Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 29 of wheel bearings who got the Genesis gV 70 The Mercedes AMG SL roadster Ford Bronco Chevy Equinox Evie Mercedes Benz vision EQ xx, BMW i x flow and Volvo ride pilot and more. All that coming up next

this is episode 229 of Wheel Bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid of guidance insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:30  
I am Nicole Wakelin with true car

Roberto Baldwin  0:34  
and I am Roberto Baldwin with TechCrunch.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:37  
And Nicole, aren't you go first.

Nicole Wakelin  0:40  
Okay. You always do that to me when I'm the least prepared. It's like you asked Robbie, and I'm ready you asked me and I'm like, Oh, crud, I was still writing stuff down. So I had a vehicle talked about before I had the Ford Bronco this last week, the two door with the Sasquatch package.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00  
General hardtop or soft top.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01  
I have a hard top. So yeah, and Sasquatch. Yeah. Which is kind of just fun to say, and you can't see what I'm making like a little claw like a Sasquatch, because I feel like they would have class.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14  
Probably very large one. So only the very large,

Nicole Wakelin  1:17  
whopping giant. So one of the things about driving the slip during this before, like on on media drives, but nobody has these yet. Like I haven't seen a Bronco in the wild, like a Ford Bronco anywhere yet. I just don't think anybody in our area has. I have literally not seen one. I've seen some Bronco sports, but not the bronco. So as I'm driving around, the most fun thing about this is watching the reaction of everybody. And what's kind of cool is it's like always these people that are in other off road vehicles that are turning their heads and like trying to see it on highways and stuff. But then you'll see I saw this one for runner go by and the guy had like, you know, lift it was tricked out, I felt like he could have driven off into the wilds of the White Mountains with this thing. And he's looking he's looking at his window and his wife significant others the passenger seat and she's like, give me these like two thumbs up. Like, that's awesome. It was so cute to see this like, Yay, someone has a bronco. So

Roberto Baldwin  2:15  
he's sitting there and he's like, I just spent like $80,000 and aftermarket parts on this. And then she just drives up. Julie over here is like, Oh, look at that. That's

Nicole Wakelin  2:26  
looking out the window. Like look at that thing. That's really cool. So I think they were just excited to see it sort of out in the wild in the party out in the wild. Yeah. So driving it it's fun to drive is very truck ish to drive. You know, you have that bounce. I found this when I was driving the Bronco before that it's it's moderately well mannered on the highway, you know, you get a little bit of bounce and sway and it doesn't attract platform. So you feel it feels like driving a truck. The thing that I find the most challenging about driving the Bronco is and I forgot exactly what they called them. They have these little like guide sites that are located on the hood. So the handles on the hand. Yeah, the little handles, they make this feel wider to me than it is it's somehow messes with my like, as I pull into parking spaces, I think my brain puts them further out to the side than they are and I always feel like I'm closer than I am. So it makes it feel unduly wide. When you're not, you know, when you're just driving and trying to park in a parking space at the grocery store.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:22  
Well, it's probably because most most vehicles you know, they kind of slip away this things more. Most vehicles are actually wider than they appear to be.

Nicole Wakelin  3:31  
Right and this one my think my brain tries to do the AutoCorrect it's been doing my whole life is that well that's where it looks like the edges of the hood are you've got X number of inches of vehicle still on either side as it curves down that you can't see. So don't take out the car next to you. So I find like I feel like I'm coming into a spot and I'm pulling closer to my side because I can see it I look on the right hand side and I've got like miles of room. So I had this like it's hard to judge you have to it takes a little getting used to that that is actually the edges of your vehicle. You don't have to worry about extra that that's it. It's it's a fun car to drive. You know, it's as capable as it is they bill you know, I've taken this off road before we did some pretty fast speedy driving out in Nevada just before Thanksgiving. It's a hoot to drive off road. I mean, if you went off for a vehicle, it's a heck of a lot of fun. It has that trail harnesses so you can use sort of like turn on a dime, almost like pivot on one wheel, which is a super cool feature. It has a pretty durable interior. It feels like you could you know, when you take off those doors and you go tromping through the mud, it's not going to fall apart. It's going to be fine with a little bit of mud. The drawback to the two door they're two big ones. It's only four passenger. So you lose one seat so you can't put five people in there. The back seats are pretty snug. Like if you if you crawl into the back seats that's it's a snug fit. You're not going to be having someone you know it's not like adults can't do it. Kids can climb back their adults can climb back there. But your you know, your older ants is probably not going to hop in the back your two door Bronco with ease. The same is true for a Wrangler, right the same is true. It's the two door thing that makes it hard

Sam Abuelsamid  5:16  
at two doors short wheelbase because that you know, the back seat is stuffed in behind in between the rear wheel wells and saving in front of them.

Nicole Wakelin  5:25  
Right so it wasn't like the Wrangler does it better now you can compare it to the Wrangler just you know, it's it's tough. And it was funny we were taking some things to Goodwill yesterday cleaning out things because I'm getting a new kitchen and many things in my house I have that I don't use and like we must get rid of this but let's give it to someone. And so we went to pile that a bunch of other stuff in the back and I like open the back of the Bronco I'm like nope, we're not taking this car because although it looks like it should lay outside you think there's all this room to put stuff in the back there? It's not Yeah, it's like there is not I like shut it I'm like nope, we're gonna take your car hobby so we took his instead because there really isn't cargo room back there. I haven't looked up the number but it's not something like you're not making a dump run in that you're not buying any mulch.

Roberto Baldwin  6:08  
Oh no.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:09  
Well, you could put them you can fold the back seat down and get some extra cargo space right but

Nicole Wakelin  6:14  
then you can get some but you have to fold the back seat down like you know that in a larger you know, if you go to Ford or you don't you can you don't have to fold the backseat and you can still have people along and put stuff in the back here. But

Roberto Baldwin  6:25  
all by yourself with yourself and the kids want to go to the dump

Nicole Wakelin  6:31  
there freely labor to unload this stuff at the dump and you can't even bring them with you so yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:38  
So upside of having kids is you know,

Roberto Baldwin  6:41  
hey come help me do this mostly free labor

Sam Abuelsamid  6:42  
I mean you know say free labor actually anyway, right? You know in the

Nicole Wakelin  6:47  
still in the moment you're like mow the lawn haul this stuff to the dump. Yes. And you can't if you have a two door split, you know, I don't think there's there's no surprises having this for the week. I mean, I had it in some really crummy weather we got about six inches of really heavy wet snow that I stover and made that nice little icy chattery kind of road surface driving around on that and playing around with it and it handles just as well as you'd expect you know it's it's not the same as driving off road but it's still that you know poor terrain trying to get through some little berms of snow at the end of roads. It was perfectly fine it shoes that stuff right up without a problem. And you know, it's it's everything that the Bronco pretty much is exactly what you expect the Bronco to be it's a little rough and ready because it's a you know truck based. It's in the two door not super huge. So if you've got a family and all their stuff, you probably don't want the two door you probably want the four and if you plan to go off road and do some serious off roading you or even if you don't and you just want to look like you do. Which I think is a lot of the time how these work. It's it's a great choice. It's it's a good option. I should probably have pricing and don't because remember Sam called me first. Oh, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:58  
Did you did you and your husband take the his wrangler and then the Bronco off to an RV park and trying to head on. We didn't

Nicole Wakelin  8:06  
we didn't take him out to an RV park. But we did take them out that so the day that it was horrible crappy weather on the roads and the snow in the mess we did take both of them out like pretty much we wrote in both of them together. And then you know in short order, so the roads are pretty much the same. They handle very similarly in bad weather, you know and I've driven the obviously his wrangler quite a bit off road. And just come I mean in terms of how well they both do off road. I don't feel like you really do bad with either one. Like people seem to have this need to say like the wranglers better or the Broncos better. Well there's good and bad features about each there's pluses and minuses to each so it's not like you're really going wrong. Getting one over the other it's just a matter of which you prefer honest to goodness, it's like which one are you more comfortable?

Sam Abuelsamid  8:54  
In? Which one hands on these nice cuz you can't

Nicole Wakelin  8:57  
get Yeah, really? Whichever one you can get your hands on. So it's it's it's a worthy competitor to the Wrangler? Is it a wrangler killer? I've never thought it was I think it's just if you don't want to wrangler and you like the Bronco and you and you prefer what the Bronco has in the drive of it. It's just like picking any other cars that Camry really significantly better than worse than a an accord? Well, no, maybe you just like the Camry better. Maybe you just like the Accord better sometimes it really is just a matter of preference. Which one you like the drive of which one you feel more comfortable in? Because in terms of capability, you're not going to go wrong with either one. You want to climb a mountain in either of these go for it.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:34  
Which which engine did you have the four cylinder or the V six?

Nicole Wakelin  9:37  
I had the four cylinder

Sam Abuelsamid  9:40  
and what kind of mileage Did you see with it?

Nicole Wakelin  9:42  
I'm gonna be honest, I didn't check mileage. Sometimes I'm sorry, Sam, I know that's my my feeling.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:49  
You know? I mean, the one thing about the one area where the Wrangler at least has an option for the gives it a significant benefit over the The Bronco is fuel economy because you can get the the plug in hybrid, which is what you guys have, which is what we have. And that doesn't mean that isn't that option in the Bronco and the Bronco gets pretty terrible fuel economy. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  10:13  
it's don't buy this fuel economy is your priority buy something else, but it's Yeah, and I guess that's you know that's a big you pay a premium for that plug in hybrid I forget what it starts out but it's you know you're paying a lot more. Yeah, so you'll pay for that privilege. But there is. And that is something I mean, if you're because I wasn't thinking in terms of the hybrid, but I mean, in terms of the whole breadth of what's offered for each of these vehicles, you can get that hybrid. And the neat thing about that is that of course, if you say that Evie mode until you go off road, it is super cool to drive that completely, silently, it is so cool. You just You just hear things around you that you wouldn't hear. And it just you know you're going off road because you want to be out in the wild and out in the middle of nowhere and out. You feel like that when you're in the hybrid because it's it's quiet, you're not listening to an engine, something you can't get in the bronco. So that is definitely a you know, one in the wranglers favor, but you know, it's like a higher trim, you pay more for it. So you have to pay for that privilege. So

Roberto Baldwin  11:16  
when are we expecting for it to give us a hybrid option for the Bronco was like a year 18 months or something after the initial launch? Or?

Sam Abuelsamid  11:23  
Yeah, possibly, you know, this maybe this fall for the 2023 models?

