Sam Abuelsamid (00:00) this is episode four hundred and seventy six of Wheelbearings. Stephanie Brinley (00:02) Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (00:02) I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry. jill ciminillo (00:06) I'm Jill Ciminillo Stephanie Brinley (00:07) Yeah. jill ciminillo (00:07) and I have I like I still haven't come up with a title, but so I'm a freelancer and I go all the places and do all the things. Sam Abuelsamid (00:16) Okay. Stephanie Brinley (00:16) That works. I'm Stephanie Brinley and I'm with Mobility Global. an anal an analyst firm and I, you know, go replace and do all the things with Jill and Sam. Thanks. Sam Abuelsamid (00:29) Good to have you with us again, Steph. jill ciminillo (00:28) Ha ha. Sam Abuelsamid (00:32) and just saw you a few days ago in New York Stephanie Brinley (00:34) Yep. Sam Abuelsamid (00:35) and we'll be talking more about that in a little bit. But right now, Joe, what have you been driving? jill ciminillo (00:42) Yeah, so a couple things actually. So first off, the car that I've been driving for the last week and I've just put 800 miles on is the Toyota GR Corolla. And this is I okay, so this is a car that I would like to own. And I decided that over these 800 miles I would make the decision like, are my dreams going to be crushed or do I still want to own it at the end? And I'm not going to tell you the answer to that because I literally did a video in which I tell you the answer, and that's going to be uploaded soon. So you're gonna have to go to my YouTube channel to find out the answer. But I really think this is a fun-to-drive car. The seats are incredibly comfortable. the wireless charger doesn't work, and you know, my phone kept sliding out of the tray, which was really annoying every time I turned the car. And you know, as a person of Petite stature, you know, my far forward driving position. Every time that I would get into the car, I had to do like a little bit of a that, you know, and then like jiggle or because of the seat bolsters Sam Abuelsamid (01:45) Because of the seat bolsters to g to get it. Stephanie Brinley (01:46) Tucking. jill ciminillo (01:48) and then my far forward position, it was just kind of like a little bit of a but good driving position once I got in there. So I I I love this car and I we are looking at potentially that or the Subaru WRX is our next car. So Both have all wheel drive, both have a manual transmission, both are really fun. Stephanie Brinley (02:11) I like that GR. I really do. I like jill ciminillo (02:14) It is so much. Sam Abuelsamid (02:15) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (02:15) it a lot. jill ciminillo (02:16) But you know, and it's because like I I everybody's like, What is that? And I'm like, it's a Corolla. And they're like, What? Why does it have three tailpipes? And I'm like, Well, you know, it's a sporty little Yeah, three cylinders. And they're like, What? Sam Abuelsamid (02:26) It's got three cylinders. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (02:27) Bull Corolla. jill ciminillo (02:30) Three cylinders? And I'm three hundred horsepower. And they're like, What? How does a three-cylinder vehicle have more, you know, three hundred horsepower? And I'm like, It's special. Stephanie Brinley (02:40) It on the the wireless chargers, it's it's it's kind of funny because we talk about this a fair amount in different things, wireless chargers or not. I have a wallet attached to the my phone. My phone is in a case that has a wallet on the back of it. So I'm always wired. jill ciminillo (02:54) Hm. Stephanie Brinley (02:55) It doesn't it doesn't even matter. I see the same thing when you throw things in different car, depending on the car, yeah. but there's a wallet in in the in the way in mine, which I like better than. having to charge it. I like having that set up and being able to just carry that into the grocery store with me more than I really care about having a wireless charger on the car. but I it is interesting that it's so difficult for automakers to kind of find a good position to your point of at least keeping the phone so it doesn't sort of slide around. The fact that phones are different sizes and there's a lot of reasons why it's hard to do, but it is really hard to do. jill ciminillo (03:31) The new MagSafe chargers I found like in Nissan and Stephanie Brinley (03:34) Mm-hmm. jill ciminillo (03:35) Volkswagen and I think Mercedes might even be starting to put in there. Those are and the Rivian R two, that was the other vehicle I Sam Abuelsamid (03:42) I think the new GM trucks might have them too. Stephanie Brinley (03:44) I have it too, yeah. That's jill ciminillo (03:45) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (03:45) helpful. But again, you know, well it jill ciminillo (03:49) But but yeah, so I mean I all around I the it's a joyful vehicle and the first time that I drove it I fell in love with it and it's that beautiful red color that's very vibrant and you know pick me out of a lineup kind of thing. so tried not to speed this week. but yeah, I mean it just I mean it's not somebody you know, it's not a vehicle you're gonna put like backseat passengers in for a long period of time. You know, it stores some things. The seats fold flat, so it does have some utility. and it I mean it there it there are some things that I don't like, but it's got a lot going for it. Stephanie Brinley (04:29) It does. Last time Sam Abuelsamid (04:31) yeah the Stephanie Brinley (04:31) I drove one, it was silver, so it was less a little bit less attention getting, but still I'm I'm with you. I really enjoyed that vehicle. Sam Abuelsamid (04:37) Yeah, the f the first time I jill ciminillo (04:37) Sorry, we keep cutting. Sam Abuelsamid (04:38) had one was actually the the Marizo edition. And I was shocked Stephanie Brinley (04:41) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (04:41) that they had one of those in the in the press fleet. But jill ciminillo (04:44) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (04:45) the you know, that one that one was not viewed quite as favorably in my household. jill ciminillo (04:50) What? Sam Abuelsamid (04:52) my my I mean, it is a lot of fun to drive and if you are someone that goes to the track, it would have been a great track car. But as a daily driver, not so much because that one, you know, is much more hardcore. like the rear windows don't roll down, there's no back seat, you know, they put extra bracing in the back to stiffen up the whole chassis. and it's very, very loud inside. And when I took my wife to we went to Detroit to for lunch and went in that thing, and she was not a happy camper. But what one of my jill ciminillo (05:25) It is Stephanie Brinley (05:27) that's that's Sam Abuelsamid (05:28) one of my neighbors has just the basic GR Corolla and and he loves it. He drives it he's got you know got an extra set of wheels and winter tires on it and drives it year round and and he's he's been digging it. He's had it for a couple of years now. jill ciminillo (05:41) Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, and it has all wheel drive. And you know, there's there's so much that is just like going Sam Abuelsamid (05:48) So it's practically an off rotor. jill ciminillo (05:50) practically Stephanie Brinley (05:50) Ha ha jill ciminillo (05:51) off roader. I I would have to look up the ground clearance. but you know, I had the premium plus edition, so that's kind of the middle of the road version of it. And it You know, I mean it has it has the things that you want, except for a wireless charger that works. It has you know, it's an eight-inch screen, so it's a smaller screen, but it has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And, you know, it it worked pretty well and pretty intuitively. And I you know, yeah, the one more thing that it does not have that I wish it had is like a a center console armrest so that you could store things in it. instead I just had like my keys and all of this stuff like all over the seat, all over the you know, like there's like a little tray and it just everywhere is like So I wish I wish there was a place to hide things. Other than the glove box. Sam Abuelsamid (06:44) Five point three inches ground clearance. jill ciminillo (06:46) Not quite an offer. maybe with a lifted suspension we could you know, do the whole Emmy Hall treatment to like she did to her Miata and give it a lifted suspension and off road tires and all that, but so not as it is. It it's not. Sam Abuelsamid (07:01) Well, you know, T T R D does do you know, they they're they've got rally editions. There's a you know, we don't get the the GR Yaris here in North America, but it's got the same powertrain. jill ciminillo (07:09) Right. Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (07:12) and you know, they use that in the World Rally Championship. So, I mean you could certainly get rally parts to put on there. jill ciminillo (07:18) Yep. So you could could be an off roader. but all in this vehicle was about forty eight thousand dollars. It was like forty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety dollars and it really didn't have a lot of options. It just had some like accessories and like the premium paint. so the the base price was about forty six thousand dollars without destination. So I I don't know. I mean, I think this is a a good a good little vehicle and I I mean, I like it better than the GTI we had like the two GTIs we had before this. So Sam Abuelsamid (07:54) So I I noticed you haven't mentioned the civic type R in any of this. Is jill ciminillo (07:58) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (07:59) was that something that you considered and if not, I mean why you know, why why the G R Corolla over the type R? jill ciminillo (08:06) all wheel drive. Sam Abuelsamid (08:07) okay. That's fair enough. Yeah. jill ciminillo (08:10) I mean that that's the big thing, but I mean I do I if if I were gonna buy a civic I would buy the tie bar. So Sam Abuelsamid (08:15) Yeah. Okay. Stephanie Brinley (08:17) I mean in the pricing in in today's world is and and for what it is is not is not outrageous. I mean obviously it's more than a normal Sam Abuelsamid (08:22) Yeah, I mean given the performance level. Stephanie Brinley (08:24) but given the performance level, given all the things you that you have with it, it seems rational, I should say. Sam Abuelsamid (08:29) Yeah. jill ciminillo (08:31) Yes. Sam Abuelsamid (08:34) all right. anything else you wanna share on the GR Corolla? And and where where can we find the the video review so I can link to that so that people can find out what your what your purchase decision was. jill ciminillo (08:48) Yes. so, it will be on. It's not there yet. I've had a week. I won't I won't bore you all with it, but it's been a week. but I i it so it may be next week before it gets up, but it it will be on Carde Jour or Jill Ciminillo YouTube channel. So yes. Sam Abuelsamid (09:05) Okay. We will I will put a link to the channel on on the show notes so that everybody can find it. jill ciminillo (09:14) So when I eventually get it up there they can they can find it. Thank you. Sam Abuelsamid (09:17) Okay. You're welcome. all right. was there something else that you drove that you wanted to talk about? jill ciminillo (09:23) Just briefly wanted to say I had the moment to finally get behind the wheel of the Rivian R2. you know, did not have it for a full test, but was able to to drive it around and climb around in it and sat in the frunk, which it's a pretty large frunk for, you know, that vehicle. And I I I can't wait to get it for a full like at home test because I want to pair my phone. I want to log in because it has an Apple Music app. I want to log into the app. I want to see you know how the text messaging voicemail situation works because everybody I've talked to says that this if you it does not have Apple CarPlay but it is the one system that actually does things really well. So I I would I'm very much looking forward to being able to have it at home to be able to check it out. But for my brief test it's fun. It has a really good turning radius. It has some interesting features. personally did not have a problem with the glass roof, but I I you know it's so again I would want to have it at home to see if it gets hot. Not that I ever get truly warm. But so I'm probably not the best person to ask about that. But you know you can press a button and all the windows, including the back window, go down, which I think Stephanie Brinley (10:37) Yeah. jill ciminillo (10:37) is kinda cool. It has two glove boxes, which is kind of quirky and fun because you know the the Yeah. Yeah the R one has none. So Sam Abuelsamid (10:43) It's like isn't it two more than the R one head? Stephanie Brinley (10:46) Yeah. jill ciminillo (10:48) they've got two on the R two. but you know It's like a right size, mid-size vehicle, I think. But I I you know, I just brief it first impressions was really it was really a fun vehicle and I can't wait to have more time behind the wheel. So that's what I got for. Sam Abuelsamid (11:02) Cool. Yeah, I I had a brief I had a brief time with it. I had about an hour with it back in July. They did a an event here at their their Stephanie Brinley (11:10) yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (11:11) Plymouth Proven Gr or Plymouth Tech Center. And so jill ciminillo (11:13) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (11:14) we literally had like sixty minutes with it that Stephanie Brinley (11:16) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (11:17) we shared with somebody else. but yeah, I've got one coming later in November for a week. so Stephanie Brinley (11:24) Yeah, me too. Sam Abuelsamid (11:25) I'm gonna hopefully hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can actually go take it up to the Mounds off Road Park and try Stephanie Brinley (11:32) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (11:33) it on some off road trails. Stephanie Brinley (11:35) Yep. I think I'm signed up for that one later in November as well. Looking forward to it. yeah. jill ciminillo (11:41) They said the Chicago unit got delayed, so I'm just like Sam Abuelsamid (11:45) Well, I I was I was supposed to have it last month. and the day before I got a call from from from the fleet company saying, Yeah, it's gotta go into the shop for something so we've gotta reschedule you. So jill ciminillo (12:01) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (12:02) that's the way it goes sometimes. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (12:04) That's the way it goes. jill ciminillo (12:04) Yes, it is. Sam Abuelsamid (12:06) All right, Steph, what about you? Stephanie Brinley (12:08) Well, I was gonna talk about a couple of cars that I drove, if my voice would come back quickly. jill ciminillo (12:15) Ha ha Stephanie Brinley (12:17) I you know, I'm not necessarily brand new, but like the two thousand two two thousand twenty-six A6 Sedan TFSI, I spent jill ciminillo (12:23) Mm. Stephanie Brinley (12:24) a few hours with this afternoon. and I've had it for a little bit, but really nice. I like it. I like a lot of it. and I was I was completely infatuated with the the display for And it's either in the head up display or in the driver instrument cluster for showing what's going on with the traffic around you. I mean jill ciminillo (12:43) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (12:44) it's not it several others are doing very similar things. and some are better or worse or whatever. But this one was ac was still quite good. I did notice that it didn't pick up motorcyclists coming like the the next lane toward me. It was it picked up everything else, but not the motorcyclists. I I wasn't in danger of hitting them, so it was it was fine. but it was interesting kind of watching that come together and the I passenger side screens are still I'm not sure you gotta have more people in the car than I have usually to make that useful. But I did notice that I could see it from the passengers or from the driver's side. It was on I I I could it see at least the shadow of it enough to kind of know what was what the screen said. nobody was running sitting in there, so nobody was running any anything on it for me to watch. But I was surprised it was that visible. but in general, I just it was nice to get back behind the wheel of a sedan. jill ciminillo (13:46) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (13:47) you know, it's powerful enough for this big size to to feel good. 300 and some horsepower just last I looked up the number right before we got on the call and now I forgot it. 342, I believe, is what I would read, but. somewhere in that in that area. which is not blindingly fast for a vehicle this big, but certainly confidence inspiring enough. and it is all wheel drive, of course. but you know, it it you know, wasn't it was had the exclusive one of the exclusive packages on it, which I liked and you know, your Bangin' Olifson 3D sound system and and all of the all of the good stuff and the twenty inch wheels and that premium package was eighty seven hundred dollars. the the car it but a couple of things brought the car up to about eighty five thousand. It it's it's a mid sized, you know, luxury city and I don't think that's I think that's probably within whatever it's gonna be. It's not it's Sam Abuelsamid (14:41) Yeah, I mean it's that's that's not Stephanie Brinley (14:43) not Sam Abuelsamid (14:43) you know, it's not out of line with the likes of BMW five series or Mercedes E class. Stephanie Brinley (14:50) I know, I don't think it is out is as crazy at all. I was a i the color is this like firmament blue metallic, they call it, which is so dark as to be like black most of the time. jill ciminillo (15:00) Hmm. Stephanie Brinley (15:00) I I yeah. You kinda see the blue a little bit if the light is right. Other than that, it pretty much looks black. I I like the idea of of colors that that dance a little bit, but this one was is a little heavy on the black. but I like driving it. I I like being in a sedan again. the other one that I that I drove in the last couple of weeks was the the Lexus IS three fifty F Sport on wheel drive. jill ciminillo (15:29) That card. Stephanie Brinley (15:31) Yes, that car of that car. And that one was red. I did have a red car. Sam Abuelsamid (15:36) Somebody in my neighborhood just recently bought one. It's also red. Very red. Stephanie Brinley (15:41) Very red. It's very red. This was a good red. And it's hard Sam Abuelsamid (15:43) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (15:43) to do reds really well. But this one was a very good red. I mean, and this one is like it was three hundred and eleven horsepower, you know, a little bit less power than than the Audi, but a lot less size than the Audi. So this one actually felt a little bit more nimble. Kind of in the in the same situ driving it in the same roads. and again, really liked it. For for me in my driveway, the IS is closer to the size that I would really want and need. so I I would probably At a personal level, like that one a little bit better for that for that reason, really. But the the biggest part was it's nice to be inside a couple of sedans. the jill ciminillo (16:19) Mm. Stephanie Brinley (16:20) IS was just under 52,000, seems didn't have very many options on it. you know, the it's got the new Lexus interface, so a lot of the problems with Lexus interface were solved a bit ago and and it's good in that res in that regard as well. yeah, it it's just the right size. Just the right size for me. And and the power was was enough and and it felt it felt really nice to drive it. The thing is, though, with this car is I don't we don't hear about it very much. We don't seem to hear Lexus talk about IS very much. I I mentioned to one person that I had it and and and they said I thought they stepped building that. I'm like, nope, I promise they didn't. Sam Abuelsamid (17:00) Yeah. It's it's still there. jill ciminillo (16:59) Ha. Stephanie Brinley (17:04) it's still there. So, you know, whether it's partially, you know, the the overwhelming preference for utility vehicles right now in general, but you know, if there's too many people running around thinking they don't make it anymore, that's not great for Alexis either 'cause it it is a really nice option. Sam Abuelsamid (17:21) Yeah, and it's it's the last naturally aspirated V six in the Toyota and Lexus lineup. in fact there's not that many naturally aspirated V sixes left in the US Stephanie Brinley (17:31) Anywhere. Sam Abuelsamid (17:32) market at all. jill ciminillo (17:33) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (17:34) most of have gone turbo or been, you know, replaced by four cylinder turbos. So Stephanie Brinley (17:38) It's it's a nice product, so Sam Abuelsamid (17:40) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (17:40) if you wanna if you want a good size little sedan, it's a little responsive and and clever, take a look. Sam Abuelsamid (17:46) Cool. well I I also had a Toyota product this week. all Toyotas all the time. Stephanie Brinley (17:53) Wow. Sam Abuelsamid (17:56) so I had the the Rav4 Woodland plug in hybrid. and you know the the new Rav Four is you know built on the same platform as the old one. it's a new body style, new interior. you know it's generally in pretty much all respects. better than the pre the outgoing the previous RAP four was. the plug-in hybrid, they upgraded the battery on the plug in hybrid, from about eighteen kilowatt hours before, now twenty two point seven kilowatt hours. and I think it's like three hundred and twenty ish horsepower for the for the plug in hybrid. So the plug-in hybrids all come they're all all wheel drive. so you get you know the the regular two point five liter hybrid system up front and then an extra electric motor at the rear. and this year for the new generation it's the latest fifth generation Toyota hybrid system. so again upgraded battery, upgraded motors, two hundred and three horsepower from the front motor and some undisclosed amount of power from the rear motor. they don't say exactly how much it is, but the total system power is about three hundred and twenty horsepower. So this is a quick vehicle. It'll do zero to sixty in about four and a half seconds. and it's also surprisingly efficient. So the woodland comes on all terrain tires on eighteen inch wheels and it's rated it's EPA rated at forty nine or no, sorry, forty-eight miles. of range for the woodland version, depending on which one you get, it's anywhere from 48 to 50 miles of electric driving range. jill ciminillo (19:53) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (19:54) And I checked with with Toyota and they said yeah 48 miles for this one. I took it out on my usual driving loop that I test these things on and it went 56 a little over 56 miles before the engine finally turned on. And Because it's got, you know, well over two hundred horsepower, just from the electric motors, it's very easy to drive this thing and keep it, you know, to to drive it, you know, even fairly briskly and not have the engine come on bec you know, I mean if you floor it all the way, the engine will come on. But you can drive it at at a very nice pace. You know, you can easily, you know, accelerate away from everybody at a traffic light, and you know, keep it in E V mode all the time. So it is really like in many respects Just like driving an EV for fifty plus miles. and then the one area that it doesn't do is it doesn't it you know it does re all the Toyota hybrids do regenerative braking when you lift off, but there's no there's nothing like a one pedal mode. It's it's very jill ciminillo (21:00) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (21:00) mild regen when you just lift off the accelerator. So it's it's more like driving a regular combustion vehicle when you when you do that. but when when when you're driving in any kind of you know normal traffic it's very well behaved and one of the things they did this year as well with the plug in hybrid version is they they made some changes to the engine. Still a two point five liter four cylinder, which is nominally the same thing you get in the regular hybrid. But for the plug in hybrid it's got a stiffer block and one of the things we've always complained a lot about with Toyota hybrids, they're four cylinder engines, not always the greatest sounding. They can tend to be a little noisy and coarse. you know, they're very, very efficient and they're very reliable. They just don't sound great. This one jill ciminillo (21:56) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (21:57) is much quieter than the regular RAV force, the the non-plug-in RAV force. so it's you know, when it does come on, there's not as much isn't it's not as jarring a change from going from EV mode to To hybrid mode. in hybrid mode, it's rated at 37 miles per gallon, which is again quite good. You know, it's it's totally competitive with other, you know, similar sized hybrids. It's it's about two miles per gallon less than a regular non plug in RAV4. So, you know, again, gonna say if you have someplace to plug it in and you want to try, you know, going down the electric route, but you're not. ready to fully commit, this is a great choice. If you don't have somewhere to plug it in on a daily basis, do not buy this car. You know, don't well, yeah, but I mean, you know, if yeah, Stephanie Brinley (22:49) Or if you just don't want to. Yeah. Yep. Want to plug it in, I mean. jill ciminillo (22:50) I agree. Sam Abuelsamid (22:53) if you if you if you're not gonna plug it in, you are spending several thousand dollars more and hauling around, you know, five, six hundred pounds of dead weight for the battery, and you know, losing a couple of miles per gallon compared to the the regular RAV4. So just, you know, if you're gonna do it, make sure you you're prepared to plug it in daily. it does have a CCS port on it. It's got support for DC charging, which is you know more than most plug-in hybrids. there's a few others out there like the the Mitsubishi Outlander. I think the latest Mercedes plug-in hybrids also have CCS ports or or at least DC charging. I can't remember if they have CCS or NACs yet. I took it I took the RAV4, talked about this a little bit last week. I took it out af after I did my testing to three new DC charging stations near my home here. plugged it into each one of them, let it, you know, charge for about ten minutes on each one just to try out these new chargers. and it's it'll do about twenty kilowatts. on DC charging, which is not great, but you know, it'll it'll top up the battery in about thirty minutes or so. So if you're doing a road trip and you're going some you know you're stopping somewhere for lunch or coffee and they happen to have a charger there, you can plug it in, top the battery back up again, and get another fifty miles of of electric driving before you have to you know before it goes back to hybrid mode. So again it'll save save you some money. so it's you know it's a Great option for that. this the RAV4 was one of the first models that has the the same new Toyota Lexus infotainment system that's in the IS. so it's got some updates to it, which includes you know the it can unlike the previous generation system, it'll show a multi-pane display so you can have navigation and your media player there on the screen at the same time, which is a nice change. Unfortunately the connectivity was not turned or I was not jill ciminillo (25:07) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (25:08) logged in when I got the car and I didn't have the login information for the Toyota account that it was set up for. So they because the navigation is connected, I couldn't use the built in navigation. so I just used Android Auto while I was driving. but I've used it before a couple of times on a couple of different vehicles and the new system works really well. so big update there. so altogether grand total on this one came to forty seven thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars, including the you wanna take a guess at the destination charge? Stephanie Brinley (25:49) Twelve fifty. Twelve ninety five. jill ciminillo (25:51) sixteen hundred Sam Abuelsamid (25:56) Joe gets it. It's fourteen fifty. You you w you want it Stephanie Brinley (26:00) Okay. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (26:01) you want it by about five bucks. jill ciminillo (26:04) Ha ha woo! And I was gonna say sixteen ninety-five, so I'm glad I didn't round up. Stephanie Brinley (26:05) Ha ha Sam Abuelsamid (26:06) Yeah. The the only options on this one were the power tilt sunroof for eight hundred and fifty bucks, black chrome wheel locks for ninety bucks and the accessory ready LED lantern for a hundred and sixty dollars. Not even sure where that was. I didn't see it in the vehicle anywhere. but presumably there's a lantern there somewhere. you can you can get the the RAV4 plug in hybrid starting at like forty one thousand dollars. so you know, again, if you if you're thinking, you know, I want to try the electric lifestyle but not fully ready to commit, but you and you have someplace to charge, you know, it this is a this is a good option to charge to start with. One one detail I'm not crazy about on the new RAV4 song. jill ciminillo (26:57) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (26:58) the the way the interior is laid out is really good. but the materials Not fantastic. A lot of hard plastic. the Stephanie Brinley (27:06) yeah. jill ciminillo (27:07) I know, I'm like, nope, nope, nope. Lots the Sam Abuelsamid (27:09) woodland I had did have there was a strip of like padded material across the center of the dash and into the into the door panels, but the rest of it is all hard plastics. And for a nearly fifty thousand dollar car, feels kinda cheap. you Stephanie Brinley (27:24) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (27:24) know, when last year when we did the the first drive of this thing, you know, I you know, they we knew I knew they were pre production vehicles. I asked Toyota, is this you know, is this production intent? Because sometimes on pre production vehicles or early early vehicles, they don't apply the full graining to the plastics. I said, Is this is this production intent materials? And they said, Yeah. So that's unfortunate 'cause Stephanie Brinley (27:49) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (27:50) it's it's not n not great. But you know, off road, these the woodland is actually pr pretty decent too. It's about eight and a half inches of ground clearance, so slightly more than the GR Corolla. Stephanie Brinley (28:03) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (28:04) And you know, with the all terrain tires, you know, it'll it'll handle some decent trails. So all right. Stephanie Brinley (28:08) And it is a woodland. Sam Abuelsamid (28:11) yeah, so let's let's move on. let's start with GM forward. Steph, you and I were both in New York for this this week. I'd let's I'd like to hear your thoughts on this event. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (28:20) Yeah. Oof. There was a lot there. It was several hours worth. no, it's it's good. And a lot of it did really build on I think on last year. and one of the the key elements though, I think, across it all is the discussion of of the amount of data that General Motors has. It's something that Sterling Anderson, they're Chief product officer who spoke last year and this year, mentioned last year, and and it was much more core and foundational to the conversation this year, and that they have a hundred years of data on things they've built, on the way people have driven them, on engineer engineering and validation and and being able to put all of that into a system that that can use it and and apply it to and then again with their their concurrent engineering stream. So there's they're taking a lot of engineering and design iteration and and putting it into the software stage. Sam Abuelsamid (29:21) Yeah, so so just just just to be clear here, you know, when we're talking about this data, you know, we've heard Tesla for years talk about all the data they collect from their cars in the field. This is something different. This is Stephanie Brinley (29:32) Yes. Sam Abuelsamid (29:32) data that you know, the manufacturing data, that you know, the that history that they have of building vehicles that they are incorporating into models, you know, to help them optimize their manufacturing processes and design processes. Stephanie Brinley (29:49) you know, doing things a lot faster, being able to iterate, especially in and as the way they're describing it, it's in that that the earlier phases too. it shortens and tightens up that earlier phases because there still has to be physical validation and you still have to to work with prototypes vehicles, but you can and components, but they can get a lot faster to what that prototype is and spend a lot less time iterating, which seems to be pretty significant in there. And then even when they're talking about their on-star assistant and their personal assistant, they still you know there's there's still understanding that they have from from 30 years of OnStar in terms of how to deal with this and and kind of how to how to use that interaction with the consumer. so that was an interesting element of it of it as well. And I it was the data comes it kind of comes back to that and kind of really figuring out how to leverage it. And I think, you know, a lot of people listening probably think of AI in a different way, but when we when they are talking and Jam's talking about using AI and manufacturing and AI and their design and development, it's not simply just going, Hey, you know, Claude, tell me what the math is on this thing. It's very proprietary. It's very specific to their data and what is they're doing, what they have. And it can just calculate faster. We can just calculate faster than a human can. Sam Abuelsamid (31:12) I mean, a a a great example they gave, you know, they talked about more about their their next generation batteries, their lithium manganese rich batteries. And jill ciminillo (31:19) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (31:20) one of the the pieces of information they threw out there was when they started down this process, they s they started they had they had three hundred thousand different formulations combinations of chemistry and cell design and pack design. And they use the AI models to evaluate those and narrow it down to, you know, just a small handful before they built first prototypes. So they went from three hundred thousand down to a handful that they could then take and test in the lab. Stephanie Brinley (31:54) And 300,000 is much more than you could do physically, right? To begin with. So you you've got a broader, a broader set of of parameters to start with, and then you can take it down faster. And and and they did that in I think a month or so. they got from that testing to the decision on the prototype pack within like a month, which is not is not normal by any stretch of the imagination for this stuff. So that that that that is why, and it's a really I thought it was a a terrific example of how an o an automaker is saying we're going to to reduce our development time by half and then showing you a little bit more how. Same, we were both at the Ford EVDC Center, Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach last year. And there was there was some conversation about data and and a little bit about AI use, but that project seemed to be much more about reducing your iteration by simply having everybody close together. And having your engineer next to your designer and and being able to have a lab there where you could fab up seat designs really quickly and not have to necessarily call and go back and forth with the supplier bringing you things and and you could save a lot of time that way. But it was much less, at least what they were talking with us was and I re as I recall, much less about using AI as a tool for that. It was much more about having your people together. but still the point is kind of you know, getting things done faster. And two different ways to look at it. but it was it's interesting to hear something that's concrete about how you're gonna make it go faster. and still, you know, we they were they're still working on it, so we'll we'll see how much faster they are. And the other thing Sam Abuelsamid (33:36) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (33:37) that they're talking about with that iteration, this bears on MI2. Remember, we were the a couple of weeks ago, they announced a brand new 8.3-liter V8 diesel engine. and they developed that in about two years. eighteen months I think and no one no one could figure that no one knew this would come. Like our people like no. Like I've got some people that generally have a pretty good idea of what's coming. No. Nobody really knew about this. at the very closer to when they got it to to the reveal point. You know, there were some questions that were going around, but nobody could figure it out. The reason I think that nobody could figure it out is because they did so much in house and jill ciminillo (34:23) Mm. Stephanie Brinley (34:23) so much development, the Pontiac Engineering C Pontiac Engine Development Center that you they didn't have to go outside. That is gonna be really interesting over time. I mean, you know, leaks get out on new projects and new programs and we write about it, we hear about it. Yeah. It that's yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (34:38) Yeah, when you when you have suppliers making parts for you, that that's how stuff leaks out. And then you know, if you can do more of that internally and you you yeah, it doesn't leak as much. Stephanie Brinley (34:47) Then it doesn't keep people jill ciminillo (34:49) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (34:50) guessing a little bit more, which I think is gonna be interesting. And I think GM has, I mean, proven in the past too, that when they really wanna keep a project tight, they'll keep a project tight. But this new approach to vehicle development gives them yet another edge for being able to do that and still get something developed quickly. So I find those two things to be really interesting about that part of it. And again, they talked about so many other things that we can get to too. Sam Abuelsamid (35:14) Yeah, well, you know, I mean I mentioned the batteries, you know, they talked about their their fourth gen EV platform. You know, the stuff they're building right now from the Equinox and Blazor up through the full size trucks and the Escalate IQ. That's all third generation. You know, they call it internally they call it BEV three at GM. And BEV four is their next generation stuff. And last year at this event, they you know, they were talking about the LMR batteries and at that point, you know, they were still taking a th a three pronged approach to batteries. They were gonna use the lithium iron phosphate, LFP batteries for some of the entry level stuff. They're gonna keep using the nickel rich cells for the high end, highest performance stuff, and then the LMR was gonna kind of fill in the middle. but you know the the progress they've made with the LMR You know, they've basically, at least they claim they've got it down to about the cost of the LFP cells, but they're getting pretty close to the performance, pretty much the same performance and energy density as the nickel rich cells. So, you know, since you've got those two extremes covered, they've decided to just we're just gonna go forward with just LMR, all in on LMR for the next Gen EVs. And they announced a couple of weeks ago that they're gonna be retooling part of the Spring Hill battery plant. in Tennessee to produce these cells. They're going to prismatic cells from the pouch cells they use today. And so they gave us some details on the fourth gen EVs. It's all LMR. It's gonna have their new centralized compute architecture. It's a structural battery pack. They're looking to take about 15% out of the weight of the vehicle and targeting about a 20% overall efficiency improvement. Which actually, you know, I was looking at some numbers, you know, twenty percent is good, you know, twenty percent improvement is good in efficiency, but if you compare today, like the Equinox E V and the Toyota B Z, front wheel drive Equinox E V gets about three point three miles per kilowatt hour. The Toyota B Z gets about three point eight. Twenty percent gets you right to where the B Z is today. Stephanie Brinley (37:32) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (37:33) So you know, I But yeah, I spent some time talking with Zach Walker, who's the new head of EV architecture at GM. He came from Lucid. He was in fact the last time I talked to Zach was in New York at Stephanie Brinley (37:46) He was at Lucid. jill ciminillo (37:47) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (37:48) the Lucid Investor Day in the spr in April. and about a month after that he left and went to and to GM. and you know, so I think yeah, they're still iterating on this. I think by the time they get into production, and they didn't say when it is, but they have said that they're gonna be producing LMR cells in Tennessee in twenty twenty eight. They're also gonna be launching their central compute architecture in twenty twenty eight. So I think it's a fair Stephanie Brinley (38:12) The escalate, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (38:13) bet that we we will see the first Bev four products somewhere by the end of twenty twenty eight. Stephanie Brinley (38:18) Mm-hmm. Sasha. Sam Abuelsamid (38:20) yeah. Stephanie Brinley (38:20) Although they were, yeah, they were kind of quiet about that, about when the timing was a bit mystery. But it it's it was it was interesting to make the the LMR switch and and sort of step away from the the LFP. And you know, if they can get their B their the platform lighter too, I think that should be able to help their performance quite a bit. But I mean, even with BEV3 vehicles, I think we've all talked about how they're a little heavy. Sam Abuelsamid (38:45) yeah. Stephanie Brinley (38:45) there's a lot of wonderful things about them, but they're a little heavy. And I, you know, I was like, okay, this is Bev3 because it's the third time they've done an EV, but it's still really their first mass market and mass mass segments and various sizes. And it just to me, even from then, it felt like they kind of over-engineered it a little bit and they'd figure out how to pull weight on it and and out of it in future generations. And I think that's that's gonna come through. and then look at the fact that it was a little heavy in this first iteration. as being the end state of where GM is going, for sure. So we'll see how that goes and and being able to to do things faster will maybe help that rate, that weight situation Sam Abuelsamid (39:25) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (39:26) as well. Sam Abuelsamid (39:26) Another another big thing they're changing is you know, they're they're gonna be introducing this central compute architecture that they first talked about last year. At that point Stephanie Brinley (39:34) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (39:34) all they had was a mock up of, you know, showing the boxes. You know, here's here's our central computer, here's our aggregator modules. And this time now they actually have this running on vehicles. Last year they were running it in simulation. they had digital twins of these of all these designs. But now they're actually they've They're building vehicles that are running this today on the road and and at the Milford Proving Grounds. and so the what they're gonna have the the the whole system, like today's vehicles, you know, have it mostly have a distributed architecture with in some cases as many as a hundred or more electronic control units. Now there's gonna be one, one big box Stephanie Brinley (40:16) Hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (40:18) mounted in in the in the middle of the car. and that is gonna handle pretty much everything except the communications, the external communications. There's a communications module mounted on the roof as well. that there's gonna be three tiers of that. So the one they've shown us shown so far is running the NVIDIA Thor chip. That's that's for the high end, for the autonomous driving stuff. There's also going to be a mid level version and then an entry level version, but they all have the same basic architecture and they're running the same Same software platform on there across across these three different ones. and they also they told us that that's going to be launching in twenty twenty eight, starting with the Escalate IQ, jill ciminillo (41:05) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (41:05) and also the full size pickups and SUVs. the gas ones. So this is designed to work on both internal combustion Stephanie Brinley (41:15) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (41:16) and electric vehicles. so they're gonna have all of that on there. And also it's also going to be on the three row crossovers. So the Chevy Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave. those are gonna be the first three platforms that get this stuff. and also all the BEV4 stuff is gonna use this. so that's that's gonna be interest you know, it it's interesting that two years before production they've actually got all this running because back in you know several years back when Ford was still planning to launch a three row electric crossover at the end of twenty twenty four. and they canceled that program in August of twenty twenty four. And I think part of the reason why they canceled that program is because they were nowhere close to being ready yet. Because that was also supposed to have a similar kind of electrical architecture. and I found out later from from somebody the software platform That was supposed to be running on that vehicle that was supposed to launch in the fourth quarter of 2024. They didn't even get it running on a bench until September of 2024. So jill ciminillo (42:28) Oops. Sam Abuelsamid (42:29) yeah. Now they've got this, GM's got this running on vehicles because they've and Stephanie Brinley (42:33) And bench. Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (42:35) bench, yeah. but even before they had physical hardware to test on a bench, they were testing this in simulation using some tools from a a company called Synopsis to do virtual versions of all these control modules. and then the last big thing was the the they talked about personal autonomy. That they announced this last year. They s last year they they called it, you know, an L three, level three hands off, eyes off autonomy system. Now this time Sterling Anderson just said it's not an L three system. They're they're treating this as a level four system. So equivalent to what you're seeing in robotaxis. Yeah, although, you know, in this case the operational domain is gonna be starting with highways. So it'll be fully autonomous highway driving. and you know that's gonna run on these NVIDIA chips in in these vehicles. and they they gave some interesting information. They started testing vehicles earlier this year. They started running these data collection vehicles, which are escalate IQs with a bunch of extra sensors on them. Now actually saw one of these yesterday here in Ypsilanti dri driving driving Stephanie Brinley (43:50) Ha ha. jill ciminillo (43:51) Hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (43:51) through downtown Ypsilanti yesterday. Stephanie Brinley (43:54) Nice. Sam Abuelsamid (43:54) and so those are those are out and running. They've got about two hundred of those running right now around the country, collecting data. They're gathering about a million miles a month of data that they are then feeding into their simulation and using techniques like they call it self play, where it's taking the real data modifying it, adding changing weather conditions, changing lighting conditions, changing road conditions, adding different agents in the in the environment to drive around, and then using reinforcement learning. And they apparent they say they're running about three billion miles a day in simulation. So th Stephanie Brinley (44:36) Which is crazy. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (44:39) so they've got some massive data center running running these simulations of all these different variations. And you know Part of it is, you know, testing new scenarios, but also every day they make they're making changes to the software and so they've got to rerun it to make sure they didn't break anything. So a lot jill ciminillo (44:55) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (44:56) a lot lot of simulation going on. Stephanie Brinley (44:59) lot. And yeah, and this time they they did like Sterling said this isn't he he kind of he said net level three and then he said do you have the SE you know architecture or levels were sort of designed to be able to talk about this but that's that's so it's not really working that way Sam Abuelsamid (45:17) It doesn't really fit anymore. Stephanie Brinley (45:19) it doesn't really fit anymore the way that vehicles are being developed and the capability that I'm really having there. and so practically yes. my highways first and then you know end to end after. but there was a little bit more conversation about, and eventually you can just send your car to pick up groceries for you or your drug. Sam Abuelsamid (45:37) Yeah, they called it mission mode. Stephanie Brinley (45:39) Yes, mission mode. Send the send the car to do those errands for you and while you're doing something else. so you know, it'll go sit in the the spot at Walmart and the Walmart person will bring their stuff out and there you go. Why not? Sam Abuelsamid (45:55) All right. I think that's all the highlights from from GM forward. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (46:01) A lot of it. jill ciminillo (46:03) So with the with the the autonomous driving, is the idea like at first it'll be somewhat similar to the super cruise with just highway driving, but is the idea point to point eventually? So like like full self-driving Stephanie Brinley (46:15) Mm-hmm. Point to point relatively quickly. I don't think that it's Sam Abuelsamid (46:15) Yep. Yeah. That's jill ciminillo (46:20) from Tesla? Stephanie Brinley (46:21) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (46:21) Yeah. No, it's you know, so this this'll be Stephanie Brinley (46:23) And perhaps stronger. Sam Abuelsamid (46:24) unsupervised, highway driving initially, as you said, and then going point to point, and adding you know, getting adding the ability to do secondary roads, urban roads, and basically going everywhere. prob yeah, I think they're they're targeting getting there within you know, within a few years, within two to three years after they launch this. Like I said, right now it's targeted for twenty twenty eight. it's gonna have radar, LIDAR and cameras on the vehicles. the LiDAR, you know, we saw in the in the videos the lidar is like what you see on a lot of the Chinese cars, it's mounted on the the roof just above the windshield. jill ciminillo (47:04) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (47:04) so you got a little lump there for the the lidar sensor. Stephanie Brinley (47:07) And I mean, in the body and white that they had on display, that that LiDAR piece looked compared to what they used to look like, really quite small. and nicely integrated and you're like you wouldn't if you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't really think of it Sam Abuelsamid (47:15) yeah, yeah, mu yeah. Yeah, current yeah, current current lidar sensors are pretty compact. You know, they're typically Stephanie Brinley (47:22) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (47:23) about two, two and a half inches tall and about Stephanie Brinley (47:25) Yep. Sam Abuelsamid (47:25) five or six inches wide. and you know, the the ones from some of the Chinese vendors like Hisai and RoboSense, they've got high performance lidars that are down to like two hundred, two hundred and fifty bucks. compared to you know, when they started doing this stuff, Stephanie Brinley (47:40) Twenty two. Sam Abuelsamid (47:41) you know, twenty years ago, those things were th those Buckets, rotating buckets on the rooftop jill ciminillo (47:45) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (47:46) were eighty thousand dollars. Now it's a couple hundred bucks. Stephanie Brinley (47:51) If you can buy it from China. Sam Abuelsamid (47:53) Yeah, well, you know, Stephanie Brinley (47:55) Ha ha Sam Abuelsamid (47:56) at least two of the the the the two biggest Chinese LIDAR vendors, Hasai and RoboSense are both building factories outside of China. they're building their Hasai is building their factory is in Thailand and I think Robosense is also in Thailand. and so, you know, as long as they're not using Chinese software, that shouldn't be a problem. They should be able to buy those. So Stephanie Brinley (48:19) Right. It shouldn't be. Well, there's still yeah. Well we'll see what we'll see what the final actually when it changes from a presidential order to a law, see what it really looks like in the end. If it does. Sam Abuelsamid (48:31) Yeah. We'll see. all right. let's see. Jill, did jill ciminillo (48:39) Mm? Sam Abuelsamid (48:39) you you drove the the new the twenty twenty seven Honda Passport Trailsport, right? jill ciminillo (48:44) I did. I did. this was like one of the coolest programs I think I've ever been on because they gave us kind of like a snapshot of what they put their staff through to train them how to like do the vehicles, and train like to to talk about the vehicles when they are in an off road situation. And they have a I I guess you would call it like a dedicated facility. It's not specifically for Honda, but Honda has kind of set up residence there for this this training. And it's in or I guess I should say near Ashboro, North Carolina. And I'm completely blanking on the name. I want to say it's like Grand Overland experience or something like that. But it's it's this really cool place, lots of trails, and the staff are really well educated and the Honda people there, because you know, they're learning, you know, they've learned from this They're also very well educated. And so we drove the vehicles to this place and then we went off on the on the trails. And it doesn't, it doesn't have a bendy button, as I like to call it. So, you know, when you are going in an off-road situation, you're definitely gonna get like wheels in the air. And but the the traction of the wheels that are on the ground. Are like working to get you out of whatever situation you are in. And so I found the it and we were able to do 2027 Trail Sport and 2026 Trail Sport back to back, which was super helpful. and the 2026 is capable. If you just bought one, it's not a horrible vehicle, but they've done some things to the 2027 Trail Sport that just make it that much better. And They've added like they've c I wanna say they said something like seventy-five percent of all of the suspension equipment has been revised, reworked, reengineered. And then on the base trail sport trim, they now have the trail camera, the trail watch camera standard, which makes a huge difference, especially Stephanie Brinley (50:54) Huge. jill ciminillo (50:54) for somebody on the petite side of the spectrum, because The camera stays on up to fifteen miles an hour and I know in some Toyota vehicles they like go off at eight miles an hour and it's like just when you get to the point that you need it it like shuts off and you're like, Wait Stephanie Brinley (51:07) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (51:07) Mm-hmm. jill ciminillo (51:10) So the cameras stay on up to 15 miles per hour, which super helpful. And they've got the the lines that show exactly where your wheels are going on the trail. It it's it's very well done system. So that's now standard and they have like a camera washer. So if you like sploosh through mud, you can wash the camera and still see where you're going. And Overall, I thought that the 2027, like again, 2026, really good vehicle, but the 2027 model is just a little bit more buttoned down, a little bit quieter, a little bit smoother. And then because it has, I think it was a 1.38 inch lift, you have just that extra amount of ground clearance that keeps you from scraping. So I took the 2027, they've created this really amazing obstacle course with like breakover angles and like, you know, wheels off the ground. And I I mean it was it was a crazy course. And the twenty twenty seven did it really well. And then you take the twenty twenty six around you're like, ooh, scrape in there. okay. Could I didn't quite see that 'cause, you know, no trail cam. And I but it just I I mean, 2026 is good. 2027 just smooths everything out and just makes it that much better. And I mean, having competed in Rebel and compete you know, I've competed in the X Cross class, three out of four times. You know, I only competed in the four by four class once. You know, these I I feel like vehicles that don't have like the rear locking differential and the you know, the four by four and the bendy button, the sway bar disconnect. I I feel like the these All-wheel drive vehicles get a really bad rap in off-road situations. And this did really, really well. And and yes, there were wheels in the air, but it got you out of like you just apply constant throttle, and the vehicle can think for itself and like put the traction where it needs to be. And as long as you're patient, you're not like it literally just kind of guided you through. these obstacles. And I I walked away incredibly impressed and thoroughly liked it. And I just it it's yes, I in the program itself, this is really cool. Any Honda employee can go through the program. And it's we only did two days and they talk you through like recovery and how to like win like hook your vehicle Sam Abuelsamid (53:41) So all the stuff you need to know if you're really gonna go off roading. jill ciminillo (53:44) Yeah. Yeah. And like how to distribute the weight between the front recovery hooks so that you aren't just like yanking a bumper off. And they talk about like tr they w walk you through the the traction boards. and they I mean, I and the different soft shackle versus a hard shackle versus a D ring. They're all different and they all do different things. So I just I don't know. It was a so two days for us doing this program. Whereas the Honda employees sh if they like they can get approval to go through the program, it's four days. And i it's just it it was like the crash course that we went through that was really good. And then to imagine like giving your employees that much education on how to do the off road things so that you can take your vehicle off road and show people how to do it too. So it was it was impressive. Sam Abuelsamid (54:40) And and those th they're on sale now, right? I think they're they're shipping to dealers now, the twenty seven passports. jill ciminillo (54:44) Yeah, I mean yeah, most most automakers like don't like let you drive the things and see the pricing if they're not imminently imminently available. Stephanie Brinley (54:52) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (54:55) the and and I I think I we're I saw a stat somewhere, isn't it something like seventy percent take rate on the current on the new passport is the trail sport? More than that? Okay. jill ciminillo (55:06) I think it's like eighty percent is is what they were saying. It it's significant numbers of people take Stephanie Brinley (55:13) That's jill ciminillo (55:13) the the trail sport. And you know, I mean and the trail sport is and the passport in general is more expensive than like if you're looking at a Toyota Forerunner, if you're looking at a Honda or not a Honda, Subaru out back. you know, it is significantly more expensive, but the things that are included And then if you look at the Subaru Outback Wilderness versus the Honda Passport, it like I mean like they're almost same. I wanna say it's like two thousand dollars different. It's not like it's pennies a month that you're gonna be paying differently, you know, di differently b depending on what kind of a payment plan you have. but I I just the it the the passport trailsport just includes so much more than you can get on the other vehicles for like if you're comparing apples to apples and like all of the up level features and things like that, it it the price difference isn't that much. Sam Abuelsamid (56:08) Awesome. all right. let's carry on. let's see. You you meant actually you just mentioned the Outback. so yeah, Stephanie Brinley (56:16) She just she just gave us a really good lead in. jill ciminillo (56:16) Yeah, right? Sam Abuelsamid (56:20) so they Subaru's made some pricing adjustments for twenty twenty seven model year with the Outback. and they added a new entry level model that starts at jill ciminillo (56:30) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (56:30) just thirty two nine ninety five before delivery charge, which is I'm not sure how much the delivery charge is. But that's I mean that's that's a pretty that's a pretty good price for the outback. Yeah. jill ciminillo (56:42) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (56:43) yeah 'cause you get you get standard all wheel drive on all of you know, it's a very capable vehicle, it's very comfortable to drive. jill ciminillo (56:51) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (56:52) really enjoyed it when I had one recently. so you know, yeah, so it's two two thousand dollars cheaper than before. Now the entry level model is two thousand dollars cheaper than the cheapest one before. But the other ones Some of them have gone up in price. So there's a little bit more of a spread now than there was before. But at least you can get a more affordable outback for twenty twenty seven. Stephanie Brinley (57:19) By by making an entry level version of presumably less stuff. Sam Abuelsamid (57:21) Yeah. Yeah, take take take a little content out of it. But you know what, there's a lot there's a lot of people that are fine with that. A lot of people that don't necessarily want all of the content that's in there. Stephanie Brinley (57:25) Take a little content. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. jill ciminillo (57:28) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (57:32) and then Ford has made some adjustments for the twenty twenty seven Mach E trail or the well the mock the Mach E in general. They added a new trail trim, which is kind of like a a cheaper version of the rally. that they added a couple years ago. So it doesn't have the the the more powerful motors that are in the rally. it's I think it's like what what is it three hundred and twenty ish horsepower for the all wheel drive Mach E. but it does it does actually have more ground clearance than the rally. Not a lot. Stephanie Brinley (58:11) Yes. Sam Abuelsamid (58:12) You know it's I think it's about 0.4 inches increase at the front and 0.6 inches at the rear axle. you know, so you know, that's just over six inches of ground clearance in total, which you know not this is not gonna be challenging any passport trail sports on the trails. but you know, if you're taking it, you know, down a a bumpy back road, you know, to get to a cabin or something or get to a campsite, you know, it'll do a little bit better than the than the Machie Rally did. jill ciminillo (58:45) And it'll definitely do better than the Toyota GR Corolla. Sam Abuelsamid (58:48) Yes, definitely. But Stephanie Brinley (58:49) Yes it would. But you know, Sam Abuelsamid (58:51) but it's actually it's actually not a whole lot. I mean the GR Corolla is five point three inches of ground clearance. The standard jill ciminillo (58:56) I know. Sam Abuelsamid (58:57) Mach E is five point seven. So and you're adding, you know, less Stephanie Brinley (59:01) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (59:02) than half an inch to that. Stephanie Brinley (59:04) It's not a lot, but you know, it it pushes in it it gives it a name that is right along with the wildernesses and the passport trail sports and and all of that with some changes that aren't particularly expensive for Ford to make. and I was looking at this twenty twenty seven model year. I think all three of us were there in twenty nineteen when they revealed this car, weren't we? jill ciminillo (59:28) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (59:29) An ally? I feel like that was I feel like that's so. So that was it Sam Abuelsamid (59:28) yeah. Yeah. It it went on sale in jill ciminillo (59:32) When four Sam Abuelsamid (59:33) twenty one. jill ciminillo (59:33) hostage. Stephanie Brinley (59:35) It w you know, so it went on sale for twenty one bottle a year, I think. it's getting it's getting old. Sam Abuelsamid (59:41) Yeah. jill ciminillo (59:42) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (59:43) It's it's been around for a while. Stephanie Brinley (59:43) getting old. It needs it it's been around for a minute. it that doesn't make it, you know, suddenly a bad car, but it's been around for a minute. And I and this is just really about kind of leaning into, you know, a trend at the moment and kind of keeping it in the news and kind of giving people a a reason to to kind of look at it again in in the in in the midst of it of it being a little bit older than some of the other electrics Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:08) Yeah, and you know they they made some other adjustments for twenty seven model year. the standard range battery is gone now. Stephanie Brinley (1:00:16) Right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:17) so that that's been discontinued. and they made some content adjustments. So now the the eighty eight kilowatt hour battery, extended range battery, starts under forty thousand dollars. so it's a little bit more than it was before, but now you get, you know, three hundred three hundred Stephanie Brinley (1:00:36) yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:36) miles of range. which is improvement and they also adjusted the pricing on the other trim levels as well. so that's you know, that's at least something, you know, they're you know, keeping it, you know, somewhat relevant in the market. Stephanie Brinley (1:00:50) Yeah, and expanding the pro power on board availability. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:55) Yeah, I mean, you know, it's only four hundred watts. So which you would Stephanie Brinley (1:00:58) Yeah. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:59) think, you know, since it's an E V, they got a high high voltage battery in there. Put it put it put at least a two kilowatt system in there. You know. I mean our E V six, you know, we'll do one point three, you know, with the adapter plugged into the charge port. Stephanie Brinley (1:01:13) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:14) So, you know, four hundred four hundred watts, come on Ford. You can do better than that. Stephanie Brinley (1:01:18) Right. You can do better. Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:19) Yeah. all right, let's see. So Sticking with EVs for a minute. I found an interesting story on Inside EVs this week. about a Chevy Bolt. and this was one of the guys who works with Kyle Connor at out of spec. You know, he's got like I don't know, seventy two channels now, I think, for various things. but the the guy on his team that works on EVs, he's a mechanic, does service and modifications on EVs and he does the out of spec renew channel. he you know he had a customer come in with a twenty seventeen or twenty nineteen Chevy bolt and it needed a new battery. the original battery was replaced with a hundred and thirty thousand miles on it in twenty twenty two twenty one or twenty two when they did yeah twenty two when they did the battery recall. Stephanie Brinley (1:02:23) Well, too. jill ciminillo (1:02:24) yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:25) so this battery that the replacement battery that went in there has three hundred and thirty thousand miles on it. Which Stephanie Brinley (1:02:35) Not crazy. Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:36) is more than most internal combustion engines will do. Stephanie Brinley (1:02:39) Yes, it is. Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:40) so this this this bolt, this twenty nineteen bolt, had a total of four hundred and seventy one thousand miles on it. with two batteries. And it needed a new battery to replace this three hundred and thirty thousand mile battery. I don't know where this guy was driving in in like three years, four y four years with a bolt, you know, that only does fifty kilowatt DC charging to accumulate that many miles, but you know, it was like either it was either plugged in or it was on the road, I guess. jill ciminillo (1:03:07) Ha ha. Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:08) but they they got a replacement battery. They they they found a used battery from another bolt that only had fifteen thousand miles on it. The battery Stephanie Brinley (1:03:19) Okay. Yep. Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:21) only cost eighteen hundred dollars. jill ciminillo (1:03:24) What? Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:25) Yeah, for a fifteen thousand mile battery on it. So it's practically a brand new battery, given what these other batteries were capable of doing. you know. And with the with the with the labor and everything, would have come to about thirty five hundred bucks, you know, normal labor rates. And and and with a normal markup, yeah, be because they were doing you know, they decided to to comp this guy and do it for f do the repla the battery replacement for free because they were doing it doing a video for the channel gave it to him for free but he's he explains at the end that would have been about a thirty five hundred dollar job. And again, if you had a car with four hundred and fifty thousand, four hundred and seventy thousand miles on it that needed a new engine, you would be paying at least that much for a replacement Stephanie Brinley (1:04:15) At least that, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:17) engine. so you know for those, you know Looking at used EVs and and I you know after I watched this I did a little digging, you know, and found, you know, that especially for for used for you know relatively lightly used battery, yeah, I mean this you know, depending on the car, it's gonna be anywhere from about two to four thousand dollars for a battery. You know, plus plus the plus the labor to install it. So that's actually not that bad. Stephanie Brinley (1:04:47) Thanks. No. Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:48) new brand new batteries jill ciminillo (1:04:50) Mm mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:50) are still quite a bit more expensive. But you know, a lightly used battery, you can do it. And you know, we know they will last a long, long time. Stephanie Brinley (1:04:58) That's I think that's the big part about this is how on how long the batteries are lasting. jill ciminillo (1:05:03) At least three hundred and thirty thousand miles. Right? Stephanie Brinley (1:05:05) At least for this one. Now, Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:05) Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:05:07) you know, it doesn't say if the driver had any, you know, performance degradation over that time, you would expect, but Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:12) He probably did, but still, you know i ev you know, even even with some degradation, you know, to to get that many Stephanie Brinley (1:05:20) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:21) miles out of it is pretty impressive. Stephanie Brinley (1:05:23) It's pretty impressive, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:26) and then I stumbled across a story from The Guardian Stephanie Brinley (1:05:29) Right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:29) the other day, about young Americans choosing Y two K cars over shiny new SUVs. and basically what it comes down to is younger people are they're quite happ quite happy buying older cars, you know, not like ancient cars, not like my Miata, but you know, jill ciminillo (1:05:51) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (1:05:51) Ha ha. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:52) twenty, twenty five year old cars that are still running well. and you know, they actually like that many of these cars don't have a lot of the features that are on new cars. jill ciminillo (1:06:04) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:04) So they kinda like the whole privacy thing. jill ciminillo (1:06:06) Like big screens. Yeah, privacy's good. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:09) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:06:11) It is it is good. It's and it's also really, really convenient when you when you're happy with something that that when you're when you're buying it with your your price and you you couldn't afford the other car with the big screens. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:22) Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, you know, if you wanted a screen in one of these, you know, you could you can get You know, the the Stephanie Brinley (1:06:26) But it's you could put it you can put in. You have an aftermarket screen. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:30) ve yeah, vehic vehicles of this of this vintage, you know, they're it's still e it was still easy to replace the audio system. So you could get an aftermarket head unit and put it in there, Stephanie Brinley (1:06:41) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:42) if you want CarPlayer or Android Auto. Yeah, you can do that for a few hundred bucks. and Stephanie Brinley (1:06:47) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:48) you know, you you don't know you're not gonna have a seventeen inch screen, but Maybe you don't want one. Stephanie Brinley (1:06:54) Maybe you don't. And what's neat about this too is in this story, you know, everybody the the people that that that they found are are at car shows. So not only are they opting for these older cars or nineteen nineties era cars, they're they're bringing out, showing and and getting involved in in Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:11) And they're modding them and Stephanie Brinley (1:07:12) that and which is it's just great. It it's great to see people still want to do that. Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:18) Yeah. all right, let's see. another tidbit about Audi. they announced yes yesterday Stephanie Brinley (1:07:27) right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:28) they're building a US factory in Georgia. Stephanie Brinley (1:07:30) Yep. Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:31) So jill ciminillo (1:07:31) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:32) so while the Volkswagen Group is talking about shutting down a whole bunch of factories in in Germany and laying off tens of thousands of people, Audi's gonna build a factory in Georgia. four billion Stephanie Brinley (1:07:45) That's Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:45) doll four billion dollar investment. They're supposed to start construction next year, and production start sometime after twenty thirty. Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:07:54) The t after twenty thirty, yeah. So it's still a little bit down the road, but and and the Audi statement didn't say which cars were gonna be there, but the speculation was, you know, it makes sense, Q nine. Right. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:03) Yeah, I mean they're they they just say they're focusing on premium SUVs. 'Cause that's that's what people are buying here. Stephanie Brinley (1:08:10) Well, another reporting was saying Q nine, Q eight and and Q seven, Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:14) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:08:15) which makes perfect sense. Those are all currently built at the same plant in Slovakia. Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:20) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:08:22) and the the Comments were, you know, again in the and some of the follow-up reports, that 200,000 units capacity with about 50% of that held for US market. So they do expect to export out of this plant as well. It I mean, I don't know what they're gonna say about the the Slovakia plant, but it's it's it's running 90,000 units a year. So I don't think they need 300,000 units of these. Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:50) Yeah, I think I think that one may not be long for the world. Stephanie Brinley (1:08:53) It may not. and that's just that's just me looking at it. That's not anything that they've said yet. and it's and it's not German. It's not one of the German plans. but yeah, it you know, it's it's interesting that they decided to make that leap. And certainly, you know, they expect that the that the US market can support the volume for all three and it should be able to, at least for what they want out of the US. All three of those vehicles should be able to be, you know, collectively a hundred thousand units. But yeah, it and deciding not to do and this then there is expectation that they're still gonna continue to do the Audi version of the the Scout. So Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:33) Right. Stephanie Brinley (1:09:33) this doesn't this announcement does not supersede the prior rumors about the Audi Scout. that does still seem to be on the table. Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:40) The the Audi G wagon. Stephanie Brinley (1:09:42) Yes, the Audi G lion. They'd probably prefer if I said that right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:45) Mm-hmm. yeah, Mercedes would definitely like to hear that. Stephanie Brinley (1:09:50) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:52) all right. IHS has been doing more crash tests. jill ciminillo (1:09:56) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:57) and this latest round they did a bunch of the smaller crossovers. and out of the this batch, only one got a top safety pick. So they tested the it wasn't all crossovers, sorry. It there's also the twenty twenty seven VW Jetta. the the both the r regular hybrid and plug in hybrid RAV4s, the twenty-six Chevy Trailblazer, the twenty six twenty-seven Audi Q3, and the twenty six twenty seven Nissan Kicks. And the Nissan Kicks is the only one to get a top safety pick. the big change this year for for this round of testing was they were using the new moderate overlap front crash test, jill ciminillo (1:10:43) Right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:43) which is like a forty percent overlap. against a against a barrier. and so it's it's a tougher test than what they've had before. And the let's see, the Audi and the Trailblazer both got poor scores on that one. jill ciminillo (1:11:00) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:02) the Ravfor hybrid got an acceptable. The plug in hybrid got a a marginal and the Jetta got a good. And so did the so did the kicks. in fact the kicks got good on everything except the front crash prevention vehicle to vehicle. So this is the automatic emergency braking test, for the eight ass and it got a marginal on that one. if it had gotten acceptable or good on that one, it would have gotten a top safety pick plus. but you did did good on everything else. So as long as you're paying attention and you know. you know, driving driving safely, you know, then then hopefully you won't need the automatic emergency braking and everything else will be good. Stephanie Brinley (1:11:52) It's it's Q three didn't do I mean I g didn't get the top safety pick necessarily because of the poor crash chatting test Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:59) Right. jill ciminillo (1:11:59) Mm-hmm. Stephanie Brinley (1:11:59) on the moderate overlap, but it was good on everything else. Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:02) That it's true, yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:12:03) so yeah, the Q three actually though it didn't get the top safety pick, it was it it only it was it was good in everything except for one, just like the Nissan was good in everything except for one. jill ciminillo (1:12:14) Well in the Toyota F four. That was so I I and I Stephanie Brinley (1:12:17) Yeah, both. jill ciminillo (1:12:18) haven't looked at how they are making the IIHS top safety pick awards, but it got an acceptable and the front overlap. Did it need to get a good? Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:28) Yeah, it ha it has to get a good it has to get a good on all the crash tests for a top safety pick. And then jill ciminillo (1:12:32) Okay. Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:35) good or acceptable on the eight ass tests. jill ciminillo (1:12:39) Okay. Yeah, 'cause it it got acceptable just in the front overlap, but everything else was good. So Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:42) Yeah. Yeah, it was it was close. It came very close, but not quite. And interestingly the the plug in hybrid RAV only got a marginal and you know, it's several hundred pounds heavier than the other rev, jill ciminillo (1:12:54) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:54) so that might be why. jill ciminillo (1:12:57) Mm. Stephanie Brinley (1:12:57) Yeah, it might be. Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:59) But the the Jetta the Jetta didn't do so great. i it Stephanie Brinley (1:13:02) No. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:03) but well the Trailblazer was actually the worst. It got three thes. Stephanie Brinley (1:13:05) Strail Blazer is also the oldest in terms of architectural development. It is the oldest of this bunch. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:10) Yeah, it's been around for a while. So poor on the moderate overlap, poor on acceptable or poor on headlights. Yeah. Well here. Actually I've got jill ciminillo (1:13:15) You know, it's a Christmas tree of colours. I don't know if you can't even see it on there, but it's a Christmas tree of colours. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:21) it right here. There we go. There's Stephanie Brinley (1:13:22) Yeah, it is. There you go. jill ciminillo (1:13:24) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:25) the whole chart. So you can see what you can see what everybody got. all right, and then NHTA you know, kind of relating somewhat to to what GM's doing with their personal autonomy, NHTA put out a notice of proposed rulemaking. So they want to change the FM VSS one eight regulation, which among other things covers lighting. And Stephanie Brinley (1:13:56) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:57) they want to add an additional color. So right now You know, headlights are white, turn signals are amber, taillights are red, and they want to add cyan colored lights to indicate that vehicle is being driven autonomously. so there's th there's not the driver is not supervising and it's driving in an automated mode. and Mercedes already did this a couple of years ago with the the S class and EQS when they launched their drive pilot system. they they were the first ones to do this. They had these cyan lights. And this is this is actually the the escalate IQ that they showed last year at the GM forward event when they announced that they were doing the automated driving stuff. So this is the sort of light that they're gonna put on vehicles to indicate that it's in autonomous mode. Stephanie Brinley (1:14:56) Yeah, it's that it seems like well, it takes a while for these to go through to being finalized. but at least it sticks something out there Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:06) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:15:06) that people can work with and you know, just putting it out there can can be enough in some respects because why bother choosing a different color if this is the direction that you think they're gonna go? Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:17) Yeah, the in the industry's already indicated they're gonna go this direction anyway, so Stephanie Brinley (1:15:21) Yeah, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:23) And strangely enough, they're not actually making it mandatory, but they're saying that if you want to indicate autonomous driving, this is the color to use. Stephanie Brinley (1:15:32) This is the color. That makes sense. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:37) and then Toyota has a new GR. Yeah, they they have another jill ciminillo (1:15:39) Like back to Toyota. Stephanie Brinley (1:15:42) Sure. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:43) G R car coming out. We actually so looked saw some pictures of this month or two ago. of so this is gonna be launching in twenty twenty seven as Toyota's new World Rally Championship car, this body style. jill ciminillo (1:15:59) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:00) but it's speculated that this is also going to be a new Silica or Selica. and mid engine. and Stephanie Brinley (1:16:08) Right. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:08) they've got a track version as well that they are gonna be running in Japan in the Super Taiku in a couple of Super Taekyu races for the end of this this year. and one of the drivers is gonna be Akyo Toyota. so this yeah, this is it's an what do you think of this design? jill ciminillo (1:16:30) It makes me think of a Stephanie Brinley (1:16:31) Like it. jill ciminillo (1:16:32) of a Honda Civic type R actually. Stephanie Brinley (1:16:34) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:34) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:16:36) yeah, a little yeah, it does. It does. a little bit less hatchbacky in the back, but yeah, it looks pretty good. Pretty Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:45) I mean Stephanie Brinley (1:16:46) mean. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:46) yeah, I mean some some people you know said, you know, it's a no it's kind of a new R two, but I don't know. I mean compared to the Stephanie Brinley (1:16:52) I know. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:52) R two, it's kind of stubby looking. It it doesn't you Stephanie Brinley (1:16:55) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:55) know, it's not as you know, it doesn't really look as much like a sports car. Yeah, it's mid engine, Stephanie Brinley (1:16:59) No. Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:59) but yeah, it's quite different. Stephanie Brinley (1:17:03) But you know, it's more of a traditional coupe style roof line, which I'm I'm a fan Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:07) Yeah. But with but with big fenders. Stephanie Brinley (1:17:10) of. I'm a fan of that. but I rather like it. The sort of side view in Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:17) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:17:17) the story is really cool. Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:21) and then last one is about a new study that was done by University of Washington looking at how long it takes people to use touch screens. and it's it's not good. Stephanie Brinley (1:17:41) No. Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:42) let's see. let's see. They found that when When people are using a touch screen, the cars were weaving more like a kind of like a drunk drunk driver, the amount of weaving increased by forty two percent on average. and tested drivers also got fifty eight percent worse at finding the input they were hunting for on the touch screen. Which, you know, makes sense, you know, when you're kind of trying to keep one eye on the road and looking at the touch screen because you can't do anything by motion by muscle memory. You know, you actually have to Stephanie Brinley (1:18:20) Mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:20) look at the screen to hit the touch target. it you know, this this does not surprise me. Stephanie Brinley (1:18:26) No, it does not surprise me at all. jill ciminillo (1:18:29) And especially as automakers are putting more and more stuff into the screen. Like my biggest pet peeve is when they put side mirror adjustments or like steering wheel Stephanie Brinley (1:18:37) It was good. jill ciminillo (1:18:38) adjustments in the screen. It without any like Rivian has like thumb wheels, so you tap a button on the screen and then you use your thumb wheels to make the adjustments. But like Polestar, like Stephanie Brinley (1:18:48) Just still yeah. jill ciminillo (1:18:50) was making you do at least in the Polestar three, I think they changed it for four, but Polestar was making you do all of the adjustments through your like screen and it was just it was hard because then you're like driving and you're like 'cause I don't know about you, but like I can never fine tune my mirrors unless I'm actually driving and I'm looking at the sidelines, you know, on Stephanie Brinley (1:19:08) Yeah. Yeah. jill ciminillo (1:19:11) on the highway. You know, even just driving down my driveway like doesn't that doesn't do Stephanie Brinley (1:19:15) No. jill ciminillo (1:19:15) it. And and so then you're like on the fly trying to like hit a button and you know, do this and then, you know, it it's just mm mm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:23) Yeah, lucid does that as well. obviously Tesla does. you know, Rivian's got the the wheels. I mean you still have to touch the screen first to get into that mode, jill ciminillo (1:19:32) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:33) but then you can use the the wheels on the on the steering wheel. Stephanie Brinley (1:19:36) Slightly better. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:37) It's a little bit better. but yeah, both both the lucid gravity and the lucid air are like that. The Volvo EX thirty is like that, as as was the jill ciminillo (1:19:45) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:46) I think the EX ninety might have had that as well. If I recall it's been a jill ciminillo (1:19:49) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:49) while since I drove the EX ninety. jill ciminillo (1:19:51) Yeah. But like the just the like just the tap tap to get through the different screens is really annoying. And you know, they're doing more like natural voice controls in a lot of vehicles, especially for like climate controls when they're putting like your climate controls through the screen. but I mean you know, just w if you don't intuitively or actually know where stuff is, especially as like a first time driver or first time like if you're only have like if you've only had the vehicle for a couple of weeks and you're still trying to get used to it. Yeah, I can see the you know, I I feel like the first couple of days of any test car I have, I'm just like driving like with one eye closed 'cause you're trying to figure out like what's going on with the screens. Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:35) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:20:35) I'm not necessarily in love with the idea that that you solve this by speaking to the car. I know that language models are getting much better than they used to, but that's not my Well, you can't do that. You can't do that, but even the some of the climate that would be stupid. But some of the climate controls and things like that that that they're Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:42) No, you you you can't you can't you can't adjust your mirrors by talking to it. That would be dumb. jill ciminillo (1:20:48) That's true. Yeah. Well, but okay, so some of the Genesis vehicles and Hyundai vehicles have something where it like you put in your height and your weight and your insteam for your genes and then it like in theory will adjust everything to be perfect for Stephanie Brinley (1:21:04) We'll adjust everything. jill ciminillo (1:21:05) you. It does not work for me. But Stephanie Brinley (1:21:08) Yeah. jill ciminillo (1:21:08) I I know a lot of people say it does work for them. Like I end up sitting like this in the in the card and I'm like, Yeah, I can't see, but it like adjusts Stephanie Brinley (1:21:16) Yeah. jill ciminillo (1:21:17) to all of your mirrors and everything. So like you if you if you go through that process, but does not work. Stephanie Brinley (1:21:23) Yeah. It that hasn't worked for me yet either. I was thinking actually earlier today when I was driving the Audi, I was thinking, you know, we have the manual controls for the vents there and and actual door handles. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:38) Ooh. Stephanie Brinley (1:21:39) I was like, well these are good things. jill ciminillo (1:21:41) Not a button. Stephanie Brinley (1:21:42) Nope, not a button, an actual Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:42) Well, I I I've got Stephanie Brinley (1:21:44) door pull. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:44) I've got the the EX thirty in the driveway right now, which has regular door handles, but that's about the limit of it, you know. Ever everything almost everything else is and Stephanie Brinley (1:21:53) Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:55) it has manual manual vents and door handles, which are two of my big complaints. But then they put the mirrors and the steering wheel and everything else in the in the touch screen. And it's it's also got the stupid, you know, only two window switches and then our rear front rear. touch button. jill ciminillo (1:22:12) Mm. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:16) well in in the in the chat pickup truck dot cop sa and pickup truck talk says Sunday night football is on. Didn't you get the memo? Stephanie Brinley (1:22:25) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:27) we're we are wrapping up now, so you know, and of that's what D VRs are for. So you don't have to watch the commercials. jill ciminillo (1:22:31) Back to your football. Yeah, back to your football. Stephanie Brinley (1:22:33) Yeah. jill ciminillo (1:22:34) Yeah, then you don't have to watch the commercials. There are no commercials here. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:37) Yeah. Stephanie Brinley (1:22:38) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:39) Well there will be afterwards, but you know. jill ciminillo (1:22:41) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:42) All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening. Stephanie, thank you for joining us again. thanks, Joel. Stephanie Brinley (1:22:47) Thanks for having again. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:49) And we will jill ciminillo (1:22:49) Thank you. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:49) talk to you all next time. Bye. Stephanie Brinley (1:22:52) Bye.