Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 222 of wheel bearings. We've got the BMW M3 competition XDrive, a whole bunch of stuff that Roberto drove during the World Car of the Year judging, including the BMW 2 series coupe, the Lexus UX 250h F Sport, the BMW Bz4x and salt Subaru soltera. The Fisker ocean, Hyundai's new end models. And we talked a little bit about the Tesla's server outage, all that and more coming up next.

Welcome to episode 222 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights

Nicole Wakelin  0:42  
I am Nicole Wakelin from Autobytel

Roberto Baldwin  0:47  
and I am Roberto Baldwin from lifewire. 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:52  
Roberto, what have you been driving,

Roberto Baldwin  0:54  
I've been driving so many things. Listeners, my last week for us was the LA Auto Show. And ahead of that is the World Car of the Year or drive annual drive. Every year we all gather up in Pasadena and we drive a bunch of cars up and down Angeles crest highway which is probably one of the best roads in the United States that you can well just drive anything up and down. And I drove a lot of cars. So here I wrote drove the the GR 86 which I thoroughly enjoyed and it made a wonderful case for me to go out sell my B RZ my 2014 busy and buy a new I don't know how that what the money slit is on that I think Did they if if I buy a Toyota does Subaru get a little bit of money if I buy a Subaru does Toyota get a little money? I don't know how that how that works and how it works. Yeah. So well I apologies to Toyota, I guess our good job Toyota, I feel like either way, they're they're both doing pretty well. I also drove it's what's also fun is that sometimes you get to drive cars from other countries from other regions that you don't get to drive here. And one of them was the Volkswagen Taegan Abdi that's how you say his ta AIG un if I'm mispronouncing it, I apologize. Probably Teigan Teigan it's the tiger the Volkswagen Tiger but it was it's a small crossover SUV whatever you want a tiny SUV whatever you want to call it but it was right hand drive and it was a manual transmission I get to drive that up and up because highway which was outstanding I don't know how much I enjoyed just the fact that it was right hand drive and it was a main transmission versus how much I enjoyed the car I think it was solved little vehicle I think you know the fact that it's it's it's on the list for for a world car makes complete sense because it drove well it's a nice vehicle. But you you sort of get sometimes you have to be careful. Like I get very excited when I get to do something very odd. If something odd is happening. I get super excited about that over the car. So yeah, the right hand drive, man transmission of Angeles crest highway was outstanding because now you're turning and you're on the outside. So you're always right there by that white line. So that was fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:20  
Have either of us spent very much time with manual transmission, or with right hand drive vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  3:27  
I'm visiting Belfast and and busy visiting Ireland I've driven like there for like over a week like driving around, like we rent the car when we go to there. And so that's that's pretty much.

Nicole Wakelin  3:39  
Yeah, when I was we were have spent time in Ireland in England. And those are my moments where we had to change things around. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  3:49  
when I when I got my first job after college working at the GM proving grounds on an ABS systems. The on my first day, you know, he said, and here's here's what you're going to be working on is the the Lotus Alon the M 100 Dylon and there was a right hand drive ones that let's go for a drive. And so that was my first driving both the right hand drive car and a right hand drive car with a manual transmission. It definitely takes a little getting used to

Nicole Wakelin  4:20  
the means like the right hand drive, I got used to really quick, the manual transmission my hands like I can't wait 123 Like I'm counting trying to figure out where I am. I was like I lost it.

Roberto Baldwin  4:32  
So So what happens, what would happen for me when I was over, so the first like hour, so you're so concentrated on your left hand, you know, shifting gears and making sure you're in the correct way, driving an oncoming traffic. And then you get sort of used to driving or finding what happened was, I'd be driving and then I put the clutch in and then I'd smack my right hand against the door because my brain is trained over decades to shift my right hand so I kept hitting my right hand against the door. So after a week that would, that would go away. But then

Nicole Wakelin  5:05  
bruises all over your knuckles on your right, like smack.

Roberto Baldwin  5:10  
But then that would go away. I would stop doing that and I get back to United States and the first that we at the time we had this like really horrible dodgy knee on that. I'm so glad we got rid of that had broken down or whatever. Anyway, I went to drive it. And the first thing I did was smack my left hand against the door when I had to shift because I had gotten so used to driving with the on the right hand drive. Let's see what else Oh, I also drove the Cooper for mentor. It's another Volkswagen product it is. That sounds

Nicole Wakelin  5:41  
like that makes me ticket Dementors from Harry Potter is this a bad evil car

Roberto Baldwin  5:45  
the it feels a little bit it's got the like it's it's very grandly it's a very grandly small SUV. It's just like, and so it could be like in the mentor of the Volkswagen small SUV sect. It was a fun little car to drive. It feels like it has more bark than bite overall, but it's still you know, when you're you. I was also I also ended up driving like a GTI and I you know, gr 86. So it's hard to sort of judge you know, compared to those vehicles, it is definitely not a crazy hot hatch. But it was really fun. It was fun. And it did have this like very distinct note.

Nicole Wakelin  6:26  
I drove the engine sounds

Roberto Baldwin  6:31  
make What's it Sound Like? What does he sound like? I drove the Volkswagen, the Golf GTI, which I will drive fun, which I am. You know, I love a hot hatch. Unfortunately, didn't have time to drive the Golf R. So I'm still I'm still behind on that. Let's see, I did a review of the EQ s a lot of the Mercedes EQ s were in gadget this week. It is I'm still a big fan of it, I still think it drives better. If you're looking for luxury than the S class. I did. After having it for a week, I did realize that the rear seats aren't great for really tall people. If you're taller than six, three, you're going to hit your head. That's that that's that's that's the deal with the overall like the front it's it is a wonderful car drive. And after a week of driving with that 10 degrees, a rear wheel steering, I don't know how I've gone back because everything out nothing, everything stocks after that. We're all staring at 10 degrees is amazing, especially with a big car just like this is so you get so used to it. And now I'm just like, well, now every car new, all wheel steering and at least 10 degrees in the back. Because what's the point of even having a car if you can't make it turn and make, you know, tight turns and super tight U turns and circles in the middle of Treasure Island here in the Bay Area in order to highlight that. And then a few weeks ago, I drove the BMW two series coupe. And it was outstanding. I really enjoyed it. It was a fun car to drive. It very much feels like if you are the owner of a Miata, or a br Z or or maybe a GTI or Golf R and you want to sort of move up you want to still have that fun of you know, these small car but you want a little bit more luxury. You want to feel a little bit more pampered. And you don't mind losing a manual transmission because you're you know, most of your day you're commuting and you're kind of like okay, I'm over this. Yeah, that that two series coupe is outstanding. It's it's a good little curve,

Sam Abuelsamid  8:39  
the two series coupe we're getting here. Is that still going to be rear wheel drive or because overseas, they have stuff that's called two series, but there's different vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  8:48  
So I go the drive. I do have a rear wheel drive, the rear wheel drive one, and I definitely and even though they told me no, and they told me that I definitely did not turn off traction control to go around corners in the rear wheel drive version. I definitely did not do that. But if I had have done that, it is outstanding.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:07  
But I didn't do that. Because

Roberto Baldwin  9:11  
yes, I would not I did not do that because I was told that we they did not want us to do that.

Nicole Wakelin  9:17  
And you're a rule follower.

Roberto Baldwin  9:19  
I'm a rule follower. I am not a rule breaker. Yeah. And that was during BMWs tests. Fast. I think I already talked about that. But I drove bunch cars on a track. Am 4am 5am Three competition on the track. Ridiculous. Yeah, we will drive vehicles on a track going really fast. It was good times. Good times overall, I think and let me double check. Make sure that's all the cars I drove i Right now I'm doing a 330 he I'll talk about that later. I feel like there's some cars I probably drove it I didn't mention but that's fine. I drove a lot of cars. That's what that's the long story short, I drove a lot of cars I really want to trade in my B or Z for a newbie or z because the GRE said It is outstanding. It's wonderful. I'm glad I finally get to drive it. I'm glad I get to drive it on Andrews crest highway. I am a big fan. Good job Toyota and or, and Subaru. I think

Sam Abuelsamid  10:14  
for that vehicle, I think it's more superior than Toyota.

Roberto Baldwin  10:18  
Yeah, I think it is. I think, I think the same I think it's the same thing with the, with the electric vehicle we'll talk about in a little bit. Which when you Yeah, and I'll tell ya the auto show. You could really say the UK who was very excited about this car who was just like me.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:34  
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Nicole, are you ready to go or you want me to go first? I

Nicole Wakelin  10:39  
am ready to go. Alright, I'm

Roberto Baldwin  10:41  
ready. Now I talked for so long I gave you to IC I helped I'm helping time

Nicole Wakelin  10:45  
I had all sorts of computer issues sporting, like instead of getting stuff ready, it was like work computer, like every piece of software it had needed updating. So I was not quite ready this morning. But um, so I was out for a whole week driving very many things. And some will talk about next week, but someone took about this week and I have the car that's parked in my driveway, I'll start with the one that's parked in my driveway. I have the Lexus u x 250 H F Sport. Because the longer the name of the car, the cooler gets, I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:13  
I believe that is the strategy, at least at Toyota.

Nicole Wakelin  11:18  
And if you make it letters and numbers that you can never ever, ever remember. So I this one. I like the UX overall. I mean, it's not this super amazing performance vehicle. But the hybrid I actually like how it dries better than just the straight up gas powertrain. So this has a two liter four cylinder engine 181 horsepower, so it's not like superduper you know, it's not gonna win you some races. It's all wheel drive CVT, it's perfectly competent on the highway. It's competent, competent edge and not an overly engaging one. So, you know, if you mash the accelerator, good luck with that it's not going to accelerate with any kind of like aggression, it's just not, but I don't feel like you're buying this if that's what you want, at least hopefully or not, because if you are then you're going to be a little bit disappointed. But it does have it looks great. It handles nicely and when driving it it's a nice comfortable car to drive. The steering is good the handling is such that if you do manage to find some speed and take a corner at speed, you're not going to have a lot of body will happening it's a pretty controlled drive. But I feel like with a car like this you're looking more like for the for the comfort utility it's like I don't know they typically call it an SUV I feel like it's more crossover sized. I don't know Sam you always know things. What does this totally count as an SUV or crossover?

