Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 233 of wheel bearings. We've got hybrid ford f 150s. Escape plug in hybrids, V8 powered Grand Cherokees, poor fuel economy of new mail trucks, dealers charging too much money, and a redesigned Spirit of Ecstasy. All that more coming up next.

This is episode 233 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:34  
I am Nicole Wakelin from TrueCar.

Roberto Baldwin  0:37  
And I am Roberto Baldwin and I, what do I do? Oh, I do a column column every week on lifewire. about EVs, go read it. Alright,

Sam Abuelsamid  0:45  
so what do you been driving this week? Mr. Baldwin?

Roberto Baldwin  0:48  
Oh man, I'm first. The we don't know for first or not until Sam says

Nicole Wakelin  0:52  
he springs it Addison. We both sit here like Oh, gosh. Am I ready? Am

Roberto Baldwin  0:55  
I ready? Let me let me host me.

Nicole Wakelin  0:57  
Are you ready? DREW? You're not ready. I can make it

Roberto Baldwin  0:59  
not I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00  
was like stalling because he knows you're not ready.

Roberto Baldwin  1:03  
Hey, I drove the 2021 Ford Escape. P have the front wheel drive version. It is a only

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15  
version. Yeah, yeah. Well, there. Yeah. All Wheel Drive plug in.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19  
Yeah. Which is sort of sad. Um, I kind of wish there was overall I think it's a it's a good vehicle. It's not it's tough. Because it's it's badly in the rav4. That's a That's a tough the especially the rap for the frat for prime. And that is a, that is a tough vehicle to battle in the P have market in that in that in that range. And if you're looking at that, and you look at their ad for Prime and you're like, ooh, it's uh, but having said that, I liked it more than I thought I would. I feel like older generation escapes, just sort of, I don't know, they just sort of irritated me. For some reason. They just sometimes you'll get a car and they just kind of bug you. The the last two generations, Chevy Malibu did that. And I think that was like, oh, yeah, no one like the Malibu. And it wasn't that it was a bad car. Because it's hard to really build a bad car because manufacturing has gotten so good. Over the last 20 years. It's just that a it just wasn't like when you look at the record and the Camry and literally anything else in the market. It wasn't as good as those. Plus I think for that car. What happened was you just kept thinking about what the Malibu used to be, like this cool car like Oh, I got a Malibu and then you get into this like, junk box. Which, which, which which they have now like it's no it's gone. It's it the Malibu is gone. I hope they bring it back as like a sweet like Evie muscle car sometime in the future. The Ford Escape is now better than it was. It's not as good as the rav4 Unfortunately, it has its P have their their MPGs you know, gasoline is 40 and an MPG e which is like some made up weird thing that the EPA has to like come up with to make people feel better. Is 105 which is like Ooh, I got really good. Just mixed mpg around. I think 5051 Which is pretty good. Yeah, but the weird thing was, yeah, yeah, that was really I was like, oh, okay, now they're all electric range is 38 miles, that's what's supposed to be or 30 and lamb look at the the Monroney right now 38, zero to 838. And then But then this is 37 on that I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't matter because it didn't hit that it hit 28 during my test now I did it at night. So I don't I try to do it at these, these these tests these electric electric test at night so I don't get stuck in traffic, which sort of throws off the whole thing. I try to do it after rush hour. So it's about the same amount of traffic every night. Around seven ish pm. I do the same route just around my neighborhood. There's you know, I live near an IRS interstate I live near mountain roads. I live near, you know, urban. So I do the same route. And it just I thought it would be do better because it was doing so well. And so it's like 28, which is not great. And I was like, okay, that's what it got. But it's still it is yeah. All right. I'm sure probably other people have gotten better. I don't know. I

Sam Abuelsamid  4:33  
got I got 40 When I did it when I Yeah, it was

Roberto Baldwin  4:36  
really it was really weird. I was like kind of like what is happening? But yeah 28 And maybe I don't know maybe do my math check my math I don't know but it's 28 it's a it's the the the blend of electric to motor is really nice. I didn't have any issues. It doesn't feel like it's sort of Herky jerky between old generation hybrids and pea hubs had this like weird like, it's gas now it's electric now it's gas now it's electric now it's gas and you are you are the engine just starts making all this crazy noise. Because it's it's spinning but it's not really you know, that's that noise doesn't translate to what's happening with the wheels. Yeah, man. Yeah, it doesn't match and it doesn't have any of that so overall it's you know, it's it's it did really well. And I my biggest really my biggest complaint about this vehicle was the seats. I could not get comfortable in the seats. They were just a little bit too squishy.

Nicole Wakelin  5:36  
Was it because you're taller? Like it just didn't like? Or was it just in general? You're like, I don't like these.

Roberto Baldwin  5:41  
I just didn't like them. And you know the the I want to call them the John Cooper Mellencamp minis. I also hate those seats. Yes, for a different reason. The John Cooper Mellencamp minis

Sam Abuelsamid  5:56  
This is a prime example, what we said before, why you should never buy a car without test driving it first. Absolutely. Because every seat is different. You know, our seats in every vehicle are different. And you know, everybody's body is different. And some seats just won't fit your body no matter what you do.

Roberto Baldwin  6:17  
Yeah, that's it. I felt like and I've gotten in cars, people are like, Oh, I love the seats in this car. And I will get into the car and I'm like, I can't I got out after my, the mileage run. I got out the car was like a no after them after my like, where I just drive the car for hours and hours. Just sort of get a feel for it. Without worrying about mileage. I just, I just I was just my, my felt like my back was wrecked.

Nicole Wakelin  6:48  
Geez, that's not good.

Roberto Baldwin  6:48  
So I was just like, Well, is it? It's? And again, this is like, you know, yes, still 28 I'm still looking at my numbers. I'm still looking at my 28 Yeah, and again it that I think it really comes down to like your like your your was the bed, the beds that you're going to just digitally beds O Matic adjusted. Yeah, Sleep Number bed. It's like a Sleep Number bed situation. You know, lots of people have probably gotten in this vehicle, I've sat down and be like, Oh, these are the best seats I've ever sat in. I love the seats. They're nice and squishy. They're billowy, they're great. I get it, and I'm like, Oh, this will be fine. And then after a few hours behind the road, I'm like, This is not fine. And at the same time, I can get into a like, like a, essentially a race car with race seats. And those are completely I love those. I feel like those are just built for my body. That's it. That's the only like, they looked at me and then I can't make it for this guy. It'll be fine. Those are great. I can sit in those seats for hours. A nice squishy seat in the Ford Escape. Now not so much. So, you know, like I said, we'll say, Get into the car, drive it sit in it kind of like know what you like, like, get into your car you own right now. And how you know, when you drive in hours and hours, you're still comfortable when you have that car. Remember how your car feels how you know the you know, some of the squishiness and some of its gone because you've been sitting in it for you know, probably hundreds of 1000s of miles. Right but like kind of get a sense of like what you like when you're behind the wheel especially and a good way to do that is also when you rent cars, see how those cars feel and then go out and find a car and sit in it because if you buy a car that you absolutely adore, and it turns out the seats just do not agree with you. It's gonna be it's gonna be a bad time. Overall though, you know the Ford Escape the weird mileage issue aside and the fact that my body doesn't like squishy seats now it's you know, I think it's a solid vehicle it's a it's a it's I think it's a win for Ford. I think they're gonna they probably sold a billion of these as Ford tends to do. I'm sad it's it's front wheel drive. The version I drove. It's the I got the titanium. Yeah, the titanium version. So of course, you know all the things. So the the price was $43,000 which right it's

Sam Abuelsamid  9:24  
it's not inexpensive. It's not cheap. Now again, not much is these days anymore.

Roberto Baldwin  9:29  
That's true. like nothing's inexpensive anymore. So you know, it's it's a it's it's not cheap. If you're a Ford fan if you've been driving towards forever, you'll probably be more than happy just to hop behind the wheel. And you know, Sam got 40 ish miles I got 27 I'm not sure what the discrepancy is and that still

Sam Abuelsamid  9:50  
be driving uphill all the way.

Roberto Baldwin  9:51  
No, it was both ways. I see there's there are hills like around where I live but other cars have gotten way better mileage. I don't Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, you know, it might have been, I

Sam Abuelsamid  10:02  
think I up and down. I mean, on the downhill side, you're gonna make up mileage that you know what you lose on the going uphill. So yeah, yeah, it all evens out in the end.

Roberto Baldwin  10:11  
Yeah, so I think maybe my driving is more mixed when it comes up hills and then downhill. It doesn't have that much. You can see it's sort of like charging as you're slowing down. But it's not, you know, a lot. So maybe that's it, maybe in some of the other vehicles I've done, they have a little bit more regen. And so that helps them. I do live in a sort of a hilly area, Northern California. I mean, I look up, I live on a hill, that's the hill over there to hell over there and a hill over there. That's why we have great roads, because we have to drive around all these crazy hills. So there's that. So yeah, overall, forest gate front wheel drive. If you don't want a rav4 that's the,

Sam Abuelsamid  10:54  
you know, for what, for what it's worth, you know, I think part of the reason why Ford opted not to do an all wheel drive version, at least for now on the escape plug in hybrid is because they also have the Lincoln Corsair, which the plug in hybrid version of that, the, at the front, you've got the exact same engine and hybrid drive system. And then they added a rear electric motor, an electric motor on the rear axle to drive the rear wheel. So you get all wheel drive with that one similar setup to what Toyota has got on the rav4 prime. So I think, at least for a year or two, they want to have that be something that is only for Lincoln. And then you know at some point, they might add an all wheel drive version all wheel drive option to the escape.

Roberto Baldwin  11:43  
Could be Yeah, I think the the it looks better. I bet I think that the baller thing I want the Ford Bronco sport. You have. Yeah. That's cool. That's yeah, see, and that's the you know, that's I think that's, that's sort of like, okay, this is, you know, this is a good car, but it could be so much better because the Broncos sport is so much better. And it's not that much more expensive from the you know, it's a couple $1,000 More Well, I don't know now because of DNR markups. But I'm in in in fantasy world where, where we don't have insane dealer markets or anything with the word Bronco attached to it. It's only a few $1,000 More people play normal places for Yeah. So you know if you if you need to, if you love Ford, if you need a solid I get it's a solid car. It's not a bad car. There's nothing you know, inherently wrong with it. It gets good gas mileage, if Sam's driving it not so great if I'm driving.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:39  
Not everything gets good gas mileage in my hands and about that later.

Roberto Baldwin  12:42  
Okay. But again, the overall MPG was really good. It's like 50 subdued so I'm just like, what's what's happening? Yeah, it was really weird. I, I probably should have been like three tests and seeing what what was and picked, you know, throw out the top and the bottom and in the middle. But, you know, I got a week with the car and you're just like, okay, these are the days I'm doing this. This is the day I'm doing right when

Nicole Wakelin  13:08  
you can do it. Yeah. Well, I

Sam Abuelsamid  13:09  
think when I drove the the Corsair plug in hybrid in December, that one got about 28 miles on a charge, but it's also significantly heavier. Yeah, it's dragon work in the Escape is, you know, it's got a lot more equipment in there, you've got that rear electric motor. So it's, you know, it's it's doing a lot more work. So I expect, you know, expect that one to be I think is like five or 600 pounds heavier than the Escape Plan hybrid. So I expect that to get less range. So I'm really kind of surprised he got that little,

Roberto Baldwin  13:42  
but I get Yeah, I get those. Yeah, sometimes I guess it's just it was just a you know, maybe it's a fluke, I'll have to figure out what happened again, that blending was so good. Vehicle blending the hybrid system blending has gotten so it's like up there with with BMW.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:56  
Ford's been doing hybrids for a long time now. Watch the first scape hybrid back in 2005, four or five, you know, so they've been doing them 1617 years now almost as long as Toyota. And so, you know, I would I would expect them to be able to, you know, make it perform really well.

Roberto Baldwin  14:15  
Yeah. But I think I don't think people like really think about Ford when they think hybrids because everyone, everyone for everyone thinks Toyota. Yeah, it is a Prius.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:26  
Yeah. And you know, Ford globally, Ford is the second has sold the second most second greatest number of hybrids. Only behind Toyota.

Roberto Baldwin  14:35  
Okay, but no one remembers who got the silver medal. That's true. We all remember Mary Lou Retton. We don't remember who got silver at that at those really? Yeah, who who got silver in the 98 for some other girl who is married, not Mary Lou. Lou won. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:53  
Alright, Nicole, what have you been in?

Nicole Wakelin  14:57  
I am in a two 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland four by four. And I have to do shout out to Jeep because the last couple cars we've gotten have not had the VIN RONIS that they they're like other cars or their cribs, or there's just no one at all. And I'm like, well wing it. Today. I have this perfect little Monroney it's like a little cardboard cutout. And it has like, it's like heavy cardstock and it has every last stinking detail and these are the ones that are in the cars like if you go on a dry program with jeep. Oh yeah, it'll cardboard he thinks I was so happy. I'm like, boy doesn't take much of a Sunday morning. I'm like, Oh, I'm Monroney if it's actually right, I was so happy. So thank you g for putting these in your cars when you send them out into the fleets because it made my life easy. So that's what I was driving. It has a 5.7 liter the eight Hemi 357 horsepower 390 pound feet of torque eight speed automatic. It's it's you feel that it feels like a big beefy vehicle when you're driving it. But what I like about this isn't like a downmarket vehicle. It's pretty fancy, especially in the Overland. You don't want it to feel like you're driving something like rough and ready. And even though you feel the power of this vehicle, it never feels harsh. It never feels too much. The engine isn't overly loud, like you know, it's doing its job. But it's still like well mannered. It's like oh, you're you're driving along in your Jeep, you're you're just you know, cruising on the highway. Now you want it to feel like a nice highway cruiser. And it does, it does a fantastic job of that. That's neat because having taken this off road, you can really take this off road and it's truly capable, which is a sort of like strange dichotomy. It's like I can have my fancy little Onra vehicle and then I can go thrash it on the weekends and get it dirty and take it over rocks, which is kind of what makes Jeeps really cool. This one had a base price of $55,305 so base price pricey but not insane. Once you add in all the options that are on the one that I am driving $70,360 That is $15,000 worth of options on this. And I was looking like so what did we pay extra? We paid 400 bucks for silver Zenith exterior paint. I don't know that I paid $400 for silver, but somebody Alright, silver,

Roberto Baldwin  17:17  
Silvers like cheap the zero pain that's a $0 pain but okay, go for

Nicole Wakelin  17:21  
it. This isn't just silver Robbie Xena says silver Zenith exterior paint

Roberto Baldwin  17:26  
is made from groundup Zenith televisions.

Nicole Wakelin  17:29  
I don't know but it smells zy. And I th isn't seen as z y and eth I'm thinking the TV I don't know. Anyway. It also gets a luxury tech group number four. This is where the money starts coming from $2,000 in advanced protection group $2,000 A black roof 700 bucks, a front passenger interactive display which is a grand and I'll talk about that rear seat entertainment is another $2,000 and the UConnect five navigation with 10.1 inch display is $1,700 plus the 7095 destination fee rounding things a little bit. That's how you get to 70 grand in your Jeep Grand Cherokee. So the luxury group really does. It does feel like a luxury car. You get Napa leather seats you get a wireless charging pad there's a 12 way adjustable driver's seat in front passenger seat, you got four zone automatic climate control so it does all the cute little fun luxury things that you want in a car to make it feel like it's a fancy pants vehicle and it does that then you get some other stuff in this advanced prediction group which is like it has this one feature that is so cool. Okay, night vision with pedestrian and animal detection. Have either of you driven this template with that?

Sam Abuelsamid  18:39  
Yeah, not on the Jeep, but I have on the Cadillac Escalades, okay, it has a similar system where when at night when you turn that on in the display it'll, it'll put a little bounding box when it detects animals or people around you.

Nicole Wakelin  18:53  
So it's super cool and I was playing with it. I thought what better night to turn this on. We got a storm in in typical New England fascist like you guys, it's just gonna be like a little dusting. tons of snow and ice and sleet and the roads are a mess and you can't I'm like, Oh, I'm glad I picked tonight to go out to dinner. So we're driving back I'm like, I'm going to try this is going on these like twisty turny, New Hampshire, scenic back roads are the only way to get to this stupid restaurant that we picked. So I turned this on. It was really cool how well it sort of cleared up the the fuzz of the snow and the sort of heart how hard it was to see suddenly you're like, I can literally see where the edge of the snowbank is like you can see the curve of the snowbank. And the neat thing was and this wasn't like a danger thing. But there was someone in their driveway on the far side of their car clearing off their car. They weren't coming out into the road. They weren't anywhere near like being in danger. But also they see this flash of yellow and I'm like what did I just see on the screen it flashes again it was picking up the person on the other side of their car and warning me that there was a person there so that I could see it. I totally honest to god had no idea she was there. Except for this because she's a fancy little yellow The box like first, it sort of picks up the fact that there's a person and you can kind of see the person moving. And then it gives the box, I couldn't even see the person, but it knew there was something there. So if there was like an animal or something about to run into the road, that totally would give you that warning, like there is a deer hiding behind that tree that is about to run out into you. I thought it was really cool. And then I had my husband get out, and like play with it. And it's kind of neat. When he first walks in front of the car, he's just glowy. And you see like him. And it's like, as if you see like the trees and the other objects that are around you, he has to get enough that the system can go, that's not just something that's a human and it's before his whole body really is in front of it relatively quickly. It realizes nope, that's a moving living thing. And it makes this little yellow box so that you can't possibly miss it. Or if you're like focusing on the road, and you're just kind of using that sort of as a backup helper thing, that yellow box gets your attention is really neat. And that's part of that advanced protect pro tech, not protect pro tech group,

Roberto Baldwin  20:57  
pro tech. Protect te te ch like pro like professional technology.

Nicole Wakelin  21:05  
Yeah, pro tech group, and it's pro tech group number three, not protect,

Roberto Baldwin  21:10  
like, mambo number, like Mambo number five,

Nicole Wakelin  21:13  
like Mambo number five only with fancy night vision. Yeah. So I thought it was really neat, because I have getting to play with it in a situation where you thought this is exactly where you wouldn't be able to see that there was a dog or a deer or some animal coming out in front of you. And it was it totally worked just like go go engineering people that was really nifty. So I like that the thing that we didn't, like my daughter didn't like it, because really, this is her playing with she's 18 She was sitting in the front seat, and she was playing with interactive display. That because there's a display screen on the passenger side, and you really can't see it from the driver's side. If you try and see it from the driver's side. It's like as if you had looking at someone's laptop that has a screen protector, like a privacy screen in front of it, you cannot see it from the angle you're sitting and when the car was parked, I tried to see how far over I had to lean. And literally my head is like on her shoulder before I can even remotely tell that there's something on that screen. So there's no way the driver is going to be able to like zone out and watch with on that screen. That's I don't know, I don't know if this was a setting. But every time we turn the car off and on we had to go back in and say yes, activate this. Yes, let her use this every single time. And I don't know if there was a setting but I could not find it and we like poked around everywhere. And it's like buried, you know, so that was my only quibble with that. And it didn't do as much like features wise, just kinda like, oh, I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do the other thing. So I think for her, she wanted it to do sort of almost everything you could do on the infotainment, but not be the actual infotainment and like let you it doesn't do that. It's very limited in the feature. So nifty. But she was unimpressed. And I'm getting her review because she's the one who had to use it. So

Roberto Baldwin  22:55  
does it have does it have Tetris?

Nicole Wakelin  22:58  
I don't I don't know if it had Tetris. She's 18. Should have to be like Tetris. Was that? No kids? No,

Roberto Baldwin  23:03  
Tetris?

Sam Abuelsamid  23:03  
I don't know. Maybe they didn't have the the Amazon FireTv stuff turned on.

Nicole Wakelin  23:08  
I didn't play with that. No. So I'm not sure if that was turned on or not. But she was what she was there a couple different features like, oh, I can't do this. Oh, I can't do that. And I'm like, what she's like, No, I just, there's things that she's like playing on the infotainment screen and going back and forth. And I guess she just felt like, there were more features that she wanted to see be able to be used by the person there. Because like, you know, you figure if you're the passenger, thank you. The idea is you could watch the Amazon and watch your movie or watch your video, which is cool, and the driver can't watch it. But would it be nice for you to have a screen that was right in front of you, instead of having to lean over in a big car like the Grand Cherokee. If like, if you want to do something to reach over to the infotainment screen as the passenger, you can just tap the screen in front of you.

Roberto Baldwin  23:46  
I like the the passenger screens. I like the idea that's that's polarized where you can't see so yes, you absolutely because people are going to watch they're gonna want to watch

Nicole Wakelin  23:55  
100% And then even if you're not trying to it's like, you don't think you're trying to work and there's TV on and like you're sitting in the lounge or something. And you're like, I don't even care what's on there. And I'm what am I watching? Is this an invoke like a commercial? Or like, new gutters? I don't need to gutters. Why am I being distracted by this? But you

Sam Abuelsamid  24:14  
are or sitting? You know, sitting in a, you know, a restaurant, you know, grab some dinner, and you know, being distracted by the TVs. All right?

Roberto Baldwin  24:22  
Yeah, like, sometimes I'll like I'll be eating in a taqueria and there's always soccer on is that? Yeah. It's always soccer. And so I don't care about any sport. I don't watch any sports. I don't I just don't care. I tried. I tried as a kid. I'm sorry. I wanted to fit in and it just didn't work. So So yeah, but if it's on I'm sorry to talk but I'm talking to someone my eyes. It's like, it's like entertainment drift you're like,

Nicole Wakelin  24:47  
right, exactly. And I think that's exactly what would happen if you were driving a car and someone's watching a video that you could actually see the movie. He'd be like, what's happening over that looks pretty exciting. Tree like no, it's never gonna work out. has to be something you can't see as a driver.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:01  
Yeah. So does it play the audio from the video through the vehicle audio system? Or do you have to use headphones? To hear the audio from that?

Nicole Wakelin  25:10  
I think it has to, I want to say it's headphones because you can pair your she could pair her headphones to it or

Sam Abuelsamid  25:16  
because I know okay, like most of the rear seat entertainment systems come with, you know, wireless headphones that you know are paired to that so you use the kids sitting in the back and you know, use the headphones

Nicole Wakelin  25:25  
out while they're grownups up front. Yeah, I'm just wondering yes you can so I mean that somebody sitting in the passenger seat could entirely watch a movie while you did the task of driving and it's not an arduous task because this is a nice car to drive you know it's it's it's big but even without I think all those luxury packages that are in there the pro tech or the luxury tech it's it feels it's neat because it runs that you know if you want to go off road in this if you really want to you know get it filthy dirty go off road where you know lesser cars fear to try it you can do that but then it's just as capable of being this super comfy. Family highway cruiser has a really nice comfy interior. I like the Jeep I thought it was

Sam Abuelsamid  26:07  
nice and this is a two row right not that not

Nicole Wakelin  26:09  
the yes this isn't this isn't the owl this is just the two row so the L is a whole different animal Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  26:15  
it's a bigger animal had bigger

Nicole Wakelin  26:16  
animal has a bigger but

Sam Abuelsamid  26:18  
I forget what what kind of fuel economy do you say you got out of this thing.

Nicole Wakelin  26:22  
The fuel state of fuel economy is 14 City 22 highway. Most of my driving in this was on really horrific winter roads stop and go snowy weather. So I feel like my fuel economy I ended up getting I was mostly on side roads. I was getting like, like 15 or so 14, like in there depending. But I honestly feel like it could have done better if I wasn't giving it the worst possible roads to slog through, because that's not you know, your wheels slip and your braking constantly. And it's not. It is not good for fuel economy to drive on those roads. So it's like, yeah, it was like 1415 profit back and forth. So

Sam Abuelsamid  27:00  
yeah, and, you know, I was driving this week, the 2022 Ford f1. Or actually, sorry, it's a 2021 F 154 by four SuperCrew. Platinum power boost. However,

Nicole Wakelin  27:15  
the headline a good thing you're talking about it not writing about it.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:18  
So this this is this is the f1 50 hybrid that has been promised for many, many years finally launched with this current generation of, of f1 50. That came up in late 2020. And I had specifically requested this one, well, what I requested was an f1 50 that had blue cruise. So I could do some testing with blue cruise. This one has all the blue cruise hardware on it. The Monroney says blue cruise. So you know they specified it. But this one has not yet gotten the software update to actually turn on blue cruise. So I did not get to try blue cruise even though you know when I turned on. When I was on the highway, I turned on the the cruise control said Active Drive assist, you know enabled, but it never actually enabled the hands free mode. It what it did was it showed me the the icon, which shows up in the middle of the attack on the left hand side of the gauge with the steering wheel and it showed hands on the steering wheel all the time. But never showed me the hands off version of that. So I could go hands free. What was interesting, though, what I did notice is that even though this doesn't have, you know, it wasn't using the hands free mode, you know, part of what Ford has done, you know, similar to what GM is doing and has been doing since they launched supercruise. And what other manufacturers are doing as they launched their hands free systems is they have infrared cameras on the dash is one that is right at the base of the A pillar by the mirror. And then there's another one that's just above the the center touchscreen display that are looking at you as you drive to make sure that you're watching the road when you're using these systems. And even when you're just using standard adaptive cruise control with Lane centering even when you're not hands off. It does in fact, it is still watching you and if you look away from the road for more than a few seconds, it will give you an alert saying hey, watch the road please keep your hand keep your eyes on the road. So that's good. The one one of the things that you know from my previous brief experiences with blue cruise that I'm not thrilled with the way Ford has done it. You know one of the things that Ford didn't do that GM and others are doing is include capacitive sensors in the steering wheel to to detect when your hands are actually on the wheel. And they are relying on the same cheaper approach that Tesla uses which is to look for motion the steering wheel It's using the torque sensor in the steering wheel and looking for that motion, that little bit of motion that you typically have when you're driving. And the problem with that is, you know, if you actually do try to hold your hands really steady on that and don't have any motion, even if your hands are on the wheel, and you're holding the steering wheel, it will still think, oh, there's no motion on the steering wheel. Yeah, yeah. So I'll hold your hand. So I kept getting alerts to put my hands on the wheel, even when they're on the wheel, which I thought was rather annoying. So I don't like that I wish Ford would, would put the capacitor sensors in there.

Roberto Baldwin  30:35  
It's like, it's like every few. It's like, every, like five minutes, you got to you have to, like do a little wheel trimmer, cuz I'll be driving I keep my hands on. I'm very, I want to keep my hands on the wheel cuz I don't want to die. And I'll be driving and driving and driving. And I'm looking at you know, I'm looking at what's going on. And so I don't feel like I have to keep an eye on the cluster. Because, you know, I'm looking at the world I looked at it's like, hey, you need to put your put your hands on the wheel. Mike, what do you think I've been doing? So I did a little, little

Sam Abuelsamid  31:04  
angle every once in a while. Yeah, still here. Nana Yeah, so that's, that's rather annoying. But, you know, it turns out, you know, the truck was delivered on Wednesday morning, here, just a few hours before we started getting, you know, it was actually raining at the time. And it's just before we started getting, you know, fairly significant snowfall, not quite as much as what Well, you got in your neck of the woods, Nicole, but we had snow that about eight or nine inches around here around where I am here. And so it was nice to have a big four wheel drive truck. The downside of that is, as you mentioned, you know, these kinds of conditions, you know, in the aftermath of a snowstorm, you get all this snow and slush and ice on the roads, it does cause a lot more drag. And the another downside of a big truck like this is, you know, one thing that you should always do after snows is brush all the snow and ice off your car, so that it's not flying off hitting you right, another car behind you. That's kind of hard to do on a big truck like that. You just, you can't I mean, unless you're as tall as Roberto.

Roberto Baldwin  32:15  
Now the F 150s A big f1 truck, I couldn't, I couldn't reach the I could probably reach about a foot into the, to the to the top of the f150 every time Yeah, it's a big, it's a big vehicle, I couldn't reach across it. And I would need a step stool or the hop in the bed in order to clean off. So yeah, you got to be really tall and do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:36  
So, you know, there was a fair bit of, you know, accumulated ice and stuff on the front of the truck. And, you know, some some snow and ice on the roof. Which, you know, got over the course of the the snowstorm you know, there was a fair bit of ice accumulated there, which, you know, cause obviously causes a lot more aerodynamic drag. And so you know, during my my test loop the other day, which is this basically the same drive loop I do for pretty much everything. I went out and drove for a couple hours. And the the hybrid F 154 Wheel Drive hybrid F 150 is rated at 24 miles per gallon City highway and combined. I've only averaged about 15 and a half. Which is which is not great. Oh cold, it was cold. It said you get all the snow and ice. Plus a turns out I found out that I also had about 400 pounds of snow and ice in the back of the truck. Because one of the cool new features that Ford has on the F 150 Oh my gosh, that's the bed scales they've got they've got loads under the bed. And also this one had the Smart Hitch option. So if you're trailering when you when you hook up your trailer and then put it on there, you can go on the screen and see exactly how much weight is on the how much tongue weight you've got on that trailer to make sure you're not overloading your truck. Or when you're loading stuff into the bed you can see exactly how much stuff you got loaded in there. So I went out there this morning and you know hit the the scales, and I had roughly about 400 pounds of snow and ice in the bed of the truck.

Nicole Wakelin  34:13  
That's how much that all weighed. I mean that's so now I know why when you feel like you shovel your driveway, you think you're gonna die when one of those stores was it really almost 500 pounds

Sam Abuelsamid  34:21  
yet? Well, I mean, when when the when the storm started here on like very early, you know, Wednesday morning, the temperature was about 37 So it was actually raining it first and gradually turned from rained ice to snow. And so you know there was a lot of wet heavy snow there early on.

Roberto Baldwin  34:39  
And you have a nice layer of ice to to keep the snow from like melting out

Sam Abuelsamid  34:43  
Yeah, exactly. So so that that also you know all all these things combined, you know got caused it to get underwhelming fuel economy because I remember when when I did the media drive the last drive when when they first start building the 20 ones Back in late 2020, I drove a hybrid, you know, for a couple of hours and I think I averaged about probably about 2323 2223 at that time. And, you know, so I certainly expected to get less not quite this much less but you know, it's it's not

Roberto Baldwin  35:19  
your holiday hauling a bunch of you're hauling like two nickels worth of snow. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, we actually had that. Just weigh things. I'm just knowing

Nicole Wakelin  35:28  
how much is this way? I don't know put in the truck. Let's find out. We actually had we had the similar situation with the snow and ice. And it took forever to clear all the snow off the top of the grand cherokee because it's again, it's hard to reach and it was so icy. You can't just reach up there and grab it. I'm like, I don't, I don't need to step stool to like Smash, smash, smash smash to break it all up. We had it was a big story up here because as we're driving down the highway, even though people had a very tiny amount of snow stuck to their cars, it was like a sheet of ice. So as it came loose, it came with these giant sheets that were smacking into other cars. They had these record number of vehicles that were having like smashed windshields and damage was smack it and it was really bad. So I was driving around. I'm like, I was looking at the cars in front of like, that roof looks clean on that roof doesn't look like we're gonna ease back a little bit.

Roberto Baldwin  36:17  
Yeah, I've had I've had it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:21  
Well, on Thursday afternoon, you know, towards the end of the storm period. I actually had to go into Ann Arbor into downtown Ann Arbor to meet up with a couple of people from a company called under that is making a new kind of imaging radar that's going to be standard on the Fisker ocean they wanted to give me a demo which was was a pretty cool demo but on the way home I was stopped at a red light and I'm sharing this photo with with you guys right now. Driving bother rushing off to the back window and this is not the only car I saw like this I'll include this in the in the show notes.

Nicole Wakelin  37:03  
Oh, do you guys have that well we have a law that you have to clear it you do

Sam Abuelsamid  37:08  
yeah yeah we have a lot that doesn't really get enforced very much apparently.

Nicole Wakelin  37:12  
Oh they enforce it like crazy New Hampshire you driver like they weren't yesterday it was like you know because everyone it's like was such small skim coat of snow left on the car. I didn't see them pull anyone over but I they would pull that car over and a heartbeat in New Hampshire

Sam Abuelsamid  37:25  
Yeah, I think this person you know basically just brushed off enough so that when they opened the door they wouldn't get all the all the snow tight and just you know maybe maybe a little patch of the windshield probably there's like

Roberto Baldwin  37:37  
a porthole that they've

Nicole Wakelin  37:39  
oh yeah just a circle big enough like so you can see your eyes yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  37:43  
yeah, I can see so please you know if you're driving after a snowstorm, you know, brush your car off you know make sure you clean off the smell clean off the ice so that both so you can see out and also so that it's not flying into the cars behind you. Because that

Nicole Wakelin  37:57  
car isn't causing accidents and such that's not good. That's that's

Sam Abuelsamid  38:01  
bad behavior bad bad bad road etiquette as bad bad record good. Yeah, the kit. Alright, so they they did send me a Monroney for this f 150 which had all the details of all the options that are on here including the lovely 12 inch thing for touchscreen display which has support for both wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. It had this truck had the optional double pane power moonroof which would have been you know, lovely you know, if it wasn't all it was lots of other options the max trailer tow package, but unfortunately, because this was probably a pre production vehicle Yeah, it looks like from the from the VIN that yeah, it was it was a pre production model. So it was before they actually started shipping them to dealers. The it does not include a price on it. But I went on the ford.com website and priced out is pretty much the same package of options. And this one came to 60 or $76,090 for this truck and and this grid This is not the most expensive f150 You can get because this is just the platinum you can also get the limited which has even more stuff in it. Oh, this one did have the the foldout work table which was so lovely for your your your cookies, Cookie table cookies. I didn't I didn't go out and get any cookies.

Roberto Baldwin  39:40  
It's the burrito table but sure, yeah. No table. Whatever depends on where you

Nicole Wakelin  39:47  
work table. I'm like no, it's a snack table. Choose the slack of your choice. Cerritos cookies, some fries, chicken nuggets, that's what it is.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:56  
Easy. Anybody that's going to use that as a word surface is not going to be buying a platinum. They're gonna get an X.

Roberto Baldwin  40:05  
Ray. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:06  
It might be the supervisor is gonna be eating lunch on there. Yeah, it's gonna be eating is this custom snack though there was something else here that I want to mention as well, which is escaping me now. But yeah, I mean, this one. Oh, it also had the, the lay flat seats. Which if you've driven if if the these this new generation of F 150s. They have these optional lay flat seats. So if you need to take a nap, you can recline the front seats, almost all the way back. So it's basically like flying in a business class seat. And great for great for taking a nap over your lunch break. After eating

Roberto Baldwin  40:48  
a burrito. It's right on your table. Nothing goes with a burrito better than an app

Nicole Wakelin  40:53  
that isn't an app of pretty much.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:56  
Alright, so that's the 2021 Ford F 150. power boost platinum SuperCrew. four by four.

Roberto Baldwin  41:05  
You're getting your money's worth, at least in the name.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:07  
That's right. In the name lots of

Nicole Wakelin  41:10  
dollars in that alone. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  41:12  
All right. Well, you're getting lots of money.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:14  
Alright, so let's, let's stick with the the theme of fuel economy for a minute. Let's do some news here.

Nicole Wakelin  41:22  
The crazy story, I feel like this is one of those I look at this and think Was that real? Was that an onion story? Oh, no, this is a real story. This

Sam Abuelsamid  41:29  
is real. The US Postal Service has been trying to get new mail trucks for about 20 years now. The the current vehicles that your your letter carrier uses to deliver your mail and your packages was originally designed in the 1980s. And they it was named the long life vehicle llv. And it was it was meant for a 20 year lifecycle. And, and that was 40 years ago. So the average age of the these these trucks that are still in the fleet today is something around 33 or 34 years old now, I think, wow. These things were they were originally based on the first generation Chevy S 10 chassis. So they had, you know, basically the suspension and brakes and everything from an s 10. And the GM 2.5 liter four cylinder. And these things average about 8.2 miles per gallon in in typical use, delivering meant delivering your mail. They also have in recent years developed a tendency to catch fire because of things like the power steering pumps, developing leaks and leaking hydraulic fluid shoes, small issues. So they've had a few of them that have burned to the ground. But for the last, you know, since 2015, the Postal Service has been trying. They've had a request for proposals and then went through a quote process and everything they you know, a whole bunch of companies originally entered and ultimately came down to two companies. And they finally made a decision in 2021. And they went with a bid from Oshkosh defense, which builds a lot of trucks for the military. And Oshkosh had partnered with Ford. And so this mail truck was designed for using a lot of hardware from the Ford Transit van, which, unlike the E Transit, the Robbie drove last week is not especially fuel efficient. The last time I had a regular transit that I used to help my daughter move it I got about 12 miles per gallon. And that was just in city driving. So you know, it's it's not especially fuel economy fuel efficient. And the Oshkosh bid included options for both an internal combustion version of this new mail truck and an electric version. So the Postal Service could choose whatever mix of those that they wanted. And one other thing to keep in mind is that part of the the specs that the Postal Service gave, you know, for these for these trucks, they wanted them to be larger, you know, to have more payload capability because they're delivering a lot more packages and parcels now than they than they had when the old ones were designed. And they also wanted to add things like air conditioning and, and other safety features that you know, to make life a little easier for the drivers. So you know, this thing is a bigger, heavier vehicle. So you would expect that, you know, probably not going to be great on fuel economy with a gas engine. Turns out that according to the EPA, this thing only gets about 8.6 miles per gallon. So Womp womp, less than half a mile per gallon better than the 40 year old truck.

Roberto Baldwin  44:52  
It's 2022 people, it's 2022 fuel efficiency has increased on vehicles, you can get more efficient engines like I don't even know

Nicole Wakelin  45:03  
how this happens like how well I do it's the government they're here to help. Maybe that's what happened. This is just like how does somebody look at all this make this bid and go? Yeah, that's a truck or go with the one with a crappy fuel economy. Let's go all in separate what is it? Really in

Sam Abuelsamid  45:22  
the the two finalists for the for this deal? We're Oshkosh and workhorse group.

Roberto Baldwin  45:29  
Okay, so I don't even know why workhorse was a finalist because they've built like one truck.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:35  
One that was offering only an electric truck. And they wanted to have an Eevee.

Roberto Baldwin  45:40  
Yeah, but I mean, I could have I could have been a final bidder of final bid on that. Because that's, that's how much of a company workhorses to be completely. Yeah. It's like I could have said, Yeah, I'll make you guys an Eevee.

Nicole Wakelin  45:52  
And we should just come up, we should have been the wheel bearings, we could have just done our Eevee and we could have made 490 $2 million.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:01  
This is ultimately like an $11 billion program, you know, because they're replacing a couple of 100 180,000 trucks. Yeah. And then, you know, eventually also adding charging equipment into the postal depots and post offices and stuff like that. Turns out for some reason, Louis de joy is even now still the Postmaster General why he hasn't been fired yet is a remains a mystery, but he is still the Postmaster General. And apparently, he's the one that made the decision that Yeah, well, we're gonna go with Oshkosh. And you know, we're probably only gonna go with about a 10% mix of EVs out of out of these. This is this is just ridiculous.

Roberto Baldwin  46:48  
It's just a fundamental misunderstanding what EVs can and can't do. Or you just like, I'm just gonna do Evie to 10% I'm gonna say 10%. And the reality is, it's gonna be 2%. Because I have friends in the, in the the oil and the fossil fuel industry. And I hate saying things like that. But like, it's when it comes to the to, to to politicians, because everyone likes to say that journalists are on the take, like none of us are on the take. I've seen our houses. Yeah. I've seen how we all live. I worked in journalism in a bunch of different fields. I've been to a bunch of different newsrooms. Unless you're like the, you know, on, you know, the morning show or 10. Rather, you know, unless you're you

Sam Abuelsamid  47:33  
Mr. Bernstein. Yeah. No,

Roberto Baldwin  47:35  
you're not. Yeah, yeah. There's that right. We're all posting pictures at like, the one time we went out to a nice steak dinner at like, a mid level place. We're

Unknown Speaker  47:43  
like, look at like living large. We're not, we're not mistake. Oh, it's

Nicole Wakelin  47:48  
back to Roman.

Roberto Baldwin  47:50  
I had a steak today. Tomorrow, but the rest of the week. It's Robin. Yeah. Sorta. Yeah. So it's, but it's just you save so much money, the E Transit right there. And I guess someone was throwing around a $65,000 price tag for each one of these. I was like, but the transit starts at 45,000. How was this? Government contracts? That's the government contract bidding con like

Nicole Wakelin  48:18  
this to the story. There's been no response. Has there been a response from the Postal Service saying why not yet. That's a letter for the EPA. I just love how it's written a stern letter from the EPA is what the subhead is, and it's like, all these like, bullet points, you did this wrong. I feel like there's like, like, what has to be at least a dozen bullet points of things that they think that the Postal Service did wrong. And it feels to be the the like, essence of like, when you're a kid and you get that, like thing you did really well on you think at school and you get it back and you see it. And there's just red pen everywhere. I feel like the EPA is like breakouts a red pen. No, no, no, no, no. And like, wooden circled everything wrong. And it's like the entire thing is a massive red pen. They did nothing. Right. Well, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  49:03  
I mean, some of the points here, the Postal Service's own analysis showed that nearly 95% of mail carrier routes could be electrified, but only allocated 10% of electrified vehicles. I mean, think you think about it, you know, unless you live, you know, in a very rural area, Alaska. Yeah. You know, most male routes are well under 100 100 miles a day. Yeah. And, you know, especially if you live in an urban or suburban area, which is where the vast majority of the population is, and that's where most of the mail trucks operate. You know, the, you're talking, you know, slow speed operations. Mail trucks don't go racing around my neighborhood.

Roberto Baldwin  49:39  
It's always and two houses stop two houses that stop

Sam Abuelsamid  49:43  
Yeah, you're stopping every 5075 feet and then going again, you know, to put the mail in, this is the you could not find a better application for an electric vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin  49:55  
If you had 100 100 mile EPA range mail truck, it would probably get 200 miles from all this stuff

Sam Abuelsamid  50:05  
a lot of rejet out of these

Roberto Baldwin  50:06  
yeah it's like and if you just set it up where it just turns off if you don't have to turn it off every time because they the mail carriers like turn it off get didn't get burned yet you just get in, get out get in, get out it's it's such a great opportunity to say you know this is the perfect application and it is the most perfect application this is why

Nicole Wakelin  50:31  
exactly why you'd want this yes

Sam Abuelsamid  50:34  
this is why Amazon is has ordered 100,000 Electric vans from rivian You know and some more

Nicole Wakelin  50:40  
they say even set out further down here like the letter also says concerns over competitors like Walmart FedEx UPS committee to fully electric fleets by 2040 and 2050 with significant near term fully Evie fleet purchases already made. Yeah, guys are like we're in. It's like Hello, postal service like my face. Like we don't want efficient vehicles. Thanks. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin  51:01  
I just feel like Oshkosh and the Postal Service should just kind of like ignore this until it falls out the new cycle. And then we're just gonna get you know

Nicole Wakelin  51:09  
what, cuz nothing's gonna change the way these things move and how slowly they move and stuff as approved. is done. Like this is what we're getting for the next How old are you say the average one is right now 30 years. Another 43 years, they might actually commit to whatever we're using today. In 43 years.

Roberto Baldwin  51:31  
And 43 years we'll have these big really nice, like super solid state batteries that get like 700 miles and they take two seconds to charge. And they'll be like, Yeah, we're gonna use lithium ion it's gonna take 14 hours to charge and it's only a it's a 200 kilowatt hour battery I couldn't wait was twice as much.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:50  
And these postal trucks sit overnight, every day anyway, at the post office. It's not like these things run 24 hours a day. You don't charge them. You can charge them. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  52:01  
yeah, no, the last this is you're gonna save money on breaks. You're gonna save money on maintenance because you know, you're not going to

Nicole Wakelin  52:10  
well, they wouldn't have if they bought the wheel bearings EV but instead they bought this thing. So yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  52:15  
We got to get our bid our bid system

Nicole Wakelin  52:17  
we got to get let's come up with a number boys. Yep. The wheel bearings

Roberto Baldwin  52:20  
EV W Bev wheel bearings. We'll think of a better name. Pending patent pending. There we go. I don't want anyone stealing our ideas, your will.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:35  
Okay. Next up. We've talked on several occasions previously about dealers and and the ridiculous markups that they are doing, especially on some of the more popular vehicles right now. And, you know, we've seen dealers, you know, demanding customers, you know, pay 1015 $20,000 More for, for a Ford Mustang Maki, or an F 150. Lightning. And this week, Ford had their fourth quarter earnings call. And during the analyst call, Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, actually called up dealers, he was asked about this, I think, and he responded, you know, about this, this problem, said that, roughly about from their analysis, about 10% of their dealer network has been charging above MSRP. And he's not happy about it. Barclays analyst Brian Johnston estimated the value of the markups is about at about $3.6 billion just in the fourth quarter. So yeah, that's that's a lot of money, a lot of extra money

Nicole Wakelin  53:50  
and a lot of money. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:54  
So, you know, Farley responded and said, We have good knowledge of who they are. I mean, you know, Ford Ford knows what the transaction prices are, that all gets reported back to Ford. So they know how much dealers are charging they know which dealers are charging these markups. It says we have very good knowledge of who they are and their future allocation of product will be directly impacted. So you know, Farley's you know, I mean, Farley is a marketer, and he's a car guy, but, you know, he came up his his specialty was in marketing. He was head of marketing. For Scion, you know, when he worked at Toyota, he came to Ford, as you know, they're their head of marketing. You know, he knows how to sell vehicles, you know how to do customer experience, and he knows that this is bad, bad news. Yeah, this is something that's really going to piss off customers. And so he apparently is taking a stand on this and says, the dealership has a middle name Farley's using it right now. Like a father calling out a kid who is about to get into trouble. This is from the the art from Kristen Schaal and the drive,

Nicole Wakelin  55:01  
yeah, that was great wording. I love that Krista. Right? You could just see him shaking his finger and doing that middle name. But yeah, that's what you need. That's why we all did the middle names of all of our kid friends from high school, like grade school, you know, the middle names, your friends, I know all their names, because mom yelled at them. So I know their middle names from being yelled at them when they did things wrong. A little.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:24  
So, yeah, so Ford, you know, Ford, Ford has previously said that they are threatened to pull lightning allocations from dealers, you know, because Ford, you know, Ford ultimately decides which, which dealers are going to get which vehicles. And, you know, for dealers that they know, are charging these excessive markups. They have mechanisms to do this, you know, they just said, we're just, you know, instead of 100, lightnings, you're gonna get 10 or none. And, you know, those customers that ordered from those dealers, you know, they're gonna have to go some go to another dealer. And I think, you know, for, especially for the, the early buyers, you know, that have placed reservations, this is one of the interesting things about this whole reservation process that, you know, manufacturers never had in the past, in the past, you know, customers just dealt directly with dealers, you know, the manufacturers didn't have any idea who the customers were, until after a vehicle was sold, and, you know, the warranty, they got the warranty paperwork. Up to that point, they didn't know, now, they know who these people are, that are doing the, you know, that place the reservations, because you went online, you gave Ford all your information. And so, you know, they are going to help out, help these customers. You know, if if the dealers that they were working with, have their allocations pulled forward, we'll be working with those customers to redirect them to another dealer that will sell the sell a vehicle to the Met sticker, or less. Probably not last, but certainly, you know, for that sticker price,

Nicole Wakelin  56:55  
after sticker instead of an extra five or 10 grand on there. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  56:59  
my friend, but she she had a Bronco coming. And then the dealer, like out of the blue, like, oh, by the way, it's now $10,000 More.

Nicole Wakelin  57:06  
What did she do that she's still taking what she's saying?

Roberto Baldwin  57:08  
She worked. They they ended up talking to Daniel, I think $3,000 Which is still $3,000 Too much? Not right now. Yeah, that's still it's just like, it's you know, a lot of people are like, I guess I'll just take it and I went and talked to someone at a dealer, a Ford dealership near my house a few weeks ago, and I was talking about the Broncos like, yeah, we're we have a $20,000 markup on those right now.

Nicole Wakelin  57:27  
Are you kidding? They're probably selling every one they can get at $20,000. But

Roberto Baldwin  57:31  
they had one they had one that they could sell in stock near two demos that they would be able to sell starting in February at that time. So yeah, so now yeah, they're just they're just, you know, and then my friend, there was the was the BRC that had the, you know, it's a $30,000 car with a $15,000 markup that I tweeted about. And then I went, I went to a to a dealership and there was a gr 86. Same car with a $14,000 markup. So it's yeah, it's it's, it's out of, like, you walk in and you look at I look at it, I'm like, No, and they start walking towards me. I'm like, No, but I just turned.

Nicole Wakelin  58:04  
Yeah, not interested. But by like, no,

Roberto Baldwin  58:07  
that's like, this is why people don't like dealing with dealerships. And the problem is a lot of people they associate the dealership with the brand. So even though Yeah, cuz you've got

Sam Abuelsamid  58:17  
that big sign out there. It says for Yoda or Toyota, right? Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  58:22  
None of those brands are happy when their dealers do it. But yet still you're in your head. The average consumer is like that's Darden that Toyota darn that Ford. It's like no, actually darn that dealership. It's not the

Sam Abuelsamid  58:33  
realize that these are independent businesses that are owned by the manufacturer. Yeah, it's Jim Smith. forwarders.

Roberto Baldwin  58:39  
Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  58:40  
I met Jim Smith Ford. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  58:43  
There's probably a Jim Smith sport out there right now. It's like, you don't really darn Yeah, we don't know. Yeah, we just unless you are doing this then Darn you, but if you're not, yeah, then

Nicole Wakelin  58:52  
we've shamed you.

Roberto Baldwin  58:53  
Good on you, Jim Smith. You're not doing this.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:56  
And for what it's worth Ford Ford is not the only one trying to crack down on their dealers doing this. GM has also said the same thing. You know, they during their earnings call they they revealed that they got they've already gotten 110,000 reservations for the Silverado. Evie. So, you know, there's clearly a lot of interest in these electric pickup trucks. And actually, this is something that I was got a call the other day from a reporter for The Detroit News. Because, you know, recently GM made the announcement that they are going to put $4 billion into their orient Michigan assembly plant where they build the bolt today to convert that over to building Silverado and Sierra EVs. And during the during GMs earnings call Mary Barra said yeah, we're probably going to do a third electric truck plant as well. But you know, in the next in the next year or so, so that, you know, they are you know, they're committed to building a lot of electric trucks. There's They're there's, they clearly think that there's that's where their business is going very quickly in the next three or four years. So all right. Last news item we've got is Rolls Royce. Also with EVs rolls, Royce recently finally announced that they're going to build an Eevee. Which seems it seems odd to me that they waited this long, because, you know, Rolls Royce, if you think about the kind of cars they make, and their customers and how those vehicles are used, always seemed like it would have been the perfect app, another perfect application for electrification. They built a prototype, Phantom, Evie back in like 2010 or 2011. And they took it around and demoed it for for customers. And for whatever reason, they opted not to put that in production at the time, but they have an electric car coming out next year, or 2024, called the Spectre. And the for the Spectre. It did they they're saying this article says that it's already got the the lowest drag coefficient of any Rolls Royce to date. 0.26, which is pretty slick. But one of you know, one of the things that they've done is they've redesigned the Spirit of Ecstasy. That's the the classic Rolls Royce hood ornament the the flying lady that you find on the front end of every Rolls Royce. they've redesigned it to make it more aerodynamic, so you get less drag from that hood ornament. Have you taken a look at this thing?

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:38  
literally tried to tell the truth at a glance.

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:40  
I mean, it's still like a very pretty thing that people want to steal off your Rolls Royce.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:45  
So they have a little thing where you can like blue pilot and

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:48  
it disappears. Yeah. Yeah, it disappears when you have a little video of it popping up and disappearing. I think

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:55  
Do we all?

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:56  
Everyone we've all do. That's the first time

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:58  
you have your hands in a Rolls ratio, like Hold, please take a video of this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:04  
Yeah, well, you know, it's still recognizable as the client Rolls Royce hood ornament. But you know, it's a little bit smoother, you know, they smooth out some of the contours and I think probably, they've also made it shorter. It's about point six, eight inches shorter than before. So it doesn't stick up quite as much. But it says your has now has a dynamic stance with one leg forward and knees bent.

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:31  
Yeah, like one leg behind the other seven legs together, which makes more sense if like as a as a human doing that making that pose that seems a lot more. I don't know. Realistic.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:40  
Yeah. So you don't care about to hear.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:45  
Yeah, you're standing out on the front edge of the hood of the car. You want to brace yourself. You want to have legs kind of staggered like that.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:53  
Flying over the top of that,

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:54  
yeah. What if someone with a become to a sharp stop your two legs together? No, that's just bad. Bad. Just gonna fall over.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:05  
Alright, let's, let's answer some listener questions. First up, Z vm 327 on Twitter asks, or Zed BM because I'm not sure where this person's from? Will GM ever replace their vans? Eventually, maybe

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:26  
some places there's been a bump,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:28  
they kind of have started with with bright drop, you know, because a big market for vans is commercial vans. And so you know, they created bright drop as a new division, a new business unit for the commercial vans, and they're they're all electric. So they're, you know, those are going to eat up some of GMs traditional van business. I would assume that at some point. We'll see them do. You know, consumer electric vans do something new in the GM. That was the savannah the GMC Savana and the Chevy Astro app. Now the Astro was the old midsize

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:02  
van I know but they should bring it back is what I'm saying. Cuz I had that sweet sweet ad was driving around like Jupiter and they have that Chevy Chevy Astro Astro.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:12  
I saw the other day I saw somebody did a rendering. They took key a carnival and adapted the the front end of the Silverado Evie to the carnival to create a new Astro actually look pretty slick.

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:27  
Right you go see spring the Chevy Astro back I mean it's a perfect neighbor. We've sought look at that we're solving problems or return our own Evie company. So what's what's

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:39  
a better name than what Bev?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:44  
If you want to make a few bucks, go out and register the trademark for Astro van, you know, and then sell it back to GM. There you go. Alright. Mike Enos asks that he's got two questions here, as cars become more like rolling computers. How long can we really expect the software updates to continue?

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:04  
Just like they do on a regular computer?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:07  
Right? Well, realistically, it's gonna be for as long as you want to keep paying for them.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:13  
I think I think at some point, it becomes like your old iPhones where you're just getting security updates, like, yeah, you have you have a 10 year old, I don't know, let's say a 10, year old ionic five. At some point, it's not going to just keep evolving after 10 years, eight years, but there might Oh, there's security updates, they'll just push it out, push it out. Now there's a security update, they push it out. And it's it. Yeah, at some point, they'll keep going as long as there's anything that's going to get them in trouble.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:38  
Yeah, I agree. I think security updates and anything for regulatory compliance, those will be for as long as those vehicles are on the road, you know, probably at least 10 to 15 years. Things like feature updates, that's probably going to be more like what you see with an iPhone, you know, maybe four or five years, maybe a little bit longer. But you know, beyond beyond the first couple of years, you will probably have to pay for those updates. If you want those updates, you're not going to get free updates in perpetuity. At least not on more affordable vehicles. Maybe on high end vehicles. You might but but not on the the more mainstream models. And then the other question that Mike had was simple. What's the best non Tesla, Evie for most people that you can buy today in the US?

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:29  
I don't know if that's a simple question. Ionic five. I'm just gonna say I love love love the ionic five. I'm sure you guys probably say something else. Maybe the EVS the Eevee? Six.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:40  
Well, I mean, the other one I was gonna suggest is the Kona Evie. You know, depending on what size you need, is cheaper. Arrange

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:48  
it. Best non Tesla. People.

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:51  
I liked it. I didn't pick the car that either I own.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:55  
Not the one I buy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:57  
But the one that I want. Granted, when you bought the Kona, the ionic five was not on sale yet. I really

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:03  
wanted to wait to Yeah. So and then. But then I went into it like, oh, it's probably not going to be nearly as good as as what I have in my head. And then it was. So that's always a nice feeling when you when you you really want a car to be good. And then it is good. And you're like okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:19  
well on Twitter. Brianna Wu actually responded to this when she said the Nissan Leaf. Put some performance tires on it. You have a hot little hatchback, though. Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. Even with good tires. I wouldn't call it

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:33  
that the Nissan Leaf is a good car. It's been around forever. Kudos to for Nissan for coming out very early ahead of everyone else. And yeah, to the Evie game. But the Nissan Leaf is also the most boring up on the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:46  
stage. Kind of boring. It's although, you know, it starts at at 30 grand, and you can still get the $7,500 tax credit on there another 2500 If you're in some states like California, I think so. I mean, you can you can get a leaf, you know, theoretically for about 10 grand,

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:04  
but it's not 150 that right? That's the that's like the 150 That's 150 mile version. So if you're gonna do that, just get to hunt the mini SE and just lose like 1015 miles. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you have more room? I guess that's most people I guess. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:19  
Depends. depends. Depends what your what your needs are, what your wants are. But you know, probably the leaf, the Kona, the ionic five, you know, are probably the six. Or the six. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:30  
DV six. Throw that in there, too. Yeah, I mean, it's, for me, it's a toss up between the V six and the ionic five. I think it goes to what you're talking about earlier, drive it and see which one is more comfortable to you make sure the seats fit you. Yeah, make sure because they're, they're a little different. You know, but so I would go with one of those.

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:47  
Yeah, I think yeah, I think that the Kona is really actually really good choice because it's it's like seven grand six grand cheaper than either the other Hyundai Motor Vehicles. 258 miles. Yeah, I don't. Yeah. I think we drive that thing all over the place. Fine. Yeah. The only I think the only people for most people if he wants a little bit more dynamic. The the other two are much

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:09  
the I think the only restriction there with the Kona would be if you do need to carry people in this backseat more frequently. And you want extra backseat room then Oh, yeah. Go at the larger. Yeah, let's

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:22  
exercise because I think I think the cone is like a smaller, which is great. But like most a lot of people need a little bit more space. And that the ionic five, yeah. And the Eevee six, give that extra little bit of space. Kona if you don't need the space, go for the Kona for sure. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:38  
I said I would meet with the front seat. For me to drive in the Eevee six. I sat in the backseat and still had like inches of knee room. I was like, Whoa, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot bigger than you think. But you drive it. It feels small. I don't know if those cars are just Yeah, I don't. Hyundai's really killing it. That's when it comes down

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:57  
to it. Yeah, they aren't. Alright, Another one from Brianna, do you think the 911 or the Boxster will get an electric version first?

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:05  
I saw this tweet yesterday. And I've been thinking about it all night. And so I still don't have an answer. And so on one hand, you think, well, maybe they want to do the 911. Because they want to have this crazy, insane Eevee like, just be like, just like out of the gate, just like, look good. We did. We're Porsche, we're going to do crazy, you know, we have all this engineering. On the other hand, the boxer would be a great sort of entry into that. So you have this like, Okay, we have the Boxster. It's an Eevee, a nine elevens coming, but we're still going to make sure that we were still taking care of our like, super hardcore 911 people. So my answer is, ah, I'm torn. I kind of am leaning towards the Boxster. But on the other hand, like just to come out with an Eevee 911. Just seems like just yeah, like,

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:52  
pump. I have no idea. This is one of those in like, a toss up to me. And there's good reasons for it. I want to know Breanna Thanks, Brianna treatise and see which one do you think is going to get an electric version first?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:02  
I personally, I think it's going to be the Boxster. Because you know, 911, a little more traditional, I think they're going to do a hybrid version of 911. But you know, the Boxster because it's a mid engine layout, you know, I think that they can, they can stuff some battery in where the engine is today. You know, it's a two seater mid engine, you know, the 911, your packaging becomes a little more of a challenge for that one. So I think it's going to be the boxer.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:33  
Alright, so I'm gonna go into boxing because Sam is smarter about engineering than I am. Also, I love the boxer. I love the boxer so much. I I just I just love it and if it will, if I were if I were not a journalist, if I were say a politician and I was on the take, I would

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:52  
not to work using Brianna of any of that because she's no longer a politician.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:56  
Oh, no, not you know, Brianna was accusing just politicians in general. Because, you know, all the journalists are on the take, and we really not because none of us have an idol. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:09  
Are those those that do usually have an old 911 that they they've owned for 20 odd years you know, since long before the prices went ridiculous went crazy.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:18  
We also like we keep track like right now prices are insane, but we really as as a whole, like if you get in a shuttle van with a bunch of journalists a car journalist, like half of the discussion is how you were able to buy a vehicle at its Valley when of its value. Like okay, well I was watching it and then then the you know, it's gonna dip at this point and they bought it at like the the least like the spend the least amount of

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:42  
cheapest they could possibly ever get lower than this now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:46  
Yes. Yeah, automotive journalists don't make that much money. The end of the day, we most automotive journalists cannot afford to shop on bring a trailer.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:57  
Oh, no. Yeah, that's why we're always like making fun of bring a trailer. I mean, yeah, true. Does it bring a trailer for creating that site and creating the hype and on the people who are selling these vehicles that they've been keeping in a garage somewhere? Without touching it? Like good for you? Selling them?

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:14  
Not good for you? I unless you're buying a vehicle that was like this super fancy. One of one never to be driven vehicle drive your car? Yeah. I don't buy it. Drive it. Oh, it's a limited who cares? Drive it. Drive. All right. Look, it didn't go to a party.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:32  
I take back my just Yeah, you should drive your car. Yeah. Thank you, Robbie. Yeah, that's live life. Live life live life.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:40  
Alright. Good. AJ asks, does the new tundra have anything comparable to supercruise or blue cruise? My primary use would be on a straight 35 mile stretch of I 75 at night and the dream is to drive across the country enjoying the wide open western part a couple of times in the next five years.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:57  
No,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:00  
no, I don't believe there's any. I think the the first Toyota vehicle coming to the US market that has a hands free system is the Lexus LS is getting the the teammates system, which is their version of this hands free. Driver Assist. And

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:18  
I like that name, though. Yeah, it's like I help you like your team. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:24  
Yeah, actually, this reminds me of something else that came up the other day. Farhad Manjoo, is a car tech columnist for the New York Times wrote a terrible column about his his experience driving a Cadillac Escalade, which he quite fall in love with. his surprise, and he actually made some good points in there about you know, the a lot of these modern cars are so good. You know, it's no wonder you know, people want to drive them more, you know, and which is exactly the opposite of kind of what you really want to do. If you want to, you know, improve the environment. You got to get people to drive less But you know, then he goes on to talk about using supercruise. And he repeatedly calls this an autonomous and a self driving system, which it is absolutely not, not it. None of these systems there is not even so called full self driving is a Driver Assist system, any system where you still have to pay attention and watch the road is an assist system, please remember that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:26  
Yeah. All right. I wish I'm friends with Farhan, he should have like reached out to me, I think that comes down to that. He's a he's a columnist, so he's not a car person. So he's writing about things that are happening in his life. He writes about technology, but I feel like like the at the editing process at the New York Times, I feel like it must be incredibly siloed because they do have people who edit wouldn't know that would know that. But if you're if you have a newsroom, that's incredibly siloed. Like that. You allow these sort of weird errors to appear on your, in your in your newspaper on your site, which is insane. Because it it just it hurts. And it hurts an

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:05  
automotive writer. Yeah. He could have told him that that was not true.

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:09  
Exactly. And it hurts. It hurts far hot. It hurts the editors, it hurts the brand. It's yeah, and you know, I've had I've worked at places where, you know, tech sites where people are like, Oh, this is autonomous like, no, no, no, no, no, do not write that do not do this. And you, you, you know, they reach out, they asked me questions and I say okay, that's well, that's not that's not right. That's incorrect. Or, or you're just you're you're framing it incorrectly. You know, you have the information but your your, you know, someone has told you via PR that this is what it is. And the reality is it is not that. And so it Yeah, it is our hot.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:48  
Farhan. All right. Next up gifted Napper asks, If you could add any one single driving law across the country, what rule would you make mandatory? Or what current one current driving law? Would you change or eliminate if you could?

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:04  
I would I would make cops have to pull you over for tailgating. Because I see people tailgating all time and then a police officer goes by and no one does anything. And it's the most insane, dangerous thing ever. Like tailgating on the highway tailgating on backroads tailgate just Tailgating is overall.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:23  
Worse. You're in a parking lot at a stadium. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:27  
Yeah, you're just trying to leave desperately.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:30  
What one law? Would I make mandatory? I would like to see, you know what, because it causes so many almost near misses when I see the road, I would like to see them consistently pull over people who just ride in the left hand lane, I don't care if you're doing the speed limit or not. If it was past five, and you're just sitting like the left lane is for passing, I would like to see that, of course. Because what happens is you have people and it's not right. But then you have people who are just losing their mind behind that slow driver. And the minute they can go to the right and pass them. And the number of times that people do that. And they do it so aggressively, because they're frustrated and angry, and they're cutting too close. And then if that slow drivers, like oh, wait, now I'm gonna get over just as slowly as I've been driving and left hand lane. Now the guy who's angry and passing them on the right is about to smack into like it, it actually is really super dangerous. It causes all this road rage, just move over. Like I would like to see that not because I want to drive 95 miles an hour. I just don't want to see people doing that and causing this sort of road rage situation that can get us all in trouble.

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:35  
This is why I love driving in Germany, because everyone

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:38  
literally thought that it never happens in Germany. You're right,

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:41  
because it's illegal to pass on the right. And everyone just sort of follows the rule which you know, didn't work out so great, like almost like 80 years ago. But now. Yeah, it's like everyone, you pass and you get back over to the right and you pass and you get back over to the right and get stuck into it. You just drive you just drive and everyone who's happened

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:01  
to make that happen here. I want to live for that to be like that's enforced. Like yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:07  
in the United States. Everyone's just hanging out in the left hand lane the entire time because everyone's very important. We're all very important people in Germany everyone's over to the right like working with the flow of traffic. It's amazing and I think people assume that in on the the autobahn. Everyone is just like flying down in the left hand. There's no one in the left hand lane. There's absolutely no one unless you're very rare. Yeah. Usually it's automotive journalists from from the United States who are just happy they can drive fast when you're passing

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:34  
like you get up on a car then the right hand lane you pull over to the left you pass them you pull over to the right it's a nice perfect little box. You never just hang out in the left hand lane and no one

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:42  
hangs out or Stanley or some rich guy with his Bugatti Chevron driving 259 miles an hour.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:49  
Yes. And then you get out of his way which is easy to do because you don't drive to the left hand lane unless you need dinner.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:53  
That's that's too much. But yeah, anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:58  
For me it would be Not so much a new law but because seatbelts are already mandatory in all 50 states, but more enforcement of seatbelt laws. Because if you look at the traffic fatality stats 1/3 of all of the fatalities of vehicle occupants involved people who are not melted. Still, yes,

Roberto Baldwin  1:20:22  
what is happening,

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:24  
I read, I can't be able to remember because it was a couple of years ago, I was at some conference. And there were automotive safety experts from a couple of different, like nonprofit groups who study what safety features are the most important ones, and which ones currently are saving the most lives. And they were talking about the cost, and this probably three or four years ago, and you know, if you want these advanced safety features, you're often having to pay extra to get them or you have to jump up to a higher trim. So you're paying extra for that trim. So it makes some of them cost prohibitive. And there were two or three of these guys in the stage. And they all said the same thing. You know what? Those are all great, and they'll help you but the single best thing you can still do to keep yourself from getting killed in the accident is put your seatbelt on that it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:04  
all there and every car, right? Yep.

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:07  
It's free.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:10  
Most people don't know. Yeah, but you know, of the 38 39,000 people a year that die. In traffic fatalities, you know, roughly about 30,000 of those are vehicle occupants. The rest are pedestrians and cyclists. And 1/3 of those are unbelted. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:30  
So 10,000 people that could be alive if they just put their stupid seatbelt on like God,

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:34  
guys. It's so weird. If you ever drive without your seatbelt, like I can know freaks me out. Like I move in a parking lot. And I'm just like, I'm like,

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:44  
buckle my seatbelt. And somehow I have to like move the car another five feet or something. I'm like, hold on. Click OK. Now I can't do it. It literally feels like I'm not ready to go. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:52  
he's the only Yeah, I mean, even just moving cars around in my driveway when I'm doing a vehicle swap. Yeah, I, I always have the urge to put on my seat. thing. I've been doing it for 40 years now. You know. Yeah. So you know, it's just it's a muscle memory get in and put on the seatbelt.

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:11  
My mom was a nurse and she was always a stickler even when I was a little kid about wearing seatbelts back when nobody wore them. And there were no seatbelt laws. And I have to do is like spend a little time talking to a nurse or doctor who worked in the ER and they can tell you all the wonderful things that happen when you don't wear your seatbelt that you could be saved from. If you just click that seatbelt. Have your mother tell you stories like that when you're seven you will wear a seatbelt for the rest of your life. It's like good job mom.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:39  
Yeah, anyway, from from WWLP 2181. What's the what's a feature you all wish was either standardized or included in all vehicles? To go extreme? What would your versions of the Homer be? As a reminder the Homer has two bubbles, one on the front. While one in the back is for quarreling kids and comes with optional restraints and muzzles. Sound causes people to think the world's coming to an end. There are three horns because you never you can never find a horn when you're mad. And they play the song La Cucaracha has giant cupholders, shag carpeting tail fins and a metal bowler hood ornament. Sam, the fellow engineer I know it's hard to design without constraints. But you can you can do it. Go nuts. I apologize for the sloppy tweaking and they play the song Cucaracha has giant Oh no. Okay, sorry. Just yeah, yeah, just copy paste. So what what would you want as a standard on on your cars

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:35  
360 degree camera for parking. Because I just watched people park like parallel they lived in San like, before I live in San Francisco. I probably was a horrible parallel Parker, but I'm not really sure because I never had to parallel park before that. And then I went once I left San Francisco and I moved to LA. I lived on a you know, a residential street in LA for a few years. And I would watch people try to parallel park and it'd be like a 20 minutes extravaganza of someone just doing all the wrong things. And you know, they didn't have this is pre you know, rear rear rear camera. So I think the 360 camera on all cars would be like super nice. Just so you can see you're not going to bump into people like children especially you know, big trucks you know a little kid runs out a kitten a dog you can see

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:28  
where you are in the room between the lines, you know, yeah a lot in a parking lot

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:33  
sometimes.

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:34  
You know, I sort of agree with you because I'm the person that's a 20 minute ordeal I hate parallel parking because I again I never have to do it. So I just never got good at I think a parallel park like three times a year so I've never gotten comfortable doing it. But you know what I wish every car had ever so I want heated everything. I don't want just heated seats and heated steering wheel. You can get that like armrests when you put Yeah, I will. Yeah, I would everything heated it is currently a high, we're at 27 degrees, that's the highest we've been in like a week and a half, right? I went all the heated things to be seen. And I don't want to just standard for me the driver, because then my passenger or my people in the back, I want it to be standard. Like, if I want to heat this car up to feel like it's the surface of the sun. I want that to be possible. That's what I want. That's all I want.

Roberto Baldwin  1:25:23  
It's actually more efficient if it's in the seat than it is the blowing. That's Yes, that's why every every Eevee should have standards. He's

Nicole Wakelin  1:25:30  
just warm me up. And I'll be toasty and and the world will be happier and my fingers won't be frozen as I'm trying to turn. Or like even a gear shift. Like when you're driving manually have to grab like an ice cube. Would it be nice if the gearshift was like toasty warm when you grab

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:45  
that also, a heating pad like underwear. Your feet go

Roberto Baldwin  1:25:50  
toasty up your feet. Yeah, see, I've been trying to think about that. Like how do I keep because my I get I might my hands and my feet get cold. And they've all I don't know why maybe because there's so much. Far from my heart, like my arms. cools. I just can't make it just gives up and just turns around around my wrist. I had a suit tailored and the lady was like, Oh, she's like, You have really long arms. Yeah, I know. At first she thought it was an error. She's like, Wait, hold on, and she just kept having to make things. But yeah, this the feet warming thing would be outstanding. Just something,

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:32  
something didn't weren't see warm, all the things. That's it, I went in a car,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:35  
I'll go with the infrared driver monitor that's in the F 150. I'm driving today to make sure that you're watching the road, you know that you're because you know, we have all these laws and a whole bunch of states. But you know, it's illegal to hold your phone while you're in the car. You know, we on the text and things like that while you're driving. Yeah, that's great. But you know, that doesn't that almost never get unless, unless a cop happens to be sitting next to you. You know, while you're looking down at your phone. Yeah. It never gets enforced. Yeah, yeah. Whereas if you had a system that was looking at, you know, where are you? Where are your eyes, looking, you know, make sure your eyes are watching the road, instead of looking down at your phone or anything else, you know, and the the beauty of that. And actually, this is something that will almost certainly be coming to all vehicles. In the next few years. It's increasingly being added now. But one of the things in the infrastructure bill that was passed by Congress is that they directed NITSA to develop a regulation to try to prevent drunk driving. And this is actually probably the route that that they're going to take is with driver monitor systems. Because you know, these things can not only tell if you're distracted and tell if you're drowsy, you know, I mean, we've, I'm sure we've all driven at times when we're too tired to be driving and you know, felt like we're falling asleep at some point. You know, so it can detect all this. And then you know, just if it if you're not watching the road, you know, or if you'd become incapacitated, if you have a heart attack or stroke or something or, or go slip into a diabetic coma. You know, any of these situations, you know, then start slowing things, start slowing the car down, turn on the flashers and bring it to a stop if you're if you're unresponsive. Very simple, cheap, easy, it works. And you know, it'll, that will actually probably save a lot of lives. All right, final one. More of a statement than a question here. I think from Brian burns 1000 wanted to share an unfortunate experience my friend is having trying to get them Ford Maverick. He ordered one back in October a Lariat with the Premium Package two replaces high hybrid fusion, and was told to expect delivery in April, his dealership called this week asking if you'd be willing to drop the bedliner so he could get it sooner. Otherwise he shouldn't expect it now until next year, which means 2023 he said sure. Before he realized it meant dropping the whole premium package, including the adaptive cruise control something that's a deal breaker for him. So today, I met him at a Hyundai dealership to test and driving Santa Cruz. And now he's most likely going to get that instead. Even though it's not a hybrid. I suggested he not canceled a maverick order, just wait for it and sell it when it does come. But these are the games that dealerships are playing that really irritate people and give a bad reputation to the industry as a whole. Because we suspect the dealership wants to be able to sell it at the market adjusted right now instead of the MSRP price that they agreed to in October. And unfortunately, the brands probably right about this one that is probably exactly the case. And to be fair, you know, again, this is not a situation unique to Ford dealers. You know, right, every manufacturers experience this, experiencing this. And, you know, there's even been, you know, lots of reports on the Tesla forums. litres of even though Tesla doesn't have independent dealers of you know, Tesla, doing things like this, you know, when customers have gotten delivery dates for their cars, and then you know, day before a couple days before they you know, they get a call saying Oh, you're something's happening your car's not going to be ready. We're going to reschedule you in about three weeks and you know, then that car ends up getting sold to somebody else, something else somewhere else. So you know this, there's all kinds of shenanigans that go on with retail and it's unfortunate that yes, needs to stop.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:36  
Yeah, and I mean, it's It is fortunate that there's a there's a competitor now that Santa Cruz because the only thing that's kind of close to the to either of those is the ridgeline which is bigger. So it's, it's kind of a competitor, but not really it's an original engine. It's sort of weird spot right now. Because at one point that was the sort of like, Hey, you just need a truck to do things and you're not right. You don't need something that's lifted off the ground. So but yeah, I mean, it's yeah, that's it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:02  
I'm all taller.

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:03  
Yeah, you need to haul mulch, or you need to haul some things I really liked originally, my wife was very upset that it wasn't Evie because she was like she liked it because like this the way the seats folded up in the back and then the dogs in the back and truck. Yeah, and you lift up the bed and there's a giant like you can put up make a Jacuzzi I guess out of it. The trunk in the trunk under the bed. Now the Rachel's a great a great vehicle. But uh, yeah. Santa Cruz hunt. That's a win for Hyundai and that dealership now that dealership has it that they mean, this is a person who had to who had a four hybrid before that. Yeah. And you know,

Nicole Wakelin  1:31:40  
they didn't just lose the sale. They lost like it was a conquest sale for now for Hyundai. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:45  
Yeah, Hyundai needs to get a hybrid version of the Santa Cruz up, they do it. And you know, the Santa Cruz is based on the Tucson which is already available as both a hybrid and a plug in hybrid. So you know, it should be pretty straightforward for them to drop that stuff in there and to the Santa Cruz. And I suspect that maybe for the 2023 model year, and maybe this fall we'll see something like that coming from Hyundai dealers, especially given the success of the the maverick hybrid, you know how popular that is?

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:13  
It's, it's, it's very weird. I just find it odd that like, Ford came out and they have the the maverick hybrid. You're like, cool, but they didn't have the escape. Not the escape. Sorry, the Bronco sport hybrid. All right, and they didn't have a Bronco hybrid, which means the four by E's out in the world. Nicole has one.

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:31  
And so And Madam President, my driveway covered in ice,

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:34  
they came out and then the you know, the Santa Cruz came out, but there's already the hybrid powertrain for that platform. And there's like, we're just gonna do I'm always curious, I always want to be in the meeting. I always want to know like that, because they had to do some sort of research with some people somewhere and said, Okay, this year, we're gonna do this, and then later we'll do this. I think there's, yeah, but the timelines are

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:58  
having having been in some of those meetings. Yeah, it's probably a case of, okay, we've got this much capacity right now, to build the hybrid drive units, and this much capacity for batteries. And, you know, to do the certification for we know, we can sell this many hybrid Santa Fe's and Tucsonans. And, you know, to add it to, to add it to the, you know, to the Santa Cruz, we're gonna have to take away some volume from Santa Fe, and in Tucson. And, you know, it's gonna cost us this many millions of dollars to do another certification for the Santa Cruz hybrid. So until we have more, so that means that the they sell the same number of total hybrids, but now spread over three models instead of two. So, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:49  
until the growth market is the growth market is the Santa Fe in the Tucson, right, so

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:53  
until they get some additional capacity for batteries and the other components, you know, then you know, and that's, that's probably the same thing is true for Ford, you know, with the Bronco and Bronco sport, that they're waiting until they ramp up more capacity for all the components they need

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:08  
to serve. They sell a gang load of those escapes because they're everywhere. absolutely everywhere

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:14  
they are. Alright, that's it for this week. Thanks everybody for listening and you know, if you like the show, give us a rating on iTunes or Spotify or wherever, wherever you're listening that that has rating system always helps and tell your friends and we'll talk to you next time.

Unknown Speaker  1:34:30  
Bye bye