Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 411 of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid bowl salmon from telemetry.

Nicole (00:07)
And I'm Nicole Wakelin from Top Speed.

Roberto Baldwin (00:11)
and I'm Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14)
And what's been going on with you guys this week? Anything interesting?

Nicole (00:18)
Nothing fun, exciting.

Roberto Baldwin (00:20)
my band had a show yeah that we did an else that's true it was an LCD LCD sound system night

Sam Abuelsamid (00:22)
Yeah, which one? Which band? Because you're in like 72 bands, I think, right?

Nicole (00:22)
Ha ha!

73.

Roberto Baldwin (00:31)
We played with the Daft Punk DJ and when we got to the club they were putting up a big wall like a big video wall for the Daft Punk and we've done this show before with this DJ and typically they put the wall about three quarters of the way back and then they put a table behind it for the DJ and then we just set up around it. It's fine. It's a pretty big stage. It's not that big. When we got there the stage was right at the edge of the stage. I'm sorry the video wall was right at the edge of the stage so we had to set up behind it

Nicole (00:33)
Cool.

God.

Roberto Baldwin (01:01)
and the stage has a peak hole to look through. So it's like, it looked like we were in a booth and you couldn't see the guitarist or the drummer or the percussionist. It was very, it was a weird, it was a weird night, but it was fine. People had fun.

Nicole (01:07)
You're like, hi.

Sounds a little crazy.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:14)
That's a little weird.

Alright, well, let let us begin Nicole. What have you been driving?

Nicole (01:25)
Yes, sir.

I have been driving. We're to read the whole title again. The 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander SEL 2.5 SAWC. That's what it literally says in my memory, which is basically the second to the top trim of the Mitsubishi Outlander with a two, which is, I don't know why they put 2.5 because there is a hybrid, like, unless you're getting the hybrid.

This is the engine you have. So it's kind of, felt like just say pee hub on the other one or something. Anyway, so that is what I am driving this week. ⁓ I got to drive it quite a bit too. ⁓ the first thing I noticed, you know, I hadn't, I got the car and then I immediately had to take off for the airport. So I hadn't really had a chance to look at it yet. So I hadn't played around with it. I didn't realize it was three rows. I thought it was just two because it looks so short. And then I opened the trunk or the tailgate to put my bag in the bag.

How is this three rows?

Sam Abuelsamid (02:23)
To be fair, it should not be a three row vehicle. It should not have a third row.

Nicole (02:25)
It should not.

It should not. So I have, and I think you guys have probably seen it. I have a roller bag carry on. That's not even a full rectangle. It's a square people. It's smaller than normal. I can shove it under the seat in front of me. It is that small. I, when I went to put it in the car initially, it was hitting the tailgate, standing up on its edge. The tailgate was coming down and hitting the top of the suitcase.

as small as it was. So I had to fold the seats down to lay it flat to make sure that it would actually fit. ⁓ It's like 10 cubic feet of space. I think it was back there. It's not a lot, right? It's, it's tiny and that's what's behind the rear seats, but the third row. But when you look at the actual third row, which seats two people, I did not crawl back there because I feel like the contortionists and sitting back there.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:05)
I think that might be exaggerating a little.

Nicole (03:22)
I mean, Robbie would just be curled up like a giant pretzel. I don't, I don't think Robbie, he'd be like, he'd just be like curled in a little ball. So exactly. We could just throw some back there. ⁓ so it is a three row SUV just barely. ⁓ I feel like if you're putting anyone in that last row,

Roberto Baldwin (03:25)
Like a little shrimp, like a giant shrimp all rolled up, ready for some sort of cocktail sauce dipping.

I mean,

you can make three rows in the Ionic 5 if you wanted.

Nicole (03:45)
if

you're really ambitious.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:46)
Yeah, I mean,

it has three rows, but the third row should not ever be used. You should just fold it down, leave it there, never touch it again.

Nicole (03:48)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (03:49)
it

Ha

Nicole (03:53)
It's... yes. Yes.

Absolutely. And if you do choose to put humans back there before you do this...

It should be, you should be apologizing profusely or it must, it has to be like, okay, it's a zombie apocalypse. Either squish yourselves in that third row or die. Then it's worth squishing in the third row. Otherwise, no way. Yeah, no way. So very, very tiny third row. that said the second row is comfy. The first row is comfy. those are nice and roomy. It's not like the whole thing is sort of like compact size. It's just that they wedge that third row in there, ⁓ pricing on this one. Now this is there's one, two, three, four.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:13)
Fair enough.

Nicole (04:32)
five, six trims. Oh, because they do broken out front wheel drive and all wheel drive. So there's four trims. So the, it's the ES, the SE, the SEL that I drove and the platinum. So I'm one step from the very top of the lineup. This one was $44,675. It had a couple little additions, but nothing much. What do you think the destination was?

Roberto Baldwin (04:58)
$1,200.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:01)
1495.

Nicole (05:02)
Wow, on the money, Sam, exactly 14.95. So kind of a high destination fee. When you look at that pricing though, $45,000 is not outrageous for an SUV, nor is it outrageous for a three-wheel SUV. you know, like...

Roberto Baldwin (05:05)
Wooo!

Sam Abuelsamid (05:16)
Well, let's

step back from that statement a little bit. Okay. It is not substantially more expensive than the competition, which is not to say that it's not outrageous. It just means that the entire market is outrageous.

Nicole (05:27)
It is hers. Yeah.

That's that's, guess, fair to say it's everything is crazy right now, but I don't feel like this one is more crazy than the rest of them. And because it is the.

almost the top trim, you get a lot of features like there's heated and ventilated seats and there's quilted leather. It looks very nice. There was a ⁓ moment in time where Mitsubishi's looks really bad. Like it was in a couple of them that just looked awful and you drive it and you vaguely felt like parts were going to kind of fall off because the noise vibrate, the NVH noise vibration and harshness was so bad. was like I actually it was one of the few cars I ever it was early on and I can't remember which Mitsubishi was. thought I'm not driving this.

we had some road trip. I'm like, we're taking our own car because I can't drive this. This is just no, I don't trust this. And it was brand new. Not the case now. This is, this is a sturdy car. It feels nice inside. Um, it's relatively quiet. It's in it for an engine. It's a 2.5 liter, uh, four cylinder, 181 horsepower, 181 pound feet of torque. Not especially powerful.

and it has a CVT, you sometimes, you mash that gas pedal, you know there's a CVT. You can sort of hear a little bit of that whine to it. So it's not...

the best handling car or SUV out there. Once you get up to speed, it's just fine on the highway. It was very comfortable. I had to make a couple trips back and forth into Boston and this thing, and it was a very comfortable SUV. Tow rating is not super high. It's like 2,000 pounds.

The thing with this is, is for this, it, you know, it, does what it's supposed to do. It has room for seven. has three rows. has the extra features. Yeah, I know. Air quotes seven. It has seven seat belts. Right?

Roberto Baldwin (07:18)
Well, seven. Seven. It has room for one, two, four, five,

Sam Abuelsamid (07:21)
It has seven seat belts.

Roberto Baldwin (07:27)
and then one person laying down in the back.

Nicole (07:29)
Exactly. But still, I mean, it's

fine, but I just don't feel like, with how small that third row is, with how little cargo room there is behind it, the sort of...

like, OK, fine, but nothing special, acceleration and handling. I don't I wouldn't not recommend it, but I feel like you can do better. Like, I hate to knock a car. It's not that it's a bad car. It's not that it's a bad vehicle. It's just against some really serious competition. Like this is a crowded segment. There are SUVs and crossovers galore. So in a segment where there are so many options.

Would this be the option you would pick, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (08:12)
Not in this form. This vehicle shares its platform with the current generation Nissan Rogue. So it is effectively the same vehicle as the Rogue. Yeah, and actually back in the mid 2010s, Nissan did offer the Rogue with three rows. And I remember having one to review back around 2014 or 15. And looking at this thing, it's like,

Nicole (08:14)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And the rogue is just two rows. They don't do a third row in the rogue. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:42)
Why did they even bother with this? This is a complete waste of space and adds cost, adds complexity, adds weight, and serves no useful purpose.

Nicole (08:44)
Right? I think it was.

Mm-hmm.

And I think they got, did they even have it? It was a really short-lived thing. And I think the naming changes, like there was the rogue, then there was the rogue XL, and then they like, they did some naming stuff in there that just to make it super confusing when they had the third row. But that third row is not around for very long. Yeah, it didn't last long because I'm sure most people were looking inside and saying that is not a three row.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:09)
Yeah. Yeah, they dropped it after about three years, I think.

Yeah. And, and yeah,

and this, you know, this current generation one, you know, they, didn't bother to add, offer the third row in the rogue, at least in North America. They may, they may offer it, I think, you know, overseas where it's called the X trail. I think you can get it with the third row option, which again, I think is not useful. Um, you know, but the, design of this, of the Outlander versus the rogue.

Nicole (09:30)
yeah? Okay.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:46)
I actually kind of like this better than the rogue. Yeah.

Nicole (09:48)
do like the styling of it. Like you're saying,

the inside of it, it's almost kind of a shame. It's like, just get rid of the third row and stop pretending. Just make it a two-row SUV, and it's more solid in that, guys. And that would reduce the weight and probably make that 181 horsepower a little bit more robust when you lose the mechanisms for that third row of seats. Seats are heavy. ⁓ But the interior, I mean, it has a very premium...

interior. Like I said, there's the heated ventilated seats and you've got dual zone automatic climate control and it has a nice big, I think it's like a 12.3 inch infotainment screen. There's a standard eight speaker audio system, Yamaha on most of the trims. It's a 12 speaker on ⁓ the ones that the one I was driving. You get plenty of charging ports.

It has a lot of great features, like feature wise, it's a very feature rich vehicle for the price. think on features on style and design on comfort, it does a great job for the price. It's just that the third row is not really usable and the power it's underpowered for how heavy it is. guess, ⁓ if it got rid of those two things and getting rid of that third row and fix, fix one thing and help fix the other.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:05)
Well,

Roberto Baldwin (11:07)
Just keep it folded down forever. I mean, to be honest,

Sam Abuelsamid (11:07)
yeah, yeah.

Nicole (11:09)
Ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (11:10)
most third rows are completely worthless. It's extra worthless.

Nicole (11:13)
this one, know, like Robbie, I'm sure there's, there's some

that you can get into the, you, I'm sure can get into the third row and you're not thinking this is where I'd like to spend eight hours, but you can get back there. Can you, have you ever crawled into the third row of the Outlander or attempted to?

Roberto Baldwin (11:27)
I typically look and I'm like, no, I just don't even bother because again, most third rows are sort of worthless. There's just sort of like you look at it, you're like, well, I mean, if I had to, would say it's like the second row of the BRZ.

Nicole (11:29)
Hahaha! ⁓

They are. This one is just exceptional. Yeah.

Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (11:40)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (11:40)
that

those seats back there are completely worthless. They're no use to any human ever. I guess you might be able to get two very tiny people, like one of the passenger seats like scooched already forwarded and one of the back seat. And when I say tiny people, I mean toddlers. If you can get like two, you and two toddlers could ride around in the BRZ. I'm trying, I'm like, I occasionally will look up like conversion kits just to remove that, just to make it into, to remove the seats and make it into what do call it? Storage.

Nicole (11:43)
Yep. Yep.

Very tiny. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:10)
Because why? Why are they there?

Nicole (12:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

I would fold the seats in this Outlander and never, never unfold them because there'd be no reason to. And then like that would, even when she do that, there's that, I'm just brought up the cargo specs. So it's 10.9 behind the third row, 30.2 behind the second and 64.3 behind the first. So 30.2 serviceable, 64.3 serviceable.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:33)
Yeah, that's the

30 cubic feet is very competitive and probably slightly better than most of the other crossovers in this segment. Most of them are in that 26 to 28 cubic feet.

Nicole (12:37)
Right?

Exactly. So it's weird.

It's a weird, it's an odd duck for me. So that's why I have a hard time with it. I just, I feel like it could do, it could do more than it does. It could do better.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:59)
You know, you know what? The one I actually prefer is the plug-in hybrid, the Outlander plug-in hybrid. You know, that, that has a lot more performance. ⁓ and I think the current generation one will go something like 30 miles on a charge. The first it's much better than the first generation.

Nicole (13:03)
Yeah, that is quite good. actually like that better too.

So that's not bad. Yeah, no, I

like the P-Hav much better than the gas engines. And it's been a while, but I remember liking it as a P-Hav.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:19)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (13:22)
So at end of the day, just get the P have.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:22)
And the, yeah,

Nicole (13:25)
Just get the beehive people.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:25)
the, well, the funny thing about the, the, the plugin outlander is it actually has, ⁓ DC fast charging quote unquote. ⁓ but it has a chatimo port. So it's got a J 1772 port for AC charging at home. And then it has a chatimo port. It's, it's one of only two vehicles, ⁓ ever sold in the U S market, ⁓ with a chatimo port. The other one being the Nissan Leaf. Yeah.

Nicole (13:37)
Oof.

Was it the leaf? That's what I thought.

Yeah. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:52)
And

but the thing is the Chattano port only charges at 20 kilowatts. So what?

Roberto Baldwin (13:58)
which is pretty quick

to be honest for a phave but you also gotta find the one chatamu port at every like EA or EV go station. And it's always being used by somebody else because they're charging their regular EV with it.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:04)
Yeah, well, and and

Nicole (14:06)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:10)
Yeah, and you know, it's a plug-in hybrid. I mean, do you know if you're doing a road trip, do you really need to stop for half an hour to charge up the battery? Yeah, just keep driving. You'll still get decent mileage.

Nicole (14:17)
You don't have to. Yeah. So it's just looking to see how, what you pay. So the,

the base trims, this is pretty significant, I think ish price jump though. The base trim. So I'm looking at just base trim to base trim that this one, the ES with front wheel drive, drive for front wheel drive is 29.6. So the way, but if you go with the base trim of the P have.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:30)
How much was the one you drove?

Nicole (14:47)
40,445. It does have all wheel drive too. Yeah. So that would be, that's still more, cause the ES, the ES all wheel drive is 31,000. And so that's the, like with a gas engine. And so, yeah, it's a big chunk more.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:49)
Yeah, but all of the plugins are all wheel drive. So, you know, like the SEL plugin hybrid is just.

So about $9,000. So the

SEL plugin is 46,400. And how much was the one you just drove?

Nicole (15:12)
Mm-hmm.

The mine was $44,600. It had about five grand of extra equipment on there. So the MSRP on this would be $38,000 in change without destination.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:26)
Okay,

so yeah, it's about 9,000 extra. ⁓ But if you have some place to plug it in, you get better performance. If you can plug it in daily, then you can pretty much do all your daily driving without ever ⁓ using any gas or using almost no gas. And then when you need to take a road trip, can still just keep on driving as a hybrid.

Nicole (15:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly. I mean, if you can afford the added cost, I would go and you're looking at the outlander, I would go with the P have for sure.

Roberto Baldwin (15:55)
Keep on truckin'.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:00)
Yeah.

And, you know, if you get one before, well, no, actually, nevermind. I was gonna say if you get one before the end of September, but ⁓ it's it's doesn't actually qualify because it's not built in the US. It's built in Japan. So nevermind. Yeah.

Nicole (16:12)
Oh, so it doesn't matter. Buy it whenever you want.

Roberto Baldwin (16:12)
⁓ Ignore us.

Ignore me.

Nicole (16:17)
So yeah, so that's the Mitsubishi Outlander.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:21)
All right, did you have anything Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin (16:24)
No, I gotta call some stuff in.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:26)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (16:27)
I got to, well, I have to figure out how we're, so we're, we're, we're, we're, we're adjusting a little bit how we cover, things on automotive engineering, which is part of the part of SAE that I work. You should go to SAE automotive engineering. Look it up, read all the fun, ⁓ nerdy content. ⁓ so I want to figure out how we're going to, ⁓ cover cars on that before I start getting, I mean, I get cars for the podcast, obviously it's up, but there's, yeah. I got a lot of balls in the air is what I'm saying.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:55)
⁓

Roberto Baldwin (16:57)
I gotta give it the beans.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:58)
Alright.

Roberto Baldwin (16:59)
All the other old timey things that I'm gonna say.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:01)
Well, I had a very colorful week in my driveway. I actually, ⁓ due to some scheduling things between two different fleet companies, I ended up with two cars at the same time again. And ⁓ as I said, was, there you go. Just drive it back to California and bring it back when you're done. ⁓ So ⁓ it was a very colorful week. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (17:15)
So I should just go to your house and pick up one.

Nicole (17:18)
Ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (17:23)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:31)
As you know, I often complain that there are far too many monochromatic cars on the road, too many grays and silvers and whites and blacks. ⁓ So ⁓ I got a Volvo EX30 in Moss Yellow and a Jeep Gladiator Willys in Orange, ⁓ which is a very, very orange car or truck. ⁓ No, I...

Nicole (17:46)
gosh, that's bright.

Roberto Baldwin (17:49)
Yeah.

Nicole (17:57)
It can't just be called orange. Is it really called orange?

Sam Abuelsamid (18:00)
Yeah, I'm trying to remember. ⁓ see what

Nicole (18:02)
I'm Googling.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:04)
what what did they call this orange? It's juice exterior paint.

Nicole (18:11)
Juice, okay, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:13)
but it's spelled like J-O-O-S-E.

Roberto Baldwin (18:13)
Juice.

Nicole (18:16)
Of course it's spelled differently than normal because you can just spell it like juice.

Roberto Baldwin (18:18)
Like fruit loops, like

it's not spelled like fruit.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:21)
Yeah.

Nicole (18:22)
So would she like better color wise,

the moss yellow, the Volvo or the juice of the Jeep? You can't, you have to, you would.

Roberto Baldwin (18:30)
Or the juice.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:30)
I like them both. ⁓ would probably go with the yellow. Yeah,

I like the yellow. Yeah. And to be fair, I prefer driving the X30. ⁓ So let me start with the Jeep. ⁓ The Gladiator is basically a longer wheelbase Wrangler with a pickup bed attached to the back. ⁓

Nicole (18:37)
You like the yellow? Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:56)
And the Willys is based on the sport. It's like one of the lower trim levels. So it is nominally more affordable. One of the complaints about the Gladiator ever since it came out, what, five, six years ago now, has been that it's kind of expensive ⁓ and it's still kind of expensive, although they have lowered the price a little bit in the past year, but it's still pretty expensive. ⁓ So the one that I had was the Willys trim ⁓ and

Nicole (19:08)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:26)
That means it gets a couple, it's sort of, ⁓ it's got some off-road oriented stuff on there. I all Wranglers and Gladiators are pretty off-road capable, even base models. Although, ⁓ as you go up the lineup, they get more capable. So this one has a locking rear diff. ⁓ It has some Firestone Destination.

Mud terrain tires, not just all terrain tires, but mud terrain tires. They're a 32 inch diameter. So it gives it a little more ground clearance. It's got a couple of skid plates underneath there to protect the fuel tank and the transfer case. ⁓ And then when you climb inside, it's basically identical to being in a Wrangler. So if you've been in a Wrangler, four door Wrangler, it's essentially the same experience. ⁓

The Willys has a retractable soft top. So there's two clamps at the windshield header. You unclamp, you release those and then basically you have to stand up. It's not like being in a Miata where you just unclamp it from the windshield header and flip it back over your shoulder. Because this is a two row, four seat vehicle, that roof is pretty long. So you actually have to get up and flip it back, you know, and it...

It actually takes a little bit of effort to fold it, fold it all the way back. ⁓ it's, it's a lot easier than, you know, if you have a hard top or, know, if you, even if you have a soft top, ⁓ four door Wrangler, ⁓ you know, those can be kind of fiddly to take all the pieces off if you want to do open, ⁓ open air driving. So this is fairly straightforward and it's pretty easy again, you know, to close it up. You know, if it starts raining on you.

You know, you'll want to pull it. You'll have to pull over and get up and reach back to pull it up. But it's pretty, it's easy to hook back up again. ⁓ But the rest of the experience is very much like driving a Wrangler, which means that the ride quality is not great. ⁓ It's kind of noisy. ⁓ It's kind of cramped. You know, it's narrow, you know, compared to a Bronco, the Wrangler has a and Gladiator have a narrower body. ⁓

If you're not watching the video, Robbie's kind of waving back and forth tossing his head the way you would if you're actually riding down.

Roberto Baldwin (21:57)
I'm gonna tell you,

this is me with the Wrangler. A, up until the current generation, I've told everyone, do not buy a Wrangler. Also me, I would love to have a Wrangler without a top. I know they're up until the current generation, they're pretty bad. But I would still be like, I still in my heart because my uncle had one when I was a little kid and the doors were off.

Nicole (22:05)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (22:19)
And it's like all the things. I don't need any of the electronics. I don't need anything. But I would still love a Wrangler. I've had friends who, the brakes just like failed on the Wrangler and they drove off into a field. They weren't even off roading. They were on the road. I have a cousin who had a Wrangler. His children were terrified of driving it. And yet, and yet, and still again, up until the current generation, not great. ⁓

Nicole (22:40)
God.

Roberto Baldwin (22:47)
Not great at all. And I would still be like, what is that, 15 year old Wrangler? Hmm. I how much they want for it.

Nicole (22:55)
Right? Like, this is a terrible idea. Hmm. Can I afford it? Can I afford it?

Sam Abuelsamid (22:55)
Huh.

Roberto Baldwin (22:57)
It's horrible. It's like Harley Davidson's.

I don't like Harley. I wouldn't buy a Harley Davidson, but I think I know people who ride motorcycles and would love a Harley Davidson knowing that it's a Harley Davidson, but they're just like, can't help myself.

Nicole (23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:12)
The

current generation is substantially improved from the previous generation. So it still has solid axles front and rear, which is great if you're off-roading, but 95 % of Jeep owners never go off-road. would say, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say 5%, take them off-road, which is probably about 4.5 % more than most other off-roaders. The only engine available in the Gladiator

Roberto Baldwin (23:16)
yeah, so much better.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:42)
is the 3.6 liter Pentastar, which is a good engine, but you know, this is a fairly heavy vehicle. So it's not exactly, you know, great performance. ⁓ There is a plug-in hybrid that's supposed to be coming for 2026. We'll see. I'll see if that actually arrives. ⁓ But you know, in the cab, it's, you know, compared to any other midsize pickup truck, it does feel tight in there, you know, compared to a Ranger or Colorado.

or even a Tacoma, you know, which is one of the smaller ones. It, feels snug in there. The body is narrow because you've got those wide fenders and the relatively narrow body on these things. Um, you know, it's, it's not, it's not a great user experience. Um, but, uh, you know, the, the last year and yet people buy them.

Roberto Baldwin (24:31)
And yet,

every time I drive one of all this is awesome. Get jostled around, wind noise, I gotta yell at my passenger, aren't you having the best time? Steering. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (24:37)
Heh. Heh.

Nicole (24:38)
This so cool. Ouch.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:43)
The the

⁓ the gladiator I had had the optional $995 trifold tonneau cover on it. ⁓ I was doing a bunch of trimming. We've got this massive bush on the side of actually it's more like a cluster of multiple bushes with the head of lilac in the middle of it and then a whole bunch of other stuff that over the years has sprung up around it. And so I've been

cutting down all of the other stuff except for the lilac. And I wanted to, you know, if I, if I want to put this out for curbside collection, I have to cut it all up and bundle it up or bag it up, you know, for the weekly curbside ⁓ yard waste pickup, or I can just load it up into a vehicle and take it out to the township compost site and just dump it out. ⁓ Which is what I did with a couple of loads of this stuff ⁓ last week. ⁓ But

Nicole (25:23)
my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:42)
You know, the bed compared to the bed of any other midsize pickup truck. And that's what this is a midsize, you know, so it's in the same class with Ranger and Colorado and Tacoma and Frontier. The bed is kind of small. It's kind of short. It's kind of shallow. And so it kind of it limits how much stuff you can load in the back there. So it's it's not all that useful as a truck. It's not all that great to drive. You know, no more so than.

Nicole (26:09)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (26:12)
You know, it's no better and no worse than a Wrangler. ⁓ But, you know, if you open up the top and drive with the top open, take the doors off, it's, you know, it's a unique experience that you're not going to get with any other vehicle. Certainly not with any other pickup truck. There's no other pickup truck on the market that you can fold the top down, ⁓ take the doors off, and theoretically even fold down the windshield. You can still fold down the windshield on these things.

You know you not sure why you would want to do that ⁓ Yeah, yeah

Nicole (26:46)
Cause you enjoy a face full of bugs. I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin (26:49)
I enjoy

bugs. Sweet, that's the protein of the future, people, bugs. Get ready now.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:56)
Back when the current generation JL Wranglers first came out, ⁓ the first time I had one to review, I actually went to the effort of taking off the doors, ⁓ at least the front doors, just to see what the experience was like driving around town with the doors off and these things. And first of all, the thing you have to remember is the mirrors are unlike a Bronco, where the mirrors are actually mounted on the fenders. On the Wrangler and the Gladiator, the mirrors are mounted on the doors.

Nicole (27:12)
and

Sam Abuelsamid (27:24)
So when you take off the doors, you have no outside mirrors. Now you can go to, you know, to Mopar and lots of other places and there's aftermarket mirror kits you can buy that mount on the fenders. And if you're going to drive one of these things around with the doors off, you should probably do that. but mirrors are not the other thing because of the way this thing is shaped. When you drive with the doors off, the, the wind turbulence coming around that flat windshield is

Nicole (27:25)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:55)
unlike anything I've ever experienced in any other vehicle. So even with the windshield up, if you take the doors off, I mean, it's just the air blowing around you, it's like being in a wind tunnel, it's crazy. ⁓ If you've ever seen one of those Japanese game shows where you got people in this air tube and there's cash, they turn on the fan, there's cash floating around, you have like 60 seconds to grab as much cash as you can.

Nicole (27:56)
Ha

That was you.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:23)
That's what it's like sitting in one of these things with the doors off ⁓ at 30 miles an hour. ⁓ So it's a unique experience. ⁓ The one that I was driving had optional rock rails and some other stuff as well. So if you are going to take it off road, you know, it's got some protection there. ⁓ But it's, ⁓ it, you know, it is, it's a Jeep, you know, for all that, that is good and bad, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (28:23)
The cash chamber.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:50)
You know, if you, if you like Jeeps and you want one with a bed, Jeeps got you covered with the Gladiator. Um, let's see, let me find the tab with the Manroni here. So the total cost, the Gladiator starts at $38,100. The Willy's starts at about $46,000. The one that I drove was $55,320. And this is not even a high end. This is not a Rubicon.

Nicole (29:17)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:20)
you can easily get these things up closing in on 70 grand.

Nicole (29:24)
I was looking as you're talking there are, I there's so many trims, there are nine different trims of this listed on Jeep's website with the Sport starting at 38 and the Mojave X at 61,000. Talk about a range of trims. This thing can get crazy expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:38)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

yeah. So, ⁓ guess is on the destination charge.

Roberto Baldwin (29:47)
it's Stellantis, so 19.

Nicole (29:51)
I'm gonna go 18.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:53)
Robbie's got it, it's 1995.

Nicole (29:56)
Wow, was it really? Gosh, that's insane.

Roberto Baldwin (29:56)
Boom! Chica!

Sam Abuelsamid (30:02)
Yeah, this one had, ⁓ it had the $7,100 customer preferred package 24W, which gets you the locking rear differential, sun visors with illuminated vanity mirrors, which apparently are not standard on these things. The Willy's suspension, the 17 inch wheels, a whole bunch of other stuff. and you even get the Willy's hood decal as part of that package for $7,100.

Nicole (30:27)
Mmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:31)
So, and the convenience group for 2100, it just goes on and on. It's a lot of stuff. ⁓

Nicole (30:39)
It's a lot

of stuff it makes it very expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:43)
Yeah.

The other colorful car that I had was the Volvo EX30 Twin Motor Performance Ultra. ⁓ So this is the small Volvo. It's electric, as the EX name implies. And when they first announced this thing a couple of years back, and it was briefly on the ⁓ list of finalists for the ⁓ North American car truck and utility of the year until they ⁓

Nicole (31:09)
Mmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:13)
delayed the launch because of tariffs on Chinese built EVs and other stuff. They it was originally supposed to start at $37,000 for the rear wheel drive model. It doesn't you cannot get these for $37,000 in the United States anymore. It's considerably more expensive. The the twin motor performance ultra that I drove

came to $48,395. And this is a compact car. It's compact hatchback. I actually really like the size. I think the size is really good. The backseat is not huge, but I can sit behind myself in the backseat and have decent headroom. It's a little tight on the knees, but I don't have to...

Nicole (31:47)
That's rather a lot. Yeah. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (32:09)
straddle the front seat to fit in there. can get in behind myself. The twin motor has 422 horsepower, 400 pounds feet of torque, which means this is a seriously quick car. It'll do zero to 60 in about 3.7 seconds, ⁓ which considering it has Performance Ultra in the name, that's good. ⁓ But then things start to go downhill.

⁓ Well, let me finish with the stuff I like. I like the materials that they've used inside. They did a lot of interesting stuff to try to make this car more sustainable, keep the cost down. So there's some interesting materials that they use on the dashboard, a lot of recycled ⁓ fibers and things like that. The seats are the ⁓ wool ⁓ seats, partially recycled wool seats that Volvo has on some of their other cars.

which I really like that fabric. think it looks really good, feels good, it's comfortable. ⁓ But then as you look around, you see they've really minimized. It's a very minimalist design. So there's no instrument cluster in front of the driver. ⁓ The doors are kind of scalloped out, and there's basically, you have an armrest and ⁓ a release, a door handle.

Nicole (33:12)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:39)
That's it. That's all that's on the doors. ⁓ Every there's ⁓ on the center console, you have window switches. You have two window switches, despite the fact that there are four windows. So you have another toggle to go between front and rear windows. Bad idea. Stop doing that nonsense. ⁓ There's lots of storage space underneath in the console. There's a very nice like down at the bottom of the center stack.

You know, there's a very nice spot where you can put your phone in there and charge it wirelessly and it it holds your phone in place, which is good. That works really well. But there's no other physical controls except on the steering wheel. You've got some ⁓ some touch controls there. Everything else is in the 11 inch center touchscreen or sorry, 12 inch, 12 inch center touchscreen that. ⁓ there are manual vents. It does have manual vents.

So there is that. But if you want to change temperature or change fan speeds or go between manual and automatic climate control, you got to do all that in the thing. If you want to see where you're what your speed is, you got to look over at the center touch screen. If you want to do literally anything else with this vehicle, you're looking at the center touch screen. And one of the features that this car has, it has a infrared driver monitor camera on the ⁓ top of the steering column.

Nicole (34:39)
Yay!

Sam Abuelsamid (35:08)
even though this car does not have a hands free driving system. ⁓ But, you know, it's looking, it wants to make sure that you're paying attention and, you know, paying attention to the road. ⁓ The result of that is that unless you go in and turn that off, which you can do in the settings, you very frequently get alerts on the center touchscreen to, hey, focus on the road, please focus on the road, because every time you want to do something, you have to look away from the road.

Nicole (35:32)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:36)
over towards that center touch screen to do it. And then it's constantly remind you, stop looking at me, look at the road. So, you know, that's kind of annoying. I didn't like that so much. You know, when I first got a chance to drive it, you know, I spent like 45 minutes with the car just driving around Los Angeles and didn't really delve into that stuff very much. I was just kind of getting into the basics, the driving dynamics and

didn't spend time doing any of the usual stuff that you do with a car that you drive on a daily basis. Over over the course of a week, that stuff got a lot more annoying. One thing I did notice was coming back from an event. ⁓ And I yawned. And the thing said, ⁓ hey, seems like you might be tired. And you might want to stop and take a rest. So it will actually detect the driver yawning.

Nicole (36:16)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:34)
So it's not just looking for where your eyes are. It's also looking at other stuff, other characteristics about you. ⁓ And I tried it a couple more times, just simulating a yawn. ⁓ And every time it gave me that alert, you know, that, you know, hey, you might be tired. It be time to take a rest. So, you know, that's good. That's a good thing because driving while you're drowsy, not safe. You know, it's as bad as driving while you're impaired. ⁓ So ⁓ I think

Nicole (36:57)
Not a good thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:05)
that Volvo may have gone a little bit too far with the cost cutting on this thing, even though this is not an inexpensive car. You know, as Volvo's go, it's relatively inexpensive, but it's yeah, it's not ⁓ it's it's it got more annoying the more time I spent with it having to deal with all these things in the center screen. ⁓ But, you know, the driving experience, other than that, was really good.

I like the ride quality. It handles really well. I like the fact that it's small. It's great to drive around the city, you know, because it is so small. It's easy to park and got really good energy efficiency. You know, there again during the week I was driving it, you know, still the continuing heat wave around here with temperatures, you know, 90 or so with about 900 % humidity. So I was driving with the air conditioning on and

And with the, you know, I did a lot of highway driving with even a highway driving with the AC on, you know, in high temps, high humidity. ⁓ It was still getting like 3.5, 3.6 miles per kilowatt hour, which is really good. Part of that you can attribute to the fact that, hey, you know, this is a small car with a relatively small frontal area. You know, but the the cargo space is bigger.

than what you get behind the third row of a Mitsubishi Outlander. ⁓ I actually could fit my backpack and my rollerboard ⁓ in the, behind the rear seat. Actually, I could have put four roller bags back there. It's big enough for that. ⁓ And a couple of backpacks. So, lots of cargo space, ⁓ fun to drive, but be aware that, you

Nicole (38:35)
It doesn't take much though.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:00)
There's a lot of stuff that you have to control through the touchscreen, is, I don't, I didn't like that, but you can adjust the vents without, without using the touchscreen. So there's that. ⁓ you want to guess at the, ⁓ destination charge.

Roberto Baldwin (39:16)
Uhhhh... 1200.

Nicole (39:18)
I was gonna say 1495.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:21)
Robbie gets it. It was $12.95.

Nicole (39:22)
Mm,

okay.

Roberto Baldwin (39:24)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (39:26)
⁓ The official EPA rated range for this thing is 253 miles with a 66 kilowatt hour battery pack. Again, because of a lot of the highway driving that I was doing, high temperatures, air conditioning on, it was probably closer to about 235 or so ⁓ was what I would have gotten if I run it all the way down. But again, in those conditions,

really good. No complaints about it. All right. Let's move on. There's a bunch of stuff from this week. ⁓ Let's start off with remember the Lordstown endurance, which was also a NAC toy finalist. Yeah. I never I never did get a chance to drive it.

Nicole (40:11)
my gosh. It was. Did you ever drive it, Sam?

Roberto Baldwin (40:19)
I don't even, you know what? I'm not on NAC Toy, so I'm not even gonna bring the wonder aloud.

Nicole (40:24)
It's, know what it is? I'll tell you exactly

how that happens. The reason is because we generally have we what's yeah, cocaine. all do need to cook. No, it's we, we, they, the number of trucks it's because of the number of trucks there were. If there's not a lot of trucks, all the trucks will get in. So it was just a year where it lucked out. Had there been more trucks there?

Roberto Baldwin (40:28)
cocaine everyone's on shrooms everyone's doing shrooms

Sam Abuelsamid (40:39)
There was only three candidates.

Roberto Baldwin (40:49)
So was just there. It got a, it was okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:51)
It was a participation award.

Roberto Baldwin (40:54)
Like

if there's a ray, there's like a, like a hundred meter dash at a high school, but only three people show up, like someone's going to get third. Everyone gets a medal. It got to bronze because it showed up. The third person in that, in that foot race doesn't even have to race. They just walk and they stop. They get a sandwich. Maybe they moonwalk over the finish line.

Nicole (40:55)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:59)
Everybody gets him. Everybody gets a medal. Yeah.

Nicole (41:01)
Correct. Exactly.

Yes. So it's not that hard to figure out what happened there.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:11)
I

I actually had an appointment to go over to Lordstown offices here in Farmington Hills and drive it and take a drive along with their CEO at the time ⁓ and the day before or a couple days before ⁓ they're calling their PR person called me up and said yeah yeah unfortunately we're gonna have to cancel ⁓ we'll get you rescheduled and before that that opportunity got ⁓

got rescheduled. ⁓ Lauristown was bankrupt and out of business. ⁓ But they did manage apparently to build about 31 of these things before they went belly up. And ⁓ for some inexplicable reason, ⁓ somebody bought one on Bring a Trailer. I have no idea why. Yeah. I don't know why.

Nicole (41:53)
Yep.

Roberto Baldwin (41:54)
No.

Nicole (42:09)
For $23,000? I... Why?

Roberto Baldwin (42:14)
It's it's it's already

already owning a piece of history if Like like that the wrapper of a garbage pails like kids ⁓ Pack was owning a piece of history. It's not the actual garbage pail card. It's the wrapper of the garbage pail. It's

Nicole (42:19)
Is it?

Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (42:35)
Yeah, you know, I mean, this was not a great vehicle by all accounts. ⁓ Yeah. mean, somebody will, it'll be an interesting piece of somebody's collection.

Nicole (42:49)
Do we have any idea who bought it? Or is it anonymous? Wait, I'm trying to read down here.

Roberto Baldwin (42:50)
Yeah, it's Tuma.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:52)
Uhhhh

Roberto Baldwin (42:55)
Let's not, let's not say their name, because you know, they might have family that listens to this.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:57)
I know. I don't, don't think it lists who the buyer

Nicole (42:58)
No, I'm just wondering if it will. Well, it could be somebody

who said who said like, bought this because I collect weird crap like. No.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:01)
was.

Roberto Baldwin (43:06)
Yeah, like

Sam Abuelsamid (43:07)
Yeah, well, clearly it was. That was the case.

Roberto Baldwin (43:07)
if you're rich, I would hope so. I hope it wasn't someone's like, you know what? This was going to be the best when we all knew it was not going to be the best, that it was just another boondoggle from the person who ran a workhorse. Yes, Lordstown.

Nicole (43:15)
Wow, it was not gonna be.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:21)
It did,

it does have 1600 miles on it. So.

Roberto Baldwin (43:25)
So they did, is this the one they just kept driving around CES? So for a couple years when you went to CES, like Lordstown, even though it was barely a company, would drive around in an endurance wherever it thought that there would be journalists. And you'd see it, you're like, I'm gonna take a picture of this. And then after a while, you're like, nah.

Nicole (43:26)
It was driven.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:28)
Probably. Probably.

haha

Nicole (43:45)
No, I'm not. Not going to do it. Not going to do it.

Roberto Baldwin (43:47)
Like,

look there's that Lordstown

Sam Abuelsamid (43:52)
⁓ All right, let's move on ⁓ Subaru had an event in New York on Thursday night ⁓ what ⁓ I wouldn't know ⁓ Mother Nature prevented me from getting there. I was supposed to be there. ⁓ I Spent what six seven hours at Detroit Metro Airport trying to get there

Nicole (44:00)
How was it, Sam?

Roberto Baldwin (44:03)
⁓

Nicole (44:16)
You spent more

time in the airport than it should have taken you to fly there and back.

Roberto Baldwin (44:18)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (44:21)
Yes. Yeah. Cause

it's, it's a little under a two hour flight. ⁓ you know, the flight finally got canceled and when they finally canceled the flight, Delta automatically rebooked me onto another flight the next day. ⁓ there were, there are flights, in the morning from Detroit to New York. but those were all, saw all sold out. There was no seats available on any of the morning flights. The only, the first, earliest flight they could get me on was it.

Nicole (44:25)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:51)
⁓ 1230 which was a connecting flight through Columbus, Ohio and I called the the Delta Diamond Reservation Line said yeah You can't get me on an earlier flight and now nothing available. So well then forget it just cancel because This is you know, if if it's on if it's on time this flight would get me into New York into LaGuardia about 430 the event is at 630 ⁓ And odds are I would miss it as it turns out

Roberto Baldwin (45:18)
my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:20)
You know, even though they canceled me, ⁓ I kept getting the flight notifications from Delta. So I was following the progress. The flight from Columbus to LaGuardia ended up getting delayed ⁓ almost two hours anyway. It didn't land at LaGuardia until about 6.30, which is the time I was supposed to be in Manhattan. Yeah.

Nicole (45:27)
geez.

Ugh, so you never would have made it.

You never make it. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (45:45)
If you parachuted

out of the plane as it was going, you might have been able to make, like, and you pulled the chute like at the very last second and you just parachuted into your seat.

Nicole (45:50)
You might maybe have made it in time then, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:51)
Maybe. Yeah.

But, you know,

am one of those people that doesn't believe that it's the wise idea to ever jump out of a functional aircraft. I think that that's just a dumb thing to do. ⁓ But ⁓ so anyway, ⁓ they showed off the Subaru Uncharted, which we hinted at last week. ⁓ Subaru was nice enough to send out the release and the images beforehand. So I didn't get any live images of it, but we got to look at it. ⁓

Nicole (46:04)
You

Roberto Baldwin (46:05)
I don't know.

Alright then.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:25)
And, ⁓ I mean, technically I had seen this thing in person in May at a Toyota event in Plano, because this is effectively a clone of the Toyota CHR, ⁓ which, you know, it's fine. ⁓ it like the Soltera and the trail seeker, you know, it's exactly identical to the Toyota equivalents, the BZ and the BZ Woodland and now the CHR except for the lights. ⁓ you know, so you get

the new Subaru's new signature six element headlights and different tail lights on the Subaru versions. But otherwise it's exactly the same as the CHR, which means that it has 338 horsepower in the all-wheel drive that is expected to make up the bulk of the volume and will be the one they offer first. And then later on at some point, they are promising to offer a front wheel drive version, single motor front wheel drive with

I think 220 ish horsepower. Yeah. Which would actually probably make it, I think the only current Subaru that is available without all wheel drive. the BRZ. Yeah. Okay. So it'd the only front wheel drive.

Roberto Baldwin (47:27)
Which is weird, but sure.

Now the BRZ Subaru. It's the only

Nicole (47:39)
Bers.

Roberto Baldwin (47:41)
front wheel drive. I think the last front wheel drive Subaru was like the 90s, the 80s, the 1800s, something like that. It's been a while.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:47)
Yeah.

Nicole (47:47)
Wow. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (47:51)
⁓ So the ⁓ the CHR, we don't know how much it's going to cost. ⁓ We know it's supposed to arrive sometime in the first part of twenty twenty six. ⁓ It's going to be built in Japan, ⁓ which is part of why we don't know how much it's going to cost, because who knows what the tariff rates will be next year. ⁓ But or, yeah, yeah, exactly. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (48:11)
Who knows? Or tomorrow, to be honest.

Nicole (48:13)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:18)
The all-wheel drive version is supposed to get about 290 miles of range. The front-wheel drive one should do a little over 300. So 338 horsepower, 90 miles of range. Not too shabby, or 290 miles of range. Not too shabby at all.

Roberto Baldwin (48:37)
still 400 volt which means 150 charging which is kind of a bummer but you know what are going to

Sam Abuelsamid (48:40)
Yeah.

but

it's a lot better than when they first launched the Soltera and the BZ.

Roberto Baldwin (48:46)
yeah, no that was that was that was embarrassing for for a company it's known for yeah for both of those companies to be honest

Nicole (48:46)
geez, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:54)
⁓ It does have ⁓ a Naxx charging port, which is on the right front fender and the passenger side front fender, which means that you should be able to reach the nice and short Tesla supercharger cables without taking up an extra parking space. What else? ⁓ Yeah. And I think it's a pretty decent looking vehicle. looking forward to trying it out. Yeah. All right. ⁓ What else?

Roberto Baldwin (49:17)
Yeah, that's cool.

Nicole (49:17)
It does look,

it looks pretty good. Yeah, I think I like how it looks.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:24)
Let's see. Oh, as long as we're talking Subaru, another short one, the, you remember the trail seeker. When we saw that at the New York Auto Show in April, you know, it's like they showed us the trail seeker, which looked like what we would expect a new Outback to look like. And then they showed us the new Outback, which was something else entirely. in Europe,

Nicole (49:32)
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:52)
They're not going to use the trail seeker name. They're actually calling what we know as the trail seeker, the E outback.

Nicole (49:59)
I like that.

Roberto Baldwin (50:01)
Eee, I mean, just give everything names. have to, we'll stop with the E. Let's stop with the, you know, the EQS thing, the e-tron thing. I think it's, we've moved past it. Let's just like, what is this? This is the name of a car. It doesn't have to have, don't like, hey, it's the electric, blah, blah, blah. Just call it whatever it is.

Nicole (50:07)
Stop with the E, you don't want any Es anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:10)
Just call it the Outback.

Roberto Baldwin (50:27)
I guess the outback doesn't make sense because the outback looks completely different. So now you're up to one car that doesn't even look like the gas version.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:37)
Yeah. All right. Let's move on. GM. When they discontinued the bolt back in 2023, they promised us a new bolt coming by the end of 2025. And they told us that it would have LFP batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are significantly less expensive than the nickel rich batteries that they use on all their other EVs. Well, they

Roberto Baldwin (50:38)
I dunno. I'm Brandon, yo.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:06)
confirmed again this week that that car is still on track to launch this late this year and it will have LFP batteries. ⁓ But they will those LFP batteries will be from a supplier that they have not yet named. ⁓ But GM also announced that they're going to produce their own LFP cells with LG at at the Spring Hill Altium cells LLC factory ⁓ in Tennessee. ⁓ That's going to take

⁓ until 2027 before they're ready to produce those because they've got to convert over some of the production equipment to running LFP instead of nickel rich cells. But ⁓ yeah, they will be producing their own LFP cells in Spring Hill and presumably ⁓ at some point ⁓ after that production starts, those will go into bolts and they'll certainly go into other vehicles from GM as well.

Nicole (52:04)
All right.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:05)
They haven't given us much more detail other than that, other than where it's going to be produced and when, but yeah. So, um, do you remember neuro? Did you guys ever seen the neuro delivery vehicles, the autonomous delivery vehicles? It was a, it's a Silicon Valley startup. It was started by some ex Waymo guys. Um, and they were doing this little, um, no passenger.

Nicole (52:12)
They're coming.

Roberto Baldwin (52:12)
And over.

Nicole (52:20)
I don't even remember those, neuro?

Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:34)
delivery vehicle. It had two compartments in it. ⁓ It was autonomous ⁓ to do last mile deliveries to deliver groceries and meals from restaurants and things like that. Well, last fall, ⁓ Neuro announced that they were giving up on developing that vehicle. ⁓ And instead, they were just going to focus on developing their software for production and offering it to other companies. Well, they announced a deal this week with Uber.

and Lucid. ⁓ And ⁓ Uber is going to invest $300 million into Lucid and Neuro, and they're going to build robotaxis, ⁓ premium robotaxis, with the Neuro driver system ⁓ based on the Lucid gravity.

Roberto Baldwin (53:24)
Alright. ⁓ I mean, it's a big station wagon anyway, so might as well. Don't tell Lucid I said. You know what I don't think Lucid, like Lucid marketing doesn't care. I think everyone else at Lucid is like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Don't tell regular people.

Nicole (53:24)
That'd be kinda cool. Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Yeah, like, yeah, sure, cool. Work with it.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:43)
As long as people buy

them. They just want people to buy them. They don't care what you call it. Just just buy them, please Yeah, it is

Roberto Baldwin (53:49)
Yeah, it's a great car. think we've

we've all driven. Did you drive it, Gravity. OK, good. All right. I didn't want to make, you know, say thanks for you. I'm like, we've all driven it and Nicole's like, I didn't drive it. All right. We all drove it. Wait, were we on the same drive program? ⁓ but we were we all together. No, I was a different I was a different wave. OK.

Nicole (53:55)
The lucid? Yes. The gravity? Yes. No, I did.

I drove it. No, I drove it. I drove it.

I was with Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:10)
Yeah

Nicole (54:14)
I don't know, I literally drove with Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:14)
I think you were the day before us. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:18)
I was just

with other people. Okay, now I remember.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:21)
But yeah, Nicole had to leave early to fly. That was when you went to ⁓ the Cooper thing, right?

Nicole (54:28)
I think I went right to a Cooper thing. Yes. I just remember they...

Sam Abuelsamid (54:30)
Yeah, because you had to

fly. had to fly because you came from Boston to Santa Barbara and then went from Santa Barbara to Miami and then back to ⁓ San Diego for the Navigator.

Nicole (54:34)
Yes. ⁓

Yes,

uh-huh. I just zipped back and forth across the country and remember that I was timed so tight getting out of Jeep that they literally made me a little pizza, shoved it in a box and handed it to me and cookie. You gotta go to the airport. And I sat there eating a little pizza in the back of the car. It was really good. It was a pizza, a little box. It was yummy. It was tasty.

Roberto Baldwin (54:55)
⁓

I'm so jealous of the little pizza. Anytime, anytime there's a trip and they're like, here's pizza.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:03)
Yeah, at the lunch stop

they had ⁓ this portable wood-fired pizza thing that they were doing. Yeah.

Nicole (55:10)
was really good, right? Weren't

Roberto Baldwin (55:10)
Oh yeah, those were great.

Man, that was a really good drive. I've been in three Michelin star restaurants in Germany and multi and other Michelin star restaurants around the world. And those pizzas were like probably better than 90 % of that.

Nicole (55:12)
those great? They just, I know, right? I'm like, how was the car? I don't know, the pizza was amazing.

It was a

really good pizza.

Roberto Baldwin (55:32)
One

year, Porsche had us go up north and the restaurant didn't even serve Mexican food. They just like had one, they're like, hey, can we get tacos and pozole? And it was the best. And it wasn't even what that restaurant made. They're just like, eh, people want tacos and pozole.

Nicole (55:48)
tacos this afternoon we found a new taco place that we didn't know and somebody was asking about the best tacos we went there and it was amazing it was like it were the best tacos in town they're very good sorry tacos go ahead what were you saying ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (55:50)
Yay!

There you go. Everything's gone off the rails. Sorry everybody, it's my fault.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:01)
Well, if you're an Ipsilanti, there's a taco truck

that parks ⁓ on Washtenaw Avenue in front of the O'Reilly's Auto Parts in the parking lot there. Really good tacos there and burritos.

Nicole (56:13)
See? Now every person listening to show is having tacos for dinner now tonight. There's a significant others might not know, but they're about to come home and go, we're having tacos. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (56:13)
Ooh, and you can get new witch soul wipers.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:15)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:24)
I'm gonna have

to I had tacos last night after our show they had a taco truck there It was the best because they were open the midnight. ⁓ Yeah, all right, sorry, sorry, sorry,

Nicole (56:28)
See? Talk to us about

Sam Abuelsamid (56:28)
that I love the chorizo tacos they do at this taco truck over here.

Nicole (56:32)
Ooh, that sounds good.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:34)
⁓ Anyway, ⁓

the Range Rover Electric was supposed to debut later this year. ⁓ Yeah, shockingly, it's been pushed back until 2026. Yeah, we don't know exactly when in 2026. ⁓ But it's been delayed. And according to AutoCar, that may also affect the new Jaguar electric models.

Nicole (56:43)
Waa-waa.

I'm so surprised.

I was so shocked.

Roberto Baldwin (57:06)
Whatever those companies don't have they don't a they don't do huge huge numbers be ⁓ There there, you know, it's JLR. They're not doing great. So if you have to push them back, that's fine I want an electric defender a 90 these so essentially the fender no one buys and I also want it to be electric

Sam Abuelsamid (57:24)
Yeah.

Nicole (57:26)
Okay, okay,

sounds like a solid strategy.

Roberto Baldwin (57:29)
So they're gonna do, I mean, if they're gonna push it back, you know, might as well just build that as well. I'm sure someone I could talk to about that.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:32)
Yeah, that sounds like sounds

like a good strategy. All right. See Volkswagen, you one of the concerns a lot of people have about EVs is the battery life. You know, how long how long is the battery going to last? You am I going to buy this thing and have to replace the battery after two years? And the answer to that basically is no. They.

They recently did some testing. ADAC did some testing in Germany. It's a roadside assistance company. So it's kind of like AAA in Germany. And they did some testing on a VW ID.3 that had 100,000 miles on it. And they found that after 100,000 miles, the 77 kilowatt hour battery pack still had 91 % of its original capacity.

Nicole (58:29)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:31)
If you're unless you're unless you're buying an old leaf, an air cooled battery Nissan Leaf, basically, you don't really have to worry too much about about the battery dying. I mean, within within the typical lifespan of the car, it's generally going to last.

Roberto Baldwin (58:32)
So you're fine.

I don't think people,

I think people don't realize that like as you own your car, your gas car, like it's mileage, like it's miles per gallon actually deteriorates over time. you know, unless you keep it pristine, which absolutely no one can, that's like impossible unless you, you know, work at the Ford dealership and you're working on it every week. Over time, the mileage, your miles per gallon actually goes down.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and parts start to fall off and all kinds of bad stuff happens.

Nicole (59:14)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (59:17)
yeah, there's that.

And then stuff falls off. Like, no! ⁓ was that the drive shaft?

Sam Abuelsamid (59:22)
Yeah. And, yeah, you know, and,

and, most, most manufacturers, you know, give you a hundred thousand mile warranty on the battery. You know, if, your capacity drops below 70 % within a hundred thousand miles, you know, they'll replace the battery. You know, this was still at 91 % after a hundred thousand miles. ⁓ you know, and, and similar tests in the past, you know, found similar results, you know, that you, know, you might lose maybe one.

Roberto Baldwin (59:42)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:52)
one or 2 % capacity per year. ⁓ And usually you have you know, at least 85 to 90 % capacity ⁓ after 100,000 miles. So yeah, don't don't use that as an excuse not to buy an EV. There's lots of reasons why you might not want to buy an EV. That's not one of them. I guess. Unless unless it's a leaf with an air cooled battery, in which case, yeah, that's a whole other story.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:09)
Yeah.

Like you can't charge at home, there's no charging infrastructure where you live. Unless it's a, yeah, then yeah. That's a, that's a, yeah, yeah.

Nicole (1:00:13)
Right.

Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:22)
So ⁓ last week, Nicole, you and I went to Montreal. And you know, that was also a heavily delayed flight for me. That was like 12 hours late getting into Montreal. But

Nicole (1:00:28)
We did!

Yeah, yours are the worst.

I was about five hours, four or five. You barely made it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:39)
Yeah. So why did we go to Montreal?

Nicole (1:00:43)
⁓ We went to Montreal to drive a new car that isn't really out yet here, but it's coming, the Polestar 4 SUV, which we can't give any drive impressions about, but we can talk about aside from drive impressions. That was the rule. So you can say anything you want except for whether or not you like the way it drives.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:09)
So ⁓ you wrote an article for Top Speed about things you love and hate about ⁓ the Polestar 4.

Nicole (1:01:15)
I

did write an article. So there's good things and bad things about every car. And there were things that I really liked about this. One of the things we discovered was that it has ⁓ this head-up display that normally it's white, and it has a snow-ready head-up display. It changes to yellow in snow mode so that you can see it against a really bright white background. thought that, hey, that's cool. It has this.

huge panoramic roof that has the electrochromic film. I was going to say it wrong. So you can change it from slightly shadow like sort of tinted almost slightly so the sun isn't too bright, but you still have light in or just full on sunlight. Also really cool. It does not have a rear window, which I thought was going to be horrible, but now.

Lack of real windows. OK. And the dynamic camera mirror. So they have this camera mirror, which a lot of places have. But this one, when you hit your turn signals, it ever so slightly tips to the left when you put your left turn signal on and right when you put your right turn signal on. And they have this really beautiful, like textured interior. It's all got all these neat textures on it. All these cool ways that they made fabric and upholstery. It's really cool. But there is one thing I hated, Sam. I hated it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:33)
What could that

possibly be?

Nicole (1:02:35)
They put the vent controls in the infotainment screen. Again, why must they do this? Why, why, why, why? Like, why? It's like deal breaker territory for me. I don't like that. Just give me an actual dang vent control that's physical that I can grab.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:47)
Well, dirt.

Before we actually went out and drove it, we had a presentation. They did a ⁓ virtual presentation with some of their subject matter experts from Polestar in Gothenburg. So they were live streamed in to the room and we got to do a Q &A. And I asked the question during the Q &A why they did this. And they spent about three or four minutes talking, trying to justify this.

Nicole (1:02:58)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

They didn't. No, it was just like, well, people like to have things in there and it's better and it's easy and it's clean and it's nice and we did it and you'll love it. No, I won't. Can I tell you the funniest part about that? So that was the week.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:23)
Do you think that they adequately justified it?

Nicole (1:03:38)
last week. This previous week I was in Detroit to check out some new Kia vehicles. We didn't drive and there was no embargoes on any of information that we saw. It was the EV4 and the K4. And in the EV4 you've got physical vent controls. And they specifically mentioned during the presentation we didn't put them in the infotainment screen because they need to be easy and accessible. So their whole thing was, and I asked them about it, I said, why didn't you? I asked their product planning guy,

Why did you not, when other companies are, why did you think it wasn't a good idea to put it in infotainment? He's like, well, honestly, he said, especially, you know, for people who were the very early adopters, they're fine with futzing around with random weirdness in a car. They like new technology, they like new stuff. They're a little willing to deal with stuff.

for the privilege of having the latest and greatest. people buying EVs now don't want that. They want it to be just like their car, just like the regular car with all the things as easy to use as they ever were. And he said that includes the vents. He said, so we just left the vents controls physical because that is the easiest way to control them. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to look for it. They're right there. It's like huzzah, go Kia. But they did not do that at Polestar and they give us this whole line of yeah, I hate that when they do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:56)
a lot of nonsense.

Nicole (1:04:58)
It was nonsense. It was just so funny that I got that at Polestar and then IKEA is going, heck no, we're not doing that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:06)
All right, anything else you want to say about Polestar 4? Because without talking about the drive impressions.

Nicole (1:05:11)
No, because we can't talk about the drive

impressions. I mean, it's a really cool looking car. The interior is neat and the rear window looks really neat that you don't have one. And it's just metal. And I thought it would look really weird close up, but you don't even even inside. You don't even see it when you just look inside the door. You don't really notice it's not there, which is some kind of freaky design thing they did with how they made the panoramic glass come far enough back and how they position things. So it actually isn't doesn't make the car dark and feel like a cave, like you kind of expect.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:41)
Yeah, well, you know, the Volvo C40, you know, which is the coupish version of the XC 40, that one has a rear window, but it also has a sloping rear back like the Polestar four. And so from the driver's seat, when you look in the mirror, you know, between the headrests, you know, in the back seat and you know, this really sloping rear glass, you basically have like a little slot that you see through anyway. So it's basic.

Nicole (1:05:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:11)
It's pretty much useless as as a, you know, as for, as for in terms of visibility. So, yeah, I'm fine with just get rid of the glass entirely. And, know, then you have, you know, an enclosed storage area, um, for cargo area that nobody can see into to, uh, steal your stuff from and just use the digital mirror.

Nicole (1:06:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and they put the digital beer, it's neat. The the cameras for it are very high up, like they're not low. Like sometimes cameras are lower. They're sort of like on the tailgate or like the lift gate on an SUV. So it's easy for them get dirty and gross, especially I'd imagine during winter or whatever. This one is up in the top. It's like where your little antenna is for your radio. It's right up there. So it's high enough that it's kind of out of the way. We're driving on a sunny day and who knows, but

It feels like it would be much better for in winter weather to not get mucky. So you'll still be able to see and not have to worry about it getting really dirty.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:09)
Yeah. Let's go back to Volvo. You know, they're also owned by Geely as his pole star. ⁓ And Volvo has been having some challenges of late. ⁓ The X 90 not selling in huge numbers yet. You know, some of the other cars, you know, their sales have been down. ⁓ So they're they're making some adjustments ⁓ because of the ⁓

The tariffs, right now the only car they sell that's produced in the US is the EX90, which is pretty small volume still. The rest of their vehicles come from either Europe or China, and because of the tariffs right now, they've decided to pare back their US lineup. They are discontinuing sales of the S90, I think.

⁓ or the

Nicole (1:08:12)
S60, X60 already stopped production and the S90 is stopped.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:13)
I think it was the V. yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because those are they were getting from China from from their factory in China. And so those are being dropped from the US lineup. ⁓ And then they are also adjusting some of their production strategy. ⁓ Their factory in Charleston, South Carolina, outside of Charleston, was ⁓ is currently producing the Polestar three and the X 90. And it's also scheduled to add the X 60 next year.

But now they announced this week that they're also going to add production of the XC 60 because they're keeping that around longer All of the the gas powered models were gradually supposed to go away over the next few years as they were planning to go all-electric That's not quite happening at least not on the same schedule So they're keeping the XC 60 around and they're gonna start building those in South Carolina next year for the US market and then they also

Nicole (1:09:19)
changes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:20)
Yeah, last year they they did a refresh of the XC 90 ⁓ and they are ⁓ they were not planning to do a third generation XC 90, but that plan has changed. ⁓ And so now they are going to do a new XC 90, ⁓ which is going to be based on the XC 70 that we talked about a few weeks back, which is an extended range plug-in hybrid, which has about ⁓

I think it's about 70 or 80 miles of electric range. And so that's going to be coming sometime later this decade.

Nicole (1:10:02)
A lot of shuffling. think we all knew that that was going to be really hard for Volvo to do what they needed to do when the tariffs started. I think everyone knew it was hard for all the OEMs, but especially for Volvo. So it's unfortunate. I think it's making this exceptionally tough for them to stay competitive in this market.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:20)
And then ⁓ back in January when we were at CES, you Nicole and Rebecca Lindlund and I ⁓ went to a little offsite briefing with the folks from Faraday Future. We got a look at their plans for Faraday X, their new lower cost sub-brand. ⁓

Nicole (1:10:26)
Ha

Yes, we did.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:47)
Okay, first of

all, there's no higher cost anything.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:51)
Well, there's

Nicole (1:10:52)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:52)
the FF91, which at the time they told us, when I asked, how many of those have you actually delivered? He about 13 or 14. Didn't even know for sure how many. Now apparently they're saying like 16 or 17.

Nicole (1:11:02)
13 or 14. Oh my gosh.

⁓ wow!

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:09)
So

when I went to their HQ in Fullerton, Hawthorne, doesn't matter, LA, ⁓ they had 12 mules, so I really think those mules... Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:22)
Yeah, probably. They're probably counting those.

Well, anyway, they showed us what they were planning next for Faraday X. And the first was this Chinese designed van, a luxury van. And they told us that their goal was to take on the Cadillac Escalade in the livery market. They think that there's going to be demand for vehicles like this. Because these kinds of vans, these luxury vans,

are very popular in China and other parts of Asia. They're pretty big in Korea and in Japan.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:03)
If you get a fancy

van, if you get a fancy car like to drive you around in Japan or Korea, it's gonna be a van. And it's amazing because they're like, they're like lazy boy recliners in there. They're awesome.

Nicole (1:12:10)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:15)
And that's what we sat in. We got to go for a short ride around the parking lot outside the building where they were doing the briefing for us. ⁓ The car was all camoed. ⁓ But we got to try out these fancy seats. The other day, they had this event in Los Angeles to officially unveil what they've now badged as the Faraday X Super One.

Nicole (1:12:25)
my gosh. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:46)
What do you think?

Nicole (1:12:47)
What is this green thing? This is what I'm I think I'm more perplexed than I actually when I saw it. I I still have confusion. I still have confusion. Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:53)
Ha

Well, the ones that we saw in January

did not have the screen. So the place where you would normally find a grill on the front fascia of the car is a giant LCD display. And it can put all kinds of messages on there. And one of the problems with this is that I remember like several years ago when GM, back in 2020 when GM did

their EV day and they showed us all these EVs that were planning to build. And I asked the question, because like on the Cadillacs, they have all this lighting on the front and they had the Cadillac logo backlit and everything was in white on the front. And I asked, why not have some color in the Cadillac logo? said, well, legally you're not allowed to. You're only, apart from the turn signals.

you're only allowed to have white lighting on the front. And this display that they put on the Super One ⁓ definitely shows a lot more color. So not quite sure how they're going to get around that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:11)
I mean they don't have to make the car. That's the thing with Faraday. They've been around for, I don't know, seven, eight hundred years at this point. They don't have to actually sell anything. They just gotta keep moving the money around. They just gotta keep moving the money. It's like Lordstown with like a, with deeper pockets.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:11)
it.

That's true.

Yeah, they keep managing to find somebody to throw money at their projects. I don't know why anyone would actually give them any money after all the success that they've had so far. I remember being at that first event at CES in 2017 when they showed the FF91 for the first time. Were you there at that one, Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:35)
Yeah.

that was one of the giant tent outside yet a big i did a big old interview with him i did a big old piece on that article on that ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I this was a two hour long press conference that they did which ⁓ Included about a minute and half of video of just moving dirt around on the site of what was supposed to be their factory in North Las Vegas Which obviously never came to pass But we got to see a couple minutes of just moving dirt around Yeah, you know lots lots of hyperbole and ⁓ in Faraday announcements they're big on the hyperbole

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:23)
Pretty exciting.

They did have the car

take off from inside the tent. They had like a like a drag race of it. Who knows what... Like once it went out of the room though, we don't know what happened. Like it wasn't, we didn't see the whole thing. It's just like, it went. So it might've gone out the door and then just fell apart. And like it turned to dust like at the end of like ⁓ an Avengers movie.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:39)
Yeah, they had a drag race with an FF 91 and a Ferrari, I think.

Well, there was

the one that they pulled out at one point that was on display ⁓ after the press conference was over. If you remember, it was up right up against the back wall. And it turns out the reason why it was pressed right up against the back wall is because the left rear corner was not done. It was missing parts. And so they parked it right up against the wall so people couldn't really see it. But, you know, it's funny.

Nicole (1:16:18)
my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:23)
reading some of the materials from this event on Thursday. ⁓ see. This is from Jalopnik. In the invitation to the FX Super 1's reveal, which I attended on Thursday night, the company described it as the world's first AI-powered luxury MPV and a true disruptor in the electric era, and said the event would also feature the Super EAI FACE, Front AI Communication Ecosystem.

Nicole (1:16:23)
⁓ that's terrible.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:53)
and the new FF-EAI 6x4 architecture, which are core to Faraday Futures new tech and product direction.

You know, mean, the hell knows. I mean, this, this all sounds like it was just generated out of, out of chat GPT or something.

Nicole (1:17:02)
What was the old tech and old periodic direction? don't...

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:02)
What?

It isn't, it's,

Well, does.

They do use AI. It's the EAI 6x4 architecture ⁓ PR marketing ⁓ word salad producer 2000.

Nicole (1:17:12)
Mm-hmm.

Is that what it is?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:26)
Yeah, I Yeah, I mean

any any time you talk to people from and this has always been the case when you talk to people from Faraday future Yeah, it's always been a lot of nonsense ⁓ In the it was funny in the in the video the Instagram video that was ⁓ Posted that's that's embedded in this gelatine story. It's in the show notes They show when they actually went to pull the silk off these two things and one of them. I guess they had

driven over the silk and so was stuck under the tire and it couldn't get the silk off the car.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:01)
That's the most on-brand Faraday thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:01)
It's.

Yeah.

Nicole (1:18:05)
Cheese.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:08)
Yeah, actually on Monday I was at a Tuesday I was an event here in Detroit and Stephanie Brinley and She was actually supposed to go to this thing. She was supposed to fly out on Wednesday I haven't talked to her since I don't know if she actually got out there or not, but she was supposed to be at this she said, you know, they Really want you to come out here, you know To see this and I guess out of a couple hundred people that were at this event

Nicole (1:18:23)
Really?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:36)
There was only a small handful of actual media and analysts and then a whole bunch of influencers and investors.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:46)
Well, that makes sense. I mean, that's all there everything is like I think my my my article about CES is all how Faraday was trying to impress investors I think that was the headline like Faraday like is impressing investors or some goofiness So many years ago man, I'm so long ago. I wrote to that in a ⁓ Mahindra electric scooter I had they give me one to ride around all through CES. It was the best

Nicole (1:19:11)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:11)
yeah?

Ha

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:16)
That was the best thing and they don't make that they don't sell the scooters anymore here in the United States But I love that thing. I wrote that thing all overseas. I was I was living the dream

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:24)
wheat. All right. Last story for this week. ⁓ Ford has ⁓ an electric Bronco, but you can't have it. It's only for China.

Nicole (1:19:36)
What? Why? ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:39)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:40)
⁓ I was not able to find anything

about this on the Ford China media site, which ⁓ doesn't appear to have been updated since sometime in early 2024. They haven't applied the new from the road media site strategy ⁓ to the Chinese media site at this point. ⁓ But ⁓ there was several articles this week, including this one in the Utopian. ⁓

Nicole (1:19:50)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:09)
This is a completely different vehicle from either the Bronco or Bronco Sport that they sell here in North America. But it has some of the Bronco styling cues on it, which actually doesn't look bad. And they're going to offer this as an EV and as an extended range EV, as an EREV. So it'll have an engine generator to keep the battery charged up.

Nicole (1:20:36)
It looks good. I like how it looks. It doesn't matter because they're never going to get it, but it looks actually looks really good. I like the colors. Are these actual production colors like that sort of burgundy ish one? It's pretty slick looking. I approve.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like it too. ⁓ Yeah, it's built as part of Ford's joint venture with Jiangling ⁓ and it's based on one of Jiangling's platforms. So it doesn't share anything with the Broncos that we get here.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:11)
So just says Bronco. And then they're like, well, we got extra. We got some Bronco sports stuff. We got some Bronco stuff. You know what? We have some random panels lying around.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:24)
Well the the eREV version is supposed to have 135 miles of electric range which is probably on the China light duty test cycle which means it's probably closer to about 75 or 80 miles but still you know 75 80 miles of electric range and then a one and a half 1.5 liter turbo for the range extender so that would that would be pretty slick

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:48)
Yeah, no. We're all gonna go to China now.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:52)
Yep. All right. Let's answer a couple of listener questions. ⁓ First up, let's do Roxy. Roxy had a question specifically for you, Robbie. ⁓ What are your thoughts about buying a used Kona EV as a second around town car? Are there any model years that you would recommend over others?

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:04)
⁓ wow.

Oh, let me think. What year did we have? Was it a 2021, 2022? There was a there was a mid cycle refresh that made the vehicle. It was the last.

the last refresh of the current of the last generation. That one's that's the one we had. And yeah, it was just a better car than the car before. You know, that's that's, know. So yeah, yeah, if you're going to get that, especially if for around the car around town, we're literally like think any of the Kona EVs would be fine, to be honest, because if you're not, you know, it's I think the charging rate was 76 on the one we had. It might have been 60 something before that. So

If you're just going to plug it in at home and you need to cruise around town, that's pretty much what we did with that vehicle for three years is we just drove it around town. The only time we took it to the charging station, my wife took it once because she was going to visit her friend who lived a couple hundred miles away. And then I used it once when I went to Monterey Car Week in it. And then other than that, the only time we used the charge, it was a to show my wife how to use the charging station and B to use up all the free charging that we had been given that we hadn't used.

So the last like couple of months of having a car, I kept taking it to EA station. I'm like, there's all this free electricity. You gotta use all the free electricity. So other than that, we just plugged it in at night. We got up and had like 250 something miles of range. Yeah, no, it's a good, great little car. Lots of room. mean, yeah. You're gonna spin those front wheels a lot though if you're not careful. Yeah, that's the, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:49)
Yeah, it's got a decent amount of power.

It's like 250 kilowatts, so 201 horsepower. It launched in the US in 2019, and then in 21, I think, was when they did the refresh.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:08)
Yeah, we it like refreshed on a Wednesday and we bought it on a Friday. Like we didn't know it was going to do a refresh. We were just going to get it. And then the refresh, they announced it and they were already in dealerships. It was. Yeah. So in just wait. Well, I guess we're just buying this refreshed version. So, yeah, it worked out great for us.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:21)
Nice.

Yeah, and I drove the Kona EV a couple different times and I always liked it. I thought it was a fun little car. I still like the looks of the first generation Kona better than the current one. ⁓ It's smaller, the backseat's tighter, ⁓ based on, you know, Roxy just wants to use it as a second round town car. yeah, that sounds like a plan. Probably if you get any of them, you're probably going to be fine.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:53)
You can put a German Shepherd and a tiny German Shepherd in the back seat and it'll be fine. That's that's literally all you know for our cars like what can I put? I can I put a guitar amp and a guitar back there. Yeah, can I put a German Shepherd in the back? Yeah, that's all we need to know. Carry on.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:58)
Okay, that's all you need.

Nicole (1:25:07)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:08)
Good enough.

All right. ⁓ The other question we got this week was from Anthony says, love the podcast. I look forward to every episode. I'm a two time Genesis GV 60 owner. ⁓ Given that the GV 60 hasn't been around that long, it seems a little odd. But anyway, a prop. OK, yeah. So I bought an advanced trim during pandemic and really liked it, but swooned for the IONIQ six design trending the

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:28)
leases probably they have a two-year leases with like some of them

Nicole (1:25:30)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:38)
⁓ trading the Genesis after a year for the newer and longer range IONIQ 6. However, I missed the delightfully charming luxury of the GV60, not to mention the much more comfortable and smooth ride. I never valued suspension until I experienced the difference on a daily commute. I really appreciate Nicole's great review of the GV60 on this and other podcasts. I bought a used performance trim and stare at it almost as much as I smile inside it. The question is, where are the emergency door releases on all four doors?

Hopefully it's in the same place as Sam's new EV6. I can't find the location, or even a mention of it in the owner's manual. Ooh, that's a good question.

Nicole (1:26:14)
I'm actually

this whole time you guys have been talking about the with Robbie. I can't find it, guys. I'm looking everywhere and I cannot find I'm Googling like crazy and I can't find it. I didn't see this question earlier. I would have searched it earlier, but I can find no mention of the end. There has to be one. Right. It's a mechanical door lock. I mean, electronic door lock. Right. On the GV 60. I can't find it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:17)
Did you find it?

⁓

Nicole (1:26:42)
I don't know if one of you guys can succeed.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:45)
Let's

see, I found the Genesis GV60 emergency rescue manual.

Nicole (1:26:50)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:52)
This is for first responders. Let's see if it has.

Nicole (1:26:54)
Yeah, see, I found

the first responders one where it tells me how to like disconnect the things and but I can't.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:00)
for immobilization,

for jacking it up, disable direct hazards, disable direct hazards, disable direct hazards, a lot of that. Access to the occupants. See how to open the door manually. When airbags are deployed, the door handles pop out automatically, but the door handles may not pop out under certain conditions. So you push the front side inwards, rear side of the door. Okay, that's fine. That's from the outside.

Nicole (1:27:08)
my goodness. We're going to have to look this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:27)
That's for outside.

Nicole (1:27:27)
That's from the outside. That's

I keep seeing outside stuff. I'm trying to find inside stuff and failing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:36)
This is why we just need doors. had a whole, I picked up ⁓ the guitarist for my band ⁓ at Bart to go to the show yesterday and you know, the Aionic Five, the doors pop out, you know, when you unlock them. And he's like, that's cool. I'm like, no, it's not. I'm like, we just, mechanical doors. I don't know what we're doing with all these ridiculous electric doors. Just, let's just have some mechanical doors. You can.

Nicole (1:27:39)
Right?

I'm like thinking, some of them have like a little latch, see

there's sometimes like underneath it or it can be right next, like.

I can't find it. I'm going to keep looking. I feel like I'm going to be looking.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:12)
I'm looking at the

Genesis owners forum where somebody asked this exact question. This is the passenger doors are mechanical. Just pull the release handle.

Nicole (1:28:19)
Did anyone figure it out?

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:23)
okay. So they're actually, they're mechanical from the inside, but they're electronic from the outside.

Nicole (1:28:27)
were they just mechanical from the inside?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:29)
That's what it looks like. Let me see.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:31)
All right, whew,

Nicole (1:28:32)
Okay,

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:32)
I

was really concerned. Because I essentially, I probably had those same doors. So Anthony and Sam and I are living on borrowed time. Turns out it's fine, we're fine, we're fine, we'll be fine. We're gonna be okay, they're mechanical.

Nicole (1:28:33)
I'm like, what's happening? One integrated door handle. know now I'm looking at a map.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:40)
I hope not

Nicole (1:28:41)
Hahaha! ⁓

Yeah, this shows

this looks like just a mechanical handle, which mean you just that's all you need. Even if you don't have power, that's all it'll still open. I was thinking it was an electronic one of electronic ones is just like a little button. Those have a release. If it's if we're not wrong and remembering, we have a lot of cars. I remember exactly what the inside looks like, but even looking at this, it's just a physical release.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think yeah, I think it is just yeah, it does look like it's mechanical.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:57)
Okay

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:07)
Yeah,

I just pulled it up and yeah, looks like it's just a mechanical latch.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:14)
All right, so the electric part is just where it plops it out. But if you really push in that, you can pull those open as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. And, ⁓ cause

like our, EV six doesn't have the, the power door handles. So you push in the front edge and it back end pops out and pull it. and the, you know, if you're, if you're outside the, know, we're, we're trying to figure out, ⁓ like my wife was, has been used to driving the Honda Civic, which had, automatic unlocking when you walk up to it with the key fob in your pocket or purse.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:26)
Mm-hmm.

That's it. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:50)
and automatically locked when you walk away from it. And it wasn't doing either of those things. we've, found out that, ⁓ you unlock it. If you have the key fob on you, if you press the back edge of the door handle in a little bit, ⁓ and you'll hear it click and unlock the doors and then you pull it out and you can open the door. So you don't have to take the key fob out and press the button. So you just push the back edge of the door handle and then

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:06)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:19)
for automatic locking when you walk away. It turns out that for some reason, Hyundai and Kia don't have that. But I found, and I'll put a link to this, I found a good, there's a guy online, he does a YouTube channel called Ionic Guy. And he had figured this out a couple of years ago when he got his Ionic 5. ⁓ Figured out how to get it to automatically lock when you walk away.

Basically you tap into ⁓ one of the CAN bus lines in the car and he designed a little circuit board that when it's connected to the CAN bus lines, when it detects you walking away from the car with the key fob, after a few seconds it will automatically lock the doors. ⁓ And the original version and the version that he still sells for some of the EGMP models ⁓ has, ⁓ it comes with a couple of T-taps and you actually have to

tap it, like go under the front passenger seat and tap into one of the CAN bus lines to hook it up. ⁓ On the EV6, if it has the trailer wiring package built in, which ours does, then there's a connector in the rear cargo area on the left-hand side. There's a little access panel and you pop that out and there's a connector sitting there and you can connect onto that. he designed, he actually 3D prints a connector because you can't actually buy that, matching connector for it.

So he 3D prints a connector and makes it puts the terminals in there. Got a little circuit board. It's got a 3D printed case for it. You just plug that in and tape the little module inside this compartment, put the panel back on, and locks when you walk away from the car. It's perfect. Yeah.

Nicole (1:32:07)
There you go.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:09)
BAM.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:12)
Alright, so ⁓ getting out of the car if you lose power in GV60, no problem, just pull the door handle, just as it should be.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:18)
Ta-da!

Phew! We're all good. We're go- All three of us are gonna live. That was a close one.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:22)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Nicole (1:32:25)
Well, panicking

from it, I'm like, where is this?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:26)
⁓

All right, well thanks everybody for listening and we will talk to you next time. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:34)
Bye.