Roberto Baldwin (00:00)
go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:02)
This is episode four hundred and twenty six of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid of Telemetry from Telemetry, something like that.

Nicole Wakelin (00:10)
of telemetry

with telemetry. I am Nicole Wakelin with Top Speed of Top Speed at Top Speed.

Roberto Baldwin (00:11)
telemetry.

and I am Roberto

Baldwin of Everywhere. NSAE International.

Nicole Wakelin (00:20)
Ooh.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (00:25)
which is international, which is everywhere on the planet. Antarctica, I'm there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27)
That is true. Well, I mean, SAE

is also involved in aerospace ⁓ engineering. Yeah. So, you know, there's rocket scientists that are part of SAE and, you know, they write, you know, rocket papers and satellite stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (00:34)
medical stuff.

Nicole Wakelin (00:43)
Kid

papers.

Roberto Baldwin (00:44)
So we

have ⁓ a plethora of actual magazines at SAE. They go out to members and to folks who just want magazines. And one of them, printed on paper and like I write articles that end up in printed magazines that get shipped out to, I don't know, a bunch of people. One of the magazines is Medical Briefs, Medical Design Briefs. It is for people in the medical field. Somehow, I'm not sure how, I'm on the list for that.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52)
You mean like print it on paper and everything?

Nicole Wakelin (00:55)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:12)
So am

I. I get that one too.

Roberto Baldwin (01:13)
I get, yeah,

yeah, so I get the medical design briefs. I don't, okay, and I try to get it to my wife who works in the medical field. She's like, I don't wanna read that. She's like, I'm at home. I'm at home. So yeah, so we have automotive engineering and off highway and plane and tech briefs, but we also have medical stuff. We got our thumbs in every pie. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (01:21)
Ha.

Nicole Wakelin (01:22)
It's like, this is not my thing.

There you go, a little bit of everything.

Ha ha ha!

Sam Abuelsamid (01:43)
Speaking of pies, have you had any lately, Nicole?

Nicole Wakelin (01:45)
No, I haven't. did have some cake this week though, because it was Russ's birthday about a tiramisu cake. It pretty tasty at Whole Foods. It was really yummy. It good cake. I wanted to their cakes a try. I highly recommend Whole Foods' tiramisu cake, people. It's yummy.

Roberto Baldwin (02:00)
So, wait, is Hiramasu...

Nicole Wakelin (02:04)
Normally it's just, it's like, I don't know, like, it's maybe a couple inches. So imagine it's layers of it, so it's bigger and they use cake and you still do the coffee flavor with the cream and the like, really heavy cocoa powder. I think there were some ladyfingers around, like in one layer, but there's like the really dark cocoa, you know, they sprinkle on top, like that layer of cocoa and the, and it's like soaked with the coffee thing. So it's it's tiramisu cake in cake form.

Roberto Baldwin (02:08)
It's Hiramisu, yeah. So it's just like... stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10)
It's a bunch of layers of.

There's still the lady fingers in there somewhere.

Roberto Baldwin (02:26)
Yeah.

Huh.

Everything's cake for him now.

Nicole Wakelin (02:34)
It's Mm-hmm. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (02:39)
Well, what have you been driving Nicole?

Nicole Wakelin (02:42)
I have been driving the Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally, which is really fun. So I haven't driven a Mach-E in a while. I just haven't. And so this one comes in my driveway and it is Velocity Blue Metallic. So it's really, really bright. And instead of the, I think it's standard with these sort of white wheels. There's like a black wheel and they're very like aerodynamic. So they look like plates. They're just flat and saucer shaped. Like there's not a lot of texture to them. And it says,

rally on the side and has like this black hood graphic and it has like yeah like a crazy real spoiler. This thing looks ridiculous sitting in the driveway. It's really cool and like all that looks at first I'm like this looks totally overdone and then I stared at him like I kind of love this. It looks really good and it has the putt-a-lights that look like little Mustang, the little Mustang logo when that's cool. The galloping pony.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:34)
The Galloping Pony.

Nicole Wakelin (03:36)
⁓ I was going to say prancing pony. I'm like, that's not right. ⁓ I was like wrong company. It's like, that is not the right company. Yeah. This one isn't dancing. This one is like, I am fast. What?

Sam Abuelsamid (03:39)
Ferrari.

Roberto Baldwin (03:40)
That's a whole other company. And that's funny, it's like, oh hey, I'm dancing. What is that? Versace? Verma? Anyway,

there's a name for dancing. Dressage, dancing horses.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:52)
Dr. Saj.

Nicole Wakelin (03:54)
dressage?

But they don't really dance on their back legs. They dance on all four, like...

Roberto Baldwin (03:59)
Well those are, yeah, those are weak, weak ass lame. mean, the fancy one, yeah. Yeah, that's the robust, like their dance, yeah, they're like they're doing a thriller dance back and forth. That's what it's in the middle of the thriller dance. You know where it puts the paws off? That's paws, it's hooves. Hooves, hooves, it's hooves goes up, dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Anyway, that's the Ferrari Francing Pony.

Nicole Wakelin (04:02)
These are the Ferrari's fancy Italian, just a pony. Well, I just had, I have just had.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:09)
You get bipedal dancing horses.

Nicole Wakelin (04:15)
god, it does look like a thriller dance.

Oh my God, that really does look like that now that you say that. But mine

Sam Abuelsamid (04:26)
Ha ha ha.

Nicole Wakelin (04:27)
was not mine was the the galloping Mustang look with all just erger arg. This is super fun to drive. I really enjoyed this. it's it has, you know, the people that argue about it this is the EV. think it's him who doesn't know the Mustang Maki is an EV. The rally is the fancy tricked out like I'm going to go rally in the dirt in this version of it. I don't think I would do that.

Roberto Baldwin (04:33)
Yeah, right on.

Nicole Wakelin (04:53)
Probably, I mean you can and people did because when they launched this and we're seeing people going out in the dirt and driving this and having their good old time. But can I just share with you? So the highway suddenly came to a stop not that far from our house and it's like four lanes and then there's this grass like median and then there's the turn lanes. And if I caught that the traffic was backing up because there was some kind of issue right at my exit, I could have just taken that exit. It's one of those that will let you go straight through, out the other side and keep going. And I could just buzz right by and I was like.

Roberto Baldwin (05:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nicole Wakelin (05:22)
Oh,

I can't do it. then I was like, oh.

If I just drove over this little median and that's like, wait, how big is the current? Well, this is the rally version. I'm like, I don't think so, but literally I'm watching like, I was watching like pickup trucks and Wranglers. Yeah. It was like pickup trucks and Wranglers and Broncos are all like, brr brr brr. like, yeah, no, I shouldn't.

Roberto Baldwin (05:35)
There's there's there's not a lot of curves in the wild I'll just say

Sam Abuelsamid (05:35)
It's it.

Yeah, well it.

It's important to keep in

mind when you have the Mach-E Rally that despite the fact that this thing has been styled to look kind of like a 1980s, early 90s rally car with those fancy white wheels and the big spoiler on the back, it still only has 5.9 inches of ground clearance. ⁓ So unless you really want to scrape that battery pack,

Nicole Wakelin (05:53)
Yes.

huh. Yes.

Exactly. I was like, for all of it can do it, can do it in the dirt. And I was looking at the curb, which was.

Yeah, it was not there. And I'm like, how big is that curb? I'm like, too big. I did not do it. I did not go forward. If there are issues with your car, I did not hump the little grassy median to go through traffic in the breakdown or in the exit lane. But so it's it's to the point it's rally, but like if you're going to drive in the dirt and have fun with it, but you don't want to drive over anything other than dirt in it, like larger.

pebbles, a small curb, don't do that, because it really just doesn't have the clearance for it. Otherwise, though, this is incredibly fun. It looks fabulous. It's very fun to drive. It has lots of power. has 480 horsepower, 700 pound feet of torque. So, you know, it goes. It's not a very big vehicle, so it's really fun. It has the extended range battery, which is the only way that you can get this one, which is 265 miles of range.

When I fully charged it sitting in my driveway here and it's been chilly, it's not quite giving me 265. It keeps charging, fully charging, saying it's like around 258, 259. So it's not giving me it, but it's cold. I mean, it's really.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:12)
It adjusts

the estimate for your ambient temperature.

Nicole Wakelin (07:16)
Yeah, and it's definitely getting cold. Yeah, well, I wasn't driving like that. I didn't drive over it. I restrained myself.

Roberto Baldwin (07:16)
Also how you drive, if you got lead foot.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:18)
Yes, true. I mean, if you're consistently driving over highway medians and stuff like that, you know, it's gonna it's gonna drop it down.

Roberto Baldwin (07:22)
Yeah, if you're, if you always put it in

sport mode or rally mode, it's gonna, yeah. But then you, like someone else gets in and they adjust it. if I, when I'm driving back from LA, because you're driving against a headwind, I'm doing 85, cause I just want to get home. So I'm flying. The first few days when I get back, our IONIQ 5 tells me that our, like the maximum range is like 235 miles. Because I was driving it like a

Nicole Wakelin (07:28)
Yeah, did. Maybe.

Yeah.

maximum range, one mile. Yeah. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (07:52)
bad out of hell, because I just want to get home. It's usually how it works.

Nicole Wakelin (07:53)
Yeah, well, was not, was not, was driving it responsibly. I want, and, but so it was coming in slightly less, but it has gotten cold. Like it was in the twenties here last night. So I think the temperature dropped and I think, I think it's, yeah, I think that the cold is starting to make things.

Roberto Baldwin (08:06)
Ooh, that's chilly.

Nicole Wakelin (08:10)
things know that it's cold. like every plant in my yard is completely dead now. Battery doesn't get the same range. That's how you know. You're like, oh, your battery's not going to get the right range. Look at the plants. You're in trouble. Right. So, but it's very fun. mean, it's, this is, it's a fun little car. There's seating for five. I think it has three. I was trying to think three in the back, but that tells you how, how tight the back looks. I was like, wait, is this a two or a three in the back seat? Like it's not a very big back seat. There's not a lot of clearance.

Roberto Baldwin (08:20)
your your battery.

Nicole Wakelin (08:40)
for your legs, for your knees. Yeah, like really it's a not 30 year olds, like little kiddos. But it is super fun to drive. I love the big screen that they have. It's very easy to drive. The power, you you have that exactly what you expect from an EV. You press the accelerator, the thing moves and it handles beautifully. It really does have fantastic handling. That's where you kind of feel the sporty.

Roberto Baldwin (08:41)
Your three children, it's for your three children. Like young children, not like they're in their 30s and you're taking them to...

Nicole Wakelin (09:09)
Like you're not going to go over rocks and stuff with this. You're not. Probably none of you are going to actually go rally driving in this. But it does give you that extra little bit of handling like it handles a little bit better. You feel the sportiness in it. It is if you enjoy driving, it's a very engaging drive. You know, some EVs, they're all fast. They all accelerate really fast. They're all like that impressive torque, but they don't all handle.

in an engaging way. sometimes I can find EVs sort of flat. They're so mellow because there's no engine, because there's no rumble, because there's nothing. This was still pretty engaging. So I thoroughly enjoyed driving this. I thought it was really fun. Pricing is not cheap, but it's not crazy. I put it together online. it's $63,170. Yeah, so not cheap. But what do you want to take a guess at our?

Sam Abuelsamid (10:03)
It's less than a wagon of your

ass.

Nicole Wakelin (10:05)
Yeah. Less than a wagon of your ass. Unless you're taking advantage now. I think you can get a wagon of your ass for like 35 cents. But what do you think the, um, the destination is on the, on the Mustang Maki rally right now? You said 18. Oh, Sam, what did you cheat it? Didn't you? Do you have a Ford? What do you have? I'm like, does he have a Ford this week? And he knows no, you have a rant. It's like, he's cheating. So Sam wins, but I feel like he's cheating. Robbie, I'm giving it to you anyway. I get to say who wins on my, my guess.

Roberto Baldwin (10:05)
⁓ I'm... 1800.

You

What'd I say, 18? I think I said 18 just now.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:18)
1995.

I just remember from the last time I looked it up.

Roberto Baldwin (10:23)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (10:26)
No, I do not.

Ha

Nicole Wakelin (10:34)
⁓ I know you could have another Ford car like you could have the same car next week. I'd be like, I don't know. Fourteen hundred dollars. I'll forget. ⁓ So the Mustang rally, it's really fun. You know, if you want that sporty kind of flair, I feel like this is a lot about style, not just like looking pretty, but like it's got the sport seats and it's cool, like white plastic kind of thing in the back of the sport seats. It's look really striking.

Roberto Baldwin (10:35)
Robbie has the memory of a gnat so he wins. That's... I got a participation award.

Nicole Wakelin (11:02)
It just looks good. Like it's the kind of car people look at it. Not because it's a Mustang, not because it's an EV, because it just looks like a fun little sporty car. And it is fun to drive. I enjoyed it. It was a fun little car to drive. ⁓ Thumbs up. I think it's a little on the pricey side, but you're paying for that extra sportiness, extra handling, that extra ⁓ performance, the suspension, all of it is a little bit sportier. ⁓ I guess if I was gonna, looking for that, I mean, I would buy this if I was buying an EV and looking for something fun and sporty.

This definitely fits the bill. And the colors, this Velocity Blue Metallic is fabulous. I love the color. I think I like blue cars. That's my thing at the moment. So ⁓ yeah, so that's the Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally.

Roberto Baldwin (11:41)
So,

Have you driven the XRT, Ionic 5? so which one? Would you get the Mach-E Rally or would you get the Ionic 5?

Nicole Wakelin (11:47)
Yes, I have. am I being practical,

practically or just for fun of driving? have to call it fun of driving. think I like the Mustang. It was if I'm being practical, I feel like the XRT is more practical. I just think space wise and stuff. There's a little more. The rear seats are right. Like if you want. So.

Roberto Baldwin (11:56)
for fun of driving.

it's so much room. It's... it's a re... Every...

Sam Abuelsamid (12:08)
If if you're if

you're and if you're actually going to take it on a trail like not, you know, obviously not rock crawling, but you know, like taking a trail, you know, out to your cabin or something. The XRT is a much better choice because it's got, you know, quite a bit more ground clearance. It's got just about seven inches of ground clearance. Not not a lot more. It's enough more. You know, it.

Nicole Wakelin (12:15)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (12:16)
These are rally v-

Nicole Wakelin (12:19)
Yeah. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (12:28)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (12:28)
Yeah, it is.

I think that the XRT is a more practical, versatile choice. If you want to have a little fun with it, you want to go off road with it, but you need something can actually comfortably see people in the back and hold a bunch of cargo. The Mustang, like the actual like the must the gas Mustang, it's just like I want pretty car goes fast. That's kind of what it is. It's fun. It looks great. It makes you feel good driving it.

but practically speaking, it's not the most practical vehicle in the world.

So there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:01)
And the XRT charges a lot faster too.

Roberto Baldwin (13:05)
yeah, just got them.

Nicole Wakelin (13:05)
Yes. Yep.

There's that too. Yeah. So yeah. So there's reasons why you would there's reasons. It's the thing, you know, this car is better. That car is better. Well, it depends what you want. You know, what do you what's your goal? They're both great cars, but what's your goal? So yeah. What's your what's your what you want?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:07)
Yeah, he's limited to about 150 kilowatts with the Mach-E.

Roberto Baldwin (13:11)
The

Sam Abuelsamid (13:17)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (13:21)
What you want? Yeah, a reminder that rally

is not off-roading. It's not the same thing. It is off-road. It's dirt road racing is what rally is.

Nicole Wakelin (13:26)
No, it's it's

Sam Abuelsamid (13:29)
It can

Nicole Wakelin (13:29)
It's driving

fast in the dirt. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not always, but if it's off road, it's driving fast just in dirt. It's driving fast on, on roads that often like some rally road, like some of those roads, like you don't have to have a rally car to do it. You could do it in a sedan, right? They're just dirt, but they're still roads mostly, right? Aren't they always still roads?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:30)
be off road. It's not always off road.

Roberto Baldwin (13:34)
It's like off and on and yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:43)
They're not necessarily paved.

Roberto Baldwin (13:48)
Look up rally racing,

you'll see the craziest stuff you've ever seen in racing. It is the most insane racing. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (13:52)
They're insane. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:53)
Especially look up Group B rally and

Nicole Wakelin (13:57)
Yeah, is that

the craziest of them?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:58)
watch some of those clips. This is from the mid 1980s and in those days, for some insane reason, rally organizers, they didn't put up any barriers along the rally stages. And you can see film of people standing literally right next to the dirt, like inches away.

Roberto Baldwin (14:01)
you

Nicole Wakelin (14:15)
Just, ⁓

They still stand right

there, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:22)
from these

650 horsepower, four wheel drive, rally, Group B rally machines that are flying by at 150 miles an hour on a dirt road. It's bonkers. And they ultimately...

Nicole Wakelin (14:30)
They're careening around a corner. Yeah.

You still see

people do that in rally driving where the crowd is very, close to these crazy corners and the cars just, you see them doing the sideways sort of jump on purpose over, like they come around a corner, they catch the mirror, they come back down and I'm like, God. And they're like so close as they slide around that corner to humans. And the humans are just like, yeah, sure. We're good. I'm like, dude, move back. But yeah, it's very fun. So you could do that in your Mustang.

But you probably don't wanna go on rugged stuff. Just go really fast in the dirt. So there we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:11)
All right.

Well, I have the same vehicle that you had last week, Nicole. I have the Ram 1500 Hemi.

Nicole Wakelin (15:18)
And what did you think?

What did you think? did you think? What did think?

Sam Abuelsamid (15:22)
I mean, it does it does indeed sound great when you hit the start button. And it's been averaging about 16 and a half miles per gallon. So it is a thirsty beast. ⁓ It does sound good. It does sound good. ⁓ Not inexpensive. The one I have is ⁓ is a longhorn. ⁓ Where did which tab did that? Big Horn, Big Horn, Longhorn.

Nicole Wakelin (15:24)
I told you.

Sounds right. Yes, but it sounds good.

Longhorn, bighorn, isn't it bighorn? Longhorn?

Roberto Baldwin (15:51)
Big Horn?

I think it's Big Horn. Big Horn, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (15:52)
Longhorn's the actual, okay. I'm like longhorn's the actual cattle.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:52)
Big horn, big horn, yes. I'm thinking long horn because I was in

Austin the other day ⁓ and there were, yeah, really long horns, like huge, huge horns on some of these cows. Well, when we pulled into the lunch stop, were driving the ⁓ Hyundai Palisade Hybrid and we got to the lunch stop. There was about half a dozen cows standing there right by the gate, including one that had horns that probably spanned about

Roberto Baldwin (15:58)
yeah, then they're the Longhorns.

Nicole Wakelin (16:04)
They're scary the first time you see those. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

really?

Sam Abuelsamid (16:22)
four and a half, five feet across. was, you didn't, ⁓ no, you didn't, I would not want to mess with that guy. ⁓ That's some serious horn action. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (16:24)
Oof. Did you stare him down? You're like, I'm gonna take you out in this palisade, dude, move it. Me neither.

Roberto Baldwin (16:35)
A... ⁓

a... yeah, a cow... a bull... it will mess you up. Having been, you know, having to deal with steers was already enough when I was working on the school farm. Like, a bull, like, yeah, you can't have that, you can't have that here, you can't have that here. It like the school thing, like, no. Yeah, you're not gonna have bulls in the school.

Nicole Wakelin (16:46)
I forget that you're like Farmer Roberto.

No, not gonna do that.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:58)
Well, anyway, this is a Big Horn, a Ram 1500 Big Horn crew cab four by four. So this is kind of a middle trim level of the Ram 1500. It's got cloth seats. It doesn't have the front bench, so it's got a console and a 12 inch center touchscreen and has the rotary shifter instead of a column shift. If you get, I think, tradesmen with the bench seat.

It starts at $52,430. This one had a number of options on there, including that 5.7 liter V8 Hemi with eTorque is $2,895. And so that's, it does have the Tim badge, very prominent Tim badge on there.

Roberto Baldwin (17:47)
That's a lot.

Nicole Wakelin (17:50)
But it comes with the Tim badge on there. Don't forget that. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:58)
And you know, the Tim badge looks pretty cool. You know, I will I'll give Tim that, you know, he's got a cool looking badge that they designed for him. And this one also has the ram boxes and the multifunction tailgate that opens up in a couple of different ways, although I haven't been able to figure out how to actually get it to open sideways. I can't find the latch for that, and I can't be bothered looking in the owner's manual ⁓ because I don't need it.

Roberto Baldwin (18:24)
you

Nicole Wakelin (18:26)
It's not your truck, you need to figure it out.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:27)
Yeah, I'm

not telling anything or hauling anything particularly long in the bed that I want to hang out one just one side of the tailgate. So, you know. 395 horsepower, 410 foot pounds of torque, which is less than the standard output hurricane, and it sucks down a lot more gas than a hurricane. Yeah, like I said, this thing is it's rated at 16 city.

20 highway, 18 combined. ⁓ I've been doing mostly highway driving with it and averaging 16 and a half miles per gallon. And I'm not driving this thing at 85 miles an hour. ⁓ you know, it's, you know, and my past experience with Hemi-Rams is that they almost never match the ⁓ rated fuel economy. They typically ⁓ underachieve on that. So,

Be prepared if you must have the sound of a Hemi and more power to you if you feel that. They did make the, when they brought back the Hemi this year, they made the GT exhaust standard with that. ⁓ And so that's gonna cost you both upfront when you buy it and every time you stop at a gas pump, it's gonna cost you because it's, like I said, it's a thirsty engine. There's a reason why they discontinued it in the first place. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (19:49)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:56)
But other than that, it's a good truck. ⁓ It's still of the light duty, full size pickup trucks. It still has the best driving dynamics. It's got good ride quality. It's the only one with a coil spring rear end. ⁓ It handles reasonably well. It's got the nicest interior of any of the full size trucks by a pretty wide margin. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (20:26)
It's a pretty nice truck to drive. The rams are, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:27)
Yeah, it is.

You know, if you want a truck as a daily, a full-size truck as a daily driver, it's kind of hard to beat the Ram 1500. You know, it's really good. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (20:38)
Yeah. I mean, except for miles.

Nicole Wakelin (20:39)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (20:41)
Driving, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:43)
Well, yeah, except for that whole fuel economy thing. And

which reminds me, you know, it wasn't that long ago that I had the Ram 2500, which averaged 17 and a half miles per gallon. So a full mile per gallon better for the heavy duty versus this one. Of course, that was the Cummins diesel, you know, but still it's, you know, it's going to cost you if you want the Hemi. So grand total on this one.

came to $64,970. And we've talked about it before, but can you remember the destination charge for this?

Roberto Baldwin (21:18)
2300 2400

Nicole Wakelin (21:19)
It was 2000

something.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:23)
What's your official guess, Nicole?

Nicole Wakelin (21:25)
Oh, can we just see 2000? Um, 2295.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:28)
Ha

25.95.

Nicole Wakelin (21:33)
⁓

I literally had it last week and I can't remember.

Roberto Baldwin (21:34)
I was off I was off

by $2,000 and I still wanted it's still like a ridiculous amount of money

Sam Abuelsamid (21:42)
Yeah, 2,600 bucks for destination on these things. you know, somewhat to their credit, Stellantis was the last of the Detroit automakers to raise the destination charges on their full-size trucks to $25.95. Ford went first and then GM and then Stellantis. And now it's just Toyota that's still charging a mere $2,095 for the Tundra.

Nicole Wakelin (21:43)
expensive. ⁓

A mirror.

Roberto Baldwin (22:11)
Nothing.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:11)
It's

a bargain. Saved 500 bucks on destination charge. So, you know, it's it's a good truck and, it does it does all the truck stuff and, you know, Ramsey only one that has the ram boxes, which are a pretty cool feature if you need someplace to to store stuff, you know, to store small, you know, some tools or other supplies and things like that. You know, so you get these two boxes on either side of the bed that have a decent amount of space in there.

so it's good, good for that. ⁓ so yeah, I mean, anything you need to do with a full-size truck, this can do, including towing a whole bunch, and hauling a bunch of stuff. So I think, I think that's all that, we really need to say about the 2026 Ram 1500 Big Horn crew cab four by four with Hemi. Yeah. And the Tim badge.

Nicole Wakelin (22:56)
There you go.

you

go with Hemi with Tim badge

Sam Abuelsamid (23:11)
Did you drive anything, Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin (23:14)
I didn't drive nothing. was supposed, I should have gone to that thing that you went to, but I didn't go because I had stuff to do. ⁓ And then, yeah, I didn't drive a thing like that. There's reasons. None of them are good. I'll be gone next week so you can't yell at me then.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:16)
Okay.

Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (23:27)
That's fine.

Reasons are reasons.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:33)
Okay. So, actually, while we're, you know, while we're still talking about ⁓ full-size pickup trucks and Ford EVs, there was a report that came out on Thursday from the Wall Street Journal that Ford ⁓ is considering canceling the F-150 Lightning.

Nicole Wakelin (23:44)
⁓ yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:52)
I mean, you, this is Ford's fault. ⁓ So here's a bunch of things. Here are a couple thoughts. A, big, full-size truck people still on vroom vroom truck. That is the person who, yeah, that is the person who wants to buy a truck. ⁓ Ford went.

Nicole Wakelin (23:57)
I don't think I'm surprised that it's... I don't think I'm surprised.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:09)
As we can see with the revival of the Hemi.

Nicole Wakelin (24:11)
Hahaha!

Roberto Baldwin (24:17)
cuckoo with the pricing. It was 40, was 50, was 60, it was 50, it was 55, was 40, was 60. They went all Tesla on it. If they don't have Tesla numbers, they'd be able to do that. I don't know why they did that. Every time they would drop the price, they would announce like, it's record sales of the F-150 Lightning. And then they'd raise it like $10,000 or something goofy. And then of course the sales would crash because inconsistency doesn't, you yeah. So I think it's a really good truck. I think it's a good EV.

I still don't understand why we have trucks where I can't see out the front of them, even though I'm tall. But at the same time, I think it was very much a decision based on, well, we sell a ton of F series, so electric one will probably sell a ton. And they sort of shot themselves in the foot by messing up any sort fleet sales by like.

Nicole Wakelin (24:52)
You

Roberto Baldwin (25:12)
moving the prices all over the place. Because if you're a fleet manager, you're like, I'm going to invest in these trucks. wait, now it's $10,000 more. Well, now I'm not. Now it's this. Now I'm seeing a lot of Silverados in fleets, which to me is kind of bonkers because the F-150 and Lightning and the regular F-150 are the same truck. You can shove all the same things on top of it.

Nicole Wakelin (25:19)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:31)
Yeah, all of the,

all of the outfit equipment that fleets put on their trucks, they can take it right off of a gas F-150, drop it into a Lightning. It's the same. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (25:34)
Yep.

Roberto Baldwin (25:40)
It's the same truck. There's like,

Nicole Wakelin (25:42)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (25:43)
there's no difference. I think that should have worked great for them, but I think their sort of decision around pricing and again, you know, I'll keep saying people who want trucks want broom broom truck.

Nicole Wakelin (26:00)
I do. Well, I was looking at the numbers. ⁓ This is based on the Wall Street Journal article where it was saying that they and it said they thought they were going to sell 150,000 of these lightnings. Thirty three thousand was last year's number. And it also is an interesting number in here that says that, you know, everyone's wondering what was going to happen when the credit went away. This says total sales dropped 24 percent in October. It makes it a hard.

hard business decision to keep doing it right now, you know?

Roberto Baldwin (26:32)
That said that everyone's sales went up and then they cratered right after it. those, yeah, so that September to October, I keep seeing articles out there about like, whoa, EV sales have dropped. I'm like, well, you're taking into account, no one's taking into account the fact that EV sales rose crazy. They went above normal and then dropped below normal. So the people who would have bought EVs through the next couple months.

Nicole Wakelin (26:36)
Right. there's that crater. Yeah. But it's like,

Right, like they went up and yeah, so it's like a roller coaster. Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:51)
Yeah, you had a.

Nicole Wakelin (26:53)
But still it makes it

hard when you're looking more like you're you've you've only sold 33,000 of them last year and you wanted to sell 150 and now you're seeing that. Yeah. But now you're seeing that because of the UV tax credit going away, sales that had spiked, but maybe didn't spike as much as they needed them to spike to make it worthwhile have now fallen off a cliff temporarily. It'll come back to a certain point at some point, but you don't know how much they'll come back, right? Of that 25 % that they're going to come back.

Roberto Baldwin (26:58)
this is just a long term issue with the F-150. I'm talking about the...

Yeah, but I think that I think a lot of these sort of like,

well, EV sales have cratered. I mean, it's a disingenuous, those are disingenuous articles as far as I'm concerned, because if you come out and say in February, like, hey, you know, in let's say before they were announced that the EV ⁓ credit was going away, EV sales were at this percentage. And then like, let's say February, March, if those numbers don't come up or they're not steady or whatever, then you're like, okay, we can see where there's an actual correlation between what happened. But when you go from the month where EV sales are like,

Nicole Wakelin (27:23)
yeah.

Right.

Roberto Baldwin (27:47)
skyrocketing because people are trying to get EVs before the credit goes away. To the next month be like, oh, they created EVs, they're doomed. I'm just like, that's just lazy journalism.

Nicole Wakelin (27:52)
Yeah. no, I agree. I just it's it just

shows you. But I mean that I think that still shows it. Yeah, it doesn't indicate which way the market's going. It just indicates the timing of EV purchases this calendar year, basically. But it does make you wonder like how much help, you know, what where is it going to recover to? It's not like it was only a tiny dip. You know what I mean? It was still a pretty big dip. And it makes me wonder how much like, OK, what's it going to do in another?

Three months, is it gonna take three months to get back on course to whatever the normal is? Like maybe by January we'll know, it's January, February, we'll actually know where they're gonna sit. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:23)
Probably three to six months.

Roberto Baldwin (28:25)
Probably.

Because

you have people who like, I was gonna buy an EV in like six months and now they're like, gosh, I have to rush and buy an EV. So you're talking about people who like, were making decisions to purchase things earlier than they anticipated just because they want, know, $7,500 is nothing to sneeze at. So it, yeah, so it's sort of a ⁓ skewed number. And again, back to the F-150, it's, that's an anomaly. I mean, that isn't really part of the problem with the F-150. The F-150 problem has been a long-term problem with how it's been.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:31)
Yeah

Nicole Wakelin (28:42)
Yeah.

No, it's a lot of money. Yeah.

absolutely.

Roberto Baldwin (29:00)
marketed,

sold, and just the decision to go with a large pickup. Which again, I think the F-150 Lightning is probably the best truck for 80 % of F-150 buyers. ⁓ But...

Sam Abuelsamid (29:12)
It's

better than a gas F-150 in pretty much every way except towing long distances. That is the only flaw. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:15)
It's the best... Towing, yes. If you don't have to...

Nicole Wakelin (29:18)
Yeah, that's what kills it. And the towing

thing in a lot of people, you're buying a truck cause you need to be able to tow with it. And if you're doing that, it's like an electric truck is not the solution. It's just not, it's not.

Roberto Baldwin (29:29)
But I think the towing, the amount of people actually tow with their truck is relatively small, to be honest. Everyone wants to pretend like they're gonna do the big thing. Like I need an EV with 600 miles of range. Okay, buddy, you're gonna, unless you're Bill, like the rest of the human race is probably not doing that on a regular basis. But yeah, regard, everyone who buys a truck buys a truck because they think they're gonna do these huge home improvements or they're gonna go to the, they're gonna do all these things.

Nicole Wakelin (29:35)
Mm.

Unless you're Bill. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (29:59)
I had a cousin who bought a truck to go to Tahoe. He's like, now we can go to Tahoe. I'm like, I'm not going in your pickup to Tahoe. I have a WRX. We're gonna take my car. like, what about my pickup? I'm like, there's no weight in the back. It's rear wheel drive. It's a death machine.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:13)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (30:14)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (30:16)
And you

you could put 1500 pounds of mulch in the back of a Maverick. Just saying, you know, but.

Roberto Baldwin (30:21)
Yep, ⁓ don't. The Maverick is,

that's the thing, the Maverick's such a great little truck, I think it would have made more sense to make that an EV version than, definitely more than the F-150 Lightning.

Nicole Wakelin (30:30)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:31)
And that's

basically what they're doing with their next generation EVs, is it's gonna be a Maverick-sized truck. ⁓ Ford made several fundamental mistakes with the Lightning program. When they first started planning it, they expected about 25,000 annual sales. By the time that they officially launched it, they had bumped that to 50,000. If they had stayed there, they probably would have been okay. But then within,

Roberto Baldwin (30:36)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:01)
a couple of months after they announced it publicly, then the initial response to it, especially with that $40,000 starting price that they had for the Lightning Pro, they bumped it up again to 80,000 units of capacity. And then a few months after that, they said, oh, OK, we're going to double the capacity again to 150,000 units a year. And they spent a ton of money expanding the facility where they're assembling the Lightning. And then they never got past 33,000 units.

out of 150,000 units of capacity. And when you have underutilized capacity, that is hugely, hugely expensive. So that was one problem. To what you said about pricing, Robbie, you know, within a few months after they launched the Lightning, you you had the invasion of Ukraine, nickel prices skyrocketed, lithium prices skyrocketed, battery costs went up, and so they had to jack the prices up, and they've never gotten back down to where they...

back to where they started and then the other thing that Ford didn't do and probably in part because they had spent so much money on increasing the production capacity Is that they they haven't really done anything to improve the truck over the last three years? You know when they when they designed it, know in order to get it to market quickly they used a lot of Off-the-shelf components that they already have for the gas f-150 so we're not they were fine They work, but they're not optimized for an EV

And so you didn't get as much efficiency as you could have. You certainly didn't get the cost reductions that you should have. And if they had put some investment into improving and updating those components to take cost out of the manufacturing of the truck, they could have made a better business case for it. But because they didn't do any of that, now you're at a vastly underutilized plant and, you know, slow sales and.

And so it's probably going to get canceled and you know, for Ford's business, that's probably the right thing to do right now. but that's just the way it is.

Nicole Wakelin (33:02)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (33:05)
Yeah, setting up for so much capacity, you're just like, what? Because I think they were looking at Tesla, which Tesla is still, right now Tesla's still the Kleenex of EVs. When people think EVs, they think Tesla. It doesn't matter, you know. And then they're like, well, you know, their market share is only 40 % now. 40%, could you imagine anyone having market share for anything in the automotive world that's 40 %? So I think they were looking at Tesla like, oh, well we could do, and then the Cybertruck.

Nicole Wakelin (33:20)
It's true.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:33)
course, three years

ago was 80%.

Roberto Baldwin (33:35)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (33:36)
It was never going to stay 80 forever, you know. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (33:38)
It was never going to stay 80 forever. But you know, there's and and Tesla knew this was coming and they didn't. I don't know what to tell them. That's just but you know, it's you know, 40 percent, 30 percent, even if they keep up to 20 percent, still a pretty good, you know, market share for for for a company. But I think they saw that and they saw the side. ⁓ the Cybertruck we can you know, they're going to sell a million of those would not, you know, not really, you know,

paying attention to the fact that Tesla says a lot of things and says they're going to do a lot of things. And many of them never come to pass. And those that do come to pass, come to pass very late. So it's, I think there was this huge excitement, especially when automakers looked at Tesla's stock numbers. And I think a lot of, you end up with a lot of startups, you end up with a lot of companies saying, oh, we're going to do exactly what Tesla does. I'm like, well,

Nicole Wakelin (34:09)
you

Roberto Baldwin (34:33)
you need to make something that's better than those vehicles. And you need to make it for the correct market. And if you don't do that, then you're throwing a lot of money away. like Sam said, if they'd said, we're make 50,000 of these a year, I'm like, right, and we're gonna try to keep, work on making sure the price comes back down. But Ford is, especially in the last five years, notorious for just like, it starts at this and then it goes up to, you know.

27,000, 28,000 now for the Maverick, which is a huge jump. And so when you look at that company, you're like, well, again, if I'm a fleet manager, do I want to invest in this company for these vehicles outside of just the regular F-150? The F-150 is just solid. They shouldn't mess with it, and they don't. is the reason Ford continues to excel. It is a cash.

Nicole Wakelin (35:16)
Yeah.

Hehehehehe

Sam Abuelsamid (35:27)
That's the reason Ford

is still in business.

Nicole Wakelin (35:27)
⁓

Roberto Baldwin (35:29)
It is a cash printing

machine, the F-Series. That's what it is. And again, if you're a fleet manager and you're looking at these F-Series trucks, are you gonna go with the one where the price goes all over the place, or are you just gonna go with the one that you already know? if, you know, it doesn't matter how much someone tells you that the operating costs will be lower over, you know, so many years and you'll be able to, know, ⁓ when you're looking at an initial outlay, you're like, well, I don't know what they're doing.

Nicole Wakelin (35:32)
Yeah, 100%.

Roberto Baldwin (35:56)
and they keep, you know, we're making them, we're not making them, we're making them, mean that's, especially, I mean now if you're a fleet manager, like, they might stop it, had no way in hell you would buy an F-150, lightning, so.

Nicole Wakelin (36:06)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (36:09)
All right, let's move on. ⁓ Let's talk about the Honda Prelude. Nicole, you had a chance to try it out.

Nicole Wakelin (36:17)
Yes,

I did. I had a chance to try it out at the ⁓ it's up for North American car truck utility of the year. It's a car, obviously, but it's up. So they had it for us in when we did our drive and we got to take it for a spin. And I liked it a lot. I liked it a lot. It was fun. It's it's very prelude. I have a soft spot in my heart for the prelude because I learned to drive a manual transmission on a friend's prelude a zillion years ago.

Roberto Baldwin (36:45)
Ooh, what's generation?

Nicole Wakelin (36:47)
It still had pop up headlights, however, so second or third, it would have been like the yeah, it was a long time because because I was having panic. I was panicking about trying to do the footwork and and then the turn signal wasn't where when I kept accidentally hitting the lights and I was like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Yes, that was my vision is I was my memory of learning how to So I genuinely I thought it was good.

Roberto Baldwin (36:49)
So second generation, second or third, yeah. Every prelude generation is a good prelude.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:49)
So it would have been second or third.

Submit 80s.

Roberto Baldwin (37:05)
Aww.

Nicole Wakelin (37:13)
⁓ I think they've done some neat stuff with this. think that it's, you know, the hybrid things freaking some people out. And is it really going to be true to prelude funness? I think it is. I think it's a fun, sporty little car and I enjoy driving it. Sam, are you going to totally disagree? Did you like it? Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:29)
No, I thought it was great. And the

thing, when I hear people complain about ⁓ the hybrid intruding on prelude funness, the thing you gotta remember, if you actually go back and look at all the five generations of prelude, the prelude was never a hardcore sports car. This is actually the most powerful prelude they've ever built. So.

Nicole Wakelin (37:39)
Yeah.

Correct.

Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (37:52)
It was always

like this like, like sort of like fun car. It wasn't a sports car. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:55)
Yeah, it was sporty and sleek and

Nicole Wakelin (37:55)
It was like it was like a cute. Yeah, it was cute

and it was fun and it was sporty. It looked cool, like it had a cool styling to it. It was kind of a fun car to just own. You're like, oh, you got a prelude. That's cute. It was never like this super high powered monster performance thing. No, it was never a Z and and somehow people are like, oh, you know, it's got a hybrid in there. And I'm like, but so what?

Roberto Baldwin (38:12)
It's never a Z.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:13)
Yeah, it was, yeah, I mean, if you...

You know, if you look at the 80s and 90s and Japanese sporty cars, you had the RX7s and the Zs and the Supras. then Prelude was never in that class, ever. It was always kind of a step down in terms of performance. It was more of a competitor for the likes of the Celica and ⁓ the Mitsubishi Clips in the 90s. That's where the Prelude played.

Nicole Wakelin (38:40)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:50)
And this one is perfect for that. ⁓ This is actually a really, really good car. It's based on Civic Bones. You got the Civic Hybrid Powertrain, which is a really good powertrain, especially in that size of car. ⁓ 200 horsepower, it's plenty quick enough. ⁓ It'll do zero to 60 in about somewhere between six and six and a half seconds. ⁓ And ⁓ the...

Nicole Wakelin (38:59)
It is.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:20)
The ⁓ S plus mode, did you play with the S plus mode? Did you turn it on? So, the S plus mode, when you press the S plus button on the console, what it does is it's a lot like the Hyundai IONIQ 5N. So you get some sound enhancement and you get simulated manual shifting and downshifting.

Nicole Wakelin (39:24)
I play with things a little bit, yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Which it does a

pretty good job of like, cause that it doesn't always, sometimes you're like, well, that's just ridiculous. And this one's like, my gosh. Like it tricks your brain. You, you would, you were, you believe it. You buy in.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:48)
Yeah, it works really well.

Yeah.

And

a key part of the reason why they're able to do that and also why the just in the standard mode and you the Civic Hybrid, why the Civic Hybrid is so much fun is the way that Honda does their hybrid system is a little bit different from what you get in a Toyota. Toyota's system ⁓ has a lot less electrical power. Like in a Prius, the main motor that drives the vehicle is only 111 horsepower.

In the Honda system, it's 181 horsepower motor. So really, the way this thing works is it's more like a series hybrid. In fact, probably the closest analog to the way this works is actually the Chevy Volt, the way the Chevy Volt worked. It works in largely the same way. most of the time you're actually driving on electricity. And, you know, the only difference from the Volt is the Volt had a big battery. So you plug it in and the engine wouldn't have to run.

most of the time. This one, you the engine's gonna be running, it's still the electric motor that's driving the wheels. The engine is most of the time is not even connected to the wheels, only at higher speeds, which is basically the same as the way the Volt works. So it's really, most of the time works like a series hybrid. And because of that, in most of your driving, the engine is not coupled to the wheels, so you can make the engine do whatever you want and make it rev up and rev down and you get the blips and the...

torque interruptions just like when you're shifting. And so it really does feel authentically like it's shifting and it sounds good too.

Nicole Wakelin (41:32)
Yeah.

That was the thing. wasn't just the feel of it. They nailed it in that it's not just one part of it. It's like, nope, you got the sound, you got the feel, which creates that experience. You need all those things to come together the right way and the right balance, or it feels wrong. It feels off. This, if someone didn't tell you that it really wasn't needing all those things to actually drive, you'd think, no, it's doing what it has to do. No, no, no. It doesn't have to do any of this. Just enjoy it.

Roberto Baldwin (41:55)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (42:02)
⁓ The other key part of this car is that ⁓ it's got the suspension and brakes from the Civic Type R, which means that it's got even better handling. The Civic, the base Civic handles really well. This is even better. And I got to drive it on the track at Honda's Tachigi Proving Grounds last week when I was in Japan. the Type R, when you drive that and you trail the brakes going into a corner,

Nicole Wakelin (42:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:32)
You can get the back end to come around a little bit, ⁓ basically eliminate any understeer that you had. You can really nicely balance it very easily between the accelerator and the brake pedal. You can have it perfectly balanced and do exactly what you want at any moment in time. And this one does the same thing. Honda says they're not gonna build a Prelude Type R. I'm not sure I believe them, but the thing is,

Nicole Wakelin (42:54)
Mmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:00)
somebody is going to do it because you can buy a Type R crate engine from Honda, from HRC, ⁓ and because the whole front structure is straight out of ⁓ a Civic, it's got all the same mounting points and everything, you can get a Type R ⁓ engine and a six-speed manual transmission and put it into this car shockingly easily. And I'm sure that,

Nicole Wakelin (43:06)
Mm-hmm.

Somebody's gonna do it. Somebody.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:29)
By

next year at SEMA, there will be a Type R powered prelude on the show floor somewhere.

Nicole Wakelin (43:33)
Hahaha! ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (43:34)
⁓

yeah. mean Honda's notoriously easy to swap engines in and out of. that was like a whole... And the engines are... It's also really easy to work on a Honda. Like every Honda I've ever worked on has been like the easiest, you know, brand I've ever worked on. So that's why, you know, enthusiasts love Honda because you can just like, I'm gonna take this engine out and put a K-engine in, I'm gonna take this out and put this in. It's just so... Like me and my friends would do it like over the course of like a weekend. Rip an engine out, put new one in. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (43:39)
Yeah.

⁓ Just for fun.

Roberto Baldwin (44:04)
And this is me and my friend, so

we're just goofing off most of the time.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:10)
So, you know, since the Prelude's already got the Type R brakes and suspension, all you gotta do is drop that engine in there. You probably wanna swap out the springs, you know, to adjust for differences in weight, but that's about it. That's about all you really need to do. this could be, you know, a seriously fun sports car. But yeah, even as it is, it's great.

Nicole Wakelin (44:29)
It's fun like it is. mean, even if you just, just

as is this thing is a hoot. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (44:33)
Yeah,

yeah, the price, you it's not inexpensive. It's it's let's see if they I don't think they've officially announced pricing yet, ⁓ but they, you know, that current exchange rates based on the Japanese price, ⁓ the Japanese price in Japan to US dollars comes out to forty one thousand eight hundred dollars. Yeah, but I mean, that falls right in between a civic sport touring hybrid

Nicole Wakelin (44:44)
of it.

It's not cheap.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:03)
hatchback and the type R. So it's right in the middle between those two. based on that, it's not unreasonably priced ⁓ considering where the rest of the lineup is. And it's not cheap, but I think if you're looking for something that is a lot of fun to drive, there's not a lot of two doors left out there. ⁓ You can have a lot of fun with this car. And it's not crazy expensive, but it's not cheap.

Nicole Wakelin (45:09)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (45:09)
there

you go.

Nicole Wakelin (45:32)
Yeah, but it's it's it's in a range where you go, OK, this is a little bit more this little pricey, but super duper fun. Like you're just going to enjoy it so much. It'll be worth it.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:33)
and it's a hatchback.

Yeah. And with the hatchback, you just fold

the back seats down. You got a big cargo area. It's it's practical, too. Yeah, absolutely.

Nicole Wakelin (45:44)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (45:46)
filled with candy.

Nicole Wakelin (45:49)
Fella

with candy. Trunk or treat. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (45:53)
Every time we

talk about the prelude, while you guys are talking, I spend time looking for a first generation prelude for sale. Every single time, and it never works out.

Nicole Wakelin (45:59)
You start looking, he's like, time to go shopping.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:04)
When

we sold our Civic back to the dealer, we bought it from the summer when we bought the EV6. We went into the showroom. They had a first gen Prelude sitting there in the showroom. It wasn't for sale, but they had one sitting there. So I think one of the owners of the...

Nicole Wakelin (46:20)
You are sorely tempted

to just drive away with it. They'd never find you, right? ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (46:24)
Yeah. ⁓

all right. ⁓ since Nicole, I think you have about 15 minutes left before you've got to jump. So, so let's, let's jump to pull star four. ⁓ you and I drove this thing way back in July.

Nicole Wakelin (46:29)
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Sorry, guys. OK.

Roberto Baldwin (46:31)
⁓

Nicole Wakelin (46:38)
I know I had to pull up the story. I'm like, I did drive this. What did I think of this? ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (46:39)
July. Again, I drove

something the other day that I can't talk, two things that I can't talk about until March. It's the.

Nicole Wakelin (46:47)
That's the worst because you have to

take notes on that stuff or something comes around and like, what I think? Mm-hmm, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:51)
I have to write it during my flight to Poland

next week because so I just don't forget.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:55)
He

Nicole Wakelin (46:57)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (46:57)
even even though they told us in July that the embargo would probably be sometime in September or October, they didn't even have a date yet. You know, since we knew it was gonna be that far out. I just went ahead and wrote the actually two different reviews right away to get it while it was still fresh, not wait three months.

Nicole Wakelin (47:05)
Nope.

yeah!

I did the same thing. I wrote

Roberto Baldwin (47:13)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (47:14)
it ages ago. I thought if I don't write this now, I'm going to forget. I'm going to forget what I think about this. There's too many cars to just you just can't. Yeah. I thought it was good. I liked it. I didn't love it. I thought it was good that one of the things everyone was weirding out about was the fact that it doesn't have a rear window. There's no window, which is a little bit weird because you expect it to be there. And if you intuitively look over your shoulder,

Roberto Baldwin (47:18)
Yeah, you got it.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:22)
So what did you think of it?

Nicole Wakelin (47:42)
is missing, but it has a really good camera rear view mirror. So you still you get actually a better view technically than you would with the actual rear window.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:50)
Well, have

you looked out the rear window of a Volvo C40 or a lot of other cars that have a fastback roofline?

Nicole Wakelin (47:54)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you can't see anything anyway.

And then someone and then the other thing it was, well, it's going to be dark because there's no window, but they have the this very the glass roof, the panoramic, guess it's still be panoramic roof goes really far back. sitting in the car, unless you look to see that there's no window, you don't know it's missing. Like you really don't notice its loss when you're inside the car. What did you think, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (48:21)
I agree. I think the lack of a rear window is a complete non-issue. I don't even care. ⁓ I know some people have an issue with using the digital camera mirrors. ⁓ That's never been a problem for me. I don't care about the absence of the window because, like said, in so many cars today, you've got this little slit because it's so steeply raked that

Nicole Wakelin (48:26)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:50)
you have just tiny little slot to see through anyway. And so you really can't see much of anything. So, you know, I just as soon use the digital mirror and be done with it. My problem with the car, you know, and I love the way it looks.

Nicole Wakelin (48:55)
Exactly.

What was it

Sam? I can't guess what you might not like about this car. I have no idea. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:07)
I mean, I really like the way it looks. I generally really liked the way it drove. You know, the ride handling was good. The driving dynamics were

good. Everything's in the damn touchscreen.

Nicole Wakelin (49:17)
Yep, including our favorite thing, the air vents.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:22)
We, know, when we did the drive, you know, they had a remote Q &A with some of the Polestar folks back in Sweden. And, you know, I raised my hand and asked the question, why are you doing this? And.

Nicole Wakelin (49:23)
Gosh dang it guys.

And guys,

he, was kind of like that. wasn't even like a, could you explain for me the decision on putting the beds? She's like, why'd you do that? He was very aggressive. It was kind of brilliant. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (49:52)
And

needless to say, as usual, we did not get a satisfactory answer.

Nicole Wakelin (49:57)
No. It was sort of this like, well, you know, it's seamless and it's this and it's that and the technology and future and none of that. None of that. I don't like it. Yeah. Not supposed words that mean nothing. I and you know what? I still have not yet met anybody unless they are working for an OEM who has just done this.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:06)
Lots of buzzwords mean nothing.

Nicole Wakelin (50:18)
that says, my gosh, isn't it the best? Don't you love it? Let a single journalist who said it's good, not a single person who is experienced it in a car has said it's good. Everybody hates it. So why are they doing this? Stop. Here we go. There's my review. Stop.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:35)
⁓

Yeah, you know, and it's not it's not an inexpensive car, but you know it other other aside from that it is very pleasant to drive one feature I really did like that I you know, was a subtle thing, but I think was very thoughtful ⁓ Is the heads-up display? The heads-up display has a snow mode So, you know if you have spent any time driving in Sweden in the wintertime, you know that there is

Nicole Wakelin (50:41)
Mm-mm.

Yes. This is cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:03)
lots of snow, especially if you're in the north. most heads up displays, most of the information that is displayed is in white. And if you've got white information against a white background from all the snow, because what they do in Sweden, ⁓ in northern Sweden, because there's so much snow, is they ⁓ don't salt the roads. They plow them. So if you're driving along these roads in the north, you'll have these three, four foot high snow banks.

and the road is just covered with hard packed snow. And so it's all white. And if your HUD is all in white, makes it not very useful. And so the snow mode on the Polestar 4 switches it from white text to yellow text.

Nicole Wakelin (51:36)
Mm-hmm.

Which is like such a like you said, such a tiny thing, but it does like even if you live someplace where it snows in the US and they like we paved down the ⁓ plow down to the pavement, there is that moment where everything is just white. You know, first thing in morning, things haven't completely melted. You haven't gotten any black top showing through. It's very white and it's hard to see to be able to have that little head up display. And it's not like it's bright, glaring yellow. It's like soft yellow, but it's just enough to give you some contrast against a white background. That's really I think that's just a brilliant

a little thoughtful touch that they did. I like that a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:28)
Yeah, and then the, let's see, the price, let me get down to where the price was here. I wrote a lot of words about this thing.

Nicole Wakelin (52:39)
Scrolling, scrolling. I know, like we have to look back

because it's been so long. ⁓ I have singer motor. go ahead. You got it.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:43)
50. Yeah, start

start the single motor starting at 57,800 including the $1,400 destination charge. And then the dual motor is 64,300. So yeah, given given what we've said about all this, would you know, is this something that you would consider?

Nicole Wakelin (52:52)
Mm-hmm.

It's pretty big difference. Yeah.

Okay, I hate the vent thing. So I automatically cross off cars that have vents in the screen. That's a me thing. Some people might not hate it as much as I hate it. If I remove that significant obstacle to my buying decision, I would consider it. Absolutely. But you have to make sure you're okay with that. I know we keep harping on that, Sam, but it's not great.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:29)
It's not a trivial

issue.

Nicole Wakelin (53:31)
It's not a small deal. If you're looking at a car that has that, go drive it around. Go drive it around and see what you think when you have to reach over there and you have to change it. And the sun's suddenly in your face and you want the AC to blow in your face and now you have to go to the screen to get the AC on your face and you can't. ⁓

That would be, that's a deal breaker for me in any car. It's not even a Volvo thing. I just don't like that. ⁓ But aside from that, I think it's a good car. Like I really genuinely liked it. I liked it a lot. So it's sort of a shame that that's a, that feature is not great. Would you Sam, would you buy it?

Sam Abuelsamid (54:11)
I have to say no.

Nicole Wakelin (54:14)
And why wouldn't you buy it?

Sam Abuelsamid (54:15)
Primarily because of all the touchscreen controls. don't like the HMI in this car. ⁓ Because I really genuinely liked driving this car. It was quick, it handled well. I really like the design. I like the way it looks. I think it's a good size. ⁓ This is the size of car that I would like to have. And frankly, it is the size of car that we do have in our garage. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (54:18)
Yeah, see?

Yeah.

Me too.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:45)
So, know, it's, but that HMI is just, it's a non-starter for me. I would not even consider, no matter how good everything else is, I will not consider a car that has that kind of HMI.

Nicole Wakelin (54:58)
How about you, Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin (55:01)
I can't talk about Volvo or Polestar. I'm gonna edit that out now. Sorry. Yeah, there's reasons, there's, Yes, I'm not allowed to talk about Volvo or Polestar.

Nicole Wakelin (55:04)
you can't. ⁓ OK. OK. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (55:06)
Ha ha ha.

Nicole Wakelin (55:12)
Work related stuff, sorry, nevermind, don't comment, shh, be quiet over there.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:15)
Okay.

Nicole Wakelin (55:19)
okay. So that means me and Sam get our say and we 100 % say no because of that screen. on every other way it's a great little EV, I liked it. It was just, that is just not a good idea.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:19)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

and by the way, this is one of those vehicles where despite the fact that they Polestar classifies this as a crossover or SUV, it's not, it's a car. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (55:42)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's

it's that weird thing now where they give you the coupe SUV thing. They're like, well, we curved it. It's still an SUV, but it's a coupe SUV now. Like, what heck is that? Yeah. Yeah, they will call it that, but it doesn't really feel like it. feels like a sedan, car, guess, a coupe, whatever. But it's not big enough to be an SUV. Me neither. Except for the infotainment situation.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:51)
this this is too low. This is way too low a car to be considered an SUV. Yeah, it's a car

Yeah, and I have no issue with that. I think it's a great form factor.

Yeah.

mean, there were a few, there were, okay.

Nicole Wakelin (56:12)
And on that note, I'm gonna have to disappear,

because it's four o'clock. Do I just need to stop? I'm afraid to do anything. Just click leave.

Roberto Baldwin (56:17)
Dun dun dun. Sing a song.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:18)
Just leave your browser window

open as you walk away and it'll continue uploading. Yeah, can hit the leave button, ⁓ but just leave the Riverside window open. All right, bye. Yeah. All right, let's.

Nicole Wakelin (56:22)
Just leave it going like I don't hit leave or anything. Okay, then okay, hopefully I don't screw it up. Okay, all right, goodbye everybody.

Roberto Baldwin (56:27)
Leave your browser window.

Bye. Oh, that was quick. was just not even like a, not even a

boys to men. It's so hard to say goodbye. Nothing.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:40)
All right, let's carry on. ⁓ So SEMA was this past week, the SEMA show. And I mean, there's all kinds of crazy stuff at SEMA, but there's one in particular I want to talk about. Toyota had a bunch of stuff that they showed, including a Tacoma, the fuel cell Tacoma H2 Overlander.

So, thanks.

Roberto Baldwin (57:11)
All right, let's just get started off. Toyota makes great trucks. I really enjoy Toyota trucks. I really enjoy the Tacoma. I like the 4Runner. Once they get bigger than the 4Runner, I'm just like, eh, as a person, in, know. Mid-size is big enough in my little brain. That said, you make a very good point. You can't go anywhere. That's why you have to live in your truck.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:24)
Mm-hmm. Mid-size is big enough.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:41)
It's now a motor home. No, mobile home. It's a mobile home.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:42)
Yeah, except, except that once you get one, once you, once

you get somewhere, you'll be stuck there. ⁓ so the, the, reason why all this is, is true is what Toyota did was they made an overlanding version of the Tacoma, which is fine. ⁓ but they put their hydrogen fuel cells in it. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of an overlanding truck.

Roberto Baldwin (57:48)
forever.

Thumbs up!

thumbs down. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (58:11)
is to take it out somewhere remote. You know, let me just read from the beginning of the press release. Like any responsible camper, the Toyota Tacoma H2 Overlander concept can venture deep to the great outdoors, tread lightly and leave no traces. So that word vent that those words venture deep. You know, in the United States right now. Yeah, right now.

Roberto Baldwin (58:29)
Cool.

It doesn't say deep and back. So let's just start

right there.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:39)
In the U.S., there is a grand total of 50 public hydrogen fueling stations, all in the state of California. Yeah. About half of them are next to your house. The other half are somewhere in the LA area. so to put fuel cells into a Tacoma and call it an overlander and say you can go into deep into the great outdoors.

Roberto Baldwin (58:47)
all next to my house.

Yeah. L.A. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:09)
It doesn't work because, first of all, you know, this this thing has a capacity of six kilograms of hydrogen. ⁓ And as an overlanding pickup, you know, that's been lifted, it's got big altering tires on it. It's got a camper on the back. Not great aerodynamics. This is, you know, and five hundred and forty seven horsepower. You might be lucky to go 200 miles total on this thing, which means.

Because you basically are most likely going to have to come back to where you started in order to refuel it again, you're talking 100 miles. And then if you actually want to use any of the capabilities, like it has 15 kilowatt power export. you can, you know, they talk about features of 15 kilowatt power takeoff capable of running something as power intensive as a home off grid or even charging two EVs simultaneously while using dual NEMA 1450 outlets.

So if you are using this thing to charge two of your friends EVs, you're gonna use up all your hydrogen and you're never gonna make it back. So it's kind of pointless.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:15)
Here you

Yeah,

it's... It's a truck that should have been an EV, to be honest. Or just, you know what? An e-rev ⁓ would have been great.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:30)
Yeah, that would have made more sense.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:32)
Cause then you have a nice size battery so can do all the cool things that you want to do plus you still have gasoline and you can charge it. let's say you get stuck up in the mountains, you run out of battery, you run out of gas. If you have solar panel, yes, it's going to take a few days before you can get home, but you'll be able to start it and move it. And when you're going downhill, regen like as much as you can.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:55)
You're gonna read regenerating.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:58)
Again the end of days whenever people talk about like, you know zombie times on the apocalypse EVs are the best vehicles because Gasoline a no one's gonna be refining it be the gasoline. It's there. It's probably pretty much junk after about a year

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:12)
Yeah, I mean, if you watched The Last of Us and you saw, hey, you know, let's let's siphon some gas out of these vehicles that have been sitting here abandoned for 20 years and put it into this beater that we're driving across the country. Yeah, no, not going to work.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:24)
That's

not how any of that works. ⁓ Meanwhile, there would be a lot of solar panels everywhere that you can just tap into. They put a bunch of solar panels on top of the, over the parking lot of the ⁓ Safeway down the street. then there's also the, remember those EA stations I was talking about, like months and months ago? Yeah, they're still there. They're not open yet. ⁓ They've just been sitting idle for like four months. But end of times, I can go down there.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:47)
Ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:55)
Rewire it, stick a level two charger in there, because I have an extra one in the garage, because that's who I am apparently. ⁓ Just plug it in. What I'm saying is buy a book about being an electrician, a hard copy, that way when the system, when society collapses, you can teach yourself how to run your EV while everyone's gas cars eventually die. Or you can go to, what's the town in Mad Max? Gastown? Gastown, duh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:23)
So, Gastown,

yeah. But that's in Australia. So it's kind of hard to drive there from California or Michigan.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:25)
Gastown, or you can find Gastown, one or the other. Yeah, that's a long drive.

It's mostly

ethanol from pigs, right? I think that was the... Yeah. Anyway, Gastown. Raggedy man. The whole... Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:35)
Probably. Yeah. So, So,

I mean, cool concept, but, you know, far less practical than than it seems on the surface.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:43)
Cool, yeah.

Toyota really wants hydrogen to happen. I understand why. But the fact that, you know, years and years of me getting emails from Toyota and other vendors and Toyota partners about we're going to have X amount of new hydrogen stations in California this year, and then we actually have fewer than we did. It went from 60 to like 50. Yeah, again, hydrogen is makes sense for long haul trucking.

You can build out an infrastructure because there's already an infrastructure there. And then maybe, maybe, maybe after that, then it spider webs out to passenger vehicles because then you already have an infrastructure involved. ⁓ Yeah. And Toyota does really cool things with hydrogen at its Pedro ⁓ port down in Southern California that uses hydrogen in trucks, which makes a lot of sense because they're like, these trucks only, they dig things from the port. They take it to a place. They come back easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:44)
And Hyundai is doing the same thing, the Port of Oakland with their ⁓ XCNH hydrogen trucks. They're doing the same sort of thing. They've got about three dozen of those operating out of the Port of Oakland. They've also got a couple, excuse me, that are running ⁓ in South Carolina, ⁓ Georgia, should say, their meta plant near Savannah ⁓ that are moving parts back and forth between their

between the factory, the assembly plant and supplier facilities. ⁓ those are being fueled, they're generating hydrogen. ⁓ I think they're generating hydrogen on site now ⁓ and fueling those. And that's not a public fueling station. That's just private to Hyundai for their trucks.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:27)
⁓ that's

again at for for large trucks ⁓ it makes a lot of sense i think on the show off a a vision of hydrogen stations in the united states that included essentially junkyards not junkyards ⁓ the dump like using the methane that's been escaped from the dump in order to create hydrogen it's a long way off obviously ⁓

We don't hate hydrogen, it just doesn't make any sense. For a car, it doesn't make sense for passenger cars. Now, give us 20 years. Yeah, yeah, you know. This truck looks dope though.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:55)
Yeah.

and especially for an overlanding pickup.

Yeah, it does.

I mean, apart apart from the powertrain, everything else about it is pretty cool.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:11)
Like if they brought it to my house, it'd be fine for me to drive around. And like there's a few off-road places that are close enough to hydrogen that I could use it, but that's just me. I'm the only person. It's me and like a bunch of other Bay area people who would go to like Hollister to do off-roading.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:27)
All right, look, one more ⁓ with Toyota. ⁓ At the ⁓ Japan Mobility Show last week when I was in Tokyo, ⁓ I got to see the Land Cruiser FJ in person. And I must say, ⁓ you know, when I saw the pictures of it, I was underwhelmed. You know, I thought that the proportions looked a little odd. It was kind of strange looking. When I saw it in person,

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:55)
Really?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:56)
actually looks a lot better in person than it does in the pictures.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:59)
See, I love it in the picture, so I'm glad I'm not in Japan, because I just would have never left.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:04)
And it's actually bigger

than I thought it was gonna be yeah, it's it's it's kind of bronco sized

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:12)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, you look at the pictures by themselves, it's like the IONIQ 5 where it looks smaller than it actually is. I've told a lot of people, I'm like, know, an IONIQ 5's a lot of room. They're like, no, no, man, I'm like six foot, like two, and I'm not gonna fit. like, I don't think you realize how much bigger this car is than you. If you look at the splash video at the top, there's a person and then there's a bicycle next to the F.

to the vehicle and that gives you a better idea of the size. But when you look at it in the picture, it looks like the VF3 or the Jimny. It almost looks like Jimny size and it's definitely not.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's much bigger. I mean, it's smaller than the 250 series Land Cruiser, which is the one that they sell here in the US now. And that's also the Lexus GX is based on the 250 Land Cruiser. It's a little bit smaller than that, but it's definitely not a little compact. this could be, ideally, if Toyota decided to bring this to North America, if they could...

If they could potentially sell it for maybe a starting price, $37,000, $38,000, ⁓ maybe reasonably equipped mid 40s, ⁓ slotted in underneath the Land Cruiser, ⁓ I think this could do really well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:30)
I think so too. think it's, know, you're gonna see a lot of people who are gonna rip off that bumper and, you know, making it a more capable off-roader than say the current Land Cruiser, just because it's so big. Yeah, it's already got all the bits, so.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:35)
Yeah.

but it's already got skid plates and everything.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:46)
Yeah, well, you know, think, you know, most people don't realize that a lot of Japanese companies are actually pretty conservative with what they do. ⁓ And so, you know, they're not just going to jump into something. But I do believe this has the potential to sell really well here. I mean, they have a SUV that's like three inches bigger than the pre... They have a trim or a level or an SUV model that's only three inches bigger than the one before it. So they have every size now.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:11)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:17)
So they might just do the FJ. I wonder if they're concerned that it would actually ⁓ cut into the Landcruiser.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:25)
⁓ it probably would take some Land Cruiser sales away. current, yeah, the current Land Cruiser. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:29)
It would be five years before they do this. They would

have to look at, know, they want to either establish the Land Cruiser really, really well or see what's what, you know, if it's not doing as well, it's doing good enough to like, well, let's just throw another car in the market because we're Toyota and we can do that and people are going to buy it because it's Toyota. Because again, regardless of their, their, their obsession with hydrogen, Toyota makes really good cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:53)
Yeah.

All right. So while I was in Japan, there's also besides the prelude, there were two other cars that we got to drive at Tachigi. One was a prototype, although Honda calls it a study. I mean, you know, this is their next generation hybrid system and the the the mule vehicle that we drove. And for those not familiar with the industry terminology, a mule is when you take a

current generation vehicle and you adapt parts from a next generation model onto that. And, you know, kind of like a, you know, melding a horse in a, in a donkey, ⁓ you know, it's, it's a mix of, of different species, that somehow is made to work. and so, you know, before they have, you know, a complete, you know, prototype of the new generation vehicle to test with, you know, they will, they'll adapt.

parts from the next generation to the new one. ⁓ And in this case, the car we drove was based on a current 11th generation Civic sedan, but had some weird camouflage on there and a whole bunch of parts under the skin that are from both from their next generation platform as well as their next generation hybrid system. ⁓ And so right now Honda's got two different variants of their hybrid system.

The one that they sell here in the U.S. is their so-called midsize hybrid, ⁓ and that's in the Civic, the Accord, and the CRV. And then they also have a small hybrid, which is for some other cars that they sell overseas. ⁓ And then for the next generation, there's going to be also the large hybrid, the large size hybrid. And that's going to go into vehicles like the next generation Pilot, the Passport, the Ridgeline, and the Odyssey.

Um, so, you know, as I was saying earlier about Honda's hybrid system, it's got two motor generator units. Um, one that is the primary traction motor that drives the vehicle. The other one mainly just acts as a generator. Uh, and the engine is coupled to that generator unit and it is running that, uh, to charge the battery. Uh, and then there's a clutch between the engine and the final drive.

so that at higher speeds, higher load conditions, ⁓ you close that clutch and you can have hybrid drive, ⁓ parallel hybrid drive where both the engine and the primary traction motor are driving the vehicle. But most of the time that clutch is open and the engine is not even feeding any torque at all to the wheels. So ⁓ for the next size hybrid,

they're actually going to have two clutches in there and two sets of final drive gearing. So ⁓ they'll be able to expand the envelope where they can also feed in some engine torque to the wheels. at lower speeds, it'll, they'll have one clutch connected to a set of gears for lower speed blended operation. And then the existing one to, ⁓ for higher speed operation. And, and then that's going to be paired.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:15)
that's cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:18)
with a new generation V6 engine. It's based on the engine that's in the passport now, in the new passport. So a new updated V6 engine, Atkinson Cycle. And it's also gonna have electric rear drive, so a rear e-axle, because the current CR-V hybrid with all-wheel drive uses a mechanical drive. It's got a driveshaft that goes back to the rear wheels.

the next generation large hybrid is going to have a rear e-axle instead. So even a little bit more electrical power. ⁓ And then the other big thing that's changing for Honda's next generation platforms is in the structure. one of the kind of conventional wisdom for the last several decades is that to optimize handling for the vehicle, you want the...

chassis structure to be as stiff as possible so that the position of the wheels, the four corners, are not moving relative to each other. ⁓ And then that way you can have better control. ⁓ If the structure is not flexing and the wheels are maintaining the same orientation relative to each other, then you can go with little bit softer springs and dampers and still maintain good handling because it's all going to be more predictable.

what Honda is doing for their next generation systems, a little counterintuitive. ⁓ So the structure, so you get the front structure where the wheels are attached and the powertrain and everything is attached. That's going to stay relatively rigid. And then where all that attaches to the central portion of the vehicle, the passenger cell, it's going to be a little bit more flexible than it is today. So that basically, if you if you can visualize it, it's kind of like the whole front structure can

pivot relative to the passenger cell and under side loads, what this allows it to do is actually put more ⁓ vertical force on the outside wheel because the amount of traction that you can get is a function of how much force is pushing the wheel down onto the tire down onto the road and what the friction coefficient is between the tire and the road. So the more force you can have on that outside wheel,

the more grip you're going to have there and better handling. And that's basically what they're doing there. So you got a stiff structure so it keeps the two front wheels oriented relative to each other the same. But ⁓ the you get more grip on that outside wheel and then it flexes relative to the back half of the car, which is kind of weird. ⁓ The amount of flex is actually pretty small. They said it's like no more than a millimeter.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:12)
So it's not like a body on frame where you see like a truck in a cab, like the bed in the cab, like, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's not like that at all. It's like, you know, barely a millimeter. And then, you know, they've also done other stuff with the front structure, you know, to make it stronger in some places, more flexible in other places for crash, energy dissipation in a crash. And they've managed to take a bunch of weight out of it and a bunch of cost out of it. So they say that the structure will be about 10 percent.

less expensive to manufacture, ⁓ and then also weigh about 90 kilograms less. That's about 200 pounds less than the current structure. And the first vehicles that are gonna get this approach are the Zero Series EVs. So starting with the Acura RSX, and then the Zero ⁓ SUV, and the Zero Saloon. And then all of Honda's next generation platforms are taking this approach. So this mule that we drove,

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:51)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:12)
has that kind of structure under the wonky skin. ⁓ the other thing that they told us is that all of the next generation hybrids are going to have the S plus shift mode. So we get to drive this around a handling track a few laps. And you couldn't really tell that there was anything unusual. It didn't feel like it was flexing or anything, but it just handled really well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:38)
Mm-hmm.

Interesting. That's not, mean, Honda loves an engineering problem. I mean, and I think they, yeah, there's something I was gonna say I'm not allowed to again. But no, the Honda loves an engineering problem and I think this is, know, remember the Type R, the...

you know, the last generation Type R came out and the first time you drove it and you're like, what wizardry is going on here? How did they do this to understeer? What did they do? What is happening? Who sold their soul to the devil to make this a reality? So yeah, they, I'm very, I'll be very interested to see, see this in, in a series of vehicles and how it works out. Yeah. I mean.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:31)
Yeah, so

the Zero ⁓ Series EVs are gonna have this, so we'll get to drive those next year. And then ⁓ probably the next generation Civic, which will probably be out ⁓ sometime 27, I think is about the timeframe, 27 or 28. And the next generation large vehicles as well in that same timeframe, 27, 28 timeframe, when those will start to appear. ⁓

you know, we'll all have this type of approach ⁓ along with the next generation hybrid system that is ⁓ both more powerful and more efficient than the current generation stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:11)
Yeah, this should put it in an element.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:14)
They should.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:17)
Honda makes like...

they'll put out like some crazy weird car that'll do okay and then it'll go away and then five years after that car has gone away, everyone loses their mind about the car.

That's the Honda way. Like they'll put it out there and be like, this is nice. And you'll have the people who want it, who will buy it. And then it goes away. And then later on everyone's like, my God, that car was so cool. Why didn't I buy that car? And the elements are, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:35)
Yeah.

Maybe they won't wait 24

years before they bring back the element. Although, how long's it been? When did the element get discontinued?

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:50)
Maybe, fingers crossed. It's been a while.

Let's see, out in 2009 or 2010? No, later than that. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:02)
No, it came out in the early 2000s.

2002. So it was in production from December 2002 until April 2011. So it's been 14 years, almost 15 years. So it's time for the element to come back, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:11)
All right.

It's time for the come back.

It's time for the element to come back. Again, I have first, I have right of first refusal when my brother sells his element.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:25)
You're gonna do an electric retro mod or rest a lot on it

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:30)
It's, you know, eight, eight, 10 years ago, it was way cheaper to do resto. It's, it's, it's gotten really weird. Like it's weird how that happened where you're like, ⁓ when people were just like gutting leafs, like, you know, broken leafs and broken Teslas out of junkyards. And you, and, know, and it was, you could like build one for, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:36)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:51)
$8,000, $10,000 bucks. Now, like, ⁓ that's $30,000 turnkey. I'm like, what is happening? Why don't I just buy an EV? Never mind.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:00)
Yeah.

And then finally, the the last car that we got to drive at Tachigi, we actually originally were not scheduled to drive. ⁓ So, you know, when we we arrived at the Tachigi Proving Grounds last Saturday, ⁓ we saw the cars parked out there. They had the prelude out there and they had ⁓ there was also ⁓ the Honda Super One that we saw at the show a few days earlier.

And ⁓ there was actually two different groups that were there at Tachigi. So there was this group of people from North America, from, you know, there's a bunch from the U.S., a few from Canada, a few from Mexico. And we were only supposed to drive the next gen hybrid and the prelude. ⁓ There was also a group of Japanese investors who were there and they got to drive the next gen hybrid and the super one. ⁓

And so we weren't supposed to drive the Super One. But then when they told us, no, you guys aren't going to get to drive that one, a bunch of us started complaining and whining and moaning and yes, like children and Hayashi-san, who's the director of the Honda Transformations division. Yeah, he he saw how enthusiastic we were about trying out the Super One. So let's let's adjust the schedule. We can we can get him some time in it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:08)
like children and like I would do. I'm like, come on, come on, what's it gonna hurt? Come on.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:29)
And so at the end of the day, after we were done with all the other stuff, we got a short presentation on the Super One. So the Super One, ⁓ they actually initially showed this prototype ⁓ at the Goodwood Festival of Speed last June or July, whenever that was. ⁓ And it was at the time they called it the Honda Super EV. And so this is based on the Honda N1E K-Car. ⁓ And you know,

K cars in Japan, make up more than half the Japanese automotive market. That's because they're small, they're relatively cheap. ⁓ In Tokyo, in places like Tokyo and some other big cities, you have to prove that you actually have a place to park your car before you can get it registered in Tokyo. K cars are exempt from that because they're so small. And so there's certain...

Dimensions, dimensional limits for K cars. And there's also, they're limited to six, for gas ones, they're limited to 660 cc's and they're limited to 64 horsepower. And so everything has to fall within those constraints. Well, the Super One is based on the N1E, but it has wider fender flares, which means that it's about 100 millimeters wider than the N1. Which means that,

it doesn't technically qualify as a K car anymore. Which means that since it's not a K car, it also doesn't have to be limited to 64 horsepower. And they wouldn't tell us exactly how much power it has. But from driving it, felt like it was probably somewhere around 75 or 80 horsepower, maybe maybe a little bit more. But they, yeah, we it's the one we drove was right hand drive.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:59)
Dun dun dun.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:25)
⁓ And so traditionally, ⁓ K cars have not been exported outside of Japan. This one, Honda is planning to export to right-hand drive markets like the UK, maybe Australia, some other Asian countries where they have right-hand drive. ⁓ There's no plans to do a left-hand drive version of this, unfortunately. ⁓ It weighs about just over 2,000 pounds.

we got to drive it. you know, they did, you know, kind of the ionic five end thing with the sound and the simulated shifting. So it's got simulated seven speed transmission. So the S plus kind of control strategy, but it's all electric. It's not hybrid. It was so much fun to drive. It was hysterical. ⁓ When

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:18)
So

Sam sends us a picture from Japan of him in front of this car and I've never been more jealous of Sam in my life.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:28)
It was a blast. Yeah, we only got a few minutes with it. We only got a few minutes each with it. But, you know, tossing this thing around, you know, I mean, at the limit, it understeers a bit. And it's, you know, it's not super fast, but it's quick enough. You know, it's exactly what you would want from like a small sporty runabout. It's it's perfect. Unfortunately, as I said, you know, we'll never get it here because

The N1E in Japan is priced at about $17,500 equivalent. So the super one would probably, because it's not a K car anymore, so it doesn't get the insurance breaks and other incentives that you get for K cars, it's probably gonna cost somewhere around 24 or $25,000 when it goes on sale in Japan next year.

And ⁓ by the time if they were to try to make it meet US regulations, you're probably looking mid $30,000 range. And it's probably only going to have about 120 to 140 miles of range at best. it wouldn't make any financial sense for Honda to try to bring it to the US. But if you happen to go somewhere, ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:34)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah, you run into the Fiat 500E problem.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:57)
you know, in 2026 where they do sell this car. If you go to Japan and you get an opportunity to drive one, I strongly encourage you to try it out because it will just put a smile on your face. It's light. It's nimble. It's quick enough. It's yeah, it's just it's a hoot.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:21)
really had a lot of fun driving to Sakura around Yokohama. He just let me drive it around the road and it was fantastic and I had the best time.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:24)
Yeah.

And imagine, you

know, adding another 20 or 25 horsepower to that and bigger tires. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:33)
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's I also a little thing about if you go do go to Japan, the little Japan. There's a thing where can like it's like a zip car where you can like rent a car and drive for a few hours and then bring it back. I tried that. It wouldn't work because I didn't have a Japanese driver's license. So if you go to Japan, you have to use like a proper. Yeah, it wouldn't work. So I had it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:55)
International driver driving permit doesn't work.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:59)
you have to get like a proper rental car. But also driving a car in Japan is very expensive. Like every time you get on the freeway is like monies. It's like, so it's a very expensive endeavor. Just warning people before you're like, ⁓ I'll just go drive a car in Japan.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:15)
So you need to

find a Japanese friend who can rent one and then take it out for an hour or two.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:21)
Yep. That's what you...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:23)
All right,

let's let's answer some listener questions and comments. ⁓ First up from Andy and Sydney. ⁓ Question about ⁓ EVs and 12 volt systems. I understand the need for this arrangement, 12 volts to power lights, wipers, etc. But why have an actual 12 volt battery installed? It seems a few carmakers have had issues with their 12 volt batteries. So why persist with them? Is it not possible to somehow siphon off 12 volts from the big battery?

Is this just technically difficult or is this something, or is there something else at play here? I hate to use the C word, but I'm, am I right in thinking that the cyber truck has such an arrangement? Keep up the good work. Um, so yeah, so in the case, well, in all EVs, they have a DC to DC converter. Um, so which, because of, you know, batteries put out direct current, not alternating current.

And the high voltage batteries are anywhere from 350 to 800 or so volts, depending on the architecture of the vehicle. ⁓ And so that DC to DC converter is used to, as Andy said, siphon off some of that power and it's used to charge the 12 volt battery. So in our EV6 that's sitting in the garage, if we go out in the garage and you happen to notice a little yellow lamp on top of the dashboard that's blinking, that means that it's currently

charging your 12 volt battery ⁓ through the DC-DC converter. And ⁓ the Cybertruck, they did get rid of the battery entirely. Most of the Cybertruck's low voltage stuff is actually running at 48 volts. They also have stuff that runs at 12 and five volts, because the computers and stuff actually run at five volts, not 12 volts. ⁓ So ⁓ they did dispense with the battery, with the low voltage battery.

It is possible to do that. ⁓ The challenge is ⁓ before you, I think for safety reasons, ⁓ when you're not using the low voltage system, the reason they typically have the 12 volt battery is to power things like ⁓ the systems that detect your ⁓ keyless entry system, your key fob.

⁓ and assorted other bits and pieces, you know, and being able to power up the computers to boot up the car when you first get in there. And for a system like the cyber truck, without a battery, basically you have to keep the contactors for the high voltage battery open all the time. So it's constantly got to be open to the high voltage circuit in cars that have a 12 volt battery. When it's not charging that battery,

the contactors open up so there's no energy flow from the high voltage battery to the rest of the car. So it should be in theory a little bit safer. And then only the 12 volt battery is engaged to power these auxiliary systems.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:37)
It's also, you know, it's a lot of work to do all this stuff and they are, they already have suppliers that are giving them, you know, that they buy 12 volt batteries at for pretty, you know, inexpensive relative to like what we have to pay because, know, they're Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, whoever. So when you look at the problem, you're like, well, we want people to be able to get in and out of their car just in case the battery dies. And we already have a system that works and we...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:00)
Yeah.

as long as we can keep that

low voltage battery charged.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:08)
Yeah,

as long as we can keep it charged, why don't we just keep doing that thing? It's sort of, yeah, it's like the path, it's almost the path of least resistance. This works, let's not mess with it. Except for when it doesn't, when like, you know, the Hyundai, Kia issues where they were draining the batteries, that was not great, because then you get out and you couldn't start your car. Even though, you know, your 76 kilowatt hour battery pack was fully charged, if the 12 volt.

What's it working? It's like, ⁓ it's like if you have a TV and you can't turn it. Yeah, it's like it's like you have a like really fancy widescreen television, but there's no power switch on it. And so while it's plugged into the wall, it's ready to go. If your remote doesn't have like two AAA batteries, you can't turn on your television. It's like almost like that situation.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:38)
Yeah, no way to boot up the computers.

Pretty much, All right, ⁓ also from David S. Said on this week's podcast, you mentioned that Tesla was testing autonomous driving vehicles in Austin. ⁓ Actually, it was in Austin for a couple days this week, and I had signed up for the RoboTaxi thing. I was hoping to try it out, ⁓ but ⁓ I was still on the waiting list and never got a chance to try it out.

Anyway, last week while driving from South Austin to the UT Austin campus, we were on the South Lamar Bridge when a Tesla sedan with no one inside passed by. There was no visible signage on the car indicating it was a test vehicle. In Austin, almost every fifth vehicle you pass is a self-driving Waymo. There were a lot of those in Austin and some Zooks cars as well. ⁓ They're clearly marked as self-driving vehicles. ⁓ However, not the Tesla fleet. And the thing is, with the Waymos and the...

the Zooks cars, even if they didn't have any markings on them, you can tell by all the sensors all over the car. ⁓ I don't know about the particular vehicle you saw, and if this was one of ⁓ Tesla's test vehicles as opposed to one that they're actually operating the service with. As far as I know, all the ones that are operating the service, the so-called RoboTaxi service, they have a RoboTaxi graphic.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:56)
You know. Yeah.

.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:20)
on the doors, it's pretty subtle and depending on the color of the car, you may not notice it, but that's, other than that, the rest of the car is stock Tesla Model Y. So it wouldn't be immediately obvious. And if you didn't notice the RoboTaxi graphic on the lower side of the front doors, ⁓ you may not realize what it is unless you looked over and saw nobody in the driver's seat.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:49)
It's interesting, like, there's an SAE standard coming, SAE, was it J? Yeah, J3134. And the idea is you have these, like, blue lights. Now, if you look on the, yeah, the turquoise, so if you look at the, yeah, Mercedes started using it on the S-Class that has the level three. And then when we went to New York to look at the IQ, the SQIQ is supposed to have a level three, you know, in 27, 28, I forget the year, a while from now.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:58)
The turquoise lights that Mercedes started using.

28.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:18)
28, those also, that vehicle also had those turquoise side lamps. And the idea is that as a driver, passenger, bicyclist, whatever, you can look, you can very quickly look at a vehicle and identify it as something that's driving autonomously. So you wouldn't have to worry about like, oh, does it have signage on it? Does it have this? like maybe this was a test vehicle that didn't have any signage. I think for the average person on the road, it's important to know how that vehicle is being driven. Whether it's being driven by a human that you make eye contact with.

or if it's being driven by a computer with a human like, you know, six miles away on it, with a, know, with a joystick or whatever. ⁓ But either way, like I think that's, it adds an extra bit of safety and understanding of what you're sharing the road with so that you can drive or react ⁓ in a way that makes sense for you as a human who doesn't want to get hit by an autonomous car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:13)
Yep. And then finally ⁓ from Vitaly ⁓ and thank you Vitaly for ⁓ giving us a pronunciation guide for your name. ⁓ if you write in, if there's any... ⁓

question about how your name might be pronounced, please give us some help. We will try. We will do our best to pronounce it correctly.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:39)
like Sam's last name.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:40)
Yeah. Anyway, so a long time listener fan. ⁓ I was served this ad and he provided a link ⁓ to an Instagram ad ⁓ for an armored Volvo XC90 while scrolling through Instagram. And I was surprised this exists. I suppose I never think about armored cars though. I have so many questions such as how many consumer channel vehicles are actually offered as armored variations? Is this an actual thing in the industry? ⁓ So yes. ⁓

Usually it's like high end luxury cars like BMW offers armored versions of the seven series. And I think the X five and X seven something. Yeah. Mercedes Benz offers armored versions of several of their models like the S class and the I think that probably the G wagon and GLS. ⁓ So typically some high end vehicles do offer.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:19)
Yeah, I saw the X5 in Germany, the armored version.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:38)
You can order them through the manufacturer. You can order armored versions. I don't know if they're always necessarily built on the same assembly line or if they send them somewhere else to be armored. yeah, it is not uncommon. Land Rover also does armored versions of Range Rovers. ⁓ So they are out there, usually on high end. ⁓ Do you guys ever get to see or get to drive them?

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:06)
I've

never driven one, but I've seen them. like up, like they showed us the BMW one. They lifted it up like on the side so we could see underneath it and all the plating and everything and the glass. it was really cool. really, you know, it's one of those things like, this is a cool thing. I'm not a head of state, so I'm okay. I don't need it, but it's kind of cool the way they do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I've never driven one either. I've seen them at auto shows, but never driven one. So what's the experience like? Are they significantly heavier and slower? Are the mechanicals reinforced to accommodate the extra weight and whatnot, other differences? So yeah, they are heavier. you know, like the armor might add in some cases, two to 3000 pounds to the weight of the car. So that means, you know, they've got to use

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:40)
Very heavy. Very heavy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:54)
tires with higher load ratings, they've got to have bigger brakes, ⁓ update the suspension components, yeah, all kinds of things need to be upgraded to accommodate all that extra weight. ⁓ Who's the target market for this? I have no idea why the ad was served to me. ⁓ Well, that's pretty standard for Instagram ads, ⁓ but it seems like Volvo's trying to target some kind of retail customer for this car outside of specialty security circles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:58)
brings the whole suspension.

I'm just like...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:24)
⁓ Well, you know, if you live in war zones like Portland, ⁓ you might want one of these.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:30)
That one block where everyone's, you know, those inflatable costumes, whew, dangerous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, mean, the target market is going to be, you know, the heads of state, you political figures, maybe some CEOs, you know, you know, really big companies, things like that for.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:45)
CEOs.

Anyone who's ever angered a lot of people.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:55)
Well maybe I better get one. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:57)
Yeah, yeah, and so journalists, ⁓

every journalist.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:02)
⁓ What's the destination fee for all that beefed up armor? If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:06)
gosh. Yeah,

yeah, I think it's, I think the destination fee is probably the same, but the car is so much more expensive that the destination fee doesn't even count. It doesn't even matter anymore. They're like, you know what, we're gonna, we're gonna waive the destination fee. Here's $300,000 in armor. Plus you have to waive the glass. The glass has to be bulletproof, blah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓

Any other experiences or insight you may have with this category of vehicle? ⁓ Not beyond what we've just said, so that's all I've got.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:35)
Yeah, they don't.

I think they don't. I think for the most part, they try to keep these a lot of the information about these vehicles just a little bit closer to their chest. Just so there's so, you know, if you share the more information you share, the more information that's out there that allows someone to exploit something. That's my I mean, that's my opsec. I, you know, idea about these, you know, you don't need to you don't. The fact that was on Instagram at is bonkers to me because, you know, the people who need these are looking for these. That's what it comes down to.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:03)
Yeah, they know where to

look.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:05)
Yeah, they know that. They know a guy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:08)
Yeah. All right. ⁓ Before we wrap up, ⁓ after we say goodbye, there is also an interview that Nicole ⁓ recorded a couple of weeks ago with Omer Weisman from Michelin. So we'll have that on at the end here. But before we say goodbye, ⁓ Robbie, it's November. And I know usually in November you do something to raise some money for those that

maybe you need ⁓ maybe food insecure. You want to talk about that? Are you doing that again this year?

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:43)
Yeah,

yeah, I usually do in October. ⁓ didn't do, we did, because we do Tacotober and then part of Tacotober is that we also, so the idea was we have a, I have a band and it's called Drastic Cats. And if you donate more than $50 to Feeding America and you give me, ⁓ if you tell me, know, me a link or, you know, via Blue Sky or email or whatever, we'll write a song about you.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:46)
Oh, that October? I thought it was November.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:08)
We don't have to know much about you. You can like share some information about yourself that helps, because sometimes it's people I know, but sometimes it's people I have no idea who they are. And they'll just take, like one person like, I just bought a new computer. So we just wrote a whole song about a computer. And so yeah, so, ⁓ well, if we're talking about it, might as well do it. So yeah, so I think if you ⁓ talk, ⁓ I'll set it up and send you a link you can put in the show notes for it. ⁓ But it's, yeah, so I grew up.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:09)
Hmph. Hmph.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:38)
really poor, like we are very few insecure. There are photos of me as a child where I look like a skeleton child. ⁓ And so to me, we've been doing this for years. I think now it's more important than ever with the sort of insanity of ⁓ SNAP benefits. ⁓ I will occasionally meet somebody who doesn't believe that there are people in this country who go hungry at night, who go to bed without food.

kids especially who ⁓ and I remember like not having food especially in the summer when you don't have like that that free lunch at school that we had so it is a it is a real issue it is continues on and if you want to send you know some money then ⁓ I will write a song about you I will I will wrangle in the other guy from drastic cats it might it likely will not come out in November it takes us a little while because

The whole deal for this is that we write and record a song in about an hour. ⁓ But it's always best if we come in with some ideas, know, maybe a melody, maybe a guitar riff, maybe a... One of them was just a drum beat that I have. And I'm like, what's this? How's this sound to you? And then the other person in the band, came up with this really great guitar riff for it. And so then we wrote a song about Saturday morning cartoons. That was because it was about somebody had said it, they want it to be about their kids and their love of Saturday morning cartoons.

So yeah, so Feeding America, will set it up now and we can put a link in the show notes and I will warn Michael Calori, he's an editor at Wired, he's the other person in Drastic Cats that ⁓ we need to get the band back together. Because we haven't done an album in two years and we still owe music from last year. So here we go, let's do this.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:26)
All right, and also, if you have a local food bank, as Robbie mentioned, a lot of people haven't gotten their SNAP benefits this month because of the government shutdown. ⁓ Reach out to your local food bank, see what they need. A ⁓ lot of times, they will have a list of the stuff that they need donated, ⁓ or just give them a cash donation, that also helps. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:55)
Cash

is best because they have ⁓ better buying power than you do. So like the dollar that you spend on a can of peas, they could buy like five cans of peas with that dollar. So it's always best to send them cash.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:09)
Yeah, last week my wife and I went, we got the list from one of our local food banks and we went to Costco and got about 400 bucks worth of stuff and took it over there. ⁓ So check out what your local food bank needs ⁓ and help out people who ⁓ aren't getting fed.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:27)
Yeah, and if you

have time, they're having, know, some of them are looking, because they have to, they fill boxes for people who are coming by to pick it up. Sometimes they need people to help just fill boxes. So you're just, all day, just, you know, a couple hours, you're just putting things in boxes and getting it ready for the next person. Are you handing stuff off, or are you checking off a list? you know, just whatever you can do if you can afford it, but if you have some time, or if, you know, just whatever, if you can't, and if you can't, I completely understand, don't.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:37)
Yeah. Volunteer or repack stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:54)
This is not, I've never wanted to guilt anyone into doing anything just because again, growing up without, you know, money or time is like really sort of wires your brain in a weird way where you're like, okay, I understand. It's cool. It's cool. Being poor is very expensive. You have no idea. People who, people who, if you've been fortunate enough to grow up without being broke all the time, you don't think about it, but like being poor, like a traffic ticket or a parking ticket can like throw off your entire month.

You're like, well, now we don't have money for this. So yeah, being poor is extremely expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:30)
Yeah. And then ⁓ one other thing that I participate in is a project called Operation Frodo, which our friend Nick Miles started organizing several years ago. ⁓ We found out that in ⁓ Nebraska, for example, at the end of hunting season in the fall, ⁓ a lot of dogs, lot of beagles get abandoned. Hunters will, you if the dogs were not ⁓ productive enough, ⁓ they will just abandon them.

you know, sometimes they'll just shoot them out in the woods. Sometimes they'll turn them into shelters or rescue organizations. And so ⁓ we work with with a rescue organization in Omaha ⁓ to transport dogs ⁓ to homes ⁓ on the West Coast where there are people looking for dogs to adopt. And so coming up in mid December, we have this this the next edition of Operation Frodo where

We get some press vehicles that are loaned to us by automakers and they also provide cash donations to help pay for the fuel and food and supplies for the dogs and hotel rooms. we drive from Omaha to Denver to Salt Lake City to Boise to Portland. Last year we transported 23 dogs to permanent homes and we're gonna be doing it again this December. ⁓ And so there's a link for any...

in the show notes as well for that if you want to make a little donation to help out with that operation. And right now I'm actually working on organizing the next one, which is going to be in the spring, probably late May, early June when we're going to do it, and use all EVs for that one. So that should be an interesting challenge.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:17)
Cool.

I have told ⁓ Nick that I'm gonna do it every year and every year. It's never worked out and so I'm glad you're doing it because I would just be like just cuddling with puppies the entire time. I'm like, you guys can drive. I gotta keep track of these dogs. Someone has to cuddle the puppies.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:32)
Well, somebody's got to cuddle the puppies. ⁓ So yeah, last year

we had about 20 automotive journalists ⁓ that took part ⁓ and we went in shifts and driving from the middle of the country to the West Coast and made a lot of dogs ⁓ got better lives and happier families. ⁓

All right, ⁓ now we'll say goodbye and continue listening to Nicole's conversation with Omer Weissman from Michelin. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:12)
Bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:15)
Okay, everyone, so I have the chance to attend the Petit Le Mans in Atlanta with ⁓ the folks from Michelin. And I have here with me Omar Weissman, trying to say his name right. And he is the VP of Marketing North America B2C for Michelin. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

Omer Waysman (1:48:32)
No,

I Nicole. Thanks for having me. ⁓ I am super looking forward to our actual discussion today.

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:40)
Yes. So one of the things that I, this sort of struck me when I was at the event, they took us on a tour when we saw the pits and the number of tires that they go through. It's a huge number of tires. It's not a small number. And, but they're all tires that are really specifically designed for racing. And I'm wondering why for Michelin, the effort for those tires, how does that translate for consumers? Cause no one's putting theirs, those tires on their Toyota Camry.

Omer Waysman (1:49:07)
You're right. you know, for motors for for Michelin motorsport is always be a very important place. ⁓ First of all, it's in our DNA, because motorsport is the center of excellence for innovation. And when you look at our purpose, we want to be and to develop the best possible tires, no matter the usage, no matter who is the end user of it.

And so ⁓ when we have ⁓ decided obviously to accelerate our presence into the motorsport industry, the first objective was to make sure that we develop the best possible tire for a racer. And obviously if you develop the best possible tire for the race, that tire and that technology will help you to develop the best possible tire for the street. So having the best combination between the grip, between the traction, between the wear, helping you actually opt

your performance within a race will obviously help us get all those insights and all this technology into our street tires. So the first really reason is this center of excellence of innovation. The second reason is ⁓ our sustainability effort. I think that you had the chance to be exposed to the new tire line that we were going to launch in 2026, the Pilot Sport Cap 2 endurance, which is ⁓ made

with 50%, five zero of recyclable and renewable material. So we try as much as possible to have again, the racing industry with the sustainability goals. The second element within the sustainability goals is all of our AI simulation. So what we try to do as much as we can is to minimize the time on the road to test the tires. So thanks to AI simulation, we are able actually to take those tires, to model those tires within the right cars.

and then to test it under all the different conditions. And so we don't have to go every time, know, to the track, then to rebuild the mold and to rebuild the tire. We can really adjust it very quickly. So one, we are obviously being way more sustainable and two, in terms of go to market and the time between the launches of product is shrinking. So that's actually a great laboratory for us to be even more active in our sustainability goals. And last but not least, and I hope you saw it.

The connection with the consumers, those people that are so passionate about racing, when you talk to them about the tires, Nicole, have to say, I'm only three years in the industry. But when I had the chance to sit in some of the table talking with passionate consumer of Corvette about how the tire affect their driving and how they're so happy with that, it's just mind blowing.

And you saw so many people coming into the fan zone. So it's a great way for us as well to express the why Michelin and why we feel that we produce and provide to our consumer the best possible tires. And so the combination of the three is why do we want really to continue and be present. And that's why we extended our IMSA partnership for 10 additional years.

Nicole Wakelin (1:52:19)
So for the sustainability part of that, which when you think about tires, mean, you see tires disposed of in places. It's a separate place at the dump. Like it's a big deal trying to dispose of tires. So making them more sustainable. You've used recycled materials. How about in terms of where? Like and the ability to say once that tire is done, what do you do with it? It's not hard on the environment.

Omer Waysman (1:52:42)
So you are totally right. That's a key point that we try to tackle. One of the promises that we have as a company is obviously to extend the wear that we can have for our tire line. And if you look at our major tire lines today, so if we take the Defender tire line, the Crossclimate 2 tire lines, are lasting on average 25 % more than our major competitor. 25%. It's huge.

It can go up to two years of additional wear that you have with the Michelin tire. And it's compared to major competitor that are actually premium players. And I think it's so important for us to be proud of that because that's really something that we are working and all of our team are working so hard to make sure that from the first mile to the last mile, you have the same performance. So it's not only about the wear.

but it's about the wear within the performance, making sure that you have the best performance from your tire from the first mile to the last mile. And that's something that we are ⁓ very attentive to because in terms of the overall cost, know, know, tire are a big part of the total cost that we have for cars. But if you are managing to have an additional one year, 18 months, two years,

with the same performance without actually having any issues to your safety or to your ⁓ driving habits. That's great also for your bank account. So at the end of the day, we are trying as much as we can to have this magical formula between optimizing the wear and optimizing the performance within the wear.

Nicole Wakelin (1:54:32)
And something you just want to touch on, because you're the tire expert, and as we just mentioned, I live in New England, and winter is coming. The optimized wear, the optimized performance, how important is putting a winter tire on your car when it gets cold?

Omer Waysman (1:54:47)
I mean, you know, it's, there's something in French you can say that ⁓ one image can describe a thousand words. And I think that when you have the real feeling, when you go actually ⁓ into a winter condition and you don't have the right tires, ⁓ I trust me when you go once, you don't want to go again. And so I think that I can obviously tell you how much I believe in that from a security standpoint, et cetera.

But if I want to be real, if you experience it once, you just don't want to get into the situation again. And that's why, you know, our cross climate to tire line is obviously for all weather situation, helping us being able to have the same performance across a different condition, if it's for winter or summer. And obviously if you are in an extreme winter condition, then you can go with a specific and tailored winter tire. So we try as much as we can in our different

portfolio of tire line to have the right tire line for the right condition, but also to have these those choices for the consumers because at the end of the day, we are here for safety and to make sure that ⁓ the driver are having a smooth ride without tire lines.

Nicole Wakelin (1:56:04)
And as far as understanding tires, because there's a lot more to it, like they're not the most exciting looking part of your car, right? They're the black pieces of rubber that we don't, we don't think a lot about tires. What, if you could give consumers one really good piece of advice, like this is what you need to do to make sure that you are driving on the tires that are right for you and your vehicle. What would you give consumers?

Omer Waysman (1:56:26)
So that's a good question. The first thing I would say, be curious. Be curious and try to get the most information that you can. Obviously, ⁓ we implemented a new ⁓ immersive experience, Nicole, and I invite you to go and see on our michelin-men.com website where you can really play and have a gamification that helps you also understand what timeline you need for what usage. And so we try really, and we saw a huge engagement for new generation actually.

that they don't necessarily want us to talk to them as we've been talking to consumer about tire before, but we try to have more dedicated about usage. And what can I do with this tire? It's not only a necessity, it's also about the pleasure of driving. And we see it more and more. was talking about this notion of pleasure from the Corvette drivers, but more and more, the more you'll be exposed to premium tire, the more pleasure you might get.

even without noticing when you're driving, the quiet that you can get. So all those elements are so important to get educated on, to understand, you know, what do you really want from your tire? You want the wear, but you also want the right grip. You want to make sure that you are driving safely. And those elements are important, I would say, from an overall standpoint. So just going to our website, to our different touch points, trying to get familiar with what we are producing.

sorry, what you're producing and the attention that we pay to detail and the innovation that we put into a tire. That's what I guess we are most proud about is every tire that we are taking out of our plant is checked individually by every employee ⁓ at the plant to make sure that we have the best possible tire going out of the plant to the streets. So just that.

Just that.

Nicole Wakelin (1:58:22)
And what's that? What do think the next big thing that you're going to like that you're excited about for Michelin in terms of your next? There's always some new products, some new idea. What's your, what are you most excited about?

Omer Waysman (1:58:33)
That's a good question. I would say I'm very excited about the new partnership that we have with IMSA, the extension of our partnership ⁓ until 2025. I'm super excited about the new tire line that you saw, also about the design of this new tire line. I don't know if you pay attention to it, but it's really a breakthrough design. So it's not only the, as you said, the old black, I would say, round.

It looks pretty nice. I like it, to be honest. And I think that that's something I'm excited about. ⁓ And definitely our action in terms of ⁓ leading the way in terms of sustainability. Nicole, it's an important one. We are within the tire industry, within the racing industry. And the fact that we race for change, that's something I'm excited about. It's all the small effort that we put together into driving the next mobility of tomorrow to be more sustainable.

and to be closer to our consumer expectations. So overall, I'm definitely excited about the next things that are coming. Some of them I cannot share with you today. promise that I will. So we'll talk in the next few months. We have some great news ⁓ and hopefully those great news are going to be appealing as well for our consumers and partners.

Nicole Wakelin (1:59:51)
Excellent. So, well, Omri, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next secret things that you won't tell me right now are.

Omer Waysman (2:00:00)
Bye.