Sam Abuelsamid  12:37  
It's an utterly arbitrary distinction that has no meaning whatsoever anymore it's it's whatever the manufacturer decides to call it every I would say what would you call I would say anything that is based on a front wheel drive architecture you know that is shared with cars is a crossover.

Nicole Wakelin  12:54  
I'm going to call it an SUV over it's an SUV over okay when you can't decide which way it's supposed to go so it doesn't have a huge amount of cargo room but it's got a decent little bit of cargo in the back it gets good fuel economy overall I would say it's a 41 city 38 highway so it's about 39 combined my driving in this has been almost strictly Highway at this point and I was averaging 39 So I'm coming in but yeah just what they said I know so that you know good job the numbers are right

Roberto Baldwin  13:29  
good job ID numbers guys.

Nicole Wakelin  13:31  
Yay. So inside it feels it looks like Alexis it does have great style it's got a little bit of heavy bolstering on the seats for car that's not especially to kind of hold you in there. Like what do you think I'm doing in this Lexus? I'm not doing that.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:46  
We'll talk about bolstering later.

Nicole Wakelin  13:49  
Yes we will. So So interior but I mean it lives up to what you'd expect Alexis it's got it's it's the materials are high quality it looks and it feels good. It's comfortable. Rear seats seat two but it's I've seat three technically I guess but two adults is what you're really going to want to put back there. If you put three adults back there. You're going to lose friends because one of them is never going to ride with you ever again. Whoever squished in the middle. It has something I'm sure that Sam loves and I hate which is a lack of touchscreen. It has like the little Lexus

Sam Abuelsamid  14:22  
yeah but that I don't like touchscreens but that Lexus touchpad is way worse. Okay, so see

Nicole Wakelin  14:30  
infotainment system marking down people 1203 and 1121. So I hate it. And it was funny because I was driving home and I had my husband and my kids in the car and my daughter was like losing her mind. She's like, I hate this. Like she was trying to find like, what, how? Why can I touch the screen? I'm like, Oh, my child of my heart. Yeah, she couldn't not like it. She hated the touchpad and I tried to explain to her that Lexus has come out with something better like their newer system is better. Then the older one, and she's like, well, how old is this? How long have they been using this? Why is this still here? Why can't they pull it out of here I'm like, it's not that easy child take a deep breath. So you're paying for the Lexus UX 250 H F SPORT $43,885. I've got some extra goodies on there that they've added. The most expensive of the bid is the 10.3 inch screen like the navigation system. So it's an upgraded infotainment system. And as like $2,200, everything else is like 500 bucks here or $500. There. The F SPORT thing, which makes it look really smart makes it look sexy. I don't know that it does much to make it drive sexy, but it makes it look sexy. So if you want your car to look sexy, but not drive that way, go ahead and add do the F SPORT thing. So I'd like it. Is it my favorite Lexus? No. And I like the brand as a whole, but I feel like you know, for $43,000 There's a lot of crossover, no SUV over options that you can get. And I might be tempted to drive some of the other ones. So I don't want to pan it. But it's just, it's just not super impressive. And then what have you guys driven both have some time to drive?

Sam Abuelsamid  16:09  
Yeah, I've driven the UX and you're right, it's, it's fine, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  16:14  
but it's fine. It's fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:17  
You know, it's a typical Toyota or Lexus, you know that. It's not, it's not going to be, you know, a huge disappointment gonna be reliable. You know, it's gonna get you where you need to go. But it's not, it's not going to get you really excited. And you know, it's kind of kind of cramped, and that infotainment interface, that touchpad that they use is just awful. That that is by far, I would say the worst infotainment interface I think anybody's come up with yet.

Nicole Wakelin  16:49  
And it's like enough that that's part of why I would say, other options because there's other vehicles that are that are similar, that have better infotainment systems, better interfaces, and although like any system, you do get used to it out over time. If you're driving it every day and you're doing your daily more around town or your daily commute or whatever you do get used to it, you get used to how your system works, and you will very quickly because it becomes intuitive, doesn't mean you're gonna like it. You're not

Sam Abuelsamid  17:15  
I'm not sure this one touchpad Yeah, I'm not sure this one ever really becomes intuitive. But, you know, for for what it's worth

Roberto Baldwin  17:22  
is there a new?

Sam Abuelsamid  17:25  
Yeah, the the new NX you know that they're just launching that one they've finally abandoned the the touchpad they get rid, you know, they years ago several years ago abandon the sort of joystick mouse thing, which actually, I thought that one actually worked pretty well. It worked a lot better than the touchpad. But they got rid of that. And they've just gone to a touchscreen. They said okay, fine, we give up to

Nicole Wakelin  17:49  
a new one. Really? You right Sam? Like To their credit, like as much as they don't like this one. Like hopefully what they've done what they've they're adding now is so much better. Oh, yeah, heaps and bounds better. So it's kind of like I'm criticizing old tech, but it's old tech that you can still buy a new car. So like, be Yeah, the old stuff for the tech. Now there are you can get the NX that has the newer stuff. But if you're getting it with this, like, play with that info too. And what was the thing that like she couldn't find the volume button, like I know there's a volume button on the steering wheel. But the volume button is like this little knob when you put your hand it's like a like a little dial that you kind of shift left and right and it's sort of hidden. And she's like, where I'm like with the button I'm trying to show her the same thing. She's a cool design that I'm like somebody who decided it wasn't a good idea and design something else called death.

Roberto Baldwin  18:36  
This is gonna be awesome. People are gonna love it.

Nicole Wakelin  18:39  
Can you imagine when you design something like that, and then you get what you get back is like everybody hates what they did was not one

Sam Abuelsamid  18:46  
guy but you got to imagine then you put it across your entire product lineup, right? You've

Nicole Wakelin  18:50  
dumped it into every product you made and everyone's like, Good job, good job look for doing I feel like

Roberto Baldwin  18:55  
that's, that's, that's when you go and you design something and you only you're all patting yourself on the back instead of like putting it in front of actual humans and saying hey, what do you think of this? And even and people still like pushed back on it. They're like, you know, no, they'll get used to

Nicole Wakelin  19:11  
it no one does. I don't I don't know anybody who says it's easy if I have we have listeners out there. I really be curious if you have this and you thought hey, you know what not only did I get used to it I love this old Lexus system. I'd love to hear from you crazy person, please tell us because I just had never heard Oh,

Roberto Baldwin  19:29  
sure. Crazy story. Okay, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  19:31  
So that was the car that is parked in my driveway that I you can see I was super excited about like, it just wasn't my thing. But I had two super exciting cars that I got to drive not in my driveway. But on a track. We went up to the Sonoma Raceway with the good folks at Hyundai like Sunday, and we had the Kona n and the Elantra n to drive on the track And he gets people these are fun cars like really, really fun. So here's the thing so like it's two cars they both have the end which someone asked me, What does n stand for? And I said Nicole because they're mine now I'm

Roberto Baldwin  20:11  
because because they're nice.

Nicole Wakelin  20:15  
No, they're mine are Berto they're mine, they're good launcher Nicole and Nicole Nicole. No, these are they have I want to say it's seven and cars in the full lineup by the end of the year. I don't know if they've got them all introduced yet but they say there's going to be seven and I honestly

Sam Abuelsamid  20:29  
haven't gotten in line models.

Nicole Wakelin  20:31  
I don't Oh, I don't know. Maybe the thing said there will be seven and trim. So I don't know if it includes the end line, which isn't quite the

Sam Abuelsamid  20:38  
same as it's more like export for Lexus. Yeah, mine

Nicole Wakelin  20:42  
is like the SD cards. Yes, it looks cool. But make sure necessarily have the drive cool to back it up. Oh, no drives, fine. Nothing. I actually like the launcher in the Kona in there more vanilla flavors. But so these are truly performance versions of these cars. They're not intended to just look better or look sporty and think oh, these look although they do I mean they have like these red accents and things that you know that this is a little bit different than the rest of the lineup. But they're designed to drive that way. So I'll start with the Alon tra i like have T things open a mess screen. So what you have for an engine you have a two liter four cylinder with 276 horsepower and 289 pound feet of torque. It moves and the thing is the Elantra it's a sedan. So you can flick a small sedan and it's sort of unassuming and you kind of think oh nice little sedan and then you get inside and the thing just is crazy responsive. The handling is incredibly sharp. We took it on the track you it's a nice, it's nice in that you use the first few blacks you do around the track in any car, you're kind of just trying to get a feel for it. Like how far can I push this? How controlled is it and you do those first couple of laps you they go I can push this a lot harder than I think I can and you can really go with this. It's also got that ride that that handling that it has, it matches that up with a harsh ride. Now it would normally rip apart a car for being really harsh. But there's a whole bunch of other Elantras you can buy. You want to get like a nice cushy sedan. Go with one of the other Elantras if you want to get one that is sporty and if you're someone who drives a car, you want to take it on the track or you just want to have that kind of handling the next time you're driving like a winding canyon road and you really enjoy that you enjoy that crisp, responsive aggressive drive. And you don't care if your passengers get jostled when you hit a change in the pavement. This is your car and Hyundai was sort of unapologetic about it though this is not the cushy sedan. This is the car for the people who love to drive and it is going to drive a little bit sporty er and harsher because the suspension is a sporty suspension system. It makes it handle beautifully. But you do feel it if you're on the bumps and dips in the road but I truly didn't care because it is so much fun to drive. I'm like That's okay, jostle me all you want on the road because driving this is so much thinking fun. It looks like it drives it has plenty of visual appeal. It's very comfy. The seats are super nice. They're leather with microsuede trims. And they have like an end sport thing on there. They like you open the door even just opening it You haven't even gotten behind the wheel and you open the door and you think of this is just not an Elantra. This is there's something else happening here. It has for infotainment, it gets a nice big 10.25 inch touchscreen, with apple carplay android auto navigation comes standard. There's an eight speaker Bose audio system. They also have this neat there's like an N exclusive I guess you would say grab like interface on the infotainment system and it shows like dials and gauges and oil and coolant torque. It makes you feel like you're like, you know, doing your Forza Horizon thing on your computer. Looks like you're like I'm driving a sports car. Like it just looks. It looks really cool. So I thoroughly enjoy driving this and it's the Cydia it's an am and it just it's sort of, we don't have pricing. So I don't know how much it's going to be but you gotta figure it's still a Hyundai at heart. And they're trying to Hyundai doesn't build cars that are so expensive, that they price people out, you know that like they're more, you're going to get more I feel like you get more in a Hyundai than you will in the other guys and you get it for a lower price. So I'm hopeful when they come out with pricing, which they say is sometime later this year when it hits the market because it's supposed to be coming out soon. That we're not going to be shocked by the price. I mean, the most expensive. A launcher you can buy right now is a limited hybrid. It's 22 So what do you what's your guess? What do you think this one's gonna cost?

