Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 226 wheel bearings. We've got the Arcimoto roadster. The Genesis g70. GM delivers Hummers and brightdrop EVs. rivian loses $1.2 billion. And we talked about the Hyundai ionic five in our first drive impressions as well as an interview with Trevor Live from Hyundai. All that more coming up next.

This is episode 226 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:33  
I am Nicole Wakelin. And we'll go with Forbes wheels this week.

Roberto Baldwin  0:37  
And I'm Roberto Baldwin with Digital Trends.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:40  
Robbie, you've been driving something or maybe I should say writing something a little different this week.

Roberto Baldwin  0:47  
I I have so I have been writing the Arca moto roadster. Now if you don't know Arca Moto is you might remember if you follow cars and especially EVs in any way, you might know the argomento SUV the fun utility vehicle. It is it is a an auto cycle. Essentially it is two wheels in the front one in the back and it has like this little bubble almost well not a bubble. Its canopy, a canopy. Yes, yeah, the canopy and you sit down in it, and you sit in it like a car but it has a it has a handlebars like a motorcycle, and you ride it around. And the idea is it gets about 100 miles of range. And you use it to do take care of like little things around town. You can you know you can you can take care of your errands, you might start seeing them in a lot of touristy areas in San Francisco, I know that they now offer them up for people who want to ride around the city and do the tour of San Francisco to a Segway as well they have the Segway and then they have those little weird little like little go kart things that oh yeah, the little yellow go yellow go karts that have a motor or are gas powered. And so now that those people are are still offering up the Arca moto SUV, so they have you know, the love, it's fun on the autobahn. So you have they have that that's sort of their main vehicle. And you can do a bunch of things with it. You can like you can make it you make the back have a little bit more room you can get there hoping to sell to municipalities as you know, little vehicles to get around and transport you know, maybe landscapers couldn't use them, etc. Then they have this other thing called the Arca moto roadster. Which is essential it's the same sort of platform but it doesn't have the canopy doesn't it looks more like one of those three wheeled motorcycles that you see riding around

Sam Abuelsamid  2:41  
like they can am Spyder I think yeah, yeah, those things

Roberto Baldwin  2:46  
which for a long time, I was always just like, about but at the same time, like you know what, if you want to enjoy the freedom of a motorcycle, without like, concern of tipping over, good, that's nice. You know, you know, the freedom of a motorcycle is great because you don't have anything around you. You see the world but you also don't want to tip over to be bad. Motorcycles are very heavy. So they have so they have this Arca moto roadster. It's essentially that it's an Eevee and I have been riding around and there's a bunch of little caveats Add to add here about about how much how I why I like it or reasons why maybe you should or shouldn't get it, but I actually really like this because initially they're like, Hey, do you want this and I'm like, oh, yeah, sure. Well take this.

Nicole Wakelin  3:33  
Did you have it for like a whole week to drive around?

Sam Abuelsamid  3:35  
I still have it

Nicole Wakelin  3:38  
like to live around town and they're cute. They were like a little gang of them going down the street. I want to get one and like drive I want to be gang in those.

Roberto Baldwin  3:49  
Castle and shopkeepers.

Nicole Wakelin  3:52  
Were the really toned down version of a motorcycle gang we're coming at you with

Roberto Baldwin  3:55  
Moto instead of like leather jackets. We have like members only jackets.

Nicole Wakelin  4:01  
Perfect. Absolutely. We have to wear bicycle helmets for safety.

Roberto Baldwin  4:07  
With like are we like to stop kittens MC stop

Sam Abuelsamid  4:14  
let me ask you a question. What kind of license do you have to have to use either this or the original? FPV Do you need a motorcycle license? You car license?

Roberto Baldwin  4:25  
Oh, you need a car license. So that's the bare minimum in some states including I believe California you don't need a motorcycle license. Or like cuz it's more car like but I anything that you ride you do have to wear a helmet. But again, that's always from state to state because Las Vegas, Hawaii they don't have more cycling,

Nicole Wakelin  4:44  
no helmet law here. Feel free to bunk your

Roberto Baldwin  4:48  
states like that. You know where you know, just go around, bonk in your head on the ground.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:51  
Wear a helmet please. Please. We're being sarcastic.

Roberto Baldwin  4:56  
As someone who spent decades not wearing a helmet I'm a huge asset have a kid

Sam Abuelsamid  5:00  
helmet from Michigan repealed its helmet law about four years ago and we've really amazingly enough we've had a huge spike in in serious injuries to motorcycle riders

Nicole Wakelin  5:12  
I don't believe you Sam the data lies

Roberto Baldwin  5:15  
the idea

Nicole Wakelin  5:18  
I never had one here I don't think in New Hampshire and people come screaming down our main road like our highway and they literally come over from Massachusetts, pull over which is super safe on the highway, take their helmets off, put them on the back of their bike and zoom back on the highway going 6570 miles an hour

Roberto Baldwin  5:36  
that that is That's dedication. It freaks

Nicole Wakelin  5:39  
me out every time like like your helmet but also could we not at least pull over not on the side of the highway which is super dangerous like you should not do unless you need to you don't need to go to the next exit

Sam Abuelsamid  5:51  
unless you have a flat tire you have to fix right now

Nicole Wakelin  5:53  
like do not just put the dangers on right there.

Roberto Baldwin  5:56  
There's always those those those those police videos of like the officer giving someone a ticket and also comes barreling into it and they all it's always like a near miss or something. Yeah, that's what don't don't pull over on the freeway unless you absolutely we

Nicole Wakelin  6:09  
actually had someone it was a child who is

Sam Abuelsamid  6:11  
you never know when someone?

Nicole Wakelin  6:13  
Yeah, those rogue Tesla's man,

Roberto Baldwin  6:16  
rogue Tesla's so when we talk about roadster,

Unknown Speaker  6:21  
totally god,

Sam Abuelsamid  6:23  
you're talking about the motorcycle club.

Roberto Baldwin  6:25  
I'm talking about the little motorcycle thing. So it has a top speed of 75 miles an hour. Anyway, let me go back to my whole if you write anything that's even remotely like a motorcycle, I really recommend you taking more physical safety class and you get a motorcycle license. The motorcycle safety class will help you and make you a better driver. And and the motorcycle license will mean that you know when you if you do happen to have one of these and you go into a state where it does say hey, by the way, you need to have a license and you don't they're not gonna like hassle. You take your your little, your little auto Well, I don't even know what it is more sexual thing. Anyway anywho anyway, it has a top speed of 75 miles an hour. It has it's an Eevee obviously and it has Evie torque like all through the Power BI like ever like I'm doing 50 I pull it out you get some maybe torque you're doing 20 Right you get some Evie torque off the line. There's a lot of Evie torque at you know, I think they said the controller just so people wouldn't fly off the damn thing. It has a range of 102 miles in the city. And then that really if you're doing 70 miles an hour everywhere, that just drops down to 32, which happens with a lot of electric motorcycles is if you're on the freeway, the range drops precariously because you are a giant board, blocking the wind as a human on a mortal motorcycle would you find body acts like a parachute? Yes, you are essentially a parachute, just dragging just destroying the range of your, your your electric motorcycle. It is three wheels. It doesn't have power steering, but I do believe they're working on that. So it is difficult to sort of turn at that low speeds because you're trying to turn two wheels with you know, handlebars. It has a very low center of gravity, it's it's and so when it goes around corners, it's not going to tip over. But you may slide off you kinda have to lean in and brace yourself if you're trying to go fast. And then there's the if you're a motorcycle rider, you know, when you hit a bump, the the action is you move up and down, the bike moves up and down as his bump to two wheels. They're running, you know, in the same direction. With this, there's two wheels in front, but they're on the side. So in addition to up and down, you have a side to side movement, which takes a little bit to get used to. If you're used to riding again motorcycles, if you ride quads, you're probably you're probably you'll be fine with it. So it's a little bit you know, with with with rough roads, having said all of that sort of saying well it's kind of weird to ride it you know, it's if you go 70 miles an hour, you'll get like 32 miles the range. Once you sort of get past the idea, like Oh, I gotta take this on the back road and do all these corners and all this stuff, which I did initially and I'm like, Oh, this is kind of fun. It's way more fun just just cruise around town. Just cruising around doing things like pick and go into the store. It's got all these little storage spaces. It's a set it's got this little like cargo area in the back that you can put like a top box on or whatever. It's essentially like a cargo I what I say in our video. For Engadget. It's a cargo bike for people who don't want to pedal it's for lazy people like if you're incredibly lazy and you just want to cruise around. You can get the Arca moto roadster it's also very, very, very expensive for what it is but yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. I think I think Sam it is 23 It starts at $23,900 which is so Okay, so all the sort of these are the reasons why it cost so much a it's a new company they're having, you know, they've essentially built a new vehicle. So you don't have the economies of scale, you don't have this idea that you can say, well, we're building, you know, 100,000 of them. Now we can sell them for 15,000. They don't have that yet. I have talked to them. And they said, they really do want to bring the price down. But you know, they have to sell more. And so, like I was saying, with the fleet sales, I do believe they're probably selling these into fleets as well. So resort towns places, the Beach, Miami sounds like a place that would probably have these Hawaii

places. And you know, you're probably going to start seeing these, in addition to the SUVs and other little fun vehicles you can rent. So the more of these that are sold within fleets, the more likely the price is going to come down. And so right now, to me, it's really for like first adopters, people are just like, well, I got a lot of money and I'm going to get this because it's goofy and fun. Or fleet sales. If you're someone who's just like, Well, I kind of want something to kind of cruise around. It's a tough pill to swallow that that that price. That's that it is really it is it is fun. You can only get it though in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Again, places where it's you know, beach towns and stuff. I'm sure if someone from Hawaii called them and said, Hey, we want to buy 100 of them. They'd be more than happy to sell. Sure. Yeah, yeah. So you know, they're they're they're a relatively new company. They've been working on their FPV for years. I wrote it at CES and 2017 I think maybe 2018 I don't know it's year years ago, I rode their SUV, or drove I don't I don't know. Yeah. And if you're looking for these fun, weird things, this this is definitely its, it has heated seats. It has heated hand grips, which is great because it's been like 45 and I've been riding this thing around and they're like the coldest week of the year here in the Bay Area. Regenerative braking, all the things that you sort of expect from from an Eevee So overall, I like it it's but there are the caveat that it's very expensive. It's kind of weird to ride into first started and yeah, that's yeah. So Arca moto roadster sent me your questions

Sam Abuelsamid  12:15  
have you written the Can Am Spyder and if so you know how how would you compare this to that?

