Dan Roth  0:01  
Coming up on episode 176 of wheel bearings, we're driving the 2021 Chrysler Pacifica all wheel drive, and 2021 BMW 540i xDrive. We named the highs and lows out of the cars we drove during the year, and we make some predictions for 2021. That's all ahead on episode 176 of wheel bearings.

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This is wheel bearings. I am Dan Roth from Forbes 

Rebecca Lindland  1:04  
I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives. 

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06  
And I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights I was wondering who was gonna win the toss up there

Dan Roth  1:15  
this is our first episode of 2021 so welcome we made it we're on the other side

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22  
and the other side of an arbitrary dateline which Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:26  
time is a construct man just lean into it it's it's fine

it's it's great my line when I'm a little late to meetings it's like well you're on the eastern edge of the timezone and I'm a little further west of you so

I'm a little later than your

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42  
The sun gets the sunrise is about five minutes later here so ya know it's a it's a big difference. Oh, no, it is it's weird when I when I go out there it's dark in the morning

Dan Roth  1:57  
Well, perhaps you should just adjust your time you know the alarm time your alarm goes off but 

Rebecca Lindland  2:02  
I never use an alarm. I have a terrific internal clock 

Sam Abuelsamid  2:05  
right off the rails.

It's January you know, it's totally representative driving in wintertime.

Dan Roth  2:15  
rundown okay. And this is the banter portion before we get to the garage.

Rebecca Lindland  2:20  
Actually 1% through 2021 already.

Unknown Speaker  2:24  
Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  2:25  
look at that. See? Positive. All right, so

Dan Roth  2:27  
our newscast this would be like the awkward bit that the anchors do at the desk before they just like throw to the weather guy who has to figure it out and like how to transition So now with weather we have Oh, all right. So we're gonna talk about some some cars that we drove this years our splash jackets? Yes, I'm sorry in the in the year that just passed. And and our highs and lows, you know, the ones that we liked the best the ones that we liked the least and and why. But first, let's talk about the cars that are currently sitting in your driveway. I still have the Ford F 350. x lt tremor. What

Rebecca Lindland  3:08  
have you had that thing for?

Dan Roth  3:10  
Well, it's Yeah, it's two weeks. It's the holidays. So it's actually really handy because I'm going to throw the two cars of our Christmas tree disaster. We have two old Christmas trees are gonna throw them in the back and then take them to some friends or some goats and apparently the goats. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:27  
Thank you. Yeah. And recycle them.

Dan Roth  3:29  
Yeah, it's super handy that way. And the only thing I will note is that I looked it has the sticker on the windshield that it's built in Kentucky. I think there's a Louisville

Sam Abuelsamid  3:39  
Yeah, truck. Yeah, Louisville, Kentucky, the Louisville truck plant.

Dan Roth  3:43  
Yeah. And that's home with the superduty as it says. So I got to thinking is like ha This is a very expensive truck and Kentucky economically isn't in great shape. So I looked at the stats and turns out that Kentucky is I think fourth from the bottom. In terms of poverty rates there's a 16% poverty rate 16 point something percent poverty rate in Kentucky. So only four states have worse poverty. And they are 44th and median income at like 50,000. So median means like there's one half that make less half that make more is that mean I'm so

Sam Abuelsamid  4:24  
it's the midpoint rather than the average. Right?

Dan Roth  4:27  
Okay, so I didn't actually look up how many people actually work at that truck plant but that's a UAW plant. So I'm sure those are actually pretty good jobs. They make a great truck. And and the poverty rate fell. It was in 2018. I think it was actually higher was 17.7%. So it just struck me as like this truck costs more than the the median income in any year in that state. And so I you know, I wonder how the folks who build That sort of feel about it as it goes down the line. You know, I, when I've worked on stuff that has a huge price tag and like I it's a weird thing from

Rebecca Lindland  5:10  
that's true for a lot of vehicles. Oh, for sure those are, you know, the what's the average income in the US like 56 57,000? Somewhere in there?

Sam Abuelsamid  5:20  
Yeah, yeah. I think the average transaction price in 2020 was just about $39,000.

Dan Roth  5:27  
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  5:29  
But that's also why it's so important in my mind to have a very healthy use car market, to have vehicles that people can, you know, newer vehicles that people can get in for a better price point that gives them the safety and the comfort and conveniences. But primarily the safety that so many of the newer vehicles afford them.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:51  
And, you know, the modern vehicles have become so much more durable, and long lasting, you know, the average age of cars on the road in the US now is just over 12 years. Yeah, you know, so it's, it's not at all unusual for, you know, vehicles to last 2025 30 years, you know, a lot of it is a lot of vehicles upwards of 20 years old, that are still very, you know, perfectly serviceable. And, you know, they're affordable to a lot of people.

Dan Roth  6:22  
Yeah, but like Rebecca says, I mean, the issue that you miss out on is the safety improvements, I think about, you know, 20 year old cars, and I'm not sure I don't want to get hit by some of the new, say, pickups that are very popular. That's true. It's kind of like walking by up a large wall. But I it's not, I'm not trying to make any kind of statement about Kentucky or anything derogatory about Kentucky, it just struck me. Because, you know, honestly, if the median income is 57,000 versus 50. That's not going to make a ton of difference, whether you're in say, Massachusetts, or Kentucky, it's just the median income is not that different, and cars are expensive. So I was just, I started playing with figures for curiosity. So beyond that, you are driving things. Sam, what are you doing? Rebecca went first intro.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:23  
So speaking of expensive vehicles, I had the the 2021 Chrysler Pacifica all wheel drive limited. Truly expensive. Yeah, the one I drove bottom line sticker price are here. 550 $5,265,

Rebecca Lindland  7:45  
around the median income of the average person? Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  7:47  
yeah. You know, so granted, you know, this is, you know, actually not quite the the top end, the top end of the Pacific lineup is actually the pinnacle trim. So there's actually a more expensive version of this. But, you know, this is close to the I mean, this is a pretty much loaded Pacifica. And, you know, we've talked about the Pacifica in the past, we, I think we've all driven it at various times in various guises, both the plug in hybrid version and the gas engine version, which is what this one was. And, you know, it's a it's a fantastic minivan. You know, I think if if you need to move people, you know, if you have, you know, younger kids that you need to haul around, I still say that minivans are a vastly superior form, you know, form factor for that than SUVs. You know, unless, you know, unless you need to, you know, move seven people and, you know, tow a 5000 pound boat, you know, or a 10,000 pound travel trailer at the same time. You know, minivans are so much better, you know, they're easier to get in and out of, especially to the third row, the sliding doors, you know, and the lower floor. You know, if you've got kids that you've got to strap into booster seats, or child seats, it is so much easier to get them in and out of a minivan than it is an SUV. You know, this one, the Pacifica You know, I think it's about four years since it first came out. Now, I think it's a 2017 model. And it's, you know, it's got a refresh for this year mid cycle refresh that's got revised front end styling. You know, the biggest, you know, some of the biggest changes to this one are the new Uconnect five infotainment system which I'll come back to in a minute. It they now have brought back all wheel drive as an option, which used to be an option on the Chrysler minivans until the last couple of generations. And it's also got the stolen go seats for both the second and third rows so you can the third row seats can slip back into the the well at the back behind the rear axle, leaving a flat floor back there. And then there's also a couple of wells in front of the second row seats that you can drop the second row seats forward and down into that and then leave a completely flat floor without the hassle, like in the old days with with the vans, where if you wanted to haul some, some larger cargo, you'd have to take the seats out and leave them in your garage, now you can just drop them down into these walls and the floor have a flat floor. Fantastic for that. So you've got incredible flexibility here. The and the all wheel drive was handy. You know, being you know, December in Michigan, we did get some snow and you know, in my neighborhood, you know, there's some, some roads were in the past, you know, they've got a fairly significant slope, or I've had challenges with certain cars, getting them up that slope when they're snowy and icy and gloomy. And this one just climbed right up the hill, no problem at all. So all wheel drive can be a very handy feature if you live in cold weather climates. Some of the other new features for this year, one of the one of the really cool features is what they call the fam cam, which has cameras mounted in the headliner of the van that you can pull it up on the screen, you know, in a I know myself in the past, you know when my kids were young, we we'd have a little mirror little meal contract convex mirror that we would clip onto the roof or the the onto the sun visor or something that would give us a view of the kids in the backseat. You know, this takes it a step further. So you've got views of both the second and third row seats. And you know, you can tap on the screen and zoom into different seating positions, you know, check yes, if you've got a baby in the in a rear facing car seat and one of the the seating positions, you can take a look make sure they're okay. Things like that. So that's also very handy. Yeah, great, great features to have in a family hauler.

Rebecca Lindland  12:11  
They've done a really nice job of putting those in a really saying embracing who their audiences.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:16  
Yeah, and, you know, it's their their features. They're the kinds of features that you know, when you think about who is the intended audience for this, you know, what are the kinds of features that would actually be useful to them, they're not just gimmicks, they're actually really genuinely useful. Things like that, like that fam cam are genuinely useful. And the way they've they integrated it, you know, and the Uconnect five system, so you connect five is their new infotainment system, that it's one of the first ones that's based on Android automotive, which we've talked about in the past. So this is a version of Google's Android operating system that is optimized to be the base OS for opera or for infotainment systems and cars. You know, in the past, some manufacturers like Honda have used the Android open source project code as the base, the basis for their infotainment system, and they build their own interface on top of it, but you know, those, that system was designed for phones, it's not really designed as a car operating system. Android automotive takes that and extends that and modify and optimize it for use as an automotive infotainment system. And it works great, you know, it's, it's quick, it's responsive. The the standard 10.1 inch display that's in the Pacific for 2021 looks really good, very bright contrast II, you know, whether you know, sunlight or dark, you know, it looks really good. It responds very well, you know, there's no, no lag or latency when you're tapping on things. The interface itself is well designed and nice, large touch targets, it's easy to navigate around everything is fairly straightforward. There's a strip at the top, where, you know, one of the icons on that strip is, you know, takes you directly to fam camp. So you know, and that's, that's, that's a persistent strip that stays there along the top of the screen. So you can one tap, you can get the views, you know, three camera view of the back seats and see what's going on. So if you're on a road trip, one tap, you can see exactly what's happening behind you. Unfortunately, the particular vehicle that was sent to me turns out the Uconnect box the the conductivity box, that handles the communications to the outside world was non functional. And it's third investigating, it's not clear if it was a problem with the particular box or the the one they sent me just hadn't been programmed properly or what the deal was. They're gonna give me another one. But what that means is that some of the features of Uconnect five were not available. So for example, With Uconnect five, the base digital voice assistant system that's built in there is Amazon's Alexa voice services. And so, you know, when you want to pull up music or navigate and you know, anything else that you would do with voice controls, you tap on the voice button. And the default would be Alexa voice services. And normally the way that works on many of these newer systems, or hybrid systems, so they've got some component of the voice control that's built into the infotainment system for when you lose connectivity. So you still have basic voice control for navigation, things like

Dan Roth  15:46  
that. Change personalities, like when you,

Sam Abuelsamid  15:49  
you can't, you can't change the voices.

