Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 244 of wheel bearings is just Nicole and Sam with the Mazda CX nine the Infiniti QX 55 Toyota four Runner The Lincoln star concept, the new BMW seven series, the Jeep Grand wagoneer for BI E, the Lexus RZ 450 and the Subaru soltera. All that and more coming up next.

This is episode 244 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:32  
And I am Nicole Wakeman. And I'm back and I'm from Let's go. Let's just go out of a tail out of I tell CNET and who else to throw him where Kelley Blue Book.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:42  
All right. That that makes up for the fact that Robbie is not here this week. He's lazing on a beach in Hawaii. So we now Yes, we were working.

Nicole Wakelin  0:53  
Yeah, that's it. Forget it.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:55  
Unless he decides to take us with ticket tickets with him next time.

Nicole Wakelin  0:58  
We could have recorded a Live episode from the beach.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01  
Wouldn't it be awesome? Amazing. What there's waves crashing track crashing on the shore in the background. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:08  
I could just put a toes in the water. Just make sure we don't get electrocuted. I'm sure we can make this happen.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13  
I miss Hawaii. I gotta go back.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15  
No, it's definitely nicer the New Hampshire in April.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18  
Although it was pretty beautiful here this weekend that ad to yesterday and sun was shining. On

Nicole Wakelin  1:24  
it's a whopping I'm looking at my watch. It is 45 degrees here right now. It's a bit on the chilly side. But things are turning green finally. And there's like little blooms and all the trees, whatever the white trees are. There's these flowering trees that have little white, little white flowers and every single one in the entire neighborhood when in the last few days. So it looks pretty

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43  
nice. All right. What do you been driving in your absence?

Nicole Wakelin  1:47  
In my absence, I've had two vehicles the vehicle I had first I'll talk about first I had the 2022 Toyota four runner, which I really want to love because it looks cool. And it's like burly, and it's an SUV, you can do stuff and you can go off roading. And you can run through snow banks and you can load it full of stuff. And hey, if they put a roof rack on top, which I will talk about you couldn't put stuff on your roof. It's sort of in its it's sort of like a rough and rugged SUV. If there's nothing refined, I mean, really, there is nothing refined about this. It is $45,000 as mine was equipped, I think the extras were probably about four grand on there. So it's probably about 40 41,000 I think before you added the little bits and pieces 370 horsepower V six 270 pound feet of torque, it can get out of its own way it has you know, it's it's fine to drive it has plenty of power. What is not fine? Is the comfort in the road noise honest to God, that thing is loud. And they had a roof rack. And I'm I didn't see it. Like I literally look like is this listed somewhere on my Monroney? Like what is this roof rack. It's got to be a part of some package that is, you know, officially a Toyota thing. But I don't see that specific list of but it came with it. So it's got to be Toyota as it created. And on Godley amount of wind noise when he got to about 4550 miles an hour. So as soon as you hit the highway, the resonance in the car and the window is it was terrible. And like everybody noticed it. My husband and a state my daughter noticed it took my brother in law and his wife out to dinner. They're like, wow, this car is really loud. Like it was noticeable. So, you know, refined, it is not now it would have been better without the roofrack I mean, that was really 95% of the problem. But still, you can still hear the tires, you can hear the road like it is not a quiet. It's not quiet. It's like bouncy, bouncy, and I'm thinking of Tigger. I don't see bouncing. Without the Fun Fun, fun, fun fun. I just I want to like the foreigner because I feel like people like yeah, I read her and I'm like, Oh, can we update this a little bit? Just a little. Just a little just go ship and update.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:55  
Yeah, a little bit of suspension refinement little session tonight.

Nicole Wakelin  3:59  
A little bit of so my big test case for all the vehicles is the Sullivan tunnel tunnel as you're coming out of Boston's airport. As you're coming into Logan Airport, you have to go through this tunnel, really long tunnel really horrific road surface. There's parts where the left lane to the right lane aren't the same level. There's parts where the pavement has like giant chunks missing out of it. There are seams in the pavement.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:21  
I felt like a typical Michigan road. Yeah, exactly. It's

Nicole Wakelin  4:24  
been paved, like at 50 different times. So there's 50 different types of pavement. So if a car doesn't have a good suspension system, this is the test case and going through that it was one of those it was so rough and so bouncy that I actually felt myself easing up on the gas because I'm like this is actually going to toss me too far left and right as I'm driving like you lose a little your control isn't good enough and you're in this narrow little tunnel with other cars next to you and you get that you know you always have more room in a tunnel than you think you do. But you really don't feel like it when you're driving this and the road is crummy, like you could feel that it just it is not refined, I guess If you're gonna just take it from your driveway to the dirt Who the heck cares? But if you're gonna drive it on the road Oh my favorite Sam not my favorite.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:09  
Well, I was just as you were talking I pulled it up on the the Toyota website the building price site. It looks like that roof rack is actually standard across the board. Is it really even on the base SR five model?

Nicole Wakelin  5:20  
Oh people take that off. Oh my gosh, it's terrible. Is that really standard I use? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  5:26  
I'm looking at the base model had to put it together. Oh, dollars. It's got the roof rack on it. Yeah, there are which trim Do you have?

Nicole Wakelin  5:36  
I have a double checking here I have sorry. Monroney minimun Here we go. It was the it says it turn a foreigner blah blah, blah. four by four trail.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:50  
Trail is all it says trail Special Edition.

Nicole Wakelin  5:54  
It must be the trailer Special Edition. It had the like the TRD like the big TRD skid plate on the front the front plate that the you know, TRD PRO exhaust running boards and something called Keep it wild savings, which I know is not a feature. Keep it wild savings. Yeah, premium audio that kind of

Sam Abuelsamid  6:13  
thing. Yeah, that both the trails Special Edition and the TRD PRO have different roof racks on them. That so the all the other models just have a standard, you know, just the like straight rails that run along the length. Okay. The trail has got a roof rack that's like a cage on the Yeah, that's

Nicole Wakelin  6:32  
what this one was. It was like a cage, which is why I'm like this can't be seen. Yeah, mine. Oh, it's this whole rack thing. Don't put that on there. I don't. I mean, it looks cool. Like and in fact, it was funny because it made it really easy to find it in a parking lot. Like you look over this SUV like

Sam Abuelsamid  6:47  
there's some overlanding you know might be useful to you. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  6:50  
but if you're an everyday and you plan to even remotely drive this on the highway even once in your whole life, don't the roof rack it this this rack? Not cool? It is really, really loud.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:05  
Okay, is that even with the windows closed? And yeah, it

Nicole Wakelin  7:09  
was the windows are fully closed. So we had the windows completely closed. And when you're just driving around town, it is like f 45 ish, maybe 50 where that sound like you don't hear just driving around town. You don't hear it at low speeds. But as soon as you reach like it, you start to get into those highway speeds, the way the wind cuts through and just the resonance of that extra chunk of metal being on your roof. You hear it it is terrible. And it wasn't like it was this horrible, like horrible. Windy Day. Every single time I got up to highway speeds, I noticed this. So it's something about that. That rack on this car or this SUV just thumbs down.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:48  
Yeah, I can I can definitely see. Yeah. So oh, this is a I'm looking at the details. It's a Yakama Load Warrior cargo basket. Okay, hold on there. That's that's what it is. So, yeah, this this is really designed more, you know, for people that are doing more off roading overlanding with a foreigner. And if you're using it as a daily driver, really, or using something like this as a daily driver anyway,

Nicole Wakelin  8:17  
it looks really cool. Like yeah, I just Googled it. You're right. That's, that's kind of awesome. And you think it's good. Like, if you're looking at buying this, you're like, Oh, that looks really cool. I might use that the one time I go off road. Yeah, but the other 9000 times you just drive this. You're gonna wish you didn't have that on your roof.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:33  
Yeah. I mean, you got come as a known brand. They make a lot of good accessories for, for especially trucks and SUVs. I know Ford offers a lot of Yakama stuff as accessories for the Bronco and Bronco sport. And I would assume, because it looks like you know, this still has the standard roof rails, and then the cargo basket. This is you could probably remove it. So if you're not using it, I would, you'd probably right, you probably want to take it off. Take it off just on those times when you actually need it.

Nicole Wakelin  9:06  
Yeah, because otherwise it's it's it's awful. So you have to be prepared to either deal with the noise or you know, take it off of the roof if you're not using it all the time. And if you're someone who's like, Oh, well I you know, it's like a 5050 I may or may not well, you decide if you want the noise or if you want to be bothered with removing it but it definitely definitely makes for a loud driving experience.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:29  
Sounds like it. Yeah. But even even without, you know, aside from that, you know, it's the right quality sounds like it's

Nicole Wakelin  9:38  
the right quality and it's it's it's yeah, it's it's the you know, this is an off road and the trim I have that the trail trim. It is the off road trim of this. It's probably the least refined, I guess Sam I would say of all of them probably. But it is so unrefined that it is it is not enjoyable to drive at all at highway speeds. And even just driving around town, it's perfectly adequate. It's not like you lose control just driving down the road or something or it's awful. But it's it feels like you should be in the dirt. It feels like this car desperately wants to be in the dirt, it wants to be off pavement, it wants to be someplace where there is mud and muck, which is great, and which is super fun, and I love doing that. But it is there's no balance there. Like when you take it on the road, when you're just doing a highway drive, when you're just tooling around town, it still has that sort of awkward bounciness, that sort of unwillingness that you get in something that's off road capable. So if that's all you're looking for, you're really focused on the off road capability, if you really are going to be someone who goes out there every weekend, and that is your 100% your focus and you're probably not going to be bothered, you're probably going to love it off road. But if this is like someone who you know, five days a week, you're going to the office, once every month, once every couple months, or even just on a weekend here and there, you're gonna use that for off road, you're taking a pretty hefty sacrifice for those rare times when you do go off road. So I think it definitely leans very heavily to wanting to be in the dirt into being not well mannered or smooth. Or, you know, I'm picking on it for not being refined, refined makes me think, you know, sound like I'm talking about expected to be a luxury car. I don't. But it's it's it's definitely not a like a long distance highway drive to get to where you're going off road. Oh, boy, that would not be fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:24  
Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like there's there's a, you know, for something like that there's a lot better options that have, you know, similar or better off road capability. But you know, are also a lot easier to live with on road.

Nicole Wakelin  11:40  
That's the thing, it's like, it's not as if there's only one vehicle that will do this kind of thing. There's a lot that will take you off road and take you off road pretty well. That also when you take them on road, you think okay, this is totally fine to go to the office, you know, it's totally fine. For tooling around town, this is totally fine. It's 65 of the highway that are still more than capable of getting you most of the places you want to go when you're off roading. You know, not hardcore offroaders but that's a different animal altogether. But for the casual the here and there the sometimes the weekends. There's a lot of cars that do it better. So I think that's if there weren't cars that did it better. I think it'd be less bothersome to me, but it's like, wow, there's so many there's options out there people, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:21  
and how much did what was the bottom line price on

Nicole Wakelin  12:25  
the bottom line was 45 and change. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:29  
yeah, I mean, it's not, you know, base prices, looking at those, you know, base prices, compared to some of the options like especially jeeps, jeeps have climbed up in price quite a bit in recent years. You know, it's, it's a little more affordable than then some of those. But, you know, that's that's still a lot of money for something that is going to be really uncomfortable to drive most of the time. That's it,

Nicole Wakelin  12:53  
it's you know, you're you're not getting like if you were paying if you're paying cheap car prices, I don't even know what I consider really cheap if I was getting some cheap little, you know, crossover or something and the ride was like, but it let me go in the dirt. But I was gonna beat it up. Okay, fine. I'm getting what I'm paying for really for $45,000. You you want the car to you want to be able to live with it, you know? And I feel like it's pushing it. It just means it needs an update. It feels desperately like it needs.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:21  
Yeah, well, this current generation of the foreigner came out in 2009. And even then, it was the like, the suspension was not the most state of the art that you could get on a on an ESA kind of midsize SUV. So

Nicole Wakelin  13:36  
Right. And I think that's it. I think it's just it's it's feeling its age, you know, and the more time that goes by and the more other OEMs are refining their comparable products. The more this feels less and less acceptable, I guess. Yeah. You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  13:51  
all right. Cool. What, what else did you have?

Nicole Wakelin  13:55  
Well, the next car I had was vastly different. I had the 2022 Infiniti QX 55 in the sensory trim, all wheel drive. This has a two liter two birch tuber turbocharged engine 216 horsepower, 280 pound feet of torque. It's like small, I want to call it a crossover. I don't know what they I think they had a funny word. And they call this something fancy. Like we had a

Sam Abuelsamid  14:21  
they had some praise for it. It's it's the sort of coupe ish version of the QX 50. You take a cue x 50 and you slice off the the back part of the roof behind the C pillar. And now you have a QX 55

Nicole Wakelin  14:37  
And now you have a character 55 It does have the neatest little I love little design things that are completely unnecessary but fun. So when you open the tailgate, you know normally until the Chiefs have to put your hand under somewhere there's a little pad that you push or something. This one it's like in the Infinity logo. There's a little button that you push and it pops open.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:55  
Oh is that where it is? I cannot find it. When I drove one a few months back. It's in like

Nicole Wakelin  14:59  
it's a Little trying. It's like a triangular piece. It's like it literally is a button that just you know, for your finger to press. It's not even like all your fingers. Little button in there.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:09  
Honey did that first a few years back on the Sonata today. Yeah. Within the within the Hyundai logo on the trunk of the Sonata. Yeah, they, they did that. And it was not at all a visible switch. So basically, the one segment of the Hyundai logo, I think was the lower segment was like a soft touch. You press it and the switch was behind it. And you press that and the trunk would pop open.

Nicole Wakelin  15:36  
Yeah, so this isn't the kind of dealio they sort of like tucked it in there. So it's kind of neat. I thought it was kind of fun. I like this. I mean, it's not. It's an Infiniti. So this is a luxury car. This is luxury pricing, the one I had as equipped, it was $60,495. So it's not inexpensive. And I want to say the base on this one was 57. So they put, you know, maybe $3,000 worth of extra goodies. There was a lighting package on there. I got fancy paint. There was a cargo package on there and there's a hitch they actually called a lifestyle hitch I just lifestyle.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:15  
Does that mean that it's really meant more for like hitch mounted bike racks than for actually towing a trailer?

Nicole Wakelin  16:21  
I'm feeling like probably because you know what, I don't have the tow rating at my fingertips. But I can imagine that this has this is not going to be what you're going to tell your horse trailer.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:31  
No, no. Absolutely not touring any horse to the lifestyle

Nicole Wakelin  16:34  
stuff. But I you know, I like this. It's weird because I feel some people are not keen on infinity they you know that it hasn't. Some things haven't kept up. Excuse me, guys, some things haven't kept up. But I actually like Infiniti products. And I like this one. I think it's a good vehicle. I think it's a little high on the price side. But the interior is beautiful. And a lot of what your you know, a lot of a luxury car is that makes it feel luxurious, how it looks and how it feels, you know, the passenger comfort level that are you creating that experience inside the car. And it does like this one has like a darkish red, they're not really burgundy, but it has like red leather seats. And they're very, you know, they're sort of bolstered and they really hold you in. It looks attractive, it's very, very quiet even on the highway. It's extremely quiet. The right is extremely smooth passed the test coming from Logan Airport like to go from the foreigner to this like within the course of travel through the tunnel I was like I don't have to ease up on the gas at all. I'm just going very very composed and you don't need not only do you not feel those road imperfections, you don't hear them because they're two different things. Sometimes the ride is smooth, but you sort of feel like you hear that rattle you can almost hear that your tires are bouncing you can hear that parts of the car that maybe isn't the passenger car but you're there's bouncing you don't hear or feel anything which I think is a good mark for a luxury car which you shouldn't hear or feel that stuff that's you're paying for to feel like you're riding in a beautiful little luxury vehicle. It has a good range of driver assistance features they have pro Pilot Assist, which is the sort of intelligent cruise control slash lane keep slash drives for you but not quite situation that Infinity has. Overall I like this and you know, it's a nice car to drive. It's a good size. If you're looking for something compact. If you really need cargo room, it's way too small. You know, it doesn't have a huge cargo area. It's that cargo light kind of car, you know, you're not packing for your family of four for an entire weekend. You know, going camping or something. But if you need to throw your luggage in there to get to the airport, you can do that if you need to throw stuff in for a project home, you can do that. A day shopping or venturing or the kids stuff that you're throwing in the back of the car. You can do that. So it's this night, I think I think it's a nice little crossover. And you don't see a ton of them it was all new furred. What was it all new for 22 hours and only for 21 was

Sam Abuelsamid  18:58  
2121 it was it was launched in the fall of 2020.

Nicole Wakelin  19:04  
And I know it was like right in the middle of pandemic Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:08  
I think it came out as a 21 like a mid or late 21 mob. Okay.

Nicole Wakelin  19:12  
So it's you know, it's so it's relatively it is updated. You know, it's not like you're looking at something that hasn't been refreshed in five years or in the case of other cars. We figured out 12 on the poor four runner, but so I like the infinity but I am overall I like infinity vehicles so it's no surprise to me really that I like this. It isn't a super aggressive power train, isn't it super. It isn't super over the top and it's luxury, but it's a nice balance. You know, it's well mannered. It delivers some luxury, it has nice audio, it has nice seats. It has a nice ride. It looks kind of sleek with that little coupe chopped off the back kind of look. So it's sort of checks a lot of boxes. It's not excelling at one but it does all these things quite nicely and quite well. So for 60,000 I mean the pricing is a little on the high side you can probably get other comparable ish thing. This becomes down almost to a matter of style. Like when you're buying luxury cars. Do you like how it looks and feels? And does it make you feel right behind the wheel? Does it fit your personal, like feelings about what a luxury car should be? If it does, this is a great choice if it doesn't go to the next guy, but I think this is a solid choice.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:17  
Yeah. So in the owner's manual for the QX 35 the section that starts off with towing a trailer has one line do not tow a trailer with your vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  20:30  
So it literally says lifestyle hitch suddenly,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:35  
lifestyle receiver cannot be used for towing a trailer only use the lifestyle receiver for receiver mounted accessories that meet the below requirements maximum allowable load 300 pounds, including the weight of the installed accessory carrier.

Nicole Wakelin  20:48  
Like the bike rack, couldn't some bike racks can can barely put a bike on there.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:53  
Yeah, probably, you probably put a bike, a bike ride

Nicole Wakelin  20:58  
a bike rack that holds like two or three bikes on a little arm thing. Yeah, if you could see me, I'm trying to demonstrate like Sam has no idea what I'm talking about.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:06  
No, no, actually, I actually have one of those racks in my garage. One of our previous cars, he had a hitch on there that I put on there expressly for that purpose of when the kids were younger, you know, it was such a pain to use the racks that you had to strap onto the back of one of those it was awful. It was a receiver, you know, the tow hitch rack, which was so much nicer. And I still have the rack, even though we don't have a hitch, receiver hitch on the on the car anymore,

Nicole Wakelin  21:38  
we still have a rack from our, from our old Jeep that we haven't, but it's this cool thing. It's like a rack that folds down and let you put stuff in it. And then it folds up flat. Yeah, you can buy. So it was really cool. But we got that we said, We'd love that thing full of stuff. Those little racks are great. If you don't actually want to tow a trailer, there's a million little cracks in sort of random accessories, you can stick on the back of a vehicle, they're awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:01  
Or, you know, I mean, if you if you have mobility issues, and you use one of those scooters, yep, or wheelchair, things like that you can you can get things that will go on the back there, you can put that on there, or, you know, load some coolers or extra cargo. And in fact, you know, if you're not going off road, that's actually probably a better way than putting a rooftop carrier, you know, it's gonna be more, it's gonna be less aerodynamic disruption. Yes, putting it on

Nicole Wakelin  22:34  
you. It's funny, because we have this our little rack in the back, we had this, you know, of course, it's low, it's coming out from, you know, the hitch and it, but we had a thing we put on there, there was maybe two or three feet tall, and it was this bulky, like mess of stuff that we put there. And you never The only thing we ever had to watch out for was there's a little note braeswood stick on the dashboard. So like remember that your longer than you think you are right now a couple feet behind you. But like as far as like noise or anything, you never notice the noise, you never even really noticed the weight of it. I mean, it wasn't a huge amount of weight, a little weight to the vehicle. But that was great. And you never heard it. You know, you didn't hear that you had seven, we've had racks we put on top, just random bags and stuff. And you do generally hear that if you do the ones on the back, you don't hear I'm just putting them on your dashboard. So you don't back into something thinking that you're two feet shorter than you are now.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:22  
What did you think of the the engine? Have you driven infinities with the variable compression four cylinder turbo before?

Nicole Wakelin  23:29  
I believe I have? Well, I've driven this before. So this isn't the first time I've driven this, but I I'm fine with the engine. I mean, it's what don't let me double check. So is that 268 horsepower? This isn't a huge vehicle tune. 16 horsepower is pretty competent to move it along. To I feel like it's this super aggressive. World's shattering or shattering engine? No, but I was I felt like it was fine. I think it worked well, for the QX 55 What do you think, Sam? Are you not a fan?

Sam Abuelsamid  23:57  
No, I like it. You know, in terms of its performance, it's it's more than adequate. It's got got plenty of power, plenty of torque. It's it's quite responsive. The I think the only issue I've had with it is, you know, the the fuel economy is, is okay. You know, I mean, you pick up a couple of miles per gallon compared to what you would get with a V six and there, but it's not, you know, it's it's not earth shattering in terms

Nicole Wakelin  24:26  
of a great Well, this one, because I have the majority of my hand it gets 22 City 28 highway for 25 combined 25 mine for a car this small and it's you know, and that's not It's not horrible, but it's not really great,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:40  
either. Yeah, you know, it's in the same ballpark as what you'll get with, you know, most other vehicles of the size with a two liter turbo, you know, 250 to 270 horsepower range. You know, they'll mostly get, you know, in that mid 20s range for fuel economy, which is you know, it's okay, if you're in California I was earlier this week, and gas is six bucks a gallon, you might want to rethink that a little bit, you might want to go to something a little more something with a plug, probably,

Nicole Wakelin  25:12  
yeah, that's the thing, you can get something with a plug, especially where gas prices are high. I just like the idea of getting something with a plug, because I feel like it gets you to try something like we're all really used to, you know, gas powered cars, whatever you don't think twice about them, you know, when they just have a traditional gas engine. But even just moving to a hybrid, or plug in hybrid requires a little bit of a mindset change if you haven't done it. And I think like you and I, Sam, because this is what we do for a living. Those are no big deal, whatever. But for a lot of people, there's still a big switch. And I think going and getting something with a plug kind of teaches you what you how much you can save on gas, like there's a there's an environmental impact, but there is a cost savings to to that, you know, and Whether gas is six bucks a gallon or, or here, it's about four bucks a gallon, I think right now or even when it gets down. If it ever does, again, let's all hope to something less, you're still paying so much less for the electric power. And it's you know, and you're helping the environment, I think it's I think it's worth people investigating going that route to see. Just like consider making a change, consider that give it a try. Come forward with us into the future and try something with a plug or at least a hybrid.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:22  
Well, we'll be talking a lot more about cars with plugs a little later on. But so it sounds like you mostly like the QX 55

Nicole Wakelin  26:31  
I did. I like it. I overall I like it. I think the pricing may be a Scotian the high side for what you get. But I do like the QX 55. And it would be something that I'd recommend for someone looking for a, like a luxurious, responsive crossover. That's yeah, I'm Thumbs up for the QX 55.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:46  
And one other thing to note, I can't remember if you mentioned the QX 55 You know that pricing gets 55. Unlike the QX 50, which you can get with front wheel drive, or all wheel drive kicks 55 is all wheel drive only. There's no There's no front drive version of it. So that's

Nicole Wakelin  27:01  
what you're getting. So that's 60 grand and all wheel drive vehicle. So your your which adds a couple 1000 Depending on the OEM you're talking about. So you know, take care, you know, which I guess is a boon for me here in New Hampshire, because I'm always gonna buy a will drive. But I guess if you do live in California, you might be paying for something you don't really need, but we'll see.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:20  
Yep. All right. So I had a substitute vehicle. I was originally scheduled to have the Toyota Corolla cross. So I haven't actually driven the Corolla cross yet. But I had the Mazda CX nine signature, which I've driven before. And, you know, so this is, this is Mazda's largest vehicle, which is, you know, by Mazda standards, it's a fairly large vehicle. Yeah. But, you know, by the standards of the general market, it's on the smaller side for a three row crossover. You know, it's, it's a little bit smaller than something like the Hyundai palisade Kia Telluride, you know, even Toyota Highlander class, which means that it's, the back seat is a little bit smaller than what you'll find in a lot of the competitors. So if you really need to use the backseat a lot, regularly, especially, you know, for older kids, you know, like teenagers, they're probably not going to be real thrilled to be in that third row. But other than that, you know, I mean, I really, you know, I generally really liked this thing. You know, I think it's, it's, it's, I think it's one of the most, one of the best looking vehicles in the segment. It's, you know, like other current generation Mazda has, you know, it's got that same kind of design language to it, you know, which is fairly sleek, sophisticated, not cluttered with a lot of extraneous details in the design. The signature, which is the top level trim that I was driving, is, it's got a little bit different grill to it than some of the the other trim levels. So signature, it's basically fully loaded. It's the grilles, got a titanium metallic finish. Napa leather trim seats on the inside comes also come second standard with second row captain's chairs with a center console, instead of a bench seat. So it's it's a six seater. Technically,

Sam Abuelsamid  29:36  
all the CX nines have the same 2.5 liter turbocharged four cylinder engine, which you can also get variations of this engine and a number of other monster vehicles now like the CX 30, and the CX three, and also the CX five

Sam Abuelsamid  29:55  
250 horsepower, 320 foot pounds of torque. It's got plenty of time. plenty of performance. You know, it feels good. Sounds good. Nothing, nothing to complain about, from a performance perspective, the one area where I, you know, getting back to the question of fuel economy, you know, it's rated at 20 miles per gallon city 26, highway 23. Combined, I got just shy of 20, about 19.8, over the week of driving it, which wasn't driving it, I don't think I was driving it especially aggressively. No more so than I usually do. And I usually get pretty close to the label values at for my driving. And, you know, it was, it was not, it was not particularly cold when I had it. So the the fuel economy was a little little on the disappointing side, especially considering this is one of the smaller vehicles in the segment. One thing, you know, Mazda is still using a six speed automatic transmission, they have not, they have not gone up to seven or eight or nine speed yet. And so

Nicole Wakelin  31:11  
that's just me the fact that we mean, you're saying that, because there's so known for their whole driving dynamics, and you would think that they would have, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  31:20  
from a driving dynamics perspective, I think the six speed actually works really well, because it's not constantly shifting. You know, it's, it's more predictable. You know, that is one of the risks you get into when you start to get into these transmissions with more gears. Yes, sometimes you'll feel it, shifting it. Surprising times. That's true, you know, so it's it, having a six speed is a little more consistent. So from a driving dynamics perspective, it works well. It's just not necessarily great for fuel economy. So there's that the interior, like all contemporary Mazda is really, really nice first class interior, really nice materials that like I said, that Napa leather seating, all the the dashboard, the door panels, everything that you see in touch is covered in Nice, soft touch materials. You know, the one, I think, the from an interior perspective, the one downside that that some people will, in fact, probably a lot of people will complain about is the absence of the touchscreen. The memory controller on the the console, you know, I'm fine with it, you know, once you get used to it, it works works pretty well supports both CarPlay and Android Auto. But you know, some people prefer touchscreen, and that's fine, then a Mazda is probably not going to be for you if that's your choice. So the the, the CX nine starts for the sport, which is the base model, at 35 630. For front wheel drive, the signature, which is all wheel drive only said it's pretty much loaded, I don't think there's any real options available on there goes for 47 to 10 plus the 1225 delivery charge. So grand total on the one I drove was $48,830. You know, for that price point, you can also get, you know, a really nicely loaded Telluride or palisade. You know, or, you know, some other options. It's a little harder to recommend this one now than it would have been, you know, say, three or four years ago, five years ago when it first came up. And this, you know, this generation of CX nine is reaching the end of its Model Cycle, I would expect, you know, we'll see a replacement for this in the next 18 months, probably. And maybe at that point, Mazda might offer a hybridized version, you know, at least a mild hybrid version on there. They're starting to watch mild hybrids in Europe. And I think we'll be seeing them coming to the US market for long, so it should have better fuel economy. I expect that, you know, it might have a little bit more room in the next generation, especially that third row. But, you know, if you're if you're looking for something now that you know, looks a little different from everything else that's out there. You know, you don't you don't want to have this be driving the same thing as everybody else. You know, that looks that looks clean and sophisticated. And has a really, really nice interior. I'd say it's still worth taking a look at.

Nicole Wakelin  34:45  
Yeah, I like the CX nine I would say the same thing you do that that third row is really snug it is. It is truly the Okay, we just need to fit you guys in here and go five blocks and it's pouring rain so we're not walking kind of situation. It's really It's time Like even for teenagers, they're gonna be like, Man who gets to sit in the back. You know, it's, it's not it's there, but it's snug. But I do think that monster does truly beautiful interiors. Gosh, I love how the interiors of their cars look the the combination of materials that they choose and the quality of the materials colors, the colors and the textures like they, they nail it, they nail it in a way that sometimes more expensive, like honest to goodness, luxury brands miss the mark and Mazda What did they say it the was the one we just went to? Oh my gosh, X 50x 50 Thank you, I lost which car it was the 650 when they were talking about how they were trying to push towards, you know, soar to a more upscale brand. They weren't really calling themselves a luxury brand. But they're trying to push that way. And I think you guys are already there like the interiors are have been and have been for years. But even the styling on the outside. And honestly, if you want a red car, pick one from the master line. Most Viewed

Sam Abuelsamid  35:55  
when it used to be crystal red.

Nicole Wakelin  35:58  
So crystal red. Oh my gosh, it is the most beautiful red car. Just if you like red cars, just go look at what you like, Okay, I'm buying a Mazda because no one does red. Mazda does red. They're, they're just beautiful. So I like it. But I do think, you know, the fuel economy. That's kind of an issue. But he said this is getting, it's just about due to have some significant updates to it. And I feel like they will likely take care of some of those issues when the next update comes the next year, year to two years, hoping that they do because I still think this is a great card. Just think, you know as as things like the Telluride have come out, which is just phenomenal. You've got competition that didn't exist when they released this. So now you got to up your game a little bit to meet up with that competition. But still a great vehicle I still think I don't think you making a bad choice going with this by any means. I like the six nine.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:46  
And I think one of the few options. One of the few extra cost options on the CX nine signature is that salt crystal red paint, which is an extra 600 bucks, it's gonna buy one of these spring for the 600 bucks, I would do anything nearly 50 grand Anyway, another 600 bucks isn't going to kill you.

Nicole Wakelin  37:05  
It's just pretty and it's just beautiful. It's just a beautiful. I don't know what they do. I don't know what magic fairies Mazda has working in its paint department. But like they sprinkle magic on every red car. It's like, Wait, who found me go out the door. They're just, they're just beautiful.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:20  
They should just cancel all the other colors and just ship them just like Ferraris always used to be, you know, their, their shade of red.

Nicole Wakelin  37:27  
Yes. We're all we're just doing red. Now we've gotten rid of all the other colors. It's like, what was the fourth thing you can have any color you want? As long as it's black color you want? As long as it's red? That's not a bad deal.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:39  
You could do a lot worse. All right. Let's see. Where that list. Where's my list? Okay. What shall we start with? Okay, let's start with Lincoln. So I went to LA for a day. Let's see. It goes on the ground in LA for about 19 hours or so 1819 hours? I watch. That's hard. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. Because it wasn't long enough for my body to adjust to the three hour time difference.

Nicole Wakelin  38:12  
So will your brain and what you would

Sam Abuelsamid  38:15  
get catching a ride to the airport at 5am. You know, it was 8am here in Detroit already anyway, so I would have already been at work. So it was no big deal. So just from aside from, you know, having to sit in an airline seat for four hours, yes. But Lincoln unveiled the star concept. Lincoln. Frankly, most automakers don't do very many real concepts anymore, most of what we see as concepts now or, you know, very lightly adjusted, you know, views of the production model. You know, this one is? Actually I think not that far off from what we're going to see in production in two years.

Nicole Wakelin  38:59  
You think it's gonna be close? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  39:01  
I think it's very much like this. So the star concept is sort of a aviator sized crossover, but little bit lower. So as tall as an aviator, I was surprised at how relatively low the roofline seemed to be. And this is this is the design direction this this is an indicator of the design direction that Lincoln is going for all its EVs. We've talked in the past about, you know, the challenge for designers as you go electric, you know, you no longer have the need for the traditional grille. You know, for cooling the powertrain, you just need a small air intake in the front for cooling the battery. And so how do you give a vehicle a distinct face, you know, that's, you know, indicates what the brand is so people see it and they know Oh, that's a Lincoln or that's a Cadillac or that's a BMW Um, and those to Lincoln and BMW, I think are kind of polar opposites of how you might approach this problem. And we'll talk about the the new seven series in a minute. And Lincoln Lincoln, in some ways, Lincoln is closer to what Cadillac has done. But I think they've gone even further than then Cadillac in, especially in the front end, look, taking advantage of the fact that it's an Eevee. And they, you know, they're relying a lot on lighting, being able to do interesting things with lighting, but just the overall shape of the thing. Yeah, has evolved quite a bit. What do you think?

Nicole Wakelin  40:40  
I think it looks amazing. I mean, if they, it's when I said, You really think they're gonna pull this off looking like this. I mean, there's some design details, and especially that grill. You know, I had a conversation with a friend who's a really big muscle car guy, and his biggest objection to making the move to EVs, because it's um, you know, they have some, you can move in an Eevee. It's sluggish little, you know, hybrids of all

Sam Abuelsamid  41:02  
your fastest cars on the road now, right, and I say, Chris Chico, drive

Nicole Wakelin  41:05  
one, I said, Go drive a Mustang maki for me just do it. He's like, Oh, my gosh, I drove one thing really moves. But I can't get past the grill that literally wears is where it loses him. He can't. He's like, they all just have that sort of plane. There's not enough there, like designers haven't quite figured out what to do with the front. I think what Lincoln did here looks really striking is if they can pull that off, and if it looks this close to this, and I love the little do they say there's an image in your story, Sam that has the pullout drawer for the frunk? Is that something that will actually make it? It's really,

Sam Abuelsamid  41:42  
they they seem to they hinted at the fact that not necessarily on every model. Okay, I think that there will be some Lincoln's that have this. So, you know, instead of just the traditional front, you know, where you lift the hood, you know, and, you know, there's a cargo area there, like you have in a Tesla or the Maki, or on the f150 Lightning, when you open the hood, or in this case, actually, the hood doesn't, it's not hinged at the rear concept, at least, it basically lives straight up into the air, and then you've got a drawer that lifts out, or that slides out. Now, I would not expect to see this, you know, on say, you know, the smaller, Evie, like the, you know, the Corsair. Right, of course, something like the Corsair. But, perhaps, on the navigator, or, or, you know, even on the aviator, definitely doesn't seem to be pretty serious about this concept about this, as soon

Nicole Wakelin  42:41  
as pull out your thing. It's so cool, because like, when you look at some of these, you know, the the Franks in some of these vehicles, you know, there's that's a lot of space where the engine needs to be it is it's either teeny tiny, and they've used nothing, or it's like, cavernous. And you think about like getting all the way to the back of that cabinet space to just have like, a turns just could come out, bring stuff to you push little drove back, all the way do wonder. And you should wonder this too, because you live where there snow? How would how well would that function, when you have your PHEVs hundra. And your car's encased in ice now you pulled it open and some ice is falling in the sides there and then you got to shut it and you've got ice.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:19  
That's where there's going to be some interesting engineering challenges. I mean, you could obviously take the Tesla approach and just not care. And you know, when you open the the trunk of a model three, and it all just pours down into the trunk. But, you know, I think, you know, Lincoln will take a little more thoughtful approach to this. I don't, I don't know for sure how they'll make this work. You know, I certainly wouldn't expect it to be implemented quite the way it is on this concept where they said that hood, that hood panel. Yeah, especially because the other thing about this hood panel that we haven't mentioned, is its electrochromic glass. Yeah. So the hood panel rises straight up into the air, and then the drawer slides out. But that electrochromic glass, you know, if if for some reason you wanted to show off to the world, what you're storing in your front trunk? You can do that and it's visible in there. Yeah. And then when you if you want, if you want whatever's in there to be private, you can just press the button and it turns black just like the windows on a Boeing 787 they work the same way instead of traditional window shades. I don't expect to see that in production, that part of it. But you know, there there are another thing about you know, the drawer frunk why? I don't wouldn't necessarily expect it to be seen or even you know, to be that useful on some of the vehicles. Because one of the things that was striking about this when I stood next to it, you know, especially after having seen the BMW i Seven The week before The hoodline really drops down at the front, I mean, they have really taken advantage, the fact that they're using a dedicated Evie chassis. And so it's not something that has been modified from an internal combustion power platform. So they don't have any, they don't have that traditional structure that they need there to hold the radiator and everything. So it's it, it really slopes down quite dramatically in the front. And you know, the front fender line, you know, is not that tall. So even if you, even if I didn't have the drawer, and you just had a traditional hood hit rear hinged hood, you know, it's not a big reach to get inside, to get stuff out of that funk. You know, for something larger, like, if you were to do something like navigator size, for example, where it is going to be a taller vehicle, right, then that's, it's a different story there. That's where I think it might be, you know, something that we only see in a vehicle of that type rather than in a smaller vehicles, because there's, there's just not as much benefit to it. And obviously, something like that is going to add weight. And obviously, that's a lot of complexity to a lot of complexity. But it's it's a cool idea. And you know, for a concept, you know, that's why you do concepts is to throw some of these ideas out there and see how people react to it.

Nicole Wakelin  46:23  
But what's the overall reception of the people that were there? Two people really loved it excited. Everyone loved it. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:29  
they all they all thought it was great. So, you know, and the, as I said, you know, the roofline, you know, even though lengthwise, it's a little seem similar in overall length to an aviator, the roofline is lower, you know, it's not as tall as an aviator. And, you know, it looks very sleek. And, you know, they, they might do something like this, you know, as an adjunct to the aviator, you know, so you have a taller, taller, three row, and then something like this, that is more. I don't want to use the word coupe, like because it's not coupe like, but you know, something a little more sleek and stylish, and it's taller than a traditional sedan, but shorter than a traditional SUV. And I think it's it's a, it's a very interesting middle point. And the concept was configured as a four seater. But it's clearly long enough to do three rows in there. Oh, you think they could do it as three? Oh, yeah. And they acknowledged that yeah, it's, it's, it's big enough and flexible enough that they could do it as a three row. And so it's gonna be interesting to see what they do, then the interior is, again, is something quite different for Lincoln, although it's not, not, not every aspect of it is entirely new one. One feature that they've got in there is what they call the coast to coast display. So this is a display screen that spans all the way from a pillar to a pillar all the way across the top of the dash. And this is something we first saw several years ago on the on the Buyten Mbyte. When they showed it, I think in 2019, or 2020 2019. They first showed it at CES Buyten was a Chinese based Evie startup that did this full width display. And it's it's mounted further forward. And it's an interesting concept, because you're putting it you're pushing it further away at the base of the windshield. So it's a little closer to your line of sight when you're driving. And when I actually before Mbyte, ran into their financial, or before Buyten ran into their financial difficulties, they had a an office in Silicon Valley, and I visited there a couple of years ago, and actually went for a ride and one of the prototypes and spend some time with their, their head of user experience design in the book in the, in the lab trying this out. And one of the things that they talked about is, you know, when when they studied the way people use, like navigation systems, for example, they, you know, people are often zooming in and out to get context of where they are on their overall route. You know, but then they want to zoom in and get the detail. And, you know, if you give them a larger screen like this, then you can see the entire route but still have it large enough to have, you know, the detail, right where where you are, you know, what's your next turn that that sort of thing. And so there's they, they felt like there was less distraction to this approach. And then of course, you can also have a display, you know, for the passenger side as well. And on the on the Buyten what they did was they actually had the controls on the steering wheel. They actually had a small touchscreen on the steering wheel. A hub, that is what the driver interacted with, because it's too far away from you to reach to touch it directly. So you've got a remote touch screen, which is an interesting approach. Ford's not doing or Lincoln's not doing quite that. But on the Zephyr sedan that they just launched in China to China only model, they actually have a large screen like this on the Zephyr

Nicole Wakelin  50:26  
screen will make it pretty close to what we're seeing in this image. Yeah. Yeah. What did you What did it look like like in person seeing it? So comes down on your just like brief impression that the reveal,

Sam Abuelsamid  50:38  
right, right now, there are two concept two versions of the concept. There's one that's got a full interior. And there's one that does not have a full interior. The one with the full interior is still stuck in China. It was supposed to be shipped back here for this event.

Nicole Wakelin  50:58  
And supply chain shipping issues situation. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:01  
it wasn't even that it was more more of the COVID lockdowns, it's in Shanghai. It's stuck in Shanghai, so they couldn't get back, get it back. Couldn't get it back here in time, but they did have an interior buck that we got to sit in. So to ensure your buck is basically a large Styrofoam model that has the shapes Z can sit in the seats. And then we were wearing VR headsets. And you look around and you see and I did the same thing last fall with Cadillac and in their design studio with the lyric sitting in a tire buck with a VR headset on, you know, looking around and checking out all the interior details. And it was pretty interesting. And, you know, I kind of liked this approach. I think the only issue I have that I didn't really get a good answer from Lincoln on was the passenger side of the display. You know, how are you going to handle that? And, you know, to prevent driver distraction,

Nicole Wakelin  52:02  
right? Like, is there a point where it because it like use some of that like the screen in the grand wagoneer? You cannot see it from the driver's seat? Yeah, you put a polarizing filter on there. Yeah. And I like try it, you literally have to lean over. So your head is almost next to the passengers head. It's there's no way you're gonna like be tempted to look over there. But we're this one, like where maybe there's Is there a point? Like, vision? You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  52:25  
the concept, they didn't have that? Or they at least didn't, you know, talk about that yet? So it's not clear. You know, what the ultimate production solution?

Nicole Wakelin  52:35  
I'm sure there's a plan because there's no way you could have been that big and have the driver, you've got to do that. Yeah, there has to be a way to cut the driver off from that.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:43  
Yeah. And then the the rear seats, you got these reclining rear seats, and actually have a drawer, the can slide out from the rear seat so you can take off your shoes and store them in the drawer under the seat isn't a it's just little details, like a lot of nice little details.

Nicole Wakelin  53:01  
I love stuff like that. That just amazes me it's what do we have the signals that we can put a drawer there, okay, God put a drawer there, put some storage there make it something people can use? Where do you put your students or just random stuff in it? Like, that's nifty. I like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:13  
So did you notice the pillars? The eight pillars and the D pillars?

Nicole Wakelin  53:20  
You they are those? Yes. What is that? I can't tell what that is looking at that. Can you?

Sam Abuelsamid  53:25  
Yeah, so what they've done? Yeah, on a lot of modern vehicles, you know, they tend to have very thick pillars on there to meet the roof crush standards, which, unfortunately has the downside of you know, making big blind spots for you. So what they've done here on this concept, and it sounds like they want to try and do for production, I don't know if they'll actually be able to achieve it or not, at least maybe not in the first generation. But eventually, I think that this is the direction they want to go, is the pillar is actually comprised of two slim pillars. And then there's a lattice, 3d printed aluminum lattice in between them. So it's made from powder, powdered aluminum for 3d printing, and sintered with the laser to solidify it. And so it's this composite so you can actually see through it, it becomes almost transparent. That is cool. Yeah, so you have potentially much better visibility, it's an interesting design detail, better visibility. And it's also lighter and stronger than a traditional pillar.

Nicole Wakelin  54:31  
It looks incredible in these pictures, it makes the car look like it's it's, it's again, it says like small details because it could have also made it not as attractive like they made it really pretty, like it looks good. It's just striking design element that matches with the other design elements of the car. So it really gives this very future vibe to

Sam Abuelsamid  54:48  
it. Right and you know, one of the other things you know, as the light comes through it you know, it creates little spots of light all over the car and it's

Nicole Wakelin  54:57  
gonna create as that comes through. Can you imagine the flickering light effect. Last sort of filtered light that's going to create for people. It looks really

Sam Abuelsamid  55:05  
neat. And they also have, what they're calling rejuvenation modes. You know, we've talked frequently about the sounds of nature, and Hyundai and Kia vehicles, hire the crunching, take this to a whole nother level. Okay. So rejuvenation modes, you know, you've got this giant display in the front there. Right now they've got three different modes in there. One is the coastal mourning mode. And so you see the splash, you know, the waves crashing the plays video of the waves crashing across this entire span spanning display. You bring the ocean to your car, if you bring the ocean to your car. It's playing audio, you know, that replicates that that synced to that video. And then there's also sense that it sprays into the cabin. So

Nicole Wakelin  56:04  
yeah, that's what I need to know about. Did they? How did they demonstrate this? Did you get a little did

Sam Abuelsamid  56:08  
they did demo it with the with with the buck? You know that they have a fully functional?

Nicole Wakelin  56:15  
Does it smell? Like is it that weird?

Sam Abuelsamid  56:17  
It's very, it's very, very subtle. It's not? It's not overpowering?

Nicole Wakelin  56:21  
You haven't stuck into it until a handful of seaweed? No, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:25  
It's very subtle, you know, again, you know, we'll see if they actually do this, you know, it'll if they do it, you know, it'll probably require, you know, having a cartridge that you might replace periodically, there's,

Nicole Wakelin  56:37  
there's the I can't remember vehicles, but they do have the little sort of atomizer things that some of them plug in, like to a spot that's in like almost in the glove box, and you can trade out you're sent it to the cabin.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:53  
I learned something interesting, a couple of years back when I was talking to somebody who had been doing a story on new car smell. Okay. It turns out that on modern cars, because, you know, they've moved away from a lot of the traditional chemicals that they use for treating leather and other materials. Apparently, if you take out the if you look underneath the passenger seat of most modern cars, there's actually a little cartridge there that has something in there that is actually your new car smell.

Nicole Wakelin  57:29  
No, they're putting really Yes. Because what people think it's not really new, I thought must be I thought these people either love or hate new car smell or that many of us want our car to smell like that,

Sam Abuelsamid  57:39  
apparently. So, a lot, a lot of interesting details about this. So, you know, Lincoln wouldn't say exactly when they're going to be launching their first Evie. Originally the plan was they were going to launch in second half of 2023. And the the Lincoln aviator Eevee you know, for I don't know if they're gonna call it aviator or not, but an aviator sized Evie crossover, and also an explorer sized one, were supposed to be built in quite a lot in Mexico alongside the Maki. But because the maki has been so popular, and they've decided to increase production of that they're they shifted the production plan for the Explorer and aviator EVs to Oakville, Ontario, which currently builds the Nautilus in the edge. And that plants being going to be retooled after novelist and edge production answer next year. And that's going to build those vehicles. So the what I've heard is that 2024 is when the first one is going to launch. What they did say is by 2025, they will have three EVs in the lineup with a fourth coming in 2026, which is the the navigator Evie and that's going to navigate your Eevee is going to be based on the next generation truck platform for the next gen lightning. That's that's, that's launching in 2025. And that's going to be built at the new plant, new assembly plant they're doing in Tennessee for for those electric trucks. So by by 2026, they'll have for EVs in the Lincoln lineup. And, you know, eventually towards the end of the decade, they expect to probably be 100% Electric.

Nicole Wakelin  59:28  
Now, I like this goes, I'm happy.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:32  
So I did have a chance to chat with Kamal Kirk, who is the Global Director of Design for Lincoln. Got a 10 minute or so interview that I will drop in here. All right, come on. We're here with the Lincoln star concept. This is the first hint of the design direction that Lincoln's gonna go in the future as you start to go electric What? What is what is the old you say is the overall theme for Lincoln? What is your overall goal? As the brand starts to introduce electric vehicles in the next few years?

Kemal Curic  1:00:11  
Yeah, so for us for Lincoln, we were quite proud today to introduce the Lincoln stock concept is an overarching vision for our brand. Where are we heading in the future, it serves as a couple of purposes, really think about the experience that our customer is going to have with a new Evie vehicles, and really kind of dialing it in into into starting the building this car from inside out. As I said earlier to you. Now we want to, we have this own new space, being electric, not having the motor not having the traditional elements. Now all of a sudden, the space is open for the designer so that we can reimagine the things we couldn't have done before. So we taking full advantage. Starting thinking about the interior, the flexibility, you're going to have the spaciousness you're going to have and focusing on the moments that really matters to our client clients and their customers. And what I mean by that are the moments that matter, we want to also understand what this customer really wants, and to give them also certain things that they didn't even know they need it. So this is another thing we're focusing as a design organization as a Lincoln organization.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:18  
So when you say giving, like what give me an example, what sorts of things that you would want to give a customer that they didn't know they needed.

Kemal Curic  1:01:25  
So right now we're thinking about the flexibility if he said, you know, this car is built for, for your mission. And it's very purposeful. So So the number one I'd have any other vehicle to have one week, because we can serve them multiple purposes. So if you think about the way that scar is designed, the front is functional. So the front entrance towards the engine used to be housing now. Now you can actually use it as a gallery that can showcase your, your hobbies, perhaps you can have the light come through, you have a flexible storage, which is in private mode that you can actually extend like a drawer and you could store your precious valuable, and lock them in an insight that nobody can see. And if you think about the backhand, the way the seats transformed to lounge seats, those are things that we all enjoy, we want to enjoy the outdoors, you want to take your vehicles, you want to also be with your friends, so you want to flip over flip the the rear trunk area and you can enjoy your vehicle. So we also want to be the car to be much more rewarding in terms of the journey becomes the reward. What I mean by that is, we want you to enjoy this, we put these three, three moods in this car that we want you to configure. So in the morning, in the evening, in the afternoon, you have the choice, do you want to be invigorating? Your car will know that your car will know you it will sense the mood you're in and it will adopt the sun was up the lighting up the seating configuration. So we want to create this amazing space that you never want to leave.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:05  
From an overall design language perspective. There's clearly some aspects of this concept that you can see the connection to current like in models. But there's also some things you've done very differently because it's an Eevee. Talk about the challenges of designing an electric vehicle and giving it a unique design DNA and incorporating the design DNA when you don't have something like a grill on the front.

Kemal Curic  1:03:34  
Yeah, so awesome. Independence, isn't that no change, we actually feel now we can dial them in even more. So quite slight vision has been for many years of the human century beauty lighting, we really focus on these elements. Now being the gliding elements, we want to focus on the air efficiency of this vehicle. So we give the most aerodynamic, efficient look to this court possible to that size. Then the beauty was another aspect you wanted to focus on the essential so we gave the Lincoln star a perfect housing very simplified the Lincoln star now is eliminated is much more 3d But behind the lens like a precious jewelry. And then we focused on the signature lighting. And again being inspired by some of the patterns which we call them the Lincoln monogram, some of the architecture of this vehicle we focused on something which is quite distinctive, quite bold and almost very recognizable. Instead of being a grill, it was more focusing on what's necessary, what's purposeful,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:36  
the lighting front the signature lights, the headlights, and the taillights is a very different look for Lincoln. Talk about kind of where that came from what inspired that

Kemal Curic  1:04:48  
like going back to like the this this inflight gesture if you think about the first at the glance look from mile away this wing up shape, very distinctive look towards the backhand heels See this wind down. But then the patterns, we were inspired by some of the architecture. If you think about some of the famous buildings, some of the different Tiffany diamond cut glass, we were really inspired by some of these 3d architecture, where you see the glass and you see the structural pieces 3d printed behind it. So even on the front end, if you see the headlamps, the way they created, you have this exoskeleton, but then you have this wonderful lighting around it, as a second read, gives a very clear, unique and distinctive look to this vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:36  
Moving to the, to the inside. Tell me more a bit more about the what the strategy was, or the thought was around how you created this this interior space?

Kemal Curic  1:05:49  
Well to first started with the experience, asking yourself and our customer first, what did it really want, what was the space? It was, it was the things that mattered to them most, we call this most memorable moment, moments that matter to you. And we created this journey map. So from the arrival from from the journey map, we create basically these moments that were very important for our clients from the moment they walk up to the vehicles. So now being an Eevee, this car is already preset for you, it already knows you, it's already cooled down on a warm day or is warmed up on a cool day. That's the number one advantage and then having your digital content available to you seamlessly. So you don't have to worry about it. So being this effortless efficiency behind there was a very important thing for us. But then again, celebrating also the craftsmanship. incorporating some of the screen, the way they magically appear, some of the content appears on the screens. There was another thing that we wanted to really incorporate the surprise and delight in this vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:59  
The some of the things that you've done here a lot. There's a lot of things you've done in this in this concept that are clearly enabled by the fact that it's an Eevee, you have you have the flat floor with a battery. How much of what you've done either in the interior or the exterior is also going to carry forward into future internal combustion. Because they're going to be around at least for a while. Yeah.

Kemal Curic  1:07:27  
Well, some of the experience, you know, we already had, but this is again, dialed in much more optimized way, this is the ideal case scenario. Now all of a sudden, you have components, you don't have, you don't have the use of a gas powered engine, that it's a brand new world to us a designer. But we are still committed to our gas powered clients, and he's still going to continue to evolve and some of the experience you will find there as well.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:58  
Okay, any other thoughts you want to share? Oh, I guess one other thing we haven't talked about is the pillars, the eight pillars and the D pillars, which are semi transparent. Talking about that idea of what what you did there and how you achieve that.

Kemal Curic  1:08:14  
We love this idea of this being this exoskeleton built around it. So you build a car from inside out. And then you have this flush glass of rounded. And what it does give you it's not just the rigidity and structural divisibility is another thing. Imagine the safety aspect from it that you have, the cars are getting larger and larger nowadays, so the pillars getting thicker and thicker, we actually went the opposite using some, some quite rigid and light materials have the same same structural feature, but the same time that enabled the light come in. So you'll never feel cramped into the interior of fields property is twice as large as it will be in a conventional execution.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:53  
Okay, any any final thoughts you want to share about the direction for Lincoln as it moves forward into this electric era into the second century?

Kemal Curic  1:09:01  
Well, we were quite excited. I mean, we're quite excited to be agreeing almost like a supercomputer on wheels, which is, which is a very new species for for Lincoln brand and reinventing ourselves and taking some of the heritage and influence and prestigious news from the past. But at the same time, you're not shying away, to reinvent. Challenge yourself, as you can see, and come up with something very unique, very bold statement here.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:29  
Thank you. Thank you very much. Always great to talk to you. All right. And that was my last conversation with Kamal talking about Lincoln design and and where it's going in the age of electrification. So let's see what do we got next on the list? Oh, so the other the other electric I saw the week before the when we're in New York, the new BMW seven series and the i seven which is the electric version of this one Do you think of the seven series?

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:02  
Grill? Like it's so big? I can't I see a giant grill. There's a giant grill the size of my entire screen. That's all I see. No. I don't know what I need to know what this one looks like in person because I didn't see this. And this one in pictures to me is not it's not as striking. It almost feels like the the one I'm like the the first image that you have in your story on unformed Sam, that first image looks like a vehicle to me from like 1985. Like, it just doesn't look exciting. Am I wrong? What does it look like in the real world? It's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:38  
pretty much yeah, you're pretty. You're pretty much right. Yeah, I mean, the first thing we thought we had, there was a backgrounder in New York, before they revealed it earlier this week, actually, on the same day, earlier the same day as the Lincoln star concept. They revealed, they publicly revealed the seven series. But the background, the background are in New York for where we got to see it in person. And a day or so before that they had announced the written midcycle refresh for the X seven, which has front end very much like this. And the first thing any of us thought when we saw it was oh, Genesis lights, what do you know? Because it's got these split horizontal lamps. So the upper segment is the driving lamps that are the daytime running lamps. And then the lower segment is the actual headlamps. Some people thought it reminded them of the Jeep Cherokee, from you know, when the Cherokee was redesigned in 2015 or 16. Whenever that came out, it was one of the first to do that, that kind of look to it. And then, you know, the massive grille. You know, aside from the front, most of the rest of the car looks pretty conventional. Three box sedan do not

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:57  
something. So it's very boxy in a way that like I said, it really reminds me of,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:02  
well, it's taller than the old seven series.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:05  
Yeah, but the little blue accents are like okay, so here's our little nod to the future because it's blue, but on the outside like it just you would not think glancing at this, the average person that like oh, this is a really new fresh vehicle, you your first you would probably not notice it like you kind of okay, another BMW minute grill is vague, and you wouldn't think much beyond? Because it's just doesn't? I don't know, it doesn't feel like it's a design forward thing. It almost feels like it relies on something old school.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:35  
Yeah, and I think a big part of the problem is, BMW is not fully committing to EVs, from a design perspective. And, to some degree, I can, especially for the seventh series, right, and kind of understand, because this is, you know, the seventh series sells about 20 25,000 units a year globally. So it's not a huge volume product. So to justify the cost of a, you know, a full electric platform for that is a lot tougher. On the flip side, you know, the nature of EVs is such that you can use a lot of those components across multiple vehicles. And, you know, so you can have a more distinct look. This one does not the ice seven does not look dramatically different from any other seven series, except when you get up close. And you look at the grill, you realize it's all closed off, there's no no opening. And the new seven series is five inches longer than the old one. Wow. So this is a big car. Yeah. And it's got when you look at it, and profile, it's got the traditional BMW proportions, long hood cabling kind of set back a little bit, you know, that performance, you know, rear wheel drive, kind of kind of proportions to it. But because they have opted not to do a purpose built in plot electric platform for this. And the same goes for the three and four series. You know, you've got the i Four, you know, just sharing it's basic architecture with, with the gas three and four series, you end up with a very long hood, that you don't have any storage under there. It's just a big, there's no front trunk. So you've got this gigantic volume that they say, what's the claim it's, there's the H vac and cooling system and other things

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:40  
world's largest H vacuum cooling system.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:44  
They claim that it takes that it does actually take up most of that space. Really. Which to me, I look at you know, I look at that. It's like you look at a Maki, which actually has a shorter front end and still has a fairly substantial cargo area in there. And that one hasn't, you know, the H vac and everything. As a launch was not fully optimized, they were using a lot of off the shelf components from other Ford vehicles. Right. And yet, they managed to still give you a pretty good size front trunk, F 150s. And other 114 cubic feet in that front trunk again, tick. Yeah. And you look at this, it's like, come on. Yeah, it's, you could not, you could not squeeze that stuff down a little bit and leaving this place

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:30  
for how fancy like, okay, let's just BMW has some engineers, they kind of have a reputation for that whole German engineering thing. Engineering guys. Like it just I don't know, I don't. I feel like that's sort of just, I feel like it's an excuse. I don't know. I don't know why they don't I don't get this car.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:47  
Yeah. And another another aspect of this is, can you get inside and you realize how this is a shared platform with the gas engine versions? Because the transmission tunnel is still there. Yeah, in the backseat. It's not a flat floor. You still have a tunnel there? As does the AI for? Yeah, because they're using the same floor plan.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:08  
Yeah, we couldn't see and I get it, I get it that we're sharing parts and get parts there's nothing wrong with that. There's but like, if you're going to share parts, don't do it in a way that like, Okay, this part works perfectly in car A and it works perfectly in car B, it's like no, not it works perfectly in car A and it looks ridiculous in car B because it doesn't make sense for it, then don't share that part. Just bite the bullet and make the part work for the car that it's in. And I feel like really? Just know.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:38  
So on the inside, you've got, you know, a lot of the same design look that we're seeing on other newer BMWs.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:45  
It is attractive, is

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:48  
it? Is it the big curved screen? The

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:51  
screen in the back the one that's on that? What is that? What that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:54  
that's that is the theater screen. So instead of having a couple of 10 inch screens on the back of the front seats, you know, for for your rear seat entertainment. The new seven series has an optional theater screen, which is a 31 inch 8k display that down from the roof.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:13  
Oh my gosh, is that with that sort of recessed? Yeah, kind of see it? Oh my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:18  
So it's a beautiful display. It's it's a gorgeous, I mean, 8k display. It looks fantastic. But again, you know, it's also a an ultra wide screen. Which, you know, when I saw it, oh, okay. You know, maybe you can, I asked, you know, can you display two different things on there. So if the two rear seat passengers want to be watching different things, you know, because Honda had that years ago on the, the Odyssey Yeah, this was?

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:48  
Yeah, you can do your own thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:51  
No, can't only only one input to the screen, hi, does have built in Amazon Fire TV. So you can stream all your Netflix and, and HBO and all the other stuff through that using the cellular connection. The other thing I noticed, you know, because the screen is so large when it flips down. If you're in the driver's seat, you have zero visibility to the back,

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:16  
I was just going to ask that does this does this have the rear view mirror? That's actually a camera? No, it's still just a mirror. So you're looking at the back of the screen? Yep. Awesome. That literally was one of my questions for him like, Wait, does it why the confusion just continues? The more you say Sam,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:35  
one of the BMW folks, you know, said You know, we don't you know, we don't think the digital cameras are or the digital mirrors are a good experience. You know, because your your focus point is different from using a mirror.

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:52  
They don't like the digital camera, but when it's either a digital camera or black box. Nothing there like the black box, nothing. The black back of a screen is better than a digital camera. Maybe the digital isn't as good. I'll give you that the focal point is different than a traditional mirror but you're not going mirror or digital. It's it's mirror or nothing. Yeah, digital is a good happy middle point for that. Maybe.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:16  
So.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:19  
Thank you those digital cameras, they take a little time for your eyes to get used to the difference. But once you get used to the difference, they're actually fantastic. But there is a little learning curve for you to get get accustomed to like we're all accustomed to the distance and sideview mirrors that they're you know, just a click. You do the same thing with the cameras, rearview mirror they just take a little time for you to get used to it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:39  
Yeah. So the the i Seven the electric version has 105 kilowatt hour battery pack, which they say will give it about a 300 mile range, which again, compared to an EQs EQs is rated at 360 miles with a similar sized battery and or you compare it to a lucid, which is, you know, up to 500 miles, or 400 miles from a Tesla. I mean, granted, this feels like a lot more of a luxury car than a Tesla Model S does. Yes. And it's certainly a lot larger than a model S's. But, you know, all of her Zipser was there. He's the CEO of BMW Group. And he kept calling this a no compromise his car. And the more I looked at it, the more I noticed all the compromises, you know, it's like, no, it's this thing is full of compromise. It's

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:32  
a very compromised car. Yeah. Yeah, I don't.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:38  
It goes, it goes on sale on November. Basing on what this puppy is gonna run. Yeah, the i Seven is, I think about 113. To start. There's also the 740 i, which is like, that's the three litre inline 675 horsepower. And that one will go for starting in the mid 90s. The so would I seven 536 horsepower, it's using the same dual motor setup that's in the I for me. 50 536 horsepower. And that one is Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's 113,600. And then the, the 760 with a twin turbo V eight, is 119,300. And then next year, they're launching a 750 II plug in hybrid, which they have not given any other details on.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:38  
You have the money, you have the bank account, would you pick this? Would you buy this? Would you go go for any of this any configuration of this?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:49  
I mean, for me personally, no, because you know, a big luxury sedan like this is not something that I want.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:54  
Okay, if you were big luxury sedan guy, would this be the big luxury sedan? Suddenly, that's what you want? You just need a giant luxury sedan.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:03  
I I think I would probably lean more towards the EQs are lucid.

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:09  
Okay, my brain was going toward lucid, so okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:13  
You know, I mean, the lucid is not quite as large as this. And some people, you know, because lucid is still a very new company. Yes, some people might be a little more reticent about going with a startup? Sure. Then again, if you're you know, if you got $100,000 Plus to spend on a luxury sedan, it's probably not your only car.

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:37  
Exactly. So you've got a backup if for some reason there's some service needed and you have to wait because it's not right out your front door. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:44  
yep. So all right, that's the new seven series and a couple of weeks back you and I were both in Word Hillary Oh in Texas in Austin

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:00  
where we were

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:02  
driving another vehicle with a plug which is the Jeep Grand Cherokee four by E. Yes. What did you think?

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:10  
You know, I like it I like the four by E the whole four by E thing with Jeep is it's neat because you know there is something to be sent for going off road in a vehicle that is suddenly as quiet as you can possibly make it

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:23  
all you hear is the sounds of your skid plate scraping across.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:27  
Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I do love that the first time we experienced that and the Wrangler forebay and like this, this is cool. There's something to be said for this and you get that same experience in the grand cherokee you know, but it's it it's bigger so it's not as nimble as a Wrangler, but you're you're getting a lot more you know, nice car as opposed to I'm gonna go out there I'm gonna get money that you get in the Wrangler I like this, but I like the Grand Cherokee as a whole I like the vehicle to begin with. So adding the making it a four by IE, I think is a no brainer for Jeep and I think it adds a nice you know, it gives you the ability to plug in it improves your fuel economy, they have those stations there and I forget there's certain trails where they are installing Jeep shins, yeah. Right. So you're gonna have you know, charging stations you can take advantage of right before you get on the trail. And, you know, they let you in the course of this system. You can tell it I don't want to use any battery right now. And you can use gas all the way out to wherever you're going and then pop it into evey mode. The second you get to the trail so you can save that entire EV range just for when you're out on the trail. I like it and I still love you know, they take you this is actually a is it a ranch? I don't know where wherever it was that we were we have been here before, like Jeep has used this location before. And the neat thing is, it's not like suddenly you get to this location where you took Wranglers, you took cars you were like really crawled over rocks like Oh no, this is the larger not as capable Grand Cherokee. Oh no Chicky over the same crazy rocks. You're still sliding around. It's wet. If you're looking at things and thinking, okay, the Jeep guy is going, like, come forward, I'm going to trust him. I'm going to trust you guys not gonna kill me. And sure enough, the car just crawls right over the rocks and does exactly what it's supposed to do. It is always impressive to me when you push jeeps with people who are experts who, you know, like they're telling me to push this in a way I wouldn't just by myself, I know that it can do this. And you think, Yeah, which one of us is gonna go sideways? None of us, none of us, we're all fine. No matter what our skill level, y'all come off of these courses, cars, or in one case, except for some skid plates, and you know, little wheels scratched rock here or there. There's never like, Oh, God, you know, Sam trashed a Jeep that just doesn't have it. You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:41  
at one point along there, you know, we're going, basically, around the side of a rock, you know, we were making, we were up on the side of a rock going around it, you know, turning left. Yep. And then going down.

Nicole Wakelin  1:25:55  
I know exactly what you're talking about.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:57  
I glanced over at the screen, I had the, you know, the off road patient off road page up on the screen. And it was showing that I was at a 26 degree angle from the horizontal. Have you looked at that? Would

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:11  
you look if you think I shouldn't be able to do this in this hunk of metal, there should be significant problems being at Nope. You know, the way you can swing that around like that they can get you to do things in that I am always impressed. I mean, jeeps are capable. And I think the thing is like I think you know, in a wrangler and Wrangler, you expect to do it. We did on that trail. Sam, you're like, Yeah, wrangler can do this. The Grand Cherokee is not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:38  
very premium feeling vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:40  
It's a luxurious vehicle inside, it is big. It is not in any way tiny, or it doesn't feel like it should be maneuverable. And yet, yet it is, like you said, you basically turn around these rocks, and they have you drive up things too. Sometimes. You feel that like, your brain.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:59  
This is a granite wall. How am I supposed to drive up?

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:03  
I know you're calling me to go forward, but my brain is like you're driving into a warm and cold stop. And she was like, no, no, no, you're driving up a wall trust style. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:12  
Yeah. And, you know, they had, I think, for their for the off road portion for for Jeeps. And two, or I think there was there's one leader and there were three of us following and for the head to trail hawks, and an overland Yeah, so I was driving the Overland. I wasn't even driving a Trail Hawk

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:33  
wasn't me. I haven't read the trail hog but it was like they're not even all trail hawks here. There's so competent is like we don't need to give you this super capable four by four person.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:43  
Other thing, the others have the good four by four the the the only thing that the main thing that the overland was missing was the sway bar disconnect. Yeah. So you know, at some point, you'll be able to get quite as much we'll articulate

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:59  
a capable vehicle that they're not capable one is still unbelievably capable. Like you're in the knockout, you're in the one Oh, you're just quote in the overland Nope, still climb right up that tree. You know, there's, there's a moment where the Trailhawk will get you further. But it's a pretty extreme moment, you know what I mean? There's so much you can still do and that that's what impresses me in this and it is, you can like we were talking about the form runner, you know, you take it on the highway, and it's not fun on the highway, this, I drive across the country in this thing, it's quiet, it's smooth, it has a comfortable interior, it is roomy, as all get out. This has that balance, you can take it on some serious off road terrain. But if you just want to drive to the office every day, you can also do that, and you'll be perfectly happy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:40  
Yeah, the the four by either plug in hybrid system. On the Grand Cherokee, it's rated, excuse me, 26 miles of electric range. And then 56 MPGe combined, you know, so if you plug it in on a daily basis, and drive it, the average person will probably get somewhere around 50 to somewhere between 50 and 60 miles per gallon equivalent when you factor in the electricity as well. And then it just straight up hybrid mode when the battery is depleted 23 miles per gallon. When we left on the drive, me the one I was driving was only about 94% state of charge. And I got 24 miles before the engine finally came on. And then it was in the the charge sustaining mode, I think is the one where once the engine comes on or the hold mode, so it will when you're driving in that in that mode. It'll actually use a little more gas because what it's doing is it's actually charging up the battery as you're driving. You know when you're coasting and things like that. It'll be charging up the battery. And so for that one, you know, by the time we got out to the ranch. I think I had a total of about 28 miles on electricity alone that it accumulated. Yeah. So is this is this an impressive vehicle? It's not inexpensive.

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:15  
You know, not a bargain?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:17  
No. But you know, when you when you factor in the tax credits, it actually comes out pretty close to the price of the standard Grand Cherokee. With without the non for BI e Grand Cherokee,

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:33  
right? Because it starts out I'm looking at the bottom, your story starts at 58, nine, with a 1700, almost $1,800 destination. So your base is 58. Nine, and that $7,500 Tax Credit makes you know, it's a big help and it's not going to disappear for Jeep anytime soon. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:53  
right. And, you know, the summit reserve, which is the top trim levels, but starts at 75 up just shy of 75. So you're looking at, you know, almost 77 with the with the delivery charge, but you know, then knock 7500 off of that plus whatever your state may offer you. And, you know, it's not quite as crazy expensive. And you know, the other thing to keep in mind too, is that the these are all four wheel drive standard. There's no two wheel drive plug in hybrid for the jeep. Yeah, that's all by E name. That's

Nicole Wakelin  1:31:28  
the four by a I'm a fan of this idea. And there is something kind of fun about driving when and then you're on a trail and there's a human and you do everything you can not to scare the human you're still getting in because you don't you hear like, Hey, hi. There's a car behind me don't realize it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:47  
Okay, let's see. Next up. Let's let's do the soltera. First. You drove the soltera last week. You did? Did you turn over to Sam where you did not? We did not? Technically I kind of did because I drove the BZ for x which is the same thing.

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:05  
The soltera but with a different batch and slightly different Okay, a better batch with a better batch. Oh, did we say that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:10  
So the big I have repeatedly

Nicole Wakelin  1:32:12  
you have the biggest difference between like having driven them both and honestly I forgot to open up everything for the specs for the soltera so I don't even I'm not gonna pretend I have this all in front of you. But I'll tell you what the big differences between these two. If you want to drive in the dirt at all, they don't mean you're going to offer like your Jeep. It's not a Jeep people it's a Subaru. But if you're someone who does a little bit if you do some dirt driving if you're taking it to a cabin or you're taking it someplace a little more rugged or you want to do off road to a spot where you're gonna go mountain biking or whatever. You can genuinely do some stuff in this. It does handle well off road it is surprisingly it makes a big difference. So when we drove this, they had an on road portion but then they flew us all to Catalina islands to drive off road and Catalina which is really kind of crazy cool because apparently there's like a 25 year waitlist or something to be able to have a car on the island at all. So I thought it was pretty cool that we got to drive there. And the roads that we were driving on there were like little dirt roads there's there's not you know and there are spots where they took us off the dirt road and you were genuinely like okay, this is a hill this is some slidy gravel. This is some you know uneven there's some ruts here from rain or whatever where you're you know you're not going to take just an average everyday car up that that was very impressive to me. So you know, you think of a Subaru is going a little bit slick you're rugged adventurer you type. It really is it you know it's standard all wheel drive, and they have their x mode. They have hill descent assist you know to help you get down steep terrain. It it really does handle it you don't I don't think you think it can like it doesn't necessarily look like it can but it handles a surprisingly amount surprisingly rugged amount of off roading and it hasn't very well. It balances that with it has just a nice on road drive. It's responsive, it's comfortable. It has good room for cargo. It's not a huge amount of room for cargo because it has a very other the rear opening is very wide it has a very sloped roofline in the back, and that does eat in so like you couldn't put things that are as big because as soon as you slam that tailgate, you've hit whatever your big thing is in the back. So the cargo is a little bit tricky but again, you have roof rails, you can that are available on that put your roof rails on stick your thing on there or like salmon, I do put a little little hitch on the back and put something on there to carry yourself because we talked about how we both like that. And additionally offer things there's 8.3 inches of ground clearance. If you think about the ground clearance in most crossovers and especially most little crossover EVs, that's pretty good. You can call over some pretty decent stuff. It's got a night it has two infotainment systems so your base trim gets an eight inch screen, the rest of it gets a 12.3 inch screen that's like you know gives you that much more upscale vibe, you get wireless Apple CarPlay you get, you know, an Android Auto, the interior is comfortable. And it has that very typical super rudeness, where you feel like if your dog jumps in with muddy paws, you're not going to have a panic attack because you just ruined your interior. Or if your kids step across the seats as kids or want to do again, you're not going to destroy this interior. It's rugged enough to feel like it's going to it's going to hold up to some some actual real world living and that it doesn't doesn't just look pretty in a showroom. As far as range, you've got the ranges. It's not great, you get 222 miles per charge except for the base trim which gets 228 so you get an extra 86 miles. Nath is

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:54  
hard. So is there are they offering a front drive version, a single motor front drive version of the soltera,

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:59  
I will drive, I will drive I will drive overdrive, so you don't get a front motor because that's you do get that in the BZ?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:06  
Yeah, the BZ for x, you can get a front front drive only,

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:09  
you go with the BZ for extra all wheel drive, you're going to be the same. But if you want more range, you can get the big 4x with front wheel drive, and then you're going to increase your range by a chunk. So that might be like that not might be that is the downside here if you want a range, but still like here's the thing, guys like the Eevee range is such a tricky thing for people to get used to because the numbers are lower than what your gas tank can hold. And because charging stations aren't everywhere. But how often realistically do most people drive 220 Miles two miles or 228 miles in a single day. You know, rarely, rarely, unless you are honest to goodness on a road trip, you're not driving that far in a day. So for 99% of your day to day life, you're gonna really need to charge this at home, you can plug it in at home, you can take advantage of a charger out there in the real world if you want, but you don't actually need it to. So you're going to be fine at home the only time that's ever going to become an issue is if you're doing a road trip, you do need to stop and you do need to plan out your charging a little bit because you're not going to get the same kind of range that you're gonna get in vehicles either like a front wheel drive, which increases your range or just have like a long range battery or just even their standard battery that might be a longer range than this. So I want to say that's the the most challenging thing about this. But I do like this vehicle I like this better than the Bz 4x Because I felt like it just it had a better feel it looked nicer it look more cohesive that when I call before that Subaru miss, where you feel like it's rugged where it still feels like a Subaru it still feels like it stand up to stuff and I'm really glad that they let us take this genuinely on just some driving on dirt trails, because it did it and it did it really, really well. I was very impressed with it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:57  
Yeah, one one downside of the all wheel drive version. You know, we talked about this before with the with the the Toyota, the they actually have two different batteries for the front wheel drive and the all wheel drive. They're almost the same capacity. There one is like 71 point for the illness 72.8 I think for the all wheel drive, but they're from different suppliers, and they have slightly different chemistries. And the Panasonic battery and the front wheel drive Toyota's can be charged at up to 150 kilowatts, the CTL battery in the all wheel drive models only does 100 kilowatts. So getting a charge, you know, in the in the front wheel drive, you can charge up to it from nothing to or near nothing to 80% in about 30 minutes. But in the all wheel drive, it takes closer to an hour.

Nicole Wakelin  1:38:50  
Yeah, the number they gave us for the Subaru was specifically 56 Minutes, from 10 to 80% of the DC fast charger, if you're doing a level two charger in your house, it's going to take nine hours.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:02  
So you know that's fairly typical, but I mean, that's something you do an overnight, right if you're plugged in overnight. Yeah, if you're at home, you're probably not doing a full charge anyway. Exactly. You know, 8080 plus percent of all daily driving is less than 40 miles a day. So, you know, you're plugging in when you get home, you probably schedule it, you know, to not start charging until your local utility switches to off peak rates. It'll probably be fully charged in an hour, hour and a half.

Nicole Wakelin  1:39:36  
But yeah, that taking an hour to get to 80% roughly an hour like that's that's a long time. If you've got 800 miles you're trying to go today or something, you know, a long distance drive that is that is a lot of stopping. I mean you can stop and you can have lunch or whatever but you don't want to stop and have lunch every every 200 miles.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:56  
Yeah, you know, you might you might need a I'll break but you know, 510 minutes, right,

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:02  
you're not going to get very much just plug it in for 15 minutes, we're going to use the bathroom, get yourself a coffee, you know, that's, it's just, you can do that you can keep topping off and that'll make it you know a little bit longer you can go before you have to fill on say, Okay, we got to charge this puppy up, but that is the drawback. So, you know, if you're someone who is doing a lot of long distance road trips in your, in your Subaru soltera. If you're considering it, then the range is something to consider a little more carefully, because it's, but if it's Oh, every once in a while, then maybe it's not the big deal.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:31  
Yeah, compared to a number of the competitors in this compact crossover segment. You know, that 222 Miles is a little disappointing. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:43  
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:44  
Especially like the the VW ID for, right. It's, you know, 260 270 miles now. I think they upgraded it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:52  
Yes, they did. They got a little bump this year. So you get more in the ID four than you did before, I had to write a bunch of comparison stories versus this versus, you know, the comic five in the Eevee. Six. And like, consistently, it's like, oh, gosh, the range, oh, gosh, the charging time like, this just does not match up, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:10  
the rear drive ionic five, and six are over 300 miles. And even the all wheel drive versions are 270 miles.

Nicole Wakelin  1:41:19  
That's a big difference. You know, it's day to day does not matter for 99% of it. But if you're someone who road trips a lot, then suddenly it does,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:27  
yeah. All right. So there is a third model coming in the next few months off of the same e TNGA platform that they use for the BC 4x and the soltera. That is the Lexus RZ 450, which was shown off this week. And what do you you know, this one, like the Subaru is only available in an all wheel drive form. The aside from the styling differences, the other main difference between this and the the big 4x. And the soltera is they're using a different combination of motors. So one of the things that's a little peculiar on the Toyota, the front wheel drive version of the Toyota is 201 horsepower, single motor. And then on the all wheel drive, they actually use two lower power motors. With one of them. They're both the same size. Let me find it here now. There, they add up to two, I think 214 horsepower, on the on the Subaru, or on the on the all wheel drive versions of the Subaru and the Toyota. So what they've done is they took the front motor from the single the front motor from the front wheel drive, BZ for X and combined it with one of the rear motors from the soltera and BZ for x. So now you have about 300 horsepower, total.

Nicole Wakelin  1:43:08  
Frankenstein combination of everything. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:11  
again, I mean this this is the beauty of EVs, it's easy to mix and match these parts to give you depending on the traits you want for a specific model, new the Lexus is you know, a more upscale, more premium model, it's going to be more expensive. So you want to go to set it apart from the other two, you know, so you give it you know, half again, as much power and it works out. Okay.

Nicole Wakelin  1:43:34  
It'd be interesting to see how that translates once you get behind the wheel. You know, I think that to give it a little more oomph. Instead it sits it sits the Lexus brand, it makes sense for these guys.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:47  
Now, one, one interesting detail. You know, one of the things we've seen some pictures of on the busy Forex from Japan, that they are not offering here is a yoke style steering wheel, like you have on the Tesla Model S plaid, are they doing this in the Lexus, it's going to be available on the Lexus on the Toyota. They're only they're only offering it in Japan and I suspect that they're the way they're doing it on the toilet on the Lexus is it's part of a package with a steer by wire system. So instead of having a mechanical connection between there's a steering column that goes from your steering wheel all the way down to your steering rack. And when you turn the wheel there's it's mechanically turning the steering rack and moving the wheels. This there's no mechanical connection there. It's a steer by wire. And one of the problems with the Model S plaid with that ridiculous yoke is that they still have a mechanical steering system. Which means you know, if you're trying to do tight maneuvers in a parking lot or somewhere or you know, trying to counter steer, if you're starting to slide, you got to do some overhead, you know, hand over hand steering. It's a real pain Do that with that yoke. But on the, on the RZ, they, it has only 150 degrees lock to lock. So it actually dynamically changes the steering ratio depending on your condition. So, at lower speeds, you know, you'll know for a given amount of steering angle, it will actually turn the wheels a lot more. So when you're maneuvering in parking lots or higher speeds, it'll be a lot less. So it's changing the steering ratio based on the conditions and but the overall from one one extreme to the other is only 150 degrees of rotation. So you'll never do the hand over hand. Right? steering. Yeah, so it's more like a Formula One car.

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:45  
I'll be interesting to see how well received this is by the average human.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:49  
Yeah, it's gonna, probably gonna take a little getting used to

Nicole Wakelin  1:45:53  
it. Yes, for sure. Putting it in an Eevee one level of change and discomfort now you're giving them a fancy pants steering wheel to they're like oh, too much at once.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:04  
So, I think we'll probably be learning more about this. Toyota is doing an event in early June and

Nicole Wakelin  1:46:11  
playing calling Toyota Palooza, it's like four days

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:14  
or something like that. Palooza version two. Yes. tweeter Palooza part two. So I'm gonna go to that as well. So that hopefully we'll learn more about this one. All right, I think that's it for the topics. We got a few questions to answer. Let's start off with one from Team engineering first, since it relates back to the soltera okay. The team engineering asks, Do you think more companies are going to start ending their performance versions like Subaru did with the Sei? As emissions restrictions get tougher? And what can companies like Subaru do when making a making Evie versions that are performance cars? Like the STI that stand out? All Wheel Drive? Isn't that unique anymore in the Eevee world or high power levels?

Nicole Wakelin  1:47:03  
I think that you know, there's there's two things to make any car performance car otherwise, what is the styling? And the you know, how does it look? How does it feel? But the drive is more than just how much how fast it accelerates, which is the big deal in an Eevee. If it doesn't handle well, if you feel like it gets away from you during that hard acceleration. If you feel like it doesn't have the capability to do what they say it's going to do off road if it's not for vehicle, it has to drive smoothly handle the right way. Those are where your differentiators are. It has to you know, which honestly in an STI before, it was you still had a performance card, lots of horsepower, but if it had handled like crud, nobody would have liked it. You know, they made it handle a specific way. I think you can still cause create those thing differentiators. Even in EVs and that's what it's going to come down to.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:53  
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, certainly, you know, performance is not going away. You know, we're Tesla's has proven quite conclusively that, you know, there is no disconnect between electrification and performance. So we'll we'll have plenty of performance models. You know, internal combustion performance models, like the STI, you know, there's going to be fewer and fewer of those, although, I think what we will have is, you know, manufacturers using electrification, using hybridization to enhance performance on their remaining internal combustion vehicles, at least over the next decade, before those fade away as well. But, yeah, you'll you'll definitely have performance additions. So

Nicole Wakelin  1:48:41  
yeah, I agree.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:43  
All right. Coach Cabrera asked, How long before solid state batteries make their way into cars? Will it be more efficient and affordable? It says, You got to drive the BMW i for EM model. But I think I would lean towards the e 40. rear wheel drive version due to affordability thoughts. So as far as the solid state batteries, I think, potentially one of the first production applications we're actually going to see is in 2025, Toyota has said they're going to start watching hybrid or solid state batteries, but they're not going to be an EVs. They're going to be in hybrids. Because one of the challenges that a lot of companies have been facing, it's been a consistent challenge with with solid state development is scaling up production. They can make small batches, you know, for testing purposes. But doing high volume production is still a problem. And so, you know, because hybrids have much smaller batteries than EVs. I guess Toyota has figured out well, we can do enough to put them in some hybrid models. So we'll do that and gain real world experience with them and then the other. The other advantage to that is because it's hybrid, if they do have a problem, it's probably I'm not going to strength people, you know they can, the vehicles will still be able to move, even if there's a challenge with the battery. So that I think that's the direction that we're going to see near term. And then probably somewhere around the 2627 28 timeframe is when you'll start seeing solid state batteries making their way into battery electric vehicles, larger solid state batteries. And again, it'll probably be on lower volume, probably more premium models first, they should be safer, more robust, that is one of the the key selling points of solid state batteries. Because you don't have the electric the liquid electrolyte in there should be more stable. And they should be able to hopefully withstand a lot more charge cycles and charge faster. But we'll we'll see. A lot of this is still unproven. But a lot of companies, including BMW, are investing in solid state technology, solid state technology, BMW and Ford are both invested in a company called solid power based in Colorado. And they're, they're doing some interesting stuff. And will, they're supposed to start testing those in vehicles this year, supposed to get large format battery cells that they that they're going to put into vehicles for testing this year. So hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll have a better idea of how well they really work. And then on the i Four, yeah, I don't disagree. I mean, you know, the rear drive bay sigh for 335 horsepower, lots of torque, you know, the, the M 50. Is 536 with even more torque, but you know, even the rear drive model, you've got plenty of performance, sir. It's still zero to 60 and five and a half seconds, according to BMW. And it's actually got more more range than the all wheel drive M 50. So yeah, I mean, if you like it, go for it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:51:59  
Yeah, I agree. Pretty much everything seems said and he's he's got more details on this one than I do. But yeah, spot on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:05  
Alright, good day j s when it comes to battery tech is GM Ford, or GM Ford comparable? Should the average consumer take into consideration when making a choice between the Silverado Evie or f150? Lightning? Alter the second part of that? No. I mean, yeah, that's not You're not going to have an option of which batteries are in any given vehicle. So you base it on the other attributes of the vehicle, and is it the right size to have the right capabilities for you? It's the right price point, and make your decisions based on that whatever's in there. There's a lot of similarities between what GM and Ford are doing on batteries there. They and most other manufacturers are using large format pouch cells. Right now, on the maki for example. Ford is still using LG cells, which are what GM is using. But they're the LG cells or the Fords using or similar chemistry to what's in the Chevy Bolt, which is Nickel, manganese, cobalt, or NMC. But Jim's new Altium cells reduce the amount of cobalt and add aluminum in there, which should help reduce the cost then make it more sustainable. But for is starting with the lightning is switching over to SK as their supplier. And they're still pouch cells. So there's a lot of similarity. But you know, there are some variations from one manufacturer to another.

Nicole Wakelin  1:53:39  
I think you know, when you're looking at something like that it's not like the technology is so vastly different between what one company versus the next is using. They're small. They're small, detailed differences, you know, there are differences but I don't think it's a difference enough that it should as a consumer like Well, I gotta stay away from GM or I gotta stay away from Ford look more of the overall vehicle like what Sam said, it's the vehicle that you're getting doesn't do everything else that you needed to do. It's probably got electric tech in there, that's fine. So don't get too overwhelmed by it is there's better today because then tomorrow something else changes in the next guy is better. You know, it's always evolving. I look at the overall vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:16  
Yeah, the one the one thing to keep in mind, you know, especially over the next couple of years, we are going to start seeing more vehicles that are using, you know, right now most EVs are using called nickel rich chemistry, so, mostly nickel that's in these lithium ion batteries from GM for Tesla, everybody else, because it's got higher energy density, but we're going to start seeing vehicles EVs coming to market that have lithium iron phosphate batteries, which have both benefits and downsides compared to the nickel cells. The Iron Phosphate are really durable, they're really stable. You know, they will Do 1000s of charge cycles as opposed to eight to 900 charge cycles for a nickel battery. They're, they're also cheaper. But they have about a third less energy density. So Tesla has now started using iron phosphate batteries LFP batteries in both the model, the standard range versions of the model three in the model Y. They've been using them in China for a number of years now, for the standard range of versions. And now the standard range model three that they sell in North America and globally actually, is using the same LFP batteries. The model Y in China is using LFP. They haven't launched that in North America yet, they probably will in the next year, I think probably sometime this year, they'll probably launch a lower cost standard range version of the model Y with LFP cells. And you know, those, they don't go quite as far, you know. So I think the model three is like two that's 260 mile or 250 mile range version, but it's a lot cheaper. And you're gonna see a lot more vehicles that offer the standard range versions with LFP. You know, to to make them more cost effective. Yep. All right. Let's go to James Gardner. When When does Santika snows off?

Nicole Wakelin  1:56:25  
Road residents shoes and I was like what I'm like, oh, snow is not cheap.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:56:31  
So, on my Miata, I don't put snow tires on it because I don't drive it in the winter because I don't want to expose it assault. But my daughter's Toyota 86 I took off the winter tires, week and a half ago. And yeah, upper 30s to 40 is probably a good, good it's about the right threshold generally, summer tires. Below 40 degrees is where they they start to feel a little hard and slippery. And so that's that's a that's a good rule of thumb is you know, as long as the or at least the temperatures in which you're going to be driving your are consistently over 40

Nicole Wakelin  1:57:13  
That's when I retire right guys, you me and if you ever question that tires call someone at Tirek those guys know and they always will sell you know consistently above 40 degrees but it's not a hard and fast rule. I live in New Hampshire. I took my snows off of my charger probably about two weeks ago, Sam so same. I took it in I had to get my car inspected, took the snows off hadn't put all seasons on. Do we still have temps that are occasionally here dropping below? 40? Yep, but not for very long. You know, and an all season tire can still function even as an Atari 10. But you know, the temperatures climbing up above 40 Most days, you're probably good because you're never going to pick it perfectly. But yeah, I normally tend to do it in April where I am in the Northeast. could still get a blizzard tomorrow.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:57:59  
We had snow here. We got about an inch of snow here on Monday. Yeah, just before I flew out to LA so yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:58:04  
so you never know like until June. You're not clear, I think for either Samurai, but I feel like you know, April for us. So when the temperatures are mostly above 40 Especially during the day because I'm not, you know, generally driving at five o'clock in the morning when is still really really cold. But mostly about 40 which is this time of year.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:58:22  
Yeah. All right. Shawn Whitehurst asked Hello wheel bearings crew, there was a question about battery health and older EVs. The 2014 leaf has a health display mine is down two bars. Keep up the good work. Psi had to leave in keep Jeep misspelling. Keep up the good work. Yeah, with a J, which I think you know, given that we were talking about Jeep earlier

Nicole Wakelin  1:58:48  
work Yeah, that should be a thing. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:58:52  
you know, battery health. Most EVs batteries are actually holding up better than had been anticipated. Because when they were developed, you know, they put a lot of effort into the battery management system to try to make sure that they weren't overcharging the batteries, trying to manage the the temperatures well, which are the things that tend to degrade the battery over time. The one exception that has had some challenges with with battery health is the leaf because it's pretty much the only one that was that's been sold in any significant volume with an air cooled battery. And even Nissan is moving away from air cooled to liquid cooled batteries what they are starting with the ARIA this year. So the leaf has had some challenges, especially if you live in very hot climates like if you live in Arizona, or especially the first few years they had a lot of problems with battery degradation. Most are fine. You can you can get them tested. Get the battery tested. So if you're thinking about buying a used DV and I think this is something I think we might have talked about last week with Some with Robbie Manheim auctions, is actually doing this now, with all the EVS that go through their auction system, they with all their all the vehicles that they put through their auction system, they do a whole series of inspections. And they put together a report for the dealers that are buying the vehicles. And they now have a specific suite of tests that they run on EVs to test the battery health. So if you're if you're thinking about buying an Eevee, and hasn't been tested, you can certainly take it to a dealer and have it evaluated. And, you know, see what kind of condition the batteries in and if it has degraded by more than about 15, maybe 20%. I'm not sure how many bars in total are on the the leaf. Yeah, just down to bars.

Nicole Wakelin  2:00:48  
Is that like two out of five or two out of 10? You know,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:00:51  
yeah, I think I think it's 10 bars is what they have, but I'm not sure. But if you're thinking about buying a used Evie, you know, get the go ahead and get the battery tested and see how much capacity is in there.

Nicole Wakelin  2:01:04  
Okay, according to this Google search, I did if it's purchases, there's 12 bars

Sam Abuelsamid  2:01:08  
12. Okay, so down about 15% then, okay, now on the on a TV if you're down to bars, so that's not too bad. You know, on an eight year old leaf. Yeah. Although that eight year old leaf only had 76 miles of range to begin with. So what was 2014?

Nicole Wakelin  2:01:26  
Yeah, you know, I still you know, you gotta contact again.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:01:32  
I mean, if you only drive 1015 miles a day, still fine. It's totally got you covered. Yeah. All right. Last one. For today from Tim Martin. I'm in the process of selecting an affordable electric plug in car. I'm looking at the VW e golf, BMW three and Honda Clarity. have about a 10 mile round trip commute and have an Acura RDX for trips and family stuff. I was wondering what you all would recommend and if I'm missing anything, looking for something with good handling and fun to drive during commuting and dropping off at daycare, previous vehicles 2013 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI 22,007 Acura TSX 2003 Honda Pilot 2003 VW Beetle TDI and a 91 Infiniti Q 45. So got some interesting tastes and cars. Yeah. Having on that first generation q 45. So I would go with the golf the golf. Yeah. If you can get a deal on the golf.

Nicole Wakelin  2:02:31  
Once you put there and also fun to drive like, Yeah, I like the I would go eat golf.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:02:35  
Yeah, the clarity. And that's kind of fugly.

Nicole Wakelin  2:02:40  
It's not really attractive. It's not really fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:02:42  
No, the i Three is actually pretty cool, too. It drives pretty well. It's not quite as much fun to drive as any golf. But, but it's pretty nice, too. And it's it's different. It's unique if you're looking for something unique. But yeah, I would say the E golf should be your first first choice there.

Nicole Wakelin  2:03:03  
Yeah, I'm with you, Sam. I just need we're looking at that list evolve. Do you think there's anything he's forgetting or leaving off?

Sam Abuelsamid  2:03:07  
Definitely worth taking a look at a Fiat 500. D and find one that's in the park. Yeah, yeah, you can get some really good deals. It's a little bit less range than the E golf but he says only driving 10 miles a day

Nicole Wakelin  2:03:21  
round trip. Yeah, walk to work. Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:03:25  
Bicycle. Get an E bike. There you go. Do you recommend C looking for something with good handling and fun to drive during commuting and dropping off at daycare. So dropping off a daycare kind of takes out the bike. Depending on where you live, you can put a little basket thing and get a little trailer you can get those little trailers for the kids that kids love those. That will be amazing. You'd be the call that a drop off. So so if you live somewhere warm, go for an E bike with a trailer and put put the kid in there. Otherwise go for the Eagles? Yes, yeah, four or 500 D 500. D is also an excellent choice. Great choices. Yes. Yeah. All right. And that's it for this week. Thank you all for joining us, and we'll be back next time. See you. Bye.