Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Coming up on episode 217 wheel bearings we've got the Audi Q five plug in hybrid the Volvo C 40. The 21 2021 Ford Explorer the BMW II for Mercedes Benz augmented reality heads up display and triple A studies a das functionality and bad weather. All that and more coming up next. This is Episode 217 wheel bearings I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights. Nicole Wakelin 0:27 And I am Nicole wakelin from true car Roberto Baldwin 0:31 and I am Roberto Baldwin from Engadget. Sam Abuelsamid 0:36 And this week, Nicole is sitting here in my basement with me because she's here in Michigan to drive a whole bunch of cars over the next few days. In her role as a juror for nactoy you're over Nicole Wakelin 0:50 at your son I'm in his his basement with his fancy green screen it feels like I'm like seeing behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. Like oh, this is what it looks like here. Roberto Baldwin 1:01 Is it Are you in a rural area? Are you a rural ger? Am I a wet rural juror? Nicole Wakelin 1:08 A rural juror? I'm in a rural area right now? Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:11 I wouldn't call this rural it's sort of suburban. I Nicole Wakelin 1:14 think of you as being like somehow I put you in Detroit so I put you like I put you downtown in my head base. Oh God I did so it's rural compared to that. No, it's a nice it's like a suburbia. Yeah. It's nice. He's kind of mid century modern thing going in his house is pretty cool. Fancy. Sam Abuelsamid 1:33 All right. So let's start with Mr. Baldwin. What have you been driving? Roberto Baldwin 1:38 I went to Belgium. Home of chocolates, sprouts and waffles. Nicole Wakelin 1:45 Did you get all those things? Roberto Baldwin 1:47 I didn't get any sprouts. I did get some waffles and some chocolate I had a while and of course the free does their their french fries. They love their french fries with the mayonnaise. I didn't get managed because I don't like manage on spreadsheets it actually makes me not like want to vomit it actually makes me want to vomit. Yeah, I don't know it just the hot french fries it into Manny's port on top is just Sam Abuelsamid 2:12 I've never understood that. I know growing up in Canada, a lot of my friends like to have gravy on their french fries. And that was pretty cool. I knew a few people that like mayonnaise on fries. No. Roberto Baldwin 2:25 I didn't know it would make me ill until I was in line for French fries at a spot in Amsterdam. And I'm like, What is that smell? It's making me sick. Did they put the fry thing next to the toilet? And like is there been a toilet accident? And it was just the smell of Manny's being poured on the warm fries? That's no Hey, if you like French fries in mayonnaise, that's fine. I don't care. But I will tell you that it does. It makes me ill. And yeah, I don't I don't want to be anywhere around it. Anywho I was in Belgium to drive the Volvo C 40 recharge This is their latest Eevee it's based on it's not based on it's essentially the XC 40 recharged or tiny little SUV with a fastback. Sam Abuelsamid 3:15 It's actually a shaved roof xc 40 Roberto Baldwin 3:18 Yeah, it's a shaved roofed xc 40 with a tiny with a tiny little wing on the back, a cute little, a cute little wing. And you think that like oh, well it just looks like a pass back that's fine, it actually is more efficient, it's 6% more efficient because of that whole shaved back and the arrow and the arrow and that tiny little wing so it has a little bit more has a few more miles of range. It's up to Sorry, I should have got my notes out. It's up to 225 miles of range, I believe the XC 48 to 2223. So you get a little extra something something it's also two tenths of a second quicker from zero to 60 to 2.5 seconds instead of 2.7. It looks cooler, it's a cooler looking xc 40 in the front seat, everything's essentially the same everything's what you would expect. You know if you've been in the XC 40 recharger, you're going to see this in the Z four or in the C 40. It's in the backseat where if you're tall, if you're about six one or taller, your head is going to hit the roof. I'm I'm six three and it was right there on it. And so I'm assuming 2461 and you hit a bump you got to dunk you're gonna hit the roof so that's sort of a bummer it's but it's also lower, it's lower than the XC 40 but it's not it that's from the top. So you're you still get like about the seven inches of ground clearance from the from the bottom of the vehicle. But the top is about two and a half inches lower. So it's a little bit sleeker. It's a little bit quicker, it's a little bit more efficient. And it you have about half the amount of rear Visual visibility when you look in the rearview mirror it's not yeah you're not seeing a lot you're seeing like the bottom of my way to tell you all the things that are wrong with a car but it is still I mean the XC 40 recharge is a fun car to drive it's a sleeper as far as I'm concerned, you know it has 400 and some you know, hold on, hold on. If the 402 horsepower 487 pound feet of torque, that's a lot of torque for a tiny little SUV you throw that in the C 40 you get a much cooler looking vehicle. You get that same torque you get that same horsepower and it's a fun thing it's a fun little car to drive I wish we had had some more dynamic roads in Belgium if you're not on the on the freeway in Belgium you're driving through a tiny town so you can't really but I did you know speed it up a little bit while going on the on ramps and off ramps. It's Yeah, it's uh both of those vehicles are they're surprisingly quick. They're surprisingly fun to drive. Again you're a bit lower so that's nice. If you're tall I mean that's just the tall person's curse to be honest. sit in the back of anything as always you're gonna lose head Sam Abuelsamid 6:17 you're saying it's a curse to be tall? Roberto Baldwin 6:19 It isn't well I mean I can reach things in regular life I just can't be the past year in the back of a car Nicole Wakelin 6:26 just like a car life Roberto Baldwin 6:27 I can't own a Miata I mean I can but I can't drive it when with the top up I have to you know I had to have drive with the top down the fee at 124 I have to drive with the top down I'm sure there are other cars that I just don't fit into that I haven't even tried I just look at it and oh, I was I almost had a chance to sit in an f1 and the driver looked at me and looked at the guard just shook his head. Nicole Wakelin 6:49 No really. Can you get into a Corvette? Roberto Baldwin 6:52 Um yeah yeah I haven't tried the new one though so I'll give it a go it's some cars are surprised I have surprisingly a lot a lot of leg room surprises some cars have surprisingly very little leg room American trucks for a long time or just never never felt like they cared about tall people. Really because trucks feel so big Yeah, but for some reason the leg room was just they just never I don't know American trucks always felt like I was driving I don't know. So back to the C 40 I will drive autom Electric 78 kilowatt hour you get 75 kilowatt hours every day 150 kilowatts DC fast charging compatibilities so you can charge it really quickly 225 miles it's not up there with the with the Kona or with the bolt or with the monkey but it is you know a pretty nice fancy Volvo it's just you know you're losing about 30 miles though on your everyday drive again. Most people don't drive more than 6080 miles a day so it shouldn't be that big of a deal it's no you know it's not like the Mazda with 100 miles is more than double so yeah second third car actually based on this platform using the same bits underneath the same you know, it's the the Pollstar to the XC 40 recharge and now the C 40 recharge all three of them I am a fan of when it comes to to driving it just just don't have tall friends. It's really yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 8:24 are they doing a single motor version of the C 40 or just the dual motor? Roberto Baldwin 8:29 I you know, I'm not really sure they might just have the single version I mean, it's a nice car from a nice brand. So you know, you already have the XC 40 which is sort of their like mass. You know, Evie, I think the C 40 is more of more niche. Volvo's a niche brand I don't think they're going to make too many different variants of this. Just for the sake of you know how many they're going to sell. Sam Abuelsamid 8:55 Next Nicole, you Nicole Wakelin 8:58 Hi was in the 2021 Ford Explorer XL t four wheel drive. Side A big cart. This has a 2.8 liter 2.3 liter EcoBoost I four 300 horsepower 310 pound feet of torque 10 speed automatic transmissions. I always feel like these big cars yeah I always wonder like is it going to feel like I'm driving a tank that has like a lot more motor in it but this moves it's a big vehicle. But it doesn't feel that big, it's responsive. You get on the highway it's not going to win any races it's not super performance or anything but it's it's competent. It feels you know, you don't feel like you're worrying about that car coming up and behind you as you're trying to merge into traffic. And it is roomy, it feels huge inside. I don't know if it's just because it's very, it's very boxy. There's nothing sleek, or performance. Or find about this is like great big SUV in your face. So it's huge. It's also not as crazy expensive as you might think it $45,000 so I mean it's not like it's cheap but also 45 grand for that much card slot a car so I was overall pleased with it I still have this thing with it's a Ford thing and now like I'm gonna be on someone's like assassins list for saying this but I don't feel like their interiors are ever as nice as I want them