Sam Abuelsamid  0:01  
Coming up on episode 223 of wheel bearings, the hot Audi RS6 avant a couple of plug in hybrids from BMW and Lincoln, Android automotive in the 2022 Chevrolet Tahoe, the Subaru Forester wilderness, Nissan's upcoming electric vehicle plans, the new Genesis G 90, Ford and GM and chips comm All that and more coming up next.

This is episode 230 223 wheel bearings get a little bit ahead of myself there. I am Sam Abuelsamid of guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:45  
I am Nicole Wakelin with true car

Roberto Baldwin  0:49  
and I am Roberto Baldwin with TechCrunch.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:53  
And Nicole, what have you been driving around in?

Nicole Wakelin  0:56  
Well, I was driving around in a vehicle and I've actually driven before so it's kind of like, take two but instead of just on a drive program, I'm actually getting to drive it around the neighborhood I had the all new 2022 Subaru Forester wilderness which I drove maybe about a month ago or so out in Bend, Oregon, and we got to take it do a little off roading, which was super fun. But now I had it like really honestly, in a more everyday circumstances. I mean, I had this Thanksgiving week. So I ferried my kids around in it, I buried my mom around in it, I carried a lot of pumpkin pie and leftover turkey in it. So I had a week to sort of live with this car. It is through the off roadie version of what's already a little bit of an offer the car it is priced at I just lost the price. Yeah, I'll find it in a second. But it adds in a little extra ground clearance, it adds a little X protection. It has 17 inch wheels, all terrain tires, it has a sprint skid plate, and it can tow up to 3000 pounds. It's got water resistant seating surfaces. So it's like you're a little you're slightly more capable version of your forester, which you could I mean, it's not like you're gonna go rock crawling in this, but you can actually do a little bit of off roading in it. And now that I found the pricing, the wilderness starts at 32 820. So it's about $33,000. So it's not crazy expensive. It's not like you're having to move up and pay an exorbitant amount more where the bass term starts at 25. So you're it's it's a jump, but it's a reasonable jump.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:35  
You can it's well below the average selling price of new cars today, which is the last I saw was about 41,000 now

Nicole Wakelin  2:42  
exactly. So it's like you're moving up like within the forester lineup. Yeah, you're you're paying more you can get the cheapest forester for 25 but for 32 you can get this and that doesn't sit at the top of the lineup. There's still the limited and there's still the touring, which actually come in higher because they get basically like an upgraded interior. If you want the fancy if you want it to be like the more elegant Can you can a Subaru be a weird Subaru standard Yeah, by Super standards. If you want the elegant Subaru you can go with a limited for 32 or for the touring at 35 and get you know, fancier speakers that kind of thing. But the wilderness is in the middle at 32 A two Oh 9.2 inches of ground clearance. So you can actually drive over we did some not super rugged. We weren't rock crawling, but we managed some uneven terrain marine Oregon and it handles it well. But getting to drive it around for a week of just living with it like to the grocery store, taking the family around taking the kids here and there. It's a very it's a very livable very comfortable vehicle. It's easy. And it's you don't worry about worrying in the interior. I had somebody who said to me Oh, he said I have a dog he messaged me on Twitter and said I have a dog and does that have the extra protection for the dog? Or is it's you know enough that you could you could just put your pets in there and not worry about it. And I'm like well it you know has it's a Subaru. It's got a pretty

Roberto Baldwin  4:04  
carrier. Literally made for dog. It's

Nicole Wakelin  4:07  
made for dogs the fact that there's a human behind the wheel, they're like, Oh, well I guess we have to do that. But it's like it's made for dogs. So I really truly wouldn't be worried about putting my dog either within somebody's paws. If you're super anal about how clean your car stays get a cover to cover it so you'd have to worry about little claws or muddy footprints. But this is it. A relatively rough and ready crossover SUV. I guess you call it an SUV technic compact SUV, so I feel like it's a good choice. I am a fan of it. I think for the pricing and for what it does. It's great. I we were supposed to get snow. I was really hoping we get some decent

Roberto Baldwin  4:43  
snow button.

Nicole Wakelin  4:44  
Yes. Yeah. couldn't use the snow button because I'm fine. And the amount of snow we got was an amount of snow where you'd like to win. Is that frost?

Roberto Baldwin  4:52  
Oh yeah, the second guessing. Guess if it's

Nicole Wakelin  4:55  
rolling. I'm like that's not enough to use a snow button. That's not enough to you gage X mode and fully put this, I could not engage the X mode. So I talked about this one on the show before because I believe I talked about it during the when I did the first drive. So it sort of just reinforced what I what I learned out there is that you know, it's a good price is a good vehicle. It's a tough vehicle, it's good for the outdoorsy, active lifestyle, so that you don't have to feel like it's so delicate inside that you're going to ruin things. The first time you toss in a pair of muddy boots, or your dog runs through with muddy paws, or your kids are just kids because they're, I don't know, they just breed mess everywhere. Kids go

Roberto Baldwin  5:35  
children, children, cheese.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:40  
Dogs are definitely better.

Nicole Wakelin  5:41  
Dogs are definitely easier to deal with children.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:45  
And they don't expect to go to college or anything like that. No,

Nicole Wakelin  5:48  
I don't expect you to pay 1010s of 1000s of dollars to educate them. I mean, my daughter's going to school and spit writing checks for 10 grand every so many months. My daughter just paid $500 And he's all trained we're good, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  6:00  
see 500 tuition way easier

Nicole Wakelin  6:03  
for that tuition costs no no need to fill out FAFSA forms and get student loans at all. So

Roberto Baldwin  6:08  
none of that. I drove that that out the the Outback wilderness a few weeks ago and it's great. I really liked it. I like yeah, it's the ground clearance is nearly that of a G Wagen.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:21  
And so it's actually slightly more than what you get, you know, in Ford's Bronco sport, which is you know, they're supposedly off road rugged, compact utility. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  6:32  
The Broncos sport. I always think of it as a baby Bronco, but it doesn't fit. I know it's done some pretty rugged stuff. I mean, that they ran that thing in the rebel and they won but it's, I don't think I would really off road in that. It's like as a rule.

Roberto Baldwin  6:47  
It's it's a it's a it's more of a it's not. It's more like a fraternal twin where one of the twins got like all the cool, like athletics and the other ones Danny DeVito. And

Nicole Wakelin  6:59  
the family. Bronco is Arnold's and the Bronco sport is Danny DeVito

Roberto Baldwin  7:05  
Yeah, but Danny DeVito Danny DeVito has got a lot of great you know, he's, you know, Dan indivudal he's a he's a great actor. He's hilarious. He's a nice guy. There's nothing wrong with Danny

Sam Abuelsamid  7:16  
Rocco. Rocco sport is a perfectly nice little utility.

Roberto Baldwin  7:19  
It is way better than the escape which it's based on. Don't buy the escape by the bronc. If you're looking at the escape, I want you to stop. And I want you to go over and look at the Bronco sport. Stop it right but also cross shop it with the Outback wilderness because you could I like the fact that it's like waterproof or water resistant, and you just you can just have filthy things in there.

Nicole Wakelin  7:40  
Well, I love that I'm assuming it's probably the same water resistant fabric that's in the forest or whatever it is. It doesn't look cheesy and cheap and cheap. When you first glance at it, you're like, Oh, what is like you notice that it's not really leather but y'all it looks

Roberto Baldwin  7:56  
clever. It doesn't. It doesn't look cheap and cheap imitate neoprene it doesn't look like a like a wetsuit. Remember, though, you put like wetsuit on your seats back in the 90s. That was, that was a bad seat. That

Nicole Wakelin  8:08  
was a bad idea. But though this it's actually a material that looks. It's durable, but it looks nice. That's the cool thing about a Subaru. It never looks. It's always durable. It always holds up to whatever you throw at it. But it never looks like it's only goal is just to preserve itself. It's like I'm going to look good doing this. You throw the mud on me. It's okay. But I don't look like it's just like it's not like, you know, the plastic that your great grandma put over the couch. So the couch like that. That in some cars. You're like, Oh, you've done the plastic couch thing. This one you're like, No, no, no, no, you're letting me sit on the couch. The couch is just gonna hold up. Excellent.

Roberto Baldwin  8:44  
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:46  
We actually have a question from a listener later that's related to this topic. So we'll we'll come back to seek coverings later on in the show. Alright, anything else on the forest or wilderness?

Nicole Wakelin  9:00  
Now that covers it? Also? Oh, no, it doesn't. So it's technically bronze trim. And someone got mad at me because I said it looked orange is kind of an orangey. Bronze. I know this already orange accents. And it's like burnished bronze or something. It's kind of orangey guys.

Roberto Baldwin  9:15  
It really looks orange. Yeah, I

Nicole Wakelin  9:17  
was like, you're kind of blind. That is not bronze. That's not orange. I'm like, it's kinda orange. As I'm sitting here staring at it.

Roberto Baldwin  9:25  
It looks orange. If someone doesn't tell you it's bronze. You're like oh, look at that orange trim, though. Don't be don't be pedantic people about color.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:33  
Yeah, what he said. Different people see color in different ways. So yeah, that's true. seconds.

Roberto Baldwin  9:41  
That idea dog seconds. Yeah, she doesn't see color in any way we do. But he knows what we're talking about. Nico. All right.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:51  
Roberto, what have you been in?

Roberto Baldwin  9:54  
I have been in two actually three, but two that I will well one of them's a motorcycle First I want to talk about the Okay, so whenever we get cars, we're always like, there's there's an expectation of what the car is going to be. And sometimes the hype sort of over you know, it's it's a lot of vehicles don't live up to the hype, especially when you get the press release and you're like, oh, and you drive you're like, Okay, well, they got 80% there, which is actually pretty good. You know? 20% just, you know, hyperbole. To last Tuesday, I got the Audi RS six avant,

Sam Abuelsamid  10:32  
does it live up to the hyperbole?

Roberto Baldwin  10:33  
It does live up to the hyperbole. I love that. It's very expensive. It is it? I feel like the price has changed since since the last time I looked at it. It starts at Oh, yeah, hold on everyone. Sit down. Breed $116,500 Oh, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, it is a lot of money for a station wagon. Guide. But and so it's it's a station

Sam Abuelsamid  11:04  
wagon. It's obviously worth it.

