Dan Roth  0:02  
Coming up on episode 189 of wheel bearings, were driving the 2021 Acura NSX Volkswagen Atlas cross sport and Ford Mustang Mach II. We talked about buying Tesla's with Bitcoin, Jeep trail head, Evie, chargers and reviens move to set up its own charging network. We finished it up with some questions and that's all ahead on episode 189 of wheel bearings.

Unknown Speaker  0:34  
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Dan Roth  1:05  
Did you know you can support wheel bearings directly head to patreon.com slash wheel bearings media and you can become a patron today. Your contributions will help fund the platforms and tools we use to bring the podcast to you. And exclusives and improvements are already on the way thanks to your generosity. So if you want to be a part of an automotive podcast, like no other had to patreon.com slash wheel bearings, media

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

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights. 

Nicole Wakelin  1:40  
And I am Nicole Wakelin from a whole bunch of different places. 

Dan Roth  1:43  
what's the what's your favorite?

Nicole Wakelin  1:46  
favorite team? And everyone else is gonna fire me right? what's what's Okay, I'll just say the person making your mind car expert. How's that? Okay, perfect. All right. a different one every week. Oh,

Dan Roth  1:56  
that's good. Yeah, you can Yeah, you can get them in a bidding war. If you like click you get first day. There you go.

Nicole Wakelin  2:01  
Give me five bucks to say already. First.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:06  
We'll sell the naming rights for the show. Right?

Dan Roth  2:09  
We've had some new Patreon supporters sign up. So I wanted to say thanks to Ronald Richmond chintan I mean, Marcos Bello, and Tristan, Ollie, thanks everybody so much for your support of wheel bearings, and helps us build out some content that is underway. It's coming. We've got some writer auditions going on right now. So stay tuned. There's more to come. And we appreciate your support. And so if you haven't caught up to last week's episode, Have you missed a little snippet in the middle? Nicole, you are our newest co host on wheel bearings.

Nicole Wakelin  2:45  
Yes. And since Rebecca last time, I actually helped her relocate all the way across the country. I'm going to take her place. I'm going to try to anyway, so yes, so thank you. I'm happy to be here. This

Dan Roth  2:55  
is kind of weird. Yeah, we're thrilled to have you. I'm surprised you made it back in one piece so quickly. That's impressive. Maybe there's a story there from the relocation. But why don't we give you top billing? What have you been been driving around since you landed?

Nicole Wakelin  3:11  
I am in a totally boring car that nobody notices and not a single person has stopped to take pictures of me interested

Sam Abuelsamid  3:18  
in that color.

Nicole Wakelin  3:21  
Yeah. I am in a What do they call an indie yellow Pearl, I believe is the color 2021 Acura NSX. That's my dog. I'm

Dan Roth  3:31  
sorry. Maybe get you in a nice camera.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:34  
You know? Those those boring hybrids? I mean, who wants those?

Nicole Wakelin  3:39  
Right? It's a totally doll. I'm like, Well, okay, I guess I'll drive it if I have to.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:42  
It's only got two seats.

Nicole Wakelin  3:44  
What am I supposed to do like that? Literally, I was taking things you're trying to go someplace. And I have a teenage daughter. I'm like, well, you can drive and meet us. Right? I want to take the so yeah, that is that I am driving units. It is a hoot to drive that thing. I love that car.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:02  
Is this the first time you've had an NSX

Nicole Wakelin  4:04  
I drove in NSX for a hot minute and an event A couple of years ago. And literally it was like this horrible heavy traffic. So it's like drive 10 minutes that way, but you're only going to go five miles an hour and then come back 10 minutes back in the same trap for waste technically second time. But yeah, total waste the first time Well,

Dan Roth  4:20  
I don't know. It's not necessarily a waste driving a supercar like that in traffic, at least lets you know how it behaves. They're there. You know, classically finicky and they hate to go

Nicole Wakelin  4:30  
slow in traffic. So they don't like slow. I mean, they're they're not cars like so even just like driving around town. There's a stoplight. You have to slow down too many times. It's like stop this. Find the highway woman. I'm like, Okay, hold on.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:43  
I'm working on it compared to other you know, high performance sports cars. You know, how would you say the NSX fair?

Nicole Wakelin  4:49  
I don't and I know Dan, I think you had the NSX already, right. You had was using

Sam Abuelsamid  4:58  
it? Yeah. I had it for a long time. weekend a couple of years ago and I also had a couple of short periods with it that drove it that mile and dragway they were doing a demo event with their launch control system.

Nicole Wakelin  5:10  
Got it cars like this the sort of supercars, they're always a little generally speaking, they're great and they're fast and you feel the power and you hear the power and they sound fantastic. But they can be sort of a pain in the neck to drive for too long. Like they're very harsh. They aren't nice to just cruise in the speed is cool, but the ride itself isn't this was fantastic. Like this is truly one of my favorite cars in this sort of range price, you know performance car category because it is just it takes all the best parts of being this powerful loud, almost obnoxious Lee glaring you know, thing driving down the road. But also being something that you like driving, you're out. So squish that you feel like you can't move your arms you don't feel like your knees are hitting the sides. I really liked this weekend like I'm loathe to give this up on Monday, I'm probably going to get the most boring team car ever. And it's gonna feel like I've been knocked right off my perch. But yeah, I really have enjoyed driving the NSX it's been a lot of fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:06  
That's the thing about the NSX. In the first one came out in 1990. it transformed the expectations that people had for these, what we did back in those days, we called exotics. Nobody was calling them hyper cars or supercars than they were they were exotics. At the time, you had stuff like Ferraris, and Lamborghinis. And you said, Dan, you know, they were always kind of finicky to drive. They weren't any fun to drive in the city, for sure. And the original NSX totally changed the expectation that people had for these kinds of cars by making it fast, but also very civilized. You know, the one time I had an opportunity to drive an original NSX, I got in, you know, feels like in a court. Well, that was, that was like a really fast car. And that's exactly

Dan Roth  6:51  
what it was, it was really the first car of that type of capable of that kind of performance that just worked like an accord. And it was that kind of reliable and easy. And any conditions and that kind of quality that you'd expect, you know, if you look back at a Ferrari of the time, would be a contemporary for like a 348,

Sam Abuelsamid  7:09  
though, yeah, probably 340 at that time,

Dan Roth  7:12  
very handbuilt. Which, it can be quaint. And it's interesting to look at, but when you spend that kind of money on it, and then you compare it to the NSX, that costs what, like 60 grand at the time, there was really no comparison, the NSX was built much better. So that kind of build quality and ease of use and reliability. You have the original NSX. To to thank for the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that we have now.

Nicole Wakelin  7:41  
Yeah, it's it really was striking. Because as excited as I was to drive this, I was thinking about what you were saying, Dan, it's going to be this finicky thing. I'm going to like have fun putting it on the highway, but it's going to be sort of trying to drive it almost as a daily driver for the week for a long weekend for four days. And I found that it all led to a shocking degree. I thought if you you know, close your eyes didn't know what you were sitting in. It feels just like you'd be riding in the court. It feels like any it feels very comfortable, very smooth ride only when you really match the gas suddenly the sound and the feel of it in a way it throws you back in your seat like a weight not in court. But it's it's an unbelievably comfortable car. The only thing that is a challenge, I think and we get this with anything like this. My husband is six, three, and I couldn't stop laughing every time he got in the passenger side. Because it was a sort of like pencil holding situation. He's like, how do you get in and out of this? I'm like, just like that money. That's all you got. But you know, he can fit in there. But he has zero What do you think? But getting in and out because it's so low when you're taller guy is a little bit of a challenge. But that's any car that's low like that. See,

Dan Roth  8:48  
the trick is just don't grow so tall.

Nicole Wakelin  8:49  
I know I told him you just need to shrink if you mentioned like six threes too much for the NSX just maybe six points. Luckily the

Dan Roth  8:57  
buyer demographics by the time you can afford one of these osteoporosis is kind of set in and you've shrunk a little bit maybe

Nicole Wakelin  9:03  
they'll shrink enough to fit by the time we can afford to buy this. And I have one other really stupid complaint or even my stupid complaint, everyone can get mad at me. They're no cupholders. I wanted a coffee. I stopped and I got a my favorite little drink at Starbucks and a little London Fog latte and I went to put it in a cup holder and there isn't one. So my husband was my cup holder. But like there was so you have nowhere to put a train there literally. I mean, I get that there's zero storage. You know, I can fit like your phone, this tiny little pod behind you. But there's never a drink.

Dan Roth  9:33  
Yeah, I mean, it's maybe a message about its purpose built nature. But it seems like even people who drive cars like that would like to drive with coffee or water or

Nicole Wakelin  9:44  
somebody on occasion even when you're screaming along in your hypercar supercar, exotic, whatever you want to call it. You might like a warm beverage or cool beverage to meet the drive that much better. And you can do that but you either hold it in the hands of someone with you or whichever between your knees. I mean that, you know,

Dan Roth  10:01  
it's I was gonna say it could be like, like it was in the 80s, or with my first cars where I would find, where can i jam this cup, can I put it between the seat and the the parking brake lever, which is not a thing modern cars have, or kind of go between the seat in the door. But it's just it's inviting disaster, especially if you have the cup. Like if you do the common like, I'll just stick it in my lap. And then you need to step on the brake real quick. Your crush the cups, and it's hot coffee that's

Sam Abuelsamid  10:31  
been there, done that, not at

Nicole Wakelin  10:34  
the things that used to be able to hang on, like Hello, click that went in the window. And then the window, which is great until you forgot you had it there. And for some reason, you put your window down or something and it's like, oh, and then your whole coffee is like ready to follow. Or again, the short stuff, we send that entire thing. dumping into your lap. It was it was awesome. You can go to

Dan Roth  10:53  
the marine supply store on our boat, when I was a kid, we had these things called Jim buoys, and they were little, it's like a little bracket. And so you can just do that right to the dashboard. And then it's a little gimbal mount for for a drink. So it has it's like a C shaped bracket that goes into that gimbal and then it's got swivels on a little basket. And so it put your your drink in there, and it'll it'll, you know, compensate for the motion of the wheels.

Nicole Wakelin  11:21  
It's just as cool as that sounds. I don't think I could screw anything into the dashboard of my $157,500 it's not yours. That's actually that's the thing. I want them to have a place for their drink.

Dan Roth  11:38  
Just fill the holes in the wall with toothpaste.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:42  
There are far more famous car reviewers out there who have done far worse damage to very expensive cars. So you know, I think that Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  11:52  
okay, so when I when I do that, try that later on. like Chris said accurate? No, like the guy said, I totally was okay. I

Dan Roth  11:58  
can tell.

Nicole Wakelin  12:00  
Yeah, Chris. Okay. Chris will come find me and said so.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:05  
So let me ask you this. Have you driven the car? Corvette?

Nicole Wakelin  12:09  
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:10  
So you mentioned the price of the NSX. You know, starting like 150 $657,000. I think this is the challenge that that accurate. And a lot of other supercar makers have now is you've got this Corvette, that starts at $60,000. How do you? How would you rate the the NSX versus the vet?