Roberto Baldwin  12:21  
I have not written the Can Am Spyder I kind of wished I'm riding this thing around on my camera I wish I had written the Can Am Spyder they have not reached out to me. So I've never actually written their their motor trike thing. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:36  
yeah, cuz cuz I'm, you know, I'm looking at the the Canon website right now as well. And those things aren't cheap either. You know, they have, they have one, you know, the, the, the base version that called the Riker, that starts at nine grand. But you know, there's the Spyder f3 That is 18,000 and the Spyder arties, you know, $24,000. So, it looks like you know, all these things are fairly pricey.

Roberto Baldwin  13:03  
They, yeah, you have to make it you have to add a whole other. And it's obviously dimension to it. Yeah, it's a lot more complex than a motorcycles now you have to you have to the suspension is now you know, you have to deal with two sets of wheels up front. And so it creates all this sort of complexity, when you're when you're building it, versus a motorcycle, where it's just like, Okay, here's a frame. And now you need to be able to attach the suspension to here on the frame and the wheel, and the suspension in the back and the wheel. And this is where the motor goes. And this is the chain and or the the belt that goes back to the motor to turns the wheel taut. And that's, that's sort of the basics of a motorcycle. That's why they're, you know, they're there. Initially, they're sort of simple and then all the auto or all the motorcycle makers sort of build upon that to make it their own. And you know, the technology it's in motorcycles now is bonkers, you know, the multimedia. What Ducati and BMW are doing is just insane. The amount of technology that you're getting in a motorcycle is sort of crazy. Like, oh, I got you know, you can get CarPlay on your motorcycle, you know, you get you can adjust the you can adjust the suspension in order to the Multistrada I mean, it's in their name, but you can adjust the suspension so it's more of a cruiser or it's more of a sport bike. You can it actually moves up and down like the suspension you can watch it on a motorcycle, which you know 1520 years ago would have been like, you just here's your bike. This is what it does. Yeah, figure it out all right.

Nicole Wakelin  14:36  
I think I think this next one No, I did you look at the shownotes now so I don't know do we do we fight

Sam Abuelsamid  14:44  
I think you go first on that. I will add my thoughts in there. Okay,

Nicole Wakelin  14:48  
so um, Sam and I have the same car this week, which we just realized when I put it popped it into the show notes just now. We're are both in the 2022 Genesis G set I am a big fan of Genesis which I think I've said before, I still feel like this is one of the you get so much luxury car for not luxury car dollars like you just it's hard to match up you can't find the features in this that you'll find in other like luxury brands you're gonna pay 510 15 Whatever $1,000 more. So this is a the has a 3.3 litre turbo It is super unbelievably fun to drive there is 365 horsepower, 376 pound feet of torque, eight speed automatic transmission. It has power in spades. I mean if you want to go if you if you hammer the gas, you will get a strong reaction from this. It's but it also manages to do that because it's a luxury car. This isn't like some aggressive super sporty just like all about performance don't care about passenger comfort. It doesn't without being harsh, like it's an aggressive acceleration but it's nothing where you feel like this overly over harshness is not overly loud. It's very smooth as it does this. And when you get up to highway speeds and you're just cruising. It is it's quiet, it's easy to handle. You know you can have a nice quiet conversation with whoever is in the backseat and not have to raise your voice just because of highway speeds and even if it's pouring rain, or in the case of me yesterday, giant snowstorm comes in and there's snow and ice and yeah, I did a little winter vehicle testing in this. It's still it's unbelievably quiet and I have to say it handled beautifully. We have we really got like craptastic weather yesterday it was icy it was snowy it was slippery. I had no problems with this it handled really really well and this is rear wheel drive. This wasn't you know it's still this handle unbelievably well and really bad weather. Which I thought was a plus because sometimes you know you have to get all wheel drive vehicle for that to happen sometimes the rear wheel drive it actually is surprisingly good. And this was this was the kind of weather that would surprise you when you think oh yeah, no big deal. It's only an inch or two of snow in the ground but actually it's an inch of snow than ice and freezing rain and a little more snow than a little more ice so it's actually pretty slick. And this did really well. So I like driving this I like the power I liked it. It's got plenty of power to move it along but it doesn't. It's not aggressive about it remembers that it's a luxury car. And to that end you have all the luxury fanciness inside, you've got you know power steering wheel, you've got leather at door panels, everything a dual zone automatic climate control, everything looks and feels beautiful, very comfortable. It feels and looks like a luxury car when you open the door. You don't have any doubt that like this is a luxury and this isn't a Hyundai. This is a Genesis and you know when you open the door and you get all sorts of fancy safety stuff with as to you've got you know Rear Cross Traffic Alert Lane Keeping Lane following blind spot, rear occupant alert. So you get this there's a lot of car here. So for that and see this thing so for all of the stuff that makes this just a beautiful well equipped, comfortable luxury sedan, it is at that it's at 40 to one now they added stuff on to the one that I have. You get a sport package which adds some like like you get 19 inch Sport Wheels you get ventilated front seats, sunroof, they upgrade the speaker system to a 15 speaker lexicon system. You get some you know there's some dark chrome trims and stuff that is a $4,300 package. And then there's an additional $4,000 package on mine that is a head up display. You get Napa leather seating surfaces so fancier leather, microfiber suede headliner Brembo brakes, so you get extra bits and pieces so mine as priced was $51,945 So it's again it's not like you're getting a $30,000 car here but for basically 52 grand, you're getting a lot of car and that's what impresses me about this it wants to be a luxury brand it is it wants to be a somewhat affordable one and it is and go for it.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:07  
Amazingly enough. Mine was actually more affordable than yours despite the fact that big difference that I had I had one with all wheel drive. Unlike the rear drive one you had it was still the 3.3 liter twin turbo V six so same 365 horsepower but it had all wheel drive which although we didn't get snow yesterday we did get a bunch of sleet and freezing rain overnight on the Friday night I guess yeah Friday night. So when I went out to to go out yesterday there was all caked and kicked an ice that had to scrape off but you know on the on the all wheel or on the all season tires that were on this it did surprisingly well especially with with the all wheel drive. You know I didn't have you know, the the Napa leather or the heads up display things like that. So this was is the the not obviously not the base trim, but just the standard 3.3 t all wheel drive version. There's also there was or is a 3.3 T launch edition, which I'm not sure if those are available, but it's listed on the website. So the base MSRP on this one's 44,200 On the one I had, and with delivery, it came to 45 745. And you know, at that price point, you know, this is really a great value, especially when you compare it you know, probably its most direct competitor for this car is going to be the BMW M 340 ai X Drive. And you can get the M 340. I either rear driver or all wheel drive. Both of them have a three liter twin turbo six cylinder inline six rather than V six. They have slightly more power 382 horsepower, but they the M 340 II starts at 54 Seven for rear wheel drive and 56 Seven an extra two grand for all wheel drive. So you know that's like what 1211 $11,000 More than what one I had for all in for for the BMW and yeah, I think I would probably take this over the BMW i like the the three series it's good but you know this is absolutely a better value. You get so much for what you're getting. And you know as you said it does feel like a luxury car you know there are there are some premium priced cars out there that don't feel nearly as luxurious as what you get from agenesis so as part of the larger Hyundai Motor Group, a key component of you know all three brands Hyundai Kia and Genesis now yeah has always been valued. Clearly you know, Genesis models, the current lineup of Genesis models are a significant step up from what you get from a Hyundai or Kia but you know you you can see you can see and feel that when you sit in the car. The seats are really comfortable. One thing that you know, this year for 2022 models, they did get a mid cycle update. So got a new front facia brought it brought the design more in line with the rest of the current Genesis lineup. So they've gone to the, the the for the the headlamps have gone to the twin, thin horizontal strips for the projector beam headlamps. so it matches what you get on the G ad and G 90 and the GV SAP gV 80 and gV 70. And similarly the grille has been revised it's a slightly larger than before, but it's not. It's not as it doesn't come across as obnoxious as the the big BMW grille.

Nicole Wakelin  23:09  
Nothing does.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:10  
It does, it works better than the BMW grille so there's that the backseat, you know, in this is a little bit tight, you know, for where I position the driver's seat, you know, for 511 I get in the back, you know, my knees are touching the back the back of the front seat. It's not, it's not I wouldn't call it cramped, but it's definitely more snug than what you would get in a GD, which is, you know, no surprise to anybody. But other than that, you know, there's not really a whole lot to to complain about, you know, the only option that was on mine was the the Adriatic blue paint, which is 500 bucks. And, you know, everything from Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, you know, tends to be very reliable, very well built. So I think if you're looking for a premium, compact sports sedan, you know, this is a great choice. One, the One other thing that that they did change this year as part of that midcycle update, is they dropped the option of the manual transmission with the two liter, the base two liter turbo engine, you used to be able to get a two liter rear wheel drive action, I can't remember they offered it with all wheel drive or not. But you could certainly get the two liter turbo rear wheel drive with a manual. That is no more it's gone. So the starting price now, you know, so everything's got an eight speed automatic starting price for the two liter rear drive 37,005 25 which is very, very reasonable. It's definitely less than you're going to pay for anything from Germany in this class and And of course, you know, because it's Hyundai Motor Group, it does come with the sounds of nature in there. So you can enjoy the sound of a region cafe or crunching through the snow or walking through the woods, as you go for a drive,

Nicole Wakelin  25:15  
which should seal the deal about why you should buy it that one feature slowly.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:18  
Exactly. Yeah, I think I think from now on anything that doesn't come with the sounds of nature should just automatically be ignored. cross

Nicole Wakelin  25:26  
it off your list, like don't even waste your time. Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:29  
Not even worth your considering. Alright, so that's the genesis g 70. Last week, before we before Robbie and I recorded on our own last week, I think I mentioned that, for the first time in the history of wheel bearings, all three current hosts were present in the same location at the same time, and we didn't take a picture,

Roberto Baldwin  25:56  
join the ticket picture, but then they forgot. I said, Hey, it's time to eat. And then I looked around and I Dilly dallied. And so then I looked around, everyone was gone. I'm like, Oh, I guess I better go find a chair.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:08  
So anyway, the reason why we were all together was We're in San Diego to drive the another product of the Hyundai Motor Group, the new ionic five, the first of what is planned to be at least 23 different vehicles between now and 2025. Using Hyundai's new E GMP, which stands for electric, global modular platform. This is the the new Evie architecture that Ki is using on on all their upcoming EVs. This is the first one out, it will be followed in a month or so by the key V six. In fact, he may even deliver a handful to customers this month, before before New Year's Eve. But in general, they won't really be available till probably sometime later in January. And we all had a chance to drive it. What and we've got we've got a number of questions, I put out a call for questions on the ionic five the other day. So we've got some questions about it. But what what did the two of you think?

Roberto Baldwin  27:17  
I really, really liked it. And I tried to temper my expectations, because I liked the design of the vehicle a lot. When I saw it, I was like, oh, yeah, this is the one. But then you're like, I think I talked about this with the RS six. Ivana were you like, oh, and then you're like, Okay, what's gonna happen when I get in this vehicle? I got in, I was like, Oh, this is really nice. It is it really does sort of deliver on the promise of what Hyundai was showing off which which, you know, again, PR marketing, they have a job to do. And that's the make whatever they're selling sound like it's the best vehicle that's ever been made. Since the you know, the dawn of time. And I'm not saying this is the best vehicle they remember is very, very good. I really as an Eevee, as just a car, which I think is really important for a lot of people is is like yeah, it's a good Eevee it's more important that it's a good vehicle, you know, regardless of the powertrain, I think that's that's really what this is. And I will talk for 30 minutes about it. So I'm going to stop talking now.

Nicole Wakelin  28:21  
I'm in agreement it looked ripping is this this has very striking styling, it doesn't look like every other vehicle like they get made it look distinct. It has a sort of this future forward kind of look to it. What do they call I keep wanting to call it like they call it pixels, I guess the little rectangle, the little squares that are part of the design that go all along the back of that. And it carries through and that's like inside the car in places and it's sort of like it's like a little bit on the steering wheel. Like there's not even a Hyundai logo on the steering wheel. It's like not there. You're like, it's it's, it looks really cool. So you you have that like okay, this looks really neat. Is this gonna drive is really neat. Are you going to get behind me? I'm like, Wow, this. No, it gives you how are you gonna, like, say that about something looks and then you sit down. You're like, well, I don't care. Cool. This looks this. This is awful. It was really great to drive. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought and the same thing that you said Robbie, I felt like it was honestly one of the first EVs that I drove and I sort of forgot it was an Eevee I was just driving a car, which is nice. Like I

Sam Abuelsamid  29:24  
cross over. It's not a car.

Nicole Wakelin  29:26  
Oh, sorry, crossover, that you want to drive just a vehicle a crossover. You don't want to say like, oh, I have a really cool Eevee you want to just some point be driving a thing and forget like the engine, which engine the fact that it's an Eevee should stop mattering at a certain point. It should just be a vehicle and that's how I felt like this was I enjoyed the fact that it had this very feature forward look that it had just very roomy interior, but the driving it I forgot yet like Robbie's like move. It is always around so much elbow room. There was no room that you sort of forgot that this was an easy He suddenly it was just you're just driving. And I think that's brilliant.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:04  
Yeah, I think, you know, this is something, you know, several years, you know, last several years, you know, when I do presentations for clients in my, my role as an analyst, you know, one of the the topics I would bring up regularly, going back, probably four or five years now was as, as the Evie sales continued to climb, and you start moving past the era of, of tax incentives for buying an Eevee. And looks looking today like that, that your is going to be coming much sooner than sooner rather than later. But, you know, one of the things you know, as EVs go mainstream, they're going to have to compete on their own merits, regardless, people are not going to be thinking, most people are not going to buy something just because Evie, they buy it because it meets their needs, you know, or their desires, you know, which may be the way it looks the way it performs, whatever capabilities it has, and, you know, this thing in most respects, you know, does exactly what, what consumers are going to expect of it. And I agree with both of you, I like I like the design, I think in your in your gadget video. Robbie, you referred, you talked about it, having kind of the the look and feel of a 90s hot hatchback. You know, and in terms of its proportions, I think it definitely, definitely has that, you know, kind of that hatchback look, even though it's a little bit taller. I think one of the interesting things about this is it's actually bigger than it looks when you see it, especially when you see it in photos. Because the proportions are very much like a 90s You know, VW Golf or something like that. But when you actually measure it, it's quite a bit larger than those vehicles it's, it has the same basically the same footprint as the Hyundai Tucson crossover. So it's like a 10th of an inch difference in overall length from the Tucson it's a little bit wider than the Tucson but it's about to the roofline is about two inches lower. So it's taller than those old hatchbacks, but a little bit shorter than a typical, you know, compact crossover. So it's very similar size to Tucson rav4, that sort of thing, a couple inches shorter than a model Tesla Model wire Mustang Mach E. And, you know, but it still has that a little more upright seating position of a crossover. And I, you know, I really enjoyed driving this thing, I think, I think it's fantastic. You know, they're offering it with three, three different powertrain configurations. To start with, actually, initially, there'll be two. So they're starting, there's two different battery sizes, there's the 77.4 kilowatt hour battery, that's the extended range battery, and a 55 kilowatt hour battery, which is the standard range that's coming, I think, next spring, sometime or spring or summer. So you can get it with rear wheel drive, and the standard range battery, rear wheel drive with the extended range battery, or all wheel drive, with the extended range battery, and the the rear drive extended range as a EPA rating of 303 miles to 20 for the standard range battery, and 256 for the all wheel drive, which is what we all drove that was the only one that had first to drive. Which has I think it's about 320 total horsepower between the two motors. Yeah, sounds right. Yeah. 320 horsepower. So you know, it's not going to come to me it's not going to challenge you know, a Tesla Model y performance. But it's plenty quick. It's more than quick enough for you know what most of what anybody's going to need Yes, it's going to be zero to 60s going to be somewhere around five seconds or so.

Nicole Wakelin  34:06  
Since you brought up the model I have to interrupt you so while we were out taking photos of this on some winding twisting road a guy who owned a Tesla Model y stopped knew exactly what it was and was like oh my gosh, I drove but he like drove by and then like turned back around and came back he's like I drove by I was like that's a cool look at oh my gosh, they have the ionic turned back around. It's like it's okay if I check it out talking to this guy. He was so excited about this car and he said if this had been around when I bought my Tesla I would have bought this but I love how it looks like we open the doors we let him see it. You know he was really impressed he his wife both like this looks so good. This you know the affordability factor they're like you know the pricing wasn't out at the time that we talked to these guys even but they're like there's no way this is gonna cost what my Tesla cost you know, but it's still gonna he was all in this test. Like I was like I am all in for buying this one as soon as it's out. And he loved it like it was a funniest thing to see him just SCO buzzing bias that all of a sudden

Roberto Baldwin  35:06  
j turns on the middle of

Nicole Wakelin  35:08  
Tesla's interested in this car.

Roberto Baldwin  35:12  
We had a couple people who were like, Oh, is this a concept car? I'm like, No, this is a production car, you can actually buy as a person. And they're like, Oh,

Nicole Wakelin  35:21  
the look of a concept of style. Like, this can't be how it's really gonna look when you get your hands on it. Yes, yes, it does.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:28  
Yeah. Yeah, no, it is, it is definitely a striking looking car. You know, much more so than, you know, some of the other stuff that's out there, you know, especially, like, you know, one of the probably most direct comparisons would be to the VW ID four. And I liked I liked the way the ID four looks, but this is definitely more unique. You know, without without being, you know, over designed, I think it's, it's a nice balance

Roberto Baldwin  35:56  
there. Yeah, they finding that balance of sort of this, to me, I call it a retro futuristic, because it adds those little pixel lights, which is very, you know, 80s but, you know, they strike this really great balance of looking like the future and looking cool and looking different from anything else that's on the road right now. While not just going you know, just going a little bit too far, not becoming the Aztec not becoming, you know, something that looks like they went a little too late, like they got right up to the edge and they stopped, right, this is where it's still good. If we keep going. It's gonna become the Homer, you know, from from The Simpsons. So they got right to the edge, they stopped and they're like, tada.

Nicole Wakelin  36:37  
And that's it. And it does it it managed to pull off looking different without looking so different that you're like, Oh, something went wrong there. Like they say what there was this old fashioned thing where they said when you look in the mirror, you're supposed to look at one accessory and take it off like you shouldn't over over accessories yourself. But I feel like the Hyundai guys like okay, we kind of fell down and someone's like, Okay, let's take off a couple bits. Now we have the perfect car. Like they didn't go too far. They stopped at just the right point. Without like, we can throw all these other things. No, no designers take that. Take that take that. Now we haven't looking just right. And what they gave us was just right. It Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  37:11  
it is it unless something like really unless the the Eevee the ID buzz comes out and it's affordable, which I don't think it's going to be that affordable. This is probably right now the front runner for our next Eevee which is not for like two and a half years because of you know, we started the lease on the Kona but yet that's that's unlike like, wow, I kind of I want this this is I want this in my life.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:34  
Yeah, and the pricing, the the SE standard range, that's the the base model that's coming probably middle of next year, that will be priced at 39,700. MSRP is like a 12 $500 Roughly delivery charge. And then goes up they've got se SEL and limited trims, like they do on most Hyundai's the top of the line, ionic five, limited, all wheel drive will be $54,500. And you can those are the ones you can get right now. The SEL and, and the limited, I think you can also get the all wheel drive SC as well. And then you still have the the $7,500 federal tax credit available on that. So this is, you know, there's some, you know, I think I think this is a reasonably good, it's definitely a good value compared to most of what else is out there. And I think that, you know, there's probably something here in this lineup that will that will fit most people's needs, you know, even even the rear wheel drive models with the extended range battery got 225 horsepower. I think that's that's plenty. You know, it's a little more power than what you've got in the Kona and the you know, the Kona is great fun to drive. And, you know, this is rear wheel drive with a single motor. So you should be even better balanced than the Kona. And you can you can get an SE extended range rear wheel drive from $44,000. So this is definitely I think something that should be on most people's radar something to look at. There's some interesting features that Hyundai's incorporated into into this platform. One is the fact that it's got an 800 volt architecture. So it's most most EVs including Tesla's current Tesla's have a 400 volt architecture, which is inherently going to limit how fast you can charge it. Among other things. This as an 800 volt architecture. It's the first more mainstream vehicle like that the only other ones that do that right now are the Porsche icon Audi e Tron GT, and the Lucid Air and you know, so they're they've adopted that the basically Hyundai is basically trying to future proof this platform with and so that means that you know, it can charge it up to 235 kilowatts. If you go to one of the 350 kilowatt chargers at Electrify America or charge point, and it'll go, it'll charge from 10% to 80%, in 18 minutes, which is really, really fast. We, we did, they did charging demos we did charging demos with this thing. And, you know, as soon as you plug it in, fits it, plug one in, at 10% battery charge. And it immediately jumped right up to like 225 kilowatts, and then slowly crept up from they're up to about two to 30. At its peak. And so it charges very quickly for, you know, for most people's needs.

Roberto Baldwin  40:49  
Yeah, it's, it's yeah, that I think the chart people don't really think about the charging speeds, they think, well, it's range, and you know, this and that. But if you could charge like, you know, that that timing were like 15 minutes or whatever, that's just a little bit longer, really, then your car just as just a scooch, just as much longer than your car because I put the thing in, you know, put the car put the, I forget, sorry, you put the pump in the car, the hose into the hole in your car, and then you go inside. And if you're like me, and you were like me, yours wander around, try to figure out what sort of new flavors of Red Bull are out in the world. Like those, like for some, you know, some beef jerky to come back and it's probably about 10 minutes, you know, if it's just a little bit longer than that, okay, I'll stay inside a little bit longer. I'll sit in my car and listen to five minutes of a podcast or listen to exactly one song. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really not that long. And these, uh, you know, last night I had to go charge, I'm driving the mini se right now, which is also a really great car, but has very limited range. I plugged it in, because I wanted to get it up to 100 for for a range test, and I walked over and I got some Hawaiian Barbecue. Because it's a big shopping center. I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna get some Hawaiian Barbecue. So that's, that's, you know, this sort of someone told me that when you're you're charging Evie. While you're, when you're feeling up a car, that's what you're doing. But when you're charging Evie, you're usually doing something else. That's sort of the the deal. So yeah, so I went and got Hawaiian Barbecue, because I could just park it there, which, you know, I can't just park my car at the gas station and walk away and walk away. But it's not. It's good. But but But you shouldn't,

Nicole Wakelin  42:34  
should not.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:36  
The another interesting feature they have is vehicle to load capability. So you can plug in an adapter goes into the charge port, and that gives you an AC outlet with one point up to 1.9 kilowatts, output. So you can you can hook up a power strip to that, and run a whole bunch of stuff off of that. So you know, if you're doing some glamping, you can have you can have have a bunch of power available for your, for your morning coffee, or, you know, to charge up your your laptop or whatever else you want to do, you know, hook up your hook up your blow dryer to that. So that, you know, that's a that's another and you know, theoretically, you could also, you know, recharge your friends, Evie, from that, although it would be a fairly slow and tedious process to it's like, it's like plugging in your Eevee into your standard household outlet for that's not particularly recommended, but you can do it. And then, you know, just just to prove that this isn't a complete love fest for the ionic five. There are. There are a couple of minor flaws in this one one in particular that somebody else pointed out to me on the first night that somebody had driven it on the first wave and was asking about this and I realized, you know with EVs in cold weather, one of the things you definitely want to do if you can is take advantage of heated seats because they take a lot less energy to heat up the seats and keep your your backside warm than it does to keep the air in the cabin warm. And to most EVs in fact most cars period, there's usually dedicated switches for the heated seats, usually somewhere in the center console or somewhere in the center stack. There's a button for each front seat to turn on the heaters. Not in this car. It's actually buried in the in the touchscreen interface. And depending on what you're doing, it will take a minimum of at least two taps on the screen to get to the heated seats and turn them on, which I thought was something of a strange oversight for an Eevee

Nicole Wakelin  44:59  
I think it was annoying too I hate it when you have to go in depth into infotainment to find that and I wonder if it was like some design thing like because it makes things look cleaner because you don't have little little toggle switches to turn on your heated seats but it was cold when we were driving this thing and I I wanted the heated seats like so it did actually really were Wait a wait in here here we go.

Roberto Baldwin  45:20  
I'm looking at the Dashboard right now. And I'm looking at the Climate The climate controls are not hidden in the the the the display there's actually like a climate control has like little capacitive touch buttons. And but right underneath where the temperature is, there is a space that you because you couldn't you know there's zone temperatures, there's a space between each temperature where you could totally put a button to turn on the heated seats. So maybe that's

Nicole Wakelin  45:50  
it has to be that they just decided like aesthetically, let's let's bury that button. Everybody who buys this is gonna live in California. It never gets cold here. Who cares? I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin  45:59  
Yeah. So yeah, that's a bummer. I don't think I'll also I wish the seat went down further. But that's that's just me with cars.

Nicole Wakelin  46:07  
I think that was the first thing I said, Okay. I walk up to Robbie at dinner at our little cocktail hour and I'm like, Oh my God, you really are tall. I was like

Roberto Baldwin  46:19  
oh, God, I can't believe we talk to you on the phone every week.

Nicole Wakelin  46:23  
Every week. You're the giant I speak to you every week. Oh my god.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:28  
Yeah, no, you're right. They do have some physical controls for things like volume and, and to get to shortcuts to some of the various infotainment controls and also the the climate control. So that's good. We have a few questions that were related to the ionic five. So let's see the start off. Andrew Pappas asked, how's the handling? How do the seats do holding you in? And the interior seems more minivan than hatchback. So I think we've kind of addressed the handling I think we you know, we thought it was quite good. But any any other thoughts you want to share on that?

Nicole Wakelin  47:10  
He said What does it say the interior feels more minivan than hatchback? Yeah. I don't think it felt like a minivan.

Roberto Baldwin  47:17  
It's very Yeah, it's comfortable. It keeps you in your seats. You don't you know it's nice. There's just enough side bolsters you're not flying around. Like you're like say I don't know, right? No Arca moto roadster so yeah, no, I think it's it's if they could hold you I think the seats are gonna anterior is very nice.

Nicole Wakelin  47:34  
I had a co driver who was wonderful who was driving more aggressively for various reasons on purpose taking the corners really hard and actually do stay remarkably in place because that was the kind of driving where if you if you didn't have good bolstering if you have good seats, you'd be like I'm smack in the center console. Now the door

Sam Abuelsamid  47:52  
Yeah, no seat, the seats are very supportive. I was I was surprised at that I was riding with with Karl Brauer. And, you know, they do the seats, the front seats do an excellent job of holding you in place and they're comfortable and supportive. You know, having that that big battery down low in the chassis, obviously helps the center of gravity helps keep body roll to a minimum. I think overall body motions are well controlled. It does you know, it does oversteer a bit or understeer, I should say a bit at the limit, which is fine. I think for the vast majority of drivers, you know, it's very safe and stable way to do it. Not not a huge amount of steering feedback, but it's it's fine. You know, I think you will you will enjoy driving this thing. You know, we took it up. We drove up from San Diego up to Julian, which is up in the mountains. Yeah, both of you got Bye.

Nicole Wakelin  48:45  
Bye. That's my pro tip. Go to Julian and get Julian pies. Yeah, good.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:51  
Alright, and yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it really feels much like a minivan. It definitely feels more like a more like a hatchback. What about flexibility of the cargo space? And do the materials seem more upmarket? So I think we addressed the second one. I think the materials are fine, you know, yeah, yeah, it doesn't feel as luxury is the Genesis But now you know, it's fine.

Roberto Baldwin  49:15  
It doesn't feel cheap. It doesn't feel like it's just sort of a part's been you know here with there's some stuff in here it feels

Nicole Wakelin  49:21  
nicer like I think it feels nicer than like an ID for the ID for feels a little bit like yeah, it does feel my affordable and I feel like the ionic five feels much nicer than like than the night before.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:32  
And the the infotainment system is never laggy feel oh, yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  49:36  
just work. Yeah, everything just worked the way it's supposed to good job.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:39  
Yeah. And there's there's plenty of cargo space. I mean, the beautiful thing about a hatchback you have a nice, large area. I think there's like the official spec is 30 cubic feet of cargo space behind the seats, and about 66 With the rear seats folded down. And then Gupta AJ asked rear wheel drive. So yeah, as I said, it's available rear wheel drive, that's the base configuration, we didn't have an opportunity to drive that just the front drive. Although rather the all wheel drive, the all wheel drive, the front motor is smaller, so it's rear torque biased. So it does feel more rear drive than the traditional all wheel drive. But thought I thought that handling is fine. What about sound installation in the road noise? What what did you think about the road noise levels? issue?

Roberto Baldwin  50:31  
Yeah, I don't think it was an issue we did. I did video with it in car video, and it didn't have to, like yellow over like, you know, the road. And we're also you know, we were on back roads. We weren't you know, so some of those can be very, you know, rough. You know, sometimes they have no more gravel than, say, your regular road on, you know, in your neighborhood. But, yeah, for the most part, I didn't have any I don't recollect or have any road issues or road noise issues that that either caught my attention or disrupted my my, my video recording.

Nicole Wakelin  51:05  
Okay, saying, Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:07  
alright. And then the charging curve. I don't know, how did how long did either of you watch the the the charging demo, or at all?

Roberto Baldwin  51:19  
I didn't make I had to shoot video that day. And I was with somebody else who was shooting video, so I ended up not doing the charging. Okay. Which is sort of a bummer.

Nicole Wakelin  51:28  
When he was doing video, and we just didn't have a chance to get that. Yeah, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:31  
I watched the, the first, the first part of it, you know, just to see how quickly it ramped up the charging, as I said it almost, you know, from 10%, it dumped up to like 225 kilowatts right away. And then it stays there pretty steadily. After this, I've got an interview that I did with Trevor Lai, who's the director of product planning for EVs and Hyundai. And we talk a little bit about that in there. But basically, you know, unlike the, the musk Maki, which, at least in its initial form, when it got to 80%, it would basically step down from 80 kilowatts down to 10. At 80%. They've since changed that they did an OTA update the changes that but Hyundai is ramping down more gradually, once it gets past 80%. So it's not, it's not that sudden step down. So it will it will keep charging, I think, full charge up to 100% Takes about 35 or 40 minutes, roughly, which is quite a bit less than than most of the competitors and then as a family car relative to the competition. Any any additional thoughts on that?

Roberto Baldwin  52:48  
I well, I mean it did you have the ID for the Kona made the bolt and if you're like the aggressive like rock and roll family the maki I think it fits in there really well. I think it has enough space for family. I don't know I don't have a family. I don't have enough space for like dogs. You know, it has that that I feel like it probably has, especially because it doesn't have that sort of curved back. It's more like abrupt. So you get you actually get in more of that space. That cargo space that square footage because sometimes you're like, Oh yeah, you know, 60 square feet, but like, you know, the the rear window is that like a 30 degree angle. And so you're, you're losing a lot of space to like, unless you're putting a lot of triangles in the back of your car. It doesn't you know, you kind of lose some space less useful. Yeah, yeah. So I you know, I think as a as a family car for doors, put some throw throw some people I got in the back, took some photos. Uh, yeah. No, I think it was comfortable. If you have a, you know, a small family. It's a great second car for a family. Hey, we're cruising we're going to Costco or something.

Nicole Wakelin  53:51  
I literally thought it was actually funny because I was thinking about the female I wrote in the back of it for a chunk of time because the person is doing video I was like, out of sight like hiding in the the passenger side rear seat while you're doing this thing. Yeah, like show us over the corner. Right. So you're like hiding in the back of his video. But so I'm in the back. So like I'm sitting in the back of the car. He's driving in the front seats pushed kind of far back because of how the cameras angled. And I think, good lord, there's a surprising amount of space back here, like so. And I remember thinking, this would be great if you had kids, especially if you have kids, like car seats are varying sizes, you know, for your family, you've got booster seats and like booster seats to the back that are pretty easy. But once you get into those like rear facing car seats and the toddler seats, those things are ginormous. And you could easily put two in here and I was thinking about it. You could even put like the rear facing ones which are the ones that are they're tough because of how they angle Yeah, they're just super awkward. I'm like you could legitimately put rear facing child seats in this and not feel like you're gonna have to scoot a little forward up front like it was surprisingly roomy that I literally thought of those questions. I was sitting back there. So those were my thoughts. There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:01  
Yeah, as a point of reference motional, which is the the joint venture company that Hyundai formed a couple of years ago with aptiv supplier to develop automated vehicles and Robo taxis. They, you know, they operate in, they've got a pilot program in Las Vegas, for Robo taxis, they have selected the ionic five as the basis for the robo taxi platform going forward. So they're there, they're actually testing them in Vegas, now they've got them and running around in Vegas and a couple other places. And also, starting early in the new year, they're going to have some of them running in Santa Monica, with Uber Eats, doing deliveries, doing automated deliveries. But you know, they chose this car as their Robo taxi platform. And one of the one of the factors you want to incorporate, you know, for Robo taxi, it's got to be easy to get in and out of the back seats, because that's where passengers are mostly going to be sitting, it's in those in those back seats. So the back seats, definitely, you know, big enough for at least a couple of adults, you know, three, three, as long as they're not too broad shouldered. And, you know, it's, it's definitely, I think, a good family vehicle, you know, so, I mean, for any of the the current leading crop of compact crossovers, you know, like a rav4, CRV, Tucson, etc. If you find the backseat of that suitable, then this is very comparable to that. It's similar in size to what you'll get with any of those vehicles,

Roberto Baldwin  56:39  
which is weird because it looks so small, it pictures it's an illusion, it's a trick,

Sam Abuelsamid  56:46  
it is an optical illusion, because they push those wheels way out to the corners, as the other interesting thing is the same overall length as the rav4 or as a Tucson. But the wheelbase is 10 inches longer. So they really push those wheels up to the corner. So when you see it sitting there by itself without without something else as a point of reference, it does look smaller than it actually is. Yeah. Which is fine by me. I don't have

Roberto Baldwin  57:15  
a problem. It's like a TARDIS. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  57:17  
it's bigger on the inside. Alright, any last thoughts on the on the ionic five?

Nicole Wakelin  57:25  
And then for me?

Roberto Baldwin  57:27  
You know what? I didn't turn on the sounds of nature. I did. Oh, you did? Okay. Alright. So with these, we check that make sure it's there. Yeah, it works.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:35  
Oh, Sam. Exactly. So you know, whatever residual sound does come through, you know, in the absence of a, of an internal combustion power train, you can easily drown that out with, you know, the sounds of feet crunching through the snow or that Parisian cafe. So not a problem at all. You're just fine. Oh, what I one one other last thought on this one. In terms of availability, they actually started they've started deliveries this past week. In California. Initially, it's going to be available in California and about 12 Other states which are either have a zero emission vehicle mandate, or where EVs are already selling and significant numbers. And then over the course of 2022, they want to ramp up and make it available pretty much nationwide. So if you don't live in ZEV state, you may have to wait till the second half of the year to get one or go to California or Texas or Washington or somewhere else where they where they do have them and buy it there and then bring it back to wherever your home is. But eventually you'll be able to get

Nicole Wakelin  58:43  
one one day, one day

Sam Abuelsamid  58:47  
fingers but assume assuming the chip shortage does continue on indefinitely.

Roberto Baldwin  58:52  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it's gonna it's gonna be tough to get these right now for the next year.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:58  
Yeah. All right. Here's my interview with Trevor Lai, director of product planning for EVs at Hyundai North America. So we're here driving the new ionic five first of a new wave of dedicated battery electric vehicles coming from Hyundai and and also across the the Hyundai Motor Group, Family of Brands. You've you've had an ionic for six years now since the original one was launched and not one. Was there Hyundai's first dedicated electrified vehicle. Now you're transitioning to battery electric only? What? What is the what is the strategy going forward with Ionic? Is this gonna mean you're going to have multiple models off of this as a sub brand for electric vehicles? Do you see it perhaps someday becoming its own separate brand or is it going to stay part of the Hyundai family? How do you see that working over over the long haul,

Unknown Speaker  59:59  
more semi touch In a really good thing, right? You've touched on the history of the ionic brand. So the versions of the ionic brand, you had the AGV PGV. And also the Eevee consumers a choice of what powertrain suited their life from that, like you said, six years, we've had a lot of feedback from those customers to try and make a even better product going forward. So we have now first of the many on our E GMP platform is our ionic five, right, great range, great styling, great interior packaging, as you can see here, as we're sitting in one, it's one of those things where I think it'll appeal to a lot of folks. As we release more ionic vehicles, I believe the company will be taking a look and seeing what we what direction we can go with that. So that piece still remains quite a bit under study.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:51  
Okay, what, what, for this first vehicle for the ionic five, you know, what was what was the thinking? Why, why this particular form factor, what what, you know, what was the background and how you how the company landed with this particular car.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:09  
So what we wanted to do for ionic five was the first piece range we found was a very, very important piece to the success of the product, right? We found that out through, of course, ionic electric, but also looking at other competitors in market. So we knew that that had to be a big piece, right off the bat. Number two, we're always looking at trying to compromise more platforms, especially going forward. And if you're gonna do that, we also know the feature is electric. So we have all those three pieces together, you really have to have a dedicated platform with which you can build five, and of course, the future electric vehicles as well, you may have seen the Los Angeles Auto Show always heard about the ionic seven concepts. That's something that I'm working on as well as V, a larger, larger SUV for for the future. And so when you have all these pieces in place, you'd have something that can accommodate for best optimized platform for the Wii. So you combine all those elements, needing dual motor, primarily rear drive biased, a large battery pack, all these things, you have something very specialized. And the great thing is, like I said, keep coming back to Communist platform communist platform. And the reason for that is, it's not just a one off some OEMs will just do a one off and lots pretty expensive way to go about doing things. Do it right the first time five, and then we'll see more in the future.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:38  
Yeah. Interesting. You mentioned rear wheel drive. And this is an interesting trend we've seen from some automakers not all over the last couple of years as they've started to launch new EVs. You know, Hyundai has had, you know, pretty much almost all your vehicles since the Genesis was still part of the Hyundai brand, have been front wheel drive base. Why? What was the thinking behind going to a rear wheel drive architecture for GMP? Well, there's

Unknown Speaker  1:03:07  
a couple a couple of reasons that we think are weird drive architecture, is going to work up pretty well, if number one was want to touch on the efficiency piece of it, right. So you heard earlier in our presentation for the auto drive variants. It's very efficient. Because we don't need the all wheel drive system, the entire front axle is disconnected. The wheels are disconnected from the motor, so you have less parasitic drag that way as well. Also, because of the longer wheelbase, we feel that we have enough weight that we carry on the rear wheels to provide a better ride quality for the consumer. And you know, through history, we know regardless of propulsion type, a rear drive platform is going to be a drive biased, powertrain is going to be a better experience for the consumer. The last piece too we take a look at front wheel drive based EVs. Those wheels are driven by a very high torque motor. In particular, in the case of a Kona electric, for instance, two and 50 pound feet of torque, and the tires were chosen for that seem to be holding up pretty well. But if you look at other front drive based EVs in a parking lot like we are here today, you're going to see a lot of advanced tire wear, and having all the torque and power sent to the front wheels. Those wheels are also turning. What happens is the edge of the tires get feathered and feathering Of course, you know both significantly

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:32  
reduces your handling capability.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:34  
Not only that, but from for NVH. tire noise we have weathered tire. So all those things together kind of led to where we are today.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:42  
Okay. As far as you know, this particular vehicle goes. Let's talk a little bit about you know, some of the design choices that were made. You know, I know one thing that's interesting, you still have some physical controls For things like getting to map navigation media, in addition to the two large screens, that's something that on the Tucson, which is also relatively new, and the Santa Cruz, you went away from those and went to a full capacitive touch interface, what was the thinking there with keeping some physical controls in this particular vehicle.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:23  
So what we what we're doing here with Ionic five, right, the buttons that we see here in the center stack of conventional terms don't even really a stack anymore, because it's so compact. This is actually really a styling element you see over here with solid, because just continues all the way across, you're gonna have a solid piece here anyway, you might as well have some controls that are solid controls, we did hear from some quite a bit of feedback, we need to at least retain volumes, we've done that here with the ionic five. The other piece of it, while we do have a very large screens, we have found through our research that, particularly with BV buyers, they're very well in touch with the current trends, current and future trends of technology. So they're already using touchscreen displays extensively in their lives, not afraid of it. We have those elements here as well, not only for these two screens, but also for the back controls appear as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:14  
I think one of the really interesting features that noticed in this car is this center console here, the armrest in the center console structure. You know, there's a lot of cars where your armrests can maybe adjust forward and back a little bit. But this one, the entire console can slide forward back. Where did where did that idea come from.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:33  
So the idea there was we need time, we are building a concept for a new vehicle and doesn't matter if it's with an ice vehicle or an Eevee. As in this case, we do a brainstorming session with our market research folks. And also our, our planning teams that we have at the engineering technical center that we have there. And so we brainstorm about great innovations that we can do. And one of the things that we found through the skateboard design of the cGMP platforms, you have a completely flat floor, no notice in the rear, there's no hump at all. Some of our competitors, they still have a hump for some reason or another. In this case, if you have a flat surface, you can do more things with it. So in this case, we decided we can slide the console for nafed.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:15  
As it's a pretty cool idea. I think it gives people a little more flexibility in how they use the vehicle, depending on you know, their physical stature like, I know, gentlemen, ello here would probably appreciate having the console a little bit further forward, you know, given her her height, or lack thereof. For listeners, I mean, you know, we joke about job that we love her. She's great. So what, what are some of the other things that you've done distinctly differently for this car that you haven't done? That you haven't done in the past? You know, whether they were enabled by the egfp platform, or just in general, you know, things that you're going in a different direction for the Hyundai brand.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:02  
So let's touch on two two things. Right. So let's jump back about maybe three years ago or so, we had unveiled that Hyundai 45 concept vehicle when that came out people like whoa, that's a feature of Hyundai. Oh, but that's just going to be a concept car. That's not gonna be anything like that. For production? Well, you look the ionic five now, pretty close, you take a look at that concept. That's pretty darn close. And so having show car styling, that can actually be produced mass produced efficiently was one of the things I think design direction is, is awesome, right now, the second piece that that we're doing here is something that Ryan talked to you earlier about right VTOL, what we call our on board generator, if you have a big battery pack anyway, people like plugging things in to charge their devices through USB outlets. And of course, you can take a look at, for instance, palisade are a Santa Fe, you know, you have a 110 outlet in the second row. Let's take that a step further. If you have a big battery pack, let's convert that to 115 volts. And you can run up to almost almost two kilowatts or 1.9 kilowatts of capacity for that system. And you can do it through the plug in of your seats. Or if you want with an optional Hyundai accessory, you'd have to charge port for the exterior of the vehicles when

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:18  
you mentioned voltage. This is the first really sort of, I'd say mainstream vehicle that has adopted an 800 volt electrical architecture. You know, most other EVs, including even Tesla, you know, are still at 400 volts, you know, but the only other ones out there 100 or more are the Porsche icon and the Lucid Air. How was that decision made? I mean, there's obviously some incremental costs associated with with going to an 800 volt system. Some of the components cost more. So what drove the decision to use an 800 volt design for this platform for vehicles that presumably at least Some of them will be relatively affordable. So the

Unknown Speaker  1:10:03  
two elements that I like to look at with the interval system one, we talked earlier about the flexibility of the GMP platform. So what that really represents is an investment into the future. 400 volts has been working great now, but what's going to be the next step? Right? So 800 volt architecture allows us to do that. The Wi Fi, and that is, again, coming back to customer research. One of the main barriers for shoppers is charge time. What if you're not prepared, you have to know and drive overly long distance at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, you know, life happens, you might have to do that. With a 800 volt architecture that we have in ionic five, you can do the Superfast charging, or is it from 10% to 8%, in 18 minutes or so. That's a really, really important piece for that peace of mind for the consumers and the best messaging there. Is that a standard across the board for all ionic fibers and their base trim, or the top of the limiters

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:01  
is interesting. Ryan was mentioning earlier that particularly in Korea, a lot of the buyers in Korea live in high rises live in apartments where don't have access to dedicated off street parking, like most in America are many in America do. And so they Evie buyers, there are going to be more reliant on DC fast charging. And so having that ability to charge you know, that that quickly with an 800 volt system, I think is going to be crucially important and you know, it's a it's a good benefit for everybody, you know, globally that gets access to these vehicles,

Unknown Speaker  1:11:38  
right. And in that time, you're looking at what 10 To 80% We're looking at about 200 miles of range. And it's basically a very similar to a top up you might have at a gas station, and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:47  
not much more time. Exactly. In terms of charging, you know, from you know, survey work that we've done at guidehouse. Mike, my employer, you know, one of the the big barriers we've seen to Evie adoption is access to charging and charging time. Was one of the challenges we have is you have a lot of different charge networks. You know, charge point Evie go Electrify America and others. And in the past, customers drivers have had to juggle multiple accounts and have different NFC tags are whatever you tap on the charger to initiate your charge. Is Hyundai doing anything to make that process more seamless, more friction free for Evie drivers.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:37  
So for that piece of it, we understand that that's a very common, common complaint, right? Especially those who have had DVDs for for quite some time. We've seen that in the consumer electronics side of having all these different dongles charge whatever device you have. The best idea is of course to have a colonised standard. That's something that Ian mentioned earlier in our presentation. He said the business is working on solutions for that information for your net, not my forte. Okay. Fair enough.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:08  
Let's see. Any other things that people should be thinking about? You know, with this, I think, you know, I think they're a Hyundai, so far hasn't gotten a huge amount of attention for its Eevee efforts. You know, which I think is unfortunate because you've already had some really good EVs you know, even though the the original ionic range was somewhat limited. It was very, very efficient. The the Kona, Evie has great range, you know, at a relatively reasonable price, and it's a lot of fun to drive. And this one as well. Are there any other things that people should be thinking of, you know, when it comes to Hyundai and EVs, and you know why they should consider Hyundai among the leaders in the Evie space? presuming you think you do believe

Unknown Speaker  1:13:55  
that? Yeah, of course. The thing to note, of course, for Hyundai, we were known very well for America's best warranty. And if you're ever unsure about well, how is this gonna? It's fine now great new car. How's it going to be eight, nine years down the line? It's not a problem. America's best warranty is that for a reason on day is backed by our legendary warranty that will warrant these parts for a very, very long time.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:18  
Alright. Trevor Lai, thank you very much. Thanks. All great stuff. Continuing on with with Evie deliveries. GM delivered the first examples of two of its new EVs this past week. They apparently delivered the first Hummers to customers Hummer EVs. They didn't say how many, so this might be like two or it might be 10 We don't know. But some some customers and and we also don't know if those customers are GM employees or non non employees. They didn't say but but there are apparently you know, regular consumers somewhere that that have Hummer EV To drive now. And they also delivered the first five bright drop Evie 600 delivery vans to FedEx Express in Inglewood. So you may see these making your FedEx deliveries if you if you live in the LA area starting in the next few weeks. And over the over the course of the next year, both of those will be ramping up significantly in volumes and GM will be adding more and finally adding more EVs to its lineup since you can't actually buy a new bolt right now, which was the only other Eevee that they had

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:38  
i The bright drop it's very interesting because they're they sort of came you know, bright jobs he startup they got bought up by or invested or however you want to say it

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:49  
anyway, they have not actually developed it internally. So they have the

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:53  
GM overlords so but you have all these startups that are making these sort of delivery vehicles. And I did an article a few months back. And I talked to FedEx and they made a very good point. Whereas if you're a big company or a small company or whoever and you're looking to buy delivery vehicles, you kind of you're probably you're more than likely going to go with the company that's attached to a large legacy automaker, because that legacy automaker has service centers all over the country, and that legacy automaker isn't going anywhere, you know, they're not, they're not, you know, the whims of the market or the whims of you know, they can they even though you know, we have the, the the shortage and the inability to, to build things right now, if you're a company, a factory that needs to build our foundry needs to build chips, are you going to build, you know, 100,000 chips for GM or 5000 chips for a startup, you're gonna go with the big money first, and then the startups and then kind of get pushed back. So it's, I think, I think we're gonna see a lot of these bright drop things everywhere. I think it's, you know, I think for automake, for big companies, and small, especially if you're a small company, and you're buying an Eevee delivery vehicle, you don't want to buy like three of them, and then have that company go out of business, because now you're gone out of business.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:14  
Right. And and that it's interesting. You mentioned that from coming from FedEx, because there was another article that was published this week, on the verge from Shadow Kane. He did a big long investigative piece on a startup called change. I think that's how you pronounce it anyway. It's like change with a j instead of a GE, of course. And, you know, they were partnered with a Chinese company to do a very similar kind of large electric delivery van. And they had a deal with FedEx. And I guess I think they delivered about 20 of these things to FedEx over the last couple of years. And it was supposed to be several 100 that were supposed to be delivered. And, and they're, you know, they were supposed to help FedEx with installation of charging infrastructure at their depots, oh, they had all kinds of problems, basically, you know, they went out of business and completely shut down last spring. But, you know, FedEx is now suing them, they've got a couple other companies that are suing them. Because, you know, they paid for vans and stuff that they didn't get. So you're right, I think, you know, this is an area where, you know, the legacy automakers are likely to have a significant advantage. And Ford is about to start deliveries of the transit, their electric version of the transit, somewhere to the bright drop, not quite as big as the Eevee 600. But, yeah, I think the any, you know, for a business that relies on these vehicles to generate their revenue, that knowing that the company's still going to be there, five years from now, and is going to have parts and going to have, you know, service centers to take care of these vehicles. I think that's going to be really important for a lot of these companies. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:05  
Yeah. And I do like the fact that they they deliver the Hummer Right, right at the end of the year, which you know, automakers do this all the time in Hyundai has done this ionic five, they've delivered a few of those. I think they delivered one so far that I'm aware of. Yeah. But they delivered it within 2021 And I remember when they delivered the first bolt they delivered the in the year but they also delivered it in Fremont, which is where Tesla was really sort of like you know, just just this just that old school automaker do that sort of thing. Yeah, we delivered it that we delivered three I think it was two or three bolts in Fremont California and they don't say anything about Tesla in the press release just another just driving by because it was before the model three to come out so they they beat the model three to market. And yeah, so it's it's that's that's always a fun like, well, we're going to have it by the end of this year, which means sometimes they're going to have three of them delivered to three people Aren't you know, the last two weeks of December?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:03  
Yeah, that's automakers often do that sort

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:06  
of thing. We did it.

Roberto Baldwin  1:20:07  
But we did it. Technically we did. And that was we're technically right, which is the best kind of right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:14  
When Ford did the the reveal of the, the machi. In 2019. In LA, they actually did it in Hawthorne at Hawthorne airport, which happens to sit right next to a company called SpaceX. I can't remember who owns that company, but some Twitter guy. Yeah, he's spent a lot of time on Twitter. Yeah. And they use, you know, the the actual reveal event. They did it in the same hangar, which a few days later was used for the reveal of the cybertruck. Yeah, that's what Yeah, Tesla does all their reveals. So and they did, they did demo rides during the day, you know, driving around the perimeter of the SpaceX headquarters. Yeah. So if he was, you know, if Elon was there, looking out the window, he would have seen these things, driving around circles around his building all

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:08  
day long. Probably just gotten his private plane and went somewhere else. He's like, I don't need to be here for this.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:13  
I'm out. On my plane. I believe in

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:16  
taking my private plane. I'm going home, wherever that may be at that point.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:22  
I think I think it was still Beller at that point is where most of he had I think he's still on five houses in Bel Air at the time.

Well, he's, I think he's sold them all now because he moved to Texas, so he doesn't have to pay California income taxes. Anyway, another Evie startup, had their first quarterly earnings report this week with rivian. You know, they went public a couple of months ago, and at a at an enormous valuation. And they reported their their q3 earnings with a $1.2 billion loss in q3. They finally, give us some numbers on how many trucks they have delivered, which was 386 r1. T's actually 380 turn 84 Or one T's there was also two r1. S is the SUVs that they delivered this past

Unknown Speaker  1:22:22  
week. They did miss that. Okay. Yeah, it

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:25  
was they talked about it in their, in the analysts call afterwards. I wasn't listening in on it. But the reports I listened to they they met rj scaringe, the CEO mentioned that, you know, we delivered the first two of the SUVs this past week, just before the earnings call. And you know, so it's not, it's a very slow ramp up, you know, they technically started production in September. And they said that it was going to be a slow production ramp, while they finished getting things sorted out. And they're also, apparently, from what I've been told, they are focusing more right now on production of the delivery vans for Amazon, than they are on the AR ones. Since Amazon invested four or $5 billion dollars into order 10,000 of these vans, it's not surprising that they

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:21  
would, they don't want to end up like, they don't want to end up like change with A J. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:28  
avoid that. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:30  
Here's your here's your vans, Amazon.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:32  
So you'll you'll be seeing a lot more of those rivian Vans coming in to deliver making deliveries in your neighborhood in the in the coming year. I think their target was to try and deliver 10,000 of those vans by the end of 2022. And a few 100 of them by the end of this year. They also announced that they were building a second factory in Georgia, near Atlanta. And they're investing $5 billion last factory. Do you think that, you know, it's what and they they also report that they have 70,000 pre orders for the r1 to r1 S, which is about a third of what Ford has pre orders for the F 150. Lightning? Yeah. Do you think maybe it's a little premature to be spending $5 billion on a second factory.

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:24  
So they have Okay, so right now their current factory the capacity is 200,000. So if they're doing 100,000 If they have to do 10,000 And then 70,000 They're still under 200,000 for the year. If they you know, as they're ramping up for 2022 production, it'll probably take them a year to finish that factory from now. So I guess they're they're very much been like well, we're gonna do it. We have the money. Let's do it now.

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:53  
Big hopes for future big thing current numbers and they'll be ready.

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:58  
I driven I've driven the r1 for 30 minutes off road, and it is a very good truck, I'm gonna, I'm actually it's quite good. I'm having it delivered tomorrow. And I'll have it I can talk about the next you know the next part like a like a proper like more than, you know 30 minutes ride and drive around in mud. But it i There are a lot of people who who have been asking me about this vehicle for the last few years more than the cybertruck more than the F 150 Lightning more than the Silverado that'll be unveiled. And so I think they they are hoping that they can continue getting the hype. I mean, they'd beat the cybertruck to market and I think that's it to them, then I'm sure they're all like, Yay, throwing confetti in the air. Of course, they're not building anything else Tesla's to build all these other vehicles and other Tesla's is hitting the issue that everyone else has when they're building vehicles. Like, we want to make a new one. Oh, man, where do we make that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:53  
Yeah, so I think Tesla's gonna deliver probably somewhere north of 900,000 vehicles this year, which is, you know, getting into, you know, real automaker territory. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:05  
So I think, you know, 600, if they, once they have both of these made, they'll have 600,000, you know, annual capacity, other vehicles, which is, you know, they still have to make the 100,000 for Amazon over the next however many years, and they're probably anticipating that once people see the Amazon vans on the road, they'll have other customers will want to buy these and then, and then, you know, they're hope. They're hoping that the hype machine keeps going. And we'll see that Yeah. I mean, I if you're going to get that, that shareholder that that investor money, like he should do something with it, I guess. And if you're, if you're adding it to infrastructure, if you're adding it to infrastructure for your for your company, you might as well just go for it, we'll see what happens.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:47  
Yeah, and I think, you know, the, in the queue in the the earnings report, I think they said at the time, at the end of September, they had about 5.5 point 5 billion in cash on hand. And that was before they, that was before or 5.2 billion. That was before they got the proceeds from their IPO, which is about $13 billion. So, you know, they were are on target, you know, for the end of the year to have, you know, somewhere around $19 billion in cash on hand. So they've got the cash, they don't have to, they don't have to borrow money in order to do this. But they're also, you know, right now, as long as they're not building very many vehicles, they're also burning cash at a fairly prodigious rate, they had a negative cash flow of about almost 1.2 billion just in in q3, and it'll probably be close to that much for q4, at least. So they

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:42  
spend 5 billion on the factory, they burn through one and a half billion per quarter, which is about you know, two and a half. That's almost five, they save 10 billion. So they still have a few billion leftover for next year for 2023. They're good. They're good. They'll be there'll be

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:57  
at least the next kid.

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:58  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're not having to borrow money, which Tesla had to do, you know, you know, they had to borrow a lot of money in order to do the things that they do. I think they're like, well, Tesla did it, but they borrowed money. We're doing it without borrowing money. Let's do this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:13  
Yeah, well, I mean, Tesla's credit they actually didn't really borrow very much money either. They just kept going back and selling more stock, you know, people kept buying it so Oh, yeah. They actually have had surprisingly little debt given you know, how much money they lost over the last decade. Yeah, it was it was comparatively small.

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:35  
The Evie stock market is just bonkers to me like the valuations of like some of these Evie companies. And you know, if you have that valuation, you have the money you should really use it you know, at some point someone's to be like, you know, what, maybe these aren't worth as much as we think they are. It's like the housing market. At some point people are gonna be like, Oh, wait, wait till it makes way more money and way more cars and Tesla and so does Ford and GM hold? I think as Yeah, as everything sort of like fizzles out, that's when they're gonna be like, Oh, we shouldn't use that money to buy a factory. Darn it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:13  
This Yeah. And, you know, I mean, even even though you know, rivian rivian, stock price did drop after their earnings report dropped about 10%. It's rivian is still worth, despite having delivered 386 trucks in the quarter. It's still worth more than Ford. terms of its market cap. $383 billion market cap versus 79 billion for Ford.

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:39  
I think if we sneezed, like and the time of a sneeze I think that's how many that's that's how long it takes for to make 386 f1.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:47  
Well, it made a billion just as we've been recording this

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:50  
podcast. Well, they build they build about, I mean, assuming they have enough chips, they build about 120 F 150s In our across the two plants. Kansas City and Dearborn, where they build it. How much 160 an hour from each plant.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:06  
120 an hour? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:09  
So that's three hours of production for the F 150. Is what rivian delivered in q3.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:16  
Our guys, that's horrible. Like everyone got up, they got to work. It's like between getting the work

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:21  
and lunchtime. That's, yeah. Yep. Up to the first break

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:27  
up to the first lunch break. All right. All right, we're worth 15 billion. Let's go. We're done. We're done.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:36  
Okay, we've got a couple of other questions. And let's address those and then wrap it up for the week. See, Andrew Pappas had another one. He had a question about how the chip shortage affects parts suppliers that don't need chips, like things like seats, glass, etc. How are how are those companies affected by the reduction? So, you know, the thing that I think a lot of people have come to realize with the chip shortage, is you get 1000s of parts in a vehicle. And for most of those parts, if even one is missing, it becomes very hard to ship the truck or the vehicle, you basically have to have every single one of those parts, you know, they automakers have been finding ways to leave a few features here and there. But for the most part, they've had to either pause production or stockpile vehicles while they wait for the parts that they need. So when they pause production, that means everybody else that's shipping parts for those are building making parts for those vehicles. They have to pause production as well, because they don't want to be stockpiling those parts. And so glass seats, you know, tires, brake pads, everything else that goes into a vehicle. Those get paused as well. So there's a cascading effect throughout the economy.

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:01  
Yeah, if you if you're like ham making something if you don't use any chips at all in your production of your part. And you're like, hey, we're future we're proof. You know, we're defended against this, this this chip George, nope. Because car production is only as quick as the slowest supplier?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:20  
Yep. Yeah, I think it's it's generally estimated that for the auto industry for every direct job, at an automaker, there's about seven other jobs that are directly impacted at suppliers and various other service providers. So there's a there's a large cascading effect from this industry across our entire economy. Alright, finally, from Sean Whitehurst, we have Hello wheel bearings team. Perhaps you can answer a few puzzling car questions I have. Why is there no indicator light that your headlights are on? The only indicators are for parking lights or headlights, and then for high beams? Which with daytime running lights, drivers may think they have headlights on in some situations. I've also been in well lit cities at night and second guessed if my headlights were on.

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:16  
Oh, that's a that's an actual Yeah, no, that's that's a real thing. I've driven around I used to drive around with my W RX. Not realizing what's this cruiser because it was like the first car that I had that had just running lights on all the time. And so I'm like, Wow, it's really dark. What's going on? And like, what's what's happening? And it didn't have like an indicator to said, like, Oh, your headlights are on because it's nighttime. It was just everything was really dark. And then I turned it on like, Oh, okay. And now we have you know, a lot of cars have those auto. So it just turns on when the sun goes down and does its thing. But yeah, I think there would there should be something

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:54  
a lot of cars actually do have separate indicators for headlights and your parking lights. Some don't some combine them into a single one. So you don't know what's actually on

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:08  
what's going on. I am driven with my parking lights on like it would it's a brightly lit city and you think your lights are on and then all of a sudden you get to a dark spot or like me Yeah, it's really not well lit, like you said, Oh, my lights are on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:23  
If you have a car that doesn't have a digital instrument cluster that still has, you know, traditional mechanical or electromechanical gauges with physical needles and stuff, one indicator that your lights are not on is if your instrument cluster is not lit up. And I've had that I've noticed that sometimes I'll pull away and then look down at the gauges and realize oh shit lights are off because because the clusters dark. Now with a lot of modern vehicles that have do have a digital cluster, those are going to be on anyway. And it's really

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:54  
bright. Yeah, because it's it's fighting the daytime. So you don't know until it gets darker. It's so in your brain. It's backwards.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:03  
But if you do have gauges, you'll be able to tell from that as well. That's another indication. Alright, continue on with the light theme. Why have lights never been connected to wiper usage? Anything beyond the quick pulse single swipe should be accompanied by lights on as long as as is the case the law in some states? Good question. I don't know. I mean, does seem logical that you know, if you're going to have wipers on your lights should probably just come on automatically, don't you think?

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:36  
Yeah, that's they have that that's like it's a law in California, where if your wipers are on, your headlights have to be on? So right, but why not? Why not just make that automatic? I wonder what happens? Well, then I think what happens is you get into the intermittent issue, like it's Yeah, does it stay on? Did you just do that? Because you had a little bit of a little you know, there's there's a little

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:57  
flipped on, it's not few minutes. Now they're off again, and now they're on and they either

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:00  
stay on the whole time because they're the you know, you only you have you know, it's early in the morning, you have that sort of weirdness that's going on. I think I'd like you know it to be fair, that should they should still just come on. I mean, I had lights on during the day isn't hurting?

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:16  
Is it really a harm if your headlights are on? I don't think so.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:20  
You know, there, there are some people out there who, you know, find themselves deeply offended by other people driving with their headlights on during the day. I have generally done you know, much of my life. Yeah. But you know, some people hate it. I have no idea why. You know, it's never it's never bothered me if somebody else has got their lights on during the day. You know, with with my cartwheel my Miata? I generally don't turn the lights on during the day, you know, because they're pop ups but with other cars I often do. So. That's

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:56  
why would they be because now modern cars all have running headlight running daylight? Yeah, the headlights are on all the time. So now I'm just saying like, why are they so angry? Hey, it's daytime.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:12  
I know. I've seen complaints from people. It's like, I don't want daytime running lights on my car. How do I disable these? You know, how do I kill?

Nicole Wakelin  1:37:19  
What I don't understand the wanting to disable some safety features. These damn seatbelts get rid of these things. How do I am bolt these, you know?

Roberto Baldwin  1:37:27  
How dare you? How dare you impose your lights on? Philosophy? All

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:32  
right. One last one from Shawn. Why do SUVs get to tint rear windows is the mark of a crossover versus a wagon. I legally tinted my TSX wagon in Connecticut. And the maximum tint on any door was minuscule. Had my vehicle been lifted two inches at the factory like a Subaru, it would not have been it would not have been a car in the eyes of the law. And I would have had the tent I would have. I could have tinted the rear windows more dark. If it's for police safety, then why not larger, higher vehicles with more places to hide things be allowed? More 10? This has puzzled me for years.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:11  
Why? I don't have any why? I don't know. Who do we ask that? Now I want to know, would that be an engineer question to ask? Would that be a dumb question to ask that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:24  
I think it's actually a legal question.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:28  
Should we need a policeman? Well, because actually, this one now,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:34  
I will check with with a couple of people that I know with knowledge of the law. But my my guess is that, you know, SUVs are generally classified as light trucks. Which, at least the way the law has, you know, the safety regulations, you know, were set up, you know, before everybody was driving SUVs, you know, light trucks were considered more commercial vehicles, you know, more like delivery vans and things like that, that often don't even have any windows on the side and in many cases on the back. And so, you know, tinting the windows, with you know, darker for those vehicles was not an issue. Whereas, you know, cars, anything that's classified as a car, you know, has a lower limit on the the window tinting. I think it's just because the class has trucks and trucks, you know, are allowed to do that. But I will I will dig into that one some more. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that one? Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin  1:39:33  
The only thing I know is that in California can't tend to side windows, the windows like for the driver in the front passenger, because the police can't see into the vehicle as they walk up.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:43  
Right but what about the other?

Roberto Baldwin  1:39:44  
I've no idea I'm not even sure what the what the I just know those windows. I think you could just do whatever you want with the back windows. You can just you know spray paint them black as far as I know. But uh, yeah, I

Nicole Wakelin  1:39:56  
don't think you're texting the only two police officers I know like hey, do do you Why so I'm trying to get into this very minute

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:03  
it's such a it's such a weird because it's you could do it on this but not this. I don't think a police officer is gonna pull you over for like well on this car it's

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:15  
over unless it was like your windows or practically tinted black or something you know so there but I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:20  
and a lot of SUVs you know everything from the rear doors back around usually is like really dark tinted. Yeah and are hard to see through.

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:30  
It's the keep the you know, people from staring at your children. I don't I don't look at my kids. You can look at if they're in a sedan but not in this car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:40  
Alright, well, that's all we've got for this week. And thank you, everybody, for continuing to listen. And if you listen to this week, happy holidays, whatever, whatever holidays you happen to celebrate Christmas this

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:56  
week. Festivus it's Festivus this week.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:59  
For the rest of us

Nicole Wakelin  1:41:00  
do Christmas. I'm gonna say Merry Christmas dollar Christmas,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:03  
Happy Krampus day or whatever, whatever. Whatever floats your boat. Enjoy everybody and we'll talk to you next time. Bye guys.