Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 254 of wheel bearings we've got the new Kia Sportage, hybrid and Nissan ultimate all wheel drive. Ford Bronco Everglades running through the muck, the Hyundai ionic six. No more buying out your Ford Evie leases and touchscreens almost killing drivers at Pikes Peak and a conversation with Jack Hollis all that more coming up next

Sam Abuelsamid  0:35  
this is episode 254 wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights

Roberto Baldwin  0:41  
and I am Roberto Baldwin from reviewed.com

Sam Abuelsamid  0:44  
That's a new one.

Roberto Baldwin  0:46  
I've done some stuff for them. None of it's like been automotive but I am doing some some folding electric bicycles for them. So my garage there fortunately, they're not sending me 10 bikes at once. I'm getting like a set of three instead of three and then a set of four. So but I was like yeah, let's give them some love. And you know if you're gonna let your car get electric bike and you ride around, they're fun.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11  
And Nicole says she's running late from the world slow as dimmer, which I'm assuming is a typo and she meant dinner. Start without she will join us in progress it just slowly getting darker and well being slow dimmer who knows the world's slowest dimmer? She's

Roberto Baldwin  1:29  
like I can't see what's her name?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32  
Yeah. So we'll, we'll see when she gets here.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36  
Let's see dinner dimmer. Let's make our beds now.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40  
All right, so you had nothing to drive this week.

Roberto Baldwin  1:43  
I had driven nothing, nothing just just some folding electric bikes, which just just some folding electric bikes. If you want to talk about one of them you can I've only I wrote it down the street and back there was a big hill and I wanted to I just wanted to see like with one of them they could get me up the hill and in a reasonable fashion because it's pretty steep. And it did so that's that's all I've done because I went out and then I end up talking to my neighbor for 30 minutes.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:07  
Okay. Well, I had the 2023 Kia Sportage, hybrid SX prestige all wheel drive, another overly extended name. But so this is this is the new Sportage and the sportage is Oh, there she is. The sportage is the last original nameplate from Kia when Kia first launched in the North American market they launched back in the mid 90s with the Sportage and a little sedan called the Sephia. And well, neither one of them were particularly well, I would say the Sportage was memorable but in all the wrong ways. That first generation I had a chance to drive on a test track we the company I was working for at the time actually was doing the abs for for it. And boy, that was a scary car. But this is not this is a much better vehicle. And the this new generation of Sportage has gotten substantially larger than the old one. The old one was on the small side of compact crossovers. And this one is very much on the larger end, you know, similar in size to the rav4 and and CRV and other stuff. Very roomy. It's got the same hybrid powertrain that's in the Sorento with the 1.6 liter turbo and electric motor and a battery under the backseat. The design, it's it's quite it's a pretty substantially different design from the previous generation and doesn't really look much like any other current key is probably the closest thing to it would be the Evie six but even that is quite a bit different. In its in its design direction. So it's it'll be interesting to see where Kia goes from here with their design. But, you know, in most respects, you know, it's a pretty conventional, compact crossover, you know, it's like, aside from big pickup trucks, you know, it's the strongest segment in the US market now. It has taken over from the likes of the Camry and accord and ultimately the top sellers. The the hybrid system in here, you know, I've always liked the Hyundai Kia hybrid system in terms of, you know, the way they the way they feel when you're driving, they feel the most normal of hybrids. You know, there's they're pretty seamless when it's shifting back and forth between electric and hybrid and engine on modes. There's none of the the motorboating effects you get from the CVT hybrids like the Fords and the and the Toyotas. But the one thing I was a little disappointed with was the fuel economy. It the, the for the front wheel drive Sportage hybrid is rated at 43 miles per gallon combined, the all wheel drive is rated at 38. I only got about 31 and a half, which is the farthest have fallen short of, you know the label value in a long time, especially for for a hybrid. And, you know, driven a number of other contemporary Hyundai and Kia hybrids. And you know, they all, they've all done substantially better than this one. And I'm not sure why this one did so relatively poorly. I mean, not that almost 32 miles per gallon is terrible. But it's certainly not what I was expecting from this vehicle, I was expecting something in the upper 30s. So that, you know, other stuff near the interior, you know, obviously a lot roomier than the old Sportage, or SP Portage as we should perhaps call it. And the the infotainment it's the same kind of evolution of the Hyundai Kia system that we've been seeing on some other models like the V six, including the strip along below the below the center touchscreen. And this was something that I had initially had a challenge with on the Eevee. Six. There, it's actually a dual mode touchpanel with a couple of knobs on it. So

Roberto Baldwin  6:35  
there's it takes Oh yeah, it does take a little bit to get used to it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:39  
So one mode is climate control. So if you want to adjust the defogger, or the temperature or anything else like that, you turn and twist the knobs, he's a knob on the left one on the right, twist the knobs to adjust your temperatures turn on the rear front and rear window defogger, things like that. And when I drove the Evie six, when I first got into it, it was in the climate control mode, and like to twist the knob to adjust the radio volume, and it kept turning up to temperature. And I couldn't figure out how to get it to volume mode. And I ended up just using the control on the steering wheel. And when I that one, that's the one I drove to Elkhart Lake for the mamas spring rally, I thought to James Bell from Kia there, and he showed me how to do it. There's actually one of the buttons on there, there's a little fan icon and an arrow icon. And when you tap that, it toggles back and forth. So that when you if you go to the arrow version, it gives you media control. So the temperature knobs become volume and tuning knobs, and the labels change on there and the labels across the touch strip change. So you now have labels for navigation and media and assorted other stuff. So it's kind of an odd system. Once you once you figure out, you know that you have to go back and forth, it works okay. But I'd rather just have dedicated stuff for things like that.

Roberto Baldwin  8:10  
It's it's, it's a cross between what JLR has done with the steering wheel where it's contextual, you like as you do things on the the lights on the steering wheel turn to they become different modes or different controls. And what Volkswagen has, when it comes to its front and rear window thing with the ID four. It's not nearly as bad as that it's not quite as nice as the Jaguar thing. I think what most people are going to end up doing is just leaving it on climate control and doing the volume with

Sam Abuelsamid  8:37  
the steering wheel. Yeah, I think you're probably right that and that probably makes more sense. But when I went somewhere with my wife, she wanted to adjust the volume. And it was in climate control mode. And and so I said, see if you could figure out how to adjust the volume.

Roberto Baldwin  8:51  
She'd be told you have to be told what it does.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:55  
Yeah, she you know, like, at least like myself, she was not able to figure it out without without somebody telling her how to do it. So let's see what else Oh, the highway drive assist feature. So this is something that is on most new kids and Hyundai's and Genesis models this is their combination of adaptive cruise control and Lane centering functionality. And after having driven the rivian Just the other week and you know that one has essentially the same function, you know, Lane center and control and adaptive cruise control. They have 11 cameras on the rivian and five radar sensors. The Kia has one camera one or one front radar sensors a couple of rear radar sensors that use it for blind spot monitoring. The Kia did a lot better job of keeping the car centered in the lane. And you know when you're going through corners not not wanting to drift outwards, you know just staying locked in the center of the lane. It's a hands on system unlike supercruise that I I'm driving now, but I'm It's it does a great job, I mean, you can just kind of keep your hands right by the wheel, just enough to give it just enough resistance so that it thinks your hands are there. But it will track down the road beautifully. It does a really, really good job. And then the only kind of dynamic complaint I have about it, there's a few spots along i 94. And the like near Detroit metro Airport, where there's transition from the main pavement to Bridge Overpass and back again, where there's kind of a little bit of a drop and come back up. And I think the Sportage feels like it could use a little bit better rebound damping when it's coming up because it kind of comes up a little bit too far. When it bounces back. And you know, and then when it comes back down the dampers kind of lock it down better, but just when it's coming up, it looks it gives it a little bit too much bounce. But other than that, you know, the ride quality is great. It's you know, fairly quiet. And then just the kind of somewhat underwhelming fuel economy. Yeah, so the sport and this Portage hybrid starts at $27,290 for the front wheel drive LX model. The one I had was the X SX prestige with all wheel drive. Fully loaded with all the goodies and you know the usual Android Auto and Apple CarPlay 10 inch wheels. This one had the shadow matte gray finish, which looks quite good on on this particular shape. And panoramic sunroof and Harman Kardon Premium Audio LED fog lights all all the good stuff and then some and this one came out to a grand total of $38,000 even including the $1,215 destination charge. So that is the 2023 kids Portage SX prestige, all wheel drive hybrid. which needs to be condensed

Roberto Baldwin  12:16  
Yes, Portage has the properties, all wheel drive.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:21  
And, and as I've been doing my little monologue here, Nicole has joined us Hello, Nicole.

Nicole Wakelin  12:28  
Hey, sorry about that.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:30  
We were discussing before your arrival. Yes. Were you in fact running from the world's slowest dimmer trying to stand the light or was it was it dinner?

Nicole Wakelin  12:39  
Didn't say dimmer um, it was actually Dizzy you can tell like I gotta check sam I'm not gonna be good. Oh, it was was dinner unfortunately it

Roberto Baldwin  12:49  
makes more sense. Yeah, whenever favorite restaurants

Nicole Wakelin  12:51  
that is normally super speedy quick and I'm like some course today they weren't like you guys. guessed apology you guys.

Sam Abuelsamid  13:04  
So what have we been driving the call?

Nicole Wakelin  13:09  
I am in the 2022 Nissan ultimate 2.5 s are all wheel drive. I don't know is that longer than your Kia Sportage

Roberto Baldwin  13:18  
ultimate SR all will drive

Sam Abuelsamid  13:20  
with them now. Because because I had hybrid and SX prestigous

Roberto Baldwin  13:26  
there's a bunch of stuff in there.

Nicole Wakelin  13:27  
I was doing it. So you know sedans which aren't the most popular cards these days, but this is a decent sedan it has a 2.5 liter four cylinder engine 180 horsepower 178 pound feet of torque you're not going to win any races in this it's not super aggressive but it's it's competent like accelerating on the highway which I was aggressively doing to get here to record this podcast. I no problem getting right up to speed. And any well yeah, just zoom right up there. So it's a nice car and it's quiet. You know, sedans are about just kind of nicely taking people where they need to go, their focus is and offering their focus isn't on cargo. Their focus is people excuse me and this one does a good job of that. It's very comfortable. It's very quiet, nice and easy to drive but still responsive enough that you feel like you know you're it's not lackluster, it has plenty of performance for what you're getting. It is a $31,440 car so it's not an outrageously expensive car. It's a nicely price choice,

Sam Abuelsamid  14:28  
and it will not outrageously affordable either.

Nicole Wakelin  14:31  
No but I mean for what you're getting. I mean this also

Roberto Baldwin  14:33  
is the all wheel drive version.

Nicole Wakelin  14:37  
And it's the Midnight Edition which is something that's available on the SR trim. You can't get this on the other trims in the Midnight Edition ads. It's like 1700 bucks and it adds LED fog lights, heated front seats. There's power driver lumbar support and sliding moonroof. You get a fancy blacked out stuff. You get a midnight badge

Sam Abuelsamid  14:59  
on the night. All that's worth 1700 bucks

Nicole Wakelin  15:03  
$100 And you get heated outside mirrors with LED turn signal indicators.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:10  
Well, those heated those heated mirrors can actually be very handy in the wintertime.

Roberto Baldwin  15:15  
Yeah, when I stop and you're just like, Oh no, because I forgot to I forgot to scrape off the mirror.

Nicole Wakelin  15:21  
If you move someplace where it snows, you can have scraped off that stupid mirror. And if the snow is the right, the right miraculous consistency of water and ice and cold temperatures, and it just builds up, you're like, I could see out that side mirror when this trip started with snow and then you're like trying to roll down your window and take that off, and you're either going nine, you know, on the highway going like 59 miles an hour. And now you're getting snow in your face or you're trying to do it in a stoplight freezing be like I gotta get this cleaned off before I started getting so heated side mirrors are actually kind of cool. So nice, comfortable car easily seats five. I mean, there's no problem putting three adults in the back of this. It's not something you necessarily want a road trip with three adults in the back, but it's very comfortable for shorter drives. And for two adults. Yeah, totally could. There was again, you know, six foot husband and eight year old daughter sitting behind each other, totally enough room for everybody. So that's my test for whether grownups can actually be comfortable in this car. Like, again, I'd say I don't know about Robbie because Robbie's giant but average grownups to be because he's a giant. You also get a whole bunch of drivers this features that are standard on this, there's rear automatic braking, blind spot warning, Rear Cross Traffic Alert Lane Departure, sort of the usual suspects on this, and it does have some it has an attractive interior, you get a leather wrap steering wheel, you get a leather wrap shift knob, there's an eight way power driver seat. It looks nice inside like it doesn't feel like a cheap car, it actually looks. I think it looks a little nicer than what the price tag is honestly, like for 31,000 You're getting a really decent looking car. I like how it looks and you get a decent amount of tech with that too. You have an eight inch color touchscreen, there's Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which is nice. You know, there are six speaker audio systems. So it's again, it's not like you've got some fancy 24 speaker Bose premium whatever but you have a nice decent audio system you have a nice decent infotainment system that's easy to use. It's pretty intuitive. I think this system that Nissan uses this is not does not take a long time to get the hang of it has a nice responsive touchscreen. So I like this I've driven this sedan. It's funny I drove this in a while back and it with all wheel drive during literally a sort of like a blizzard that like descended upon me as I landed at the airport and had like a one hour drive home and it was like well, it's either sleep at the airport Hilton, or get in the car and drive home and I drove it home and I gotta say this handles amazingly well in the snow because the thing was like all wheel drive is great, but part of a sedan problem too. If you're driving in rough weather. It doesn't matter how good your all wheel drive is if your snow is too deep and if you're driving over sort of those little berms created by the snowplows you'll just bottom out and you're done and you're stuck and this cut through a lot of it it handled really well it was there was a lot of snow on the roads so even though today it's nice and beautiful and sunny I have driven this in the snow and this was one of my favorite vehicles to have to drive as sedans go to have to take through crummy weather so if you want a nice comfortable sedan it's not outrageously priced that looks good feels good. has good acceleration and yeah you can drive in the snow because I did it this this is definitely one to consider I'm really a fan of this one I like the

Sam Abuelsamid  18:39  
cool yeah and of course you know this is the one weekend a year that you don't have snow in New Hampshire right

Nicole Wakelin  18:45  
right the one it's just this weekend the rest of them snow all the time

Sam Abuelsamid  18:51  
Okay, cool. So you also recently had the opportunity to drive something else

Nicole Wakelin  18:58  
did can tirely different vehicle Yeah, I drove the retaining the the Ford Bronco Everglades. Is that where it was or something else you

Sam Abuelsamid  19:06  
want to add in as well? I

Nicole Wakelin  19:07  
feel like that's the one that's no the Ford has is taking the Bronco and doing all the other things it can do besides just call it a bronco. There's the Ford Bronco cheetah report or there's the Ford Bronco Raptor. And there's the Ford Bronco Everglades. I'm waiting for the Ford Bronco, whatever they call the Winter edition. There needs to be one. You personally

Sam Abuelsamid  19:26  
will be the Yeti, the Ford Bronco

Nicole Wakelin  19:28  
Yeti, I like it because

Sam Abuelsamid  19:30  
it'll come it'll come with a Yeti cooler in the back and then a full set of Yeti

Nicole Wakelin  19:35  
like Sasquatch lug with some things but instead of it'll be like a little white snowman a Sasquatch BOMINABLE snowman, little Abominable Snowman. So would this is the Everglades is where the Raptors like your off road desert racing thing. The regular Bronco gets you through kind of like everything. The Everglades is the one that you want to take if you're going to drive through serious water think like the Florida Everglades. They didn't take us to Florida because I'm really thinking crocodiles and they don't want us all to die. So they took us to this place called Drummond Island which is in northern Michigan. You have to take a ferry over there. But I have cars and the ferry drive out there. It was it's like this very restaurant and there's tons of swampy like mucking around in the dirt. I mean, real swamp not like Oh, little puddle is two inches deep. No amount of water that maybe it sometimes go. I know that you can wait 36.4 inches. I feel like we're past that. Like it was a lot of

Sam Abuelsamid  20:29  
water that we this is why I was joking about leeches last week.

Nicole Wakelin  20:33  
I know. And that's all I could think of dang you like freaking out I'm like looking at it wasn't the spot it was that was just like muddy but not like synced your ankles. And I'm like, do I need the waiters? I don't see leeches. But they really just

Sam Abuelsamid  20:48  
don't know if there's actually any leeches. Oh,

Nicole Wakelin  20:50  
I'm sure no doubt there was because this was like, this is muddy, mucky, brown, swampy water that they have is driving through which sounds like I'm saying me tortured us they didn't, it was actually really great because torturing the vehicles. We were torturing the vehicles and there aren't many, you know, you can't know if this vehicle does what it says without foregoing. Well, here, we will bring you to an extreme version of what this can do. And let you drive it through it. And the thing was, it did it did everything was supposed to we're in water. I don't know if anybody who has ever been in a small boat like and when the waters splashing against the bottom of the boat and you can feel it underneath you like every single and you can hear it. It was just like that, but I'm like, oh my god, I'm in a car. It's that sound and that sensation. And it's freaking me out a little bit. But we went through very long stretches of water that was you know, 36.4 is the maximum waiting depth. I feel like we were right there. They had given us waiters. So if we needed to get out, we had waders to protect us from the evil leeches and whatever else was in the mucky water that was there. And there was under the wheels, you know, they had we were drove an entire day. It wasn't like a five minute drive. We basically spent an entire day driving through mud and muck and rocks over rocks and along the along the water because you're right along Lake Michigan. And we drove along there. It was, it was like an extensive and very tough drive. It wasn't for the faint hearted. It was amazing. I mean, this did it we had this comes with a winch you have a worn winch that can handle 10,000 pounds, it's got 100 feet of synthetic cable and, or to even worked on the winch. It's like when winches are already pretty amazing. But they did a few little tweaks to it because they wanted it to resist corrosion and hold up a little bit better. So it's kind of like a four to ized version of this winch that's better than the average. We all have these winches as part of the package when you get the Everglades we didn't actually need it, except there was a tree a tree that I'm still sort of slightly convinced that a couple of sturdy gentlemen could have just pulled out of the way but the guy's like no, we're going to

Roberto Baldwin  23:00  
wrench it yes a couple of sturdy gentlemen might have put it in the way

Sam Abuelsamid  23:08  
this was immediate program

Nicole Wakelin  23:11  
to but there was actually there was that one and there was no little tree later on. It was but it was you know, we didn't need it like there's 12 of us we're going through this muck nobody is like a professional you know swamp driver here none of us got none of us got set. We all did it. And they have forever long drive right now I want to say like off road or but I feel like that's just generic swamp driver. Say swamp driver. None of us. Leave. Yeah, these are for swamp drivers. If you're a swamp driver. I got the car for you.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:42  
Well, the other the other reason they probably took you to Drummond Island instead of the actual Everglades because there's also no Burmese pythons.

Nicole Wakelin  23:49  
Oh, you know what? I'm not listening to you with the things that are gonna be on the water anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:54  
Sure. So did you hear about the one they just caught in Florida

Roberto Baldwin  23:57  
a couple weeks ago? See that cargo?

Sam Abuelsamid  23:59  
18 feet long? 215 pounds? No,

Nicole Wakelin  24:02  
I don't everything in flight I feel like everything in Florida wants to kill you. It's big and scary when you're with like crocodiles alligators,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:09  
and then there's the wildlife. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  24:15  
Anyway, so it was so it was I mean, the Everglades is a very purpose specific vehicle but it's you know, you don't have to be driving it in those circumstances. It has a snorkel on it too. So you know, you can you can handle this water. If you don't really need that much like every other. Offer a vehicle. You don't have to do as much off roading as they say you can do but you can still buy it if you want it. You know, I don't know how many people will need this kind of capability. But if you do live someplace where it swampy it is amazing. And to be able to get through all that water and truly is you're driving along and you're looking at the in some of these muddy ruts that we're driving through that's like you can just see the vehicle just sink into the mud and come right out the other side. It was cool to see and it is kind of have exciting to think that you could do that. And it did prove that you know, they, they built this to be able to get through that kind of that kind of off road terrain. And it did it no problem.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:09  
I assume you didn't go doors off. But they know

Nicole Wakelin  25:13  
some guys did do roof off like they took the roof and I was like, You people are nutcases. Because you know what else swamps have? Mosquitoes the size of Sparrows? I'm like I am not

Roberto Baldwin  25:24  
just flying leeches all

Sam Abuelsamid  25:26  
over the place. Like mosquitoes are carrying the leeches and dropping they drop off.

Nicole Wakelin  25:32  
My buttoned up nice and tight. But um, yeah, there was no way I was gonna do that. But yeah, so there were genuine doors off. I know. There were some windows open and there was roofs off and I forgot to do the sunscreen thing and I'm like, you know your balls. sunscreen on good, sir. Yeah, and there was a cup with a couple of Ford folks. I don't know why they picked white why he would wear anything white. And they wouldn't have

Roberto Baldwin  26:00  
been a lot of the folks just haven't done a lot of off roading folks as these guys do, but he's been there all week and they're like, wired on, like Madonna

Nicole Wakelin  26:08  
him and I'm thinking and I were like my nastiest jeans beat up sneakers and clothes. And I'm like if these have to stay in a trash can in Michigan at the end of this, I'm okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  26:20  
They need to they need to have everybody in the communications team. actually go and spend a week with Mike Levine before they do stuff like

Roberto Baldwin  26:30  
yeah, I don't think Mike Levine lives in a house I think he lives in a Ford Bronco in the desert

Sam Abuelsamid  26:35  
Yeah. Back and forth between a Bronco and a ranger

Roberto Baldwin  26:39  
yeah I'm out here and nowhere i And here's another thing

Sam Abuelsamid  26:45  
for those that don't know Mikey he is the director of North American product communications for Ford

Nicole Wakelin  26:51  
and he is constantly sharing images online of the net these most amazing sunrises and sunsets and starry skies when he's out there in the middle of nowhere with whatever Ford off road thing he's driving in any given moment Yeah. Everglades so it's it's pretty amazing. It's

Sam Abuelsamid  27:11  
so much is it? Oh, sorry to get

Nicole Wakelin  27:13  
no I'm trying to get the starting price I should have had that in front of me and I didn't you know I'm gonna blame dinner because I didn't open this up into the last second but it's like in the $55,000 ish range which is like a lot but not a lot think about what offer the more like really like like capable not just like, oh, you can put it in a little drive and drive through that field. No, but like,

Sam Abuelsamid  27:34  
a Wrangler Rubicon or Land Rover Defender is going to cost you at least as much

Nicole Wakelin  27:38  
so right now it's not a crazy outrageous price. It's a price that feels fair for what you're getting. And I you know, it was it was it was pretty cool. I mean, it was a unique thing. And I've done a lot of random off road driving over the years and this is the first time I've ever driven through anything like this. So I've never had another OEM another bit where you were just there was just so much mud and water in luck.

Roberto Baldwin  28:02  
I think it's I hope being if you buy the Ford Bronco Everglades or any other vehicle and your 14 through water moving water like rivers and floods and what like don't drive through that. There's only like a like a foot or like 18 inches and you're like well my car No, no, that's not the same, completely not the same because first of all, you're usually driving over concrete or asphalt so you're gonna slip and water is very powerful. At the end of the day, water always wins.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:31  
There's a reason why the Grand Canyon exists exactly. Water not full of water when it's

Nicole Wakelin  28:36  
like you anything really You truly do have to be careful going through water You never liked is even if it's standing water, like some of these spots like these, they knocked out this course so they know but then we had really torrential rains right before so some of it wasn't quite what it was literally 24 hours before but they're saying you know, we know there's a rock here we know there's a rock there and there's things if you just went blasting through this water that looks pretty smooth and calm and whatever there are rocks under there that if you just hit them you're gonna You don't want to hit him like that like go through with a certain amount of caution. You can't see what's down there. So pay attention to how you're driving and don't just go blazing through even if it's you know, standing water not like a river which you shouldn't be driving through anyway you know and we should I should also say they have the guys from tread lightly I think it is out there. So we were like on an area where you were allowed to drive we weren't just randomly tearing up a natural preserve with no regard for anything so we it was very responsible offerding Before he went because I know especially with water people get very concerned about that. But they got leeches as leeches you know what I heard the leeches. Oh, and also I just double check I had 55 in my head because that was my ad as sort of like as tested price. It starts at about 35

Sam Abuelsamid  29:49  
Well, the Broncos started 35 Not the Everglades.

Roberto Baldwin  29:53  
The Everglades started Everglades starts at 53

Nicole Wakelin  29:56  
Oh, just the start of 53 Okay

Sam Abuelsamid  29:59  
and It is that four door only for the Everglades.

Nicole Wakelin  30:03  
Yes. You would, I would I mean, is it that that I like the children, right,

Roberto Baldwin  30:10  
I don't want people in my car.

Nicole Wakelin  30:14  
People in your car, you can leave people behind,

Roberto Baldwin  30:17  
I guess it's easy to get the dogs in and out. All right,

Nicole Wakelin  30:20  
especially with the mock, imagine they've mucked around in that water around, you're gonna leap over the driver's seat to get into the backseat, you don't want to

Roberto Baldwin  30:29  
make a little I put a little staircase in the back and the

Nicole Wakelin  30:34  
guys who have a plan for the dogs

Sam Abuelsamid  30:35  
and back to your point about you know, being careful of going to the water. The other thing you don't want to do, you don't know, the reason you don't want to go through water really fast, is because there might be something sharp down there, that's gonna cut your tire. Yeah, the last thing you want to be doing is be stuck in the middle of a river with a flat tire.

Roberto Baldwin  30:54  
If you know you have the fortunately you have the winch so you can just drag your car out and then change the flat tire.

Nicole Wakelin  31:00  
Or if you haven't driven in water, even if you get the Bronco Everglades, I don't recommend you immediately find 36.4 inches of water, the weights,

Roberto Baldwin  31:10  
you want to build up to it. Yeah, build up to it, take a class, that's probably a class.

Nicole Wakelin  31:14  
That's because you can doesn't mean like figured out how just like work your way up. Because if you just start driving through that kind of water, you're suddenly going to be in four and a half feet of water and be like, Oops, and you're gonna be in trouble. So don't you know, yeah, you make sure you know how to do this before you do that kind of aggressive driving through water,

Roberto Baldwin  31:33  
Baby steps. Baby steps we all learn like, you know, driving quickly driving, you know, yeah, we all learned that by driving slowly. First,

Nicole Wakelin  31:43  
exactly. Be responsible when you're driving this thing. It'll be a lunatic.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:48  
That's right, well, you should be that all shitted on, put

Roberto Baldwin  31:52  
it on YouTube. So we can all point in.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:56  
All right, let's stick with Ford for a minute. There was some news that came out of Ford this week. That going forward, they are changing the terms on new leases, for customers that are getting electric vehicles. Traditionally, you know, when you lease a vehicle, in the contract, they give you at the end, at the end of the lease term, they give you a price that you know, if you want to keep that vehicle, you know, here's the price, you're gonna pay for it if you want to, if you want to buy it, and just keep it forever. And there. I've only ever leased a vehicle one time, and we did end up buying it at the end of the lease and keeping it but going forward for for electric vehicles, you will no longer have that option. You're going to have to give the give the Eevee back to Ford at the end of the lease. If you want to keep it you got to just buy it outright at the beginning. You can't you can't do a lease and then buy it

Nicole Wakelin  32:54  
is that just people who are buying EVs from like here on out, like if you have

Sam Abuelsamid  32:58  
if you currently have if you're currently already leasing a lightning or Maki, you're fine. You still have that option in your contract. But from now on, you can't buy it at the end of the lease. It's going back to Ford and and Dell decide where they want to put it. What do you think about this?

Roberto Baldwin  33:18  
It's I'm confused at the like, Well, it's because of batteries. I'm like, What do you mean? The least like, even like even a high end, you know, at least with 15,000 miles you get a three year lease that's only 45,000 miles on a vehicle unless you like you know, drive it. But even then the battery should be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:37  
Yeah, I don't think

Roberto Baldwin  33:39  
I'm confused with the battery.

Sam Abuelsamid  33:41  
I don't that I don't think that's the real reason. You know, I think what it is they, they want to have more control over the resale value of these vehicles. Because traditionally, most EVs have experienced a lot more depreciation over time over the first several years, because there was uncertainty among customers about, you know, what the condition of the battery is, and all this stuff. And so and also because of the tax incentives, the $7,500 tax break, that was generally factored in to the resale value. So you know, if you bought a 40 $47,500, Evie, and you got that $7,500 off, they figured the depreciation based on that $40,000 Net Value net price rather than the actual sticker price. And so, you had the same amount of depreciation, but it was from starting from a lower point. So your overall depreciation was greater. And I think you know, what part of this what Ford wants to do, and Tesla has done the same thing that you know, in Tesla leases, you don't have the option to buy it. Most of the time. There's there have been some some leases where they've done that but most Tesla leases you You don't get the option to buy it at the end of the lease, you have to turn it back into Tesla. And I think they, they have what they what Tesla has done is they have controlled the flow of used off leased Tesla's back into the used car market to try to keep the prices up and keep the prices high rather than just flooding the market with all these off lease cars, which is one of the problems that other automakers have traditionally had in the past is, is I Yeah, flooding flooding the market with off lease cars. And this is that's also one of the reasons why companies like BMW originally started doing certified pre owned programs. So you know, that basically what they were doing was taking trade ins but mostly off lease BMWs because they BMW leases most of their vehicles, most BMW customers don't lie they lease. And so they were taking those, you know, cleaning them up, refurbishing them, and then reselling them with a warranty. And I'm sure that's what Ford is going to be doing with these, you know, they'll they'll parcel them out. And you know, do a CPO type program and also make sure their dealers have some inventory of used EVs to sell so

Roberto Baldwin  36:20  
I don't know why they said batteries but whatever.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:22  
Well, you know I think that's that's what was speculated in some other reports, but I don't think that that's entirely the situation. Also with EVs yesterday, as we record this are recording this a little earlier this week because of the upcoming long weekend. Hyundai released photos of the ionic six their next Eevee that's coming out later this year. I think they're the full reveal is in mid July if I'm if I recall, but what do you what do you think about the ionic six?

Nicole Wakelin  36:58  
Oh, that's good. I like it.

Roberto Baldwin  37:01  
Someone said looks like a Pokeyman I forget who someone on the internet. That looks like a pokimane and I'm like, Oh, it does look like a pokey.

Nicole Wakelin  37:08  
Now I'm gonna call it mine. I don't it

Roberto Baldwin  37:14  
does look like a pokey mod.

Nicole Wakelin  37:15  
Well, if it was bright yellow or something, it could be a Pikachu. But I feel like generally speaking,

Roberto Baldwin  37:20  
there's a lot of pokimane Gotta catch them all they call.

Nicole Wakelin  37:25  
Which pokimane are we talking about? Rob? Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  37:27  
you just pokimane in general? Is it because it looks like it there was a Pokeyman car it would be the ionic six kinda just

Nicole Wakelin  37:34  
look at like the headlights. I guess it kind of heads up. Okay, Mom five. It's cute. But then you take your hand when you look at the whole thing. Ooh, sexy little car. Pika Pika. Oh my god,

Sam Abuelsamid  37:46  
it's got it and it's got a bit of Mercedes CLS there with the slope and the back and you look at the look at it and profiling see the the side glass you know kind of curves down a little bit towards the back end. And then the interior you know, the the photos they showed are with the optional camera mirror system. So there's no outside mirrors. There's just a couple of little cameras on stocks that stick out at the base of the A pillar and then the the dashboard curves up at either end and there's a display there for that shows what the cameras are seeing so instead of outside mirrors, you get the get that interior display. But yeah, no no technical details on this although other than it's on the same egfp platform as the ionic five and the gear Eevee six and other upcoming models. I think there's some speculation somewhere that the range would be over 300 miles which seems reasonable since this thing has a very low coefficient of drag, I think it's only point to one so it's very slippery. But it doesn't look like the ionic five which I thought was interesting. The kind of the the it's still got a little bit of the Pixel THING in the driving lamps in the headlamp clusters it's got the pixel lights there, but overall it doesn't have that kind of squared off shape of the ionic five it's a sleeker shape.

Nicole Wakelin  39:15  
I think it's cool that they didn't just try to continue to make it look the same you know that it's it's like they don't all need to look the same like it's a different different look. I didn't want to just be iterations of the ionic five and it's you know I got a call

Sam Abuelsamid  39:36  
Yeah, yeah, it's good good to see that there least at least gonna do at least one electric sedan.

Roberto Baldwin  39:44  
Yeah, no, they Hyundai and Kia they're like sticking with a sedan so like, you know what everyone else is like exiting this space. That means that those people won't sell cars and people want sedans will buy ours. Yeah. Okay,

Nicole Wakelin  39:56  
you're saying that like people don't, you know drive them anymore. You but They might not drive them as much, but there's still a heck of a lot of stands out there.

Roberto Baldwin  40:03  
Still buying them, which is the, you know, teeny tiny SUVs, but Well, teeny tiny. Like, that's not even true.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:13  
You know, they still sell, you know, 200 250,000 Camrys and accords each year. And like a similar number of ultimus. So, you know, there's still a market there. It's not as big as it was 10 years ago, but it's still there. It's not like

Roberto Baldwin  40:28  
100,000 So many cars. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:33  
All right. Another Evie related story. This one last weekend was the 100th running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in Colorado. And in this one, there were a couple of drivers including Randy Pope's pops, the poster pops, I can't remember I'm sure it was pronounced anyway. Driving, Tesla Model S plaids. And the touchscreen in there almost killed the two drivers. Because there there was fog and partway up the hill. They got into the fog and their windshields fogged up immediately. And because there was no button there, you hit that turns on the defroster. They were while they're racing up the hill at over 100 miles an hour. They were trying to find the defogger control in the touchscreen menus. So this is an example of why touchscreens should do not belong in cars that you have to drive.

Roberto Baldwin  41:31  
You should you need buttons. Yeah, I every time someone like leaves, buttons and cars, I'm like, Oh, thank you. I think more and more automakers are like you know what? I think we've gone a little too far with this. There's there's a there's a there's a place for touchscreen. But there's also a taste place for buttons. And we got to put some buttons in here. Because people like buttons. And apparently it makes it safer when you're flying up Pikes Peak at 100 and whatever miles an hour, although

Nicole Wakelin  41:58  
I do ever since lately not in defense of how it was because I get it. It should have been easier to reach. But I feel like I'm gonna race a car like you do at Pikes Peak. Do you not find stuff ahead of time? What was that? Find some

Roberto Baldwin  42:11  
of that over the time.

Nicole Wakelin  42:13  
Maybe locate things that might be important. Like no, you didn't maybe make sure you can get to that pretty quick. If you had to get an hour

Roberto Baldwin  42:20  
going up in the mountain. It's gonna get cold. Maybe we should know how to defrost. Or just turn it on beforehand. Yeah, I

Nicole Wakelin  42:29  
feel like I'm not not not like removing fault from Tesla or removing responsibility but like also,

Roberto Baldwin  42:37  
also as a car driver as a racecar driver you should know about. The second part of that is car.

Nicole Wakelin  42:42  
Hard part the driver part cool. The car part. Like maybe a shuttle.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:51  
Okay, yeah. And then the final story I've got for this week is TfL truck. Those guys do some some great work. They're out in Colorado. And they they do a lot of interesting tests, especially if you're, if you're into towing and stuff like that. And they've done one of the interesting tests they do is they're like gauntlet, they go up to the Eisenhower tunnel. And they drive with a truck with a trailer. And they drive down and it's like several 1000 feet descent, it's a pretty steep grade to and then they turn around and go back up. And, you know, normally with a gas or diesel truck you you'd have using the tow haul mode and one of the things they do when they're doing that test is they count how many times you'd have to tap on the brake during the course of the descent, you know for it to maintain its speed. And last week, they did their ick test with the with the rivian r1 t and with the lightning and going down the hill the lightning, they didn't have they they touched the brake one time at the top and then didn't have to touch it again. Because the regenerative braking was able to to get enough deceleration to just have a constant speed all the way down the hill. And we're great and then going back up. No problem at all towing there. We're towing an 8000 pound trailer back up the mountain had no problem at all doing it never overheated the battery or the motor. This time, just today or yesterday, they released a new video where they did a test where they compared the lightning against the GMC Sierra Denali ultimate with a 6000 pound trailer on the back and to and wanted to see how far could they go on one charge or one tank of gas and the the the lightning to do so. Well, what a full charge. They, by the time they got to 85 miles, it was down to 9%.

Roberto Baldwin  45:10  
Oh, yeah, time to find some charging.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:13  
Yep. And so they had to abort the test and actually go back, turn around and go back because the nearest charging station DC fast charging station ahead of them was 40 miles down the road, and they only had 20 miles of range. And then there was one about three or four miles back behind them. So this is, you know, I mean, it wasn't level ground, they were going up a slight grade, but still, you know, at five miles going from 100% to 9%. Charge was not very confidence inspiring. Especially since it when they started off that one thing they didn't actually do in the test in one of the things that in the interview I did with Darren Palmer. When we did the first drive, he talked about they have the calibration mode. So when you hook up a trailer for the first time, there's you can go in there, you can give it information about the weight and the height and width and length of the trailer. But there's also a calibration mode where you can go and just drive it for for 10 miles. And it measures actually how much how much energy it's using to drive that with that particular trailer. And it uses that to try to give you a more accurate range estimate. And when they started off the range estimate was 150. I think 155 miles, but they only managed to go a little over at about 85 miles. So and I think part of is because they didn't they didn't do the calibration. So they could have known upfront that they weren't going to be able to make it as far as they wanted to go. But still, he thought miles not very good. It's point seven miles per kilowatt hour is what they got.

Roberto Baldwin  46:55  
Who Yeah, if you gotta I mean, I think if you have a trailer because you go to the lake, or you got a boat or whatever, you're still probably just going to need a big truck. And even then, I still think you know, I still think people like if you have a big truck just just for that. That seems like a lot of money when you could just rent a big truck.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:15  
Whenever you if you're using it every weekend. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  47:19  
every weekend, but I think I've seen a lot of boats just sit there for like months on it.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:28  
Water in California. That's true. We have we have lots of lakes here,

Nicole Wakelin  47:33  
too. We also have lakes not great. We have lakes.

Roberto Baldwin  47:37  
Lakes on there are still some of your water bringing them back then you guys like motorcycles? I fear some of those like that's the thing you do every weekend. Awesome. Go for it. But if you're also the person who's you get the jet skis or the motorcycles and you never ride them, but you got the big truck for them. That's a lot of money. A lot of money. Especially don't get any vetoes unless you're gonna listen, they're pretty close.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:05  
Yeah, I mean, around here, you know, I mean, there's a lot of lakes within a 30 mile radius of where I'm sitting right now. So for me, you know, I, I could easily use a lightning, you know, and towing, you know, a couple of jet skis are in the wintertime, a couple of snowmobiles, you know, 3040 miles, not a problem. But you definitely this is definitely something you need to consider. As I said, when when we talked about it before, you know, this is the the one the one thing that the Lightning doesn't do better than the gas F 150 is long distance towing, short, short distances, no problem at all long distances. And, you know, this was a tall, wide tall trailer, you know, so it wasn't particularly aerodynamic. But it's It's still tough.

Roberto Baldwin  48:50  
Yeah. The brakes. Don't know what that means.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:59  
Let's answer a few listener questions. Starting off with chintan common, I think is how you pronounce that from Twitter. And he says, My kid is profoundly red green colorblind and we were talking about colorblind last week. It's not that he can't see those colors or that he can't see other colors is that those colors look like a muddled murky Brown and he can't discern between red and green. Good news. He gets his license in two years.

Roberto Baldwin  49:28  
Well, I mean that but that's also why when you hit when it comes to traffic lights, they're all like universally that's always read a top yellow and then green at the bottom.

Nicole Wakelin  49:37  
When you have a car and it turns green for normal mode in your car and red for he just sees murky Brown and murky Brown. Yeah, that was a good thing when I said that

Roberto Baldwin  49:50  
murky Brown. I went to Paul Reubens. He was their secretary once we know what happens.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:57  
All right, Fozzie Bear EA says curious is anyone on the wheel bearings team scheduled to drive the Fisker ocean? If not curious what the general sentiment of the team is regarding Fiskars go to market strategy with Magnus steer. So still a little early the ocean is not coming out till the end of the year. They haven't. They haven't given any invites to anybody to drive it yet. So probably, you know, in November, December timeframe,

Nicole Wakelin  50:23  
I would think late this year or early next, depending on how production goes from. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  50:29  
Something going on. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  50:31  
yeah. But what what do you think about their their overall strategy? Was the Magna using magnetic manufacturer? The V? Oh, god,

Roberto Baldwin  50:40  
that's a jewel. I mean, yes. Yeah. It's a genius, because they build the Supra, the G Wagen. Some other cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:47  
They build a lot of vehicles for a lot of manufacturers. Yeah, you did that

Roberto Baldwin  50:51  
people don't take don't realize that Magna builds a lot of cars for a lot of manufacturers.

Nicole Wakelin  50:55  
To get somebody who knows how to build cars to build cars the first time you try, like, Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  50:59  
well, this is the second time that Henrik has tried. Well, that's true. Is this splitting hairs, whatever. And the first time didn't work out. So well. So yeah, so this time, we got a better part. What are you using before? Valmet? But you know, also last time around, they tried to do more of the engineering in house. And they didn't really have the resources to to engineer the karma fully. So it was kind of half assed, say the least. Yeah, so this this time around, you know, magnets doing a lot of the vehicle engineering. And so I think it'll like things will work out a lot better for them. Cool. And then there was, oh, this is from some guy named Sam, responding to a tweet that you had Roberto. But tell us about the time you were allowed to drive a tractor on regular roads before your license before he got your license.

Roberto Baldwin  51:59  
So when I was a young child, in my teens, I got a job with the school. If you're poor, you get a job with the school during the summer. That was that's all you had to be it was poor and like you'd show up. That's really that was I thought I was like, done all this stuff to get this job like I did. But it turns out, you just had to be poor. And so I got a job at the school farm, which is how I ended up in FFA. So at the farm, I was I was only like, I was 13 when I started and when I drove the tractor, I was probably about 14 or 15. So I'd worked at that farm a few spur a few summers. And one day, they're like, hey, we need it.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:34  
So what they do is in California, they use poor children as farm laborers. Yes, as underage farm laborer school

Roberto Baldwin  52:41  
are you are or I could have been a janitor, or I could have worked at the bus barn. The bus Mart is where all the mechanics were. And that's where the tractor was. And it was probably about, I don't know, maybe two or three miles away. It's a small town. So it wasn't really that far away. So my boss, who was a teacher, took me over there to pick up the little John Deere tractor. And I had driven it before in class, because, you know, there wasn't a labor laws that I couldn't do it. And he was just like, Oh, we got to get this back. And he's just kind of looked around, and was like, Well, do you want to drive it back? And I'm like, Who? Because I wasn't allowed to use any like, he wasn't allowed to use the weed whacker, or the lawn monitors like,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:21  
tractor no problem.

Roberto Baldwin  53:22  
Yeah. But it was like, Well, you know how to drive it. It's only down the street. It'll be fine. So he gave me the, like, go for it. And so I got to drive the tractor down through to hatchapee as a 15 year old without a license. And it was the greatest thing ever. Like, yeah. Do not engage anything. I'm like, I know. I know. I don't know why it was it just it felt awesome. It was like to be and to be honest, I had been driving cars way before I wish I had a license. I kind of got in trouble at some point because of that. But I was driving cars before I had a license, but for some reason drive with a tractor just felt way cooler. Like five miles an hour through town with a tractor just like hey,

Nicole Wakelin  54:12  
I know today for the first time ever I live out there's a lot of farms and stuff I live and I was just out driving with my daughter and they're apparently it's the time of year when you cut all the grass and you turn it into hay bales. And I've never seen this before. And I for the first time saw a little machine just drive along to cut hay and then it like little thing goes up and down and then all of a sudden fruit a bale of hay go shooting. That might be the quote it was like I literally stopped the car. I'm like check this out. We're like oh my god that is

Sam Abuelsamid  54:39  
I want to drive whatever rectangular bales are the big.

Nicole Wakelin  54:42  
These rectangular bales and they literally it's like the machine drives long and you see little you see contraptions moving from the road things are moving and also like food because shooting into the air into the thing in the back. I'm like I want to dry that. I don't even know what that is. Is it a hay bale or I guess I just want little hay tells you

Roberto Baldwin  55:01  
it's super impressive because when you when you when you have the hey when you when you when you snip it open it doesn't just fall into section it's like little sections. Here's like a hammer this horse here's like a hammer this horse. Yeah, those machines are genius belts for

Nicole Wakelin  55:18  
watching. I was like, I mean literally there's a farm I could walk to five feet out my door practically and like how am I never seen this process before? It was the coolest thing I saw.

Roberto Baldwin  55:29  
driving tractors fun. You know, you don't have like an accelerator, you have a like, Well, you do have an accelerator but it's like a lever and and yet to be cared. That's why there's all if you ever look at a tractor has all those weights on the front. Like on the front, they're just like these big like, yeah, like, those are weights. So you don't do wheelies work and you have so much torque in the back. And it's you know, it's built so we can like you know, you're attaching things to it is derived at a really low gear ratio. Yeah, super low. So careful. You'll you'll you'll flip you'll you'll Yeah. So that's why all those weights are from the front. Okay. The more you learn, the more you don't you know.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:11  
Next up M burns asks, Jeep Question number one, with the new Grand Cherokee will Jeep offer the Eco diesel engine as an option at some point?

Roberto Baldwin  56:22  
I don't know. It's decently the same people want to do anymore.

Nicole Wakelin  56:26  
Yeah, that I don't I don't know. I doubt it. I would guess no,

Sam Abuelsamid  56:30  
I'd say the chances are somewhere between slim and none.

Unknown Speaker  56:34  
Yeah, I don't see that happening.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:37  
Especially now that they're going they're electrifying. You know, so you've already got the plug in hybrid in the regular Grand Cherokee. They're probably almost certainly going to add that to the grand cherokee L at some point it's going to be in the wagoneer. And then, you know, then there's battery electric versions coming in a couple of years. Yeah. So I I would not expect it to ever see another Jeep diesel

Nicole Wakelin  57:01  
crisis, but it just doesn't it's not it's not it would seem like an odd direction given what the direction of things in general is going and especially with when he has said that they're

Sam Abuelsamid  57:10  
still Lantus also just settled a similar Dieselgate case to what Volkswagen had just a couple of months ago they paid like I think almost a billion dollar fine Wow for for cheating on

Roberto Baldwin  57:25  
dollars if you're looking for some for hardcore towing just go back to telling Jeep has dodge I mean, still ANSYS has dodge, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  57:33  
the you know, the dodge or red Dodge Ram it's just

Sam Abuelsamid  57:38  
you know, the the wet the wagoneer with the new hurricane six cylinder, it'll tow 10,000 pounds. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the hurricane goes into the grand cherokee as well as an option in there and, and, you know, it'll, it'll probably have similar towing capability. So, yeah, and then if you need, you know, more than 10,000 pounds, you know, just get get a ram. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  58:04  
Get us Am I okay, Jeep question

Sam Abuelsamid  58:06  
number two, Nicole. Yeah, highly of your family's Jeep Wrangler Unlimited for buy. If you had to buy a new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, would you consider the Eco diesel over the four by E if cost and or availability of the latter were an issue.

Nicole Wakelin  58:20  
I wouldn't go for an ecodiesel because I didn't I because the whole reason that we got the plug in the four by E was because the nifty Enos of being able to drive in the quiet off road, and the ecodiesel does not provide that. So the reasons we went with that. Other powertrains don't work, you know what I mean? So it's not that I wouldn't do and ecodiesel it's just that that for me wouldn't have worked I what sold us on getting the one that we got was when I honestly at the dry program when I went in, I'm like this is amazing, just driving out there in this summer in Texas, and you're driving through this field and you can just hear the grass crunching under the tires, and you can hear birds chirping, and you can hear

Sam Abuelsamid  59:03  
your skid plate scraping over you can hear seeds basically for scraping over the rocks. So it sounds

Nicole Wakelin  59:07  
really hokey. It's like it's not like I'm like Mother Earth woman over here. But it was nice to be able to hear the world around you and hear the nature around you and you can save that that ye mode until you're off roading in the form of IE. That's what made us do it the diesel is not going to do that. So

Roberto Baldwin  59:23  
and it sounds like a tractor it's it's it's the exact

Nicole Wakelin  59:27  
opposite. So I would not if you were just looking for I don't know fuel economy. Is that what it is that more what he's asking then

Roberto Baldwin  59:37  
if you're doing small trips all week, I mean, I wish one of our cars with a P have one of our gas cars because I just been doing small trips when my wife takes the car to work the beat the electric car. So I have the BRC and the Jaguar Jaguar has a big has a V six the BRC as a four cylinder and I've been driving the BRC a little bit more and I had a good putt 60 hours and gas and a little bit of good Oh, a few hours ago, it was on IE the light was on and it was hitting. Let's do it. Oh, and while I'm filling it up with gas I'm like, You know I love this car but I wish I had another car that was either a P HEV. Or an Eevee. Just

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:11  
like I would wait if it's availability of the four by ignition. I know that it is availability of everything is an issue. If I could wait, I would just wait. I'm like, Well, I'm not getting a new car this week. I'm getting a new car whenever if you're looking at like Jeep says is going to be another month. Okay, it's another month Jeep says it's another month it's really another three okay, it's another three like I would I like the four by enough that I would wait for it unless I had to buy something else because my other carbon

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:38  
okay. And then final question from Mr. Burns. Also diesel question, in general, our diesel ICS its internal combustion engines a bad investment right now. If you if you can't afford to get into a Ph D or above? Is their longevity at all in say the RAM Jeep eco diesel ice models? So the jeeps do they even still offer the diesel and the Wrangler? I can't remember right. I know.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:15  
You did a googling Robbie. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:17  
If if they do the wranglers the only one that still offers a diesel and none of the others currently do. And then there is the RAM. And, you know, I think it it depends on the answer depends a lot. If you're going to do a lot of long distance towing, then a diesel is actually probably your best option. Because that is kind of the ideal use case for a diesel, you know, under load, you know, relatively constant speed. Those things just they rock, you know, they you're gonna with a gas engine. And you know, going back to the the TFL video, the Denali that they're driving with the 6.2 liter V eight, that thing only got seven miles per gallon, towing that trailer. Oh my god. So it didn't do it didn't actually do a whole lot better than the Wii. But with a diesel. If you had if you had that truck with GM three litre inline six diesel pulling that same trailer, you probably could have got close to 20 miles per gallon and the same thing is true with the RAM. So if you actually do a lot of long distance towing, the diesel is actually your best option. Anything else? I would probably not go for the diesel at this point.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:35  
Yeah, I wouldn't. I don't think I would. I don't think it's like, is it a bad investment? I just don't see. I just wait unless I'm telling you, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:47  
They're more they're more expensive. The fuel is typically more expensive, at least here in the US. And I mean, I you know I'm a fan of diesels. I like diesel engines. You know, we used to own a Jetta diesel until we had to sell it back to Volkswagen. But you know, so I do like diesels I like the the torque that they make. And in a lot of cases I like the sound that they make like I like the especially the GM diesel the the the Lantus eco diesel is not quite that refined. But the the GM diesel is a fantastic engine. And if you were going to get an internal combustion, light duty truck or SUV from GM, I would seriously considered that one. Like I say, especially if you're going to do a towing or you know, haul regularly hauling heavy payloads. That's that's where that engine rocks because I mean I had an Escalade with that diesel in it last year and got 20 to 23 miles per gallon with it. And you know, I've had the RAM diesel before and gotten, you know, 23 miles per gallon with 1000 pounds of fencing material in the in the back in the bed, no miles, no malts that trip is even heavy enough diesel is laughs that I was just built building a fence for somebody around their yard. So, you know, for those kinds of use cases, diesel's great. Everything else at this point. Pretty much better going some you know, either plugin or plug in hybrid or battery electric.

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:27  
Yeah, there's so you can get a three liter V six turbo diesel engine with the on the Wrangler. It's $3,500 more. Okay, so it's more expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:41  
Yeah. And on the on the GM full size SUVs, like the Escalade, and I think the Tahoe the diesel is actually the same price as the 6.2 liter V eight. So you can I mean, if you get an Escalade, you can pick either one for the same price Escalade Escalade, not the Escalade of just the regular Escalade Escalade, I

think the only other thing we've got for this week is I've finally got the interview I did with Jack Hollis, during Toyota Palooza, Jack Hollis is he is now the Senior Vice President of the automotive Operations Group at Toyota. Week after we were there, he got promoted. I can't remember what his old title was when I talked to him. But he's basically in charge of all the automotive stuff at Toyota in North America now. And so we talked about EVs and hybrids and Toyota and so on. So I'll drop that in here. And we'll say goodbye. And talk to you next time.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:53  
See ya have a nice fourth, do sigh bad queuing or whatever you people do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:00  
It's been a busy week for everybody. I'm sure. You guys have announced a lot of things this week. We've seen and driven a number of different things. One, I guess one area I'd like to start with is, you know, kind of this this transition that is happening in the industry right now and how Toyota is looking at it, you know, we've got this shift towards more electrification conductivity more advanced ATS systems, automation. How, what's you know, how does Toyota How's Toyota going to handle this transition? How's it how do you see it impacting the kinds of products you do and how you deal with customers especially around education around these technologies?

Unknown Speaker  1:07:01  
Okay, you got a little bit a couple of things to go with and I want to make sure that I answered saw a good one way then you can, okay,

Unknown Speaker  1:07:07  
let me know I've got kind of an open ended question what it is, and I

Jack Hollis  1:07:10  
want to make sure you get the core because I think that's really critical understand what we're looking at as a company because it's battery electric that we're bringing as a company we've seen a lot it's not exclusive to Lexus or Toyota, right, it's across both. But the way the taste of each of our brands is going to handle some of these things slightly differently, right where we're like we do on every other product. So when you look at there's there's slight there's tends to be a bit of a difference. At the luxury side, the Lexus side, you have a lot of consumers who are going and getting a lot of education around the entire Evie infrastructure, or Ecocert Evie ecosystem, we what we have found is you find some of the more luxury buyers, they're installing chargers in their homes prior to purchasing a vehicle. They're going and getting educated with a private, you know, electrician and they're setting up their house and people who are building new homes and a luxury level. I'm here in Texas next door neighbor they're building it with with the one of the one neighbor directly next to me is building it with a fast charger in his house. I don't want you as a fast charger DC fast charger. Yeah. But so why is he that but here he is committed to that, right? That's a luxury buyer. He already has two luxury vehicles in the home, one being electric whatnot. But the so the circus wants to separate these. So there's a there's an education level, though, that has to be across the entire ecosystem for the total nexus in the industry. Okay, so with that said, we're putting forth a lot of efforts with our dealers to make sure that we are first starting by the educating of our dealers of all of the elements for them start to consider. And at the exact same time we're encouraging our dealers to look at themselves not as a Evie, product seller, not just an EB vehicle sales seller. But an EB ecosystem. concierge. Does that make sense? No,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:07  
that's a that's a good way a good perspective on it. I think as an Eevee system, concierge ecosystem comes together.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:13  
Okay. So since we're doing that, I need you to understand is that your question is what are we doing specifically? Well, I can't really call each one of those but what we're going beyond what the normal is, which is product knowledge or EB charging. That's, that's the basics. We're talking about everything from home charging versus public charging. Education on your vehicle, and what does that mean? tire wear? tire wear right now industry wise, is somewhere about twice as fast as normal tire wear. If you look at the companies out there, well, what does that mean for you, Mr. Customer? So there's elements like those that were there. So to answer your question of where we're going, is we're going to is what is the maximum The amount of education we can provide, but we can't just look at it as just for our own brand, we have to look at the ecosystem, because we want customers to experience the joy of an Eevee. Vehicle. And to do so means you have to do more than given just product knowledge. Right. open ended question I'll give you an open ended answer. No,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:22  
that's not let that. That's great. Yeah. I think that I idea of educating people around the ecosystem because the ecosystem is it's not just the vehicles or changes the whole ecosystem, charging versus fueling? And how you service and maintain these vehicles over their lifespan?

Unknown Speaker  1:10:44  
How much time does it take to charge the vehicle?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:48  
What kind of planning do you have to do for a trip

Unknown Speaker  1:10:51  
will come and give you to do for a trip? So many different elements here. But I put where you talk about a showing, and one of the things we tried to share I think this week, I think we've done a really good job I really I really think is, is that that's just on Evie, because it's the quote unquote, newest right now, right? That same education. And planning is also around things like how does the hybrid system work? How does the plug in hybrid system different? Diff it how it's different? How is that different from EB How's it different from fuel cell, the hydrogen fuel cell technology, because all four of those have distinct educational needs, and consumer feedback based upon their own, they they need to make a decision of what vehicles best fits their driving and their ultimate needs. So the education is going the education piece, I love the word appreciate that. The education and training right now is one of our probably most most critical focuses right now. Both both for interning for the dealerships as for the gift and the consumer, there's two pieces, right two streams of work, right. And they're both really hot, right. And since

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:10  
the dealer is the interface with the consumer, it's an he seems like it's particularly important to make sure they understand absolutely, so that they can transmit that message, the messages back both directions, both from the company to the consumer, and from the, from the consumers to provide the feedback to you guys,

Unknown Speaker  1:12:31  
which and this I'm gonna go every single time you give me a chance like that, I'm gonna tell you why I expect. And while I know that Toyota, and Lexus will be successful in this. And that's because when you continue to look at the relationships that we have with our dealers, I've read about nada, being number one and number two, for now, double digit years, the relationship we have with our dealers is a both way situation, as helping them to be best for the customer, and then the customer through them helping us be the best we can. Backwards means back and forth. That's why I'm so confident in whatever ways we go, we're going to be effective, because that relationship is solid, that communication is solid. That's the overall relationship with us with our dealers and the consumers that has the right balance.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:13  
And, you know, over the past year, in particular, there's been a lot of discussion, that around the whole idea of trying to achieve carbon neutrality and what are, you know, there's no silver bullet solution to getting there, which is why you're still very much committed to, to hybrids and fuel cells, you know, finding the best tool for the job, whatever, whatever that job is, and not every driver has the same job and traveling, they don't need the same tools,

Unknown Speaker  1:13:44  
your needs.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:46  
If you were Where do you live? Just outside of Ann Arbor, okay.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:50  
The needs of a person living in Detroit, Metro, Chicago, LA, Houston, are significantly different than if you're living in Colorado Springs or Tulsa, Oklahoma or Charleston, West Virginia, right? You have different needs. to city life of driving with your round trip, round trip to work might be 25 miles in your round trip into the larger cities is 50 Miles me, there's a significantly different need on your product. And like you said earlier, but you want to plan a trip to go see Grandma, you know, that extra 500 miles and 900 miles per gallon on that that changes everything. So what is your needs? And I think what specific is, if we play this out of the way it's always been done in America is if you let the consumer decide between multiple choices that benefits carbon neutrality, you will get to be carbon neutrality a lot faster than trying to push them only to one powertrain because the consumer still has to should have the choice and should make that what's best for them while still reducing cars.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:00  
I have with dealers. Certainly we've seen in certain parts of the country, EVs have had a much higher rate of adoption than other share of California mainland. But, you know, even even here in Texas, there's a pretty strong way of adoption, a lot of southern states. Do you ever foresee a time when you might start to have, even though you're maintaining this diversity of powertrains, where you might start to see some of your dealers start to specialize in one area or another? I know, we've heard that from Ford around their reorganization, the Ford blue model II, where they want to have some dealers that are focused on EVs, or near case could be hybrids or ice vehicles for certain markets. Do you see that as something that would, for Toyota, at least for Toyota and Lexus that would ever be potentially desirable, or useful?

Unknown Speaker  1:16:06  
Fantastic question. It's a different way of looking at it than have heard before. is clearly California's adaption is, is and always has been a newer technology. They've been early adopters. So I see through a lens of a California dealer, I see them adopting earlier, are you asking me between the lenses take the I'm trying to get a mix? I want to make sure I understood, what you're specifically asking. You talk about is your Do you think? Have you specialized in difference between one dealer and La another dealer in LA?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:38  
Yeah. What are you to perceive time when there might be some dealer some Toyota dealers in LA or anywhere else that sell only EVs while others saw the full lineup? Now,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:49  
I do not see that address. And that's why I want to make sure I was clear with your question. I don't really see that I see that there are areas of the country which will have like we do today, in Texas, you see a higher percentage of trucks being sold. When I go to Florida, you got a higher level of Camrys being sold. I go to New York, I got Corolla has been so if I go to different places, in Colorado, it's a mix. Okay, so when I see that I see the difference. There's different models. But based on powertrain, do I see somebody being an exclusive on this or that I don't I see that the full lineup across both in the state and then through the country? Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:25  
One of the things I spoke with Andrew gone earlier about, you know, we, especially over the past year with the supply constraints. Some some some other manufacturers have seen a marked shift to consumers from the traditional approach, and the US market is buying vehicles out of dealer inventory, to ordering vehicles. Is that something that you see that you're seeing at all for Toyota? I know for Lexus, I guess it's mostly been dealing with ordering from what's incoming. And Toyota and Lexus, you know, both traditionally had fewer buildable combinations of vehicles. But do you? Are you seeing any kind of shift towards consumers ordering the specific vehicle that they want?

Unknown Speaker  1:18:23  
First, I'd say that we're seeing the same evidence in both Toyota and Lexus. Okay, we're not seeing any differences. And right now, that's because I think there's still such a large gap between this supply and the demand. But despite with the demand being so high, still, we don't see a big difference, too, is I think that the idea of taking an order or a vehicle ordering, to be specific, it's more about them. It's more about them, it's more of like reserving right and versus an order, I want to make sure we're clear. There's not a lot of consumers who are ordering and I want this card this way did that? No, it's here are the vehicles we have coming in and a consumer saying I would like to reserve one of those Yeah, just want to make sure we're defining things linearly. And in that, we are seeing the dealer model. Who really being able to spend a lot of time with that customer. So it's safe. Some people think it's less touch, it's actually more touched, because when the vehicles coming in the consumer saying I want to raise my hand for that vehicle, they want to make sure the reason they have exactly what they want. So they're spending a little bit more, there's a little bit more of a personal touch. So what we're seeing is a little bit more time taken right to find that vehicle. We're also seeing very few people who put to reserve it and then walk away those reservations are happening. They're landing, they're staying there and they're committed. And so we're seeing that as a trend across both Twitter and LinkedIn have a lot more to I say, satisfaction with their purchase process. bigger ticket in time. Third is while we're we will definitely plan to keep our our inventory at a lower level than we've had previously. You've heard that different numbers. I don't really want to get into the exactly For an inventory, I can simply tell you that we will we, in conjunction with our dealer counsel, both of Lexus and Toyota, we will maintain a shorter amount of gun stock and trade but allowing allow that reservation and then are you familiar with that both of our smartpath for Toyota and monogram programs are online or digital? Okay, so let's get on both of those. So it was take smartpath for today, it was helped it was developed by a group of dealers for dealer trade, they helped us to develop this system, that system, were really you can go on shop, build, order, deliver, purchase everything online, right? That becomes more of a model that readers are gonna be wanting to use, allowing that customer a lot more of the control and flexibility in that in that buying process. So we I do see that,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:53  
as part of that, do you see the dealers being involved, if a customer's order doing their order online, configuring their vehicle online? Do you see the dealers you know, perhaps participating in that, you know, maybe through a chat or some some, some mechanism volunteers to help guide them or figure out what

Unknown Speaker  1:21:15  
they want all the time. And our system that we created was it's a it's a it's a direct sales, but through the dealer, okay. So the dealer is allowing the dealer is can activate at any moment, you can chat call, okay. Come in, you can actually say you can say you can shop and configure committed viewership. And in the geogrid, caught up because it's safer than theater. Oh, yeah, let's look at it together. So yeah, it's a lot of touch going up from a familiar

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:39  
ship to connected services. Written to several years ago, Toyota moved to an in house telematics platform from using an external platform. How, how are you seeing the consumer adoption that beyond trial periods? are? Are you satisfied with the take rate, I guess, that people are subscribing to those kinds of services?

Unknown Speaker  1:22:10  
Gosh, you're opening up a big one. One, I'm never satisfied because I don't think we've ever reached it. And that's part of the Kaizen approach to it. We all we all need to get better. Right? So no, I'm not. I'm not how, however, where we are today has exceeded the expectations that we set for ourselves in the internal metrics of connectivity and subscriptions. And so we've we've exceeded the original expectations. So so the question is, is that because the system is better, or our expectations were too low? I mean, we can go back and forth on this. My point is, I think where we are right now is actually the right growth curve and the rhetoric,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:49  
looking, you know, a few years down the road from now, as we're getting more and more software defined vehicles out there, than and features being available as over the air updates, or, you know, things that you subscribe to, is do you see that as being a significant part of Twitter's revenue stream going forward? What what kind of feedback are you seeing from consumers about their willingness to subscribe to features?

Unknown Speaker  1:23:22  
Okay, well, I don't know, when we talk about we're doing significant revenue. And I would say this, the idea of software first, you've probably heard us talk about it into an Alexis lab, we're taking a software first approach is clearly part of our going forward strategy to is you have I think there's a difference between consumers expectations or what are they what is their expectation of, you know, required in a vehicle that they believe should use purchase price and it was other than optional that our services? So I think, would your I think the first is is to really understand from a consumers point of view, what is the table stakes? That That to me is a little bit of what that I think we're still trying to figure out from the industry level, What must a vehicle have? That's part of just the purchase of a vehicle and what is then more an optional or an upgrade to what you want? And if you don't give me that when you have if you buy a streaming service or DVD how many streaming services you need for your TV? Do you have Disney plus and Apple TV and Roku and ramen making you know the question is each individual wants to have the basics covered that's what we're I think that's right now where both Alexis as well as industry is trying to figure it out and that's gonna be who can listen the customer best to provide that and that's what we're working on.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:52  
So let's take for example, something like teammate a feature like teammate

Unknown Speaker  1:24:58  
but now YouTuber from connections to versus two autonomous, well

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:02  
features, but we'll where I'm going with this is as a feature that you would subscribe to. So you look at Tesla as an example. They build in, you know, the hardware for their so called self driving system and on every vehicle, and then you can purchase that as a as an over the air sure software I've got I got, you know, or you can subscribe to it. Do you see? Do you think consumers are going to be interested or willing to pay for a feature like team mate as a subscription, as opposed to, I bought a car with this hardware on it, I expect to be able to use it.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:44  
I'm gonna tell at this point, it's too early to tell. And that's part of what I think we need to research and research we need to learn more. I believe there's a value to teammate that has a value proposition or a cost and the cost, there's a value proposition to the customer. Whether that becomes an optional as a service, or included as a hardware expectations would always say a little bit earlier. That is really where we're trying to draw a line and figure out what do we know? This is good. You need to have right you need to have critical mass on what is an expectation? You know, today, you know, you used to be as good as going to the basics of airbags in your car. Today, you can't charge for how many airbags? Right? Because there's expectation everybody's there for Okay. Well, every service is provided at some point to bring in services just switch to come to my vehicle, I want to turn my radio on in place. Right? Well, what what what, what, what, what apps Am I getting to use in my car? So the answer that question regarding teammate or anything else, like that has to be decided by the customer value. All right, I think we're on time. They got me on. I'm on a bigger me on a treadmill for the next few hours. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:04  
Any last thoughts? You want to share about Toyota? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:10  
I think that where we're at, for Toyota and Lexus, as part of the in this industry is you have a significant number of companies making very large strategic decisions for long term. If you look at every day, there's somebody who wants to make a statement in through your publication or anyone else's right they want. Everyone wants it. And I think you have a lot of speculation. I still believe in that in the history of American economics is listening to the customer. And I think those who listen to the customer, this is not one company or a government telling us what to do. This is about what is the customer's value proposition will win the day. And while I'm confident Toyota Lexus is I think that's what we do better than anybody in the industry. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thanks, John.