Roberto Baldwin  11:07  
It is it is I feel like it is where it is worth it because you get it. As soon as you sit down and there are their cars again, you sit into use you sit and be like, Oh, this is very nice. This is Oh, he said I sat in the car. This is I got that. This is very nice. This is exactly what this card is used to be. It's very utilitarian, because it's a wagon. But it's also insane. It's like a supercar and the in a station wagon like got married and this is their first child this is their like, this is the one that's that's going to you know, that's that's got all the AP classes but also is like the king of the captain of the whatever came

Sam Abuelsamid  11:49  
what would it be fair to say that this is the car that the Cadillac CTS V Sportwagon wanted to be?

Roberto Baldwin  11:57  
Yes, yes, yes. No, that's I like that wagon. CTS V wagon, but it is it is not that they aren't I Yeah. All Wheel Drive, you know as the quatro system. It's it hold on my closest store because dog

Nicole Wakelin  12:17  
My dog is sound asleep in my arms.

Roberto Baldwin  12:20  
He's absolutely all day she's quiet. Alright, here we go to the podcast,

Nicole Wakelin  12:23  
my arm will be completely asleep.

Roberto Baldwin  12:27  
This if if you were looking if you're somebody who wants something fast, and but you also need utility used to have kids, you still have to drag stuff around. But you don't want to look like absolutely everyone else on the road and you have some money. You can get you know, a GL whatever, you can get a BMW X, whatever. Or you can get the RS six Avants and be the coolest mom and or dad at school. Because it looks amazing. I had a millennial come up to me and say it looked amazing. I had a boomer come up to me and said it looked amazing. It's crossing the multi generational. Say it was amazing. I'm Gen X and Gen X doesn't talk about anything and we would rather be we would rather be loving we would rather be left alone Gen X is like you guys do what you do. Just leave us alone. We got we got we got stuff to take care of. It looks amazing. But when you're on the freeway, you're driving, you're maybe going a little too fast. Cops not gonna notice that you know why? Cuz you're a station wagon.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:38  
I have loved the look of the Audi station wagons like the mid side, the upper mid sized Audi station wagons front since when I think the late 80s mid to late 80s When the original 5000 avant came out. Because it always had that that sloped rear window, you know, so it was wagon, but it still had you look at it. It's like oh yeah, there's a little little sporty or look in the near average wagon and it's always had great proportions. And then you know, up to this one, you know, the RS six, you've got the, the LIDAR fenders and everything to go with that. And then of course, you know, the powertrain.

Roberto Baldwin  14:19  
It's that VA the giant va 591 horsepower, 590 pound feet of torque, zero to 60 and 3.5 seconds. And a station wagon. I'm just gonna keep saying Rs mode, you tap RS mode twice. It turns off the traction control your stability control. It you can get it you can get it sideways, you can break it, you can break the back end that not that. Not that I would do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:48  
No responsible auto journalist would ever do that. I heard you've heard. He read the manual. I read the manual. It says it says in the manual. Yeah. TFM

Roberto Baldwin  14:59  
If it's available 21 or 22 inch wheels, but really just you just take up the entire wheel well if there's a 22 on there, it it looks fantastic. It's comfortable. It's nice to drive and has all the regular Audi accouchement. So it's very luxurious inside. It just, I am. I feel like I'm gushing over this vehicle. And this car, I do if I were rich, and I had lots of money. It would be a tough sell. But it'd be a tough decision between this and the new sport. Tie con sport, Turismo. I love the tie John. Well, you know what, let's just go all the way I am very rich and I have to

Nicole Wakelin  15:54  
That's it used to make compromises I refuse

Roberto Baldwin  15:56  
to make compromises one of each one of each. The I'll let the dogs decide which one they want to go into dark pocket. So that's that's one car I drove this week. What else did I drive

Sam Abuelsamid  16:08  
well, and you and your wife could trade up, you know, from the Conant, you know, get rid of the Kona Evie and she could drive the icon Sport Turismo to work. Yeah. Boom, done,

Roberto Baldwin  16:19  
I think we saw was still driving an Eevee. still the number one cards being driven in the house is still an Eevee. So we're still feeling good about what we're doing. I think the dogs to the dog park. In the end, the RS six. Everyone's happy. I could go to the Home Depot and pick up mulch. I could if I went to Costco, I could do that. There's only two of us. I don't know I

Nicole Wakelin  16:43  
have a truck to get mulch. You're allowed to get mulch in a

Roberto Baldwin  16:45  
wagon get that is the beauty of anything. All the fun of a truck without as your stuff getting stolen because someone just reached in and grabbed it

Sam Abuelsamid  16:54  
would have been perfect on Saturday when I had to go to Lowe's to get a supply line for my new dishwasher. The RS six would have been the perfect vehicle for that trip.

Roberto Baldwin  17:05  
Boom perfect. Everything about the RS six is perfect. Wow. Everything is perfect. Well I mean not everything's perfect.

Nicole Wakelin  17:17  
See y'all know Robbie for Christmas. So

Roberto Baldwin  17:21  
if you're if you want to buy me a Christmas presents you're not Audi I don't want a car from from an automaker. Don't get me stuff. Yeah, RDR six, I also drove another car, which was not quite as exciting. I drove the BMW three, three D, I'm doing a review for digital trends. For this vehicle, it is the plug in hybrid three series. They have a they have the reroll drivers and and they have the X Drive all wheel drive. I had the rear wheel drive version, I will say it is 90% good. There's a weird, there's a there's a weird 10% Not so good. And that is when you're in hybrid mode. Sometimes when you take off it like it just go like kind of jerks forward. And it did. My wife it turned to talk to me. And I hit her head up because like I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that. It didn't happen a lot. It doesn't happen every time. Every once in a while the hybrid systems like alright, let's go when you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And it's not enough for you like you jerk forward and then you're just like flying. It's like jerk forward and then you just sort of move into the

Nicole Wakelin  18:36  
apologize to your wife for snapping her head forward.

Roberto Baldwin  18:40  
Every once in a while. It does that which is like okay, that's weird. But if you put an Eevee mode doesn't do it put in sport mode doesn't do it. It's in hybrid at some point I think we live like the stoplight near our houses on a hill. So maybe that was I don't know so but for the most part though, it's like $1,500 More than the gas only version both for the X Drive and for the rear wheel drive. And I'm like well why would you get the gas version? This is it's it's you know when you get to when you when you factor in any sort of incentives I think it's about a little over 5004 federal incentives for this plus any local and state incentives you might get just anti hybrid maybe maybe but you get 20 miles of range and Evie mode which I got 19.8 in my test which include me like doing 70 on the freeway and stomping on the gas and like doing real world like mixed driving. It has I think it's 5.6 or 60 It's both vehicles it has more power than the other than the other vehicle but it has the it has the same zero to 60 time just because

Nicole Wakelin  19:49  
they were saying it gets what you say the range was 20 miles or 20 minutes okay I saw something come up and Twitter and I need to ask both you guys that. He said that he that plugin Hybrid's should not be allowed to charge at public like charging stations because it should be reserved only for actual

Roberto Baldwin  20:08  
Oh, yeah, there was another journalist I forget who it was.

Nicole Wakelin  20:11  
Yeah, I remember who was leaving,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:13  
you know, this was this was something that your day name, I think they should be allowed to charge their name up 10 years ago when the volt first came up?

Roberto Baldwin  20:24  
Yeah. It's, it's, I think it's fine. Because those public charges aren't especially the free ones. Like the blink, the way that the law is

Nicole Wakelin  20:32  
there, one that's not free, even if you're going to an Eevee go. Then your pain?

Sam Abuelsamid  20:37  
Yeah, you know, the thing thing with public, if you're going to plug in, if you're going to plug in a plug in hybrid at a public charger, I think there's there's some etiquette that we need to develop around these things. You know, if if there are two parking spaces where you can access the charger, and, you know, one is occupied by a plug in hybrid, and you're driving an Eevee. And you really, really, really need to charge I mean, you're, you're, you're empty, and you don't have an option to go somewhere else. You know, I think it's okay to unplug the the plug in hybrid because you know, it can it can go, you can unplug it, especially if it's if it looking off the lights, you can see from the Chargers indicator lights that you know that it's full, or you know,

Nicole Wakelin  21:24  
I would only unplug. I think I could only unplug if it was full otherwise, I would feel like I couldn't do I wouldn't I would be like,

Sam Abuelsamid  21:32  
well, I can still operate as a hybrid. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  21:36  
I feel like it's like, Well, I gotta like, I don't know, if it was full

Roberto Baldwin  21:41  
note, or they will note Hey, sorry, no, I would be living in for six days if

Sam Abuelsamid  21:48  
I need to charge my first generation leaf that only gets 55 miles on a charge now, my current

Nicole Wakelin  21:54  
generation Mazda CX 30,

Roberto Baldwin  21:58  
MX 3030, an MX 30, please help me.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:04  
Yeah, and the other thing is, you know, if you are the driver of a plug in hybrid, yeah, then also be courteous, you know, keep, you know, be be conscious of how long it's going to take to charge your car. And, you know, don't leave it sitting there on a charger all day. Yeah, you know, if you're charging at work, for example, if you've got workplace charging, you know, go ahead, you know, go ahead and plug it in, you know, when you get in the morning, you know, if you've got a 25 or 30 mile commute, go ahead and plug it in. And then after a couple of hours when it's fully charged up, you know, unplug it and move it. And you know if there's people are

Nicole Wakelin  22:39  
pretty good, like I know, my husband's office, they had only I think two charging stations at his office, but they had quite a few EVs at one point. And I can remember him saying that, like his colleagues be like, Oh, wait, I'll be right back, I gotta run out my car is finished charging, I want to unplug in case anybody like they would literally run out, relocate their little vehicles and let someone else charge it. So I think most people, most people are pretty good about that when they can be I think the question with this was more like, if you're just just a plug in hybrid, you should not be taking away the charging station in any circumstances, from an actual full Eevee

Roberto Baldwin  23:15  
if I'm driving, I have a PDF, and I go to a to a mall. And it's one of those free chargers and there's like one or two, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna charge that's, that's just no point. Those things aren't very quick. It's sort of whatever, if I go to a place where there's like eight, and I have to pay and there's idle fees, because everyone you pay has have an AI has an idle fee. So if I just leave my car there, I'm still losing money. I'm still I'm paying money to get the ticket to charge which P has had like a super slow charge rate anyway because they don't need you know, they don't need 100 or 50 or 25 or even 14 Like kilowatt they're usually like

Sam Abuelsamid  23:53  
six 6.6 kilowatt. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  23:55  
So you know, I it's not a I think it's as just be a good person. I think I think I think I just say no, don't don't charge there. Seems just sort of regular. But at the same time, I'm like, just just be like, Oh, now the podcast

Nicole Wakelin  24:11  
is officially you're making sound effects again. Okay. Yeah, I sidetrack just for that. I'm curious with the guys who do

Sam Abuelsamid  24:23  
that. It's a legit question. Yeah. And as we get more and more plug in vehicles on the road, it's something that we're gonna have to learn to deal with. And also, you know, even for Evie drivers, I think I've talked about this before. There have been times especially when I've been out in California when I've had an Eevee to drive and I've gone to charging stations, DC fast charging stations, and I get there and there it might be charging stations next to a grocery store. And, you know, right next to the handicap spots. And I get there and there are EVs parked in front of the chargers that are not plugged in. Yeah, that's

Roberto Baldwin  25:08  
that's the that's that's just because you drive an Eevee does

Sam Abuelsamid  25:11  
not entitle you to park in front of the charger. Unless you're actually using that charger.

