Sam Abuelsamid (00:02)
This is Wheel Bearings, episode 434. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:09)
And I'm Roberto Baldwin from SAE International. Sam's at CES, I'm at home. I'm winning life.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16)
He that that is absolutely the truth. I just I just got into Vegas about an hour and a half ago. ⁓ The show the press day doesn't actually start till it's now Saturday afternoon. The press days don't start till tomorrow or till Monday morning. ⁓ By the time this is posted it will be Sunday afternoon. ⁓ But we've got you know part of this program here where we're going to have a bunch of briefings with companies tomorrow.

So we get three briefings tomorrow on Sunday before the show even gets started. And it's funny on the the flight from Detroit today, it's like half, almost half of the first class section was people coming here, including Gary Shapiro, who was sitting right across the aisle next to Jamie Butters.

For those who don't know, get it?

Roberto Baldwin (01:07)
I'm not gonna say anything.

I'm going to abstain from saying anything about Gary Shapiro.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13)
Okay, well, Gary is the president of the Consumer Technology Association, which is the organization that puts on CES. And we will leave the conversation there. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (01:26)
Yeah, so you can

you can guess.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:32)
All right. Well, ⁓ unfortunately, Nicole pinged me about an hour or so ago to let me know that she unfortunately will not be able to join us today ⁓ because ⁓ she had to take one of her daughters to urgent care. She's going to be okay. Everything's fine. But ⁓ she's she's held up for a little while. ⁓ So she won't be able to join us ⁓ today.

Roberto Baldwin (01:33)
Ahhh.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:01)
So it's just me and you, Robbie. ⁓ So, ⁓ you know, I know you didn't drive anything this week or ride anything this week, but recently you talked about something else that you rode. Do you want to share some additional information with us?

Roberto Baldwin (02:04)
Yeah!

So.

I did.

So here's some fun and ⁓ really exciting news. ⁓ So remember when I talked about that Verge motorcycle, the TS Pro? It's the one where ⁓ the motor is part of the rear wheel. They call it like a donut motor. So there is no chain, there's no, because the motor is, the wheel is the motor, the motor is the wheel. Cool, fun, was a fun bike to ride. ⁓

So they have some news that they're unveiling at CES this year. And the news is that the second generation, the second version of this bike, that one that they're going to be selling in the United States, will ship with a solid state battery, which makes it essentially like the first production vehicle really that is at, you know, they're going to mass produce. They're not gonna make a lot. They're going to make lot in first year. But...

uh, you will be in 2026 according to verge motorcycles and their partner donut lab. They will be, you will be able to purchase a solid state battery powered electric vehicle, which is huge news. It's, it is sort of, and I really hate this term, the Holy grail of something. It's just, it's annoying. It's cliche and it's, this is sort of the Holy.

Electric vehicles for those who don't know solid-state batteries the electrolytes it's solid. It's not a liquid and so it's the idea is that it It allows for a more dense energy. So there's more so you can get essentially the same amount of energy to say a hundred kilowatts and a Pack that's like 60 % the size 40 % the size 50 % the size sometimes, you know Probably about half the size of that pack. So if you have a let's say of a vehicle

and the battery weighs 2,000 pounds for let's say 300 miles, it can now be 1,000 pounds for 300 miles. But also, because you've lost all that weight, now you're getting extra miles because you've lost 1,000 pounds. Also the...

Sam Abuelsamid (04:23)
So even with the same

capacity, you get more miles per kilowatt hour because you're not moving as much mass.

Roberto Baldwin (04:28)
Exactly.

And because the pack is less likely, there's very little thermal runaway like you would with lithium ion, so they're less prone to fire, ⁓ which means you don't have to protect them quite as much. You don't have to build this giant, I mean, you still have to put some protection around it because you don't want it to get destroyed, but you don't have to like build, know, essentially build a tank around it. So you're also losing weight in that respect.

The whole, and they charge quicker. They charge much quicker than ⁓ your regular battery packs. And potentially, if you can fix the problem, which is ⁓ the biggest problem with them is dendrites. What happens is that as everything's going back and forth ⁓ through the electrolyte, you start getting little spikes. And those little spikes are called dendrites. And they start creating shorts within your battery. And the biggest problem that's been with solid state batteries is that they... ⁓

their cycle life is pretty short because yes, they charge quicker, yes, they have more energy density, yes, they're less prone to fire, but if the battery can only be charged like a thousand times, that's not ideal for a mass market. ⁓

Donut Lab, is the partner with Verge, says the way they are building their solid state batteries, they will not have dendrites. So they will not have the issues that everyone else is trying to solve when it comes to a solid state battery. So that's huge, huge news. Now, again, they are making 350. They are not Honda, they are not Toyota. These are two companies that are actively working on solid state battery. They are not Nissan.

They're not having to make 30, 40, 100,000, a million units a year with these batteries. But even 350, if you say we can do this, the batteries have a five year warranty. They're saying that the issue with the life cycle is they will, they're going to last way longer than lithium ion batteries. It's a lot of really exciting stuff that they're sharing. It's.

With everything that comes out when it comes to solid state battery, you kind of have to like, okay, wait and see. But they told me that they are already building the batteries. They've been building them for months. They've put them on bikes. They've been riding the bikes around for months. They've been testing them in super, essentially in freezers and testing them essentially at like 100 centigrade, which is like, why? But they have. The 100 centigrade is the boiling point for us Americans who deal with Fahrenheit.

which I have no idea what Fahrenheit boiling point is, a lot. But it is, yeah, it's really, 212. Oh, I did know that. I wasn't gonna guess 212, but I didn't want, I was like, I'll sound stupid. So their bike that they have now that I've ridden, it has a lithium ion battery, they can essentially half that battery and still get the same range, which is about 217 miles is what they offer with the.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:16)
It's 212, 212 Fahrenheit.

Roberto Baldwin (07:42)
bike they have now. So you can get the same bike with the same amount of range that weighs less because the battery is like 60 % of what the lithium ion battery. Also that donut motor in the back, that's smaller, that's that's weighs 50 % less. So the tire is not as quite as wide in the rear, which is nice for a bunch of reasons. A wide tire is great for stability, but it's also, you you're having to kind of fight a little bit more ⁓ for nimbleness. ⁓

The capacity of that battery is about 20 kilowatt hours, and it'll charge at the solid state at 100 kilowatts for a motorcycle. It'll have NACs. So it'll go from 20 to 60%, they say, I'm sorry, 20 to 80 % in 10 minutes, is, that's essentially putting more gas in your motorcycle. If you get the long range version, which they just put two solid state batteries,

⁓ It'll be about 33 kilowatts. And then that one will DC fast charge it up to 200 kilowatts. Again, this is a motorcycle. This is not a car. ⁓ And it'll do 20 to 80%, again in about 10 minutes. And again, both of these have a five year warranty on their batteries, so they are definitely making sure that these batteries last a long time.

It's really, really impressive. I'm excited to ride these bikes once they come out. They will start building them again the first quarter of 2026, which is now. yeah, no, I have a whole interview over on SAE. We'll put that in the show notes with the CEO of Verge Motorcycles and with the tech team over at Donut Lab. Originally, they were like one company and then they sort of split off.

I've talked to them little bit about ⁓ coming up with what they've done to create this battery. Obviously, they don't share too much because it is a proprietary bit of information. ⁓ It is a big deal for them. And they also talk about looking beyond the two-wheel vehicle. look, where else can these batteries, energy storage, your phone, everything uses a battery now. If you can make that battery, ⁓ if you can have that battery with ⁓

more capacity and a smaller footprint that charges quicker. It's not just the idea that you can get a car that does all this. Your phone could last twice as long. Your earbuds could last twice as long. Your home battery can hold twice as much capacity. it's a huge deal. is...

from a relatively small, you know, a small company. They have been making motorcycles, selling them in Europe. The motorcycles they'll be selling in 2026 will be essentially for Europe and California. So if you live in one of those places, you can order one. They say there's still some spots. They've had, they have over 600, you know, I think there's, they have reasons for selling them only into regions. I mean, most places when you remember when, when EVs first came out, most of them were only sold in California. I think that's the sort of the same reasoning.

Yeah, no, was a pretty, after, they shared the information with me after that ride, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down. When is this bike coming out? Expecting them to tell me by the end of the, by the end of the decade, which is essentially, know, Honda's talking about by the end of the decade, Toyota, think, is also talking about by the end of the decade. ⁓ gosh, I forget what Nissan, I should've looked it up. I think Nissan's around the same timetable. mean, the,

Sam Abuelsamid (11:16)
Ha

Nissan's been talking about

like 2028 or so.

Roberto Baldwin (11:33)
Yeah, so the end of the decade. think everyone's like the end of the decade, which seems plausible and makes sense. ⁓ And then this small company, and it comes out and says, yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it in a few months. Enjoy. So yeah, so that's the big news for me out of CES.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:50)
Yeah, well...

Yeah, I mean, this is great. ⁓ know, one of the challenges, one of the big challenges, there's a lot of companies have been developing ⁓ solid state batteries. And, you know, there's been, you know, a lot of companies that have gotten, you know, good samples of the batteries. The problem that everybody has had.

⁓ Is scaling manufacturing? Yeah, and I think you know the fact that verge is only planning to make a few hundred of these You know kind of maybe a test to that you know companies like quantum scape and solid power and SES and and all the traditional battery makers, you know have

They've been able to make small numbers of these things, but it's scaling the manufacturing to high volume, where it's been a challenge for everybody. And it'll be interesting to see if these guys, ⁓ if Donut Labs and Verge can actually get the volumes up and produce these in like,

you know, for thousands or tens of thousands of motorcycles a year.

Roberto Baldwin (13:03)
Yeah, I think, I'm sure they're open just to offering up batteries to other companies. I think this is a, for a company like them, if they can do this at 350, they're making 600, 700 packs essentially. Plus they're talking about, they're partnering with other companies already for the technology, Donut Lab is. If they can get, let's say they get a thousand, 2,000 batteries out this year.

that gives them a little bit of a leg up on a lot of these sort of other companies outside the automakers. you know, because then they have real world tests, people going out and using it versus like, oh, we built one Mercedes that we're driving around and testing the solid state battery, which is great. You know, that's how you learn things. That's how you figure things out. But when you're, you know, we got 350 of these vehicles going around.

And we also are building them for other companies and for other types of vehicles. And we're able to get the data from all these vehicles while we're building this battery pack. it's exciting times because it does, I think on one hand, it's good for this company individually. Sure, that's great. Good for them. But I think overall it's really good for the industry because it pushes everybody. If everyone's like, well, if we're just going to say end of the decade,

And now this one small company is like, hey, we're making, we're making vehicles. That makes you like, oh gosh, okay. Now competition is happening because now someone's out. And once somebody has something, then everyone's going to try to, to, emulate it, try to, to at least catch up to them, to beat them, to be better than them. And at the end of the day, that's really good for a EV adoption. But I think, you know, a lot of people are still like, well, it takes like, you know, it takes an hour to charge an EV. I'm like, well, not.

I mean, most modern EVs know. But if people are like, well, you can get a motorcycle. And again, electric motorcycles, essentially the ones on the market are really sort of weakened, they're commuter bikes. Because you can go somewhere, you come back. It's a daily rider, it's a commuter bike. It is not the motorcycle that, it's not the Harley-Davidson rider. It's not the person who once a month rides 300 miles with their friends.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (15:25)
or they say they're gonna ride 200 miles, they realize how 300 miles is a long way and they ride 200 miles, but they don't wanna worry about charging, they wanna ride out to whatever restaurant they're gonna meet at, they wanna hang out with their friends, they wanna go broom broom and then they wanna ride back. They don't wanna like, oh, hey, let's stop. My motorcycle only has 150 miles of range on the highway. That's not the excitement of the motorcycle lifestyle, that sort of.

that almost that weekend warrior lifestyle. You know, want to be able to just ride your motorcycle all day without stopping to get gas. And if you do stop to get gas, it only takes five, 10 minutes. This gives you that option to join your Harley riding friends ⁓ on their trip.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:11)
So this is gonna charge at 100 kilowatts and what's the size of the battery? What's the capacity of the battery?

Roberto Baldwin (16:17)
So they have the standard range and the long range. The standard range will charge at 100 kilowatts and it's 20 to 80 % in 10 minutes. It's got a 20 kilowatt hour battery. The long range version has a 33.3 kilowatt hour battery. It'll charge it up to 200 kilowatts and the same 20 to 80 % in 10 minutes charge time.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:41)
I mean that's you know 10 minutes 10 minutes that's good enough.

Roberto Baldwin (16:46)
That's, I gotta get off the bike. I'm gonna go inside. I gotta pee. I gotta get some beef jerky. I go out to the bike. Time's up, yeah. After 80%, obviously, it's probably 15, the 20, if you wanna charge to 100, which, that's slower, obviously, than putting gas in your bike, but 20, 80 % in 10 minutes is, and to get, what is it?

Sam Abuelsamid (16:54)
Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (17:15)
the long range, sorry, let's see here. 200 miles on the highway. It's 370 in the city for the long range. 200 miles is four hours, that's fine.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:25)
I you know, I would think, you know,

yeah, I would think after, you know, 200 miles on a bike, you're ready for a little bit of a break, stretch your legs a little anyway. So, you know, 10 or 15 minutes.

Roberto Baldwin (17:37)
Riding, a,

if you ride, you know that sort of vibration that your hand, like if you haven't ridden in a while, there's the vibration of the handlebars and your hands feel really weird. You're like, cause you're getting used to it if you haven't ridden in a while. You don't really get that on an electric bike. You get a little bit because of the road and it, but you don't get that, that constant vibration that makes your hands feel a little odd. And so,

Sam Abuelsamid (17:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (18:04)
That's, think, stuff like that is one of the reasons why people sort of like, okay, well, I'm take a little break from riding. This is why there's so many stops on these sort of monthly, you know, once a month rides, because these people are not riding every day. They don't ride, you know, I, when I lived in the city, I rode every day because that's how I got to work. That's how I got around the city. And so I just did, you get that sort of vibration just kind of goes away. You stop thinking about it. It's just part of how you ride. It's just part of, you know, what your life.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:18)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (18:34)
⁓ But when you ride once a month because there's no need for you to ride a motorcycle in your work or for whatever reason, ⁓ yeah, that vibration, feels, it's a weird feeling. But when you ride electric bikes, and I've done a couple electric bike rides in the last year and a half, ⁓ long days on ride programs, and it's just not there because you don't have that vibration the whole time. So you actually less.

fatigued riding electric bikes. You can actually ride longer.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:05)
Yeah,

I mean I don't I don't ride a motorcycle but you know, I know you know from mowing my lawn You know, I get vibration through the handles of the lawnmower So I know I know the feeling you're talking about that tingling sensation you get in your hands from from the vibrations of the mower

Roberto Baldwin (19:12)
Yes, it's kind of like that.

There, yeah, it's like that. It's that tingling, the lawnmower vibration. haven't mowed a lawn, gosh, 30 years maybe. I think that's like high school. Well, I lived in apartments for most of my life. And now that I live in a house, when we bought the house, came with fake grass.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:36)
Well, you live in California, I think, yeah, so, yeah, you probably.

Perfect.

Roberto Baldwin (19:50)
so we never have to do that.

I have a weed whacker, that's electric and that's pretty much for weeds.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:58)
Yeah, I mean all of my outdoor gear, my lawn mower, my weed whacker, chainsaw, hedge trimmer, all that stuff is battery powered anyway. And I've been a homeowner for going on 32 years now and I have yet to ever water my lawn. I've never once watered my lawn.

Roberto Baldwin (20:20)
Wow, yeah, California you'd have to water your lawn.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:23)
Yeah. All right. Cool. Well, that's, that's exciting. You know, first, first solid state batteries come into EVs here in the U S this, year and in the next few months. And I, and I bet you half of those 350 bikes get bought up by automakers and battery companies looking to test these things and tear down those batteries and figure out what the hell's inside them.

Roberto Baldwin (20:24)
Anyway.

Yeah, this year, first quarter of 2026.

Oh,

I feel like there's gonna be, they have over, I think over 600 reservations, but they're all, again, they're only selling them like in California and parts of Europe. So they still have reservations available. So if you're looking to buy one of these, they're over 20,000 or they're not cheap. It's the Verge TS Pro. I think as soon as the news drops, that's $20,000 is nothing to an automaker. I think there's gonna be a couple of them. they're like, we have an engineer in California, have him order one now.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:14)
nah, it's peanuts.

Yeah, excellent. All right, ⁓ well, I ⁓ drove the Subaru WRX TS with a six-speed manual transmission. ⁓ And, ⁓ boy, was that fun. I really liked that car.

Roberto Baldwin (21:39)
It is, I was like, think myself, I talked to Tim Stevens, who has a big pile of like WRXs and STIs in his house. And I drove, yeah. And so we talked about, cause I used to own a WRX. The TS is kind of like, Hey, it's kind of chill. It's like the regular person's version. It's still fantastic. Like we, I think we both thought it was going to be like a little like, Oh, they're going to like, you know, shave off the edges and make it like, you know, sort of meh.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:47)
Yeah, various vintages.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (22:09)
⁓ Nope, it's just a fantastic vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:13)
Yeah, know, they Subaru dropped the STI versions of the TRX, at least here in North America a couple of years ago. Although there's strong rumors that it's going to be coming back, you know, and they did show the two concepts at the Japan Mobility Show, including one that, you know, is based on the WRX, you know, based on the WRX hatchback.

So, you know, there's a seems like there's a strong probability that you know a WRX STI Hatchback will be back sooner rather than later ⁓ But you know what what we have right now is the WRX TS With the TS standing but for tuned by STI, so it's not quite a full-blown STI, but it's it's close So, you know, it's a superchar or supercharged turbocharged 2.4 cylinder

four-liter four-cylinder boxer engine, which is what you've had in WRX's forever. 271 horsepower in this one. 258 foot pounds of torque from 2,000 to 5,200 RPM. And that's one of the things about this.

the, you know, it's been years since I drove an STI, but I, you know, some years ago I drove a regular WRX and an STI back to back ⁓ on consecutive weeks. And I actually preferred driving the regular WRX to the STI, ⁓ you know, for, as, as a daily driver, you know, for driving on the street because the, you know, the STI had a lot more turbo lag. ⁓ you know, it was a lot stiffer. ⁓

You know, this one is, I think, a really nice middle ground between the standard WRX and what we had as an STI. ⁓ And it's got plenty of low end torque, so it's really responsive. It's a lot easier to drive as a daily driver. ⁓ It comes with a six speed manual, no CVT in it. ⁓ It's got. ⁓

electronic-control dampers, adaptive dampers developed by STI. ⁓ It's got ⁓ Brembo brakes all around, six-piston front calipers ⁓ and dual-piston rears. ⁓

The ⁓ one that I had was finished in the Galaxy Purple Pearl, which is this really dark purple color that in the sunshine, it looks fantastic. Unfortunately, it wasn't a lot of sunshine the week that I had it. was mostly kind of overcast and ⁓ snowing and raining and kind of kind of early winter weather. ⁓ But when the sun was shining, it looked really fantastic in that Galaxy Pearl, this really deep purple.

color, you know, and then you get the gold colored calipers coming through the gray wheels. And then in the interior, it had Recaro performance seats. And ⁓ there was these... ⁓

bright blue accents on the seats and on the dashboard and the door panels that contrasting against the black and predominantly black and gray interior. They really added a nice splash of color to the interior and made it a little more fun. The seats are fantastic. Not a lot of adjustments on the seats, but you don't really need a lot of adjustments as long as you fit the seats. Fortunately, I do fit those seats. And I took this thing

out on a day when the weather, it was cold, but it was relatively nice out. The sun was shining a bit. ⁓ The roads were dry. ⁓

And, you know, it came on, fortunately they put it on winter tires. So that was helpful because, you know, the temperatures were, you know, right around freezing, which you don't want to be driving summer tires on those kind of conditions. So the winter tires still gave it decent grip. ⁓ And it was just, it was such a ball to drive, you know, on some nice curving back country roads ⁓ outside of Ann Arbor. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (26:15)
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:38)
The and you like I said, the you know, with the adaptive dampers on here, ⁓ it was just it was really nicely tuned. So it's it's something that, you know, it's feels really sporty, but it doesn't it doesn't it's not punishing ride quality. It's you know, it's actually really comfortable to drive. You know, and this is something that you can easily use as a daily driver. And it's quick. ⁓

you know, the gearbox was really nice to shift. ⁓ It had the usual array of ⁓ assistance features that you find on modern Subarus, like the EyeSight system with the dual cameras, the stereoscopic camera system for adaptive cruise control. So if you need to take a road trip, makes it little easier with the adaptive cruise control. ⁓ But...

The there's really only one complaint I had about the car ⁓ and that was the infotainment system ⁓ You it's got support for wireless Android auto and Apple CarPlay, but you know, this is the old ⁓ Subaru system that they've had for quite a while they call it Starlink and it's just it's slow You the interface is is okay, but it's slow

Roberto Baldwin (27:59)
It's-

It's

just an iPad. It's just this it's like someone gave you a third Yeah, somebody gave you an iPad from like two generations ago and you stuck it in your car That's essentially what it's like having this infotainment system. ⁓ When I drove this car, I I sort of forgot about the infotainment system because I was so much fun driving but yeah, it's not it's like this is kind of slow. Hmm Well, all right. Well, it doesn't have that all the power went to the motor

Sam Abuelsamid (28:05)
Yeah, basically. But it's like a first generation iPad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we forgot. Yeah, and.

Roberto Baldwin (28:34)
They're like, you know what, we did all the other stuff. You can put your iPhone, you

know what, can connect your iPhone, leave us alone.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:41)
Yeah.

Well, know, it took a couple of minutes, you know, just for Android Auto to pop up on the screen. Yeah, just to get some music or something. So, you know, just to get that far.

You know, I had already been driving for a while before it even came up on the screen. But, you know, if you don't need the navigation, if you don't, if you don't need the music, just just turn it off. You know, turn off the audio. Just listen to the sound of that boxer because it's such a unique sound and it just sounds so good.

Roberto Baldwin (29:17)
I used to work at ⁓ a, I used to work in entertainment, so I worked at a studio. And one of the little perks of working at the studio is that you work 12, 15 hour days. So what would happen was there was a place down the street that did car washes and oil changes, and a guy would just show up at the studio and be like, hey, give me your car keys, I'll take your car, you know, car wash, da da, and you can pay for it when I bring it back. It was great, because I never had to worry about, you know, ⁓

you getting, you know, getting my old change, cause they would just do it while I was working. They would just wash my car while I was working. They like to call my car the sewing machine. Cause it does kind of sound like a sewing machine. Like, ⁓ your sewing machine. I'm like, here you go. They're like, all right.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:53)
Yeah.

It's kind of a unique sound. mean, the only thing that sounds remotely close to that is like a Porsche Boxer engine. the Subaru even has its own kind of unique sound to it, distinct from a Porsche. And it's a fun sound. And this thing is quick. This thing is seriously quick. The 271 horsepower.

You know, it's not that it's, you know, it's a fairly compact car, which means, you know, the backseat's not huge. You know, I could, I could fit back there behind myself, but you know, it's, it's probably, you know, it's probably not something, somewhat something you'd want to have, you know, Robbie sit in the backseat of, unless he was maybe sitting behind Jill Simonillo, ⁓ you know, who's like four foot 11, but. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (30:47)
Robbie and Jill like like like Jill

and I are going around solving crimes traveling the world in our WRX

Sam Abuelsamid (30:58)
Yeah, you know and currently, know, the WRX is only available as a four-door sedan. You can't get it as a hatchback, unfortunately. Hopefully that's something that will change, but you know, we'll see. But even as a sedan, you know, it's this is a great little car to drive. And let's see, where's the...

Roberto Baldwin (31:18)
It's, yeah. It's, I, on

your, like I think in Detroit, this is like the perfect car. ⁓ Because the, I've driven like the Aston Martin Vantage. I've driven like a carbon Corvette. I've driven like all these, you know, and supercars around my part of the Bay. And we have, we, you know, my part of the Bay area, we have, you know, hills and mountains and windy roads.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:26)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:46)
except my part the bay doesn't have like Marin money. So the roads can be a little rough. ⁓ And all those other cars get tossed around like there's nothing. Because they're so, like you're going around a corner and they're just like, it's rough. So you're essentially tossing the super car around. ⁓ The WRX, this one, and I drove the other one, the one right before this. So the TS and then the previous generation. And both of them just ate those road up like there was nothing. Just absolutely just.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:52)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and that's the nice thing about the way the suspension is set up. know, it does, you know, it...

Roberto Baldwin (32:16)
Porthromb.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:22)
You know, it's got, there's kind of that Subaru rally heritage in there, you know, where, you know, you know, um, and rallies, you know, driving it on unpaved gravel roads, you know, bumps and stuff. So, you know, it's gotta have some suspension compliance to it. And so it just, you know, it, works really well. Um, so, you know, on roads like we have here in Michigan or, you know, around where you live, Robbie, um, you know, it, it, uh, this, this whole, the whole system works really well. It's a, it's a good combination. Uh,

Roberto Baldwin (32:52)
It is, yeah.

And most people don't know what this car is. That's the best part. It's a sleeper.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:52)
And.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't look like anything crazy. It looks fairly conventional, like just a basic compact sedan. It's got nice looking wheels on it. But other than that, it looks fairly conventional. ⁓ see, the Monrone they gave me didn't have a price on it. So let me get the pricing here.

Roberto Baldwin (33:20)
free.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:23)
So, you know, the bass WRX, which strangely enough is premium trim, that's the bass WRX, is a little over $37,000. The TS that I had, if you're gonna get the TS, spring for the 395 bucks for the Galaxy Purple. And then, let's see.

This one came to a grand total of $49,270, which is not inexpensive. But if you're considering something like a VW Golf R or some other, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (34:09)
Type R.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:11)
Yeah, a Civic Type R or an Integra Type S, you know, that's not, you or, you know, ⁓ a GR Corolla, you know, it's not quite as, ⁓ you know, it's more subtle in the way it looks. You know, if you want something that's not gonna jump out and grab too much attention from, ⁓ you know, the law enforcement that you might be driving past it slightly more than the speed limit, you know,

This this might be a better choice plus You know the golf are you can't get it with a manual transmission anymore. It's automatic only or DSG only ⁓ and You this six-speed manual transmission 49 grand you want to take a guess at the destination charge?

Roberto Baldwin (34:48)
mmm

I already saw it. By accident.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:02)
⁓ okay.

it's $1,170.

Roberto Baldwin (35:05)
It's

relatively cheap compared to everything else.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:10)
Yeah, but

by today's standards, it's quite cheap.

Roberto Baldwin (35:13)
I think of all those cars

you just named, I think this is probably the best balanced out of all those. This is the one, this is sort of the winner of all of those cars. I think the GR Corolla ⁓ is a little bit more fun, but it's also like will rattle your teeth out. And is a, is a, for the term Gazoo, this is the most of those vehicles. ⁓ Everything else is a little bit tamer.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:19)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (35:42)
I feel like especially the type that the Golf R, which is unfortunately, I think they really shaved off a lot of the sort of like danger of that vehicle. And now you can't even give it to matter of transmission. So I think of all of those, this is the one that it's the less, the one that doesn't really stick out, but overall this is the best one. That second, that short gearing of second is so amazing because you're just like first second really, you're in the third really quickly because of that rally.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:07)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (36:11)
you know, inspired and a lot of people don't, they have problems with this vehicle with the manual transmission because they can't figure it out. Give it like a week. Like after like a week, some people take a month, but once you figure out ⁓ the gearing of this vehicle, ⁓ you bet it, you're in love. You're in love with this vehicle for the rest of your life.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, and if you like driving a manual, you'll spend a fair bit of time actually shifting it, and it just works really well once you figure it out. yeah, no, I definitely like this car. I had a lot of fun with it. All right.

Roberto Baldwin (36:41)
Yeah, yeah, it's a fantastic car.

And I know that someone's gonna tell us

that they raised the prices on all these vehicles, the WRX, this and the BRZ. I know they did. Subaru is a small company, but they raised the price without like raising up the destination. So, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:03)
Yeah. And, you know, like I said, by, by today's standards, you know, it's not like it's wildly overpriced relative to the competition. You know, it's, it's thoroughly competitive. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (37:11)
Yeah, and what you're getting, the engineering

you're getting in this vehicle, it's not a high volume vehicle, so they gotta, you yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:22)
Yep. All right. Let's move on. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (37:23)
Good times.

Let's leave the Subaru love fest.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:31)
you know, we, we didn't, ⁓ I didn't give particularly high marks, ⁓ earlier this year or actually it's last year now when, ⁓ Ram brought the Hemi back to the 1500, you know, ⁓ you know, after, after driving it, yeah, I it sounded great, but you know,

I, if I was actually buying one, I would probably buy the hurricane because it's better, you know, more powerful, faster, ⁓ better payload, better towing, and gets better fuel economy. and you know, when they, when Tim caniscus came back, ⁓ after his brief retirement, after, ⁓ Carlos Tavares left Stellantis, ⁓ you know, the first thing he did was bring the Hemi back to the Ram. And as soon as that was confirmed.

everybody knew it was just a matter of time before the Hellcat was back. Because if there's one thing that Tim likes to do, it's put a Hemi or a Hellcat in everything. ⁓ And so ⁓ the RAM TRX is back for model year 2027. It's coming back this summer. And...

You know, I mean, it looks pretty much the same as it did before and the same as the the RHO. You know, so it's the sheet metal is all carry over. ⁓ They ⁓ they did make some improvements, you know, so it's got the the updated ⁓ the updated ⁓ electrical architecture.

⁓ from when they refreshed the Ram 1500 last year. And so that means it's got updated infotainment and other features like it's got ⁓ level two hands off and ⁓ hands off ⁓ assisted driving capabilities, although ⁓ why you would want that on this vehicle, I'm not quite sure. ⁓

But the big thing is they got more power out of it. Because if you're gonna bring it back, why bring it back with less power than your primary competitor, which is the Ford Raptor R? So they bumped it up from 702 horsepower to 777 horsepower.

Roberto Baldwin (39:51)
Dun dun dun. It's what the kid, you give the people what they want. And this is what they want. Can any of the people afford it? No. But you give them what they want.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:54)
So it'll...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I it starts now. When the TRX first came out, you it started at about $72,000. Now it's going to be $102,000, including the $2,595 destination charge.

but it has an SRT badge now. They brought back, they're bringing back SRT to Stellantis. So.

Roberto Baldwin (40:32)
Okay. Does it

have the angry kitty cat on it?

Sam Abuelsamid (40:38)
It does, yes. Has an angry... Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:39)
Okay, well there you go, you got that. I'm

just gonna 3D print one of those, put it on my Ionic 5. Done.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:45)
There you go.

Roberto Baldwin (40:50)
Look at that, I got a Hellcat in my Onyx 5. Gonna put a Hellcat in my BRZ, gonna put a Hellcat on my Vespa 250. Boom.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:50)
⁓ Perfect.

You know, I'm sure that this is going to help, you know, Rams bottom line. you know, they'll sell some of these, you know, it'll help their profit margins for a while. ⁓ you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know how many people can actually afford these things. ⁓ but you know, it it's back, you know, but you know, when, what, you know, They've, they've got, they seem like they have one strategy for what to do. Just.

Put a hemi or a Hellcat in everything. When are they going to come up with something original?

Roberto Baldwin (41:29)
put a Hemi or a Hilga, which,

which again, it's what the people want. The thing is they just need to start naming everything Hemi. Just be done. Make an affordable car, make an affordable, bring back the Dodge Rampage, put like a four liter turbocharged, I'm not four liter, a four cylinder turbocharged engine in it, call it a Hemi, be done.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:38)
Yeah.

the Hemi4. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (41:56)
The Hemi 4. There's only four letters in Hemi. Each letter gets its own cylinder.

Boom. Thank you.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:06)
Yeah. But that's not all. That's not all from Ram this week. They also launched a an updated power wagon that you can now get with the Cummins turbo diesel. Before you could only get it with the 6.4 liter Hemi. Now you can get it with the Cummins turbo diesel. And so it's basically a Ram Rebel HD.

Roberto Baldwin (42:11)
DUN DUN!

Sam Abuelsamid (42:33)
with triple lockers, ⁓ but a little bit cheaper than a Rebel.

Roberto Baldwin (42:39)
You could pull a house off its foundation with this.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:46)
Pretty much, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (42:48)
How much,

how much torque? is it? Oh, that's 1075 pound feet of torque.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:58)
You got all the torque.

Roberto Baldwin (43:00)
Get all the torques Pull a house if you buy one of these guess what everyone's calling you to pull that pull that tree stump out of the yard Because you can do it you can pull yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (43:11)
Yeah.

Uh, yeah, payload, you know, payload is about, uh, let's see with the six and a half foot bed as about 3,600 pounds. Uh, yeah, it's, it's got some, you know, it's got some significant payload capabilities. Which is, know, to, be fair, that is significantly better than a TRX. You know, the, the light, you know, these light duty off road trucks.

Roberto Baldwin (43:23)
Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:40)
Typically they they lose a lot of payload capacity because you're adding all this extra weight for the skid plates and the big giant tires and everything else And you know, I think the TRX payload capacity is only about 1,400 pounds which is less than my neighbor's four-cylinder hybrid Maverick ⁓

You know, so at least you know with the ⁓ With the the power wagon you still get lots of payload capacity and lots of towing capacity I think this thing will tow about 19,000 pounds So yeah, you pretty much could pull most houses off their foundations

Roberto Baldwin (44:21)
Yeah,

and it only start and it starts at 88,000, well, 88 and a half thousand dollars.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:29)
Hey, that's, you know, that's 15 grand less than a TRX. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (44:35)
I'm I'm you know our our cars leases anything in January not January June and so we're like, oh I guess we'll just get another Maybe we'll just find an ionic five. That's you know Essentially the same car on the lot for like 25 and I'm like man that's gonna be a lot of money every month for a car payment and then $88,000 pops out

Sam Abuelsamid (44:58)
You think, ⁓ that's kind of cheap.

Roberto Baldwin (45:02)
That's pretty cheap. That's nothing. just like, how? I don't understand how people can afford. I think priorities are different for folks. Plus, again, I live in the Bay Area, so my cost of living for everything is a, yeah, I bought a house in the Bay Area. That's really where it comes down, is that I bought a house in the Bay Area. So my expenses go to, know, a big chunk of my stuff goes to my home. And then I have a lot of animals, so, you know, they gotta eat. Yeah. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (45:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So lot of your other expenses are a lot more than...

Roberto Baldwin (45:32)
Yeah, but.

Whoo, $88,000. $90,000 probably after everything. Probably 95, what's the, oh, 88,000 including destination. Oh, bravo. Bravo, Stellantis, for doing that. There you go, 90,000 bucks. There you go, bravo. You know what, I'm not gonna complain about it. Because they, because Stellantis did the right thing and said including destination. I'm very easily swayed.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:45)
⁓ so it's a bargain.

All right

Okay, so let's let's swing to the opposite end of the spectrum from a power wagon ⁓ Do you ever watch the rich rebuilds YouTube channel?

Roberto Baldwin (46:15)
Uh, I th- Oh, I once or twice, like a long time ago. I- I- Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:20)
Yeah,

I've watched some of his videos. He's pretty good. Rich Benoit lives in Massachusetts and kind of his shtick is finding ⁓ really cheap cars that most others would just send to the scrap heap, would not spend any money on them. He bought a Fisker for like a pent, know. ⁓

almost nothing that wasn't running and he managed to get it running you know Fisker Ocean managed to get it running again. ⁓

This is one that popped up in my YouTube feed the other day. It's actually from about a year ago, ⁓ but I thought it was kind of fun. ⁓ He ⁓ got an opportunity to get a Honda Beat that wasn't running. So basically the way he described it at the beginning of the video was, ⁓ I was offered this Honda Beat for the low, price of just get it off my lot. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (47:21)
Ooooo ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (47:23)
So he got the beat brought it back to his shop ⁓ and he had ⁓ an Arcimoto you you've ridden the Arcimoto right

Roberto Baldwin (47:32)
I have ridden the Arcimoto. It's a fun little vehicle. I really don't know if they're around anymore. I know they had some problems. know they were kind of like hit or miss for a couple of years trying to get everything going. But it made a lot of sense for like small towns, small dense towns, like college towns. made like, it sounded awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:57)
Well, ⁓ Rich decided to ⁓ merge the Honda Beat and the Arcimoto. ⁓ Since the Beat had an engine that wasn't working, ⁓

He ⁓ pulled the powertrain out of it, pulled the fuel tank out of it, pulled a bunch of other stuff out of it, ⁓ and then took an Arcimoto apart. The Arcimoto's got dual motors and driving the two front wheels. So the Arcimoto, for those who don't remember, ⁓ is a trike, a tandem seat trike. It's electric.

⁓ and he pulled the motors and the batteries and the electronics out of it and he put them into the Honda Beat and he got it running ⁓ and then took it out and was you know the third video in the series I'll put the links to the videos in the show notes the third video in the series did what they call the Honda Beat Off ⁓

Which, you know, and drove it against a standard gas-powered beat. So the beat, for those not familiar with it, is this tiny little mid-engine roadster that Honda sold in Japan many years ago. It's a K-car, so that means it's got a 660 cc three-cylinder engine with all of 63 horsepower and a five-speed manual transmission. ⁓ My friend Mike Austin's got one. It's a...

Roberto Baldwin (49:25)
I've

driven it. It's fantastic. I love it. I fit, barely.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:26)
Time yeah, it's it's but

yeah, but But it's not you know, it's not real fast You know, it was never never particularly quick ⁓ and I'll let you watch the video to see how the electric beat the arcimoto powered beat does against the original gas powered beat But it's fun It's a fun fun project

Roberto Baldwin (49:53)
It's I I I love everything about this. This is like everything. This is everything I wanted to do with my old ⁓ My Datsun 2000 Roadster. I essentially just wanted to buy the Roadster back This is my first car from a friend of mine who has it who won't sell it to me I won't say his name, but he knows who he is and every like once a year once every other year I'd like dude. want to can I buy it? He's like no, I don't don't I don't really want to sell it I think his kid is going to do something with it, which I'm like, okay All right fine

But they haven't done anything with it. And it makes me sad because we were going to do a whole video series about making it ⁓ an EV ⁓ at one point. And of course, we never got it. but ⁓ yeah, no, this I think the Honda Beat is is is a wonderful little car. And I would love to have one that has a little, you know, that's built, that's powered by the Arcimoto. Just just to cruise around town.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:25)
Yeah

You know what would be cool is,

you know, now Honda, you know, instead of like the, beat was built in like the late early 2000s, think late, no late nineties, late nineties. and, ⁓ they currently have a model that's sort of a successor called the S six 60. ⁓ and, what would be cool is if they took the electric powertrain from the, the, ⁓ super one.

Roberto Baldwin (50:57)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:15)
that I drove in Japan in October. Their little electric hot hatch K car. And put that into the S660.

Roberto Baldwin (51:22)
Ohhhh

⁓ that would be That's just that's that's someone with a lot. Yeah, see this is why if like if I were rich There's a couple things I would do First I would buy like it's a big plot of land and just be the guy who has a lot of like rescue animals Like cuz that's that's like my that my wife and I that's kind of our deal We rescue a lot of animals like all of our animals were essentially like well Like one of our cats doesn't have a paw because of the people were like well We don't know if he's gonna take him away. We'll take him

Sam Abuelsamid (51:32)
Yeah.

Haha.

Yeah.

You

Roberto Baldwin (51:59)
We'll take him. He's missing a paw. We'll take him. ⁓ And so, that would make my wife so happy if we bought a big ranch and we just rescued a bunch of animals. So there'd be that. And then there'd be just the most ridiculous car bill. And that would be horrible. I'd put them on YouTube. I would have to hire somebody. I would give somebody a job to just shoot video of me doing bad, bad, like, builds and swaps. Like four people would subscribe.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:13)
Just have a pull.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's basically what Rich

does. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (52:29)
Yeah,

I would do it riches. would just hi. I would just be riches best friend I would call him every day rich have you decided to do this yet? I'm gonna do this. Okay

Sam Abuelsamid (52:34)
You

You

Roberto Baldwin (52:40)
So there'd be signs. Like I wouldn't tell people I was rich, but there would be signs. Why does he have 57 dogs now? And why, is he, what, is he driving a Model T with a Viper engine in it? I think he's gonna die.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:45)
Yeah.

even sure a Model T frame could hold the weight of a Viper engine. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (53:03)
It couldn't hold the weight the way it would just it would collapse now But you could you know, I think every old car

if unless you're like super like it's gonna be original Just throw an EV an electric motor in it I saw an ix the other day yesterday In fact that the side had been swiped like both wheels were destroyed. The car was a total loss, but the battery area looked fine and I was like I was driving with my wife or going to lunch and dry like we should follow that car

Sam Abuelsamid (53:16)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (53:31)
and steal the battery and the motors out of it. And she's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, ⁓ we, you know what? We could make the Jaguar a real car.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:36)
Just put them in the garage until I figure out somewhere something to install them in

There you go. Is that do you still have that thing?

Roberto Baldwin (53:46)
Nah, nah, I still get rid of the J.

I still have, this is all, this is one of those, it's one of those things that you have in your house. You ever have a chore that you just keep putting off? This is it. All I have to do is go down and update some paperwork and it's gone. We're gonna give it to like KQED, we're gonna give it to like NPR, like you know, this cash for cars thing. Like you just give it away and then you write it off at the end of the year. We don't care, just want it gone.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:59)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:16)
And I'm just like, every time I'm like about to do it, something happens. I'm like,

Sam Abuelsamid (54:20)
Yep.

I have plenty of those projects around the house.

Roberto Baldwin (54:24)
Yeah. Yeah, mine just happens to be a giant X-type sitting in my driveway taking up space.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:26)
Alright.

⁓ Okay. ⁓ So we have talked previously about electromechanical door latches and cars. And, you know, we've been critical of ⁓ a bunch of automakers, ⁓ including Rivian for these things. Well, an article popped up the other day, ⁓ apparently, and I guess there's a whole thing on Reddit ⁓ where

Rivian owners are, because the mechanical backup latches are so hard to find on these things, especially on the R1s, particularly on the rear doors. So on the rear doors, they're actually hidden. There's a panel by the door handle that you have to pop out. So you need like a screwdriver or something. So if you're stuck in the car and the door, the mechanical, the electronic latch won't work.

You have to pop off this little panel and then reach in and pull on this cable to release the door handle. So if something happens, you get into a crash and the doors won't open and your kids are in the back, how are they supposed to do that? Or if you've got a friend in the back that is not familiar with this car, how are they supposed to know that? Or ⁓ even the owner, how's anybody supposed to know that's how you do it?

Roberto Baldwin (55:42)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:52)
And so some Rivian owners have apparently started taking to their own DIY emergency door releases on the back doors of the R1S and the R1T. And you can see the photo in here. You can see the rope. They basically took off some of the parts, attached this rope to the wire loop that you're supposed to pull after you pull off this panel. And then just have it hanging out.

It looks so ridiculous, but it's ridiculous that you have to do this on a car.

Roberto Baldwin (56:25)
It is a little bit, cause they're using, they're using a, they're using para,

para, paracord. At least it looks like on brand, but it does look ridiculous.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:34)
It's true. Yeah, it's true. It does fit, you know, with the adventure theme of a Rivian, nonetheless, yeah, it's like, you know, if owners have to do this, then the manufacturer is doing it wrong. Rivian, take note, fix this, stop doing this.

Roberto Baldwin (56:53)
Just make a mechanical door. They work. They've worked for decades. I've just put a little click I had the model when I had the model X and they me the wrong one They gave me a pre-production model to review by accident Anyway, I had to find where the little cord was and to do all this create I had to rip things out and it was a huge pain in the butt and it still didn't fix the problem ⁓ but yeah, it's

Sam Abuelsamid (57:08)
Uh-huh.

Roberto Baldwin (57:22)
We're clever for the sake of clever, stop it.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:26)
Yeah. All right. The Tokyo Auto Salon is coming up in a couple of weeks. ⁓ And this is, you know, this is a very different kind of show from the Japan Mobility Show. This is more like Japan's version of SEMA, ⁓ where you have all kinds of custom stuff on display. And I found this article. ⁓ There is a school ⁓ in Japan. ⁓

forget the name of it here. ⁓ But, ⁓ it's the Nihon ⁓ Automotive College. ⁓ And a group of students there have been working on a project for the Tokyo Auto Salon ⁓ to take a ⁓ Dahatsu Copen, which is a K-Car, it's a little K-Car roadster, ⁓ and they're transforming it into a Supra. ⁓

So putting miniaturized ⁓ supra body work on a Daihatsu Copen, which just looks so cool.

Roberto Baldwin (58:36)
Yeah, no, this is awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:39)
Yeah.

So it's kind of like a little Hot Wheels version of a Supra.

Roberto Baldwin (58:44)
I want one.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:49)
Except it's drivable

Roberto Baldwin (58:51)
Hot Wheels Supra.

Yeah, you can drive it around town. I mean, you're just... ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (58:55)
And unlike

the actual Supra, it's a convertible too.

Roberto Baldwin (59:02)
Ooh, no car have I gotten into where I get into an immediate like this car should be a convertible. And it's because it's, you know, it's the Z4, it's the convertible. It just, you could feel it. You can feel that its soul is that of the convertible.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:19)
Yeah.

⁓ All right. ⁓ Jalopnik had one of their listicles that they do all the time. ⁓

And this one is nine trucks that had really super cool bed features. this is one of the things, the competition in the pickup truck market has led manufacturers to get a little more creative and figure out what kinds of interesting utilitarian features. Some of these are better than others.

But some of these are really good. One of my favorites has always been the RAM box that they launched back in 2009 on the RAM 1500. So this is on the sides of the bed. You've got...

These storage box lockable storage boxes and you can put tools and all kinds of other stuff in there, ⁓ including even a guy named Mike Levine will fit in the ram box. And if you know, if you know, know. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:23)
⁓ well there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:30)
see but some of the other things you know that they've got on here the the utila track that they had on the original 2004 Nissan Titan which was this track system with cleats that you could move around so you can tie stuff down and retain stuff ⁓ the the dual action tailgate on the Honda Ridgeline that opens like a regular tailgate or open sideways you know they did that long before anybody else started getting these crazy tailgates ⁓

the Avalanche Midgate back in 2002, ⁓ the Multi Pro Tailgate that GMC launched in 2019. ⁓ What else? ⁓ and of course the in-bed trunk in the Ridgeline. The Ridgeline, even though it's never been a huge seller, Honda got really creative with that truck.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:21)
The Ridgeline is so great. I love the Ridgeline so much. And when my wife got into one, she's like, is this electric? I'm like, no. She's like, no. She really liked it because it was like, it's a good size. It's really comfortable. It's like a Honda Odyssey, essentially. And it's comfortable. I'm like, look, it's got a tailgate. Look, it's got a trunk underneath the bed. She's like, everything about the Ridgeline is awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:29)
Thank

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:48)
except that people are like, ⁓ where does 9F150, it's not a real truck because it's a body on frame. It's not, you I'm sorry, it's a unibody, it's not body on frame. ⁓ But no, the Ridgeline's dope. It'd be doper. And that's why I always say the R1T is essentially just the Ridgeline.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:00)
Well, you know what you need to do is.

Yeah, well, if you if you could get that I actually were talking about and get like an old first generation Ridgeline. There you go, bet you that bet you you could make that fit. Put the I X battery and the motors in here.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:17)
There you go. Yeah,

we might lose the trunk though for the batteries. ⁓ maybe. Well, not necessary. Yeah, we could probably make it work. ⁓ the money I would do. The money I would just blow through with my million dollar lottery ticket that I don't have, that I never play the lottery.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:26)
⁓ Not necessarily, because the battery is between the axles, I think.

Yeah.

⁓ And of course one of the ⁓ one of the the best on here of course is Ford Pro Power on board you know if if you're have some electrification either a hybrid or battery electric on a on a truck ⁓ You might as well put a bunch of plugs in there

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:04)
Yeah, yeah, the pro power is great. I'm gonna go somewhere and do some work. When we did a wedding and we had the F-150 Lightning, the band, and they were doing power, they were turning power out during the, around that time, that weekend, they were talking about having to cut power in places in Northern California, and I was like, I got the F-150 Lightning. I could save this wedding if things go sideways. I was all ready to go. I brought some extra extension cords.

It didn't happen, it was fine. Potential gorgeous cloudshift, that's all you need. I was ready.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:36)
Extension cords and power strips. But you were ready. You're ready. That's that's the way it always works. know, when you're ready, then everything goes fine. You know, it's when you're not ready that everything goes sideways. Yeah. All right. ⁓ So another thing that popped up ⁓ was an article about an old Ford concept.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:50)
That's why I'm always ready.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:04)
And interestingly, this one was on autoblog. And they did not link to an article that I wrote for autoblog back in July of 2007. So this is all about the Ford Interceptor concept. So the 2007 Detroit Auto Show.

Ford unveiled three concept vehicles. They had this van called the Airstream, had, ⁓ or purportedly had their ⁓ high series drive, you know, the fuel cell plug-in hybrid system in it. ⁓ They had ⁓ the ⁓ Lincoln MKR, which was this four door.

Lincoln coupe concept that introduced, you know, the design language that they subsequently brought to all their production models for a few years. ⁓ And then the interceptor, which was this big classic American sedan. ⁓ It was built on a stretched Mustang platform. ⁓ And ⁓ I will put a link to the original article.

That I wrote back in 2007 because one of you know, usually when automakers build these concept cars more often than not, they're not even drivable But even if they are drivable, they rarely ever let outsiders actually drive them but for some strange reason and July of 2007 Ford Had an event their Dearborn proving grounds where they brought out these three concepts plus some other stuff that they were working on

And they let us actually spend the day driving these things around the proving grounds. And so got to drive this, uh, this interceptor. And so I've got the, um, you know, the, article that I wrote for auto blog in 2007, um, all about this and this thing, uh, like I said, it had, it was built on a stretched Mustang chassis and S one 97 Mustang chassis. Uh, and,

It had a five liter camera crate engine in it. So it was a twin five liter twin cam. This is before the coyote. Yeah, and it was a crate engine and it had a big four barrel carburetor on it. And this particular day when they had this event was like ridiculously hot and humid. was like 90 plus degrees and about 90 % humidity.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:35)
⁓ Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:39)
And ⁓ because this was a concept, it didn't really have proper cooling and everything. They hadn't sorted out all the airflow through the engine compartment. So this thing kept vapor locking. So you'd drive like 2 3rds, 3 quarters of a lap, and then it would grind to a halt because the carburetor would vapor lock.

⁓ And then it would have to sit for 10 or 15 minutes under the tent You know with the hood up well while they let it cool off They're blowing blowing fans on the thing

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:04)
Paper.

Vapor lock. Oh

my god. My dad's my dad had a 260 240 260 Z that would vapor lock constantly Use me up. I just start choking because it couldn't get any power. It couldn't get any gas This is

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:29)
I mean, this was a

cool looking car, but they obviously never built it. Instead, we got the 2010 Ford Taurus, ⁓ which was not quite the same thing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:42)
No one talks about the Ford, the 2010 Ford Taurus and now we know why. This is a cool, think, I don't know, it's fine because the front of it is very reminiscent of the Flex. It's got the, you know, that sort of the Flex front end. I think it's cool. I don't think, I think you'd have to adjust it a little bit in order to sell it, obviously. But this is a cool car and I think it would have it would have behooved Ford to make it, just make, you know what, just pull this out, throw an EV.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:09)
throw an EV engine, get some of those F-150 Lightning motors you got sitting around, throw them in the interceptor, and watch people lose their minds.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:11)
Ooh, there you go.

Yeah, that would be fun. Okay. Let's see back to the run down here. so I mentioned Fisker earlier, you know, rich rebuilds, you know, he had rebuilt a Fisker Ocean. He also did, ⁓ did a Fisker Karma. He found a Fisker Karma and got that thing running again. But, you know, Fisker.

You know, Fisker Automotive, which was the original company that Henrik Fisker started back in 2008 or nine, and built the Fisker Karma. And it went into production briefly. They built, I think about 2,100 of them before the company went bankrupt. So, you you actually got more oceans built than he did of Karmas. But after, like when, when Fisker Automotive went bankrupt,

They during the banks of bankruptcy process, the assets of the company were bought by a Chinese company called Wang Shang and they launched Karma Automotive. So they rebranded as Karma Automotive and they basically continued to build these things in very small volumes ever since. Yeah, there's probably I think maybe five or 600 of these things that have been built over the last 12 or 13 years.

⁓ you know, over time they, updated it. ⁓ originally it had, you know, so the, the Karma was an EREV. was an extended range, know, true EREV with the, engine was not connected to the wheels at all. It just drove a generator and had a battery pack, you know, had about 40 ish miles of range originally. And then the, the engine would start up and run the generator to keep the thing going. ⁓

And over time, they replaced the original GM four cylinder engine that was in there with a BMW 1.5 liter three cylinder turbo that had more power. ⁓ They replaced the generator, they replaced the batteries, they replaced the motors. They did some tweaking to the design, but.

They're still basically building the same car. And even now, you know, they recently, you know, they re they rebranded it as the Karma Rivero for a number of years. And they recently discontinued the Rivero and launched a new, what were they calling it now? Yeah. Got Gaia Sarah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:58)
Y-Y-Y-Sara?

G-Gisare? Is that how say it?

Gaisare? I'm how do you say that?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:06)
I don't know. But I mean, when you look at this, as soon as you see it, yeah, they've refreshed the styling. They changed the front and rear fascias. They changed the front fenders a little. But it's clearly, it's still the original Karma. This is the car, yeah, I mean, this is the car that Henrik designed 17 years ago.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:21)
Which is a pretty car. That's at the end of the day.

It's still a really pretty car. It's still yeah, I still like the way it looks. I would I buy one god, no, but I love the way it looks

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:35)
⁓

Yeah, well I you know, I actually had a chance to drive ⁓ the ⁓ The Rivera driver Rivera Probably about six or seven years ago They brought one ⁓

to the management briefing seminars in Traverse City and their PR guy at the time, who's actually here with us now. He used to be a GM. ⁓ He's a guy named, ⁓ why am I blanking on his name now?

⁓ Anyway, he's here. He's here at CES now. ⁓ And he said he ran into him and said, Hey, I'm working with Carmen now. You know, we've got a Rivero here. Do you want to try it out? Sure. Why not? And took it out for a drive for about 45 minutes. And it was actually quite fun.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:24)
Hell yeah!

And look, yeah, I think it's just no one knows it's even a car still. I've talked, I talked to Karma at Monterey Car Week, like five years ago probably. And they're like, yeah, you know, we got the car. I'm like, oh, it's cool. It's still beautiful. It's still this, but like no one knows. It's like, no one knows they're a thing. It's a secret. It's like a cool indie band that everyone's like, oh wow, this is really cool. No one knows the indie band.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:00)
It's the band that it's like one of the bands when I talk to friends. I'm like, have you heard the new blah? And they're like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:06)
All right. ⁓ One last story. ⁓ VW, as I was flying out here today, got an email, ⁓ got a notification from the VW newsroom. ⁓ They unveiled the interior.

Of the new ⁓ ID polo, which we've talked about before. So this is their new Smaller EV. You know, it's supposed to be priced under 25,000 euros. And you ⁓ know this It's it's a shame that this thing is not going to be sold in North America because I think this could actually

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:43)
I was

so happy when I saw this photo.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:48)
Yeah. So

the big thing is the interior. One of the big complaints about all the current ID cars, the ID3, ID4, the ID Buzz, is all the touch controls. Especially, they've got touch controls for the volume and the temperature and everything at the bottom of the center touch screen. It's just annoying to use.

And ⁓ the ID Polo, ⁓ VW says they've heard the complaints about touch controls, going back to physical controls.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:21)
Yaaaay!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:23)
So you ⁓ got a bunch of physical, there's a whole row of physical buttons. There's a rotary volume knob on the center console. So you don't have, if you just want to adjust the volume, you don't have to reach all the way up and reach out for the screen. can just reach down, give it a twist. ⁓ It's got manual vents, just as it should be. It's got physical buttons on the steering wheel, not touch haptic buttons on the steering wheel. And there's even...

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:51)
Four window,

four window levers. Not two and a weird like switch front to back. Four window levers.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:53)
Yeah, four. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they have heard all the things that everybody hated about all their current generation EVs and looks like they've fixed almost all of them. And it's got a... ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:12)
love the, I think this is

their faux LCD displays in the dash cluster. I think they're faux, but I love them so much.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:17)
Yeah, yeah, there's a 10 inch digital

display for the instrument cluster. And one of the options on there is basically a replica of the old first generation golf instruments. Kind of like Ford did on the Mach-E, or actually not on the Mach-E, but on the.

the regular Mustangs, where you have the option to get the Fox body gauges on the digital instrument cluster. VW is doing this on the ID Polo as well. I think this could, I would love to be able to try one of these out.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:46)
yeah.

⁓ Put all these controls in the ID buzz make it a hundred volts put some rear put some cup holders in the back seats Lower the price give you which give everyone a real cheap option so they can up the up build it and Volkswagen's back They're back, baby After I don't know very long time of just sort of not making it anyone care This is this is beautiful

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:05)
Give it.

⁓ All right, ⁓ we got some listener emails and messages. ⁓ So some of these we're going to address a couple of these we are going to save ⁓ because they concern ⁓ Nicole's next car. So we're going to save those for Nicole. But there are a couple that we're going to hit. ⁓ The first one is from Mr. Burns. This was on the Discord. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:43)
Nicole.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:54)
And says, so here's a topic for the next episode, or maybe it should have been for Sunday's episode.

What was the weirdest thing you had to fix on your vehicle in 2025? Either diagnosed or diagnosed and fully, either diagnosed or diagnosed and fully repaired. Example, Nicole had to have her gone EV Jeep after it was dragged over and through an airport parking garage gate system. And Mr. his example was, I'm waiting until 2026 to replace $700 worth of rear seat seat belts in a 20,

2022 Jeep Wrangler 4xe because of a nervous seatbelt chewing greyhound.

you

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:38)
⁓

so for me, haven't, I've been fortunate with my cars, but ⁓ I think early in the year, I went to put my seatbelt in and a spring shot out, like a cartoon out of the seatbelt in my BRZ. And so it was like three in the morning, I had a 6 a.m. flight and I'm like, okay. I'm leaving my house to go to the airport.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:04)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:07)
I can't take the other car because my wife needs it for work. So I'm fiddling with it to get it to work. And I finally get it in, it doesn't have the spring anymore to get it out. when I get to the place, it takes a little while to get it out. So that was sort of the weirdest fix. it was like $70. I went to the Subaru dealership, ordered it. I was still able to sort of like, I could get it in, it would hold, but it'd take a little while to get it out. So if I was in an accident and there was a fire, would have died. ⁓

But that's the weirdest thing I've had to fix this year. But all I remember is that it's dark, all I, pew! This little spring just shoots up. And I was like, what the? Yeah, that's the only, I think that's the only thing that's broken on any of my cars this year. Except for like, you know, flat tires and stuff like that. But it was also very weird with the seatbelt thing. Cause that had never happened. I mean, I've had cars for over 15 years that the seatbelts are fine after all that.

sort of a weird thing to break on a car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:10)
Well, I had on the Miata, ⁓ the fuel gauge hadn't been working for a couple of years actually. And so I was just using the the triple diameter.

to keep track. Every time I filled it up with gas, I would ⁓ reset the triple odometer. I only drive it for fun. about every 150 miles or so, would stop and put gas in it and reset it. So I finally decided, know, it's good, I'm gonna figure out how to fix this thing. And part of the reason why I had left it is I figured, I'm gonna have to...

take it somewhere, drop the gas tank to do it. And when I actually researched replacing the sender unit, turns out that it was actually a lot easier than I thought. on the gas tank is behind the seats, between the seats and the trunk.

And ⁓ so there's a carpeted panel. When you put the top down, there's a shelf behind the seats there. And all I had to do was actually just pull up the carpet that was on top of this. There's an access panel, five, six screws, take this access panel off. And then right on the top of the gas tank was the thing to access the fuel pump and the center unit. It was right there. So another five or six screws.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:32)
What?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:35)
this thing out, take off the sender unit, put another one on, put it back in. Except when I pulled off the main access panel, I found a bunch of stuff sitting on top of the gas tank, which as soon as I saw it, knew, ⁓ shit, it's a mouse nest. It was mice. so they had chewed through one of the wires for the fuel gauge sender unit. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:42)
⁓

Ohhhh

⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:05)
As it turns out, even after I re-soldered that, I still had to replace the center unit. So the center unit had died anyway, but they had also chewed through one of the wires. So I had a little bit of soldering to do. But before I got to the soldering, I had to clean out all of the stuff, all the detritus that the mice had brought up to make their little nest underneath the parcel shelf. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:23)
You're gonna get the Hanta virus. Or bubonic plague.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:29)
Yeah, well, so I get my shop vac out and I'm rooting around in there vacuuming up all this stuff and then all of a sudden, know, it's that sound you get, you know, when something plugs the end of your vacuum and so I pull it out and it's like there's a mouse there on the end of the vacuum wriggling around. It's like, oh shit. So I turn it off, take it up, shake it out on the ground, you know, to get it out.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:44)
Awwww.

So you get out. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:55)
But, you know, finished cleaning that off, replaced the center unit, you know, it was about a 15 minute job. ⁓ And, you know, I've, you know, I found a, I got a replacement center unit on eBay for like a hundred bucks, I think, and fixed that up. yeah, so that was, that was an easy fix. And then, then the other, the only other issue that we had to fix this year was when we bought our replacement EV6 after the first one got totaled.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:10)
nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:25)
Before I bought it, I put the VIN number, I'd gone on the NHTSA recall website and you can put in a VIN number to see if there's any open recalls on the vehicle. I put in the VIN number to check for recalls because ⁓ these EV6s, like all the other Hyundai and Kia EVs, had the issue with the integrated charge control unit. It would fail and not charge the 12 volt battery.

And so I put the VIN in, said no, you know, no unrepaired recalls. Now it turns out that no unrepaired recalls doesn't necessarily mean, I found out after the fact that it doesn't necessarily mean that the ICCU has actually been replaced. It just means it's been inspected. ⁓ And so, you know, they inspected it. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:11)
Ohhhh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:15)
It was fine, it hadn't failed, so they didn't do anything with it. Well, about a month and a half after, about two months after we got the car, ⁓ I was on a trip, I was coming home the next day, my wife texts me and says, just got an electric system fault on the car, and it went into turtle mode, she was only like two blocks from the house, so she was able to get it home, but the ICCU had failed.

And so she got it home, got it in the garage. When I got home the next day, I...

plugged in the scanner. Yeah, it's the 12 volt battery was low. It wasn't charging. It was the ICC you fault. And so I had to have it towed to the dealer. It was fixed under warranty. That didn't cost me anything. And the dealer was great. They actually, you they were and this was like right before Christmas. And they were thinking that, you know, they weren't sure if they were going to be able to get the part in before Christmas and get it replaced, in which case it would have been like till December 29th. So it would have been in the shop for a week and a half. As it turns out,

The part got shipped out like the next day they got it fixed in two days and back on the road and haven't had a problem since.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:28)
Yeah, I've always had such great not so much with like the dealers like as sales people But like the service centers like when we had our mini we take it to the mini service center because it was less expensive to taking it to Jiffy Lube I don't change my own oil. I stopped doing that in the 90s like I'll switch anything else in the car, but changing the oil is just that's no I'm not gonna do that ⁓ and Our dealer service center for the hunt for the for the Hyundai. They're fantastic. Just great wonderful people

And every time I hear the dealers like, well, we're not going to make money on EVs, da, da, da, da, da. I'm like, lean into your service centers. That's where all the cool people work. All the cool, nice people work in the service center and the parts department. They're like, hey, what you need? I'm like, I need this. And then you see all the cool stuff for you, like your car from that, like, ⁓ you know, like, you know, the Ford branded or the Hyundai branded or the Toyota branded or Subaru branded, like little tchotchkes you can buy. like, maybe I'll get a, you know, key chain or whatever.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:05)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:25)
I don't think it's the same as like, you know, the money they get from selling a car, but I really think it should lean in, lean into the nice people you have in your dealerships.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, especially, you know, when it's, you know, if it's something that's under warranty anyway, uh, you know, definitely take advantage of that. Yeah. Cause they, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's free. It's free to the customer. Uh, you know, it, you know, they get, they get paid by the, by the manufacturer for doing warranty work. So absolutely, you know, take advantage of that. Um,

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:39)
that's just free money. Well, it's not free, but you know, it's money.

Yeah, yeah. And also the

idea that you can just get to the fuel pump through a panel on top is just another yes vote for what's the answer is always Miata. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:01)
Yeah

Yeah,

that's just good design for serviceability.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:12)
Yeah, my friend sent me an mg like on Facebook marketplace the other day and she was like, ⁓ should I get this and I just replied no period kids an mg Because it's an mg. I'm like no it's like I'm like you should get a Miata get the ND and the ND is probably the best for Non-car people good. It's I mean I fit in it so I'm happy and her boyfriend's a little taller But again, the answer was the answer was Miata ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, or an NC, you know.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:41)
End

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:41)
Unless you're someone who likes to spend a lot of time working on your cars. If you have the time and the wherewithal to work on your cars, then absolutely get an MG or some other British roadster. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:48)
Yeah, if that's your

Yeah, Jaguar. Get some other British car. If you like,

if you have a lot of like, ⁓ meters in your home, like the little electric meters, like the test stuff, like I have like three of them. Yeah. Volt meters. If you have those in your home, if you're that type of person, yeah, go ahead. Get a, get a British car or, or as my cousin once said, I'm going to get a Saab. And I turned to him and said, no, you're not. No, you're not. Cause he's not a car person.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:06)
Yeah, meters and voltmeters and yeah.

And also if you know how to

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:24)
Yeah, if you know how to solder, you're golden.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:25)
If you have multimeters and you know how to solder, then get a British car.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:28)
You're good. Get a British

car. And if you're ⁓ an architect, get a sub. An architect who knows how to work on a car. Get a sub.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:37)
Yeah.

Okay. ⁓ Or if you're Keith Price. ⁓ Keith buys lots of old Sobs and Volvos, but Keith is kind of weird. Anyway, last one's from Colin in Minnesota. So last week we talked about ⁓ some of the...

parts from cheap cars that show up on supercars. So Colin in Minnesota wrote to us and said, I'm a total sucker for did you know this car used X part from Y car trivia. One of my favorites is that the F1, McLaren F1, used the front marker lenses from the Lotus M100 Elan. But Peter Stevens kept that a secret from Gordon Murray. And Peter Stevens designed the M100 Elan, and he also designed the F1. But he kept that a secret from Gordon

Murray because he hated the four front wheel drive M100 probably apocryphal but who knows you know I I wouldn't be surprised you know if that was the case you know if that if that was a true story but you never know and listening to the podcast while putting a new water pump on my 79 alpha spider here in snowy Minnesota you guys are even more entertaining when working with brake cleaner

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:57)
Yeah. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:00)
We're not, you know, we try to be entertaining, but we, you I don't want to recommend working with brake cleaner unless you absolutely have to. But I can definitely see how, you you might get a few more laughs out of us if you were inhaling some of that stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:21)
Everything's funnier when you're doing breaks.

Yeah, these guys are hilarious.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:30)
Alright, well thanks everybody for listening and we'll talk to you next week and hopefully Nicole will be back and hopefully Rose is okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:40)
Yeah. Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:43)
Bye.