Dan Roth  0:01  
Coming up on episode 178 if wheel bearings were driving the 2021 Ford F 250, platinum diesel 2021, Toyota, Sequoia and Nate shade and the 2021 Nissan Rogue SL, we talk about the official creation of steel llantas automaker subscription service is shutting down Jim's new brake drop venture, and Mazda canceling the diesel you probably didn't know you could buy. After all that we finished up with a question that sparked its own lively discussion. That's all I had on episode 178 of wheel bearings.

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I am Dan Roth from Forbes. 

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights. 

Rebecca Lindland  1:17  
And I'm Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives. 

Dan Roth  1:19  
All right, so before I get started, we have a few Patreon supporters Patreon patrons who have signed up since last time we're up to 38 active people. Wow. So we have to make sure that we we thank them. So since the last episode, we have some new folks who have signed up since then. So Steve Doyle.

Chad Leachman, he's in Canada so I see like Canadian money

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50  
We won't hold that against you know, 

Dan Roth  1:52  
it's fine. It's more like it's the same ticker number. And then Li Ari is the username. Thank you, john bone steel, which is a fantastic name. 

Rebecca Lindland  2:04  
Fantastic name.

Dan Roth  2:07  
reminds me that traffic song john barleycorn must die.

Rick Gibbons and Dave Marsh, another listener from Connecticut Stan. So thank you, everyone for pledging your support. Again, Sally fields you like us?

Let's talk about what we're driving. And I'll be real quick because I've had different versions of the same hardware several times over the last year. Please don't stop because I love it. I've got a Ford F 250 Platinum it with the Tremor package and the 6.7 liter diesel and Rebecca I think this is the truck that when I mentioned the last f 250 i had you mentioned that our friend Nicole wakelin had once I think this is the exact truck she had. 

Rebecca Lindland  2:52  
Oh really? Yeah, it makes sense because she's up in Nashua, New Hampshire, 

Dan Roth  2:55  
right um, Nashville tax free New Hampshire. We bought a bunch of furniture from that guy.

You go to the Jordans furniture there they have this little special ice creams. Any Jordans furniture

Rebecca Lindland  3:07  
was purchased by Warren Buffett

Dan Roth  3:08  
A number of years ago. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I want only one of the guys is still doing the commercials.

Rebecca Lindland  3:14  
right because he has been wanting to go to Broadway.

Dan Roth  3:16  
Yeah, so good for the Edelman's. I like it's just again, it's a great trick I do like the contrast between that so the last one I had was the XML t and this one is the platinum and the boy the Platinum is nice it's got she didn't

Rebecca Lindland  3:29  
have the diesel actually. Oh, she

Dan Roth  3:31  
didn't. Okay, now

Rebecca Lindland  3:32  
I'm just looking at her review. I'm Rebecca drives.com.

Dan Roth  3:35  
I don't know I guess they've they've just like spat a bunch of trucks into the the journalist fleet which is fine. I find it very handy. There's lots of stuff I can do with it. I have a bunch of little stumps I need to poke actually like not stumps, but the footings for the deck. So I can use it as a tractor which would be entertaining. That's that's what these things are built for. Yeah, yeah. So like there's a particular technique when you're pulling footings like that I think you have to have like something for it to

Sam Abuelsamid  4:05  
a pulley to so you can actually pull it up rather than across

Dan Roth  4:10  
Yeah, exactly. You want something for it to roll on. Like a log or just something so I have to figure that out. I'll see how how, you know suburban by suburban guy embarrassing it can be whatever

Sam Abuelsamid  4:25  
make sure you take a GoPro or something out there so yeah.

Dan Roth  4:30  
It's always entertaining to get the big

Sam Abuelsamid  4:32  
posts up specifically for the patrons right.

Dan Roth  4:37  
Here's for Dan launched a 300 pound chunk of concrete into the back window and afford that it's not

Rebecca Lindland  4:43  
just to interrupt me for a second. Nicole actually did have the F 250. tremor diesel. Yep. I think she had that. I don't know when she had it exactly. But read

Dan Roth  4:53  
it or the pictures was

Rebecca Lindland  4:55  
you know what? I don't know. She didn't take pictures of it.

Dan Roth  4:58  
Oh, that's bad for SEO. You got to take care. And put the

Rebecca Lindland  5:00  
tech lead me, Hey, you know,

Dan Roth  5:02  
the X lt has it's a comfortable truck, it's a nice truck that the Platinum is mostly the same, it's a little bit more dolled up inside, it has leather seats that are quite cushy. They feel like old school Lincoln seats like old Lincoln Town Car seats, which is not not a criticism, it's quite nice in the truck, they're wide and comfortable. And I feel like I could, you know, hook a million pounds up to this thing and tow it across the country on the interstate, and it would be very happy doing that. And the tremor package to makes me feel like I could drive up along the power lines. Just like, you know, there's always that story of like, one of the power lines the rights of way, go all the way to Canada. Alright, cool. I'm sure they do.

Rebecca Lindland  5:53  
You go go see that Patreon guy?

Dan Roth  5:55  
Yeah, that's right.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:57  
The Super duties, you know, they you can get those with a fifth wheel towing package. And depending on the configuration, like I think an F 450 dually. Fifth Wheel can tell about 32,000 pounds?

Dan Roth  6:12  
Don't you need a CDL? The tow that much?

Sam Abuelsamid  6:15  
A question? Possibly? Yeah. I don't know, I'm not sure of the licensing requirements?

Dan Roth  6:24  
Or maybe you don't, because the actual gross weight is not an I don't know that. And then maybe it varies by

Sam Abuelsamid  6:30  
I couldn't tell you.

Rebecca Lindland  6:31  
I think one of the most challenging parts of the F. F series is just the configuration is working your way through all the different configurations of that thing. Like, if you don't know exactly what you want, I think it could be really challenging. Yeah, I

Sam Abuelsamid  6:48  
remember years ago, I mean, on the, on the f150 being told that there were about 14 million buildable combinations, that's just on the F 150. And that includes, you know, all the different color variations of interior texture, different trim levels, you know, different engines and towing packages. And on the super duties, it's even worse, because you know, you go from, you know, 250 to 350 to 450, you've got single wheel dual wheel, you got three different engine options. Now. I mean, though, it's definitely in the many millions of buildable combinations.

Rebecca Lindland  7:27  
It's well, and then you go down the rabbit hole, because you're right, like I'm looking at their website, there's that the f150 path, but then there's the F 250 path, which is the Super Duty, which is different. So you can go all the way down and build this thing and then be like, Oh, no, actually, I need this. And then you have to start all over. It's just, it's crazy. It really is, it's like

Dan Roth  7:47  
you know, it's the only part of the market that's really like the 1950s in the sense of there's just so much you can do. And so many options and, and ways for you to get your truck the way you need it. And not only with like, luxury and features, but also with the outfitting that's available to you can get your truck set up for the work you need to do with it right from the dealership. And a lot of times from the factory, you know, the way they've got accessory switches wired in and stuff like that. So again, it's just like another indication of they really know their truck customers, the trucks are clearly their profit center, and they're doing a good job at serving that market. But when you're just a simple car person with simple tastes, it does make your head spin a little bit because the super duty trucks if it's just you know, they're if you if you're not doing regularly, that kind of heavy duty work, but you want the heavy duty truck, like just pick one. They're all gonna work, you know? Yeah. If you're towing Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  9:02  
you do. I mean, you know, with these things, you do want to be careful about what you pick, though because these things can get very, very expensive. Yeah, can you you know, you don't want to buy more than what you actually need. Because you mean you will be paying many, many 1000s of dollars extra if you overbuy for, you know for your particular application. And this, this is something that you know for recently, Ted Canis who's now he was previously head of the team medicine at Ford and he moved over last fall to head up Ford commercial vehicle operations. And he was doing a fireside talk with Adam Jonas during I think the Morgan Stanley conference. And he was talking about they were talking about the the transit, the electric fan and we'll talk more about electric fans later but Ted was talking about the the transit and you know, why they picked the battery size, they did, you know, 127 mile range. And they said, you know, for commercial customers, you know, and for superduty you know, most of the customer, most of the people that buy superduty are commercial customers, you know, whether that's municipal fleets or utilities, or, you know, who whoever else, you know, or, you know, cable companies. That's, that's the bulk of the customers for those vehicles. And they look very carefully at what their needs are, and by basically just what they need that you know, so if somebody doesn't need the extra capability, extra towing or payload capability of a 350, they're gonna buy a 250 not a 350. Because capital costs are very, you know, very important to businesses like that, you know, whether it's a city or or a company, you know, that that upfront cost is isn't a very important consideration for them.

Dan Roth  11:00  
You only get so many years to depreciate it. So

Sam Abuelsamid  11:03  
that's right.

Dan Roth  11:04  
And speaking of costs, like an $85,000 truck, I don't have the sticker. I looked for it. They didn't have a sticker in it, but it's gotta be right. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  11:15  
I think if it's a similar one that Nicole tested, hers was at four 645, including almost 17 $100 for destination delivery.

Dan Roth  11:26  
Yeah. And I think so the Platinum almost seems like it's not a trim, when you try to build it. I think it's a package on top of the

limited maybe?

Rebecca Lindland  11:43  
No, it's a separate trim.

Dan Roth  11:46  
See, they throw you off with the picture in the website. They haven't. Yeah, we'll Yeah. So the Platinum starts 65. And it's above the King Ranch. It's got a lot of stuff on it. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  11:57  
it does. But you're right. I think, you know, it's to Sam's point about, I think it's smart for people that are venturing into this space, you have to have a budget, you have to go in there and understand like, what your what your max is because you can rapidly go from 30 something $1,000 up to $60,000. And really fine, like figure out what what your actual budget is, and try and stick with that. Because I think you can very quickly over by

Dan Roth  12:25  
Yeah, well, I got curious the other day, and I went and built a an F 150 at the site. Yes, just not a ridiculous truck. The things that I thought I might want it was a $50,000 truck.

Rebecca Lindland  12:38  
Yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm in there, I'm in there. f150 Configurator. Now, and this is not a this is not a slight on Ford, this is this happens with with the Ram 1500 and the Chevy Silverado and Sierra and yeah, it's just the whole building a pickup truck, going through the pickup truck configurator for anyone is just a days,

Sam Abuelsamid  13:01  
average average transaction prices for light duty trucks are now you know, just I think just shy of $50,000. And, you know, the super duties are, tend to be a little bit more than that. Because, you know, in the case of the super duties, you know, as you said, you know, like an F 250, XL, you know, basic basic work truck steel wheels and everything, you know, starts at 34,000. And then, you know, it goes up rapidly from there, you know, when you get into an F 450, Ltd, you know, you can, you can easily top 100 grand with that thing. So, you know, it's all over the map, but you know, what, what tends to happen with these things is, you know, a business owner, you know, like a construction company, the owner or construction company will buy, you know, a small fleet of these things for for the company, you know, or landscaping business or you know, for a ranch whatever, you know, they'll buy, you know, buy a bunch of 250 or 350 you know, XL or x LTS work trucks. And then you know, for the owner for himself, you know, we'll buy you know, a King Ranch or a platinum or a limited.

Dan Roth  14:08  
Mel Brooks just going it's good to be king.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:10  
Yeah, exactly.

Unknown Speaker  14:14  
It's awesome. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  14:15  
mean, the and the capabilities are impressive. It's, you can tell if you put the gooseneck hitch to the gooseneck is that the fifth wheel, not the fifth wheel. The gooseneck is this hitch ball in the middle of the bed. Fifth Wheel is a little different. That's the assembly that's like a tractor trailer but they both kind of do the same thing you tow from the middle of the bed versus the bumper hitch. So on the gooseneck you can tow 37,000 pounds. Like,

Rebecca Lindland  14:43  
I mean, that's like a tiny house, isn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid  14:45  
That's probably more than a tiny house. Yeah,

Dan Roth  14:48  
that's right. So that's a that's a toy hauler with all your stuff in it like a 30 foot toy hauler like yeah

Sam Abuelsamid  14:58  
in all the three states in the US the limit the weight limit for trucks is 40 is 40 tons 80,000 pounds. So that's for, you know, a big 18 Wheeler or a tractor trailer. Oh, wow. You know, so you're talking about a pickup truck that can tell almost half of what the maximum weight limit is. For the, you know, anywhere in the US

Dan Roth  15:23  
well, and until they change that rule in the early 80s. It was like 6060 tons.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:28  
Yeah, well, it's still at in Michigan. Yes, part of the reason why Michigan roads are so bad,

Dan Roth  15:33  
no, no, in the in the 80s. They raised it, it had been 60 tonnes. And they you know, our friend, Ronnie Reagan raised that limit to 80 tons and a lot of the roads weren't designed for that weight. And that's why some of the virtues got pounded to bits. Because none of the not just the asphalt but like the overall design of the road wasn't made for that kind of abuse. But when you think about 60 tonnes in the system, this is even closer to 60 tonnes at close to 40,000 pounds, you know, you can tow 37 pounds, 37,000 pounds, and then the truck weighs got

Sam Abuelsamid  16:14  
over 6000 pounds for

Dan Roth  16:17  
payload and people and yeah, that's a lot. And it'll do it the 6.7 liter diesel is a wonderful engine, it really feels definitely feels like there's a lot more weight on the nose of this one then with the 7.3 that we talked about last week, and the week before. And then we had Ryan metallic from Ford on to talk about it's the flip side is it's twice as torquey, it's got 1000 pound feet of torque. So it's a really odd sensation to be in a truck that's so large. And you can basically just set the needle on the speedometer wherever you want it very quickly. And the the only analogy I can make for it is like it's it's like when you're you're like setting in a controller or something. And it's got that like indicator, the geekiest thing I could think about is when we would we would set up master tapes, and you'd put audio tone on them. And you'd want the meters to just go up and stop at zero the VU meters. And that's what it feels like I can just press on the pedal and the needle just goes up. Just stops there. That's a super geeky way to explain it. So I'm sorry, but that's all I felt like I was just doing it on the highway and it's quick it happens really fast. Like you go from 50 to 70 you like nothing and it's it doesn't feel like it going that quickly. But you look at how fast that needle moves. This thing's just really powerful because it's empty all that torque has nothing else to do.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:53  
Yeah

Dan Roth  17:55  
it's a it's a really well thought out truck to you know, I think I'd probably skip the tremor package just it's a little bit aggressive for my tastes, but

Sam Abuelsamid  18:06  
well you know, it's one of those things, you know, it depends on what you're using it for him if you're if you're using this truck, if you're on you know, working on a ranch, you know, and using this truck or on a farm, the trimmer package might make more sense you know if you're using this you know, as a carpenter you know or plumber you know, probably not a plumber but you know, an electrician or something you know or you know for a city you know works crew you know going out and you know doing work in the in the city parks things like that. which is you know, where I see these things all the time, you know, the FC township parks department you know, has several of these and every Tuesday morning when I'm walking Daisy I see to them you know, see a couple of them parked out you know by the park to the south of me you know tolling all the big lawn mowers you know they go out and mow the lawn in the in the park and then you know the driving hours of leave leave the trucks there drive the motors drive the mowers four blocks down mow the other Park and then come back. Next Park

Dan Roth  19:09  
if they had a if they had a platinum with the tremor package,

Sam Abuelsamid  19:15  
no they're just driving XL right

Dan Roth  19:17  
I was gonna say there would be some nasty letters

Unknown Speaker  19:20  
Yeah, the city

Sam Abuelsamid  19:22  
and then in the wintertime, you know they melt the plows on there and and you know use them as plows. Yeah,

Dan Roth  19:28  
it's as a work truck. It's It's fantastic. And I like that you can be comfortable in the in the work truck. You know the tremor package has the the different suspension tuning and the the large tires for the good years but they're they're more offroad focused and so that's really what makes it feel like you can go just about anywhere can fit. It is kind of long, definitely tall. It's great for a stubby person like me like I don't even know if I come up with like my eye level. may not be over the hood. They're big now and it doesn't have motorized running boards. It's got fixed, fixed ones, but at least it's got running boards so you can get in the grab handles and stuff. So yeah, again, Ford is really buttering us up with trucks and I like it. So please don't stop. It's, it's honestly at even at $85,000 for the things you can do with it, if you're going to use it. It's, it's Yes, it's, it's expensive, but it's also going to give you the work. It's it's like buying. It's like buying a really expensive tool. Don't do it just because you like it, you have to do it, because you're gonna get something from it, you know, like, yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  20:53  
I mean, it's kind of it reminds me of the conversation we had just last week about the GMC Yukon Denali, like very purpose built and, and serving a very specific type of need, which I think is really cool like that, like, you know, people may need the tremor package, they may or may need that capability. And so I think it's great that, that all those options are available and those kinds of choices, and configurator So, you know, even though it can, it can really run up in in dollars, at least it's available you can buy exactly what you meet what you need, it may cost you but at least it's available and you don't have to buy that you know, that's the benefit of having this super complicated all these choices is that if you don't need the tremor package or something like that, you don't need to buy that

Dan Roth  21:42  
right can you imagine if it did like a string diagram or something of like all that it would look like one of those conspiracy theory movies,

Rebecca Lindland  21:50  
we will find the serial killer All right.

Dan Roth  21:55  
So that's until I tell you something or yank out those footings I can't comment so much about how hard it works. I'll see what I can do to get out there if the ground is not frozen, because it's been kind of mob lately. So we'll see. I may have some injuries to report next week. Hopefully not. Rebecca, I was intrigued because you're driving this Sequoia the Toyota Sequoia and I'm wondering if when you open the door can you count the growth rings?

Rebecca Lindland  22:27  
This is I I did I had I had the 2021 Toyota Sequoia I this one I had the what they call the night shade Special Edition really believe it night shade?

Sam Abuelsamid  22:40  
Yeah, they launched a whole series of night shades.

Dan Roth  22:44  
Well, no, that's the thing is like you have to ask to order like tomato or potato like it's a poison. Okay, carry on. They named their truck poison. Got it.

Rebecca Lindland  23:00  
So it had the blacked out trim, like the Chrome and stuff. Mine was white. And I don't know, for whatever reason, it reminded me of like those old 1950s milk trucks.

Dan Roth  23:13  
Yeah, you

Rebecca Lindland  23:14  
know, like, I don't know what it was about it. But so so it had the 5.7 liter V six speed, automatic. I mean, just just those specifications tell you how old this truck is.

Dan Roth  23:27  
It's a nice power train. It's just not not all I mean, it's it's not super wimpy, but it's not all that muscular compared to other stuff now, but it's well yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  23:35  
I mean, the technology is I think the technology has, has overcome the displacement, you know, like so you can get more with a smaller displacement with a you know, so, but it was fun to drive. It's always fun to drive a VA they sound great, you know, there's plenty of power there. I mean, it's, it's, you know, you sort of have this feeling of invincibility and King of the road kind of, you know, capabilities when you're sitting up so high. This also has fixed running boards, but it was easy to get in and out of but it's a big truck. I mean, you're king of the road. However in this Sequoia, you're definitely not king of technology because I think they're the optional blu ray disc pad. This player for the backseat has a nine inch screen and the driver has a seven inch screen. Like it's, I think it's about the size of your phone.

Dan Roth  24:29  
Old School versus new. So there's a new tender coming really soon. And I would expect on the heels of that we're gonna have a new Sequoia.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:38  
This one This one debuted in 2008. Right as the the current tundra.

Rebecca Lindland  24:43  
Yes, yeah, exactly. I mean, they're both they're both very throwback sort of feel to them. I think that you know this one. So the so the night shave version starts at 50,100. I tested it at 68,000 I I just think, you know, there's a lot better vehicles out there, or this and you know, the first ones that come to mind are the Hyundai palisade and I can't tell you right, but you know, because it's a seven passenger full size SUVs, we truck truck truck based. I, you know, four wheel drive centerlock diff. I mean, it does, you know, chose so this one towed 7100 pounds, the two wheel drive chose 7400 pounds. I, you know, it's a little it's a lot of capability, but it also feels like, it feels like you're driving your father's Toyota.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:38  
which pretty much are you think about if you look at, you know, the, the most direct competitors to this, you know, body on frame full size SUVs, Chevy Tahoe, GMC Yukon Ford Expedition. Yeah, these, each of these vehicles has gone through, you know, a couple of generational changes.

Rebecca Lindland  26:01  
And those are better competitive competitors to tell you right, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  26:05  
you know, since this thing came out, and, you know, they've gotten substantial upgrades, you know, in pretty much everything. And, and those GM utilities now, the new Tahoe and suburban, you know, are, I think, probably vastly superior to this, you know, to what you're getting here before roughly the same amount of money?

Rebecca Lindland  26:27  
Well, right. I mean, that's the thing is they all

Sam Abuelsamid  26:29  
start at 50 grand.

Rebecca Lindland  26:30  
Yeah. So, you know, this thing was, I mean, it's, it's old, it's old, there's no, there's no getting around it. Was it terrible to drive? No, I mean, it's still a Toyota is still very durable and reliable and all the good things that Toyota's are, but it's just, I don't, I can't make the case for somebody to purchase this vehicle when there's so many better competitors out there. And by the way, this wasn't even the least, this wasn't even the most expensive. There's a platinum edition that starts at 66,000. That I mean, it still has all the same kind of very flat black interior very, you know, plasticky kind of feel and not in a durable sort of way, in a 2008. Kind of a bottom

Dan Roth  27:20  
of the recession. Like

Rebecca Lindland  27:21  
Yeah, I don't know, when it was refreshed if there's been a refresher as well. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:28  
I mean, they've tweaked grills and things like that. Yeah, nothing substantive. Since 2008,

Dan Roth  27:34  
the tender is similar, where it's been refreshed a couple of times inside, but overall, the, the milia is still recession grade plastic.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:47  
Yeah, and, you know, the tundra, at least, got a pretty substantial exterior refresh, like four or five years ago. You know, with new sheet metal, it's still, it's, you know, still the same under the skin, but it did get new sheet metal, the Sequoia hasn't really gotten that. And, you know, the market DNS kind of spoken. I just pulled up the toilet is 2020 sales. They sold 70 364 suppliers last year, that was down 29% from 2019.

Dan Roth  28:19  
How many

Sam Abuelsamid  28:20  
7374?

Dan Roth  28:22  
They sold? 7000. Like,

Rebecca Lindland  28:25  
I mean, but it was 2019. And that was, you know, rather had its own special issues. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  28:32  
yes, we sold a quarter

Rebecca Lindland  28:36  
million know for sure. But it's it's, I think that and that's why like when it showed up, especially with the blackout thing, where there's no chrome or anything, just to hold the bumper looks really old, like everything looked the whole vehicle looks dated. It's, uh, yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. I can't wait for the upgrade or for the for the redesign, because it deserves it. You know, I think it's still it's a it's a good capable vehicle, but it's just been far surpassed by others. You know, it has all the typical Android Auto Apple CarPlay that actually worked out pretty well. I think, you know, I actually had this a few weeks ago, we I kind of jumped over it because I wanted to talk about the key a K five last week. So I had this a couple weeks ago. And you know, I it's one of those like, I had to look back at the pictures and be like, Oh, yeah, okay, now I remember driving this.

Dan Roth  29:38  
Again, it's one of those things like it's not a bad vehicle and I think probably those 7000 that they sold sold on merit. You know, Toyota has really loyal, yeah, fires and they have that Sterling reputation, not the reputation that Sterling had but a sterling in it.

Rebecca Lindland  29:58  
And the other thing is, it has It doesn't have the power lift gate, which in today's world is, I mean, I yeah, luckily that the little the handle like hung down like three inches because I was on my

Sam Abuelsamid  30:11  
especially for you know, full size body on frame utility. That's important, you know, because if you're not six feet tall, you know, grabbing that, grabbing that tailgate to pull it down is can be a real pain in the ass. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  30:24  
And it's heavy. And, you know, so it is what it is. I mean, I think it's, you know, hopefully the redesign will be significantly better. And we'll see one soon and it will have all these improvements.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:36  
And if you know that redesign, you know, when it does arrive is going to be coming into a market with still more aggressive competition, because Jeep is launching the wagoneer and Grand wagoneer later this year, which actually saw one in cammo. Yesterday, when I was out driving the Kia k five, saw one on the highway. Yeah. And that it, it looks it looks exactly like the concept Grand wagoneer we saw last fall,

Rebecca Lindland  31:05  
I make a correction. I'm sorry, I just noticed in my picture, this does actually have an electronic liftgate thing. It just was hard to find. I I didn't see it. And so I did end up pulling down but so I apologize. So yeah, so the Grand wagoneer looked great on the road.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:20  
Yeah, I mean, you know, this one, you know, still had the the squirrel wrap on there. But, you know, I snapped a couple photos with my phone, you know, as I was driving past it, and, you know, it looks, the design is exactly what we saw on the grand Waggoner concept. You know, and based on the, you know, what we saw the Grand Cherokee, that was revealed last week, you know, presumably, the, the interior of the Grand wagoneer is going to stay pretty close to the concept, I don't expect it to change, to have any substantive changes to the interior from the concept. So, you know, that's, that's going to be a really important, you know, another really important competitor here, it's gonna be really hard, you know, this toilet is gonna have to do something really special with the Sequoia to gain any significant traction in that full size body on frame utility market.

Rebecca Lindland  32:14  
Yeah, they are. I mean, even you know, it's kind of silly things, but like, the sunroof was super small on it, you know, stuff like that, that again, like, all of this has been surpassed. And you know, it's, even if you're late to the party, if you've got the best dress on, that's what everyone notices. But and so that's the thing is they are going to have to go above and beyond because they're so late, they're coming in so late to this, or everything has already been refreshed and redesigned, that it'll be really interesting to see how how the new ones do if they can gain traction, which always sounds like a bad pun.

Dan Roth  32:49  
But you know, it's it's true. I'm surprised. We had, I think the last thing I heard is we had a 16 and a half million seasonally adjusted sales rate this year, which is bonkers to me, given that we were shut down for a big portion of it. So there's a lot of pent up demand. So that bodes well, for even with more competition coming into the market, you'll I think you'll see that there's enough demand to sustain them all. Some, some brands might might lose some, you know, there'll be folks who want to try the wagoneer. If they do refresh the Sequoia, very soon. I think there's gonna be they'll see a bump in sales, because it'll be new, it will be comprehensively redone. It's I mean, it's quite old. There are kids that like 2008. My gosh, there's two kids that have gone through like the entirety of their schooling. Well, that thing's been out. But it's at its core. It's not a bad truck. It's just it was early to the party in that sense. And now, it's kind of overstayed its welcome.

Rebecca Lindland  33:57  
Yeah, now it's showing his age. So we'll see.

Dan Roth  33:59  
So yes, that was my ride needs to retire to the drawing room. But Sam, you mentioned the key, the key of K five and we talked about it me and Rebecca were driving last week. So how

Sam Abuelsamid  34:10  
did it all up? I'm still in the middle of driving balance. I'll talk about that one next week.

Dan Roth  34:14  
Oh, cc for next week. Excellent. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:17  
But let's let's just say it's, it's good. It's really, really

Dan Roth  34:20  
good. I was impressed with that car. But they

Sam Abuelsamid  34:23  
know what I had. What I'm talking about this time is the 2021 Nissan Rogue SL, which I did the media drive program for this last September, which was like one of the first drive programs Did you know when it started to sort of emerge from from this thing before it all went to hell again. But they, I got to spend a week with the rogue and you know, it is vastly improved from the previous generation. Yeah, and the previous gen rogue, you know, is another one of those, you know, that been around for a while. You know, it was one of the older models in the segment now this this compact, compact a midsize crossover segment, which is, you know, this is the hot segment that isn't full size pickup trucks right now this is this is where you want to be. In terms of volume, you know, you've got the rogue for the last three or four years has been Nissan's best selling vehicle, you know, since it overtook the Altima. And I think in 2019, they sold almost 400,000 rogues, you know, similarly, Toyota sold, you know, of well over 400,000, rap fours, you know, in the same ballpark with the Honda CRV, and then you got other competitors like the Jeep Cherokee, the Ford Escape and, and many others. So this is, you know, this is this is where midsize cars, you know, the midsize car sedan buyers have migrated to the segment, this is where this is where people that are buying vehicles as daily drivers are going. And so you, you know, and and most of the models in this segment are relatively fresh. I think the CRV is probably the oldest now and you know, that's like three years old, four years old, not

Dan Roth  36:18  
even that old.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:19  
Yeah. So, you know, it's a, it's a really competitive market. And, you know, Nissan has done a lot to make this a much better vehicle than it was, you know, the design, you know, we've talked about before, it's, you know, it's, it's quite, it's a departure from what it was before, you know, it's picked up a lot of the design language that we, you've seen in the in the recent sedans, the ultimate and the Versa, you know, sharper edges, you know, that's a more blocky looking design, you know, you could argue that it's maybe a little more male, not aggressive, but a little chunkier looking than before. But there's, you know, there's some really good functional elements that they've done. Like, for example, I think one of the, one of the things that, that I think is the coolest element of this, the rear doors actually open up to almost 90 degrees. And because this segment, you know, the, this, you know, compact mid size crossover segment, has become the default family vehicle for a lot of people, you know, a lot of people are loading kids into the backseat of this thing, you know, as they would have in the past into an ultimate or a fusion or something like that, you know, having that door that opens up so wide. Of course, there's downsides to that if you're in a parking lot. But having that door that opens so wide does make it a lot easier, you know, to to access that rear seat, you know, get kids in and out, get them strapped into their booster seats or child seats. You know, so that's a very, very nice feature to have. The one I drove was the SSL premium with it was front wheel drive. They this year, they added a platinum trim above this so that SSL used to be the the top trim level for Nissan now now it's platinum. But this is, you know, this one was really well equipped, it had the pro pilot assist. And, you know, one of the features that they they upgraded the pro pilot this year. So it's not, it's not the the version two pro pilot that debuts on the electric Aria crossover later this year, is the one that allows you to hands free, so this one is still a hands on system like the original propilot but they have enhanced it, they now incorporate map information as an input to it. So if you have plotted, you know, plotted a navigation route that involves an interchange, it won't do the lane changes for you, you still have to do the lane changes. But as your as you go into an interchange into the exit ramp, or even just going off, you know, going off the highway, it will automatically slow you down. So you don't have to touch the brakes, it'll slow you down to a speed that is safe for the curvature of that road. You know, or, you know, if you're coming up on a roundabout, same thing, it'll slow you down as you go through the roundabout, which you know, is a very handy feature to have. You know, a lot of the time you know if there's any other cars around you that you had to drive for quite a while to get into some scenarios where I could actually see it work because you know, a lot of times you'll be behind somebody else and the radar will automatically slow you down anyway. But this you know, if you if you're not following somebody, it will it will slow you down automatically which is nice. It's a handy little feature. The you've got also you know all the other array of driver assists you get, you know, parking the system, you know, cross traffic, blind spot monitors and cross traffic alert, all that stuff is standard on the rug this year, which is always good to see the one of one of my complaints, long running compliance with Nissan, for the last, I don't know how many years now has been the quality of the displays that they use for the infotainment system.

Unknown Speaker  40:29  
They causes

Rebecca Lindland  40:30  
that Well, there's different supplier or is it the cost, what's the supplier and

Sam Abuelsamid  40:35  
the technology that they choose? You know, there's there's different types of LCD displays. And I don't know exactly which one this is. But, you know, they, Nissan has typically chosen LCD displays that are tend to be dimmer than other manufacturers. They're also, you know, when you look at him, you can see that the display itself is actually set back a little bit from the top glass surface where the capacitive surfaces. And so it looks like there's, you know, that it's that you're, when you go to touch something, you can tell you're not actually touching right on where that target is, sometimes you hit it off by a little bit. But the the bigger the bigger problem with this is, as an example, you know, you know, one of the things that Apple did a number of years back with their displays for the, for the iPhones and iPads as they went to, because this, this used to be a problem a more of a problem on mobile devices as well, you know, where you weren't actually, you know, your where you were touching was not right at the display level, it was you could tell it was sunk back below the touch sensitive glass. The what they did was they went to a laminated display, which is a little more expensive to manufacture, but basically it just compresses everything gets everything closer to that top surface that you're touching. Nissan hasn't chosen that. But the the other thing is, you know, their their displays are cut tend to be dimmer and low contrast. And depending on the type of display technology that you use, there's, you know, polarized sunglasses a hard problem. And I've complained about this many, many times over the years. And most manufacturers are choosing display technologies. Now that worked fine, you know, that k five, you know, Hyundai vehicles are among the best they have. They have, even for, you know, mainstream, you know, relatively inexpensive vehicles, they choose the displays that work really well and don't give you any distortion. The display in this rug was one of the worst I've seen since probably, when I had the Toyota Prius Prime a couple of years ago, when I put on my polarized sunglasses, the screen looked all blotchy Look, it looks kind of like, you know, if you have a piece of paper and you spill a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and you give like a lipid down, you know, when it dries and you see those brown blotches on it. That's what the screen looked like through polarized sunglasses. Wow, that was bad.

Rebecca Lindland  43:20  
How much more what a good, a higher quality screen be $5 right. What are we

Sam Abuelsamid  43:29  
given the sense given the Hyundai Jia, you know, put really good scans in cars like the venue, you know, or, you know, the Kia Rio, Rancho

Rebecca Lindland  43:40  
20 $22,000 cars?

Sam Abuelsamid  43:42  
Yeah, you know, I got, I can't imagine that it would be that much, you know, that much more that's gonna eat that much. Yes, you know, over 400,000 units a year, it's gonna add up, but you know,

Rebecca Lindland  43:53  
but increase the price 10

Sam Abuelsamid  43:58  
or 20 bucks.

Dan Roth  44:00  
It's not that the screen is going to add costs that you have to take that extra cost from somewhere else. And so not every car comes with, you know, like pro pilot assist, or, you know, the safety and active safety features that the rogue does. So it's

Sam Abuelsamid  44:17  
like real pilot assist.

Rebecca Lindland  44:20  
But is but that's that was my that's why my question is like, is there is there a material cost increase? That would need to be factored in? Because obviously, Paul, you know, and we've talked

Sam Abuelsamid  44:33  
about this before, you know, that there's always you know, there's a budget for everything in the vmrc whether it's a cost budget or weight budget or performance power, right.

Dan Roth  44:45  
It's like a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation, I think at this,

Rebecca Lindland  44:49  
but But again, the thing is, though, that the technology in a vehicle is often the purchase decider. And so you know, yeah, me So, you know, maybe not do this super fancy stitching that I'm looking at on the seats and get a better screen. I mean, when you, you know, what are you really going to be doing? Is somebody going to buy this car? Because I like the stitching on the screen? Or are they not going to buy it because of that? Because I'm sorry, the stitching on the seats are they're not going to buy it because of the screen, you know, what they don't like?

Dan Roth  45:24  
I think for for me, it's it's one of those, it's an all encompassing thing. Yes, they will, they'll buy it or not buy it because of all of that stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:33  
Yeah, no, that's true. But, you know, as cars become, you know, in many ways, more and more generic, and there's less differentiation. You know, I mean, things like, you know, the Driver Assist features, you know, those are becoming standard across the board, everybody's got to have, you know, the market is becoming more competitive, you've got new players coming into the market with all these Evie startups, and you've got the traditional players, and the market is largely saturated, and not really growing that much anyway. Yeah, did it, a lot of it comes down to user experience. And you know, this better than any of us, Rebecca, you know, the user experience aspect of it, you know, if you get in the car, and you, you know, you're putting you put on your sunglasses, and the screen looks like a blotchy mess. You know, that's, that's a terrible user experience.

Rebecca Lindland  46:24  
Well, and that's going to happen on the cat, if you're test driving it correctly, that's gonna happen on the test drive. That's the thing is that this isn't something that shows up a little while later, you know, this is something having a having a poor quality screen. I am not even in comparison, if this is what's happening when you are in the vehicle, they're not even thinking with a Hyundai venue is better? No, they're thinking this is a bad experience just in isolation. You know? And that's the thing, how is the gear shifter with that floating console situation,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:58  
it's fine. You know, it's a, you know, it's an electronic shifter, you know, it returns back to center, it's kind of like, you know, it's not that different from what you'll find on a lot of hybrids and ATVs, where you push it forward for reverse, you pull it back for drive. And, you know, press the button for Park, I'm fine with that. That was that was not a complaint for me. And, you know, unlike, for example, I have complained about this on the Volvo plug in hybrids, you know, the, they have something that functionally is not that different from this, you know, where it's just kind of like a little toggle, it's an electronic shifter. But, you know, on the Volvo's, you have to, you know, to go from Newton Park, or neutral to reverse or drive, you have to do it twice. You know, because if you only if you go from Park and you push it forward, once you're not getting reverse, you're getting neutral, and the car starts rolling, if you take your foot off the brake. Similarly, for drive, you know, this one, you know, it does, you know, one time forward for reverse, pull it back for drive, that's good. No, no issues there. And really, the rest of the interior of the vehicle I had no real complaints with, you know, the, you know, it's got the in the center console, it's got the butterfly opening doors, you know, the armrest, you know, that opens up butterflies style. So, if somebody needs to get something out of that bin from the backseat, you know, it, it's, you know, it's out of the way you know, so it opens up, it splits, longitudinally opens up to either side, easy to get stuff in and out. So, that's, I think, you know, they've, they've generally done a really good job, this one has, you know, the SL the standard the other models have a dual zone climate control SL has a tri zone so rear seat passengers can select their own temperature, you know, it does have hands free power liftgate, you know, so you can kick your foot under the rear bumper and open up the lift gate for your hands are full and you know, putting some groceries in there. You know, it generally rides you know, rides and handles reasonably well. You know,

Rebecca Lindland  49:07  
to tone roof to color. I love the color selections. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:11  
it does have a two tone roof option. You know, there's only one engine option right now, which is the 2.5 liter four cylinder, naturally aspirated four cylinder with a CVT. You know, Nissan, you know, generally does better with cvts than most manufacturers. So, you know, not not any real complaints there, although I would have preferred to see them, you know, do you know, offer some sort of electrification option, which apparently they are working on. And actually, as you know, as we talk right now, just the other day I saw a report from Autocar about the Nissan Qashqai in Europe, you know, it's been spotted testing in Europe coming out later in the year. The the cash guy is the is what's bad cheers the rogue sport which will presumably be replaced at some point in the next year or so. And the for the version that they're selling in, in Europe, at least as the cash guy is going to be offered with a four cylinder with a mild hybrid, or Nissan's e power system, which is their series hybrid system, which is, you know, has a gas engine that only drives a generator and then the the thing is electric drive, you know, there is only an electric motor connected to the wheels. And that's been available in Japan for several years. Now, they have not offered it here yet, but it's supposed to be coming here. So, presumably, you know, maybe that power train will come to the rogue in the, in the next year or so. But, you know, aside aside from the screen, the rest of it is fine, and it's

Dan Roth  50:56  
15 minutes.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:04  
The rest of it is so good. You know, I have no no real complaints about the rest of the vehicle. But it might be a deal breaker for me because I don't like screens anyway, but

Rebecca Lindland  51:18  
it's not so as bad as you know. So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play

Dan Roth  51:24  
but I agree like I think the rogue is in a really competitive market and it's a really friendly family size crossover I I went back actually and listens to our show with the rogue when I had it in October the other day just to refresh about it because I'm trying to actually crank out some reviews that I'm behind on like I got into my world you might want to actually like get the coverage out there for the you know, getting the car in the driveway. That's sort of how the system works. You send me the car get you some coverage but the the rogue itself is it is a compelling little package. I i agree i guess that the screen isn't great. I didn't have the litany of complaints that you do but I also I haven't had polarized glasses in a while so you're like that one perfect storm of like a really technically competent reviewer who wears polarized glasses drives everything else on the market.

Rebecca Lindland  52:26  
So you said it has three rows but I don't see any picture

Sam Abuelsamid  52:31  
try zone it's not a three row three row okay used to offer a three roll option in the zone then I'll just try zone climate control right yeah so you know today you know a lot of cars today you can the driver and front passenger can set their own temperatures right yeah tries on the rear seat passengers can set their own temperature Oh

Rebecca Lindland  52:54  
I see. Okay, so that so the three zones are the past the driver the passenger and the people in the back,

Sam Abuelsamid  52:59  
right? Okay, so you know if the, if the whoever's in the back, you know if the driver wants it at 68 and the front passenger wants it at 72 and they the kids in the back wanted at 76 or 60 you know they can do that

Rebecca Lindland  53:14  
right here for your remedial explanation.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:21  
That they do have which is not something you typically find you know, in the segment is second row, second row sunshades on the doors. You know, and you know if you've if you've had kids, Dan, you know, this probably, you know, when you've got kids in the backseat, you know on a sunny day, you know, I mean I know you know when our kids were young, we used to have sunshades a suction cup on the the windows or you know to block some of the so they can still see out but it would block some of the the smash a mesh. And you know, you could you this is actually standard on the SL the rogue SL is second row sunshades you know, they dropped down into the doors, you know, you lift them up, hook them on the top of the windows, and you know, they can stay there and and the way that they're hooked up, you can you can actually leave them connected and lower the windows. So if you want fresh air but you still want the shade you can you can have that combination, which is nice. Yeah, it's a really nice feature. So a lot of really thoughtful things that they've done in here. Someone at Nissan please find a different supplier for your displays. And the the base price for the rogue SL front wheel drive $32,000 as as built with delivery charge to someone was 35 195. The rogue s starts at 27,000 front wheel drive, the Platinum all wheel drive starts at 37,000. And I think you know, fully loaded with every available option. It's still Under I think it's like 39 or so with delivery.

Dan Roth  55:04  
It's a good package at a good price. I love driving it I thought it drove Well, it was quiet and, and soothing drive. I think it was one of my comments was as a family car driver, sometimes you just want a little piece. Yeah, it provides it, it's easy to drive it has those safety features. So in a tough market, it has some some high points to compete on. So if you don't,

Sam Abuelsamid  55:31  
if you don't drive polarized, if you don't drive with polarized sunglasses, it's fine. You know,

Dan Roth  55:36  
it's,

Sam Abuelsamid  55:36  
it's absolutely sure additives

Dan Roth  55:40  
are the best. There's no

Sam Abuelsamid  55:41  
you know, there's nothing about it. That's a real breakout from the segment. But you know, it is, you know, it is it is really good at, you know, everything else it's got to do. You know, it's just if you do wear polarized sunglasses.

Dan Roth  55:57  
I see. That's it polarized sunglass buyers need to drive something else? Yeah. Use the voice commands.

Sammy pointed this out, is that slant is the deal has finally been finalized. And their, their stock ticker symbol is stla, which is really, really close to right.

Rebecca Lindland  56:25  
That was the tweet of the year so hard that it was so funny.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:32  
guarantee you that tomorrow when the markets open in Europe, and then on Tuesday here, that there are going to be a whole bunch of a whole bunch of Robinhood investors that fat finger it and buy a bunch of stuff into stock. Price. So

Dan Roth  56:48  
the thing is like, you want to sell, sell, sell, sell. I mean, that's amazing. Do they do people actually squat on titles like that, like they do with domain names? Oh, I'm

Sam Abuelsamid  57:02  
sure I'm sure they do. I have absolutely no doubt that this, that the choice to use. I mean, I don't think Stu lantis was chosen specifically for this reason. But I think at some point along the line, somebody realized, ooh, stla that is really close to tsla. And, you know, transpose those first two letters, you know, and, you know, I think that you know, some somebody in marketing nerd, you know, something somebody, somebody in the company, you know, was you know, rubbing their hands with glee at that thought.

Rebecca Lindland  57:38  
Hilarious.

Dan Roth  57:40  
I still I got us I still hate the name still.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:44  
Sounds like something from a pharmaceutical company.

Rebecca Lindland  57:46  
Yeah, yes. I keep waiting for the you know, low voiceover warnings to come into play. Damage sheer health and you know, if you need to breathe on a regular basis, and

Sam Abuelsamid  57:58  
it sounds like either an antidepressant or something that you rub on your balding scalp or take to address some other male. You know, honestly, I

Dan Roth  58:09  
think automobiles sort of serve as as a as a balm for all of those conditions in some way or another. Yeah, figuratively.

Rebecca Lindland  58:18  
Can we explain to our audience what still emphasis

Sam Abuelsamid  58:20  
Oh, yeah, we probably should remind you. So, as we're recording this on Sunday morning, yesterday, a day ago, still lantis was officially born. This is the new name of the parent company, as emerged via Chrysler Automobiles and PSA, which is the parent of Peugeot Citroen Opel, Vauxhall ticker symbol, LDS. You know that I think there's like seven brands within there. And this is actually something we should probably discuss a little bit, you know, so PSA and FCA merged, they are now still lattice between them. They have 14 different brands globally. What do you think? Rebecca? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. Well, I

Rebecca Lindland  59:13  
mean, you, you tease the phrase perfectly, they have 14 brands globally, which I think is gonna be one of the biggest challenges. And it's actually you know, it's there's pros and cons to this. I remember years ago when we were looking at the diamond or Chrysler, marriage of equals whatever that was. And the and the fundamental flaw with that relationship. Was that at the base, their customer was very, very different. I mean, you had you had Dieter zeca. In that thing, got a Hemi commercials, that it people people actually thought that He was a character. They didn't know that he was the CEO.

Dan Roth  1:00:03  
Well, I mean, you had that magnificent mustache,

Rebecca Lindland  1:00:05  
he did have that magnificent mustache. But you know, this German accent like all that, you know, there was there was, I mean, it just it there, there was a failure to blend and and I remember talking to some people that were in like engineering meetings, and they said that, you know, the customer at its base was just so different. What I like about what actually even liked about the Fiat Chrysler merger was, even though as a global company, their customer, though had a lot of the same values, you're still talking to a similar audience. And so I think that there's opportunity here with this merger with Peugeot to to reap some of those, you know, economies of scale, still respect the different brands. But I, but I think that in those in those foundational meetings about vehicles, you're still talking about a customer that is diverse, but has some some core values that are similar

Dan Roth  1:01:08  
with the Daimler Chrysler merger to I think one of the things that didn't help was the engineering cultures didn't mesh and they sort of forced it. And yes, that. So there was rework that had to be done. Because Chrysler did things in a much different way than than Daimler did it. And they had to align them versus what happened with with Fiat and Chrysler, where they sort of let things run on a parallel path to a degree, which is a little bit more difficult, I guess, because you've got then multiple architectures and systems to support but also by that point, there had been some atrophy at Chrysler itself, where the the platform's just weren't there like they there was a lot, there were a lot more models, and a lot more brands, when the Daimler Chrysler deal happened. Versus Was it 10 years later, when they had killed off Plymouth and they had shrunk the offerings across the lineup. So there was there was less friction when fiap came in, because Chrysler didn't have some things that they'd had before. And what they did have were holdovers, you know, the minivans were very old, for example. And so it was a little bit more graceful to bring some Fiat platforms in, you know, that's what you've got, like, the Jeep Renegade is a Fiat platform that the Cherokee is a Fiat platform as well. And there were some missteps. But overall they I think they tried to put put the product out there and and like you said, like, pay attention to the customers match up with the customers, desires, and some things work some things didn't, you know, the dark was a weird launch, where they launched it in manual only, which, that's, that's great, Sergio, but you've been to America. And it kind of sucks because it is a good little car, but like that in the 200 they just, they they didn't, they didn't really it just

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:15  
kind of missed on both of those, you know, the 200 was a little bit too small for its segment, you know, the dark said, you know, manual to launch and, and, you know, also coming to market at a time, you know, when sedans you know, we're already starting to decline.

Dan Roth  1:03:31  
Yeah. So I think that there's that opportunity here. I was looking at the Chrysler page yesterday, they offer two vehicles. Yeah. The 300. And the Pacifica and, and the Voyager but

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:47  
the Voyager is just the content content at Pacifica now.

Dan Roth  1:03:50  
So I do you anticipate either view, are you anticipating that we're going to see some brands go away? Or that we're going to see some platform sharing? And like, I don't expect we're going to see Cujo returned to the US market. Although there's a subset of fans who would love that I think what you'll see is Peugeot product returned to the US market under dodge or Chrysler nameplate.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:19  
You want to go first, Rebecca?

Rebecca Lindland  1:04:21  
Well, I think that there's no doubt that there's going to be some brand consolidation. You know, on a global basis, I'm not talking about just in the US, I'm talking about on a global basis. I think that we could definitely see some very strategic, you know, I don't think that they're that they're, they shouldn't cancel brands just because they want fewer brands you need to do on a very strategic basis. I but I do think that we will see that and I would hope the responsible thing is to do some Cloud Platform sharing, again, on a very strategic basis.

Dan Roth  1:04:56  
I mean, luckily, FCA doesn't have any

Rebecca Lindland  1:05:02  
There's that. I mean, what do you think? Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:05  
Yeah, I, you know, I think that, you know, obviously RAM and Jeep are safe. You know, they're, they're not going anywhere. Yeah. The other two, you know, domestic brands, Dodge and Chrysler, Dodge has actually been doing reasonably well, you know, with its niche of, you know, they've been pushing it, you know, pushing this muscle car idea, American muscle cars, and the charger and challenger, despite their, you know, age are doing shockingly well you know. And even but the you know, I've been hearing some rumblings that there is not going to be replacement for the Durango. So the Durango is probably going away. And you know, this is, you know, the Grand Cherokee L, you know, is going to be the replacement for the Durango because the Durango right now is you know, on the same platform as the Grand Cherokee, the old Grand Cherokee man, it's a three row, it's a longer three row alternative to the Grand Cherokee, the Grand Cherokee L is going to replace that. And in large part because customers are willing to pay a higher price for effectively the same vehicle that's got a Jeep badge on it than a than a Dodge badge. So it's

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:20  
very blue collar and Jeep doesn't have that constraint Jeep

Dan Roth  1:06:24  
blue collar aspirational. But it's also I think that there's like you said, there's there's a lot of non blue collar folks that will buy a Jeep that won't touch a Dodge basket and billionaires. Yeah, so.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:36  
So I think there's some significant risk for dodge. Because you know, who knows how long they can keep that going. And I don't think that there's really anything in the PSA lineup, that is going to be a good fit for what they've tried to make the Dodge brand into, you know, as a platform sharing.

Rebecca Lindland  1:06:54  
Yeah, I think that dodge is is also threatened. And by demographics here in the States, I think that there's enough blue collar, Hemi buyers. I mean, I had the Dodge on track, which actually I I kept wanting to talk about it, but the embargo was still in effect. And but now it's it's it's lifted. But you know that the Dodge Charger was a riot. It was a Hellcat version. I mean, I think that there, first of all, from a profit standpoint, I think that there's enough buyers right now to keep that extreme dodge identity going. But what does that what does that group look like in 10 or 15 years from now?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:39  
Or even five, seven years from now?

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:42  
Well, I was giving them the benefit of doubt thinking that maybe they're in their, you know, 50s and 40s and 50s. But yeah, for sure. I mean, five years from now, it could be a very different market as well. So I think that I haven't looked at the demographics of who's buying those vehicles. And but I think that, that dodge May, the biggest threat to dodge is, is in some ways, demographics, because I think they make enough profit on those vehicles to justify the continuation of it on a very, you know, geographically local basis.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:16  
But I don't think I don't expect them to announce next week that they're going to shut down now, but I think five years from now, I think that there's this unless they figure out a new path for Dodge, you know, and maybe maybe that's somebody, right, I can't remember who it was now, maybe there's at least a pedal, you know, or something, you know, the ideal transforming dodge into a next generation muscle car brand, you know, an electric, or at least hybrid muscle car brand.

Rebecca Lindland  1:08:48  
But part of the muscle car is the exhaust note. Right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:51  
Well, that's, that's why you know, maybe, you know, maybe a hybrid hybrid muscle, you know, you know, hybrid ISOs with, you know, the same you because you've got the the technology there, you know, the this the sedef hybrid transmission that they're using in the Wrangler, and that's going to be in the other jeeps this year, you know, that fits in, you know, we're, I mean, that's the same package as the, the current set f8 speed that they're using in that in all the dodges. So you could drop that in there, put a you know, doesn't have to be necessarily a plug in at least, to start with, put a you know, one and a half kilowatt hour battery, you know, under the backseat or in the trunk. And, you know, add, you know, more basically add add, you know, more power to those things. Yeah. And, you know, so you make them even quicker, make them a little more fuel efficient. So that's, that's, you know, that's a you know, sort of a midterm, you know, want the long term plan for dodge knows at this point,

Dan Roth  1:09:52  
well, Dodge is one of those, their brand but they're also they're in that position that we've seen independent companies Get into after they build the same thing for a really long time. My mind just goes back to Volvo having built their, you know, the 140 then 240 series, you know, for 20 years. And the problem they had was, seems like longer than that, that base 30 the 140 came out in 67 and the last 240 was 93. So, a long time, yeah, almost 30 years. Yeah. And the problem they had was it like it almost killed the company, because it wouldn't stop selling until it finally just like fell off a cliff. And, you know, they tried to replace it once with the the seven and nine series cars. But they they were basically the same hardware kind of rehash and the charger and challenger in the same position where they still sell and they're not a bad car. They're just actually really good there now I like them quite a bit. But they don't have their there's still a car there coupe and a sedan. So the market is leaving those there, even among the, you know, the Chrysler brand portfolio, right, they're moving to Jeep because of the crossovers or they're moving out or to ram for the trucks. So there's nowhere for a buyer to go there. And they kind of

Rebecca Lindland  1:11:25  
Durango is there. So if the I mean, the Durango Hellcat, which I drove as well, so sure it is there. I think that they're leaving for other you know? Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:11:36  
yeah, that now they're leaving for other pastors and they killed the journey. So they had the journey for a while, which was whatever you want to say about it, it was, you know, priced well, and it offered a lot of utility. And you know, it was it was a good deal. But it was also really old and based on Mitsubishi parts. So they need to basically have their h 50 moment, they come up with something that's just so good, and so impressive that it gets a lot of attention and conquest, a lot of buyers and this is a really hard market to do that it's not 1993 anymore, and I don't know that that's even something they want to do. So it may make more sense for them to just shut it down. Or

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:21  
I but from a profitability standpoint, I think there's potentially other brands on a corporate basis that they could kill off or try and merge like a brand like Vauxhall right to merge it's a very British centric brand.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:37  
All Vauxhall is an Opel with the steering wheel on the right hand side.

Rebecca Lindland  1:12:41  
Exactly. Right. And so you know, there's, there's opportunity for them to, to eliminate other brands because I look at I mean, Fiat, look at Fiat is Alfa Romeo like the Mazda rottie. There's other you know, there's the the brands that the breath of brands is really stunning. And so, but I think that we always have to think about these things on a global basis and on profitability standpoint.

Dan Roth  1:13:08  
Sure, yeah. I was being very provincial with dodge dodge.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:12  
You know, I think almost certainly, we will not now see the reintroduction of Peugeot into the US market. You know, they hired a PSA hired Larry Dominique, the former CEO of Nissan A few years ago, to reestablish PSA in North America and, you know, with the goal of bringing Peugeot back to the North American market by 2025. I don't know that there's a place for for Peugeot or Citron in the North American market, you know, right now, again, you know, going back to what I said, you know, it's it's a saturated market with more brands coming in, you know, and, you know, there's probably, you know, there there are some people that still have a soft spot in your heart for Peugeot, and for Citroen. But, you know, whether there's enough to justify bringing two more one or two more brands into the US market. You know,

Dan Roth  1:14:06  
you can have a soft spot, but that's multi billion dollar. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:12  
Yeah, you know, I mean, FIA just got no traction at all. Interestingly, alpha male, actually, you know, even in a down market in 2020, alpha male us sales were actually up 2% last year.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:27  
Well, I mean, their car, though, you know, the alpha cars are so much fun. And I actually prefer them over Montserrat even

Dan Roth  1:14:34  
why I wouldn't touch them. But the alpha also has some some crossovers. So that helps them.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:43  
Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:45  
At least one.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:46  
Yeah. Well, there's another one coming

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:48  
well, and the styling of them are, it's beautiful. The performance is beautiful.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:53  
I mean, it's just to drive.

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:54  
Exactly. It's sex on a stick. So I think you know, from me are

Dan Roth  1:15:04  
what kind of fair kind of state fair? Do you get that at? So I

Rebecca Lindland  1:15:09  
think, you know, it'll, it will definitely, I'd love to be part of that strategic discussion of what, what goes and what stays, I think that that's a it's a lot, it's a lot of push pull, like we talked about earlier in the, in the podcast, right? Like, there's you know, there's always that if you get put something in, you have to take something away with this in order to maximize the benefits of this merger, they I think they're going to have to look at calling some of these brands,

Dan Roth  1:15:40  
we're gonna be all very surprised when we find out what they actually do. That's this is true, only accurate prediction.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:51  
Speaking of adding brands to the US market, Tim, just just a day after or two days after we talked about their new logo, added the second new logo for their new brand bright drop.

Dan Roth  1:16:06  
Seems a little bit more promising now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:08  
Yes, I mean, as a product, yes. So this, the heart of you know, Mary Barra, or actually GM, Mary was, you know, part of it, but she, you know, she came and went during the course of an hour long keynote for the virtual CES this year. And the big news that came out of that, along with some, you know, first teasers of the Cadillac silastic was the announcement of bright drop, which is a new business unit for General Motors, that is focused on the commercial commercial electric vehicles. And their, their first product actually, is not anything like you would ever expect from GM, which is, which is launching in the next few weeks. It's called the EP, one, it's an electric pallet for moving goods around warehouses or moving them on and off of delivery vehicles. But then, later this year, before the end of this year, they are going to start deliveries of the V 600, which is a new commercial electric van, a cargo van you know, targeted looks very much targeted right at the, you know, the Ford e transit The, the rivian, Amazon, Dan and workhorse and, you know, a few others out there. And, you know, it's built on the same altium platform as the Hummer. And, you know, all Jim's other TVs and bright drop. And, you know, the interesting thing is they didn't make this van a Chevy, you know, it's not, this is not, you know, a drop in replacement for the Chevy Express GMC Savana vans, you know, this is very much a more, you know, like the European style vans, like the transit and Ram promaster and so on. And, you know, flat floor, you know, battery under the floor, that sort of thing. It's actually a little bigger than the biggest transit the, it has the 600 actually comes from the 600 cubic feet of cargo space it has inside the biggest transit is only 473 cubic feet for the long body, high roof.

Dan Roth  1:18:16  
cubic feet is that's, that's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:19  
Yes. But the the business unit is establishing a whole commercial vehicle electric commercial vehicle ecosystem, so they're tying in their, their telematics stuff. So, you know, fleet managers can track where the vehicles are, when they need service when they are charging all this stuff. You know, and they're gonna, you know, it sounds like they're gonna have a lineup of a number of vehicles and different variations of this van. You know, one of the, the variations that they showed in the presentation showed a version of, of the Evie 600, where the whole, one side of it drops down 90 degrees, and they have these electric pallets in there. And these pallets are interesting, you know, because they have little electric motors, they can go up to three miles an hour. And basically, you know, as the operator is pulling it around, it adjusts its speed to the operators walking pace. So it's kind of cool in that respect, but they showed a quick load version of the V 600. where, you know, you decide drops down and you see, you know, a row of these EP one pallets in there, it can roll out onto the side, and then it drops down kind of like what you see on a lot of delivery trucks on the back. This is on the side, so it drops down, right down to the sidewalk. You roll the pallets off, or roll them on. Yeah, so quick, quick load and unload. And, you know, all you know, there probably be cutaway versions of this, you know, for like airport shuttles and things like that. So, you know, there's going to be a whole range of these things. They're not going to be sold through existing GM dealers, there's going to be a separate retail mechanism that they haven't discussed the details of yet.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:58  
We assume directly Do they

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:01  
have to go through a franchise?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:04  
This is what we don't know yet. Mine, I'm thinking that the reason why they set this up as a separate business unit is so they don't have to go through a franchise. Yeah, so you know, so they can sell them directly to fleets. Their first customer is FedEx, they worked very closely with FedEx on development of this vehicle, and the the pallet, the P one pallet, and the first 500 of these are going to FedEx by the end of this year, and then it'll be available to other customers next year. So my belief is that they're there, they are not going to have franchise dealers, they're going to have their own separate retail system. And the thing is, I don't I don't know, the franchise laws in enough detail, or what, you know, what their agreements are with their existing dealers. But I think that, you know, because they set this up as a separate business, you know, separate LLC that's wholly owned by GM, but it's, you know, it's not, you know, it's a separate company. So they don't, I don't think they have to go through the franchise dealers, I am guessing that they will probably contract with a bunch of dealers in various locations to provide service, but not not sales. So probably be direct sales model. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:21:20  
I think I mean, I, it, anytime that I hear that they, you're they're setting up a separate retail that just as you know, as Dan pointed out, that's billions of dollars, all of a sudden, you're talking about in capital investments. So I would have, I think that they would probably have some mechanism to sell direct, like, you know, a fleet manager kind of situation.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:41  
And that's what you know, because it's commercial, you know, the, you don't have to have the same, you don't have to have the same kind of retail network as you would have for consumer vehicles.

Dan Roth  1:21:52  
Like this, this can be a sneaky way for them to try out some some direct sales channels, though, that eventually do trickle down to consumer level sales models, so that that's the thing that interests me the most is, I think, honestly, the Evie stuff is going to really take off. by serving these commercial markets, they're gonna fine tune the technology, they're gonna learn a lot, and all end, and they'll probably be profitable, faster, by serving an industry that can can adopt this stuff on the pure practicality of the business decisions versus the emotional play of a consumer car purchase. And then that's going to inform what they do in five years with really transitioning their consumer business to Evie, because that seems to be where it's going. So

Rebecca Lindland  1:22:46  
yeah, and you know, the thing is, with EBS, one of the concerns for dealerships is that they often require less service, you know, and so, but if you're now replacing, if you recruit some of these dealers to service these vans, that could be a nice revenue stream to replace any lost retail service revenue.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:12  
Yeah, and, you know, the reality is that most dealers don't sell very many commercial vehicles anyway. Right. So it's not on the sales side, it's probably not going to be a huge hit to most of them, you know, there will be some, you know, in some locations that probably do a fair bit of commercial vehicle sales, but for most dealers, it won't matter. Right. And, you know, if they can pick up a few extra bucks, you know, providing service for these vehicles, you know, for the fleets when needed, you know, and in many cases, you know, especially a lot of the larger fleet operators, you know, like a FedEx or UPS or CIO or whoever, you know, they are doing their own, you know, they have their own internal service operations anyway, so, they'll, they'll take care of maintenance, yes, sir. Yeah, and

Rebecca Lindland  1:23:54  
like smaller companies may not be able to do right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:57  
And you know, that so, you know, starting you know, early in 2022, you know, these will be available to any, any business that wants to buy them. And then, you know, we talked, I talked earlier about, you know, how companies, you know, the cost is a much bigger consideration for consumers than it is for consumers, you know, and while the capital cost of buying vehicles is an important consideration, operating cost is also a much bigger component, you know, especially for these larger vehicles. Because, you know, when I, when I had the transit a few weeks ago, you know, I talked about how I got like 13 miles per gallon. And for, you know, for an urban delivery vehicle, you know, 13 miles per gallon, you know, that adds up to a lot of gallons a year, you know, a lot of dollars and the the transition to electric for that kind of vehicle. You're talking huge, much bigger savings in operating costs than you are for somebody switching from a Chevy Cruze to a bolt. Yeah, the The savings in fuel are enormous for these commercial customers. So it will, it's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. Another interesting element of this at the time when they made the announcement on Tuesday, they did not say where the Evie 600 was going to be built, you know, the, the assumption at the time, you know, my assumption was that it would probably be built at the Detroit Hamtramck plant alongside the the Hummer. But it's not there. They announced yesterday that they're going to build it at their plant in Ingersoll Ontario, which started off started its life in 89, I think as a joint venture with Suzuki where they built the the geo tracker and, and some Suzuki small crossovers. And they they built you know, GM and Suzuki crossovers there and until early, I think around early 2000 to 2003, something like that. When they stopped building, the Suzuki's and they built, they built the equinox there for many years before they transferred that production elsewhere. And so that plant is being converted to building the V 600. So that now makes for plants that have been announced by GM in the last couple of months that are building EBS. You've got the Ingersoll plant, Detroit Hamtramck, Oregon, which already built the bolt and the Spring Hill, Tennessee plant, which is going to build the lyric and other vehicles. And sounds like there's going to be at least one more plant, the two Honda ATVs are apparently going to be built in Mexico, or at least one of them is going to be built in Mexico. So we'll probably see one of Jim's Mexican assembly plants converted. So that's going to make five GM assembly plants that are going to be building electric vehicles by next year. Just just in that doesn't include China. So you know, the GM is really going all in on this.

Dan Roth  1:27:00  
Good luck. Yeah. Everybody's sort of on their the edge of their seat waiting for the mistake, because that's it's the cynical thing, but that's just like GM. GM seems to have great plans, great thoughts, and then they just fumbled the execution in some way. So I hope they don't. Because this is all really promising. And once you get GM behind it, I think that the industry unlike dominoes, they're gonna fall you know, it's it's, it's been niche players nibbling at the edges. But it seems like there's such a big commitment now from GM that it's going to sort of get some critical mass and the industry and consumers will both shift.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:45  
Well, you had sort of a GM here, you got Volkswagen in Europe, you know, Ford, also, Nissan is and Nissan Renault are starting to pick up steam, you know, Renault had their big strategy announcement earlier this week, you know, their resolution thing that they're calling it, and they're going to be launching a whole bunch of more TVs in the next three years. So and reviving the Renault five, to bring it back to when I saw that.

Dan Roth  1:28:09  
I think that's cool. I do hope that at a certain point, we can get past retro, but I like it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:17  
I mean, I think that that the concept they showed, you know, looks, you know, it's got some some hints of the old lecarre as you if you're old enough to remember that, you know, but still, you know, looks looks modern, you know, it's not, it's not it's not like the Fiat 500. That was, you know, much more overtly retro.

Dan Roth  1:28:39  
What else we got?

Rebecca Lindland  1:28:43  
Potentially failed? launches. I was looking at that the vehicle subscription that BMW and Audi have pulled now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:51  
Yeah. Yeah, the subscription model for cars. Volvo seems to be the only one that's getting any traction with that. You know, everybody else has tried and failed that. And I don't think that they're, I don't think they're giving up on it permanently. I think I think it's gonna come back. But I think they need to revamp how they're, you know, rework how they're doing it. But Volvo is the only one that's, you know, gotten any significant success with it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:21  
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, you know, so the idea is that I, you can a customer pays upwards of $2,000 a month, and then they get access to a variety of different BMWs or in the case of Audi Audi select, and they did it in very short distance. Very specific markets on BMW actually tried to add a new entry level which was $1,099 a month, but I just don't think that consumers saw the value of it.

Dan Roth  1:29:53  
That's too great.

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:55  
Well, and remember book by Cadillac also

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:00  
Yes, it is Edwin Porsches how to program

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:02  
until Ford has something?

Dan Roth  1:30:05  
Yeah, until they make a subscription service that's like, a couple 100 bucks a month. Like, you're just not gonna see wide adoption, you know, and I understand that some of the perks that you get with those subscriptions seems like they're selling it as a luxury product. And I think that that's a tried and true method, right is, is you make it a premium thing. And you drive adoption that way. And once it gets a little bit wider out there, people want the thing and they'll either pay up for it, or you can introduce tiers that are more affordable. I just, maybe they missed on making it affordable, and what the perks are, I just don't know. But it's just like, anytime I looked at as, like, that's so much money, you could just own the car.

Rebecca Lindland  1:30:54  
And I think, what what did it what was what was the biggest? What was the biggest selling point of them that you don't

Dan Roth  1:31:00  
have to own a single car?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:02  
Yeah, he had access to a variety. Oh, yeah, that's the thing you could you could go on tour. Oh, yeah, if you want, if you want to, you know, at Rs six for the weekend in a row and rent one, or, you know, or an M five or whatever,

Dan Roth  1:31:19  
well, also to like, you have access to the fleet, but there's still a level of hassle, you have to put up with it, no matter how seamless you make it, there's still got to be that swap of cars. Right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:30  
Well, and that's, that's why these programs are so expensive, you know, because the logistics of managing them was really complicated, you know, to pick up, you know, to have somebody pick up and deliver the cars to customers. And then sometimes, you know, depending on how many cars they had in the, in the fleet, you know, maybe what you want for particular weekend isn't available, is so yeah, I mean, the the idea of the conceptually the idea of having x, you know, being able to pick cherry pick whatever car you wanted on any given day, you know, whatever you wanted to drive, you know, for a particular trip, and have insurance and maintenance and everything included in the single payment was really cool. But the the reality of actually trying to execute it is really hard and really expensive.

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:17  
Well, and there's like things like Zipcar, you know, which

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:23  
car was, you know, mostly, you know, smaller mainstream vehicles.

Rebecca Lindland  1:32:27  
It was it was more mainstream vehicles. But I actually remember looking at originally Zipcar was smaller cars. But then they realized that they needed to expand to larger vehicles. And it didn't, it tended not to be a luxury vehicle. But then Turo was around, and that was a lot of luxury vehicles, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:45  
Yeah. And you know, that even Zipcar, you know, has, has never made money, it's never been profitable, because of, you know, the cost of doing this, you know, of getting, you know, getting the cars where they need to be, you know, and, you know, it, excuse me, even, you know, various other car sharing services, you know, with BMW and Daimler, had merged about a year and a half ago, had merged their mobility services or car to go and ride now, services into one company, and now they're backing away from that, as well, you know, and yeah, in Europe, you know, they already cancelled and killed it in North America, they're backing away from in Europe, because these programs are really expensive to operate. And I think that, the reality is that until we get to automated vehicles, where these vehicles can reposition themselves, and be easily accessible to people where they are, because, you know, if, if you're in one part of town, and the car you want is somewhere else, now you gotta go get the car, or somebody's gonna deliver it to you, it's, it's a hassle. And it's, you know, the, the reality of it has never matched up with what the conceptual ideal was. But if you can, you know, once you get to autonomous cars, where they can, they can come to you when you want it, now, it can start to maybe make a little sense,

Dan Roth  1:34:08  
that's never going

Rebecca Lindland  1:34:10  
to lower the cost.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:11  
And that's not that's so far out into the future. That, you know, it's, it's not you can't sustain these existing programs today. And especially, you know, in 2020 2021, when you also now you have to add in the costs, it's one thing, you know, they all, you know, they'd always have to clean the cars and everything, you know, when they picked them up, and before they deliver them to another customer. Now, it becomes even more complicated, you know, the, the cleaning of cars. So that, I think, you know, the only like I said, the only one that's really gotten much of a hold in the market is carried by Volvo. And that's a much more restrictive program, which is more like a lease Plus, you know, you You're, you're you're leasing. You And your lease payment includes service and add insurance on the vehicle. And you can only swap once every 12 months, you know, every 12 months, very different.

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:08  
That's a very different business model.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:11  
We've seen companies experiment with a variety of different operational models. And Volvo's is the only one that's come close to success so far.

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:19  
Well, and it's it's actually impressive that Volvo has come close to success, because they're, they're not even in Florida and New York, to the, you know, to pretty big markets. There's other states to Hawaii, Mississippi, the Dakotas, but, you know, it's in Texas, too. They're not even in Texas. So there's, you know, there's opportunity for Volvo to grow if they can overcome whatever. I don't know, if it's a regulatory issue. I don't know why they're

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:43  
not doing challenges with dealer sales. Some dealers don't like it. Yeah, cuz you're right. Going direct to the manufacturer.

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:52  
Yeah. But you know, so you've got New York, Florida, and Texas, those are three pretty big states that they could potentially tap into if they can work out the issues.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:05  
Speaking of canceling stuff, Mazda CX five diesel

Dan Roth  1:36:10  
now we knew this was gonna happen. I waited for so long to happen, like to come to this market. And then like, nobody bought it. I never

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:17  
understood this philosophy anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:23  
Yes, that when they finally did get around to launching it, you know, because they were Mazda originally announced they were going to launch that diesel engine in the six back by 2013.

Rebecca Lindland  1:36:33  
Right? Yes. And I didn't understand it then either, though. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:37  
you know, the, the idea was to get them much more fuel efficient vehicle in there. And at the time, they thought they would have an after treatment system for the diesel emissions that, you know, they could get by without, without the urea injection, which would have made it much more cost effective.

Dan Roth  1:36:55  
Yeah, but then, somebody had to go blabbing about that Bosch thing. And yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:59  
you know, they never, I never got, you know, well, I mean, 42 Mazda's credit, you know, they, they came to the realization that, no, this is never actually going to work. You know, before they launched it in North America, you know, they they realized, okay, we're not gonna cheat, you know, that we can't make this work, we can't meet emissions with the system that we have. So we're gonna have to re engineer it put in a urea injection system, they did that. They put it in the CX five. And, you know, at the, at the time, they launched it, you know, the CX five diesel actually sells really surprisingly well, in Japan. They told me, you know, Ross on the CEO of Mazda, North America told me that, you know, they about 70% of cx five sales in Japan are the diesel. Which was surprised because diesel's never been very popular in Japan. But, you know, they launched it here. It's expensive. Because of the you know, because of the changes they had to make to actually meet the new emission standards, it took a long time to get it certified. The fuel economy benefit was not as big as what they had hoped for. And, you know, they they said, you know, we're going to offer this because we know some people like to tow with their cx five, yes, but ananth is a lifestyle vehicle. And, you know, this is a much better option for towing than the gas engine. Which is true. Unfortunately, I don't think there's been as many people to tell with a cx five, is it hope for me, why

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:29  
didn't they put it in the CX nine, x seven, or nine, like if the if the towing capacity was the big benefit? I feel like the CX five is is a smaller, it's too small. Like if somebody that's chose, they have an active lifestyle, they probably have a couple of kids, they've got a lot of stuff. Even if they don't have kids, you know, they mean like I felt like the seven or nine would have been a better application. I

Dan Roth  1:38:52  
just like honestly, I'm having trouble with like Mazda. going together with towing I just don't know.

Rebecca Lindland  1:38:59  
There's so many issues in the

Dan Roth  1:39:01  
US. Like I know, in Canada, Mazda is a much more popular brand and in Europe, people tow a lot more. I don't know if those two things come together in the US if you're gonna tow here in the US, generally not looking at Mazdas

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:14  
you're looking at our aforementioned pickup trucks, you know, there's so many other options, or even, you know, even the Toyota, Sequoia and Denali, and there's so many other options, then. I agree. I don't think that people go into the monster dealership to say I've got stuff to show. This is where I'm gonna have

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:33  
capacity with the diesel. It was only 3500 pounds.

Rebecca Lindland  1:39:36  
Yeah, so there's, I mean, there's so many like, what does it What

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:39  
would you tell a jetski or something?

Dan Roth  1:39:43  
It gets you more range? Yeah. And better performance, like you know, more torque not.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:48  
I mean, I, I drove it for a couple of weeks. And it was it was lovely to drive. I really enjoyed driving it. But, you know, it wasn't that much better than that. gas engine especially, you know that

Dan Roth  1:40:04  
they their little, their skyactiv engines are great. Yeah. Anyway, so

Rebecca Lindland  1:40:08  
we could have saved them a lot of money on Dang.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:12  
Well, you know, they got so far along, they did all the development and they figured, yeah, it's a sunk cost Hill. Let's, let's put it out there and see what happens. You know, they sold a few 1000 of them.

Dan Roth  1:40:23  
Yeah. And and the rest of the world is going to use it more. So yeah, I guess it's it's okay. It's It's seems like a lot of Dota go tilting at windmills with but, guys, we don't we don't work at that automakers and we didn't ask us to make those decisions. We had a question from last week. Did

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:46  
you get answers? I'm still trying to schedule recording on that one. So we'll have that one. Hopefully next week. want

Dan Roth  1:40:53  
answers?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:54  
Yes. And then we'll get an answer. We'll get an answer. But we do have a question from from this week from Adam jordison. Does

Dan Roth  1:41:02  
supporter listen to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:03  
this week in tech by twit TV today. And they were talking about the true power of big tech. And it got me thinking should we have a growing level of concern about the ability of manufacturers manipulating our vehicles via tech once we own them outright. I embrace tech and I understand the need to do updates to our vehicle systems because the computers on board are delivered with flaws. I really, I didn't know that. I also appreciate it. I also appreciate the ability to shut down a stolen vehicle OnStar is an example for the sake of crime deterrent. I have a new fleet 2021 rav4. Hooray Android Auto, and on the way that my company and on the way that my company provides. I have a new fleet on the way that my company provides. But I'm also thinking that I should hold on to my 1961 Falcon feature, in case I need to feel that analog experience now

Dan Roth  1:41:54  
and again, listen, the Falcon feature is going to be able to function after the giant EMP. EMP from from whoever drops the nuke on us, you'll be able to file the points on that thing set the timing. I mean, put a Magneto on it and you won't even need a battery.

Unknown Speaker  1:42:11  
That's awesome.

Dan Roth  1:42:14  
Don't ever get rid of the Falcon. Sorry, carry on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:22  
So, should we should we have a growing level of concern? for vehicles?

Dan Roth  1:42:28  
I mean, you know that this is gonna be my answers that yes, anytime your information and your data is out there and the thing that you are using has a channel for somebody else to collect data from that or to manipulate it. Yeah, you should. You should. I mean, don't let it paralyze you, but you should be aware of it. And and understand what the upsides and downsides of that are and hope and maybe we can communicate with the automakers and ask them like, have you thought about the bad things people could do with this? Because it seems like lately, there's lots of tech that gets launched by people who have a failure of imagination to think about how the things that they enable are not secure, and they never imagined nefarious uses, which seems like a problem to me. So yeah, I mean, yeah, you should, should have a healthy respect for it. But not necessarily, like change your life. But just I mean, it's it's stuff that's there. I don't know I I'm slightly paranoid. What do you guys think,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:30  
Rebecca?

Rebecca Lindland  1:43:32  
Oh, I tend to be pretty sanguine about these. I guess in some ways, I sort of feel like it's inevitable. And I think back. So this was 1999. So 22 years ago. And when you know, none of the technology that we're familiar with today really existed. I mean, cell phones were, you know, popular. And I'll tell you a quick personal story. So one of my closest friends Lorraine, she was arranging to spend the 2000 in Paris with her where her cousin was stationed was working. And so she was making a phone call from her place in Boston. And she wasn't she's a physician, but she's so she doesn't do a lot of like international travel at that time. She has since changed that but so. So she put in the wrong country code when she tried to call her cousin in Paris. And so she's on you know, her landline and she's calling and she's like, you know, I think they were speaking Spanish and so she's like, I you know, that. Obviously it was it clearly wasn't right. And as she cried, she calls again, and her phone is interrupted 1999 her phone is interrupted, and a woman comes on the phone and this is how her intelligence goes. She was all of a sudden this boy comes on. Ma'am. Are you trying to call Cuba?

No No, I'm trying to call Paris. Well, ma'am, you're trying to call Cuba and you need to stop that right now. True story.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:10  
I believe that.

Dan Roth  1:45:12  
You do have to say, though.

Rebecca Lindland  1:45:15  
So this is the thing is that, you know, similarly, I had, I think it was a 2006, I think I told a story where I was in Beijing, and I was on the phone with my friend Beth. And Beth said, you know, Beth is very paranoid. And she's like, well, when when you get back from that effing place, you know, you to burn your phone and click, we were disconnected. And so my my thought is, if they want to listen in they're listening in, it just is, and I don't know, I'm not paranoid about it. I take appropriate precautions. I certainly Watch out for scams and things like that. But they're out there. They're listening.

Dan Roth  1:45:54  
Yeah, I mean, I you have to be sanguine about that, like, you. Look, we are we are willfully under surveillance. But that's not necessarily the question he's asking, either. So I don't I don't I'm sorry, I derailed this a little bit with my, my paranoia. Well, no,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:07  
I mean, security, you know, cybersecurity is a very serious issue, especially as we add more and more degrees of automation to vehicles. You know, if, if a bad actor finds a way, you know, to get into the systems, you know, into the communication system service vehicles, you know, we saw, you know, several years back, you know, you know, a couple of different instances, couple of different demonstrations of somebody hacking me, with GE and also with OnStar. Researchers, and these, these were, these were white hat researchers, you know, so they weren't, they weren't trying to do, you know, they were trying to demonstrate what could be done, you know, to get fixed, rather than bad guys trying to do something bad. And, you know, so, you know, they hacked in, and we're able to take control of systems like the brakes, and the steering and the engine. Yeah, these vehicles, as we add, you know, these partially automated and fully automated driving systems, you have the potential of some if a bad actor gets in there, too, you know, not just take control of a single vehicle, but potentially hundreds of 1000s or millions of vehicles simultaneously. So, security is a major concern. And, to their credit, the industry is taking it much more seriously now than they were 10 years ago. You know, every automaker has teams focused on, you know, building and security from, you know, from the ground up, you know, they're designing systems now, with security in mind. So there's always going to be flaws. So building in over the air software update, right, but

Rebecca Lindland  1:47:45  
that's not the over the air.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:48  
Right. But I mean, that is that is one of the major drivers. I mean, there's also a lot of other things.

Dan Roth  1:47:53  
But I mean, I think that the one of the promising things about the right to repair legislation that has been a fight here in Massachusetts, instead, it requires a sort of a common platform. That I think that's actually good in terms of hardening it against attack versus every automaker, building their own platforms, and having their own security flaws can be exploited. Because you get you get more minds working on on making a secure platform, when you have to have a common platform versus each one doing their own thing. So I'm encouraged by that. And I think that yeah, that the the hacking side of it is, is the thing to be concerned, at least. Again, don't let it paralyze you, but it's it's there, you know, people can steal the codes from your fobs and stuff. And if they really want your car, they're gonna get it.

Rebecca Lindland  1:48:46  
Yeah, I think it's the thing that Yeah, don't let it paralyze you.

Dan Roth  1:48:49  
Yeah, I mean, the thing that concerns me more is, is the, the software they you know, the OTA updates that fail or the software that has flaws that are, like, sketchy. I mean, the whole toilet unintended acceleration thing was there was like, a software level to that right. Where, maybe, maybe not Yeah, I mean, it's just

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:12  
Nope, nope. Nobody was ever actually able to find a root cause in software for that. Yeah, I

Dan Roth  1:49:18  
think about that from time to time though. So that situation it was there there was still not enough thought put into the way the car operated because whatever was going on it you couldn't shift it into neutral. It just wouldn't wouldn't shift and you couldn't shut it off like those things like the the the way you operate it is that a push button start and had an electronic shifter like those sort of doomed that, that episode two happening because it wasn't clear how to make the thing stop. You know, and and i think that's, that's something I have to do a better job at. And so like breakover, right is something that they came out with it dumps the accelerator signal

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:09  
to me that at all, all that is absolutely true and, you know, things to be concerned about. However, the original question i don't think actually had anything to do with any of this. I think what Adam was really asking about was, should we have a growing level of concern with the ability of manufacturers to manipulate our vehicles, once we, once you own them, and the reality is, any vehicle that or any device that has software on it, and has the ability to be updated over the air? You know, you do not ever own that completely, ever, the software on that is licensed to you, you do not own that software? Right. And unless you cut that connection, there's always the potential for a manufacturer to change that functionality in ways that you don't like. Yeah, and, and that is actually a really serious issue. You know, in some cases, you know, it's going to be, you know, for compliance reasons, for regulatory reasons, or, or they found a bug that they're fixing. And that's great, you know, or security, vulnerability that they're fixing. That's great. But there is also the potential for manufacturers, or companies, let's put, let's put it as companies to remove functionality that you actually like, and I don't want to get into politics. But I mean, we've seen this happen in the past week, you know, with parlor, you know, Twitter, like service that, you know, people on a certain part of the political spectrum were predominantly using. And we saw first Apple and Google pull the parlor app from their mobile app stores. And then, you know, right after that, we saw Amazon pull the, you know, they were using Amazon Web Services to actually run this service on. And Amazon said, Nope, you're done. We don't like what you're doing, you're out of here. And no other hosting provider will, will give them service. And so they are completely on their own, and it's the service is effectively dead, right, that's

Dan Roth  1:52:27  
like, that's a little different, you don't sign a service level agreement with your, with your automaker, when you buy a car,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:33  
while you actually do a car, the first time you start that that infotainment system, you know, it comes up with with an agreement, you have to say, Yeah, I agree to this, you know, it took to get that conductivity out to do use that service, you know, you know, it's one of those click through agreements that, you know, 99.99% of people never read, you know, and nobody knows you use it, you can accept, and then you start using it. And, you know, we've seen, you know, Tesla in particular, Tesla's the only one that's really done this so far. You know, they've done this with autopilot, you know, and with their full self driving package, people will buy or lease a new Tesla. pay, pay 1000s of dollars for that functionality. And then a couple years later, when they turn it back in, or they sell it, you know, and we've, we've, we've seen instances where, you know, somebody sells their Tesla to another customer, or they trade it in on another vehicle. And, you know, somebody buys a used Tesla. And that feature that was on that car that was paid for with that car, when it was originally purchased, is no longer available there. And if they want to use that functionality, they have to pay Tesla 1000s of dollars, again, because Tesla, once that car was was sold, Tesla went in and turned off that feature that you know, that, you know, in the past, you know, if you bought a car with a premium audio system that was there for the life of a car you sold that you traded in that car, sold it somebody, the next person, they got that and you know, they paid you know, the price they paid for that used car was based in part on the the idea that it still had that functionality there. And, you know, nobody's going to take that away from you. Now, you've got at least one manufacturer that is doing exactly that, you know, there, they paid a premium on that used car price for that Tesla. And then after they, you know, change the oil after they registered it under their own name. Tesla went in and turn that function off. Yeah, said we got to pay for it again.

Dan Roth  1:54:48  
I can see that as a recurring revenue model. I don't like it. That makes a certain amount of, of sense from a business perspective. You know, first owners done with it. Second owner, we've we've wiped the device, as it were. And now the second owner can decide which pieces they want to add back as a subscription model. You know, it's very much like how Adobe software, we used to buy the box of everything. And then a year later, it's obsolete, you have to buy the patch, and update and now it's, it's a subscription model, and you just, you're renting it forever. It's two different approaches, I don't like the idea of renting features in my car, I want a certain level of base functions. So in a way, like, it offends me that they're going to make me pay on an ongoing basis for stuff and I'd probably just go without, but

Sam Abuelsamid  1:55:47  
and you have a choice to do that.

Dan Roth  1:55:48  
Yeah, I don't it, I'm more offended by it than concerned, I want them to be able to update the software, and that kind of stuff. And if you can do it without going into the dealer, I think there's actually a safety benefit to that. Because you can get the whole fleet updated with the patches, that, especially if it's something for emissions or safety stuff, really should be taken care of, you know, I guess it depends on how has that network connection done? am I paying for that network connection? Or is that a network connection? That's part of the car, like, you know, is there's a lot of questions, and none of them are really germane to his initial questions. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  1:56:32  
no, but I think that, you know, using the example of what happens if a manufacturer says, you know, you consistently exceed the speed limit in our cars. So therefore, I mean, we already have vehicles that are, you know, our speed limited, but it's like 150 miles, you know, something like that. But what happens is, it says, you know, what, you You're always exceeding the speed limit, therefore, we're gonna, we're gonna electronically limit your car. So you can't go above 55 miles an hour, or 65 miles an hour. We don't like the way that you're driving our car. No, but I mean, but this is the thing is like, this is all the kind of control of like, if you don't if if, if the if the mat if the owner of the software doesn't like the way that you're using their services, which include things like how you dry like to pull the plug on you write about?

Dan Roth  1:57:18  
I don't know, I mean, like, I think that there's a big civil liberties argument there. And like, the whole I mean, we haven't seen anything with with firearms, over however many years,

Rebecca Lindland  1:57:29  
we've seen a lot

Dan Roth  1:57:30  
of safety things with firearms, we've seen like, you need to lock it up kind of stuff. But not, you can't.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:57:37  
In the case of firearms, you know, you have particularly in the US, you have the challenge, you have the problem of the Second Amendment. And so there's, there's limitations on what can be done there.

Dan Roth  1:57:49  
That's not what I'm saying. It's more of like, how you're using the thing like, I yeah, it's this this

Rebecca Lindland  1:57:58  
thing that people are gonna use it illegally, right? Because it's, you know, the Yeah, and we are venturing far away from his from, you know, but it's the idea, you know, to, to Adams question, should we can be concerned about manufacturers manipulating our vehicles. I mean, it could be as much as they say, you can only use it in this manner. So, I think there's always that slippery slope,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:58:22  
that they decide that a function that they put in there is no longer going to be available to you. Yeah, exactly. It's something that you that you thought you paid for. And it's no longer available, even in if we set aside the whole argument of, you know, are they making judgments about the way you're using the product, you know, disregard that for the moment, and just just the things you thought you paid for? You don't own those things. Right, you know, and write you down, there is always the risk that that's going to be taken away from you, for whatever business reason, or regulatory reason, you know, at some point in the future, so, yes,

Rebecca Lindland  1:58:59  
I think we can all agree that he should never sell a gun. Exactly.

Dan Roth  1:59:06  
I'm glad we got around to that.

Rebecca Lindland  1:59:10  
Yes, he's a big concern. And no, you should never sell the Falcon. I think that's,

Dan Roth  1:59:13  
that's about it for our podcasts. Yes. Yep. So thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks for your Patreon support, and we will see you again next time. Bye, everyone. Cheers. Bye.

Thanks for listening to wheel bearings. Hey, we love to listen to our listeners to drop us an email to feedback at wheel bearings dot media with your thoughts. Questions are conversation starters. That's feedback at wheel bearings dot media. You can also find us on Twitter, at wheel bearings cast. Don't use any vowels except for the A in cast. So that's why LBRNG s cast. Thanks again. We hope to hear from you soon.

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