Sam Abuelsamid  24:49  
would say 33.

Roberto Baldwin  24:52  
I would say 33 Give the lecture say Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:55  
I said 30 That might be a little bit

Nicole Wakelin  24:57  
low. I was gonna go with 32 So we kind of have it covered. That's which is a really good price for a car that drives as well as this does. Then there was also the Kona N. Same kind of idea. But what makes the Kona end kind of fun is that it's a little it's a little crossover. I'm going to call this from a crossover. It's not an SUV, it's not an SUV over it's a crossover. And it looks like you know, I just bought like this little, you know, cute little crossover thing because I need to have room for my friends and I want to have the crossover so I can throw my garbage in the back of it and, you know, take people or anything else is going to be the bestest thing on the track because crossover is a little taller. And oh my gosh, this thing I actually enjoy driving the Kona more than I enjoy driving the Elantra, it's just something about the notion of driving this little crossover that handles like a true hot hatchback. Once you get it out on the track, it does have the same thing where the ride is very firm out on the road. And again, totally 100% willing to forgive that because there's a whole line of other CONUS you can buy. So if you're looking for the performance, Kona, this is your Huckleberry if you want your everybody's comfortable, and the kids are sneezing in the back corner, get one of the other ones. I really enjoyed this, I thought it was a lot of fun. Now, my one someone was asking me and I am going to share this, how to rate how bouncy it was on the road. So when you go do off roading, or you do anything where it's really you know, bouncy, as a woman, you have to wear a supportive bra. Otherwise, you're bouncing along on the road. And I was like it was nice, like on a scale of one to five that I wish I had worn a sports bra. I was like in about a three and a half with both of these, because you start going like, oh good gravy, I need it. So it is very bouncy. So you do feel about so you know if it's rough pavement, if you're driving anywhere, you know, highways, it's smooth. But if you've got something where it's rough pavement, or you're going through lots of potholes, you are gonna feel it. But then you take it onto a track or you take it someplace where the road is really nicely paved. And when it's smooth, the handling is just so good. I mean you can really, you can be aggressive with this and it sounds aggressive even it is it is these are I love these I loved both of these cars, I did not want to stop driving them. So those are my and again, we don't have pricing on the Kona either, we're waiting on that the Kona runs I put pricing in here somewhere for what it actually runs. Now I can find it. The Kona currently runs from 21. Just about 21,000 to about 28. Five so it's it's pretty much in the same ballpark as the launch Are you think it's gonna be the same ballpark for the entrance? Guys?

Sam Abuelsamid  27:36  
Probably. Yeah, I looked up the the velociter end, and it's 32. Five. So I think you're just about right on

Roberto Baldwin  27:44  
33. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  27:46  
they'll probably be about the same. And, you know, for those that want, you know, the sporty or look, and, you know, a little sporty or performance, then then the base models, you know, both of both the Kona and the Elantra are available in inline models, which give you a sporty or look, you get the 1.6 liter turbo instead of the two liter turbo, so they're about 200 horsepower. And you know, those, that's a really nice combination. And in both of those if you don't want that super aggressive feel, did both of the comment and the Elantra that they both have the eight speed DCT the dual clutch transmission? Um,

Nicole Wakelin  28:26  
there was there was one had the manual and I've just turned a total blank. I want to say

Roberto Baldwin  28:30  
it was Kona doesn't get it doesn't get a manual, you only get the eight. Yeah, you only get the HP DCT on the cones. So you

Nicole Wakelin  28:36  
get the manual on the launcher, you can get it with a manual, which was a hoot to drive. There. It's a nice little manual transmission. But that DCT that it's good. Like, you know, it's not. Yeah, you're driving automatically. Oh, man, if only this hand had a manual, I really didn't feel that way about this one. It's the ships are it's so it's so good. It's so well timed. It does such good delivery of the power where you would feel like you would want to shift if you're driving a manual, it's like yep, right there, boom, and it shifts. And it's gonna do it faster than you can do it. Like you might be superhero level speed, but you're still not going to get as good as how this you know, the the DCTS do they're shifting and this one is really well mapped. It's really, really good.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:20  
Especially if you if you press the End mode button on the steering wheel that that really turns it up. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  29:25  
So you can definitely there's enough, both of these enough that you can do you want it to sound more aggressive. You want to drive more aggressive, you want the suspension, more aggressive, you want the steering, anything you want to Spotify, you can choose to do it. I think there's like almost I want to say like three different levels almost of each of those things. How just how sporty Do you want it to be? So you can you know, crank it all the way up, if that's what you want. If you want to turn it down a little bit because you do have people in the car and you don't want them to bounce all over. You can turn things down a little bit. So there is plenty of people ability to tailor this drive to be as sporty and aggressive as you want or to make it a little bit more mild manner but even in its most mild mannered form, you take everything and you tone it down it's still going to be a heck of a sporty ride a heck of a lot of fun. I really enjoyed both of these cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:15  
Excellent. Yeah, it sounds like they took a driving when I had one this summer and, you know, put it in a couple of other form factors that you know, not everybody wants to drive something that's is unique looking as the Gloucester

Roberto Baldwin  30:36  
and you know, it's a fair way to call it that is there

Sam Abuelsamid  30:39  
I mean, you know, if you want something that's that's really sporty but you still need to be able to put a car seat or two in the back you know for the for the young ones you know, that's now you have that option with either the owner or the the Elantra so yeah, I think it's good to have choices

Nicole Wakelin  30:57  
you can I mean like you know, the comfort level is you know, the smoothness of the ride is better and the knot and versions but like the idea that you could still like you said Sam I can get a car that I can put my kids comfortably in car seats in the back throw whatever kid accoutrements that I need to bring with me in the bat you know in the cargo area and do that and just be focused on whatever kid stuff and family stuff I need to do but then if it just me and you're driving to work or just out having a nice drive, you can really have fun with this and it's the same car you do it doesn't require you to have yours my sporty fun car and here's my responsible family court you can make this do double duty and that's that's a tricky thing to do. You can always pull it off sometimes you you know people's no you can use this for your family can I can't, but you could. So

Roberto Baldwin  31:42  
my dad's like,

Nicole Wakelin  31:43  
yeah, it's like no, you can say that in the marketing but it's not true. No, you really can with these, which makes this and the pricing I know we're guessing at this 32 ish. That's still a good price for what you're getting in the performance of this car wherever that's you know, maybe they're going to surprise us and it's going to be outrageous. I don't think they are so I still think

Sam Abuelsamid  32:01  
I don't imagine there will be cars there yeah, all three of them the velociter you know if you look at the other trims the velociter the Tucson and Elantra are all fairly similarly priced for the various trims so I would I would expect the ends gonna are gonna be in that same same range.

Nicole Wakelin  32:17  
Yeah, I think this I think the pricing and that's again, that's just a handy thing their pricing is always spot on you get so many features compared to what you'll get for like their competitors is going to be 1000s of dollars more than whatever Hyundai is going to charge you for the same thing. So I would be really shocked if the pricing didn't you know, it wasn't a happy little smiley face for all of us and then 32 ish range.

Roberto Baldwin  32:38  
I also drove the Kona in do you think did you Angeles crest or I did drive it on Angeles crest I didn't want to step on your story because you drove for a lot longer and you get to have it on a track I had to drive it with people and things you had to like obey laws and obey the laws Yeah, it is a fun the hot hatch it is it is very very aggressive especially those first a second gears you get I was getting a lot of just like you could feel the torque just like ah just like attacking the road a lot while I was driving it, it's fun. It is a it is a very unique driving characteristic that you don't feel much anymore because it's very tight. It's very tight SUV. It's very tight in the ground and then it's very just gravity. Like those front tires are just grabbing like there's no tomorrow so you can feel that. You know as I was accelerating the corners, you could feel it just like her. Let's do this. Miko settle down settle down Kona and I heard that I had the Kona electric so this is different. But the front wheel drive, so it's like it's the same it's fine. But they are not.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:48  
Okay, well, while we're in California, I was I was expecting to arrive home or ride back at the airport in Detroit to a key a carnival, which I got to Karneval currently, which I got to drive briefly last month when I was in Wisconsin for the mama rally and was quite impressed with it. And that's what was scheduled to be waiting for me but unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view. When I on Wednesday the day before I returned I got a note from the fleet company saying yeah kiya asked for this one to be turned back in and we're gonna get another one soon. But for now we're gonna we're gonna drop off a BMW M three competition X Drive for you.

Nicole Wakelin  34:31  
Well, that is not a bad thing. I mean, you're making it sound like they gave you an old Hugo they had in the background. I feel like your trade was not so bad. So

Sam Abuelsamid  34:38  
it was it was not a terrible trade, although I would have preferred to have this trade, you know, say like, July or August or even early October when the temperatures were a tad warmer around here because it you know, 503 horsepower from the twin turbocharged inline six and I do love a good inline six cylinder engine. BMW knows their inline sixes. They know How to make those Absolutely. But it was on summer tires and the temperature is hovering has been hovering right around freezing since. And when you're when you get below about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, summer tires basically become like rocks. You don't get nearly quite as much grip as you do when the temperature is above 40 degrees.

