Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 432 of wheel bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from telemetry.

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

Sam Abuelsamid (00:10)
And we have a special guest today. Robbie's running a few minutes late. He's got a work thing, but we got a special guest joining us today for the first time. Harvey. Hello.

Harvey Briggs (00:19)
Yep.

Hey, thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited. I've been listening to you guys for a long time and glad to participate.

Nicole Wakelin (00:29)
You're welcome.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30)
Harvey Briggs is a longtime friend of the show and of all of us. ⁓ Tell the audience a little bit about who you are, Harvey.

Harvey Briggs (00:40)
⁓ I'll not go all the way back because that would be a long time, but I started this crazy career back in 1978 as an intern at Car and Driver magazine. ⁓ Since then did some automotive advertising, bunch of other things, and I now run the Rides and Drives and contribute to Rob Report and a few other ⁓ outlets doing automotive reviews, travel stories, that kind of stuff. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42)
Ha

Harvey Briggs (01:09)
one of the gang.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:11)
And you've written some books too, I think, right? Oh, just one? Okay, I thought it was more than

Harvey Briggs (01:13)
A book. Yeah, I wrote,

yeah, we had hoped to do a second, but ⁓ that one flamed out spectacularly. yeah, we wrote, ⁓ I'm co-writer Simon Van Boy, and I wrote a book called Rolls Royce Motor Cars, Making a Legend. It's still available on Amazon and any other platform where you want to buy a book, but we had a lot of fun writing that.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:41)
So last week, you and I spent a good portion of the week together, probably what, about five, six days altogether. so to share with the audience what we were doing across 2,000 miles in multiple days last week.

Harvey Briggs (01:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, we were participating in what is known as Operation Frodo. It's a rescue mission that was founded by our friend Nick Miles, ⁓ where we rescue beagles from Omaha, Nebraska, and drive them to Portland and Seattle ⁓ out on the West Coast. It turns out that there are too many beagles in the Midwest and not enough homes for them, but there are

plenty of homes available for beagles on the west coast. So we were able to move these 20 beagles out of the Midwest and into places where they'll have their forever homes and, ⁓ you know, basically save 20 beagle lives. So I'm really excited we got to do that together, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:49)
Yeah, and it also, not just did we find some homes for those dogs, but it also opened up space at the Bassett and Beagle rescue of the Heartland in Omaha for other dogs. think we got a note from Kathy there on the second day that we were on the road saying that the 20 that we had taken had opened up space for another five that they had already taken in just two days later.

Harvey Briggs (03:15)
Right.

Yeah, and you know, this is I think fourth year we've been doing it. So we've saved 85 dogs to this point. And when you think about that, that means, like you said, we open up space where they can bring in more dogs and those will get adopted out in other areas of the country. ⁓ just, it's a really nice thing to be able to be a part of. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:39)
And of course, not all of the dogs end up in the Pacific Northwest, especially the last two years.

Harvey Briggs (03:44)
Yeah, two things happened. One, we

started working with the Utah Beagle Rescue, so we've dropped off dogs in Salt Lake City. But ⁓ our friend Paul Eisenstein just can't seem to leave Operation Frodo without adopting a dog. So for the second year in a row, Paul has failed as a foster and didn't let a dog get home.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:01)
Ha ha ha ha!

Nicole Wakelin (04:01)
Hahaha!

⁓

Harvey Briggs (04:14)
So he took it home with him and he's just been having the best time introducing his latest four-legged family member to the others in their household.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:26)
Well, if you're going to fail at anything in life, that's a good thing to fail at.

Harvey Briggs (04:29)
Yeah, exactly. was it. It's always dramatic, though. And Paul decides to do this. Then we have to figure out with, you know, because they aren't our dogs. Right. We're just transporting them. They either, you know, when before they get in our our vehicles, they belong to Bassett and Beagle Rescue of the Heartland, an amazing organization that does so much good in Omaha and throughout the Midwest. And

Nicole Wakelin (04:30)
Right?

Sam Abuelsamid (04:35)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (04:59)
once they're in our possession, then technically they belong to the rescues on the other end. And that would either be the Asher House, Seattle Beagle Rescue, or Utah Beagle Rescue. So when Paul says, ⁓ this dog and I have bonded and he must come home with me, well, then we have to call the rescue and say, is he spoken for? Is it OK if Paul takes him home? This year, was fairly easy because the dog

didn't have a permanent home yet, but last year the dog did. And so Paul had to take that dog home, then get another dog and fly him out to Seattle so ⁓ some child could have his Christmas beagle. So it was a whole thing, but it's great. It's great to see it. It's great to see everybody get so involved.

Nicole Wakelin (05:49)
Ha ha ha ha!

Harvey Briggs (05:58)
And it's such a great event for our community of automotive journalists to give back.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:04)
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And it's challenging. mean, it's hard driving 2,000 miles. And also, even for those of us that have the willpower not to adopt every dog that we're with, ⁓ it's still tough when we have to hand them over after we've spent multiple days with them.

Harvey Briggs (06:25)
Yeah, I know you bonded with ⁓ one of the dogs that you ⁓ cared for and that was really great to see. ⁓ I must be a heartless bastard because I love the dogs while we have them, but at the end of the trip, I'm happy to see them end up where they end up in their homes. it is, for me, it's super gratifying to see

Sam Abuelsamid (06:30)
Yeah, with Ned.

Hahaha

Harvey Briggs (06:54)
people get that dog and have the pet that they're gonna keep and know that this dog went from a really tough situation, whether it's a puppy in a puppy mill or a dog that was serving as a breeding dog in one of these places or medical research, know, because they come from all different areas and end up in a loving home with other animals and maybe kids to take care of them. To me, that's the best part about the whole thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:23)
Yeah, and this year it looks like a second dog is also going to be coming back to Michigan. ⁓ Paul adopted Clyde, who is a Bassett and Border Collie mix, which is a very unusual mix. But ⁓ there's another dog ⁓ that is coming back, a dog named Liam, that apparently one of our cohort has found a home for him here in Michigan.

Nicole Wakelin (07:50)
wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:51)
Right after Christmas, he's planning to fly back out to the West Coast and drive back with Liam and bring him to his full-time home here, assuming he can get everything sorted out by then.

Nicole Wakelin (08:00)
Nice!

Harvey Briggs (08:02)
Yeah, yeah. And bring one of the vehicles that we drove out there back to the Midwest, it turns out. It turns out that ⁓ the fleet in Chicago was expecting that Kia to come back. I had no idea. Yeah, we got the call, you know, an email saying, so when are you going to drop that car back at O'Hare for us? So.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:08)
okay.

Oops.

Nicole Wakelin (08:26)
You're like, not? ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (08:27)
We'll

get back to you on that.

Harvey Briggs (08:33)
So that's a note for next year. Just make sure all communications on vehicle start and end points is clear for everybody. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (08:40)
That's

Sam Abuelsamid (08:40)
Yeah, and you

Nicole Wakelin (08:41)
funny.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:42)
know, this is one of the things about this event is that automakers loan us vehicles just like we get press vehicles to drive and review. you know, in a few minutes, we're going to do some some quick reviews of the vehicles we drove last week. But, you know, they they loan us the vehicles that we're using for this event. You know, and some in some cases, you know, they want them back where they started from, like this particular Kia Carnival and others.

⁓ They're loaning us vehicles that they also maybe need to have repositioned. Some of them come from here and end up and stay in the fleet on the West Coast. So we should definitely thank the automakers for that.

Harvey Briggs (09:23)
Right. Did did. Yeah.

And typically the vehicles that they loan us are toward the end of their useful life as a press vehicle. ⁓ You know, they get to that point where they've got 10, 11, 12000 miles and they're going to be pulled from the fleet anyway. And in some cases, so ⁓ for them, it's a nice opportunity to give the vehicle one last hurrah. And for us, it really is a unique way to evaluate a vehicle because

You know, how many long road trips do you ever take in a press vehicle? How many dogs do you carry in your press vehicles? You know, it doesn't happen very often and this is a way for us really to talk about the vehicles and what they're capable of in a way that typically we don't.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:11)
So Nicole, you want to adopt a beagle? ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (10:14)
I would love to adopt a dog, I just don't have my life does not support it with the amount of time I'm on the road. I miss our dog so much. Our little doggo. keep saying I want another one because now Kit has him because it was technically her dog. So she took him when she moved out. I miss that little dog so much. So someday when my travel life slows down, there could be a dog, a beagle potentially in my future.

Harvey Briggs (10:19)
You

Yeah, I think we're

the same way. That's one of the reasons that I try to stay somewhat detached because I can't bring a dog home right now with our lifestyles either.

Nicole Wakelin (10:49)
It's

too hard. Our dog, if we had a dog, that poor puppy would probably spend 75 % of his time at a kennel, not at our house, you know, with our travel schedules. And that's not fair to a dog, so.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:01)
No,

no, definitely not. ⁓

Harvey Briggs (11:02)
Yeah, yeah,

that's important for people if you are adopting a dog. Understand your lifestyle and what you can give, because that's what happens a lot of times is people get a dog, they don't realize the commitment it takes, and then they surrender it. And we actually had a few surrenders on ⁓ our ⁓ troop of dogs this year, too.

Nicole Wakelin (11:11)
Mm-hmm.

It's a lot of work. Like dogs are great fun and they bring you so much joy and so they're such loving creatures, but they are a responsibility. So not one to be undertaken unless you're prepared to take that responsibility. Truly.

Harvey Briggs (11:37)
Yeah.

Yeah. And for, you know, I mean, a dog can live 15, 16, 20 years. So it's a long term commitment for sure.

Nicole Wakelin (11:47)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:49)
Yeah, and you you mentioned, you know, a couple of the dogs that we had, you know, were surrenders. know, a couple of them were, you know, we came into the rescue because their owners were elderly and had died. You know, and so that's, you know, that's unfortunate. You know, and then there was one, you know, Cora, who was, I guess was found out in the wild, having just had a litter of seven pups and she's a little.

a little beagle and she had seven pups. And they brought them all in and they're taking care of those puppies now at Asher House near Portland.

Harvey Briggs (12:19)
Right.

Nicole Wakelin (12:19)
Wow.

Harvey Briggs (12:26)
Yep. Yeah, we should talk a little bit about Asher House too, because that's a pretty amazing, pretty amazing setup out there.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:31)
Yeah.

Hey, Robbie. Robbie, Robbie was running a little late because he had some actual work to do, you know, got to pay some bills. ⁓ thanks for joining us. We're just talking about Operation Frodo and the, you know, the experience that we had last week transporting dogs. And one other thing I want to mention about Operation Frodo, you know, it's

Roberto Baldwin (12:36)
Hi everybody.

Nicole Wakelin (12:38)
Hey there.

Harvey Briggs (12:39)
Hi Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin (12:43)
I'm sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:03)
⁓ Nick Miles, who you mentioned, he's a friend of ours, ⁓ he started a non-profit organization called Animal Rescue Rigs. So Operation Frodo is just one piece of a larger puzzle. ⁓ We've transported 85 dogs now over the last four years, ⁓ but there's half a million dogs that never come out of shelters every year. ⁓

Moving those those dogs around is challenging for the organizations for the shelters and so one of the goals of animal rescue rigs is to eventually provide vehicles for those rescue organizations to help move the dogs to where they can get permanent homes

Harvey Briggs (13:50)
Yeah, I'm actually on the board of Animal Rescue Rig. So we've been talking about this now and really putting the plan together this year to start building and delivering vehicles specifically for animal transport. Because those half a million dogs that don't make it out of shelters, there's a home for every one of them if the dogs can be moved to where the homes are.

And so that's really what we're trying to do is to use our, you know, what little influence we have with the automakers to do things like Operation Frodo and then also work with them to hopefully provide vehicles that can help move dogs throughout the year. Because while it's great to do it around Christmas time, these dogs can be moved and need to be moved any time of the year.

Oop, you're muted, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:51)
But before we move ⁓ on, one last thing on this before we start talking about cars, tell us about Asher House.

Harvey Briggs (14:53)
You

yeah. The Asher House is ⁓ just came on as a partner with us ⁓ this summer. And this is the second time we've been delivering dogs to them. But Lee Asher founded this. He actually started ⁓ his life with animals as ⁓ like a TikTok influencer. He was going around the country to shelters just before Covid hit.

Nicole Wakelin (15:11)
Ahem.

Harvey Briggs (15:29)
and he would go into different shelters and highlight animals that were up for adoption. Well, when COVID came, ⁓ he couldn't do that anymore and he wanted to do something big. So he bought a 240 acre farm outside of Salem, Oregon, where he keeps dogs, cats, ⁓ farm animals that are rescued from bad situations. When we were there, he had

to Clydesdales that had been rescued from a slaughterhouse. They were going to be killed. ⁓ He has ⁓ 150 dogs in his pack right now. About a third of those are adoptable, and the other third aren't adoptable, but he cares for them so that they can live out their life in this amazing setting. The cat annex in his house was incredible.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:25)
Yeah

Harvey Briggs (16:26)
And the house is funny. It's like he bought this property and it had this beautiful, I don't know how many square foot that house was, but you know, 20,000 square foot home on this property overlooking a lake. And I'm going, must be nice. And then I walk in and he's converted it to an animal shelter.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:45)
Yeah, there's like,

there's I think there's about 110 or 115 of the dogs are living in the house.

Harvey Briggs (16:52)
So yeah, but we got to go for a pack walk with him with about 50 of the dogs. It was really cool. So ⁓ he's doing great work out there and we're happy to support him and happy he is partnering with us to take those dogs as well.

Nicole Wakelin (16:53)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:11)
All right. ⁓ Well, let's ⁓ let's transition a little bit to talk about some cars and what's going on in the auto industry. ⁓ Nicole, let's start with you. What have you been driving?

Nicole Wakelin (17:22)
Yes, okay.

Excuse me, of course he asked me what I've been driving and I immediately start coughing. ⁓ I was driving the Ford Maverick Lobo, which is just a silly name, Lobo. ⁓ Just say, what do you drive? I drive a Lobo. ⁓ So it's a very specific version of the Maverick. It's sort of like their low rider.

Roberto Baldwin (17:37)
Lobo.

Harvey Briggs (17:37)
Ha ha!

Nicole Wakelin (17:49)
like street performance low rider, but it's not super performancey in terms of power, but they gave it a performance tuned suspension. ⁓ Excuse me. They lowered it a little bit, so it's got that low rider vibe. It has a specific seven speed automatic, and you get paddle shifters. ⁓ There's a Lobo drive mode, which I didn't try because it's a track. ⁓

mode kind of thing and I was not taking us on the track. I had this for a very limited window and nobody's taking anything on a track in New Hampshire right now because it is like 10 degrees out if you are. It's probably a snowmobile and that's it that you're taking out there. But so you know if you want to go have some fun with it you can. It's a fun vehicle to drive but it's a little bit more about the style of it than the substance of it. Like it looks really cool like you

Sam Abuelsamid (18:20)
Ha ha.

Nicole Wakelin (18:41)
walk up to it and you're like, what is this? It has this, I don't even know how to describe the grill on this. It has this grill that is just, it's such a funky looking grill. The way it curves, I don't know, I just think the grill is amazing. And it has wheels. You guys, have you all seen the wheels on this? They call them, I wrote down what they call it, turbo fan styled black painted wheels. Or,

As somebody in my family said, it looks like the wheels are dinner plates. Like they're just these big flat black.

Circles. So it looks cool, but it either looks cool and you love it or it looks funky and you think, what? What were they thinking here? If you get that lowrider vibe though, from that point of view, you gotta have that in your head when you look at this and suddenly it all comes together and kind of makes sense. I don't know, I try to imagine who's gonna buy this? Like are there that many people that want a lowrider maverick?

truck right at the stock. Like, I feel like if you're that guy, you want to mess with your own truck. You like want to do it yourself. If you're the guy who's going to take it to a show and I don't know, put the little, what do they do? What's the hydraulic thing? So the car goes boom, boom, boom. Is it literally, yeah, like a hydraulic suspension. You can't see me trying to mimic what a hydraulic suspension does. Like this, like this. This isn't TV. This is a podcast, but.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:54)
the hydraulic suspensions.

Roberto Baldwin (19:56)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (20:07)
So it's very fun to drive. It was comfortable. mean, I had four people in it. We did a good bit of driving on the highway and stuff. The only thing I would notice it sounds has a nice little girl, a little bit louder, but it's not especially powerful. It has a two liter four cylinder EcoBoost. It's 250 horsepower and two and pound feet of torque. It's fine. mean, the Maverick is in a huge truck, but this the performance part of this is more that they have lowered it and sort of changed the suspension as opposed to like giving it this outrageous amount

horsepower so suddenly you can you know beat a Tesla off the line or something. That's not what this is. I feel like it's a little bit more about the style of it. It's because it just looks really fun. It looks really cool. I saw people like you know doing that like what is that like the wheels especially those turbo fan style black painted wheels they get people's attention and they're gonna love it or hate it but you are going to attract attention for those wheels. ⁓ The other thing about this that is not

friendly is the price. It starts at $35,930, according to what I just looked up online, because I'm trying to get the most recent price, also the most recent destination, because it changed from what was on the Maroni that I had. As we've noticed, things have been changing a lot on that. Do you guys want to take a guess at what the destination is on this?

Roberto Baldwin (21:30)
16.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:31)
Harvey,

you're, what'd you say, Robbie?

Roberto Baldwin (21:34)
16.

Harvey Briggs (21:34)
He said six. I would say 1495.

Nicole Wakelin (21:38)
And what would you say, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (21:40)
I believe it's 1695 if I recall from

Nicole Wakelin (21:43)
with his like engineering man memory. Yes, it's exactly 1695.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:45)
It Harvey it used

it was 1495 until a couple months ago, and it just it recently changed I was a 15. Okay

Nicole Wakelin (21:52)
Well, and then my Monroney said 1595. it said

15 on my Monroney, but it was 1695 when I looked it up, because I looked it up right there. So unless it's changed in the last 22 minutes, it's 1695, but who knows? So you're looking at a car that's a truck that's $36,000. But there is an options list for this, like the number of options when you add the pickup box cover, and there's different bed liners, and there's an illuminated Ford logo badge that you can

get and like all these there's a lot of options on this for the exterior options to make this look like how you want it to look I feel like once you start playing with this you're very quickly gonna have a truck that's gonna be over 40 grand and it's a compact it's a smaller truck you know

Harvey Briggs (22:39)
As a Maverick owner, yeah, I have a 2024 XLT hybrid that I got all in at 34, which felt like a stretch. 40 for the Lobo, and I drove the Lobo at the Mama Rally. We autocrossed it. And yeah, that...

Nicole Wakelin (22:42)
Okay.

Okay, yes.

Yeah

You did? Okay. And how, how

was it when you got a chance to drive it in its Lobo mode? How was it? It's fine.

Harvey Briggs (23:08)
⁓ It's fine, you know, but it's

not an, my god, this is the coolest, most fun pickup truck I've ever driven. It's not like the old ⁓ Chevy SS, 454 SS or something that they used to do with the Silverado. It's a trim package, you know. And it handles better, yes. It is more street oriented, yes.

Nicole Wakelin (23:18)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (23:37)
but it's ⁓ not a light your heart on fire kind of performance car.

Nicole Wakelin (23:43)
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:43)
Wait, so you're saying this

is a trim package and not an all new vehicle that arguably should not be included on Car of the Year lists?

Nicole Wakelin (23:47)
you

Harvey Briggs (23:51)
Bingo!

Sam Abuelsamid (23:52)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (23:53)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (23:56)
Yeah, well, either way, ⁓ it is it is a finalist for an act toy. Limited number of trucks in the mix each year. So we do some leeway based on what the truck availability is. So but yeah, it is one of the trucks we sometimes do allow trims depending on the changes for the trim, which we've done for years now. We've done that because sometimes there's just not enough straight up 100 percent all new trucks. It happens all the time. It's nothing unusual. ⁓

Harvey Briggs (24:22)
Well, there goes my chance at NAC Toy Membership.

Nicole Wakelin (24:25)
⁓

You're out, Harvey. Not at all. So, but it was, and that's part of why I had it, because Ford wanted to make sure that I had a chance to drive it before we finished our voting, which finishes, I think, 2nd. So, they were trying to kind of run through us, like, give you a couple extra days. We had it at the drive that we did back in.

Harvey Briggs (24:29)
Yeah

Nicole Wakelin (24:47)
in Michigan, but they like, hey, if we can get people a little extra time to see if they want to vote for it or not, they gave us a little extra time in it. But yeah, it's mostly like it is, it's mostly a trim level. There's not some significant change under the skin. I think it's more style than substance. You're paying for the look of it. Inside it gets cool blue accents and stuff. So I don't dislike it, but I don't know that I feel like they're billing it as a performance, low rider performance truck.

Roberto Baldwin (25:15)
It's like the tremor. It's just like

a nice sticker pack. It's a nice trim package, but you're like, well, if I was really going to get this vehicle, would maybe I would just buy like the XL and lower it and do my own stuff to it. Or if the tremor, I would probably just turn around.

Nicole Wakelin (25:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly. That's... that's

Sam Abuelsamid (25:30)
Yeah, mean, given that the whole

theme of the Maverick when it launched was this whole DIY thing, you know, shouldn't you be actually just be buying an XL and then doing all this stuff yourself?

Nicole Wakelin (25:31)
what I think.

Yes.

That's kind of what I thought.

Roberto Baldwin (25:41)
Make all the, yeah, lower it.

Nicole Wakelin (25:42)
I feel like, and if you're the guy who wants to do this, like you're, and I say guy, the person who wants to do this to their vehicle, part of the fun of doing this to a vehicle is you get to do it yourself. You get to make it look exactly whatever weird wheels you want and lower it how you want to, you you, kind of want to play with that stuff yourself if you're the person who's into that kind of car. So I'm, I don't know. And have they, do they put sales numbers out for this specifically Sam? You always know that.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:07)
No,

they, well, they don't publish by term law.

Nicole Wakelin (26:08)
They don't break it out, do they? I didn't think

so. So we have no idea whether they sell five of these or five million of these. I feel like this isn't going to be something that's going to sell huge numbers, but who knows? Who knows? Only Ford.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:22)
As you were talking, I went through the build and price and just put on all the options or almost all the options. I got it up to $46,370.

Nicole Wakelin (26:27)
my gosh, what did it come up to?

Roberto Baldwin (26:32)
You

can just buy the XL and then do what people did in the 80s and 90s is just cut the springs or heat them up. That was the other thing. And then that person's car would always be like a little cockeyed, like one wheel, would be slightly, ⁓ you can never get them quite even like you would. like, well, if I heat them, it'll be better. And I'm like, either just buy new springs.

Harvey Briggs (26:32)
Thanks.

Nicole Wakelin (26:32)
Right?

Harvey Briggs (26:39)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (26:39)
Yeah, there you go.

Nicole Wakelin (26:39)
hahahaha

Sam Abuelsamid (26:46)
Because you can never get them quite even.

Nicole Wakelin (26:46)
Just slightly off or to the side.

Harvey Briggs (26:46)
You

Nicole Wakelin (26:53)
Yep. Yep.

Harvey Briggs (26:58)
You

Nicole Wakelin (26:59)
Yeah, so that was my time in the Lobo and I do have another car that I'll talk about next week since I have it for three weeks because of Christmas. So I'm going to get to know that sucker really, really well by the time the holidays are over.

Roberto Baldwin (27:07)
Three weeks, that's too long.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:12)
Okay,

⁓ Robbie, what do you been driving?

Roberto Baldwin (27:17)
So this week I rode the Verge TS motorcycle. So if you don't know what this is, it's electric motorcycle, ⁓ except the hub, they just made a motor out of the hub. So when you look at it, it looks like the rear wheel is just floating, but that's actually the motor and then there's just a wheel there. So you don't have a chain, you don't have a belt, you don't have any of that stuff that's going to the rear tire. ⁓

They say it has 737 pound feet of torque, is a dangerous amount of torque. It's got a very, very wide rear tire. Most of that has to do with the motor though. It's 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, except when you do 0 to 60 in under four seconds in a car, you have a chair or a seat.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:52)
That seems like a lot for a motorcycle.

Heh.

Roberto Baldwin (28:14)
When you do that on a motorcycle, ⁓ you're just holding on for dear life is what it comes down to. The Verge says that, the Verge, I keep seeing, I'm afraid I'm, there's the site, the Verge, okay, Verge says it'll do it to 217 miles. I only got to ride it for about an hour. They just brought it out. ⁓ The bike I was riding was a European spec. The US spec isn't available because they're making a TS.

Nicole Wakelin (28:15)
you

You

Roberto Baldwin (28:44)
Like version 2, TS2, I don't know how they're gonna name it, but they're making a new bike and that's the bike that's gonna Drop in the first quarter of 2026. They just sort of wanted me to ride the bike to show hey, we know how to build things We you know, we actually have a bike. We're not just vaporware and we are building ⁓ bikes ⁓ That's it. It was a lot of fun to ride. ⁓ It has a regen on it, which it can be a little weird with with motorcycles ⁓

My biggest, actually my biggest issue with the bike is the regen because as you're rolling off the throttle, when you get to zero, that's when the regen starts. And so there's no sort of, it's very binary. It doesn't like sort of like, come on, it's just, now it's on. ⁓ And you can adjust the different ride modes. They had like a regular mode, like a normal mode where the regen still felt a little ⁓ extreme.

⁓ But they have this chill mode where the regen feels very, it makes a lot more sense. It's a much nicer, you know, sort of slowing down experience. It did take me a good 10, 15 minutes just because where I live, there's a lot of windy roads and you know, I'm riding a motorcycle. So it took me a little bit to sort of get used to that sort of initial, ⁓ you know, right off the throttle, like breaking. So that is a little... ⁓

you know, that's sort of my big issue with the bike. Other than that, it rides well. ⁓ It feels very solid. ⁓ I remember the first zero motorcycles, those things were terrifying because that's not, you know, now they make, you know, the motorcycles are great. They're great motorcycles. You happen to be electric. This is one of those things where it's a great motorcycle, happens to be electric. But the early days of electric motorcycles were essentially because everything costs so much. The motor costs so much. The batteries cost so much.

So the quality of the rest of the parts wasn't always that great. So it was like riding like a really powerful mountain bike. Like, just putting on the brakes. Yeah, the first generation Zero motorcycle, I rode it in the rain in San Francisco. And I remember trying to come to a stop on a hill and the bike was just like, like, I'm gonna die. ⁓

Harvey Briggs (30:51)
Thank

Nicole Wakelin (30:51)
you

Harvey Briggs (31:02)
You

Nicole Wakelin (31:03)
⁓ jeez.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:03)
Ha.

Ha.

Nicole Wakelin (31:04)
This is it.

Roberto Baldwin (31:07)
That said, the next version of this bike, I guess the rear tire is gonna be smaller, not quite as wide. It's like 40, it's a 40, it's super wide. ⁓ So that'll be great. It helps with nimbleness. ⁓ Yeah, so it was really sort of like, hey, look at this. We want you to ride this before we put you on the next generation bike, which comes out next year. ⁓ And I guess they're gonna do all the unveil and all the fun.

look out for that. If you're a more cyclist and you're in the EV bikes, ⁓ check them out. Right now we have Zero, we have Can-Am, I rode the Can-Am's recently, those are really nice. ⁓ I think we've come to a point where now the motorcycles all differentiate themselves based on the company versus just like, here's electric bike. Like Can-Am is a very interesting.

⁓ way of regenerative braking, whereas you twist forward on the throttle. So you hit zero and then you twist forward up to think five degrees. And between zero and like five degrees, there is, there are variants in how much recuperative braking you get, which is kind of cool unless you're really tall and you're trying to do the sort of, you know, the DS model's fine, the Origin, but the other one, I'm sitting so far forward and I'm so tall that as I'm coming to the stop and I hit it, it just sort of like pushes me. So anyway.

Nicole Wakelin (32:32)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (32:34)
So yeah, yeah, so yeah, there's the the TS Pro ⁓ The the the motor they call it the donut motor is really interesting just because it's part of that that wheel ⁓ They they do support ⁓ DC the next bike the one I had had like DC or I'm sorry had a CCS for Europe because it was European bike, but the ones that are coming out will have Naxx

So you'll be able to go and charge it at like a Tesla station or at anyone who supports Nax at that point. yeah, they do have a weird like tablet that sits where the gas tank is. So they have a ⁓ cluster, which with the information that you need, and then you look down more and they have all this like sort of additional information about charging and some other things, which...

Nicole Wakelin (33:08)
Thank

Roberto Baldwin (33:28)
To be honest, you don't really need to be looking at it most of time. I just want to know how fast I'm going and if I'm going, my blinkers are working. But if you want additional information, you can look down a little bit more. I looked at it a little bit. Whenever you're on a new bike, there's always, how does this ride? I'm more concerned in that dying. That's my biggest concern. Yeah. Whenever you're riding new bike, your first concern is don't die. And then after that, you can learn about all the little bits that it does.

Nicole Wakelin (33:36)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (33:48)
Ha ha ha.

Nicole Wakelin (33:48)
It's a good priority.

Harvey Briggs (33:54)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:57)
So Harvey, you're also a rider. Have you ever ridden any electric motorcycles?

Harvey Briggs (33:59)
Yes.

Yeah, a couple years ago I did have a Zero ⁓ for a month and rode that and I, you know, same thing. The thing I love about electric motorcycles is the silence. When you're out on a country road and just, you know, riding and you can hear birds and all that stuff, it's pretty cool. I also like the instant torque. I remember talking to the chief engineer at Zero when I got the bike, he said,

Nicole Wakelin (34:06)
Mmm.

Harvey Briggs (34:32)
when you first ride it, ride it in mild mode until you get used to it and then go into the full sport mode. ⁓ But he said we even we detune that a lot. mean, it could they could put more torque more instantaneously on that right from zero, but they don't because they don't want their customers to die. And I mean, it's so. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (34:57)
Ha ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (34:58)
Yeah, not a great way to build a sustainable business.

Roberto Baldwin (35:00)
That's not, it's not a resale.

Yeah. It's not a resale market.

Harvey Briggs (35:03)
It's

it's so easy to lift the front wheel on those things as it is But they really have to modulate that right off the right off the throttle ⁓ acceleration, so ⁓ Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I'm ⁓ Looking forward to hearing more about this verge I just looked at it online and the engine the motor concept is really cool. So

Roberto Baldwin (35:26)
I

accidentally wandered into one of their place, one of their sort of retail stores in the San Jose area at a mall. And I really didn't know much about it. I looked at it and the person behind the counter was just sort of, don't know what they're doing. Facebook, who knows? ⁓ And I was just kind of looking at it. I'm like, well, okay, fine, whatever. And I walked out because, know, the, the hype, you know, the sort of performance bike, EV performance bikes, those companies have come and gone. And it's more the, like the,

Commuter bikes seem to be the ones that stick around for the most part. But this one, they keep going. They're selling bikes, in Europe at least.

Harvey Briggs (36:02)
That's good.

mean, yeah, I think there's still that thing where a lot of ⁓ the guys who are riding the highest performance bikes, they like the visceral sound and feel of an ice motor. And there is something to that. mean, my daily ⁓ is a 97 Ducati 900 SS, which you can't get more visceral than that. It's just such a beautiful machine. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (36:25)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (36:32)
So I think there's still a lot of that in the sport bike crowd that while electric may have a lot of advantages, that's great. But and the other thing is range, you know, they're saying 212. I can't remember what the zero was published, but the practical range on my sort of go out and have fun rides was closer to 50 miles. You know, when you're really pegging the throttle and stuff like that, you're not going to get a lot of range because you can.

Roberto Baldwin (36:41)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (37:01)
put what a 14 kilowatt hour battery on there maybe ⁓ you can't get a lot of yeah that's that's big for for an electric motorcycle

Sam Abuelsamid (37:06)
This one says 20. They've got a 20 on the verge.

Roberto Baldwin (37:11)
Yeah,

yeah. But you're just like, you you're riding a motorcycle. So of course you want to go and ride a motorcycle. It's, know, the commute. think that I think right now the majority of the bikes are great for commutes. They're great for sort of like if you have something around your house or you ride around like trail. mean, I think they're great for like like Harvey is saying, they're wonderful on trails, especially when you want like a nice quiet and, you know, especially if you're just kind of cruising a trail, you know, you're going to be okay. But if you're really tearing it up, you can like, you can burn to that battery pretty, pretty quickly.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:41)
And the Verge is a not inexpensive bike. Yeah, like this one, $29,900 starting price.

Roberto Baldwin (37:47)
they're all very expensive. That's the other.

Harvey Briggs (37:48)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (37:50)
Ha ⁓

Wow,

Roberto Baldwin (37:53)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (37:54)
Well, in...

Nicole Wakelin (37:54)
how much is a typical bike? Like I don't know as much about bikes compared to like a gas equivalent vehicle of that. Is it?

Roberto Baldwin (37:57)
It's all over the place. It's like a car. Like what's how

Harvey Briggs (37:59)
Yeah, I mean you're

Roberto Baldwin (38:02)
much is a typical car? It's like all over the place depending on what you want.

Harvey Briggs (38:03)
Yeah, your starting

price is, you know, for a reasonable motorcycle it's going to be under 10, a little bit under 10. But like if you go buy a fully dressed Indian bagger, you know, you're going to be $35,000- $40,000. So, yeah, I mean, you do pay a premium for electric motorcycles, but it's...

Nicole Wakelin (38:13)
Okay.

Wow.

Harvey Briggs (38:32)
something like this that promises top-end performance, know, the bikes that they're competing with, they'll be maybe not that expensive, but they'll be expensive. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (38:43)
Still up there, okay.

Roberto Baldwin (38:47)
How much can you get a KLR? 7,000 bucks for a KLR. Bulletproof bike, there you go. If you want a Bulletproof DS, get a KLR.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:47)
Okay.

Harvey Briggs (38:51)
Yeah. Exactly.

Nicole Wakelin (38:55)
Ha ha ha!

Sam Abuelsamid (38:58)
All right. ⁓ So Harvey, ⁓ we had six different vehicles that we rotated through during our drive last week that we all spent several hundred miles in each day. ⁓ so let's see, we had ⁓ the ⁓ Kia Carnival, the Chrysler Pacifica, the Toyota Sienna, VW Atlas, Subaru Forester,

Harvey Briggs (39:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:28)
and an Ineos Grenadier. ⁓

Harvey Briggs (39:30)
Yeah, and

because no one else wanted to, I spent a bunch of time in the Grenadier. Let me tell you that the car is lovely, but it is not designed for long distance freeway driving. Let's just put it that way. ⁓ I mean, it's and they say they've they're working on the steering that it will be better, but it really does. And Sam, you drove it right?

Sam Abuelsamid (39:35)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (39:38)
⁓

Nicole Wakelin (39:45)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (39:46)
yeah, that's, yeah.

Harvey Briggs (39:59)
⁓ It's the yeah, I mean it's it's it's a type of thing where you start your turn and Maybe it's gonna consider turning and then all of a sudden it does right so so it and it really you you Constantly just have to mind it because it you guide it down the road. You don't steer it Well, yeah, I learned to drive in a 1970

Sam Abuelsamid (39:59)
Mm-hmm. Not on this trip, but I drove it last year,

Nicole Wakelin (40:02)
Yeah, I've driven

it too, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:21)
It's kind of like driving something from the 1970s, early 1970s.

Harvey Briggs (40:28)
for International Scout 2 and the steering felt just like that. ⁓ But, surprising, I mean maybe not surprising, the engine was phenomenal. It's got that nice inline 6 BMW ⁓ motor in it, so that's great. ⁓ It wasn't as loud as I had anticipated. You could hold a conversation at 80 miles an hour.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:31)
there you go. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:33)
⁓ yes,

that's perfect.

Harvey Briggs (40:58)
when we were driving? Yeah, well we were driving, if we were, yeah, Wyoming, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:58)
Whoa, he got up to 80. With corners? Well, is it Nebraska? All right, you're fine, man.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:02)
Yeah, well you're driving across Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and

Nicole Wakelin (41:05)
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:09)
across most of Wyoming the speed limit is 80.

Harvey Briggs (41:12)
Yeah, so we were driving, and in Wyoming, we were driving 80 miles an hour in a 40 mile an hour crosswind. And it was surprisingly, you know, it was surprisingly controllable. I was worried that I was going to get blown all over the road, it wasn't that bad.

Roberto Baldwin (41:12)
Alright.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:19)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (41:20)
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:33)
So what would you say was, ⁓ did you have a favorite of the six vehicles that we used in that context?

Harvey Briggs (41:42)
Well, in

the context, I'm a big fan of minivans for these kind of trips. A long distance road trip where you're either having family or a lot of people in them. you know, the only thing that could have skewed my opinion on that would have been if we had gotten some typical winter weather there. But, ⁓ you know, driving the Sienna, the Carnival and ⁓ the Pacifica, I think all three of those.

were kind of really ideally suited for the mission of loading up two or three crates of dogs, a lot of gear, two or three people. They served really well. The Toyota, you know, it was the mileage champ because that was the hybrid version. I think we averaged over 30 miles per gallon on that thing over the 2000 miles of the trip. And a lot of those were miles above 70 miles an hour.

So that one did really well. I think overall though my favorite of the three minivans would be the Carnival, even though they don't want to call it a minivan.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:52)
It's an MPV.

Nicole Wakelin (42:52)
Yeah, MPV, multipurpose vehicle, is that what it is?

Roberto Baldwin (42:55)
I see them around

Nicole Wakelin (42:57)
⁓

Roberto Baldwin (42:57)
and I'm like, ⁓ carnival, carnival. I'm like, good job, good job. Because everyone who buys one is tricking everybody.

Harvey Briggs (42:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I, you know,

it was interesting because initially we thought we were going to get ⁓ get the Telluride and I was really happy we got the Carnival because with all the people and all the gear and one of those vehicles being a Forester, ⁓ which doesn't have a lot of room and the Ineos, while it's a fairly large vehicle, it doesn't have a lot of

cargo space either. ⁓ So we were happy, I was glad to have more minivans so we could make sure everybody got their gear.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:39)
Yeah, last

year we had a Mercedes Sprinter that we were able to put a lot of the extra stuff into that. So things like puppy pens and everybody's luggage and extra food and everything for the dogs. And so we loaded a lot of that stuff in the Sprinter. But that one also had a lot of challenges with those really strong crosswinds as you're driving across Northern Colorado and Wyoming and Idaho. But the... ⁓

Harvey Briggs (43:46)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:10)
One thing I noticed this year, the Pacifica that we had was the pinnacle trim. So it's the top trim level with ⁓ the second row captain's chairs. And I like the Pacifica a lot. It's a really good minivan. But ⁓ if you get that trim with those second row captain's chairs, they don't do the stow and go with those. So if you get the other trims, you get the stow and go second row seats. And so you open up a cover.

And those things just drop right down into the floor and you got a completely flat floor behind the front seats. And the seats in the Pacifica that we had ⁓ don't stone go and they don't fold completely flat. the seat backs were still angled. So you kind of limited in what you can load up on there. So we had to put, you know, things like, you know, some duffel bags and suitcases and things like that, backpacks on there that

You know and then push the the crates up against the kennels up against the back of that so the stuff didn't move around ⁓ But yeah, the the minivans I think you know in general You know are really great for this this kind of if you've got a haul a lot of stuff or a lot of people They're they're great for for a trip like this

Roberto Baldwin (45:24)
are dogs.

Harvey Briggs (45:25)
Yeah, and.

Roberto Baldwin (45:26)
We rent minivans. We went to Palm Springs a few weeks ago and we rented a minivan so we could put the dogs in the back so they can relax.

Harvey Briggs (45:34)
Exactly. it's, you know, I'm guilty of it back when I had kids at home and all that. We bought the Chevy Tahoe instead of a minivan at the time because of the, you know, the image thing of it. But looking back at it now, it's like, God, every time I do a long distance road trip with family or that, those are the best vehicles for that mission, for sure. And

Nicole Wakelin (45:37)
Thank

Roberto Baldwin (45:59)
the best.

Harvey Briggs (46:03)
One of things I do want to call it is I really did like the seats in the Chrysler. I thought the front seats on that were the most comfortable of the three minivans. ⁓ But they each have their strengths. Unfortunately, that one wasn't the hybrid. We just had the V6 on that.

Roberto Baldwin (46:23)
Well you

couldn't even do snow and go so it would be... He might as well have you the hybrid. He can't snow and grow with the pinnacle.

Harvey Briggs (46:26)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (46:31)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:31)
Well, you know, when you're asking people to loan you, asking companies to loan you stuff, you take what you can get.

Roberto Baldwin (46:34)
I know, I know. Thank you, thank you,

Harvey Briggs (46:35)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:37)
thank you Chrysler for letting us browse. I like the Chrysler. I typically end up with a Chrysler Pacifica. Occasionally I'll get a Sienna.

Harvey Briggs (46:37)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:39)
Yes.

Harvey Briggs (46:44)
And

they were nice enough to put ⁓ blizzacs on that for us too. So in case we had run into snow, we would have been fine. But we lucked out with the weather this time.

Roberto Baldwin (46:49)
⁓ yeah. That's, that's awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:56)
Yeah,

apart from, well, ⁓ I know two of the vehicles had to get driven down from Detroit and Chicago. I think the Chrysler was one of them, right? And the Kia was the other one?

Harvey Briggs (47:06)
Yeah.

The Chrysler, the ⁓ Kia and the Sienna all came in. Cause I drove, ⁓ actually, yeah. No, and the Subaru, right? Cause Cherise drove the Subaru from Chicago. So three of the vehicles came out of the Chicago fleet. I drove the Sienna. Tanya drove the Kia. Yeah, we had a full on blizzard and

Sam Abuelsamid (47:13)
Oh, okay. Yeah. The Sienna also got driven down.

⁓ okay.

And there was some nasty weather coming through Illinois and Iowa.

Harvey Briggs (47:35)
I-80 was closed in eastern Iowa because of the snow and wind and some crashes. we're lucky we got all the vehicles there all in good shape. It helps to have experienced pilots behind the wheel of those things.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:54)
Yeah, thing that was very much obvious was ⁓ because the speed limits were fairly high on these roads, interstates with not a lot of traffic, ⁓ and we had very strong winds, ⁓ fuel economy was not great. You always know that the faster you go, your fuel economy is going to degrade pretty rapidly. And the same thing is true for

for EVs that your range is going to degrade rapidly because the aerodynamic drag goes up with the square of the speed. So it's an exponential difference. that, what we saw, I'm not sure what they got for, I think you said what, about 30 in the Sienna? In the Carnival in the Pacifica, we were getting closer to 20. And the...

Harvey Briggs (48:42)
Right, yeah.

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:50)
the Forester on the last day I was driving the Forester hybrid, it was a Forester hybrid and we only got about 24 with that one.

Harvey Briggs (48:55)
Right.

But we were going up some pretty big grades up across into Oregon. And of course the INEOS, I think we were around 13.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (49:05)
Ooh, that's pretty good. I mean,

Nicole Wakelin (49:07)
Wow!

Roberto Baldwin (49:07)
it's essentially a brick. It's a brick attached to another brick.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:08)
Well, know, 80 miles an hour in a... Yeah. Aerodynamics and fuel economy are not a high priority for the NAO Scuderia. It's a fantastic off-road vehicle, but it was not the ideal use case for that vehicle on this trip. But it ultimately got the job done.

Harvey Briggs (49:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (49:14)
and break attached to a brick.

Harvey Briggs (49:29)
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:32)
We got all the people and all the dogs that are safely and that's what matters.

Roberto Baldwin (49:36)
I want to fill off for an option for like an upgraded steering. Like you can still get like the hardcore like, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:41)
Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin (49:41)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:44)
somebody was talking to ⁓ the owner. We had dinner ⁓ the night when we were in Boise at the Ineos dealership in Boise, which was the very first Ineos dealership in the US. And they apparently sell more grenadiers there than anywhere else. Apparently people in Idaho really like them. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (49:57)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:10)
Somebody can't remember who it was. Was it Tanya? Somebody was talking to ⁓ the owner of the dealership or the general manager of the dealership and they said, yeah, for 2026, they are revamping the steering to make it better on road. ⁓ So we don't have details on that, but apparently next year it will get better for on road driving.

Roberto Baldwin (50:32)
Want them to keep the the old steering though as an option like you know, there's there's

Harvey Briggs (50:36)
Maybe, maybe,

Sam Abuelsamid (50:37)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (50:38)
maybe there'll be some kind of switchable, yeah, who knows.

Roberto Baldwin (50:41)
Yeah,

I'm just, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:44)
Yeah, guess a lot of people who live in the Boise area ⁓ have places up in the mountains because Boise is kind of down in a valley. so they have grenadiers and Land Rovers and other stuff that they use to go up into the mountains to their places in the hills. ⁓ And once they get up off the interstate, it's the perfect vehicle for them. It's funny, while we were there, ⁓

the dog I was looking after, had to take him for a little walk to do his business. And so we just went outside and walked around the dealership building. There actually was an old classic Defender sitting out back, out in the back of the dealership.

Nicole Wakelin (51:25)
wow.

Very cool.

Roberto Baldwin (51:29)
Aww.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:30)
⁓

All right. ⁓ So yeah, I would agree. I think the Carnival was my favorite overall of the four vehicles I drove. I drove the Pacifica, the Carnival, the Atlas and the Forester. The Atlas was also surprisingly really good. ⁓ Tonya and I drove that on the first day. And ⁓ the only issue I had with that was the engine seemed louder than I remember it from.

prior times driving the Atlas, but maybe it's just because of the speed we were going. But other than that, it was very stable on the road. ⁓ It was great at high speeds driving down the interstate. ⁓ And we were comfortable, the dogs were comfortable, so it was all good.

Nicole Wakelin (52:01)
Hmm.

Harvey Briggs (52:21)
Yeah, I think it was a good representative fleet. It gave us a lot of variety of different things to drive. I did drive the Forester one day with Paul, so we had two guys well over six feet in that car and dogs, and it was a little crowded in there. You realize very quickly that that is a compact.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:41)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (52:42)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (52:48)
Mm-hmm.

Harvey Briggs (52:49)
SUV,

you know, when you spend it that much time with that much stuff in the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:55)
Yeah, so next June we're going to do this again, but we're going to do it with the EVs this time. yeah, looking forward to that one. We've got three of four vehicles already lined up. We're going to have a Cadillac Escalade IQ, a Hyundai Ioniq 9. We're going to get a Rivian, hopefully an R2, but if they can't get us one of those in June, then we'll get an R1S.

Harvey Briggs (53:01)
Yeah, that should be a lot of fun.

Nicole Wakelin (53:11)
Nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:25)
and then still working on the fourth. ⁓ So might be a lucid gravity if they're still in business. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (53:34)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (53:35)
Well that's not gonna

want them to give you a car.

Nicole Wakelin (53:38)
Ha

Sam Abuelsamid (53:39)
Well, it gives them an incentive to prove that they can keep going and they can be successful. ⁓ Or maybe a key EV9, we'll see. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (53:43)
Keep on going.

Harvey Briggs (53:45)
That's right.

Yeah,

maybe we should talk to the folks at Volvo for the EX90. Yeah, that might be a good one for a fourth rather than doing the same platform with Kia and Hyundai, right? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:55)
EX90? Yeah, that might be worth a shot.

Yeah, okay. We'll look into that.

Roberto Baldwin (54:04)
Yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (54:06)
All right. ⁓ Let's talk about some of the stuff that's happening across the industry this week. ⁓ So a couple of years ago, was a lot ⁓ of people got upset when GM announced that they were no longer going to support ⁓ smartphone projection in their EVs because they've got an Android based system in there with Google services. I said, starting from this was in ⁓

March of 2023, think, they said, going forward, we're not going to put Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in our EVs anymore. ⁓ And they're still not doing that. They may or may not remove that support from their gas engine vehicles. But ⁓ they now have Apple Music available. for those people, do any of you use Apple Music as your streaming choice of streaming service of choice? Robbie?

Nicole Wakelin (55:00)
Gosh, I haven't

used Apple Music in forever.

Roberto Baldwin (55:02)
I use Apple Music. I use Apple Music and Spotify, I use both. I use Spotify because I have to deal with a bunch of people for playlists and then Apple Music for regular Robbie stuff.

Nicole Wakelin (55:04)
you.

Regular Robbie stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:14)
Well, well

now ⁓ on GM vehicles with the Google system, can get app that they're down there ⁓ pushing out the Apple Music app ⁓ to those vehicles so you can use Apple Music. So it's just since they launched Apple Music, are shortly after they launched Apple Music, they've had an Android version of the app. So if you use an Android phone, you can still use Apple Music.

But, ⁓ and that's what they're pushing out for whatever reason. You know, most of the other streaming services like Spotify and YouTube music and others are all in the Google Play Store on Android Automotive, but Apple for whatever reason never decided to put that in there. And so now they're pushing it. It looks like they're doing deals with individual automakers because they've had it in Rivians for a little while. ⁓ And now they're putting it in GM vehicles and

⁓ They're you know, they'll maybe they'll get it into other vehicles going forward ⁓ What do you think does that make you any less or does that? Overcome any of the issues you have with lack of cars carplay support

Roberto Baldwin (56:28)
Not really.

Nicole Wakelin (56:29)
I I feel like it's not just about the music. It's all the other... I don't think that would...

Roberto Baldwin (56:33)
So I think

I spent a lot, yeah, I don't think it really like solves the problem. And again, I think the bigger issue is that you can't tell everybody, hey, we were doing this thing, now we're not gonna do it because we're going to make our infotainment just as good. You make the infotainment just as good, then you say, then you make the change. And I think that's the big issue with this. And most of the GM infotainment systems I've dealt with.

Nicole Wakelin (56:35)
If you want carplay, that's not what that is. You know?

and then you make the change.

Roberto Baldwin (57:01)
over the past few years are very slow and buggy. When you're a halo vehicle, the Hummer, whenever you change the drive mode, you gotta wait a few seconds for the car to do whatever it's weird thing it's doing. It doesn't bode well for the idea. They're like, we're gonna get rid of Apple Music. like, well, just, I think a company that could probably...

Harvey Briggs (57:14)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (57:14)
Go on.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:24)
but they're using Unreal

Engine to do all those cool graphics on the screen.

Nicole Wakelin (57:27)
It's fancy

Harvey Briggs (57:27)
You're

Roberto Baldwin (57:27)
I

Harvey Briggs (57:28)
done.

Nicole Wakelin (57:28)
graphics of a car rolling over Mars and whatever.

Roberto Baldwin (57:28)
I know, I know. I think that the only infotainment system that I think that when I get in the car, I rarely use CarPlay is Mercedes, is M-Bucks. Because it's just like, here's the map and here's the widgets for the things you want. That's it. I'm like, oh, I want the map, here's the widgets. Cool, easy.

Nicole Wakelin (57:37)
Really?

Harvey Briggs (57:37)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (57:44)
Yeah.

is all I need.

Harvey Briggs (57:48)
Well,

and I think the whole point of bringing your device into the car is so I don't have to program a whole other system, right? And yeah, I've got to learn it. I've got to put all my stuff in there. And this is just you. We want to make life easier for people, right? People want to just walk in, plug in or pair and go. And, you know, making people

Nicole Wakelin (57:58)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (57:58)
You have to learn, you have to do this thing.

Harvey Briggs (58:17)
learn a new system isn't making their lives easier.

Roberto Baldwin (58:21)
I think there's a lot of apps that they still don't support that I'm ⁓ like, well, isn't here. Well, this isn't here. Well, this, I'm like, all this would work if I had CarPlay. I think that people have their own little ecosystem that they want to be able to use when they get into their car. And when they've become accustomed to that ecosystem and then they get in a car that...

previously, or a car, you know, a car from a car maker that previously supported that ecosystem, now that ecosystem is just taken away with the promise of a better ecosystem that's not ready yet, that's where you run into the issue.

Nicole Wakelin (58:59)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (59:01)
It's like we're taking away something that works for something that we're gonna make eventually.

Nicole Wakelin (59:07)
but not yet suffer.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:11)
Okay, so apparently Ford is for model year 2026 for the Mach-E. When the Mach-E first came out, Ford made a big deal about how big the frunk was and that had it. And yeah, they loaded it with ice and shrimp and said, yeah, it's got a drain plug in the bottom. So as the ice melts, the water can just drain out. So it'll be real easy. Well,

Roberto Baldwin (59:27)
the shrimp!

Nicole Wakelin (59:31)
I forgot about the shrimp. That's right.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:39)
Now apparently for model year 2026 the frunk is going to become an extra cost option.

Roberto Baldwin (59:46)
What is going on at that company? What is happening? What are they doing?

Nicole Wakelin (59:48)
Why? I-

Sam Abuelsamid (59:52)
They gotta save

some money.

Nicole Wakelin (59:55)
And how much is it? I'm trying to scan through this. it a

Roberto Baldwin (59:55)
They've already molded all the plastic

for the thing that goes in there. They're like, you know what, we're gonna mold new plastic to cover it up. Is that the?

Nicole Wakelin (1:00:01)
A thousand bucks?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:03)
Well,

I haven't actually seen a picture of it yet. ⁓ So my guess is that they're actually just going to leave the plastic off. It's going to be like when you open the hood of ⁓ a Chevy Equinox EV and there's the motor and the inverter and everything sitting there, it's going to be like that. There's just not going to be any plastic. So they're just saving that plastic.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:17)
Which is a hole.

Nicole Wakelin (1:00:27)
I don't get it. Why would you get rid of- I mean it says it gives you a slightly lower entry point by about a thousand bucks.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:34)
Well, yeah,

so the base price of the the Mach-E for 2026 is going down a little bit apparently. And then ⁓ as part of that, you know, to they're taking out taking out some contact content. You know, the thing we know about so far is the frunk, but there's probably going to be some other things that that get taken out as well to get to that lower price point.

Nicole Wakelin (1:00:56)
people not like

the frunk? I think frunks are cool. Why?

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:58)
This is the weirdest decision

from a company that makes non-stop weird decisions.

Nicole Wakelin (1:01:05)
So it's very on brand.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:06)
Yeah, they've... Ford's made a few weird decisions.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:08)
Like GM makes, GM seems

to make like bad decisions. Like they'll build a great thing and then they'll kill it. Like Ford just makes weird decisions. Like there's a big, they have a giant dart board and on the dart board they allow children to just make things up and then stick it on the dart board. And then the executive comes in and throws an arrow and then boom, get rid of the frunk.

Nicole Wakelin (1:01:31)
Like, okay, frunk is gone. Timmy threw a dart at it. Yeah, that's a strange... I guess? Most buyers weren't looking at it in the first place? Looking for it? No one... Don't you want a frunk? Isn't that one of the cool... Isn't that one of the cool things about having an EV? That have a little frunk you can like stuff stuff in there?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:44)
Well, you know that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:45)
Most buyers

didn't use the frunk.

It's nice if you have a big frunk.

Harvey Briggs (1:01:55)
Right. You know, the frunk in the lightning, which is going away. ⁓ No, the frunk in the lightning was useful, right? But most frunks are just, okay, I've got some place I can put an extra thing. yeah, this...

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:01)
Yeah, you're getting rid of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:05)
You can just open it up and get your shit together.

I mean, for

a hatchback, it's good to have somewhere where you can lock something. So that's what's nice for the Mach-E is like, if I had something like, ⁓ I have my backpack, you don't leave your backpack in a hatchback anywhere on the planet, but you could lock it. You could lock it in the front. Like the, so the Mionic 5 has a front that's like the size of a laptop, like a really big, like, you know, mid 2017 inch MacBook laptop.

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:23)
Right. It lets you put little stuff. Yeah.

How did that sound, Robbie? Okay, just double checking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:39)
So

you can stick a cable up there and then just sort of forget about it because you don't need it. So it's kind of like just there for, you know, every once in a while if you need a cable. But like to have like a real like frunk and to make a big deal about it and to fill it full of shrimp and then to say, you know what, if you want to have a ⁓ sweet cocktail party with your EV, it's gonna cost you a thousand dollars.

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:57)
I forgot about this.

See, I think the whole frunk thing, if I still had an EV, I might use the frunk. I don't have one now. But if I would use it, I don't know. I think about when kids are little and you have stuff that's gross, want to just throw it the frunk, keep it away from your other stuff, the muddy pants, the boots, or whatever.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:27)
So, I mean, you had a little frunk in your EV that you had for about

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:31)
eight months. Did you ever use it?

Nicole Wakelin (1:03:32)
I, yeah, I owned it for eight months.

I owned the car for eight months. I drove it for all of like 1200 miles, Sam. I didn't have a chance to use it. When it, I feel like I'm not the use case. And I had a chance to have it. I had it in February when it was freezing cold or what, maybe March. By the time it was nice weather and I couldn't, I didn't have a car anymore. So it was never, never.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:41)
You

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:41)
I don't think, I don't

think, Nicole's not a very good use case.

Nicole Wakelin (1:03:56)
worked long enough for me to see if I needed the frunk. So, yeah, yeah. I would have though, I think it would have been awesome like camping or something like throw ice in there, a little cooler, like a little frunk cooler.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:02)
So, so the...

So

the swagging air is officially gone from your life now?

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:12)
The swag in here is officially gone last last week. ⁓ Yes, I have. It has been turned in and the good folks at Jeep figured things out enough to say we need to get you out of the car. So, yes, I no longer have the old swag. I do have a license plate, though, in my garage. I'm sad I left that car. It was the whole going part of it that was a problem, but otherwise it was great. So, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:31)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:38)
On the

rare occasions when it worked, was great.

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:41)
It was brilliant when it worked. It was fabulous when it worked. Pretty radar red interior and great audio system. It went really, really fast when you matched the accelerator, but not always, which was the problem. Sometimes it did the exact opposite when you match the accelerator. therein lies the problem. But yeah, so it's officially gone.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:01)
Yeah.

Well, ⁓ speaking of EVs going away, ⁓ Ford made an announcement while we were on the road last week. ⁓ I got a call from somebody at Ford saying, hey, ⁓ we're going to be having ⁓ a briefing call in a couple of hours. Can you join? And it was to announce a bunch of changes in their EV strategy. ⁓ The Ford, as has been rumored for a while,

Nicole Wakelin (1:05:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:33)
The F-150 Lightning is now officially out of production. It's no longer being produced. ⁓ Ford had also previously announced that they were breaking up their joint venture with SK On for battery production. So they had two plants, one in Tennessee, one in ⁓ Kentucky, and the Tennessee plant is going to SK, the one in Kentucky is Ford is keeping, and they have now

ended production of nickel manganese cobalt cells there, ⁓ laid off all 1600 people, and they're going to spend a couple of billion dollars to re-to-all the factory to build ⁓ LFP, lithium iron phosphate cells, to be used for ⁓ energy storage systems instead of EVs. ⁓ They've also canceled plans for the next generation electric transit van. ⁓

What else? ⁓ There's a bunch of stuff ⁓ and altogether Ford is taking a 19 and a half billion dollar charge this quarter. Yeah. But there's going to be a new lightning someday, eventually. ⁓ But it's not going to be a pure EV. It's going to be an extended range EV. What do you think about that?

Nicole Wakelin (1:06:42)
Billion with a B. Wow.

Harvey Briggs (1:06:55)
Yep.

Nicole Wakelin (1:06:58)
I feel like they just tried to keep the name. Like we don't want to say we're canceling the lightning, but we cancel the lightning. So we're just going to have a new lightning coming. That's not like the old lightning, but we're not getting rid of the lightning because we still have the name.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:10)
They say it'll have 700 miles of range altogether between the range extender and the battery. They're not saying how much electric range it'll have from the battery, but 700 in total, which is pretty good. ⁓ And that shiny new plant that they built in Tennessee, the Blue Oval City plant that was supposed to the next generation Lightning, that's going to build gas trucks instead.

Nicole Wakelin (1:07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:37)
Womp, womp.

I mean, it just comes down to Ford. They looked, they're like, my gosh. ⁓ God, Tesla's making a truck. We have to make a truck. And it all went downhill from there. It's a good, the thing is the F-150 Lightning is the best Lightning for 80 % of Lightning owners, to be honest. It's the best, or I'm sorry, it's the best F-150 for most F-150 owners. It's not the best Lightning for Lightning owners. It doesn't make any sense. I think for most people, that's the, it drives better than the gas vehicles.

Nicole Wakelin (1:07:57)
Ha ha ha ha!

Harvey Briggs (1:07:59)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:08:02)
You

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:06)
It's more stable. It's just a better truck to be honest. That's... Yeah, it's...

Harvey Briggs (1:08:10)
If you're not towing with it, and

Nicole Wakelin (1:08:12)
Yeah.

Harvey Briggs (1:08:13)
you're not doing any long distance driving with it, it's great. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:17)
Yeah, round town, landscapers, et cetera. ⁓

But somehow, but they changed the pricing every three weeks it felt like. then it became too expensive for, ⁓ what do call it? Those people who buy a lot of trucks. Fleets, thank you very much, fleets. Meanwhile, I see Silverado EVs in a lot of government fleets up here in Northern California. So Ford really dropped the ball on that. That's like.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:34)
fleets.

Harvey Briggs (1:08:36)
Yeah. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:08:37)
Hahaha

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:45)
you know, that's potentially thousands of trucks that GM is just selling EV trucks. And so I think they didn't quite realize that full-size truck owners want vroom vroom truck. That's it. That's what it comes down to. Yes, the towing thing is a big deal, but a lot of them just want vroom vroom truck. is the official luxury vehicle.

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:08)
Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:12)
Of americans who want to spend over a thousand dollars a month on on their their car payments ⁓ I think the e-rev Yeah, i'm fine with full-size vehicles as e-rev because most of the time Those people are going to be driving around on an ev mode and then yeah. No, I think it's It's a smart move. ⁓ yeah, I think but I think that

Harvey Briggs (1:09:33)
Well, in 700 miles. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:36)
that Ford's EV, their whole EV strategy has been scattershot and it's very much like they don't wanna do it. feels like, yes.

Harvey Briggs (1:09:46)
It was totally reactive. They

reacted to Tesla in every move. They have never led from an EV standpoint. And it even shows in canceling the transit program. I mean, there isn't a better use case for electric vehicles than ⁓ that kind of last mile delivery vehicle. ⁓ So if, you know.

Nicole Wakelin (1:10:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:11)
There's 35,000 Rivian

vans out there now in the Amazon fleet.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:15)
Rollin' around.

Harvey Briggs (1:10:15)
Yeah.

Yeah. mean, that that that use case where you where you're depot charging and you're driving 200 miles, maybe a day, a lot of stop start and you can have that vehicle just sit there. And now it's not idling, not contributing to greenhouse gases, things like that, that you see with a lot of the ice powered delivery vehicles. It's I don't know. I'm not sure what they're thinking.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:45)
I feel like there was vehicles that they didn't like really try hard selling, especially with the transit. When we talk about Rivian, like I see Dodge, the Dodge Ram electric vehicle, what ⁓ else? There's a couple others that are on the road that I see out and about and I very rarely see the E-Transit. I had the E-Transit for a week, it was awesome. Stabbed it around, filled it with electricity, plugged in a ⁓ saw.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:06)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:11)
You know, I think.

Yeah, I think you know, I think the problem that that Ford had, you know, like you said, I Harvey, you said, you know, that there's they've been totally reactive to everything. And they they can't they they seem to have been completely unable to stick to a plan. You know, like when they when they did the lightning, you know, when they decided to do the lightning, you know, and this was around the time that, you know, that Musk announced the Cybertruck.

They said, okay, we can do that, we can do it better. And arguably they did do it better than the Cybertruck in most ways. But the original plan for the Lightning was they were planning to do capacity for about 25,000 units a year. Then they bumped that up to 50,000 units a year when they saw there was some interest in it. And then when they showed the truck publicly, they said, oh man, we need to build more. And so...

right as they were starting production, said, okay, we're going to build 80,000 a year. And then a few months later, they said, okay, we're going to double that. We're going to build 150,000 units a year. And, that was around the same time that, you know, the Ukraine war started. Nickel prices went through the roof. Battery prices went up and they had to raise the price of the truck. And then people realized, oh, yeah, this thing can tow 10,000 pounds, but it can only go 100 miles doing it.

And then they decided, okay, we don't want electric trucks. And what they should have done instead of putting all of that money into building extra capacity, production capacity that was going to go unused and getting their suppliers to build more parts and to tool up for more parts that ended up going unused. And then that ends up costing the carmaker a huge amount of money when they've got unused capacity. They should have kept the capacity lower.

no more than 50,000 and put that money, put that investment into actually improving the product and making the product more appealing for customers. And if they had done that, they probably could have been using that 50,000 unit capacity at, you know, using all of that capacity, selling 50 or 60,000 units a year. And they might have even made money on it. But they did it completely wrong. You know, it's so nuts.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, they could I mean they could have

like set, you know three years had a hard volt version, know 800 volt architecture you would teach you more efficiency and worked on the battery chemistry to get you more range and you know, there's but it just felt it felt like we were going crazy. I was like 160,000 I'm like that's so many And I really think they like like oh well a lot of people like it and look how many people signed up for the Cybertruck We're gonna get all those Cybertruck people

Nicole Wakelin (1:13:57)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:05)
And I was like, that's not the same people. now, you know, in hindsight, the Cybertruck, is, you know, you can, yeah, they're not, we could.

Nicole Wakelin (1:14:08)
Hahaha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:14)
And they've only

sold about 50,000 of those total over two years.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:16)
Yeah,

not great.

Harvey Briggs (1:14:19)
so much for their million pre-orders.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:21)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:21)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:21)
Well, they heard a million pre-orders like, well, if we just do like 16 % of that, we're going to be, we'll be in the money. It's the F series. No one's going to say no to the F series.

Harvey Briggs (1:14:31)
Great. That's it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:36)
Well, Tim Koniscus has the solution for all of this, which is just throw a HEMI in or a Hellcat in everything. Yeah. But ⁓ during a call, a briefing a few days ago, ⁓ they talked about a bunch of stuff that we can't talk about yet. But one thing that he did talk about ⁓ is he confirmed that the 2027 midsize truck that they're going to build,

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:39)
I don't.

Everything's a Hemi.

Nicole Wakelin (1:14:45)
I'm

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:05)
is going to be called the Dakota. So they're going to build a midsize truck in 2027 called the Dakota, bringing back Dakota.

Harvey Briggs (1:15:07)
Ooh, yay!

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:08)
that's nice.

But not

the rampage.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:16)
Who knows?

Harvey Briggs (1:15:16)
Ooh, that would be

really nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:18)
It's, it's, it's, you need a Maverick fighter, that's the rampage. They

don't have the money for that right now.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:22)
Mm.

Harvey Briggs (1:15:24)
No, but getting it getting a mid-sized truck makes a ton of sense seeing how big full-size trucks are now.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:27)
Yeah, that's a smart.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:28)
Mm-hmm. It does.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:31)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:31)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:32)
but

apparently it's gonna cost about $40,000.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:35)
Hmm.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:36)
Oof.

Harvey Briggs (1:15:37)
Well, I mean, that's not out of line with ⁓ you know, dolled up Ranger. So.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:43)
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:44)
⁓

How much is a take how much is a taco?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:44)
well, you know, a Tacoma TRD Pro, you know, or a Trail Hunter is like $67,000 now.

Harvey Briggs (1:15:50)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:51)
But with just a

Harvey Briggs (1:15:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:51)
regular Tacoma, where can I get one?

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:55)
a lot. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:55)
think they start around 37-ish.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:57)
32, 145.

Harvey Briggs (1:15:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, but that's an unobtainable vehicle. That rear wheel drive. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:03)
That's the $35,000. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:04)
Yeah, basically only, only fleets can

Nicole Wakelin (1:16:06)
But it does say,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:07)
buy those.

Nicole Wakelin (1:16:07)
so I'm reading through this story and it says that the, that the, Tim may have been suggesting that the volume trim of the Dakota would be 40, not the base model. So.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:18)
Yeah, yeah, there will probably

be a work truck special that'll probably be somewhere around 35.

Nicole Wakelin (1:16:25)
Right,

so we don't know, like, that's just what most people are gonna spend 40 grand on this, but you could get it for less. I don't know what you get for less, but yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:31)
Yeah, which is still a lot cheaper than a gladiator.

Nicole Wakelin (1:16:39)
yeah i mean it's cool they need it they need that they need this size truck it's good that they're going to do this.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:45)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:46)
Which is a ridgeline.

Nicole Wakelin (1:16:49)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:50)
So ⁓ speed limits, we saw speed limits last week ⁓ that were quite a bit higher than what we have here in Michigan. ⁓ so Harvey, ⁓ I know you gotta leave, but thank you so much for joining us and we're definitely gonna have you back.

Harvey Briggs (1:17:06)
Yeah. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:09)
Yay!

Harvey Briggs (1:17:10)
⁓ I'd

love doing it. Yeah, happy to hop on anytime. So thank you guys. Thank you Sam for joining us on Operation Frodo last week. I'm looking forward to the summer rescue. So thanks guys. I'll see you later. Bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:17:11)
Yes, thank you, Harvey.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:23)
All right, bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:17:23)
Take care.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:26)
All right, so let's talk speed limits. A ⁓ legislator in Arizona ⁓ wants to ⁓ remove speed limits from certain roads in Arizona. Because there's already some roads in some interstates in, I think, Montana that have where the speed limit is whatever is prudent during daylight hours.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:49)
Does it say prudent

on the thing? Cause I would love that. Speed limit, whatever's prudent. I would.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:53)
haha

Nicole Wakelin (1:17:55)
Actually, well, the thing

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:56)
I

think that's what's think that's actually what's in the law. I don't think they put that on the signs though.

Nicole Wakelin (1:17:56)
says the.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:59)
⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:18:00)
That's

the law, the RAPID Act, Reasonable and Prudent Interstate Driving Act. So they do use that, reasonable and prudent.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:09)
Yeah, so what do you think? Is this something that should be happening?

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:15)
If it wasn't the fact that I've driven on American roads in Arizona with American drivers who don't understand that the left lane is for passing only. Montana, there's like 12 people in that state, maybe 14. Arizona, there's a lot of people in Arizona.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:19)
with American drivers.

Well, there are a lot of people who ⁓ have their vehicles registered in Montana who don't actually live there.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:39)
There's that as well, that whole ⁓ thing. ⁓ I don't know.

It like a one way ticket to people getting hurt. And again, it's not that ⁓ because the vehicles are unsafe at those speeds. Speed does kill, just so people know. The faster you go, the more likely you are to die.

Nicole Wakelin (1:18:59)
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:01)
it's

the sudden stop that kills. It's not the speed, it's the sudden reduction in velocity.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:04)
This is not the speed that kills. It's what happens when you don't have it anymore.

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:06)
It's end stop, right?

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:10)
Yeah. So, I mean, if they make it illegal to pass on the right, if they make it illegal to just hang out in the left lane, like if you add a bunch of other provisions that make it so this, you know, ⁓ get rid of the speed limits thing makes sense, then sure, if you're going to teach the people of Arizona,

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:11)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:35)
how to drive correctly through laws, then okay, yeah, you can do this thing, I guess. ⁓ But at the same time, I don't think that's gonna happen, unfortunately.

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:49)
I know we talked about this when I was in ⁓ Europe and driving on the Autobahn over my vacation. They drive very, very fast and they drive very, very differently than we do. They get out of the way. You're in the left lane. You very rarely have to wait for someone to tell you to move because the way you get to somebody in the right lane, you pull to the left, you go around them, you pull to the right.

There is, it is very organized and it's very not antagonistic in the someone's going fast. Don't get ticked off. Why are they going so fast? I'm not moving. Get out of the way. I don't think we have that attitude here. And that's like Robbie was saying, you'd need to get people to change how they view, how they drive, how, how, what, what's speeding. Like someone's going fast move much harder. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:33)
It's also a lot harder to get a license in Europe than it is here.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:37)
you

Nicole Wakelin (1:20:41)
I don't know. I love driving fast. I love it when I can go to Germany and drive as fast as I want, but I don't know that I'd be keen on this idea here as a rule.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:51)
It's

yeah. Because what happens is you're driving fast on the left lane and if you don't care about the rule or you don't understand or you're just a jerk and you're a person who gets in the left-hand lane, even though you're doing the speed limit or less, that's, yeah, that's a problem because now you have someone who's doing 100 because they can.

Nicole Wakelin (1:21:05)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

That's a problem.

Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:18)
coming

up on someone who's doing 55 and they feel entitled to be in that left lane because they just got in the freeway and you are moving so quickly. People don't realize how fast you're really moving when you're going that quickly and especially when you're ⁓ encountering ⁓ traffic that is moving slowly.

Nicole Wakelin (1:21:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:42)
Yeah, it's, know, and the Autobots, it's, you know, when you come up to like interchange, like it goes back to like 100 kilometers or 120 kilometers an hour and everyone slows down.

Nicole Wakelin (1:21:50)
And everybody slows down. That's the other thing. Everybody

really pays attention to that reduction in speed limit. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:56)
And it's like

four lanes wide on each. So it's not like it's like a two lane road and I'm doing 95 miles an hour. It's a very wide, know, okay, this is where slow people, here's people who are a less slow, here are people who are driving regularly, and then there's the left lane where people are passing or there's one person who's doing, you know, 150.

Nicole Wakelin (1:22:01)
Yeah.

Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:18)
Yeah, at 100 miles an hour, you are covering 150 feet every second.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:26)
Was that a football field?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:28)
⁓ That's about half a football field.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:30)
Yeah, so there you go. You're doing half a football skill. A second! Yeah, people don't, yeah, you, if you haven't driven really, really fast, you don't like, it's very much you become a tunnel because you can't look down at the odometer, you can't look down at the speedometer, you are just looking forward. And the idea that we're going to sort of get people all on board on that in Arizona, kind of.

Nicole Wakelin (1:22:32)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:32)
Every second. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:22:40)
It's hard to understand. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:56)
Kind of scares me. Again, if they make it so like, okay, it's only on four five lane roads, it's only out in the middle of nowhere, everyone has to follow these special rules, there's gotta be a lot of police officers now, like pulling people over for passing on the right or for just hanging out in the left-hand lane, it just seems like because we do not have that driving culture in this country.

Nicole Wakelin (1:22:57)
It seems unlikely.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:05)
And that is part of it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:23:18)
Exactly,

it's the driving culture. You nailed it. That's a great way to put it, Robbie. We just don't have that driving culture here and it would be a complete change in how people... We're all so important, everyone needs to get out of our way. We're in the right spot. Wherever speed I'm going is the speed. Exactly.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:26)
We're all very important people.

out of my way. need to... I'm not moving over. I'm doing 70 in the 65

lane. Why should I move over?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:39)
Also,

are, you know, the average age of cars in this country is now 13 years old, almost 13, just shy of 13 years old. There are a lot of cars on the road that should not be being used anywhere near those kinds of speeds. Yeah, there's a lot of them that arguably shouldn't be used at 60 miles an hour, but, you know, certainly not at 100 or more miles per hour.

Nicole Wakelin (1:23:59)
Yeah.

Get the thing off the highway. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:06)
That's a whole other issue.

Nicole Wakelin (1:24:09)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:09)
And so,

you know, maybe part of that should also be, you know, annual inspections of vehicles and, you know, in order to drive at those higher speeds, you know, your vehicle has to get inspected. Maybe you need a special license plate or a special tag on your license plate ⁓ that, you know, to make sure that the vehicle you're driving is actually safe to operate at those kinds of speeds, too. But again, that I know that sounds utterly un-American.

You know, that's, you know, it's.

Nicole Wakelin (1:24:41)
we're

getting rid of state inspections in New Hampshire. They're disappearing. Yeah, we've had them, I don't know, forever. as of, we've had them, yeah, we had a, it was always state inspections and ⁓ since, as far as I've ever known. And they're, I think they end in February, if you register. I think it's February, March, it's the spring. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:44)
Are ya?

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:48)
So then what happens? We just have a smog check here in California. We just smeg for.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:48)
We've never had them here in Michigan.

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:05)
We had a smog inspection thing for a hot minute back in the 80s, and that was about it. We don't have that anymore, but now there's no state inspection. And I gotta say, as frightening as it is, you hold your breath, especially if you drive an old car, you're like, please God, please God, please God, please God, like you want it to hold together. But I truly would rather know my brakes are about to fail, or my tire's worn and I don't know it, or belt's about to snap, than find out harder ways. you know, I'm like, wait a minute, I gotta, I feel like I just wanna now make an appointment with a mechanic once a year

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:19)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:35)
just check it. Like is there anything I'm missing? You know?

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:38)
So they just check

the road worthiness of your vehicle to make sure that like you said, your brakes aren't bad, you're you're you're you're you're not, not, you're not, not, you're not, you're

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:46)
Right? I just want someone

to check and make sure like am I missing anything I can't see? You know? But yeah, nothing. New Hampshire's gonna be like, okay, go for it. See what happens. Okay. Yeah, start your good to go. God.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:59)
If it starts, you're good to go. ⁓

⁓ All right. ⁓ Apparently, more people are ⁓ starting to realize that ⁓ modern door handles on cars are really stupid. ⁓ They're just terrible, terrible designs.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:16)
Thank God they're figuring it out.

Nicole Wakelin (1:26:20)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:20)
I just want to grab a door and open it. ⁓ I want a firefighter who comes to my car when something bad's happened or a police officer or whoever and can just grab the door handle and open it up. I don't need them to be like, did you read how to open up the door on this certain vehicle because they decided to do an electronic door? I don't need that. I don't need that stress in my life.

Nicole Wakelin (1:26:23)
I just want to hand though.

Yep.

I just want door handles to the new door handles that you just reach. I want it to be something that like the ones that come out and are like a little just thing you grab when it's cold and snowy and wet. The number of times like my hand slips off of those. Like I just want to open. Just give me a little thing I can grab and pull open. Thank you very much.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:59)
Yeah, foop! Foop!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:07)
Yeah, Bloomberg had a big piece. They focused on Tesla, Tesla is by no means the only company doing these bad door handles. A lot of legacy automakers are doing it now. ⁓ The likes of Lucid and Rivian are all doing it. A lot of the Chinese are doing it. The Chinese regulators are now starting to ban those types of door handles. But I think we really need to consider that.

doing that everywhere. Because it's just it's just a terrible idea.

Nicole Wakelin (1:27:41)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:41)
Yeah,

yeah, like even the, like the Hyundai, the Onyx 5, they're not electronic. Like you can just put, you can push the little side and pull them open. They're actual mechanical door handles. But the fact that they're flush just makes me, me not bonkers. Because again, a firefighter comes up and they're like, I don't know. I don't need an instruction manual for someone to save me if I get in a car accident. That's all, that's all I want.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:51)
Mm-hmm.

It does make it more annoying.

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:00)
He's like...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:05)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:05)
Right,

before we save him first, let's figure out how to get the door open. Where's the manual? Yeah, page 95. Let me just check. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:09)
Hold on, let me get a YouTube, let look up. ⁓ Yeah, no, it's, it's,

it's. Stop. They're like, well, we're saving like 0.00001 on drag coefficient. I'm like, that's not worth it. Stop it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like the Onyx 5, we're windshield wiper and their first reason was like, well, drag coefficient, right?

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:24)
I'll pay that extra little bit of whatever, reduce that efficiency to be able to be safely extricated from my vehicle.

I can't see.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:36)
And then the

next wing came out and it had it and then it has more range. I'm like, look, see, look at what you did there. The technology got better, you got better at making the car bits that make the car go a long way. So you could add a windshield wiper. Now add like just a regular old, I wanna grab the door handle and open it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:54)
handle. Just regular door handle. Just a handle.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:56)
Give us a hand.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:59)
Speaking of just having stuff that works, there was some nasty weather in the Bay Area this week, apparently, Robbie. You might be able to tell us little something about that, but I guess it was a tad windy.

Nicole Wakelin (1:29:13)
Was it nasty?

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:14)
All

the leaves felt like one day the leaves were on the tree, next day the tree is completely bare. Things are falling over. I will rebuild, ⁓ which is just, I don't know, I'll probably trim the tree later.

Nicole Wakelin (1:29:24)
You ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:31)
Well,

guess apparently, you know, there was a lot of power outages in San Francisco. Yeah. And ⁓ apparently that caused ⁓ Waymo's fleet to just freeze because they lost, you know, I they don't need power while they're driving, but I guess they do need connectivity. And without power, ⁓ the connectivity...

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:38)
Like half the city.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:59)
just went away. was no cell signal in large parts of San Francisco for a while this weekend. so without connection back to home base, all these Waymo robo taxis just, okay, I'm going to stop right here, right in the middle of the street.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:13)
Meh.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:14)
It feels

like a really bad way to have like, okay, you're like pull over, get out of the way.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:20)
Like they're

supposed to, like if they come to a ⁓ light that's kind of like a traffic light, they're supposed to revert to a four way stop, you know, like a human would and they couldn't figure that out because they're like, we don't know what's going on. And you're just like, ⁓ well that's okay. And this isn't like a crazy edge case.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:38)
Well, that's the thing.

Like, I feel like what do we do if the power goes out? That'll never happen. We don't need to worry about that. Maybe? Close out all the time. Silliness.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:42)
She just says northern california. It's always going I don't know when does that ever happen? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:45)
When does the power ever go out in Northern California?

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:50)
No, it's it's it's it's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:51)
Who's ever had a power issue with PG &E?

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:55)
I

know no one's ever had issues with PG &E. yeah, so it's it's it's a yeah, it's it's it's one more thing where you're just like, well, hey, the way most are great. And they do this thing. I got stuck behind a Waymo. I was driving the CLA electric through San Francisco and it just pulled like it was taking a right. This is in traffic. And then it just stopped.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:56)
Never, never. Power's perfect.

Just like I'm done.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:19)
And we're all like, what

is going on? And so I pulled around it and the whole time I'm pulling around it, I'm terrified that the car is going to decide to just go because I don't have, there's no one I can look at. I don't know. I don't know what the car is going to do. There's no, you know, there's no eye contact. There's no, yeah, you see me. Okay, cool. And so I pull around really slowly and then another couple other people. then like the fourth I'm looking in every mirror, it starts to pull forward again.

Nicole Wakelin (1:31:27)
that it's going to start again.

to be like, I'm here, I'm going, you good? I'm staying, you going? You see me, I'm around you, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:48)
And the person pulling around is like,

Nicole Wakelin (1:31:51)
Wait, it's a week! Just a regular day.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:51)
And that's just a regular day in San Francisco with the cart. Now the

fact that they're just like shutting down. Power's out, we're done. Union break. People, think people like some, I saw some people online or on ⁓ social media who were like, they just got, they ascended the ride, got out of the car and got an Uber. They ordered a human to come pick them up.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:02)
What happened to the people in them? Were there people in them?

man, they

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When when

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:15)
went to Uber. Get me my reliable Uber. Get me out of this thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:19)
when there's you when there's no power and like you say, you pull up to a traffic signal and the lights are out, you just treat it as a four way stop. Humans know how to do that. I mean, that should be a no brainer for for an automated system.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:26)
Right, you make it through.

That's bizarre.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:32)
What's

terrifying is if this had happened because of say of an actual disaster, like a fire, like something had fallen over and now there's emergency vehicles trying to get somewhere and people in their cars like, I know them pulled over. The way most are already confused are like, man, they're just, just, yeah. And they were all like bunching up because they, you know, they all work in a geographic region. They all typically will take the same route because they know that route. So they all got bunched up at certain intersections and you're just like.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:38)
Right?

They're just going to sit there.

See, I'll get.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:02)
Now imagine a fire truck or police or an ambulance trying to get through that and you're like, oh, well, we can't get by because the way mores are confused because they can't come home. There's no redundancy. This is the same thing we grilled the guy at cruise, the CEO ended up quitting. I'm like, well, so there's no redundancy? Oh yeah, he ended up getting fired.

Nicole Wakelin (1:33:05)
trying to get through that mess.

We almost don't understand what a four-way intersection is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:22)
Yeah, no, he did not end up quitting. He got fired.

Nicole Wakelin (1:33:23)
Hahaha!

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:29)
But, you know, talked to asking him about redundancies and network connection because all those cruises got stuck and they blamed a music festival that was on the other side of town. He's like, well, the network. I'm like, so you don't have redundancies for the network? And then me and Sam kept asking him questions till he got angry with us.

Anyway, self-driving cars of the future.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:51)
Yeah, it's

all good.

Nicole Wakelin (1:33:56)
Bring it on.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:57)
All right,

⁓ so last week we put out the call ⁓ for suggestions as to what ⁓ Nicole should get as her next car. And we actually did get some suggestions. we're still looking for more suggestions. But remember, you can't just suggest a vehicle. You have to justify it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:07)
did someone? I don't see. there were suggestions.

my god, there were a lot! I didn't even see this!

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:18)
You have to tell us why, can't you just say Chrysler Pacifica? I demand answers, I demand reasons.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:20)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:23)
Yeah. So let's start off with C. Rose, who actually provided several suggestions. ⁓ So ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:24)
demand reasons.

She wants an EV, two mid-size EV, three horsepower. I like

that she, their explanation, she wants an EV, is number one, two mid-size SUV, three horsepower exclamation point, thank you. She is buying outright, not leasing, so I looked at it, I sort feeling real, so I just bounced them and not on lease, so I can't, can't, so the answer can't be Miata. Very well done.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:40)
Yeah. ⁓

This is

one of those rare instances where Miata is not the answer. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:54)
Not the answer.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:55)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:56)
Okay, so was Genesis GV60 and Tromso green. Oh, is that really dark green? Is that that really dark green one? That's a good color. With Robbie in the Ionic and Sam in the EV6, you could complete the picture with the fancy Genesis. Go for the advanced trim or if you need more horses, the performance trim. Ionic five, do you like that one?

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:59)
Ooh. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:01)
I think so, yeah.

I

was going to suggest, my personal suggestion is that you should get the GV60 Magma. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:21)
The magma, that

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:22)
Ma.

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:23)
magma, just so

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:23)
mad.

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:24)
I can say it's liquid magma. That would work.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:25)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:27)
⁓

And then what's the number two is Ionic 5N no explanation needed prices on these just came down a lot You should be able to get three to four under sticker Cadillac optic great value. I've had mine now for two months and really enjoy it reach out to me I'll get you a great deal from my dealer. Okay. I'll keep that in mind. Look at that ⁓ Chevy Blazer SS or Cadillac Lyric if optic is too small, but I like the drive of optic more especially get a 26 Which is rear wheel drive a rear biased

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:44)
Heh. Heh.

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:57)
all-wheel drive Ford F-150 Lightning. It's almost like forbidden fruit. ⁓ Thanks again for the amazing contact. BS, I have a contact of a great broker in the Boston area that could really get you a deal once you decide what car you want. All right, I'm getting that email for this person from C. Rose from Sam before.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:08)
Yeah!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:14)
I will send that over to you. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:17)
Then I

had, those, okay, so I like all those. I think of my list on that list. The GV60 is my favorite because I was actually looking at a Genesis. That was, that's on my list. So that's on the list.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:26)
We're gonna complete

the holy trinity of HMG if you get that GP60

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:34)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:34)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:34)
We're just going to get all their products. So Genesis is on my list. I like I really like Genesis. That's.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:35)
ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:37)
trying

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:40)
Yeah, Robbie's got a rear wheel drive IONIQ 5. We have

an all wheel drive EV6. You could get the GV60 Magma.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:48)
Okay, GV60 Magma, okay, problem solved. Then when...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:52)
Unfortunately, I think a couple of these suggestions, ⁓ the Cadillac Optic, the Lyric, and the Blazer SS, while they're great vehicles, I think ⁓ you would probably disqualify them because of lack of CarPlay support.

Nicole Wakelin (1:37:05)
Yeah, wouldn't, because I do want car play on mine, that would be a no. I would be, that would be a lot, yeah, no explanation needed. That would be super duper fun times. I would like that one. So.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:16)
We'd all be very jealous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:16)
Yeah, well,

and the GV60 Magma is basically a 5N in a fancier suit. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:37:22)
Fancy, it's dressed up, it's wearing a tux. Yeah,

okay. It's the tuxedo version of the 5N. The James Bond version. Okay, then Scott Dix said, I should buy a Mini, a 26 Mini Cooper S, four door iconic. We bought the 2005 and 2006, wrote a check, waited a week, went back and drove it away. Look for any over 40K, they have most trick parts. There's no spare that costs 1200 bucks.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:27)
Yeah, it's the James Bond version of...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:28)
Alright,

yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:37:50)
We put it in the backseat when we drive out of the city. It's a great little car and she'll be able to spend the next year attempting to figure out most all the software features. What makes it even more fun is the software updates about every 60 days so you can start over again. It's kind of natural that's the recommendation. I'm not sure that that's what I want is a constant sense of having a new car in terms of not knowing the infotainment, but the mini is super fun. I know, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:58)
Ha

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:04)
It's like a party!

Woohoo!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:12)
But isn't that what software-defined vehicles are all about? Is that constant sense of

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:15)
Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:16)
having a new car?

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:16)
it's evolving like a Pokemon in your driveway.

Nicole Wakelin (1:38:18)
Like a Pokemon.

⁓ And then we have one more from Steven, who said, think her next car should be a Porsche Taycan or an Audi e-tron GT. The justification. Does it say, used? Yes. And the justification one, I recall the reasoning behind the Wagoneer was because as an automotive journalist, there's a value in having perspective on the EV ownership experience. This is still true. He is correct. Steven, you are correct.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:29)
used.

Yes.

I think you've got some perspective on the experience now.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:45)
Yeah,

yeah, you've gotten.

Nicole Wakelin (1:38:46)
Let me tell ya. So no, that

is true, I did want that. Then number two, 75 % of all car sales are used car sales, so likewise having perspective on the used car buying process, okay. Number three, the sensible choice would be on IONIQ 5 or EV6, but the co-hosts have those perspectives covered. I can't buy what you have, okay. All right, crossed off.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:03)
Yeah, you're not allowed to buy the car we have. Sorry, Nicole. ⁓ Sorry, Dems the rules.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:09)
And number four the tycon and its platform mate are generally regarded as the best EVs in the market Cpo's we have for less than the MSRP of the Wagoneer with factory power train warranties still in effect Looking forward to hearing about you decide to do Thanks once again for all that you do and best of luck on the road ahead. I was looking at Porsche's was actually looking at I'm at the tycon was not my list, but I was looking at a macon or a cayenne Those are on my list

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:35)
yeah. You can get the Tycon,

the Cross Turismo. Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? That's a Wagoneer ass.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:41)
I could. See? So there's some potential. You guys, there's some potentials. I'm right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:42)
Yeah, that's kind of like the same form factor as a Waggoner S.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:48)
It's a wagon. It's the same exact car. Do I want the same exact car? I appreciate these. I like these. I like these. I think there's a couple on this list that are on my list. said the Genesis is on my list and I was looking at Porsche, but maybe not the Taycan. Maybe, maybe I should be looking at the Taycan. You know, I have never driven one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:08)
What? It is...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:09)
Attack on.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:10)
ever

once ever I've never had the opportunity to drive a Taycan.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:13)
I

everyone who's driven a Taycan loves a Taycan. That's why I didn't sell as well. If auto journalists, if auto journalists universally loves something, it's going to bomb. It's, is such a wonderful vehicle. drove the last one I drove as a, I think it was a sport Turismo in Germany. It was purple. ⁓ fantastic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:18)
Ha!

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:19)
Ha ha ha!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:24)
It's gonna bomb. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:25)
It's gonna bomb.

I'm looking at

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:35)
I

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:36)
it now, I just pulled it up online.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:36)
haven't driven the Taycan, but I've driven a couple of e-tron GTs, including in October I drove an RS e-tron GT when we were shooting a thing for CNBC and ⁓ that car is so good.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:40)
All those are nice.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:40)
I've driven, yeah.

The Taycan's so pretty though. It's a good looking car. I'm looking at it now. I'm scrolling through Porsche's website.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:54)
It is. It is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:59)
I have a Macan

coming in a couple of weeks right after CES. Macan EV, So I've driven it briefly during that same day we were shooting with the Audi. ⁓ But I'll have it for a week and we'll see what it's actually like to live with.

Nicole Wakelin (1:41:03)
Do you really?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, well see, let me know if it goes. That's my main priority. Does it go when it's supposed to go? Because that's high on my list of things a car needs to do. The most car thing a car needs to do is go. ⁓ I like my car to do car things.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:28)
Do car things, please.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:33)
I would like my car to do car things, please.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:34)
Well,

speaking of which, ⁓ last week during the final day of Operation Frodo, we were just pulling into Portland and I got a text from my wife ⁓ that the ⁓ electric system fault came on in the EV6 ⁓ and then it went into turtle mode. ⁓ Fortunately, she was only a couple of blocks from the house.

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:00)
Ugh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:02)
And I had a suspicion of what it was that you know, it was the the low voltage system And before you know before we bought this one, but it's a used one before we bought it. I had I had Checked on the NHTSA there's a NHTSA recall website where you can put in a VIN number for a particular vehicle and You can see if it has any open recalls on it or you know if they've been addressed and when I put the VIN in it actually said

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:28)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:32)
There are no unrepaired recalls on this vehicle. However, it turns out that the way the recall was worded is that they ⁓ were pulling in all the cars and they were inspecting the integrated charge control unit, but not necessarily replacing every single one. So if it was working, they weren't replacing it. It was working at that moment.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:53)
so it was working at that moment.

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:58)
At that exact moment it was okay,

it's like technically.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:00)
And so what

I ultimately, when I got home on Thursday, I plugged in the OBD dongle and opened up the car scanner app on my phone and read the codes and sure enough, it had the fault code for the ICCU. And it was also showing the low voltage battery was only just shy of 10 volts, ⁓ which is why it wouldn't go. ⁓ And the dealer's only like less than two miles from my house.

Nicole Wakelin (1:43:26)
It wouldn't go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:30)
So I figured, okay, let me see if I can drive it very slowly over to the dealer. I can stay on side roads. And I figured, I'll give it a shot, see if I can get it over to the dealer to check it out. I got about two blocks before it came to a complete stop and would not go any further. So then I called AAA and they towed it over to the dealer. And this was on Thursday afternoon.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:46)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:58)
Fortunately, they were able to get it in, check it out, confirm that yeah, the ICCU had failed, and they immediately ordered a part. And when they were checking, they checked in the Kia system, in the service system, and they saw that it had been inspected twice. The ICCU had been inspected two times, but there was no indication of whether it had actually been replaced. ⁓ So while they ordered the part,

and got, you know, they told me that, you know, this was on Thursday afternoon that it might, it probably wouldn't come in till Tuesday, which as we're recording, it's Monday evening, it wouldn't come in till tomorrow. And if it didn't show up by Tuesday, then because of the holiday this week, it wouldn't be till Monday. So we would have been without the car for over a week. Fortunately, the part showed up this morning, Monday morning, and it's only a 20 minute job to replace it. And so they

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:46)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:56)
They got it done and we've got the car back and it's all good. ⁓ I sent a note to one of my contacts at Kia and asked him to check and he verified that yeah, this one had never had the ICCU replaced. ⁓ So now it has, so it should be good to go for forever. My hope. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:59)
Yay!

It's a holiday miracle.

Nicole Wakelin (1:45:14)
It's

a little holiday, it is a little holiday miracle. Woohoo! ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:16)
Praise Lord Santa.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:20)
Praise the Lord Kia!

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:22)
Praise Krampus.

Nicole Wakelin (1:45:22)
Please Lord Kia.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:24)
Praise Krampus.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:26)
So anyway, so our EV6 is back running again, so it's all good.

Nicole Wakelin (1:45:31)
Yay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:32)
Yay,

only a few days, that's always the best. And it in caution.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:34)
Yeah, yeah, just

Nicole Wakelin (1:45:35)
Yeah, that wasn't bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:37)
a couple of days, just a long weekend and it was all good. And La Fontaine Kia here in Ypsilanti did a great job. When they were done, they washed the car so it's all clean and shiny. So thank you.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:39)
It's just time and effort.

I have a nice service center

at my Hyundai dealership. They're really nice. They get me in, they get me out. They're very no-nonsense. But they're also very nice, which I'm a big fan of no-nonsense nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:02)
Yes. That's the best kind of service department.

Nicole Wakelin (1:46:03)
No, that's nice.

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:05)
It is. I just,

it's like, do need? All right, we got it. Okay, cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:10)
Just fix it, and then sign here to acknowledge that it the work. And nope, no charge, all under warranty, all good.

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:19)
Get out.

Get out of here.

Nicole Wakelin (1:46:22)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:23)
All right. ⁓ With that, let's say goodbye for this week and we'll talk to you next time. Bye. Yeah. Happy holidays, everybody. All right.

Nicole Wakelin (1:46:30)
Yes, everyone have a good Christmas. It's Christmas week. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:34)
Bye.