's never entirely seamless, but it's pretty close. So that's that's what the two are what why they're different. Some engines use just turbocharged most engines just use turbochargers, typically a smaller turbo that is has more responsiveness or they may use two turbos that are smaller that but combined have as much capacity as one larger turbo but they're more responsive. So that's that's the quick and dirty we can talk about that in more detail. Sometimes you want.

Dan Roth  1:49:38  
I got absolutely roasted back years ago, when I wrote a description of how a turbo works for Autoblog. I said as the exhaust gas cools and decompresses, which is what drives the turbine and what I really meant was the pressure drop Up is what drives the turbine. Because it expands as it both cools, which is, you know, not normal. Things typically expand when they get heated but because it's coming from out of from, from under pressure to, from high pressure to low pressure, it's expanding because of the pressure drop. And that's what's actually sort of driving the turbine. Man people did not get it. And they were de they were brutal. It's just like I tried to put it in your terms, folks, I tried to make it you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:36  
it's actually more the kinetic energy that's driving the turbine, the pressure comes as an effect of going through the turbine. And really Yeah, because you're actually trance you're converting that thermal energy and the exhaust gas and and the kinetic energy into mechanical energy to drive the turbine. So and the nature of a turbine is it does expand, and it cools, but it's actually the kinetic energy that's driving it. But

Dan Roth  1:51:03  
yeah, so I thought it made me sense in my head. I, you know, when it came up my fingers it also made sense. And then then I had the comments.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:14  
That Next one is for Rebecca Moore, said as from Sean, he had the podcast on when you talked about Subaru eyesight intruding into your visual periphery. Of course, during that discussion my I caught the extended black box behind the mirror on my rental. It was a Mitsubishi Outlander. I thought it was good engineering to side everything to the far side. So the driver, the mirror, so the mirror hid most of the box from the driver. I was shocked. It was shocking how many Mitsubishi Eclipse and outlanders. The National Ava's had, which begs Another question is the car market? favor of SUVs? When do rental fleets shift SUVs are still considered more premium? So let's address the eyesight question first.

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:01  
Yeah, I think so. As I mentioned, it was just kind of a momentary distraction until I figured out what it was that when I was driving the Subaru Crosstrek the new one, the 2021 and in the rearview mirror on either side of the rearview mirror or small casements that hold the what are the things the sensors the cameras eye for Subaru's eyesight system? And it was just a very, it was one of those like, you know, when you something catches your eye, and then once you know what it is it goes away, you know, you don't pay attention to it anymore. So that's what he's that's what Shawn is recovering

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:45  
the notch on my phone. Kind of like the what the notch on the phones, watch.

Dan Roth  1:52:51  
Some phones that screen?

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:52  
Okay, that's it. No.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:54  
Yeah. Sorry.

Rebecca Lindland  1:52:58  
But and then as for the Ava's question, I think this is a really interesting question. Because I, first of all, I'm not surprised that Mitsubishi Eclipse and outlanders are at the Avis counter, as we talked about with an Gosh, I'm getting really tired. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Thank you, as you're as we were talking about with Nissan, I, you know, almost every company, almost every not all of them, but a number of companies will sell very heavily into fleet rental sales. And so this is a tactic in order to really frankly, to use capacity in a plan and to sell more cars. They sell them sorry, move the metal, they move the metal. Exactly. So, you know, Mitsubishi has been struggling in the States, I for brand recognition for product for dealer experience, and this is a way to get their vehicles on the road. It has happened before when somebody thinks, you know, they read something and they're like, Wow, I've never been in this car before. I've never been in this brand. I really like it and maybe it you know, would lead to a sale but that's why you're going to see quite a few mitsubishis because the brand itself is just is has been struggling for to find spudding in the states for a while.

