Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 450 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:07)
I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International and the SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast. I don't know how I forgot that was a thing, but that's where we are right now on a Sunday morning.

John Voelcker (00:20)
And I am not Nicole Wakelin, as you may have noticed, although I'm representing New England here. I'm John Voelcker from upstate New York.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28)
And yeah, I think even if people were listening on audio, I think they would have figured out just from your voice that you're not quite Nicole.

Roberto Baldwin (00:35)
We were gonna send him a wig, it didn't make it in time, because he lives so far away.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, Nicole is hanging out in New Orleans with Acura for a couple of days at the Jazz Fest. I saw this morning she posted a picture of some beignets just covered in powdered sugar. ⁓ And she also posted a picture of an Acura MDX because you're on an automaker trip, you got to do that.

Roberto Baldwin (01:00)
⁓ I was

looking around for my trumpet, but it's in my band space right now. I play some jazz. Bad, bad, horrible jazz. Not that jazz is horrible. My jazz is horrible.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:08)
⁓

Okay.

John Voelcker (01:17)
Well, as

the only child in my school to have been asked to leave fifth and sixth grade choir for not only not being able to sing, but doing it loudly and happily, ⁓ you all are the music side.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:25)
Ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (01:33)
They just bring you up to like, hey, dad, come here. You know what? love the excitement. We love the attitude, the enthusiasm.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:41)
Love the enthusiasm.

John Voelcker (01:44)
⁓ I'm older. This was a, you're disturbing the rest of the choir. How would you like some more study hall time?

Roberto Baldwin (01:53)
yeah. Yeah. That's how I was asked to leave the rocket club in high school. It was the, was the eighties. They're like, Hey, dude, just leave.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:53)
Ha ha ha.

Ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (02:04)
No one was nice to children until about the mid 90s.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10)
And then arguably we may have been a little too nice to them, but that's a story for another.

Alright, let's get started with this. ⁓ Robbie, what have been driving?

Roberto Baldwin (02:23)
So

I went to the Hyundai Meta plant. I had not been there. I missed the first couple trips out there because complex, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, it's great. Went around, saw the Meta plant. ⁓ It's like ⁓ a very, larger version of the plant I saw in Singapore, which is really interesting because, you know, it's different from your typical line. Currently they only have one shift. Cool. They're hiring for a second shift right now. Awesome. They're gonna make a lot of cars there. Cool.

Really, the most exciting thing was that they gave me a Hyundai IONIQ 5 XRT and they made an autocross, like a dirt track, and they just let us go at it. So that's what I did. So that's what I drove. I drove a Hyundai IONIQ 5 XRT. What's fun is that the, well, it's fun. The road was really rutted. Like the track was super rutted by the time I got there. And when you're driving any sort of vehicle, especially something that feels lower than it is,

Sam Abuelsamid (03:03)
No.

Roberto Baldwin (03:21)
⁓ You're always kind of wincing like waiting for the the bumper to sort of dive into something Nope, because you know, they they shaved up the bumper and they approach the departure those angles have been increased It's been raised. I didn't have any issues like scraping or anything and if you turn off The traction control you put it in sand and you put in sport you can drift it till the cows come home So that's my

If you were someone on blue sky was like, I drove it I just bought an XRT if that person is listening, that's how you drift your vehicle. Find a nice dirt road Hopefully know what else is around and you just you turn off your tracks. Mostly you just turn off your traction control We use the sand because it was in the quarters. It was pretty deep sand and so you kind of had to You know, you don't want to overcook it ⁓ but you could and ⁓ yeah, no, I had a great time is you know

Inside it's a Hyundai, it's an IONIQ 5, which I have in my driveway, except it has that little terrain mode, which allows you to put in dirt, sand, snow, mud, lava. I don't think the last one's true. But yeah, I really, I liked the XRT when they had the drive program, but the drive was actually pretty tame. Like, okay, here's a dirt road and go up here. And you're like, okay, we just drove up a dirt road in I Palm Springs.

John Voelcker (04:28)
you

Roberto Baldwin (04:46)
This was a lot more fun. This was like, hey, just go nuts. And we did. And my best lap, there's too much dust and the sensors didn't pick up my takeoff. So I'm just assuming I won. I don't think I won. The person who got like 51, he was there like on the track first. So it wasn't as rutted, but also I think he's a better driver than me.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:01)
I mean, that's always a reasonable assumption.

Roberto Baldwin (05:13)
I there's those of that. So he had a better track and he can do it better. He's better than I am. Had a lot of fun.

John Voelcker (05:20)
So you didn't

grind the battery pack on anything during that? Okay. I was on that XRT drive too, actually, and for whatever reason, you're right, it wasn't that challenging, of course, we managed to ground the pack on the one sort of hard rut. Yeah, didn't do anything, and there was a long discussion there afterwards about, well, is your pack strong enough? And they sort of gently said, yes.

Roberto Baldwin (05:23)
No, no, was with with ruts

that one? Yeah that one spot.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:38)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (05:47)
We guard our packs and we armor them against whatever people might do with them and that's the standard pack. We didn't add any extra armor on the XRT.

Roberto Baldwin (05:56)
Yeah.

So yeah, so it's, you can scratch up the bottom, apparently, according to Hyundai. ⁓ you know, they have to build these things with the idea that at some point someone's going to find a really spiky rock and high center their vehicle on it. So.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:11)
or drive it in Michigan, you know, whatever.

Roberto Baldwin (06:13)
Or driving in Michigan. One of those two.

I was in, what was I in Detroit? like a week ago. And I was in Ubers. I didn't drive around, but the whole time I'm like, man, you guys.

So yeah, no, was just a track run, but it's a reminder that I like that XRT. It's a bit more, I mean, again, it's not a Wrangler. That's not what it's built for. Don't think it's a Wrangler if you're like, well, I can't go up, know, Moab or whatever. I'm like, that's not what this car is. You couldn't do the same.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:48)
Yeah, it's meant

for going, you know, taking the road out to where John lives or, you know, a trail out to a cabin, you know, things like that.

Roberto Baldwin (06:54)
Yeah.

It's like a heavier, ⁓ slightly less fun version of a WRX. There you go. There. Like a WRX is great for me. Whenever I get a WRX, I'm super excited because it chews up all roads. It doesn't care. But also, I can't go to Moab in a WRX even though it's built to go off road.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:04)
Yeah. Although...

John Voelcker (07:13)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:19)
Yeah, well, you know, and even, you know, like the Subaru, Saltera and the Toyota BZ just in their standard form, those cars have more ground clearance than the XRT does. You know, the XRT is like seven inches of ground clearance, which is not a whole lot.

Roberto Baldwin (07:19)
Ahem.

John Voelcker (07:36)
Although I think it's an increment of an inch higher than the standard vehicle, but not so you'd see it.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:37)
a note.

Yeah, yeah, the standard one six inches and

Roberto Baldwin (07:40)
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:43)
this is five, this is seven, so.

Roberto Baldwin (07:44)
Yeah,

it's definitely not for insane off-roading, but it is for ⁓ you found something cool to do.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:52)
Although, know, it's better. It's got more ground clearance than the Ford Mach-E Rally, which is like 5.9 inches, which, you know, for something that is supposed to emulate a rally car, not a lot of, not much ground clearance there.

Roberto Baldwin (07:55)
⁓

You can't call it a rally if you doesn't.

John Voelcker (08:11)
That

Sam Abuelsamid (08:11)
It's a

rally because it's got those cool white wheels on it.

John Voelcker (08:11)
said, I-

Roberto Baldwin (08:14)
all right then.

John Voelcker (08:16)
That said, I live in a place where we have a fair percentage of electric cars. I have not seen a single Mach-E rally or a single IONIQ 5X RT on the road. Have you guys?

Roberto Baldwin (08:30)
see them here pretty often and I went to the dealership to get the wheels rotated on our IONIQ 5 and so I was just kinda talking to the salesperson who sold us our car. ⁓ He's actually a nice person. Then again, whenever we walk in, my wife's like, you know, he writes about cars and that pretty much gets rid of all the sort of BS that happens. ⁓ But he was saying, he's like, yeah, we get, he's like, they don't send us very many XRTs, but when they do, they're gone, like immediately.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:31)
⁓

Ha

John Voelcker (08:59)
Ruin, huh?

Roberto Baldwin (09:00)
So I've

seen a couple around here, but other than the Bay Area, I can't swing a stick without hitting an EV. I mean, I see a lot of, what do you call it, the Vinfasts. I see a lot of Vinfasts driving around here, so, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:12)
The only

place in America where you'll see Vinfasts.

Roberto Baldwin (09:15)
Yeah,

they're just like if there's an ev someone here is going to buy it and drive it around. I see oceans

John Voelcker (09:21)
Although very much to my shock, I presented at an EEV conference last month and VinFast had the second largest display on the floor ⁓ along with Kia. ⁓ It didn't seem to be terribly populated, but I was surprised to see it still out there.

Roberto Baldwin (09:41)
I think they had the potential to be like the Hyundai in the 80s with the Elantra, or I'm sorry, the Excel, where it comes out, they first get here and it's like, it's not great. Like the Excel wasn't a great car, it was really cheap. You go through a couple generations, I think if they stick with it and they have the money to do so, and they iterate and every car is better than the one before, there's the potential for them to do semi well. But first impressions are really tough to get over. I think the Hyundai really,

Sam Abuelsamid (09:52)
Then they go through a couple of generations and

Roberto Baldwin (10:10)
was able to succeed because the ⁓ the Yugo was so incredibly bad and it was around the same time. Everyone's like, yeah, it's not great, but it's not the Yugo. So you get the...

Sam Abuelsamid (10:17)
Ha

I mean, for Hyundai, it took a good 20 plus years for people to really start taking them seriously. And the main thing that kept them going through that time is after the first couple of years when their quality, everybody thought their quality was so awful, frankly it was not great, ⁓ they started introducing insane 10 year powertrain warranties and five, six year bumper to bumper warranties.

John Voelcker (10:48)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:52)
And that was, you know, and the cars were, you know, among the most affordable on the market. And so, you know, people figured, okay, well, it's cheap and, I can get a really good warranty on it. I'll take a flyer on it. And, but, you even with that, you know, it wasn't until like the late 2000s, early 2010s that, you know, people really started to take them more seriously.

Roberto Baldwin (11:16)
I still had people who, even five years ago, who were very much like, well, I mean, know you like these Hyundai's, but I'm not gonna buy one because blah, blah, blah, quality issues. So yeah, it stuck with them for a long time. I've just cleared my throat.

John Voelcker (11:28)
I'm always surprised at the different... Sorry.

lag. ⁓ I'm always surprised at the difference between perception and reality because we drive so many new cars. We have sort of an up-to-date 2026 picture of what a brand is like, what the cars are actually like. Around here at least, Hyundai has sort of emerged as the budget alternative to Toyota and Honda, probably somewhere above Nissan. ⁓

I'm still getting the... what? Aren't they Korean? And...

Sam Abuelsamid (12:12)
I didn't hear that word there, John. think you've dropped out a little. No, I'm just joking. We actually had a reader or listener ⁓ write in last week because ⁓ Nicole used a couple of words that, you know, she didn't drop any f-bombs, she, you know, she was, she got a little ⁓ worked up in some of her commentary.

John Voelcker (12:15)
I wasn't sure what the rules were, I didn't ask ahead of time. Yeah.

Being a demure and fragile flower, I won't go there.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:44)
Okay, else on the Ionic 5 XRT?

Roberto Baldwin (12:51)
Now, yeah, the ground clearance is seven inches. There you go. I looked it up real quick in case anyone's interested. Yeah, there you go. XRT, it's a lot more expensive than the other IONIQ 5s. ⁓ But if you live on a dirt road and you want to drift, there you go. You could probably do it actually in the SEL, to be honest.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:07)
There you go.

You might actually be able to do the drifting easier with an SEL just because it's not on, quote unquote, all-terrain tires. So you're to have a little less grip. All right, John, tell us what you've been driving.

Roberto Baldwin (13:20)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (13:27)
I actually have had a test car every week for the past six weeks, which has been kind of great, so I'll bang through them quick. ⁓

I had a Porsche Taycan, possibly my favorite EV just because up here, ⁓ know, New York is a high-tech state, but they take pretty good care of the roads, especially in my county. And so we have a lot of curvy roads with hills. They're twisty. They don't have a lot of traffic on them. And so having a Taycan is always a pleasure. This was the cheap one. This was only 138 grand. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (14:07)
easy.

Roberto Baldwin (14:07)
Nothing.

Jump change.

John Voelcker (14:09)
Yeah, well, you know, I'm thinking five years in, what's it going to show up on Bring a Trailer for? maybe the cheap one's going to show up on Bring a Trailer. so, ⁓ all right. I could maybe sort of do that.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:18)
About 38.

Just drop the one that's about the price it'll be.

used Tycon prices are

it's not it's not what you would expect of a used Porsche

Roberto Baldwin (14:32)
You can get one right now, I can get one right now for 50,000.

John Voelcker (14:33)
Anyway.

How many, what model year and how many models?

Roberto Baldwin (14:36)
I'm sorry, go on.

2024, 16,000 miles.

John Voelcker (14:44)
15? Oopsy, alright. Well, and the reason I ask is because there's this weird thing that's come up with some of the data from our current on EVs where it turns out age of the battery may be as important as the number of miles. Every used car salesman says, you know, it's got 78,000 miles and it's an EV, therefore, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (14:46)
Yep, no 16. I mean, now I'm splitting hairs.

John Voelcker (15:09)
I'll price it cheaper. If it's a newer model year, that may actually be a decent deal, but I digress. ⁓ The Taycan was lovely and I realized I've finally gotten over my irritation with Porsche not offering one-pedal driving just because it's such a nice throwback in a way to how you used to drive cars. The screen is only this big and ⁓ you don't get distracted by

anything digital. You just drive the car and you know I know the roads and curves up here pretty well and you know it took about half an hour to realize I could go into any curve 15 miles an hour faster in that car and just hold it through than any other vehicle I had tested recently until the next large SUV in front of me breaks in terror for a curve.

So the Taycan was lovely. ⁓ It always is. I will always take a Taycan to drive. But then I put, in six days, put 1800 miles on an Escalade IQ ⁓ in four states and a province. And that was an interesting road trip. Loved. ⁓

Super Cruise, the newest version of Super Cruise is really good. I haven't, I didn't see it do anything that worried me over those six days and a lot of this was interstate time.

Parking the Escalade IQL, I should say, not so fun, despite good cameras. And in fact, in a small town that was laid out before the arrival of horseless carriages, it was miserable. It brought up my driveway fine, but that's a great road trip car. 1.9 miles per kilowatt hour.

over those 1600 miles, but it does weigh four and a half tons,

Roberto Baldwin (17:15)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (17:18)
Charged at two different charging networks you guys tell me if you want to know this stuff

Sam Abuelsamid (17:24)
Yeah, no, we want to know all that kind of stuff.

John Voelcker (17:27)
All right. I had my first ever IANA charging experience. I covered them. I'd gone down to see their sort of marquee site. ⁓ Apex, South Carolina, think. North Carolina. Yeah. And ⁓ you know, that one's lovely and very stylish and 60s retro and the whole bit. This, I didn't even know there was one. It's on the border of Vermont and New Hampshire. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (17:41)
Carolina. Yeah, somewhere in the Carolinas.

John Voelcker (17:57)
It was 34 degrees. It was raining because it's New England in the winter. And I showed up. It had a canopy. It had trash bins. I charged at 368 kilowatts because I had taken it down to 14 or 12 percent. ⁓ It had squeegees. And at the motel next door, they said, ⁓ are you charging out there? Do you want some coffee? So overall,

Sam Abuelsamid (18:24)
Nice.

John Voelcker (18:27)
You know, it didn't look all that promising. was a canopy off the side of a budget motel with a restaurant that wasn't open yet next to it. But the whole thing worked flawlessly. Power delivery was great. There were two other EVs that showed up while I was there. So I wasn't the only one. But ⁓ first impression in real world use, very impressed. And then in Western New York State, I went to a Flying J slash GM

energy site. ⁓

GM is putting money into some C-Store chains. This one charged at 344 kilowatts, so almost as good. ⁓ My one grumble there was it was probably a few hundred feet ⁓ from the convenience store and the winds off Lake Erie just blow steadily to the east at 25 miles an hour and it was cold. you know, half-time first floor are the problems. ⁓ So those all work

Roberto Baldwin (19:27)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (19:29)
great. ⁓ The Electrify America station I went to was less fast, but it did work.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:35)
you

Roberto Baldwin (19:36)
Yeah, I'm seeing the electrify. I think the last two years they've really sort of made sure that their systems actually work. It is weird though when they do stick in a, you know, the recent one they put near my house, which is less than a mile from another Electrify America station, they put 10 charging stations in, which I'm like, see, that's how you do it. You can't put two in, stop that. It's like a lot of.

John Voelcker (20:01)
I wonder if they're going

to decommission the first one. First one's not on a Walmart, is it?

Roberto Baldwin (20:07)
No, no, it's at a Vons or Lucky. It's at another, they're both at supermarkets. One of them is closer to the freeway than the other, but they're both, the smaller one actually is used a lot. The new bigger one, there's always at least, there's always a spot there. So, they're both being used. And then, yeah, so it's, and they both work when I have to, if I'm going shopping, I'm like, oh, I still have like the free.

John Voelcker (20:13)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (20:35)
⁓ charging, which I rarely ever do because I'm lazy and it's easy just to plug my car in at home. ⁓ But when I do, you know, plug it in, walk right, you know, walk into the store, buy something, come back out, car's charged, everything's easy peasy.

John Voelcker (20:50)
Does the new EA have half NAG sports and half CCS?

Roberto Baldwin (20:54)
It does not. ⁓ I was hoping this was going to be an export ⁓ location because, they had talked about it, but as far as I know, did they even have an export location yet?

John Voelcker (21:08)
on me. The Ayanna was half and half.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:08)
Electrify America? I

think EA has started to retrofit some stations. I think there's a handful that they've done, but not very many.

Roberto Baldwin (21:18)
Yeah, Orlando,

and Waterford, Connecticut. looks like that's their next pilot stations, which seems. Yeah, it's been a been a minute, but, know, the most, you know, it's fine. Everyone has adapters, which I never got, which I found out like, you know, like a month ago that I never got an email or maybe I did, but I never got an email to get my free adapter from Hyundai. So I'm like, boo.

John Voelcker (21:44)
Well, two adapters. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (21:45)
Ahem.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:48)
Yeah,

well, yeah, for Hyundai, you'd need one for AC and one for DC.

John Voelcker (21:51)
Right,

right. And trying to explain this ⁓ to the public at large, they get adapter. The idea that you need different adapters for different use cases is a challenge. But what else did I have? So the Escalade IQ was great. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (22:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Voelcker (22:11)
albeit massively, incredibly, horribly energy inefficient, but not a bad way to travel a long distance in crappy weather on interstates. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (22:20)
Yeah, well, we will

we will be we will have an escalate IQ as part of our fleet for Operation Frodo in June when we're transporting rescue dogs. And so I'm going to be driving that one from Detroit to Omaha. And so actually, there's there's no ⁓ there's no IANA stations in Michigan yet. There's there's several in Ohio. And there's actually one in Gary, Indiana. So I may I may make a stop there for ⁓

John Voelcker (22:28)
yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:49)
to try that to check that one out on the way.

John Voelcker (22:52)
Yeah, definitely recommend it.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:54)
but the big

size will be handy for putting multiple dog crates in there.

Roberto Baldwin (22:59)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (23:00)
Although I didn't, well maybe it's not a Cadillac thing, I didn't see the old Subaru style I had. Look, our load bay is wide enough where you can put two standard medium-sized dog cages side by side. But unlike Subarus, it doesn't come standard with a golden retriever, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (23:11)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (23:16)
Yeah, I just

didn't like, you know, we got our BRZ there was just a dog in there.

Even the BRD. I mean the dog was vaping, but he's in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:25)
Well, according to the alternative fuels data center site, there are currently four electrify America stations with ⁓ with NACS ports, ⁓ one in Connecticut, ⁓ one ⁓ in, let's see, in Maryland, ⁓ another one ⁓ near Pittsburgh, and then one in Florida.

Roberto Baldwin (23:48)
Oh, Pittsburgh. All right. Well, next time I have to go out to the office. I'll see if I can cruise over to the E.A. To be honest, don't think I've been to Pittsburgh. I've been to the Pittsburgh area like four times for work. I've never actually been in Pittsburgh. Because I never have time. just there to work, do a bunch of things. And the office isn't actually in Pittsburgh. It's in Warrendale. yeah, maybe it's near. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:53)
That's southeast of Pittsburgh.

Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (24:17)
Anything about Pittsburgh, to be honest.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:19)
Alright John, what else you got?

John Voelcker (24:20)
What

else? ⁓ And then I did 2,700 miles in a Maverick hybrid all-wheel drive. And this was a deliberate long-term test. I had to pick up a 50-year-old axle from way, way, way south of the Mason-Dixon line for a 70-year-old car, as one does. And... ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (24:46)
practically new for you.

John Voelcker (24:47)
We'll get to that part of it at the end. ⁓ And the trip got interrupted by the northeast very largest snowstorm.

But ⁓ I had the truck and I wanted to test it out as a long-term vehicle. I was a fan of the Maverick when it launched. I am still a fan of the Maverick because in the update, they paired the hybrid not just with all-wheel drive, but with 4,000 pounds of towing capacity. No, it won't tow your 28-foot boat, but it will tow anything on a small trailer. ⁓

I didn't actually have to tow, the axle fit nicely in the bed diagonally. ⁓ anyway, I did that whole trip in truly crappy weather ⁓ and got almost 30 miles a gallon, the bulk of it on the interstate. ⁓

which was a little lower than I'd hoped, but again, it was fairly heavy duty cycle and it was cold and snowy and side winds and all the rest. But I still love the Maverick. The door handles still irritate me, but otherwise in my world home run, especially with the hybrid that has all wheel drive, because I cannot own a car that does not have all wheel drive if I want to get up my driveway in the winter.

Roberto Baldwin (25:48)
yeah.

John Voelcker (26:09)
So that was that. Then the latest two, ⁓ I had a week with the new Jeep Cherokee, which I was very interested in. Yeah, I was driven it.

Roberto Baldwin (26:21)
I'm supposed to get one.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:21)
I have not, when they did the launch program,

I was on vacation in Mexico and so couldn't go.

Roberto Baldwin (26:29)
I'm supposed to get the Cherokee Hybrid in May, in like two weeks. I should email someone about that, whoops.

John Voelcker (26:35)
So.

Make a note, they're all hybrids at this moment. You cannot get a non-hybrid powertrain. Does not use the H word anywhere. It might be in the owner's manual if there is still an owner's manual, but ⁓ other than that, nothing on it says hybrid. ⁓ And even the gauges aren't incredibly clear that you're sort of re-genning. I haven't flipped through every single option for gauges yet.

Roberto Baldwin (26:39)
Make a note, email a person.

John Voelcker (27:08)
And so, you know, it's a perfectly good large compact or small midsize two row crossover. My main problem was I just don't understand what makes this a Jeep. It could be take a take away the seven slot grill. It could be anything. Put a different grill on the front. It's square. And there were certain things that didn't feel incredibly jeepy, like electric doors.

You know, maybe if you're in a grand wagoneer, but you know, for a, you know, 40-ish thousand crossover, do you need a little button that electrically releases the door and then on the outside a sunken handle where you put your thing in and push the rubber mat and the door releases? That just didn't feel very jeepy.

Roberto Baldwin (28:03)
It also feels like just a waste of money to be honest. Like mechanical doors been working for, you know, over a hundred years. Why are we doing this with electric doors? Let's please stop. Exactly. And then there's a whole region where they're like, yeah, don't do that.

John Voelcker (28:13)
China has thoughts on that.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:16)
Yeah, we've...

John Voelcker (28:19)
Yeah. Yeah. and there were odd, a few odd cost cutting, you know, it didn't feel cheap. The interior was good enough. I had the old black, which I'm never a fan of, but it was fine. ⁓ as far as I could ascertain, I should have looked it up on the interwebs. ⁓ it has, you know, you, it has a powered tailgate. I couldn't find the button to put the tailgate back down. You could do it from the fob, but who wants the whole.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:47)
Usually on

Stellantis vehicles, it's inside. It's usually on the left-hand side of the cargo space. There wasn't one there.

Roberto Baldwin (28:48)
Is it in, maybe it's in the, the, the, the pillar.

John Voelcker (28:53)
I looked, I looked and

saw, unless it was hidden or it was looked like something else. Now I'm perfectly willing to admit to being an idiot here. ⁓ It was also raining. Do you sense a theme for spring in the Northeast? But, ⁓ so I wasn't crawling around, but it just, you know, that was a little, little bit of a puzzle. There was one other thing which I'm now forgetting, but you know, it should sell well.

Roberto Baldwin (28:55)
⁓

John Voelcker (29:22)
It looks...

somewhat jeepish if you take the Grand Wagoneer as their most recent styling statement because it's very upright. It has fewer rounded curves. It's a little bit more knife edge in some of its aspects. Nice and upright. So people will say yes SUV. Mine was $45,000 give or take. And the engine is a 1.6 liter turbo with this two motor

hybrid system, which worked fine. ⁓ And unless I hammered it, the engine coming on was fairly sedate. ⁓ But, ⁓ say again?

Sam Abuelsamid (30:05)
What kind of fuel economy did you get out of it?

What kind of fuel economy did you get?

John Voelcker (30:10)
⁓ 34?

So, you know, not quite rev four hybrid levels, but it has legit all wheel drive as opposed to the Toyota practice of a small E motor on the rear axle. ⁓ I don't know. just, I think, I think they'll sell a ton and quality seemed good. ⁓ they come from Mexico. So of course it's tariff time, but, ⁓ I just, I'm curious whether people

Sam Abuelsamid (30:14)
Yup, yeah.

for now.

John Voelcker (30:42)
will perceive it as a Jeep or whether they're buying a brand name for what is essentially a very conventional compact crossover and that's the size of it.

Roberto Baldwin (30:55)
I mean considering how few Cherokees or Grand Wagoneers or whatever actually go off-road.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:55)
Yeah, well.

Roberto Baldwin (31:02)
Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:03)
And they

have acknowledged that there is going to be a Trailhawk version of this. So it'll be lifted up. It'll have some sort of low range mechanism like they had on the last generation Cherokee and so on. ⁓ And it'll have some more capable, some more serious off-road credentials than this one. This is the one for most people.

I think once they launch the Trailhawk, with the previous generation Cherokee and with Compass and others, they sell a surprising proportion of ⁓ Trailhawk type models on those. And so I have no doubt that that will sell, that will probably sell quite well for this Cherokee lineup as well.

John Voelcker (31:46)
Yeah.

Well, something did cross my mind. That vehicle is built on the Stella Large platform, which I hadn't realized, which is also what's under the new Charger and the Wagoneer S. ⁓

And I guess the Jeep Recon, which are electric, the Charger is obviously getting its gasoline engine now in a longitudinal format, whereas this is a transverse format. is there, let's seriously consider, is there a Hellcatized Cherokee out there?

Sam Abuelsamid (32:26)
Ha

I don't think so because with the Stala Large platform, there's a couple of different variants of it. ⁓ So there's versions where the front end, ahead of the bulkhead, the front bulkhead is longer, like what you find on the Wagoneer S and on the ⁓ Charger. And ⁓ those use a multi-link front suspension.

The version that's used in the Cherokee is a little bit shorter, has a strut front suspension, and it's designed for transverse engine mount. So I don't think we'll, and same as last words, we probably won't get a Hellcat or Hemi version of this Cherokee, but what there probably will be is one with the new two liter, four cylinder Hurricane Four.

that they just launched in the Grand Cherokee. So that, you know, in the Grand Cherokee, that one's like 320, 321 horsepower. So we'll probably get that in a version of the Cherokee, maybe in the Trailhawk, maybe in some other trim levels as well. You know, so that's probably about the limits ⁓ of what we'll see in that particular vehicle.

John Voelcker (33:29)
Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (33:51)
Just say it's a Hemi.

John Voelcker (33:51)
I'm old enough to

remember when certain British car makers would fit a new engine by redesigning absolutely everything forward of the firewall. ⁓ Again, I digress, but ⁓ I can think of one brand CEO who would like that ⁓ prospect. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:10)
yeah, I'm sure Tim Koniscus would love to

⁓ a hemi in that thing.

Roberto Baldwin (34:13)
Should have a Hemi in it.

Just stick a Hemi in everything. Or just whatever you put in there, just call it a Hemi. It doesn't have to be a Hemi. It doesn't matter. Just say Hemi.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:20)
I mean, technically

all of their engines have hemispherical combustion chambers, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (34:25)
Yeah, Hemi. They're all Hemis. Everything's

a Hemi. EV, Hemi. Hybrid, Hemi. Bicycles, Hemi. They're all Hemis.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:36)
⁓ Okay, anything else on the Cherokee?

John Voelcker (34:38)
⁓

Yeah, the last one I just picked up a couple days ago, ⁓ Subaru Trail Seeker. It's one of four Subaru electric vehicles now, all of which are Toyotas with stars on the nose. And one extra.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:50)
Which is four times

as many EVs as Ford sells now.

John Voelcker (34:56)
I'm sorry? ⁓ for times is may- If you don't include the E-Transit, which I think actually did stick around.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:57)
That's four times as many EVs as Ford has now.

I think the e-Transit

production has ended.

John Voelcker (35:06)
You know, I

got caught out on that. I got a note from Ford, but it may have been at the end of last year, so I'm not sure. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (35:12)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (35:13)
I did a

whole video about the e-transit and then like two weeks later they're like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. And I'm like.

John Voelcker (35:19)
I know they said they weren't going to have a new generation of built here, but anyway. So yes. ⁓ And actually four times as many EVs as Volkswagen ⁓ sells today in the US. ⁓ But anyway, ⁓ the trail seeker to me, I'm sort of fond of because the only one that actually looks like a Subaru. Now.

Does it feel like a Subaru inside? Not particularly, it feels like a Toyota. ⁓ Does that matter to Subaru buyers? I'm not convinced it will. ⁓ I've always said if any brand...

should have had EVs early on in Subaru, but they're so tiny globally. I looked it up, they don't even make a million cars a year globally, of which fully two thirds now are sold in North America, which is bizarre for a Japanese company. But they do one thing really well, as their marketing says, longevity, safety, adventure, and hopefully these vehicles will, you know.

take them, continue to take them down that path. What I found amusing at the drive for the car was they just put up a side shot of the thing and the Subaru version has roof rails and they asked people, no brand, what kind of car is this? Everybody said Subaru. It's that right wagon. Yeah, exactly. And the Outback doesn't look like an Outback anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:47)
Yeah, they probably all thought it was an outback.

John Voelcker (36:55)
I'll be curious to see if anyone buys one by mistake. anyway, so I'm driving that so far so good. I'm taking it on a 240 mile road trip today. So that's the list.

Roberto Baldwin (37:06)
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:07)
Excellent.

Awesome. All right. Yeah, I I haven't driven the Trail Seeker yet, but I've driven the same vehicle as a Toyota, which is the the BZ Woodland. And yeah, I was I really impressed with it. Yeah, it's the most powerful. know, the Trail Seeker and the BZ Woodland are the most powerful variants of that apart from the Lexus RZ. You know, so the 375 horsepower.

John Voelcker (37:10)
Were you driving, Skip?

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:37)
And you know, they're quite quite fun to drive and one of the interesting things when I was talking to the chief engineer from Toyota about that Yeah, he said, you know, they've set it up to be you know, because the two motors are each capable of 220 horsepower but Because of the the voltage and current they get from the battery they they're kind of capped at about 375 but they What what they've done is by default it biases towards rear

John Voelcker (37:53)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:07)
rear power, rear torque bias. So the rear motor is putting out the full 220 and then the front motor is putting out, you know, 150 ish horsepower. But it could shift between 70, 30 in either direction, depending on the traction, you know, what you need, what's available. And it was, it was quite fun to drive that vehicle. And it's got, it's got a surprising amount of room inside, you know, good, cargo space. That's a, you know, it's roughly the same size as the old Outback.

John Voelcker (38:09)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:37)
And like you said, it certainly looks more like an outback than the new outback does.

John Voelcker (38:37)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (38:41)
The new Outback

John Voelcker (38:41)
The new Outback is actually

the same size except being four inches taller. It's on that same platform, same wheelbase, et cetera. But absolutely.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:47)
Yeah.

But, the proportions of it now, the boxy proportions

make it somehow looks much larger.

Roberto Baldwin (38:56)
It looks weird. The Outback is great until you look at it. It's fine. You know what? No one's bought a Subaru because it looks good. make no one, no one, you know, yeah, but, but no one, yeah, no one, no one. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I had a bug eye. Yeah. I had a 2004 bug guy, which was like a weird looking car. I love that car.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:00)
Ha ha.

That's true. Except maybe the old SVX.

But nobody bought those, so.

John Voelcker (39:13)
Yeah. Or it's XT predecessor. So yeah.

⁓ yeah. The one thing I will say about the ⁓ trail seeker slash BZ Woodland is that Toyota hasn't quite caught on to a lot of the EV stuff. The regen is the weakest in any two motor car I've ever driven. ⁓

It just doesn't have. So you learn to drive for it, but you lift off and let it regen much earlier before the stoplight. One thing. The other thing is ⁓ nothing latches through power cycles. So I have to tell it to give me strong regen with the left paddle every single time I turn the car on and off. And worse, I like hill hold because I live in a place with hills.

That doesn't even latch if you change gears. If you reverse and then go back into drive, your hold is gone. Which is just bizarre. But perhaps over time...

Roberto Baldwin (40:14)
⁓ yet.

It turns off hill. Alright, that's weird.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:26)
Yeah, that's,

Sam Abuelsamid (40:30)
If we all complain enough, maybe they'll change their philosophy, at least on the regen. ⁓

John Voelcker (40:36)
Dude, it worked

with Hyundai. The new IONIQ 5 finally latches.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:39)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:39)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:42)
Yeah, I know.

Roberto Baldwin (40:43)
Like you tell

like, you know, some automakers listen, Hyundai is one of them. ⁓ I'm sure there's others.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:51)
Yeah,

you know, Toyota's philosophy when they launched the BZ4X, you know, and that also obviously got applied to the Subaru variants, was they wanted the experience for their customers to be as much like driving one of their hybrids or gas vehicles. hence, you know, staying away from strong regen, know, certainly no one pedal mode, ⁓ even, you know, that you could select, you know, it's not even selectable. ⁓

And I don't think that ⁓ people really liked that very much. And they haven't changed their philosophy on the regen yet. Maybe if we keep whining about it, they will eventually. But ⁓ certainly they've said that in Japan, ⁓ guess supposedly regulations in Japan don't allow for one pedal drive.

⁓ And Nissan has said the same thing when they launched the new Leaf. He said, no, Japan not allowed to do one pedal mode. said, this is, yeah, but this is the US market and it's all software controlled. So you could do one pedal in the US and not allow it in Japan. It's not like a whole lot of cars are going back and forth between those two markets.

John Voelcker (41:56)
However...

Roberto Baldwin (41:58)
I mean, that's cool, but...

John Voelcker (42:08)
There's a concept called additiveness. Yeah. I will say I drove a BZ earlier this year and it is improved in a lot of subtle ways over the original BZ 4X, which I really felt was borderline contemptuous for anyone who had EV experience.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:29)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (42:31)
It was an

⁓ angry teenager who's been forced to clean their room. They're like, fine, I'll do it, but I'm not gonna do a good job. Here's your damn EV.

John Voelcker (42:39)
Fine, you want an EV here. And the one example actually

that made me overly happy was in the initial car, it would not give you battery percentage. It only gave you miles remaining. And I asked about that. And they said, battery percentage will be too confusing. People only want to know how many miles are remaining.

Well, if the calculator didn't oscillate quite as much all over the map, maybe, but, you know, you can actually use one or the other or both and, excuse me, you'll just say percentage meter.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:16)
And you know.

Yeah, exactly. was just gonna say, you know what people have been used to for a century? Looking at a fuel gauge and seeing, okay, it's three quarters full, it's one quarter full, it's empty.

Roberto Baldwin (43:27)
Half full, yeah.

John Voelcker (43:29)
Yeah,

yeah. They now have a percentage. It's in smaller type than is the miles remaining, but progress.

Roberto Baldwin (43:29)
We've been using percentage for a while.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:40)
All right. Okay. Well, let's carry on then. So I also had a product the last week from the, uh, from the Toyota motor company. Uh, I had the Lexus GX five 50 over trail, which is the fancier, um, more, most off roadie version of a Land Cruiser, the current generation Land Cruiser, uh, or at least the Land Cruiser two 50. Cause you know, third,

Within Toyota, there's actually a whole bunch. There's always been a bunch of different Land Cruiser variants. And so depending on where you are in the world, this particular vehicle is either called Land Cruiser or Lexus GX 550 here in North America. Some places it's a Land Cruiser Prado or a Land Cruiser 250. ⁓ Then there's also the LX, is that's the high-end 300 series Land Cruiser. ⁓

John Voelcker (44:39)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (44:39)
in

that mid-range Land Cruiser ⁓ territory. The GX is basically the same as the Land Cruiser, but with a nicer interior. It doesn't have so much way of hard plastics. It feels more premium. ⁓ And given what a Land Cruiser costs, if you go for one of the higher end off-road Land Cruisers, the price difference between a Land Cruiser at the high end versus a GX 550,

Actually not that much. And ⁓ when I first drove the Land Cruiser, the price on that one was like $74,000, which is about where a GX550 starts. And I said at the time, well, if you're to spend this kind of money on it, you might as well just get the GX. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, be more comfy, have nicer feeling materials, no hard plastics.

Roberto Baldwin (45:29)
Be a little more comfy. Just like nice comfy.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:38)
Um, so it was definitely a nicer place to spend time. The over trail is the most off road oriented version of it. So you get the bigger, uh, all train tires on 18 inch wheels. Uh, it's got skid plates underneath things like that. Um, and the one that I had was also equipped with a roof rack, which, um, you, when you're driving at highway speeds, you absolutely know you have a roof rack up there. Even if the sun roof is closed and you can't see it, you, you hear it.

You hear the noise of the air flowing over this roof rack. But if you are going to use a GX 550 Overtrail, you know, to go camping, go off into the woods, carry your kayaks, your bikes, put a rooftop tent on it, whatever it might be, you'll want to use that. The reality is that most people are going to buy a GX 550, even if they get the Overtrail, probably never going to do that. They're going to be like,

Land Rover Defender customers, the first two generations of owners of the vehicle will probably never ever go on anything worse than a gravel road. by the time it's on to the third or fourth owner, it's got 150,000 miles on it. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:47)
Then Roman will buy it over at TFL and that's all he'll do.

By the time TFL buys it.

John Voelcker (46:56)
But meanwhile, those muddy soccer fields are really, really four wheel drive necessary.

Roberto Baldwin (47:03)
Yeah, you need four wheel drive.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:03)
absolutely.

Yeah. And at least this one's got off-road, all-terrain tires on it so that when you do take it off-road, it's gonna have a lot better grip than the all-season tires that are on standard GS550s. So the other big difference between...

John Voelcker (47:19)
It's going to be great when

Brendan does a long job on those new neighbors.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:24)
Yeah, exactly. So the other big difference between the GX and the Land Cruiser is the powertrain. All the current generation Land Cruisers have the 2.4 liter turbo either with or without a hybrid system. ⁓ The ⁓ GX ⁓ has the same 3.4 liter twin turbo V6 that you will find in the Tundra and Sequoia and in the LX ⁓ and ⁓

probably some other products as well from the Toyota and Lexus group. 10-speed automatic transmission, 349 horsepower, 479 foot pounds of torque. So it's got plenty of performance, that's not an issue. And it's actually pretty similar in terms of output to the hybrid in the Land Cruiser, but feels a lot nicer.

Roberto Baldwin (48:06)
79.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:22)
⁓ The engine feels better than the four cylinder in the Land Cruiser. ⁓ I've complained before about Toyota's four cylinder engines that generally very fuel efficient, don't sound great. ⁓ The V6 definitely much nicer to drive. well actually to be fair, the hybrids, the Toyota body on frame hybrids, not great fuel efficiency either. ⁓ This one similarly, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (48:48)
It's like a trick.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:52)
Well Toyota, on the body on frame vehicles like the Tundra and Sequoia and Tacoma and the 4Runner, they're using the hybrid to enhance performance more than enhance fuel efficiency because they don't really get you any better fuel efficiency. The GX with the V6 is rated at 17 miles per gallon combined, 15 city, 21 highway. I averaged about 15 all around, including a bunch of highway driving. ⁓ I didn't get a chance to...

take it to an off-road park or anything. But during the weekend when I had it, we had a whole bunch of rain and so I took it out blasting around some unpaved back roads that were getting pretty rutted and had some big hefty puddles in there. ⁓ And it felt fine on there. that's probably the most that most GX550s are ever gonna experience anyway. ⁓ it handled those fine. ⁓ Launching in some...

you know, on a muddy back road, ⁓ you know, no issues there with traction or anything like that. ⁓ Had the this one, you know, had the optional heads up display, the Mark Levinson premium audio and a bunch of other things. We're see the where's the. Looking for the roof rack. here we go. The off road roof rack. ⁓ Fifteen hundred bucks for that. So that's, you know, again.

If you are actually going to take this thing to go camping in the woods and use it, get that. If not, skip that because that probably contributed to the lower fuel economy as well as the significant amount of wind noise around the thing. So if you're not going to use it, save your money. But if you are going to use it, then you know, then it's definitely worthwhile. ⁓ So base price on the the GX 550 Overtrail.

is 79,345, which as I said, compared to the Land Cruiser, it was only a few thousand dollars more. And I think it's worth it for this vehicle to go with the GX instead. All in, the one that I had, bottom line, $86,365. You guys wanna take guesses on what the destination charge was on this?

John Voelcker (51:17)
24.95?

Sam Abuelsamid (51:19)
How much? 24?

John Voelcker (51:19)
24.95?

Roberto Baldwin (51:21)
I'm gonna say 18.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:22)
Robbie? ⁓ You're both high. ⁓ It was $14.50.

Roberto Baldwin (51:28)
⁓

John Voelcker (51:29)
These days that sounds almost reasonable, horrifyingly.

Roberto Baldwin (51:32)
I know.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:32)
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (51:33)
I know.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:34)
I know. and the, the one that I had was finished, was painted the Nori green pearl, which was a really nice color, looked really good and looked even better once I had a whole bunch of mud on the sides of it from driving around those back roads. So it actually.

Roberto Baldwin (51:44)
Hmm

If I have

any sort of off-road vehicle, I've decided I'm only gonna try to get photos of it just looking absolutely filthy. Come on, that's the whole point of the car. The way our...

Sam Abuelsamid (51:58)
Yeah, well, yeah, that's the way it should be. ⁓

John Voelcker (52:04)
I got yelled at

by a leader for having bug smears on the windshield. I'm like, excuse me, I was testing.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:08)
haha

Yeah. All right. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (52:15)
You can go to the, you know what?

can go to the, they can go to the automakers website.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:21)
Yeah. If you want pictures of a clean car, go to the website. All right. Let's carry on. ⁓ So last week ⁓ was the Milan Design Show, which is the place where automakers usually like to unveil new cars, right?

That's okay.

John Voelcker (52:47)
Bye!

Roberto Baldwin (52:47)
I said yes, I think there was a, I think

there's a Chrome issue with, know, Chrome, because Chrome has to be updated every 13 minutes. ⁓ And right now it's like, hey, you should be updated. I'm like, gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:52)
Okay.

Well, Hyundai brought a number of American journalists, including ⁓ our aforementioned friends from TFL and Sophie Anbe ⁓ over to Milan to show off new concept that they were announcing there. ⁓ Actually, no, it's not a concept. It is a production model that they're launching ⁓ that is going to be on sale soon in Europe. It's going to be assembled in Turkey.

It's the new Hyundai IONIQ 3. ⁓ What do you guys think about this car?

Roberto Baldwin (53:35)
I don't know, it's probably not hot. ⁓ It's probably not hot now. But I like a small little hatch. mean, I like it. It's probably going to do well. ⁓ It's probably not going to be sold here because we can't have small cars because of F-150 effect. ⁓ But yeah, no, think it's cool little car. I like a...

Sam Abuelsamid (53:37)
Well, it's a hatch. I don't know about the hot part. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:04)
I like the back end. I like that it's very sort of cut off. It's got that little weird, ⁓ you know, that little wing for, you all the not speeding it's going to do.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:14)
Well, this is

the N-line version, which is like 150 horsepower, think. Something like that.

Roberto Baldwin (54:19)
Yeah, which

in Europe is like all the horsepower. ⁓ But no, I think it's cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:23)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (54:26)
What struck me is this is probably Hyundai's attempt to get out and duke it out with...

Sam Abuelsamid (54:26)
So.

John Voelcker (54:37)
less expensive Chinese EVs. Which are now, if I remember, like 15 % of the European market to the great distress of Volkswagen, which will have less expensive EVs coming in due course. ⁓ But ⁓ I will be curious to see if Hyundai can do the same trick with a compact SUV, which is really what a lot of the Chinese vehicles are.

in England six weeks ago, all anyone could talk about was, and I've of course forgotten the brand because I had J.Coup, J-A-E-C-O-O. I had never even heard of a J.Coup and it seemed to be the one that everyone was pointing to as 20 % cheaper than whatever all the others were. We'll see how the quality stands up, whether they can do servicing, all the rest, but I'll be curious to see if Hyundai can compete with those

folks. Still, this is a cool looking little car.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:38)
Yeah,

JAKU is a new brand from Cherry, ⁓ has been Cherry's been around for a while. ⁓ And yeah, I've seen I've seen that little JAKU car ⁓ that they're talking about, which looks pretty interesting. You know, this thing, the IONIQ 3, you know, it's based on the 400 volt version of the ⁓ EGMP architecture.

⁓ So, you know, similar to what we had here in the Kona EV, ⁓ what we're getting in the IONIQ 3, smaller than those, you know, it's going to be like the same size as the ⁓ Kia EV2 that's launching in Europe shortly. You know, I like the look of this thing, you know, it's got a little bit of, you know, Veloster vibe to it. ⁓

And it looks like it would be a fun car to drive around.

John Voelcker (56:35)
That's the same platform as the Kia EV4, which was their sedan that they were going to bring in. They actually drove in Korea, boy, spring, I think, now. ⁓ And then they're not bringing it in because it's made in Korea, whereas their EV3, the little tiny square box ⁓ compact SUV, will actually be made in North America. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (56:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Voelcker (57:04)
But that too is the same platform, the 400 volt version of EGMP. I'm not sure the Kona and those are on that platform. I'd have to go back and check.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:15)
They, it's not, it's

technically not the platform, but they are using the 400 volt, the same 400 volt components. So battery motors, power electronics.

Roberto Baldwin (57:21)
Yeah, that's it. Because it's it's

John Voelcker (57:21)
Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:25)
EV first, but it's still like a modular type platform. So it's a little different from the EGMP.

John Voelcker (57:28)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:29)
Yeah. ⁓ the other, the other big thing that's new on the IONIQ three, ⁓ is an all new infotainment system. ⁓ so this is the first Hyundai to feature their new Android automotive based infotainment, which means, you know, it's, it's running all Android. You'd be able to download apps to it and everything. ⁓ it's, ⁓ they've got, ⁓ 12.9 inch or 14.6 inch center displays. And then there's also a small.

instrument cluster display on top of the dash. ⁓ So that that's the thing that's, you know, we'll be getting that in other vehicles here soon. You know, probably

Roberto Baldwin (58:10)
I tried to ask

John Voelcker (58:10)
Does it follow

Roberto Baldwin (58:10)
him

John Voelcker (58:11)
mirror?

Roberto Baldwin (58:11)
at the...

John Voelcker (58:13)
Does it phone mirror?

Roberto Baldwin (58:15)
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:16)
⁓ Yes, it does have support for CarPlay and Android Auto. So you can hook up your phone.

Roberto Baldwin (58:20)
I tried,

when I was at the meta plant, I tried to get them to tell me when, but they're like, I'm like, so when's this coming to United States? And they just kind of looked at each other like, do we say anything about that yet? They're like, no, they're like, I'm like, it's coming. They're like, yeah, yeah, it'll be here. But the PLOS, their infotainment system, their STV stuff. But I was trying, I really tried to get like like, next generation Ionic five or something, nothing.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:34)
The car or the infotainment system?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we could see it later this year in the new Tucson when that arrives. That's coming later this year. ⁓ So it could show up there. ⁓ But certainly, would guess by sometime next year at the latest, we'll start to see it in cars here.

Roberto Baldwin (58:50)
Womp Womp.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:09)
All right. So just last night I got back. Well, actually let's continue with the Milan show first. ⁓ The Hyundai also, let's see, where is it? Kia. Kia showed off a concept in Milan ⁓ called the Meta Turismo, ⁓ which some people are referring to as kind of a next generation stinger ⁓ that's electric. ⁓

doesn't it doesn't seem to have any of the design language of what we've seen in other recent kiosks like the ⁓ the EV9 or the the ⁓ the Nutella ride. It's it's quite different. What what do you think of the metatourismo?

Roberto Baldwin (59:59)
It doesn't have any door handles. So how you going to get, no, I'm just kidding. It's a concept. mean, you know, we get excited about these concepts. Kia does and Hyundai do a pretty good job of sort of bringing a car to market that sort of looks like their concept relatively quickly. So what we see here, it's not going to be as cool. I guess the word would be or as, ⁓ but you know, they're probably going to have something close to this coming to market in a couple of years. So yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:02)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:28)
The Mediterranean is a weird name. I don't like the meta in anything, but it's like...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:33)
It's you

know, and it's sort of sedanish

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:39)
Yeah, you can put your friends in the back. There's enough room for dogs. That's all really matters, to be honest.

John Voelcker (1:00:46)
And hey, it's Sunday, so it's time for a new design language from Kia.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:46)
Any thoughts?

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:50)
Yeah, it was like they throw they just go crazy. I I appreciate that the Kia and Hyundai are just like, woo. Yolo, they're like Yolo with every new car. It doesn't quite work out IONIQ 6. think, you know, it was really the design of that vehicle that sort of like, you know, made it not really people.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:50)
Of course.

John Voelcker (1:01:08)
The concept

was amazing looking, then they ran into things like aerodynamics. Yeah. I mean...

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:13)
Yeah, so yeah, it'll be fun to see

how much of this is like that when it comes out.

John Voelcker (1:01:19)
I'm just curious at this Stinger Parallel because there were a lot of high hopes for the Stinger rear drive, compact, four-door sedan. Actually, was that hatchback, I think? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:31)
Yes it was.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:32)
Everyone

loved the stinger. No one bought the stinger.

John Voelcker (1:01:35)
You're right. Well,

in part because it needed a couple more years of suspension development ⁓ to be a really, you know, sort of the less expensive vehicle to match it up with stuff that's more expensive. ⁓ And I'm not convinced the dealers knew what to do with it or how to sell it. ⁓ Is there a niche in the US for something like that?

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:05)
for a sedan or like a, I mean, there's a niche for like, you have to, so like the BRZ GR86, that sort of, there is a niche, it's young enthusiasts who still want to drive transmissions. So that's, you know, it's a small, know, it's a small, but those people will continue to buy that car again. you know, I see they're all over the place here in the Bay area. I have a BRZ, you know, I'm that guy. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:02:07)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:07)
GM seems to think so.

John Voelcker (1:02:33)
Give me

your commie.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:35)
Yeah, that's true. But I don't know if the four door is something that people are, I don't know. Are you pulling people away from like a three series for this? like what do you, is that, or is that market so tied up with those folks that you're never gonna pull them?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:48)
I think for Kia,

that may be what they're targeting, is something like the 3 Series. And of course you've got Genesis still in there too with the G70 for now.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:03)
I see a lot of like Genesis G70s that like young guys have bought and like totally tripped out. They've lowered it, they've done all the things. They really liked the design of that vehicle. So it's got it, but again, it's such a small, it's such a small market. Like the enthusiast market is, know, it gets smaller every year, I think, to be honest. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:03:23)
So is the G70

the new ⁓ Q35? No. ⁓ G35 was it? What was, what did they call it before the Q?

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:27)
Yes, yes, it's like the cube- it's- it's- it's up, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:28)
Yeah.

G35.

John Voelcker (1:03:35)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:35)
the G35,

yeah. I remember G35 was, that was huge. But yeah, the Genesis isn't that big.

It's just you just hit this this weird little spot in the hearts of these enthusiasts and all it takes is like three people to buy it. And one of them to end up in a magazine or on a site. And then everyone's like, my God, that's a great car. Let's buy that. And let's trick it out and let's do all these things to it. But you never, know, it's a really a crap shoot for the enthusiast market because you're never quite sure. Like, is this going to?

Are people going to buy this? Or can we dethrone the 3 Series, the BRZ, the Miata? Can we take those on? Because none of those cars sell a lot.

John Voelcker (1:04:22)
I think the challenge is that in lot of cases they're more popular with second owners than they are with first owners. I wonder if G70s aren't relatively cheap. I haven't looked, but compared to other things that you might tune.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:38)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:38)
Probably,

you know, and I think you know the people who are I think the people who are more likely to be the enthusiasts Yeah, like you say Robbie, you know, probably a little bit younger may not have the income to afford one of these cars new But you know then you know when after a couple of years, know pick one up pick I used one up with You know not too many miles at at a reasonable price. Let's see Here's a 2019 g70 for

$18,000 but that's but that's with 99,000 miles. Here's a 22 with with only 6,000 miles on it for 32 grand

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:09)
Yeah, that's it. mean, that's it.

All

right, well you know what I'm seeing a lot of Camry's Like lowered and and and you know Camry's have become sort of like the mass like enthusiast vehicle people are blasting down the road in a Toyota Camry like it's something else Yeah, a lot of like you know, they're like well I need you know, I don't have a lot of money the money I do have I want something that's gonna last forever Toyota Camry

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:20)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:05:24)
Really?

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:42)
And then I'm gonna piecemeal, like, you know, maybe I'll lower it, maybe I'll put some wheels on it, maybe I'll put an exhaust system on it. I'm gonna tint all the windows so no one can see what I'm doing inside the car. ⁓ Maybe I fill it with vape, who knows?

John Voelcker (1:05:55)
Tuner cars are so interesting because for us, aside from a bazillion Subaru's, ⁓ both tuned and lifted, ⁓ it's almost all old VW group products. Jettas, Golfs two generations back, three generations, four generations back. You know, I can't imagine what a tuned Camry even looks like.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:25)
It looks like a Camry.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:27)
But lower and with with the wheels at very strange camber angles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:29)
lower yeah no

John Voelcker (1:06:32)
Dance.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:33)
Yeah,

like the camber's horrible. And I think I've said this before. Nothing breaks my heart more than a WRX or an STI that's been lowered. Because that's definitely what that car should not be doing. Buy a BRZ. Just buy, I have a BRZ, buy one, I see them all the time, they're all lowered, camber's all out of whack. ⁓ That's fine, don't do that to an STI or a WRX. Come on, stop it. Yeah, you're hurting them. Well, you're hurting me.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:54)
They're rally cars. They're supposed to be sitting higher, not lower.

And that's the one thing that nobody should be doing is hurting Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:01)
For a while when I was younger, I'm-

Yeah, don't hurt me. Mini trucks for a long time, like in the 80s, I was like, why are you doing that? It's a truck. But now I'm like, you know what, it's fine. You got a mini truck, you want to lower the hell out of it, you want it scraping absolutely everything, go crazy. More mini trucks.

John Voelcker (1:07:06)
Exactly. Don't hurt Robbie.

I'm waiting for a Maverick logo with a real engine.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:24)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:25)
It's only a matter time before somebody does it, put a crate engine in there.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:29)
Hey, did any of you have a mini truck or riding your friends mini truck in the 80s and 90s? It's a horrible experience.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:36)
I

had an 84 S15, GMC S15, that I drove all through college. No, I did not.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:41)
Did you slam it? Okay,

see, that's what I'm talking about. If you've been in those vehicle that's been slammed, just absolutely horrible experience. Yeah, that's true.

John Voelcker (1:07:45)
Who's that?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:48)
I know. But even stock, it was a pretty horrible experience.

John Voelcker (1:07:52)
Was an S15 designed by Chevy or was that still an Isuzu or something?

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:57)
Isuzu Pup.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:57)
No, it

was, it was a GM design. It was just a rebadged S 10. Uh, so, you know, it was a boxy, you know, style of GM trick, uh, pickups of that era. Yeah. Uh, yes, it was, yeah, it was the first generation after the love and, but, but the one I had, you know, like the first couple of model years, um, they still used the Susu 1.9 liter engine. So I hadn't had one with the Susu 1.9 liter four speed manual.

John Voelcker (1:07:59)
Was it? Okay. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:01)
Okay.

John Voelcker (1:08:08)
post-Chevy-Laviera.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:27)
and literally nothing else. Manual crank windows, ⁓ manual mirrors, the whole gamut.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:29)
Yeah!

I had a girlfriend at a Mazda B2200 and had absolutely nothing. It was just car. It was just truck. What is this? Truck? No.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:39)
Yeah. It did put

an aftermarket radio in there because, at that, in that age, you know, they, were selling these stripper models, with no radios or anything. And, know, was kind of like what, what Slate's going to try and sell, you know, so at an aftermarket. Yeah. No AC. Yeah. Yep. But,

John Voelcker (1:08:56)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:56)
Yeah,

no AC. That was the big like in the back in the day.

and we were glad to have those vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:07)
But I did find a used 23 g70 2.0 turbo all-wheel drive with 20 Where's the mileage go now? Shoot it was like 25 26,000 miles or fit sorry 50,000 miles for 26,000 three hundred sixty bucks and it's nice bright red

It's out there, they're out there. Go for them.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:37)
They're out there. They're out there,

kids. Remember, children are our future.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:43)
So, you know, if the, the Kia doesn't do it for you, Hyundai showed off the IONIQ V in China this week at the Beijing Motor Show, ⁓ which is, know, and it, you know, just as they recently talked about for North America with making their, you know, dramatically expanding their lineup, you know, and adding new models, they're recommitting to the Chinese market.

⁓ And this IONIQ V is a four door that, you know, it's got kind of a late seventies wedge shape to it. You know, almost kind of a, a Lotus Esprit kind of vibe to it, but in a four door sedan, it's electric as it would be with the IONIQ badge. ⁓ And let's see, it's part of Hyundai's recommitment to the Chinese market. They're launching 20.

20 new models in China over the next five years, starting with this new IONIQ V and expanding their electrified lineup, including an additional SUV for the first half, in the first half of 27. They're targeting 500,000 sales in China eventually. So, I don't know, what do you think of the IONIQ V?

John Voelcker (1:11:03)
I loved it. looked at it and I mean I'm from the generation where the Lotus Esprit was sort of the car of choice if you weren't a Porsche fan. And so...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:13)
Mm-hmm.

John Voelcker (1:11:15)
you know, that white esprit wedge shape. But I looked at the IONIQ 5 and I immediately saw a current gen Prius, which has the most raped windscreen of any vehicle Toyota sells, if I recall.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:33)
Yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. Looking at it now, it does have a bit of the Prius vibe to it as well. The current gen Prius ⁓ looks like from. Yeah. Just that nobody's buying them.

John Voelcker (1:11:43)
And I should say I love the lines of the current gen Prius as opposed to the previous generation by which the last seven died.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:45)
Yeah, no.

really? that's sad. Well it's everything else is hybrid so...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:51)
yeah, the Prius is not doing well. At least not in North America. Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:11:55)
But the Prius,

they always knew that. I mean, they said we're going to bring in 20,000 the first year and 30,000 the year after. Why do you need to buy a Prius if you can get a Corolla hybrid that's built in the US, no less, that produces within 10 % of the gas mileage and you don't get all of the legacy Prius hate?

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:06)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:12:16)
because I have a relation who still says Toyota Pius and that was a 21 year old South Park episode.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:21)
Ha ha!

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:26)
Yeah, it's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:29)
Well, sadly, we will probably never see the Ionic V on American shores.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:36)
I guess I gotta go to China and drive some cars. It seems like a long way.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:36)
Maybe, yeah,

we need to arrange a wheel-bearing road trip to China.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:44)
Yep, I could just drive over the street, you know, through Alaska into Russia. I'm sure they'll be fine with it. They're like, we're the wheel bearings folks, come on. We'll bring you a puppy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:56)
All right. ⁓ so last night I got back from several days in Japan and, you know, making Robbie jealous. ⁓ and, ⁓ Toyota brought a small group of us over to visit woven city, which is this mobility, weird hybrid mobility test course that they have built ⁓ in the shadow of Mount Fuji. ⁓ it's built on the site of

the former ⁓ Higashi Fuji assembly plant, ⁓ which started off in the 1960s building the sports 800, the Toyota sports 800, which is this tiny little two seat, 800 CC sports car. And over the years they built everything from Corollas and by the end of its model, the end of its production run in 2020, it was building the Toyota Century. ⁓

And so they closed that plant in 2020 and consolidated that production elsewhere. And they announced this Woven City thing. So Woven is this group, Woven by Toyota is this group within Toyota that's kind of responsible for all of the advanced technology development. So, you know, it includes their assisted and automated driving stuff, connected stuff. All their software development is being done within Woven.

So that's their new Areen software platform and Areen software tools. So that's the stuff that we're first seeing in production in ⁓ the new RAV4 with its new infotainment and new ADAS. That came from Areen. so Woven City is this mix of proving ground, company town, ⁓ inventor garage, inventor lab. So the inventor garage,

They, of all the stuff from the old plant, they tore down everything else except for the building that was the stamping plant. And that is now the adventure garage, which is a lot like what we have here in Detroit with new lab, where you bring in various startups and partners and they're, you've got collaborative workspaces and labs for many small scale manufacturing and testing and development, and coworking spaces. And so.

⁓ it opened all of the woven city stuff. The first phase opened in October of last year. ⁓ they had 20 comp 20 teams within the garage, the adventure garage, working on various things. And they announced four more, ⁓ this week, ⁓ including. Joby, ⁓ the maker or the, the hopeful maker of, EV tall aircraft. and a company that does, ⁓ commercial.

⁓ karaoke systems. And, so they're doing something with AI and karaoke and generating automatic playlists for your karaoke. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:52)
Cool.

Is that a thing we need? Was that where we needed AI and karaoke? It's a pretty

easy sell. Hey, you wanna sing a song badly in front of all your friends while you're drunk? Do we need AI to be inserted into that?

John Voelcker (1:16:14)
It's going to be in the dashboard of your next Chinese vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:18)
There you go. But I don't think I need AI. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:19)
Yeah, it probably already is. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:16:21)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:23)
And then there's the, the, what they call the inventor's field, which is the testing area and then the residential area. So this is what's really different from a lot of these other kinds of places is there's people working there, but also people living there. And the ultimate goal is to have about 2000 people there. So far there's about a hundred ⁓ people in 55 households.

including Toyota employees and spouses and children, but they're going to be opening it up to people from outside of Toyota as well. They're testing out a variety of stuff like their e-palette, mobility shuttles and their personal mobility vehicles, their Swake, ⁓ leaning three wheel scooters. Those are actually pretty cool looking. ⁓

One of things that they announced that they're, ⁓ that woven is developed is this woven vision AI model. So they built their own foundation model and they've got, ⁓ they've got a, ⁓ a vision language model that's running on that. So unlike a large language model is focused on text. This is focused on processing visual data and doing stuff with it. And so when we, when you walk around woven city,

One thing you notice fairly quickly is there's cameras everywhere. And some of this, you know, there's, they're using it for a variety of different things. Part of it is they want to do collaborative perception. So as vehicles are driving around this town, you know, obviously the sensors on the vehicles are limited to line of sight, just like human drivers are, but the cameras, you know, can pick up if there's somebody walking out from behind a building or behind a parked car, they can.

⁓ It'll detect that and send messages to the cars in the area to provide alerts and let you know, hey, there's a hazard here. ⁓ That's all good. But they're also doing some other stuff. ⁓ There's not just people living in here, but there's some businesses in there. One of them is a UCC coffee shop. UCC is ⁓ a Japanese coffee company.

that has a chain of coffee shops, but they were also the ones that invented canned coffee back in the 1960s. ⁓ And so in this coffee shop, when you go in, there's cameras in the ceiling that are using this vision language model to look at what people are doing, what kind of drinks they're buying, and then how they're responding to these strengths, kind of a market research thing, which is all kind of creepy.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:13)
Creepy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:14)
Very creepy. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:19:17)
It's for

your own good, you know. It will go so much better for you and your lovely family. We know where they live by the

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:19)
It's over.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:24)
Yeah.

Yes, right over there. They all live right here. And, you know, it's the thing that I wrote in the article that I put together, you know, is I'm, I'm willing up to a point to give Toyota some, some credit, you know, that, you know, lot of this, you know, they're trying to do it to make mobility safer. Fair enough. You know, the, collaborative perception stuff on the roads.

to enhance the situational awareness, whether it's an automated vehicle or a human driven vehicle, there's actually some really good aspects to that. But in a world where Palantir and Metta and ICE and the Chinese government exist, Flock, I don't want this. ⁓ Obviously the people that are participating in this, living in Wolven City, they know what they're getting into.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:08)
Lock.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:21)
They've agreed to this, ⁓ how much if any of this ever expands beyond this testing facility remains to be seen. ⁓ But it just seems kind of potentially problematic.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:36)
Yeah, yeah, we don't, yeah. I just don't, I think there's a big pushback, especially from the younger folks, people, is everyone younger than me. ⁓ Some of them are moving away from smartphones, they're moving away from anything that's sort of tracking them and some more tangible items, know, listen to CDs, know, even cassettes. Like I've been to two punk shows where they sold me cassettes. And so, yeah, I think there's...

There's this like, don't want to be, you

scanned and watched and collected and then sold.

John Voelcker (1:21:13)
How many of them know how to turn

off GPS location in their phones?

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:17)
Yeah, or paint their turn off locate, but they, know, the same time, some of these kids are like sharing their locations with each other, which is like also problematic. So I think it's, it's a weird, yeah, we're in this weird sort of like at one point you're like, well, and whenever someone says, well, you know, you don't want your car to track you, you know, your phone tracks you. I'm like, yeah, but you can also turn off a lot of these things in your phone. It's a lot more difficult in a car. And it's a lot more difficult when you're out in the public.

where there are just cameras everywhere. And so that's sort of like, well, your phone tracks you is almost a straw man argument at this point. Where it's like, yeah, but I can leave my phone at home. When I go outside, I'm still getting tracked even without my phone. And that's not what I signed up for as a human.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:03)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, there were actually some, good things that they had there. Like one of the things, you know, they, for the people living and working in woven city, they have a fleet of shared vehicles. have a fleet of Toyota BZs ⁓ and they have a parking garage. So all the vehicles are parked in there and they have bidirectional charging system in there and they've set up a virtual power plant and the, the team at a rain has developed an energy management system.

that so they've got solar panels on the garage. ⁓ The ⁓ system is tied into the local utility ⁓ and they can take charge from the EV batteries when needed. They can even feed that back into the grid. They're testing that. ⁓ And then for the people that are living there, when they need a vehicle, instead of having it parked next to the building they're living in,

They just use the app and then they have something called a Mobi Guide, which is a little autonomous vehicle. ⁓ What it does is it communicates with the vehicles in the garage. So it will pull up to one of the vehicles that's available and has charge ⁓ and connects wirelessly with that vehicle. And then does virtual wireless towing ⁓ to the location where the person summoned it. ⁓ And then

The Mobi guide goes back to the vehicle. The Mobi guides are equipped with radar and lidar and cameras to provide more robust assistance in what you get from just the cameras that are on the vehicles. ⁓ And they're also used for other stuff like used for, you know, they can tow little trailers, you know, some of the utility crews, groundskeepers and so on use or to use for deliveries around the complex. ⁓

That was pretty cool. having the virtual power plant system ⁓ was, I think, you know, was really, ⁓ really a good thing to be working on. And then, ⁓ what was the other thing? we had the, the, the Swake scooters were pretty slick. ⁓ And, they're, they're also, I'm trying to remember now what, there was, there was a bunch of interesting things, but, also some very dubious things, like it said.

⁓ So we'll see how that all plays out. Like I said, they want to get to 2,000 residents in Wolven City over the next couple of years. ⁓ And it's ⁓ going to be interesting to watch how much of that stuff ever gets anywhere. ⁓ See if they ever actually have any Joby aircraft flying out of there, taking people somewhere.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:31)
Ahem.

Yeah, that'd be interesting. I'm really interested in their grid management because I know in Japan, know, after Fukushima has sort of been decommissioned, know, there was a lot, they put a lot into nuclear power. That was like, this is the magic thing that's gonna keep us where Japan will, you know, we won't need outside influence for our power.

And then Fukushima happened and then that was a whole, you know, like, whoops. So it'll be interesting. And I think that's some of the reticence in Japan for EVs is like, well, we don't, you know, our grid's already been strained because, know, this just, you know, this nuclear power plant is now offline. So it'll be interesting how, you know, I think people don't think that EVs can also balance the grid. EVs can feed back into the grid. You you combine them with renewable solar, wind, you know.

geothermal or whatever. And when those things aren't like producing power, now you have a giant, you know, array of batteries everywhere that can also feed back into the grid in order to balance everything.

John Voelcker (1:25:53)
And the

advantage there is that Japan has a known small number of electric utilities as opposed to the 3,800 in this country. ⁓ for that reason, I always believe that vehicle to home in the US makes a huge amount of sense.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:53)
Well, of course.

Yeah. That all have distinct unique systems to try and interoperate with.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:08)
Yeah. then the big one.

John Voelcker (1:26:16)
Providing grid management services and backup power or shuffling power, arbitraging power through the grid in the US seems to be much more problematic just given the disparate array of electric utilities. In some places, it'll work, but in a lot of places, it's going to be completely irrelevant for quite a while.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:34)
Well, you knew you

Well, in Northern California, you have PG &E, which has been said, you know, they have this pilot program, but you can't get them to talk about it, you know, off the, you know, on background and stuff. are like, PG &E is a pain in the ass to work with. They sort of really don't want to do this. And so you're just like...

John Voelcker (1:26:54)
Well,

but they're above and beyond that. Remember, the DOE has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars with entities from utilities to R &D labs.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:02)
⁓ I get-

John Voelcker (1:27:08)
in the last 18 months having anything to do with electrification, electric vehicles, or in any way of earning climate change. They just unilaterally canceled those. So there is an additional incentive above and beyond PG &E specific problems for none of those folks to talk about any of that at this particular moment.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:18)
Yeah, or noodles.

Yeah,

I get a DOE email like every day and every one of them is just like, ugh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:36)
Well, I think part of the reason why there's limited adoption of EVs in Japan as well, especially in a lot of cities, there's limited places to park. Most people don't necessarily have off-street parking to plug in an EV, which makes it more challenging to own one there. A scenario like this where people are using a shared fleet. ⁓ so you've got this constraint, the fleet.

their vehicles are all parked in one place, it makes it easier to also do something like a virtual power plant like this. ⁓ So some interesting, it addresses some of the problems of using EVs in Japan as well. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:28:21)
Except where are you going

to park 200 EVs in Tokyo?

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:25)
Yeah. You get Nissan Sakura, which, man, that was fun. I love the Nissan Sakura.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:25)
Exactly.

Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:28:32)
Anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:33)
All right, so one other thing that they demoed for us there was something called integrated onsen, which is onsen is Japanese word for safety or security. And what they're doing with this is utilizing the in-vehicle sensors, the driver monitor system, like the infrared cameras, capacitive sensors in the steering wheel. And as we get more and more vehicles that are

talking to you, various AI and so on. There's times when you just don't, you know, when you don't want the vehicle talking to you, you know, when you need to focus on the driving task. And so ⁓ what they're, what they've developed is a way to model the, the drivers, ⁓ the driver's behavior and their, you know, their, you know, set a baseline for the way a particular driver ⁓ operates the vehicle.

And then looking for changes in that, you know, that would indicate that, Hey, you know, between that and what the outside sensors are seeing, you know, okay, now we need to leave the driver alone. And so, you know, if the, if the navigation system was giving you guidance, uh, but you know, you need to merge onto a highway and you need to focus for that. You know, um, the, the, what it's doing is, is generating a score of essentially the driver's workload. And, you know, once it gets above a certain threshold, the system just

It pauses and backs off and leaves you alone to focus on the driving task. ⁓ which is an interesting, interesting idea. ⁓ how well they can actually make it work. We'll see. ⁓ but, know, who knows? ⁓ you know, they were showing it showing us that one with a, simulator driving simulator. ⁓ and, know, had the driver going through a number of scenarios and you can see the score going up and down in different scenarios.

And as it goes up, you know, the car stops talking and switches modes to let the driver focus.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:39)
There was a beep in my Kona electric. We had that car for three years. Never figured out what it was before. was like a random alert. Never. I got to always kind of look around like what is this for? What is it? Is there a car in my blind spot? What's happening? Never figured it out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:46)
Ha

John Voelcker (1:30:56)
I, you don't live in a cold enough climate, but when that happens here, half the time it's an ice alert potential sensor. Temperature is coming down and it's like a little tiny snowflake somewhere off by the passenger's knee. You know? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:57)
⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:09)
⁓ yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:12)
Yeah, once it gets below like 38, 39 degrees.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:18)
Yeah, yeah, we don't, yeah, it wasn't that. Just rant, I don't

know what it was for. Just the car just saying, hey, you're doing a good job.

John Voelcker (1:31:26)
Yeah, given that the this Subaru trail seeker. Apparent I have to dive into the settings, but the settings for a lot of the safety systems seem to be on or off. They don't seem to be graded. ⁓ I was driving around a constant radius, fairly shallow turn at 28 miles an hour, and I turned to look at an old car in the driveway of one of my neighbors and the car swopped at me that I had taken my eyes off the road.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:51)
As you would.

John Voelcker (1:31:55)
There are limits, folks.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:59)
Yeah. So ⁓ let's let's carry on. ⁓ So Rivian this week officially started production of the R2 ⁓ and about the same time ⁓ GM ⁓ was reported the GM ⁓ has paused development of their next generation large electric trucks and SUVs. ⁓ What do you think, John?

John Voelcker (1:32:00)
That's for my own good.

⁓ I think I put this in an article in January there's actually a tag in the notes but ⁓ electric pickup trucks have largely failed so far.

And ⁓ it is notable to me that Rivian is not making an R2T, or at least not yet, a pickup version. They're just doing the SUV, which makes sense because they said as much as five years ago, they launched the R1T and showed the R1S, but they built the R1T first, in part because then it was the only battery electric pickup truck on the market.

Ford hadn't come out yet, GMs hadn't come out yet, et cetera. But they now sell twice as many SUVs as pickup trucks in the R1 line. Might be more now. so, is it, okay. Yeah, last time I checked it was two for one. yeah, you know, everybody knows and uses and accepts SUVs. There are a lot of people who will drive an SUV who won't drive a pickup truck.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:24)
It's about 75 % SUVs now.

John Voelcker (1:33:41)
So I'm not surprised about GM doing this. ⁓ I will be curious to see if there is a new range of trucks.

They have a battery plant in construction now for what they call LMR cells, lithium manganese rich cells, which are supposed to be almost as cost efficient as lithium ion phosphate, LFP, but ⁓ have ⁓ energy storage and performance closer to those of the high energy cells that we use today. So that would give GM three different ⁓ cell chemistries for different applications.

different cost levels and that LMR plant was always going to be how they got the cost of their trucks down. ⁓ I should look at, well I guess really the only big SUV on that platform is the Cadillac, isn't it? And all the rest are trucks. Okay. So that's not really. Okay. Yeah. Fair. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:41)
Yeah. Yeah. And the Hummer, the Hummer SUV.

John Voelcker (1:34:51)
Hummer numbers haven't looked particularly meaningful of late even against things like the Escalade IQ, but I'll go back and check. It's...

⁓ I think the question will be, obviously they're wildly underutilized in the plant that makes all those trucks. I think the question will be, are they going to soldier on gritting their teeth and producing up low numbers into the very late 20s or will they in fact wind them up and go where I tend to think the higher volumes are in EVs, which is affordable, smaller vehicles, compact crossovers and the like. ⁓ But I was a little

surprised to see it, maybe they'll put the new cells into the existing trucks. The last thought I have there is I think they missed a bet by doing the unibody format, essentially an avalanche redux, as opposed to what Ford did, which was a conventional body with all of the attachment points where your standard up-fits could bolt right onto your electric truck. Can't do that with the GMs, but

the

fleet sales people will ascertain whether or not that's an important thing. And of course, the Ford's no longer with us either.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:08)
Yeah, I suspect that what we may see is GM also picking up on the eREV approach, following Stellantis and Ford and maybe ⁓ Scout if they ever actually get to production. ⁓ We'll see on that one. ⁓ But I think...

John Voelcker (1:36:32)
But you know what I'm going to say,

Sam. You know what I'm going to say.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:37)
Go ahead and say it.

John Voelcker (1:36:39)
Will anyone ever plug in their e-rips? I keep hearing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:44)
I think

with an eREV, the answer is yes. Because with an eREV, the battery is so large that you are getting significant electric range. I think it will make a lot more sense to plug those in than even a standard plug-in hybrid. ⁓

John Voelcker (1:36:48)
Why?

For fleet

buyers, I hear that argument because they actually look at numbers and make relatively rational decisions. Truck buyers in America are among the most conservative, traditional ⁓ buyers of any vehicle segment. And what I hear is this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:21)
Ha

John Voelcker (1:37:29)
Oh yeah, it drives much smoother than like my last truck. It's got 350 miles on gasoline and I think there's like 120 miles or something on electricity but you know, I go to the gas station once a week just like always. And yeah, I never bothered with that plug stuff, it's a hassle.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:46)
The end of the day, the full-size truck ⁓ market is vroom, vroom truck. That's what they want. They want a big, loud, gas-powered truck. The F-150 Lightning was a good truck for like, it's the perfect truck for 80 % of F-150 owners ⁓ in my mind, but people don't want that. want to, like you said, conservative, weirdly, EVs have been politicized for reasons that are beyond me at this point. ⁓ Well, I mean, lobbyists.

But beyond that, yeah, they broom broom truck. That's what they want. They don't want.

John Voelcker (1:38:16)
We'll change it with Dad.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:21)
Well, I mean, that

even explains, you know, Ram, you know, bringing back the Hemi. You know, the Hemi is a worse engine than the Hurricane, the six cylinder Hurricane in those trucks. And yeah, it's slower, uses more gas. The only thing it does is make better noise.

John Voelcker (1:38:30)
And it's slower.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:34)
less efficient.

That's it. Broom broom truck. I'm telling you that's all. That's the entire large full-size truck market. All but you know I see a lot of Silverado's. I see a lot of Riv-ins. I don't see as many like F-150's, the Lightning's, but I see them in fleets. I see them you know Caltrans here in California uses the F-150. ⁓ I'm sorry not the F-150. The Silverado EV and that makes sense because they're like we can we you know we could control you know how much energy these things are using because

the electricity pricing isn't nearly as volatile as gas, which recently has been very clearly shown. ⁓ And most of these people are driving maybe 100 miles a day, they're, maybe. Most of time they're just going somewhere, they're parking the truck, and now the truck has a giant battery in the back that they can power random tools from. So, yeah.

John Voelcker (1:39:26)
Again, for

fleets, absolutely. I get it, rational decisions. Retail buyers, as I keep saying, auto dealers have sent many generations of children to expensive universities based on irrational behavior by retail vehicle buyers. And I would like to believe, Sam, that you are right, but ⁓ when large automakers who sell plug-in hybrids

start to release the data on the plugging in behavior of their user bases, which thus far they have not done either because they haven't collected it, looking at you Stellantis, or because what?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:06)
Although

they have the data. I have no doubt they have the data.

John Voelcker (1:40:12)
They probably don't on the first generation of Pacificas and four by ease the older you connect system because they didn't think it was important

You know, they got the compliance credits, regardless of whether anyone ever plugged them in. just, and the fact, of course, that they canceled all of them three weeks after the current administration eliminated all penalties for admitting anything at all, kind of says it all to me. Toyota has the data and they refuse to release it because as they said, we're worried it might be misinterpreted. Case closed. Now, 100 miles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:22)
That sounds about right.

John Voelcker (1:40:51)
on EV, some people will plug them in. Will they do a majority or even half of their miles on grid energy? Count me as skeptical until the data shows otherwise.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:04)
What

if fuel prices stay four, five, six dollars a gallon?

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:11)
I mean, these are people who are spending over a thousand dollars a month on a truck payment in addition to paying whatever they're paying for the big wheels. This is a lifestyle. This is the id. This is everything, their personality. Paying more money for gas, that's a badge of honor.

John Voelcker (1:41:12)
I think

And the data seems to show that people react more to the velocity of the change in gas prices than they do the absolute level. If we look back to 2008 and 2009, there was this wonderful period, prices spiked insanely. I forget which months it was. There was this period where for four months, the sales mix in the US in 2008 or 2009 met the 2015 mission.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:54)
It was 2008 because

right after the meltdown, all the demand went in the tank. gas, actually in 2009, fuel prices actually fell because of lack of demand.

John Voelcker (1:42:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. But for those four months, we met the 2015 emission standards. And then even before everything fell off a cliff for several months, if I remember, it kind of normalized and people started buying what they were always going to buy anyway because they got used to gas prices. We're at $4 a gallon now. If it went to eight and stayed there, maybe. But I think $4 will be normalized.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:37)
Okay, fair enough. ⁓ Let's see. ⁓ Let's talk a little bit about Stellantis before we wrap up. ⁓ So, put in something here about Stellantis focusing on four core brands globally. ⁓ And Stellantis also ⁓ made an announcement this week introducing Mopar, ⁓ which is new products from their Mopar.

John Voelcker (1:42:45)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:06)
⁓ parts division focusing on, ⁓ on, animals, know, dogs and, and, other critters that you might be carrying in your vehicle. ⁓ so, you know, they, they, they're basically trying to go down the Subaru path and, ⁓ and appeal to pet owners. But, ⁓ on the, four brands, what, what do you think about that? You know, focusing on Jeep, Ram, Pujo and, what was the fourth one? Fiat. Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:43:33)
Yeah.

So, ⁓ to my right is a very large shelf of books about the auto industry. Remember books? But ⁓ when I read that, there's a piece in that article, which I think Reuters broke. ⁓ That's the link we have.

It that says essentially we're not going to kill off any brands. We're going to make them smaller and regionalize them for the places they apply, which is to say, Lancia hasn't meant anything outside Italy for 30 years anyway. So ⁓ Lancia for Italy. Fine. And there are various other brands. I'll be sad to see Citroen go if it does, or Citroen confined to whichever six countries in the EU and the UK it matters in. But.

They said essentially those cars will be derivatives of vehicles from our four core brands.

We seem to be in a renaissance of badge engineering. Certainly the four Subaru EVs are badge engineered Toyotas in really the classic way. Different badges, different grill, different model names, same vehicle. And I worry that that is what's going to happen with Stellantis. I get the thinking behind this, but the more I think about Stellantis and the more I look at their executive struggles and their products and

their lineups, the more it brings to mind a really ugly facet of 50 years ago. Possibly the most grim, depressing book I have on the whole auto industry, and I have a lot of books, is called British Leyland Chronicle of a Car Crash, 1968 to 1978.

by guy named Chris Cowens. And he makes the point that when British Leyland was mashed together out of almost all of the volume makers in England, Absent Ford and Absent Chrysler and GM, but everything else that was native British mashed together, they had 40 % market share.

but they had 48 separate plants in the country making stuff. They had 190,000 workers and they had a capacity of a million units of which they used 40%. Does this sound like any modern day parallel? Because I won't.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:57)
You

⁓ Yeah,

like Carlos Tavares mashing together 14 brands to create Stellantis ⁓ or pretty much the Chinese auto industry.

John Voelcker (1:46:24)
Yeah. Well, the Chinese auto industry has subsidies at every level, but I'm not sure make it really comparable here. But in the nominally capitalist world, ⁓ I look at Stellantis and I just keep seeing British Leyland.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:33)
Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:46:44)
They have the same problems. England, it was regional. We've got unemployed coal miners up here, so you need to build a car plant to teach a bunch of people who've never done anything except mine coal to build high precision engines. ⁓ In this case, France wants its factories preserved. Italy wants its factories preserved. The US wants its factories preserved. Same thing, except regions in England's replaced with countries. ⁓

Way, way, way too many brands. How many brands does Toyota have now?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:17)
⁓ Three well, I guess if count century it'll be four With with century kind of being broken out as a separate brand. Hmm. ⁓ yeah, they've got the Hatsu ⁓ and Yeah, got Toyota Lexus they got gr for sports cars ⁓ and Then they're adding century as they're breaking that out as a separate brand then Daihatsu and then there's Hino for trucks

John Voelcker (1:47:26)
and Daihatsu.

They got Toyota and Lexus. Nothing else here.

Okay, well, I would argue that Hino, probably or possibly Century, and ⁓ certainly GR, are small and or regionally specific.

which is rare, fact, Stellantis says it wants to go. I just, Stellantis has a lot of capacity. Under the previous CEO, they made some head-scratching product decisions, like killing the Cherokee two and a half years before the replacement arrived, and so forth. And like a lot of other car makers, they got caught in the fact that the EV adoption rate has proceeded at massively different rates in different markets. China at 50%,

EU at 20, 25%, US at about 10%. And building products to map across all that is hard. But I want to see how Stellantis is gonna clean up the US. I'll leave the rest of it for someone else. Chrysler makes a minivan. Dodge makes the Charger and...

2 door and 4 door I guess. They've already killed the Hornet if I remember. Does Dodge have anything else? The Durango, right. Which I guess is going to continue for a while. And don't they all have himmies this year? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:58)
Durango.

Yeah, but the Durango.

which is 15 years old now.

It's selling better than it ever has. Which was the case for the Challenger before they killed it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:49:14)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:20)
But yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what they have to say next month when they have their investor day and they're going to lay out their strategic plan. ⁓ Stellantis is kind of a strange one, especially in North America, because they've got the four North American brands. ⁓ And even though Chrysler and Dodge obviously have very limited lineups, the thing is none of those brands have standalone dealer networks.

all their dealers sell all four brands. So in some ways it makes things easier to have those individual one or two or three models for a brand and not do the badge engineering ⁓ to the same degree. How they handle this in Europe, I think is where it gets a little more interesting.

John Voelcker (1:50:14)
Yeah, because Peugeot and Citroen and Fiat and Opel slash Vauxhall are all competing mass market brands. Different personalities in different markets, but having four effectively Toyota competitors or well Volkswagen, of course Volkswagen has Seat and Skoda as well. But ⁓ yeah, I just...

The French combined and Citroen was always sort of the weird offshoot of Peugeot. Okay, got that. And then, right, right. And then they got Opal in, basically canned everybody in Russell Shrine. So now Opal's are badge engineered something else. And then you add Fiat in top of that, let alone.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:51)
And then there's DS, which was a weird offshoot of Citroen.

John Voelcker (1:51:10)
I mean poor old Alfa Romeo and Maserati, they're all adrift. What do you do with them? Aside from sell them to the Chinese, which I think could be a non-zero possibility, but I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:23)
wouldn't be surprised to see at least some of those brands get sold off.

All right. ⁓ Anything else?

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:34)
Nope.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:35)
All right, well, let's call it a day then. Thanks everybody for listening. John, thank you so much for joining us. We will definitely have to have you back again soon. Yeah.

John Voelcker (1:51:44)
Thank you for having me,

especially on the EV tip. know, Ferraris, I can't tell apart, but EVs, I'm there.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:52)
All right, awesome. All right. Take care, everybody, and we will talk to you next time.

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:59)
Bye.