Sam Abuelsamid  0:00  
Coming up on episode 262 of wheel bearings who got the Lucid Air Grand Touring Toyota gr 86 The Chevy Bolt, Evie, the Hyundai Tucson plug in hybrid. Buick buying out some of its dealers Toyota increasing its investment in evey batteries and much more. All that coming up next

this is episode 262 wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:31  
I am Nicole Wakeman from the FAST Women podcast.

Roberto Baldwin  0:35  
I am Roberto Baldwin from lifewire.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:39  
And, Roberto, what have you been driving?

Roberto Baldwin  0:42  
Oh, you're gonna ask me first. It wasn't even ready.

Nicole Wakelin  0:46  
He didn't ask me because I am ready. He only he generally only asks if his like spidey senses he's already asked him.

Roberto Baldwin  0:53  
It's like more fun that way. You're like the teacher in school who's determined who hasn't done their homework, right? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03  
Yeah, Sam in the back row. I know.

Roberto Baldwin  1:06  
You haven't done you.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08  
So therefore it's your question five on our homework.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12  
Anyway, while we were talking, I opened up the file I knew I was driving the 2022 Bolt eu v. Premier. Ooh, what is the U V?

Nicole Wakelin  1:24  
actually stand for? Every electric utility vehicle is an E electric utility vehicle. Okay. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30  
Everyone, unlike Spectre. It was the original title for everyone loves Ray, and it just didn't test. So. Yeah, no, no, it didn't. It didn't work out at all. Yeah, the UV. I've been driving it for a few days. I haven't done the mileage run yet. So I don't have some details about actually doing that today after the podcast. But I can't tell you that it drives nicer than the regular bolt. I think one of my issues with the regular bolt is that the it's kind of a bit of a rough ride. When we were looking at EVs to purchase. When we were driving around in the boat, my wife asked, Why is this vehicle why is this why does this car handle rougher than our BRC? Oh, well, there you go.

Nicole Wakelin  2:22  
Here's your review.

Roberto Baldwin  2:23  
There's your review. Overall, I mean, I think especially at the price points that these things are at right now. It's a pretty good deal. If you are fine with the DC fast charging, which is 50 kilowatts, which is was great when the bolt came out way back in the day, because it was funny because of the bolt beat the Tesla Model three to market. And when they when they when they delivered the first bolt, they delivered it to someone in Fremont, which is where Tesla is. Oh, that's well, when they dig a little stick nei.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:56  
Yeah, well, when they did the media drive program for the bolt in January 2017, I think they did it in Palo Alto starting from Palo Alto, like about a mile and a half from Tesla headquarters.

Roberto Baldwin  3:11  
It's, you know, just a little old school automaker stick in the Yeah. So it has a the EPA says it has a range of 247 miles which is adequate, which is fine, which is what people want the 50 kilowatt charging, it's i Well, for me, like I got it, I've been you know, I'll go do some DC fast charging on like 50 Kill, I was just like, it just seems so slow. Now, compared to when this vehicle came, it came out and we were like, whoo, and now I'm sitting at 150 kilowatt, you know, station, and I'm waiting for it to charge and medical, whatever the 52 Oh, we get a little extra.

Sam Abuelsamid  3:58  
On the other hand, though, you know, the bolt and the EU v have a relatively small battery, because they're, they're actually pretty energy efficient. So they only have a 65 kilowatt hour battery. So, you know, that's like half the size of the battery, and the lightning and the f150 lightning, and, you know, a third less than most of the the longer range EVs that are out there right now. So your actual time to charge most of the time is actually probably not going to be that bad. You know?

Roberto Baldwin  4:32  
It's still 45 minutes. Yeah, it's not it's not horrible. It's just it's you're looking at it. You're like, Oh my gosh. Again, most people are charging at night. I am you know, I live within a stone's throw of like five charging stations. And we never ever charged our Evie charging stations. It's been a long time my wife did like one road trip, which you know, most people will do. She charges it then we still have have to like when you bought a Hyundai or you leased a Hyundai you got 250 kilowatt hours of like free charging Electrify America. I was looking at it, we still have 200 and like 30 kilowatt hours of like available. Like, I'm like, Oh man, I shouldn't really look up and see, when does this just expire? So if a might think you're doing a lot of charging, the reality is I think most people, if you have a house, if you live in an apartment building, that's a completely different, you know, scenario. If you live in a house and you charge at home, or you have charging at work, the 50 is probably not that big of a deal. If you if you live in an apartment, if you live near a plate, you know, you're you know where you do your grocery shopping. There's a Lucky's nearby, it has Electrify America right next to it, it's in that parking lot. You know, if you go there a few times a week, you're probably going to be fine. It's not that it's not really that big of a deal. It's really mostly for if you're someone who's like I'm gonna do road trips over 200 miles in my Eevee on a regular basis that's where it's really gonna be kind of a pain

Sam Abuelsamid  6:02  
and to be honest, if you're doing that you're probably not buying a bolt Evie anyway. You're not buying I like the bolt a lot. But yeah, you know it's not probably not the car I would want to drive on a cross country road trip.

Roberto Baldwin  6:18  
Yeah, yeah, you're not getting it Don't Don't you shouldn't be concerned about it. That's it. It does have the the bolt the EU v not the regular bolt but the Evie does have the option for supercruise and I have supercruise on this one. And I've been cruising around and going back and forth I have I've had to go to Oakland into the city a bunch this week. I had to go all the way down to Lake San Jose and yet still you know solid still you know the best hands free system on the market of the to the does have a bit more ping pong in that I've experienced on other supercruise vehicles. Really? Yeah, it's weird.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:56  
I have one earlier this summer and it was standing in the center of the lane rock solid it was we have a lot

Roberto Baldwin  7:02  
of like really windy road rainy windy freeways here and there's a lot of construction working going on it's you know our you know even if you're not on like a back road we're still got like big curbs for whatever reason so they not handled big gotta go around base you know water we I go around you know mountains and whatnot. Things that were built in you know, you just

Nicole Wakelin  7:23  
made that area so much more right you get to go rob water there's mountains all sorts of stuff. You've just turned just turned it into like the most rugged landscape in the country like San Francisco

Roberto Baldwin  7:36  
Hampshire I know because I don't want my car to be swallowed up by a pothole I have not seen that's that overall. Yeah, I like it. I mean, if you're looking for an Eevee that you could probably get right now. I would expect I think the you know, the fire the battery fire thing, which again was LG Chem asphalt has probably turned a lot of people off of this vehicle, which means it's probably it's likely that they might be in stock you know?

Sam Abuelsamid  8:13  
Plus, GM has just, you know, slashed the price on these things. It's the only price go down.

Roberto Baldwin  8:19  
Yeah, like the first like a like a year ago, the the price went down on the Kona and then recently the price went down on this and these are all like you know, these are not new EVs either been easier Evie has been around for a while. So if you're looking for an Eevee but you also you know you like oh man, everything you know maki is going you know everything else is the price is going up. If you're looking for an Eevee like yeah, maybe I need to save some money. And for whatever reason you need the bigger version of the vault of the bolt. Guy. That's that's still that's annoying that bolt volting of the bolt. You know, maybe for the version I was driving, standard cost is $37,500. And it had a how much is supercruise? supercruise is $2,200. So

Sam Abuelsamid  9:08  
that $37 That's also I think that's a 20 to 2022 model your price. Yeah, so

Roberto Baldwin  9:14  
it's cheaper. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:15  
So for 23 they lowered the price by like $6,000. So, so the bolt Evie the bid the one LT bolt Evie starts at 26 595 including delivery. And it's like 29 Eight for the two LT model. And I think for the for the EU V it's about 1500 or $2,000 More than that.

Roberto Baldwin  9:38  
So the EU V starts at 27,200 which let's look up the premiere price. Again. I had the premiere. It was like I was at a movie.

Sam Abuelsamid  9:52  
Oh 32 seven for the premiere to seven so less. Yeah. And which is

Roberto Baldwin  9:59  
like it It's almost $5,000 Less, which means that the total price with all the bells and whistles, which was 43, for 2023, would be like 37.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:10  
Right. And even. And once they announced the price reduction for the 23 bars, they started offering a discount rebate on the 20 twos that were still available. So basically, you if you find a 22, model your car on a dealer's lot, you can basically get it for the same price as the 23 model your car. So because nothing's changed, I think there might have changed a couple of colors, but everything else is the same. So you can get it for that lower price. So you're looking, you know, 36 37,000, for the one with the supercruise on it was pretty much a bargain.

Roberto Baldwin  10:47  
Yeah, yeah. So that's a pretty sweet deal. My only issue with the bolt is that it doesn't show percentage, battery percentage state of charge it just like look everywhere, I think you have to go deep dive and

Sam Abuelsamid  11:00  
find it in the menu in the center menu,

Roberto Baldwin  11:02  
you have to go looking for it. Because that when I had to do the bolt, range drive, I was sitting in my driveway for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out how to turn it on in the DAT cluster. It just gives you like, how far and a bunch of little like, a bunch of little bars which are, you know, slightly Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  11:24  
what they do is they show you a window of range, you know, and depending on your on how you drive in real time as you're driving it, it'll adjust that window. So if you're, if you drive efficiently, it'll shift it upwards. And if you you know, if you're doing Jackrabbit starts all the time, it'll start to shift downwards.

Roberto Baldwin  11:46  
It also doesn't tell you how fast you're charging cheese. know, I know the car and the charger i have is pointed the other direction because one of those pull in charge. It's at an angle, it says in front. It's almost like a pull through charger, but not quite. But they've set it up. So it's easier to plug in to the to the vehicles. And so it's pointed away so I can't see the display. And I'm looking in the car and like well, what's the charge rate? I shouldn't be angry right now. Do I need to get on Twitter and be angry? Because you know, if you have a low charge rate, that's the law you have to get on Twitter. Like I'm only charging at 7k.

Nicole Wakelin  12:22  
If you don't tell me, buddy, it's like it's not even happening matter.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:25  
If you're if you're on Twitter, and you're charging an Eevee shouldn't being angry. Just be your default position anyway. Yeah, that's

Roberto Baldwin  12:32  
the default. But I had opened the app and look at the app for the charging station. And so that's that's how I found out I was charging like at 52. I'm like Ooh, fancy. I will say that one of the charging stations I went to two people just pulled up in their ice car and just parked there. No, really. They did it well after I have walked away and I came back and they were just two cars sitting there. There were four charging stations. There was a red bolt, Evie. There was me in this like light blue one that I'm driving. And then there's just two other cars. And then there was a guy driving around in a an eagle. Like it could hear him in the car to place the charge. Like those cars aren't even EVs. I could hear him saying and I was like, You know what I can leave. And so while they came around the second time I pulled up and I'm like, I don't know figure out how to get them towed. So that's why I tweeted if you own a if you're under contract from a city or county, and you get money every time you tow a car that's illegally parked, hanging out charging stations make some money. Yeah, because there were two cars and those

Nicole Wakelin  13:36  
technically tell you from those though, like,

Roberto Baldwin  13:39  
it's technically it's really Yeah, you can say this is there's like a little thing you can tow this is where you can call to get your car.

Nicole Wakelin  13:46  
Oh, I've never looked for that. I mean, I've been to them just never noticed that. I don't think enough people charging here to ever use all our charging stations. Yep,

Roberto Baldwin  13:55  
one one guy did pull up in a Prius. And I was like, What the fuck is going on? Around here, and, and he ran in and then he ran back out. He was just like a DoorDash guy. And I was like, fine, whatever

Nicole Wakelin  14:07  
feels sketchy. I mean, would you do a handicap spot where the handicapped person was probably two minutes.

Roberto Baldwin  14:14  
Yeah, there. Yeah, people are horrible. People TV, not horrible. supercruise a little bit of ping pong. And still, you know, if you used it 70 80% of the drive down to San Jose interchanges. It's like, Hey, I'm turning off and it's like lights are flashing and telling you to turn down the music. Like everything. Yeah, it turns down the music now when you're, you're listening to music to tell you when things are about to turn off. So it's yeah, it's they they want to make sure you know what's going on. So there's

Nicole Wakelin  14:43  
no doubt that you are well informed about the status of your vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:47  
No mode confusion allowed? Correct.

Roberto Baldwin  14:49  
No mode confusion allowed? Yeah. Well, do you be

Sam Abuelsamid  14:54  
excellent. This Wakelin yes, we've been driving.

Nicole Wakelin  14:59  
I was Driving the 2022 Tucson Limited pH EV all wheel drive that has a long title like I read, and I'm just gonna read whatever the Monroney says from now on. So we can all see how ridiculous some of these actual names are for these vehicles. Okay. So plug in hybrid Tucson, I like the Tucson I like it in all its guises. I don't have a problem with it. I think they're all really good. I like I'm a plug in hybrid fan, I think it's a great little happy medium between, you know, you're not quite ready to go with an electric entirely, but you kind of want to start exploring the idea of it. I love plug in hybrids. So this one gets 33 miles of all electric range, which I think is pretty good. I would say when you look at the you know, it's not. I mean, ours gets like 20 something our wrangler because it's heavy and not as efficient. So I feel like 33 is pretty good. Starting price on this is $35,400. Mine had apparently a million extras, although I'm getting I don't know what see this weird on the website is 35. Four. But when I'm looking at the Monroney in my hand, it says the starting price is 43. Two, so go figure that out. So you know what? How much, which doesn't make sense because it says everything is included? So I

Sam Abuelsamid  16:14  
was that 35 Starting price for the limited? Oh, I

Nicole Wakelin  16:17  
think it's a limit. I must be going up a trim. That's it. That's what it is. Thank you so much. Matching limited, it's because the name so long. So 44 640 is what mine was? Are you going to take a guess? Guess? Shipping freight handling all that stuff? What's

Sam Abuelsamid  16:32  
$1,500.12

Nicole Wakelin  16:36  
Oh, Robbie wins again. He always goes under 1245. Oh, that was pretty close. You were spot on look at you. So here's the thing. So I was looking at the pricing. So the bid, that's where I had the best pricing on it. PHE V, the bass drum is 35 for if you just go with the hybrid, it's 29. Seven, if you go with the gas, it's 25 Eight. So all three of these are great. And it's cool that you can get this in every single powertrain you could possibly want except a pure electric. But look at the price difference. I mean, 25 Eight for the gas 35 Four, that's a significant increase. To get the benefit of that plug in powertrain.

Roberto Baldwin  17:11  
You know, you got to put another bet you had to put a battery and a little motor. Well, no, I'm not that it's not like

Nicole Wakelin  17:18  
the batteries was really bad. Joan is eight grand, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  17:21  
Well, especially especially when you have the limited and all wheel drive. You know, you're adding a lot of extra badges, adding a lot

Nicole Wakelin  17:27  
of extra badges. But I was thinking about that just in terms of the affordability of these things. Like if you're looking for an efficient car and you want to be if you're talking $10,000 between the gate base gas engine and the base. plug in hybrid like that is way beyond like, if your budget is tight, you just blew your budget to get this one. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's it's hard to get into some of these, like, even if you wanted to, like Oh, honey, do we have an extra $10,000 in our budget to get the plug in hybrid? And it's not a rock and roll used car. Right? And it's not a knock against Hyundai by any means. It's just like the nature of the pricing. It's like holy cow, it really is hard to get into some of those more efficient, less polluting going electric power trains because the price I mean, that's prohibitive man 10 grand can, you know, well,

Sam Abuelsamid  18:13  
and this is this is Toyota is argument for putting so much emphasis on hybrids. Yeah, because it can do the hybrids relatively inexpensively now, yeah. And, you know, when you when you step up to a plug in, you know, and then to a battery electric, it the price goes up in very big shot

Nicole Wakelin  18:32  
increments. Yeah, if you just want to go from gas to hybrid, not the plug in just a straight up hybrid, it is four grand, so $4,000 Which is I mean, it's an it's another 6000 You know, if you want to get that plugin, it's, it's, it's a jump to get into the hybrid, but like a more manageable one. But to get into the plugin, that's a huge jump. So just a little thoughts on getting into those vehicles, it can be sort of a challenge. I do like this though. I like the styling on the Tucson on the outside. It's got this very angular sheet metal on the doors like on the side and it makes it look a little different instead of being all these like round, curvy. swoopy it has a little character to it. So I do like that inside. I mean, like this isn't limited, so it's the fancier one. It's very comfortable. It's very It looks good. It looks like a more premium thing. And you do get a lot of extra features like you get leather, leather seating surfaces. You get heated rear seats or standard New England girls like Yeah, you did rear seats. Like that's really cool. You get ventilated front seats. Who cares about that unless you're in Texas, hey, Texas, ventilated front seats. You get a 10.25 inch touchscreen for navigation, which is really really nice. The here's the weird here's the weird thing between the trim levels on this, which I feel like needs calling out because they don't I do not understand this when it comes to the tech. You get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in both. If you get the limited the fancy trim, you got plugged You gotta plug it in. You need a table if you get this trim down, it's wireless.

Roberto Baldwin  20:06  
I've I've encountered this in some other Hyundai and I was like what's happening? Because Because my Kona which was like low Bill way below this vehicle, like in just sort of like trim not Yeah, not counting the fact that it's an Eevee like has wireless CarPlay but this other vehicle is more expensive. I had to plug it in. I'm like, What is going on? Why is this happening?

Nicole Wakelin  20:29  
It's the backwards I mean, the the screen gets larger, you get other stuff you gotta you know, you get a stereo upgrade to a Bose audio system. You get like all the in this liquid but no, we're taking away the wireless capability. Go find your USB cord, which I just find a weird thing. It's perplexing to me why this does this. So it's but it's a great car overall, it rides really smoothly, you get that Evie? You know that electric range, which is nice. It has a decent amount of power, it feels pretty aggressive. It's a 1.6 liter turbocharged four cylinder. So you get 261 horsepower, 258 pound feet of torque it goes. It's not like an aggressive engine, but it's perfectly fine. You'll have no problems with it. And they're standard all wheel drive, which is kind of nice. So you have that for those of us who live in cold places. And you can even tell with it you can tow up to 2000 pounds. If you get it properly equipped. I think it needs special like brakes. And it has a good cargo room. Like behind the second row. There's 31.9 cubic feet. That's a decent amount of cargo when you flip the seats down. It's 66.3 I had to get rid of a big screen TV because it died and that just slid right in there. And I didn't know I was doing the debate like is this going to be quite long enough? Yeah, there's no problem so and then today, I used to cook it for mums and some decorative things for outside my house because Fall is here because it's September

Roberto Baldwin  21:49  
Oh, like mom's like, mom's like you had to go find her like really in the fall snow or we're in air tones or drinking pumpkin spice have the same love all the

Nicole Wakelin  21:59  
time. And I don't generally put her in the cargo area of my card. No, this is good for them. I could before her in there if I wanted to. First of all plants B ball plants, plants, not humans.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:10  
So you probably could fit for small humans in there. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  22:14  
you know what, Sam, I'll let you do that test and talk about it. I don't have

Sam Abuelsamid  22:19  
an empty nester. Yeah, I don't

Nicole Wakelin  22:21  
have small humans either minor minor also grown and flown. But they're, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  22:25  
my neighbor would let me borrow hers. Okay, so

Nicole Wakelin  22:28  
your child children you can we and in the meantime, for a couple of minutes, anybody with children? Money, just email us and then when he gets arrested for putting kids in the back of his car, we'll have something to bail them out in

Roberto Baldwin  22:42  
the 80s.

Nicole Wakelin  22:44  
So um, yeah, so I'm a fan. I mean, I like the Tucson in any guys, I like it, I think it's a good car, I think it's a good value. Even though like I said, you're paying a premium for the plug in hybrid. It's, it's if you can afford the premium, it's a great way to get yourself kind of used to the idea of plugging in charging and make that feel like a regular part of your day instead of something weird having to plug in a car. So I think it's it's a nice, happy medium. And you do get a little I mean, 33 miles of all electric range driving around town, you're almost never going to need to use gas. You know, you figure your typical day. So yeah, so the 2022 Tucson, limited plug in hybrid. All Wheel Drive. There you go. That's my thing.

Roberto Baldwin  23:23  
But a bing, bada bing,

Sam Abuelsamid  23:25  
excellent. And

Roberto Baldwin  23:29  
I had a really fantastic car actually drove two really fantastic cars. Oh, yeah, to my what my favorite cars really want one of which you know, is actually attainable, and the other is not.

Nicole Wakelin  23:43  
For everybody for all the two people listening.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:46  
The first was the Toyota gr 86. So this is the second generation of the Toyota Subaru jointly developed sports car. And this car is so good. Fantastic. Yeah, the new engine, you know, slightly larger displacement, slightly more power still doesn't have an overwhelming amount of power. And it's a great sports car to just drive 228 horsepower from the 2.4 cylinder engine now. And they got rid of the the torque hole that was in there in the previous generation model. So you don't as you're accelerating, you don't suddenly get a dip and then comes back on again. Though I had the premium, the GRT six premium with the six speed manual transmission, which is the really the only way you should buy this is with a six speed manual

Nicole Wakelin  24:40  
like that the only way otherwise just don't yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  24:42  
don't even give it off as an automatic. They shouldn't.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:45  
Yeah, they do. But you shouldn't you shouldn't buy that one. Just buy buy the manual and if you don't know how to drive a manual learn and then go buy one of these. It's it's a fantastic little car. I would if I were In Toyota product planning, or Subaru product planning, I would ditch the rear seat because it's completely useless.

Roberto Baldwin  25:08  
I put someone in the back of my BRC wants, like a human. He was like, had to sit like, oh, wait, he's not a she's not. He's short. But he still had to, like, sit all weird and crooked. And I've took my dog back there. And both times no one was having a good time.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:24  
You know, I'm not as tall as you Robbie. I'm only 511. And with the seat in the right position for me and my, you know, my proportions. I'm long in the torso. My legs are not exceptionally long. And when I looked back there, there was about an inch between the back of the front seat and, and the back seats. Like, why? You know, unless you're, you know, riding along with Jolson. monello driving, you know, Jill, we love we all love Jill. Yeah, but she's like, What? 411? I think,

Nicole Wakelin  25:54  
yeah, she's not even five feet. She's a tiny little thing. Big and personality. Oh, absolutely.

Sam Abuelsamid  25:58  
She more than makes up for it. Yes, she does. But you know, and she's got the seat all the way forward, then you might be able to get a modestly sized human in the backseat. Otherwise, it's completely useless. But besides that, the only other complaint I have, I wish I wish they would offer this as a convertible. But I think you know, the the looks of the new car are fantastic. It drives great. It's a sports car. So it's not a plush ride. But it is more than comfortable enough to deal with Michigan roads. And it's funny, when I when I when it was delivered, and I went to take some photos of it while it was still clean. I'm looking at the the tires. And clearly, you know, probably the guard guests from current driver had had this one previously,

Nicole Wakelin  26:46  
where no tires left at all. It's just a thin tread with

Sam Abuelsamid  26:49  
the shoulder pretty shredded. Yeah. But this thing is just a hoot to drive. You know, it's got just enough power, you know, to really have fun with it on the road. The there's an eight inch touchscreen display. For the for the radio, it's got Android Auto and CarPlay support. Not wireless, it's wired. But you know, such as such as the way and the one I had was in what they call track. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be pronounced track bread or track be read. Because it's lowercase b and then r e d in uppercase.

Roberto Baldwin  27:29  
Oh God.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:30  
So currently the same people that came up with the BC Forex naming,

Nicole Wakelin  27:35  
I bet track will read. They're saying bread because they're trying to be fancy because made for the track. But But yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:44  
So yeah, this thing was a hoot to drive. The BRC starts at for 23. I think it's 2027. Five, I think or something like that. And the 22 model I was driving was our Saudis. 27, nine for 2023 model year. So went up by 200. The one I had starts at 27. Seven, the premium starts at 30,300. And for that, you get more powerful audio system upgrade from 17 to 18 inch wheels, Michelin Pilot Sport tires and place of the premacy all season tires on the base model. But overall, it's just a it's a fantastic car. And if you are looking for a relatively affordable sports car, and you don't fit in a Miata, or you don't want a convertible you know, this is a this is the the other best option. So it's either this or Miata if you're looking for an affordable sports car. And I think they're they're both fantastic. I really liked the new gr 86. Oh, and also on the premium, you get that ducktail spoiler on the trunk lid, which I think looks does look a little bit silly, a little bit much. But you know, I can live with it.

Nicole Wakelin  29:02  
It's so much fun. It's like no, you don't need that. But it's kind of fun. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:07  
And I'm sure on the track, that would give you a little bit of extra, if not downforce at least less lift on the back end. So that's that's a good thing. So that was the

Roberto Baldwin  29:19  
Oh, someone asked me, I don't know, like a few weeks ago. What's the most fun I've had in a car in the past year? And without hesitation GRD six. Yeah, it was crest highway really fun. It's just so much fun. And this is I've driven a lot of cars. And some of them you're like well you this car is worth 100 And something $1,000 You must have had more fun in this. No, no.

Nicole Wakelin  29:43  
Isn't that like one of the funniest things that when people ask you about like your favorite car the best car to drive and then you make them qualify it like best car like crazy expensive or what kind of very often it's not the most expensive car in the segment. Like Nope that top car yeah, it's got fancy this fancy stuff, but you know it was better. This other one It's 1015 $20,000 Last like it doesn't have to be the most expensive car in its class to be the best or the most fun to drive. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  30:09  
absolutely. Yeah. All in with delivery the the Gerety, six came to $32,432.

Roberto Baldwin  30:17  
So don't don't forget the $15,000 markups that they're charging there for

Sam Abuelsamid  30:22  
it well there is that. If, if you lucked out, you might be able to find one, you know, at or near sticker. You know, and unfortunately that those that's a rare instance these days. So that's the gra 86. The other car that I drove. There was actually something else that I drove that we can't talk about till next week. But while I was in California driving that other thing I had to get from LAX to Santa Barbara. And lucid loaned me a air grand touring in Zenith read. I had previously had a brief opportunity to drive the Lucid Air Dream Dream edition, the launch edition of which they only built 520 Back in March when I was in Austin for South by Southwest, I had about an hour with it done. This time I had three days with it. And this is this is such a fantastic car. I mean it's gorgeous. It's roomy, it's fast. Everything almost everything about it. Almost not quite everything but almost everything about it is fantastic. It is expensive. The Grand Touring, is priced at $154,000. So it is not inexpensive. But, you know unlike some other vehicles, you know it, it feels very premium in there. You know the Tesla Model S even with its upgrades does not feel particularly premium, it doesn't really feel like $100,000 car luxury sedan, This thing feels like $100,000 Plus luxury sedan, the materials, you have your choice of either animal leather or vegan leather, beautiful fabrics and metal trim inside and wood open pore wood trim. Really, really nicely executed feels very solid. No squeaks and rattles, even over some some rougher pavement is great to drive. On the way up to LAX or up to Santa Barbara, I took a little detour through the canyons above Malibu drove up latigo Canyon Road and some of the other roads up there Mulholland and even though this is a $5,000 5000 pound luxury sedan, it is it feels surprisingly nimble. In part because the packaging it does, it's not as given the amount of room it has an inside, it doesn't feel huge on the outside, it's relatively it's got a relatively compact footprint, but it's really well packaged. And the trunk. In the trunk I had I put in a you can put in a standard carry on bag on its side, like you would in some newer aircraft. So you can fit for carry ons in the trunk across and also have a little extra space for some odds and ends. Plus you can also fit another one in the front truck along with some extra space for odds and ends. Want I think from from a design or usability standpoint, one of the only complaints I have about this is that center screen. So the infotainment system, you've got the large display that goes across the top of the dashboard, it's actually there's actually three displays within the housing. So there's the instrument cluster, the infotainment, and then controls for headlights and wipers on the left. And then there's another display that slots into the dashboard. And when you press the button or tap the button on the screen, it slides out and angles down to make kind of a console and there's a storage bin underneath there. Had some software issues, which is not unusual and many new cars. We had software issues on the Cadillac lyric. And there's a lot of newer vehicles are having software issues early on, was talking with the guys from lucid the other day, they've actually got a major new OTA update going out this week actually, that should hopefully address a lot of those things. One of the issues I had was relatively long boot up time when you first get in the car for the whole system to be up and running. They said they've cut cut the boot up time by about 80% which makes should make a huge difference. hopefully also addresses some stability issues. And one issue I had on one day, heading out from the hotel, I went, I use the voice recognition to put in a destination in the navigation and said

sure, the directions depress Gil winery. And then that was it. It just solids, the the top screen was blank in the center, the lower screen still had the map on it. But nothing was respond, it was completely locked solid. I went ahead pulled up the directions on my phone and just turned on the voice prompts and stuck it in a cup holder and drove for a while, you know, just to see if it would reset itself if it would timeout and reset itself. It never did. After about 15 or 20 minutes, I pulled over, looked up directions for how to reboot Lucid Air and found it and it's actually pretty straightforward. It's more straightforward than it sounds. If it if the system locks up or doesn't respond, all you got to do is turn on one of the turn signals. And then step out of the car, lock the door with the key card and step out of range of the key fob and the key cards about 2025 feet away and just wait until the turn signal stops. And that's your indicator that hey, the system has turned off and is restarting itself. And then you can get back in and it was good to go. The but having that screen down below, with the navigation stuff down there and some of the media stuff down there. It's kind of down down kind of low. And you're looking down away from the road to use that, which I thought was not great. But and the other thing is if your whatever you're you're using, whether you're using navigation or media stuff, it's showing you basically the same thing, it's showing you navigation stuff on the top screen. And on the lower screen, or media stuff on the top screen in the lower, it's showing you different stuff. You know, so you have some extra controls on the lower screen. But what I'd like is to have a navigation up top and media stuff down below or vice versa, you know, be able to switch switch them around. And I think that's that's something that's coming in future software updates. And it's it's a relatively minor complaint. But overall, you know, loved driving this car 819 horsepower and the one I had with the 21 inch wheels, I think it's rated about 420 miles of range. I was driving relatively brisk pace, and got a little less than 400. Or I was on pace for a little less than 400. But nose was fantastic. I loved it. And if I had, if I had 150 grand to spend on a car, I would seriously consider it.

Nicole Wakelin  37:59  
It's it's beautiful. I love the loose it I think it's great. I too, I drove that dream edition like you did a while back and had nothing but good things to say with it. I didn't drive it for a terribly long time it was very short drive that I got in it. So I didn't have any glitchy stuff. But it was fantastic. And I still can't get over this. I'm a style person it is such a neat and interesting way to do a luxury car it is. It's very simple and very clean and very streamlined. But it feels every bit like it's a car that costs $150,000 It's just gorgeous. I love it.

Sam Abuelsamid  38:32  
Especially when you get the combination of kind of the the aluminum roof, and then the lower body in a different color. That contrast and it looks really good. Oh, one other thing I should highlight about the the interior, the controls, I think they've done a good balance of physical controls, and touch controls. And the things the things you're likely to use most often temperature, fan speed, volume, those are their physical controls for that. So there's a row of rockers along the middle of the dash, so below the upper screen and above the lower screen. So you can just tap that up or down to raise the temperature raise or lower the temperature or the fan speed roller for the volume control. You've got you know regular turn signals and and shifter on the steering column. So, you know, I think they've found a decent balance there. Without you know, that gives you enough physical controls without cluttering up the interior pedigree. Alright, let's see. Next up. Stay with EVs get get there's a bunch of electric related news this week. Actually, let me start with this one. Before we started recording, I was telling the coal we had a major storm that swung through here last Monday and our power went out For about 24 hours. And when I called in to the utility to let them know, you know, to report the outage, I was having a lot of trouble getting through, the phone system was apparently getting overloaded, their website was getting overloaded, finally managed to report the outage, trying to get a status update estimate of when it might be back. They weren't even offering status updates until as late as you know, 18 hours later, I still couldn't get still said, No, we can't we can't give you an estimate yet. So it looked like power was going to be out for a while. Fortunately, we have a generator, a portable generator that I bought 18 years ago, 19 years ago, when we had the Big East Coast blackout. I had had that generator. So I pulled that out fired it up to power, these keep the refrigerators and some lights and a few other things powered. And the next morning, I got a call from somebody at Ford saying, hey, you know your power's out? Would you like us to send over a lightning to you? First, I was gonna say I was gonna say no, because I had a generator, a gas generator that was running. But then I realized, yeah, but a bunch of my neighbors don't have generators, right. So I said, yeah, if you want to send it over, then I can loan my generator to one of the neighbors and you know, give them power. So they brought over lightning that afternoon, they got home, we got to our place about five o'clock. I got everything plugged in, transferred over from my generator. And it was bought to roll the the mike my gas generator over to the neighbor's house. And then the power comes back. Of course, but you know, it did it did work really well, you know, just ran it ran a couple of extension cords from the truck plugged into the truck, ran him in through the garage door, powered the upstairs refrigerator and the other refrigerator downstairs, hooked up some lights had laptops, charging few other things. And it was pulling all that and it was pulling less than 400 Watts from the truck. So it could have gone on for a long while, at least a couple of weeks, you know, at that rate. So thank you to Ford for offering. And if we have our power, it stayed out for a few more days as it did in many parts of the region. You know, fortunately, the problem in our neighborhood here was a relatively minor one, and they were able to fix it quickly. relatively quickly. But, you know, if you've if you've got a lightning, or a hybrid f150 You know, with the pro power on board, you know, you'll be all set the next time your your power goes out.

Nicole Wakelin  42:39  
Did you see the link? I just popped into the show notes about the rivian. Oh, yes, I felt like this was relevant to mention right now. So I thought this story is so talking about using your your Eevee to do other things. This headline is this doctor used his rivian r1 t to complete a vasectomy, not even a joke he literally use they ran out of power. And this doctor used it to power the clinic to complete this to do this patient's ectomy and it was like he didn't want to

Sam Abuelsamid  43:10  
reschedule it. Yeah, he's like, I mean, that's not the kind of thing kind of job you want to leave half done.

Nicole Wakelin  43:15  
Right? Well, I don't know. He said. He said he said power on the clinic went out. This is the quote from the story power in the clinic went out patient didn't want to reschedule because he already had time off. The Electro cautery was normal, the procedure went great. And he literally has a picture of his review and parked up front you can see the cord just kind of going inside through the door of the clinic. And which I thought was hilarious. I mean, I thought this was a joke at first, but like no, I've seen it everywhere. And it's this is over on motor one. There's a story and I'm like, wow, like I went forward to demonstrate that here. We got some other ideas for you people.

Roberto Baldwin  43:52  
The whole I mean, I think there's there's, you know, every once a while you're like, Well, you know, because we're like in California, it's really hot. There's a heatwave. So they're out there have flex, and they're asking us not to turn on the air conditioning between like one and five, you know, the hottest time of the day, you know, they're asking us to So people always point to that, like, see, see if we had Eevee if anyone had an Eevee the whole thing would collapse. I'm like, Well, I don't think you're really thinking this through because they we all charge it if you're smart, you charge it up at night where electricity is like half the price. And also, if I had an Eevee that had no vehicle to load, I could run my air conditioner off of my car instead of using the system. Or I can reduce the load of the entire network.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:31  
Yeah, well, and this is exactly what PGn he's doing a test with right now with GM and with Ford. Using the bidirectional charging capabilities, the vehicle to load capabilities, you know, so right now with Ford with their intelligent power backup system, that's all managed locally. So if you're the integration switch, detects if your power goes out and flips the transfer switch over and starts drawing power from your truck until the power comes back. By But what what PG and he's doing and also some other utilities are also doing some more tests is remotely managing that. So if your truck is parked it is plugged in during the day and has enough charge, then what they can do is when they're seeing that, that load climbing up near the limits, they can send a signal to people's homes if you've if you've opted in, and basically take your house off the grid for an hour or two or three, and just run it off the off the vehicle. And then as the load comes back down, then they can flip it back over and recharge your vehicle again. So this is the kind of thing we're going to see a lot more of going going forward into the futures is that load balancing or load leveling using these vehicles and, you know, 111 case, where that's going to work really well is with school buses, you know, electric school buses are getting more and more popular. And for stuff like this, it's actually an ideal use case, because of the way that electric school the duty cycle for electric school buses, you know, they go out in the morning, you know, pick up the kids take him to school, a go out in the afternoon, later in the afternoon, pick up the kids and take them home. And then during the middle of the day, they're usually just sitting there in the bus barn, you know, and it's their electric that can be plugged in. And they can be used as this load balancing system for the grid.

Roberto Baldwin  46:26  
And this isn't actually new this is because we have the things called peakers. So as as the grid gets taxed, usually these dirty PE like, they're just crap, there's old power stations, and they spin them up. And then those take help, you know, balance the load. But you know, they're they're just trashed. They're just old power stations are not that great. And so what they started doing in California and Hawaii is the you know, and Australia is using essentially power walls, you know, Tesla has, so they're using batteries in order to to reduce to reduce the use of peakers. So and so as the as the as the more and more people need more electricity, these batteries can instantly add electricity to the grid. This is pretty much the same thing. Except the batteries are everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:14  
So yeah, they call it they call it a virtual power plant. Yeah. Where you have you have a bunch of vehicles out there with, you know, with batteries in them, utilize those batteries for short periods, and you can cycle through you don't necessarily need all you need to use all the vehicles that are plugged in, you can run it run a vehicle for you know, run off a vehicle for an hour or two and then shuttle a shuttle around a different vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  47:41  
Yeah, no, it's it's I think there's, there's sort of a misunderstanding of how EVs can actually contribute to the grid as opposed to being these giant sucks from Yeah. And they were like, Oh, they're gonna destroy my home. And it's, it's kind of difficult to explain. Because if you don't have an Eevee, if you don't understand how the grid works, there's a lot of explaining to do in order to get that aha moment from people. And of course, there are people who just don't want to listen. They're just like, No, no,

Sam Abuelsamid  48:11  
yeah, no, yeah. All right. So staying with the EVS, Buick, this week announced that they are going to be offering buyouts to dealers to buy back their franchises, if the dealers for dealers that don't want to make the investment to Go Electric, because back in June, I think Buick announced that yeah, we're, the brand is gonna go all electric before the end of this decade, just like, you know, just like Cadillac. And when Cadillac analysis in 2020, they did the same thing for their dealers, they said, Look, you know, we know that there's a bunch of dealers that don't actually sell very many cars. And, you know, we're going electric, and if you don't want to spend the 250 $300,000 that you got to invest, you know, to put in chargers and training for your technicians and spare parts inventory and things like that, you know, that's fine. You know, let us know, we'll buy back your we'll buy back your franchise and you don't have to sell Cadillacs anymore. Now, Buick is doing the same thing with Cadillac, almost a third of their over a little over 800 dealers that they had the beginning of 2020 opted for the buyback. So I think they're down to somewhere around 550 dealers now, but turns out that, you know, though, those dealers that are left accounted for about 90% of Cadillac sales anyway. So most of those dealers that took the buyouts were not selling very many cars. And I think we're gonna see more brands going down this path over the next few years. And I'm buying out dealers that don't want to support EVs.

Nicole Wakelin  49:52  
It doesn't sound like a bad idea either do either. Even if it's just not a matter of like, well, we're not going to support EVs and don't want to invest but if you just have an underperforming dealership Oops, it's a great way to sort of call the herd a little bit. Yeah, get out of it, you know?

Roberto Baldwin  50:05  
So how was my Cadillac dealership where I sell two cars a year?

Nicole Wakelin  50:08  
Right? Like, maybe it's not worth it to have a Cadillac dealership that looks like that one and then only sells two cars, let's, let's let them gracefully exit to the market. You know, everybody wins.

Roberto Baldwin  50:17  
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:19  
And, you know, they kind of did some of that back in 2009. When they went through bankruptcy, they got rid of a bunch of dealers, but they're they did it. You know, they did it kind of arbitrarily. And they didn't pay out the dealers, or at least didn't pay out most of the dealers here. You know, it's, it's completely voluntary on the part part of the dealers, and they're getting a pretty decent payout for their franchise. So it's, you know, I think I think it's a good idea. It's a good approach for the manufacturers to take.

Nicole Wakelin  50:47  
Yeah, it definitely looks better for the brand if the dealerships they have looked vital and engaged, as opposed to like, you know, cobwebs, cobwebs on the corner, like you want to get rid of those, you don't want that to be impression of how excited people are about your car.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:00  
You still you still have a brand new 2004 DTS sitting over there in the corner. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  51:06  
Maybe that's not so great.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:09  
Look, we'll buy out your franchise, and we'll buy that DTS,

Nicole Wakelin  51:13  
take it back.

Sam Abuelsamid  51:17  
Okay. Toyota has been one of the major automakers it's been, let's say less enthusiastic about battery EVs. That's actually been shifting quite a bit over the past 12 months. You know, they've a couple of times now adjusted where they expect their their sales targets for Bev's to be by the end of the decade. They're up to now projecting or targeting about 30% Evie sales by 2030 globally, which is, you know, a lot better than 15% that it was a year ago. But now it's this week that they're converting two of their major engine plants in Japan. Over to building batteries, their Shimoyama and Miyoshi engine plants are going to become battery plants over the next couple of years and start building batteries. And they had previous earlier this year, they announced plans for a battery plant in North Carolina, which at the time they announced it was about a 1.3 billion investment. And they were going to only build hybrid batteries there. They have now almost tripled that they've added another two and a half billion and they are going to build batteries for EVs in addition to hybrids. So it's about what set them out to $3.8 billion investment now. Going into this North Carolina plant with about 2000 employees working there building batteries.

Roberto Baldwin  52:51  
You know, it's I feel like a broken record. It's not a it's not a sprint, it's a marathon when it comes to EVs. Toyota has been very vocal about how much they don't want to. It's in the past. And I think you know, and then the sort of wheels falling off of their current EVs is,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:10  
you know, literally, literally,

Nicole Wakelin  53:13  
truly actually, they're falling off.

Roberto Baldwin  53:16  
But I think you know, they're coming around and they're realizing like, oh, we really have to like invest in this we want to make sure we don't get left behind you know, there's I don't know if they were waiting for the what was going to happen in California, which there was an executive order two years ago for 2035 And now everyone's like Yeah, yeah, we're gonna make it so TV only in 2035 which is I think they were just like, oh, it's the biggest market okay, we're looking at the actual business case for this and we're like fine, fine, we'll do it. So I'm you know, I'm hoping there's some enthusiasm within Toyota that'll to make this happen. It's more than just business based. And a GRE electric Yardi six would be dope.

Nicole Wakelin  53:59  
Yeah, but then they have out there just in case you also have

Roberto Baldwin  54:02  
like one of the best looking Evie concepts that might come into the market was like the little their little FJ the tiny FJ Cruiser Evie. Yeah. Like a year. Yeah, you're just gonna sell one. Yeah, it's a you're gonna sell a billion of those things. Just throw a really nice Evie powertrain in there. Bring it to market and then just watch them make sure the wheels are low. Right keep the detail the wheels on

Nicole Wakelin  54:27  
stay on. That's it small requests. People have given meals please stay on the vehicle. Okay, thanks. Bye. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  54:34  
Yeah, that thing is gonna be that thing's gonna sell like gangbusters.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:39  
Yeah, hopefully they will build that. But, you know, it's not just EVs for Toyota or not, not just battery EVs for Toyota. And for other automakers like BMW. They're still big on fuel cells. week before last. Toyota did an event here You're in town at the American Center for Mobility. And I had a chance to go for a ride in a fuel cell semi fuel salt Kenworth t 680. Yeah, pretty amazing how fast and electric semi will accelerate, especially when there's no trailer hooked up. But the they've been testing these, for they're on their second generation right now, they've been testing these for few years in the Port of Long Beach in the portal on Los Angeles. And the latest generation version of it's got a range of 300 miles with that with a full load. So at 80 tonnes, or 40 tons or 80,000 pounds, it can go 300 miles, and recharge and refuel in between 10 and 15 minutes, which is pretty impressive. And for big vehicles like that fuel cells are a great solution.

Roberto Baldwin  55:54  
That's the great that's and I think that's how we're going to end up with fuel cells and regular cars is that we're going to build out a network for the for these large, these large semis, you know, across the interstates for them to move with fuel cells, because fuel cells make perfect sense for a semi and for long haul trucking. And then from that, you know, we'll get like little spider webs out where like, oh, let's put a little fuel you know, I got a Mariah and I live in Ohio, and I live near like a, you know, a rotten, Robbie's and how I can or a pilot or whatever, you know what there's another, you know, I'm gonna put a fuel cell station, you know, five miles 15 miles in from the, from the, from the interstate. So I think that's that's how we're gonna get fuel cell vehicles, but it's going to definitely be it makes way more sense for semis and long haul trucking than for just passenger cars in this country in Japan and North Korea or Japan and in Korea. It's you know, they it's they there's fuel cell, there's actual infrastructure, but here, I think it's got to be trucking before it's anything else.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:53  
Yeah, no, I agree. And, you know, with trucking, you know, the business case for trucking. You know, truckers make their revenue based on the poundage of freight that they can carry. And their their weight limited to 40 tons in most states, except for Michigan, unfortunately, where they run 80 tons and destroy our roads. But that's so much. Anyway, they're typically limited to 40 tons. And, you know, so the way to you take the weight of the truck out of that, and that's how much payload you can carry. And with the fuel cell truck, it weighs roughly the same as a current diesel truck, even even with the hydrogen tanks on it, whereas the battery electric truck is typically gonna be hauling about somewhere between for long haul somewhere between 10 and 15,000 pounds of batteries, that's 10 or 15,000 pounds of freight that you can't carry that you can't generate revenue from that's just dead weight that you're dragging everywhere. And so from a business case for long haul trucking bat, batteries, or battery electric is fine for like day cabs, you know, short haul, you know, around town or, you know, short regional runs. But for long haul transcontinental battery electric makes no sense at all. But the other thing got with fuel cells is BMW announced this week, that they are starting production of fuel cell stacks, and they partnered with Toyota on this. So they're using Toyota technology for their fuel cells. They're starting production in Munich of fuel cell stacks, and they're building a fleet of BMW i x five hydrogen SUVs. So there are fuel cell x fives that they're going to be testing in Germany, starting excuse me towards the end of the year. And so that's, you know, that's another use case, you know, larger SUVs and stuff like that, where they the fuel cell stack, you know, it can be better it can be packaged, and you can get faster refueling time with it than you can with a battery and, and still have zero emissions.

Roberto Baldwin  59:15  
Yeah, it's, I guess, it's just that infrastructure. That's just that's that's what it comes down to. And I noticed that for years Toyota and California kept crowing about how we're gonna have 160 stations, we're gonna have 150 stations, we're gonna have 200 stations, we're gonna have 20 You know, 220 stations. And then like one station will be built a year. And it's you know, it's it's it's chicken and egg. And if you can charge your car, really almost anywhere because electricity is everywhere, versus I have to go to a special place to fuel my car and that place is only available in Northern California, Southern California and parts of New England. It gets hard to like make a business case and hard to sort of expand that infrastructure beyond piggybacking on like you No buses. And that's, that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:04  
well, the right now in the United States, there's a grand total of 54, hydrogen fueling stations, whom the whole in the whole country and the whole country and I'm thankful for all of those are in California

Roberto Baldwin  1:00:16  
are all doing my house, everything is near my house.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:20  
There's one in in Tahoe, or Carson City. There's a bunch of them around the San Francisco area, there's a few around Sacramento. There's one and in the Central Valley. So if you're, oh, yeah, LA area, and then there's a lunch around around the Los Angeles area.

Roberto Baldwin  1:00:39  
What's scary is that Santa Barbara, a lot of times, they're like sort of out of there'll be out of commission. And at one point, there was a field, there was a hydrogen shortage. There's very few fueling stations, and sometimes they don't work. And then like 20% of the time they don't work is what I figured, when you look at the list, like 20% of them are just like, sorry, it doesn't work right now. And then sometimes they just run out a hive or

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:10  
wait, I think there's, I'm looking at some random map for the Massachusetts it's a mass.gov thing. So something on this, Massachusetts, and there's one outside of Boston, one outside of Hartford, one outside of New York and one between New York and like Hartford, Connecticut. So there's nothing in New Hampshire, apparently. So basically, the entire northeast, we've got for,

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:35  
probably for buses.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:38  
They're all for private fleets.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01:41  
I don't even think I know, they're implying that they're not in these little happy pictures. I'm like I don't what is behind the gate that looks honest to God, like it's in like a prison, I feel like those aren't accessible to the public.

Roberto Baldwin  1:01:53  
The one that I typically would go to is in Emeryville. And there's a giant there's a wall along the street, because inside is a giant bus facility for for the regional transit system, and wall wall wall. And then there's like sort of a carve out where the wall sort of dips in, and then back out and in that sort of dip in in that little, like a little parking structure. Like when you go to register for your hotel, when you pull in. It's just like that it's just to fuel there's two hydrogen pumps. Because it's like, it's like on the outside of the the bus thing. And you're just like, and that's the one I would just go to whenever I hadn't, because I knew the buses need hydrogen. Yeah. So that's the place that I can trust that it'll be fine.

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:38  
Actually haven't been they'll work.

Roberto Baldwin  1:02:39  
Yeah, the buses need hydrogen, so they got to have the highest.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:45  
Alright. And then one last story. So we've all heard about issues of battery fires. And you know, that's not a good thing. But the reality is that the, the frequency of battery fires is still a tiny fraction of the frequency of gasoline engine fires. It's about one, it's less than less than 1/10 of the number given relative to the number of vehicles on the road. So this German insurance company AXA, decided to do this demo is crashed demo, where they took a Tesla and they dragged it up a ramp to to have it flipped over. And then it caught fire. And they tried to imply that you know, EVs are dangerous, you know, and it catches fire when it crashes. Except that in this particular, you know, if an accident like this one, you know, were to run up some kind of ramp and flipped over and then scraped along on its roof. had happened, it almost certainly would not have done any damage to the battery. And in fact, the car that they used for the demonstration didn't even have a battery in it. It was they took the battery out of the Tesla. Oh God. They rigged it up to catch fire to show it on fire

Roberto Baldwin  1:04:11  
that day. This is like I remember, was it 2020 or 60 minutes in the 90s with the GMC, they still was SD fi SD rockin

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:24  
knows NBC was Dateline. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they did that with with the old Chevy pickups with the sidesaddle tanks. Yep. Yeah. It's like they don't just don't do this.

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:37  
They have this whole statement like well, you know, we're simulating things and we take precautions to to you know, keep people safe. There's like the whole statement here. It's like, but it was fake. But it was fake. But the whole thing was fake. If you want it to be like this could potentially happen. Dramatization, not real at the bottom. That's one thing but this is what it looks like not only if you stick fireworks in your Tesla

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:00  
And the thing is, you know, actually, if you watch this video included in the show notes, you see this Tesla, you know, flipped over and is scraping along on its roof. And actually, the roof structure held up.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:15  
It's actually the roof. Yeah, like if I didn't play it, but it's like the roof looks like I'm like, Wow, that's pretty sturdy. It's like still perfectly curved and everything. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:25  
I mean, there are genuine safety issues with Tesla's that have nothing to do with the battery. I feel like this isn't fun structure. Yeah, highlighted entirely the wrong thing. And faked it.

Roberto Baldwin  1:05:36  
So this is when it's funny because, you know, Elon Musk and Tesla are like, we're building up our AI lawyers and you know, they were gonna go after, I don't know, I guess, journalists or who knows? And who knows what Elon is thinking most of the time. But I'm like, Oh, this is the thing you should be using all those lawyers for this is this is another company essentially saying yeah, if you roll a Tesla over for reasons that make no sense, it will catch on. While

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:04  
someone's getting sued, but but if you do get into a crash and an Eevee, and you see smoke, you know, and it looks like the battery's gonna catch on fire. Get away from the vehicle as quickly as you can. I mean, well, anytime actually any view and get away from it. Go away from vehicle, not try to put it out yourself. Just get get back away from it as soon as you as quickly run away. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  1:06:27  
Just fires provider bad run away.

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:29  
Run away for help. Runaway. Yep. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:33  
All right. Let's answer a few listener questions. First up from Bryn barons 1000. Why did Mazda not do the Miata as their first low range? Evie, they would have sold a boatload versus the mistake that is the MX 30 even lower range in a sport coupe convertible would make more sense than a compact crossover. And actually, when I was in LA last week, I actually saw an MX 30 In the wild, you know, oh my god, someone's gonna manufacture plate did they didn't even make that

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:01  
many wasn't 500 500. And some, just mostly? I think it has to do for California.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:07  
Yeah, it was they were all sold in California. And they sell them in Europe as well. So I'm not sure I haven't looked up the numbers, sales numbers for Europe. But yeah, they

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:18  
chose to buy that why,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:20  
but good freeze, probably a Mazda employee.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:24  
So you didn't buy it? You got it. You got a

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:26  
really good deal. Mas was like we're gonna you know if it's like $99 a month like the Fiat 500. D. I would, I would totally get an MX 30. Evie, I liked the interior. It doesn't drive like a Mazda, which is unfortunate. But the interior is really nice. And it has the cool.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:42  
It is really cool. Except it also has that cord. It has that cork,

Roberto Baldwin  1:07:45  
oh, it's just gonna like the cork, the cork, cork, but it's gonna get filthy.

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:49  
Exactly. Until you think about it doesn't even have to be kids in your car. Like I know how bad I am with my large iced coffee sitting here that I've dripped on myself half a dozen times, sitting at my desk, what is gonna happen to the center console in my car, when I put this coffee in it, I'm gonna drip it out. And it's gonna be in the cork. And this can be sticky and there's gonna be mark, it's gonna be it's beautiful. If you don't ever touch it, that's not gonna happen. I'm

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:11  
gonna look up MX 30 leases right now.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:14  
Robbie's about ready to get a new car. I'm gonna get a deluxe 30.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:18  
But the question of why they didn't do the Miata mainly comes down to I think they probably felt that they couldn't maintain the Miata as driving dynamics. Now with Eevee they could they couldn't squeeze in enough battery to be useful and still maintain the driving character that they want it and that

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:38  
hope and they have the whole with a 5050 weight distribution that they're so picky on like I bet it would be like, impossible to get that to make that handle the way Miata should handle I bet it would compromise it too much.

Roberto Baldwin  1:08:50  
Well, I think battery who's battery technology that it used for the MX there was a Toyota? No,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:56  
no, I don't know. They never said okay. Never said whose battery

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:01  
by the way. You can't get the MX 30 Because it's sold out.

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:05  
It sold out. That's yeah, that's going

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:08  
to bring here for 22 model year is gone. So you may not may or may not be 20 threes. They haven't said yet. Oh, zero

Roberto Baldwin  1:09:15  
results found? Yeah, I can't find Oh, wait, let me let me expand the range 250 miles.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:09:24  
They, you know, they could put the battery down the center tunnel of the Miata and kind of have sort of a T shaped battery with a little bit in the front and then maybe some in the back ahead of the rear axle. But it would be tough to get enough range to be useful even in the Miata and still keep the weight and the driving dynamics where they want. I

Nicole Wakelin  1:09:46  
feel like it'd be worse for them to like if they put it in they could make it drive like a Miata. Cool. But if it didn't drive like a Miata, oh, that would be Yeah, that would be worse than building the MX 30. Which people are so you know for its drawbacks. Okay to mess up a Miata like don't mess up don't mess. People will come after you.

Roberto Baldwin  1:10:06  
Yeah don't matter to me all right, you know they they're there. They're not a big automakers are not to it or not Honda, it's going to be a little bit for them to get the the battery technology to where it needs to be before they can shove it into Miata. But when they do people, yeah, you're right. They're good people. They're gonna sell a bunch of these things.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:23  
All right, James Gardner asked, current standard supply chains and dealer inventories and availability from you and from your insiders. craptastic craptacular. Yeah, I was just talking to one of my neighbors the other day. There are saris a friend of ours. And they were getting a new crv for their daughter, whose old Chevy Sonic died. And it took them four months from the time they ordered it. So it actually it depends a lot on which brand you're going for. Some brands are worse than others. Honda and Toyota are still having some really severe constraints. And I think back in June, Toyota was saying they had typically like four days supply.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:11  
Yeah, it was really ridiculously small. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:15  
Honda's Honda's also still really bad Ford and GM situation has gotten better. Still, antas is also a little better. But so it varies. But even for Ford and GM, you know, they're still they're still struggling with supplies. And getting enough GM, I think this week, came out that they're shipped. And it's not just things like chips, it's all kinds of different things. They started shipping pickup trucks without the under hood liner, the noise liner that goes underneath the hood. Really said when we get those in, you know, we'll give it we'll send you a note and you can come in to the dealer and they'll install it for you.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:56  
Just concerns with doing that until we get if you really want your vehicle but like I want the guy who puts the parts on my car, the original parts to be a guy who does that all day every day for a living. I don't want it. I want that to be his jam. Like I can install a headliner like a boss not like how's this go on? Like, I don't want that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:13  
I don't want someone looking at YouTube putting

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:16  
on training onto mechanics into dealerships. They know what they're doing, but it's like the guys that the put them together from the get go. They do this all the time.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:24  
The headliner guy like they're like, Hey, you can we need to rotate like nah, nah, nah, I'm good.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:29  
I just did. That's all I did.

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:31  
I do. I do headliners to reduce noise. I'm

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:36  
awesomely

Roberto Baldwin  1:12:38  
I'm the king.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:39  
All right. Andrew Pappas asked Jim Farley said that Ford wouldn't make an Eevee like the lyric because that the vehicle has a traditional hood, as he ever looked at his own Maki. And so this actually came from an interview that Farley did with Eileen, your co host on fast woman. Nickel, yes. in Newsweek. And in that he, he was talking about, you know, the, the Lyric, you know, maybe not looking quite enough out there quite different enough. Which, you know, I think that, you know, he's maybe going a little overboard, I can't, I think there's one legitimate complaint you can make about the lyric in terms of the design, which is that given the length of the hood, and the proportions of this thing, which are, which do look fairly traditional, it's got quite a bit of space between the the firewall or the bulkhead and the front end of the vehicle. And they opted not to put a front storage area in our front.

Nicole Wakelin  1:13:39  
Did they say, Why was there a reason that kind of, like, the reason

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:42  
that Cadillac gave, which I don't entirely buy into is, you know, that they were packaged protecting to, you know, to allow for the all wheel drive model. And, you know, they packaged all the electronics and the climate control stuff under the hood. And when we were out there in Park City in June to drive it, we actually opened the hood and popped off the plastic cover, that's there is a big empty space, there's a big empty space, even even when you account for where the motor is going to be, which is down pretty low. There's easily enough space in there to give you at least some storage area

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:18  
that feels like a ridiculous excuse because like, Okay, so right now, cars have engines, and they have all wheel drive. So you don't have to, it's not like you have to come up with it's not like all wheel drive is a new concept. Like Currently there are cars with both those features. Our used attorneys, yeah, we should have space where the engine was even if the whole drive components are still there. I know engineering things have to move around, but still, it shouldn't require you're going to be staying

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:43  
well, you know, I mean, the the lucid is a perfect example. It does not have a particularly long hood, you know, it's not you know, it's got a fairly compact front end. And it's got a motor in there driving the front wheels with, you know, 400 plus horsepower, and it's got a front trunk. Yeah, enough to hold the standard carry on bag that will go into your overhead compartment.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:05  
I feel the explanation from Cadillac is not adequate. I need more information Cadillac.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:11  
To be fair. Yeah, lux not the only one. You know Bo U is pretty bad about this as well.

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:17  
Isn't that super that? What's the Subaru that I can't think of the name of because I'm trying to set her doesn't that not have a funk to?

Roberto Baldwin  1:15:25  
It's also to to bees? Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:27  
no, but doesn't I don't think it has a funk.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:31  
Yeah, well, in the case, in the case of the Saltair, and the Bz 4x, they, you know, it does have a relatively short area, and they've got all the electronics stacked up on top of the front motor. So the, like the, in the case of the the Lyric, the Lyric is rear wheel drive, or all wheel drive. Yeah, the Saltair and vZ 4x are front wheel drive and all wheel drive. So they've always got the, it's always got a front motor, and all the electronics are stacked up on top of that. So there, there really isn't much room there to do it on those vehicles. But the Lyric, the Lyric is better. Yeah, they could do that, if they chose to, but they've opted not to. And my understanding is that the Celestica is the same thing. They also did not have a front trunk in this elastic.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:17  
I mean, the front is one of the coolest things about getting an Eevee I just like to open the that's cool. I want that. I think I will not buy an Eevee that doesn't have a front. I don't care if it's only big enough for like, like a juice box and a sandwich. I want there to be a frank in there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:32  
But you know, to what Farley said, you know, at least in the case of both the maki and the F 150. You know, they've got a traditional hood, but they also have pretty good sized front trunks.

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:44  
Yeah, well, you can throw a whole other car inside the

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:48  
the f150 it's like that's your

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:49  
carrot. That's a spot to put it almost put an MX 30 in there.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:52  
Just yeah, just putting the MX 30. And when you get there, you can pop that out.

Roberto Baldwin  1:16:56  
Charge it up head Oh no. Yeah, there you

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:58  
go. Okay, X Lite, says third gen Chevy Colorado and the 2.7 was varying outputs, are the engine internals exactly the same. The only difference being in software are tuned upgrades offered. So there's three variants, there's two high output variants and a standard output variant. There are differences. They use the same block and head and everything. But there are some different mechanic hardware differences between the bass 2.7 Turbo and the high output versions. I think pistons are different, maybe the turbo some some other things, because there's quite a bit of difference. And you will probably be able to get more power out of the base version with the software tune. Whether GM is planning on offering anything like that from the factory, I don't know. There probably be something available through Chevy's performance parts catalog or something like that. All right. And then last one is a pretty long one. Let me try

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:01  
and I'm still trying to skim through and find the question. Yeah, so

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:05  
this, this is more comment than question. This is actually two emails combined from Elaine Sykes. He's lived in California for 40 years, stays in touch with just about everything happening there. Been an avid, high wind kiteboarder and wind surfers well as being a big boat sailor. I know weather and wind patterns announced yet on the news today Governor Newsom is seeking to extend the life of their nuclear power station to supplement the ever growing demand. So this is forget the Diablo one. Which one Diablo. Yeah, the Diablo nuclear power stations the last one operating in California. It's supposed to close in 2025. They want to extend it for a while to make sure they have enough generating capacity. So during during the months of September through mid October, the normal wind patterns change the normal cooling flow from the bay to the Delta the Sacramento Delta ends. Temps rise in the Bay Area and Sacramento area people turn on AC and mass. The grid suffers and rolling power shutdowns are numerous when the winds when the wind quits so to the windmills the California Assembly mandated many years ago that PG and E divert money from grid and infrastructure updates and upgrades to create more solar and wind. The engineers advised the California government that there was insufficient electrical storage capacity. They said California only has 60% of the required storage. Governor Brown signed an executive decree in his last days stopping the cutting of the trees for any treat for any reason. That complicates distribution and upgrades PG and he says that it will take 80 years to complete required upgrades to stop forest fire threats. So you live in California

Roberto Baldwin  1:19:46  
don't even get me start okay at p Jamie has been essentially paying out money to its stockholders as opposed to upgrading its its actual infrastructure. So instead of taking the dude diligence and taking care of its infrastructure. So it doesn't like fires and kill people. They had been just giving money to up to their stockholders. So there they weren't working for and even now, it's difficult to to to really trust pg&e, but they weren't working for the good of their customers. They are the good of the grid or the good of really anyone besides their stockholders and the people, the executives at pg&e, so it's a yeah, there's no love lot. There's very little love for PG and E in California, and especially in Northern California. And you see their sort of mismanagement and just inability to just do their jobs, which is something that's been decades in the making, and it's been exacerbated with the drought. And yeah, the sort of like, well, pg&e said there, PJ, and he is only sane and doing things, especially for the last few decades, in order to make more money not to fix the the grid itself. And so it's sort of disappointing. You know, what has happened here in California and the fact that we're having, you know, we have to do the the power outages, that's, that's really 18 or pg&e, saying, We know what we don't trust our electric lines, not to spark a fire. That's why That's it. That's it's, you know, there's Yes, there is grid issues. But it's, that's not why they're there turning the power off, they have peakers, they have battery storage, they're turning the power off, because it's slightly windy, it's a hot day, they don't trust their power lines not to spark another fire. That's not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:46  
good. And yeah, and they have caused multiple, very major fires, like wasn't the paradise fire caused by? Yes, CGD it was, like

Roberto Baldwin  1:21:56  
100 year old like part that is that you could see they showed the part like they had a picture of it. And it hadn't been changed or looked at or fixed or anything. And you can see just how the powerline had just wore through this chunk of metal over the decades. And the PGA were like, Oh, we don't have capacity, right? No, you don't have the will to do the work that you're supposed to do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:21  
Yeah. And this is, this is probably the single biggest problem we have with going all electric is it's not so much the generating capacity, because it's the generating capacity exists. But it's the distribution and reliable distribution. And, you know, when you've got systems like that, that are threatening to cause fires, that limit your ability, your ability to distribute the power, then, you know, it's gonna be a serious problem in California, you know, the Air Resources Board has passed the rule saying, you know, from 2035 onwards, no more sales of pure internal combustion, or hybrid vehicles, it's got to be at least plug in hybrids, battery electrics or fuel cells from that point forward. And if they if the state doesn't do something about making sure the utilities are up to snuff, it's gonna be a real problem.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:22  
It's definitely an issue. I mean, I think, you know, everyone's for the let's make it better, cleaner, faster, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, if they're gonna make these mandates, like you must stop selling this kind of thing by this date, well, then you darn well better have the infrastructure to support it, or you're creating a different whole problem for people, you know, regardless of whether it's the greed of a company or whatever it's like, if they're not going to change if they're not going to, you know, if they're not going to adapt, and it does, it does cause a bit of a problem for all of us.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:49  
Yeah, it's the ironic thing is that the thing that might help me fix the fix the issues are the automakers because you know, you have the Ford F 150. Lightning, you have vehicles from Hyundai, you have the ID buzz, Kevin, these all support the vehicle to load. And at some point, these vehicle to load vehicles will be able to be a distributed storage system within the grid. And so either you're helping your fellow man with your vehicle to load, Pollstar will do the same thing. I just did an interview with the CEO of SOS GM. Yeah, so everyone's working on these sort of vehicle to load vehicles. So they're essentially home batteries. They're essentially part of the grid, even if it's just in a micro level where it's at your house, but they can also be used like you were saying earlier, with PG and E working with Ford and GM, where those vehicles can help, you know, pull some of the load off the grid and off the their energy producing either whether it's fossil or whether it's natural gas, or whether like it's natural gas that falls but whether it's wind or solar, so the cars that everyone's complaining about, might actually be the thing that helps the grid

Nicole Wakelin  1:24:59  
Do you wonder like if it Okay, so and I totally agree with you like the cars can totally help with the situation once you get to a point where you can you know, you've got your cars, cars now your little battery in your driveway to charge your house. But do we have the infrastructure so everybody had the car in their driveway to charge your house? Do we have enough to even if we stagger out like Bob, you know, like you know you do watering when there's a drought like in New Hampshire, it's like odd even watering so you're not all watering on the same day so that it doesn't deplete our reservoirs? Even if you're doing a similar kind of thing with electric power coming in you still we do they really have enough to juggle everybody doing that, you know, the entirety of everyone just like you wonder how well they're, they be able to handle that. You know, it is I get I get that like someday in the future. But like, if you push it too fast, if you push it too fast, it can't it doesn't. It's not gonna go smoothly.

Roberto Baldwin  1:25:45  
Yeah, the technology is actually I mean, if I bought a def 115 and got the Pro Connect station, I think it's called or charge station pro charge station Pro. I can do it right now. Right? Oh, no. I mean, it's just electricity. I mean, it's just that if

Nicole Wakelin  1:25:58  
you, like everybody in San Francisco did that right? Now, let's just put them all on an f150. Because that's a super practical vehicle for San Francisco. But like, the idea of it like everybody's in that right, the second, you all have to charge that up. Now you're always using that you can also charge your house with it. But like, do they have the can the could the grid handle always having to charge that much stuff? Like you're still at some point charging that f150?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:24  
Your house? It absolutely can at night? Yeah. So you'd have to come up

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:27  
with like, really strict though, like, like, you'd have to almost it feels like you'd almost have to do my odd even watering thing like these people.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:34  
And the thing is they can take they can they can do that. You know, they can do math, you can do they have managed charging systems that say, okay, you know, at 10pm, you can start charging. And of course, you know, they're not going to suddenly start charging a million vehicles, a million EVs all at exactly 10pm They're gonna stagger them, you know, by 1015 seconds apart.

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:57  
It's still a lot to stagger.

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:58  
It's it's also, it's also based on the you know, whether the way it works, it's there's a financial aspect to it, because nothing works about money, right? Oh, there is? No, there is it's half the chart, my electricity is half the cost, while I'm charging my car at night between midnight and 9am that it is during the day.

Nicole Wakelin  1:27:16  
But that's true. But see, but that's a financial incentive for you. But it's like, is that enough to make you go and spend the money on an f1 50? And is it I don't know, I still think that it's happening at a pace I get what now I've lost his name and his giant email, what Elaine is saying sorry, to scroll back up to the show notes, I get what Elaine is saying that there's like, it's this is all really cool. And there is ways to do but man, it is a complex thing to try and pull off in a short period of time because there's so many, there's so many variables in this and because the power is already in short supply to get it to get it to

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:49  
really in short supply. The power is the power out to you. The power is yet it to you. Because they haven't fixed the infrastructure, which is again, a whole other system.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:28:00  
So big patching the infrastructure with the cars, right patching

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:03  
the infrastructure with the cars, you can't

Nicole Wakelin  1:28:05  
like, I feel like that's not a that's a sketch way to try and do it. I feel like eventually it will work. But I'm like, it's still getting the power to as many people whether you blame it on the actual source or the lines that get it to it are getting that much part of that many people and then staggering it so that everybody has the power they want when they want it is a complicated you can't deny that's going to be complicated as heck to try and figure that out. If you suddenly had everybody on the grid and you were relying on the batteries, cool, cool, cool, your car can power your house. But you still have to charge up that car at some point. So how do you charge Bob's car and Mike's her car in Sam's car, Nicole's car, and Robbie's car, all so that we have our cars, we win our cars and also had the electricity to run a house when we were out. It's a complicated, it's a complicated, it's

Roberto Baldwin  1:28:44  
not automatic, but you say that suddenly, it's not a sudden thing. Well, but

Nicole Wakelin  1:28:49  
these are huge infrastructures. It's not as it but it is in the grand scheme of trying to upgrade an entire infrastructure, you know, stuff that hasn't been done in 100 years, it clearly doesn't, for whatever reason, not negating the reasons, you know, can be debated, but it's still, it is still a complicated thing that is not going to be easy. And look at how long it's just taking us to get charged for crying out loud, just reliable chargers to plug in your car to charge on the road, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:16  
whether it's, here's a so a peak or takes five years to build a peeker, which is something that you know, you say, Okay, we want we need we have more demand, and we're able to supply during peak hours. So we have to build a peak or five years, a battery storage systems 18 months, a cost less than 18 months. So there's always a there's already the financial benefit of already moving away from the fossil fuels and using battery storage. So it's there. It's just the will of pg&e and, you know, the fact that we've allowed unregulated power companies to just do whatever they want, and the result is deaths.

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:56  
Yeah. I don't think this is as easy a problem to solve by doing this. Oh no. I don't think it's doable. I agree that it's doable, it's gonna take time, it's ridiculously complex to actually pull this off. I don't think it's easy at all. I don't think it's remotely easy. I think all the pieces are there. But like the pieces are floating in the entire universe, we got to bring them all into one spot. And to get all those pieces to work together at the same time, people in the cars, infrastructure to support the cars, everybody to have to have all of that that is a complicated thing. I know the prot, like if you individually have your f150 total ease, you get how to do it, but to make it so that it's not the small number of people that have those. And it's it's more complicated. I think it's complicated.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:37  
Yeah, no, it

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:39  
is, I mean, everything. Everything with the greatest complicated is just that there's there's actually financial incentives that make it actually less expensive. But it really, again, I'm just going to harp on PG and E and their inability to care about their customers. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:53  
there is one other piece of Lane's email that I did want to address, which is, since for the past week, on the local news, I've listened to price increases on electric cars. Interesting that those increases came on the heels of the $7,000 rebate, it was, if it were based on cost of materials, the all electric cars would increase by proportional amount. Back in the Carter days, President Carter days, he gave $1,000 rebate to anyone who would put solar water heaters on the roof, the day after the rebates ended, the prices dropped to $1,000. So first of all, the price increases are in fact proportional to the increases that were that we've seen over the past year, and prices of the critical minerals on the on batteries. So this is things like lithium, nickel, and cobalt rare, those prices have did really did spike over the last year and dramatically increase the cost of batteries. Which is that translates into the price of these EVs they've gone from being at least break even on a lot of these models to losing money. And so that's why they're increasing the prices, these price increases. And this is something that's been going on since early this year, the price increases, we're already in the planning stages, long before anybody heard that, that they had reached a deal for the inflation Reduction Act, and these new rebates. Plus, the other thing is most of the vehicles that are getting these biggest price increases aren't going to be eligible for rebates anyway, with the with the price increase on the F 150. Lightning, the the only lightning that would actually potentially qualify for the rebate is the standard range Pro, or the standard range XL T. And their price increases are much less because they have smaller batteries, the all of the extended range versions are now over $80,000 base price, which means that they are disqualified anyway. And come next year, or beginning of 2024. Ford is planning on putting CTL iron lithium iron phosphate batteries in the standard range version of the F 150. And also in the standard range version of the maki middle of next year. Which because those batteries made in China also disqualifies them. So there they can they're raising the prices. But that's not because those vehicles are suddenly gonna have a rebate on them. They won't there is there's they did not qualify for these incentives, which is a whole other issue. Yeah, and the same thing goes for the Hummer, EV it's too expensive to qualify. So there, there actually are cost increases that have gone into feeding these price increases. That said, you know, we will probably see automakers playing some games with pricing and with options like one of the things a couple of years ago when Canada instituted a price cap of $45,000 for an Eevee. To qualify for their incentive programs. Tesla introduced a version of the model three, with a 93 model range that was priced at $44,999 $1 less than the price cap of $45,000. And all they did, it's the same, it's got the same battery that's in every other model three, but they software locked the battery to limit the capacity. So it would only go 93 miles on a charge, which of course, nobody wants a 93 model three, that's only going to go 93 miles. But once you buy it and you get your tax credit from from the government, then you can pay for an over the air software update that unlocks the rest of the battery,

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:33  
which honestly is really like it's the best workaround ever. Like I can't You can't blame it's like you're gonna make this put this arbitrary number on this. We can figure this out like the consumer figures that out Tesla figures it out. It's kind of it's kind of like horrifyingly brilliant to do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:49  
Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see how, you know when sometime between now and the end of the year the IRS is going to have to issue the the actual rules of how I'm gonna work and to see if they put anything in there to try and prevent any sort of gamesmanship

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:07  
and you have to track it like imagine have to track it like then if you did that, if you bought it under that what they did in Canada like that you'd buy it and then have to wait X number of months or not be able to within Tesla has to or whoever would have to report back. Hey, we gave an upgrade. So take their money back next year put an extra X number of dollars on their taxes, because they shouldn't have that gets scary. Complicated. Yeah, I'm not for complication and regulation.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:31  
Well, there's a lot of complication. And yeah, we'll clean vehicle credit program. Yeah, we're right. We're currently writing a whole report on it. We hope to publish in a couple of weeks. Is

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:41  
it 8000 pages long? I bet it's ridiculously long. Is it really that size? Like oh, God, you have no idea.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:35:47  
We're trying to pare it down and make it actually understandable. Yeah. Trying to read through 750 page bill.

Nicole Wakelin  1:35:56  
I was gonna say anyone trying to make any bill in the US government understood Go with God, Sam. I don't know how you're gonna do that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:04  
All right. Well, that's all we've got for this week. Thanks for listening. And we'll be back next time. Buh buh.

Nicole Wakelin  1:36:12  
Buh bye.

Roberto Baldwin  1:36:14  
recording stopped