Nicole Wakelin  25:17  
That's like the equivalent of parking sideways across two spots. So no one parked like too close to

Sam Abuelsamid  25:22  
your. You mean like that? So yesterday

Nicole Wakelin  25:26  
apparently, yesterday you were busy installing a new dishwasher

Sam Abuelsamid  25:35  
Yeah, so I anything else on the 330 Robbie

Roberto Baldwin  25:42  
now I kind of forgot about it. Oh, yeah, hold on. Let me get the price hold. I have a written down. I'm still I'm reading the review right now. I'm sure it's in here. I'm sure I had it pulled up at some point. Ah, okay. Rebel drive is 42,950x drive is 44 950. And again, those are only $1,500 More than the gas equivalent. And the tax credit Oh, the tax credit is up to $5,836. That's just federal. So if you have state California state, if you live in like San Joaquin Valley, I think there's there's another, you know, different regions, in addition to state have have tax have credits or incentives. So it's actually cheaper than the regular 330 I and you get, you get to plug it in at night. Or plug it in and make somebody on the internet really angry. One of the

Sam Abuelsamid  26:40  
I also had a plug in hybrid for a couple of days, I had the new Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring last week just before the the holiday. And Lincoln This is a technically a first drive program. Lincoln's not doing a full media drive for this. They're just doing two day loans to get people familiarized with it. And then they'll put them in the regular press fleet after that. So the the Corsair Grand Touring was initially announced two years ago at the 2019 LA Auto Show the last time we had an LA show. And this is the the plug in hybrid version of the Corsair. And like its sibling, the Ford Escape plug in hybrid, it went through some delays it was supposed to come out in mid 2020. Didn't didn't arrive until a few weeks ago. And they they had some issues with the the European version of escape, which is called the Kouga. Last year with some battery fires while it was charging and you know it was caused by a defect, a manufacturing defect that they had with the battery cells that was causing a short circuit and so when you plugged it into charge, sometimes occasionally we catch fire, which is not not a good plan. And so they they delayed it while they sorted that out. And they launched the escape here a couple of months ago, we talked about that. And now they've launched the the Corsair. And, you know, we the Corsair like other current generation Lincoln's, you know, shares the basic platform with Ford vehicles, but it looks completely different. It's totally different sheetmetal everything in interiors different you you get into one of these, you get into a Corsair and you look around you would never guess that this is you know, sharing a platform with the escape, and the Bronco sport and the maverick you know because there there's nothing that you look touch or feel or look at that looks like it came out of a Ford vehicle every all the parts in interior unique and it's you know, pretty stylish looking vehicle i like it it's got a nice sculpted body side to it and you know, similar profile to the aviator but obviously smaller so when you look at it and profile the roof cut roofline kind of drops off a little bit towards the rear give it a little bit of a teardrop shape. Under the hood, the the front half of the powertrain is basically the same as what you get in the Escape hybrid or the escape plug in hybrid or the maverick hybrid. So you get a 2.5 liter four cylinder engine with Ford's hybrid drive unit in there. And together that the the electric motor and the the engine give you about 200 horsepower to work with. And then for the plug in hybrid, like in the escape plug in hybrid. There's a 14.4 kilowatt hour battery pack that sits underneath the second row seat. So it doesn't intrude on the cargo space at all like it did in the old SeaMAX plug in hybrids or in the fusion plug in hybrid. It's a nice compact battery pack. And then the big difference between the Corsair and the escape plug in hybrid is the Corsair at Another electric motor to the rear axle. So the escape plug in hybrid is only available in front wheel drive right now, you can't get an all wheel drive escape plug in hybrid, for the, for the Corsair. It comes with electric drive around racks and motor. So you have total about 200 horsepower versus 200. and escape. So definitely feels a little more breath rest.

Does, you know, happier so it's not doesn't feel substantially more powerful, but it's a little more powerful. And, you know, the one I had was pretty much loaded with all the goodies it had like 23 or 24 way power adjustable seats with split thigh bolsters and massaging and all that kind of stuff in it. The when it arrived, beginning of last week, we were starting to get into a bit of a cold snap here in Michigan. And I took it out twice to do mileage runs with it with a full charge to see how much ELECTRIC DRIVING i could do on a full charge. When I had the escape plugin, it was quite a bit warmer it was in the 60s, I think when I had 60s or 70s. And I got 41 miles without one. And then when I had the Audi Q five, plug in hybrid back in mid October. With that one, I got 21 miles on Alan, but that one is quite a bit more powerful than the Corsair. And yes, similar size to the Corsair. But quite a bit more powerful because it's got a turbo four cylinder engine, whereas this one's normally aspirated. And the Corsair got 28 miles, got 27 miles on one run 28 miles on the other one. So pretty reasonable. You know, it's not great, it's better than the the Audi better than the than the BMW that you just had Robbie. The other chief competitor to this vehicle that is coming out soon, is the new Lexus NX 450 H plus, which is also going to be a plug in hybrid, similar configuration to this with a 2.5 liter engine and the hybrid and electric rear motor, but it'll be a little more powerful because it's the Lexus, the Lexus and x is gonna have the same powertrain that's in the rav4 hybrid plug in rav4 prime. So it's going to be about 306 horsepower. So it's definitely a little quicker than the Corsair. And it's also got a bigger battery that the Corsair has got an 18 kilowatt hour battery pack. So Lexus hasn't got official numbers on that one yet. But they're projecting it's going to get about 36 miles of range, which sounds about right. So, you know, this one's not bad. The Corsair if you're looking for, you know, a premium compact crossover, you know, that looks and feels really nice, you know, really nice materials, nice. real wood trim real leather, comfortable seats. It this has got all that stuff in it. The touchscreen, the center touchscreen, because it's still on the escape. Bronco Support Platform. This hasn't been upgraded to sync four yet. So it's still on the older sync three system, which is fine. You know, it's it's still a decent system. It's only a 10 inch screen. 10 inch, sorry, not even a 10 inch. I think it's actually an eight inch display. Yeah, so it's a it's a considerably smaller display. Yeah, it's it's an eight inch center touchscreen. Where it's

Nicole Wakelin  33:49  
funny when you think about an eight inch touchscreen not that long ago. No, that was touchscreen. Like it was like a five inch screen was tiny. Now an eight inch screen is tiny. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  33:59  
yeah, it's funny because eight inch anything bigger than like, seven, eight inches. You're just like, alright, well, whatever. Yeah. All this real estate to see all the things but the reality is like, Well, can I see the map? Yeah, cool. That's cool. All right. The streets.

Nicole Wakelin  34:15  
Okay, great turn. I'm good. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:20  
You know, the coarser I had was equipped with the optional heads up display. And so if you're using navigation, if using either the built in NAV, or Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, it shows you the navigation prompts in the heads up display, so it'll tell you where to turn. So that's, you know, that's good. The Audi has a 10 inch display and the the annex is a 14 inch screen. So, you know, kind of puts this one a little to shame.

Roberto Baldwin  34:47  
But look how big the the icons are in CarPlay.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:51  
Yeah. You know, so it does get really nice ride quality. It's, it lives up to for the most part it lives up to To Lincoln's theme of quiet flight, you know, especially when it's running in electric mode, it's very quiet. When it when the engine comes on, most in most normal driving, it's fairly quiet. But when you get on the accelerator to accelerate hard with the engine on, it's less refined than what you'll get in certainly in the in the Audi.

Roberto Baldwin  35:25  
Get a sketch of turbulence and your quiet flight.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:27  
Yeah, a little bit of turbulence. Yeah, let's learn a little bit of that roar you get when you're taking off in a jet. jet engines are full throttle, you know, you get that roar coming from things. That's that's kind of what you get, you know, once you get up to cruising speed, then you're good throttle back, you know, then it gets nice and quiet again. So yeah, the Corsair, the 22 model, your Corsair, the one I had was actually a 21 model. But the only thing that's changing for 22 is they've got a couple of pillar options. And they've rearranged some of the option packages. So the 22 starts at $51,425, including delivery, which is not inexpensive. But you know, it's also not out of line with, with the Audi in the Lexus, or at least where we expect the Lexus to be. As equipped, the way I drove it was $62,300, including the 20 inch wheels and the luxury package. And, but it does come with you do get a $6,843 federal tax credit available for this one. So you know, that's now you're down back into the mid 50s, which is, you know, again, not not crazy expensive, not cheap, but not crazy expensive. So, you know, if you want something, you know, in a premium compact crossover, that, you know, looks nice, drives really nice. And get, you know, can go about, you know, 2528 you can probably in warmer weather, you could probably get easily get over 30 miles of electric range, you know, that that'll suit most, most of the daily driving that most people do, you know, just plug it in at night and unplug it in the morning and you're good to go. It's not not a bad deal.

Roberto Baldwin  37:23  
It has that bonkers dash cluster that all the Lincoln's have, where it's like very minimalistic, and then you change the mode and it just like like an explosion of sight and sound and color. Like what is that the earth like what is happening?

