Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 253 of wheel bearings. We've got first drives of the Honda HR V and the Cadillac lyriq as well as the Cadillac CT4-v Blackwing. The Acura Integra. The Polestar 5 prototype. And Honda's are Ford's new dynamic driving simulator all coming up next.

This is episode 253 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid. From guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:33  
I am Nicole Wakelin of the fast women podcast, 

Roberto Baldwin  0:36  
and I'm Roberto Baldwin from engadget. Gadget

Sam Abuelsamid  0:44  
what pray tell, have you been driving at Mrs. Wakelin

Nicole Wakelin  0:48  
this week? It sounds very formal Mrs. miglin. Mrs. Waco. Is

Sam Abuelsamid  0:51  
that Mrs. wakelet? I don't know what is your preferred,

Nicole Wakelin  0:54  
you know what just are Don't be mean and I'm fine with whatever you decide. Hey, girl,

Roberto Baldwin  0:59  
how you doing?

Nicole Wakelin  1:00  
biatch I appreciate you saying that. So the 23 accurate Integra is what I was driving this week which was really cool because it didn't get to do the launch for this and many many many years ago my husband's first car the ever bought with his very own monies we were married was an accurate Tegra. So he was kind of excited to see this one too because the gods back first thing and the guy who drove one and loved one back in the day he loves this thing he thinks is the coolest car ever. He's really pleased. So you know when you think about that, like the heritage person have they ruined the Integra he's uh you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35  
it's a manual or an automatic manual six

Nicole Wakelin  1:37  
speed manual. All that matters. to you guys. This car is fun. I really liked this one. So I was excited when they said I was gonna get this for like, because we had when it's always neat to have a car they like, you drove it back when it was a thing. And then they said, No, we're done with it. And then they bring it back and you're like, Okay, did you make it as cool thing as you did last time? Yes, yes, she did. So I had the a spec. With the technology package and the six speed manual that we mentioned, you can also get it with a CVT. If for some reason your brain is broken, and you think that's a better idea. You should be getting it with a six speed manual.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:12  
And if you don't know how to drive a manual learn,

Nicole Wakelin  2:15  
this is a car this is one of those, here's your reason to learn this car, learn how to drive one so that you can drive this. It's a fantastic manual transmission. i It's so easy. It takes very little time to get the feel for the clutch. Nice short throw. It's just it's fantastic. It's really fun to drive. It has a 1.5 liter turbocharged four cylinder 200 horsepower, 192 pound feet of torque, there's sport comfort, normal and individual modes, I pretty much put it in Sport the whole time. You can feel you can feel a little difference as you move through the modes. It's not dramatic, but you can feel a little difference. And I liked it in Sport mode. And also it makes your instrument cluster turn red. So like why would you not want that? Right?

Sam Abuelsamid  2:54  
Because that's always a good thing.

Nicole Wakelin  2:55  
So car automatically goes from

Sam Abuelsamid  2:57  
colorblind to red.

Nicole Wakelin  2:58  
What color would it be? What would you see if you couldn't see red?

Sam Abuelsamid  3:02  
I don't know.

Nicole Wakelin  3:03  
Blue? What color was

Roberto Baldwin  3:06  
green and red?

Nicole Wakelin  3:07  
Red? I thought it was is? Is it green and red. So it looks green.

Roberto Baldwin  3:12  
colorblind, please send us a message.

Nicole Wakelin  3:14  
Tell me what color your red dashboard looks like if you're colorblind. Now I'm curious. What does it mean? Well see? Does it not change?

Roberto Baldwin  3:21  
And how would we how? Yeah, please send us your sins. We have a lot of colorblind.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:26  
Yeah, if you're an ophthalmologist or you're colorblind, please let us know.

Nicole Wakelin  3:30  
Tweet and tell us. So you can put into this poor mood, which is great. It you know, exhilarating. It's fantastic. It's very strong. I mean, 200 horsepower is not like some crazy figure. It's somewhat modest. You know, it's not low, but it's not especially high. But because you have the manual transmission, you can comply with that a little bit, you know, you get out yeah, you have enough control. The only time that it is not what I would have liked it to be it it was funny because my husband said we know the original Tiger really kind of did the same thing. If you're on the highway, and you're in sixth gear and you're flying along, and you suddenly need a little bit more power to pass someone, you don't really have it like you can bury that gas pedal, and it will accelerate then it's like I'm thinking then it's very modest. It's a very modest acceleration, you can drop back a gear to fifth, it gets a little bit better, but you just don't have that like once you get all the way up there that torque you don't have the torque it doesn't have the torque to deliver what you want to do. So if you really want to go blazing by someone, you know, turn out of your lane and go around to slower guy in the highway. If you need to get extra power you're not It's not like it's terrible, but it's the thing is it's so nice getting up to that speed and it feels so strong getting up to that speed. You kind of expect it to still have that kind of aggressive acceleration at speed and it doesn't once you're up there, it's like you sit here at the speed limit and you know, don't plan on going faster on anyone because you can't do it. So

Sam Abuelsamid  4:55  
it's an excuse to to use the gearshift it is but

Nicole Wakelin  4:57  
even so like you shift down it's like you Only shifts so I mean I'm not shifting down to second gear at 65 miles an hour that would be bad for the car. So like so you can shift down and get a little bit more but it's sort of like I wish there's a little bit more there when you were at highway speeds and just wanted to you know, give it a little bit more gas go around a slower vehicle. But that wasn't enough to dim the fun of this car. I absolutely love driving this it's super fun. That like I said the transmission is wonderful, has exhilarating up to speed is just a joy and it's so smooth, and it has just enough like girls coming out of the engine and the exhaust without being this harsh, abrasive thing like if you just wanted to take this on a long road trip we've got like a long morning commute for anybody who still has to commute you can do it and it's comfortable and it's got you know it's got the 6040 split folding rear seats it's a hatchback so it still has that really good versatility for cargo you know you want to put something big in there it is What Am I nuts tell me 24.3 cubic feet for cargo it's pretty good. Yeah, I mean it's a good amount of cargo room. It's not an SUV but you get some of that SUV versatility with the hatchback because you can shove big bulky things in there whatever, you know, mulch you could put

Sam Abuelsamid  6:07  
some of your bags of mulch in there you could definitely have done that our civic

Nicole Wakelin  6:11  
see you could you could you if you'd have a truck by yourself and Acura Integra. Same thing totes the same as far as inside. The standard setup is a seven inch touchscreen with Apple card, Apple Car charge apple carplay android auto and an eight speaker audio I had because of the A Spec with tech package, which is like considered a trim is the top it's got a nine inch screen wireless CarPlay and Android Auto Wireless charging and a 16 speaker ELS premium audio system. So it's kind of tricked out. Sounds great. I mean the audio system is great. There's also a 10.2 inch digital instrument cluster that standard across the whole thing that we think is read unless you're colorblind at some other color when you're in sport mode. And there's a 5.3 inch head up display that's an optional thing you get it on this pad but you don't get it on the base trims the interior you know this is a really good looking car It looks good on the inside you you know the Integra had this sort of history being this kind of like fun sporty car but not like top premium you need to be you know, Midas to afford it. It was a more reasonably priced car which it still is because the base is $30,800 which is not obscene. That's a decent price. But like I had on my trim, which I said the top trim 36 895 That's still pretty reasonable. It's not it's you know, it's keeping it under 40. That's something

Sam Abuelsamid  7:40  
is 22 That's all it is. Right.

Nicole Wakelin  7:43  
And so you get a lot there's microwaves mic or micro suede seats. heated up front 12 way power

Roberto Baldwin  7:50  
for the drivers. I'm thinking about microwave seats now. Microwave temperatures,

Nicole Wakelin  7:58  
four way power passenger seat, you've got a leather steering wheel, there's ambient lighting, and mine was all red inside this bright like cherry red microsuede it looks absolutely fantastic. It looks like a it looks like a more expensive sports car when you open the door. I mean, you easily think this is going to cost more and even the design from the outside. It's just a really attractive car even the like the Integra it's really kind of cool. So you have to like look at it find an image somewhere. But Integra isn't actually like stuck to it, like you know, a little plate that stuck to the car. It's like embossed into it. So it's like it's it's like you stamped it into it and it says Integra it's really kind of neat. So it's it's a nice package with interior and exterior styling. Good performance, good technology. And gosh, thank you for putting a manual transmission in this accurate I love you, I hurt you. Thank you for doing that. Because it's so nice to have one and have one. That's good. So I loved this that my husband had said, he said if I was looking for like a car like as he has, you know, his little wrangler for by ECERS little SUV ish thing is like if I was just looking for a sedan, this would totally be on my list because this is just such a nice, fun little car and it's not outrageously expensive, but it looks and fields fantastic.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:13  
So, I mean, under the skin, this is basically a civic SI. Yes. And this costs about $3,000 More than a Civic Si, is it worth $3,000 more?

Nicole Wakelin  9:27  
This Civic Si feels compact, you know, you're in a compact vehicle. It's kind of low, it's tighter, if you want a little bit more space, if you're going to put people in the backseat on anything more than like the odd occasion. Yes, 100% Because this it doesn't seem like it's that much bigger, but it makes a difference. It is roomier, like my husband's six three right so when he gets in the civic it's a little snug for him, you know, a little bit snug, not too tight, but it's snug like he's packed he's you know, he's he fits and that's it. And there's like no room behind them for whoever sitting be kinda like, you really can't sit behind somebody who's six, three, when you're in a civic here, you totally can because my daughter did. So he had the seat, the passenger seat adjust to where he wanted it to be comfortable at front. My daughter's 18 She sat behind them in her knees weren't matched against the backs of the front seats. So it does give you a little bit more. A little bit more. You already mean it's a little more, a little bit just a little bit more. So I yeah, yes. Okay. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  10:28  
Civic, civic. Transmission is outstanding. So it's probably still outstanding,

Nicole Wakelin  10:35  
still outstanding. Loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it, loved. It, loved it. Loved it

Roberto Baldwin  10:40  
nice. It's a nicer Civic Si.

Nicole Wakelin  10:42  
It's a nicer Civic Si, you want a little bit more like,

Roberto Baldwin  10:45  
well, something something a little more a

Nicole Wakelin  10:46  
little more civilized, maybe not quite so much a little thrashy, a little hatchback a little more civilized, get yourself an Integra.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:54  
I'm just looking at the specs. And they it's actually only about an inch and a half longer. And it's got the same wheelbase as the Civic same. Well, it

Nicole Wakelin  11:02  
feels I don't know what's different, but there's definitely I don't know if it's the positioning of the seats. However, they moved it there is definitely not the same tightness behind those receipts.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:13  
Right. I'll take your word for it.

Nicole Wakelin  11:16  
It feels roomy, your paint my child wasn't squished. I know much. Here's my kids. My child was squished in the Civic Si not squished in the Acura Integra. So there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:26  
All right. Well, that's that's all it matters is you don't want your kids to get squished. Would you be squished? You got a manual transmission and no squished kids? You're good to go?

Nicole Wakelin  11:35  
Exactly.

Roberto Baldwin  11:36  
four doors. I mean, I railed against the fact that it wasn't a coupe. But, you know, they would have had to do a whole other platform, blah, blah, blah, order to make it and that's not a thing. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:48  
And I think you know, the fact that it is a hatchback is actually a really good thing. Because it does make that that rear end a lot more usable. Even Even if you've got the rear seats up, you can still put, it's easier to put larger stuff in the back of this than it is, you know, if it was a sedan, you know, with a tiny little trunk opening, so you can put bigger stuff in there. And then if you fold down the rear seats, you can put really big stuff in there, you get a ton of room back there, because it's

Nicole Wakelin  12:21  
not just the fact that there's like the the actual cubic feet, although there's more it's how those cubic feet are laid out. You know, having that hatchback, you can put much bigger, much bigger things into it than you can if you just have a standard trunk way bigger.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:34  
cupboard. We're good. Alright. You didn't drive while you didn't have any regular thing that you drove this week. Right, Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin  12:44  
I drove my cars this week. Okay, I can tell you about the 2004 Jaguar X type. Did that actually run three liters for Yeah, it runs it runs. Yeah, I drive it around the dogs we go for a little drives with it. Okay, it needs new suspension though. I need to replace the, the, the shocks and the springs and raise it up and put Nabis on it and then turn it into a safari car.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:13  
I had something that was very much not a safari car. But is pretty similar in size to your to your X type, which is the Cadillac CT for V Blackwing. Which is maybe a little bit too much name.

Nicole Wakelin  13:30  
It has a lot of name

Sam Abuelsamid  13:31  
it this is this is what the CT for V should have been when it launched a couple of years ago I drove one I think in 2020 the regular CT for V before they debuted the Blackwing. And while I liked the size of the CT for from for me, you know I don't need a big honkin sedan. You know I like a smaller car and I liked the size of the CT four. But I was disappointed by the 2.7 liter turbo four cylinder that they have in the V which is the same engine that they debuted a couple of years ago as the base engine for the Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks. You know it's fairly Torquay but it's it's not much fun to drive really. The Blackwing goes back to what the previous ATS ATS V was with before really pre Blackwing days the ATS V had a 3.6 liter twin turbo V six engine and that is the engine that they have brought back for this vehicle and it is wonderful. Let's see it generates 472 horsepower and 445 foot pounds of torque and Cadillac all offers, you can get this with either a 10 speed automatic transmission, or a six speed manual. Yeah, unfortunately, the one that landed my driveway have the 10 speed automatic Oh, bummer. But it's still a great engine. And the the automatic is, as is often the case these days is actually slightly quicker to accelerate than the manual just because it can do that stuff faster than almost any, you know, anything resembling a normal human being not a racecar driver can achieve and oftentimes, faster than a racecar driver can do. But the with the black wing, you get the heavily bolstered seats. It comes with a bunch of carbon fiber bits, little dive planes on the front corners, big spoiler that goes on the rear trunk lid, front, also a carbon fiber front front splitter, all all in the name of downforce, you know, basically trying to transform this into a track car. And I actually just saw this morning today as we're recording this, this is Sunday, June 26. at Watkins Glen, where they're having the six hours of Watkins, Glen EMSA, race, Cadillac is going to be unveiling a special track edition of the CT for black wing. And I'm not quite sure yet, what's going to be in that one. But that should be even more of what this is. But you know, this is, and if you get the Blackwing with with the manual transmission, they actually put titanium connecting rods in there instead of steel rods, presumably to let it rev even a little bit faster. And, and also to protect them a little bit more in case you let it rev a little too fast. But you know, this is this is a fantastic car to drive. With the Blackwing you get the Magna ride dampers on all four corners, which if you've ever driven a vehicle with especially a high performance vehicle with MagneRide dampers, you will be actually those are those are sorry, those are actually optional. They're not standard that comes standard with some Zed F MBS passive dampers. But the if you ever drive anything with Magna ride dampers, you will be shocked at how good the ride quality can be. With even even with you know, the stiff springs and the limited wheel travel you can get it's actually very reasonable to drive even on what passes for roads often in Michigan. It's got an electronic limited slip rear end rear differential, big Brembo brakes, six piston calipers on the front four piston calipers on the rear highperformance tires on 18 inch wheels, which is nice because you know, that's less unsprung weight. And you know, frankly, you know a car of this size, it doesn't need 20 or 22 inch wheels, it looks fine on eighteens. So I had a lot of fun driving this thing. It is really quick off the line. It'll do zero to 60 and well under four seconds.

I didn't I didn't actually clock it but it feels fast. With the automatic with the paddles, it responds surprisingly rapidly. And it just goes you know, the it's very responsive, the steering feedback is great if you're looking for an alternative to something like a BMW M for competition or I guess what would be the Mercedes C six Mercedes AMG C 63. This you know this is a great alternative to cars like that. If you want something a little bit different that you're not going to see everywhere. The one that I drove the base price on the on the CT for black wing is about $65,000 Find them and running here. That's about 60 or sorry 50 $58,000 or $59,000 Total as the base price optioned up with everything that I had on this one which included the leather seats, the suede microfiber trim package, the carbon fiber package, which is $4,350 the 10 speed automatic which is $2,275 and assorted other bits and pieces that came to

Roberto Baldwin  19:57  
gaming get by the way, don't get the automatic yeah Don't

Nicole Wakelin  20:00  
don't get sick, save your money don't do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:04  
It came to a grand total of $76,560 delivered. It's, you know, if what you're looking for is a car that gets great fuel economy in these days of, you know, five to seven to $8 a gallon gasoline. probably not your best choice. But, you know, if you're going to spend money on a high performance sedan, you know, forget about that, just just drive it, you'll, you'll enjoy it. It unfortunately, if you need to carry third and fourth passengers with you on a regular basis, unless they're short, you might you might want to opt for the CT five Blackwing instead, because the back seat is pretty tight and especially foot room. There's not a lot of foot room or not a lot of legroom and this but it's mainly just you and your your partner. Most of the time. Go for it this this is a great car I loved driving this thing

Roberto Baldwin  21:05  
I don't Why didn't even have the V on there. They have the Blackwing just called the CT for I

Sam Abuelsamid  21:09  
know that's that's what I was the little bit too much.

Roberto Baldwin  21:14  
It's too much. Yeah, settle down.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:17  
So we're just dropped the other CT for V and just call this the CT for V. Which is probably what it should have been. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  21:23  
that's another thing you could have done.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:27  
All right. Let's get into some of the other stuff that happened this week. Just before we started recording, Nicole told us her tales of woe of trying to get to trying to get to Utah this week.

Nicole Wakelin  21:43  
I was supposed to drive the lyric but then delta is like no.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:49  
Well, if you really wanted to you could have gotten an hour or two in the lyric it would have

Roberto Baldwin  21:55  
no it sounds like

Nicole Wakelin  21:56  
she would have got 45 minutes and 45 minutes I would have flown I would have spent more time in an airplane than I would have actually in the Lear so unfortunately when they bumped my flight by you know oh eight hours I'm like yeah, no, that's not gonna work for a 24 hour turnaround program. I'm like now I just kind of like land high take my diet coke leave out that would have been it

Roberto Baldwin  22:18  
I would like my free diet coke please like my

Nicole Wakelin  22:20  
free day come home you guys and now I'm gone.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:23  
But But Roberto and I did get to drive the new Cadillac lyric What did you think of it Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin  22:31  
Outstanding. I got into it. The first I have to shoot video for this video will be on Engadget if you want to see me walking around with hair with that I should have cut before I did this. But you know that like the first like they like okay the first day you get the car you can go get content you know? And so I drove the car like 30 minutes away and even within the first 510 minutes you're like wow, this is really nice. This is this is and I don't want to say surprisingly nice but I will I don't care surprisingly enough because it's there are three Altium vehicles that are on the road right now have driven all three one is the Hummer which is just ridiculous. It's it's you have a lot of money and you just want to be the most ridiculous person on the planet. There you go get

Nicole Wakelin  23:17  
the most accurate assessment. Yep, pretty much that's gonna be

Sam Abuelsamid  23:21  
ridiculous get a Hummer

Nicole Wakelin  23:22  
here's your ridiculous

Roberto Baldwin  23:23  
second is the bright drop I think it's called vivo 600 Now these evil xivo I've written the article about this and I like the fact that they change the name is throwing me off which is you know, a really good delivery van but no one can buy it. No one should buy it unless you're you have a company that you need a delivery van and

Sam Abuelsamid  23:43  
make a pretty cool camper.

Roberto Baldwin  23:44  
It would that range of over 200 up to under 50 Miles loaded which means the over you know unloaded it would probably do it probably 320 I think is talking to somebody about it. So if he if he can if he can swing that go for it. But and then this and this is like the first like regular person version of a of a lyric of a regular person who can afford $60,000 But still a regular person version of a lyric and as a Cadillac. It's it's no they did everything they needed to do to build a Cadillac Evie SUV. I felt like I think they're the interior is nice. It drives really well. It has just the right amount of of acceleration and sort of sportiness sort of sportiness is I think how you should use this is definitely not a it's not a

Sam Abuelsamid  24:34  
black at least in this this first first version. Yeah, I would agree with that.

Roberto Baldwin  24:39  
It's but really it is a it is a very nice very comfortable very creepy Lee quiet in some instances. Vehicle. And yeah, I really liked it. Um, you know, hats off to the to the to the engineers over there. You know, they kept telling me over and over we wanted to make the best Cadillac we wanted to make the best Cadillac. Oh my gosh. should be every kind of like you build butcher. Okay, then that'd be the goal for every time you make an a car.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:06  
This ideal version of this one should be better than the one before.

Roberto Baldwin  25:10  
Yeah, yeah. Which, which, kind of like I think design wise Cadillacs really sort of been killing it for last 510 years so far. You know, when I show up when I've shown up somewhere the Cadillac sedan people are like, what is that? Which is kind of sad because it looks kind of like like, oh, man, this looks great. I'm like, Oh, that's not. Maybe it's not working so well. But for those of you for those who have who have had a chance to drive, especially the sedans, and just kind of throw your friends in them, if you're looking for an Eevee version of that, that's not loud. That's very, very nice. Very luxurious for what it is. Yeah, the Lyric is yeah, I'm looking forward to Celeste stick. However, we're calling it Mystique or

Sam Abuelsamid  25:58  
the Cadillac has said it's the lipstick

Roberto Baldwin  26:00  
lipstick. Instead of like literally it shouldn't be mystique.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:06  
I mean we can call it whatever we want. Yeah, like

Nicole Wakelin  26:09  
Escalade Escalade of so.

Roberto Baldwin  26:12  
Listen Escalade Yeah, so yeah, I really I really liked it I'm I'm the current generation of EVs. Everyone's coming out with really nice vehicles is what it comes down to. Well, not everyone, but most people are coming out. You know, they're they're hitting that that stride where it's not, you know, I think we've talked about this before. It's not a good Evie. It's a good car that happens to be an Eevee is happening,

Nicole Wakelin  26:38  
which is what you really want these to be increasingly, like, it shouldn't be that they're that different. Like, there was a moment you're like, oh, my gosh, this is an Eevee. And it's becoming, I mean, they're not mainstream, it's still a really small percentage of people who actually own one, but in terms of how they're addressing them, just start making them like, seem like other cars, they just happen to have an electric powertrain or you know, get rid of the EU, it's good for an Eevee it looks good for an Eevee it's designed for an Eevee this isn't meant just make it look like another car.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:05  
Well, especially as we move past the era of, you know, having a lot of big price and tax incentives on buying EVs you know, in my, in the course of my work as an analyst, you know, this is something I was telling automakers several years ago, is you know, you gotta get to the point where the, these vehicles are, you know, they can sell they can sell themselves, you know, in their on their own merits, regardless of you know, what, what incentives there might be to buy one, it just needs to be a really good vehicle right off the bat. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, this, this car, you know, is roughly the size of an Audi e Tron.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:52  
And it the battery is only a little bit bigger than the E Tron. But it has 100 miles more range, which I think is really good. It the battery, the battery pack in here is basically half of the battery pack from the Hummer, the Hummer, which is so this is got 12 of Jim's Altium modules in it. They the Hummer battery is a 20 and it's a 1212 module battery. The the Hummer has 24 modules stacked in two layers so they basically just sliced it horizontally and you know for every Hummer they build that can build two of these with the same battery

Nicole Wakelin  28:35  
Robbie's earlier description about crazy

Sam Abuelsamid  28:39  
and and yeah, this this has a an EPA estimated range for the rear drive model anyway, which is all they're building right now. 312 Miles versus I think it's 324 the Hummer with twice as much battery because it weighs not quite twice as much, but quite a bit more than this. Yeah, the Hummer, I think the launch edition Hummers like almost 9500 pounds. This one weighs about 5600 pounds, which is actually heavy compared to some of the competition, it's but three or 400 pounds more than Tesla Model y. But it's a little bit lighter than the E Tron. And I agree with you, Robbie. I think it's it's a fantastic vehicle to drive. What's interesting, you know, this was this was a rare case where they actually rather than delaying a product launch, to fix stuff, they actually pulled it ahead by nine months from the original launch date. You know, this one this car wasn't supposed to start production till the end of in North America until the end of this year. It was supposed to be starting production in China about right about now and then in North America at the end of the year and go on sale early next year. And you know, they're going to start delivering these either this week, you know, as we record this, you know this coming week or next week is the plan just Aren't deliveries they've, they've actually been building them ready for production for about a month and a half now. I don't know how many they've built. And Cadillac isn't saying how you know what their production capacity is or how many they're going to build. There. There was a report from Reuters a couple of weeks ago, that and somebody from Cadillac pointed me to that and said, that number is in the right ballpark. And Reuters reported that they were planning to build 25,000 This year, and then ramp up next year.

Roberto Baldwin  30:31  
25,000. That's a good that's a good clip at the middle of the year for a new vehicle. That's an Eevee right now. Yeah, crazy times.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:40  
Yeah. So, you know, the 2023 model year, lyrics are all sold up. All the all the lyrics for the for this for this model year are the so called debut edition. They're going to start production of the model year 24, late in quarter q1 next year. So it's going to be a short, relatively short model year for 23.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:04  
You can they actually, this week opened up the order books for the model year 24 vehicles when they'll have some more trim levels available. And one of the things when we walked out to go for a drive for the on the first day, my driving partner and I chata. Or sorry, I drove with Chubb on the second day, Jeff Gilbert on the first day, said, Would you like gray, gray or gray? Because right now, that is the only color you can get. And Jamie Burr, the chief engineer explain that part of the reason why it's only available on one color right now. And only with the all wheel drive version, or sorry, the rear wheel drive version is because they had to pull everything I had so much. One of the big challenges when you're building cars is actually color matching of components, different materials. So when you've got metal parts and plastic parts next to each other that are supposed to be the same color, actually getting them to look exactly the same is really, really hard. And if you look at a lot of Tesla's, you'll see just how hard that is. And so rather than try to rush things, they said, Okay, we're going to focus on basically one configuration I think about the only option that you have for these early ones is do you want 20 inch wheels or 22 inch wheels. Everything else is standard on these, including the color over the course of the next eight or nine months, they will add some more colors. And in the fall, they will add the rear the all wheel drive version, the dual motor all wheel drive. So what you get right now is a rear wheel drive 340 horsepower, and

then the all wheel drive one. And that motor, that electric motor that's on the rear axle is basically the same one that they use in the Hummer. Although the Hummer has three of them, two on the rear and one on the front. So there's only only one in here right now. And then for the all wheel drive version, they'll add 160 horsepower motor on the front axle to give you 500 horsepower and all wheel drive. And when I asked about you know, well, are we going to see something like say a lyric Blackwing with, you know, three 340 horsepower motors. Jamie just smiled and said, You never know.

Roberto Baldwin  33:25  
We cannot exist. We cannot comment on future projects. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  33:30  
we can smile broadly.

Roberto Baldwin  33:33  
Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:36  
So the only real problem that that we encountered with with the lyric was some of the software for the infotainment system. And, you know, these were, these were very early pre production cars that they had there, they did not have the latest build of software in them. And so there were some glitches in here. You know, according to Cadillac, they've got a couple of Ota software updates that they're going to be deploying to the the cars that are built before they get delivered to customers in the next couple of weeks. That should fix most if not all of these problems. So we had things like and the one that I was driving, when you put it in reverse, the backup camera wouldn't come on. Or sometimes it would come on after about 10 seconds. Other times it wouldn't come on at all until I put it back in drive and then the backup camera would come on

Nicole Wakelin  34:34  
oh, it's your driving away it's showing you where you just super helpful

Roberto Baldwin  34:39  
or they're always kind of cool because it serves you off from it still as the backup camera wait for it to do

Nicole Wakelin  34:43  
that like and it's not even that there's something broken just some cars hold on to that longer. I hate that. I'm like I don't need it's freaking me out man. What am I looking for? It's very disorienting to see

Roberto Baldwin  34:51  
that. Also like who is someone following me? You know if you're a spy

Sam Abuelsamid  34:55  
who's fine. But yeah, I mean other other than that you A couple other minor software glitches. I mean, I agree the rest of it was great. It's really, really quiet when you drive it. And you can select, you know, between one pedal driving mode or you know, basically coasting mode. And then the paddle on the left hand side of the steering wheel, lets you do regen on demand, which they've had on the bolt for a couple of years. But they've changed it on this one. So instead of it being a couple of different steps of regen that you can select by tapping the paddle. Now, it's pressure sensitive, so you can control with your finger, you lift off the accelerator, you can control with your finger, how much additional region you want to get from the paddle without touching the brake pedal. So just modulating that paddle, you can control the amount of braking you get, which, you know, once you get used to it, figure out how much is there. I thought it worked really well. And the rear seat and this thing is really incredibly roomy.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:01  
What did you think Robbie about the fact that there's no Fromkin this thing.

Roberto Baldwin  36:06  
Unless the front is really big, unless it can fit a like a carry on. I don't care. That's, that's really what it comes down to it. Unless it's like, don't give me like a friend, like, hey, look, you could put like an iPad in here. And like, some of

Nicole Wakelin  36:17  
the friends are like, it's like that is this like, that's is the glove box bigger than this, like, and I feel like they're just right. It's kind of like they're doing it. They're doing it and it's kind of like, you know, if you can do it, it's actually going to be useful spot Have at it, if you can do it, and it's not gonna hold anything more than your wallet. Maybe you don't, or maybe your

Roberto Baldwin  36:34  
charging cord. Yeah. It's like, you know, like the lightning or, you know, huge or the Maki. I just don't I don't I don't care. Because if it's like a small one, I won't even talk about on video. I don't

Nicole Wakelin  36:46  
really you just ignore it. You're like, Yeah, whatever.

Roberto Baldwin  36:48  
I'm like, Oh, this is the one we're talking about. I mean, I guess if you're gonna hide one thing in there, like, oh, it's, you know, a couple of people told me it's more secure. And like, yeah, people just break into your car, they can pop the hood. That's not a thing.

Nicole Wakelin  36:58  
No, not more secure. But okay, let

Roberto Baldwin  37:01  
me just break it into cars is just like busting the driver side window and opening the trunk. You can do the same thing with the front gates.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:08  
Yeah. And unless you have a power operated hood, like you have on the rivian, or the F 150. It's not really it's not really, it's not particularly convenient. You know, if you have all heavy, yeah, if you've, if you've got stuff, you know, that you're carrying, like, you know, if you come out of the grocery store or whatever. And you have to open the the driver's side door, reach down, pop the hood in order to put something in the front. I mean, what's the point of that? That? That doesn't make any sense? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, there actually is some, some not insignificant volume under the hood. I mean, we we open the hood and pop the plastic cover off to see how much was there was there's actually, there's actually a fair amount of space above the, above the the charger, the onboard charger,

Nicole Wakelin  37:55  
it should have been frunk worthy, or is it enough that it makes sense that they didn't do frog,

Sam Abuelsamid  37:59  
I'll put it this way, if they had wanted to do a Fronk they could have. And had, it might not have been enough for a carry on bag. But you know, certainly enough for you know, a couple of backpacks, bag or two of groceries, something like that. But again, unless they had put a power hood on, there are two so you could open it externally. It wouldn't it wouldn't be particularly useful,

Roberto Baldwin  38:22  
especially as a Cadillac because it's supposed to be electric cars, and I didn't all this way and all this extra complexity for like a kind of small funk. And,

Sam Abuelsamid  38:30  
you know, talking to one person off the record, they said, you know, part of what they're doing is package protecting for some future stuff that they want to do. You know, which, you know, may well include a, you know, a larger front motor than the one that's going to be going on there in the fall server machine. Could be Yeah, you know, or coffee machine. KVM 340 horsepower, front motor,

Nicole Wakelin  38:55  
espresso machine up there.

Roberto Baldwin  38:57  
Espresso Machine. There's a lot you can put up there.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:59  
Yeah. So, you know, they're definitely looking at that stuff. What else? Oh, well, one other annoyance I did find when before we got the the presentation on the first day and then went for our first drives. We were sitting in the in the car in the the hub, the presentation area, looking around the interior and trying to figure out how to open the glovebox.

Nicole Wakelin  39:25  
Oh, yeah. Challenging Was it weird

Sam Abuelsamid  39:30  
things in the game? Three taps on the touchscreen

Nicole Wakelin  39:32  
to open your glove. Wait, you can't sweat

Sam Abuelsamid  39:35  
the glove box. No button.

Roberto Baldwin  39:36  
Oh, there is a little there's like a little cubby like underneath the system. That's about the size of the glove box. So you can put

Sam Abuelsamid  39:43  
the glove box is actually pretty big. Yeah, if you base in there, if you take the time to open it. Yeah. But yeah, it's three taps, you know, to go down and drill down through a couple steps. What was

Nicole Wakelin  39:54  
the logic behind that? Did anyone address why they decided that needs to be an infotainment screen clever for the sake of

Sam Abuelsamid  40:00  
Whatever. Yeah, too much software to find vehicle sometimes. Sometimes there's some things that shouldn't be controlled by software, they should just just put a button on there and be done when you guys

Nicole Wakelin  40:10  
that's from an engineer, so designers take note that was an engineer who just said sometimes things don't need to be controlled with software just needs a button, like old school people,

Sam Abuelsamid  40:20  
but they do have physical switches for the climate control stuff, which is good. That was that was good. No Drive

Roberto Baldwin  40:25  
Mode button. So you have to go into the infotainment system. Yes, that's just two taps to get to hit the tap.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:30  
And then it takes fewer taps to change the drive mode than it does to open the glovebox, which you'll do more often.

Roberto Baldwin  40:35  
Anyway. I opened the glove box on our cars to put the new registration.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:41  
Yeah. But I mean, if you get pulled over Excuse me, officer, I know what's in this menu somewhere.

Nicole Wakelin  40:52  
I swear I'll get you my license and give me

Roberto Baldwin  40:54  
once a year you're like, oh, man, where's the glove box? Or hold on? I gotta open up the owner's manual. Oh, my God scrolling through, maybe you won't get a ticket? Because the cops just like you know what?

Sam Abuelsamid  41:03  
Forget it. It's not worth the hassle. It's not worth the

Roberto Baldwin  41:05  
hassle. Yeah, it's funny.

Sam Abuelsamid  41:10  
But we did have a couple of questions that were related to the, the lyric. One was from Surtur. How long does the caddy take to get full? And 80%? Full using the fastest charger available? Could it be used as a road trip car with a distance of say 600 miles in a day?

Roberto Baldwin  41:32  
So that was a long way?

Sam Abuelsamid  41:34  
Yeah. So you know, they didn't specifically say you know how long it took. And they don't specifically say how long it takes to get to full, you know, and obviously, it depends on what your starting point is. But the lyric does support 190 kilowatt DC fast charging, which is faster than most. And what they do say is it'll do up to 76, it'll add up to 76 miles of range in about 10 minutes of charge time. So that's, that's pretty good. You know, what we can estimate, you know, 300 312, or sorry, 100 kilowatt hour battery pack, you got 190 kilowatt charging, to do basically, a full charge is probably going to take you somewhere between 40 and 45 minutes. Yeah, you can probably get to 80% in under 30 minutes with this thing. So that's, you know, that's that's pretty reasonable thing. So

Roberto Baldwin  42:32  
doing 600 miles in a day, unless you're someone who drives 600 miles on the regular, you're going to pull over about two every 200 miles or so. Yeah. And you're going to want to sit down and stretch and you throw that thing on there for 30 minutes, and you'll be good and ready to go again.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:47  
So yes, you can do a 600 mile road trip in a day. And, you know, the 190 312 miles, you know, I mean, that's comparable to what you're getting from a Tesla. The The only question is, you know, is it actually going to do is the charging going to be as reliable as what you get from superchargers? And that's, you know, that's still a very open question. I actually talked with some folks from GMs infrastructure group a couple of days ago, about an announcement they were making, they're, they're actually adding plug and charge capability to all of their EVs as opposed to plug and charge, you know, with an ampersand, which is plug in charge is the standard that Ford and Volkswagen and Porsche and a few other manufacturers have started to implement and Electrify America supports that, in theory, at least means that you know, you set up your payment information in your car, your your your, your automaker account, one time you pull up to a plug in charge compatible charger, plug it in, and it just you know, it talks to the car figures out you know who to Bill and just starts charging and you don't have to do anything else. You don't have to do any accounts or tapping a RFID card or, or anything else. It just charges and GM is adding this to their EVs. It's a slightly different version of the same concept. They're doing it with Evie go first and they'll be adding other charging charge network operators over the course of the next year or so. But Evie goes there their main partner, and there's this plug and spelled out a and d charge. But it does basically it's supposed to do basically the same thing. We'll see if it actually works any better than plug in charge. But that's you know, that should help hopefully as long as the Chargers themselves are actually functional. If the Chargers if Evie go on Electrify America and charge point and all the others don't actually keep their chargers working then all of this is there. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  45:01  
they're doing better. You know, anecdotally, but you know, it's early days still, but what can we just oh my god, why? Why can we just pick up, pick a good, like setting, plug in charge plug and charge, just just pick one bullet and everyone do it because it's already too. It's already it's already extremely complex system to like, Okay, now this car has to talk to this charger in the software's have to be, you know, besties Oh, we created another another thing. I'm like,

Nicole Wakelin  45:32  
Hey, because it's like, because it's hard enough for people to make the idea like Well, now I have to think about where I'm going to go and where I'm going to charge and have to plug in and I have to plan for this time. And I can only do this many miles. And it's not like there's a gas station in every corner and it takes me 10 minutes to fill my tank. I could have just been there for half an hour. It's already enough of a like mental obstacle for people to overcome making the switch. Now let's like, oh, no, it's not just any gas station. Imagine. There's 15 Different kinds of pumps that you might want to use. And you have to see if the what you have on your phone that you use that pump and if it does, they make it blink you they're sort of shooting themselves in the foot with this come with wine, make it work and be so nice. It'd be so nice.

Roberto Baldwin  46:10  
Pick a thing people pick a thing.

Nicole Wakelin  46:12  
A thing one thing pick one. Don't be greedy. One thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:15  
Yep. Another question we had about the lyric from John Halkias. How does the lyric compare the lyric luxury compare to the other luxury brands? I pace IX, e Tron, etc. And so far as interior and ride quality? What do you think Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin  46:33  
It's very, very nice. I really liked the interior, except for one thing that someone else actually pointed out to me. And that is the little plastic that's along the center console. You can tap it, it doesn't feel good. It makes like a weird little as. So actually,

Nicole Wakelin  46:51  
he's turning into a snare drum,

Sam Abuelsamid  46:53  
snare drum. That's one of those things that once once heard can never be unheard. Yeah. So.

Roberto Baldwin  46:57  
So hopefully, I mean, we were diving, pre production, early production or whatever they want to call it, you know, they're not, you know, they're not the ones that are going to be sold to, to regular folks, these things will be smashed later on. Or maybe fixed. Who knows. But yeah, that's that. Outside of that one thing where I literally packed, I couldn't stop tapping it once I started tapping on it. It's actually really, really nice and drives really nice. I think it is, as you know, is a bit more sporty, because it is an Audi that's their brand. And the I pace is, you know, you know, I want to give a lot of props out to Jaguar, Jaguar of all people to come out. They came out with an Eevee really early compared to everyone else. And I think the eyepiece is a good car. But I think it's also very long in the tooth at this point.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:43  
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  47:45  
If you were early to the if you were early in on any of it, the changes are happening so fast, that it's something that would have made it for five or six or seven years and looked okay. Before suddenly, it looks horribly dated really fast, because it's changing so quickly. So yeah, that's the punishment, which is unfair, almost because they were early out of the gate, and it's like now you're punished because your car looks old.

Roberto Baldwin  48:07  
Yeah, that's exactly what it is. They're sort of I mean, that's why I think you know, the federal tax credit should be extended to Tesla and GM because they're being punished right now for doing a good job early on. And seem to be also punished for that. You know, you did a good job early on. Now you don't get any any nice things. Yeah. I know your dealers have to explain why they can go over to the you know, the Audi dealership and still get a discount but they can't get it here are a tax break, not a discount.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:39  
All right, let's let's stick with EVs for just a couple more minutes before we get into something else that Nicole row, which is the Pole Star five prototype, which this weekend was being shown off at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK. What do you what do you thinks of the Pole Star five?

Roberto Baldwin  49:00  
It looks fantastic. I really like the way it looks. I got invited to Goodwood and I had to say no, because lyric. And then I just I have a lot of stuff going on in my life that I'm like, I can't go on every trip. And now like looking and there's a there's a lot of stuff that's going on a good way to like Oh, sad face Robbie, but Pollstar by like so good. Man. It's true. I know people and there's probably a lot of people who bought a pole start to like, oh, I should have waited.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:35  
Well, I mean, this is still a couple of years away, you know, if they if they leased one, you know in the last year, you know, by the time this comes out, you know, there'll be just about done with the lease on their pole star too, and they can upgrade to the five

Roberto Baldwin  49:47  
that's the that's the that's the dream.

Nicole Wakelin  49:50  
Upgrade, upgrade.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:52  
Yeah, this is like unlike the, the Pollstar two which has a very Volvo vibe. up to it. You know what I think starting with the three coming this later this year, and then the four and the five. You know there's Pollstar is trying to starting to move in their own design direction. And this thing you know, it's a it's a fastback sedan. I'm not sure if it's a hatchback or not, but it's certainly a fastback you know, very much in the vein of, you know, an E Tron GT, but it still retains the Thor's hammer lights, which I think is interesting. Can

Nicole Wakelin  50:28  
you get rid of that Thor's hammer lights, that's the coolest name, like everybody can come up with whatever they wouldn't call their fancy lights? None of you are going to be the fact that they call them Thor's hammer or Yeah, really? That's cool. And this looks great. The car does look really good. Nice. Is early images. It looks pretty fancy

Sam Abuelsamid  50:42  
PS 884 horsepower, so you can't complain about that

Nicole Wakelin  50:46  
at an acceptable amount of horsepower. I

Sam Abuelsamid  50:48  
guess. I think, you know, in the old days, in the old days, you know, Rolls Royce never used to say how power how much power their vehicles had there was just Yeah, it was it was always just listed as adequate.

Nicole Wakelin  51:00  
No way was it. I never knew that. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:02  
until until about 20 years ago, when BMW took over Rolls Royce. The Rolls Royce never listed the power output for any other engines. No kidding.

Nicole Wakelin  51:11  
Because they figured like, know if you need to add this is you're

Roberto Baldwin  51:15  
buying a Rolls Royce also, yeah. You're like, oh, it's got 1200 No one cares, because you have a Rolls Royce. And it's like, the most British thing. It's adequate. But I feel

Nicole Wakelin  51:26  
like also if you bought a rolls, it was cool. Like I want to custom this I want more smell Rolls Royce to be like, okay, we can work on that for you how much money I got.

Roberto Baldwin  51:34  
Just give us your your your pin number. I guess pin numbers a pin number that's like, say an ATM machine. Just give us your pin.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:42  
Yeah. Oh, or you know, your your routing, routing, transfer your account? Or just count number for your Swiss bank account. Just put us

Nicole Wakelin  51:51  
on your Swiss bank account? Because you probably have one if you're buying a Rolls Royce.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:57  
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, it seems seems reasonable to me.

Roberto Baldwin  52:01  
Which way we got to spend sending your kids to school to college. All right, double that and send it to us.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:05  
Yeah. So yeah, 884 horsepower is getting an 800 volt electrical architecture, which means it should be charged really fast. And this, you know, I think this is this looks like it's going to be a lovely car. And then you know, this fall late this year, early next year, we get the Pole Star Three, which is going to be unveiled in October. I don't think it'll actually be on sale till early in the new year. And then next year, the Pole Star four which is a smaller crossover. A smaller electric performance SUV coupe, they call it. So looks like Pollstar and they just listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange this week. So yeah, looks like they're they're well on their way.

Roberto Baldwin  52:52  
Yeah, there they have Pollstar dealer will take a showroom. It's like a room with some cars anyway, they have. They have they have some here in the Bay Area. And I've see a lot of pull stars in the Bay Area. So there Yeah, for the markets that they want to sell in there. They seem to be doing pretty well. Again, the Bay Area's not the rest of

Sam Abuelsamid  53:12  
the world. That's true. It's not very much not the rest of the world. Yeah, we.

Roberto Baldwin  53:15  
We live in a fantasy fun land. If you want an Eevee there's 50 of them right over there. There's two chargers, like there's charged there's two chargers within five minutes of me on either side of me to eat a charger just another charger. Yeah, again, the the Bay Area's a crazy man.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:32  
Okay. Nicole, back to Honda. Yeah. You've driven the HRV I have driven

Nicole Wakelin  53:40  
the herb. Yeah. I'm gonna come up behind her. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:46  
So how was the herb, the herb I actually really liked about the way it looked last week, or I think at least I did. I don't know. I don't

Nicole Wakelin  53:52  
know if I complained about the way it looked. I I don't know. I know. I did. You did? Maybe I complained. I changed my mind. I don't know. I think no. So they have a new HRV that I don't think I have a problem with how it looks. I didn't think it was particularly mad or anything. I was think I was pleased with it. It was a nice, it was fun to drive. I mean, I am not a fan of the old HRV I hated it. I didn't like it. It was no it was it was it was just

Sam Abuelsamid  54:21  
the whole back. Tell us what you really thought it was.

Nicole Wakelin  54:25  
But it was like you guys it was so the engine was so underpowered. And it was so windy and it was so loud. And if you had to, I had to take that thing on a drive up like into Vermont and from here and it was a couple hours in the car. I couldn't wait to get out of that car. doesn't often happen. The old one, the new one. I thoroughly enjoy joy. It was an entirely different vehicle to drive. It feels much better. It looks better. I feel like the interior quality no longer has that sort of plasticky kind of cheesiness. I mean it felt it used Feel like a cheap crossover. I know they sold a ton of them. It was like it sold really well. From what I understand last time I looked at numbers it sold really well. But I just felt like there were a lot of other things too in the segment that did it better. Now, not so much. I think that they've, they made it a little bit wider, they made it a little bit longer they made you know, they've changed some of the materials that are inside, it has a good amount of room for cargo, they updated infotainment, I mean, there's nothing they didn't really touch in this, everything got a little bit of attention. So everything is better, including the engine, there's a new two liter, four cylinder 158 horsepower, 103 pound feet of torque. It's again, 158 not a huge number. But sometimes it doesn't have to be huge number to do the job. This, this is fine for this vehicle. It accelerates strongly, although it's not aggressive. But now it gets up to highway speeds and doesn't feel like you might not actually make it to 55 It feels like it's gonna make it now. And then it's like gonna go to make it we're gonna have to find a side road. And now it feels like there's a there's still a CVT, but they've updated it. So with the new engine and the new CVT, the combination is better than it used to be. So it's not that one is outstanding, it's the both of them together take a little step forward. And that makes a big step forward for the vehicle overall. We took it where we were we're in Oregon driving this and it was we have this like very, they give us this one stretch of these really twisty turny roads that we got to drive on, really twist turned twist, turn to his turn. And that's the kind of thing if you have a car that doesn't handle well, it's going to show itself right off the bat because you feel like you're always going to wide in every turn. It doesn't it handles well, not a sports car, but it handles nicely and it was quiet, it has an affordable starting price, it only starts at 24 895 for the base trim. That's so bad, you're getting yourself a little compact crossover, that's, you know, got the interval. So you know, it's 100. So it's gonna hold up, you don't have to worry about the wheels falling off tomorrow, you know, it holds up? Well, it's durable, it's sturdy,

Sam Abuelsamid  57:02  
well, you might, you never know, because you know, there's another company whose wheels are falling off. And you know, they're not somebody usually associated with that

Nicole Wakelin  57:09  
it sometimes it happens, I feel relatively certain that the wheels are not going to fall off. I have a high degree of competence. So you've either so it's, I think that they've, you know, there's still other views, there's a lot of competition here, at least the compact crossover, there's a lot of options to choose from. So I think they needed to take the HRV and make it better, like all around make it better not just focus on one thing. And that's what they did. They made all the little pieces that the trims, the interior materials, the engine, the infotainment, everything is one step better. And by making all those things one step better, they overall create a much better vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:50  
Yeah, well, does it still have the magic seat

Nicole Wakelin  57:52  
does not have the magic seat by now.

Sam Abuelsamid  57:56  
Because this time, the first generation HRV was based on the Fit platform, which is also what the new HRV in the rest of the world is it's still based on the the Fit platform. Yes. Because Americans want everything bigger. You know, we got an HRV that's based on the Civic so I think everything you say about the way it drives the way it handles seems consistent with rail. It's basically a civic it's a civic, it's a taller Civic,

Nicole Wakelin  58:23  
I basically driving all the variants of the Civic every version of civic that doesn't say Civic, because that's my thing. Well, we did Hyundai what else did we do? We did another one now we're on to the civics.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:35  
So, you know, you would expect it to have similar kind of driving dynamics. And it sounds like it does. It does. And unfortunately you you lose the magic seat but that Yeah, well, you lose the magic

Nicole Wakelin  58:47  
see, but overall, I mean, that's let's see, even with losing that I figured the gains I feel like the gains and all the other places make this something that I still I still would recommend. I like it. I I don't like losing the magic seat but the other stuff is better. So I still like this better.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:02  
Okay, fair enough. Sounds good. There was one more listener question from AJ asking, Is Honda sticking with CVT transmissions forever. Yep.

Nicole Wakelin  59:18  
Yeah, probably. It would be odd with the odd manual thrown in there for fun. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:24  
At least until at least until they switch over everything over to electric in which case they'll just ditch both manuals and automatics.

Nicole Wakelin  59:31  
You know? Like I said, they redid the CVT in this one, they made it better. So yeah, they're sticking with CVTs but I think they're still working to make them better, more refined, not as annoying. So yes, still CVT but not as bad as CVT. It keeps getting better.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:46  
Okay. Let's see what else one last item for this week. Actually second to last item for this past week, invited myself and Elisa Pirtle From Motor Trend, and Jordan crews loose key from the Detroit News to visit their new dynamic driving simulator. And this is a full motion simulator, that they they've had one similar to this, actually, they've had a couple of these for a number of years already they have they have won elsewhere on their, on their product development center campus in Dearborn, that is called vertex, I think it's goes back to the mid 2000s, when they built that one, that one doesn't have quite as much fidelity as much as it's not, it's not as powerful in terms of how fast and how it can move the vehicle around for for simulation, and they use that one mostly for doing Human Factors testing, you know, human machine interface testing, you know, so it's got a little bit of motion to fit all fair bit of motion, but not not what this does. This is more similar to the one that they built at their Ford Performance Development Center in North Carolina, back in 2014, for racing, and they use that one for they use that one for testing the original, the previous the Ford GT, for a lot of the race cars. And then subsequently, they used it for development work on the lightning and the mach II, as well as some other stuff, but now they have a new one in Dearborn, so they have more access to it for their production programs. The other one is was really built more for for racing programs. And so this thing, it's on these big hydraulic actuators, it's got nine degrees of freedom for for moving around. And we got to actually get in and drive it and simulate driving Ford Maverick on some different roads, and also lightning on some different road surfaces and also experience what it's like doing some Driver Assist system testing with it. So you know, this thing is surrounded by a 270 degree screen, you get in, you buckle in, and then in the control room they turned on, and it seems it feels very realistic, especially the motions, you feel some of the different road surfaces, it really feels like you're driving on these different road surfaces, it was really impressive. And this is something they're going to be using for all their programs going forward. Because what they can do is they can model all the different dampers that different springs and tires and everything else. And and the suspension architecture of different vehicles, and try out a lot of different stuff in the simulator. Before they have to build prototype parts, you know, and they can in the sim, they can change damper settings, you know, instantly, instead of having to go out to a track, you know, with, you know, five different sets of dampers, and you know, go out, run a bunch of laps, and then come back into the garage, swap out the dampers, go out and run some more laps and gather all it did, they can do it in just a matter of hours. In the simulator. It was really funny. Cool. Yeah, that's pretty

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:21  
cool. You know what it looks like. That's funny looking at the images, all I can think of you were seeing these things when you're at like an amusement park or whatever they have that you can create your own roller coaster ride. And then they have the little vehicle that you sit in, and it creates the nausea inducing roller coaster ride that you invented, it looks just like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:38  
Except Except this can move a lot faster, with a lot more fidelity and replicate real estate, I would hope. What was really fun was when I was driving the Maverick, I found out the hard way that turns out that the the model they had of the Maverick, did not have the ABS set up in there yet. And so we're driving down this highway, and I slammed on the brakes, I want to see what would happen, you know, when I slammed on the brakes, and all of a sudden the back end of the thing is sliding around on me. And it felt like I was like I was sliding in a car, which was pretty cool without actually having to risk you know, slamming into the guardrails or any vehicles around me. Sweet so, so that was fun.

The last thing we've got, which I'll be dropping in here is an interview that I did with Jamie Brewer. Jamie is the executive Chief Engineer for the Cadillac lyric. And we talked for about 15 minutes about some of the but the development of this, this vehicle and some of the challenges they faced especially with trying to accelerate the program and bring it forward. So I'll drop that in here. Jamie Brewer, executive chief engineer on the Cadillac we're let's start a quick little bit of background you How long have you been with GM?

Jamie Weber  1:04:57  
I've been a GM about 23 years now been sort of all over the company, lots of different engineering roles, started off doing performance work out of our proving grounds noise vibration, firstly, and then moved into a lot of different release type activities. I've been in chassis body interiors, and having the quality organization not to nearly museum to good practice for catalog. Yeah. Yeah. And then we did any Charles. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:23  
So when did you get involved with the lyric program? And I guess when when did the Alert program kick off? And were you involved right from the beginning? Yeah, I

Jamie Weber  1:05:31  
got involved with the lyric program about four years ago, right, right, about four years ago. And I would say it had just sort of exited the architectural phase of our development cycle. And we were starting to work on what we would call a top hat. So prior to that, it had been in where we call our advanced vehicle development group, really working on the skateboard, figuring out how the LT and battery pack was going to integrate with the chassis and the body structure, doing all of that sort of blank paper upfront work. And then once we got to the point where the skateboard was pretty set, and now we were starting to talk about things like ball of foot, the front axle, front overhang, top hat, all of that. That's when I joined the team and started working on it from the from the top half of the architecture perspective.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:15  
So what as you were developing the, the architecture, what I guess, what was what was the, the goal? What What was your theme around this vehicle? Why choose this particular form factor? Yeah,

Jamie Weber  1:06:31  
the theme was that it was going to be the best kind of like SUV we've ever done. Period, irrespective of the propulsion technology. So we knew it was MIDI vehicle. And that's great. But first and foremost, for my perspective, was this was going to be the best catalytic we've ever done. And we were not going to compensate. Just because it was an electric vehicle does not mean we're compensating on the fact that it's a Cadillac. And so that was really an all of the sort of conversations and debates as you go through vehicle development. That was sort of the Northstar for me. And we always went back to okay, what is the right decision for this to be the best Cadillac SUV we've ever done? That's where we're gonna go with. And that's been our Northstar all along. And I think it's, I'm very proud with the results. And I do think this is one of the best calyx we've ever put out.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:20  
Yeah, certainly, you know, visually, and for this, because I want to put this up before next week, I'm not going to talk about driving impressions. But you know, from from an aesthetic perspective, you know, both inside and out, you know, I think the team has done a phenomenal job. And I'm gonna ask you a question that we've we've already talked about, but I want to get it recorded, because this is a question that pops up all the time, from people that are interested in EVs. You know, as far as the, the, the architecture, you know, it has, in many ways, you know, a traditional SUV form factor. It's got a longer hood. But there's no front storage, there's no fuck. So give me the explanation.

Jamie Weber  1:08:06  
That's fair. So and I'll tell you that the conversation around a throne, we've had multiple times in many different forums, this debut edition, rear wheel drive vehicle, and actually in all of our vehicles, we offer the ability for the 19.2 kilowatt at home charger, that is a significant upgrade. It's actually the fastest charger, home charger in the industry today, the Viva 52 miles in an hour of charge. So you need 100 amp circuit, but it is a great option for people that really want fast and home charging. However, that does drive the need for a second onboard charge module to handle that type of conversion from AC to DC power. Right. Once we package that second onboard charge module, the amount of space left for Frank, because we do obviously have other other underhood elements. There was availability for front but it would have been on the smaller side. What we decided to do and again, this goes back to sort of the North Star that I talked about the best Cadillac irrespective of the propulsion system. The options were a small, small Frank in a medium sized cargo area, or since we'd already sort of compromised the front with a second onboard charging unit. Take some more of the electrical modules that we packaged in the rear compartment. In a typical vehicle, any typical vehicle you pull back your rear compartment term, you're gonna see a bunch of electrical modules bolted to the sidewall and you lose inches of space on each side that could be used as cargo space. But we chose to do is take a bunch of those modules, move them under hood as well fill up the under hood area, shrink wrap the rear cargo area, and now we've given you the largest possible rear cargo area. So you can either have a small Frank and a medium sized cargo area or no Fronk in a large cargo area. If we're thinking about the customer, the the opportunity for choice into to bring more items along with you on your trip lends itself to seeing the large cargo area is the right decision. It's not trendy from an ad perspective. And I was okay with that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:10  
GM is doing funks in other vehicles, the Silverado the Hummer and

Jamie Weber  1:10:14  
vehicle by vehicle, what's the customer base? And what's the purpose of that vehicle. And in this case, the purpose of the vehicle was to give the customer the best possible experience possible. And we felt that giving them the maximum cargo volume in the rear was was the right decision.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:30  
So in the course of developing this vehicle over the last several years, what, what were the biggest challenges that you had to overcome?

Jamie Weber  1:10:38  
You know, I guess one of the biggest ones, and it's funny that people don't usually think about it, but was noise and vibration. In this vehicle. If you think about a traditional Ice Vehicle, we we tend to take, we tend to forget the value of an internal combustion engine as relates to masking, other unwanted noises, right, it tends to dominate dominate, and it balances out frequencies, that would typically be considered obtrusive to the driver, but that they're not going to hear because of the dominance of the combustion engine, right, you get rid of that internal combustion engine, now you put a drive unit, and the drive here is typically going to have a higher frequency sound to it than a combustion engine, first of all, but it's at a much lower decibel level. And now all of those annoying sounds start to become prominent, even road noise, wind noise, but all of the customer actuated, all of the modules, all the pumps, all the actuation sounds, all the switching frequencies, you start hearing all those right. So how do we now handle that, because again, we still want to create that quiet Oasis environment. If you actually were to tear down a lyric, you'll notice we actually have more noise abatement content and the Lyric, then we have in its predecessor, the ice vehicle, the SC five. That was because we are cognizant of the fact that we need to block more noises, we need absorb more noises, because we can't mask them. Right. And then we go into things like our EB sound enhancement in our active noise cancellation or advanced active noise cancellation, again to get after those unwanted noises. So you'll notice when you're driving the vehicle very much is a quiet oasis. But that was not that was on purpose, there was quite a bit of effort that went into creating that environment. And this is a

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:23  
very quiet vehicle, when noise was was really well subdued. So that that clearly is an important thing when you're when you make that transition to EVs. Another area that that's something you lose with an internal combustion engine is a source of waste heat and living in Michigan, you know, winter weather, you know, we rely on that waste heat to keep cabin comfort in the wintertime. And with an Eevee. You know, normally traditionally you've had to use energy from the battery seedlings range when you talk about the heat pump system.

Jamie Weber  1:13:01  
Yeah, and so we do have a heat pump system, which actually takes advantage of TierPoint waste heat. I mean, yes, engines great, we waste heat, but battery packs create waste heat as well. And if you look at the top of the battery pack, there's basically heat sink, they're able to pull heat off of and turn into cabin heating. So it's actually helped quite a bit from our range. As we look at doing our certificated range certification, the way that we are able to capture that waste heat and turn it into cabin comfort. That doesn't mean we never have to pull heat from the battery pack me not all EVs to your point dependent on the ambient temperature outside to some extent and I'll have to but the heat pump system and it is a it's a brand new system in the lyric and we're continuing to evolve it in our future EVs is able to get us a benefit from reducing our dependency and pulling energy out of the our high voltage and turning it into cabin cabin going.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:57  
Yeah, and I think you know that that whole, you know, anything you can do to improve the overall efficiency of the of the system, you know, whether it's power electronics, or the climate control is going to be important for EVs because you know, the batteries are still despite the advances are still very big and heavy and cost a lot of money. So, what would you say you're most proud of with this car?

Jamie Weber  1:14:26  
I'm so proud of this car. I'll tell you that. You know, after you spent four years of your life working on something, it's hard to boil it down to just one thing i i will say one of the things that I do like to talk about a lot is well the driving dynamics and the the steering and handling performance of the vehicle I just absolutely love. I think we made the absolute right decision with the hard mounted front cradle. We had a lot of back and forth conversation on that. But the steering precision you get out of this vehicle, the maneuverability the road hugging experience. I just think I think it was absolute Are you the right decision. So I am extremely proud of our driving dynamics, I personally like to drive the vehicle in sport mode. So hopefully, your readers or listeners will get a chance to do that, because that gives you even that much more control over the vehicle. But I would say other besides the driving dynamics, I am extremely proud of how closely this vehicle is linked to the show car, if you look at the show car that was revealed a couple of years ago, and if you kind of go back over time and look at various show cars released by a multitude of companies, I'm not going to say just GM, and then you sort of take a look at the production variant of that vehicle. You're hard pressed to really say they're the same vehicle, right? If you look at the Lyric show car, and you look at the Lyric production vehicle, you would be hard pressed to name 10 things that were different,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:47  
you can even find little details if you're looking really hard. But yeah, it is very close to the

Jamie Weber  1:15:53  
end. The reason it's not done very often, it's because it's hard, it's really hard, you have to take this beautiful, wonderful vision of your creative designers. And now you have to make it manufacturable you have to have it meet regulatory compliance, it's got to meet safety and crash, it's got to meet aero performance, all the other concern Yeah, all the other means of the vehicle. And the easiest thing to do is say, you can't have that or you can't have that or we need to change that design or that design to go to a tried and trued off the shelf design solution. Right? We were extremely focused on this program and not doing that the the goal of this program was enable enable enable the design, and again, it goes back to the North Star, right, the North Star is the best Cadillac SUV we ever put out there. We trust I trust our creative design team, to have the pulse of the customer as it relates to the design and the styling of what that means. And so my job then was to work with the engineers to say, how might we enable? And it was just a constant? Yes, we can, how might we enable? And so when I put the production lyric next to the show, Carlier. Eric, I am extremely proud.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:08  
You mentioned how hard it is to do that. Another thing that was obviously really hard is pulling ahead the program by not usually the other way around, you can easily get delayed. What what did you have to do to achieve that,

Jamie Weber  1:17:21  
we had to make sure that every team member working on it was on because it was it was a very intense last year and a half to pull that nine months out. Couple of the things we did obviously is you'll notice our debut edition is one one trim. We left the team really focusing on doing the first time the debut edition and doing it right. We let the manufacturing team really focus in on launching one trim off on doing it perfectly. And then we start bringing the other trim levels on after that. But it really was just laser focused, I will say complete support from the senior leadership team up to and including Mary, if we needed something we got it quite frankly, on this program to to get this vehicle launched, had a schedule, because the demand was so high. When you looked at the handlers we had like a quarter million hand raisers when we debuted this, this vehicles show car. So we knew that we the sooner we can get it out, the better we would be able to satisfy our customer base. And so it was really just what must be true. What do you need to make it happen? And how do we get you those resources along the way? Great.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:29  
Any final thoughts you

Jamie Weber  1:18:30  
want to share? I'm just really excited. I'm so glad to hear that you were able to drive it today. I can't wait to hear your thoughts. I'm really excited for your viewers to get to ride it, drive it. I think the vehicle quite frankly, speaks for itself once you get in it and you experience it. And yeah, I really appreciate the time today. All

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:49  
right. Well, thank you so much. And then any final thoughts that you got for this week?

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:55  
Oh, no. Finally.

Roberto Baldwin  1:18:57  
All right. I'm devoid of thought at this

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:00  
devoid of a thought so Wow. Rough day for you, Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:04  
It's all it's 948 I'm ready to go back to bed. 9:48am not pm

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:14  
Yeah, we we started early on Sundays for Robbie.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:17  
Yeah, poor Robbie. One

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:18  
weekend and and like, Oh, I gotta get up at 730 on Sunday. All right. Well, sorry. Sorry. I get to hang out with nice people.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:26  
Oh, we love you. We love you.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:29  
We try. We tried. I was

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:30  
talking about the people at the coffee bean and tea leaf now.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:34  
You know why? You know what I'm done with him? Forget it. Let's schedule for 8am Eastern next time.

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:39  
I don't even drink coffee.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:43  
All right. Well, we'll talk to you all next time. Bye,

Nicole Wakelin  1:19:45  
guys.