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

Sam Abuelsamid  0:08  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights. 

Rebecca Lindland  0:11  
I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives with my cat Lucy.

Dan Roth  0:17  
What does Lucy think of a car?

Rebecca Lindland  0:20  
she ever go for rides. Lucy loves car rides, right Actually, she loves it. I actually have to. I put her in the front seat in her carrier buckled in. And then I have to open the sunroof and she will sit there and just stare out the windscreen. If it's cold out, she'll stare at the sunroof. Yes. Lucy is a car girl. Hmm. Usually cats are like, suspicious. Usually think cats are just naturally suspicious period. Yeah, her brother Linus was not a fan. Linus would he? I would give him some like kitty crack to calm him down in the car. But Lisa is all about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Well,

Dan Roth  1:02  
I talk to he's got like barbiturates or something when he go to the groomer.

Rebecca Lindland  1:07  
It's great. It's box pet remedy. It's all natural. It's really fantastic stuff

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13  
was going in the car.

Dan Roth  1:14  
Yeah, I was I was kind of item one day when I got a little crank myself down.

Rebecca Lindland  1:23  
Yeah. All right. So

Unknown Speaker  1:26  
a good way of track already. Right.

Dan Roth  1:28  
So a couple of housekeeping things before we start. So we now have a Patreon, which some of you have already found. So I want to make We love you.

Rebecca Lindland  1:38  
Thank you. Thank you.

Dan Roth  1:40  
I wanted to make sure that we thank those patrons. It does actually help. So let's see. Robert grace Collin, how, soldier? I'll hard. I hope I didn't screw that one up. Stephen. No. last name. Florian Hertzog and Shawn Whitehurst. So far, you guys are early adopters, or early pledgers, or whatever, you're one of the first. So we got some more things coming with that what the supplied,

Rebecca Lindland  2:08  
we explain what what Patreon is exactly.

Dan Roth  2:10  
So Patreon is a way you can go and support your favorite creators, which, clearly wheel bearings are a group of your favorite creators creating a thing. And so you can go to patreon.com, slash wheel bearings, media. And there you can see our rudimentary page, which will get fleshed out with some more things, because one of the things that allows us to do is, say at this pledge level, or that pledge level, you know, increasing pledge levels, you can get exclusive or special things, you know, either you know, some kind of some basically some kind of little return for your, your support, you know, like a

Sam Abuelsamid  2:57  
lrps gives you, you know, tote bags, right, we'll give you something else.

Dan Roth  3:03  
And, you know, we've got a couple of other things in the works, that this actually helps support. So one of the things that I've wanted to do for a while is do a regular newsletter, and email newsletters. So we're getting set up for that that's coming, will mostly sort of encapsulate some of the things that we talked about. But it gives you an easy way to, to read the things that we talk about, you know, often when we're talking on the podcast, we mentioned, something that we've written or something that we've read or whatever, it's a way for us to sort of correlate all those and send them to you automatically, versus you having to listen through and make notes in case we missed anything in the podcast. So it's just another you know, another way you can get some more wheel bearings in your inbox. And then the other thing that we're working on that hasn't really shown up yet, but may is advertising so advertising can go a couple of different ways. There's programmatic, which everybody has a little less control over, that's basically you select your demographics and you know, we accept a deal. We don't really it's not live reads or anything, it's basically we create some, some holes in the show and the platforms fill the holes with, with ads. The other way, is just straight up direct campaigns where you some of you who I know, are on Apple devices with high household income, because we see the metrics, some of you may control marketing budgets or have influence over it. If you would like to hear us talk about your thing. Drop us a line feedback, we'll bring stuff medium. And so from there, and we'll talk we'll talk about your thing, right let's talk about um, you know, it's a it's a way I would dearly love to stay independent. And so this is a way that we can we can try to do that. Lots of money is washing into the podcasting industry after 20 years of being a joke, now, all of a sudden, everybody from iheartmedia, to the, you know, Spotify has discovered it, and they're all pumped up with VC money and credit lines, so they can pay for really great content. But the flip side of that for creator is that you as the creator don't necessarily Own your thing. You don't have as much control over it. And I'm a control freak. So I don't want to work for a giant corporation, I want to have a pretty direct line between us and the listeners. And so this will help us do that. So I'm going to step down off my sort of shop steward soapbox. Now we can talk about cars that were driving and we got a pretty good, good crop. I would love to start with you, Rebecca, and your story of trying to get the Volkswagen Atlas cross sport to understand you.

Rebecca Lindland  6:01  
Yes, well, and thank you for all your efforts. We really are very grateful for the listeners, but it is a lot of work. And I think that that's and content creation is something that hasn't been as valued as it should have been from the very beginning. So anyway, so. Okay, so I had the 2020, Atlas, cross Volkswagen Atlas cross sport, and a couple interesting things about this vehicle. This is a five passenger version of the Atlas, which is historically a three row large, like it's a big crossover. But this one only has two rows. And then it has kind of this cool sloped back. So the three row Atlas is a little bit more square in the back. This is a little bit more sporty profile. along the lines of the Audi Q seven and Q eight. It's kind of the same idea. And what was very interesting about this is the day that it was delivered was a beautiful day. And I thought I'm going to do something that I never do and always should and that's take pictures as soon as I get the car because usually I'm taking pictures like five minutes before Dr. Shop is gonna

Sam Abuelsamid  7:12  
try to do that today. The cars delivered because then it's still clean.

Rebecca Lindland  7:16  
I know. I know. Exactly. I just took 30 Cockers so I drove, I drove to the local beach, and there was actually a family there that had the three row and so the the mom and I were chatting, and because the kids ran off, actually a little boy came over to check out my car then too. But I we were comparing and one of the things that I noticed in the two row is that it's not significantly smaller. So you have this gigantic backwards back cargo area.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:49  
Well, it's the same the same over it.

Rebecca Lindland  7:52  
Right? It is. And so you have this gigantic back cargo. And what's cool about that is that if you don't need that third row, you can then you'll fit so much stuff, whether it's a giant dog carrier, or if you just bring a lot of stuff with you. The woman was she was she was super nice. And she did say that she she does show it to kids, she doesn't use the third row folds up flat most of the time, but it's there if they need it, which I can appreciate. But if you're somebody like me that single or maybe has one other person, it's just not something that would ever really do. And I like to I like to fastback sort of look of the cross sport better. So it was a really good alternative. I was really happy with how big and how spacious. This was. And it didn't drive particularly large. It was fun to drive. It was very engaging. I think I had said before about the Q seven that I had recently that it wasn't quite as emotionally engaging as I would like this. The cross sport, the Atlas cross sport certainly was the kind of was that again, there's that QA sort of feel to it. So I'm driving along and listeners know that you know, I am the worst kind of early adopter because technology hates me. But I love it and it's like this awful like that, like elf in, you know, where he just wants to follow his dad around and his dad was and want anything to do with him. That's my relationship with technology. I have definitely the L I'm in the Atlas and it's got Android Auto, Apple CarPlay all those good things. So I've got Android Auto activated. And I wanted to go I needed to find a local grocery store. So I put in the local grocery store and I'm gonna give it to me it actually actually said to me, speak softer. Now I'm Italian. And if you need me to yell, I can yell. And I thought

Sam Abuelsamid  9:53  
Joleon from the from the New York area,

Rebecca Lindland  9:55  
or the New York area, also Okay, so if you want me to yell, I can yell out the window at you. So I was perplexed by this because I actually wasn't yelling at it was close. I didn't start bottom line was that it wouldn't it just it turned off, it basically said voice cancel. So a couple days later, I'm with my brother, Steve. And we have to go to the post office. And I thought sees a big Volkswagen fan. And actually, my first accident was in his probably mid 70s Volkswagen bug, and he was visiting from college, which means I was probably 12. And I got into his car and played, and I didn't know what the stick in the middle was for. And I couldn't remember if when I got in the car, it was up or down. But I left it down and the car rolled down the driveway in hit a tree. We're sitting at the post office, we're at the old Greenwich post office. And I said, You know what, I'm going to see if this infotainment system can get us to the post office because it just didn't. Like it needed a specific address. We couldn't get the poi to work. So I said, you know, let's take me to the nearest post office. And it said things like, be quiet, speak, speak softer. And it said things like I I'm trying to remember now, but like, it wanted information that I didn't have. It went into it went into the telephone book. And so then I was like, Okay, I'm going to go into navigation. And I don't know if we should have said, Give us poi eyes. We just it was just strange to me that you can't say things like, take me to the nearest post office. So and then

Dan Roth  11:52  
yes, it doesn't have natural language processing. Like is it supposed to be able to do that? Or? Because no, Steve? Well, Steve also said like post office. And it was like,

Rebecca Lindland  12:04  
because then we started making videotapes. And so so that so then we have we have three different three tapes of us talking and trying to get this thing to take us anywhere. Really, at one point, it instead pulled up the name of probably the most famous person in India, in my, in my, in my contact book, like it said, Do you want to call this? And I was like, Oh, my gosh, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:34  
I post office for Narendra Modi. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  12:38  
I mean, it really was so incredibly random. And then so then we took that, so then I used it without Android Auto. So that was just

Sam Abuelsamid  12:48  
that was that was with Android Auto.

Rebecca Lindland  12:49  
That was with Android Auto.

Dan Roth  12:51  
So you were you were trying to get Android Auto which, which should have natural language processing? Right? It should?