Sam Abuelsamid  37:39  
When you switch modes, it goes through all kinds of cool graphics. So I also had another vehicle, which came when the Lincoln went away, which is the 22 Chevy Tahoe Premier. And like last week, when I had a vehicle that was scheduled cancelled because this case, Nissan Pathfinder had to go to the shop. The fleet guy called me up and said, Hey, can't get can't send you the Pathfinder tomorrow. Do you want BMW X four m competition or 22 Chevy Tahoe, and I asked him if the x four m competition had winter tires on it yet? He said nope. And I looked at the weather forecast. And I saw that we were expected to get several inches of snow this weekend, which we did get. And I said I'll take the Tahoe. Thank you very much, please. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the Tahoe, you know, pretty straightforward, big, full size American SUV, you know, it's been, you know, top seller and its class for a million years. You know, the, the Premier's got the 6.2, liter V eight, so it's got lots and lots and lots of power, and has a healthy thirst for petroleum products. The the main thing that has changed for the 22 model year is that they updated the infotainment system. And you know, the Tahoe, the new Tahoe, just just launched a year ago. And they've already upgraded the infotainment for 22. It's GMs new Android automotive based infotainment. So they've replaced the the old system that they had. And it's, it's quite good. I like I like it a lot. So, you know, this is running Android inside. It's got Google Assistant. It's got Google Maps. And you can download Android apps from the Google Play Store right in the the infotainment system. So you know, if you want to listen to podcasts you can get, you can get Google podcasts or Pocket Casts or whatever. You can also get stuff like hoopla or Libby to download content from your local public library, you know, all kinds of cool stuff right in there. You can just log in with your Google account right in the vehicle, and then start downloading apps and so you don't even have to hook up your phone to it. It just does it directly through the the cellular connection that's built into the vehicle. You know, the the new Tahoe This is the first time I've actually driven the Tahoe I've had the car before the the CRO the Yukon before and the and the escalate the new generation Tahoe they finally switched the rear axle from a live axle to an independent rear suspension, much better ride quality. This one had the optional air springs. It's also got a two speed transfer case. So if you want to go off roading in this thing, you've got a four wheel drive low range for some rock crawling. And, you know, it's it's really nice, it's a much improved interior over previous generation tacos really feels much more in line with the price point which is not inexpensive. The the 22 Tahoe starts at $49,700. So 50 grand, the one I drove was the four wheel drive Premier, which came to a bottom line price of $76,670 Wow, including the $1,695 delivery charge 880 $900 In options on top of the the Premier trim package. So it's one thing I will say for for certain, if you are considering buying a big truck or a big SUV like this, if they offer an option for the digital camera mirror, the interior camera mirror, absolutely get that if it's not standard equipment, take whatever option package you have to to get that because it is so much better actually being able to see what's right behind you. Because, you know, these things set up pretty high. And you know, with three rows of seats, and headrests and heavily tinted windows, it's really hard to see anything behind you are off to the sides in the sun. So the digital camera mirror just is makes it so much easier to maneuver around and because you can actually see what's behind you with this thing. And that's that's definitely very worthwhile option.

Roberto Baldwin  42:05  
I'm curious with the camera mirrors, because when I look through a mirror, I'm looking you know, my eyesight has gotten messed up in the last few years my my my my close up eyesight, I took some medication messed me up anyway. So things that are close to me it's difficult for me to see and I realized what those types of rear view cameras which I love actually I loved it on the bolt I love them on the Cadillac. Now I'm looking under a little bit fuzzy they should make Can you they should make so you can adjust the focus like you do when your camera like you know, like they should make it so i don't i after? Yeah, like a little diopter adjustment and have it set for like certain profile like my wife can see fine. She's Yeah. And so yeah, anyway, so if you're someone from GM or who else does this? I don't know other people

Sam Abuelsamid  42:53  
as the Lantis has it now. Oh, yes. The wagon here and the grand cherokee have it? Yeah, like Ford start that On some vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  43:01  
Fix that. Okay. Yeah. Good suggestion.

Nicole Wakelin  43:04  
Makes that and I hear that for Robbie. When

Roberto Baldwin  43:06  
I'm supposed to get the Pathfinder tomorrow. So I'm wondering what they'll bring me instead.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:14  
You'll get the competition.

Roberto Baldwin  43:16  
Yep, there we go. That's fine here and that's all Yeah, that's Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:19  
Yeah. The the the summer tires on the on a 500 horsepower x 4am. In the three inches of snow, it would just not have been a good idea. Not a good combination. Not at all.

Roberto Baldwin  43:31  
Nobody wins.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:32  
Yeah. Yeah. And this thing, as I said, has a fairly hefty thirst for fuel. It's, it's the 6.2 is ready to combine 16 miles per gallon. I think I've been getting closer to about 14 Thanks, cool weather and everything. So

Nicole Wakelin  43:51  
gas is super cheap right now. So what else?

Sam Abuelsamid  43:54  
Exactly? Yeah. At least I don't live in California.

Roberto Baldwin  43:59  
I think it went down like a nickel. Oh, really.

Nicole Wakelin  44:02  
So only less outrageous than it was?

Roberto Baldwin  44:06  
It's it's it's still you know, it's still a lot which every time every time I go get gas, I'm like, Man, wish I could drive the Eevee right now my wife said

Sam Abuelsamid  44:21  
All right. Last night, as we record this, Nissan had a little online event from Japan. It was Monday morning in Japan when they when they did this, they announced their ambition. 2030. So basically they were they were laying out some of their Evie plans for the next nine years, which includes spending 2 trillion yen on Evie electrification over the next five years. So between now and 2026, so that works out to about 17 and a half billion dollars, which is surprising. It's That's quite a bit lower than what a lot of other automakers are have committed to adding GMs at 35 billion for 30 billion Volkswagens 30 some billion dollars. Oh, the billions, all of all the many, many billions. And I think it's, it's interesting. You know, Nissan was the first manufacturer to launch a relatively affordable modern Eevee 10 years ago, 11 years ago now with the with the original leaf. And at the time, I remember being at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2009. And Carlos Gon, standing on stage talking about that they were going to launch for EVs in the next three years. I think one of those in addition to the leaf one other one made it to the market in some places, which was the the electric version of the envy 200 van it was never sold in North America. And after being you know, an early leader in the Evie space,

Roberto Baldwin  46:08  
the number one selling Evie in the world was the leaf. We have the number one spot really the number one selling Evie in the world was that Nissan LEAF

Sam Abuelsamid  46:19  
until the model three came out. It was a model three solar. Yeah, wow.

Roberto Baldwin  46:23  
It was just sort of like squandered it.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:25  
Yeah. Yeah. And he's Nissan kind of lost its way with with EVs. You know, they're finally kind of getting back into it now with the ARIA, but even that has been delayed. That's not launching in Japan until middle of next year. And then it'll be here in the US, I think in October of next year. And with a starting price at $47,000, for the initial versions are going to sell. But they're they're promising 15 New EVs between now and 2030. They expect 50% electrification, including EVs and their e power system, which is a series hybrid system that you don't actually have to plug in. And, at the end of the show here, I have actually got an interview I did in LA, with Aditya Jai Raj, who's Nissan's director of Eevee marketing and strategy. He talks more about this, but what what do you think about you know what, what Nissan's doing

Nicole Wakelin  47:27  
I mean, I think it makes sense. Everybody's pushing to EVs. I feel like them pushing is not the exception. It's sort of the rule. The dollar amount, like you said, does not sound as heavy as you might expect. It's it's an impressive number, but still not a mind blowing number 23 new models with 15 new EVs by 20 3015 New EVs. I feel like they could do that.

Roberto Baldwin  47:54  
Yeah. I mean, I could probably do that. Do that.

Nicole Wakelin  47:57  
Yeah. You could do that by next week. I'm

Roberto Baldwin  47:59  
gonna do that hold

Nicole Wakelin  48:00  
on. I mean, it seems like it all depends, like how well that, you know, they, what you don't know is how much they've already done in the background. You know, we know what they're saying they're gonna do how, how prepped, are they I feel like to have this gigantic, you know, event where they're saying all this their ambition 2030 they must feel pretty confident otherwise, it's gonna look pretty silly. It's not like this is just a rogue announcement. You know, it was sort of like, oh, rude, right.

Roberto Baldwin  48:29  
Sorry, I apologize.

Nicole Wakelin  48:31  
That's okay. You know, let it go. So I don't know. I think I think the chances of them doing it are good. And I think I mean, it absolutely makes sense. Everyone's pushing towards EVs and electrification. Why wouldn't they?

Roberto Baldwin  48:41  
Yeah, I think, you know, Nissan's rebuilding that you know, they've been putting out everything with you know, they've been redoing everything they've been updating everything it's it's a it's a it's a company that's trying to restart and regain what it was. And I think part of that is Evie and I think I've said this again, it's not a sprint to EVs. You can be a little late, you can't be a lot late, but you can be a little late and still be okay. It's you know, right now, Evie. I mean, Tesla is still essentially the Kleenex of EVs. When people think EVs. They think Tesla, no matter how much GM says they're, you know, what, they're one car that's out. But, uh,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:24  
what's they're not even building right now.

Roberto Baldwin  49:26  
If they can't, which they can't build because because LG kind of screwed him over with batteries. But yeah, you know, I think where it's considering where Nissan was a few years ago, this is actually this is really good news for them. You know, it's less money but they're also a smaller automaker, they're not Volkswagen huge, you know, Ford is huge. GM is huge, you know, those those automakers they have a lot of brands underneath them. But Nissan has that and and, and Lexus and so they're like, you know, we don't have to be ginormous and you know, it's I if they're, you know As long as they're making actual headway because a lot of it feels like right now we're seeing you know, last few years everyone's been like we're we're gonna have 50 v 70, Evie 17 EVs, we're gonna six $60 billion, blah, blah, blah and EVs. But it's a lot of press releases, and yeah, there's more EVs on the road, but that's not as many as there should be. Meanwhile, Hyundai is over there in the corner, just like pumping out EVs every 15 minutes. Like every time I see something Hyundai's doing like oh yeah, here's another Eevee we made don't want that cool. Take it.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:36  
Well, as part of this event, last night, they also reveal several new Eevee concepts. Which of either the two of you had a chance to look at these yet.

Nicole Wakelin  50:47  
I have not seen the concepts I can glance

Sam Abuelsamid  50:50  
there's, there's a there's a link. If you go to the the US press release, about halfway down just above the subhead increasing accessibility there's a link to the Nissan global site there. And you can see the concepts and serve out Yeah, so they've got a compact crossover that looks kinda like the area called the chill out a pickup truck called the surf out a hatchback, I guess, you know, that is kind of reminiscent of the cube called the Hangout. Oh, hang out and the convertible called the max

Nicole Wakelin  51:35  
out yeah, now they have all this stuff have all this

Sam Abuelsamid  51:39  
stuff and most of it is just renders but

Roberto Baldwin  51:41  
they handle all this rendering. They got they got they got a new they got new GPU you know, it's hard to get GPUs right now set a new GPU they're ready to rock and roll as long as they don't have to actually build a car

Sam Abuelsamid  51:56  
they could do this on one GPU, you know, so you know, they can't build them yet but they can they can read them.

Roberto Baldwin  52:02  
i Okay, so I really like the surface because it reminds me sort of like spiritually at from the Nissan Gobi remember the Gobi from like the late 80s, early 90s. Oh, yeah, it was just really ridiculous. And I really wanted one. I mean, remember you my friend would just like this thing. He didn't sane. And another friend was like, Dude, that's never going to happen. What is wrong with you? Why do you think that's going to happen? I'm like, I'm saving up my money. We're gonna get this it's gonna burn.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:29  
Yeah, the goat the Gobi was a concept from net. It was that the the 1990 Detroit Auto Show? It was sort of a funky looking pickup truck concept. Definitely.

Roberto Baldwin  52:43  
It didn't have a lot of emojis. No, no emojis. It was just weird looking. But you know, so this is before? thing. Yeah. So we got the surf out, which is anything that has anything to do with surfing. I'm always a fan of. But yeah, I mean, if you had something close to the surf out if we can get another small truck on the market, that also happens to be an Eevee I think Nissan will, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  53:08  
I like the Hangout. I think the Hangout looks very much like a starship. Like, like a an away team pod for the enterprise.

Roberto Baldwin  53:17  
Like you don't wear a red shirt if you're in it, because you know, you're not coming back.

Nicole Wakelin  53:20  
Right? Because then you will die. Right? And if you notice in the picture of people, right, oh, there's a girl wearing a red and white

Roberto Baldwin  53:26  
shirt. She's gonna be eaten by a bear. Yeah, bears got girl. Sorry, kid. Oh, yeah, that kids that that kids bear Potter. Ghana, Ghana, Ghana. Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:38  
Yeah, the Hangout is pretty cool. I like that one.

Nicole Wakelin  53:41  
I like the Hangout. I like how that one looks. Like

Roberto Baldwin  53:44  
they're all kind of small. They're not like, enormous. But of course people want

Nicole Wakelin  53:49  
anything big like if you want to. They're actually all very small if you want a big vehicle. Well, you got the Tahoe that Sam was just Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  53:58  
Hello, hello bit, Tahoe.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:01  
GMC has started to build, you know, production Hummers now in Detroit. So you know, those will be getting to cars by the end of the by the end of December. So, you know, they've got that end of the market covered. And someday Tesla might even build a cybertruck build a second cybertruck. So somebody needs to cover the smaller end of the market. So I think it's good.

Roberto Baldwin  54:24  
All solid state batteries by 2028. Yeah, good luck with that. I mean, I'm saying I'm actually saying good luck. Because if you can do that, that's great. It's, I think we get really excited about solid state. It's the you know, it's the magic bullet. But

Sam Abuelsamid  54:39  
there's, there's a long time. There's a lot of interesting developments going on in the battery space, which we'll talk about another time, but some, some companies doing some cool stuff that I think has, there's some things that have a lot of potential to really drive down the cost of batteries and improve the performance in the energy sector. Oh yeah, that'll that'll really help to make make these things more mainstream. Lithium ion

Roberto Baldwin  55:05  
is gonna be around for a while and it's just gonna get better and cheaper. So it's yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  55:09  
it's just different variations. There's a lot of different flavors of lithium ion

Roberto Baldwin  55:13  
flavors like a Baskin Robbins of cars. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  55:16  
you're talking batteries. And I'm looking at the back of this nice son, sir fat that has a little emojis and stuff. Somebody is gonna hack that and be able to make it so you can flip off the guy who just like is tailgating you or like that is just so right to have obscene things on the back of that little emoji screen on the tailgate.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:34  
I mean, that's half the point. You say you say that as if that might be a bad thing.

Nicole Wakelin  55:38  
I know. I'm just saying I'm like, What do you give it five minutes after the first one leaves the dealership? Someone's gonna be like, damn.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:45  
Well, the other thing was kind of neat about the surf out is at the front. You know, it's it reminds me kind of the of the the canoe vehicle. Oh, yeah. Last Friday, he can look straight through under the dash, you know, out the front of the truck.

Roberto Baldwin  56:03  
That's pretty dope. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  56:05  
anymore. It's just high and a little hang loose thing. And it's gonna be a few in the middle finger. On the back of that.

Roberto Baldwin  56:14  
If we can't get the buggy, the Volkswagen. Oh, the ID. ID. Yeah, I forget what I love. I drove that thing. And at Pebble Beach one year and I absolutely loved it, even though I was only allowed to go like 38 kilometers an hour, which is like 20 miles an hour. And it says we can't get that. Nissan should bring us the surfer. Come on, just give us something. Come on. Give us something fun.

Nicole Wakelin  56:40  
Give us the surf out.

Roberto Baldwin  56:41  
Give it to us. Give it to us.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:44  
All right. Next up, Genesis has shown off exterior images of the new G 90. And we don't know much about this one yet. Presumably coming out sometime next year. But one thing that I did note is that compared to the current generation G 90 The Grill actually seems to be a little bit smaller. I was I was looking at pictures of this next to the current G 90 earlier. And it's not a lot smaller still a big grill. But it has shrunk vertically. A little bit it's still about that looks like it's about the same width.

Nicole Wakelin  57:23  
Did the grill bother you on the old one?

Sam Abuelsamid  57:26  
Yes. There's too much there's too much grill out there today.

Roberto Baldwin  57:30  
Too much grill in the world and yeah, Hyundai heard you and they're like, you know, with the Genesis we're gonna, we're gonna do we're gonna we're gonna bring it down a little well take it down a notch.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:39  
Good. Couple more notches. Maybe we'll be getting to the right right proportions, the

Roberto Baldwin  57:44  
right proportions.

Nicole Wakelin  57:45  
I like how it looks. I think it looks good.

Roberto Baldwin  57:48  
It looks very It looks like a very important person we'd be driving

Sam Abuelsamid  57:53  
No, it looks like a very important person. We'll be riding in the back yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  57:59  
Like his henchmen will pull up and then when I do get out

Sam Abuelsamid  58:02  
Yeah, well, I mean you can get the executive seating option and then the G 90 they've had it you know, like since the original before it was Genesis. What was the Equus the Hyundai Equus? You know, they they had that executive seating option where you could recline. So on the on the passenger side, if you weren't behind the driver. You could recline the seat you had a foot rest that came up is kind of like a business class seat. On the plane,

Roberto Baldwin  58:28  
man. Yeah, like it does, like subtle I mean, it's it really is not that subtle. But the the shoulder line on the front tires, just sort of like our

Sam Abuelsamid  58:38  
Yeah, let's kind of like it says in the in the text that it's a clamshell hood. So that line lights and the sideways The hood is. Yeah, so it's all one piece above that.

Roberto Baldwin  58:52  
I'm going I'm going full screen on the pictures now. Hold on.

Nicole Wakelin  58:55  
I know. We're all going full screen. Like I must see this better.

Roberto Baldwin  59:05  
Yeah, someone someone fancies getting driven around in this thing?

Nicole Wakelin  59:07  
Yeah, it's definitely fancy.

Roberto Baldwin  59:11  
This is going to be in season four of of succession.

Nicole Wakelin  59:19  
I think it looks good. But I like the Genesis brand. So I'm not surprised that I like this one. I've been very happy with what they've done so far.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:27  
I agree. All right. Anything else in the gene ID before we move on?

Nicole Wakelin  59:32  
No, it looks good. Good work, Genesis.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:36  
All right. Next up. There's been some reports over the last week and a half or so about Ford and GM. getting more involved in the chip design process. You know, trying to move past this, this current chip shortage. You know, one one report was about GM that GM didn't have didn't put out a press release. But Mark Rice was talking at an at an investor conference about this. And they're working with a number of chip vendors. And basically from from looking at what Roy said, what they're doing is they're moving their electronic architecture on their vehicles more towards a more centralized compute architecture. So, you know, today, you know, a lot of high end vehicles have well over 100, individual computers or electronic control units in the car. And starting to consolidate that down, you know, following the trend that the Tesla started, you know, they did, they were the first to do this. And other manufacturers are moving in this direction now. So you got fewer computers, more powerful chips in there. And so GMs working with a bunch of different chip vendors, like NXP and Renaissance and Qualcomm back next year, GM is going to be launching some stuff, some new models with Qualcomm powered driver assist systems in there, they're using their their new Snapdragon ride, compute platform. And Ford is partnering with Global Foundries which is, their, their chip fab, they don't design chips, so much as manufacture the chips. They were they used to be part of AMD, they got spun off from AMD, I don't know seven or eight years ago. And they're also working with them. And I think one of the interesting things, just like in, in mobile devices, and even computers, now everything's moving towards ARM based chips, you know, lower power, more powerful chips, lower power consumption, but more capable chips. And there, these things are designed as sort of, you can do sort of ala carte design, you don't have to design a complete chip, you can pick and choose different pieces. So you can have graphics processors from from one company and ARM cores and neural engines to do AI processing. And you can mix and match these and have somebody build it for you to your own specifications. I think that's what Ford's doing with Global Foundries. What do you guys have any thoughts on this?

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:23  
I know you if you that happens, if you rely too heavily on what other people are making wood now we end up in a situation where we're kind of in now, I mean, you still we still need more founders, regardless of how were those even though they want to make more chips, and they want to be more part of how the chips are made is etc. We still we still need more foundries and to actually build these just but consolidating, you know, the hundreds of chips that are hundreds of different SOC s or microcomputers or whatever, or silicon, you know, portions that are in a car and sort of bringing them all together. That's I mean, that's a that's going to help with the foundry issue. It's going to help with greater control over what's going on the vehicle. I mean, it's it all. At the end of day, it all makes sense. You know, Tesla's doing it loose, it's doing it. Somebody else? The traditional automakers doing it, I talked to them about it. And for the life of me, I can't remember who it was. Maybe Volvo.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:19  
Volvo is doing it. There we are, that the XC 90 replacement, is going to be using two central computers powered by NVIDIA orange chips, which are really powerful chips. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:03:31  
So you know, consider consolidating, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's instead of having, you know, it's almost like if you had a bunch of stoves in your house, and now you just have the ones though, that you'd need with the four burners and the thing, as opposed to 15 tiny little stoves all around hot plates. Like one hot plates, boiling water, the other ones like cooking a turkey for some reason, right? Just consolidate all this.

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:57  
Until it seems like it's something to you know, that maybe that because of what happened with COVID. And because of how things rolled out over the last, what, like 18 to 24 months, this is something that we're probably had to happen at some point anyway, it's just COVID sort of accelerated the OTO. Got, we need to do this, we need to do it now. You know, maybe it would have taken an extra five years instead, they're all doing it this year, but it seems like something that naturally would have had to happen, as they realize that the inefficiencies of what they were doing in the first place, like okay, let's, let's get rid of all the hot plates and just buy an oven. I feel like that that had to happen. At some point, it just might be happening a little bit more quickly and aggressively than it otherwise would have

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:37  
and sort of smart to start doing it and start working on it now because they're all working on new architecture for the EVS and their plug in hybrids. And, you know, if you're building a new architecture, you might as well actually build a new architecture with you know, from the top down. Or bottom up I don't know. Yeah, just make it better. Buy one nice stove and one nice oven. There you go. Nice

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:58  
stove.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:59  
Yes. That's what we did. And it's working out great for us.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:04  
See yeah. Meanwhile my stoves sometimes might get the right temperature.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:12  
That's That's why replaced our old one. Never knew what kind of temperature it was going to be at. Getting those burners lit. Pain in the neck. Alright. Speaking of chips, let's let's go into we've got a couple of listener questions. And let's tackle the first one from from AJ or Gupta, AJ, on Twitter. And he asks, place your bets, the chip shortage will end in three months, six months, or 12 months from now.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:42  
18 months to two years. foundries are hard to build. Yeah, it's if one of them got destroyed. Everything now has a chip in it. It's gonna be a while.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:54  
I'm going at least 12 months and I'm leaning towards your 18 because it's like you said it's it's it's something that is not easily correctable in five minutes, it takes some time to correct the problem.

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:05  
So manufacturing is tough.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:09  
It's a challenge. It you know, it takes three to four years to build a new chip foundry. And it's it's a very expensive process. I think Samsung just announced they're building a new one in in Texas. They just announced that last week. And they're spending $17 billion on one foundry or one

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:32  
Nissan EV.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:37  
50 That's enough for to build 15 Different Nissan EVs. Yep. Yes, that's for one chip plant. And Intel earlier this year, talked about building several new foundries in the US and also in Europe. And they're spending I think, a total of somewhere around $100 billion on new chip foundries. So yeah, it's an expensive process. That said, you know, I talked to a lot of chip companies on a fairly regular basis, and most of them are right now they're projecting, you know, by the second half of next year, things should stabilize. So about a year from now, they think we should be in pretty good shape.

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:17  
But then a new a new Playstation will come out at all go to hell.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:23  
That's it, forget it. shortage is back.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:26  
All right. The other question we had relates back to what we were talking about earlier with others from Andrew Pappas. And after listening to our previous episode, Andrew wrote back and said he's not the the Andrew Pappas that I know that lives in my neighborhood. He says, And he, I guess he was listening to this week attack yesterday, which I was on with with Leo Laporte and Doc rock and Padre SJ. We got into a tangent about rich Corinthian leather or rich Corinthian leather. As Ricardo Montalban would say I can't roll my arse like that. I'm sorry. Maybe you can Robbie V in leather. And reference to the rich color Corinthian leather spoke of on another podcast. Who makes the best real fake and bang for the buck leather. So best real leather best fake leather and best bang for the buck leather

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:29  
like which automaker? Yeah Who has the

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:32  
best real I know that Napa and you know whenever they throw that in Napa and a PPA not the region of northern California leather in that that's always really nice. I think was what had a nice what had some nice leather in it that I was I've been driving Mercedes Mercedes

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:50  
yeah really nice leather interior.

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:52  
Yeah, Mercedes rolls. You know everything that's out there

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:56  
because I'm leather interior is great. But we do have a little bit of Alcantar a little bit of suede action here and there to give you a little bit of extra grip. Like the little extra grip with little suede. I like the both pure leathers cool nap or otherwise but you want a little bit of suede and stuff like a suede steering wheel. No, that's cool.

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:16  
I hate i Absolutely. See, it feels slimy. I absolutely.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:24  
Do you have sweaty hands or something just feels gross.

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:26  
It just feels wrong. I just want the leather or pleather or whatever anything else. There is anything on a steering wheel if it was wrapped and just dishcloths I mean just like some old is class flown together.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:42  
I don't like it when it has metal on it. I don't like the metal on the steering lever it like some of them have like a piece of metal accent like and there we go the imprint of today's steering wheel across the palm of my hand burned your hands people. I don't like that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:00  
fake leather. Alright,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:02  
who does the best fake leather pollster? Oh, that one because I want a vegan leather. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:10  
blue. It's the posters, fake leather.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:12  
Just like bowls.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:15  
The the ActiveX stuff in the Mustang Maki. I think he's actually quite well that's pretty good. Yeah. There's actually, I mean, I remember growing up, you know, the first car. I remember my dad having was a 73 Dodge Dart, you know, with, you know, 1970s vinyl seats in there.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:34  
Oh my gosh, my dad had a Dodge Dart with horrible vinyl seeds.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:39  
They were just awful. The vinyl the vinyl that you got in those cars in the 70s and 80s was

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:47  
no it was there was no it was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:51  
it was absolutely no doubt at all that it was something created in a lab somewhere just

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:56  
slide everywhere they would crack and stab you in the ass. Yeah, that was those were bad times.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:05  
But you know what most of the EDA with the I think the imitation leathers now, the ones that are like imitation not because they're trying to save money, but because they're trying to use some sustainable alternatives. Those are the best ones when they're just trying to be cheap when it's like the base trim of an already really low priced car. And it's just like, Okay, it's fake. Those aren't so great. But if it's any kind of like we're trying to be sustainable, so this is made out of recycled whatever. Those are normally pretty decent.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:33  
Yeah, even. I think Pollstar probably has like man made stuff with beans or something. I don't know. They have like a whole like company they work with with a weird name.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:45  
There's a whole big thing about all the how they you know, there's little bits and pieces, you know, maybe I'm looking at remember, but I do remember hearing about it when I did the drive all the sustainable stuff. Yeah. To make everything like all the parts. So.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:59  
Alright, how about bang for the buck leather. So here I'm assuming he's talking about you know, real leather, but not the real premium stuff. Huh? Who's got the best cheap leather?

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:14  
The best cheap lab trying to think of inexpensive vehicles I've been in that had leather

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:21  
had any kind of love that weren't just trying to do a fake that weren't doing like imitation leather.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:27  
Oh, man. Got a tough one.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:30  
I don't know if that I think that there's one that stands out. I feel like most of the like most of the I feel like they're all even if it's supposed to be an imitation leather. Not like we're just cheeping out there most of them are pretty decent. I don't know that there's one that's Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:48  
I think in this case, yeah. It's not looking for imitation leather. But cheap. animal hides that are just you know not like the fancy Nappa leathers or Andrew

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:01  
demand some sort of dead animal on for him to sit on Andrew

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:04  
one animal under his butt. Okay, what

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:07  
is the what is the the best modern interpretation of rich, Corinthian leather?

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:12  
Rich Corinthian? Gosh. Trying to think of something with a leather interior that I've driven. That's not fancy schmancy

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:21  
I know cuz the ones that come to mind are fancy cars to begin with. It had these beautiful leather interiors.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:29  
You can get leathers in a lot of mainstream like, you know, Toyota Camrys. Now Dale and Honda Accord. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:40  
If you just get the straight up leather interior in most cars, if it's a leather interior, it's gonna be good. I mean, if you go from just leather, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:48  
not gonna be soft and supple. You know as a high end nap, miss.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:53  
I'm gonna have that like, it's been

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:55  
the perforated Napa leathers. Yeah, it the Napa leather is the thing that makes the difference. Otherwise the leathers that are real leather are all pretty decent, I think and there's not one that stands out for me.

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:07  
Yeah, I've been in the court and the Camry with leather and they're both nice.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:12  
They're both decent. They felt felt like nice.

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:15  
Alright, like, I don't know if there's one that's better. They're probably sourcing them all from the same people.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:20  
Just avoid the 1970s era darts that Sam and my dad had

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:25  
a pollster just fine. Buy a car get a re upholstered with rich Corinthian leather, whatever.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:33  
But find an old Cordoba and salvage seats on doba

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:39  
with rich Corinthian leather. Ricardo Montalban We miss you. Yes. Sorry. The way you said Kirk. Come on.

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:55  
Oh, now I'm gonna have that conflict. There was not now I could see

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:01  
I think I think that's a good place to

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:04  
see a lot of Star Trek references today.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:08  
Yeah. You can never have too much Star Trek. Yeah. See

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:12  
my Christmas tree is loaded with Star Trek. That's why of Star Trek on the brain.

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:17  
Yeah, yes. So,

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:21  
yeah, right. Do you start?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:22  
Well? No you did Nicole. You I did.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:25  
I did. I did a

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:27  
little kids read and yeah, that kids.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:30  
I started fine. I started it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:35  
Alright, stay tuned here for my interview with Dr. Jay Raj from Nissan, and we'll see you next time.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:44  
Okay, bye, guys.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:47  
Hey, everyone, it's Sam again. Time for another interview that I recorded during the LA Auto Show the other week. This time I've got Aditya Jai Raj, who is the director of electric vehicle marketing and sales strategy at Nissan. We talked a lot about the new Nissan aria that was shown in its production form that is arriving next fall here in North America, as well as just Nissan's overall Evie strategy. Enjoy. Alright, so let's talk about the the ARIA first. The first of all, this is your first this is Nissan's first new Eevee since the leaf and taking a very different direction from the leaf. What is the overall strategy for the Aria? So from targeting what is clearly a more popular market segment right now, compact midsize crossovers. What's your overall strategy for going forward with EVs starting with the Aria?

Aditya Jairaj  1:16:55  
Sure. So first of all, Nissan is fully committed towards the certification. So we have announced that by 2030, all our major models in key markets will have an electrified. So we're fully fully committed. Aria is the first step. First, crossover, Evie, for me. So three things about the audio, which I think paved the way, one. There are different battery sizes, different drive trains, so we have an area for everyone, based on your needs. Not everybody needs 300 miles. It's more about education. You know, once you're educated, your range anxiety goes down. And you know, you adjust based on what your what your commute is and what your life situation is, right. So this is an area for everyone. Second, the experience that you get when you drive an RV, it is very different. I'll give you a very simple example. This is the first model in the US where we are launching Pilot Assist 2.0, which is the next generation of autonomous driving, stepping up from what we have on the road. So it's eyes on hands up. Right. So this is going to be the first module. So ARIA is this at the center stage for introducing this technology with the RV. So what paving the way for what the future is going to be. We're fully committed towards electrification, there's an RV of everyone. And it's a stepping stone towards what's going to be happening over the next day.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:39  
So you mentioned two battery sizes, what, what are the sizes and estimated range that you're going to get from each configuration.

Aditya Jairaj  1:18:46  
So the big battery, the 87 kilowatt battery will go up to 300 miles. And the 63 kilowatt battery, I believe, is 215 months.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:02  
Okay. So the base level, you're starting roughly where the leaf plus today, and then 300 For the more premium models and assume that single motor is going to be front wheel drive as opposed to rear drive. That's right. And then optional. All Wheel Drive dual motor,

Aditya Jairaj  1:19:21  
optional. He forces what I would call it, yes, it's all drive, but it's beyond all wheel drive. Right. So an all when you when you think about all wheel drive, it's it's the typical features of you know, works in inclement weather, good cornering, good acceleration and all of that. Yes, equals has all of that. But what ethos has in addition to that, is it minimizes human body movement inside the car. So what we've done is we'll build on the knowledge that we have the GTRs attesa, ETS stocks clip system. And then we've also built In the knowledge we have on all the intelligent all wheel drive systems for crossovers, put them together. And we put together equals to equals is all wheel drive. But it's a holistic all wheel drive, that gives you all the good things about all your drive, but also gives you a much smoother drive, which basically reduces human body movements. So this carsickness and this will be

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:21  
interesting. That idea, I think, I think that's a great idea, you know, to have, you know, to try and tune your propulsion to make it as seamless as possible, as smooth as possible for the occupants. And it's something obviously, you can do, I think, much more easily with an electric powertrain than you can with an internal combustion system.

Aditya Jairaj  1:20:45  
So you see that we have a near 5050 weight distribution, which helps, right, and the center of gravity is pretty low. So hence, you know, we're able to use these systems and provide a much, much smoother ride. In addition to all the other fun stuff that all we drive in EVs,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:06  
you know, looking forward down the road, some years, you know, when you start to deploy, really, you know, higher level will have higher levels of automation, Robo taxis and others, being able to use a control strategy like that, it can be really beneficial for those types of vehicles as well. Because when you're, when you're disconnected from the driving task, I know you're a passenger in a vehicle versus the driver, when you're actively involved in the driving task, you're much less susceptible to motion sickness than you are as a passenger. So in terms of the performance levels, I haven't had a chance yet, unfortunately, to look at the release that came up for this. But what what kind of power levels you're going to have and the Aria?

Aditya Jairaj  1:21:56  
So in terms of talk, which is you know, which is what stands out to the Navy, on the Platinum, equals we'll have 442 pound feet of torque. me say this, instead of going into the numbers. It's almost as fast as as eSports. Okay. Numbers are what they are. Jeff will confirm the numbers. But it's almost as fast as eSports. And it's a cost.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:27  
That is one of the amazing things about this move to electrification is that the performance that you can get out of these things, because of that instant torque was fossa, zero RPM torque. Where, where do you see this vehicle fitting into the market? Because I know, I did see the the pricing on it starts at about $47,000 or whatever, which, which is a little more than what was talked about initially, you know,

Unknown Speaker  1:22:58  
when they are showing, so just so that's just for the starting reservation trim. Oh, okay, additional models.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:06  
Okay, so that's what that's an extended range version at that price point. Okay. What's, what's the timing going to be for launch of the different variants for fall of 2022? Okay, so

Unknown Speaker  1:23:19  
Well, I think the question is the additional trim level? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:23  
So what was the one of the first one? Yeah,

Aditya Jairaj  1:23:25  
we Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So deliveries for the reservations. I missed. deliveries for the reservations will happen in fall of 22. And because of time, we'll have more dreams.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:39  
Okay, so the first first vehicles won't be available in the North American market till close to a year from now,

Aditya Jairaj  1:23:44  
but then once familiar, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:47  
And is that what about Japan and other markets is launching sooner there? Or is the the launch delayed?

Aditya Jairaj  1:23:56  
It's a few months before us, Japan starts a few months before us. And then Europe is right there along with us. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:04  
For the the standard range variants, front wheel drive variants. Do you have you talked at all about what the price point for those is going to be? Is that going to be closer to that $40,000? Mark?

Unknown Speaker  1:24:18  
See that? I mean, we've talked about it all along, starting around 40. Okay. All right.

Aditya Jairaj  1:24:24  
Now, and then there's also the $7,500 tax credit. So that that improves affordability. Customers will return to both both existing customers, but I would say the biggest subset is going to come from conquest.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:41  
And in terms of footprint, the area is pretty close to physical footprint of a rug. But cheerier volume, closer, probably to at least what you get in the first couple of rows of Pathfinder, I think, right? It's very

Aditya Jairaj  1:24:55  
spacious, right? It's very spacious. And the reason the reason why We've been able to achieve this configuration with the RA is because it's a brand new platform. It's not an existing SUV platform that we retrofitted in Mairangi. So brand new Evie platform. With with the battery. With the battery positioning, what we've been able to do is to create more space in the interior. Second, under the dash, usually you have H Mac systems that take up space, we've taken all of that out, push the dash back for into the, into the into the herd. And what you see in the RV, I invite you to take a look at the interior. It's more about what you don't see, you don't see the center console attached to the your dash, you don't see any undulations in the floor. And you don't see any clutter of bodies. So it's basically what you don't see. Right, right. And it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:56  
things like touch sensitive controls in that console that disappear when you're not using them. But as you light up, that's

Aditya Jairaj  1:26:03  
right, hey, when you use them, you get feedback. Haptic feedback, haptic feedback. Thank you for right. Now in addition to that, if you look at the interior, we've got available Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and wireless charging. So again, no wires needed. But in case you do have a wire, you have a card. At the center console, on the lower part, there's a place where you can wrap around the cord.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:38  
Oh, okay. That's is you don't have it hanging on hanging around and you know, getting nice.

Aditya Jairaj  1:26:46  
So you can pick it up. So, the reason why I bring this up is the interior is very spacious, right, for reasons that it is described, but is very purposeful. There are there are there are, I would say even artistic touches to the interior, which actually make the cabin a place that you want to spend more time. So when I say you know artistic crutches What do I mean by that? So in the footwell the foot, well, there's, there's an end in life. An ending, right is very difficult. In Japan, it's a lantern, actually the foot right? In between both survivors. There's, there's an engine light. And the finish is the conical pattern. Again, the conical pattern is very typical in Japan. Intricate finishes. So basically what that does, it gives you the warmth of having some interior lighting. Second, it gives you a touch of art inside the cabinet. So these are very minute, very significant items that have been done on the interior to make it very desirable.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:51  
Yeah. One, as we start as we make this transition to electric power trains, yeah, one of the traditionally one of the things that has allowed manufacturers to distinguish and create product differentiation has been their powertrain, you know, different sounds different, different characteristics of the engines. And as you move towards electrification, a lot of that falls away. And so creating a unique user experience is a key part of creating, you know, what separates one brand from another and all these things you've talked about, you know, in terms of the finishes, the lights, the the the smoothness of the control, all of those things seems like they add up to create, to try and to create a Nissan user experience.

Aditya Jairaj  1:28:37  
Absolutely right. Now, to add one more point to that. If you think about the interior, we don't have displays, we've got screens, the cinematic screens, and one is convex, and the other one's concave, very purposeful, the one which is further from the driver, the curvature is towards the driver, making it easier for the driver to access.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:05  
And that one's concave,

Aditya Jairaj  1:29:06  
that's gone. That's concave because it's closer to the driver. And then in addition to that, we've got heads up display. And you can customize your heads up display. So these three, you know, these two cinematic screens and the heads up display is basically your gateway to the outside world when you're sitting in the car, and it's all connected. So I'll touch on one more point. You know, when you're sitting inside the car, there are different ways in which the car interacts with you and different ways in which you interact with the car. So you talk about the senses, right? We've got lighting, I spoke about lighting, we've got autonomously driving. When autonomous driving is activated. The interior lighting changes color. It becomes blue. So white, white is standard. Green is when ProPILOT assist 2.0 is available. And blue is when it's active. Right so the So there's underwriting. And there's the interior lighting, touch. I spoke about the happy garden, right? So there's, there's that. And then once so you can sit in your car, and you can say, hey, Nissan don't have the temperature. Or you can sit in the car and say, Hey, Alexa, play my whatever music list or something like that. You can sit at home and say, Hey, Alexa at home, hey, Alexa, what's the battery status on my car on my audio. So you can interact via sound. You can interact with touch. There are multiple ways in which this interaction happens to the senses.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:41  
So you mentioned Alexa, our Alexa voice services integrated into the infotainment system is the Aria. Okay, so you can you can use those commands in the way a consumer would use an echo at home. And then sound like you also have support for skills, skills. So at home, you can do this. The the infotainment are one of the things that we're seeing a lot more of as we go forward. Around the electronics, is the ability to update things do over the air updates. Is that something aside from the infotainment system, which presumably is OTA updatable? Are you supporting OTA capability for other systems in the vehicle as well?

Aditya Jairaj  1:31:29  
Yes. Simple answer. Yes. So OTA will be available on on the area, not just for bug fixes, and all of that, but also for feature updates. So in time, we get feature updates. And this basically helps keep you on refresh. So that's, again, I think that's something customers expect, and it's available

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:52  
in terms of what kinds of systems can be updated. does it extend to basically the entire vehicle or limited to certain aspects of the vehicle?

Aditya Jairaj  1:32:01  
So it's a lost that idea? Okay. All right. So it's systems and features, the difference? So the was the idea of systems that can be updated by OTA and features again, it depends on what our engineers put together and what our customers basically want. Features can also be

Unknown Speaker  1:32:18  
added, not updated, but added. Temporarily. I got one, two other people make a little more specific. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:25  
All right. That's great. And then going back to HMI for a moment you type you mentioned, you know, the ambient lighting changing color we have enable profile to Yes. You talk a little bit more about the HMI strategy around ProPILOT. Because I know I've driven a number of different vehicles now that have handsfree capability, like supercruise, and Ford blue cruise. And the HMI strategy is a little different. And especially for hands free system, I think it's, it's really critical for the driver to be fully aware of what the state of the system is. Yes. And so you can talk a little more about what the strategy is around HMI for that.

Aditya Jairaj  1:33:05  
Sure. So profiler, this is 2.0. The basics. It's a eyes on hands off system. Right. Right. And it works on on highways that have been HD map,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:16  
right, it uses the HDI it had the system in Japan on the skyline.

Aditya Jairaj  1:33:21  
So the key is, its eyes on when you talk about setting expectations with customers, right? If a customer activates robot edition 2.0 and looks away for more than I think it's five or six seconds, the system starts beeping, okay. So it makes it super clear to customer that your eyes have to be on the road. There is no gaming, your eyes have to be on the road. But you can sit like this. So that's that's very important in terms of expectation setting with customers. Second, when Kubernetes 2.0 Is is activated. It's not just interior writing, the color of the heads up display changes the color of the screen, the screen in front of the driver that changes. So we're making sure the customer knows what more they're in. So they know what to expect. Yeah, right. It's very important to set the right expectations. The customers, they should know what they're getting. The car doesn't drive itself, right. There's active involvement in the driver we're driving. This is a system that reduces stress. And if there's a situation where I see this, sometimes you need to go to a dance and your dance partner is either much better than you or otherwise and you want to opt out of the dance. Then similar ProPILOT assist 2.0 helps you opt out of certain dances. You want to highway the road is map all of that You can opt out of that situation, but you're still fully in control. The key is you're still fully

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:06  
and you are using an infrared driver monitor system as well as part of that is what's what's the availability of ProPILOT 2.0 going to be on the ARIA is limited to particular trim levels. Do you have any information about what the cost will be?

Aditya Jairaj  1:35:25  
So right now, we've, we've announced four times for reservations, the Platinum trim has provided receives 2.0. And the limited edition, which is which of the launch edition limited edition has go for it is 2.2. So right now, based on the terms of announced, two out of the photons have to be standard on those two on those two terms.

Unknown Speaker  1:35:49  
And I would say to all trends will have ProPILOT system NaVi link, right? Yeah, yeah, that's the standard.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:55  
Yes. Okay. All right. And then the terms of the longer term support and pricing. I know, for other manufacturers with hands free systems, you're getting typically three years of conductivity to support some app updates, so on and then after that you have to buy a subscription will be similar type of strategy for you guys to get some some period of time where it's, it's it's included, and then strive after

Aditya Jairaj  1:36:25  
the exact details we're working on, but it's on those things. Okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:29  
great. So, beyond Aria, now that you have a dedicated Evie platforms, really purpose built one, you know, going back a decade when leaf launched. At that time, the management of the company talked about watching a number of EVs in fairly short sequence, most of those never did appear, at least not in North America. The EMV 200 did go on sale and some other markets. But what's what's Nissan's strategy for watching EVs? Well, I don't expect you to show me specifically what vehicles but presumably, what kind of timing these views proceed for adding to the Eevee the lineup for a brand?

Aditya Jairaj  1:37:17  
So I know, I think what's key here, Sam is by the early 2013. In the US market, which is a major market for Nissan Motors, we have an electrified option. Right. So I think that's key. So that's, that's the cadence in which

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:36  
when you say electrified, refer to some mix of hybrid plug in e power and have you. Okay, all right. Then, one last thing I want to get into, and I don't know if this is very talked about or not, is the batteries, you know, if you can say who the battery suppliers are, and, you know, talk about the battery architecture, because we're starting to see some interesting new things coming in, in terms of battery architectures from various manufacturers. And so if there's anything you can share on that appreciate that too.

Aditya Jairaj  1:38:12  
That's a hard one to get into.

Unknown Speaker  1:38:14  
I got a they might be able to help with that. Okay,

Aditya Jairaj  1:38:16  
that's a hard one. No. So battery supplier. I think that's that's something we we don't discuss external. The battery system, you know, it's different from the way

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:31  
this liquid cooled battery, battery.

Aditya Jairaj  1:38:34  
Battery, again, designed based on performance, which more customers are looking for, you know, again, batteries go back to charging speed, right? That's most important. So Ravi, we have 130 kilowatts, charging speed. So you can go from 20% to 80%, in about 30 minutes, which, which is really competitive. So to support that we need we need to have the architecture set up in such a way that the batteries can do the thermal management, so management system.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:04  
And you're, you're using CCS now rather than chat at least in North America.

Aditya Jairaj  1:39:10  
In North America, it's not in the US. We have CCS.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:16  
I know in Houston, the current generation of the leaf, you know, with the Chatham o system, it has Chatham o standard, it has support for vehicle to home. I know there's been devices available in the Japanese market. Never there's never been anything washed in North America. Do you have any plans for doing anything around bi directional charging with ARIA through CCS?

Aditya Jairaj  1:39:40  
So you know, this is this is an area that we've seen, you know, we know how it works because it works on the roof. We're seeing you know what customers interest is how we continue continue to gauge what customer's interest is. We take that and then we continue to make updates on on our on our product. So it's definitely an aspect that we're considering. Until you hear about For more on this,

Unknown Speaker  1:40:02  
I mean, they add to that too, we work with a number of companies that are working on margin products. So we continue to work with them for certifications.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:12  
Okay. Yeah. A number of the the EVS that are coming to market now have varying supports of bi directional capabilities,

Aditya Jairaj  1:40:21  
key varying support. Not technically bi directional, but

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:27  
via veto veto, or in the case of the the upcoming ford f 150. It's, it's doing bi directional Power Home power backup, through the through the CCS connector. Lucid has talked about having some sort of bi directional capability, but they haven't really revealed details yet. But we're hearing more and more

Aditya Jairaj  1:40:50  
coming some an area that there's a lot of interest. And that is perhaps has to be because customers are interested in.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:58  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Especially, you know, for lifestyle vehicles. You know, there's some, there's some interesting possibilities there, you know, that if you have the ability to want to other devices off of your car, you utilize that battery power for other things,

Aditya Jairaj  1:41:13  
especially in states like California. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:17  
Yeah, definitely. Five bucks, guess it's five bucks.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:20  
Five bucks. And you know, power, your power from the grid can go away at various random times, certain times a year. Okay. All right. Well, anything else about the Aria or Nissan's Evie strategy that we haven't discussed that should be thinking about?

Aditya Jairaj  1:41:37  
No, the one thing I will say Sam, about the audio in my mind, for customer making a transition from an internal combustion engine to maybe we are we are makes the transition much easier. The audio is is a car. It's a car. So yeah. Which happens to be

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:58  
very, very, from from a usage perspective, it's very conventional, they don't have to change their lifestyle very much.

Aditya Jairaj  1:42:05  
That's right. And that becomes even more important when more of the mainstream conversion happens. Right now, the Evie market is three 4%, whatever it is, it's still I mean, we can call it still fringe for when it becomes more mainstream. That transition has to be easier, has to be more seamless. And that's what the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:26  
that that does actually bring up something else I just thought of which is around charging. You mentioned 130 kilowatt charging capability, which is great. The other challenge that is often cited as as a barrier to adoption, is availability of charging. Yep. Some other companies are, obviously Tesla's got their proprietary network. Other companies are building in aggregation across multiple charging network providers. What's What, if anything, is Nissan planning to do around that? Presumably? Or are you continuing to your partnership with Evie go you've had for a while? And are you doing anything beyond that, to simplify the process of adding electricity to vehicle,

Aditya Jairaj  1:43:11  
so for our reservationists, because 10,000 reservations, we provide $500, or even the key there, I would say, is to get customers to understand how to use public charging infrastructure you need this is this is once you learn how to use it, then it becomes seamless. So that's why you know, we want to, we want to make sure that we drive customers to using this public charging infrastructure, then they know how to use it, right. So our endeavor is to make sure that our customers have access on their fingertips to. So we also have an intelligent outlet, which will guide you to different charging stations. So that's that's been our, that's our strategy right now, where we want to provide customers seamless access to all the public charges that are available. So we can we can educate themselves on how the Chargers work. And hence, you know, it works in many ways. It helps reduce any anxiety. It helps, it helps increase customers understanding of how the charging system works. 80% of customers today still charge primarily.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:29  
And, you know, that's to be expected, you know, primary so far, you know, AV customers are mainly early adopters. They've got access to off street parking. That's right. But as you expand that market, you're going to bring in more and more people that don't have that access

Aditya Jairaj  1:44:42  
to exactly so it's one of the goals for the key is once you understand how to use it. You get over get over the innovations that you know, it is super hard. Yeah, it is not it is not easy. Yeah. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:53  
I mean, to your point about you know, seamless certainly you can find charging stations But if you have to juggle a charge point, Carl and ego count, eat Electrify America account and all these others, you've got multiple accounts that you got to pay them. You got it. Which tag do I want to tap on the thing? Yeah. Are you doing anything to simplify that process for your customers? Working progress, okay.

Aditya Jairaj  1:45:22  
It's a it's a very important customer adoption.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:27  
And you've got, you know, some pools full time you have to roll that out. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Great to talk to you. Likewise.