Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Coming up on episode 205 of wheel bearings. We've got Robbie in the Mercedes Benz EQ s. Nicole's got the 2020 Mini convertible john Cooper Works. I've got the 2021 Genesis gvhd, you got lawsuits over deal delivery fees, low inventory rivian delayed Chevy bolts on fire, and a ban on internal combustion and EU by 2035. All that and more coming up next. Did you know you can support wheel bearings directly head to patreon.com slash wheel bearings, media, and you can become a patron today. Your contributions will help fund the platforms and tools we use to bring the podcast to you. And exclusives improvements are already on the way thanks to your generosity. So if you want to be part of an automotive podcast, like no other head to patreon.com, slash wheel bearings, media This is Episode 205 of wheel bearings. I'm sammobile Samad from guidehouse insights. Nicole Wakelin 1:07 And I am Nicole wakeland from out of a towel. Roberto Baldwin 1:12 And I am Roberto Baldwin from engadget. Sam Abuelsamid 1:16 Excellent. And what have you all been driving this week? Let's start with the coal. Nicole Wakelin 1:22 Oh, he start with me. Okay, I was actually really excited about this carcass. They don't often get cars from this company headed Mini, which is just about the cutest car in the entire planet in any version. It's adorable. This is the 2022 Mini Sam Abuelsamid 1:37 mini mini or a big maksimum Nicole Wakelin 1:39 little mini it's a mini john Cooper Works convertible. It's it's Mini. It's Sam Abuelsamid 1:43 excellent. Nicole Wakelin 1:45 It's super cute. And it was funny because when they pull it into the driver and level of weird custom stuff you can do to like, what do you want your roof to look like? What do you look like what your side mirrors to look like? Like all this custom stuff? The one I have the convertible top has a union jack on it. So it's like a black top with sort of like a gray a different fabric that has a union on the convertible. Yeah, on the convertible to on the actual fabric. It's the top so I looked out my window to see what was there and it was like a little union jack looking at me. It's really cute. Sam Abuelsamid 2:14 Yeah, I've seen that on the coops. But on the hard tops. I've never seen that on one of the convertibles before we Nicole Wakelin 2:18 do. And it's neat because like if you think the fabric of the convertible is just like, you know, think of your basic black fabric. But then the union jack is gray. But it's almost like it's a herringbone pattern. So it's a slightly different you know, it's not just a different color. It's actually a different like material pattern. It looks really cool. Yeah. It's just a custom screened Sam Abuelsamid 2:38 or no, I believe it's actually yours it Nicole Wakelin 2:43 printed, it looks like it's stitched. I could probably find out because hearts the guys who make the convertible tops for like 99.9% of the convertibles on the planet are in Massachusetts right next door. I may even see him at a local event. I will ask I will find out if it looks green, I will tell you but I'm pretty sure it's actually woven into the fabric. So that's what I have this week and I never had minis I think this is the second time. Maybe the third time I've ever driven one. haven't put the top down for more than 30 seconds because I'm in New England. And what we're currently doing is building arcs. Because it hasn't stopped raining for three weeks. It's just Rain, rain, rain rain. So I put it down for a hot minute it was it was fine. And then I had to put it right back up again because it's been raining. So we'll see I got it a couple more days. Maybe I'll get to drive it more with a top down. But I like this it it you know there's that cuteness I mean it's incredibly appealing car to just look at in mind is this what is read, you know, like I said the union jack thing it's it's got that cute little kid smile when you drive by kind of thing happening. And even the interiors that way everything's like very round and very bulbous. And there's cute colors, you know, you adjust the radio and the colors on it like around the infotainment system, turn one color and you adjust your your air conditioning and they turn another color. It's it's the most entertaining little car to drive. But it's also a lot of I mean, it's also a sporty little thing. So last week, I had had the Civic Sedan, which is a perfectly fine sedan and I drove it a lot because I had a little bit of a road trip. And I had just gotten out of that. And they took it and then I get into this An hour later and for a second I thought oh my gosh, this is so this feels so harsh. It was so tight. I'm like no, this is just not the relaxed civic city and it's got some sportiness to it. So for a second it was almost disconcerting, like the difference between the two and then my brainwaves yeah but you actually like this calm down to call this is fine Sam Abuelsamid 4:39 well you have the john Cooper Works right so it's Yeah, even sportier. Not quite the sporty is that I don't think they have the the GP edition in the convertible. I think that's only for now but yes, but it's definitely gonna it's gonna be tighter. Nicole Wakelin 4:55 Yeah, and it's it's in the power it's a twin turbo four cylinder with 200 20 horsepower and 236 pound feet of torque to 28 is a good number. But it's a really good number in a car this small. This is such a tiny little thing. It's not like this is a huge, heavy SUV that we're moving down the highway. Sam Abuelsamid 5:14 Comparatively tiny by modern standards. Nicole Wakelin 5:17 by modern standards. It has a you can see it has a backseat. I mean, there's one there. You could technically put people there if they took their knees and folded them up against their chests like a pretzel. Otherwise the seats to people. We went out we went out last night was like, why aren't we taking the minimum? Like you want to sit in the back? He's like, Oh, yeah, three of us can't fit in there. So it's really a two seater. I mean, it doesn't say that but it is. And it's not the cheapest two seater on the planet either. So the base price on this is 38. Nine. I had a lot of options added on there. brought that price on the one I'm driving to $46,250. exactly who that's it. Sam Abuelsamid 6:04 That's a maxi mini price. Nicole Wakelin 6:06 Yeah, exactly. So it's it's kind of pricey. But the thing is, it's it really is a sporty and very fun car to drive. I mean, it's very tight handling. It's very aggressive. The only time that this sportiness sort of works against it is it does get hurt. If you hit a pothole like you hit a pothole, you don't realize it's there, you will know it's there. Once the wheels of this car have gone through it because it is it is harsh under those circumstances. And there is a drive mode selector where you can pick like sport I forgot. It's like sport in normal. And I think there's three, the sport mode does make a huge difference. You put it in sport and the neighbors neighbors will hear your exhaust four doors down. It gets all verbally and crackly and it sounds fantastic. It but you know as small as it is, the backseat not really usable. But I don't know I owned a beetle. Once upon a time a turbo beetle back when the new Beatles first came out, nobody pick on me I loved that thing. But the neat thing about it was it's so round, that even though it's a really tiny car inside, it felt big because it was very easy. The roof is just higher than you expect for a small car. My husband six three, and he was always like, he was always surprising that he could sit in that thing and not be squashed. It was kind of the same way with the mini the mini has a surprise you know, it's got a sort of a boxy design to it. It's not like this low squished, you know, small, it's tiny in terms of how many people can fit. But it's roomy if you're just using the front seats. So he's six, three, he's still fit in there without feeling like you know, His head was about to brush the top of the, you know, the car, which I think is kind of neat. My biggest criticisms of this, and this is a weird criticism. So there's a thigh adjuster that like, you know, you can adjust the seat out for your thigh. And I don't need that. But when you close it as tight as it will get, it's not all all the way close. So there's like a little gap between your seat and the thigh extender. And when you sit down, it feels weird. It feels like you have something like a little seem feels strange. And it's this little gap. Which doesn't seem like a big deal until you keep thinking like, like it's almost like you sat on the edge like is the seat belt under my leg is what is under my leg. Is there a straw wrapper there? Did I What did I sit on it? No, no, that's just actually how the seat is made. So that was a little weird. In fact, it's enough of a gap that I rolled up a straw wrapper from my McDonald's Diet Coke, and I dropped it and it fell directly between so I had to extend the little thing so I can reach it and take the little straw wrapper out and not give that back to them. And the other thing that I found a little awkward in the few moments that I had the top down. Once you have it down, you have no rear view whatsoever, it sticks up even when it's folded completely, it's up enough in an angle that you have, you really can't use your rearview mirror like you have the narrowest of views over the top of that I realized like if you're in a parking lot, you can turn around but I'm not like turning around and looking over my head on a highway. So you're really having to rely 100% on your sideview mirrors to see what's behind you and you're changing lanes because once that top is down, it doesn't come low enough that you can still see over the top of it and you're where every mirror Sam Abuelsamid 9:12 This is one of the downsides of having such a small car and making it convert convertible is that there's nowhere to stole that mechanism inside the body working basically has to stacked on top of the rear body. Nicole Wakelin 9:26 Yeah, and it really does which you know you still have sideview mirrors I mean you can pack an SUV full of stuff and have no rear view mirror because you blocked your view you know when you just use sideview mirrors but it was it's disconcerting because your habit when I drive you know you check your mirrors you check all three of them side mirrors and the rearview mirror you go to check that rearview mirror and you kind of want to do this like duck thing like can I if I change my angle can I see Nope, nope, there's no seeing out that just use the side peers. Sam Abuelsamid 9:55 Yes, it's been a while since I drove a mini mini you know the last slide All minis I've had them all been like countrymen's, and, and clubmans and stuff. And it's probably been decades since the last time I had a Cooper or a convertible. I mean, and so it's, you know, when I The last time I drove one of those in that, you know, it was even smaller than it is now. And it was a lot of fun to drive. And sounds like it's you know, they've, they've kept that that fun to drive feel of the of the many in this latest generation. Nicole Wakelin 10:33 Oh, 100% it is truly, it is truly fun in one shot, you know, when you listen to that exhaust note, and you you know, hit the gas hard to merge onto a highway in it. It feels great. It sounds great. It's absolutely a joy. So it makes that rather pricey price tag a little bit easier to swallow because like well if I buy this I'm having all this fun every time I get on the highway. I'm having all this fun every time they take a twisty because it's so tight on side roads. You know if you're on little country roads, slinging it through the corners is truly truly fun. So I enjoyed the heck out of it. This is a this was a good car. I'll be sad when they take this one away in two days. Roberto Baldwin 11:09 Yeah, it's a it's a fun car. I had the the coupe of a year ago, eight months ago. The only issue for me was that I could not get comfortable in the seats. I for the for the life of me, I could not figure out a way to not be uncomfortable in those seats. Nicole Wakelin 11:25 It was that stupid thigh extender. Roberto Baldwin 11:27 Maybe maybe everything else in my car really liked. But I was just like, I can't I couldn't buy this car because of the seats. And this and it was the john Cooper Works version. I've driven the other ones and it's fine. But the junk I don't know. Somehow they found the perfect measurements to stab my spine and all the right or wrong places. But no, it was it was it was great. It was fun to drive. It's you know, it's like a souped up I mean, everyone likes to say that it's like a souped up Go Kart. Nicole Wakelin 11:57 It is it is a little bit like a souped up go kart in cuter than us. It's just really Sam Abuelsamid 12:02 storable. And this is exactly why you should never ever buy a car sight unseen without actually sitting in it first, at least sit in it preferably ticket for a very thorough test drive, but at the very least sit in it because you know that the thing that people think probably think about the least when they buy a car. But that may well be the single most important feature of the car is the seats. You know, no matter what else you do with the car, you're gonna have to sit in those seats. And if you can't get comfortable, you're going to be miserable for as long as you own that car. So, you know, absolutely take it for a test drive. You know, and, you know, maybe if the john Cooper Works seats don't work for you, you know, try one of the lower trims, you know, Cooper Cooper S you know, and, and actually, they are a lot more affordable to like, I'm just looking at the media website that the base Cooper convertible starts at 28,000 and the Cooper S which is 189 horsepower, the bass one is 134 the Cooper S 189. So it's not that much slower than a john Cooper Works. You know, it starts at 32. And, you know, if you're more a little more judicious with the options list and maybe forego the, the union jack on the roof. Because, you know, the reality is, you know, if you're going to buy a convertible, you should be driving it with the top down anyway. So you're never gonna you should never ever see that, you know, whatever's on the roof of a convertible. So therefore, you should, you should, you know, skip that and drive it Nicole Wakelin 13:32 to New England, you save a lot of islands where you It's too cold. There's there's very many months, the year where the towel just shatter in freeze. When you opened it up. The fabric would just start blasting Roberto Baldwin 13:43 and start blasting the heater. And it'll be fine. It won't be too cold. You start blasting the heater and everything. Yeah, exactly. Sam Abuelsamid 13:54 Yeah, just just turn. Okay. Nicole Wakelin 13:56 You come out Roberto Baldwin 13:57 here. Put some goggles on. Nicole Wakelin 14:02 Okay, sure. I'll get driven convertibles Sam Abuelsamid 14:07 in that kind of weather. Roberto Baldwin 14:08 Like Nicole Wakelin 14:13 it's snowing. It's raining. There are moments when it's just not. If you try to put the top down. Roberto Baldwin 14:18 If you're driving fast enough, the rain won't hit you. That's all I'm saying. Nicole Wakelin 14:21 Oh, is that the key? Okay, that'll be it for trying to try Roberta that'll work. Okay, the wind will Roberto Baldwin 14:27 blow the rain away. It just got to keep going faster all the train harder. Gotta speed up. For this live training, Nicole Wakelin 14:34 sorry, guys, it's raining. I gotta run this. Sam Abuelsamid 14:39 I mean, I took I took the Miata out on Sunday for you know, a couple of hours and you know, it was glorious. You know, top down at three degrees sun was shining. It was amazing. That's the way it should be. All right. Anything else on the the mini john Cooper Works convertible. Now Nicole Wakelin 14:57 that was that. That That pretty much covers Sam Abuelsamid 15:02 Excellent. So I believe you went on a little trip last week, Robbie, were that somewhere that's not in the United States. Roberto Baldwin 15:11 I did, I went to Europe last week, which was weird because you have to wear a mask the entire time, which is fine because, you know, germs and COVID and not wanting to die and whatnot. But I will I you know, I've traveled a few times, I've flown a few times while wearing masks, and you know, you have to wear it in the airport to work on the plane. And the the biggest issue is that it starts to rub against your ear. So I had to figure out a solution for that for my next trip. But I went to Switzerland to drive the new Mercedes EQ s, essentially, their their electric S Class, flew into Switzerland drove around Swiss Alps, which were ridiculously amazing. And the vehicle itself, I'm just going to say just upfront, I'm not going to, like try to charge better than the S Class done. There you go. It's the S Class. But without the vibration without the noise. It's it's almost eerily quiet inside the vehicle. Whenever I test a vehicle, especially on a drive program, I don't turn on the radio, I don't turn on, you know, I drive it for, you know, as at least three quarters of the time that I'm going to be behind the wheel, I drive without any music or any whatever talk radio, podcast, whatever you want to listen to. So I can sort of hear you know, how it sounds. And it's so you know, we were on the freeway, we were on back roads, we were driving through little towns, which were all very delightful. And everywhere you took it, it was just nice and quiet, and smooth. And just it was it was it's the night. Yeah, it's an S Class that just happens to different our train. And it's it's sort of nuts. And if you're looking at an S Class, and you're like, oh, should I get the S Class? Or should I spend you know, I'm sure there's going to be a price premium they haven't announced pricing yet. Or should I get the EQ s I'm almost certain you should probably get to EQ s especially if you're going for something that is you know, you're going for that luxury, you're not you know, that we drove three different vehicles, we drove the the rear wheel drive for 50 plus the the 584 Matic, and then the first edition, which is just a 580 formatic with a bunch of stuff on it. And that two tone paint job which I'm not really sold on it's it's like you know, the Maybach twotone type of paint job, so, but it's, you know, all three of them, the 580 that's the that torque that Lauren torque, it had three 631 pound feet of torque, which is sort of ridiculous. In any vehicle adequate. Yeah, you know, you stop on the gas, and you're like, yeah, you know, you're making, you're moving a pretty large, you know, a hefty vehicle and it's still delivered every time. But you know, you don't, that's if you're, you're somebody who just absolutely has to have the power of, you know, the five ad format you need, you're, you know, you're someone who's obsessed with, with that low end torque, who wants to just stop, stop and go driving the rear wheel drive for 50 plus completely fine. It was, you know, it still has that power, not obviously, not nearly as with as much as the 580. But it was the I drove that through the Alps on switchbacks. And it was great, it was wonderful. It was you know, smooth it was, you know, it was more than adequate power. You know, it's everything about both of those vehicles. And there is a very distinct difference between the vehicles especially when it comes to the power and a bit with handling but I think most people are going to be happy with the 450 Plus, it's rear wheel drive, you know, you're no one's you know, very there are people who are going to try to like, you know, push the S Class to its limits to the EQ s are gonna go into the mountains. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. But most people just they're on the they're on the freeway, they're driving through the city for 50 Plus, you're fine. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 19:17 Do do both of them have the same size battery? Roberto Baldwin 19:19 Yeah, they both have the same size battery. And the the wl t p figure is about 780 kilometers is a little bit less with the 580 plus. We're about I did Sam Abuelsamid 19:34 like 475 miles. Roberto Baldwin 19:37 So I think with EPA around 400 ish top the high to 350 Sam Abuelsamid 19:41 and 400. Probably. Roberto Baldwin 19:43 Yeah, so the ranges, you know, they haven't announced any arranged numbers with the EPA. They haven't they didn't they wouldn't announce like targets for it, but I if it hit like 380 if they announced 375 three, I wouldn't be surprised they said 400 I probably be a little bit surprised. But I'm guessing it's gonna be up there in the high three hundreds, which is, you know, if you're paying a lot of money for an S Class, you're expecting quality and you're expecting not to have the hassle of like having to pull over to every 200 miles to charge your battery. So yeah, you're, you know, you're going to get the, the the, all the accoutrements that you would expect from an S Class, which includes not having to get out and charge as much as possible. And in both of them have a 107.8 kilowatt hour battery. Battery Pack, so Sam Abuelsamid 20:35 Okay, yeah. So it sounds sounds like this one's a lot more efficient than their first TVs, like the EQ see that they launched in Europe a couple years ago, but never, never brought to the US market, because it only had a link just over 200 miles range w LTP. And would have been well short of that. Here. Yeah, Roberto Baldwin 20:54 that I drove I went on that EQ C drive program, because they were going to bring it to the United States. And it was, it was very much, you know, a Mercedes SUV, there was, you know, you, you felt the Mercedes quality. And it just happened to be an Eevee is what it was essentially what that vehicle was, and then they decided not to go with that and do the EQ s, which I think if you're people who are who are waiting for the QC, they were probably a little disappointed, but I think trying to make a big splash, a larger splash in the United States with an Eevee, the Q s is gonna do a much, you know, it's, it's gonna be the halo vehicle for them. And they come out with that to show Hey, this is what we can do, as we're, you know, battling against the Model S which really, I mean, the model, it's a price comparison, mostly, it's not really a Model S, you know, it goes fast. It is not an S Class, though, and I think anyone who's ever sat in an S Class can and sat in a Model S if you if you try to compare them in terms of luxury, and just, you know, build quality. It's it's almost night and day, I mean, not even close it's not even close. Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 22:05 I think I think maybe the closest thing to this might be the lucid air. Yeah, that's really more targeted at this kind of luxury feel. Roberto Baldwin 22:15 Yeah, that lucid air, they're really going after the Germans that's that's that's essentially what they've told me time and time again, they're going after the German premium luxury vehicles. Sam Abuelsamid 22:25 So what did you think of the the new infotainment system in this one, the new version of mbu x You know, that's got the edge to edge glass panel stretches from pillar to pillar glass panel. 33 different displays in there. Yeah, the hyper screen this Roberto Baldwin 22:42 hyper screen, it's 56 inches of a glass, and they're very proud. They're very proud of the hyper screen. It looks nice. It's essentially six inches of glass that they that they they worked with Corning, you know, Gorilla Glass, but they also had to work with other suppliers fixes Corning didn't think they could build. They could do it. They're like, Oh, you guys are crazy. This isn't gonna work. This is ridiculous. And it's curved. It's got like, it's like, it's long. It's weird shaped. It's curved like all these things accordions like I don't know for this could happen I got out now he can do it and they did it. And behind it are three different displays. There's the 12.3 inch dash cluster there's the 17.7 inch OLED touchscreen and then the the 12.3 inch passenger display which is you know, right there that you can use to to control media you can you can do you know, you can do a lot a lot of stuff you can do with mbu x media and navigation wise from from that screen. And so you know, it's it's, it's a it's, it's, it's, it's sort of ridiculous, but it's also an S Class. So it has to be ridiculous it has they had Yeah, you hit it when your Mercedes you kind of have to push the limit with every edge Class S Class without losing that, that luxury feel. And with the EQ s, they've, they've done it, I didn't get a lot of chances to, to work to deal with the or to test the passenger display because of COVID. Typically, on these drive programs, you're paired up with another journalist and you drive and you switch off and then they drive and you switch off. Because of COVID. We all had individual cars, which is nice, because you get to drive the car the entire time. But at the same time, I usually like when we switch I'd write my notes down. I can like, you know, push they touch things that I can't do while I'm driving. But it was you know, it's unfortunate I didn't get a chance because the the display doesn't turn on. It just has a What do you call it like a screensaver on it when there's not a passenger sitting in that seat. So you can set it to like, you know, they have images of their avatar based concept car but you'd also set like a compass or a clock there. I put it on the compass because I don't know. They'll go Sam Abuelsamid 25:02 And what about the center display, you know, where they've talked about the setting the center, display, they've talked about this, this idea of the zero layer interface, you know, where you've got, you know, the, the navigation, and then some widgets floating on top of that. Roberto Baldwin 25:17 It was, you know, what I was, I remember they showed it off to me at the unveiling, and I was a little hesitant that I'm like, Okay, well, that's, well, I don't know, I'm sure everyone's just gonna want to go back to the, to the the sort of tablet display that we've become a used to, which is the, you know, the regular mbu x this way. I like the zero layer, I kept it on the zero layer almost the entire time. And it surfaces information that you need, as you're driving. And then if you drive the car for a few weeks, it starts to learn your routine. So if you have a meeting, let's say you do in your car, every you know, Wednesday at 9am, it'll start to surface that like, Oh, we should turn down the music, we should do this, we should do that. And, you know, it surfaces navigation to where you're going. It's, it's so it gets a bit smarter as you train it. But what is weird is that you have the 17.7 inch OLED touchscreen. And the steering wheel actually covers some of the touchscreen. So while you're driving, you can't really see about maybe about an inch and a half, two inches of the left side of the screen. But Mercedes knows this, and they've moved all the widgets that much over. So it's had these very large, very, very large wide screen that the driver can't see the entirety of. and Mercedes knows this. So they move the widget over just enough so you can see it. So I'm driving I could still see. So I didn't even notice it until someone brought it up. Because I could still see you know, my directions. The controls for you know how I want the display to be for the for the navigation, like everything that I wanted was there. So I initially I didn't notice that and someone brought it up. They're like, yeah, you can't see the very left edge of the screen. I was like, What and then I got in the car like Oh, you're right, and Mercedes like, yeah, we are aware of that. We moved everything over. You still have this big beautiful screen though. And so like everyone else in the car can see the entire Sam Abuelsamid 27:15 passenger can see it all. Roberto Baldwin 27:17 Yeah, your passenger can see it all everyone can see everything that's going on. But it is it is it's sort of an odd decision to say okay, well, why don't we just make a smaller screen? And they're like, no, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 27:31 Or shall we call screen the display over? You know, an answer to Roberto Baldwin 27:36 now it's Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a pretty it's a it's a large, large piece of display real estate. And I think they were just like, we're gonna shove as much screen in there as possible, even if it means you're not gonna be able to see it all. It's there. It's there. And when you look at it, like Okay, it looks symmetrical. It looks nice and fine and everything but it's it's it is very Yeah, it was it was sort of like oh, okay, that's the thing you're doing cool. Sam Abuelsamid 28:05 So maybe it's a little bit too hyper. Roberto Baldwin 28:07 It's too hyper it here's the fun thing is that the gentleman who is essentially like the father of the hyper scream, he's also a big fan of this band called scooter and scooter had this song called hyper hyper it's like this dance track from like the 90s so everyone go look up scooter hyper hyper. And he was he was very excited to share that information about that because they were talking about how the name came about and he was like, Oh, this song hyper hyper core. So of course we all like started looking on our phones. It's very much a 90s you know, like house trance or not trance house song so it's, it's if you want to dance, listen to hyper hyper my scooter Sam Abuelsamid 28:52 will include that include that in the show notes. So when when's it? When's it gonna be on sale in the US? Roberto Baldwin 29:00 So it'll land in the United States. This fall? Again, they have not announced pricing it but you know, it's an S Class. It's, it's an Eevee. So it is it's, it's not going to be you know, it's not cheap, you know, you're talking it's it's going to be a pricey endeavor, how much the price premium will be above the S classes is yet to be seen. Maybe Mercedes can can pull a fast one and make it you know, not not not parody, but pretty close, which would be which would be especially for California where, you know, they sell a lot of s classes and they sell a lot of UV you know, and you know, by law ease, and they can get it within like 10 $15,000 I think dq S is gonna do pretty well. I will say that the design language is it looks like a Mercedes but it also sort of looks very bulbous. And, you know, that's, that's, you know, if you want a 0.2, you know, drag coefficient That's kind of what you end up having to do. No, I, I don't know if I can say that. I love it. But I like it. How's that? Especially when you think about, okay, well, I'm getting this many miles. And it's still when you and when, again, you're sitting inside most. It's like the first Panamera where everyone liked it. Until they saw it. Sam Abuelsamid 30:21 Yeah. Are there? Are there any plans for an AMG version? I'm not sure. Talk about that at all. No, I assume at some point, there will be an A everything, Roberto Baldwin 30:34 everything that Mercedes Benz makes, is this at least Yes, the AMG trim level at some point. So so I'm sure they'll probably, especially with something that's that's, that's, you know, their, essentially their Halo vehicle, their Halo tech vehicle, which is which this is, oh, I also will say that it does not have the 3d dash cluster, because the the display is curved, and the 3d technology that sort of interlacing they have to do SB on a flat surface, and they can't do it with the, the curve of the dashed line. Okay. So that's okay. And then again, that's such a weird, like, sort of, like, almost gimmicky feature on the S class that I was like, What? Yeah, fine, whatever. Sam Abuelsamid 31:18 Actually, the car I was driving did have a 3d dash cluster. So we'll get to that in a second. Any other thoughts on the EQ s? Roberto Baldwin 31:28 Um, I really liked it. I was, you know, it's, it's, it's, every time you get into an S Class, you know, that you're in an S Class, this is an S Class. And it impressed me with just how smooth you know, in there, you know, Mercedes has to they have to appeal to the person who's been buying an S Class for the last three generations. And they have to tell that person Okay, this is what you're used to, but better because it's an Eevee. And so, and I think and they've done that, that's, and I think that's the you know, I can't afford an S Class. I don't know how many of our listeners can but the people who can, Mercedes has to make sure it hits that level and they did with the EQ s. Sam Abuelsamid 32:10 Excellent. Alright, so I was driving the Genesis gV 80. Which I first drove I did a did the first drive last fall here in Michigan, and I had one per week. And so this is you know, Genesis is Genesis, the first SUV from Genesis and it's based on same architecture. The same same platform architecture as the new g ad and you know, clearly you know, when you look at it, you can see the resemblance and especially in the the design languages, new Genesis design language where you know, the front, the front lamps, you've got the double horizontal strips of light the the oversized grille, which you know, while I'm not a huge fan of oversized grills, you know, I think is better executed than what BMW has done and what a lot of companies done but I still think it could be could stand to be a little smaller but the overall shape of this thing I think, is really good. You know, the the detail the design details on this thing, I think it's a great looking vehicle. You know, and I think for somebody looking for a premium luxury, utility, you know, kind of in that upper, upper mid size class, you know, kind of x five, q seven, Audi Q seven size, you know, this, this is something you know, that I think is a very reasonable competitor. You know, it's available with with two engine options a 2.5 liter turbo or 3.5 liter twin turbo V six the 2.54 cylinder, I had the three, five, it was the, the, the high the top end, prestige model says the gv at all wheel drive 3.5 t prestige, and it was pretty much loaded with everything. You know, one of the things when when I first sat in the gv at a couple years ago at the LA Auto Show and Rebecca linlin and I were sitting in this thing in LA, looking at checking out the interior these these new Genesis vehicles they've done I think, largely done an amazing job on the interiors you know, with the materials and the the finishes that they've got on there. You know, some of the detailing on the knobs the the knurling that they've done on the knobs you know, to give you some, some grip there. I think looks great, largely feels great to the touch. You know, works really well It feels really premium it you know, it feels expensive, it you know, it doesn't look or feel in any way cheap. Yeah, you would certainly you sit in this thing you would Yeah, you you will not, you know, read probably not think that this comes from a brand You know, from the same company that makes Hyundai's, you know, it makes a, a Hyundai Accent, you know, or a venue. And yet, you know, this is where the Genesis brand has evolved to, you know, the first, the first Hyundai Genesis a decade ago, little doesn't know, 13 years ago, you know, was a high end Genesis, and I think, you know, I think they had some challenges trying to convince people that Hyundai could make a premium luxury car, and, you know, it was the first Genesis was a was a really good car in many respects. But that, you know, they eventually split off the brand into its own separate sub brand. And Genesis has had its challenges with dealers, and you know, trying to get the brand established. But, you know, this is, this is a fantastic vehicle. The one complaint I have about the functionality in the interior, and I mentioned this last fall, when I first drove it, the, you know, as, you know, as we've mentioned before, this is one of those vehicles that doesn't have a touchscreen, you know, the, the display is set up on top of the dash, wet, you know, out of your reach, so you can't touch it. And there's a central controller, but unlike a BMW II drive, or some of the other central controllers, it doesn't sit up above the center console, it's actually kind of flush with the console. And it's actually actually kind of concave, you know, so it's like a little dish in the middle of the console, and around the perimeter of it is has the same kind of knurling, that's on the, on the other knobs and controls, which looks really nice. But the The problem is, while that knurling works well when, you know, in kind of in compression, you know, when you're squeezing a knob, you know, it's, it's got enough texture to it, you know, they can get a nice grip on it, you know, and turn it in very precisely, in this case, the knurling is kind of on the top surface. So when you're rotating the the the controller, instead of grabbing it and twisting it the way you would have BMW i drive controller, you're kind of rotating, you know, you're putting your finger on it and rotating it kind of like the the old, you know, first and second generation iPods, if you remember that that was with the the click wheel. So it's very similar to that, you know, but you actually you turn it so it's really more like the the very first generation iPods, which actually had a physical wheel that turned this the later ones, it became a capacitive surface that you use swipe, swipe your finger around it. This is like those first ones where it turns. And but there's the there's not quite enough texture there, that sometimes you have to press down hard enough on it, to turn it that, you know, this also acts as a rocker control, you know, to go up and down and menus and things like that. And so you sometimes you end up pressing it a little bit too hard and you and you end up clicking when all you really wanted to do is spin it to go up across the screen. And you know, I've noticed this on the GMAT on the new GMAT. And when I first drove the gvhd and hopefully, you know, what they'll do is they'll make some changes in the, the exact texturing of that surface on on this controller, on, on future model years. But right now, it you have to be, you have to have, it takes some finesse to control it quite the way you want. But other than that, everything else about the interior, this thing works, works great. The, you mentioned the 3d instrument cluster, and that's an option on here, it's available on the the prestige model. And it's it's an interesting detail that you when you first look at it, you know, especially if you're using, you know, the adaptive cruise control or you know, other driver assists, and you page over to, you know, where it shows you the, you know, your vehicle and where other vehicles are around you, you actually see that 3d and you can see some 3d depth in the gauges and so on. So it kind of looks, you know, rather than just being a flat LCD display, you know, it looks a little more like a traditional mechanical gauge cluster. So, it that looks pretty, I mean, it does, obviously doesn't add any functional improvement to it, but but it looks a little prettier. But the the Driver Assist display, I think is kind of neat. You know, because you do get more of that 3d effect there. Then you do with the gauges and so on. And so you see, you know, your car on there, and, you know, when you're following somebody else, you know, you can kind of You can kind of perceive that depth, you know, between your car and the one in front of you. And this one, I'm like most like, systems, you know, with lane centering or Lane Keeping Assist. This one actually shows the cars in your adjacent lanes as well, much like a Tesla does with autopilot. And so you can you can see those other cars, you know, as you go by them, you know, and so you you, you'll see what the sensors are detecting. One of the unique things that they've done with the lane centering system when you're using the the highway drive assist, which is their hands on combination of adaptive cruise control and Lane centering. When you're going down the highway. If you're in the the adjacent lane, there's a large vehicle a truck or a bus or something in the adjacent vehicle. If there's nobody to your to your left on the opposite side. As you're going down the lane, normally it keeps you tracks pretty well right in the center of the lane. But as you approach another vehicle to to either side, it will actually nudge your vehicle over just slightly. And if if you're watching the mirrors, you can see it you can you can see that you're getting a little bit closer to the centerline opposite the vehicle. So just to give you a little bit more room a little bit more clearance to that that large vehicle on the other side, which I think is is a is an interesting touch. And I haven't seen any other manufacturer do that yet. And it's something that I think, yeah, an attentive human driver will often do. And it's good to see them starting to incorporate those kinds of things into these driver assists. Roberto Baldwin 41:40 Yet the supercruise when the initial launch, it would be like right up against the car, it would just center it up versus like the giant truck. And so you're just always like, because you're because naturally as a human, you kind of move over. So I think nervous. I think they adjusted that I have a supercruise escalate coming in next few weeks. I'll double check it I think they were they were they were adjusting that to it nudge it over just the just the scooch. Just so you won't have that because you'd be driving and on paper. And as a math problem. It was correct. That you were like, Oh, yes, in the center of the lane. But you know, when you're driving, you're like, Oh, dear god, I didn't realize how much I move over. And even it's only a few inches whenever I pass a big rig in a vehicle. And so I think Yeah, so yeah, the the sort of, like scooch it over just a little bit is is such a human thing to do when you're going when you're going because we know that a wind gust could move that truck into your lane, we know that anything could move that truck and dearly. And it comes over like a wave, you know, the first and then the back and then you know, doesn't come over as one solid piece. So I think as humans, we we know that there's a potential for danger. The GI tract and so it's good to see that that Genesis is has taken that into account. I again, I think they have they've adjusted for supercruise. But I'll I'll double check in in a week. I don't know whenever I get. Sam Abuelsamid 43:10 I drove, I drove I drove the the escalate suit was supercruise a couple of months ago and I didn't really notice that doing that there. But actually, as we're recording this on Wednesday morning, or Tuesday morning, tomorrow I'm actually going out to to Milford, the belfry Proving Grounds champs room grounds to drive the GMC Sierra was suppose and yeah, we're actually going to be doing some, some towing with supercruise which will be interesting and I'll ask them about that if they're doing that. Because I don't I don't think that they're I don't think they're doing that in supercruise just yet. But you know the the engine that was in this in this G v 80 as I said was the twin turbo three, five v six. It's got 375 horsepower and 391 pounds feet of torque so it's got plenty of performance, eight speed automatic transmission, very smooth shifting, no issues there. It's got decent steering feel to it. And so yeah, so this this is Genesis first SUV that they've launched, they've subsequently also launched the gV 70 which is smaller based on the the G 70 platform. The base price for the G at the the RGB at the most affordable version of it is the 2.54 cylinder with rear wheel drive, which starts at 49,000. The Prestige model I drove came to $72,995 including the delivery charge that includes the prestige package with the 22 inch wheels, Nappa leather electronic Limited Slip, rear def microsuede, headliner, the 3d cluster, that's all, all that stuff's part of a 60 $600 prestige package. And it was, you know, you can, you can probably forego that, you know, I mean, that'll drop you down into the mid 60s, if you if you take a pass on that stuff, the, the the lexicon 21 speaker audio system does sound really good. You know, it's got a really nice audio system. So I think, if you're driving this thing you will have, you will feel very, very comfortable in this, you know, very, very serene experience at, I think it said, if you're in the market for something like an Audi Q seven, BMW X five, maybe a little smaller than x seven, I think, you know, or the Mercedes GLS I guess this would kind of fall somewhere in between the GL E and the GLS. You know, I think that this is definitely something that you ought to be considering. If you're if you're in a more in the market for something like that. It's it's definitely better, you know, in terms of, if you need a three row utility, you know, it's, it's definitely a much better option than, say, the Lexus RX three row, which, you know, they are x should not be offered with a three row, it's too small for that. This, this actually has a reasonably usable third row. You know, it's not huge, but it's, it's usable. So I think there's, there's a lot to like about this thing. And the color was great, the, the sort of burgundy red color that was on it, I thought looked fabulous. And I also have some other really good colors on there's a really nice dark green that they have. So, that is the Genesis gV 80. And let's get into some news items. So we've talked previously, I think we've talked, you know, since you guys have been on the show about delivery charges. And I know, we definitely talked about it, when Dan and Rebecca were still with us. And one of the things that automakers have been doing over the last couple of years is they've been sneakily raising prices by raising increasing the delivery fees, which are mandatory fees that you have to pay, you know, it's not, it's not like you can, you know, skip the delivery fee and just go to the factory gate and pick it up. And you know, and avoid that delivery fee, which can range anywhere from 1000 to 17 $100. I think Ford is really gone overboard with this on the the new f 150s. Are they charging about 17 $100 for delivery? Yeah, this is a mandatory fee, which, you know, typically in advertising when they advertise the price of a car, they don't include the delivery charge. It's but it's something you have to pay and I think you know, if it's if it's a mandatory price isn't mandatory fee, just roll it into the MSRP and be done with it. But there is now a class action lawsuit. And this this actually goes back a few years even before the delivery charges really started to get out of hand. Some the original suit was fire filed by the owner of a 2019 Lincoln MK x purchased the car in 2019. And at the time, you know the delivery charge on that vehicle was just $995 so imagine what this person would have thought if they bought a new f 155. According accordingly article here says the plaintiff argues that she didn't know at the time that the $995 for dis destination fee she paid generated a profit for the automaker and claims that most consumers aren't aware of this fact either. You know I'm not a fan of the way they do delivery fees. Nicole Wakelin 49:09 But does it make a difference like I get the delivery fee is crazy high like okay, it's it's Yeah, the numbers have gotten ridiculous. But what did you think like? Would you have not bought the car if you thought that wasn't profit? Like oh, it's just covering their delivery fee? Coca Cola buy a car. Oh, wait, you're making money on it? I'm out. Forget it. Like there's kind of weird like you're paying who cares whether they make a profit on it or not? You do know it's in there. They do show you you did go Yep, I'll pay it. But it Roberto Baldwin 49:38 sounds it sounds like it's costing them $1,000 to move it from point A to point B that's the end they feel like okay, well I'm it's like you're paying for shipping when you buy something from you know, I have to say they they're it's like I when I buy something from not from Amazon from someone else, and it's $20 to ship it I know that they have to pay $20 to FedEx or UPS or a US Postal Service. That's $20. This the fact that they call it the delivery fee, and they don't pay. Nicole Wakelin 50:06 They don't like your delivery fee. Like, they have to ship it to you. When you order on Amazon, it's like, okay, we're shipping to or anyplace, you know, it's like, you're on this half of the country, it's $5 or a little further, it's $10 a little further, it's 20. But you might only maybe it only cost them $3.22 to ship that with packing and everything else. And they actually made $1.88 on your like you wouldn't like the numbers are way smaller, I mean, a buck 80 Roberto Baldwin 50:35 for it, like it's $1,000. In Michigan, if you buy a Ford, it's $1,000. In California, it's a set price that they're they're adding to every vehicle, just add it to the price of the car. It's such a is Nicole Wakelin 50:50 it out? Does anybody know, like, what what was the original original reason Sam Abuelsamid 50:54 used to be? It used to be up until I say like the late 80s or early 90s, that the delivery fee actually did depend on where the vehicle was coming from it was variable. So it wasn't the same across the board. So you know, for example, you know, the Ford rouge assembly plant where they build f 150s is 20 miles from my house. Yeah, and, you know, if I, you know, bought one up the street here, from from my local dealer, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't cost Ford 17 $100 to ship that vehicle. To my local dealer. Sure, I'm fairly confident. I mean, I know that, you know, shipping charges can be a little exorbitant sometimes, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost them 1700 bucks to get it there. Now, you know, to ship it from Dearborn to, you know, San Diego, or to Dallas, or somewhere, you know, it's certainly going to cost them more than it's going to cost them to ship it here. You know, and they use that, you know, the delivery charges used to depend on where you lived and where the vehicles coming from. At some point, I think it was the late 80s or early 90s, they changed that and made it just a flat fee, you know, for any into any any particular model. And it wasn't the same for every model, it was it varied. But it was it was a flat fee, no matter where you lived and where it was coming from. And I think that's, that's one of the problem really started because, you know, they, they wanted to make it simpler. But when they did that, at that point, they should have just said, Okay, we're just going to roll this into the the sticker price of the car. Now it's become, you know, kind of a kind of a bait and switch thing because you know, they'll advertise a lower price. And then all of a sudden, when you're signing your paperwork, you realize, oh, now I've got to pay almost $2,000 more than the price that you advertised for this for this vehicle. Because of this shipping fee. That's not included on your on your on your billboard, or, you know, on your on your ads, you know, and that I think that is misleading. I think, unfortunately, I think the the the legal argument that they're making, in, in this particular lawsuit, I think is kind of dubious, you know that the Ford is making a profit. I don't care if they're making a profit on it. That's fine. Nicole Wakelin 53:11 That's what I don't get business. Like I don't get it. Okay, you if you can object to what, what anybody does with any of the money that you pay them, but they're not. I mean, the fee isn't hidden. Eventually, you do see it like you sign that ginormous form. And there it is, whatever exorbitant amount you're paying for, you know, destination is on there. It's not like they hit it like, Oh, we charge this and didn't put it on the forum. No, it's there. What they use it for, I kind of feel like, however much they make on it. Well, it's up to them for that's up to them. Like, do you want to pay this what we call the disk destination fee or not, like pay it or don't pay it? But what we do with the money once it's Ford's have added for Do whatever you want. Yeah, so it's weird. Yeah, I guess that's what my issues like it's a weird, legal reason. It's not, this doesn't reflect the genuine destination fees, which would be a more solid reason. It's I don't like that they're making money. Okay, well, they're gonna make money the other Sam Abuelsamid 54:07 day, I mean, that's, that's why companies are in business to make money off you. So, you know, I would like to, you know, ultimately, I would like to see, you know, that companies, just, like I said, just included in the sticker price. Just don't be don't break it out. Especially if it's, if it's something that you can't opt out of, just roll it into the price, you know, because you're gonna pay it one way or another, you know, if it's optional, and you can say, and you can, then you can say, No, I'll take delivery at the factory gates, fine, then leave it as a separate item. But otherwise, because, you know, they don't, they don't charge you separately for tires, or for windshield wiper blades or any other part of the car. This is no different. Yeah, you know, you pay optional, you know, for more premium versions of some things, but you, you don't you know, just for having There are seats you know, you don't pay separately for sale. Nicole Wakelin 55:03 You know, they do list a car. I wish I could remember which one it was. But I was writing up a vehicle and I had to list you know, this breakout standard and optional features about the standard features. They proudly listed a steering wheel like Well, good. I'm glad we not like it was a leather covered stereo just like steering wheel. Yes, that is a standard feature at our vehicles. I'm like, Well, good for you. Because I feel like that should be Roberto Baldwin 55:25 well, you don't get it on the Tesla. You don't get a steering wheel. You get a steering yoke, Nicole Wakelin 55:29 a steering device. Roberto Baldwin 55:30 Yeah. It's vise grip vise grips attached to a column. Sam Abuelsamid 55:37 Yeah, well, you know, when when dodge sold the challenger demon a couple of years back, you know, they, it they actually it only came with one seat, it only came with a driver seat. You know, if you wanted a passenger seat, you know, you did pay extra for that. But I mean, it was included in a package that was only like $100 extra. But it was it was just with the driver's seat, you know, for going to the drag strip, they wanted to make it as light as possible. But you know, this is something different. Just just roll it into the price. And you know, advertise it that way and be done with it. I'm cool. Stop trying to sneak in and yeah, Nicole Wakelin 56:09 they would have rolled it into I'm trying Sam Abuelsamid 56:11 to hide your price increases. Nicole Wakelin 56:13 Yeah, if this train that rolled into the price instead of you know, making it its own little thing Cool, cool, cool, but like mad because they are making a profit on it. That's why they're selling you cars, not out of the goodness of their heart, but you make you all the money. So get over that. Sam Abuelsamid 56:28 The Alright, next up, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Roberto Baldwin 56:32 I was gonna say it's mostly so you can save 3995, you know, for your car. And then when you get there, it's 4200. Or it's 42,000 threshold you like? It does because for especially for California, New York, you have to be under a $60,000 threshold in order to get the Eevee credits. So So, like Pollstar had a move, like adjusted the price of their car, the Pollstar to in order to get the Eevee credit for the state. It's a it's a state, it's not the federal one, you still get the credit, but for for New York, and and California has to be under $60,000. So So Pollstar could say, Okay, well, it's 59 995. But then if they wanted to, they could put like a $4,000. Car. Nicole Wakelin 57:13 So yeah, we see that maybe that's the secret sauce that we don't know, they're keeping the price to stuff like they're keeping it under all these thresholds that we don't know about. And that's it. Sam Abuelsamid 57:25 In California, is it based on the, the base MSRP? Or the transaction price of the car? So like, if you if it's 59 995, and then you get $5,000 worth of options? does it become ineligible at that point? Or is it still eligible? Because the base transit, the base sticker price was under 60? grand? Oh, I'll have to check. That's okay. Roberto Baldwin 57:49 I just I know, they were they were they were very much like they're very excited, like we got it under this price. So now it's gonna be available for for this day. So it might, and the fact that they sent out a press release makes me think that it's possibly like, it's the base price versus the buying price. But it could just say, yo, we get you into this thing. Well, yeah, you're not gonna get to 15 $100 from California, but you got all these sweet, sweet options on your Pollstar too. So it doesn't really matter. All these sweet, sweet options. Sweet, sweet option. Sam Abuelsamid 58:23 I know in Canada, you know, they had a, there was a price threshold, and it was $40,000, you know, to get a certain tax credit for EBS. And so Tesla introduced a version of the model three, that they software limited the battery capacity. So it still had the same 75 kilowatt hour battery capacity as all the other model threes, except they disabled two thirds of it in the in software. So it had a 94 mile range, and they sold it for 39 995. So it could get that tax credit, but then, you know, then you you'd pay extra afterwards for an otaa update that unlocked rocket battery capacity. story Nicole Wakelin 59:06 they can make. Sam Abuelsamid 59:07 I just saw I just saw a story, you know that, that that alone has cost Canadian taxpayers something like $115 million in tax credits from people buying this 94 mile range model three, you know, when you know and then just paying for the otaa update after the fact. You know, and that's why I think you know, if you're gonna do this sort of thing, if you're gonna have a price cap and I think it's perfectly legit to have a price cap, you know, on you know, for tax incentives, make it on the transaction price, not on the not on the base sticker price. So, alright. just writing down the title, sweet, sweet options. That has to be the title sweet, sweet options. Roberto Baldwin 59:59 All right. They pull you in, they get the sweet options on Tapia, and then they get and then the destination fee. And now you're walking out