Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
Right. Take two. This is episode four hundred and seventy one of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:09)
And I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12)
And mister Baldwin, what have you been driving?

Roberto Baldwin (00:15)
So I teased it last week. I'm just gonna be up front. I've been so busy. I haven't had a chance to do any range runs. When you do a range run, it's like hours of me driving a car. Like in a circle. And so it's if it most of the time I can I usually try to carve something out on the weekend. we're we're recording on Saturday 'cause because tomorrow I have to fly to Utah. So a lot of excuses. end of the day. I didn't do the range run for this car or other car I'm gonna talk about. So

But I will talk about how they felt. I drove the Ikea Telluride hybrid. I really liked the Telluride. When the first tet generation Telluride came out, it sort of changed everything really. this was a really nice, of more affordable, like large SUV that was punching above its weight luxury-wise. And it, you know, people are like, my I remember we I had one when we were shopping for our house, and our real estate engineer was like, What is that? He had never seen one, they had no idea what it was.

And he was taking pictures of it to send to his wife. That's like so if just people, just random people, like we're impressed with this vehicle. This is a second generation. It's a lot more boxy, which is literally everything else on the market is a lot more boxy. Everything is two rectangles stacked on top of each other. There's a big rectangle, then a smaller rectangle. And on the smaller rectangle there like a little slant for the windshield. But essentially everything's just a rectangle now. Everything on the road, just rectangle SUVs driving everywhere. I still blame the Ford Raptor for this.

But yeah, I I like I like the design. I like the previous version design better. but yeah, it's it's it's comfortable. like I said, it's it's you know, luxury wise is sort of punching above its weight. it did I did have the one with the captain's chairs and the second row. So it's a it's a more comfortable ride for people in the second road. But the the sort of trade off is if you want this for this vehicle to do a lot of like if you're you're hauling a bunch of stuff

If one of your main reasons for getting a big SUV is not to have like, you know, six, seven people in your car, but instead to be able to haul things around, what'll happen is if you get the captain's chairs is you have that gap. So when you put the seats down, there's just a gap in the middle, and so it's kind of weird and so yeah, so you know, you you you know, when you're going to to to look at these vehicles, you have to decide you want the captain's chair for comfort for the people in the second row.

Or you want the bench for, you know, maximum cargo hauling capabilities. either way, I think, you know, you're probably gonna be fine. if you don't have a big family, I would say get the captain's chairs for when you are like hauling people around. if you do have a big family and or you like you're the the parent or the person who just always ends up hauling things all the time, just get the bench seat in the back. that's it. The the hybrid system is actually really nice. You don't get that sort of I know we we always pick on Toyota

Sam Abuelsamid (03:11)
Ha.

Roberto Baldwin (03:12)
And because they have

the loud you the Tioda hybrid system is sort of like, you know, the benchmark, but it's loud. The high the the Kia hybrid system is not, it's nice, it's smooth, the transition is really, really well done. a couple years ago last year I believe I was at a Kia event or a Hyundai event and they were like kinda lamenting that people didn't realize that the the the Hyundai Motor Group made hybrids. And they're like, We know we we really want more and more people to know that we make hybrids.

And, you know, the drive program was a was a hybrid. and but, you know, I I went to another Hyundai thing this week and their hybrids are doing well. So I think more and more people know.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:53)
Yeah,

th it's about twenty five percent of the vehicles they're selling now in the US are electrified. So either hybrid, plug in hybrid or or battery electric.

Roberto Baldwin (04:03)
Yeah, so it's you know, pe it there people are catching on. The hybrid system, it's it is a big vehicle, but with the hybrid, you know, the EPA is thirty one combined. That's thirty city, thirty two highway. I got like I was getting I was averaging about twenty nine. So pretty you know, a little bit below what what Kia says. I I don't know. Whenever I think hybrid, I I I you know, I was like I wanna get a minimum of like thirty five. But you know, it's a big vehicle.

You know, kind of you know take it or leave it when it comes to that. It has a two point five liter turbo hybrid. three hundred and twenty-nine horsepower, three hundred and thirty nine pound feet of fork torque. No problem getting out of its own way, no problem catching up, no problem overtaking. it's a automatic transmission, doesn't have a C V T, which is like yay, it's paddle shifters if you want to do that. this one is all-wheel drive, so you know you're you're you're having a nice time. It was the X-line SX.

prestige all-wheel drive trim level. That's the one I had. So it's the very fancy. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (05:06)
to the tippy top of the lineup.

Roberto Baldwin (05:08)
it was like the yeah, the the fanciest of the fancy of the vehicles. and but even though it's a tippy top, like I expected it to be more and this is the sort of secret sauce of the Telluride. So the let's see the manufacturer suggested retail price, if you like Bob Barker, fifty seven thousand five hundred ninety dollars. Which for a

A large, nice SUV. That's pretty good. That's actually that's really good. Now after

Sam Abuelsamid (05:38)
I mean

it's it's it's totally competitive with with similar offerings in the market like the the Toyota Grand Highlander. really in terms of three row as you know, crossover SUVs like this, the the you know, the Palisade, the Grand Highlander and and the Telluride are really all there is right now, I think. I I don't think there's anything else.

Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (06:04)
Yeah. But it

it for for what you're getting, it feels like a deal. I mean it's still very expensive. let's see, we can get the regular Kia Telluride for for less. I probably should have looked this up. Seems like I don't know how I do my job. so

Sam Abuelsamid (06:21)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (06:21)
it's the starting price is except all What is the starting price? Give me a starting price. wow. So you can get the LX, like sort of the the cheapest one without the hybrid.

for forty thousand bucks. So for people

Sam Abuelsamid (06:38)
I mean that

it's not that's not cheap by any means, but you know, by current standards of what's out there, what's in the marketplace, it's not bad at all.

Roberto Baldwin (06:48)
Yeah, it's it's for for what it is, what that market is is asking and what's happening in the world, it's a pretty it's it's pretty good. Yeah, that's that's sort of the the Kia Sacred Sauce is that you're getting something it's not a super, you know, screaming insane deal, but it's a pretty good deal. And when I'm driving this, I'm like, why would I get a Range Rover? And I know the people who are cross shopping Range Rovers are not looking at Kias. The

Sam Abuelsamid (07:12)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (07:13)
it

People who are buying Range Rovers are going to buy a Range Rover. They're going to buy a Land Rover. That's what they you know, that's what they want. They want that that sort of that that British luxury. but if you are not you know, a a a big fan of a British par like, you know, a hardcore fan of British British vehicles, I know some people who like, you know, they love Jaguars because they're British. That's what they you know, this is the car I want, this is the car I grew up with, whatever. Same thing with Range Rovers, Land Rovers.

If you were just like, I you know, I need a really nice vehicle, maybe go I don't know. After you leave the JLR like dealership, head on over to the Kia dealership of all places and check it out. Yeah, all wheel drive. you know, obviously I didn't have a chance to take it off road. Most of these things aren't gonna go off road. I did we did have a chance to drive drive these off road late last year? Time

Sam Abuelsamid (08:07)
no, it was wasn't it early this year? Wasn't it like March, February or March? I think I think it was this year. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (08:09)
Early this year? Maybe. I don't time does Okay, so at one point

they let us drive these off road. and and mostly it was like on trails and but the trails are pretty pretty you know, they were steep and there was some hard turns and stuff, but

Sam Abuelsamid (08:24)
And

well and they had that shelf road that was going along and basically you had to keep it like right on the trail. 'Cause if you went a l a little bit

Roberto Baldwin (08:30)
But yeah, are you are you f

Sam Abuelsamid (08:33)
too far over to the left, you're gonna fall off.

Roberto Baldwin (08:35)
You just fall off your into the off into the the depths of nowhere, Zville. so yeah, no, it's it's you know, it's it's for what people are going to do, which most people are again when it comes to these vehicles, they're not gonna most people are not gonna do the thing that the c vehicle is capable of. but but you have the the peace of mind that it is capable of taking care, you know, if something, you know, you do have to go up some weird, crazy road.

you can do it. so yeah, no, it it though when I finally had it it was sixty one thousand one hundred and eighty dollars with everything. it's weird to make you pick the the the charge when it's just us. So it the the destination fee was fifteen four fifty. I fifteen forty five, sorry, one thousand five hundred forty five. So Yeah, it's not too bad. It's too much. It's too much, but it's not too bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:25)
Which which is not bad. again, by by current standards. Yeah.

It's rel relatively speaking, it's okay.

Roberto Baldwin (09:35)
Yeah, yeah, relatively speaking, you're okay, fine. Yeah. Again, this thing had all the things, dual sunroost, you know, power lift gate, you know, all all the the fancy bits. so yeah, Kia Telluride, X H E V or their hybrid, X line, SX Prestige, all wheel drive.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:57)
What do you think

of you know like there there's some a couple of odd elements about the design. particularly like those those little things at the top of the wheel arches. The little inserts there.

Roberto Baldwin (10:09)
the little like the little like they're

like they're like if you're a clown and you have that little like

Sam Abuelsamid (10:14)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (10:15)
slash up. I like those better than the ones on the Palisade where it looks more like you have like an eyebrow.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:21)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (10:24)
this this they feel more like they're they're sort of like an off-road, you know version. And they you know, they they give us all the reasons why these things are when they talk the designers talk to us and you know, it breaks up a line, it adds this, it does that.

I'm fine with the little I like the little check. That that that just that one little vertical little check that's on the telluride.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:47)
It's it's kinda it's kinda like

a like a binder clip that's holding the top of the wheel arch to the fenders.

Roberto Baldwin (10:52)
Yeah, it's like

it's it it looks like it's lifting it up. I think that's the idea,

Sam Abuelsamid (10:55)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (10:56)
is it lifts it up. I I'm fine with it. It to me it's not that big of a deal. I I I like it way more than the sort of eyebrow that's on the palisade.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:05)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (11:06)
Cause the eyebrow seems very weird because it's very like, you know, you have the wheel arch it but then the eyebrow doesn't go with the wheel arch. It's very straight. It's like you went to get your eyebrows threaded and you didn't you know, the person wasn't really paying attention and they just gave you like a nice like

Flat straight, which is not how eyebrows work. It's like like that. There we go. If

Sam Abuelsamid (11:26)
Yeah, 'cause you got a

on the Palisade you've got a round wheel arch and then and then a horizontal

Roberto Baldwin (11:31)
Right above it.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:32)
eyebrow over it. Which is a little peculiar.

Roberto Baldwin (11:34)
Yeah. It's

it's a paco yeah, it's a it's an odd it's an odd look. but yeah, yeah, I know I like and I th this is the same thing with the the the the telluride and the palisade before. I'd liked the the way the telly the original telluride looked versus the original Palisade. I think it's just there's just something I don't know. I I so yeah, so you know, give it a look. Give it a s give it a look see. if you're looking for you need y you gotta haul a lot of people, you gotta haul a lot of stuff.

You wanna feel a little classy without throwing classy money down and you need all wheel drive and you wanna save a little bit on gas. You know the th the hybrids in these vehicles, yes, they do sort of give you more miles per gallon, but it's not like it's not doubling it. It's not the p it's not the prelude where the prelude versus the B R Z where it doubles the the thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:20)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:21)
It's like, I'm getting five, five, five, five, maybe eight miles per gallon better. Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:28)
But, you know, again, if you compare it to you know, like a Grand Highlander, for example, it's, you know, similar fuel economy to what you're gonna get in that vehicle. And I think it's a lot nicer driving experience. It just it

Roberto Baldwin (12:43)
It's

Sam Abuelsamid (12:43)
sounds better, it feels better.

Roberto Baldwin (12:46)
They yeah, they're just man, the Hyundai Motor Group, I they You know, you you always kinda like, well, when's when is something you know, well like like Volvo was doing amazing for years and then it kinda wasn't. And now they're you know, they're sort of digging their way out and then you know, but it's you wonder like, okay, what at what point does Hyundai Motor Group

like sort of falter. Everyone falters at some point. You know. Lincoln made an amazing they had like a a a string of like great vehicles and then the next generation of all those vehicles are like, like what happened? Like what you guys were doing so great and then you just sort of and

Sam Abuelsamid (13:24)
Well, I think it was

I think, you know, they made the decision to go with software controlled fence and you know, that just kinda messed up everything.

Roberto Baldwin (13:30)
Yeah. Everything once you go software controlled advance, you just sort you've given up the ghost. You've messed up. So

Sam Abuelsamid (13:36)
Yeah, exactly. There's no h no hope left.

Roberto Baldwin (13:39)
yeah, there's no hope left. So so the next vehicle I got, I got back from Texas. We meet Sam and I saw each other in in Texas was a twenty twenty six Sierra EV AT four max range pickup truck. It's huge.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:54)
Although

to to be fair, it's actually not any bigger than a gas Sierra. It's it's the same s

Roberto Baldwin (14:00)
I know, I know, but th these trucks

Sam Abuelsamid (14:01)
what I mean though those are huge too, but it's you know

Roberto Baldwin (14:04)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:04)
it's the same size as the gas version.

Roberto Baldwin (14:06)
Yeah, it's the same size as the gas burge. It's just I am not I I I wonder, you know, if you live in a you know, I had to go to San Jose in this. I went there and back. I, you know, I had to drive around the city. my band had a show last night in Albany, one of my bands, and so it's great for like loading things in, sort of, but it's so tall. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Cause you gotta lift like we're lifting giant heavy amps. and into the the back of the truck, and then up and into the back of the truck, and you can't

And you know, when you look at the the bumper, you know they have that little extra step. Then we've had to add that step as a society in order to get into the back of our trucks because they're

Sam Abuelsamid (14:46)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (14:47)
so tall. So there's that. they they do you know this vehicle GM, what's it say? Four hundred and seventy eight miles of range. That's so much range. And so I got into the truck and I immediately drove to San Jose.

And I got back and I still had three hundred and a bazillion miles of range. And then I drove it around doing some stuff with it. Still a lot. I I still have like two hundred and something miles of range in this truck. Driving it around. I took it to the sh I had to go pick up gear. I had to go to the show. I had to go back and drop off gear. I had to come home. You know, just driving around, doing things with it. And it's just you know, it's got a gigantic battery. So at the end of at some point.

It's gonna you know, I'm gonna have to fill all put all those electrons and back.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:34)
It's a it's a three thousand pound battery pack.

Roberto Baldwin (15:36)
Yeah, it's it's it you know, it weighs more than everything I've ever owned, ever. so yeah, it's it's got a lot of yeah. but you know, it's taller, you know, it has more ground clearance, that's why this one is so called 'cause the AT four. it has standard all wheel steering, which does make it feel smaller than it is. So that's really nice in the parking lots. You know, I had to pull into the parking lots to do stuff.

It has super crews, which you know, use supercruise. Gen you know, supercre it's generally it's fine. Everything, you know, it hasn't really changed much. in the Bay Area still, there's just like areas where it's like, I'm turning off supercruise and then a quarter mile later, back on and the line and the road is straight. I'm just like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:18)
Well, I mean we saw the same thing with the Escalade during Operation Frodo in June, the Escalade IQ. Every once in a while it would just randomly switch off supercruise, say put your hands back on the wheel and then like ten seconds later, it's like, Okay, you can go hands free again. I mean

Roberto Baldwin (16:38)
All go ahead, go. Yeah, it w it would do. I'm like, I don't

Sam Abuelsamid (16:41)
maybe I mean, maybe it's something they put in there just to make sure that you're really, you know, still awake and paying attention, who knows?

Roberto Baldwin (16:47)
Maybe. I I mean it's I'm again I like I've said I always just keep my hands on the wheel anyway and it like it

Sam Abuelsamid (16:52)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (16:52)
it like rumbles your butt.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:54)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (16:55)
It's got a little rumble seat. It's all I'm like, all right. Well my hands are here anyway and I was already really I was already driving anyway. I was just like do do do do do. it's fine. it does have the mid gate expandle bed, which I'm like I I think is really cool. I think I I'm a big fan of the mid gate. I haven't had a chance to use it 'cause I don't have anything that long that I need to stick in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:15)
Need

you need something you n you need

Roberto Baldwin (17:16)
Like we just kept shoving we kept shoving

amps in there. We didn't even have to take the the the tono top like more than halfway. I'm like, Well I I guess I mean we should have went to the drummer's house and picked up his stuff too.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:29)
You need you need you need an eleven foot paddleboard, stand up paddleboard to put in there. Yeah. So you can put

Roberto Baldwin (17:33)
Yeah. Yeah that's a we

Sam Abuelsamid (17:35)
down the mid gate, use the the the sixty three way folding tailgate and you know.

Roberto Baldwin (17:43)
Like this one has the one where it pops up and it blocks it

Sam Abuelsamid (17:45)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (17:45)
so it stuff doesn't fall out, which I think is clever.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:48)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (17:50)
because, you know, that's that's nice. it's it'll charge at up to three hundred fifty kilowatts, which for a battery this size, you kinda

have to you you kinda have to. Yeah, it still takes a while 'cause there's

Sam Abuelsamid (17:58)
You you g yeah. And it still takes a while to charge just 'cause you got so much battery.

Roberto Baldwin (18:03)
so much yeah, it's such a huge battery. It's still

But yeah, you kinda need it. And then what they say, they say ten minutes for up to a hundred miles and about ten minutes. So to fill the like four hundred miles, I say you go from ten to eighty, it's like forty minutes. So because again it's a big battery. So you this is definitely a car where you can park and then go have a nice lunch and while it's charging it. if you're lucky if the charging station is working correctly. it has the energy transfer, you know

system where you know you plug stuff in. I was like pulled up every time I have one this truck or I have the F one fifty Lightning or anything with like the power in the back, I'm always like, maybe the power go out of the club and I could be like, guys, I can save the show We did we did a wedding with I had the F one fifty Lightning. We did a wedding. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:49)
Just just g just get like four four really long extension cords, you know, use all the outlets.

Roberto Baldwin (18:55)
Yeah. W but we did a wedding when I had the F one fifty Lightning and there were like rolling blackouts around the area and I was just like yeah

ready. I'm ready to save this wedding just in case. it will do like, you know, it says it's available twelve thousand three hundred pounds of towing, which is yeah, that's awesome.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:15)
Well,

I mean the the the good thing about, you know, having such an enormous battery is you know, even when

Roberto Baldwin (19:21)
You can tow.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:22)
you're even when you're towing, you're still gonna get well over two hundred miles of range out

Roberto Baldwin (19:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:27)
of charge. I think when when the T FL guys you know first got a Silver Auto E V, you know, they did a towing test and got like I think it was like two hundred and twenty, two hundred and thirty miles of range with like a a ten thousand pound trailer on it, or you know, like a box trailer.

So

Roberto Baldwin (19:47)
Yeah, no, these I mean that's the the thing is that yes, it's very big, but trucks are just really big and to me I'm just like this is it's such a I'm like, how do you live like this? Like if I

Sam Abuelsamid (19:56)
No I

Roberto Baldwin (19:58)
lived in a small town or like I need I had a need, or if I had a farm or something or a a ranch, I'm like, Okay, this is I need this for for this. But when I see people just driving big trucks as like that's their car, like around like a a a like an urban area, I'm like, How do you live like this?

Sam Abuelsamid (20:17)
I know.

Roberto Baldwin (20:17)
How

do you like and and the problem and it doesn't help that I'm too tall for the steps, for the sights, the steps, the little you know, the steps to get in. I'm too tall. If I stand on that, I'm like I like fly. But it's also but now but I also have to step over those in order to get into the truck. So it's awkward for somebody of my size, the six foot three, with like a thirty six inch instead. So I have really long legs. I'm like mostly just legs and arms. I'm like half spider.

It's hard it's like it's really weird and awkward to get into the truck with no matter how I do it, either if I step on it, I'm like whoosh, I like launch in the sky or I get in the other way. And the problem you know, that that sort of and again this is this is a personal thing 'cause I asked another person who's about as tall as me, but his torso is different size. you know, I have I had this issue with the with the Hummer EV where there was it, you know, it was the plastic little Hummer EV thing that was right

Sam Abuelsamid (21:12)
Uh-huh.

Roberto Baldwin (21:12)
at my shoulder blades. Well that

The way the seats are actually, you know, it's probably the same seat. They just take they just took a badge off. So there's no badge on the the Sierra EV one, but it does have like sort of a you know, a difference in consistency and and material. And so I on that car it was the same thing. Like right across my shoulder blades, it just felt like something's just pushing on it while I'm driving, which made it kind of uncomfortable to drive, which I'm like, okay, well this is supposed to be, you know, a sort of a luxury, you know,

Pickup trucks are essentially luxury vehicles with giant beds at this point. And so I'm just like, this isn't Yeah. And then of course the fact it doesn't have car play, I turned on, you know, notifications for my text messages, which is sort of the thing. And at one point they were overlapping. I didn't know what was I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (22:01)
And this is not this is not GM's fault, but but Google Maps has gone crazy the last few days.

Like it's it's slowly I feel like AI is just breaking everything even a little bit more with slop. At one point it told me that the freeway was closed. So it took me off the the road. Guess what wasn't closed? The

Sam Abuelsamid (22:21)
Freeway.

Roberto Baldwin (22:22)
freeway. I could see the freeway. And so I feel like Google Maps like I've had a few like really weird things lately with Google Maps and it happened with with this vehicle. you know, the the fact that you can put all three things up is great.

but if you don't you know, if you're using something that you can't get with Android Auto, some sort of music or podcast player, you you're using your phone, which is like not the thing that you wanna be doing in your car. So I'm not a fan of that.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:50)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean you can you

can s yeah, you can still connect your phone via Bluetooth and you know, once you've launched something, you know, once you you know, once you've got something playing, you can control it through the the media player that's part of the Android Automotive Infotainment System. You can play and pause and reverse and go forward. But ac actually getting something started is the is the problem.

Roberto Baldwin (23:17)
And if you wanna I'm like, I wanna listen to a different album or whatever, I y you know,

Sam Abuelsamid (23:19)
Uh-huh.

Roberto Baldwin (23:20)
either at the Ask Siri if you use you know or you have to pick up your phone, which I'm just like not, you know, not not a f not a fan of to be honest. And there was I could only find like one USB C port in the front. And I'm like Like in the th

Sam Abuelsamid (23:34)
there's there's more.

Roberto Baldwin (23:35)
inside the the the little cubby, there's like I opened it up and just one. I'm like Alright, where's the other ones?

Sam Abuelsamid (23:42)
I I know I know there's

more of them in there. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:44)
There's probably more. This and

here's the problem, this is the same problem I have with the escalade. This is the I could not figure out how to open up the frunk from like outside the vehicle. I had to use the key.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:53)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:53)
Like there's no I stared at it. Every time I used the frunk, I stared I was like I was just moving my hands along the front of the truck, trying to find a button or a lever or a a pulley.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:05)
It's like

under the it's in the slot in the bumper.

Roberto Baldwin (24:10)
I okay, I'll try it later today. I just I just

Sam Abuelsamid (24:11)
There Yeah, so

there's there's a there's an air slot in the bumper, like below below the or yeah, some somewhere it's it's actually on the bumper. It's not somewhere on the underside of the bumper where is where

Roberto Baldwin (24:25)
All right.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:25)
the butt that's where it was on the on the escalade and and I think it is on the Sierra too.

Roberto Baldwin (24:27)
I gonna escalate, 'cause I remember in the escalade I couldn't find it. I'll try

it. I'll try it today. I do love the giant frunk, even though I have to use the stupid key fob to use it 'cause I can't find the stinking button. we we we went to lunch and so we were able to s shove you know, before the show, we went to dinner and we were able to shove things that we wanted to keep out of sight inside the frunk. Frunks are great. You can lock stuff. I think that's the that's the big, big, you know, p a plus for if you're getting a pickup, is that you have that

extra storage that's lockable and no one can see it. Yay.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (25:01)
So you can put your tools in there. You know, if you have like, you know, your your expensive tools you can just shove all in the front and you can power all from the fr from the front. So yeah, it's a you know, to me the the the for for big for real I I if you look at their thing, the Sierra E V is a real truck that does real truck things. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it does all the real truck things. It's just really big and

Sam Abuelsamid (25:22)
And ex

really expensive.

Roberto Baldwin (25:24)
And it's and and the the the the infotain yeah it's it's really big, it's really expensive and the infotainment system does not match what they wanted to do when they removed CarPlay. I wish it was better. It's not. It's and and again when it comes down to it, the only like really the the one infotainment system that I personally end up using without really worrying about CarPlay is MBOS or Bucks. Mercedes, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:52)
The Mercedes Benz system.

Roberto Baldwin (25:54)
Because it's just like and then everything's just right there and it's very easy to use and yeah. So yeah, so that's the CR EV. I did not do a range run. I'm assuming it probably does you know it does have four hundred seventy eight. Maybe it has a little less. They don't there's no they don't have to do EPA tests on this. If you look at the Monone, there's nothing because

it's so heavy.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:12)
Yeah, because because it

yeah, its gross vehicle weight is over eighty five hundred pounds.

Roberto Baldwin (26:17)
Let's see if it does it have the gross vehicle waiting here.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:20)
so for

the USB ports, I think where the where the wireless charging pad is,

Roberto Baldwin (26:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:28)
that's that's a panel that I think slides forward and there's a storage bin underneath that and then the port Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (26:33)
it's in that little so

I found that like yesterday. I'm like, look at this little like secret area. But I didn't open it all the way 'cause my

Sam Abuelsamid (26:38)
Yeah, and the ports USB ports are

on the front of on the front the leading edge of that.

Roberto Baldwin (26:43)
So if I s okay, so I'll I'll look at those. So anyway, so there's some ports. It has have like a lot of little cubbies, which I'm like, yeah, I love a cubby. I love a little hidden cubby. So I was just like, what's this button doing? A shoo. And then my phone like almost just I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, come back. So there you go. So there's some USB C ports in there. I I apologize to the GMC team for saying I can only find one, but what yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:07)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (27:08)
it's it's definitely a vehicle that when you buy it, you need to get the owner's manual out.

And because there's some things are like, hey, we hid these. Huh? Huh? You like

Sam Abuelsamid (27:15)
There's there's so much stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (27:16)
Easter egg hunts? You're just like, What? What? No, I don't I just just show me where the things are. Hey, it's got it's got real events. It's got manual events. There you go. Easy peasy.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:26)
Yeah. That's that's that's all you really need.

Roberto Baldwin (27:30)
And you can feel the how the you know the the Hummer, I had some like weird issues with the Hummer. The Hummers have had software issues since it launched. They're still they're you know, they're just kinda there.

zero software issues with the CREV. So thumbs up for that. So you can see the, you know, and you know, GM I think they're still building it. They're still selling it. People are still buying it. I see in fleets. Caltrans has a lot of these. Not the AT

four, obviously. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:57)
Yeah. I they sell they sell a couple of thousand a month. I mean it's not

it's not a huge number, but you know, they sell some.

Roberto Baldwin (28:02)
Yeah, you know, everyone you sell, if it's at the job site, you know, the guy who shows up with it or the gal who shows up with it, they're like everyone's like, you're like, Hey, how much you paying for gas?

Sam Abuelsamid (28:15)
Well, you know, I I just saw a clip somebody posted the other day, somebody sent it to me, it was on Instagram, of truck drivers or a truck driver somewhere down south that just filled up the tank on his tractor trailer over a thousand dollars and the tank wasn't

Roberto Baldwin (28:36)
I can't even

Sam Abuelsamid (28:37)
even full. 'Cause you know

Roberto Baldwin (28:39)
So

Sam Abuelsamid (28:41)
Long long haul semis, you know, they typically have at least two hundred gallon tanks, you know, and with diesel, you know, in the seven dollar range, seven dollar a gallon range and up, depending on where you are in the country. It's like right around here it's I think it's around six seventy nine right now.

Roberto Baldwin (28:59)
I saw eight dollars at one spot. Eight over eight dollars.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:02)
Yeah, I I'm not I'm not surprised in California.

Roberto Baldwin (29:04)
Which, you know, that's not where big trucks are are start are are getting you know, are filling up. But if you have you know I'm talking about like big tractor trailers that deliver all your stuff. So if

Sam Abuelsamid (29:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:14)
you don't own a diesel truck or you know, an old diesel golf or whatever, you're still paying for these these diesel prices because the prices of everything, because absolutely everything is transported and moved around this country.

All your little Amazon purchases, all the fresh produce, all everything that's in all your stores, that's all getting delivered by big trucks and they all have to pay diesel prices. And they're like, Hey, they're not gonna you know, hey, it costs more for us to move this, so we're gonna charge you more. And then the people who make the thing are like, okay, well we're gonna charge a store more and the store's like, Well, we're not gonna lose money, we gotta s keep our doors open and pay our place, so we're gonna charge more. So at the end of the day, we're all playing for high diesel prices.

Womp womp. But I I

Sam Abuelsamid (29:58)
Yeah

Roberto Baldwin (29:59)
yeah, my new my next ep my new s next issue of battery and electronic electrification technology magazine for SAE, I got like there's some like new megawatt chargers that are coming to market. They're all in there. I I I'm

like, yay for big trucks. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:10)
For for trucks for for North America megawatt chargers. that's cool.

Roberto Baldwin (30:15)
So yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:18)
all right, yeah, I mean I you know, I headed out here about ten AM on Tuesday morning to head to the airport and I stopped to put some gas in the the Dodge Charger I talked about last week. and regular at that point in time, you know, was four thirty nine a gallon. premium was five ninety nine a gallon here. When

Roberto Baldwin (30:42)
That's ca that's California prices.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:44)
when I when I returned

about thirty six hours later, driving home from the airport, passing that same gas station that was four thirty nine a gallon the day before, it was four ninety nine a gallon and it still is now. And diesel diesel is at six seventy nine and that's here you know, in the Ann Arbor area in southeast Michigan.

Roberto Baldwin (31:04)
It's I I the BRZ doesn't use a lot of gas. I don't drive

Sam Abuelsamid (31:08)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:08)
it as o as nearly as much as the Onyx five. But when I do, I'm just like, man. And I see like a big truck, like a raised truck with giant wheels on it, so

Sam Abuelsamid (31:15)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (31:15)
I know like whatever the EPA number was at, they've halved it. By raising it up, by throwing the big wheels on it, by j essentially destroying all aerodynamics and all drag and everything. and I'm s

Sam Abuelsamid (31:26)
There's there's somebody

down the road here that's got a super duty with big wheels on it and and everything.

Roberto Baldwin (31:32)
Just

blasting past me at like 90 miles an hour on on the freeway. And I'm like, do you know how much you're paying for gas? Slow slow down. Like 10 miles an hour. You're gonna get there around the same, you know, you're gonna save like a minute if you if you keep going faster. But you're gonna save so much money. I just want to be like, hey buddy, slow down. Save a little gas. You could buy like another pizza.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:57)
Yeah. Or maybe several, depending on what you're driving.

Roberto Baldwin (31:59)
Several.

Yeah, if you well if you live in California you can you can get yourself a nice T bone.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:03)
Yeah. yeah, I'm I'm definitely

Roberto Baldwin (32:08)
gas.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:09)
glad that we no longer own a diesel vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin (32:12)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:16)
yeah, I was looking I was using the the c calculator in fuel economy dot gov the other day and doing a comparison between the twenty ten Jetta TDI we had and a twenty seventeen Honda Civic that replaced it.

And then the Kia E V six that we have now. And you know, and I put in the current prices as as they were on that, you know, today. and you know, the diesel was by far the most expensive to drive compared to the other three, you know, costing I think it was came out to like thirty five somewhere around thirty five hundred dollars a year to drive versus about twenty two hundred for the Honda.

and about seven hundred for the the E V six. So yeah, if you don't like those gas prices, go buy an E V.

Roberto Baldwin (33:12)
Yeah. And then the y prices of Us E Vs have gone up because more and more people want and it's just like a whole

Sam Abuelsamid (33:15)
Yeah. Yeah, well

I you know, I was you know, just out of curiosity, I was looking recently on Auto Trader, you know, to get you know, an E V six, you know, similarly equipped to ours, with similar mileage to when I bought it. And I paid twenty seven thousand dollars for it for the one we have right now. and that is now running about between thirty one and thirty two thousand dollars. So they've gone up by about four to five thousand dollars.

Roberto Baldwin (33:44)
Wow, that's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:46)
Yeah.

But I mean even at thirty two grand, you know, for a car with, you know, fifteen, twenty thousand miles on it, you know, that's basically brand new, that it's still a bargain.

Roberto Baldwin (33:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, I talk I've been talking I've talked to a couple automakers and I know people like for years were concerned about battery degradation. A lot of this is cause the first you know, leaves were, you know, air cooled batteries, so they they degraded like a like a mofo. but like modern E Vs, like the battery degradation is not really that it's it's not as bad as even the automaker style. It was everyone's everyone's

surprisingly delighted at how well the batteries are holding up. So you're gonna be fine. And you know, you can do the thing, the test or s I don't know, there's something you have to do, I forget. but yeah, I shouldn't you know, if someone's like, well yeah but the battery's gonna like fifty percent of it No th no it won't. Unless there's

Sam Abuelsamid (34:37)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (34:38)
something like absolutely horribly wrong with the car, you're gonna be fine. You'll probably get Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:41)
Yeah. If you're if your cooling system is not working and you're

doing nothing but fast charging it, you know, in hundred and twenty degree heat every day, then then yeah, it might not hold up so well. But you know, the data from recurrent, you know, they're seeing, you know, a hundred thousand miles most yeah, apart if you take leaves out of the equation, the the air cooled leaves, pretty much everything else is upwards of n you know, around ninety percent or more.

of the original capacity after a hundred thousand miles.

Roberto Baldwin (35:12)
Yeah, you're you're gonna be okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:15)
Yeah.

all right. well I also had a Kia this week. Still have the Kia. at when I got back on Wednesday night, I picked up the twenty twenty seven Kia Celtos, which is the the entry level model now, you know, in the Kia lineup now that the the Rio and the the well no, I guess no, there's the K four still as well. So this

Roberto Baldwin (35:42)
Yeah, K force well.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:42)
this is the entry level crossover.

and I was, you know, I mean the the first generation Celtos was fine. but you know it was nothing to get real excited about. you know, it was it was okay. You know, it was a solid vehicle. when I got into this one, boy, i it th the the change, you know, I mean the the look, you know, this the design is basically like a a three quarter scale Kia E V nine.

Yeah, the the styling is very much like the EV9 in terms of the overall shape. Yeah, and but it you know it's obviously smaller. it's compact, you know, it's roughly the same size as a Toyota Corolla Cross. yeah, that's that's its most direct competitor. and there's two powertrains available right now. There's a two-liter naturally aspirated four cylinder, 147 horsepower. And then there's also the one point six and that one comes with a C V T

Or you can if you get the the top of the line SX the SX X line that I've got that one comes with a one point six liter turbocharged four cylinder, hundred and ninety horsepower, and that's with an eight speed automatic transmission. and then there's also a hybrid coming sometime this fall, which will probably be

Same setup that's in the that you'll find in the Sportage and in like the Hyundai Elantra hybrid and and and the Tucson hybrid. so the two liter with Hyundai's hybrid system in there. and then that one will probably get somewhere around forty miles per gallon. we don't have any pricing yet

Roberto Baldwin (37:33)
Pretty good.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:34)
on that, but you know, it's coming it's coming this fall. and

I was you know, when I pulled out of pulled out of the parking lot near the airport and was driving home, the roads right in that area, you know, if you're if you've ever flown in and out of Detroit Metro Airport, Merriman Road, and then as you get on to I ninety four, not not a great piece of pavement. in fact it's a pretty terrible piece of pavement. and then, you know, right now nine that whole stretch of I ninety four in the area of the airport and

east of there is currently in the process of being rebuilt. so you know they've got the you know all the lands shifted over to one side of the median. and you know so the the the lane the side we're driving on right now 'cause they've they've been rebuilding the other side all this year and then probably next spring they'll switch over to to to do the other side. So that stretch in ninety four, again, not a great piece of pavement. But you know what? This car felt so comfortable.

driving it on those roads. They Kia did an amazing job on the ride quality on on the Celtos. You know, for what is an entry level crossover, it it actually is feels really good. you know, it's not like luxury car smooth, but you know, it it absorbs all of all of the the major bumps. you know, it the ride quality is excellent. it's

You know, you get you know, as an entry level model, you know, you get a little more road noise coming through than you would in, you know, some higher end vehicles, but it's it's not bad at all. I was really impressed by how nice this car is to drive. And, you know, the interior materials, again, really nice. It's got their whatever Kia calls their their their vinyl, you know, their faux leather in interior on there.

soft touch surfaces, lots of lots of soft touch surfaces, so it doesn't feel cheap. And even, you know, I've I've checked out even the bass models and they're also quite nice as well. you get, you know, the typical Kia setup where you get two twelve point three inch displays, one front for the instrument cluster, one over to the side as with touch surface for the infotainment. And then in between you get that weird little

Touch panel there for some of the climate control stuff that is hidden completely hidden by the steering wheel. yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (40:09)
It's by the steering wheel it's I I

so I I I was driving, you know, people were like, you know, I've talked about, you know, how everyone's like changing the size of their steering wheels in order to to accommodate like their the dash clusters and they're doing this and they're doing that. And then I get inside of my BRZ and I you know, I just kinda like why I'm in those cars I'm thinking about that and then I get my BRZ and I'm like, Well this has this is it. I can see the entire dash cluster with just a regular steering wheel.

Because they they they they they designed it so

Sam Abuelsamid (40:41)
Because you don't have a twelve

and a half inch display panel there with all kinds of extraneous information.

Roberto Baldwin (40:44)
Yeah. Stuff and

weird stuff. It's just like, they just stuck it in this little they they're like, this is where the person sits. This is how they look. They'll look through this hole. Inside that hole we'll put the dash cluster. That's it. We we get I don't and at the end like when I look at the the the dash cluster on the like the ID four or the dash cluster on the Mocky where they're like kinda tiny, those are fine. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (41:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (41:09)
all the information I need.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:11)
Yeah, and you know, this one's got, you know, pretty big cluster display. And then, you know, from this angle of the shot, if you're if you're watching the video, you can see the the little panel here, the the climate control panel in the middle there under the steering wheel. But if you were actually sitting in the seat, in the driver's seat, the steering wheel just cuts straight through that. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (41:29)
You you can't Yeah, you can't you can't see that. It's it's

Sam Abuelsamid (41:34)
But, you know, fortunately it does have, you know, physical switches along the bottom of the dash there for temperature control, you know, for the

you the dual zone climate control and for you know the fan speed and and something else there as well you got the volume there's a volume control there manual vents just as they should be it's yeah this this is a really nice vehicle and the back seat is roomy enough for adults to sit back there so you can have four full size adults you know sitting back there get a decent amount of cargo space in the back. this one you know the X line SX Prestige

also, you know, has you know, built in navigation and it's it's got, you know, the Kias like you know, all the Kias and Hyundai's have all the stuff like the all the base all the major ADAS stuff so you've got adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, you know, that's that stuff is standard across the board. This one also has the blind spot view monitor so it shows it in the cluster. Hence why you have such a big cluster because

It shows when you turn on the turn signal, it shows you what the camera is seeing. You know, so you see your blind spot you know, even better than what you'll see in the mirror. so you know, this is this is a genuinely nice vehicle to drive. It's got a wireless charging pad, it's got wireless support for wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. this one, you know, is on 18 inch alloys, you know, with some decent sized sidewall, you know, which obviously can helps with that.

that ride quality. so, you know, I to be honest, you know, if I was looking if I was looking at you know, Kia crossovers right now, two row Kia crossovers, I'd I think I'd be tempted to take this o even over the the slightly larger sportage. and I would I would definitely take this over the the Toyota Crawl across.

Yeah, it feels much nicer. Yeah, it's a much nicer driving experience. so and and I like I like the way it looks. You know, it's a it's a good looking vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin (43:47)
Yeah, I think it's I you I I was I had that that lunch with Jose Munos from, you know, CEO of Hyundai this week. And I asked the point, like like what is how important are inexpensive vehicles to Kia? And i and his answer was they're very important because

What happens is if you if you reach like some of those competitors is what they've done, they've gotten rid of all their cheap cars. There's no sedans, there's, you know, they don't have any key because they and they have the big, you know, expensive SUVs because the profit margins on those SUVs is you know, those profit margins are much larger than they are on an inexpensive car. It's really hard to make an inexpensive car that makes money. An S an an expensive car, you can just throw crap at it all day because you're gonna like just make it up anyway, 'cause you're charging a premium for it.

But what happens is, and he said he's like, What happens is like what we're in now where prices are so everything's much more expensive, is that the people who are buying this car, these expensive vehicles, they can't afford anymore. So that's so they don't have, you know, there's they can't go down to the inexpensive cars because that automaker doesn't make them anymore. And for Kia or for Hyundai, you know, which you know Hyundai Motor Group ov you know, overall, but for for Hyundai, you know, having an inexpensive car means that

there's a vehicle that someone can buy. When they don't when they aren't making either because they're, you know, they're they're early in their career or, you know, maybe something's happened or, you know, gas is one bazillion dollars a gallon or whatever the reason is, there's an option for those people. And also, you know, that's also the the if you if you're a young buyer and you're looking around for inexpensive cars and everyone else has sort of moved up market and hasn't replaced, you know, the the Honda fit or the whatever you know, if you well Honda does have the

C H R? No.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:37)
HR V.

Roberto Baldwin (45:38)
HR V, sorry. The HR V, which one of my cousin's kids has and she loves it. So you know, but if you don't have that entry level vehicle, you don't you're not gonna you there's no conquest there.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:49)
Right. You're not gonna cap it's gonna be hard to it's easier to retain a buyer than it is to capture a buyer from a competitor. And

Roberto Baldwin (45:53)
Yes. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:56)
you know, so if you can get somebody who's buying their first car and you have something that they can afford, you know, that starts at twenty five thousand dollars or you know, or even a little bit less, hopefully, but you know, even you know, the the the salto starts at twenty five grand. and that's even at twenty five grand, that's still, you know, a nicely equipped car.

Roberto Baldwin (46:17)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:18)
And

You know, then once somebody has been driving that for a few years and they're ready to move up to something bigger, the next time they buy a sportage or a Sorrento or you know some you know, even you know eventually step up to a telluride, you know, it's it's easier to retain those customers than to get them to switch over from another brand.

Roberto Baldwin (46:38)
Yeah. If you give a good like entry level vehicle, I mean this I ended up with Honda's for years because I had a Honda Civic. It's one of the best cars I've ever owned.

Essentially an entry level vehicle, solid, bulletproof, last forever. We end up getting a you know, a C R V, we got a Del Sol, we got you know, and then yeah, so you kind of like once you have that person, then that person is more likely to just stick with you versus trying to conquest that person. Like if you buy a Celtos, like, you know, maybe when they move up, maybe they'll think, I'll RAV four But they might just be like, Well, you know, I I like my key, why would I move to something else?

Sam Abuelsamid (47:19)
One one other thing about the Seltos, you know, when I was taking photos of it the other day, I pop went popped the hood to take a an underhood picture. And, you know, I was gonna look for the the strut, you know, 'cause usually in a car like this, you know, you gotta pull up the strut to prop up the when I opened the hood, it went up by itself. It's actually got hydraulic struts

Roberto Baldwin (47:39)
it's a air. Shh.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:40)
on it. You know, you don't have to prop it there's no prop rod for it because it holds itself up, which was I

Roberto Baldwin (47:46)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:46)
mean, that is not something you see on

many cars anymore, but especially not again on entry level cars. So, you know, really got to give Kia props on on this new Celtos. They really did a nice, nice job. Now, granted, this one, you know, is the this one is as loaded as you're going to get a Seltos. came to a grand total of 37,250 bucks. Yeah. including 1495 destination

Roberto Baldwin (48:12)
Just might as well just get us.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:14)
charge. But like I said, it starts at 10 grand less than that.

Yeah, eleven grand less

Roberto Baldwin (48:19)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:19)
than that. Yeah. So it starts at at twenty five thousand, twenty four nine something. it's the starting point for the Celtos. And you know, you can get a a really nicely equipped one for well under thirty grand. Yeah, this one had the all wheel drive and everything else on it, but still very, very good.

Roberto Baldwin (48:37)
Yeah. If you you know, for automakers you gotta have that entry level inexpensive vehicle. Because I you know, I'm I'm I'm talking to, you know, family members who are in their, you know, college and they're you know, they have the the the K four

HR V, you know, they're they're getting these and they like they love these cars. They're like, This it's really it's great. It's wonderful. I'm like, Okay, well now that person is going to continue to buy a Honda, they're gonna continue to buy a Kia, they're gonna continue to buy a Hyundai, they're gonna and if there's nothing down there from another automaker that they feel is compelling because the automaker is just sort of either given up on that part of the market or they're sort of half assing it. They're just like, Well, we need to have the car.

But just let's just put the car out there and other people are offering better options. Like you're sort of it's it's not long term thinking and it's it's it's disappointing.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:27)
all right, let's move on.

The VW mission efficiency. This is a concept that Volkswagen unveiled earlier this week. you know, they they did something like this, what geez, it's gotta be almost twenty years ago now, with the the XL one. which, you know, their goal was to make the most efficient road legal car in the world. you know, at the at the time they were aiming for

fuel consumption under two liters per hundred kilometers, which is like a hundred and seventy something miles per gallon. Yeah, so that thing had a little it was a hybrid with a little diesel engine in it. and it was a two seater, little teardrop shaped two seater. and really cool car, but it was really expensive to build. and they they did a limited production run. They they built a few hundred of them. so this time

they did a a you know basically a a twenty twenty six take on the same idea. How efficient can you make an E V? and they came up with the mission efficiency. and you know this one is it's a a two plus two. you know, extremely aerodynamic. The drag coefficient is point one five eight. you know, so for a you know, a road legal car

you know, supposedly the most efficient ever. but if you if you read the press release, the the press release some aspects of this press release are really badly written. At

Roberto Baldwin (51:11)
I mean it's it's it's like we

we did the test and it's not that bad. It's just people don't read the it's in the same paragraph. It's not like it's

Sam Abuelsamid (51:19)
Right. But but the the way

the way it's worded, it's I th it seems kind of deliberately ambiguous. you know, 'cause they're basically you know, what they did was they they did a test run of about nine hundred miles, twel one thousand two hundred and seventy eight kilometers from Wolfsburg over through Poland, Czech Republic and ended up in Vienna, Austria. and you know, they said

Yeah, did this on one charge. Now

Roberto Baldwin (51:53)
Well no, no, it says it on a test drive. It never says one charge. At no point does it say one charge in this thing. I'm reading it right now. Because at the end of the at the end of the graph, or at the s the second to the last once. And that's the thing

Sam Abuelsamid (52:04)
It was it was only charged once during the journey. Right.

Roberto Baldwin (52:07)
people just didn't read.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:09)
Yeah. Or or they they misinterpreted that as being the charge at the beginning of the journey.

Roberto Baldwin (52:15)
That doesn't well how would you that what doesn't make any sense either. How would

Sam Abuelsamid (52:18)
Well

Roberto Baldwin (52:18)
you disinterpret that? I don't I'm sorry, but that's just this is a reading comprehension issue, to be honest.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:22)
Yeah, well

yeah, when I when I first read it, that was actually my first thought was, you know, I I was assuming, you know, charged at the beginning of the thing. And I I was about to to actually shoot a note to V W to clarify. So was this the charge at the beginning of the trip or did you charge it once during the trip? And but then when I started looking at the numbers

Roberto Baldwin (52:44)
Like why would they tell you that that they charge at the beginning?

Sam Abuelsamid (52:47)
I realized, yeah, no, it's gotta be they charged it once during that twelve hundred and eighty kilometers.

Roberto Baldwin (52:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:53)
And yeah, so it it did it got what six point eight nine kilowatt hours per hundred kilometers overall without not including charging losses seven point five so I mean this is you know it it all worked out you know to roughly about nine hundred miles of range. Or no, sorry.

Roberto Baldwin (53:16)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:17)
Nine hundred nine hundred miles is what everybody was saying because they misread this thing.

Roberto Baldwin (53:22)
Says right there. I've t

Sam Abuelsamid (53:22)
See Yeah, I know.

Roberto Baldwin (53:24)
I've I've j If the problem is that someone an initial person saw this and they wrote up the thing and they misread it. And then everyone else just copied it without going to the original source. Your job

Sam Abuelsamid (53:29)
Yeah. And then everybody else copied that. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (53:37)
as a journalist is go to the original source when you're reblogging stuff. The problem with reblogging is people are just like, okay, copy paste, copy, paste, copy, paste. I wrote an article where I got I got the information from

the the manufacturer about a number. I posted my article, it went up. Someone else wrote an article where they got the information from the manufacturer, but they got it wrong. And guess what was decimated throughout the entire blog sphere? The wrong number. It was like me and three other publications that got the correct number. Everyone else was just copying pasting from ev from all these other people, which is why you should like really like when you're

Just do the job, man. The job is I think people think, well, as a journalist you have to do a lot of writing. I'm like, yeah, you have to do a lot of writing, but you have to do a lot of research and

Sam Abuelsamid (54:29)
Do some research. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:30)
parsing information and read and reading comprehension and parsing.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:33)
And that's and that's

that's the that's the challenging part is actually parsing especially the way PR people tend to write stuff. Is parsing trying to r really extract the the truth out of of out of what they're saying. So yeah, it probably is.

Roberto Baldwin (54:46)
If it sounds too good to be true like nine like

nine hundred miles on a single charge, it probably is, especially again when

Sam Abuelsamid (54:52)
Well, since it

Roberto Baldwin (54:54)
in the same it's in the same paragraph.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:57)
Yeah. Well, especially, you

know, since this thing you know, it uses the powertrain from the ID polo. So, you know, it's a hundred and thirty three kilowatt hundred and thirty three horsepower electric motor and only a fifty five kilowatt hour battery pack. So it's not a huge battery pack. Yeah, but

Roberto Baldwin (55:16)
Yeah, it's nice and light.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:17)
yeah. You know, and that that helps you know, helps contribute to making this thing so efficient.

Yeah, and you know, they kept a a fairly minimalist interior to it. you know. the the tray there, the center tray is actually kinda cool, you know, in terms of you know, being able to store stuff there. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (55:34)
Put a sandwich in there? Like a hoagie?

Sam Abuelsamid (55:37)
Yeah. So it's

Roberto Baldwin (55:39)
And look how

nice and small that dash cluster is. Look at that. I'm a big fan of that right there.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:42)
Yeah. But they s but they still

did a you know, a flat top, flat bottom steering wheel.

Roberto Baldwin (55:49)
Yeah, I don't know what's going on with them. Steering wheels were fine. I don't know why we're

Sam Abuelsamid (55:52)
Yeah. all right.

Roberto Baldwin (55:55)
But yeah, it's

I I I yeah, we I I was talking to some other journalists about theirs and they're just like they're the same thing, like it's in the art it's right there in the same graph. It's not hidden somewhere like

Sam Abuelsamid (56:05)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:06)
fifteen pages there, fifteen graphs down. Whenever I say graph, I mean paragraph. Sorry, it's it's

Sam Abuelsamid (56:11)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:11)
that's shorthand for lazy writers and and magazine people. We we call graphs like he paragraphs graphs and we call headlines heads. And we spell

Sam Abuelsamid (56:19)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:19)
head H E D because so you could feel anyway. but yeah, it's in the

Sam Abuelsamid (56:22)
Well and and and and

the lead is spelled L E D E.

Roberto Baldwin (56:26)
D

E yeah, it's it's yeah. So you don't

Sam Abuelsamid (56:28)
But

you know, they they do they do that on purpose, you know, so it you know, if you're if you're putting notes in into your st into your mi your story that you're gonna submit to an editor, you know, then they deliberately misspell stuff. And that's part of why they use graph. Yeah, it's not just laziness, but also, you know, they spell it G R A F. or if there's something some piece of information you don't have yet, they'll stick in a T K, which is actually for

Roberto Baldwin (56:53)
'Cause it doesn't naturally a a

occur in in regular words in the wild.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:57)
Yeah, so so that means to come. Yeah. so they they misspell things in a way that you can read it and it makes sense, but it you c it you can search for it easily.

Roberto Baldwin (57:09)
Yeah. And your your spell your spell checker will like, whoa, it'll give you like a little red line and stuff. So yeah. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (57:15)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:15)
all there's a reason for for misspelled weirdness within the the publishing and the the the journalism industry. But yeah, it's it was there they were like like I talk to a journalist like everyone's saying this thing but they charged it during the thing and then

Sam Abuelsamid (57:31)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:31)
after they charged it it had a hundred was a a hundred and sixty four kilometers left, so it was like four fifty ish miles of range on a charge, which is really good.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:36)
Yeah. Which with a

with a fifty five kilowatt hour battery pack is great.

Roberto Baldwin (57:40)
Yeah, with the filler which like

yeah, this was like eight I don't know, I I don't I'm too lazy to do math. But even if you did the math 'cause you you want you you're gonna have to transfer it over to to to miles per hour if you're a US you you should still should I know, math's hard. I know people don't live but mm. It was a very it's it was a weird day to wake up and like, What what is happening? And I looked at the

And someone was making fun of it and telling me about it and then I'm like, What do you mean? I'm like, did they kinda like hide it? That they did this you know and I'm like, No, no, it's in the graph I was like, Wait, what? They're like, No, no, everyone just mis like one person misread it and then everyone just copied that person.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:20)
Yeah.

all right, let's move on. so Ford this week revealed some updates for the twenty twenty-seven F one fifty. there's some visual changes that if you don't actually park a twenty twenty-seven F- one fifty right next to a twenty twenty-six model and look really, really carefully, you're never gonna notice. they tweaked the grill a little bit, you know, the couple actually a couple of different versions of the grill.

and also got some new wheels. That's literally it. yeah. yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (58:54)
You know what? Ain't broke. Don't fix it. It's the F series, it's fine. Just yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:59)
and interior completely unchanged, nothing new there. they they did change the base engine in there, so you know they've had a two point seven liter twin turbo V6 for since what, twenty fifteen when they launched the aluminum trucks, when they went to the aluminum trucks. So, you know, for

Roberto Baldwin (59:18)
Aluminium.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:18)
For a decade now, they've had a 2.7 in there. They switched it out for the three-liter version of that engine, which is also used in some some other vehicles like the the Ranger Raptor and and various other stuff. but if you look at the power and torque numbers, the power and torque numbers are exactly the same as the 2.7 in terms of their their peak values. So 325 horsepower, 400 foot pounds of torque. The where it changes though is the peak the tor the torque peak.

for the three liter goes from like thirty five

hundred RPM down to twenty two hundred RPM. Yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin (59:53)
that's good though. Yeah. I mean

it makes i is if you're doing truck stuff, that's that's a that's a nice little that's a nice little change in your your your how how your torque is being delivered.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:05)
and then they they talked about you know a couple of their most popular models of the F one fifty are the Tremor off road version and the the Raptor. And the Tremor both of those off road versions are now significantly cheaper for twenty twenty seven because they did some decontenting. They pulled up pulled out a bunch of stuff. and it's stuff that

actually kinda makes sense, you know, when you think about it. because a lot of people that are buying those trucks, if they're actually going to use it for off roading, they're gonna do a bunch of custom stuff anyway. So like on the tremor, they got rid of the the step. They got rid of that because a lot of people that buy those are gonna put rock sliders on there anyway. Yeah, so so get rid of that. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:53)
Yeah, they're gonna rape those steps off. They're you're adding something that people are gonna pull off anyway.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:58)
And they you know they now base it

on the STX trim level, which is one of the lower trim levels. And so there's there's a bunch of little things, you know, little features that are no longer standard on there. You can get them. You can get that stuff, you know, and get it basically back to where it was for twenty six. But now you can you get at a lower starting price. Fifty three hundred dollars cheaper now for the tremor for twenty twenty

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:20)
that's good.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:21)
seven.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:22)
Yeah, the steps are gonna get ripped off if you actually do the the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:26)
the standard steps if you're if you're actually going to do off roading. Again, that's that that's that's the the sort I saw a tremor a s a person with a tremor yesterday and I don't think that thing's ever been off road.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:38)
no, most most of them never are.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:39)
No. But it had tremor on it. Like we're

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:41)
Yeah.

and then the the base Raptor is now four thousand dollars cheaper, 'cause they got rid of some stuff, like for example, they got rid of the fog lights that were in the front bumper because a lot of people buy buy raptors are gonna buy aftermarket ones anyway and just throw

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:54)
People are gonna just buy their own fire. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:58)
those away. they got rid of the heated rear seats. Yeah. Because why not? Yeah. so

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:02)
Who cares about those people?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:07)
so they they basically did a bunch of decontenting. So both of the off road trucks are now

thousands of dollars cheaper. All the other trucks are basically the same price as they were. But yeah, it's a start. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:17)
I mean that's good to be honest. You know, with all the weirdness that's going on with everything. Of course they're

they're you know, we'll have to look at how the their d the destination charges evolve over the next eight months.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:30)
Yeah.

The the other big thing that's new for twenty twenty seven is they're they've updating Blue Cruise, the hand their their hands free system. and it's now gonna have support for towing hands free. which

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:46)
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:46)
which is something Sup GM has had in Supercruise for like three years now. so if you any GM trucks in the last three years, they can they can tow hands free. Now Ford is gonna be able to do the same thing.

And after they did they did the background briefing out at Bell Isle Park, in Detroit on Monday morning. After that I went over to Dearborn and I got a chance to spend some time in their dynamic driving simulator, which is you know, if you've ever seen one of these, they they're really cool. Basically they put the cab of a vehicle onto a platform that's sitting on a a a platform with a bunch of

hydraulic actuators, actually actually electrical actuators 'cause they're faster. and the whole thing moves around and tilts and goes forward and back. So you when you're dri you can drive in this thing and then it's surrounded completely surround surrounded two hundred and seventy degrees by a screen. and they project the environment around you. and so it actually really feels like you're driving this thing.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:57)
It's like you're

in a bubble inside of a giant room and there's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:59)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:00)
giant arms holding the bubble and as you're driving it it moves the bubble around in

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:06)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:06)
relation to how real world physics would affect you in the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:10)
Yeah. So I got a chance to spend some time actually trying out towing with supercru or with blue crews, in the dynamic driving simulator. They're gonna do the drives a little bit later this fall. but do doing it in the simulator, you know, it's surpr like it's surprising how realistic it feels. Like, you know, when you're doing lane changes with this, you know, you you can feel it feels like you've got a

they had it set up for a ten thousand pound trailer hooked up to the truck. And you know, you feel you know, having driven a vehicle with a ten thousand pound trailer, it it n it feels very realistic. And also, you know, as you're slowing down, you know, you can occasionally you'll feel a little bit of a little jerk, you know, as the the hitch, you

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:59)
a little

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:00)
know, 'cause the hitch has got some a little bit of slop on it. Yeah, so you'll feel

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:03)
Little slabers like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:05)
it I mean it feels totally real.

And so I got got to spend about twenty minutes driving it, and trying it out. So, you know, some of the and the changes that they did are all in software. So there's no hardware changes for this from the Blue Cruise that's on twenty twenty six and and earlier F one fifties. right now they're not committing to doing to making that software change available to existing F one fifty owners. or at least not as a as an O T A update, but

I'm guessing that once they get it launched on the twenty seven models, they will make it available to owners of earlier F one fifties as well.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:46)
mean I still keep my hands on the wheel but it's nice especially if you're towing something very heavy to have that additional set of like here's a little help. Here's some robot help for towing this giant thing. And horses if

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:54)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:57)
like if you've ever ho towed like horses or cows or they move around in in in the in the in the trailer. And so and in that of

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:01)
Yes. Your weight your your weight balance changes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:05)
yeah in that effect you're like goddamn horses drive like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:11)
So I I did get a chance to chat with Kevin Wekienga, who is the Blue Cruise man manager in Blue Cruise engineering for the ADAS team at Ford. and I've talked to him before, and he's actually a listener to the show. So hey Kevin, thanks for taking the time to chat on Monday.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:34)
Hello.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:36)
and so I'm gonna drop that in here. and

Then after that there will also be another conversation, or at least part of the conversation I had with Sammy Omari, who is the head of ADAS and automated driving and software at Ford, and and Jerry Engelman, who's the chief engineer for Blue Cruise. They were they were at the dynamic driving simulator lab. so I chatted with them as well. so both of those are gonna be just

Keep

listening. You'll hear those dropped in to the final version. Those of you who might be listening live right now to the stream, let's see how many are listening live right now. I know there was there was one person earlier. it's four four people. So it f so

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:24)
Hello to the four people.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:26)
so to the to those of you who are listening live, you'll have to download th or you know or watch the the version coming up later to get to get all that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:37)
today we're out here at Belle Isle in Detroit and you've announced that you're doing a big upgrade for Blue Cruise for the twenty twenty seven model year F one fifty. so tell us about what what is changing for the F one fifty Blue Cruise the ship

Kevin Wekienga (1:07:52)
Yeah,

so for 2027 F-150, we're really excited to announce Blue Cruise with towing. So this vehicle will get Blue Cruise 1.4 and the ability to be able to tow hands-free. so we've done a lot of testing over the years to make sure that we're giving customers a complete confidence-inspiring robust Blue Cruise feature, but now you can tow your trailers and your boats hands-free.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:14)
So what did it take to add towing capability to Blue Crews to to go hands free dri to do hands free driving with a trailer?

Kevin Wekienga (1:08:21)
Sure. I mean so this was a purely software upgrade. We actually haven't made any hardware changes to the vehicle, but it just took us a lot of time to make sure we thoughtfully designed this feature and thought of everything that we could to make sure that we were giving customers something that they can trust in and believe in when they're using the system. So whether it be how we activate the feature, the things we look at, we want to make sure you enter your trailer profile information, all of that, to being able to sense trailer dynamics and trailer sway continuously.

while you're using the feature to know if we can give it to you in a comfortable and confidence inspired manner.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:56)
So

you know, obviously when you're developing something like a a hands-free system like Blue Cruise, when you're doing your your initial calibrations, you know, a lot things you take into account are things like the vehicle weight and the vehicle dynamics. you know, obviously that changes dramatically when you hook up a trailer, you know, which I think you support up to ten thousand pounds with with Blue Cruise. So what sorts of things did you have to add in there into the software to accommodate that and adjust for

The changing dynamics and you know, some people might have multiple different types of trailers, so for how how do you handle that? For sure

Kevin Wekienga (1:09:31)
So we tested on a wide variety of roads for good reason. So we went up in the mountains of the Appalachians where you have a ton of twisty, curvy, winding roads, all with different trailer loads. Same thing, different trailers out in the plains of the Midwest where you could have large crosswinds. And so if you've got a big camper that has a large side profile and you get a gust of wind, that can upset the trailer a bit. So we've actually been able to allow Blue Cruise to dynamically adjust itself based on the weight of the trailer that you're towing. We also noticed from

development that if you are passing a semi and you have a big camper, let's say, you might feel your truck or trailer get pushed and pulled towards and away from that semi. And those are the aerodynamic effects of that semi interacting with your vehicle. So we wanted to make sure that to give our customers a smooth ride, we've actually tuned blue crews as well to be able to proactively counter those forces and make sure that you know we can keep you steady and planted in the middle of the lane even while you're experiencing things like that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:29)
So F series for a number of years now has had load sensors under the bed to you know, to be able to check payload how much how much you're loading up the truck. Are you utilizing that as part of that logic to figure out the trailer weight?

Kevin Wekienga (1:10:42)
We are using some form of mass estimation, yes. So we have an idea of how heavy the load is that you're towing. And again, we can adjust blue crews to behave differently based on that. So say I'm coming up to a a tighter curve. Depending on the weight that you're pulling, we can maybe slow you down sooner, slow you down even more, just depending on what we detect. But we do have some form of mass estimation that we use to to detect those.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:06)
I know one of your competitors has had a feature like this in their system for a couple of years now. One of the things they did was doing some mass estimation based on looking at you know, comparing the amount of acceleration you're getting for a given amount of throttle position and using that to say, Okay, I'm probably towing X number of thousand pounds. Are you is something like that something that you've incorporated as well?

Kevin Wekienga (1:11:31)
It's something similar to that, but I think where we've really pushed the envelope with Blue Cruise is all of the thoughtful pieces of design that we've put in place. Not just the mass estimation piece, but we're looking at tire pressures of your truck to make sure that everything is good there. We look at again continuous trailer dynamics, right? It's really important for us to be able to see and feel if your trailer is moving a lot to make sure that we're giving you the future confidently. And I know the teams at Ford have taken a ton of time to make sure that we've thought of everything and we

thrown it at this truck to make sure that we give you a really confident feature.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:05)
So

trailer suede control you mentioned, something that's been part of the stability control system on trucks and most any vehicle it can tow for a number of years now. How are you how are you adapting that for blue crews?

Kevin Wekienga (1:12:19)
So

We like you said, we have had trailer sway control in production for many years. We actually took that version of the trailer sway control algorithm, we modified it for our ADAS needs, and we actually tuned it differently so that if you're enhanced free driving and we detect that trailer sway is active, we actually will ask you to place your hands back on the wheel first. We can also slow the vehicle down a little bit to try and mitigate trailer sway. And that's because we don't want to suddenly give you control of the vehicle back if trailer sway control kicks.

And we want to try and give you some form of heads up like, hey, something might be coming, or we just want you to take control of the vehicle for some time while that trailer sway is happening.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:00)
So one of the with with the trailer suede control traditionally that's usually been done with some braking applications, alternating back and forth to adjust to get trying to get everything stabilized again. since you have steering control with blue crews as well, are you also utilizing that as part of that logic or is it still just with the brakes?

Kevin Wekienga (1:13:23)
So we actually were able to take that algorithm largely untouched from brakes and we tested with it on our test track to make sure that, hey, we're comfortable with how it performs in its current state. And from that that's how we derived what we call internally our trailer suede detection, which is that modified version of trailer suede control. We knew we wanted something more upfront to when trailer suede control kicks in.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:45)
Okay. and then I think from reading the the press release one of the things that when you have a trailer hooked up that you're not doing with with other versions of Blue Cruise, or when there's no trailer hooked up, the vehicle will when you're passing a truck or or a large vehicle, it will adjust within the lane, give you a little bit more of a gap, it'll shift over to the left or to the right depending on which way you're passing. you don't do that with a trailer. Why is that?

Kevin Wekienga (1:14:14)
So

we believe that in those cases, there are some trailers that are so wide that it might actually obscure the detections of the objects next to you. And for that feature you're referencing is in lane repositioning. It's possible that we can't provide that to you confidently and robustly. So we ended up saying, Hey, for this first iteration of Bluchers with towing, let's make sure we're keeping the drivers planted and centered in the lane when you're using it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:39)
Okay, fair enough. And then I I can't remember if you mentioned this. you earlier you talked about you know having have setting up trailer profiles, and that's something you've had in the trucks for a while. Yes. for for other use cases like the the backup assist and so on. so do you do you have to set up a different profile for each trailer you might be towing to give it things like the w the weight and length and things like that for to adja for allow to allow blue crews to adjust?

Kevin Wekienga (1:15:08)
Exactly

right. So we do require that a unique trailer profile is set up. So if you give us information like the hitch type, the different dimensions of your trailer, length, width, that will let us know if we can believe that you have a trailer that we can comfortably provide you support.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:21)
Okay. and then you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that this is based on Blue Crews one point four. I know on some Ford models you have you're up to one point five now. What's the distinction there? What what's the difference between one point four and one point five that you don't have with this system?

Kevin Wekienga (1:15:40)
Sure. The big difference between one point four and one point five, one point five adds automatic lane changes, so the system will actually make lane changes for you. Just with any of our products, it takes time for the features to propagate across all of our vehicles. And from our customers who get F one fifty, we've heard from them that towing is a really important thing to them and to be able to do that hands-free, they wanted that prioritized. So that's why we've introduced

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:02)
So since this is you you said this is a soft you know, it's basically just software upgrades, there's no no hardware changes for this. Is this something that's gonna be available to current F one fifty owners that have blue crews?

Kevin Wekienga (1:16:14)
Yeah, while we don't have any specific over the air plans this time, it's something that we are investigating internally.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:19)
Okay.

anything else that we haven't talked about with Blue Crews for the twenty twenty seven F one fifty?

Kevin Wekienga (1:16:26)
I think you asked a lot of great questions. I don't think so. Honestly, we're just really excited that we're able to give this to our customers. I know it's a big thing over the years that they've asked for. They've wanted hands-free capability while they're towing. And me personally, I do tow a little bit. I can say confidently that this does relieve stress when I'm driving. Like just I don't have to look in my mirrors as much. I'm confident that the system's gonna keep us planted and centered in the lane. So just really excited for customers too.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:52)
All right. Well

I'll I'll be the judge of that. All right.

Kevin Wekienga (1:16:54)
Thanks for all your feedback, Sam.

Jerry Engelman (1:16:57)
Can you tell us a little bit about what you thought about morning?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:03)
already heard? Yeah, I mean I I had a chance to chat with Kevin out of Bell Isle this morning and you know we kind of went through in some detail as to what has changed you know what what the team has done to enable towing. no hardware changes, it's just software updates. so you know it sounds like you know basically a lot of the same sorts of things that those other guys did a couple years ago when they launched towing with with supercruise you know having weight estimation in there

Updating the the swag control algorithms to and you know put obviously putting some some guardrails, some additional guardrails on where and when you can use enhanced recapability because of you know the the challenges, the physical challenges with the trailer. So yeah, I mean it sounds all sounds pretty straightforward.

Jerry Engelman (1:17:56)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:56)
How how long how long has this been now how has the team been working on this, for Blue Crew?

Jerry Engelman (1:18:02)
You guys can take that away.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:07)
yeah, I you know, I don't I don't do much towing, so I haven't had a chance to actually try out Supercruise out on the open road. I d I did get a chance to drive it when they were first launching it at Milford. so tried it out on a couple other trucks out there. but haven't haven't actually ever tried it out in a truck.

Jerry Engelman (1:18:25)
They they do a good job. Like it's I think we have more protections in place. The hardest part is, you know, we don't know anything about the trailer and don't control anything about the trailer. And honestly people

Sometimes intentionally but mostly unintentionally don't have a good trailer. And so what what we saw is we we thought we needed to protect to s to some degree against that. So that's actually where most of the development is. I mean if you have a really good trailer or a really light trailer, even if it's bad, like we were ready to tow that.

So it's really the marginal trailers and people pushing the edges of the physics.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:13)
Too much weight or too much tongue weight and

Jerry Engelman (1:19:16)
It's yeah, the I mean the weight's fairly simple but the dynamics of the trailer are not simple. Okay. And so trying to understand like we we have kind of a three tier approach. We know what a good trailer is and we ask them to confirm it. And then before we start driving, and you'll see it in the simulator, we're measuring the dynamics.

of the vehicle with the trailer and if those are not good we won't let you go hands free. So and and then

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:48)
Things are specifically looking for.

Jerry Engelman (1:19:50)
so it's mainly the the we were looking at the understeer gradient. So if you put too much weight on the hitch, like you will take weight off of the front end of the truck. Right. And the understeer changes. So we're looking if you've overloaded, if you've underloaded it and you're lifting the rear wheels off the ground

That changes the dynamics in a different way. And we have estimators looking for all that stuff. and then if your tires are not right, that also changes the understair gradient and the handling. And so we're looking for all of those conditions before we let you go hands first.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:29)
That you when you do that, obviously you know a lot of that has to be done dynamically when the goals in

Jerry Engelman (1:20:34)
That's correct.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:36)
if you know if you're detecting that you know maybe it's either overloaded on the on the hitch or underloaded on the hitch, you know is there have you has there been anything in incorporated to provide some guidance to the driver and say, Hey, we think you've you know got too much tongue weight or not enough tongue weight

Jerry Engelman (1:20:56)
being super explicit about it, but we we are telling them you can't go hands-free and know if we get into a sway condition we will twice, we will lock them out right and tell them they shouldn't drive the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:11)
Yeah. is is there any thought to providing some coaching to drivers? Yeah.

Jerry Engelman (1:21:17)
And then

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:18)
Maybe you can look at adjusting the weight of your of your trailer or something like that.

Jerry Engelman (1:21:23)
Yeah. I I mean we're looking at getting more specific. Sammy's actually after something that part part of that was i it it makes a really complex metaphor. and particularly a lot of people don't understand a lot of that with trailering, that's what we saw. So I think we're gonna make a conservative effort, get it out into the market and certainly we have a lot of ways to track how people are using it in the field.

Sammy Omari (1:21:53)
Your question is spot on, right? We we don't see that just with Blue Cruise, we see that kind of across

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:58)
Yeah, just in general.

Sammy Omari (1:21:59)
like

Robert Rieveley (1:21:59)
Yeah.

Sammy Omari (1:22:00)
Bronco. You have all these buttons like what what does a you know difflock mean and all these like most customers, even Bronco Raptor customers never use those buttons. Don't know.

Jerry Engelman (1:22:09)
And if we tell them to pull over and, you know, re shift the trailer, like the biggest part is not the weight, 'cause we detect that really

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:18)
Yeah, so w it's worse distributed.

Jerry Engelman (1:22:20)
and and that's a hard one to explain to somebody. Hey, move your trail your weight is too high in the trailer and too far aft. And like what are they gonna do with that information after they're

We've we've tried to coach them, but I would say it's trying to be minimal and out of the way at the moment. Again, because it's rare. Like the base use each tow like people are fine. They're not pulling ten like the trailer we're gonna have you pull is max. Not very many people are towing anywhere near max. And if they do tow near max, they typically know what they're doing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:59)
Yeah, well and especially you know with an F one fifty, you know, it's more likely to be like you know, a smaller camper or you know, maybe you know, some snowmobiles or jet skis or something like that, or a smaller boat, you know, bring maybe like four to six thousand pounds.

Jerry Engelman (1:23:14)
Yeah. Th I mean, and up to about five thousand pounds.

The di the weight of the truck dominates the story. But at ten thousand pounds, the weight of the trailer dominates the story. And it's serious but

Anyways, we've tried to work thoughtfully through that and but it's those edges that have taken the time, not the base still.

Sammy Omari (1:23:39)
We did take a deliberately different approach to some of those decisions relative to our competitors. so we are a little bit more conservative. in particular as we launched a feature. Like for many of our customers it's going to be the first time they can go in any kind of hands on or hands free data centering condition, right? So for example, when we approach construction zones, you basically say put your hands back on the wheel.

Even though like we evaluate our performance, we obviously valued competitive performance. Even though our competitors are not hands free, we we basically said, Hey, even though our com our performance is equally or even better, we say, Hey, you know what? At least to launch you you know, to kind of establish the technology, we want to make sure that we

Jerry Engelman (1:24:20)
common coming into a construction zone that you get a hard beer and that hard beer can upset an an ugly trailer. Yeah. And so we don't we've decided we don't want to let the customer experience that part of it. So what

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:36)
indicators are you using you know that you're coming up to a construction zone and you obviously

Jerry Engelman (1:24:42)
You'll actually see that in the simulator.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:48)
You'll

see. Are are you also you know using traffic information coming out of report desk? Yeah.

Jerry Engelman (1:24:57)
Not Fort Bath. It's what's it's still what's coming out of our cameras.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:01)
Okay.

Jerry Engelman (1:25:02)
So there's a lot of information flowing around.

Sammy Omari (1:25:04)
Well in in in North America usually it's like hey in f in like half a mile there's an upcoming construction, like these orange traffic signs we detect over

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:12)
So

so look looking for any kinds of signals that are indicative of traffic.

Jerry Engelman (1:25:18)
So the

new stuff is looking for barrels and signs that indicate construction. and then we still have all the old protections that if the lanes get

A lot of times you'll pick up lanes that go this way and lanes that go that way. Yeah. So we go

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:34)
Just just out of curiosity, you know, have you you know, I don't know, has Ford looked into incorporating HOSS alerts as you know, through the connectivity to you know, to get information about for example where there's emergency vehicles or construction zones. I happen to be driving a a Dodge Charger right now that, you know, driving on ninety four the past several days, you know, w as I'm approaching the construction area here not

West of two seventy five, you know, it pops up an alert in the work zone ahead.

Sammy Omari (1:26:10)
What I can say is I think you probably saw or saw the news about Apple Maps collaboration there. We haven't shared more specifics, but this is a very tight collaboration where

Robert Rieveley (1:26:23)
You don't

Sammy Omari (1:26:23)
You have

used Apple Maps, yes, for next generation. So if you've used Apple Maps you can kind of get a glimpse of what the art of the possible is there. And so it's gonna be a combination of also us detecting when something is wrong, right? In particular our next generation system.

But we we haven't spoken about that publicly yet, so we're yeah.

I just think Jerry already kind of captured it all well. I think just maybe a few words about the simulator. I mean you've already experienced it, yeah, which is great. I think one of the key things is right, we we're close to a billion miles on blue cruise.

I think

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:05)
And it has gotten a lot better in the last couple of generations.

Sammy Omari (1:27:09)
You've already talked with Kevin.

Yeah,

so for us it was about, hey, as as as Jerry said, right, there's the nominal conditions, you know, the jet ski trailer. That's that's not the issue, right? But can we really figure out like for all the different noise conditions, like we talked about, like how we load the trailer, tongue weight, etcetera, etcetera? Then also, we have different customers with different levels of experiences. How can we kind of test this, the human machine interface and interactions in a way that's repeatable? And so this is really where this the simulator comes in.

We have over eight hundred different trailer configurations that we're testing here. so before we hit the road, we have like a really good baseline. That doesn't mean we're also not doing a lot of

To us, this was a key tool to get us to that level of confidence where we are scaling it out across F fifty with the next small year and two.

Jerry Engelman (1:28:07)
We we test unsafe combinations here and make sure that we're

then test those corner points in the real world.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:21)
Custom outside

here before you go up the road.

Sammy Omari (1:28:26)
All right, do you wanna

Robert Rieveley (1:28:27)
Sure. Well, welcome

back, Sam. it's great to have you back in our driving dynamics simulator lab. you were here in the early days, so when we first commissioned this simulator. and so over those the years since you've been here, we've been growing this in our product development process. So we have Ford engineers that are coming in here quite readily and regularly through the development cycle of Ford and Lincoln vehicles here since we commissioned the simulator in 2021. And so

We've grown a lot of process around that. So my team is specifically working with our in house ADAS teams to continuously use this system to continuously learn, develop, and iterate on our systems. So we've done a lot of work here in terms of how our hands free Blue Cruise experience works. And you know, we're able to get engineers in, human in the loop, and improve experiences as well as new capabilities like Blue Cruise.

so really what we're trying to do here, as we've talked about with you before, we're bringing a simulator platform which is a combination of computers and actuators and in vehicle components, and we're putting a human inside of all of that to really truly put the human in the loop. And really we can hone our experiences there. And ideally, you know, when we're talking about blue cruise, you know, if blue cruise is working properly. It's a very mundane and potentially boring experience, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:50)
It should be uneventful.

Robert Rieveley (1:29:50)
Yeah, and that's what we're good that's

and so so with that we're able to bring things like our vehicles and our control systems and our HMI together, put them in front of a human, and see how the human interacts with those systems. So things like handover control, you know, how day to day operations work, and we're able to do that in a number of different ways. We can bring people in and do clinicking, so we can bring in, say, twenty to forty participants and statistically look at how they behave in a situation, and that can guide our development.

we can bring our development engineers here and as Jerry said we've done a lot of simulation work, so we have simulation teams that work in this building as well.

And they simulated over 800 configurations on the simulator through or in the simulation through various scenarios. and then from that we rank order the variants various variants and we can bring critical ones here or ones that we want to take a closer look at and really dive in and evaluate them. And here we can do things that we can't do in the real world. So you know, we can change the situation slightly, we can change traffic parameters, we can change the wind, or sort of noise factors like the road roughness, or

the interfere interference of tractor trailers that you're passing. I mean, see how that handles and how somebody

Exactly.

Jerry Engelman (1:31:11)
Aerodynamics with a big trailer and that and actually in the trailer profile we add

think thirty three feet, thirty feet, somewhere around there is the limit and it's aerodynamic.

Robert Rieveley (1:31:27)
System really allows us to deep dive into those situations and truly work on our thoughtful design and our robustness of our systems. Okay. So, you know, really what we're hoping today is give you a behind-the-scenes look. we're gonna let you get in the simulator and drive. I think you drove it when we first launched it. So we'll have a slightly different situation this time. we'll have a truck and trailer that you'll be driving, and we'll walk you through some of what Sammy and Jerry have already

This is a two-way communication, so you can speak inside the simulator and ask us questions, and we can answer those questions as you're driving.

Jerry Engelman (1:32:04)
I I just say what we're what we're gonna pull today is a ten thousand pound trailer. Okay. What we call fifty percent inertia. So the trailer has some dynamics, but it is stable. Okay. So we're not putting you in an un

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:17)
This this

be camper or you know, toy hauler type of trailer.

Jerry Engelman (1:32:22)
I think we're depicting just a normal trailer

Robert Rieveley (1:32:24)
Stay in the box.

Jerry Engelman (1:32:25)
trailer, a box trailer. But it it is stable. We're not trying to show you the limits. It is possible that Jack Zan Sammy Jack knife that is more it is possible. Okay. but we're not putting you in wild combinations. So for the most part it'll be boring unless you pretend.

Maybe I think we're setting it up so like maybe go through the demo but towards the end if you want like there's room.

Robert Rieveley (1:32:55)
All right. So what you're seeing here is some of the upfront work that we did. So a lot of it is the simulator buck itself is prototype, and so we've got bits and pieces of different vehicles and components in there. and then as well, you know, the simulation components, we do have, you know, program intent software running. the HMI is a prototype, so you know there's some rough edges on that, but this is an engineering tool that we use day to day to help guide.

So I think eventually as you get into blue crews with towing thrives, I think later this year, then you'll experience the the true release.

Jerry Engelman (1:33:37)
That's gonna be really fun. I'm having a lot of fun

Robert Rieveley (1:33:37)
I'm not

Jerry Engelman (1:33:39)
deciding what you guys are gonna pull.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:41)
Okay.

Jerry Engelman (1:33:42)
we also have these mics, so I'm looking forward to hazing you if you do Jack Mike.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:50)
Well, like I said, as as a relatively inexperienced tour, you know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Robert Rieveley (1:33:57)
If that's if that's the case, this is a great place to have

Jerry Engelman (1:34:00)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:00)
Yeah, I'd

much rather do it here than out there.

Jerry Engelman (1:34:03)
is

if you're careful then there are enough in place so you're not gonna get in trouble. Okay. So be be pretend at least in the beginning and if you value your life and towing a ten thousand pound trailer is no joke. so

Robert Rieveley (1:34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Jerry Engelman (1:34:18)
if you treat it that way like you'll you'll see it part the way it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:21)
film. Yeah, it's it's yeah. I've my my earliest experiences with simulation, you know, with driver in the loop simulation like this, go back to the late nineties when I was still working as an

static. But we had you know big giant screen, we had a Silicon Graphics iris computer running this thing. And you know, because there was no emotion, no seatwater. Yeah, after a few minutes it's like, okay, I gotta stop. Yeah. Yeah. but you know with the w having having all the physical feedback it's it's it's a very different experience. Feels much more much more natural. So

Robert Rieveley (1:35:15)
Do you have any more questions being in the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:18)
Sure, thank you.

No, I it's you know, one one thing, you know, since there's no hardware changes associated with this, it's all, you know, software changes that you've done. Are there plans to make this available to existing F one fifty owners?

Sammy Omari (1:35:37)
we are

Robert Rieveley (1:35:38)
E all

Sammy Omari (1:35:40)
in the past we've been a little bit too proactive about announcing OTAs before they were out. So we kind of we are gonna talk about OTAs as they're starting to hit customers. But as you said, right, there's there's no required hardware changes. I think for for ten thousand for very high lows, like ten thousand, we do need specialized tires. So for example

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:09)
Presumably though, an anybody that well hopefully anyone that's towing ten thousand pounds, you know, has got the with the max trailer towing packages. Yeah, that's right. And you know, they're already aware of that. Yeah. So

Jerry Engelman (1:36:20)
But they can put aftermarket tires on, they can

Five thousand pounds is pretty benign on the F one fifty.

Sammy Omari (1:36:30)
I mean right now

highest in the industry for any gas powered truck. So

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:40)
Yeah,

Jerry Engelman (1:36:40)
Ninety one. Yeah.

Sammy Omari (1:36:47)
They're Hummer on EVs, but you

Jerry Engelman (1:36:49)
Yeah. But the numbers are really

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:52)
Yeah, well and the Hummer I I don't think we'll even tow ten thousand pounds anyway because it's so tall. It doesn't.

Jerry Engelman (1:36:58)
Yeah that's well.

Robert Rieveley (1:36:57)
because I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:59)
I know I know the Silverado and Sierra do.

Jerry Engelman (1:37:08)
That's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:12)
Yeah. You know, they're they're both like I've got somebody in my neighborhood.

Sammy Omari (1:37:18)
Yeah.

Jerry Engelman (1:37:23)
Got a Hummer instead. In Southern California at least, your average Hummer buyer just stands at the charger on

Anyways, you saw a lot of the experience there around us catching behaviors. I I would one I would say that's not normal unless you're really pushing to the very top.

of any of that other than a brief delay while we learn the dynamics and then you're gonna go. But the the protections that we have in there particularly if you start to see sway the big thing is slow down. And so actually our system will slow you down. We first say take over and slow down. If you don't do that we're actually gonna slow you down. And

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:22)
Slowing slowing down using the vehicle brakes though, not the trailer brake. actually.

Jerry Engelman (1:38:28)
If we see a trailer starting to sway the right way is the trailer brakes, which is what he's telling you. We don't want to upsafe the vehicle when it's already starting to behave weird. So but again, that's a lot of the protections that we've put underneath that I think all the competitors aren't necessarily doing. And it's it's gonna benefit the the customers who are towing near the max.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:52)
Is there any thought to having the system activate the trailer brakes? You if the if the driver's not responding, you know, like beyond just coasting, like if you know if it's getting to a point where you need to slow down faster than coasting to get things under control, can can you you know or have you thought about activating the the the trailer brake?

Jerry Engelman (1:39:14)
Yeah, it's it's currently set up we require it on the heavy loads. Right. And then but the customer configures it and we don't have any control how they configure it. Okay. And that limits how we can actually

Robert Rieveley (1:39:28)
Yeah.

Jerry Engelman (1:39:28)
Yeah. They have to set it up. And so again, this is where the trailering is a very different space and that we don't necessarily control everything about the trailer. It can

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:38)
Okay.

Jerry Engelman (1:39:39)
have an after it can have an aftermarket trailer brake controller.

There's a lot going on there. So we're just trying to open up the base and you know, let every customer tow and then putting protections in as they start getting near the max. And and that we think is important. And I think the the road construction's a really interesting one. Uhhuh. But I mean we've definitely seen, you know, those if you go in and go that's you you felt when you put a sharp turn

This is a very stable trailer, but it can still feel a little

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:14)
Yeah, you you definitely feel moving around.

Jerry Engelman (1:40:16)
Table

trailer can actually get dangerous if you give it a quick jerk. And that's the thing we're trying to avoid.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:26)
Yeah, you don't want it snapping around I mean when you get narrow lanes, for example, you don't want it snapping around. Yeah. Or even if you got traff if

Jerry Engelman (1:40:32)
But it's a super hard to

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:35)
you get traffic on both sides of you, you don't want it

Jerry Engelman (1:40:38)
So and and again it the the guy the person who's really knows how to tow heavy will have a good trailer. but there are a lot of people you get in a pence, you pull something for somebody, you don't necessarily

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:51)
You go you go you go rent a U Hall, you know, to move some stuff, you know, and you not something you normally do.

Jerry Engelman (1:40:57)
You pack it full, not

really thinking about trailer inertia and diamond. So anyways, I I think that's the essence, that's the piece that took us longer is to make sure we were comfortable with those edge conditions where the drivers again I don't think they're intentionally abusing it, but a lot of people just don't know. And you can't see it sitting still in the parking lot. You don't see it until you're driving and it's already starting to become a problem. And so how you manage it at that

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:31)
All right, great. Well thank you so much for this opportunity.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:35)
let's carry on to what what else we had. Volvo. Volvo announced some updates for the X C sixty and X C ninety for their coming in early twenty twenty seven. they got some minor styling changes. so yeah, I think last week we talked about the X C forty updates and it's got you know they changed the headlights a little bit, changed the

the design of the Thor's hammer lighting. So the X C sixty gets the same kind of lighting setup that's on the X C forty. And then on the X C ninety, it's got a s that's the sorry, that's the X C sixty. on the the X C ninety it's

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:18)
There we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:19)
got a slightly different version of it. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:22)
I see it's a little outline of it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:23)
so you get the outline of the Thor's hammer. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:26)
So you get a solid or an outline. If you pay a little extra, if you want some

more space, you get the little outline of it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:31)
but the really important change though is on the plug in hybrids.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:35)
This is really n this is really impressive.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:37)
yeah, so up till now the plug in hybrid XC sixty, XC ninety, and the V90, V60, the plug all the plug-in hybrid versions of the sixty and ninety series Volvos have had a battery pack that was about eighteen kilowatt hours, and it was down the center tunnel of the car. now they have moved it to

underneath the car and it has gotten quite a bit larger. so that let's see. The XC sixty will now have an electric driving range of seventy eight miles and the XC ninety will have seventy three miles, which compares to about thirty two, thirty-three, so more than more than double the range that they have on the current generation of those.

and let's see they they also made some updates, some other interior updates. but yeah, those are those are relatively unimportant. The the big thing is the the much larger battery pack.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:46)
Yeah. It's forty so so gross is forty one point two and then usable is thirty nine point seven kilowatt hours.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:53)
So about double what they had before.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:55)
Yeah. So more battery, more range. It's maths.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:58)
Yep. So yeah, yeah,

so if you're so if you're you know, if you want a a plug in hybrid Volvo, they'll be able to go a lot farther on a charge next year. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:08)
And you never really want to put gas in your car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:12)
Except except for a long distance trip. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:14)
Except for a long distance trip.

yeah.

wait, that was a at you know, I'm let me double check 'cause that number's for the X C sixty. Make sure that number is the same for the X C nine.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:24)
It's probably the same battery.

'Cause the sixty has slightly longer range than the ninety.

And they're both based on the same platform. So

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:34)
It's very weird that the way the documents are are being shared. They're

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:37)
I know. Their their text specs are strangely done.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:40)
like they're like, here's an image. I'm like, What?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:43)
Yeah. let's see.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:48)
yeah, it's the same. Forty one point two, thirty seven point nine. All

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:51)
right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:52)
So so these are these will be the the longest range longest electric range for a plug in hybrid in the US market. yeah, there are longer range plug in hybrids in China and and even in Europe, but these will be the first ones for North America with that kind of range.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:10)
Are

they longer are they longer based on those like testing, you know, W L T P and and

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:15)
this is from this is the US press release.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:18)
No, but I mean in other in other in other countries.

They say they're longer, but they're really longer in a way that's that they're using those testing procedures which are kinda like meh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:27)
no I mean in some cases they are longer, you know, 'cause they've got even bigger batteries.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:30)
Okay.

okay, that makes sense. All right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:33)
or

they're lighter vehicles, yeah, or both. so GM, you know, has been teasing out bits of information about the new Silverado and Sierra since they launched them you know since they first showed what they looked like earlier in the summer. last week I had a call with the their their head of UI design for this stuff.

And he walked me through some demos, you know, in a Zoom call showing me some changes they're doing to the infotainment system for the twenty twenty seven trucks. and presumably these same changes will be rolling out to other GM vehicles, over the next year or so. but you know, the first thing, it's still based on Android Automotive. So it's still the same basic underlying software that's in that C R E V that you've been driving.

Robbie. but

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:32)
Tun.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:33)
you know and because it's not electric, they still have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support in there, wireless. but for the the built-in part of it, they now have they they've revamped the interface a little bit compared to what's in the current generation stuff. So the the current generation stuff, you know, you can you can have the the center screen display

you know, the map on the entire screen, or media player on the entire screen, you know, whatever you want in a single pane view. and you can also have it display a dual pane view. so you've got like two thirds of the screen for the map, one third of the screen for the media player. But the way it is in the current trucks like the one you've got, the smaller pane, the smaller window is

on the left hand side. So it's further away from the driver. So if you happen to have

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:33)
I've been doing

the three paint where it's like it's the the the map on top and then like something on the bottom on the left. the drive modes and then the the the media player. But the media player is the furthest the the way and that's the thing you probably use the most so it's very it's yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:47)
Exactly. And and then

you know they thought about that, you know, they and they looked at the way people were using these and they realized, yeah. The the the media player is something you want typically want in a smaller window and you want it closer to you because you're using it a lot to pause and go forward and back and things like that. And so they they switched it around. They they f they

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:06)
Yay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:07)
flipped it around. So now the small window is on the left, closer to the driver, the big window's on the right. Great.

it's also got you can pull down from the top of the screen to to get quick settings. so basically like on an on an iPhone or an Android phone, just swipe down from the top of the screen, you get a bunch of quick settings. You can customize what's there, you know what things you want available there. It still has the switch for the lights as a virtual switch at the in the the panel or the strip at the bottom of the screen.

so no physical light switch anymore, which is they've got on the current trucks. but and then there's also a shortcut there to the to all of the settings. And then there's other stuff that will pop up there. Again, fur you know, on the left hand side of that strip, fairly close to you, that is modal, depends on you know what you're doing at any moment in time. you know, it'll give you, you know, something it'll give you stuff that's relevant.

Like for example, one of the things they have built in here is a virtual garage door opener. so it's not it's not the home link based stuff, but it's you know, if you go to you know, big box store, you know if you've lost your garage door opener or it's broken or whatever, you can buy a generic garage door opener and program it to or the the remote and you can program it to your garage door. Now they've got that built in to these trucks. So they've got the generic garage door opener built in there.

So what it what is is geofenced. So if you if you have your your home saved in in the settings in this system, w as you approach your home, it'll pop up at the bottom the garage door opener. And so as you're pulling up to your driveway, just tap that button on the screen and your garage door opens. Assuming you have a garage big enough to hold a Silverado or Sierra, which

Roberto Baldwin (1:50:09)
I mean the but but everyone just has the thing in the rear view mirror too. And that's a physical button, burp.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:13)
Yeah. Well for for Yeah.

Well for for for that, you know, they've they've gotta pay Gentex to use that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:50:24)
it's a licensing issue. Okay. So

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:25)
Yeah. So they've they've just built it in themselves.

Roberto Baldwin (1:50:29)
Okay. So they don't want to pay licensing. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:31)
Yeah.

and there, you know, there's there's a bunch of other things that they've tweaked. you know, and all all of the for the twenty twenty seven model trucks, all of them have the same it's an eleven and a half inch instrument cluster display and a sixteen point three inch infotainment screen. and then on some trim levels on the higher trim levels you can also get an optional ten and a half inch passenger screen.

Roberto Baldwin (1:50:58)
Again, I when I talk to automakers who sell internationally, these vehicles internationally, they're like, It's for Asia. So I don't know what this is for 'cause you can't buy the I mean

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:06)
Yeah. The out outside of North America, you know, they I mean they sell s they sell some small numbers of them in the Middle East, but that's basically it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:15)
Yeah, it's just I d I don't know why I mean, yeah. I talked to Audi, I talked to Mercedes, like Asia. China. China loves the passenger screen. What's a US US doesn't really use it, but we it's just there. We're building a global car. So that's why I'm a little confused by it being on this this vehicle. But again, we all have phones in our hands. It's just like yeah. I have

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:33)
Yeah. But the

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:35)
I've I haven't gotten anyone excited about the passenger screen and I really try. I'm like, Hey look, there's a screen there. You can like push buttons and do things and they're like, cool.

T two minutes later they're back on their phone.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:49)
yeah, they they are expanding the number of apps that are available through the Play Store, starting with these trucks. so there's gonna be a lot more entertainment apps. so you can you can watch Hulu and Disney Plus and YouTube and you know, bunch of other stuff on the passenger screen. It's got a filter on it so the driver can't see it anyway, but whatever.

Roberto Baldwin (1:52:10)
There

go. I watched Disney Plus in Germany once on a in a Mercedes. For like five minutes and I was like, All right, well I tested that and I turned it off

Sam Abuelsamid (1:52:16)
There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:52:20)
It's always like okay I tested it, it works.

Turn it off.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:52:23)
Yeah.

and then GM also finally released some more details on the new engines that are in these trucks. so for the twenty seven models, you know, we talked earlier this year about the the new generation small blocks that are in the Corvettes. Corvette's getting a six point seven liter V eight the for the for the trucks.

they are getting either a five point seven liter or six point six liter V eight. and the initial ones for the new trucks will be built at GM's Flint engine plant, as well as some additional capacity in Tanawanda, New York, near Buffalo and St. Catharines. and so the the five point seven liter is now up to where'd that number go?

Roberto Baldwin (1:53:21)
Are you looking

Sam Abuelsamid (1:53:22)
The the power and torque numbers.

Roberto Baldwin (1:53:25)
it's it's five point seven liter V eight is four hundred two, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:53:28)
four hundred and two yeah, four

hundred and two horsepower, four hundred and twenty eight pounds feet of torque. which is a little bit more than the five liter coyote in the F one fifty and a little even more compared to the five point seven liter Hemi in the in the Rams. and then the six point six liter gets four hundred and eighty one horsepower and five hundred and one foot pounds of torque, which is just lots.

It's got plenty of plenty of power. No no shortage of power here. they've also they're also carrying over the three liter inline six diesel, the three liter Duramax. so that's got the same three hundred and five horsepower as before. that one yeah, I I like that engine a lot, but the way diesel prices are right now, I would not be buying that one. yeah, because

Roberto Baldwin (1:54:21)
Yeah. Yeah. It's

a yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:54:25)
Yeah,

they said when I when I was looking up stuff in in the fuel economy dot gov the other day, I was comparing the cost of operating this one to the cost they haven't got the EPA numbers for the new generation small block V e eight yet. But so I was comparing it to the twenty twenty six models. And it's more expensive, even though it gets substantially better fuel economy than the V eight, it's more expensive to run the diesel.

Compared to the V eight's.

Roberto Baldwin (1:54:56)
Yeah, the diesel thing was always like, Well, it's it's you it's far more efficient, you know, you can go, you know, you can get more, but the price of diesel is so high that it's sort of it's sort of killed that whole reason for you know, also the torque. I mean, obviously if you're getting diesel especially on a big truck, you want that torque for towing. And the you know, a nice byproduct was like, yeah, it's you know, diesel's more expensive, but I'm getting more miles per gallon. Now diesel's so expensive that the miles per gallon sort of like win is now a loss.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:25)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:55:26)
It's like, no.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:28)
they also updated the two point seven liter four cylinder turbo four turbo four cylinder that is the base engine in these trucks.

Roberto Baldwin (1:55:38)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:38)
it's now up to three hundred and fifty horsepower and four hundred and fifty five foot pounds of torque, which is more than the three liter V six in the F one fifty.

Roberto Baldwin (1:55:49)
Which that's it's it weighs less. It's got better power. It's like the weight to

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:53)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:55:54)
to power, you're like, and and I know that, you know, I'm gonna truck, I need a V eight or I need a but if you look at gas prices, maybe you don't need a V eight. You know what?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:05)
Well, I mean what the what this for?

Roberto Baldwin (1:56:07)
Out to be honest, I I I you know, I think there's there's a whole section of people out there who are buying vehicles who if you told them that your your four cylinder was a V eight

They would just believe you. What's it got in V eight? they're not gonna look. And the only e everyone only knows what a hemi sounds like. Everything else we're like, I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:29)
Yeah. The the maximum tow rating with the four cylinder is ninety four hundred pounds, which really for a light duty truck, almost nobody's gonna be towing more than that. Yeah. Nine ninety four hundred pounds is plenty.

Roberto Baldwin (1:56:41)
Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:44)
and it's also got the most payload because the four cylinder is the lightest. so you

Roberto Baldwin (1:56:49)
So you can haul more stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:50)
get yeah, you get twenty three hundred pounds of payload with the four cylinder.

Roberto Baldwin (1:56:53)
my god, that's so much more.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:55)
compared to eighteen hundred and seventy or eighteen fifty for the Silverado and Sierra. So five hundred pounds pit more payload capacity.

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:01)
No for the

for the V8, the six point six liter, the the payload for the Silverado is fifteen hundred and fourteen fifty for the Sierra.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:10)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:11)
Wow. So you're you're getting like almost like nine hundred more.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:16)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:16)
Eight eight nine hundred more for Sierra and like eight hundred more to for the Silverado. and the yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:22)
'Cause you got you got a lot

you got a lot of excess weight. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:25)
And you're you're really and at

the end of the day, you know, what you really care about with a truck is torque and but you lose like fifty foot pounds of torque, but you weigh so much less that it kinda doesn't matter.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:34)
Yeah. Well,

you know, and and the the six point six liter the max towing on the Silverado is ninety seven hundred pounds, ninety four hundred on the C on the Sierra, which is the same as the four cylinder. So you're

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:48)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:49)
not gonna be towing more. You're gonna have, you know, eight hundred pounds more payload capacity with the four cylinder and a lot better fuel economy.

Roberto Baldwin (1:57:57)
Yeah, yeah. I mean the the the the only hit is like fifty you know, forty five pounds, forty six pounds of torque, which again, lighter, so you don't it's not that's not a big deal. The biggest hit is the horsepower, but who cares? You're

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:11)
Well and

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:12)
not a you're you're not you're not driving a a Corvette.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:15)
Yeah. Well and you're

actually getting more torque with the four cylinder than you get from the five point seven liter V eight. It's

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:21)
you wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:22)
four hundred and fifty five foot pounds compared to four hundred and twenty eight for the five seven. you lose

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:27)
you know the the the six six has an edge in torque, but it doesn't actually help it do anything more. So just

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:34)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:35)
buy the four cylinder.

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:36)
Just by the four cylinder. And again, just tell your friends. It's a V eight. Just tell I don't know. And when they hear the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:42)
turbo spin up, there's like turbo V eight, man.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:45)
Yeah. I mean

if you if you're if you're actually gonna use this thing for truck stuff, yeah, rather than to show off, then buy the four cylinder.

Roberto Baldwin (1:58:57)
I'm just assuming it's gonna be less expensive as well. 'Cause

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:59)
yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Roberto Baldwin (1:59:00)
it's like it's half the cylinders.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:59:02)
Yeah. yeah. So

all right.

Roberto Baldwin (1:59:07)
Wow, I did

I was like growing through this and I was looking at I didn't stop and look at the reference guide. I was like, no.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:59:17)
all right. And finally, Tesla or actually not quite finally, we've got one more after this. Tesla started deploying some of their cyber cabs in in Austin and in Miami. and I think they've got some on the road in California as well. but they're not actually allowed to go without safety drivers there. and so there's already concerns from first responders about these things. like you know, in any of the other

Except for the Zooks and so Zeus actually has some of the same problems here as the Cyber Cab. but notice there's no steering wheel, no pedals, yeah, no controls of any kind. So if one of these gets into a crash or you know, just dies or something, in order to get it into neutral, this and there's also no like no gear selector. So

you know, if this thing gets stuck somewhere and emergency responders need to move it, if it's if the battery's dead or, you know, decoupled, there the Yeah, I

Roberto Baldwin (2:00:26)
Even if it's not dead, like how do you move this

Sam Abuelsamid (2:00:29)
mean i you know, with with a conventional vehicle, you know, you got an automatic transmission. There's there's always a mechanical release. You know, you'll if you look somewhere in the vicinity of the the shift lever, you'll find there's a there's usually a little cover there that you can pop off.

you can stick the screwdriver or something in there and get it into neutral. And then you can just roll the vehicle. The only way to do that in the cyber cab and in the Zux, Zooks is same way, is by going through the touch screen. And and then, you know, if the touch screen's not working, then you've got to call Tesla or Zooks, and they have to send somebody out to do it to actually move this thing. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:01:10)
Meanwhile my house is burning down

because there's a s there's a robotaxi who they didn't I mean, I feel like the the the the solution is have a port where and give first responders steering wheels that have like accelerator and you like plop, you just shove it in there and you can kinda drive it, you know, just to get it out of the way. If you want something without a steering wheel in

Sam Abuelsamid (2:01:31)
Yeah. Or, you know, I mean if if if if yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:01:35)
there, you need to like give first responders the ability to move it

Without having to rely on the touch screen. Cause the touchscreen, if there's an accident, let's say the person wasn't wearing a seatbelt, which say they had a bag in there and it hits the touch screen.

yeah. It's it's a very it's there there's there and I I I know people like, level four you know, level four, you know, without I'm sorry, level five. Level five doesn't have a steering wheel, they're like, we're look how sm

Sam Abuelsamid (2:02:00)
Well actually l there

there's not there's nothing in the level definitions about steering wheels. So level five vehicle can be le can be level five capable, theoretically, and still have a steering wheel.

Roberto Baldwin (2:02:12)
I just feel like th there has to be a a system. You know, the the the first responders have a bunch of tools that they take. You know, there's the giant wrench for the hydrants, there's this, that, there's ever there's, you know, the jaws of life in order to get get cars you know, crack open a car like a like a tin can. there's you know, and I know

Sam Abuelsamid (2:02:31)
Yeah, there's there's gotta

be some mechanism that the you know, I mean th there's there's like a a big main high voltage disconnect that that first responders can can either pull out or, you know, cut a wire that will disconnect the battery, the high voltage battery. So, you know, if the car's been in a crash, that's usually the first thing they do is they they pull that out, you know, to make sure that, you know, it it's less likely to cause a fire. but then there needs to be some

At at the very least, even if you're not gonna have a steering wheel or pedals, there needs to be some mechanism to allow the vehicle to get into neutral.

Roberto Baldwin (2:03:09)
Yeah, or or again to be able to just to drive the vehicle. You don't need to like I feel like

Sam Abuelsamid (2:03:13)
Well, even if even

if you can't drive it, I mean, you know, if it's disabled for whatever reason, if you can at least roll it.

Roberto Baldwin (2:03:19)
Yeah, something. There has to be some sort of what's fun is that the place I work for for SAE is teaming up with Nitsa to to to create A V s competency standards. It's ascend is the thing. So I feel like NITSA should have done this like ten years ago. I don't know I mean cool you're do cool you're doing it now.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:03:37)
Yeah. Some of us were calling on Nitsa to start doing some regulations

a long time ago.

Roberto Baldwin (2:03:43)
Cool you're doing it now, you should have been doing it a long time ago. I'm glad that you know, the standards people, which is the place I work for, are are they working with us to to make it happen. but yeah, it's this the this sort of like, look how cool this is. I'm like, hold on, what's the unintended consequences of having a vehicle without any controls inside when something happens and they have to move? And we've all, you know, we hear the things about Waymo's that are stuck, you know, cruises.

you know these robot taxis that get stuck and or they're and or they're blocking emergency vehicles and like there's no like what do you do? Do I have to call a tow truck out to get this thing out of the way? Do I have to do and and giving first responders the ability to just get in the car, do something with a physical control and control the vehicle and drive it out of the way is seems like, you know, just a first step in making sure that when things go s you know sideways that you know

These vehicles are not part of the problem.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:04:40)
Yeah. all right. And then finally the last thing, you and I did see each other in person this week. We were in Texas, in in Fort Worth. we visited a company called MP Materials. GM brought us down there. and MP materials back in twenty twenty one GM announced a partnership with MP Materials, which is a company that owns a rare earth mine.

in Mountain Pass, California. It's about forty five minutes west of Las Vegas. they announced a partnership to buy rare earth magnets produced in the US from US materials. and they're building those magnets now. They they built a factory. you want to talk about it?

Roberto Baldwin (2:05:29)
Yeah, no, I think, you know, the idea, you know, we we've one of the issues with rare earth magnets is that essentially the entire industry has been getting everything from China. And then like last year, China's like, we're not gonna give you as many. And then everyone's like, Well, what are we gonna do? The the reality is we had a rare earth magnet mine here in the United States. It just sort of sort of fallen in disrepair. The people who owned it didn't really know what to do with it. There's been a couple owners, and then this company and P

They buy that, they they have this facility, so now we can produce r in in this country, which means jobs for people in America, which means, you know, less concern about tariffs, less concern about sourcing because China's like, we're just not gonna give you rare magnets. so they they they they can mine it, they take it to their facility, they make it into

the to slate, they make it into dust, they make it into this, they make it back into dust, they make it into it, they form it. There's like there's this really long, complex process to make a battery, which I had never until we went to this to this facility, I had no idea. I was like, I don't know, dig a battery out of the ground. I don't I knew it was more than that, but I didn't realize how much how how complex it was and how, you know, how they were doing it in order to to to to make it work. And GM

like saw what they were doing and they you know they they didn't give them money financially. They're not like a partner, but they did say, we will buy your batteries. Are you I'm sorry, you're your your magnets. We will buy your we

Sam Abuelsamid (2:06:59)
If you if or magnets. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you make the magnets, we'll buy

Roberto Baldwin (2:07:05)
will buy them. And because of that, now, you know, they're also working with Apple because Apple, you know, for recycling to help you know, reboost magnets. And they're gonna work with the DOD for for magnets. I mean, we need magnets. It's it seems like the the most weird thing, but

You know, all the EVs, they need magnets. And cars have a ton of magnets in them anyway, that that people don't think about. We only think about, you know, the electric motors that need rare earth magnets. And yeah, it's you know, they're the you we they showed us the the sort of test line, the pilot line, then they showed us lower the big line, and they're expanding. And you know, GM is happy because they're going to be able to source magnets without having to deal with a third party, without having to deal with with, you know, whatever China is feeling and

however they're feeling this week or however you know our administration is feeling when it comes to tariffs, like that that volatility is is could is horrible for automakers because you know they like stability and they like nice long roadmaps and they like thinking, okay, this is gonna cost this much for the next five, ten years. And when things things are all over the place and they can't get the magnet because the country that makes the magnet is like, nah. So having essentially homegrown American magnets

is is is a good thing for the industry, it's good for GM, it's good for this company, it's good for people who live in, you know, the Fort Worth region who get jobs. And so yeah, it's pretty it was pr it was really interesting and exciting and it's one less like, you know, sort of hurdle for for EV both production and adoption, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:08:39)
Yeah, so that that Sierra EV that you're driving, it's got two motors in it. Each one each one of the motors in that truck has a hundred and ninety two magnets in it. And

Roberto Baldwin (2:08:48)
That's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:08:49)
when when they when they're fully ramped up in Fort Worth, they're gonna be shipping a million magnets a day.

Roberto Baldwin (2:08:57)
A day.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:08:58)
A million magnets a day. and GM Yeah. Yeah, they're they're little they're little magnets. you get yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:00)
But I they're small. They're not like giant magnets. They're like these teeny tiny they're wait, hold on, I got one. I g they give us little

they they're like that big. So what is that? Like like an inch? An inch an inch by like, you

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:12)
Yeah. It's

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:14)
know.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:14)
it's like, you know, roughly the size of a postage stamp and about a quarter inch thick.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:18)
Yeah, there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:19)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:19)
They they gave us one. This isn't magnetized because apparently if it was magnetized they're so powerful it would just stick to something and then that would be the end of it.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:26)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:26)
I tried to figure I was I was hassling Sam on the way to the airport, I'm like

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:29)
So I I

was look I looked it up later and let's see. It you need you need about to the to energize those magnets, it takes about a burst of like twenty six hundred volts and twenty thousand amps.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:48)
So I'm not gonna be magnetizing this at any point.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:50)
No, probably not.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:51)
So they ship demagnetized because if you you can't ship a magnet that's magnetized because it's it's it's a it's a it's a nightmare. It's a

Sam Abuelsamid (2:09:57)
You can't do anything with it. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:09:58)
nightmare because if if it hits if it gets if it attaches itself to something, they're so the the magnets that are in your EVs are so powerful, you just won't be able to get it off.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:10:06)
Well and and you c you can't even put the motor together. You know,

Roberto Baldwin (2:10:09)
Yeah, 'cause I like fuck.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:10:11)
'cause 'cause the the w the way the motor's built, you know, the rotor of of an electric motor of an E V motor, you know, is a s is a stack of steel sheets. and you know, and they've got slots cut in there for the magnets. And if they were if the magnets were already activated, if they were energized, you would not be able to get it into the motor to to

Roberto Baldwin (2:10:33)
Yeah, we pick.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:10:34)
assemble it.

so they they they put it they put it they put the rotor to together and then they put it in a machine that gives it that quick burst of electrical energy and that gets that gets all the the the the molecules aligned properly so it becomes an active magnet. but you know, I mean GM, you know, th GM made this decision to work with MP, you know, like back in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, the height of the the pandemic.

You know, GM and other companies were already realizing, this policy we've had for decades of globalization of concentrating production of everything in like one place or two places, you know, just going for the lowest cost, was fine as long as everything works. But if you have any kind of disruption, the whole thing just falls apart. and

Roberto Baldwin (2:11:26)
Yeah. And even

like even if it's Cob like COVID was a huge disruption.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:11:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:11:30)
But like there was a big tsunami or or there was a big there was a big event in in in Thailand not Thailand. Taiwan. There's

Sam Abuelsamid (2:11:37)
yeah, in in Thailand.

Roberto Baldwin (2:11:39)
it in Taiwan, well probably in Thailand, but the like one of the f the the foundries, the semiconductor foundries there flooded. And then then suddenly

Sam Abuelsamid (2:11:46)
Yeah. Well and it w into

Roberto Baldwin (2:11:48)
semiconductors like, no, we can't get semiconductors people like, just build a new semiconductor plant. I'm like

You know what, it takes ten years to build a foundry, you know? These are not like houses you can just throw it up.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:11:56)
Yeah. Well it happened in Thailand

with a factory that was making hard drives. Yeah, and for like a year

Roberto Baldwin (2:12:00)
Yeah, yeah, there we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:12:01)
and a half you couldn't couldn't get hard drives.

Roberto Baldwin (2:12:04)
Yeah, so when you when you have like we're only building this one thing in this one place because it's the least expensive and they're doing a good job, like natural disaster, political upheaval, like maybe the company maybe someone in the company's been embezzling billions of dollars and now it's collapsed. Like there's a lot of like all these like weird variables that everyone just like, we don't have redundancies for that.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:12:27)
Yeah.

So so now now they've shifted to a buy where you build. You know, and and we're seeing that increasingly across the industry, across a lot of industries really, you know, to diversify supply chains supply chains to make them more resilient. so GM you know has a contract with MP to get a thousand tons, thousand metric tons of magnets annually from this plant. it the plant has a capacity of three thousand tons. they're also gonna be supplying Apple. and

and then they're building another factory about ten miles down the road, which that's gonna be a seven thousand ton annual capacity there. And the DOD has committed to basically purchase they're they're not gonna be buying all the magnets from there directly, but they're they they wanted that set up so their defense contractors can then get the magnets that they need from

from MP materials. And yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (2:13:27)
Which again makes sense 'cause all the different

if if the defense contractors in the United States were building in the US, you know, my my my dad would worked for defense contractors like my entire life essentially. Then he worked for NATO and he worked for a bunch of different places. Like he were for Lockheed, he worked for Kentron, general dynamics, all these places. They're building all this they're doing all this stuff here.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:13:48)
Yeah. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. You know, MP material the the Mountain Pass mine, by the way, there's there's seventeen elements in the periodic table that are considered rare earth elements. And that that mine in in California has f fifteen of those. there. And

Roberto Baldwin (2:14:08)
Yeah, it's pretty crate.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:14:09)
it's one it's one of only four, you know, and the thing about rare earth elements that's yeah, they call rare earth, but really

they're not actu the materials actually aren't that rare. Most of the time they're they're found everywhere around the planet, but they're just in such small concentrations that it makes it not commercially viable to extract it. and there's really only four known places where they have really rich reserves of these rare earth elements. Mountain Pass, two locations in China, and one in Australia. And so this is the only one in the Western Hemisphere.

Roberto Baldwin (2:14:42)
Yeah. It's just which is crazy.

Yeah, which is cra it's it's funny 'cause the GM people when they they they were saying when they went and met with MP for the first time, like they had like a periodic table on the back of their like name tags because they were like, Are these people making something? You know, they have to do their dil due diligence because everyone's gonna come up to them like, Hey, we can make this for like nothing and you go and you talk to and you know, sometimes it works out, but I'm I'm assuming for them most of the time it doesn't. They're like, these people are kinda talking out their butts. So they have

Say like we had the periodic table behind our g our our name tags we can make sure they weren't just saying made up like elements or like, hold on. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's a real thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:15:21)
So,

you know, when when GM you know did this did this deal with them in twenty twenty one, MP was not making magnets at that point. They had no magnet business. They established one from scratch and went from nothing to having a working factory in five years. and you know, so they you know, they've developed the the formulations for the for the magnets. and you know, right now they are shipping magnets to GM

to their propulsion engineering center in Pontiac, Michigan, where they're doing they've they've been building up prototype units, prototype motors with these magnets, going through all the validation testing, and by the end of the year they will be shipping them to GM for production motors. and then they're also looking at excuse me, using some of the other materials, some of the other elements they have to build up other lines of business, you know, for other other products, you know, 'cause they use rare earth elements in

semiconductors and LEDs and all kinds of stuff. So

Roberto Baldwin (2:16:24)
Yeah, no, it was it was cool. I was I man a big nerd. I mean Sam and I are both big nerds so we were like, huh Wait, wait, so will you do this and you're like, you're gonna make this and then they're telling us how like we have to make a dust but if the t grains are too fine they have to go sit in here and then but then we do that and like, yeah. Yeah. When when they impl invited me, I'm like

Sam Abuelsamid (2:16:44)
This is cool.

Roberto Baldwin (2:16:47)
Super nerdy. yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:16:48)
Yeah.

All right. That's it for this week. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (2:16:56)
Right.