Nicole Wakelin  35:22  
So I'm thinking of a Flintstones car you say that. Just put little Flintstones wheels on that car in my head.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:29  
Yeah, but especially the ones in the back are just about as wide as the ones on Fred's car is the one on Fred. But, you know, that said, I have driven it some drove at home from the airport, and I did some driving around yesterday. And despite the the temperature, you know, barely getting up to but I think 38 or 39 Yesterday, this is still one hell of a fun car. You know, the unlike the more pedestrian three series models, the M three does get the the new style BMW grille with the massive twin kidneys. But, you know, this one, this one was finished in Frozen dark gray metallic, the one of the optional paint colors. And so with that, and the black trim, those grills don't stand out quite as much. Seriously, once you're behind the wheel, you don't even see the grills. You forget about everybody else has is fine. That's fine. Who cares about everybody else?

Nicole Wakelin  36:30  
That's whatever

Roberto Baldwin  36:30  
I do kind of wish you gotten the the rear wheel drive sedan instead of the X Drive with all the the cold. I've driven both. And it's I love all wheel drive, because I like staying on the road. And it they're great. But I also love a rear wheel drive vehicle that you should never ever turn off the crack control. I've never done that BMW, and then

Nicole Wakelin  36:55  
because as we've already established,

Roberto Baldwin  36:57  
I'm a rule follower.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:59  
Well, I did I did drive the M for competition, rear wheel drive at Road America for the mama rally. So I have had some experience with basically the same thing in a two door form factor instead of the four door. Nice. So yes, you're right, that is an excellent choice. And, and I absolutely did not turn off the traction control when I was on the track that that would that would be never toward. I would I would never disobey those sorts of rules. But that paint that paint finish that's that's a that's a matte finish. So BMW has several colors that are that they call frozen. There's a frozen Portimao blue, which is actually that's the one I would have loved to have seen. That's my favorite color on there. These are matte finished paints. So it's a $4,500 option for that couple those colors. They also have a white frozen white.

Roberto Baldwin  37:51  
I also don't feel like they've they're far away enough from the movie Frozen, because all I can think about is let it go. I cannot I yeah, I can't get far enough away from that movie to start calling things frozen. Sorry, BMW.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:04  
Fortunately, my children are old enough that they were not into that film when it came out. So I've never seen it. And

Roberto Baldwin  38:11  
it's a good it's a good movie. I don't have I have I don't not have children. And they I feel like the marketing for that movie was really bad because he had no idea what was going on. And then just one day for I don't know why I watched it. I'm like, this is a very good movie. And I feel like he didn't market it very well. And it was word of mouth and it exploded. And then it has that song, which is linear where it is.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:35  
So let's see some of the other options that are that are on this car came with the the optional M carbon ceramic brakes, which are an $8,150 option, and $1,000. But if you've ever driven a car with carbon brakes, it is so good, especially when you're driving aggressively, which unfortunately under the current weather conditions is not finished. But But it's amazing. You know the the feel you get from those breaks, especially once they warm up a little bit. There's so good. That one one of the other options that is on this particular one is the M carbon bucket seats. So if you are at all considering an M three or an M four before you check off the box for the M carbon bucket seats for 3000. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely need to make sure that you sit in them. Yes. And make sure that they fit your body because if they don't fit your body, you will not be very happy.

Roberto Baldwin  39:46  
They're difficult to get in and out of as well. Yes,

Sam Abuelsamid  39:49  
they're very deep. You you side bolsters earlier, Nicole, we got these things. These have some serious side bolstering. I think you know what One of the few road cars that I've driven over the years that has as aggressive bolsters as this was the Lotus exceed 240 s that I drove many years ago, which is basically, you know, like a racing shell see, these the the M carbon bucket seats, the only adjustments you have are for aft and the seat recline. So it's not a complete shell, it's actually a two, two piece shell. But there is no adjustment for the side bolsters or anything else. Fortunately, my body just barely fits in them, and fits reasonably well. So I don't slide around. But depending on on your body shape, you may not find yourself in a very comfortable place, if you order these seats. So make sure that if you are considering an M three or an M four, before you, you go for those seats, make sure you actually sit in them and preferably go for a drive and make sure that you're comfortable getting in and out and just just sitting in them. Because if if if there if there are pinch points on your body, you will you will regret spending that almost $40 on

Nicole Wakelin  41:07  
Sam, they were okay for you like you thought they were comfortable. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  41:10  
they're fine. They're fine for me. You know, and when I drove them for on the track, I really appreciated those seats because they hold you very securely in place. Oh, yeah. They're outstanding. The position will not change relative to your whatsoever. You're not sliding around.

Nicole Wakelin  41:26  
Yeah. Did you think the same thing were Burnham? Were they?

Roberto Baldwin  41:28  
Yeah, I will see, here's the thing. I really like sports seats a lot. For some reason, I feel far more comfortable in sports seats than in most luxury vehicle seats. I don't know why I think they, they, I feel like they're built for me. But I will say like that the the leg bolsters are really high. So I could see people getting in and out of their car a lot, like ended up with bruises on their thigh. There's like the little bolt, there's a little bolster in the middle, like right below your crotch, which is right there. And like it's carbon Vega, what the hell is that? It is, I feel like it's, you really got to want the seats, if you're going to get them and you should like like Sam was saying, you really should go and sit in them and drive for and I'm sure the dealer is going to be a little upset with you. But if you're going to spend that much money, you should get like 30 minutes behind the wheel at least driving with those seats because they are extreme aim as well. You're like one step below just throwing someone in an f1. Yeah. Figure it

Sam Abuelsamid  42:30  
out much. I mean, it's about as close as you're gonna get to a true racing seat, you know, which those are typically a one piece shell, you know, that doesn't have any recline capability. So they do split it into pieces. So you can recline and get the right positioning, you know, relative to the steering wheel and pedals and everything. But that's, that's the only adjustment that and for aft. So that all that aside, you know, this is a lovely car to drive, you know, especially when you put it in an the Sport mode. I didn't put it into track mode on on the street when the pavement is so cold, though, man,

Roberto Baldwin  43:07  
that would be bad thing, there's no

Sam Abuelsamid  43:11  
you know, drunk driving in sport mode. You know, it sounds great. You know, and it's very, very quick. You know, these this is this is a fast car. It's probably it's probably not I haven't looked up the any of the instrumented tests I'm pretty sure it's not as fast you know, as a Tesla Model three performance and a straight line. But, you know, I'm sure if you got this thing on a track, you would have a blast with it. As I said 503 horsepower, similar amount of torque. And it's just really well executed and you know, if you get it in one of the darker colors, the that that grille doesn't stand out as much in what's your what's your behind the steering wheel, it doesn't matter anyway.

Nicole Wakelin  43:57  
You can't watch the grill. So what was the what was the color of yours? Is

Sam Abuelsamid  44:01  
it darker is frozen dark gray

Nicole Wakelin  44:03  
metallic? Is it is it so the $8,000 paint also camouflage it's only

Sam Abuelsamid  44:08  
4500 for the paint. Oh,

Nicole Wakelin  44:10  
for the camo, okay,

Roberto Baldwin  44:11  
there you go. Say you know what don't eat I would say if you are buying this and you're going to drive it for more like a lot. Don't get the paint or the the crazy seat and just go for the brakes.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:23  
Yeah, that that's actually a good point. Because that's, that's the thing that will really make a difference. For for high performance driving is those brakes. Those carbon brakes will not fade. Yeah, he didn't they will they they work beautifully, you know, stop, you know, every time you slam on the brakes, that you will get all the stopping power you'll ever need. What else? Yeah, so the base price on the M three competition X Drive is $77,000. And all in including the relatively modest by today's standards, not $195 destination charge despite the fact that this car has to come all the way from Munich,

Roberto Baldwin  45:05  
all the way from Germany, another country

Nicole Wakelin  45:08  
that will be charged 95 That,

Sam Abuelsamid  45:11  
actually, it's half of what that's, that's half of what a Jeep Wagoneer costs to come from 20 miles away. So all in total price $108,545. So, you know, again, there's a lot of options on there, which, you know, is typical of Premium German cars, you know, they, the manufacturers like to give you lots of choice and lots of ways to spend your money. And, you know, this doesn't, this doesn't even get into the BMW individual program, which is, that's where things get really out of hand. But, you know, for for 109 grand, you know, it's a lovely car. If, you know, if I had that kind of money to spend on the car, I would seriously consider it.

Nicole Wakelin  45:58  
So if you had $109,000 to burn,

Roberto Baldwin  46:00  
yeah, you do it yeah. I think BMW when it comes to with these with their, their latest M cars, I think they're really sort of going back and really embracing their, their sort of performance heritage. I think for years, they were just trying too hard to be Mercedes they were just Yeah, and I think with with the new with the M three competition, and especially the two, the two series line, it's just amazing. I just I love those cars. And, and I think they're really just like, You know what, we're supposed to be the driving drivers car, like people who want to let's do that. Why don't we do that for a while?

Sam Abuelsamid  46:32  
Yeah. And, you know, I'm not sure. When I think when the previous generation M five came out, BMW got some grief from customers for the synthetic engine sound that they were doing. And, you know, I don't know if this engine sound and this one is synthetically enhanced or not. I suspect it probably is to some degree. But whatever they're doing, it sounds good. It sounds very natural. And it's it's, it's great.

Roberto Baldwin  47:01  
The funny thing is, is that engine noises are you know, they tuned him you know, they adjusted to do this. It's all sort of synthetic if you really think about it because it's all like set up and like

Sam Abuelsamid  47:10  
there's no electronics involved. You know, there's a lot that goes into getting the pipes just the right length and getting the bends the right places and the mufflers and resonators

Roberto Baldwin  47:20  
you're tuning an instrument it to make it sound a sir it's like a guitar and you're like okay, I got a tune. Now let me add some effects and they put some guitar effects on it. And then yeah, that's essentially how your car gets tuned. Sorry, everyone

Nicole Wakelin  47:31  
car does sound like a guitar. You hit it just right and you hear like

Sam Abuelsamid  47:37  
we've talked about you know the sounds in EVs before you know one of the things BMW did as they hired out on Zimmer, Han GM rate the sound strap the soundtracks for their EVs. So they're, you know, that's, that's all completely synthetic.

