Dan Roth  0:01  
Episode 191 of wheel bearings is packed with driving the 2021 Mazda three turbo Toyota Highlander Lincoln Nautilus Black Label and 2022 accurate MDX. We talked Mazda MX 30, GM and cloud maps to OnStar Bryant Swanson, chief engineer of the Chrysler Pacifica talks vans with us, and we even answer some of your questions. Plus, we finished with an important announcement about the show. That's all in there on episode 191 of wheel bearings. Did you know you can support wheel bearings directly? Head to Patreon comm 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 and we should talk about that later.

Unknown Speaker  1:10  
But carry

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10  
on. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14  
And I'm Nicole Wakelin, from what I do this week. How about I tell so how about Napa know how blog. How's that works?

Dan Roth  1:23  
But no. Wow. Yeah. I just want the ads like we're gonna punch a face for 30 seconds. By part.

Unknown Speaker  1:30  
What is that? anyway?

Nicole Wakelin  1:34  
Read my stuff and you'll find out. Okay, well, how do we get to it? Where's the link capital comm blog that's literally it. Napa know how blog. Like you can take that calm on the end. Do you need to say that in 2020 one.com? Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:48  
Alright, so carry on. This is wheel bearings dot media. I don't know what you get.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52  
It's actually Napa know how Napa online.com

Nicole Wakelin  1:56  
Well, if you just type Napa know how and use your Google flu you will find it Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:01  
well that's that's what I did. And it came to Napa know how Napa online calm.

Dan Roth  2:10  
Let's talk about cars. What are we driving? Who wants to go first this week? Okay.

Nicole Wakelin  2:18  
Sam,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:19  
so I have the Mazda three turbo, the 2021 Mazda three turbo and I don't know about a month or two ago talks about the Mazda CX 30 turbo. This is basically the same thing but lower and with less recorder visibility. But you know, it's it's my personal preference. I like the CX 30. But I am a low carb person, not a crossover ish type person. It's got the lovely Mazda 2.5 liter turbo skyactiv g engine with 250 horsepower, 270 foot pounds of torque. This is a great car. I mean, I remember driving the last Mazda speed three, which had roughly about the same performance or a same output but it was rather an uncivilized beast. If you ever want to know what torque steer is just find somebody with a Mazda speed three and take that for a little spin. You know, just get it on a straight piece of road and then stand on the on the gas and drop the clutch. And, you know, hold on to that steering wheel really, really tight. You know, otherwise you're going to be in

Dan Roth  3:21  
the ditch or if it just revs up when you drop the clutch nothing happens you now need or have

Sam Abuelsamid  3:31  
I've had that happen. I've actually had a half shafts snap on me it was on a personal car. It was no it was on a development vehicle back like 30 years ago it was that w body with the with the small blind Oh no, it was it was actually something we call that was nominally called the tour van. But most of us that worked on it actually called it the turtle van. It was one of the early development mules for what eventually became the Ford Windstar, they they took Dodge Caravan body shells. Roush built up half a dozen of these for Ford, one of which we had at Kelsey Hayes for ABS development. And they modified it they spliced in about six inches ahead of the firewall, because they put in the Ford 3.8 liter V six for those days. You know, Chrysler was using the Mitsubishi three liter V six which was a 60 degree engine. The Ford V six was much wider so they had to stretch their nose at six v six, isn't it? You know, I remember the first time I saw this thing it was kind of weird looking because the track wasn't quite right. And you know, they also stuffed in the instrument panel from a Taurus. You know, it had had a bunch of Taurus bits on it. But anyway, I digress

Dan Roth  4:43  
right off the cliff every week.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:47  
The torque steer problem that was endemic in a monster speed tree is not at all an issue in the new Mazda three turbo because among other things, the monster three turbo is standard. With all wheel drive, which makes it much more balanced, you're spreading that that power output amongst the four, all four wheels instead of only to the wheels that also have to do the directional control. And I think that's you know, for for cars like this, that's generally a superior option. There are some companies that have done a remarkably good job with putting that much power down through the front wheels, most notably Honda on the Civic Type R 307 horsepower through an front wheel drive, it's it's amazing. But I really like the the Mazda three turbo for all the reasons that we've talked about before why like these modern Mazda, it's not the boy racer type of car that the the monster speed was, that's a very grown up but quick, nimble, agile car. I like the way it looks. Although you know, I personally think that all of them should be painted sold crystal red, none of this gray color.

Nicole Wakelin  5:51  
That is so pretty

Sam Abuelsamid  5:52  
is the poly metal gray metallic, and it just it loses the best parts of the cars design the shape. But But other than that, so

Dan Roth  6:04  
you had that you had the hatch or this hatch, I

Sam Abuelsamid  6:06  
think the turbos only available in the hatch hatch. And, you know, personally, you know, I think any car you know that size or smaller, I would always recommend going with a hatchback instead of a sedan if it's available, because you know, having that big opening in the back, it gives you so much more flexibility. When you know, when you've got sedans of that size, you typically only have 1213 cubic feet of cargo space in the back. And then you can fold down the back seats for longer objects. But the problem they have because all modern sedans have this fastback coupe like profile, you inevitably end up with a very small trunk opening. So even if there's a reasonable volume inside, there's actually a very small opening to get stuff in and out of it. But with a hatchback that that problem is no longer there.

Dan Roth  6:56  
I ran into that. I discovered that with our s 60s and I invented an entire new class of squares. Yeah, lots of portmanteaus just you know, mashing all kinds of other vile words together, because it's really frustrating. Yeah, you like there's space in there? I know. There is.

Nicole Wakelin  7:13  
Yeah, right. I

Dan Roth  7:14  
can't get anything through here. So yeah, the hatch is definitely the way to go. So in terms of competition, it seems like a really natural GTI competitor,

Sam Abuelsamid  7:23  
it is you know, the the one thing it lacks relative to the GTI is the option for a manual transmission. And and also I misspoke on the output, it's actually 227 horsepower, but 310 foot pounds of torque, so more torque, a little less power than what I stated earlier, which is actually fine. People buy horsepower, but they don't really drive to work. And that's that's really true. And especially in this case, you know, it It feels quick, but six speed automatic only. But it's a great automatic transmission, very smooth shifting, it does have paddles, you know, so you can do the the manual control and Aaron's very responsive. And with all that torque, you know, the six speed by modern standards, a six speed is relatively low and relatively few number of ratios. But it's, you know, this thing's got so much torque and so responsive. There's not really any turbo lag, and there's no torque holes in there. So you can have wider spaced gear ratios. That's not an issue for this thing. So I really enjoyed driving this thing and I took it out and took a nice long drive in the countryside, and just had a lot of fun. tossing it through corners. It's very nimble, very responsive. Even on you know, when I got it, it still had winter tires on it, it didn't have they didn't put the summer tires or all season tires back on it yet. And even with the bliss acts on there, it still felt really good on on dry pavement. All the other things that we've been saying about modern Mazda's over the last year or two or three is there, you know, the very premium feeling interior, I think a really well laid out interior, it's not cluttered. I wouldn't call it minimalistic, but it's very well organized. And there's not too much stuff. There's no touchscreen. Some people don't like that. But Rebecca is no longer with us. So

Nicole Wakelin  9:05  
well I take her place with that I hate not having a touchscreen, it drives me bonkers. I want to touch screen.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:11  
I do like the central controllers. So we will so

Dan Roth  9:13  
I think with this system in particular makes you frustrated that there's not a touchscreen because it's not intuitive to use. It's frustrating. So you default to like, I just want the thing. I just

Nicole Wakelin  9:26  
want to be able to touch the screen to make it work. No. And I and it's you know, I know that you said they said that one of the monster program once that you know, it's a certain amount of time and it's relatively brief, that people get very, very comfortable using that infotainment it becomes intuitive and we're in a car for a week and then we swap it off for another brand that works totally differently. Theoretically, that's why I don't get used to it. Don't like it. But I've been in a lot of monsters and I think I did every single one again and it's not like I've only ever had one for one week. I've had many many weeks in them and I still I still sit there like how that I just want to I just want to turn the volume on what are we doing?

Sam Abuelsamid  10:00  
All right, next up is a big bigger controller.

Dan Roth  10:03  
But I mean, it's a little bit of PR department victim blaming, or they're like, are you don't like our stuff? Because you just don't own the car? Yeah. Kinda Yes, but kinda kinda know, like,

Nicole Wakelin  10:13  
Yeah, I know, I would get more used to it if I drove it every single day for a month. But it's, yeah, still hate it. I get used to it and like and know how to use it and still hate it exactly as I hate this thing, but I at least know how to use it. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  10:26  
regardless of how you feel about the central controller, this does still have the other issue that Rebecca had pointed out, which was, if you're using Android Auto or Apple CarPlay it with almost every other vehicle, pretty much every other vehicle I've tried, when you plug in your phone to use the phone projection system, you still have access to the embedded voice recognition system. And typically, the way it works is just tap on the voice button on the steering wheel. And, you know, just give it a quick tap, and you get the factory voice recognition system. If you do a long press on it, then it'll pull up either google assistant or Siri, depending on which type of phone you're using. In the case of the Mazda, they made the decision to once you plug in your phone to disable the embedded voice recognition system. You know, Rebecca highlighted the issue of if you want to use Google Maps, for example, but you also still want to listen to satellite radio, you can listen to satellite radio, you can, you know, jump out of the Google the Google Maps interface and get to the satellite radio interface. But you can't do that by voice anymore, because Google Assistant doesn't have access to the embedded stuff in the vehicle like satellite radio. So if you're listening to Sirius XM, and you want to change the channel, if your phone isn't plugged in, you can hit the voice button and tell it to change to whatever channel. But you can't do that when your phone is plugged in. And that is still an issue. Mazda explained to Rebecca, we wanted to keep it consistent, we didn't want to have the multiple competing voice control systems running at the same time. That one I think, is perhaps I would see as more of an issue for some people, I personally don't listen to satellite radio. So it doesn't, it doesn't bother me, but I did try it out just to see what happens. And, you know, it's I think, you know, people that that have that use case are going to have an issue with that. But aside from that, just driving the cars fantastic. They're available now, it's not the most affordable version of the the monster three, as you might expect, the one I had was the the turbo with Premium Plus package all wheel drive, it priced out to $34,820, including the the $945 delivery fee, which for a compact hatchback seems on the high end, but then again,

Dan Roth  12:49  
that is all the money for all the guests,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:51  
you know, when when you compare it to other vehicles, you know, similar segment and you know, similar performance level, like a GTI, or Civic Si or something like that, you're gonna be in that same price point, they're all getting up into that mid $30,000 range. Now, Mazda has done a good job of making their vehicles feel more premium, as you know, they try to go for, you know, a little bit higher margins, because they're, they're not the highest volume brand out there. And I think that they really succeeded in that. And, you know, the rest of the industry, as at least price wise, has followed them into that same space over the last couple of years. And but I think in most cases, they don't feel as premium as a Mazda does at, you know, what is roughly the same price point. You know, I think that this is definitely one worth considering if you want a quick compact hatch, and you don't necessarily feel like you need a manual transmission. But you know, if that's the case, what is wrong with you? If you can live with an automatic transmission, I think this is one you should really drive and consider.

Nicole Wakelin  14:00  
Yeah, I liked it. I and you know what you were saying about the the sort of not luxury car, but kind of sort of luxury car, I think Mazda does an unbelievable job of that their cars always feel like you're getting into something even though you're saying like the price is creeping up, they always feel like they should be more than what you're paying, when you just take a look at the interior, whether it's the base trim, or the top trends, the interiors of their cars are much like that red paint are beautiful, and always feel very upscale.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:27  
Yeah, I mean, if you took this, you know, and you compare it against, you know, an Audi, a three, or a BMW two series, this feels in most respects, you know, like, it's, it's in that same class with those, you know, those those brands that we think of as premium brands,

Dan Roth  14:43  
right, but to be honest, Mazda has sort of captured the spirit of those older BMWs to a large degree, you know, they drive with that kind of verb, that BMW is don't necessarily all drive with anymore and they've been Feel premium, like you said, you know, so they, they just they have that that character that we all kind of fell in love with back in the 80s 90s and early 2000s BMWs and Audi's they just feel like those cars. And so that's really attractive. From a driver perspective. They're fun to drive. And they're nice places to be where I think BMW in particular has gone. I don't know where they've gone. their cars have gotten big, it's all

Sam Abuelsamid  15:32  
it's all about the girl now,

Dan Roth  15:34  
Oh, my gosh, the girl would like, Look, the grill is fine. And

Nicole Wakelin  15:38  
it's like these giant beaver teeth on the front of the car.

