Sam Abuelsamid (00:00)
This is episode four hundred and seventy four of Wheel Bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:05)
I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.

jill ciminillo (00:09)
And I am Jill Ciminillo of many things. I probably need to get a better title. I know, many many things, many places. I probably need to figure out a better title.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14)
Many things this time, not many places.

Roberto Baldwin (00:20)
I get a rat, round, round, round, I get a rat.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:20)
that's all right. Well well Well,

how's everybody doing this week?

Roberto Baldwin (00:26)
I'm very tired. I'm very busy. I'm tired of busy and then have to get on a plane.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31)
Well luck lucky for you you get to sleep on a plane for a few hours tonight.

Roberto Baldwin (00:36)
everyone's like, ooh, you get to travel with your job. It's not it's not fun. It's not good travel. It's not that they're

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42)
Not it's not glamorous, definitely not.

Roberto Baldwin (00:44)
like, you're going to Germany. I'm like, I see the same yeah, I don't see much of Germany. whatever's like outside the road outside the vehicle,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (00:54)
that's what I see when I'm in Germany. I don't go walking around doing fun stuff. I'm not I'm not going to Germany.

jill ciminillo (01:00)
No. Everybody's like, You should go see

this. You should go see that and you're like, yeah, I'm very scheduled for the entire time that I'm wherever I'm at. There is no optional anything.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:08)
It's it's yeah, it's it's it's

pretty rare that we get much excess time. I mean la last week when we were in New York was one of the few times when I've actually had a few hours to do something.

Roberto Baldwin (01:20)
Yeah, that was a weird trip. They're like, you got a few minutes to do something. You're like, What I didn't though because I had a bunch of work to do, but

Sam Abuelsamid (01:28)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (01:29)
There w there

jill ciminillo (01:30)
I went for a walk.

Roberto Baldwin (01:30)
was the opportunity to do something. I didn't take part, but I I had the opportunity, but you know, work.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:39)
all right. Well let's let's dive into this week's stuff. Jill, what have you been

driving?

jill ciminillo (01:44)
Yes.

yeah, so I'm currently in a very teal Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. I think they they call it like Wave Maker is the is the color. new for twenty twenty six. And it is a very, very large vehicle and I did not try and fit it in my garage this week. I didn't I didn't I'm like, I'm just too tired. I'm not even gonna play the game.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:05)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (02:08)
No.

jill ciminillo (02:09)
so I am I am parallel parked on the street this week and I have to say, I did a ding

Fine job of parallel parking if I do say so myself. but it is it is large, there are no running boards, so I feel like I need to like have a running start to get into the vehicle. but I mean it it's very smooth. I drove to Iowa this week. I yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (02:30)
Well, you're very athletic, so I mean you should have no problem jumping up.

jill ciminillo (02:33)
I pull vault into it. but it is it is comfortable for the long haul. I drove to Iowa.

So it was like six hours, you know, three hours there, three hours back. And you know, cruise control works well and I you know, it it's a comfortable cabin, lots of good technology, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and just good good all around vibes, but it is it is very large and it is not nimble. It is not nimble at all.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:01)
Well,

it's not often that a full size truck could be described as nimble.

jill ciminillo (03:08)
No, you know, I feel like as a petite driver, my favorite full size truck is the Ford F one fifty. And it does a decent job of being nimble, but I think more of that is because of the better visibility that I get in that in that truck with the lower belt line and then it has the kick down windows. So, you know, the the front window of the w of the side windows kicks down a little bit and then your side mirrors are lower. So, you know, you can see when you're in a four-way stop so you don't hit pedestrians and

of bonus. and it is you know so for me like that that is probably like on the most nimble side of the scale and the the tundra and mean especially the TRD Pro it's just it's just big. It's big.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:51)
So how how

how did that thing do on on using gas? How many how many gas stops did you have to make in that six hours?

jill ciminillo (03:59)
So, I mean, here's the good news is the fuel tank is very large, but it requires premium fuel. Not so good. so I mean, I got there and I still had like two hundred and fifty miles of range and I was like, Nah, I probably don't need to fill up and I'm like, wait, but Iowa,

Sam Abuelsamid (04:14)
huh.

jill ciminillo (04:14)
way better gas prices than Chicago. So, but I I was you know, I I I was not getting the EPA estimated fuel economy, which

That is, let's see, let me look at the sticker sheet really quick. That is of course it's not gonna come up now. but it it it was not I feel like it was I was like well below actually the the like 16 miles per gallon on the highway, going at actual highway speeds.

When you are so it says you should get 18 miles per gallon in the city, wasn't doing that. I was getting about 14.2 miles per gallon. And it says 20 miles per gallon on the highway. Definitely was not doing that. When I was in like the 65 mile an hour range, so surrounding the city, I was probably closer to like 18, 19 miles per gallon. But as soon as I got on the open road where there was 70 mile an hour speed limits and traffic was actually going eighty.

you know, the the fuel economy tanked. And I I think I've I currently have about sixteen point seven miles per gallon on the trip computer. So didn't didn't do the calculations. did not do the maths, but so not not getting EPAS. So so it was definitely a a little bit of a fuel sucker, even though it has a hybrid powertrain. The hybrid powertrain is not about fuel economy, it's more about fo power.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:38)
Yeah, I've I mean I've driven several tundras and Tacoma's and Sequoia's and and the Lexus L X over the last several years since they introduced that hybrid system. And it's really not very efficient. and I've seventeen to eighteen is about the best I've ever managed to get with any of those vehicles.

jill ciminillo (05:59)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean they were very upfront about it at the vehicle launch, you know, four years ago that the point was towing and power wasn't actually fuel economy.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:11)
Well, I mean w what's interesting is that you know it's a it's a very similar architecture. I mean, you know, you've got a twin turbo V six, three point four liters, you know, similar in size and output to the Ford three point five liter EcoBoost. the the hybrid system is very similar in architecture. You know, that they Ford and Toyota did their own, but same basic concept in both. They have similar amount of electrical power, similar battery sizes, and yet

F one fifty hybrids I've found always do significantly better. You know, they have this rough you know, comparable power in torque. I think the Toyota might have a little more torque and the Ford's got a little more power, or maybe it's the other way around. But you know, there's they're similar and yet the Ford always seems to get significantly better fuel economy than the the Toyota.

jill ciminillo (06:59)
Yeah. I would agree with that.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:05)
So did you did you haul any mulch with the with the with the tundra or?

jill ciminillo (07:11)
I did not. I did not. I I would say

Sam Abuelsamid (07:12)
Well I guess as an apartment as

an apartment liver you probably don't have a h huge demand for mulch.

jill ciminillo (07:16)
No no no real demand for mulch. I I I think the the the the test that I did is I was visiting a friend in Iowa, actually guest spoke at her, she's a college professor, a guest spoke at her class about media and social media and all of that kind of stuff, but we went to a fundraiser and so the the test was can two women in evening gowns and high heels

get

Sam Abuelsamid (07:41)
Ha ha.

jill ciminillo (07:42)
in and out of the truck without falling flat on their face?