Nicole Wakelin  47:51  
They're all making a mistake, because clearly Roberto should be making the sound effects. You could just know can be like an arm mode, and it really is just you making different four or five selections of different Roberto cars making noises.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:06  
I'm sure I'm sure it's only a matter of time, blah, blah, delegable car sounds just like ring tones for your phone. So

Roberto Baldwin  48:12  
working on that someone's working on that. And they told me and I think yeah, that sounds right. Dang it. Who was it? Oh, someone's working on me.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:22  
Porsche has said that they are looking at some of that. Some Downloadable Sounds. He had that. Maybe

Roberto Baldwin  48:28  
it was an Eevee. Maker. Was it Mercedes? Oh, I think it might have been BMW. Like you could download different I think I think I'm sure I probably should pay more attention when I'm half asleep in another country driving a car.

Nicole Wakelin  48:44  
It's like when you could download all the cool stuff. I mean, does anyone actually have a dash mounted navigation system anymore? Remember TomTom? You could make it sound like Star Wars and

Roberto Baldwin  48:51  
different voices. Yeah, you can still

Sam Abuelsamid  48:53  
do that for ways you can do as ways for voices. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  48:58  
So you got that going for us, which is nice.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:01  
Alright, so while we're in LA, the LA Auto Show was this past week. And it was a much smaller show than usual. There were far fewer options, a lot of OEMs a lot of automakers didn't participate at all. But of the vehicles that were revealed in LA one thing was unique this year. Every single one of them was a battery electric vehicle. All Evie tacular Yes, it was it was Eevee tacular. And one of them actually came with two completely different badges on it. That is the Subaru Sol Terra and the unfortunately named Toyota Bz 4x. And I would strongly urge urge everyone that is that is interested in this vehicle to just despite Toyota for decision to use that name. Go buy the Subaru go buy it from a Subaru dealer instead. I was thinking

Nicole Wakelin  50:00  
that Easy Forex, it's, like I don't even know how to write it is it lowercase b,

Roberto Baldwin  50:05  
lowercase b for capital X, Z, a four and then a capital X.

Nicole Wakelin  50:12  
For me to spell it with different capitalization through a frickin store.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:16  
And worst worst of all, if you actually look at the badge on the car, and all the signage and everything, that lowercase b is superscripted. So you have a superscripted, lowercase b, and then uppercase Z and uppercase X, yes. And that. I told the folks at Toyota it's like, do not expect us to superscript this be this. It's not

Nicole Wakelin  50:37  
doing. He's doing that. It's like, well, it's kind of like some of the OEMs who like, mini is all caps and depending on who you write for, you don't

Sam Abuelsamid  50:47  
you know, back in my auto blog days, when when we finally put together a style guide, one of the elements of the style guide was all brand names and model names would be first letter uppercase, everything else lowercase. Regardless of what the official branding is, so many will be capital M lowercase I, I've

Nicole Wakelin  51:07  
been in a couple places the same way. They had this really good. The editor who wrote the guidance, I can't remember but it was like so written like, you know, this expectation of capitalizing your entire name, you are no more important than any other OEM will be one letter capitalized and the rest of the lowercase. Okay. He was not pleased with the whole idea

Sam Abuelsamid  51:26  
whatsoever. So anyway, the call and I were both in Encinitas on Sunday and Monday, when Toyota was revealing the BZ for x, and then Subaru showed this Altera at the Auto Show. Toyota had the BZ for Bz 4x on the stand, but they didn't do a fee or anything.

Roberto Baldwin  51:48  
say did you have to look at the name every time you said that? Because I was going to do I did a I did a video of the soltera at the Auto Show. I've stood around and I thought I was going to do a bit about how it's hard to like, try and remember the BZ for x. And it turned into not being a bit and it turned into me really trying to remember BZ for x. Whereas soltera I'm like oh, so Tara it's the sun in the dirt. It's it's very Subaru Bz 4x is like a Sony headphone name.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:19  
Yeah. So Toyota actually did explain the the somewhat convoluted logic behind the name. So Bz sansour beyond zero, which is their sub brand for their EVs kind of like Hyundai's using Ionic and BMW is using AI and Volkswagens using ID. So that's Tron that's there. Yeah, and that's so that's their EV sub brand. The four basic is stands for the size. So if the Bz, five, whatever with whatever other combination of letters will be somewhat larger, BZ three will be something smaller, and so on. So it's where it stands size wise in that lineup of BZ cars, and then the X is for crossover. And so presumably if they do an electric sedan, it'll be a Bz, something s or a coupe would be a C, or whatever. Yes, I know it's convoluted, but it is what it is. And so the the soltera before we get into the vehicle, I gotta say one thing. I was at the press conference, I was gonna stay and watch the press conference. And I was standing there in front of the stage. And I kept glancing down the floor, and they had this moving video surface on the floor in the show super stand. That was extremely disorienting when you're standing there seeing was it making you? Was it making you sick? It was and finally I just had to walk away I could No,

Roberto Baldwin  53:52  
I love that I have the reason to go to the LA Auto Show is for the Subaru booth. One is because of the floor. The second is because they always have dogs.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:01  
They do that at all, every auto show. Yeah, that basset hound that they had there on Wednesday was great.

Roberto Baldwin  54:06  
I missed the best I got there. Like I didn't see that I went for the dogs first. I'm like, Oh, I guess the dogs are here. I guess I'll go watch the sotera

Sam Abuelsamid  54:13  
Yeah, cuz they always partner up with a local shelter and bring in some dogs that are available for adoption. And I think they'll be doing they do that all through the public days of the show. So if you're if you're in LA and you go to the the auto show and you're interested in adopting a dog, stop by the Subaru stand and if nothing else, at least check out the dogs. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  54:33  
Yeah. Can I mention something else about the LA Auto Show? So we got a chance to look at the Fisker was yes, our beloved Rebecca is now living not in a Fisker but like

Sam Abuelsamid  54:45  
have you seen the rents and then

Nicole Wakelin  54:47  
he prefer her to live in the Fisker? Yeah, so they had they had those on display so you could you could get a good look at it. Did you get a chance to see him Sam,

Sam Abuelsamid  54:56  
did you? I did I sat in it I you know, I was actually being hosted by Fisker on Tuesday and Wednesday and so I got a, a one on one walk around the car with with Henrik Fisker on Tuesday morning and had a chance to sit down with him and interview him, which is I put that interview, I put it in the the Patreon feed on on Thursday and put it in the in. I added it on to the last episode as well. So, and there's there's a bunch more interviews that are coming over the next week or so with various other folks that I did over during the show. But yeah, that you know, that that I really liked that thing. I liked what they've done with it. And they've done a lot of things differently. This time around from what they did with Fisker Automotive,

Nicole Wakelin  55:46  
you know what I like. And you know, it's, it's like a first look, it's not like anyone was driving this, but I love two things that were really cool. They have their infotainment screen that spins, you can do it portrait or landscape. So to show that off in their booth, they have a giant light basically a huge I don't know how big it was, Sam probably knows exactly because

Sam Abuelsamid  56:03  
looks like look like it was about a 30 inch screen or so they

Nicole Wakelin  56:05  
see you do exactly. So I have a 30 inch screen, sort of like on a post and it goes flip and it shifts up to portrait and then flip and it slips shifts back to landscape. The screen in the car does that if you're a park, apparently you can move that screen. So you can you know, watch a movie while you're sitting there, whatever and have it in a nice like landscape mode. And also the the windows, there's like a little dog window at the very back of the car. So when you go all the way back, it's in the A, B C, am I right? C

Sam Abuelsamid  56:33  
D pillar, it's deep on the D,

Nicole Wakelin  56:36  
how many? How many letters do I need. And it's a tiny little window and you can put the window down so your dog can stick his little face through the window and he can get to bear so I just want them to get a picture of this with like a husky or something sticking his face through. Because you know how they have like a body that's like x. And with their further like x 1012 degree, I just want that little head just just popping through this window to see this just sticking out the side of his car. I thought it was really neat. The interior this thing was gorgeous, and everything is sustainable and recycled and all these things. But when you touch the materials like it, it still feels like something that's going to hold up after five minutes of driving because sometimes you get some of the Sustainable stuff that they've done in some of the cars I really questioned like how well that's going to survive in day to day use. You know, we all drink coffees, we all go through drive throughs there's rain, there's snow, there's mass. This is a beautiful interior, but it has a a quality that makes it feel like it's actually going to look pretty well. So I thought it was kind of cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:35  
Yeah, those those windows are, you know, they're part of that go part of what they call California mode, which is when you can tap one button on the steering wheel, or on the on the touchscreen I should say, for California mode, and it lowers all the windows, all four doors, plus those two quarter windows, the dog windows, the rear window and the rear tailgate and opens up the massive sunroof. So you get about as close as you're going to get to a convertible in this type of vehicle lot you know very open air feel to it. And the the screen it when you're driving the default for the screen is portrait mode. And when you're parked when you're sitting there waiting to charge, they call it Hollywood mode, you tap the button and the screen flips 90 degree Hollywood into into the landscape mode. So you can watch a movie watch your Netflix or whatever. So it's like I think it's a it's a nice solution. One thing I really like saw that I really appreciated his despite having the 17 inch touchscreen there. The the climate control buttons are actually physical, physical buttons. And so they're actually on a they're mounted just below the screen. So when the screen is in portrait mode and your normal driving mode, they they sit right at the bottom edge of the screen. And it looks like it's all one piece flowing down there. When you rotate the screen, the that strip of controls actually stays there. So you have physical controls that you can operate without looking at them that are always in the same location. And then other stuff for your your media and your navigation and everything. That's all in the touchscreen interface.