Dan Roth  15:45  
There's only a couple of models and like very specific models of their lines, you know, like, there's a very particular three series that's gonna drive really well, the rest of them are going to be like, Okay, this, essentially, it's their high volume car. And it's not really distinctive other than the badge. And they do that for each model they make, you know, there's, there's a couple of really special ones that still have it. And then the rest of them are just like, and that's disappointing. Where what we've seen with Mazda is like, they've sort of flipped it, right? Like where every car has that special thing. You don't have to buy the most extreme to get the fun. And I think that's what what I

Nicole Wakelin  16:23  
think Mazda looks like they all say, you know, they're also having that luxury vibe, that sort of fun to drive things. Somehow, Mazda has managed to shake this sort of stodginess, almost that that but like BMW and Audi have have embraced whether they meant to or not lately, you know, Mazda is still the fun one Mazda Yeah, we look good. Yeah, we have a nice interior. Yeah, we're fun to drive. But we're not full of ourselves to the point that we're like, we're a luxury brand. And we're fancy, we're having fun with it,

Dan Roth  16:52  
which makes them different is so serious. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:55  
We don't use the Zoom Zoom tagline anymore. They still the cars are still infused with that, when I'm looking at the BMW website right now, you know, a 228, front wheel drive, 228 I, you know, same performance, 228 horsepower, starts at 35,700. The all wheel drive, you know, which is comparable, more comparable to this starts at 38,000. And, you know, similar for the Audi, a three, you know, there's similar sized vehicles, you know, similar performance levels, and the, you know, they're, they're starting where this one is, is ending up. And so I think that, you know, from that perspective, you know, if you're looking for something in that class, this is really a car that you should be considering.

Dan Roth  17:42  
Yeah, I mean, it's the price handoff seems about what I would expect going from volume brand to a premium brand. So that makes sense. The thing with with Vogue with I guess without ease there's the folks wagon compliment you could you could look at a golf but you know, the the Mazda three in the golf, they're competitors, but they also have different characters, and they're both good. The Mazda feels nicer in some ways.

Nicole Wakelin  18:06  
It feels premium, the Volkswagen feels fine.

Dan Roth  18:09  
Yeah, I mean, and the Volkswagen feels premium in a different way. Like, it's, it's not like luxury premium, it's more like just solidity

Nicole Wakelin  18:20  
doesn't have the elegance of a Mazda monster a little bit more elegant.

Dan Roth  18:24  
And we're just gonna keep reaching for a good drive from your favorite drive line for this now,

Sam Abuelsamid  18:29  
Nicole, what do you have?

Nicole Wakelin  18:30  
I had the Toyota Highlander, so is like Toyota Avalon one week now and it was Toyota Highlander, which has already left my driveway. And I should let you know, I know that it has left my driveway while we're recording because Hellcat has replaced it. I can't see it. But I can literally hear it drive up in the background. I'm likely okay. they swapped

Dan Roth  18:50  
me up when the 90 year old guys dropped off.

Nicole Wakelin  18:53  
He said I can't see him and I'm like that that's the dulcet tones of a Hellcat in my driveway. So I had a Highlander, which

Sam Abuelsamid  19:00  
you know, are you getting?

Unknown Speaker  19:05  
Just like

Nicole Wakelin  19:05  
we're going next week.

Dan Roth  19:09  
Durango like that's that's the Highlander competitor.

Nicole Wakelin  19:13  
Same exact person is looking for that car. Yeah, to

Sam Abuelsamid  19:16  
upper mid size three row SUVs.

Nicole Wakelin  19:18  
There's not much difference between the two. Just take your pick. Yeah, very little interest

Dan Roth  19:21  
happens to have a proper engine and drive the correct way.

Nicole Wakelin  19:26  
So Highlander, we'll talk about the hellcats are in my driveway next week. So you notice when we were I had the Avalon right from Avalon to this it was interesting because I like I liked the Avalon but it's kind of like it's a sedan isn't really exciting. But it is a really good job of being a three row SUV like it I would be more inclined to buy that in that segment than I would the Avalon in this segment. It just has a nice interior. It's comfortable. It's roomy, it rides really smoothly. It's not outrageously priced,

Dan Roth  19:54  
it can get expensive.

Nicole Wakelin  19:56  
Well they all can get expensive. Like how much do you want? Spend like if you want to just get a base one and you just want a car to do the job now mine had a lot of stuff, I had to look at my little monroney $48,258. So it wasn't

Sam Abuelsamid  20:09  
red or the

Nicole Wakelin  20:11  
button. No, this was the this was the limited all wheel drive that I had.

Dan Roth  20:15  
So you're gonna pay that for anything that basic size in that class with that kind of equipment like that.

Nicole Wakelin  20:22  
Exactly. So it's not so you get a lot of cardboard. It's not it's not a fancy interior. It's definitely not like, you know, you're driving. You know, it's Toyota. How's that? But it's still it feels better than the Avalon? Yeah, everyone sort of had this sort of almost like I'm trying to be upscale and fancy. And I'm not really getting the hang of it is like, Nope, I have room for all these people. I need to work for your family. I need to be comfortable when you do that giant road trip this summer. And I have room for all of this stuff that you're going to throw in the back with the kids and it does a great job with it. So I I liked driving the Highlander I thought it was I think it's I think it's a good choice.

Dan Roth  20:55  
Toyota doesn't mess around when they want to own a market. They own the market, you know, in terms of just making the product that is aggressively priced and well content it Yeah. And that's that's the highlighter in the rav4 that's their game. Yeah. Now,

Sam Abuelsamid  21:09  
I'm curious what you think about the design of the new Highlander?

Nicole Wakelin  21:13  
What What part of it the inside the outside outside? I did you not like it? I'm looking I thought it was fine. I was I didn't have an issue with it.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:22  
I don't I don't dislike it. But I actually prefer the previous generation

Nicole Wakelin  21:27  
really see now I thought it looked good. I I like this sort of more. I hate these everyone calls it aggressive. But the way they've done the grille that there's a little bit more going on on the front of the car, it doesn't just look like this boring box. It gives it some personality, a point where they didn't want to give SUVs, real personality, it's like you are a family car, you will be functional, you will do your thing. And you will blend in and carpool. And I like that they're trying to make them kind of stand out a little bit that they have some personality that you can have. I like it. Why don't you like it? It's not

Sam Abuelsamid  21:58  
that I don't like it when I first saw it. And now every time I see it, the thing that strikes me about it, it's almost like they tried to apply Supra styling cues to say that,

Unknown Speaker  22:10  
yeah. Is that right? Not necessarily.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:14  
I'm not I'm not saying it's bad. Like I say, I'm not saying I dislike it. It's just that I I personally for this kind of vehicle. I'm more partial to the look of the previous generation, which was a little more boxy, a little more chunky looking, you know, a little more truck ish. Yeah, obviously, design is always a matter of personal preference. The look of the last the previous generation, I thought seemed a little more integrated, you know, on this one, you know, for such a large vehicle, you know, having these sort of organic, flowing curves on it, it just seems a little incongruous to me.

Nicole Wakelin  22:50  
I you know, the reason I like it is I get what you're saying Sam about the sort of boxier styling of the previous version, which has its own appeal on this sort of like rugged, tough kind of thing. I like it, they're making these big SUVs be something sporty looking, are you calling the soul sport you're carrying, you know, seven, eight people your big, great big piece of you know, metal, but you know, sometimes you want that car but you just want it to you want it you want to have the family car, but you want it to have a little bit of fun and personality. You can't buy a Supra input, you know, your kids in the back of it. So if you have to buy something, it's bigger. Okay, it's not a Supra. But it kind of sort of looks like one and it makes me happy when I see that you know, so it gives the illusion of a sportiness to something that is not really sporty. Or you know, that kind of car it gives you that little taste of that when you're at a point your life where you can't really have it.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:40  
Yeah, that's fair point.

Dan Roth  23:41  
How is the inside though you said it was definitely Toyota. So just a limited have they offered with like, quilted

Nicole Wakelin  23:48  
it No, the inside is beautiful. You know what it was funny because I hated the JBL speakers that were mounted on the a pillar in the Avalon had that piano black that I was railing against last time. These were just the same color as the headliner, sort of like a cream color. So exact same style and I'm like look at that you don't have this giant like piano black thing like stuck there looking on. So I think the interior is better on this one it still had it was upscale in a different way. It was just like quality materials and it didn't try to be it doesn't try to be flashy, like I feel like when they with this one they're trying to make it comfortable and look good and not make you feel like you're just getting some you know, utilitarian toaster to take the kids around in but it doesn't go over the top like we're gonna put shiny black everywhere just to meet you think you're in something fancy. It actually looks more cohesive to me and it works and it's super comfortable. It's really comfortable. We

Dan Roth  24:36  
have to drive. Rebecca's biggest thing was always there's no place to put my phone. This has like a little cubby for the phone and the armrest.

Nicole Wakelin  24:43  
Does it has a little armrest cubby situation going on? Um, so yeah, there's spots to put your phone there spots. Like wherever you need to put whatever you have in your hands. When you sit down there is a spot to put it like there's so much random little cubby storage which is honestly perfect for family because you walk in the car. And you could have your keys in your wallet, maybe you got your phone because it fell into your pocket and your kid handed you something and you're like trying to sit down with all this junk in your hands, there's a spot to put it all right away. So

Dan Roth  25:09  
that's why I love the big couple. There's right

Nicole Wakelin  25:12  
there for all of this stuff your kids can dump right there.

Dan Roth  25:16  
I find a lot of bobby pins after dance classes

Nicole Wakelin  25:18  
are always full of hair ties they're in here.

Dan Roth  25:23  
But I think that's the thing with a family vehicle as well that tends to get missed is the thoughtfulness of the design and how it just integrates with your life is something that's hard to catch in a review unless you you are family style of review, I guess. Like if you've got kids in the dog, and you're using to school pickups, and all that stuff, like all of a sudden you're finding all the things like Oh, they thought about this, somebody was here first. And they gave it you know, third road charging ports and cupholders or, you know, they gave it just like should you places to put your stuff? That feels really good. How is it in that respect is it feel like if you climb into that third row is it's gonna be like a penalty.

Nicole Wakelin  26:10  
You know, I think the pennant the third row is a little bit of penalty box no matter which vehicle you get into. But on the scale of penalty boxes, this one isn't that bad. I mean, you can get back there, my daughter was back there. She's a teenager, she's like 17. So you know, not a little kid. She climbed back there wasn't horrible to get back there. It's comfortable. I don't know that as an adult, I'd want to do a road trip in the third row. But if you're taking me on it shorter trip, certainly it's not something you feel like you have to be a contortionist to get back there. And you don't feel like you're being punished over every bump. It has a really smooth suspension system for a great big SUV. So it's comfortable. And you do feel like even when you're there, there's still places to put stuff. You know, you don't feel like when you sit in the third row, suddenly, you're just sitting there with everything on your lap, because there's not a single place or any room. So there's a little bit of room for stuff. But I know I think it's a thoughtfully designed car. I think it's you can see the utility for families, you can see how easy it is to live with as a family. I think the you know, when they talk about cargo space in these, everyone's like, yeah, you need stuff, you need room for your kids stuff. But what you're saying then, when you actually have kids, you realize how often you're running out of the car. And suddenly everyone has a book bag, and she's got her stuff for dance class, and he's got a sports stuff. And even as they get older, they're walking in the car with all this stuff. And if you don't have a place for that, it's chaos when you go to get out of the car, because suddenly everyone's looking for their things you don't know where you put anything. So I think it's I think thoughtfully designed is a good way to describe the interior.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:36  
Yeah, I would say the third, the third row this this one is definitely better than for example, the Explorer, which is a similar size vehicle on the outside. But you know that third row is definitely a lot tighter in the Explorer than it is in this one. Or, you know, the Kia telluride or Hyundai palisade? You know, similar. They're more similar to this one.