with a $70,000 Pollstar to and you're like, Hey, what happened? Nicole Wakelin 1:00:08 What happened? Between options? Roberto Baldwin 1:00:10 Oh, sweet, sweet options. Alright. Sam Abuelsamid 1:00:13 So speaking of trying to buy anything right now, last week on the on the train to Chicago for the abbreviated Chicago Auto Show. I was talking to Michelle Krebs from Cox automotive. And she was telling me that because Cox deal, you know, they do a lot of work with a lot of the things, a lot of their business units are working with dealers, you know, they provide a lot of the backend services that dealers use the various computer platforms that they use to track vehicles and inventory and sales, and they do auctions and things like that. So they've got access to all kinds of interesting data. And she told me that right now, in the US, there is 24 days of inventory for new vehicles, dealers across the United States. And just for reference, what they normally target what dealers normally try to have in stock is about 60 to 70 days worth of sales. So, you know, the basic whatever they if they sell, you know, flat, you know, 10 cars a day, you know, they would normally they would try to have, what, six 600 or 6000 now 600 cars? Yeah, 600 car, yeah, 600 cars in inventory, if they're selling 10 cars a day. So, you know, bigger dealers would have less inventory, but 62 months of inventory is what they usually try to keep in stock. Right now. They're at 24 days, because of all the production holdups because of chip shortages. And so you know, that's, you know, the the upside of that for dealers is that they don't have to, they don't have to haggle on prices. And they're not, they don't have to do any rebates or discounts on cars. So dealers and manufacturers are getting higher transaction prices. And actually, in towards June sales released, they announced that their average transaction price in June, for all their sales was up to $47,000. But that also means that for customers trying to buy a car means you have very little choice, and you're not going to get any kind of deal. So unless you really, really need to buy a vehicle right now. You probably better off waiting until later in the fall or early next year. You know, when there's more inventory available. And if either of you driven past any car dealerships lately, Nicole Wakelin 1:02:40 I have we actually we actually bought a car not long ago, you just bought one. Yeah, we just bought one and it was a the dealership, the lot is like empty, like, you know, normally you drive by the Jeep lot having to be Jeep and there's just oodles of Wranglers staring at you from the parking lot. And there were I think three sitting there. And he said, You know, these will be gone by the weekend, you know, doesn't the because this is all we've got. So there'll be go, I won't be waiting for the next one. We have people just waiting for cars. And it also makes it hard to order what you want, like he was the sales guy had ordered something. And he said, you know, he'd had it on order for almost two months, I think something that should have taken matter of weeks to get in not because Jeep was doing anything wrong. Just they can't get what they need to make the cars that they need. And they have all these priorities for what do we you know, what do we build? What do we ship? We, you know, take away from this lineup to build more of this one, because we're selling more of this one? Oh, wait, now sales are going the other way. We should have put that chip over here. You know, so there that he was saying they're definitely having a challenge getting vehicles because it's just he said, there's just there's no inventory, what comes in sells and has gone poof? Sam Abuelsamid 1:03:53 Yeah, from what I've been hearing from various manufacturers, you know, a lot of cars that might normally take, you know, 20 to 30 days or more, you know, sitting on the dealer lots before they sell are going you know, in 1015 days, or in some cases, even the last year in some cases, you know, single digit number of days, you know, when when a car gets unloaded off the carrier until the time somebody buys it, you know, it might be a week or less in some cases Wow. So stuffs such really moving there's there's demand but not enough supply. And And speaking of not enough supply rivian announced another delay, two deliveries of the r1 T and the r1 s so if you've got you know if you pre ordered one of those and you had the whatever the launch edition or first edition model was you were expecting to get it the summer. It's gonna be at least a couple more months, at least until September, before they start shipping those and, you know, in a letter to customers from rivian, you know, they said yeah, I mean it's basically We were having trouble getting parts we also had delays in getting the plant ready. Because of the the pandemic, you know, they they were having trouble getting some of their equipment in and getting everything installed. So everything is just getting backed up. And so they those vehicles won't be hitting the road until at least September. possibly even a little bit longer than that. Nicole Wakelin 1:05:25 Do you think you'll hit September? Sam Abuelsamid 1:05:29 Me? Maybe. Unknown Speaker 1:05:31 Maybe see Roberto Baldwin 1:05:32 you're only you're only as fast as your as your slowest supplier. That's and everyone's Yeah, pliers. Very, very everyone. Sam Abuelsamid 1:05:39 Someone in there who's really really slow. Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday I was on a briefing call around table with Duncan Aldred, the head of GMC at General Motors. And one of the things he talked about was the launch of the GMC Hummer, EV. And he said, right now we're they're still on track to deliver those this fall. sometime this fall. Yeah, he. He didn't say when? December 2008. How many? One? Yeah. I mean, don't don't go hand over three of them. You know, on December 30. Nicole Wakelin 1:06:19 We have 2021. Sam Abuelsamid 1:06:22 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he didn't say how many, but he did say they would be they would be coming out this fall. He also dodged the question. I asked him, you know, why does this thing weigh 9000 pounds? declined not to answer that one. Nicole Wakelin 1:06:37 Where does that come from? I just I need to know why the thing weighs so much. It drives me I don't know why it bothers me. But I'm like, Why? It's like, I don't know got a bed. What's going on Sam Abuelsamid 1:06:49 cast iron, cast iron skid plates, man, I tell you, good play cast iron, Roberto Baldwin 1:06:54 six inches thick and everything, lead, Nicole Wakelin 1:06:59 lead, all lead Superman, we'll see nothing. Inside that car, everything's left. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:06 They decided that they the ultium batteries weren't going to work. And they're just going to go with lead acid batteries, 200 kilowatt hours of lead acid batteries. That's why it weighs nine pounds, Roberto Baldwin 1:07:15 led, let go done and done. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:19 Alright, continuing with the Eevee theme, the Chevy Bolt, if you have one from the first three model years, so before they did the first refresh, where they bumped it from a 60 kilowatt hour battery pack to a 65 kilowatt hour battery pack. So these were built from 27 2017 to 2019. Don't park it in your garage and leave it outside when you're charging it because they've been having some issues with fires as some other. GM is not the only one. You know, Hyundai had an issue with the Kona Evie. And now they're actually using the LG Chem cells. And those same ones that I don't know if they're the same ones, but they're from the same factory that GM is using for the bolt. The newer apparently the newer bolts built from 2020 onwards that have the newer battery pack do not have this problem. But the older ones did have this issue. And GM is not talking specifics about what's what's the causes, but it sounds like it's contamination inside the cell. So and this is something that happened to both Ford and BMW in Europe last year. With some of their plug in hybrids with the the kouga, which is the European version of the escape, plug in hybrid, and also the some of the BMW plug in hybrids, they were using Samsung batteries from a plant built in Hungary. And they were having some fires. And it turns out that the problem was when you know when you when you build these cells, you assemble it into a pack, you have to weld the terminals on the cells to make to connect them all together to make it into one big battery pack. And there was a an issue with the process of welding those terminals that was causing little chunks of copper or aluminum to form inside the cell. And that's the bad thing is then you headaches, then that's when you get short circuits and short circuits or when you get battery fires. So bad, bad thing. So GM already did a software update that was supposed to limit the charging capacity of the bolt batteries. But apparently, at least two cars since the software update have also caught fire. And now they're warning customers to park your car. Don't park your car in the garage, you know, or you know as soon as it's done charging, unplug it and put it outside. Liam, make sure you leave me trying to minimize the risks. If a fire does happen, so Nicole Wakelin 1:10:02 so that the article that you have put up there that has a picture of a the burned shell of a bolt that caption cracks via the Vermont State Police released this photo of the 2019 Chevy Bolt dv that caught fire on July 1 2021 in the driveway of state rep. Timothy Bricklin, a Democrat like that has anything to do with anything. We must tell you what race party was because that's relevant the bolts like oh, I'm gonna catch fire. He's a Democrat, like it's just the weirdest category even the fact Sam Abuelsamid 1:10:29 that he's a state rep. You know, Nicole Wakelin 1:10:31 like, July 1 in the driveway of its owner who cares whose car it was not a targeted battery fire. Roberto Baldwin 1:10:41 I remember when the Hyundai the Kona recall was happening, or before, during and whatever, but they like Hyundai and LG were like we don't know. We just don't even they were like we're gonna recall these. We're not 100% sure why these are catching fire. It's just like, we're just throwing our hands in the air and saying, You know what? Forget it. We don't know why just bring us your car. We'll fix it. It was Yeah, there was like indication that there was some some sort of contamination, which makes sense because, you know, like you said, short circuits equal heat equals Fire Fire equals you're having a bad day. But yeah, they were just Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:15 extremely bad. Roberto Baldwin 1:11:16 Yeah. So So why are these? We don't we have no idea we keep checking everything. We're not sure why, Nicole Wakelin 1:11:22 but at least we'll take it back as we have no idea what the heck's going on? We admit it like okay, something's broken. Who knows what we're not sure Roberto Baldwin 1:11:29 what it is we're just gonna swap this stuff out and just kick it a few times Nicole Wakelin 1:11:37 you just you kick it a few times. See if that takes care of it. Take it out blow on it like a Nintendo Roberto Baldwin 1:11:41 cartridge from the 80s Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:44 knock those little knock those little copper particles out. Nicole Wakelin 1:11:48 Yeah, exactly. Oh, good. You just need to blow it up like I like your theory better just blowing it like a Nintendo cartridge everything. And then you're Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:56 perfect. What could go wrong? All right. Finally, with with E V's the EU last week, put out some draft legislation that for new regulations for co2 emissions from from a whole bunch of things, but particular cars they want to raise or lower the co2 emissions fleet co2 emissions limit down to not sure what the exact threshold is, but basically that the previous the current requirement would reduce co2 emissions by 37 and a half percent by 2030. They're increasing that to 55% and then they want to cut co2 emissions from vehicles to by 100% by 2035, which would in effect ban any sales of new internal combustion vehicles and even hybrids you know, if you want 100% reduction He can't even have hybrids at that point. It's all got to be either battery electric or fuel cell. What do you think? You know, is this practical? Can we get there? It's I think, 14 years Nicole Wakelin 1:13:10 Yeah, but there have you looked at what they're requiring? Like I'm scanning through this article and it's in its proposal at once member countries to install charging stations no more than one every 37.3 miles apart on major roads by 2025 that's four years a charging station and every basically 40 miles that's that's a significant investment. I mean, I believe it feels if there was a guy Sam Abuelsamid 1:13:35 you know, we've got we've got gas stations at least that far apart. Roberto Baldwin 1:13:39 Are these Yeah, but yeah, but every 20 feet Nicole Wakelin 1:13:42 every every five inches but I mean, it I don't know Roberto Baldwin 1:13:46 if you're if you're if you're BP or whatever other you know, if you're a British Gas Station, this is how you make money is that this okay? There's a proposal you know what we can do this because we already have the we already have the land we already have the infrastructure we already have power because we have the power gas stations, and the little you know, the food Mart's we're gonna put these in, you're gonna pay us awesome. I mean, that the infrastructure is there. It's it's, it's it's really down to these companies saying, oh, who wants to be first where we were gonna get paid to do this. And so you know, you have EA, which in I guess, Europe, they have Ayana T and a couple other places. But yeah, you know, a BP or an Exxon Chevron or whatever. I don't know all the gas stations in Europe, but if they were smart, they would one of them would would would try to jump ahead of everybody else and say you know what, because this is going to happen, whether or not I partake in it or not, I should try to make some money so that still have people coming into my stations and buying beef jerky and fancy waters. Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:55 In Europe, you know, both. Both shell and BP have been buying up Charging networks in the UK and across Europe, you know, and expanding them, you know, putting putting those charging stations at you know, at their gas stations, you know and at their, their roadside service stations. So, you know, I think I think we will see this this happen I think, you know, this is this is the direction that everybody's going you know, I think and the UK has actually said that they want to ban sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2030. And in Norway, it's the date the drop dead date is 2025 you know, in Norway is a much smaller market but you know, after they're all you know, more Roberto Baldwin 1:15:37 ease in Norway that places always Nicole Wakelin 1:15:39 just ease I was in Norway walking along the highway. They had this like, really nice, this busy highway and there was this rather nice trail next to it. And it was the most bizarre thing because it's mob like the highway is like, three lanes in each direction. It's totally full of traffic and it had the sound of like, a quiet little two lane road in the US because it's so many cars wishing through the air is like there's no there every now and then an engine would happen. You're like, oh, someone has an actual engine. It Unknown Speaker 1:16:07 was very weird. Roberto Baldwin 1:16:08 Yeah, they and they have Evie charging stations everywhere. And what they have is instead of having the cable that goes into your car, and they have a port on the charging station, that way whatever like weird port you have on your car, you just bring your kid it's BYOD bring your own cable, just plug it in, plug it in the thing. Nicole Wakelin 1:16:26 It's like mountain It was like these twisty turny. Like if your car was too long, I don't think you could have made the turns to get to the top of it to go to some place for dinner, which was very good. But we get up there to the middle of nowhere. It is one little house that has you know, conceit, maybe 60 people and they have an Eevee charging station right there in the parking lot. I'm like seriously, I can't get one like the local Walmart. But you guys have one up here on a mountain for one restaurant. Roberto Baldwin 1:16:52 Yeah, it was Sam Abuelsamid 1:16:55 over 50% of new vehicle sales in Norway are e V's now. So you know, they're I think they were the first country to break that 50% barrier. Roberto Baldwin 1:17:06 Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's essentially what California is doing the 20 by 2035 time period, it's 14 years. They're not taking away the gas car that you own. I know a lot of people and I wrote the 2035 article about called California people are like, they're gonna take our car I'm like, no one's taking your car and 2034 you can buy a gas car and do whatever the hell you want to do with it. It's Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:27 2035 go to Nevada and buy one yeah, you Roberto Baldwin 1:17:31 can go to that with their laws don't exist and buy your gas car and you know live in Tahoe and register your car and Reno if you're if you're that incent you know if you've got to have a challenger which probably won't be around but it'll be the hell panda Hellcat Evie, and it'll have Nicole Wakelin 1:17:52 would it be like a Hellcat? But instead of like the demon had red eyes, they put like little lightning bolts in his eyes. Maybe? Roberto Baldwin 1:17:57 Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Little lightning bolts. Nicole Wakelin 1:18:00 Yeah, little lightning bolt eyes instead of the evil red demon eyes. Roberto Baldwin 1:18:06 I'm gonna shock you. Like, really? That's Nicole Wakelin 1:18:07 your marketing right here. Dogs here. Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:10 Alright. Okay. So before we get into listener questions, as I mentioned, I was in Chicago last week for the abbreviated Auto Show, I had a chance to chat with Trevor Scott, who's the marketing manager for the Ford Maverick. And we'll drop that interview in here. If you're a Patreon supporter. It's been in there since since last Thursday. But now the rest of you get to hear it. It's about 15 minutes. And then after that, we'll be back with listener questions. So this is the first public viewing of the new Maverick. Absolutely. Absolutely. Trevor Scott 1:18:45 We're excited to be here. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:47 So it's been a while since Ford has done a truly compact pickup. And this thing well, actually size wise lengthwise, it's falls right in between where the the old Ranger extended cab and regular cab fell in. So it's much shorter Trevor Scott 1:19:04 by what 10 inches shorter than our current generation, roughly about 10 or 11 inches shorter than a ranger. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:09 So there's been a lot of people over the years that I've talked about wanting a smaller pickup truck. How much demand Do you think there actually is for a truck? The size and you know what, why, why now? Why is why is now the time to bring a smaller truck like this to market? Trevor Scott 1:19:25 It's a great question. I think there's I mean, really from No, sorry, really, since we revealed in early June. The reaction from a customer perspective has been off the charts. There's been a lot of demand. We obviously opened our reservation experience and we're seeing that firsthand with a number of reservations are coming in. Well, I will tell you is we're seeing a lot of customers coming as we anticipated from other vehicle segments, right. So this isn't just truck customers looking at Maverick as an alternative truck. This is sedan, small utility customers that previously would Never expected or even entertained looking at a truck that based on the total package based on the fuel economy, based on the passenger seating, and I think just the versatility with the bed affords them, or looking at a truck for the first time. And that's what we expect to play out when we launched the vehicle this fall is a lot of customers that are looking at a truck as first time in 10 years, they think Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:21 a lot of people who in the past might have bought a fiesta or focus or fusion are now looking to maybe upsize a little bit and get into something Trevor Scott 1:20:30 like this, where previously they didn't have a lot of choice, right. So if you wanted something really strong fuel economy had to buy a small car. And then you were compromising the space and interior, where you can store as many things because you just didn't have the size of the vehicle that you needed. Maverick kind of eliminates that issue, right? You don't have that compromise, because you get the 40 mpg in the city, you get the 500 miles range, but you can still fit your friends and family and get the extra bonus of being able to throw stuff back in the truck. Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:59 So one of the one of the fascinating things about this when when the announcement was made, starting at $20,000, is the most affordable Ford branded vehicle you can get now that the cars are gone. It's the most affordable hybrid of any kind in the US market and most affordable pickup truck by a pretty significant margin over the one competitor that you will have when it launches this fall. So what was the rationale, you know, in kind of aiming for that, that price target and and why? I guess why? And how were you able to hit that price target with a standard hybrid powertrain Trevor Scott 1:21:38 warranty. I think we went back, you know, just a few short years ago and announced that we were moving away from sedans. Obviously, that left sort of a potential opportunity in the overall Ford showroom from an entry level affordability perspective, right. And Ford obviously has all the credibility when it comes to trucks. And when we looked at what we wanted to train introduce in that space, we wanted to leverage a lot of the efficiencies and the learnings that we had from the rest of the portfolio. And so Maverick actually shares its platform with both Bronco sport and escape. So there's a lot of learnings and a lot of efficiencies just in how we've actually designed the platform, and then actually use that platform and the flexible architecture of that platform to extend the wheelbase for Maverick and deliver the truck attributes that we are after. And so I think knowing that we needed that affordable vehicle and knowing that for customers to truly consider a truck of this size, fuel economy needed to be an important part of that. The standard hybrid just made all the sense. And we certainly made sort of decisions on what feature content is most important to this customer to make sure that we can actually afford to offer a vehicle at a sub $20,000 price point and still right and still operate efficiently and still operate profitably. Sam Abuelsamid 1:22:58 How much did they shift by Ford, to these five global flexible platform architectures helped to enable you to do this, because I know that a decade ago when the previous Ranger was discontinued in North America, Ford talked about for a small truck at that time, at least a small truck, it cost them almost as much to build it as it did to build an F 150. You know, but people weren't, weren't or couldn't spend that much on a small truck. It does. Does that shift to the C two platform? Is that what enabled you enabled Ford to Trevor Scott 1:23:34 do this, that that among a number of other things, right. I mean, I think certainly that flexible architecture in the platform is was a huge enabler. But also a lot of the common parts that we're able to share with other vehicle lines on this platform like Bronco sport, as an example, helps afford a lot of inefficiencies in the build process as well as in the upfront engineering process, right? Because that's really, where do we have the opportunity to save a lot of time investment was in that upfront engineering process. And when you have a shared architecture, the shared platform, and a lot of the shared parts, and helps cut down on total engineering going to try to bring a vehicle like this to market Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:09 makes it possible for you to offer at this price point and, and still be economically viable from a business perspective. So one of the things we've noticed in the the specifications for this truck, standard hybrid, but that's only with front wheel drive, no four wheel drive hybrid option. Is that something that at some point in the lifecycle of this vehicle, we Trevor Scott 1:24:33 might see, it's something that we're obviously monitoring, right. I mean, I think, you know, the beauty of this vehicle was how quickly we're able to bring it to market, we shave roughly about 20 months of typical development time off of this truck. So we brought to market in just over 30 months. And that's actually remarkable considering that typically, it takes Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:51 early 2019 kind of late Trevor Scott 1:24:54 2018 is really kind of when you know kind of you said All systems go so good. And how quickly we're able to bring a lot of those things to market. We have all wheel drive, hybrids is Yeah, exactly right available across the lineup. So it's something we'll continue to monitor. And if it's something that merits something entertaining down the road, then we'll certainly look at that. Sam Abuelsamid 1:25:15 I think, you know, one of the really interesting things, when when this was announced a month or two ago, in the presentations was a lot of emphasis on, you know, DIY customers want to want to do their own thing. Yeah, obviously, there's a lot of accessories you can you can buy, you know, the same goes for this vehicles, SUV, siblings, you know, especially the profit sport, you got a lot of partners doing a lot of different accessories. But you're also offering the option for customers to do their own thing, and even providing Trevor Scott 1:25:48 instructions for that. I know, it feels a little bit ironic, right? I mean, obviously, you certainly want to make sure the customers are aware of and have the availability to purchase a lot of our Ford accessories. But what we recognize is the customer that is after this truck affordability is at the top of their list for purchase reasons, right. And so when you get past the point of purchasing a truck, we want to make sure we've got the ability to actually customize and personalize their truck affordably as well. So we'll have all those accessories available at point of sale. But for the customers that truly want to be able to do things like put a bike rack in, or just simple bed dividers, showing them how they can do that, right, here's the list of materials that you can get at your local hardware store. And here's the step by step on how you can do that. That's in our mind, I think truly powerful. And giving the customer that optionality in terms of choosing which path they want to go down, and then molding in slots into the bed to enable them to easily do that. Exactly. That was a really cool feature. Sam Abuelsamid 1:26:44 Yeah, what are some of the other unique features on this truck? You know, that you've done? Particularly an interior? I know, there's some of the some stuff that you've done. It's different from what's been on previous vehicles? Trevor Scott 1:26:55 I think for me, it's the storage, right? So you look at a compact pickup like this. And you might expect Well, yeah, you got the bed, but where else am I gonna put stuff? Well, I think the way that the design team approach this truck, and how they engineer the overall design, you take the doors as an example. Right. So the cannon lever design of the door handle is actually what enables the ability to put tall one liter water bottles right in the door pockets, right, so all four doors are designed in that fashion. The pockets are so deep, you can put laptop, so they actually extend all the way back here, okay, all the way to the door. So you can put laptops, tablets, there's all kinds of storage spaces just in the doors alone. And then it extends into the second row. So in the second row, you can lift the second row seat up here, and you've got large storage bins underneath where your game you can keep hidden items like Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:44 similar to what you've got an F 150 with the pop ups. Trevor Scott 1:27:48 Exactly right. So there's lots of storage capability in the truck beyond just the the flex bed itself. And that's I think, kind of what intrigues me the most is you get the ability to store stuff, hide it, and still use all the passenger seating when you got in the trunk. Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:03 And I sat in the backseat of this thing, and it's fairly roomy. Yeah, even even for adults and three, three adults across the back of this, I think Gail will not cannot be not be uncomfortable. Trevor Scott 1:28:15 Extending upon the DIY story that you were talking about earlier. You'll see on the back of the first row of counsel, here we have the slot we're calling it is our Ford integrated tether system. And our intention is we'll have a number of accessories available for purchase. So cupholders storage bins, you name it. But what we intend to do is alongside the step by step, so we're gonna provide on DIY experiences in the flex bed, we're also going to provide the CAD data. So customers that are familiar with 3d printing can actually create their own accessories. Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:46 download that data, Trevor Scott 1:28:48 build their own data model printer, and then actually go ahead and customize and build their own 3d printed accessories. So Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:54 So if somebody wanted to do a holder for a tablet, for the kids riding in the backseat Trevor Scott 1:28:59 on holder, you could literally produce that on your own and make it your own accessory just based on the CAD data. Sam Abuelsamid 1:29:05 Is there right next to the USB ports. So easy to plug in? Yep. Trevor Scott 1:29:09 Yep, you got it. Very cool. Sam Abuelsamid 1:29:11 All right. So I got to ask one question. You know, I've watched a number of Sandy Monroe's tear down videos of them, I'm sure you probably have as well. If you've ever watched his videos, one of the things that he harps on about endlessly is fasteners, you know, he was a Ford engineer a long time ago, hates fasteners. I'm looking at these doors, these cantilever door handles. Yeah, looks like there's four bolts in there's there's actually four fasteners holding that on, you know, or is that just molded in just for apparently, you Trevor Scott 1:29:37 know, it's a good question, Sam to be asked with the I don't know the answer to that. I should probably find that out. But my hunch is is that that's more for decorative purposes than it is for functional purposes. Okay, yes. That's a great question. Sam Abuelsamid 1:29:52 I mean, this. I think this is gonna be a very interesting segment to watch because, you know, it's a segment that we haven't had in the US market for a long time. Yeah, at least at least a decade does everything all the other trucks used to be small? You know, they're they're midsize trucks now Ranger and all its competitors. And it's gonna be fascinating to watch. You know how the US market takes two vehicles like this. And it's it's one other competitor at the moment. Trevor Scott 1:30:18 I agree. I agree. But I will tell you early reaction as far as been really positive, from what we've heard from our Ford dealers, and what we're seeing based on the reservations that we have coming through, it's very encouraging in terms of what we're seeing from the customers are looking at Maverick for the first time. Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:32 We've got three trim levels available SLS lt and Trevor Scott 1:30:35 Lariat. Yep. Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:38 Do you have any data yet on or any projections on what kind of split you might expect to see between those trims? Trevor Scott 1:30:45 We're seeing roughly about 20% on our Excel series. The Excel t model, which we're showing here is roughly around 50 to 55%. And then you've got Larry, it kind of makes up the difference. So a fairly typical most evenings arranger. Yeah, exactly right. But most of your volume, kind of in that Excel tea model, which is consistent with Ranger consistent with f150. Okay, yep. Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:08 Great. Well, thank you so much, Trevor. Absolutely. It was great to talk to you. And hopefully, I'll help this thing's a huge success. Yeah, you know, we need more different vehicles like that. Trevor Scott 1:31:19 Well, we look forward to having you out comedian. Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:21 Let's just dive into some listener questions. We got a few this week. First one from Adam, jack alinco. Add an S. I've been trying to help my very uncarved like very car on savvy and figure out her next vehicle. And I'm looking for your thoughts. She currently has a 2018 Honda CRV. And before that she had a 2011 rav4. So she likes that type of vehicle because they don't make that because they make her feel a little safer, and have all wheel drive. But she doesn't really need to be that doesn't really needed to be that big. Her lease is coming up on her CRV in October. And she doesn't really want to keep it even though she has a buyout option because it has no features or options. Not even any kind of touchscreen or backup camera. Actually, I think both of those are on the 2018 standard, but that's beside the point. But I looked at looked up the value of it, because she only has 8000 miles on it and almost three years. And so I told her that she should buy out the vehicle and just hang on to it for a while because the MSRP was 21,000 and the current market value is 18,500. So she would be giving a huge gift back to the dealer if she returned it at the least let the police and so given that she might hang on to it for a while longer, and we have some time, but I would like her to start thinking about what to get next time when the market is a little bit better for a new car. Her only real requirement is all wheel drive because she lives in upstate New York. She wants it reliable and something that's a little higher off the ground. So not a sedan or hatchback. She doesn't need tons of bells or whistles her budget is about 22 to $24,000. Ideally, it would be new but used is okay if it was only one or two years old. But it seems there are so many options in this category. It's hard to choose kia seltos Nissan Kicks Honda CRV, Buick Encore, Volkswagen, Taos, Mazda CX three Toyota Corolla cross etc. We'd love to hear you top your top one or two options. Thanks and love the show. Nicole Wakelin 1:33:18 So right off the bat, the kicks doesn't have all wheel drive. So the kicks is really right. Yeah, is off your list. So if you're going Nissan, you've got to go with the rogue sport, which does offer all wheel drive and is kind of fits or thing you know, it's a little bit higher, a little bit off the ground has decent safety features, and it's pretty cheap. So yeah, I feel like a beast on the road sport would be the one just as a heads up kicks won't work. Yep. Get off the list. Roberto Baldwin 1:33:45 Hey, get off the list. Hi, I'm a fan of the Kona I think the cone is a great car, you get a lot of money, you get a lot of value for your money. You can get an all wheel drive version, it starts it within that price range that she was talking about. Yeah, I liked I think the the CRV and the rav4 have sort of been priced out of that range that that he's talking about. So that the Kona might be the the way it goes Nicole Wakelin 1:34:15 would work too. I think the seltos will pop into that pipe price range. I think in the base trims I think Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:21 sorry. Yeah, I think I think you're right. Yeah. Nicole Wakelin 1:34:25 I think there's even wait, there's a positive that does it too. What is Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:28 the one of the Mazda CX 30? Yeah, it starts at about 22. Nicole Wakelin 1:34:34 Yeah, so the CX 30 would work too. So there's those are Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:37 all in that same, you know, slightly smaller than a CRV segment, you know, so, I think I think those would be great choices. And, you know, if she if she doesn't want to wait, you know, I think you know, what I would do is I would suggest, you know, go on a carvana seeing what they will offer you on that trade. Because you'll probably get a great price from carvanha for a car, CRV, with only 1000 miles on it. And my guess is the buyout price right now, you know, based on that lease is probably several $1,000 less than what carvanha will probably pay for that thing right now. So maybe do the buyout, and then immediately turn around and sell it to carvanha. You know, so now you make a little profit on that instead of giving that profit to the dealer because the you know, that's what Adams referring to there. Your you know, the dealer is going to be making a hefty profit on that because the, the that buyout price is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of I'm guessing 15 Grand 1414 to $15,000. And you know that that used CRV right now will probably go for closer to 19 to 20. The way used car prices are right now. So do the buyout, turn around, sell it to carvanha and then take your profit and you know, turn it into one of these others like a cx 30 or the Kona and and then go from there. Yeah, I think the see what the Kona Evie go for with all wheel drive. I think you can get that for for about 24 grand with all wheel drive. So you know, I think that that's a great choice. You know, and and then there are several other options as well. But I think Kona or cx 30 or seltos would probably be the ones I would I would recommend. Yeah. The rogue drug sports kind of at the end of its lifecycle. It's going to be replaced soon with with an all new model. They just launched it in Europe as the cash guy, I think is Yeah, that's what so alright, Eliot Johnson asks, you're recently talking about one pedal driving and how you enjoy cars with strong region. I have friends with a V's who fear being rear ended when driving this way because the brake lights don't activate when you just take your foot off the accelerator. So they started feathering the brake pedal not to stop, but to signal cars behind. Similar to recent autonomous technology is at hand back driving at any moment. This sounds to me like a technology is making cars more dangerous. Do you agree? Should car makers fix this? Best regards? Elliott Johnson? cars? No, I don't agree. Roberto Baldwin 1:37:19 Whenever I take because I because I remember when when when one pedal driving was like a you know, when the Nissan and the bolt the leaf in the bolt? When you take your foot off the gas or off the accelerator like I would I double checked and like yeah, the brake light comes on. So I don't Nicole Wakelin 1:37:37 actually believe I'd asked him one vehicle and I want to say we're better was the leaf and they said no, no, if it's if it's breaking, like if you're if it's breaking, we even though you're not putting your foot in the brake, we're going to show break late so people know you're slowing down. So I don't know, where they got the and I wondering is there a threshold? Like if you just eased up off the gas Sam Abuelsamid 1:37:55 there there is there is a threshold it's typically somewhere around point oh, five G's DSL, which is, you know, that's that's kind of like what you're going to get from, you know, just engine braking when you're coasting when you lift off, you know, you'd get about point oh, 4.05 G's of diesel, anything over that. So any any kind of significant region, they will turn on the brake lamps, you know, even even without touching the brake pedal, because for this very reason, so yeah, the it's it's not an issue. This is something that the industry has already thought of, and they've they've already addressed this going back to the original mini e test fleet that many launched back in 2008. You know, because they were they were the first ones to do this really strong region. And those those also turned on the brake lights as soon as you lift off the accelerator pedal, so not an issue. Elliott, don't worry about it. Tell your friends, they don't need to feather the brake pedal. You know, the light the brake lights will come on when when you're using one pedal driving. Roberto Baldwin 1:38:58 What is next up? Sam Abuelsamid 1:39:01 Dutch? Dutch mantell asks, Why are we why aren't we talking about the use of autonomous vehicles that transport things robots for warehouses, robots for mail delivery, etc? Then as in the, etc, then is in the public domain currently? Are we unable to wrap our heads around that? Roberto Baldwin 1:39:18 I have written extensively about this for car driver and TechCrunch. No, it's it's you know, we have those tiny little robots that transport you know, items, but I think you're gonna see a lot more autonomous vehicles for transfer for transport, you think actually makes a lot more sense than a ton of vehicles for transporting humans. Because there's, they're typically set on a on a there's typically a set route, they have an area which which which within they they operate, they typically will operate during the times when people aren't around, you know, you're at work. It's, you know, it's off peak hours, you know, you know, typically you're not going to get a delivery at 9am from ups just because it doesn't make sense for ups to have someone On the road stuck in traffic. And so yeah, the the sort of autonomous delivery system does make a bit more sense. But you still have to have someone bring things from the vehicle to your door. If If I'm in my office working and I work from home and I'm, let's say I'm podcasting, and a vehicle shows up in my house with the delivery and I have to get up, leave the podcast or leave what I'm doing and going take it out of the vehicle. That's, that does. There's no benefit in that. So you know, you still have that sort of it, you know, people still want things dropped off at their door, the last 50 foot problem. Yeah, it's the last 50 foot problems. So it you know, we're still sort of figuring it's still sort of being figured out. But but for warehouses, you know, Amazon already has like weird little robots that run around and do something and then you know, for delivery i think that's that's just going to continue to to grow at some point, I think they're, they're still going to be a delivery person inside the vehicle. They might not have to drive anymore, they might be in the back getting ready for the next delivery, which they will, you know, then put on a pallet like bright drops like a pat like I think it's what's it called? Anyway, they have a mechanical pallet Sam Abuelsamid 1:41:16 of toys are they gonna just the pallet I forget what the bread drop. Roberto Baldwin 1:41:19 Yeah, so Teddy has an E pallet bright drop has something a pallet like where you just put, you can put a lot of items on and so they would park at the end of the block. And then this pallet, which is powered by electricity, they can, you know, sort of lead that along and then take things out and drop in for other houses. And you know, they they do the whole block they get back in the truck, the truck is already set up, it's already checked out traffic and where it needs to go next. And then it It sets on its way and then the person in the back can either reload the pilot or get the next pallet ready. It's you know, I think autonomous delivery, again, it makes more sense because it's it's a geo fenced area, which is not as difficult to for an autonomous system to to learn. Sam Abuelsamid 1:42:03 And, you know, there there are a bunch of companies that are more focused on the whole delivery market companies like Gatwick neuro, you know, which has gotten a fair bit of attention. You know, they've got a smaller delivery vehicle with a couple of compartments in it that they've been testing for several years now in places like Houston and Phoenix and now in the Bay Area. And there's also even smaller ones, you know, these little delivery bots, these little rovers. In fact, Yandex, the Russian search engine company, which also has their own automated driving program, in addition to their, their passenger vehicles. They have Yandex rovers, and they just announced, like last week, I think, last week or week before, a deal with grub hub, the index, the index rovers, has been a couple of Yandex rovers, making deliveries in downtown Ann Arbor since last March. I met up with them back in April. And, you know, we've got a demo of it. You know, and it's it's a little looks like a little wagon, you know, six wheels LIDAR sensor on the top some cameras. And you know, it drives around downtown Ann Arbor, you know, making deliveries from Amir's deli and other places to University of Michigan dorms and anybody else who within a couple miles radius. And there's another Ann Arbor based company called refraction AI, doing the same sort of thing they've got, they've got a delivery bot. So the Yandex deal with grubhub, they're going to be deploying a bunch of these grubhub currently has deals with like 250 universities across the United States universe in colleges across the US. Not all of them are going to get these right away, but probably a dozen or so to start, where they'll be using these you know, to drive on you know, sidewalks and things like that. So it is happening deliveries deliveries are happening for automated vehicles. Alright, duchez had another question as well. What is the likelihood that we will see more non traditional automotive companies get into the electric autonomous vehicle space? What kinds of companies could they be? So we've seen a bunch of tech companies get into the sector, you know, obviously Google and Baidu in China and Tencent and others have made investments in a V's and electric vehicles. You've got a lot of Evie startups in China. You got some here as well, like Fisker, and lucid. But what do you guys think? Nicole Wakelin 1:44:35 I think there's still going to be companies who try to get into it. I don't think it's a matter of are there companies that are going to attempt to get into this space? Sure there are, how many of them are actually going to be able to pull it off? That's, that's really the question and I don't think most of them are going to be able to pull it off. I'm sure there will be some that will will do it and will succeed. But building a car whether it's an Eevee, or traditional gas engine, It's a complicated process. And it's expensive as heck in the supply chain and the production issues and the legal issues and adhering to the nine zillion government regulations. And it's a process. So I think even if you have great technology and a great idea, and you know, like, this is gonna be an amazing vehicle, there's a lot of pieces to pull together that makes it a challenge for even a well thought out, new cup new product to succeed. I mean, heck, they have a hard time with products from existing OEMs that they make a product that they think it's great, and it's like, nope, we made one false move, and this product fell flat. So if you've never done it before, I think your chances for success are not great, but I'm sure there's gonna be a bunch you try. Roberto Baldwin 1:45:43 It's such a huge gamble because building one car to show off at a show that maybe drives that's incredibly hard building 100 other than that's impossible now scale that scale that to where you're building 100,000 of them. That's, it's it's mind boggling. It's incredibly difficult. The Silicon Valley is littered with the tattered remains of Evie startups that came in went, it's like when you go to auto shows, and there's always those, there's like those 20 or 30 supercar startups that have always been around, and they only still had that one car. And it's always, you know, somebody who's super rich, who's had an idea. And they built one car and they're just been there has been dragging it around. And that turned out. Yeah, yeah, you just dragging the same, like fancy car around to just to be at auto shows. When you're a company and you're Apple, which is, you know, the open secret is that Apple has been building a car since 2014. You know, that's, it's even for them. And these are tech companies are used to moving fast and having yearly updates in the car world does not work like the car world is, is not that and there's so the complexity is so much higher than your phone. Because if my phone crashes the software on my phone crashes. Oh, no, that's it. That's that's an inconvenience. When the software in your car crashes, that's a well that's a crash. That's, that's, it's not ideal. I think a lot of people you know, a lot of companies are still gonna try to jump into it, they're still gonna, you know, we're gonna keep having Faraday futures and bowling jers and Lourdes towns and all the other sort of like, companies are gonna keep trying to do this, you're gonna have the big companies like the apples, and maybe I don't know, maybe Facebook, who knows what Facebook's doing. They can't even sell the portal. But you know, they're, you know, you're gonna have all these companies, they're still going to try. But it is it is it is tough. It is tough. And and that's when we can we can talk about the person who runs the company all day about how he might be insane. But Tesla being able to pull off what they've done is you have to applaud them for that. Because that is it's it's an impossible task to do what they have done. And I think rivia and lucid are probably the two Evie companies that will likely make it out of this batch of Evie startups that we've seen over the last few years. And even then, it's not 100% because it's, you know, like you said, it can be one thing, one thing and they're like, oh, okay, Nicole Wakelin 1:48:06 I mean, this Yeah, everyone, like people will write off a car. Like there's one thing that's not quite right, that you know, the automaker doesn't even know something about the seats weren't comfortable, or the look of it just didn't resonate with the public the way they thought or at the same time they did this, this other world event happens and suddenly nobody wants the car the way you've built it. You just you don't know. And if you've got 10 cars and you're stable, okay, one was a dead that's hard to swallow, but you're fine. If you've got two, you just you're one. Yeah, in trouble. Roberto Baldwin 1:48:34 No one wants to be the Eevee maker that unleashes the Aztec on the world. And that's exactly as exactly on paper, the Aztec like oh, it's like an SUV ish. It's like you can camp It is always clean, saying cool Nicole Wakelin 1:48:46 idea. did amazing. It sounds like a great Sam Abuelsamid 1:48:50 item on the checklist, except for the design, Roberto Baldwin 1:48:53 except for and then people saw they're like, no. And at that point, you're already so far down the rabbit hole. Nicole Wakelin 1:49:00 You can see you'd imagine all of the, you know, it's not like it was a startup making that either. Can you imagine the number of focus groups and all those things that they must have had Look at that. And enough of them went like Yeah, cool. We love it. That they said Sure. Let's move forward. And then the general public sees it and says, That's hideous, like and they've got huge amount of research and like focus groups and experienced developing cars and they still turn out a dud Roberto Baldwin 1:49:26 Yeah, it's it's it's a crapshoot. Sam Abuelsamid 1:49:31 The reality is that, you know, probably 90% of all business startups in any segment, fail. They don't succeed. They don't they don't survive for, you know, more than a few years at most. And you know, that that's as true whether you're opening a restaurant or opening a bookstore or, you know, getting into the car business, you know, and the car business in particular, you know, attracts big egos. And you know, people think they've got big ideas and money. Have them never make it. Roberto Baldwin 1:50:01 They're gonna change the world. Sam Abuelsamid 1:50:04 Yeah. And occasionally some dude. Well, you know, I mean, yeah, but but not very often. So they will come then but most will fail. So, alright, we already addressed a genius question about the the bolt batteries. And, you know, just rewind if you missed that. And then finally, Josh felts has a two part question, which is the better VW coupe, the Shaco or the Corrado and why is the answer Shaco? Roberto Baldwin 1:50:34 Because you can say sure, Raka Ferrari. So it kind of looks like a Ferrari. Yeah, there you go. That's it. I love the karate. I love the name of this Rocco. I love the Corrado. I wanted to Corrado so bad, but my friend had a show. Rocco. Sam Abuelsamid 1:50:48 Did you want to be our sixth or g 60? Roberto Baldwin 1:50:51 I don't even remember. I'm just gonna say both. I anything I could have gotten my hands on at that point in the 90s. would have would have been would have been would have been great. But my friend had a shoe Rocco. And she's like, yeah, this is our shoe rocker. firey I'm like, oh, oh, that's great. Nicole Wakelin 1:51:07 Once you heard the name and I would like one please. Ah Sam Abuelsamid 1:51:10 for first or second generation turaco the Giugiaro design or the second generation I believe Roberto Baldwin 1:51:16 they had the second generation I'm trying to Yeah, I have a second gen. Yeah, okay had a second gen the Sam Abuelsamid 1:51:26 end it was what would be your choice. Roberto Baldwin 1:51:32 I'd like saying Straka You know, I'm gonna go with my childhood dream of having the Corrado and say the Corrado. Okay, because it was it's sort of a weird bulbous thing turn it now at now now I'm really you know what, sir Rocco Rocco Nevermind. Scirocco I'm going second ginger Rocco. Sam Abuelsamid 1:52:02 I would I would probably go with the first gen turaco I like the design of that one. But I also like the Corrado and but the problem with the Corrado is is you know, they especially the early ones with the they had this supercharged four cylinder with a weird supercharger called the G later which was you know, as a scroll type supercharger, which is it was technically very interesting, but also extremely unreliable. They tended to have have early early failures and so you probably if you get a Corrado you probably want to get the later VR six models. But a friend of mine who died a few years ago, he had a G 60 Shaco and loved it and so yeah, I always liked the design of it, but I would go with the first gen turaco Unknown Speaker 1:53:00 Well, yeah, everybody Nicole Wakelin 1:53:02 I'm just gonna go with Shaco because I like saying Shahrukh What did you say sure Rocco Ferrari Roberto Baldwin 1:53:07 rocker Ferrari Sure, aka Ferrari like a Ferrari. Nicole Wakelin 1:53:10 I just want to be able to say that so I'm gonna go for that reason Sure, Rocco. Sam Abuelsamid 1:53:17 I actually saw a really a really interesting first gen turaco at cars and coffee a few weeks ago here in Ann Arbor. This guy had a first gen turaco and he originally he wanted to put VR six in it but it wouldn't fit front. So he did a mid mounted VR six and the Shaco took out the backseat and you know, put in a structure in there and made a mid engine VR six Rocco and then put an electric motor on the front axle to make it a hybrid. So he's got a plug in hybrid VR six minutes and VR sexual Rocco first gen. So when everything is closed up, it looks like a fairly normal first gen turaco. But then when you open the hood and the tailgate, you realize that Whoa, this is not this is not what I expected. Roberto Baldwin 1:54:09 This is not your father's Oldsmobile Sam Abuelsamid 1:54:12 No, definitely not. I alright Roberto Baldwin 1:54:18 I'll just say I'm always curious about the guy who make who create a hybrid who do retro mod hybrid because you have to deal with two different power trains and I'm like how how that seems like such Oh, I can't cuz I want to do an Eevee conversion of a vehicle I want to buy back from a friend but the hybrid thing I'm just like, I don't even know how I would pull that off and anyone who does it and they are able to do it with correctly How am I just correctly how about just works? Maybe not even correctly how that works? I applaud you for doing that because that is Sam Abuelsamid 1:54:55 well if you're doing it the way this guy did the show Rocco you know because what they call it Through the road hybrid where you've got the gas engine on one axle, the electric motor on the other axle and you don't really have to blend them you know to feed the torque to the wheels you know each axle kind of does its own thing so you know it's a little easier doing it that way but yeah, it's it's Roberto Baldwin 1:55:18 like it I just feel like some one of them is going to be either being dragged or pushed. You know what I mean? Like one of the one of the axles is being dragged because the let's say the Evie is pulling doing it has more torque than the so is it? So does it decouple like the the clutch when it you know, does it? Is there a clutch to decouples the rear wheel so it doesn't get like, you know, these are rotating at 500 rpm and these are orientated 400. Like, what's that? Do it? Yeah. See? That's all the stuff that happens in my brain. When I think about the hybrid retro mods I'm like, but what if How do you keep them in? Okay. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Nicole Wakelin 1:55:58 Just a little bit, maybe I think Roberto Baldwin 1:55:59 I might be overthinking it. I'm sorry. All right. Sam Abuelsamid 1:56:04 Any final thoughts for me to Nicole Wakelin 1:56:06 know Final Thoughts? Thoughts? Roberto Baldwin 1:56:09 Oh, check out my video for the EQ s on end gadget. There we go. That's fine. Sam Abuelsamid 1:56:14 We'll put we'll include that link and my my video review of the VW ID for is up on hands on tech on twit now to include that link as well. Cool. So, alright. Thanks, everybody, and we'll talk to you next time. Roberto Baldwin 1:56:30 See ya. Bye bye.