Rebecca Lindland  12:57  
Yes. So the first the first time we did this was with Android Auto. The second time I just connected Android Auto, and had the exact same experience. We tried them to find the poi. So then we played with the system a little bit more. And it shows the icon of the post office. But it won't actually you can't actually like point to it or touch it like it just shows it just says you're near a poster. It doesn't. You can't get to it. And it was just it was perplexing. It was perplexing. There was so many other good things about it, it was nothing like the Mazda CX nine issues that I had, this actually could change your radio station and, and things but just the the navigation part of it. It didn't matter if I had Android Auto activated, or if I did not, we couldn't get it to work.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:47  
One thing you might want to consider doing is going and going into your Google Account Settings. because it saves the when you use Google Assistant, it saves it saves the the voice clips, the audio clips in there for a while. Okay, and you might want to go in and just like go to that date, and listen to the voice clips and see what they sound like. See, because given that I was doing this with both Android Auto and with the the embedded voice recognition system, I wonder if maybe there was an issue with the microphone, or, or the audio system somehow in the vehicle that was mangling the sound of your voice. And that's what was confusing it.

Rebecca Lindland  14:30  
It was very frustrating. Obviously, it was funny in some ways. And again, we were parked outside the post office. I can't imagine trying to actually I can't imagine trying to do this while I was driving because I was trying to find something and maybe I just I'm expecting things from it that it's not designed to do. So it went with Android Auto. Do I have to do something to activate google assistant or does that is that happening already?

Sam Abuelsamid  14:59  
Well, you'll You'll see when you're an Android Auto, you know if it's if it's actually using assistant, and most on most vehicles, and we talked about this with the Mazda before, you know, on some vehicles like the Mazda is when you press the voice button, it will just automatically trigger assistant. In other cases, you do a long press on the voice button. So if you do a short press, you know, quickly, quick press on it, you know, then it'll trigger the embedded voice recognition.

Rebecca Lindland  15:23  
Right?

Sam Abuelsamid  15:23  
I can't remember what Volkswagen does. I've actually got a cross sport coming next week. But it may be that you'd have to do a long press to trigger assistant but you'll see it on the screen, you'll see the the little thing, you'll see the little icon for the great pop up and you'll see it the little waves in there. If it's using assistant and better voice recognition. Did you have the two liter or the V six.

Rebecca Lindland  15:49  
So I had the V six it's a 3.6 liter V six engine eight speed automatic, really liked it. You know, it was great power. I this one, it was the CL premium Arline goes for about 52,000. So this is you know, there's a there's a broad range in this. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I think, I think the cross the, it starts around 30. So for the cross sport, so there's, there's a lot of options that you can you can build up to, you know, I got pretty good fuel economy, and that in that mid 20 range, I mean, low low 20 range, I'm driving both on the highway and around town, it was quiet, you know, I there was, again, there were things that I really liked about it, I and certainly, you know, I love the flexibility of so much room in the back. Again, I prefer that kind of more fastback sort of style to it. So if you need three rows, it's there. And you know, the other the other version is there, but I liked the idea of kind of the sporty look and feel. And, and really, you know, just overall I thought it was really good. Once again, like the the monster though the infotainment system just really let me down. Which is a shame because like the graphics are great on it, it's got this really cool. And this thing blue and you know, it has the, it'll show you your your driving score, which mine was 93 out of 100. Thank you. And so it does, you know, there's, I like the layout of it. There's quite a bit of black plastic in the black interior. And I would love to see Volkswagen, either upgrade that or break that up a little bit with some open pore wood a little bit softer feel, you know, like so many others have done, because it's, it's just a lot of a lot of black plastic. But, you know, it's durable, for sure. And you don't have to worry about it, you can wipe everything down. And it had quite a small sunroof compared to other vehicles. I just finished with the Volvo XC 60. And that the it's like the entire roof is a sunroof. It's amazing. The other thing is the front camera in the front bumper and front grille just below the big Volkswagen emblem. It sticks out about two inches. It's really odd. And it's like, it's it looks like such an afterthought. It's like somebody went, Oh, crap, we forgot to put that in. Ah, let's just stick it right there. It just sticks out a lot. It was really because it was not integrated at all. Like it literally looks like somebody went oh, we forgot. So, you know, again, overall, I think that I certainly enjoyed driving it. And, you know, a lot of times when we have these different vehicles, you kind of look and think, gosh, I've got to go and drive that thing. With this. It was like, Oh, great, I get to go drive it. So it's a positive feeling from that standpoint. But you know, again, I just think there's, there are some improvements that can be made.

Dan Roth  19:04  
Well, you know, I think just like the big Atlas, the three euro Volkswagen has done a really good job making a grand cherokee with it just every time I see one, I just, it looks just like that was their benchmark for style at least. And the cross sport looks a little bit more aggressive. You know, it's got bigger flares on it or they just appear more prominent. And it does like the sporty profile. It looks sharp. There's not a whole lot of greenhouse so how was visibility?

Rebecca Lindland  19:35  
visibility was actually surprisingly good. Yeah, I didn't really have any issues with that. I mean, I I don't mind Well, first of all the the whole cabin had a had a nice, airy feel to it so I could get into the driving position that I want to comfortably. I could see the visibility was good. The side mirrors, I would have liked to have had a little bit of a break between the a pillar. And that and the vehicle had to have some of them. Some of the manufacturers, just, they almost like prop out the mirror a little bit. So you have a little bit of a view in between the mirror and the car. But that and that was only just occasionally, there's certain there's some specific turns that I need to make on the way to my sister's house, that it's just a tricky, it's it is kind of like almost like a hairpin left turn, and sometimes that it just gets in the way a little bit. But otherwise, you know, I certainly again, I didn't have the types of issues that I had with the CX nine, where I you know, I couldn't get comfortable the sun this the windshield is because it's so it's so sharply dramatically sloped that the a pillar often it's like I hit my heads practically I didn't have those kinds of issues with the outlets. So I think it was overall it was just a it was a nice vehicle. I really enjoyed it. And you have the

Dan Roth  21:08  
instrument panel that's led, right.

Rebecca Lindland  21:11  
Yes, yeah. Which was cool. Yeah. So you know, again, the interior, the only issue that I had with the interior was just I would like to see more variation in the black. I, you know, in the materials of it, the graphics and everything were excellent. So from that standpoint, it was a very modern, it had a very modern feel, you know, the digital cockpit that they've put in, again, kind of similar to what they've done with Audi is is really forward thinking and from from again, from that standpoint, it's got a great look to it. It's just that voice thing will be really interesting to see if that's the problem.

Dan Roth  21:52  
If you can't get the stupid NAFTA work, it can't put the map in front of you. It's a really, it's a good shot in the family crossover SUV. Market, you know, Volkswagen really has pinned a lot, a lot of hopes on this. And I wonder, Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  22:13  
I mean, the the Atlas has been doing really well for them so far.

Dan Roth  22:16  
I mean, it's a product, it's a family buyer, like if it had existed in 2013. When we bought our jeep, I would have seriously considered it.

Rebecca Lindland  22:23  
Well, it's a perfect Gen X. It's it's a Gen X brand, first of all, and right. And oh, you know what, let me The other thing too, in the, in the center console on the front, there was actually room enough in there for my bag, which is like a small knapsack. But it fit really nicely in there, which I loved. The other thing, and I'm looking at the steering wheel right now. It does not have a hang up the phone button on the steering wheel. And that drives me crazy.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:58  
That there's an there's a button to answer the phone right now. Really not at all?

Rebecca Lindland  23:04  
Nope, there's no thing. You have to do the touchscreen. There's no buttons related to the phone. It's probably Yeah, cuz I remember driving and having to reach over to answer and to hang up, which is a problem. If the screen changes while you're on the phone. Then you you know you're flipping through. So yeah, because I'm looking at the screen right now I'm looking at the steering wheel. And I remember there was a I thought this is the vehicle that I had that didn't have a HANG UP button. And remember I think it was when a Honda did this as well then they ended up putting it back. So it might be the okay the multifunctional okay button. Like it is in the Volvo that I have right now. But it's it's I prefer a dedicated pick up and hang up buttons on the steering wheels. I think that's much safer than having a multifunction button that does it.

Dan Roth  24:03  
Nothing more to say, shall we move on? I think I'm

Rebecca Lindland  24:07  
done for the night.

Dan Roth  24:10  
All right, Sam, what do you got?

Sam Abuelsamid  24:12  
So I had the 2021 Toyota gr Supra. Finally, finally got to drive the Supra. And I liked it a lot.

Dan Roth  24:24  
Really, gosh, I can't imagine.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:28  
This is a great sports car.

Dan Roth  24:30  
Great looking. Everybody gives like, I mean, not everybody but you see this sort of like chatter that goes on about the way it looks and whatever. I don't know, every time I see one in person, it's really striking. It's really good. It is I mean, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:43  
I think the the fake vents in the front fenders and you know, in front of the rear wheels. I think, you know, I would have preferred if they actually had, you know, air passing through them. But, you know, aside from that the rest of You know, I think it's a great ship. I mean, it's a classic, you know, sports car proportions, you know, it's a two seater as a proper sports car should be, you know, with the cab way back engine out front. rear wheel drive, it shares its architecture with the BMW Z for the reason Toyota was able to justify bringing the super back as they did a deal with BMW and they collaborated on this architecture for the the latest Gen Z four and the, the Supra, they share a lot of hardware underneath they, you know, they share the same they use the BMW powertrain, the three liter inline six, and for 2021, they also added a two liter turbo four cylinder as the base engine. And, you know, the BMW three liter six is just such a wonderful engine, I've always love BMW six cylinders, they're great engines, they sound great, makes lots of power for for 2021, they updated, or they upgraded the engine. Last year was 335 horsepower, and 365 I think foot pounds of torque. And this year, it's up to 382 horsepower, and 380 or 368 foot pounds, the base four cylinders, 255 and 295. And, from, from what I've heard from people have driven the four cylinder version, that one's also I mean, I've driven you know, that BMW two liter in a variety of vehicles, and it's a great engine as well. But the six is just, it's just lovely, it's a fantastic sports car engine. You know, the one, you know, as somebody that, you know, 511 one thing that was a little annoying is, you know, the way the roofline is shaped, you do have to duck your head down quite a bit, you know that the the door opening is fairly small, and it's easy to whack your head on the top of the door opening as you're getting in and out. More. So more, so those getting in and getting out. But, you know, once you're in, you know, visibility actually is not as bad as you would think, you know, straight out the back, you know, there's a nice large window in the back. And, you know, to the sides and the front and good visibility, the seats in this thing are fantastic. Lots of lots of lateral support, very comfortable. Unfortunately, you cannot get a manual transmission and this thing, so only the Zed f eight speed automatic, which is, you know, it's also good transmission, but it's got paddle shifters, but I would love to have, I would love to try one of these with a manual gearbox in it. You know, when you get in, you know, from, from the outside, you know, it looks nothing like a Z for you know, the styling is completely distinct. Once you get inside, you see the BMW heritage, you know, it's got I drive, you know, the shapes of the dashboard and everything are very familiar, contemporary BMW, nothing wrong with that, you know,

Dan Roth  28:11  
I mean, would you rather have I drive or Intune? Oh,

Unknown Speaker  28:18  
that's a great question.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:19  
I will take this, you know, 120 times out of 100. You know, the, the, the graphics on the screen, and, and the instrument cluster, you know, been tweaked, you know, so it's got a little bit different look, it basically just re skinned the BMW systems, but it's the same system, which works well, you know, I've no complaints about it. The You know, this, the one I drove, you know, was on these gorgeous 19 inch 10 spoke wheels. Really fantastic looking wheels. The Supra has a nice big hatch in the back so that you know, the cargo area is fairly shallow. But you do have this large opening there so it's easy to put stuff in and out. And you can actually you know, it's got passed through straight to the the passenger compartment. There's a cargo cover, you know, to hide stuff away. So it's not it's not a huge trunk, but it's it's reasonably sized for a sports car. And you know, I took this thing out and just went out and drove for a few hours out in the countryside, and just had a ball with this thing it was it was so much fun to drive. It starts for 2021

Rebecca Lindland  29:37  
would you ever put snow tires on something like this?

Unknown Speaker  29:41  
time?

Sam Abuelsamid  29:43  
Yeah, yeah. Would you know because, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to have it as my only vehicle in the wintertime. But you know, when there's, you know what's cold or is light snow on the ground. I would absolutely put snow tires on it and drive it in the wintertime. Obviously the you know, the limited ground clearance, you have to snows deep, you're not going to get anywhere, even if you've got the best tires in the world. So that's why, you know, I would not want to have it as my exclusive vehicle in the winter time. But I would absolutely drive this thing year round with the right tires on it.

Rebecca Lindland  30:18  
And are there plans? Has there ever been a convertible?

Sam Abuelsamid  30:22  
There has never been a super convertible? I don't know. I was gonna

Dan Roth  30:27  
say there was the silica sunchaser, which was aftermarket. But

Sam Abuelsamid  30:32  
yeah, that's all we need to say about that one. The son chased it away.

Dan Roth  30:39  
Was ASC that built that

Sam Abuelsamid  30:40  
I think, I think I think it was it was either ASC or Carson concepts. Yeah, one of those two that they did, they did all the convertible conversions in that in those days in the mid 80s, early mid 80s. But the the two liter Supra starts at 43,000. The three liter starts at 51. The one I drove with the sort of options and it didn't have a lot of options on it, it had the Driver Assist package, which was about two grand or 12 $100. It $425 for the the metro yellow nitrile, yellow, sorry, natural yellow. And, you know, that's about it, and the bottom line price came to 57 145 including delivery. So, you know, it's, you know, it's not cheap. But it for, you know, for, you know, under 60 grand, you know, it's it's very competitive, you know, with any other sports car, you know, with this kind of performance level,

Rebecca Lindland  31:45  
it's more the 891 edition or the 3.0 premium.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:50  
The 3.0 premium.

Dan Roth  31:51  
There's not much I complained about what the Supra other than I mean, you could argue that it really needs a manual, but it doesn't really

Rebecca Lindland  32:00  
well, I mean, who's buying it, right, like, is this? I mean, do we know Do we have demographics on who's buying this at all?

Sam Abuelsamid  32:09  
I have not seen any.

Rebecca Lindland  32:10  
Yeah, well, because it's what you know, it's a brand that I mean, so it's a it's a nameplate that again, like Gen Xers like us, or our you know, we have fond memories of this, but does it resonate with younger buyers at all?

Sam Abuelsamid  32:27  
I think I think, you know, the super name actually probably does resonate with some younger buyers who are fans of fashion various kind of thing. Yeah. Curious. Okay. Yeah, the old JDM GT RS, you know, the certainly, you know, the the fourth, the previous generation, the fourth generation, actually, even the third generation supras, from the late 80s, early 90s. You know, are very popular among that crowd, you know, that those JDM sports cars.

Rebecca Lindland  33:00  
So it's really, it's that i would i wish they hadn't manual, then.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:04  
Yeah, I do, too. But, I mean, the reality is that, you know, if they had a manual, they probably wouldn't sell. Right would probably be lucky to sell 1000 of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, you can't justify the expense. You know, it's, it's, it's amazing enough that in this day and age, they built this car at all. Right? Yeah. So, you know, to justify putting a manual in it as well, for such low volumes would just be really, really hard to do.

Dan Roth  33:36  
Yeah, well, I think that's, you know, that's an interesting pattern with Toyota and their sports cars is there is no pure Toyota sports car. They partnered for the well, it was. Yeah, it started to say it started as the FRS but the 86 there's a lot of Subaru in it. And then this would not exist if it weren't for BMW. I don't know that that's a bad thing. But it does lead to some kind of snarky comments. I do wonder how distinct the super is versus the Z for?

Sam Abuelsamid  34:13  
Well, I haven't driven the current generation z four. But, you know, from what I've heard, it actually does feel fairly distinct. You know, they once you know, once they develop the architecture, you know, BMW and Toyota engineers basically went their separate ways, and did their own suspension tuning on it on each one, and they do from, from what I've heard, actually feel fairly distinct from each other.

Rebecca Lindland  34:39  
And they go and it does this does that for it is a convertible. So.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:43  
Yeah, yeah, that's, that is another. That's another important distinction between now and and it's, you know, the BMW is only a convertible, whereas this one is only a coupe,

Rebecca Lindland  34:54  
right? You know, we're gonna see more this kind of collaboration anyway. I mean, it's, it's I think they've done a good job of personalizing it and customizing it for their brand. And that's the, you know, the most important part when you're doing these kinds of collaborations is what is what is the consumer See? And, you know, I think when we think about the, the Fiat, the 124, right, you know, not as much I mean, this, these two, this the, the Zed four, and the super, I think I, they are, they are two different animals, certainly from the, from the outside, and to the buyer. And I think, if they share some, you know, technology that allows them to put these vehicles out there, then go for it, I think it's a good idea,

Sam Abuelsamid  35:45  
you know, let's play this way. I would rather the, you know, automakers collaborate and share some components and be able to offer cars like this at all right, and to not have them, even if, even if there is, you know, more in common between these two vehicles, then you might prefer, I'd still rather be in that position than the position of not having either one of them.

Rebecca Lindland  36:09  
Exactly. Yes, for sure.

Dan Roth  36:11  
So I mean, that's, that's kind of like the natural end. I mean, building cars is a it's an expensive undertaking. And sports cars even more so because they don't sell in the volume that something like a, you know, Camry or a three series salesman, so it's expensive to do if they can sort of pull their resources and come up with something that that's distinctive, and the way they've sort of kept the two cars a little bit different. It works for everyone, especially US consumers, who will actually buy them so

Sam Abuelsamid  36:43  
right. And in addition to the collaboration between BMW and Toyota, they also you know, went to Magna to actually do assembly both the BMW and the Toyota are built at Magnus deer in Graz Austria. Magna specializes in doing lower volume contract production work

Dan Roth  37:06  
guys that's the that's your G fuckin plant isn't it? That was that's where the yeah look at all that history. Yeah. I think van against came out of the same

Sam Abuelsamid  37:17  
lots of stuff has come out of there over the years.

Rebecca Lindland  37:19  
Yeah, that's a great actor

Sam Abuelsamid  37:20  
also builds the you know, that mech the magnet plant there builds the Jaguar I pace. They built they still doing Porsche

not any more Porsches in source those now, but they they built the first generation BMW X three there. They build the BMW or the MINI Countryman is built there. They have built cars for Chrysler for the European market. They used to build Grand Cherokees and, and caravan

Dan Roth  37:50  
caravans. Diesel caravans came out of there. Yep. Ah, wow, inside baseball. Those are the kind of details that are fun, though. Um, yeah. So all right. Are we good with the Supra?

Sam Abuelsamid  38:05  
Yep. All right. I'm good with it. I'll take one.

