Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 234 of wheel bearings. We've got Ford Broncos, Land Rover defenders,  Hyundai Tucsons, Nissan Sentras the new Alfa Romeo Tonale and an NFT. A bigger mountain and round up the Chicago Auto Show, All that and more coming up next

this is wheel bearings episode 234. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Guidehouse insights

Nicole Wakelin  0:34  
I am Nicole Wakeline from AutobyTel

Roberto Baldwin  0:37  
I am Roberto Baldwin from Tom's guide. 

Sam Abuelsamid  0:42  
And Mr. Tom's guide, what have you been driving?

Roberto Baldwin  0:45  
Mr. Tom's guide has been driving the 2021 rant ram, ram clover, the 2021, Land Rover Defender 110 SE, I got the 90, you know, little two door one, I don't know, probably a year ago, it was a while back. And this is the four door version of the vehicle. I was very excited. I really really liked the Land Rover.

It is the this is this is where I put the sort of these types of vehicles in the world. There's the G Wagen at the top and you have the defender. Then you have the Bronco and then you have the Wrangler now I'm not saying these that's the order in which they are best good, you know, best or worse or whatever. That's just the order and how much money you're going to spend. And so if you're looking for something that's a little bit more well actually you might be a defender for less than a Bronco right now. Considering or re considering like the the the market, I haven't been to a JLR dealership, I should probably do that sometime this weekend. Just Just see, just look because I know these things are doing very well. They're all over the place, especially in Los Angeles, where the G Wagen is king of vehicles that are made to go off road and do not go off road. So I think that yeah, I think JLR has done a really good job with this vehicle, reintroducing it make it look cool, making it not only available as for some people who are very excited about the past, you know, nostalgia, but also, you know, bringing it up to up to speed and in, you know, the modern, the modern tie as, as the kids would say, I drove it up to Tahoe I went snowboarding with it. And I specifically requested this vehicle for that trip because I knew it had offered tires. I knew that it was I thought it was gonna be awesome. We're gonna go up there it's gonna be snowing, we're gonna be able to have it on the snow. But dang global warming kind of kind of poo pooed all that it was very nice and more. It was like 50 It was like 4550 degrees on the slope. The snowboarding was great though. You can't it's tough to beat like Tahoe for snowboarding any literally any mountain is pretty great. But we did mean to my friends three snowboard while to snowboard a set of skis I did not know a skier would be going with us so we'll figure that out later. We'll have a discussion with that friend but it was it was comfortable the entire way it was surprisingly quiet considering how to offer tires it's it's really nice to drive it's very hot off the ground at the same time if I needed if there had been snow I would have felt completely comfortable just driving over the I've been over snow but you'd have to drive up some sort of weird dirt road in order to get to the mountain I would have been fine i really like this vehicle because the interior is all the rubbery mats and everything so when you know when you're going snowboarding or surfing or you have dogs or children are anything that makes a mess other humans then it's nice to have something you could just like you know suppose off because as these uh these rubber

Sam Abuelsamid  4:06  
something you don't feel bad about using you know based on its name you know rover Land Rover Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  4:13  
The land and where some of the land inside and still be okay.

Roberto Baldwin  4:18  
Exactly I the that's the this is kind of one of my issues with some of the very fancy trucks the luxury vehicles the you know, the F 150s that have been lucked out like and you get it and you're like you don't want to get anything dirty and in my brain still and this is just me you want to buy a big truck and just a bachelor luxury vehicle. Yeah, fine. But for me like I should be out in a field getting dirty, getting gross, going to Home Depot picking up stuff, picking up rocks picking up, I don't know 7080 tonnes of mulch, and then be able to get into the vehicle. I'm not really worried that my my shoes are a mess, and that's what you can do with the defender. Yeah, I really liked it. It supports Android Auto and CarPlay. So there's that if you're not too keen on their infotainment system, which I believe that it's gotten better over the years, I think before the I was fine with the interface I was I was always like this, this, this infotainment system that had this weird like sort of fade in and fade out like, feature. And you never knew if it was a feature or a bug, you're like, is this really slow? Or it's just like, supposed to be like that? So they, you know, I think they've, I think they got some people to sort of fix that after everyone was like, Well, what is this? I got 19.8 miles per gallon, which is pretty good. Just, you know, it's a lot of highway driving, but it was also highway driving up a mountain. There, EPA is 19 combined. So that's, you know, pretty much on par. It's still I mean, that's still it's a big car with three people 19 You know, that's pretty good. It's but it's still you know, pretty low for when you think about the rest of the world outside of large SUVs and trucks. The version I got MSRP was $62,700. So yeah, a lot and then they threw some other stuff. It had the panoramic sunroof, which was really pretty, you know, three zone climate control 14 way heated and cooled front memory front seats and you know, all this plus plate here's and I think this is the the deal of the century, from a luxury automaker, off road tires. $350. Just didn't seem like cheap.

Nicole Wakelin  6:38  
Yeah, it just seemed cheap for that car.

Roberto Baldwin  6:40  
Not for this car. Yeah. But yeah, so anyway, so what I was driving, essentially a $70,000 $69,195 You know, $70,000 really fancy fancy Jeep is fancy. I really liked it a Fender because there's so many cubby holes to put things in, like everything is like, like put stuff here was a period was a period you put stuff here, you put stuff here. And when you go snowboarding, he always have all this extra crap that you're dragging with you all these extra bills, you gotta get your gloves, you know what, I don't want to have my wallet, my pocket, and here's my phone, and then, you know, we stopped and got food, and I need somewhere to put that and we get, you know, there's a little you know, there's the path that you bought, where should I put that and if you're smart, you put that all in a bag. But if you know, that doesn't always work out. For some people. Some people like to have things out where they can see them and you can kind of put them out where you can see them with the with the with the defender. And it's a it's it is a weird name. It's so it has a six cylinder three liter six cylinder 395 horsepower, forerunner, six pound feet of torque, eight speed, automatic, very smooth. You know, you have all that power, it's a big car. So it has adequate amounts of power is what it has maybe, you know, every once in a while, if you really want to push it you can you can outrun so it's like an old Rolls Royce. Yeah, yeah. So you know, but you also get the big giant, full size spare. So

Nicole Wakelin  8:08  
this has been compared to both the Rolls Royce and a Jeep Wrangler, and the same, which is kind of awesome.

Roberto Baldwin  8:12  
Which is exactly where the defender sits. It's like, like, you're you're you're trying to merge this like, rugged off roading this with the luxury brand. And it's sort of it. It does a really good job of sort of balancing both of those. Yeah, Land Rover Defender 110. I still like the the two door. But that's because I don't have children. Otherwise, I don't have an excuse. I don't have a reason for people in the in the back seat all the time. So I was like, if you want to ride with me, then yeah, that's that. That's what you have to deal with.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:48  
And, you know, with respect to the pricing, jeeps have gotten very expensive as well. The Rubicon 392 The V eight powered Wrangler. That thing starts at $75,000 Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  9:01  
they're not cheap.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:02  
So, you know, in terms of price that you were talking about earlier, you know, I think that those those last few entries on that list that you had their, you know, the defender, the Bronco and the Wrangler, I think are actually a lot closer than most people think would would expect.

Roberto Baldwin  9:21  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Bronco starts at 30. But as as I've mentioned before, I pretty sure I went to a dealership, they're like yeah, the markups $20,000 in this car. So 30 for like the like the the ish of the bronco. So you're talking about $50,000 Then all the random stuffs. Now you're talking about 55 And you're like, well, I could just get a defender for

Sam Abuelsamid  9:46  
well, and the $30,000 Bronco is the one that is usually bought by the the most hardcore off rotors who are going to be taking, you know, they just want the basic palette. Yeah, to start with, and then they're gonna gonna be putting on lift kits and big tires and winches and all kinds of other gear, and they're gonna, by the time they're all done customizing it, they're gonna be up in that, you know, 60 $70,000 price range anyways.

Roberto Baldwin  10:14  
Yeah, yeah. And the the 90 s, the starting price is $52,300. So you can get into dope cream, which I had it in before.

Nicole Wakelin  10:25  
What's it called?

Roberto Baldwin  10:26  
I don't know what's called, but I know I call it dope green.

Nicole Wakelin  10:29  
Do what you said. And I'm like, wait, they can't possibly have called us. That's Robbie's mean for the color. The color name I'm like, they call it what they call

Roberto Baldwin  10:37  
the dope green no green now and I feel like if I don't tell people the real color, they're gonna yell at me on the internet.

Nicole Wakelin  10:43  
I'm sorry. Robbie, I thought he was I thought they actually got a half a second.

Roberto Baldwin  10:50  
where's the where's the colors? Where's the colors? Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. I give it up. I don't care. You can look it up. You have you have the internet. You're looking at Google's Google Google's anyway, so yeah, Land Rover on 10 dope vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  11:09  
Vehicle in green, but not actually dope green.

Roberto Baldwin  11:12  
If you're gonna go off road and you but you also want like fancy art if you just want to look fancy, which is I'm sure I'm sure a lot of them have been sold 95% of these will probably go off vehicle or off road three times.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:24  
Or the most the most they'll go off road is just a gravel driveway up to their, their, their. Their summer cabin. Yeah, their summer cabin in Lake Tahoe.

Nicole Wakelin  11:34  
Yeah, that's the most aggressive off roading it will ever see. They're all turning

Roberto Baldwin  11:37  
the little dial, they have that cool, they have that cool control system where you they have the you have all these buttons. But you also have these knobs if you push the knob, it goes from controlling the the temperature of the car to you push it and then you it controls the heat or the cooling of the seat. And then there's not there's little buttons next to it. If you push a button next to it, it's the the the the rear profile of the vehicle, you can use it to change the drive mode. So these little knobs do three different things. And I think I really like it because I'm like, oh, you know you're not losing buttons but you get a button that does a lot of different little things. And once you like sort of figure it out, it takes like two minutes so it's not like oh they over thought this is too difficult now now it's fine.

Nicole Wakelin  12:27  
I just sit with someone yesterday who has a Mazda and was so frustrated with the infotainment system. She threw her hands in the air and said can you just sit in the driveway with me for five minutes and show me how this works? Talk about using buttons. I said yes, I could do that with you.

Roberto Baldwin  12:40  
Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:42  
yeah. Okay, Nicole, what have you been driving

Nicole Wakelin  12:49  
I haven't drove I actually had two different vehicles this week. Most of the week for most of the week I had a Hyundai Tucson which is all new for 2020 to give it you know the whole nine yards styling updates better better in every way kind of situation. You can get a hybrid a plugin or a gas engine I have the gas engine which is a 2.5 liter four cylinder 187 horsepower 178 pound feet of torque. So it's a decent responsive engine. I think you can do front wheel all wheel drive we have all wheel drive because everything that comes to New England will have that for the next few months. It handles well it's a nice car I love actually the the styling on this they gave it this very angular metal like the way the the side panels outdoors look to it. Yeah, it's really cool and I think it's just different it makes it stand out a little bit because there's so many cars crossovers, SUVs whatever you want to call them of this size that they all kind of like blend into one thing and this one truly stands out I was taking pictures I was noticing like it looks really good they made they did a good job me like differentiating it without going crazy like what like the front end of the Avalon I think it was they went nuts to make it look sporty at one point it was like oh my god what has happened to this vehicle now there's a little bit of you know little sculpting like you said facet it's a perfect way to describe it so it looks really good. Great to drive it's a nice smooth vehicle we had some snow it had no problem dealing with the snow and the ice and the muck that was on the road and still leaving you fairly confident and in control even when it was that that the worst stuff which is that sort of packed down snow and ice that the plows don't really get off the road until the storm is over. So I appreciated that it is not really an off road vehicle like Robbie said this isn't as capable as his car but it also I think will go off road no more than two somebodies much cheaper cabin in a much less extraordinary space. So it's not you know you can yes but you can't really so that's kind of you know your your capability wise. The interior is really roomy, you've got exceeding four, five, I had the Limited trim which sits right at the top of the lineup. So and I don't have a Monroney. So I kind of sort of tried to build it. So you're looking at around $40,000 ish for it if you're getting that top trim, depending on what you decide to put on it. But you get standard things for that price, you're going to get heated front and rear seats at my kids gets my daughter gets so excited when the rear seats are heated, I can turn on the seats do so she doesn't feel like she has to fight to sit up front and boot my husband to the back, which is kind of funny. So that's always like big bonus. There's a 10.25 infotainment screen, which is really nice. I love big infotainment screens, I just think they the tiny ones, when you get in a car that has a small one, this one's really are harder to read, you don't realize how much of a difference a larger screen makes, until you get in the car, like go find a car that's maybe like five years old and had an infotainment screen and try to use whatever that car had. And it's so small, you suddenly think, oh, there's a reason they're becoming massive. It makes a really big difference in how well you can view what's on there. You get a Bose audio system. Of course, there's CarPlay and Android Auto. And it has a lot of cargo room. I was trying to double check it as we were getting on the air, I believe it was 41.2 cubic feet for cargo is what I have written. So the seats folded down with the seats folded down. Okay, so I think it's 41.2 of the seats folded down. That's a good amount of room for cargo. I mean, you can fit a lot back there. I appreciate that. Because when you're getting an SUV, you know, yes, you it has to do that double duty, it has to have room for people, but it has to have room for your cargo and depending on the moment, you you have some combination of or you you just have one or the other actually I'm double checking 41.2 is with the seats up. Oh, is it? Yeah. Okay. I just found it

Sam Abuelsamid  16:44  
a lot because most most crossovers in this segment are usually somewhere around 23rd rear

Nicole Wakelin  16:51  
seats up 41.2 rear seats folded at point three.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:59  
Okay. Well, they did, they did make this new Tucson quite a bit bigger than the last generation.

Nicole Wakelin  17:04  
Yeah, so and it feels that way. Like when you look in the back, it is surprisingly cavernous. So the numbers don't surprise me. So that's a lot of stuff, even 41, when you have a full load, like five people, that's easily the family's luggage, whatever you're putting in there to go away for the weekend. Or if you're camping, it's all of your stuff and luggage. And if you need to really haul stuff around for a project 80.3 cubic feet, that's pretty cool.

Roberto Baldwin  17:27  
That's a lot of room,

Nicole Wakelin  17:29  
that's a lot of and it goes down a little if you're looking at the hybrid. And like in the plugin, the numbers dropped a little bit, when you go to the hybrid like the max is at, they drop a bit more when you go to the plugin, it's 71.8. So you know, batteries, whatever. So you lose a little bit of cargo room once you go with those, but you gave me I know, whatever, come with a better design. So you lose that but that's the you know, typical of any vehicle that has both a gas engine and a hybrid plug in, you're gonna get different cargo capacity. So overall, I really I like this, but I'm a fan of handy because I feel like they pack so much in like this. Like I said, this came in just under 40 is the you know, I haven't added anything to make my car fancier and it's already pretty fancy, you can always add stuff to it. But for that just under 40 You're getting a lot you don't have to then add, spend, you know, $10,000 on additional options to get heated rear seats, you know, no, no, that comes standard. You're at the top of the line have all the fancy stuff. So I appreciate the fact that this is it's nice to drive. It's nice inside, it looks good. It has good cargo room and it's very comfortable. And it feels upscale without you having to break the bank. Like if you don't care if it says a Hyundai on there. If you're not someone who needs it to say BMW it needs to say infinity it needs to say something fancy. This is a great choice. So that's, that's

Sam Abuelsamid  18:49  
yeah, we move on to the other car you had. Yeah. What's one of the questions that we got from a listener this week? Oh, and it came up on Twitter after you posted the picture of the front end of the Tucson which has a very distinct look with the the way the headlights are done. And you got all these little triangles. Yeah, and when they're off you know they almost kind of blend into the bodywork, you know, they're not really that visible, but when you turn them on, you know that these look

Nicole Wakelin  19:18  
really cool. I was pulled up against like a glass storefront and to see the reflection of the lights. Yeah, it looks really cool. They're really striking

Sam Abuelsamid  19:26  
the enth degree burns as you know, this is definitely distinctive when you see one coming at you on the road. I'd be curious what you all think about the cost of replacing one of those headlights or just the bulbs will be in the long term. And I don't know I haven't haven't actually looked to see what it's got. You know if there's like one or two bulbs I think there's probably just a couple of balls that are behind that front structure, you know that are like that, but I could be wrong. I don't know.

Nicole Wakelin  19:55  
I'm digging right now. I don't honestly know how that what is it? I'm looking to see a face So scanning, scanning, scanning through to see if they say because it was all new, they probably talk about the light somewhere. If I can find it in here, I might have an answer for you by the end of the show has that because I can scan through some of this. As we are chatting, I can double check it. And if I can get an answer, then I make at least maybe tell you what you're looking at, when you're having to replace those lights.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:18  
Also my control my guess is if you got into a fender bender and cracked one of those corners, that would probably be pretty expensive to replace.

Roberto Baldwin  20:27  
Yeah, but that's what insurance is for.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:30  
I think these are LEDs, right?

Nicole Wakelin  20:33  
I believe they are. That's I'm looking, I'm double checking. I was caught off guard by the question.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:37  
So if they are LEDs, then chances are you will probably last the life of the car. So you'll probably never, never have to actually replace the bulbs. But if they're if they're not, then you know that that could get kind of complicated just because of the way this thing is built. There might be multiple balls. But definitely if you were, if you were to crack that front facia in some kind of little accident, that could probably get very pricey.

Nicole Wakelin  21:10  
It's gonna be pricey, but I'm betting they're LEDs and I can't find it, of course, because somebody asked me but yeah, and those will last probably longer than you will want to have your Hyundai Tucson. So

Roberto Baldwin  21:20  
the 2021 Tucson LEDs are $100 but lamp

Nicole Wakelin  21:28  
$100 A lamp.

Roberto Baldwin  21:30  
Well, I think it's for the pair actually. I just find it on help headlight expert. Oh, this is the LED conversion kit. Because the 2021 version. Alright, I don't see this. I feel like we're just gonna be sitting here on

Sam Abuelsamid  21:43  
Yeah, so they, yeah, the LED LED headlamps are standard on the 22. Tucson. Okay. So chances are you'll never have to worry about replacing those bulbs.

Nicole Wakelin  21:54  
Unless you're in an accident, then your insurance is replacing them for you. Right. So that's the good side. All right. Okay, so that's question next. Our next car. Next Car. I know you've now skip to the end of the show. We're done, folks, everybody, thanks for the other car that I've had. And I've had this only very briefly because we were doing the New England motor Press Association winter vehicle testing this weekend. So we all drove down to the place where we do all this and then I drove back in a different car for a couple of days. So I have this like for a hot minute, but I drove it for almost three hours because very long drive back and forth. I had a 2022 Nissan Sentra, which is a great sedan. It's comfy. But you know, it's interesting. I took it last night because I've only had this for it. Like I said for like 48 hours is I'm going to get with this thing. And I took it last night drove it down into the city, and I drove a friend. And it was interesting just judging the ride of it. It was snug like getting like the way this center console comes past you as you to buckle your seatbelt. Like the way it comes down. It's a little snug. It's a little tight. It's almost like it's a great little cockpit for me as the driver because yay, cockpit. But if you're the passenger in that front seat, it's a little bit on the tight ish side especially it's eight degrees. Oh, now it's 28 it was eight yesterday. So we're wearing these like bulky winter coats, you're hopping in another car, it gets a little bit cumbersome. And the only other thing that in my again, my passenger commented on this. She said it's really noisy in this thing, like the road noise and the wind noise. There was a lot of it in the center, which was sort of surprising. So it handled really nicely but I thought you know what she's right. Like I just got out of that Tucson. The Tucson despite being big, bulky, square ish SUV thing was very quiet. And the Sentra theoretically sleek, sexy sedan thing was actually noisier to drive which feels bizarre, but that was the case. But fun to drive. You get a two liter four cylinder. It's got 149 horsepower, 146 pound feet of torque. Those aren't ginormous numbers. They're like numbers, but it's good enough. They are good.

Roberto Baldwin  24:00  
Are you going where are you doing? I know really not racing. And Walgreens you're going to Walgreens to pick up cops go to Walgreens

Nicole Wakelin  24:08  
and go to the grocery store to get some milk some eggs and bread for the you know French toast I have to make during the blizzard. Yeah, so it's it's not a super like engaging, aggressive drive but it's it's fine. Sounds like you're insulting it but it really is just fine. It's perfectly nice mild mannered sedan. It's fine. It's so I liked it. Like the only

Sam Abuelsamid  24:31  
industry transportation.

Nicole Wakelin  24:33  
Yeah, it was it's like and the price on this let me find it here. The one I have is the SSR and it was $27,000 so for $27,000 it's a decent deal you got you know all the infotainment stuff you want. You've got you know, an eight inch screen apple carplay android auto those standard things. You have, you know, comfortable seats, you have nice seating surfaces, everything nothing feels cheap. You're like you it's 27 You don't think like this is really cheesy, it feels nice inside, it's just a little bit on the snug side. If you'd like a little bit of a roomier sedan, it doesn't have that very roomy, open feel. And it's not going to be super aggressive. But I did like it. I mean for the for the long highway drive that I did with it yesterday, it is a halfway decent little city and just be aware that the wind noise in the road noise is a bit more noticeable than you would think.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:23  
And you can also get that Sentra for quite a bit less the sticker price you know, as long as you can find a dealer that's not putting an absurd markup on it. Exactly for starts at 19 Five, so delivery, just over 20 grand.

Nicole Wakelin  25:37  
Even this one is the base on the on this trim, it says basis 22 we've added in fancy paint and floormats. There's a lighting package. There's snazzy door sill plates, and there's a premium package that puts like LED headlights and there's a power sliding glass roof. You get prime attacks which I think is like a imitation, you know ceiling trim. You get a powerful leather. Yeah, like a faux leather leather leather faux leather. Faux faux leather. And it also has a power driver seat. And it's got heated front seats and a steering wheel. You get an eagle to Bose audio system that actually sounds really good. So I mean, you've for that 27 You have a nicely equipped sedan and fuel economy on this. The EPA is 28 City 37 highway I did almost entirely highway driving, except when I like pulled off the road to pull into my house and then pulled off the road for briefly at the place. I was going to downtown in Boston last night. So with a 37 highway almost all highway driving, I ever 36 So it's pretty close. Pretty close to that number. Yeah, considering that though, when I pulled off it was you know, downtown Boston craziness. So overall, I mean, I like it, I think it's it's sort of a value proposition. You're not getting an expensive vehicle. You're not getting a performance vehicle. If you want something that's nice and comfortable and you just don't want to spend a ton of money and you want good fuel economy, but you're not looking for that really sporty aggressive vibe. 2022 Nissan Sentra

Sam Abuelsamid  27:06  
Sentra, and the vehicle I've been driving also had a six in the fuel economy number, but the first digit was a little bit lower. Like there was a one instead of a three

Nicole Wakelin  27:19  
you were driving

Roberto Baldwin  27:22  
there's a lot of words in this car. So you know, the more words you put on a car the

Sam Abuelsamid  27:26  
Oh yeah, that increases the fuel consumption.

Nicole Wakelin  27:29  
I feel like the more words they use to describe it, the worse your fuel economy is going to be. It's gotten so fancy, they're like we have to distract you from that number. Read the name of the car.

Roberto Baldwin  27:38  
The only automaker, where that's flipped is Porsche with the Panamera. Oh my god, I had to remember it for video. It's so long for the for the for the hype. Anyway. Let's Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  27:52  
Tell us about your cars we pick on

Sam Abuelsamid  27:53  
cars. So I had the 2021 Ford Bronco Fort Ord advanced four by four wild track Sasquatch. Passengers

Nicole Wakelin  28:02  
Say that five times faster.

Roberto Baldwin  28:05  
So while a Bronco,

Sam Abuelsamid  28:06  
which, you know, everybody's been waiting for for years, you know, finally, a true competitor to the to the Jeep Wrangler in so many ways, you know, I mean, vehicles like the the defender, you know, are clearly you know, competitors to the Wrangler as well. But the you know, the Wrangler has had some in the past we've had the Toyota FJ Cruiser and others, but the Wrangler has stayed relatively unique in the segment by having things like removable roof and removable doors and all the customizability that you can get in a Wrangler. And the Bronco is really the first entry to kind of match all of those capabilities that that wrangler owners have had for decades. So this the one I had the said it's a four door hardtop wild track with the Sasquatch package. And it's it's EPA rated at 417 City, 17 highway and 17 combined. And I've averaged about 16 and a half. So I almost hit the EPA label numbers which you're considering, you know, it's been cold, and you know, it was driving on a lot of snow and ice was actually not bad. I mean, at least relative to the numbers, it's still pretty, pretty mediocre fuel economy for a brand new vehicle. You know, you mentioned road noise. That is something I have I did notice quite a bit in this one. Because it's you know, with the Sasquatch package, it's got the big off road tires on there.

Nicole Wakelin  29:44  
Did you say did you have the hard top of the soft top? I missed the hard top hard.

Roberto Baldwin  29:48  
So soft, soft would be louder? Yes, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:51  
Wind noise is actually surprisingly not bad. Given the shape of this thing. It's a very boxy shape. They actually do a pretty decent job of controlling wind noise but there's a got a bit of road noise coming through from those big 35 inch tires. And you know with the Sasquatch you get the 30 fives with the beadlock wheels or bead lock wheels on there so that when you're going off roading you know hopefully it'll hold the tires in place as you're crawling over those boulders and stuff. This has got all the the goat modes and all the other all the other nonsense that having

Nicole Wakelin  30:24  
I'm sure they'll appreciate that the other nonsense they put on this car.

Roberto Baldwin  30:28  
I have a lot of feelings about goat mode that are Yeah, we can talk about in a second.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:32  
Yeah. Yeah, there are some some really neat features that we talked about before when did the first drive last summer like the the the trail turn assist feature, I was out shooting photos of this thing in an area that was full of some pretty deep snow and turned on the trail turn assist to quickly turn around and get shots from a different angle. And what that does is when you turn the steering wheel all the way to lock in either direction, and then hit the gas it will apply full brakes to the inside rear wheel and basically drag that wheel so the the the Bronco just essentially turns around the inside where we'll see have a very tight turning radius. Could you use that last week when I had the F 150 It's extremely long wheelbase it could use a tighter turning radius they

Nicole Wakelin  31:26  
should do that on big pickup trucks or

Roberto Baldwin  31:29  
all wheel turning all wheel turning is the greatest thing after After that After cruising around that EQ s for a week with a 10 degrees of rear tire oh man

Sam Abuelsamid  31:39  
that the Chevy Silverado Evie will have over the the F 150. Lightning because they will have four wheel steering on that. Whereas the lightning will not have that at least not in this generation. But anyway, back to back to the bronco. This thing's pretty tall. Yeah, it's quite a step up into it. One One thing I noticed that I hadn't noticed when we did the drive last summer was when you're opening the tailgate. When you have the the Sasquatch. The Bronco has the spare tire mounted on the tailgate, which is a side swing tailgate. And it has a full size spare which means you have a 35 inch spare tire on there, which is those things are very heavy. And if you get a Bronco with the Sasquatch package or even one without the Sasquatch package, if you ever park on a road that has a you know on a surface that's not quite level and it's tilted a little bit towards the driver side be very careful with that tailgate because it right here squish you and and yeah it will unless you push it all the way if you push it all the way open then it will it'll latch there you know and then you can pull it back so it'll stay there but if you open it partway just to throw a bag in the back it will want to swing back down on you oh Jesus it's very heavy. Did I make is to prove

Roberto Baldwin  33:05  
why everyone went with the hatches that pop up I'm sure enough people were like eaten by they're

Nicole Wakelin  33:11  
stuck and trapped in my tailgate.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:16  
But you know seriously if you want to go off roading you know this The Wrangler the defender are probably you know the best vehicles and I'll probably the G Wagen if you can afford one of those are like among the top of what you know they'll go pretty much anywhere you could conceivably go this one as I said has the 2.7 liter EcoBoost V six in there, which is about 375 horsepower. It's got plenty of plenty of power. Even though the Bronco is not a lightweight vehicle. I think the you know the four door with the Sasquatch package and everything is somewhere well over 5000 pounds. Curb weight, it's got plenty to get up and go 10 speed automatic transmission is the only automatic avail are the only transmission available. This one is loaded had the copilot 360 package copilot 360 Plus with the adaptive cruise control and Lane Lane centering assist. It also has going back to what we're talking about earlier with the customization capabilities. You have the auxilary switches up on the top by the above the mirror. So if you're gonna put in extra lights or any other things that need power, it's already pre wired for all that stuff. So you have the switches there like the the defender, you know a lot of plastic and rubber inside. And in fact, Ford is actually built in one way drainage plugs into the floor of this thing. So when you if you hose it out or you get water in there when you're if you're going through a trail through a stream or something like that. then as you get out of the water, it'll, it'll just drain right out through the floor, which is very handy for a vehicle like this. You can tell it's really designed to be used. Like most Wranglers, most defenders, it will probably most of them will probably never be used as they're intended. But you know, it has nothing

Roberto Baldwin  35:21  
to do Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  35:22  
list price on this one sticker or base MSRP for the the four door advanced four by four is 49,004 75 with the wild track package, and they keep the keyless entry keypad which would be very handy on a vehicle like this. The hard top it also has the tow package. And it's got the the bags in the back to store the doors. And if you take the doors off, it's got bags for the the doors, and also the the the roof panels, which I didn't bother taking off this week because it's cold came to $58,420. And the destination charge was by today's standards, a fairly modest $1,495.

Nicole Wakelin  36:14  
Isn't it horrible that that actually is a modest number

Sam Abuelsamid  36:17  
compared compared to a year which was $2,000? Yeah, actually,

Nicole Wakelin  36:22  
like, it's not even like compared to most it's a modest number. That's insanity.

Roberto Baldwin  36:27  
Landrovers 1350.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:30  
And it's got to come all the way from Iran gotta

Roberto Baldwin  36:31  
come all the way from another country from across the sea over.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:36  
This thing is built in a plant 20 miles away from me.

Nicole Wakelin  36:39  
Is it built in this country? Because it's not? Is it or is it built over there and you have to fight across the border today?

Sam Abuelsamid  36:45  
That's built in Wayne, which is like, literally 20 miles east of me here. Wow. So that's the 2021 Ford Bronco, wild track Sasquatch.

Roberto Baldwin  36:57  
Oh, so about the goat mode. Because it's great. My beef was goat mode is greatest of all time. But it's that's very much like It's like saying something that's fleek. Or that's something is i in the 90s or the late 80s. I got a pair of skis. In high school. I was very excited to save a bunch of money. My dad helped me out about some skis on the back of the skis. It said radical. And I was like, well that's cool. dorky. Yeah. And then you know now radical has come back but there's a good 20 years where those skis people would be like, What is wrong with this person? Yeah. When you when you when you're using a current lingo? Like if I got in groovy mode.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:39  
For what it's worth, yeah, I think, you know, Ford probably would not object to anybody saying he's referring to defining goat his greatest of all time, but their official definition there is go over any terrain.

Roberto Baldwin  37:52  
Yeah, it's great. They do they know what they're doing. It's like watch to freedom. It's like wt, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  38:01  
Greatest of All Time means because I realized they were calling Tom Brady the goat and I finally said to a friend, why do they call him a goat? She's like, calling them a goat. They're calling and I had it explained to me very recently. I'm like, over over my head. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  38:15  
it's like watch the freedom. WTF in the Hummer. It's not Yeah, it's okay. Watch the freedom go over any terrain. Alright, grandpa.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:30  
Alright, let's start off with the I think the only new vehicle that was actually announced this week, the week of the Chicago Auto Show, and was not announced at the Chicago Auto Show or even shown at the Chicago Auto Show. And that is the 2023 Alfa Romeo Tenali. Finally, finally seeing it in production form alphas new compact crossover. It's it's actually you know, design wise, it's very close to the original concept we saw three years ago 2019 When they first showed it, I think so to like two and a half years ago. What any, any thoughts on the Denali?

Roberto Baldwin  39:13  
It looks like an alpha.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:14  
I mean, there's a second alpha that's sort of maybe Stelvio

Roberto Baldwin  39:18  
Yeah, it's you know, it's funny is that when I had the Julia when I lived in the city, I'd have to park my the cars on the street. And my neighbors knew what I did. And there's one guy who would always walk by with his dog and he seemed Mercedes and BMW and he talked to me but when I had the Julia because of the design, he's like, doesn't seem like the kind of car you should leave on the street. But think alphas like their design language is very, very unique to them, which is good for them. But it also for many people, they're like, Oh, what is this it gives them a little air of mystery.

Nicole Wakelin  39:53  
I love I just love alphas because they are different because they that that triangular grill on the front shields. Yeah, the shield you want. It's something that you don't have to be a car person and you look at them and you're kind of like what the what? I've never seen that before. Did you do something to a regular car? No, this is how this comes. I think that's not always a good one. I I was kind of personally taken with the green Stelvio they had at the Auto Show. Did you see that? Sam? Yeah. And it was this brilliant. Green. It looked like an emerald. And I was like, I like them already. I'm like, and now you made one that looks like an emerald. Please stop trying to take my money. Money. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:33  
so the, the the Denali, it says a compact crossover. They wouldn't talk about what platform it's on. But looking at the specs, it looks like it's basically a variation of the platform that's used for the Jeep Compass. It's got four wheel strut suspension. And for North America, there's going to be two powertrain options. The two liter, the same two liter turbo that you can find in the base, Giulia and Stelvio and as well as sorted Jeep vehicles and other vehicles from across the Atlantic lineup. And that's about 252 horsepower, LR, the other powertrain option is a plug in hybrid, its first alpha males first electrified powertrain, that's 1.3 liter turbo four cylinder up front, with a 90 kilowatt electric motor at the rear axle. That altogether gives you about 272 horsepower. So it's more powerful than, than the four cylinder, the two liter four cylinder. And it has it'll, it's supposed to give about 30 miles of electric driving range. So this would be the first alpha with a plug going forward, all new alphas are going to have plug in options. Some are going to be plug in hybrids, some are going to be battery electric. And then it's also got the UConnect five infotainment system. And it also comes with an NF T.

Roberto Baldwin  42:09  
Because everything's an entertainer, my dogs and

Nicole Wakelin  42:12  
NF T's are cool.

Roberto Baldwin  42:14  
Is the goat of the digital world.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:21  
You know, I spoke with Larry Dominique, who's the head of alpha male North America earlier this week, and will after the segment, I'll drop in that interview there. But we talked about the the NFT and what they're doing. And this actually seems like the first one of the first, actually useful applications of NFT technology, you know, not not about buying some silly illustration of an ape for Come on.

Nicole Wakelin  42:51  
Illustration of an ape.

Roberto Baldwin  42:53  
It's a board ape. It's a, it's got like, it's got a lot of time on our

Sam Abuelsamid  42:57  
hands. Yeah, well, it's not so much the illustration. But the amount of money that people are spending on the illustrator is ridiculous. So this won't actually cost you anything extra for the NFT. And what they're doing is they're using it as a way to record the service history of the Denali. And there'll be applying this to other future vehicles as well. So when you take your car in for service, everything that's done to it will be recorded in the blockchain. So the idea is you have an unchangeable service record that is accessible to anyone. And the hope the the rationale that alphas given for this is that they're hoping that this will help improve the resale value of alpha male vehicles. Because, you know, as we've talked about before, alphas don't have the greatest reputation for reliability.

Nicole Wakelin  43:54  
No, you're making that.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:57  
I've never had trouble with ONE ONE. Not one. I've had one here as a loner. But you know, that's only for a week at a time. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  44:04  
I never had one as a loner. I've driven them at launches, but I've never had one for a week because I would steal it. I love them.

Roberto Baldwin  44:12  
Now, they their depth, definitely never gonna give you one now.

Nicole Wakelin  44:15  
They're like, take nickel off the list quickly, quickly.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:19  
But Would would you pay extra for a used car, any used car, if you had, you know, an NFT service history of the thing.

Roberto Baldwin  44:32  
But it doesn't I mean, you can just have a database, it doesn't need to be an NF T.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:36  
But when I pay extra database can be modified is Yeah, but

Roberto Baldwin  44:40  
I mean, I guess, if it's if it's held if it's, if you have to have it done at that alpha, and alpha is holding the database. The only people who can change the database are people at alpha. And if you can just have like every time someone access the database, it's the same thing. I mean, even if it's an NF t if you take your car and they're like, Oh, we fix something and then as you drive away They still have the unique you know, whatever log in they're like, Hey, let's say we put three tires on it this week. I mean the same thing could happen with the database I mean it's not I don't know I think it's

Nicole Wakelin  45:09  
I don't I mean I think it's a neat idea to make it something that everybody can access very easily online and that anybody could get to it that needs to get to it you know, but I don't I don't know that it would make me pay more for used one I would still just want to be having a mechanic check the car make sure it was the car what is that it didn't seem like it had been thrashed added the number of miles had a good price. I don't think having that would make me say Well, I'm gonna give you an extra $2,000 Because I didn't have T said that you did everything you were supposed to do maintenance has

Roberto Baldwin  45:39  
nothing to do it. And he could also just get a CARFAX which has a little clocks so the NFT had like a little cute animal do you know that it doesn't or Berto I don't know that doesn't so if it has a cute like a fox with wears a shirt that says entity? I guess it wouldn't be the fox isn't maybe getting in trouble to carbon fee

Nicole Wakelin  45:57  
for an Italian car maybe just a picture of a like a little cup of us like espresso cappuccino with like a with a little SHIELD logo on the top a little steam rising up from it. Little Italian guy drinking it? No. Okay, it

Roberto Baldwin  46:09  
has to be like a little animal. I think it really has to be some sort of animal. What's just now a penguin maybe?

Nicole Wakelin  46:19  
Penguins are cute. Yeah, something

Roberto Baldwin  46:20  
cute. A raccoon.

Nicole Wakelin  46:23  
And right now alphas like are you kidding me? We do this technology and all you want is a cute animal.

Roberto Baldwin  46:29  
A saucy badger. Saucy badger.

Nicole Wakelin  46:32  
Well, there's the title of the episode saucy badger

Roberto Baldwin  46:37  
badger blockchain.

Got it bossy, bad. Yeah, I'm sure there's, there's I'm sure there are other things that are that that the entity will keep will make it better than just the regular old database. But at the same time, I'm just like, Oh, okay. Sure. You know, on the blockchain, everyone's been talking about putting things on the blockchain so you can keep track of it. And if t is just the latest thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:08  
Yeah. You're Dominique, you're now the the head of alpha male North America. I think the last time I chatted with you a few years ago, you had just joined as head of PSA North America when they were planning to reenter the North American market. And you're you've just launched a new product for the alpha male brand, the Denali, a compact crossover. Let's start off with where where does this vehicle fit into the overall market and who you see is the the the competitive set for the Denali?

Larry Dominique  47:43  
Yeah, the great newsstand is the the compact premium SUV segments, one of the fastest growing premium segments in our market, which is which is great. Some of the key competitors that we see out there today are things like the BMW Exelon and the Mercedes GLA. But I would say those are two of the highest volume competitors in that segment.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:01  
And what what is it what what is what makes the Alpha special in the segment? I think, you know, those of us that are familiar with the Giulia and the Stelvio, you know have a, they have a pretty good idea of what alpha wants to be, but what you know, how have you translated that into the smaller vehicle?

Larry Dominique  48:21  
First of all, we just believe by having the alpha male logo on the front as the starting point, right, so, so Alfa Romeo as a brand with our 111 year history, Sam has been a very consistent brands matter what segment you compete in, no matter which products you bring out, we tend to deliver alphas first, which means first of all, very not like the Germans, it's a very different execution. For us. It's about performance and beauty in everything we do. So just taking a step back and looking at, you know, the 2019 concept vehicle for Denali. And how we've translated that into the production version, I think you're gonna see, unlike a lot of concept vehicles, we kept true to a lot of that design elements, as a design team likes to talk about the GT Line from the front of the back of the vehicle. So first and foremost, it's a beautiful car, great dynamic lines, right proportions. So I think from a visual point of view, it delivers on being an alpha and a perfect family as as as well. And what you're also seeing in there is some of the future design direction we talked about the tributo in the front, the headlamp signature, the kind of three element headlamps signature, continuous sine wave where light signature, those are some of the new elements you're gonna start seeing towards the future of future products coming. Now from a performance point of view. You know, the base engine on this is going to be a 256 horsepower, two liter turbo, we refer to as our GME engine that's going to deliver very high in class horsepower and performance just in our base trim. But what we've done on top of that with our mid and upper level trends is we're going to be offering the plug in hybrid electric vehicle. So we're not treating plugging Hybrid is just a powertrain alternative for fuel economy. This is about delivering the best tonali performance, which just happens to be wrapped in a plug in hybrid at the same time. So yes, you knew 30 plus miles in pure Evie. But you can also deliver 272 horsepower, great 5248 weight balance, you know, you know, our frequency selective dampening. So all the higher performing technologies that we would normally have in our higher level, term grade vehicles is in the plug in hybrid. So we believe is can deliver in segment that same kind of Stelvio Julianus, but in under in wrapped internally and and segment.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:36  
So obviously, the hybrid is going to be probably going to be a bit heavier than the two liter version. Where will the performance be relative to the the gas engine vehicle will be comparable, maybe a little better?

Larry Dominique  50:52  
We think it'll definitely be better. Because when you think about the power and weight distribution, so the 5248, but not just that, it's how we're dragging the front wheels and how we're using the dedicated electric motor in the rear. So how are we driving the vehicle all of our vehicles, so in the material for Europe, we mentioned front wheel drive versions in Europe, we're not doing any front wheel drivers, everything coming to North America will be all wheel drive. So whether it's the gasoline or the plug in hybrid, so our ability to deliver the power to the right wheels at the right time to deliver that great dynamic performance is going to be great on the GME engine, but it's going to be I think even a step above that. We talked about the plug in hybrid. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:33  
Watching the the reveal some of the things that were talked about in there were the technology that you're putting in this. And the Julian Stelvio had a fair bit of technology. But this one really seems to step that up. You connect five some of the A das features. Can you talk about what, what the strategy is there? What what are you trying to achieve? With with the on the technology side?

Larry Dominique  51:58  
Yeah, so a key for us on the technology side is, you know, we're going to be coming out at a time the end of this year in North American market. And the technology we've now embeddedness we'd like to think of our technology is not just technology for technology's exam, it's to make sure we're enabling and making the drivers life a little bit easier. So if you want to use the oil to autonomy, you can automate features and the past of safety or they're, you know, for you all the time as long as you leave them on. But even when we were doing the screen technology, so we talked about the unique 12.3 inch TFT for the meter. But if you look at the design elements of it, it harkens back to historic Elvis, kind of the dual gauge with the with the umbrella on top of it, and how we present present information is very what I'll call high technology configurable, but also very, very historic from the standpoint of hearkening back to our DNA, the center screen, the 10.3 inch, you know, you talked about the the audio, you connect the cores that you can add five, that's configurable, you know, very high technology. But we're not thinking of the vehicle as technology wrapped around inside wrapped around by a car, right? It's an Alfa Romeo first. And we tried to deliver the Alpha nest and all of our technology. So we want to be very competitive with all the customer expectations tailored to being an alpha male. A good example is we still have the mechanical DNA switch.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:24  
Yeah. That was That was interesting. And of course, you also still have this the start stop button on the steering wheel as opposed to on the dash. You know, so those familiar with the, the previous alphas will fit right in there. Yeah, it's a distinctive feature of the interior. The, the, over the air update capability that's going to be on this, is that limited just to the UConnect five capabilities, or will that also be able to add other types of features, you'll be able to update other systems in the vehicle.

Larry Dominique  54:00  
So that the potential is there, we haven't fully decided the full breadth of what we're going to be doing over there updates on but the you connect an HMI features, the mapping and so forth is a given. But how we manage because we still have to work through a lot of things, you know, what I'll say regionally relative to what can we do at the dealerships? What can be done at the customer's house? And are there opportunities in the future? If there are features or services we can provide with the customer you want to pay for some of those features? Do we offer that as well? So it's going to be an evolving opportunity for us just like the non fungible token as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:33  
That's what I want to ask you about next was the NF T. You know, this is like to most people, you know, the the concept of NF T's is something that's come up relatively recently. I think this is the first time that I can think of that anybody has used it in relation to a new vehicle. How what, what are you doing with an NF T with the Tenali? What what does that mean to customers?

Larry Dominique  54:58  
Yeah, so fundamentally Everything about it is the first initial plays related to helping maximize the use car or the residual value of the vehicle. So we're using the non fungible token, when you get your vehicle maintenance done or updates to the vehicle wheels or tires replaced brake jobs don't insure Alfa dealer, the not the NFT will be updated. So you have this kind of living record that's transferable in theory to the next owner as well, to take it, how we execute that, who we partner with what kind of what kind of contractual relationship we have with both the the blockchain technology and the customer is still being defined. Europe is finalizing theirs right now in a launch, you know, first commercial sales are in June. So we're about six months later than that. So we have a bit more time. And the great news for us. And as we're going to learn with the launch of tonali in Europe first on how best to optimize that going into our launch at the end of the year.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:56  
Is this something the ability to store that those service records through along with an NF T? Is that going to be exclusive to any services done by alpha dealers? Or will do expect that should have some sort of mechanism for third party service providers? You know, both because, obviously, as you know, you know, once a vehicle gets out of warranty, sometimes customers take vehicles elsewhere, and Alfa still has a relatively limited footprint in North America. And it may be more convenient for somebody to take it to somewhere else for service. So will there be a mechanism for that?

Larry Dominique  56:34  
Yeah, it's it's in development is what I'd say it's being considered how do we do that? And how would we partner with certain nationwide chains that have that opportunity. There's also we do find a lot of in what I'll say, the less dense Alfa Romeo service areas, we do have relationships with our Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealers as well. So there might be an easier opportunity to implement that before we go to the nationwide chains. But you know, as we think about our future cars rolling out, our footprint of vehicles that are NFC enabled is going to increase. Okay, so managing that out of warranty period, and even sometimes in warranty, people don't always go to our dealerships. Yeah, how can we best help them?

Sam Abuelsamid  57:12  
Yeah, I think this for the first time, this actually seems like a potentially really useful application of an NFT technology. You know, a lot of the other stuff we've seen, you know, people selling links to pictures of an ape, you know, dubious value. But with this, this actually seems like it could be really useful to customers over the long term. Is that something this is something you expect to add to other Alpha models or other other your you know, to the Giulia and Stelvio and to future models as well,

Larry Dominique  57:46  
for sure. And it comes back to we think of, you know, first as a brand, from a success point of view, obviously, we want to be profitable, sustainable brand, but a key thing what we're trying to deliver on right now, Sam is all about customer experience and customer satisfaction. So what can we do in the vehicle outside the vehicle over the air at our dealers in between the brand and the customers themselves to maximize their experience? Because we know people have alpha males because their driver cars and they're fun to drive and they're emotional. We want to give them all of the other elements that helps ease their life and make their life better. And we like to think of it enough for me as we're building a tribe of LCC. Right people across the world. I mean, I I'm amazed when I came into this brand almost a year ago, the level of L feastday. Groups, you know, the owners groups across the United States and even Canada, and certainly in Mexico, just blew me away the loyalty going back to the 40s and 50s and 60s all the way up to modern times. So this we want to expand that that world of elfies into a very modern and new customer froze,

Sam Abuelsamid  58:55  
and who do you see as the customer for the Denali.

Larry Dominique  58:59  
So Denali, unlike, you know, historically which alpha has been an extremely male oriented brand 70 80% Male purchasers, not saying male influencers to the purchase, but actual purchase on the registration, we believe this vehicle is going to start to appeal to a much broader audience. So we are already the youngest premium brand in the United States at about 44 years old. So we're about six or seven years younger than our German counterparts. So we're already drawing in low end younger Gen X and older millennials into the brand. So we think we can really manifest that because the millennials very rapidly becoming the most important premium buyers in our market. So catering to them their needs for technology, their needs for customer the kind of customer satisfaction when I'm in bash, and at the same time moving at more gender neutral. We definitely believe we get a higher percentage of females and women buying these nice cars. So we think it will be the first vehicle for us which has made me a slightly broader, you know, demographic

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:00  
Okay, and obviously, you haven't announced pricing yet. But can can we expect it to be competitive with those German counterparts that you mentioned earlier?

Larry Dominique  1:00:11  
Yeah, we, you know, we think of our brand. As you know, we were premium brand, we should quite as a premium brand, delivering the premium experiences, premium services, Premium vehicles, premium quality. So what I would say is we're going to be priced competitively. We have some unique technologies, unique powertrains, that will come to the market as well, which will be factored into that final pricing strategy. But as our global CEO, John fleet imperata likes to say, We office history has been, you know, delivering that premiumness and premium experience, you know, to, to a broader mass, right. So, we never want to be priced out of the market, we want to be priced where we're reachable, and only accountable for people delivering on alpha. And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:55  
one one last question, how big do you see the Alpha brand potentially getting in the US? Do you expect it to get into hundreds of 1000s of units annually? And maybe how many, how many models? How big a lineup would you anticipate getting to in North America?

Larry Dominique  1:01:15  
Yeah, so So answering the latter question first. And we think about the product portfolio, we've talked about globally, launching six, all new products within now, in the end of the decade, a large portions of those will come to the North American market, there's one vehicle for Europe, that's smaller than Denali that we're not interested in bringing over. But we're going to focus on the high volume, profit pool kind of segments. So you're looking at CD II kind of segments in the North American markets, that's where we want to focus, we're not trying to be Michi, outside of that, from a from a volume point of view, the way we think of our brand is, is we want a brand that's going to grow organically. So we want to put the right products in the right segments, appealing to the customers and grow the brand over time. So we're not chasing market share, we're not trying to deliver artificial demand, we want to grow that demand organically. And and to do that when you start talking about three, four or five products or more in the lineup. You know, you could you could see us 100,000 Plus but they're you know, word ends up Sam, we'll find out that the key thing is, if you're growing and growing profitably satisfying customers, every incremental volume you sell is is a positive image. And it's a positive contributor, so, so not rushing. The key thing is to get stability, get the customer loyalty, we want it to be and grow the brand in that organic way. And, and I think that's great for us because we want to stay true to the alpha roots. We don't want to we don't want to watered down we don't want to. You've already seen if you look back over the last year, we've tightened up our product offerings, the number of trends, the number of options, we're trying to make it the right packages at the right price, you know, so we can limit complexity, increase the quality and deliver a great customer experience.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:59  
Long i for 1am. Looking forward to getting behind the wheel to Tenali and trying this thing out. And thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Larry Dominique  1:03:09  
I was my pleasure. Great to talk to you soon. Alright, have a great day. You too.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:14  
All right. Well, let's let's move on then. To the rest of what was in Chicago. I think this may be the first auto show that I can recall ever being to were not a single new vehicle shown for the first time.

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:30  
Yeah, it was there were trims and that was it. Yeah. New trains.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:35  
Awesome. We saw some new vehicles that had been previously released online virtual events like the the Silverado Evie. The the Toyota Sequoia, the new Sequoia, but nothing. Oh, and then the the Bronco Raptor. Yes, yes. I

Roberto Baldwin  1:03:56  
like he was there. The laser? Yeah. For regular people, they can go

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:00  
regularly. Yeah, for regular people. It's the first time they're gonna get to see some stuff. That's cool. So because in fact, I had someone who wanted to see Believe it or not, and it's not even really, he's he ordered a maverick. I know not like brand new. He hasn't been able to other than glance at one and a dealer lot that belong to another customer. He's like, do they have one because I might drive there just to see one. Because I have one on order. And I want to know what it actually looks like and talk to someone like he lives in New York guys. And he's considering just random Joe on Twitter. So I'm not sure if he'll do it. But yeah, he can't just to see like, yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:34  
it's a nice little trip. Chicago is a good a great city. I've never been there but I've been told wait. You've never been to Chicago ever. I've never I've driven through Chicago which doesn't really count I'd like to in the morning on a cross country road trip. But I've never been to Chicago. Wow. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:52  
I should go went to a great Peruvian restaurant the other night. Both the food and the service were excellent.

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:59  
We We picked it we were trying to pick a place to eat and we couldn't pick anything. And somebody had recommended actually, someone at Ford recommended this restaurant. And we're like, Okay, let's go. So Thanks for Thanks Rhonda was really good. Yeah, so he went to this where I opened the menu. And normally you know, you're in a restaurant that you haven't been to before. And you know, a lot of the stuff like, you know, steak is a steak is a steak. And then there's a couple things you don't know. I've never been to a Peruvian restaurant in my life. So I open it up and I'm like, uh, I don't know. How about that one. Look, I had no idea what anything was on this menu.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:31  
It's exciting. It was tasty.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:33  
No, it was really yummy. Yeah, we had a nice little dinner all of us

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:36  
a mix of each a was Oh, yeah. With shrimp and squid and octopus and bunch of other stuff in there some really, really good. Anyways, back back to cars. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so everything everything that was there, we had at least seen online before and some of it you know, some of us have seen at various events that the manufacturers have done like I saw the Silverado Evie at a background briefing back in December, before it was shown online during CES. They also had the the new kiya Sportage plug in hybrid, which were again showing out of show for the first time that they've announced everything before was there anything in particular that caught your attention Nicole

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:32  
it was hard because we had seen a lot what I actually a couple there are a couple things. And I'm gonna forget the name of the what they call the ram truck, they viewed debuted a Ram 1500 That was a fire vondre a first responder edition. That was brilliant, bright red, but it had neat little things inside and one of the things that I thought was cool is on the backs. I'm going to I believe it was the front seats. They had like a little Velcro pant like you know where you'd have an embroidered with the logo of the vehicle at a higher trim, instead of being embroidered with a logo and had a little Velcro thing. So you could put a patch on it. Like you know, if you wanted to put like the patch from your department, or whatever departments you served with, you could actually pack stick that with Velcro to the car. I

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:10  
thought it was kind of like the top of your back like your shoulder blades,

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:13  
but it was was it your shoulder blades? I'm trying to think where exactly it was. For me, it'd

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:18  
be like the bottom of my back.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:19  
Yeah, for you. It'd be right above your butt. Robbie. Yeah. But yeah, so and it was like a large ish, sort of, just below the headrest, just below the rest, so probably wouldn't be like against it, it's gonna be a little below where for the most part, your body is going to touch the seats. So that was kind of neat. And it was, you know, it was a neat tribute addition, I thought that was kind of a

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:40  
cool thing to do. I'm just thinking that one day I'm gonna sit in it with this with you someone's gonna sit in with a hoodie or their their sweater. And they're gonna forget to put the patch in and they're going to be trying to eat

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:52  
it must be the not sticky, so I don't know, I guess it could have a one. Now, if I see what it is I'm gonna have to put on my fuzziest sweater and see if there's

Unknown Speaker  1:08:00  
a hooks on there. You're gonna like

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:03  
probably on the patch,

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:04  
probably on the patch. And the other thing that I saw that I liked, and it was new, they did have a new trim of the Grand Cherokee. I don't think it was the L I think it was just the grand cherokee but forgive me on that they had a limited black edition that gets us like blacked out front grille and really snazzy blacked out wheels that they debuted, like they announced it that morning, the first morning of the show, and they actually had one on the floor there that looked. I thought that looks pretty snazzy. So it was just like trim packages. But those are two cool ones that stood out to me.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:37  
Yeah, the RAM. The RAM is actually the built to serve firefighter edition. They had previously done some built to serve trucks honoring members of the military. This is the firefighter edition in a bright red, which is a pretty cool color. The thing the thing that I think probably was one of the most interesting things for me was the the frontier, the 3d Nissan Frontier concepts show. Yeah, sort of retro concepts. They are well two of them were retro. One was called the project 72x is named after the the old Datsun 720 pickup of the late 1970s. And so it had kind of a 70s late 70s vibe to it with the stripe and graphics package on the side and had light steel wheels. The wheels are actually the standard, the standard spare tire, which mounts under the back of the bed, as with most pickup trucks is a steel wheel. So they actually just took the regular spare tire, Frontier spare tire that you if any by any frontier, you'll get one of these. It took four of those and painted them white and put it on they're

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:49  
so fantastic that with the white paint on them and just being so it was like oh that love is great. Oh, they were awesome. It looks really cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:01  
There was also the the hard bodied edition which had they reproduced the wheels that were on the mid 1990s Nissan hardbody pickups it's a if you've ever seen them you'll recognize them pretty cool looking wheel and of course you know it had it was set up for off road had a lift kit on there and fancy light bar on the back of every car. Yeah, good plates and all that stuff. And then there was also the the Overland edition, it actually is the official name is the project adventure. But it's picking up on this this overlanding theme that is caught on in recent years. So it's got all the gear racks in the in the bed and a pop up tent on the top and all this other good stuff.

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:53  
That's a cool like decal graphic thing that kind of looks like a topographic maps almost on the side of the truck. And like Max tracks or something of the equivalent strap to the side, like any anything you could, this is the one that if you actually did just only take this you know, off to your cabin, you would look like an idiot like just if all you do is go to your cabin Robbie. Like if you're gonna do this one like do not know you must go someplace where you need

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:17  
to head on it at all times,

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:19  
even if it's dirty. And if you don't actually go in the mud, go get like permanent mud, like get some kind of like just spray cement on the side or something like make it look muddy binder

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:29  
at the local hardware store. Nursery, you're mixing it with water and you're splashing it on your truck. So you're

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:36  
on your truck because no one if that truck is driving around clean people are looking at you saying Come on. Yeah, what a poser. It's cleaned.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:46  
No, you're getting rocks and scratching up the street. Just scratch up the

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:49  
bumper a little bit like take some like tree branches and just make your own desert pinstriping on the side or

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:56  
so yeah, I don't think Nissan actually has any plans to offer these as production options. But aside from the wheels on the the hard bodied concept, all the other stuff that's on here is stuff that you can go and buy and install on your on your Frontier yourself anyway. So you could you could easily recreate any of these, any of these three concepts, including, you know, getting a set of steel wheels and having them painted and put them on your truck. There you go.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:25  
So they were very cool. Yes, dailies for the win. Now they were cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:30  
But really, I think as usual, the real winner of the of the Chicago Auto Show, as always was Subaru. Even though they had no new product to show. They had their puppy corral again. They're their big supporter of the ASPCA. And on the on Thursday, they had a bunch of a whole litter of Beagle puppies. And then on Friday, they had Labradors. And,

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:58  
man, it's super wins every auto show, by the way, any auto show that Subaru is that they have like the little like camp Subaru setup, usually. And they're like, Oh, here's a bunch of puppies. And then they have a big floor that like, is a giant display.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:14  
There's fake snow that comes down when it has to be snowy. Like there was snow. Like, there's snow on you. So you can stand in the fake snow and watch the puppies. It's like the best booth. It was amazing. Oh, it's so cool.

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:28  
Yeah, super like, well, we're gonna put all our money into this year, like, I can replace the CVT core. You could have a dope booth. Booth.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:38  
booth with the puppies. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:42  
But of course, there was actual one actual bit of news that came out of the chicago auto show this year. And Larry Valiquette from automotive news got the scoop on this one.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:54  
I couldn't read this whole story. So I'm interested to see what the story because I got I heard firsthand for this too. So tell me what the story says. Okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:01  
so Larry was at the the Nissan event on Thursday night, he was talking with Dave Sloane, who's the head of the Chicago automotive trade association as the dealer group that puts on the Chicago Auto Show. And one of the one of the unique things about the Chicago show or what used to be unique, I think, probably almost 15 years ago Jeep started doing a camp Jeep display in their booth area where they had a big mountain and a whole you know, kind of a simulated off road off for you know, all terrain thing where you could get in a jeep, or and sometimes Ram trucks and other vehicles and test drive it, you know, over this, this mountain it was steel mountain that they built. And up until this year, the mountain that they had is a fairly steep grade. The mountain was 18 feet tall. Well last year for when they did the The compressed chicago auto show during July, Ford because they were watching the Bronco created their own version of this and they called it Bronco mountain, Bronco mountain they built to be 21 feet high. And of course, you know, this being the auto industry and a lot of people with a lot of egos, they're very competitive. You know, everybody always wants to one up their competition. So Jeep came back to share with a new version of Camp Jeep, which is now 28 feet high. And it's as high as they can possibly go. Because once once you if you go any higher than that, you can actually hit the rafters in the in McCormick Place. So they are guaranteed least until there's a reconstruction of the facility that Ford will never outdo them on the third. They're driving.

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:52  
They're gonna have it where it goes outside and then back and then it's gonna be

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:57  
rude. So it was funny. I was actually talked to Jim Where's in a jeep, I was teasing him about this and like so I hear you guys had to build a bigger ramp because Ford built a bigger ramp. He's like what we built it as high as they would let us so unless we like cut a hole in the ceiling or maybe four to cut a hole in the ceiling. I wouldn't put it past him. They could do that they could go taller, but this is as tall as you can get. And the other thing he was all hot to trot about was the angle of it. So you he says that as you were coming down, you got it a 45 degree angle, which is pretty steep. Like it that's like, hold you. Yeah, it holds you in the seat belt and the seat belt is keeping you from face planting on the dashboard steep. So I said okay, sure. He's like, No, prove it. So we get in, he puts on the off road pages and we see the angle that we're at, and he's driving to try to be like, Okay, wait, we're gonna see it, whatever. Like, I'm like, 3940 41 I'm like, Jim is 41 is like, no, no, we're getting another vehicle. This is gonna come on, we go again. It's like 43 Yeah, I'm actually I'm like, Dude, it's not there. He got it to 44 He's like, I swear it was a 45. One of these times I can't remember which one I was in. It was a 45. So but it does have a 4544 At least I can confirm angle as you're coming down. They claim 45 That one extra degree. But so as you come down, and it is unbelievably steep. You, you do feel like you're holding on for dear life. Yeah, you're looking straight down. You literally I'm straight down like the seatbelt is all that's holding me and like my back is not? It could have been Velcro. It didn't matter. I'm like, yeah, just leaning against the front of the seat belt. Like please don't kill me.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:31  
44 points.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:33  
That is steep people.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:35  
Yeah, that's, that's, that's yeah, I don't think people realize how steep when you're in a car when like the degrees that I get 20 degrees, right? This is a lot. And then if you

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:43  
have like a vehicle that has pages, like the offroad pages they have in the Jeep, and you can see the angle that your car's going at, look at it, and then think like, compare that to the number I just gave you. And if you're selling like, Oh, this feels terrible. I must be Oh, no, I'm at 20. Yeah, when you get to 40. Like it's really

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:01  
all right. The last item we have before we get into q&a Today is it was actually something that was mentioned by a listener. And a tweet they wanted us to talk about it was a change that Tesla made last year in China, in response to the chip shortage, you know, Tesla, you know, like most automakers has had to respond to the chip shortage. And in many respects, the Tesla's actually had more success here than than a lot of other manufacturers, they, they have replaced some of the chips in their cars with other chips that are more available. But that, of course, requires rewriting of software sometimes. And Tesla is able to do that quite quickly. And so they, they were able to, you know, still have an increase in sales last year, despite the chip shortage, unlike almost every other automaker on the planet. But one of the things that they did, I mean, they among the things they did, and they also eliminated some features as other manufacturers done, GM has dropped heated seats and steering wheels from some vehicles, they dropped cylinder deactivation systems just so they could avoid putting the ECU in there. One thing that Tesla did on the model threes and model wise built in China is they eliminated the controller for the secondary steering circuit. So in order to do automated driving, one of the things you have to do is you have to have fail operational capability. Because if you're going to have a vehicle that can drive around without without a human behind the wheel, you've got to make sure it can do things like steer and stop, even if the you know, some of that mechanism fails. So all these vehicles now have they all have electric power steering systems and what the what manufacturers have started to do is use power actuator that has two independent circuits on their coils on there to drive the actuator within, and each one has an independent controller and power supply. And if one of those fails, you can, you can still have your your steering control in there. It's it has lower peak power, but it can still steer the vehicle. And what Tesla did was they removed the controller for the secondary steering system. And that means that if they were to ever try to deploy full self driving on these vehicles, I no joke ever, but if they were, if they were meant to do, if they were ever to try and do that, they would have no steering backup. So if the steering failed, they unless they went back and retrofit these vehicles with that steering controller, they wouldn't have that option on those vehicles. Any any thoughts on this?

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:59  
Do we know for a fact or they haven't. So Tesla hasn't officially said anything, right. So we have no official statement. But the claim is that it wouldn't impact the safety, it would just that it's fine until you want that full self driving, you have to make a service visit, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:14  
As long as long as you're never actually deploying full self driving on the car, it's fine. Because it'll be just like in the past, if your power steering failed, you could the human could still steer the vehicle, you just have to put more effort into the steering wheel to do it, you can still turn the wheel just it's too hard. You know, but if you don't have a human behind the wheel, now, if that steering circuit fails, you don't have a backup for that. And so the car is just going to go in whatever direction it's pointed that point.

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:45  
Yeah, so for level two, the backup is you, right? Really, if it fails, I've level three, the backup is nothing. So if it's sort of it's going around a corner on the freeway, and you're playing, you know, Call of Duty, or whatever they have on the Tesla at that point. And also it fails. So now the car just keeps going straight. And by the time if you're doing 6070 miles an hour, now you've rammed into the vehicle next to you, you know, there's a lot of problems because you don't have that, that, that, that, that backup for you. That's why you have to have all these redundancies, which Tesla's talked about when when they, you know, when they introduced their their Chip said they thought they kept saying redundancy, redundancy, redundancy backup systems. But then in other parts of the vehicle, they don't have them, like, you know, when they only use cameras for sensors, you know, there's no redundancy there. So this is if the people and it's it sucks, because people didn't know like, if you knew you're like, well, your car's never going to have self drive. And you're like, well, you're gonna cut, take some money off of it. And they're like, Yeah, sure. And you're like, alright, that's fine. But if they didn't tell people to charge you the $12,000, for full self driving. Yeah. But if they didn't tell you maybe not tell you that. Yeah. But if they didn't tell people that that that they weren't ever going to get it, if it you know, when this system goes live, eventually, maybe who knows. That's kind of a, that's a huge bummer. Especially if you fail, this will help you get navigate on auto draw, you know, you can get all these other like level two, level two plus features on there, but you'll never get level three or higher. Because you just you don't have that redundancy in there. So if you're paying the $12,000, anticipating that at some point, you'll have level three, and then they're like, oh, yeah, remember when they had that chip shortage? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:23  
That's gonna cost you another 1000 bucks,

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:24  
because he had to bring it in. And we're gonna have to put some stuff in there. And it's gonna require your car be in the shop for a week and a half or

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:31  
should not be fun.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:32  
Yeah, yeah. It's the idea of not telling people is the he is the big issue here. Because if you tell somebody like, hey, this doesn't have it's not going to give, then you're like, Okay, if you're really cool with that, then fine. But if Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:47  
yeah, it feels like something that they should have known ahead of time. Yeah, it's

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:51  
like it's like the the BMW without the touchscreens or the you know, all of you know, hey, you're gonna get a BMW now. But you're not going to have a touchscreen or you're going to get a

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:59  
Yeah, at least other manufacturers are telling customers, hey, we're leaving these features out. And in many cases, they're actually reducing the price.

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:07  
It's interesting when I was trying to build something for Audi first story I was writing. And I don't know if it's still that way, because there's maybe like a few weeks ago, but they were actually saying due to manufacturing, blah, blah, blah. The content listed when you build the vehicle might not be what normally is always so you know, might come standard with XYZ, no, X might not be there. So make sure you confirm with your dealer what is exactly in your car. So they were sort of doing this sounded like we may have changed some things up here. We don't want to surprise you, but we can't tell you exactly what's sitting in your dealer lot right now, which I felt was at least a good like, buyer beware, you know, check to see what it is that you have on your car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:43  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cuz you wouldn't want to be disappointed to me. You want to know before you drive off before you sign in and drive off with the car. You want to make sure it is actually what you want. Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's answer a couple of listener questions. You got a Magic Man 1288 asks, Do you guys realize that most of the country does not have the infrastructure in place to charge EVs you spend most of your show talking about? We're years away from average Joe and flyover country to adopt one of those EVs especially in cold climate? Love the show?

Nicole Wakelin  1:25:16  
Well, I think yes, we realize that there is not a ginormous infrastructure. But if we don't talk about EVs at all, then we're neglecting a huge number of new vehicles coming up, because the manufacturers are releasing them at a pretty alarming rate. And I think as much as there's huge sections of the country where people are not really into the Eevee thing at all, there are huge sections where they are so it's a little bit where you are a little bit regional. But yeah, it's gonna be a while before you can readily charge your car everywhere, like you gas up your car right now. But it is something that's coming in it is where things are moving, like whether or not it happens tomorrow, that to that point, or happens in five years. That's where it's moving. So it's just like a matter of time. So I think and I think it's something good to talk about, because there is a lot of there's a lot of mystery around EVs, like we know about them, we're comfortable with them. We've been looking at them for a few years. It's like, Oh, it's another one. This is what's changed. If you don't know about EVs, if you're not someone who has won, or has a buddy who has won, they're sort of like scary magic, things, like people really don't know how they work. So to sort of demystify it a little bit, and you know, show yeah, there's pluses and minuses to getting one I think, is an important thing to do as the technology rolls out.

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:31  
And I think that for an Eevee owner, I'm going to tell you, we never ever, ever, I we have 253 kilowatts of power from Electrify America, it came when we got it when we when we got the Hyundai. I have not been to Electrify America. I think the first two weeks, we took it there because I hadn't set up I had I had set up a new outlet in our in our garage in order to charge the Eevee we haven't been there since in our daily life, like just driving it around. We just bring it home, we plug it in. So there you know, I know that EA is building out. Tesla has a really robust system if you're new, especially if you're near the interstates. And yeah, it's gonna take a long time for like places off, you know, 100 200 miles off the interstate to get like a nice robust Evie infrastructure where you can charge you know, while on the go. But also, I think what happens is a lot of times is especially if you have a home, you have somewhere to charge, you just don't ever go to the charging station. The only time I'm going to charging stations now is to charge review vehicles just because I'm charging my car. So I have to go. I'm like well, I you know, I charge my car plus I want to test like to make sure they do that, you know the 50 150 kilowatt, you know that that peak power, they're going to get, you know, testing that, and making sure that the manufacturers are telling us the truth on that. But yeah, it's it's it I know, I understand. It's a weird thing for us to talk about when you're thinking like well, and then in some cases you can't even buy like you can't buy the the MX 30 anywhere outside of California.

Nicole Wakelin  1:28:00  
Yeah, there's some that unless you live in California, you can buy whatever the heck you want. I can do what I'm sure. In New Hampshire, they're like, Good luck getting it. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:09  
Yeah. So we I mean, we talked about them just because I mean, and again, I live in a magical land where there's an each, you know, charger every 10 every 10 at this point. But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's coming. And again, like, if you were if you'd live in Wyoming, and you had an Eevee Tesla, you just plug it in every night? You know, you'd have to make adjustments, just like you do with gas vehicles when you know, for range. But, yeah, unless you're driving 200 miles a day, you're the charging infrastructure, while important, becomes less of an issue. Yeah, it is,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:45  
you know, for for people living in the vast central part of the country. You know, the relatively far less dense network of charging stations would make it a challenge for doing long road trips with with those vehicles. But, you know, if you're using it around town, then you know, it shouldn't be a problem. It shouldn't be much of a problem. The other thing to keep in mind as well, is that if you look at where the population density is, in the United States, versus where the Chargers are, yeah, it's in the around the perimeter of the country that that the coast, the the, the east and west coasts and across the south, is where most of the people actually live. And there's, you know, increasing number of chargers there. Now, yes, we do have to fill in that middle gap. So that, you know, everybody else can have access and so that you can drive cross country, you know, if you choose to, and that's happening, you know, though that is increasingly getting filled out and all the charging network companies ego, Electrify America charge point and then on and on. You know they are progress. possibly building out more and more chargers, all charging stations all the time. So as as the population of vehicles increases, so too will the population of chargers. And actually, just earlier this week, the Biden Administration released the first $5 billion from the infrastructure bill, to just start awarding grants, for building out chargers, pumping a public charging infrastructure, which is really going to be focused on underserved areas, you know, smaller towns, or rural areas, you know, making sure that those places have access to charging to try to address the that gap. So hopefully, over the next several years, you know, that will be addressed more and more,

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:49  
your small towns will start getting charged efficient. Yes. That's the goal. Yep. But yeah, you know, if you're a company, you want to put it where you're going to get make the most money, which is right now. I mean, my house, essentially, California. And then once you have the monies, then you start spreading out to areas where the the adoption isn't quite as high. Yeah, yeah, chicken and egg

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:10  
is the same thing. We had the same thing. When built up the phone network, we built out the electrical distribution network, you know, rural areas were kind of to be the last to get served. Because it wasn't economically viable, because there wasn't nearly as many people there. And so we had to subsidize that, you know, through various programs. You know, there were there were programs for the phone companies to build out, build phone lines into rural areas. Same for rural electrification, starting in the 1930s. And now we're doing it for Evie charging, and hopefully that will help to address the problem.

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:48  
Yeah, as someone from us who grew up in a small town, I understand your pain of not getting cool stuff until later. They moved to the city. I was like, look at all the things that are already here that we didn't have.

Nicole Wakelin  1:31:59  
I grew up in a small town to the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire, and we never had an ad so I get it, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:04  
it goes to go to a big city like Whoa, look at this. I got five bucks.

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:10  
The Big City Life.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:12  
All right. Last one is from Bryn Behrens 1000. Have automakers had a tradition of announcing new models long before they're going to be available? Or is that more of a recent trend? It's disappointing, frustrating when you see any new Evie model announced coming in two to three years.

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:30  
They kind of done this for a long time. I feel like at least as long as I've been doing this, there's always something they announced that they say

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:36  
how long was the Bronco how long it was the Bronco announced that we knew it was coming 1718 years it feels like I remember being at an auto show doing like where I worked at the time. They want us to do live Facebook Live. And they're like, hey, what do you want to see at the LA Auto Show? They're like, Hey, show us the new Bronco. And this was probably five years ago. And I'm like, Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:00  
I want to say the they officially confirmed that they were going to build the Bronco in 2018. I think I think it was 2018 you know that there were rumors. I mean, Ford built multiple concepts of it over the span of about 15 or 20 years. You know, going especially going back to the early 2000s. There was one, there was a couple other concepts. But they never gave the green light to the program until just a few years ago. But I think you know, the this long span of two to three years is a more relatively recent phenomenon, especially in the last decade, it has accelerated you'd go back, go back to 1964 when Ford launched the original Mustang, they showed it on a Friday. And in April and April, Friday, April 17 1964 at the New York World's Fair, and it was on sale that same day they start they start selling it that day. You know, of course back in those days, you know, didn't have spy photos of cars. And you know, it was a lot easier to keep a secret. These days, you know, oftentimes, you know what we'll see, if we see concepts at all. Their concepts are often previews of upcoming production vehicles. And yeah, that's that's usually what we'll see, you know, a couple of years in advance or a year in advance. And even even production models, you know, we'll typically see, you know, nine to 12 months before it goes on sale. And, yeah, it's it's frustrating to have to wait that long. But, you know, it takes a long time to develop vehicles and begin because it's so hard to keep this stuff secret. You know, it's these, these things are going to be out there. So they figured well, we might as well milk it for all the publicity we can get You know, go ahead and tell people now Hey, this is what we're going to build, you know, it's coming eventually. And you know, then when you see this by photos, you know, they keep just getting more attention for it until it till it actually goes on sale.

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:14  
It does, I guess technically generate a little excitement, you know, if it's timed Well, well, we're all talking about it, and then we're talking about it again. And then we're talking about it again. And you know, yeah, probably does help do that Martin

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:25  
marketing is leaking a rumor that they're working on something and then check and seeing what the reaction is, like,

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:31  
people excited. Are they all complaining about one thing? Are they all like, oh, yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:35  
let's like make a justice. Right. I mean, I think the the biggest Evie model we're probably taught as the ID buzz was 2017.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:44  
That was a show. Yeah. 17 or 18? I

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:47  
think. Yeah. Yeah. So that it's it's analogous off now. So that's even four years, maybe five. Since you know, it was like, Hey, look at this. Right. Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:57  
Amazing. Well, I mean, that's another one where, you know, VW built multiple different concepts over the last 20 years. A new Microbus but none of them ever got approved for production until the ID buzz. That was the first one that actually made it. And now they're gonna show they're gonna unveil the production version of that on March night, which is what? We were weeks away.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:23  
Yeah. And a buzz around the buzz and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:28  
it'll be live at South by Southwest. So if you're in Austin, keep your eyes open for for the ID buzz

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:34  
speaking, barbecue and touching the ID buzz with your greasy hands. The dream really to be out maybe they'll have one set up as a food truck. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be mc

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:47  
id buzz food. What I do wrong. With an electric induction cooktop inside there, running off the big battery,

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:54  
making all your barbecue,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:56  
you go. Alright, well, that's it for this week. Thanks, everybody. And we'll talk to you next time.

Nicole Wakelin  1:37:04  
Bye guys.