Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 251 of wheel bearings. We've got the Lincoln Navigator Black Label against the Cadillac Escalade V the Kia Stinger, the Ford Bronco preview, the Pollstar three, the VW Amarok versus the Ford Ranger, the new Honda HR V, and more coming up next

this is episode 251 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  
and I'm Roberto Baldwin from Ars Technica.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:36  
And this week, because my colleagues are ill prepared, I'm gonna go

Nicole Wakelin  0:43  
fine, just throw us directly under the wheels of the bus.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:47  
I wouldn't want you to get kind of halfway under the wheels and then get mangled and be settling or suffering and by the curb. Yeah, do it, you might as well finish the

Nicole Wakelin  0:57  
job. And I appreciate that. Thanks.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01  
I just don't want you to suffer.

Roberto Baldwin  1:02  
It's like pulling a knife out of my back. I don't want you to do it slice. Yank it really quick that you put in there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10  
I do what I can. Speaking of which, I spent a week driving the 2022 Lincoln Navigator black label with the Central Park package. And first thing I will say is if you're going to get a navigator with the Central Park package, get it in the lovely dark green that they have not I love it. Nice, but go for the green.

Nicole Wakelin  1:36  
It's so pretty. I love that color was wondering which one you got? That's gorgeous. And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40  
well. Well, unfortunately, I got the white. Oh, no,

Nicole Wakelin  1:43  
well then Sucks to be you. And I don't feel bad because you threw me under a bus five minutes ago.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50  
But no, I absolutely recommend you go for the green. It's a fantastic looking color, especially in the sunlight looks looks great. But, you know, the navigator got a mild refresh for the 2020 model year. We drove it for a day back in was it February, March March, I think out in Arizona.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:13  
And so I had it for a week, this time for a full review. And it's hasn't fundamentally changed since 2018. When the current generation debuted, the new one, you know, got some mild tweaks to the facia and to the tail lights, headlights are slightly reshaped. And then in the interior, the main changes, they went from a 10 inch center touchscreen to the same 13 inch screen that they have, that they put into Nautilus last year. So you've got a little more screen real estate, and it's sync for now, I think it was sync three before. So all that all that's good. You know, the rest of it is basically what we've had for several years, which is actually fundamentally really good. It's a it's a solid platform, it's always had good, good ride quality, you know, for you know, a 6000 plus pound full size, three row luxury SUV, it's doesn't handle too bad. You know, it doesn't feel flabby or anything it doesn't, doesn't roll around too much. Everything's well controlled not not quite as well controlled as an Escalade with the magnet, the optional MagneRide suspension and the spring air springs because you don't get air springs on this, but you do get adaptive dampers. So it does does a good job of keeping everything under control. The seats as we've talked about, I think on some previous occasions with various Lincoln's including the navigator, you know, are these 30 way multi adjustable seats that if you can't get comfortable in these, you're either somewhat misshapen, or just impatient, because there's a lot of things you can adjust. One of my favorite aspects of the seats in this car though, are as the massaging capability and especially the full recovery mode. I'm very fond of that anytime I have an extended drive does a nice job of keeping everything you know from getting too too tightened up in the back. It's got let's see, we've got Venetian leather seating as part of the the the Central Park package on this. The wood trim inside is an open pour walnut veneer that's been laser etched with basically a map of Central Park, hence the name

Nicole Wakelin  4:48  
I had to make a comment about the map of Central Park I know it's a map of Central Park but you know what I saw when I looked at it like a footprint from a sneaker. Yes,

Sam Abuelsamid  4:56  
it does kind of look like that.

Nicole Wakelin  4:58  
It looks like your sneaker print you would leave Yeah, as soon as I saw that they're like, No, it's central part. I'm like sneaker.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:04  
Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  5:05  
once you see it, you can't unsee now it's a sneaker forever.

Roberto Baldwin  5:08  
Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:11  
All of the navigators now are equipped with the two point or the 3.5 liter, twin turbo, don't call it an EcoBoost V six, with a 10 speed automatic. Hmm. Because Lincoln stopped using the EcoBoost branding a few years back, and it's just a twin turbo V six now EcoBoost is for Ford's, you know, for those more pedestrian Ford vehicles,

Roberto Baldwin  5:35  
it sounds like Oh, eco but my luxury SUV.

Sam Abuelsamid  5:41  
In the in the Lincoln, it's tuned to 440 horsepower, 510 foot pounds of torque. And I'm kind of surprised that when they did this refresh, that they didn't bother adding the hybrid option in here to give it even more power. No, no hybrid availability in this one. I think, let's see, the Nautilus doesn't have a hybrid, either. So just the, just the Corsair and the aviator have the plug in hybrids. You know, it's, it's a lovely vehicle to drive around. And one of the additions that they've added recently with the the sync four is Amazon FireTv capability for the rear screen, rear seat entertainment system. And also built in Alexa voice services. So now you have the option, you can either say, hey, Lincoln, and ask her to do something like turn up the temperature or tune the radio, or you can say, Alexa, please do the same things. Or if you happen to be using Apple CarPlay, you can do a Siri. Or if you're using Android Auto, you can say, hey, Google, so you have your choice of voice assistants, whichever one you prefer. And that they all work reasonably well. For those sitting in the backseat. With the there's a pair of 10 inch screens there. So Lincoln hasn't quite gone whole hog like Jeep has with the wagoneer weather with the grand wagoneer. With, I think there's up to eight screens in the grand wagoneer. There's only only four screens in this one for the cluster, the center, the front center, and then the two rear seat screens. But you get the full Amazon Fire TV experience. So if you have if you're subscribed to things like Netflix, or HBO or other streaming services, through the Amazon through your Amazon account, you can watch all those in there because there's an LTE radio built in so you can stream directly to those rear seat positions. And there's wireless headphones included. New Also new for the 2022 models is massaging in the rear seats. So not only the front passengers, but also the second row passengers can

Roberto Baldwin  8:06  
even bother the drivers this you buy it, you make someone else drive it, and then you just sit in the back.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:12  
Well, the second, the second row massaging seats are not quite as sophisticated as the front row. So it's not as quite as good a massage as you're gonna get in the front row seats.

Roberto Baldwin  8:22  
Wow, wow. Wow, wow. Well, that's what I get for sitting in the back then lazy.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:27  
Yeah, exactly. So the the navigator starts that the standard trim starts at 77 635. And plus a 616 $195 destination fee. So that gets you to 78 a little over 79 grand for the base version. The the one I drove was, as I said, The Black Label plus the the the Central Park package, which brought the grand total to $108,340. This also includes the Lincoln active glide, which is Lincoln's branding for blue cruise, which is their hands free driving system. It

Nicole Wakelin  9:16  
also needed to sound like something different than what absolutely it was using.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:20  
Yes. Because you know, it's not the same thing. It's a Lincoln. But, you know, as we've talked about before, it works reasonably well. It's not as good as supercruise. It doesn't do lane changes. It doesn't slow down as you're approaching curves if you know if your speed is maybe a little bit too fast for the curve, and it will prompt you in the instrument cluster to put your hands back on the wheel. And if you don't happen to notice that then it will just kind of drift out of out of the lane on like what it's supposed to do if you don't put your hands back on the wheel. So it's it's not it's not as good as what GM offers, but it's not bad. It has actually gotten a little better than what we drove previously, there has been a software update to it. So when even when you're driving in scenarios, where it's not hands free capable, like, you know, when you're not on divided highways, it doesn't give you as many false activations to warning you to put your hands on the wheel, even when your hands are on the wheel. So that's a good thing. And unlike the GM system, it does actually use the driver monitor system, even when you're just using the copilot hands on capabilities. So it will, it'll be watching to make sure you're watching the road and if you're not watching the road, it will give you an alert and say, hey, put your eyes back back on the road. You know, don't don't look down at your phone or don't spend too much time looking at that lovely 13 inch center touchscreen. The other main complaint I have about this especially as we were just discussing just before we started recording here in Michigan gas topped $5 $5 A gallon a few weeks ago it's over seven in California and I think your gas just top five bucks a gallon and Hampshire

Roberto Baldwin  11:17  
it's over seven if you're if you're in certain areas if you're getting premium, so it's still like in the mid the high sixes for now. Okay. Oh, so that's not so bad. Yeah, if but I ended up having you know, I have the BRC and yeah, so I put I'm printing premium and everything. But I don't really drive those cars anymore, so it doesn't really matter.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:37  
So this one is navigator got about 18.2 miles per gallon during my week of driving, which is not great. pricey.

Roberto Baldwin  11:53  
They know what it's all the Massassi. That's true.

Nicole Wakelin  11:57  
That's a lot of weight. Seats. If you just got

Roberto Baldwin  12:01  
power if you get 40 miles of the gallon if you if you get rid of the Massassi.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:06  
On the plus side, it does do better than the the grand wagoneer does, you know, which was about 15 miles per gallon. So yeah, it's there's that

Nicole Wakelin  12:14  
the grand wagoneer also has all the off roadie stuff. It does.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:17  
This is much more off road kids. So yeah, it has weight, all weight. All of these big SUVs have have weight to weight to spare. They have lots of weight.

Nicole Wakelin  12:28  
I experienced that myself with the car I'll talk about later. Okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  12:32  
so that's the 2022 Lincoln Navigator. Black Label Central Park edition. Who wants to go next?

Nicole Wakelin  12:42  
I'm ready the Robin. No, I'm ready. I'm going next move. Okay, so I had today was this was a very Bronco II week. I have one that I can't talk about with you guys yet. I drove the Bronco raptor out in the desert. But I can't say anything about another week. So yeah, that was that a raptor? Was that like a kitty?

Roberto Baldwin  13:05  
I don't know what a raptor sounds like I don't think anyone really

Sam Abuelsamid  13:08  
we can say it's wide and has big tires on it really big time. Yes.

Nicole Wakelin  13:11  
We seen pictures. Pictures. So So I person. Yes. See. I think a bunch of you seen it in person. Probably. I've seen it in person before. know if they've had it, do they? Oh, so

Sam Abuelsamid  13:26  
they did have in Chicago? New York too. So it's like 10 inches wider than a standard Bronco?

Nicole Wakelin  13:32  
Yeah. So it's so I will talk about what it was like driving man in the dirt next week. Because if I talk about it now, Ford sends its goons to come get me but what I can't talk about is the car that is in my driveway right now. Which ironically enough is a Ford Bronco, but this is completely different. It's funny because after driving that it's a pseudo Bronco. I have the Bronco to door first edition. The first

Sam Abuelsamid  13:57  
so it is a real Bronco. No, no, no.

Nicole Wakelin  14:00  
I have I have a real bright today sport earlier when I was talking to you know it's it's actual Bronco, I have the actual Bronco but it's a 2021 two door first edition first edition is gone. So if you wanted that Too bad you can buy it online, like use from somebody but so I have this one. It's the first one I've driven the two door Bronco for more than just like a brief time on my own. And I had my daughter with me last night who's 18 So that little girl like like don't size her getting in and out of the back of that thing. Lord people don't buy a two door if you find plan on putting any adults back there it is not easy to access the second row. I watched her very ungracefully crawl out of it and thought to myself 18 If she is like

Roberto Baldwin  14:43  
she's having problems are doomed. What chance

Nicole Wakelin  14:47  
does anybody else have so it's really that that second row if you get the two door better be like every now and then in emergency or the dogs happened back there. I think the dog probably would have plenty of room.

Roberto Baldwin  14:58  
So it's for Robbie as well. It's

Nicole Wakelin  15:00  
the Robbie car yeah, so Robbie versions the Ford Bronco Robbie. So

Sam Abuelsamid  15:06  
yes, for 2023 Mommy for

Nicole Wakelin  15:09  
2023 Molly,

Roberto Baldwin  15:11  
manual transmission, two doors and everything else just leave me alone I just want to drop

Nicole Wakelin  15:17  
their seats they you have to crank them up it takes 20 minutes to adjust your throat yeah the click click click click click click and it moves like a quarter and each quarter inch with each click you have to click it 50 times. Okay so first edition Broncos so I love the color this by the way it's called lightning Blue Metallic is and I'm now really curious if that's the same lightning blue that's on the lightning like because it looks very similar that striking and I'm like they called it lightning blue metallic. Now granted, this is pre lightning. So I don't know but it's it's really beautiful. And it has inside it has the their leather trim, but they're like a vinyl gray and navy seat. So the idea being that you can take your top off and it can get messy and dirty and you can clean it off without having to worry about it or Robbie's dogs can run across it and everything could be fine. It has a 2.7 liter V six 315 horsepower four and 10 pound feet of torque. This has the Sasquatch package, which adds 35 inch tires, gives it a bit of a lift gives you front and rear locking differentials. So it takes what's already a pretty off roadie car and makes it even more so. I mean if you want to offer it you can I mean there I think everyone's pretty pretty sold on this you can offer it in the Bronco if you want offer in the Bronco if you want to do some crazy stuff you can I like the thing that I've always liked. And is this trail turn Assist, which I know I've talked about before, but it's so neat because it's it's a kind of thing that a very, very small percentage of offroaders will ever need to use. But instead of turning the wheel and like just you know, driving forward into the right, it kind of pivots you it's almost like you're pivoting in place like you're on a pin. So if you're in a really tight spot, I kind of feel like it's the oh, I screwed up, how do I get out of here function that will let you pivot to get out. So I like the trail turn assist and there's like a trail one pedal drive. So think of it like one pedal driving, you know, in an Eevee you don't have to hit the gas you don't have to the brake model modulates Well, the one pedal drive lets you just work with one pedal instead of both so you can modulate things a little bit easier focus on steering and not you know, hitting a rock or scraping the side of your car if you're in a narrow spot instead of having to focus on keeping your speed quite so much which is kind of nice. It it has the goes over any type of terrain, the goat mode that is you know standard thing in the bronco. So it it's a it's the Bronco that does all the Bronco things but now there's Bronco we are Broncos with the Raptor, and with the Everglades. So they've come up with some sort of special additions. I like the Bronco, my biggest my only real complaints about it. I mean, if you're an offer to you know what you're getting into, you're not getting a Mercedes sedan, you're getting an off road vehicle that feels like one, it handles pretty well when you're not off road when you're driving on the highways. But what I do find and I find this that It's intrusive, and it was funny, both my husband and daughter found the same thing. It is loud inside of that it is really really loud and soft top and hard top we have a hardtop and this comes with we drive a a Wrangler with that Sky One Touch, so it has the like sort of retracting, soft top. So we have a vehicle that has a part, you know, mostly soft top on it. It's louder than that. And it's a hard top and there's a noticeable difference. Like you, you get onto the highway and you you know hit 55 Not even and you're raising your voice you're turning up the radio you literally Yeah, it's literally like whoever's in the backseat is constantly saying what because they can't hear what the people in the front seat are saying to each other.

Roberto Baldwin  18:46  
Road noise too. Yeah, the Sasquatch package. Sasquatch pack packers are like

Nicole Wakelin  18:53  
there's just so much noise. So it's it is it's not quiet. But like I complain about it. It's the same time as I see it, but you're not buying this if you want to particularly quiet car. Like there are other vehicles out there that will do that. But if you just want a vehicle that's a really off road, Beast and can do whatever you want it to do that you can pretty much go anywhere that you want to go off road, then the Bronco fits the bill. And this is this one was Oh I found the price I had to go back and look because it wasn't on my sheet. And now I've lost it. I've lost it I don't know you guys it's whatever I pick whatever

Sam Abuelsamid  19:27  
doesn't matter because you can't get it doesn't matter anymore.

Nicole Wakelin  19:32  
It was 57 Just over 57 So that's what this was so you could probably find the first edition out there somewhere used I bet you pay more you think you pay

Roberto Baldwin  19:42  
75 and 75 I'm gonna

Nicole Wakelin  19:45  
Google that while we're talking only to see us or I'm gonna see if I find out because now I'm curious

Sam Abuelsamid  19:50  
and while you were describing it I looked up the colors and the lightning blue is different from the two shades of blue they offer on the lightning which are One is the Atlas blue. That's the lighter one that they have on the. Okay. And then the dark blue that they have is the antimatter

Nicole Wakelin  20:07  
blue. Oh, that's the one I like. I like the antimatter stuff. Yeah, that one's that one's a

Sam Abuelsamid  20:11  
lot darker than lightning blue. Maybe?

Roberto Baldwin  20:13  
Uh huh. Well, you know, if you're, if you're buying a car where the doors come off, you're probably not thinking too much about road noise.

Nicole Wakelin  20:22  
Exactly. So like as I come,

Roberto Baldwin  20:24  
at least you shouldn't be priority.

Nicole Wakelin  20:28  
It's like for the guy. I think the only person is gonna matter for you. Now there are a fair number of people I know some of them that buy a car just because it's a cool car. Like everyone's buying this now buying one. I want to buy one it's up to you off road new do but I'm gonna buy one. The most efforting you've ever done is like a field at the state fair, but you're gonna buy a bronco. Really? That's your plan? Well, you're gonna get the

Sam Abuelsamid  20:46  
stick. There's a word for that, but we're not going to use it. Okay, so while you're looking up what the current resale values of first watch edition Broncos are robbing point of view that.

Roberto Baldwin  21:00  
So okay, so I wasn't going to talk about this. But then I was like, Well, I guess I should say something. I am the last automotive journalist to drive the Kia Stinger, the last one on the planet. That's Wow, had one and they had one in the fleet. He really never driven one ever driven the kids. It was just one of those things where it just didn't like when it came out where I worked. It wasn't something they wanted to cover. So that okay, and then I went over the car and driver. And at that point, and then COVID happened. And so there was no point in driving it then because car driver at heart had done everything they needed to do. It was COVID You know, there were months and months and months before we got a car. And so it was just like this sort of perfect storm where it's just this vehicle I just haven't driven. And so I got it the other day, the problem. The only place I really driven to is to the airport and back at three in the morning, and at 11 o'clock at night.

Nicole Wakelin  21:59  
So how did that really long drive experience go for? Yeah, yeah, we'll just

Roberto Baldwin  22:03  
get in at like, Oh, this is really nice. So I so far, I really like it. I really like the seating position. It's got the rear wheel drive version, so I like the way it feels.

Nicole Wakelin  22:16  
It has Wait, I have to interrupt you. I found the 2021 Ford Bronco, two door on one site for $85,000.

Roberto Baldwin  22:25  
That sounds right. It's looking

Nicole Wakelin  22:26  
at the skin. 60 to 75 is about the average. But someone's trying to get at it only has 495 miles on it.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:34  
And shockingly there is not a single one listed on bring a trailer. Wow.

Nicole Wakelin  22:41  
Okay, sorry, Robbie. I was just so dumbstruck by the ad. Oh, you

Roberto Baldwin  22:45  
should you should I've been to a dealership where they told me that they were up. They were adding $40,000 to each Bronco that came into stock. $40,000

Nicole Wakelin  22:55  
crazy. Okay, continue on with your

Roberto Baldwin  22:59  
driving experience. Oh, yeah. So I enjoy the Kia Stinger i So far I like it. I'm you know, and I think there's the now the running joke about the stinger is a great car that everyone loves. That is going to be discontinued in the future. So I looked up the sales figures of the Kia Stinger

Nicole Wakelin  23:15  
I was gonna ask that do they sell is that is it really because it just sounds like a stinker.

Roberto Baldwin  23:19  
So pretty much 18 They sold 16,800 which is it's a nice vehicle. It's not 2019 They went down to 13,800 2020 which is sort of weirdness. So that's hard to you know, 12,500 and then 2021, which is still sort of weird. 13,500 So when the year where it's hard to actually build them. People started buying them again at 2019 levels, but I mean when you compare it to say, well, not the Hyundai Sonata, which is like, you know, 2018 they sold 105 and 2019 A sold 87,020 21 Is it Eddie 3000. So that's Yeah, but let's say the Mazda six to Jan 21. They sold 18,000 of those and the T LX 2021 26,000 So I really like it so far. I know everyone else really loves the stinger. I wish I had manual transmission. But that's my I wish everything had a manual transmission. But it's it feels like a really really nice car just in my very short time behind the wheel. And you can't i on the status again, you can't say well there's no more sedans in the world or there's no more of this there's no more of that and then not buy those vehicles. Yeah, you can't say well I really want this type of car and then when that type of car is available you out and buy a CRV

Nicole Wakelin  24:53  
that's the thing everybody does. You know, like, you know, with everyone everyone's getting rid of sedans, everyone by sedans Do you have one? No, I have a truck and I have an SUV. Well, if you really want sedans by them clearly the fact that you're just like we should have them is not enough to make them stick around. You know, I

Roberto Baldwin  25:08  
want more manual transmissions you only need cars with manual transmissions Well no,

Nicole Wakelin  25:13  
no I don't Well then sure. I do. I do I can talk all you can talk all you want about it say yeah, you're the only one justified No, I

Roberto Baldwin  25:23  
have a man of transmission.

Nicole Wakelin  25:24  
I don't anymore. I didn't know you're dead to us now. I know.

Roberto Baldwin  25:28  
Well, it's nice having you on the show Nicole. Yeah, so well, but but having driven this for just a short amount of time. I am looking forward to seeing what Hyundai and Kia do with their upcoming Evie sedan because the Evie sedan If it drives like the stinger right that's that's a game changer because that means it essentially drives like an eye for except it's going to be less expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:00  
And we should be seeing the Hyundai ionic six sometime this fall I think

Roberto Baldwin  26:05  
yeah. So get ready for Halloween extra fun time.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:08  
But it won't be at the Detroit Auto Show in September.

Roberto Baldwin  26:12  
Okay, so it's Halloween or whatever, Detroit. Oh, la.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:16  
Yeah. Isn't la bien all these were probably see it. Yeah. Yeah. And so let's get get ready for this Thanksgiving. Hyundai will not be participating in the 2022 Detroit Auto Show.

Roberto Baldwin  26:27  
It's expensive show. That's what I've heard from automakers like they all expensive. They've told New York is

Sam Abuelsamid  26:32  
actually the most expensive but really? Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  26:37  
Someone told me Detroit. I feel like I've been lied to. Anyway, Kia stinger. I'll tell you more about it later. I'll also have the Yeah, Cherokee for about you to talk about next week. Probably. Yeah. For my E.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:53  
Alright. So speaking of, actually, when we're speaking of EVs

Roberto Baldwin  27:01  
speaking of EVs. Oh, no, I said, Evie. I said, there are Stinger EVs.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:07  
Oh, that's right. Yes. So there's another Eevee. That's a new Eevee that's coming out this fall one of one of many, which is the Pole Star Three. And we finally got an initial image from pole star this week. And unlike the Pole Star to this one is sort of an SUV. Or more sort of an SUV than the star two is have you you had a chance to look at this thing yet.

Roberto Baldwin  27:35  
Yeah, I want to see the front because it has that little air way those vents coming off the hood. From the front. I really want to see the front of this car.

Nicole Wakelin  27:47  
Do we just have that one profile? And

Sam Abuelsamid  27:50  
that's all they're showing us? So it's kind of a sleek wagon ish, you know, tall wagon ish type of vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  27:57  
Oh, but I see what you're talking about the vent what is that?

Sam Abuelsamid  28:01  
I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin  28:04  
If that is just create an air curtain. Or

Sam Abuelsamid  28:08  
it might be you know, like to control the airflow over the front of the top of the car. You know, as it flows over the the windshield and the roof. That's kind of peculiar.

Roberto Baldwin  28:22  
I want to see the front of this car.

Nicole Wakelin  28:23  
Yeah, it's like a little front wing like you look at it almost looks like like it should be on the back. But it's on the front. It's very low. Yeah, I mean, that can't be more than a couple of inches if that.

Roberto Baldwin  28:34  
And they they recreate it. So they had Thor's hammer and the light switch, you know, Volvo, but they also sort of recreated in that little event right below it. I want to see the front. I mean, the side looks cool and fun. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  28:45  
you know what it looks like? There's a lot going on on the front of that car. I'm really curious. Me

Roberto Baldwin  28:49  
the front. Show me. I guess well, I guess they'll show it to us later.

Nicole Wakelin  28:55  
Eventually. Not today. Yeah, I think it's gonna change.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:58  
October, October is when we will see the the full reveal of this car. And so this, this will be the third model from Pollstar and this is sharing its platform with the replacement for the XC 90, which is also going to be all electric. And they're saying they're projecting that the Pole Star Three is going to have a range of 372 miles on the Dolby LTP test, which is what they use in Europe now. So probably be somewhere around about 300 miles on the EPA range.

Roberto Baldwin  29:30  
Big Car on a big luxury car. Yeah. Which is which is kind of like where everyone's going with the big luxuries. But I'd say it's a trick. This is a trick. This is a visual trick because the same thing we had with the ionic five, where we're like, oh, look at this tiny little hatchback and you got it like oh wait, now this is almost the size of a CRV the size of an SC 90 people. So when you look at it and the wheels are pushed out so far that it looks like it looks like it's the size of a rav4 it's not

Sam Abuelsamid  29:59  
I mean nothing wrong with those kinds of visual tricks that make it look smaller. And what's interesting is this clearly has a much lower roof profile than the current generation XC 90, the current xe 90s have fairly tall vehicle. And the the Volvo recharge concept that they revealed last year, which is a preview of, of the Volvo branded car. It has a similarly low roofline to it. And it's hard to tell from from this image, whether this is going to be a three row or not. It kind of looks like it's not like it might only be a two row, at least for

Nicole Wakelin  30:37  
that image doesn't make look make it look like it's big enough for three. Yeah, that's too It looks too short to like you would be squished.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:45  
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  30:46  
I mean, I guess you could. I mean, you could fake one back there. Who has a really bad third row.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:52  
Who doesn't say it needs your question? Good. 30 Sorento. Well, that the Navigator has a great third row. Oh, yeah, the navigator is the boss though. Yeah. But yeah, and kind of more mid size, you know, mid to upper upper middle size vehicles. Yeah, none of them have a really great third row. And even the current XC 90 is not an exceptionally large third row. So. So anyway, this is coming this fall. We probably won't get it in production is beginning, expected to begin in early 2023. So we'll see it in October. But it won't be available until early next year. So that is the Pole Star Three. Not an Eevee is the VW Amarok which VW released some images of this week. And back in 2019 might have even been 2018 Ford and VW did a deal to the product sharing deal where the VW would get some commercial vehicles and trucks based on Ford platforms. And then Ford would get to use the MTB electric platform from Volkswagen for some EVs in the European market. And the first of these vehicles on the VW side is the Amarok. VW has had a midsize pickup available since what about 2413 or 14, I think, but outside of North America, they've never sold it here. And doesn't sound like you're gonna sell this one here. But this is based on the new generation Ford Ranger, which is launching here. It's going to be on sale here are also early 2023 and looks quite a bit you know, the Amarok is styled quite a bit differently from the Ranger. What do you what do you guys think about this Okay,

Nicole Wakelin  32:56  
is this image with all the rhinoceroses actually an official image the rhinoceros image? It's like got this mock up like it's on safari and like the guy has a relaxers on his shirts.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:07  
I believe it is. Yeah, then I will if they're

Nicole Wakelin  33:09  
gonna show this their head best be in Amarok rhinoceros edition or I'm gonna be really sad. I want to be able to get a little Rhino on my door. I want that one. I want that.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:18  
Well, I do sell the Amarok in Africa. I want though you'll have you'll have to go to Africa to get one Danya as long as she

Roberto Baldwin  33:25  
gets the rhino That's all she cares about. That's all you guys see

Nicole Wakelin  33:28  
what I'm talking about the day. And there's a rhino off in the distance. Yeah, what

Roberto Baldwin  33:33  
are you guys doing?

Nicole Wakelin  33:34  
Yo, what's up? I live here but boys get out the way No. House. But it looks it looks actually looks really good. I wish it would go on sale here because I think it's the little truck thing has. I mean that is it's sort of hot right now. The little truck thing?

Sam Abuelsamid  33:50  
Well, this isn't a little low. I mean, this isn't the mid size. This is Yeah, by Ranger, Colorado, but

Nicole Wakelin  33:56  
I mean, it's not an F 150 That's true. It is. When I say little, I mean not f 150 I should clarify like not, you know, Super Duty. Yeah, it's not like a line. It's originally it's more like you can park it in the grocery store parking lot without having to just pick the spot at the end of the road because it's the only one you know you can fit in. Like I like this did this size truck is is cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:20  
Yeah, it's a good size. I mean, one of my neighbors recently traded in his got rid of his 2014 f150 and got a ranger. Oh, really? Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  34:32  
What made it and he downsized and he was happy.

Unknown Speaker  34:35  
Yes, he's happy

Roberto Baldwin  34:36  
with it. It's probably tired of trying to find parking and just being like,

Nicole Wakelin  34:40  
it's hard to find parking and big trucks. It is because I only because I don't drive it like every day of the week. I have one for a week. And then they put me in you know, a Honda Civic and like I have no sense of, of the size of

Sam Abuelsamid  34:52  
there's so much wider than most other vehicles for one thing. So you have to find basically you have to find a parking space where there's nobody on either side, yes. And you end up filling up most of the space between the lines. So if somebody pulls in beside you, you know, then you can't get the doors open. So yes, it's a pain in the neck is a challenge it is. So, hopefully, hopefully we can convince Volkswagen to sell the Amarok Rhino edition here in North American

Nicole Wakelin  35:20  
Rhino edition. I'll buy it and someone you said at least one I want the rhino though.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:26  
That can go to Save save the rhinos. It can

Nicole Wakelin  35:29  
be all like you've done a little PSA by building this car. Do this.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:33  
contribute some money to the rhinos together contribute some money to the poacher poaching hunters.

Roberto Baldwin  35:41  
The poaching the poacher hunters are Yeah, because poaching hunters just like you're going out poaching the poacher hunters?

Sam Abuelsamid  35:50  
Hunters? Yes. That's what I meant to say. Okay,

Roberto Baldwin  35:52  
we are the world's very podcast does not,

Nicole Wakelin  35:56  
does not endorse poaching anything.

Roberto Baldwin  36:00  
Of any, any at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:03  
All right. Also new this week, we finally get to see the US market version of the new Honda HRV, which is a completely different vehicle from the HRV that was revealed either late last year earlier this year, in Europe and other parts of the world, which that HRV like the first generation HRV is based on the Honda Fit or jazz, depending on where you are.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:29  
The HRV that we're getting is like the original CRV 20 plus years ago, is based on the Civic which is makes it significantly larger than the old HRV. It is now something like nine inches longer than the previous gen HRV. That is going away. And it's one of the things that they talked about in the in the press release is that you know, getting a more responsive two liter four cylinder engine. So it's based, it's the base engine from the Civic, which has all of 148 horsepower, I think, maybe not even that much. Or sorry, 158 horsepower. So better a little better than I thought, but not much. As opposed to the 141 that was in the 1.8 liter in the old CRV. But the problem I always had with the old CRV as much as I kind of liked the packaging and the size of it. That 1.8 The CRV or the HRV was quite a bit heavier like several 100 pounds heavier than a fit. And it always felt a little sluggish. And since this thing is nine inches longer, but Honda has notably not discussed how much is thing weighs. I'm guessing that this is going to be significantly heavier than a civic because you know, it's all wheel drive and taller and bigger. So it's, you know, this is probably going to be 30 the Oldham was 30 140 pounds for the all wheel drive. This is probably going to be upwards of 3300 pounds. So I'm not sure there's actually going to be any performance improvement. What do you think about the design of this new HRV?

Roberto Baldwin  38:14  
As a front

Nicole Wakelin  38:17  
okay, I feel like he can't say anything about this. I'm gonna be totally honest because I'm going on the stripe program for this on Tuesday and I had just read the all the embargoed stuff they sent us so you can't I'm afraid I'm gonna say something that is really so I'm gonna sit here quiet,

Roberto Baldwin  38:33  
Robbie. Okay, um bring back the jazz. Yeah. That's my that's my that's my big takeaway. I don't know. It's the front is I don't know if I liked the front or don't like the front. It's I don't hate it. But I don't love I don't know, I feel like this is something I have to see in, in real life. The front of this car because it it looks like they just took off. They took the front off like a Taurus from the 90s and just slapped it onto a Honda. I don't know. I

Sam Abuelsamid  39:12  
described that's not a bad way of putting it. Yeah, it's got this weird thing with design. You know, they seem to oscillate back and forth between doing dull and interesting. dull. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. The two generations ago the Civic was dull. Then the last generation they made it interesting. The new one is more doll ago. Yeah. And now they've done the same thing going with the HRV. And

Roberto Baldwin  39:39  
I don't want to like I don't want to dis I don't want 100 be like, oh, people don't like it. So we're gonna go back to dull because I would rather have this than dull. At least something that looks different. There we go. I'm gonna say it's better than the last HRV look looks wise just because it doesn't look like it disappears. And that's the whole thing of the HRV is just sort of disappears. It's It's It's urban. It's urban camouflage because it looks like everything else and you're saying

Sam Abuelsamid  40:07  
them? Yeah, I would argue that this thing looks even more like camouflage than the old one more adult. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  40:15  
Yeah, if you look at the side, there's like, Oh, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:19  
I mean, this could be it. This could be any number, you know, any of 20 different tail small crossovers.

Roberto Baldwin  40:25  
Yeah. I'm not. I don't know. I mean, I maybe I'll drive it. I'll be like, oh, man, this thing is do although that's probably gonna be a tough sell. My big again, my big takeaway bring back the Honda Fit.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:40  
Yeah, I would agree with that. Especially, especially if this doesn't have the Magic Seats. The Magic Seats were always one of the great things about this and the but the HRV in the fit.

Roberto Baldwin  40:52  
There were magic. I mean, who doesn't love magic Magic Seats,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:55  
I don't, the Magic Seats and the fit and the HRV. The back seats, you could either flip up the bottom seat cushion. So you'd have, you know, that whole space behind the seats from the floor to the ceiling. So if you wanted to put taller stuff in there, like bicycles and things like that fit great. Or you can just fold it all down and have a nice long flat load floor all the way from the couch.

Nicole Wakelin  41:20  
What everyone's missing is that as Sam is talking, Robbie is doing hand motions like he's either directing an airplane into the individual way, or he's telling me how this folds that was

Roberto Baldwin  41:30  
giving you a visual representation of how much look like how far down the floor is. But then when it's this kind of like that. They have this old CRV had that too. I don't know this, you already have it too. Okay. And old back in the day, like our old car, we had to CRV for a short amount of time. So when I don't know how we ended up, we just ended up with some points. And that was it had a it had a picnic table in the back. Oh, nice. Like for the wheel. Well, like the cover was a picture you could take it out and have little arms that came down. And so

Nicole Wakelin  42:02  
I have that version of the CRV I think that was the year that we had it. That was a long time ago.

Roberto Baldwin  42:07  
It looks like a panda if you got the black and white one. And we had that car for gosh, three, four years. And I not it wasn't until the day that we sold it that I found the button to open the rear that rod in the cruise the button to open the tailgate in this car for I just gave up bad. And then the last day we had it I was cleaning it out and get it off and get oh that's it. I was doing a good deep clean and then I found it. I was like well, that's great. That's wonderful. Well, goodbye CRV.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:45  
All right, well, moving back to EVs for a moment. You know, if you if you're going to drive an Eevee you got to charge it from time to time. And one of the cool things if you have a Ford f150 Lightning like I have in the driveway right now, which we'll discuss next week, is it has pro power on board, which you can use to charge other EVs if you want. And apparently, when they started shipping lightnings to customers, the one I have is a pre production unit that does not have this extra little accessory but the customers are getting their lightnings are finding that in the bag with the charging cable. There's also a nice little adapter that will fit a into a Tesla charge port. So if you're driving along and you're lightning, whoo. And you spot a Tesla sitting by the side of the road with a dead battery, you can help them out and you can stop off and give them some extra electrons and it can plug right into their their proprietary chest Tesla charge port.

Roberto Baldwin  43:49  
It's not trolling. No,

Nicole Wakelin  43:50  
it's just that trolling it

Roberto Baldwin  43:51  
all helpful. Just decay. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  43:55  
yeah, because somebody somebody had posted about this on Twitter or somewhere one of the Tesla forums that Ford was trolling Tesla owners you know by by including this, this accessory. And Jim Farley responded not not trolling, just being helpful.

Unknown Speaker  44:11  
Just being helpful we're very sorry givers afford

Roberto Baldwin  44:14  
if anyone has the least the least likely chance of running out of power. It's It's It's Tesla owners because the Supercharger network Besnard blah, blah, blah, blah. We all know that. That's the that's the killer app for Tesla's is that Supercharger network but around the middle of nowhere, you weren't paying attention. Maybe you had the air conditioning blasting for some insane reason, I don't know. And someone before lightning comes by they can give you a little extra something something. It's gonna take a while.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:42  
It's gonna take a little while you can charge up to 9.6 kilowatts with that. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  44:46  
so if you're getting 9.6 for an hour, let's see if it's about four kilowatt. If you're doing a model three, they get about four miles per kilowatt. So if you do a half hour you're gonna get like a nice 2016 20 miles or range gets you where you need to go. Perfect, hopefully. All right,

Sam Abuelsamid  45:03  
hopefully, sticking with chargers, and the infrastructure bill that was passed some months back, they included seven and a half billion dollars to build up more public charging infrastructure across the United States. And this week, they issued some rules for what's going to be required for anybody that wants to get some of those billions of dollars.

Nicole Wakelin  45:28  
slow everything down. Okay, what are our rules?

Sam Abuelsamid  45:31  
To me, there's nothing here that don't make sense. You know, they're requiring least 150 kilowatt chargers for DC fast charging, they've got to be located within a mile of a highway. So you know, if you're driving along, you don't want to be, you don't want to have to get off on an exit and drive around for another five or 10 miles to find a charger. So it's got to be located relatively close. They've all got to be standard CCS connectors, charge connectors. And they cannot require the user to to have to log into an app, you know, or sign up for any kind of account to use them.

Nicole Wakelin  46:15  
And how do they pay? Do they just randomly?

Roberto Baldwin  46:18  
There's credit card readers

Sam Abuelsamid  46:20  
card swipe things, just like use it a guest? Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  46:23  
Because a couple years ago, I did an article about why people had it. And they were like, Oh, well, you know, they kept coming up with reasons why they couldn't just put credit card readers on their chargers. And then they finally just, like, suddenly realize, oh, people don't want to sign up for 15. I don't have to sign up for Mobil, Chevron shell, you know, you just go gas station, just go to a gas station, I pay with my credit card. So that's Yeah. That's pretty much where the charging companies are right now.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:50  
So is there anything else that you would like to see them do as part of this program?

Nicole Wakelin  46:55  
I can use Travis to be no more off of no more than a mile off of highways, but they one summer in rural country and tribal communities. Doesn't that doesn't the rural negates the highway part.

Roberto Baldwin  47:10  
Be surprised what's called the highway in this country? By the way?

Nicole Wakelin  47:14  
What is the highway? It's his major highway? In this article. I'm like, How can you be on a major highway, but yet also be rolling country?

Roberto Baldwin  47:21  
Yeah, little things go to Monroe. It's essentially where all the gas stations are. You know, and I think we're a mile off a highway, just Shell Station isn't like three miles from the interstate. If you're driving across the thing, and if this is if you want the money, you get anywhere, right? Yeah. But for like, it's I built 20 of them, and 18 of them, like work with this within the structure, that I get money for 18 of them. And the other two that I put out in the middle of nowhere, I can put in the middle of nowhere.

Nicole Wakelin  47:53  
That makes sense. Right. And

Sam Abuelsamid  47:54  
this is I think, you know, because this is 5 billion, there was seven and a half billion set aside in the in the infrastructure bill. I think this 5 billion is just the portion for DC fast charging, there's another couple of billion dollars for Level Two charging public level two charging in, particularly in underserved areas. So I think, you know, those can be placed, you know, wherever, you know, wherever it's convenient. Or I'm sure they'll have some rules, you know, but you know, trying to make sure that people in more rural areas have access to at least level two charging public charging.

Roberto Baldwin  48:33  
I don't know how they would do it. But I still think there needs to be something that says, hey, you know, at least 80% have to be working it all the time.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:40  
Well, actually, it says I think it's, it's actually 97% uptime is what's required. Oh, okay.

Nicole Wakelin  48:48  
You have 90, but once you have the money and you've done it, what did they do? Take it back if your charters always working?

Sam Abuelsamid  48:52  
I'm not sure exactly how, like how would they

Nicole Wakelin  48:55  
do that? Like rip that charger out? Give us our money back. You are no longer working all the time. We want our money back.

Roberto Baldwin  49:00  
Like they probably don't get it they probably don't give you all the money they probably dole it out, like in sections, and then they're like, Okay, like, maybe they

Nicole Wakelin  49:10  
find us, you know, like off a lot of work to get money for a charging station. I'm saying because I plan of course, you know, and opening 800 charging stations in the future. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  49:20  
Most of this stuff they should be doing anyway, to be completely honest. I mean, if you're still building 50 kilowatt charging DC fast chargers, if you're still putting those out, what's wrong with you?

Sam Abuelsamid  49:29  
I know. Stop it. Yeah, stop it. There should be nothing. There should be nothing less than 150 kilowatt chargers at this point, and if you're

Roberto Baldwin  49:38  
putting less than four, I'd be like I'm just putting one in the middle of a field. Stop it. It's like It's like going to a gas station or having one one pump. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  49:49  
It's you want a buches of evey charging is that what you're just sort of walking just have like, like a whole field worth of nothing but Evie chargers like Bucky.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:58  
That's what that's what basically Do what Tesla is putting in. Where's it Yeah, Baker's everywhere and we're, they're, they're doing a supercharger station that with I think 100 charge ports. You know halfway between LA and Vegas.

Nicole Wakelin  50:11  
They're putting one off the highway here in right just the border as you come into New Hampshire in a little strip mall and I counted I think I counted 14. As I started my watch is a lot of Tesla superchargers right off the highway in New Hampshire. It's not like we're this huge Evie market is like, wow, that was a pretty big investment.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:31  
Yeah. Oh, well,

Roberto Baldwin  50:33  
that's the thing is that people will see that. And then when you're thinking of what am I gonna buy and the Tesla superchargers are like everywhere in there like, well, I could get any other car or any a Tesla, which I know there's a supercharger right down the street. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:49  
If Tesla wants to get any of this money, they're gonna have to switch over from their proprietary charge connectors to CCS, because that is one of the requirements.

Roberto Baldwin  50:59  
They you know, they want yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:02  
They actually already do that in Europe and Europe. That's already the law, CCS. And so they, you know, they've been using CCS on cars and Tesla vehicles in Europe for several years now.

Roberto Baldwin  51:15  
It's just done that well, but it's still but they still get money. If it's if it's propriety if it's only for Tesla's?

Sam Abuelsamid  51:23  
No, it has to be open to everybody. All right. Well, yeah, anybody has to be able to use it without without having to log into an app.

Roberto Baldwin  51:31  
That's a lot of money. Well, I mean, if they can use that money, because it's not I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:35  
you can they can, you know, they can charge for the use, they just, it can't be restricted to any particular brand. And it can't require an app

Roberto Baldwin  51:43  
here. I mean, it's the money thing is where it comes down is to use the money to do the software because that software to get that to get the Tesla to talk to every other car. I don't people don't realize that it's not like a gas station. We just played with a lot electronics and computers talking to each other your cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:01  
And a lot of times when when you if you go to a plug public Evie charger, and you try to charge and it doesn't work. That's oftentimes what the problem is. It's it's often a software problem. You know, something's not communicating properly. Like I don't

Nicole Wakelin  52:15  
know you like Yeah, where are you in your fancy car? I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin  52:20  
Yeah, it's essentially like I don't know you like yeah, you do. You met me that one time? I don't think so. And then he goes to the next charger the next chargers like, Hey, I remember we met at that one buddy.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:28  
I took I took the lightning to my local EAA station the other day just to see what kind of speed it would get. I plugged it in plug in charge worked perfectly. It authenticated, immediately started charging, ramped up to 130 kilowatts. Yeah. Because it was already 60 60% Charge. Yeah. And it worked great. Flawless.

Roberto Baldwin  52:48  
They're getting the EAA stations are getting much, much better. That doesn't. I mean, that's not that doesn't like

Sam Abuelsamid  52:54  
let them off, though. Yeah. But they're still having a lot of a lot of challenges. And it's still they need, everybody needs to do better. Yeah. Do better, better, do better. So let's talk about something that is the opposite of an Eevee.

Nicole Wakelin  53:07  
Oh, that must be my turn. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:11  
What else did you drive this week?

Nicole Wakelin  53:13  
I drove I want to call it the escalada. But it's actually the Escalade V, which is the Cadillacs V series. That's their performance cars. And they've started this back in I think it was 2004. And in the few cars that they've done as a V series, one that they've never done until now is the Escalade. So now you have the Escalade V, which is, it is it is bonkers. It's bonkers. i The amount of gas it uses. I don't know because now they're the EPA nor s. Escalade, nor Cadillac has given an estimate yet. They say it's actually not as bad as you might think. But let's

Sam Abuelsamid  53:49  
not it's not quite in gallons per mile.

Nicole Wakelin  53:51  
It's yeah, it's so just to give you give you an idea of what is it is a 6.2 liter supercharged V eight with 682 horsepower, 653 pounds of torque, and a 10 speed automatic zero to 64.4 seconds. 12.74 quarter mile at 110 miles an hour. I'm expecting it to be as fuel efficient as a pre Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  54:15  
Who was asking for this, by the way who got into an Escalade. So you know what? I want to race it. You know

Nicole Wakelin  54:21  
what I think so, okay, you got it. Like take your head out of I have a Kona, I'm Robbie put your head into.

Roberto Baldwin  54:26  
We find one last Yeah, it is like at least a smaller SUV. The thing is, maybe you don't want that the locomotive

Nicole Wakelin  54:34  
maybe you want a big big car that can drive over your Kona because I feel like I could accidentally do that. And I'd be like just go for speed bump. But so it is huge. It is absolutely huge. And we drove the long wheelbase because production issues. They didn't have the standard wheelbase and time for the drive. We had the long wheelbase. You cannot possibly drive a car bigger than this. I think without needing a commercial license. It is gigantic. But that said it is Absolutely a hoot to drive it the the acceleration is so strong, it is so aggressive. It sounds amazing. You can actually change the way it sounds. There's a stealth mode so your neighbors don't hate you. If you start the car at like 4am for an early flight or something, then there's a touring and a sport you put it in Sport. The exhaust is that fantastic, like verbal and cracking thing every time you slow down. It sounds like it sounds like it should be a tiny little sports car thing and you're like, nope, ginormous Escalade, but it sounds really really good. The sound is fantastic. And for the engineer who was horribly offended, nothing like a motorboat at all. It does not sound like a motorboat as someone suggested. It has this really beautiful sound. He was talking about how they worked very hard to tune it to make it sound like a sports car. Have that sporty throaty sound but not be so harsh and aggressive because it is still a luxury car, Escalades luxury vehicle. You don't want it to sound like you're driving. I don't know some what's I can't think of another like a Mustang or something you want it to sound like an Escalade. So sounds like an Escalade drives like nobody's business. But it is unbelievably planted like this is big. This is not a small vehicle. And they had us on this sort of swooping route that took us from we were in Scottsdale, and we drove up to this like dam. Thomas Jefferson, somebody, I don't know, some some famous Roosevelt Dam roots. I don't know, Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt. That's what it was Rongai Theodore Roosevelt Dam, we drove up there and there's like, there's a section of highway, there's a section a little narrow roads, and there's a lot of this very swooping highway where you're kind of sweeping back and forth. And you know, you're going up and down this that was an absolute joy to drive, which I did not expect. Because normally in a big vehicle like this that is powerful. That is also just so large, you get that kind of tippy side decide thing that didn't happen. I was expecting to have to keep letting up on the gas like scrubbing off a little speaker. So I thought oh, you're gonna feel like you're going a little too wide in that corner. Nope, you can keep your foot pretty much planted on that gas pedal and you're gonna pass everybody like I'm passing by like trucks and other large SUVs that are like moving over because they can't drive that fast because they don't have the handling to do it. It truly handles like something much sportier than you would think it's fun. It's a really fun car to drive and it's got that nice, smooth Cadillac luxury car vibe. It's beautiful inside the trims are gorgeous.

Roberto Baldwin  57:19  
It's not cheap. It's a you and six of your friends can go really really fast in a in a brick,

Nicole Wakelin  57:26  
six year fence do really, really fast and break but it's like a barn or barn. Yeah, it's more of a barn. So I mean, you get like some way power adjustable front

Sam Abuelsamid  57:35  
seats with heat only 16 way. Only 1630 When the Lincoln

Nicole Wakelin  57:41  
heat and massage Did it have zebra wood accents in your Lincoln?

Sam Abuelsamid  57:47  
No, but it had

Nicole Wakelin  57:48  
zebra wood. I don't even know what zebra wood is. But I had zebra wood accents. There's a 36 speaker AKG audio system. There is six speakers like seriously. So it has all of the

Roberto Baldwin  58:00  
over the top big people here.

Nicole Wakelin  58:03  
And then it has that massive 38 inch like curved OLED screen across the front. And then like 60, almost 70 16.9 inches, I think is the infotainment section of this. So it's got this giant, beautiful screen on the front. If you get the long wheelbase that I was driving the starting price is $152,990. Oregon. It is a bargain. But so when you talk about the fuel economy, that's going to be not what anybody wants to pay when gas is creeping up. If you're spending 152,900 car, you don't care. I mean, you really don't care. There's no way you were looking going. It's just affordable.

Roberto Baldwin  58:44  
If you're looking at the Escalade, and you're like, you know what, I need to go really really fast in an Escalade why, I don't know, because I can't buy a sports car. Now.

Nicole Wakelin  58:55  
I want I want to be able to also take the

Sam Abuelsamid  58:58  
practice the same reason people want to be able to go from zero to 60 in two seconds in a Tesla Model X. And just for reference, you know, other large, very fast SUVs, the Bentley Bentayga speed, six liter twin turbo tart twin turbo w 12 engine, 630 626 horsepower and 664 foot pounds of torque. What did you say the zero to 60 watts for the

Nicole Wakelin  59:23  
Escalade zero to 60 is 4.4.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:27  
See the speed can do it and 3.80

Nicole Wakelin  59:31  
Maintain the smaller or bigger is a bit smaller like I think you'd have to chop off the everything behind the third row to remove the weight.

Roberto Baldwin  59:40  
behind the third row. Just whoosh is gone for the Escalade at the

Nicole Wakelin  59:46  
Escalade of that's a lot of what's going on have so I mean I and this is one of the it is sort of it not even sort of it is a crazy over the top vehicle. It is not something that's going to be for everyone. It is is a very limited we're gonna afford it kind of exactly, but it's I love that they did it. I know you got you guys.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:07  
I wonder if Jeep will do a limited run of grand wagoneer ELLs with the Hellcat before they end production of the Hellcat

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:15  
Do you love it like tell me the truth you wouldn't want to spend some time driving that you wouldn't want to know what it was like to drive that beast of a vehicle with all that horsepower you would Sam you would rob Yeah Would

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:27  
that doesn't make it any less ridiculous no

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:30  
denying the ridiculous but I am I am okay with ridiculous when the ridiculous is done in a fun. Like it works for the ridiculous if you have the money if that's what you want. This does exactly what it's supposed to be great big luxury SUV with power that will just like and handling that you don't expect from this. Oh, it's never going to be fun to drive and just a bunch of power. It's going to like it's going to be awful. No drives, really sporty drives really fun. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this vehicle. If I had $152,000 and I was looking for a three row SUV, I this would be on my list. I love it. I really liked it.

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:07  
I just wonder if the Escalade customer and the Escalade is that's that's what I'm thinking about who's going to buy this in the Escalade customer like the people who are buying Escalades right now who is saying, oh, you know what, I bought this really big luxury vehicle. So you show off that I had a big rip big luxury vehicle or I'm picking people up at the airport. Oh, I wish we had some more power. Whereas when you look at the BM, like the X seven m 60 is sort of ridiculous, but it's also okay, BMW driver. That's where That's where I'm

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:37  
the guy buying the Escalade in the first place, right. You're not like I would like a nice Jimmy or a three row SUV for supporting my

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:44  
family around town. There's nothing demure about an Escalade now. Correct.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:47  
So you're looking for something that is like in your face, like right here, people know you bought an Escalade, they know you spent a ton of money, even if they don't know what you know, you don't have to know a thing about cars. You're like, That guy has an Escalade who baby he spent some money on a car. Now you put the little V series thing on it. Now you've made it even more expensive. Now you've made it even fancier. So if you aren't going to talk to your buddies, and you're the guy who wants to be like, yeah, Yo, bro, I bought an Escalade like, Oh, I got the V series because I wanted the power or whatever. It's like you're you're you aren't going to be want to be that person. You aren't gonna want to have the extra horsepower for the front of it. And for the bragging rights don't underestimate the power of bragging rights if you're buying us Yeah, you've been bragging rights

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:27  
you know the share any any like information about their the people who are buying the Escalade.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:32  
They did oh, I wish I could find the slide. They did have information in the people who are buying it. It was part of their thing. And it was it was it had a lot of detail, and I'll see if I can find the slide. But they talked about prestige is literally one of the reasons like some people buy, buy an expensive SUV because they just they want it like I don't care what my neighbor thinks. The person who's buying an Escalade is someone who's buying it for the prestige. They're they they like that they want to be noticed. They want people to see sort of that they have arrived. So what does that better than not only do you have an Escalade, you have an Escalade that you can hear Yeah, you can hear it four blocks away, like your neighbors are like wait, Robbie's home. Yeah, that's him coming around the corner like you can hear this. So that's like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:14  
added but it does have the quiet mode too. So if you don't want to disturb your neighbor

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:18  
does it has the stealth mode to tone things down. And then it has a Tour mode and a Sport mode. And I would put it in stealth mode for the two minutes it took me to get out of my neighborhood and immediately push the Sport mode because it sounds just glorious. Does

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:33  
and that is the main thing that I will miss as we make the transition to electrification. It's the sound of great engines,

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:41  
like the burble in Papa the exhaust that pop or bleed that I'm gonna miss that I do like that. I like EVs I'm not anti Evie at all. But I'm also not anti redonkulous escalada of I love I liked the Escalade of

Roberto Baldwin  1:03:58  
because that's coming in and they're gonna eat the CT five V Blackwing. You don't they said like seven of them right now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:08  
It's a shame. I've got one of those coming next month. Oh, yeah. I've got both the CT four black wing and the five.

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:17  
Oh, back to bad times your fancy. Oh, well, then you got to hit up a skid the Escalade of a lot of do all the things a lot of I really liked the Escalade of Escalade of was

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:33  
I was looking at the Rolls Royce. Coolant on and that one is only like 500 and something horsepower. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:41  
Yeah, yeah. But that's definitely like a train. That thing is just like it's like nothing like you could run over a house. You could literally run over and buy Kona with it and wouldn't feel a thing in the drivers. I mean, it's just like floating over the ground things get out of the way. They need to put Like a cattle garden for it, so it just pushes everything out of the way. But he wouldn't need it. If something got under it doesn't matter.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:05  
Doesn't matter. I'm just gonna go right by it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:09  
All right. Let's see. So that is the Escalade of for 2020.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:15  
Kill me. That's a 2023. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:20  
Didn't kill you. You loved it.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:22  
I did love it, but I've renamed it. I mean.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:26  
All right. We only have a couple of listener questions this week. Everybody's being lazy.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:35  
Actually, only one is a question one is more of a comment. Adam J posted up Twitter. A, he took a photo of a window sticker on an F 150. The f150 MSRP is $69,554. And this is not a lightening this is just a regular gas regular old f150. The market adjustment on here is also $69,554. So a 100% markup on the $40,000. I'm trying to read the coin. Sorry, this this is this is a lightning. Yes. Okay.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:13  
Did he talk to the dealership? And I'm really curious what the dealership would say if you're like, seriously, you're seriously doubling the price of this car and what they would say? Like, I just want to walk in and put some, like put them on the spot.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:25  
Wait, the argument that I have heard from someone at Ford about this, you know that they are actively trying to discourage their dealers from doing it? Right. But the problem is, you know, with with vehicles like this that are in such high demand right now, there are also a lot of scalpers out there that are going out and buying these things, and turning right around and you know, they're taking the profit out there, you know, they're selling it for more than they paid for it. And so,

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:55  
you know, what, those scout the scalpers is that the idea basically out bid for

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:59  
at least at least, you know, take take some of that. Some of the

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:05  
money. Yeah, if someone's gonna rip you off, it's gonna it's like a ticket masters. Like, you know what we think these even though the tickets are 100 bucks, we think someone else is gonna buy him at around seven for 300. So you know what, fu they're $300. Now. That's money. That's the excuse.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:22  
Pretty much ours ours, all ours

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:25  
allow for what it's worth. That extra $70,000 is not going to Ford that's going into the pocket of the owner of the dealership. So yeah, so it's, you know, might be a local business person, you know, so you're supporting your local community?

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:37  
That's definitely not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:40  
what whatever, whatever you do, you know, don't pay a dealer markup. Yeah, just go somewhere else. Find another dealer?

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:47  
Well, this is why, you know, wow. The Jimmy and Jim Farley did that whole thing talking about how they want to go to online, non negotiable, negotiable. negotiable. negotiable. negotiable, say, numbers, you know, price sales price. So, if you if the car is $70,000, you pay $70,000. But you go to the dealership, and you get it and the dealership gets there. $800,000 or whatever money they get, whenever they sell a car, as opposed to it's $70,000. And then it shows up at the dealership. And now it's apparently 140,000.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:20  
Yeah, well, I mean, the challenge you get is that, you know, they might turn around, and they might sell it to somebody, and then turn around, you know, that that person might turn around and either sell it to somebody else, or go trade it into another dealership, you know, for a higher price, and then that they sell it used for an even an even higher price. Which is it's an unfortunate byproduct of a situation when we've got more demand than supply. So

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:49  
you could go buy an f150 Lightning for 100. And what was that $140,000 You drive it off the lot, and you put it on? I don't know, whatever source Yes, trailer car trailer for $175,000. And someone pays that. So you just made $25,000 for buying a car and driving it to your driveway.

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:07  
That's the same excuse like if you buy a Pokeyman car to target for $5 and you turn around a sell for $100. So target should raise the price of Pokeyman cards so 100 off. It's the logic is really flawed, because you're you're saying, Well, someone else is gonna do this. So we might as well like screw, we might as well screw everyone. Because there's no way you can get this vehicle for less than this, as opposed to the 12 people who buy it, maybe two of them will sell it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:33  
They kind of the only way around this is if you do what they did with the Ford GT, which is you know, as part of the purchase great. You agree that you you're you're not allowed to sell this for two years.

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:47  
And no one's gonna do that because like, the person buying a Ford GT is like that's sort of an exclusive luxury customer that has that's different. If you're buying a truck, you might you're just a regular your regular guy. Like you don't know what you're The financial world situation is gonna be it might not be like you're trying to make a buck, it might just literally be like, Oh, things have gone sideways, I need to sell my car now you can't, you

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:08  
know, and that's, again, the amount and the percentage of people who were like flipping trucks after they buy at a dealership is far lower than the percentage of people who just want that truck. That's the thing is that you're you're you're you're you're, you're screwing over everyone, because five people and of those people want to buy something and turn around and sell it. This the same thing on the, you know, the gray market with everything that gets sold. It's a collector's item. But when you set the precedent that oh, you know what, it's just going to be this much for everyone. That's messed

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:37  
up. Yeah, that's tough.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:40  
So don't pay a markup. If

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:42  
you don't pay markup, people don't do that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:45  
Alright, don't let them use crazy, crazy dealer logic, by the way.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:50  
So last question is from Paul Kavanaugh. How come Sam and Roberto never talk about pie.

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:57  
I spent like three days tweeting almost exclusively about pie. There's a thread about pa

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:05  
you guys don't talk nearly as much about pie as I talk about pie. A pie is like pious, pious life. I mean, I have a PI club we literally go when we find pi in random cities. And we go like hey guys, I found pi and XYZ pie shop in whatever city I'm in. I pi i talk about pi a lot. I still pi for not steal I sneak pi all the way from California back to New Hampshire. I randomly get pi everywhere. I now get pi recommendations from random people on Twitter and it warms my cold dead heart. I'm like, Oh, someone knew I was here and recommended a pie shop. I because you just didn't need to embrace the pie life. You did just get pie everywhere you go will make you happy. Cream, berries,

Roberto Baldwin  1:11:45  
whatever. I mean, not I mean, clearly not as much as you

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:50  
love to eat pie. I'm not talking about pies. It's just that's something that I traditionally do a whole lot. But what I will recommend is if you are in Detroit, my wife

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:03  
recommendation going to do a drive where I'm going to be doing this random drive with Eileen and we're going to we're going to stop at places and I was looking for pasties and pie.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:16  
Okay. Well, there there used to be a really good pie maker here in Ypsilanti where I live, unfortunately, she moved to Portland, Oregon, so other other ports

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:30  
for me is road trip.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:32  
It doesn't help you. But if you want something a little bit different, there's a fantastic new patisserie in Detroit called Wardha Patisserie. It's, it's in Midtown Detroit. And if you like pastries, if you'd like to GH which is sort of like a pie.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:50  
Pie like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:52  
she makes this amazing quiche. That is like custard the textures like custard. It is incredible.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:00  
What we're doing we are arriving very early one day, like for this drive for the Ford Bronco Everglades actually, and we're while riding quite early and driving up to some driving positions.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:12  
I wanted to drum an island, yes to German Island and

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:15  
we're driving up there and we're going to ping, ping, ping, ping all the way up and stop at pi shops, pastries, coffee pasties overall.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:23  
So if you're gonna take us to Traverse

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:26  
City, we haven't I don't know for going I don't know we have not built that yet. So you shouldn't go to Traverse City

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:31  
pie company. The pie is great there. And you know, there's all kinds of, especially once you get like north of Bay City area, Saginaw area, you know, there's lots of places where you can get great pasties, pasties.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:44  
See everybody everybody listening who's like a Detroit person or Michigan person you gotta tell me where I should be driving tell me where I should be stopping tweet me. We will make a giant list and we will have all the tasty treats under way up to drive into swap.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:58  
Excellent. All right. Any more thoughts on PI Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:02  
I am team pi I live I don't really like cake all that much. I like pie. So there's that and I am tweeting at Paul Kevin off my 12 by 12 tweet thread about pie. When I had when I got the julienne pie company I just tweeted it at the top of my feed now where I got the Julian pine company I got a pie and then I just had to do a bunch of things. But this pie okay in order to get it home

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:35  
your home is still California My home is New Hampshire when I take a pie home from Julian I commit. Yeah, but I had to take

Roberto Baldwin  1:14:41  
it. I had to I picked it up on 1111 Drive Drive Program and then went to another drive program with the PI. Okay, just go around with pi it was the key though. The Hyundai drive program they onic five Yes, I bought one of them. And Brian home and then right after that I went on to Mercedes Drive Program by the time I got home it had been in nine vehicles. I see it. Vehicles by vehicle eight.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:13  
Okay, did you oh wait, you ate it with a fork and knife. And it's like a metal fork and knife. I mean, if you're really committed, you're like chopping at that thing with like the stir that's in the hotel room for the coffee and finding

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:24  
Oh, I stole I stole things so I can eat it in my room.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:30  
So what is your favorite kind of pie? Me Who me both of you.

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:34  
I don't know pie. My

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:37  
favorite kind of pie. They have a pie that is in fact from julienne pie company. And it's like mountain Berry. I think it's what they call it. It's like raspberry Blackberry. It's like three or four different kinds of berries in it. That is my absolute favorite. You warm up a slice while you're there and they put ice cream on top of it and it gets melty. And then you take a whole pie home for yourself for later.

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:54  
That's the one I bought. Boys and I got the boys an apple crumb. That's what I know. That's

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:59  
different. This is literally like mountain Berry. I think it's what they call it but it's like three or four different kinds of berry. It's the kind of thing if you get it on your clothes, just throw the shirt away. It's never gonna be out or just

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:09  
suck on the you just suck all the juice

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:11  
out of your shirt then throw it away.

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:13  
I mean, don't waste good pie. Come on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:18  
I am quite fond of a great strawberry rhubarb pie. That that is something that I have not had in for too long.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:27  
I brought that home from that was the last pie brought home from Julian because strawberry rhubarb. Yeah, my husband's favorite is strawberry rhubarb. And he I like strawberry rubber but he's like an aficionado of that particular combination. He rated it quite highly just so you know.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:40  
We used to we used to grow rhubarb in our backyard in our previous house, but we haven't had any for a while so I have to find some. But I also love like a great pecan pie. Oh yeah, just just a classic apple pie is great to have um,

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:57  
Kim pie. My husband is good. Because pie like with real pumpkin at Thanksgiving. It's good stuff. Right now we've all talked about pie pie. Welcome to the pie show.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:08  
I tweeted a like to word a patisserie in the in Twitter, from the wheel bearings account. So there we go. People who are not in the show notes as well.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:19  
People are completely confused because they don't hear the show right now.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:24  
Hi. Why were they talking about pie because Nicole that's what they're

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:28  
a pivot a pie pivot.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:31  
So now officially a pie shell.

Roberto Baldwin  1:17:34  
Show little

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:35  
wheel bearings were pie plates. Welcome.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:39  
All right. One last thing. We'll say goodbye now. But I've got an interview that I did when I was in Texas for Toyota palooza. This time with Cooper Erickson, who's the head of product planning at twit in North America. And we talked about, I asked him about some of the questions we've had about, you know, the slow charging and stuff on the busy Forex. So he had some response in there. So give that a listen. And we'll talk to you next time. Bye everyone.

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:11  
Bye. But pie

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:18  
Alright, let's talk Toyota electrification. Toyota, I guess Toyota and Lexus two. Okay. So firstly, the first question, is the BZ on sale yet? Or is it Yes? Okay. How's the how's the response been so far to the busy Forex been great.

Cooper Erickson  1:18:39  
Dealers told us they're the inventory they have exposure to is sold out. They have many customers coming in wanting to check it out. So it's obviously very early and availability is very tight. But But so far, so good.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:57  
I'm curious. What what kind of feedback have you gotten from customers that are looking at the BZ Forex compared to you know, there's a number of competitors out there in the marketplace. Now the other similar size in a similar price range. Have you gotten feedback from customers? What they think about things like the range, the the charging rates, things like that?

Cooper Erickson  1:19:30  
Yeah, the cut is pretty early for customer feedback. There's not a lot of customers hands yet but we've got lots of feedback from you know, media journalists and some customers and it's actually pretty simple. People love the driving dynamics. They love the the SUV functionality in interior space. They love the intuitive nature of the controls and technology. You don't need to learn how to drive a vehicle it's very intuitive. The grid Round clearance is something that is very SUV, you know normal, most TVs sit a little bit lower. So people see it as really good off road, you know, mild off road? More like a rav4. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:16  
Not gonna go we're gonna follow a wrangler trail, I

Cooper Erickson  1:20:20  
wouldn't suggest that but for EBS that that was something that frankly, I was surprised to hear from the reviews, but that there was a lot of comments about, hey, this is this is good, you know, for a surprisingly good for for for a unibody Eevee, it's very competitive has most ground clearance, and you haven't they've mentioned. So all of those things are the positives. And then, you know, some of the things we've heard from customers is the range doesn't meet my expectation. And that's completely understandable. The reality is, you know, there's different ways to look at range. And we are really focusing on the best utilization of battery resources there, we can only build so many batteries, we can only have so many raw materials to build batteries. And we're dividing those raw materials up between hybrid batteries and plug in hybrid batteries and, and battery electric vehicle batteries. And so the average person commutes 24 miles a day, you put a battery in their vehicle to let them go three or 400 miles, that weight. And that cost and that resource is not the best use. We also know that, you know 90s, High 90 percentile of consumers that are currently buying EVs, it's a second, third or fourth car in their family. So they're, they're not relying on that vehicle for for long trip, you know, family vacations, things like that. So there are, you know, range anxiety is real. And, and so we recognize that, so we're trying to strike this balance, but we feel it's going to meet a lot of customer's needs. It's a good value proposition for consumers. Starting price is what 42,000 something. So it's a really good value proposition. And that's affordability is going to be key. But customers would want more range, but we're just trying to balance the resources there and give the customers most of the customers what they want. There's some that that's fine, go by car with more range if that's if that's what you need. charging times are a little bit different with the all wheel drive, and the front wheel drive, you know, 90 kilowatt hours, versus I think 150 kilowatt hours of charge rate. So we've heard some of that feedback. The the onboard DC charger is like 6.6 kilowatts of power. And so you know, that's something that's even the the AC charger, the AC charger. So well, it's an ac to dc converter, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:03  
Yeah, yeah.

Cooper Erickson  1:23:05  
So we've heard that from consumers, our design intent and the use of this vehicle was you bring it home and it charges overnight. So that was the thinking of optimal use cases, you bring it home church, and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:20  
for early adopters, who are much more likely to have single family home with off street parking. That's probably fine for them.

Cooper Erickson  1:23:29  
Yeah. So we know that's an area. So when it comes to everything that customers have said they want more of maybe more more range, quicker charge and all of those things. We are we are taking, and we are evaluating, and we will continue to figure out how to meet more and more customers needs as we need to expand and we were able to expand our bed volume. So it's all great feedback from customers.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:56  
I think, you know, one thing I've heard from listeners to, to my wheel bearings podcast, a number of people have written in asking particular the all wheel drive version with the CTL battery, which has the lower fast charging rate of 100 kilowatts versus 150 For the front drive version. If you think about consumers that live in more northern climes, probably more likely to want to go for an all wheel drive version in colder weather. And, you know, you're starting off with a low rate of slower nominal charge rate. And then when it gets cold that tends to get even worse on cold temperatures. It's just the nature of the physics of batteries. Is there anything that you can offer as to why that setup has such a you know 1/3 lower maximum charge rate?

Cooper Erickson  1:24:56  
You know, it has to do with the battery design and the chemistry Really, and you know, we're really, we're really challenged from a battery global supply chain standpoint. So, you know, there's not a product reason for why one has one battery and one has another, it's really the maximum available at production from different different sources. And just trying to optimize that for our product lineup. So that's it's really supply chain, and just just getting the battery capacity or the volume, capacity from a range are charging, but capacity, production volume capacity.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:40  
And you mentioned earlier, the, the way, most people actually use their vehicles as opposed to what they buy. And I think we can all agree that consumers are most consumers are not necessarily entirely rational in their buying decisions much of the time, which would explain why so many people drive around with just one person in a large SUV. And the same applies to EVs. Obviously, you know, people, you know, they may think that they want to take road trips all the time, or or maybe they even do do it on a regular basis. But the reality is, most of the time they're driving 2530 35 miles a day. And they could probably easily get by I mean, certainly I think anything over 200 miles of range on an Eevee is probably more than sufficient for 90 plus percent of consumers. Is there anything that you can do? Or is there anything that, you know, maybe Toyota might try to do to help educate consumers more about, you know, about some of these issues, you know, you're carrying around all this extra battery that you're not using most of the time, to maybe try to steer people towards a little more rational buying decision that you can, you can get by with 220 miles or 240 miles. And if you want to take that trip to the Grand Canyon, or even to visit the grandparents, whatever, you know, maybe you rent a vehicle for that trip, instead of taking the IDI. Is that something that Toyota is thinking about? Or? Well, obviously,

Cooper Erickson  1:27:31  
consumer education is, is a tricky business. You know, it's, it's kind of interesting for the first 15 years of selling hybrids, biggest rejection reason was, I don't want to plug it in. And you never had to plug in hybrid, it was just just the perception, oh, it's electric, you got to plug it in. So we spent all this money telling people you don't need to plug in your hybrid. And then we come out with a plug in Prius hybrid. And now we're telling them, You got to plug it in. And I from a consumer, wait, wait, what? Whiplash? Yeah. And so the bottom line is, it takes time for consumers to learn things and talk to each other, and it's cocktail parties. So I think we're seeing that right now in the industry. So I don't know if there's any magic bullet from a marketing standpoint, you know, what we're trying to do is make their lives seamless and show them they can do it. So, you know, we have, you know, partnerships for out of home charging, where it's for the first year, right we have, we have partnerships for in home charging, we want the charging experience to be seamless, you know, want to have application for charging locations. So we're doing what we can to try to make it a seamless experience. And, you know, we're our retail partners, we're working with them, you know, Lexus, and Toyota to come up with ways to possibly have use our existing loaner fleets, to satisfy that, that need of I need to go on a trip. So we're looking into doing some things like that, and I anticipate we probably will, one of these days to to satisfy those needs. So beyond beyond the consumer just experiencing this and then having a favorable opinion about it. There's not a lot we can do from marketing standpoint. I don't think it's okay. You're flushing money down the drain, right? It just gonna take time for consumers to to learn and grow comfortable with it. And, and frankly, you know, I'm not in the business of predicting but there will be a day when when I don't think range anxiety is going to be the biggest issue. I think affordability is going to be the biggest issue. And I think consumers will make decisions on oh there's 150 mile that I can get for this price and a 500 mile I can get for that price. I I can't afford the 500 while I'm gonna get the 150s that works for me. Right now it's a race to who can have the most rain, because we're trying to overcome range anxiety. But I think once consumers get used to driving an Eb, they're gonna realize what you're talking about where you, you know, 25 miles a day and pretty much fine. And the affordability is going to be an issue. Definitely going to be an issue, but

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:22  
it is already an issue now.

Cooper Erickson  1:30:24  
Yeah, I equate it to, you know, old school and the engine size and horsepower. Well, everybody might want the 600 horsepower VA, but you're on the Corolla budget, so you're not getting a 600 horsepower VA, you're getting 120 horsepower, four cylinder, it'll last for the next 100 years. So that's great. But it ain't that. So it's consumers making decisions on what they can afford. And so yeah, EVs are a lot more expensive right now. So in order to get to mass adoption, we got to figure out as an industry how to sell a Corolla price car, a Camry price car rav4 Price car, that's an Eevee with acceptable range. And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:03  
certainly, you know, I don't disagree that, you know, hybrids, I think are a great solution for a lot of people, especially if they're looking at smaller vehicles, other cars or smaller crossovers, you know, when when you start looking at the actual energy use, hybrids absolutely make a ton of sense. You know, because as, as you get more and more efficient, the incremental reductions in energy use from every additional mile per gallon or mile Evie range goes down. So the, the real benefits to all this stuff is at the low end of the low end of the efficiency range. So, you know, driving, you know, a Corolla hybrid, or a rav4 hybrid, you know, is not, you know, in real terms is actually probably not that much different from driving a PC for x.

Cooper Erickson  1:32:06  
Well, actually, it's tiara, I believe they actually have a website GHG track or something, we can get that, you know that, you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. So you can put in your vehicle and where you live, and it shows your emissions, right. And the reality is, the power grid, some parts are bigger than others. And in this indicates that battery electric, pure Evie, versus a hybrid. If you live in an area that has a green grid, of course, the battery electrics a little bit better, but not dramatically, a little bit better. But if you live in an area with a non green grid, then they're pretty equal. And in some cases, the hybrid may actually be better. Or hybrid, just super efficient, of course. So you're right, that the difference in actual greenhouse gas emissions is pretty close, depending on where you're at. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:10  
going back to batteries, you know, and this applies, you know, across the range. Everybody is experiencing supply constraints with batteries. And part of that is the materials going into the batteries. Some comp some OEMs are actively getting involved in investing in the material production. Is that something that you see Toyota, likely pursuing you've started investing in the battery in the cell production. You've got the plant coming online and Greensburg you've had a long term joint venture with Panasonic for your hybrid batteries. Do you see Toyota expanding further down that supply chain to those materials? And, you know, either the extraction or maybe on the recycling side?

Cooper Erickson  1:34:03  
Well, there's parts of the supply chain, but I'm not really versed in. So I'll give you what I know. We have many partnerships, you know, it's BYD and Panasonic and, and another toe to Tetsuro partnership we there's about 1234 by about seven or eight different companies and partnerships that we have for battery supply. And we for a couple of decades have been the biggest manufacturer of automotive batteries, right we build more batteries than anybody. We've been the volume leader in electrified vehicles for 22 straight years so this is not new new for us. And the reality is batteries are very diverse. There's a role and a place for nickel metal hydride batteries. You know we got new bipolar nickel metal hydride batteries with higher energy density. There's a role for lithium ion. And there's different forms of lithium ion. And, you know, there's going to be a role someday for solid state batteries. So the batteries are not a one size fits all. So I am sure that we have that we're pretty deep into the supply chain on that. But I can't tell you for certain what that looks like, on the recycling side. Yeah, we have a group here at our headquarters working on, you know, reuse of batteries. So we, again, our goal for carbon neutrality is not the emissions of the vehicle. Our goal for carbon neutrality is the entire acquisition of raw materials, the ascent are critical to graduating cradle to grave. And at the grave part, you know, when when right now there's not a really efficient way to recycle lithium ion. So at the at the end of this this life, what do we do? Well, let's reuse some of these to stay in home Powerwall, whatever you want to do, we're going to figure out how to recycle these things. So we're, we're setting up programs and working with partners to pull that off, that's going to be more and more important as the industry volume on on beds ramps up. So we're active in that space. I just don't know how deep down the supply chain we go.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:21  
Obviously, there's millions of lives and about 15 million Toyota hybrid vehicles that have been sold to date. I bet

Cooper Erickson  1:36:29  
we're 20 million now we are at point 1 million at the end of 2020, I believe. So we're probably well, let's say 20 20 million. And it's accelerating rapidly. I mean, in a couple of years, hybrids are going to be 40 50% of our total volume and work. We're flipping vehicles over 200% hybrid pretty quick to us. We just flipped over to CNN, we just flipped over last year. 100% is coil 100%. So it's it's mainstream. So it gets accelerated, the numbers accelerated rapidly. And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:00  
so with all these hybrids on the road, and now some of them but on the road for a long time, or as part of the business, are you looking at recovering those batteries? You know, when they reached the end of their useful life in the vehicle, they still may have some useful life for other applications. Is that something that you're pursuing?

Cooper Erickson  1:37:24  
Yeah, that's the real use hardware difference of the end of life. Yeah. So we're, I can't tell you, I know there's activity there. I can't tell you specifically, what is happening. We've done lots of pilots throughout the years, we partnered with Yellowstone Park and use some of the batteries to provide storage for solar energy stored for certain parts of the park that are off the grid. So there's things like that going on. But I don't know exactly where we're at right now with that. Okay. I wanted to dive into that I could have, if you want to dive into the battery do we can set up probably a different interview with James George or Christiane or somebody.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38:03  
Just this morning, there was a release that came out of Toyota in Japan. On they're going to start selling a home energy storage, Home Energy battery. Sounds like you haven't seen that. Thank you. Okay, no. Well, I was gonna ask if that's if that's a product that's going to be available here in North America didn't didn't really give any indication in the release that I saw? I think it's,

Cooper Erickson  1:38:29  
it's a good idea. But I have not, I've not seen that yet. Okay. Yeah, we're working on focus has been seamless ownership experience for the customer in their house, you know, level two charger. But we're doing a lot of work to try to figure out how to connect those customers with a green grid, and how to store energy at their house. So that's all probably part of the mix. I wasn't aware of, of that announcement yesterday. But it would make sense. And I think it'd be great to consider selling in the US.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:04  
What about bi directional charging? Is that something that Toyota is developing, we're likely to see in future plug in vehicles.

Cooper Erickson  1:39:12  
Yeah. So when we that's part of the battery utilization. The ability to go both ways allows you to manage your energy costs. And, and if it makes sense. So yeah, I would say when it comes to setting up the the engineering parameters for future products, that's something that's on the table. You know, building a car is the art of compromise, right? No, yeah, no, no, no car has everything. And so we have to weigh the cost and the consumer benefit how many consumers will will need it we don't want to charge you know, 100% of the customers for something when when 1% of the customers use it. So we're going through all of those things, but that is a feature that we feel is going to serve a role and that will we want to deliver on

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:10  
Any any final thoughts about Toyotas overall strategy? When it comes to electrification that we haven't talked about?

Cooper Erickson  1:40:24  
Our goal is not electrification. Our goal is carbon neutrality. Our goal is the elimination of greenhouse gas. And we think the fastest path that that goal is the best app. So if the fastest path turns out to be battery electric vehicles, let's go. Right now. There's too many hurdles for us to really say that. So we have a portfolio approach. We think that's best for reducing greenhouse gas that the quickest combination of hybrid plug in hybrids, battery electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles. We think the portfolio approach is the quickest path to carbon neutrality.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:09  
Okay, great. Thank you, Cooper. Thanks, sir, to talk to you. Yeah. Thanks, Sam.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:14  
Thanks.