And we were successful in that. So winning.

Roberto Baldwin (07:48)
Yay.

jill ciminillo (07:49)
Winning.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:49)
Outstanding.

jill ciminillo (07:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (07:52)
Finally, a full size vehicle for the lady on the go.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:56)
Ha ha.

jill ciminillo (07:56)
Exactly.

I mean, I will say sidesteps or running boards would have been helpful, but alas, we did not call.

Roberto Baldwin (08:02)
yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:05)
all right. Any other thoughts on the tundra?

jill ciminillo (08:09)
It's a handsome truck. I I would say of all of the full size trucks out there, it is the best looking truck. but you know, in terms of fuel economy and overall agility, not not the best.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:22)
I I do like that Wave Maker color. and that's that's exclusive to the to the T R D pros. you can't get it on any of the other trim levels.

jill ciminillo (08:32)
Yeah, it is it is vibrant and very

Sam Abuelsamid (08:34)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (08:35)
visible and I did not speed 'cause it was

Sam Abuelsamid (08:37)
Ha ha ha

jill ciminillo (08:38)
like 'cause it would be like, yeah, it was that guy in the very blue truck. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:41)
Yeah.

All right. Robbie, what about you?

Roberto Baldwin (08:48)
I drove okay, so let me so last week I had the twenty twenty six Subaru Trailseeker. I've been waiting for this vehicle for a long time. I actually had it scheduled for a time where I was going to go like off-roading and camping, and then I don't know what happened. Who knows? Like blown who knows. Sometimes they're like, the car is in the shop or some other reason. I don't know. Subaru person came into town, needed it. So I had it, but I didn't get to go off roading or camping. Womp womp.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:15)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (09:17)
That said, the Trail Seeker is essentially just it's like, hey, you want an Outback, but it's electric? Ta da. That's what the Trail Seeker is. Yeah, it's by passenger SUV, you know, Subaru's synchronous all wheel drive sync all wheel drive system. I'm sorry, not synchronous, symmetrical.

Symmetrical all wheel drive so if one slips the other grips. That's the thing I always like to tap t tell people. it's got eight point five inches of ground clearance, which is a a nice amount. It'll do zero sixty in four point four seconds, which is pretty quick, really. It's a it's a very quick vehicle for it's it's quicker than you anticipate, especially if you're used to Subarus that don't have like X's or I's in them. Like it doesn't have it, it's not WRX, it's not STI. Like the B R Z is kind of quick, not

The CRZ is not made for, you know, zero to sixties. It's for going around corners. so this thing is yeah, it's it's it's weirdly quick. It's like the X XE forty, the the the Volvo. When that came out, you're like, whoa, why is this thing so fast?

Sam Abuelsamid (10:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (10:25)
It's that sort of experience. Like, gosh, what's happening? But it has knacks. it's got a seventy four point seven kilowatt hour

Battery pack and it'll do 274 miles. That's about 3.6, 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour. which is pretty good for an all-wheel drive vehicle. I d I think I I last week I'm like, I'm gonna do this range run and then I just didn't. I've been r super yeah, we've I got a magazine I'm late on. I got yeah, I'm just I'm a busy, busy man and taking two two and a half hours of my time to drive a hundred miles.

just wasn't in the cards unfortunately. That said, I really, really like this vehicle. Except for the front. The very front of it. I'm just like, it's it's No,

Sam Abuelsamid (11:15)
You don't like the face of the trailseeker?

Roberto Baldwin (11:17)
it just feels it's just like they're like, what are we gonna put there? I don't know. Nothing. That was sort of the decision. What

Sam Abuelsamid (11:20)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (11:23)
do we well they'll put the logo and it's you know what? Who cares? And just wandered off.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:30)
It's got the new

the new Subaru lights, you know, the the s the six element lights. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (11:33)
It's got the lights and everything, but there's

the grill is just like, Why bother? It's just like

jill ciminillo (11:36)
It's blank face. Blank face.

Roberto Baldwin (11:41)
Yeah, it's it's a nothing face. but the rest of the car, you know, I like it. It's got you know, it's got rails on the top, like a Subaru. I w I did go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of stuff. I bought like a ten foot long like two by eight? Two by ten? Two by ten. ten foot long and I you know, it it it did sort of like

Encroach in the front seat. I did use the again, I I can't stress this enough. just get a cheap tarp. Yeah, I did use the tarp. and then when you need to move things in and out, things just slide in and out on the tarp. It's real easy. It doesn't even if you're not like, you know, getting cars that don't belong to you and you don't want to scratch up with your shenanigans. yeah, no, it's it it it it's I really like and you it ri again, it's like it's it's it's an electric outback.

If you're like, man, I really I want an outback but you know what, I don't I I really don't wanna pay for gas anymore. Or, you know, I don't like the fact that, you know, mountains are on fire or I don't like the fact that, you know, the world's worse than Nino or the oceans are getting and they're getting the all the c fun climate change stuff that we keep putting off.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:54)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:55)
We'll take care of that later. It's like the stairs in my backyard that I finally finished. That's why I went and got that's why when I had the Subaru, I finally finished the stairs down my hill. that's climate change. Six years later, after you built three stairs, you finished the other eight. Hopefully we don't wait a a long time. yeah, it's very comfortable. It's got you know, it's it's got the their infotainment system which is fine. You just gotta plug your phone in. That's

It's got wireless car play, wireless android auto. Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy. What I do not like is that when I put it in reverse it like beeps at me.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:35)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (13:35)
yeah,

that it is it is hard and it's like I know I'm in reverse. You don't need to squawk at me

and tell me reverse.

Roberto Baldwin (13:40)
It's so you know what it is? It's

it's like two generations ago Prius where you would put in reverse and it would beep like a c like a truck backing up, but it only beefed inside the vehicle. It didn't beep

jill ciminillo (13:50)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (13:51)
outside the vehicle. It's like that. You're like and I I thought that I was

Sam Abuelsamid (13:52)
Yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin (13:54)
I'm like, did I not close a door? Is my seatbelt not attached? Did I throw something heavy on a seat and now it thinks there's someone sitting there? So it's like, hey, this person Nope, just beep so

Sam Abuelsamid (14:04)
That that's

that's the Toyota heritage in this 'cause you know, this was co developed with Toyota. Yeah, the the Toyota B Z Woodland is the same vehicle with a different grill and different badges. but yeah, Toyota Toyota likes to Toyota vehicles like to beep at you a lot.

Roberto Baldwin (14:19)
Hey, hey,

hey you backing up? Just wanted you to know. Every few seconds

Sam Abuelsamid (14:22)
Yeah. you're you're

you're you're you're moving the cars around in your driveway? Yeah, and you haven't put your seatbelt on? Beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah. Lots lots

Roberto Baldwin (14:32)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:33)
of beeping.

Roberto Baldwin (14:34)
Yeah, the the the Toyota Heritage, the too much stuff in the in the the the steering wheel thing, the the the clustering of everything in the right hand corner in the dash.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:43)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (14:44)
But everything's clustered in one little spot and you're like, What are you I can't understand what any of this is 'cause it's just noise now. It's the so

Sam Abuelsamid (14:51)
But it

but at least now you can see the dash, unlike on the original Soltera and B Z four X.

Roberto Baldwin (14:54)
That's true. Yeah.

So you can see the dash. it's it yeah, it's it's a good sou it's a good subaru, except for me ever you want to go in reverse and you're like, wait, what's what am I what is my what are all these little things? You're squinching your eyes. Tiny little

Sam Abuelsamid (15:11)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (15:12)
It's too much. It's too much. Too much going on in the steering wheel. Just settle down. Settle down. What why are we doing all this? What's happening? What's

So yeah, so the twenty twenty six twelve seaver, which which which one did I have? Limited, which is, you know the one they have the most. Yeah, danger.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:30)
That's the That's the mid trim, right?

Roberto Baldwin (15:33)
I think it's this it

Let's just say yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:38)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (15:41)
we're gonna look.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:43)
Yeah, I think it's premium limited and touring.

Roberto Baldwin (15:45)
That's what it is. That it's that's the confusing thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:48)
Yeah. 'Cause

jill ciminillo (15:49)
Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (15:49)
you know.

jill ciminillo (15:49)
'cause limited

is usually a top trim, but no no no, let's put it in the middle.

Roberto Baldwin (15:52)
No,

Sam Abuelsamid (15:52)
Yeah. No,

Roberto Baldwin (15:53)
no.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:53)
it you

know, the pre premium should be your entry level. That that should be the minimum that you sell to somebody. And then you go up from there.

Roberto Baldwin (15:56)
Yeah. That's the premium.

You go up from there. So the premium starts at forty. The limited starts at forty four. So I got the forty four thousand dollar one. apparently zero they added zero things to it. They're like, here you go, here's your here's your damn car. it was it was in white. Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:22)
Yeah. The most boring colour.

Roberto Baldwin (16:26)
Yeah. and then they try to you know, they try to gloss it up, you know, try to pretty it up with crystal white pearl. Sure, why not? Whatever you wanna say.

jill ciminillo (16:33)
Wait is

Sam Abuelsamid (16:34)
What yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (16:35)
Yeah. the charge speed is out is is is one fifty, which is the weird you know, Toyota's been doing a great job at like efficiency, they've been doing a great job at including range, but they're still like rolling the four hundred volt system and like really not pushing it to at least two hundred

charging a two hundred kilowatt. So that's sort of a bummer. and it it's got knacks, so you can charge it all the places so you can throw an adapter on charges. the let's see. the destination. You guys want to guess at the destination charge?

Sam Abuelsamid (17:12)
Fourteen hundred dollars.

jill ciminillo (17:17)
See and I was gonna save like fourteen ninety five.

Roberto Baldwin (17:21)
Jill wins by forty by five dollars. It's fourteen fifty.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:25)
Ooh, there you go. First win for Jill.

Roberto Baldwin (17:26)
Good job. So

jill ciminillo (17:26)
Okay.

sh sh woo should I have

Roberto Baldwin (17:29)
first woo

jill ciminillo (17:31)
you guys d guess the destination on the tundra? I didn't I didn't play that game with you.

Roberto Baldwin (17:34)
You can we can go back.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:37)
Yeah, well w take take your guess, Robbie. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (17:39)
Let's just do it now.

the Tundra, sixteen ninety five.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:45)
I think it's two thousand ninety five. 'Cause Toyota has not gone as crazy as the domestic trucks. Is it two Yeah.

jill ciminillo (17:49)
On the nose, ma'am. Yep. Yep, nope.

Roberto Baldwin (17:52)
It's two thousand two thousand ninety five.

jill ciminillo (17:55)
On the nose. Yep.

Roberto Baldwin (17:56)
No wonder

Sam wanted to play. He already knew the answer. He's

Sam Abuelsamid (17:58)
Ha ha ha

jill ciminillo (17:59)
He's like, I know what that is.

Roberto Baldwin (18:00)
like, No, no, no, let's play it now while I still have it my brain. yeah, anyway, so I drove to Trail Seeker and then this week I got another giant vehicle. I have a house. I live in the suburbs. I shouldn't be that annoyed by giant vehicles. Yet i they just don't make any sense. I for me. I s

I got the Ford the 2026 Ford Expedition Platinum 4x4 Max. I can put eight passengers in it. It's got a third row. I don't have seven friends. I have a wife, I have some dogs.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:31)
You got two dogs and a couple of cats?

Roberto Baldwin (18:33)
Yeah, the cats don't want to go anywhere. They're happy where they're at. The dogs always want to go. But Ford is the one aut automaker that in their little paperwork, it's like do not put animals in our car.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:43)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (18:46)
test vehicles, yeah, fair.

Roberto Baldwin (18:47)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. so yeah, they're they're very adamant. Don't you don't you don't you put a co dog in our car. Don't you do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (18:55)
I I

made I made the mistake one time. I had a Mustang convertible and I put our our old Corgi Rosie in the back seat and took a picture of her in there. You know, we were stopped

at a red light and she was looking out. and I I posted that on Instagram and then the next day got a note from Ford said, Please don't do that again

Roberto Baldwin (19:17)
Wow. Yeah. I Yeah, Subaru was like, gee,

jill ciminillo (19:20)
They are not pet friendly, not like Subaru. Subaru wants all the dogs.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:22)
Nope. Well

Roberto Baldwin (19:24)
could you could you put some like I was going on a trip with my dogs and they were supposed to have a car that week and I told the fleet guy and I'm like, Hey, I don't you know, I'm going somewhere, it's off road. Also I have my dogs with me. And then like the next day it's like, Hey Subaru would love to give you a car

Sam Abuelsamid (19:41)
huh.

Roberto Baldwin (19:42)
to play conviction with your dogs.

And then I took all these pictures of my dog in the Subaru and I sent them over the car and driver, and they never posted them in the social media.

Sam Abuelsamid (19:48)
Ugh Bummer.

Roberto Baldwin (19:51)
Like that was like my thing whenever I got cars, is I I got them all all these photos for social media and they didn't do it. I'm like, I got the dog in the car. It was just the one dog at the time. Anyway, back to the Ford Expedition Platinum 4x4 Max 8 passenger 3.5 liter Eco Boost V6, 10 speed automatic, something up there by the

the I I'm completely confused by what I'd have no idea what it is. it says four A next to the drive select in the dash cluster. I'm like, it's enforced gear automatic but that doesn't make any sense. So then I even like did the aus the the auto gear, like the gears where you select the gear. No. No, that didn't I'm like and I just haven't had time to like look it up but I just

Sam Abuelsamid (20:34)
Four that's

that's f four wheel auto, four wheel drive automatic. So

it when it it will it's like all wheel drive basically. So it n it normally drives in rear wheel drive and

Roberto Baldwin (20:46)
Why does it need it?

Sam Abuelsamid (20:47)
then when when it detects slip it automatically engages the drive to the front wheels.

Roberto Baldwin (20:52)
Why does it need to tell me that? Just literally no reason for that.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:55)
So so that

you can distinguish it from four wheel drive high and four wheel drive low?

Roberto Baldwin (21:01)
Again, the Ford Expedition Four by Four Four by Four is essentially like, we had to pick someone up from the airport and it's snowing. That's what the Ford

jill ciminillo (21:15)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (21:15)
Expedition four by four is for. We had to pick

Sam Abuelsamid (21:18)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (21:18)
someone up from the airport and then we have to drop off at a ranch on a dirt road. And maybe it rained a little.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:25)
Well,

you know, I mean, to be fair, there are some people with large families, you know, with multiple children

jill ciminillo (21:30)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:31)
and you know, they they wanna haul everybody around, you know, or haul an entire soccer team, you know, or well, most of a soccer team. you know, so I mean there are some people who have a use for a vehicle that large.

Roberto Baldwin (21:42)
I'm listen, I

no, I see the the largeness of the vehicle, but it's not like it's not just rugged off rotor.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:50)
No, no, definitely not.

Roberto Baldwin (21:51)
It is it has the auto like little side steps, little steps

Sam Abuelsamid (21:56)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (21:56)
that pop out. Yeah, that's the running boards up yeah, power running boards are always

jill ciminillo (21:58)
The running boards, power running boards. Love those.

Roberto Baldwin (22:01)
a bad sign for anything that's off road because you're gonna just break those. They're just they're not

jill ciminillo (22:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (22:07)
those aren't made for off roading, they're made for breaking. They're made for like, hey, I want to get in the car and I'm

You I'm Jill.

jill ciminillo (22:13)
Yes, that is fair. I need those.

Roberto Baldwin (22:14)
These are they're literally the

Jill the Jill feature. So I had the the

jill ciminillo (22:18)
The chill step.

Roberto Baldwin (22:19)
Jill feature. That's it. Very, very comfortable. Very huge. you know, it it's it that that three point five liter Eco Boost V six, bit a pr you know it did a a a tolerable job at hauling it around. Sometimes you're like you put in they put in your like wait what's there it goes. There's the engine. There we go.

It's got ten speeds. It's got a ten speed on my transmission. And even then it's just like, which one?

Sam Abuelsamid (22:50)
It's gotta do a little thinking.

Roberto Baldwin (22:52)
three? Four? yeah. So yeah, it's it's very large. It's very Ooh, it does have this really cool thing. The center console slides back and forth. It's got a little button. So you can c open the center console and close the center console. I'm like, ooh, this will totally break.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:12)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:12)
That's all I can think of.

Because the kids are gonna be playing with it all the time if you have children. If you're an adult with one of these, if you're a fleet,

fine.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:19)
Can can you control

it from the second row or is it only from the first row?

Roberto Baldwin (23:23)
I don't know, I didn't try it from the second row. I would hope you wouldn't be able to control it from the second row. 'Cause you're like just sitting there's all rrrr

Sam Abuelsamid (23:27)
Yeah, 'cause yeah, 'cause then you'd have your then the kids

would would be running it back and forth.

jill ciminillo (23:30)
Then it would definitely be

broken. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:32)
Like you're like driving,

you're drinking your drink and your kid moves it back like, you know, six inches, you put your drink down and just falls into the abyss. Is that what you want? Your kids are laughing, giggling. Mom and dad are idiots. Why do they buy this? yeah. It's tons and tons and tons and tons of room. so much room for everything. It has a little tailgate. So the back opens and it has a little tailgate and then that'll

jill ciminillo (23:57)
yeah, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:58)
open. Which is nice. I kinda I I I enjoy those.

Because you know, sometimes you have stuff that's you know, especially if you're parked on a hill. I'm like, I gotta open the tailgate and all my stuff's gonna roll. So then you're in anticipation, like all kinda underneath the car, waiting and waiting. So yeah, so I I I enjoy that. it is not great on gas. I got fourteen point eight miles per gallon. Courtney EPA combined is eighteen. city is fifteen, highway twenty two. I did both. I think probably most

Yeah, it's it's not yeah, it's Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot lot lot of money for gas if you're if you're looking at this. it does have like a hill descent control, which is again, I I think is great for people who are on a hill and it's snowy or it's muddy or it's rocky or it's whatever and people tend to like stand on the brakes and now your car's just sliding down the hill. So hill descent control. Yay, good job.

That it's just a nice like light blue. What blue do they call this? Glacier grey. So I guess it's not even blue. It's like a like a grey. So kinda like a glacier. Yeah,

jill ciminillo (25:13)
Glaciers have a blue tinge.

Roberto Baldwin (25:14)
and the thing, you know, it goes through so much glass, gr gasoline, you know. It's helping to you know, it it's helping melt glaciers, so we gotta have something to look at when the glaciers

jill ciminillo (25:21)
Melt the glaciers. Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (25:25)
are gone and it'll be the

Ford Expedition Max.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:26)
You can you'll still have you'll

still have an expedition that looks like a glacier.

Roberto Baldwin (25:29)
The Ford Expedition Max Platinum 4x4. It's great for picking people up at the airport. It's great for if you have a lot of friends. If you're not me, if you're like if you're a party person, you're like, hey, we're all going out. Everyone get in the car.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:42)
Well,

you know, I mean you you could put, you know, probably all the equipment for two of your bands in there.

Roberto Baldwin (25:50)
Probably. Yeah. It's too fancy though. It's a very fanci it's it's it's

jill ciminillo (25:54)
So can you sit at the third row?

Roberto Baldwin (25:56)
like a link it's just like a step down Lincoln without the long without the long screen, which I appreciate. it does have the the opposite of the Trailseeker steering wheel controls, which are like, here's all the buttons. It's like these blank buttons and then little things flash like light up like the old the Jag was it, Jaguar or Land Rover?

jill ciminillo (26:19)
It w it was the

Prius used to have that where you would like put your thumb on the wheel and it would flash what you were selecting.

Roberto Baldwin (26:26)
Yeah, it c it shows

Sam Abuelsamid (26:26)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (26:27)
up in the dash cluster what it is. So what you're doing is like, okay, because I didn't know what I could not figure it out. For like the first couple minutes I'm trying to test out Blue Cruise. I'm like, I gotta test out Blue Cruise, see if it still turns off on a straight line. And I'm like, what what what's hap finally I'm like, it's up here. I can see what is here. But there is a few minutes where I'm like looking down, looking up, looking down, looking up, looking down, 'cause I'm like, what is happening? And then you finally okay, it's all showing up on on the thing.

So it's kinda I I don't I'm really torn on it 'cause I feel like that the amount of time it took me to figure out out worked. I'm like, what is I I I'm gonna we're all gonna die. and then once I figured out I'm like, okay, this is so bad. Like the right ones for media controls and you know, as you kinda like scroll over, you know, or or brush against it, like the media controls pop up on the on the dash cluster, which is like, okay, so okay, forward, back, up, down, all right, cool. And then the you know

Once you figure out blue crews, okay, up down, left, right, whatever. so yeah, it's kind of a it's a it's it's clever for the sake of clever, I think. It doesn't need to does it need to be like that? Not really.

jill ciminillo (27:35)
Give me physical controls.

Roberto Baldwin (27:37)
Yeah. D does it does it does that is that what it needs? No? Okay. A and the gears are probably like the volume control like underneath this the display? It's all gear up, gear down. I'm like 'cause I kept I'm like, what is that thing right there? Is that to change gears? No, I'm not doing that. It's so weird. It's like what is that thing up there? 'Cause I at first I'm like, wait, 'cause I knew that the the

Center console went back and forth. I'm like, is that to change the center? No, no, that's on the actual Central Console. What is that? I'm just like getting closer and closer to this weird thing. again, very comfortable. sometimes I get into these luxury vehicles and I'm like, ugh, these seats suck. this one, no, not so much. That's actually quite comfortable. So yeah, Ford Expedition match, not cheap. The base price for this this bad Rambo Jammer was seventy six thousand hundred and fifty dollars. they threw a bunch of options on there.

including the Platinum Ultimate package, which was fourteen thousand five hundred and seventy dollars. Fourteen

Sam Abuelsamid (28:43)
Ooh.

Roberto Baldwin (28:44)
thousand. But you get tires and wheels.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:48)
You don't get those without the platinum ultimate package? It just it just comes with brake rotors and

Roberto Baldwin (28:51)
I guess not. I guess you just Yeah, they're just like clonk.

jill ciminillo (28:56)
On a jack. It's the Chicago

Roberto Baldwin (28:57)
Yeah, it also has a two thousand dollar

jill ciminillo (28:59)
edition.

Roberto Baldwin (28:59)
rear seat entertainment. For two

Sam Abuelsamid (28:59)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:01)
thousand dollars for rear seat entertainment. I mean an iPad, like, how much can you buy an iPad?

Sam Abuelsamid (29:04)
See in in in twenty yeah, in twenty

in in twenty twenty six that seen you know, I'm not sure why anybody buys Re Seat Entertainment systems anymore.

Roberto Baldwin (29:14)
In the world of iPads. Exactly.

jill ciminillo (29:15)
I know because i

phones, iPads. okay, so my question for you you're taller. Could you sit in the third row? Did you try and sit in the third row?

Roberto Baldwin (29:23)
I don't typically try to be honest. It's

jill ciminillo (29:26)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (29:26)
not it's it's it it looks like I could. I look like I'd be fine back there for a it's like around town type of thing. It's yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:33)
I I

I did I have tried the third row when when they did the the background or last year before they launched it, I I crawled into the third row and it it was fine. you know, I'm like five eleven. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:43)
It's in a round town third row. Yeah.

Like, hey, we're just gonna go five

jill ciminillo (29:47)
Yeah, 'cause people are like

Roberto Baldwin (29:48)
miles to this thing and it's and not in LA, we're gonna go five miles. They're like it's gonna be twenty minutes. Like, I can I can deal with that.

jill ciminillo (29:55)
I I am apparently not a good measure of who will actually fit in a third row. So I s I've I've I've started drawing my husband into the third row with me and asking other people how they fit in the third row because people are like, You're the size of a ten year old. That's who we're gonna put back there. We wanna know if adults fit. I'm like, but I'm an adult. An adult.

Roberto Baldwin (30:12)
Well they don't. They don't. Just

Sam Abuelsamid (30:13)
Yeah, well and and your husband's pretty tall,

Roberto Baldwin (30:15)
I feel like

Sam Abuelsamid (30:15)
so

Roberto Baldwin (30:15)
the default should just be no. And this is like a big

jill ciminillo (30:18)
Yeah, well, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (30:19)
like again, an expedition or a navigator or a minivan. For the most part third rows are sorta decorative for adults. They're like, hey, I need to put some stuff back there, I don't want it to roll around. So I have this nice

jill ciminillo (30:30)
I figured

the max version would maybe have a little more legroom. I don't know.

Roberto Baldwin (30:34)
Probably. I don't know.

I guess. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (30:36)
It it it actually does

have a little more leg room back there in the max. So you got it's split between leg

Roberto Baldwin (30:41)
You know, for around town.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:42)
room and extra cargo space behind the third row.

So so I mean ad

Roberto Baldwin (30:45)
Yeah. There's a lot of it's you know, it's

Sam Abuelsamid (30:47)
adults adults will fit in that third row. You probably don't want to do a cross country trip as an adult back there,

jill ciminillo (30:52)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:53)
but I mean theoretically you could. You know, certainly, you know, teenagers would have no problem back.

Roberto Baldwin (31:00)
So yeah. Again,

jill ciminillo (31:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:01)
twenty minutes. That's a but you know I need to go somewhere,

Sam Abuelsamid (31:02)
Yeah. And you know

Roberto Baldwin (31:03)
twenty minutes, I'm tall, I'm six three. Easy peasy.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:05)
Yeah. And

and with all the second or third row seats folded down flat, you know, you could you could probably put five or six dog kennels in there.

Roberto Baldwin (31:15)
yeah, you put lot of lot of stuff back there. so yeah, you can't do No Pets. No dogs.

jill ciminillo (31:17)
Just as long as it's not a test vehicle. No pets in those.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:20)
Well I mean yeah, well I mean, you know, for for the the r for the regular owner. Although Fort Fort Ford is probably

gonna be giving us one of these for Operation Frodo in December, so

Roberto Baldwin (31:31)
well yeah, for this is perfect. I mean it we're not we're gonna be paying a lot of money in gas, but it's really it's great.

jill ciminillo (31:31)
Ironic That's ironic.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:33)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:37)
It's comfortable, it's got blue crews, it's got a ton of room, it's gonna fit a thousand beagles. So there you go. Expedition max four by four because we might be hitting snow or

who's

Sam Abuelsamid (31:47)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (31:48)
or whatnot. yeah, there you go. destination, you guys wanna take a take a wild stab in the dark at how much it costs to have this dropped off at your local dealership, not even at your house.

jill ciminillo (32:03)
What do you say sixteen ninety five?

Sam Abuelsamid (32:05)
Ooh. You haven't been paying attention to these, have you, on the on the especially on the trucks lately? It's it's twenty seven ninety five.

jill ciminillo (32:10)
No, no, well no. Is what is Holy SNKI! What?

Roberto Baldwin (32:17)
mine says twenty five ninety five. So so Ford is like Yeah, so so what's

Sam Abuelsamid (32:17)
Yeah. okay. So so yours w yours was built a few months ago. It

Roberto Baldwin (32:22)
happened is like Ford's like, we're not gonna raise prices on tariffs. Psych, yes they did. They just crammed it in destination charge. Ford's

Sam Abuelsamid (32:27)
They just hit it in the destination charge. Yeah. All

jill ciminillo (32:28)
Destination fees.

Roberto Baldwin (32:32)
destination charges are bonkers.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:34)
Yeah, well

all all three, GM, Ford and

jill ciminillo (32:35)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:37)
and Stellantis on their full size trucks and SUVs, they're all they've all gone up like four times in the last year and a half. and they're up they're all up to twenty seven ninety five now. At the beginning

Roberto Baldwin (32:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:50)
of last year they were nineteen ninety five.

Roberto Baldwin (32:52)
twenty seven ninety five. I like to say that's ten percent of a of a slate.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:57)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (32:58)
Ten percent the cost of a slate. It's ten percent the cost of a of a maverick. So ten percent of a maverick is the destination charge for the expedition max or that's that's a house payment. Yeah,

jill ciminillo (33:07)
Good grief. Yeah, I mean that's that's rent. That that is more than I pay in rent, actually.

Roberto Baldwin (33:16)
that's a that's that's a house payment for s for you know

Not me, I live in the Bay Area. But for some pe for other people that's that's yeah, that's right. So yes, that's the four deck.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:25)
That's that's like one and a half times my mortgage payment.

Roberto Baldwin (33:28)
we don't want to hear your s your s your crazy weird I live out in the middle of nowhere.

jill ciminillo (33:29)
In Michigan.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:32)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (33:35)
Gonna

Sam Abuelsamid (33:35)
And and

I don't live in Ann Arbor, so you know, that helps. I live just outside of Ann Arbor. So makes a difference.

Roberto Baldwin (33:42)
I always whenever I see people like I bought a boat, I'm like, how can you afford a you live in Michigan.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:48)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (33:49)
And I live in the Bay Area.

jill ciminillo (33:52)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:53)
In in the Bay

jill ciminillo (33:53)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:54)
Area, you know, un unless you work for like one of the AI companies or you know, one of the other tech companies, you know.

jill ciminillo (33:59)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:00)
The

the only boat you get to use is like the ferry that goes across the bay.

Roberto Baldwin (34:04)
I will tell you that the the the existential crisis that I have every time someone p offers up a job that fits exactly what I know how to do and pays three to four times what I make. But it's an AI company and I'm like, Nope, I can't. I can't. I got I

jill ciminillo (34:23)
Mm.

Roberto Baldwin (34:23)
I have to be able to sleep at night. I'm very U yeah, the amount of jobs I've turned down because I have a moral compass like an idiot.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:35)
There's your problem. Yep. Just go

Roberto Baldwin (34:35)
Like an absolute that is my pro I need to ditch my moral compass. so

jill ciminillo (34:37)
Ditch the moral compass.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:41)
I mean all you gotta do is just go for the money for a few years, you know, stock up your

Roberto Baldwin (34:45)
It's talking.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:46)
retirement fund and you know, pay off your mortgage, and then you know, go back to being a poor journalist.

Roberto Baldwin (34:53)
My wife, when I was freelance and she was gonna be okay for money, I th I think we'll be okay. And then I told her about a company that had sort of offered me a job years earlier. And I'm like, Well they'll pay me like double at least what I'm making, you know? And she's said, Well, will you be happy? And I'm like, Well yeah I'm but yeah, but I've been making a lot of money. She's like, Have you ever done anything for money? And that is like I'm like, okay. She's like, It's fine. We make enough. We can pay our bills

The dogs are happy, the cats are happy, we can afford burritos and tacos. I mean Yeah, we go on a

Sam Abuelsamid (35:27)
There you go. You're all set.

jill ciminillo (35:28)
Breedos and talk.

Roberto Baldwin (35:29)
we're all set. So anyway, that's for expedition. and if you see me ordering off the value menu, you know why. Out in the streets. What's Roberto dude? Isn't he a fancy journalist? Why is he ordering off the value menu? I'm because I'm a fancy journalist.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:44)
There's

jill ciminillo (35:48)
I was like fancy and journalist do not go together.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:51)
There there

are a few out there but you know, they they work

Roberto Baldwin (35:53)
I am not

Sam Abuelsamid (35:54)
for publications like The Atlantic or you know, Vogue or you know some you know, some condenas publication.

Roberto Baldwin (36:00)
I w yeah. I have a

yeah. Well, I worked at Wired for a little while and I'll t a anyway, it's a long story. I don't have time for that 'cause I gotta leave in a little while, so it was

Sam Abuelsamid (36:08)
All right.

Roberto Baldwin (36:09)
about hotels and like they were like, you gotta stay in this very boutique hotel. I'm like, No, I can't our T our our our travel and e expense budget won't of allow me to stay there like but this is the w because it's Conde Nass, Wired and Vogue are in the same place. So they were like, you're like a Vogue person. So here's this very expensive hotel room and I'm like, No and I tell my editor's like, No

So we found a cheap hotel, thank God.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:34)
All right. Well, I had the Kia K five G T line front wheel drive. and this is one of the one of the few remaining mid sized sedans that's on the market in in the United States. you got the Hyundai Sonata, the Ki Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, the K five. I think the maxim or the Ultima is now out of production. I don't think they're I don't think they're doing Ultimas anymore. If it's not, it will be fairly soon.

so there's only a handful of these left. and this is still a great form factor for for a car. It's a it's a great great form factor for, you know, a family of four, you know, or an individual. I I really like the K five. and you know, of of the remaining mid sized sedans, I personally I think this is probably the best looking one. you know, I I

I like the design, especially since they did the refresh and you know kinda got that little thunderbolt thing going there with the with the lights, the front lights. It's yeah, it's a it's a cool look. and it's I I enjoy driving it. so they have multiple trim levels, all but the GT. So the GT line, you know, is is like Hyundai with their N line, you know, and various other brands.

where it's got some of the looks of the top trim level, like the G T in this case, but it's not it doesn't have the the performance stuff that they add to the to the G T. So yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (38:14)
It's like the it's like it's not you don't get an

you get the two something or other. You're not getting an two, you get two thirty five. Yeah. It's a trick to fool your f

Sam Abuelsamid (38:19)
Yeah. Or Sport, you know, or AMG Sport or AMG line, something like that. so yeah. So, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (38:27)
your your friends.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:29)
Yeah. So it's I think it's a handsome looking car. It's very roomy inside. back seat is very roomy. Trunks decently sized. you know, you get on the G T line you get, you know, a little bit more aggressive looking lower front fascia, the black wheels, and you know, the one that I had was

w had the optional steel matte gray paint. Yeah, so it's a matte finish. looks pretty sharp. Not sure how well it'll hold up over the long term, you know, if you're washing it, especially if you take it through car washes. it remains to be seen. But looks good. looks looks sharp. and so with the GT line you get the the base engine which is a two point five liter naturally aspirated four cylinder.

If you go for the GT, you get a turbocharged version of that engine. and so that's like 270 or 290 horsepower. This one, 191 horsepower, 181 foot pounds of torque, and eight-speed automatic transmission, so no CVTs, which is nice. and you know, it's not it's not super speedy, but it's it's more than adequate, you know. Hundred and yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (39:43)
It's good enough.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:44)
190 to 200 horsepower.

is plenty. That's all you really need. especially with especially if you got front wheel drive.

Roberto Baldwin (39:50)
I still like to remind people, 90 Honda

Civic had 86 horsepower and I blasted that thing everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:55)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (39:56)
So this is double.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:58)
And and it you know, with front wheel drive with a hundred and ninety one horsepower, not hard to you know, to chirp the front wheels, get you know, get the front wheels spinning. So it's it's plenty of performance. It will easily s accelerate to merge onto the highway. you know, if if you're gonna pass somebody on a two lane country road, as long as you give yourself enough room, you'll have you'll be fine. it's also decently fuel efficient. you know, it's EPA rated.

Tab with the Monroe here. It's EPA rated at 25 City, 36 Highway, 29 combined. When I did my my usual efficiency loop, I got 31 with the with the K5, which which I was quite impressed with. you know, again, for you know, a good-sized car that it, you know, that's not a hybrid, doesn't have any fancy electrification stuff. It was it was great. you know,

you know, equips like like most everybody now, you know, they equip their cars with all the all the usual ADAS stuff. So you got radar adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assist, you know, you got the the highway driving assist as as Hyundai and Kia call it. blind spot monitors. it's got the it it'll show you when you put on the turn signals, it'll show you the view from the from the cameras, from the side cameras in the instrument cluster.

so you can you can see if there's anybody there. it's got dual zone climate control, multi-adjustable seats, dual twelve point three inch screens, so one for the instrument cluster, one for the infotainment system that's touch. And because it ha still has the controls along the the dashboard there, you don't have them you don't have that extra little panel that's in between the two big twelve inch panels.

that

hides the climate controls behind the steering wheel. That it's like that

Roberto Baldwin (41:58)
Just looking around. Am I what's going on?

Sam Abuelsamid (42:01)
I I I that one still baffles

jill ciminillo (42:02)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:03)
me. Wha why Kia did that

Roberto Baldwin (42:04)
It's like you're

it's like your your Jason Voorhe 'cause it's it's almost Halloween. You're Jason Voorhe i Vohez? Voorhees? Voorhees? But anyway. You're the guy from from

Sam Abuelsamid (42:11)
Four heaths, I think, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (42:12)
Friday the thirteenth and you're in the forest and you gotta kinda look around to see if your victims are over there. That's you dri that's you driving a Kia and like adjusting some of the more in depth like climate controls like hold on, let me look.

jill ciminillo (42:29)
That that is like singularly the most annoying thing on Kia Vehicles for me is that hidden panel. And whenever I talk about it in social media, everybody's like, Well, there's redundant controls and you could use voice commands and you know, you don't really need that panel.

Roberto Baldwin (42:42)
The redundancy control is just

like are the the clim hot cold hot cold. Which is what you do

jill ciminillo (42:47)
Yeah, but

Roberto Baldwin (42:48)
most of the time anyway, is just hot or cold or turn on auto. But

jill ciminillo (42:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (42:51)
you have to look you have to look over there for auto.

jill ciminillo (42:54)
Yeah, and th the research button, by the way, I did try voice commands the last time I had a Kia vehicle and you cannot say, Hey Kia, turn on the research button. You actually have to physically touch it, and that is only in that stupid panel.

Roberto Baldwin (43:06)
Like

yeah, so

Sam Abuelsamid (43:07)
And that's also

where you select if you want it to blow up top on your face or down b down low on your feet. It it's it's all in that little panel, which again, why?

Roberto Baldwin (43:16)
Very weird.

jill ciminillo (43:16)
But

you should set it before you leave and then it will be all good. And I'm just like that's not always how it works because I yeah. That's not like the sun

Roberto Baldwin (43:20)
That's not how that's how climate controls work.

jill ciminillo (43:25)
comes out, you get hot, you want the air on your face. The sun goes behind a cloud, you get cold, you want it down by your feet, or you know, and so it like changes. It changes constantly. They are. No. I will Yeah, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (43:31)
And these people are just they're just jerks. They're like I drive my

Sam Abuelsamid (43:35)
Yeah. At at least

Roberto Baldwin (43:38)
car five minutes a day and I have it set to exactly seventy one degrees and I've never changed it ever. And though I might be uncomfortable

jill ciminillo (43:45)
It's fun.

Roberto Baldwin (43:46)
sometimes while I'm driving, I've done that's what I've done. I'm like, cool, good for you, buddy. Enjoy your

jill ciminillo (43:50)
Yes. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (43:53)
seventy one degrees. Never changing.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:55)
At least

at least the vents are fully manual, which is a good thing.

Roberto Baldwin (43:58)
Yay.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:59)
So you can just reach out, grab the vent, direct the airflow where you want. So that's a that's a good thing. So yeah, I mean it's you know, mid size sedans are not the latest and greatest thing, but you know, this is a sharp looking car and it drives really well. It's very comfortable. you know, it handles decently well. you know, there's I have I have no complaints about this car. you know, if

if they had an electric version of this, we might have con might have considered buying this instead of the E V six. although probably not, 'cause we actually like having the hatchback on the E V six. the

Roberto Baldwin (44:35)
Yeah, hatchback's pretty great.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:37)
ha hatchbacks are great. but you know, this this is a a great alternative if you still like you know, if you are one of the f few remaining people in America that still like, you know, sedans with it, you know, cars with a trunk. Yeah. This this a yeah, this is a dandy sedan.

