Sam Abuelsamid 0:02 This is episode 421 of wheel bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from telemetry, Nicole Wakelin 0:08 and I am Nicole Wakelin from auto web, Roberto Baldwin 0:11 and I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International. Sam Abuelsamid 0:15 And welcome back everybody. Last week was just all interviews. So get the whole I just slept in. Oh, okay, well, whatever. No, no, you know, I made a really good excuse of why you weren't here a week before you had to go and spoil it. Roberto Baldwin 0:34 Oh no, no, I had stuff to do. It just fun. Like my wife asked me what I was gonna do today. And I'm like, we'll have to do the podcast, and then I have to nap. And she's like, what Nicole Wakelin 0:41 you have to nap? What a rough day. Talk for a couple Sam Abuelsamid 0:45 hours. It takes a lot out of Roberto Baldwin 0:46 you. Takes a lot out of your get all tuckered out. Nicole Wakelin 0:48 Yeah, I have to do the podcast. Go to an apple festival and bake an apple crisp. That's my day, Roberto Baldwin 0:53 you see? Oh, because we have Apple festivals in my little, small town, because it was, like, known for its apples, and now it's all sod. Nicole Wakelin 1:01 It's the whole the whole state is known for its apples. So it's Apple time. Gonna make some apple crisp. What are you doing? Sam Abuelsamid 1:09 Sam, after I assembled the show, I'm probably just gonna sit around with the dogs and throw the ball around for Patty for an hour or so. And yeah, that's finished. I finished harvesting all the potatoes yesterday and stuff. Nicole Wakelin 1:23 So see, we all have just productive enough days. Today, we have Roberto Baldwin 1:28 one tomato pick off my tomato Sam Abuelsamid 1:29 plant. We got the last of the tomatoes. We harvested the last of the stuff from the garden yesterday. So I have no Roberto Baldwin 1:38 garden. Our pear trees decided to make more pears, like it made a bunch of pears, and then it's like, hey, you know what? Now, those are some more pears. Nicole Wakelin 1:46 What are you doing? Pears and apples and playing with Sam Abuelsamid 1:50 dogs. Our previous house we had, we planted a couple of Paw patries in the front yard. And, you know, once those things start to develop fruit after a few years, you know, it's they produce so much fruit that you can never get it all. So there's always some that lands on the ground that's rotting. And so every spring, there's all these shoots coming up around the base, oh, from where they were. So I have to pull all those suckers out, or cut them off or whatever, so you don't kill the parent. Yeah, mess. They taste pop. Have you ever had pawpaws? Nicole Wakelin 2:28 No, I'm actually Googling them right now because it don't I've heard of them, but I don't know what they are. So pawpaw trees, do you do you eat? Are they these tiny fruits? Sam Abuelsamid 2:37 It's big. It's at the fruit itself is like about the size of a mango. It looks kind of like a mango, but the the flesh is kind of like a custardy flesh. You know, it tastes kind of like banana custard. It's really tasty, but they're, they're a real pain in the neck, because they've got, like, in the middle, they've got, like, these four big seeds. So like, instead of like one big seed, like an avocado has, you have these four sort of oval, fairly large, oval shaped seeds that are kind of across. So you can't just slice through the middle of the thing. Yeah, you got to kind of cut around it and then try to scoop these things out. And it's just, they're just, it turned out to be way more of a pain in the neck than we anticipated. After the first couple, first couple of years, you know, I'd harvest a whole bunch of them, and then I'd bag a whole bunch of them and put them up by the curb and say, Here, take them. Take them somebody. You know, we, you know, we would freeze them and use them for various things. But then we just got tired of it and and then removed and never touched them again. The end of the pawpaw tree. All the trees are still there, and they're still they're huge. They've gotten really big. But anyway, anyway, enough about pawpaws. Paw Paws. What did you drive? Nicole Wakelin 3:53 Nicole? Well, I'll start with him. When I drove the week that we were off, I had the BMW m5 touring, which is basically like a little BMW wagon, wagon people, well, it's not little, but it's a wagon. We have a wagon that's great, like they gave us, talking about fruit, forbidden fruit in the US, we never get fun wagons like this. So this is a plug in hybrid. It has 24 miles of all electric range to it. It's all wheel drive, eight speed automatic, and it's powered by a twin turbo v8 with 717 horsepower, 738 pound feet of torque. Sam Abuelsamid 4:29 It's got some juice, and it weighs almost as much as a Hummer. EV, it's heavy, Nicole Wakelin 4:34 yeah, and excuse me, it also costs $122,725 do you guys want to take a guess at destination? Since we're at pricing, 1300 1195, Sam, you're super close. Nicole Wakelin 4:50 1175 Ooh, that's a weird number. I know that's what came up with when I looked Nicole Wakelin 4:54 I'm like, is that? When they checked it like three times, it keeps coming up. 1175 we're going with that. So. So it's, Nicole Wakelin 5:02 this isn't like it's an M, you know. So m means sporty in the BMW world, and powerful and all that. But this is still not tiny, and it's a wagon. So think sporty like I want to go cruising on the highway and have some oomph when I'm driving around the highway. Not so much Canyon carving, because it doesn't quite have that kind of handling. It can get a little bit squirrely from really twisty roads, not not like compared to, not like a lot of other cars, but in like, when you compare it to other BMWs, it's not as finessed, I guess, as other BMWs. It's a little bit more cruiser than Canyon Carver. And I think that's important to know, even though it has all that power, Sam Abuelsamid 5:43 sounds amazing. It's for cruising down the Autobahn at 155 miles. Nicole Wakelin 5:47 Yeah, exactly. It's not for, like, canyons in California. What's the one? They always make us drive that one road which was Pacific? Sam Abuelsamid 5:54 No, well, there's crest, or something, Angelus crest. There's a few angels crest. Nicole Wakelin 5:59 That's what I'm thinking of. It's not for that. It's, we're just going in a straight line. So it's but it is really nice drive, and it does sound fabulous. And I mean that that engine, twin turbo v8 you know, you're driving one, sounds fabulous. It really makes like when you started out, you're like, Oh, I miss this in electric vehicles. It just sounds so good. So I enjoy driving this. I thought it was a lot of fun. It had, you know, plenty of power. When you do mash the gas, it does respond. It's just the handling front that it's not quite as sharp as you might think and expect from a BMW. It has 12.3 inch digital instrument cluster, 14.9 inch infotainment screen, so it has the tech inside. It's it. It's almost a little too much going on inside. Though. When you take a look at the interior, there's a lot. It's a little bit too much like an airplane cockpit. Like, there's too many there's a button, there's knob, there's dial, there's touchscreen. This one's red, and this is black. You're like, Ah, it's kind of cool, but it's also a little overwhelming. You first sit down, you think, okay, hold on, how do you drive a car again? Like it's a it's a little it could be simplified a little bit, but my criticisms are very small for just how it is fun and it's super versatile. So behind the rear seats, there's 18 cubic feet. We fold them out, it's 58 cubic feet. And there's even a little pass through, so that you could, like, put a set of skis in right through the middle of the back seats and still have two people sitting in the back seats. Nicole Wakelin 7:27 So I like it. Overall. I like this. It's a lot of money. $122,725 is a lot of money. Would I pay that much for this? I don't. I don't know. I mean, if you really wanted a wagon, you really, really want a wagon. Okay, do you? Would you pay $122,725 Sam Abuelsamid 7:50 for this? Sam, if I had the sort of budget to spend on cars that, yeah, that, you know, allowed me to buy cars with six figure prices? Yes, this would definitely be on my consideration list, Nicole Wakelin 8:04 yes, if you have the budget for six figure cars. But for those of you who are stretching, who your budget is not really six figure cars and you're trying to think of getting one anyway, I think you can get other things that will do a lot of what this does for you, but you're going to lose the prestige of saying you drive a BMW, because that's not undeniable. I mean, that's a performance luxury car. It's got style. It's It sounds amazing. It is comfortable. It's not especially, like upscale. It doesn't have that, like, Uber luxury vibe to it. But, you know, you have standard leather seats, panoramic sunroof you can get there's an executive package where it's heated and ventilated up front, ventilated rear seat or heated rear Wait, heated and ventilated front. He did only in the back. Sorry, can't get my word straight. Sam Abuelsamid 8:53 Grand you should have ventilated rear seats too, right? Nicole Wakelin 8:55 So it's right, so it's, it's, I like it a lot, but I'm not sure it would be if I really wanted a wagon. I'm not sure. I mean, are there any other performance wagons as I'm sitting here? Audi, RS six. And how much is that? Though, that's gonna be significantly less. Wait, let me see, that's a good RS six. So the Audi are billion dollars. That's a billion dollars. That starts it's 120 25 oh no, that's the sedan, sedan, sedan, avant. That's the Roberto Baldwin 9:27 wagon. It's amazing. It Nicole Wakelin 9:30 shows at my local dealership that it's 151, 795, and that might just be this particular that's the it's a lot. Nicole Wakelin 9:37 Yeah, yeah. Base price. Base price is 130,700 Nicole Wakelin 9:42 so you're still in the same zone if you want the performance luxury car was a wagon. Sam Abuelsamid 9:48 Does Mercedes still offer an E Class AMG wagon, Roberto Baldwin 9:51 e 53 hybrid wagon? Why? Yes, they do, according to Mercedes website, because it's the wagon version of the sedan I drove. Yeah. And how much does that one go for? It starts at 90, 393, 50. It's a bargain. It's a Nicole Wakelin 10:03 bargain. The Mercedes is the cheap car. Yeah, things you never think you would ever say so, that's so. I mean, I so, I truly liked it. It was, it was a fun car. I enjoyed driving it. It is pricey, but if you're in that six figure range and you want it something that's a performance wagon, like we just figured out, you're looking at close to six figures, no matter what, if for this, or for, you know, the Audi you're looking at in this range, let's give it that 120 $130,000 so it's not an inexpensive Nicole Wakelin 10:35 segment, I guess is how to say it. So if you're in that segment, you're looking for it. I loved it. Just be prepared more, not quite the canyon Carver for super sporty little sedan feel. This is slightly larger. It's a wagon. So it's more about cruising on the highway and being super comfy with all your Sam Abuelsamid 10:53 stuff in your car. And before we continue, just you know, something popped up in our work chat the other day you're talking about, you know, how many people can afford six figure cars? Yeah, the in the US now, one in five car buyers have $1,000 a month car payment. Nicole Wakelin 11:15 Wow, yeah. One in 20% of us, yes. 20% of people Roberto Baldwin 11:22 have on trucks. People buy big trucks with, like, big SUVs, yeah, like 70 year, Nicole Wakelin 11:30 70 year loans. Unknown Speaker 11:31 They remember Roberto Baldwin 11:32 there was that, there was that dealership, that that dealership that was talking those walking around, and they were like flexing that everyone on staff, their their their payment was over $1,000 Sam Abuelsamid 11:45 yeah, that's just idiotic. You should, you should not was spending that much money for a car loan? No, the feedback they got from Unknown Speaker 11:54 if you didn't end well Nicole Wakelin 11:56 for the gosh, I feel like it like it's not that you're buying it to an expensive car, save a little money, money, money for before you do, like, $1,000 but anything goes wrong in your life, you're going to be screwed trying to pay for that car. Sam Abuelsamid 12:11 And most likely, if you have a car loan that is that much, you are probably going to be underwater for most of the life of that car loan, yep, Roberto Baldwin 12:21 for like, five minutes off the lot. Boom, underwater. Yeah, yep. Nicole Wakelin 12:25 So if anything happens to it, it will ever get totaled. You're sunk. Or if you try to trade it early again, you're sunk. Roberto Baldwin 12:33 It's yeah, it's hard to like, for me, to fathom that people, we all like cars, but $1,000 Nicole Wakelin 12:39 car, monthly car payment is too much money. Roberto Baldwin 12:43 Yeah? Like one, I remember when I lived in an LA, there would be guys in their 20s, and they would have, like, new Mercedes, new BMWs, but they were living with their their mom, and they were in like, their mid 20s, and like, well, that's okay Nicole Wakelin 12:58 with your mom, so you can buy a Mercedes. You're making the choices wrong. Roberto Baldwin 13:01 Yeah, to like, Woo women, that's, that's where we're going back to my mom's house. Sam Abuelsamid 13:08 Yeah, just, just a little, a little more detail here. You know, this is data from Experian. They the types of cars with over with payments over $1,000 a month, Unknown Speaker 13:19 54 53.4% Sam Abuelsamid 13:21 of SUV buyers have $1,000 a month payment. 36.8% of pickup buyers have $1,000 a month payment. For sedans, it's 3.6% minivans 1.96% and coops 1.85% so stop buying. Stop, start. Stop buying SUVs and pickups and buy cars. Roberto Baldwin 13:42 People, yeah, minivan, yeah. Have a whole story. Nicole Wakelin 13:47 So my most responsible segment, unsurprisingly, our new parents who are trying to figure out their budget with or parents with kids or don't have a huge budget, or Sam Abuelsamid 13:55 people buying coops, yeah, Roberto Baldwin 13:59 there's not very many of them, to be honest, and they're all and they're all BRGs and rioters, Nicole Wakelin 14:08 all right. So that decoration, Nicole Wakelin 14:10 that's the BMW. So that was my thoughts on the BMW. And then I had something that was very not a BMW. This week, I had the Hyundai Kona limited all wheel drive, which I'll tell you, when you go from the BMW to the Kona, you're like, Whoa. Like, the power difference is so dramatic, but it's also the price is considerably less you could buy. So I had the limited you could buy four of these, if I just roughly, Roberto Baldwin 14:41 like, four, you could have them and you have a sled behind it. Like, like, get different Nicole Wakelin 14:46 colors. You could, like, pick an orange one to drive in the fall, get a red one for Christmas. Get, like, I don't know, yellow one for summer. I don't know, but you it's considerably cheaper. So SEL convenience limited. You're going. From 24 550, for the base, up to 33 600 for the limited. That is the maximum with all he'll drive 33 600 Sam Abuelsamid 15:09 if you got to buy a quote, unquote SUV. That's the sort of thing you should be buying. Nicole Wakelin 15:14 This is what you should be doing. This is a reasonable car to buy. So what do you think the destination is on this one? Guys, it's your turn. Roberto Baldwin 15:21 Robbie, I 13, I think I said that last time, too, 1495 Nicole Wakelin 15:30 so Robbie wins just barely, because it's 1395 he wins by let what five bucks. So Robbie wins 1395 so this can they consider this, I guess, a sub compact. Technically, it's got 25.5 cubic feet behind the second row, 63.7 behind the first row. So when you think about that, that's actually more than the wagon, the BMW wagon we were talking about. So this is like a smallish, small, affordable car that gives you more cargo room so you don't need to have the wagon like wagons are great, but you can do with this and save yourself a chunk of change. Does not have the power. It has a 1.6 liter four cylinder turbo, eight speed auto for 190 horsepower with 195 pounds being dark. That is not a spirited drive. Let's put it that way. But see, I'm not anti low power cars, as long as they're not so low that you hit the gas pedal and you think, oh, no, my Roberto Baldwin 16:32 life, can you Sam Abuelsamid 16:35 comfortably merge onto a highway Exactly? Nicole Wakelin 16:38 That's what you need. That's really, realistically what all of us need, enough to merge into highway traffic without feeling like the car behind us is going to slam on the horn rear end us, kill us. And this has enough power to do that. It actually is pretty robust. When it accelerates. It is good acceleration. It's noisy. It's which isn't the transmission or the engine, per se. I don't think there's a lot of sound deadening between the cabin and the engine compartment. One of the things that you when you get a less expensive car those little bits and pieces that make your interior sound really quiet. That's where they can save a little bit. So it is a little on the noisy side, but again, only when you're doing that highway merge. The rest of the time. It's fine. It's it's not disturbing. You hear it when it accelerates. It accelerates. It doesn't have the beautiful sound of the BMW, but it's not horrible. The only time you really notice it is when you're really heavy on that gas, trying to merge into highway traffic and just tearing up the stereo. Don't worry about it. So I like this, and I think it looks good. It's a good looking car. I had it. What did they call this? It's this bright red. Oh, my. I just looked at the Monroney that, apparently was, it's completely out of focus when they took the picture. So I can't read I'm looking at the official Monroney in the car. I had it. I looked understand how PDFs work. It's, it's literally just a piece of plastic with blur all over it. I just now glanced at it because I'm looking it up. Oh my gosh. So it's red. I have no Sam Abuelsamid 18:05 idea what is I'll look it up. You keep talking. Nicole Wakelin 18:08 I can't tell, but it's, it's a beautiful car. It actually looks really good, and I enjoy driving it. We drive drove back and forth to Boston a couple of times. The suspension system was even good. That's the other thing that sometimes when you get a more affordable car, they can feel a little rough, and if you hit it's one thing, if you're on pebble pavement, or, say, you hit a seam in construction between two different kinds of pavement, but sometimes you hit those potholes and they literally jar you from your soul. This is actually pretty good. It's, it's a nice, smooth vehicle. The Kona is. It's an affordable subcompact SUV. I call it a crossover. It's an affordable crossover. It's great for a couple or for somebody who's single. For a family, it's going to get a little tight in the backseat as your kids get older, but you can put a couple car seats back through when they're little, and it has really good cargo room. So overall, I like the Kona. I've liked it since it came out. I think the Kona is a decent little car, and I would recommend it to people for but not somebody who has a big family or is like craving huge power, because you're not going to get that in this, but you are going to get affordable and fuel efficient. And Hyundai is a really good, reliable car. So overall, I like the Kona and metallic, ultimate red metallic. It's really good looking, and you probably won't have $1,000 a month car payment on the Kona. I'm just guessing. Sam Abuelsamid 19:29 I would hope not. Well maybe, you know, maybe if you got, like, a 12 month loan, 12 month loan, Nicole Wakelin 19:37 when you think about that, though, if you buy something where you're paying $1,000 a month for 567, years, you pay that same money on a tiny, little, affordable thing like this. You know, that sucker paid off in like, a year and a half, maybe two years would be, it would be your car in no time you wouldn't be upside down for very long at all. Sam Abuelsamid 19:56 Yeah. I mean, you know, the the biggest car payment, i. I've ever had was actually when we bought the Civic, you know, it coincided with when we were selling back our Jetta TDI back to Volkswagen. And so, you know, we had a little bit of a gap in between when we got the check from Volkswagen and when we had to buy the Civic. We had, you know, because we needed a car, we bought the Civic. It was a few weeks before we got the check from Volkswagen. And so as a result, you know, I got a loan. You know, we just did it. It was, at the time, was like a three year, you know, like half percent interest loan, and, you know, ended up paying that off. But you know that car payment was like 500 and something a month. Roberto Baldwin 20:43 I think the most I've ever paid is like 350, 363, something that was, but we've, I've never purchased a new car. We've leased new cars. But like purchasing a car, I think the, I think, and I think that was the BRZ, Nicole Wakelin 20:57 I think the most, gosh, I Nicole Wakelin 21:00 feel it was in the 300 somewhere. It's been a little while, but I think the most I've had on a car that I've purchased outright, the word that was financed, was a $300.03 something, I think at one point, which is reasonable, I still remember the dollar amount for my very first car loan, because it was the first monthly payment I ever had to pay every month. It was 192 91 I still remember that which no one can even conceive of a car payment for. 192 91 because eight cars are expensive and B, that's people are paying $1,000 for a car loan because they're making foolish choices. Roberto Baldwin 21:44 People, yeah, my 90 Honda Civic, when I bought that, I bought it used it was 152 a month. I remember that Unknown Speaker 21:50 mine 52 Look at that. And I Roberto Baldwin 21:53 was a I was a busser, and then I was a waiter. So, like, my checks just went to the bank, and I never used them, because I always just had cash because, you know, tips and, you know, I lived at home, so I wasn't like, you know, I had, like, real bills. Yeah, I love that car. It was a great car. Nicole Wakelin 22:11 All right, there you go. Buy yourself one fancy BMW or Four Hyundai Konas, one for every season. Take your pick. Roberto Baldwin 22:19 These are the cars for a season Sam Abuelsamid 22:22 or or, you know, if you have a wife and two teenage kids, one for each one for each member of the Nicole Wakelin 22:30 family, everybody has a car for the same price. Yeah, and there's no arguing. Everybody has their own car, right? Nicole Wakelin 22:38 Perfect. That's the only, the Sam Abuelsamid 22:39 only potential for arguments is if you got, like, four different colors, and then, you know, people were fighting. Nicole Wakelin 22:46 It's everybody picks their color. You pick your color when they buy it. You can't complain, you know, you always drive the red and mom always drives Sam Abuelsamid 22:52 the white or whatever. So I'll take, I'll take the sultronic orange pearl. I want the red. Okay? What color you get? Neoteric yellow, or Mirage green, or cyber green, metallic. Roberto Baldwin 23:04 Oh, I was just looking at the colors, Mirage blue, think, Sam Abuelsamid 23:09 Ah, no, they don't think that anymore. That blue they had on the first gen Kona was really good. Roberto Baldwin 23:14 Yeah, we had the blue. We drove, like, over an hour to get that blue. Here we go. Here's the colors. I I just get the bright green one or the orange one, the lime I'll get the lime green, the neoteric Sam Abuelsamid 23:29 yellow. And that's a cool Nicole Wakelin 23:31 color, neoteric All right. Sam Abuelsamid 23:35 Okay, Robbie, where have you been driving? Roberto Baldwin 23:39 So I drove the sedan version of the Mercedes AMG E, 53 hybrid. It's actually a plug in hybrid. Mercedes calls it a hybrid, but it's a plug in hybrid, and it's got a little plug and everything. You plug it in, and you get a pretty nice 42 miles of range, which is more than enough for your average, you know, commute according to the Department of Transportation, which is, I think it was 36 or 37 Last I checked. And this actually does really well on the twisties. I took it, that's what, I went and drove it. I didn't have it for very long. I had it for like, two or three days, and then those two or three days I was like, Oh, this is the, this is the plug in hybrid you get when you're a rich and B, you like fun. Most public and plug in hybrids are, you know, they're SUVs, they're crossovers, they're, you know, well, everything, most everything, is ICV or crossover. So this is, this is the sedan. So it has a three liter inline six with a turbo. It's got 577 horsepower, which is a lot, 553 pounds of torque. It's AMG. So it's got, like, the ride control, suspension. It's got the nine speed, their speed shift automatic. It's got rear axle steering. It's got all the things, the. So you're, yeah, you're not. You're not just sort of like, oh, it's kind of cool. No, it's really cool. It starts at 88,000 but of course, the one I had $128,164 which is, I'm sure that's a that's at least $1,000 you guys want to check this is, I'm looking at it, you want to guess the destination? Nicole Wakelin 25:24 $1,300 I was gonna say 1695 Roberto Baldwin 25:29 it's 1150 Oh, wow. Remember the performance cars? Yeah, they don't. They don't get you like, they watch everyone else move up, and they're like, Yeah, sure, we throw a couple 100 bucks on there. And 100 bucks on there and move it up. But the reality is, they sort of like, you know, you're buying a really expensive car. And they're like, we're just gonna, we're gonna, was it a the multi contour seating package was $3,000 Oh, wow. Was it worth I don't I, I don't know. I didn't, I don't think so, I didn't realize that was that much. But like, you know, the AMG edition one, so it was an addition one, so it had, like, the orange, like, yeah, and the orange, like, seats, the orange, or the orange lettering, the orange trim, the orange, or, I'm sorry, not orange yellow, the yellow seat belt, and then a bunch of other junk. $25,850 for that. But that's, that's, yeah, that's the one package you don't have to get all that. You could just get this car and be fine. It's very comfortable. It does. It did have the passenger side screen. I never had a passenger in the car, so we just sat there with the AMG logo on it the whole time. I still don't think the passenger side screen is something that's going to stick around for too much longer, unless we, you know, we get autonomous cars, which is still very, very, very, very, very, very far off from now, because I think most people look at it, they're like, Oh, cool. I can watch a video on this, and then I or I could just look my phone and I can use like, you know, because they have one at the time. The last time I used it was in battle Germany, probably while someone else was driving I watched something. There's like, one streaming service that was, like, it was kind of a catch off for other streaming services, sort of, yeah, it was weird. Or I can just get my phone. I can like, oh, I want to watch Netflix. I want to watch Disney plus, oh, I want to watch, you know, HBO max. Now it's whatever. It's called, Hulu. I can, you know, whatever you already have a thing to you can just watch on your phone or your iPad. So, yeah, it's, it's, I'm still not 100% sure that's a thing people want, because every time I show it to people, they're like, Oh, that's cool. And then they pick their phones. Roberto Baldwin 27:54 No, it was very nice. It's very Mercedes. It's got, it had the landscape version of the Mercedes infotainment system, Sam Abuelsamid 28:07 the hyper screen. Roberto Baldwin 28:11 Well, yeah, the hyper screen, but it's more the software where they call Sam Abuelsamid 28:14 it one, oh, the zero layer. Roberto Baldwin 28:16 Zero layer, which I'm a big fan of. I actually really like zero layer, because just a giant map and then, like, little widgets for things that you you want to do. Sam Abuelsamid 28:25 That's it. Yeah, it's a really, don't, you don't have to do much tapping around. You can just glance over see what you need. Roberto Baldwin 28:30 Yeah, it's, it's very it's they, I think they did a really good job with with zero layer. Roberto Baldwin 28:38 Yeah, it's because, mostly, you just want it. Where am I going? What am I doing? Giant map, and then little widgets like, oh, I want to go forward on my music. Oh, I need to click this on your class. It's very Yeah, I really enjoy the zero layer. So you're getting that, which is nice. And, yeah, no, overall is, you know, a really good car. Again, 42 miles of EV electric only driving. That's interesting is, as you're driving in EV mode, you can feel there's like a little, like, almost, they set it up. So it feels like there's a notch as you're using the accelerator. And then right when you get to a point, and if you go past the point, then it's like, Well, dude, you're trying to go too fast. So then it kicks on the the motor, so it gives you, like, this little notch to be like, Okay, you can stay in EV mode, as long as you don't, like, lose your mind and try to overtake someone else already doing like, 90, yeah? Because when you want to do that, all right, here you go. So, yeah, yeah, I had a chance. I drove it into the city, and then I drove it on back roads. And that's really it. It was, it was they sort of, they loaned it to oh, they loaned it to me so I could go to a tennis game and meet Roger Federer. Federer, Federer, so I met him. He's very nice. He's a very and that's just nice to me, like you watch him afterwards, because some of your people are very. Nice to you because you're interviewing them, but like, he was like, picking, Oh, someone had left her sunglasses. He's like, Oh, he ran back around to sing, like, oh, Whose are these? Just a very delightful person. I don't know anything about tennis. I got to watch a tennis match, which was really fun. Don't know anything about it. Don't know what's going on. I understand the scoring because it's not that difficult to sort of wrap your head around. It wasn't cricket. So, yeah, so anyway, they gave me that, and then I went and looked at their giant Mercedes van, their vision van, that is, they don't call it a Vance, an MPV. You know, they're pulling the same thing as Kia, where they like, Hey, look at this really cool minivan. Oh, cool. Don't say minivan. For the love of God. Sam Abuelsamid 30:45 Kill any potential. Roberto Baldwin 30:46 Please don't say minivan. Yeah, it's an MPV because America, and if, you know, if you go to Japan, or even, you know, Korea, and even some places in Europe, you'll, you'll get, like, if you call him, like, a really nice taxi. It's a minivan, yeah? And when we, when we went on vacation, we decided, instead of taking the train back to the airport, we decided to go back in style. So we like rent. We, you know, we got we ended we wanted a nice car to go back. And would like recite minivan. It's minivan. It's wonderful. Easy to get in, easy to get out tons of room. Yeah, Mercedes has theirs. They have their, you know, their new upcoming or their new their platform they're going to be building it on. This, does you know this? This vehicle doesn't really replace the meters, because the meters is sort of like a different beast, to be honest. Mattress is more of it like a sort of a utility type van, and it definitely won't do anything to displace the Sprinter, because that is a cash cow for Mercedes, because of all the the overlanders and all the RV up, you know, every you know this really, that the Sprinter has really been embraced by those, those van life people, like, There's one on my street, there's there, yeah, they're everywhere. And the Northern California is silly with sprinters that have, like, things attached to them. Sam Abuelsamid 32:09 Yeah? One of my neighbors has a as an RV that's based on a sprinter, sprinter chassis. Roberto Baldwin 32:16 Yeah, so, so, yeah, it's that. But, so this is more, they're, you know, they're going for a more upscale luxury vehicle for for this vehicle, the their MPV, vision. Vision is their word for concept. I once had someone at Mercedes tell me, I'm like, Oh, the concept. They're like, Oh no, no, it's not a concept. It's a vision. I'm like, Yeah, but it's a concept still. I mean, you have a fancy word for still concept. It's like, when, when when automakers are like, I just, I don't use that most of the time. I don't use their, their fancy name for, like, you know, for Adas, whatever they're calling it, yeah, because it just, it confuses people. They just want to, Oh, does it have adaptive cruise control? Yes. They don't need to know that it's called some weird name these. No, it has adaptive cruise control, because when you give them the weird name, it just confuses them. That's that's no Sam Abuelsamid 33:05 helpful. That's that helpful. I mean, that that is exactly the point, though. They they want consumers to be confused. They want consumers to think that they have something unique that is different from what every other automaker is selling. Roberto Baldwin 33:15 Yeah, it's a radar and a little it's a radar that says that's this far away. All right, put the brake on, oh no. Put the accelerator on, no. Put the brake, no. Accelerator. And then just how well you've, you've tuned all of that. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I really, I really like this vehicle. I didn't know what I was gonna get. I was like, Nicole. It was like, it was like, What's it like to be Nicole for once? And a car just appeared. I drove I drove it to it was but it was unfortunate, because that weekend, I really didn't have time to drive a car, so I really didn't get to do as much as I would like to with a vehicle. But what I did get, I was very I was very impressed. And if I were rich, I'd probably get the I would try out the wagon version of this, but I'm not rich, so I have my BRZ and my ionic five, Sam Abuelsamid 34:06 and there's nothing wrong with that, yep, nothing Roberto Baldwin 34:09 wrong with that. I'm trying to my neighbor does Turo, and he has a bunch of vehicles, and he just got a Santa Cruz. So I'm just like, get rid of my cars and Turo his Santa Cruz, Nicole Wakelin 34:21 there you go. Problem solved. Sam Abuelsamid 34:25 All right? Anything else on the E 53 it Roberto Baldwin 34:31 was just gray. That was kind of a disappointing, Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 34:34 unfortunately, that is all too common with cars from German brands. Roberto Baldwin 34:38 Yeah, yeah. The battery capacity was 28.6 kilowatt hours. It's a pretty big battery, and yet it handled really well. It's still, you know, still felt a little heavy, but, you know, it's an AMG. So they're gonna, it's like Porsche with the Tay con. You're gonna make, they're gonna make sure they're gonna, sort of, they're gonna do as much chassis and suspension control as possible to make it feel like this. Those, that battery doesn't exist. I mean, you can only do some so much because, you know, physics and whatnot. But now they did a really, really good job. I would like to have driven this back to back with that BMW that that Nicole got. So next time Nicole and I should meet in the middle, which I'm assuming is like Colorado, Nicole Wakelin 35:17 I feel like maybe Kansas, drive to Colorado. How long would that take? Roberto Baldwin 35:23 I drove this 24 hours Salt Lake City Sam Abuelsamid 35:26 was you went all the way straight through? Unknown Speaker 35:29 Yeah, I feel like color. Well, maybe I could have Roberto Baldwin 35:31 made it to Kansas City in 24 hours from to hatchby, but we hit a snowstorm, so probably like 20 something hours Nicole Wakelin 35:41 wait, I'm looking. I feel like that. What's the midpoint? Oh, my gosh. The approximate midpoint between New Hampshire and San Francisco is near the city of Denver, Colorado. There you go. Roberto Baldwin 35:51 Boom, oh, we can go see the TFL guy. Well, they don't leave it Sam Abuelsamid 35:54 in Boulder, but that's only close enough, yeah. Well, there you go. So it's 28 hour drive from Nashua to Denver. Nicole Wakelin 36:03 Sure, let's just plan this robbing Hold on, I'm looking at Denver now maps. That really is the halfway point. Somehow I thought it was closer to me. I want you to be closer to Colorado, I guess. Roberto Baldwin 36:16 Yeah, 17 hours to Denver, Sam Abuelsamid 36:20 but you got to drive through all the mountains. Roberto Baldwin 36:23 Yeah, I know that's gonna be awesome. Yeah? I mean, let's drive on. I think most that's, I don't think people realize, like, half of California is just mountains. Everybody's like, oh, it's like, beaches and stuff. Like, no, it's a lot of really, mountains are just along the edge. Yeah, they're just along the edge, yeah, no, it's a lot of mountains, a big swath of farmland and then desert, yeah, which is also like, and parts of the desert mountains that the drive Sam Abuelsamid 36:53 for Nicole would be mind numbingly boring, most of the way Nicole Wakelin 36:56 so boring. Oh, you got to go to Nebraska. Yeah, right. I may. Sam Abuelsamid 37:01 And I take it all back Southern Illinois. Nicole Wakelin 37:03 That's the worst drive ever. Roberto Baldwin 37:06 I've driven across country a couple times, and I absolutely positively hate Nebraska. I don't know much. I've never I Nicole Wakelin 37:13 don't think I've been anywhere something. I don't remember it. I've been through it so Roberto Baldwin 37:17 like, you can see the one tree the entire time. It's so flat and boring. It's the because as you, as a human, you have these goals. So you're like, Oh, we're in the next day, yay. Oh, right. Nebraska just goes on and on and on. Do I Nicole Wakelin 37:36 have to drive through Wyoming on this trip? No, no, Roberto Baldwin 37:39 that's, that's, that's west of Nicole Wakelin 37:40 you. Okay, I like Wyoming, Unknown Speaker 37:42 Wyoming. I get all the cool stuff. Sam Abuelsamid 37:47 You could turn north from Denver and drive into Wyoming and then meet there, because I drive through Wyoming to get there, if I'm Can we Nicole Wakelin 37:56 meet Wyoming, but Denver is nice. I mean, what's not that far? Roberto Baldwin 38:00 Oh, everything on my whole drive is great. I drove this to Salt Lake City, this route, like, a year ago for a gig in a van. It was like a transit van, and it was beautiful. It's like, it's, you know, desert and mountains, and it's in Salt Lake, you know, in Utah. And after that, I get to drive through Wyoming, and then down to Denver, I get a great drive. You get Nebraska? And, no, I know, by the way, I'm not trying to. I don't know much about Nebraska. Nebraska is probably a wonderful place. I know people live there who really liked it. It's very boring to drive to the Sam Abuelsamid 38:33 it's not the best drive. Yeah, I'll be driving across Nebraska in December for Operation Frodo. Oh, that's right. Sam Abuelsamid 38:40 So, so that's when is that the third week, Sam Abuelsamid 38:45 12th, 13th Nicole Wakelin 38:48 operation photo is coming up again. This is the third year, fourth. Um, fourth year they've done it where they take rescue dog dogs that were rescue, Sam Abuelsamid 38:57 a couple of dozen beagles from Omaha, drive across Nebraska to Denver, and then from Denver to Salt Lake City, and then Salt Lake City to Boise, and then Boise to Portland. Nicole Wakelin 39:09 And they do all this because there's where the dogs are. There's nobody who wants to adopt it, but where the dogs are going, there are people who want to adopt them. So they save dogs yesterday, yesterday, last time Sam Abuelsamid 39:20 they did it, last year, we had 23 dogs, 23 beagles Nicole Wakelin 39:24 and journalists volunteer and OEMs volunteer support with their vehicles. And it's pretty cool thing. It's a cool thing that ever the people that do it, just Nick miles started it. Yeah, who's another journalist. Sam Abuelsamid 39:35 Eisenstein drove back from he fell in love with one of the dogs and drove back from Salt Lake City, back to Detroit, over two days with Melvin, and then turned around, flew back to to Kansas City, I think, to meet up with one of the people from the rescue organization. Omaha, who brought another dog, because Melvin was originally slated to go to a family in Portland, and Paul fell in love with Melvin, and then Melvin's brother was still back in Omaha. And so the family in Portland agreed to take Fred, was Melvin's brother, and so they arranged to drive Mel, drive Fred from Omaha to Kansas City, where Paul met up with them and then flew from Kansas City to Portland with Fred, and brought Fred to that family in Portland. Nicole Wakelin 40:31 So warm, fuzzy stories every year about people just seeing dogs because they can Yep, Sam Abuelsamid 40:36 yeah. All right, Sam Abuelsamid 40:39 let's see. Well, we'll talk more about Operation Frodo as we get closer to it. But anything else on the Mercedes? Are you done? Roberto Baldwin 40:48 Oh no, I'm done. Now that we've we've done. We've totally gone off track on what we do on this podcast today, I'm gone for two weeks, and everything gets broken when I get chaos. Sorry, everyone. Sam Abuelsamid 41:01 All right. Well, I had, I also had a couple of vehicles. I had the Lexus LX 700 h over Trail, which is, you know, a lot a lot of fans of the Toyota Land Cruiser were not thrilled when Toyota introduced the new land cruiser here, because there's actually several different variations of Land Cruiser that Toyota builds. It's different series. And the vehicle that we get here that's badged as a Land Cruiser, and also as the Lexus GX, is based on the Land Cruiser 250 but the top, you know, the really hardcore Land Cruiser is the Land Cruiser 300 series. And the only variant that we have of that is the Lexus LX. So that's, this is the, the really hardcore Land Cruiser. And, you know, this year or this generation it's equipped with, you cannot it's they all come with the 3.4 liter twin turbo v6 that is also in various other Toyota trucks and SUVs. And you can get it with as the LX 600 with just the v6 the twin turbo v6 or you can get it as the LX 700 H, which adds the hybrid system to it, and so I had the 700 H, you know this. This is a serious, off road capable vehicle for the most part. It has three locking differentials, front center and rear locking differentials. It's got Toyo all terrain tires. It's got all, all the goodies. The only downside to the LX 700 H, from an off roading perspective, is, you know, it has the Lexus front end to it, which is, you know, it's got kind of a deep front fascia, you know, it's got the big spindle grill. So the the front approach angles are not ideal, because that grill stretches down quite a ways. I mean, this is a massive, massive grill on this thing. The one I had was in this tan color. It has air spring suspension on it. So it's got some, some serious ground clearance capabilities. I didn't do any off roading with it while I had it, but I did back in what may, when we went to Plano for Toyota palooza. I did drive the 700 H on the off road course they had there at Eagle Crest raceway. And, you know, I mean, this is, this is a very, very capable vehicle. It's, it's a three row, although the third row fairly tight, you know, it's more for younger people you know, or those you know that are not especially tall. The and with the hybrid like the forerunner and Sequoia, and some of the other hybrid SUVs that Toyota has, the battery takes up, you know, it sits in the rear cargo area, and so you it's about four or five inches tall. So with the third row in place, you don't have a lot of depth behind the third row seat, between the third row and the tailgate. And then with the with the battery, it also takes up some vertical space as well. So there's, there's not a whole lot of cargo space if you're using the third row, if you just fold down the third row, it's a lot better. You still have a fairly tall deck because it's above the battery, but you know, there's kind of a shelf there, and then when you fold down the rear seats, it gives you a flat surface there. And Sam rose so. You know, we took it to take Patty out one last time for the season, to go do a little paddle boarding last time at the paddle board in there and everything, so that that all worked out nicely. The this is, this has the the latest generation Toyota Lexus multimedia system. So it's a pretty decent infotainment system. There's all the luxury goodies in here. There is also a touchscreen in between in the center console, so you've got the infotainment screen at the top. Then there's another touch screen below that controls some of the some of the four wheel drive off road stuff, and some of the climate control stuff. But there's also lots of buttons. So you got physical controls for a lot of stuff. I actually use this thing to drive to South Bend, Indiana, which is about two hours and 45 minutes away from me, and then from there, back to Elkhart, because I visited Thor industries, which I'll talk more about later. This is not a despite being a hybrid, it's not a particularly fuel efficient vehicle. Roberto Baldwin 46:16 That's the thing with the big Toyota SUV, like it's a hybrid, and you're like, we saved half a mile per gallon. Nicole Wakelin 46:22 It's still a giant car that uses lots of gas, Sam Abuelsamid 46:25 yeah. So this thing only averaged about 17 and a half miles per gallon. You okay, Robbie, Nicole Wakelin 46:34 Robbie's completely done. Robbie, come back to us like, what was it if Speaker 1 46:39 it didn't have the hybrid, was it? I think it's about the same. So, you know. Roberto Baldwin 46:44 So you're losing space Sam Abuelsamid 46:47 for these, for these rear wheel drive, four wheel drive hybrid systems that Toyota and like Toyota does for, you know, Toyota and Lexus brands. It's really more about the performance than it is about fuel economy. Yeah, you get that long tour, yeah. So, you know, with the, you know, with the with just the v6 you get 409 horsepower, 479 foot pounds of torque. With the hybrid, you get 157, and 583 foot pounds of torque. So it's not particularly fuel efficient, as I said, you know, because this is a large SUV, a lot of funnel area, Knobby, off road tires. Yeah, it's and I also found that, you know, after several hours in the driver's seat, seats not that comfortable. Nicole Wakelin 47:34 Oh, Sam Abuelsamid 47:35 interesting. Yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah, not, not the greatest seats in the Roberto Baldwin 47:40 world. You know, it's funny, because that the the Toyota, the Land Cruiser, I drove that thing to LA and back, is very comfortable. Sam Abuelsamid 47:50 So, so that's just body type, yeah? And for also, this is the luxury version, so who knows? Yeah, they're different seats in this one, it does have massaging, which helped a little bit. But, yeah, it was, it was a little tiresome after, after a few hours behind the wheel. But, you know, it's, you know, it's a pleasant enough environment, you know, it's got, you know, some nice wood trim on the center console. Got lots of leather, you know, it's overall comfortable. But just seats. Seats, not great. And it's also, it's expensive. Let me find where's that okay. So this one came to a grand total of $118,510 and the only two options on it were the premium paint, the color, by the way, is called Earth, which is sort of a tan color. That was 500 bucks. And then 2664 the Mark Levinson premium audio system. So 118 510, guesses on the destination, charge. 1195, I five Nicole gets it was 1350 rough by just $55 yeah, so it's actually officially rated at 20 miles per gallon combined 19 City, 22 highway. But over the last three ish years or so that they've been offering this hybrid system in the tundra, Sequoia, this thing, the Tacoma, I have never once gotten one of these to hit the EPA rated fuel economy. They're typically about 17 ish to 18 and a half, is what I what I usually get. And you know, this was mostly highway cruising, you know, and it got 17 and a half, so there's that. But, you know, lots of lots of Adas features on there, one One feature I really do like that Toyota does on a bunch of their vehicles now, is, you know, they have, you know, everybody's got the rear cross. Traffic Alert, so using the rear corner radar sensors for the to warn you when you're backing out of a parking space in a parking lot, if there's anybody coming. But they Toyota also has their front cross traffic alert, which is really handy to alert you when there's traffic coming from either side in the front. And then, you know, all the other usual stuff. You know, adaptive cruise control. It's got their traffic jam Assist system, which is a hands free system that operates at up to 20 miles an hour. So if you're stuck in stop and go traffic, like when I was in a couple of construction zones, you know, you can take your hands off the wheel for a while, until you get to 20 miles an hour, and then, you know, then you got to put your hands back on the wheel. But other than that, you know, it's if you're looking for, you know, something with hardcore off road capabilities, as long as it doesn't require a really good approach angle. Then then, you know, Lexus got you covered with the Alex 700 H. 100. Nicole Wakelin 51:03 H, here you go. I'm, I'm looking at the, let's see. What are you looking at? Roberto Baldwin 51:09 2025. Land Rover, mild hybrid, the 90. It gets 19 combined Nicole Wakelin 51:16 for the defender, yeah. Roberto Baldwin 51:19 And I start to, like, 114, this is the 90, just because I don't care about other people, so I don't care about back doors, Nicole Wakelin 51:27 back to Roberto Baldwin 51:29 back doors. Sam Abuelsamid 51:30 I mean, the dogs, though, they Roberto Baldwin 51:32 can get into the back okay, or they'll just jump into the I mean, the little one, she's like, as soon as you put in the back seat, she jumps over this, the little barrier into the front seat, sits here and looks at you. I'm like, That's not where you're supposed to be. She's like, Huh? Sam Abuelsamid 51:46 So the other vehicle I had was the 2026 Ram, 2500 black Express Crew Cab, four by four with the Cummins diesel engine, my goodness. So, you know, this is, you know, the latest generation of rams heavy duty pickup. And the black Express is a new trim for model year, 2026, Midnight kind of Yeah. So it's basically, this is essentially a tradesman which is the base work truck version of the Ram 2500 with black wheels, a body color painted bumper, black grille and few other trim bits. But for the most part, it's basically the, you know, the work truck, which means it's got cloth seats. Front seat is a bench seat, so you got six passenger seats, you know, in these full size crew cab truck, the back seat is like limousine, levels of space and comfort in terms of leg room, you know, you can really stretch out back there. The the heavy duties have, even with the crew cab have a longer bed than the light duty trucks, so Ram, 1500 or any other light duty full size crew cab typically has about a five and a half foot bed. This is a six foot four inch bed, which turned out to be very useful. When I went to go pick up some bales of straw, I was able to fit four bales of straw in there with the tailgate closed, worked perfectly, you know, because you know four more draw what, 100 pounds, 150 pounds, maybe you know, which you know really took a very slight nibble out of the total payload capacity of over 3000 pounds. In this truck could Roberto Baldwin 53:39 have got a bunch of straw and then, like a steer, yeah, exactly. Sam Abuelsamid 53:43 Or I could have parked my, you know, put my card, put my Miata in the back, yeah, just drop it on there, yeah. So, the, this one, you know, with, with the with the Cummins diesel, you know, the latest generation of the 6.7 liter Cummins, six cylinder inline six diesel. It is. It has 430 horsepower and 1075 foot pounds of torque at 1800 rpm. So you know, if you perhaps, you know, need to move your house off its foundation, just chain it up to this thing. You got it covered? Yeah, done, yeah. Take that home. And you know, this, this also, you know, has about the frontal area of a typical house, you know. So, I mean, this is a big fucking truck, and especially because it's a four wheel drive, the heavy duties have solid front and rear axles. So these things, even though this one did not have locking front or rear differentials, it was part time four wheel drive. It had two range transfer cases. Got four wheel drive high, four wheel drive low. You definitely don't want to drive on dry pavement and four wheel drive in this thing, because when you turn you will hear the tires scrap. Thing. But you know, if you need to work on a farm or anything like that, just put it in four wheel drive, you're good to go. You know, it's got all terrain tires on it. And despite the curb weight of this truck being 7728 pounds. And, like I said, frontal area, you know, basically the size of a house. It, it got better fuel economy than that Lexus Hybrid, about 18 and a half miles per gallon. Roberto Baldwin 55:35 That's a diesel, like, it's, it gets a little bit of a pass. But I feel like with the diesel, should have been like 22 Yeah, well, at least Sam Abuelsamid 55:42 if I, if I've been towing, you know, 20,000 pounds, it probably would have got that. I mean, that was also on my, on my combined loop, which is a mix of city, highway, urban, suburban, rural roads, party roads. You know, if it was just driving on the highway I could, I was definitely seeing over 20 just driving on the highway to Detroit and back a couple of times. You know, I mean, being as large a truck as it is, you know, can be challenging. Sometimes when you're in tight spots. You know, parking it can be a bit of a pain in the neck, but it did have the the towing package with the the digital camera mirror, which is very handy so you can actually see what's behind you. The end the seats, even though these were cloth base cloth bench seats actually more comfortable than the ones in the Lexus work. Roberto Baldwin 56:41 You want to be comfy? Yeah? Let me share this. People are comfortable, yeah, no nonsense. Comfort. That's all you need. That's right. Sam Abuelsamid 56:47 And nothing fancy, you know, just the only adjustments were front, you know, sliding front and back, and the recline for the seat back, and that's it. Everything else was fixed in place, no massaging, but, but the seats were comfy. And even, even without a load in this thing, you know, with, you know, the heavy duty truck, it was still road, you know, had pretty good ride quality on the highway and and in the city. So, you know, aside from its enormous size, it's actually quite pleasant to drive. There you go. Yeah. So let's see for pricing, where'd that tab go? So grand total price was $71,175 now for the destination charge, you get to pick, do you want the destination charge as it was last week when I looked it up, or as it is today? Roberto Baldwin 57:49 Oh, no, yeah, today. So 17,000 No, 1700 How about that? Sam Abuelsamid 57:59 1800 No, it's 2595 Oh, my God, Roberto Baldwin 58:04 comically high. Wow. Sam Abuelsamid 58:06 Remember when we're talking about the expedition a couple of weeks ago that Nicole was driving, you know that one? They had raised the destination charge on that, because I think on your Monroney, it said 2195 and they raised it, yeah, they had, since at some point in the last month or two, they had raised it to 2595 and GM had done the same thing. When I looked it up, stellantis, at the time, was still, you know, this, like as of a week ago, stellantis was still at 2195 so this just in the last seven days they've raised it to 2595 so it's now matching everybody else. So 2600 bucks for 100 bucks for Roberto Baldwin 58:44 destination. And again, like, we're not raising prices because we're building America terrorism. It's got to be great. And then you're like, now you are raising prices. You're just doing a very sneaky, sneaky way, sneaky way. Don't, don't do the sneaky, sneaky Sam Abuelsamid 58:59 way. So you know, you can get the black express with the 6.4 liter gas Hemi, and that's only $55,000 the Cummins is a $13,500 option, Roberto Baldwin 59:13 yeah, but you have to wear a cums t shirt if you have that. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 59:16 And it's quite it's a very refined engine. I mean, it's, it doesn't have nearly as much clatter as the old Cummins diesels, you know, 20 years ago. So it's quite a pleasant, quite a pleasant truck to drive. And one thing you know, kind of surprising. You know, $71,000 doesn't even have a bed liner in it. Roberto Baldwin 59:40 I think that's, I don't even know why bed liners are optional anymore. Sam Abuelsamid 59:43 I know, fortunately, the you know, the only thing I was hauling around was straw, so it wasn't, wasn't a big deal. Listen, actually, you didn't Nicole Wakelin 59:49 need the liner for that, necessarily. But, Roberto Baldwin 59:52 and also, I mean, I guess it's really at the end of the day, like, Oh no, I scratched the inside of the bed. Yeah. I. Say they're nice because it gives you a little bit of traction. When you're in the we're in the bed, and you're moving things around, like, I've slept on enough inside, enough on lined beds to, like, be like, Man, it'd be nice if there was some traction Sam Abuelsamid 1:00:12 back. Well, the other thing is, you know, if you know, if it's not a Ford, which has an aluminum bed, you know, the rams and GM and Toyota trucks still have steel beds. So if you scratch through the paint, you know, then you are more likely to it is more likely to rust. Having the bed liner is handy for that, you know, and avoiding that. Roberto Baldwin 1:00:35 So no rust, no slipping and falling, yeah, on whatever random thing you're carrying in the back of the bed. Sam Abuelsamid 1:00:42 All right, let's move on. So the reason why I went to Indiana, and you know, not, not a place I typically go except passing through on the way to Chicago, is visited Thor industries. They invited me to come down for their annual Open House, which is basically, it's a dealer show. So Thor industries, if you're not familiar with them, and chances are you probably aren't, is the biggest manufacturer of RVs, I think in the world they own, I think something like 15 different brands. They start when they start when they started off in 1980 they bought Airstream. So they own Airstream, and they own Highland and a whole bunch of others. One of their brands is called Integra coach. And so the reason why Thor invited me down was to check out the new Integra coach Embark. So I have never driven an RV before. Fact, it's been decades since I've even been in a motor. You know, the last time, I think, was when I was in high school. You know, a friend of mine, his family had an old Winnebago and so, you know, I think we went somewhere a couple times in that thing. But so it's been decades in an RV. And I said, Never, ever driven one. And what's special about the embark is it's an extended range. EV, back, about 2020, 2020, yeah, about 2020 Thor started looking at doing an electric motor home. And, you know, they did a bunch of research and stuff, and ultimately came to the conclusion that for the way people are going to use RVs, pure battery electric, probably not the right solution right now, because, you know, at most they could get, you know, 250, 300 miles out of it, and then, you know, you got to stop for charge for a couple of hours. And, you know, RV owners, and a Roberto Baldwin 1:02:51 very, very large RV, by the way, yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:02:55 so, so what they ended up doing was partnering with a company called Harbinger, Harbinger, first came out of stealth mode in 2022 at the Detroit Auto Show, they showed off their medium duty electric chassis for, you know, for like larger delivery vehicles and things like that, and they decided to partner up with Harbinger and adapt their electric truck chassis as an E Rev. So they they added a little 1.4 liter gas engine from a company in Germany called G tech, and 45 kilowatt generator. And this thing sits way out in the back of the yard, so when it's running, you barely even hear it. And you know this, when I drove it around, I drove it for about a half hour or 40 minutes, and it was just running on electricity. And you know, aside from the usual rattles of a prototype vehicle, it was really, really quiet, and this thing was surprisingly pleasant to drive. Like I said, aside from being very large, this is about a 30 foot motorhome on a 202 inch wheelbase. It you know, sleeps for very comfortably. It's got a big bedroom in the back, and then get up front. There's some chairs that you can convert, or, like sofa that you can convert into a bed. And there's a really nice kitchen, shower, in the shells this thing was would be a great way to do a road trip. And actually, we were talking to, talking to Thor, perhaps next year, might might end up doing a road trip up the California coast with one of these things. Oh, cool, cool. Which would be interesting. So it's got 104 30 kilowatt hour battery. There's the range extender in the back. Gives it a total range. On electricity alone, it'll go about 105 miles. And then with the range extender, it'll go about 450 miles. You know what they what Thor has found is from their research, you know, most people, most motor homeowners, are driving about four or 500 miles a day. So that's plenty, yeah, to get them, you know, to where they're going to, you know, stop, and then you can plug it in. It's got a CCS port on it right. Now, they're looking at converting that to to a Nax port for the production models, for the full production models, there's output power from this thing. So you can power all kinds of stuff. You get several kilowatts of output power. And then you can also plug it in, in an RV camp, use the shore power to plug it in, to charge it. And this thing was really nice to drive, he said, except for size and very quiet, which he could Yeah, I said, you know, I told him, you know, since I've never driven an RV before, you know, would it be possible to get into another one with a with a an internal combustion engine, just for comparison. So this is what's known as a Class A Motorhome, you know. So it's a dedicated RV. So they pulled out one of their other class A RVs similar size with that's built on a Ford chassis, a Ford F 53 chassis, which has the 7.3 liter gas v8 in there. And the gas v8 is mounted up front. And man, was that sucker loud. It was not nearly as quick to accelerate as the Embark. And when you're accelerating, oh, boy, do you know it's accelerating. Roberto Baldwin 1:06:57 It's a party in the engine bay. Sam Abuelsamid 1:07:00 You know, after, after spending a few minutes, you know, about 1520, minutes driving that one. I'm not sure I would want to be driving that thing for several 100 miles at a stretch across country, yeah, but the, you know, the embark that one, I could definitely see spending time in the fee right now, right now. You know, they've got the first one built. They're in the process of assembling the second one. And the plan is that this is going to in the first part of 2026 they're going to have about a dozen of these that they're going to put into a rental fleet, an RV rental fleet, to gain more customer experience with it, get feedback before they start volume production later in 2026 and so they're going to have about a dozen of these in a rental fleet in California starting early part of 2026 and that's where I live. Yeah, so maybe we can get you into one too. Nicole Wakelin 1:08:02 There you go, driving around. Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:06 And the typical price for a Class A Motorhome of this size, with gas engine, depending on the options and features you get, is anywhere from 250 to $400,000 and this one, the the embark is going to be, is going to start about 300,000 so about 50 grand more, but it's a lot. Yeah. I mean, the 250 Roberto Baldwin 1:08:37 is a lot too. So, Unknown Speaker 1:08:39 yeah, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:43 Right, right, yeah. I mean, you can basically live in these things, the house on wheels. Yeah, it is. And hence the name motor home, Unknown Speaker 1:08:51 home, Sam Abuelsamid 1:08:53 the with, with the with these motor homes. So and these things use a lot of gas. These things get about six seven miles per gallon. So if you're driving four or 500 miles a day in these things, you're going to be spending a lot of money on gas, and the your fuel bills with the E rev version are going to be a tiny fraction of what you're going to pay for a gas truck home. And it's gonna be a much more pleasant ride. Roberto Baldwin 1:09:25 Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're already spending 250 drive really, to drive in the right lane, and I did a bunch of Airstream reviews years ago, I was like, oh, maybe we should get an Airstream if you do like this sort of the price comparison, like Airstream versus just staying in a nice hotel. Like, oh, we could just stay in a nice hotel. Yeah, it's cheaper. Because unless use the airstream, like every single weekend, it didn't make sense financially. Yeah, the Sam Abuelsamid 1:09:57 you know, while I was waiting for my turn to go drive. The embark, I wandered around the open house area to check out some of the other stuff from the various other brands that Thor has. And I walked into this, this Tiffin Zephyr, which is their top of the line motorhome, you know. And you know, this is one of those big luxury coaches, you know, it's like a big bus, and you walk in this thing's got tile floors and, you know, an induction stove and all kinds of other stuff. These things start at $700,000 and when I was looking around online, you can find a bunch of these things for well over a million dollars. So, you know, 300 grand for this thing. Not bad. So anyway, bad. That's the Integra coach embark, coming to a California rental fleet sometime next year and then available to the general public to buy if you're interested in, you know, RV sort of thing Nicole Wakelin 1:10:57 in the motor home life, yeah, motor home life. Sam Abuelsamid 1:11:01 So as we're recording this, it is now October 5. We're five days into the post EV tax credit era. And if you didn't get your tax credit, if you didn't get your new EV with the tax credit yet, you're not out. You're not entirely out of luck yet. GM and Ford came up with an interesting scheme. We'll call it that scheme, back in late August, early September, you know, the IRS said, you know, they gave some guidance. Said, you know, if you have a firm purchase contract and you make at least the first payment on an EV before September 30, you can still claim the tax credit, even if you haven't taken delivery yet. So if the vehicle is in transit or something you're waiting for it, you can still get the tax credit. So what Ford and GM did was they went to their dealers that were selling EVs and said, Look, if you have any EVs left in inventory on September 30, we will, if you want, it's opt in for the dealers, if you want our financial services arms, so Ford credit and GM Financial will buy those EVs from you. You keep them on the lot, and then you can lease them, and we, you know, we'll buy them from you and make the down payment on them. So then, you know, the leasing company takes the takes the tax credit, which is the way it's always been gate balls, and then they factor that into the monthly lease payment. So if you weren't able to buy one before September 30, but you still want a Ford or GM, EV while supplies, last of those vehicles that were in stock by December or by September 30, you can still get, you know, pretty good lease price on those things. Roberto Baldwin 1:12:59 That's pretty cool. December 31 but GM says while supplies last. So the, I think, is better, because I feel like there's going to be a couple four dealers are just going to hide some EVs in the back until January 1. They're like, Oh, no, we got that. Sam Abuelsamid 1:13:17 Yeah, well, I think the, you know, with the with the IRS, you know, they've got it. They've ultimately got to sell them by or lease them by December 31 anyway. Otherwise, you know they can't, you know, they'll have to pay back the tax credits. So I think you know, and I suspect you know, that they will have gotten rid of most of the stock by the end of December anyway. Yeah, there Roberto Baldwin 1:13:45 you go. But get a couple more months if you get one of Ford or a GM, yeah, Evie, Sam Abuelsamid 1:13:53 then Hyundai, when they announced their q3 sales or their September sales on on the October 1, they also announced that they were cutting the price on the ionic five for model year 2026, by more than $9,000 that's huge. Nicole Wakelin 1:14:12 Yeah, the average price reduction is 9155 Nicole Wakelin 1:14:18 and the $7,500 Nicole Wakelin 1:14:20 cash incentive. So you still Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:22 get the cash left over 2525 you still get, they're giving you a $7,500 rebate out of their pocket, and then slashing the price on the model year 26 so they now the s, what the SE is the base model that starts at just $35,000 for the standard range. Nicole Wakelin 1:14:40 Se kind of knew they were going to do this, though not Hyundai specifically, but you could see the EV shuffle coming. Like, how do we how do we take, how do we fix that? $7,500 everybody just lost. That's more than that. Yeah, they've more than fixed it, but still, yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 1:14:55 it's Yeah. So Roberto Baldwin 1:14:57 we're now getting that, that 35 $1,000 remember what Tesla's gonna give us, a $35,000 car, right from Hyundai, and it's an 800 VO. Now we're getting it. You're getting a more efficient EV for the 30 you know that that that sort of, I guess you would call it that mythic, mythical, $3,500 Nicole Wakelin 1:15:23 affordable. EV, yeah, Roberto Baldwin 1:15:25 that's, that's, you know, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:15:28 So even, even the top of the line, ionic five limited, all wheel drive, that one dropped from $58,200 to $48,975 and the the SEL, the mid level SEL, that one dropped by $9,800 to it's gonna be one to 43,300 Roberto Baldwin 1:15:51 so I so we have a rear wheel drive SEL, and we have that on lease. And so when the pay, you know, so it's a $50,000 car when we got it. Now, when the lease is up, it's definitely not going to be worth the 35 I guess that's, I think, the payoff. So that'll be an interesting when our lease is up on this vehicle. At this point, my wife's like, can we just buy this car? She's like, I'm done with leasing. She's like, well, I like the car. We can just get this car. And I'm like, All right. Sam Abuelsamid 1:16:17 So my, my guess is that there will be some opportunity for negotiating that oh yeah, buyout price, yeah. Roberto Baldwin 1:16:25 Or you can also get one that's like two years old, or two years old for like 26 like 24 like I did, yeah, yeah. Or 24 Yeah. That's, it's, uh, the Yeah, those ionics and the EV sixes. I mean, they're great cars. They're 800 volt. They charge quicker. They're more efficient. They, you know, they might look a little wacky to your average person, but they're just cars, and that's all they really Sam Abuelsamid 1:16:49 Yeah, I'm sure that Hyundai is not going to be the last one to slash some prices on some of their EVs probably gonna do the same thing pretty soon. Nicole Wakelin 1:16:58 Oh yeah, yeah, that would be the gas, yeah. Roberto Baldwin 1:17:01 And this is, this is a long term play to the Ford. And the GM one is like, hey, for short term, we can do this. And then key is a hold my beard. Boom. They just bust through the window like, Kool Aid, man. And they're like, everything's cheaper. There's like, what? Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:18 So? So if you're still looking for an EV, you know, after October 1 you got, you got a bunch of choices. Now, you know, don't forget, the Nissan LEAF should be arriving in dealers any day now, starting at 29 that Nicole Wakelin 1:17:33 car that was such a good little car. It's a good little car. The little car, except for Roberto Baldwin 1:17:38 the weird brakes, it's a good little car one mode. So just don't use E mode. Nicole Wakelin 1:17:43 Yeah, just don't do that. Don't use that button. Yep, then it's then it's brilliant. Yeah, all right. Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:50 Speaking of EVs still back in 2022 in August of 2022 Tim caniskas took the wraps off the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT concept. So this is, this was the original concept, you know, before we got the the production version of the charger Daytona, and that concept had a different powertrain than what's currently in the production charger Daytonas. It was a three motor, you know, 800 plus horsepower powertrain that they called the Banshee powertrain. And you know, stellantis had been promising that, you know, that was supposed to be coming in 2026 apparently, maybe not. Nicole Wakelin 1:18:39 Gone, gone, gone will not exist ever. Sam Abuelsamid 1:18:43 Yeah, the two motor charger Daytonas not been exactly screaming off the lots this year. I think they through the through September 30. I think they sold about 4300 of them. And so the 800 volt architecture, Banshee version. It's apparently dead. Nicole Wakelin 1:19:07 Yeah, I don't think anyone's surprised. Is anyone surprised? Roberto Baldwin 1:19:10 No, I had never seen an angrier car launch than the launch. It was just like the that, like, within the few weeks it was that, that event, and then the rivian event, where they showed the the our 2s and our three, you know, where it was that, like, the rivian event was like joy and, oh, we're gonna have fun. And this is great. And we love everything. And the Dodge event was like, cars in America stocks, because we don't have this even, like, there's such a contrast. And when you're looking at you're like, Well, why would I buy an Eevee from the angry people? Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:51 Yeah, yeah. Roberto Baldwin 1:19:52 It seemed like it was very much like, well, we have to make this. Let's do this. We're gonna get rid of all these boring EV. EPS. I'm like, Have you driven an EV lately? Buddy? Yeah, there's some boring EVs out there, but there's some boring cars to dodge makes some of them, and so maybe, oh, Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:10 stop talking about the Hornet that way. Roberto Baldwin 1:20:13 Oh, I was trying not to, but so yeah, it was, it was such a, you know, they're just gonna put a Hemi and everything. It doesn't matter. Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:23 Yeah, well, that's apparently what they're gonna do with the charger. Just put the Hemi back in there. Roberto Baldwin 1:20:28 Don't have a better engine, shut up Hemi, that's the, that's the, that's the Dodge, that's their whole everything, that's their business plan. Hemi, yep, we have a better engine, what we call that heavy Shut up Hemi. We're gonna, Nicole Wakelin 1:20:42 we can change this. No Hemi. Hemi answer Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:44 me. That's, you know, I'm surprised they haven't called the hurricane six cylinder a Hemi. Roberto Baldwin 1:20:49 Yeah, they should just call everything Hemi. Well, they can call the Hemi. They can just keep selling the, you know, the engine they've had for a million years, less efficient, not as powerful. That's probably cheaper for them to make, and especially, Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:02 you know, since the administration said, Yeah, we're, we're not going to impose any fines for missing your fuel economy or emissions targets anyway, so it's not going to cost you anything. So you might as well just, you know, throw everything you got in there. Roberto Baldwin 1:21:14 This goes all in, of course, in three years, who knows what's going to happen after that? Oh, no, I can't believe her, Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:21 but you know, stellantis can book the profits on selling those hammies today. Nicole Wakelin 1:21:25 Hammies, yeah, still answer me all the things, literally, all the things, any money they can get. Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:32 So who's a big fan of electronic door latches on your cars? Nicole Wakelin 1:21:37 Nobody, nobody. No, human. No. Sam Abuelsamid 1:21:43 Okay. Well, apparently rivian has finally heard the complaints, or at least sort of heard the complaints. I'm actually going to an event at rivians tech center tomorrow, and I'll ask them more about this. But they for the r2 they are redesigning, and they are to supposed to launch sometime next year, sometime in 2026 they are going to redesign the door latches to make it easier, because all these electronic door latches, they have to have a mechanical one as a backup anyway. And I'm I don't remember what the ones the system they had on the r2 looked like, but when they redid, when they did the refresh of the r1 last year, they they changed the way the door latches were set up. So on the door panel, on the front door panel, you got the button on there to release the door, and then literally, two inches in front of that is just the mechanical latch that you can just pull, which I just do not understand if, if it's going to be right there, right next to the electronic one, why are you wasting the money on the electronic One? Just have the mechanical one, because Nicole Wakelin 1:23:02 it works 100% of the time, some weird perception that it's fancy, if it's mechanical, Roberto Baldwin 1:23:07 like it's clever for the sake of being clever, that, right? Yeah. Like, we feel this a lot in EVs, which is like, Oh, we're gonna be clever. Like, no, don't just Nicole Wakelin 1:23:16 give and I think they're getting less though, like they're slowly, like this, slowly realizing we don't need to make the EV look like something out of a spaceship just for the sake of it, unless it works better. Don't do that. Leave things alone. Make use what works, not what you should like. Ooh, we could do this. Let's see if people hate it. Sam Abuelsamid 1:23:37 Unfortunately, no word yet that they're going to redesign the vent controls to make those man manual as well. Nicole Wakelin 1:23:45 See, that's also just doing it for the sake of doing Sam Abuelsamid 1:23:48 it. Yeah, because it's definitely a more expensive system, Nicole Wakelin 1:23:53 and it does. Nobody likes it. Nobody likes it. Roberto Baldwin 1:23:55 Nobody, somebody you know, the person who came up with it. Again, clever for the sake of being clever. That's the that's, it's like, look at this clever thing you can do. You're adding the metaverse to everything. It's, hey, we're gonna be in the metaverse. And everyone's like, no, no, no. You really want the metaverse. Like, no. We don't want to be. I don't want that doors that. Like, if there's a if there's an accident, I you know the muscle memory of knowing where my door is works. Nicole Wakelin 1:24:23 I don't have to take off a plastic latch and go, Okay, there's a latch. It comes off here. I do this as I have a concussion because I was in a car accident, like Roberto Baldwin 1:24:32 when I got the Model X for the review, they accidentally gave me a pre production model. It's a long story. Anyway, one of the problems was that the door wouldn't close, one of the rear falcon wing doors, and so I had to rip I had to pull all these things off to find the manual release, to try to get it to the whole time I'm doing that, I'm like, if there's a fire, everyone in the back of this car is gonna die. Sam Abuelsamid 1:25:00 Yeah, and there's an that has happened in real life. That is because it's on more than one occasion. It is Roberto Baldwin 1:25:06 this, this ridiculous, like thing, right? Oh, but do you know it's there? I'm like, you know, sometimes I take people in this car who have never been in this car that's in. How do you Yeah, not every. Hold on everybody before we leave. If there's, if we drive, if I actually drive into gotta give the passengers a briefing on how to get out in case of emergency. You got a little she got a laser pointer. You need to pull this thing up, and then you'll find this, this one thing, and you pull on this little like cable with a little handle on it, and then the door should pop open. Then you'll need to push the door open. Nicole Wakelin 1:25:41 But the biggest thing, aside from not knowing how the heck to open it, is, even if you do know how to open it, when you've been in an accident, your brain got scrambled. You're not thinking. You're not like, well, let me see, what did I remember when I read that manual? How does it you're just like, ah, you've been in an accident. You're not necessarily thinking clearly at that moment. Roberto Baldwin 1:26:00 We know. I was in a Ford Expedition. I was in a review car, and someone just ran into me. It just flew across. It's hard to see. They just ran into me. Anyway, I pulled over, and because I'm in cars all the time, and because you're, you know, I was just like, it's okay, someone ran into me and pull over to the other people, the people who ran into me who they had been cut off, apparently, and so they, like, over corrected, and they lost control and ran into me and they hit another car. Everyone else was, like, shaking. They were like, really, just, like, super anxious. And I'm just like, hey, how's it going? You guys? All right, you good, cool. Like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I'm like, It's fine. It's fine. You know, it's happens, it's, you know, that's what insurance is for. They're just vibrating with anxiety and adrenaline and because that's the normal reaction to even, like, a fender bender, right? And, yeah, and the idea that those people would have, like, Hey, if you had, like, flipped upside down, you know, and the 12 volt battery had become, you know, dislodged. Okay, hold on. Let me get the owner to me Nicole Wakelin 1:27:04 would calmly remember how to open the garage the doors to the car with a little manual release? No, yeah, it wouldn't. It's yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:27:13 All right. So the verge launched a new podcast this week called version history, which I listened to the first episode this morning while I was walking the dogs. And the the first episode was about hoverboards, you know. So the premise of the podcast is there. They're taking a look back at each episode. They're taking a look back at some old piece of technology. And so this year happened to mark the 10th anniversary of when hoverboards first emerged, really right before they all started catching on fire and exploding. And so, you know, they talked about hoverboards. And turns out that, you know, those, those two wheeled hoverboards were kind of tilt, tilt the sides, you know, to turn and go forward and back, stuff like that. That idea was invented by a guy named Shane Chen, and he got a patent on it. And then, you know, got somebody to manufacture these things, and they started selling them in 2015 and like, within a year, they were all gone. They had all been pulled off the market because they had terrible batteries that kept exploding when you plugged them in. Well, Shane Chen is back. He's got a new patent for a two wheeled car that is creatively called the Shane Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:40 and basically it's a self Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:41 balancing car. Do either of you remember the the GM envy concept from 2010 remember that Nicole Wakelin 1:28:52 I'm looking it up now that you said that like Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:57 and so this was a little self driving Nicole Wakelin 1:29:02 transportation pod does look a little bit like, yeah, the Sam Abuelsamid 1:29:06 Envy was, was based on a segue chassis, and so you know, to make it go forward and back, to balance the thing. Essentially, the pod that carried the people would slide back and forth on this segue chassis to adjust the the weight balance. And that's what this thing does, yeah? This, this is basically a larger, five passenger version of the envy. It feels Roberto Baldwin 1:29:33 like a vomit machine. Nicole Wakelin 1:29:34 Yeah, yeah. I sense myself getting sick in that immediately, immediately, it Sam Abuelsamid 1:29:39 depends upon how well it's controlled. I mean, I've ridden in the envy and, you know it, it works fine. But this, I don't see this ever taken off. Nicole Wakelin 1:29:51 I don't then I don't want this talk about making something complicated for the sake of making it complicated. Ta, da, anybody Roberto Baldwin 1:29:58 wants this? Well, the other two, we. Was, like, really, like, throwing us off, or they missed. Was that Nicole Wakelin 1:30:02 really too much to put two more on there? Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:04 Well, the nice thing about two wheeler, you know, because when it's electric, is, yeah, you can when you're when you're parking, you know, you to parallel park. You just have one wheel turn one way, the other one turns the other way. You turn 90 degrees on the spot, pull into the parking space and then turn back again. Roberto Baldwin 1:30:22 You can do a tank turn so Nicole Wakelin 1:30:24 it'll pull into its parking space and plenty of time for you to flip up in the doors and hurl onto the sidewalk. Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:29 Yes, exactly. Roberto Baldwin 1:30:30 It'll do it. They'll do an E turn. You know, the Mercedes Benz, the G wagon, do that. But it'll, it'll, yeah, Nicole Wakelin 1:30:37 I don't, I don't. I don't want this. I don't want this. I mean, I would ride in it once, just to see, but it makes me feel, it hurts my head, just thinking about what that would be like to ride in. No also, the bursting into flame thing from the hoverboard still has me a little battery problem, though, on it, I know if they conquered all these problems, though, I mean, you Roberto Baldwin 1:30:57 could have got better batteries. There's just that they were super cheap, and so they were using super cheap batteries. Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:01 Yeah, this thing ain't gonna be super cheap. It's not Roberto Baldwin 1:31:05 gonna It's like the super cheap e bikes that people were buying for years, especially like in New York, for some reason, yeah, like, people are getting, like, really cheap e bikes, and then the batteries were just trash, and so they just catch on fire. Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:21 Okay? One last one, the Nissan Xterra, apparently it's coming back. Well, I've actually, actually never mind. I was gonna say something that I shouldn't say, but it's coming back. Are we allowed to say anything? Well, I mean, it's, this is reported by Motor Trend and a bunch of other sites. Okay, I saw some. There you go. There we go. I saw some. I saw the story online. Saw the story of Motor Trend and yeah, or actually, was originally reported by Bloomberg, and it was Christian Munier, who's the chairman of Nissan Americas, who told Bloomberg that they were going to relaunch the xterra Roberto Baldwin 1:32:00 All right, so we can say stuff, yeah, yeah. What do I say? Anything that was such a that was a busy week for me? Yeah, I still don't. I'm still not 100% sure what I can and cannot talk like. Nicole Wakelin 1:32:14 The number of times you do that, oh, I have a really cool thing to add. No, no, I don't. Sam Abuelsamid 1:32:21 Anyway, so the xterra, for, for those who don't remember, was the four wheel drive off road, you know, the more off road oriented SUV that Nissan had from 2000 to 2015 I think they had two generations of it, and then discontinued it in 2015 just in time for, you know, this segment to really start to take off, Roberto Baldwin 1:32:44 to explode. Bad timing all around this is like the Subaru Baja. Like, people are like, Boo Baja now, like, Oh. Like, what can you Unknown Speaker 1:32:53 have that now? Sam Abuelsamid 1:32:55 And you know, this render that that nice Motor Trend has, you know, basically looks like they told chat GPT to take a Nissan Rogue and make it off roadie. So I don't think this is what it's gonna look Nicole Wakelin 1:33:08 like. It's a cool I Roberto Baldwin 1:33:09 think we're allowed to say that we will render we can say we're not. We don't think this is what it looks like. I think if we're allowed Sam Abuelsamid 1:33:15 to say that, yeah. So anyway, the xterra is apparently going to be built at Nissan's Canton Mississippi factory, where they had previously been planning to build a couple of new EVs, including a new Nissan Maxima that and an infinity EV have apparently been put on the shelf for the foreseeable future, and they're going to build the xterra instead. What do you think? Roberto Baldwin 1:33:41 I mean, I like that the exterior took up the mantle that the Pathfinder has, sort of like lost. And I think that, you know, based on the everyone wants to go off road, but they don't really actually go off road all the time. I think this is, if it looks cool, if it's capable. I think capability is a big thing that maybe, you know, some automakers have brought back a name, but didn't really give it the chops that people wanted. I think we talked about showing it a little bit ago. Yeah, if they can, they can pass. We'll see go Nissan, I guess is what I'm excited Nicole Wakelin 1:34:21 I think that's, I mean, I'd love to see this come back. I just thought it was kind of cool back when it was out before. So, like, I hope it's, like, you said that way. I hope it's actually off road. It needs that capability. Like, there's so many things now, yeah, and that's Sam Abuelsamid 1:34:35 the problem, is there's, there's a lot more competition now than it was in 2010 2000 or 2015 Yeah, you've got, you know, wranglers and Broncos and forerunners, and even the Nissan passport or Honda passport, you know, is there going to be enough space in the market for a vehicle like this? Nicole Wakelin 1:34:54 It'll have to be really good Roberto Baldwin 1:34:55 to snag it. It's gonna be really good and really different and really tug on, you know. It's got to, they got to try to sort of build up that Bronco hype, yeah, Nicole Wakelin 1:35:04 in some way, yeah, they Nicole Wakelin 1:35:06 do. It's gonna just be an also RAM. They've got to do something big. Come on, Nissan nail it. I would like them to do that. I would like to see it succeed. Roberto Baldwin 1:35:14 All right, bummed about the max, but it was a four door sports car. Remember when it came out and the f4 4d, Sc, on the like a little sticker on the window. My uncle got one. I remember that. Sam Abuelsamid 1:35:25 Yeah, all right. Well, that is all of the stories we've got for this week. I do also have two interviews that I did a couple days ago. I talked with Micah Tinder, who's from Cox automotive. And I think earlier the summer when when we bought our EV six, I talked a little bit about the experience I had with the KBB instant cash offer program. So I talked with Micah about about that. And you know how they come up with pricing for the for used vehicles, and how that instant cash offer program works. So a lot of lot of good information in there for anybody that is is wondering how they come up with used car valuations. And you know what? How different dealers come up with different numbers? And then I also talked with Josh serfman, who is the CEO of Michigan Central, which the former Michigan Central Station Nicole Wakelin 1:36:29 still need to see that I have not seen it. It's on my list. Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:33 And and then Caroline Carolina placinski, who is the COO of Michigan Central. So you know, Michigan Central is the i Central is the organization that oversees that entire campus, and not just the train station, but also the new lab and some other stuff around there. Nicole Wakelin 1:36:55 Robbie makes train noises. He's 12. He's also make a little hand motion to to go with that, just so everyone knows. Sam Abuelsamid 1:37:05 So keep listening for those conversations coming up right after we say goodbye, Nicole Wakelin 1:37:12 my, Roberto Baldwin 1:37:13 oh, wait, I forgot to plug my my new podcast, oh, oh, tell us goodbye. So we got a SAE has a new podcast. It's the SAE automotive engineering podcast, because it's the automotive engineering magazine. We have a magazine and on the podcast, what we do is, instead of trying to, like, get the three of us who work on this magazine plus a guest, what we do instead is that we each go out and we find a person to talk to about a certain topic. I accidentally recreated American This American Life for for cars. That's like, I like, I pitched I wrote it all down, and then I was like, sent it out. And I was like, Oh, this is cool. And then I was sitting there and I was listening to This American Life. I'm like, oh, no, obviously we don't have Ira Glass or anything like that, but it's Yeah. The first one was about the state of EVs. We talked to slate and BMW. We're doing one a month right now, and then we'll probably move on more. Sam Abuelsamid 1:38:07 Anyway, Sam was high the first one. It was really good. Cool. Oh, thanks, Sam, yeah. And then I also, and don't forget, there's also the telemetry transportation daily, two minute daily hit on some news item of the day. Roberto Baldwin 1:38:24 Those are cool. I like those little short podcasts where you just like what's going on and driving to wherever you go. I guess I don't know. Sam Abuelsamid 1:38:31 Just have to find the link here to the SAE podcast. Roberto Baldwin 1:38:35 Oh, I'll send you a link, because there's a there's an issue, you can just go to Spotify or Apple Apple podcasts and look up sau automotive podcasts. I'll send you the I guess everyone uses Spotify. Can people can Sam Abuelsamid 1:38:50 Android. Most of our listeners don't whether you listen, whether using pockets or something, most of them say apple. Strangely enough, Apple podcast is number one and overcast, and then podcasts are the top three. I think Apple podcast modifies down one, five or five or six. Nicole Wakelin 1:39:07 Oh, wow. I'm gonna send you a link so you can put it in the show. Sam Abuelsamid 1:39:13 So I will, I will include that link in the show notes for today's show. So make sure that as you're as you hear this. Then, you know, go into whatever podcast player you're listening to and add that to your subscription list, Roberto Baldwin 1:39:25 because it is definitely, absolutely, yeah, the next one is Oh, EV manufacturing, so we're setting that up right now. Expert, October, Nicole Wakelin 1:39:34 so now are we Goodbye? Yes, we can say goodbye now. Now we're officially Goodbye. Goodbye. Everybody. Sam Abuelsamid 1:39:44 Hey, everybody. I am back, and today I am talking with Micah Tinder, who is senior director of strategic planning at Cox automotive. And I reached out to my friends at Cox recently, earlier this. Summer, hoping to talk to to Micah or somebody on the team there to learn a little bit more about used car valuation and and what triggered us? Michael, I don't know if Mark or Lisa told you what. What kicked this whole conversation off was the KBB Kelly Blue Book, which is part of Cox automotive, has this instant cash offer thing. So you can go in, you can get an estimate of your car's value, or the value of a car that you're considering buying, if it's a used car, and then if you're getting rid of a car, you can get an instant cash offer from dealer. So I want to learn more about the whole process of figuring out the value of used cars and how that instant cash offer program works. And so let's, let's start off with, let's start off there. You know, kind of what, what is the scope of what you do at Cox, Micah Tindor 1:41:02 at cops automotive, I have responsibility for the instant cash offer business, as well as the new effort that we have to ensure that when a consumer lands on KBB or auto trader and wants to understand the vehicle value, whether it's a value range or an instant cash offer, that it All is through one seamless platform with some guidance and in a way that makes sense, right? We don't want you to have to go to one part of the site to understand what's roughing my vehicle worth if you're very, very early on in your shopping process, and then have to go to instant cash offer later, and I have responsibility for kind of unifying that across the KBB platform. So I am delighted to be here and chat with you around all things vehicles and vehicle valuations. I've been in the industry about 17 and a half years, and the vast majority of them have been thinking about, how do you appraise a vehicle, the party is a cash offer. How do you properly account for everything as a dealer, and then how do you price it correctly? Really, that that that variable ops side has been my focus for a long time. So love space. Sam Abuelsamid 1:42:04 All right, yeah. I mean, and you mentioned auto trader, I mean, that was actually what kicked off this whole process, because my wife and I decided to buy an electric vehicle, buying a used EV, and I found the one that we ultimately ended up buying through Auto Trader. You know, when we made the decision, yeah, let's go ahead and get a, get an EV, you know, first thing I did was I went to auto trader and looked for, you know, looked up what we were looking for, and found one a couple of hours away from at a dealer that was the right vehicle at the at what turned out to be a fantastic price. And then, you know, once we located that started the process of, you know, figuring, okay, the car we're replacing, you know, how do we, you know, what's, what's our best solution there. And so tell me kind of, what's the process of doing, of of determining a value of a used car. Micah Tindor 1:43:03 The it really depends, Sam, on where you are in the journey of getting rid of your car as a consumer. And I would like to start there, because, from a KBB perspective, what we're really focused on and what we've let the industry in for almost 100 years is building confidence for the consumers by providing transparency in the process, and we've done a lot of research about consumers looking to sell their cars, whether it's peer to peer to a dealer. And the average consumer takes 77 days to get to the from the point that they start looking at a vehicle like you and your wife did on Auto Trader until maybe Sam Abuelsamid 1:43:35 77 minutes. But I figured Micah Tindor 1:43:38 that you'd probably a little bit ahead of the curve go get a little more industry knowledge than the average person. But because of that, we actually have two different complete sets of offerings at KBB. One provides consumers a value range with a very light set of engagements. So that when they're in day one to 15 of their process and they want to understand in the back of my mind roughly what my vehicle worth. So that as I go out and look at other vehicles, I know roughly how much I'm going to have to finance. They don't want to talk to a dealer, they don't want a cash offer that requires a lot of lift. That process is really all about consumer coming in, giving us their vehicle information. Of course, what we're looking to do is decode that information with a van or license plate so we can understand everything that's on the vehicle, because we don't expect everyone out in the market to be able to go through and pick each of the trim pieces correctly. We will make sure they get the proper value for their vehicle. So they're going to decode the vendor license plate. We're going to ask them a couple questions around miles, anything that can't decode, and then we're gonna go by condition tier at that point, because we're in the early stage. Just need a general range. We're gonna go Excellent, very good, good or poor. At that point you get a value range, and likely where you sit the consumer can run around with that and start to do their shopping process. And that's the first half the value range, the second half of what KBB provides consumer. It is, and it's a cash offer, which is at the point you're getting ready to transact like you your wife were is going in and doing a. Granular assessment of your vehicle so you can get $1 exact cash offer that we then pass to a network of dealers who have contractually agreed to honor that price, unless you misrepresent the damage. So the customer experience in that flow is you go in, enter your inter license plate again, that then takes you through the same series of steps around. What killers your vehicle? Anything didn't decode. Do you have extra keys? Do you do any mods? And then the big difference is, we ask you to do a granular damage assessment, and it's pretty like the average consumer. Only takes two minutes in the entire process, but it has an exploded vehicle view for interior, exterior, mechanical and little plus and minus signs, and you just go through and pull a plus sign anywhere there's damage. That then gives us the ability to accurately price the vehicle. And talk about the details, if you want, of how we go about pricing. It gives the ability to accurately price the vehicle based on the statistical averages in the market and outliers that you have entered. We give you a value, and then we connect you to up to three dealers in our network who are interested in that Sam Abuelsamid 1:45:58 vehicle at that price. Okay? And so, yeah, that was, you know, that was kind of the, at least the first part of that was the experience I went through, you know, once we decided on the car we wanted to purchase, you know, before I contacted the dealer about purchasing that car, I went to KBB and, you know, went through that process, which I've done numerous times over the years In the past when I want to bought cars, you know, in the past, this is the first time when I've, I've decided to actually sell a car to a dealer, as opposed to in the past, I've usually just sold them private property, private, private party, you know, you know, we used, used to be that we lived a house, you know, that was on a fairly busy street. I could park the car at the end of the driveway, put a for sale sign in it, and within not too much time, I would sell it. And you know, part of the way, you know, the way that figured out, you know, what price is, I'd actually go to KBB and figure, you know, here's, here's what, what this car should be worth and, and so I've done that in the past for private party sales, and this is the first time that I've used the instant cash offer part of it. So I went through that process of valuing the car, I took a bunch of photos and uploaded them, you know, and those were evaluating it came back with a price that, you know, that seemed very reasonable to me, and you know, so the first thing I did, you know, before I actually did the the went, you know, actually approved the instant cash offer. I contacted the dealer of the that we were buying the car from, and, you know, said, you know, how much will you give me for a trade in on this? And they gave me a much lower value than that. And I think one of the issues here, as part of this process is the dealers themselves. You mentioned that they're contractually obligated if they're participating in instant cash offer. This was not the instant cash offer thing with the dealer we were buying from. It was just a standard up straight up trade and you know, when, when dealers are doing, taking cars, trade in, or, you know, buying used cars, maybe talk a little bit more about that process, what, what impacts their their decision making in, how They evaluate and value a car. Micah Tindor 1:48:21 So we have been looking for the last year and a half at what do consumers expect of the process of disposing of their vehicle, both peer to peer, as you mentioned doing in the past, and selling to dealers we recently, and then we've also done a lot of research around what are the normal dealer processes. And if I put my kind of retail hat back on, going back to the dealership world, when a vehicle comes into a dealership, what they're going to do is put the VIN into a inventory management tool. Cox has one called fiato that about 68% of the market uses. And it's going to do some decodes, and it's going to provide you relevant, competitive set vehicles. So vehicles like that same your make, model, trend, rough, mile, band and Keller. And it's going to tell you, depending on where you put, your buying number with the consumer, your appraised value, what your average cost to market is. Meaning, let's say I offer you 25,000 for your vehicle. Sam, it's going to tell me that I am about 2000 more expenses than average, or 1000 less expenses than average. And then what I do as a dealer is do retail back, which means I'm gonna figure out what I sell the vehicle for, and there are some tools in that pricing to help me understand what I'm gonna sell for. Then I'm going to minus off any pack the dealership has, and a pack is pre built profit that a dealer principal adds that automatically comes off. The value of the vehicle recon costs, any transport costs, anything that's a cost. And that's going to get me to the max number that I could give you on your trade as a dealer. At that point, most dealers are going to try you on for a little bit lower number. Everyone likes to haggle, right? Everyone negotiate. No one's gonna give you the top number I'm. Off the RIP. So most dealers going to take that retail number, take all the costs off, take their max number, and then come in with something lower and see if they can get you to bite there, try to steal a deal with what dealers call it, and then they'd like to try to work their way up. What is interesting is the consumer perspective has really changed during covid and through now where it used to be, consumers would go to maybe one or two online sites, at max, and then they'd show up at a dealer. And a lot of consumers would show up at a dealer, never having gone through an online appraisal process, and the dealer would be the first one to talk about what a vehicle is worth. Now, the average consumer has 2.6 cash offers by the time they arrive at a dealership, and if they're millennial or Gen Z, they're a lot closer to four to six cash offers, and the consumers now have a set of expectations, right? You have all these different online experiences. You get you understand your vehicles between 23,020 5000 now I, as a consumer, show me up, showing up the dealership, expecting you as the dealer, to help me understand, why is there a difference? Where is my car actually in there they want, and we all as consumers want the dealer to kind of partner with us through that process. So one of the areas that dealers are really trying to work on improving right now is when they reach that, that appraised amount, that can be the max value they're willing to give, trying to understand, how much are you expecting to get, where do they sit in that range? And where do they need to come in on their initial offer? Because anytime, let's say the dealer's top is 25 you I have an offer for 25 and you offer me 23,000 I'm gonna feel like you're ripping me off if you don't give me any explanation. So dealers more and more trying to close that gap, and it is a gap in the market, but the way dealers can do it, on average, is understand what they could sell the vehicle for, look for damages, to reduce the value of the vehicle based on damages, take all the other amounts off, get their max amount, and then try to work as low as they can versus that in the negotiation with Sam Abuelsamid 1:51:50 you. Okay, yeah, so you know, the the car that we were getting rid of was a Honda Civic, and the dealer we were buying from was a Hyundai dealer in Ohio. You know, he offered us a price, a trade in price that was about about $5,200 less than what the instant cash offer was showing. And so I said, Yeah, never mind. I will dispose of the I'll get rid of the car somewhere, somewhere else. So we went and picked up the car we were buying from that dealer. We bought, we bought from that dealer because it was a good price on that car. But then, you know, I had my, I got my, my three offers actually might have even been more than three, because I was getting calls from a bunch of dealers, like within within minutes after I, you know, accepted the price that instant cash offer gave me, you know, I was, I started getting calls from from dealers. And so the the first one I responded to was, was a Chrysler Jeep, Dodge Ram dealer that is literally about three minutes away from me, you know. So it was convenient. So I took the car over there, and they, after taking a look at the car, basically offered me the same amount that the dealer we bought the other car from the Hyundai dealer, which was about more than $5,000 below the instant cash offer. And so I said, and also at the same time that I did the instant cash offer, I had also gone on Carvana, you know, to see what I could get there. And I got a I got a price from there which was a little bit lower than what the instant cash offer was, but still pretty reasonable. So I declined that, that offer from the stellantis dealer, and the next one on the list was actually a Honda dealer, which was the one that we originally bought the car from eight years ago. And so I called them and said, hey, you know, are you still interested? And you know, if so, you know, can I bring the car over for you take a look at it? And said, Yeah, okay, I'll be there in 15 minutes. So I went, I went straight from the stellantis dealer to the Honda dealer. They, went through, they did an inspection of the car, they came back with a price as well that was also a little bit less than what the instant cash offer was, but it was a lot closer. It was, it was actually the same price as the as what Carvana was offering. And I opted to take that. But, you know, maybe talk a little bit more about, you know, how that ultimate pricing choice, or that pricing decision, you know, for the instant cash offer works. Micah Tindor 1:54:31 So the way instant cash offer works is a dealer signs on to be a partner with Kelly Blue Book instant cash offer, and they're doing that because they want that trust bridge, right? You come to KBB, we give you value trust KBB, and we bridge that trust into a dealer as a starting point to remove some of the price negotiation that everyone likes to fight on. So a dealer's responsibility under the contract is, when a vehicle arrives, they're responsible to go out and confirm the damages you've entered, so you went through the experience and probably entered bits of damage. Damages here and there, considering the age of the vehicle, maybe a few dents, few paint chips, that's safe to assume the dealer's responsibility, then, is to go through and identify, is there any damage that you might have missed. And we asked the dealer to do that for two reasons. One is the at times, the consumer, again, not as much industry knowledge as you may not know how to correctly assess something. I may think, in my mind, that my vehicle is really good for its age, and it may have its paint chips, some balding tires and some sunburn, but for its age, it's good to me, but from a dealer perspective, they have to look at is kind of resell that car. And is anyone out there in the retail market desire to buy that car. So one is the dealer supposed to work with the consumer to ensure that they missed anything that the dealer can identify it. If the dealer does identify new damage, they don't get to pick what price it is to repair. They have to go into our system and say, Oh, Sam, missed a bumper repair. They're going to log, log it as a bumper repair. We will reprice the vehicle with the bumper repair so that there's visibility to you and to the or will deliver a side by side that has green lettering that shows the adjustment and the adjusted price. So we asked the dealer to do it, first, to ensure that it's accurate, and then second is because the dealer has to buy the car, and we have a backstop guarantee on that vehicle as KBB Ico, we want to ensure that the dealer in our network are willing to honor the price of the vehicle that we set for the correct damage. So need to adjust damage they will. And in order to do that, we need to know what is the dealer confirmed amount that we will send them a check for if they don't want the vehicle at the end. Because reality for any dealer is each dealer has a really a niche of what they sell. Certain dealers are phenomenal at selling f1 50 certain dealers are phenomenal at selling kia's. And we don't expect a dealer to always be able to take the vehicle into inventory profitably, but we want to ensure that you get the right number for your vehicle based on the condition. So what we asked the dealer to do contractually is make adjustments for damage that are accurate, whatever that Final Adjusted value we deliver after they adjust for damages to buy the vehicle that price, and then if they don't want it, we'll backstop it to make sure that you have had the experience of delivering that value. Now, all that said, we do work with over 5000 dealers across the US, and as with any dealer, it's employing 1015, 20, 3040, people on the sales side, there are times where sales people make mistakes, whether accidentally or intentionally, where the process might not go exactly as expected. So we do have a call center for any consumer who has an experience that they don't think matches that brand promise from KBB, where they can call in, and we'll help sort through that process with them the dealer, Sam Abuelsamid 1:57:46 okay, it sounds like, I mean, it sounds like a very reasonable approach, you know, obviously you're, you know, you want to get the get the consumer the best price they can. But you know, the dealers are businesses, and, you know, they've got to make money. And if they, if they don't think that they can sell, you know, sell particular cars you mentioned. You know, some dealers might be really good at selling Kias. Others might be really good at selling f1 50s, stellantis dealer, maybe a little less confident about selling a Honda Civic. And so, you know, maybe they were, you know, because there's, it sounds like, I mean, there's always going to be some amount of subjective judgment in evaluating the car. You know, you've set standard prices for various bits of damage, you know, for based on your valuation models, and they have to use those standard prices. But you know, whether or not the the whoever's doing the inspection of the dealer says, Yeah, I'm gonna let that go, you know, or Yeah, I'm gonna count that paint chip so they've got, they there's some flexibility there. And how they how they do that if they decide that they're less confident about selling a particular car, Micah Tindor 1:58:58 I think that's a good call out Sam, as part of that appraisal process where the dealer goes out and walks the car with you and looks at damage. There are personality differences, and there might be money motivational differences. I might be super attentive to details, and I might nitpick the car, and I might be accurate. Let's because I'm attentive to detail, and my brother might not be as attentive to detail. Might do the exact same thing at the dealership, and you could get different values. In fact, one of the things that we learned when we did the dealer survey of what is your appraisal process and does it match consumer expectations, is if you have four people appraise the same vehicle, take a guess at what percent of the time you see the same price. Sam Abuelsamid 1:59:36 I would say at best, it's probably low single digits percentage. Micah Tindor 1:59:40 That's a good guess, because it's visit zero because of subjectivity at the human level, every person's experience is different. What they like in a vehicle is different. What they don't like is different because of that subjectivity. No single person dealership replace the vehicle the same way. So one of the things we're working on right now that will really. Next year is adding AI into the damage detection process, where we'll ask you, as a consumer, Sam, to go around and take a couple framed in pictures, meaning, well, that little white outline that you overlay on your vehicle, we'll have ai do the damage detection. We'll have aI then tell us what's wrong and make the adjustments. Then you and the dealer both can, can, can work with us to make adjustments, versus the AI if something was wrong. But one of the things that we're looking to do is, from a subjectivity perspective, we're looking to normalize. We should reach a point in the industry with data where a vehicle is appraised the same way. Now, dealers still, in the end, outside the ICO process, just general dealer processes are going to put different pricing on a vehicle regardless if you get the same appraisal process. But we're really looking to help dealers standardize the appraisal process to have less human variance and let that variance really be around. What is supply and demand uniquely from my dealership look like in how much money I put on that car. Sam Abuelsamid 2:00:57 Yeah, and I believe Manheim auctions, which is another part of Cox, another Cox business. You're already using some of that. Ai, I think you at your facilities, your auction facilities. There's a system where cars drive through and it takes a bunch of photos from various angles, and already doing that sort of analysis is that using the same technology, or building on that same technology base for what you're talking about here, for the instant cash offer. Micah Tindor 2:01:27 Yep, that's exactly right. Sam, it's we call them fixed imaging tunnels at our Manheim location, it's about 100 feet long. Tunnel that you drive through has all kinds of cameras and lights, all kinds of angles, obviously, with the cell phone, with dirt shadows, instability in my hands, it's a lot harder. So the team has been working for a while on converting that core technological capability of photos to AI damage capture into the ability to do it on a mobile phone. We're testing it right now with the intent of deploying that that same technology in a more mobile, friendly version here next Sam Abuelsamid 2:02:02 year. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, you know, I ended up selling the car to the Honda dealer. We originally bought it from for a price that was, you know, not, not exactly what the original cash offer was, but, but it was, it was close enough to it that I was satisfied with it, you know, after they pointed out some, some things that I had, I had missed, you know, as you said, you know, it's, you know, the owner. You know, when you're living with something for a number of years, you know, the changes over, over time, subtly. You know, there's going to be things that the owner is not going to catch, that somebody looking at it for the first time is, you know, and also that is arguably a professional is going to flag. And, you know, these are things that we know we're going to have to fix before we turn around and sell it. Plus, you know, Honda dealer probably, you know, they could probably get that stuff fixed up and turn that car and sell it to somebody else, probably within a week or two after they after they bought it. So, so, yeah, in the end, you know, it was a it was a good experience. It was a lot less hassle than trying to sell it private party. So, you know, you know, I'm glad I went that that that approach. Micah Tindor 2:03:15 In the end, what we're trying to do is have a one stop disposal shop for consumers at KBB. Consumers already come to us as a trusted source to understand what the vehicle is worth, what vehicle they should buy next, do that research. So we want to provide all the options that you need to dispose of most easily right there. We have a peer to peer site that we've been working on, building out for a while. We have the dealer side. I'm glad to hear in the end, it worked out that is always our goal is to try to help balance the process, make it as easy as possible for you as a consumer, make it easy as possible for the dealer, and provide transparency as part of it. So I'm glad to get worked out for you. In the end, it's a product that I really liked. Haven't been in the industry a long time, but also hating to buy and sell cars from a dealer. I really like the transparency the process brings. So I'm glad that it worked out Sam Abuelsamid 2:04:02 well, yeah, and it sounds like, you know, with some of the things that you're working on, that it should get even more consistent in the future. So, you know, I think it's, it's something I would probably recommend to people to look at as an alternative if they're, you know, if they're, if they're buying a car, and need to get rid of an existing vehicle and and, you know, you know, don't necessarily, aren't, aren't necessarily happy with what they're being offered on a trade in, you know, this is this. I think this is a very reasonable alternative. Micah Tindor 2:04:37 I agree. Our goal is to provide the correct value for a vehicle based on on your inputs, and that give you the dealers to work with. In the end, it's going to come down to who do you want to work with? Sam, did they treat you correctly? Did they explain the process so that you feel confident in it? And for any of consumers out there, that that's our goal, and as we move into. 26 there's a number of things we're working on. Just try to more and more standardize the process, make it easier and easier for there to be that trust, that transparency and confidence. Because in the end, most people will rate buy and sell your car below visiting your dentist, which doesn't sound very exciting. And we want to do our part sitting in as that trust bridge between the consumer and the dealer to help make it an easier process, and hopefully we see it notch up above dentists here in the next year or two, as we do some some Sam Abuelsamid 2:05:25 great well. Micah, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Micah Tindor 2:05:31 Thank you, Sam. Appreciate you having me on. Appreciate being part of what you're doing here with the listeners. Sam Abuelsamid 2:05:38 You hear Josh Sam Abuelsamid 2:05:39 cerfman, CEO of Michigan, Central Carolina. Plucinsky, COO of new lab, right? Michigan, Central Michigan, central okay. And Shawn white Sean, your role is what? Director of Strategy, Director of Strategy, okay, so, you know, we're in this room now that has just been the displays in here have just been finished up. And I think this probably a good place to start. Because, yeah, I think when most people think of Michigan Central, they think of this particular building, the train station, right? Yeah, and, and the remarkable restoration has been done on this building. But let's step back a little bit. When you you know, from your perspective, a new lab, or rather, as Michigan Central, it's actually a whole complex and whole Speaker 2 2:06:29 campus, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's really a 30 acre innovation district. We think of it as both a tech and culture hub, because really, it's about bringing all of that together and across that campus, we're fostering what is really a unique world, leading community of entrepreneurs working with businesses, academia, philanthropy, government, corporates really like nowhere else, focused on the future of mobility, next generation manufacturing, application, robotics and AI to any of a number of uses alternative energies. So really, in the you know, centered around these beautiful, two old, historic, incredibly iconic and significant buildings. The future is being invented in them. This is kind of beautiful, yeah. So the two buildings is that the train station here with the tower, and then across the street is new lab, which is the former Detroit School Book Depository, right? That's right prior to that, yeah, then So, so what? I guess you know those two anchor buildings, what? What would what would you if someone were walked through new lab? What would they find in there today? What's in there? Carolina Pluszczynski 2:07:40 So I think you would see that that, to me, is where the start. We are co locating startups and entrepreneurs in the government and corporates together. They're building their prototypes, they're having those collisions and talking about fundraising and really trying to break down the barriers for them to get to scale. And so that work is all happening in that in that building, they can go up and they can talk to the state of Michigan. They can have the conversations with other other entrepreneurs to make their products better. We have companies that are co locating with some of the startups on in robotics to help them inform their robotics arms, so that they work in their plants, or if they launch, they can put them in their facilities. If you actually see the work happening. It's not Sam Abuelsamid 2:08:29 theoretical. Yeah. I mean, I've been fortunate enough to go through new lab several times over the last couple of years, since it opened for various events, and met with a bunch of the companies in there. So you've got companies like grounded RV, that's building electric they've expanded to 12,000 square foot warehouse. We have ours. Their growth just keeps pushing, pushing more for to more scale for them. So Right? That's fantastic. I was actually in Elkhart, Indiana last week for the big Sam Abuelsamid 2:09:00 RV open house that Thor industries hosts there. And there's various other companies that are also there. You know, it's basically a dealer shelf for RVs. And I saw grounded was there. Now they had one of their RVs there. It's a really interesting idea. But then, you know, you've got other things. You've got some drone companies in here. You've got companies doing some interesting things with manufacturing. It's electric. And I think volt post is also in here as well. So you get at least two different companies in the EV charging space. So I guess is there, are there any limitation to what kinds of companies you will allow to come into new lab? Carolina Pluszczynski 2:09:40 New lab has a has an application process that they go through, and they're really focused on hard tech startups, because we have the resources for that, right? We have the resources to help the build, bring the resources that I've been able to test in the real world. But I think mission, what Michigan central does is they wrap around with the other types of. Of stakeholders that we need in this ecosystem. So we have university partners, we have corporates that we are starting to plug in. Actually, Cummings is actually in the building today. They're one of the first companies that actually have taken space here because they believe the value and the proximity is something that's really important. I think all of those other pieces coming together is really what makes our ecosystem unique. Josh Sirefman 2:10:26 But you know, on your question, it's there's so many applications of technology towards outcomes that aren't even known. We don't. We're not in the business of saying this company's not what they're doing doesn't apply. It's more about where they headed with it. What do we think about think about the potential for them? And I think through that, what we found is that while mobility is the core, we have companies doing all kinds of work that has threads to either mobility or other spaces where, over time, it's all going to merge together. We even have a company focused on capturing data from plants and how they communicate and to think about the use cases can be applied in a million different ways. So, you know, we really, the ecosystem is almost naturally growing and building on itself, though. Sam Abuelsamid 2:11:09 Yeah, and mobility, really the core, the key to mobility, to make future mobility workable, is that ecosystem. You need all the pieces. It's not just a term one thing, like building an EV you need charging you need back end services. If you're going to do Sam Abuelsamid 2:11:26 RoboTaxi or automated shuttle services, there's all kinds of pieces that are part of that puzzle. The other Carolina Pluszczynski 2:11:32 thing that you need is talent, and so we spent a lot of energy around thinking about the jobs of the future. We have a very robust pipeline of STEM programming for kids, where kids are learning how to fly drones and getting their pilot's license, where they're learning how to code. Here, a Boys and Girls Club will be opening soon, and they're partnering with us on those types of technologies we do adult education as well, because they're in this building in East Station. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, you got to have the talent in a lot of our startups. Then you've said at the pipeline to hire folks we do fellowships with our university partners to be able to keep the talent in Michigan and to help the startups grow. Josh Sirefman 2:12:15 So it's not just the work in the buildings. We're standing in the middle of a three mile radius where you can test out of line of sight, use of drones in the urban context, but you really can't do anywhere else in the country. And so what Carolina was describing about all those pieces, it actually comes together in like real world highlighting and testing and application and accelerated product development. Yeah. And I think recently, Wasn't there an announcement from leather, from um tree, or M city, about setting up a corridor working with the state, between Ann Arbor and the Michigan central campus, that they're right, or for some of that out of out of the line of sight testing, yeah, Carolina Pluszczynski 2:12:55 really robust rail lines that that you can follow, because with drones out of sight, you can't fight for people. And so you think about the rail lines, when you think about the waterfront, we're situated in a very unique environment that has all of those opportunities to be able to kind of push the boundaries on beyond that site. Sam Abuelsamid 2:13:13 The last time I was here new lab month, month and a half or so ago, for an event, I was talking to one company that was in the it was a drone company that was working. They were already testing their drones delivering parts to another, another building nearby here from they would make manufacturing some parts of here in their space, in new lab, I think, and using the drones to fly those parts back and forth. Carolina Pluszczynski 2:13:39 Yeah, that was aerial loop. Yes, that one aerial loop. They've done about five to 600 flights back and forth. They've gotten beyond line of sight waivers. And so they're the one that we did a test about a week ago where we flew to Hart plava from Michigan Central and Donna. And actually, I lived to the mayor. Yeah. So just to show the real world application of it, right? And and one of the pilots, you have to have a pilot where you launch and a pilot where you land when you do, be honest, line of sight. The pilot the launch was one of the kids that was trained here. He was 17, and others, excuse me, drone pilot license, so he was actually applying the drone, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 2:14:18 So how many companies are working out of ulab now, at this point, Josh Sirefman 2:14:23 within the new lab community, companies about 180 Okay, overall, when you factor in all of the entities working missions, but we're getting close to about 250 Yeah. So shifting the focus over to this building, to the station, you know, obviously it's a different kind of environment from what you've got in new lab. You know, for the companies in here, you've got office space and and other facilities available for them, yeah. Well, if you think about and you've spent a lot of time in new lab, you know how lively the public space is, and that's a key part of it, where we always. Up being happening, and it's about people meeting each other and mixing that holds true at an even greater scale sheet during so the ground floor today is an example. We constantly have things happening. We're now part of the west side of the ground floor is under construction because our hotel, the Nomad, Detroit, Michigan Central, is starting to get built out. So the environment here will be very lively all this time, but what we kind of do is create an ecosystem where people are going back and forth between the two spaces. So in addition to the office space, we have additional membership space, a working space, similar to what you see across the street that we're building out now, where we'll have it continue that expansion of the membership community. And the goal is really that it sort of seamless between the two. And yes, by definition, slightly different restraints in this building, but we want that same entrepreneurial energy and that same mixing of people to be happening here as well. And yeah, so now at this point here in the station, you've got the ground floor that is mostly kind of in the vet space. A lot of like, Oh, now we have summer retail. We'll have more over time, more food and beverage over time, and then lots of folks in the tower the top five floors will be when you a map those five floors, by the way, never finished, never occupies since 1913 Brian, and we've got Ford with couple of its really forward facing business units. Ford's model e team is based in model E and integrated systems. And we've got Carolina mentioned. We have our youth floor, the girls club, and our STEM training facility, all kinds of programs happening, and over time, we'll be adding others, plus the membership. And so it becomes this really active, vibrating mix of activity all the time. So how's this all funded? All the work where the buildings was funded by this extraordinary and catalytic investment from Ford Motor Company, Michigan central itself. We start over time. We have different ways now that we can try to generate generate revenue. And the goal is that we become self sustaining. We have tons of great partners. The state of Michigan, City of Detroit, a number of foundations have allowed us to scale programming. We have corporate partners. Google is a great partner. So over time, we keep building that community that can really help scale this and ensure that we're driving and driving that ecosystem. So for the companies, the organizations that are part of this communities, 250 ish companies now, are they? Are they paying rent for the space that they're using, or for the facility. We most of it is structured around membership fees, okay, but yeah, I mean, we, everybody is committed to being here, and it's, you know, obviously we're, we're building something special that I think people want to be a part of, and and we also have to make it work, yeah, so at the top of this, you mentioned a tech and a cultural hub, you know, let's dip into the cultural part of it. What? What else is going on here besides all the the tech community that that's building stuff? What else is going Yeah? You know, essentially, we, we don't think about it as two separate sayings. So, for example, we have a group foundation funding to build an art and technology program. So we've got 23 artists in residence, actually, in new lab, who are able to explore their medium, use the shops and create things and really wrestle with technology issues and questions. We do a ton in this, building a public program where we want to bring people in. Want to make it a really dynamic environment. Always where it's something a little bit unexpected, it's a little bit different, and that's because the skin this size of sort of we're creating a forward looking environment so focused on innovation, but we love to have all kinds of people here and and and all on this premise that everybody is capable of innovating. Like innovation isn't just somebody sitting and designing software, or, you know, a somebody just, you know, building a prototype. It's, it's the energy and then the environment and the interactions that really fuel the, I would Carolina Pluszczynski 2:19:15 just say, the part of the vision around this building. I mean, you know, the love for this building being in this in Detroiter was to give the first floor at least back to the community and make them feel woken to come, to come into the community. I mean, for a long time, this building separated Corktown some Southwest, and so having activity that's here, where the kids can come and just hang out. And there was chess club on the weekend a couple of weeks ago, where kids are learning how to play chess. There was movies during winter at the station, where you could come and hang out, and kids could sit on a rug and watch movies. We want that energy here, and we want everyone to feel Speaker 2 2:19:51 welcome to come in. So when there aren't events like today, there's the Ford pro accelerate event. At other times, is the ground floor basically open to the community most of the time. Yeah, most attends open to the public and every day and and we try, we can't always balance everything, but we try to make sure that this corridor is open to the public every day, that people can come in and look at some of the spaces. So, you know, we're still learning, how do we mount unsold things, but the goal is, Carolina said this to be a real public asset. Yeah. I mean, yeah, having been through here a few times now, you know, I highly encourage anyone who's in the area who hasn't seen it yet to take a walk through and just just explore. It's amazing. Yeah, and are you also doing? Are there tours available guided tours? Yes, we do private guided tours as you go to our our website for that, or Detroit history tours website, we we cannot. The demand is extraordinary. Beyond that, all of our capacity gets filled, and we add capacity as we can. But we love for people to be able to do this. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being with the free race visitor. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, like anytime. Appreciate it. I.