Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 452 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:07)
I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.

Stephanie Brinley (00:11)
And I'm Stephanie Brinley from S &P Global Mobility.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14)
And Nicole is off ⁓ having fun at Disneyland for Mother's Day. Is it Mother's Day this week or next week? I can't remember. okay. I don't know. With the kids gone, you know, it's like every day is Mother's Day around here. So it's hard to keep track. ⁓ But we will be hearing from Nicole later on at the end of the show, because she did go to a Ford event this week in Detroit.

Stephanie Brinley (00:22)
It's today.

Roberto Baldwin (00:23)
It's today, so whoops.

Stephanie Brinley (00:34)
That's cute.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42)
And she got some interviews so you will hear Nicole's voice on those interviews that I will introduce at the end of the show But in the meantime ⁓ Steph you've been driving anything this week

Stephanie Brinley (00:56)
was thinking about that. I mean, it was, but I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about. I had a Hyundai Tucson plug-in hybrid this week. ⁓ you know, it's not necessarily something new has changed on it. So it was interesting. You know, it's still quieter, it's still smoother. And I still, like some of the things that I still really like about Tucson is the package size. I think the package size is just terrific. It's just not too big and not too small.

A little Goldilocks kind of thing going on there. ⁓ But I was also thinking about a couple of weeks before that, I had the Volvo EX30, ⁓ which as we know, they've stopped importing them, but they still have a few. So it's still on the website, right? And they could turn it back on if they felt like it, but tariffs sort of killed that. So I was thinking about, what am going to talk about today? Am I going to talk about the Hyundai Tucson, which I did like, which I just had, or this EX30, which wasn't the first time I've had it, but

You know, I enjoyed it a little bit more. I still really dislike the credit card size key thing for locking in the locking the car. But it's quick, it's smooth, it's quiet, it's cute. And then I pulled the monronies for both of them.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10)
⁓ yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (02:12)
including destination, the monroney on the Hyundai is $50,140. The monroney and the Volvo EX30 was $48,445. I think the EX30 is slightly smaller, but I'm like, okay, it's made for an interesting little dyne. It's smaller, so it's not size for size, a good comparison, but just the two that I was looking at, I was like, all right.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:19)
Oof.

It's actually quite a bit smaller.

Stephanie Brinley (02:42)
I did not necessarily expect to see the plugin Tucson get quite that high. ⁓ And I think a case could be made for both of them, honestly.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:53)
So, if you were shopping for yourself, what would be your preference?

Stephanie Brinley (03:00)
The Volvo. I think it would be the Volvo. Just because it is a little bit smaller, I'm a little bit more curious to try an EV next, think. I'm getting more more curious about doing that. The trick part of that is I don't think that I'm buying a utility vehicle anytime soon. So I've got to weigh that. But if I had to choose between these two, it wouldn't be easy, but I think I would pick the Volvo.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:26)
Well, you know, they call the Volvo a crossover, know, given the given it's not it's a hatchback. It's a compact hatchback and and arguably more compact than than most of the compact hatches we have out there. You know, like a a GTI or a Corolla hatchback, things like that.

Stephanie Brinley (03:30)
Yeah, it's not. It's an archback. Yeah, it is.

three of them.

Yeah, yeah, but it's 422 horsepower. That says something.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:48)
That's true. that, that yeah,

no, I I'm not complaining about the performance. I've never had any issues with the performance of it. What, what do you think about the interior of the Volvo?

Stephanie Brinley (03:56)
Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

It is not quite as good as more expensive Volvo. And you do sort of feel a little bit of that. But again, compared to the Hyundai, was kind of on par. So that is one thing that is probably a little bit on the negative side. And I had the yellow seat belts. I'm kind of over them. But if I was going to buy one, I could maybe not get the yellow seat belts. So yeah, that is a little bit of it. So it's $48,000.

Its interior isn't quite the same as the $90,000 Volvo, but I feel like there's a reason why. And it still feels very much like a Volvo. It looks and feels like it. It's just, can find some bits that aren't quite the same material level as the more expensive cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:51)
Okay. All right. Anything else? ⁓ How was your time with the Tucson?

Stephanie Brinley (05:00)
It was very common. one of the things that I don't have a charger in my house, so I didn't plug it in, but one of the things that I thought was interesting is that it regenerates enough, it regenerates more battery power for itself than I thought it would. I went from 16 % battery to like 25 % battery, just kind of driving it back and forth to work. ⁓ So there seems to be more efficiency in that system than I feel like I've seen in others. So a lot of it, not to in the

the actual plug-in part, I drove it more as a hybrid than as a plug-in, but you do get a little bit more acceleration and the whole system operates a little bit more quieter than some of the regular hybrids with a smaller battery.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:45)
Okay. All right, cool. Any other thoughts on those two cars?

Stephanie Brinley (05:53)
Robbie, you have anything? No, I'm good, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (05:55)
on those cars?

Stephanie Brinley (05:59)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (06:00)
I'm just trying not to cough up a lung. That's my main job today is to not cough up one of my lungs or my head explode.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:11)
Well, that's definitely a very valid thing to want to do. I've been there. People have heard me in the not so distant past struggling to speak. so, yeah, that's good. What were you doing this week, Robbie?

Stephanie Brinley (06:11)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (06:15)
Yeah, yeah I like the pair.

I went to Germany, weee! ⁓ And I drove ⁓ the S-Class that I can't talk about and something else that I can't talk about. But I did also drive the Benz Patton Motor Wagon, which is essentially like the first mass-produced vehicle. mean, mass is like, know, for that time, it's very mass-produced vehicle. Production, like car you can drive. You sit there and argue about the merits of what's first, blah, blah. mean, Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (06:42)
Ooh.

Stephanie Brinley (06:49)
Relative.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:56)
Yeah.

Supposedly the Wright brothers didn't, you weren't the first to fly.

Roberto Baldwin (06:59)
Thomas Edison did. Yeah, there was

always somebody, like somebody in a backyard somewhere who did something first. But the reality is at the end of the day, you got to, if you have the paperwork and you're making a bunch of them, guess what? You get to be first. And that's, that's pretty much what it comes down to. You got the patent. It's literally in the name, the patent motor wagon. Anyway, so I got to drive it. It's essentially just a, it's, it's, it's like almost a joystick to turn the wheel. The wheel, there's, it's three wheel. It's a three wheeler because they're, you know, differential. didn't really have any.

Stephanie Brinley (07:11)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:12)
And Carl got the patent, hence the name.

Stephanie Brinley (07:18)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (07:29)
They didn't have any, you know, differential like technology back in 1886. And to drive, there's just a, there's a lever on the left and you push it forward to go forward and you pull it back to stop. And that's it. That's the whole car. It's a single cylinder. It's got 0.75 horsepower. It has a, oh, I'm gonna cough. That's sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:56)
So, so it's

literally not a faster horse.

Roberto Baldwin (07:59)
It is not a faster horse. It is not a fa- it's a pony. It's like one pony. It's got one pony horsepower. It's the first pony car. It has seating for two if you want to sit out in the elements. And you just want to hear the single cylinder.

Stephanie Brinley (07:59)
That's I was thinking.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:03)
Okay.

Stephanie Brinley (08:07)
you

Roberto Baldwin (08:17)
⁓ And these are recreations that we're driving. not giving us. I know they have like number three that they gave to a museum in Germany, but they built some recreations of it, which is fine, to be honest. I don't need to drive the one original and then have an anxiety attack. I'm like, this car is kind of priceless. I probably shouldn't be driving it. ⁓ I drove the Simplex, the 1902 Simplex.

in a park once in a in the in the whole time a l's out of time i like the terrified

Sam Abuelsamid (08:49)
Ha

Stephanie Brinley (08:49)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (08:52)
So yeah, it's interesting because it's, you know, when you look at the car, it's like, I can see where this was a horse carriage. ⁓ And then we decided, you know what we should do? We should, you should put a motor in it, a one ⁓ cylinder 0.75 horsepower motor and just party. ⁓ What's funny is they had like, it's doing a loop and the loop was maybe 400 meters, not even, know, probably.

let's say 300 meters ⁓ of a loop in this resort we were staying. And after like three or four loops, the car would overheat. And there's no gauges, so they just touched where the water, the cooling system. They're like, nope, we can't, we gotta wait little while before we do this again.

Stephanie Brinley (09:29)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:36)
Get

a little temperature scanner, just scan the coolant tank.

Roberto Baldwin (09:44)
No, they didn't do that. They was always just touching it. Like it was the 1880s. were like, they would tap and they were like, put their hands on it. You know, you're like, ⁓ no, this is too hot. It was, it was like, it was in the seventh. It was a beautiful day, by the way. It was like the perfect day to be driving this car. ⁓ But it would be, you know, if it was colder, they probably could have put us, you know, some more loops. ⁓ But yeah, no, it was, it was really fun. I can talk about ⁓ the, S-Class next week. ⁓ And all I can say is that I drove it.

Stephanie Brinley (09:47)
Go!

Sam Abuelsamid (09:48)
Ha.

Ha!

Roberto Baldwin (10:13)
But yeah, and then I also drove some other cars, some other old cars, you know, you know, whatever. This one was sort of the highlight of the old cars that I was given the opportunity to drive. We're very, very, very fortunate in our jobs. We don't make a lot of money, but we get to drive really old cars. So it kind of, you know, balance. Balance.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:34)
So, I mean,

Stephanie Brinley (10:35)
Hehehehehe

Sam Abuelsamid (10:38)
you get paid kind of like what you would have, you at the time those cars were new.

Roberto Baldwin (10:42)
Yeah, we're making, we're

making 1800s money driving these cars. So yeah, no, it was, I am a sucker for old cars. I don't care what it is. I don't care who made it. I don't care how bad it is. If there's an old bad car, like, oh, if someone, if we went on a trip and someone was like, hey, you want to drive a Yugo? I'm like, you know what? I drove one in the 90s, 80s. It was like 89, 90. I doubt they probably have to recreate it like that motor.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:06)
Any of them actually lasted into the 90s?

Roberto Baldwin (11:12)
⁓

But I would totally drive it and then just like laugh at how bad the transmission was those those transmissions were absolute trash I'm here trying to drive like what is this thing that we're driving a Friends dad bought her one because it was super cheap. So I would totally drive a you go ⁓ No, yeah, it's like buying like instead of buying a Swanson Hungry Man dinner you buy like that really really cheap ⁓ Microwave dinner and it's absolutely horrible. I mean, it's not that the Swanson Hungry Man dinner is some sort of

Stephanie Brinley (11:26)
That was the point.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:26)
⁓

I think that is the primary reason anybody bought those.

Roberto Baldwin (11:41)
you know, wonderful meal, it's just that there's something cheaper and I'm gonna eat that. And then my bowels are gonna be like, dude, come on. That's what everyone who bought a Yugo, they bought it it was cheaper than like, you know, not great cars. It was the worst of the worst. And your body and your soul were like, dude, come on.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:45)
The store brand.

Stephanie Brinley (11:45)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:50)
You

But then.

As you're driving down the road into Hugo, you can feel your soul seeping out of your body

Stephanie Brinley (12:08)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:08)
Yeah,

that's how it ran. That's why it kept it inexpensive. You had to sign a little paper and Satan would show up. He's like, ha ha, you got a cheap car, but it's the cheapest car ever built. You're like, what? He's like, ha ha ha. And he disappears in a puff of brimstone. And then you're stuck with ⁓ a Yugo.

Stephanie Brinley (12:13)
Heh!

Yeah.

See ya.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:30)
Did you ever drive a Yugo, Steph?

Stephanie Brinley (12:31)
Yeah,

I did not, driver, you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:34)
I did not either. ⁓ I did get to drive the original Hyundai Pony and that was not much better.

Stephanie Brinley (12:36)
tired.

Roberto Baldwin (12:42)
⁓ see that's pretty cool.

Yeah, it probably wasn't a good car.

Stephanie Brinley (12:47)
Show some of the old day

woos. Some of those early day, ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (12:48)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Those

I actually worked on breaks for some of those old day woos ⁓ in my first job out of college. It's like, how does this thing stop?

Roberto Baldwin (12:57)
The woo is for woo, we're gonna dive.

Stephanie Brinley (13:00)
Yeah, they were.

Roberto Baldwin (13:03)
The Hyundai Excel was, you can, if I, you can talk to Hyundai and they'll be like, yeah, it wasn't great.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:09)
Well, and the Excel was a huge step forward from the pony.

Stephanie Brinley (13:09)
No, yeah, now they can say that, because, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (13:11)
Yeah, but

it was...

Yeah, but I think what helped Hyundai so much was that the XL came out around the same time as the Yugo. And so people were like, well, it's not the worst car.

Stephanie Brinley (13:21)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (13:23)
That's

Stephanie Brinley (13:25)
Show us something.

Roberto Baldwin (13:25)
And when

you can say, it's not the worst car, then you're like, all right, we're doing okay. We're doing all right. As long as Vinfast is around, anyone who comes out with a bad car could be like, well, I gotta be just a little bit better than Vinfast and we'll be good.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:36)
It's kind of like being in Formula One this year and being Cadillac and just being able to say, well, at least we're not Aston Martin.

Roberto Baldwin (13:44)
Exactly. At

Stephanie Brinley (13:44)
You

Roberto Baldwin (13:45)
least we're not Aston Martin.

Stephanie Brinley (13:48)
There's always a comparison point. It's interesting thinking about affordability and that common thread that we always have and joking around about how when cars are really bad and they are really cheap. So do we really, how cheap do we want our cars? Apparently $50,000.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:50)
Yeah

Roberto Baldwin (14:04)
Yeah, there's,

There's a thin line between inexpensive and well-built. I think the Maverick is a good example of an inexpensive, well, it was. Initially, the Maverick was a good example of an inexpensive car that was well-built. It was what it was, and it was a good value. And you're like, oh, I got a nice hybrid, it's 40 miles to the gallon. The interior's plastic, but they've made it look sort of nice. I think the Nissan Kicks is another example. It's a cheap.

Stephanie Brinley (14:20)
It was well built.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:35)
the kicks, and especially

the Versa.

Roberto Baldwin (14:38)
Nissan Versa,

Stephanie Brinley (14:38)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (14:39)
Nissan makes a great inexpensive car. But then you get like, okay, well, but then you can get a VINFAST for like $5 a month on the lease and you're like, oh, that's where it drops. I, so I, know, I, again, I would, and I've said this before, as soon as that VF3 comes out, I'm get one of those no matter what. It's gonna be like $7 and it's gonna break down as soon as I get it home. But I love that little, the idea of driving electric Jimny. It's just electric Jimny.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (14:42)
it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:49)
Yeah

Stephanie Brinley (14:49)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:02)
Ha ha.

Stephanie Brinley (15:06)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:07)
you

Roberto Baldwin (15:08)
So

will make bad decisions with our audience. You got some bad decisions? Give me a call. I'm ready to rock.

Stephanie Brinley (15:14)
Ha

Sam Abuelsamid (15:17)
Feedback at WheelBearingStuffMedia. in your bad decisions for Robbie.

Roberto Baldwin (15:21)
Yeah, send in your

bad decisions.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:24)
⁓ All right. ⁓ Anything else ⁓ from your Germany trip that you want to share or that you can share?

Roberto Baldwin (15:33)
nothing I can share now sorry it's yeah let me think was anything cool ⁓ if you go to Germany you should have a white asparagus in the spring it's it's it's so good what yeah yeah so it was why it's white asparagus season right now so it's so good it's you're like every year like white asparagus okay yeah it's just pretty good and you like man this is smooth

Sam Abuelsamid (15:35)
Okay.

Stephanie Brinley (15:42)
I have done that. It's really good. It's so good. And it's only like two weeks or some ridiculous short period that you can get it.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:01)
⁓ When my wife and I first got married, ⁓ shortly after we got back from Hawaii, ⁓ getting married, assigned, ⁓ had to go over to Germany for three months. And Julie and our daughter came with us, ⁓ came with me. ⁓ And they set us up in an apartment there ⁓ south of Mainz. just outside, like we were in this little town, and just outside of

of the building we living in were these fields of asparagus. And so, you know, they were growing white asparagus and it was amazing.

All right. Well, I had the 2026 Nissan Leaf Platinum Plus, which I'm looking at the Monrone here and it says 2026 Nissan Leaf Platinum Plus front wheel drive, 259 miles plus plus plus. And I'm not sure why there's three plus signs after miles.

Roberto Baldwin (16:50)
Hmm

What? You,

well, you get Disney plus, get Paramount plus, get Peacock, you get all the plus things. You got streaming services.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:13)
okay, well that makes sense. So,

Stephanie Brinley (17:14)
Thank

Sam Abuelsamid (17:17)
you know, this is the newest generation Leaf, and this is the high-end version of it. ⁓ I drove the Leaf last September-ish, I think, yeah, September, ⁓ when they first launched, and was really impressed with it. so, you know, driving it around last week, you know, I'm still impressed with this car. It is so much better than the...

than the first generation and a half. Because what they call the second generation Leaf, it was more of a refresh than a full redesign. Because it still had the same structure, the same platform. They managed to squeeze more battery into it and give it more range. they made the design a little less weird, but still basically the same car. This one is just so heads and shoulders above.

And it's actually quite a decent car and the base model, you know that they dropped plans to import the S plot there the base leaf s Model which was gonna have a little bit smaller battery range of probably somewhere around 230 240 miles Because they you know with tariffs and everything They you know, they came to the conclusion that they weren't gonna be able to get it down to the price point they wanted to you know, and

maintain some level of margin and given Nissan's financial challenges, selling a car like that at a loss would have been untenable for them. But you can still get the base S Plus model, which has the same, it's mechanically identical to the Platinum Plus that I drove, but it starts at 29,990 plus the 1495 destination charge.

The Platinum Plus has more stuff in it, but it's not necessarily stuff that you actually need. And this one came to $41,835, including destination. So the thing is, even in the base S model, the interior is actually surprisingly nice. A lot of the stuff they did to the interior of this car, and again, we were talking about this earlier.

Technically, they call this a crossover. It's not really a crossover. It's a compact hatchback, which is fine. You can call it whatever you want.

Stephanie Brinley (19:51)
Well, as soon as soon as it's a rules actually change, I you can.

Roberto Baldwin (19:52)
Everything's a crossover.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:56)
That's true, yeah, you probably will see some of those change. Although, maybe not, because they may classify them for certification purposes as cars instead of light trucks, but they'll still call it a crossover because that's what American consumers seem to think that they want for some reason. the interior is actually surprisingly nice. You've got some nice touches on this fabric.

Stephanie Brinley (20:07)
and still call it whatever. Yeah.

And yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:26)
across part of the dashboard, some decent soft touch surfaces. It's really good. There's a 75 kilowatt hour liquid cooled battery pack now. The previous Leafs all had air cooled battery packs and that's why Leafs had a tendency to have some degradation of, especially early ones, degradation of the battery, especially if you used them in hot weather environments. So this one should hold up a lot better.

The 75 kilowatt liquid-cooled battery on this one It's 214 horsepower electric motor on the front wheels. So it's front wheel drive only kind of like the bolt and Yeah, and that's fine, you know for for this classic car. You don't really need you know, probably don't really need all-wheel drive the The the the AC onboard charger is only 7.2 kilowatts which

you know, is better than, again, better than old bolts, or better than old leafs, I should say. But, you know, not quite in the same class as a lot of other newer vehicles. So it charges a little bit slower at home overnight. Yeah, you'll still get a full charge, you overnight.

Roberto Baldwin (21:36)
It's, if you charge overnight, think sevens, sevens

fine, unless you like drive 18 hours a day, sevens fine. We don't turn on our charging till midnight for our car because of prices. And it's done by like two, if it's, if we.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean we

Yeah,

we only plug in our car once or twice a week anyway. So it doesn't really matter. This one does have one of the things you get in the Platinum Plus, you get vehicle to load capabilities like you do in lot of the Hyundai's and Kia's. So you can get an adapter that plugs into the charging port. And this is one of the other peculiar things about the new Leaf. It's actually got two charging ports. The old Leafs also had two charging ports, but they had

The charging ports were in the front, ⁓ right in the middle of the nose, and you had a 1772 charger for ⁓ AC charging at home, ⁓ and then a Chattomo DC fast charger. And of course, that was only good for 50 kilowatts. And Chattomo chargers are slowly disappearing, being replaced. ⁓ So this one, they moved the charging ports to the front fenders, but now you have a 1772 charger on the driver's side front fender.

And on the passenger side, you get a J3400 Nax charging port. So you can charge at Tesla Superchargers. you also get, this one came with the adapter. So you can also plug it in and charge it on a CCS charger. Nissan charges 170 bucks for that. But the...

⁓ When you're charging on a DC charger now, it'll charge it up to 150 kilowatts. So it's dramatically faster. So you can get, I think, 10 to 80 % charge in about 30-ish minutes, ⁓ and full charge in under an hour. So that's good. Much, much, better than the old one. So you actually can realistically use this between the combination of the range and the charging speed. You can realistically use this for longer trips now, which you couldn't.

couldn't do in any kind practical sense with the old one, because even the longest range ⁓ of the previous Genleaf was only about 220 miles and 50 kilowatt charging, you know, was not great. So ⁓ big improvements there. The interior in general is really nice. The Platinum Plus does have the glass roof and it's got an electrochromic coating on there. And, you know, it's kind of funky. So the switch.

Like you have in a lot of cars that have moon roofs that have a shade, power shade that goes back and forth. You get the same kind of switch, but with this one, when you push the switch one way or the other, ⁓ it opens up the electrochromic coating in segments. So it's kind of like having a shade that goes back, but you're just clearing parts of the roof in segments as it goes from front to back, which is kind of cool.

⁓ It's a nice touch, so if people in the backseat want to have a little bit more shade, they get a little more shade or at least less direct sunlight. It's not really opaque. It's translucent, so you can't actually see through it when it's closed, but at least it blocks some of the direct sunlight from you. ⁓ Let's see. The ⁓ infotainment system, ⁓ get the ⁓ Nissan's latest Android automotive-based infotainment.

Still has support for CarPlay and Android Auto, which worked well on this thing. ⁓ It's dual 14.3 inch displays. And those, again, these are parts that you find even on that base S Plus model. You don't have to spring for the Platinum Plus to get the same screens. You get all the same interior hardware from the base model to the top end model. ⁓ know, the S Plus, you're not gonna get the glass roof.

Stephanie Brinley (25:38)
experience.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:48)
⁓ This one also had a heads up display. ⁓ But you get all the same ADAS features across the board. you get Nissan's Pro Pilot Assist, which is their hands on ⁓ lane centering system. ⁓ It's a really nice car to drive too. ⁓ When I first drove it, I was impressed at the steering feel on this thing. The overall driving dynamics were surprisingly good.

You're not gonna mistake this for a Z or a GTR, but it's quite pleasant to drive on curvy roads. It's great on the highway. ⁓ It's got enough ride compliance to ⁓ not get beat up on Michigan roads. So it's a nice car. What I would probably recommend for most people if they're considering this car,

is to maybe go for the mid-range SV Plus, which is usually the best choice. But even if you go for the base S Plus, the base model actually, because it's got smaller wheels, think 18 inch wheels, 18 or 19 inch wheels on the base model, that's the one that gets the most range. So you get like 303 miles of range. With the 21 inch wheels that are on the Platinum Plus and bigger tires,

Stephanie Brinley (26:57)
question.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:12)
The official range rating drops to 259 miles, but I was averaging about 3.2 miles per kilowatt hour, which comes out to somewhere around 275 to 280. And I think depending on your driving conditions, the one addition that if you live in a cold weather environment that you probably do want to get is the battery pre-heater, which for whatever reason is not

⁓ Is not standard on any of the trims ⁓ That's 300 bucks and if you live in a cold weather environment, that's probably a good 300 bucks to spend because I know somebody who was ⁓ Reviewing one of the reviewing a leaf this past winter in Canada near Montreal ⁓ When it got really really cold, which it does in the wintertime in Montreal ⁓ the charging speed

dropped off the max charging speed dropped off to about 55, 60 kilowatts. So having that battery heater on there to pre-warm the battery will make a big, big difference. Other than that, I like the new Leaf. It's got reasonable amount of room inside, even in the back seat. Sitting behind myself, I didn't have a huge amount of excess leg room, but

You know, my knees were not touching the front of the back, the back of the front seats. My head was nowhere near the roof. You got plenty of cargo space. No, no frunk in this thing. But it's, you know, it's it's a I think it's an attractive, attractive car. It's a decent size. You know, so it's not it's not too huge. So if you live in the city or you have to drive in the city on a regular basis, it's going to be relatively straightforward to park. ⁓ It's a good car. And, you know, I think people.

If you're looking for an affordable new EV, this is definitely something that should be on your list.

Roberto Baldwin (29:15)
Yeah, one of the things for the S Plus that was sort of weird to me, which I think they probably shouldn't make, is it doesn't have Google, it doesn't have Google, the Google system. So it doesn't have Google Assistant, it doesn't have Google, it doesn't have ⁓ the drive, or I'm sorry, route planning. So you have to use a better route planner if you get the S Plus. But if you get the SV Plus, you can get route planning and all that stuff. So if you're getting the S Plus, you're saving like, I think, five grand.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:36)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:43)
But you're, you know, there's some like some weird little things in there that she's like,

Sam Abuelsamid (29:46)
Yeah, and

the same thing is true on the Kix and some of the other models where Nissan's not putting the Google services on the base models because the Android operating system is free. It's open source. They can use that for free. But for the Google services, for Google Assistant and Maps and all that stuff, they do have to pay a licensing fee on every vehicle to Google for that. ⁓

Stephanie Brinley (29:50)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (30:09)
Yeah, but it has

wireless, it has wireless Android Auto and wireless CarPlay like standard on the S plus and all the entire lineup. So you could.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:13)
Yeah.

Yeah,

Stephanie Brinley (30:18)
See you

soon.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:19)
and if you're using Google Maps through Android Auto, ⁓ it will read the battery state of charge from the car. ⁓ And you can do a lot of the routing right in Google Maps now too. It does a pretty good job with EV routing. You put it in a destination, it'll show you best places to stop, how long to stop. So you don't necessarily have to have the built-in Google services.

Roberto Baldwin (30:44)
BAM.

Stephanie Brinley (30:45)
And I think with this car too, it's more likely to be something that you're driving more urban and more maybe suburban, but in that space, it's not necessarily the car that somebody is going, okay, do four road trips a year, I'm gonna buy a Leaf. It's probably not gonna be their primary use case. It's more getting back and forth to school, to work and kind of around town. So while all that stuff for route planning is important in general,

Sam Abuelsamid (30:52)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (31:02)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (31:14)
to have and have done well. I feel like this has a much more natural, more sort of city use case vibe to it. Yeah. Right.

Roberto Baldwin (31:22)
It's just your regular car, because most people, that's all they do. They very rarely go on road

trips. Again, the American road trip was killed by cheap airline fares, which I guess those are going away now that spirits. Now, a Halloween store, I don't know what happened, but I know they're not around anymore.

Stephanie Brinley (31:33)
BWAH!

Sam Abuelsamid (31:38)
Yeah, they're just just gonna park the the yellow spirit planes and parking lots now and turn them into part Halloween party stores

Stephanie Brinley (31:38)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:42)
film with Phil.

I mean hey, you gotta make money somehow if it's leasing out planes to the spirit Halloween people.

Stephanie Brinley (31:50)
how? ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (31:50)
That's right.

you

Stephanie Brinley (31:53)
Yeah,

yeah. But yeah, the Nissan Leaf is a nice, nice little alternative in that space. And I know that makes sense. The translucent roof, yeah, I could live without that. It's nice, but not that.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean,

it's a cool touch, you know, if you want to spend the extra money for the Platinum Plus, you know, it's a nice little thing, but yeah, it's not necessary. So, ⁓ yeah, for, you know, almost forty two thousand for this one. But you said, you know, get the S plus or the SV plus and you'll be down in the low thirties for those.

All right, let's carry on. So Steph, last week you and I were both out in Long Beach and we visited the new Ford EV Development Center, which speaking of airplanes, the site where that facility is used to be the McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Factory where they built DC-10s and DC-9s and C-17 cargo planes and actually it goes

Stephanie Brinley (32:42)
Yes, we were.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:02)
all the way back to 1940 when they built C-47s, which were the military version of the DC-3. And that factory closed, I don't know, about 15 years ago, and they've been redeveloping that site. So it's right on the north side of Long Beach Airport. And ⁓ so we get to see some stuff.

Stephanie Brinley (33:23)
Yeah, we saw some stuff. Super, was, it's very interesting to see. was cool to see sort of everybody's excitement about it. ⁓ And we'll get into kind of the sort of what the most important thing about this space and this facility is the ability to do things really fast ⁓ and to put everybody in the same place and bring some development stuff in house and just cut a lot of development time in theory.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:53)
We'll see. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (33:56)
It's wonderful that you catch it at the end in theory.

Stephanie Brinley (33:58)
In theory.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:59)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (34:01)
Well, I you know, because I think because this facility is new, because this whole process new, because the whole development of the UltiCon, Universal Electric Vehicle Platform is new. I mean, we were still talking, you know, to what 23, 22 when they kind of put this group together. They haven't had this building open that long. And we're still talking.

you know, mid 27. So we're still looking at a four year development cycle on this vehicle. So maybe the next one will be a little bit faster, but I think all of the front loading they needed to do with this. I think they're setting it up to be able to do future things faster, but everything they need to do to get this far means this one isn't coming a lot faster.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:50)
Yeah, you know, said, you know, think they started to assemble this, you know, what's been called the Skunk Works team later 2022, you know, so almost four years ago now. And, the first product is scheduled to go into production towards the end of this year, you know, and then start deliveries sometime in the first half of next year. And that's this is the $30,000 electric pickup that they've talked about. And, you know, I think the first

the first year, probably year plus, you know, that they were starting to assemble this team was mostly just spent, you know, studying the industry, trying to figure out, what do we have to do to build an affordable EV and make money on it? ⁓ And, you know, so they, you know, they spent a lot of time studying, you know, what Tesla was doing, what Rivian and Lucid were doing and what the Chinese were doing. ⁓ And they

Stephanie Brinley (35:37)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:49)
You know, they seem to have picked up a lot of the lessons, know, they've done, they seem to have done all the things that they need to do. The question now is, can they actually execute on it? Yeah. And this has always been the problem with Ford. Yes.

Stephanie Brinley (36:07)
Always.

Roberto Baldwin (36:08)
Can they get out of their own way? That's the

question. Can you get out of your own way and do this? mean, the Chevy Bolt, it was a big deal. They're like, oh yeah, we came up with this, know, we developed this 18 months. And that was, gosh, how many years ago in EV time? 100 years ago?

Stephanie Brinley (36:11)
That is.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:21)
2016

they launched it? Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (36:23)
16, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (36:24)
Man,

that was a long time ago.

Stephanie Brinley (36:25)
And then they said the same thing about, I think, the Hummer EV was that 18-month time frame and Lyric was pretty close to that.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, Hummer EV and the rest of the full-size electric truck lineup at GM could have probably used a little more time to work on weight.

Roberto Baldwin (36:45)
Yeah, the bolt. I

Stephanie Brinley (36:45)
Right?

Roberto Baldwin (36:46)
like the bolt. Everything else felt like giant heavy. It's like, yeah, you want to drive around some lead? That's her pee.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:51)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (36:54)
⁓ Yeah. So the basis is there to be able to go a little bit faster on the next thing if they can execute it well. how did, you know, so as we were walking through the studio, the facility and they were showing us the design space and the fabrication space and the engineering space and the trim shop and ⁓ mills and axes and battery testing facilities and everything is right there. That

Sam Abuelsamid (36:55)
⁓

Stephanie Brinley (37:22)
that works really well when you're working on one sort of basically one product. And then I don't know how easily that translates when you're working on a full range or if you're even if you look at the seats that they can change the the materials out very quickly. You know, if you're working on a vehicle with multiple seat sort of coverings, like where does that that same fast and

The other thing that I do think does seem to be really exposed in this scenario is what they were talking about with the lead time for getting suppliers to build prototypes. Cutting that down from several months to being able to build a new prototype of a seat in two weeks was pretty amazing.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:14)
Yeah, you know, that was one of the key examples that they gave us, you know, because they've got they've got a fabrication shop there. ⁓ And, ⁓ you know, they've got a trim shop. They've got the design studios all in one building. And so the designers can come up with something and the engineers can drop the do the CAD drawings. They can send that down to the fabrication shop. They've got a five axis mill that can work in foam and clay and plastic and

aluminum ⁓ and carve out seats, ⁓ fabricate, they can 3D print frames for the seat. ⁓ What would typically take two to three months from coming up with the design for a seat, having to go out to suppliers, get the POs approved, get the quotes, get the POs, purchase orders approved, get it done and get it back in to test.

It would be two to three months and they say they can do it in two weeks internally, ⁓ which is pretty impressive. ⁓ like you said, once you're working on multiple different vehicles and you've got different seat configurations and I mean, that's just one piece of the vehicle. mean, there's a whole, there's thousands of parts that go into there, but it's interesting. It'll be interesting to see.

Stephanie Brinley (39:19)
It is.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:40)
how much they can really benefit from this and how much of that they can translate into the rest of Ford Motor Company. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (39:48)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (39:48)
Yeah, because the tools are there like additive

manufacturing, CNC, like quick CNC, quick, you know, prototyping is there. It's available. People are using it. It's just, again, like these large, especially the American automakers, they're just, they're lumbering beasts. And there's people within these beasts that like sort of getting, sort of getting away of, of change and getting away of something, like do something new. And they're like, you have, you know, battling managements and it's just, it's, it's a, yeah.

Everyone just needs to get, hey, everyone, let's get on the same team and work together. Valid criticism is great, just, you know, roadblocks are not.

Stephanie Brinley (40:25)
Yeah, some of the sort of just philosophical approach to it, I think, is what needs to come back. And I don't know how quickly that necessarily will. That's a big challenge.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:35)
Well, mean, know, Saturn

transformed the rest of General Motors,

Stephanie Brinley (40:38)
Absolutely. That's, that's how that went. So yeah, it's, I'm very curious to see. And when they, when they look at the Chinese, I mean, from what I'm understanding about a lot of the Chinese vehicles that are coming together, part of that speed isn't necessarily just that it's in house, it's that they're just, they're suppliers instead of

Sam Abuelsamid (40:43)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (41:04)
you know, saying, hey, Lear, make me a seat to these specifications. They're like, hey, Lear, send me a seat. I'll figure out how to bolt it in. And so that two to three months or breaks or whatever. that two to three months that Ford is talking about, some Chinese automakers are skipping that by just using what's off the shelf. Yeah. So that can be kind of interesting to see how that plays through. I don't know that.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:21)
Yeah, they do that for a lot of the components.

Stephanie Brinley (41:31)
legacy automaker is going to be quite comfortable going off the shelf. I you know, it's been 80 years and, and, want to end, you know, who knows what happens when, you know, off the shelf doesn't work quite. And that's an evolution as well, because I don't think that some of the paths that some of the Chinese automakers have taken now to get really fast. I think there's a natural evolution where they start saying, okay, wait a second.

Now we're all about the same level because we all got the same breaks, we all got the same seats, and then people, what are people complaining about? I don't know what they're complaining about yet. Are they complaining about the seats? Are they not? You start to evolve your product and you start to ask different questions and you sort of naturally build in more time to make it more your own, to make it a little bit special, to figure out where those improvements are. So there's just, I think, a natural development time and a development process with

Roberto Baldwin (42:02)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (42:24)
with automakers and with vehicles. I we were talking about Hugo earlier, which didn't succeed, but we were talking about Hyundai. they took these, started with cheap cars and evolved and figured out how to do that. Chinese automakers are not starting at that same level, but that's still true. Like you come up and you figure out how to make this product, you figure out how to develop and put it in there. And then over time, you start to want to do things differently, just to make it better.

Roberto Baldwin (42:54)
Yeah, but at some point, what's the differentiation between your product and someone else's product in China? And if you're all using the same thing, at some point, someone's going to be like, you know what, what if we built this part so we could be a little bit better than these than these competitors? And, you know, auto, you know, the rise of the middle class in China is relatively new. The rise of being able to afford a car, you know, on a mass scale is relatively new. So we'll see how that sort of evolves over time. I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid (42:54)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (43:06)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Roberto Baldwin (43:24)
because they're so used to moving quickly that, know, they're like, again, their prototyping might be a lot quicker and like, okay, we need this in two weeks, you know, SeatMaker, do it. And the SeatMaker like, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:35)
Well, I think

from a couple of visits I've paid to a company here in the Detroit area called Caresoft that among other things does benchmarking. They take cars and they tear them down to every single part and they evaluate all those parts and they do costing analysis on those parts. And one of the things that they've talked about is a lot of the parts commonization and maybe things like seats need to be a little bit more bespoke.

for individual manufacturers. You want a particular feel for your seats. But there are still a ton of parts in a vehicle that the consumer does not care about that make no difference to the consumer experience as long as it works. So things like wiper motors. Traditionally, a Legacy automaker, the Legacy automaker will, ⁓ they'll design a vehicle, design the vehicle structure.

and say, okay, we got to put wipers on this thing. Okay, here's the volume where we've got to put the wiper motor. ⁓ And they'll go to the supplier and say, okay, we need a wiper motor to go in this package space. And then the supplier will have to design a custom wiper motor for them. In China, they're kind of doing it the opposite way around. It's like the wiper, the consumer does not care what the wiper motor looks like or what volume it fits in.

Roberto Baldwin (45:00)
I don't need I

don't care what the I have a customized wiper motor in my Hyundai

Sam Abuelsamid (45:03)
Yeah, they

just don't want to know that it's going to wipe the windshield. And so they will take an off the shelf wiper motor and then design the other stuff around it. So it's kind of coming at it from the opposite direction. I think you're right, Steph. think there's going to be a mix of some stuff is going to get more bespoke. And then the industry needs to also be willing to adopt things that are not. ⁓

Stephanie Brinley (45:05)
She don't even know. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:30)
they're not going to make a difference to the customer perception of your car. Take those off the shelf.

Stephanie Brinley (45:34)
Absolutely.

Roberto Baldwin (45:35)
That's, mean, think that's what Slate is doing is they're, they're, looking at like, what's available. What can we just get? we can get this part and we can flip it over. So we don't have to get like two versions of two skews. get the same skew, save money and just make it upside down and put that as the, as the other part. And so that's, you know, that's how they're saving money to, to, build this vehicle. It's May. So they, you know, they just did a whole thing about how they've, they've, they've put in a bunch of robots and everything. So they got there.

Stephanie Brinley (45:40)
Yeah.

some level.

Roberto Baldwin (46:03)
They're trucking, you know, they're chugging along, trucking along. I don't know. My brain is full of mucus right now, but they're, you know, they're going along. And meanwhile, you see like Scout is like, Hey, we're going to be in a little bit longer. And you're like, okay. But these other people who like, I mean, yes, Slate is filled with people who have been building cars. So they have that going for them. It's not some sort of like, I, in Silicon Valley, I come up.

I meet a lot of people who like well, we never built a car, we got some good ideas and I'm like, no And it never works out it always ends up crashing and burning Yeah, they just burn through money

Stephanie Brinley (46:35)
That's a way to burn money fast.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:35)
You

Stephanie Brinley (46:43)
But yeah, I agree. Those sort of shared components need to settle down and hopefully that's something that the wider industry does learn from. They were talking at Ford, they were talking about how they can build all those wiring connectors. They can build connectors that do anything, any size. That was one of those, I was thinking, well, at what point do you just figure out the size works and you just use that size all over the car? How can you?

I mean, some of them need, or at least, least commonize more of that. And I don't think their goal is to have, you know, 15 different sizes for the car or whatever that number might be. But it was interesting to see how they were going to play and, and try and figure out what the best one was and had the ability to build everything.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:25)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, with something like that, with the, you know, the connectors for the wiring harness, you know, they can, they can build complete wiring harnesses there in the shop and one of the shops that they have. And, ⁓ you know, they, if they need to design a new connector, they can do that. but I think, you know, as much as possible, they want to commonize the connectors and, you know, part of that is, you know, or just reducing the number of connectors.

Part of that is the new electronic architecture of this thing, going to a zonal architecture. One of the interesting details they showed us, so zonal architecture for those who don't know, you've got, instead of 50 to 100 or more electronic control units scattered around the vehicle, start consolidating all those, have a central compute unit that handles most of the computing for the driver assist systems, the propulsion, battery control.

And then you have, ⁓ in some cases, three or four zone controllers that are somewhere around the perimeter of the vehicle that do power distribution and signal routing between sensors and actuators and the central compute. And ⁓ so on this UEV platform, they've got three zone controllers. They've got two in the front, one on each side in the front, and then there's one in the rear, which ⁓ they've combined it with

the Naxx charging port. So you've got one unit that has the Naxx charging port in there, the routing from there to ⁓ the battery management system for the power and the zone controller all in that single unit. So when it comes to assembly, they just bolt this thing on the inside of the fender. And again, fewer parts, fewer connections to that. because they're going fewer connectors,

In some cases, they're going to have larger connectors for the wire bundles.

Roberto Baldwin (49:29)
but it's a single connection as opposed to like 15.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:31)
Yes.

Stephanie Brinley (49:32)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:33)
Yeah. Yes.

Stephanie Brinley (49:35)
And

in theory, if they've got this done right, then they can use that on the others. And that should be something that basically is done for the other vehicles that are on this platform as well. One of the things that Ford has been talking about this platform for a little while, and I think, Sam, we've been on some other calls about this, but part of it is rethinking vehicle design in terms of

I think Alan Clark, who's running this program, has said the idea is that you don't look at just getting a part cheaper, but you look at what the impact of that part is on the entire vehicle. So if you get something cheap, but it ends up having a cost someplace else that has to compensate for whatever that part can or cannot do, or did not have a part at all to the point of the charging.

and having the ECU in there, just having fewer parts, that scrutiny and that thought process is not something that Ford had done for a long time. And if they can get that into the system a little bit more, that I think can make a big difference in speed and in cost. And it's just that thinking about the vehicle holistically instead of taking off into your little divisions and somebody trying to save

know, five dollars on something that another department has to then fix or do something else to compensate.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:07)
Yeah.

And we saw some of the major components of this vehicle in one room. So they had, we walked in, they had the battery pack, which is a structural battery pack, which forms the floor of the cab. And it was sitting there on a rack. It had the carpet on it. It had seats bolted down, at least the front seats bolted down onto it. ⁓ So what they'll be able to do is assemble most of the interior of the vehicle.

right on the battery pack where it's out in the open. So you're not reaching through door openings, trying to get door, trying to get seats in there and steering columns and all the other stuff. You just assemble it out in the open on this battery pack. And then that whole thing slides into the body shell. And then you've got the rear casting, know, they're calling it a unit casting, which is like a better term than giga casting, because at least it's somewhat descriptive of what it actually is.

Stephanie Brinley (52:06)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:06)
You know, that holds the rear suspension, the rear drive units, the brakes, you know, all of that stuff can be assembled, you know, again, outside of the vehicle where you've got a lot easier access to it. Plug that into the rear body shell under under the bed. And then the front, the front casting, you know, again, you know, one big casting that replaces 146 stamped parts that they would have to weld together. And the assembly of that things like the pedal assembly, you know, traditionally

Again, putting the pedal assembly, you've got somebody who's kind of working their way in through the driver's door side, getting in there, bolting that up underneath the dash, which is really, it's ergonomically difficult and hard to get consistency with that. All of that stuff is mounted on this front casting, which then goes back and gets bolted onto the rest of the body shell. ⁓ And so I thought that...

There's a lot of interesting stuff there. And again, they're not the first to do a lot of this. Tesla really was first with ⁓ the Model Y a few years back when they went to structural battery pack. A lot of the Chinese are doing the same thing now. Ford is the first legacy automaker to adopt this approach. And it'll make the assembly process a lot easier. ⁓

But one of the concerns around using these big castings has been with repairability after a crash. And that's something that they also addressed.

Stephanie Brinley (53:42)
Yeah, they put those breakers, break sections almost, know, let this part be able to come off and be repaired in sections. And to the point that while it's super cool that Ford's doing it, they're not the only one. These are some of the things that Lucid was talking with us about at their investor day in March. What was that, March? Something like that. But the repairability was one too that...

Sam Abuelsamid (54:02)
⁓ March, April, yeah, something like that.

Stephanie Brinley (54:08)
Ford was talking with us about the other day and also was one that Lucid mentioned as well and making that front casting. You kind of know where cars are going to break in various crashes and making it so you can take a section out and put a section back in.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:23)
Yeah, so.

Roberto Baldwin (54:23)
Cause that's the,

if you don't have those, what happens is your insurance goes up. Like the Teslas are very expensive. Yeah. Your, your, your insurance is already higher. Now it's going to go up because you have a single section that can't be fixed. And so having these sort of breakaway parts that can be, you know, replaced is very, very important and will save you money in the long run. They're like, well, the, the automaker saving money, then you're going to buy the car for less money, but your insurance is going to go up like a hundred bucks a month. You're like, well, you're not really saving money. Everyone, the only person saving money is the automaker.

Stephanie Brinley (54:27)
And it's already higher.

Right, right.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:53)
Yeah, so Tesla actually did something very similar with the Cybertruck, much as I just like the Cybertruck. They did some of this kind of stuff with the Cybertruck as well to build in repairability for those castings. ⁓ when a casting fractures in a crash, which is what it'll do instead of bending like a traditional stamped component, ⁓ then they have the lines where they can basically do a clean cut. So they've got several zones.

for each of the castings and they cut it off at the line, take that section away. They have a replacement part that they then rivet and glue, these industrial adhesives on there. And ⁓ I'll include, there's a video from ⁓ JerryRigEverything where he had his Cybertruck through some of the ridiculous testing that he did, broke the rear casting and the hitch off the back of the truck.

But then they took that and he shows how they actually did the repair. think Ford is doing something pretty much the same ⁓ with this platform. And when they tested it afterwards, they found that the repaired section was actually stronger than the original one. ⁓ And they're gonna be training all of their ⁓ body shops on how to do these kinds of repairs. it should be more repairable than a lot of traditional vehicle.

⁓ systems.

And then we did see in the, in the design studio, they had some, covered up clay models of other stuff that they're working on. You know, they've last year when I was at the visiting the Marshall battery plant, Lisa Drake, um, talked about as many as eight different, um, body styles office off this architecture. Um, you know, think it'd be a few, several, at least probably five or six years before we see that many. But, um, you know, they, saw.

You know clearly several different types of body styles ⁓ in the studio there that were covered in silks you know, including one that looked very much like a sedan and Sitting sitting adjacent to that was an old mark one Ford Escort rally car. So maybe they're gonna bring back the escort name on it Yeah

Stephanie Brinley (57:12)
be interesting

for sure. ⁓ Yeah, there's more products are coming in and Ford needs them. And it's good to see that there's something out there. You know, there's there's noise about sedans, not necessarily becoming super popular again, but a little bit more popular enough to to consider that. And, you know, it's, it's interesting, because I think there's still space for sedans somewhere down the road. And, and, you know, Ford

As much as they talk about leaning into trucks, I don't know how many trucks they can sell. In terms of every segment, you get to that four or five trucks in your lineup and you've just got to be stepping onto your other truck's toes. It feels too many for that. I think there needs to be something in there, whether it's another sedan or whatever kind of vehicle it is. I think they need to something else rolling around.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, well,

I mean, this thing is obviously going to be very much a competitor for the Maverick. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, yeah, very, you know, very close to the same starting price. ⁓ you know, and, ⁓ unlike a cyber truck, this is actually a truck shaped truck.

Stephanie Brinley (58:12)
Yeah, this one, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (58:24)
can do truck things with your truck. That's

Stephanie Brinley (58:25)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (58:26)
all I wanna, that's all people wanna do. They just wanna do truck things. I mean, that's all they think they're gonna do, do truck things with their truck.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:32)
That's exactly. You're gonna gonna haul, you know, can haul quite a few bags of mulch in this thing. ⁓ We did get an ever so brief look at one of the prototypes from a distance across the parking lot while we were there. Almost. ⁓

Stephanie Brinley (58:44)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (58:46)
They give you like like binoculars they're like hey Over

there in the hay they got a smoke machine. They're like over there in the haze It's through the fog of war is another car

Stephanie Brinley (58:51)
thumbs.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:55)
Yeah, I mean as we...

As well as we finished as we were finishing up the tour we were walking back from building two to the lobby and building one and The woman who was guiding us on the tour? Yeah, so, know what as I'm walking, you know when I walk across this courtyard I always like to look around you never know what you're gonna see you know, and you know next thing, know, you know somebody's turning around and You know across the the side of the parking lot going driving into the garage that we just walked out of was one of the prototypes You know wrapped in camo

Stephanie Brinley (59:25)
just left.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:28)
⁓ And so we just got an ever so brief glimpse of it. you know, yeah. Yeah. And there was also, you know, on the other side of the parking lot, there was a Maverick, you know, with LIDAR and bunch of other sensors on their Latitude AI logo on it. So, you know, they're doing work on the next generation, you know, level two plus and level three driving systems ⁓ that are going to.

Stephanie Brinley (59:28)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (59:33)
Real Real subtle.

Stephanie Brinley (59:35)
It was moving, it was rolling.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:56)
they're going to appear on this vehicle and on others from the UEV platform as well.

⁓ Any other thoughts on the Ford EV Development Center?

Stephanie Brinley (1:00:11)
I that's, I think we, I think we wrapped that one up pretty well.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:14)
All right. ⁓ So speaking of Chinese EVs, ⁓ I saw a video the other day from Kyle Connor on the Out of Spec channel. ⁓ He went over for the Beijing Motor Show and then was checking out some stuff afterwards. He got a chance to check out the VW ID-ERA 9X, ⁓ which is a three row crossover that they've just launched in China. ⁓

This is one of the new VWEVs. saw several of these as concepts last year, I think from the Shanghai show. And this is one of the ones that they showed. This one they're doing in partnership with SAIC. And I don't know if either of you had a chance to watch any of this video, but this thing looks extremely impressive. It's a really, really nice looking vehicle.

roomy, lots and lots of range, ⁓ very fast charging. ⁓ He went out and tried out the, it's got the driver assist software in there, it's from a Chinese company called Blumenta, ⁓ who are also working with Mercedes and BMW. ⁓ And they basically drove around Beijing for quite a while, just around the city ⁓ in hands-free mode pretty much all the time. Looked like the performance was

really impressive. ⁓ It's quite something.

Stephanie Brinley (1:01:49)
It is. ⁓ It'll be, you know, in China for China's is still where we're at, unfortunately. Like some of that cool stuff is gonna take a time to get over here in a different way. Not enough buttons.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:02)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:02)
Not enough buttons. Not enough buttons. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:05)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:05)
my

big takeaway. I'm like, this is really impressive. Most of the stuff most people don't use. And I would like some buttons for stuff.

Stephanie Brinley (1:02:11)
But.

the in-car software seems to move really fast. And that's like, we still have so much laggy software. I feel like...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:16)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:16)
Yeah.

Right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:22)
Yeah, and

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:22)
Well, they put the software in, they don't optimize it, and then they get a CPU or a GPU that's not really quite future-proof. And then you're like, well, let's wait for this to load for 20 minutes.

Stephanie Brinley (1:02:28)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:33)
Yeah, so this one, the ID.ERA 9X actually is an eREV, it's not a full BEV. And so it's got a 1.5 liter four cylinder engine that acts as the range extender mounted up front. It's got about 150 miles, or actually I think almost 200 miles of electric range. And then they're 994 miles total range with the range extender.

Stephanie Brinley (1:02:39)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:02)
Um, you know, real realistically, it's probably more like, you know, 800 or so miles because that's on the CLTC cycle. Uh, but you know, still very impressive. I think what, what's going to be interesting to see, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, they've got all these EVs and irreps that they're working on for the China, you know, they're developing their team in China is developing these and building them for the Chinese market. The question is, will Volkswagen.

Stephanie Brinley (1:03:09)
So.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:11)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:03:14)
That's.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:32)
take any of the lessons learned from this and apply it to vehicles that they're building in Europe and North America and other regions and selling outside of China. That's, yeah. And we shall see.

Stephanie Brinley (1:03:42)
Just a question.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:44)
Yeah.

It'll be interesting. And remember, even though you look at this and you're like, the fully loaded demo is 51K, the base is $45,000. That's for a Chinese vehicle. That's not for a homologated for US vehicle. So you're not, if they just brought this over to the United States, it would cost more. Yeah. Because it has to be homologated for US market regulatory, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff keeps you from, you know, dying in your car. So just a reminder that.

Stephanie Brinley (1:03:56)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:57)
Right.

You're looking more like 70, 75 at least.

Stephanie Brinley (1:04:03)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:13)
Just because you see a $5,000 Chinese EV doesn't mean it's gonna cost $5,000 when it gets to the US after it's made, you know, safer.

Stephanie Brinley (1:04:20)
Well, and to be fair, it's not necessarily that the Chinese standards aren't safe, it's they're different from ours and their county. Yeah, there's differences in that and we're nowhere near global homologation ⁓ yet. And not only just the homologation element of it as well, but there's component and cost advantages that...

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:26)
They're different, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:04:48)
won't translate as well once you start shipping things, Yeah, it would not be, it would be priced normally, I guess, here. But it's still, you know, it's impressive looking thing. And that that's going to be the challenge, you know, is how do we get this technology and learnings out of the country?

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:50)
labor costs, labor costs, yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:14)
Yeah, well

hopefully VW will take some lessons from their colleagues in China and apply it maybe to a next generation ID buzz that has some respectable range and maybe cost a little less and has better software.

Stephanie Brinley (1:05:30)
All those things, mean, you know, they're working with Ruby and we think that they'll get the software thing nailed down a little bit. And that is pretty significant. It's just taking time to get there still.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:34)
Yeah, I mean that will help.

Yeah.

All right. ⁓ There is a three row electric, another three row electric SUV that we are going to get here in the U S which is the new Lexus TZ. You know, we've been expecting this one to get revealed for a while now. This is basically Lexus's version of the Subaru getaway and Toyota Highlander ⁓ coming around the end of the year. ⁓ It's based on the same component set as the BZ and the Solterra.

Soltera and the CHR and the Beasy Woodland. ⁓ So I think this is, it's been interesting to watch Toyota and Subaru really with their EV strategy over the last couple of years, starting off with a couple of very underwhelming vehicles and then thoroughly revamping those and then using the same component set across surprisingly wide range of vehicles ⁓ that

You know there so by the end of this year between Toyota and Lexus. They will have seven EVs on the market in the US Including the the new ES that we're gonna be driving next week So, know they they haven't the you know from the reveal of the TZ, you know, they didn't provide any specs at least at least performance specs you know, they talked about you know, 300 mile range on the

Stephanie Brinley (1:06:50)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:13)
the top one or the one with the longest range. I don't know if you watched the reveal event that they did in Japan, ⁓ but one interesting detail that's not in the press release that ⁓ came up during the reveal presentation is because it's an EV, they can put different sound profiles in there. So one of the sound profiles you can pick is the sound

of Lexus LFA. So you can have your three-row electric family SUV and you step on the accelerator and it sounds like an LFA V10. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:07:49)
sound like this, Wardscare. I love it.

I it. I don't know that I would do it, but it's

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:55)
Bye.

Stephanie Brinley (1:07:57)
crazy that it's there. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:00)
I continue to be impressed with the Lex Toyota's ⁓ efficiency numbers on these things. mean, they don't give us, know, but if you have three, 300 miles of range and you got 95.82 kilowatt hour battery pack, that's three miles per kilowatt hour for something this large for three row. That's, that's really nice. That's a, that's, that is a great number for something this big. ⁓ Again, if you, if you, if you want like sort of a, almost a comparison, that's like your

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:06)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:28)
big SUV getting about 30 miles per gallon, which is like, Ooh, can you imagine?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:33)
Yeah,

so that's probably going to be the front wheel drive version with the big battery, getting to 300 miles, which is about the same as the Highlander. And I would expect that the Lexus is probably going to offer the more powerful 422 horsepower all-wheel drive configuration that's in the Subaru. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:08:35)
Well, you know.

That's what I'm thinking. And

that's what I it was sort of hinted at in this, in the release and then the story. And it made more sense. was like, because the Super coming out with more power than the Toyota, that's kind of awkward. And then I'm like, now I get it. Now I get it. That makes sense. Just put that in the Lexus. Yeah, it looks great. It will be interesting. And I think that, you know, we've...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:19)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Brinley (1:09:23)
Toyota got sort of derided for a long time for not being fast enough or whatever. They were just doing their work in the background. ⁓ Yeah, whatever. Yeah, we'll work.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:30)
Yeah, when when when we're ready, we'll be ready.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:32)
Well, they were doing the work in the background

while Akio Toyoda was like, EVs are dumb. Come on, guys. Come on, come on. You're talking out of, talking out to.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:38)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:09:38)
Yeah, that's all right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:41)
⁓ It's kind like back in the day when Steve Jobs said, who

would ever want to watch video on an iPod? You know, right before he introduced an iPod video. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:47)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:09:47)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:50)
With a video, yeah.

Who'd ever wanna watch something like this?

Stephanie Brinley (1:09:54)
But, you know, they're going to see some scale benefits from having the three brands on here and from as much sharing as they're doing. I think it's going to make a big difference for them and just trying to break through and trying to figure out where to be profitable because we're not yet. So that's still a struggle.

and the Subaru and the Toyota versions will be produced in the US and the TZ will be imported, which I thought was interesting as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:22)
it's

not they're not producing the TZ in Georgetown.

Stephanie Brinley (1:10:27)
what they said was Japan, which I was expecting some, I'll have to look into that a little bit more. But they were talking about, yeah, they were talking about Japan production for this, which doesn't necessarily mean never US, but that was something that stuck out at me ⁓ a little bit too.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:28)
Okay. All right.

Yeah, we'll have to ask about that this week.

⁓ I like the direction they're going with the styling on some of these latest Lexus models, moving away from the enormous spindle grills. So you still have, there's still a little bit of echo of the spindle in the black trim on the front fascia, but getting rid of most of it.

Stephanie Brinley (1:11:12)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:14)
It always reminds me of a whale

Stephanie Brinley (1:11:14)
Yeah, it looks a lot.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:15)
shark. Everyone go look up an image of a whale shark and you'll see the Lexus grill.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:21)
Yeah, no, think this is a good looking vehicle.

Stephanie Brinley (1:11:24)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:25)
Yeah, it's

better.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:26)
⁓ and actually the 300 miles, that will be with all wheel drive, because all wheel drive is standard on the TZ. The Highlander ⁓ is front driver all wheel drive, but the TZ is all all wheel drive.

Stephanie Brinley (1:11:31)
Later on this one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:33)
I

Again,

that's three miles per kilowatt hour with an all-wheel drive, three-row SUV. mean, someone needs to give those people a high five for that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:45)
Absolutely. OK, let's see. ⁓ another thing with China and Japan, ⁓ they have been working for the last few years on a new charging standard. you having different charging connectors in different parts of the world, I think is not actually that big of an issue because not many people drive their cars from, you know, say, Seattle to Tokyo.

Stephanie Brinley (1:11:53)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:15)
you know, or to Beijing, yeah, you know, or, you know, to Paris. ⁓ So, you know, most vehicles tend to spend their entire life in one region of the world. So as long as the standard is consistent in that region of the world, you know, whatever it is in different countries is fine. That said, you know, there's a new charging standard being developed with Japan and China ⁓ called what?

Stephanie Brinley (1:12:16)
Thank you much.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:16)
I've tried,

it doesn't work.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:45)
What's the name now? ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:45)
calls.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:49)
can't find it now. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:56)
Cha-cha-ji? Chow-ji? Chow-ji. Which, you know, to be honest, this article is, has a lot of old information in it. How was I, when I read the article the other day, I was like, nope, but I just closed it. I'm like, if you're gonna write this article, you really should do your research. It's just, it's, it's, it's wrong on so many levels.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:56)
Yeah, ciao G. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:12:57)
It's...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:05)
Yeah, I know.

Stephanie Brinley (1:13:05)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:09)
Yeah. Yeah. And I

Stephanie Brinley (1:13:13)
Ha

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:16)
did look up in some other places, ⁓ found additional information ⁓ on that. But ⁓ key things about this is that it's going to support megawatt charging standard or megawatt charging from day one, ⁓ which is becoming increasingly common in China. And Chinese companies like BYD,

Stephanie Brinley (1:13:31)
Love you.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:39)
are starting to build out ⁓ megawatt chargers in Europe as well, where they're allowed to sell their cars. And we've talked about that in previous shows. ⁓ But what they're doing, they're going to use a common connector between Japan and China. ⁓ And in China, they will continue using the GBT communication protocol, so it will be backward compatible.

With existing chargers with an adapter You know, so it's the same same same communications protocol in Japan. They're gonna use ⁓ chat a mode 3.0 But it'll just be a lot lot lot faster So this of course Yeah, it is ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:28)
That article's really bad. As someone who works at SAE

Stephanie Brinley (1:14:31)
I was like.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:32)
and has written about 3400, I'm like, well, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong. I'm like, you're talking about J3400 as a Tesla standard? It's like, you four years old idea. Yeah, but as you know, the J3400 will have megawatt. I mean, there's a physical, there've been physical changes to the design.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll find a different link for the show notes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:56)
It's a lot more than this. ⁓ Wow, this must be really fast. And I read the thing. I'm like, it's not. No, no, it's it's it's this person just doesn't know how to do research.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:08)
Of course, to be able to utilize megawatt charging, we'd actually have to have vehicles here and chargers. ⁓ And the fastest chargers we have, at least for light duty vehicles, are 400 kilowatts right now.

Stephanie Brinley (1:15:13)
Richard, may God.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:15)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:15:25)
And it's going to be a while. You know, the trick will be, know, how, can you, when it's time to put, bring that technology here, how quickly can it be done? It's, yeah, it's not.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:38)
The standard's out, it's J3400 slash two. So it's

there. It'll do bi-directional thousand watt charging. I don't know what else. Yeah, kilowatt or a thousand kilowatt, yeah. Yeah, it's fine. We're not getting left behind by, it's the cars that are the problem at this point. The cars are the bottleneck and the batteries, yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:15:48)
Build it when we need it, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:59)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:16:00)
Yeah, well.

and our willingness to buy them? I don't know. There's a thing out there with that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:06)
Yeah, exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:11)
All right, and then BMW. ⁓ So a couple of things from BMW. They announced ⁓ pricing and range for the US spec version of the new iX3, is, ⁓ first of their NOIA class EV models. And this vehicle's roughly the same size as an X3. ⁓ Pricing for the US starts at $61,500. ⁓

1350 destination charge. goes on, think deliveries are going to start in about September. But what's really impressive, 434 miles on the EPA range for this thing, the, on the 20 inch summer tires. And then, you know, the various other trims range from 383 to 399 miles. Which I thought that was odd that

The longest range is actually on the summer tires, the 20 inch summer tires, and not on all seasons. The all seasons actually get the worst range.

Stephanie Brinley (1:17:18)
You...

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:18)
I like that

they, I do like it that they broke it out by tires, because no one else is doing that. I really appreciate that. Because you're like, ⁓ and you're like, summer tires, cool. You're like, wait, it rains here. God. If I lived in Phoenix, this is going to be awesome.

Stephanie Brinley (1:17:20)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:17:30)
Right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:35)
So I was looking at the pricing for the X3. So the X3 is currently available in two variants, the X-Drive 30 with the four cylinder engine and then the M50 X-Drive, which is actually similar performance, a little bit less power, but it's a little bit lighter, so it gets ever so slightly quicker, 0 to 60.

Stephanie Brinley (1:17:51)
50.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:05)
The pricing on the 30 starts at about $52,000. The AM50 starts at $65,500. So this is cheaper than the M50, similar performance, lots of range, and this will support 400 kilowatt charging on suitable chargers. So this is pretty comparable in terms of pricing.

compared to where you would be for a similarly equipped ⁓ X3.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:38)
It's a good value.

Stephanie Brinley (1:18:42)
feel like this is a really interesting case because all of that is true. And I remember when the Dodge Charger Daytona EV was coming out and the power for the SCAT pack and for the RT was similar to upper levels and it was priced. It still is priced because it's not gone. But the Charger Daytona was priced closer to those upper level versions of the V8s. And when

when that was happening and I was like, like it's the same price as the roughly the same price as the, you know, power that the old one was getting it. People are like, yeah, but it's still too expensive. A year and a half later, people are like, isn't this awesome? This is priced about the same price as the same power of the gasoline. I'm like, attitudes are changing just a little bit and it's a BMW. So people are accepting things a little bit differently. ⁓ Had other problems.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:24)
Yeah.

Well, and BMW's punished.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:34)
Yeah, the charger, the people who buy chargers

are not... It's like people who buy full-size trucks. It's the same group of people who are like, I want vroom vroom car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:40)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:19:43)
Right. was.

Well, and it gave it that. and of course, looking at these range figures for the BMW are amazing. ⁓ So there's there's differences going on there as well. But I found that I found that charming that the reaction was quite different on the other sort of media conversations about the pricing on this one.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:59)
Yeah, well, mean, it's got this.

Yeah, mean, you know, this is going to have, you know, twice as fast, at least twice as fast charging as the charger. You know, a lot more range and BMW, you know, has had a much higher penetration of EVs, much higher take rate for their EVs across their lineup than, you know, most other manufacturers to date. ⁓ Yeah, so. Yeah, so.

Stephanie Brinley (1:20:12)
Yeah, yeah, I wasn't going that way.

in general.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:21)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:20:26)
They've been pretty consistent about it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:26)
Yeah.

They're very good EVs. And the amount of engineering to do it, again, without rare earth magnets in their motors, the efficiency and the performance they're getting out of those motors is bonkers. I don't know if they trapped like a group of people in a room and then those folks are just like constantly like working on this and they're not allowed to see the light of day until they get it right. But it's really impressive. Unless you're the person trapped in the room who doesn't get to see the light of day.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:32)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:20:44)
it.

That's true. But yeah, it is impressive pricing and impressive output all the way around on that. And it looks pretty cool too. So I...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's

the design direction they're taking with the NOAA class, know, shrinking the kidneys back down to, a more reasonable size. You know, it's a pretty good looking vehicle.

Stephanie Brinley (1:21:18)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:24)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:21:25)
And

it needs to be this impressive, since there's so much coming behind it. I know I close. Everybody needs more buttons. I don't disagree with that statement, but I feel like you can just put asterisk, needs more buttons. I'm just about anything.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:30)
And it needs more buttons, but that's a whole other thing too. Everyone needs.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:33)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:38)
Needs more buttons.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:40)
⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:40)
More buttons, please.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:42)
And then the other thing that BMW dropped this week is their ⁓ what they're calling their M-ignite ignition ⁓ for all their six-cylinder engines, which ⁓ for those that have been paying attention, this is basically exactly the same thing that Stellantis recently announced for their new Hurricane 4 turbo. Pre-chamber system, two spark plugs, know, it's a passive pre-chamber system.

Stephanie Brinley (1:22:04)
Thank

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:11)
Basically the exact same concept. ⁓ BMW is just putting it on all of their six cylinder engines starting this summer. ⁓ So they'll get more power, better efficiency, ⁓ and less likelihood of knocking. ⁓

Stephanie Brinley (1:22:28)
Yep. And

BMWs are more expensive so they can sort of drop that. They can make that sort of big leap on all theirs more quickly, I think, than Salinas could do. But yeah, I did notice That was pretty cool, actually.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:35)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:35)
Yeah.

BMW's

got a lot more money than Stellantis. I might have more money than Stellantis to be honest. I'm all looking in my pocket. I got three dollars. Who wants a new Fiat?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:45)
You

At this stage, that's, yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:22:48)
It's entirely possible. No.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:54)
Well, they raised, we talked last week about, they raised the price on the 500E by $5,000. So, clearly they've run out of cash to give away free 500Es.

Stephanie Brinley (1:22:55)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:06)
how well that vehicle's

doing. It wasn't doing well in the first place. At least the original one was a compliance card. You're like, okay, I can sort of, you know, they're kind of giving them away. And it was the best Fiat. And I drove the new 500E and it's like, like this is really nice, except for.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:09)
Not well, yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:23:09)
Not well. Not well.

No.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:23)
It costs $32,000.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:25)
Yeah, except for I can buy a lot of car from literally anyone else for this much money.

Stephanie Brinley (1:23:28)
a lot of cars. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:30)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:23:32)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:33)
Unless you happen to live in Colorado and you could lease one for zero dollars down and zero dollars a month for two years

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:36)
then.

I need to move to Colorado. I feel like they're getting all the sweet deals for other EVs.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:44)
Yeah.

Well, I mean, they don't have that anymore because they don't have the federal tax credits anymore. They still got some good lease deals, but not that crazy. All right. ⁓ Last one ⁓ is Ford had a little event here in Detroit a few days ago. ⁓ They, ⁓ again, took advantage of the Michigan Central Station to unveil the 2027 Super Duty Carhartt Because Carhartt is based here in Detroit. ⁓

Stephanie Brinley (1:23:45)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:49)
They still got some good deals. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:13)
you know, here in the Detroit area. And so they decided to collaborate on a Carhartt version of the Super Duty trucks. And ⁓ Nicole was there. We got some interviews that she did with the designers. But any thoughts on this?

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:28)
Sorry if you're gonna go Detroit Little Caesars pizza if we're gonna little Caesars is based out of Detroit I want a Little Caesars f250 XLT. That's what I want. I want

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:39)
So do you need like

a little ⁓ pizza oven in the backseat?

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:43)
The little

pizza guy. I mean, makes just as much sense as this, to be honest. I mean, what's this? It's like the Harley Davidson Fords. Remember those, the trucks? it just has a Harley Davidson badge on it. Yeah, they're probably, yeah, this is just like.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:47)
Ha

Stephanie Brinley (1:24:52)
I don't think they're gone. I don't think they're

gone. Now, I think it works in the sense that it's like her heart and the relationship is there. The image is there. And if you get a few more people to spend a little bit more on it, they're happy if they like her heart, because there's some of them that do, right? And they're like, yeah, this is cool. At least for work, right? That's all they'll wear.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:00)
Yeah.

yeah, that's all they'll wear. That's all they'll wear.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:17)
I'm just surprised

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:18)
All I wore was

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:18)
that

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:18)
Dickies.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:18)
they didn't incorporate the Carhartt orange color into this more.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:22)
Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Like I was I wore Dickies for like almost exclusively for like 15 years because they last I still I'm wearing a pair of Dickie shorts that I bought in like 1997. They just do not die like Dickie's clothes. I think that's probably yeah. So if you have if so, there you go. That's where that's what we're talking about. When you buy like these these sort of I don't know if you want to call the working man's clothing line for it. Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:25:22)
Right?

Hahaha!

And...

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:50)
It's gonna cost you a

Stephanie Brinley (1:25:50)
I don't.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:51)
lot of money. don't know how many like ⁓ working class dudes can afford a Carhartt XLT crew cab. ⁓ But if you can, there you go. And if you, again, ⁓ I'm really looking forward to that Little Caesars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:03)
Hey, you know, if you're a plumber, electrician,

carpenter, you know, using this truck for work, chances are you could probably afford it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:10)
Your general contractor,

this is the boss's car. You're the general contractor. This is the boss's car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:14)
Well, mean, this

Stephanie Brinley (1:26:15)
but the boss still needs to be at by a truck. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:15)
is the XLT. It's not like a platinum or limited. So this is one of the trims that the working guys, or if you own your own plumbing business or electrician business, you're probably going to be driving something like this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:35)
Do they have a price point for it?

Stephanie Brinley (1:26:35)
It's every bit as worthwhile

as a night edition of something, you know, it's it's little, it's a little bit more personalized, and it's really relatively easy to do for the for the automaker and the person who steps forward, they're gonna like it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:39)
Yeah.

Listen, I'm not,

if you buy this, I'm not gonna judge you because I have a Hello Kitty fuzz pedal from Fender. So there you go. It costs the same, I think, as the regular fuzz pedal. I think it's maybe $5 more, but.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:55)
Ha ha ha ha.

Stephanie Brinley (1:26:56)
Again, see, like I'm not buying it.

We

started off saying that I probably was in my utility vehicle. I feel like an effluent super duty is probably not real high on my driveway list. But these are relatively easy things to do that lean into where that consumer base is. So I think it's nice. I don't know what the price is yet.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:18)
What's up?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:20)
Although I think

I will soon have to see if I can borrow one of these for a loan because I'm in the process of rebuilding my deck right now. So I've got a lot of stuff that's going to need to be hauled away to the dump in the coming weeks. So I'll have to...

Stephanie Brinley (1:27:35)
Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:35)
does it come with a

Stephanie Brinley (1:27:36)
it's almost seems almost waiting for you to say you're gonna use the the truck to pull the Whole thing on and detach the whole thing out Demo

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:43)
No, no, no. The frame is still in good shape. I'm just

redoing the top part, the top surface, replanking it. No, no, no. It's real wood.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:49)
Are you getting like the fake wood? Because I'm thinking about...

No, but to replace it. Because you can get the fake wood, it lasts like a thousand years or something stupid. All right, take that trees.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:56)
No, no, no, I'm sticking with real wood.

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, as it decomposes, you know, it returns nutrients back into the soil and, you know, it gives the chipmunks something to chew on from underneath.

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:06)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:08)
That's

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:14)
So where are you gonna get rid of this wood that you're taking away?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:16)
Take

it out to the township compost site.

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:22)
Good,

yeah, see, that works.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:25)
Yeah, it's

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:25)
Del del

del.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:26)
all the circle of organic life. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:29)
Circle of Life.

Come on, I'm

trying to find this car price. Whatever. The car, yeah, it's wonderful that Ford's, yeah, it's one of that Ford's press site is almost completely worthless.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:35)
for the Carhartt?

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:36)
I haven't seen

the price either.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:38)
I don't think they've announced pricing for it yet.

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:42)
think it was.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:45)
⁓ yeah, I know.

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:46)
⁓

yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:47)
Yeah, sorry, Ford, but ⁓ yeah, fix that. We like to be able to do our jobs.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:49)
⁓ no, mean they've

heard this from us repeatedly in person. I've told them on numerous occasions that I don't know what they're thinking, but it certainly wasn't about us.

Stephanie Brinley (1:28:54)
It's a minor thing.

Yeah.

No, no, I think it was thinking they don't need us, I think is actually the point.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:09)
Yeah. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:11)
We got

influencers who just say things that we've paid them to say. By the way, that's the secret of influencers. A lot of them get paid by the automakers. yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:18)
Oh yeah. Well, I mean not

just automakers, whatever they're covering.

Stephanie Brinley (1:29:23)
Whatever.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:25)
Yeah, they're getting, yeah, it is, I mean, I'm not gonna shade on influencers. Hey, that's a job. You figured it out. They work really hard. I've been around some influencers, but they're also not journalists. They are paid marketing people.

Stephanie Brinley (1:29:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:39)
Yeah. So ⁓ just for reference, the 2026 F250 XLT starts at $49,175.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:51)
Alright so this one's probably like 60, 65, maybe more. I'm always, I'm a big fan of just getting, uh oh, Stephanie's gonna tell me.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:52)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:29:54)
Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:58)
And that's.

Stephanie Brinley (1:29:59)
⁓ no,

I've not seen the price. It might not be 10 grand more. It's wheels, it's trim.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:08)
It's got the rubber mats, which I'm a big fan of. Actually, just take all carpet out of any car that is an electric car and just put rubber in. That's my other hot take.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:09)
And they're obviously going to have

Stephanie Brinley (1:30:11)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:17)
to pay a licensing fee to Carhartt for every one of these. So ⁓ you're probably looking at about $5,000 extra for the Carhartt package.

Stephanie Brinley (1:30:19)
Yep.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:19)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:30:23)
That's what I would think. I would think

it'd about five grand.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:25)
There you go. And you get to put your Carhartt jacket on, which by the way are really nice jackets, but very expensive. But they'll last forever. ⁓ Buy workers clothes. It's gonna last forever. It's not fast fashion. You could do wonderful things. could throw it down a hill.

Stephanie Brinley (1:30:27)
She's not here.

Right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:47)
So actually for the crew cab F250 XLT, those start at $57,000. That's with the 6 and 3 quarter foot bed.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:56)
All right, so wasn't, I probably 65.

Yeah, because they got the wheels, they got the rubber mats, which they're going to charge like an extra $500 for for no reason. You could just go to, what's the weather tech? You could just go to weather tech.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:03)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Brinley (1:31:05)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:10)
Yeah.

Stephanie Brinley (1:31:13)
Yeah, but you know, don't have to do that. You can just buy the truck and it'll already be out now.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:17)
I

know, you don't have to do anything. You should come with a jacket. Does it come with a jacket? If it just comes with a jacket, I'll... Me, that's why I make bad financial decisions as a human. I'm like, well, it's $5,000, but it comes with a $150 jacket, so I should do that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:22)
⁓ there you go. It's a very expensive jacket.

Stephanie Brinley (1:31:23)
It should. That'd be pretty funny.

Yes.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:38)
So, yeah, get, get, you take the jacket and then you resell the truck.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:44)
Yeah, there you go. My car hard truck. I'm gonna go to Ace Hardware and buy, I have too many jackets. have like three, yeah, I don't need any more jackets.

Stephanie Brinley (1:31:45)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:47)
⁓ Alright.

Ha

⁓ All right, well Stephanie, thank you for joining us again today. Appreciate it.

Stephanie Brinley (1:31:59)
Thanks

for having me back. I appreciate it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:01)
Yay,

Stephanie.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:02)
and we'll talk to you all next time. Bye.

Stephanie Brinley (1:32:06)
Bye!

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:07)
Bye bye.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:10)
Okay, so here we go. Give me your name and your title.

Steve Gilmore (1:32:10)
you

I'm Steve Gilmore. I'm the chief designer for Ford's Ford Customization Department.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:20)
So for Ford customization and we're here talking about the Carhartt. Tell me a little bit about how that partnership came.

Steve Gilmore (1:32:25)
Super duty. Yes. ⁓

So we were talking about this that I look back my first email that popped up in my inbox was ⁓ late in the fall of 23. Yes it is. these types of partnerships don't happen quickly. ⁓ So we, when we did hear about this, we didn't want to just jump in and start sketching or, you know, doing things we wanted to actually research and make sure.

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:41)
That's three years ago.

Steve Gilmore (1:32:59)
what we were getting into was the right type of partnership. So my design team and I decided to take a day and go to a Carhartt store here in Detroit and ⁓ actually just spend a lot of time with their product and really understand it. I've worn Carhartt since I was a kid. I understand it to that degree, but I really wanted to get more in depth with it.

and take a look at all their product because they have stuff that is just much more far reaching than I understood ⁓ for my type of wear. So after we did that though, we really realized that Super Duty was the right customer. ⁓ And then even more so after we started talking about the marketing information, really looking at the in depth who our customers were with them.

we noticed, we have the same images. They have Ford trucks in their stuff. It was the right type of a partnership. And then even after that, when we started working with their design team, which was two miles away, is that close.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:12)
Is it really that close to where the Dearborn

Steve Gilmore (1:34:17)
We got to spend a lot of time with them. They invited us over to their facility, showed us what they were doing. We brought them in for reviews, a lot of stuff that you could touch and feel, just understanding what the truck was. They got to come in and take a look at a bunch of our super duties and really understand that this is the right thing.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:40)
What do you think because there's lots of companies you could have chosen to partner with like I remember back in day the Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Way back. That's what I think of when I that's the one that sticks in my head What made Carhartt the best one because there's other companies that make work wear and rugged stuff. Why Carhartt?

Steve Gilmore (1:34:58)
It was simple.

Detroit, we're both Detroit ⁓ owned and operated and have been here for a long time. ⁓ And that was one of the big foundations. But like I said, when we really looked at who we were targeting and why with our products, it was the same people. when you get something that is just that close of a real, you know.

Relationship it just makes sense

Nicole Wakelin (1:35:28)
And as you started meeting with them two miles away from your offices and seeing what they have and they're seeing what the super duty is, what was the most exciting thing as you started this out? You thought, my gosh, I'm going to get to this.

Steve Gilmore (1:35:41)
Well, it was. ⁓ The whole thing because I think our initial thoughts were probably bigger and we were talking about this that Carhartt's more reserved in how they handle branding, how they handle their products.

Ford is a little bit more bold. We're very intentional in what we do, but we might be a little more bold. So I think our first proposals were probably a bit too bold. Okay. we kept, then we really talked about it. It's like, if it doesn't serve a purpose on the truck, it doesn't belong there. So we started removing stuff.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:21)
That seems like crazy. That's a very different thing. I don't think just for Ford, but for everyone, because you look at trucks these days and it's like more, more, more, more, more. Like there's so much stuff. You open the top trims of Ford trucks or any truck and you're like, wow, this is like insane. There's so much stuff. How hard was it for you to say, nope, take that away, take that away?

Steve Gilmore (1:36:40)
Actually it wasn't because when we really started focusing on who the customer was, we're not focusing on the highest end customer. We're focusing on somebody who is going to work with that truck every day that might not need all the bright and the flashy stuff. They want the vehicle that really works hard. So when we took on that philosophy, it actually made it very easy to say, is that

Does Does that belong? And you know, we would weigh it out. And you know, as I was showing you, we removed stuff from this truck just because it didn't feel like it was necessary.

Nicole Wakelin (1:37:22)
It is interesting because if you're talking about the 4x4 sticker is not on this because they're all 4x4 and it doesn't need it. But it is, you you've got the little Carhartt logos, which lets you know it's Carhartt, but you don't have all these crazy graphics, which is only something that comes along when you do some kind of customized.

Steve Gilmore (1:37:38)
No, and our department actually does a lot of those big graphics on vehicles, but this didn't feel right. And even the graphics that are on it, they're more of a protection than just a pure graphic. They have a higher level of durability. They're protecting the paint. They have a texture to them. ⁓ They even have this...

as we call it a meso tint. So it's got two tones of gray in it and also lets you see the body color through it. So even if that chips up or anything happens to that, you don't notice it.

Nicole Wakelin (1:38:18)
It's hidden. What are you most proud of? If you had to pick a thing that you did, you're like, I love that we were able to pick one thing. You can't say the whole truck.

Steve Gilmore (1:38:27)
Oh,

I know. It's rough because the exterior, I think you heard the story about the wheel, the manhole cover that we saw and it was, we walked out of the store and just, were standing there talking and it was cold and we like, manhole cover, that's interesting. Take a picture of that. And Cece then built this beautiful wheel out of it.

as the inspiration. that, you on the exterior it's that, but the interior, just getting to understand Carhartt's philosophy and their materials, and then taking that philosophy and putting it to it, know, with the triple stitch and construction and material.

all the way through it was just a wonderful experience getting to understand.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:17)
Excellent, thank you very much. Thank you.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:19)
Okay, so first tell me your name and your title.

Ben Ewy (1:39:22)
Hi, I'm Ben Ewy. I'm the distinct honor and pleasure to be vice president of global product design at Carhartt. I've been with the company for 11 years now.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:31)
Okay, and we're here at... I told you you could look sloppy, can't cough. Sorry. a podcast. Yeah, exactly, need to a little button for you. So we're here with the Carhartt Ford Super Duty. Tell me a little bit about why you at Carhartt thought Ford would be the right truck company to do this with.

Ben Ewy (1:39:38)
Where's the cough button?

Sure.

I mean, it's funny because when we started this relationship, we're like, why are we doing this? And then it went to how can we not do this? Because Ford and Carhartt are both founded in Detroit. They're both still family-owned companies. And even though they make trucks and we make apparel, we both serve hardworking people by giving them the gear that they need to get their job done. And the more that we work together, the more we realize just how closely we were aligned. And it's been an incredible.

process. It was a true collaboration. We worked directly with the Ford team. Of course, our focus was on what makes Carhartt important, which is functional, durable, protecting hardworking people, and Ford had the same mantra. And so it was a joy to work with them. We came up with something we think that was better than either one of us could have done alone, and we created what we believe to be an incredible hardworking truck.

Nicole Wakelin (1:40:49)
So

looking at the the way the Carhartt logos are on this sometimes when you see branded things like this it screams at you There's huge things. There's giant decals. It's colorful. It's in your face There's no way you can miss that there is some collaboration. It's on there and it's on there in a lot of spots, but it's kind of

Ben Ewy (1:41:06)
You're

exactly right. What we said was we wanted to whisper, shout. We wanted people to lean into the truck and not, you know, lean back. And it was very important to us to be subtle with it because what we wanted was the functionality of the truck, ⁓ what it does, how it performs, the authentic small details to tell you that it was a Carhartt Ford truck. And we didn't want to just plaster big logos on it. We thought it was a more subtle way. It's how we prefer to make our apparel.

under brand when we can. Again, we want to do what we call the thumb test at Carhartt. Can I put my thumb over the logo and still know that it's Carhartt product?

Nicole Wakelin (1:41:45)
you

really do that? that like a thing? you like stick your thumb on a shirt or whatever? It's like no that's too big.

Ben Ewy (1:41:50)
Well, it's it's it's more like if I didn't see the logo. Yeah, would I still know it's Carhartt? it's the DNA in there. Is it functional is it authentic?

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:00)
So you cover up the Carhartt logo and I'm just looking at it. What makes, what lets me know it's a Carhartt?

Ben Ewy (1:42:05)
Well, we have five things that we like. actually have this written out. We want it to be functional. We want it to be durable. We want it to be authentic. We want it to be versatile, because it's important not just to be able to wear it at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day. We go on job sites where there's a temperature swing of 60 degrees during the day. And you have to be able to layer up and layer down. So we want that versatility. But we also want people to be able to be facing the... ⁓

their clients and looking professional, but being able to go back into the back of the house and do the work. And then we have this really important concept that we call enduring value. Now, Carhartt product might not be the cheapest upfront from the dollars and cents, but when you think about the life, the lifetime value of the product, how much use you get out of it, how functional is it, how safe it keeps you, we think there's no better value than Carhartt.

We think that same value extends into this truck that we're building with Ford. Because of the fact that it's so purpose built, that it's built from the ground, from the job site up, we know that people will use this truck, cherish this truck. We see this as being a generational product, the same way that we do with our auto wear and the clothes that we make.

Nicole Wakelin (1:43:12)
When

you see the finished product here, which actually looks really cool, which you can't see in a podcast, but it does look cool. What is your favorite element of this truck? You got to pick a thing that you look at it and you think, man, that captures Carhartt and Ford and I love it.

Ben Ewy (1:43:28)
You

know, it's a great question and actually I do have one. You do? It's the all weather floor mats. Okay. And what I like about the all weather floor mats is that it is keeping the truck clean and safe and it's a protective element and the ones on the front actually have the Carhartt logo embossed in it as well as the Super Duty logo and because it's a protective element because it's something to add durability to it to make it more long.

lasting and they have our logos locked up. That to me just tells everything you need to know about the truck. That this is again these are functional things that we have done to the truck to make it better for hard-working people.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:10)
Excellent, thank you very much.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:12)
What's your name and title?

Bhavna Mistry (1:44:13)
I am Bhavna Mistry. I am a color and materials designer, senior designer working for Ford Customization Group. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:24)
So

we're so we're talking about today is the Carhartt Ford Super Duty, which you put a lot of work into the interior of this

Bhavna Mistry (1:44:33)
Inside and out. Inside and out. Everything you touch and feel and see. so... All the color story, the texture story, so the color of the wheel, the exterior grill, the interior materials, the front...

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:37)
It's not just his everything.

You're doing

all of it. I somehow thought you were just interior, but you're all...

Bhavna Mistry (1:44:48)
Well,

yeah, I mean, parts might be designed by people, but I do the whole color, texture, and the material story for the entire vehicle. my god. I truly do like Thank you.

Nicole Wakelin (1:44:57)
Well, it looks fantastic. Thank you. Talk

a little bit about, I think your last name, which I know is a weird thing to ask when I'm talking about truck. Tell me your last name and why it's relevant.

Bhavna Mistry (1:45:08)
Okay, I will tell you, it's very, it has been a very fulfilling project for me. my last name is Mistri, M-I-S-T-R-Y. It basically means I come from a community of people who worked with wood, whether they were puppeters or were sculptors, but people who worked in wood.

two sides of the family. One side was a woodmaker, wood workers, and the other side was a blacksmith, maternal side is blacksmith. ⁓ So this project was like paying homage, tribute to my grandfather. So I remember...

So my grandfather's a blacksmith and when I was little I have a vivid memory of going to his workshops and I was fascinated as a little child, little kid when you see the red jewel like spikes flying through as the hammer hit the red hot metal. I was like, whoa. And then it would fly on his clothing and it'd work away and it would singe his clothing too. I was like, wow, he's amazing. He's so brave, like my super hero, you know? And I saw the hardship and the perseverance was real, you know?

he worked and he had a smile on his face and he kept going. The more I remember, I remember there used to be queue of people waiting for the tools to be done. They were farmers or people who worked in automotive workshops and they needed their tools.

done or something but I it kind of was like he was working and serving to another community of people who work with their hands and they were all about work as well and now for me to work on this truck I feel like it's a complete circle I could finish the circle and also he passed away couple years ago I'm sorry so for me I felt like it's a tribute to him definitely and the excitement I haven't told anybody but I haven't told my mom about this after I finished today I'm gonna

tell her ⁓ because I just wanted to keep it until the embargo is lifted and I will send her the link and ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:47:15)
tears there's

going be tears right there. % 100 % 100 Okay I love the idea that this big burly truck is going to cause sentimental

Bhavna Mistry (1:47:22)
Cheers! That's amazing! I love the story. Yeah, and it's also a lot of love and respect for people who work hard every day of their life and keep going and build the communities around this country.

Nicole Wakelin (1:47:36)
on a very personal level, what it means to have to have a super duty truck to get through your work day and also the apparel like Carhartt to get you through it. Things like your grandfather with a spark spouts and all. What was your biggest challenge when you looked at this and you said, okay, we're going to take our great big Burley truck and apply this really well known company's apparel ideals to it.

Bhavna Mistry (1:47:46)
Absolutely.

Yeah,

were challenges, there were a lot of learnings as well. mean, at Ford, when we do the trucks, we like to make a statement too, as you said, and early, But I had to immerse myself into Carhartt's core values, understand their DNA. And one of the core things they told us, the main statement was, we want it to be a whisper and not a scream.

I completely was aligned with that because that is how I think I, my mom had a humble beginning. So for that, it made a lot of sense to me. I got it straight away. So the challenges were we wanted to bring the iconic duck canvas and we also wanted it to be recognizable as Ben pointed out.

If you had the tongue test, could you tell that Centurion was Carhartt? That was my personal mission. wanted to... And we worked as a team, tirelessly worked as a team ⁓ to make that happen. It wasn't just me or Steve. It's a team effort. And I think it's one of the best collaborations we've had. The team worked seamlessly together. So the challenges we had was ⁓ I wanted to work on a duck canvas. That is their iconic material, the yellow.

I want to get that feeling, want that construction, I want that rugged durability for this customer but I also want them to feel comfortable when they're sitting in the car. It's one thing to wear a duck and this jacket, it's another thing to sit on it, something that's very rugged, right?

Nicole Wakelin (1:49:37)
So

to find out that it couldn't be exact, did you make a seat? Or did you actually make a seat and you sat down and then thought this is not right?

Bhavna Mistry (1:49:46)
Absolutely, we made several prototypes. So what we did is we developed the construction, ⁓ we applied on the seat, we made prototypes, we even made prototypes of all the triple stitch. That was a big, big challenge because it's very iconic to Carhat and it had to be purposeful. You cannot just have a fabric.

just plough through three stitches and make it look good. It had to be purposeful. It's there for a reason. So now let's go back to the seat. So when I was sitting on the seat, I was like, okay, it to feel comfortable. So we'd seen another product, a few other products in their shop that had like the old walnut, had the fabric, which felt soft and comfortable, right? And it also didn't look as...

solid you know like it wouldn't stick out like it had multiple it was more complex ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (1:50:38)
It is just it's one color. It's solid color.

Yeah

Bhavna Mistry (1:50:42)
And here I wanted the environment reflecting into the seat as well. Bring all the elements in the environment and then weave it together onto the seat and make it feel comfortable at the same time. So we kind of married the two's texture. The iconic duck canvas and the olive walnut fabric that's heathered. So we kind of married it to that construction. Heathered the top surface of it to make it more softer feel.

But at the same time we were working with the materials engineering to make sure that we're not compromising on the quality of the fabric and the durability and the soil repellency, all of those issues. So I think we were able to accomplish that, was absolutely, we were very, very excited.

Nicole Wakelin (1:51:27)
That's fantastic. When you talk about durability, that's part of the thing about the car jackets. just hold up to all sorts of abuse. Durable is that interior guys are spilling their coffee. best of it.

Bhavna Mistry (1:51:32)
Correct. Correct. How?

Yeah,

yeah, so soil repellency is poured absolutely takes pride and focuses on and it's very important for a truck like that, right? So the liquid can beat up to 13 minutes on that material Just brush it off. Just brush it off. Just brush it off. Okay. Yeah, and it has way more abrasion resistance as well. So if you take it to be in your tool

Nicole Wakelin (1:51:53)
I think time get out

Bhavna Mistry (1:52:06)
something it's not going to snag or do anything like that. So it's very very durable.

Nicole Wakelin (1:52:11)
So

what are you most proud of that you were able to accomplish interior exterior? What's the thing that's okay?

Bhavna Mistry (1:52:19)
So

the one thing I'm very proud of is the color story of the whole thing. The color And the construction, we were able to achieve the triple stitch. I'm super proud of because we've never been in, we've never done it Ford before. you ever done anything No, this is the first time Ford's done a triple stitch. So I'm very proud that we were able to bring that feature into the automotive realm. I was very proud of that. But the color story I'm very proud of.

and obviously the material as well. But the reason why I say color story is because I was able to take once the construction, we established the construction of the fabric, I was able to pick the color from every element. when you see the exterior wheels and the grill, right, I have this tarnished back anodized color on the wheel and the grill. Now, I took that color and we made a graphic that is two tone that has one of the color is

wheel color and the other color is what's on the seat so there is a subliminal connection with everything you see.

Nicole Wakelin (1:53:25)
more tied in. Everything works together.

Bhavna Mistry (1:53:27)
And

it's funny because I just met another journalist and she was saying, I was wondering why it looked so perfect and so well executed. But now that you're telling me all these details, I know my brain style is connecting all the dots and it works together.

Nicole Wakelin (1:53:42)
you say it like it looks very cohesive when you say it.

Bhavna Mistry (1:53:45)
Yes,

yeah, even the badge that you see that's reflective over the fender badge. Yes, it has the texture at the back ⁓ So it's a reflective logo. Okay, and that texture is the same as what you see on the floor mat inside

Nicole Wakelin (1:54:00)
I'm

gonna have to go up to the truck after I finish.

Bhavna Mistry (1:54:02)
Yeah. That's interior story. Thank you very much, Nicole. Thank you. Lovely chatting with you. Thank you.