Dan Roth  1:54:16  
Well and Mitsubishi still willing to do it while other brands have been less willing to do it. Yeah, Honda

Rebecca Lindland  1:54:21  
will absolutely not do fleet sales, they feel like it devalues the brand.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:26  
Yep. And and traditionally it does because, you know the rental companies once they sell off their used rental cars, they sell them at a fairly significant discount and because they also buy them from the manufacturers at a discount so they sell them off at a discount. And that tends to depress the residual values for the retail models as well. I just want to add one more thing about eyesight versus what you saw what Shawn saw in the Mitsubishi I the eyesight system is unique in that It's a stereo camera system, there's actually the, the module that holds the cameras is quite a bit larger than what you find in most cars because it really actually relies on two cameras. And the parallax difference between those cameras kind of like our, our eyes are two eyes. The distance between the eyes is what gives us our depth perception. They're doing the same thing, because they're using it for adaptive cruise control. And they're using that to calculate the distance to the car in front of you. Rather than using a radar sensor, and the Mitsubishi, like most cars has a model vision system has only one camera so the module can actually be much smaller, and it actually fits typically behind the mirror. So you are hiding most of it. That's why you didn't see that same very large system that was in that's in the Subarus because they only have a single camera like Subaru. Alright, all right, one last question. This one from Chad reckling. It came to to Rebecca. And Chad is with the state of Iowa Department of Human Services. Rebecca, I was listening to your podcast recently when you were talking about the Land Rover Defender experience. I think I would love that drive as well. You mentioned a history of the defender that Land Rover gave us a book. Do you know if that's something the common person can obtain or buy? Or is that for the lucky press people who only to have? I would be interested to see what it's all about. Thanks for your response. I love listening to the show with you on it. We all Thank you.

Rebecca Lindland  1:56:35  
Thanks, Chad. And you know, I promise you, I will look into this I did a quick perusal because this actually came in just before we started recording. I didn't find it in my usual sources. But I think I am going to ask a couple of people for you. So hopefully I'll have an answer in the next few days.

Dan Roth  1:56:51  
I think they do at least have some sort of trial courses at the dealerships where you can you can take them and try them out. No, he's looking for the book itself. Yeah. Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  1:57:02  
yeah. The driving experience of the Land Rover driving experience is actually available to the general public. You don't have to have a Landrover. There's three, yeah, there's three in the US so. So Chad, if you ever want to do this, I there's one out in California, there's one in South Carolina, is that where it was? And then there's one up in Vermont. And but the arguably the closest one to you would probably be either the Carolinas or Treat yourself and go to California. And but it's actually open to the public. You can I don't know how much it costs i but i but it is something that anybody can do. And they have vehicles there that you can use as well. So I think it's a really cool experience. I definitely want to do it. With some family members. We were talking about it, but I will come to the book for each out. I promise.

Dan Roth  1:57:54  
I got confused there clearly the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:57:56  
California ones in Carmel, and beautiful out there. So yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, great place to go, you know, take vacation there, once they get the fires. I don't think it's burning in Carmel right now. So probably go there. But yeah, definitely a beautiful area there. The quail Lodge. And one, you know, one thing you might want to do, Shawn is take a look on. Chat. Sorry. It's okay. Yeah. Yes. Anyway, what you might want to do is, is take a look at eBay. Because even if it is a, you know, something that was produced specifically for media, there are some less ethical members of the media that will take items like that and post them on eBay, you know, press kits and others, other swag drives. Yeah, and post those on eBay. So you might want to take a look there. Although I would discourage you from actually buying from one of those people, because we don't want to encourage that sort of behavior. You know, Rebecca, we'll see if you see if it's available. It may be it's it's probably something that they might sell through the experience centers. Yeah, it's true in my package of experience.

Rebecca Lindland  1:59:15  
Yep. I'll definitely check it out for them. All right.

Dan Roth  1:59:19  
All right. Well, that is the show because it's two hours, roughly. And so Thanks all for hanging in and thanks for listening. You know where to find us feedback and wheel bearing sent media. And in the meantime, enjoy.

Rebecca Lindland  1:59:35  
Thank you so much, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai