Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 235 of wheel bearings who got the Jaguar F type convertible, the Mitsubishi Eclipse cross Nissan Sentra, driving on ice pan over MSRP for current for new cars. Nissan's new EVs, fake manual transmission for Toyota EVs, the Chevy Silverado and the chief engineer on the Silverado, and all that and more coming up next.

This is episode 235 of wheel bearings I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:38  
I am Nicole Wakelin from TrueCar.

Roberto Baldwin  0:43  
And I am Roberto Baldwin from Engadget. I couldn't think of when you when you pause that made my brain I froze your brain to brain freeze. Gotta think of a name.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:53  
Now that now that you're rolling, aren't you go ahead and start a soft Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin  0:58  
Oh, okay, cool. So I drove the 2022 Jaguar F type convertible, rear wheel drive roadster thingamajiggy that's its official name. thingamajiggy. And when it is, so I it is a fun car seat. Might I have this? I still have this problem. In my brain about Jaguar. As especially as someone who owns a jaguar is it is that for decades, it was this very almost stodgy brand like very British and, and then I got into this and I expected this very, very beautiful but kind of stodgy you know roadster and no, it was it was actually really fun. It's it's, it's for the person who wants to upgrade from the Miata and look a little bit different and doesn't quite want to Boxster doesn't want you know, they want something they want to convertible, they want performance, they want fun. But they want to be a little bit different. And that's what the the F type p 450 rear wheel drive convertible is. It is you you're you know when you're when you're when you're when you're badly enough gets Porsche that's a tough that's a tough sell with with an MSRP of $73,000 but I think there are people who you know, they want something a little different it's it's it's not quite as nice or refined to say Mercedes, it's not quite as as fun on the road as a Porsche which is again that's that's such a that's such a high bar really for for anyone but having said that it is a lot more fun than I anticipated. Driving around. It has a lot more kick than I anticipated Everything about it was more than I expected which is always a nice sort of thing when you get into a car because I'll get into a car I think most people get into a car with some expectations what that automaker has been doing and then when those expectations are sort of exceeded it's it's always a fun little surprise. I actually liked this car a lot I know people who if they had the money would buy this car over something from Mercedes or Porsche or you know a Corvette or whatever. Just because it is a Jaguar just because it is different it is a really pretty car it is very pretty. The front end looks extremely aggressive without looking like it's gonna stab you you know you know where it's like it's like a

Nicole Wakelin  3:28  
too many angles you're like I'm afraid of exactly exactly the

Roberto Baldwin  3:31  
type are the the old type are we that's what that was it felt it was aggressive but also it was gonna you know, I think I've written this down somewhere in an article where it would take you into a back alley and and cut you for your lunch money. The the type is not that is a lot more smooth, but is very it's aggressive. It's fun to drive. It has a five liter supercharged V eight 444 horsepower, 428 pound feet of torque. It has a five speed automatic transmission has a little you know, the paddle shifters and it is rear wheel drive, which is always you know, if you're getting a roadster or sports car rear wheel drive is always you know, that's that's what you want. It's always good to hear your architecture it is it is a superior architecture. I'm a huge fan of all wheel drives because I love Subaru. I love WR x's, which is what I'm driving right now and I'll talk about next week and I'll probably gosh, the entire time. Which I don't think is fair because I am just a big WX STI fan so that I like

Nicole Wakelin  4:33  
that too. It's fair gush over it next week. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  4:35  
But yeah, it's it is a it was comfortable inside. It had nice sports seats. They're comfortable. It was fun to drive. It gets a whopping EPA combined 19 miles per gallon. I got about seven to 17 points seven. And that's because I was driving it like it's a two seater. And then would go on you know a long drive to go and pick up something or you know to drive somewhere where I could drive a little quicker than I would on a freeway. But it Yeah, I actually really liked it the the version I had had a what was the interior luxury pack which was $2,000 has the most expensive sort of thing and had illuminated and met metal treadplate you know the little thing when you get in your car that little lit up extra leather and some cabinet X premium cabin lighting which I'm just like, I don't think you probably need that. But yeah, no it's it's a it's this is why

Sam Abuelsamid  5:40  
we have a chip shortage. Yeah we were putting all this you know custom you know ambient lighting and alumina because

Nicole Wakelin  5:48  
of ambient lighting. Oh 64 colors of it depending on the car.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:51  
All that stuff is controlled by chips.

Roberto Baldwin  5:54  
That's true. Everything needs a chip like the I love the the Mercedes interior where you can like make the color anything I always make it look like the Peppermill in Las Vegas. Which pepper mill is is very is this diner in Las Vegas at the sort of the end of the strip before this. And it is great because they will give you a giant plate of food like nachos it's it's it's a nicer it's nicer than let's say Mel's diner or Denny's it's should I be adding

Nicole Wakelin  6:21  
this to my listening experience in Las Vegas. program takes me there. This is the Sahara

Roberto Baldwin  6:30  
it's on the strip or the other. It's near the Mexican food place. It's it's it's at the very end like it's north. The north end of the strip. Yeah. Okay. The pepper mill. I love the pepper mill. Anyway, so the one I drove I drove last week was at $4,350 which is a lot of money for a car just in general. But is yet

Nicole Wakelin  6:50  
it is

Roberto Baldwin  6:52  
great. Yeah, it's not a lot of money. But it you know, it is a Jaguar so you know JLR it's gonna be expensive anyway. Again, if you're someone who likes the idea of Miata, but you want to be fancy, and you want to be different this is probably the car you're looking for. There are other cards have a little bit more power in this price range or other cars that have probably a little bit nicer interior in this range. But you're going to look like a Porsches are a dime a dozen Yeah, Porsches are a dime a dozen. That's you know, if types everywhere you don't see everywhere that's true type is just a sexy little car. It is it's so pretty. Like I don't see a lot of X types. You know, I got the X version of that which is like x like don't do it. But type X don't do it. F type Fantastic. Fantastic little roadster rear wheel drive. Put the top down. I don't know. Midlife crisis movie. Midlife crisis. I think about midlife crisis is a lot because I'm like, oh wait, I'm old. I should be having a midlife crisis. And I realized everything I'm doing now I was doing and like my late 20s, early 30s. I'm like, Well, nothing's changed. I've been having a midlife crisis since I was a teenager. Oh, there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:05  
All right. Oh,

Nicole Wakelin  8:07  
yeah. But yeah, I have the same car had kinda when I spoke to you last week. I too, and I had a Nissan Sentra that I thought I was only having for a minute they're like No, no, no, no, you actually have this for a whole week. So lo and behold, still have the Nissan Sentra parked in my driveway so

Sam Abuelsamid  8:24  
a little I talked about it before Sam's went off on you yet it is

Nicole Wakelin  8:27  
charms have not worked. You know it's still a charming little car the I still think it's a little bit loud. Like on highway driving, there's there's there's a good better road noise and wind noise. It's not a quiet sedan.

Roberto Baldwin  8:39  
Stereo is the stereo

Nicole Wakelin  8:41  
good. The stereo, it does have a good stereo come from just turn that

Roberto Baldwin  8:45  
volume up a little. In fact,

Nicole Wakelin  8:47  
it's on my handy dandy list of things I wanted to mention. This one has an upgraded stereo, it has a Bose stereo system. I forgot how many speakers I wrote it down eight speaker Bose premium audio system. It's actually really good audio. It's it really is nice. So I like the audio system. So yeah, you just turn that up and you don't notice the fact that there's wind and noise all around you outside. And it's not so noisy that like you can't carry on a conversation with whoever's next year in the backseat. It's not like driving, you know, something like a Bronco or a Wrangler, which truly like the noise, but but it is I mean, but you do you do notice it. If you're looking for a super quiet highway cruiser. This is not the car but it is very comfortable. It gets good fuel economy, so it's rated for 20 City 37 highway for 32 combined. I was on the money at 37. Exactly, which was mostly highway driving, but I did have some city driving in there and some of my driving was during really terrible road conditions where there was just it's slushy and icy and you're not getting it's not the best kind of stuff. Right at 37. So I was kind of impressed. So if you want to, you know I'm like okay, that that bodes pretty well for what you're going to get overall so I thought that was pretty good. This one had this is the paddy has a CVT that's relatively quiet, it's not too annoying, it's not going to drive you nuts. You're not going to hear droning. I like that, because you have enough wind and road noise happening. What else do they say here? I thought, a couple big things. So there's the center console where you flip it open. Sometimes those are super shallow. And you can't even get like, if you want to toss your phone in there, you want to toss something, there is no room for anything. Yeah, sideways.

Roberto Baldwin  10:26  
And

Nicole Wakelin  10:28  
yeah, it's like you can't get close all the way. So and I now because it's COVID time, I have a little thing that I take with me and it has my EZ Pass my garage door opener and like five different masks in there. So if I'm someplace that requires masks and I people that don't have them, I always have some masks. So it's my little

Roberto Baldwin  10:48  
mom, right?

Nicole Wakelin  10:49  
So I had it fits in there entirely. And I can put my phone in there and I can put my wallet in there and I can shut the whole thing. I thought it was kind of good, because then if you want to leave stuff in there, you don't feel like it's just sitting out, like on top of it. But if you do want your phone to be like more or something have been easy access, it does have a nice little bit of storage like in front of that center console, like there's two cupholders and there's a spot you can easily like set a large, good sized phone in there. So I appreciated the little bit of extra storagee bits that they put in the front. I thought that was pretty good. I also liked and I think this is probably part of the package. There's an SSR premium package and I'm thinking this is it. But they have Yeah, it says prima Tex appointed seat trim. So it has fancy seat trims. But there's like a little sort of like straight detail that goes along the back of the seat like vertically that's in the center of the seat and it gives a little visual pop. Like I like it when there's some little accent when you open a car. I mean it leather seats are cool, whatever. But when there's something like there's a little bit of color, a little something, something. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  11:49  
that's part of the ASR trim level, right?

Nicole Wakelin  11:52  
I don't Yeah, I'm on the ASR trim. And I'm looking there's an SCS as the as our premium package, and on here it says premedex appointed T trims. It doesn't talk specifically about this fancy little stripe, but I'm getting it's a part of that. And it does make a big difference does it actually as a little like visual like pop, it looks nice. Total cost on this one. It's 27 to the way that it came equipped to me. I mean, it feels like a $27,000 car. I don't think it's overpriced under price. It's like sort of like yep, that feels just about right for this like, right where it belongs. You just cruise right in there. You're just a couple 1000 under 30. So I overall I like this. I think Nissan makes a decent car. I mean, they're their trends are they never get too fancy. They're never so basic. They feel like you're driving like a rental special.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:35  
And I feel like they're like my smell. If you are in fact driving a rental even if you

Nicole Wakelin  12:39  
are in fact driving a rental special which on occasion I have had a Nissan rental special but even then though when they are that they never feel like horrifically plastic fantastic insight. I think they do a good job of avoiding that even when the trims aren't Premium trims on the lower price trim, you know models and trim levels. So yeah, so that was my thoughts on he Aldi Nissan Sentra that I've now had for longer than I thought I would. The only other thing I noticed on here that has really cool blackout light wheels. The wheels are nifty, but now they are kind of white la wheels because salt and February in New Hampshire.

Roberto Baldwin  13:11  
I don't know how you people drive cars into salt like that. I have a quick question about the center. So I am a big fan of the Nissan Kicks. That is a favorite. That is my favorite Nissan what how would you how would you rate it up against the

Nicole Wakelin  13:23  
um, it's more it's more responsive than the kicks the kicks is, you know, it's super fun. I love the kicks. It's really cute. I like it. But it's this is a little bit more oomph to it. It is a little smoother the ride. I don't know that it's quieter. I feel like the kicks

Roberto Baldwin  13:38  
the college student and the TRA is like your first like

Nicole Wakelin  13:42  
job you graduated in your

Roberto Baldwin  13:45  
in your Yeah, and you're like you're starting out as that you know? Yes. No, I think it's a good life. So

Nicole Wakelin  13:52  
it's right, it but it's it's it's a little nicer than that little it's a little comfier than that it's going a little smoother than ride I like the kicks I think it's a great college kid car I think it's a good but I feel like this is like you graduated college and you got your job and now you're going to go for you're going to go for the center.

Roberto Baldwin  14:10  
You feel you feel embarrassed telling your daughter your boss what cards your mind is the kicks they're like the what

Nicole Wakelin  14:14  
they're like wait, is that really a car? Is that a bicycle? No, it's a car it's called

Roberto Baldwin  14:18  
and then the teat then the boss says you know in my day that's what we call choose.

Nicole Wakelin  14:23  
But um well my daughter tries a rogue a rogue sport so that's a college kid car she got a fancy well because you know what, what was it I was looking for? There was something that she had to have automatic emergency braking and I wanted all wheel drive I think the kicks is not always the case is front drive only I believe that's where we lost the kids because my first thought was kicks and then I thought we cuz she's in Milwaukee in the city. You need all wheel drive for the snow that they don't plow when they have it so Okay, so yeah, otherwise Kix was gonna be the first choice.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:52  
Yeah, and you know, the kicks, you know, shares its platform actually the the center of the versa and it kicks all share the same basic platform platform, but the kickstand the Versa both have smaller, I think it's 1.6 liter, four cylinder, whereas the center is a two liter. So a little more power got a little more oomph? Yeah. All right. And, and, you know, for those that are on a budget, you know, just looking at the Nissan website, you can actually get the Sentra starting at just over 20 grand for the bass S model. And even with that, you get a touchscreen radio with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support. It has the same engine that's in the ASR. It just doesn't have all the other nice few trips that are on there. So

Roberto Baldwin  15:38  
you don't need to fancy but you can plug your phone in. You got a nice and you got a pretty good engine. You got a little bit of road noise, but you know what, just turn it up, turn up stereo,

Sam Abuelsamid  15:47  
fancy stereo and then you don't have to deal with it. Or get some noise cancelling earbuds? Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  15:51  
yeah. No, don't don't do

Nicole Wakelin  15:54  
not supposed to remember trying to drive with you couldn't wear headphones back in the day, he probably still can't write. But I used to hang them over the side, the rearview mirror, and just turn things up really loud. So I could hear what I wanted to hear back before my when I had no stereo at all in my car in college. That was my solution and blasted through the little headphone like I'm not wearing them. I'm not breaking a

Sam Abuelsamid  16:13  
rule. You know, that's very, very small speaker drivers.

Nicole Wakelin  16:17  
Very sweet. But you know, it was better than nothing. Or am radio. I mean, really? You're definitely

Sam Abuelsamid  16:22  
better off hanging your headphones over here.

Nicole Wakelin  16:24  
Exactly. All right.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:28  
Well, I had have the Mitsubishi Eclipse cross. Which, you know, when this thing came out a couple of years ago, a lot of people were a little bit upset about the name because, you know, Eclipse Eclipse now. And going back 30 plus years ago when I graduated from college, you know, the the Eclipse was new back then. And it was you know, this pretty cool little Sport Coupe that Mitsubishi developed in cooperation partnership with what was then known as Chrysler. And there was the Eclipse there was the eagle Talon and the Chrysler laser versions of it. They're all they're all the same car. And, you know, it was a pretty cool car. And it was one of the ones that got that I had on my shortlist of what to buy after I'd graduated. You know, along with the the five liter LX Mustang and the Miata. But, you know, I actually did get to spend a lot of time with the Eclipse back in those days. Because when I went to work after graduation, I was working at GM working on abs for the Lotus Salon at Jim's mall for proving grounds. And we had an eclipse that we were using as our competitive benchmark for the ABS system against SEC because it was similar performance to the lotus. And so I spent quite a bit of time driving that Eclipse. And it was a lot of fun. This one so it's it's actually it's not it's not a bad car. It's it's a it's a good basic, small crossover. I don't know that, you know, should be called an eclipse. But you know, that's marketing. But it's a decent little compact crossover. The one I have is the top of the line STL they all come for 2022 They got a slight design refresh, new new front facia, they have they all come standard with a 1.5 liter turbocharged four cylinder which by by the standards of of what's available out there and 1.5 liter turbos. It's a little on the low side. We have a 1.5 liter turbo and our civic that is 174 horsepower. This one's 154 horsepower, but it's not bad. It's got it's got decent torque 180 some foot pounds of torque. And it that it's only available with a CVT as is unfortunately increasingly becoming the case you know, in the lower ends of the market. It's it's it's a decent looking design. It's it's like I said it's compact. It's got a more not quite coupe like profile to it but you know, it's got that that forward slanting rear glass so it's not quite like what you would get you know, say a Tesla Model y or BMW X four kind of shape to it but kind of leaning in that direction. And especially in the the blue color that's on the one that I'm driving. I really like the blue, bright blue, you know, definitely we need more, more vibrant colors, more bold colors on cars. The Eclipse crimes

Nicole Wakelin  19:49  
I want them all to be orange and orange. Right now we want

Sam Abuelsamid  19:53  
them all to be orange but I want a lot more orange cars. I like that what I want I want a variety of colors. I want a rainbow a rainbow skills are the cards. Yeah, yeah, what reds and yellows and oranges and greens, just bold colors, no more gray and silver and white and black. No more monochromatic cars. Now they're boring. And that may turn, you know, something we'll talk about later may help to push that trend forward. But right now, you know the the clips starts at $23,700. The one I'm driving the SEL model came up to $34,075, including the $1,200 destination charge. This one, as I said, is pretty loaded. It has. It's got the panoramic glass moonroof, the lightning Blue Metallic is the color. It's got full suite of a Das. So adaptive cruise control lane keep Lane Keeping Assist blind spot monitors all that good stuff. It has multiple modes for the This one's all wheel drive. So there's a snow mode which came in handy over the last couple of days to give you a little more traction when you're trying to get through residential streets that haven't been plowed yet. To get your snowblower to the shop to get it fixed after it died on you partway through clearing your driveway.

Nicole Wakelin  21:20  
Oh awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:23  
But I got the snowblower fixed for about 50 bucks, instead of paying four or $500 or more for like the one or two snowblowers are left in Lowe's in stock. So I should be good for another 15 years now.

Roberto Baldwin  21:38  
50 bucks 15. That's it. That's value.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:41  
Yeah, I mean, I've been using this snowblower for 15 or 17 years, something like that. Anyway, none of that divergence, LED headlamps, fog lights on this thing. It drives drives pretty decent. It's got decent ride quality, you know, it's not going to, you know, thrill you like the F type will in terms of its acceleration.

Nicole Wakelin  22:06  
I was shocked by that Sam

Roberto Baldwin  22:08  
has the F type and that's their

Sam Abuelsamid  22:09  
that's their tagline. And, and the CVT control is not as nice as what Nissan does with their CVT control, it definitely feels more like a CVT, you get more of that motorboating effect, especially if you're trying to accelerate hard and use all 154 of those horsepowers. But if you're driving it more sedately, it's fine. It's adequate. It's, it's well put together decent materials inside, it doesn't feel cheap. So I think, you know, it's Mitsubishi is making progress. They're, they're, you know, getting to be more and more competitive all the time. And, you know, when they if and when they finally get around to replacing the Mirage with with something that's a little more up to date, then I think I think they'll, you know, they may even survive, they may even thrive in the marketplace, we'll see. But for now, the the Eclipse cross SEL one thing that was a little disappointing in this one, it's rated 25 miles per gallon city 26 highway 25 combined. I've only been getting a little less than 19 with it, which is for small crossover is not great. But this is you know, it's also been a very cold week. Temperatures often in the low teens or less the past week and trudging through the snow so that is going to degrade your fuel economy. But even that 25 combined for a vehicle the size is not that not that inspiring. I'd like to see you know something closer to 30 at least for for a car the size but aside from that the rest of it it's a it's a very nice compact crossover that you can get you know at a pretty reasonable starting price.

Roberto Baldwin  23:58  
What if if Mitsubishi were to come out with to like sort of really jump into the market? What halo car do you think they should bring back the Lancer or the Eclipse?

Nicole Wakelin  24:08  
Bring back the Eclipse now because they brought it back with the wrong. Yeah, it's cross will really confused people. I was

Sam Abuelsamid  24:14  
confused. I would like to see them. Bring back an electrical answer. Oh, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  24:20  
Yeah. Okay. It's right there, Evie? Oh, and they could have even did a little Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:26  
yeah. Just do some weird, weird capitalization of the letters. Perfect. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  24:30  
There you go. Mitsubishi. Send us you can send your check to Kev Roberto Baldwins.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:39  
Yeah, electrical Lancer Evo I think would would be pretty cool.

Roberto Baldwin  24:43  
That would be pretty dope.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:45  
But that would be pretty good. So that's the that's the 2022 Mitsubishi Eclipse cross. Alright, let's get into some of the other items for this week. Something that you remembered last week Robbie while recording and I made a note of it. Ice driving. You got to do some ice driving recently.

Roberto Baldwin  25:03  
I did. I jumped into a plane I flew to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I jumped out of the plane and then I jumped into it.

Nicole Wakelin  25:13  
Yeah, did you jump out of the plane? What was in the sky? Or did you just like

Roberto Baldwin  25:16  
it would while it's landing, if you jump out as long as you roll, it's good. Roll, roll around enroll. That's, that's all you really need to do when you when you're when you're jumping out of a plane.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:30  
The next time the flight attendant tells me to get away from that door. So it's all right. I'm gonna roll and I'm gonna roll

Nicole Wakelin  25:35  
we're all good.

Roberto Baldwin  25:36  
And then another flag to be like I cool about it, dude. You know what you're doing? You know what's up? You know what time it is? Go for it. Next stuff out. So you see you at the wetzels pretzels. Um so yeah, so I went to and there was some Acuras there and we were driving on Bridgestone tires. And you know, I don't live where it snows. I live in Northern California by the ocean by the bay. It doesn't snow here. But I do on occasion go up to Tahoe to go snowboarding. And for years at when I was a very hardcore snowboarder. I would I had all seasons on my WR x and it was fine. I went out to Steamboat Springs. And apparently in the last 10 years or so all seasons have gotten way better, because I drove an NSX on all seasons. And I said you know the accurate supercar on with all seasons on four inches of ice. And it did really well. It's not in they weren't winter tires, which I also got to try. But they are very, very nice. So yeah, if you're the if it's so

Sam Abuelsamid  26:43  
hold on, just before you go on with four inches of ice. I'm assuming that that there was solid ground underneath that ice not not just a frozen lake, right?

Roberto Baldwin  26:53  
Yeah, there's some ground somewhere. Okay. Yeah, no, it wasn't like that. Because it's it's a their course has inclines. So you so they had us breaking like on a downhill. And then they had a skid, skid pad. But the skid pad was at like an angle, like a probably about 12 degree angle. So as you're coming down the bottom, you're like, awesome. Yeah, just sliding because you're sliding. They're also sliding, because you know, you're you're working against gravity and just sliding off. And so yeah, so they had a they had this drive around the NSX rolling on all seasons. And it did really well. Considering like what we're trying to make the vehicle do. I did hit a cone. I did. At one point. Yeah, I know. I know, I, I brake too late. And this is this is my own fault. Because what happens is when someone's telling me how to do something, I think too much about how to do it. But if I just do it, then it works. Back to the snowboarding thing. If I think about snowboarding while I'm snowboarding I fall down. But if I snowboard it's

Nicole Wakelin  27:56  
sorry. Like, like when you're walking up the stairs and if you think about walking up the stairs you like stumble

Roberto Baldwin  28:03  
like hit the little like edge of the stairs. Yeah, you're

Nicole Wakelin  28:06  
like she just kept letting me just go

Roberto Baldwin  28:09  
yeah, that's how that's how my brain works. So I braked, I hit the brakes too late. I turn too much, and I wonder blink. But uh, if I, but if if they'd have been on like some old all seasons, or just regular tires, which is laid into the embankments, so, so yeah, no, you can, and then they had us do hot Ladino they did a hot lap with us with a driver, with the NSX just flying around the corners and getting sideways and because everyone loves a good hot lap, if you don't know what a hot lap is, is when a professional drives or driver just goes crazy while you're in the passenger seat of a car on a track and you get to just hold on for dear life and giggle the whole time or scream you know, whatever, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  28:51  
I like to giggle at it. I try to be like I'm gonna be all cool and then I'm just like I'm 12 I can't

Roberto Baldwin  28:58  
it's like yeah for the Evie tires, they had a they had us on the the the Acura MDX. They're their little midsize crossover and they get they let us drive it with all seasons and with their bliss Zach. Winter tires I love the name bliss Zach by the way, it's not new it's been around since the 90s but it's the greatest name ever given to any tire ever ever live Zach

Nicole Wakelin  29:25  
Zach Max cuz I love that Jeremy was like it was incredibly

Roberto Baldwin  29:30  
impressive how nice those winter tires were. And when you know when with the dip between winter tires and say summer tires, summer tires, you get in the car, and you have to warm up to sort of to get them to not be as hard. Well, if you have as hard compound and you try to do the hard compound on ice is just like a recipe for disaster. Don't ever drive with summer tires in the snow or the ice because you'll you'll have a bad time. Well you probably won't go anywhere you just slide into that The ditch next year driveway and in that'll be the end of it

Nicole Wakelin  30:02  
I had what they gave me a press card with summer tires once in the winter it was snowing and I didn't know it. So I get it and drive it literally just to my little neighborhood and I turn the wheel on the car just keeps going straight I'm like what what's happening and it literally just not like I had done nothing just cheap. Yeah, so don't forget people.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:20  
First time I ever had a mini for review. It was a John Cooper Works. It was delivered to me the first week of December on summer tires. And a couple days into the loan, we had a bunch of snow and I could not get up the hill in my neighborhood I got halfway up the hill and the car kept slowing down and slowing down and finally halfway up it came to a stop and would not go any further and so on around a different way.

Roberto Baldwin  30:49  
So that's that's what summer tires are so there's a very hard compound when they're when they're cold. They they sort of they loosen up when they get warm and then they add grip onto asphalt. Winter tires gonna have to do the opposite they have to stay they have to be they can't be hard when it's cold. They still have to stay very squishy and squishy. That's a good word. I see squishable pliable there you have to really see better there's this is a good word of appliable is probably something that I didn't try being an engineer Sam whatever and then they have their the the tread, which they call Snipes, which is a fun word. But when you have that nice, pliable rubber, it makes all the difference in the world. And they have this they have any and I learned that there's that ice is the roads are the slickest around the temperature freezing around 32 degrees a little bit above and a little bit below because there's also water on the ice, which creates a slicker experience. Oh, yeah. Yes. So so yeah. So you might think, well, it's only 32. It's not going to be as bad as if it were negative 10 Nope, that's the opposite. It's it's actually worse because you have the water slide and on top of the on top of the ice, it's like when you drop a piece of ice on the ground, then at first you can it'll kind of slide but then as it melts, it just slips every time we try to move it it just slides everywhere. It's that. So yeah, so my whole thing was when I went to Arizona kind of want to talk about them with EVs and tires because EVs usually are typically shipped with these high efficiency low rolling resistance tires. If you live somewhere where it's insanely cold if you live in Canada, the northern part of New Hampshire or New Hampshire you might want to you know swap out those tires you know you're going to lose some range but you're going to have all this extra safety which is which is a good deal and winter tires have gotten so much better. And I talked to them they so much better over the last like 1015 years, all seasons the same thing. I did talk to them. This is an argument I have with people all the time because everyone's like well, you have all wheel drive it's fine. I'm like well not really because all drives great for acceleration. It's but it's not going to help you turn and I was talking or stop and turn out exactly turn off stop and I was talking they were like yeah, we had a thing where we I forget the vehicle but they I think it was ambulances and they were bringing them out in the front wheel drive and all wheel drives and they put the winter tires on them. And the front wheel drives actually did better than the all wheel drives. So you know if you have good tires, always it's really down to having the proper tires for the environment over all wheel drive or four wheel drive and I am a big I'd love all wheel drive vehicles again, WR X. But same time I understand that. If I had a front wheel, my Kona if I put some winter tires on my Kona, I'd be doing great.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:48  
Well my daughter bought a toy at Toyota 86 last year and I convinced her to get a set of winter tires for it. She previously had spent the last dozen years driving a Honda Fit on all season tires. And the first time she tried the the winter tire she got actually got to set a Bloodaxe on a she got a second set of wheels and instead of Bloodaxe we put them on four and she said yeah after driving driving the the rear wheel drive at six in the snow on the Bloodaxe compared to driving the Honda Fit on all season tires. It was like night and day it was so much more confidence inspiring.

Nicole Wakelin  34:28  
Yeah, we my daughter had just all seasons on her car when we she first started driving and because I just hadn't put winters on there and I bought Bloodaxe for her to put on it and I think she drove like the first winter season with all wheel drive. I mean with all seasons and then we put the winter tires on she's like why? What were you doing to me last year? Why didn't you give me these earlier? You're terrible mother. I'm like I did get that for you eventually, so Cool your jets, but she noticed it was Oh my gosh. And then my younger daughter has never driven with anything, but the bliss accident My older ones, I was like, You have no idea you have no idea what put me through

Roberto Baldwin  35:05  
the horrors of my life. 

Nicole Wakelin  35:07  
Yeah, you don't know the horrors of all season tires compared to these?

Roberto Baldwin  35:11  
Yeah, I, you know, I, I grew up driving all seasons I've driven all seasons, because I live in again, California, even when I lived in this in the snow as a kid in snow enough for probably for winter tires. But if you are somewhere where it's, Hey, it's snowing, that's what you got for the next few months. Yeah, you should definitely invest in some winter tires.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:32  
And, you know, as my daughter did, and what I've done in the past as well. If, if you live somewhere, you know, where you get, you know, a significant winter weather. A good thing, you know, if you can swing it a good option is to just buy a second set of wheels with the winter and put had the winter tires mounted on those. And then you know, sometime around Thanksgiving or so or depending where you live might be earlier, later, just swap all four wheels, leave your summer tires mounted on the wheels, stick them in a corner in the garage, or in your basement or wherever or and most tire stores will also actually offer you storage for your tires when you when you swap them out. And then you know in the spring, March, April, whenever the snow and the salt melt, then just put the summer tires back on. And it's so much less hassle than having the tires on dismounted from the wheels and less less risk of damaging the tires and the wheels. It's gonna cost you a little more, but it'll last a lot longer.

Roberto Baldwin  36:37  
Yeah, no, it's I think I'd get some steelies Yeah, yeah, there's some steelies on there. Because it I've had this happen where you're driving, and you start to slide and I'll send you hit something that you didn't see. Because underneath snow and now you're scratched up your room. Yep, gotcha. We'll get there some steelies on there. So that way, when that happens, you're like, Oh, well, that sucked.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:59  
Yeah, I mean, so Sophie got, you know, an extra set of, you know, low cost alloy wheels. And you know, another good thing to consider is, you know, go basically go minus one, when you get your winter tires. So one, one size down on your wheel. So she went from 17 inch wheels to sixteenths and also go a little bit narrower and adjust get a little higher, taller profile, aspect ratio. So you have a little more compliance if you hit potholes and things like that. And then also, because the tires are are narrower, you get a little more pressure on them, because you got the same way to the car, and a narrower contact patch. So you're going to get a little more pressure a little more bite into the snow. And I see again, that helps you attraction a little bit. Yeah, yeah, one, the one probably the one thing I missed most about my engineering days was doing winter development, you know, working on things like anti lock brakes, traction control, stability control. We did, we did the opposite of what you would expect. You know, when it's wintertime we would go places where it was even colder. And then summertime we go places where it's even hotter to get the extremes. And so I spent a bunch of whingers up in northern Minnesota and northern Michigan and northern Sweden. You know, blasting around on snow and ice and frozen lakes. That's why I asked you earlier about the the four inches of ice you mentioned. You know, up in up in Minnesota and in Sweden, we did our testing on frozen lakes where the ice was about two two and a half feet thick. But weird being out on the on the ice on the frozen lake. You know if you just stood out there when it was nothing else around, you could sometimes you can hear it cracking and shifting on your feet. Oh, I

Nicole Wakelin  38:49  
did it. I did an ice drive in Colorado and they had us all up there. It was Sunday. There were certain spot like if you stood there, you could kind of feel things moving on like I'm gonna die now for this. I'm gonna dive as it does it right. But it's like you said that it's like feet of ice, but it's not completely inflexible. It's a little scary. It's cool, but scary.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:10  
Yeah. All right. All right. Next up. Let's see. Speaking of stick with EVs for a bit. Nissan announced this week at their plant in Canton, Mississippi, that they are going to be spending $500 million to retool to build a pair of new EVs one for the Nissan brand, one for the Infiniti brand. And no surprises. I mean, everybody else is retooling plants to build EVs. But they had they had teaser videos for each of these. And what struck me about both of the teaser videos, is the profiles of the cars there were both sedans, and you were driving the Sentra, Nicole and Nissan is you know, unlike you know, Ford and GM and many other brands Rance has not completely given up on sedans they're still building a bunch of different sedans. Yeah, but apparently, they're gonna build two electric sedans in Canton, Mississippi in 2055.

Nicole Wakelin  40:11  
You think about it, though, like what we don't we have Tesla. What do we have for sedans just normal sedan like the eat like the easy six but no, not something that normal people can

Roberto Baldwin  40:23  
people not like the QS

Nicole Wakelin  40:25  
right there, right? Like, like Sidin wise, when you there really aren't. That's not there's not the crossovers. There's nothing unless you there just aren't options. So if you're thinking technically

Sam Abuelsamid  40:35  
only the model three is a sedan, right. Because hatchback Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  40:41  
so, so you have a limited number of options. And unless you think sedans are just completely complete, no one's gonna buy them ever again ever. It's not a bad call to create a couple of EVs. And there's still a huge despite the fact that crossovers and SUVs are everywhere. There's still a huge number of sedans on the roads. I mean, they're selling like they did once upon a time but it's not like they're this like dud that no one's buying. They still sell a lot of them.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:05  
Yeah, and Hyundai is actually going to be launching an electric sedan later this year the ionic six it's it's roughly a sonata sized sedan that we've seen spy photos of it, and that's that's coming out later this year. So we will be getting mainstream electric sedan sir, they're coming and at least least one from Nissan and one from infinity coming mid decade. The other thing about this, that I noticed reading over the the press release, watching the announcement. Canton Mississippi currently builds ultimas frontiers and the Titan and the or they were building the Envy Vance the big the full size Nissan vans, the envy 1500 20 530 500. And it looks like there's I can tell I haven't been able to get back with Nissan yet. I think the envies might actually be out of production now because they never really caught on that. Well. I think they may have ended those with the 2021 models. And the I wouldn't be surprised if the Titan is what gets replaced and in Canton when they start building these EVs but

Nicole Wakelin  42:19  
you know, the Titan is just kind of is it? It's such an also ran at this point.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:23  
Yeah, I looked up the sales numbers. They only sold 27,000. Titans last year. Wow. Which and how many

Nicole Wakelin  42:29  
f1 50s. were sold last year?

Sam Abuelsamid  42:32  
Well, Ford typically sells somewhere between 60 and 70,000 F F series pickups every month.

Nicole Wakelin  42:40  
Oh, geez Louise. So they sold more in two weeks. Then Nissan did have the tightening and a whole year? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's okay, then.

Roberto Baldwin  42:50  
That's a and I think that that's probably what happened with their their envy too. Is the Ford Transit. That's it. Like that's it. That's a juggernaut. Yeah, they're like, Hey, listen, it'd be right. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:01  
I'll be 20 between the transit the sprinter and the RAM. ProMaster. Those are three really dominate the full size Van market today. Yeah. All right. Again, sticking with the the Eevee theme for another another couple minutes. Some patents published by a republish this week by Toyota for a simulated manual transmission for EVs.

Nicole Wakelin  43:29  
This is weird. Yeah.

Like, I What, like because it's not as though everybody it's not as though there are vast, vast numbers of people who drive manual transmissions and I love them and they're fine, but are like, Well, I'm not gonna buy an Eevee there's no manual. Forget it about I don't know about this.

Don't know about the SAM.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:50  
So for those who haven't read this, are seen this. The series, I think eight different patents that involve having a manual H pattern style shifter, a pseudo clutch pedal, and a control system to manage the torque output of the electric motor. So that it basically it's like driving a video game. If you've got if you've got you know, one of those Thrustmaster wheels and pedal setups at home for playing Gran Turismo or Forza, you you shift this thing, the shifter is not actually connected, mechanically connected to anything. It's connected to a bunch of sensors. And the clutch is

Nicole Wakelin  44:43  
gonna make it feel like that sensation of like you've like gears.

Roberto Baldwin  44:50  
Yeah, because you'll have a different torque level for each as after you shift. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  44:53  
between each shift. You'll see you'll feel the torque drop off. Yeah, and I guess the Question is, you know, Will Will they program in the ability to stall the electric motor?

Nicole Wakelin  45:04  
Yeah. If you're not paying attention, can you stall it?

Roberto Baldwin  45:07  
We hit a rev limiter.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:09  
Slip, slip the clutch a little bit

Nicole Wakelin  45:14  
realistic is this is what we're asking. Because if you can't mess it up

Sam Abuelsamid  45:19  
electronics, you could theoretically do anything you want with it. There's no reason you couldn't do. I'm not sure why you would want to.

Nicole Wakelin  45:26  
Because then it's not real. If I were does it say I'm trying to figure out the phrasing in this story. It says it's supposed to be cut, what does it say? Like of comfort to people who prefer manuals should be uncomfortable than it should? Yeah, comforting to drivers accustomed to manual boxes, comforting well, that I need to have all the risk associated with that comforter? It's

Roberto Baldwin  45:47  
not really I demand,

Nicole Wakelin  45:49  
the risk and the reward, or I don't want this.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:54  
I agree. This, I don't know, this

Nicole Wakelin  45:58  
is just a flattened. I mean, to be fair, it's like they just did. This is coming. It's just we could do this, if we wanted to, we should probably patent it. All right, you know, you have no idea if this lever actually ended up in

Sam Abuelsamid  46:09  
another hand, you know, I mean, it's not inexpensive to file patents. No, but a series of eight patents.

Nicole Wakelin  46:16  
But automakers file a lot of patents just to make sure that some little random piece of this giant schematics that they had happen, but wasn't something they could say because they know we have that first, like if there's a part of there, they think might apply to something else, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  46:31  
I want to start looking at Porsche because it has the two speed it has the two speed gearbox for the TT icon. I went there looking at like the Volkswagen Group me like, oh, we should get ahead of that. Can they come out with a five? You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:43  
there's no indication here that they're gonna have a multi speed gearbox, just but they wanted

Roberto Baldwin  46:47  
they better? Yeah, they are. They're like, well, if Porsche comes out with it, we want to say, well, we got an Eevee that has a man with has, it's a manual that I and Toyota can be like, Hold on there, Mr. Volkswagen,

Sam Abuelsamid  47:01  
what now? What a Ferrari. Is this from Toyota? And they bring back the classic stainless steel gated shift gate, like, like he had back in the old days.

Roberto Baldwin  47:15  
I mean, you could I mean, okay, so 111, where world we're at an Eevee does sort of pair up with a with a man transmission is the resto mod world. Because it's, it's easier to just connect a an electric motor to your transmission than to try to, like, create all this, like, an automatic system and connected to all the transaxles and, and drive shafts and whatever, if you just hook it up to the to your transmission that's in your old car, and you'll be fine. And most everyone, like takes off in second gear because of all the torque. So there is cars out there that have manual. There are cars out there that have manual transmissions that are EVs, but they're sort of like, you know, they're Frankenstein cars, which is, well, I want to build one of these Frankenstein cars. So So I'm not saying this as a bad thing. I'm, you know, I'm like, one of my goals, hopefully in next five years is to build a resto mod. Evie. I don't I mean, I guess you could you could, you could

Sam Abuelsamid  48:15  
step into a resto mod.

Nicole Wakelin  48:17  
Here you go.

Roberto Baldwin  48:18  
No, no, no, no, this type is not no.

Nicole Wakelin  48:22  
That's not my plan. No,

Roberto Baldwin  48:24  
that's you now. Next type is I think I want a safari it out. I want to lift it up and three kids all wheel drive. Ish. Three liter V six. Yeah, lift it up a little bit. You know, it's the dog car. I think it'll be a fun, like, that'll be a fun project. But you could put a, you know, a manual transmission in an Eevee. And it you know, it could be fun. I'd be cool. You know, it'd be cool Miata.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:55  
Yeah. Well, there are there are some companies that are doing Eevee conversions for Miatas. And back about, I want to say about 2008 or so. I was out working in my yard one day and this guy pulls into my driveway. I was mowing the lawn pulls into the driveway in his old beige Saturn coupe first generation Saturn coupe. And gets out of the car asked me if I read about cars because he drove by all the time and he saw all the different cars in the driveway. I said Yeah, so well check out my car here. And he had done his own home Evie conversion on this first gen Saturn on a Saturn on a Saturn Wow. And it was under the hood and in the trunk and everything was filled with lead acid batteries that he had wired up and it was the electric motor in the front was connected to the five speed manual transmission the original Saturn five speed and we took it for a drive I test drove it was actually not bad anything he said it had a range of about 40 miles. I'll find the link and put it in the show notes. There's some there's some photos with it. But yeah, I mean, you can do stuff like that. But again, I mean, those cars have actual transmissions in them. Yeah. And you're you know, when you have that shifter there, you are actually moving the gears around. Yeah, what Toyota is talking about here is just pretending it's a pseudo shifter. I mean, they literally use the phrase pseudo shifter and pseudo clutch. Oh, yeah. So there is not actually a clutch in there, there is not actually so Can

Nicole Wakelin  50:30  
you envision someone thinking that they actually have figured out how to drive a manual transmission with this bag and then giving it a real one? Like, they're done like wait?

Sam Abuelsamid  50:40  
If you program it, right, you could actually do that if you program it to have that but you have to

Nicole Wakelin  50:45  
you have to program it to fail like to fail the way a regular one was, like I didn't shift right. Right. If you don't program it that way, then no one's really gonna like you. You think you're learning but you're not

Roberto Baldwin  50:55  
yet the program failure into the

Nicole Wakelin  50:57  
program failure into this? Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  51:03  
Like, like, like, like a, like an impatient dad

Nicole Wakelin  51:08  
was holding on with white knuckles on

Roberto Baldwin  51:10  
white knuckling it shut down shut down.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:17  
Okay, one one more Evie thing here, which is about the Silverado Evie. When when we were in Chicago. I had a chance to sit down to call Kratz, and after the segment I'll drop in the interview I did with Nicole. Nicole is the chief engineer on the 2024 Chevy Silverado. Evie. And I asked her some questions about this, you know, particularly getting back to the whole wait question some of the design decisions they made. And I'll let you listen to the interview. It's about 1518 minutes, I think she talks about some of the design decisions. One of the big things that came out of that because they didn't use the the existing Silverado frame. And they didn't have to rely on having the same hardpoints for mounting the cab on it, you know that that's part of what allowed them to do the unibody design the avalanche style architecture, but it also allowed them to move the frame rails further up. Because if you look under most trucks, you'll find that the frame rails are actually usually mounted debate about eight to 10 inches inboard from the edge of the truck, they're not out at the perimeter of the truck. And so they for and they did this for the Hummer and they're doing it for the Silverado and Sierra, the frame rails and moved all the way up, which allowed them to pack more more cells in there and have with the two layer battery system. And then earlier this week, Kant came out the documentation that GM submitted to EPA for the the Hummer EV because the Hummer EV is not a light duty truck. Because it weighs 9000 as a curb weight of 9000 pounds,

Roberto Baldwin  53:01  
nothing that word note the word light should not be associated no way applies.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:06  
It does not it does not have to have any range numbers, or MPGe numbers on the Monroney label on the on the window sticker, as light duty vehicles do. And one of the they had some actual specs in but they still had to submit the documentation to EPA. For so this thing has the energy efficiency of this thing is rated at 47 MPGe. That's miles per gallon equivalent, which is really really, really bad. This is like far and away the worst energy efficiency of any Eevee on the market.

Roberto Baldwin  53:50  
But to be fair, that is the Hummer brand. It is it's never been that is very true.

Nicole Wakelin  53:56  
Yeah, it's it's in line right? It's Yes. It's in keeping with what it has been in the past.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:04  
But even the battery itself so we finally have actual specs on the the battery. The battery pack in the Hummer EV weighs 2923 pounds. That's more than the Honda Civic that's sitting in my garage. It's a whole civic of batteries. It's a whole civic worth of batteries. This is civic and it has a gross capacity of 247 kilowatt hours and net of like 12 kilowatt hours to Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  54:39  
Okay. Wait 47 And then that's the gross

Sam Abuelsamid  54:45  
that's the gross and then to 12 I think was the top the net to 12 and a half roughly Gosh So yeah, I mean it's it's just 212.7 kilowatt hours is the net Wow. usable battery capacity. So it has a range of 329 miles, which is a bit less than the 350 that the GM had been promising for this thing, even even the rivian r1 T, which up until now was one of the least efficient. Battery EVs is rated at 70 mpg. The same is only 47. Which is really, really bad, really. So. Yeah, assume you know, Chevrolet hasn't specifically said exactly what the capacity the battery capacity is going to be on the Silverado. But the they they did, they did say that it's going to have the two layer battery pack that's in the Silverado. So basically two battery packs stacked on top of each other. And it's presumably going to be the same the same battery pack in order to get the 400 mile range. By comparison, the F 150 Lightning, the extended range version of that as 131 kilowatt hour battery pack that weighs, I believe it's 1600 pounds. So just over half of the pack weight of the Hummer.

Roberto Baldwin  56:12  
So I did some quick math with the net versus the in the range and it's the miles per kilowatt hour is 1.5. Yeah. Oh my god. So it is it is completely in line with the Hummer brand. Yep. Except no emissions. Is that no emissions? Yeah, you don't have to get it smog. Yeah, no, Director. There's

Nicole Wakelin  56:36  
that one. There's that one departure from what it was?

Roberto Baldwin  56:39  
Yeah, you don't get it smog. I mean, it's still gonna be if you're if you're charging it. Oh my god. So it takes us you have to get a level two charger. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't just 212 G's and you have to make sure that you set it up to charge at night. So you get the cheaper kilowatt hour rate will still be cheaper than especially in California gas. Yeah, it's still gonna be Yeah, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:04  
Yeah. But if you have you made a modern Hummer. Do you know that thing's probably going to get about 10 miles per gallon anyway. Yeah. So at best, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  57:14  
Amazing. Amazing. Just stick sticking with that. Brian, just go.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:21  
But like I said, I mean, the the the problem is, you know, the Silverado is based on most of the same hardware. So, you know, the Silverado Evie is gonna be probably not great in terms of efficiency compared to the F 150. Yes, yeah, it will have more, more range. It does have a longer bed. But it has a lot less payload capability, at least in the version, the first versions are launching. The the work truck only has a payload of 1300 pounds versus 2000 pounds for the F 150. Pro, the lightning Pro. So, you know, for I think for depending on your application. For some people, that might not be enough.

Roberto Baldwin  58:05  
Well, it also has a mid gate. So you know, that's true. I don't know why I'm excited about the mid year.

Nicole Wakelin  58:11  
Long stuff like Wait.

Roberto Baldwin  58:13  
I'd like the idea of a mid gate for the dogs. The dogs can like walk away with the bed or in the bed. Raviga

Nicole Wakelin  58:21  
back and forth, back and forth.

Roberto Baldwin  58:23  
Back and forth, back and forth.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:24  
Hey, everybody, it's Sam. During the recent 2022 Chicago Auto Show had a chance to sit down with Nicole Kratz. She is the chief engineer for the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado. Evie that's coming to market about a year from now. Talk about some some other some things about that truck like how much it weighs the range, you know some of the decisions that were made for that vehicle. Enjoy. So, Nicole Kratz your chief engineer on the Silverado. Evie, have you been involved on the program from the very beginning of it? So let's dive in a little bit in the origins and kind of the thinking around this VA. You guys obviously taken a little bit different approach from your competitors down the aisle here.

Nichole Kraatz  59:17  
They shall remain nameless

Sam Abuelsamid  59:19  
buildings building up from the from the ground up around the Altium. System. Yep. What was some of the thinking around the decision making with particularly with going with with this type of body style versus more traditional separate cabin bed and things like that?

Nichole Kraatz  59:40  
So this is really about bringing efficiencies to the Evie opportunities. It's you know, we wanted a traditional looking not a traditional looking thing. We wanted a Chevrolet that had some cues from its Chevrolet counterpart but also something that said that it was electric going down the road. Now we could have done a body on frame architecture. But we know that Evie adoption is going to be, especially in these early years all about range. And we can't get as you're seeing with those competitors that have chosen body on frame, you can't get 400 miles of range. By going to a traditional body on frame architecture, you have to think differently. And you have to recreate how you're going to integrate the battery pack. So this calcium architecture is really game changing for the industry for General Motors, it's really about creating a golden brick, a Lego that has the battery pack as part of a structural pack. And that structure can be carried across multiple vehicles. So we were able to take that off the battery pack create an all new body, the structure from the Altium pack is quite a bit of the structure like a frame row would be. So it's not body frame integral were all of the structures in the body alone. And it really allows us the opportunity to build on the scale to be LTM offers, it allows us to re partition, literally the front overhang the front of dash the cab, everything is redesigned to be able to fit number one the battery packs in. And number two, get the aerodynamic performance that we want to be able to get 400 or even more miles of range.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:30  
You got a considerably larger pack capacity with this one. Jim's officially said 200 kilowatt hours.

Nichole Kraatz  1:01:38  
But that's the rumor. And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:42  
I think early on with the Hummer. That's that's what the discussion what he was talking about that. So you've got a similar footprint to the F 150. Lightning in terms of overall length, with and so on. Where did you what what were you able to do by not having to stick with existing hard points? You know, where did you put in where'd you managed to pack in that extra capacity.

Nichole Kraatz  1:02:09  
So the frame rails don't sit inboard of the rockers, like on a traditional pickup truck. The battery structure is literally as wide as just inside of the rockers, which allows you to pack in batteries wider than a traditional body on frame, pickup truck. Oh, that's part of the Altium structure, we've also been able to get like a five foot 11 truck bed that the competitors aren't doing. And that's because we shorten the front overhang we made the overall length of the truck the same, but we shorten the front overhang and and change the wheelbase a little bit and move some things around inside the truck to be able to get that five foot 11 bed. We also didn't trade off passenger side. So there's still a six foot

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:56  
customer.

Nichole Kraatz  1:02:57  
Yeah, definitely, you can't do that if you use the traditional body and frame pickup. So it's all about the pack size, we've got the old team structure, which carries you know, the 24 module battery packs are two levels of battery cells on top of each other, it's a very awesome opportunity to scale our EVs that we're bringing into the segment and be able to build upon that architecture.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:27  
And obviously, addition to having a longer, they said I guess how much how much of that extra length that extra as well five or six inches of the bed line came from the fact that by using this unified architecture for the upper body, you know, not having to have that gap between the cabinet bed, how much were you able to gain there from that.

Nichole Kraatz  1:03:55  
So um, you know, the gap between the truck and the pickup bed and the cab is a pretty good amount of inches when you work on the the gap that you need between the cab and the bed as well as just the metal structure itself between the two. So it's a it's a couple inches, I mean, I'm you know, I'm not gonna say the exact numbers here and there. We've also put the customer forward closer to the front wheels than we have in a traditional vehicle. So we've gained some inches there as well, and then shorten the front overhang, you know, get that overall length to still be the same.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:31  
Of course, that also gave you the opportunity by making that decision to bring back the mid gate arrays, which was a unique feature of the avalanche and the Cadillac will escalate. T and it was whatever was Was that was that something that the ability to add to mitigate that? Was that something that drove some of that decision making for the unified structure or Was that just a happy benefit of going that direction?

Nichole Kraatz  1:05:04  
Yeah, so we didn't set our sights on an avalanche. And we didn't set our sights. On a mid gate. When we started. We, we were designing a traditional cab, and we started talking about our compass was 400 miles of range or more, and cargo carrying flexibility. And when we started to look at our design and what we had come up with, we weren't as versatile as we wanted to be in terms of what an Eevee can offer. And so we stepped back and started going through, should we design a little pass through, let's not do that, let's do something bigger, it's a pickup truck, it should be capable of something bigger than a small pass through. Okay, well, that's the slip down the back for 100% kind of pass through. We had, we had talked about the fact that it would be really helpful to have a passenger in the backseat, so that that idea evolved. It didn't it didn't come from let's go do the avalanche. And let's go redo it and just make it better. It really evolved from when we sat back and looked at it at one point in the design process, we said this is not giving the customers the versatility that we want. And the appeal of moving to the Eevee segment needs to be high range, and something different than what they get today from their full size pick up.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:24  
The performance targets. One of the issues with the Hummer is it's very heavy one. And it sounds like this one is going to be heavier than the lightning, I know not ready to talk about that weigh heavily out is that is that I see that as a potential problem.

Nichole Kraatz  1:06:52  
I wouldn't say that the Hummers weight is a problem. And I don't think we will have a problem either. I mean, the reality is that cell technology is constantly evolving, the weight of the trucks are based on, you know how many cells have packs of batteries that you could put into the truck. So if someone's gonna put 24, you know, module batteries, they're all different cell chemistry. But you know, the people that you're referencing that are lighter or lighter, because they're lower range, I can give you a I can give you a lighter truck that's got 300 or 280 miles of range, and will be competitive will be equal. So I don't think it's about

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:34  
but you also unless payload.

Nichole Kraatz  1:07:38  
But again, it's because we're trading off how many miles of range, so tit for tat, if you want to, you will see from us more models becoming available. And you'll see that we're extremely competitive for payload, you're seeing sort of one view right now of a fully loaded truck. So it's a little hard for me to talk about the total range of the payload capability. But what I will assure you is that the truck is very efficiently designed from a mass perspective, as the module text drop, we still offer great range that will still outperform our competitors. For that, let's just say a similar capability, similar price points, things like that. And we'll have trucks that'll have better payloads than our customers. And those will show up when you see more of what you hear now. And this is standard in the bullseye, stroke industry, whether we talk EVs are shown, you know, you hear payload numbers of usually based vehicles. And then as you add options, your payload goes down. But people don't advertise those numbers. We've come out with the RFP, fully loaded truck as our one and only truck. So you're hearing one data point, as you see more of those models coming out, you're gonna see, improve haloed numbers like people would expect. And it's going to be a very similar setup to what you see in full size trucks today. It's nothing uncompetitive about what we're doing.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:07  
You know, one of the things that I think is really interesting about the the Evie market right now is we're starting to see a lot of emphasis on the commercial customers for EVs, and you're watching the Silverado with the work truck first, several months before the rst comes up. It was was that decision is that driven by demand from those from that customer base from your fleet customers? Were they were they asking for something like this? Or is it more that you decided that you thought this might be a benefit to them? And you know, they thought they looked at it what you were offering and said yeah, let's do that. What drove that? Oh,

Nichole Kraatz  1:09:49  
I think there's a couple of things. So, first of all, ESG and sustainability. investors that are investing in these fleet companies are asking the fleet companies to become more sustainable. And so they're seeking out partnerships with people like us to help them sort of achieve their ESG goals and sustainability goals. So most certainly move on to offer that opportunity to them. I think the second thing is that Evie adoption is not just about putting retail vehicles out on the road, but it's also about people seeing utility companies, fleet companies, enterprise, those kind of people that we've talked about, it's about seeing them show that an Eevee pickup truck is a solution, it can become normalized, and so heavy, it can do the job and it's capable. So without having to just have word of mouth to retail customers, you're also visibly seeing that fleets are embracing a utility going out to fix a pole in an Eevee Silverado is the same as the utility going out and fixing a pole in a Silverado ice truck. And so there's definitely multiple facets to wanting to do more with our fleet markets.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:10  
Yeah, I'm really encouraged to see this adoption, because as you all know, as an engineer, actually, addressing, bringing electrification to this kind of market actually has a really big impact and taking a 35 or 40 mile per gallon car, and hybridizing or electrifying it, it helps. But it's not nearly as big an impact for each vehicle as taking the truck that might be getting well 1314 miles per gallon, you know, doing out doing work every day and replacing it with an Eevee that that has a huge impact on fuel consumption, emissions, operating costs for the user. Absolutely. So it's great to see that, you know, this is something that's finally starting to come to fruition.

Nichole Kraatz  1:11:55  
I mean, there's a lot of people excited about it. And our fleet customers were hand raisers very early on asking us to be part of this. They came in, and we talked with them about the features and functions that they needed out of an Eevee pickup truck. And so this partnership with them has been, you know, quite a good thing for everybody to really build that, you know, zero emissions future

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:18  
was one last thing related to that. Yeah. Was there any thought to, you know, since you're wanting to work truck first, to also offering a lower range version of it for those customers, because a lot of a lot of those users don't necessarily need more 100 miles of range. Yeah, so

Nichole Kraatz  1:12:34  
our actual original strategy was to have a lower battery pack for them, we thought that's what they wanted. And when we brought in the customers and started talking to them, they actually asked for the 400 mile range pack for two reasons. Some of them actually are going to use higher range vehicles to go to different job sites. And then others were asking for offboard power capability for their job site. Yeah, other teams taking in maybe they run 200 miles in their day, but they also need to run tools and lights and other things that their job. So we actually listened to the customers and offered that 20 format 400 mile range pack first, the flexibility of the Altium architecture allows us to plug and play different mileage different battery pack sizes to the customer's needs. And so you know, the reservations that are available. Now we've sold out the first work trucks, we sold out the first RFTs now people can go onto the website and order put in a reservation for an order for a vehicle. You know, there'll be more models and more configurations becoming available by by the time those people sort of their place in line becomes available. And so there'll be different offerings, and you'll see more of that flexibility and capability as we approach more of those type orders.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:00  
Anything else on the Silverado Evie, or you know what what Chevrolet is working on with electrification that you want to bring up before we wrap it up?

Nichole Kraatz  1:14:11  
I think it's just about, you know, being smart, and providing compelling vehicles to bring people in to consider an Eevee vehicle and in my particular case, an Eevee pickup truck. We don't want to offer a cookie cutter approach with something people are used to seeing and have the same capability as what we have in our Silverado today. We really work to make it the same and offer something new and compelling that that an Eevee can really offer and I'm I'm really excited. The feedback so far has been really great. And I think we're offering a really compelling vehicle to our customers.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:52  
Well, congratulations, and thanks so much for your time. All right. Yeah. All right. Let's see now Next up. Turns out that in January, if you've been shopping for a new car recently, you've probably noticed that they're kind of expensive, if you can find anything on the lot at all, according to the drive, the 80% of new car buyers in January, in the US paid over sticker for their cars, which is, that is something we have not seen before. I mean, in the past, used to be you would go into the dealer, and you would haggle over the price and you you do usually drive away more often than not you drive away, you know, for something under sticker somewhere between the invoice price and the sticker on a new car. And oftentimes there were, you know, various kinds of rebates and other deals and that ain't happening anymore. And see, yeah, it says the average new car buyer spent $728 over MSRP in January in the US. And I think the transact average transaction prices are up to about 42 or $43,000. Now, in the US

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:10  
this talks about it's not the same like although the average was 728 buyer shopping for a Cadillac paid an average of 4000 over MSRP to take home a Cadillac. Yep, an extra four grand to have a Cadillac.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:25  
Landrover was 2500 2565 over MSRP and see

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:33  
here was 2289, Kedah. Oh gosh, like that's I mean there's anything wrong with Kia but it's just like here we have this luxury like a luxury brand like Land Rover 25 Kia 22 That's like as in demand as Land Rover. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:48  
The only six brands sold there had their average transaction prices be lower than MSRP in January mini BMW RAM Lincoln Volvo and alpha male so if you're if you're looking for a car right now that's where you can get your best deal on an Alfa Volvo

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:09  
basically you want to buy an Alfa Romeo because it it says an Alpha was the only manufacturer server that had a had four digit average discounts.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:16  
Ooh, didn't get to Julia.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:20  
I know I want to Julia so bad I can't even tell you like that's what I'm gonna do you have to the podcast can go by Julia.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:27  
Cheap super cheap Julia or crazy expensive. Cadillac. Yeah. Or

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:34  
tablet? Yeah. Which would you pick? Would you pick I would pick the super cheap,

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:37  
Julia. Oh, yeah, I totally get that. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:39  
absolutely. All right. Last one we've got is one that you found. Nicole.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:48  
Yeah, I talked about this. I thought this was just kind of fun. So last weekend, we had the Super Bowl happen and everyone's all excited about the Super Bowl. I don't know who won or who played or anything. I just have to listen to Tom Brady. I didn't have

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:01  
another football fans are both fan my wife had told me who was playing and then when she said the Rams I'm like, Oh, the St. Louis Rams. She's like no they're in LA. I'm like no, that's before.

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:13  
Now, it was the rams and it was I don't even remember I remember the Bengals. Okay. So regardless of the sports ball part of the sports ball, so everybody knows they pay a small fortune to advertise like I watch games like that because I the commercials in the automaker do some really cool commercials. But they also this is just sort of neat, like just anyone get me bang for their buck for all that auto auto advertising. This was actually about the halftime show. And if anybody saw the crazy halftime show, there were all these low riders, the Chevy Impala low riders were part of the show in the halftime show bouncing along and EB Motors was putting up that after that. They had a 160% surge in searches for Chevy Impala low riders, just from having it there for not even doing like an official commercial for it's just like oh, they were part of the halftime show. I thought that was kind of amazing. And all these things like to get suspension kits for your low rider suspension kits and taillight kits and rims. So like you don't even have to advertise you just just put your put your car on the sidelines there somewhere just get it into the halftime show poof so because of the average ad at the show just how much it cost to do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:26  
Six and a half million now. The highest ones this year

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:29  
were 7 million the average cost is $6.5 million 6.5 million. So I don't know what you would get back for your 32nd ad spot but if you manage to get your cars put into the halftime show when you were trying to sell Chevy Impala low writers 160% increase in searches just because it was

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:52  
rolling in there six four there

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:57  
any stats on some of the some of the actions Will adds, in terms of the impact it has on Sir No, this one specifically of the GM ad with Dr. Evil with Dr.

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:07  
But no, this didn't have that this was specifically just about how the impalas did as a result of the halftime show. So I don't have the figures on the other you have to Google and get more stuff, Sam, we can put it on that next week. But I just thought that was kind of impressive. Like it wasn't even an official ad it was sort of like you know, background stuff with the halftime show. Still huge number of searches. So you see how all those random things that are placed that you don't think they're advertising for something, but they are who they got some payback on that one.

Roberto Baldwin  1:20:35  
It was a fun Genix Hip Hop halftime show. I didn't watch I didn't watch the game. I watched it on YouTube. They stray

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:45  
I like the next day in the morning and was gonna have to do the halftime I'm like, Okay, fine, YouTube, I'll watch it. I'm like, Oh, that was not bad.

Roberto Baldwin  1:20:53  
And then I was all excited. I'm like, Oh, my homie you think imagine Kendrick Lamar must be so excited like up there with his heroes. Anyway, I got all excited. Yeah. Rolling new six four, and then that's as much as I can do. That's all you got. That's good. Well, that week I don't think we can do were allowed to do any more than that without having to pay license without

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:13  
having to pay nine bazillion will pay 6.5 million.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:20  
Okay, let's answer some questions from the listeners. First one from at Bastion 7211. says I'm not Brianna Wu Rihanna happens to own four Porsches, including an air cooled Targa. Butter have a question about a Porsche. Is it too late to get an air cooled Porsche? I'm talking WhaleTail no AC feeling the road through the steering wheel and manual transmission. barebones excitement. I can't afford $100,000 For what would be a weekend car. Well, as you can deal with the WhaleTail without the turbo. I did I did a little looking around on Haggerty undervaluation tool 80s 1980s, air cooled nine elevens are typically going for somewhere between 50 and $70,000. For the non turbos, if you if you want WhaleTail and the turbo, you're definitely going to be paying over 100 grand. So they're not cheap. But they're not. Well, they're expensive, but not that stupid, expensive just yet.

Roberto Baldwin  1:22:27  
Yeah, I think and I think I like to think that at some point in the next, you know, after the next two, three years, the prices of a lot of these vehicles are going to go down. I think we're in a pretty everything is inflated as far as I'm concerned when it comes to cars, new cars, used cars, old cars, everything. It's just it's all too much money. It's it's you know, everyone's throwing away so expensive. Yeah, everything went and people are paying $100,000 for 90 Honda Civics. I'm like, slow down everyone. Slowly.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:56  
So you're saying there is a bubble in the used car market?

Roberto Baldwin  1:22:58  
I believe that there is a bubble named Carmax.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:01  
Claim? Probably I don't know about

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:02  
$100,000

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:04  
Integra Type Rs 100 value reasonable.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:09  
Oh my gosh. Um, so you know if if you can wait. But of course, there's also the the sort of if you wait, maybe it'll just keep going up because there'll be fewer of them on the road? I don't know. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:21  
i i think i think you know, there there were enough nine elevens built. Yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot of them out there. Yeah, I've been built for a long time. Yeah, they all

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:33  
have a thin layer, all the ones from the 80s also all have a thin layer of cocaine on the interior. So you get that right.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:37  
The so little bonus or depending on your

point of view.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:43  
So, so be patient, you know, give it give it a couple more years till the bubble bursts. And then you know, pick one up for 10

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:50  
Then try and get one. Yeah, today. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:54  
All right. At wobbles asks, Have Tesla drivers become the BMW drivers of the 21st century, aka the biggest day holes on the road?

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:03  
I don't know. I still think BMW drivers are pretty much at home. Maybe I just don't see enough. Tesla's here. I vote for the BMW drivers. So

Roberto Baldwin  1:24:10  
someone who who who wrote more cycling scooters around San Francisco, like you start sort of seeing like, because you have to be hyper aware when you write anything on two wheels. And so being like German gentlemen, well, I wouldn't even call them gentlemen, older dudes in German sports sedans were pretty bad. But they were not as bad as a Uber and Lyft drivers because they know they're just like, I don't know where I'm going. I gotta go left or contractors and white F 150s. Because a contractor, white fit f150 gives zero F's about what's going on there. I don't care. Tesla drivers though. Started getting like very here. Two days ago, I was driving I don't know something. And I looked over And the man in the Model S took both his hands off the wheel to grab his his phone with both hands to text while we were driving down the freeway. And I was like, I'm gonna slow down and get over.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:14  
Give him some room.

Roberto Baldwin  1:25:15  
Give him some room. So I think that Tesla drivers are becoming the Yeah, I think we Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:23  
I would, I would split it up. Yeah, I don't I hate to overgeneralize I would say that you will. I will generalize. I would say that there's at least two categories of Tesla drivers, you know, there, because there's, there's a lot more Tesla's on the road today than there were a few years ago, I think I know, some people that are on Tesla's, and they're not all like this, I would say that there's kind of two categories of Tesla drivers. There are, there are those who, you know, just bought a Tesla, because they were looking for a nice electric car, you know, that, you know, look decent, had some decent performance wasn't stupid, expensive. And, you know, they bought a model three or model Y. And then. And then there's the Tesla fans. And most of these people own stock in Tesla. And they tweet a lot. In response to everything that Elon says. And if you say anything remotely negative about Tesla, they will swarm you on Twitter, or wherever else. And I think those are the, the and a lot. I think, a larger, probably a larger percentage of those types of Tesla owners happen to live in the Bay Area. And so I think that those are the ones and they're, they're the ones that get the you know, they're the ones that get your attention. The other people that are just driving around doing their

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:55  
cruiser and living life like a regular person. Yeah, it's, it's,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:59  
you know, the squeaky wheel gets the attention. Yeah. So, you know, I think that I think there's these kind of two categories of Tesla owners and and the, the ones in that latter category, the real fans, the hardcore fans, I think they are probably worse than the worst of the BMW drivers, especially if they have access to the FSD beta. But, you know, the rest of them, you know, they're just average people just driving around, you know, using using the the model three is what it is, which is, you know, the 21st century Camry, yes, the the Camry of Silicon Valley now.

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:37  
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:40  
All right. Andrew Pappas asks, I have a family on both coasts. So driving across the US was not an uncommon vacation growing up. I want to drive some want to drive some of the roads in Europe, especially the Alpine passes. What's the furthest that you've ever driven? And what's your dream road trip?

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:59  
The furthest I've ever driven like in one fell swoop. Like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:03  
Like, you've done a nice little drive probably

Nicole Wakelin  1:28:06  
across the US is the furthest I've ever driven. I don't know that. I've done anything longer than that. I don't think What about you guys.

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:14  
It's pretty I mean, it's pretty big country. I've driven from California to to Pennsylvania and everyone from California to to what's that state called Kansas?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:28  
From New York to Denver via DC and Cleveland, Chicago, Memphis and Dallas and Amarillo. That's definitely the long that's a

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:39  
Johnny Cash song. That's Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:44  
We did. We did go to the to the rodeo while we were in Amarillo. So yeah, interesting. Seeing a bunch of German engineers and big, big Stetsons

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:53  
brand new Stetsons not sticking out like a sore thumb that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:57  
Stetsons and later Hosen there's a combination for you. But no, I think that's that's definitely the longest road trip I've taken. And I've, I've driven like from Michigan to South Carolina and Georgia a couple of times. Yeah. So those would be those would be the longest. What about your What about your dream road trip?

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:21  
My dream road trip. I mean, we're helping in here, but I really want to go through the Stelvio Pass in Italy. I just saw something about that once and somehow it got my attention so I want to drive a road trip that has that in there somewhere. Yeah, I think that's that's what comes to mind just off the top of my head. I think there's probably a million places in Europe that I could drive go be amazing.

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:44  
Yeah, I think driving across your I driven the Swiss Alps, which was outstanding. I've driven around Bavaria a bunch and into Austria, which is really pretty but yeah, Italy. I'd like to drive in Italy.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:59  
Did you drive that you You said your Did you drive in Norway at all? You're going

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:02  
to Norway. I've been driven in Norway so I think I think like driving Sweden, Norway down to Italy I think that'd be a fun drive.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:09  
Did you do the troll sticking? Have you ever heard of this road troll stickin?

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:13  
No, I don't think so.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:14  
I'm not just like making it up because it's called something else actually called troll sticking and it's this really twisty turny mountain pass. Like there's points where you can't you can't both go around the corner you pick who goes around the corner.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:26  
I definitely did that. I was driving like an EQ. See, I was driving the SUV that Mercedes is going to the United States and then they

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:37  
okay. Well if you're in Norway, there's this highway called the troll cygan. That is this

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:42  
beautiful back and forth through the fjords.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:44  
It is not so much it goes it goes you can get it you kind of go up and then you come back down it like through this you can but it's just the view once you get up there. First of all this little like we have little cheesy little rescuers United States this looks like something out of falling water. When you get up there. It's like beautiful, like watery air that you walk through. You can climb up farther if you want. There's it's beautiful. It's one of my favorite roads that I've ever driven. And there's they have an ice cream stand with a troll on top because why not? You have to have that. But yeah, the troll stick in in Norway, which is absolutely beautiful. So if you're ever there and you see that go go drive that road. If you'd like to drive

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:21  
the troll, stick it down to the tip of Italy. I think that's

Nicole Wakelin  1:31:25  
there we go. That would work. For me.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:27  
Yes. Yeah. I've driven from RBDR or from Hethel to England in which is on the the East East call it the eastern part of England, to Sweden to rvr, Sweden, which is up near the Arctic Circle. And then driven back to Birmingham at the end of a winter. So that that was that was an interesting trip driving all the way up through Sweden along the the the eastern coast long was a it's the Baltic Sea. It's the Baltic. But yeah, that was a gorgeous drive. And I've driven you know, in the Black Forest and the autobahn. But I think yeah, definitely doing doing more driving in Europe would be would be awesome. I'd definitely like to do the Stelvio Pass assorted other places.

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:21  
Yes. drive across Europe, go go get one of those BMW delivery things where you can pick up your BMW injury go and just drive around Europe for a while. I once I tried to dry i i was in Barcelona, and I was going to drive over to Italy to visit my friend who lives over there. And absolutely, everyone was like, Don't do that. Because you don't have to drive to France. And I was like, Why? Why? Oh God, France. Like don't do it. Don't do it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:46  
What's your least favorite country to drive through? Do you have one where you feel like there's no rules? I have one or I feel like there's a nice that I wanted to drive there. But

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:55  
drive. I mean,

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:56  
Greece, no one there are rules in Greece, but no one follows.

Nicole Wakelin  1:33:00  
They all have rules. It's just how likely are they?

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:03  
I liked it was nice driving through Greece. But like they're like rules are just sort of like nice suggestions.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:08  
Yeah, yeah. One of the coolest drives I ever did that Done, done a couple of different times is in Arizona. From the the Roosevelt Dam. There's a road that goes down from the dam along the canyon along the river, the Salt River. That is, at least when I did I don't know if it's still unpaved, it was unpaved at the time, but it winds back and forth kind of the kind of thing you described. Nicolle, Norway, wandering back and forth. And this was one that we used when I was still working for GM and I was working on the lawn. And we were doing our summer testing. And in Arizona, we would sometimes go drive up to the dam and then drive back along this road that goes from the dam down to Apache Junction. And it's that's a it's a I wouldn't say quite terrifying, but it definitely takes a lot of attention. Otherwise, you end up you could end up falling a very long distance down to the water

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:16  
to your doom. Yes. I'd

be curious what any listeners who feel like tweeting us or telling us or emailing us what their favorite place in the US if they have a road that they love or a section a highway that they love to drive us.

That would be kind of

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:28  
tweet at us tweet at us. I will say driving in South Korea, the speed limits are very low. And there's a lot of just random speed bumps. So there's kids that South Korea

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:39  
for no particular reason. Here speed.

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:42  
The speed limits are very low. I was in the mountains driving the speed limit was 30 kilometers an hour, which is 18 miles an hour. Wow, that is a road but no houses around down a hill with switchbacks and I was like no, I'm not doing 18 miles. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:59  
Well, that But you know, for what it's worth, I mean, that speed limit may have been set back in the days when that's probably about as fast as you would want to drive on a road like that. And a Korean car, and Korean cars have come a long way. But yeah, you know, again, at the beginning of my career, you know, along with that Lotus, I also did some work on a Daewoo program, that that was a frightening car. And I never drove that one on the street. That was all that was just driving on the track

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:28  
in the car with air quotes. Yeah, well, I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:31  
had four doors, four wheels, you know, an engine car, mostly. But you know, it almost had some brakes. Brake Light. Good day, Jay asked us. This actually goes back to the topic we had earlier about the auto nation CEO saying on their earnings call that transactions at full MSRP are here to stay, is this wishful thinking or the manufacturer stumbled across upon some secret sauce, if I'm paying sticker price with the dealership model even be necessary? I think it probably is here to stay. Unless unless we get into a situation, again, where manufacturing because we've got so many new entrants coming in with all these Evie startups. If everybody starts over building, and flooding the market with too much supply, I think, you know, one of the things we've seen from manufacturers during over the past year, especially with a chip shortage, is they're increasingly encouraging customers to factory order cars that usually the model in the US has been, you go into the dealership and you buy something off the lot, and you drive away that same day, which is part of the reason why we have so many gray and silver and white black cars, because they're easier to sell, you know, it's easier to have somebody just drive away with one of those, you know, the the bold colors are a little bit tougher. The with, you know, with some little supply, you know, and I've told people, you know, that I've talked to, you know, that said they're, you know, they're looking to buy a new car, and we're wondering what to buy. So whatever you decide on, go into the you know, decided early, go into the dealer place an order, so you can get exactly what you want, because otherwise you for still for a while now you're gonna have a hard time finding what you want on on a dealer lot. And if you're doing that, if they're keeping inventories low and not over building, then you probably will, you know, be selling cars with little or no discounts going forward, you know, for the foreseeable future. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:37:43  
Hopefully in there, they don't make as much money on the EVS as they do on the gas vehicles, you know, that the the sort of gravy train of the big truck that just, you know, they build it for, you know, $10 and they sell it for $100 is kind of coming to an end. And so, you know, they have to make their money somewhere. So,

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:00  
yeah, I don't think it's going to be forever. I think it'll stick around for a while though. I think it's gonna still take some time for everything just get to some kind of leveling where we aren't so short on vehicles and that if they start producing and overproduced that we aren't, you know, I just think it's gonna take a little time for things to to even out

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:19  
soon, a couple years, we'll have those factory rebates of $10,000 on a brand new, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:24  
what is it?

There's some vehicle that's going to be in demand for what's the the giant ship that's on fire somewhere, isn't there?

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:30  
Yeah. Our shows in the Volkswagen, the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:33  
Saudis and some valleys too.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:35  
So if you're looking for those, can you imagine a Bentley? You probably is not like there's bazillions of Bentley's coming. Imagine your bellies on order. You've been waiting forever. Like, yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:43  
update for fire? Yeah, we're

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:46  
gonna have to build it again. could take a little time.

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:49  
Sorry about your expensive car.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:52  
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:53  
I guess it'd be honest story. It's my car burned down.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:56  
This is my second time.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:58  
The first one in the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah. And then the other part of the question was, would the dealership model even be necessary? I think that I think that there, we will continue to have dealerships, you know, as a place to, you know, take delivery of cars, get them serviced. But you know, what you'll probably see going forward is dealers will probably reduce their physical footprint, they won't have such huge lots full of cars. Like there's a dealer as a Ford dealer here in Ann Arbor, that prior to the chip shortage, they typically had like 12 1300 cars in stock on a lot at any given time. And you know, there was a story in car driver last summer that they had, I think, at the time, they had like 30 or 40 cars on the lot. I remember driving pastor a few days before that story was posted, and it was looking over and seeing Wow, there's like nothing there. All right. Next brand barons house and asks, How has Mary Barra survived in her role? They've so dropped the ball on electrification, they've let the bolt get too old before an update. They haven't have a new platform that's taking forever to come to market. Have this and have this monstrosity that gives EVs a bad name referring to the the Hummer. What do you think about Mary Barra and the way she's run GM?

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:28  
God, I think the Okay, so Altium, I think is a good move. There's a lot of things that GM has done. Well, I think ultimately, like being out with Altium before almost everyone else was great. But the sort of like just taking forever to put anything on that platform. And the Hummer EV is, is really just a halo thing did like get people to look at them. You know, it's really, you know, when you look at the Lyric and some other vehicles are going to be coming out yet the bolts took too long to update and it's still the same. It's not on ultium Like when we they were we updated the bolt yet still on the old platform, it's still in its, you know, 50 kilowatt charge. And you're like, why is this happening? So I think there's, I think they're, they're just being sort of, yea, we're all about the future. But they're also being very conservative about sort of introducing vehicles. And I think they're being too conservative when you look at what other automakers are doing just like sort of going all in as quickly as possible. Because the bolt beat the model three the market, and yet we still don't have anything besides that from from them on. Well, I mean, I guess they have delivered like a couple giant delivered a few Hummers.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:37  
Yeah, right?

Nicole Wakelin  1:41:38  
I don't you know, I

don't know, like, is it really rushing to market if you haven't gotten, if you haven't figured out your solution, if you haven't figured things out yet, like in a way that you feel like what you're bringing to market is really going to work? Is it better to rush it? If for whatever reason it's taking them more time? Or is it better to just say, Okay, well, we're just gonna have to be a little bit behind the curve here and come out with something that when it comes out is gonna knock the socks off of everything else. Like, are we just maybe maybe we're going to be overly impressed when they do get their acting here with some of this future promise stuff. And I do think that the the Hummer is just a it's just, it's they're saying it's a brand so you know, not even like, but I think the Hummer brand, the Hummer, there, it's just to Halo cards to make you say, Oh, wow, look

at this. This is cool. GM is doing this, they brought it back. And it's cool that ever cuz it's electric, and it's the future. Oh, what

are they buying? Building that I can actually afford? You know, I? Yeah, yeah. It's yeah, I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:31  
think, you know, we're kind of in, in this uncanny valley. Right now, you know, we're GMs promised all these EVs. They haven't actually built them yet. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that is suddenly going to drop over the next 18 months. And if you ask if you asked me this, overall, I think Mary Barra has actually done a really good job running GM. Yeah. And then, you know, GM made a different strategic decision than Ford did, in terms of how they were going to go into EVs. They spent a lot of time developing all the underlying hardware, the batteries, the platform, the motors, everything else. And they've actually done some really good stuff that, you know, is just starting to come to market now. And I think they're, you know, Ford took a little bit different strategy, they developed one platform for the Maki, and they decided to adapt existing vehicles with the E Transit and the F 150. To get them to market quicker. And, you know, long term, which is going to be the better strategy. I don't know, it's, I think, is too early to tell. I think, when the Silverado does arrive, you know, especially with the smaller battery, you know, more standard range versions, you know, I think it probably will have superior performance to what Ford can get out of the F 150. But the F 150s kind of have, you know, 18 month Headstart, almost two year headstart on when those variations of the Silverado get to market. And, you know, Ford is already working on the next generation, which is following more the path the GM took with the other one. So, you know, that next generation lightning is not going to be that far behind when the Silverados arrive in force. You know, I think, you know, GM has, you know, as a business overall has done very well. It's been very profitable under Mary Barra, his leadership, and they, you know, they, they've done a lot of the foundational work that's going to be necessary for success. And now they just have to deliver those products and that's that's the thing. I think a lot of people are getting frustrated that the lack of those products being in the marketplace, if they They do what they've promised and have cars like the the equinox Evie and the blazer, Evie, you know, out in the market, you know, in 2023. And the lyric does well on some of these other vehicles that they've shown us, they just teased out first, you know, first image of the headlights of a Buick electric crossover that's coming out that's supposed to be shown this summer. So there's a lot of interesting stuff coming, it just, it's all gonna drop, like, seemingly all at once over the next 18 months. You wonder if

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:30  
all of a sudden there's just gonna be this, like, boom, everything comes from them all at once. And we'll see whether that strategy was a better strategy or a worse strategy. And I don't think we really know. I mean, I

Roberto Baldwin  1:45:41  
wish they showed off an equinox that everyone's excited about. No one's ever been excited about the equinox,

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:47  
right? Yeah, right. Around the equinox, I'm sorry, what now? You know.

Roberto Baldwin  1:45:54  
So yeah, I think when you look at I think BMW is sort of in the thing where they have the eye in the eye, and then nothing forever. And they're like, Yeah, we're working on it. We're working on work. And we were like, What are you doing? Why is it taking so long, and then you and then I got into the AI for the AI X. I was like, my god, these are amazing. And so they took their time to create like these really, really great EVs and I'm hoping that's what GM is doing.

Nicole Wakelin  1:46:15  
Yeah, what they deliver is, is is is worth the weight that it will have been worth it if what they deliver is what other OEMs are delivering right now then there's going to be some problems.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:23  
And you know, keep this in mind. Tesla was founded in 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Mark tarping. And nobody named Ilan was around at the time. It took nine years from then for the Model S to arrive, and then another six years 2012, five, five years after that, for the model three, so you're talking 14 years from the from when they started until the model three, which is their first really volume vehicle. So you know, give GM a break? Yeah. Give Mary a break.

Roberto Baldwin  1:47:02  
Yeah, I mean, I've expressed frustration, a GM like, come on. But they're also you know, they've also they're teaming up with Honda. I mean, if you really be upset, it's like, what the hell's going on in Japan?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:12  
Yeah, that's true. All right. Brent also asked he, he tweeted out, he retweeted something a picture of somebody else posted that it was somebody standing in front of a GMC Yukon, actually, I think, I think that's actually a CR HD. It's not a Yukon. And for reference, the, I'll include the picture in the show notes of the tweet in the show notes. He the the person standing in front of this truck is six foot one, and the hood, the top of the hood is nearly up to his shoulders. And Brian said, I consider these vehicles just as if not more dangerous than Tesla's running beta FSD. The front end is basically every pickup an SUV is now designed to be a pedestrian splatter zone. And, you know, I think he's right. This, this is a real problem as vehicles have become larger and taller. It's, it's, you know, they are a huge risk to pedestrians.

Roberto Baldwin  1:48:13  
But they've essentially built billboards, their billboards for brands, and then instead of having like a nice slope, which you could totally have, there are these right angles. So because of the right angle, you know, the hood is straight, and then it drops off at a right angle, you don't have that sort of slope, where you can see what's in front. Whenever I have to drive a big truck. I'm always like, Well, I hope you know, how far am I from the car in front of me, three feet, 12 feet, who knows I can't see the car anymore,

Nicole Wakelin  1:48:37  
and perpetually too far away from everything when I parked those because I'm so afraid, I leave more space than I need to. It's like, Oh, I could have pulled forward another five feet. But you can't see that you have no idea how close you are to things it really is hard to figure out.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:52  
And oh, you know, over the last 678 years, when we have seen an increase in traffic fatalities, despite all the additional safety equipment we're putting on vehicles, if you if you look at the numbers in the fatal accident reporting system that NITSA has turns out that most almost all of the increase was to pedestrians and cyclists. The the number of people, vehicle occupants that have died in crashes has gone down. But the number of pedestrians and cyclists dying has gone up. And I think this is a

Nicole Wakelin  1:49:26  
does that data break it down though by what kind of car like pedestrian accidents involving trucks it doesn't.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:34  
You can drill down into that data to find out what kind of vehicles it's it's kind of hard to do hard to do. I wasn't sure what is easy, but I mean, if you look at the types of vehicles, you know, the you know, the mix of vehicles we've got on the road. Yeah, it's a corresponds and obviously correlation is not causation. But you know, it does correspond with a dramatic increase in the number of SUVs and trucks getting sold. You know versus cars. So You know, I think I think that clearly you do not have as much visibility when you're driving these big trucks and SUVs as you do driving a car. I mean, I sit in my Miata, I have full 360 degree vision, you know, from about three feet up, you know, so it's, it's a very different kind of experience. And definitely more people are getting hit and killed by these larger vehicles. So it is it really is a problem. One last one that we have that popped up while we're while we've been recording from Wes WW p 2181. Do you wash your cars regularly? Or do you let the rain do it for you?

Roberto Baldwin  1:50:45  
Well, I live in California so so no rain for

Nicole Wakelin  1:50:49  
you. It's rain. I wash my car regularly, even in the summer. I always have a wash it once a week because in the summer, it just gets covered with bug guts. And during the winter it gets covered with ice. And in the winter. I always made sure to do an undercarriage wash because the the the salt and the the the the salt or whatever the stuff like were places where you can't use salt. There's like a different chemical thing. Like it's a chemical, little cocktail he put on the roads and even the dirt. Oh my gosh, it gets all over everything you feel like I just feel like it just eats the car. So yeah, I wash my car pretty much once every week, it gets a good little scrubbing.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:28  
Yeah. And I don't I don't watch the Miata that regularly, you know, maybe once a month, because I don't drive it that much. But yeah, mostly, you know, when you're getting bugs and stuff like that splattered over the front of it. I mean, it does have a fairly small frontal area, so it's not that bad. But, and my wife's car, you know, probably gets washed a little more regularly than that. But also both of them get parked in the garage. You know, we don't you know, our cars in the press cars are parked in the driveway and our cars are parked in the garage. So you know, they don't get they don't generally get to filthy. But yeah, I do wash them on a fairly regular basis.

Roberto Baldwin  1:52:10  
We wash our cars every few weeks, so they get pretty filthy. But I have to wash a press car like every week for photo and video. I will be washing a car and right next to me will be my BRC it's just a mess. Because you know is there we have a lot of pollen right now. So every like, every day you go out there cars, I'll have a layer of pollen on them. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:52:32  
we have a pollen season to it comes right after mud season and there's pollen season.

Roberto Baldwin  1:52:37  
So, so yeah, I don't wash them as much as I probably should. But, yeah, yeah, it's Yeah, I think mostly because I'm like, why I'm washing this other car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:47  
You know, the people, the people delivering the cars. You know, they wash them before they bring them to me. And so what I do is I usually within a few hours after it arrives, I will take it even before I drive it, I'll take it and photograph it while it's still clean. Yeah. You know, or if it's gonna rain, you know, go out and shoot it, you know, before before it rains. So I get that out of the way. And then you know, if I'm going to do anything else with it, you know, then I'll wash it

Roberto Baldwin  1:53:12  
again. Yeah, but that's the smart adult thing to do. I'm neither smart nor an adult. I'm just a tall person. And I'll drive the car around and and I'll be like, I gotta take pictures. I've gotten up. I've gotten up the other day. I had to get up at six in the morning to wash the car in the dark to take photos of it. Because I had not even though I'd had it for a week. I had not taken pictures of it. That's awesome. So yeah, I got some nice early morning pictures. But although I could have done that, I could have done that any time but I did it today they were picking the car up.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:53:49  
Alright, well, that's all we've got for this week. Thanks, everybody, and we will talk to you next time.

Nicole Wakelin  1:53:54  
See ya.