Dan Roth  15:53  
When it drops from like the

Sam Abuelsamid  15:54  
Oh, it goes, it goes to simpler, simpler system more like traditional voice recognition. So it's not, it's not as natural language capable, the cloud based system, because you can't do a lot of that stuff locally. So there, it's got a backup system that can handle basic functionality. But it can't do some of the more sophisticated things that you could normally do with an Amazon Echo type device. And essentially, when it's working, it is essentially an Amazon Echo in your car. So anything you can do with an echo, you can do with with Alexa voice services. It's, as I said, that wasn't functioning, and this one because it couldn't communicate with the cloud. And there were a few other things that as a result also didn't didn't work properly. So I'm going to get another one in a few weeks. And it should be working, I spent some time on the phone with the guys at Chrysler to try to diagnose it and and they found out what was going on. So they're gonna get me another one. But aside from that, you know, the rest of it was was really good. It has part of part of what you get with the with Uconnect. Five is wireless, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support. And there's a wireless charger built in underneath the underneath the the center stack. So once you once you set once you get in, first time you get in, you connect to Bluetooth, it asks you if you want to connect to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, depending on which device you're using, you can then you can set that up. And then you don't have to mess with that again, then next time you get in the car, you don't even have to take your phone out of your pocket or purse. It just as long as your Bluetooth and Wi Fi are on on your phone, it'll connect and you can use those interfaces. And when you're doing that, you still get to use google assistant or Siri depending on which device you're using. And it's using the connection through your phone to do those. And, as with many of the other cars that they've tested, you know, it's a tip. And I think I can't remember which one which one it was, uh, you had Rebecca that you had the issue with where when you were connected with Android Auto, you couldn't use the base, the embedded voice control system,

Rebecca Lindland  18:20  
that's the Mazda CX nine. And it turns out that that's also true with the newer monster system.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:26  
So with, with most other vehicles, you know, if you do a quick tap on the voice button on the steering wheel, it brings up whatever the default voice recognition system is, in this case, it would normally be Alexa. And then a long press on that voice button will bring up the phone's assistant. And that worked. That part worked fine. So no complaints there. You know, I get in the car, I dropped my phone on the wireless charger, Android Auto connects and you know, I can use whichever system I prefer. So as far as the cost goes, yes, you know, this particular one, you know was pretty much loaded up was a beautiful new color called ocean blue. It had the the package you know which gives you the blacked out grille and wheels and everything and actually kind of looks like you know, if you put a red dome light on the roof, you know, would look like a Michigan State Police minivan at the State Police drop the certificates instead of instead of chargers and this one was $55,000

Rebecca Lindland  19:32  
Okay, because I was just looking I had one in last year in 2019. That was 50,000. And it also had the appearance package and a couple other things so I'll be interested to see

Sam Abuelsamid  19:43  
Yeah, well this one also had all wheel drive which wasn't available. Okay, right. So you know, the all wheel drive is very handy to have in wintertime. How

Dan Roth  19:52  
do all wheel drive is it? Is there like a drive shaft forward or is it all just electric motor on the rear axle? No,

Sam Abuelsamid  19:59  
there's there's drive shaft. So all wheel drive is only available with the 3.8 liter, or 3.6 liter pentastar v six. If you get the plug in hybrid version, it's still front wheel drive only. So there's no. And that's what I had. Yeah, so there's no all wheel drive option right now with the plug in hybrid.

Rebecca Lindland  20:20  
But you can put snows on Don't forget,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:22  
yes. And, you know, highly recommended, you know, if you drive somewhere where there's a lot of smell. And so the the Touring model starts at $35,000. And then you know, it goes up from there. You know, adding all wheel drive is about a $3,000 option on the tour and or the touring L. Unlimited starts at 48 390. The pinnacle at 53. Four. And last year, when one of the things that Chrysler did when they discontinued the old Dodge Caravan, the previous generation Dodge Caravan said

Dan Roth  20:56  
finally discontinued like out,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:58  
done, they're no longer in production, no longer building them no longer building them. They do they do offer the speaking of 2008 they revived the Voyager branding for a baseline model. Oh, that's right. Yeah. So you can you can get the the Voyager, which starts at 27,002 35. So it's basically a slightly discontented version of the Pacifica. And that, that's, you know, that's much more affordable at 27,000 to 3520 28,000. You know, with delivery. And those, you know, those that's still you still have, you know, a lot of the it, you still have the same core vehicle, you know, so it drives while handles well. It's got a nice power train in it. I did most of my driving around town, the gas engine version is not the most fuel efficient. You know, it's fairly typical of a of a minivan like this, you know, EPA fuel economy, combined rating is 20 miles per gallon 17 City 25 Highway. Frankly, you know, if I was gonna buy one, unless you really want an all wheel drive, I would really recommend considering the hybrid, the plug in hybrid instead.

Dan Roth  22:14  
Because it doesn't really get great fuel economy. It does better. But

Sam Abuelsamid  22:19  
no, I actually I've had I've had really good experience with hybrid. Yeah, it gets about, depending on you know, you're driving anywhere from 30 to 35 miles of electric driving range. So you know, with our full charge, you know, you can do most of your daily driving without ever using a drop of gas. Yeah, I

Rebecca Lindland  22:37  
did 35 miles, 35 miles per gallon, on average when I had it, and that was what 33 miles of range of charge of Eevee range.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:48  
Yeah, okay. Getting 30s is not hard. You know, as

Rebecca Lindland  22:54  
we all know, I don't try.

Dan Roth  22:58  
I'm part of it probably was the way that I used it when I had it, where it was longer, longer drives, and I don't know, I can't recall being super impressed by the fuel economy.

Rebecca Lindland  23:10  
That was so mine was I drove it for an hour when I got 35. And then here's another screenshot, I took that I got 34 on a shorter drive, 25 minutes 34 on a 23 minute drive. But I mean, that's pretty good. And obviously I wasn't I didn't have a lot of people in it. I wasn't hauling a lot of stuff. But you know, the other thing I like is the range. It's got 400 miles of range with that. And as Sam said, you know, in the if you're doing well, it's hard to know how families are using it now, but you know, if you're doing some errands in the morning, and then can come home and charge it back up, especially if you have a level two charger, then you can do your afternoon errands with on TV again, and get you know, 60 miles of range. In a day potentially. I got very chewed out by somebody who I think unfriended me now an old college roommate, old college friend who was very derogatory about my discussion. I remember when I had this about a family running errands on TV and he's like, if you really think that a family of four can run 35 miles of errands you have no idea bla bla bla bla button was like whatever. See? Yeah. But if you've got that level two, again, every family is

Sam Abuelsamid  24:27  
different. But

Rebecca Lindland  24:28  
yeah, every family is different if you have a small a small town, and, you know, so anyway, I think that is a great i think i think the hybrid a great choice. You know what that is? That's privileged

Dan Roth  24:37  
talking,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:38  
right? Well, yeah, and the other advantage. The other advantage to the hybrid is it's still eligible for a 70 $500 federal tax credit.

Unknown Speaker  24:49  
Oh,

Dan Roth  24:50  
see, there you go. So now you're in the 40s. It's like Fetzer, like a 40 $48,000 car right?

Sam Abuelsamid  24:56  
Right. And you know the see worse

Rebecca Lindland  25:00  
That's pretty impressive, though. I mean, if you can get that, that does make it, you know, why wouldn't you want to save that kind of go? Well, I

Dan Roth  25:07  
think to one of the things, thinking back that I didn't do is I don't know that I charged the Pacific. So I think I ran it just as a hybrid. So right,

Sam Abuelsamid  25:18  
and, you know, clearly it's, you know, it's not going to do as well, and you know, a vehicle The size is never going to get, you know, 50 miles per gallon, like a Prius. But, you know, if you can get, you know, 3035 miles per gallon, you know, as a hybrid with this thing, which is very doable. And, you know, when you if you charge it regularly, you know, doing most of your driving on electricity, it's far more efficient, and hybrid hybrid touring, you know, for this year, they made the the hybrid available across all four, trim level across all the trim levels on the Pacifica, so you can get the hybrid touring sticker, the sticker price starts at 40,000. So, you know, with the tax credit, you're looking down at, you know, under $33,000. To start with, which is actually pretty reasonable.

Dan Roth  26:11  
So here's the thing about being right about the minivan, because every time we have one, we say this, you know, they're the best sort of option for carrying people and things and efficiently. And if we can get 30 with the hybrid. That's, that's pretty great. That's better than I recall. So any anything above that is sort of like gravy, a vehicle with that much utility. That's that's that efficient is pretty great. But nobody seems to care. That we're right. And I guess this is the burden of being right, correct.

Rebecca Lindland  26:47  
Me, nobody seems to care.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:49  
there's fewer and fewer people are buying minivans.

Dan Roth  26:52  
Yeah, no, absolutely. That's what I mean. And then they'll freely admit the book. Yeah, you're right. But we're gonna go buy something else.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:01  
Okay, we're gonna go buy a Durango instead.

Rebecca Lindland  27:04  
But people are having smaller families as well. There's more and more because cars

Dan Roth  27:09  
Costa Rica,

Rebecca Lindland  27:11  
no, because they don't want. They don't want kids.

Dan Roth  27:16  
Who's gonna pick your nursing home?

Rebecca Lindland  27:19  
I got that all figured out. Oh, you know, the nephew

Sam Abuelsamid  27:24  
found a very interesting market niche for the Pacifica hybrid though, that's all the companies developing automated vehicles, Robo taxis. These are very popular, you know, because it's, it's the only plug in hybrid minivan, they have become very popular, you know, obviously Wei mo eo is best known, but companies like voyage motional Aurora, auto x, you know, as a bunch of companies that are using these now as their the base vehicle for their automated driving development. Because, you know, especially you know, as for that Robo taxi application, if you're not going to develop a purpose built Robo taxi, like the cruise origin or the zooks vehicle, you know, this is the next best thing, you know, you've got sliding doors, power, sliding doors, on both sides, easy access to the thing, it's a plug in hybrid, you know, so it's more more efficient, and you've got the electrical power to power the the AV system. So and, you know, Chrysler when when waymo first went to Chrysler back in 2016, and wanted to buy some, you know, they said, Okay, well, you know, we'll sell you, we'll sell you the vans, but, you know, given you know that, at that time, it was just, it was 100 to start with, for the first batch. They said, Okay, we'll work with you to build a custom wiring harness, you know, for this thing, so you don't, because up to that point, every time WeMo or Google were buying vehicles for their test fleet, you know, they would buy they would go and buy priuses or Lexus RX hybrids. And they would have to go in and tap into the wiring harness on every one of these, you know, to to hook up all their sensors and compute and every one was a custom build. And Chrysler said okay, you know, you're buying 100 of these and hopefully a lot more, we'll put together a custom version of the wiring harness for you and install it on the on the assembly line in a factory so it becomes basically plug and play for for that and you know, they've subsequently added you know, additional things like redundant braking systems, redundant power steering systems, and that's why all these other companies are buying Pacific is now because Chrysler is offering essentially an AV ready version of the Pacifica hybrid to these companies.

Dan Roth  29:39  
So is that the trick you have to buy like 100 of them and then they'll build you exactly what you want.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:45  
I mean, if you if you buy 100 and you have the potential to buy 1000s more like like way mo you know, I have

Dan Roth  29:51  
impeccable taste so 100 cars configured the way I would like them will be very popular once people find out that I have designed Boise that's

Sam Abuelsamid  29:59  
what We have to do then you have to configure a custom Pacifica and then we can convince everybody to buy pacificus again, right.

Dan Roth  30:06  
It's the Pacifica wheel bearings package. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  30:08  
perfect.

Dan Roth  30:11  
They all come with wheel bearings, but

Rebecca Lindland  30:13  
all I know is I want the pinnacle. So I can have a little pillow, which I actually do have.

Dan Roth  30:18  
That was the pinnacle have like the,

Sam Abuelsamid  30:21  
the quilted pillows? Yes. Yeah, um, pillows are really good thinking

Dan Roth  30:24  
of the Sienna that has like the lazy voice there, right, like, yeah, that

Rebecca Lindland  30:29  
Toyota Sienna, which I had

Sam Abuelsamid  30:32  
Sedona had those as well. Yeah, reclining seats with the Ottoman that comes up and everything like the first pass.

Rebecca Lindland  30:37  
It's pretty awesome.

Unknown Speaker  30:45  
Pretty awesome. Rebecca, would you

Dan Roth  30:49  
worry about something that's serious.

Rebecca Lindland  30:52  
I'm a little afraid to say given that, that Dan is on his every man rant this morning. But

Dan Roth  31:02  
listen, I am the shop steward in this place.

Rebecca Lindland  31:05  
I had the 2021 BMW 540 i x drive sedan. And it was delish.

Dan Roth  31:13  
doesn't suck, but

Rebecca Lindland  31:14  
it didn't suck. It didn't suck. It just you know, first of all, number one most important thing, it does not have the new grill. So that so that's the number one thing that people should know. And if you don't know what the new grill looks like, You're lucky.

Dan Roth  31:33  
It's been very polarizing among journal like auto auto enthusiasts and car riders, but I see a big of a deal.

Rebecca Lindland  31:42  
I don't understand how it's polarizing. And the reason I say that is because

Sam Abuelsamid  31:47  
why would anybody actually like it?

Rebecca Lindland  31:49  
Exactly. There isn't anything

Dan Roth  31:53  
out I mean, have you had the luxury of seeing in person? Because I haven't.

Rebecca Lindland  31:57  
So I have not. But you know what, though, but I also did not see bet Midler and Hocus Pocus live. And I can say that sub op as well.

Dan Roth  32:09  
So I think my impression is that and I don't want to derail us into this car doesn't have the grill anyway. But the there are some models like the the four series that have the grill that in some shots, they look good, and others, they look awkward. And so

Sam Abuelsamid  32:30  
depends on what you've been drinking, or what you've been in fairness,

Rebecca Lindland  32:32  
I will go down there is a BMW dealership not far from me. I will go down even today and

Dan Roth  32:39  
look at your homework, you don't know

Rebecca Lindland  32:41  
because I know you're absolutely right, though I should go see it in person. And the dealerships used to be I used to live not far from them. But now it's not in a part of town that I necessarily need to go ever. And so because Greenwich is larger than people realize. But so it's it's in the southern part of Greenwich. I live in the northern part of Greenwich, it's probably six miles away, which doesn't sound very far. But I will make a concerted effort to go to the other side of the tracks and change to

Dan Roth  33:07  
be able to do that. You should be able to do that on a full charge electric.

Rebecca Lindland  33:12  
No, you're absolutely right. I should. So yeah, so I had this. And there's a couple things that struck me. So first of all, it's, it's wonderful to drive, it's quiet, it's incredibly comfortable. I drove it in comfort mode, and then I turned it to sport. And that was just stupid fun. And I could get myself into a lot of trouble with that. And there's there's a, there's a road not far from me that is in very poor shape, and really needs to be repaved. And it's actually the perfect place to drive things. Because, you know, nowadays a lot of the roads are are often paved. And you know, the the only surface change you really get is just the different sounds, you can different surface changes, but this one in particular for me is ideal to drive on and see how the car really responds. And in comfort mode. This thing was probably one of the quietest that I've had in terms of of that both engagement, but also very comfortable. And again, the sport was even more fun than when I put it in there. But the one thing so my brother Larry's visiting from California and rest assured we quarantined and then we got tested before we five days into his visit. And we had so much fun in this car. However, the infotainment system which is often dominates our conversations about these vehicles, it has that gesture control, which my only gesture to that thing is usually my middle finger and appropriately and not lady like yeah all but it's much worse when two half Italian people are in the car.

We set off that thing it did all sorts of stuff.

Dan Roth  35:10  
You find out what it ordered from Alexa or from from Amazon for to show up at the door.

Rebecca Lindland  35:16  
So even so Larry's very Norwegian Look, he looks just like my dad, very tall, blond haired blue eyed. Exactly like me. Right? And, and but we do both talk with our fingers, our hands, we gesture, and it's very, very funny to watch that thing, like try to figure out and it's German austerity, what the hell he's talking about.

Dan Roth  35:40  
So that was

Rebecca Lindland  35:42  
that was the only thing that was kind of a downside. But otherwise, you know, it just, it was beautiful. It's got a 3.0 liter, the twin turbo in line six. I all wheel drive. This one has I think the horsepower is in the threes. Let me just grab

Sam Abuelsamid  35:58  
five, isn't it?

Dan Roth  36:00  
So I had the 540. Right.

Rebecca Lindland  36:02  
I had the 540 i x drive

Dan Roth  36:05  
a hybrid two. Right.

Rebecca Lindland  36:06  
Exactly. So So this one had, this one has the the 48 volt mild hybrid?

Sam Abuelsamid  36:15  
Yeah. So it was I think Dan was thinking of the plug in. That's the 540.

Rebecca Lindland  36:19  
Right? Yeah, no, I didn't know I had the boost. 48 volt, mild hyper, which actually made that the stop, start really transparent, nice and smooth, right, super smooth. And Larry, you know, he's not a huge fan of some of the different hybrids that he before COVID. He used to rent his travel even more than I did sometimes and rents a bunch of different cars all the time, and is not a fan of stop start. And so I deliberately didn't tell him I was like, you know, we were at a traffic light. I knew the car was in stop start. And he didn't feel it at all. And then when we accelerate it out, I told him I said, you know, that was just a good example of how much better stop start has gotten. And he didn't even realize it. And so, you know, from that standpoint, they've done a really, really nice job with it overall, you know, gorgeous interior. I mean, just a really warm it had this chocolate brown interior, which I absolutely love. That's hard to dislike. Yeah. Right. It really is. It's just so pretty. So which shade

Dan Roth  37:21  
of white, black or grey Did it have on the

Rebecca Lindland  37:24  
white? it? I'll find it seriously, I'm

Dan Roth  37:27  
looking at the colors so you can get there's 1234567 there's nine colors? Alpine white Bernina gray. So gray, bluestone metallic. So that's bluish gray phytanic blue test. So that's blue. Okay, so you get blue, mineral white, so another white. Let me see

Rebecca Lindland  37:48  
if it was darker white, or white, gray,

Dan Roth  37:52  
silver,

Sam Abuelsamid  37:53  
it doesn't really matter.

Dan Roth  37:55  
It doesn't matter metallic black, like, Well, guys,

Rebecca Lindland  37:58  
so a friend of mine who used to work at BMW who was transferred over to Germany. And this was probably more than 10 years ago now. And he ordered his company car. And he gets to the gets to Munich, and sees the parking lot. And his colleagues just like glanced at him askance, because yes, his was the only red car in the entire parking.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:31  
Trying to find your car in a field of you know, 1000, you know, monochromatic five size

Dan Roth  38:41  
t shirt to be a chromophobe. Put some put some pigment on that that.

Rebecca Lindland  38:47  
But no, it was really it was a joy to drive. And, you know, one of the things that sometimes with some of the cars now I feel like there's not that emotional connection. You know, I've struggled with some of the Lexus that I've had, which is very much a first world problem, I realized. But there isn't that there isn't that emotional connection. And there definitely was with this BMW. It was also very handy because the the middle in the in the backseat, the middle compartment goes down. And so we actually had to go to Home Depot and get a piece of lumber for some work that my brother is doing here. And it worked. It was great. We actually slid like an eight foot piece of lumber through

Sam Abuelsamid  39:29  
this design for skis, but a couple of two by fours will work just fine.

Dan Roth  39:34  
Right. Worst case had been made out of lumber back in the day. Right.

Rebecca Lindland  39:38  
Exactly. So no, I think you know, I I think the BMW has certainly they've had some struggles over the last couple of years. I you know, with the resurgence of outtie in particular and really Mercedes Benz you know, I remember when I moved back from Saudi in 2015. I BMW was what I had left in 20 13 they were really doing very well. And when I came back in 15, Mercedes was the one that had really grown the most, in terms of, of excitement for product and an interesting product. And now, but I think that, you know, BMW has started to find its way, maybe a little bit, but again, I will say I am concerned about that girl, because that's not okay.

Dan Roth  40:22  
BMW seems to have this sort of love hate relationship with legacy that it's built for itself, the cars are getting less and less driver centric, and more and more techno centric, and it's there, I think they're making the moves that the customers ultimately want. It's just as a enthusiast, it's, it's hard to, to, to understand it sometimes when they had been sort of our benchmark. And I don't know that they are really our performance benchmark anymore. I think that maybe not the five, but certainly the three I kind of shrug a bit about it, you know, it's, it's still a BMW, it's gonna do the BMW stuff, but it's not necessarily the car I would pick if I was looking for a thrilling drive anymore. Yeah, I think that says something.

Rebecca Lindland  41:13  
Well, I think that, you know, this is very much a demographic issue and challenge for them. Because I, I 15 years ago, when I bought my place in Boston, I remember I, I had a BMW, a lot of the people in the in the, you know, in their parking lot. We either had BMW or Audi's and then this kid moved up from Atlanta, and he had a Mercedes. And I remember he said to me, he's like, Why doesn't anyone have a Mercedes? I'm like, because those are old people cars. Again, 15 years ago, I bought the place in 2006. So I, but you know, at that time I had, I had three BMWs. All all in a row, but I had two x rays, and then an X five, which was way too big. But they were fun. They were exciting. There wasn't a single Mercedes, I even considered buying. And Audi was resurgent, because none of our baby boomer parents had them or siblings had them, because they had alienated them with the unintended acceleration issue, you know, way back in was that

Sam Abuelsamid  42:18  
in the 80s, like 8080, or 85.

Dan Roth  42:21  
So this was the line.

Rebecca Lindland  42:23  
So this was very 60 minutes, 60 minutes? Yes, this was very much a BMW was an Audi were brands that our parents didn't drive and we could make our luxury brand. And so but the problem then, is that I think Audi in particular, I remember giving a presentation in Germany and telling BMW, you have got to watch out for Audi because demographically in the US, that's what people under 30 wanted. And then, you know, and it really proved to be true. Their styling came out, they change, you know, they changed their proportions, right? They went to is it transverse? I can never remember what No, they're

Sam Abuelsamid  43:03  
still longitudinal engines, but they they moved. It used to be you know, it up until the the late 90s, early 2000s. The engines hung out in front of the front axle. So you have Yeah, so they moved the engine back. So it's more like a traditional vehicle.

Rebecca Lindland  43:24  
And that was like a billion dollar investment to do that was not a small feat. But so then it became their proportions became better looking and such so. So, you know, with all that said, I think, you know, this five series was just an absolute delight to drive. I really I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed it. You know, and, and as well, I should, I mean, I think I don't know if I gave the price point. It starts at 61 seven. And then the one that I had was almost 78,000. It did have the M package. It had the dynamic handling package, Driver Assist, which actually was very non intrusive, which I liked. The Premium Pack, remote engine start heated front seats that heads up display. One of the things that I loved in this and the infotainment system in the infotainment is a backup cameras in the parking assist when you are in the parking assist mode, is that the graphic shows when you open the doors. So it's which is really cool. And I have a couple pictures of it. I can we can put in the show notes. But I loved that because then when you're you're pulling in, you can see exactly how wide your door can swing. And just as a side note to go talk about the Pacific. I've said this before, if you need to pick a place to park next to if you need to pick a car to park next to pick a minivan because then your only chances of having one door hit your car as opposed to two doors that you

Dan Roth  44:51  
should have parked far away and then walk and then invariably some schmuck parked next to me it's like Well, that's because aces in this park.

Rebecca Lindland  44:58  
Yes, they do. do that on purpose. So that's right. So that's what I drove. And it was absolutely delightful.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:05  
Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what the market response is to BMW as new TVs, and they start launching next year with the AI x, which you've talked about before. And the I four, which is their electric sedan, and I just dropped a link in the in our chat. So you can see what that looks like, you know, and that's, I'm guessing, like, somewhere between a four and five series today, sedan, that is going to be all electric. And I wonder if we'll start to get back some of that any of that traditional BMW performance character into cars, especially the iPhone, or, you know, to see what they what they can achieve with that as they go electric? Because, you know, that's clearly you know, you're losing the power train, which has always been a, an important part of BMW, obviously, it's their middle name, but it's going going to electric, you know, and going up, you know, more directly against brands like Tesla, and lucid and, and many of many of the others that are coming out. This is 2021 and beyond is going to be a very interesting time to watch.

Dan Roth  46:24  
It will be good reasons. Yeah. I

Rebecca Lindland  46:25  
mean, what's interesting about what's coming out in 2021, is that this is the emergence of those some of those newer brands versus legacy brands, so you've got rivian coming out, lucid Fisker. You know, it'll be really interesting to see what emerges, as the year unfolds from New upstarts. And from the legacy brands.

Dan Roth  46:56  
There's not a whole we're in that I think that term is interregnum. There's just in between years now, everybody sort of had the, the end of Year holiday, sort of furlough. And then we're back at the first week of the year, nothing has happened yet.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:12  
Yeah. And in the old days, you know, this would have been the year when we've got all kinds of stories in our pocket of embargoed news for the Detroit Auto Show, that we can't do stuff we've been briefed on over the last couple of weeks of the year, that we can't talk about until the auto show starts. Except now the auto show is going to be in September, and perhaps scheduled for September. You know, and, you know, the first the first Auto Show, I think we've got scheduled now is New York, in May, I think, are La La, la, la La and May, New York is going to be in August. I don't know when the Chicago show is going to be it's not going to be in February. So, you know, then the only other thing we've got is CES, you know, which is a week away, you know, maybe next week we might be able to start talking about some of that prop probably not so, you know, there's there's no news basically is what I'm saying. Right?

Rebecca Lindland  48:15  
So we don't have urine results yet either. Because taping this too soon,

Sam Abuelsamid  48:19  
right. So you're really in your lower some of your highs and lows. Automotive Lee speaking of the past year,

Rebecca Lindland  48:28  
D'Amico, first of all, our garage, Alright, so,

Dan Roth  48:31  
I mean, I've really loved the amount of trucks I got to drive this year, I drove more pickups this year than I did, I think in the previous couple of years, it was for whatever reason, and I think this is almost a media loan sort of Fleet wide thing. Everybody got a lot of trucks, truck sales went through the roof. This this year once auto sales kind of recovered a bit from the spring. And it was it was great because they do sell in such big numbers. They're such versatile vehicles, they're so popular. I get to drive basically everything Ford makes a drove Rams and Chevy's and I've really I liked that quite a bit. But I don't know that while I loved all the trucks and they certainly have my favorite. I don't think that's the favorite thing I drove all year. But I will say my favorite truck was the Silverado. I liked that quite a bit and I had that it's it's quiet and smooth and refined. I like the way it looks I like the way it goes down the road I like the you know the seating position. People talk about the the interior quality and the gems lagging I don't know that it's any worse than you know like Ford. It's definitely better than what I've seen in the tundra. The I haven't had a titan in a while The RAM is certainly the king of interior quality. But it was it was, it wasn't offensive to me, you know, it was comfortable and everything worked nicely. It just it was really good to drive, even with the trail boss package has the knobby tires, and I managed to actually squeeze 20 miles per gallon out of that thing on the highway.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:23  
With Yeah, with which engine was that the

Dan Roth  50:26  
five, three or the 5.3? Okay, yeah. But you know, it's got the the raised suspension in the knobby tires, which don't do you any favors, I was definitely trying. But due to the fact that you can do that, when there's nobody else on the road because everybody's it helps. But the the favorite thing I drove was actually another Chevrolet the the bolt, I finally got a chance to spend a week with the bolt. And I just was really fascinated by it. And so impressed with how just how much of a total package it is, it just, it really fits everybody's needs. I think there's, the cars are there, the hardware is there. And now we've got to get people over that emotional hump. Like you were saying, Rebecca, your your former college pal who doesn't, you know, has has some range anxiety doesn't think that the average family can can do whatever on X amount of range. And they said that, you know, 250 miles of range charging wasn't really a huge deal. Part of what you do, I found myself thinking about range a little bit more, and just planning my trips, which it sounds like it's extra effort, but it's not really and it's almost like he, you start to think in a more efficient way, you start to think in a way to maximize your efficiency, which we probably should do anyway, even with, you know, gasoline vehicles, that's been one of the things that that people talk about to boost efficiencies, plan your trips, almost like be your own logistics manager. And so you think about planning your route. So you're not making multiple side trips and being inefficient, and you try to get it all done at once. And you do that really naturally with an Eevee. Because your range is a little bit more limited.

Rebecca Lindland  52:14  
And some of the some of the apps kind of try and help with that. Like, I would love to have that sort of I remember walking on CES and kind of thinking this way of like, you know, on a Saturday, I like analyzing your driving patterns to say, Okay, you know what, typically on a Saturday, you go, let's just make that, but you go to the bank, you go to the post office, or you go to the grocery store, and maybe you pick up a kid from something. And, you know, saying, Okay, if you do it in this order, that's the most efficient? You know, what I mean, I think that

Sam Abuelsamid  52:47  
most manufacturers are, you know, that certainly in terms of your routing, you know, they're they're developing eco routing systems, you know, that for any given day, you know, we'll you know, find them, you know, for any given trip, find the most efficient route for that trip.

Rebecca Lindland  53:06  
Scheduling route. I

Sam Abuelsamid  53:08  
mean, like, that's, that's a little more challenging, you know, because obviously, they've got a look at your prior patterns and habits. And, you know, I think a lot of people are gonna have privacy concerns around that. But

Rebecca Lindland  53:23  
if you have it, if it's, you know, your own account your own. Yeah, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:29  
I think I think that's, that's something we will see more of, you know, and manufacturers are looking at how to do that, how to implement that in a way that, you know, that they can do it locally, you know, and, you know, keep your information as private as possible. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  53:43  
think you're right, though, I think it'll definitely come through the apps. You know, like BMW and Volvo are pretty attuned to that where the app extends the the usefulness of the car extense, the integration of the car into your life, the car actually becomes almost an app of its own. Right, where it will do those things. It will, you know, because it needs inputs to it needs to pay attention to traffic. So it can say, Hey, your normal commute at x time. You may want to leave a little early or there's there's ways Yes. Yeah, exactly. Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:16  
And yeah, all that's Volvo is going to be interesting to watch because they, you know, they're shifting to their new infotainment system that's also based on Android automotive. And unlike Chrysler, you know, just chosen not to use the Google automotive services. Volvo and Pollstar are using that. So their base navigation system is Google Maps. And, you know, and they're gonna have Google Assistant in there. And if you have, you know, location history turned on in Google Maps and your Google Maps account. You know, like, for me, you know, when I use Android Auto, you know, and I get in the vehicle, it knows where I am, you know, based on the time of day, it knows it. It can make a connection make a pretty good guess where I'm likely to go where I'm likely to want to go, based on my past history, and, you know, the first two options, you know, on destinations are, you know, very often, you know, the places where I might want to go to I don't necessarily need navigation information to that. But when you put that into an Eevee, you know, that starts to get you to what you were just talking about Rebecca. And I think, you know, as we start to see more manufacturers deploying Android automotive as their operating system with, with the Google automotive services, I think that's where we will start to see some of that start to be deployed.

Dan Roth  55:39  
Yeah, I just, I don't like any of that.

Rebecca Lindland  55:42  
And I and I totally respect that. Because I've I've, I understand, I have plenty of friends that are, you know, far more concerned about privacy than efficiency. So I, I respect that. And I remember, actually, I think it was the Toyota Camry that I had, that actually showed the breadcrumbs on the route that I hit driven, which I thought was really, really clever. And it was, it was frustrating, though, too, because I remember I went to the local, my closest post office, they were out for lunch, literally and figuratively. And so then I had to turn around and drive back up to another post office. And that actually passing my house again, and then going back, and it was, when I got home, I looked at that route. And I was like, wow, I knew it was as inefficient as it was happening. But to have the visual of it as well, was really fascinating and raised my awareness of you saying, Okay, I need to run these errands, what is the most efficient route factoring and traffic factoring in all these different inputs, that you have opportunities to you know, I, I got a tweet just this morning, saying that this road up the street from me is closed, because there was a car accident, thankfully, nobody was injured, but that road is closed, which it there's no other reason for it to be closed. And I wouldn't know other than this tweet, unless I go on ways to say, Hey, you know, it happens to be on the route to my mom's house. But as Sam said, like, I don't need navigation to my mother's house, obviously, like, but I need that input for sure. Because then I would alternate my route and go a different way. So

Sam Abuelsamid  57:23  
those are the kinds of if your battery's charged, you know, then it can also say, Hey, you know, just if this is where you want to go, you should probably stop here to you know, grab some juice.

Rebecca Lindland  57:33  
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I think that there's, you know, there's, unfortunately, there's an element of privacy, we need, first of all, increase the privacy increase the layers of privacy, by there is always that little bit of sacrifice that you may have to give, you know, I know, people that don't put on Google locations, because it freaks them out. And I don't blame them. You know, it is, it's super creepy to see sometimes,

Dan Roth  58:01  
I think, yeah, for me, the issue is, the convenience doesn't Trump the sort of black box of I don't know what other data you're getting and what they're doing. And I yeah, I know enough of what they're doing with it, that I just, I don't want to participate in that and any more than I have to, but efficiency is still a concern. So you wind up doing it manually. And you may not be as good as the, you know, the app at revenue yourself but right

Rebecca Lindland  58:29  
and for me, I you know, I feel like I like the idea of, well, there's pros and cons, right? Because we've talked about like how you know, you'll talk to somebody about a product and then the next thing you know, your phone is just absolutely barraged by you know by ads for that product and it's like I just mentioned it I didn't say that I wanted to buy it and it's just creepy anyway. But I also sort of interested in the idea of of the person whose name I can't say because it will activate her but as I say I you know, saying hey, I you know, I see you've got you know, five different errands or five different appointments on your calendar would you like the most efficient route you know that that kind of stuff like I think about my niece and you know her different activities and you know, it's just I think there's just opportunities there to manage Evie range until it is no longer a concern which is when it will be refueling it quote unquote refueling refueling your Eevee is as seamless and convenient as refueling your internal combustion engine.

Dan Roth  59:40  
Yeah, and I think that what I was really impressed by the bowl was how, how it just blends in like, and that's not to say that it doesn't. It doesn't have sort of any any kind of like Verve or anything. It's not it's not a bland car, but it blends into your life. really easily where I think people still think that going to an Eevee is requires a level of sacrifice, and it really doesn't, you've got 250 miles of range, that's, that's plenty for a round trip commute even for me, when I was commuting to the office where I was doing 90 or 100 miles per day round trip, it would have been fine. You know, I had another 100 something miles of range, or, you know, in the winter, I'm sure that would have gotten cut in half running heat and stuff, but it like it just works like a normal car. And it drives really, really well. It was a little loud ish, but you know, that's part of what the class is. But I really liked the instrumentation, the, the controls the the fact that it just felt really easy to make that transition from a gas car to an Eevee. and have it just feel familiar. That's really important because not everybody's going to, to do well with that transition from a regular car to something you know, like, like the Tesla's where everything is touchscreen, and it's, it's a lot more sort of a technophiles environment in there. That can be confusing as well. So I'm glad that we have options that are affordable charging is easy. It had the charge port card, which, you know, just RFID, two different chargers, and it plugs in can do level two, no problem. So I liked it quite a bit. It was mostly also and a introduction to using it for that, like, you know, how do you get over that range anxiety, like just the experience of needing to charge it fast, and I only have 110 at the house. So I had to go to the commuter rail station, use the level two chargers. So that's what it would be like, if I needed to take a road trip, which is always sort of the hypothetical that people use to shoot down getting an Eevee, it's not really a big deal. Like you're on the whole, you're paying less for energy to put into it. When you especially if you charge your home, and when you're out, you have to understand you're probably going to need to pay for the parking space plus the electricity. So there's a little bit you know, it winds up not being as cheap, as you might think. But it's also not terribly expensive.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:21  
Well, it shouldn't be free gas isn't free.

Dan Roth  1:02:23  
Right? Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:24  
The energy's got to come from somewhere.

Dan Roth  1:02:27  
Right. And like, that's kind of the sort of the fallacy that and like, it needs to do everything a gas car can in any situation at all times and be a complete silver bullet for everybody. Always right before it can be viable. And that's such nonsense like it really it does work for probably at least 60% of people.

Rebecca Lindland  1:02:47  
When the Chevy Volt came out, didn't they say that that like 5050 miles of range was covering like 76% of commutes?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:55  
Yeah, you know, round trip kimia 75% 75% of Americans daily driving is less than 40 miles.

Dan Roth  1:03:05  
Yeah. Right. And so going forward to like, I think that we're gonna see a big shift where, right now, miles driven or so, so much lower than they were last year. And there's just gonna be a reluctance to go back to driving lots and lots of miles and gridlock if we don't have to, it makes no sense for me to just commute and to go sit in an office. I

Rebecca Lindland  1:03:29  
mean, that's very much an individual situation, depending upon your job and a whole variety of things. But yeah, yeah, it'll be I mean, we're still coming out. 2021 will be the year that everyone kind of figures out, where do they work? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:43  
But, you know, if you look at the American population, you know, the American workforce, more than half of the US workforce, you know, previously worked in some sort of office or, you know, service job that, you know, did not necessarily require physical presence. And, you know, I think a substantial portion of those going forward, are not going to return to certainly not to daily commuting, you know, I think, you know, a lot of people are going to end up in some sort of hybrid situation where they maybe go to a job site, you know, once, you know, once or twice a week, and, you know, work remotely the rest of the time. Yeah, it'll

Rebecca Lindland  1:04:29  
be it'll be interesting, because these are the people that I've spoken to about this issue. And obviously, I'm job hunting. And so it is a constant issue that comes up. And I do find that the more the most senior people, whether it's a CEO or you know, a second in command, high level SVP, they tend to want people in the

Dan Roth  1:04:55  
perception generational, where there's this idea that you don't do your best work unless you're in the office. And as a creative, I don't, I don't know that that's true, you know, creative tends to be one of those things where we all work a little differently. Right and, and, you know, I, I trend more introverted, so I actually, I don't feed off people like I, that makes me tired, I need to be alone in my workshop of it before I am collaborating, you know, it's certainly it's, it's you just have to know your, your sort of how you get into to your abilities. And so, you know, it's much more productive for for me to have that alone time before I'm then opening it up to collaboration, which is a necessary part of it, but it just it can't start cold with a with a blank sheet and like 10 people. And like, for me, that's, that's really difficult.

Rebecca Lindland  1:05:51  
So but that's also one of the one of the biggest challenges is integrating new people into your corporate culture that existed before.

Dan Roth  1:06:02  
And now your corporate culture that existed before is not small enough return.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:08  
Right? And that's not in many cases.

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:10  
Right, exactly. And so, you know, that's going to be very difficult, you know, again, like, that's, I think, I think there's pros and cons to in office environment, but learning how somebody works, you know, and I may have told this story, and I've told the story before, but like, when I went to work at Kelley Blue Book, I was the only remote employee, they had no facilities with which I could interact with people, they didn't use Slack, they everything was literally like, like analog at the Irvine office. And it was very, very difficult. Unless I was physically there, it was very difficult to build relationships. And I eat and I and in many cases, they ended up the first few first few months were fine, I spent two weeks of the of the month out there. And then there was a travel cut. And they were like, you know, your trips out here are expensive. And so I wasn't able to take the advice that was given to me, which was spend as much time out there as possible. And, you know, those relationships that I made, you know, we're both I mean, some of them have still survived, but, but a lot of them haven't, and they certainly didn't thrive. And so that's, you know, as the new person coming in, that is an enormous challenge is building trust building friendships, building those, let's grab, you know, let's go out for lunch, let's get drinks afterwards. Those things that build those relationships are going to be really challenging. I, you know, it's so

Dan Roth  1:07:45  
I mean, it's funny because like, I and I, this has probably hurt me throughout my career, I I don't tend to do that, like, hey, let's go out for drinks after it. I'll do the lunch thing from time to time. But the thing that I think has really facilitated those work relationships over the years has been stuff like Slack, or email or other sort of chat platforms, like for auto blog, we were all over the place. And, you know, those are relationships that, you know, I'm still talking to those people. Sure. I mean, well, I mean, Samsung, the show

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:20  
never met down in person.

Dan Roth  1:08:22  
Right. So if you're not gonna do any of those things, though, yeah, it's gonna be really hard if you're not going to use those tools that are available. So we're completely off

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:33  
to get us back on track. I will tell you that one of my favorite vehicles and this is not to supersede but it was the Hyundai Kona Evie. And a lot of what you talked about that normalization of the Eevee power train, it is a power train choice. As opposed it's just an option it's it's it's simply a power train option. So you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:54  
choosing between a four cylinder six cylinder diesel, now you have one more you have one more and everything is the same.

Rebecca Lindland  1:09:03  
Everything else is the same and I actually I remember talking about this a couple weeks ago on the show, I far preferred the Kona Evie to the ionic the ionic felt like I was sacrificing the Coney EV I could have driven that thing. I mean, I was sad to see that go. And I really really enjoyed that. I didn't feel it's been a couple years since I was in the Chevy Bolt. I felt like that was I didn't have quite the same warm fuzzies as you had with it. I felt like there was some compromises going on there. But you know again, that was a couple years ago. I'd love to get into one again and see how I feel now but I just that Hyundai Kona Evie was was really, really fantastic and echoed a lot of what you said about the Chevy Bolt. Yeah, well, I

Dan Roth  1:09:49  
think the compromises are certainly there and visible and I think that may be what charmed me a bit because you can see the solutions being worked out. You Because there's an Eevee every ounce matters, right? Um, so some of the ways they kept the weight out of the vehicle like the little cover for the cargo and stuff, it was really wispy and light was like a piece of fabric and a couple of bows and several presses. Like, you know, normally it's not all that heavy, either it's like a piece of molded, you know, fiberboard or something, but just little details like that to really see how they they took it seriously and they changed some practices to bring it to market and make it really you know, competitive, it was free and it was well put together and just well thought out. So that impressed me quite a bit

Rebecca Lindland  1:10:41  
well and similarly you know, I made a point of in the Kona Evie heated and ventilated seats, because then you have to cut you don't have to use a track nearly as much. And I do remember in the Chevy Volt, it had heated seats and one of the main reasons was so that you know, in those cold frigid mornings, you can just put on your heated seats and you don't have to demand so much from your age,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:04  
it takes a lot less energy when you have a heated seat that's in direct contact with your body to keep you at a comfortable temperature than it does to heat the entire

Dan Roth  1:11:14  
thing. And you know what's gonna make that transfer of heat more efficient is if you get the insulation layers out of the way so you should just drive in like you know the least amount of clothing possible. So if it's

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:26  
my neighbor you see my expression by my 20 something year old neighbor walked by, I could see her out my office window this morning and it's like 32 degrees out in bare feet in Capri length so just below the knee I pants and a T shirt like almost like with tiny cap sleeves. This trick is unusual, but that was bizarre Oh

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:56  
the other day I was walking Daisy bare feet the other day when I was walking Daisy I suddenly there was somebody in the neighborhood that was jumping rope in his driveway and T shirt shorts and shoes on but

Dan Roth  1:12:09  
but but but jumping rope generates

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:11  
you'll need to get the male bare feet if you have a gravel driveway like there's nothing that made sense in

Unknown Speaker  1:12:19  
that situation I

Dan Roth  1:12:20  
just don't Yeah, I delicate little feet. So that was my my favorite. And you know we didn't dry I'm sure you'll agree we didn't drive anything outright bad. I don't think I've been in an outright bad car in a long time, even the Mitsubishi Mirage which I think it's pointed out as a as a terrible car. It's a terrible solution for our market. But it's not a terrible car. It's just not a good fit. So the my least favorite this year I think was probably the the Subaru Outback and legacy and again,

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:58  
why? Why cars,

Dan Roth  1:13:00  
but they have that new infotainment system that I just I hate it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:13:07  
I have the cross track in my driveway right now. So

Dan Roth  1:13:10  
you probably have the Crosstrek sport with the new 2.5 liter engine. That was delightful that had the one I just had a couple weeks ago had the older starlink infotainment but the the legacy and Outback have that large portrait oriented screen, almost like they're trying to have their own version of census and just the the colors and the icons and the short the functional choices it's very, it's it's hard to find what you're looking for, especially at a glance, the touch targets are small at times back out, so it doesn't stay on the screen if you want to stay there and it goes back to the default all the time. It's just, it's confusing, and it's slow. It's not sometimes it's not super responsive. So I just I couldn't get past not liking it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:05  
Enough. I respect that. I mean, I didn't have that same repellent feel I went on the launch of the outback. And I have not had one at home here. And as I have learned, that can be a big difference spending a week with something versus you know, going on the launch. And spending a week with the infotainment system in particular can be a very different experience.

Dan Roth  1:14:30  
Yeah, and it's great otherwise, I mean, the Subaru makes pretty, pretty great recipe in different sizes. You know, they've they found their their niche, and they've really been successful with it. Their sales keep going up this year.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:46  
But yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:48  
yeah, I mean, it's nice pickups, right.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:50  
Yeah. I mean, I think and you and you're absolutely right. I do have a different one. But just looking at my review. I mean, for me, the outback is supported the Android Apple CarPlay. So I didn't tend to have as many of those issues by, I also only used it for a day or day and a half. And a lot of times we don't even turn on the radio, we don't interact with it, you know, the navigation is built in, or they or they've plot, you know, they've programmed the navigation for us. So, on a drive, when we're on a media drive, it's very different than having something at home, you know, dropped in our driveway, and here you go figure it out. That's why a lot of times, I think our interaction at a media launch can be quite different than when we actually have it at home.

Dan Roth  1:15:38  
Yeah, well, and I think to spending more than a week with it might soften some of that impression. Sure. You know, I might get used to it. It did. I did use CarPlay with it, but I just felt like navigating around between the different features. And the way it worked even with CarPlay was not the slightest, so yeah. Yeah, it's great car, like, this is the thing, like it's it's just it was my least favorite, which doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that I liked it the least of all the things that that I drove so somebody else's turn YouTube took it out, figure out what's going well, I assume it

Rebecca Lindland  1:16:13  
Sam, if you don't mind, I'll go only because I had a very similar experience. So I think, you know, as as you do, I, we drove a lot of really great cars, and it's so hard to pick favorites, I mean, from a from a cost is no object standpoint, I'm gonna have to go with Aston Martin DB 11, because that's just stupid, not to an option. So I'm gonna go with that one, as, as you know, easily one of my favorite cars of the year. On a more reasonable level, though, you know, I've got to give credit to Genesis, because the gv ad that I got a chance to drive again only for a day, not even a full day. But that was just that they what they've done with that vehicle, and at the price point, you know, that they've done and we talked about this. It was just really, really impressive. It's an incredibly competitive segment, that midsize luxury, you know, five to seven seat, but I just think they've done a beautiful exterior wise, you know, we spent far too much time probably bitching about how ugly the BMW grille is. Genesis is just gorgeous. I think that they've done an incredible job with that vehicle, I hope more people will get a chance to, to drive it to give that brand an opportunity. Because looking across at all the Genesis that I drove, you know, the G 90 was kind of a little stayed, but they've just done an incredible job, even you know, with their sedans and with their SUV. So I think from a both a brand. And overall, I think that gvhd was definitely a highlight for me. On a, I also come from a different price point. The Hyundai Sonata, both the hybrid and the non hybrid were also real standouts. For me, I think that the Sonata Hybrid, it just did so many really good things, the styling is really sharp on it, the price $36,000 was really really good. I, it just it was it was a delight to drive. And you know, as a sedan, I you know, it just it, it was comfortable. It was engaging, I actually just did again, I did a lot of things really, really well. So that was another highlight for me. And then if there's so many more that I could pick from we love all the cars, please keep sending them to us. Yes, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:57  
I do agree with you wholeheartedly. Rebecca on both the Genesis the gv ad as well as the god sedan, which is basically just the low rider version of the gv ad and the Sonata, you know, all excellent vehicles.

Rebecca Lindland  1:19:11  
Yeah, they really were. So then on the other end of the spectrum, and this is why I wanted to kind of force my way, a way into conext. It was that Mazda CX nine and I know I talked about it on the show. And then I know, conversing with Mazda further, that the lack of being able to use the, the built in or the native language capabilities when you have Android Auto or Apple CarPlay activated. I just have never encountered that before. And I and I don't I don't know of another manufacturer with that, you know, we've got three options interact with an infotainment system, you've got touch, you've got voice and you've got like dial control and they've Taken away touch, and they took away voice. And I just don't, I don't understand that I don't understand that why how that was a good safe decision. And I kind of just struggled with Mazda. Overall the styling of it I had in the CX nine, I did have a hard time getting comfortable in the vehicle, because of how I have to sit, you know, quite high and forward, the roofline that the a pillar in with the windshield is sloped, so rakishly that I've had issues with that. And it's frustrating because they are such great vehicles. You know, the interiors are beautiful. There's, they're fun to drive, they're engaging. There's, you know, Sam and I had gone, I think we drove together on the CX 30. Launch. There was there's such good things about it. Did we drive together on that one?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:55  
No, your next wave we Oh,

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:57  
that's right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:57  
Yes, that's right. I was I was with Stephanie brenly.

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:01  
Oh, that's right. I was with Alan Taylor, and Alan Taylor into Alan Taylor. I

Unknown Speaker  1:21:06  
love that guy.

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:07  
But you know, it's just, again, there was a lot of good, good things about the Mazda lineup this year. But I actually I'm struggling with that infotainment system. And it's so hard to, to say to somebody, you know, yeah, I think this would be a great a great experience, when you can't change the radio station, unless you pull over. Unless it's in your presets, you do have to you know, so when you purchase this vehicle, if you choose to purchase a Mazda with this new infotainment system, you will have to spend a considerable amount of time putting in presets presets and anticipate which presets you want. Because that's really the only way that you're going to be able to change the station and, and to interact with it. I did try. You know, since this experience, I've tried to use Google Assistant more. And actually, in the Subaru that I have this week, the Crosstrek has been a great experience with that. So I've been able to use that a little bit more. But yeah, I just, I struggled with visibility. And I struggled with the infotainment system on the Mazda, I did not struggle with the performance. So as a car, it's great. It's just, you know, those, those were my issues with that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:24  
And, and those are absolutely legitimate, especially, you know, the ergonomic issues, you know, and this is why we've talked in the past about, you know, the importance of, before you buy any particular vehicle, make sure you test, drive it, spend some time in it, you know, get in and out of it several times, you know, make sure that it's comfortable for you to get in and out of make sure that you can see out of it adequately, you know, with with whatever seating position you're in, you know, last week, we had the question about, you know, you know, the machi, you know, hitting your knee on the bottom corner of the screen, you know, based on however you happen to sit however you have, you know, whatever your preferred seating position is, make sure that vehicle works for you. And if it doesn't, you know, don't buy it. You know, I mean, seriously, no matter how good it may look on the outside, if it doesn't fit you, right, do not buy it, because if it if it doesn't fit you right in that first 20 minutes, half an hour of a test drive, it sure as hell isn't gonna fit you, right, two years, three years, four years down the road. Yeah, it's just

Dan Roth  1:23:31  
something that gets better.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:33  
Yeah, it's just going to annoy you. So make sure you try that stuff out when you're when you're considering a vehicle to purchase.

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:40  
And the other thing too, is that you know that test drive is your time, it is not the dealer's time, it is your time. And I've seen people spend more time picking out a pair of shoes, which I understand and appreciate full extent. But they spend more time walking around, you know, the Nordstrom shoe department in a pair of heels than they have picking out their car. And so you know, and dealer pressure is a real thing. And that's actually one benefit you're getting at home delivery. And you know, trying out a test drive at home is a benefit I think of COVID. So, use that time wisely. It is your time it is your responsibility and your right to to test that vehicle out the way that you're going to use it driving on the highway, drive it on driving on your route as much as possible. So the other shout out I have to give. And not only just because I own my little cute little Coco is the Buick Encore gx for $25,000. I tested a $34,000 version of it, but this car was so good. It was such a great size. It just did a lot of things really, really well. It didn't have ventilated seats, and I complained to them about that. But that was another car that when I look at my review, I think Yeah, you know what, I just like that one. So that's my final one.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:58  
Cool night. lowlights. Oh, yes. Well, you talked about the monster. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:04  
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, but otherwise, like Dan said, there's, it's, it's hard. The the, there aren't a lot of bad cars out there, you have got to go and look for them by their mates may be a car that's not as good for you. And that's the that's the most important thing in my mind.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:27  
Yeah, I mean, almost everything out there is good for somebody, somebody, right? Not but not necessarily for everyone. Exactly. In fact, I would, I would say that there's nothing out there. That is the perfect vehicle for everyone. And that's, that's why we have variety. That's why we have, you know, hundreds of different nameplates out there, you know, and different form factors, so you can find whatever is the right fit for you.

Rebecca Lindland  1:25:53  
And it's also you know, it's when people ask me, what's the best car? Like? It depends? Yeah, it depends on what you who you are, and what you do with that car. And what is going to suit one person may be wholly unsuitable for somebody else. So, you know, I don't prevaricate deliberately on that question. But it really just does depend, it depends on what who you are, what your lifestyle is, and what the demands you're expecting. From that vehicle, you know, I got that Buick Encore, because my mom could get in and out of that thing, the easiest of any vehicle that I had, and at that, at that point in time, five, six years ago, that was the number one priority for me was, can my mom get in and out of it? And, you know, it's so you've got those kinds of demands? I you know, on your lifestyle?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:44  
Absolutely. All right. So, we're yours. Uh, I would say, you know, my three favorites of the year, were, you know, the new Corvette, the 20 2020 c eight Corvette, which it for what it is, you know, is a combination of amazing performance, and the best possible value for this kind of car, you know, for a mid engine to see supercar, you know, that you can get for a starting around $60,000 it's, it's unbelievable how good a car this is. It's, it's, it's amazing, you know, and, like, I just said, you know, it's certainly not the car for everybody. But if you are interested in a high performance sports car, that looks great, sounds great drives great. You know, this is absolutely something you should be considering, you know, assuming it fits your budget, you know, and, again, for a lot of people, you know, they can't afford a $60,000 car. But you know, if you're considering something like an Audi R eight, or a Lamborghini Huracan, or an Audi nssr Acura NSX. You know, this, this is a car that you should, or even, you know, things like a McLaren, you absolutely need to take a look at the Corvette and test drive. Right. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:28:10  
Or a Super Duty pickup. I mean, seriously, the chicken? My Drive is $63,000. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:19  
I mean, if you if your needs include a pickup truck, as opposed to, as opposed to a sports car, yeah. Then Then you get your priorities in order.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:31  
But you're right, Sam. I mean, the one that I test drove on the launch was $85,000. And it was easily as good if not better than the than the Acura MDX rd NSX. Thank you, you know, which is much more

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:51  
grand, it's still it's still half the, at least half the price of any of the other cars I mentioned.

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:57  
Absolutely. Absolutely. No, they've just done an incredible job with that. I'm still not a huge fan of the interior. I don't like that. The middle spine that Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:12  
That's, that's my that's my biggest complaint about it. Yeah. But at least for the 2021 models, they have made the the camera mirror system as standard equipment. So even on the base LTU gun, you don't have to step up to the next trim level to get the camera mirror. It's standard now across the board on all of them. So you have much better visibility behind you, which is hugely important in a car like that. Yeah. So, you know, next up, you know, the Ford Mustang Maki. It's the first. First time Ford's ever built a purpose built Evie. And it's also the first vehicle with a Mustang badge on it. That isn't a Cooper convertible with an internal combustion engine in the front driving, driving the rear wheels and a lot of people You know, I have huge concerns about that. You know, I'm at the point where, you know, I certainly had concerns about it when they first hinted at it a couple years ago at the Detroit Auto Show and hinted that it might be called a Mach one. You know, I thought that was a bad idea. I said that to Jim Farley. And I have no, no pretense that he paid any attention to me specifically. But he certainly listened to the crowd that that wailed about that. But they did keep the Mustang name. And I'm fine with it. I, you know, it is what it is, as they say, but, you know, the Maki, if you're, if you're looking for an Eevee, that, you know, has room for five. And that is, you know, I think design is obviously very subjective. You know, I like the way it looks. You know, it's certainly, it's much higher riding than any Mustang before, but compared to most utilities, it's actually relatively low. Yeah, it drives great, it looks great. You know, everything about it, I think it's, it's a really well executed vehicle. And as long as it can build them correctly, then I think Ford is gonna have a huge success with this thing. And it bodes well for what Ford is going to be doing in the future with EBS.

Rebecca Lindland  1:31:22  
Yeah, I think it's a great iteration of, of one of their most iconic assets, which is the Mustang name. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's a great evolution of, of what else have rethinking what a Mustang looks like, and, and, and feels like and, and performs. And, you know, eds are known for their torque. I mean, there's, they're known for performance, so you can still get that same feeling. And I think they did a good job of honoring and respecting that Mustang nameplate with this vehicle. Yeah, and, you know, the market,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:02  
as we know, has moved away from coupes and convertibles, you know, we're obviously all sad about that. But it is, that is the reality of the situation. And if you're going to stay in business, you've got to respond to what the market is wants. And I think that this is right now for this time, is probably the best possible response that that Ford could make, to keep the Mustang brand alive and relevant in the in the market going forward. And also as a way to attract people that are that like, the Mustang brand, you know, to bring them in to, you know, TVs, you know, to Ford EBS. So, you know, it's going to be fascinating to watch over the next couple of years, as all of these legacy automakers try to battle it out, both amongst themselves and also with all the newcomers in the market, to grab, you know, the Eevee market share, and we'll see how that plays out. But I think that, you know, as a first step for Ford, you know, they've done a lot of things right, with with this vehicle, and then, you know, the, you know, off in a completely different direction, the Jeep Gladiator Mojave, you know, I think you know, what they did with the Mojave to the gladiator. I love it. I think it's great. You know, it's, it's not a vehicle that I would likely ever buy, but it was a lot of fun to drive.

Rebecca Lindland  1:33:33  
Why wouldn't you buy it just out of curiosity, just,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:35  
I don't personally have a need or want for an off road vehicle. You know, it's not an inexpensive vehicle, if I did, it is absolutely one that would be you know, near the top of my list. You know, because, you know, I like the way it drives on, you know, on dirt roads, you know, especially, you know, rough dirt roads. The driving dynamics are excellent, I thought I thought I liked the way it drives a lot better than the F 150. Raptor, I think the Raptor, you know, which is, you know, both the Mojave and the gladiator Mojave and the Raptor are both designed is as high speed offroad vehicles as opposed to dedicated rock crawlers, okay, you know, and the, the Raptor, you know, feels a lot softer and mushier whereas the Mojave feels much more controlled. And I like the way it drives, especially on the road, but also off the road I preferred the way it drives. And, you know, it's it's got you know, that that those fun aspects of the of the Jeep Wrangler, you know, you can take the roof off, you can take the doors off if you want, you've got you get that flexibility, you know, to for that cut if you're into that kind of lifestyle, you know, it's it's not what I'm interested in, you know, I'm interested in, you know, low slung You know, sports cars that go around curves really fast. But, you know, for what it is, I think it's it's really well done. And then, you know, lowlights, you know, I guess, again, as you said, Dan, you know, there's nothing bad out there. But just, you know, in terms of kind of a disappointment as to what I was hoping for versus what I got, you know, the Cadillac CT for V. You know, I really liked the 80 s, especially the 80 s v. You know, and this the CT for the replacement for that. Yeah, and the, you know, the to seven turbos is it's powerful. It's got lots of power, but I don't know, it just didn't have the, you know, didn't have what I wanted in that car. And maybe

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:49  
series.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:50  
Yeah. Well, you know, when they launched the blackwing later this year, you know, which will have the the twin turbo V six, like you had in the atsb you know, maybe that you know, we'll get it back to where I prefer it to be you know, in terms of you know, size and you know, the the format of the vehicle I like that but it's the the CT four v just didn't really turned me on, and the Lexus RX 450. we've, we've, we've latched on about the RX the numerous times over the past year, a new one coming. It is at the end of its lifecycle. And finally, the Prius, you know, yeah, it's

Dan Roth  1:36:36  
interesting for me, because the Prius for a long time, you know, like it blazed the path. And it was one of those things that we wind up finding ourselves defending, even as enthusiasts saying, like, Look, it's not exciting to drive, but it's, it's quite a technological achievement. And it really does move the needle and now it's kind of

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:53  
Yeah, well, it served its purpose. You know, just a couple years ago, you know, I, when I talked about the, the Prius C, you know, which is basically a hybrid jaros.

Dan Roth  1:37:03  
I love that thing. That was my favorite Prius,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:06  
again, when it launched, you know, it had a purpose, to create a more affordable, and more affordable hybrid from Toyota. You know, both, you know, all all the variants of the Prius had a purpose, which was, as you say, to blaze that path of electrification, they serve that purpose. And hybridisation is now a mainstream thing. You can get hybrids in almost every Toyota now, except, yeah,

Dan Roth  1:37:34  
and sometimes you don't even realize it's a hybrid like the the defender 110 I just had. I had to look that up.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:41  
Yeah. Well, that's a mild hybrid. Yeah. But so

Dan Roth  1:37:43  
I mean, yes, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:44  
but even, you know, the, the Prius style, you know, strong hybrid system, and you can get that and, you know, the Rab the Corolla, the Camry, the Avalon, the Highlander, the, the, the Sienna. And, you know, the the Prius, you know, has been that sales have been declining for years. You know, the rat, the rav4 hybrid is now the most popular Toyota hybrid last year, in 2020, at least up through the end of November, the first 11 months of the year, 27% of rav4 sold in the US were hybrids. It is by far the most popular hybrid sold in the US. And you know, you know, similar market share, you know, is coming in, you know, for a lot of the other Toyota hybrids. So, I think that the Prius served its purpose blazing that trail. It's time to let it go. Yeah. And I don't expect to see a next generation Prius in the US market.

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:47  
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't realize that did I know that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:50  
was that? No, that's just my breaking news. No, I'm just guessing you know, given the way the market has shifted away from smaller cars, right, I'm I would be I would be shocked if Toyota bothers to bring a next generation Prius to the US market.

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:07  
Well as you say, there's when you have opportunities in potentially higher profit vehicles also, like the rav4 hybrid and such there's there's a lot of other options out

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:18  
there even even the Corolla I mean, yeah, you've got the Corolla hybrid, there's really no reason especially for something as weird looking as the generation Prius and got the infotainment looks

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:33  
so funny. I when I drove it this summer, I I did not want to drive it. I didn't want to be seen driving it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:41  
Now I can sympathize with that. You know, so again, it's it's not that it's bad. It's just, you know, it's, it's day has it's seen its day, it's time to move on.

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:54  
Very, very baby boomer and not very Gen X in it.

Dan Roth  1:40:01  
You becoming my parents?

Unknown Speaker  1:40:04  
Exactly?

Unknown Speaker  1:40:08  
Oh, my goodness.

Dan Roth  1:40:09  
All right. So I think that's our, our highlights or lowlights, any quick predictions for the year I have one. But it's it's a pretty universal prediction. I think this is always going to be the case. But I think in in 2021, is this is not the year, we see fully autonomous self driving cars. On the road, and, you know, sort of mass way, we've got some on the road, you know, like with waymo, and they're doing limited testing it self driving doesn't heretic, doesn't hit them. This year. That's, that's my prediction, a bold

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:46  
statement. Yeah. No, I think that I could see this year, as we talked about kind of evolving as our commutes evolve as our workspaces evolve, I think our use of the vehicle will continue to evolve. I, you know, wow, a third of the luxury market is leases. And those are going to still be coming up. And it'll be interesting to see what people do. I, you know, and how we use our vehicles. I mean, I feel like some days, I just want to get out of my house, and I need to go for a drive. And that speaks more towards a sports oriented car or something that is more performance based, more emotional. But it also means, you know, I've talked to my my brother in law about this, because sometimes, you know, in his busy household, he just needs quiet, and like, go, you know, go for a drive and take that conference call. I'm not a zoom call, obviously, but conference calling in the park, go sit at the beach, you know, go sit in your car. And so, how you're using that car, I think it'll be very interesting to see what what we find out over the course of 2021.

Dan Roth  1:42:04  
Yeah, I agree. Agree.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:06  
Okay. And if you want to hear my predictions on autonomous vehicles in 2021, check out the latest episode of The no parking podcast. I'll include a link to that. Brian Zalewski, and CEO of Argo, AI and Alex Roy, and I chatted for about an hour about that stuff, get some myths on on abs. But, you know, I think the the other thing I think we're gonna see this that we will see this year is, you know, a really big expansion of EBS. We're certainly getting a lot of new models coming to market this year. And I think we're gonna see a big growth in sales of EBS in 2020 and 2021 and beyond, you know, because in addition to the Maki and the 40 transit, you know, GM is going to be launching, you know, several e V's this year starting with the Hummer. The lyric is coming. Cadillac lyrics are coming coming early next year. But Mary Barra is doing keynote opening keynote for CES and a little over a week and she's expected to announce Chevy Chevy Silverado Evie and and possibly other Evie so we're gonna see a bunch of stuff from GM, the VW ID four and other VW EDS and and Audi e V's coming to market this year. Some newcomers like lucid, the Nissan Aria is coming this fall. So there's gonna be a lot more options in in certainly in market segments, you know where where people are buying vehicles. And also you know increasingly you know, in you know, at price points that people are going to be more affordable Hyundai is going to also be launching their their new ionic five this year. Kias is going to be launching some new TVs this year. So, there's gonna be a lot of competition at various price points and different market segments. And so I think that's, that's going to be the big thing to watch.

Rebecca Lindland  1:44:08  
I agree. I agree. It'll be very exciting to see. Okay.

Dan Roth  1:44:12  
All right. So we had one email, it looks

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:14  
like let's save that for next time.

Dan Roth  1:44:17  
Okay. So up on the edge of your seat for next year. I just I liked what he had to say. Yes.

Rebecca Lindland  1:44:24  
We can we can we can do it. I just was just thinking that we were wrapping up sort of a year end show, and it might be a good way to start the new year. Yeah. That was my strategic. That's the only reason I wanted to do it because I agree Dan, you're very soothing to listen to I am I am.

Dan Roth  1:44:42  
I lean into the Microsoft

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:45  
word I would have used for listening to them but

Dan Roth  1:44:48  
you know some people find find peace in the chaos.

Rebecca Lindland  1:44:53  
You put your best NPR voice on

Dan Roth  1:44:59  
it I don't think I've lasted any NPR. Me I feel like listen, you tried to unionize the newsroom. Okay. I'll be unionized already. But anyway, start rabble rousing. Thanks for listening everyone. 20 if we need to wrap it up, I mean, it's there's, there's just a year of episodes to go through, you know, sort of

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:28  
dental screening episodes

Dan Roth  1:45:31  
76 or 76 episodes, we have a new year to fill with episode. And 176 Episode 176 plus some some other sort of bonus episodes, and we do have other stuff. in the works. I know that I've set for the last few episodes, we're getting there. We're getting down to business, some things had to be sort of developed and hooked up, but we've got some more content on the way for you, we're going to flesh out those, those Patreon levels. I'll talk to try to get on that this afternoon. So stay tuned, stay in touch and we'll see everybody a little deeper into 2021 for the next show,

Rebecca Lindland  1:46:14  
and Happy New Year, everyone.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:15  
Happy New Year. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai