Sam Abuelsamid (00:03)
This is episode 449 of wheel bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from telemetry.

Nicole Wakelin (00:09)
I am Nicole Wakelin from Test Smiles and Top Speed.

Roberto Baldwin (00:12)
and I'm Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16)
And welcome back everybody. After last week when you both had some travel challenges.

Nicole Wakelin (00:22)
what a fiasco. I had a red eye home that I was supposed to be home by 10 o'clock and I ended up on a red eye halfway through because they diverted a flight and it was bumpy and everyone was sick. It was awesome. It was awesome.

Roberto Baldwin (00:23)
It's just.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28)
in the morning.

Roberto Baldwin (00:34)
⁓ I had

we landed in Chicago and the twisting of the plane was so so it was the most severe like sort of twisted I ever had like landing somewhere that these women there's these three women there sit like next and behind me they were losing their minds or grabbing onto everything they were kind of and then once we landed they were like that relief but just created all this like joy and laughing and it was delightful almost died

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (01:00)
We diverted to the world's, we diverted to a tiny teeny,

what was it, Grand Junction, which is an airport the size of a post stamp. And I really am convinced that our runway, yeah, mm-hmm, we were going to Salt Lake. Mm-hmm, yeah. We were, no, we were stopping from LA and we were supposed to go to Salt Lake and we ended up in Grand Junction. But I don't know what that plane is rated for for the required length of a runway and what the actual length of that runway is.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:09)
in Colorado.

That's okay. I was thinking you were heading back from Minneapolis back to to Boston.

Nicole Wakelin (01:28)
I'm convinced there was about a foot beyond the actual requirement because that pilot hit that runway and literally my feet bounced off the floor. I'm like, oh my God. And we like stopped on the dime. So, and then we sat there for a couple hours, which was interesting. Uh-huh. But it was, and we're laughing. I had the best row of people though. I also had this lovely lady named Bobby who was 86. She was so chill next to me. We had the most lovely conversation. thought, well.

Roberto Baldwin (01:31)
⁓

Yeah, we.

Couple hours.

Bye bye.

Nicole Wakelin (01:57)
You're gonna get stuck on an airplane in Grand Junction. Bobby wasn't a bad person to be stuck next to.

Roberto Baldwin (02:02)
Yeah, that's, yeah. Anyway, yeah, travel sucks and I'll be on a plane at 5 a.m. tomorrow.

Nicole Wakelin (02:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm, 7.55, see you in the air.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:08)
⁓

I'm not on the plane until 2pm tomorrow heading off to Tokyo. Yeah. Tokyo.

Roberto Baldwin (02:11)
Yeah, but you're going somewhere cool.

Nicole Wakelin (02:11)
Lucky you.

Where are you off to, Sam?

Tokyo, that's right. That would be cool. Where are you going, Robert? Where are you going? I don't know, because it says, I know, Roberto, as soon as I said it, I'm like, that's not right. I'm sick, in case you haven't.

Roberto Baldwin (02:18)
Boo. Boo because I'm not going to Tokyo.

Robert? Who the hell's Robert?

I'm going to George. I'm going

Sam Abuelsamid (02:29)
Heh. Heh.

Roberto Baldwin (02:31)
to the Hyundai meta plant.

Nicole Wakelin (02:33)
I'm going to... It's really cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:34)
you're doing that one? Yeah. Yeah. No,

Roberto Baldwin (02:35)
Yeah, which is cool because I haven't been to the meta plant. I wasn't able to go the first time.

So I'm excited.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:38)
you get to watch the spot robot dogs walking around.

Nicole Wakelin (02:42)
huh.

Roberto Baldwin (02:43)
they showed me that ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (02:45)
Well, you get to see them again.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:45)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (02:45)
It's actually one of the coolest plans I've ever seen. It's really nice. You would think this, the light and the openness. I am going to ⁓ Nashville for infinity.

Roberto Baldwin (02:49)
Yeah, that's the...

forever.

Nicole Wakelin (02:58)
Forever, never coming back. ⁓ Never coming back.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:59)
Never coming back from Nashville.

But one more thing flying related. ⁓ One thing that's always interesting to watch on YouTube is videos of planes doing ⁓ crosswind landings when you got heavy crosswinds and the planes are basically coming in sideways. Back in the early 90s, ⁓ in the wintertime I had to fly up to International Falls, Minnesota ⁓ for winter testing.

Roberto Baldwin (03:18)
yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:28)
There was one time and the flight that we took, we'd fly from Detroit to Minneapolis and then hop on a little Saab 340 that would make like two or three stops to get to International Falls. So we'd go to like Minneapolis to Bemidji. Yeah, basically, yeah. at one time, in, there was such a strong crosswind. And this is like a

Roberto Baldwin (03:44)
So was just like a bus. It was essentially a bus. A bus with wings. You have to pull a cord while you're in the sky. You're like, ding ding, that's my stop.

Nicole Wakelin (03:46)
Hahaha! ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (03:59)
15, 20 seat, you know, turbo prop, twin turbo prop. And, you know, so basically everybody's got a window seat. And so I'm looking out the window of this, this relatively small airplane. And as I'm looking out the window, I realized I'm looking down the runway as we're approaching the runway.

Roberto Baldwin (04:19)
yeah, cause you're coming in sideways. Cause you gotta come inside. You gotta come in sideways to the very last minute. Yeah, this was the issue in Chicago with the flight. was just, you're coming in at like this weird angle until the very last minute when the air isn't quite as bad because you have the ground sort of buffering. So you just, and then you just slap the, and then just smack the ground.

Nicole Wakelin (04:20)
You're like, huh, that's not how this should work.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:21)
That's not good. Yeah. The plane was probably

at about a 60, 70 degree angle to the runway.

Nicole Wakelin (04:29)
both.

Yep.

We took a, we almost landed but didn't. So they, we were coming in and it was like so bumpy and all of sudden it was like boop, taken off. That was in Salt Lake. We couldn't land, we were supposed to land in Salt Lake and couldn't. And then he, and even said, we've been circling for like an hour, we're gonna run out of fuel, so we're gonna make one more pass. And if not, we're going to Grand Junction. I'm like, way to comfort the plane, buddy. And then, so then we didn't land. And as soon as we didn't land, it was funny. You could tell who was really used to flying. Because there were a whole bunch of people that were still sort of,

Sam Abuelsamid (04:45)
I know.

Yeah.

That was in Salt Lake or in Grand Junction?

Roberto Baldwin (05:13)
He's like, nah, what do you gotta do?

Nicole Wakelin (05:14)
hanging on like, well they're also doing like, okay, so we're landing, we're like, no, we're going up again. Are you sure we're not, we're going up, we are not landing in Salt Lake. And the people that were panicking, my God, what's gonna happen? And the Freakle Flyer's like, ⁓ We can't do anything about it.

Roberto Baldwin (05:27)
Hmm. What are you going to do? I'm glad that we've made

flying a terrifying experience for everyone listening today. This is our lives. It sounds, our lives sound glorious and fun, but most of time we're just like, well, maybe we're going to die on a plane.

Nicole Wakelin (05:33)
Exactly. Enjoy your next flight, guys. Enjoy your next flight.

Could be today.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:41)
you know what you might you might

die on any given day you know out walking your dog or going to the grocery store you know so I mean it's just just enough we're all gonna die eventually

Nicole Wakelin (05:51)
So basically,

welcome to Wheel Bearings, where we remind you all the horrible ways you could die in your day to day.

Roberto Baldwin (05:56)
Yeah.

No one loves forever. Welcome to Will Barrett's podcast.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:59)
No,

that just means that you gotta live every day for, know, as if it's the last because you never know. It might be. Exactly. Enjoy your life. Don't live in fear. Speaking of which, Nicole, what have you been driving?

Nicole Wakelin (06:05)
Buy the car you want, because you never know. Okay, that's what the message is.

Roberto Baldwin (06:08)
You gotta take it to the limit. The limit.

Nicole Wakelin (06:10)
Enjoy your life. Don't live it.

Roberto Baldwin (06:13)
Yeah, what are you gonna do?

Nicole Wakelin (06:15)
Okay.

Yes.

Well, I missed a week. So we'll start with the car that I had last week, which if ever there was a car that caught flak on social media when I posted about this man, this poor thing, there was a lot of hate for this. And I wasn't, couldn't decide if it was EV hate or it was actually EV hate and Chevy hate. Very weird. The Chevy Equinox EV, which

Sam Abuelsamid (06:39)
Why would

that catch flak on social media?

Nicole Wakelin (06:42)
Everyone was hating on it. People were like, I just put up the normal videos I do like, hey, here's the inside. Here's how it looks. Here's a walk around the outside. Right. No, they were like, I got emails or messages like DMs. Is it such a bullshit car? I even know why they swore in the show. I don't even know why they have you driving this. This is terrible. Blah, blah, blah. Shoveys are garbage. Blah, blah. Evie's are garbage. Blah, blah. Loser. Why'd you buy that? And I'm like, I didn't. But OK. But yeah, people didn't.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:48)
Yeah, I saw those.

Roberto Baldwin (07:08)
Sounds like

some sort of weird bot thing.

Nicole Wakelin (07:11)
It was, they

were real people. I'm pretty sure they were real people, but it was very strange. Like, I'm used to not getting a response.

Roberto Baldwin (07:16)
Where are they though?

Sam Abuelsamid (07:16)
No, you

don't understand. There are no real people on the internet anymore. It's just us and bots.

Nicole Wakelin (07:20)
Mmm.

Roberto Baldwin (07:20)
yeah, there's no rib.

It's just us and bots.

Nicole Wakelin (07:22)
The three of us and bots. So I have Equinox CV, which I actually enjoy driving. ⁓ has three hundred and fifteen miles ish of range, depending on the trim that you're getting. There's a really big like 17 inch 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17,

like reasonably priced. This is nice. So this crossover SUV ish sized. It has actually I really like the interior of this because the mine was this really bright blue and had a white roof inside. It sort of had this bluish trim. It looks very purple in the videos. It's more like a sort of an iridescent kind of blue. That's like bits of it on the dashboard, bits of it on the doors, bits of it on the center console. So it looks really good. I think my biggest criticism of Chevy's is normally that the interiors can look kind of cheap.

This one didn't, I thought the interior of this actually looked good, so kudos to Chevy for that. I thought they deserved that little like go Chevy. So if you have the front wheel drive, it's 220 horsepower, 243 pound feet of torque. The all wheel drive, which is what I have is or had was 300 horsepower and 335 pound feet of torque. So it's a little bit more of it. You know, in many ways, drives like an EV, you mash the, guess I wouldn't call it gas anyway. Accelerator sounds so pompous. Mash the go pedal.

Roberto Baldwin (08:43)
Accelerator.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:45)
Go pedal.

Nicole Wakelin (08:48)
And it goes, it's very responsive. was nice to drive it, had a nice ride even. Taking it back and forth to Boston, it was not too bumpy. It was, because this is the worst season, I'm sure like it is in Michigan right now, Sam. The potholes are like the size of canyons and they could swallow your entire car if you're not careful. I hit a couple of them, sorry Chevy. The car is still fine, it still manages it really well. You feel it, because you're nailing a pothole, but it's still...

well-mannered and easy to drive, which matters. There's cargo room, 57.2 cubic feet if you fold the second row. That's plenty of cargo room. And if you have those rear seats up, there's still enough room you could put a family's bags back there easily, know, for suitcases, for roller bags, some random stuff. So it's, I like the Equinox EV overall. think it's a, know, EVs are getting a bad rap at the moment. A lot of people are showing anti-EV-ish. I am not.

I like this one. I would buy this one. I thought it was nice. I think it's a good price. I think you're getting a decent value for what you're getting. 300 miles of range. feel like it's 315 give or take. That's more than enough. Like that's enough. You don't road trip every single day of your life. You road trip a couple of times a year. If that. You're not probably, maybe. Like if you're a sales guy, maybe you're driving 300 miles in a day. If you're, you know, covering a territory or something.

Roberto Baldwin (10:06)
Maybe some people, a couple.

Nicole Wakelin (10:14)
Most people are not driving 315 miles in a day. Maybe in a week? I don't even know. Depends on the person.

Roberto Baldwin (10:22)
36

or 38 is the average miles. Yeah. The average person.

Nicole Wakelin (10:25)
38 so what's the math Sam do it real quick before I break out a calculator 38 times

7 is 196

Sam Abuelsamid (10:34)
Wait, you two were talking over each other. What was the question? You said, I heard you say what was the math? I didn't hear what the.

Roberto Baldwin (10:36)
like

Nicole Wakelin (10:38)
Hahaha!

38, yeah, 38 miles a day, seven days, 266 miles a week then is the average person driving. Once a week is all you need to charge. So, right, because your mileage, your range will come down. So cool your jets about freaking out about the range. You can charge this in your driveway all the time. ⁓ Cool your jets, people. So it's got plenty of range. I know there's vehicles out there with more range, but you don't really need that. Like you wrote like.

Roberto Baldwin (10:43)
the numbers were?

Sam Abuelsamid (10:49)
Yeah, yeah, you can charge once a week and you'd be good. In the winter, maybe twice.

Roberto Baldwin (11:01)
Cool your jets.

Nicole Wakelin (11:10)
How many times do you road trip? How many times do you really drive more than 315 miles in a single adventure? Not very often. So I don't really worry about that. know range anxiety still technically is a thing, but I feel like it's sort of a weird thing because vehicles do well enough that you can just charge them at home. You don't need to worry.

Roberto Baldwin (11:29)
Just go places.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:29)
And you know what?

There's a lot more public charging out there now than there was six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, and it's getting more reliable too.

Roberto Baldwin (11:37)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (11:39)
It's continually

Roberto Baldwin (11:39)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (11:40)
increasing the number of places where you can charge. Even some of the charging stations near me where there were, say, two chargers at it or maybe four, they have actually gotten a little bit bigger. The twos are now fours, the fours are now sixes. So they've upgraded some of the ones that are there. So it's getting easier and easier to charge electric vehicles. that just doesn't, it doesn't.

Roberto Baldwin (12:00)
Yeah.

It's being anti-EV is when people were anti-cell phone. Remember when people had cell phones and some people didn't. They're like, look at that person with their cell phone. We all have cell phones now.

Nicole Wakelin (12:06)
Mmm.

Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:11)
You know what's

Nicole Wakelin (12:12)
You all have now.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:14)
great to have when gas is $4, $5, $6 a gallon? An EV.

Nicole Wakelin (12:17)
and EV.

Roberto Baldwin (12:19)
⁓ yeah, I don't...

Nicole Wakelin (12:20)
What are gas prices? So what are gas prices by you right now, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (12:24)
⁓ generally around $3.90 to $4 a gallon for regular.

Nicole Wakelin (12:28)
And what about you, Robbie? You're in California, six bucks. And in New Hampshire, our cheapest gas station.

Roberto Baldwin (12:28)
About six bucks. Yeah, about, it's like 580 to 620. I looked at it because

I still have the BRZ and when I go to the airport, that's what I drive. And because I've had a bunch of shows, I had a big show with my band and I had to do a bunch of stuff. I've been driving the BRZ more recently, which means I'm like, oh, this sucks. Which is I'm driving the BRZ on the highway, which is like, okay, it's fine. No matter how fast or where you are in that car, you're having fun. But I'm like,

Nicole Wakelin (12:50)
It's 384 for me. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:58)
I wish we had a second EV.

Nicole Wakelin (12:59)
Yeah, see, there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:00)
Right

now, according to the alternative fuels data center, across the US and Canada, there are 17,585 DC fast charging locations with 79,739 charging ports.

Nicole Wakelin (13:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (13:16)
That's a lot.

Nicole Wakelin (13:18)
So basically you can find a place to charge your car. That's what we're saying.

Roberto Baldwin (13:21)
I mean, I've road

tripped our IONIQ 5 a bunch of times.

Nicole Wakelin (13:25)
Yeah, so I like the IONIQ. I mean, I like the IONIQ. I like the IONIQ. I like the Equinox. Both. It's still a true statement, just completely irrelevant. So I do like the Equinox. It's something that I would consider buying if I was looking at an EV right now. I think the interior is nice, the ride is nice, the range is plenty. It's comfortable. I like the style of it inside and out. So thumbs up for the Equinox EV.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:33)
Okay.

And there's a lot of room in the backseat too. It's shockingly roomy.

Nicole Wakelin (13:50)
It is a surprisingly roomy car. There's so I pushed the like, I always looked to see when Russ sits in the front seat, cause he's six, three, how much room is left in the back? Like, could you fit Russ behind Russ? And I think you could. Like I looked at it, it wouldn't be a huge amount of room for someone that tall, you could say, and it's not one of those where once you push the seat back, you're literally can't sit back there. Cause a surprising number of cars, if there's someone six feet plus in the front, you can't use that back seat unless you sit with your knees sort of.

like sideways around the seat. there's, mm-hmm, you guys are comfy. So this is a room car. So thumbs up for the Equinox TV. That's what I had ⁓ last week and it was nice.

Roberto Baldwin (14:20)
Or you just lay down on the seats.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:29)
Okay, so before you continue to the next one, you mentioned that you would consider buying this. There's one thing that you did not bring up in all your discussion of this is the fact that this is one of the GM EVs that does not have support for smartphone projection. So that means no CarPlay, no Android Auto. Does that impact your feelings about whether or not to, that you would consider buying something like this?

Nicole Wakelin (14:33)
Uh-huh.

So, you know, I like having Apple CarPlay and Android out in a car. ⁓ I don't know, honestly, if it'd be a deal breaker for me for the right car. I like having my Apple CarPlay. The right car, the right car. There was a time when I felt like everything that natively that the OEMs had was so horrible. You just didn't want to use it. But I feel like they're not on par, but they're still...

Roberto Baldwin (15:08)
You gotta have a really good car. That's the thing. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (15:25)
So for the right car, I would give that up. For the right car, I would say it's okay. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:29)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (15:32)
Currently the only infotainment system that I think works without having to use CarPlay is ⁓ Mercedes MBOS or MBUX, sorry, MBOS is the platform. MBUX, M-B-U-X. That's the only one. Just because it's like, here's a giant map, here's a couple of widgets, that's it. I'm like, this is exactly what I want with my car. I just want to see a few things. I just want it to be able to drive. I do.

Nicole Wakelin (15:53)
Hahaha!

And it does

have, so the thing with the Equinox too, it has ⁓ Google built in. So you can do the, hey Google, take me to my favorite ice cream place, whatever. And I really like the Google Assistant and the Google Voice. I like being able to say that. I feel like it's really good at hearing you. It's really good at interpreting you. So if I can't have my Apple CarPlay, Google built in, I like it.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:22)
And it does, it does pretty good route planning now. ⁓ and you know, the other thing you can do is, ⁓ you know, because you, you know, using Google maps, if you've got Google maps on your phone, either Android or, or Apple, ⁓ you can do your route, you know, you can, you can have your, have the vehicle tied to your Google account. You can, you can set it up in your Google account. You can do your route on your phone or on your computer and then just send it to the car.

Nicole Wakelin (16:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:50)
Yeah, so if you're planning a long trip, can just figure everything out beforehand, or you can make it up as you go along.

Nicole Wakelin (17:01)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. For the right car, yes. All right, okay, I'm closing, I'm officially closing the Equinox screen I have open with my Equinox click. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:06)
Okay. For the red car. Alright. Cool. Carry on.

Roberto Baldwin (17:06)
the right car.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:16)
do you want to do destination charges on that one?

Nicole Wakelin (17:19)
Yeah, and I looked at it before you did that. Go ahead, Sam.

Roberto Baldwin (17:20)
Seven, 16.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:24)
Think it's $16.95, but I could be wrong.

Nicole Wakelin (17:26)
My notes say 18. I didn't have I didn't have a monroney. So that was what my Google food showed. It could be wrong by the time we've done that, because I pulled my notes together a couple of weeks ago. Now it's a deal breaker for Roberto. He's like, done.

Roberto Baldwin (17:28)
my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:30)
they raised it.

Roberto Baldwin (17:32)
⁓ oof. Oof. For that much, for that much, it should have Apple CarPlay turned off. You're charge me that much.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:40)
You

Roberto Baldwin (17:45)
I figured a chargement

was $2,000 for destination. I should have be...

Nicole Wakelin (17:48)
Ha ha ha

Sam Abuelsamid (17:49)
Well,

Nicole Wakelin (17:49)
ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:49)
to be fair, ⁓ to give Jim a little bit of credit for one thing, when they advertise prices, like right now, I just pulled up chevy.com and went to building price. The price that they show right off the top includes the destination charge. So the 2026 Equinox EV, it says from 36,795, and that's including the destination charge. So they don't show you an MSRP and then way down at the end of the process tell you what the.

Nicole Wakelin (17:54)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (17:59)
Yeah, GM does say like, we've built it. is.

Nicole Wakelin (18:13)
Mm-hmm.

Right?

Sam Abuelsamid (18:19)
what the total price is.

Nicole Wakelin (18:19)
Which is really nice, you can, which I think is really, you know, because if you're looking, you build the whole darn thing and then you think, you know where you are and you get to the end and there's a lovely surprise of wait, I was being so careful and now there's an extra $2,000 on there that I didn't know was gonna happen, dang it, you know, that's just not cool. This one, see now I'm looking at, oh this is a 25 though. Okay, okay, that's what I was looking, okay.

Roberto Baldwin (18:21)
Ahem.

sake.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:36)
And it does say it says 1800 right now for destination.

Roberto Baldwin (18:41)
All right, so you

won, Sam.

Nicole Wakelin (18:45)
So yeah, high destination, but at least it's in there so you're not surprised. They're being really upfront about that, which I appreciate.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:51)
That's that's still 200 bucks less than the destination now on a like on a mock e Maki is 1995 now, I think Yeah

Nicole Wakelin (18:55)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (18:57)
Peace.

Nicole Wakelin (18:58)
Is it really?

Roberto Baldwin (19:00)
Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:04)
All right.

Nicole Wakelin (19:04)
Well,

Roberto Baldwin (19:05)
Oof.

Nicole Wakelin (19:07)
let that soak in for a second, everybody. So I'm ready. Are you ready to hear about the second car that I had, which was actually this week? It was two weeks. So this week I had the twenty twenty six Honda Pilot all wheel drive elite. So that's it's kind of elite. The only one cooler than that is I think there's a black edition. I think that comes and actually the pricing didn't come up when I was trying to find it. But

Roberto Baldwin (19:08)
Uff.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:14)
Yeah.

Elite Special.

Nicole Wakelin (19:33)
There are one, two, three, four, five, six, technically seven terms of this. They're all standard all wheel drive. The base sport starts at forty four to nine five. My elite comes in at fifty three, four, nine, five. So there's about a ten thousand dollar price spread between them. And I cannot read the destination on this. It's very blurry. Actually, I them in Rony, but the print is terrible.

Roberto Baldwin (19:59)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (20:01)
Ha. Ha.

Nicole Wakelin (20:02)
Like it's

it's like it's the printer screwed up. Take it.

Roberto Baldwin (20:04)
What is every?

Sam Abuelsamid (20:04)
So your

local fleet, they get you either way. They either don't give you a Manroni or they give you one that's a really bad copy that you can't actually read anyway.

Roberto Baldwin (20:08)
Ahem.

Nicole Wakelin (20:10)
Give me a monrony. I know that you

Roberto Baldwin (20:13)
⁓

Nicole Wakelin (20:13)
can't actually beat. So I should probably look it up or like for realsies wait. Let's see if, wait, I think it's 1495. I can't tell. Cause it's blurred. Okay, I know what number I'm going with, but I'm just gonna say it. I think it's 1495. I think it's 1495.

Roberto Baldwin (20:22)
It's a secret.

It's a secret.

You

Nicole Wakelin (20:36)
It's so like parts of it are blurry parts of it aren't when I went to look like shit. That's one of the blurry parts. So ⁓ because it's like it's like it got squinched in the printer. Yeah, you know. So anyway, so you're looking at about for this one about fifty three thousand dollars when all is said and done. ⁓ So it's like a light refresh to the share. It's nothing like dramatically different. There's now a standard twelve point three inch touchscreen. You get a.

Roberto Baldwin (20:41)
⁓ what is going on?

Ugh.

Nicole Wakelin (21:04)
10.2 inch digital instrument cluster. You do get wireless Apple Carpling and Android Auto along with Google built in, which is cool. There's like new colors. Also, I just said that I love 360 degree cameras, the ones that show you all the way around the car. I think those are the best thing ever. I would pay for that as an upgrade anytime it's something, because it makes it so easy when you're in a tight spot. And when someone posts, like, parks really, really close to you and you're trying to back out in the air and you think.

Roberto Baldwin (21:12)
Cool.

Nicole Wakelin (21:31)
As I'm backing out, I'm going to clip that guy's bumper as I make this turn. It's just so nice that little extra view. I love that little extra something something. Yeah. And if I was someone who drove in cities all the time, especially, I would absolutely have that in my car so I could see what was going on. So I really like that. ⁓ There is a three point five liter V6, 285 horsepower, 262 pound feet, 10 speed automatic. You get a bunch of drive modes, including snow mode, which thankfully I'm not going to get to try again until next, let's hope December.

Roberto Baldwin (21:37)
A little extra something, something.

Nicole Wakelin (22:01)
because the snow is still melting, hopefully. And we haven't had any snow in a week, so I'm gonna call it done. ⁓ It's raining. But it's the middle of April. I'm normally pretty close by mid-April. Like, if it's... We're not having a lot of flooding, but we are. Yeah, you guys are having serious flooding. We're just having a lot of rain, but nothing that's caused any flooding just yet. So, thankfully, that's not an issue. You can tow 5,000 pounds.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:01)
Hopefully.

Is it raining there? Are you?

Roberto Baldwin (22:09)
you just, you just, you just doomed yourself.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:15)
Are you guys having a lot of flooding there? Because we are here.

Nicole Wakelin (22:31)
on the all wheel drive model so you can tow a good bunch. ⁓ have the ground clearance. They have a trail sport in this. Trail sport gets an extra inch. So it's 7.3 in the regular one, 8.3 on the trail sport. So if you want to do a little off roading, it's not an off road, off road vehicle, you can go up to the cabin, do your thing. Exactly. For most, what most people are going to do, you're just fine with this. You're fine. You're fine.

Roberto Baldwin (22:49)
It's good for 95 % of what you're gonna do.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:52)
Yes.

If you're not going to Moab or Rubicon, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (22:56)
Yeah. You're fine.

You could probably do it in a Camry to be honest, but go on.

Nicole Wakelin (23:02)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (23:03)
Yeah, in most cases, yes.

Nicole Wakelin (23:04)
So. Mm So you get three rows of seating, you're going to get either seven or eight passengers, so it depends. There's captain's chairs that take it down to seven ⁓ or you have seating for eight. It's actually really roomy. And as I'm saying this, I just realized last night's leftovers are still sitting in the second row of the Honda Pilot. God damn it. I just realized it as I'm talking, as I'm talking.

Roberto Baldwin (23:23)
no! don't. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (23:23)
I hate it when that happens. I hate it when it's like, it's like we,

we either walk out and leave it sitting on the table or else leave it sitting in the back seat. And it's like, man, that food was so good and we wanted to have leftovers.

Nicole Wakelin (23:34)
Yes. ⁓ man. ⁓ we were at our favorite barbecue place. There were chicken.

Roberto Baldwin (23:38)
Weep, weep, weep.

Nicole Wakelin (23:40)
There were barbecue chicken wings in there. I'm going to. yeah, I'm not eating them. Barbecue chicken wings. think there was a bit of a German pretzel and ⁓ man. Probably. know it's the chicken wings are gone. I love. I was going to have those for lunch today. Nicole's problems. Dang it. As soon as I said Rose, I was like.

Roberto Baldwin (23:42)
Oh yeah, that's you're gonna die if you eat those.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:45)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:49)
No, no, you're you're probably with the pretzel, but that's the chicken wings. The chicken wings are.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:49)
You could probably eat the pretzel. Stick it in the microwave for 10 seconds, warm it up.

Roberto Baldwin (23:59)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (24:00)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Nicole Wakelin (24:03)
Our row has chicken wings in it. So there's, you have a good amount of space in here. So you get up to 113.7 cubic feet to fold everything down. So you get a good amount of space. This is a pretty roomy vehicle and it's nice to drive. So what I like about this is sometimes you get the larger SUVs, the three rows, they get a little unwieldy. feel like just heavy and they don't, it's not even underpowered. It's just the way they're balanced. You suddenly feel like you're driving a three row.

Roberto Baldwin (24:05)
Hmm.

Nicole Wakelin (24:32)
This doesn't feel like it actually drives really nicely. It still has plenty of power. If you mass a mash on the go pedal, as we've called it now, the go pedal makes it go. It is perfectly fine and responsive driving on the highway. This did a fabulous job of soaking up all the rough pavement that we have was better than the Equinox. It's it's quieter overall. It's just smoother. You know, you know, when I when I hit a hot pot hole in the Equinox.

You suspected I hit one when I was in the pilot. That's the difference. So you still know, but it's just right. Right. Did I actually steer out of the way? I may have caught. Yeah, we're in the equinox, knew. So, but so I really like driving and that's what you kind of want in a in a three row. You've got family. Presumably you have kids and keeping those kids comfortable and asleep once they fall asleep is important, especially if you're road tripping. You don't want to have your kids waking up just because you went over a bump.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:04)
Like I know I saw one. Thought just a little thump.

Nicole Wakelin (25:30)
or because the pavement changed on the highway or because you had to slam on the brakes or whatever. So I genuinely like the pilot. I generally like Honda's. I feel like they're solid vehicles. I feel like their pricing is sometimes a little on the high side. Like for this, though, the elite 50, the $53,495. The interior is comfortable. I it doesn't feel overpriced to me. It feels really reasonable. And for fuel economy on this, because you're talking about things, it is rated.

19 city 25 highway 21 combined not bad for three row. I mean think what they were rated Five ten years ago, right what the numbers would have been they are getting better So you don't have to assume that every three row gas vehicle is gonna be a gas guzzler you can still budget for your family's road trip and You know not go broke Even with gas prices where they were like we talked about earlier. So I overall I I do like this

I think it's a good vehicle. I think it's comfortable. I think it does exactly what you want a family vehicle to do. And Honda has a good reputation and their reliability is good. So your worries about being stuck on the side of the road on a road trip are minimal. Could always happen. But I feel like buying a Honda reduces the chances of that likelihood. So overall, I really enjoy driving this and I recommend the Pilot for anybody who needs those three rows for the kiddos.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:57)
Excellent. All right. Well, I had one of my all time favorite cars, of course. And it came just as the weather got really nice here in Michigan. We got some nice warm weather. So was able to drop the top and drive around in a Miata that wasn't mine. ⁓ I did spend time driving mine. I did spend time with mine, but I had...

Nicole Wakelin (27:19)
They gave you Miata?

Sam Abuelsamid (27:25)
a car that's actually been in the press fleet for a little while, but just finally made it around to me. This is actually a 2025 Mazda Miata MX-5, a 35th anniversary edition. So you cannot actually buy one of these new anymore because it's a 25 model. And what made the 35th anniversary special distinct from other Miata's is the color and trim combination.

Yeah, it otherwise, you know, mechanically, it's the same as every other me out. But the the 35th anniversary special is finished in the artisan red metallic, which is that deeper burgundy red that they introduced on the CX 90 a couple of years ago. So, you know, obviously, you know, soul crystal red is still the best one. But this this is a very nice color.

And it's a tri-coat, so they do three base coats of the color and then clear coat it. And especially in the sun, it looks fabulous. It's a darker red, so when it's overcast or a little darker, it's not as noticeable. The color is not as noticeable, but in the sun, it really pops and it looks fantastic. So you have the Artisan Red Metallic.

And then tan Napa leather interior and also the top. So the tan top against the dark red paint is a great combination. Like all current Miata's, it's got a two liter naturally aspirated four cylinder, 181 horsepower, 151 pounds feet of torque, which for a car that weighs barely over 2,200 pounds, perfectly adequate.

You know, it's you know, it's not going to win drag races against Corvettes or Mustangs, but it doesn't have to because it's going to get around corners faster than most of them anyway. It's the 17 inch wheels, 17 shallow wheels on this one. They're they're a silver finish on there. It's a what looks like a 10, 12. I got eight.

double spokes, so eight thin double spokes, and looks really sharp. And it's funny, know, driving this back to back with mine, you the original, the 1990 model. Again, you know, the performance is a little bit better with this one. got more power, ⁓ only weighs less than 100 pounds more than mine. ⁓ But, you know, the...

the overall characteristics, it still feels very much like a Miata, very nimble, ⁓ know, it goes exactly where you point it. ⁓ But in the modern Miata's, the belt line is a lot higher. Like in mine, when I sit in it, ⁓ the belt line comes up to below my shoulder. And I almost feel like I'm sitting on it rather than in it. You feel much more exposed in an old Miata.

And the doors are thinner than on the old ones even though overall dimensions on the new on the current generation of fourth generation Are very similar to the first one it you feel a lot more enclosed in it Which from a safety perspective is probably a good thing You know, it certainly feels a lot more solid mine feels more delicate in a lot of ways But they're they're both equally a blast to drive ⁓ and on the on the interior

You know, in addition to the tan covering on the doors, on the dashboard and on the seats, there's a panel across the top of the doors that stretches from the dashboard ⁓ across the top of the doors that is in the same ⁓ artisan red coloring. You know, so it matches the exterior. ⁓ The steering wheel, ⁓ the shift knob is covered in black leather.

⁓ stitched, know, kind of almost like a baseball contrast stitching on there. ⁓ My only complaint about the interior of the Miata ⁓ is the cup holders, which, know, to be honest, driving this car, you're probably not going to use the cup holders much anyway. But where the cup holders are placed is it's on, they're mounted off the rear bulkhead between the seats. So, you know, if you

pull your arm way back, will hit them with your elbow. ⁓ But that's a minor thing. I can live with that. I could easily live with one of these cars as a daily driver. ⁓ It's just so much fun to drive. Of course, there's always that caveat. It's so much fun to drive if you fit it. If it fits you, you're golden. If it doesn't, then you're out of luck.

Then you got to go get a better get a BRZ. Do I fit?

Nicole Wakelin (32:41)
Can you, do you fit?

Roberto Baldwin (32:41)
This is the first generation

Nicole Wakelin (32:45)
Nose,

Roberto Baldwin (32:45)
Miata that I actually fit in.

Nicole Wakelin (32:45)
Roberto. Really?

Sam Abuelsamid (32:48)
you fit in? Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (32:50)
that I don't fit in the A and B and C, none of those. There's a lot of different reasons. One of the main ones is when the top is up, the cross member, one of the cross bars is right where my head is. And so my head is resting like a centimeter below it. So every bump, every just like the whole time I'm just getting smacked in the head. So with the NDs going, they've sort of moved it and I actually fit in it. I will say that after when I had the ND,

Nicole Wakelin (33:08)
Oof.

Roberto Baldwin (33:19)
Like a year ago when I got back into my BRZ my BRZ felt like like a Ford Excursion There's just so much more room so it is it's it is still tight but I do fit in it like it is and it's very fun to Know I don't I don't even bother trying to RFs. I tried like the the The NC RF and they're like now like that's not a thing. So I haven't even tried the ND RF. It's not even and then what's the point? Why are we getting a Miata?

Sam Abuelsamid (33:25)
Hahaha

What about in the RF? Do you fit in the RF?

Nicole Wakelin (33:36)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:49)
Exactly. Absolutely. You know, the whole point of having a Miata is to put the top down. And the great thing about having a Miata, it doesn't matter if you have a 360 degree camera view. You don't need it because you just look around. You can see everything. You have you have 360 degree vision all the time. It's perfect. So as long as you fit, as long as you're not so tall that you can't fit. you know, to be fair, there's

Nicole Wakelin (33:50)
Hahaha! ⁓

Hahaha

Sam Abuelsamid (34:18)
Plenty of people that do not fit the Miata, but if it fits you, it's absolutely a great time. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (34:25)
Yeah, it's

like having the same height that say like Russ, like I'm 6'3", he's 6'3", I have another, like it doesn't mean that we all, it automatically excludes us from fitting in certain cars. Cause some of us are like, I have really long legs and really long arms. ⁓ So that sort of like kind of messes with like how I like, yeah, so your proportions aren't, know, we're not all like proportioned exactly the same based on our height.

Nicole Wakelin (34:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:43)
It depends on your proportions.

So the great thing about the Miata still, even in 2026, it's obviously more expensive than it was when it was new or when it first came out. Like my car was $13,000 when it first came out. But when you run that through an inflation calculator, actually not a whole lot different today because the 2026 Miata starts at $30,430.

which I think the original price, let's see that 13,000 in 1990 I should say. Let's see, $13,000.

in 1990.

equates to $33,695. And so the current gen Miata, the base sport model starts at $30,430. The mid-level club starts at $33,930. So, you know, it's basically just slightly, it's about the same price as it was 35 years ago. And even the loaded Grand Touring is 30... That's true, proportionally, yes.

Nicole Wakelin (36:11)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (36:13)
You just don't get paid as much as you did 35 years ago. That's the problem.

Nicole Wakelin (36:16)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (36:18)
Yeah, you're proportionally, you're not getting paid as much.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:18)
It's $35,730.

The 35th anniversary model, grand total, came to $37,435. Guesses on the destination charge?

Roberto Baldwin (36:31)
16.

Nicole Wakelin (36:33)
I'll go 17.95.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:35)
⁓ Robbie gets it, but you're both way over it was $1,185.

Nicole Wakelin (36:40)
Wow. mm, yep.

Roberto Baldwin (36:40)
Well, it doesn't weigh anything. We should have known better.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:41)
Yeah,

it's small.

Roberto Baldwin (36:44)
They

just shove it in the back of an F-150 and then take it off.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:47)
Pretty

much, yeah. At least a Super Duty. ⁓ Alright, so let's carry on. ⁓ So first up, let's talk about Mercedes-Benz.

Roberto Baldwin (36:49)
We're doubling up.

Let's talk about Mercedes-Benz. There are busy, busy beavers over there at Mercedes-Benz recently.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:03)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (37:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:09)
Yeah, you. Yeah. Real professionals here.

Roberto Baldwin (37:09)
⁓ I guess that's, that's the throw to me, huh? so I went to Tallahassee,

Nicole Wakelin (37:14)
What?

You

Roberto Baldwin (37:19)
I went to Tuscaloosa ⁓ to look at the new GLE, the new GLS, the GLE hybrid. I talked to Ola, I talked to the new CTO whose name I've immediately forgotten already. I know the old CTO was Marcus. ⁓

But yeah, so we, know, this was a very much a gas vehicle event. They also had ⁓ factory tours. I didn't have time to do that, unfortunately. Boo hoo me. We did get to go off-roading though in the GLE. I didn't get to drive, but it was really impressive how well this thing handled doing some really weird, crazy off-roading that again, no one's ever going to do in a GLE. I mean, they wouldn't even do it in a G-Wagon, to be honest. And the G-Wagon could like.

Nicole Wakelin (38:01)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (38:05)
deal with this like no problem. ⁓ That said, new GLE, what Mercedes has been doing recently is essentially just sort of revamping their motors for these vehicles, which ⁓ is quite impressive. This one has a new, I think a new camshaft and just a bunch of cool new stuff. ⁓ The GLE is available in a bunch of different flavors. I think the most exciting is probably the GLE 500E.

All of the ones we're getting in United States are all wheel drives. So they're all formatic. ⁓ So the GLE-E is their plug-in hybrid ⁓ and it will do probably... Okay, so there's a lot of confusion on the range for this when they had the event. The person who was giving us the presentation was from Europe. They were giving us numbers based on the Europe thing, but they were saying miles to kilometers. They're surrounded by a bunch of journalists. We're unnerving people to be around.

Nicole Wakelin (39:01)
Unnerving.

Roberto Baldwin (39:02)
because they're quite annoying.

ask a lot of like really hard questions at inopportune times. I, I finally, after I looked it up, this vehicle based on the WLTP number that they gave us with kilometers, this, well, they didn't give it to us. They gave us the wrong number, but based on the official number that they have in the press release, it's likely this thing's probably going to do about 40, 40, 40 to 50 miles of range. And,

with for electric only, which is ⁓ pretty nice. You you're get a Mercedes. You're be able to drive a long way, which, you know, we talked about 36 or 38 was the average ⁓ driving ⁓ distance of the average person ⁓ in their average life. That means that you're never gonna use gas or you're very rarely going to use gas. If you plug in your vehicle at night, ⁓ it's still, know, it has a three liter inline six.

443 horsepower, 443 pound feet of torque. Let me double check. No, wait, it's totally different. Sorry, it's 429 horsepower, 502 pound feet of torque. That was just the motor itself, which is the M256M Evo. Again, this is one of their updated motors. They did the same thing with the CLA, the hybrid. That's an updated motor, it's on a Miller cycle. These are different.

It has a new cylinder head, improved intake, exhaust, ports, a new camshaft I already talked about. It's higher revving. ⁓ They've extended the torque curve. It's got turbo. It's just they've done a lot to these motors, these gas motors in order to increase power and efficiency because I did an interview with Ola talking about electrification and ⁓ their sales guy who's a name I also forget, but they...

They are, I think when you see places like Ford, who's pulling back, ⁓ but then you see GM and Hyundai and they continue to push forward. ⁓ Mercedes is in the same bucket as GM, Hyundai, they're going to continue to push forward with electrification. ⁓ They don't see, they like, if we're playing a game and then, you know, we have like a, know, suddenly, you know, we get kind of pushed back a little bit, you don't just stop playing the game.

Like you want to do the long term, you're thinking long term. So he's...

Sam Abuelsamid (41:27)
Just because you've

fumbled once doesn't mean you'll walk off the field.

Roberto Baldwin (41:31)
And to be honest, didn't really, I think they fumbled and they talked about this. think their biggest issue was the EQ lineup initially. It didn't look like a Mercedes. And they were very forthcoming and like people want a Mercedes to look like a Mercedes regardless of the powertrain. And that's where we're delivering going forward. People don't want like a sort of like, you know, when you design a car 10, five years before it comes out, you don't know if people are going to like it. You're just hoping, you're like, okay, well the zeitgeist is this.

You know, we're seeing this, let's design this car and it looks cool to us, you know, five years before anyone else sees it. And then it comes out and suddenly it doesn't just doesn't look cool. It's like whatever flavor, whatever, you know, excitement that might've been five, six years ago within the company is gone by the time it comes to the market because, you know, people have, you know, design aesthetics just change all the time. Like what we thought was cool in the nineties, what we thought, you know, if you just

looking at fashion is a great way to sort of understand.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:33)
For some reason people thought that putting vent controls in the touch screen interface was cool, but they were wrong.

Roberto Baldwin (42:39)
Yeah, they thought,

Nicole Wakelin (42:40)
Seems like a good idea.

Roberto Baldwin (42:40)
yeah, it seemed like, this is cool. People are gonna, yeah, people are gonna love this. It's gonna be great. Or people are gonna be so excited. No. So what is interesting about this vehicle is it has a, it's a, ⁓ it's kind of a CCS. It's not gonna have NACs. ⁓ And it'll charge AC at 9.6 kilowatts, which, okay, yeah, it's plug-in hybrid. But it'll charge at 60 kilowatts DC fast charging.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:42)
No, it was never a good idea.

Roberto Baldwin (43:09)
which is sort of, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, crazy. ⁓ So you know, you can go to pretty much everything by the Tesla station at this point and if you're shopping, like all the,

Sam Abuelsamid (43:10)
on the plug-in hybrid? Wow.

So

if you plug in one of these GLE plug-in hybrids on a CCS station, you can top it up in what, probably about 15, 20 minutes? Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (43:33)
If that, you gotta run, you

gotta run into the store. There's a, yeah, so, yeah, so I think of the vehicles, you know, they also have an AMG version. I didn't get to drive any of these vehicles. They're not drivable yet. These are all like, this is an unveiling. The GLS looks really nice. All of them have physical, ⁓ what do call them? Vents, they all have physical vents. So there's no concern about that. They do all still have the ⁓ passenger side screen.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:54)
fence.

Roberto Baldwin (44:02)
which again, I've talked to them about it. I've talked to regular people. think we've talked about it. The average in the United States, we don't seem to care about those screens. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (44:12)
Well, it's funny,

the one vehicle I've been in that had a passenger screen that my wife actually liked using was in the EQS SUV. Yeah, because she was able to go in there and mess around with the audio and the navigation without leaning over. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (44:22)
Alright.

You could do everything in the Mercedes screen. Yeah.

Whereas some of them are very like, you can only do these certain things. You could pretty much just run the whole car. You can adjust like, you know, where you're going, what you're doing, et cetera. The audio, the media, know, anything you want to do, you can do it. And you can watch videos, which all of them have that. ⁓ That's it. You know, it's like, again, these screens are very much a play for Asia, especially China, where you got, you know, this is what

This is what people want. They're building global cars. If you're an automaker right now, especially right now because automotive sales have been down, I know when people are like, no, they're selling less EVs. I'm like, you if you look at the whole market, everyone and everything is down. So yeah, if you're building a global car, it makes more sense just to put all the things in it for everyone versus trying to sort of piecemeal. Well, this,

market gets this, this market gets this, especially when you're doing something big like.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:29)
It makes it a lot more expensive

when you have to do a whole bunch of different variations. you try and get something that's going to be usable everywhere.

Roberto Baldwin (45:32)
Exactly.

Yeah, I think an Audi was really smart with the new A5, where they've gotten rid of the four engine choices. And they're like, we have one engine, it's the best one. You're like, okay, cool, that's fine. There was no real, I can understand, you wanna upsell to the higher engine, but now you're just like, know what, that's just one engine, essentially one engine skew that we put in all the cars as opposed to having inventory for four different types of engine. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (45:46)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:08)
Mercedes, like BMW before it, is looking at their manufacturing as we're gonna be able to build a gas, a hybrid, and an EV all with the same car, all on the same line. Just sort of consolidating and being a little bit smarter about how you build these vehicles. Yeah, think, how many cars they show? So there's four GLEs. How many GLSs are there? There's two GLSs.

There's a the GL8, you got a 350 which is the only one it's got an inline-four the 450 and the 500e Both have the same engine. Those are inline sixes and then the 580 which is you know, the GLA it's got a v8 ⁓ for the GLS ⁓ You got an inline six the 450 is an inline six and of course the GLS 580 is a four liter v8 so, know your for ⁓

For the GLE, you got three different engine choices. One of the engines also is part of a hybrid system. ⁓ And so yeah, the GLS is the same. You get two engine choices, but yeah, it's the same. The inline six is the same. ⁓ Both of them were comfortable to sit in. They'd look nice. They looked like Mercedes. I think the GLE is more exciting ⁓ just because that's just me. ⁓ At the end of the day, if you need a lot of room, you got the GLS.

⁓ If you got kids, I guess fancy children you get the three row GLS if you have regular children ⁓ The GLE or up or a pilot ⁓ That's true that's true or you know, so yeah, no, think the the Yeah, it's it's it's very interesting to talk to to Mercedes about their powertrains because they do you know, they are like making fundamental changes to these motors with these

Sam Abuelsamid (47:44)
Or it depends. It depends how many children you have.

Roberto Baldwin (48:04)
with the latest generation of vehicles and they are still like yes we have gas vehicles but we are still very much an EV company ⁓ and so it'll be interesting to see where they are in a couple years but even they were like you know five years ago everyone thought we were going to sell more EVs than we did which you know I think everyone was following Ford's lead ⁓ who was following the Cybertruck's lead so it was all sort of like whoops

Nicole Wakelin (48:25)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (48:34)
So yeah, so it's, know, but again, you're paying a lot of money for a Mercedes, you still get some buttons. They put the rockers back on the steering wheels and you get physical controls for the ⁓ vents. that's, mean, that right there is worth however much these vehicles will cost when they come to market. Which will be by the end of this year, I believe.

Nicole Wakelin (48:41)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (48:57)
Cool. All right, there was another bit of news that came out from Mercedes in the last couple of weeks as well, which ⁓ was around the new steering system on the EQS. they've got a revamped version of the EQS coming. It still has the same basic shape. The photos that they released, it's wrapped in camo, but it looks like they're making, especially the front end, look a little more, slightly more traditional Mercedes, even though it's

You know, the grill has no real airflow through it. And one thing about all these, the GLE and the new EQS and the GLS, they're all adopting these ⁓ similar signature headlights, you know, that started on the CLA where you've got the Mercedes three-pointed star lit as your running lamps in the light clusters. ⁓ But on the EQS,

they're not showing the whole car yet, but but they they showed off the the new steer by wire system that's on there and You know like the one on the cyber truck, you know, it's it's complete. There's no mechanical connection between The steering yoke and yes, there's there's a yoke now. No steering wheel and the wheels but you know, it's got like they limit the

the total lock to lock steering angle to about 170 degrees. So it's just short of going to 90 degrees ⁓ in either direction of angle from the yoke. ⁓ And it's going to be interesting to try this out. I've tried this stuff out on a couple of demo vehicles from suppliers over the last few years. And it's fascinating to try it. ⁓

I haven't had a chance to spend time with anything on the road that has a full steer by wire system like this, because I never drove a Cybertruck. ⁓ I'm not crazy about the yoke, if it only turns 170 degrees from one end to the other, you're never going to go hand over hand with the thing, so it doesn't really matter. Getting rid of the top half of the steering wheel means that you... ⁓

you you get better visibility of your instrument cluster, but it's also going to potentially pose a problem in China. They may not be able to use this in China because we talked a few weeks back about the regulation changes in China because of the way they test, do the crash testing for the steering wheels. Um, you know, it's specifically looking at the impact on the, the top part of the steering wheel itself. And if there's no top part, then it, it

They can't test it and it fails the way the regulations are written. Maybe the Chinese will change that regulation, I don't know. Or maybe Mercedes will just put a standard steering wheel in the cars for the Chinese market.

Roberto Baldwin (51:55)
Yeah.

I mean, I'm fine with steer by wire. I know it's even more, you know, sort of removed from the road, which I'm not a fan of for me personally, but I think most people aren't driving like I drive, to be honest. And I think people who are driving any sort of luxury vehicle, they're fine with something like this, unless it's like an AMG or something like that. I just don't, the yoke just like sort of like, it just reminds me like in the eighties, we all watched Knight Rider. We're like, that's cool.

Nicole Wakelin (52:31)
Ha ha

ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:32)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (52:32)
And

then after that, like, oh, you remember in the nineties when, late eighties, early nineties, like every car, every concept car had a joystick. Remember that was the cool, like we were all going to drive with joysticks. And now they're like, ah, no, that's not the hell with it. Maybe not. Um, about those lights, I forgot the, new lighting system as 50%, the, um, it has a larger light field. So you're getting more of a spread with these new lights on all these vehicles and they're using 5 % less energy.

Nicole Wakelin (52:41)
Yep.

Maybe not.

Roberto Baldwin (53:01)
So it's a bunch of little teeny tiny LEDs. it's pretty, so that's kind of cool. But they're thinking about how much energy they're using. Especially when you're looking at vehicles that at some point they want them to have level three and level four, which means that computing's gonna suck up a lot of power.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:17)
Yeah, so they need to reduce power consumption wherever they can.

Roberto Baldwin (53:23)
Yeah.

But the flatter steering wheel, I don't know, just give us a regular steering wheel. Make it an option. That's my only thing. I'm like, if someone wants to drive with this weird thing, it looks like a butterfly, ⁓ cool, that's their, but give me the option of just having a steering wheel because I like a steering wheel.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:31)
Yeah.

I mean, you know, Tesla did eventually go back to a conventional steering wheel in the Model S and Model X, but they didn't have, they didn't, those cars didn't have steer by wire. You know, they had, they, when they did the last refresh of those, they put in a yoke, but you you had to actually go hand over hand, which just didn't work very well with that yoke. ⁓ So we'll, see what happens. All right. ⁓ General Motors. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (53:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:12)
They've got an assembly plant. They've got two assembly plants in Lansing, Michigan. The Grand River assembly plant is where they currently produce the Cadillac CT4 and CT5. Although I think the CT4, they may have ended production of that, but they're building the CT5 there. They used to build the last, the sixth gen Camaro there. And they're now getting ready for the next revamp. They're doing, updated a new version of the CT5.

They have supposedly green lit a new seventh generation Camaro that's going to be built there and apparently a new sedan for Buick.

Roberto Baldwin (54:52)
If it's not the Grand National, should just shut Buick down. No car, no Buick has had a huge, a bigger like impact, especially recently in the sort of culturally than the Grand National. Like I wanted to buy a like I've wanted a Grand National since I was a little kid. My uncle had one and I was like, this car is rad. And so ever since I've wanted one and you're like, you're getting older and I'm like, okay, if I could save enough money, I can buy one. They're getting sort of.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:55)
Ha ha.

Nicole Wakelin (54:56)
That's the only

option.

Roberto Baldwin (55:21)
you know, inexpensive, and then run the jewels, and Kendrick Lamar ruined that for me. So if they're not building a Grand National, what are they even doing?

Sam Abuelsamid (55:33)
So do you think they should bring back the old turbocharged 3.8 liter V6 from the 1980s?

Roberto Baldwin (55:38)
I care what they put

it. They just bring something. They just have something that people, they need like a seller. Something cool. If you make a Grand National and you only tweak it just a little, the design just a little, just a little bit. ⁓ they also had one in Watchmen. It was electric. They had an electric Grand National in the Watchmen TV show. And I really wanted that car. So if they gave us an electric Grand National, just take my money, G. that's definitely not going to be electric.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:56)
That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I don't think this is going to be electric.

Yeah. But, you know, it's going to be on the same alpha platform as the CT5 and the Camaro.

Roberto Baldwin (56:16)
Camaro

which is like it's all signs point to Grand National.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:21)
Yeah. Would a four door Grand National be acceptable to you though?

Nicole Wakelin (56:22)
site.

Roberto Baldwin (56:27)
I don't think I have a choice. It's like a four door Acura. It's like, well, this is the way, this is the way of the world. Now this is how, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:30)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (56:31)
Hahaha

Sam Abuelsamid (56:36)
The world doesn't want to buy two-door cars anymore.

Roberto Baldwin (56:38)
Yeah, the world is very picky about two door. Stupid world. I got my two door car. I make people if they want to get in the back of the BRZ, ⁓ they got to open that and put the seat down, slide it forward, shove things back there.

Nicole Wakelin (56:40)
Stupid world.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:52)
Yeah, but how many

people do you know that are as tall as Jill Simonillo that can actually fit in the backseat of a BRC?

Roberto Baldwin (56:57)
So the drummer for my band, he's not as small as Joseph Melton. So he and the bass player who's about the same height as me, sometimes I give him a ride to Bart after band practice. so, and like half the time I have the BRZ and half the time I have the Onyc 5. Well, for this band practice, I always had the BRZ because my wife has work. he, I mean, he doesn't fit back there, but he's back there.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:00)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (57:00)
my gosh, really?

Sam Abuelsamid (57:23)
Hahaha

Roberto Baldwin (57:25)
Keith, I think he's sideways and it's only a few blocks.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:29)
Okay, well that's not so bad.

Roberto Baldwin (57:30)
Yeah, no, we wouldn't drive him for like an hour. That would just kill him.

I- I- ⁓ I'll dead.

Nicole Wakelin (57:36)
kill him, he'd be dead.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:38)
I once sat in the back seat of a Hyundai Tiburon. If you remember the Tiburon.

Roberto Baldwin (57:43)
How?

I do remember Tim Brown. How'd you do that? Was it magic? You were younger. It was a different time.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:48)
It's all kind of scrunched up and stuff. That's true. It

was, you know, like 17, 18 years ago. All right. So last week, Chad and I did discuss the, you know, as we were recording it, it was just before the event that Nissan did in Japan last Tuesday night or Monday night, Monday night, our time here.

Roberto Baldwin (57:56)
Different time.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:16)
was Tuesday morning in Japan when they did it. ⁓ And we did talk about the ⁓ new Rogue, which is coming this fall, ⁓ and is going to be initially at least offered only with the e-power hybrid system on there.

Roberto Baldwin (58:31)
Which I drove, we can talk about that. I drove the e-Power, it's very nice. I drove it in Japan, I drove it recently in LA. It is a very nice, like you should be, people at Nissan should be very proud of themselves for this hybrid system. That's, yeah, it's, like I tried to do the thing where you rev it so it's trying to make it sound like a Toyota and it wasn't nearly as loud as a Toyota.

Nicole Wakelin (58:35)
Mmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:35)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (58:45)
That's good to hear.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:53)
It is much more pleasant. I haven't

driven it in the Rogue. I drove it in the Qashqai ⁓ last November and ⁓ it is really, really good. I was very impressed with it. Have you driven the e-Power yet, Nicole?

Roberto Baldwin (59:00)
Yeah, I drove in the cash guy. I didn't drive.

It is, yeah, Nissan builds great. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (59:10)
⁓

I don't know that I have.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:13)
Did you go to the Nissan event last fall in Nashville?

Nicole Wakelin (59:18)
You're asking me about last fall and I have the world's worst cold. can't remember what I did 20 minutes ago. I don't think, did I? I don't know that I did. I can't remember. I honestly, I'm just gonna be honest, I can't remember.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:22)
Ha ha ha.

Okay.

⁓ Well, ⁓ in addition to the Rogue, which we talked about last week, ⁓ well first of all, do you guys, do either of you have any thoughts on the design of the Rogue?

Nicole Wakelin (59:40)
I like how it looks.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:43)
Yeah, it's quite different from the current one.

Roberto Baldwin (59:45)
Yeah, I think they...

Nicole Wakelin (59:46)
I think it's a nice

change. think it makes it more updated. It makes it look a little bit more current and not as dowdy as it kind of looked before. It was looking meh before. And I like the Rogue. I think it's a great little crossover.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:52)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (59:53)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:59)
Well, ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (59:59)
I

think they've done a good job at sort of taking a car that, like you say, was pretty meh and ⁓ making it look a little bit more exciting. I mean, it still looks like every other medium-sized SUV on road. But the front end looks really nice. I think they took a lot from the Aria, which was a car that I think was better than people said it was. Especially the interior of the Aria was amazing. And the EEP, they're...

Nicole Wakelin (1:00:06)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:27)
4E4. Their all-wheel drive system was really nice on that vehicle, which again, unfortunately, it just didn't resonate really with folks here in the United States.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:40)
Well, ⁓ they also showed off the new Nissan Juke, which we are not getting, unfortunately. ⁓ And it's going to be an EV. ⁓ And like prior generations of Juke, ⁓ it's a little different looking. Every version of the Juke so far has been a little out there. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:00:47)
you

I feel like if they

made it look just like a car, everyone would have it wouldn't have technically been a juke. It had to be a little bit a little bit funky funky. So mission completion then if it has to be weird. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:08)
Yeah, it has to be weird or it's not a juke. That's the law.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:16)
Well, they definitely achieved that. ⁓ Looking at this, it does ⁓ adopt a lot of the design language from the hyperpunk concept that they showed at the 2023 Tokyo show. ⁓ It's obviously toned down somewhat from that one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:38)
Scooch.

Nicole Wakelin (1:01:38)
They

got rid of the funky, I like the way the headlights used to be on the old juke, the lights were weird. Like it was a weird, these funky weird headlights. Now they're sort of, what are these? What shape is that? Is that an ock? One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:41)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:44)
Yeah.

These are, these are less weird.

That would be, let's see, one, two, three, four, fives,

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:51)
One, two, three, four, five, six.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:55)
hexagon.

It's sort of an uneven, it's an irregular hexagon.

Nicole Wakelin (1:01:57)
What's, it's like, okay, thank

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:58)
⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:01)
you, engineer. But then there's so many, there's so many creases in the angles, in the doors. The sheet metal is not flat. It's like crease, crease, crease, crease, crease, crease. It makes me, it makes me think of the.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:13)
It's a low polygon car. It's a car from

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:13)
Kinda like the...

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:16)
the video game Star Fox.

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:18)
It makes me think of the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:18)
Ha

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:19)
Epcot ball. Sorry, it's like a think of like, there's so many angles to it. But I weirdly like it, though. I say that, but I kind of like it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:21)
Uhhh...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:25)
Well, yeah, no, I do too.

I actually like it better than the old. I was never a fan of the like the first generation Juke that they sold here. I know was never a fan of the way it looked. I was it just did not work for me. But I like actually really liked driving it. It was because I once drove a Juke Nismo, which was a hoot to drive. Just, you know, as long as I just kind of close my eyes till I got inside the car.

Nicole Wakelin (1:02:34)
Yeah?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:54)
Then was great.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:55)
just bumping into things like like mr magoo

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:58)
Yeah.

But I do like the look of this one. I like this origami look to it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:04)
I like it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:03:06)
I think it looks cool. It's very different. But I like it every now and when they go a little different with a car. I think that's neat.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:11)
I think I talked to the Nissan design dude, who's again, whose name I can't remember because I'm old and I have no brain. Yeah. And he was saying like in the United States, we don't have like a lot of like, like charm doesn't or whimsy like charm or whimsy doesn't really work in the United States. Like it just, it's not a, which is sad. We're not whimsical people. We're you're like, ah, um, where I see this doing well in Europe. Like I can see like, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:17)
Alfonso Abaya.

Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:03:32)
We're not whimsical.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:41)
5,000 units being sold here in the US. Because it's too, every, United States is so much like high school. Like everyone wants to be just like everyone else. Like you pick your clique and then you're just going to, you're going to put that uniform on and you're going to drive that car and you're going to go to those restaurants and you're going eat that food and you're going to listen to that music. Like, yeah, there's, it's very, we're very clique and none of us want, with Homer Simpson, I'm not cool enough to be weird or star-armed.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:52)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:03:55)
Pick your click.

You

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:12)
Yeah, you're gonna eat at Applebee's and shop at Target ⁓ and get all your tools and outdoor stuff at Home Depot.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:28)
Yeah, it's, Yeah, we're all gonna drive a gray or white car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:28)
Everything's got to be the same.

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:30)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:34)
Yeah. So ⁓ I do like the color on this, this sort of lime greenish yellow. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:42)
Cause they showed the blue one, the blue one's like meh.

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:45)
Hahaha!

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:45)
I mean the blue one's like nice, but it looks cooler and that's crazy green.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:49)
Yeah. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:51)
Were there

pictures of the blue one? I've only seen the green one.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:53)
There's

a video that's embedded in the Inside EV story that's in the show notes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:55)
Like it doesn't even look like the same car.

Nicole Wakelin (1:04:57)
wow.

I missed

that. Let's see. If I watch it, will everyone hear it? No, let's see.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:05)
⁓ So this is apparently going to be using the same platform as the Leaf. So same 52 kilowatt hour and 75 kilowatt hour batteries, ⁓ saying up to 386 miles of WLTP range. So it'll probably be around 305, 310, similar to the Leaf ⁓ if you were ever to test it on the EPA cycle, which since they're not going to sell it here, probably no reason to do that. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:05:31)
They won't.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:31)
They don't have to.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:35)
probably front wheel drive only, although it could support all wheel drive. An all wheel drive version of this could be fun. ⁓ Put this up against ⁓ the Toyota CHR, that would be interesting.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:48)
yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:05:49)
Mmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:50)
Nissan makes really good inexpensive cars. That's my big takeaway from Nissan is they just they make these really fun powertrains that sort of end up in mid-priced cars, which people don't seem to want for whatever reason, or people haven't traditionally wanted the last 10, 15 years. But their entry-level inexpensive cars are so good. The Kicks is better than the Altima. The Leaf is better than...

The leaf was

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:26)
All right, anything else on the the juke any other comments on that for remove?

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:33)
It's fold-tastic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:35)
All right. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Porsche introduced yet another, I think this is about the 378th different variation on the 911. This is the 911 GT3 SC, which is the first time they've done a convertible version of a 911 GT3. It's got all the GT3 goodness.

Nicole Wakelin (1:06:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:04)
but it's a convertible. It's available with a manual transmission, which is outstanding. And it's a naturally aspirated four liter flat six, 502 horsepower at 9,000 RPM.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:08)
Yeah.

This is a party mobile.

Nicole Wakelin (1:07:23)
Yeah it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:23)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:25)
This is, you know,

I see a lot of people buy GT3s who have no business behind the wheel of a GT3. They're driving so like they don't have to do corner, they don't have to corner, they don't have to do anything. I think this is, and I think some people are gonna get all upset because like, well, the GT3, you know, you're losing some of the rigidity because ⁓ it's a convertible. Shut up. You're never gonna do.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:31)
Mm-hmm.

The way most people drive

a GT3, they won't matter. It won't make any difference.

Nicole Wakelin (1:07:50)
you

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:51)
It doesn't matter.

Even the way you drive, whoever you are, you're not doing real 10 tenths on this car, because there's nowhere you can do that, to be honest, on regular. Yeah, if you take it to a track, and then if you're the person who's going to a track, you're going to buy the hard top. So I support this manual convertible GT3. A salute to you, Porsche.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:59)
Yeah, unless you take it to a track.

Nicole Wakelin (1:08:00)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:06)
You're going to buy the hard top anyway.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:17)
Remember every time they sell a Macan every every the the 5000 variants of the 9-eleven are all because they sell a lot of Macan's and kind So every time someone hates on those those those Porsche SUVs I'm like you need to shut your mouth because those SUVs pay for this You know that there's now a variant for every 9-eleven owner each individual owner has their own very own variant There's gonna be like the bill variant

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:25)
Yep.

Nicole Wakelin (1:08:26)
Ha

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:41)
It's not just picking

your own colors, but there's a unique trim level for everybody who buys one. They could just sell one of every different type of 911 and satisfy the market.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:47)
Just, just yeah, for everyone who buys one.

Yep, yeah, it's, know, and so don't get all up on your high horse with people who buy 911 SUVs, like, oh, they're not real Porsches, and first of all, those cars drive amazing. Second of all, they pay for all these.

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:01)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:10)
And well, I I suspect that the prices they charge for this, it probably pays for itself anyway. The GT3SC, $273,350 starting price. Yeah. Then when you bring in your paint chip and say, I want it to be this color, then they'll charge you another 30 grand or so for that, for painting it in whatever custom color you want and ⁓ doing unique interiors.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:16)
Yeah, it's that cheap.

starting that's starting price so

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:25)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:39)
I do like the red plaid interiors on these press photos.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:42)
Yeah,

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:43)
Mm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:43)
this red plaid's really nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:44)
Yeah, that that is cool.

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:47)
That looks really cool. I'm a sucker for a plaid interior. Those just, it just looked cool.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:52)
This is the car for everyone's like, well, there's no fun cars anymore. I'm like, well, if you have $300,000, you can either buy 10 Miata's or one of these.

Nicole Wakelin (1:09:58)
I just was with someone who has...

I was in LA last weekend, I visited a friend who has a 911 and he has a tan like that dark saddle kind of interior and he had a green plaid like a green and blue plaid. Oh my gosh, it looks so pretty. It is beautiful.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:13)
⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:20)
Alright, let's see Volkswagen The ID 3 neo has now been revealed. So this is a significant update to the ID 3 and They're now, you know as they did with the ID ID 2 polo They're they're putting actual names on their EVs so this is this pretty big update for for VW and

It has, you the exterior doesn't look dramatically different. You know, it's revised the front fascia and the lights and stuff. The interior is where they make the big difference on this one. And remember we were talking a couple of weeks ago about Thomas Schaefer saying buttons everywhere. You got to have buttons in a car. Well, they, they certainly did that in this one. then.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:06)
Mm-hmm.

Look at all those

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:12)
They got

all the buttons. It's... It's...

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:12)
buttons. A whole row of buttons. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine buttons on the center console. Wait, let's see. Wait, where's my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:15)
And look at the driver's side armrest. Count the number of window switches on the driver's side armrest.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:24)
There's four.

Look at that. One, two, three, four.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:26)
There's.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:27)
One,

two, three, four, how many are on there? I can't see that one as well. Every window?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:30)
One for every window. no front

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:33)
Yay.

⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:34)
or rear button now. They realized what a dumb idea that was.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:36)
Look at that, there is

four buttons and a child look button and buttons to look and unlock and they're all right there. ⁓ my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:44)
Yeah. And on the steering wheel,

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:45)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:46)
you got actual buttons there too, instead of the the touch, the haptic touch controls they had before.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:53)
I like the design of this button layout. It's very 80s. It's got a very clean like brawn.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:56)
I was gonna say the very square, it's so squared off on

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:56)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Wakelin (1:11:59)
the steering wheel, that's kinda cool.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:01)
Yeah, I guess it's got this very 80s brawn like, yeah. And then the dash, no, I think, of course we're not getting this car, but anyway. But these will end up in the ID4 and then updated ID buzz and et cetera, et cetera. Good job Volkswagen.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:01)
Yeah, it's it's very yeah, very 80s Volkswagen.

Nicole Wakelin (1:12:09)
Not that we're ever going to see it. was about to say that. Not that we'll ever get to drive it in the United States.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:10)
No.

Yeah. And you know, even,

even though they have stopped production of the ID four in Chattanooga, they have said that we're going to get an updated ID four at some point. And so it will undoubtedly have this interior in it, which is, which is a good thing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:33)
The ID.4 isn't bad. It's just, think I wrote, I think I did a video about it's a boring, it's sort of a boring car, but it does the thing it needs to do. I mean, how many gas, how many boring gas cars are on the market? 80 % of them?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:40)
Yeah. But you know what else

is boring? A Toyota RAV4. And it's the best selling nameplate in America.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:50)
Yeah,

it is. It's a very boring car, but it's...

Nicole Wakelin (1:12:54)
went out

to dinner last night. There were three RAV4s in the parking lot with dealer plates, like the new, like you just bought the car, three. Like everyone bought one yesterday. Uh-huh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:01)
huh. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:02)
Yeah, no. Everyone bought any Rad4? It's a

good car. Good, boring, not exciting. I call it a Rad4 because I want to give it little X or something for at least Rad4. I mean, it's not a fun car, but I mean, what it is, it's pretty rad. It sells really well.

Nicole Wakelin (1:13:11)
You called the what? Rad for- okay. All right, we can go with that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:23)
Yeah, so the ID.3 Neo, they've made some other updates to it as well. it's, let's see, where's the, yeah, so they've improved the efficiency of the motors, they've upgraded the batteries and everything, up to 630 kilometers WLTP, which is about 385-ish, 390 miles.

So, you know, over 300 miles of range on the top models. ⁓ Faster charging. It's, you they've just, they've upgraded it across the board. So.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:04)
Yeah,

it's still 400 volt, but it's still like, it's the ID.3, it's entry level vehicle. yeah, I'm not expecting 800 volts from something like this.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So hopefully we will get an ID for with all these upgrades before too long. ⁓ all right. ⁓ Uber, you know, back in 2018, ⁓ Uber was the first company to have somebody killed with one of their, ⁓ autonomous vehicle, autonomous development vehicles. and, then a little over a year later, they abandoned their whole.

AV development program sold it off to Aurora. And then in the last couple of years, they've been throwing money at just about everybody that's working on AVs to get robo-taxis into their fleet as soon as possible. ⁓ And that number now adds up to grand total of about $10 billion that they are investing in robo-taxis, ⁓ which is a lot of money.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:09)
It's a lot of money for something that isn't going to be profitable for about 10 years. Then again, Uber wasn't profitable for whatever. And when you see these companies, they're oh, we're doing autonomous whatever. A lot of that is just sort of appeasing shareholders. Like Rivian could do anything in the world to make, they could have made the best EV truck on the planet, but until they start talking about AVs, then they got a spike in their stock price.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:15)
at least.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:39)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:39)
just because

they said autonomous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:42)
⁓ Yeah, so Uber is planning to seven and a half billion dollars on buying robo taxis for its fleet. So that's, I mean, that's a fundamental shift for Uber. ⁓ You know, going from an asset light model where they rely on drivers to bring the vehicles to them ⁓ and to going to owning their own fleets. ⁓ And, you know, they've partnered with a bunch of companies that, you know, they're running Waymo's in Austin and Atlanta.

Nicole Wakelin (1:15:50)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:12)
They're running ⁓ AV ride, robo taxis in Dallas and Houston. They're running main mobility robo taxis in Atlanta. They're running emotional robo taxis in Las Vegas. They've got partnerships in, ⁓ in Japan, ⁓ in the middle East. They're going to be, they're planning later this year to start testing ⁓ vehicles from wave in the UK. So.

You know, they're throwing and they're throwing money at all these companies. You know, they've also, you know, invested in in Lucid and Rivian. You know, they initially put 300 million dollars into Lucid, 300 million dollars into Neuro, who is their partner for Robo taxis. They last week, they put another they invest. They they participated in another 650 million dollar round for Lucid. ⁓ And also ⁓ they put several hundred million into Rivian. ⁓

for their robo-taxis. So they're throwing money around like there's no tomorrow.

Nicole Wakelin (1:17:15)
It's a lot of money for the hope that it's gonna pay off soon, but like you said, not probably.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:18)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:21)
It's gotta be, ⁓ especially now they have all these things on their books, all this inventory that they have to deal with now. includes taking care of these. includes, are they taking care of the tele control? Who does that? Is that the individual companies? Is that Uber who takes care of that? When the car gets confused and you have to call home and someone's looking through a monitor and controlling the car, who does that? There's so many things that are going on with this RoboTaxi stuff that...

that we don't, you know, and they, again, for the sake of shareholders, you don't talk about stuff like that. You're just like, look at this, we're all gonna be able to ride in robo taxis. I'm like, yeah, but remember when Uber came to San Francisco or really any other city and increased the traffic? Like they made traffic worse.

Nicole Wakelin (1:18:09)
all the stories

of the traffic jams that happen because of all the things that they do and yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:14)
And that's just, I mean, we're talking about the human drivers. did research and it turns out that increasing the amount of cars on the road made more traffic because we increased more taxis, which were Ubers, more lifts. so, yeah, traffic got worse and some of this money, like throw like 1 % of this money at like public transportation and that would be a lot better.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:24)
Funny how that works.

Yeah. Let's see. right. So Doug Field, ⁓ Doug Field left Ford or is leaving Ford. They announced it a couple of days ago. ⁓ And you remember when Ford did this big reorganization and they created two separate business units, one called Ford Blue, which was all their traditional stuff and Ford Model E, which was all their EVs and software and digital and electronic stuff. Well,

⁓ Doug leaving Ford, they're reorganizing again and they've created something called the, ⁓ what the heck was it called now? ⁓ The Product Creation and Industrialization Group, ⁓ which ⁓ is being.

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:20)
Trying to find the title, it was a weird name.

What

does that even mean?

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:28)
Isn't

that every group? That's like saying science and technology. We'll be building our company with technology. We're like, okay.

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:32)
product.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:36)
Basically

what it is, even though I reached out to Ford when this announcement came out and I said, does this mean that Model E is going to go away? They said, no, no, E is still there. Model E not going anywhere, ⁓ least not this week. ⁓ Because basically what it says here in the announcement, the new structure which integrates Ford's electric vehicle, digital and design team with its global industrial system.

Nicole Wakelin (1:19:54)
Not today, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:06)
electric vehicle, digital and design. That is basically all that was Model E. So pretty much everything that was part of Model E is now being integrated into this new group, which is reporting to, yeah, it was reporting to Kumar Gulhatra, who's the chief operating officer for Ford. ⁓ And Alan Clark, his new title, he had been leading the advanced EV program, the Skunk Works. ⁓ He's now

Nicole Wakelin (1:20:11)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:18)
Product creation industrialization.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:35)
Vice President of Advanced Development Projects, and he'll continue leading the Advanced Electric Vehicle Development Team ⁓ in Long Beach, and working on launching the Universal Electric Vehicle Platform. So he's now reporting to Kumar. So what exactly is left of Model E? I'm guessing that within the next few months, we will see Ford announce that, yeah, we're just gonna go back to one.

Automotive business and I think I think what they're the way I'm interpreting this right now is that they've seen what's going on with the skunk works program and They're confident enough that it is working so well that they're just gonna roll it right back into the main organization because Some of the stuff they talk about in here is they want to bring the new electronic architecture that the skunk works developed across the board

to all their vehicles so they can have full OTA updates on everything they build. ⁓ Whether it's got gas, hybrid, diesel, whatever, it's all gonna be updatable. They're gonna have all the new software in there so that they can support the new level two plus, level three ADAS systems. ⁓ They're basically just taking everything from the Skunk Works and from Latitude AI, everything that was done in Model E and finally bringing it into the rest of the organization.

which is going to be interesting to watch how that plays out over the next couple of years.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:10)
I mean...

Nicole Wakelin (1:22:12)
deep sigh. Robbie, your sigh summed it all up. We don't even need to say anything.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:13)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:15)
I-

this is this is this okay sport has some wonderful engineers just absolutely you know gangbusters smart engineers

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:29)
And how many

of them are gonna quit in the next two and a half years when they're...

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:32)
When they look at when they

look at what is possible at other automakers That's going to yeah, it's gonna be you know, there's people who are gonna bleed blue forever. That's like I'm forward no matter what

But there's people who are also like, oh, look what GM's doing. Look what Tunde's doing. Look what, you know, look at what all the Mercedes is doing. mean, Mercedes is building, you know. Look at what all these other companies are doing. And it seems they have a focus and they have a business plan that doesn't change every three months.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:05)
Are you implying that Ford can't stick to a plan?

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:11)
I just don't under, mean, I just, as a, gosh. I just wish the CEO would stop making podcasts and start CEOing.

Nicole Wakelin (1:23:23)
CEOing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:25)
I just want, I want, these are people's jobs, this Ford's a huge American company. The F-150 Lightning, was a bad decision, the amount they thought they were gonna make, but it's still a wonderful vehicle. The Mach-E's a great vehicle, the E-Transit was great, and I have a whole video about the E-Transit that is now dust in the wind because they're like, yeah, we're not gonna do that anymore. I'm just like, I'm like.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:41)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Wakelin (1:23:48)
Doesn't matter.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:52)
Your business plan shouldn't disrupt people just making a video about one of your cops.

So yeah, just, mean, yeah. There is a, when you look at the way Hyundai operates, everyone like, this is the plan, this is what we're gonna do. And then they focus and stick to that plan, and then you look at Ford, we're like, ⁓ Ford is me in my college years, like I should do this homework, I should do this thing, I should do this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:24:16)
I think they... You and your college.

You know, the only caveat I put to it is, know, it is the industry is so messed up right now trying to decide what to make and the whole push for EVs and not a push for EVs and people want to buy them, people don't want to buy them and there's an incentive and there's not an incentive. And it was a tough call. It was tough to figure out. I mean, think about all the losses a lot of them have taken and pulling back on EVs, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:46)
But I think a lot of

those losses were just bad management to be honest. And then just dumping more bad ideas on top of the other as opposed to like, let's sit down and figure out.

Nicole Wakelin (1:24:49)
I would, some of it, some of it definitely, but it was also just, you have to guess, right? You have to guess which way.

Oh, for sure. But I think there are I think a lot of them

are like, look at the like who hasn't canceled EVs of some kind at this point or canceled whole yeah or canceled whole companies. What was the one the Sony feel a thing like whole company? Right. So. Mm hmm. Right. So that was, know.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:08)
I mean, well, who hasn't cancelled cars, to be honest, but...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:14)
Yeah, that was one that never should have started. mean, that's probably the smartest thing that Honda did.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:14)
well that was that was a boondoggle from the beginning that should that that was a bad that was the smartest thing that sony

that that that sony ever did was allow honda to cancel the car that no one was gonna buy

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:27)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:27)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:29)
So, yeah, I just wish Ford would just, I don't know, pick, find a plan and stick to it. I mean, the companies that seem to find a plan and stick to it seem to be doing pretty well. And the ones that are sort of floundering and like we have a meeting once and then we're like, that's a new plan. Those are the ones that are, you Listen, they have the F series to keep them going for decades. Ford could cancel everything. They could mess up nonstop.

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:49)
Having a little more trouble.

Exactly.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:56)
and that F series will keep them rolling for decades. So it does give them a really nice cushion to do whatever they want. But at the same time, when you're someone who's buying a car and you're just like, what? Okay.

Nicole Wakelin (1:25:58)
Yep.

They have a sure thing right there.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:13)
All right, I guess. The fact that the F-150 Lightning is not a huge fleet vehicle, but the GM, the Silverado EV is. I mean, GM is very, I've talked to GM a couple times about their EVs, and some of them are like, we are pushing really hard for these to be in fleets, because it makes a lot of sense for fleets. And then I look around, and there's a lot of Silverados and a lot of fleets. I'm just like, what? This is.

Nicole Wakelin (1:26:34)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:35)
That's frankly where most of the

most of the Silverado's I've ever seen the Silverado EVs are fleet vehicles of some sort. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:42)
Those should be F-150s to be honest, because

you can just transfer whatever you have on your other F-150 on this vehicle onto this vehicle, and instead there's something else. And I'm just like, that is leaving money on the table.

Nicole Wakelin (1:26:53)
You know what, only fleet EV, the

only fleet EV truck I've ever seen, there is a paving company around here that uses Rivians. And they have a little fleet of Rivians that do, you'll see around, and they've been using them since Limer's Sump first time last summer. And their trucks are everywhere. And we have one neighbor in our neighborhood who has a Lightning. One. That's it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:03)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:17)
Good truck. But yeah, I see a lot of Caltrans, Silverado EVs. A lot of local municipalities in the California, Silverado EVs. And I'm just like, those should be F-150 Lightnings, to be honest. yeah, mean, GM was smart about like, okay, well, we accidentally told everybody these were gonna be $100,000, so that we kind of shot ourselves in the foot that way. But if we can sell these to a lot of fleets, we're making money.

Nicole Wakelin (1:27:18)
Is this a good truck?

Mmm.

Yeah.

Right?

Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:47)
Well, back when Doug Field first came back to Ford in like 2021 or 22, whenever that was, they did an event in Dearborn where he introduced his new leadership team there. And he had brought in a bunch of people from outside Ford to lead software and lead electronics development and all kinds of other stuff. And I said it was almost all people from outside of the auto industry, even not just outside of Ford.

because there were people from Hewlett Packard and elsewhere. at the time, know, Ford was saying, yeah, we're going to, you know, they had launched the Lightning, they had launched the Mach-E, and we're going to do this next generation EV that's going to be a three row electric crossover. It's going to be on a new platform with a new electronic architecture, new software. It's going to be all updatable. And then they delayed it and eventually just canceled it entirely.

It was supposed to be in production by the end of 2024. And in August of 2024, they canceled the entire program. And they canceled most of the other stuff. And now they're using the stuff from the Skunk Works, which is maybe a step beyond what they were doing, who knows. But they never publicly showed what they were doing with a three-row crossover.

The only hint we had gotten up until this week was the Lincoln star concept from 2022. I don't know if you remember that. And that was that was supposed to be a preview of what the Lincoln version of this was going to look like. So kind of a, you know, an electric replacement for the aviator. Well, it turns out that there's been a picture of the Ford that's been sitting online for over a year that nobody noticed until this week.

It was the banner image on Doug Field's LinkedIn page. And this is apparently the Ford Eros. This is apparently the crossover that they were building, that they were going to build in Oakville, Ontario. What do you think?

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:00)
What did I say it looked like? Crosstor, the Honda Crosstor.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:02)
the

yeah

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:03)
It's just

the back end is just whew, it's missing. Just whish. Like somebody went with like just like a cake knife and cut it off the back. It looks odd.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:07)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:13)
After my long

rant about Ford not sticking to something, ⁓ good job not making this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:20)
Good job not sticking

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:21)
Hahaha

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:21)
to this.

If you're not going to stick to something, make this the thing you don't stick to. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:24)
⁓ Yeah, yeah, sometimes I mean,

even yeah, sometimes you're like, well, maybe we don't build this. I think this is the.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:34)
It is

clearly very aerodynamic, but the third row in this thing would have definitely been a child only third row.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:36)
yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:37)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:42)
Oh yeah,

what's... just punch down. Your back snapping into... No. Yeah. I think what the... Really, you should bring back the Dodge Magnum. Make that an EV. Yeah! Dodge Magnum, that was a dope... Man, that thing was... I remember that thing was everywhere here in Northern California. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but... Yeah, I mean, I think they all just fell apart after about 5 10 years. They probably weren't, you know...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:45)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:45)
There's no way that could have been usable by anybody. It's a Jill Cimino third row.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:51)
pretty much, yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:57)
There you go.

He had a lot of them once upon a time.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:10)
But I think when they were being sold, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:10)
I still see him around every once in a while. I see one around

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:13)
there's a couple left, but when they were being sold, man, those are everywhere, and I'm like, that's a dope, man, good job Dodge, making a wagon to people want. Just make the Dodge Magnum.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:22)
Yeah. no, not this, huh? Okay. ⁓ all right. ⁓ what else did we have here? ⁓ Honda also killed another EV. The, ⁓ the E N Y one. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to pronounce that. ⁓ this is basically

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:24)
Not this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:31:26)
Hahaha!

Why not ENY?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:49)
I mean this was initially developed for the Chinese market. It's basically an electric version of the HRV that they sell in the rest of the world. So we have a fundamentally different HRV from what everybody else gets. ⁓ The HRV they sell here is based on the Civic, ⁓ and everywhere else they get one that's based on the Honda Fit or Jazz, as it's called in some markets. ⁓ And then this one was...

Nicole Wakelin (1:31:51)
How would you say that?

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:14)
Cheers!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:17)
developed for the Chinese market, the ENY1. I don't even know what the heck that's supposed to mean.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:23)
I'm

trying to figure it out and it literally just says it's pronounced E-N-Y-1.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:27)
Everything

about this car was cursed though. Like it was too expensive. It like it was it wasn't really that great. It wasn't it's not a Honda of a Honda. It's the bad Honda.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:30)
Yeah.

Yeah,

it had all the traits that we disliked about the original BZ4X, like taking 45 minutes to charge from 10 to 80 % on a DC charger. Yeah, so they were selling it in the UK. They've now discontinued it. ⁓ But on the plus side, the British are soon, this summer, are going to get the Honda Super N instead.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:41)
⁓

It deserved to die.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:03)
That's the one, I drove it in Japan last October. ⁓ It's based on a K car, on the N1. ⁓ And it's got wider fenders, it's a hot hatch version of the EN1. ⁓ so that thing is gonna be, I think British drivers will be much happier with the Super N.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:29)
Yeah, I'm all for killing a bad car and making a good car and replace it with a good car. Although I still am sad about the AONIC 6. just wasn't... Okay, was ugly. Let's just say it. People thought it was ugly. It's a good car. Just don't look at it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:33:30)
That's easier to say for sure.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:33)
Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:33:46)
Just don't look at it. Close your eyes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:49)
A couple of weeks ago we talked about Stellantis making a pitch to build leap motor EVs in their Brampton, Ontario assembly plant, which the original plan, that's the plant that used to build the Charger, Challenger and Chrysler 300. And they were going to build the new generation Compass there. And then last spring after tariffs, they decided to kill that plan, even though they had already started retooling the plant.

And as part of that, they had gotten a bunch of incentives from the provincial government in Ontario. so they've been trying to figure out what to do with that factory now. And they proposed a plan to assemble leap motor EVs in that factory. This plant is just west of Toronto. ⁓ the ⁓ government and the union, ⁓ Unifor, the Canadian Auto Workers Union,

⁓ rejected that plan because it turns out that what Stellantis actually wanted to do there was build these leap motor vehicles from complete knockdown kits. ⁓ which, you know, what, what that is basically is they partially assemble and put together a kit with all the parts for a car, put it in a crate, ship it to some plant overseas and then do the final assembly there. So they can say, yeah, it's assembled, it's assembled here. and,

that plan instead of the 3000 people that were previously working there and it would have been working there building the compass, that plan would have employed about two to 300 people because there's

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:29)
Like four guys

with those Torx wrench that comes with the IKEA stuff. Essentially you're just rebuilding IKEA furniture, but cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:33)
Yeah.

Well, and they would have had impact wrenches to put the wheels on.

⁓ So that plan has now been killed. So now they're trying again. we'll see. Stellantis is having an investor day next month here in Auburn Hills, and that's where it's supposed to lay out their strategic plan going forward. ⁓ We'll see if they keep any EVs at all in their lineup or just cancel everything and just build HEMIs.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:47)
Yeah, that's, I think that's a, to be honest.

Everything's a hemi.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:11)
Could happen.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:12)
Dodge Magnum hemi.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:13)
Yeah, you never know. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:15)
Just call everything

Hemi, slap that badge on all the cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:19)
Yeah. So we'll see if they have anything to say about Brampton plant then. And then finally, the National Transportation Transportation Safety Board recently released their report back in early 2024. There were two fatal crashes involving Mustang Mach-E's operating on Blue Cruise, and the NTSB did an investigation into those.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:25)
Brampton. It's fun to say though, Brampton.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:49)
and came up with some good recommendations as they usually do. Sadly, this is America in 2026, so probably none of this will actually get implemented. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:02)
To be fair,

like, NHTSA hasn't done anything about anything for like 15 years. So, yeah, that's not new.

Nicole Wakelin (1:37:06)
Right? That's not a new phenomena, that's just nitsa.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:12)
The two crashes were interesting. One involved a that was stopped in the lane on the highway. Maki was following another car which saw the stopped vehicle, pulled over into the adjacent lane, and then the Maki just ran headlong into the stopped vehicle and unfortunately killed the occupant of that vehicle.

Neither of the occupants of the two Mach E's ⁓ were seriously injured in either of these crashes, but the one in Philadelphia ran straight into the ⁓ vehicle. ⁓ And then the other one ⁓ involved a Mach E going almost 75 miles an hour ⁓ in a construction zone that was marked for 45 miles an hour. And again,

ran into a stationary vehicle. Turns out the driver of the Mach-E was in fact impaired and was not paying proper attention. so ⁓ NTSB made some recommendations ⁓ calling on ⁓ improvements to the driver monitor systems to better be able to detect when drivers are impaired or non-responsive, ⁓ more

stringent performance testing protocols, ⁓ which right now there are none. There's none at all in the US. let's see. ⁓ they also say that these vehicles, when they're operating in hands-free mode, ⁓ that it should not disable things like automatic emergency braking systems. So it should still be able to detect and stop the vehicle or at least hit the brakes.

⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:10)
when

you're in autonomous mode, those things get disabled. I don't think I knew that until this minute.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:13)
⁓

Apparently on the Fords they did, at least at the time with the version that was on these vehicles in 2024. That apparently was the case because it did not engage the automatic emergency braking. ⁓ They also said that ⁓ they should have ⁓ intelligent speed assistance that should not allow the vehicle to go, when you're using a hands-free mode,

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:22)
Huh, that's interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:40)
should not allow the vehicle to go more than 20 miles an hour over posted speed limits. ⁓ They recommend against allowing the hands-free automation to work in construction zones with reduced speed limits. ⁓ So some good overall recommendations, which again, NTSB has made a lot of really good recommendations about these various systems over the years, especially for Tesla Autopilot and FSD, because they've investigated a number of those crashes.

As you said, NHTSA has done exactly nothing about any of these.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:15)
I went to the hearing for the ⁓ accident, the NTSB hearing for athlete. The final sort of conclusion for the gentleman who died, the Apple engineer who died in a Model Y or X. I don't remember which one. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:25)
So Walter Wang.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:28)
X,

I think, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:31)
And NTSB, like they did their thing and then they spent a good 15, 20 minutes just railing against NHTSA for not doing their job. Just absolutely just calling them out for not doing their job. And it changed exactly nothing. Which is scary because NHTSA makes the rule, NTSB can say, you guys should really do this stuff. And then they're like, meh. It's like, yeah. And this is, know, again, this is decades of this.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:45)
now.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:53)
Right?

think they've been long criticized for

being, yeah, for being so slow moving to change things and make, you know, a regulation that should have been changed years ago finally sees its time in the light. Like, why didn't we do this 10 years ago? Why didn't we do this eight years ago or whatever? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:14)
And you know, under

the current administration, they're not going to introduce any new regulations. All they want to do is eliminate existing regulations. Yeah, I mean, Jennifer Homendy, who is the current chair of the NTSB, you know, she in various speeches over the last couple of years, she has been extremely critical of NHTSA. So just for those that don't know, we've got two different bodies here. There's the National Transportation Safety Board, which is an investigatory body, and they investigate

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:19)
nothing. Yeah, it's the...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:43)
all kinds of transportation crashes. So that includes road vehicles, but also trains, aircraft, marine, anything. They investigate those and they make recommendations, but they have no regulatory or ⁓ enforcement authority. That's up to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make the rules and enforce those rules. And NTSB has always been exceptional at what they do in terms of investigating

crashes and finding, know, determining root cause ⁓ and making recommendations. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whose responsibility is to take those recommendations and put them into rules, they have been utterly negligent for at least the last 10 or 15 years. They've done nothing. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:32)
Yeah, just absolutely worthless.

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:34)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:36)
Anyway, let's get on some planes next week to everybody. That's FAA. That's a totally different has nothing to do with NHTSA.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:38)
Yeah Yeah

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:39)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:44)
Yeah All right, so that's all we've got for this week We do have two interviews that Nicole has recorded over the last couple of weeks. We had you know posted a couple last week including ⁓ Austin Witherspoon the CMO of Nissan ⁓ This time we've got first up is going to be Jennifer Morrison

who ⁓ is, ⁓ she's ⁓ Director of ⁓ Safety Strategy and Communications for Mazda North America. ⁓ And then after that will be Rob Whitley, who you talked with at the New York Auto Show, and I forget what Rob's title is.

Nicole Wakelin (1:43:19)
Correct.

I'm trying to get

his actual title is product planning, product, what is he? Head of product pricing and lucid air production marketing advantage minutes says in here.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:39)
Okay. ⁓ And so both of those conversations took the the Rob Whitley conversation was at New York Auto Show. I'm not sure where he's talked with with Jennifer Morrison. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:43:50)
Jennifer Morrison,

just talked to her the other last week. I just chatted with her on the phone, so.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:53)
Okay. All

right. So both of these, you know, if you're a patron, ⁓ thank you so much for your support for the show. ⁓ You've already heard these. They've been in the Patreon feed for a while now. And for the rest of you, well, you know, come on, get with the program. But you can hear those interviews. You can hear those interviews now, starting off with Jennifer Morrison and then Rob Whitley. And

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:02)
Yay!

Give us money. Give us money.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:22)
We will talk to you next time. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:24)
Bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:24)
Bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:27)
tell me what is your title at Mazda for

Jennifer Morrison (1:44:31)
Good one. Yes, I'm the director of vehicle safety strategy and communications.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:36)
OK, so Mazda is on quite a roll. have, unless it's changed since I last got this, eight 2026 IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus vehicles in your lineup, which is the most of any automaker. Is that still correct?

Jennifer Morrison (1:44:53)
It's still correct. fact, the Crystal Awards themselves, I can go grab one from the hall, they just arrived in the DC office. We just unboxed them and put them out on display on our console table in our lobby. So yeah, eight is a lot. They're very heavy and they're really hard to earn. So that's another thing that I'd love to talk a little bit more about.

Nicole Wakelin (1:45:14)
So

eight is a big number. mean, there's automakers that have had cars for ages that they cannot get that award on certain vehicles because they just can't swing it because it's not just one or two things. It's a huge number of things you guys have to hit in order to get that top safety rating. So talk to me a little bit about what Mazda does to manage to get all those awards for its people.

Jennifer Morrison (1:45:35)
Right, it really is a stack up. What we do, like big picture, long term answer of how we do this is we're aligning internally on what truly does affect.

vehicle road safety in real world crashes. So we're internally already doing our own research. What types of crashes are people getting most injured in? What types of scenarios can we create crash avoidance technology or occupant protection systems to really address? So we're looking at that at all times on a big picture. And the thing that aligns really nicely here is so is IIHS. They're doing that same thing. They're using the insurance plan data to look at what's happening in the real world. We're typically using crash data to look at what's happening in the real world.

And those two things often align. So that's what happened when IHS updated their side impact testing about four years ago.

⁓ And Mazda's, CX-5 was the very first and only small SUV to do well in that test for a few years until others caught up. It was an incredible moment for us. But the reason we built our vehicle so strong and done that work on the side impact and done side impact airbags and seatbelt pretensioners and just overall the structure of the cage to work for side impact so well, which is a part of still getting in the IHS TOPS 85 Plus Award. The reason we've done that is because we've seen that

but there were more aggressive side impact crashes. Vehicles that were hitting our vehicles were getting bigger.

and faster and we've already taken that into consideration and IHS was on the same path. So our paths often converge because of our internal safety research and philosophy to always improve regardless of what the other agencies say but it's really nice when those two things align and what they're asking us to do is something we've already started working on so that's behind really truly what's behind a lot of this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:47:30)
So you mentioned in that that part of what made that more challenging, the side impacts, was it's no longer sedans hitting sedans. It's sometimes a giant SUV hitting a small sedan or crossover. How much did that force you guys to make some changes in how you looked at things?

Jennifer Morrison (1:47:49)
That's exactly what that test did. It was more momentum overall. It was a larger moving, that one it's a stationary vehicle that gets hit by a moving barrier and that barrier got bigger.

so was more energy to absorb. So what we really had to do was think about how do we absorb that? How do we dissipate the energy? So the steel structure, we use ultra high strength tensile steel, and it's the kind of steel that when you hit it, does, the steel can break pretty quickly. So rather than breaking, it bends. And when you bend, you can move the forces outward.

versus just letting them in. That's called, when you just let the forces in, it's like intrusion into the occupant compartment. So great display down in IHS, which shows this, where the steel frame of a competitor vehicle that's shown next to a Mazda vehicle separates. And you can see that the energy would just be let into the occupant compartment. Whereas with the Mazda vehicle, it just kind of bends into forms and dissipates outward. So it really is not just airbags and seat belts, although that is a component of this as well. It's about energy dissipation.

as a strategic approach to crash worthiness. that also helps with the new moderate front overlap crash. So that's a vehicle that hits the stationary barrier at 40 miles an hour with a 40 % overlap. That one is also a lot about energy dissipation, but even more maybe about seat belts in that one because front crash is a lot about seat belts.

Nicole Wakelin (1:49:17)
So in addition to seatbelts, which are like the thing that everybody hates to wear, can't imagine, I'm still surprised by the number of people that hate wearing seatbelts. Like I can't even drive without one. It makes me uncomfortable to not have a seatbelt on. But that's like a big one. Seatbelts are huge. That will save a lot of lives. The strengthening that you've done to the vehicles. How much does all the fancy new tech play into things like the ADAS systems? How much does that impact you getting these ratings? And how much does it improve the safety overall?

think of Mazda's vehicles.

Jennifer Morrison (1:49:50)
It's almost 50-50 at this point. Is it okay if I share a graphic? Absolutely. I am just going to go into presentation mode so you can see only this. Bring this down and just excuse me for inverting my eyes towards the camera for a second because this is going to be on a screen now.

Nicole Wakelin (1:50:11)
Okay, and you have to get me this graphic so I can include it in things.

Jennifer Morrison (1:50:15)
Absolutely,

this is a public-facing graphic. You can use this in any of your discussions. So basically this is what I need because this is not easy to communicate to people, right? It's pretty technical, but honestly, it's not that hard to understand when you see it in graphical form. It's a stack up of ⁓ all of these requirements. And if you get good ratings, good or acceptable ratings in some of these categories, so these are all the crash testing ones. There's the small overlap, the moderate front overlap, that's the update.

one that has the rear seat dummy now, that's the one we've been running a lot, the updated side. here's the category. So if you do all of these things, you get one of these. There's a couple of different nuances here. You can get good or acceptable in the pedestrian front crash prevention test, whereas with the top safety pick plus one, you have to have only good. So you can have this and study it a little bit more.

Yeah. So in Mazda's case, this is how we got all eight, right? Is that we did everything we needed to do in these categories. You can see that there's these crash testing elements, but let's not forget about headlights, right? Headlights are a really important and almost foundational component of crash avoidance. The best way, the safest system in the vehicle is still the driver. And the best way to truly avoid

crashes is for the driver to be able to see things as clearly as they can. And that's why IIHS includes headlights in their top safety pit plus criteria. So it's really half and half. You've got three categories here that are crash testing and three that are crash avoidance. The pedestrian front crash prevention, that's now done in daytime and nighttime, which means we have to have smarter, better.

cameras that can see in all of those conditions because pedestrians can't really be seen that well with radars. So we need really good cameras to see those pedestrians and then react. And then the front crash prevention 2.0, which is now a trailer target, a motorcycle target and a car target.

The radar is a huge component of that for those types of targets and they're at higher speeds. You can see that Mazda has not gotten a good rating in that test yet. It is the newest crash avoidance test. We are working on it. I hope we have some better news on that. You can see we've got our newest CX-5, the one you saw out in California. It hasn't been tested. can see my little coming soon here. I'm sorry, I make it to the next slide. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:52:49)
Yes, yes.

Jennifer Morrison (1:52:56)
You don't need to know how I test ratings are done. we go. That one hasn't been tested at all yet. So we look forward to giving like all a whole green column here, but we haven't achieved that yet.

Nicole Wakelin (1:53:10)
So

we're fingers crossed for all greens when that one comes out. That's what you're hoping.

Jennifer Morrison (1:53:15)
because there are two trims of headlights that is pretty normal to have both good and acceptable because our adaptive front headlights are the ones that do the turning with the steering wheel. Yeah. And those are on the upper trim. I have to fact check that I believe those are on the upper trim for CX-5 that there's not two different. I'm positive there's two different trims. know that I just needs to test it. Yeah. In two different ways. So that one would be pretty common for all of these with and without the adaptive front.

I would imagine hopefully a good and acceptable sitting here side by side. But yes, we are always hopeful to get all good ratings and this will be our new updated electrical architecture, ⁓ all new sensor suite, new front facing camera, new logic in our crash avoidance technology, it's all from a new supplier with some more advanced.

to really get logic and it's hardware and it's software. So we're hoping for another great encounter, but I can't make any promises until we're through the testing phase. Should be done later this summer. Okay, we're gonna be crash testing it on May 27th. So this test will be done. We actually run these two tests, the small overlap and the side impact, we're allowed to run those internally now and submit all of that data.

the dummy sensor data and the video data to IHS, they have to run this one at their facility because it's the newest one. They run this in person at their facility. We have that already scheduled for late May. And then they will also run their own headlight testing. It's very unique. No one else does it. And then we run these at a contracted laboratory in the United States. That's also scheduled for sometime this spring.

Nicole Wakelin (1:55:07)
So as you're talking about trying to meet some of these new things, you they keep changing them, they keep updating them, all the interest is of keeping us safer, right? As things change, vehicles get bigger, all these different things. What is your biggest challenge in continuing to get all those nice little green boxes on this list of safety features?

Jennifer Morrison (1:55:27)
Yeah, I mean it's it's the biggest challenge is truly

keeping pace with, there's a lot of technologies out there that can help solve these problems, but we have eight models, right? So sometimes you've just reinvented a model, you've just done your updates, and then you need to move on to the next product cycle, the next model. And keeping pace with all eight models is something that Mazda has really done an outstanding job on. I think that's why you often see some of these other companies only have one or two top safety pick plus

awards because in their product cycle I do give credit to many of our competitors. They are also safety focused and they're able to add this new technology in but the thing that's really differentiated from MOSFET is that we're doing it further upstream.

Maybe it's helpful that we only have eight models and not 25, right? So some of our competitors have a much more diverse set of products where we can do it a little bit further upstream and get the technology baked in a little earlier so that we can hit these marks right as IHS is releasing their award criteria. ⁓ But it is still a big challenge, the timing of it, because oftentimes we're getting that criteria two years ahead of time, but our product cycle is

four years generally. So we have to be thinking two years ahead of what we're doing four year predictions on a two year criteria is what I'm trying to say. And we do that by having a really close relationship with IHS like going to conferences and events where they're talking because they even though they're not publishing their criteria to two years out, they're talking about it and they're loading ideas with us and we're listening really closely to that. So it's kind of

Nicole Wakelin (1:57:16)
you have a little bit of a hint of where their mindset is and where you might want to focus. Okay.

Jennifer Morrison (1:57:22)
And our internal work we're doing of what we want to do anyway to help reduce crashes and their injuries they cause, that helps provide us that internal compass of, well, even if IHS doesn't include this in their criteria right away, it's still a really good idea and let's go ahead and do it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:57:43)
do you think that happens? So when you talk about things, know, IHS didn't say you have to do it to make a test or to get a score, but you find something that's like, this is really good. This is really helpful. How often do those kinds of things, you look at them and say, we're just going to put that in there anyway. No one's going to test it. No one's going to give us a gold star. We're just going to put that in the car.

Jennifer Morrison (1:58:03)
All the time. ⁓

really good examples of how that's even happening today. the ⁓ first, which ties to the Consumer Reports appellate, is blind spot monitoring. It's nowhere in this list. It's not required for IHS at all, but for Consumer Reports, it's one of their foundational requirements that we have blind spot monitoring systems, which have no federal regulation. There's no federal motor vehicle safety standard that requires those. That surprises a lot of people.

They're great. You love them. Everyone loves them. They're great. They're not required. There's no standard on them. But we've put them, we found that they were just really helpful to crash avoidance, roadway departures, sideswipe crashes in particular, and that they were reducing insurance claims and damages. And we've put them standard equipment in Mazda vehicles since I want to say 2023 model year. So at least three full model years in now. And that's also packaged with the rear cross traffic alert.

It's the same general technology. uses side radars. So that's a technology that IHS doesn't say anything about. The government doesn't say anything about. We think it's great. Our customers think it's great. On Mazda, it's standard. You do not have to pay extra for that technology. Kind of core safety principle. And that's really what helped as a big differentiator for us for that consumer report so far. ⁓

is traffic sign recognition is the speed technology that says like that's able to use either mapping data or camera and see if ⁓ the

if the speed of the vehicle is matching speed of the roadway, and then provide a series of different alerts. That's a technology that is standard on the new CX-5, and IHS is thinking about it, and they've mentioned it as part of, have this program called 30 by 30. They would like to reduce 30 % of crashes by 2030. It's ⁓ an optimistic goal, but we agree that that would be wonderful. And speeding is a huge part of that.

Trying to get people to reduce their speed. So we've already started to roll that out as standard technology It's available on all of our other products and now it's standard on the on the cx5 ⁓ And there was one more that I was going to bring up speed blind spot And now I'm lose the third one Let me leave you with the two and the other

Nicole Wakelin (2:00:29)
is going to come back to you after we finish talking.

I'll go with

two and then when I get the email...

Jennifer Morrison (2:00:35)
I'm

sorry it came back. Oh, what is it? seatbelt reminder. So Mazda has had seatbelt reminder icons in our vehicles since think 2018 model year and The government has been saying they were gonna regulate that for many years But then never did and then finally just published their final rule but it's kind of like mute to us now because we are we did that that was like so yesterday

Nicole Wakelin (2:01:02)
It's nice to be thinking that when the government catches up you're like, ⁓ we did that already. Nothing to change. Got it.

Jennifer Morrison (2:01:08)
It

is, it's reassuring because we did that. So those are just some examples of how we tend to be ahead of the curve. It really is based on just following your own internal compass of what you believe is the right kind of technology to deploy regardless of being told what to do.

Nicole Wakelin (2:01:26)
And for people who put, most people put a priority on safety, but especially people, I think when you have kids, then it becomes super, super your priority. You'll take risks with yourself that you'll never take with your children. What do you, what do you hope families take away from seeing this giant list of top safety picks? Awards for Mazda.

Jennifer Morrison (2:01:43)
plus.

I parents really get that clarity that there is a new leader in safety. That safety is not something that is always standard. You have to do your research when it comes to buying consumer products, whether that's a ⁓ dishwasher or...

sofa or whatever, consumer products are not created equal, right? We all know that from the things that we purchase in our daily lives, and that's true with cars. I think that a lot of people are surprised to know that these crash avoidance technologies are unregulated, that blind spot monitoring is not required, and that they have to do their research to help protect their families and really...

have a wonderful drive and not one that involves an accident, right, in their vehicle with their children. It is not, all products are not equal and Mazda is the new standard in safety. There may be some of those other brands out there that have been synonymous with safety for years and years because they did some great marketing back in the 80s or 90s and it stuck. But those that do their research now can see very clearly that Mazda is the safest.

new car brand in America.

Nicole Wakelin (2:03:06)
Thank you so much Jennifer, this is perfect.

Nicole Wakelin (2:03:13)
Okay, okay. Name and title, so I have it officially.

Rob Whitlay (2:03:18)
Rob Whitlay W-H-I-T-L-A-Y. Thank you for that. Yes. I have learned. And I'm the Air and Gravity Product and Price Manager.

Nicole Wakelin (2:03:25)
You

product and pricing manager so talk a little bit about you just guys just won the world car award for the gravity yes how excited are you

Rob Whitlay (2:03:37)
super excited

and thank you again for that we can add it to our list behind the vehicles here we have have many so add it to our our various

Exactly or the actual word itself

Nicole Wakelin (2:03:54)
A podium to put it in front of there.

Rob Whitlay (2:03:57)
Nick,

Nick Tork was actually saying he thought about ordering another case, another display case at HQ because we run out of rooms.

Nicole Wakelin (2:04:06)
mean

that's the kind of problem that you want. We have run out of room for our trophy.

Rob Whitlay (2:04:10)
So he has some at his desk and he needs to clear his desk of those. So very happy for that. ⁓ for air, we won for gravity, obviously, this morning. But for air, we were at one time the most awarded new luxury vehicle in America. Really? Yeah, the number of awards that we had was just immense. And now we still are the most awarded in our segments over past three years.

Nicole Wakelin (2:04:13)
That's awesome.

Why do you think that is?

Rob Whitlay (2:04:35)
It's

the work of our engineering and design teams and how they were able to optimize so much to enable cars that have all the superlatives that they have. makes my job easier. So we have the longest range, fastest charging, and in many cases the most spacious vehicles in their segment. So we're in the entire industry. So it's that coupled with the performance and the driving aspect and the dynamics that feel. It's something that's in views like the pictures in all the journalists see, you know, immediately punch.

So, like you said, to our next or third product.

Nicole Wakelin (2:05:13)
The next one. Have you said anything about the third product? not trying to fool you. What have you said about the third

Okay. Have you said what they are yet? we know what? Okay.

Rob Whitlay (2:05:29)
So, mid-size crossovers and we've announced that starting pricing will be under $50,000.

Nicole Wakelin (2:05:36)
So

that's a big thing. So I actually love the first loose that I drove was the Air and I remember driving it and thinking it was amazing. was like, wow, this is incredible. It was super impressive. It was just beautiful and drives beautifully and the styling. But crossovers are kind of where it's at right now, right? So you're getting it and the lower price. What's the decision behind taking the price a little lower for what is very much a luxury brand at this point?

Rob Whitlay (2:06:00)
So it remains electric brand. We're conscious to not go to mainstream. So our brand is luxury electric. And electric is secondary. So we're an electric car brand. And we make the best cars that happen to be electric. So we obviously conquest very many customers from our main EV competitor. But what we're seeing, especially with gravity, is a huge influx of ICE, Vivo, SUV, competition.

Nicole Wakelin (2:06:29)
So

do you know how much like what's your percentage of ICE people coming in versus other EV people coming in?

Rob Whitlay (2:06:37)
So the number one trading for air is Tesla Model S. So that is twice the amount of number two.

Nicole Wakelin (2:06:45)
Wow

Rob Whitlay (2:06:46)
We are getting a lot of, and I think some of that's due to the recent cancellation which was announced of Model S Next. But we do see, percentage wise I have to follow up with you on that. We do see lot of ICE, BMW 5 Series, Mercedes E Class going into air and similarly with gravity. And the data is still, there's a lag of that data that we've seen once in a few months. we do have a few months data to go on and we're seeing that there's GLS,

GLS customers, VW X7 customers are coming into rabbit. So that's something we're very happy about.

Nicole Wakelin (2:07:22)
Pulling

from a lot of real, I mean those are true luxury brands that are established and they're saying they're first. Do you know if they're first EV buyers? Like the first.

Rob Whitlay (2:07:31)
Yes, so many are and I have that stat.

Nicole Wakelin (2:07:34)
Oh, that's okay. I don't expect you to have every number. should put you on the spot.

Rob Whitlay (2:07:38)
No,

no, no, we are seeing more gravity buyers choosing gravity as their first EV than we have seen with air. I think that's partially because of early adopters. They are more focused on the EV to begin with. They adopters of Tesla, not unless, and they're going into air. But gravity is actually really pulling from those.

Nicole Wakelin (2:07:48)
Okay.

So for the crossovers, SUVs that are coming, who's your target for that? Who do you think is going to want that one?

Rob Whitlay (2:08:18)
So that is the buyer who wants a really vehicle that can do everything. So it will maintain our DNA of performance in driving, great handling dynamics. But someone that is a bit more pragmatic, want that efficiency. Efficiency is key. One thing that we can state is that there is the most efficient vehicle sold today is rated by the EPA. They're pure specifically. It has a miles per kilowatt hour rating of five, which is unprecedented.

Despite the size of the car and performance capability, it's not a super lightweight two-seater that's the most efficient sold in America. It's actually air pure. And gravity is the most efficient SUV. So what you'll see is a distillation of that product DNA into midsize. Midsize is poised to be an efficient seat leader as well. But again, those key attributes of high range, fast charging, and great performance dynamics are going to be

key with that vehicle as well. Like I mentioned, have our third and fourth vehicles that we've announced the names of. What you'll see is that one is a bit more on-road focused for that traditional buyer, Tesla Model Y for example, and then the fourth will be a little bit more of rugged aesthetic because that is a popular trend. Customers like that sort of go off the beaten path sort of thing.

Nicole Wakelin (2:09:39)
Everyone's doing that. That's the thing to do. Now, have you said how quickly those are coming? Do we have ETAs on those yet? Reveal later this year.

Rob Whitlay (2:09:46)
Okay.

That's okay.

Nicole Wakelin (2:09:53)
So reveal, so it's coming. So how much of a challenge is it bringing out new EVs right now? Because two reasons. One, there's more and competition, there's more and EVs out there. And also, people are a little bit soft on EVs. know, there's a lot, like how are you prepped to handle that?

Rob Whitlay (2:10:11)
Well, on the first point, it is very true, as you know, more than anyone, there, many makers are producing more EVs now, more EV models, yet our number one competitor...

cancellation of Model S and Model X. that's a huge opportunity for us. we've seen quite an influx of orders and interest based on that. that will continue to help air and gravity. in terms of the EV winter that some are mentioning, early adopters did largely buy their EVs already a few years ago. But what remains is that steady increase in EV market penetration through 2035. So by 2035, the expectation is

that EBs will comprise three and a half times the mix as they do right now versus ICE. So it's not a steady state or even a decline in market penetration. And that's a third party data source which is showing that that pump and inventory through it will get us to about 3.5 times the market share of EBs in the next 10 or so years. So that's going to be huge for us. We're here to capitalize on that, especially with our expanding portfolio. And in terms of current events, what's helped

us too. You sign up for our emails, you may have seen it. I of get all of our emails, see them ahead of time, and all the competitor emails. You may have seen this, but based on current fuel prices, there are immense savings with our products. Again, because they're EVs, but also because they're the most efficient EVs, either in the industry or in their segment as it relates to gravity. gravity versus its main ice competitor, a

save about $10,000 in fuel and energy costs over five years. So that is huge. Significant. Yes, and strictly going by government data, error, you can add.

save about $6,000 over five years at current fuel prices. So at fuel prices what they were six months ago, that's a bit lower, probably about $4,000. But with what they are now, well over $5, $6,000 younger in California, the savings are huge. And even for customers that can afford a Mercedes GLS or BMW X7, when you have the opportunity to have a car which performs better, has more space, it's more fun to drive, and saves you $10,000 over five years, that's hard to...

Nicole Wakelin (2:12:36)
I think

everybody would take $10,000 in their pocket regardless of what your income is,

Rob Whitlay (2:12:40)
Right, exactly. Yes. So we see a lot of opportunity for all of

Nicole Wakelin (2:12:47)
So for someone looking for an EV right now, first EV, never had one, what should make them look at Lucid?

Rob Whitlay (2:12:55)
immediately go to my first error that I leased and

My sister is looking into Elucid. Her main reason is she does not want to touch a gas pump. Doesn't want to have to go pump up her gas late at night. I charged at home only. I never had to wait in line. had to come in and even a 2-prong, 120-volt outlet. That's all I used. I never got a home charger installed in air. I only charged at home because with air you can add 100 miles a day just on a regular...

Nicole Wakelin (2:13:24)
Wait, you never had a home charger in stock.

Rob Whitlay (2:13:31)
120 volts. it was, yeah, and most people don't realize that. They think, I'm gonna have to spend $2,000 for a home charger. But you don't. So the convenience is amazing. Of course on road trips, I drove from Tampa to Raleigh, I only had to stop once with an arrow, which is pretty amazing for 600 miles.

But so I did public charts sometimes, never had issues, but I just love the convenience. But in terms of like coming to the brand also, that's anecdotal. I love the convenience, but I also love the power. There's like you said, me for strobe and air, there's nothing like the power of that. And just the seamlessness, the cohesive feeling of everything, the design, it's a timeless, very elegant design, something that's not...

ration in your face, you know, that, you know, a hood line that comes up to your waist. you know, it will age well. The design team did a tremendous job with that. And that's what we're saying.

exterior styling. It goes back and forth a bit between exterior styling and the sort of technical innovations. Ultimately, under the brand for all of the vehicle offers, you have a super car and an SUV form that can seat seven people and you can fit a refrigerator in the back with the two. Did ⁓ you test this? So when you fold second and third row seats in Gravity, can fit a refrigerator yet.

Nicole Wakelin (2:14:51)
Somebody do that.

I had to put a fridge back there.

Rob Whitlay (2:15:01)
the Gravity Grand Touring still does 0-60 in 3.4 seconds. It's all-wheel drive, great off the beaten path and great in fine weather. And ultimately the convenience too, because if you're on that road trip, with all of your stuff, you can add 200 miles of range in only 11 minutes of charging. That's fast. I covered air prior to Gravity, air only, and I'm so used to saying air is the fastest charging vehicle sold. And it's not anymore because Gravity beats it. Gravity has a max charge

Nicole Wakelin (2:15:29)
It's not somebody else that came and beat you guys.

Rob Whitlay (2:15:32)
I'd

say air is faster charging for, you know, among all vehicles except for the gravity now. Thank you. I enjoyed speaking with you. That's perfect. Thank you so much. And do we need to follow up with any stats? I know I didn't have...

Nicole Wakelin (2:15:37)
Thank you so much.

Yeah.

⁓

If you have it cool, but if you don't that's fine