to be they're always just like a skosh less refined like I want that one plastic surface to be a soft touch surface I want that one thing that looks like it's it's chrome but it's fake plastic to look more like Chrome and not fake plastic. So they never feel like they get it they just their interiors just don't live up to my expectations. But the drive does I thought driving it was nice. I did quite a lot of driving backwards on the highway which was good you know, even in really heavy traffic it's nimble enough that it's still easy to sort of cut in and out when you've got that heavy traffic and nobody knows what the heck they're going downtown like in Boston it was easy to drive around which is saying something because that city is insane to drive thru at certain times a day so I felt like it was overall a good vehicle I was pleased with it. But like I said that thing that always sets me down and it's a fourth thing the interiors never quite do it for me. Sam Abuelsamid 11:10 Yeah, I can definitely agree with that. You know, I had the same thing last week when I was driving the escape plug in hybrid that interior doesn't feel quite as premium as what you would expect you know for a $43,000 crossover is 43,000 that one was yeah cuz that was the titanium Yeah. So yeah, I mean that that is a Ford thing and it's a little unfortunate Nicole Wakelin 11:38 yeah i mean if they like they could if they could just step that up just that even like it's not even like it's terrible they could just step up their game like this tiny little bit who makes a huge difference in what it feels like to drive those suddenly you think oh my gosh, Ford nailed it but you look at the interiors now and you're like for kind of did it like drive fine. roominess, spaciousness features all that fine but like the just the quality of the interior like wow, it's not never quite what I want it to be. Roberto Baldwin 12:07 Something I want to talk about when it comes to the 40 tear, and that's the blue that they use for the infotainment system I know it's the corporate blue I know it's on brand, but I just I don't know it feels really dated and I don't really like the blue I liked it or it feels Nicole Wakelin 12:23 like an old get what you're saying it's like an old computer the blue but it is their official blue. So what do you then what do you do what is your official like your blue the blue that you officially use? is an outdated old looking blue Roberto Baldwin 12:38 that's the problem with with with branding well here's the thing is that BMW they have a blue they don't use it in their infotainment system Nicole Wakelin 12:46 so you're telling is Ford needs to change the color their infotainment system just Roberto Baldwin 12:50 the infotainment or give you an option to something else Nicole Wakelin 12:53 so they would call traditional for blue outdated new for blue Roberto Baldwin 12:59 it would look like remember Coca Cola classic like you could have more or classic and then new Ford and then everyone get angry Nicole Wakelin 13:08 for it right everyone new coke everyone hated new coke someone's gonna hate new Ford Roberto Baldwin 13:13 yeah but then everyone could yell at me and then Ford would have a PR when we tried Nicole Wakelin 13:18 it they'd be so excited to go back to old date of Florida and be like now old dated before it is cool because Newport was Sam Abuelsamid 13:26 you know I I have I have the same complaint about the the instrument clusters when they do the digital instrument clusters they use that same blue not just in the infotainment but in the instrument cluster and it's even more dominant in there and when I was driving the the Maki gt with blue cruise yeah again they've got that that blue you know it's all blue and the interface when blue Cruise is active or when it's when you can use when you can enable it it's not it doesn't stand out as much as it does on a GM vehicle supercruise night I complained to Ford about that and they said yeah that's that's a legit complaint and so it wouldn't surprise me if you know they start making some changes to that the next couple of years Nicole Wakelin 14:12 it's all going to be because Robbie said now that he does like it that's 100% sorry Roberto Baldwin 14:16 sorry for the new system new sync systems Great. Nicole Wakelin 14:21 Now the new thing that's that's a huge improvement though. Whoo the old one was that was definitely worth kicking to the curb. No, it's really good. But you're right though the color I never really thought about it, but it does make it look dated even though it's the system itself is not the system itself is fine. Roberto Baldwin 14:39 Yeah, it's just that blue color. It's like a Windows BIOS screen. Nicole Wakelin 14:44 Now I'm gonna be thinking that every time I ever thought of that until now it's all I can see. Roberto Baldwin 14:49 And I apologize to all the Ford owners out there who are like, damn it. Now they're all good Nicole Wakelin 14:53 to see that. That's all it's good to see. And some poor tech guy Ford is shaking his fist going Robbie. Sam Abuelsamid 14:59 You We actually have a q&a question from a listener later that addresses the the feedback thing with, with all manufacturers, but in particular with Ford, but we'll come back to that later in the show. But due to your comment about the price of this thing, you can actually get Explorer's much more expensive than that. Like you can you can get a platinum up close to 60 grand Nicole Wakelin 15:26 with the hand, okay, so the interior and the platinum. I mean, they're, they're how your trims do look better? For sure. But how much like are they $60,000? Is Sam Abuelsamid 15:34 that what's your Tom? Almost 60? Yeah. Nicole Wakelin 15:37 I don't think I've ever been in an explorer, even a fancy one that felt like it was worth 60,000 like 44,900 and cut off 10 I'm gonna go with 10 44,910 I was okay with that. Just as like, oh, the interior is not quite there. But 60,000 I don't think they have a $60,000 interior. Sam Abuelsamid 15:55 No. Especially, you know, when you compare it to, you know, competitors, like the Kia Telluride, which, you know, maxed out telluride is about 48 or 49. Nicole Wakelin 16:06 And that thing looks beautiful. See, they do the reverse. They give you you look at that car and you think I think this should be more than what the monroney says it should be an extra five or six or 10,000. Depending on the trim you're at. There. You sit down, you're like, Okay, kiya, you totally delivered this interiors. Gorgeous. I see. That's the thing. Like, would you get it? So would you get the telluride? Or would you get the Explorer? Which one would you get? Guys? You have to pick your Roberto Baldwin 16:31 hero, right? Yeah, that was an easy one. Nicole Wakelin 16:36 So there you go. There's the holy Sam Abuelsamid 16:38 grail unless, unless you want a more performance oriented one, you know, and you want to go with the st the Explorer St. Or you want more fuel efficiency, and you go with the hybrid. But for anything other than that, yeah, probably go with the Nicole Wakelin 16:54 kidwind. See, that's that's why this doesn't work. Because for $45,000 you can get yourself a Kia with more stuffs. Roberto Baldwin 17:01 I have the Kia Carnival right now. And it's it's not it might not even be the material. It's how they that's how they use it. It's how they present it like those little little like waves that they have in the material does that I mean, that's just it doesn't have to be some, you know, tree that they've cut down and I don't know about a tree. And you're just like, Oh, this is just plastic. But it feels really nice. It feels it looks really nice. Sam Abuelsamid 17:28 Yeah, I drove the carnival a bit last week during the mama rally at Road America. And you're right, it does feel significantly more premium, you know, especially at that price point. Nicole Wakelin 17:40 Yeah, it's not the carnival is really good. I had that back in May. I think so it's been a little while since I drove that. But once again, the interior and that thing is always key is especially once you hit like the mid range of that, like even the bass transmitter lamps, when you hit like mid to the higher end of their trim levels in any given vehicle. Suddenly, they look like they cost so much more than they actually do. Like, I don't know how they do that. I don't know what magic, what little magical elves are able to do this and other companies can't. But he does it every time the carnival does it too. It's amazing. Sam Abuelsamid 18:14 Right? So I had actually still have until tomorrow morning, the Audi Q five, plug in hybrid. So this is Audi's compact crossover, not their smallest crossover, which is the q3 but the kind of the mid, the upper, lower mid size. And this is you know, it's a plug in hybrid, which I drove to Wisconsin last week. So I didn't really get to leverage the plugin part of it too much. The, the one I have is a 2021 model, which has a 14.1 kilowatt hour battery pack. And it's officially rated at 19 miles of electric driving range. But I drove it, I took it out on Saturday, charged it up fully and took it out for just a test in Eevee mode actually got 23 miles out of it before the engine came on. So did a little better than they and that's an a mix of urban suburban light highway driving. So you know, it's, it's not bad, although, you know, for that battery size that's about, you know, just over half of what I got from the escape the week before, which has a similar size battery and is a similar size vehicle. But the escape only has about 200 horsepower. The the Audi has 362 horsepower combined from the two liter turbocharged four cylinder and the 100 horsepower electric motor so it's got a lot more both gas and electric power to work with so it does feel quite a bit quicker. The 2022 models get a refresh and actually get a bigger 17.9 kilowatt hour battery. Which bumps the EPA rating range rating up to 23 miles of electric range. So if if it behaves similarly to this one, you could conceivably get 2627 miles of electric driving out of it. You know, even you know, 23 is gonna tackle most of your daily driving, probably in electric own electric only mode. And then once the battery is depleted, you're in hybrid mode over the course of driving about 800 miles to Wisconsin and back, I averaged just about 30 miles per gallon with it. And so, you know, for something to 360 horsepower, that's it's pretty impressive. It's not not bad at all it will do zero to 60 in about five seconds. And like any most any premium German vehicle if you're doing long highway drives, I mean, you know, this thing was designed for the autobahn. It it's great you know, it's comfortable, smooth, quiet, refined. It's It was a very pleasant drive, you know, for a six hour stretch from here to Elkhart Lake, so that that part was good. The infotainment system is out is shifted a few years ago away from the central MMI controller to touchscreens. Unlike the higher end ones, they like the Q seven and a DA six and E Tron. It it doesn't have the it's only got a single screen, not the dual screen setup that the higher end, Audi's do, and it doesn't have the haptic feedback, which is fine, I can live without that. It does have support for Apple CarPlay Android Auto. And that works well even even the base system works fine. Although I've I've always been a little dubious about they include Google Earth data in the nav so you can switch between a standard map view, which is not Google Maps, or Google Earth satellite view. Which really when you're driving just you know any instrument cluster it or even in the center stack. It just looks kind of cluttered. And it's not really useful for navigation helpful. It's Nicole Wakelin 22:17 too much here's the mount not at all beside me. I don't know that I need that one. Sam Abuelsamid 22:22 It's a gimmick. Yeah, yeah. And it's like going around my neighborhood here. All you see is green because while the trees the satellite images were taken in the summertime, trees everywhere I live in driving around in a forest so you can't really tell where you are anyway. So but even that's a minor quibble. I mean, you don't you don't have to enable that. But other than that, you know, it's a that's a really nice premium plug in hybrid crossover. It's it's roomy. backseats got plenty of room. You get lots of cargo space in the back. It's Oh, and it's all wheel drive. It's quatro that's the only way it comes with that the starting price for for the 2020 twos is 54,600. The one that I drove which was still a 21 model came to a grand total of $60,740 including the $1,095 destination charge. And let's see it also had a 15 $100 navigation package. And the $950 Bang and Olufsen sound system and unlike the b&o sound systems that you get in Ford vehicles Now, those are actually not really Bang and Olufsen. Those are dnl play, which a few years back about seven or eight years ago Bang and Olufsen created the b&o play brand as a lower end and entry level brand for bank for Bang and Olufsen and then they after about three years they sold it off, they sold off the b&o play brand to Harman. So there's banging olafson which is the really premium audio. And then BNL play is owned by Harman and it's it's still decent, but it's not thing at all. Nicole Wakelin 24:14 I never had to trick the CI I knew the piano but I never knew that the background. Yeah, there you go. Roberto Baldwin 24:22 It's all you play. You're not getting the real BNF system. Yeah, you're paying for a name that someone else. Sam Abuelsamid 24:29 Pretty much yeah. So that's the Audi Q five plug in hybrid, which also with the refresh for 2022 models, is actually been renamed slightly it's now for 2022 it's the Audi Q five TFSI E. So that's so much easier. MSI TFSI is their branding. It's the equivalent of EcoBoost. So it's that's an acronym turbocharged fuel and it's actually a German acronym, but basically it's Turbocharged Direct and direct fuel injectors. It's very German Nicole Wakelin 25:08 because it's a long act Yes. German words. Now that all makes sense Sam Abuelsamid 25:12 and then of course you have to add the the E on the end because it's a plugin right? Just one more Nicole Wakelin 25:18 login again because it's all it's capitalized and then just little lowercase Yes, Sam Abuelsamid 25:21 lowercase E. Roberto Baldwin 25:23 Tt tiny. Sam Abuelsamid 25:27 Okay, so that is the garage for this week. Let's see what do we got next? Oh, Roberto. Yeah drove the BMW for Oh Roberto Baldwin 25:42 yeah, I I okay, so I expected it to be a good car. I for BMW has been doing EBS for a while It feels like there was sort of I don't know stuck for a little while you're just like well we got the i three now what and they just kept talking about this modular factory and how they were going to be able to build everything on the st you know, they have one platform to rule them all that you could put everything in here is like Okay, all right. And we just heard that for years and years and years and then the AI for the AI x come along you're like oh okay, cool. We'll drive these it'll be fine. The iPhone is outstanding. It is such a good car it's it's I was I was really impressed at how well drives I was really impressed at how well they sort of I don't know I don't know if you want to say hide the heft of a battery pack. But you know you you it is it I really really liked it that's the and I I try not to be too excited about things because you know Sam Abuelsamid 26:42 well just just tell us a little bit how'd you how'd you like the girl Roberto Baldwin 26:48 grows on you. How's that? Oh no, it gets bigger. It grows on you like a plague I didn't hate it by the end of the week. I went to Germany to drive this I drove this in the ix so I drove it around Germany I drove it on the Autobahn drove it in I don't know some mountains might have been Alps. Who knows? At some point they gave us the the eye for m 50 so it was an M vehicle so it's the very first m electric BMW and it deserves it it deserves its m badge it drives like an M It feels like an M and makes funny noises that you know aren't like your typical am but it's still you know it makes these noises and it just drove so well on the inside I like the i x for the inside feels like they took elements of the three and elements of what they've been showing off for years about like this more like labor and room type interior but they did it in a way that didn't feel too gimmicky it's nice and wooden you got crystals everywhere it feels like it feels like a shop you would find in Meridian the eye for is is you get in is like a you wouldn't get like oh it's just like getting in a four series it's it is yeah there's there's nothing really that that that that different from what you would get from the I four versus a four series and I prefer this over the four series The three and a four series they sell a ton of these things like number one or number three selling BMW in the world some top five or something so they sell a ton of these sedans so it makes sense for it to be the the first like proper BMW sedan that's an that's an Eevee but it also felt like the four series is kind of basic it's kind of the you know I got the bait you know I can't I want I'm a little bit too old for a three series but I can't quite afford the five so you just kind of get the four the four is just like good enough it's the it's the Goldilocks of BMWs fine right temperature it's the just right most people it's but it's also but when you end up being the jester I you also end up being sort of the basic version of BMW the iPhone I think as a as an Eevee it's just much better than the four series just it's just funner the drive you get that Evie torque it's quiet like the i x like you're on the Autobahn you're going super fast you don't realize it so when you get it here in the United States Be very careful that you don't speed I think a lot of TVs have that problem where you don't you're just like kind of like cruising along you look down you're doing like 20 miles over the speed lane you're like oh dear let me slow down you know you can do that with the I four but in Germany it's fine as long as you there's still speed limits on the Autobahn I think people think it's just nonstop unlimited just do what you want but those areas Nicole Wakelin 29:33 is non stop and limit Yeah, there Roberto Baldwin 29:35 are spots but you but you got and then all sudden you like whoa, who comes in here change they have to slow down. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's pretty great. But it's also the first time you do it. If you traveled to Germany The first time you do it. It's very difficult not to be paranoid that you're going about the police. You're like this is wrong. This is wrong because everything in your being as an American driver has been if you speak You're gonna get pulled over where with the Sam Abuelsamid 30:02 120 miles an hour somebody's gonna throw you in jail Roberto Baldwin 30:06 yeah you're going to jail whereas in Germany someone's pulling out of your way or you're pulling out of someone else's way because they're driving in Nicole Wakelin 30:11 Germany I had like two seconds of like wait I'm gonna go to jail Wait No I am not Sam Abuelsamid 30:19 so did you get to drive the non m version of the iPhone oh Roberto Baldwin 30:23 we only drove the M 50 okay so yeah so we didn't Yeah, but it you know as peak horsepower 536 horsepower phone for an 86 pound feet of torque which is the range I'm sorry I don't have my article up because this happened so long ago. Over 200 Yeah, it was a long time ago. I have a lot of things that I've been doing recently where the embargo time is like a month a month and a half and you're just like and then it goes live you're like well what is this I do this when did this happen? Oh man I meant to look it up I really Sam Abuelsamid 31:03 liked it I couldn't even find anything on in gadget I just I found the video on YouTube. Roberto Baldwin 31:08 That's a whole other issue with their their their slack. There's Apple events. That's what's had been held in gadget for I guess it's about 300 miles or so. Sam Abuelsamid 31:22 Yeah, yeah, I think that's what they were sayings is around 300 miles. Roberto Baldwin 31:26 Trying to do my script. I'm like, Where's my script on is Sam Abuelsamid 31:31 one of the one of the complaints about BMW over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years is, you know, BMW is especially the three series used to be renowned for their fantastic steering feel. And over the last couple of generations, that's kind of gotten progressively worse. How did the steering feel on this one? Roberto Baldwin 31:49 You still get this I mean, that the I ate the stereo felt like you're just playing a video game. I mean, I like the IAA just because it's just wacky I like the I eight and the i three because someone said hey, let's just make a let's make a show car and then put it in production. I like that. That's sort of just the outrageousness of both of those vehicles because of that the eye for the steering does feel a little video gaming it does feel a little detached still drive by wire you know I got the same feeling from the E Tron g the the Tron gt where you it's not quite there it's not you know you don't quite get the feedback that you really want as someone who's who's who's doing some dynamic driving but it's it's an it's definitely not a deal breaker it's definitely not like super detached like the I felt and so it's it's there but it's not as i mean it's it's not the two series a two series if you're the insane BMW enthusiast who still wants the ultimate driving machine well you can't get the current generation but you can get the previous generations with the manual transmission that's that's what you go for that's the you know, if you're that person, there's a car for you if you don't buy the new one. Sam Abuelsamid 33:07 So you're a musician. What's your verdict on the Hans Zimmer soundtrack Roberto Baldwin 33:14 you know, I like the idea of this additional sound because driving has always been this multi sensory experience it's always the feel you know the feeling of of steering and the the throttle mapping and if you have a clutch of the clutch and then shifting gears or you know the the G forces and how you move and everything and sound has always been a bit it's been part of that, you know, depends on and doesn't matter if you're driving like a big, floaty, you know, like, VA or if you're driving a little you know, four cylinder you still hear something, you still have something that sort of attaches your your ears to everything else that's going on. And the soundtrack is it's fine. I kind of like it. It's it's, you know, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I think, people at some point, there's got to be just this sort of division of people who like and people who don't, you can turn it off. If you don't like it, it's fine. I kind of like it. You know, it's like these kind of almost, we, so you can't just say we every time because your throat gets sore. So you need something that happens whenever you stop on the accelerator. So yeah, you got Hans Zimmer, which is like, you know, it's always it's Hans Zimmer, what do you mean, if anyone's going to get Hans Zimmer is going to be a BMW. To be honest, I like it. I can totally see how people wouldn't like it. I think people get very sort of stuck on the idea that it's fake. BMW has been sort of feeding fake sounds into their vehicles for a while now, let's say so I wouldn't. Sam Abuelsamid 34:50 I think I would say it's probably less of a problem with something like this where it's authentically fake, as opposed to like sort of the previous m five where They were simulating actual engine noise and feeding that in you know where's this? It's clearly not emulating anything natural yeah spaceship fake Unknown Speaker 35:11 yeah Nicole Wakelin 35:14 the bridge of the enterprise Roberto Baldwin 35:17 yeah that's it you know and again it's it's very much you know individual fee I talked to some people who like to talk to some people who don't I'm sure there's going to at some point automakers are going to start selling sound packs for their vehicles that you can get over the air and there's going to be one where you can put in you know a big throw deviate and beam no from the outside Nicole Wakelin 35:43 I want mine to make a George Jetsons car noise this little like Roberto Baldwin 35:48 yeah, they'll get you know we'll get Sam Abuelsamid 35:49 some isn't Porsche already offering some sound packs for the takane Roberto Baldwin 35:56 get one in a few weeks I'll see if I can turn that on because I will turn on all the sounds I don't Nicole Wakelin 36:02 you reviews just gonna be like okay these 52 sounds here go over here Roberto Baldwin 36:06 the 52 sound that's just one video just me Alright, next sound Here we go. Sam Abuelsamid 36:14 Okay, anything else on the floor? Roberto Baldwin 36:19 Nope, I think that's it I liked it. If you're looking for an Eevee looking for a sedan if you're thinking oh I should get a Tesla Model S you should definitely try out the I four if you're looking at icons Tesla's each bronze yeah give the I four if you're looking for something a little bit less outrageous. I think the I four fits right there. Did Sam Abuelsamid 36:39 you say what the price is gonna be? Roberto Baldwin 36:41 A lot no Hold on. Did they give us a price again? This was like a month in something ago so I am let's see tu tu tu tu oh it's 60 about 67,000 starting price the M 50 for the M 50 which is wow that's pretty good. Good job BMW nicely that's that that's really comes down to it Good job BMW i always whenever someone whenever I write an article and the people say oh thank you so much. That article might Don't make me think the engineers I didn't do anything but write about the thing they did. Sam Abuelsamid 37:16 All right. Well, as I mentioned, I went to Wisconsin last week to the Midwest automotive media Association rally which is usually a spring event at Road America in Elkhart Lake, and they gather dozens and dozens of vehicles from a whole bunch of automakers and we get to spend a day and a half driving them on the track and on the street and doing some off road for some of them and sometimes some auto cross for other ones. And so I got a chance to sample a whole bunch of different vehicles that I haven't had an opportunity to get into yet. And I also drove a BMW i drove the M for competition coupe on the track and that was really nice. I liked that a lot. I particularly like the color which color it was it was a bright green and I'll include a picture of that in the in the show notes. I forget the official name of the color but it's a really awesome color. But the one of the things that intrigued me the most was I got to drive the new Mercedes s class they had an S 580 there and one of the it had it has all the usual features you expect on a high end Mercedes Benz you know, lots of big screens and massaging seats and you know the seats were the front seat the driver's seat, the side bolsters move in and out as your cornering Nicole Wakelin 38:47 was always freaked me out I'm like, stop hugging me chair Stop it. Sam Abuelsamid 38:51 I remember the first time I drove an S Class an AMG s class with that about 14 years ago and it definitely was a little weird but one of the the new features on this new S Class is the augmented reality heads up display. This is one of the first production applications of this there's actually going to be a whole bunch of vehicles with this kind of system on there coming out over the next year so the Cadillac lyrics gonna have it I think try remember I think the key Evie six might also have it. There's several other vehicles but the the Mercedes is the first. And so the way This differs from most heads up displays until now is when you when you use a HUD it's projecting the the in some of the instrumentation and other stuff, you know things like your navigation prompts on the windshield, but it looks like it's floating out over the hood of the car, usually somewhere on the middle to the front edge of the hood. So when you're looking down the road, it's it's out there so you're not alone. looking away from the road to see this information, but when you're using that, if you're using navigation, you know, it'll usually tell you, you know, wonders, a turn coming up. But you know, sometimes, you know, you still, you're trying to figure out, okay, where exactly am I supposed to turn where's the street. And with these new HUD systems, they're actually able to project information that to your eyes appears to be in multiple different planes. So it looks, you can have, like, your speedometer and your blind spot monitor and turn signals and stuff show up, you know, floating over the middle of the hood. And then for your navigation, it actually shows up way down the road. So it'll show up floating over the road that you're actually supposed to turn on. So as you're Nicole Wakelin 40:52 so is actually going to, you're not going to figure it out, you're just gonna get as you get closer, Sam Abuelsamid 40:56 as you get closer, the arrows get bigger and bigger. Yeah, so as you as you start as you as you approach it, you know, you have an arrow that's pointing down the road you're on, and then it'll come up and rotate, you know, but 90 degrees in whichever direction you're supposed to turn, and then it expands into a role like four arrows, and it gets progressively larger as you approach it. And that the Cadillac, Escalades has this in the in the instrument cluster, they've got this AR display, and it does the same kind of thing. But it's not really as useful down in the cluster display where you got to look down from the road. Here, it actually appears to be floating over the road, you know, at the point where, where you're supposed to turn. So it's actually really useful. And this is just one of the first applications of it. I think one of the other things we're going to start to see in some of these vehicles is using the like for the pedestrian detection systems, it will highlight when, when the camera when the forward facing camera, sees a pedestrian text, a pedestrian will draw a box around the pedestrians that Hey, watch out for this person stepping out into the road. So it's actually really cool. I really liked the idea of this. And at least on this Mercedes, it seemed to work really well. So Nicole Wakelin 42:13 you actually tried the navigation thing. And you felt like the arrow was like, yeah, the street is there. And as you got closer, it was show, so it really worked. Sam Abuelsamid 42:21 Yeah. Did you know of course area? Yeah. Getting getting the heads up display to turn on was another story entirely. I spent several minutes looking around trying to figure out because usually there's a button on the dashboard, you know, it's labeled HUD or something like that. And you press the button and it turns on the HUD. Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't want to use it, you can turn it off. And I never did find a button to turn it on. And I looked in the menus in the screens. And then I said, well, let's try mbu x and I said hey Mercedes, turn on the HUD Oh, there it was. It's actually voice recognition and the voice Nicole Wakelin 43:01 recognition actually solves a problem instead Roberto Baldwin 43:04 of promise of bogus voice recognition has been filled Sam Abuelsamid 43:09 realize Did you did you get to try the AR HUD when you drove the S Class and the the Roberto Baldwin 43:15 yeah so when I drove the the S Class I think these are slightly pre production or the production models so the HUD had a little bit of a stuttering that the the arrows and I and I went in my video I said I'm like I think this this this is probably an issue with these are very new vehicles it's probably there's probably going to be an update you know, whenever you do these, these first drives for these vehicles, especially early first drives, there's always something weird, there's always something weird new sort of like you got to kind of take the temperature of the automaker you're dealing with and see whether or not this is something that's going to make it to full production or something that is just sort of some weirdness and so when I drove the EQ s A few months later, that was gone any sort of like little stuttering anything like that was gone. And it is it's great it's really great when you're in Europe and you have to use roundabouts because I've learned on my last trip that roundabouts with voice like when someone's telling you are just horrible I had to turn off the lights because I always took the wrong round exit on the roundabout if I was using voice and I looked at the map I was fine but like it's always a little late or whatever but when you have the arrows the arrows because it's right there it's in your your line of sight you can see it it tells you where to go You don't have to look down you're not looking over to the side it's great i really I really think it's it's it's it's outstanding I think it's you know more cars gonna have this as you know, obviously Mercedes is gonna start pushing this down the into the rest of the lineup, but other automakers are gonna start doing this and you know, it was cool when they had it in the in the, in the infotainment screen where it sort of like showed up and it helps you but it's I don't know, I think I feel like it's 100 times better now that it's in the heads up display and it's you know, you have to have Essentially like I think you have to have stereoscopic I know you have to have all the sensors working together in order for this system to work correctly because if one of them's off or whatever it's it doesn't take into the into account like depth perception and figuring out like you know, it essentially has the place you know in in real time the system has to find a point and which where those arrows need to be an anchor those anchor those arrows to that and then do the whole animation and then sort of go left go right go wherever. Sam Abuelsamid 45:31 Yeah, and Mercedes uses a stereo camera system on the front. So they can do some of that depth perception with with the two cameras that are the two forward facing cameras. Yeah, so yeah, no, it was it was a good system I was I was really impressed with it. There were no roundabouts in Wisconsin where I was driving so I didn't get a chance to try that out. But, but uh, I was impressed I'm looking forward to using it on more vehicles in the coming years there are Nicole Wakelin 45:57 two roundabouts within walking distance of my house in New Hampshire so if I ever get that I will have to give them a try. Roberto Baldwin 46:03 Bam See? Sam Abuelsamid 46:05 Well, there's lots of roundabouts here in Ann Arbor area so if I can ever get into a Mercedes around here again, then I'll definitely try it here. All right, let's see Oh, another thing that I drove when I was in Wisconsin was the the maverick I get to actually drive the maverick and the Santa Cruz back to back it's interesting you know, the the Santa Cruz when you look at it, it it looks a lot more premium. Yeah, it looks more upscale. Of course, you know, when you get into it, and you you actually start touching the surfaces. It's it's the same interior that's in the Tucson. So it looks nice. But it has a lot of hard plastics. And yeah, so it doesn't doesn't feel quite as nice as it looks. And you know, where's the the maverick here? It's all hard plastics, too. But it's I mean, it's basic, it looks basic, but it's solid. You know, it feels utilitarian. And yeah, I mean for something that starts at 20 grand it's perfectly acceptable. And I like driving both but i think you know, I would probably depending on what people were looking for, you know, I would probably recommend the maverick you know, because it does have some of those neat features inside like the the cutouts for the big water bottles and the doors and the you know the the notches in the bed you know to do your DIY bike racks and things like that. Nicole Wakelin 47:37 Just the Santa Cruz have some bed fanciness too Why Sam Abuelsamid 47:42 don't they do what you have to buy accessories Nicole Wakelin 47:46 oh where you can like just throw to buy foreign create? Yeah, no piece of plywood and you've done it in the maverick if you don't want to buy stuff Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 47:53 yeah. And you know the the other thing of course, is that $20,000 starting price in the maverick you get a 40 mile per gallon hybrid. Whereas you know, the best you're going to do in Santa Cruz even with the base engine i think is like 26 or 27 Yeah, that's so it's it's a lot more fuel efficient. So you know, the the Santa Cruz is more stylish. The Maverick looks more basic. They both drive pretty well. Yeah, no, no, no real complaints there. And, and the the one real the the one complaint that I think is unconscionable unfortunate part with the maverick is why the $20,000 one does not have does not have cruise control. Nicole Wakelin 48:34 Oh, it doesn't have cruise. I did not Sam Abuelsamid 48:36 you have you have to step up to the XSLT to get cruise. Nicole Wakelin 48:39 How much more do you have? What's the difference between pricing? Sam Abuelsamid 48:43 Start about 23 and a half I think for an Excel 20 Nicole Wakelin 48:45 big jump if you're really looking at that price point. Yeah, $1,000 is a big difference. Sam Abuelsamid 48:52 Right and and the thing is, the only thing they have to add for cruise control is the button on the steering wheel. Because modern cruise monitor vehicles all have throttle by wire systems. You know, so there's not any hardware that's added except for that button on the steering wheel is Roberto Baldwin 49:12 automatic automatic emergency stopping. So it has sensors in front. Sam Abuelsamid 49:16 Yeah, it's got all that but it doesn't it's not it's not it doesn't have radar. So it's not. It's not adaptive cruise control. It's just standard. But you don't even get standard basic cruise control for that. $20,000 Yeah, yeah. With sell. I mean really, they're clearly the quarterly thinking okay, people are gonna look at this. Oh, I have to get an XL t Okay, fine. I'll spend the extra three or $4,000 and get the XL t spend Nicole Wakelin 49:41 $3,000 $4,000 for cruise control. What else do you have any other nifty goodies? Yeah, there are seats on the XL T. Sam Abuelsamid 49:48 There are some other features. I don't remember them all. But you do get some other stuff for that money for that extra. Nicole Wakelin 49:57 That's a lot. That's a lot of money to spend. To get that feature Sam Abuelsamid 50:01 yeah it is so I think Ford should have should have included cruise control on the base model and the Excel but other than that it's good I like it a lot so all right next up there was a