Nicole Wakelin  12:31  
You know what, it's really hard? Because I think two things happen. Yeah, there's a huge price jump between the vet and the asset. So there's two things, not that you see a Corvette on every corner, but you sure see them on a heck of a lot more corners than you see the NSX. So there's a certain exclusivity, you know, that you're paying for it makes it you're paying more, but you're getting something that's cooler in the idea that nobody knows what the heck, you're driving until they swivel their head around to see it. So the rarity of this makes it sort of more interesting, more fun, if that's your boat. Also. I i. I mean, I definitely liked driving the NSX more than the Corvette. I love the Corvette. But there are things that are much more drivable in the NSX. Now is it what $100,000 more drivable in the Corvette? That's a lot. But I think it's sort of appealing to a different person that somebody who really wants the supercar experience. But once an element of exclusivity, like I said, you see a lot of Corvettes, because they are more affordable, you see a lot more than you drive in NSX, you're probably the only one in town who drives but

Dan Roth  13:35  
it's not necessarily that you get $100,000 more performance either, you know, the Corvette is generally always been really competitive, performance wise, for the money. So the things that you you get when you buy a different car are that exclusivity? Certainly some of the, the things that Chevrolet has to do to make the Corvette 60 or $70,000. Accurate doesn't have to do when their car is twice that. So that's an n the, like, just the idea that you're not you're not seeing yourself everywhere, like all of those things, I think are the inherent value in that or, you know, some of the other even more exotic cars there. The NSX is pretty rare. I think you'll probably see an Italian exotic more often than you'd see an NSX

Nicole Wakelin  14:22  
I know I know that I've never I mean I'm in New Hampshire. We don't have a lot of exotic cars anyway. But I there's a you know, we see Corvettes, there's someone in town who has a McLaren. We see some Lamborghinis. I've literally never seen an NSX anywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:36  
Well, Acura only builds, they only sell about five or 600 NSX is a year globally. And in fact, they just they just announced that they were ending sales of the NSX in Japan because the sales were so low I think they'd sold about 70 or so over the last two and a half years. By comparison, Chevrolet builds about 500 Corvettes Oh week after I belts 500 a year.

Nicole Wakelin  15:03  
So I think the NSX did so poorly in Japan.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:07  
I don't know. And it's hard to say. Certainly, you know, for the for the Japanese roads, you know, it's relatively large. It's expensive. You know, I don't think that, in general, I don't think a lot of these really high performance cars sell from any brand in Japan. So something about the NSX for whatever reason, it's just never really caught the public's attention since the new generation NSX came out, you know, despite its success in racing, I think it's a fabulous looking car certainly drives great you know, just something about it. It just has not caught the attention the way even a relative newcomer like McLaren has McLaren sells a lot more cars just in the US than Acura sells. NSX is globally.

Nicole Wakelin  15:53  
Yeah, it was just part of the idea being that like, McLaren, everyone you get is this fancy expensive car Acura, you can buy an affordable Acura that regular humans can buy, some people don't? Yeah, you can buy one that like people can afford. So people think of it as sort of a luxury brand. But it's when you have a chance to bind someday. So to have a car in there, that might not be the one that you can ever buy. People just don't even think about what the brand, you know. Yeah, I wonder if

Dan Roth  16:23  
that's part of it. You know, I think part of the original NSX too, was that it, it offered that quality and performance for Corvette money. It wasn't really much, much more expensive than a Corvette. Now, it's a lot more expensive than a Corvette. So it's a different thing now, and this car is a long time to get to us. I remember, we were waiting for the new NSX for a while. And we,

Sam Abuelsamid  16:49  
I sat through at least three accurate press conferences as a trade Auto Show, showing, you know, the new NSX concept, you know, as it went through various iterations from the first time they showed one, up until they finally had the production model, it took a long time, because I mean, they did a lot of redesign under the skin, you know, over the course of its development, because it didn't start off as a hybrid. You know, it started off with a transverse v six, they went to a longitudinal v six, they made it a little bit bigger, a lot more powerful. So it changed quite a bit, you know, over its long development period.

Dan Roth  17:25  
Yeah. It's inexplicable to me why why it hasn't become more of an icon or more impressive. I mean, even the Ford GT, right, it's gotten successively more expensive and exotic and different. And that sort of has a shine to it as well, that maybe the NSX does, I don't know, it's maybe better marketing, we can help them.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:44  
So how much was how much is the one that you have?

Nicole Wakelin  17:47  
Well, I did not have one running in the glove box. But I tried to price it out. And it looks like the one I have, I gotta look at my notes, because it had all the carbon fiber accents, which is another almost chinking nobody

Dan Roth  17:58  
covered it, you have to have a carbon fiber. I

Nicole Wakelin  18:00  
mean, right. The carbon fiber fiber engine cover which is 3600. And I believe it had the ceramic brakes chaincase. So I think we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 185. ish. Probably more because I'm sure there's stuff on there that I'm missing because I was literally just trying to piece it together. So you're probably you know, one $885,000 it's not a cheap, not a cheap choice by any means. But what if I had $185,000 to burn? Would I park that my driveway? Absolutely. If I could park $185,000 Acura NSX because I have the cash and cash didn't matter. Or the most tricked out version of the Corvette, which probably still isn't even going to come close to that. I wouldn't think I think probably everything Corvette. What's on a Corvette. I'd still go with the NSX because I just enjoyed driving it that much. It was just such an easy car to drive. You could really drive it every day. It wouldn't be one of those things you don't need to take out when it was sunny and you just wanted to go for a cruise. You could really drive that often. And enjoy it.

Dan Roth  19:02  
Yeah, I'd be curious to see the comparison between like the NSX. And what's the what's the cheap McLaren? You mentioned McLaren and the 620 CLARIN.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:15  
That's about to be replaced by

Nicole Wakelin  19:17  
anyone ever said those two words cheap McLaren together

Sam Abuelsamid  19:20  
like that. The most affordable mccluster for us.

Dan Roth  19:26  
It costs like a

Nicole Wakelin  19:28  
quite as much as your house.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:30  
The least ridiculously priced McLaren? I think they start around 200 grams. Yeah,

Dan Roth  19:35  
I was gonna say they make a car that's like right in that that range. That would be no need

Nicole Wakelin  19:38  
to do that. I'll just tell McLaren Hey, give me a car so I can compare it to what you need to do. Totally.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:44  
You know, you are you are nactoy juror now and they just launched the Arturo. Yeah, so that that should be eligible, I would think for North American car of the year.

Nicole Wakelin  19:53  
Okay, we'll see if that ends up in my driveway. I'm not holding my breath.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:56  
They'll fly to Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi, or some someplace Like, yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  20:03  
I mean, I work if I have to.

Dan Roth  20:04  
Alright, so Sam, what are you driving.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:07  
So I had the Volkswagen Atlas cross sport, the 2.0 Sal premium. So it's got the two liter turbo four cylinder. So this is basically the same engine that's in a GTI. But in a very, very different vehicle. I've always liked the Atlas, you know, since the, since I drove the original one, like, three years ago, I think almost now, it's a good, you know, mid size, you know, upper mid size, SUV, crossover SUV thing, the cross board, basically, they shaved off, you know, the back end of the roofline, and ditched the third row seat, which was always kind of dubious, you know, because the, the Atlas is not really, it's one of those, you know, upper mid size that they put it, they offer a third, they have a third row in there. But it's certainly not big enough to accommodate adults, it's really a kid's only seat and that third row

Nicole Wakelin  20:57  
back there,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:58  
I have in the past, so the cross sport doesn't have doesn't offer the third row to the Atlas, it's kind of like the passport is to the Honda Pilot. So same same chassis, same wheelbase, but a little bit shorter body, and they get rid of the third row, the upside of that is you have enormous cargo space in the back behind that second row has a lot of cargo room in there, which makes it really great, you know, for road trips or, you know, whatever kind of, you know, lifestyle activities, beach carrying, or whatever you need to wherever you need to take it. It's great in that respect. I've always thought the the Atlas, you know, drove pretty well never had any complaints about that. The I don't, I think this is the first time I've had one. But all the previous times I've driven the Atlas couple times I've had the Atlas, it had the V six engine, the 3.6 liter V six, which actually feels the I was just looking at the specs by the numbers, it doesn't have a whole lot more torque, like the the turbo fours got 258 pounds feet of torque and the V six has 266 the but it feels a lot stronger, which is odd because usually, you know, the servo fours usually have really good low end torque. And I think it actually the the complaint I had about it is more about when you're driving it in normal mode, when you put it in sport mode, it actually feels a lot more lively. In the normal drive mode, it feels kind of sluggish. You know it's 235 horsepower, which is not bad. But it just doesn't feel as aggressive as I as I might want. So I ended up driving it in sport mode most of the time. Or it actually feels quite good. I liked it. Fuel Economy didn't quite match up to the EPA numbers, which are, you know, it's EPA rated at 22 miles per gallon. I think I got about 18 and a half 19 miles per gallon lit. Oh, that's Yeah, you know, so for, you know, for a vehicle in this size classes, not, you know, not that impressive. I mean, you can do a lot better. And I think I've actually gotten better fuel economy in the past with the V six. So I think I would probably recommend, you know, going with the V six, just because it generally feels better than the four cylinder does and generally gets better fuel economy because I think the four cylinder because it seems like it's got to work harder, you know, it's generally not going to get as good fuel economy.

Dan Roth  23:19  
To be fair, though, among other vehicles that size, that class, that fuel economy is not off the mark, it's just that's about what you're going to expect, usually get

Sam Abuelsamid  23:28  
over 20 without too much difficulty usually get in the 21 to 22 range I

Dan Roth  23:34  
would expect like our our grand cherokee, which is rather hefty, gets 18 on the regular as an average is not uncommon, depending on how we drive it like so what was your your driving loop? Was it mostly in town or highway? or?

Sam Abuelsamid  23:50  
Yeah, it was a mix most mostly around town, you know, so you know that that obviously hurts it more, did some highway driving with it, you know, so it's not the worst fuel economy but it's definitely not best in class for fuel economy, at least with the four cylinder like I said, I've gotten better with the V six before. So I think I'd probably recommend people look at the V six instead. design was I really liked the cross board. I think that changing the roofline the way they did, it definitely gives it a sportier look than the standard Atlas does. And I mean, it's it's not a huge change, you know, it's actually the same length overall, you know, it's just like cutting off the the back end, you know, like the last foot of the roofline and slanting the rear glass, and it makes a pretty substantial difference to the overall feel of it. So I like the design, but one of the reasons why I asked to drive this one, because I have driven the Atlas before is Rebecca had across board back in less than November, December timeframe. And she had she posted a video of her adventures trying to use the voice recognition in this thing, right. She was sitting she was sitting outside the post office near her home, trying to ask the the voice recognition, you know, to never find this post office, right.

Dan Roth  25:09  
And it was like it would mean pizza.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:13  
disaster, a total disaster. So I tried doing that. And it was just as bad if not worse, it was completely hopeless at trying to find anything by voice. The VW really needs to like, ditch whoever their voice recognition provider is for the Atlas, and start over again.

Nicole Wakelin  25:33  
Now I feel like I have to try that the first time I get wet and start trying to ask it to give me directions and do things but I have notoriously bad luck with every voice activated. Everything I've ever used in my entire life. Like I could say, you know, call mom and it's like, yeah, depleting tires, I'm just not, I don't know what it is about my voice. But I never find it's always easy. Like, I'll tell my phone like, I'll ask Siri to do it to do whatever I want to do, you know, to get into work through but if I asked the car directly, forget it, all bets are off.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:07  
Yeah, you know, the the overall user interface of their infotainment system is fine. It's, it's comparable to what you find in most modern cars, you know, not nothing, nothing particularly great or, or terrible, but just that voice recognition is just completely, utterly hopeless. But what it does have, it does have wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support, which is good. And, you know, the one I had had the wireless charging pad underneath, you know, in the little pocket at the bottom of the center stack. So, you know, once you connect it the first time, you know, the next time, when you get in the car, you know, it just automatically connects to the phone. And I don't have to mess around with, you know, plugging it in or anything like that, you know, if the phone is in my pocket, and I don't want to take it out, I can leave it there or I can drop it on the charging pad, and it charges up. So I think if you get one of these, especially, you know, the 2021 and newer, which has the wireless support, just connect your phone and use Siri or google assistant and be done with it. Don't even bother trying to use the Volkswagen voice recognition. Because all it's going to do is irritate you. It's just utterly atrocious.