Nicole Wakelin  27:57  
Yeah. Now the palisade and the telluride is like my favorite three row SUV, the moment I love that thing. But yeah, those all those are all vehicles that you could ride in the third row, you can use all the seats for the family. It's not just one of those like, Oh, I got to bring a couple extra kids. I guess I'll use the third row and torture them putting them back there. You had to use that third row every day. Your family's that big. If your life is that busy, you could do it. And it's not going to be like a debate about who gets stuck back there this time. You know, it's not, it's not torture to be back there. And if they do do a good job, the Explorer always surprises me because I feel like it looks huge to me on the outside. Like it looks bigger to me than every other car and then you get in that third row. It's like, what happened? Where did that all go on from the outside?

Dan Roth  28:42  
There's so many cars now are just so chunky on the outside and you get in you're like there's just nothing

Nicole Wakelin  28:48  
freight like you like where did that go? It's like a reverse TARDIS. It's like smaller on the inside. I don't know what happened. I

Dan Roth  28:55  
first heard I was on the highway the other day and I saw a new CRV behind in a first generation pilot and it looked like the CRV eight The pilot was just like, it's so much bigger. And just like physically on the outside is so much larger and the pilot was never small. It's just

Sam Abuelsamid  29:12  
kind of one of those. There's somebody in my neighborhood is got a first generation CRV. And you're right. It's amazing how small it looks by comparison to a modern one.

Dan Roth  29:21  
Yeah, so delicate. Yeah, so Avalon no Highlander. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  29:25  
Yeah,

Dan Roth  29:26  
that's fair. That's fair. So what did you have for the power train? You just had the

Nicole Wakelin  29:31  
basics. Yeah. Yeah. 295 horsepower, 263 pound feet of torque. So it's not something that's going to win your race. But when you hit the gas, it moves. It never feels like you're driving something as big as you're driving, which I think is a big deal in these larger vehicles. You don't want to feel like you're driving a tractor trailer and you're sort of waiting for the car to keep you know to catch up with you and get moving especially when you're on highway driving. Like there's nothing worse than trying to merge into highway traffic and feeling like the car is not quite ready to come with you yet. And This yeah you never get the it's it's it's a responsive power train and it's easy and it's quiet you don't have all this noise coming in from you know from the engine into the passenger compartment so it's it's decent good.

Dan Roth  30:10  
I had a couple of cars. I think last time I talked about the 2022 Acura MDX that kind of just arrived on the heels of the marquee so I wanted to spend more time with it and be fair to it. After the mock He spoiled me with all that electric motor torque. It's not as powerful as the electric motor in the Maki regardless, so it's going to lose in the Evie kind of acceleration war. But it's a good engine. It sounds great. It's plenty powerful. It does like to rev which really fits I think the Acura attitude. You know, the MDX is now they've redesigned it for 2022. So it's it's the flagship of the brand. And it really looks like a flagship. They gave it a double wishbone front suspension and so the chassis can keep up. It was really, really fun to drive. I actually really quite liked its ride and handling, which you know, fits with a sporty snarly v six. And if you actually want more power, you can get the type s which I didn't have, but sounds just right.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:15  
I don't think they actually released the type SCR it's not

Dan Roth  31:19  
quite yet right. So it's it's gonna come at the end of the summer, but it's coming so you can wait for it basically takes that V six and makes it twin turbo or single two anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:31  
It's actually different engine altogether. It's a V six. Really, yeah, it's a it's an all new v six because this the the current three, five, Honda Acura, three, five, is been around for a while. And the type s engine that it's in the TLS now is coming to the MDX is is a completely new engine.

Dan Roth  31:51  
Even better, you get the benefit of a brand new engine. And they've done a lot of work on the platform that this is on, it's really stiff, it feels really good. I definitely felt like there was that sporting kind of ethos that went through the whole car and makes it really pleasant from a driving perspective. I think that that does kind of ding the MDX a little bit in terms of the family car mission that it's probably going to be asked to serve it's a little louder from road noise. And doesn't necessarily just settle down and kind of be super easy to live with it. It settles fine but like it always just, I don't know there's it's always ready to go as well. It's just this really weird sort of nebulous terms to try to describe it. And I'm not sure the best way it's always you know, it's it's always sort of ready You know, like it wants you to drive 95 miles feels good there at 70 it's kind of like come on, buddy, what do you do? I have not described that well, but it's it's beautiful to look at the interior materials are really nice, the infotainment is better than it has been in earlier Honda's an accurate so they're getting there. I you know, quite liked it overall, it's roomy, you know, has more space than before. And again, with with three rows, it was super handy. So it really it does fulfill its mission. I think though its mission because it's it's accurate. And like this is kind of what we're talking about with Mazda to where it's looking for its place, you know. So if you want just the straight up family vehicle version, go by the pilot. But if you want something that's got a little bit of personality, that's what the MDX offers and that personality has to be right for you. You know, as somebody who likes to drive and likes sports cars, I really liked the way it rides and handles and is sort of you're getting all that tactile feedback through the wheel, which is really cool that have a car that has steering field these days. And that could be off putting to somebody who just wants the luxury SUV like it's not it's not a cushy super luxury SUV in that traditional smother the road since it's very comfortable. It's luxurious. The materials are nice, but it's also built the top something that is sporty. So it has has a little bit of sport to it at all times. So yeah, you got to kind of want that. And I think that it's great to have that option. I

Sam Abuelsamid  34:30  
mean, that's consistent with the direction that accurate has been trying to go for the last couple of years, a couple years ago at the Detroit Grand Prix, sat across from john Ikeda the head of Acura, at, at dinner. And, you know, I asked him at the time, you know, what, what is accurate supposed to be because, I mean, they kind of lost their way for a long time, you know, back in the early days in the late 80s when they launched, you know, it was, you know, kind of this You're more performance oriented version and more and more premium version of a Honda. But, you know, what, what do they want accurate to be now and going forward? And he said, you know, Acura is Honda's, you know, performance group PERFORMANCE DIVISION, which is why they've gone this direction with the TLS and bring back type s and, and now with the MDX you know, because there's already a lot of options, you know, if you want a premium, you know, large crossover, you know, that's more plush and soft. There's plenty of those out there you can you can find those, you know, the accurate needs to find its own way forward.

Nicole Wakelin  35:38  
Way back in the day when you were saying what they used to be my husband's first car ever bought was an Acura Integra. Yeah. So which was fantastic. But it was all about this like sporty two door, you know, manual transmission. It was fun to drive. It was the sporty car. That was the thing that was what he wanted an accurate and they did, I don't know pivot in a direction. That's kind of a giant question mark for a little while. And now they are coming back to that word is this 40 year vehicle. So and the puts all that together, I loved that the MDX side, I would buy that in a heartbeat. I thought it was great, because I but I also like you were saying, I'd like to drive I enjoy that sort of engaging driving experience. If you just want something that is beautiful and plush and comfortable. Maybe you're not going to find that engaging driving, maybe you'll find it find it kind of taxing, that you're more engaged with it. So you know, yeah,

Dan Roth  36:28  
that's, that's I think exactly what I was thinking and but that's not necessarily bad. Like, it's I would rather have the car stakeout its territory, than try to be everything to everyone, right? Because it's just, it's just gonna be a mess. Because

Nicole Wakelin  36:41  
there's so many that are just like, here's a three row house, you know, here's a big SUV, here's a big card, here's luxury card, just go drive and have fun. We don't care how much you like driving. But to have this one, say no, we only want you in it. If you're someone who likes to drive, you have to enjoy driving getting behind the wheel, you don't want just something that's an appliance, you want to enjoy the time that you're driving, then this is the choice for you. And if that's not you, then there's plenty of other things to pick,

Dan Roth  37:04  
I love the chassis tuning it over some sharp bumps, it feels a little abrupt, but overall, like it was well tuned your throat in sport mode, I liked how you could select your dynamic modes, you could soften, you could you could get the sporty steering with the softer setting. Or you could put it into sport mode and has the digital cluster that changes it's very well thought out and it it really does perform well. In it, especially in the handling side of things, which is really where we can have fun, I don't really I like cars that will accelerate hard, but you can only use that up to a certain point, you know, like onramps. So I would rather have this device, this low carb fast kind of thing, where you're just doing the speed limit, but every curve is like, you know, it's it's an opportunity to feel all of the components work together. right down to the contact patch on the tire. Right? So I liked it quite a bit. Sam, I came to terms with the touch with the detract guy the interface. Yeah, I came to terms with that I still not the greatest fan, but I remember you talked about and you actually like it dude, I

Sam Abuelsamid  38:14  
do. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to get into TLS or the MDX yet, but I did like it in the RDX.

Dan Roth  38:20  
The trick is you have to remember it's not it's not like your laptop is it is very different than lift a finger. You've got to keep your finger down and like just move around. And and then it works and has haptic feedback. And

Nicole Wakelin  38:33  
I liked it. That was one where it takes you know, I was talking about taking some time to figure out how an infotainment system works. And that was one right generally felt Okay, there's a little bit of a learning curve here. But if I just wasn't getting in and out of this every week, it would become very intuitive and easy and would not make you want to bash it with a hammer. So I like this one like this is what I felt like living with it, you would totally get just how much you need to touch that. It became pretty intuitive pretty fast. But I just think you know a week in a car is not enough time to not think about it, you're still thinking about it when you sit down. I think this week number two, you'd be like whatever and you'd have it I liked how they did the new one I did.

Dan Roth  39:08  
You probably have the exact same one with this one was red with a nice tan. And

Nicole Wakelin  39:13  
I want to say that we probably have the exact same one, I would bet we've got a carver initials and we need to hide like a little thing like here. At the top of the glove box, you look underneath

Dan Roth  39:28  
kilrea somewhere.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:30  
And for those listeners that don't remember, you know when we've talked about the RDX in the past this trackpad is different from like, you know, like you mentioned the typical laptop trackpad. It's an absolute position. So, you know, if you put your finger in the center of it, you're going to see the cursor in the center of the screen. If you put your finger in the upper left hand corner, you're gonna see the cursor in the upper left hand corner and basically every point on that trackpad corresponds to the same point on screen. So it's essentially a remote version of the screen you know, but because the screen is up higher, closer to your line of sight and kind of out of reach, it's you get more precise control with it down there. But but it's not you're not like tapping, you know, or you scrolling along multiple times to get across the screen like, for example on the Lexus trackpad.

Dan Roth  40:24  
Well, it has a nice little armrests too little hand rest. It's it's metal and like leather wrapped, it's I quite liked it. So as a driver, the MDX is your Huckleberry you should definitely try that out. And then the next week after and just briefly, they replaced it with a 2021 Lincoln Nautilus, Black Label, which tries to be more of that, like all cars for all people kind of thing. So it has it has more power. It's got the 2.7 No, it actually has the three, the three liter V six. They don't have a name for this. It's just turbo direct ejection. Yeah, like that. But plenty of horsepower. So it goes really well. And it's chassis tuning is good for like, up to about seven tenths. So feels good to drive until you overdo it. And then you realize you've overdone. Kind of Yeah, exactly, it kind of gracefully lets you back off. Also, it's another one of those cars, you can select, like sport steering with the luxury suspension, which is the sweet spot for that because the steering just gets this nice center, you know, good weight on center, and it'll go track arrow straight down the highway real nicely. The interior on the Black Label, like just blows me away, Lincoln is doing very nice Black Label interiors. And that was a fun car to have for a week even though it's old hardware, you know, the Nautilus is not new stuff. And there are compromises for it. I don't fit super comfortably in it. You know, the steering wheel angle was a little off to me and stuff. But I eventually again, after a couple days got into it and just overall, that's still a good one. I it's not not as not as sporty as the MDX but still fun to drive.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:08  
Yeah. And but, you know, again, this Lincoln, you know, decided, Okay, we've got to find our own path as well, you know, a few years back, and, you know, they decided that they weren't going to try to be direct competitors to you know, BMW or Acura for that matter. And

Dan Roth  42:26  
which is smart because that Lincoln driver, like they don't, they don't want that. Do you know, like, that's why I sing the MDX like that kind of car. It's gonna put them off anyway. That's

Sam Abuelsamid  42:34  
the Lincoln about coddling the the occupants, right.

Dan Roth  42:37  
It's and it's, you know, it's just surrounded by beautiful materials. It's quiet, like super quiet. It's very comfortable. It's not a mess to drive, though dynamically. It's pretty good. Again, until you push it and then you shouldn't be doing that.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:50  
What did you think of the the 13 inch touchscreen with lip sync for an Ellen?

Dan Roth  42:56  
It's responsive and intuitive. I think everybody's kind of getting to that point now. And Ford's been at it long enough with sync that sync fours was pretty well refined. Things are easy ish to find. And it's it's not hard to use. Kind of like the latest What is it Uconnect five is coming as well, that's going to be you connect was great. And they kind of broke it a little bit. And now they're redeeming themselves. Sync fours was good. I didn't have like it was seamless enough to use. I can't I can't pitch about it. So that's

Nicole Wakelin  43:29  
the best reading for how's the entertainment? I can't pitch about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:34  
compared to some of the things we said, and that's actually something we didn't talk about what the Highlander was the infotainment.

Dan Roth  43:40  
Yeah, we shall never speak of the event

Nicole Wakelin  43:45  
shall not be named, complained about

Sam Abuelsamid  43:47  
it enough over the years. We don't need to continue bashing that dead horse. The design

Dan Roth  43:52  
of the interior really lends itself to that screen in the in the Nautilus. It's it's a widescreen format versus portrait, which I liked. And there's enough real estate on there to get everything up there. I mostly use it with Apple CarPlay. So in that sense, it was it was good. I loved all the controls in the center console and stuff like really well thought out, like here's the heart command, or here's the heart controls. Here's other stuff in the screen. This is sort of an idiosyncrasy of sync all together. When you do something with the heart controls, it gives you the visual in the screen, and I wish you could shut that off. So like I don't,

Sam Abuelsamid  44:27  
yeah, like it'll give you the little fan up route, circular scale for the volume. When you turn the volume knob. You see that overlaid on this,

Nicole Wakelin  44:35  
you're turning the knob, you know you're doing that you don't

Dan Roth  44:38  
like it's either gonna get louder or softer.

Unknown Speaker  44:42  
Either way, I'm

Dan Roth  44:43  
gonna know I'm gonna get what I want. Eventually,

Sam Abuelsamid  44:44  
maybe when they do the next version of sync on Android automotive, they'll get rid of that. Or at least give the option to turn it off.

Dan Roth  44:50  
It takes a second to timeout to so like if you're trying to do something else at that point. You've got to wait for it to like stop and then you can go these are I know for problems. were complaining.

Nicole Wakelin  45:02  
Weirdly, the things the first world problems in a car, the things that once you buy it, you think, Oh my gosh, this, this little first world problem thing makes me wish I didn't buy this car. Like, that's the stuff that drives you nuts. It's the little stuff that gets you, it drives, it goes, it gets you where it needs to be, if it's a family, whatever. But if there's some little thing on the control that you have to deal with all the time, that's the stuff that makes you not like a car.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:24  
And if you've got to live with a vehicle for several years, you know, then all of a sudden, those those little irritants, being in relationship with with a person, those things, you know, but the way I feel perhaps, you know, the husband do choose to loud, you know, can just drive a life completely up the wall

Dan Roth  45:43  
aren't doing like Edgar Allen posters.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:47  
Probably, he actually does have the 2.7 liter versus the three. That's right, the the three liters and the The Aviator, it's not in a aviator, yeah, the Nautilus.

Dan Roth  46:00  
Either way, that nano is such a good engine, I'm always impressed by it price wise, it's a little higher than the MDX wound up being or at least starts a little higher six starts at 64 730. And I don't have them in running. But that's also

Sam Abuelsamid  46:15  
you know, the Black Label that you had, you can get the the selector I think, or I forget what the other trim level is, that are a little more affordable.

Nicole Wakelin  46:23  
And like the Black Label is full on, that's a luxury vehicle, no doubt, you know, so you're, you're really you're paying luxury car prices for luxury car experience,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:32  
you're also getting a lot of amenities that like it offers to customers with that,

Dan Roth  46:36  
I mean, it's kinda it's still a deal. And you could do the the phone app and stuff to open up more functionality, and you get the fanciest leather and the Black Label, stuff that you don't get from the other trend. It's

Nicole Wakelin  46:52  
all stuff, I like to say that Black Label stuff,

Dan Roth  46:55  
I believe it's Black Label member,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:58  
the Nautilus with phone, it was already paired to it, so you could use it use the phone as a key. Okay. Now they did that here in Michigan,

Dan Roth  47:06  
sort of two sides of a different coin, you know, both luxury, both performances there, but two different ways to approach it. Neither of them bad. I've quite enjoyed the last couple of weeks.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:20  
So Mazda announced that they are finally bringing the MX 30 to the US market, starting this fall in California, California only. And then gradually through the course of 2022 expanding availability to the rest of the country. And for those that haven't been paying attention, the MX 30 is Mazdas first ever battery electric vehicle, fully electric, not a hybrid least for the moment, we'll get to that in a second. It's kind of a sort of a crossover ish. And it's it's comparable a little bit close to close to the size of the CX 30. But actually, I think a little bit shorter, different styling, very different styling from the CX 30, or the the Mazda three, and it's got a relatively small battery, it's only a 33 kilowatt hour battery. And it's 144 horsepower, electric motor, 200 foot pounds of torque. So it's not as powerful as say a Chevy Bolt, it has about half the battery capacity of a Chevy Bolt. They haven't got official EPA numbers, range numbers for it yet. But based on that battery size, it's probably going to be somewhere around 125 to 130 miles of range. No pricing yet on it. So let's or sorry, it's 35 and a half kilowatt hour. So probably probably gonna be about 130 235 miles, roughly. So let's start that. What do you think about Mazda launching this as their first Eevee?

Nicole Wakelin  48:48  
Okay, fine.

Dan Roth  48:49  
I think they should call it the compromise.

Nicole Wakelin  48:52  
compromise.

Dan Roth  48:54  
Because it seems like with the other plans that they've talked about, this is their first Evie, but it's going to also the same architecture is going to support hybrids and plugins. And that's where they're going to make the volume. So this is the max battery that they can fit into this car, or this platform, right and all the other ones are going to have smaller batteries or the rotary engine range extender, which I love, but also, I don't know if they're going to still be able to overcome the efficiency problems with the rotary. That seems like a it's an unbranded choice, but it's not necessarily the best choice. The wangle is not efficient. It's it's great packaging, so it's tiny, so I can understand why they pick it. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:45  
so this is the other bit of news that came out. You know, we've been hearing about Mazda, bringing back the rotary as an Eevee range extender for a while for several years now. They, they got some patents a couple of years ago and this will be coming In 2022, at some point after launch, they're going to offer a rotary engine as a range extender. You know, much like what BMW formerly did with the i three, where the the i three had about 110 120 mile range. And you could get the optional range extender, which was basically a BMW motorcycle, motorcycle engine mounted in the back to the drove a generator. And they're they're doing essentially the same thing with the MX 30. You're gonna have a little rotary engine. In this case, one of the advantages, the rotary is very, very compact and power dense. And it should get better fuel economy than rotaries traditionally have, because it's going to be running just said steady state. It's not really propelling the vehicle. It's just driving a generator. You have any thoughts? Nicole?

Nicole Wakelin  50:46  
I don't know. I think it's an interesting idea that they're trying to do it this way. I'm not sure that the Mazda person, a person who's a Mazda buyer, who really loves pastas, and is all about that is going to be that interested in it? I don't I don't know. I have mixed emotions about this. I'm not I I think it's a great idea that they're trying to do something electric. I think it's a great idea with the rotary engine, but I have giant question marks about how well it's going to be received.

Dan Roth  51:12  
Yeah, I'll agree with that. I'm also a little bit frustrated that it's California only. Why is it

Nicole Wakelin  51:18  
because everything's California only if it's efficient. In New England, we just want to burn all the coal possible and all the oil and all the trees and destroy everything. But in California, they want to save the planet so they get all the

Dan Roth  51:29  
California emissions. I thought all the New England states now have California we

Nicole Wakelin  51:33  
It doesn't matter. We're still here, we're still like in a in another country over here in the northeast. There's a lot of stuff we can't

Sam Abuelsamid  51:40  
get here. California is the biggest market they require manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of zero emission vehicles. And so Mazda is going to watch it there first, you know, roll it out to the other Zev states. You know, so New England and, and Colorado and other places that are following the California Evie mandate, are going to get it over the course of 2022. So you will get it you know, probably within a year. You wonder

Nicole Wakelin  52:07  
how much we're gonna is. That's the thing too, and Dan can probably attest to this, like, it comes out in California, it's out in California, it's coming to you. Oh, no, there's one dealer. He has one vehicle. And he if you want that one, you can buy it. Otherwise, we can order it for you. And you can have that in three and a half months. It's like there's no we get them here, but we don't really get them here.

Dan Roth  52:27  
You got to commit you got to

Nicole Wakelin  52:30  
be like give this to I don't care what I have to do to get my hands on this. Find one for me and bring it to New Hampshire.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:36  
But at least you know, at least New England you know, or at least Massachusetts. I don't know about New Hampshire. I don't think New Hampshire's as I've stated are they I don't know honestly, I don't know Massachusetts is and Connecticut and a few other states there. But at least you get some of these Zeff state only Evie is like the Hyundai Kona and the Kia Niro, Evie. You know, Hyundai and Kia don't offer those at all to other states like say Michigan. Yeah, you could not buy one of those in Michigan, you'd have to go to SF State to buy one and bring it back. Because we don't have a mandate here. And so they're just they don't even bother to offer it here. Part of the reason for that is the need to have enough batteries to build enough. And there's more demand for these right now in Europe, particularly because of the co2 emission standards in Europe, they have to sell many more electric vehicles there than they do here. And they can get them they can get a higher price point for them there. So they're basically only shipping enough to North America to meet their regulatory requirements. And all the rest of them are going to Europe. And so that's that's why the xfc only the Zev states get them.

Nicole Wakelin  53:50  
We are and I just googled New Hampshire not only are we not as every state, when I look it up, all I get are things about our governor like vetoed this green bill vetoed that green bill. And like, I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be no as I scroll there,

Dan Roth  54:02  
we want to chop down those old growth.

Nicole Wakelin  54:05  
We are not.

Dan Roth  54:07  
I mean, I guess the California thing makes a little more sense when you consider a the limits on battery capacity, like just battery amounts, availability. And then also you're fishing where the fish are, like, that's it. That's where the people who are going to buy them.

Nicole Wakelin  54:23  
You know, I think you're right, I get the I get the marketing strategy behind this specific vehicle to do it that way. But I always think when they do that, I guess maybe like you said, because of the constraints of the economy and where they get their credits you have to but if you want everybody to start driving those you have to make it easier for everybody to get them at some point. You know, and I feel like a lot of people don't drive them here for very many reasons. But if you had more of them on the road if you saw someone driving it if he saw more than it lends to that, like okay, these are thing they're not an anomaly. They're not weird. Oh, I didn't even know you could get something like this from Mazda. Well, I wasn't going to consider the bolt but I'll consider that you know, The awareness of them in places where they're not necessarily getting all these tax credits, I think would help a lot to the adoption of them. In general.

Dan Roth  55:09  
Yeah. So let's talk about the car itself, which is going to have that monster look and feel right, they're gonna have to figure out how to deal with the weight. And that's something that I'm interested in trying out. Sam, you're probably going to be the one who gets to drive one of these at some point. So luckily, you are a Miata enthusiast. So you know what that feels like? batteries are heavy. And monsters typically are about sort of being nimble and light on their feet, not too much weight. So how do you think that's gonna?

Sam Abuelsamid  55:43  
Well, for what it's worth, you know, the the reviews, the early reviews out of Europe have generally been very positive for this car. I know, Mike Taylor, who is Australian, an Australian living near Lake Como in Italy, he a few weeks ago, and he really liked it. And most of the other reviews have been generally very positive. And it's actually, you know, like I said, it's a little bit smaller or shorter than the CX 30. In fact, it has the, if you remember the RX eight, with the the rear hinged half doors, it was a four door coupe, the MX 30 has the same layout. So the two regular front doors and under half hinged rear doors, actually, the BMW three has that too.

Dan Roth  56:26  
They call it what do they call it here freestyle,

Sam Abuelsamid  56:28  
something like that. So there's no B pillar, and are no conventional B pillar. You know, one of the advantages, you know, at least, you know, when you've got that weight, you know, the the weight is all in the floor. So the the center of gravity is actually surprisingly low, even though it's a comparatively taller car, then, you know, then, say a Mazda three, I think it actually should drive reasonably well, you know, and it's good. In many respects, I think, you know, because of the, the relatively low power output are the same 144 horsepower, not that I want to compare it to a Miata, but you know, it's going to have more of that slow car fast, kind of feel to it, obviously, you've got that instant torque from an electric motor, but it's, it's going to top out pretty quickly. But I think it should be pretty responsive. So Mazda is really emphasizing the, you know, the Mazda driving dynamics of this thing. And we'll just have to wait and see until we actually get our hands on it. You know,

Nicole Wakelin  57:27  
I think, when you were saying that, that the driving dynamics, you know, my expectation is going to be that they're going to do everything they can to make sure that still feels like a Mazda. Because if you're getting your Mazda enthusiast to move into this, and saying, this is where the future of the brand is going on the electric electrification product, and suddenly, everyone gets in it, like, This isn't like a monster, this is not, this is not a Mazda, it's lost the Mazda Dennis, that's not a good thing, you've got to have this one pretty much feeling like, like, it's got the Zoom Zoom, they no longer say exist, you got to have that feeling. Or you're going to sort of alienate some of the people who love your brand in the first place.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:01  
And I think that's part of the rationale behind going with a comparatively small battery, you know, a 35 kilowatt hour battery, yeah, that's gonna wait somewhere in the neighborhood of about probably 500 pounds, five, five to 600 pounds, compared to, you know, close to about 1000 pounds for the battery in a Chevy Bolt. So you're talking about, you know, half the batteries weight, so it's not going to have nearly as much of a weight penalty, as you might expect, you know, obviously, you give that up in range. But, you know, for for the way most people drive it, you know, and especially if you live in warm weather climates, and maybe this might also be part of the reason why they're launching in California first, you know, warm weather climate you're not, you're not going to be relying on the heater as much. You know, and once they get the rotary range extender version, you know, offer that, you know, in colder climates, and you know, that I think that's part of the rationale for the way that they configured this to retain as much of that Mazda, you know, driving DNA as they could

Dan Roth  59:07  
I see all those points it just seems to me like there's no room to grow beyond this, you know, there's and they're saying, I guess this will this will be the basis for another larger Evie as well. So I just, you know, it has that sort of whiff of like, compliance car, but I don't think that's what they're doing here. I think they're just trying to go about it their own own way and there there will be room for more Evie choices. I think the market is actually hungry for it depending on the price and utility they can put into them. Evie is have become a lot more popular and sort of a lot more on everybody's mind. So being able to have something to offer. Even if it's not quite right. At first. I think this is a good way to at least drive some traffic and then they can evolve what they're doing. So this will keep an eye on I do like the interior interior.

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:00  
You just shared is really slick. It's like a floating center console situation that is, like,

Dan Roth  1:00:06  
it looks like cork because apparently monster cork was a cork manufacturer like what is it? Toyo? kogyo or Kojo? Yeah. Anyway, the parent,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:16  
cork cork is actually, you know, really commonly used, you know, and more. For more environmental type of things, because, you know, cork is a renewable resource, basically, from from, you can shave the cork off of cork trees, you know, and it grows back. It's like the bark of these trees

Dan Roth  1:00:36  
on this really friendly bowls that hang out under the cork trees to like, just further and it's just they're chilling. Children's Book reference.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:48  
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a really interesting approach to the design, yes, you've got this relatively small console, since not a full length console, but it floats and there's a little bit of a pedestal underneath to support it. And then, you know, the lower console area that's covered in Cork, you know, underneath that, you'll see you've got some storage space. So I think it's gonna give it a more open airy feel to it.

Dan Roth  1:01:12  
Well, that natural, natural material thing that everybody's doing with like, open pore wood, you know, cork is a really good choice, too, because it's actually, you know, it's some sound deadening and it's going to feel warm to the touch, and it's not going to, it's not going to rattle if you put stuff on it, it's actually going to insulate it,

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:26  
right. Because like you put something hard on it, you don't have that below noises, you

Dan Roth  1:01:30  
know? Yeah, soft. I, the material choices are good. So I think I think once we have time to experience car, it's going to charm us in a lot of ways. So the nuts and bolts aspect of it makes me a little bit more skeptical. But musk does its own thing and its own faith,

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:47  
I have faith in him that they're going to be able to pull this off that they would not introduce this as something and be like, well, we're gonna sort of halfway it just to say we can be compliant and do it, you know, I think it'll get better going forward. First efforts, never, you know, generally isn't the best effort wouldn't try something new like this. But I have faith that it's going to be a decent car to drive.

Dan Roth  1:02:07  
Good. Let's talk about GM now, because if there's anybody that gets criticized.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:16  
So GM, this week announced that they were adding an app cloud based navigation app called maps plus, that's going to be available for owners of GM vehicles from 2018. And onwards with OnStar enabled, that don't have built in navigation. So if you got a car that doesn't have an embedded nav system, and you want a nav system, you can now you'll now be able to download this maps plus app onto your OnStar system. And it downloads and runs from the GM, I think it's the app shop, I think app shop is their their branding for, basically, they have their own little Store app store where you can get a bunch of apps that run directly on the head unit. So it's not running on your phone. It's running running locally. It's cloud based, like Google Maps or Apple Maps. So it's downloading the map data as you go as you need it. And it's made by a company called map box that does navigation stuff. The downside of this is to use it, you have to have a paid OnStar subscription. And you know, it's one of three plants that are eligible for this, you have to have a minimum, like, I think it's the I forget what they call it. Anyway, it's a $15 a month subscription to you know, to answer I mean, you know, you're getting a lot more than just, you know, this Maps app for that $15 a month, you're getting all the other features that you have with OnStar. And there's a lot there's, you know, and for a lot of people, I think there's real value to it. But it can be hard pressed to find people, all these cars that are eligible for this. Also support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. So who's going to use this? If you're, you know, if you've got your phone with you and just plug that in or have wireless anything?

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:59  
No one, I think no one's going to use this if you put your have your phone and because you're, I guess you can you forgot your phone or something. You can use this, but it's $15 it's just part of what's included in another OnStar thing. Am I reading that? Right? It's not like an extra 15 bucks for the back.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:14  
It's just Yes. Or whatever. Yeah, if you have one of these OnStar plan subscriptions for there's a couple three different plans are like 1520 and $25 a month. So

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:24  
it's the base one, so so I guess you'd use it if you haven't, but I feel like I mean, who doesn't have a phone, they can just do Apple CarPlay you know, or Android Auto at this point for those three people that don't have a compatible phone. This is really cool. But

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:39  
I guess you know, or, or, you know, if you prefer to, you know, for the voice control on this one, it's using Alexa voice services. So if you prefer using Alexa as your voice interface in the car. Yeah. And you've got a paid subscription.

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:56  
I do like Alexa better. I mean, like if I'm at home and I asked her Alexa, I just said it, and I can hear her in the kitchen trying to answer me. And I call it Alice, you have Alice, you can use that it always works better than my iPhone stuff. But I don't I don't know that that would I know that that'd be compelling reasons.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:16  
Something that works better than Siri.

Dan Roth  1:05:19  
I guess. So this is really what I'm questioning is like, it probably works better than using something on your phone. At least in those edge cases where your phone gives up or whatever, right. But the phone is good enough. You know, people will use ways not only for the mass, but for like the real time traffic and stuff. And so now you're you're asking them to change apps, like it's one of those things like did they consider the switching cost because the switching cost here is very high. Actually, it's not just the normal idea of switching costs where you're moving from one piece of software to another and you've got to, you know, whatever preferences and expertise you have with that piece of software, now you have to either replicate or relearn. There's also like, a pretty decent economic like actual dollars whack that you have to take to do this. And so integrates in the head unit of the car runs on that hardware, which is nice. But I don't know, wireless CarPlay is pretty good.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:27  
It's not like you're what you're saying. It's not like what we have right now is horrible and awful and terrible. Very bad, no good. And you don't want it if it works, and it works well. So I I feel like this is like cool. I have this for backup if I somehow managed to walk out of the house without my phone, like every year,

Dan Roth  1:06:44  
but I'm not paying $15 a month for bear. But you're

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:49  
the man you're paying $15 a month for OnStar. So you get other of the OnStar stuff. I don't know what the $15 month one. But so if you were already getting the answer, which I've always said, If I had a GM vehicle, I would do that. Because I think it's just the the convenience and the life saving thing and getting someone who can help you and how well they have that is great. I don't know if that's the $15 plan, because there's all these levels. But I like OnStar as a rule. So if I don't have to pay anything extra beyond already getting OnStar. But I don't know that I would use the map. Like even if I was paying the 15 I think the mass would just be like, if I forgot my phone, I'll use their map thing today.

Dan Roth  1:07:26  
I mean, I do think that the system is going to perform really well. You know, even if it's using the integrated 4g LTE connection in the cars, typically because it's got that Roof Mounted antenna on a large physical plane, you can get more more gain of the antenna. So it'll it'll have a connection often when the devices inside won't. So that's a plus, if you're trying to get map data down map data is cached in the hardware. So like, I'm sure it works better, like and performance wise, it's probably better but you got to you now have to move those users from what they like and are comfortable with to something new. And you got to have them ping

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:03  
wouldn't be enough to make you like it's like okay, cool feature, because there's millions of features in every infotainment system, right? But that'd be like cool feature that has sold me I'm now going to purchase the GM versus the other guy would that ever sell you on the product or to just be like,

Dan Roth  1:08:20  
I mean, it may know it might for some people a GM infotainment has gotten pretty good over the last couple of years. It's it's easy to use, it's pretty intuitive. It's responsive and quick. So it's they've done it pretty well. It's not in tune. Just like I just turned into Jeff Goldblum and in Jurassic Park here like he you know, you got caught up with whether you could versus radiation.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:48  
So I don't know I'm looking at the the OnStar plans right now, you know, so with the paid plans, you get things like vehicle diagnostics, dealer maintenance notifications, smart driver, which gain insights about your driving skills that may help you maximize your

Dan Roth  1:09:02  
pay to get you paid, you pay for the system to bug the

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:06  
$15 one Sam, for the base one,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:09  
you also get the voice service, the remote key fob, so you can you can use the OnStar remote app to lock and unlock your car, Flash, your headlights, honk the horn, etc. Even when you're out of range of you know, doing the you know, honking the horn with your with your regular key fob. You can do that through your phone, because it's going through the cell network. You get Alexa voice services, vehicle location remote personalization. So there's a bunch of other features you get plus you know things like the 911 assist, you know, if you if you do get into a crash and airbags go off, it'll automatically call 911 Center, send your location to emergency responders, that sort of thing. There's there's a lot of stuff that you do get with with OnStar capability and then when you step up to like the The the higher plans like the connected vehicle plan, you get, you get other features as well, you can, you can also get up to plans where you can do the, you know, if you've got a teenage kid or young driver in your household and you want to geo fence them, you want to you want to know, you know, if they go outside this geo fenced area, you can get, you know, automatic notifications and things like that there's, there's all kinds of features that they offer as part of these various OnStar plans. So, you know, if you're, if you are subscribing to an OnStar plan, you know, this is just this is an extra bonus that you get, you know, especially if you don't have now built into the car. If you're not,

Dan Roth  1:10:41  
if you don't have nav built into the car like doesn't that isn't that sort of like? Do you actually have the budget for 15 bucks a month for onset point like, I I don't know, it just seems

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:53  
because you're buying built into your car, you're buying the base trim of a more affordable car. And necessarily,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:01  
because a lot of times, you know, the the built in nav systems are there on the more even on like the mid level trims their options. So you may have gotten a mid level trim, decided not to spend, you know, two or $3,000 on the built in nav or you know, maybe it was part of a bundled as part of a bigger package that you decided you didn't want all those other features. So, you know, there, I think that there's reasonable instances where that may be the case, but you if and you know the other thing to consider when you when you buy built in when you get built in Dav if you want updates to your to your maps, those there's a cost a pretty significant cost associated with those. And maps can get out of date, right?

Dan Roth  1:11:43  
I paid 100 bucks for the campaign for the for the the Uconnect in our jeep, and it's 2013 it's a real pain to actually update it to get update the OS and you get

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:56  
fresh maps.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:57  
See you spend 100 bucks, when was the last time you updated? it? You said you have a 13? Is that you're doing that every year? Are you doing? No no, I'm

Dan Roth  1:12:02  
like, this is the actual This is the 2020 upgrades. Okay, even then there's like a new one. So I went from 13 to 2020 without updating the maps. Yeah. So that like that is the thing, but like your phone has? No Yeah, so and if

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:16  
you're using your phone, you probably don't need this. But if you're if you are subscribing to OnStar, this is a nice extra bonus.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:24  
It's like I feel like it's like it's cool. But it's not enough to like change what you would spend or what you would buy. You're just like, Oh, I have OnStar has this now cool.

Dan Roth  1:12:31  
Is it included with part of the like, when you buy a new car, you get OnStar included for X amount of years? Is this included in that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:38  
Yes. So you know, when you have when you have that that trial period, it's it's also part of that, I think.

Dan Roth  1:12:44  
So that's I mean, that's a way to get people down.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:48  
Let's do the questions first, and then we'll hit the interview. So the first one Robert grace asks, I have a philosophical question for the three of you have an answer to this question. But I'm clearly biased in my Outlook, and I want to hear your collective opinions. Well, we always have opinions. Absolutely. When do I advise a friend who's considering a new car purchase to drop all consideration of internal combustion vehicles and only buy an Eevee? importantly, this discussion is limited to those friends who plan to own their vehicle for three to five years and who own their own homes or are able to have an L two charger available to them at work. So an L two available either all day or all night or both? I believe this to be about 75% of the US population, but I'm not sure the answer is now or at the very least six to 12 months from today, when there will be this is his. So I think that the obvious cause obvious advantages of Eevee is better driving characteristics, lower cost of operation, higher reliability and reduced environmental impact will make them choice the most, which will rapidly drive down the resale value of used ice vehicles probably significantly. When you factor in the massive auto manufacturers investments, new governmental incentives, which seems likely and the rapidly expanding charging infrastructure my answer seems like a no brainer. My bias is obvious. I own two V's and have 30,000 miles of Evie driving experience. What do you think? Thanks for the podcast.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:09  
What do you advise someone to drop all consideration of ice vehicles? I don't think anytime soon What I drop all consideration device vehicles, like right off every single one like nope, don't do any of them. You have to buy an Eevee i don't know i don't think soon. I think it's not dependent on the the availability of the charging and what the infrastructure is and the incentives but how you drive. It really depends how you're driving like I would have an ice vehicle and an Eevee right now, but I wouldn't have to see these. Me personally. So I don't think I'd say like completely accident from your consideration. I know that's pretty dramatic. Like no no to eat no to any ice. I don't think I can commit to that. Dan,

Dan Roth  1:14:50  
I am I so I think it's really it's always use case dependent. So those are the questions that we ask anyway when somebody is talking to us about Cars are like, well, how are you gonna use it? What's your daily commute? Like?

What are your edge cases? You know, do you take long trips? Do you have another vehicle for that? Would you be opposed to renting if you needed to take a you know, cross country trip and you know, you needed to take the whole family, you know, rent a van or SUV or something. So, once you get those questions out of the way, and the charging availability is there and your daily, you know, your daily miles is, you know, the average daily mile round trip is less than 40 miles. Yeah. Right. So, I think now is the point to try to go Evie, I agree that you should probably should, at least in the back of your mind, be like, you know, that option for internal combustion is always there. But try to go Eevee if you can, because you're you're just gonna benefit to a degree anyway, with all the incentives he was talking about. Plus, you'll never have to go to a gas station again and wants to cut a gas. Right at least the charging stations that are close to stuff that Mach II I took down to the it's at the Solomon pawn mall is the closest level to or not level to closest DC fast charge. And that's like right outside of Bertolucci's. So you can go get pizza,

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:09  
charging pizza, there you go. That's great motivated teachers right near your local Evie, charger, then stop thinking about nice engine altogether, you know?

Unknown Speaker  1:16:19  
Absolutely.

Dan Roth  1:16:23  
Eat more pizza, use less gas. Everybody wins.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:26  
Yeah, like

Dan Roth  1:16:29  
that's I so yeah, I think you should try it, if you can try to do it now. You know, but try versus like, life is too short to be.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:39  
The absolute was what got me with the question like, Yeah, yes, I think everyone should be considering it, most people should probably be at least looking at it, depending on their lifestyle, but like to completely say, ice is not the way to go at all, don't even look at it, I can't I can't commit to that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:55  
Yeah, and I would agree with with both of you, to a large degree, you know, I think you absolutely need to take a look at your your use case, your lifestyle. And you know, how you're using your vehicle. For, for the vast majority of people that have that live in a single family home with off street parking, you should absolutely be considered considering one, if not now, at least within 12 months from now, because 12 months from now, there's going to be a whole lot more options than there are today. Today, the options are still fairly limited. But you know, by the middle of next year, there's going to be a lot more that you can buy from a variety of different automakers. And particularly in the smaller, you know, small to mid size crossover segment, which is you know, the increasingly the biggest segment of the market now, that's the kind of vehicle people want, you're gonna have a whole bunch more options from Hyundai from Kenya, you know, from GM and others, you know, a year from now. So, I think that if you if you are in that situation, you know, if you have a normal commute, you have less than 50 miles a day or less. And you have off street parking where you can charge at home, you know, chargers, you can you can buy a charger, a dc, dc, or AC level two charger for about 400 bucks. Now, if you have a dryer outlet in your garage, you can plug that in. And in fact, a lot of new cars now are coming from the factory like the Maki's an example the Audi e Tron, they're coming, the other charge cable that they come with in the car has support for 240 volt charging. So if you have that, that dryer outlet NEMA outlet in your garage, you don't even have to spend the three 400 bucks on a charger to stick on the wall, just use that cable and just plug it in, and you're good to go. So if you have to rely on street parking, you know, or you have to park somewhere else and you don't have you know, workplace charging, then it becomes a little more complicated. Or you know, if you are, you know, frequently taking long road trips, you know, then it becomes more of a hassle. And, you know, again, it depends if your road trips are greater than 200 miles, then you probably still want to be thinking about an ice vehicle if your road trips are to 200 miles now, you know, not so much. I mean, you know,

Dan Roth  1:19:20  
and the middle ground there is still very plug in hybrid. Yeah. So and that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:24  
and that is that is a very viable option for a lot of people. And, you know, next week I'll be talking about the Toyota rav4 prime, which is you know, it's a fantastic option for customers that want to go electric but aren't quite ready to make the full jump. And, you know, those those sorts of options are out there and and they should also be considered. So yeah, I would agree, you know that. It's not for not quite for everybody yet. But we're rapidly getting to that point where you probably don't want to consider I see vehicle anymore unless you are making the right choice and buying a Miata

Dan Roth  1:20:07  
you know an electric Miata it's gonna be a good time. So it let us know that was rubber Cray. So let us know if we match up philosophically I feel like we didn't disagree enough, we wouldn't get any fireworks. All right, well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:19  
maybe this one See, Lynn Lynch, as she says, Good morning, love the show. And so sad Rebecca left and so happy you now have Nicole on the show. Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy for Rebecca and enjoy the make. Enjoy the hosts. But I'm selfishly sad for me the listener. I think what we probably needed to do is have more shows with Rebecca and Nicole together. Yeah, where would I be able to get a comprehensive rundown of current electric vehicles that are available to consumers and a rating, including Tesla, which I'll put in the MC, which I put in the mix. I'm looking to possibly get an electric vehicle for my next car in June, and was interested in evaluating what is currently available across all types of vehicles. I looked at the archive of the podcast, I wasn't able to find a show that fit that bill. Thanks for all your info over the past three or four years. I started listening after I heard Sam on Twitter on a Leo Laporte show many years ago, although I'm not a car buff, like my husband, I do enjoy listening to your discussion about the different cars and auto news. Keep it up and happy to have you hit the big time.

Dan Roth  1:21:21  
So right we got Nicole we hit. No, that's not a joke. I mean, that none of us are next.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:29  
We have a Car of the Year Junior on the team.

Dan Roth  1:21:32  
Were legit.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:35  
You're in trouble. If I've legitimised

Dan Roth  1:21:36  
you just five years. By the way, five years, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:41  
Well, five years is false. So for about four and a half years. So probably the easiest, the quickest place to find what's available right now is if you go to fuel economy.gov. And we'll put a link to that, that is the EPA website where they list all the the fuel economy numbers for all the vehicles that are available for sale in the us right now. And as part of that, it also includes all the electric vehicles, and you can on fuel economy.gov, there's a tab at the top for advanced cars and fuels. And if you click on that you can find in there, see all electric vehicles. And there is a list. From there, you can click on new electric vehicles, and there's a list of everything that's available, what its ranges. And then you know, you can then you can compare those click on up to four of those at a time and do a comparison. And that's, that's probably the most comprehensive list that's out there right now. And, you know, if you're looking to buy in June, you know, this is not going to change dramatically between now and then we might have one or two models buy more models by June. But this this is basically what you've got available today. And as soon as cars have been certified by EPA, they get added to this list. And they they typically update this the site every Thursday. So yeah, you can they get updated within a few days after, after all the paperwork has been processed.

Dan Roth  1:23:17  
So where do you guys go though, for in terms of ratings, like a car evaluations, that's the think the other aspect of the question, right, like a road test or some other kind of information beyond just the efficiency. Where do you go for that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:40  
Well, I personally go do a Google search for Nicole wakelin and electric vehicle road test.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:47  
Hey,

Dan Roth  1:23:51  
Monica, where do you

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:53  
go, you know what there's, it's sort of I'm trying to I literally was thinking like, where do I go to look up EV stuff when I need to like just see what someone thinks about EBS. I actually use websites that I really like I like inside ebs.com. And I like green car reports has good stuff. I feel like if you're looking for a way those are the ones that pop into my head, so I must use them a lot. What about you guys? Where do you go when you're looking for EDI stuff? Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:24:19  
I wind up looking at Consumer Reports and admins pretty often. And also, you know, just searching around seeing who has what to say.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:32  
Yeah, green Green Car reports is also a good choice for reviews of Eevee hybrids, plug in hybrids. And Edmunds is interesting. One of the things that Edmunds has been doing quite a bit is not just reviewing those cars, but doing real world range tests. So they have they've developed a drive cycle. And they they actually just recently updated that they did real range test have several have a whole bunch of current EBS, the machi, the various Tesla's the Porsche topcon. And, and assorted others, to compare what the EPA range ratings were to the real world evaluation, which is a mixed drive cycle of highway and city and suburban driving. And they get some real interesting results. And I'll include a link to that in the show notes to that comparison test. So, a Motor Trend also does real world range testing on ATVs. So those, I think, you know, both of those sources for that, in particular car driver also does some as well, is is an important factor, because the the label EP label values do not always correspond to how far you're actually going to be able to drive on a full charge on that vehicle. And one particular trend that you may notice from all of these tests from all these different sources, and the same thing is also true, if you look at European sources, like auto auto car has also done a lot of this in the UK, is that Tesla's almost invariably fall short of their EPA label values by anywhere from 20 to 30%. So Tesla's typically have the highest numbers for their EPA range ratings, but they they usually do not achieve those in the real world. Whereas almost every other manufacturer, they overperform in the real world versus their official ratings. And in some cases, by a significant amount, like that Porsche icon I mentioned, you know, obviously not a mainstream product, it's very expensive car. But you know, it's it's EPA rated at like 204 miles of range. But, you know, most of the real world range tests find that it will actually go 280 to 290 miles and sometimes as much as 300 miles or more on a fault on a full charge. The, the Maki also tends to tends to overperform not buy as much, you know, like the all wheel drive extended range Maki that's rated at 270 can generally hit 300. And, you know, cars like the Hyundai Kona, the Kia Niro and others, also tend to over perform by similar margins. So I'll include links to a bunch of those to look at in the show notes.

Dan Roth  1:27:29  
You know, yeah, just keep coming back. Keep coming back to wheel bearings.

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:33  
You know, what I forgot? I can't believe I forgot to do Shut up. These guys are just safe. It's your call the E the pulse.

Dan Roth  1:27:39  
And, yeah, that's Bradley Brown. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:42  
And he's like, what is the what I'm trying to remember and which is ridiculous because I've done contributed work to them recently. But they have reviews. You've written stuff for them. But Evie pulse has some great stuff. And Stefan Beck does a lot of their reviews. And he goes great reviews like he is like how they feel, you know, he doesn't get too bogged down in the numbers. And you know, you're going to get x number of miles or this, but he really gives you a good feel for what it's like to drive these and he's got a ton of reviews up there. And so yeah, if you haven't checked out Evie pulse, and they have, they're getting there and like an Eevee site, so they have a lot of great information they're worth checking out to.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:21  
I will include all those.

Dan Roth  1:28:24  
Let's get to the interview. I had a couple of questions about the latest Chrysler Pacifica I've reached out to my friends at still lantis. And it got a very nice interview with Brian Swanson, who is chief engineer of the Pacifica and Pacifica phv. And my biggest question, which is still danced around a little bit was like Why haven't you just electrified the rear axle four wheel drive, why did you need a drive shaft and the system works really well don't get me wrong, like it's a it's a pretty impressive system where it detects slippage, and it can it can move the power from front wheel drive to the rear axle really quickly. And all of that stuff is good, it's good engineering, it's clever. It just made me think that maybe maybe they missed out on an opportunity although maybe also they maximize the the battery range for the plug in by using larger batteries. Anyway, and if they were to try to keep stoned go together with hybrid you'd have a compromise.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:18  
And you know, we we may we may yet see you know that all wheel drive plug in hybrid Pacifica because still Stellantis has launched in Europe, they've launched plug in hybrid versions of the Jeep Compass and Renegade with you know that that have an electric rear axle. So you know, they're they're doing it that way already for a couple of vehicles in Europe. So maybe we'll see that get added to the Pacifica.

Dan Roth  1:29:45  
Right and it's in the corporate toolbox. As I'm not the only parent here obviously, we're all parents but like, I just want it all when I'm buying the thing.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:55  
All of the things I can get on this I want on this vehicle note well then I don't want it

Dan Roth  1:30:01  
I want the payment to be $250 a month please like just

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:04  
you get cool. Mechanical, the little boy, those

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:07  
are nice pillows.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:11  
They're beautiful. Yeah. Oh,

Dan Roth  1:30:13  
yeah, there's a lot to the pinnacle. And Brian was great. And he talked up not only sort of the greasy bits underneath, but just the other stuff that you can get in the Pacifica, with the newest generation of you can act and all of the changes they've made. So it's a short interview about 10 or 15 minutes. And we'll we'll jump to that. And come back. I have a quick announcement. So don't go away.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:37  
Thank you.

Dan Roth  1:30:39  
Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us for the wheel bearings podcast, I appreciate it.

Brian Swanson  1:30:46  
Great to get an opportunity to, to talk about our products.

Dan Roth  1:30:50  
Why don't you start by telling, telling our audience who you are and what you do there, it's to lantis.

Brian Swanson  1:30:55  
So I'm Brian Swanson. I am the chief engineer for our Pacific project. So that includes both the guests in the in the hybrid applications been with the company for about 22 years, through various roles within engineering. So in our new 21 model year, Pacific guys got a lot of great stuff coming in the market. So really excited to talk a little bit about that and some of the technology on the car.

Dan Roth  1:31:19  
Yeah, it was really interesting. When we got the background around it, a lot of what's going on is going on underneath. Are there a couple of goals that were laid out at the beginning of of designing the 2021 Pacifica and the changes for it that left you thinking, gosh, how are we going to solve that,

Brian Swanson  1:31:37  
you know, just to talk about kind of how we got where we are on, I guess I want to take a step back and just talk a little bit on specifically about the 21 model, you're in kind of a mission of that particular vehicle. Right. So we launched the original Pacifica in 17. And just about, since we launched that car, we had customers calling us and asking us, you know, hey, I love it. It's great. I love all the features on it, the stolen go love everything about it, but when can I get an all wheel drive? And we heard that message pretty strong from all over the country specifically, you know, in the, in the Midwest, and that we, you know, kind of high snowfall regions, if you will, right. what's what's really interesting about that, though, was back when we initially concepted the car, in 17, we kind of always knew that that all wheel drive would be an opportunity. So we kind of tasked our packaging engineering department with Hey, you guys got a package me you got a package protect for all wheel drive, we know customers are out there that are probably going to want it. But you also got to make it work with stolen go. And that was kind of kind of a big challenge for them. So we ended up growing the car about 38 millimeters with lines from the exit man. And that allowed us to actually accommodate on the three piece driveshaft that runs the length of the car and keep kind of one of our most coveted features, which is stowing go. So you know, in 21, we're bringing not only all wheel drive, but a van that that also has that that stone go feature. So it's one of the things that that we're really excited about on it. And you had mentioned a lot going on underneath. And it's not only underneath, really inside. So for 21 model your Pacifica you know, we're one of the first vehicles within galantis to offer new Uconnect five system. And it's really an awesome system if you haven't had an opportunity to experience it yet on it. It provides customizable driver profiles. And I'm not just talking about like radio presets. I often tell people and tell people my my wife and I have shared a minivan for about 17 years. It's her daily driver, I get to drive it occasionally on the weekends. And

Dan Roth  1:34:08  
so yeah, settings is the number two button on the door, right? Like

Brian Swanson  1:34:14  
Absolutely. You're with me. One of the things that's really frustrating, right, because you get when you're in your daily right you know where everything's at, and you kind of know where all those great features are. And it's it's like that five minutes or so that you get in and you're kind of like re acclimate yourself you're like, Alright, how do I turn on the heated seats and how do I do all that the these customizable driver profiles are awesome. You can go in, you can build pages within the head unit that allows a customer to put all those features that they want right on the front screen. And you can just kind of like you just can jump in and go ninja. It's really great. It's it's bringing wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay all of the Alexa capabilities that you have at home on your Android on that's all in the van on. It's great. I mean you can you can start the vehicle lock unlock doors all from your home. Just a lot of really, really cool tack. That's, that's in that you connect live system.

Dan Roth  1:35:18  
Yeah, I remember getting the backgrounder on that earlier in 2020 as well. And it was just the amount of thought that went into it was pretty impressive. And so that right now Uconnect five is on what it's on the Pacifica but it's also on the RAM. It hasn't hasn't started to filter out into other vehicles just yet. Right. It's on those those two though.

Brian Swanson  1:35:40  
Yeah. So right now it's, it's on Pacific dot and it's on on on a geranium as well in Durango. Okay. And you'll see that that system come into the rest of our portfolio? Pretty sure.

Dan Roth  1:35:54  
Yeah, it's pretty slick. And I was really impressed with the there's like the app marketplace for it too, as well, right? Where you can you can add different functionality to the car via subscription model. Just download it.

Brian Swanson  1:36:07  
Yeah. It's really cool. The the amount of connectivity now, right, that we're starting to see on in the vehicles as well as you know, some of the customizability right. So like, even on our van on our on our 21 mile year Pacifica, we have a feature called fam can and it's a it's a video feed that's mounted up in the headliner that allows the driver a 360, kind of bird's eye view of the cabin. And what's really unique about it is you can see, based on how we have the camera position, we can see into a rear facing infancy in the second row. And I know when I was when I was a young father, you know, it's like, you put that rear facing infant seat in the back, and you're always wondering, like, What is going on? Is he sleeping right? push of a button on the radio head, you can kind of check in and see how things are going. And that's, you know, just one of those cool little things that right now is only offered on the Pacific on and that's kind of some of the customized customization. That's the system like that is awesome. So, yeah, really cool.

Dan Roth  1:37:15  
I mean, you guys must get all the parents sort of together and just saying, what is it that you want? What what do you what do you want in a car? Like, how do you focus group that even just among yourselves to just figure out the features that you want to try to roll out?

Brian Swanson  1:37:27  
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, you know, what's funny is, you know, obviously, a lot of young parents, you know, you go out and do clinics and stuff, but not only that, you know, it's the segment is such that, you know, really, if you think about it, a lot of our customers are our younger children, right? The kids that, that end up sitting in the second and third rows, right. So it's kind of a very unique segment. And, you know, being able to go out and get those customer voices and understand, you know, really what their expectations are and what they want to see, you know, kind of activity, I guess it's kind of paramount, and everyone's got their own phone, if you will, and they want to be able to connect and do all those things. But you know, even with that, there's always that that portion that either forgets that at home, or you know, perhaps is too young to have a phone. So you know, we offer Uconnect theater, in 21, we have four new games that that are coming in for that launch, we're adding concentration chess back in and Chrysler says which is kind of like a Simon cone. And that gets added to the nine existing games. So I mean, we have tons of entertainment for those second row passengers. And just kind of all those creature comforts. Yeah, and the games. You know, it's

Dan Roth  1:38:46  
so funny. It's hilarious to me to talk to my kids about what they like and the vehicles that I get to review on a regular basis. And they love Vance. First of all, I think part of it is because they can see out of them so well. But the games in the Chrysler systems are that either the earlier even the earlier Pacifica has ruined them for any other my I forget which competitor was the my my son got in he was a car. There's no games in here, buddy. So that's, that's really cool that it's offered and I think it's it that's kind of like a growth area. You can even start to partner with other game publishers and you get Pac Man on there something

Brian Swanson  1:39:29  
you know, you talk about games, I know my kids will. They'll go in and plug in their Xbox. Right and it's like the exponential growth of technology and how quickly it's arriving. Not only in your home but now into the vehicles. You know it's This is an exciting time to be in the industry. Absolutely.

Dan Roth  1:39:47  
So let's get back to the greasy parts for a sec. You had mentioned package protect. Can you just give me like a real quick summary of

Brian Swanson  1:39:56  
what that what that practices? What does that what does that actually mean what what I mean by that is we wanted to make sure when they did all of the packaging for, say kind of all of the hard points or all of the pieces, and all of the things on the vehicle, that would be very difficult to change, we wanted to just carve out kind of a space, if you will, of where we thought that the system would have to go. Right. such that when, you know when and if we were allowed the opportunity to execute, we didn't have to go back in, you know, retool the assembly plant, if you will, or retool significant portions of the vehicle. So you know, to to get the all wheel drive system in there, we launched the car, the wider the space was kind of there, really simply all we had to do, we had to make some minor modifications to the front and rear cradle, we modified the fuel tank a little bit at a redo a little bit of exhaust rerouting, but there were no like major monuments that would make it very difficult to to put that all wheel drive system in there.

Dan Roth  1:41:05  
Right. So really, the body in white stays the same. And just some of the pieces you're bolting into it are are different.

Brian Swanson  1:41:12  
Yep, absolutely.

Dan Roth  1:41:13  
So with the all wheel drive, you can get all the drivers stow and go. And you can get hybrid, but you can't get them together. And part of that is because the stone go goes where the batteries go for the hybrid, but it's also a mechanical all wheel drive system.

Brian Swanson  1:41:30  
Can you talk about maybe the choices you had to make, you know, maybe considering something like an electrified rear axle versus mechanical all wheel drive that would have given you some capability, some some electrification capability and all wheel drive together and kept seven go, when we started to look at it kind of the first application that kind of made sense to us was just going after the gas, the plug in hybrid, like you had mentioned just makes, just makes the adaptation that much more of a challenge when you have a mechanical system that's architected, like what we have on our gas application. So of course, with the system that we have, right now, we weren't able to execute that on our on our hybrid. So who knows what the future will hold. But right now we only offer a donor under gifts, applications.

Dan Roth  1:42:16  
Sure, sure. And it was just, you know, I, if you were to try to keep all those features together, I'm assuming the hybrid function would suffer because if you've got stolen go, there's not really anywhere really for the batteries to go. So you've got a much smaller battery at that point, you hurt your hybrid capability as well. I just it was interesting to me seeing how other automakers will do like, through the road hybrids just didn't know what maybe conversations had happened to arrive at the V six with all wheel drive combo versus some other system.

Brian Swanson  1:42:52  
So if you look at the launch cadence though, we launched the gas, right, the hybrid came after, you know, it's, I would say it's more of an evolution.

Dan Roth  1:43:01  
Nobody's gonna complain. I mean, it does, it does so many miles off the battery. I think that's great.

Brian Swanson  1:43:07  
Yeah, our plug in hybrid is really on. It's been great. The customers love it in the field, I think it's an awesome package. I mean, if you think about it, right, our research showed that, you know, an average customer's daily drive cycles, about 30 miles are plug in hybrid gets 32 on all electric, right, so you can technically run around a lot in electric mode only and not burn a drop of gas, you know, for you know, a good chunk of the population that's out there, on and then you know, if, if it's needed, right, you can supplement with the gas power train, right. And, and combined to get 520 miles of range. You don't have the range anxiety that, uh, that exists with a full bath. You know, there's, there's just a lot of a lot of really good things that make sarpy have a great package, especially for younger families where you know, you don't want to have a carload of people, and oh, my goodness, am I going to make it to the charging?

Dan Roth  1:44:09  
Right, and then the way that the charging station and everybody's schedule, the the longer range battery vehicles are great, that unexpected family thing I've dealt with it myself, it's kind of sometimes it's just nice to have a little insurance. You'd like you said, you can cover your daily range pretty pretty well, at least for the average driver. And cost wise, it's in that range of affordability that some of the most prominent, ie V's aren't. So what compromises had to be made along the way because cost certainly plays a much bigger role in something like a Pacifica or, you know, family vehicle than say, you know, a ram tr access, you know, just something that is, you know, closer to $80,000 versus, you know, 50 at the top end So,

Brian Swanson  1:44:56  
and we'll see as the as the industry evolves and the time technology that's better. Right? We'll see some of those costs come down. So, you know, and I, and I think that's obviously a little bit why, you know, the the Evie kind of stuff was just starting to ramp up. Right. So that will help out with economies of scale. But, but absolutely, I mean, I'm trying to think off the top of my head, if there was one or two things that, that I would say we had to, we had to go after or really investigate when we, when we went about it. There's really nothing off the top of my head that that I could think of, but you know, I completely understand kind of where you're coming from

Dan Roth  1:45:38  
minivans don't they're not really seen necessarily as a hotbed of engineering, innovation, but there's a lot lot going on. And and so what are your plans? I guess going forward? What can we expect to see as the model evolves, you know, and the next iteration right, you know, what, what can you tease us with

Brian Swanson  1:46:00  
you don't always let us talk about future projects. But I guess I'll talk in generalities right yeah, absolutely. Stay

Dan Roth  1:46:08  
general don't get yourself in trouble.

Brian Swanson  1:46:12  
There's a lot of stuff going on in the industry, right relativity, V's you got autonomy, you got all kinds of stuff that that's out there, whether or not it shows up on in a future Pacifica is yet to yet to be defined. But, you know, I think, you know, it's, it's a, like I mentioned before, it's a pretty exciting time to be, you know, in the industry. And, you know, the I agree with you as a van, I kind of chuckled back there, you were talking about the range thing with the, with the family. And, you know, I've been in a been in a couple of competitor vehicles, and then kind of experienced similar, you know, with a full dove and you're like, oh, boy, am I? Am I gonna make it or not? Right? So I'm really hoping is, as the battery technology gets better rain, and we're able to, you know, improve upon, you know, how quickly we can do some of the charging activities, that we'll start to see some of those benefits. Show up in, in the vehicles.

Dan Roth  1:47:11  
Yeah, and battery tech is hopefully going to continue to evolve to so we can pack more range into the same space. So is there a challenge to educate people with that, like, when they see that the the plugin, Pacifica will do 30 something miles, electric only, that's really good. But then it it pales in comparison to something like a Model X that is all electric and does hundreds of miles. But to make that argument to say, you really only need 30 something most of the time.

Brian Swanson  1:47:42  
So I think that's a fair point. And but I think, you know, one thing that at least that I'm seeing is, you know, a lot of the the Evie, you know, any of the electrified applications, the customers are just really much more into the tech, right. And so I'm training much love is required, because it's kind of a different customer, they're, they're kind of out there, they're really digging into, you know, kind of the guts and the technology that their car has on. So I think it's a very, it's a much more informed customer. Now, when you're trying to get a conquest, though, right, you got somebody who's in a, in a gas van, and you want to put them in a in a p have, you know, there's some really cool features like on cabin conditioning, right? Where you can actually when the car is one of the vans plugged in charging, you can you know, set times to condition the cabin, right. And it's almost like it's a remote start or the for the plug in hybrid, right. So if you live in a in a cold climate, right, you can say, Hey, you know, what, my I leave to go to work at 7am start eating up the cabinet 630 in the morning greater, you know, so it's ready to go. I think it's subtle features like that, that, that probably require a little bit more of the training, if you will, more so than the you know, the plugin portion, if you will, at least in my opinion.

Dan Roth  1:49:07  
So yeah, yeah. But once people learn about that stuff, too, they love it. They evangelize. Hey, look at this cool thing my, my car can do now. So I wish I had all that stuff on my gas car.

Brian Swanson  1:49:20  
No, and that's, you know, that's some of the cool things right, that that will start to get a lot of people interested in, in coming over in, you know, in being in what I'll call an early adopter. Right? Because I think we're just seeing the, you know, the beginning of kind of, you know, that move obviously over towards electrification but, you know, you're absolutely right. There'll be cool little features like that, that people you know, find out wake up one morning and go man I can't live without.

Dan Roth  1:49:47  
Alright, so last question. We'll move to the engine bay. In the staying with the hybrid for a month was there ever consideration to swap the V six for smaller, more efficient four cylinder, it kind of used the electric motor to fill in the performance gap, you know, make it even more fuel efficient. And maybe why was that? Or wasn't that considered,

Brian Swanson  1:50:11  
when you're going through in, in concepting, vehicles, you're going to take a look at all the different possibilities and different combinations, but they're out there, obviously, right. And at the end of the day, when we looked at, you know, kind of pulling the package together, it just made a little bit more sense to us with the vehicle that we had, you know, to keep that three, six, it's slightly modified, right, we're running at Atkinson cycle on that motor. So you're, you're picking up, you know, some subtle improvements, or some pretty significant improvements in efficiency, you know, and we let the electric motors kind of pick up the, the bottom line, if you will, and, you know, the absolutely, you know, it's it's interesting to see again, where, where the industry is kind of moving to that smaller four cylinder, you know, application and, you know, what's going on there, but with our, with the current offering that we have right now, that was kind of the when we looked at all the data that was just the one that made sense to us, so

Dan Roth  1:51:21  
well. Alright, well, so I think I have run through our, our list of questions, and I will put it into the next episode of willowbank. So I really just wanted to say thanks for for taking the time to chat Pacifica with us. And, you know, hopefully I get the chance to try one out soon. I haven't seen one in the fleet in a little bit. So

Brian Swanson  1:51:40  
I'm gonna check out. I'm going to recommend, I'm going to recommend one or two, and we'll see what we can get you in so 21 we have a new model, or new high end model is the pinnacle. I don't know if you've heard about it. Yeah, I love the pillows. Definitely, absolutely. It's got the quilted pillows, it's got the unique Napa leather. They call it karma walk, it's got the plush second row seats, like you have in a in a hybrid rate, Mom, so it doesn't have stone girl, but so on. But that's a suede headliner. I mean, it's, it's like the epitome of luxury in a band. It's a really cool on the checkout. But I'll tell you the one I've sold the most. And a lot of people haven't heard about it. But it seems like everyone I talked to ends up getting one. And Matter of fact, I got one in my driveway right now is the red S model. Have you heard of the red s?

Dan Roth  1:52:36  
I have? That's the one that Ezra Dyer just wrote about in car driver. So he didn't get a nice.

Brian Swanson  1:52:44  
I talked to him right before he bought it and told him I was like, Hey, you got to go check out the Retta. And that's awesome. I was lacking because they thought I saw his article and said, Hey, I sold him that car. But oh is it is so cool. Every time I take that van somewhere people are just like, oh my god, what is this custom? I'm like, nope, comes through the factory just like just like this. So it's, it's cool how, you know, the van segment and I and I listened to it a little bit on your January podcast, just to get a flavor for the for the show. right in. Okay. And Sam was talking his experience with the car and, and you guys have made a lot of comments about you know, everyone loves the minivan, right? It's, it's kind of an awesome vehicle, but no one wants one. Right? And it's just, it's kind of funny to see, Mom, not only that, like, small customization stuff that's now kind of even coming out of the factory. But even the little like grassroots stuff that's going on. There's clubs out there specifically, like our west, if you look on them, culture is one of them. But yeah, you know, there's a lot of people that are really, really interested in the segment and customization in the segment. So who knows what, where that goes, but it's just kind of one of the really cool things that you know, you you just kind of step back and look at it and go, you know, it's an interesting segment to play in, but then to see what what people do with them is pretty, it's actually really cool.

Dan Roth  1:54:19  
Yeah, I would love to see sort of a plot of how passionate the owners are, because there's really like that van culture thing is is definitely happening. And I think part of it too, is there's a whole generation of us that grew up with the minivan you know, we we were born right around the same time as that original caravan hit the market. And it was I think it was five or six. And so it just it's been a part of our culture are one of the first cars move. Remember his kids might have been a caravan or a voyager or something and now SUVs and crossovers have been the thing for them. A decade plus, we want something different. And the van gives you that car like driving experience with all of the space inside of full size SUV, you know, there really are that most practical solution. And it's that we fight with ourselves, I think a little bit.

Brian Swanson  1:55:16  
Like, yeah,

Dan Roth  1:55:17  
it's cool. That's also got that like, uncool to it as well, which I don't know. That's that's us to figure out. That's not the van. Yeah,

Brian Swanson  1:55:25  
definitely a dichotomy, right. I'll leave you with this, though, because I thought this was kind of funny. So one of my close friends sent me a Sunday a text the other day, and it was, it was a post on Twitter from some guy. And his comment was, the kids who drove minivans in high school, are now the backbone of society.

Dan Roth  1:55:52  
announcement wise, we have a couple of changes for the show. I know, we just put everybody through the changes with Rebecca leaving and Nicole joining. So I now need to make everybody sad, I've taken a position at Ford. And so my role with the podcast needs to change. But it's not as tragic. As you may worry, I'm still gonna try to be a part of the show. And as much as I know, you know, as much as I know, everyone else wants to hear what I have to say. In the meantime, we're going to add a another third host and CMU lined up. Robbie Baldwin,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:56:28  
Roberta Baldwin, formerly of car driver and gadget and assorted other places and is now freelancing has agreed to join us starting next week. So we're really looking forward to having somebody tall on the show.

Dan Roth  1:56:45  
And he plays guitar really well.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:56:46  
He's in a bunch of bands to do. So

Nicole Wakelin  1:56:49  
if you can do like Intro Music for the show now, well, we have just a little guitar at the beginning of every show.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:56:56  
For sure we go,

Dan Roth  1:56:57  
I have no complaints, I'm still going to maintain a role in assembling the show. And it's an opportunity for us to bolster the content on our site, we did solicit some some folks for wheel bearings, media. And so now that I've gotten through the intense two weeks of leaving one place and preparing to start another, I'm going to put my attention toward opening up our platform for people who want to scratch that automotive journalism itch. So we'd love to have people contribute to hit us up. We are a self. Yeah. But what the email is pitches at wheel bearings, that media if you wanted to pitch us and see we have a tiny little budget for now, which is made possible by you our listeners, you should be on PBS, PBS. Right. your listeners, right, and we're not underwritten by like the Koch brothers. But, you know, our budget is small, it's made possible by our excellent audience and I'm, we want to have more contributions. So let's build a scrappy thing together. I am going to try to come back my role will evolve as I go through ethics review. So stay tuned for that. I need to step away for a little while to just to make sure I get the okay to do it. So I'm disappointed to have to back off after podcasting for 15 years.

Unknown Speaker  1:58:19  
Wow. 10 years,

Dan Roth  1:58:21  
as part of the first wave of podcast

Nicole Wakelin  1:58:23  
early podcasters. Look at you. And now you're going to work on board,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:58:27  
which has nothing to do with why Dan was driving so many Ford's over the last couple of months, actually.

Dan Roth  1:58:35  
And that's its most mostly due to our wonderful New England fleet person, Rhonda. And she just kept a stocked up with everything. New England. Great. And so yeah, she's, she's awesome. I'm not in a product, roll it forward. So there's that as well. But, you know, if you if you're in Florida employee, you'll probably continue to hear from me. Otherwise, I will see everybody when I get back. We're gonna miss you, Dan.

Nicole Wakelin  1:59:05  
It was a fun, you know, like half minutes that I podcasted with you.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:59:10  
Forever doing the the Autoblog podcast together in early 2008. When we revived it after it was on hiatus for a while and

Dan Roth  1:59:18  
that's right. They killed it. And we were like no.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:59:20  
Yeah, cuz, you know, Neff and john Neff and Alex and Damon labyrinths, you know, put it on hiatus. And you and Chris shock and I convinced them to bring it back. said we'll do it. Yeah, we

Dan Roth  1:59:35  
said we do. We were like, we'll do it for the normal post rate. You don't even have to pay. We built that podcast, that podcast had hundreds of 1000s of listeners every month. Part of it was, you know, AOL juice. You know, we were part of that first wave of podcasting. And so it's really interesting to see where the industry has evolved, especially in the last five years where big money has flooded in and it's there's a lot of great content out there and I think that we're gonna chase down more opportunity for content from your bank. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:00:06  
all right, yeah. I'll talk to you all next week.

Unknown Speaker  2:00:09  
Bye bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai