Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 430 of wheel bearings. am Sam Abuelsamid from telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:07)
Roberto Baldwin from SAE's Automotive Engineering Podcast and other SAE properties.

Perry (00:14)
And I'm Perry Stern and I'm mainly freelance.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:18)
And Nicole will finally be back next week. So she can tell us all about her travels and what the status is. We can get possibly a final status update on the Wagoneer S.

Perry (00:32)
That'd be interesting.

Roberto Baldwin (00:32)
⁓ yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33)
Yeah.

All right. Let's see. ⁓ Perry, let's start with you. What did you drive this week? Or what are you driving?

Perry (00:42)
So this week I'm driving

a Honda Prologue, ⁓ which I hadn't had a chance to try before. So it's the ⁓ dual motor elite top of the line. ⁓ actually, it's quite nice to drive. I mean, I know it's basically a GM car. ⁓ It shares the whole platform with the General Motors ⁓ EVs, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And ⁓ I just took it out in snow earlier today and found that the

The all-season tires did just fine with the ⁓ traction control was working overtime, ⁓ as was the all-wheel drive system. ⁓ But ⁓ I also did find that when you're in one pedal driving, the ABS does kick in when you let off the throttle, ⁓ because that was doing.

Roberto Baldwin (01:28)
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:29)
Also, if you, if

you, if you let off too fast, it'll throw on ABS.

Perry (01:32)
Yeah,

or if it's icy, it doesn't matter how fast you let off. It just kicks in the ABS anyway, which could be part of the reason that my battery was going quickly. ⁓ But that and the fact that it's about 20 degrees outside and I've got the heat going and all that. ⁓ yeah, but it's ⁓ between the traction and stability control, actually handled it just fine. So if you have one of these and it's Michigan winter, ⁓ unless it gets deep,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:41)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (01:49)
That'll do it.

Perry (02:02)
You could do pretty well. throw winter tires on it and it would be unstoppable, I would think.

Roberto Baldwin (02:08)
It is the pro log. It's not the amateur log. It's pro. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:08)
I'm remember what the...

Perry (02:11)
Yes, this is the professional log. And

it does have all of the GM infotainment and everything else. The nice thing is that even though it's an EV, it does have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which we know GM has been slowly getting rid of. ⁓ But it also has the Google Maps. It's the Google-based system. So if you're an Android user and you want to log into everything, you can almost replicate the Android Auto experience with the native system. So it's not a bad thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:42)
Yeah, and it's got a decent amount of ⁓ ground clearance. On the Elite, it looks like you got 8.1 inches of ground clearance ⁓ with Elite all-wheel drive. So that's, if you've got some snow on the ground, as long as you got less than eight inches on the ground, you should be able to get through okay.

Perry (03:03)
Yeah, and it did just fine. And it's also, with the EV, it's nice that it heats up so quickly inside. ⁓ I remote started it. And by the time I had all the windows and everything cleared off, it was nice and toasty inside. ⁓ So nice added benefit. The heated seats, heated steering wheel, all of that. ⁓ And it's pretty comfortable to drive. The rear seat has got good room, but the seat itself is a bit flat and stiff. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (03:33)
No.

Perry (03:33)
So long trip in that might be a little, yes, yes. But front seats, all very comfortable. And so the sticker on this one, well, this is a 25, but if you convert it to a 26, because it's unchanged for 26, the sticker on it is just about $60,000, $59,850. And that includes the extra scarlet red metallic paint, because you've got to have that.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:34)
It's a GM seat.

Yeah, you know, that's, this has been my main problem with the Prolog. The Prolog drives really nice. I actually like the design, the exterior design. I think it's a nice clean look. But it's kind of pricey. It's 60 grand for that Elite. And when I first drove it, when I first got into it, you immediately notice that it's all hard plastics.

Perry (04:33)
It is.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:33)
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (04:34)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:35)
it doesn't look premium. I mean, it's nicely laid out. Everything's functional, it works well, but it looks kind of cheap. And for 60 grand, I find it hard to make the case for that.

Roberto Baldwin (04:45)
Yes.

That's when you buy a car and then have to sell the car after you buy the car from another car company.

Perry (04:54)
I mean, I'd agree. It's not like it's unattractive inside, but it is a lot of plastic. If just a simple leather padded trim along all the hard plastic on the dash and center console, because the center console is big, and it's got this big space for storing items. ⁓ It also has the wireless charger there, but it is a lot of dark black plastic, ⁓ which

Sam Abuelsamid (04:54)
the hell.

Perry (05:23)
isn't necessarily attractive.

Roberto Baldwin (05:25)
there.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:27)
And especially when you compare it to other Honda vehicles that are considerably more affordable, it doesn't come across great.

Roberto Baldwin (05:37)
Yeah, you're paying a lot of money for 400 volts as well

Sam Abuelsamid (05:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Perry (05:43)
But you do

get a 300 horsepower all-wheel drive vehicle. it's got, this is the top of the, the Elite gets the lowest range. So I think EPA range is about 283, which ⁓ is what I'm showing, which is what I'm showing on the, when I've had a full charge. So it's, it does at least seem to be matching up. ⁓ But as I mentioned, you know, it's this particular tank of charge ⁓ is probably.

Roberto Baldwin (05:54)
Good.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:08)
Tank of electrons.

Perry (06:10)
Exactly. It's probably not going to go as far just because I can already see my ⁓ average use is about 1.7, 1.8 ⁓ miles per kilometer, miles per kilowatt hour, sorry. ⁓ And that's not going to equate to 283 miles.

Roberto Baldwin (06:31)
⁓ no. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:34)
Okay, yeah, mean the Prologue's an interesting combination for Honda, because it's a mix of parts from the Blazer and the Equinox. So it's got the smaller battery from the Equinox, but the long wheelbase of the Blazer, so it's actually the same size as the Blazer EV, whereas the Equinox is a little bit smaller, and so the Equinox EV gets a smaller battery, because it's shorter wheelbase, they can't fit the...

the 100 kilowatt hour battery. So they go with a 10 module. I think it works out to about 85 kilowatt hours. And so you get a little bit less range than you might get out of the Blazer, but ⁓ it's also a bit ⁓ lighter than a Blazer. And so think, in most ways, it's a pretty good compromise, but it's just that price point. It's just kind of hard to swallow, especially when you look at what else is out there. ⁓

Perry (07:28)
Yeah, although I think...

Roberto Baldwin (07:29)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:31)
what else is available.

Perry (07:33)
Yeah, I mean, think it's almost become expected that if you're buying an EV, it's going to be expensive. ⁓ I mean, it's I think it doesn't.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:43)
Yeah. Well, it doesn't have to be. I mean, look at

the Leaf, the IONIQ 5 price is down to $35,000 starting price. The Equinox EV, the Equinox EV starts at $36,000 now for a model year 26. Yeah, the base model starts at $36,000 and a loaded Equinox EV I think is under $50,000. I think it's about $48,000 for...

Perry (08:01)
Is it really that low now?

Sam Abuelsamid (08:12)
if you get with pretty much all the options. And you're getting the same battery, the same motors as this. The only difference is it's slightly smaller, but it's still ⁓ very roomy for its size.

Perry (08:16)
Set up.

definitely. Well, the ProLock, so the base price of the EX, which is the base model, that's ⁓ single motor, that's 47.4 without destination. ⁓ And so you're going to have a bit more range, but you're not going to have all-wheel drive. They have a reported 308-mile range on that one. ⁓ But obviously, it's not going to be any nicer inside as the lesser model.

Roberto Baldwin (08:53)
Yeah.

Perry (08:55)
if that's what's important to you.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:59)
So an Equinox EV RS with all wheel drive goes for $45,895. And let's see, if you add...

Perry (09:13)
So is that base level trim or is that?

Sam Abuelsamid (09:15)
That's

the top trim level. there's the LT1, LT2, the, or 1LT, 2LT, and the RS trims. And let's see, if you add the active safety package that includes Super Cruise, that's 3,300 bucks. What else? You cannot get that on Prologue. And then if you want the 19 kilowatt charger,

Perry (09:17)
Okay, top trim.

which you can't get on Prolog.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:44)
That's another $12.95, but you know don't really need that at home. You know for this size of battery you know the the 11 kilowatt charger that's standard is more than adequate You know if you want the fancy You know bowtie pedal light puddle lights, that's another $15.50 And the trailer package is $14.95

So, you know, that's most of the most expensive stuff. ⁓ and if you want the dual pane power sunroof, that's another 1500. So all in, you know, that's 56,290.

Perry (10:17)
And one sec.

Okay, so it's so that's still less than the top of the line prologue. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (10:36)
Yeah.

Yeah. And, like say, if you, if you want to get it more, does the prologue have the glass roof? Okay. So if you, if you drop the, the super cruise package, you know, that gets you down to 53,000, including destination. Um, and that, you know, that, that's. Yeah. You know, that's, that's about $7,000 less.

Perry (10:43)
Yeah. Yeah, does.

It's pretty equivalent.

That's a big difference. Of it doesn't have a...

Sam Abuelsamid (11:03)
Yeah, now, you know, are you willing to pay

$7000 to get CarPlay?

Perry (11:08)
mmm yeah that's of course it but you also you also get a Honda badge which for some people they don't want a Chevy badge they want a Honda badge yeah so it's

Sam Abuelsamid (11:10)
I mean, that's basically that's the main thing you're getting with the with the Honda is carplay.

Roberto Baldwin (11:17)
That's a big deal. Yep. Yep.

They'll pay the premium for a Honda badge which yeah

Perry (11:26)
Right, these

Sam Abuelsamid (11:27)
Yeah,

Perry (11:28)
are

Sam Abuelsamid (11:28)
not having to deal with a Chevrolet dealer.

Perry (11:28)
the... Well, there's that. So yeah, there's clearly a market for them because they seem to be selling pretty well, ⁓ relatively speaking. ⁓ And like you said, this...

Roberto Baldwin (11:40)
Yeah, think it really yeah,

it pushed Honda to like sort of yeah, we should make our own EV

Sam Abuelsamid (11:48)
Yeah, Honda does have its own EVs coming out next year. They've got the Acura RSX that's launching first in Q1. And ⁓ then the Honda Zero SUV is coming ⁓ probably late summer. ⁓ And then the Saloon in early 27.

And once the zero SUV arrives, that's probably gonna, you know, they're probably gonna drop the prologue at that point.

Perry (12:16)
Right, mean, they've already dropped ZDX, which is the Acura version. So that didn't last long.

Roberto Baldwin (12:21)
Nah.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:23)
No. All right.

Perry (12:25)
So,

so there it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:28)
⁓

Any other thoughts on the prologue?

Perry (12:32)
No, I mean, I'm taking a road trip in it tomorrow. So that should be interesting to see how it does for a 200 mile drive ⁓ with a 280 mile range. So ⁓ may do some fast charging along the way. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (12:35)
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:46)
There's

an Electrify America station in ⁓ Portage near Kalamazoo. It's not far off the freeway.

Perry (12:51)
Yeah, I

saw that. There's actually a slew of them all along the path.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:59)
Yeah, once

you get past that EA station, most of the other ones that are out West Michigan area there are like 50 kilowatt chargers. So they're DC chargers, but they're not fast. So you may want to top off at that EA station.

Perry (13:11)
Yes.

Yeah, think I don't know if that's the one or not. There's one that's about 140 miles from here. ⁓ That's ⁓ that. Yeah, it's at a Meyer grocery store. It's right next to it. It's right next to a Tesla supercharger, it's ⁓ it shows at least on Electrify America site that it's a 350 kilowatt charger. So so we'll we'll see if it works. You know, I've I've had hit and miss experience when I've done road trips with the EVs and counted on a charger that didn't work.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:21)
I think that's the one.

⁓ okay.

Perry (13:44)
So we'll see what happens. It'll be fun.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:47)
All right.

Roberto Baldwin (13:49)
You'll be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:51)
All right. Well, I also had a GM developed EV this week. She still have it in the driveway. ⁓ I have the 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV trail boss.

Perry (14:03)
So it's practically the same car.

Roberto Baldwin (14:05)
Yep, totally the same.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:05)
Pretty much, yeah.

Well, I the cells in the battery pack are the same. It's just a lot more of them. About two and a half times as many almost. And the battery pack weighs about 3,000 pounds. So it's almost 1,000 pounds more than my Miata just for the battery pack. But for model year 26 Chevy...

Roberto Baldwin (14:13)
all of the cells and battery packs.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:32)
Realigned the Silverado ev line up a little bit. So when they launched Silverado ev they launched initially with just the work truck and Selling those two fleets and then a little while after that they added the RST trim, which is the really expensive and You know the luxury trim level with big 24 inch wheels air spring suspension all the goodies on there for like $95,000 and so

What they've done is because GMC, because they don't sell enough of these to justify so many different variations of roughly the same thing. ⁓ GMC has the Sierra EV Denali and the Denali Ultimate, I think, ⁓ that was equivalent to what the Silverado RST was. So they dropped the RST for this year.

but they added in a mid-level LT trim and also ⁓ the Trail Boss, which is a more off-road oriented version. So the Trail Boss has got a ⁓ couple inch lift compared to the other Silverados. ⁓ It's on 18 inch wheels with big all-terrain tires that have sidewall and everything, which is nice. It's nice, nice change, you know, from the skinny little tires that were on the RST, the 24 horse with like,

no sidewall, which makes them very susceptible to damage from potholes. ⁓ On the Trail Boss, get ⁓ the good all-terrain tires that are much more suitable for driving on Michigan roads, especially in the wintertime. ⁓ I've been driving it this week. We've had a bunch of snow this week. ⁓ And the one that I've got also has the four-wheel steering. ⁓ So there's

You can turn off the four wheel steering if you don't like it, but I'm not sure why you would because I took it, I took it in a parking lot and did a couple of circles with four wheel steering on and off and looked at the difference in this, the, ⁓ the, turning radius. It's about an eight foot difference in the turning diameter between four wheel steering on or off. And on a big truck like that, it's like, just turn on the four wheel steering and leave it. It's, it's so much better.

Perry (16:48)
This is...

Sam Abuelsamid (16:58)
so much easier to maneuver the thing on this big truck. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (17:02)
Yeah, forward

steering is a game changer for big vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:06)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ And they also, ⁓ this year they added Sidewinder mode, ⁓ which is Chevy's branding for when you're off road, having the wheels turning in phase. So it's the equivalent of what Hummer calls their ⁓ Crab Walk mode. So all the wheels turn in the same direction. Robbie's doing little crab things with his hands.

Roberto Baldwin (17:32)
I'm I'm doing crab heads. Crab people.

Perry (17:36)
I'm still waiting to see a situation where that really does actually make a difference.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:41)
⁓ Unless you're taking it off road, there may be a few situations off road where it might be helpful. ⁓ But for the most part, no, it's not. It's not actually. It's a gimmick.

Roberto Baldwin (17:53)
You kind of

have to practice with it because it's unnerving and a little difficult to control. You're like, ah. It feels like the truck is sliding off a hill. If you've ever been off-roading and then like, if you've ever been off-roading with like, know, silt or mud or snow or ice and the trail's a little off-camber and you feel the vehicle sliding like off-road, that's a little bit, that's what it feels like when you're driving.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:58)
Yeah.

Perry (18:01)
Right. It's kind of unnatural.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much. ⁓

Perry (18:19)
So it'd be interesting

to be it if you're in that situation where it's sliding, put it in phase turning the other direction, would it balance itself out?

Roberto Baldwin (18:24)
I guess you

Sam Abuelsamid (18:26)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (18:27)
just keep going you just keep sliding slowly up the hill I guess I hope fingers crossed

Perry (18:31)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:31)
Yeah,

Perry (18:32)
No, no, no.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:33)
it's more of a gimmick than anything else. Most people are never going to ... It's one of those things where you show it off to your friends once or twice and then you never touch that button on the touchscreen again.

Roberto Baldwin (18:47)
Yeah.

Perry (18:47)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (18:47)
Like

the G turn makes more sense and even that's goofy. You're like, whee! The G turn's a lot more fun too.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:50)
Yeah.

Perry (18:51)
Yeah, yeah. It's

fun to watch.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:56)
⁓ So on the the trail boss you can get the trail boss two different ways with with either ⁓ the 20 module battery pack or the 24 module battery pack and I had The spec sheet open here and I closed it for some reason ⁓ Yeah, approximately ⁓ they don't GM doesn't actually list

Roberto Baldwin (19:16)
205 and 170

Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, GM, everything's a practice.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:25)
the capacity in kilowatt hours, people have figured it out. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (19:30)
Someone told me 218

at GM, but maybe that was a different.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:34)
⁓ The gross capacity is actually somewhere around 225. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (19:40)
Yeah, so I looked at why why don't they I've

spoken to them numerous times about it and they've always they're like well they they they talk around why they don't tell us the the kilowatt hours but none of the the reasonings ever made sense. I'm like everyone else does it. I have to share this with my readers. I'm like well you know every battery pack is a little different. I'm like yeah but it's not like different by like 30 percent. Come on just give me a number.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:56)
Yeah.

Perry (20:04)
The

Sam Abuelsamid (20:10)
So, they offer three different battery pack sizes. Yeah. Yeah, they offer three different battery pack sizes across the Silverado EV lineup, the Standard, the Extended, and the Max. ⁓ The Standard is a 14 module pack. ⁓ In the work truck, it gives you 286 miles of range, ⁓ or in the LT, it's 283. ⁓ The Trail Boss is only available with the Extended or Max battery packs.

Perry (20:11)
Yeah, and if it is, that's a whole different issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:39)
The extended battery pack is rated at 410 miles of range. The max pack is 478 miles of range. And the starting MSRP for the Trail Boss is $88,695. The base work truck starts at $54,895. So it goes from about $55,000. So you can get a Silverado EV work truck with similar range.

to the prologue that you're driving ⁓ for about $5,000 less. ⁓ And it's got a lot more payload, a lot more passenger capacity. ⁓ can put stuff in the bed. You can put lots of mulch in the bed, more mulch than you can fit into a prologue. You can use it as a truck. ⁓ The Trail Boss, like I said, is the more off-road oriented one. It loses a bit of range.

Perry (21:16)
Okay.

can use as a truck.

Roberto Baldwin (21:29)
You can do truck things.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:39)
⁓ relative to the LT because it sits a little bit taller and it's all-terrain tires. ⁓ And it's got recovery hooks, but you might have a hard time. If you were taking it off-road and you got stuck, you might have a hard time getting it out. You'd to get a really big vehicle to tow it out of a mud pit that you're stuck in because

Roberto Baldwin (21:59)
because it's so heavy.

Like a tractor.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:07)
I took this thing to the weigh scales yesterday. 8,760 pounds empty.

Roberto Baldwin (22:14)
Whew, that's a lot of mass.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:15)
That's

yeah, that's over 2000 pounds more than an F-150 Lightning Platinum.

Perry (22:23)
Cheers.

Roberto Baldwin (22:24)
That's,

that's the, you know, mud loves mass too. So you just see like a dinosaur sliding into the Amber. Just.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:26)
Yeah. ⁓

Perry (22:27)
Yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (22:34)
So like I said, the one I've got is rated at 478 miles of range. It's been cold this week. We had a couple of days where the temperature got, actually one morning it was minus two, I think on Wednesday morning or something this week, was minus two or one of the days. ⁓ So it's been cold. So I've been using the heat and ⁓ nice thing is you've got the quote unquote remote start button.

But unlike the old days, it doesn't actually fire up the engine. It just powers everything up and turns on the heater and everything. So use the use the remote start to defrost it in the morning and get the cabin warmed up. it's been averaging about one point five miles per kilowatt hour this week. Yeah. You know, with.

Roberto Baldwin (23:22)
That's pretty good, to be honest. But yeah, mean, you're sort

Perry (23:26)
I mean, we think of.

Roberto Baldwin (23:26)
of preload, you're warming up the battery when you start it up. So that's one of the nice things about the sort of remote start is that it gets the battery, it warms up the battery before you start driving. So you're using the grid in order to precondition the battery before you start rolling around. So that's nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:40)
Yeah,

except I didn't have it plugged in. So it's just using the battery. But you know, the

Roberto Baldwin (23:43)
⁓ Never mind then You say you didn't so let's just use the battery anyway if you're

Perry (23:45)
No

Roberto Baldwin (23:48)
doing this if you should plug it in and then the cold went

Sam Abuelsamid (23:50)
Yes, generally, if

you're doing this at home, you're to have it plugged in. You can use the grid power so you're not draining the battery. So that contributed to the relatively more modest efficiency that I've had this week. And that works out to a little over 300 miles of range. In cold weather, that's actually fine. And with the size of battery that's in this thing.

Roberto Baldwin (24:07)
Still pretty good for these giant trucks. Yeah.

That's good.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:20)
It will actually tow unlike other ⁓ electric trucks. You know, this this thing will tow up to twelve and a half thousand pounds and it will actually tow. That's pretty significant difference. ⁓ I don't have a trailer. I didn't have any to test to tow it with or to tow with it. But when the guys at TFL had one a couple of years ago, when it first came out, they had a Silverado EV work truck which has the same battery in there. ⁓

And they were telling a big box trailer, which is not particularly aerodynamic. ⁓ Yeah, a box with with a vehicle in the back. So they were telling about ninety five hundred pounds ⁓ and they they went two hundred and thirty two miles with it, which is a lot more than you can do with a lightning or with a cyber truck towing a similar trailer. It's about more more than twice as far as you would get with the same.

Roberto Baldwin (24:54)
Which is just a box.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:19)
with the same trailer with those other vehicles. So it actually can tow pretty significant distances just because of the size of the battery. Of course, you pay for that in a big heavy battery and an expensive truck. Like said, this thing's almost $89,000 before you add any options to it. that does include, GM does include the destination charge and the pricing. ⁓

But the one, let's see, the one that I have had just a few options. It had a hard folding tonneau cover, which is $1,850 for a tonneau cover, $1,500 glass roof, and the Game Day tailgate package, which, you know, so it's got the fancy multi-flex tailgate that can fold in six different ways. And part of that,

Perry (26:02)
tastes.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:17)
It's got a package of speakers built into the part of the tailgate. So if you're using it for a tailgate party, you can blast the sound out from the tailgate. ⁓ And then 250 bucks for floor mats and 150 bucks for the roof sunshade. ⁓ So driving this thing around, ⁓ all told, it came to ⁓ $93,940. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (26:46)
Which is,

Perry (26:47)
Wow.

Roberto Baldwin (26:47)
by the way, if the regular public still thinks this vehicle starts at $100,000. When I had this Silverado, I had a man come up to me and say, did you buy this? I'm like, no, I'm a blah, blah, blah. I tell him the whole spiel. He's like, yeah, because these things start at $100,000 and then walked away. I was like, yeah, GM's sort of dropped the ball about.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:08)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can get, like I said, you can get that work truck for $55,000. And, you ⁓ know, the LT, which is a little better equipped than the work truck, starts at $63,000. ⁓ Of course, actually, those prices are actually going to be slightly higher now because destination charges have changed since this was published. The Monroni I've got shows the destination charge that is now out of date. ⁓

You remember, guys, remember what the destination charge is for full-size trucks now?

Roberto Baldwin (27:42)
18.

Perry (27:45)
That's gonna say close to two, isn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid (27:47)
No, not close to two anymore. When this was published, the Monrone says $2,095. It's now $2,595. Yeah. Yeah, they raised all the... Yeah. Yeah. And this year, they have raised the destination charges on the full-size trucks and SUVs twice since the beginning of the year.

Roberto Baldwin (27:50)
no, is it 22?

⁓ 21.

my gosh.

Perry (28:00)
Wow.

Roberto Baldwin (28:03)
$1,000 more than my first car.

Perry (28:07)
Where does the destination start?

Roberto Baldwin (28:11)
I it was the 80s.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:17)
They went from 1995 to 2095 and then to 2595 sometime around September. So they're hiding part of the tariff costs in the destination charge.

Perry (28:27)
Wow, that's a...

Roberto Baldwin (28:27)
Oof.

Perry (28:33)
Huh? Guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:34)
But

Roberto Baldwin (28:35)
That's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:36)
again,

to their credit, I do give GM credit for the prices that they advertise for their vehicles includes the destination charge. So you don't get any surprises. Yeah, they're pretty much the only automaker that does that.

Roberto Baldwin (28:45)
That's good. Alright, I appreciate that.

Yeah, I mean that feels... Pushing the prices up via the destinations is not great, but at least they're saying, it's cost this much. As opposed to like sort of hiding it and you're like, I wonder how much this is. ⁓ dear.

Perry (29:02)
Right, right.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:08)
So, you know, like you said, Perry, the Silverado doesn't have any smartphone projection, so no Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. It's just got the Google built-in services. But GM gives you eight years of connectivity for that when you buy their EVs. So you'll still have navigation and Google Assistant and stuff for at least eight years. ⁓ But, you know, it works pretty well. ⁓ And the SuperCruise actually works really well.

On Wednesday night when I was coming back from Nashville, ⁓ driving home, it was dark, the road was kind of wet and slick and it was snowing a bit when we arrived. And I put on the super cruise and it had no problem at all ⁓ driving hands-free from the airport back to the exit from my house off the interstate. So.

Perry (30:02)
I was

curious to see how it handled since I driving a Honda Civic without any Super Cruiser or anything at that point in that same weather. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (30:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, I mean, the upside to weighing almost 9000 pounds is it's somewhat more impervious to crosswinds. It's not quite as sensitive to crosswinds. ⁓ You know, aside from the lack of smartphone projection, the the only other major complaint I've got on this thing ⁓ is I have noticed a little bit of a squeak coming from the

Perry (30:21)
true. There's some silver lining for you. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (30:26)
There

you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:41)
the headline, top of the roof area in front of me, where think where the glass is joining the steel, going over some bumpier surfaces, there's a little bit of a squeak there, which is not particularly confidence inspiring. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (30:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, even with

all that mass, something's gotta give a tiny little, see?

Sam Abuelsamid (31:01)
Yeah, something's got to give somewhere.

Perry (31:01)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:05)
So, other than that, it's for a full-size truck. It's very roomy. It's 725 horsepower. It's stupidly fast. ⁓ When you enable the wide open watts mode, ⁓ it does still ⁓ scramble a bit. It's got some torque steer. I've only tried it once a few days ago in between periods of snow when we had some dry pavement.

to work with and I tried it and you know just as when I drove the RST a couple of years ago, you know, it does tend to Crab back and forth a little bit when you're doing full throttle acceleration ⁓ But again, you know, that's not something you're gonna use most of the time. So it's it's it's probably arguably too fast for what it is but you know that helps that certainly helps in terms of towing capabilities and

You know, it's comfortable to drive. ⁓ It's just big, you and you definitely want to work on your parallel parking skills before you get something like this.

Roberto Baldwin (32:15)
We got the

slidey thing. You got the...

Perry (32:17)
I was

going to say, can't it just go sideways into the parking spot? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:20)
Yeah, sort of.

You still need a lot of space for, mean, you know, this thing is actually the same. It's not large. It's not any larger than a gas Silverado. So it's it's like within an inch or two on all the major dimensions of a gas Silverado. It's just it's just electric. And it does this one does have the mid gate. So, you know, if you need to carry longer stuff, you know, you can put down that fancy tailgate.

and flip up the little stopper at the end there and put down the mid gate and you can carry stuff almost 11 feet long inside. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (32:57)
which is pretty cool if you're building

like a catio or some other cat related like outdoor thing like me.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:03)
Yeah

Perry (33:05)
Yeah,

that's a pretty common use for a pickup truck, building a caddy-o.

Roberto Baldwin (33:10)
I bought eight foot long, like two by twos, and I put it in the BRZ. So if you put them from the driver's side rear corner out the window of the passenger side and you make sure you wrap your side mirror, you're totally fine. That'll fit in your car. Yeah, you can joust. I did not get on the freeway driving home from that trip to the hardware store. That was the one I'm like, I should take the side streets.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:18)
Ha.

Perry (33:28)
And you can also do jousting on the way home.

Yeah, good call.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:41)
Ugh.

Roberto Baldwin (33:42)
But you can do it. Or you can buy a giant Silverado.

Perry (33:46)
Yeah, and you could carry the BRZ in the back of it.

Roberto Baldwin (33:50)
Yeah, I can put my BRZ in the back. I can fill the BRZ with wood, put the BRZ in the back, home.

Perry (33:54)
And then put the...

There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:57)
All right, let's move on. ⁓ So Perry and I were both in Nashville this week, actually more precisely in Franklin, Tennessee ⁓ with Nissan. Nissan brought a bunch of people down to drive a whole bunch of stuff, some of which we can talk about, others we can't talk about entirely yet. One that we can't talk about yet is the 2026 Pathfinder. We can't talk about driving impressions.

Perry (33:58)
Heh, on that note.

Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:25)
But there's one thing I do wanna talk about with the Pathfinder. got a mid-cycle update for this year. And the Pathfinder and the Murano for 2026 are the first vehicles to get an updated wireless charging system that has support for Qi2. So Qi has been the industry standard for wireless charging of small devices like phones. ⁓ And the Qi2 standard that they updated basically incorporated ⁓

A few years ago, ⁓ Apple introduced what they called MagSafe charging on the iPhone and they contributed that technology to the Qi standard to make Qi2. So what that means is it includes a magnet in there. So one of the complaints many of us have had about wireless charging pads in cars is that, you know, the phones are all the phones are different sizes.

and somehow you gotta come up with a charging pad that fits all of them. if the charging, if your phone is smaller than the charging pad, when you go around corners and stuff, the phone slides around and then it doesn't charge and.

Roberto Baldwin (35:31)
This is how I left

my phone in the EV6 GT while drifting.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:35)
Ha ha ha ha.

Perry (35:36)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (35:37)
just gone and then I didn't realize it and then an hour later I'm like uh-oh

Sam Abuelsamid (35:42)
So, another complaint that is common with wireless charging pads in cars is after a few minutes on the charging pad, you get a message popping up on the screen saying, please remove your phone from the charging pad because it's too warm, because it heats up. so ⁓ the Qi2 pad in the ⁓ Pathfinder and in the Morano basically gives you a little

circular island ⁓ on the charging pad ⁓ and it's got the magnets in there and so you put your phone on there and it holds your phone in place and it'll charge now at up to 15 watts and it's got a fan built into the pad underneath there so it draws away the hot air so it keeps your phone from overheating.

Roberto Baldwin (36:22)
Damn.

Perry (36:37)
which ⁓ is great option unless you happen to have an Android phone without a case that will actually stick to the magnet, in which case you cannot use the wireless charger at all because there's no place to put your phone.

Roberto Baldwin (36:47)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (36:47)
But ⁓

if you buy a new Google Pixel 10, it's got support for Qi 2, and the newer Samsung phones do as well. Or no, the Samsungs don't yet.

Roberto Baldwin (36:57)
Buy a new...

The answer is Perry, buy a new phone for your drive programs.

Perry (37:03)
That's

what I'm gathering, yes. ⁓ A new case would do it. it was, ⁓ I imagine there are plenty of people out there that have older phones that don't have that. And where the other one charged slowly and occasionally overheated, ⁓ I could still use it. And I wasn't able to use this one at all. ⁓ So that was a bit frustrating for me. But I know that ⁓ you have to look forward, and that's the future, and all that stuff. But it still was annoying.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:05)
Yeah. Or at least a new case. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (37:31)
You need to be a better consumer, that's the only reason we're alive, Harry. Come on. You're not spitting enough.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:35)
You're not spending enough money Perry.

Perry (37:35)
This clearly

clearly I'm not making enough. Yes, I need to make more to spend more.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:38)
You gotta support the economy.

Roberto Baldwin (37:40)
Yeah, yeah, you gotta,

you gotta, no, no, debt, come on. Make more, that's, you're asking too much, no.

Perry (37:46)
It's the American way. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (37:48)
You

Perry (37:51)
yeah clearly ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (37:53)
Crank

up those credit card bills, you'll be fine. What could go wrong?

Perry (37:56)
But

yeah, exactly. So I didn't actually get to try out the wireless charging in the Pathfinder, but I understand that it does work well.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:02)
I did and it worked great. Yeah, it worked

perfectly. So it was flawless. ⁓ So I definitely liked that in the Pathfinder. ⁓ Then ⁓ we also got to drive the Nissan Qashqai. So the Qashqai is a crossover that you cannot buy in North America, at least not currently. The previous generation Qashqai was sold here for several years as the Rogue Sport. ⁓

The current generation is not sold here. It's sold in Asia and in Europe. It's based on the same platform as the Rogue, but it's a little bit smaller. But the reason why Nissan brought over a few cash guys is because they wanted to give us a preview of what is coming for model year 2026, or sorry, 2027. It's coming out in 2026 on the Rogue, because the Rogue is being redesigned for next year.

Perry (38:54)
27 yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (39:01)
And ⁓ one of the challenges for the Rogue today is they don't offer any sort of hybrid option. And most of the top selling vehicles in this segment, like the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, the Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, they all offer at least hybrids and in some cases plug-in hybrids as well. so they, ⁓ next year Nissan is bringing

Roberto Baldwin (39:05)
.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:30)
Their e-power hybrid system, which has been available in Japan and some other markets for several years They're bringing it to the US market and it's their third generation of this system and it's kind of a unique system It's a series hybrid. So the engine never Drives the wheels it is completely engine is completely disconnected from the wheels. It just drives a generator and All of the the vehicle motion is provided by an electric motor and about a 2.1 kilowatt

our battery pack. They brought over the Qashqai from Europe with the e-Power system. We both got a chance to drive it. What did you think, Perry? I think you've driven the e-Power as well, right, Robbie, in Japan?

Perry (40:13)
I tell you.

Roberto Baldwin (40:17)
I did, I wasn't sure if I could talk about it just now.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:20)
Okay. We'll talk you can talk about it.

Roberto Baldwin (40:22)
It's been

like months of like can I talk about the cash guy with the e-power?

Perry (40:28)
It's a unique idea because you're basically you're driving an EV, but as you give it more throttle, you still have an engine that's coming on to add more power to the batteries. ⁓ so it's but you have that smooth power delivery that you get with an EV. ⁓ And obviously, you know, with the auto shutoff of engines right now, it's seamless in that because the engine isn't actually driving anything. It's just providing power. So if you're just cruising it up,

relatively smooth speed, ⁓ the engine can shut off and it comes on briefly as it needs to, just like you would expect of a hybrid. ⁓ But you still get that electric car performance. And they're saying that when the Rogue comes here, it will be a dual motor. ⁓ So we'll have all-wheel drive. And they also said that, at least initially, that will be the exclusive powertrain. So it won't come with a conventional

gas engine driving the wheels, at least initially. So I think for consumers, though, I don't know if you didn't tell somebody that it's doing it, that the gas engine's not driving the wheels. I think a lot of people wouldn't even know.

Roberto Baldwin (41:40)
I think they would just think this car is really smooth. I think that's the big, cause we drove, in Japan we drove the old ⁓ e-power system and then the new P-power system in the cash cars and it was like, this is really nice. It just feels like a much nicer driving experience. And yeah, like you said, I don't, yeah, average person wouldn't realize that it's, you know, series and it's only electric motors going. They will think, ⁓ this is a really smooth, it feels premium.

Perry (41:43)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (42:09)
as a hype and that's one of the nice things about any sort of electric motor powering the wheels is that it always feels a little bit more premium than what people are used to with the gas car.

Perry (42:10)
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:21)
Yeah, it's, you know, the in sport mode, it's 205 horsepower or 203 horsepower, I think, and about about 190 or so in standard mode. And because it's all electric drive, you the engine doesn't have to work as hard. And one of the things that they did with this third gen e power, they did a bunch of things with the third gen e power.

Well, they've cut the cost of the system by about 30 % compared to the previous version because they've done a lot more integration and they're using shared components with their EVs. So there's a lot of parts from the Leaf and the Aria that are also in the e-power system. Like the power electronics are the same. You get basically the same motor and the reducer gear from the motor. So there's a lot of shared componentry. So that helped them cut the cost pretty substantially.

⁓ And because the electric motor is providing all the propulsion, the engine doesn't have to work as hard, even under maximum acceleration. You do hear the engine a bit, but it's a lot quieter than if you do the same thing in a RAV4 hybrid. A RAV4, you hear that engine. It's not very obtrusive at all.

Roberto Baldwin (43:35)
Yeah, it's... Yeah.

Yeah, they've done some really cool stuff with packaging, like you said, and using shared components. They were very proud of it when we were in Japan. And again, I wasn't sure if I could talk about it until now. There were so many crazy embargo in that Japan trip was all over the place. So I'm happy I can talk about it now.

Perry (43:41)
I think it's.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:50)
Yeah.

Perry (43:56)
I mean, it's

interesting that it's not a plugin, at least initially, because I don't think, at least that I can remember, there's ever been a series of hybrid sold, at least in America, that didn't plug in. ⁓ So it is something pretty unique, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:15)
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (44:16)
Yeah, right, I'm like... Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:16)
no, not a pure series hybrid.

Perry (44:19)
No. ⁓

Volt, I know there were some odd circumstances where the engine could drive the wheels. ⁓ But you also plugged it in. So that was different than this. it's

Roberto Baldwin (44:32)
Yeah, I3

just had a generator.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:35)
Yeah. So,

you know, one of the challenges with a series hybrid, because you're going, you've got an engine that's driving a generator, that generator is producing alternating current. The battery store is direct current. So you have to convert that alternating current to direct current for the battery. And then it goes back through another inverter to back to alternating current for the drive motor. So you're changing between AC and DC twice in there. And there's some inherent losses associated with that. And under most conditions, it's pretty small.

Under most driving conditions, it's fine. And you're still going to be better off overall. But at higher speeds, ⁓ those losses start to build up a bit. so vehicles like the Honda hybrid system mostly operates as a series hybrid, except at higher speeds, at highway speeds. There's a clutch that engages the engine to drive the wheels directly and blend in with the electric power. ⁓ And the Volt was the same way.

⁓ This one does not do that. There's no clutch. There's no mechanism at all for the wheels to drive the or for the motor engine to drive the wheels. But ⁓ what what ⁓ Nissan has done is for this this generation, they've actually gone with a little bit larger battery. ⁓ So ⁓ because, you know, typically, you know, the the demand as you're driving down the road, the power demand cycles up and down a little bit.

⁓ And they did some clever things with calibration as typically a hybrid is somewhere between one and one and a half kilowatt hour battery this on the cash kites 2.1 and on the rogue because it's gonna be all-wheel drive it might actually even be a little bit larger than that but it's still fairly fairly small, but it's enough that They don't have to They can make the overall system more efficient by taking advantage of regenerative more regenerative braking

And that's one of the interesting things about the e-Power is it does have the e-Pedal mode. So you basically have one pedal driving just like in a Leaf or an Aria, except it doesn't bring it all the way to a stop, which is a whole... Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:46)
It's a whole thing that we've been hassling

Nissan about this for about, you know, since the Aria came out. like, wait, what? You sort of, popularized this feature and now you're not doing it? You're not even giving us an option?

Sam Abuelsamid (46:53)
Yeah.

So, yeah, they're estimating that the Rogue with e-power, and this is going to be all-wheel drive, as Perry said, to launch, all-wheel drive only. And then they'll probably add a front-drive version at some point and also add a gas engine option. But they estimate that the all-wheel drive Rogue with e-power is going to get around 40 miles per gallon, which is actually a little bit better as 40 miles per gallon combined.

which is a little bit better than what you currently get with the RAV4 and CRV all wheel drive hybrids, which are about 38 miles per gallon. ⁓ I think, I'm really excited to drive it, drive the new Rogue with this system. I think people are gonna really like this.

Roberto Baldwin (47:58)
Yeah, I-

Perry (47:58)
It will be interesting

to see how they market it since it is something so different yet for the average consumer it drives exactly like everything else that they have. mean, not that it doesn't drive us, but there's nothing else they have to do different.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:11)
It drives more like an EV, and better than most hybrids.

Perry (48:13)
It does. ⁓

But there's nothing that, I mean, you still fill it up with gas. You don't have to plug it in. for most consumers, it's just like buying any other hybrid. ⁓ Yes. So it'll be interesting to see how much Nissan markets the fact that this is something completely different or just that it's more efficient, it's quieter, it's which it is.

Roberto Baldwin (48:27)
Yep. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:27)
but a lot more efficient.

Roberto Baldwin (48:41)
and then they just say it gets better gas mileage really that's what goes on to the new news it gets better gas mileage and it's smooth like butter that's it that's your whole thing if you get too too far in the weeds ⁓ sometimes people get a little yes

Sam Abuelsamid (48:51)
There you go.

It's like, if you tried our Rogue with the 1.5 liter turbo, try this one. You'll like it a lot better. It's a lot more efficient. It's quieter. ⁓ Yeah, no, think it'll probably do pretty well. ⁓ And then, you know, during the presentation we had before we went out to drive, ⁓ Tiago Castro, who's the VP of Infinity Americas, got up to talk a little bit about Infinity's future plans.

Perry (49:04)
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:26)
You know, one of the things he talked about, know, the infinity is going to have four new models over the next four years, each over each year, a new model each year for the next four years, starting with the QX 65 middle of 2026, 2027. They're launching a new hybrid crossover based on the rogue. We were shown some teaser images, but we were not allowed to take any pictures of it. We had to cover, you know, get our cameras and everything covered up. But.

⁓ They're going have a rogue based crossover with e-power and that, if anything, is likely to be the first one with e-power to have a larger battery and a plug. I think if they do that, ⁓ that's probably where it'll show up first is in that vehicle before it shows up in a rogue.

Roberto Baldwin (50:18)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:20)
⁓ all right. Then, ⁓ we also got to drive the rogue plugin hybrid, which we briefly talked about a little bit a couple of weeks ago when they, when they released images of it. And pretty much everybody is calling this thing the rogue lander because it's basically a Mitsubishi Outlander plugin hybrid with Nissan badges on.

Perry (50:39)
Yes.

I

yeah, I mean, they barely hid the design. I mean, it looks exactly the same. And I think that they're referring to it as a bridge product ⁓ that will ⁓ hold the space as a plug-in hybrid until they can come out with their own. ⁓ But stopgap, bridge, whatever you want to call it, it's interesting. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (51:05)
Yeah, mean, over dinner the night before we drove, ⁓ one of the folks from Nissan was saying that the reason why they're doing this, because the thing is this is going to be a short term play for them. Because the Rogue e-Power is coming out next year. ⁓ And this will probably only be for ⁓ one model year, maybe two, depending on how the demand goes for it. ⁓

He said, the reason why they're doing it now instead of just waiting for the Rogue Hybrid is they found that from their research, looking at the, when people were doing searches ⁓ for crossovers, ⁓ if they just searched for compact crossover, they would see Rogue and CRV and RAV4 and all the others. But if they searched for most fuel efficient ⁓ crossover,

they would get all of the hybrids and the Rogue would immediately not even show up because ⁓ it didn't have any kind of hybrid option. And so ⁓ they were losing a lot of sales because they didn't have this hybrid option. And by doing this, by just taking the Outlander plug-in, putting Nissan badges on it, there's no engineering cost for Nissan. ⁓

except for however much it costs to make a new mold for the upper grill with the Nissan logo on it instead of a Mitsubishi logo. ⁓ And they will at least show up in those online searches for consumers. And a lot of people, they search for the most efficient crossover, and then they end up buying a gas one anyway. Once they figure out, okay, well.

Roberto Baldwin (52:39)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:00)
what's the monthly payment going to be. But at least they'll be in that conversation when people are searching. And that's the main reason why they're doing this. So have you driven the Outlander before, either of you?

Roberto Baldwin (53:13)
I've driven the Outlander. ⁓ It's fine. I think it's my sort of... I know it was huge in Europe. The Outlander, huge in Europe. And then I drove it and then I was like, it's fine. It's fine. It's not horrible. It's not, you know... But I remember one of my British colleagues, this when I worked at Engadget, was like, how dare you? He was very angry that I didn't give it like, like a, like like, like, like, like, ⁓

Perry (53:22)
Yeah, it is.

Hahaha!

Didn't rave about it.

Roberto Baldwin (53:42)
It's good enough, but this was a couple years ago. So this is, gosh, probably seven years ago, maybe more. So it's, I haven't driven it since then because I have not driven the current generation.

Perry (53:50)
I mean, I thought it...

Sam Abuelsamid (53:52)
So you haven't driven the current generation. Okay.

Perry (53:57)
And I haven't driven the Mitsubishi version, but the Nissan version is basically the same thing now that I've driven that. ⁓ And so it's, yeah, I've assumed that they would be the same.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:08)
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, the driving experience is the same and it's fine. ⁓ know, it it. I mean. Yeah, well, you know, the thing is, you know, I was looking at looking over specs the other day as I was writing something up on this and compared to the current rogue. So the rogue and the outlander, the current generation rogue and outlander are on the exact same platform. They're the same wheelbase. They're the.

Perry (54:15)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (54:17)
Okay, I'm glad that it's evolved from fine to fine.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:38)
The Outlander body is like two inches longer than the Rogue body. And Mitsubishi, for some inexplicable reason, offers a third row seat option in the Outlander. But yeah, and I will include a link to the video ⁓ that Tommy Micah put up, the shot with Safian Bay. ⁓ They, know, Tommy...

Perry (54:50)
slightly tight. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:07)
tried to climb into the back seat, the third row seat on this Rogue. And the default setup, there's basically, you have maybe an inch between the third row and the back of the second row seats. So if you've got a small kid with no legs, or yeah, that's about it. you don't really want a baby seat in the third row, because sometimes you need to attend to the kid.

Perry (55:24)
Lates.

Roberto Baldwin (55:26)
Like a baby, you could put a baby seat back there. Like put the baby in the baby seat.

Perry (55:29)
Right, but

would you want to? No.

Roberto Baldwin (55:36)
That's why you have other kids. They're on the second row seat. They're the babysitters.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:37)
Yeah.

Perry (55:40)
Right, I mean, if you've got

four baby seats going, then I suppose that could work out. But then you got other issues. Yeah, probably.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, you probably in that case, you probably want something a little bigger than this. ⁓

But, you know, the thing is, if you compare the weight of the Outlander plug-in hybrid versus the Gas Rogue, it's almost a thousand pounds heavier because you've got a 20 kilowatt hour battery, you got electric motors, that third row seat. ⁓ And so it doesn't it feel when you're driving it to me, at least, you know,

Perry (56:04)
Makes sense.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:15)
⁓ driving it on some curvy roads. It feels a little softer and mushier than a Rogue does. It doesn't feel quite as precise in terms of its handling. ⁓ And the performance isn't really any better because you get more power, you get about 240 horsepower, but it's a thousand pounds more. So an extra 40 horsepower doesn't really do much to overcome a thousand pounds of dead weight. ⁓

And then the Mitsubishi hybrid system is another one that is mostly series hybrid, but has a clutch to bring in the engine ⁓ when you need it for maximum acceleration. And when the engine comes on, ⁓ I found it not as obtrusive as in a Toyota hybrid. But ⁓ strangely, driving in electric mode, there was a

a wine from the motors. Did you notice that Perry?

Perry (57:17)
I did hear that, yeah. it wasn't bad. ⁓ I I liked it better than the fake noise that they usually put in. So ⁓ I'm not a big fan of that. But I thought it was also interesting when you have an EV mode and you put your foot to the floor, it stays in EV mode. It will not kick the engine on, ⁓ which I thought was kind of unusual. So if you're in EV mode and suddenly you realize you need to get around somebody, you need to take it out of EV mode to do that.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:21)
But it was there. was definitely there.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then, you know, with the 20 kilowatt hour battery, it's got about 38 miles of electric driving range. But once the battery, once the battery is depleted and you're in hybrid mode, the Outlander and Rogue are only rated at 26 miles per gallon as a hybrid, which is actually pretty poor. That's, that's worse than the gas Rogue.

Perry (58:12)
Yeah, well, because you're still carrying around that extra thousand of battery, pounds of batteries.

Roberto Baldwin (58:13)
Buh-Buh-Bah.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:16)
Yeah.

So it's kind of a mixed bag. It drives fine. ⁓

Perry (58:24)
I

think it will fit the need that they have, though, that they need to have a hybrid, and now they have one.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:31)
Yeah. So, yeah, and

you know, it's temporary, like I said. Also, the onboard charger that they use, the AC charger, is really slow. It's only three and a half kilowatts, which means that even though the battery is only 20 kilowatt hours, it'll take you about seven and a half hours to fully charge it. So, I mean, if you're plugging it in at night, you you'll probably be fine. You'll probably have a full charge every day. But it doesn't charge particularly quick.

⁓ Whereas other plug-in hybrids will typically charge at 6.5 to 7.5 kilowatts. So you can fully recharge the battery from a ⁓ 240 volt outlet in about three hours, three and a half hours. All right, any other thoughts on the Rogue Lander plug-in hybrid?

Perry (59:26)
No, like I said, it'll do what it has to do.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:30)
Yeah. All right. ⁓ Thursday night, ⁓ Friday morning in Japan, Toyota had an event ⁓ to finally unveil ⁓ their their new sports car, including the race version of it, the GT3 race version of it. And there's been a lot of speculation, you know, back twenty twenty two, I think.

Toyota showed a concept ⁓ for a GT race car. ⁓ then at Goodwood Festival of Speed last June, they showed both the road version and the race version wrapped in camo. ⁓ And there's been a lot of speculation about whether this was going to be a Toyota or whether it was going to be a Lexus.

⁓ as a replacement for the old LFA. ⁓ And what they ended up showing was actually a GRGT, GRGT3, which is the race car, and an LFA concept. ⁓ And the LFA concept, we've actually kind of seen twice now. We saw it at the Japan Mobility Show with an interior. It was shown first ⁓ in August at Monterey Car Week with no interior.

And now we know that the new LFA concept is actually an elect and it's built on the same architecture as the GR GT. It's it's actually electric. And so Toyota is using the GR branding for their sports car. So it's not technically a Toyota, it's Toyota Gazoo Racing, which is a race division. What do you what do you think?

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:26)
I

Perry (1:01:26)
Looks amazing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:30)
No, looks cool.

Perry (1:01:30)
I mean, it's always interesting when a car company comes out with cars like these that are clearly, I don't know how you turn a profit necessarily on one of them, but you bring in a lot. You draw attention. mean, they're the halo car. And halo cars are cool. There's no question. And I like the fact that it doesn't really look like anything else out there.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Perry (1:01:55)
It's not your typical swoopy sports car that kind of all look about the same. I mean, it's got its own look. ⁓ It's cool. I want to drive one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:10)
I like it. And this is from someone who hasn't been excited about a Lexus vehicle in, I don't know, 10, 15 years. I'm like, okay, fine. For the Lexus brand.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:18)
haha

So

you like the LFA. What about the GRGT?

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:27)
The GRTT, you know, it's great to have a car that you can land a helicopter on. ⁓

Perry (1:02:32)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:33)
It does have a very long hood.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:34)
Like they even have a cutout,

Perry (1:02:35)
It does very long.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:36)
they do, they even have a cutout or sort of where it shows where the engine begins. And it begins like right at the midpoint of the front wheel. So there's like just a good mile of like extra hood after that. It just feels, I don't know. I like the, I'm sure it's gonna be tough to see out of, cause it's just so long. It's so long.

Perry (1:02:59)
Because that hood is so long. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:02)
And you do sit

very low in this thing. I saw a diagram somewhere.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:06)
I feel like I wouldn't

fit. Yeah, like the diagram shows, with the helmet on, it looks like the head is like just within like... Yeah, I don't think I would fit in this car, to be honest. Even though it has... I know, well that's a problem I have with like Lamborghinis where I can't like, get in the Lamborghini with a helmet, now I'm driving around with my head all car crooked. So I'm like, well, this is not... Yeah, when I get in my Lamborghini. But...

Perry (1:03:12)
It's actually practically in the roof, yeah.

well don't worry don't worry about that ⁓

I hate it when that happens.

That's beyond

first world problems.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:36)
That is first world problem, but it

would be the same if I were in a Miata to be honest. ⁓ Even the new ND, I guess not new, even in the current ND, I would have that as soon as I put a helmet on them off. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:49)
Yeah, I

I'm only 5'11 and with a helmet, I cannot fit in a Miata RF with the top closed and a helmet on.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:58)
gosh, don't even get me started on the RF. I don't even know if I'll fit in that at all. ⁓ That's it. I mean, it looks cool. It's for folks who like a vehicle with the hood that is like half the size. Let me see. It's almost half the size of the car. It's a pretty long hood. ⁓ And you could, yeah, you could put a lot of things on that hood. So many things.

Perry (1:04:24)
I do like the idea of landing like a drone on

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:26)
Yeah, like a giant drone. You can use it for touching goes, know, when jets land and then take off so they can practice getting on aircraft carriers. ⁓ So, yeah, no, I don't know why the, I I look at the Lexus and Lexus has a pretty long.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:41)
This was basically

designed as a race car first.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:46)
Yeah, the Lexus

has a long hood, but it has a big like, like angle at the end. So it feels a little, it's, probably just as long, if not longer. ⁓ but it feels less. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:57)
Yeah.

know, Toyota needed a needs a replacement for the Lexus RCF GT3. You know, that that car is definitely getting old and the current RC is going away soon. ⁓ And so they developed this basically from the ground up as a, as a GT3 race car. So, you know, it's got an all aluminum structure. It's got a rear transaxle, eight speed automatic rear transaxle.

There's a four liter twin turbo V8 ⁓ upfront that is behind completely behind the front axle. You know, so when you, when you look at it in profile and you see the diagram here, you realize that, you know, yeah, that basically half of the distance from the, from the base of the windshield to the front of the car, there's no engine there. That's just for the cooling system, the radiators in the front.

And then the engine is behind the front wheels and it's a hybrid. So 650 horsepower. At least that's what they're saying now. And the race version, the GR GT3 is gonna debut in the World Endurance Championship and in IMSA and other series for 2027 season. And then the LFA.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:23)
is basically an electric version of this, which, you like I said, you know, we saw it, was shown at Monterey as a concept. Then they showed it at the Tokyo Mobility Show, the Japan Mobility Show, without talking at all about any powertrain. And, you know, now they're saying it's going to be electric.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:44)
Mm-hmm.

Cool, I mean I think the GRGT3 is my Ikea 2, I didn't want a new race car. That's what it really comes down to. That's really, whenever there's like any GR, anything Ikea is like, yeah, let's do this.

Listen, you can get two, you can probably fit the GR Corolla on the hood.

Perry (1:07:10)
I just looked and the new one is about two feet longer than a GR86.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:18)
There you go.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:18)
Alright,

two feet. Yeah, you could definitely stick a GR Corolla on this hood. So you could just zzzz and you stop and then you jump in your little gorilla, poof, and you launch off of it.

Perry (1:07:19)
Let's, yeah.

Exactly. It's

the getaway getaway car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:32)
So let's stick with long hoods for a moment. You remember the Jaguar Type 00 concept that was unveiled last year at Art Basel, I think, in Miami? A concept version of Jaguar's new electric GT car. That thing had a long hood, even though it's electric.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:48)
The Batmobile? Yes.

Perry (1:07:48)
Yeah, it's been around.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:00)
And it was ⁓ somewhat controversial.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:03)
I think

half the controversy is that people didn't like it that it was pink or light blue. I made a gray one with Batman standing behind it and I think people love that a lot more.

Perry (1:08:12)
Ha ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:13)
I'm fine

with the colors. I want more bold colors.

Perry (1:08:15)
I thought the blue one looked good in person.

mean, that was the first time I'd seen it in person because all the images look like AI. ⁓ They don't look real. But in real life, it...

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:17)
Yeah, I think.

Yeah. And the fact that we are fine with it.

Yeah, it's quite that. But it's it's it's from Batman the animate. Exactly. This is like Batman, the animated series car, which I'm like, cool. And everyone's like, boo. I mean, I think that the video that it is definitely ⁓ it's not the whole thing. Just essentially old British men. Nah. The people have been buying Jaguars. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:30)
The fact that we're fine with it means that nobody will buy it.

Perry (1:08:33)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:36)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, they're all dying off. You know,

the people that were buying Jaguars are are dying off. And so Jaguar needs new new kinds of customers. And that's why they're going.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:00)
That's true.

Perry (1:09:00)
Yeah, it'll be interesting

to see what kind of customer that brings in though, because it is pretty different.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:04)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:05)
Yeah. Well,

the, the guy who is overseeing the design of this and all of the other Jaguar Land Rover products for the last decade plus, the guy named Jerry McGovern. and, ⁓ Jerry is now, ⁓ as of this week, unemployed.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:22)
Dun dun dun!

Perry (1:09:24)
Yes, ⁓ somewhat surprising. I mean, I've heard that he can be difficult to work with. ⁓ And having met him in person, I could see how that would be.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:31)
I have heard, yeah, I think that's...

Yeah, I don't think anyone... let's... I don't know him personally, but I don't think people were like, ⁓ boohoo, Jerry's gone at the Jaguar.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:45)
I I

Perry (1:09:45)
I haven't seen a lot of that, no.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:48)
⁓ think there's been a lot of good designs that have come out during his tenure, both from Jaguar and Land Rover. Stuff like the I-Pace, the F-Type, ⁓ even the F-Pace, and then the current generations of Range Rovers, the Defender. I think they're generally really good designs.

Perry (1:09:55)
Definitely.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:08)
Yeah, Defender's really nice.

Perry (1:10:08)
He's definitely

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:10)
No, I think...

Perry (1:10:11)
talented, there's no question. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:12)
Yeah. But talent doesn't give you a license to be a... Yeah. Again, I've never worked with a guy. I have talked to him. I have been at events with him and he seems pretty prickly. I don't know what it's like to work with him, but from what I've heard... Maybe he's the delight. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:13)
Mm-hmm.

Perry (1:10:19)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:28)
Well, if he's prickly in person

at events like that, that's probably not a good sign. there's people that I have talked to that are very pleasant and cordial to talk to ⁓ that have also been described as toxic to work with. who knows? ⁓ None of us have worked with McGovern. JLR just ⁓ got its

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:42)
Delightful.

So we don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:57)
fourth CEO in six years, ⁓ couple of weeks earlier, a guy named, he came over from Tata. He's the chief financial officer of Tata Motors, ⁓ PB, ⁓ Balaji, and two weeks later, McGovern was fired. So.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:13)
Well, you know get a new boss that Maybe he's cleaning house. Maybe like you need to change every hot top properties like your bot your job is to go in and clean house and Right now it's not working. And I mean the defender is beautiful. I love the defender, but that's The only thing it's selling

Perry (1:11:14)
Somebody didn't get along with somebody.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:31)
Yeah, pretty much.

Perry (1:11:33)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:33)
Which

is, know, it doesn't matter how beautiful your cars are if no one's buying. And it might not, it might be beautiful to us, which, you know, if we like it, we know it's doomed. That's just the automotive journalist way. Like we're like, everyone should buy this car and then no one buys it. And then we're.

Perry (1:11:43)
Hahaha

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:48)
Yeah, I mean

we all wanted CTSV wagons with manual transmissions and in Brown, yeah. And I think they sold about 500 or so of those ⁓ and then GM discontinued it because nobody else bought them. ⁓

Perry (1:11:53)
Of course, in brown.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:53)
Yeah.

and brown.

We all loved the V60

and the V90 when Volvo was like, hey, why don't I keep doing wagons? We're like, cool. We all drove them. We're like, these are rad. And then no one else bought them. My cousin bought, my cousin got one. So at least someone, at least my family is doing the right thing. One cousin bought that, a V60. And then the other one bought a Honda Odyssey. And these are both people who have.

Perry (1:12:23)
There you go.

So you're supporting

two dying breeds, minivans and wagons.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:32)
Yeah, we

got, we got, I got good, I got good family. I got good car family vibes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:38)
So speaking of wagons, ⁓ the Trump administration made an announcement this week that they're basically rolling back corporate average fuel economy standards to about 2020 levels. ⁓ But what was particularly ⁓ surprising about that announcement is apparently ⁓ Donald Trump has fallen in love with K cars ⁓ from his most recent trip to Japan.

⁓ and they also want to bring back 70s style station wagons.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:13)
That's okay. So a stopwatch is wrong. It's correct. Yeah. And of all the things you're like, well, this isn't enough. This isn't justified all the horror. ⁓ but I also, don't know if Americans, I think outside of like people are being buying K cars for, know, these either automotive enthusiasts or people who are like, I can just buy this from my farm because you know, farmers and ranchers love these things because you can

Perry (1:13:13)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:17)
Twice a day.

Perry (1:13:17)
hahahahah

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:41)
get them for like five, six thousand bucks and then you can do all the, you know, F-150 stuff with it around, around, you know, just on the farm. But I don't think the average person wants a K-Card to be honest. I mean, I do. I want one so, so bad.

Perry (1:13:51)
Yeah, I mean, it's it's.

I mean, honestly,

if there was a market for them here, they'd be here. ⁓ I mean, if the car companies, if there was clearly demand for something like that, then there would have been more of a push to get something like that here. And there's a reason that it's all crossovers and SUVs out there because that's what people are buying. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:14)
Well, that's also

like a lot of marketing because they marketed crossovers and SUVs like a mofo for years because they get more money and then you go, you know, it's, you know, sort of sidelined. Yeah. It's propaganda people were buying crossovers SUVs because of propaganda. And then you have and then you well, then you don't have a choice, especially if you're buying a Ford. At some point, you're like, well, and then that lie that like, they're more they're safer because you're taller, blah, blah, blah. It's you know, there's a lot that went into it.

Perry (1:14:18)
True, but that.

It worked.

but they're still buying them whether you like it or not but

Well, true.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:43)
But ⁓ at the end of the day, how we got here doesn't matter because ⁓ we're here and the K-Car is not that. Which again, I would love a little, the Sakura, the Nissan Sakura EV. I love that little EV. I drove it around Tokyo or Yokohama. Loved it. Tiny little car. Big guy in a tiny car.

Perry (1:14:48)
Because we're here.

No.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:04)
Yeah, I on

Perry (1:15:06)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:08)
my most recent trip to Japan, I got to drive the Honda Super One. And that's actually technically not a K car because it exceeds the width limit for a K car. But it's based on a K car with wider fenders. But yeah, think one of the things I said during this announcement was,

Perry (1:15:09)
That never gets old.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:14)
So jealous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:33)
We want these tiny little cars to be built and sold here in America. And we have approved them, cleared the decks for these things. Which, what exactly does that mean? mean, the only thing that was, besides the market potential, the only thing that was actually preventing K cars from being sold here was federal motor vehicle safety standards, crash requirements. Because these cars are only 134 inches long.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:57)
Yeah, they're not great on crashes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:02)
That's the maximum that they're allowed to be. As a point of reference, a current Mini Cooper hardtop is 152.6 inches long. So it's about 18 inches longer than a K car. And a Fiat 500E is 143 inches long. So it's over nine inches longer, almost 10 inches longer than a K car.

Perry (1:16:29)
They're also less than five feet wide. mean, they're...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:30)
Yes, that's

the other thing about a K-Cars. as it stands, there's no way these things would meet ⁓ crash requirements here. if they're approving these things for sale in the US, does that mean they're basically just waiving all the occupant protection standards?

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:50)
Is it like a motorcycle sit? Would it be like a more sick like if a motorcycle is less than 200 CCs? You can't put it on the freeway. Well, okay car be like, you can only drive it around town. It's essentially a golf cart. Nobody knows

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:00)
Nobody knows.

Perry (1:17:02)
Right, because

we don't have anything like that right now. ⁓ mean, in Europe, you have these little smaller than K cars. When I was in Amsterdam, they're, right, which are street legal in the city. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:12)
Yeah, quadricycles.

Yes, but they're limited to

I think 30 or 35 miles an hour.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:21)
Yeah.

Perry (1:17:21)
Right,

and you apparently don't need a driver's license to drive them. They're just, exactly, because they're about the size for a 12-year-old. But we don't have anything like that here. So to have cars that are designated for certain places that you can drive them or not, mean, no one's going to listen to that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:24)
You can get like a 12 year old just driving them around.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:34)
Yeah, I mean, well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:42)
Yeah, that's a, that's the, this is America. can't.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:42)
Yeah, mean, K cars are marvels. They

are marvels of packaging efficiency. Yeah, see, seeing bank bank Talverson sit comfortably in a K car, you know, and banked is six foot eight inches tall. And he can fit comfortably in both the front and back seats of a K car. ⁓ Yeah, I mean, they are remarkable little vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:49)
yeah.

Bank's so tall.

Perry (1:17:59)
No

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:07)
And the gas K cars typically go for about $10,000 $12,000 in Japan. And the EVs go for about, I think the Honda N1E is about $18,000 in Japan. And this is why, I mean in Japan, in most of the major cities, have regulations, you cannot register a car in a place like Tokyo.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:07)
I would love one.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:34)
unless you can demonstrate that you have some place to park it. You have to have documentation that you have some place to park it. And before you can get a license plate for it, an inspector will go out and actually measure the space and make sure that you have space for it. That rule does not apply to K-cars. ⁓ And they also get breaks on insurance and taxes. So ⁓ this is why K-cars represent more than 50 % of the market in Japan.

Here in the U.S., I think no matter what the regulators do, I have a hard time seeing insurance companies even being willing to register to insure these things in the U.S.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:20)
They, yeah.

Because someone's gonna take it on the freeway. It's not for the freeway. You drive it around town. Whee!

Perry (1:19:22)
There's also, of course there.

But there's also one of the reasons for bringing them would be the added fuel efficiency when at the same time they're just lowering the fuel efficiency requirements. And so another reason that the car company really isn't all that incented to bring it here.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:41)
Yeah

Yeah, less than a liter displacement. Every little K car. Essentially you're driving around with a motorcycle engine. Yep, eventually.

Perry (1:19:48)
Yes. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:48)
been Hyundai.

Perry (1:19:53)
Zero to 60 on a good day.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:53)
Honda and Toyota even discontinued

the Fit and the Yaris here. They don't even sell those anymore.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:58)
⁓ I love,

Perry (1:20:00)
No.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:00)
the fit was so great. I remember when I asked about that and they're like, well, when we look at the sales, the CRV is higher and we would rather just, you know, and eventually they essentially just said, we'd rather just push people towards the CRV because we're going to get more, it's a higher profit margin. ⁓ Yeah, so these are going to have low profit margin, ⁓ very few people like me are going to buy them and that's it. And then, and then someone's going to.

Perry (1:20:09)
Sell those.

And the same things with

the station wagons. mean, there's a reason that car companies don't offer station wagons anymore because nobody bought them.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:31)
There's only so many automotive journalists in the world. Yeah, there's only so many of us. There's only so many of us that would... Well, there's those 50 automotive journalists. That's 50 sold. Used in four years. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:33)
I bought them.

Perry (1:20:34)
I know, I know, I know, the artichoke will spy them. ⁓

remember

when the last generation Audi RS6 Avant came out and I was at the Geneva show with Audi to see it and I asked if they would be bringing it to America because you I wanted them to bring it to America and he said well if I could find 50,000 of my friends they would consider it. That would want to buy the car. ⁓ But ⁓ yeah, auto journalists don't cut it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:04)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:06)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:08)
Amazingly,

they do offer the current generation RS6 Avant and BMW sells the M5 Touring here as well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:15)
Yeah, I wonder how many they sell. Probably not very many. That's amazing. I love that R6 Avant though. It's the best. See? But Perry and I don't have, we don't have R6 Avant money. That's the problem. That's also the other issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:18)
Nope, not many.

Perry (1:21:19)
No.

That's like, that's one of my dream cars. Yeah. Anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:31)
Yeah.

Perry (1:21:31)
No, no, not even close.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:35)
Alright, what else? ⁓ have either of you ever driven a Lotus Esprit?

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:43)
i don't think i've driven any lotus ever

Perry (1:21:44)
Don't think so,

I drove the Evora a long time ago, but I have not driven a Esprit.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:51)
I was fortunate enough early in the beginning of my engineering career to get to spend a bunch of time with ⁓ the Esprit. That was with the S4, the Series 4 Esprit, ⁓ after the styling had been updated by Peter Stevens. ⁓ But ⁓ there's a company ⁓ in the UK called... What the heck was that called again now? ⁓

Encore? Yeah, Encore. That is creating a sort of resto mod. mean, typically a resto mod is you take an old body and you put new hardware under it. ⁓ In this case, they are taking a newer set of hardware and essentially recreating an older body to put on top of it. So they have created the... ⁓

What they're calling a reimagined Lotus Esprit Series 1. So if you remember the

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:55)
This is just the NEO

screen of deer like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:59)
Yeah, well, the the the yeah, it's kind of kind of like that ⁓ Yeah, so You know the the first generation the first the series one esprit, know had a cleaner design It was done by georgetto giugiaro You know came out in the 1970s ⁓ And a lot of people prefer that design to the later s3 and s4 Esprit ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:02)
It's just a low production NEO screened ear.

Perry (1:23:03)
Hahaha

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:29)
And so what Encore is doing, they're planning to build 50 of these. They're using the last generation Esprit V8, which was based on the Series 4, but with a twin turbo V8 engine instead of the turbo four cylinder from the earlier Esprits. They're buying up a bunch of those to use as donor cars.

And they've created a new body that is inspired by the S1 Esprit, but it's all made out of carbon fiber now. It has some modern updates to it, but it looks a lot like the Series 1 Esprit. Putting it on this twin turbo V8 platform, they've upgraded the engine in production form between the mid 90s and about 2003 or 2004 when they stopped production of the Esprit.

The V8 made about 350 horsepower. They're rebuilding the engines, getting them up to about 400 horsepower. ⁓ And this thing looks fantastic. ⁓

Perry (1:24:36)
It's got

the pop-up headlights. Although have to say, taillights keep reminding me of a Dodge Challenger.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:40)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:41)
the interior.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:46)
⁓ Yeah, kind of.

Perry (1:24:48)
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw them.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:48)
Oh, yeah, it does look like it doesn't like oh, maybe I have to

dodge Challenger. That's cool

Perry (1:24:53)
But then you're right, the interior is gorgeous. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:55)
Yeah, interior is really nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:56)
Yeah.

And if you want one of these, like said, they're planning to build about 50 of them. It weighs just 1200 kilos, so about under 3,000 pounds with 400 horsepower. And it will cost you...

430,000 pounds, not including the donor car.

Perry (1:25:26)
So you have to find one first?

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:26)
So.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:28)
Or they'll find one for you. They'll find a suitable car for you.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:30)
All right.

Perry (1:25:30)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:31)
So you gotta buy another.

Perry (1:25:32)
Does it have the flat windshield?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:34)
yeah.

Perry (1:25:36)
That was how I always found it interesting with the Lotus Esprit was that the windshield was perfect. I was... There was no... I thought there was like no curve to it. I thought it was... Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:41)
It wasn't actually it had slight curvature to it. No, there was some curve to it.

It wasn't it wasn't completely flat. But I mean, it was for all intents and purposes flat, but not not not exactly. ⁓ So, yeah, I mean, this this M.Core and core as one of spree, I think I think this looks fabulous. If I had half a million dollars, I would I would definitely consider one of these.

Perry (1:26:11)
well. It'd be a...

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:12)
I'd have to pay off my

house. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:15)
And

I think, yeah.

Perry (1:26:15)
I'd have to sell my house.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:17)
I guess I could pay off my house

or buy this and then when it breaks down I'm just I guess I better fix it on my own

Perry (1:26:22)
Alright.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:28)
Or I can get like 50k cards.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:28)
Yeah, it's a

Perry (1:26:32)
You

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:33)
put them all on Turo because now K-cars are legally United States.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:33)
yeah.

They've they've also they've they've upgraded the gearbox the original gearbox was a five-speed gearbox. got from Renault ⁓ which That was always one of the weak links on the on the esprit is Yeah second gear in particular Yeah Second gear was was weak and those things so when you whenever you drive in a spree Yeah

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:46)
Yeah, it's made out of glass.

Perry (1:26:47)
I would bet.

Ha ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:59)
Which is the most important gear like you should that that should be the hardiest of gears and they're like I said gear

went out. I'm

Perry (1:27:09)
Yeah, don't need seconds.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:10)
When you're driving a Spree, have to be careful. Be delicate. You don't want to jam the thing into gear.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:20)
Give it a little.

Perry (1:27:21)
I'll keep

that in mind.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:22)
Yeah. Yeah. Next time you get to driving a Spree, just remember that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:23)
Next time I'm behind the wheel of a spree.

Perry (1:27:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:28)
But yeah plaid plaid upholstery on the seats and on the door panels this thing looks good

Perry (1:27:33)
As it should be.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:36)
All right, let's see. ⁓ What else? ⁓ Jason Fenske. You guys know who Jason Fenske is? He does the channel Engineering Explained. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he does great work there. Yeah. Well, he bought himself a Lucid Air about six months ago. ⁓ It's not been a great experience.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:44)
Yeah.

Perry (1:27:47)
Yeah, does a really good job of it too.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:47)
Yep.

He does do a very good job. Big fan.

I haven't watched the video but like I was reading some of the stuff Like his like his is cuz like some of the comments like there's a reply. This is like no, but yeah, but it's not working. It doesn't matter It's not working for me

Perry (1:28:01)
Interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:05)
Ha!

He's had a lot of issues that are mostly related to software. It's been a big disappointment.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:21)
Yeah.

Perry (1:28:27)
That's unfortunate.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:28)
Yeah. Like when he first got it, ⁓ it said that needed the software update and it kept failing the update for like the first six weeks or so. He could not get the software to update and he finally managed to get it updated. But even then he's still having all kinds of issues with it. He's having the entertainment, the infotainment screen go blank on him. ⁓ He's got issues with using the phone as a key.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:28)
here.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:58)
⁓ He's got issues with using the key card. You know, you've got an NFC card with it that you can use as a key. And when I had the Gravity a couple of weeks ago, ⁓ I tried using the key card and it didn't work most of the time either. You know, I ended up having to use the key fob most of the time to unlock it. You know, sometimes it would lock, sometimes it wouldn't lock. You so he would try to lock the doors and walk away from the car.

you know, go in the store, come back and it was still unlocked. ⁓ Yeah, all kinds of problems with this thing, ⁓ which is really unfortunate. Because it's. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:32)
That's not great.

Perry (1:29:36)
That's That's too bad. Yeah. Because they're great cars to drive.

I mean, the opportunities I've had. ⁓ it's unique ⁓ to be able to get to live with one for that long. ⁓ So I guess you learn all sorts of things.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:52)
Yeah, yeah. Software

is hard. That's what Ask BMW, Ask Volvo, as well, pretty much every car company, but those two in particular. Software is difficult. I know that Lucid had hired the guy away from Apple, but he's no longer there, so who knows? I think they did some cool stuff with the latest update, but that doesn't mean that, you know. New things mean new bugs.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:59)
Yes it is.

Yeah, mean, even CarPlay was a thing he's had a lot of trouble with where it keeps forgetting the phones that are connected to it, or it will connect to the wrong phone, regardless of which driver profile you're using between him and his wife. ⁓ He's had to do a full factory reset on the system at least a couple of times now and then have to go back in and change all the settings.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:23)
Again software is hard

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:52)
when you pick a driver profile, it saves things like your mirror position, your seats, and everything else to your driver profile. And he would get in the car with his key, his phone, and it would, for some reason, decide, nope, I'm gonna give you your wife's driver profile and set everything for his wife. And so he'd go in and manually switch it to his driver profile, and it might move the seats, but not change the mirrors. It's just been a nightmare.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:18)
Sounds like a mess.

Yeah, that's not great. I'm sure Lucid has already reached out since he's a big deal. I'm like, hey, so here's the thing.

Perry (1:31:21)
Yeah.

I would imagine.

Yeah, here's your new Lucid. This one's better than the other one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:35)
but it still has the same software. I mean, it's not the hardware that's been the problem, it's the software.

Perry (1:31:37)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:41)
Yeah, that sucks.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:44)
Yeah, and so there's a new Mazda CX-5 coming for model year 2026 and Mazda has finally given up on the central rotary controller. You've got a 15 inch touchscreen.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:58)
We should have waited until ⁓ Nicole was back to talk about this in that case.

Perry (1:31:59)
Finally.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:05)
Okay, well, we'll leave

it for next week then.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:09)
I

just want to see her reaction, her excitement. She's like, what? The thing's gone? Thank God.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:14)
All right, well, we'll talk about this one next week then.

Perry (1:32:16)
that was pretty

it was pretty annoying i have to say

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:20)
I personally didn't have a problem with it. You know, I, I'm fine with it. ⁓ yeah. All right. ⁓ well that's, that's it for, for this week. Well, actually there is one more. Do you guys want to rant about, ⁓ Mercedes Benz charging you for subscription for features that are in the car?

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:20)
Nicole has a lot of... It's... It's not great. It's like turning things.

Perry (1:32:26)
I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:47)
I mean, that's... Yeah, I mean, it's not the Tesla model. They just build the car with everything in it, all the hardware, and then you just pay for it.

Perry (1:32:47)
Have we been down that road before?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:56)
Yeah, so ⁓ Mercedes wants you to pay $50 for a front seat massage function. Even though the hardware is already built into the car that you bought.

Perry (1:33:04)
$50 per month or $50?

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:09)
Period.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:10)
I think it's a one time. It's not, it's not clear.

Perry (1:33:11)
$50 per month.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:16)
⁓ But the thing is, they're charging you 50 bucks and all it's doing is it's manipulating the lumbar support.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:21)
It's that lumbar support thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:26)
Yeah, which is pretty lame.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:28)
It's that fake massage that you get sometimes in the car where it's like, it's it. it just sort of moves you back and forth every couple minutes. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:36)
Yeah.

Perry (1:33:36)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:37)
And

and two hundred dollars to use dash cam functionality. Your car, the car, all the all the CLA's have a front camera. They have the ability to record, but you cannot actually get that functionality unless you pay them an extra two hundred bucks.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:56)
Yeah, I mean that's the I mean seriously that's the

Perry (1:33:58)
So why not just

raise the price by that much and call it good? mean, so if it's a subscription, it must be a continuous charge, I assume.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:07)
Is this a- is it or is it a pay once? I don't see the word subscription anywhere.

Perry (1:34:10)
Because if it's just a pay once,

then you're just paying $200 for a ⁓ camera, which, you know, that's...

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:17)
is

doing other things. Again, it's the Tesla model where they would build the cars with all the hardware and then say, hey, do you want to this on? Do you want to this on? Do you want to turn this on? Because it costs less money in theory and sort of having a bunch of different vehicles on the line. Yeah, streamline manufacturing. Yeah, this is just Mercedes doing something that they did like 10.

Perry (1:34:33)
to streamline everything.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:38)
And to be fair, does cost

money to develop that software. You're adding software in there. ⁓ There's a cost associated with that. And manufacturers have to figure out a way to recover those costs, especially if consumers increasingly expect to get new features over the life of the vehicle. It's not like in the past where whatever was in the car when you drove off the lot was what you had for the life of the car. Now they've got, thanks to Tesla,

Rivian and others, they've gotten used to getting new functions over time, but that costs money to develop that and maintain that software. and, you know, now, you know, this is really the only way that you can realistically, ⁓ cover those costs over the life of the vehicle.

Perry (1:35:27)
I don't know, I think whether it's there or not, if you want a product, you should have to pay for it. ⁓ And if they want everybody to pay for it, they just increase the price of the car and everybody has it. ⁓ So I don't know, I understand the principle of not, it's already there, why should I have, I've already bought the car, it's already got all the things I need, why do I have to pay more? ⁓ But like you said, it's...

And we know software is important because look at what JSON's going through. So I ⁓ don't know. I don't think it's that big of a stretch, especially if you're making these transactions at the time of purchase anyway. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:59)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe you don't want it. Maybe you want it later. Maybe, you know, whatever. It's I don't know, like ADAS stuff like like top in ADAS. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:17)
And I think if it's

a one-time thing, it's probably not so bad compared to if you have to pay a subscription for it.

Perry (1:36:28)
Yeah, subscription would be different. mean, if you're paying $20 a month so that you can have a seat massager, that would be no.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:35)
That's

the BMW thing and they got in big trouble for that. I don't know, trouble, they got a lot of pushback. That's what I wanted to say. Yeah, it wasn't even here, it was in Europe and like one market and everyone's like, they're like, fine, gosh, okay, we tried it out. This is, yeah, I mean, I guess their ADAS, the subscription for the ADAS is more expensive than other systems ADAS, which I'm like, it's the Mercedes.

Perry (1:36:39)
Yeah, people didn't like that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:43)
Yeah.

Perry (1:36:43)
They decided not to do it because of all the pushbacks.

Yeah.

I mean, you have a subscription for SuperCurs. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:06)
Alright.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:09)
Yeah, it's just more expensive

than those other ones. But again, it's a Mercedes. So yeah, it's going to be more expensive, even if it's not as robust.

Perry (1:37:15)
Yeah.

It still says Mercedes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:18)
You

bought a Mercedes, I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not sorry. I mean, I like the Mercedes. I'm sorry that you don't realize that a premium car, everything on it's gonna be premium. If you buy a Mercedes, guess what? It's gonna cost you more to get it fixed. Everything costs more. ⁓ That's what happens when buy a luxury brand. Yeah, everything's gonna cost more. That's why I'm like, I'm thinking about buying this. I'm like, well, you know, do you have the money to have it for upkeep? Because you might be able to buy it up front, but.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:36)
If buy any German car, it's going to cost you more.

Perry (1:37:36)
Business model.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:48)
you know, when it's 75 % more, 50 % more, yeah, cost of ownership is higher than that of, you know, an escape.

Perry (1:37:50)
Cost of ownership, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:01)
⁓ All right. ⁓ Last thing is, a ⁓ few days ago, I spoke with Marc-Andre Forget, who's the co-founder and CEO of a company in Montreal called Decibel Energy. A couple of weeks ago, ⁓ Decibel announced a partnership with Volvo and Polestar ⁓ to offer their and to integrate their home energy management system. They're calling it this because it is more than just a charger. ⁓

at, you know, we've seen systems like from Ford and GM to do vehicle to home capabilities to use the battery in your car ⁓ for home power backup and do other stuff. ⁓ The decibel system can do that, but it's all integrated into one box. So it's easier to install, but it also has more stuff in it. Like one of the things, one of the key things is that it has

DC charging capability built into it. So it's got two cables on it. So you can actually charge two cars at home at the same time. But if you have a solar system on your house, ⁓ you can connect it to this decibel aura home charging system. ⁓ And your solar panels put out DC direct current, your battery takes direct current. ⁓ And with most

systems, most home charging systems like the Ford and GM ones or anything else, they're all doing AC charging. So if you have a solar system, it's got to go through an inverter, get converted from DC to AC, go through the charger, and then when it gets back into the car, into your battery, it's got to be converted back to DC again. So you've got some losses associated with that. So you're wasting electricity when you do that. ⁓ With this system, it goes straight through

as DC from your solar panels through the machine. It's got a CCS connector or you can get it with an axe connector on it. ⁓ And it goes straight into your battery ⁓ as direct current. So it's going to be a more efficient system and it can do a bunch of other stuff too. So I talked with Mark Andre ⁓ and after we say goodbye, you can listen to that conversation ⁓ and we'll be back next week.

Guess who will be back next week.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:27)
Nicole?

Perry (1:40:28)
I'm

guessing Nicole, back from her adventures.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:29)
Yeah, Nicole's gonna be back finally.

So ⁓ talk to you all next time and stay tuned for the conversation with Marc-Andre Forget. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:43)
Bye.

Perry (1:40:44)
Bye.