Dan Roth  27:13  
What trim did you have?

Sam Abuelsamid  27:15  
The CL premium?

Dan Roth  27:16  
It says about 45,000.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:18  
All in this one, including the delivery charge came to 48,001 15 close. Yeah,

Dan Roth  27:25  
that's price very well, actually.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:27  
Yeah. I mean, it's it's very comparable, you know, to you know, the other top vehicles in this class. You know, some again, similarly equipped, you know, like a Kia telluride or Hyundai palisade, you know, anything else, you know, in this, this upper mid size segment, you know, Ford Explorer, they're all you know, in that mid Upper $40,000 range. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  27:49  
Which are the ones you just rattle off, would you get if you had your $48,000?

Sam Abuelsamid  27:55  
It would, it would probably be either the cross board with the V six, or the Telluride, the Kia telluride.

Dan Roth  28:05  
I really I like the tele ride, although I'm holding out I really, really, really want to drive the new Grand Cherokee.

Nicole Wakelin  28:14  
Oh, I really want to drive that too. It's coming, it's coming. Ones that he just rattled off, to tell you I what else to say Explorer, or the cross Atlas cross sport. Um,

Dan Roth  28:27  
I want to spend more time in the Explorer as well, the the most recent version of that I had with the aviator. And if that was any indication, I probably would would wind up with the telly right? Just for the extra sort of space and ease of use and some of the things you get with the gear

Sam Abuelsamid  28:46  
that the kid has the sounds of nature.

Nicole Wakelin  28:49  
Yes, exactly. All sorts of random stuff playing in the background as

Dan Roth  28:54  
you travel there crunching snow,

Sam Abuelsamid  28:57  
or you know the sound of a French Cafe as you're driving down the freeway.

Nicole Wakelin  29:01  
There's people in the backseat having a little latte. That's a problem.

Dan Roth  29:05  
Especially if they speak in French like cafe

Unknown Speaker  29:12  
Atlas.

Dan Roth  29:13  
The Atlas itself, the regular one looks pretty good, it looks hefty, the cross sport I just can't get past the way like the bottom section looks like the regular Atlas. And then the top section looks like they put you know a coupe roof on it which just is the point but it just draws your eye down to all this weight of the just the MIDI like front end there

Sam Abuelsamid  29:37  
it there is a lot of visual mass in the bottom of it. Yeah, especially like the three quarter views. You know, I think it it works. It works well because it gives it that sort of almost Raptor like, you know, kind of off road capable appearance. I mean, you know, it's it's obviously not going to be as off road capable as something like a jeep. But you know, it kind of gives you that feel to it. And I like that I Like that, look,

Dan Roth  30:00  
they really did study the rest of the class and figure out what are the design cues that seemed to move the metal. And it really does look like an amalgam of all the successful designs in the in its own class, which is fine. Like, it looks good. It's got a lot of wheelarch, though, a lot of like, just the way that character line goes up over the just I don't know, it looks looks thick to me, I guess. I'm not sure what the right word is. But it's

Sam Abuelsamid  30:27  
but you know, I mean, this this was a vehicle that was specifically designed for the American market. And it has supplanted a lot of the the car sales for Volkswagen in in North America. So that's the kind of look that To be honest, now that most American consumers are more interested for

Nicole Wakelin  30:45  
buying. Yeah, I had to pull it up and look at it now. And it doesn't have that squishy roof and the very heavy bottom. That is what a lot of the newer vehicles in that class look like, though, you know, they really do look like that. That is kind of the style. So yeah,

Dan Roth  30:59  
I look if it's moving cars, fine, because mostly I want Volkswagen to succeed because they will keep paying for electrify America. And we we could use that. And I think honestly the the thing that Volkswagen does, that I like is less than the outside more on the inside with their ergonomics and interiors. And just the way they are to operate their infotainment aside which it lags a little bit, not lags and performance, but lags sort of in user experience. They still you know that I still see three big knobs and some buttons for the H bag stuff is where you're expected to

Sam Abuelsamid  31:34  
think things are well laid out in the interior, it's easy to use everything. Everything except the voice recognition just works.

Dan Roth  31:42  
I don't like to talk to people anyway, and I definitely don't

Nicole Wakelin  31:46  
need to buy one of these. I can't hear you.

Dan Roth  31:51  
So it'd be fine. I I'm surprised though that It impresses you that much saying that you'd by the hour is just that that like little subset of Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  32:03  
let me let me step back. As you know, I am not an SUV person

Dan Roth  32:06  
or folks wagon thing

Sam Abuelsamid  32:10  
that I have been there have done that, you know, sold it back to Volkswagen, you know, at least the most recent one. We had a couple of we had a 2000 pissant wagon and then we had a 2010 Jetta TDI wagon. Okay. And we we did the buyback with the with the with the diesel Jetta. I mean, they were great cars to drive. And we loved driving them. They had fantastic driving dynamics, you know, and I mean, they were primarily both of them were primarily my wife's cars. And she really enjoyed driving them even despite the issues we had with the facade. You know, she still wanted to buy the the Jetta she wanted to buy another Volkswagen. And you know, that one didn't have nearly as many issues as the facade did that enough time has passed that I would not rule out buying a VW again in the future at you know, in 2017 when we did the buyback, I was not inclined to ever buy another Volkswagen but you know, that that feeling has faded. But just SUVs crossovers in general. I'm not I'm not the market. I'm not the customer for those vehicles. That's true. Yeah. I I buy cars your

Dan Roth  33:16  
past Yeah, yeah. You don't have those needs your

Sam Abuelsamid  33:19  
your we have a civic you know, we have a 2017 Honda Civic hatchback. And, and my Miata, you know, and that's the kind of car could I

Nicole Wakelin  33:28  
yantai SUV with those? Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:31  
You know, if if I were buying an SUV, this is certainly something I would consider.

Nicole Wakelin  33:37  
I've always liked. The first two cars I bought were Volkswagen. So I've just always liked Volkswagens. I have no problem with buying one. I think though, in that group that you're mentioning, I really liked the telluride. I just love that. So tell me

Dan Roth  33:49  
right wins again.

Nicole Wakelin  33:53  
Dang it.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:54  
Yes. I mean, if you need, you know, a larger vehicle like that to, to, you know, haul people and stuff around, which I don't, you know, then you know, it's a great choice. Yeah. And I like the design of it the way it looks, you know, the way it drives and you know, the way they the way it's laid out inside. You know, I like all of that about the telluride.

Dan Roth  34:13  
It's just that great combination. That makes it tough to to beat. I've been driving the another superduty right now, no, another Ford. But they I was so excited to get this. They dropped off the Mustang Marquis the other day, and then I promptly didn't drive it for like a day and a half because I was busy with other things. So I've put some miles on it. I haven't put as many as I'd like to. And I know we had some questions from listeners that their main concern is does the range hold up and the best I can say right now is that it's showing about 49 48% battery and it says it's got 96 miles of range. So that seems like it's it's calculates out to being right on what they say it's supposed to be off the top My head I'm not, I don't have all the numbers in front of me. But it's it's fine though, like you don't, don't worry about range doesn't, it's not going to get you just charge it when it needs to be charged. And it can do things like you know, fast charge if you have a station near you, and you can clearly see how much range you've got left. So just plan that said, this is probably the best TV I've driven so far. And I haven't driven ever Evie available. But this is a really, really complete effort. I'm very impressed with the Maki, I played around with some of the features, you know, it has the things that will please you if you expect it to be Mustang ish, he can put it in unbridled mode, which is my favorite in terms of driving dynamics. And it has the, the it'll play the little rumble from the back speakers of the V eight. If you miss that. I found myself just shutting it off. Because the trick with the Eevee is just like you get that kind of performance and it's quiet about it. It's just it's a different experience in it. It's kind of like my daughter was picked her up with it and we got on the highway. So we went up the on ramp and just to get that surge of torque. She's like, whoo, I can't say sick, right in the verb resource that story land. Because it's just the electric motor acceleration is what what happens on a roller coaster. And that's, that's what you get the same kind of thing, you just you start to go fast, it's really well put together. The interior i think is you know, it's there's some criticism that I think is valid, you've got to trim weight and cost out of the car, though. So overall, I like the design. I like that not just Ford. But other automakers too, are using fabric. As an interior design element. It's a nice touch to have that speaker grille, kind of fabric, everything looks good, the cowl is pretty low for I guess, a modern car. So like, there's not a lot of stuff in your face, the giant screen is still taking me a while to get used to. I'm finding my way around it. I think that's one of those things where, and this is another thing where my daughter 15 year old, you know, they're all like tech wizards. She's like, Where do I find the like, how do I find my phone to pair it up and stuff? It's like I, let's hang on, let's figure it out. Sick. Why is it so hard? It's because you said it once. And then like once the car is set up as your device, it stuff you want is there. So you only go through the pain for that first, you know, few days or a few weeks of ownership. And then once you learn it, everything becomes second nature, you can customize the screen to to have what you want there. So as an owner, I think that's much less of an issue than it is as a reviewer. It's I'm probably not going to get all the way through learning that interface before I have to hand the car back. But the instrument panel in front of you is just this little LED that gets blocked by the wheel a little bit. So

Nicole Wakelin  37:55  
I found that too. I was wondering if that was interesting, because I was wondering if it was just like my height or the how I set my seat or but I felt like it took the edges like I couldn't see the whole thing and I thought it has to be just me that for some reason I'm exactly the wrong it might just be

Dan Roth  38:11  
us that we are we're not the right type of shape. I it's there's not really information over in the edges that get blocked, but it's still it's like very

Nicole Wakelin  38:19  
disconcerting. You feel like you're missing something even though you're not Yeah,

Dan Roth  38:22  
but dynamically, you know, the steering is great. The acceleration is certainly fun. The ride and handling are well done. It's very composed, you know, I've had it on backroads and it actually just the way it goes down the road encouraged me to bend it through some of my favorite curvy sections. And that was a good time. So you know, Evie sometimes tend to not want to be driven in anger, they kind of they don't protest with their tires and stuff. This Maki is just a it's a really complete effort as I guess, sort of my best way to describe it. Rear Seat headroom is not super great. I think it's it's fine for what it is I you know, the hatch area is a good load area. I stuck a bike in there when picked up the bike from the shop. So, you know as a car that you can use, I think it's the right call to have it be a four door five passenger Mustang. I mean, they own the Mustang brand, they can make whatever the hell they want to call a Mustang is a Mustang. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  39:25  
I mean, back in the 60s, you know, they looked at doing you know, Mustang sedans, you know, they were multiple prototypes of Mustang station wagons. Yeah. Which Yeah, I still think they should have built at least one if they

Dan Roth  39:37  
do. I mean there's custom ones out there right. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  39:39  
there are.

Dan Roth  39:40  
No it's a really good card and a Mustang brand I think helps sort of get the get people chattering whether or not they love it or hate it. You know, the guy across the street he's got a Grand Cherokee SRT, and he's, you know, Hot Rods and stuff like that. So he backs out of the driveway yesterday and he rolls down the window. That's a Mustang Husky. It goes like a Mustang. And, you know, overall, it's it's just just pleasant. It's it's really, it's a good Evie effort. And I think it's got a bright future, the thing that I was on the lookout for, and some listeners have asked is how the brake handoff between region and friction is. And that's I think where they're over the air software update is going to help them. This is I think this is the first for the can do otaa. And so does

Sam Abuelsamid  40:27  
this and the F 150. The new f 150 can also do it. Yeah,

Dan Roth  40:30  
that's gonna help them out. Because I think that the one pedal driving is I wanted to be able to adjust the aggressiveness of the one pedal driving and I, if you can, I haven't figured it out yet. I don't think you can. I think you just put it in one pedal mode.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:43  
Yeah, you either enable it or disable it, right? There's no, there's no gradation.

Dan Roth  40:47  
Yeah, so it can be a little aggressive, I actually prefer it in non one pedal mode, just because it, it still seems to region a little when you coast. And it's not quite as hard. Like you get a lot of DSL out of it at all times when you're in one pedal driving and you let off. And there are times where you do want to Coast A little more, and you don't want to region as hard. So that's something they can solve with a software update. And I think that also plays into the braking with the handoff between region and friction, it can be a little grabby. I, I think one of the things that happens as a car reviewer is we drive a lot of cars and we adapt to stuff like that. So maybe the first couple of stops was get Alright, that's a little grabby. And we figured out pretty quick. If you're coming from a different car, you don't, you don't drive a lot of stuff on a regular basis, it may be a little bit more disconcerting, I can see what people are talking about. To me, I don't, I don't really find it to be an issue. You know,

Nicole Wakelin  41:47  
I think you might be right to him. Because we do so often have to get in the vehicle that you're not quite sure how the braking is going to feel you're not quite sure how the acceleration is going to feel. And you have a couple of awkward stops or starts before you get the hang of it. That if you've never done one pedal driving like that before, I do think it'd be a little bit tricky in that MFI. And you might have that moment of Oh, I can't do this. This is but it's going to take some getting used to. And it is a little grabby. But I wonder how much that would bother people who really never experienced that kind of thing before because it is more aggressive. Hopefully, like you said, the software updates will smooth out that transition and make it a little easier over time.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:25  
It always is challenging to do the blending between region and friction. I mean, back the last couple of years, I was working as an engineer, that's actually what I was working on was electro hydraulic brake systems for hybrids. And, you know, we're, that was one of the challenges was going between back and forth between region and friction braking. And trying to get that transition smooth, it's really hard to do because friction brakes can be very inconsistent, you know, depending on how hot they are. If the brake pads, or the rotors are wet, you know, if it's cold, you know, all kinds of different conditions change that. And if you've got one or the other, you do get used to it. But, you know, when you're trying to control that, that blending of the two, it's really hard from a software perspective. And one of the things you can do in the machi. You know, if you switch the drive modes, like you can't, you can't really control the one pedal driving directly changed, you know the amount of region you're getting. But if you switch between the unbridled and the whisper and the engagement, engaged mode, it does actually change the amount of region you get. So if you go to engaged and or down to whisper, you will get a little bit less aggressive region. The first time I drove a car with really aggressive region like that was back in 2008, when BMW launched the mini he remember that fleet they had, they built like 500 Electric minis, as a pilot program to learn from and the least amount of customers so you can learn how people use EBS. That was the first one I drove that had that kind of one pedal driving. And at first it was really disconcerting, but I got used to it pretty fast. And you know, it's just a matter of you learn to modulate the accelerator pedal. So it's, it's not like with a get a gas car where you know, when you lift your foot off the accelerator, it just sort of coasts now you it's more like, you know, bumper cars, when you go to the, the, the Midway you know because those are one pedal and work you know very much the same way

Dan Roth  44:28  
that's a really good analog for it. Yeah, it and once you get used to it, you start to be able to anticipate what you're going to get. So you know, you know just how much to back off the pedal to get the amount of braking the line so you can come to a full stop behind somebody or you know to a stop sign or stoplight or something without ever needing to use the brakes. But even in even in regular driving mode. Without one pedal the brakes can be a little grabby and a little inconsistent. I suppose some some folks have felt that way, I didn't find it inconsistent, I do think that there's, there's maybe a little bit of difficulty in modulating the brakes. And I think again, that's, that's something you can tune out of the car. So and if those are our two main complaints is like, how the brakes work and how one pedal driving is for a fully new model that cuz you look around the marquee they've really anytime you're doing a car like this, where you're reinventing sort of the propulsion system, but you're also reinventing the car itself around it, you know, to, to reflect that they didn't have to do it this complete, they could just, you know, stuck this powertrain in a, you know, in an explorer, for example, and it would be like a regular explorer with the electric motor or whatever. But it's not that it's every aspect of the car has been considered. You know, the door handles are different. We talked about that on the show when you had it, Sam, you know, the button and the little handle there. The even in the interior door handles are different. They remind me of the ones that my father was 740 because they're in the armrest, you pull them back like that, but all of those little aspects have been rethought. And so that's kind of like a continual delight as an owner or driver to just see every everything you do with the car. Somebody has been here and tried it and thought about it and done it this way, or designed it this way. And that way, in the Maki's sometimes different than the way it's been for 40 years and everything else. So that's, that's fun. I like that aspect of it, too.

Nicole Wakelin  46:40  
It was it was a very thoughtfully, excuse me thoughtfully designed card, there's nothing in there that you think they just found this and they didn't pay attention to it, there's a lot of thought that was put into how it looks, the ergonomics of it, how it is to live with it, how it how it feels to drive that car and ride in it. And like you said, if the only thing we can complain about is that it takes a little longer than we'd like to get used to the grab Enos of the brakes. And the more you drive it, the more that's going to become intuitive, I think of it a little bit like when you get behind the wheel of something that has a manual transmission. I know like we're the only three people that know how to drive those anymore. But you know, not every manual is the same. So then you get in and you're trying to find that pressure point on the clutch. And some of them you don't have to think about it, you get it right away others like whoa, in for a few you know, the first couple times you're stopping and going you're driving a little bit like somebody who's just learn you got to figure that out. Once you get it, you got it and you never have to figure it out again. So I think it's just a little bit like that there's a learning curve to it and that hopefully between that and then smoothing it out over updates. It's something will be an issue.

Dan Roth  47:42  
Yeah, so what did you think about it you guys you both of you have had a chance to drive it as well. My my off my rocker my point what's what's our Maki?

Nicole Wakelin  47:50  
No, I agree with you. I mean, I did notice the grabby braids the first I was thinking about as you guys were talking the first vehicle I ever did with one pedal was actually the Nissan LEAF which is an entirely different vehicle but like one pedal driving one pedal drive.

Dan Roth  48:05  
I love that car.

Nicole Wakelin  48:06  
Right and but the leaf was and I remember what I was trying to remember what was it like the first time I got behind the wheel of something with that one pedal driving, and it was hard like but I don't remember it ever being as grabby as the Maki I never remember you know, it was that first like okay, so if I take my foot off, whoa, and suddenly you're stopping because I'm taking my foot away too fast. But I remember finding it a little easier to modulate and that was like the first ever so I do think there's a difference like I definitely think the monkey's grubbier. But I figure Okay, she's gonna take a little more time to get used to if I was driving this every day back and forth to work like in the before times then you would get used to pretty quick, right? So it's, it's it's just the learning curve with it. But overall, I thought it was great. I had this steering wheel issue that you had, but using it sitting in it the materials it has that very sort of utilitarian kind of thing that EBS do because you're trying to get rid of as much weight as possible. It's not overdone inside, but it's kind of streamlined and elegant. I liked it. Great.

Dan Roth  49:07  
The design is quite nice. The materials, you know, I kind of have to give them a little bit of a pass on that they're they're trying to get cost and weight out so Exactly. It's not going to be it's not a Lincoln, you know

Nicole Wakelin  49:19  
you can't have genuine wood in genuine steel and genuine leather everywhere or you're

Sam Abuelsamid  49:24  
actually it doesn't have leather at all. This is one of the things they talked about at the launch of the machi was, you know this use of what they call vegan leather. It's a synthetic leather.

Dan Roth  49:39  
It feels like leather. It looks like

Sam Abuelsamid  49:40  
a nice material. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  49:41  
it does. Yeah, so who needs

Sam Abuelsamid  49:44  
this? It's not like the you know the plastic plastic II vinyl that was in my dad's 1973 Dodge Dart.

Dan Roth  49:51  
And it was shorts and a it would sear you and then you'd stick.

Nicole Wakelin  49:58  
Burn your legs. I used to hate My mom had said no century and it had navy blue vital seat was the worst.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:12  
But to do the question of range in the day, I assume you probably had the the extended range extended range battery all wheel drive Maki.

Dan Roth  50:22  
I haven't looked to see what he

Sam Abuelsamid  50:24  
I think they're all the ones in the press fleet are the extended, the longer the bigger battery

Dan Roth  50:29  
Oh, and she's fair to like this is a pre production car this it doesn't have a price on it says not to be sold. So that means that some of the tuning may not be final. That's that's Yeah, I should say

Sam Abuelsamid  50:38  
i think i think they you know, they're they're regularly updating the software in the in those in the Presley cars. But the, you know, it's officially rated at 270 miles of range with all wheel drive is 300 miles with the rear wheel drive version. Edmunds just, you know, they've actually published two articles over the last month or so, where they did a bunch of real world range testing with a whole group of TVs, and to see how the real world range compares to the, to the EPA numbers. And, and they the first one, the original one they did, you know, the longest range was the model three Tesla Model three long range, which is rated at 353, it went 345 miles, the Porsche TT icon, which got a lot of criticism, including from me, when it when it came out last year, for only having an EPA range of 203 miles, they actually got 323 miles out of it. And almost everybody has driven the TT icon has gotten way beyond what the official EPA range is. And it came in second, the the Maki was fifth, it's 270 miles, it got 304 miles on their real world test.

Unknown Speaker  51:51  
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:52  
So and, you know, the the testing I did when I had it, in early February, with or late January was, you know, that was when it was very cold. And, you know, I drove 164 miles and still had 80 miles left on it, you know, so you're in the 242 50 mile range, even, you know, at sub freezing temperatures, which is actually really good.

Dan Roth  52:15  
Did you use if at all? Or did you precondition?

Sam Abuelsamid  52:18  
I mean, a precondition to but then I, you know, I had the I had the climate control on, you know, but I had it, you know, set it like 65, you know, so it was comfortable, but but you know, not using too much of the the battery. And, you know, I think you know, in moderate and more temperate weather, you know, I can definitely see getting, you know, 300 miles or more out of the thing. So I think range is not really an issue for the for the lucky.

Dan Roth  52:43  
Well, one of the questions we had was how usable is it both day to day, and can it handle weekend trips 200 miles from home, for a family of four, I think it's eminently usable day to day, build quality is great. You know, and even on a pre production car, I'm not noticing any flaws in terms of like body gaps or anything like that, no rattles, it's just nice and tight. They've, they know how to put a car together. So this one is screwed together. Well, I, you know, 200 miles from home. If you're doing a 400 mile round trip, as long as you have charging where you're going, that's fine. You should have no problem getting there. The fordpass app will to help you plan your trip, it's going to show you chargers that's where I actually found the closest fast charger because I can I can go and charge at level two in town. But I want to try fast charging because there's reports of the fast charge level of ramping up and then quickly back down once it hits a peak. So I want to see if I can have anything to say about that. I don't know what my experience is going to be. We're starting to see that wave of solid. Evie is coming from everybody, you know Volkswagens right behind Ford with with their TVs that are going to start to hit the market and they're all moving very aggressively to get them into the market that Edmunds tested. They test them too. They actually run out of juice, or did they test them till they were displaying zero

Sam Abuelsamid  54:04  
range. The original test that they did in early February, they published in early February, was testing it till it was at zero range. The Tesla actually complained quite vociferously about this, because every single Tesla that they tested, and they tested a bunch of different variants, model wise S's and x's. Every single Tesla fell short of the EPA range, while almost every other Eevee exceeded the EPA range in some cases by a significant amount. And Tesla complained about this and said, Well, we leave a buffer in there even when it's zero, there's still some charge left. And so they went back, Edmonds went back and retested some of them and they retested five, five of them, or six of them and for even with that extra buffer, they ran it until it came to a complete stop. That had no no charge left and Have the six still failed to meet the EPA range even with that? So it's telling me Tesla, you know, is kind of notorious for overstating on the EPA range, you know it almost every independent tests that's been done, North America, Europe elsewhere, of range with Tesla's fault sees them falling anywhere from 20 to 30%. Shy, in many cases of the EPA range numbers.

Dan Roth  55:27  
Yeah, I think it's it's a great effort. And I hope that they build more V's on this platform. I I'm pleased with the machi.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:36  
It sounds like they are. In fact, you know, there's, there was some news out of Ohio last week, originally, I guess, they had plant in the last union contract they told the UAW that they would build EBS at the Avon Lake assembly plant near Cleveland. And currently that plant builds medium and heavy duty trucks that we're going to do Evie sir, but they changed the plan. And they're actually going to build a couple more e V's in kwantlen, Mexico where they build the Maki and because they want to keep building the medium and heavy duty trucks in Avon lake and the union was not thrilled about that, you know, they said well no we want to be productions you know, it's not like you lose any losing any jobs. So anyway, that's a whole other thing but yeah, they're they're going to be building at least a couple more vehicles off the same machi platform one of which will almost certainly be a Lincoln

Dan Roth  56:28  
and that will have the nice interior that everybody Yes, yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  56:31  
yes, the real word and all the other fancy trends. Yeah,

Dan Roth  56:34  
full fat weather.

So we've gotten through the fleet. I love the first topic that we have here on our list, buying a Tesla with Bitcoin because that just seems like the more we talk about words like that together we're gonna get sucked into a vortex it's just like, that's tech bro. buzzword Bonanza there. But if you buy a Tesla Bitcoin you're gonna get whacked for taxes

Sam Abuelsamid  57:04  
if you're not familiar with Bitcoin, first of all, you know Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency giant

Dan Roth  57:09  
Excel spreadsheet. That's all it's really like.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:13  
It's slightly more complicated than that. But yeah, close. So

Dan Roth  57:17  
also, if you're buying a Tesla, because they're saving the world understand that Bitcoin is the like filthiest, most dirty power consuming thing, right? You should not

Sam Abuelsamid  57:27  
it requires a lot of power a lot of electricity to mine Bitcoin and then also to do the transactions because of the way it works with the idea of the blockchain. Yeah, this fancy spreadsheet, the the idea, the concept of the blockchain is actually really cool. And I'm not going to get into that today. But there's a lot of really interesting applications so that this is not one of them, you know, problem with Bitcoin is, is actually because the way it was set up, it's actually a really terrible currency to use, you know, as something to use to buy stuff. It's really not very practical at all. And it's, it's complicated. And, you know, there's a lot of problems with it.

Dan Roth  58:10  
Well, it's not fiat currency. Like, like, is it it's, I thought it was more like something like gold where it's like, because there's only so many, it's, you know, the, it's, it's different than like $1, which is, you know, it's Yeah, yeah, right. The dollar is just

Sam Abuelsamid  58:29  
a Bitcoin, you know, a Bitcoin only has value to the extent that people believe it has value. Well, yeah. Which is what a fiat currency is. Okay, I mean, at least at least with gold, you know, you have, you can have a physical coin that you made out of gold, that's true, you can exchange something physical in exchange for some goods. And, you know, you've got something that, you know, has some, like, I mean, even the value of gold to some degree is Fiat, but, yeah, you know,

Dan Roth  58:59  
and we don't know

Sam Abuelsamid  59:02  
Bitcoin is Bitcoin is a fiat currency that's not controlled by any government. I think

Dan Roth  59:05  
that's where I'm getting stuck because our fiat currencies, we tend to think of them as backed by the full faith and, you know, whatever of of a government and you know, that that government that those that federal backing means that they're generally good for their debts, right and so forth. Bitcoin has none

Sam Abuelsamid  59:21  
of that, right. Like, it's what it's valued at whatever, people trading it on any given day think it's valued at

Dan Roth  59:29  
which is ludicrous.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:31  
Yeah. So So the thing is, okay, because the value of Bitcoin bounces around all over the place, you know, it's highly volatile, and a lot of people are investing in it, you know, actually, I wouldn't say they're investing it they are speculating Nicole, do

Dan Roth  59:45  
you own any Bitcoin?

Nicole Wakelin  59:46  
I do not own any Bitcoin. I do not do either new. No, I didn't think so. I was quite like she'll

Sam Abuelsamid  59:58  
my kids does she She has invested in Bitcoin but that's a whole other issue I don't want to get

Dan Roth  1:00:05  
invest like back in the day and then lose the the like the past key or whatever like no recording on the hard drive somewhere. I

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:12  
have a million dollars of Bitcoin but it's on a hard drive and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:16  
one of the one of the things I do a weekly car tech segment on Leo Laporte, the tech guy radio show, and years ago, Leo had set up a tip jar for twit for his twit Podcast Network for where you could donate Bitcoin. And you know, he, people had donated almost eight Bitcoin into that tip jar,

Dan Roth  1:00:36  
it's got to be worth a lot now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:37  
That's what it's worth about half a million dollars. Now. The problem is Leo has the Bitcoin wallet. He has no idea what the password is

Dan Roth  1:00:46  
Erica didn't didn't

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:51  
lose that I knew Mr. techie guy was real.

Dan Roth  1:00:56  
And Hang on, aren't they sponsored by LastPass?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:01  
Yeah. But for whatever reason, Leo never actually put the password for that wallet in LastPass.

Dan Roth  1:01:09  
You know, there are companies out there that can help him figure that out,

Unknown Speaker  1:01:13  
their password is just like us, that's all he's just like

Dan Roth  1:01:22  
passwords on scraps of paper.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:24  
It's just so So the thing is, you know, because bitcoins value bounces around everywhere, you know, when you buy some Bitcoin, and then you go to spend it on something, it's going to get converted back to dollars or to some other currency. And when you transfer it to somebody else, now that the difference in that value from when you bought it to when you transfer it, in this case, transferring it to Elan musk in exchange for a Tesla vehicle, the IRS wants capital gains tax paid on that if you bought that Bitcoin at $20,000 and it's now worth $60,000 you're gonna have to pay taxes on that so you're potentially depending on you know, how much the value has has appreciated over time. You may be if you buy a $50,000 Tesla with Bitcoin you might be on the hook for several 1000 or perhaps depending on how long you've been holding that Bitcoin perhaps 10s of 1000s of dollars in capital gains tax on you know, just in addition to the price of buying the car

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:28  
seems like anytime that whenever you no matter what then when you when you finally use that Bitcoin to buy it Yeah, no, that's that's where you want to have it little tiny bits and pieces, you spend your Bitcoin wherever, or one ginormous chunk when you spend a whole bunch of bits by yourself a Tesla?

Dan Roth  1:02:44  
Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to think of it is it's a lot like your your IRA or something right? Like it's, it's got this this value, when you cash that value out, you're receiving that money, you need to pay tax on that money because depending on your IRA, I know there's some that you pay tax on the way in but if it's a traditional IRA when you take a distribution you've you've got a capital gain that you have gotten the capital out of your asset or your your investment so now you need to pay tax on that at that time, so Bitcoin is really like that sort of idea where it's got value stored in it when you extract the value now you're on the hook for the taxes of that value. It seems like a much higher tax rate than what you would pay just like a normal transaction for a car like a Tesla like if you weren't paying Well

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:37  
yeah, you're paying that in addition to the capital gains tax rate is like 15% so you're paying that on top of whatever sales tax in the state where you buy the car

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:49  
sales tax

Dan Roth  1:03:50  
Yeah right. A lot of Bitcoin tech for is in New Hampshire they like New Hampshire cuz it's tax

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:56  
there's a Bitcoin machine dispenser I don't know like there's a thing it's like this local little diner and I always see it it's like a little box thing on the wall. It's like a Bitcoin thing. I've never investigated I'll take a picture I'll show it to you. I would have never I'm like Bitcoin white and it's in this like little diner just randomly. I don't know, maybe you can pay for your food in Bitcoin? I don't know. burger and fries worth of Bitcoin.

Dan Roth  1:04:21  
I that's an expensive meal.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:23  
It is funny. You know, there are stories like back in the early days of Bitcoin in early 2010s it was a story of some guy you know, when it first launched there were a few places that were started accepting Bitcoin as payment and some guy you know, bought a pizza with like seven Bitcoin, you know, when it was worth, like, $1 you know, and just, I wouldn't even want to think about having done something like that, you know, now, you know, that's seven Bitcoins. You know, that's a million dollar pizza 400 $400,000 Pizza

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:55  
the most it's like this crazy meals you get where you get like, you know, shaved gold on top of stuff.

Dan Roth  1:05:02  
That was not that's basically the automaker luncheons, they have us press people to write

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:07  
only one bitcoin for each of us, but that lunch?

Dan Roth  1:05:12  
So yeah, it's so why would you ever do this? What?

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:17  
Well, if you want to I mean, if you don't have to say no, I mean, it makes no sense, but it makes sense. So you have to pay the capital gains on their Bitcoin no matter what, at some point refilling, right? Someday you're getting hit with that. So you can either wait and get hit with it, whatever it may be, you're making less money when you're retired. So you're, you know, it makes more sense to do it when you're retired or something, but you're gonna pay capital gains regardless. So if you don't have the money to buy the car, but you can use your Bitcoin and handle the capital gains, your net might still be better, you know, at this moment, if it's like, that's what stands between me getting a Tesla or not paying the capital gains on that money or having to come up with, you know, 60 grand. Yeah, I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:55  
mean, you know, if it's, you know, if you bought Bitcoin when it was 10 or 100, or even $1,000, right, yeah, it's, you know, 55 $60,000. Now a Bitcoin, you know, basically free money. So even if you take out that tax, you know, you're, you're still gonna be way ahead.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:14  
It's just people who don't know that there's a capital gains. It's like, oh, shoot that. No, that's really surprising. That's, and that's,

Dan Roth  1:06:23  
I think the danger of Bitcoin is because it's so popular. And it's, it's something that's on the tip of everybody's tongue, but it is it's an investment. It's an investment instrument. And so you have to understand investing, and you have to be savvy about that. And it's a speculative

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:38  
investment instrument.

Dan Roth  1:06:40  
And so anytime you're investing, and you're you're doing these things, you need to understand what's going to happen, like I can put money in, am I going to lose it? Straight speculation, or am I putting into like a mutual fund where it's generally a little bit of a better bet? Or, you know, when I draw on that, what am I going to what am I going to pay, you know, and that's, you know, when you when you and especially the class of investment, if you draw on your IRA, if you look at your IRA, and you're like, I want a Tesla, I've got 120k in my IRA, I'll take 60 out be good. Well, you're actually gonna pay a lot higher than 15% capital gains, you're gonna pay capital gains, plus, you're gonna pay the early penalty. So like, each investment class has its own rules, you should probably know that if you're gonna put money into those things,

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:27  
surprise anybody who bought Bitcoin and thought you could just cash that in and if it was worth 50 grand now you got 50 grand it's like well 50 grand minus your capital Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:07:34  
you'll get 50 for a moment and then you'll

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:38  
that's fine if you just take the 50 and run like no check a little bit away does IRS wants their chunk

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:43  
so before you go into the Tesla app on your phone and hit buy with Bitcoin, you know, call your accountant first and asking how much this is really going to cost you

Dan Roth  1:07:54  
the do or do the freelancer trick any invoice cut it in half Yeah, that's what you get.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:03  
I did I always was like, Oh look at this great check wall wall is I like put aside half a bit so that I know that I'm good when tax time comes. Yep.

Dan Roth  1:08:13  
easy, super easy rule of thumb. So if you need to buy a $60,000 Tesla, you need 120k where the Bitcoin Alright.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:24  
So sticking with electric car stuff, electric vehicle stuff. Jeep and electrify America announced this week that they're partnering up back. A few months ago when Jeep first announced the Wrangler for by II plug in hybrid. They said that they were going to install some Evie chargers at the trailhead to some of the more popular places where people go off roading with jeeps like in Moab and the Rubicon trail and California and a few other places. And now they've revealed more details about that, since they're finally going to start actually shipping Wrangler, for by ease to customers in the next couple of weeks. They actually are partnering with electrify America. So electrify America is going to do the installation and operate the Chargers, these is trailhead chargers. And there'll be available you know, at these various locations. So if you have a Wrangler for bi e or any other, you know, electric offroader you can, you know, you can when you get to the trailhead, you can plug it in, charge it up, these are all going to be level two chargers, not not DC fast chargers. But with something like the Wrangler, you know, I think you can fill it up completely in like about an hour and a half or something like that. That way you can with you know, 20 plus miles of range for electric range from this thing. You can basically traverse the entire trail without any emissions. That's really cool. Yeah, this

Dan Roth  1:09:49  
isn't like related to those monolith things that they found out in Arizona, right that the Jeep quickly like photoshops their brand

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:57  
was actually I believe we're actually prototype charger

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:01  
In the back, there was a plug. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:04  
If you if you feel around, you can find a little button to press divot there. Press that and that door opens up and you get your charge cable.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:11  
These are really chargers

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:13  
and they're gonna be solar solar powered.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:15  
Really cool the picture it looks really slick and it is a giant advertising billboard for Jeep, like if you didn't know existed Hey, now you do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:23  
I suspect anybody heading out on the Rubicon trail probably knows the Jeep after driving a Land Rover Defender or you know

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:35  
I'm so sad that we didn't get to drive that earlier.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:38  
Yeah, I think I think they're gonna be doing something pretty soon. That was just the touch with somebody from Jeep the other day. And he said they're Yeah, they're, they're finally gonna start shipping in the next couple of weeks to customers. Oh,

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:51  
cuz we're gonna drive do you drive in November or something? There was a media giant. I want to say November don't quote me on that. But I believe it was in November, and then the COVID so we didn't get to do it after all, which made me sad. So I really wanted to check this out. I love Jeep.

Dan Roth  1:11:06  
Yeah, I think everybody loves jeeps and electric jeeps. I think you're gonna be a thing. Wait,

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:10  
Sam, do you love jeeps?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:14  
If I'm going off road, then yeah, I absolutely love Jeeps, okay,

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:16  
because you're gonna have an issue. I'm like, I'm not liking his babies. But if you have hate for Jeep, then this is my

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:23  
i don't i don't have hate for Jeep. You know, I think that you know, for for every task, you've got to use the right tool for the job. I don't go off road very often. I don't I don't haul around seven people, you know, so you know, SUVs are not the right tool for the jobs that I that I require? If that's the job that you require of a vehicle, go for it.

Dan Roth  1:11:47  
To say like, I love Jeeps, I would probably not

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:51  
own a Wrangler, right. Why would you not own a car?

Dan Roth  1:11:54  
Like it's one of those things like I just get it out of my system every time I have one as a media loan. Like they're, they are exactly what they're supposed to be. They're a little a little rough, a little loud, and they're more refined than they've ever been. But they're they're sure they have that you're still

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:09  
very much a Jeep

Dan Roth  1:12:10  
they're exactly what they're supposed to be after a little while I I am old and tired and I just want it to be quiet.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:18  
I love when they first have the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:21  
Maki and whisper mode

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:23  
and the gladiator first came out I took it all the way from Nashville up to Montreal and for like all approved like I had paper ticket over the border here you go That was a long drive and I love that thing like I just let we have a little pains off the you know the top so I'll open I can just kept driving that further into Canada and driving and driving.

Dan Roth  1:12:45  
They have charm for sure. And I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:48  
Gladiator Mojave is great.

Dan Roth  1:12:50  
Fantastic. Yeah. So I'm not anti Jeep. I just I think that my disposition I am the noise maker not necessarily that noise receiver in my my reality so and then

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:02  
answer you I'm pro Jeep I love I love Jeep. I my mom had I can't wait for the new grandma near my mom had a brand wagoneer back in 1982 or something with like the genuine full wood paneling on the side. And I love that you could put a small army of your high school friends into that thing, just saying so that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:22  
that that is going to be the the thing that we're going to you know, the aftermarket thing that we're going to be seeing this fall is you know, various kinds of wood kits for the new wagon errs.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:32  
You know, I guess they said they didn't do it because they felt like Well, that was of a moment. And that's not where we are now. And I'm like but if you've done some little throwback, made that available, there's I think a lot of people who would have slapped wood paneling.

Dan Roth  1:13:44  
I think they want to see what the aftermarket is going to do at first to say we'll let the aftermarket handle that. And if it really becomes exceedingly popular, they'll come though officially sanctioned one

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:55  
offer they'll offer something through Mopar, eventually

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:57  
it'll be a Mopar thing. Yeah, it'll be an official Mopar enhancement. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:01  
I hope speaking of wood paneling. Have you ever seen Frank Marcus's car? No, no.

Dan Roth  1:14:08  
He's got our cake wood panel kei cars like the country

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:11  
is husband have an 84 I think it was. I think it was Town and Country wagon. So the Chrysler Yeah, the fancier version, Town and Country wagon with the woody side panels and the turbo 2.2 liter four cylinder in there. Yeah. That's a great vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:31  
That's awesome. It's why I like like all those things that were like of a time that are not definitely 2021 the wood paneling on cars, they don't realize the old cars and I'm like, I love it. I know. It's kind of weirdly tacky and half the time it's sort of peeling off. I love it. It's

Dan Roth  1:14:47  
so funny too, because like our nostalgia for it is like we have the nostalgia for the nostalgia of the time. That was nostalgic about the wood bodied station wagons of the 30s and 40s.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:58  
So I'm nostalgia actually. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:15:01  
yeah, you're like, well, you're nostalgic for someone else's nostalgia.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:04  
Okay. Yeah. Dang it. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:08  
that's right. Show title rivian also announced this week, or maybe it was last week that they are building out their own charging network, much as Tesla has done, they call it a rivian Adventure network, which I have no complaints about that, you know, it's like automakers, you know, if they, they want to go out there and build install chargers, you know, to get more infrastructure out there. So more people will buy TVs, all for that. My complaint with what rivian is doing is they're building a network they plan to have by 2023 3500 dc fast chargers, at what 600 locations, so 600 stations with 3500 chargers by 2020 by the end of 2023. They're using this the CCS chargers, which is the same as what you have, you know, from everybody that isn't Tesla. So it's a standard charger. But these are going to be exclusive to review and owners. Anybody else driving any other Eevee with a with a CCS charger will not be allowed to use these which I think is stupid.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:24  
But you say there's another note in there that says they're installing 10,000 around the country that won't be tied to the review. NET one of those

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:30  
are going to be level two chargers so just the slower AC chargers like

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:34  
3.6 everyone else a bone like here.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:38  
But you know, I'd rather see you know, all of them be accessible to everybody. I mean, I don't I certainly don't expect rivian or Tesla or anybody else to give free charging to people who buy a Ford or a Volkswagen or GM Evie, it's expensive,

Dan Roth  1:16:54  
it's not their job to become the charging infrastructure company for the entire Evie owner

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:00  
well and to give away free electricity, I mean, it costs well aware of how much it costs to install these things. I mean, you know, it's a couple $100,000 to install a DC fast charger, a single one, you know, and you've got to have enough electrical capacity and everything coming in. It's it's a costly endeavor. But you know, I think that one way to make your money back on that is to open it up to everybody to allow everybody to use these things, you know, and charge them for it just like you know, they charge for gas Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:30  
it says I'm going to charge their owners for this the company didn't release info on how much owners will have to pay so it'll be revealed only but you're not going to get free charging at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:40  
Yeah, I'm sure that you know, like most other automakers, you know, they'll You know, when you buy the vehicle you'll get some amount of free charging, but you know, just the restricting it only to their own customers i think is is a fundamentally bad idea.

Dan Roth  1:17:55  
I agree with that. I mean, I think that if you're looking at building a business it seems like a potential revenue stream I also think you have to balance it by making your customers have your special thing feel like they are special. There's a middle ground there

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:10  
give give give rivian owners you know discounted pricing you know charge charge extra for non reviens but there's there's ways to do it, you know, but I just don't think that you know, if what you're trying to do is expand the marketplace for TVs and get more people to adopt TVs you know what one of the things you know my company one of the reports that we publish is an annual consumer survey you know, consumer profiles for TVs and two of the three biggest barriers to entry for E V's arrange access to charging and cost you know the range and access to charging you know go hand in hand and if you don't have access to charging you're not going to buy an Eevee you know make it as easy as possible for people to to buy an Eevee and the more people buy

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:59  
this just gives you a reason to get a revamp but yeah you're right it doesn't help the overall Evie market although maybe it does I mean even if you can convince someone to buy or then over a you know the gas engine you've at least gotten someone in the door with a BS you know if they get another review next time maybe now that once they're in TVs they'll say oh well this time Oh by a monkey or a Tesla or bolts or whatever else instead you know just get a person in the door but just for their brand.

Dan Roth  1:19:24  
Yeah, I would love for them to get to the point where they have to worry about conquests and I guess there's a little bit of that people are very brand loyal reviens making a great case for itself already a third their trucks look really cool. They have a great team. I think they continue to build out their team and they're, they're not they're not moving too fast or they become sloppy you know the whole move fast and break things. ethos from from software can can hurt you if you try to do it. Try to apply it to automaking

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:55  
are hurt or hurt other people on the road.

Dan Roth  1:19:57  
It feels like a misstep. But maybe There's, there's some other strategy behind it that we're just see

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:03  
how what happens once the reviens are out there and they have their customers and see how long it stays. Yeah, really and only or if at some point they say, Okay, now we're gonna really change this up, you know?

Dan Roth  1:20:14  
Yeah, I mean really the the charging experience is going to be key and that's still one of the best things about Tesla ownership is the charging experience is on point it's generally just better than anybody else so far, and so I could see rivian wants to do that where they want to make sure that you have a great charging experience with their product I can see that

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:37  
and that child it's funny the Tesla charged up here because we get to know somebody the Tesla charging stations, they're always cleared because of how they're located. So if the superchargers you can always get to them there's never probably even when there's snow, some of the other spots where there are little chargers like guys don't even know what they are and there's snow all packed up and you can't even you can't even get to it to charge it but you don't see it at the superchargers because they're always the super well March giant bank, you know, and everybody knows what they are so yeah, the access thing even in the winter, you can always find yourself a supercharger at the supercharger network, but you can't necessarily get to the same Evie charging station for somebody else to even use it all year because now somehow I didn't catch that those two little Poles were important and he's buried them in eight feet of snow right

Dan Roth  1:21:23  
behind the fence that sometimes blocked yeah that's all

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:26  
yeah well that's you know that's that's another complaint I have about charges like yeah, good luck you know half the time finding the actual the physical charger you know you've got a map you know shows you Oh, there's a charging station here you know in this at this mall, but then you end up driving around for half an hour trying to actually find the physical charger

Dan Roth  1:21:46  
I mean luckily there's not anything else at malls these days

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:52  
gas stations you see the signs everywhere you know for a gas station shell station BP or whatever you can see it's never there's never there's never any signs on these chargers so you have no idea that they're there

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:08  
they're hard to find and like when you have Tesla superchargers it's normally a huge Bank of them and they're so you know you you see them out of the corner and when they're at a gas station you cannot miss them you know lined up on the side of like the rest areas and stuff in New Hampshire have them it's this huge Bank of them you could not miss that those are Tesla charging stations right there they're never hidden they're always very easy to find like you have a sign on the you know on that side of the highway like a VP but still once you knew that they were there when you get off the road you're gonna have no problem finding that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:39  
let's let's do some listener mails

Dan Roth  1:22:40  
all right now we did it a little music intro for this I'm sorry.

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:45  
Well so any musical instruments

Dan Roth  1:22:49  
listeners send in your you send in your your musical interludes royalty free, please. Yes, sir. It's a free will give you what is it share? Like will will tell. Tell people who did it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:03  
We need to send somebody some at least silly automotive OEM.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:06  
Wait, that's that's something on our to do list.

Dan Roth  1:23:09  
We have a longer to do list. We've talked about doing things.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:12  
I'll send you a couple of flash drives with automaker logos on them

Dan Roth  1:23:16  
and every, every episode of the show. Listen, I've got a to do list I'm going to get through in the next couple of weeks, so I'll have time so it's fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:27  
So first up Shawn Whitehurst Good morning web hosts. I just listened to your episode with a healthy discussion on supercruise on the bowl TV. Earlier this week, a legendary member of the St. Louis Blues organization died in a car accident. It happened to be a Cadillac which got me thinking the autopsy revealed no fatal organ damage from the accident instead listing cause of death as a cardiac incident. I know some autonomous systems take actions when a driver is not providing input. Do any systems Stop the vehicle? Fortunately, these this accident resulted in a glancing blow to a minivan with minor injuries. And then an impact for the barrier. Are any companies openly discussing measures their systems could take during a medical emergency even stopping in a lane of travel on a highway may be safer than the vehicle continuing with an incapacitated driver? I'm just curious about these outlier situations on autonomous design. So the answer The answer is yes. Get Cadillac or GM does this with supercruise. They've got the infrared driver monitor system that's looking at the driver to make sure you're watching the road when you're using supercruise. And if you are not paying attention, or if you become non responsive, the system will it'll alert you first if you don't take the wheel if you don't take over control, it will bring start slowing the vehicle down when it gets to 40 miles an hour turns on the hazard warning lights. If you're still non responsive, it will bring the vehicle to a complete stop. And if you still don't respond, you know, if there's indications that you are, you know, incapacitated in any way, it will in fact, use The OnStar system to call for emergency services. it'll, it'll, it'll speak to you through speakers first and say, Hey, are you okay? Do you need help? If you don't respond within a minute or two, it will call for call for help. And the GM I think, is the only one right now that's doing the the call for help part of it. I expect others will, I suspect Ford will be doing this when they launched their active drive assist this summer. And also, Nissan when they launched the ARIA with at the end of the year with their pro pilot version two, but even pro pilot, the current generation pro pilot, if you if it thinks that your hands are not on the wheel, if you don't respond when it alerts you, it will slow the car down and bring it to a stop. And a lot most other systems like this, will do this. Even Tesla's eventually, if it thinks your hands are not on the wheel will slow the car down and bring it to

Dan Roth  1:25:54  
a start. If it doesn't flow into something first.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:58  
Tesla it may take many minutes to do that, depending on where you are in the road conditions, but but it will eventually stop. It doesn't call for help. But it will eventually stop the car.

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:08  
I tried it out in the Nissan propilot assist in our current jet. And yeah, like we're driving like, okay, let's see. And it aggressively. lets you know, it's like, oh, yeah, it's like listening to like the Red Alert in Star Trek at a certain point. But it's so there's no way that if you if you miss that you should have been paying attention that you could. So if you were incapacitated, and that wouldn't wake you up that would wake you up from anything. So you'd have to really be incapacitated. And then it Well yeah, bring you to a stop nice and straight like

Dan Roth  1:26:38  
that calling for help. Part is something that's been part of OnStar for a long time, it almost goes all the way back to the original OnStar implement. That was that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:47  
was an original feature when if the airbags went off in a crash, it would automatically call 911

Dan Roth  1:26:53  
which is like, that's great. And I think that combining that with the ability of the car to actually get over to you know, safely stop means that they don't have to wait for the airbag warning. To deploy, you'd have to wait until you've hit something. So it's I think it's a safety improvement.

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:10  
OnStar has always been so good with that, like I didn't think years ago where they took astons their little OnStar call center and you got to experience what they didn't hear the stories. It's kind of amazing. It's always one of those things like, I think it gets underrated for just how much that can help you if something goes horribly wrong. very harsh. Yeah, doesn't surprise me that they're one of the first ones to say, okay, and also we will call for help. If our you know, supercruise decides that you're not, you're somehow in trouble and need help.

Dan Roth  1:27:38  
I mean, they invented the sort of telematics for the consumer like that. As like,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:43  
they were the first in 1996.

Dan Roth  1:27:46  
Yeah, ons, where is their like network operation centers across

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:51  
all their call centers. But there's a big network right in the red center downtown in Detroit. Okay, there's like there's like a cave, I bet that building is so huge, like, you go downstairs and there's an OnStar logo and a Batman that signal. Honestly, summary of a picture they're doing like development stuff. But then it can take you up to where they have, you know, you have, you can see the screens, and it literally shows you how they can see that we're getting a lot of calls here, we're getting a lot of calls there. They can see like, it's so cool. They can see see there was an issue. I don't know there was a flood, there was a hurricane, there was an earthquake, they can see the sudden influx of OnStar calls and open things up. So they know like we have a problem here. It's it's an unbelievably sophisticated and interesting system to watch and to talk to the people who answer the calls, whether it's just the Hey, how do I get to the nearest chick fil a, or help my husband having a heart attack? It's amazing what that system is capable of handling?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:44  
That's cool. Yeah. And, you know, they've they've responded to say it's more than 100,000 crashes, you know, sent out first responders with 100,000 crashes over the last 25 years. Yeah. So it's, it's used a lot. You know, and and then, you know, also, you know, just for general help and assistance. So, you know, what we're gonna see going forward in the next few years is a lot more cars equipped with these types of driver monitor systems, that are you looking to see if you're alert, you know, and one of the advantages to this, you know, is it can detect, you know, just in general, you know, distracted driving, you know, or if you're impaired, or, you know, if you if you're having a medical issue, you know, or drowsiness, you know, because it's looking for your eyes and your head pose. And when when it does that, then it can, it can respond in either, you know, try to alert you to see if you are if you are actually, you know, ill or ill or injured, or, you know, just to get you back on track, hopefully.

Dan Roth  1:29:48  
Yeah. And you know, I tend to have that skeptical approach to autonomy and self driving cars is the thing like I don't think we're ever going to get there to full self driving, but maybe I'll be surprised, but I think this is a really good use case for autonomous systems and automation. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And it helps avoid crashes that would otherwise be worse. Even just glancing blow if they talks about like, it sucks that there was another car involved. But if there was a way to, you know, make it just be that bad versus like hitting something, you know, much more violently. It's a good reason to have all that stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:27  
Yep. All right, next up, get hemmingway Hey, guys, I guess I can now say that without gender neutral preface. Since Rebecca has left GED. Wow. You missed your opportunity. If you if you'd sent this email in last week, you

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:45  
guys, encompassing enough for me? Hello, fellows.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:53  
We're not we're not easily offended here. Now. She will be missed as she brought a perspective that was opposite what I focus on. And that's a good thing. And hopefully, I think Nicole will bring some of that to us as well. electrification is the obvious future. And right now infrastructure is a big obstacle, which we were just talking about. There's been some action in the long haul industry with developing electric rigs. But then in the consumer market trucks with some nice towing numbers. I currently have a 2015 Chevy Volt and love the electric side of it for running around town. In the year of ownership, I've gassed it up maybe twice. However, for anything long haul, I take my 2017 Nissan Titan X d diesel, I have a 36 foot travel trailer, which we take trips with, and I can't imagine attempting anything outside of battery range, which will be significantly reduced while towing. I get range anxiety enough from a diesel on cross country trips, trying to find a station I can pull into and more significantly out of proper intervals is hard enough within established infrastructure. And you can sure as heck can't pull it into a charging station. Where are that currently? We're that currently an option? What chatter Have you guys heard for this side of electrification, I'd like my next vehicle, which is still four to five years off to be a full electric truck. But I can't do that. If I can't do the one thing a truck was built for. And that's toe. Side note. I've never really looked at what you guys look like until listening for about two years. And it's comical to me that my mental image of your voice is essentially had Sam's voice and dance body and vice versa. I love the show. Keep up the good work.

Dan Roth  1:32:23  
I think that's not great. Same I have a deeper voice than I do. So that's good. Yeah, I think your interim step is going to be a hybrid like a hybrid f. f series.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:32  
Well, no. And we've got full electric trucks coming reviens launching later this year. Yeah. Lordstown motors claims are going to be launching this year but they're not selling to consumers anyway. Don't expect them to ever really arrive. But you know, GM is launching the the Hummer EV this year. And there's, you know, there's going to be more conventional type electric pickups from GM. Probably within the next year, I think, you know, we'll see we'll see a Chevy pick electric pickup. Ford's launching the F 150. Electric next year. There's the cybertruck.

Dan Roth  1:33:05  
Come on.

Nicole Wakelin  1:33:07  
Right. I mean, it's supposedly, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:10  
So there are electric pickups coming. But he's right, though, I think this is a real challenge. I mean, what you were just talking about the coal with, you know, the plow drivers, you know, plowing the snow on top of the charges, right? It's hard enough with a car, you know, or, you know, smaller vehicle, if you're towing something with a truck. That's, you know, the, the operators of these charging stations really need to start looking at how to change the configuration of these vehicles. Because I know Dan Edmonds, you know, he did several tests a couple of years back, when the Model X first came out, doing some testing tests, and trying to charge that thing up on a road trip, while towing a trailer was really, really hard. Because, you know, these most of these charging stations are designed to, you know, pull straight enter back in, you know, in bays, because you're sitting there for a while, and they're not set up, like gas stations were, you know, where you drive and drive out. And I think, you know, we're the, you know, companies like electrify America and, and chargepoint and Evie, go and blank and others, you know, really need to start doing this. I'm going to be really curious to see how rivian does this, you know, we just talked about rivian. And how they do this with their charging stations with, you know, what are they ail? Are they going to arrange them in a way that you can do that drive in drive out? Because right now, there really aren't any stations like that.

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:38  
I don't, you know, I think part of you know, EMTs are still in the process of being accepted by the public. Now, there's a lot of people who won't even consider one yet. Most of what most people are considering this point, our vehicles that are just driving drove out is fine. Most people aren't considering towing with them. Like I think that still I know it'll happen. I know. Realistically you can. But I think that's not where Most of the AV using public is right now and I don't know what they're gonna be there for a little while yet I think this guy is kind of a nice exception, you know that he's like, I want to be able to tell with mine, but am I gonna be able to do it? I think for smaller towing jobs, you know, when more like, local, like you're going camping a couple hours outside of your house, you know, not going on a major road trip, towing a 36 foot trailer or something. I think it's just because the public isn't there yet. And they're just trying to get Okay, let's get the people who are most likely to adopt the people who are most likely to adopt right now. They're driving cars, they're not worrying about a truck, they can tow it. So I almost like it feels like a phase two thing that they'll actually make the Chargers work for that.

Dan Roth  1:35:42  
I wonder if some of it too, is a blind spot from the the the folks that developed the current Evie landscape. Now that we've got automakers getting in there, and really applying it to trucks, they're going to understand truck uses, and they'll figure out how to apply that, you know, and how to make it work. And what changes to make, you know, because I think that IE V's they've gotten their rise from folks outside of the automotive industry with sort of a narrow perspective, you look at who's, you know, at the top of those, those companies and sort of driving product decisions. there's not as many like automaker veterans, getting them to this point, now they're starting to bring in automaker veterans. And my point is kind of going off the rails here a little bit, but I just think that you know, as as you have them, Evie trucks integrated into your normal product development cycle, they're gonna have to figure out all of those things. How does it work? You know, car makers do this? How does it how does it work at the gas pump? How does you know all this stuff? Like how convenient? Is it? What's it like to use? What changes can we make? How can we partner with industry in certain places to make it a little easier, we can both sort of, you know, get some sort of shine from a new development. So that's going to come as they develop the trucks for market, I guess where I was going with, like, you're probably going to want to wait a few years before you do an electric truck is like the ones that are going to come to market tend to be like, really premium, like the Hummer. I know that it's a truck. But it's kinda like, that's a super premium bubble. But I don't expect any of those to ever be used, like a truck, I guess is like my my thought and the rivian it's supposed to get here. I'm, I'm, I'm doing my skeptic bit, I suppose. which I know

Nicole Wakelin  1:37:40  
is gonna get here because they've done a lot of stuff with their truck, their truck, you know, out there running white, right, me haul ticket

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:47  
they're doing out there, you know, they're doing pilot production Now, those and it's premium, and it starts at 67,000. You know, before the

Dan Roth  1:37:56  
tax breaks, that's not ridiculous for a truck. Like that's true.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:01  
And, you know, GM, GM is going to launch, you know, something, you know, much more conventional than the Hummer, you know, more conventional pickup than the Hummer, probably in 2022. And Ford's, you know, doing the F 150, which is, you know, much more conventional, you know, very conventional truck. So, they'll there'll be there, you know, within the next 18 months, you know, we will have a bunch of electric pickup trucks on the road.

Dan Roth  1:38:27  
Okay, that's sooner than I expected. But,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:31  
again, but but tolling tolling is going to be a challenge. Because, you know, when you when you put attach a trailer to an electric vehicle, you can count on cutting the range in half. Generally, this is the rule of thumb. And so, you know, if you've got 300 miles of range, you're looking at stopping to charge every 150 miles, you know, why

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:51  
they're not people aren't really doing it. That's why I feel like it's like it's almost too early or something. We just started a point where we can realistically tow solid stuff, you know, really tow

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:01  
at least long distance.

Dan Roth  1:39:02  
I think that that's the difference, right? It's like, can you tow cross country? Or can you tow, you know, within a 20 mile radius or something?

Nicole Wakelin  1:39:11  
Yeah, like I think they work if you're just telling a short distance, like that weekend trip, a trip situation, but if you're towing everyday and you're towing something heavy, or you really want to go in a long distance. I don't think they're there yet. I don't know when they'll be there. And so that's why the Chargers I don't think are matching up with it was that kind of driving doesn't happen for them just

Dan Roth  1:39:29  
yet. They may not be there for quite a while. I mean, it's it's a good idea, I think to look at what's going on in the heavy truck side and see like, we're definitely going to see a electric What is it class eight, or, you know, electric box trucks? You know, like, yeah, semis, you're going to see those for intercity and intracity. Yeah, a lot sooner than you're gonna see cross country just because like the batteries are just not there. The charging is not there. And if you're going to make charging on that If at all, quick enough, that's going to be really, really hard on the hardware on the batteries themselves. And so it there's a lot

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:11  
to get to them for for long haul trucks, you're looking at megawatt one to one and a half megawatt charging rates, you know, where's today the fastest chargers out there, you know, or the electrify America stuff 350 kilowatts. And, you know, the the Porsche icons, the first one that can use that, you know, they charge 270 kilowatts, the lucid air coming out later this year is going to do 350. And there's, there's others that are going to be coming up doing that 300 to 350 kilowatts, but we're talking three to six times that much with these long haul trucks. And that's, that's technology that's still in development. It doesn't, it doesn't exist today.

Dan Roth  1:40:51  
it'll it'll get there. it'll eventually figure it out.

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:54  
Like it will, it's just, ya know, well, yeah. Yeah, it's just too far off. Like it'll get there but I don't know if it'll get there before this guy needs to buy a trial.

Dan Roth  1:41:03  
So if he needs to buy a truck and he wants to cross country tour, I still think that like you're gonna have hybrid options which will get you better fuel economy and they'll they'll tow across the country no problem. And they'll probably do some plugins too. So you get an X amount of range. Electric only before for you have

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:18  
to run the gas. So there's, there's the F 150 hybrid. There's a new tundra coming later this year, which will probably have a hybrid option that at some point, so yeah, those are those are viable options.

Dan Roth  1:41:29  
Drive another Titan XD

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:31  
Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:41:32  
Yeah, so that's, that's a that's a pretty like, that's half halfway between, like a 1500 and a heavy duty. Right. Like that's, that's Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:41:43  
kind of started. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:41:44  
So that's, that's gonna be his keys to just sort of match up capability.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:47  
All right, Travis writes, I'm looking for thoughts on elderly SUVs. I have a 2003 four runner with 235,000 miles. That is my third backup beater. It's a solid driver. It hasn't given me any trouble other than a minor oil leak. We inherited my father in law's 2001 suburban with 230,000 miles, the suburban looks fresh off the showroom floor. While the foreigner has seen better days. What should I keep as a people haul or flood Home Depot ox. I live in Houston. So flooding is always a concern and snow isn't for runners all original, but recently redid the suspension and brakes. It's rust free and the paint is completely faded and it's just the V six yet. I'm lucky to do better than 14 miles per gallon. The suburban on the other hand is rebuilt 5.3 liter V eight new transmission and looks nearly brand new. It gets similar gas mileage doesn't ask for premium in the manual and has much more comfortable ride but the four runner looks cooler. My friends are evenly split on what to do. So I need adult advice. While you've come to the wrong place for that is his daily drivers are a Kia Soul for his wife and a Chevy Cruze for him. And my wife said no to keeping both and or selling one of our one of our dailies. He's

Dan Roth  1:42:55  
smart.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:57  
So choose between a 2003 four runner or a 2001. suburban. What do you choose?

Dan Roth  1:43:05  
I think you put the 2003 four runner on one of the auction sites that

Unknown Speaker  1:43:10  
drives up the price bring a trailer Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:43:13  
Cuz the four runner even with ratty paint, like the four runner has a little bit more affinity for buyers. I mean, I'm really nice looking suburban though.

Nicole Wakelin  1:43:26  
So he just said at some point he has to keep on he has to sell one. Is that where we are? Yep. Does he need the cash orders his wife just like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:34  
one of one of the SUVs must go?

Dan Roth  1:43:36  
Well, I think his wife is looking at a driveway full of like five vehicles Make sense? Like get rid of these.

Nicole Wakelin  1:43:42  
I keep the foreigner just because I like it better.

Dan Roth  1:43:47  
We're split, same, you're gonna break the tie.

Nicole Wakelin  1:43:51  
If you're looking for money, I would say sell before runner, because it'll probably get you more cash. But if you're like, which one is what I keep, just to keep and like get rid of one. I keep the foreign.

Dan Roth  1:44:00  
I think that's fair. Yeah, that's fair.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:02  
Yeah. I think I think that's, that's reasonable. You, you're definitely, you know, I think there's a fan base out there for stuff like the foreigner that, you know, post that up on bring a trailer, and you will probably get way more than you expected for it. Especially if you take some good photos of it. But yeah, I mean, that that suburban, you know, will probably easily run another two 300,000 miles, you know, with with regular maintenance,

Dan Roth  1:44:26  
but so of the four runners, that's the thing like they're, I'm that's what I'm trying to get past it's like, well, practically, the foreigner is going to be worth more to sell. They're both going to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:37  
Bourbons, you know, have good resale value, too.

Dan Roth  1:44:40  
Okay, so here's the thing, which one rusts more I've seen Suburbans that's the GMT. 800 Yeah. 2000 What's that? Those lose their rockers all the time.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:52  
There otherwise this one he says it looks brand new. You know, it's it looks like it's fresh off the showroom floor even though it's 20 years old.

Dan Roth  1:44:58  
Yeah. Mmm Hmm, that's a hard one. Maybe post them both and then just don't sell but one that doesn't bring them both

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:09  
foreigners gonna get more money. I bet if you post about the foreigners gonna get more cash.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:14  
I think so too.

Dan Roth  1:45:15  
I agree with that. So if you need to sell one and you need the money,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:18  
or you just want to get the most money, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:21  
Yeah, the foreigner

Dan Roth  1:45:23  
the emotional choice. You know, I think the foreigners probably more fun. And it's definitely a it's also sounds like it's more of like a beater class car too, with the way it looks, versus the suburban that looks super cushy and nice. So I know the foreigner is going to be like, if they just have that reputation, they're like reliable, and you know, they do all the offer and stuff. So there's, there's more people who are going to go bidding for that, versus the suburban, which is giant, and I love giant SUVs, and they're very useful. So I keep the suburban that that is another thing to consider is like, where are you going to drive it?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:02  
You know, he's using it for hauling stuff around. So that extra space in the suburban may be useful to him. But you know, the size may be a challenge just in terms of maneuverability, so

Dan Roth  1:46:13  
yeah, amazing. Houston does I don't think this is

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:15  
from there's lots of space in Houston.

Dan Roth  1:46:18  
Tell us what you did. Alright.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:20  
I think we should probably call it there.

Dan Roth  1:46:23  
It's lunchtime.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:25  
Yes. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us, Nicole.

Nicole Wakelin  1:46:29  
Thank you. I'm glad to be part of it.

Dan Roth  1:46:31  
You're gonna come back next week.

Unknown Speaker  1:46:32  
Are we scared to come back next week? All right. Well,

Dan Roth  1:46:37  
thanks, everyone for listening.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:39  
Bye.

Dan Roth  1:46:50  
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 wheel bearings cast. Don't use any vowels except for the A in cast. So that's WHLBRN gs cast. Thanks again. We hope to hear from you soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai