Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 250 of wheel bearings we've got the all wheel drive VW ID4 the Chevy Bolt, the Mercedes Benz GLS 450 The 2023 Toyota Sequoia, the Buick Wildcat Ev concept, and the new Lexus RX and more. All that coming up next.

This is episode 250 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:30  
I am Nicole Wakelin from the FAST Women podcast.

Roberto Baldwin  0:33  
I am Roberto Baldwin, say the verge. And what I said last week.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:39  
Have you been driving Mr. Baldwin?

Roberto Baldwin  0:41  
Mr. Baldwin has been driving Z 2022 Chevy Bolt. You may have? I don't know. I'm sure we talked about it. In fact, I'm sure we did. In fact, I remember we did. I had this vehicle, maybe not this exact one a while ago, and they dropped it off at my house. And I think I might have taken it to the store which is like a quarter of a mile from my house. Like pick something up. And I brought it back and I immediately got an email from Chevy. They had done a huge recon everything, every Chevy Bolt, and they're like, Don't park it in your garage. don't plug it in. Don't do anything. Don't fire put any kindling around it. Don't leave any fireworks in the trunk. There was a long list of things that well, yeah. And they came in he took it away. All right. So Chevy Bolt is back. They've replaced all the batteries at a great great, great expense,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38  
mostly to LG,

Roberto Baldwin  1:40  
mostly LG Chem, which is I mean, it's their problem, their fault. Pay for it. Yeah. So it arrived again, at this point, though, it's so late. And initially when they were like, Hey, do you want the Chevy Bolt? Like, why? It's too late for me to write a review. I'm not you know, no one's gonna want to buy a review from me on a car that's been out forever. And then they and then the fleet manager is like, hey, hey, you want to say well, you know what, while you while you're waiting for the bolt, Evie, and I'm like, You know what? Sure, bring it to my house. Because I need you know, it'd be nice to sort of compare and contrast that versus the Eevee. So I got it in for a week ish. In order to compare it to the UV which whenever that becomes available, I will be driving the Chevy Bolt compared to the first gen. Pretty much the therm To be honest, I think the seats are far more comfortable. The first generation seats, they were super heavy. They did this crazy thing where they made them really thin and they were kind of cool, and they're fun to drive around in for about an hour and then you're like, Oh, these are so the seats are more comfortable. I think the ride quality is a little bit better than before. I remember the the the the vehicle was jarring enough that my wife mentioned that it was the ride was rougher than our BRC oh geez, why is this cars ride rougher than our Subaru so no, it's gotten it's a better vehicle. It's still not on the ultimate LTM platform unfortunately on the they're sort of old platform this is you know, one of the vehicles this at the time this was like we got this car from from from idea to on the road and the quickest time ever now. Now, Chevy or GM says the bright drop Zeebo. 600 is now the fastest vehicle had gone from idea to to whatever but you know, it's it compared to other EVs. I mean, it's got 200 and I believe it's 59 Yeah, pull up the Yes to 50 miles range, which is pretty good, which is pretty good. That's good. That's a good that's a good amount of range for a vehicle right now. Especially one that's not necessarily new ish. It's still

Sam Abuelsamid  4:10  
the same basic car. I think they launched the first 17 Yeah, the other one,

Roberto Baldwin  4:14  
the other one had 66 kilowatt. This one has 65

Sam Abuelsamid  4:18  
Now the original it went from 60 to 65. So

Roberto Baldwin  4:23  
from 66 to 6065, there was six and then there was

Sam Abuelsamid  4:27  
it was number 66. It was it was 60 Originally, now you guys who's on first

Roberto Baldwin  4:32  
anyway, so now the guy anyway tune in for the miles 65 kilowatts I don't know if that's gross or, or usable because Chevy or GM is just really weird about that

Sam Abuelsamid  4:42  
stuff. Yeah. I think it's the the usable,

Roberto Baldwin  4:45  
and yeah, I think they're they tell us usable at the gross is probably like 70 something. Got a little car, you know, it's Android Auto CarPlay I did a I did I did my I usually mileage run it did actually did really well I got 275 miles on my mileage run. But the caveat is that I end up getting stuck in traffic a lot more on this run because I did the run later in the day than I typically do it so it's got you know that which means that it didn't do 70 miles an hour for as long as most other cars. So if you take that into account, it was probably I'm guessing it still would have gotten like probably like two six, it probably would have hit to 259 to 60 is my my estimation that said, Yeah, that's a good range. The other biggest problem with this vehicle is the charge rate which is 55 kilowatts.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:49  
That is a little slow, especially compared to you know, the Hyundai ionic five and the KV six,

Roberto Baldwin  5:55  
oh gosh, real slow compared to those. So it's you know, it's not quick when it comes to charges. So if you're going on you can do you can do a road trip on this vehicle, but it's not going to be the range that's going to get you it's going to be the sitting around waiting for your vehicle to charge that's gonna, that's 35 kilowatts, which means, you know, most of the time you're, you're rarely hit that that, you know, that top, top end charge rate, maybe at the beginning, maybe for a little while, but then it you know, it sort of tapers off. If you're talking about 55 That means it's gonna be you know, we're sitting around waiting at 20 kilohertz 25 kilowatts, 30 kilowatts, and you're like, which is when you have, you know, oh, anything over 200 You're like, awesome, because we hit 190 You're like, this is great. It's still awesome. This has tapered off what is so, but I'm gonna talk about the price for about a hot second and then tell you that is completely wrong.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:59  
It's not wrong yet. It's not

Roberto Baldwin  7:01  
wrong yet.

Nicole Wakelin  7:02  
It will be wrong. By the time this goes live. It goes wrong very soon, doesn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid  7:08  
Sure, they haven't said exactly what the date is when they're going to start shipping. The the revised number?

Roberto Baldwin  7:16  
Yeah, so right. So this was the 2022. Bolt, Evie two LT, they have the one LT and the two Lt. I don't know. That's such a weird trim thing. One to One.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:28  
It's a GM thing. They've they've been doing that for many, many years on many models.

Roberto Baldwin  7:34  
This, the starting price for this vehicle, this is the high end, I guess the upper trim level $34,200. With the infotainment package with USB charging, only ports, the Bose seven speaker system and wireless device charging that was 600 bucks. And then adaptive cruise control was 375 bucks. $36,165 destination 995. So almost four,

Sam Abuelsamid  8:07  
and actually that that 995. And this, this actually relates to one of the user questions or user comments we had come in, which praises GM for including the delivery charge in the listed price of their vehicle, which is something they've actually been doing for at least a year or two now. So the when they advertise the price of a vehicle, that includes the destination charge, unlike every other automaker.

Roberto Baldwin  8:34  
Good, good good job, GM. Yeah, good job. You know, GM should get props for getting the bolt came to market before the model three, it beat the model three department of market, which is

Sam Abuelsamid  8:45  
by nearly a year

Roberto Baldwin  8:47  
and not. That's the market. The first deliveries were in Fremont, California. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  8:54  
Were they really? Oh my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:57  
They did. They did the launch drive for it. in Palo Alto. Yeah, just a mile or two from Tesla headquarters.

Roberto Baldwin  9:05  
Yeah, I just drove around like, Hey, I know where this is that no, they there was a lot of shade. Unfortunately, once the car was out, they just never told anyone about it again. Yeah. And God, and they were you know, and when you talk to the people at GM there, oh, we're really looking at Fleet sales. And you know, there's they got some fleet sales with it. But the fact that you just the only add, I saw with a Chevy Bolt in it for years was the one that Toyota had to make. Under the diesel gates, went you know, what part of their deal with diesel guys they had to make an ad for EVs, and in that ad, there was a Chevy Bolt. You mean? It was

Nicole Wakelin  9:49  
Volkswagen you said Toyota,

Roberto Baldwin  9:51  
I'm sorry, Volkswagen diesel gate. I apologize to Toyota. Volkswagen. I apologize. As apologies to the police,

Nicole Wakelin  10:02  
no diesel issues. You're good. Yeah, they've

Sam Abuelsamid  10:03  
never sold a diesel in America.

Roberto Baldwin  10:05  
Yeah, please don't come to my house and steal half the parts of my car. Like we heard what you said the Volkswagen Volkswagen diesel gate, they had to make a an ad. And in that ad was a D batch. Chevy Bolt. EVs are great. And there's a Chevy Bolt right driving around.

Nicole Wakelin  10:25  
I do remember that. Now that you're saying that? I think that me too. That is the only time I can ever recall seeing an ad for that ever.

Roberto Baldwin  10:33  
Yeah, but prices. The prices are coming down on this this

Sam Abuelsamid  10:39  
mammoth jammer. Yeah, the price you just said was completely wrong. Completely wrong lately,

Roberto Baldwin  10:42  
and utterly incorrect? Well, if you unless you bought it today, I guess.

Nicole Wakelin  10:49  
If you just bought it, you're good. If you didn't just buy it. If

Sam Abuelsamid  10:52  
you go buy a 2022 model, you know, as long as those are still in stock, that's the the price that you just said is the price you'll pay. But when it's one of the threes rollout, which we don't know exactly when that's going to be because they don't actually say when that's going to happen. But sometime in the near future, the 2023 bolts will arrive with a substantially reduced price point. And the one LT

Sam Abuelsamid  11:21  
start is going to start at $26,595. And the two lt will start at $29,795 which is a $5,900 price cut. Yeah, it's one

Roberto Baldwin  11:35  
so now so to sort of help them out because GM and what's the other place Tesla does I don't know cars do automakers anymore. They they don't get the federal tax credit, which I still think is sort of bogus, because I'm an 80s kid so it's bogus because they're being I feel like they're those two companies are sort of being like Oh, you did a good job getting EVs on the road. Now we're not going to let you have that easy credit. job you don't get it? You're like Oh, but everyone else was dragging their feet Yeah, they still get it overnight you it was losers they

Nicole Wakelin  12:16  
get the discount you won't Wah

Roberto Baldwin  12:18  
wah wah you gotta pay full price so but the full price is pretty low now. It's still cheaper

Sam Abuelsamid  12:23  
than pretty much everything except the the Kona Evie and the leaf you know after their credit says with with their credits are the only ones that are going to be cheaper than the bolt. Yep. And and the leaf that's actually cheaper, only has 150 miles of range instead of 259 miles of range. If you want a 220 mile range leaf you are still going to pay more

Sam Abuelsamid  12:50  
and the price is also going down on the bolt e u v as well by $6,200. So

Sam Abuelsamid  12:57  
you know I think you know I'm you know I expect that GM was already planning to cut the price on the bolt next year anyway because you know, once they launched the the equinox Evie which is gonna supposed to start at $30,000 But you know, given the the reputational challenges they've suffered over the last year with the

Nicole Wakelin  13:22  
reputational challenges you have a career in PR my friend

Sam Abuelsamid  13:26  
that's behind me I think that's probably why they accelerated this price cut because they were probably having a hard time selling these bolts Yeah, I mean if

Roberto Baldwin  13:39  
it's it's if you need a inexpensive Evie These are probably gone you could probably end up leasing these for like a nickel at some point. Yeah, yeah. When remember the the Fiat 500 ease those were like $99 and there was a little while while they're bowl TV if you were a Costco member, you could get like a really screamingly steal. So it was like ridiculous it was it was so low that I was thinking about I'm like oh I don't I'm not a Costco member. And then I remember that my wife does not like the Chevy Bolt and it wouldn't be here car so now we got to come on which is I mean to be fair, the better vehicle

Sam Abuelsamid  14:18  
but although the back seat

Roberto Baldwin  14:22  
Yeah The only thing is in the backseat of our cars or dogs

Sam Abuelsamid  14:25  
Yeah. I mean it depends on what you know what a particular customer needs

Roberto Baldwin  14:30  
if you have like family or some of that that sort of stuff. And friends.

Nicole Wakelin  14:36  
Friends who has those that's stupid

Roberto Baldwin  14:39  
those are overrated I mean our main car was a BER z so we're not really backseat consider that was our that was our only car for a while. The BRC, back seats are like for us.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:56  
Okay, anything else on the bolt?

Roberto Baldwin  15:01  
Ah, now that's pretty much it. All right.

Nicole Wakelin  15:06  
So I have a car that I already had. So if you guys want to know about it, you can just go back to, I believe, three, two. And you can hear what I said the first time. They gave me a car that I had a few months ago, I have the Mercedes Benz 2022 GLS 450, which is their ginormous grip, big SUV. It is not an inexpensive SUV, the way this is it is, in fact $97,155 with a destination fee of 1050, which is surprisingly low. I don't know, I somehow expected that to be as outrageous as the overall price of the car. So it kind of getting exactly what you think great, big, luxurious Mercedes, that looks fancy. I talked about a lot of stuff before but this time, I interestingly, my daughter was home from college. So I was carrying her around, and my brother in law and his wife were home, we were doing all this family stuff. It was hilarious to see the reaction of my family to this car. It's I mean, it's $100,000 SUV, not everybody rides around and $100,000 SUV, I would not if Mercedes had not given me this one. So, but like just the things they're noticing and the things they're either liking or not liking cracked me up. They hated uniformly that the you adjust the seats with that little silver thing that looks like the side profile of a human and it's like on the side doors. And it's like, there's a little instead of reaching down to the seat and just every single person who got in that car. This is how does this I don't why are they? I don't like this like it was this. Everyone Everyone hated. I'm like, wow, I never really liked that. But apparently I'm not the only one. They all hated that. And they all lost their minds in a positive way over. Do you know what the thing that the most noticed about this? We were driving it at night? Do you know what the thing that they all thought was the coolest thing I've ever seen?

Roberto Baldwin  16:54  
Oh, the lighting, the puddle

Nicole Wakelin  16:57  
light that looks like the little Mercedes star on the grid. Like literally my brother

Sam Abuelsamid  17:01  
in law saw. He's like everybody does that. No.

Nicole Wakelin  17:04  
I know, but not yet. But not everybody has a car that does that. I mean, everyone does it. But does anybody have a car that does it? So literally just like oh, and I thought something was wrong. And like what? Oh, God, what happened? He's like, look at this on the ground. And I'm thinking I have a flat tire. Somebody's hit the side of it. He's like, No, but the lights that said, he's all excited to come look, look, look, look with the door. I'm like, Oh my gosh, when you open the door it moves. And like of course it does. Oh my god.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:29  
It must be it must be so nice to not be jaded like we are

Nicole Wakelin  17:33  
pretty, pretty jaded. That's just like, wow, okay, so yeah. Hey,

Sam Abuelsamid  17:38  
nice to still appreciate the little trivial things

Nicole Wakelin  17:42  
like that. Also, they were This is funny. So I tried to do the cars that you know, you can activate the infotainment by saying, hey, Mercedes, and I was saying, you know, is we're joking about the things you get or don't get in $100,000 car. I was like, Yeah, but you can just yell at it and it will do things for you. So John is in the backseat literally yelling at it to like change the colors on the ambient lighting. We took a 20 minute ride back from the movie theater from seeing Top Gun last night. John yelling Hey, Mercedes, make ambient lighting yellow. Oh, it worked a Mercedes make ambient lighting green. Oh, it worked. I'm like, John, this could work every time.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:19  
Are you sure about that? I mean, it is a voice control system.

Unknown Speaker  18:22  
We did. We had a couple of times. Very good. We

Nicole Wakelin  18:25  
laughed at him once. And when we laughed, it was like Mercedes, like I'm sorry, I understand you please repeat that and everybody else be quiet. When we did that. Other than that one time when we were sort of all laughing and talking over him it kind of every single time and said that the system's credit. He is literally in the second row screaming. And it worked. It got what he was saying. So it was sort of no sort of

Sam Abuelsamid  18:51  
system. Do you think that's that's actually a good idea that it can respond to people in the back in the second row? You know, if you're driving around with your kids, do you want your kids issuing commands to your car?

Nicole Wakelin  19:01  
I guess if your kids are old enough or smart enough or whatever to figure out to yell Hey, Mercedes, I suppose that would be bad. Maybe that's a bad thing. If your kids are like just

Roberto Baldwin  19:11  
turned it off to good I guess if your kids are churchy, I guess whenever you get an A you can set up a profile one for when your kids aren't in the car and one when you're with your your jerky. Your jerky jerky care obnoxious

Sam Abuelsamid  19:25  
teenagers Exactly.

Roberto Baldwin  19:27  
So setup. Like you can set the biometric like one finger is you the other finger the what the middle finger is you kids.

Nicole Wakelin  19:36  
Like the kids are in the car. Dang it.

Roberto Baldwin  19:40  
We solved the problem. That horrible children

Nicole Wakelin  19:42  
so so yeah, so puddle lights, big hit. Hey, Mercedes, big hit. The way you adjust the seats. Not not a big hit. Not a big hit. Not a big hit at all.

Roberto Baldwin  19:52  
It's like, it's like every time you get the Mercedes. I still put my hand like Oh, whoops.

Nicole Wakelin  19:57  
I know I do to put my hand down Am I So the league literally be looking sideways making direct contact with a little silver things on the door. And I'm like, why is my where is it like directly in front of you, you're looking at them.

Roberto Baldwin  20:08  
Like when you get in a Porsche, and you're looking for the start, you're like, where the? Yeah, the key.

Nicole Wakelin  20:14  
And this was probably the first time ever, this is all about what other people thought this time. I was at the drive thru at Starbucks, getting my venti London fog, which is my daily thing. And I got my venti London fog, and the girl went to hit it, she was like that car is the interior look at that screen. So what she picked up on was the giant screen and which again, like when you say there's things that you we see that we see that kind of thing all the time. We're like, Oh, nice, green Mercedes, to somebody who doesn't see it. They're like, oh, good gravy. That looks like something. I mean, she was impressed enough with it that she was saying to actually, did you see the script, look at the side of that car, they're like hanging out the window, the Starbucks checking off the screen. So it was sort of interesting to just see other people's reactions to it. And to a point, what you're saying is like, we get kind of jaded that we're in these things all the time. So you get sort of used to them. But they are a big deal. And they're not sort of normal for everybody else, especially in a car that looks as pretty as this one. So it was it was a fun week, driving the family around and thinking what they thought of it. And I mean, it's a it's a beautiful car to drive. It's has plenty of power. It's not like going to be it's not something that you're going to like win races. It's big. So it has 362 horsepower, but it's a big vehicle. So it gets out of its own way. But it's not like it's not super, super fast. It's a three liter turbocharged six cylinder, nine speed automatic three to six, nine pound feet of torque. So it's, you know, it's got a decent engine under there. And it's fun to drive. And I'm really glad I didn't have to put gas in it, because it's combined fuel economy is 20.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:46  
That's pretty good compared to what I've been driving. But that's

Roberto Baldwin  21:52  
a good segue.

Nicole Wakelin  21:53  
That's a good Timmy. What have you been driving?

Sam Abuelsamid  21:56  
Well, actually, the the car I'm going to talk about today is the one I was driving until a couple of days ago. The one it's in my driveway right now. It's the new Lincoln Navigator. Yeah, it's not quite as fuel efficient as the the one I'm actually going to talk about, but we'll talk about the navigator next week.

Nicole Wakelin  22:18  
I just looked at the show notes. I'm like, how is that getting worse fuel economy and my Mercedes, something's wrong?

Sam Abuelsamid  22:25  
No, I had the, when I got back from Wisconsin, I had the Volkswagen ID for all pro ID for all wheel drive Pro. So this is the base trim of the ID four, but the new version that now has a second motor on the front axle, which gives it roughly about 300 horsepower. And so it's got got a little more grunt than before, still has the same 82 kilowatt hour battery pack. It is got compared, it's a lot. Some point in the past eight or nine months, VW pushed out a software update to the ID fours both rear wheel drive single motor and the all wheel drives. So they actually got a little bit of an improvement in their efficiency. So the all wheel drive version of the ID for now pretty much matches what the rear wheel drive version originally got, which is 249 miles I think when the when the rear drive first came out, it was ready to 250 and it's now and I think I think it's a 260 or 265 So it's doing it's doing a little bit better than it was before

Sam Abuelsamid  23:41  
you know, the ID four is a you know, compact crossover, you know in the same size class as what is now what has now supplanted midsize sedans as the top selling car passenger car passenger vehicle category after full size pickup trucks so you know this is going up against the likes of you know on the electric side the ionic five and Evie six as well as vehicles like the honda crv and Toyota rav4 Which I think it's the best seller overall now of non pickup trucks. And so you know, same same kind of size, overall size as those vehicles but unlike the gas engine vehicles, it actually has a little more room inside because they've expanded the passenger compartment and pushed the front bulkhead forward a little bit. So the VW ID vehicles the ID four and the ID three hatchback which are which is available in Europe not here. Don't have a front trunk because they when you look at him in profile, you can see that they have shrunk down the windshield to bumper length and you know packed everything in there, you know all the ancillary hardware. So there's not they, they actually have a legitimate reason for not having a front truck because they they have put that stuff in there, they haven't, they haven't kept it the same size there as the gas engine equivalents. So you have a little more room inside, there's actually quite a bit of cargo space, and there's almost 30 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seat. So very roomy. As I said, you know, with that, that extra motor in there, it's got a little more oomph to it, you know, accelerates a little quicker. Another thing that has gotten quicker, since we first talked about the ID for last year, is the infotainment system when it when it first launched last year, there were a lot of complaints about lag Enos and the infotainment system.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:45  
It has gotten noticeably better, I did not really notice any significant lag when I was yes,

Roberto Baldwin  25:51  
when you. So you start it and you drive three miles, it launches before that three miles

Sam Abuelsamid  25:58  
does in fact, it launches even out of my driveway. So there's there's that. So when Jen generally more responsive Now, that said, it still has, you know, the stupid touch controls based on the, the screen. So when when I went out somewhere with my wife the other day, she tried to hit the pause button on the screen to pause something we're listening to, to comment on it, and kept hitting the menu button that was just below the screen because it's a touch, touch control capacitive touch area there. And so when she was pointing at the pause button, you know, her middle finger, as she was doing that was also touching the button below it, and causing a menu to pop up over it. And so she couldn't pause, hold on, hold on a second, I'll do get touch this part.

Nicole Wakelin  26:53  
She's ready to like bash the screen.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:56  
So, you know, so this is this is why, you know, some of those ancillary controls really should be physical buttons, not touch sensitive surfaces. But, you know, it is what it is. But overall, the performance of the system was was much better much improved. You know, it's still, you know, I think it's, it's a decent looking vehicle. It's, it's got, you know, nicely, it's nicely finished inside, you know, as Volkswagens typically are. And I enjoyed driving it, it was it was quite pleasant to drive. It's rated as a 249 miles of range. So the MPGe works out to 97 mpg, which is not at the high end of the range, you know, it's not as good as the Hyundai and Kia models or you know, some of the other higher end or, you know, some of the more efficient EVs out there. But it's adequate. It's about 35 kilowatt hours per 100 miles. I actually, and then this is the EPA ratings, I was actually getting in, in my driving about 3.3 miles per kilowatt hour, which is slightly less than what I got with the Kia. And granted I got the 3.4 miles per kilowatt hour on the Kia with almost all highway driving. And this was more a mix of city and highway driving. So it is definitely not quite as good as the as the Kia. But it's I got better than what the EPA label value would indicate. So getting 250 miles of range, in real world driving with the ID for all wheel drive should be no problem at all. The price tag on this one came up to a grand total of $44,870 including an $1,195 destination charge. So, you know at that price point, you know, just a little under $45,000 That's actually about 10 grand less than the all wheel drive ionic five I had. And about $1,000 less than the Evie six that I was driving. Both of those have a little bit more range than this does. And, you know, they they're say a little more interesting to look at, you know, the styling is a little more bold on those vehicles. But, you know, I think that this is actually a pretty good value for what you're getting here. You know, it is obviously significantly more expensive than the bolt, but it's also significantly larger and I think a lot of people might prefer driving it and it also charges a lot faster it'll, it'll charge it, I think about 130 kilowatts. So it's it's definitely worth taking a look at and it's been doing pretty well for VW since they launched it so you can get it as either the rear wheel drive model or dual motor front all wheel drive model now garlis of where you live, and it is available in all 50 states. Unlike Hyundai and Kia they are not limiting it right now to ZEV states or anything like that.

Roberto Baldwin  30:10  
Okay, so the roll down the weird when the rear? Well there is, yeah forgot to but they did they did they change that

Sam Abuelsamid  30:20  
they have not changed that. Yeah, so for those that don't recall, he made the peculiar decision.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:30  
Rather than having on the driver's door, having four window switches for the four doors, they decided to save a few cents and only have two windows switches. And then in front of the window switches, there is another touch button that you have to press that's labeled rear. So if you want to, if you just press the two windows switches, it'll rolled out and will roll down your front windows. And then you press the rear button and then press these window switches again. And you can roll down the rear windows. So it's an extra step if you want to roll down the radios ticular. It is

Roberto Baldwin  31:08  
it's it's there's some there's so much to like about the ID four. It's its you know, and then fortunately, they seemed to fix the issues with the with the infotainment system, which was just really laggy that was like its big thing, infotainment system.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:24  
I mean, the interface was fine.

Roberto Baldwin  31:27  
It just took forever for anything. And so that's good. The touch haptic that all the touch buttons. I mean, that's in their entire lineup. And that's just they're just, that's just we're gonna have to deal with that for for the next few years. That's just but the rear window thing. It's just trying to be clever for the sake of being clever. Yeah. And it's not it's the

Sam Abuelsamid  31:46  
sign some accountant said, Where can we save 50 cents? They said, Oh, we can get rid of these two switches. And two. That was a bad bad idea money.

Roberto Baldwin  31:57  
But But I do see a lot of ID fours on the road around so they're not

Nicole Wakelin  32:02  
often. I mean, I believe you. It's just you know, read in California.

Roberto Baldwin  32:10  
I've seen others. I've seen a lot of ionic fives recently. I've seen a couple Evie sixes. Yeah, California, northern California, especially people are trading in their model threes for other cars. Or they're buying model threes. There's still a lot of model threes everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:25  
Yeah, they are the new California Camry now.

Roberto Baldwin  32:29  
They are the Prius. Because forever Prius was like the official car of California,

Nicole Wakelin  32:35  
let's say look better. I mean, the Prius

Sam Abuelsamid  32:38  
marginally better. Well, the current generation prisons pretty bad. So yeah, it's quite a bit depressed.

Nicole Wakelin  32:46  
I mean, they've gone some generations and the newer one you'd think would look better and

Sam Abuelsamid  32:52  
well, let's end the previous discussion there before we say something we shouldn't. Yeah. Okay. Speaking of Toyota, Nicole and I went to Toyota Palooza to

Nicole Wakelin  33:07  
Park did

Roberto Baldwin  33:08  
my next call Toyota THON.

Nicole Wakelin  33:11  
Because it sounds sort of normal is Toyota Palooza sounds like something that's gone off the rails? That's yeah, I feel like it needs to be like

Roberto Baldwin  33:21  
that Terry Farrell was there. And there was? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. confused as to what's going on.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:30  
You know, the Toyota, you know, this past week, had tried to have multiple events simultaneously, which included several waves of having media come in to drive the new Toyota Sequoia. But they also had a couple of other things that they were doing at the same time, some of which had to be done simultaneously. So usually, when you have multiple waves for a drive program, you'll have the first group come in on day one, and drive on day two, and then either leave, either on the evening of day two or the morning of day three. And on day two, while the first group is driving, the second group is arriving, and so on through the course of the week. But because Toyota also wanted to do the global premiere of the new Lexus RX and have everybody there at once, you had some you had four waves of people that came in, but at various times, and some of them were there, like from Monday to Thursday, some were there from Tuesday to Thursday, like I was, which was the shortest wave. Others were there from Tuesday to Friday, and some were there from Tuesday to Saturday. And they had Okay, yeah. And then a bunch of they had a bunch of other stuff that they had us doing. You know, they had some demos, some pretty cool interesting demos of stuff. They had a couple of the they had the new sienna, a tunnel masks, which is their, their AV ready version of the CN minivan that they, they prep it. So, you know, for companies that want to do autonomous vehicle development, they can buy these things that makes it easier for them to, they pre wire a lot of stuff and put in redundant brake systems and steering systems. And Chrysler has been doing that for several years with the Pacific as well. But they, even though they acknowledged that they were doing it, they would never actually talk. Talk about it on the record, which was really weird. Toyota is actually advertising it now. So anyway, the Sequoia Sequoia, what did you think of the Sequoia?

Nicole Wakelin  35:37  
I liked the Sequoia. I thought that they it didn't change as much as I expected it to change because it's been over a decade correct me if I'm wrong, Sam

Sam Abuelsamid  35:48  
almost 15 years.

Nicole Wakelin  35:49  
Yeah, it's been so. So like, it's been a hot minute since they last redid this car. So, you know, normally you get these all news and it's not that long of a timeframe. They're significantly different. This was different but I expected more different, like expected to be more dramatic, like 15 years how far cars have come.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:10  
I mean, it looks a bit different.

Nicole Wakelin  36:12  
It looks quite a bit different. But I mean, it looks what I do, like we got some time in to to go off road in it a little bit and we got a little off road course. Really short one. And then we did on road driving. And they had us in the new we tried out the new Capstone trim, which is the highest trim in the lineup. So that's their fancy pants. It's like their new you know, the fancy is the leather the walnut trims or whatever we are wood trims real everything cobbles, you makes you feel like you're a rock star, blah, blah, blah. That one looked really good. I thought it looks really good. I liked that they have one that they really did an upscale interior because Toyota interiors on the doctrines are decent, but they never really have something that looks like really like wow, this is a really nice Toyota. I know they've got Lexus for that. But it's nice to have something in a Toyota that you haven't gotten into Lexus territory pricing wise. So I liked the capstone. I thought it drove nicely. I didn't think it drove I was expecting it to be a little bit more well mannered because so many of the largest Chevy's that size today do. I know you know, it's got a truck thing going on, but a lot of them are very well mannered. They feel very nice there, they still know they're a big SUV, but they don't have that sort of unwieldy like if you're on the highway you don't have that you know if you change lanes quickly for some reason. You don't have that sort of sway back and forth like

Unknown Speaker  37:30  
unless you have a trailer hooked up unless you have a trailer hooked up. It shouldn't

Nicole Wakelin  37:33  
feel like you have a trailer hooked up when there's not a trailer hooked up and every now and then it did in highway driving. So I liked it overall I love that they've you know, got the new infotainment system in there. I mean, they put that in the tundra first we sat there first so it's the same. It's the I don't know what they call the newest generation

Sam Abuelsamid  37:50  
of the it's just the Toyota multimedia system. It's it's

Nicole Wakelin  37:54  
just okay, I wasn't sure if it had like a fancy name

Sam Abuelsamid  37:57  
that they got rid of Antoon Yeah, I

Nicole Wakelin  38:00  
knew Edison was gone I couldn't like what did they call it the branding because

Sam Abuelsamid  38:03  
it had such a bad reputation in the field and purchase

Nicole Wakelin  38:07  
good I mean, because it really is it is the infotainment is a huge you know leap forward from that's, that's probably one of the biggest changes like that infotainment system is so much better than the old one. The old one was horrific. This one is great. It's what they have in the tundra. So it's not you know, if you've seen a Tundra, you've seen with this new infotainment isn't it's much better. I mean, it was perfectly capable off road they did do it was a very short offer, of course, but be like

Sam Abuelsamid  38:30  
yeah, I mean, it wasn't really challenging course. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be curious to see how this thing behaves. You know, on the type of course that GM would send or the Jeep would send us on with the Wrangler Wrangler, the wagoneer

Nicole Wakelin  38:47  
wagon here. That's the thing like it was I mean, it was off road it but it was like they had mowed a section of road for us to get to this field like it was the field had been mowed. Like we didn't just drive through the field Jeep would have been like drive through the field. Okay, fine. These guys sort of mowed a path through the field. And then we got to the off road port, and they had part and they had, you know, some stuffs, you had a wheel popped in the air, you know, as you're going over these bumps, and they had it where you were banked very sharply to one side, you know, so you can see that it does do that and maintain control. And there's a little tiny part at the end where they said you could drive faster and then they told us don't drive over 35 miles an hour and I was like that's not fast or that's not fast. That's just the speed that what, you can't drive much slower than that and keep moving. So and it handled fine on that. I actually liked it. Honestly, I liked the TRD Pro was a TRD Pro for getting my trims. I like taking the TRD PRO out on the dirt. I thought that was nicer to drive overall than driving the other ones on the highway. Yeah, if you're, if you're gonna go off roading, and that's what you want this for. I liked how it felt. I thought it was it looks really snazzy. It's got like red and accents everywhere red stripe bananas and a steering wheel and red stitching and fancy TRD PRO everything red, red everywhere because cool off road thing. So I liked it. I wasn't as impressed as I think I thought maybe I would be I think, like I said, I was expecting a little bit more just because it had been such a long time. So what did you think Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid  40:22  
Yeah, you know, the design. If you've seen the, the new tundra, you know, it's basically the same same design language, you know, back to the, you know, the second row doors, the front, the front, half of the thing looks exactly the same as the tundra. And then, you know, the SUV on the back, got independent rear suspension. One interesting detail is that the hybrid system that is optional on the tundra, is the only available powertrain on this. So it's, they call it iforest Max. So this is 3.5 liter, twin turbo V six, with an electric motor embedded in the nine speed transmission, which is basically the same architecture as Ford's PowerBoost. And it's close to the same power levels, I think it's like the Tundra has got slightly more horsepower, and slightly less torque than than the the Ford system. But yeah, they're effectively equal.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:20  
And, but what I did notice, in driving that, you know, especially on the road, it didn't seem quite as smooth as the the Ford system every once in a while, I would feel some jerking and hard to tell if it was, you know, the clutch between the engine and the electric motor, engaging, disengaging, or something going on, and the transmission couldn't quite tell where the where the problem was, but wasn't I mean, it wasn't severe, but you could feel it doing something. Which, you know, a lot, especially compared to other Toyota hybrid systems, is not usually the case. I mean, they're usually totally seamless, you know, you can't, you can't tell it all.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:06  
And also, the fuel economy of at least during our a couple of hours of driving was not particularly impressive, like about 17 and a half. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  42:17  
we know what I should have mentioned that Sam, we saw the same thing. We were looking at the fuel economy, we're like, Well, this is gonna be it's gonna be better than the old one. We're like, Wait, it's gonna be better than the old one. What is wrong with the numbers? It's going to be better than the old one. It's the fuel economy doesn't seem like it made much of a change. And we have no EPA fuel economy as of the moment recording this and we have no Toyota estimated fuel economy either. So they released nada about the fuel economy is going to be we did like sometimes we go to these things. And if EPA numbers aren't ready, they'll say Toad is estimating you will get x. Yeah, yeah. Oh, nothing, not a target. Not an estimate, not a tentative like there are no fuel economy numbers. It's like, Oh, okay.

Roberto Baldwin  42:57  
I didn't know what the fuel economy numbers gonna be in there. Like, let's just didn't want to brag about

Nicole Wakelin  43:02  
it yet. Right. So yeah, that was interesting, because and we didn't get we didn't get great fuel economy. We were driving up there and we weren't, you know, my dry partner was not driving aggressively, but he wasn't driving. You know, he wasn't hypermiling you know, he was driving with enthusiasm. And our numbers were not were not great.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:19  
The other thing that at least for us was not great. was towing. You know, the, the Sequoia can tow is rated for up to 9200 9500 pounds 90 520 Actually, I think is the total number, which is a pretty good tow rating. And they they had two tundras setup for towing evaluation, one was set up with a boat that weighed about, I think about 4500 pounds with the boat in the trailer. And then the other one was an Airstream.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:56  
And we took out the one with the Airstream trailer. And at about 65 miles an hour. The and we couldn't I couldn't we weren't quite sure if the problem was the trailer or the whole setup. You know the guy the the guy who came with us on that ride was saying that, you know they they couldn't get the trailer with it was a single axle trailer weighed about 5000 pounds. And they couldn't get one equipped with a sway bar and the trailer you know, as soon as you got to about 65 miles an hour, the trailer was definitely swaying back and forth. And it felt rather disconcerting If you push too much beyond 65 miles an hour and so you know I slowed down and kept it just under 65 so that it wouldn't do that. And compared to a few weeks ago when we drove the the f150 Lightning you know drove the lightning with a 9500 pound trailer. And it that thing, it didn't even feel like there was anything connected to it. This thing, even with a 5000 pound trailer, you could feel that there was some weight back that are holding you back when you tried to accelerate. I mean, it wasn't really slow, but you could you could tell that it was it was working a lot harder than than the lightning was. So that's another thing to consider if you're going to be using using this for for towing. You know, we'll have to see if anybody else does, some are probably when the TFL truck guys, you know, do their towing videos, you know, we'll see what kind of results they get even Roman

Nicole Wakelin  45:44  
in my community to do.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:48  
They always they always do a lot of a lot of that kind of stuff, and they do a pretty thorough job with a do. So, you know, you might want to think about that if you're going to if you're going to be doing a lot of trailer towing. But other than that, you know, overall, it was it was good. And it was certainly a huge improvement over the old Sequoia. And, you know, the the, the, the Toyota multimedia system was, is much much, much better than anything Toyota has done before. I still have the same complaint I had when I drove first drove the Bz 4x Was that, Oh, got a 14 inch screen. And they don't allow it to be split, you know, to show more time. Yeah, one thing? Yes, you can have navigation, or your audio controls or other controls. But you can't have a split screen with navigation and your media controls. Same thing. Now, you know what they told me that the big 4x drive is well, you can use the voice controls, you know, so if you're using nav, you can just say, you know, was it Hey, Toyota, I think positive music, and it'll it'll do that. But, you know, again, you

Roberto Baldwin  47:04  
are you could also just use your finger. Yeah. The music's really loud. How's that? Nevermind.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:12  
But but you know, as I said, when I talked about the tundra that I drove a couple of weeks ago, if you are using CarPlay, or Android Auto, those will give you a split screen configuration and use the full screen. So you can have map and media controls side by side on there. So there's that.

Roberto Baldwin  47:31  
There's that There you go. I tell you, they are not they're sticking with body on frame like like it's nobody's business.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:39  
Well, I mean, for a vehicle this. I mean, everybody else is too for these full size utilities and pickups. Yeah, but

Roberto Baldwin  47:46  
but everyone else has figured out how to make their cars drive better. Or their SUVs drive better.

Nicole Wakelin  47:52  
Feeling like that customer is

Roberto Baldwin  47:55  
happy with this is the other customers like I know it's not gonna be as nice as he is other vehicles. But I feel like I'm gonna be able to drive over a cliff with this thing and it'll be fine. I think that's what they're

Nicole Wakelin  48:11  
I think that is kind of the thing like the person who's buying this like you said, same you know, you have a you actually have a navigator in your driveway this week, right? Yeah. And like the Navigator has an entirely different drive to it. I've driven the navigator I drove it to the lodge and that has that like luxury car like Oh, y'all do all this stuff. It's all fancy and smooth and it's sequoias kind of like you and your luxury car stuff. Let's go drive in the dirt. Like I kind of feel like that's what this

Roberto Baldwin  48:36  
let's go go mow afield

Sam Abuelsamid  48:37  
and drive around but you know, then again, if you want both if you want the luxury thing and the ability to go driving the dirt then there's the Jeep Grand wagoneer

Roberto Baldwin  48:51  
brand I tried to make my cousin was Land Rover owner. LR three, four, I don't know. And he looked he was looking for new vehicles like Oh, try the you know, he actually goes off road he actually has to you know, he does all these things. He's this stuff with the scouts. And I'm like, oh go try the you know, Toyota whatever I forget what and he's like I don't like the ride quality and went out and bought a discovery.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:17  
I mean, I thought I thought the ride quality is in the Sequoia was generally fine. I didn't have I didn't have any notable issues with that. It felt fairly smooth and well controlled. But you know, it's just some of these other things. Price wise pricing on this. I don't think they even told us exactly when this is gonna go on sale. They originally

Nicole Wakelin  49:39  
it originally they if you read the release stuff and it said like August or so. Okay, now they somebody asked in my presentation like yeah, fall. Okay. So it got a little bit so it's bumped out. Like if you look at the original stuff. It also is like I think August or summer of 2022 it's not summer, summer. Yeah, yeah, it's not anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:00  
Ah, okay, well, pricing for the starting starts at the SR five four by two model starts at $58,300 goes up to 75,300. For the Capstone four by two in between you get limited and platinum trims. You can add 3000 to each of those four four wheel drive and then the TRD Pro which is four by four only is $76,900. So, that is the 23 Toyota Sequoia which will be arriving at some point in the coming months event they'll

Roberto Baldwin  50:41  
sell 60 gazillion of them they'll sell bazillion

Sam Abuelsamid  50:46  
I don't know if they will because I don't think so. The previous Sequoia never sold that well I don't think it ever sold much over about 25 or 30,000 units and you know compared to you know, the Chevy GM full size utilities or even the Ford Expedition it never sold as well as those did

Roberto Baldwin  51:07  
bring back the Ford Flex. That's what I think we should yeah. It kind of looks like

Nicole Wakelin  51:12  
you really liked the Ford Flex I honestly I have never driven one but I really despise how it looks.

Roberto Baldwin  51:22  
I've only I've only gotten a ticket in one press vehicle and that was going down. I wasn't even covering cars at the time I was doing a thing with this is when I was at Wired so I was covering a bunch of stuff. I was covering tech, but we were doing a snowboarding thing and we were driving back from Tahoe I reviewed all these snowboards driving back down here and I got a ticket in the Ford Flex. That's fine. I still love the Ford Flex I liked the way it looks like the little boxiness of it. Yeah. Cool looking. I miss all the little box vehicles. But you know if you look at the Toyota Sequoia kind of looks like a bigger version or four flex with a little bit more flair. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  52:00  
The seem like they haven't weird seems like on the doors. The lines. It was

Unknown Speaker  52:05  
like oh on the flex. Yeah, it was creases, creases. Character

Nicole Wakelin  52:11  
No, they gave it an ugly I don't know I didn't like them.

Roberto Baldwin  52:15  
A little chrome between the window and the door or no on the doors and so there was a hooker speed lines.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:25  
First came out in like 2008 We took one up north up to Traverse City for a family vacation. And it was great for that. You could put all kinds of stuff in there. You know, family of four and all their gear for a week and a half and it was fantastic.

Nicole Wakelin  52:44  
It was great. That weirdly creased little vehicle

Sam Abuelsamid  52:48  
crease. Well. I've seen it's gone now.

Nicole Wakelin  52:52  
I know that's why you can pick on it because you can't buy one anyway. So

Sam Abuelsamid  52:55  
there's several of them in my neighborhood.

Roberto Baldwin  52:57  
You see him around every once in a while. No,

Nicole Wakelin  53:01  
no

Roberto Baldwin  53:04  
not the crease. Not no. Oh, that's

Nicole Wakelin  53:06  
a great car

Roberto Baldwin  53:07  
you just fill you could buy you buy the Ford Flex and then you buy a Cana Bondo.

Nicole Wakelin  53:12  
Just smooth it all out. That's everyone doesn't you buy a new car I do not like how you design this, where's the bondo we're gonna fix

Sam Abuelsamid  53:22  
or maybe it's a little fiberglass, fiberglass, I know

Roberto Baldwin  53:25  
the bomb just pops

Sam Abuelsamid  53:26  
out. All right. Next up, while while we're actually in fact, while we were sitting while at least while I was sitting in my session to with the present for the presentation on the Sequoia before we went for our drive a announcement came up from Buick that they are going to be introducing their their EVs starting with a model, or there's at least there is at least going to be a model called the Electra, which seems like a no brainer for Buick. Given that was a long, long term, long time nameplate that they had. And that's the electric coming in 2024. But I guess they're gonna have other models before that and 23 and they showed a concept that gives a an indication of their new design direction for Buick, but sadly, that sounds like they're not actually going to put produce anything quite like this. This is the Buick Wildcat concept. TV concept.

Nicole Wakelin  54:37  
You're both doing like Rihanna.

Roberto Baldwin  54:38  
You're doing kitty hands.

Nicole Wakelin  54:42  
One Sam

Roberto Baldwin  54:46  
paws kitty paw hands.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:49  
So what do you think is a wildcat?

Nicole Wakelin  54:53  
I think it's really cool, which is why they'll never build it.

Roberto Baldwin  54:57  
It's fantastic. It looks

Unknown Speaker  54:58  
look at the wheel. Have a look at those wheels that are fantastic. And

Nicole Wakelin  55:04  
car. That is a beautiful concept. And I don't think they'll have anything even close to that problem.

Sam Abuelsamid  55:10  
Well, I think you know, kind of the shape the shape of the front end of this thing, I think is the sounds like this is the direction that we're going to be seeing for vehicles like the Electra and other Eevee models and a Buick wants to be all electric by 2030.

Nicole Wakelin  55:26  
I would if this is the direction they go in, did you look at the interior shots of this? Yeah, it's the interior is

Unknown Speaker  55:33  
beautiful. It's gorgeous.

Nicole Wakelin  55:36  
It's the bee's knees. It is absolutely gorgeous. If they were I mean, they're not gonna build it looking like this. I don't I like you look at those seats. You think those are stunning? They're not going to look anything like

Roberto Baldwin  55:47  
Oh, definitely. Legally, they won't be able to do it.

Nicole Wakelin  55:51  
I just engineer find a way to do that. Because that looks amazing. Some engineering people, a Buick engineers, go engineer this make this happen. Make it so

Sam Abuelsamid  56:01  
hopefully, Bob Bonnefoy has finds a way to bring this concept to his cars in my yard party in July. But Bob is he is the executor, Executive Director of Global Buick design at General Motors. And he he was the leader behind the original Chevy Volt concept back in 2007. And he's done done a lot of interesting stuff at GM over the years. And he has this this really cool party at his house every July, although haven't haven't had it for the last two years, for obvious reasons. But it's called cars in my yard. And traditionally, it was always on the Friday night before the concourse of America, here in Detroit. But that's that event is moving to September now but he's still doing the party in July. And it's cool invites all kinds of people from, you know, from friends of Bob, from around a rally around the industry. And there's there's always an amazing collection of cars in his backyard for this party. And usually somewhere around 100 vehicles of all sorts a couple of years ago when I was there. Somebody brought an Aston Martin Lagonda. Yeah, you don't see those very often. And there's all kinds of fun stuff. But hopefully, hopefully, Bob will find a way to bring this thing to his party

Roberto Baldwin  57:30  
to do if you didn't have like a, like an online event that like oh, hey, here's the car. Yeah, it'd be cool to just invite a bunch of people and we could all stand around do videos in front of it. And

Sam Abuelsamid  57:43  
they'll they'll probably they'll probably bring this thing out to Pebble Beach. Oh, yeah, there's that. I wouldn't be surprised if it's at Pebble Beach.

Roberto Baldwin  57:53  
Pebble Beach, you know, I you know, if they this is at least a direction. I mean, obviously, this is not going to come to market. I mean, Elektra, hopefully, that'll look cool. I want to bring back the Grand National, but that's just me. Yeah, no, let's fingers crossed for Buick. Columbia was the thing I didn't expect to see. 10 years ago.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:18  
They're still doing okay in China.

Roberto Baldwin  58:20  
Yeah, that's the whole

Sam Abuelsamid  58:22  
tell people like he likes China as the only reason. Brand even exists at this. It's true.

Roberto Baldwin  58:26  
Yeah. For years. That's like the only time you heard of a Buick was in China. Yeah. And but that's sort of fallen. But that's a whole other thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:37  
All right. Let's see, what do we have next? Oh, I guess we should probably talk about the Lexus RX, which was you know, the other big thing out of Toyota palooza. So there's a new Lexus RX coming later this year, which we saw for the first time this week. And you know, the RX has been the best selling Lexus, pretty much since it debuted almost 25 years ago. What did you think about the 2023? RX?

Nicole Wakelin  59:05  
No, I think you get to go first I went, okay. So

Sam Abuelsamid  59:07  
the other one. Alright. So yes, prefaces,

Roberto Baldwin  59:10  
I was there so

Sam Abuelsamid  59:11  
I don't have to talk at all, as usual. You know, this was branded as an all new, completely redesigned our x. And to be fair to Lexus, you know, it actually was new. You know, there. It's actually significantly changed underneath. But you probably couldn't tell from actually looking at it, except for some changes to the front end. Because most of it actually doesn't look that different from the current generation RX. So if you if you'd like to, if you'd like the current generation Lexus RX, you'll probably be fond of the new RX.

Unknown Speaker  59:51  
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's

Roberto Baldwin  59:54  
the LEC the Toyota, the Toyota. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:00  
This has been kind of a weird trend with with the Lexus brand over the last couple of years like they, the last couple of new vehicles that they launched, the new the current is, looks almost exactly the same as the old is, the new LX SUV doesn't look that different from the old LX SUV. And now the RX looks very much I mean, it's got the same kind of greenhouse. You know, there's some subtle reshaping of the sheet metal, you know, the lower body sheet metal, the the most notable difference is actually at the front where the spindle grille that has been very controversial, has been reshaped, or it's been changed. So the top part of it is actually the spindle doesn't really go all the way up to the edge of the hood anymore. The top part of it is more solid. And what you see when you look at it, it kind of looks like it's fading from a mash or whatever the grill shape is in the lower part to a solid at the top. Which is kind of interesting look. You know, the the bigger changes are actually in the inside where the dreaded Lexus touchpad is finally gone.

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:18  
I was finally getting used to it. No kidding, no one's ever been used. What are you talking about?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:29  
Under the hood, there's no longer a V six and the RX. There's, you know, for the last four generations, there's always been a V six powering the RX no more. It's all four cylinder engines. Now. The base RX 350 is a 2.5 liter turbo four cylinder, the RX 450. H is a two liter naturally aspirated four cylinder with a hybrid and an electric rear axle. Much like what they had before. So it's basically the set or not, not two liter to 2.5 liter. So it's basically the same powertrain that you'll find in the Sienna and the highlander hybrid. And then there is also coming early next year, there is an RX 450 H plus plug in hybrid. And for the first time they've had that the F Sport trim on the RX for a while now. But it's always been just an appearance package. It's never actually been a performance upgrade. Now it finally will be because it's the RX 450 Or sorry, the RX 500. H F SPORT performance. Yes. Yeah. All that stuff.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:47  
Oh, letters, you can numbers you can pack into one description possible. Yeah. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:51  
so that one combines the 2.4 liter turbo with the hybrid system. So you have something on the order of about 367 horsepower, I think and about 400 foot pounds of torque. So it'll be a notable performance upgrade from the other our axes. So what were your thoughts on this decal?

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:11  
I mean, I kind of had similar thoughts it didn't look it you know, if you liked the old one, you like the new one second verse, same as the first kind of thing. But I do feel like the way they choose that grill up that was kind of neat. I mean, because Lexus was all in with a spindle grill that was either loved or you hated and it's like, Oh, we've morphed this. So I thought it was a nice way to sort of kind of keep it but not quite, you know, because you like how do you take a dramatic or like that and make it stay but make it work for a new vehicle, you know, like this. So I thought it was good. I think it's probably gonna sell just as well as the old one if not better, because it's an upgrade and it looks a little more modern and all these you know, but I, it's great. It was a lot of Toyota excited. It's just a palooza last in the Palooza, there was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:00  
so much just a little overwhelming. It was just like,

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:03  
here's the extra oven. Here's the white trim. And here's the trim. And here's the Z section sub subsection for paragraph three trim and I'm like, there's many.

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:14  
I'm sorry, I missed that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:16  
Oh, speaking of which, we probably should mention the the one other one that actually got people kind of excited, which is the GR Corolla Marissa Marissa addition, Marie Kondo is the pseudonym that Akio Toyota uses when he goes racing. So when you see a race car with the name Murrysville on it, that's got Akio Toyoda driving it. He's the president of Toyota and the heir to the founder. And the Murrysville addition, takes the GR Corolla that you first saw a couple of months ago. rips out the back seats, and the rear window regulators and some other stuff. and add some additional reinforcements saves about 100 pounds compared to the the other gr Corollas and also has about 20 foot pounds more torque still has the same 300 horsepower from the 1.6 liter three cylinder turbo, but gets a little bit of extra torque and various other things are retuned a bit to make it even more hardcore. And for the launch year 2023 There are only going to be 200 of them built. But it is something that we'll be carrying on beyond the first year gr Corolla production,

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:35  
you know, it doesn't have rear seats, you know why don't need them.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:39  
Just feel we're telling you to just really like when they're doing like, let's sell a little sporty little things that people can like, just have fun with that. It's not like we can design these really amazing fun fun cars to drive. Let's design for those. I like that better than like the Sequoia thing. I think they're good at that. I think they do a good job with that. Yeah, and not everyone is exactly like they're the kind of cars you're like, Oh, I will take this completely impractical car that I can't drive when the weather is not perfect and I can only bring like one other person with me and they can't be tall like Roberto is not allowed to get on me he can't fit

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:16  
Toyota Corolla.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:18  
Well you do a Corolla but I mean, they're not the roomiest vehicles on the planet like you know, there's other roomies vehicle you could buy but I just say like there's there's a certain like, I just want to get in a fun little car and have fun and drive and enjoy it and they do a good job of that. I like it when they do that do more of that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:36  
Absolute more fun to do more to whoever's in charge of fun to it is really good at fun.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:42  
The fun guys.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:44  
That would be awkward.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:46  
Yeah, thank you good job with a fun Akio he's doing great. You make you make Toyota's Fun, fun like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:57  
Okay, before we do the q&a, I am going to drop in into one of the interviews that I did here we've got did several interviews this week at Toyota Palooza, which we'll be dropping into the next couple of episodes. The first one here, since we talked about the RX was with Andrew Gilliland, who is the sure he is the Group Vice President and General Manager of the Lexus division in North America. So I had a chance to chat with Andrew, the from the sound quality is not as good as I would have liked, because, unfortunately, he had COVID. And so he did not actually come to the event. He was he was on a video call with me in one of the conference rooms at Toyota headquarters. So, but it's still we still had a good conversation about where we're where the Lexus brand is going. And some of the other things to expect in the coming years. So I'll drop that in here. And then we will be right back with the q&a.

Andrew Gilliland   1:08:01  
DC of all places, they know what the one place, they really, really be sensitive to all this stuff. All right. Sam is here. So if you're ready, we can

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:17  
get started. I'm doing well. So it's been a good event. But we were able to get some time together to chat about Lexus and kind of where the brand is going. Let's, let's start off with what's the now the plan now for Lexus it has to be all battery electric, all battery electric, or just all electric, which may include fuel cell by 2030.

Andrew Gilliland   1:08:46  
I think you know, our vision is to be all electric. So that maybe plugin could mean hydrogen community. And I think it's a, you know, obviously the markets gonna really dictate this. This is really one of the big challenges I think all the manufacturers we're dealing with is we're all saying hey, we want to be battery electric, you know, 100% by 2030 years from from day. The reality is the consumers are really the big thing, right? I mean, some of its going to be regulatory in nature, obviously. So what we are, what we've always said is we're going to sell to wherever the customer demand is, and so we will follow that that may be driven by some government regulations and some things in our industry that have changed over the next few years. But it is a goal that we have, and we hope to to achieve it but at the end of the day, we're going to make sure that we sell what consumers are desiring and demanding in the marketplace.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:46  
So 2030 timeframe all electrified, this would probably be a better better way of phrasing it then. And it could be whatever mixes is the right mix for the market at that point.

Andrew Gilliland   1:09:58  
Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. I set a goal on a target, right, especially when the industry is transitioning the way it is, right? We've never seen this before. So we want to set a goal and have an objective and work towards it. But again, really a lot of it's going to depend on what consumers are willing to buy. And also, like I said, What is the regulatory environment looks like, as it relates to greenhouse gas in the next five to 10 years. It's a bit of a challenge, I mean, get raw material issues, you've got supply chain issues. You know, you have engineering issues, range issues, you've got the electrical grid issues, this is a really, I can't even look at it two ways need to be it's the very best time to ever be in the car business in the last 30 years, because of the complexity of what we're going to have to work through. And I find that to be challenging for it's going to be really challenging as people aren't going to really like that. And I think it's gonna be interesting to see the brands that are able to adapt the companies that will be able to adapt to the environment that we're going to be putting in the ones evolving, it's going to be very interesting to see all that transpires. Next eight to 10 years.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:16  
Lexus has already had a pretty good history of success as Toyota, with hybrid vehicles, hybrid power trains. Have you noticed any shifts over the past year, or particularly the biggest the last six months or so? As fuel prices have gone up? Have you seen more of a shift towards those electrified power trains?

Andrew Gilliland   1:11:39  
Yeah, I mean, you can't get through demand because it's a supply chain. But clearly, if you're using our term rates, or sales, availability rates, they're higher on hybrids, and active. It's particularly plugin. So the next plugin for Lexus, we just can't get enough. I mean, we've got solar lists, people are starting to understand, you know, the advantages of a plugin. You know, we've got customers that, you know, send me emails and say, I've had this car for three months, I've put a tank of gas, because they're driving less than 50 miles a day. And you know, what we did for? I think it's 40. Don't quote me on that we can get you or something for summer, give or take. And we know that the average consumer in the United States drives 37 miles that we find depending on what survey. So we think it's a really good solution for consumers that are looking for electrification, but but still may have some challenges with the idea of a full range and charging and all the other things that go along with that. So the answer is yes. The demand for plugins and hybrids is, is higher than it's ever been. May I share with you across the company, it's, we continue to grow that volume. And I don't know what, what the top really is, because we just said we can't get the supply from TMC right now, because of the supply chain issues we're having. But you can see it in the sales report every month. It's been going on for the last three to five years, and we've been doing this for 20 years. So we're pretty good at these hybrid power trains that are quite good. So I think you're gonna continue to see that demand

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:18  
for for the NX plugin. Is the is the the batteries or semiconductors that are your biggest bottleneck right now. Or something else?

Andrew Gilliland   1:13:29  
Motors is batteries, just general supply chain challenges.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:39  
One of the Yeah, what one of the interesting trends we've been seeing recently, across the industry is a lot of OEMs starting to invest more directly in in a lot of a lot of these fragile supply chain supply current supply chain bits, like, you know, the battery materials, the raw materials. And I don't know if this is something you can answer, maybe more the Toyota level, you know, Toyota has always had a very strong supply supply base, with its affiliates and partners, do you see expanding into some of the materials production or extraction and processing, battery recycling, as being something that the company will do to help improve availability of these technologies?

Andrew Gilliland   1:14:40  
You're probably gonna leave that to me and and kind of answer for you. For me, you know, I can tell you that I think we look at all that, you know, we just recently announced an investment in Greensboro on the play on battery manufacturing. Right, right. So clearly we are just like every other manufacturer understanding that Need to go ahead and start to invest significant amounts of money to get we probably got every detail on that we could possibly have one. But then you've got a deal, like you were mentioning, it's a global supply chain. And I think we start to dig into where these raw materials that we control. So destination, questions start to come up. And notice the questions are not for the manufacturer to answer as much as the government, quite frankly, where are these materials coming from? And how do we extract them out of you in the most efficient way, are all going to be challenges that I think industry and industry trade routes gonna have to work collectively. But I don't think there's any manufacturing is not thinking about supply chain. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, I want to get into buying. That's just my personal opinion, I get a little nervous in the 80s. It's, you know, I think there needs to be much more of an understanding of what people what it's going to require for us to be more electrified. And I'm not quite sure everybody has a good grasp on. Like, like I said, just when you start to research, where are all the raw materials that there are some some geopolitical issues start to come up?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:20  
Yeah. shifting a little bit to the sales, the retail side, as you as we make this transition to more and more electrification. Do you see Lexus? Changing its strategy at all, in terms of how it sells electrified vehicles going forward. You know, we've seen yesterday Jim Farley, talk that Bernstein conference about doing all Evie sales online, and having non negotiable pricing. Other companies are looking at things like battery leasing, separate apart from the vehicle sale, is Lexus looking at different kinds of sales models as you go more electric?

Andrew Gilliland   1:17:12  
I mean, we're always gonna, our strategy is to leverage our viewers our competitive advantage for us. And I think you can start to look into what your offer and the retail model is really quite compelling, whether it's physical plant, people, you know, anything about payroll, what some of these companies are trying to accomplish, I think, is going to be a bit challenging at scale. But you've got to deal with all these things that I'm sure they're thinking about. But you've got trade ins, you've got people you've got to deal with get service, I think some of these startup companies like red onion or other people that don't want to do or network may find that to be a competitive disadvantage. A built in distribution network that we're going to leverage, or we're going to partner with. So for us, that had that discussion of doing direct selling. I think viewers are doing a lot of the things you would describe as a benefit of direct selling. Today, right? I mean, the pandemics cause a lot about how to deal with consumers. They do much of the transaction electronically before they ever physically come into the store. But you know, your consumer, you have a car, something's wrong, you're gonna want to be able to go somewhere where there's an expert, and somebody that knows you, that's in your local community that can take care of you. I mean, I've heard a lot of stories from other brands where they got a problem they don't know who to call, what did you call that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:49  
guy on Twitter, and then tweeted the CEO.

Andrew Gilliland   1:18:55  
And I don't know what Elon is gonna do. Yeah. But, you know, we have a extremely good relationship with our viewers, and our dealers that have helped us become successful. I mean, there's such a core part of the Lexus brand, particularly. Now, if you look at our covenant, those values are kept by both us and the viewers, and we believe its competitive advantage as a viewer.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:20  
How, how do you foresee the relationship with your dealers evolving? As you get more electrified? One of the one of the challenges that we've long heard with consumers going into dealers wanting to buy an Eevee and being steered away from the Eevee because dealers maybe don't want to sell them because because of the potential losing out on service revenue on the back end, because there's less maintenance required. How how do you see your relationship with dealers evolving to help Um, help that transition? And, you know, let them continue to be a viable business going forward.

Andrew Gilliland   1:20:07  
Yeah, we get a lot of these questions, you know, it's a math problem, right. So the average age of the fleet right now, we can only use the letter 12 years old. So we've been selling as less provision called 300,000 per year. So you've got 3 million cars on the road, that are going to need to continue to get service. We stopped building ice engines today, we still have 11 years worth of cars out there, we're gonna need service. So I think that's the first thing people aren't really getting into the business model, are really doing the analysis. I mean, you're gonna have internal combustion engines on the road for 20 years, 30 years. I don't know how some for some period, it's probably at the, at the very least, yeah. Right. So if you start doing that math, right, and your dealers are getting 70% retention, turn to customers and bring it in, in the first six or seven years. There's a pretty strong business model still there. So we, I think our dealers are excited about selling electric vehicles, you can imagine the amount of research that we're doing about what is the maintenance of these vehicles look like. And initially, the data that we've been able to capture is it's about 80%, of an internal combustion engine. So it's not like there's zero maintenance on the vehicle. To tire wear, is probably the biggest one, you know, conservative estimates, it's 15,000 miles, probably, you know, it may make may wear out sooner than that. So there's still wearable items on the vehicle that are going to need to be maintained. That we see as you know, again, a viable business source for our viewers. So it's less anyway, I'm telling you, it's not last is probably not being straight with you, but it's not zero either. And so we'll work with the dealers to figure out no different sources of revenue. And the dealers are also always know there's assessors ation, there's aftermarket parts, there's all these other business things that go on inside of a viewer that aren't just strictly maintaining the vehicles. So we're looking at all that I think everybody in the industry is, and we'll figure that out. And find a way to keep the viewers profitable. But, you know, I just keep going back to 2012, Excel 2 million, round 2 million, so they got 20 million cars on the road, and this cars gonna need to be serviced. So I think that's something that gets missed in this conversation quite a bit. And we need to think about as a company is, you know, there's going to be all these different types of cars on the road press continue to maintain. So I think even in the near to mid to long term, there's a pretty significant service business out there still

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:51  
going back to sales from with the tight inventories we've had over the past year, I know some manufacturers have said that they've had a significant uptake, uptick in customers doing factory orders, as opposed to buying out of inventory, especially when there is no inventory. How across the industry is traditionally in the US has been mostly people buying out of inventory, as opposed to factory orders. Is that also true for Lexus? And have you seen any shift in that mix of people ordering vehicles to make sure they can get one, as opposed to buying from whatever inventory there is?

Andrew Gilliland   1:23:35  
Well, I know inventories everything sort of a solar order. But it's usually not a factory order, per se, it's inbound units. Less and could have been known for discipline around production, and buildings, you know, set of 10 variations. Building three, it's a very vague explanation. But we've always been much more acutely aware of what consumers are looking for in the marketplace. And so our bill, breath is much smaller. And so usually we can because customer see online, and then everything's connected in our world, right in the better bursts. Like we only show what we're building. You can spec the car out if you want to special order a car, we'll be more than happy to do that. It's about a 90 to 120 day wait. But we're seeing most customers taking sold orders on newer things, orders on inbound products that we're already building. So it's not really an order to delivery. And that's just it's always been that way. We've always had a lower day supply model. So our dealers, I think when this all started our viewers, quite frankly, we were much more prepared for it than some other brands. Because that's the way we we've already run our model in less than 30 days.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:51  
So what assuming we get past this inventory, strain. Do you think that it will be Go back to that 30 days that you've traditionally had, or will dealers maybe stuck or start carrying less inventory going forward.

Andrew Gilliland   1:25:09  
And they'll be less inventory. For sure. I mean, the model works for us works to them. I mean, when that happens, and the manufacturer is happening, that yours happy, that's probably a good place to be. So, you know, our dealers have been pretty consistent in asking us to manage our inventory levels. Again, we've always, really, frankly, we've done that, in the past, we've never done a 60 day, you know, much less 100 120 days supply some of the other brands have. So, yes, there will be a lower de supply model that we'll continue to try to manage. But again, you know, you're not dealing with a small enterprise. So like, we could have that goal, and then the market change, or we have economic activity like we have now going on, it could cause demand is slowing down to the point where it would take us 90 days to totally balance that. So it's always a constant challenge. But we are committed to our dealers carry a lower stock level than previous to the printing pandemic. And we're happy to do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:09  
Going a little different direction. As you start to deploy technologies like teammate on the LS, and other more advanced driver assist systems, as well as electrification and some of the connected systems are, are you working with dealers to try to improve the training mechanic, make sure that there, the sales staff are more knowledgeable about the technology, and that they can educate the customers when they come in? Because I know, a lot of people don't, you know, drive away a new car and don't understand the technology, it's in there. My own experience with various manufacturers has been, you know, they often don't really know very much about what they're what they're selling. So is that something that Lexus is trying to address? Yeah,

Andrew Gilliland   1:26:59  
for sure. I mean, it's cargo, you know, massively sophisticated. I mean, I work at a company is struggling, right? So yes, it is something that we've spent an inordinate amount of time on, is developing curriculum to try and help to deal with we have specific position within the store. We've asked the viewers to hire for you know, this Lexus diagnostic specialist. There they go by different names Technology Specialist, and yes, the majority of our stores have a specialist that deals with some of these technology. But you know, obviously, great question for you like your, your younger guy, like when you can't figure something out? Where do you go?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:38  
I usually end up calling somebody at Dell, one of the companies that I'm dealing with to talk to an engineer, but I'm in kind of a an odd position, as you know, both a journalist, as an industry analyst,

Andrew Gilliland   1:27:53  
you can't call somebody you know, like zoning work in your house, where do you go?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:59  
Go online, you know, Google and start start searching for it.

Andrew Gilliland   1:28:03  
You go YouTube, every time, right? When's the last time you pulled out an instruction manual? Right? Right. I used to not anymore. First thing I do is, let me go look at YouTube. So the other thing, the reason I bring this up, is we're looking to content lexus.com in a more robust way with many of these technologies, because we have found, especially with the newer consumers, younger consumers who bring it in, that they're going to the internet. And if we can create engaging content through our engineers and people, but we have an engineer talking about teammate and how it engages. And when it engages in what conditions it engages, we found that is better than in many cases, the experience that consumers are getting at the time of delivery, because at some point, consumers have been there to Agile I look at I'm out of here I got I've got other things to do. And then they come your way, but when that person tells me I can't remember. And that's just as normal is natural. So, you know, we're all, especially luxury, there's a huge transition occurring with Gen X y&z that we talk about all the time. And you've probably heard us talk about during the HP confidential. So we need to start thinking about how did those consumers consume information? Right, where did they go to get it and then we create it and put it in a place where they can find it. So we've got a strong desire to create a very robust tier one website, microsite that people can go find out about a cost. And the other thing allows us to do if somebody comes in and talks to it Lexus diagnostic specialist or technology specialist, we don't know. We need Lexus. They go online, and we can see what they're looking at and click it. Okay, now we can start to optimize what we're doing in our efforts because we can see that Andrew and 5 million other people went to this particular part of Have a piece of content. So we know that's a place where we need to continue to increase, whether it's technical information, marketing information, something about us or about the car. So that's really been a huge initiative for us internally to work on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:15  
Okay. Yeah, that's, that's, that's great to hear. I think people will really appreciate that, as they start to get these technologies in the new vehicles. We're just about out of time, any last thoughts that you may be thinking about for Lexus, as it goes into the next several years of transition?

Andrew Gilliland   1:30:37  
Yeah, we have heard this matter. But I think the best five to 10 years of lessons are in front of us. And the reason I say that is because of the products that we have. So it really started with iOS, you know, it's been followed up with NX, which has been very, very successful with younger people. Obviously, the LS has been a home run, we can't get enough of them, what a great flagship, are, as you saw, just complete home run. And we've got some products that we'll be sharing later this year with yours, and will be launched next year that really are equally exciting. So, you know, I think Lexus is not the boring car for your parents anymore. Quite frankly, it's exciting, it's vibrant. And the products are great. And with koji Sato got a chance to listen to them. When a dynamic personality and have a chief engineer running Lexus, to build a car like LC, I think I started where we are, we're car people. So this is gonna be fun. I'm lucky to be sitting here. And to be a part of it. So I think the future is really bright for Lexus site. So we're,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:48  
yeah, I was thinking earlier this morning, that it's very interesting, I'm old enough to remember the the original Lexus commercials from 1990 when the original LS launched that ad with the champagne glasses, sitting on the engine. And it was so smooth, you know, the toward the champagne, nothing, nothing was vibrating. And, you know, thinking that as you transition to an electric future, you know, that's even more I mean, that takes that to the ultimate extreme because you you have no vibration or, or noise from any of that. And that seems like it's a perfect fit for where the Lexus brand started.

Andrew Gilliland   1:32:31  
Yeah, we've always been the pinnacle of engineering. And I don't say that in an arrogant way. That's a fact. And I think when you take that, and then you add in the excitement of the design and the emotion, we're starting to get in our vehicles, along with interesting things like electrification, and maybe not just BP, certainly, you know, hydro power trains produce more torque, performance is more fun to drive. You know, I think, again, we've always been the QTR. That's Twitter's bread and butter. But now we're starting to see exciting design, and driving technology that we haven't had in the past. So that's gonna be fun, there's gonna be a lot of cool products that come out of it. You know, we're not all gonna be driving DVDs in the next five years. So I'm pretty confident that, you know, we have a bright future and privacy as we move to that future.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:21  
Alright, well, thank you for your time, Andrew, appreciate it. You feel better. Okay, so listener questions this week. Fozzie B asks, What What are your general thoughts on the vinfast TVs? Also curious on your thoughts about battery subscriptions?

Nicole Wakelin  1:33:40  
I would like to see vinfast EVs. And I think there's a question as to when they when if we see them, do you think we'll see them? Do they really going to happen here?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:49  
I mean, they'll be here next year.

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:52  
They have a lot of capital. I mean, you have lots and lots of money. So I think it's gonna happen. I don't know about the US market and battery subscriptions though, especially when now that we're you know, 1012 years into EVs. Batteries just don't fail as much as people think.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:12  
I think it's perhaps not quite so much about battery failure, as trying to make the EVs more affordable,

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:22  
more affordable, if you're still paying for it? Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:25  
it depends on how much they reduce the purchase price of the vehicle. If they if they can bring that price down to a more affordable level. And, you know, I mean, the the thing, the thing with the battery subscription, you know, as you as you said, you know, batteries are not failing, the way we thought they might a decade or a decade ago, they're actually lasting quite a long time. And so for the manufacturers, you know, at the, after 10 years or something, you know, there's there's still value in that battery to the manufacturers. They can take that battery out of the vehicle and put it into a stationary storage application or some other type of second use application and use it there for a few years before it gets recycled.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:12  
So, you know, because of that, that long term value that the battery has to the manufacturer, they could ideally, if they're going to do subscriptions, they can reduce the price of that subscription. So that the, the combination of the battery subscription, and the you know, the monthly payments on the car are less than what hopefully less than what we're paying for EVs today, where you're just buying the whole thing. Again, that's all theoretical. We don't know exactly how much they're going to charge for this stuff.

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:45  
The subscription if for if you're under 310 miles, it's $35 for the VT, VF eight, if you're driving the VF nine, it's $44 a month for 300 tin, you know, if you're less than 310 miles, if you want to get 10 miles of range or a month, that's a monthly so you see 100 miles a month, so you get to drive 300 miles a month. Yeah, you were really excited until I said that. Where are you? 300? That's a 310 miles a month. Hold on, wait, wait, wait, wait. So there's two tiers, this is the first tier 300 miles a month. $35 $44 If you want unlimited, it's $110 a month for the VF eight and $160 a month for the VF.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:33  
Okay, see that that? I mean unless the you know, the monthly payment on the car, you know, unless you can, unless you can get that that vehicle for, let's say $25,000 You know and have, you know, a $200 a month payment or something or $50 a month payment? You know that? That's, that's gonna be a tough sell.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:54  
Yeah, cuz the VF at 40,000 $40,000, the VF $9,500. So, it's Yeah, I mean, even with the, you know, you get your your, your, your federal tax incentive and all that stuff. It's still just like, well, but and, you know, you get free battery maintenance, okay. And, and a free replacement. Once the battery loses it degrades below 70%. But that's just, that's just what's just like, it's just, they feel

Nicole Wakelin  1:37:26  
like that's only going to matter what you know what though as I see this a number of things you see when people comment about EVs, just the general public about EVs online, a lot of people don't get that the battery doesn't just like go poof and stop working right after, you know to train. Sometimes

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:40  
it does go poof

Nicole Wakelin  1:37:44  
that aside, the actual proof, but you know what I mean? Like, I don't think some people I genuinely don't think

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:51  
it's not like an engine that can seize up if you never change the oil. Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna mention another word about my kid. Oh, no.

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:03  
Yeah, so it's, I don't know, the battery subscription thing. It's, it's a tough, I feel like it's gonna be a tough sell here. Yeah, I think eventually, there's, they say, I think they're going to eventually have a vehicle without the subscription thing. But it's, unless, unless you're the kind of person who's going to be like, just driving like an animal,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:24  
you're going to be like him, if you're gonna drive 60 70,000 miles a year.

Roberto Baldwin  1:38:28  
Yeah, if you're DC, fast charging every time to 100% you get in that car, you have to go for it get to subscription. But also, if you do that, you're probably going to hit the warranty anyway. And they'll have to change. You know, if you get a Hyundai or a Tesla or whatever, you know, you're gonna they're gonna have to replace your fabric.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:47  
Okay, so, yeah, it all it all depends on the economics and how the numbers work out. I mean, it could theoretically be good. But based on what we've seen a vinfast So far, doesn't look promising for the subscription model. And to be honest, you know, from what we've seen as the vinfast vehicles at the New York Auto Show, you know, the quality didn't look great. Yeah. We'll see.

Nicole Wakelin  1:39:15  
They've been making here, but they've been doing this forever in the building off of the country in Vietnam. So

Roberto Baldwin  1:39:23  
they've been building vehicles off the BMW platform. They've been building cars. So we'll see.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:31  
So Steve Levine had a question about the bolt and Altium. Will, Will the bolt carry on through the decade and will it have Altium? I doubt it.

Roberto Baldwin  1:39:45  
I don't think so. I feel like that car is just like, it's here for now. And there'll be more than happy to like sort of toss that aside. Once they have something that's ultium and can be new and it has a cool new name, and it won't be associated with fire.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:00  
I mean, unless unless there is a sudden resurgence of small car sales in the US market. I have a hard time believing that the bolt, at least maybe the Evie, you know, maybe a new version of the Eevee. But the regular bolt, you know, I can't see that living on, you know, more than a couple of years past the introduction of the equinox TV next year. So, you know, I would you know, by 2025, you know, the bolt is going to be eight years old. And I, I seriously doubt that they will, you know, they may they may do a redesign Bolt EV that is, you know, even more crossover, like, but the standard bolt, and when they do that, then it'll be an Altium. But I don't think that the the original bolt will was likely to carry on.

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:55  
Yeah, I think it's gonna go bye bye.

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:58  
If you want a small Eevee you're gonna have to look to Mini.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:01  
Yeah, or Kona or Kona. Alan Paton asks, I appreciate it. Robbie detailing his Eevee range testing method. That got me thinking of how NITSA determines range and EMP. It's actually MPGe ratings for EVs. Do you have any insights or experience with this? Yeah, so actually, it's not necessarily the does it? EPA is the one that actually does the certification of emissions and fuel economy. NITSA does the calculations of Corporate Average Fuel Economy and enforcement of that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:39  
And actually, they don't even do the EPA doesn't even do the testing. That's actually done by the manufacturers. We have a process of self certification here in the US market, where manufacturers actually do the testing, and they submit the paperwork to EPA, EPA looks at over and sometimes, you know, on some small percentage of new vehicles, they will actually do. They'll request a vehicle from the manufacturer and do their own testing to verify. But that is only about 15% of new vehicles. So most are only tested by the manufacturers. And the way they test them is the same way that test gasoline and diesel vehicles, they use the exact same drive cycles. And they put them on a dyno, while they do close down testing on the track first to determine the aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance and everything. And they use that to calibrate the dynamometer, put it on the dyno, and they run it through the EPA, the city drive cycle and highway drive cycle until and they keep doing that until the battery is completely depleted. And they figure out how many miles it drove on a charge. And then the MPGe actually comes there's a there's a formula that's used it's part of a model developed by the Nash, let's see was it Oak Ridge, it was or

Roberto Baldwin  1:43:03  
Oak Ridge brothers, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:07  
Oak Ridge National Lab. It was one of his one of the National Labs developed a model called greet, which is an acronym that I can't remember what it stands for now, but basically, it's an energy equivalence model between different fuels. So one gallon of gasoline has the energy equivalent of 33.7 kilowatt hours. And so if you know how many kilowatt hours per mile an Eevee gets, you can translate that into MPG equivalent based on the energy equivalence formula. So that's how they come up with those.

Roberto Baldwin  1:43:46  
And then the, almost all the automakers refer to, there's an adjustment factor that they have to come in because they know that real world testing on a dyno is real world testing. And so everyone else uses one adjustment factor. And then two companies. There might be more actually, at this point, they use an additional adjustment factor, which gives them fives tests on the dyno, and that is a Tesla and lucid because they're battling to be the best. But if we if there's any indication from Tesla, Tesla's in real world tests for evey, like when a lot of people, magazines, publications, whoever, Tesla's don't always quite make it to their, to their range, while other automakers their vehicles will hit the range or do better, especially Volks. The Volkswagen Group which you know, I think they're just gun shy, but they actually go with the lower numbers. So it's a so so do your answer is we have zero insight on mp.

Nicole Wakelin  1:44:49  
Zero, nada.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:50  
The test Tesla's typically fall about anywhere from 20 to 30%, short of their EPA label range numbers compared to As in like in real world driving, whereas most other manufacturers beat or meet or exceed those numbers, like the the Porsche icon which when it first came out, I complained quite a bit about why it was only rated at 204 miles of range or something like that. But in most in the real world testing usually gets somewhere close to somewhere between 270 and 280 miles. So it beats it quite handily. So it's actually pretty good. Yeah. All right. Brent Behrens housing asks, I'm betting automakers I'm begging automakers to stop making sedan EVs only there superfast expensive flagship models. Some of us still want an affordable mid sized Evie sedan to daily drive.

Roberto Baldwin  1:45:45  
I'm thinking maybe beautiful house something electric. Maybe. I mean, I would want

Sam Abuelsamid  1:45:55  
I mean, I'm with you. Brynn. I want to see more dance. Evie sedans

Roberto Baldwin  1:46:00  
probably come from Hyundai to be on. Yeah, because Hyundai Well, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:03  
the the Hyundai iyonix. Six, the ionic six is coming out this fall. And that is like a sonata size sedan. So that is probably the one you'll want to be looking for. And I wouldn't be surprised Kia hasn't said anything about it yet. But it wouldn't surprise me if they did something similar as well. So that there's at least one that's coming. And we'll probably see some others over the next couple of years. Maybe one of the Buicks might might fit in that category. Although I haven't seen any indication from GM that they're going to do any Buick sedans for at least for the North American market. They certainly will in China, where sedans are still much more popular. So it all comes down to what people are actually buying.

Nicole Wakelin  1:46:54  
And that's what then I call them a sedans is five and when you know the whole crossover SUV craze that's what they're going that direction because that's where people are going to start you know if it so blame your fellow car buyers for that one. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:08  
Darrell asks, What was your worst car review as far as driving tech just a bad vehicle etc.

Nicole Wakelin  1:47:17  
The the Nissan Versa Note really hated that little thing. It was just it felt like such a tin can. I mean, I know it was affordable, but like there are very few cars when I've gotten effect that might be the only one when I got it as a press not the Versa the Versa note when I got it back. Yeah, when I got that as a press car. I happen to have a very long drive like it was driving to the cape or something. So excited to take the press card. I'm like nope, I'm not driving that. I literally left behind. I'm like no, I don't feel comfortable. I don't even feel like safe. It felt so nothing. It felt so tinny and so cheap. I was like I don't I yeah, that was my least favorite. That's that's the one that I thought was really terrible. Sorry. And you said I love you. And I like the Versailles a nice little affordable, compact car. But the Versa Note No, thank you.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:08  
Well, you Robbie. Oh, I

Roberto Baldwin  1:48:10  
can't remember the name of it. It's that. That car that looks like an old timey car that came out in the 90s. It's like a little SUV got damaged, same time as the Prowler,

Nicole Wakelin  1:48:22  
like if it gets his Prowler it's not the Prowler. The other one

Roberto Baldwin  1:48:25  
the one that everyone bought the one Oh, the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:48:27  
PT Cruiser. Oh, the PT Cruiser.

Roberto Baldwin  1:48:30  
T. Cruiser.

Nicole Wakelin  1:48:32  
I had that as a rental car once. It was terrible.

Roberto Baldwin  1:48:35  
Worst. So my this is before I was I was an automotive journalist. This I was like I was a college student. I was a film student. And a friend of mine was a videographer. And he had we lived in San Francisco. We had a drive to LA to do a job. He wasn't feeling well. He asked me to come along. And just in case he wasn't feeling well. I could do the job for him. Cool. He's like I rented us a car. Cool. I got the PT Cruiser. Cool. There's lots of room we can drive the PT Cruiser within five miles of driving that he couldn't even feel well enough to drive within five miles of driving that car. I absolutely hated it. So much. Everything about that car like it doesn't know what it wants to be. It's uncomfortable. There's no you can't see out the rear windows like everything about this car is horrible. And every time I see one on the road, I'm like you have been scammed.

Nicole Wakelin  1:49:27  
You put it on soccer. You

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:29  
probably shouldn't talk to my next door neighbor.

Roberto Baldwin  1:49:31  
Does he have a PT Cruiser?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:32  
She She has she just bought a new one or a newer one to replace the older ones worn out. She bought a 2010 one of the last ones

Nicole Wakelin  1:49:45  
and then she bought another one did I fall she

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:46  
had she had 2003 or four. Ah and by the 2010 like six eight months ago you know like

Nicole Wakelin  1:49:56  
this neighbor did you not share with her that she was making a mistake people

Roberto Baldwin  1:49:59  
Have the PT Cruiser yeah

Unknown Speaker  1:50:01  
some people really

Roberto Baldwin  1:50:02  
like their people they love she's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:05  
she's very nice

Nicole Wakelin  1:50:08  
to defending I do like her she just likes to wait I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:11  
had I had recommended that she might want to take a look at the maverick good choice because she uses it to take her dogs to the dog park and she's got a herd had two very large dogs. Unfortunately one of them died recently. But the you know, the maverick I thought you know would have been a perfect car for her. But she went for a ticket love it. They love love your old PT Cruiser.

Roberto Baldwin  1:50:39  
People love it. I like Toad the wet sprocket What are you gonna do?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:45  
My My worst review was the 2009 Chevy Aveo five, which I reviewed for auto blog back in 2000. Yeah, how this this was a little Korean built hatchback. And the fact that it's Korean is actually irrelevant, but it was built by Daewoo Jim's Korean division. And you know, it was it was not good.

Roberto Baldwin  1:51:16  
It was like a car and that's where it ended there operated

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:18  
under its own power. But at the time, you know, my daughter, my older or older daughter had a 2008 Honda Fit sport. And you know, this, this this, this the availe I want to say this one had the automatic transmission had the vinyl seats, you know, which were optional instead of the sees

Roberto Baldwin  1:51:52  
this burlap sack

Unknown Speaker  1:51:53  
this was this was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:51:56  
in January 2009 This thing was was priced at $17,610. Wow, which was more than a Honda Fit sport at that time. And the Honda was such a vastly better car than this in every conceivable way. It was quicker it was better handling. It was better looking. It was roomier. And in fact, you know, at this time you know 2009 You could have bought a low mileage two year old used fit sport for you know, a couple of grand less than this and you would have had a much better car with better fuel efficiency. Yeah, and it only got it was only 25 mpg city and 34 highway car which was kind of mediocre

Roberto Baldwin  1:52:51  
it's just their phone it in there's phone in it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:57  
To be fair, you know less than a year later they replaced the availe with the Chevy Spark which was a much much much much better car yeah, compared to the avail compared to the spark was actually a decent car. Yeah, it's fine. The availe was not

Roberto Baldwin  1:53:19  
Yeah, yeah. Nana peach I'm still angry about that. PT cruisers every once a while sounds like someone will say PT cruisers good and I'll immediately I don't want to tell them I don't want to yuck on someone's yum that's exactly yeah, that's why if you love the PT Cruiser, wonderful. I'm happy that you're happy. I'm happy that they made him I'm happy that the people who built him had jobs I'm you know, the dealer. Yes

Sam Abuelsamid  1:53:48  
sir. It gets her and Duke to the dog park safely. You know?

Roberto Baldwin  1:53:53  
I absolutely hate that car. Just absolutely.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:53:58  
I think when did when did I think I reviewed the PT Cruiser. Actually not long after I did the availe

Roberto Baldwin  1:54:06  
Are you in trouble? Your anger the Autoblog Gods All right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:18  
Adam J has more of a comment here. Can we please apply GM for including delivery charge and listed price of the vehicle? Let's get that trending. Yeah, we mentioned that earlier. Bolt and that is a good thing. You know, and I think everybody should be doing that, you know, whatever price that they show, you know in their advertising and marketing should include that, that that price. Okay, finally, Fozzie be a wait.

Nicole Wakelin  1:54:46  
You put things in twice so that's that one

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:48  
pull up so that's carried away. All done.

Roberto Baldwin  1:54:55  
Socket PT Cruiser All right

Sam Abuelsamid  1:55:03  
thank you very much everybody and hopefully we'll get nervous we'll talk to you again next week

Unknown Speaker  1:55:09  
bye