Sam Abuelsamid  0:43  
This is episode 300 of wheel bearings. I'm Samuel ball Samad from guidehouse insights.

Nicole Wakelin  0:50  
And I'm Nicole wakelet. I'm gonna mention anything I have another podcast I'm doing called the road reflected. That's myself and my hubby and random guests. So second podcast out there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00  
Excellent.

Nicole Wakelin  1:01  
Not as cool as this one. Obviously this is well, you know,

Roberto Baldwin  1:06  
and I'm Roberto Baldwin back from Europe. I don't have I don't know, where am I from? Let's think I felt like I should have a podcast.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14  
You know, now you're gonna get emails, complaining about why it takes you so long to figure out where you're from.

Nicole Wakelin  1:19  
Don't be a braggart. Just figure it out, say where you're from. Come on.

Roberto Baldwin  1:22  
Let's just say Engadget. And guys. It's good to me. Okay, good people.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26  
Yeah, we're all back. Last week, we had a collection of the interviews that we did at the New York Auto Show, while at least two of the three of us were vacationing. Robbie and his wife were in Europe. I was in Hawaii with my wife. Nicole was actually in Hawaii for a couple of days. But then then went home because she she didn't see fit to take her husband with her. No, oh, that's messed up.

Nicole Wakelin  1:51  
I caught so much flack, like randomly I said to resume like, oh, well, you know, Sam and his wife. He's like, wait, I'm sorry, what Sam and his wife? And was Sam Sam's wife is? Is he Oh, crud, like I knew is

Roberto Baldwin  2:02  
really, after he just came in and helped you with your podcast. Matejko hardware?

Sam Abuelsamid  2:07  
Well, he doesn't know won't hurt you. I guess it's the way it goes. Right.

Nicole Wakelin  2:11  
Well, next time, gosh, okay, I'll make sure I bring you buddy.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:15  
So anyway, we're all back together. We've got stuff to talk about. We've been driving lots of stuff. And there's there's some interesting news this week. And we got a bunch of listener questions to answer later. So let's start with Robbie, this time, is still chewing her bagel.

Roberto Baldwin  2:32  
She had a delicious bagel that's toasted and she doesn't chew it, you'll get a cold. I drove a few weeks back, I drove the 2022 Ford Expedition. I think we all know what the expedition is big giant, three row SUV that you can shove all your friends into, if you have, you know, so many friends if you have seven if you have six friends. And so I drove that. And okay, so here's the deal. As what it is at the base of what it is, as the Ford Expedition, a very large vehicle with a lot of room to put a lot of people or a lot of stuff. It's fine. It's great. It does what it's supposed to do. That's what it is, then you get to the technology that Ford has put into it, I feel like Ford has just sort of like, half assed the stuff they put in, like the infotainment system was, it's the same like big screen that we're seeing in the Maki, and all you know, the you know, that's that's sort of rolling out into the Ford lineup. And it just, it just felt slower. And then the, the driver's assistance was just Herky jerky, that's the word I'm coming up, it was just like, slamming on the gas, cramming on the brakes. It was just, I was like, What is going on, especially after you drive like the maki or the Ford F 150. Or the you know, F 150 Lightning, where it feels like okay, this is, you know, they're really, they're getting it, they're getting closer to supercruise you know, they're, they're, you know, they're getting up there with their hands free system. And this vehicle, it just feels like it's all the tech that you expect in there. But none of the groundwork done for it is just like, You know what, we know what you want the Ford Expedition, you got a lot of friends, you got a lot of kids, you got a lot of crap you need to get from point A to point B, we're going to give you that and then we're going to give you the new tech but it's not gonna be as nice or as polished as what we have in some of the other other vehicles. And it just sort of it sort of bugged me like a lot. And you know, it's I drove it up to to Yosemite, my band had a show so I ended up getting this giant vehicle so it was a ton of room. I was able to get like all of our we had a PA system to put in there and guitars or amps I had Mike Stan like all you know drum stuff percussion stuff, all that fit in there, no problem plus our stuff, drove it up there. No problem drives nice, comfortable for a nice long drive. But the whole time I'm just like, Why? Why just this Okay, so the, okay, so the the base price for this thing is $67,345. The one I had was at $3,000 It was the limited, it has a 3.5 liter EcoBoost V six was in this like red color. And I'll say for all this money, just throats pay the extra 200 bucks for the better for something to make your work better. And so I don't know at the end of the the fuel saying the fuel economy on this thing is it's not great. 16 City 22 highway combined is 18 I got it in Eco mode, I drove the thing and eco mode the whole time I do have to go uphill and downhill. So you know, it's not just a regular, but I got to 17 and I was really like, I one point I got to 20. And I was like yeah, I felt like

Sam Abuelsamid  6:04  
a tailwind. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin  6:05  
Yeah. So, you know, the, the folks are gonna buy the expedition, they're gonna buy the expedition. I think it's, you know, it's a legacy vehicle. It's something like, Well, I had an expedition on one good another expedition. And, you know, I want to I want a big vehicle, I have to haul a lot of people or things and that's, that's fine. It's just I, you know, it's this is the 2022. So hopefully, you know, I don't know why they have the 2022 fleet, but that's what I got. But hopefully the next refresh or you know, maybe a little silent refresh, they'll sort of work just tweak the technology a little bit, just a little, just just get rid of some of that latency fixed. The adaptive cruise control for the love of God, please fix the adaptive cruise control. It was just it was not good. It was just like, wow, this is this isn't Mm hmm. So like for years, like three years ago, like Hyundai's adaptive cruise control was just, it wasn't so great. It was very sort of Herky jerky. And that's I'm like, okay, and they've they've fixed they've worked on have they gotten better? And with the ionic six, it's, it's outstanding that they did such a great job with their next version of their drivers assistance suite. But the Ford Expedition, is it the weight? Is it just like, Okay, there's just too much weight I have to fight with in order to drive this vehicle smoothly. I don't know. But if you're if you're down with the Ford Expedition, you're probably going to be fine with it. Just you know, just know that you're just gonna be like, kind of sloshing back and forth in your seat like David Byrne. Going forward and back. So yeah, um, before we move on to the next chart, so okay, I'm gonna let you guys pick the destination fee on this mega big car.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:50  
I'm gonna say 6095.

Nicole Wakelin  7:53  
I'm gonna say 60.

Roberto Baldwin  7:58  
At 6095 on the.oh.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:00  
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin  8:03  
Sam sheeting?

Sam Abuelsamid  8:05  
No, because I had one some a few months back or maybe a year ago, and recalled that it was it was 1600 Are

Roberto Baldwin  8:16  
you remember that? It was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. To move it from from from down the street from your house.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:26  
Actually, the the, the expedition would come from Louisville.

Nicole Wakelin  8:29  
And it's all okay.

Roberto Baldwin  8:32  
Even if it was down the street, it wouldn't matter.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:34  
But you know, like an F 150. Built in Dearborn, which is like 25 miles from me. Would would also cost the same amount.

Nicole Wakelin  8:42  
Yeah, it's a it's a rigorous 25 miles.

Roberto Baldwin  8:46  
Yeah, it's a rigorous vehicle. You know, they drive it as the crow flies, so they're just driving through houses. You have no idea. It's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid  8:57  
Actually, I think they take them to a staging yard in Kansas, and collect them all there and then distribute them onto the trucks and trains. You know, so they'll put an expedition in and an F 150. And a focus and an escape on a truck that's going to one particular dealer so they they all have to go to Kansas first. And then they get distributed to all over the country.

Roberto Baldwin  9:19  
They all have to go to Kansas first. That's a horrible the worst get a kid's song title. We all have to go to Kansas first. For all my get a kid fans out there. I guess just me probably. So the next car I drove was the 2023 BMW i Seven. This was the ASHRAE 60 with the 21 inch wheels. It's quite the opposite of the Ford Expedition when it comes to tech. This has all the tech and all the tech works and well. This is their this is BMWs electric answer to the EQs and the Lucid Air this is their or their their fancy, luxury vehicle. And I'm just gonna say they sort of hit it out of the park with this thing. It drives so nice for a large vehicle. It's got all the bells and whistles, it's got the one big problem with this car is that it has this giant 31.3 inch like screen that comes down in the back. So the people in the backseat could like watch a movie it uses like it has a it's a fire TV, or you can plug in HDMI, and it comes down. And now the driver can't see. They don't have a rear camera rear view camera. They didn't have the digital mirror. They don't have a digital mirror. I mean, you see at the side windows, which legally that's all you really need is the side windows. That's why vans can drive around everywhere.

Nicole Wakelin  10:44  
Like a weird choice. I mean, given that it's not a $5 car to be like we're gonna save a buck by not doing

Roberto Baldwin  10:50  
it right. It's such a like a weird, weird thing to forget to do.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:54  
Yeah. And to be fair, since since they launched it late last year, BMW has said yeah, we will be adding a digital camera, a digital mirror system to the car for sometime in 2023. Yeah, so if you want this just should have been there to begin with. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Roberto Baldwin  11:13  
We put all these answers. These lounge seat, which is very comfortable, which I used a lot, I did a video for engagement for this vehicle. It drives really nice. You know, I had some of the places where have to go to like, shoot video. There's like big dips, and like it has you could raise it up. So you know, I wasn't worried about like messing up the vehicle. Like everything about this, this car that is really well thought out, except for the rear. The rear view camera. And ya know, I really liked it a lot. And so yeah, if you're looking it, you know, and it starts at $119,300. So it's not cheap. It's you know, but if you're looking at that, you know that, that, that EQs or you're looking at that Lucid Air, this is definitely something you should also be looking at. Especially if you're looking at the EQs because I think I liked the EQs I liked it more when it was the only luxury Evie. Really, I mean, there was that and the Model S which is luxury adjacent as far as its luxury price is not it's luxury products. Yeah, the interior, it had its time they sold a lot of them, it was the only one good for them. It's, you know, changed everything. But yeah, it's it's everywhere, everyone has, has has has definitely caught up and surpassed it with with everything. And so if you're looking at those, I mean, the EQs the there's no, that's this the promise, the promise of the S class is that you have a really nice rear seat for your passenger, you're going you're going to pick your executive up, and the EQs doesn't deliver on that if you're that if that person is a basketball player or just Hall, they're just doesn't doesn't have the head room in the back that that it should have that it should have for an S class. The Lucid Air has it, which is nice. And then you have BMW who's like, you know, we're just going to take our BM R seven series and just electrify which is something they talked about, like 510 years ago modular, you know, factory where they can build any type of powertrain into their vehicle. And they did it and they did it in a way that actually still even with their you know, magnet they're rare magnet less motors, whichever one else thinks they're not very efficient, they they're doing it. And they're doing they're nowhere actually as

Sam Abuelsamid  13:35  
as efficient if not more so than Yeah, pretty much anybody in similar segments.

Roberto Baldwin  13:40  
Exactly. They're doing so that everyone else that couldn't said said couldn't be done. And you know, this vehicle it has a range of 308 Miles according to EPA in my test 333 Wow, for that big vehicle, I did the 70 mile an hour driving, you know, for 50 miles on the freeway and then driving back through, you know, back roads and in the suburbs. And the same tests they give every vehicle and it it it surpassed it, like by a lot and so yeah, no, it's it's, it's it's more efficient than you think it is. It's it's yes, it's really big, but it has a I think 3.5 degrees of rear steering, which is as nice as the 10 degrees of the EQs but still nice to have that the interior is really nice has this weird like sort of crystalline crystal like line that goes from the driver's side across the dash the other side has, you know, the ambient light so it changes colors you know, we've seen that from from from Mercedes for years. So they have this but they haven't a sort of different way. And really the only thing I think that turned people off is the exterior design, which is I called it it I like it because it looks like Batman The Animated Series. And then I decided that the car is King woman's car because it has little cat eyes. So if you want cat woman's really fancy,

Nicole Wakelin  15:08  
like looking at him like Yeah, yeah, I see both of those things. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin  15:11  
Yeah. If you really want cat woman's fancy car this is this is the one to get, ya know, I, I cannot say enough nice things except for that rear view. My wife, well, we ended up driving this is the car we drove to the airport to go to Europe. And my wife hadn't been in the car yet. And so I'm like, Oh, look, you push these buttons. And then this happened. She's like, Oh, cool. She was doing stuff for Instagram. And at one point, I'm like, Okay, can you can you put the rear? Like, can you put the monitor back up, please? I can see what's going on behind me. Which again, legally, I knew those side mirrors, but I feel better with that other. It's just,

Nicole Wakelin  15:52  
you want to be able to decide, but I mean, I think just glanced up and get that view right behind you.

Roberto Baldwin  15:57  
Yeah, and I just looked at him, it's just black and white. There's the back of the monitor.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:03  
Think of it this way. It's more like you know, you are the chauffeur in this car. You are the chauffeur cases you know, in a chauffeur driven vehicle. There is a partition there anyway, you know, to give the passengers some privacy. So the chauffeur is not listening in and, you know, in the passengers can do in the back can do whatever they like, and the chauffeur can focus on driving. So in that situation, you know, the chauffeur, in many cases can't see back anyway. So I slipped that,

Roberto Baldwin  16:35  
just like that. And then people don't want me yammering on while I'm driving around. So yeah, if you do want that fancy rear seat and theater, it's an additional 7200 $500. So it is a very nice, it's $250 Sorry, $7,250. It's not cheap. But it's also you know, a car the starting price. $119,300. So, it's, yeah, it was a lot of money. So the vehicle, the version I drove, all said and done with all the little party packages and was $156,595. So, yeah. I mean, if you're not fancy, if you don't have fancy friends, you can just get it without the rear lounge seats. And you can get it without the, you know,

Nicole Wakelin  17:27  
save a few bucks, save a few bucks.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:29  
Okay, so you've got Lucid Air, you got the ice seven, you got the EQs. And, you know, the the Model S of the three, you know, the lucid and the Mercedes, what would be your choice, the BMW

Roberto Baldwin  17:50  
man, set the tough one, because I really I liked the way that the lucid drives. And I liked the sort of the sort of nothing that's going in the minimalism.

Nicole Wakelin  18:01  
I like to loosen, I'm with Ravi, The Lucid there's something, the way it drives him the design of it is just so mean and just aesthetically just so appealing. And that's a large part of a luxury car,

Roberto Baldwin  18:14  
you know, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  18:17  
Feeling and make such

Roberto Baldwin  18:18  
a close race though. Between those two, it's like uncertain days, I would really love the lucid but on other days, I'd really love to be

Nicole Wakelin  18:24  
what you're saying is you need one of each cuckoo hole. So yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  18:27  
so what I did to do is, is get a CEO position where one you know, I have both so each day but I think the lucid sort of just edges. I mean, the the efficiency that they've just the on the nerd level, the efficiency of the lucid is is is is outstanding, and the fact that the motors like 100 Lift, you know, the motor, and everything are like 156 pounds or something. And like, you know, you could pick it up if you wanted to. Yeah, I think that's it's, it's so it's really, really close, but I think the lucid just beats it out just beats and again, it's all down to that, that sort of that minimalism that I really like and that that that's just the exterior design. I like it a lot more than I like to BMW even though and you know, there's a lot more room and you know, you have the front.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:15  
Yeah, well, I was just gonna say, you know, the lucid being designed as an Eevee from the ground up, like the the Tesla. It, its packaging is actually a lot better. Oh, yeah, BMW. Yeah. I agree that the i Seven is a lovely car to drive. But, you know, for a car that size. It doesn't have a whole lot of trunk space. Yeah. And there's no storage in the front, you know, because of the fact that it is that modular, that flexible platform that they use. So it's it's the same platform that they utilized for the gas and the plug in hybrid versions of the seven series. And so BMW has opted not to put any sort or have any sort have front storage available, which particularly in the in the i Seven because it doesn't have a huge, huge trunk, you know, I think would have been, would have been better, you know, in the eye for, you know, the i Four is a hatchback. And you know, you can fold the back seats down, you know, and you actually have quite a bit of cargo space in the back, even with the back seats up, you know, and the i x, you know, similar, you know, because it's a wagon a shape, and you've got, you've got a decent amount of space back there. So you can make the argument that you don't really need that front storage. But in the seven, you know, I think it's a little harder to make that argument. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin  20:43  
I did drive the gas version of the ice. Ice seven, I drove the the 760 A few weeks ago, time doesn't make any sense to me right now. The 760 I try it, you know, and that's the gas version and the, the electric version of all of the you know, it's like the Ford f150. Lightning, that's the best f150 Just the hands down. It's the same thing with with BMW is doing like, the best version of that vehicle is the electric version. The eye for the eye seven, they like both of those. They're they're the best version of that series of BMW. So it's, yeah, so if you're looking at the end, if you're like a big BMW person, you're not going to be disappointed at all. If you're like, Well, I don't know about EVs. I mean, that's it's Yeah. If Yeah, it but if you're looking if you're definitely looking at the EQs and the Lucid Air, you should definitely drive drive all three. I think you might be in the same boat that I am where you're just like, just what what what are the things that you like, that's what's going to push you into buying one or the other,

Nicole Wakelin  21:46  
like a bad or good? It's just like, I like chocolate? You like Ella, you pick the one you like? And this is why we

Roberto Baldwin  21:51  
have choices. Yay for choices. And yeah, both of those I mean BMW with the with with that with that Moto and lucid with their entire packaging, like the efficiency from both of these companies is outstanding. And that's a huge thing that I think we talked enough about, in general, when it comes to EVs is the efficiency of what they're doing as opposed to just throw a motor in sort of the biggest battle we can find and just hope for the best.

Sam Abuelsamid  22:18  
Excellent. Nicole? Yes. What have you been in?

Nicole Wakelin  22:22  
I had several very fancy vehicles. I guess this is fancy vehicle week, because we're like,

Sam Abuelsamid  22:27  
at least for you to wait till we get to mind.

Nicole Wakelin  22:31  
Oh, what are you doing? Listen, like wait a minute, what's happened? Oh my gosh. Oh, gosh. So I had the first vehicle I had is the Mercedes AMG g 63. G Wagen. G wagons are cool.

Roberto Baldwin  22:48  
You wagons are cool. And I still haven't driven one and every time I tell Mercedes that they're like, What? This is a driven everything. And they're like, we're gonna get you a G Wagen. And I just I just never follow up.

Nicole Wakelin  22:59  
It's a short term loan. It was a short loan. I worked with somebody else to make sure that I had it for a couple days because I'd never been in what I'd been in one for like literally half an hour, so that I would actually drive one around. So the funny thing is, if you want to fly under the radar and be really like quiet and subdued and reserved, and

Sam Abuelsamid  23:17  
the wagon is the vehicle for you, in that case,

Nicole Wakelin  23:19  
a vehicle for you nobody, nobody's waves that your class stoplights and gives you thumbs up. Or like, you know, flailing their hands like nice. That never happens in this car.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:29  
Not at all. Especially if especially if we get the AMG right. Yes. And

Nicole Wakelin  23:33  
this was an I had the color and now I can but it was like It's like ocean sea blue metallic. It was in this blue. This is brilliant, beautiful blue. Guess how much the paint was?

Roberto Baldwin  23:44  
Just Oh 4000 $6,500

Nicole Wakelin  23:47  
Yeah. And I loved it. I'm like who would pay that? I'm like Nikolas said $200 car they don't care. Yeah. Worth it. It was it was absolutely absolutely gorgeous. So you know 200 grand, this is really like rarefied air here this is expensive stuff and it has unbelievable power. There's a four liter twin turbo V eight it's got 577 horsepower, and 627 competed torque so it kind of moves you know it has a little bit of Oh, I found it South Sea Blue Metallic is the official color of the $6,500 Oh, very fancy. So it has all the power in the world I mean you mash on the gas pedal in that thing is gonna go the only thing here's you had your one dislike Robbie might have your vehicle what I don't like it is loud on the highway. Like a highway driving if you're driving around town, I don't mean the the delicious sound of the engine and the exhaust, which are fabulous. And they can make all the noise they want in a car like this. It's a toaster. It's shaped like a box.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:48  
Yeah, it's just a box to get a little wind noise with noise.

Nicole Wakelin  24:51  
Which to me is a very not luxury car thing like part of what makes a luxury car a luxury car. There's a lot of pieces. One of those things He says it should feel like you're sort of ensconced in a little cocoon, and the hoi polloi are kept outside of the car. And you're not being this this made it feel like you weren't so much in a cocoon. That was my literally that it was louder

Roberto Baldwin  25:14  
than the defender. It's louder than the defender by far okay, there he goes. Because I think that's it's like closest I don't remember the defender. I don't either I remember the vendor just being like

Nicole Wakelin  25:25  
I don't remember thinking man this is noisy highway sees with this one. I was like, Oh, wow, this like the couple of times I took it on a little bit longer of a highway. I'm like, Nope, this is this. There's a lot of wind noise in this. But okay, I feel like you have a $200,000 Mercedes this might be one of your cars pick a different one. One pick the loosen when you go for drive on the highway. So it's it's this beautiful car. It's the interior Good gravy. This had the G men manufacturer is it still manufacturer if they spell it like German, it's not. It's F A K T who are manufacturer, packing factor, and the factor package. So it gets like this Napa leather dash and there's diamond stitching in the leather on the seats. And there's like a little metal AMG badge and AMG floor mats and everything's heated and cooled and massaged. And oh my gosh, the thing is just loaded. I mean, it is if you want a great big SUV that but I feel like you're not buying this. Like Robert, you had an expedition. It was big. And it's like useful, right?

Roberto Baldwin  26:24  
Yeah, it's a big utility is what the expedition is getting that because

Nicole Wakelin  26:27  
you have a big family or lots of people, you have lots of cargo, you want to tow things like your stuff that requires you to have that much room for people and cargo. That's not at all

Sam Abuelsamid  26:41  
this is just to be a show off.

Nicole Wakelin  26:43  
This has to be a show up. And I don't even mean that as a criticism that people that buy it like you just buy this because you want to be like look at what I can buy. I like it, I want it, I bought it and you just you just buy it because you can because it makes you feel good and it says something that is the that is the impression you want to give to everybody that sees you on the road you want everyone to know and I don't think that that's a bad thing.

Roberto Baldwin  27:06  
It's just you could do the Rubicon Trail but you're never going to like it so it's so incredibly capable but you're on the edge you're never gonna get this thing dirty if you can help it

Nicole Wakelin  27:15  
you could go anywhere you want to but I like if anybody's ever out there and finds a G Wagen like take a picture because I'm like wow go you're the one you are the one person who actually decided to use the capability this vehicle class

Sam Abuelsamid  27:31  
I would just so on the particularly on the AMG that it's probably not going to have the kind of tires that you would need on the Rubicon Trail

Nicole Wakelin  27:43  
okay, I'm looking at the world's smallest bun Roni and I can't move what tire size I had Sam to be honest, probably not I would not imagine that it came with Burley off Route

Sam Abuelsamid  27:54  
Well, it looks like they've at least got some sidewall I'm looking at yeah Mercedes site now so got some

Roberto Baldwin  28:01  
sidewall it's not someone's going to take that in and they're going to change they're gonna buy new wheels and they're gonna survive and

Sam Abuelsamid  28:07  
Ypsilanti pothole problem yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  28:09  
Lamy pothole but you if you took it off road you would scratch the South Sea Blue Metallic Yeah, yeah. Sounds metallic.

Roberto Baldwin  28:17  
You're just you're just a millionaire with a toy. That's that's the G Wagen. That's a G Wagen with the Rubicon Trail. It's a

Nicole Wakelin  28:23  
millionaire with a toy and you know what for all your millionaires who want to toy this is like if you have money to burn do it this way. set it on fire buy a Mercedes like this is a fantastic way to do it. I realize the only thing that I this is always a thing I find silly. There's a lot going on on the dashboard on this Mercedes like there's a lot there's you know, between the sort of all the leather and the trim and the makeup pretty and then the tech and everything and there's a fancy grab handle that again says gee manufacturer it's like or but there's down all the way down as far low as you can go on the center stack right above like the center console area. There is like if you do some your forefinger together a analog clock that the company has just escaped me and it's super expensive fancy pants outrageous Clock Company makes timepieces. And it is the silliest thing to have this little clock showed all the way down on the especially you can't read it when you're driving. Because it's so low. You're kind of like you'd have to sort of lean back and be like, it's like you can't see it. The angle is so low. Also I feel like you have a clock in your infotainment screen. You have a clock on your on the instrument cluster. Where are we shoving this little analog clock on the bottom I feel like because you can think of I know you can. I want to spend less money it's a $10,000 clock when I make it 10 grand. I want to spend my 10 grand on something else I want to get a fancy fancy or leather. I want to get wood on the dash from my estate in Normandy something it would not be on the useless little analog clock shoved to the bottom of the dashboard. That was my this is my second bone to pick with it. It's a little out and the clock is silly.

Roberto Baldwin  29:59  
The chair that That's all that matters, you know, it's there, you know, it's there, you

Nicole Wakelin  30:02  
know, it's there, you will never be able to read it, Robbie, especially with your height for you to get the right angle to be able to see that you have really, really moved my seat back me

Roberto Baldwin  30:12  
is it easy to set I didn't

Nicole Wakelin  30:14  
even try it's

Sam Abuelsamid  30:15  
certainly not as easy as a German vehicle, you cannot possibly have an easy to set analog clock, you have very expensive German vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin  30:24  
Robbie, your brothers,

Roberto Baldwin  30:26  
I love my B or Z there's the little like, led clock or LCD clock. And it just has there's a clock and then right next to it there's an H a button with an H in but with an M That's it. That's all the sort of whenever times did or I need to change the M because you know it's there's sort of a drift because it's not connected to the atomic clock in the sky. And that's it

Nicole Wakelin  30:49  
that's what this I didn't even see button so it's probably I don't know, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  30:54  
probably you probably actually have to have your butler take your G Wagen into the Mercedes Benz dealership and have have a German technician flown in from Stuttgart to to actually set the clock for you.

Roberto Baldwin  31:09  
There's there's three people in that team

Sam Abuelsamid  31:14  
around the world

Roberto Baldwin  31:16  
and when they're in first class playing around the world they're actually fixing other clocks like other watches like that's a little tray making the watch the little tray with a little cloth a little if the little glasses with a super

Nicole Wakelin  31:30  
monocle thing with fine glass in it. Yeah, that's there you go. If that's not your job, go find Mercedes somebody there's a job for you. So that was fun, super expensive car and then I go to the cheap one. I can't believe it, which was the G v seven D, which is still a $65,000 car. Still not cheap. It's still expensive still luxury car. Not as cheap as what Sam was going to be talking about later. But so the Genesis electrify gV 70. And it always is the GV 70. just shoved the electric powertrain in there. So it ends up with other standard all wheel drive to electric motors, you get to 77.4 kilowatt hour battery, 429 horsepower, 516 pound feet, and you will go 236 miles before your battery goes kaput. So decent amount of range. I feel like that's good. I feel like that's gonna get everybody through the day. Right? Shouldn't that be enough for most people?

Roberto Baldwin  32:30  
Yeah, that's more than enough for most people. Like when it gets over 200

Nicole Wakelin  32:33  
people should stop panicking. But I feel like they don't really Stop panicking until they hit 250.

Roberto Baldwin  32:38  
Yeah, I think there's there's there's sort of a mental block.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:43  
But we do have a listener question later. Maybe you want to address the listener question right now.

Nicole Wakelin  32:49  
Yeah, we want to pop that in the middle. Go ahead. All right.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:52  
So MDC dropped a question to discord. So hey, Sam, the gang looking for a replacement for my my end of lease Audi e Tron? A two row Evie luxury crossover hatchback vehicle is what I'm looking at. My wife has the ionic five. Do you have any input of a replacement that is below $90,000 pre federal rebate? Well, you'd have to get below 80 To even be eligible for rebate but okay, let's say below 90 grand with at least 250 miles of range. I would love a dual motor rivian r1 s but who knows when that will be available? Well actually, they may be available sooner than you think supposedly, sometime in June. They're going to start shipping to motor reviens. But he says I'm looking at the Genesis gV 70 Electric. Have any of you driven one? Well, Andy, as a matter of fact, Nicole has the range seems very so so the 230s the BMW i x has great range, but that face is just gag inducing. I have the Fisker ocean downpayment at a QA e Tron on order. So any input would be helpful.

Nicole Wakelin  34:04  
Well, having just been some time that God sent me I like it. I think it's really good. If you look, and I don't I know they're only available. I can select state. It's very limited availability on this. It's unsurprising it's expanding

Sam Abuelsamid  34:14  
that Genesis has been gradually expanding the number of states where they're selling their EVs over the past eight nine months,

Nicole Wakelin  34:25  
it's getting there so so you know you can get your hands on one it sounds like you're you know, it's not like you need one tomorrow but yeah, if you want to go get it soon. I like this. I think if you looked at if you like the Genesis in general, like if you'd like to Genesis brand if you looked at any other Genesis vehicles, it feels very much like that. Like you don't know that it's different except that it's an Eevee and all other ways. It's like every other Genesis very luxurious. You get a lot of features a lot of luxury for the price. You know this one I had an unfortunate to have a Monroney surge It can even tell you what you know destination is but it starts at 65 850 Depending on how much you add on, you know, you add on bits and pieces, you can make it fancier you can make it you know more luxurious, if you want to do that. But you get like the you know, it has all the kind of things that you want it to be a luxury car without being outrageous price. And I know you talked about range 236 miles, that is really just a Scotia under your 250 limit there. That's 14 miles, right. So I know it'd be nice to have the 250 I would not hesitate to get this though, because I think here's the thing for the most of the time when you're not driving that right, I know you're not driving 236 miles every day. So it's not a big deal. You have more than enough range. On the times when you do drive more 14 miles of range, you know if 250 is sort of your mental break is not going to make or break your day. You know if it was why?

Roberto Baldwin  35:47  
So it's the Hyundai Group. So it's going to be more Yeah, so it'd be like 241.

Nicole Wakelin  35:51  
Right, exactly. And it and they can do DC fast charging. So you can go from 10 to 80% in 18 minutes. So if you are doing a road trip, you can charge it up pretty darn quick, so you're not going to be sitting around so I wouldn't let the fact that it's in the 236 like Robbie said probably a little more than that. It's what you can average. I feel like it is still worth it. And there are things I really do like this interior I like the nice large 14.5 inch touchscreen. It has that Evie just you know it goes when you push on the pedal I love and this is mounting the charging ports on the front. It's not on a rear quarter panel or anything or front quarter panel it's on the front which does make it easier when you are driving to places where you have to wedge yourself into some of those wonky charging spots that are not really no one thought about cars all having ports in different spots. You can just pull straight in and it doesn't matter whether it's on the left or the right you can still get your car plugged in and I just I think it drives beautifully it has everything that makes it feel luxury car, but it has a more affordable price point like I think you said you wanted it under 90 You're gonna get this under 90 you know and you're gonna get it low enough you I don't know is hyundai genesis is still eligible for their tax rebates.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:05  
Actually, the GV 70 Evie is the only one because that's the only one that's built in North America. Okay it's an Alabama the others are all built in Korea. Now you if you lease you may be able to get the the tax credit depending on where you lease it from but you may be able to get it if you do at least but if you want to buy then the GV 70 would be the only one

Nicole Wakelin  37:32  
and you mentioned in your question you mentioned the rivian the rivian r1 s which I drove like two weeks earlier or something also great but way way bigger that is not a that's not a lot it's huge and you were saying like I can't you said like smaller like what it was a crossover hatchback is not crossover hatchback I think so if you I mean

Sam Abuelsamid  37:52  
he's replacing an E Tron original e Tron. And yeah, the rivian is a bit bigger than the E Tron. The other one that I think might actually be the best fit for him if he's looking to replace the E Tron is actually the Mercedes EQ e SUV which I think you've driven Robbie, I think you may be the only one of us is driven it that one has a starting price of around 79 and it has a range that should be around 270 miles I think

Roberto Baldwin  38:22  
it's really nice. It's the Mercedes Yeah, I think the SUVs in the Mercedes lineup are a little bit better than the sedans which is not something that you expect me to say and a lot a lot of it has to do with the design and the way the rear seats are with tall people that's it's really comes down to I think the EQ is better than EQs and when you're talking about the sedans, but the EQs SUV and the EQ e SUV are both sort of like deliver that like rear seat experience that you want from a Mercedes

Sam Abuelsamid  38:54  
already right now I can't think of any other luxury to row electric utilities that would fit those criteria

Roberto Baldwin  39:05  
okay of the ionic five so the bar is really high for them. Yeah, right yeah, he originally Tron was fine for what it was. But then you have the ionic five comes into your house you're like okay, well, alright.

Sam Abuelsamid  39:17  
Well and you know, there's also the Q eight e Tron, you know, which is essentially a mid renamed and mid cycle update of the original e Tron, which will have a little more battery capacity, more range. A little bit faster charging, you know, so if you if you like the E Tron, you know that Q eight e Tron should be. They just did some media drive with it like in the last couple of weeks. Yeah. So it should be showing up in dealers fairly soon, I think. So that may be another one to consider as well. I'm trying

Roberto Baldwin  39:47  
to get that vehicle in right now. So hopefully I can get in it was in next week or two. So fingers crossed. Hopefully it's still up here because they did to drive up near my house. But I was I was in Amsterdam during the time so

Sam Abuelsamid  40:02  
All righty. Well, as we've previously mentioned, well, did you have anything else on the GV 70? Nicole,

Nicole Wakelin  40:08  
that kind of covers it.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:12  
As previously alluded to, I had something that was slightly less luxurious than, than any of the stuff that either of you drove over the last couple of weeks. And this is because as I said, my wife and I were on vacation in Hawaii. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, when I'm traveling, if, you know, if there's a press fleet in the area where I'm traveling, I'll usually reach out and see if there's something available that I might not have access to locally here in Michigan. And, you know, try and get a little time with that. On the Big Island in Hawaii, no press fleet there. So I went to hertz and rent to the car. Got the 2023 Chevrolet, Equinox Lt. Front wheel drive?

Roberto Baldwin  41:04  
Yeah. The rental car special?

Sam Abuelsamid  41:07  
Yep, it certainly is. I do believe that this is the first time that I've ever gotten into a car that actually had a screen protector on this. The infotainment touchscreen was not at all surprising.

Roberto Baldwin  41:25  
Like it was new, like the car was so new, they hadn't taken the screen protector off like this, or they put it on there because people are like people are using their Sandy, salty hands and destroying, okay,

Sam Abuelsamid  41:35  
yes, this this was one that was clearly not from the factory. I mean, I've seen you know, the, you know, whenever you buy a phone or something, or a tablet, whatever, you know, there's always a little thing that you peel off the screen. This was not that this was an actual screen protector, because it wasn't quite. And it was clearly not, I don't think was intended, you know, for specifically for this vehicle or his purpose in it because it was slightly smaller than the screen itself. But you know, covered most of the screen. But you know, when you've got people, you know, rental customers getting in and out, you want to, you know, have some protection for stuff like that. So that was fine. You know, the LT is not the base bottom of the line version of Equinox. That's the LS. So that's, that's the base base trim. So the LT is one step up. It's a small step, but it's step up, baby step. Yeah. And, you know, the equinox is, you know, GM, Chevrolet's compact crossover in the same segment with the Toyota rav4 and the Honda CRV and the Ford Escape and you know, currently about 63 other different models that are available in the US market. And, you know, it's it's adequate. It's, it's the current one is nearing the end of its model lifecycle, it'll probably be replaced. Well, there is an equinox Evie, coming to market this fall. That will be actually very slightly larger than this one, believe it or not. And, you know, it's unclear how long the gas Equinox will stay in the lineup. You know, they'll probably keep building this, you know, for at least another two or three years. It's not a terrible vehicle. It's actually you know, if you're looking, you know what, it's not terrible. No, it's,

Roberto Baldwin  43:35  
there's other cars that are better, but it's not terrible. Like if it showed up at your house, you wouldn't light it on fire.

Sam Abuelsamid  43:44  
You know, what would it be you know, out of the segment would it be my first choice? Probably not. But you know, this one, you know, this LT, as I said, was fairly basic. It's got a seven inch infotainment screen it it does have support for wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And even the base infotainment system works reasonably well. It's got USB A and USB C ports on the front. It's you know, it's got cupholders that will actually hold stuff and hold them hold them fairly securely. It's got actually a lot of cargo space in the back it's got almost 30 cubic feet, just shy of 30 cubic feet behind the rear seats. You know, so for us, you know, we were going to the beach every day, you know the condo that we had rented you know had some beach chairs and boogie boards and snorkeling gear and so I just took all that stuff down, put it in the back and there was plenty of room back there. You know to put all this stuff in there and you know, take it to the beach and and haul it around. So it's got it's a good utility vehicle. Plenty of space for both for cargo in the back as well as passenger Here's in the second row, and the equinox has a sliding second row seat that can move forward and back, I think it's about eight inches. So, you know, if you need to carry a couple of Robbie's in the back with you, you can slide that back and still have lots and lots of cargo space, you know, or if you if you're, if you've got a couple of kids, and you've got, especially if you got a couple of young kids, you know, that are in car seats, and maybe, maybe even a toddler or an infant. And you need to pack in, you know, portable playpen and crib and all kinds of, you know, all the, all the gear that parents are familiar with that, you know, whenever you want to go somewhere and it's like, it's a, it becomes a major production, there's enough space in the back of the equinox to to carry all that stuff, which is, which is actually really nice. Yeah, no,

Roberto Baldwin  45:51  
you want it's just want to carry your crap everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:53  
Yeah, it's a very good utility vehicle. You know, it's, it's a nice design. I don't I like the design of the current generation Equinox. Yeah. You know, it's not groundbreaking, but I think it's a very pleasant looking vehicle.

The, you know, the, the interior materials are not, they don't feel luxurious, but they do feel durable, they feel like they will hold up for, you know, a couple of 100,000 miles without, you know, without showing off too many blemishes

Nicole Wakelin  46:26  
matters when you have kids, because Oh, absolutely. Jesus out of things.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:32  
You know, the LT that we had, you know, had cloth seats. So you may want to consider, you know, maybe upgrading to, you know, some of the available, you know, artificial leather seats, you know, might be easier to clean. But, you know, aside from that, you know, it's not bad, that probably the single biggest complaint I actually had about this thing. You know, the, it comes with a fairly basic Driver Assist suite that does not include blind spot monitoring. It does have forward mono vision, a single camera forward collision alert system. There's no no adaptive cruise control, no radar, adaptive cruise control. So, you know, compared to say, a rav4, which comes standard with with some of that stuff, you know, this, this was one of the complaints I had, you know, several years back when GM watched this generation of the equinox and, and some of their other vehicles is that they were kind of cheeping out on a lot of the driver assist features that other companies were starting to include a standard equipment, you can get adaptive cruise control on here, but it's you have to step up to a higher trim level, and it adds quite a bit of cost. So there's a camera based Forward Collision Alert System. That is, cameras are not great for especially a single camera is not the greatest thing in the world, for measuring distance.

Roberto Baldwin  48:00  
And so it was a close one of your eyes and walk around your house.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:04  
Yeah. And so it was frequently going off, you know, giving me alerts even when I have lots and lots of room. You know, so it was a little bit annoying. And I, I kept forgetting to go into the menus, you know, after I parked it, to find where to turn that off. Because I think there is somewhere where you can turn it off. But that was probably the single biggest annoyance of this thing. The engine, it's a it's a 1.5 liter four cylinder turbo, with things about 175 horsepower, which is adequate, you know, it's, you know, this, this is, this is not, you know, not a sports car. But it'll do it'll get you around 203 foot pounds of torque and fuel economy again, it's okay. It's not great. You know, especially if you compare it to some of the hybrid vehicles that are available in this class now, you know, from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia Ford, you know, they all offer hybrids in the segment. GM does not offer a hybrid. So the front wheel drive that we had is rated at 26 City 31 Highway, I was getting an indicated about 27 and a half combined, driving around the Big Island, including some driving up mountains and down mountains and stuff or more, like more accurately driving up volcanoes and down volcanoes. But, you know, it's again, it's adequate. You know, it's not exceptional fuel economy, but it's not terrible. It's certainly better than that expedition. So you know, if you're looking for, you know, some basic transportation that is bigger than say something like the Chevy tracks or Hyundai venue or Nissan Kicks, you know, this is this is not a bad place to look and, you know, if you're, if you're looking for a rental vehicle, this isn't not a not a bad choice you just bring bring your USB cable plug in your phone you'll have your or actually you don't even have to plug in your phone you know you can you can pair your phone and just use it wirelessly you know and have your have your navigation and everything worked really well. The you know obviously there was no Monroney with a rental car but I built out basically the same one it comes to an MSRP of $29,095 for the front wheel drive LT you want to guess it the freight charge the destination 1200 9513 95 Robbie gets and there is currently on the equinox $1,500 rebate available which is something we haven't seen much of for the last couple of years. So net price as shown on the Chevrolet website and the building price 27,595 So not not a bad vehicle I mean, you know it's not going to excite you. But you know it's for for basic transportation you know, it'll get the job done

Unknown Speaker  51:19  
yeah

Nicole Wakelin  51:21  
it's kind of neat to actually for you to review what's a rental car because most people aren't like we often are getting the highest trims or the nicest ones with all the bells and whistles there's not everybody's buying that because you need that's a lot to the price to move up. But you get all this stuff

Roberto Baldwin  51:36  
like that like what's the one I can afford? One up from bottom

Nicole Wakelin  51:44  
you're buying the one that's like it could get the job done that's kind of what a rental car doesn't this does it it gets the job done.

Roberto Baldwin  51:50  
It does the job

Sam Abuelsamid  51:52  
done. God got us around the island you know got us to all the beaches we wanted to go to and everywhere we needed to go and

Nicole Wakelin  52:00  
get some like Hawaiian shaved ice while you're out and about did get

Sam Abuelsamid  52:03  
some shaved ice, some shaved ice with some some coconut and passionfruit. During it lots of fresh fish lots of poke a. And as it turns out the the Airbnb we were staying at there, right across the street. There was this little sort of open air marketplace called Eleague gardens marketplace. And you know a bunch of vendors in there, including a Shaka tacos trailer.

Nicole Wakelin  52:30  
And lots of tacos is what you're saying.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:33  
Ah, they make the most amazing fish burritos with with grilled Oh no. And they're so good.

Roberto Baldwin  52:43  
Fish for like a month before I go to Hawaii. That's a rule. Like I'm just waiting holding it and waiting.

Nicole Wakelin  52:51  
I go and I eat all the fruit in the entire island. I'm like all the mangoes just put them here on the table. For the next week.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:58  
We wait so many papayas papaya is certainly every morning with breakfast. It was great. So highly recommend, you know, if you're looking for, you know, a place with great beaches, you know, just fantastic weather. If you can swing it Hawaii is just amazing. Yeah, this is the first time that we'd been to the Big Island.

Roberto Baldwin  53:23  
We love the Big Island. Yeah, I

Sam Abuelsamid  53:25  
mean, we, my wife and I had been to Hawaii three times before over the last 30 years, including when we got married. And this was our first time to the Big Island. And it was it was lovely. I remember working with manta rays and oh yeah, we did the house. Great. And we were sitting on hurricane a beach hurricane a beach the other day. And about 200 yards out. We saw a pot of dolphins up and out of the water and swimming by fives.

Roberto Baldwin  53:57  
Fabulous. All the things. Yeah. All the things that you expect from Hawaii. Likewise, like yeah, we can deliver that.

Nicole Wakelin  54:05  
That's pretty nice. Come on.

Roberto Baldwin  54:06  
I actually have one more card that I completely forgot about was that it was a 2023 Mercedes Benz GLC. This is the new version of the GLC I had it for a week it was instead of doing a press drive that just dropped it off at my house. And so I had it for a week. Mercedes says this is the number one selling vehicle in the United States for them. It's their Miss midsize SUV. And it makes sense because it's yeah, it's not it's just like a nice I want to Mercedes, but I'm not, you know, a billionaire.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:37  
It's simply like the Mercedes equivalent of an equinox.

Roberto Baldwin  54:40  
Yeah, it's like the Mercedes Equinox. It is it's about the same size except it's, I'm just gonna say it's way nicer. You know, the, this one is a two liter inline for four cylinder with turbo engine. It's a mild hybrid. So you'd have to worry about like, you know, when it does the auto off, it's like wrong. Woman unlike because it literally just kind of goes until the motor catches up. 25 horsepower twin or 95 pound feet of torque. I drove it around for a week I use it for another show for my baby. Yeah, there's plenty of room

Sam Abuelsamid  55:15  
to pull up in that thing and people say, How much are we paying these guys?

Roberto Baldwin  55:18  
I know, I know. They weren't paying us very much for the show, but it was fine. It was it's a friend. It was a friend discount for the show. Yeah, it's, you know, it has MBU x in there as all the things you want for Mercedes. It has the zero layer and MBU x, which I really liked, which is just like, here's the map, and then like a few little widgets for things that you use, and that's it. And I feel like like, why would just do that? Everyone just do that? Because that's all everyone cares about is the map. And the few little widgets like on listen to music. This is right, push forward and back on the music. That's that's really it. Yeah, no, it's this I really liked this vehicle. It's, you know, the latest version of of, of, it's a refresh. And, yeah, the week I had it 47,000 The one I had with all the extra bits, including the drivers assistance package with $61,250. It did, they don't the Monroney I have didn't have a doesn't have a destination delivery fee on it. So they're the gas is 28 combined. 25 City 32 highway. That's pretty much in line with what I got to get about 30 miles per gallon in this thing. And I drove it up and down in the Bay Area a bunch of times to do a lot of things. I had to do a show that was 45 minutes away. And then after I set up I had to come home and feed my dogs and then drive back home and it was it Yeah, it's a it's a nice sort of entry level. Mercedes Benz for someone who needs an SUV, but doesn't need you know, doesn't need like an S class. It's just very it's yeah, it's a nice little car. It's a nice little luxury vehicle. You get all that little that fun Mercedes bits without emptying your bank account. You won't be broke afterwards. Yeah, you won't be broke. It's the Mercedes for people who want to Mercedes but don't want to be broke. So ya know, the GLC I really liked it. It's yeah, the new the new version is nice. And again. I can't say enough nice things about MBU x, it's still I mean, I understand people can't it doesn't work for everyone the voice recognition but it works fine for me. I don't know why. I'm called the lucky guy who knows either

Nicole Wakelin  57:27  
one that was somebody it was no his friend who likes us doesn't listen to him. He's like, he could be screaming at me. Is that you? As you

Sam Abuelsamid  57:34  
know, that was only in the RX, though. That's right. Everything else works fine. But the RX refused to recognize me.

Roberto Baldwin  57:45  
Yeah, but I've

Sam Abuelsamid  57:46  
got I've got I've got a an RX coming in about a month, scheduled in about a month. And so I will try it again and see if it actually works. Now.

Nicole Wakelin  57:55  
Maybe it's forgiving you maybe it's come to terms with your voice. Maybe

Sam Abuelsamid  57:58  
a Toyota has worked fine. Other Other Lexa you know, the NX worked fine. With the same system in there. So I don't know what was going on with the RX. All right. So the reason why, you know, I was in or what triggered the trip to Hawaii in the first place was Toyota. Toyota invited us there to drive the new grand Highlander and also to unveil the new Tacoma. So, since Nicole and I were there, we drove together. And amazingly enough, this was actually the first time that we actually drove together on a program. So we spent the day driving around,

Roberto Baldwin  58:39  
you guys are together. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:42  
And then we sat down and recorded our impressions of the grand Highlander. Sitting on the balcony of my hotel room that my wife and I had. And down below us, there was a hall event center and there was something going on there. And during the course of our conversation, the cacophony from this hall got progressively louder and louder and louder. Fortunately, you don't know very little of it actually got picked up on my recorder.

Nicole Wakelin  59:14  
Like we sat out there. It was like quiet, just a little breeze. It's like

Sam Abuelsamid  59:19  
the birds chirping

Nicole Wakelin  59:20  
birds got loud because apparently there's a bird nest up there then. I'm like, come on, people. Give us like 15 minutes here.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:28  
But I've got that recording. I'm gonna drop that in here. Nicole? Yes, we are here in Hawaii, on the Kona Coast, Big Island. And we drove the tweeter grand Highlander. We did. And what would you say? Let's let's jump right to the right to the end. Okay, but what would you say was the highlight of the drive?

Nicole Wakelin  59:56  
I got coffee.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:59  
There we go. I know she got a lot of

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:03  
coffee, all my bags and bags. But no, what did I think the head of the drive was? What do you think that? Was it one thing? I think the the the hybrid Mac's that engine proved to be the highlight of the experience for me. I really liked that one. That was my favorite part.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:21  
Okay, yeah, I would agree that that was certainly the best powertrain of the race. So stepping back a little bit, you know, just to review what this vehicle is. Yeah, this is Toyotas, new upper mid size, three row crossover SUV, little bit bigger than the regular Highlander, the Highlander that we've had for current generation for what, three years now? Three years? Yeah. It's actually not much longer. Like it has a pretty similar footprint, but it's quite a bit taller. Yeah. And it has a totally different look to

Nicole Wakelin  1:00:58  
it. It actually, I think it looks much better. I don't dislike the regular Highlander, it's fine. But I just think this one sort of has a bit more. I don't know a bit more presence. It looks more modern. It's it's more squared off without being boxy and awful. But it just has it looks bolder. Yeah, it looks bigger. It looks like it's a lot bigger than it really is compared to it. I think just because of the styling, you think there's a bigger increase in size. And there actually is between the two.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:23  
Yeah, the proportions make quite a substantial difference to the to the way it looks. Like I said before, the the design of this one is it seems to draw a lot of DNA from the rav4. Yes, especially in the front. So it's got a more SUV ish kind of look, whereas the the regular Highlander the the the the unground Highlander. In its current generation has a much more rounded look, which is quite a bit different. You know, the previous generation Highlander was actually a lot closer to the what this grand Highlander is a lot of ways. Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:02:09  
I would say so. It's sort of like the made that I'm going to call the unbranded and the unbranded Highlander, just kind of it looks it's is if they were trying to make it look more crossover ish, was sort of that first smaller sort of rounder dimensions and try to make it look a little bit more cute not so in your face with the grand Highlands or you're looking at sportier, yeah, sportier. And so with the grand Highlander, they know, we're gonna go the other way, we're gonna make this look like it's a little bit bigger, a little bit more capable in terms of the its ability to carry people and carry cargo. You feel like, okay, this, this could this could take your family on a road trip is big enough to handle whatever it is you're going to shove in that car, and other people with no problem?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:47  
Yeah, I mean, the way the way Toyota describes it, you know, I think is that the grand Highlander has three rows, but you know, that third row is really more for occasional use. Yeah, and for those people that want something where they can actually really use that third row on a regular basis, even for adults. That's where the grand Highlander comes in. Plus, this guy also got more cargo room behind that third row. One of one of the images that they showed during the presentation, was actually having seven suitcases, you know, standard size, carry on bags, stacked behind the third row, which is pretty impressive, you know, for one of these, one, you know, this type of vehicle, and that's a lot because

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:32  
you figure if you got a vehicle that can handle up to eight passengers, even if you've got a small bag for each of you, that's still a lot of luggage. So you can manage to have, you know, enough for everybody to go along without having to worry about like, well, now we're gonna have to put luggage at people's feet to get to the airport kind of thing,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:48  
or, you know, get a roof rack or something like that.

Nicole Wakelin  1:03:52  
Because it does tell I was just looking at it, it's I think it's about 3500 pounds with a hybrid and I believe 5000 with a hybrid max and a gas engine. So you can hook up a trailer if you got a ton of people and you still need more room.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:04  
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not it's not going to tell your big camper trailer, but you know, certainly some smaller trailers, you know, or if you're towing, you know, modest sized boat to the lake or something like that, you know, a lot of those weigh around 4000 pounds or so. So you can certainly handle something like that. Yeah, without any difficulty and it was

Nicole Wakelin  1:04:25  
for me because we actually played around with the seating and you have the seat suggested for you your 511 range. So you were sitting at front and then I was sitting behind you behind that. And it just did the second row for me at five, six and then you climbed in the back so it was like 511 565 11 And you could still fit back there and it wasn't like horrifically cramped so it is rooming

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:44  
Yeah. You know, the floor level in that third row is a little bit higher than it is in the in the first two rows. So it's it's a little more of a knee up kind of seating position but not not crazy. Not like for example, in previous generation shins of the gym, full size SUVs like the title and suburban, where they had all the solid axle that was moving around, you know, and those you kind of felt like you're sitting on the floor with your blood on the floor and your knees up in your chest. It was definitely more comfortable, you know, and I had, and, you know, as we've talked about before, you know, everybody's got different proportions of the body, you know, I'm a little longer in the torso. So but I still had clearance from my head, from the, from the headliner. And I had a couple of inches, at least, at least two or three inches of knee room back there. And I could also slide my feet under those second row seats, when you were when you'd had a position where you were comfortable, right. So you could definitely take certainly would if you have the bench seat up sitting condition configuration, which is technically an eight passenger because there are three seat belts in that third row.

Nicole Wakelin  1:05:55  
Right, but like you were sitting back down, I looked in the backseat. I'm like, ma'am, there's one adult could sit next to you. I don't know how you could get three adults back there unless they were really teeny tiny people because just salmonella is back there. You get three Jill Seminoles if you're doing this seminal measurement system, she's a teeny tiny little journalist, but like for you is to people like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:16  
to for the most part, two adults, two average adults,

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:19  
if you're putting Yeah, or three kids, if you're putting three adults back there better be for five minute ride to dinner, because you're all sitting sideways in your seat. There's no way you're really gonna sit three adults back there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:06:28  
Yeah, and you can get the second row with either to captain's chairs, or, or a bench. Yeah. And if you get the captain's chairs, there's like the Nissan Pathfinder and the new Infiniti QX 60. The there's a standard console that is removable. So you have the option of taking that out when you don't need it and having a pass through there

Nicole Wakelin  1:06:48  
are you know, let's be really your kids are going to climb right over that center. Consequently, you remove it or not. They're just using a good point. At least they're not cartwheeling over the seats and getting little footprints on the roof, right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:01  
So, you know, we had an opportunity to spend quite a few hours driving around the island here yesterday. It was with all three configurations. And you know, some of them actually put together quite a nice drive route they did. There was a mountain road with a lot of curves and we made

Nicole Wakelin  1:07:20  
one wrong turn. I don't know how many we saw a bunch of chickens. crossing the road. We saw some goats. Yeah, we thought we saw nature. We weren't supposed to be on that road. I'm like this road is one car with where the heck are we? What we made it through? I'm like, okay, good thing no one else can.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:35  
No, no, no serious off roading. I mean, this isn't, you know, this isn't the Toyota Tacoma trail Hunter. Correct, which we're gonna see in a little while. But it's, you know, I think for for typical family use came across really well. And I think it it was felt very composed on that road, you know, heading up into the mountains into the volcanoes more technically. So, it was, I think it had quite a comfortable ride. It didn't feel bouncy or floppy or anything like that. So it's something that you can drive and it's going to, it's going to feel controlled. It's you're you're not you're not gonna feel uncomfortable, and it's probably not gonna make you nauseous.

Nicole Wakelin  1:08:25  
No, yeah. Hey, that's a bonus compared to the vinfast. I was in last week. Yeah. Did not make me nauseous with you driving or me driving. Yeah, no, I definitely think it's a very, it's very accommodating. If it is the kind of vehicle that you really think, yes, you can take a road trip madness, because the seats are comfortable. The engines no matter what, you know, they're not all exactly the same, but they're all responsive enough, like you're you're gonna get moving, you're gonna be going onto the highway, not feel like it's lagging and you can't really do what you want to do. And I liked the interior, that you know, one of the I forget how many water bottles with a water bottle, like on the side like in the doors pockets are huge. Like it's not just like a little plastic water bottle you got in a convenience store. You could fit a great big water bottle in that which you know, don't Ester underestimate the importance of those little things, especially if you have a lot of family on board. You get a lot of people you're gonna have bottles you're gonna have this you you suddenly went through the drive thru you forgot you had something else you gotta shove something in the door pocket. You know, it. That was nice. And I really like one of my favorite things about the interior is how the USB charging ports are set up. So in the front, oh, yeah, good point right there. There's three up front. So there's one that is direct, like on the right hand side far right of the dashboard for the passenger. So you can plug in and charge and you don't have to like plug it in the middle and have a cord running all the way across you or be fishing for it on the center console or looking for it inside of the center console, which is the worst thing and there's like a little shelf right there. So it will trough the Yeah, you can plug it in and you can like leave it right there. So you can let it charge and it's out of the way. And then if you're I mean still the passenger but really for the driver there is another two more little ports one and it's so clearly marked. One is the charging port. One is to connect the Bluetooth so that your car is one your data port. And sometimes you can't tell which is which you literally don't know, until you plug in the phone, you're like that's not working and you have to switch. This is very clearly marked very easy to get to. I thought that was fantastic. Because like removes frustration, you know exactly where things aren't appointment.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:19  
Yeah. And I've noticed recently on a number of vehicles, that the the data port, you know, the the only distinguishing element of it, I think it's I think it's actually on Hyundai's is they put a white outline around one of the ports, that's the data port, the ones that don't have the white outline around it, they're just charging,

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:41  
like literally never even notice that differentiator or like so it's like, what if you don't know that,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:46  
bounded by trial and error? Why isn't this connected?

Nicole Wakelin  1:10:49  
And that's the worst, right? So you're sitting there you're plugging, you're like, gosh, dang, and I just want to get this plugged in and work. There's no frustration, you plug in if you want to use a data point, if you're the passenger, and that's your zooming. You can see which one it is if you're the driver, and you know it already because you drive the car all the time. Cool. But for the passenger, that's great. Because you have people along for the ride, you don't necessarily know your car,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:07  
right? So you got the three USB C ports in the front row. Two more on the second row, two more on the third row, so everybody can charge.

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:14  
Everybody gets their devices charged. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:16  
So you did bring along a cookie? I did. And, you know, there's there's no worksurface there's no official there's no. Cookie table, but you know, did. Would you say that the grand Highlander suffices. The grand Highlander

Nicole Wakelin  1:11:33  
suffices. The concert was nice inside, I did like took the cookie right there. It was good. And then for storage that Oh, I love this in front of the couple that are in the console. There's this huge deep spot in front of it, right, like I put my phone in, like vertically into that spot and my wallet and the cookie while it was in transport all fit in that little thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:51  
Yeah. And there's also there's another cubby in front of that horizontal one on one side is the Qi wireless charging port. And then the other side is just a place to put more stuff. And then if you put your phone and stuff in there, your wallet and things in there, you can use that space that you were just describing. There's two, two standard cupholders and then there's this other cavity where I think they actually described it in the presentation as it's big enough to hold. You know, like one of those massive drink cups. Yeah, from the from the guest.

Nicole Wakelin  1:12:20  
We have like three spots. It's like all these little things. Family Life is complicated. You never know what you're gonna have with you when you're you're trying to juggle things with the kids, your brain is kind of scattered sometimes to have all these spots was like, I can just throw everything in here. I don't have to worry about where I'm gonna put things you can just toss it all in. There's a spot for everything. I love that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:38  
Yeah, yeah, no. So the overall, you know, really good family vehicle. Let's let's go back to the powertrain and wrap that part up. So three engine or three powertrain options, the base setup 2.4 liter turbo four cylinder, which is been gradually rolling out across the various Toyota and Lexus vehicles over the last year and a half or so since it came out. And that one's but two, I think 276 horsepower, roughly. I think that's right. Yeah. And then there's and that's the first one that we drove Yes. We started off with a gas engine. Yep. And then the second one is the more traditional Toyota hybrid. It's the fifth generation Toyota hybrid system, as they call it. So this is basically the same powertrain that you can also get in the unground Highlander, and also in the Camry and a bunch of other vehicles. The rav4 has it so it's a 2.5 liter naturally aspirated four with the CVT at the traditional and we got we got we got some sparrows nesting right above us here sitting out on the balcony. And so that one is I think about a little over 270 It's about 210 horsepower. Yeah. And that's what the the classic ECVT

Nicole Wakelin  1:14:05  
right where's the gas has an eight speed automatic, they're going to CVT and not only do you get less power, you get the CVT which is kind of loud I mean, it still does what it's supposed to do but there's a dramatic difference in how it's very fuel efficient it's very fuel efficient, it's the most fuel efficient option of a lot but it's just it's loud. i It's after spending some time that gas engine to switch over to that hybrid I'm like well this is a nice yeah, I just didn't like it. I enjoy driving the gas one I did not enjoy the straight up hybrid as much because of that noisiness I mean it just sounds you when you push the gas if you're really asking for power, it sounds so strange. Like you know, we can do it, but can it

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:46  
Yeah, really. I mean, this this power train, you find it in a lot of smaller Toyota vehicles. This is the largest Toyota that that has this power in there. And you can you feel like it's one Working I mean, it's very efficient. Oh yeah, I think you can get 36 miles per gallon crazy this size of vehicle. Yeah is impressive. But when you you, when you drive it, it, you can get it, you hear it, it feels like it's working,

Nicole Wakelin  1:15:14  
it is letting you know that you were demanding a lot of it and it is trying.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:18  
And then of course, there's the new hybrid Max, which I think we first saw it on the Toyota crown, yes, or no, actually, Lexus RX was the first one and then on the crown. And now it's on here. And this is a new version of Toyota is hybrid system that dispenses with the ECVT and has a conventional eight speed automatic. With the 2.4 Turbo, yeah. And you can also get it with all wheel drive with with the actually, I think it's always always always I will drive electric motor on the rear axle as well for the all wheel drive. And that's 326 horsepower and 400 foot pounds of torque. And that one, that's the

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:01  
one I mean, here's the thing it is it is doesn't have the noise of a hybrid, it doesn't quite get the it's not as efficient as it in terms of fuel time, but it's still better than the gas. And it is it is a happy medium on fuel efficiency. But in terms of performance and engagement, I liked it the best. Yeah. So it is the one that I would go for. I mean, it was it was so nice to have a hybrid that didn't that whine ill I just hate how that CVT sounds. So to have something that is getting good fuel economy and is nice to drive in doesn't sound horrible.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:31  
That's the one. Yeah. And we drove that, you know, the set up into the mountains up to I think about 4000 feet was roughly the peak of where we were. And it didn't feel like it was working particularly hard at all. No, it had plenty of performance for vehicle the size. You know, I think I would definitely agree that is the best choice.

Nicole Wakelin  1:16:55  
And it's more expensive than forgetting pricing. So it goes towards the top of the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:00  
price, depending on the trim level. I think the Platinum, I think gets approaches 60,000.

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:05  
Like the most expensive ones are 60 Grant, like are in that six or so. And I mean, so there's a pretty you're paying for it like, but it's something I feel like it's in your budget, if you can afford it, and you want to have that performance go with that one like it really, I think it's enough that it's worth driving if you're just like, I'll just get the hybrid, I'm fine. No, no, no, try the hybrid backs, because you're gonna find it a much nicer car, you're gonna enjoy driving that one a lot more.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:28  
Yeah, definitely. So one, one last thing I want to touch on. During the q&a after the presentation before we went off to Dr. Toyota was asked, you know why there's no grand Highlander prime, no plug in hybrid plug in. And, you know, they made some excuses

Nicole Wakelin  1:17:46  
bla bla bla,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:17:49  
think, you know, this customer base would necessarily want that. But frankly, I don't agree. I think this is perfect customer base for the plug in hybrid view, if they offered a 30 flattening, you get 40 miles of electric range in a rav4 Prime, if you could get 35 miles and this thing

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:08  
will take it because like you look at how popular the rav4 prime is right? Like it's hard to get one right now. Because everybody wants when they're making them fast enough to satisfy the demand there. I think if they did a plug in with this, I think people would love it. Because you're also, again, it's a family vehicle. So you're doing a lot of driving, generally speaking, when you have a family, you're budgeting a heck of a lot of stuff between the kids and the husband, the wife or whoever. So to be able to budget like, Okay, our fuel economy just get that much better, because I can plug it in and get that 30 miles of electric range. I think that,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:38  
which is all the driving that most people do on a daily basis and plug it in and yes, unplug it in the morning, do all the things that you do, you know, commuting to work, taking the kids to school, wherever else they need to go. And then you're not gonna you're not going to need to use almost any gas.

Nicole Wakelin  1:18:54  
Right? So think about that. Think about how even if it even though it's more expensive, generally than other trends, you're getting a lot back by not having to fill a tank quite so often. So I yeah, I'm I don't know why they didn't. I mean, they didn't seem to feel they didn't they didn't do that hinting like, oh, it's not here yet?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:14  
No, I think they've made it pretty clear that they don't intend at this point, to do a prime version of this vehicle. And you know, we were talking about this a little bit. And last night at dinner, you know, I asked Dave, Chris from Toyota. How many they think they're going to sell of this first year, you know, they're looking about 75,000 or so. And then once they get up to full production rate, and this is this vehicle is going to be built exclusively at the Toyota plant in Indiana where they also build a Sienna. They think they'll probably get close to 100,000. And this is a North America only vehicle right? I think if they sold the grand Highlander in other Markets, and they had more volume than I think that, particularly if they offered it in Europe, but a vehicle was says probably wouldn't sell real well, and

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:08  
they just don't do large vehicles like this as a rule,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:11  
but you know, if it was offered in more markets and had higher overall volume, then I think they would do the prime. But, you know, the plug in hybrid would probably only get somewhere between five and 10% of the take rate, which you know, be between maybe five and 10,000 vehicles. So it's a small number, and they probably felt that it's not worth engineering, another power to that particular power train for this.

Nicole Wakelin  1:20:35  
And when you look at all the, you know, there are still lots of issues with them getting all the parts they need, not just Toyota everybody to make vehicles just like okay, so we got enough to make these three different power trains are gonna add a fourth in there, you know that that increases the complication, and the chances that we're not gonna able to get it because this one thing is missing. So to keep it to three is already a lot of options. So I get it, but I think a plugin would have been cool.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:58  
Yeah. Great. But now, still, the options you have are a really good one to see. The hybrid is very fuel efficient, if a little unruly sounding. Yes. The max is definitely the one to get. If you're especially if you live in a place where you're climbing mountains.

Nicole Wakelin  1:21:18  
Yeah, absolutely. The max is my favorite. That's the one I would get if I was looking at this.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:22  
All right. So that's the Toyota grand Highlander, our first drive impressions. Yes. Hopefully in the coming months, we'll have a chance to spend more quality time with it and try piling more people in and then see how they feel. More cookies. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. All right. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. All right. We're back. And after the day, after the evening, after we drove the the grand Highlander we Toyota had a luau. Where they had a kalua pig, you know, they, we got to see them digging up the pig out of the ground. And that was it was

Nicole Wakelin  1:22:00  
a much larger one. It was buried in the ground and they're all the banana leaves or the leaves. I just gave me great big pig in the consensus, like a little flat, little thin little time. Like that was much more impressive when it was buried.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:22:12  
But it was still really tasty. It was very, yeah. And and then they showed off the new Tacoma, the 2024 Toyota Tacoma. So kind of the last of the midsize pickups to get a complete redesign. You know, over the last year or two. We've seen new new Ranger new canyon and Colorado, new Nissan Frontier. And now we've got the Tacoma which is far and away. The best selling of the midsize pickups that sells more than twice as many as the GM, the Chevy and GMC, GMC trucks combined. Definitely, well more than double the number of rangers and an interesting stat that Dave Crist, the head of I think he's the head of Toyota brand now for North America. mentioned during dinner the night before, was the Tacoma for 22 years now has actually been the best selling nameplate in the state of Hawaii. Oh, yeah, that are selling than any other vehicle is the

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:21  
it is the official the official vehicle of Hawaii. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin  1:23:25  
I had no idea. And then all of a sudden, once we I think once I knew that I was like, Look, they're

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:32  
they're everywhere, because they're rugged. Do you get them off, we'll drop you get them all wheel drive, there's a ton of aftermarket stuff. Hawaii little, there's a lot of light trails in Hawaii that you have to drive on. And so yeah, you want a rugged truck that you can do work with and get to where you want to go.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:46  
And even in some of the access roads to, you know, to get to beaches, you know, there there are they are nominally paved.

Roberto Baldwin  1:23:54  
And while they're saved with air quotes,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:56  
and you know, while they don't necessarily have Michigan style potholes, they're you know, they're not exactly smooth, much of the time. So you want something that's going to be fairly rugged and durable. And so we got, you know, the Tacoma and they sell a ton of those in Hawaii. And we've got a new one with a couple of new variants of it, including this trail Hunter for overlanding. And we're what's interesting is the at least Ford and GM on their new midsize trucks. They've dropped the extended cab versions are just doing crew cabs now for the new ones. Toyota is got a crew cab, interesting ly enough though it doesn't have the rear hinged half doors on there like they've had in the past. You know, so it's purely a two door extended cab midsize pickup and you can get the the Tacoma with it. either the 2.4 liter turbo that's been showing up in all kinds of Toyota and Lexus vehicles, or the 2.4 liter turbo iforest max you know hybrid system similar to what's on the the tundra and the Sequoia but with a four cylinder instead of the V six that's the same two for turbo and you can even get the the natural or the the non hybrid version with a manual transmission still in certain trim levels like in the pre runner and the SR five What do you guys think about the Tacoma?

Nicole Wakelin  1:25:38  
I think it's a good I mean, just first of all that just the keep they kept enough of what you needed to keep, like the capability the very you know, like you can get out there can do anything but then updated the stuff that needs to be updated. If you didn't break it always where they're gonna break them.

Roberto Baldwin  1:25:53  
Yeah, I mean, the the fact you can get a hybrid or a manual transmission. I'm just like, yeah, no wonder it's I mean, this is when you think midsize truck you don't I always forget the Ranger even exists to be honest. I see them. They're around.

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:07  
Because when the Ranger came out and was like, oh my god, oh my god. Oh my god, the Rangers back the Rangers back the Rangers back. Now someone asked me a bit about a mid sized truck and I'm like Tacoma

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:14  
Tacoma, taco, just get the taco.

Nicole Wakelin  1:26:18  
Taco. They're like, I'm sorry, I'm not hungry. I was looking for a truck. But still,

Roberto Baldwin  1:26:21  
ya know, it's, I think they're gonna sell a billion of these. I'm a fan of the hybrid system because of the hybrid in a truck is always is always great. I mean, you know, the Maverick, I would like to add and make a small Maverick V type vehicle with a hybrid. That would be dope or a small transmission? Either way. No, that's a coma is great. It's I got to sell billion of these in Hawaii. They're gonna sell into these in my neighborhood. A lot of there's my neighbors. I have like two Toyota trucks. And yeah, it's it's, I think the tundra to me is just too much. It's just a slowdown. Yeah, that's it come with, on the other hand is like, yeah, yeah, this is this is this is why people buy Toyota trucks. For this. This is what they want.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:05  
Did you see the seats on the new TRD? Pro?

Roberto Baldwin  1:27:09  
I don't what? So what is going on with that? It's like, it's like, it's like Robocop it's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:15  
so the TRD PRO is, you know, sort of Toyota's answer to the Raptor or the ZR two for the canyon, it is the high speed off road. And so they've actually got a couple of different, you know, really off road oriented, high end off road oriented trims, we've got the new trail Hunter. And last year at SEMA, they showed a Tundra trail Hunter concept. And the trail Hunter is for overlanding. Yeah, so it's got a beefy suspension. And it's, it's designed to, you know, hold more stuff, you know, put lots of gear on there, you know, put your pop up tent camper on the back and things like that. The, the TRD PRO is, you know, kind of the desert racer version, you know, and rock crawler. And so they have these new seats on the the TRD Pro that actually have their own dampers built into the back of the seat. And what do they forget what they call these things? So dynamic performance seats? Yeah, so I guess the whole structure, you know, they had one out there, you know, to sit on and just sitting on it, you can, you can really get an impression of how it actually works. But I guess the idea here is that, you know, this is supposed to provide some more isolation for the driver when you're going over the really rough terrain, or the driver and the front passenger actually, so that you've got this structure on the back of the seat that's got a couple of dampers built into it. And I guess the the seat back and the seat cushion can move somewhat independently of each other. I'll be curious to see what this is actually like, you know, when we actually get to try it off road? No, I

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:07  
can see is my knees getting destroyed if I'm sitting in the backseat? Yeah, well,

Nicole Wakelin  1:29:13  
your knees bounce. Oh, ouch. Over your head. Imagine you're not against a piece of plastic, you're bouncing against

Roberto Baldwin  1:29:22  
whatever's going on. Does the suspension system in the front seat?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:27  
Actually, for you, Robbie, you're probably not gonna want to sit in the backseat of a Tacoma anyway. Anyway, I sat in the backseat of the trail Hunter. And it's a little snug. You know, I mean, I'm not as tall as you are. And my knees were touching the front. You know, I set the front seat, you know, for my height, and then got in the back and my knees. Were almost touching the seat back. And I'm not going to have a good thirst. There's like no room under the front seats to get your feet under there either says no. So you're probably not going to want to sit in the backseat of any Tacoma.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:03  
So it's mostly for the dogs. That's a dog sitting in the backseat. Yeah, they don't need they don't need and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:06  
for that you can fold down the back seat. Like fold down the seat back in the back. So the dogs great for the dogs. You can also pop it up and there's some storage underneath the seat cushions in the back as well. So one little storage.

Roberto Baldwin  1:30:21  
That's nice. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:24  
So that's the, that's the Tacoma all and you know, they they borrowed a little feature for the trail Hunter, from the, from rivian. They've got a JBL Bluetooth speaker that's embedded in the top of the dashboard that you can remove and you can you can put put it outside, you know, so when you've set up a website,

Nicole Wakelin  1:30:42  
I just think that's a cute idea. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:46  
So so that's the new Tacoma. Next up, while I was in Hawaii, I got got a message from somebody at Ford, saying, hey, there's gonna be a Twitter spaces event later this afternoon, which I didn't tune into with, with Jim Farley, and Elon Musk. Did either of you listen to this?

Roberto Baldwin  1:31:11  
I was I think I was somewhere. And I was like, What? No. So and then afterwards, like

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:21  
from from a technical standpoint, at least this one worked out better than the Twitter spaces they tried to do the day before. With Elon and, and that guy from Florida, Florida man that's running from Texas running running for president. That one did not go well. This one at least technically went well. But the the news that came out of this was Wow.

Ford is done a deal with Tesla. Starting in early 2024 existing Ford vehicles will have access to the the Tesla Supercharger network, and they're going to build in the capability right into the FordPass. app. So right now, you know, for for superchargers that have the magic dock on it. We've talked about that you tried out, Robbie, you'd have to use the Tesla app, you know, to get it going and when you plug in the vehicle and to check it Yeah, you have to tell it to do super dark. Yeah. And so they're gonna build that capability right into the FordPass app into the Maki, and E Transit and the f150. Lightning starting early next year. And presumably that will be available as an OTA update on those vehicles for the existing ones. And they'll also have the dock adapter available the Tesla adapter available for those vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin  1:32:43  
So you don't have to use a Subaru because there's only like five of them in the country. You just have to have if you have the adapter with you just plug it in into

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:51  
Yeah. Okay. So it plugs into the CCS port on the car and then you plug in the Tesla connector into that. Starting in late 2024, early 25 When Ford starts launching their next generation of EVs, the, their three row SUVs, the base explorer sized to as the we don't know what they're going to call them yet, but let's call them Ford Explorer, Evie and Lincoln aviator, Evie. When those launch in early 25. They won't have a CCS connector on them and

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:25  
what Wait, hold on. That's the here's the whole thing. They've don't know. Emma Berg from from Ford replied to a bunch of Twitter questions and said, We're, we're not 100% sure where they were they they're sort of like exploring whether or not they'll have two ports on the car. Well, Mark Martin

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:41  
gins Ginsburg Ginsburg said that they that they will have the NACS, the, the Tesla connector on there. So

Roberto Baldwin  1:33:49  
they don't know if they're gonna have one port or two port. They don't really know. Everybody and every journalist I've talked to who's talked to him has all gotten a different a different answer. So on Twitter, she's like, well, we're not we're investigating having both ports.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:05  
So at the very least, there's gonna be at least a Tesla connector on there.

Nicole Wakelin  1:34:10  
Possibly more, there's

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:11  
at least one it'll be the Tesla connector, and possibly CCS.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:16  
And presumably, they will put that Tesla connector somewhere near their left rear corner like it is on Tesla's so that you can do pull up to a supercharger or back into a supercharger and have the cable reach the port. Unlike trying to do it today with an F 150 Or a Maki. You know, we're with a magic dock where the cable is just not long enough.

Roberto Baldwin  1:34:39  
Yeah. Essentially, it took up like three spaces the charger f150, which I'm sure Tesla people will be super happy about. Oh, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:47  
So for Ford, you know, I think this is this is interesting, and I think Ford probably didn't want to do this. But you know, with the lack of success They seem to be having with getting Electrify America and Evie go and everybody else to improve on their, their, their reliability with their chargers, they probably looked at this and said, You know what, we just got to give our customers the best possible user experience with charging. And the best way to do that is just put compatibility with superchargers right into the vehicles,

Roberto Baldwin  1:35:23  
just just use the one that works. And that's the crazy thing is that the killer app for Tesla, and I've been saying this for forever at this point, is the charging network that that is that is the killer app, when people say, well, I need to drive across country, what should I use them like? Well, the model three, you should just, it's going to be the, you're going to have the easiest time going across country and the model three, because you're not going to have to worry about it, you're it's the car is going to tell you where you have to go, it's going to tell you how to charge you're not to be used like 12 apps, you're not going to get there, you're not going to be concerned that you're gonna get there 11 o'clock at night, and everything's broke. So when you look at on one hand, you're like, Oh, my God, I can't believe they're going with this. This other, it would be nice if Tesla would just went to CCS. But when your Ford and your your your your, you're probably getting a ton of feedback from your people who have bought Maki's and F one, F 150 lightnings. And they're, they're saying they're telling you, you know, I really liked my car. But, you know, when I go on a road trip, it's a big huge pain in my ass to like charge, because like, like, you know, there's only like four charges out of place, and three of them are broken, or it's not charging fast enough. And meanwhile, all these Tesla people are just like,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:31  
and, you know, Ford, to their credit has been doing a lot of stuff to try to, you know, monitor, you know, the charging experience on vehicles, when people plug in their their Maki's and lightnings, you know, if the charging session doesn't start correctly, or it's charged slowly, or whatever it might be their tracking that. And when they detect that there's a problem with a charger, they, they, they are pulling those chargers out of the FordPass system, you know, that got you know, when when you drive one of those vehicles, you know, you can have it navigate you to a charger or you know, when you put in a destination, you know, it'll say okay, where do I need to charge and it'll show the the places where there's charging available and they are actively pulling out the chargers that they know have not been functioning. And you know, they're sharing data with the charge operate charge point operators, but it hasn't really helped so far. And so this is, you know, this is going to potentially be the, you know, the best of all worlds for for an Eevee buyers going forward.

Roberto Baldwin  1:37:39  
Yeah, it's that when I took that, that BMW up to wherever I'm up near Tahoe, on the way to Tahoe to charge it, I was like halfway expecting to get there and it kind of didn't work, you know, so I charged beforehand, because they Well, just in case they were charging me get let me get enough charge so I can make sure I get there. And if it doesn't work, I have no charge to get back down to this charger. And I got there and it was just like, it was like other than the fact that I didn't have a credit card on file with Tesla it had it wasn't working with apple pear for whatever reason. It's like once I set that up, it was just like, it just worked. So I was like could you just like I need that was the charge. I needed to do the super, you know, the super dock or whatever. And it just like like no like, and I just plugged it in. And then I walked in the car and the car just like started charging. I'm like, This is why you buy a model three. This is literally why you bought a mountain by a model three, you don't buy my three kids better than the maki you don't buy it gets better than the ionic five, you buy it because I want to go somewhere. And I don't want to worry about it. I want to drive a car like an Eevee like I drive a gas car. Yeah. And Tesla has been like, yeah, we made a we made a charging network. And somebody, somebody at the office when I talked to the engineer years ago, they're like someone here was like, Wouldn't it be great if like along the way, we could tell you like, where to stop. And so like, we just did that, like someone had an idea. And they just did it. And then it changed everything. And somehow automakers or other automakers are just now starting to catch up with it. And mostly through Android. Automotive. So yeah, it's like on one hand, you're like I don't like the idea that we're essentially like putting lightning ports and cars you know, like apple with its you know, I would love if there was USBC where this proprietary cable but on the other hand, you just people just want to go where they want to go and they won't want to like fight with, you know, a sort of janky network that we have now, which I completely understand.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:38  
All right. Last thing we've got, before we get to a few more listener questions, so the new BMW five series BMW revealed the new five series this past week. And as you might have guessed, it will be available as an AI five with a battery electric as well as a plug in hybrid and and mild hybrids is the standard setup. And one of the cool, well, maybe cool features remains to be seen that they're adding on there is support for air console, which is a streaming video game service for casual games, so it's not quite like NVIDIA GeForce Now or Microsoft's Xbox cloud gaming. But you'd be able to start you can pair your phone with the screen in the car while you're waiting for it to charge and use your phone as a controller and play video games on the on the screen in the car. What do you Woody, what do you think about the new five series? I

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:41  
like it. I think it doesn't have the giant kidney grill. I think there's sort of paring down on it. Voting for me

Nicole Wakelin  1:40:47  
I'm like what I want to see if it as a giant grill and for some reason the pictures are not loading for me. I'm like, come on. That's the biggest question.

Roberto Baldwin  1:40:53  
It has a smaller grill. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:55  
it's looks like it's fairly similar in size to the current gen five.

Nicole Wakelin  1:41:02  
Oh my gosh, is no giant beaver teeth. Yay.

Roberto Baldwin  1:41:05  
Yeah, no, it looks nice. It's clean. It's not like crazy. The Evie. I mean, I'm really excited to drive the Eevee I mean, I like the iPhone. I think the iPhone, the the the rabid five series is gonna be nice, but I just just from history that he's gonna be.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:21  
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, right now, you know, they've announced to two versions of the iPhone five, the drive 40, which is the same 335 horsepower, rear rear motor that's in the eye for you drive 40 to 295 miles of range. And then the M 60. With 590 horsepower. So this would be the same pair of motors that you find in the i seven m 60. Zero to 60 and 372 156 miles of range. They bumped up the charging speed to 205 kilowatts now

Roberto Baldwin  1:42:01  
I drove the i Seven and it told me there was like 190, something I was getting 205 in that car charging? I don't know,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:08  
it may be that they have done an OTA update that enables a little faster, because I know 190 was what they what they specified when it launched. Yeah, it made those.

Roberto Baldwin  1:42:18  
I have video of it hitting 205 I'm like, All right, well, this is good. Yeah, it was add a charger too. So you know, maybe things aren't so bad.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:31  
And, you know, looks like similar size, maybe slightly larger. I haven't looked at all the detailed specs. I don't know if they've published all those yet to the current five series. But you know, the five series is a really nice midsize luxury sedan. And I'm really looking forward to driving this. And then of course, there's also the gas versions, you know, with the two liter turbo four cylinder and the three liter, turbo inline six. The the i Five E drive 40 starts at 67,000 68,000 including delivery, and the M 6084. The base 530 It starts at 58,000. So, I think I think this might be kind of the sweet spot for a lot of people. Yeah, you know, not not as big as seven the i Seven. But you know, similar performance. And, and I think this this could be a lot of fun.

Roberto Baldwin  1:43:33  
Yeah, there's a $6,600 differential between the 530 i X Drive and the i Five E drive. So yeah, and so you know, if your realtor I was gonna be so it's gonna be nice. Yeah, I think we've talked about the i Four as a rear wheel drive, or like to just get that. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:43:53  
I mean, as nice as the dual motor all wheel drive i Four and 50 is, you know, if I was buying one, I would actually go with the the rear drive, you know, the better range and everything. I like it. One, one interesting detail. You know, it's got a lot of the same ATS stuff that's, that's on the seven series because it's based on the same platform architectures, the seven series you know, so it's got the the new hands free driving assist, that's on the seven series on the i Seven. But they've, they've added a new capability in here. So on the on the ice on the seven series, when you're using the hands free system, you know, if the sensors detect that the lane adjacent to you is open, and you can do a lane change, it'll, it'll flash up on the instrument cluster, you know, lane change available and suggested and just tap on the turn signal stock, and it'll go and it'll execute the lane change and actually the i Four does the same thing. But even though it doesn't have hands free, but it'll do the With the lane changes on the new five, using the driver monitor system, it's actually watching your eyes. And instead of having to tap the turn signal, when you're using the hands free system, all you have to do is glance over at the side side mirror. And if you look over at the side mirror, it takes that as, as a, you know, acknowledgment that yeah, okay, go ahead and do the to the active lane change, and it will do the lane change. So it's the, it's the first vehicle I've seen that has that kind of capability using using your eyes to activate auto lane change

Roberto Baldwin  1:45:37  
your eyes, eyes, okay. I will be in Germany in a few weeks to talk to them. So I'm gonna like really ask them a lot of question, because because I glance a lot like I was just, that's just to all my mirrors. I'm like always looking because that's how I was taught to drive. So I'm wondering, like, what's the is it two seconds? Three seconds? Like, what's the difference between a glance to make sure there's no one over there? And a glance to change lanes? So it'll be? How does a difference? It has to be timing based, I guess? Or maybe you have to, like, maybe you have to like, like kind of like scowl a little like well, you know, I mean, maybe it's maybe it's also checking checking your, your your eyebrows, if your eyebrows are kind of like, lift your left eyebrow, and then it'll get up late with your right eyebrow.

Nicole Wakelin  1:46:25  
Sideways, it's just glance, if you lift up, then yeah, I feel like I could screw this up like, Yeah, I'm not changing lanes?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:46:31  
Well, you know, what, you know, on the seventh and an AI for? You know, it's looking at, you know, okay, what is your set speed for adaptive cruise control, let's say it's 70, you got set at 70 in the car in front of you is going 65. You know, so it wants to, you know, it's gonna suggest an overtake the sensors are going to look at the left lane. And if it's all clear, then it'll say, you know, lane change available. And today, you know, on those vehicles, if you wanted to actually do the lane change, you have to tap the turn signal stalk, you know, so it, you know, now if you, if it says lane change available, if you look over at the mirror, or presumably for some period of time, it will then execute the change. If you're just if it's if you're just glancing at the mirror, and it hasn't suggested a lane change, it's not going to do anything. So it's not going to change lanes every time you look at the mirror, only when it has suggested a lane change. And then you look at the mirror. Again, the timing is going to be interesting. I'll be curious to see what they tell you, Robbie, about details about well, this is gonna work.

Roberto Baldwin  1:47:39  
Yeah, I got I got lots of questions, and the Germans will love telling me all the answers to that in a very technical way. And I get all excited. I love going to Germany because there's like, Okay, let me tell you about some engineers. Like Bill come here. Well, not bill Hans or whatever. Klaus, get over here. We got. We got a question.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:47:57  
All right. Speaking of questions, let's answer a couple more listener questions. This one came from Shawn in Australia, sent us a question via email. Even though I'm in Australia and some of the models you review and discuss never make it to our market. I love listening to the podcast and have for years now. Wondering if I could ask the team's opinion as we are looking to replace our 2008 Nissan Elgrand Peoplemover slash not a minivan. Although we do prefer Ronaldo we do refer to it as the van. We have four kids twin girls nine and two boys seven and five. So we do fill a car. Fortunately, there are still small, they're still small and neither my wife or I are Robbie sighs So our kids are not likely to become tall anytime soon. We like the Kia carnival and the Kia Sorento. My wife has always liked the SUV shape, but the space in the van is always a winner. And certainly with four kids I can I can see where it would be. The advantage of the Sorento plug in hybrid is the government tax benefit for me with a hybrid under a Novated lease. I'm not sure what that means. But anyway, so so much so that even with a $20,000 increase in price for the Sorento GT Line to the PHE V. I will pay less a month for the PHE V pool compared to the carnival. The lease deal makes the PHE V very attractive, but my only concern is how the 1.6 liter hybrid engine compared to those V six 3.5 liter GT Line. And I think the Carnival is the same V six petrol engine. I'd love to hear the team's thoughts on these three options. The Carnival GT Line, the Sorento GT Line and the Sorento PHE V. I'm particularly interested in your opinions on how they drive and handle Keep up the great work many thanks in advance Shawn.

Nicole Wakelin  1:49:46  
Okay, I'm aside from like surrender, which one which powertrain? With four kids I would lean really heavily still towards that carnival.

Roberto Baldwin  1:49:54  
There is a facelift coming that's supposed to have a P HEV. For the carnival Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin  1:50:01  
I feel like because it's here's a hybrid.

Roberto Baldwin  1:50:03  
I don't know, if you have Hold on, I think it's just a hybrid,

Nicole Wakelin  1:50:06  
because I know that you can make like their Sorento will absolutely do the job. But in for kids, that means you're always having at least four kids and then Tommy's along for the ride, because you're giving a ride from soccer practice. And now you have five extra bit of space. I like the carnival,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:20  
and the Sorento, you know, has a third row. Yeah, it's nowhere near as voluminous as the third row in the carnival. And if you're using

Nicole Wakelin  1:50:31  
it, like it's the thing is, I always think that the third row in an SUV is very much like every now and then, if you have to kind of sort of there's a third row, none of them are really most of them are not really truly huge. The Sorento isn't gigantic, so I feel like I kind of feel like I would really lean towards minivan with four kids. That's just where I am, I would be like, No, three kids, maybe three or four kids?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:50:57  
Yeah, you know, I would definitely, you know, take the kids to the dealership, and have the two nine year olds sit in that third row. Yeah, and see if they can sit in there comfortably. Because, you know, thing is, at this age, you know, nine years, even though okay, even though the two of you may not be particularly tall, you know, there, they are soon, probably within the lifespan of what, you know, given that you're currently driving a 2008 Elgrand, you know, presumably you're planning to keep whatever this whatever you buy for a significant length of time. And that's good, we, we definitely encourage that. But, you know, they're getting to the age where in the next couple of years, they're going to start hitting growth spurts. And, you know, if, if the nine year olds can't be comfortable in that third row today, they're probably in the time during the, the period that you own this vehicle, you know, none of them are going to be comfortable back there.

Nicole Wakelin  1:52:01  
Like, I know, you're looking at powertrain but just purely from versatility, like Sam said, they're going to be, they're gonna be squished back there, it's gonna get tricky. As all the kids get older, it's gonna get tricky.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:52:12  
And you're also going to have less cargo room back there. So you know, if you're taking trips to visit the grandparents, or, you know, whatever, it's just going to the beach, taking them to the beach, you know, you're gonna have a bunch of stuff back there, you know, that you take for, you know, for a day a day at the beach, or, you know, for a vacation trip. And you're not going to have as much cargo space behind that. In fact, you can have very little cargo space behind that third row and the Sorento especially compared to the carnival. So, you know, I would definitely consider the carnival. Especially if they, if they have I don't know what your timing is for buying a vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin  1:52:54  
Yeah, like wait till like next year? Yeah, I know, the new US. It will. There's a good chance in the US we'll have a hybrid carnival next year, early next year, we will don't production like this fall. So I'm not sure how that will work with the

Sam Abuelsamid  1:53:06  
Carnival is built in Korea. It's not built here. So it's like right down the street. Yeah. So it's not gonna be compared to us. Yeah. I mean, it's not gonna it's not gonna be a North America only model likely. So if there's, if there's a hybrid carnival, then that's going to be you know, something that's probably going to be global. And, you know, certainly the hybrid. The other part of the question is whether the 1.6 Turbo, you know, with the plug in hybrid is a good solution for that size of vehicle, you know, I think it is, you know, it's it's got plenty of torque, and when you pair it with the electric motor, it's got it's got plenty of performance, I don't think performance is going to be an issue for you with the 1.6 Turbo and the plug in hybrid. But if they do a plug in hybrid version of the of the Carnival, I mean, that would that would be your your ideal combination, I think

Roberto Baldwin  1:53:56  
yeah. I'm seeing just hybrid but if it's a plug in hybrid, it's like yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:03  
I'm just looking to see what else is yeah, you know, the the next size up you know would be like the the palisade and Telluride which you know, neither of those is available as a hybrid today and I don't know when when or if they will be you know, there there is the Kia Evie nine coming I don't know if that's going to be offered in Australia. You know, and if that you know kind of fits your your needs. You know that that is another option to consider as well is you know, the Evie nine is is a step up in size from the Sorento and will definitely have a more usable third row seat for those kids.

Nicole Wakelin  1:54:45  
I'm reading something that says that it is going to be do wait a minute, but it is going to be coming into Australia. I'm trying to get

Sam Abuelsamid  1:54:52  
it done. Yeah, I'm trying to look well there's also the Hyundai ionic seven, which you know, one of those will probably you know, either the ionic seven The v nine will probably be offered in Australia.

Nicole Wakelin  1:55:03  
This is an AVI website, and it says it's due to be launched in the third quarter of 2023. July to September. So it should be coming out. Oh, cool. So, so yeah, theoretically, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:55:16  
So, you know, start off by, you know, ticking, ticking the kids, you know, making the two nine year old sit in the third row of the Sorento. And you know, that may that may cross it off your list just by default. Because, you know, they're, they're not going to get any shorter. The kids

Roberto Baldwin  1:55:33  
just keep growing.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:55:35  
Tell me about it. All right. Next up, Kenny in Rhode Island, wrote in, says, Hey, wheel bearings cast, enjoy the podcast very much. It's pretty much a go to weekly show started following you guys. After hearing the tech and hearing you on the tech guy a couple years ago, the podcast you all have put together as informative and entertaining. My wife and I recently started to look into leasing a hybrid vehicle. Shocker, there's a limited inventory, and those they do have seem to be marked up quite significantly. And here's where the confusion comes in. Do you know why the leasing terms are significantly higher, even though the price of a gas model and hybrid and are not that different? It also seems as though the manufacturers don't want you to get an Eevee or hybrid. Second question. If we go with a PHE V.

At least that can we still get the tax credit? Where can we find clear details on this information? At this time, we're looking at the Kia Sorento or Hyundai Tucson hybrid or plug in hybrid stock is very low. If there's any at all. We're told we could put a deposit on the vehicle but they didn't they have no idea when the vehicles are going to arrive. What a mess. Any thoughts on these vehicles I mentioned as others, we priced our way out of our price range. And I thought that this credit would help with but it does not seem to be the case. When will the vehicles being made? When When will these vehicles begin being made in the US so that more people can take advantage of the tax credit? Sorry for the long winded email. Kenny in Rhode Island. So let's start off the first part about you know, the the lease terms on the hybrid plug in hybrids versus the gas models. Any thoughts? Sir?

Roberto Baldwin  1:57:27  
If there's less of them, and the people want them, they're gonna charge more, that's the dealer, they get to do whatever they want. That's, that's what it comes down to my cousin, they want an HRV the people are like, you gotta we're gonna charge you like this 2000 or $3,000? Like, extra just because and I was like, No, that's crazy. It's an HRV they're all over the place. Nope, nope, they don't care. Yeah, it's still just doing whatever they wanted. And I wrote I test e bikes as well. And one of the routes takes me by where they drop off all the cars. So as much as Subarus, and a big parking lot full of HRVs didn't help my cousin.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:58:04  
So yeah, you know, the, the supply situation is getting better, you know, inventories are starting to creep up. So in the coming months, you know, hopefully, we'll start to see some of these markups subside. And, you know, the thing is, if people are looking for a hybrid or plug in hybrid of any of these models, you know, dealers, if the supplies have been limited, you know, the the monthly payment on the lease, you know, is based on, you know, combination of the residual value, and, you know, whatever the sales price of the vehicle would be so if a dealer tacks on a markup upfront, you know, that is what gets factored into that monthly payment. So if they're tacking on 235 $1,000, on top of the MSRP, then you're going to end up with a higher monthly payment. Even though, you know, comparing the sticker prices, that you know, the MSRP MSRP, they're going to be you know, not that much different. That's why you're probably seeing higher lease prices. What I would suggest is maybe shop around some different dealers. You know, see if you can find a dealer that is not charging markups, because it's not it's not universal, not not every dealer is doing that.

Roberto Baldwin  1:59:23  
markups.org Yes, that's right. We

Sam Abuelsamid  1:59:25  
talked about them before. So check check there and see if you can find a dealer that you know, is willing to sell a sticker and then you can get a better deal. The next part about getting the tax credit on a PHE V. Again, it it depends but just in general. Yes you can the tax credit gets passed through on on the lease. And I think Kia has said that, you know their policy and I think the same is true for Hyundai that they are Passing through the tax credits, you know, if you lease one of these vehicles, because right now, because none of these, none of the plugins are assembled in North America, the the gas versions are all or many of these are assembled in North America, but the plugins are still being imported from Korea. But if you lease it, there's a good chance that you can get the, the tax credit on there. So again, I would shop around there, it's not really published anywhere. So because the lease, Elise is legally considered as a commercial vehicle sale, because it's, the vehicle is technically being sold to the financing company, whoever the financing company is, and then leased to the end customer. You know, for commercial vehicles, they don't have the North American production requirement on there. And so, you know, on most leased vehicles, you know, you can, you can get that. So, again, shop around different dealers and and see what they'll give you. And then, you know, again, on the inventory, it's getting, the situation's getting better. And so we should start to see more of these. And, you know, a Hyundai Motor Group, you know, is along with, you know, the, the Japanese manufacturers are moving aggressively to shift more of their production of these vehicles to North America, in order to make them eligible for for the tax credits. So, you know, that's not something that's going to happen imminently. But over the next couple of years, it'll definitely happen. So it's probably not going to help you right now. But, you know, by 2025, we should start to see more of these vehicles be eligible for for tax credits. See, I think that answers everything they had,

Roberto Baldwin  2:02:00  
yeah, it's a lot of supply and demand, and the dealers are gonna, like, well, we can make extra money are going to make extra money. Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:02:10  
That is unfortunately, the way it works. I mean, you know, when, when supply exceeds demand, you know, that's when we've been able to negotiate on prices and haggle on the price and, and get a discount or get rebates and things like that. And, you know, it works the other way around as well. When supply is low, then you know, they, they want to take more from you. So that is unfortunately one of the downsides of a capitalist system. So All right, last one from Shawn Whitehurst. This one Hello, what was the best Japanese wagon? The Lexus IS 300 Sport cross Acura TSX Sport Wagon, Mazda six something else. Thanks, Shawn. And signed it off with 2011 Maroun TSX wagon, which is presumably what he drives. So what do you do either of you have a preference in terms of Japanese wagons?

Roberto Baldwin  2:03:05  
My the best wagon is the 2002 WR X Sport Wagon because I owned one and I absolutely love that car.

Nicole Wakelin  2:03:12  
That was like so oddly specific.

Roberto Baldwin  2:03:15  
The bigeye the Buckeye WR X. Subaru Sportwagon is the best wagon they don't even you can get a WR X wagon anymore the last one was 2004 This is a four model

Sam Abuelsamid  2:03:27  
and then they went away and hatchback anymore

Roberto Baldwin  2:03:29  
do they? For the WR x now

Sam Abuelsamid  2:03:32  
I think it's sedan only now isn't it man

Roberto Baldwin  2:03:33  
only that's kind of a bummer but yeah 2002 Like I got a fun look. It's fun to drive I think the lap making it a wagon only added like 100 pounds to the car. It has that that really short like second gear and that really weird drive in a WR X like you have to like drive it for a month before you get it and then once you get it you're like oh yeah this is it. But it's not an easy car that you just get most people just jump in and just like oh okay I'm driving it is a you have to work for the power of a WR X to to reveal itself and I absolutely love it and I missed that car so much so that's the best Japanese Ford wagon. Bad Japanese wagon

Nicole Wakelin  2:04:20  
did it because I just sort of be picking one sort of I like I like the Mazda six when he said Mazda six I'm like I kind of like that one but I have no great passionate like, Haha, like Robbie did. So I feel like I just have to defer to Robbie's beat that for all those reasons,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:04:38  
I would say the last generation Mazda six wagon, which was never offered in North America, it was sold in Europe and I think in Japan, it was never offered here. You know, I was a big fan of the most recent generation of the Mazda six, and they did have a wagon version overseas. And in about 20 years or so you should be able to get one here. You should Be able to import one. But you know that the previous the prior generation Mazda six wagon was a fantastic looking car. You know, I also liked that one a lot. But I think I would have to go with the TSX Sportwagon. You Yeah, those were mostly only bought by automotive journalists or their, their spouses. I know. In a previous job, I worked with Marcia pond, who's Dan Pons wife, he's, Dan is now running track. He was at current driver for many years. And she drove a black TSX wagon. And that was fantastic car. And I liked that generation, the TSX liked it a lot. And the I thought the wagon was great. But the only downside of that TSX wagon is they did not offer it with a manual transmission. It was automatic only. But aside from that, you know, I think that was a that was a fantastic car. So it would either be that or the Mazda six.

Roberto Baldwin  2:06:11  
I've never driven one, but I've always liked the Accord wagon. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  2:06:15  
I mean, all of them. Every

Roberto Baldwin  2:06:16  
accord wagon looked like had like a cool little in the last generation of what other wagon just look like the Accord and then just like a thing was thrown on the back.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:06:25  
That's been more than 20 years since they did an accord wagon, I think yeah, like early 2000s. Maybe might even be 90s. The last time they did away a cord wagon. But yeah, I mean that. Well, I mean, that that TSX you know, is essentially the, you know, the TSX was the European market accord. Yeah. You know, because Acuras in North America only brand. And, you know, what they did was they brought the in the rest of the world. You know, we had the accord that was the last several generations of accord sold in North America were a different car from the accord that they sold everywhere else. It was bigger, heavier. And the TSX was the European market, a quart. And the wagon was the wagon version of that. So that is actually the most recent version of an accord wagon that is available. So I would I would I would vote for that one I think and you know if you can if you can get one of those. And you know, if you could maybe get the parts from a European accord wagon and put a manual transmission in there.

Roberto Baldwin  2:07:34  
Yeah, you can get the cars you can get the court you could get the Accord, right. Yeah, man transmission. So yeah, I like the front end of the Accord better than the TSX that's the way that's my big thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:07:43  
Yeah, that's yeah. Well, you you could also get the front facia, you know, the European accord facia and put that on so take off the the facia the TSX facia, and put the European accord facia on there.

Roberto Baldwin  2:07:59  
I'm gonna tell you that 90s Honda's are so easy to work on, like swapping engine swapping transmissions, it's of a nine so if you get either of those and you want you can just Frankenstein it and be totally fine. To be honest. Like I don't like this man, which I don't like this automatic transmission train and you know what you can throw you can throw that you can just grip them and get them find a manual transmission the junkyard or from a shop or whatever. Now you can it's really easy to just sort of swap things out in a night and 90s Honda's it's just it's, it's bonkers how easy it was to work on those cars and they I also miss my 90 Honda's Civic Hatchback.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:08:35  
Well, we're still very happy with our 2017 Civic Hatchback. It's still doing great. So. Alright, that's it for this week. Oh, one. One thing I forgot to mention. The show is now available on YouTube. We're publishing it published, like the last six months worth of shows, going back to last fall are actually back to about last September to YouTube. So if you go to YouTube, slash at wheel bearings cast, you can find the show so if you'd like to listen to your, your audio podcasts and YouTube, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. Music

There's there's no there's no video there's just a still image that shows up. But you know, if you if you'd like to listen to it and YouTube, you can you can listen to the shows on in the YouTube app now. And they're, they're there. And I may go back and put them backfilling the older episodes in there. You know, they only let you I only let me publish like for a day because of rate limits on the YouTube API. But going forward, all the new ones will be published as they come out. They will also be available on YouTube in addition to all the other places where you listen to podcasts, including Pocket Casts and app podcasts and overcast and Spotify and Amazon podcasts and whatever else you use to listen to the shows so and that's it for this week, and we will talk to you next time.

Nicole Wakelin  2:10:15  
Bye everyone.

Roberto Baldwin  2:10:15  
It'll be 301 I don't know what that means.