Roberto Baldwin  59:21  
Yay, climate controls that actual buttons are nice.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:26  
Absolutely. And then the other thing that's impressive about this car is the starting price, it's going to start at $37,500. You it'll be a while before you can get one at that price point. Because as usually the case these days, you know they're they're having a launch edition that option one that is fully loaded with all the goodies in it. And the first 5000 units they build will be these launch addition models. And then after that they'll introduce the lower trim levels and including The the the ocean sport, and the ocean sport will have a 250 mile range and single motor is actually going to be front wheel drive rather than rear drive. And then all the other models are all dual motor with 340 to 350 mile ranges.

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:18  
I'm looking forward to this. I think there was a lot of excitement for it. I thought it was I think people were excited to see it and it you know, you hear so much about it. No, it's like a startup. It is not a startup, like everybody knows Fisker a little bit more than some of the other quote startups that are out there. So I think you're you have these expectations. And you're you have these hopes that okay, are they going to nail it? I think it, it looks good. I mean, none of us have done anything other than sit in it, get a good look at it, hear what they're saying. So, for all that, it really does look like it's gonna pull it off. I think it's gonna be kind of cool. When it finally does arrive. I'm hoping they do because I like what I see.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:54  
Yeah, well, I think a key part of that is the fact that they're working partnered very closely with Magna and Magna, the third largest automotive supplier in the world, is a major investor in the company. Magna is helping them with a lot of the engineering and they're also going to be doing the manufacturing at their plant in Austria at Magna Steyer in Austria. And Magnus Dyer has been doing contract manufacturing of vehicles, complete vehicles. For a lot of automakers for many, many for decades. They build the Mercedes Benz G Wagen. The Jaguar I pace they have in the past built the MINI Countryman, I don't know if they still do, I think they've moved that maybe the Supra. They do build the Supra and the Supra. Yeah. And they build a number of other vehicles there too. So cars that you like, you build. Absolutely. So they, they know how to put cars together, they there, they are familiar with the process of managing supply chains, getting parts into the factory and, and putting them together in the right sequence so that everything stays together. They also know how to paint cars.

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:04  
Car, yeah, they, they know what they're doing over at the magnet, the magnet folks?

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:09  
It really is. As we're joking about this, that is a big thing. Because when you have, you know, a startup and you're trying to decipher the one that we're picking on is, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:18  
we're not picking on anybody or we know,

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:20  
I think that's just an issue with startups because you have to learn how to do what you're doing. Yeah. And that's the thing, but like, it's not easy to build on the cars,

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:26  
a new idea, we want to build a car, we haven't actually built a car, or we have very little experience building a car, like go with somebody who knows what they're doing. And I think that's, you know, that's it a solid way, and it makes you feel like, okay, well, you were smart enough to say, we shouldn't just build this us we should go to somebody who you know, does this kind of thing. That's a that's a sound business decision. And it makes you feel good about the decisions they're making where you can kind of say, Okay, well, that was one good except this, you know, decision. Let's see, there were very many more made throughout the course of the, you know, development. So we'll see how it goes, it gives you

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:58  
the opportunity is if you if your car or your auto, you know, your company starts doing really, really well and you start going to scale, you can still have a company building your car, while you're building your own factory, or buying a factory or retrofitting a factory or doing whatever, you know, as you're, as you're scaling up your company, it's going to be small to begin, you're going to be making a few 100 cars. You know, as but as you bet, while that's happening, you don't have to wait for a factor you don't have to wait for you know, somebody go out and find you know, it gives you the opportunity to have you not the tool factory.

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:30  
And make sure that you got it and make sure everything is going the way you think it goes. And then it's going to make the money think it's going to make and go okay, now let's do this ourselves. Yeah. With your expertise on hand. Let's continue to do this ourselves.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:42  
Yeah. Okay. Next up. Tesla had a server outage this week, was it. This is not the first time this has happened or not the first time that Tesla owners have had challenges getting into their cars. Tesla for a long time has offered the ability to use your cell phone, use your smartphone, as a key to get in your car and to start the car. And this this has been a problem in the past. Sometimes. I've seen stories in the past where Tesla owner has gone out somewhere to go for a hike, you know, on the side of a mountain. And there's somewhere outside of cell phone range. And one of the ways. Tesla's had a number of ways to use the phone as a key. Most of the the newer ones all use either Bluetooth Low and yeah, they're using Bluetooth low energy. So your phone has to be on and then it connects to the car by Bluetooth unlocks it and you can start the car. But some of the older stuff. Some models in the past have required a cellular connection. So your phone actually goes up to To the Tesla's server, and then the Tesla server sends a signal to your car to unlock and let you start the car. Well, I guess, Tesla had a data center problem this week, for a while. And a lot of Tesla owners could not get into their cars, because they only had their phone and they didn't have, you know, the regular key fob or anything, and they were unable to get in the cars. And what, what interesting, just to see earlier today, or maybe it was yesterday, actually, Matt Hardegree, who was formerly the editor in chief of Jalopnik, I can't remember what he's doing right now. But he, he reposted a story or a tweet from earlier this year, like back in May, that was posted, it was tweeted by somebody who's a Tesla fan. And that, that tweet, showed a picture of when President Biden went to the Ford test track in May, when they were revealing the the F 150. Lightning. And you can see on the door of the F 150. It still has the the keypad that Ford has been offering on their cars as a way to unlock your car since the 1980s. And it was basically it was basically, you know, poking fun at you know, Ford having this, you know, this old school technology, stolen cars, you know, and it could be using, you know, phone as a keypad, or phone as a key. And four does offer that on most of their newer cars, they have phone as a key using the same basic approach that Tesla uses Bluetooth, le. But the reason why they keep that keypad on there, that they explained, is you know, if your phone dies, your battery dies, you can still get into the car, you know, even if you don't have sure your key fob on you do five, five digit code and get into your car, and then you can plug in your phone and charge it up and get it going again and then use your phone as a key or you in fact, you can even do it without without the phone at all. You can you can set up a PIN code in the car on the touchscreen. So you start to press the start button, punch in your code and it'll start the car. The

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:15  
tweet did not age well is what it comes down to. And I this is i and I'm we're not picking on Tesla because this is a problem it's not picking on when you actually have a real problem where if you if your if your phone is a keys system, we choirs pinging a server, that's, that's a bad system, because there are going to be people who are off to we're going to be off the grid with their Tesla's and suddenly realize they're not going to be able to get into their vehicles. If there's a server error, that should not be a reason why I can't get into my car. But I think a lot of other automakers if they're doing the same thing that also require some sort of pinging of a server in order to to authenticate the user, you need to fix that, because there are secure they're secure elements in modern day cell phones that allow you to have a nice secure encrypted connection between the phone and whatever other thing you know, it has to connect to so so use that How about that? How about just use the technology that's available? To do that? I I'm always nervous with the phone when I when I draw the i x they only gave me a phone they didn't give me a key so that's all I know. And it was fine. It worked out fine. But it was also very controlled. They knew where I was driving you know I had a route you know I you know I wasn't looking at the phone constantly to see whether or not I was you know connected to any sort of cell coverage. But it's I'm still i are keys that bulky are they that bad is that as that become a problem? That's my other point. That I understand. So there's there are portions in life where I think you know, a key is gonna suck surfing is a huge thing for me. Because modern day keys are just full of electronics. I can't you know, you on your, if you surf on your wetsuit, there's usually a pocket with a little thing you can tie your foot your key to that way you're out surfing you come in you pull your key out, you unlock your car, you can't you can't do that you don't want to you know maybe put a key full of saltwater 45 minutes an hour. So there are like Jaguar has like a wristband of some sort like I fit wristband.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:24  
I think it's an NFC, I think it's got an NFC tag in it. Yeah. And there's

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:27  
like little cards that you can use. I think the cards are probably a better solution than than the phone. I think the phone is just like, hey, look what you could do with your phone and then suddenly, you can't

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:39  
carry your key, which is yea big. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:44  
Some pretty big keys.

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:45  
There are some big keys out there.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:47  
Like if you don't have enough room to store your key. What makes you think you're gonna have enough room to store your foot like a space thing, you know?

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:54  
Yeah, yeah, it's it's, uh, yeah, anyway, so if you're doing this and you're an automaker and you're not learning from what just happened to tell And if Tesla is not learning how to fix this year, you're failing your, your fail this should, this should be a wake up call to everyone. Because there's potential, you know, there's some I didn't, I haven't seen a reports of someone who like really needed to get in their car because you know, maybe someone got hurt are, you know, if you're on a job site, and your f150 won't load, but you know, the, let's say didn't have the key, the the keypad because you decide to use your phone as a key. That's a bad bad scene. And then we found out there's a lot of like, really weird things about phone as a key that I'm just always like, yeah, I guess you could do it. I mean, it's cool.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:38  
Like sounds cool. But you're like in practice? There's some holes in that thought.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:43  
Yeah. Well, if and even when it works, it's usually it's, it's every time I've ever used it. It's been slower and less reliable than just pushing

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:52  
the button on your key. Yeah. Without even me load an app or I got the hold it and you wait a few seconds.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:59  
Yeah, even most of the modern ones, you don't even have to push the button. You don't even have to take the key out of your pocket or purse, you can just walk up to the car and you know, grab the handle and it opens it unlocks. Yeah, just like my wife's car, or our Honda Civic. When you walk away from the car, once you get 10 feet away from the car, or even less than that, I think is about 10 feet. It locks the doors automatically. So you don't you don't even have to think about locking the doors. You'll as you walk away, you'll hear hear the horn, beep and you know that it's locked.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:33  
In modern cars. They almost all buttered cars now have that thing where you walk up to it and unlock and it's it's so prevalent that I when I walk up to my br Z or my ex type, I forget that I had to take the key out of my pocket and push a button. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:47  
Ford Maverick owners like what's going on in Africa owners will get used to that again, because those the least on the XL and XL T still have to use the it's actually a physical key. There's no it's not a push button start.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:58  
Rad. Well, you put it in and turn it. Yeah, yeah. See now you know, your key is? Certainly Yeah, you don't lose the key or you don't have any air pockets in there. It's like the best, the best storage for your key is the ignition.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:12  
Yeah. Unless you have an older GM car, in which case,

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:18  
then it's the next best storage for your key is now on the ground because the ignition.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:24  
Alright, we have some listener questions. Let's try to get through these. We actually got quite a few of them this week. Ooh,

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:31  
I didn't scroll down. That's a lot. First up.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:36  
Ulay Jay from Twitter. I'm not sure mangling that. But anyway, what are the odds that Ford would offer the Raptor recoil spring suspension and the F 150. Platinum or limited trims?