study that triple A did the auto club of South Cal Southern California which seems like an odd place to be doing this particular kind of study but but they did it they did a test of a das systems Driver Assist systems like automatic emergency braking and Lane Keeping Assist and so on in bad weather so they simulated rain and other stuff at their their test facility. Yeah, exactly it does it doesn't rain in California so they had to simulate all the Roberto Baldwin 50:51 rain yesterday guys come on, rain drop fall out of the sky and scared one dropped and we got super excited. It was like oh my gosh, there is like yeah, it's gone. Sam Abuelsamid 51:04 So you know, they they did a test where they use one of these inflatable cars that they make, you know, for testing purposes. For testing things like automatic emergency braking, and Forward Collision Alert. They did test at 25 and 35 miles an hour. And they found that with with rain, it about 1/3 of the time at 35 miles an hour, the test vehicles actually collided with the stopped vehicle they ran into the back but they did not stop in time. And for the Lane Keeping Assist, it departed the lane about 69% of the time going around cool curves. Yeah. Because the the cameras get obscured that you you can't get Nicole Wakelin 51:50 rain Is that bad? Can you just imagine what snow would do to those numbers? Sam Abuelsamid 51:54 Yeah, it would be 100% and you know, I know this having not having actually run into anybody with these systems. But you know what, what typically happens with with snow in particular snow and slush is when the systems will just simply deactivate you'll get an alert saying Hey, you got to clean the sensors you know adaptive cruise control is not going to work or the collision alert and collision warnings not going to work not gonna work because I can't see Nicole Wakelin 52:26 I had a vehicle during the winter when you get that very and if you live somewhere where it snows you know this. There's certain snow that just snows and it's whatever and there's other snow your you drive for five minutes and it creates this, like just packed snow and ice that stuck under the front of your car. Roberto Baldwin 52:42 Oh yeah, really wet snow. Nicole Wakelin 52:43 It takes like two minutes for the splashback from like the highway and everything to do that. And I was driving an SUV, perfectly fine SUV within truly five minutes that happened. And when I got where it was going I took a picture of the front of it because you could see where some of the sensors and things that all you can see is this nasty, slushy mess. And I put up this is why many of these cars really aren't ready for primetime because this technology can't. It can't overcome that it just can't. The poor OEM apparently got somebody saw it higher up in the ranks is like she's mad at our car. I'm like, I didn't even name your car. I'm like, Yeah, but you could see the logo and the kind of sort of on the side. And if the car isn't working, right, I mean, it was not that your car wasn't working right? It's that no car works right? When that happens. They all do that. It doesn't matter whether you're a cheap car or an expensive car. None of them work right when you get snow. I spend the entire winter months constantly like taking my thumb to clean off sensors and stuff on the front of the car. Sam Abuelsamid 53:41 Yeah, same same here. A few years ago, I was driving a Hyundai Sonata that had adaptive cruise control. It was using that it was the morning after its node so it wasn't snowing at that point but there was slosh on the road that was getting thrown up and after about 10 minutes you know enough slush had built up on the radar sensors normally you know radar unlike cameras radar can see through rain and fog and stuff but if you get enough sloshing ice building up on the sensor then it it does get obscured and you know got an alert said hey you systems disengaging you've got to clean off the sensor. And I've had this happen with camera systems. One time I was sitting in a parking lot waiting to pick up my kid after work and it was snowing. And I was just sitting there I was the vehicle was not moving. But the snow was coming down hard enough that it was constantly triggering the sonar sensors, the ultrasonic sensors for the parking assist. Sensors the beep is you getting too close to something just sitting there the snow was triggering the ultrasonic sensors. And so I had to find find find the park assist button and turn that off because it was driving me crazy. So you know and this is you know, this is also a problem with automated vehicles, autonomous vehicles. You've got to have If you're going to have a system that is going to drive the car without a human that can take over when these sensors get obscured you got to be able to keep the sensors clean which is why no Tesla built to date will ever be level five capable because it can't drive autonomously in the snow because it can't keep the cameras clean. Yeah there's nothing Nicole Wakelin 55:19 unless you try unless you live someplace like if you live in California someplace where you don't really get that kind of weather you think oh, well I'm sure it happens No, it's literally the winter months those systems have a conniption fit constantly you're constantly getting warnings that things aren't working and like you said, if you're driving an autonomous car then you're you're done like your cars can speak I'm sorry, I'm pulling over there's a snowflake like this. You can't have that kind of driving if for how frequently it happens is not rare. It's all the time. Sam Abuelsamid 55:46 Right? And even in a place like California or other places, you know, in the summertime, when you get insects you get clouds of insects and you're driving along you know and your windshield is splattered with dead bugs. You know, those dead bugs are also in front of the cameras which is why you know, these companies other companies developing autom automated driving are incorporating sensor cleaning systems is why waymo a few years ago they put out a little video I don't know if you saw it they washer washer light system. So for the dome on the roof for the rooftop LIDAR, they have couple of wipers that come up at the washers spread the wipers sweep around a couple of times around the dome to clean it off and then they retract back into the Nicole Wakelin 56:35 seat need to have wipers that can just like come out about like you have wipers on headlights and stuff and like pop out of all the areas where the sensors and the radar and the characters clear everything off and then pop back away Roberto Baldwin 56:46 yeah the eye X has that the eye X has a sensor camera cleaners on the front and the back so you get the front and the rear camera you push a little button in a sprite Sam Abuelsamid 56:57 it's also got heating elements in front of the sensor the cameras behind the windshield to keep ice from building up on there because that's that's the other thing i mean you know Nicole living in New Hampshire you know in the wintertime you know even you know your wipers are working you know and clearing off snow at the at the ends of the wiper blades you know that's that's where you have the least pressure on the blade and so there's always a bit of snow and ice there so a lot of times you know it'll be sweeping the wipers will be sweeping in front of the cameras but they can't get the snow off of their ice Nicole Wakelin 57:32 when you do and you get that buildup of ice on the blade very very quickly and it's it's it's a large visit like it's one of those things you get out and you have to like snap the windshield wipers against the windshield together to just knock off and to get it all out yeah it's the second that happens you're obscuring anything that that wiper is going in front of and it makes a mess yeah Sam Abuelsamid 57:50 yeah. So you know if you're driving in bad weather conditions or you know winter weather or whatever you know make sure you check your wipers from time to time clean your wipers clean off your sensors you know so that all this stuff can continue working Roberto Baldwin 58:04 it's it's it's it's up there with the I mean the Mercedes level three system it's a highway system that they're launching in Germany then eventually the United States. It doesn't work in the rain, if it rains or like nope, it doesn't work. They're just very upfront about it like we were not going to we're not going to because they say that they say that the vehicles are responsible. Something happens and so they're like nope, if it rains Nope. Which is funny because it rains a lot in German. Yeah. Nicole Wakelin 58:30 This works two days a year. Have a nice day. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 58:37 Okay, let's get into a few listener questions. Dan Basma asked on Twitter. Big multi day trip across the country in no rush free choice of any car currently for sale in the US. What keys are you picking up something comfortable something fast something electric Nicole Wakelin 58:58 oh wait I'm driving across the whole country did he say cross Roberto Baldwin 59:02 cross country well I we delayed in New York about that Nicole Wakelin 59:06 Stelvio and I gotta say it was not half bad but let me think gosh Roberto Baldwin 59:13 oh I think I know what are what would you pick? Oh, hold on, hold on. Hold on. Give me Give me a second. Nicole Wakelin 59:19 I don't know what about you Sam, what would you pick? Do you know? Sam Abuelsamid 59:22 Oh, I think for for a cross country trip I would definitely lean towards comfortable I don't know if I would at this point yet necessarily go for electric maybe in a few years I think but. So something like you know an you know an Audi A six or a seven. I think would be really nice. Something big and comfy. But you know, very stable, you know, high speed stability. You know, or, you know, maybe a BMW five series something like that I think would also be a good cruiser I think it depends on the route to I mean if you're if you're taking the interstates you know then I think something like a big German cruiser would be a good choice if I was sticking to back roads you know and taking multiple weeks to make the trip I think I might choose something like a Miata or C or maybe maybe a BRC or a gr 86 Nicole Wakelin 1:00:36 riders that I feel like I'd be the small crossover person I'm trying to decide which one just because I know I would never stick to the highway the whole time and I want to be able to turn down that random dirt road that there's some thing at the end of that I want to go see randomly like I'm the person like like hey, there's a farm stand that has whatever I'm like I have to go see this now and I will drive down the road so I think a crossover there's just enough that I can handle getting down some dirt roads and stuff and by the weird random tchotchke that I'm gonna find at the end of that dirt road at that farm stand or whatever. But I don't know which one I feel like a monster would be a good choice. Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:15 A 630 Nicole Wakelin 1:01:16 Yeah, I'm thinking maybe that might work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:21 Except there's no touchscreen Nicole Wakelin 1:01:23 monster oh you set me up I forgot to dm you Sam no right off the list. I need something like that. But with a touchscreen what would Roberto Baldwin 1:01:34 you what you need is a GLA the AMG GLA Oh that sounds good. I drove one of those to LA and back and it went through a lot of gas but it was it was it made me not hate it was I don't I'm not a fan of SUVs as personally I understand why people like them I understand why people buy them. It was very standard and ggl is Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:55 low enough that it's yeah Nicole Wakelin 1:01:57 it's a it's like a hot hatch but not so hot hatch that you feel like you're driving across the entire country. You need a little bit of company has to be fun, but has to become Roberto Baldwin 1:02:07 a Mercedes and Mercedes is all about like we're gonna give you both Yes. See, that's that's fair deal. Nicole Wakelin 1:02:12 So maybe Mercedes? Yeah, I feel like what would you What would you say Robbie, Roberto Baldwin 1:02:16 the Porsche 718. Boxster GTS for Wow. Because I drove that. I love that car. I drove it. Last year. It was just so nice. And I really here's a weird thing. I fit in the sports like sports seats are the most comfortable seats for me. Like most of the time, when I get into an SUV and it has like all these seats are supposed to be comfortable. I'm always like, I can never, I never feel comfortable. But you put me in a sport seat. I'm always like it just see I'm very happy. It's a convertible. It's quick. It's I drove it from Palm Springs to LA so on the freeway, it's it wasn't you know, it didn't Rattle my teeth out. But when I wanted to go fast, when I did find a side road, I did want to do fun things I could, and driving cross country in a convertible just sounds outstanding. I've never cross country a couple of times. And I'm a big fan of long road trips. And I like the idea of just I think it's the best. It's the next best thing to write in a motorcycle cost. Nicole Wakelin 1:03:13 Like I want the crossover because I'm thinking about what I would do. But if I'm just like literally thinking about the drive. I still I love the Giulia I love driving that car, I could say There you go. I could drive that forever and ever and ever. So if I'm like that's a nice sporty but as long as you don't go quadrifoglio because they didn't have the seats that you like Robbie, they're a little bit too stiff and Huggy. I don't like them quite that Huggy like. But if I could drive the Giulia, from New York to LA no problem. That would be fun. I couldn't find a dirt road anywhere. But it would be really fun. I'd love to go back to the back to the Stelvio to the car I did it in is we're fine. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin 1:03:54 Well, I like the Stelvio. Then we go through 12 other cars and is returned to the Stelvio. Sam Abuelsamid 1:04:01 All right, next question comes from Adam Jacqueline Co. And this is the one I was mentioning earlier when I think Robbie was talking. Why? Why don't automakers have a more organized system to obtain feedback from their customers. I'd love it if they dedicate some resources to a community forum for verified customers to provide feedback and enhancement requests. Instead, it seems like owners are left to figure out on their own what the best method is to give feedback. And even if they have no way of knowing if anyone at the company ever sees it. Example, I love my Mustang Maki, which has a powered trunk, but no physical button anywhere in the cabin to open or close it. There's only a software button buried three levels deep in the infotainment. I love it if there was a forum on Ford's site where I could suggest they make it easier to access in a future otaa update or at least consider a physical button for next year's model. The other fellow owners could upvote or downvote it but in reality if I actually wanted to suggest this to forward I have no idea what the best method it is seems like less than ideal just to tweet at Jim Farley and hope he actually you might be surprised Roberto Baldwin 1:05:09 you might be surprised actually share Nicole Wakelin 1:05:10 stuff that the automakers See I mean they're paying attention to like Twitter feeds it's not might not be Jim that's looking at it but like somebody's looking at that Twitter and they take a surprising amount of the information when customers email or you know tweet or whatever and they are like everybody hates this we did this wrong like they do actually notice that so even though they might not be saying to you Hey thanks for the feedback we noticed that if you make complaints to them or suggestions they do see that stuff and it does impact what happens in future products because every now and then you will be sitting you guys can vouch for this you're blue sitting at something and they'll say hey, we change this because customers said they hated this thing. or customer said they found this fiddly so we changed it this way so they do listen to what you say it's and if enough people say the same thing they go okay this is this is the thing we have to address. Sam Abuelsamid 1:06:03 Yeah, and you know at Ford, Mike Levine who's the Director of North American product communications, I know he spends a lot of time on Twitter and Instagram and he often responds to customer stuff they you know, they have dedicated social media teams that all these companies do they have social media teams that monitor for things like that. And yeah, how well at any given company how well some of that actually gets back to engineering and product planning versus to the marketing folks is questionable. But there are people that are looking and listening for this stuff and I think if you if you target the right people you can sometimes get a response like Mike or Jim Farley or Emma Berg you know if you're if you're tweeting about the the Maki but there are you know there are others as well that are watching this stuff but I think I think your your overall question is right though or your request that it would be nice if automakers had some sort of dedicated place that was just for owners for you know for registered owners you know so you don't you're not gonna have hopefully not have trolls in there it'll be a place for people that have actually bought the vehicle you can sign in and then you've probably got a Ford pass account or Ford you know Ford owner account already anyway for your Ford pass. You log in with that, you know that authenticates you with your vehicle VIN number things like that and to have have a place like that where you can ask questions you know make like comments make suggestions I think would probably be a good thing Nicole Wakelin 1:07:49 Yeah, I agree it would be nice to have that I wonder how how hard it would be for them to moderate I suppose less hard if it's if they verify that you're an owner somehow Yeah, they have just because then you'll have a trolls like oh Ford sucks it's like okay, that's not helpful you know? Roberto Baldwin 1:08:05 model y let someone bottom Maki just to say that they're like wow, that's that's dedication that's going Nicole Wakelin 1:08:15 Okay, thanks for your money Roberto Baldwin 1:08:18 i know that i mean they do talk to owners and they always say well based on owner feedback blah blah but that's such a small lane and they find some people via survey and ask him some questions they call them on the phone or whatever I don't think it's and I think sometimes like sometimes they're like oh well owners in like this you know like really? What about this other three these other three things that like we all pointed to me when you're last generation and this with this refresh you could have gotten rid of the Nicole Wakelin 1:08:41 thing when you have like and I think about that when you have it feels like everybody will complain about a thing like say the trunk release being buried in all those venues and like every owner will suddenly come clean about it and every journalist is like this is the worst thing ever and they refresh it to like oh no, we left that there you're like come on that Roberto Baldwin 1:09:00 but the 100 customers we talked to and also like a place where you learn how to do things we had a CRV for a little while and before we sold it to before we sold it we didn't know that there was a there was a button like hidden that you could open the trunk with inside the car we'd always had like we'd always get out open the trunk like manually and on the day we're like cleaning it out the salad I found the button on that day and I had looked for it before and if I had had a if there was like a nice forum instead of just randomly searching online like a dedicated forum then it would have been great because sometimes sometimes you find a YouTube video and it takes 10 minutes to get to the thing that said the video the YouTube video will say it does they were like hey we have this Hey, if you want to if you'd like more of these likened something like oh my god, just get to the point for the love of God. Sam Abuelsamid 1:09:49 Yeah, for the things that all the things I've complained about with Tesla and Elon Musk, you know, that is one thing that they have done really, really well is they're you know Or at least Ilan has you know in terms of he you know he will respond to people on Twitter you know, so if you've if you've got a complaint You know, he will respond and oftentimes things will get changed in an upcoming otaa update and now that you know other manufacturers are doing otaa updates something like this is something that could change and actually on the Maki gt I don't know if they how much they talked about it when you were there Robbie but you know that they talked about the new otaa update for the sink for system in there where they've they've made some revisions to the graphics you know, and increase the size of some of the touch targets and move some things around to make based on feedback that we're getting you know about how to use it so you may well see that you know, the trunk release you know move up to a higher level in the sink interface in a coming update could Roberto Baldwin 1:11:01 who knows Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:03 it's it's one it's one of those little annoyances it's gonna drive you insane for the entire time you own the car? Yeah, Roberto Baldwin 1:11:09 every time someone's like, I can't open the trunk from the inside I gotta go into blah blah blah blah. Sorry. And everyone gets in the car like ready What do you this is one thing like I have but it's someone said I was nitpicky for review. I did. And I'm like, that's my job to be nitpicky. Because the thing that I find like a little bit annoying, that's going to be someone for five years with that car. Nicole Wakelin 1:11:31 key thing that like if it's enough to bother us in a week long loan, or like a six hour first drive, if it's enough to really make us think like, like not having cruise control, like not having cruise control, you know that that's going like if you live with that, if it could bother us in that short amount of time. Pretty good chance it's gonna bother other people. Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:49 Yeah. Alright, last question from Brent Baron Hausen. Will it be possible to return the wrenching beer on mechanic car culture with the transition to IE V's will right to repair influence how he V's are developed? What about Eevee kits for converting old or classic cars? Roberto Baldwin 1:12:11 You know, I think there was I mean, I remember in the 90s when computers it like started into, you know, 80s but I remember in the 90s, like, like, all the people who are my parents age or you can't work on modern cars, because they're all computerized and you'd open the car and I'm like, What are you talking about? There's everything that's in your car except now I don't have to fight with a carburetor. I think it's a bit I think with with ease is become very, very, you know, it's they're very closed systems, I think what's going to happen is you're going to end up with this sort of, like tuner world where people are you remember, when people are shipping cars, I mean, you can still ship cars, but I think you're going to get people once a car's been paid for, once it's out of warranty, they're going to start shipping these TVs, they're going to start doing these very weird things to them, using, you know, their computers, which people have been doing since the 90s. Really, especially in the import tuner scene, you know, people will remember it was an article where people were, it was more interesting to watch that than to watch like pony cars race, because they'd be sitting there and tweaking and tweaking it, and then they'd like fire two cylinders at once. And then I loved that was the end of that, you know, it's just really weird things. Because, you know, it was like all this fine tuning in addition to all the mechanical stuff. So I think it's going to be more, you know, nerd or nerdery, when it comes to it, but you know, especially with the AV kits that are available, now you can buy an AV kit now from EV West, you got to see a lot of like, really weird, and a lot of really fascinating and a lot of fun, like conversions come in, and then, you know, probably about 510 years once these cars start falling out of warranty and stuff. And you know that the parents are getting them to their kids. And their kids are like, Oh, yeah, I got the iPhone with the new, you know, there's an app I can download, and I can interface with the car. And now I'm going to blow up the motor. Nicole Wakelin 1:13:55 I think that Yeah, I just think the wrenching is just not necessarily going to involve a wrench at some point. It's going to involve, you know, keyboard and code, and you're going to eat chips, and you're going to do it that way. But it's just, they'll still be a way for people to, like you said to play around and accidentally break their cars and have all sorts of fun doing it, you know? Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:11 Yeah, you know, and it doesn't matter if your propulsion is coming from a battery pack or a gas tank. You know, your car still has systems like brakes, you've got suspension. You know, you've got you know, a lot of other bits and pieces that you can customize and modify. You know, so you can change the handling characteristics. And then of course, there's also the software stuff, you can give it a new soundtrack, you can create your own soundtrack. Yeah, get it get a GarageBand and, you know, create your own soundtrack for your car. Roberto Baldwin 1:14:43 remap the throttle. Yeah, oh, man, there's gonna be not Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:48 only interesting things, and then, you know, for the like you said, you know, companies like Evie last, you know, for the really hardcore, you know, taking vintage cars, you know, the next generation of resto mods, you know, is Instead of putting modern engines into the 1950s and 60s cars, now we're going to be putting electric power trains into those cars in our cars of the 80s and 90s. and modifying those. And there's already some some interesting ones. A lot of interesting ones being done. I mean, a lot of people there have been a lot of conversions of old Porsche nine elevens to EBS, those are very well suited to Evie conversions you know, old Beatles and there's going to be conversion kits for all kinds of different cars. And you know, somewhere down the road if you know when it becomes more difficult to get find liquid fuel. Yeah, you may want to consider getting an old car and doing an Eevee conversion on it. So there's there's still going to be opportunities to play around with this stuff. People Nicole Wakelin 1:15:47 still find a plate way to play around with it no matter what. No matter how the tech changes, it'll just change how they play, but they'll still play. Roberto Baldwin 1:15:54 Yeah, yeah, if you want to see some really cool especially Volkswagen and Porsche based resto mods, look up z electric motors, they're based out of San Diego, they've been doing this for a long, long time, end up meeting one of the co founders once at Pebble Beach and they have just they're very expensive, but they have these really great like, rest, you know, restoration, restore, rescue rated, refrigerated storage, you know, beetles and buses and Porsches. And they're all powered with electricity and they look great. And if you've ever owned a beetle or a bug or whatever you want to call it a super Beagle super bug. You know that if you own that car, you that's a car you know how to work on because you don't have a choice. The idea of having a great classic car that you don't have to wrench every three days is very appealing to me. To be honest, I've had an old car and I've had an old car that's broken down on me and a lot of places and a lot of bad and that car if I can ever get it back from the person who owns it now I'm definitely gonna try to shove an Eevee powertrain in there Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:01 and you know there's there's gonna be some very interesting Evie power trains available you know, with full self driving Tesla's that crash into walls and other barriers so there'll be lots of parts available from those to scavenge to put into these other cool cars Roberto Baldwin 1:17:15 plus crate engines or crate numbers from Well yeah, that's Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:19 Yeah, that's that's the other thing. You know, both GM Ford have announced crate motor kits that are coming, you know that you'll be able to get a motor, power electronics, and a battery pack that you can stuff into various kinds of vehicles, so alright, anything else for this week? Roberto Baldwin 1:17:42 I don't think so. All right. Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:44 Well, then we will talk to you all next time. Roberto Baldwin 1:17:48 Bye.