Dan Roth  38:09  
I mean, the SAT or the Atlas cross sport with navigation that doesn't even understand you.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:15  
I mean, when you're an assembler Who cares if the system doesn't understand you? Drive anyway, get me last gullies. So wherever the road takes you.

Dan Roth  38:23  
wind up in Canada.

Rebecca Lindland  38:25  
I know. I'm so demanding that I want it to take me to the post office. I really got to get over that.

Dan Roth  38:29  
I've only been in Greenwich for how long you should know where it is. So I had a couple of things. I've spent less time in the 2021 Cadillac CT five. So I'll start with that and just briefly say this is the best Cadillac I've ever driven. It's a really good car. I think it's the 350 t i think is the power level or whatever. It's got the V six the two liter. Now this is a V six. So it's what is that three liter? Three?

Sam Abuelsamid  39:03  
Yeah, it's a three liter. twin turbo V six, right? So yes, I think three liter. So I think that's a 550

Dan Roth  39:10  
or maybe it's 550 and I just glanced it out the window quickly. Either way, there's lots of power. It doesn't doesn't want for power. It's not as quite as powerful as like the old CTSV was but it's a little bit more responsible. In that sense. All the black links coming for that that's true. But it's it's just it's really really well tuned. I was telling somebody the other day it's it's the best three series they've ever made. And I am what no I mean it's a good way they've spent so long chasing those those cars right the three series and the five series and they're making cars that dynamically probably actually could could run neck and neck. The problem is really like the market just doesn't care anymore. They've got to focus more on their their crossovers and SUVs which are also good. But what I liked about the CT, five is that it doesn't have the NVH troubles that you find in the smaller crossovers, like the Z four, which is really fun to drive, but it just it feels a little bit too edgy for I think that the buyer Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  40:20  
it needs some insulation.

Dan Roth  40:21  
Yeah. So the CT five, at least in this trim, there's definitely some engine verbal, and it's, I go back and forth, it sounds good when you are working at hard. Other times, it just really wanted to shut up. So it kind of has that sort of like dual personality like the VQ v six does in some cars, where it, it's great when you are making it do its thing. And otherwise, it's just a little too loud. And doesn't doesn't sound quite as graceful as like that BMW in line six months. It doesn't sound bad, but it's just you know, it's not it's not like there's it's it, you know, the noise and vibration? The vibration, harshness totally fine, totally under control. It's the noise part that, you know, it was a little bit taken aback by we'll see how I do with it for the rest of the week.

Rebecca Lindland  41:17  
But you, but you know you when you think about like, like I was saying about the Aston Martin that I had driven, like, that's a big engine. But they're there, you do want to just still be elegant, like that gracefulness of like, when you're even when you're sitting there, when you're not using the engine, it still needs to feel good. It needs to have a resonance to it and not be like, Okay, enough, you know?

Dan Roth  41:45  
Yeah, I think that's that's part of it. I guess. It's like, it's not just the sound, it's the quality of the sound. Oh, for sure. You know, they have cylinder deactivation, too, which messes with the rhythm of the the pulses. So that's, that's something that they're going to have to tune for, you know, sonically. So, yeah, I understand the challenges. And, like, That's such a small thing to really be carping about. So that's more of a personal observation. It does not matter the experience, it's a really good looking car. It's very comfortable. The infotainment is is really well done and good to use. Yeah, you know, there's a couple of knobs. There's one for tuning and one for volume, which is nice. And there's actually three volume knobs. There's three Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  42:27  
yeah, there's, there's one that's up on the, just below the touchscreen. Yep. There's one that's down on the console next to the large controller. And then and then you've got the the the controller, the volume controller on the steering on the steering wheel smoke.

Dan Roth  42:41  
Yeah. And that large control mob is nice to it, like, you know, their materials and color folks, or whatever the division is called the GM, the folks that that pick the color and trench. Yeah, the stuff you touch feels good. And it feels it's important in a Cadillac, especially, you know, you don't want to you don't you don't want to necessarily be grabbing the same dials as you are in a cruise. And this stuff feels special enough, at least especially that large controller knob and it's it's intuitive to use so I was impressed with that. I liked the just sort of getting in and customizing it to my preferences was easy. I didn't swear at it much. So all of those things are good. Now off to spend a little bit with the car I spent the most time this week with was the the 21 superior cross track sport. And so I mean, we've talked about the cross check before it's been around a while. So we know kind of the charms that it has the sport is a new model. It has a different look. It's the Crosstrek has gotten it's mid cycle refresh, the nose is a little different. And the sport has some different seat trim. I forget exactly what it's called off the top of my head, but that there, it's not leather. It's not you know, vinyl. It's a special kind of,

Rebecca Lindland  44:08  
Oh, it's they're vegan. They're vegan option. It's

Dan Roth  44:11  
got the vegan seats.

Rebecca Lindland  44:12  
Yes, the vegan seat.

Dan Roth  44:16  
And it's, you know, it has all those super terms and i. So, what really struck me was sometimes, you know, when you you hit your early 40s you struggle with good feeling anything because you've spent so many years just having steely resolve. And so you have to do things that are mildly irresponsible to have any emotion at all, like drive in torrential downpours at night. And so this is a sad little tale, right? Like he has to I just don't want

Unknown Speaker  44:50  
whatever

Sam Abuelsamid  44:57  
Rebecca I just want Say one quick thing. For those. For those of us listening for those of you listen to this, keep in mind that Dan is by a pretty good margin, the youngest of the three of us.

Dan Roth  45:09  
I'm 43 years and four I just turned 43. Okay, and

Rebecca Lindland  45:13  
what was your birthday? We

Dan Roth  45:14  
missed your birthday was in November. Yeah. I'm a Scorpio. I'm sure it's not a shock to anybody. But, uh, you know, you, you just like you, you spend your 20s getting established you spend your 30s just freakin surviving and then like, you look up and you're like, oh my god. I don't have like, like it's almost like I'm like an addict, right? Like just it just takes more to get that get that zip this is God This sounds dark. And it's not what I mean. I'm I'm trying to say is sometimes you like do things like drive in the worst weather. Like I love driving in snow. Why? Because like, it's not because it's like an adrenaline thing like surfing or something would be it's more of like, it's a mastery thing. Like, like a musician playing for a crowd, which we can't do right now. But you you get to go there and you like you're working your muscle memory and so you need a car that's going to support that and so here's where I'm bringing it full circle to the super Victor crasnick is a really good partner for any of those like inclement weather high jinks that you want to you want to do because I tend to like cars that are a little evil handling and the reason why is because they make you concentrate it's it's

Sam Abuelsamid  46:34  
kind of wire some some degree of skill and precision to an engagement Yeah, to keep it in control.

Dan Roth  46:41  
And that's what I mean that's why people like motorcycles which I will I will certainly perish if I do that. So I will keep it on four wheels but you know, the Subaru itself is just it's a solid platform, it's not evil handling and it's just really stable and steady and just a friendly car to drive. You know, I'm still not a huge fan of their their starlink infotainment but it's better here than it is in something like the legacy probably because the the Crosstrek hasn't been updated yet. So I expect that it'll get that that newer super resistant at some point and I'll complain more but this this current system is pretty good. And you know it's it's a handy hatchback it's a good size, it's pretty roomy, front and back seats, we took it to get the Christmas tree so that was fun, because it has integral roof rails and you know super has a lot of clever options for that that lifestyle buyer you know, it's a brand that people with dogs love because they're there they've thoughtfully created options for you where you can get the dog cage you can get the ramps for the dogs to get in the car. It is a go anywhere do anything car that's not necessarily an SUV. So it's a friendly car for my my dark little late night exploits in the rain. That torrential downpours here last week, and it was just it was it was nice and gloomy. And I enjoyed it so

Sam Abuelsamid  48:07  
that the phrase the phrase that I like to use for what Dan was just describing was old enough to know better young enough not to care.

Dan Roth  48:17  
Everything you have to watch out for is when it's windy like it was you know, I guess is a tree branch gonna fall on me. Because, you know, they're heavier than they look.

Unknown Speaker  48:27  
Yeah, we've had some bad storms. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  48:29  
Oh my gosh, yeah, that's funny.

Dan Roth  48:31  
So yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to bring er into the podcast.

Rebecca Lindland  48:38  
All right. You were like the brand of love.

Dan Roth  48:41  
I love driving the car and shitty weather. It was nice. It was fun. I didn't want to, like stop. So, you know, it's one of those things like I will I remember doing this like just like especially coming home they are like going home from college on winter break or driving back to school. Once winter break was over, you know, I'm in I'm in New England, I went to school north of where I grew up, so I would invariably be driving into you know, worse weather. And usually I would leave late so I'd be driving like at night on the highway. And so you just you know you got to take it easy when it's snowing and it just so you're just moving along like 40 miles an hour it's it's plowed enough for you to just do that and you just you just relax you know he turned the cedars on. You play around with

Rebecca Lindland  49:29  
James Taylor No no.

Dan Roth  49:31  
Like what I would do to keep myself awake is I would just see like how far away Can I pick up on am because am at night skips across the atmosphere so you could easily in New England pick up Quebec and then you know, try to like translate the French which they speak way too fast to make it work. So that's other people do fun things. These are the things I do for fun.

Unknown Speaker  49:55  
Oh my god. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  49:56  
think I feel like that's a real like this is a plea for listeners. feedback, tell us what kind of weird crap you do for fun. Maybe I'll find new hobbies.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:08  
Two days ago, Hyundai announced their new dedicated electric vehicle platform and this is the first one they've ever done that is purely for battery electric vehicles. When they did the first generation ionic and Nero a few years back, that one was an electrified platform, when and they had hybrid plug in hybrid and battery electric versions, variants of that, of those two vehicles. This time around, they've developed a completely battery electric only architecture that is going to be used, their planet was at 23, battery electric models between now and 2025. Across all their brands, Hyundai Kia Genesis, and also, this is the platform they're going to use for the robo taxi, they're developing motional, which is their joint venture for automated vehicles with aptiv. The first two models off of this, what they're calling, Eg MP, their electric global modular platform, are going to be the ionic five, which is a compact mid size crossover. So you know, roughly wrap for Tucson size. And then there's going to be a key as well, which I haven't given any details on. But I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that it is going to be a replacement for the Nero. That is based on the habanero concept we saw last in 2019 at the New York Auto Show, and which was a really cool looking, compact crossover concept. That was all electric. And, you know, I think it'd be if they if they build something that looks like that, I think it'd be really cool for the the key a brand. But there's, there's some interesting stuff they're doing with this one, you know, it's like, like everybody, it's not a pure skateboard chassis, like what you see from rivian, and some other some other companies, because, you know, the, the suspension and everything is not, it's not, it's not a rolling chassis with the suspension and motors and everything. It's the battery pack, and everything is still tied to a unibody structure, but it's one that's designed specifically to be an Eevee. But, you know, they can scale the battery pack up and down, put more more modules in it, it's standard standard module format, they can put more or less depending on the application, you know, the price point and performance that they need. Base rear wheel drive, so this is actually a lot like the VW MTB architecture. So the the base configurations, rear motor, rear wheel drive, and then optional, front, dual motor all wheel drive. And interestingly, it's a it's an 800 volt architecture. So it's going to support 350 kilowatt charging, they say, you know, it'll do it'll charge up to 80%, in about 18 minutes 350 kilowatts, it'll, in five minutes, you can add 60 miles to it. So, you know, it should be very practical vehicle for road trips.

Rebecca Lindland  53:22  
It's really, that's it? That's a fantastic charging time. Because, yeah, I mean, then then you, you can conquer a lot of the infrastructure issues that we face today with longer charging times.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:35  
And they put, you know, a lot of emphasis on efficiency with this thing. So they're, you know, they're saying that the, the top range is going to be a little over 300 miles. So, you know, they're not trying to go down this 500 mile range route, like Tesla and lucid. But, you know, I think that their philosophy, you know, when they did the first generation, I ionic, electric, you know, they talked a lot about focusing on efficiency as well, which is why they limited the range, you know, keep a smaller, lighter battery pack, which, while, you know, limited the range to about 120 530 miles, it was, it was a lot more efficient, it was also more cost effective. And I think that's what they're trying to do here is find a good balance of enough range, and, you know, a lot of efficiency. So you get, you get plenty of range, you know, from the minimal amount of battery pack possible. They're also, and so part of that, they're using silicon carbide power electronics, which so far, Tesla was the first manufacturer to do that. And Hyundai is going to be the first mainstream incumbent manufacturer to do that. What does that mean? So, the power electronics, that's your inverter so your battery stores electricity and direct current it produces it puts out direct current. The motors are alternating current Which are more efficient. So that's like what comes out of your out of your outlet. That's what comes from the grid is alternating current. Okay, and so the power electronics module switches back and forth between AC and DC. And there's always some losses associated with that conversion, that power conversion between AC and DC, Ma, almost all of these today, except for Tesla's use silicon switches in the power electronics, just pure silicon. What Tesla did was they went to something called silicon carbide, which is more efficient, and it adds, it can it can give you about three to 5% more range.

Dan Roth  55:39  
So why is it exercise? Why is it more efficient? Can it handle more heat? Or is it

Sam Abuelsamid  55:45  
because there's, there's there's less heat and heat generated? Yeah. So you know, less less of the power that you put through it is converted into heat

Dan Roth  55:54  
ice, so it just did it? Yeah, the power goes in and out versus heats it? Yeah, got it.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:01  
Yep. And then one other interesting tidbit about this thing is, it's got bidirectional charging capability, which means that you'll be able to plug stuff into it and get power out of it get up to three and a half kilowatts out of it. So if you have a power outage in your house, you could plug into your car, and you know, power your refrigerator, or your microwave or various other stuff off your car.

Rebecca Lindland  56:28  
I love that. I think that's super cool. What is the thing I mean, it's we've talked about this before, the challenge of the Eevee is to explain or to justify to people why this is a better solution than an internal combustion engine. And we as an industry have not done a good job of that. But, you know, the idea that this has 310 miles of range, that you can charge it up, you know, and sort of, you know, spot charge, if you will, I get it, you know, 60 more miles, you know, quickly, all of that makes it a more traditional ownership experience, which is what we have to try and work towards, in order to facilitate deployment of these vehicles. Because right now, people say the internal combustion engine is it's familiar, it's working perfectly adequately. I, you know, we're more fuel efficient than we've ever been. And people don't see why they should have to, or that why they should want to change over to an Eevee. You know, in their minds, it saves the environment. But then there's other aspects to it maybe doesn't save the environment, if you're producing dirty electricity, or in California, where they're turning off electricity, during, you know, fires or to prevent fires and such. So, there's a lot of challenges here. But I think that this is a good combination of a very suitable range. Most cars have a range of a gas tank range of 300 miles. And it's about you know, a little bit longer than a trip to a gas station, but not that much. You know, if you could, if you can completely recharge or recharges to 80%. In what was it in 18 minutes? Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, maybe you buy a scratch off lottery ticket and you know, sit there and do that, while you're at a convenience.

Dan Roth  58:26  
guys find all the scratch tickets, my god.

Rebecca Lindland  58:31  
Not very long, especially if you're on your phone. So I think that this is it. You know, I love that combination. I'd rather you know, 500 miles is great. That's an amazing range. But we've lived for decades with 300 miles being sort of the standard. The thing that I've always said for years while I've been working on EBS is the charging, if we get the charging infrastructure, if we get the charging times down to well as if you were going to the gas station, that's one of the biggest barriers.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:00  
And that's, you know, I think that's one of the interesting choices that Hyundai's made is to make the 800 volt architecture as the standard setup for this platform. So GM with its altium system, they're, you know, they're going to have a couple of different variants, you know, they're going to have vehicles that have a 400 volt system, and some that have 800 volts, so the bigger vehicles like the Hummers and the trucks and so on, they're gonna have 800 volt systems in them. But, you know, vehicles like the Cadillac lyric are going to have 400 volts, so they're going to be limited to about 150 kilowatt charging, which is less than half of what the, the the 800 volt systems will do. And the fact that Hyundai has chosen to do that, as the baseline across all the variants, I think is an interesting choice, you know, so they're trying to make it as convenient as possible.

Dan Roth  59:54  
What's the sort of like what's the price range that they're Did the cover because

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:03  
they have not said, what the, you know, I mean, next sometime, we'll probably in the spring or so we'll we'll see, we'll see the reveal of the ionic five. And that's, that's when we'll have a better idea. My guess is that they're probably going to aim for a starting price in the mid 30s.

Dan Roth  1:00:27  
That's not really that expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:30  
No, no, yeah. And at least for for a time, you know, Hyundai's still going to be eligible for, you know, the 770 $500 federal tax credit and whatever state credits are available. You know, they still are, they're not at their 200,000 limit yet. So that'll help.

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:52  
Well, it depends on what gas prices do as well, whether it makes sense, you know, if gas prices go up, this is going to be a better deal in

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:01  
general. And Hyundai is aiming to be selling a million avisa year by 2025. That's their that's their target.

Dan Roth  1:01:11  
That's super ambitious.

Rebecca Lindland  1:01:12  
That's 48 months away. Yes. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:15  
Well, that's that's the same. That's the same target that GM has. Actually, GM. Hyundai's target is a million ATVs. A year globally in 2025. GM a couple weeks ago said they're aiming for a million a year in the US.

Rebecca Lindland  1:01:31  
Wow, by 2020. Globally, a million is doable out of 90 million cars that are sold. So that's possible for Hyundai to do in the states here. Again, you know, a lot A lot, it depends, there's a lot of changes demographically better going on in the next five years. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:50  
yeah, you know, we're, we're gonna start seeing ease coming into a lot of new market segments where they've never been before as well,

Dan Roth  1:01:56  
right? A million a year, even with like November's sales, right, which is like 15 something minutes. So that's like, what 15% of the market by 2025?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:08  
Actually, you know, actually, I think the GM target was a million a year globally. It wasn't wasn't just for North America. So it's, it's, it's gonna be split mainly between the US and China. So probably I'm not familiar in here.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:21  
I mean, that's it that's relatively easy to do with China with the regulations that they have in place. And it's a 20,000,020 2 million market unit market every year 24. Now, yeah. So I mean, when you think, you know, it wasn't really that long ago, when the US was the number one market, but in China, because of regulations, and because of the mandates that they have there a million EBS is, is or even half a million is definitely doable. Well, by 2023, GM is going to have three assembly plants, producing EBS exclusively, the orien, Michigan plant, the Detroit Hamtramck plant and the Spring Hill, Tennessee plant are all going to be exclusively building electric vehicle battery electric vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:06  
So, you know, the quarter million apiece, you know, that's capacity for, you know, 750,000 ATVs a year, just from those three plants?

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:16  
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot, you know, when a lot of the work that I did in Saudis, in, focused on who bought ATVs, and why, but at that time, we were really limited to just the Nissan LEAF and the and the Tesla Model S. And so now, as you mentioned, the proliferation of new product into different segments, that will appease a lot of different groups. I mean, I think that there's, again, if we, if we can normalize the look of the vehicle and the ownership experience, there's certainly from a driving standpoint, these are very engaging vehicles, you know, I mean, I I didn't love the ionic and when I had it, but there's still you know, but I, but I did love the Kona. So I think that there's opportunity there to really get a new audience for EBS and demographically there are a lot of changes coming, a lot of younger buyers are going to be coming into you know, in five years time. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity here. Yeah. And in the commercial space also, you know, for Hyundai and Kia for Hyundai, I mean they have a lot of opportunity in the commercial space to get EBS and when we talk about that engine noise my gosh you can hear a diesel truck coming a mile away right? How nice is it to not have that and an EB

Dan Roth  1:04:46  
Yeah, we're just be choking on the exhaust. Well, they

Rebecca Lindland  1:04:50  
drivers actually prefer Evie ease in their commercial vans. You know like the sprinter types because it is quiet and they don't have they're not surrounded by it. Diesel fuels.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:03  
While we're still on ATVs, I've got a couple other things. Capital report Cadillac has been offering $500,000 or $500,000 more buyouts to dealers that don't want to invest in Evie support. And Cadillacs got a stated goal basically being pretty much all, Evie, by the end of the by 2030 by the end of this decade. So

Dan Roth  1:05:26  
does that mean that they're like, if you don't want to support V's they're buying you out? like, No, you're not.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:34  
So they'll say, if you don't want to sell E, V's supporting TVs, we don't want you to sell Cadillacs anymore. And here's a check, go away,

Dan Roth  1:05:42  
go sell something, it's just 500, Grand

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:45  
500 500,000 and up, I think, you know, I think it'll vary depending on the dealer. But I, my guess is, you know, what we're likely to see is, you know, smaller dealers, you know, getting 500,000, you know, those that don't want to invest a couple $100,000 in, you know, the parts and the equipment that's needed and chargers, and, you know, all the other stuff, they need to support ease and training further, there's staff, you know, the big, the big dealers, the big Cadillac dealers, you know, if, if one of them, you know, wanted to not sell abs, you know, I'm sure that GM would offer them more money. But, you know, all they're buying back is the franchise, not the whole store,

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:30  
these are people that may, geographically we'll probably see some differences, as well, you know, in people that take them up on this offer.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:39  
Yeah, I mean, you know, probably be some dealers, you know, like, in the more rural areas, you know, in the Midwest, and some places like that, you know, the bigger dealers in the urban areas, you know, they're gonna sell TVs, because they're gonna, they're gonna have customers in those markets that want them, you know, they're gonna want cars like the lyric and scholastic and whatever else comes up. And the other another related thing with GM as well, is, with the Hummer coming next year, you know, there's been some some reports about how GM is handling that with their dealers. Apparently, what GM has been telling their dealers they're GMC dealers, is the all the all the whole purchase process with the Hummer EV is going to be handled online. And basically, the dealers are going to take care of final delivery. And, you know, and, and service and support. Customers buying the Hummer EV will do it online, you know, they'll take care of all the financing and stuff online. And, you know, then GM will assign the, the delivery to a dealer, and you know, they'll they'll handle that. But the dealers won't be getting any inventory of Hummers.

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:59  
So, you know, one thing on the Cadillac Dealer issue, isn't an EV doesn't require as much service. So they potentially are not going to be making as much money on servicing also.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:14  
Yeah, that that, and that's, you know, one of the reasons why especially smaller dealers might be reluctant to make the investment that's required.

Dan Roth  1:08:22  
Well, yeah, I think I think, you know, importantly, though, there's that tension right between the manufacturer, the main brand and the small dealers. And I guess I want to make sure that we're not not making it sound like these dealers are jerks. It's, they got businesses to run and yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:42  
yeah, for sure.

Dan Roth  1:08:45  
There is investment

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:46  
for some dealers, you know, it absolutely doesn't make economic sense to invest hundreds of 1000s of dollars in, you know, in sparse spare parts, inventory and training and equipment, and chargers, if they know that they're probably not going to sell very many, if any of those vehicles.

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:07  
So in this I'm reading in one of the articles about this, it, it says, according to the latest report, even a buyout offer of 300,000 can equal 10 years worth of new Cadillac vehicle sales for some dealers 300,000 as I was talking about profit, they're what they're making in profit margins, even a buyer offer a 300,000 can equal 10 years worth of new Cadillac vehicle sales, for some dealers,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:36  
that's probably profit. It may be the some some small dealers, you know, that maybe aren't exclusive Cadillac stores, you know, if they're selling

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:44  
GMC, and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:46  
or or maybe you know, just some other non GM brand, right Cadillac, that they you know, they may not see the justification in, in spending that money on on Cadillac TVs, no, I

Dan Roth  1:09:59  
mean, if If you're not gonna buy a Cadillac, Evie, how about you come over here and we'll put you into a nice? Yeah. Nice Tahoe for a more profit or how about an HD pickup truck $100,000 crew cab pickup

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:14  
Well, I suspect lots of Cadillac dealers that are, you know, are selling other GM brands are probably not going to, they're probably not going to be the ones that don't want to make the investment because GM is doing this across all four brands. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of GM e V's coming as we mentioned. And, you know, there's Wouldn't it wouldn't those those dealers, you know, they're going to spend the money, they're going to make the investment because they're not gonna have any choice

Dan Roth  1:10:41  
for the more mass market brands. The hump is going to be a little easier to get over my guess is that anytime they make a big shift like this, like they did with with Hummer and Saab, they put those dealerships together, they had particular architects in a particular architecture for the dealerships, that the dealers had to front the money for in our had to at least secure the loans with their own collateral. So it was, you know, there's a big investment on the dealer side, too. And if you're rolling it out with Cadillac, they want, you know, that brand experience to be premium versus Chevy, which they still want a good brand experience, but different and probably for less money.

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:25  
And before we leave EBS, I just want to mention, I speaking of EBS with Vivian Laura Schwab went from being the president of Aston Martin of the Americas, to being the VP of Sales and Marketing for rivia and the first the first person in that position as they go to launch so that will be an interesting development to watch.

Dan Roth  1:11:48  
For years. Can she get us some Vivian's? She can probably get us Arabians. Yeah, no,

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:55  
I think it'll be you know, we're coming to the time where some of these brands and rivian among them. The Fisker ocean, you know, we're starting to see these come to fruition. So it'll be it's an exciting time.

Dan Roth  1:12:13  
It's funny, we mentioned magnet earlier, I think magnets building that. Yeah. Magnus

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:16  
Magnus build Yeah, Sr ocean in Graz as well.

Dan Roth  1:12:22  
This dovetails nicely with EBS. And we don't need to belabor the point too much. But there's more and more internal combustion engine bands. And like, the more I hear it reported, the more I get a little frustrated at the tone because like, you can keep your car. It's not like they're going away. It's that they they want to stop the sale of new ones which right, you know, you're you're shaping your shipping behavior through, you know, regulation and policy. And, you know, I know we were talking about this before we started recording, so I know you to have thoughts about it. Like I don't know of any other way to actually accelerate Evie adoption than to take, you know, internal combustion engines off off the retail shelves and

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:12  
I do you normalize the ownership experience of EBS? Well, I

Dan Roth  1:13:17  
think they're right. It's

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:18  
it's a my it's it would be a natural progression. The problem is it's not fast enough for a lot of people. But it's not fast enough, because there hasn't been the right product. Now we have the right technology, we have the products we have to have, we've got to get that ownership experience. And frankly, we still have a lot of challenges with the electrical grid.

Dan Roth  1:13:38  
Yeah, that's true. The infrastructure that is lagging Still,

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:41  
we haven't really totally solved that issue. by any stretch, look at what's go look at the blackouts in California right now. I mean, it's like, we can't it's like converting everything over and not having a fuel source.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:57  
Yeah, and for what it's worth, you know, most of the big utilities are actively working on this, you know, they're, they're working on, you know, what do they need to do to modernize their grid infrastructure to support ease because they actually do want more TVs on the road? Because, you know, that's a market for their product, which is electricity. Yeah. So, they want they want ease out there. But, you know, they do need to make some changes updates in their grid. And, you know, they need to do things like you know, have managed charging, you know, so that they can, they can remotely manage, you know, how much energy is going into EBS at various times of the day. because ideally what you want as a grid operators utility is you know, you want to have a constant flow of electricity, you don't want it cycling up and down too much. And so you know, if you can manage that charging process better, you know, and if you have TVs out there that you can, you can manage you know when they're drawing From the from the grid, and also, you know, with things like bi directional charging, when if you can draw a bit of power out of those vehicles and use unused those vehicles that are plugged in as a buffer to help, you know, shave some of the peak loads off of, you know, when you've got high load on the on the grid. So you don't have to ramp up another power plant to generate more power, if you can draw some a bit of power from some of the vehicles that are out there. Those are the sorts of things that they're working on now. And, and by the time we get to the end of the decade, you know, when we're starting to look at some of these bans on sales of new internal combustion engines, you know, I think they'll they'll have a lot of those issues sorted out. The other thing is, you know, Daniel, you mentioned, you know, those, those ICS that are out there today are not going anywhere. Yeah, I mean, we've got 290 million registered vehicles in the United States alone. Almost all of which, you know, like, all but about a million of which are internal combustion engines. Yeah, you know, those things are not going away, you know, via the average age of vehicles on the road, today's is 12 years now. Right? And, you know, so it's gonna take decades before all of those vehicles are gone?

Dan Roth  1:16:18  
Well, and we honestly, we shouldn't want them to go away instantly, we should want to get as much use out of them as feasible, because of the amount of energy and raw materials it took to make them. Yeah, I mean, certainly the emissions are an issue and there's a certain point, you know, you're gonna be doing, you know, the, the environmental harm that you're doing from running it, versus, you know, sort of getting all of that sort of return on the initial investment of energy and materials, you know, those two lines cross, and then you start just actively polluting more. I'm sure, you know, trying to wrap my head around that, but the, they're gonna coexist. And you know, we're seeing energy shift to now renewables, like wind and solar are some of the cheapest energy out there. And the big problem with that is, yeah, especially like solar, the sun needs to shine. But if you have a grid with storage, which, you know, that's, that's where the grid is going. it smooths out those peaks and valleys. And so if everybody's car can act as a little bit of storage, and you know, if they rely on your car heavily, you get a check. It's, it's almost like if you have solar on your house, right, like you do, Rebecca, do you ever get a check?

Rebecca Lindland  1:17:39  
Yeah, actually, sadly, but I think, I mean, my concern, though, is, if we and I could be completely not understanding this, but so if we're looking at cars as potential sources, like when they're plugged in, and maybe it powers your house, you know, like, like mine could do or something, but then that also means having a charger at in your home, which is, which is different than and one of the barriers, because when we think about multi unit dwellings, and again, different, you know, there's not anybody that has a gas station at their house anymore. And so, you know, the farm next to me,

Dan Roth  1:18:20  
literally used to have a gas station where you get the five diesel two that had the red dye in it that, you know, if you got busted on the road, you can pay road tax. So yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:28  
I think that, you know, we have to, we have to be when we're, when we're creating this infrastructure, we have to think as far down the road as possible. And, you know, like I've mentioned before Volkswagen, investing in these in these cool, and I never described them properly, but like the little robot guys that come to your car, and, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:49  
we'll just mobile

Rebecca Lindland  1:18:51  
charger, thank you. And they'll charge your car, and then they go back to their little station and you don't need designated parking. And you don't need the Tower of infrastructure and Such are the, you know, the actual charger individual chargers there. So there's, there's, I just I want, I want to make sure that we are thinking as far into the future as possible when it comes to how we charge these vehicles. But some of these projects are going to take 10 1210 1520 years beyond what he'll we're asking the manufacturers to do right now. Hey, we, you know, we're banning or banning cars, Oh, we don't have any way of charging them but we're banning them. So I think that there's a balance there that we have to make sure that people are working in tandem. And these industries are working in tandem. You know, Saudi Aramco, is they have, they have six different engine development labs around the world, because their number one concern is that we don't run out of oil because if they run out of oil, they're in trouble. So they want to make the most efficient engines possible.

Dan Roth  1:20:00  
So there's really like, is it Saudi Arabia? Kind of sunny? Wouldn't solar be good there?

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:05  
You would think, however, what happens to the solar panels, there's a lot of sand. And because there's limited water, where in the desert, obviously, it's hard to clean them. So there, there was a solar panel, one of the largest in the Middle East. And they actually said, you know, the capacity, the the utilization was really poor. And so some bright crew got a bunch of rags and wiped the sand away and scratched all the panels. And the utilization was halved from what it was. So it went from being like, 70, down to 30. Because all the panels were scrapped. Wow. Yes. So it's, it is a, it seems obvious. But the reality also is that it's so hot. So the compound that I lived on, we had a huge solar grid. And but the problem was that the houses that they build are huge as well, and not particularly well insulated. So even though we were actually LEED certified, and the building that I worked in, was, was highly energy efficient. The environment, the climate just is really difficult to try and manage the sand on the solar panels. Hmm.

Dan Roth  1:21:22  
Yeah, no, it's something I like, as with everything, it's not as simple as it seems, at first, or it's, it's simple, but it's not easy. You know, those are two distinct things. And, and our grid, and our energy utilities Here, have a lot of a lot of issues, like, you know, California in particular, like, I think there's a lot of under maintained systems to begin with, and just adding the demands of ease to it, is gonna show even more cracks, we can get a handle on that we just have to commit to it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:02  
And yeah, I mean, that's, that's why we're seeing a lot of growth in what's known as D are distributed energy resources. Yeah, so moving more and more away from centralized generation, and then distribution through the grid, you know, where you have a bunch of big power plants, and moving to smaller generation facilities, you know, solar, residential, solar solar on buildings, and warehouses and, and wind and all this stuff. So just having a more distributed system that should also be more resilient.

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:33  
And hydro to right, because,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:36  
yeah, hydro is like the original, renewable, renewable energy source.

Dan Roth  1:22:41  
Yeah, so we just had, we just went through this in New England, they want to build, you know, there was a deal with Hydro Quebec, and Massachusetts. And the way they were gonna get the power here was they're gonna hack a high tension transmission line through the White Mountain National Forest. That's not happening. Um, so there's, you know, our grid is, you know, transmission capacity is limited to it's just like in New England, where like natural gas transmission capacity is limited. So energy, it's, it's a really interesting sort of sidebar to automobiles, because all of our cars take energy, if we go Eevee. They're kind of fuel agnostic. That's cool. But the only fuel that really has the infrastructure that makes life as pleasant, as it currently is, is petroleum. And so how do we make it as easy or close to as easy with alternatives and we're getting there with ease, you know, that the Tech has to catch up to so the faster they can charge the more more attractive it's going to be to get get them off the road and get gas cars off the road so

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:57  
well, before before gas cars die, there's something else that's dying down.

Dan Roth  1:24:01  
Yes, we're all dying a little bit every day.

Rebecca Lindland  1:24:06  
So is the Volkswagen facade,

Dan Roth  1:24:10  
the facade that's named after a wind right and it's blowing away? It's like sands through the sands through the hourglass.

Rebecca Lindland  1:24:21  
You are dark tonight big

Dan Roth  1:24:23  
guy. I mean, that's that's Days of Our Lives. Isn't it like sins? Anyway, that we don't need to belabor this either. The beside is dying because people aren't buying it because they're buying crossovers like that Atlas cross sport and the Atlas. And you know, big sedans are one of the casualties of our our buying habits shifting. So it's it kind of sucks a little bit because, you know, bisac was but was that was we had the first bus that was the Dasher and then the quantum, and then they decided to actually call it the besar So it's a it's a thing to lose kind of sucks. Are you guys is for clump does I am about it? No, no, nobody

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:10  
is the current, the current. I mean, we we owned a facade for almost nine years we had a 2,000% wagon, which was a great car to drive and a terrible car to own. But you know, what, like, when it wasn't in the shop, my wife loved that car. Yeah. And you know that that was like the last generation of great facade in North America. And then, you know, after that one went away, we got one that was made more amenable to the US market.

Dan Roth  1:25:45  
Yeah, it was,

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:47  
like a country

Unknown Speaker  1:25:51  
that I I'm a bad boy, but a good man.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:57  
The current generation facade is fine. But it's not.

Dan Roth  1:26:00  
It's aluminum. It's

Unknown Speaker  1:26:04  
always

Dan Roth  1:26:07  
on, it's fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:09  
Yeah, it's a German. It's a German designed American built camera.

Dan Roth  1:26:13  
It's and it's fine. You know, it's like, I think it's probably actually better owner experience?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:18  
Oh, sure. Sure, absolutely.

Dan Roth  1:26:20  
It's nowhere near that, like, so you had it at the zenith, the PX era, with like, that was like when you could get the W eight and all that just the way that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:28  
was, you know, that was the what the, I think the before platform, so it was this, it was the same architecture as it was basically an Audi a4. Right. That was you know, about 10, grand, cheaper, you know, but didn't feel 10 grand, cheaper, right? badges on it. But

Dan Roth  1:26:44  
that was the sort of that was the peak of Volkswagen. Everything is just fantastic then, and completely unreliable. And so the newer ones are better than new Jetta. I mean, the jet has been that way. Since what like 2010 2011. Two, we've got

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:01  
something like that

Dan Roth  1:27:02  
bigger and cheaper and probably less, less exotic in terms of engineering. But, you know, again, just like a better, sort of straightforward car, but that's not what people are buying. So it makes sense for it to just die. And it's it's not the rest of the world beside anyway, it's our facade, the facade that the rest of the bank gets isn't even the same car. So it makes sense for Volkswagen to say like, well, we're gonna we're gonna tie off the bleeder here. Just stop building

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:33  
this and, and, you know, they're the, you know, the Chattanooga plant where they build it, you know, they also build the Atlas there, and they're gonna be switching that plant, you know, switching that over to building the new ID four, and Id five and other electric vehicles there. So that's another plant that's been converted to electric TV production,

Dan Roth  1:27:52  
right? So it's just you know, sometimes when you when you've served your time, you just have to take a long walk in the woods. Alright. Let's get

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:04  
to questions and stick with VW for the first one, okay? This is from Freedland coke. And greetings from Germany been listening to from the beginning was was tipped off to the show by Casey lifts on ATP. Thanks, Casey. Just check in living in southern Germany driving a 2019 vw tour on so the tour on is, is MTB based minivan based on the same on the golf it's basically a taller longer golf. It was a cool I want one minute. Yeah. And also a smart cabriolet.

Dan Roth  1:28:41  
Those are also cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:43  
So the question, do you think the minivan and maybe the wagon two will be totally subsumed by SUVs and crossovers? I found that there are people that want to buy one minivan that is, but there are so few left on the market. And that is nearly impossible. Maybe a chicken and egg problem for my part. I'm hoping to still be able to buy one when it's time to replace the to run baby, but maybe the ID buzz will fill that role. So what do you guys think?

Dan Roth  1:29:10  
I'll let you go first. go first. I've been talking a lot. Okay. Um, I think that vans like the turon don't do well here in the US. But they they are a really good match for other markets because they're, they're compact and very functional. I think there's also a generation coming up that is going to rebel against the crossover, much as the generation before, you know, grew up in minivans and is buying anything but a minivan and before that the minivan sold because they weren't wagons. So everything is sort of cyclical. And each of those things that came before it feels kind of exotic to generations to come after. You know, you get a little distance from it and it's different and it's neat. And so I'm sure that if there's enough buyers They'll come back, even if the ones we have currently go out of production. vans are a really good idea. And every now and then somebody reinvents one. You know, it's it's like, it's like all the tech bros out in Silicon Valley. You know, they want to disrupt everything, and then they wind up inventing the bus. Yeah. Like,

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:23  
I mean, I think the number one distinction and the number one reason for purchase of a minivan is the sliding doors. And so slender is a great feat.

Dan Roth  1:30:33  
Sorry, I was sliding doors are great.

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:36  
They are great for little kids in and out of it's ideal. And that's, that's why I think that many bands will always as long as there are families, there will be many bands, because of the sliding door. If they do something silly, like some, for some reason, completely discontinued sliding doors, then you're just getting across over and then it's defeating the whole purpose of getting a quote minivan. So I think it's like pickup trucks without the pickup bed. It just doesn't that's an SUV, right? So you know that the sliding doors as long as as long as minivan minivans will exist, as long as they have sliding doors. Well,

Dan Roth  1:31:15  
so the terrain doesn't have to run. It's more like a Mazda five on the Mazda five had assigned arcticnet.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:21  
Right. Which is why we wouldn't consider it a minivan.

Dan Roth  1:31:25  
Yeah, that's that's true. We just like the C max or whatever the whatever it was called, I think was the galaxy was based on just you know, it's it's a tall boxy, not hatchback. It's got full I mean, I'm

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:42  
looking at, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:45  
the Toronto the current generation turon does not have sliding doors.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:50  
Yeah, and the ID four doesn't either. So well, the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:53  
ID four is a crossover. Yeah, yes. It's not even Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:56  
I'm sorry. Which one did he referenced the but

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:59  
the ID buzz does or at least the concept had sliding doors. sliding door election one will? Yes. And that's the ID buzz is scheduled to for production launch in 2022. So that one, that one is coming that one. So, you know that one should be around right about the time you you want to be maybe looking at replacing the turon it probably will be bigger than the turon. But yeah, it's you know, and that's, you know, since its ID that means it's gonna be electric. battery electric. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:32:32  
I you know, I don't they're gonna they're gonna be around.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:35  
Yeah. All right. Next one. From chris. mizens all I've seen some sketchy reports of an imminent new land cruiser, would you three, would you hear what would love to hear what you three? No. And your thoughts about Toyota in this segment? Thanks.

Dan Roth  1:32:54  
I know nothing.

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:57  
I think that they issue I mean, the land, the current Land Cruiser is incredibly expensive for the market. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  1:33:03  
thought it was actually getting getting discontinued.

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:07  
Right. So there's, there's, there's a discussion that it will not, the next generation will not come to us. And I think a lot of it is pricing. That's just my first Well, I

Dan Roth  1:33:17  
mean, it's you can get an anchor. So it's like 90 grand. And it's doesn't feel like a Lexus. It's nice, but it's not that nice, you know, right? Just, and it's serious hardware. It's the all three differentials lock. And it's it's legit, and offer a vehicle

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:34  
that doesn't get stolen the Land Cruiser, you know, the current generation Land Cruiser launched in 2007. So it's been around for a while. It's, you know, it's old. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there. In fact, I would be surprised if there's not a new Land Cruiser in development, you know, that's, that will probably launch in the next 12 to 18 months. But you're right, whether it gets sold here knows, you know, we might end up just with the Lexus LX version and not get the the Toyota brand Red Badge version of it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:34:12  
I think that's the most likely scenario because there I mean, the Lexus. I had it a couple of months ago. And the one that I had was $100,260, including destination. But you know, the the Land Cruiser is not that far off from that number. And so I think that it's a pricing issue. That's the number one and of course, just lack of demand to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:36  
write when people aren't going to use it like that, you know, what might be interesting is if Toyota decides to do the, you know, to take the Toyota version, the Land Cruiser, and maybe take it down market a bit more, and, you know, try to compete with vehicles like the bronco and the Wrangler.

Dan Roth  1:34:54  
Yeah, that would be interesting. I can think of the forerunner for the form runner, kind of

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:00  
I just got a foreigner today. I love it. It's so fun.

Dan Roth  1:35:03  
It's so quaint. Yeah, um, the and the problem that Teresa has to at that end of the market with the larger SUVs is in the US, they've got this coil that fills probably 95% of the same role and is actually larger. It's not going to be as good off road as the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:26  
Land Cruisers got that off road capability. Yeah, we're the Sequoia lacks, but

Dan Roth  1:35:31  
but I think that the way we use cars here in the States, the Sequoia is a better match. And it's cheaper. It's not right. And that's,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:38  
that's why I was thinking that, you know, you could potentially see them, you know, maybe take it down market more, and try to make it more of that pure offroader

Dan Roth  1:35:49  
I'd be fine with that platform.

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:50  
I mean, I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:52  
will globally the market is there for that. For that, you know that segment?

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:58  
Probably not? Well, yeah. But I mean, think about it, it's more the want than the actual so people just want to be able to go off road, but they don't actually do it. But you know, the Land Cruiser is super popular in the Middle East, and other parts and where people do need that kind of traction, you do need that type of capability in the sand and where people go on a regular basis. So I think that there's demand for something like the Land Cruiser in other parts of the world, but maybe just not in the States.

Dan Roth  1:36:29  
Yeah. And that's fine. Like we there's a lot of Toyota's we don't get that are actually kind of neat.

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:35  
Yeah, for sure.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:37  
Absolutely.

Dan Roth  1:36:38  
All right. What's next more question?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:40  
Next up is from Steve back off. Love the show never miss it. I bought a 2017 Genesis God knew and I love it. I call it a poor man's Mercedes. I love all the standard equipment including the V six all for less price of $41,000 I paid 38 the 2020 God was under fourth that was under 43,000 but the 2021 God starts at over 48 when you include 400 for just about any paint choice, and if I want to be six it's 10 grand more clearly Genesis has a new demographic in mind the considerable price increase can only work to my benefit and raising the value of my car though I won't be selling it for many years. But if I were buying a new car today I'd probably go for an Avalon which can be had with a V six for considerably less than new GT What do you guys think?

Rebecca Lindland  1:37:36  
Well I mean the extra 10 grand for the V six is definitely not worth it and the gap I having we just talked about having driven both of those vehicles recently both those engines rather in the gap in the gv ad by I mean yes, Hyundai is a Genesis is moving up brand with the Genesis brand they're separating, they want more separation between Hyundai's pricing and Genesis and and more definition and what in Genesis as the luxury brand I mean, look at what we just talked about with the Lexus and Toyota right there's very little price difference between the Toyota version and the Lexus version and so the Toyota version you there isn't a demand because the Lexus buyer is going to be more tolerant of that pricing. Genesis is trying to move up market and separate itself from Hyundai but you know the gap that we both Sam and I both had is a really really good car if for even for $48,000 it's still really good yeah the pricing on the paint I totally understand that Steve I respect that. And but i don't i mean then the new Avalon is pretty good. I just I personally love the looks and the driving experience in in the Genesis the 2021 gap there definitely

Dan Roth  1:38:55  
Yeah, Avalon in the Genesis are going to have different characters but I think two and 2017 we didn't yet have the G 70. That we've had to make Genesis has had to make room for at the bottom of their range. So that covers that price that you know, mid 30s to low 40s prices the G 70. Now I realize it's smaller and so if you want a car the size of the gap, you're kind of stuck unless you're you know, you wait a little bit and find one that's off lease or something and you can still get the value out of it that way but if you want it brand new Yeah, guess the prices have increased a bit you know, and then there's nothing wrong with saying like that's that's too rich for my blood, what else is around. There's nothing wrong with the Avalon I like it quite a bit. It's just it's not not the same kind of car and the gap. Those rear wheel drives a traditional big, luxury sedan dynamics going on. And that may not actually be all that important to you. You know, so yeah, I mean, it's an interesting observation too, because typically I think of Genesis and I think like, what you're getting all the stuff that the German brands give you, but you are paying considerably less. And now as they sort of get established, that's that's gap is closing a bit.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:29  
Plus, Genesis doesn't have and so, you know, I think that's worth an extra

Dan Roth  1:40:35  
suffering with Intune you might want to pay. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:43  
All right. Why don't we call it

Dan Roth  1:40:47  
good? Well, so thanks for listening, you know where to find us. We're feedback, media. And you can find all our new channels for Patreon and other things. Patreon is patreon.com, slash wheel bearings, media, and you can find us on social and we'll be around keep sending your questions in. We'll see everybody next time.

Rebecca Lindland  1:41:13  
Thanks, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai