Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Coming up on episode 256 of wheel bearings we've got a long one to make up for missing last week. Got the market Ford Mustang maki GT, the 2023, Nissan Z, the Mercedes Benz EQ B and EQ xx, the AMG GLB 35. The new blazer, Evie, Scott keahole moves to scout, the Toyota crown, charging failures and forward adopting LFP batteries and a bunch of listener questions. All that more coming up next. This is episode 256 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid. From guidehouse insights. Nicole Wakelin 0:45 I am Nicole Wakelin from the fast women podcast, Roberto Baldwin 0:48 and I am Roberto Baldwin from let's say TechCrunch. Sam Abuelsamid 0:52 And we took a week off last week. Well, I was getting recharged in California not far from where Robbie lives by the way, but had a wonderful vacation and we'll talk a little bit more about what I was driving out there a little later on. But Nicole, what about you? What were you driving in the time since we last spoke Nicole Wakelin 1:12 in the interim? So the morning of attack about that I was driving was the 2022 Mercedes Benz AMG GL B 35. formatic. That doesn't even sound like a car. It Sam Abuelsamid 1:23 sounds like the model name for some Sony headphones. With noise cancelling. Yeah, so I have no more ultimate this week. No. Ultima? Nicole Wakelin 1:37 No the ultimate as much as I love the ultimate it has finally gone to the next human so no, I do not have the ultimate. They had the Mercedes Benz. I like the Mercedes. I mean, what I like what Mercedes is they consistently have this interior that feels like fancy and upscale. If it has a little bit of elegance to it, you know, they keep a lot of tech in there. Some of them just get fancy for the sake of getting all kinds of flashy and crazy. Mercedes doesn't know sort of reserved. It's nice. It's lovely, but it's not out of control. So I appreciate how they do it. So this is a $58,000 SUV. It's got Unknown Speaker 2:16 the GLB is the little one right? The little it's a Baba Nicole Wakelin 2:19 it's a little one so you've got it but you have a decent amount of space it's not so little bit you feel like it's too small. It's rather upright in how it's designed. I know it's an SUV but it's fairly it's Roberto Baldwin 2:29 comfy inside Yeah, it's like the boxy ones and there's like room for everybody. Yeah, like it's smaller than the other Nicole Wakelin 2:35 one. So it's like smaller you're like oh no, this is a small one but like Robbie I think even you could sit in the back of this you probably wouldn't be hunched over like Roberto Baldwin 2:42 you know Lee proportioned for its size. Oh, what Nicole Wakelin 2:45 a good description smartly. It's the proportions that kids smartly proportion. Okay, so I did enjoy driving this. It was roomy. We had four adults in there, plenty room for everybody that's fit no issues with headroom or legroom. There's a decent little amount of cargo room. And because this is the AMG, it has plenty of power. It's got 302 horsepower tuner, 95 pound feet of torque, so it moves, you push the gas and it moves and it does feel aggressive and it has nice crisp paneling. Because of that whole AMG Mercedes situation. It's not just an SUV with lots of power that gets away from you and feels unwieldy and sloppy on the highway you get on the highway and it has the Mercedes sedan kind of vibe where it's very controlled, the steering is tight, it's very crisp, you don't have a lot of nosedive. If you hit the brakes hard. It's it's a nice vehicle to drive but it's not like an overly in your face. Aggressive SUV, it's got it's like a happy medium, happy medium on size happy medium on power. Inside, it's beautiful. It has like Napa leather and heated seats. And there's on the one I have there's I think the base screen size is only like seven inches, I might have that wrong. But this one, it's a 10.25 infotainment touchscreen. And the only thing that it still freaks me out a lot of Mercedes have these on the steering wheel, there's a tiny little square on each side. That's a touchpad. I mean, it's not even the size. It's like half the size of your pinkie nail. It's this teeny, tiny little, teeny, tiny little square, which is kind of nice if you want to swipe through things, but also your hands go there. So accidentally you just move your hand and you're like, What am I Oh, I've changed the channel. I'm listening to gospel what has happened? How did I do this? Like, it just it's very easy to accidentally hit those. So I feel like it's a great idea. But somehow they're just in a position where I just move my hand off the steering wheel and on again and I've managed to brush it ever so slightly. And I have changed things. So I like if it feels like it's a good idea. But I'm not have you ever either view experiences in a Mercedes A little teeny? Unknown Speaker 4:47 It's been a long time Roberto Baldwin 4:48 with my hands because nine in three which is and of course every steering wheel. You know the little bars come out nine and three and then my hands are this big. Yeah. So they're large. So I'm always hitting buttons and things while I'm turning I'm just like, like anything that's really close to the edge I hit so i i Like I purposely I'm very like I don't hit the Mercedes Benz one very much but but yeah, like, like if you don't remember which one does which like the left sides for the for the cluster and the right sides for the infotainment system right so you'll you'll hit it you're like oh, I need to change something Oh suddenly popped up on the cluster and you hit the right one often something's going on in payments. Nicole Wakelin 5:28 I kept doing the infotainment screen was apparently apparently I moved my right hand far too much when I'm driving because I was constantly like, new channel volume. What am I doing? Like it was constantly changing. So I had issues with that. But I mean, it's not it's just like, I'm sure once I got used to it, it does feel like one of those things once you get the hang of it not to touch that little spot unless you actually want it to change something. It probably gets fine. But yeah, I kept changing things all the time. It also has, and I keep trying this and it it hates me the Hey, Mercedes. Mercedes hates me. I'll say is it okay everyone quiet like me the whole car. utter silence from everyone. Hey, Mercedes, directions to McDonald's. I'm sorry, Nicola. Say that again. You know, it's like it never never ever hears me it's always or it'll give me the can't help you with that right now. There that's not found. Please be more specific. And I'm like, directions to make Donald's. I don't know how to be more specific Sam Abuelsamid 6:29 sounds like the same use the same voice recognition software as Volkswagen, which is utterly trash. Nicole Wakelin 6:35 Yeah, it just couldn't get and then when he gets it, it's like, Oh, hey, cool. We'll take you to McDonald's. Here you go enjoy your diet coke. 25 minutes for me to say and I've gone by three McDonald's, trying to get it to give me directions to McDonald's. So but I said this one, I'm not a fan of the voice control. I like the idea that you can say hey, Mercedes also, I don't think I said the word Mercedes that much when I was driving, but the car thought I did. Because every now and then it's just like listening. And I'm like, I didn't call your attention why? And you see this like little squiggly thing? Roberto Baldwin 7:08 Maybe you hit the little little voice button with your microphone with your with your hand while you're while you're moving. Nicole Wakelin 7:17 Right, Rob? It's probably my own fault. It's like you didn't call for me? Sam Abuelsamid 7:20 Well, I mean, it is a Premium German Car. So anything that went wrong is clearly your fault. Nicole Wakelin 7:25 percent user error, it is not a design flaw at all. No way. So yeah, so I had some fights with the infotainment system, but it is like, you know, it's a nice big screen. It's the 10.25 was a big screen. It's very crisp. It's very clear. When you know, it's easy to see. It's it's it's not like, everything is really good. I like the system. I like the features it has, you know, it's got like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto it has the features you want it it just doesn't like me. You just have a hard time with it. But I think that's amazing, because I've experienced this in a couple of Mercedes where I just, I just have a I have a tough time. It's I still like it better than the stupid rotary controller and a Mazda. So there you go. Roberto Baldwin 8:05 See it works really, it works really well for me. But I drive a lot of Mercedes. So I think every time I get in the car, they're like Hey Rob, he's getting in the car. God this guy will not leave us alone. He's back again. Let's make sure that this thing works with his dumb voice. Nicole Wakelin 8:23 Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if it's a voice thing do you think I can Roberto Baldwin 8:27 voice its frequency there's a lot of like variables like my my cousin has a has a high voice. And she has she's you know she's born in America. She has just a slight California Mexican accent in her voice. So I think that like really throws off like I remember like Siri like for years like just would not understand her she gets so angry. There's just like little itty bitty things and they're getting better but they're still not perfect are still and you know I can't when I'm doing these these drives with these cars. I'm doing video inside the car. So I have like a camera in there and I have a little mic on and and I'll be saying things and I'll accidentally say Mercedes and then the little thing pops up and it's like how can I help you? Oh my gosh, shit that's not supposed to like figure out how to turn it off. And it's a whole it's a whole thing. I tend to it works. It works too well for me and not not well Nicole Wakelin 9:23 enough for me. I know what it is working to. Because it's constantly turning on and I don't need it. I'm like I don't I don't know wonder why you're turned on because I just pulled into my driveway in about turn the car off. I did not ask you to do anything at all. Roberto Baldwin 9:35 All it hears from you is Mercedes. What do you say? What do you say nickel Mercedes. Unknown Speaker 9:43 That's kind of feels like cars, like Sam Abuelsamid 9:45 the teacher and peanuts. Nicole Wakelin 9:48 Everything except the wild Mercedes. Like the teacher and peanuts. Yeah, that's how the system thinks I am Roberto Baldwin 9:53 Mercedes Womp womp womp womp womp womp Sam Abuelsamid 10:01 All right. And what what kind of fuel economy do you get out of this thing? Nicole Wakelin 10:06 I aimed aimed I got pretty close to what they said. So the official fuel economy, it's 20 City 27 highway 22 combined. I was doing a lot of highway driving in this. And I was like it like 23 ish and it was mostly highway so I feel like that's pretty fair. I wasn't nice to it. I was relatively the gas Unknown Speaker 10:26 isn't AMG. Yeah. I could have gone for Nicole Wakelin 10:30 like a putter under the highway, like a little lady. So I was Yeah, so I was aggressive in the driving but completely legal. So I felt like that was pretty good fuel economy for given how I was driving it and based on what it was saying it should be getting so good. Sam Abuelsamid 10:45 All right, Roberto, what have you been driving? Roberto Baldwin 10:49 So I'm just gonna segue into this. I was driving the EQ B, which is the electric version of the GLB. Oh, Mercedes all the time. All Mercedes all the time. I flew out to Germany. I went to the Eman Deagan test facility and really how do you say that? Did you meet a late that's how they say it. That's how they say it because I didn't even begin because I did the we'll talk about it a little bit later. But I did Drive Pilot there like months and months and months ago. And I had to do a stand up and I kept having to walk back over to the German. How do you pronounce this again? diggin Indian Indian? Funny. So now I know how to say it. I don't know how to say it wrong. Nicole Wakelin 11:28 I will never say it wrong, either. Thanks, Robbie. Roberto Baldwin 11:32 Amon diggin. And then I double check. And we're driving around. I made like, I had a co pilot for one of the drives and like Amundi and he's like, yeah, that's why my current Okay. They'll be saying it wrong. They're probably just like, You know what, you're never gonna get it right. Nicole Wakelin 11:44 So when you get those emails from everybody who lives in Germany that we're seeing it wrong. This is entirely Roberto Baldwin 11:48 apologize. I apologize for for butchering the name of your tenant which is very it's very quaintance in the south in Bavaria and Anywho. EQ B, I drove the 300 and the 350. The EB 300 was formatic. So both four will drive starts at $54,500. The QB formatic 350 Is $58,050 you can get a Mercedes Benz luxury SUV electric vehicle for under 60 grand Well, probably 60. Once you throw in all the how much things cost to ship to your house if you get the 350 What's funny is is that you know we just talked about how it's it's very well proportioned. You can get these with a third row. Unknown Speaker 12:35 A third incubate the EQ B with a third up Roberto Baldwin 12:37 with the third row but but because it's Mercedes, they tell you right up front in the press release. People who are five foot four will be fine. No no, no don't put tall people back here. Yeah, I've I've never seen that anyone else's like third row there. I was like, Hey, we got a third row. I can't tall you know, it's a third row. Mercedes like is a third row. If you're five foot four, you will be slightly comfortable everyone else not so much. Nicole Wakelin 13:04 Please, sir, on his five, four. That's your cut off, folks. Otherwise don't bother. So if you Roberto Baldwin 13:08 have so if you're shorter than me, I don't want to say short. If you're five, five, dated someone who was five, four, so I guess he was short. If you're shorter than me, our if you're a child, you're what six four? I'm 6363 Yeah, it was high school things were crazy. And so five, four, if you have children, you can put seven people in the in this vehicle or if you if you if you are short people I they didn't have the third row for me to try out. And I at this point, I don't really try those things out much. Unless it looks like I'll fit back there. If it looks like I'm not going to fit. There's no point other than like, you know, what am I going to take a picture of me looking like a fool smashed in the back isn't like a shrimp all shriveled up and Nicole Wakelin 13:56 Yes, do that. There's a third row in a car that is clearly too small for you. I triple dog dare you to crawl into the third row and take a picture Unknown Speaker 14:05 to see you like for Nicole. Nicole Wakelin 14:06 Yeah, do with your knees all the way up to your chin. Roberto Baldwin 14:10 That's what it's like. So you're the two trim levels. The 300 has 225 horsepower, 288 pound feet of torque. The 350 has 288 horsepower 395 I'm sorry, 384 pound feet of torque. And they are not they are definitely not the AMG they're not AMGs they are adequate. They work well. Drove it a little bit on the Autobahn or a little bit on the German back roads. Everything you're supposed to do with this car you can do with it. It is it is a 400 volt system. So it's not yeah don't Don't Don't get excited. It's only charges 100 The charge the DC fast charger is 100 kilowatt hours. And then we come down to the range which I wasn't supposed to know this but I found out anyway it's about To 30 to 30 miles of range which this is and here's the thing is that most people that's 90% of the people who are driving 99% of the time that's going to be totally fine but in the United States we have this very like 252 5250 is sort of the minimum for people so I think it's gonna hurt I you know, I really liked this car it's really nice it's very comfortable it's well proportion as as we've it's, you know, you get all the Mercedes bits you get the a Mercedes but you still get the little the little touchpad because they removed the touchpad and on the newer cars with the Hey Mercedes in the new version of the infotainment system and so you get both you get the best of both worlds you get old school and new school Mercedes in this and yeah, but it is definitely I think what people are gonna buy this for is their second you know, their second luxury vehicle it's the it's the vehicle for mom and dad to take the kids around town take them to school to go shopping. It is the around it is the around town Mercedes like utility vehicle this is the workhorse this is the thing you shove all the stuff in the back you get lots of room when you put the second seat down if you have a third seat and put that one down to get the third seat and take all the kids to soccer practice or baseball or whatever kid is lacrosse I guess rich people practice they choose to go to I've only seen rich people play lacrosse so I'm assuming there's a lot of lacrosse players Nicole Wakelin 16:30 or anyone that's played with one person who played they're not a rich people Robbie they're normal people Roberto Baldwin 16:36 it's an effect it just always like an East Coast rich person thing to me Nicole Wakelin 16:40 now this is just an East Coast normal person thing but exactly one human I know who played but this one person is nobody goes Roberto Baldwin 16:47 when it goes into lacrosse he's like he's the poverty kid right Unknown Speaker 16:52 he's the one on the scholarship Unknown Speaker 16:55 poverty people Roberto Baldwin 16:57 did and like his Camry and just like a regular human car and everyone else is pulling Unknown Speaker 17:02 like some really really just a regular Roberto Baldwin 17:05 human thing and everyone has a roll it up in their Mercedes in their Porsche says you know the trick that G wagons Nicole Wakelin 17:15 are there to speed up Camry now you're gonna figure out what kind of car exactly as if it's a care we all die laughing. Roberto Baldwin 17:22 Care probably Corolla Camry is a good car has a 70.5 kilowatt hour usable battery pack capacity, that was a weird sentence to say is very convoluted. Anyway, the battery pack has 70.5 kilowatt hours of usable energy 230 miles of range a little bit less further. 350. Yeah, you know, it's, I feel like it's if this car came out. Three years from now, I don't think the 230 miles of range would matter. I think, whatever. Fine. 230 I think right now, might be a little tough to sell it just a little. But then again, the Pollstar had less than 250. And people were buying that thing. So, you know, fingers crossed, the people are sort of figuring out that anything over 200 is, Nicole Wakelin 18:15 I don't you know, I'd like to think that but it's interesting. I've had it just in the last couple of weeks. Quite a few friends who said, Hey, would you go to an electric vehicle? Would you buy one like I'm looking at my next one being an Eevee. And these just normal Joe's, you know, no and fancy. And they all sort of still have that concern, like, well, how far do you go? Like, how far are we do you drive to work? Your office is is 10 minutes from here. You drive to the office, you drive around a little bit, you come back, I said, when do you ever drive? Over 200 You know, 250 300 350 miles in a day? They're like, well, a road trip. I'm like, So how often is that? I'm like you have to your car. Yeah, and so it's but it's funny when you say that to someone when they're genuinely asking you and you tell them and they sort of have that moment of like, well, yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't do that all the time. And I'm like, then go buy one if you want one. Buy it like you're already you don't need to wait but the number of questions I get where people worry about that makes me think most people are still very worried about it. Roberto Baldwin 19:09 Yeah, that's it's the I had a conversation with someone I was on a road trip with recently where we were driving 420 miles or something. And they were like, well until they hit 500 miles and I was like, No, that's that's yeah, I'm like we're not going to drive straight through on this trip. How has it been? No Sam Abuelsamid 19:27 way we're going 500 miles without a pitstop. Right? I mean, how big is your bladder? Nicole Wakelin 19:32 And honestly if you're if you're like say like Okay, so you went all in you have to EVs you do not want to have to stop on the once, maybe twice a year road trip, you go on where you would need to stop to charge because you just are not ready to stop. Then rent a car that one time a year like it's not like you know people have been renting cars to do road trips forever because you have too many people you have too much stuff you have a sedan at home. This is Dan you know your launcher is not going to take your family of four on a huge road trip and all their stuff you rent something Like steal the net net, just rent a car for the odd occasion that you think you need something and you just do not want to stop and have to charge and worry about finding a charging station. Unknown Speaker 20:11 It's not that hard. It's like, Roberto Baldwin 20:13 going further than three hours away from our house for a trip. And we're taking the dog, we rent a van. Like we could stick him in the back of the Kona and do it but we're like now dogs won't be comfortable. It's not even a range thing. And it's only because of the dog. Nicole Wakelin 20:27 Right? So I'd be like people rent cars like you for the dogs. It's like that's rental cars are out there for more than just like I've flown to another town, I need a car, you can use them for road trips, stuff, you can use them for other things. I feel like if you're nervous about it, God, just just rent a car for this few occasions. And I think then people will realize genuinely how few times they really need to have something like how many times do you think Well, I'm just gonna rent a car instead, not very often, you're going to realize it doesn't really happen that often that you need something or you truly want something. It has a ridiculous number of miles and is bigger Roberto Baldwin 21:00 than a question. When I was doing that long trip. I was worried about gas the entire time like Nicole Wakelin 21:06 I have I have a Ford Expedition coming for a road trip doing next weekend, which is great, because I have a lot of people but I'm like, Oh God, what does that get? Like one mpg. Sam Abuelsamid 21:17 And even you know, even if you live in New England, you know where it gets very cold in the wintertime, and you've got to crank up the heat, you know, and the window defogger and things like that. You're still gonna have like 200 miles, you're still gonna have plenty to arrange for, you know, whatever you need to do. Nicole Wakelin 21:33 Well, and the reality is like, you're right, because you do lose some range when you have cold weather. But most of the time for most people that have a lot of people that have families, how often do you do road trips in the winter? You normally if you're doing a road trip, it's the summer I mean, you do do in the winter, but like families you're going in the summer when you've got the kids out of school that you know that the winter road trip is not as common so it's it's like an even less of an issue. You know what I mean? Like? Roberto Baldwin 22:02 Yeah, so yeah, you QB 230 It's good car. You know, like gob. Gob is a good car. It's a modular platform. So they can put, you know, a G a gob AMG, they can throw a hybrid in there and they can throw the the EV powertrain in there as well. So it's yeah, good for good for rainy season doing that. We'll see how well it does. I also drove while hold on Sam Abuelsamid 22:26 before it before you wait. When? When does the ECB go on sale in the US? Oh, summer? Unknown Speaker 22:33 The summer next summer? Summer? Oh, so it's very soon. It's not? Summer? Roberto Baldwin 22:41 Yeah. Just says summer 2022. And did you say what the pricing is going to be on that? Yeah. At the beginning? I said 54 or 500? For the 358,000 for the 350. I'm sorry. Wait, what was it? Oh, yeah, EQ x x. So then I went to a human being and then I drove the EQ x x, their concept vehicle that gets they built to get 1000 kilometers per charge from a battery pack. That is less than 100 kilowatt hours. They won't tell you how much less. They say it's like nearest 99.98. Yes, exactly. So earlier this year, in April, they did 621 miles on a single charge going through the Alps, from Germany down to France. And then they're like, oh, you know, we can do this again. So then they did 747 miles range from Stuttgart down to Silverstone. And that down across over to Silverstone in the UK. And they you know, they didn't have to use the Euro tunnel. So you know, it's not a it's not a hydroplane car. It's not a magic hybrid flying boat car. But yeah, and so, on that trip, they're doing 7.5 miles per kilowatt hour. Which is that's pretty phenomenal. Yeah. Yes. So so they let me drive it because I don't know they've lost their mind. Like, you know, a button but I think they're driving on like public roads. Were again emanating this love saying and now. Nicole Wakelin 24:15 I'm like, Go Robbie, you Roberto Baldwin 24:16 got them. They have, you know, the big test tracks, they're busy. And so they had just roads and we drive along. And it's funny because you're driving and then like a little sign will pop up. And it's like a little flag of like Japan, Korea, China, like it's like it recreates those roads in that portion of the track. So you just I mean, Italy, France. I mean, China. I mean, Korea is funny because Korea, you could tell that one side was like a nice Korean road and then the other side was the rest of the Korean roads. And that's driving like once I was pretty messed up. Is that you Korean roads can be pretty hardcore, like messed up. Yeah, no, it was fun. It was fun to drive me you know, it's The vehicle with it is it is I was really surprised how close to production feeling it felt for a concept car, a concept test car, there's only one there's only one in the entire world and they let me drive it Sam Abuelsamid 25:17 there's there's one that's got finished bodywork and interior and everything. I'm pretty sure that there are at least several others that are you know, mules that have all the hardware. Oh, no, Roberto Baldwin 25:29 here's everything well, you know, the hardware for the development is actually an AMA, which is an EQ B. Okay, so they got an EQ, they got a GLB they ripped out all of its Electric Gas parts and all the all the the drive train the rear wheel drive, the battery, everything that's in the EQ x x is in this GLB and it's called Emma. Okay, and so that is their test mule is in so instead of having to build to EQ X X's they built they have Emma which, you know, they have I guess they have a couple of these, those GL B's they use for meals and this one specifically for the EQ x x and so before they did the initial trip and April in the EQ x x, they did it in AMA and they had to stop and get no charge because you know, it's not it doesn't have the it doesn't have the drag coefficient obviously of EQ x x. But ya know, so I got to drive Emma as well so I got to drive really weird. Like, like Frankenstein vehicle around it was a it was it was it was interesting because they're like, Oh yeah, it's Emma. They're not quite sure what it's like mod it's like something II and then like modular something something something and so they're like we're not really sure like what Emma stands for Unknown Speaker 26:44 but it works so we like it Roberto Baldwin 26:47 very unGerman so the top so the so Yeah, no it was it was like I thought there so they have like a bunch of like designed versions of it like that don't move it's just like air some bits and pieces and it looks nice and I did stand ups in front of those because you know all other journalists are driving EQ x x and what's what's interesting is that it's it looks like this like super car you know supercar sports car, but it's really you know, an efficiency vehicle so it gets a top speed of like 85 miles an hour. And the it only has 241 horsepower. And the way that the the acceleration is mapped is it has it doesn't have that crazy Evie torque at the beginning. So it sort of eases into it and then the torque bag goes up like later on is Nicole Wakelin 27:43 that would you like the crazy Evie torque Are you glad that it doesn't have that it felt Roberto Baldwin 27:47 like it felt fine really to be honest. You know when I hit it, it is kind of nice to have that because you can scare your friends and then when you're on the plane when you're when you're when you're going and you hit it then it's there. And so I think it was just that to like help to make sure that they get the most efficient vehicle possible but it's still drivable, it's still gonna you know take off when you need it. It has it's built on a 900 volt architecture while the rest of the Mercedes lineup the real lineup is 400 volt which gives me a good feeling that hopefully will Mercedes be moving to an 800 volt or 900 volt system and in the near future just because that 400 volt system really sort of it sort of keeps you constrained when it comes to DC fast charging the fastest you can go is 200 but most everyone stuck down at 190 kilowatts of charging as passive cooling is very comfortable inside and has like shag carpets and it just loves Nicole Wakelin 28:45 shag carpet. Is it avocado green harvest go Roberto Baldwin 28:49 it's like it's everything's blue because you know everything green is blue. And what the I don't know the big a big Sam Abuelsamid 29:02 C class size a little bigger a little smaller. Roberto Baldwin 29:05 Yeah. Yeah, probably like well, probably it's smaller product II see? Sam Abuelsamid 29:13 More like like a CLA. Roberto Baldwin 29:15 Yeah, more like a CLA it has back seats but I don't think any humans could sit back there. Okay, so it's a coupe like a proper coupe. It doesn't have four doors has two doors. It has this gigantic. How big is it's 40 I'm sorry, I didn't look at my notes. I'm trying to find it in my notes. I know I wrote it down. Maybe I wrote it down somewhere else. Anyway 40s plus inches, one giant screen across the front from pillar to pillar. And it's it's actually it's actually really cool because it'll show you like the wind disk like where the winds coming from and the speed thing I often Nicole Wakelin 29:52 wish they each direction as the wind comes Roberto Baldwin 29:55 them like you can legally look at it and determine like how efficient the vehicle is going to be going again. As the wind versus with a tail wind with this, you know, so Sam Abuelsamid 30:02 they do they factor that into the range estimation. Yeah. And then they have a range estimation. And then they Roberto Baldwin 30:07 tell you that you can tell where the sun is like the angle of the sun, because it has solar panels on top which add like 25 adds 25 kilometers, but the reality is, is that it adds 25 kilometers by not making the vehicles battery pack power, the infotainment system and H pack system. Unknown Speaker 30:25 Okay, so how is it using Roberto Baldwin 30:29 the sun powers the infotainment system, Nicole Wakelin 30:31 so the sun powers the electronic bits, Roberto Baldwin 30:33 yeah, and then it tells you like, you know, your drag coefficient as you're driving and it shows you when your passive cooling is open and closed and when active, the active aerodynamics are, are out or open and all this stuff and it looks really really nice. Like they didn't have to make it look this nice. So clearly, it sounds good. It looks really really good. You're like this is like, like the most interactive, like the most information out of an infotainment system. And a lot of like, the real The details are way over on the passenger side. Because the thing is so wide, which is for the you know, the passenger to like make notes. Okay, we're driving on this road. And but overall, I mean, this is a it's a it's a really, really fun, cool car. It's always fun to drive concept cars. Again, it's really close to to what I say to what to what a production car will be. But they're not going to sell you an EQ x x don't don't yeah, they don't have Mercedes, we don't have plans to bring this car to market ever, which, well, we don't have plans. We don't have plan, which makes me feel like well, maybe they do have plans. We don't have plans. But if enough journalists say we really liked this and enough people like on the internet, they would have plans. Yeah, like they wouldn't have like, you know, unless, you know, obviously not have a billions of dollars in cost to build this one. Like, you know, a short run, you know, 100 a year, maybe 1000? Because it's 1000 Kilometer car. What now, it's more than that. 747 Miles is a lot. But overall, no, it was it was really a great concept vehicle. And, you know, it's always fun to drive those. But it's more important that a lot of the tech that's in this vehicle will make its way into the Mercedes Benz lineup, which should make everything more efficient, which again, hopefully they'll they'll hit up the hidden 800 or 900 volt system in the near future. Sam Abuelsamid 32:27 Yeah, they do have a new vehicle platform coming out in 2020 for the modular, which is going to be an Eevee and so this year, most of the technologies you see in this thing will probably be in that vehicle. Roberto Baldwin 32:43 Yeah, it's pretty great if you if you go to a car show and it's there go look at it, it's just it's just a beautiful car. And you know, they could have just made a tear dropper I guess it's supposed to be a raindrop but for some reason in my brain cuz I listen to the Smiths too much growing up. That's a teardrop that that perfect, you know, drag coefficient vehicle is a teardrop or a raindrop. Sorry. Sam Abuelsamid 33:09 All right. I also had had some time last week with an electric vehicle, which I will get to in a minute. But first, before went on vacation when we were last recording. I was driving the new 2023 Nissan Z. No numbers now just Z. That's all it is. No, no 400 Z or anything else, just z. And I had driven it for a couple of hours back in early June. I think it was maybe late May I really enjoyed the car and got to spend a whole week with it, you know, see what it's like to live with. And it's still really good. This is a great sports car. You know, it's a lot of what's underneath in terms of the platform is it's not entirely new, you know, there's a lot of carryover bits, but they've been refined and improved from the previous generation Z which is fine because there was not really much wrong with that. They the powertrain is the three liter twin turbo V six that has been in some of the infinities in the Q 50. And the q 60. Redline I forget what the branding is that they use, but the high higher performance versions of the Q infinity Q 50 and Q 60 sedans is it read sport report that says okay, yes, that's the one. Unknown Speaker 34:35 I was like, Wait, what is it? So it's Sam Abuelsamid 34:37 a 400 horsepower, twin turbo V six 350 foot pounds of torque. It feels a lot stronger than the old 370 Z naturally aspirated V six, even though it's only three liters now. It's the same wheelbase as before. The car itself, the body is a couple of inches longer than before, so there's a little bit more overhang. But you know, I really liked the design of this one. It's, it's modern. But you know, there's some cues that harken back to old Z's of old. And I took it to a cars and coffee on a Saturday morning, here in Birmingham, and I had it parked next to one of the guys from Autoblog had brought a 911 GT three, the brand new one. And I had parked next to that one, and probably a lot more people taking a look at the Nissan, because this was in the the blue that they have, which is a fantastic shade of blue. Cerri car and blue is what they call it. Yeah, I knew that TNC and, you know, since very few people had seen it in person up to that point, it was garnering a lot more attention than the 911. You know, even though it was, you know, high end 911 People see nine elevens, you know, at that cars, Roberto Baldwin 35:57 elevens and 911. And Sam Abuelsamid 35:59 there's always at least, you know, eight or 10, at a minimum nine elevens that that Cars and Coffee event. And you see them all the time. So, you know, this was the first time most people were seeing the the Z in the new Z and person. And, you know, people really seem to like it. And I had a great time driving this thing. I had the one with the manual transmission. There's two in the local fleet here. One's an automatic. The other one's a manual, I had the manual. This is the launch edition. Or yeah, I think it's the launch edition is what they're calling it or something like that. So it also had the blue interior that matched the exterior, you know, very, very flashy looking. Sam Abuelsamid 36:46 The, the price on this one was $53,210, including delivery charges. Base price on the Z is $40,000, which is actually pretty reasonable for the level of performance that you get, it's quite a bit cheaper than a Supra and has similar or better performance. arguably better looking than the Supra. Certainly a cleaner looking design is not not quite as over designed in some respects. And it's got carries over some of the features from before like for example, if you're less comfortable driving a manual transmission really fast, it still has the synchro rev matching for shifting. So you know if you're if your heel and toe technique is not quite up to par, it'll it'll do the rev matching with the the engine as soon as you move the shifter. And so it makes it makes driving a lot smoother that way. It's got a mechanical limited slip differential, the nine inch touchscreen wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support. Sam Abuelsamid 37:57 And when you look at this thing, you wouldn't think that there's actually that much luggage room but my wife and I took this car to we dropped it off at the airport when we were heading out on our vacation. And there was plenty of room in the back for two standard carry on cases plus a couple of backpacks and we could have really Nicole Wakelin 38:11 surprises me I would think that there would be barely enough room for the backpacks. Sam Abuelsamid 38:17 No, it's cuz it's a fairly long cargo area. So I'm real deep. But we could I could lay down to back to two suitcases in their backpacks on either side, you know in the corner. I guess I can see that. Okay, you've got to it's not a real deep but it's a fairly broad cargo area. Because then I you know when I got the car I explicitly took the suitcases out there because I wanted to figure out if I needed to arrange for alternate transportation to the airport or if you Nicole Wakelin 38:49 like Jenga them in there somebody Sam Abuelsamid 38:52 any Jenga action just don't drop them in they're fit perfectly so it was great. So you know it's a big great car for you know, we can get away for a couple you know, take take what you need what else Oh, I did my my role as well. So Nicole Wakelin 39:19 at this point is actually same thing, same thing you know Sam Abuelsamid 39:36 significant other, go for a drive. That's great. Great. I gotta go with it. We've got one one last one for the man manual. So the season but but but not Unknown Speaker 39:56 what you'd expect, right? Sam Abuelsamid 39:59 So it was it was A lot of fun to drive. I really enjoyed this car. And if I was looking to buy a new sports car right now, this is definitely this would definitely be near the top of the list of from what's available right now. You know that is relatively attainable, looks great drives great and has, you know, kind of the modern amenities that you expect in in a new car. So, I dropped off the z at the airport at Detroit metro airport. Roberto Baldwin 40:30 See you later. Sorry, have you waited the entire time? I'm always gonna drop it off. He's gonna talk about how I got rid of it. Sam Abuelsamid 40:38 And we got on a plane flew out to San Francisco. And from there I picked up a Ford Mustang maki GT. Performance edition, actually. So the the highest end of the high end Maki's Nicole Wakelin 40:54 and see fancy it, Sam Abuelsamid 40:56 it took a little finagling, we had to switch cars a couple of times before the trip, I was originally going to have a pole star too. And I got a call from the fleet company on Friday and said, Yeah, that car got damaged on a previous loan, it's in the shop waiting Oh, no. So got was gonna get a regular Maki, not the GT, because the GT wasn't going to be available till the second day of our trip, when we were already going to be up north. And then something happened oh, that one had a tire that needed replacing. And they were had to wait a couple of days for a tire. So they put me in, they move things around and got me the GT in time for our arrival at SFO. And we hopped in, drove that one up north, drove up to first to Santa Rosa, grab some groceries and then turn west into the redwood forests of northern California. Sam Abuelsamid 42:06 And the GT performance edition is only rated at 260 miles, the regular GT is 270 miles of range. And if you look at a map of where charging stations are, in this region of northern California, are actually a lot of places, you'll find that there are lots and lots of public charging stations and there's like DC fast charging stations every 10 miles, all the way up one to one. But as soon as you get more than about two or three miles away from Highway 101, there's nothing Nicole Wakelin 42:40 I mean, desolate desert no charging for you public Sam Abuelsamid 42:43 charging there. In the whole region where we were staying. There were like two hotels that had Tesla destination chargers, which are their their AC, their 20 or 40, amp AC chargers. And the least on the map, there was no you know, no non Tesla chargers anywhere in the entire region. So we stopped at Whole Foods, grab some groceries, there was an Eevee go charger there plugged it in, topped it off there, you know in about 20 minutes while we're getting there, getting our groceries. And then we headed headed west to the place where you're staying, which was a little place in the middle of the forest, right next to a creek. And fortunately, when we got there, it turns out that there was a plug on the outside of the house and the court was just wanting the cord with the car was just long enough to reach from that plug to where the car parked with maybe about a foot to spare. And so it was able to keep it topped up there you know just off of 120 volt outlet and that worked out fine. Sam Abuelsamid 43:52 The the GT you know I know there have been people that have driven the GT on the track and we're less impressed by its its handling behavior and, and everything else on a racetrack. And when the Michigan State Police did their annual testing of police vehicles last fall, they included the maki GT for Ford supply to maki GT for them to test further their work at gentlemen Raceway in Western Michigan. And, you know, they had some complaints about the way it behaved, you know, in in persistent high speed performance on the track. But on the road, you know, this this region, you know, the roads rarely go straight for more than you know, a few 100 feet. You know it's lots of twists and turns. And after not too long after we left Santa Rosa my wife was saying can you back it off just a little bit there. And if if you've ever written shot gotten, you know, on roads like this, you know, it can be a little unsettling to your stomach. So I did back off a little bit. And I was using the one pedal drive mode and the the Maki. And I was able to use that system in the Maki, the way it's tuned, it's very you can you can drive shockingly smoothly just modulating your foot on the accelerator pedal. As long as you're not like lifting your foot off the accelerator all the time, you know, just bet up and down. You can you can keep the amount of acceleration and deceleration to a minimum and still maintain at a decent speed but be much smoother. And on the road, you know, while the the maki GT may not be the perfect track car on the road, it's for something that weighs nearly 5000 pounds. It does remarkably well. It's the performance edition, you get Magna ride dampers on there, which you know, the those things are amazing. They're whatever you put those on, it always makes the car better. And we had a great time with this thing. Driving around Northern California, you know, going to places like Bodega Bay and in timber Cove and Marshall ate lots of oysters. Lots of fresh oysters from Tomales Bay. And just Oh good. Yep. And we went to go rock beach. One day we grabbed some sandwiches from a place and went out to go rock beach where we went with the Infiniti QX 60. Yes, Nicole Wakelin 46:35 that's supposed to be like one of the most dangerous beaches in the universe as far as getting swept away. If you're in the water. Yes, Sam Abuelsamid 46:41 they warn you do not go in the water here. Roberto Baldwin 46:43 Northern California just killed people left and right. Yeah. It's all quaint and beautiful. But the water hill just when I first moved to the San Francisco, I lived out by ocean beach. And there was just constantly like, and one day I for about two months. I was like, does anyone talk about the fact that how often the water here just kills? Just out of the water is what I'm trying to say. Unless you're a very good swimmer. And you know, you understand how the ocean works. Don't Don't Don't just say Nicole Wakelin 47:11 they had his favorite was like, I was with another journalist and she's taking Eileen and she's like taking video and I'm watching the water that's coming really close. And I'm doing I'm like she's gonna get washed. I'm like doing this like, I leave. And she like gives me the one minute finger like that. Hold one minute and I'm like, I tried to save your butt. You're on your now girl. Why didn't like up halfway up her thighs or shoot? I was like, I tried to tell you. You didn't listen to me. And you almost died. But but she didn't. She didn't. She was almost death. She's still here. She's still here. Roberto Baldwin 47:41 Yeah, never turn your back on the ocean never used to see it all the time. Really? No, it's true. It's Unknown Speaker 47:48 absolutely yeah. No, it's Roberto Baldwin 47:50 not. Yeah, those Sam Abuelsamid 47:51 those waves. When a big one comes in, you know, I mean, there's a lot of power in that water. So the efficiency, this thing driving up one on one to Santa Rosa and back, you know, driving highway speeds, the machi was getting about 2.7 miles per kilowatt hour, which is fine. You know, it's pretty close to what the the EPA liberal rating is, you know, that would work. If I was, if I just did a full charge 75 miles an hour, then get about 245 250 miles of range out of it. When when we got off the highway, you know, slightly lower speed, curvy stuff that actually jumped up to about 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour. Over the course of the whole week, we averaged about 3.3, which works out to about 300 miles of driving range. So it's split roughly evenly between highway and, and bad road driving. Could would have gotten about 300 miles out of out of a full charge, which is is quite a bit better than the EPA label rating. And I really, really enjoyed driving this thing. One thing I did notice, when we were heading north from San Francisco, I turned on the blue cruise. And one of the things one of the complaints I've had with blue cruise on the F 150. And the lightning is and also on the Lincoln Navigator is you know, they tend to have a relatively monochromatic color scheme, primarily blue for the instrument cluster. And we talked about this before we're you know, it's not always immediately clear, it's not always so obvious when it's changing modes between hands free and hands on the wheel because it doesn't change full colors. The Maki, the one that when the headlights are off, the default color scheme for the instrument cluster is actually white. And then when the lights are on it goes to gray and then when you're or in blue Cruz hands free mode, it goes to blue. So especially in in daylight, but even even at night, you can you can tell much more readily when it is switching mode between hands free and hands on when it wants you to put your hands on the wheel, it's much more obvious than it is in those other vehicles. So that's, that's an improvement, the system is still not as good as supercruise GM supercruise. But it's def that that that slight HMI difference is a big improvement compared to the F 150 in the in the Navigator. So that is the maki GT performance addition which the one as I drove, priced out to $69,600, including the $1,100 destination charge, which is quite modest for her for modern for, right. Yeah, it was the base price for the GT is 59, nine, and total of $8,600 and options. So that got it to just shy of 70 grand, which is not cheap. But if you're looking for a mid size, fairly high performance crossover, that's electric, that gets decent range. It's definitely one to take a look at. And there's also another direct competitor to this car coming about a year from now. The 2024 Chevrolet blazer, Evie, Nicole Wakelin 51:32 is it really a direct competitor? Or is the difference between the whole like aura of a Mustang versus blazer two totally entirely completely different humans? Sam Abuelsamid 51:46 I think by branding alone, I would definitely say that when you when you look at this vehicle, look at the specs look at you know, clearly what's the intended market for the blazer, Evie is not This by no stretch of the imagination, the same people who would have owned, you know, a K 10 blazer back in the 1970s or 1980s, which was a big full size body on frame, you know, gas and VA engined you know, SUV, the the predecessor to the Tahoe. This is this is a completely different customer. And, you know, I, I really think that it very clearly is targeted at the maki and the model Y it's similar in size, they they didn't give us the exact dimensions, you know, I saw it, it looks pretty close. They what they would say is that it's similar in size to the current gas engine blazer, which is about six inches longer than a Maki or a model why. But otherwise, you know pretty similar overall the the limited amount of specs they gave us, you know, it's it's it's pretty spot on, you know with the range with the performance range that you're going to get with the with the Maki, the base model is going to have a range of about 247 miles which coincidentally is exactly what you get with the base Maki, the longest range RS version are actually I think it's the one lt is going to be is projected to be 320 miles. And then variations in between that, depending on which powertrain you get one one thing that is unique about this, you know what the machi you can get it as rear wheel drive or all wheel drive the blazer, you can get a front wheel drive, or you can get rear wheel drive or all wheel drive. So you can get the reorders matter wherever you want. Nicole Wakelin 53:48 Like whatever the heck you feel like okay, Unknown Speaker 53:51 why? Roberto Baldwin 53:54 Why make that drive? Sam Abuelsamid 53:56 Actually, I think I do know, I think the probably the reason why they they offer the front wheel drive version is you know, you're going to be able to get more regenerative braking out of a front wheel drive vehicle than out of a rear drive vehicle. Because your your front brakes do most of the work. So they probably probably ran the numbers and realized, okay, if we do a front drive model, we can get this thing up to 247 miles of range. If we do a rear drive model, we're maybe only going to get 230 And so they probably decided okay, we'll offer the front drive version to get that minimum range up there fleet vehicle. Yeah, so that's what the standard range battery and the the front end the front wheel drive will get 247 Oh, and Chevrolet did announced that they will be offering an official police package version of the blazer, Evie. Nicole Wakelin 54:50 No kidding. Yeah, let's sneak right up on you won't even know he's there. Yeah, exactly. Roberto Baldwin 54:55 Why did they have to turn that? Can they turn off the low speed gene Go jangal sound that they have to have on vehicles no I feel like Nicole Wakelin 55:05 you'd have to because they're trying to be all stealthy right going in because now I've turned it into a TV show every single cops life where there's gonna be all stealthy like sneaking into like where the bad guys are camped out they want to be as quiet as he can but then all of a sudden the cars going whoo whoo whoo is is pulling in I feel like that would not be helpful to their stealthiness Roberto Baldwin 55:22 but I mean the gas cars right now so it's like Nicole Wakelin 55:25 no but like if you had the stealth Why would you give up the stuff you should be like you know you can disable auto start stop you should stop you should be able to disable the little beeping noise as a cop this yeah stealth mode Roberto Baldwin 55:40 coming up to people with their their ice cream truck that type sounds like Sam Abuelsamid 55:46 the question is, do you really want cops sneaking up on you? No, Nicole Wakelin 55:50 I'm not. I'm not worried about cops sneaking I think Sam Abuelsamid 55:54 that there's a whole thing I have a whole you know you're not a bad guy. Roberto Baldwin 56:00 That thing you're doing right now is probably illegal. That's the whole thing. Yeah, I have a whole long manifesto about not being a bad person or not doing things that people should be concerned about online and like the reality is, but I'll Nicole Wakelin 56:18 get in my car. I don't think there's a lot but they can sneak up on me. I know I'm talking about like, I'm doing bad things out in the real world and he's sneaking up to me as I'm I don't know what are you doing and you're an abandoned warehouse making drugs? I don't know. Whatever. I'm not worried about that. I am not doing those Roberto Baldwin 56:36 drugs. You got the big law. You got the big drug making machine just run in Cluck. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck. Sam Abuelsamid 56:41 And I would have guys be working in working in the basement of that. Underground. Where underneath the laundry. That services the New Mexico chicken joint. Roberto Baldwin 56:52 Exactly. Nicole Wakelin 56:53 Me That's exactly it. So I'm thinking about that. I don't do that. Even though I have a plan for it. I don't do that. So don't Roberto Baldwin 57:00 do that. That we're aware of Nicole Wakelin 57:02 wink wink nudge nudge. Roberto Baldwin 57:03 Yeah, like you're really like making a case that you're not going which now makes me wonder. Sam Abuelsamid 57:12 So what do you think of the design of the blazer EV? That's fine. Nicole Wakelin 57:19 That's the worst answer. Roberto Baldwin 57:22 It's, it's I think it's nicer than it. Probably to be honest, probably than it has to be. I actually forgot to buy it. Because they liked the blazer. I think the new blazer looks really nice. I think this is like okay, cool. Yeah, the thing that you made it looks nice. It's gonna continue look nice and it'll be an Eevee Sam Abuelsamid 57:40 the first thing that struck me when I walked into the studio and saw this thing was the front signature lights which look like they took them straight off of a pulsar a Volvo it looked just like the Thor's hammer lights Yeah, totally Nicole Wakelin 57:54 right. Oh my gosh. Oh Roberto Baldwin 57:56 . Now that doors gonna be so angry it's gonna be ticked ah Sam Abuelsamid 58:03 but the interior I mean overall I think it's a good looking vehicle the interior look you know was on the show car that they had there was really nicely executed, you know, big 17.7 inch center touchscreen digital instrument cluster. The one that they had, there was an SS, which is going to be the top top of the line model, which is going to have like something like 556 horsepower, some more more power than than the maki GT. But you know, this also appears to be pretty, it's going to be largely the same underneath as the Cadillac lyric and the lyric weighs 5600 pounds. The maki GT is just under 5000 pounds. My guess is that this thing because it you know assuming it it's a little bit bigger than the maki it's probably going to be somewhere in the 53 5400 pound range so a little heavier than the Ford but so it's not going to be you know that's going to eat into the efficiency a bit but it's also got a little bit bigger battery it's going to be the large battery is going to be the same 100 kilowatt hour battery that's in the lyric and then 190 kilowatt charging capability if you can find a charger that actually works at 120 kilowatt hours but we'll we'll get to that later. But you know all the all the usual features that you expect on a modern vehicle pricing for the one LT model there's gonna be four trims, plus the cop car. The one LT two LT RS and S S starts at about 45,000 and change, including delivery for the one Lt. Going up to think about 67 or so. 68 for the SSH And then everything in between the the two LT and the RS launch in summer of 2023. So just about a year from now. The next fall will be the SS and then the one LT and the the police package watch in early 2020 For Nicole Wakelin 1:00:19 me kind of ways to go for this somehow I thought it'd be coming sooner. Roberto Baldwin 1:00:22 Yeah. The cops aren't gonna sneak up on it just yet. Not yet. Nicole Wakelin 1:00:25 I get a little more time for my drugs down in the bottom warehouse. Yeah, okay got about a year that up Roberto Baldwin 1:00:32 all the money. We learned anything from Breaking Bad. Is that a he was always a bad guy and be don't get greedy. That's Nicole Wakelin 1:00:41 crazy. Don't get greedy. Sam Abuelsamid 1:00:43 Yeah, he was he was always bad at heart. He never really looked bad. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:00:49 All right. Next up. Scott Key Whoa, Ford. VW of America had a little reorganization this week. And Scott Keogh, who's been head of Volkswagen of America for the last several years is no longer going to be the CEO of VW North America. He is now in charge of Scout, which we talked about a few weeks back. The W's relaunching the scout brand, which they acquired ownership rights to when they when Triton, their Commercial Vehicle Division bought Navistar last year. And Navistar owned International Harvester and the scout trademark. So they're relaunching Scout as an Eevee. Only SUV and truck brand. Scott keel is going to be in charge. What do you think? Roberto Baldwin 1:01:44 Scott? I liked Scott, when he was running out in North America when he went over to Volkswagen North America. But he's also like the guy who just says things that is that might be a little like, he was like, You know what SUVs aren't going to be like number one forever, like stuff like that. I can have conversations with him. He's very, he's very forthcoming. He has a lot of money. I think he's, I think for Scout this actually, to me, this makes Scout seem like more of a real thing that they're going to do. They're going to put somebody a known entity who knows what he's doing, and I think, is probably more suited to something that's new and exciting, as opposed to jumping on the train. That is Volkswagen America, which is just a constant moving thing. The ID four is a fine, fine vehicle, except for the infotainment stuff, which they finally fixed and some of the cleverness, but it's also you know, it's, it's not that exciting. It's not as exciting and stuff that's happening over at Audi. So we'll see, I think this is good for scout. I don't know how Scott feels about this he might like, but he might be excited about the idea of like getting off this giant monster train and jumping on something new and exciting. So we'll see. I think it'd Nicole Wakelin 1:02:53 be kind of exciting to take take the reins of a name that's coming back and coming back as an Eevee. company or an EVP? You know, I think there could be exciting for him. I think it'll I think it's only good for scout. I don't think it's going to be a negative. I think it's a positive. Sam Abuelsamid 1:03:11 You know, the scout, you know, the International scouts been gone since the early 1980s. So it's been gone jump 40 years. Yeah. As a new vehicle. You know, there's still a base of fans for scout. I mean, there's people that love scouts. But do you think that this is a brand that has enough recognition that it's actually going to gain any traction? Nicole Wakelin 1:03:36 I don't think it almost is like it doesn't really, I mean, there'll be people who will recognize that I recognize it only because someone I think of it as the kid my best friend. I mean, the car my best friend's dad drove like in years ago when I was really little and that's my only memory of that brand. I didn't even know it was still around as late as it was. So I don't think there's necessarily like a huge legion of people that will flock to it because Oh, Scout is back. But I just think it's neat to have the the lure of a new brand name for the people who don't know that it existed before. Now it's something cool and new and Evie only I think it's I think it'll take a little bit of what it had and then add to it for people who don't know I don't think it's gonna make a difference. But I still think it's cool. You have a new thing people will look at it and think Oh, it's a new direction they're doing something new. It's cool. What's this all about? Roberto Baldwin 1:04:24 I mean, the reality is most people didn't care about the the the old school Bronco until the new Bronco was coming out. Like people just like the people were in the old school Broncos were in the old school Broncos, when everyone else was just like when whenever. So and it gives you know it gives Volkswagen and Scott and that whole team over there the opportunity to go after Bronco to go after Jeep to go after Land Rover with an Eevee like we're you know, we get to go after these these these companies that are making these off road vehicles and we're gonna go after him with an Eevee and try to get there and I don't know if they're gonna get there first. Who knows how How long it's gonna take to get the Bronco on an Eevee platform? Or I'm sure they probably said something but you know, things are always moving now in our crazy supply chain world. But yeah, I think you know, Volkswagen got a lot, you know, the ID buzz became this huge big deal and the really the only people who cared about the the ID buzz for a long time were hippies and surfers. Yeah. And so, you know, the microbuses are like, oh, and then also they came out like, oh, yeah, I remember you know, my, my pot smoking high school sophomore, like girlfriend had one of those. That was a cool thing. Oh, I completely forgot about how cool some things were back in, you know, we're in the day. I mean, those things are probably death traps. But you know, everyone wants one now. And and so it's, you know, it's gone from enthusiast vehicles of old into something that people really like. And I think the Bronco is really sort of like, showing that you can take an old enthusiast vehicle and make it into something crazy. And I think Volkswagen, if they don't mess it up, can do that with scout. Sam Abuelsamid 1:06:04 Yeah. And, you know, one of the interesting things is that, you know, this is not just being established as another brand for VW group, but actually as a as a separate company. It's a separate, separate business unit that is wholly owned by Volkswagen, but is an independent company. So Scott's going to be running this company. And I'll be curious, I'm, I'm guessing that one of the things that they're going to do since this is an Eevee, only startup technically a startup company with no no dealer network, that they will not have franchise dealers when they launch so they'll probably follow the Tesla Model of having of having company owned retail outlets that can focus just on off road EVs. Roberto Baldwin 1:06:58 Yeah, if you want someone who's going to spin up a company who knows a lot about automotive and the VW way, it's Scott. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:06 I mean, he's a marketer at heart. I mean, when I first started, he was, yeah. And you know, when I first met him, when he was at Audi, he was he was head of marketing at Audi. And he's always been a marketer at heart. So Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:19 be really interesting to watch over the next several years, I think, I think probably going to not we're not going to see Scout launch vehicles until about 2025 or 26. So he's got got some time. Roberto Baldwin 1:07:30 It'll be Yeah, I just remember, I really liked the scout. I don't remember how well they, you know, it seems like my friend, my friend was horrible at taking care of his car, and they keep kept running. But you know, it was also, you know, the 80s and 90s. His dad probably fixed it for him. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:48 Well, I mean, there were there were pretty simple vehicles. You could didn't take much to keep them running. That's good. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:55 All right. Mercedes. Again, you mentioned you tried to Drive Pilot last year over in Germany. And sounds like they're getting ready to start launching it here. In the US, by middle of next year. Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:13 What do you think about dry pilot? Robbie? This is an L three system that lets us not watch the road. Roberto Baldwin 1:08:18 I've done to dry pilots at Iman Deegan. I did the one this one that we're talking about that's on Nicole Wakelin 1:08:24 Where did you do that? Again, I'm sorry, it was okay, just checking. Roberto Baldwin 1:08:27 And I've done one in LA, the one in LA was I wasn't behind the wheel, the ones in Germany I was behind the wheel. It's, it's a, it's a really smart, good system, you actually have your hands off the wheel. And you can actually, like, do other things on the you know, in the car, or read a book or use your phone. And then it says, hey, oh, by the way, you need to take over and it gives you time to take over. It is sensor tastic there's a lot of sensors on there. You know, there's LiDAR, there's, there's a sensor that tells you when it's raining, it's under, it's in the wheel well, and when it detects rain, they'll turn the system off because you can't You're not allowed to use it in the rain and has high definition like GPS, it has, you know, uses all these different satellite systems and make sure you're exactly where you're supposed to be. There's a lot of tech in it, it's you know, it's it's true level three, and then at the end of the day, I cannot stop looking at the road I visited Craig You know, the the two times I was in Germany, it was you know, they they had a hole they created like freeway traffic on the track. So they had a big truck they had like emergency vehicle they had all these people kept in front of you they had all these things that would happen that the car would have to react to and it did all the things like it was supposed to it and act weird and you know, it didn't you know slamming anything, which means they trust it and they you know, I was behind the wheel so they're like, well, good luck. But at the end of the day, I don't know I was telling them like, how hard is it for you to not look at the road? Because it's it's it goes, it's flies in the face of everything that you do when you're behind the wheel, which is paying attention. And I think initially people will probably be fine, you know, have difficulty. But then after about two months, that'd be like, on their phones and, you know, playing Tetris on I played Tetris in one day, there's a browser, you can watch video, I watched a video of Dr. Pilot inside the car doing Drive Pilot. But as soon as the system turns back on, it says, hey, you need to take over all that shuts, you can't you can't access it anymore. So if I'm driving, and I say an emergency vehicle comes up behind me. As soon as it recognize that emergency vehicle, it tells you how to take over. And so anything you're doing on that screen, that screen goes back to like the home screen. It's like, hey, no, you got to you got to enhance the little lights on the back wheel. And yeah, it's very good at telling you like what to do. And that's it. I don't know how that's going to work with us regulates the US laws, because it might be like, yeah, you can you can just you can deploy it in California and Nevada, which, you know, they'll probably be the first places that will do it. But what do you mean, you still have a cell phone law? You can't have your cell phone in your hand. And we should just tell your car? Oh, by the way, my car is really fancy. I don't have I can use my phone and they're constantly like, sneaking up on you with their little blazer. Blazer. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 1:11:31 Score hammer lights. Roberto Baldwin 1:11:33 Oh, my God. Is that a bowl? Oh, no. Oh, god. No. It's a blazer. Blazer. Swedish cop? Oh, no, wait. Yeah, so I you know, using you're reading a book, like all these things, that they're Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:47 that you're just reading a book while you're driving in California, right? Roberto Baldwin 1:11:52 You can't have anything I suppose to have anything in your hands. Nicole Wakelin 1:11:55 It's have to be free. Yeah, it's you can't? Yeah, so you like having soda or something? Yeah, cheeseburger. So where do you draw the line? Sam Abuelsamid 1:12:06 Can you get can you get the Kindle app on the screen in the Mercedes? Roberto Baldwin 1:12:11 Oh, maybe I'm sure they'll probably in a book, you can just watch movies, I guess the whole time. Because I know Sam Abuelsamid 1:12:17 Mercedes has a deal with suppliers part called for sia that has an alternate Android app store called Aptoide. That they're going to be integrating in some in their future cars. So you know, maybe you can get the the, you know, the Kindle, Android app, running on the center screen in your car. So you can you can read while you're while Dr. Pilot is taking care of the work. And there's Roberto Baldwin 1:12:44 a web app for it. You can just load up. There's a browser? There you go. If you got to just do it in the browser, zoom in the browser. You don't do all these things. But yeah, this, what can you can you have your phone in your hand? Can you not have your phone in your hand? How do you how do they determine whether or not like, oh, do I pull that gun away? It was you have a special Mercedes, you have to look for that little bolt in the back for that. Nicole Wakelin 1:13:05 Stupidly complicated now that you say this, you're totally 100% right to make this work. The level of complication is going to be absurd. Sam Abuelsamid 1:13:13 Well, and this is one of the reasons why, you know, back in 2018, when when Audi launched the current generation eight, at the time that they announced it, they announced this traffic jam pilot system. And this was the eighth was the first one to be equipped with LiDAR, that's actually the same LIDAR sensor, Vallejo Skala LIDAR sensor that Mercedes is using. And they were going to have the same kind of level three capability that you have with Drive, drive pilot. And they ultimately decided, no, we're not we're not actually going to launch this because you got different laws, you got this patchwork of laws and all these different states and you know, we can't make it work everywhere. So screw it, we're just, we're just gonna give up. Roberto Baldwin 1:13:58 So now they have a un like rule that it adheres to, but the two countries that don't adhere to that rule are the United States and China which are a huge huge huge market for well for everyone really, but especially for Mercedes for as a luxury brand. And so you're just like Okay, so now they have to like figure out like, Okay, this state and this state and that the geofence it and you know, it's if you especially in LA if you live in LA and you have to go 10 Miles that's going to take three hours you know, and you're just sitting there Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:30 seven mile an hour speed limit on the 405 is no big deal. I mean, you'd never get there Roberto Baldwin 1:14:35 you'll never get there Yeah, so it's you know, you're just sitting there for a long time and you could get work done and you could get work done without like putting others in danger and yourself in danger. It's just the sort of like figuring like, I don't think you're gonna be able to use your phone legally. In these just because the average you know, Swedish cop and a Chevy Blazer is not like that. That was a Volvo is not gonna know that your car is a level has level three you know it'd be you know the hands free thing they're like you know, no one's pulling you over for that, you know, are we getting people pulled over for supercruise all the time. But if you're like, you know if I'm just sitting there with my phone in my face just like staring Sam Abuelsamid 1:15:21 I mean unless you you're holding your hands up in the air you got behind your head with with supercruise usually can't tell if somebody's got their hands on the wheel, they might be on the bottom of this tray Nicole Wakelin 1:15:32 with their hand on the bottom of it all the time. And you can't tell Yeah. Are you Roberto Baldwin 1:15:35 supposed to put your hands anyway and that's the situation supercruise I just lay him like on my lap and they're right next to the wheel. Nicole Wakelin 1:15:45 I would just my hands in my lap. I feel like like, really in a photo, like I don't know where to put my hands. It's just in my lap. Roberto Baldwin 1:15:52 Okay, just once I'm done doing the testing on the curves that I know that are difficult and the areas that I know are difficult my hands end up just back on the wheel because like, where else am I going to put in my pocket? I can then you're sitting down like what do you do here? Cross my cross my arm. Nicole Wakelin 1:16:09 Center. Yeah, what Unknown Speaker 1:16:10 do you do is Yeah, Roberto Baldwin 1:16:11 so no, it's I think it's it. You know, Mercedes Benz is doing the right thing, being super careful to being super safe with this, testing it with, you know, actual engineers and know what they're doing as opposed to just randos. You know, I know they were trying to get this in California by the end of this year, but I guess that's not you know, everything. Everything takes longer than you didn't you think and it does. Sam Abuelsamid 1:16:39 All right. Nicole, when we were down in play, call for for the Toyota Palooza, title palooza. Yeah, at one point in there. They took us into a secret room in Korea headquarters. Nicole Wakelin 1:16:57 They put tape over our phones that no they put Sam Abuelsamid 1:16:59 that they put them up in a little bag. So we couldn't take pictures or record anything. And they showed us two cars, one of which we can talk about now. Yeah. The Toyota crown coming back to America for the first time in 50 years. Nicole Wakelin 1:17:14 Yes. So it's coming back. And nobody knows it was here anyway, because 50 years ago, like, he knows me because he gets a brand new car. I'm like, Well, only for us. Yeah, so the crowns make Okay, so I actually like how it looks. I like the crown. I feel like when I look at the design of it, I like the design. Let me preface this by saying I like it, but I kind of feel like they took like a crossover. Like, you know, the clay molds. They show us you know, and they're like, and one of the guys just accidentally leaned on the back window and was like, Oops, and I'm like, Oh no, wait, let's leave it just like that. Like they just squished it down just a little bit in the back. So squinch Unknown Speaker 1:17:47 it's it's an interesting design. It's Roberto Baldwin 1:17:53 an AMC Eagle. Let's just run Google AMC Eagle and tell me I'm wrong Unknown Speaker 1:18:02 corridor the corridor Eagle. The hatchback Eagle. Oh, yeah, the hatchback. Yeah. Nicole Wakelin 1:18:08 Oh, shoot, it doesn't really need to pull up the picture and I've looked at the picture. Dang it. Now let's get to see Thor's hammer on the front of the Chevy and I'm always gonna see this isn't the ego at all. But this is I do like how this looks I like Oh, Roberto Baldwin 1:18:29 I'm just seeing what it looks like Nicole Wakelin 1:18:31 the bid on the side on the door. They have that like black trim piece. The one that they have in their media site is this bright red and has like a black roof and a black hood. That's the one we saw. And that's what we saw. Yeah. And it has a little black insert on the side like it's on the like right above the dorsal on the outside of the current little black trim piece. It's I think it looks Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:52 Yeah, and I think the red and black you know, kind of the red on the sides and then the black over the top from the from the bumper all the way to the back is a cool look. Yeah, and you know, it's kind of a modern fastback sedan that's been lifted up like an eagle Nicole Wakelin 1:19:10 because people this this two tone situations they have gone on which I really like and it sounds like you'd like it to Sam. people either love this or absolutely hate it. There's no in between Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:20 well, and you know, you don't have to get the two tone version. You don't get it in solid colors to Nicole Wakelin 1:19:26 get a solid color if that's what you must do. Or you can get the two tone because you're Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:30 if you're if you're boring and you know have no no sense of fun in your vehicle design. Get the monochrome get. Just get a blank. plain silver monochrome. Nicole Wakelin 1:19:40 Yeah, just silver, just silver, nothing. Roberto Baldwin 1:19:43 The EQs has a two tone version that you can get. And people were just like sending me messages like oh, that's hideous. Why would you make it too tall, like you can get it? You can get it in one color. It doesn't have to be the two tone. It's not like look, look at the site you can get in and there are videos like in the video. There's Who told one and then there were like, like single color ones. But I guess they just watched that first half. Hell with it, they threw their hands up in the air. And then they immediately sent me a text message saying what the eff is going on. Nicole Wakelin 1:20:13 It's like when they have like, so many cars where it's not like the hood and everything but just the roof. Just having a roof. That's a different color than the rest. I like how that looks on most cars, too. I think the extra Can you just make them look interesting? Roberto Baldwin 1:20:24 Can you get different colors with the two tone? Like could you get like a blue and orange? I think it's just Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:30 they haven't they haven't given us all those details yet. So Roberto Baldwin 1:20:35 I want a Christmas one. Christmas crown, like the Christmas crown? Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:43 Do you really want to drive that in August or? Yes, July? Nicole Wakelin 1:20:46 Yes, yes, I do offering Christmas spirit everywhere. Roberto Baldwin 1:20:49 Yesterday, I saw dayglo yellow Volkswagen Rabbit cabriolet, it was like, oh my god, I was gonna tell the person and tell them if they ever want to sell that car. This is my phone number. I've done that. Nicole Wakelin 1:21:03 And then you worry if I follow this person, and they get out of their car, and they think I'm a creeper, I'm gonna get shot. So Roberto Baldwin 1:21:08 like, if they're near me, and we're in a parking lot, then I'll go up to them. Someone had an old mp3. Like, I forget which one. But it was like kind of being taken care of. I'm like, Oh, this car I picked this kind of wants to sell this car. And so this is when I was a current driver. So I gave him my current driver business card. And like everyone saw that car seemed legit. But the problem is, is that card, every business card had my first email address. So he's probably trying to sell it right now and no bouncing back spam, or my old bosses get it and she's just like, oh, yeah, Nicole Wakelin 1:21:37 she's got me a car. Thanks, Robbie. Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:40 Well, Sharon, Sharon is not she's not there anymore. So Roberto Baldwin 1:21:43 no, it would have been It's Laura Skye Brown. who's gotten my email? I think I don't know it's probably dead. Now it probably doesn't bounce to anyone now it probably just bounces into oblivion Oblivion Nicole Wakelin 1:21:53 to know where, Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:55 what one of the interesting details that they revealed is that all I guess all the crowns are going to be hybrids. But they've launched this new hybrid Max system on the platinum version of the crown with a 2.4 liter, Turbo electric rear axle. But this will be the first Toyota hybrid, or transverse mounted hybrid that uses a regular step ratio transmission like a six speed automatic transmission, instead of the system that they've used since the first Prius which is a an electronic CVT. So you won't have that classic Prius motorboating effect when you're accelerating. It'll it'll feel more like, like a Hyundai or Kia hybrid Nicole Wakelin 1:22:46 map, which I think you'll see it'll be interesting to drive it. Roberto Baldwin 1:22:49 They do want to build that electric manual transmission over Toyota. Remember, they had that? Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Remember, we talked about it and how they're if it doesn't work, unless there's some sort of failure like it has to fail? I was like months ago, or years ago, I don't know time doesn't make any sense anymore. It was a Blur. Blur. Sam Abuelsamid 1:23:10 Okay, let's see what else Oh, back to charging again. The the car I'm driving this week, which we'll talk about next time is the Audi e Tron GT. But I wanted to run down the battery as much as I could because I wanted to go and use Electrify America to see if I could actually get 270 kilowatt charging. And coming back from a party yesterday, I stopped at my local EAA station pulled in their the first 350 kilowatt charger I pulled up to says on their charger on available it was it was dead. Pulled backed up, pulled over to the other 350 kilowatt charger. plugged it in, started talking to the guy that was in the F 150. Lightning couple stalls down that was charging his truck. He had just gotten it about three weeks ago. I turned around and looked at the screen. After 10 minutes it was the the Audi was charging at a grand total of five kilowatts fly get from my charger Roberto Baldwin 1:24:14 Hey, my home charger does more. Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:18 Yeah, my mind does 9.6 to turn it back around to the the lightning owner and his he was on a 150 kilowatt charger. His was only going at 150 kilowatts on Electrify America, you at least for me. I've had pretty good success with your chargers in the last year. But I know a lot of a lot of other people that have had a lot of failures with with EAA chargers. This is just not acceptable. Nicole Wakelin 1:24:49 You didn't respond because you tweeted you sent out a tweet with this did Electrify America. Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:54 No. Apparently they only respond when you say something nice about them. They don't respond when you A political and because I haven't heard anything yet, Roberto Baldwin 1:25:02 because you think that the last like I would say, eight months to a year Electrify America seem to have gotten there gotten it together. Like I was going to stay at like I wasn't having like issues like every one. So like one would be down mostly the most me the issues I was having was that the the the credit card readers were just dead, like curvy road break or whatever. But then in the last like, month and a half, two months, like everyone's having issues with Electrify America, I don't know. Are they updating everything right now? And it's just not going? Well. Unknown Speaker 1:25:34 I know. I have no idea what what the problem is, but it's Roberto Baldwin 1:25:38 good. Me did it? Did it feel like, like, they seem to be getting it together? Like they're like, Okay, it's not 100% But they're doing better? Well, Sam Abuelsamid 1:25:46 at least here, you know, around Michigan and Illinois, you know, Ohio, they seem to be doing okay. I know, in the Northeast that are still having a lot of problems. John Volker, you know, he lives in New York. You know, he's still having a lot of issues. John getelan has been complaining about Sam Abuelsamid 1:26:03 problems. You know, so on the on the East Coast, they're, they're definitely having a lot of problems. I you know, when I was in California last week, I didn't use an EAA charger, because I wasn't really in the mood to shop at Walmart. But, so I used an Eevee go next to a whole foods. But you know, that one worked fine. And, you know, I've generally had six more success with with the other chargers, although other I know, other people have had issues with ego and, and ChargePoint as well. So Nicole Wakelin 1:26:33 I had the one I when I was road tripping the one charge point, it had like two plugs that you could, you know, one charging station, but two little things you could plug in, one worked one didn't. And I tweeted, I was like, Well, I'm not gonna be able to charge my vehicle. And they responded, they immediately responded and said, even though it was complaining, it was like, hey, where was it? What can you tell us exactly what happened? Can you DM us? Like, what happened? It did not put like, what was it? How was it broken? Did it like what didn't work? And they said, Okay, great. We're gonna have a call tagging. And we're gonna take it look. So I don't know if they ever fixed it, because it's obviously not near me. But they they responded to my you guys, this is broken. I think it's like, trying to fix it. I'm like, which is okay, cool. You responded when I complained about it. So points to them that they did respond, when I complained, Roberto Baldwin 1:27:15 I'm wonderful, you need to just move to the almost the gas station model with charges where there's a person there, who says, well, and I think I feel bad for this, I feel bad for this person, because they're gonna have to, but this person can also be like, Oh, hold on, hold on, I can go back and I can hit a big red button and restart it. And you know, it's, you know, Nicole Wakelin 1:27:34 small mechanical things like literally, this clip doesn't work. Hold on a second. Yeah, like they can fix stuff without having it to be like, Unknown Speaker 1:27:43 I get a call guy and the guy is eight hours away, they can fix this. Roberto Baldwin 1:27:46 Yeah, and beef jerky and Slurpees. And the whole thing. So Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:50 if you've got, if you've got to hang around for anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes anyway, for a fast charge, you want something there is something besides just a grocery store that you may or may not want to shop at Roberto Baldwin 1:28:04 Sana come on Sonic Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:08 carhops, EA did show a few months ago, they put out a release and with some renderings, you know, of their new charging station design that will include you know, like a convenience store or restaurant, that sort of thing, like a gas station. And you know, they're going to start rolling some of those out. And Tesla has been doing that they've, I know, some of their supercharger stations have some of those amenities now. And that's something that they're gonna have to do. The other thing is, if any of these companies want any of the money from the infrastructure bill, they've got to guarantee like 99 and a half percent uptime and minimum performance requirements for their chargers. And it'll be interesting to see how they enforce that, you know, once they get the money to install, you know, if they don't, if they don't keep it up, or, you know, is the government gonna start clawing some of that money back? I don't know, Roberto Baldwin 1:29:02 is it released like, monthly, you gotta get your stuff together, get it together, put it in escrow? I know. It's I know, it's hard. I know. It's hard to like deal with all these different cars. But at the end of the day, if you will, I mean, Volkswagen was sort of forced into this. But yeah, if you're taking the responsibility of being like the largest network, or trying to be the largest DC fast charging network in America, you got to take the responsibility. It can't just be like, well, we put them all out. Well, they also work yeah, it's actually five kilowatts is I might be I have that the Genesis right now. And I might, I'm debating whether I'll take it today or tomorrow to test the the 350 chargers during either side of the bay, because even though there's EAA stations and Evie go stations all around me, none of them are 350s I have to go to the other side of the bay to do it. And so I might do that today. And if I get all the way over there, it's not working. I'm gonna be ticked off. There's got to be such a tweet. An old man yelling at UCLA Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:00 Out All right last last Evie story of the week. Ford made a big announcement on Thursday about finally adopting lithium iron phosphate batteries. They, they talked about this briefly last year. They mentioned when they did their big Evie presentation last year that they were going to be looking at LFP batteries, particularly for the commercial vehicles. And they those For those not familiar with different battery chemistries. Most of the EVS today are using nickel rich chemistries, either nickel, manganese, cobalt, or for the GM all teams is Nickel, manganese, cobalt aluminum. Tesla uses nickel, cobalt aluminum. But the nickel is the really expensive part in there. And that's what they use the most of LFP. And it's also the thing that causes thermal runaways and fires. When it goes when things go wrong. The LFP batteries are much more stable, they, they will charge 1000s of times, you have the potential for batteries to last a million miles. They're about 30% cheaper than nickel orange batteries. Actually, probably more than that now with the price of nickel haven't gone up. But they also have about 30% less energy density. So what Ford announced is a deal with CA TL, the Chinese battery company, the biggest Evie battery company in the world, to supply LFP batteries starting middle of 2023 that they're going to use for the standard range models of the maki starting next summer, and then early 24 on the lightning as well. So they'll have you know, at least the same capacity is what you get. With the current nickel batteries at a much lower cost, they'll be much more durable. And these are actually the same batteries that Tesla is using for the standard range versions of the model three now, they're no longer using nickel batteries are using the CTL LFP batteries. And that's that's for the base model those. And then Ford and CTL are also going to establish the first large scale LFP cell production in North America by 2026 with the capacity 40 gigawatt hours. So nickel is still going to be the predominant one, it's probably going to end up being about two thirds of the market for the longer range vehicles. But at least for Ford, you know, it's probably going to be about 1/3 of their sales are going to be these LFP batteries Roberto Baldwin 1:32:46 last longer. And I still think this is where we get to a point where people realize that they don't need 300 miles, 400 miles for their daily car or if you know, if you have two cars, if you have a gas car and you have an Eevee your Eevee doesn't need 400 miles up doesn't need 300 Miles 250 Touge anything above 220s goal, you know you even if you do a long weekend of just like crazy stuff and you forget to charge overnight, you're still gonna be fine. Like I haven't plugged in that Genesis in like four days. And I had to go back back and forth to the city twice because I forgot something. I went to the city on Friday, and then I had to go to Oakland and I've just been driving this thing around for I don't know, a few days, like real like not like oh, I'm gonna go in 20 Miles like, you know, 4050 miles and it's like, yeah, I'll charge it later. Sam Abuelsamid 1:33:37 Yeah, I didn't, I didn't plug in the Audi for for three days, you know, and I drove to Detroit and back a couple of times to to Bloomfield Hills and back. And, you know, there was still you know, 30 miles of charge left on it. And you know, it was doing fine, you know, and that that thing's I think the EPA rating is 234 miles for that E Tron. Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:02 Yeah, I mean, you can definitely you if you've got 200 miles of range, you can definitely get plenty of range out of that Roberto Baldwin 1:34:09 million mile battery. This is I mean, these things are perfect for fleets. I mean absolutely like any delivery vehicle anything like that where you know that things meet a delivery vehicle goes maybe doing 100 miles in a day. And it's a lot of stop and go miles anyway. And the thing just has to be a workhorse you know, you know, we were doing 100 miles every day that's you know, a lot of miles every year I don't know. Yeah. A lot of Miles 30,000 Miles, you know, let's just say 30,000 miles a year if you do and fit even 50,000 miles a year like that car is gonna last for decades. The battery is and he just throw in a new drive unit and good to go. Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:53 Well, I mean drive units don't wear out. Unknown Speaker 1:34:56 And kiss plateau maybe run over? I don't know. Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:59 I mean unless you have a mechanical failure from from something, generally don't wear out everywhere unless they overheat. Roberto Baldwin 1:35:08 Yeah, I guess this tires you see I get new tires and tires. Occasionally the pads because those don't wear out nearly as quick because you have regenerative braking, right so you don't even need to hit the brakes. Oh my god, are you telling me that that EVs are better than gas vehicles at longevity? Unknown Speaker 1:35:25 They could be don't be. That's crazy Roberto Baldwin 1:35:28 talk just because there's less moving parts. fewer parts. That's the word fewer, not less fewer. Yeah. I got all grammar. Well, Nicole Wakelin 1:35:40 to be able to pronounce name and at one place in Germany that have already been given you forgot Unknown Speaker 1:35:43 how to speak? Sam Abuelsamid 1:35:46 Well, while we're talking Evie durability, let's answer some some questions from listeners. Sam Abuelsamid 1:35:52 So first up from El Beck. Question about long term Evie purchase, say the battery degrades to 50% capacity, would it cut the range roughly from 250 to 125? Miles? Yes. The answer there? If so, would the cost to charge the 50% capacity battery also be cut in half? Yes, yes. Because you're only gonna put half as much electricity into it. That's all it's gonna take. Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:18 You know, it's basically like, if you took your gas tank, and you filled half of it with foam. So it can only hold half as much gas. That's all you're going to be able to put in there. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:31 So this example, you know, take a 60 kilowatt hour battery is 50% degradation, or reduction in battery efficiency, example 60 kilowatt hours going into the battery, same as new but half usable power coming out. No, it's It's, it's all, all it's going to absorb is half that capacity. Yeah. And so yeah, it's, you know, 30 kilowatt hours in 30 kilowatt hours out, roughly, it's actually a little bit more than that. But even with a brand new battery, you've got there are some losses associated with charging. Depending on the type of charger you use, when when you're charging at 120 volts, you're going to have more losses because the Chargers are less efficient. They're typically optimized for 240 volts. So you're going to have a little bit more, you're going to consume a little more power going in to get that 30 kilowatt hours. But that's, that's a separate issue that that has nothing to do with the age of the battery. That's Roberto Baldwin 1:37:27 a lot of math that you have to deal with. And he's busy. Don't worry about it. It's not enough for you to worry about is really what it comes down. Yeah, it's like the 120 to 240. Like, just nerd stuff. Sam Abuelsamid 1:37:39 It's too much it's too much. So if it's the former would fueling cost rise over time. No, your feeling cost won't rise over time. But you will be feeling more frequently. Yes, yeah. Yeah. So. Roberto Baldwin 1:37:53 So then and 50% degradation, I think there was a concern that like, oh my god, batteries and integrity. batteries last a lot longer than they anticipated. Yeah. Nissan LEAF, I think they've only gotten those down to like 60%, almost for most people. Sam Abuelsamid 1:38:08 And those are those are worse than most because they're the ones that are air cooled. Everybody else is using liquid cooling. I was actually at a meeting with some folks from from Cox automotive a couple of days ago. And you know, they've made some investments. They bought a battery recycling company. And they also bought another company that's developed systems for testing batteries, because one of the things Cox does they own Manheim auctions. And so they, they do a lot of processing and refurbishing of the vehicles that are going, you know, the US vehicles that are coming either as lease returns or US trade ends going to auction and, you know, they, they wanted to be able to properly value us DVDs. And so they've made some investments to develop some testing methodologies to evaluate the condition of batteries, unused EVs, and you know, one of the things they found from their data is aside from the leaf because of its air cooled battery, pretty much every other Evie is holding up way better than was anticipated 810 years ago. So they're, they're generally you know, retaining it at 10 years, you know, they're they're almost always still have well over 80% of their original capacity. A lot. Yeah. So you know, for the context for owl, you know, thinking about buying an Eevee we tend to keep our cars for 10 plus years. Am I crazy thinking about a Nissan LEAF or a Kona Evie the leaf maybe but the the Kona definitely not you'll be you'll be fine. If you want to keep a Kona Evie for 10 years. Roberto Baldwin 1:39:49 I think 10 leaf is fine. It's just really boring. Sam Abuelsamid 1:39:52 Yeah. Well, I guess the other thing the other thing I would add to the the leaf is it depends, I'd say it probably depends on where you live. If you live somewhere like in the Southwest where it gets really, really hot, then stay away from the leaf. Like in Nevada or Arizona, if you live somewhere more, where temperatures are more temperate, then you know, the leaf should be fine. Roberto Baldwin 1:40:18 Yeah, they caught it. I love I really like our Kona Evie. And they really the only reason we lease we're leasing it. And it's really just because of what I do. And I want to have the next best thing and three or four years, battery technology is going to advance but it's, you know, even in 10 years, if you're just cruising around town, you're gonna be having the Kona, we've had it for 10 months now. And there's never been a time where I was like, Oh, I wish it charged faster. Or oh, I wish it does this. We never take it to the charger. We it's always just charging at home. We just cruise around we go, you know, my wife has done a couple of road trips and and she's gone to Walmart and gotten a Walmart run, done the Walmart run on wall, you know, on her way there on her way back. And now it's like if we have this car for 10 years, I'd be like, Yeah, that's fine. But you know, I also want an ionic five. And now I want to add buzz. And now we want to Oh, the other things. So that's just me, if you're a big car person they car people tend to like switch cars pretty often, they'll pick one good car that they'll keep forever. But then everything else is like oh, I want to try this now. Sam Abuelsamid 1:41:28 Well, you know that Audi I plugged it in last night with 8% charged in the battery and plugged it in about nine o'clock 930 Last night. And this morning at seven o'clock when I went out to walk the dog it was fully charged. And that's a 92 kilowatt hour battery in there. So you know you can you can definitely charge do a full charge overnight. And the vast majority of the time you're only going to be doing a partial charge. Roberto Baldwin 1:41:53 Yeah, you're not Yeah, it's nice though. Because every day you walk out and your car's full. Was that something I will get into my like in my BRC, and I'm like, Oh, my how much gas is in this? Oh my god, like, Oh, where am I going? Okay, I'm going all the way to San Jose. I have enough gas. And I won't know until I get into the BRC because it's you know, doesn't have any fancy like check stuff or add it doesn't have anything like that. Well, I get it. I'm like, Oh, cool. I'm cool. I'm cool. I can drive all the way to San Jose, I Unknown Speaker 1:42:18 don't have to stop at a gas station. Roberto Baldwin 1:42:19 I don't have to stop. Sam Abuelsamid 1:42:21 All right, Adam J asks, If my old car is out of warranty, and the alternator dies, it's on me to fix it. Now, so many cars have so much software. I'm wondering how that will work when my car's out of warranty. But some glitch causes features to break. Will that still be wear and tear and on me to fix? It depends. Yeah. You know, I mean, if it's if it's we don't know the answer. The honest answer is we don't know yet how manufacturers are going to handle, you know, long term, you know, software fixes. Because nobody's you know, aside from Tesla's, nobody's been doing it long enough. And, you know, usually, you know, if if, if they if they push out a software update, that breaks something, they'll usually turn around and fix that and push out another software update. But it's funny a few days ago, I was listening to a podcast I listened to called historic racing news. And they were talking about, it's out of the UK. And they were talking about, you know, historic racing, you know, old race cars, and trying to keep like Formula One cars and endurance racing cars, you know, from the 1980s and 1990s running so that they can still use these things on the track. And they're having a harder and harder time with some of these cars. Like one example, the Williams, FW 14 B from 1992. So this is 30 year old formula one car. When it came out, it was the most advanced car in the world, most advanced race car in the world full active suspension and everything completely dominated the 92 season. And recently at the British Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel, who now owns the car that Nigel Mansell won the championship with that year, did some demonstration runs with it. And one of things they talked about is that they actually had to take the active suspension system out of his car and revert it back to a conventional spring and damper passive suspension system, because they could not get the software and everything you know, the computer the and the computers working to make it run with the active suspension system. Sam Abuelsamid 1:44:41 You know, this, this is a problem with a lot of these older cars. There's some some people who specialize in maintaining these older racecars that one of the things they also do is they collect old computers, so they can use the computers of the same era, the same software to plug them in and just to get the engine started. Yeah, just fired up, Roberto Baldwin 1:45:02 because they don't have the interface anymore. Like, if you ever tried to log into an old like Apple, like, let's say printer with a new MacBook, it wouldn't it will work. Nicole Wakelin 1:45:10 It does not operate. It's like no, Unknown Speaker 1:45:13 no. So you have Roberto Baldwin 1:45:14 to have the old Apple Computer. And then you have to have the old OS and you have to have the old Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:45:20 Like the McLaren f1. And another example. You know, when they design that thing, you know, a lot of the stuff they did was with Compaq laptop computers of the early 90s. You know, I had I had one of those from my job back then. And McLaren technicians still have to keep a stockpile of these 30 year old Compaq laptops, just so they can service and just to do diagnostics? Come into the shop. Yeah. So we, you know, the reality is we, you know, I think it's going to be better because these new vehicles are going to be able to do over the air updates. So they'll be able to push out software updates, so they won't necessarily have to directly connect in a lot of cases. But, yeah, it's going to be a challenge as software ages. Like, what what can you actually get fixed? You know, what, what can you you know, what, are you still going to be able to use 20 or 30 years from now? Yeah, how long? Are Nicole Wakelin 1:46:19 you going to keep that old stuff and say, yeah, we'll fix it. When do you when do you just say, Nope, done? Yeah, good point. Roberto Baldwin 1:46:25 At some point they have to preserve, they essentially preserve the OS. And Amber is just sort of stopped being getting updated. And they have, this is what it is. Now your car no longer evolves, which is Nicole Wakelin 1:46:35 this is where it stops. Like what could come out but not for your car. Your Unknown Speaker 1:46:40 stays here. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin 1:46:41 And at that point, where there's going to be issues as with there's security's security issues, if someone figures out how to hack that Nino, that software that's in that old car, so How old Nicole Wakelin 1:46:52 do you think that old car is going to be? Is it getting old enough now that you've got just such an old car that like, suck it up? Buttercup, you have a really old car? Roberto Baldwin 1:47:00 I mean, we I mean, if you look right now there's that Honda, like the relay issue, which, you know, and Honda's like, Oh, we're gonna fix Sam Abuelsamid 1:47:09 that? Yeah, so I've got a 32 year old car in my garage. Roberto Baldwin 1:47:13 Yeah. So it's, you know, it's on a, you know, it's on the, the, these these automakers, they're gonna have to look at it and say, Okay, well, we've sold, you know, we sold 150,000 of these cars, we have to make sure that, you know, at least one person on staff, and then you have to train people with all these person knows, yeah, Nicole Wakelin 1:47:31 here's a guy literally, there is a guy. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:47:36 And it's almost like y2k, you know, when, when they, you know, they just they realized, you know, in the late 90s, that there was a lot of code that was written with the year with just two digits, two digits for the last two digits, and they didn't think about what happens in year 2000. Yeah. And, you know, they, they had to find people that still knew how to write COBOL. And, you know, to call for throw all this code, figure out what needs to be fixed. Roberto Baldwin 1:48:02 So there will always be, there's always going to be like a class of people who are who, you know, okay, we're going to teach you how to use this really old operating system, because this is happening. So I mean, the, the automakers are hiring more and more and more and more software engineers, because there's so much that has to be done, and they need, you know, these people more so than they've ever in the past. Because even with the gas cars, there's so much going on software wise, that, you know, these people you know, they have to have, so you have a larger you have a much larger pool of people to pull from when things go, you know, weird, you know, 15 years from now. Sam Abuelsamid 1:48:40 Yeah. All right. Final question from rich. This is really more of a comment, I think, from Richard DeCarlo. And to preface this, there was some reports that came out earlier this week, that Ford was planning some massive layoffs from their Ford Blue Division, which is the old the internal combustion business unit after they did their reorganization this spring, that Ford, in its infinite wisdom decided to permanently cut 8000 jobs this week and an announcement to workers. So first off, Ford hasn't announced anything to workers yet. There's reports that they may lay off up to 8000. But they haven't announced anything yet. So there's that Sam Abuelsamid 1:49:21 the reason behind the cuts is due to the transition from gas powered vehicles to electric. Our current government is pushing electric vehicles saying that it will create new jobs. Here's a perfect example of the lies that are telling that they're telling us. It's not like they're they were offered to go work at a different plant to produce electric cars. They were just told that jobs are permanently eliminated. Once you start peeling back the onion, you start to see that this is all about dollars and cents and not about making the saving the environment. So first of Nicole Wakelin 1:49:50 all, it's a lot to unpack right there, Sam? Yeah. So there's a lot I'll start with this question. You save this. Okay, go ahead. Sam Abuelsamid 1:49:58 They haven't announced any Anything yet to employees, this is all speculation, rumors, and, and the given some of the people that report this, I think that they got it from, they got some hints from some reliable sources within Ford that they're definitely cuts coming and this was to be expected. The other thing to keep in mind is that these are all cuts to salaried staff. None of this is hourly staff. None of this is people working in factories. This is all from design, engineering, marketing, you know, other, you know, other parts of the organization. Now, if they do cut 1000 people, that's actually like almost a third of their salaried staff. I have a hard time believing that they're going to be able to cut 8000 salaried staff and still be able to function. Nicole Wakelin 1:50:47 I mean, like, I am agree with you, like, I get it, you know, you downsize things change. It's like, oh, we have goofed. And we have a third too many people. That's a lot of people. I mean, and so yeah, I don't I guess I have no problem leaving maybe laying people off. I mean, companies do it all the time. But I don't necessarily think that it's like bizarre because of electric vehicles, and they're evil, and they're really just gonna fire everyone. Companies lay people off in a hierarchy, shift and create new divisions and take for it. Unknown Speaker 1:51:18 It's a constantly flux thing. I Nicole Wakelin 1:51:19 don't think you can really, Roberto Baldwin 1:51:21 especially in the automotive industry is so volatile. I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's it's, it's a lot of it's stuck to how the economy's doing a lot of people are concerned about a recession. I mean, Tesla preemptively. I mean, they just started laying tons of salary people out my friend got laid off at Tesla. He works in service, which is like maybe not the people you should be laying off at Tesla. Yeah, so and but you know, people have been laid off from and factories have been shut down way before EVs in the automotive industry, it like it just like it there's, there's a whole documentary called about Flint, Michigan, you know, it's just the you know, the the automotive industry is it's fickle. It's weird. And it's, it's, it's really like if we if if humans are not buying cars, then they cannot sell, you know, there's no point in them making more cars because the Humans do not have the money to buy cars at this point in time. Nicole Wakelin 1:52:15 It's an industry that is in and really any industry, most of them have layoffs and have a cyclical thing. And as the economy changes in his people's habits changed, but it doesn't, you know, I just think like offering up the sacrificial lamb of EVs damn them to hell, they've laid off all these people, I don't necessarily think that's what's happening. I think this is probably assuming that Ford comes out with something and said something about this, it's going to be, there's going to be more to it than just yeah, we just asked 1000 People didn't need them. Like, there's gonna be a little bit more to this, you know, Roberto Baldwin 1:52:45 let's say it's a hierarchy. Again, just go back to the last question about, you know, software, I mean, they had their hiring, they've had so many software people they hired, they have all the, and then and then we have talked about autonomy, but like software, battery specialists, and people, you know, they have to build a whole other factory just for batteries. I mean, that's a whole that's a whole lot of jobs. And Ford didn't have those jobs before because Ford doesn't make oil get into gasoline, like Chevron, Exxon. Now Ford has to make essentially make the thing makes your gasoline, almost making your gasoline for it. So it's, it's Yeah, yeah, I Sam Abuelsamid 1:53:20 mean, for for it is, you know, they've already announced three battery plants that they're building, and plus a new assembly plant in Tennessee. All of those are hiring, you know, probably combined, I think more than 1000 people. Plus, you know, this week's announcement of the LFP plant, which is going to be another probably another 1000 to 1500 people. So, you know, and the software engineers, you know, they've hired between the manufacturers, they've hired many 1000s of software engineers over the last three years. And they're, they're actively recruiting for more software engineers, you know, I think you know, where you're going, where you're going to see people leaving Ford is people had been designing engines and transmissions and other components that you don't need in EVs. So there is a shift, but, you know, the, the people that are that are going Sam Abuelsamid 1:54:12 are, you know, they don't have the expertise and the skills to design you know, you're talking about mechanical engineers, as opposed to electrical and electronic engineers and software engineers that you need for EVs. So it's a very different skill set. And you can't just retrain those people unnecessarily Roberto Baldwin 1:54:30 Yeah, I want to talk to automate your Oh, sorry, God, Nicole Wakelin 1:54:33 no, I just it's it's more than just like they lay people off. You know, it's, it's the nature of humans of development of civilization. That is things change and they move what was a very, you know, a position that they needed lots and lots of 10 years ago, suddenly you don't need lots and lots of but you have some other type of job that needs to be done. So there's always especially in large industries, you know, the automotive industry is a huge animal. There are so many parts to it. There's factories there's offices there's development they're trying to do Evie stuff now people are gonna you know the markets gonna shift where they're gonna have to lay off people from one place and maybe they've hired more or the same as in another spot but it's just kind of civilization like this this has changed industries change. I don't I don't see this as like oh the EVs are crushed everybody I think that's the only thing it's freaking me out about this question. I'm like, it's not like Ford's infinite wisdom for it probably is wise. I would rather see them lay off people as they need to lay off people even if it was me working for them Be like, by we laid no one off. We're done. Like you sometimes have to make business decisions that are unfortunate. So there's there's Roberto Baldwin 1:55:39 not a lot of carburetor designers left at any I mean things, you know, the catalytic converter, people like one day they had a job. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, it's I mean, vehicles have been advancing. And it's just now they're advancing much quicker than they were before. And like, you know, cart again, carburetors, once the fuel injection, there's a bunch of people who probably worked carburetors, and they're like, I don't want to learn how to fuel injectors. And, you know, they'd laughed, and I've talked to automakers. I'm like, How was What is your team feel about this? And they're like, there's a lot of people who are very excited, and they're learning and they're doing all the things that make sure that they're, they're ready for the future. And then there's some who are just like, you know, what, I've been here for, you know, X amount of years. I'm just gonna, like, I'm gonna ride through until my retirement and then, you know, as I retire, the job I do anyway, is not going to be of much use anyway. So there's just sort of like, cruising till the end. It's always unfortunately, people get laid off. I mean, it's Yeah, I Sam Abuelsamid 1:56:36 mean, it's, it sucks to to lose your job, and especially if you've been doing it, I've been laid off. You know, I mean, ya Nicole Wakelin 1:56:42 know, I mean, it doesn't negate the human price of change, but their change is going to happen. You know, it's, it's not always easy for everyone Sam Abuelsamid 1:56:51 to know. We could stop it. We can stop the chance Nicole Wakelin 1:56:53 to change no more change the 900 Sam Abuelsamid 1:56:57 we turn it back to 1850. It's not too late. I grew up on that note. Let's say goodbye for this week. Roberto Baldwin 1:57:11 Goodbye for this week. Bye