Nicole Wakelin  11:28  
I would guess 2023 Because things are still so backed up supply. We're just trying to like we can't fill the regular boring old ones. Let's go on to another one. Maybe maybe,

Roberto Baldwin  11:39  
maybe we just make the finished making the ones we're making. Right? Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  11:42  
ordered six months ago and see if we can, you know, then go from there.

Roberto Baldwin  11:45  
I'm sure they probably pushed it back at some point. Internally, they probably like, hey, you know what, we just finished building the things we already got.

Nicole Wakelin  11:53  
Yeah. And there was didn't they have? And I you know, I was just thinking about this as we're talking. Did they have an issue with the heart tops on?

Sam Abuelsamid  12:01  
They did? For the first several months, it was an issue from the supplier. Right with the court issue? Yeah, well, ultimately, it's a Ford issue. But yeah, there was a problem with the finish on those they have since fixed that issue. And they have gone back and replace the hard tops on all the early ones. And I know that

Nicole Wakelin  12:23  
but didn't that cause some delivery cars and just in terms of getting out there when you have

Sam Abuelsamid  12:28  
to hold up and delays. So they, you know, they held some of them back. And they've replaced those and they've also replaced the ones that were delivered to customers with the bad top seat

Nicole Wakelin  12:39  
imagine that would that would further is to see you know, things happen. And you feel bad anytime it happens, especially something that was their supplier that screwed up? Not, you know, like for directly. Yeah. And if they don't have enough things to deal with, with all the shortages and 2021. It's like, oh, by the way, we also messed up your hard tops have a nice day, like, you know, come on some slack.

Roberto Baldwin  12:59  
To be fair, that's typical, like a brand new car. There's some weird weirdness just because they've only made like a few 100 of these so far. And now that I got to build them to scale. And then when you start building the scale, you're like, oh, oh, here's some thing I

Nicole Wakelin  13:14  
had years ago, I had an OEM, I was talking to one of the customer, I mean, a consumer person, and she was talking about, you know, the car is like, Oh, this is great. It's been fun. I could see myself getting one of these. And this person literally said, Don't ever buy the first model here. Oh, any vehicle people that

Roberto Baldwin  13:31  
all the time. Yeah. And by the time I

Nicole Wakelin  13:33  
was really new, I'm like, why wouldn't you want to? And she's like, because we test them. And we do all sorts of stuff to make sure they're right. And it's not like we send them out the door and going here. Let's see what happens. But there's always something that happens that we think we tested that 100 million times. And if we had just tested 100 million in one, we'd have found this problem that now that it seems like every single consumers hitting so she's always wait, wait, wait a year. Go ahead, Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin  14:00  
I've said that enough to my wife tells people that don't ever buy the first year something you don't want ever want the first year I'm like,

Nicole Wakelin  14:07  
I don't I don't follow my own advice. I bought it now.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:14  
And I wouldn't do that. The The reason I part the reason I asked which top you had, there was a story that popped up in the drive earlier this week about this a Bronco in northern Canada. And it was a soft top and the guy went away for a week. And there was a blizzard, and there was when his wife went out and looked in the Bronco and there was all this snow inside of it. Where something was appears to have not been properly latched or not all those pictures Yeah, I think properly. So yeah, I'll I'll put the link in the show notes. A lot

Nicole Wakelin  14:54  
of snow for just I guess. I guess if it was really just blowing just right, it could have blown.

Roberto Baldwin  15:03  
coming sideways come in. Also northern Canada, I just assume they're just always snowing.

Nicole Wakelin  15:09  
Always looks like this picture was taken in April. Now.

Roberto Baldwin  15:13  
This is a January.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:14  
This is a June. Yeah. Yeah. Reading through it. It sounds like I guess there. There's something with the four door Broncos with the soft top. There's separate latches at the middle of the roof and at the front or at the windshield header. And sometimes if you don't get them latched correctly, it can lead to leaking. And that might be what happened here.

Nicole Wakelin  15:40  
Oh, a lot of snow in that car. That's like

Roberto Baldwin  15:44  
old wrangler issues where like, if once you took the top off the top, the old Wrangler, like trying to get back on was just, I wasn't

Nicole Wakelin  15:51  
once I gave up. I was. Yeah. And I was like, I can't get this back. And literally, they were coming to pick it up. And I'm like, here, hope it doesn't rain. I can't get this back up.

Roberto Baldwin  16:02  
It rained on us. We could I opened it in Hawaii because I was like, oh, let's do it was our our last flight for my wife started school. And so we knew we weren't gonna go on vacation for like four years. So we're like, oh, let's let's go. Let's go full tourist and get get a Wrangler. So we got a wrangler and as a top top, and I was like, Yeah, and I knew I knew. But still I got it and we drove it and then I open the top and then I couldn't get close and it started raining and it's you know, we're in Hawaii, which is like the wettest place in the world. It's we're up north, and it just started pouring and I couldn't get close. I'm like, You know what, forget it. Forget it. We're just sitting here in the rain, like, ah, a water, like build up in the footwells. And I was like, Oh, well.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:44  
Fortunately, in the Bronco, it does, it does have a floor.

Roberto Baldwin  16:48  
So yeah, it was fine. But it was also just like, whatever, open the door, splash it out with my foot. There we go, let's go spend a dinner. Go back.

Nicole Wakelin  16:55  
I can think of it. It's gonna be such a pain in the neck for them to dry this out. Because if you manage to get water in your car, and it's summer, you can at least like leave it open and let the sun do its job. But here, it's gonna be warming up while you're sitting in it and your butt is going to be so cool forever.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:12  
Yeah, back back in 2005 or so when I was still working as an engineer at TRW. They were doing the brake system for the Pontiac Solstice. And they sent over a prototype to our shop to our garage. And it was in the garage. Were some of us, some of us were looking over it. And we put that we made the mistake of putting the top down on the solstice. And then we decided to try to put the top back up. Oh, no. And yeah, the solstice looks great with the top down. But putting the top up on the top mechanism on that thing was just such a horrendous mess that we finally gave up

Nicole Wakelin  17:54  
after about half an hour. Done. Not doing it.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:57  
Yeah, this was a group of engineers. It's like I don't know how they do. Good side

Roberto Baldwin  18:02  
engineers are like, Oh, I'm looking at this. This doesn't make any sense. I do miss the it was it was kind of a pain. But also it was very simple when we had the Del Sol because it just slipped into like a t top and you just turned like two handles and and then we took it out. There was a little there was a carrier in the trunk and you stuck it in the trunk. Oh, that's like yeah, that was a nice, but you also had to carry this big giant roof all the time. It wasn't that heavy, but it was still it was still awkward if you weren't like a tall big person who had long arms.

Nicole Wakelin  18:38  
And you are tall because I still remember standing next to you for the first time and going Wow, he really is tall.

Roberto Baldwin  18:44  
I wasn't lying.

Nicole Wakelin  18:45  
You weren't lying. He said giant people.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:50  
I'm a tall speaking of open top vehicles. Mr. Baldwin I think you drove something to like

Roberto Baldwin  18:58  
that I did in a while Exactly. I think a month ago. The Mercedes AMG S L this is the new SL the new SL roadster it is I actually did it ride along in the vehicle. Oh gosh months ago with somebody in August or so yeah, I was with with an engineer and we talked about what they were trying to accomplish with this vehicle was to make it lighter to make it more responsive to make it more make it more like an SL like a proper SL like is this the sports roadster, the sports car roadster and so finally I have to drive it. And they have accomplished they have done what they said they wanted to do you know and it's it's AMG, it's AMG only you cannot get the SL outside of an AMG if you if you want to. If you want something I guess is there are two variants. There's the SL five five and the SL 663. So if you're like looking for one you're like well, I don't want all this power. Just get the 50 Five. But yeah, no in either vehicle and I think most people should just get the five, the 55 you don't, you don't need to see the insane power of the 63. But that said, um, it is a really nice fun car to drive, I could see a lot of people purchasing it and probably just keep it in in comfort mode the entire time. Because they're, you know, they're just going to be driving around town. This is very much an LA vehicle. We drove it around. Where do we drive from, from Orange County to Palm Springs, which was exactly what you would do with an AMG SL, with a Mercedes SL roadster, unfortunately, it was raining and then it got super super foggy and had to slow down like 20 pounds. But that's that it's comfortable. It's it's got a ton of power, it's well mannered. You know, Mercedes power, so it's not like, you know, it's not Herky jerky, it's very smooth. You know, they're trying to make sure that it still has that, that that luxury and comfort of a Mercedes Benz. And for the most part, they did it in Comfort mode, but it is it's not an S class, you know, it's not an E class, it's still, you know, it's still a roadster is still an SL and so you know, you still have you know, it's not nearly as as, as, as nice on are as nice and smooth as those vehicles when you're driving around. But the you know, I feel like you kind of you kind of give that up when you're when you again, at AMG, which I think there, there's probably people who who would be happy to have it without the MG. They don't need all that speed. They just want the convertible but I think it's a it's Yeah, I think it's a low it's a low numbers vehicle, I don't think they're gonna sell, you know, the S class or C class or E Class numbers on this thing. But for people who do buy it, they're gonna really enjoy it's the first all wheel drive it's formatic Plus SL. So, you got that going for you the 55 has 469 horsepower and 516 pound feet of torque, which is more than adequate. If you if you if you demand speed, the the 63 has 577 horsepower from and 590 pound feet of torque and both of those have a the a a handcrafted AMG four liter V eight by turbo. So you get the little engine and you get someone's signature on it Han's or, or Phil or whoever built it. You know, let's calm that's better. My name Tomas Tomas, Tomas. You get mosses or Tom

Nicole Wakelin  22:38  
just Tom you build it Tom eater.

Roberto Baldwin  22:40  
Yeah, so you get you get you get that cool thing? Yeah, it's comfortable. It's funny because it's a has a because they know that the tops gonna be down and if you've ever driven vehicle at the top down, you know that probably with the Jeep, or at the Bronco, or you know, with the Miata, sometimes the sun glare on the screen sometimes. I don't think it's that it's not on the windshield or on the screens in the car on the on the screens on the display. It's on the touchscreens. So sometimes you're driving like oh I can't really see what's going on for a little bit. So to fix this Mercedes has made the the the touchscreen infotainment display, it tilts it tilts forward and back at a different angle you can tilt it at a different angle in order to see better if you push a little button

Nicole Wakelin  23:33  
it's just actually tilted its power. Its power

Roberto Baldwin  23:37  
horses power. You're not expected to do

Sam Abuelsamid  23:39  
that or you know you could just watch the world around you and forget about the screen and you know what I was

Roberto Baldwin  23:47  
gonna say well Crazy Talk few you know if you if you need directions but then the directions can be on the center console as well in the ER the dash cluster as well but it tilts 12 to 32 degrees so it's 12 and it goes up to 32 and then my dog barks she's very excited about 32 degrees of tilt. And then they have like a little cover for the for the dash cluster. So I guess they're really thinking about that you know the the shoulder vents so if you decide you want the top down but it's cold out you get the shoulder vent so it keeps your shoulders nice and warm in your neck. Which is

Sam Abuelsamid  24:25  
just just a Mercedes has had that for a while on it. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  24:28  
yeah on there. I remember we tried it on the the S Class convertible watch and I was like oh my gosh, like this is just too much.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:40  
There is no such thing as too much there is no

Roberto Baldwin  24:41  
such thing as too much and it has all wheel also has all wheel steering, which is nice. I'm a big fan especially after spending about a week with the EQ s and that thing in driving with all wheel steering with a with a large car I'm like all right This is everything should have all wheel steering. That's the law. Anything. Anything big should have all wheel steering. And so whenever you see those big trucks, those big Evie trucks and they're like, Oh, this is all wheel steering. It's like Oh right. No, you're gonna you're gonna be so excited when you pull into Target. And you're you're lifted rivian r1 t or your your your gear, your auto Eevee Silverado or your Hummer, EV especially the Hummer lightning f150 You're gonna be so excited when you're like, Oh, look at that. I didn't get fuel economy because I you know, drive like a bat out of hell. It's a day of the drive program. So I have an SL who cares? Yeah, no one Yeah, no one's no one's you know,

Nicole Wakelin  25:40  
you don't care. You just don't

Roberto Baldwin  25:41  
care. You don't care. That's not uh, I just bought an SL we don't have pricing, but it's gonna be a lot.

Nicole Wakelin  25:48  
Yeah, a lot is gonna be

Roberto Baldwin  25:51  
like 130 I'm guessing for the five five and then our 55 and then probably more but overall No, I really liked it. It's I had an opportunity to drive the 57 SL 300 roadster and there's there's this glamour that comes with that vehicle. There's just this you know all you know golden Golden Age Hollywood drove the the 300 SL roadster and I can see that happening again with this vehicle. I think it has the design. Everything about it is very like this is beautiful, but not overstated. It's not a Lamborghini. It's not a Ferrari. It's very much for the the more glamorous of the Hollywood set, it's the George Clooney. It's not the Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  26:38  
George Clooney is not the Kim Kardashians.

Roberto Baldwin  26:41  
Yes. Yeah, it's the George Clooney. It's not the Kim Kardashian. Thank you. I was trying to think of

Nicole Wakelin  26:46  
someone who would be would be an opposite. I know it's a woman. I'm like, that's about as opposite as I could come up with.

Roberto Baldwin  26:51  
Yeah, the Kardashians. I mean, the Kardashians have a history of buying just like really large outrageous vehicles crazy.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:58  
So Kardashians would drive around in like a gold wrapped Hummer. Yeah, well was George Clooney would drive around and an SL.

Roberto Baldwin  27:07  
Yes. Yes. I think that's a fair assumption.

Nicole Wakelin  27:10  
That cover with like, the logo would be embellished with actual diamonds. Who cares if they fall off while you're driving?

Roberto Baldwin  27:16  
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. No, I

Sam Abuelsamid  27:18  
mean, the more you just get

Nicole Wakelin  27:20  
more diamond supply in your closet and a little bin that you have stickers,

Roberto Baldwin  27:24  
your little diamond supplies

Nicole Wakelin  27:26  
and like most people keep buttons, you know, a

Roberto Baldwin  27:28  
couple of those extra buttons that come with your shirt.

Nicole Wakelin  27:31  
It's just a pile of diamonds if

Roberto Baldwin  27:32  
you're a diamond sack by Diamond sack supply. So yeah, no, it's it's I really liked it. Um, I also drove the Q. S. AMG us which you know, there's always during that drive program, and there's always a concern that what's going to happen is you're gonna take a very comfortable, luxurious charge car and kind of mess it up by throwing by making it performance. But when you're in comfort mode, it's great. And I got to drive it in the snow because for some reason it was cold and snowy up while we're driving. It was a bad day for a convertibles but yeah, no, I had that EQ s. The AMG Qs had summer tires on it. Oh, but it was all wheel drive. It's got that 1010 degree Oh, when I was nine degrees of rear steering because bigger tires. Instead of 10 degrees like the regular EQ s. It was fine. Like it was all icy and everything and I threw it in slippery mode, which is a new mode for the AMG model. And it was like, Oh, look at this. This is you know, and I, you know, you tried to get the break free because that's what you do as the person who like encounter snow for the first time and like in a year and a half you're like yay. And it did it did a pretty good job. Once they throw at you know, you throw some all seasons or some winter tires, that thing is gonna be planted pretty, pretty good to the ground. But yeah, both of those. Anyway, you can read both of those things on TechCrunch I guess the same time this goes up. All right, tada, tada.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:03  
And I had the 2022 Genesis gV 70. The latest addition to the Genesis lineup, which is basically about as close as Americans are going to get to the G 70 estate or Shooting Brake model that they sell in other markets because we don't we don't appreciate station wagons. So we we have to jack them up into the air to to get anything that is shaped vaguely like a station wagon. But the the GB 70 that I've got is the two liter turbo, all wheel drive all wheel drive a standard on gV 70. So on the G 70 sedan, you can get them in rear drive or all wheel drive but on the GV it's all wheel drive only. And I had the advance model, the advanced trim level. So that is the second from the top. They come comes in four different trims standard select Advanced and sport prestige. So I had the I the advanced the two liter or sorry, it's not two litre it's a 2.5 T. The Hyundai Motor Group has replaced the two liter turbo, they used to have a 2.5 liter that is used in a wide variety of vehicles at various power output levels. For Genesis, it's ready to 300 horsepower 311 foot pounds of torque uses an eight speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters on their fully independent suspension. The the the interior of the G v 70 is largely the same as the G 70. Which means that you get the rotary shift knob and the center console. And unlike the G 80, and g v 80, it doesn't have the, the the rotary controller for the infotainment is not set in flush, as we've talked about before, you know where it's kind of hard to actually get a grip on it without clicking it at the same time. So it's raised up more like a BMW, I drive controller. So it looks like you have two similar controllers one behind the other one for the transmission one for the infotainment Excuse me but they have different finishes on the transmission shifter has the knurling like you'll find on a lot of the controls in the in the G 70. gV 70, G 80, etc. The metallic neural pattern on there, whereas the, the infotainment controller is more it's it's probably plastic, but it's like a like a crystallin type of surface on the outer perimeter of it so you can you it's easy to get a good grip on it to to spin it around quickly and move around the infotainment system fairly quickly. No touchscreen in here. So clearly this would be a non starter for Nicole. But but the system works well. And of course since it is a modern product from the the 100 Hyundai Motor Group, it does include the sounds of nature. Yeah. So I was driving around was fairly frigid this week, here here in Michigan. So driving around with a little bit of the truck the crunching as you walk through the

Roberto Baldwin  32:31  
snow yeah

Sam Abuelsamid  32:35  
yeah, the this this, this powertrain in here I think is a really nice balance for the the G 70. gV 70. You know, it's not a huge vehicle. It's similar in size to BMW X three. So it's, it's roomy enough in the backseat for a couple of adults. But it's not it's not an enormous SUV. And I really liked the size. They as we talked about a month or so ago when I had the G 70. The G 70 Got to refresh this model year with a new front facia that matches the look that we got on the G 80. G VAT and now and the upcoming G 90 as well with the the slim horizontal headlamps and matching the similarly slim horizontal tail lamps on the back. It's it's a good look. I like the look of it. It drives really well said it's plenty of power 300 horsepower. It's it's a very responsive engine, not a lot not really any noticeable turbo lag. The fuel, it's rated at 22 City 28 highway for fuel economy 24th I think I've been getting around 2020 21 Because it's it's been cold and and you know, I've been having a little fun with this thing. So, you know, it's fine. No, no complaints there. The standard, gV 70 starts at 41 Five before the delivery charge. And the one as I drove it for the advanced model, including the $1,045 delivery charge came to $50,695 and I think you know, in this segment against the likes of you know, an x three, GLC Mercedes, GLC Audi Q five, I think, I think it's a it's a really, really competitive product and, you know, pretty decent value as we've come to expect from Genesis and the rest of the group brands. It it's it, I said, it's got a fairly comfortable ride. It's also got Wouldn't particularly when you put it in Sport mode, decent steering feedback, very responsive. You know, it's it's a good size. So it's easy to park, you don't need four wheel steering on a vehicle the size, you can get it into parking spaces really easily get them out. It'd

Roberto Baldwin  35:17  
be cool though you're just doing what was your goals teeny tiny circles. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  35:22  
it's got the full suite of Driver Assist features, including adaptive cruise control, Hyundai's highway drive assist for Lane centering, it's does have support for, it's got a wireless charger, Android Auto and CarPlay, but not wireless. So you do have to plug in your phone, or just use it with Bluetooth. One interesting detail on that's included in the comfort and convenience on this thing. A lot of modern cars have, you could have set up multiple driver profiles, they're usually tied to your key fob. And so you know, you're your partner, you know, you each have your own key fob, you get in the car, and it can be set to, you know, to automatically set your mirrors, set your preferences for the audio system, set the seat in the right position, as you walk up to the driver's door, all that stuff will adjust the you can also set profiles in the infotainment system on this thing. And there's a little fingerprint scanner on the dashboard. So if you want to switch profiles or change, change your profile settings, it'll ask you, you know, if you set it up, and I tried this, you know, put your finger on the fingerprint scanner, and then it'll it'll change. You can change profiles. And that didn't work. It works quite reliably. Yeah. Yay. So yeah. It's just like using a fingerprint scanner on your phone or on your computer. That never works.

Nicole Wakelin  36:51  
Well for me. I felt like when you had little fingerprint thing back on the iPhone back in the day, I was forever like it is my finger. Dang it, like Oh,

Roberto Baldwin  37:03  
it's my finger.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:04  
Maybe your fingerprints are just worn off. I know. That's it on my phone. On my mobile. Yeah, I have it set up for both both of my thumbs. And my right thumb. rarely ever registers correctly, but my left thumb works every time.

Nicole Wakelin  37:23  
So it just has to be you only lose your left thumb, you're in trouble.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:27  
Clearly, I must have worn off most of the little rules and stuff on my, on my, on my right thumb. I don't know what the deal is. So yeah, I mean, I, you know, as compact premium crossovers go I think this is this is a really nice one, you know, it's got a distinct look looks a little different from what you find from the Germans or from from the Japanese premium brands. It's got good performance and it's you know, a not unreasonable price.

Nicole Wakelin  38:00  
I haven't Genesis fan, even without the touchscreen, I'm still a Genesis fan. I like it even without

Roberto Baldwin  38:04  
I know,

Nicole Wakelin  38:06  
I know, right now was a great vehicle, right? If I like it, even without a touchscreen, you

Roberto Baldwin  38:11  
know, that's the I just I just think they're I

Nicole Wakelin  38:15  
think that I like it. Same reason I like Hyundai vehicles, they deliver a lot of content for a price that's unexpected, you feel like you should be paying more than you do. And like Genesis is a luxury brand. You're paying luxury prices. But you're still paying less for comparable luxury than you would with some other brands. It's and it's striking and it looks different, unique. And I feel I just am a fan and thumbs up.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:38  
Yeah, on the one I've got, which is in this really dark blue, the the chrome trim strips around the side glass and everything. I think that the way they've done it, you know, when you look at it, you know, it stands out, you've probably seen, you know, the sketches done by designers where it doesn't, you know, the sketches not in full detail, but just just some basic lines of the profile, you know, that kind of calligraphy style lines. And that's what this looks like, in reality. Still standing there looking at it. That's that's those those chrome strips really stand out that way. Yeah. And I really liked that look.

Nicole Wakelin  39:17  
Yeah, I think it looks good. I like it. Alright.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:22  
Excuse me. Well, let's get into some of what's been going on this week. Last week, we talked about a couple of the vehicles that were being introduced at CES, the Chevy Silverado Evie, and the Chrysler airflow concept, which is going to be a production vehicle coming up. But since then, we of course, you know, CES has come and gone. A few people actually showed up in person apparently, I think the attendance was about 1/10 of what it usually is. I saw

Nicole Wakelin  39:54  
one number that said there was a 70% decline in the number of attendees at CES this year. No, I can't find it. I read it on my phone this morning. And I was 70%.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:04  
Yeah. If it was if it was even more than that, yeah, I'm sure that the CTA is probably gonna, you know, hedge the numbers on the high side. Yeah. But yeah, I saw people posting photos of the halls, you know, and you just see nobody around. I was doing. I had a meeting with quantity, a lidar company the other day, and they were doing a live virtual demo of some of their technology from their booth. So their their cmo had his iPhone, and he was walking around showing me the stuff in the booth. And when when he when he scanned the phone around, and I could see the crowd or lack thereof. Crowd. Yes. Like, it was. Not many people there. Yeah. So hopefully, hopefully those that showed up, don't end up getting sick. Because, you know, there was there was plenty of room for social distancing there. But

Roberto Baldwin  41:01  
it's perfect CES, I think of every CES was like that. I think people would be less than regular ces are like, Oh my God, there's so many people here. And a lot of people will go and they're very, they make sure that they always have hand sanitizer whenever they would shake anyone's hand. This is pre COVID. This is like, yeah, because people would come home and they'd have the flu or they'd have something else because just in contact with so many people, and you're next to so many people for an entire week. And it doesn't help that you're not sleeping very well. And you're eating bad food, you know, the entire time. It's just, it just wrecks your body. It's like well, those people climb Mount Everest, except for tech tech people. Tech, like you can only be above like 80,000 meters for like so long.

Nicole Wakelin  41:43  
Are you gonna die? Yeah, like that CES.

Roberto Baldwin  41:46  
Like, you can only be there for five days after that. It's like your body starts to collapse upon itself.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:51  
I usually limited to four days.

Roberto Baldwin  41:53  
Yeah. See, that's, that's smart. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:56  
But so But this year, I wasn't there in person at all, but I still had all my meetings. So that was good. So anyway, during the course of the week, you know, we got there was a lot of automotive related news, you know, started off on Monday night with the virtual reveal of the Mercedes Benz EQ x x or vision EQ x x, I think is actually the official name. Have you seen this thing? Have you taken a look at it? I have,

Roberto Baldwin  42:26  
like, I have looked at it, it's, uh, it's okay, so it's a long tail. So that means it's never gonna come into, we're never gonna see it. We're never I mean, it was designed recently. Yeah, it's, they're designed to raise that lemon. But if you just take the front end, and you put that on a production vehicle later on in 2020, for which, you know, all the tech is supposed to show up in a car, that would be dope, I would be very, very excited. It's you know, and they were able to like, say, Hey, we're getting 621, the six minutes or 2021 miles from 100, roughly 100 kilowatt hour capacity pack, which means they're getting six miles per kilowatt, which is some crazy efficiency. And, you know, they will do that from a pack that's 30% lighter, 50% less volume. That's the real excited, I mean, it looks great and everything, but the thing inside that battery technology, that the ability to get 100 You know, the same capacity as what they have, say in the, in the IQs. But in a pack that's 30% lighter and 50% less volume. That's, that's insane, because now you can make 60 kilowatt hour packs and put them in cars that have the same amount of range. You know, it's the or you have these like, yeah, you can just it's getting it's smaller. And so not only do you have that capacity, you get the range, because it's lighter, and you know, it's all about weight. It's all about cramming as much capacity into a smaller pack as possible and Mercedes is doing that. And they said this is going to be in a production car. This whole power train drive train situation and 2024 which is pretty great. Yeah, okay, well,

Nicole Wakelin  44:04  
I want to know what this is. It has something called neuromorphic computing. Did you see this? Yeah, that sounds like the part where where the world gets taken over Noro computing popularity. The hardware run spiking neural networks information is coded in spikes in energy is only consumed when a spike occurs. I in its infancy, okay. Do you want neuro morphic computing I feel like the car should like that makes me think of a guy from the silver Yeah, the movie with with Skynet in it why can we think of the name later when the Terminator is like the silver guy and he morphs like he does now enough my hand is a gun that now this person sounds

Roberto Baldwin  44:53  
cool, but it's more like your l le you know your TV where it's only getting energy when it went if it's If the LED is they're black. They're not. Yeah, they're Yeah, an OLED panel when it's black. It's not using energy energy. And when it's lit up, it is using energy. It's essentially that except for compute, it sounds it sounds really cool, though. It makes sense because Okay, we're gonna use less energy. But when you kind of like just like, oh, it's like your OLED in your house like, oh, oh,

Nicole Wakelin  45:22  
the capacity to radically reduce the energy needs to run AI technology. I don't know. It involves AI technology. Roberto, I'm still not sure we don't have sky coming. Oh, whatever. Oh,

Roberto Baldwin  45:33  
yeah. Hey, guys like mobility. It's just a buzzword you throw in everything. No, it

Nicole Wakelin  45:37  
does sound cool. You put a blockchain morphic complex AI technology,

Roberto Baldwin  45:41  
I'll buy it sure that reason blockchain?

Sam Abuelsamid  45:45  
Yeah, it's my understanding that this thing is actually a compact. So it's much smaller than the EQ s, you know, it's more sounds like it's more like the site and looks from the photos, it looks more like the size of a CLA, as opposed to an E class or an S class, which makes it even more impressive that they got that much battery into it, 100 kilowatt hours of battery, and I was talking to somebody else the other day. And sounds like what they've done with the battery in this thing, in order to fit that much capacity into this car, they've gone to a structural pack design or a sell to pack design. So most Evie batteries today, you know, they're if you open up, if you open up the pack, you'll find a bunch of modules, so a bunch of boxes in there, they're basically smaller batteries. So each module might have you know, 24 cells in it, you know, and you might have 20, you know, 20 modules in there. 24 modules, however many modules, and you know, the problem, you know, that having a modular design like that makes it easier to service, if you have a bad cell, somewhere, you can take out a module, just replace the module and put it back in the car. But you know, what the what manufacturers have been finding is that the, for the most part, the batteries are more reliable than they thought they were going to be a few years ago. And so they're moving to this sell to pack design, because that all those modules, you know, if you remember 1012 years ago, when Apple went to the the unibody design when they sealed in the batteries on the MacBooks. You know, part of the reason they did that, if you look at an older laptop that has a removable battery, you've got packaging around the battery, you've got a structure in the bottom of the computer itself, that's all taking up volume, that you can't put more cell in there. So going to a structural pack designed like this, getting rid of all that volume, you can add, you can get about 30% more capacity in the same size battery pack. And that's how that's what they did here.

Roberto Baldwin  47:54  
Because the modules are essentially like, well, we could take the pack out if it fails, and then replace the module. But then there's like so many different steps for the pack to fails for this to happen for this to happen for this to happen. And then we're like, why don't we just how about we just take the pack, we replace the pack, and then you still have this pack that you can use for a bunch of other things and some other uses somewhere else down the road? And so that the whole like, well, we could swap out the module? Yeah, it sounded. It made sense. Yeah, it made sense. Because we're like, we don't know what's going to happen.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:27  
And then now they're realize they don't actually have to ever replace those modules. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  48:32  
Dom technology. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  48:37  
technologies. So fancy for

Roberto Baldwin  48:39  
a better tomorrow.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:42  
So think things are moving in the right direction to have more more affordable, because you can take the same concepts, the same ideas they're doing here, put them in more affordable car more affordable EVs and have more range, you know, lower price points as well. So that's good, too.

Roberto Baldwin  48:57  
Yeah, yeah, you could, you could get a 500 mile. Because they took all the other fancy bits out, you know, they have a low power, you know, they're not a lot of power to that car. It's rear wheel drive, only, you know, there's a lot of the drag coefficient is I think, 0.17 something ridiculous, which is, I asked them a mic. So do you think this will ever make it into production because of regulatory issues or, like, a very roundabout way of saying, I mean,

Nicole Wakelin  49:21  
we could maybe kinda, but

Roberto Baldwin  49:25  
yeah, it's, it's really a thing. So at the end of the day, it's really that the battery that that sort of, is very excited about that vehicle, and if you can get 500 miles instead of the 600 That's still a huge, huge win. Big difference. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  49:38  
It's a huge show.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:39  
And then this thing's also got this massive screen. You know, it goes even beyond the hyper screen that's in the EQ s. It's just one long display that spans the entire dashboard. That's what 78 inches across I think there's 4747 inches across this a

Roberto Baldwin  49:57  
smaller car. Yeah, that's how we know because the the hyper screen Is 56 So there we go. That's how we know. Okay,

Nicole Wakelin  50:04  
that's doing doing now it's like engineering people

Roberto Baldwin  50:09  
doing simple math. You know, I was writing about this car and I had a right I was trying to you know, the Tesla's you know, their efficiencies are really are pretty good. So I was trying to figure out which like what is the the, the the miles per kilowatt for the currently available Tesla's the model three standard long range, the long range plus is gone. I don't know what happened to that thing. And it was really just a simple matter of because EPA will show you how many miles it'll do, or how many kilowatts you'll use, and 100 miles. That's how the VA shows it, which is sort of confusing. And I was like, trying to figure out what the math like problem like what was the formula? And it turns out, no, you just 26 divided by 100. That was it.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:48  
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  50:52  
To figure out like, okay, hold on, hold on, what's the what's the it's got to be this really complex problem. And then finally, I'm like, you think? basic math, I got this. I didn't become a writer to do math.

Nicole Wakelin  51:06  
So we have Sam on the show.

Roberto Baldwin  51:09  
Get your slide rule out. It's your graphing calculator out.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:15  
We also had another German Evie concept that showed up in it. This one's actually based on a production vehicle, the BMW i x which you've driven, Roberto, but this is a slightly different variant of the i x it's called the BMW i x flow.

Nicole Wakelin  51:37  
Did I make that piece out loud? No. Because it's okay. So the thing is the flow is it It features eating so it changes color. You can change it from black to white, and all the shades from black to white that cover the spectrum of gray. So it's my great night but I'm like I get it. I get it. I get it. We were talking about this before the show. You know, well, but you know, people buy black and white and gray cars if you look that's what sells I don't care what sells how impressive is it to see black like Black, White gray. Like I'm in a car where you push a button. It's like today it's purple. Tomorrow St. Patrick's Day. I'm making my car green. Oh, wait, it's Christmas. I want my car to be red. Like I want it. I see it in Yeah, I

Roberto Baldwin  52:21  
was red stripes. Yes.

Nicole Wakelin  52:23  
Where's that car? Roberta? That would impress us. I mean, this is actually very cool technology. Electro phoretic technology. another fancy word. It's about the fancy words in the CES press releases. Right? But so it's cool. It's cool. But I it's black, white and gray. Where's the purple one?

Roberto Baldwin  52:41  
So they said that? Oh, we could do this with color. Oh, why didn't you

Nicole Wakelin  52:47  
like because I feel like it would have been more impactful you look at

Roberto Baldwin  52:50  
it would have been harder it would have been way harder for them to do it.

Nicole Wakelin  52:53  
Right but like a lot cooler when you love to taking a video of it going from purple to green just like that. What are the cool

Roberto Baldwin  53:01  
here's like even four colors just four colors Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  53:04  
well technically there's 8000 Shades of Gray that you could do right but I mean like one other actual color like the shade 58,000

Sam Abuelsamid  53:18  
I'm sorry on the regular production i x I'm looking at the the configurator right now at BMW usa.com They offer two shades of light black four shades of grey and then a blue and a red which are almost red by well then

Nicole Wakelin  53:35  
why can't we have had What did you just list out I want to see my BMW i x flow featuring II think where those colors

Roberto Baldwin  53:43  
should have been Purple. Pink.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:45  
No no, you know

Nicole Wakelin  53:47  
those colors like supercar colors. Purple bright green lines your retinas? Yeah, that's what I wanted to see. You man.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:56  
You know what this is actually this technology is actually going to be used for not that so they can, it's gonna be like you know when you when you go to buy a Kindle off of Amazon, you can buy the Kindle with with ads or whatever, you know. So when you're not reading, you know when it's off, it shows you an ad you know as soon as you turn on to read you know it goes to whatever page you were on in your book, this is going to be you'll be able to get a subsidized version of the iEX that runs ads. So you get a couple of $1,000 off and you know they'll use the E Ink to change up the ads all the time on your car.

Nicole Wakelin  54:33  
On the side door. So your if so drive by and it will say like

Sam Abuelsamid  54:39  
advertising on on your on the side of your car, you know that changes dynamically based on where you are and what you're doing.

Roberto Baldwin  54:47  
During during the.com bubble there was a company that would pay you like $400 to wrap your car. Like you just do a vinyl wrap on your car with ads and then again had like a little screen on top. That was pretty I mean it was the early 2000s and my friend was like, oh, but you had to like drive a lot. It was like, Yeah, and we didn't. I mean, we went to. We lived in San Francisco went to school in San Francisco. We worked in San Francisco. So we just took the bus everywhere. It didn't make any sense. For you, you're like, Well, I've everywhere in my car, and then have to pay for parking and have to deal with that fat. Now I'm just gonna sit in the bus. The bus is way easier. Just take the bus. But uh, yeah, man, you could do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:27  
And then of course, you'll also you know, if you if you were to have a car that actually was covered in E Ink, you always have to be the guy that parks out in the remote corner of the parking lot because, you know, you get a door ding on one of these EEG panels, you know, now shattered

Roberto Baldwin  55:47  
I guess. Oh, it looks like like an explosion in a comic book.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:54  
On the more affordable spectrum of EVs we talked last week about the Silverado Evie. But during the GM keynote address that they did, where they introduced the Silverado, they had a one of those, you know, Steve Jobs in you know, oh, one more thing. And they gave us the, you know, they gave us the first preview of the new Chevy Equinox Evie, which is coming in the fall of 2023. And actually, all the EVS we've seen from GM seems to me that this is the one that's actually the most important, the most most relevant to the most people because this thing is apparently going to start at $30,000. sticker price.

Roberto Baldwin  56:37  
$30,000 Altium. So that's, that's more than the bolt is which? I don't know why they didn't make that up, at least. I mean, it's it's all the things that GM has been promising for the last however many years and a vehicle that looks 1000 times better than the current Equinox. Yeah. Like you're like, oh, maybe I want an equinox, which is something people don't say. Nobody says that. Everyone says, Oh, I guess I'll get an equinox

Nicole Wakelin  57:02  
Yeah, this this fit. Okay, the price is and they have one and that's for buying an equinox. Let's go buy but this, like looking at this. I would Let's go buy that. Yeah. For 30 grand.

Roberto Baldwin  57:14  
Let's go buy any kids are going to go buy an equinox. Yeah. Everyone's like, Hey, we're gonna go get a car.

Nicole Wakelin  57:19  
No one has ever said before until today, Robbie? Yeah, it was

Roberto Baldwin  57:23  
it was always like, well, let's go look at the equinox it's pretty expensive. You put a lot of stuff in it, it'll work, this will work. This is fine. It's fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:34  
Yeah, of course, you know, at that $30,000 price point, you're probably not going to have 400 miles of range, like the the Silverado, you know, it's probably going to be more like, you know, to 30 to 40. Like what you get, you know, the base models of cars like the Hyundai ionic five and various others, but still, I mean, that's, that's plenty, you know, for what most people need, you know, if you get that kind of range, you know, that'll be more than enough for for almost everybody. And then you know, they'll probably have a higher end version for $40,000 is 300 miles but

Roberto Baldwin  58:08  
we we never, we never take the Hyundai Kona, the electric Kona to the charge station. Never. Never, I still haven't even bought like a level three charger for our house. We're plugging into the wall. When we drive into the city and back. And that's like, you know, we drive past the city, we drive it, you know, you'll do it. My wife will do maybe 1520 miles a day. But on the off day, like the weekend, it'll do 4050 6080 miles. And it's just like, Oh, whatever. It's fine drive here and drive there. I got decent this other thing, I'll do something, then you plug it in, and it doesn't charge it up to 80% the first night. But it's fine. It's not that big of a deal. You know? And we it's just yeah, the 200 we have 258 I think is what it is. And we are always charging just just to to 80%. So we have like 200 miles, right? It's fine. It has it has not been an issue at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:58  
Forcing you do live in California. So you don't have like could dry weather very often.

Roberto Baldwin  59:03  
Well, yes, it has been down to like 30 up here. But still, that's not

Nicole Wakelin  59:10  
my load tomorrow was one I just looked at the weather. I was one I have one degree when I wake up tomorrow morning just wasn't gonna be tomorrow. One, one, just one.

Roberto Baldwin  59:20  
I gotta go do some woodworking outside today. It's gonna be 50 And I'm like, Oh, come on. No, I

Sam Abuelsamid  59:26  
was only going to be five here tomorrow.

Nicole Wakelin  59:27  
Oh, five. Whoops.

Roberto Baldwin  59:30  
We didn't go to the beach yesterday because it was like 53 We like yeah, read the beaches, all sunny and 53. And all these people are at the beach, which is very, very northern California thing like hey, it's above 50 Let's go to the beach.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:43  
But of course nobody actually went in the water though because, well the water temperature was 50 It was probably about fill water.

Roberto Baldwin  59:48  
Yeah. Water is like the water fluctuates between like about 47 and 56 year round in the Bay Area. And I remember if I when I was surfing, if it was like 54 Like what waters feels really warm today. But I'm also wearing like a very, you know, like a three two wetsuit. And we took someone once in the summer who want to go surfing with us. And he's like, Oh, I'm like, Do you have a wetsuit? He's like, Nah, it's cool. And this is summertime, and we all paddled out. And then I turned around, and he was on the beach huddled, like unable to move. And I'm like, I don't know why you thought that was a good idea. Barry will kill you. The water will kill you.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:27  
Alright, let's see. Where's my rundown here. All right, last one I've got from CES is Volvo ride pilot. I had a call earlier this week with Austin Russell, the CEO of Luminar and Odegaard. Anderson, she's the CEO of Zen sack, which is a division of Volvo that does software for Driver Assist and automated driving. And we talked about this ride pilot, which they announced. This is Volvo's what Volvo is calling their first unsupervised automated driving system that they plan to launch in California. And so, the thing about ride pilot, you know, you can, you can have, you can have, you know, partially automated systems where you have to supervise That's level two systems like GM, supercruise, Ford, blue cruise, and so on. You can have work, you know, fall into the category of level three systems, which are unsupervised, partially automated systems. And that's like the Mercedes Benz Drive Pilot that you tried out in Germany. And, and then you can have unsupervised, you know, fully automated systems. And the way I like to describe these things, you know, you can have, you know, feed off, hands off, eyes often brain off. And for, you know, blue crews, supercruise type systems, those are hands off and feed off, but eyes on and brain on level three, its eyes off, but brain on, so you still can't climb in the back and take a nap. But you don't have to be watching the road all the time. And then when you go brain off, that's systems like, you know, cruise and Waymo, Zooks, and Argo, where you don't, you don't ever have to take over control. This ride pilot thing is an eyes off, but brain on system. So you will, it's designed for automated highway driving, but you don't have to constantly watch the road, you know, until it's approaching, you know, if you're, if you've got your destination set on the nav and it's coming up to your exit, then it'll give you an alert, you know, 10 or 15 seconds before the okay, you're going to have to take over control. That's what they're working towards. And that's what the the Mercedes Benz system does, except the Mercedes Benz system is limited to 37 miles an hour, because that's what the regulations in Europe allow for 60 kilometers per hour, 37 miles an hour. The reason why Volvo is planning to launch this in California first, because we don't have that regulation here. And so they're going to be able to do this at normal highway speeds. You know,

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:16  
is there any there's no, there's no maximum speed at all, whatever the speed limit is,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:21  
it'll probably be a back speed of like, 90 or something, you know, whatever, you know, whatever

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:27  
the actual speed limit is. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:30  
And, and I think Volvo said last year, that going forward, they are going to cap the top speed of all their vehicles at like 111 miles an hour or something 112 miles an hour, which is crazy fast.

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:44  
Really, really fast. Oh, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:47  
Unless you're in Germany on the

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:49  
Yeah, nobody can be driving that. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:53  
So but the thing is, this is going to launch on the car on the vehicle. That is the replacement for the XC 90, which is coming out later this year. It's an it's an electric. Evie. They showed it as a concept last year, and they had it in Vegas this week, called the concept recharge. So it's a it's an all electric, three row SUV. And when it launches, you know that vehicle is going to have all the equipment for this, you know, much like just Tesla's done with autopilot gonna have all the the hardware built in a standard equipment. So that includes LIDAR. Luminar, Lidar is going to be on there and cameras and radar. But this system is not going to be enabled yet. They're going to start testing this in California this year. And they won't say when they're going to turn this on, unlike unlike Elon Musk, who says oh, it's going to be ready in six weeks, six months tops. You know, they're saying when it's ready, it's ready. We'll let you know. But you know, we're not going to charge you for it right now. We're not going to make you pay for it. It's going to be available as a subscription when it when it is enabled. And that's when they'll start charging people for it. In the meantime, crazy. Wow, that's insane. Yeah, it's nuts. Who would do that when you could, when you could collect all this extra money?

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:08  
Like all this money, it's also very Swedish and Volvo To be honest, I mean, I'm sure if there was a if you bet the good at an auto show, I very when I first started doing that I very quickly learned that Volvo would just be like, Hey, we have a saying it's kind of cool. You know, like a guy would stand up and okay, there's a car. And then that would be that'd be the whole thing. It wouldn't be explosions or anything. And then you go up to the car, like, oh my god, this is amazing. Why aren't you telling more people about there's like, oh, we made a car and it flies, but it's fun. Wait, why? Why? Why are they right there? Yeah. We just you know, we did a thing. It's no big deal. It's no big deal.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:45  
Here's almost all about safety anyway.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:48  
Yeah. I feel very I you know, because it is Volvo, Mike. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Because they have that whole time, like, their whole, their whole, everything about them is wrapped up in their history of safety. So there, they are not going to put that at risk. In order to rush anything like the Santa market. They're gonna be like, super careful, but it's

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:10  
really true. Like if you're nervous about any kind of sort of autonomous tech, regardless of where it is level one, level two, or level three. You hear it's coming from Volvo and you're like, well, those guys are the safety car like they're the safe guy so they think it's safe. Like if it's good enough for Volvo like a Volvo says yes. You know, it's like a Dodge doesn't forget it. But Volvo Yeah, like, you know, like, they do lead to certain cretins. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:33  
they they're like, hey, it's just here's our cars crashing and TV ads. They're like, what? We're just gonna crash a bunch of cars just to show you they're

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:44  
gonna crash safe. They are crashing. Yeah, like, Okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:47  
fine. You're riding in a Volvo. It crash? If it crashes. You're going to be safe. You're going to walk away from that crash. Yeah. And now you know, going forward. We want to make sure make sure that you don't even you can't even crash

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:01  
right? You can't even that'll be the next commercial be someone actively trying to steer towards a wall and the currency like Sir, please don't do that. Like that's just not going to be actively not crashing.

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:11  
Is it? Pardon me? But I'm taking over. You saved my life. It's no big deal. It's no big deal. And we're going to we're going to the Walgreens it'll be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:22  
Alright, let's answer some listener questions. We've got a bunch of them this week. First one from Tom prossima. Okay, I've Odede on AV news. 2022 585 That's five models. Is there anything? No I don't think there is anything new from 22 I think they're just carrying over

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:45  
no next question.

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:49  
They're gonna be EVs Tom.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:51  
Yeah, they get these EP versions I wait let's get a press release.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:56  
So yeah, no, I think the do a four and S five and so I think that they're probably going to be next year sometime maybe they might that might be revealed this year. But for right now for the 20 model year 20 twos they're they're just carryover Brent Baron housing. This is not actually a question so much. He posted on Twitter. Picture of the the cupholders on the carts at Target look like a wrangler grill.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:26  
I'm pulling up the image now because I didn't pull up the image earlier. Let's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:28  
see. Got it. Look at it. Wait, wait, wait. Absolutely right.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:33  
Holy crap. There you go. 123456788 slots so there's no

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:41  
they didn't want to get sued by they don't want to get to do they don't want to be Mahindra issue. Oh, Hummer. Oh, that's all I'm gonna say. Oh, yeah. So

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:49  
also bring that's a lovely little rainbow fleece thingy you've got in your cart. There I approve it. That's cute. Adorable.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:58  
Next one, from Brianna Wu. What other Amazon technologies besides eating would make poor car features. So we talked about the E Ink on the on the the AI X flow. Anything else from Amazon that you think would would be bad on a car that Amazon makes a lot of cars out. I don't want my services built in now. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:20  
I don't want to be ordering things on my car.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:24  
I feel like unless, you know I mean, I

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:27  
guess if you're reordering if you're reordering stuff like hey, Alexa, reorder. So and then it just does that like remember the little buttons that they used to have you just push a button around your house when you're out of like laundry soap and automatically, like that seems okay. But when you're like, Alexa, tell me five things about you know, now I'm sorry, everybody. I just screwed up everyone's Alexa in their house. Didn't realize what I was doing.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:52  
Alice, I had a developer talk to me about it and they said they call what you said Alice and they call the Apple version. Sarah so it was Alice and Sarah so that they could avoid when they were having conversations. Okay, about making it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:06  
Think those seem a little too close? And sometimes I think they would probably recognize those media. Maybe just call it madam a. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:13  
That sounds terrible.

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:17  
Amazon saying, oh, you know, tell me if I've, you know, I need to order batteries and it gives you like a rundown of batteries. And now your brain is thinking about the different batteries that are available. Yeah, I don't I don't want that in my car. I also don't want people doing podcasts and saying the Wake words of others. I apologize, everyone for

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:35  
that. Yeah. Have you Have either of you tried things like fire TV or any of the other Amazon technologies that are in some vehicles?

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:48  
I'm not I haven't tried Fire TV. I haven't tried the Amazon auto thing either. I know that's out. I'm supposed to get one for review. And then I don't know what happened. It was like everyone saw people like, Yeah, we're gonna send you this thing or, Hey, this car is gonna show up and then it just doesn't. And you end up being so busy that you kind of forget about it for six months, like, Oh, hey, what happened to that thing that was supposed to come in? And then yeah, maybe I made a mad with a tweet. Who knows? What did you say? Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:15  
I don't know. The Jeeps the jeeps have fire TV built the wagoneer and the grand cherokee have a fire TV built in for the the rear seat entertainment system. And I think actually, for the the if you get the passenger screen on those, you can also watch Fire TV on those do watch Amazon Prime Video shows and things like that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:39  
Cool. We can watch whatever's on Amazon. Yeah. stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:45  
There's some good stuff there.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:46  
There is I watch Amazon Prime TV a lot. Video prime, whatever it's called now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:53  
All right. Next up. Oh, of course.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:56  
There's the expanse. Oh, yeah. The Expanse I got to start rewatching because I watched the first season. And then I don't know what happened. I got you know, life. And I feel like I have to go back rewatch the first season because now they have all the seasons, etc. One episode left this one. Okay, this week. That's the final, final final. That's also my power move is that I wait. Like, I started watching insecure. And I watched the first episode and I stopped and like, okay, you know what, I'm gonna wait till this is done. And then when I watch them all once, I really liked it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:23  
I was on discovery mode for a while. And I just finished that was very disappointing. So maybe I'll move on to expanse, and it'll be better. It has to be better.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:31  
Oh, wow. Oh, the expanse is fantastic. All right. Next up from Surtur. What's this about Toyota, Toyota and solid state batteries? Are they fast charging? Do they? Do you need a billion dollar factory to make them? As far as the billion dollar factory? Yes, yeah, definitely need a billion dollars. Unless you want to make you know, one or two. I mean, if you want to make

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:55  
every factories a billion dollar factory, if you're making Pokemon, it's gonna be a billion dollar. Yeah, they're making solid state batteries, billion dollars,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:02  
any any batteries, you're looking, you know, one to two, depending on your volume, you know, one to $2 billion at a minimum for a battery plant. As far as you know, toilet is like a lot of companies has been working on solid state batteries for a long time. You know, we're probably going to start seeing some, you know, hit production vehicles in about the 2025 2026 timeframe. That's, that's what that seems to be the general consensus. They should be able to charge faster. You know, but of course, that also depends on the charger use, but they should be able to charge charge faster, more safely than current generation lithium ion batteries.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:43  
So that's the that's the that's the dream is the solid state because the charge is quicker. It's like, you know, you get the fight, charge. It's safer. And then, yeah, it's just right now they only last like about 100 charges, right? 1000 charges or something. But it went that they can figure that it's like Toyota and Samsung are the two big players right now we're doing it there's a bunch of polluters like there's 5000 like startups that have been doing it forever, but I feel like like once the big guys get into it, you're like, okay, because there's gonna eat up all those startups who are doing good work.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:11  
Yeah, I mean, there's quantum scale, which is working with Volkswagen solid power, which is working with BMW and Ford. Ses is working with GM and there's there's some others out there as well factorial energy. I forget. I think they just got a partnership deal with Hyundai if I recall. They got they got an investment from somebody. Alright, Adam J. Says, more realistic, useful. Auto announcement admits lots of lots of vaporware and moonshots as to be expected to see us after all, I like GM going for $30,000 Starting price, Equinox Evie, which we talked about already, and next generation Android automotive with the latest Qualcomm tech this that may get me to consider a pole star three. So yeah, we didn't we didn't talk about this. You know, Qualcomm had a bunch of announcements this week. With Snapdragon ride platform, which is for a dass and automated driving. And GM is using that for their ultra cruise, as well as for an updated version of supercruise. It's launching with the Cadillac lyric the spring. And then they also talked about their, their new or updated infotainment ships that are, they're one of the one of numerous companies it's using was Volvo for the Pole Star Three and the aforementioned XC 90 replacement, which is on the same platform, and you know, they're incorporating a bunch more stuff with Android automotive. Qualcomm is working with Volvo on that implementation on there. In fact, Volvo I think just this last week, or last week also announced that they're going to start enabling YouTube on their vehicles that have their current Android automotive system on there so when you're when you're charging, you can watch YouTube videos. So no, no Netflix or other video streaming yet that you will be able to start with YouTube and they're gonna have a bunch of other stuff that they're putting in the next generation vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:11  
You're gonna watch stop making sense on YouTube it's like cut up but you can watch the talking heads and oh, you can watch our but I'm sure I haven't minute segments Yeah, I have a YouTube channel either if you have a YouTube channel Yeah, there you go. You can watch videos that that Robbie makes and yeah, Roberto Baldwin just go to youtube search up for bear trouble. There you go. Got a call. Do you have one Nicole? Do you have a YouTube channel? Don't I? Did she just say you do and then go out and get it after this podcast and that way when people

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:41  
do by the time I get this posted you'll you'll have

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:45  
50 videos all of you just pointing at cars. That's essentially all my do is they stand on video and be like look at this car then I say things that's my video. Perfect.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:57  
Daisy serious asks Hi wheel bearings. I have a question. What's the best way to buy a car in 2022? Oh, I can do a dealership or any of these online car buying things reputable. I need to buy an Eevee hatchback right now not putting on an order for later. How do I even find out what's available? PS my team crashed my beloved old Prius loudly crying haste. Okay, but the car was totaled amazing how little damage it takes Yeah, that is something unfortunate on a lot of modern cars what would seem like a relatively minor crash can bend and break a lot of stuff under the skin that would be very expensive to replace. So any thoughts from either of you on best way to buy a car right now?

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:43  
A new car

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:44  
she say I on on on Twitter to this one to find me see if she could tell us you know what budget she had and whether she needed a new or used but

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:00  
I Okay, so we we bought our like I mean she's looking for like a little hat, Evie hatchback which essentially they're all crossovers. Really. I mean, we have our Kona electric we really like it. It's a good car. It's a it's a car that just happens to be an Eevee if you're not looking for you know weird gimmicky stuff, then it's a pretty sweet it's a sweet jam. Um, that being said, I don't, dealerships are the worst.

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:26  
It's so hard to get anything to our

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:28  
dealership was actually pretty good. But for the most part, I'm kind

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:31  
of hoping she lives in California since there's stuff in California that we don't have everywhere else. You know, things roll out Warren California. In from

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:38  
her Twitter profile. She's in Colorado. But Colorado, Colorado did adopt the the California ZEV mandate. So okay, the California, Colorado

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:51  
and there's still a good number, or at least a healthy number of EVs that automakers are just like, isn't the ionic just out of five or something just in California to start? I feel state Oh, is that? Okay?

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:07  
You can get a Chevy Bolt from like Costco for like a nickel. Like once they start selling them again. Yeah. Yeah, for Hosko for a nickel. Yeah, if California I used for a few years I used to start up called shift. They're backed by BMW. But it's just it's used cars. But yeah, we just go online. And I would look at you know, I put in what I wanted, and then your transmission, blah, blah, blah. And then it would show me the available cars. And then I would say oh, I want to see this car and then they would schedule a time for them to bring the car to my house. And then me and my wife would drive it around and say yes or no. And if we liked it, they would just leave it and go away. And if they if we didn't like it, they would take the car away and then we would find another car do that. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:51  
it's Yeah. Carvana will deliver cars to you as well. It I think a lot depends on if you're looking for a new or you CAR If you're looking for something new, you know, one of the things that has happened over the last few years is every new car dealer has a website and almost almost all of them now will show you all of their available inventory. So you can search through what they have available on the lot. And I did a little search. I don't know where in Colorado Daisy is, you know, but I just look for Denver. And for example, you know, Hyundai dealer looked at a couple of Hyundai dealers in Denver, they've got inventory of Kona EVs, and also one of them also had some ionic EVs ionic fives the new one you know, if you're looking for something a little more affordable, that's new, there's also the Nissan LEAF which starts at 30 grand and you can still get the tax incentive on that there you know the bolt if you're if you're looking for something you know if you're if you're interested in something used you know there's a bunch of options you can get used leafs bolts, and I threes BMW threes you know, I don't know how much range she needs you know, that's that's also an option. And the Hyundai or the Kia Niro Evie is also another good option as well, if you're looking for something in that that size. Yeah, that is a good one.

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:22  
It's got louder, it's got more rear. If you have kids, if you have more rear, what's it called space for your likes? Like Kona Canungra. leg room. Room for your leg leg room, then the it's like it's the same car, but it's got more leg room than Yeah, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:36  
the same battery, same same motor and everything just longer wheelbase. Yeah, so you got a little more cargo space, a little more leg room in the back. So that's, that's another really good option. And there's also the VW ID four is another one that's in that same, same kind of similar size class. You probably don't want to wait for the Subaru Saltair Bz 4x one right now her car's totaled. So yeah, so there's, there's, there's a bunch of options out there. You know, but what I would do is if you're looking new, or if you're looking used, you know, go and you know, you can check out the inventory that's available online before you go to a dealer. And if you find something, then make arrangements to get a test drive. A lot of dealers now, like us experience with shift will actually bring the car to you for a test drive. So that that helps as well. You know, Carvanha, you can do the whole thing online. Although I've heard a lot of mixed reviews with Carvana. With that experience,

Roberto Baldwin  1:22:37  
you don't drive the car, they just bring you a used car, which I like. Cuz I remember I wrote an article on an article about ships when they I don't know, a long time ago. And Carvana is like, yeah, we're the same thing. I'm like, but you're not like you don't bring me the car until I buy it. Yeah, and now I'm stuck with the car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:53  
I think they do supposedly have a seven day return policy from Carvanha. Yeah, but I've heard some stories that, you know, people had a hard time with that. So there's, yeah, it's it's tough stuff, buying anything. But yeah, you can, at least for shopping around, you know, you can use sites like autotrader, which, you know, Nicole writes for,

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:15  
I think, I think I'm occasion I've done some stuff. But you know, in for the Carvana thing, the I too have heard mixed results. But you know what, I'm just trying to think, compared to the normal dealer experience. I don't know that I've heard worse results from Carvana. Or is it just kind of on par with? You know what I mean? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:32  
I mean, the problem is probably the dealer, you can local dealer, you can go and let's order tickets,

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:40  
but I mean interest people like, oh, you know, it wasn't what I expected or returning it or the challenges or, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know that. I don't know that. It's, I don't know that it's better, that it's worse either.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:50  
It's certainly a more, at least for the buying process. I think, you know, something like Carvanha has, you know, less friction. Yeah, you know, not having to deal with salespeople was a big plus, for a lot of people. That's true.

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:03  
We were fortunate about the corner, the dealer was actually really cool. But it also my wife immediately told him what I do for a living. Oh, which makes a huge difference. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:13  
The wall over these people. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:14  
And there was one thing that he kept trying to sell us on. Well, no, no, no, no. I'm like, What is this? What is this market also markups? Like, just say no, to the mark, I'll say I'm not gonna buy this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:24  
If any dealer that's insisting on, especially on a new car, you know, on a markup, you know, just walk away. There's there's other stuff out there.

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:32  
Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's like, I'm gonna tweet something about the local leadership that has a $15,000 markup on a BRC right now. $15,000 markup on a $30,000 car 15, one, five, comma,

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:49  
sell it. If they're doing that, then they actually like no, we can sell it and do this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:55  
This is the problem. I did a couple of media interviews this week. I think I did one for Reuters and somebody else as well, talking about this, you know, with the the prices and the markups. And the challenge, you know, is that these dealers, you know, when you're buying from a dealer, or anybody else, for that matter, they own the vehicles. And, you know, it's, it's a free market economy. And, you know, it's all supply and demand, you've got limited supply right now. And there's a lot of demand. And there's, you know, it may be it, it's, you know, I think it's unethical. Yeah, I think it's unfair to consumers to be charging, you know, to try and put put these huge markups, especially on new models that are, you know, in high demand, like Broncos, the F 150, lightning things like, you know, the BRC, to, you know, it's unfair to consumers, but it's not illegal. You know, they can write, they can chart, it's just like, you know, you sell your house, you can charge you can ask any price you want for your house, if it's too high, people won't buy it. Right. But you know, somebody out there might buy it. And, you know, I hate it, you know, and if a dealer ever, you know, if I was shopping for a car, and a dealer had, you know, a market adjustment, you know, that was more than a few dollars, I would just walk somewhere else.

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:15  
I did, they were I know someone who had a $10,000 market adjustment markup to their Bronco that they ordered. He ordered your car, and they're like, Okay, now it's $10,000. And they got what did they do? Did they pay it? Or did they ended up, they ended up talking them down to like, I think 3500 Which is still too much, but you're like, Okay, I've been waiting my Bronco forever.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:41  
You know, when you when you do place an order with a dealer? Yeah, read the paperwork you're signing, you know, make, you know, make sure that there's no loopholes in there that say the dealer can add an additional markup on there. You know, if you don't, you know, otherwise, you know, especially in this market, you you could end up getting hosed. You know, so, you know, if, if there's any concern, you know, put something in there stipulating This is the price I'm going to pay. And if they, if the dealer won't agree that, you know, whatever the sticker price is, is what you're going to pay. Don't don't give them any money, just walk away. It's it's not worth it. You know? No, there's no car out there that that's worth it, you know, don't have FOMO you know, about this stuff. Just walk away. You don't have to be the first one in your block with a Bronco or any other, you know, fun new vehicle. You know, just wait, wait, you know, if, if there's enough demand, you know, manufacturers will keep building these things as fast as they can. And we'll eventually get one you don't have to be the first. Yeah. Don't Don't encourage these guys. Exactly.

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:48  
Yeah, if you can avoid encouraging that stuff. Don't do it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:53  
All right. Michael sim asks, I would love your thoughts on where the automotive industry is going with every manufacturer basically making a skateboard platform containing the battery suspension and electric motors, while merely changing the top hat. VW has me BGM is Altium. They've written before I think Fisker is a viable plan to market an Eevee because they're utilizing a version of the Magnus steer skateboard for their ocean SUV. I think yes. I think Sony is doing the same thing with their prototype vision vehicles. Who knows what

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:22  
Sony? Sony doesn't know what they're doing? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:24  
What is preventing companies like Tesla from using their multiple Giga factories to manufacture EVs for other companies as a way to amortize their billions of infrastructure investment. Elon Musk has said that his technology is open to others. Why doesn't a small Evie company skip building a factory and not recreate the wheel so to speak, the average driver won't know the difference between batteries from Tesla, CTL, Panasonic, etc. Electric motors are likewise pretty homogenous and feel happy even homogenized ice vehicles with every manufacturer making a two liter I for turbo already. GM and Honda are already in a collaboration that helps Honda skip years of development and cost for EVs. Is it hubris, pride that prevent these small upstarts from working with a larger company? Or are they just trying to milk money from investors? Thanks, keep up the great work.

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:15  
I think Fisker is doing the right thing. I don't think I don't think Tesla would be able to help anybody at this point. They just can't. They're I mean, right now, if you order a I just had someone send me a message like, yeah, we order a Tesla supposed to be here in February. Now it's August, right? Or June? I don't know. It's like later. It's like it. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:35  
It's like a thing that Tesla does that. And if you're gonna buy a Tesla, you sort of know that going in and you either accept it or you don't buy a Tesla. But it's certainly not something that aside from the current, you know, shortages of cars that you that other automakers will tolerate as a rule, like they don't want to be like, Oh, no, we told you, you'd have your new whatever. Bronco in March, but you're not going to see until next December. You know, they're not going to do that because they can't reliably get batteries. Someone,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:01  
yeah, Tesla actually has done this before that, you know, they had a deal with Toyota. And you know, they provided the batteries and powertrain for the rav4 EV back in like 2011 2013. Toyota eventually cancelled that deal, because they had a very hard time working with Tesla. They are a very difficult company to work with whether you are a customer, you know, buying components from them for your EVs, or a supplier providing components to Tesla to build their vehicles. I've heard a lot of horror stories from a lot of suppliers over the years about their dealings with Tesla. Similarly, Daimler had to deal with them. They were using Tesla batteries and motors for electric versions of the smart for a while. And I think also for the the B class. They no longer do that. Yeah, I think it it all, you know, we've, we see, you know, large manufacturers doing deals like this to share platforms. You know, in addition, you mentioned GM and Honda, Ford, for a couple of European market EVs is using the VW MEP platform, they have a partnership with them. But, you know, once you write that there's not a huge amount of difference, you know, between the batteries and motors and stuff from different manufacturers, there's a lot of similarity. It depends, you know, once you get up to scale, you know, then it makes sense to do your own once you're building enough, you know, rather than buying from somebody else. So, if you're building, you know, a few 1000 vehicles, yeah, you buy from somebody else, if you're building hundreds of 1000s to millions of vehicles, you might as well do it yourself, because you're not gonna save any money by through a partnership.

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:53  
Yeah, yeah, I think I think like, you know, the, the GM Honda LTM platform is there. Volkswagen is very good. They're very open that they're like, hey, anyone wants to use MEP platform, we'll do it if you can, as long as you pay us. Which is, you know, we thought we were gonna get the ID buggy. We were so close. You're so close to getting the ID buggy. There. It was right there. And then it was like a

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:17  
little VW did announce they're finally going to reveal the production version of the ID buzz in March,

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:23  
march. I'm very excited. Yeah, I wrote a whole thing about how I'm excited and how it's different. When I say Oh, I said it's it's a different vehicle is being it's a different world compared to when it was unveiled when it was unveiled. We were like, as a as a concept. We're all very excited because nostalgia and Microbus and now as a as a as a EV van, you still have the nostalgia SVU. But now we have van life and people who because of the pandemic who want to, you know, they want to travel and do things and they realize that they can do that in a vehicle and I think it's, I think it's going to help VW so people who wanted it before were like, hey, you know, get over it. Now. There's a whole other audiences probably looking at this thing when it gets unveiled in March.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:05  
Alright, last one from Oh, Jeff, something else.

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:09  
I was just gonna say it buggy one more time.

Nicole Wakelin  1:33:11  
At buggy buggy

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:12  
and it was fun. I get to drive it at Pebble. I was so excited.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:17  
Absolutely, I'm sure somebody VW doesn't build it. I'm sure somebody will.

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:21  
But that was the plan like some other company was going to build it but I think it didn't work. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:25  
Some somebody will come along and do it. Fingers crossed. From from Justin risky. I wanted to write you all to ask you a question about user replaceable lights on newer vehicles. Since listening to your podcast and hearing about your positive review of the Hyundai palisade and seeing how many others approve of it and the Telluride, I have decided to order one for myself. Hopefully within the next four months, I will be the proud owner of a 2022 calligraphy. That's the top trim level of the palisade. Seeing his home, everything seems to be going led, which I'm a personal fan of I cannot help but wonder are the days of being able to go to an autoparts store and buy replacement bulbs for your vehicle a thing of the past, I have this fear that instead of buying a replacement bulb costing me 20 bucks, I'm going to be forking out hundreds of dollars on an entire assembly. If any one of the little LEDs that go up any one of the little LEDs go up. I know LEDs are supposed to last for a really long time. But I'm also seeing other modern vehicles with entire DRL status daytime running lamps and other lights already burnt out. Do you think that user repairability is over? I'm curious as to what you think about this. Thank you for the great podcast to help me get through my work day each week. So I mean, I actually have I put replacement LED headlamps on my Miata. They're, they're a package that's shaped like a like a standard, you know, traditional seven inch steel beam ball lamp, but you know, it's got LEDs in there so that I can actually see at night because when I first got that thing the first time I was driving at night it's like a turn on the lamp. The headlights it's like like what? Well, where is everything? So I got I've got some aftermarket LEDs, but I, I have not, I have not actually tried replacing the led to, or even to check if the LEDs are replaceable on any of these modern vehicles. My wife's or civic has halogen bulbs and you can replace the bulbs in those. I don't know, I would, I would assume I've been probably dumb to make an assumption but replace an LED module in there. You can't

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:32  
I mean, no you could the headlights, weirdly, I just was I'm writing a gigantic story about headlight bulbs for CNET and was just Googling LEDs and changing your halogen lights in your car to LED lights. And there are a mind boggling number of options out there. So based purely on just looking up this information over the last few days personally for this article, there's a lot of them out there. So I mean, maybe someday it'll go away, but especially for headlights anyway right now. And like Sam was saying, you can convert your halogens to LEDs because the light is better and clearer and brighter and goes further and goes wider last longer than a halogen bulb. So there's still options for doing that. I mean, I and they do last so much longer. You know, I think with anything, you're going to see that freak thing where that LED light that was supposed to last you thought it was gonna last you 10 years last you 10 minutes, but it can happen with any kind of part. I don't know that they're any more fallible than other random parts in your car that are supposed to last for a really long time. Maybe at some point, but I think people you know, if you start to find out like with a lot of things, you know you if you're doing research on your car, and you're doing it yourself or you can find stories where people talk about how easy it is or is not to do common maintenance things on cars. And I think if you know manufacturers make it increasingly difficult for people to do things. The manufacturers that make it easy will find the do it yourselfers gravitating towards those that's it, that's a selling feature, you want to be able to change your light bulb, your you know, $20 bulb without having to take it into the dealer and spend an hour and a half of labor to have them take things apart and do for you. So I don't I don't think it's gonna go anywhere. I think it's kind of ways before we hit a point where those things aren't easily replaceable by most consumers.

Roberto Baldwin  1:37:23  
Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's probably, it's definitely going to be more expensive and the price of LEDs just continues to drop. Because we're putting them in absolutely everything. So at some point, it's gonna be like when I needed a new catalytic converter for my Honda Civic. Way back in the day, I could either buy the one from Honda, which was $700 at the time, or I could buy the aftermarket HiFlo carbureted. One for 200. Wait, wait. So this one adds more power to my Honda. And it's carbureted which means it works for you know, for California Air Resource Board. So it's it's it's legal, and it's cheaper. And I don't have to like cut the pipes. Okay, well, I think I saw I think we're just there's gonna probably be some some some cheaper options and what you get from a dealership for these lights, just like, you know, you're not, I don't go to the Hyundai dealership to get Sylvanian lights for our G lights, I think we're going to see the those those companies building the, the light modules for these things. But yeah, is it good? It's like if you buy a new car, and then like after a year, like one LEDs out? Like, it might not be a big deal. But you know, it's just gonna bug the hell out? Absolutely, again, this whole LED array, and then one is out just like, Ah, it's not worth paying, you know, $200 to replace this thing, but God, it's driving me nuts.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:41  
Yeah, you know, a few years ago, if you wanted LED lamps, LED bulbs for your house, you know, I mean, they were like $10 apiece, or more, you know, now you can, you know, go to your big box store, and, you know, buy a box of 10 of them for for six or $7. You know, so you're right, the price has come way down. And I would hope that, you know, they the manufacturers are using, you know that they have the LED modules as a separate module. So you don't have to replace the whole cluster. Because those those cluster lenses they have in there, those things are insanely expensive. You know, it's not unusual, you know, if you have to, if you get into a, you know, a minor accident, you have to replace a headlamp cluster. You know, 1000 $1,500 for one of those headlamp clusters is not unusual. But in most in almost all cases, at least with the halogen or projectors, you can replace just the light module without replacing the whole cluster. And I would hope that the same thing is true with LEDs. But well, I'll look into that and get back to you next time.

Roberto Baldwin  1:39:44  
I think the ones with a light signature, you know, when you're driving your car and like a bunch of crazy stuff happened. Yeah, the outies in the BM, you know, the high end, those are gonna be expensive because those are all individually addressable LEDs so you have a completely different board on there. Whereas the ones that just turn off and on when you have when you hit the brake light I think those are gonna be much cheaper because it's just you know it's just off on off on

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:04  
yeah alright that's all we've got for this week thanks everybody for listening and we will talk to you next time

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:14  
bye