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:51  
I don't see why they would

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:52  
want yeah. Because if you want, then you're going to want more than what you're going to get over. Like, why would you put that with those trucks? Because, yeah, just that one piece. I think you'd want the other stuff that comes along with that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:03  
Yeah, I would not entirely rule it out. Because like the lightning, for example, is also going to have a coil spring rear suspension. It's it's certainly possible. More likely, it'll be in the next generation F 150, which is probably about three years away. 2424 25 timeframe? You know, that's probably when you'll see them adopt recoils. It's certainly, you know, if they think that, you know, the owner, the customers for the platinum Unlimited, would want that extra ride comfort coils. They might well do it, but it's probably gonna happen in the next generation rather than this generation.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:44  
Yeah, I think it's more of okay, what now we have it permeated other portions of this lineup. And it makes it makes financial sense for us to put it on these other vehicles. It makes it easy, as opposed to like, you know, the Raptor and the lightning are going to be you know, those are those are still nice vehicles. When you're making the F 150. You're making, I don't know 70 billion of them. So yeah, as the wrapped as I think the lightning is gonna get as, as more and more people buy the lightning, then they're like, Okay, now we're getting these springs at this price. And let's, let's, let's, let's throw them on to these other vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:19  
Alright, Rusty Dusty 55 asked, how about a show on the mid to long term outlook for advancements in battery cost and efficiency? Well, that's a pretty long topic. And I don't think we're going to cover that one today. But we will do something on that coming up. Maybe I'll get a good battery expert to come on as a guest and we can grill grill that person on on the outlook for battery costs and efficiency.

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:45  
But I think the TLDR is they're going to get better. Lithium is going to be a wild round for a while people are going to make it incrementally better over time and then 510 years from now we'll probably get solid state and that'll be the next big jump. That's that's There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:01  
There's also some show. Yeah. Some interesting progress on lithium, sulfur and other stuff too. So we'll cover that in more detail on a future show. Brianna Wu asks, What do you all think of the new Cayman?

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:14  
Oh, we got to be careful. Good brand is super Porsche girl. Yes, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:17  
And she has a Cayman. According and she she's got a first gen Boxster, and a couple of nine elevens. So

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:27  
are we talking about the club sport the RS club sport that they just showed on

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:31  
the Jeep. There's the GT four Rs and the the club sport the club sports attract only model. But there's also the GT four Rs, which they had at the auto show it was unveiled at a separate event before the show. Did did you take a look at the GT four Rs?

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:49  
I did I did look at the GT four Rs. I am a fan of the Cayman GT 17 came in. I like the GT four. I was I think it Porsche showed a lot of cars, the four vehicles at 455 vehicles, five vehicles at the Auto Show. And yes, we are we were looking at the GT four Rs, we were looking at the Panamera GTS but really all anyone really cared about was the the icons the the electric TT icon, which is the Sport Turismo Yeah, yeah. The the Sport Turismo especially. Yeah. So anyway, the 70 TGT the DC four Rs. Um, I like you know, I really like the caiman a lot. And I'm gonna say this. It's it seems to boy racer to me, there we go. That's what I'm gonna say.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:48  
The GT four Rs or the caymanas

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:51  
GT four Rs, the GT four Rs, the regular came in, I like the regular game and the GT four Rs. I know why it's, I know why it has all the events and it has the wing and it has this and it has that. But I'm just I don't know, I'm, I would rather have it with. I like it without all this stuff on it. That's, you know, that's that's that's my it is it? You know, it looks sort of?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:19  
I don't know. Well, too, I think to help address it. Any any concerns that Briana has? I know Briana? Or any thoughts that she might have had about trading in her Cayman? On this one? I think all you really need to know is that the GT four Rs only comes with a PDK a dual clutch transmission. There's no manual transmission version of it, which I think will automatically disqualify it from being part of her mother's garage.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:49  
Oh, yeah. She's not a fan of anything. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:52  
Now she wants manuals only. So I think the, um, you know, I have no doubt that this is an excellent dual dual clutch transmission. Work PDK

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:05  
PDK. Is, is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. They know what they're doing over at the Porsche factories.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:11  
And do you know, cars or something? Yeah. And, you know, this thing has 493 horsepower. So it's the most powerful caiman yet. It's basically a street legal version of the Cayman GT for that you can run in like the, you know, some some of the GT for racing classes. You know, it's, it's basically it's a barely street legal racecar, essentially. Yeah. What it is, and it's the club sport is not certainly, it's only attract car.

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:45  
Yeah. I I don't know. I like the Cayman. I like the I. At some point. I'm like, alright, that's why I know why. But it's just it's too much. It's like the the STI remember the old STI with a giant wing? It's kind of like that, where you're just like, Okay, I know who's gonna buy this. But does it really, when we were driving when we had the type bar when it first came out? My wife was like, I really like this car, except for that thing on the back. Yeah. Whatever, that and I yeah, I mean, all this stuff that Porsche is putting all this stuff on there to make it quicker. It's it's, it's it's utilitarian. But also,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:28  
well, make it quicker and to separate the customers from more of their money.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:32  
Yes, exactly. I think, you know, people are like wild Porsches are really expensive and will drive a Porsche, you'll understand why every car costs as much as it does, because you get in it, you drive you're like, oh, yeah, this is worth that much money. You're right. You're right here. If I were rich, this would be the money I would be putting, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:52  
like a handful of Porsches. I feel like I have no opinion on this one because I don't get to drive them very often. So I'm like, I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:59  
It's been a long time. I got my hands on one, unfortunately. Oh, hopefully sometime soon again. All right, Andrew Pappas. Andy, I don't know if this is all Ofsted or not, but if it is, we're answering your question. What? What should a homeowner do to get ready for car charging at home? How should it set up be future proofed?

Roberto Baldwin  1:20:25  
i Okay. So if you if, if it makes sense financially for you, solar panels and a battery pack are and that's just like, overall, if it makes sense, like you can do, you can run the numbers and figure out how much sun you get, and blah, blah, blah, and whether or not it makes sense financially, if you're, if your energy bills are gonna be the same, and you're not, you know, you're you're like me, you live from paycheck to paycheck. Maybe not, maybe not. But that's, I mean, I think that just future proofing your home for a lot of things, but it also makes it so you know, your car is essentially being charged at night for free, thanks to the sun. But also, you know, look at how often you're going to be driving. And if you're going to be driving, if you're going to be pushing the limit of your vehicle on a regular basis, when it comes to range, maybe get like a level two charger, reach out to a electrician. So you can get a NEMA plug put in, see how much power you can, you know, get set up to that. And do that right now we are just plugging we just have our Kona plugged into the wall, just a regular old boring outlet. It it's not charging really quickly. It's charging very slowly at the I think we get for three and a half miles every hour added to the vehicle but essentially just goes to you know, essentially has a 20 mile range, you know 20 miles round trip drive every day. So it's not that big of a deal. We are planning on getting a level two charger at some point. But yeah, look at you know, there's unlike your gas car, we just like I bought a car. That's fine. But the EVS you gotta like okay, well how often am I driving? How far am I driving? Do I need to quicker charging if you need, if you're gonna be driving long distances on a regular, pretty regular basis, you want to use the car constantly. If it's like the main car, I think a level two charger would be a good addition to your home. And then if you're really going all in, again, solar panels and a battery pack of some sort would be pretty great. Because, again, free charging. I mean not free cuz you have to pay for all that crap.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:32  
Panels are not inexpensive solar thing. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:22:35  
yeah. But you also got like energy during the day for your home to you know if that's your thing you feel like having lights on?

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:42  
thing like you have to look and see like, depending you can go online and you can see it like is the angle the sun, the way your roof is versus the trees versus how much sun you get in your you know? Yeah, they can tell you how much you would save or you're going to spend more than

Roberto Baldwin  1:22:55  
Yes, I think the next 50 years Google has it, you can actually I think you can actually just do a search on Google and they'll tell you how well they

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:01  
haven't they have a tool, an online tool for that. Yeah, and the cool you've seen my house, you know, it's surrounded by trees. You know, I can't really do solar here.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:11  
Yeah, see, if you like we have we are we have a garage that is on the southern part of our house and as a flat roof. We are essentially like there's no trees, we're almost we're right near the top of a hill. So nothing's gonna get in our way. So we are kind of set up perfectly for solar we just pulled a trigger

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:33  
I practically live in a forest for for what it's worth

squared gets charged. It's great in the summertime because we have this giant maple in the front keeps you cool all the shade. Yeah, so it keeps the house like a good 1015 degrees cooler in the summertime. But it also means you can't really make use of solar. But yeah, I agree with you, I would say you know the at a bare minimum. Now, you know, I would consider getting a 240 volt outlet installed in your garage with a NEMA 1450 plug on it. So that's that's basically just a standard dryer plug. Because most newer EVs are actually coming with charging cords that support 240 volt as well as 120 volt outlets. So they've just got interchangeable tips on them. So you know if you're just using a standard household outlet, you can put that on there and you'll get the your three three and a half miles per hour of charging. And then if you have that if you have one of those cords and you put on the 240 volt plug on it, you can plug that in, you don't have to have a wall box, you can just plug right in. So all you need to do is just get make sure you have one of those outlets by your garage or you know, somewhere outside your by where it's accessible from your driveway. And you know that that will chart, you know, you'll charge the car a lot faster. And also, you'll actually end up using less electricity because the, the onboard AC chargers on EVs are generally optimized for 240 volts. And so they, you know, when they're running on 120, they're less efficient and doing that power conversion. And so to get the same amount of energy into the battery, you'll actually be drawing more energy from the from the utility, so it'll actually cost you a little more to charge from 120, even though it's slower. So it's probably if you can, it's probably worth considering getting a 240 volt outlet. The other thing to consider as well, you know, talk about future proofing, you know, in most cases, you know, those 240 volt outlets, they're usually a 4030, or 40 amp circuit from your breaker panel. If you're thinking about something like, you know, like a full electric pickup truck, or big van, like an F 150. Lightning, you might want to consider getting an 80 amp circuit put in there, you know, that adds a little more oomph. But if you if you do that, you know, now you can charge, you know, at, like from a standard 40 amp circuit, you can charge it like 10, or 11 kilowatts, from an 80 amp circuit, you can charge at 19.2 kilowatts, and you know what the big batteries that are going to be in these big trucks, you'll definitely want that faster charging capability. And so that's, that's something to consider for future proofing. Beyond that, you know, the, you know, the solar and having a backup battery is is definitely something to consider if it if it's something that works at your location.

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:42  
Oh, also check with your you your local utility, because we can set up our utility, I haven't done it because that's what the VIN number in and I'm like, wait, what's the VIN number of the car and then I'm like, Ah, the hell with it. But you can set up sometimes your local utility you have, you can get a special rate, if you have an Eevee if you promise to charge it, like, you know, essentially, if you charge it in the middle of the night, and then all the charging, you know, you get it, we're probably going to charge box. But a lot of those sorts of capabilities of a charge box are also just built into the car like only charges between midnight and like 6am, you program

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:13  
it right from the touch screen, or from the app for when you want it to charge. The other thing too, is another good reason to check with your utility is a lot of times they will have special programs where you can get that the the charge box the wall box for free. Or you get a rebate. Yeah, full rebate, you know, so you buy it, and then they give you the money back. When you get that when you get it installed. So, you know, get get the outlet installed. And then, you know, check with your utility on the wallbox. And you may be able to get that free of charge.

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:45  
Yeah, there's a lot of things you can get when you get an Eevee. It's just there's a lot of like, research and paperwork. I've alluded we, DMV just kicked back our car. So that wasn't, wasn't available for the kalff. The Clean Air decal, because it wasn't on the list is like oh, your car isn't on the list. It's called the Kona electric. And then I looked and I looked at the list. I looked at the list and it's on the list. I'm just like, Ah, so this very nice woman from DMV called me. And she said, Okay, here's the number. She's like, call them before you send it back, just to you know, make sure everything's fine. She's like, because they were looking they're like, Oh, you have you tried to? Is this an old car like it's a brand new car. It had like 12 miles when we bought it, no one else has set it up. So it's especially now with you know, there's a lot of things they're kind of running slow. But once you get it all set up, it's great. But yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:37  
All right. From Coach Cabrera what plug in hybrid SUV, would you recommend that's not considered luxury.

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:46  
Hyundai something or other Santa Fe. What's the Hyundai? Is

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:51  
it available yet? The Santa Fe plugin? I know it's coming. I don't know. I don't think it's out yet. I think I don't think it's on sale yet in the new year. Yeah, that one's that one's probably a really good choice. The other one, you know of stuff you can buy right now. Assuming you can find it on dealer a lot. I would say probably the the best choices are the Toyota rav4. Pronto, yeah. And the or the Ford Escape plug in hybrid, either of those will get you about 40 miles of electric driving range. Also, you know, if you if you are hauling kids around, she's hauling more than more than a couple of people around. Definitely consider the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid, which is a plug in hybrid. You get about oh yeah, four miles of range. And you know, minivans are always an excellent choice if you're hauling kids around. And you know, that one is very efficient. And you know, it's a great plug in hybrid.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:49  
I can't remember I don't know the range on I'm trying to look up there. No, no, I the one I was seeing, and I know that nobody likes Mitsubishis roll they get but the Highlander I mean, the Outlander, the PA GeV they have a plug in hybrid Outlander.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:02  
They're actually yeah, actually, like,

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:05  
I remember the afforded me thinking, Boy, this is really affordable for this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:08  
Oh, yeah, it's really that was for the those for the old generation one. Yeah, it's

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:13  
not the new generation. It's the old generation. It's essentially the vehicle they introduced in Europe, like a year and a half ago or two years ago. But you can get an Outlander plug in hybrid. I will say, if you're looking at a at a Toyota prime, the rav4 prime, I was looking them up when we were looking at cars just to sort of, you know, see, there is a there was a $10,000 dealer markup, the cheapest one I found was $7,000 dealer market. So you know, the the shortage and blah, blah, you know, all the things that we already know about buying a car right now was really it's it's a tough time to buy a car if you don't have to buy a car. Maybe don't buy a car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:50  
But yeah, especially in California for those Yeah. Demand for me. Yeah, yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:55  
it was it was I was like

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:58  
that it's crazy expensive to get the that right now, that's not the first person I've heard say that. So yeah, it's how desperately you want it.

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:05  
Their first year, they were already going to be short. I spoke to Toyota last year. 5000. Yeah, they're like, Oh, we're not gonna have enough this year. And I'm like, what? They're like, yeah, we're not making enough and then everything fell. And then of course, the the chips shortage. They're like, Oh, no, now we're really not making enough and it's, it's the rav4 prime, it's a good you know, it's it's a it's Toyota, they, you know, they may be slow on battery electrics, but they are killing it with the hybrids, and they know what they're doing over there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:33  
Yeah. The, the new Outlander plug in hybrid, which was just announced in late October, is not launching here until the second half of 2022. I'm not sure if they're still selling the old Outlander plugin. But if they are, you can usually get pretty good deals on those. I mean, it's yeah, it's not an especially modern vehicle. It's been around for a while, but you can you can get pretty decent deals on I think

Nicole Wakelin  1:31:58  
it's not like it's just like amazing. But I always felt like it was a pretty good value for what you're getting.

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:05  
Yeah, you'll be the only person on your block with a with a Outlander. Yeah. That's kind of cool, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:12  
Absolutely. All right, last one from Ben chambers. I know most if not all electric vehicles retested regular 12 volt lead acid battery, I understand that many vehicle accessories require 12 volt power. But wouldn't it be simpler to use a converter to simply step down the voltage for these devices, instead of using a whole separate battery system? I'm sure they must already use a converter to keep the lead acid battery charged anyway, this seems very logical place to simplify and cut weight. Thanks for a great show. Yeah, I mean, all EVs still have, you know, they have multi voltage, in many cases, electrical systems, including a 12 volt circuit, you know, because most of the traditional accessories, you know, things like the, all the computers and the the things like Power windows and locks, those motors, you know, those are all designed to run at 12 volts. You know, a lot of the vehicle systems operate at 12 volts or less. And so they, they keep the 12 volt circuit in there, because they haven't redesigned all of those components for high voltage. And so they do have a DC to DC converter that steps down from the usually somewhere around 400 volts down to 12 volts. I think the reason why they keep the battery in there is to basically act as a buffer, you know, for the times, you know, depending on what the state of charge of the the high voltage battery is, and, you know, to make sure you can do things like unlock the doors, you know, start up the computers

Nicole Wakelin  1:33:51  
worry about that. I mean,

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:52  
yeah, well, the nice redundant system.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:55  
Yeah. And, you know, the, the, the computers, you know, that, you know, handle your battery management system for that high voltage battery, those are running as low voltage, they're running at 12 volts or less. And so, you know, before you can start the car, you actually have to have 12 volts, you know, available. And so that battery gives you that 12 volts to power everything up, and then you can actually start the car. And this is why, you know, some manufacturers have had issues at various times, like, Ford had a problem with the machi. Early on with some of them, the 12 volt battery was dying. Tesla's had problems with that at various times with the 12 volt batteries dying prematurely. And, you know, when that battery dies, you know, you're basically dead. It's just like

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:42  
your regular it's just like your gas car. If the battery's dead, you can't make it turn over. You can't turn over the car is Yeah, but yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:50  
I suspect at some point, we will get to a stage where where they don't use that anymore. They don't need that battery in there anymore. They'll have redesigned some of the things seems to run at high voltage. But for now, you're still gonna have that that battery, the 12 volt battery in there somewhere.

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:08  
It's not that I mean, how much is a 12 volt battery weighs 30 pounds. I'm thinking about every time I pull one out and then go to the place where the core charge and you put it on the counters. Calm. You get the new

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:20  
30 pounds.

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:23  
Yeah, about 23 cents not too much. It's not a lot of weight. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:27  
Compared to, you know, 1000 1400 1500 pound high voltage battery. Yeah, that's Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:33  
It's like the weight of a small dog.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:39  
That's the weight of my dog.

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:40  
It's a bounce you go that's less than that. Oh, I think I think Nico is about 30 pounds now. She's crazy. She's got, she's got about 12 volts versus no, she's probably got about 400 volts versus worth of energy. And so Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:59  
I think all puppies of a play are pretty much high voltage, I

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:02  
think. Yeah, yes, exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:05  
They eventually get to a point just like a battery, they get to a point where that voltage starts to drop off. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:11  
There's battery degradation, which actually ends up being nice for after a while. You're like, okay, you don't need to be jumping at my face and looking. Take a deep breath there. Breed breed.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:24  
Alright, that is all the questions and topics I think we have for today. Anything else you want to mention before we go?

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:33  
Happy Thanksgiving?

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:35  
Yeah, yes, it is. Yeah. If this goes up before that, there you go. Do that. Yeah, it'll be a

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:42  
slacker. I hope you have a good Thanksgiving. We'll see.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:45  
Oh, Sam on the spot. No. He's awesome. Enjoy your time with friends or family if that's what you're doing? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:53  
absolutely. Turkey Day. Alright. Don't forget to go for a walk after the turkey.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:59  
For a while I bye