Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 243 of wheel bearings, we've got the Honda Civic Si the BMW i Four, Ford hooks up with Alexa BMWs X seven gets a refresh. Genesis reveals the x cpdm and coupe radwood hits the New York Auto Show All that and more coming up next.

This is episode 243. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Guidehouse insights.

Roberto Baldwin  0:35  
And I am Roberto Baldwin from the verge.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:40  
That's a That's a cool name that they have. And unfortunately, Nicole is with a mom in the hospital again, today. Hopefully her mom is going to be alright. And I also have an interview coming up later on with Larry Dominique, head of alpha male in North America, talking a bit about what alpha is doing, they recently announced that they're going to be going all electric as a brand by 2027. And they want to they made some big, they've got some big growth plans, which hopefully unlike the previous big growth plans they had other late CEO Sergio Marchione may actually come to fruition this time. So all that will be coming up later in the show. But for now, what have you been driving Roberto?

Roberto Baldwin  1:27  
So I have been driving the BMW i for i drove this vehicle in Germany, yeah, either earlier this year or late last year, time makes no sense anymore. Anyway, I drove the car in Germany, and I was extremely impressed because you know, BMW had the i Three, the the IAT. And then he just kept talking about this modular factory where they could throw any, you know, powertrain they wanted into a vehicle you could throw it into, you know, you can put an Eevee into an iPhone, or you put a hybrid onto a four series you could throw you know, a gas in this whole thing. And it just felt like for ever before anything was actually out. And then finally the iPhone and the iPad came out. And it you know, all that time was time well spent. Because these cars drive so great. There's it's so I was so impressed with what they had done with the vehicle in order to make it feel like a proper four Series Sedan that just happens to be an Eevee. It does, you know, it does have that heft of the battery. I mean, you can't you can't fight with physics. I mean, you can, you can play with physics all you want. But physics always wins at some point. You have to make a deal with physics. That's essentially what car what car makers are doing. They're just making a deal. Compromise. Let's be friends.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:50  
Yeah, trying to get trying to get a reasonable compromise,

Roberto Baldwin  2:53  
get a reasonable compromise. For the interior feels like a four series. It is the eye x. On the other hand, it feels very spacious, they have little crystal like bits, they have a crystal shifter they got all this, this stuff that makes it feel a little bit more futuristic. Meanwhile, the i Four, which is the I believe the best selling sedan that BMW has. You use it in that and unless someone told you that it was an electric vehicle before it started and you didn't hear the engine, you you probably you know, you'd have to be told. So it's it is a it's very nice. It's very on brand for BMW. I did a range test with it, you know, I do my 100 miles around Northern California. And it did really well. Because it's not you know, it's not as high. You know, it's not all, you know, they didn't sit there and carve everything off of it to make it more aerodynamic the way Mercedes has with the EQs versus the S series. They're just like, here's a four series with a different grill. Well, different a large grill but with different things and some different badging and I don't know if some other stuff it this one is rated this this was the oh, sorry, my mouse froze. Oh no, there goes. Sorry about that. This one is the one I drove was the I four E drive 40. Now it comes with 18 or 19 inch wheels. I drove the 19 inch wheel version. It's rear wheel drive. It has an EPA range of 282 miles which is good, that's pretty good. During my drive, it did 300 Miles according to my calculations, so better. We get an extra 18 miles and this you know, again 50% of the drive is driving at 70 miles an hour with the cruise control on on highway and then the rest of it is backroads and mostly suburban driving just sort of driving around town. Some of this involves going up to 5060 miles an hour in some of these More where the houses are sort of separate from the road, you know, they get to get the suburbanites to the Starbucks as quickly as possible. Yeah, I was really, really impressed with how well this vehicle did. It has an 83.9 kilowatt hour capacity battery pack of that at 1.5%. Or I'm sorry, at 1.5 kilowatt hours is available to the vehicle at any one time, the car told me it was doing 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour, which is

Sam Abuelsamid  5:28  
I mean, that's, that's the same as what I got from the mini a couple of weeks ago. And that's a lot smaller car.

Roberto Baldwin  5:35  
Yeah, that which is really, really good for a car that size, again, that hasn't been modified, really modified to make it any more aerodynamic than the regular vehicle. So kudos to the engineers over there at at BMW and whether they whatever they have been doing over the past few years to make this vehicle a reality and make it sort of a no compromise. Four series that happens to be an Eevee. It's pretty great. The one I had was the the MSRP was $55,400, then, you know, did some paint, some dynamic handling, which was $1,700, a driver drivers assistance package, which is $1,700, which includes the their extended traffic jam assistant, which is their hands off system up to 40 miles an hour on the highway. So if you're stuck on the highway, you're doing on 40 miles an hour, you're stuck in stop and go traffic, you hit the little button on the steering wheel and little light little green light show up on the on the on the wheel itself. And then you're you can do hands free, but you do have to pay attention to the road. Anytime I looked away, obviously, it got very, very angry with me. Yeah, I think the most expensive thing on the list was the $2,400 M Sport Package. Which you know, you're throwing, you're not getting an M car, you're getting an M package. And it has makes it look more like an M car and makes it look more like an M car all set out the door. Six $8,270 with a $995 destination charge which is now on the low side. That's where we are, where BMW is destination charge is on the low side. And this car was built in Munich. In Germany, this car is built in Germany had to come over from Germany, it would cost you more to get to buy a flight probably from Germany right now than it took than the destination charge on this vehicle. Yeah, overall, I really liked it. I'm gonna have a full write up on the verge. But ya know, it's I you know, when you drive when you do a first drive with a vehicle, you don't get to sort of live with it. You know, you drive it for the

Sam Abuelsamid  7:55  
day, you don't you don't really experience most of the quirks.

Roberto Baldwin  7:58  
Yeah, you know, because they have, like, this is the road we've already picked for you. And this is the you know, this is this is what you're going to be doing throughout the day and you don't get to charge it because you know, you're, we're going to charge it for you or be it'll be fully charged. It's a very well handled experience. This on the other hand, when you have it for a week, then you really sort of like see all the little issues that might pop up or all the little like nice things in my papa. Yeah, I am. I really liked his vehicle. Good job, BMW.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:30  
Yeah. You know, and you mentioned, you mentioned the word, no compromise, or the phrase no compromise. And earlier this week, I was at a BMW event in New York. And I heard their CEO Oliver Zipser. Repeat that phrase, many, many times, in the course of a couple of hours, no compromise, no compromise. He was referring to another car, which we can't talk about until next week. But yeah, I think what's interesting, you know, BMWs approach to EVs. You know, they started off, they did the i three, which was as purpose built an Eevee, as you might possibly imagine, yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  9:17  
it's a concept car that they just like, you know, it was just make this.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:23  
I mean, it was it was it was originally conceived, you know, as part of what they, you know, in the, what they originally came up with in about 2007 or eight as their mega city project. They were looking at it from the perspective of as we have the growth of these mega cities, you know, these are cities with populations of over 10 million people around the world. How do we provide transportation in those kinds of cities? How does the vehicle have to evolve for that? And what came out of that project was the i three, and, you know, I, you know, I always thought the i three was a really cool, urban city car. It had At a carbon fiber structure was the lowest, it was the first sort of semi mainstream vehicle ever with a carbon fiber structure. It truly was, I think, in many ways, to the degree that anything can ever be no compromises. And I actually, I've written a blog post for guidance insights my employer the other day about this idea of no compromises and the reality is, there's actually no such thing as a no compromises car. It's impossible. Yeah, I mean, even even a $3 million Bugatti Sheeran has compromises, you can't drive it at that its maximum speed without going through a whole rigmarole of us have different things to get prepared. And you have to use special tires. And you can only drive it at that speed for a short period of time before it completely depletes the fuel in the tank. You know, so it has compromises, the i three had compromises. It was fairly small, so was not for huge families, great for cities. Engineering is always about balancing compromises. And I think what's interesting is BMW strategy. Unlike some of their competitors, who are planning to go 100% Electric, at least in Europe, and maybe in China by 2030. And somewhat less than North America and other markets, their target their stated target is to be 50%. Electric, globally, by 2030, I don't think they've actually given a specific number for Europe, it'll probably be significantly more than 50%. But, but 50% globally, which means that half of their vehicles are still going to have some form of internal combustion, almost all hybridized to some degree or another. And because of that, you know, they're very what I think would be classed as a medium sized automaker, they do about two, two and a half million cars a year. So there are a lot smaller than a Volkswagen or Toyota that does 10 million cars a year. And for them to justify the development of all electric architectures, is going to be more challenging, they just don't have as much scale as some of their competitors do. They are developing an all electric platform for 2025. That has been called the NOI class, the new class. But it's that we don't know, that's going to be several years before we see that in the meantime, everything that you know, now they've just continued the three, they're using flexible architectures that allow them to go gas or diesel or plug in hybrid or battery electric, like the eye for and like other stuff that's coming up. And that I think is more inherently compromised. You know, for example, the eye for you know, it has, you know, somewhat classic BMW proportions, you know, performance car proportions, long hood cabin kind of setback a little bit, you know, that when you look at it, and profile, you know, it's fairly typical of a BMW, or other premium performance oriented vehicles. And there's another one, this other vehicle, it's going to be announced next week, same thing. But despite having all that space in front of the firewall, there's no front storage. There's no front truck, not even a little storage compartment to hold a charging cable, you'd have to put the charging cable in the back. If you take it with you. What do you think about it? Oh, and another one, because it's still using the same common structure with the gas engine models. It still has a center tunnel where the drive shaft would go through, even though there's no drive shaft going to the back. So you lose second rear seat legroom in the middle? Well,

Roberto Baldwin  13:57  
first of all, no one should no no adults who sit in the middle of the backseat. That's, that's just

Sam Abuelsamid  14:04  
for the eye for a reasonable argument. But yeah, it's not the case for all models.

Roberto Baldwin  14:09  
Also the frunk the frunk I'm, to be to be honest, unless the front is huge. I don't care at all whenever someone shows me a front that'll fit like a suit, like a like a briefcase, I'm like who? So? Yeah, I just don't care. It just that's that's likely never ever going to be used. You know, they're, they I think at the end of the day, what people want is a car that drives like the car that they were in before or feels better than that car and I think that's that's that's what that's the Evie thing is that the car is drive better for the most part than the vehicle the other vehicle in the same class, the gas vehicle. And so I think that's what BMW is doing right now is trying to make a vehicle to drives as good as or better than the same. A variant in the gas vehicle and you know, they're, you know, they have many who's going all electric, which is cool. But, you know, they're, they've, they were kind of, I feel like they're almost like GM, where GM was out pretty pretty early with the bolt and before that the the v1, and then they just like, oh, we have Altium. And then we just waited and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. And meanwhile, you know, and I always bring up Hyundai, but Hyundai was just like, Oh, here's a bunch of cars, and we just keep making the same EVs and I think, you know, BMW, they couldn't just come back out with their, you know, this modular architecture and have like, an okay, Evie, it had to be good. And, you know, the, the, you know, the center console or the the tunnel or a canal, you know, the tunnel, the tunnel, I think most people probably won't even that won't even, like crossed their minds, when, when they're when they're getting it. Yeah, they're gonna lose some of that we're that storage that that people have been putting underneath where the tunnel would be. And of course, the the lack of a Frank is, again, to me, unless the front is huge. Unless we're talking, you know, a nice, large trunk, I kind of don't care. And I've gotten well, like if I, if I get a car and the front is I don't even mention it anymore in the US because it's, it's like mentioning, like an, you know, an extra little cubby hole in the car. And I'm just like, Well, okay, well, fine. But step now it's really hard to get to, it's not something you're going to think about, I guess you could put your wallet in there. So people won't that mean, people can still get to it. That's the other thing. Someone was trying to make the argument with me that? Well, you can put things it's more secure might not really because the thieves break into your car and they pop open, you know, the back and they pop open the front I've had I've had parts going off. Because they broke into the car and open the hood and stole parts off of it. Because that's what they wanted. They didn't care was in the trunk. So it's, you know, as more and more thieves are like, Oh, well, there's going to be, you know, stuff up front. They're going to be looking for stuff up. Right. So it's even the security sort of thing isn't I mean, the most secure thing in your car right now is that locking glove box, you know, like the black box, we actually still use a key. That's probably the most secure area of your car right now.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:19  
Although that's not very hard to open with a big screw. No, it's not

Roberto Baldwin  17:21  
very, but it's like, it's the idea of security, like the least, you know, they want to get in and out as quickly as possible. Yeah, it's like if you if your house is locked in your neighbor's house isn't locked, like which one are they going to go after?

Sam Abuelsamid  17:33  
Right. And you know, that's a valid argument, you know that, in most cases, people aren't going to use the frunk. Most cases, it's too small to be useful. But on the other hand, the flip side of that, is okay, if if you're not going to have a front there, and you don't have an engine, you know, you can reconfigure the way the whole car is packaged. And you can shorten up that whole front. And you don't need that giant, long hood, like you have on the i x and the i Four. You know, look, it would be what VW is done with the ID four, and the ID three, you know, if you if you look at him and profile, they've moved the base of the windshield forward, move the bulkhead forward, and they've shortened up that whole front end of the car. Because they're they're not they don't have a front but they're also not having to accommodate an engine in there. And so then

Roberto Baldwin  18:28  
you're asking BMW to make a compromise on design to change the design. And I think we've all learned at BMW doesn't care how

Sam Abuelsamid  18:36  
well that that's a Yeah, actually.

Roberto Baldwin  18:39  
Okay. We have that big thing that like people are like, Oh, I don't know about that. And they're like, now we're just going to keep doing it until you like it. That's that's essentially now like I look at the eye for now. I'm like, That's so bad.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:51  
That's just given up hope. Yeah, you've just like

Roberto Baldwin  18:54  
the Prius, the Prius was never a pretty car. But at some point, you're just like, Yeah, it's fine. We're just gonna keep putting it out and you're gonna like it, whether you like, eventually you're gonna like it, or at least you're just gonna, you're gonna grow to accept it. I think that's what what has done. And I think for them, they're like, we still want to have the cars that look like the cars. Right. And like you said, you know, it's a lot of money to have a dedicated architecture and I I do kind of wish they had gone dedicated before modular, but you know, they I think they were trying to be as cautious as possible.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:31  
Yeah, and, you know, I mean, they they did it before, and it wasn't a huge market success with the three

Roberto Baldwin  19:38  
was disappointing because the three is awesome. Yeah. So many people hate that car. Like they either love it or hate it.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:44  
They and most of the people that hate it have never driven it.

Roberto Baldwin  19:48  
Yeah, you've never driven it. It's a fun little car. It's like a little living room. It's got no it's just this fun little city car. You can park it anywhere. Should you drive should you do a cross country drive in it? Probably not. Not I

Sam Abuelsamid  20:00  
mean, not unless you want it to be a very leisurely drive where you have to stop every 100 miles. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  20:04  
But you know, just cruising around town, especially in an urban or even suburban area, I think, you know, it's a fun little thing. You know, good parking anywhere you want. It's got a sweet little turning circle. It's got just enough room for your stuff. You and your friend want to go for a little cruise around? It's great.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:23  
Yeah, no, I love the three. I'll hopefully, hopefully be getting the high fours in the Michigan Press fleet pretty soon. I'll get a chance to try one for myself. At least, I think they're gonna they're planning to have one at the mamas spring rally at Road America next month. So Oh, at least get to drive one there.

Roberto Baldwin  20:43  
Again, I was I was very I expected to get in it and feel like they had it wasn't going to be as good just because it is the modularity. Wait, you're just throwing this into this? And like the Eagles, except, you know, a bit more purpose built? It's yeah, it's really good. All right, you know, which I missed the Eagle. Eagle back.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:04  
Yeah, me too.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:06  
All right. I had the Honda Civic Si, in Blazing orange pearl. So this is, this is the 200 horsepower version of the new Civic Sedan, there's no no coupe this generation.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:24  
You know, we've talked before about the design of the 2022 Civic, which is a little more tame than before, it's a little less interesting to look at. It looks very much like a seven, eight scale version of the current generation accord. It's not bad. It's just not as interesting as before.

Roberto Baldwin  21:46  
It's just sort of I feel like they've gone backwards a bit when it comes to the design. I liked. I liked the sort of stabby

Unknown Speaker  21:54  
Yeah, I do, too.

Roberto Baldwin  21:57  
You know, it was a little much on the the Type R but that's also that mean, the type bar is a little much period. So yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:04  
But the the the Civic Si comes with the 1.5 liter four cylinder turbo, that's also in more pedestrian civics. But with an extra 2025 horsepower, and a six speed manual transmission and a wonderful six speed it is, you know, aside from the exterior design being tamed down a little bit, and the blazing orange pearl paint, which is an extra $395 really helps to overcome helps to offset some of that. Because Oh, pretty, we need to work the $400 Absolutely, you know, if you're going to buy one of these spring for the extra 400 bucks, and get the orange, it's, it's a fantastic color. The blue is also very good, the A G and blue, I'm really a big fan of that one as well. But the blazing orange pearls is awesome. The version that I had the SI sedan comes in two variants, there's you can get it with all season tires, starting at $27,300, or for an extra 200 bucks, you can get it with summer tires. For a little bit of extra grip, which, you know, unfortunately was kind of cold, most of the time I had it so I didn't want to really push it too hard. But it was definitely it was excellent. Driving this car is amazing. The the engine has just enough power to be a lot of fun, it's responsive, the six speed manual is is great. The interior, while I thought the The exterior was a little bit of a step back the the interior is definitely a step forward from the previous generation. And the seats that they put in the SI are amazing. You know, last last week I was talking about the the Mini Cooper and the fact that you know the side bolsters on the lower cushion, were a little bit too narrow and pressing it on my thighs a bit too much. The the seats in the Civic Si don't have a lot of adjustments, basically for aft height and recline for the seat back. And that's it. But it getting in and sitting in this thing it felt like with race cars, you know they with high on race cars, for the drivers, they actually get the drivers in there and they actually make a custom seat for each driver and mold it to their body. That's what the seat in the SR Civic Si felt like to me. It felt like yes, they measured my body and made a seat to fit me. I don't know how well it fits anybody else but it worked great for me. It was extremely cool. Trouble, very supportive. In all the right places, it was it was near perfect in that respect. And the SI also comes with power moonroof, Bose premium sound system, auto climate control leather wrap steering wheel. And all civics this year at get get the Honda Sensing package is standard equipment, which compared to the previous generation Civic, black to styling is both taking a step forward a step back. On the step forward side, they finally ditched the silly LaneWatch system that had a camera under the passenger mirror that when you put on the right turn signal would display the view from that camera which is basically looking down the right hand side of the car to make sure you aren't clipping the curb, but only one side of the car but yeah only on one side of the car. But they had no proper blind spot monitoring system radar based blind spot monitoring system, the new Civic has gets her LaneWatch gets the rear corner radars for the blind spot monitoring much better cross traffic alert when you're backing out of parking spaces very handy to have. The downside is that while you gain two radar sensors in the rear corners, you lose the front radar sensor for the adaptive cruise control. And they've switched to a system that is only using the monovision camera. So only the front camera above the mirror is now used for Lane Keeping Assist and adaptive cruise control and forward collision alert and automatic emergency braking.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time driving it in the dark. For the most part in daylight hours, the adaptive cruise control actually worked better than I expected to in terms of maintaining distance to the car ahead and maintaining a reasonable distance, it seemed like it was maintaining a little bit longer gap than it would previously with the radar based system that we have in our 2017 Civic. The biggest issue I actually had with it though, was if you have the Lane Keeping Assist turned on, you can turn the lane keeping assist on separately from the adaptive cruise control. So if you have the lane keeping assist on its it has despite the fact that it's basically the same as what was there before using that front camera or looking for the lanes and where you are in the lane. It seems to have a very high tendency towards false positives for detecting for thinking that you are not holding on to the steering wheel because it's using a torque sensor and a steering wheel for hands on so it's very much a hands on system it's not a hands free system. And it only seems to do this when the the Lane Keeping Assist is on if you turn off Lane Keeping Assist and just use adaptive cruise control it it's fine, it doesn't doesn't seem to care if you know if you're holding the wheel very steady or if you're apparently not holding the wheel at all. But if you're using the lane keep if you have the Lane Keeping Assist turned on. Then it's monitoring the motion of the steering wheel to try to detect that your hands are on the wheel because it wants to make sure that you're keeping your hands on the wheel. And like I've experienced previously with Ford and Lincoln vehicles with their blue crews that use a similar system for hands on detection. It has a lot of false positives, it's very regularly wanting me to put my hands on the wheel when my hands were in fact on the wheel

Roberto Baldwin  28:44  
and having to wiggle your hands a little bit so yeah isn't yellow, even though your hands have been on the wheel the entire time.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:49  
The problem with this system though, is after about four or five instances of alerting you to put your hands on the wheel. If it continues to detect that then it disables not only the Lane Keeping Assist, but also the adaptive cruise control. So and there's no way to get just regular cruise control. So if you're doing a highway drive and it thinks that your hands are off the wheel, it will turn off it will disable the adaptive cruise control until you cycle the ignition

Roberto Baldwin  29:24  
so on long drives, if for some reason you just aren't fighting with the wheel every you know 20 minutes you just turn off the lane keeping assist us don't even Lane Keeping Assist. Yeah, well that's that's that's that's unfortunate. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:39  
Which is what I ended up doing. I just turned it off and said forget it. I'm tired of these false pot false alerts that my hands aren't on the wheel.

Roberto Baldwin  29:47  
On one hand you have the you have the people who are like you know what, radars kind of expensive? How about we just, we just kill that and just use one camera. That will save us some money on the on the other hand, you have the lawyers like hey, if you're gonna do Do that, in order to reduce our, you know, our liability, we're gonna make it. So if you're using lane keeping assist with this one camera, we're going to make it so you have to really just be wiggling your hands the entire time,

Sam Abuelsamid  30:13  
I would rather that they spend the extra 30 or $40 on a radar sensor. And that's all it costs. I mean, modern radar sensors are not very expensive, you know, it's like less than 40 bucks apiece, just put the radar sensor in there,

Roberto Baldwin  30:29  
just throw the radar sensor and charge an extra $500 for the car.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:32  
Or if you want to, if you want to try to detect hands on the wheel, put capacitive sensors in the steering wheel, don't try to use the torque sensor to detect hands on the wheel. Because it's a terrible way to do it. It's a very, it's very unreliable, and very annoying.

Roberto Baldwin  30:48  
And it requires people to like just wiggle the wheel, which is something you do in real life, you don't you're not just wiggling the wheel.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:55  
Well, I mean, the presumption the presumption is that you're going to have some motion on the wheel, you know, your hands are rarely going to be completely steady. But if you are actually somebody that holds the wheel, very steady, long straight highway drive, then you're going to get false positives. It's dumb. And as I've said before, this is not a problem unique to Honda, although the particular issue of them disabling the cruise control, when it detects too many hands off the wheel incidents or parent hands off the wheel incidents, then get makes the problem worse. So just stop or just turn off the lane keeping assist when if you get one if you get a new Civic and just don't even use it, because it's not worth

Roberto Baldwin  31:37  
it. But the flipside is they have like one of the best manual transmissions.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:42  
They do. Which

Roberto Baldwin  31:46  
Yeah, which kind of offsets I'm gonna I, you know, I really want Honda to be, you know, I really want the Honda II here, by the way, but a Honda Civic, you know, Si, that's an electric vehicle that would be outstanding. But also, I really don't want that manual transmission to ever ever go away. I don't know how they you know, if make them make the Honda makes such a great transmission. And I'm really going to be sad when it finally goes away. But kudos to them for continuing to offer it though. So yeah, fives to everyone at Honda for that.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:18  
Absolutely. It's it aside from that, that annoyance with the link keeping the Yeah, is this this is a fantastic car.

Roberto Baldwin  32:27  
Yeah, if you do like long drives in your car pretty often that's gonna get really annoying.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:32  
Yeah. And it's got decent sized trunk. Yeah, I still prefer the hatchback, you know, having the big opening in the back, because it's great for putting big stuff in the back. But the interior on this one is really nice, feels definitely more premium than the previous generation. The Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support is very good. What else Oh, and it was also surprisingly fuel efficient. I got it's rated at 27 City 37, highway 31. Combined, I was actually averaging about 35 combined with it. So I was very impressed with that. Very, very pleased with that. Other than that, you know, it's it's a great car, including the $1,015 delivery charge, two grand total came up to 28,710. the only the only option on here above the 27. Three, for the version with the high performance tires was the $395 paint. Everything else was it was included a standard. So Civic Si Great choice.

Roberto Baldwin  33:53  
That's pretty great when you just have like, this is the base model. And it has a lot of cool stuff. It's the SI, which is the base for the SI, but you don't have to like, you know, keep optioning to get all the cool stuff that they had they that's available. So yeah, I mean manual transmission.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:10  
Yeah. And the the, the the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support is also wireless. So you don't have to plug in via USB. And there is a wireless charging pad in there. So you can just drop your phone on there or leave your phone in your pocket or purse and it will automatically connect when you get the car so that's also a good thing. And, you know for there's also one of the things that they've got in here is rev matching for downshifts. You know, if you you know, obviously you can still do heel and toe and then flip the throttle yourself. But if you choose to be a little bit lazy, it'll do just use the clutch. It will it will make sure that the revs are perfectly matched. Can you turn it on into gear? I don't think so. I didn't see it in there. And I like the idea

Roberto Baldwin  35:01  
of like a mom or a grandmother just cruising around town and just rep. Matching as they're going to the store because they really live, they've had a Honda Civic since the 70s. And they really love it. And they're like, you know, they've always driven a manual. And now they're doing rev matching. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:23  
So that's the 20 to 2022, Honda Civic Si HPT, sedan HPT for high performance tires. Alright, a few news items from this week, we have Ford announced a partnership with Amazon expanded partnership with Amazon to embed Alexa voice services in sync four. And Ford was one of the first automakers to have support for Alexa in their in their vehicles. But originally, it was implemented using sync app link. So you had to have the Alexa app on your phone, and then have your phone paired to the car. And then it would it would do that. So you could use your dual Alexa voice commands from your car through your phone.

Roberto Baldwin  36:17  
Which again, I've done it a couple of times, it's a kind of a pain in the ass.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:20  
Yes, pretty, pretty clunky system. But since then, other automakers have actually fully embedded Alexa voice services in their vehicles, including steel, Lantis, and GM, and I think a few others. And now Ford is doing the same thing. And I got a demo of it when we were in New York. And one of the nice things is because it's embedded right in there, you can you can actually use multiple voice assistants in your car, you know, side by side. So in the case of the the Ford implementation, you can say, okay, Ford or okay Lincoln, for some of the embedded Lincoln Ford commands. Or you can say Alexa. And if you happen to be using, have your iPhone or your Android phone paired up, you can do Siri or, Hey, Google. And you can all of these coexist side by side. And you can you know, depending on what it is you want to do use one or the other. The Alexa stuff is actually integrated with some of the vehicle controls like climate control, volume, and assorted other stuff. And they will be adding more functionality to that over time. So you can if you're, if you want to turn up the temperature and the climate control, you can say, hey, Alexa, I'm cold, or, you know, set the temperature to 75 or 60, whatever you want. And it's, you know, the system works pretty good. The interesting thing, you know, when I was sitting in the demo in the car and a Lincoln Navigator with somebody from Amazon and somebody from Ford, I asked the question, so you've got all this great integration here. Is there anything here that's actually unique to Ford, that, you know, that you can't do in a still antas vehicle or a GM vehicle that has the same capability, I think kind of hemmed and hawed and while we've really worked, worked tightly with Ford to integrate this in here, and made sure it works really well. But ultimately, the answer is no, it doesn't do anything you can't do in any other vehicle that has embedded Alexa. So if you like, if you like using Alexa, now you can have it in a new Ford vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  38:40  
You can have like a bunch of friends. It's like, you know, if I don't have friends, I have an Alexa, I have paid for it. Or hey, Google, or you can have a conversation on the phone. You can get them to talk to each other you make you know, you know, full on conversations. It seems like a win win forever. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:56  
Well, what would be nice. And a couple years ago, 2020 ces, I was at a dinner with the Amazon team. And Ned Couric, who was then had in charge of Alexa automotive, and since moved on to become CTO at still antas talked about this idea that they were working on what they'd ultimately like to do is not just have these things coexist with each other. But, you know, not not have to require users to specify a particular wake word, but just be able to issue a command and have the system figured out Okay, which of these assistants that I'm running in parallel here can actually execute this and then just automatically route it? That would be nice not to have to remember which one can do what

Roberto Baldwin  39:48  
Yeah, cuz you have to figure out like, which of your three friends can do a thing like one friend is really good at like volleyball. Really good at math. You're like, hey, Fred, can you help me with my with my mathematically Oh, I meant to ask Phil dammit. Yeah. All right, that would be nice.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:08  
someday maybe we'll get that. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, BMW has released a refresh of the X seven midcycle update on the X seven. What do you think of this?

Roberto Baldwin  40:26  
The Yan was not because the x seven just because I'm yawning. Oh, you know 7x? Seven? It's big, three rows, giant giant grill. I mean, well, I think I think we talked about this beforehand where the grill doesn't look as big as it used to. But it's again, it's an optical illusion.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:45  
Yeah, I saw I saw the X seven, the updated X seven in person on Thursday. And one of the things that they've the big thing that they've changed in the front is the lighting on the front. So instead of having a single, slim headlamp cluster with dual lamps, and each one kind of the, the, the evolution of the classic BMW four lamp for round lamp. Look, the they've gone to this horizontally split set up that looks very reminiscent of a certain Korean premium brand. By the name of Genesis.

Roberto Baldwin  41:26  
It looks like a kitty cat. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:29  
So you know, the upper slim part has the signature lighting, the date and the daytime running lamps. And then the actual headlamps are in the lower portion. And because the combined height of these two segments, horizontal segments of lights is taller than the single cluster that they had before. It's taking up more of the height relative to the grille. So it creates this illusion that I asked BMW sacral smaller than before. It's a no, it's actually slightly larger, but it looks smaller. It looks smaller than before. So it's I guess it's better balanced than it

Roberto Baldwin  42:09  
was. i Okay, so the i x when I was in Germany, I guess I don't know, I guess it was Germany. And I was driving the car. And I'm like, so about the kidney girls. And one of the things is like, what else would be there? And I'm like, well, that's not really an answer. A lot of things could be there. They don't have to be as big as this. Well, since

Sam Abuelsamid  42:31  
you don't have a Frumkin there, you could actually instead of having this long horizontal hood, you can lower it down, slope it down a little bit. Yeah. You know, go go back to the look of the the original aid series from the late 80s. Early 90s. Yeah, or the M one.

Roberto Baldwin  42:48  
One? It's yeah, it's it's yeah, no, I think it's, you know, it's, it's a midcycle refresh. It looks nicer. I do like the kitty cat eyes. It does look like a kitty cat, though. If you look at it, it looks like a kitty cat that's down, like ready to pounce a little bit. But not at like that. That's its nose is the grill and those are ties. You put some little ears on this thing. And yeah, it's a little cat. For reals.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:16  
Yeah. They also made big changes to the interior. So they they went with the the large curved, single panel, you still there's still two displays in there. But the single large curved panel like you have any iEX. Now is the big change inside the excuse me inside the X seven.

Roberto Baldwin  43:42  
Yeah, that new their updated infotainment system, which is, which is nice. It's weird because on that eye for like, you can show apps that are part of the car or you show all apps, and it pulls in the apps that are also on your phone. So like Electrify America or charge point like any of that, like most of the like the apps that have my phone are also available there. And of course you click it and it goes into to CarPlay. But there's so many apps at that point that it's a little like it's too much because you don't swipe left and right. You swipe up and down. And that so you just go back to the regular apps are like okay, okay, it's too much.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:20  
So so it's automatically pulling in any CarPlay compatible apps that are on your on your phone, and yeah, shows the one there. And then yeah, we'll launch carpet. Okay. I know that. Yeah, it's

Roberto Baldwin  44:33  
interesting. It's, you know, but you also could just open CarPlay and open those apps as well. I think that's a lot. That's a much easier navigation, because the All Apps thing again, it's so overwhelming, because it's all these apps and you have to scroll up and down as opposed to left and right. Yeah, so it becomes it's very much something that your your passengers should be doing. But if you just hit the car apps like just the BMW app, then it's fine. Then it just has like a nice grid of like, you know, you're not swiping up and down because this this is what's available. There's a few other things in the All Apps, but for the most part, everything you need is in that that area, then of course, you have all the little panels that you swipe left and right on with the homescreen.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:13  
One thing that didn't do was add a passenger side screen to this thing, just

Roberto Baldwin  45:19  
ah, I mean, you.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:24  
I'm not complaining.

Roberto Baldwin  45:25  
It's nice. No, I think it's nice that you can if you want to watch a movie, you can do so without holding an iPad the entire time.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:30  
Yeah. So there's the rear seat passengers, you know, they still have a rear seat entertainment system. Yeah. So they can have their own screens.

Roberto Baldwin  45:39  
But yeah, if you're sitting in the front and you want to watch, I don't know, cartoons or a movie or some sort of Jane Austen film. You could do that in another car. Or you can just do it on your your iPad. Yeah. Aren't you just sleep?

Sam Abuelsamid  45:54  
There's a thought. All right. Also at the from the New York Auto Show this week. Genesis did not have I mean, they had a stand but they didn't do a press conference or anything at the show. They did have a little event at their genesis house in Chelsea. Which, unfortunately, I was not there. But they showed off a new concept and Evie concept as a calling the Genesis X. I don't know if it's justice extra Genesis 10. I'm not sure I have to double check on the correct pronunciation of that. But the Genesis X medium coupe, which is an Eevee luxury coupe. And it's, that's got an interesting evolution of the Genesis look at transform because you know, because you don't need that massive grille. They've kind of taken some of that shape and done it with lighting on the front. And it's got big flared out fenders like a 1980s IMSA GTO car what do you think?

Roberto Baldwin  47:07  
It looks really I like the idea of taking that wing the Genesis or the logo and creating this almost triangular shape in the front so it looks a little bit like a Cylon. It looks cool. It's you know, I think we talked a little bit about the the front of the BMW and the front the hood of this thing. It's just, it's about five, six miles long from and then the back is a hatchback. So it's everything. It's like, they were like, hey, you know what, who who would like this automotive journalist? Should we make it brown? Now? Let's not go that far.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:43  
Oh, they didn't make it green.

Roberto Baldwin  47:44  
They didn't make it green. Which

Sam Abuelsamid  47:45  
a nice shade of green. Yeah, it's a pretty sweet so you never know they might offer it and brown? I'm sure they probably they do production version.

Roberto Baldwin  47:52  
I mean, there's a lot of things that are gonna have to obviously they'll have to change for to make it road legal, but not too much. I think. I'm curious how much of this is going to make its way into production vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:06  
I would guess that based on these pictures here looks like it's probably about the size of a God maybe maybe the next next generation GT might look something like this.

Roberto Baldwin  48:23  
It looks dope. Yeah. If I can the whole hot Hyundai Motor Group.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:31  
Well, they one of the things they did at the at the Auto Show was they had the the World Car of the Year awards. And Hyundai just killed it. They got four, four of the six awards. Went to Hyundai Luke Dunker walk there, Chief, creative Chief, chief creative officer and head of design for the whole group over Hyundai Kia and Genesis, one person of the year. And then the ionic five won three awards for overall World Car of the Year. World Electric Car of the Year and design of the year.

Roberto Baldwin  49:11  
I'm a World card, the World card juror. And I am sure there was other people, but I nominated Luke for that. I think, you know, we got to, I mean, liquid, they're doing liquid, this person needs to be recognized. I think, you know, it's a lot of times it's a lot of, you know, it's the CEOs and CEOs, you know, they they guide and they make sure that things are happening in going correctly and they sort of you know, they're the captain of the ship. But I mean just I mean part of the engineering they're doing over the handmade group is great but the a lot of the learners those designs are just so so different and yet so compelling. And yeah, I was afraid that the Evie six and the ionic five were going to split the vote. That's that's that that was what because there were Almost the same car, and then it really comes down to well which one do you like better because neither car is bad either car you get is going to be a great experience. But which one do you prefer? And I prefer the ionic five. So I was kind of happy that one but yeah, the Kia people should not be disappointed because I'm sure the the Evie six is probably second on that list.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:22  
Yeah. And the the two awards that were not won by Hyundai Motor Group are actually no sorry is three, three awards that they didn't win. The world urban car went to the Toyota Yaris Cross, which is similar to the Corolla cross we get but smaller, same idea. So a crossover ish variation of the the RS, the world performance car went to the Audi e Tron GT, and the world luxury car went to the Mercedes EQs. So of all of these vehicles, the only of all the winners, the only one that was not electric was that Toyota Yaris Cross, which is interesting as the world urban car, you would think that the urban car winner would probably be electric, or at least hybrid. And that's the only one that was not.

Roberto Baldwin  51:15  
Yeah, I wrote a my column this week. lifewire. Yeah. About this about how you know the EVs are the best cars now, except for the urban vehicle, which is, which kind of shows like, you know, a lot of these urban meals, they're small, they're inexpert, they're not, they're inexpensive, and we don't have like really small inexpensive EVs outside of like the mini se, that, you know, or the the Mazda that they build a Mazda MX 30. Yeah, the MX 30. But really the mini sc. And so it's yeah, it's it's a it's a part of the growing up well, that, you know, we needed inexpensive. You know, EVS for people in cities where they can, you know, they don't have to be huge. They don't need a lot of a lot of range. And, you know, the the ers process isn't available in the United States, because people in other countries are more than happy to buy smaller cars. Well, you know, US consumers are afraid that we're gonna die. We're in a smaller car. Again, with the Hummer on the road. I mean, that's that's a valid concern, I guess.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:20  
Yeah. I mean, the Hummer would probably run over something like that not even notice it. Was that. Speaking of stuff that you would notice, one of the one other stand that they had at the show was a radwood display, which was kind of interesting. They had a bunch of 80s and 90s cars there. And radwood. For those not familiar with it is this show that been going on? Oh, 567 years now. Started off in California. They do a bunch of them now around the country. And I think Haggerty just recently purchased red footed fi.

Roberto Baldwin  53:07  
Yeah. Haggerty Haggerty just just bought redwood. And

Sam Abuelsamid  53:11  
so there was some really interesting cars, and there's about a dozen cars on this on the stand. One of which I have never before seen in person, and it was the one that first caught my attention. There was a 1991 Jaguar XJ r 15. Back in in the 89 or 90, when Jaguar was very successful in Group C racing, TW or Tom Walkinshaw racing, which ran the Jaguar sports car program built a batch of these SJR fifteens, which were basically LeMans race cars. And they did a a one off spec series with these things. And it looks like there was only 28 of these ever built. And it's a really cool looking car. And so they had one a yellow one on display there.

Roberto Baldwin  54:17  
I can't I can't imagine only in one of 28 of of a of a car. That seems like too much pressure.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:23  
It's even more rare than the 250 GTO. Yeah, I

Roberto Baldwin  54:27  
don't I don't I don't want that car. I was just like, you know, the cat's gonna jump on it and scratch it or, or you know what, there's a fire at my house. You can rebuild a house. There's only 28 of these. Now, it's too much. It's too much pressure. Like, whenever I get to drive a concept car. It's a little unnerving because there's like one or maybe two of these in the entire world. They're like, Hey, let's go for a drive and I'm like, okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  54:52  
yeah. Well, and the thing about radwood You know, most of the cars you see at radwood You know, oftentimes are you know, kind of beaters or, you know, there's certainly 80s and 90s models but they're, they're much more conventional. They're not, you know, they're not these extremely rare machines. Like one of the other ones that was there, or they had there was a 1990 Nismo pulsar GTR which was the basis for Nissan's rally car of that era. There was also a Ford Rs 200 Evo, which, you know, the RS 200 was Ford's Groupby rally car that they built, which unfortunately, by the time it got to competition, I was ready for it really ready for competition. The group beat the whole group group B category had been cancelled, because they determined that it was actually way too dangerous. And sitting next to the the RS 200 was a Citroen Citroen BX four TC, which was their group B homologation special. And for Group B manufacturers only had to build 200 examples of the car. And some of the other classic Groupby cars were the latch at delta S for the MG Metro six R four, which was one of the the failed Groupby cars. And, you know, these things were just insane insanely fast and powerful. And most of them

Roberto Baldwin  56:36  
and teeny tiny and essentially like him can't kill Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:40  
So it was pretty cool to see some of these machines there.

Roberto Baldwin  56:44  
So it was this was just put on by Haggerty or it was it just or was just a sort of just someone with a lot of money who had a bunch of 80s cars and had

Sam Abuelsamid  56:53  
no it was it was it was rad. Would that put on this display there?

Roberto Baldwin  56:57  
Okay. Yeah, there was a Haggerty it was a Haggerty jam.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:02  
All right. So if you if you hear this this week, and you go to the New York Auto Show, if you're in the New York area, and you go to the auto show, make sure you head towards the back of the hall, back to if you're going into the hall, to the left, or to the right of the Chevrolet booth kind of behind infinity I think find find these, these this Haggerty display. It's it's some really cool stuff there.

Roberto Baldwin  57:30  
You see one of 28 cars in the world? Don't touch it. Yes. Don't let your children don't, don't. Don't Don't try to save on it. Don't try to sit in it. I have a fun. Before we move on. I have a fun story. When you have the concept cars at shows. Sometimes they're they're not like working vehicles. They're they're essentially just mock ups there. And I was at a show in Geneva most of the time, actually. Yeah, most of the time. I was at a show in Geneva and there was a vehicle that they were like, at one point, they said I could get in the car to do video. And then they were like, No, you know what, nevermind. You can't, I'm like, Yeah, that's fine. I understand. You know, you only have one of these costs you $1 billion to build. I went back later to do some more shooting. And they had to put the steering wheel back on because a journalist had gotten in the car and had grabbed the steering wheel to like sort of prop the you know, to help pull themselves into the vehicle. They weren't supposed to be in the vehicle, they waited until security was looking the other direction. And they broke the steering wheel off. Oh, so So the moral of that story is don't get in the cars that say don't get in the cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:35  
And, and you know, if they happen to have the car on display, and you're shooting, you're photographing it or taking video of it, if you know if they've got the doors open and you want them closed for a shot. Don't try to close the doors yourself. Or vice versa if you want if you want to get shot interior shots, don't try to open the doors yourself. Let somebody that knows what they're doing. Because usually these things are very fragile, and, you know, barely held together and and sometimes things work in weird ways and you probably won't be able to figure it out on your own.

Roberto Baldwin  59:09  
I was in the Mercedes Benz C 111. Which is this this car that they've built yesterday. That's amazing. And so it has gullwing doors. And when they were closing it, they're like, oh, we'll close it because there's like a weird thing. And I was like, okay, yeah, more than happy to just sit here while you close the car. When I when we when we got back. I could open it. But closing it because the mechanism I think they had like maybe like jiggle the handle, you know, to close. But yeah, so you know, just Just don't touch anything.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:39  
I have had the opportunity on a few occasions to actually drive concept cars. Back in 2007, Ford had three concepts of the Detroit Auto Show, and that summer they did an event at their Proving Grounds, where we actually got to drive all three of them. That was the the Lincoln MKR if you remember that one Um, that was the one that kind of previewed Lincoln's new design language which has since been superseded. They had the Ford interceptor I think it was a big full size sedan, and the airstream van concept, which was that one was, as it was shown on the stand, it was described as having a fuel cell plug in hybrid powertrain. But the reality is the actual vehicle had an internal four cylinder internal combustion engine mid mounted in there,

Roberto Baldwin  1:00:35  
just to move it around, essentially just push it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:40  
Yeah, well, the interceptor concept is big, great big blue sedan had a five liter crate motor in it, that had a carburetor, a big four barrel carburetor on it. And when they did this event, it was in July, and it was very hot and very humid that day. And so we would take like one lap, and then it would have to stop and sit there for for 10 minutes to cool down because it kept vapor locking and it would stop.

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:10  
Vapor locking is something I do not miss. We had a we are my dad's to 60 Z would vapor lock, you just be driving and also it'd be.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:19  
So alright. Let's answer a couple of questions. And then I will attach the the interviews at the end of the show. Start off with Adam J. He's got two questions here. Or maybe it's just one. So is there any justification for having a front wheel drive electric vehicle? I always thought that front wheel drive was better when the motor was up was up front, because that's where all the weight was. But an Eevee that isn't necessarily the case, especially with skateboard platforms. If I get the Eevee if I get it to evey. Oh, hold on. So he's referring to here to the the Toyota BZ for x. And so says if I get an Eevee was based on a front wheel drive, Ice Vehicle, but notice that the new Toyota BZ for x, y d y d u underscore J half joking there has a front wheel drive option? It's a new purpose built Eevee? Why would they not make the options rear wheel drive and all wheel drive? So the first part of this, you know, part of the reason why you know we've had predominantly front wheel drive cars over the last 3040 years turning the engine sideways news and driving the front wheels, you can have a more compact drive train you putting more of the weight over the drive wheels. So it can be a little more stable get a little better traction and poor weather. And you don't have to package a drive shaft or anything down the middle. You're right. If you have an Eevee you don't have to do any of that you can put the put the electric motor in the back, as VW has done with their MDB platform. And a lot of other automakers are doing Do you have any thoughts on why they would do front wheel drive?

Roberto Baldwin  1:03:21  
I think for the average person, a front wheel drive is actually a bit more safer. When it comes to driving. rear wheel drive, you're more likely to encounter oversteer than your understeer in vehicles, but I don't think that's a good excuse. To be to be completely honest, I think it's maybe, you know, it's because you know, our Kona is based on a gas architecture. So it's front wheel drive. And I really do wish it was rear wheel drive, but it's fine. It's you know, whatever, fine. But yeah, I don't I you know, I had that rear wheel drive I for and I did get the backhand out a little bit more often than I would have, you know, if I had a front wheel drive vehicle, so maybe that's the reason maybe just this is how we built it and people are used to front wheel drive. I'm gonna let you Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:23  
If you you know the an electric motor and the electric powertrain is going to weigh less than an engine, it tends to be very small, more compact than internal combustion setup. Still, if you're going to have just one motor, putting that on the front axle, you know, it is going to have more, it is going to be a little safer, a little more stable for most drivers. Like you said, you're not going to have that understeer or oversteer. I mean, you know, it's whatever weight you have is being put over the steering wheels. So you know In poor and poor traction conditions, it might be a little bit easier to to drive a little bit easier to steer. But since all this stuff is electronically controlled anyway, there actually there is one, there is one other major advantage to going front wheel drive, as opposed to rear wheel drive under braking, when when you're decelerating, you're going to have weight transfer onto the front wheels. And so if you look at your car, you'll notice that your front wheel your front wheel brakes are much larger than your rear wheel brakes because under the harder you break, the more of the braking effort that's coming from the front brakes because you're unloading the rear axle, so you can't do as much braking force on the rear axle. And because an Eevee depends more on regenerative braking, if you have a rear wheel drive, Evie, you're not going to be able to recover as much energy from regen. I think this is actually the main reason for doing front wheel,

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:01  
the pole star the pole star to the single everyone thought was going to be rear wheel drive and it was front wheel drive,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:06  
right because you can do more regen off the front axle and you can off the rear axle. And so you know if you can do more regen, you can recover more energy into the battery get a little bit more range out of it. So I think this that's actually the primary reason more so than the vehicle that vehicle dynamics are I think are part of it. But the the ability to do more regen off the front wheels is the main reason why you would want to go front wheel drive. Yeah, said Toyota doesn't really believe in really strong region anyway. So do you know they could have gotten rear wheel drive? If they wanted to just

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:42  
you know, that's Toyota's turn it doesn't want to do this stuff? Yeah, I mean, when I Subaru is like, yeah, we gotta find it's the same.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:58  
All right. The other question we got was from car snob, that's what that's a great name. By the way, that's what two A's between the N and the B. So I'm assuming he's he or she or they are fans of no longer produced Swedish cars. Why do electric vehicles have what why do electric vehicles not have multi speed transmissions?

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:26  
I mean, for the most part, they kind of don't need it. I mean, you just you can go you can do the the full gamut of how fast you want to go with a single gear you know with a single system that said you know, TT icon, the E Tron GT, both of those have to two speed transmissions. So you know, as you get to higher as your drive, the quicker you go, that sort of goes almost into like an overdrive system, but you kinda, I still think we could probably come up with multi speed transmissions for, for electric vehicles, it works well and in those two vehicles, but it also adds more complexity, it adds more money and EVs are already too expensive. Maybe in like 10 years when the prices have gone down. Someone will come up with like a really sweet, maybe it'll be Honda maybe a Honda will have a really sweet Civic Si with a six speed manual. With a with an electric drive train or powertrain.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:17  
Well, the Jeep Wrangler Magneto that they had at the Easter Jeep Safari this year mobile app has a six speed transmission.

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:27  
lower speed. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:28  
they kept the standard six speed gearbox and two speed transfer case. Actually, no, I think I don't think it has the transfer case, I think, or doesn't have the two speed transfer case, because they don't do the torque. But just the six speed gearbox. You know, doing, doing a multi speed transmission with an Eevee is more problematic, because you have reason why you don't do it, because you have basically continuous torque from zero RPM all the way up to whatever the maximum is, which is usually somewhere between 10 and 13,000 rpm. And because you have that peak torque, pretty much all the way through its operating range. You know, the reason for doing multi speed transmissions in the first place, his internal combustion engines tend to have a much narrower band where they get their peak torque might be a modern turbocharged engines, you know, it can be as much as three or 4000 rpm but older engines, it was only one or 2000 RPM where it was near its peak. And the rest of the time you were we had much lower torque. And so you needed a multi speed transmission to multiply the torque, especially to get launched and to get off the line. You don't need that with an Eevee. And then on top of that, because that Eevee is making that peak torque all the time and it doesn't. The torque production doesn't really drop off so much. You know when you lift off the accelerator, like it does with with an internal combustion engine Shifting, reliable shifting is also becomes problematic. Because you actually want to reduce the torque during that shift. So you're not you don't you're not having all that force on the gears as you're trying to engage them,

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:15  
you're going to destroy second gear is what is what?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:19  
Well, and this is what happened to Tesla, when they originally designed the the original roadster it had, it was designed for a two speed gearbox because they needed that they needed a lower gear to get the zero to 60 and four seconds that they were targeting at the time, and then still be able to have the maximum speed that they wanted to have, like 120 or 130 miles an hour. But the problem is the their original vendor for the think originally they had x track designed to gearbox. And these things were lasting like a few 100 miles before they were destroyed. And they eventually went to to BorgWarner, who designed a two speed gearbox for them. That also did not work out so well. And well, actually no, they went to Magna, and then they went to BorgWarner Magna tried to do a two speed gearbox, which didn't work out. Then they went to BorgWarner, who designed just a single speed gearbox to go with a redesigned motor that Tesla did, that had a wider operating band. And they were able to achieve their original specs with just a single speed setup. But yeah, I mean, it's it can be really hard to do manual transmissions or multi speed transmissions with internal or with electric motors.

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:40  
When you when you do a retro mod, and you you throw in an Eevee into an old car, you know, if as a manual transmission, they said, you know, just leave the transmission in there because it's too you know, you have to do all these, all these other modifications to the vehicle as opposed to just connecting the motor or the motor directly to the transmission. But everyone like you can't take off in first gear, they can't take off it like in second or third year.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:07  
You just put it there, put it in third gear and just drive around that way. It's never touched the ship.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:11  
There's so much torque that you just don't have an irregular car. If you try to take off the first gear, you know, then you're just melting.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:18  
Yeah, and if you try to take off in third gear with most internal combustion engines, you'll just stall the engine. electric motor won't do that. It'll, it'll just pull no problem at all.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:28  
Yeah, we'll maybe we'll get like two speed manual or three speed manuals like at my parents all GMC truck, three hills speeds to

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:36  
get there. There are a couple of cars I have been able to launch actually in fourth gear. One was the Dodge Viper and death machine. Yeah. And the other was the the C five c six Corvette ZR one with the LS nine, supercharged V eight in there. And I'm sure you know, subsequent iterations that probably could have done that as well. Because I remember back in the 90s when I was in England, one time I was reading one of the British car magazines. This was in like about 93 or so when the Viper had just came out and just come out, and they were doing a comparison test between the Viper and a Ferrari 348. And they did acceleration test from 10 to 120 miles an hour. And the when they did it, the Ferrari initially pulled ahead of the Viper. But then the Viper caught up and passed it and left in the dust. The difference was the Ferrari start Yes, was in first gear at 10 miles an hour and went through all six gears to get to 120. The Viper did the whole thing and 100 and fourth gear from 10 to 120 miles an hour and for

Roberto Baldwin  1:13:58  
so little and a little bit less torque at the beginning but then once it caught it's bad. It's gone. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:04  
So alright. That's it for this week. Keep listening for interviews with Larry Dominique and Shelly Pratt, the wagoneer marketing manager, and we will talk to you next week, when hopefully we'll have Nicole back. But Robbie will be gone because he'll be on vacation in Hawaii. Hawaii, be laying on the beach

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:31  
are swimming when it's either one of those things. They're laying on a beach swimming or eating pineapple or fish. That's it. That's the only four things I do in Hawaii.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:40  
Those are the only things you really

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:44  
um, well yeah, but the hiking to the beach, the hiking to fish. But any sort of hiking isn't isn't isn't service to one of those four

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:52  
things. Yeah. All right. Talk to you all next time. Bye bye Today at the New York Auto Show, I had the chance to sit down with Larry Dominique. He is the head of alpha male North America. We talked to him a couple of months ago, when the new Tonale compact crossover was first announced about what they were doing with NF T's around service records for the Denali. This time we talked about alpha males future plans, particularly around electrification. Recently, it was announced that alpha would be going all electric by 2027. And have a listen. So alpha has been making some moves recently. Obviously, you've got the canali here for the first time in North America. But the big news is that the brand is going to go

Larry Dominique  1:15:46  
all electric. We are going all electric. So you know, one of the things one of the things week that Carlos Tavares recently announced in the dear forward 20 years, we would become carbon neutral by 2038 as a company globally. And as a part of that the premium brands are going to lead the way. So when I see premium brands in our umbrella we have miles red is a global luxury brand. With a global premium brand. We have two other regional premium brands, ds and Matsui. So we are going to be the leaders in moving into electrification. So we made the conscious decision that as a performance brand, there's no limitations to electrification to live on the alphas and the Alpha performance. So we made the decision to jump forward in that and be the first Atlantis brand globally to go full electric. Here in North America, we certainly will be and we're starting the net first, first execution will be 2025. And everything we build after that will be driven up. And although we'll have some new models coming after 2027, by the end of 27, we're not going to sell it anymore. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:50  
I was talking to Nick earlier and he mentioned that alpha is actually fairly comfortable right now. Which given it there's been a lot of skepticism about alpha, the alpha male brand over the last five or six years. You know, everybody loves driving the Giulia and Stelvio including myself and the Forsey when when it was still here. Never really seemed to catch on from a volume standpoint, the way it was hoped when it was relaunched. What's what's going on with alpha, the alpha male brand now,

Unknown Speaker  1:17:24  
the three questions so when when, when I came into North American market, and Jonathan Ferrara was assigned as the global brand CEO for alpha male, I had worked with him for four years. My American market, they were Carlos asked to translate to an alpha male, he went from the largest volume highest profit brand and inside the PSA portfolio to one of the smallest brands unprofitable at the time with alpha male, but he could bring all that experience. And when he reached out to me and asked him if I helped him with with this resurrection of the brand, so to speak. So what we did in 2021, is we both know, we both know Carlos, we've worked with him a long time. If you're gonna sustain your future, you're gonna build your future you have to be you have to fund your future as a brand. And that's doesn't matter which brand you are in. So what we did in 2021, is we took that opportunity to look back. What had we done since it was introduced in 2014? That was right, what was wrong? What do we need to fix what had with them? So when I looked initially, we had low transaction versus low customer satisfaction, relatively low throughput at our network standpoint. So we said, you know, we got to use us right away, we have to, we have to take a different mindset. The first thing I did is separated people that were in these cross functional brand functions. And we started with a dedicated Alfa Romeo organization, both regionally and globally. So we got people that live and breathe alpha male every day. And the competitive side, we also started thinking about how are we selling our cars, what's always penetration, we were too high in lease, our pricing was too low. Our supply was inconsistent. So we just looked a lot each blocking and tackling, which included and probably one of the most important because are we driving the right customer satisfaction through the transaction? Or are we as a brand treating our dealers and our customers the right way our dealers transacting and selling. So three days into this job, I had a meeting with all the dealers and I said, Okay, guys, the world is changing. I'm not your traditional retailer, guy, trust me, I'm an engineer. I'm a product planner. I'm a quality guy and manufacturing guy who has done everything I can up to selling the car. But I understand brands, and there's 10 brand strengths. And I said if we don't treat customers right away, if we don't build the right quality, and I said it starts with us as the brand. I've got a guarantee and I'm delivering great quality out of casino to the ports to your dealership for you have to guarantee to me, you're treating the customers the right way, the way they expect to be treated at a premium transaction level. And what we saw through that process, as we saw not only some SSI scores go up pretty dramatically in our CSI moving, but we saw higher transaction prices last year in a marketplace of premium they went up about 15% We went up 22% So we raise prices, which at least 10, down, we support down. And the dealers after a while they're like, Oh, I can't be making all these changes, but after like six months are calling me up saying like, I'm just selling to customers I never imagined I could sell to before this guy crush up to us Brand X around why they decided to buy us. I've got my dealers, I have a new dealer here in Manhattan, I said, Larry, I just got to get people in the front door. Once they see it, once you drive, man, I sold it to him. So I know we can sell the vehicles right away. And so we did all this in 2021. And just to get stability, or we want to be volume and profit and stuff. But we're in the right direction. So like get turned into the brand profitable, we were able to lock in the future for a long strategy with me. So we've got five products in the Core Model strategy. Focusing on C, D and E segments. I can't say specifically what we're gonna be building and stuff but but from a direction. So I protected the highest volume highest profit segments in the North American market. So we're going to as we start launching these new products with tonali. And then we start switching the BV versions and 25. It's going to be one year after another new product.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:04  
So is that CDA? Is that just for North America? Or is that your global global

Unknown Speaker  1:21:09  
core mousetrap?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:12  
One of the big challenges with every manufacturer every legacy automaker, going electric, has been dealers, you know, and especially here in North America, a reluctance by a lot of dealers to really make the push to sell electric vehicles because of the fear that they're going to lose out on service revenue after sales, service revenue and things like that. And for years, there's been complaints from customers going in with the intent to buy an Eevee. And the salesperson director tried to try this one out. Like just how have the dealers taken to this announcement of alpha going all electric? What's what's been the response to that?

Unknown Speaker  1:21:53  
So from a dealer standpoint, so right now we have 16, dealers in Canada, 134 in the US and nine in Mexico. We are we are to a point now I think we're about at the right size. From the standpoint we're very agile network. It's not, it's not this massive number of outlets and dealers and dealer partners to pivot the brand and start to think innovatively and think out of the box a little bit relative to consumer services, digital tools, electrification, whatever it might be. So we had the first ever Alpha Male MC meeting at the NADA convention in Las Vegas. And we got about 50 dealers there. We it was relatively late when I called it but we really get them, we started talking about electric. And the response from the dealers University was very positive. Now, when I think about a lot of what you just talked about, if you've got a portfolio of 11 vehicles in a portfolio, and two are electrified and nine are not. There's this interesting dynamic that exists in the show. And if but if you're a premium brand with a limited number of models, and you're 100% Evie, you don't have that sharp, you know it's making, what that does is it allows the dealer to focus on training and understanding electrification to the nth degree. It allows us from a marketing point of view, to focus on those markets and in the EDI message. But the messaging is not specifically the messaging for us as Alpha Man. This is an alpha.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:18  
And we're designed to get that alpha male flair to it

Unknown Speaker  1:23:21  
correct. And we look at why people buy esterday number number one and number two or the way it looks no way it performs. And I guarantee you electrophilic Federer I give looks and performance.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:31  
But it won't sound like a Giulia Quadrifoglio he

Unknown Speaker  1:23:33  
won't sell like a Bentley a quarter folio. But when we start talking about what's the visceral feeling that the customer gets in the car, whether it's acceleration, deceleration, lateral G's, whatever it might be, the sound that the vehicle makes, which we're still defining some of those metrics, we believe we can give the right kind of experience to its customers. Because once people drive electrified vehicles, they sometimes forget about the vibration from the engine, because of the acceleration field, the instant acceleration. So I also feel very confident because we're drawing in some of the youngest demographic of any premium brand in the United States. Average age is about 44. We're already touching. We're already by Sunday, a lot of millennials a lot of Gen X's. So we're not trying to be a seven year old brand pivoting to a 45 year old brand. 44 year old brand, abroad, and that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:21  
fine. And that's that's really the core of where Evie buyers are today.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:25  
It is. And we're already fluent 150,000 plus. So if you look at our networks, where we are today, where we have the highest density of our networks, Southern California, northern California, New York, New Jersey, South Florida, these are these are, by definition going to be heavy eating. So we're making sure we have the right right outlets right partners in the right locations. We're going to make sure we really focus over the next three years without first pure benefits to how we're going to market how we're going to communicate to our customers how we're going to train the salespeople. And on the fixed upside. We're actually fortunate to a certain degree we don't have a huge you Yo, we don't have dealers today on the alpha male side, dedicated to a certain number of repair orders, they're right every day and covering their fixed ops costs. The goal for us is to make money on the front end. And then fixed costs will come with fixed costs, revenue will come with that volume. But the dependency on it doesn't exist today to the same degree doesn't some of the bigger legacy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:21  
Okay, great. That gets me to my next question. One of the other challenge for dealers is as they make the transition to electric, they will have to make some significant investment. And up until now, at least in North America, Alfa dealers have not not necessarily sold as many vehicles as they would have hoped when they when they launched the brand. There sounds like they're all prepared and willing to make that investment to support EVs. And

Unknown Speaker  1:25:52  
so we actually still Lantis because we have electrification coming in all of our brands, we've been working with a company called future energy, developing electrification strategies, your plan with our dealers to help them assess their needs and help them assess their infrastructure. So and we had, we had the fastest signup rates of any of this branches brands for alpha male, okay. Now, it's also important to understand because we share 65 rooftops just deal with Missouri, we have 15 rooftops that are alpha males, karate and Fiat. I have about 40 that are alpha Fiat. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:28  
we know the body, dealers are going to be going electric as well, they've got more

Unknown Speaker  1:26:33  
incentive to correct

Unknown Speaker  1:26:34  
and some of the most profitable stores are those stores. So when you're talking about investment and stuff, I think they see the broader scape built up for the team over miles, right are working really hard to move Mazal righty, in the direction that we're trying to move our brand. There's the luxury brand, we're the premium brand. So the electrification is going to be liquidus in the premium environment for us. So how we get the dealers thinking about together and collectively syndrome,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:00  
you mentioned earlier started to get more conquest sales for alpha male, what what brands are people coming to coming to alpha from?

Unknown Speaker  1:27:11  
So the good news is most of the inflows we're seeing now are other premium brands. Two years ago, wouldn't have been the case, we saw a lot of high end Honda's Toyota's move ups, we're at a transaction price point I mentioned that 22% increase year over year, we read the transaction price point where someone could either buy a high in mainstream media or they could buy an alpha male. But that's not a sustainable position for brands. So with increasing the transaction price, the dealers are learning how to market to a broader premium customers that have done market. And that's allowed us to have a higher contrast ratio. JD Power has just recently showed that alpha actually has very strong loyalty numbers. My problem is my awareness is low. So my job as the brand owner is to expand that awareness.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:54  
Anything else about what's going on with alpha? We should be thinking about.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:00  
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that we've done that I think are core to sustainable future as well. One is complexity. We've cut complexity 10x In the last year, so we had way too many herbal combinations you could buy, you can get a yellow caliber with everything a red caliber with everything. You just can't sustain nowhere from a plant quality point of view, dealer order, complexity, customer shopping complexity. So we've been very, very strategic in our Sprint's at TI Veilleux chain Quadrifoglio planning, you've been able to push the mix up. So we're seeing a lot more T eyes and below trace level, which is now our volume model for both Stelvio and Giulia. And I expect it will be as well for tonali. So we've been really smart on the complexity side. On the on the supply side, we've done two things, one we're working with, with Europe, to have a much more steady supply coming from Europe, no, no fits and starts. I don't want this kind of inventory adjustment. I want it to be like this. More boats coming to the to the US getting more cars on all the boats coming. At the same time we've gotten to work with our dealers we had, we had an uneven distribution of inventory, we had dealers that were struggling to earn inventory, because they weren't selling cars. It's kind of a self fulfilling chicken egg thing. So we helped those guys get cars by getting some of our dealers with volume to sell some vehicles to them. And we guarantee a relegation battle for those folks. So we're spreading out the inventory, getting our sales tried to spread out more evenly. And we did a special allocation just a couple of months ago for the 22 and the 22 model year. That's going to get pretty more inventory into these slower, historically slower markets to see if we can stimulate those guys. And I'm pretty pleased with the progress. So you

Unknown Speaker  1:29:32  
got a green car and you're I got a customer wants forever. You don't and I get a premium for the car. Exactly what that person. Let's figure out a way to make that. That's great.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:49  
And then Denali is coming early next year, early 2023.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:52  
So production will start q4 European production just started. They launched this I think they delivered the first decal in June. Um q4 for us so we'll start with the two liter Jimmy and and the P M will follow shortly thereafter. Any other

Unknown Speaker  1:30:07  
KPIs visiting plans?

Unknown Speaker  1:30:09  
Yeah, as I mentioned, the dealers you know, quality starts with us jauntily literally visits, casino and open the Galliano every single month with Richard schwartzwald who runs global quality for scientists to do a quality review three months in service reviews, supplier quality reviews, he is pushing, pushing, pushing, and that three myths numbers just keep dropping. So I'm really happy with the numbers coming out of casino right now and I don't have anything coming from directly out yet. But the numbers guy casino are world class. So I'm starting to see it at the dealership level. Customers are very

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:44  
well thank you very much, Larry.