Roberto Baldwin (44:49)
A sedandy? I don't know. You're a sedandi?

Sam Abuelsamid (44:54)
Yeah. so all told, the this one came out to thirty two thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars. guesses on the destination.

Roberto Baldwin (45:05)
Ooh, fourteen. Fifty.

jill ciminillo (45:09)
Sixteen ninety five.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:11)
Ooh, Robbie got it this time. It's twelve forty five. A modest twelve hundred and forty five dollars. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (45:14)
Yeah. Modest.

Roberto Baldwin (45:16)
Boom. Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:18)
and that that included the the twenty two hundred dollar G T line premium package. It gets gets you the panoramic sunroof, the LED interior lights, the Bose premium audio system with active sound design and those black wheels.

Roberto Baldwin (45:32)
Woo How many

people like adjust the act like once I feel like people just get in their car, turn on the music, and just drive off.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:40)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (45:40)
Like I was a big audio yeah, exactly I was a big audio guy in like

jill ciminillo (45:43)
I'm like that would be me.

Roberto Baldwin (45:44)
the nineties and the two thousands. Like I had a big stereo system with like crossovers and amps and big speakers and all that stuff. And I'll get in and I'll sort of play with things a little bit. But I'm like I feel like I again I'm just a weird edge case.

jill ciminillo (45:59)
No. I'm not an audiophile at all. my husband

Roberto Baldwin (46:02)
It's like

jill ciminillo (46:03)
is totally into the music, so if like there's some vehicle that I'm driving that has like the Macintosh system or something really bougie, I like pull him into the car with me.

Roberto Baldwin (46:09)
he gets it put in does it put turn on rush?

jill ciminillo (46:14)
I

Sam Abuelsamid (46:14)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (46:15)
he he I don't even know what he does. I it's not my music. I I'm like it's not anything I listen to. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:19)
It's nerd music, is it? It's nerd music. It's music you listen to you play

D and D to.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:26)
Gotta listen to some sticks and work on my character

jill ciminillo (46:29)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (46:29)
sheet.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:32)
so that's that's the Kia K five G T line. Excellent mid size sedan. all right. Let's let's move on. so let's let's see. Let's start with this the new Citroen Duchavau concept that

Roberto Baldwin (46:46)
The chevaux.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:48)
it's gonna be shown at the Paris Motor Show this week. Citroen released the the details on it today. I actually saw this thing back in May. I was at the Stellantis

investor

day program in May, in Auburn Hills and they showed us a whole bunch of upcoming stuff and they showed us this thing. And wow, this yeah,

jill ciminillo (47:11)
It's adorable.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:12)
this thing was yeah. This thing is really cool.

Roberto Baldwin (47:11)
Did you fall in love? The one thing they tell you

jill ciminillo (47:13)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (47:15)
when you show up is never fall in love.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:20)
so yeah, you know, if you know the original De Chaveau, you know, clearly, you know, the styling is very, you know, reminiscent of that that car, you know, which came out in nineteen forty eight. you know, very you know, it's designed to be very low cost. And this thing, you know, kind of lives up to that. It's built on a new platform, they call Stillantis e Car platform, which is it's targeted at price point

fifteen thousand euros. So about seventeen, seventeen and a half thousand dollars.

Roberto Baldwin (47:53)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (47:54)
Which means we will never get anything like this in the United States.

Roberto Baldwin (47:56)
Yeah. Can you drive it

Sam Abuelsamid (47:57)
Probably not.

Roberto Baldwin (47:58)
can you put a bag a basket of eggs in the passenger seat and drive it over a freshly what is it? A plowed field?

Sam Abuelsamid (48:06)
Tilled field.

Roberto Baldwin (48:07)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:09)
I don't know. probably not.

jill ciminillo (48:12)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (48:13)
my god.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:14)
Look look at this interior.

Roberto Baldwin (48:16)
I mean the steering wheel I y you settle down. But everything else about the interior

jill ciminillo (48:18)
That's silly. It's adorable.

Roberto Baldwin (48:20)
is is is is fantastic. 'Cause it it has a dash cluster. It's got yellow yeah, change fix

Sam Abuelsamid (48:25)
Yeah got the plaid seats just like

jill ciminillo (48:26)
my god, those seats.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:29)
the old ones.

jill ciminillo (48:29)
Happy It's happy.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:31)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (48:32)
Man.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:34)
And it's it also has the the sliding or the you know, the fold back roof. Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

Roberto Baldwin (48:38)
It's got a basket for your eggs.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:41)
So

jill ciminillo (48:41)
There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:41)
there's the answer to your question.

Roberto Baldwin (48:44)
man. So is bench well this is a concept. So I'm like has bench seats? This is

Sam Abuelsamid (48:50)
Well, I

I I believe the the plan is that the production car is going to be very similar to this, very close to this. Although

it's still two years away. It's not coming out 'til twenty twenty eight. But and so we don't have any

Roberto Baldwin (49:00)
All right.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:03)
information on what the range is gonna be or anything like that. But yeah, they're

Roberto Baldwin (49:07)
Quicker

quicker than quicker than Scout, so two years.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:10)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (49:11)
Quicker than Volkswagen period, really.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:14)
Yeah. and so yeah, this this could hopefully, you know, we might see something like this here, but yeah, maybe you know, maybe after twenty twenty eight, you know, who knows what happens. You know, maybe we'll get something like this. If assuming of course

Roberto Baldwin (49:28)
I it's the people are

Sam Abuelsamid (49:30)
Stellantis is still in business in twenty twenty nine.

Roberto Baldwin (49:32)
Yeah.

Yeah. They might be broken up

jill ciminillo (49:33)
Fair point.

Roberto Baldwin (49:34)
by then. They might split back up again. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (49:37)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (49:37)
like whenever so whenever someone buys Warner Bros. That's just a bad scene. Someone just bought Warner Brothers.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:41)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (49:43)
I w worked at Warner Brothers during the AOL time Warner merger and during that time Hmm Warner Brothers like a it's like poison, it just slowly kills you.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:54)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (49:55)
It slowly kills its host. And then it breaks back off again. That's why some

Sam Abuelsamid (50:00)
And then and

then it finds another host and kills that one. It's it's the ultimate parasite. It's the ultimate corporate parasite.

Roberto Baldwin (50:02)
Yeah, it just just sucks all the life out of it. It is. Yeah,

like we're gonna buy Warner Brothers, I'm like, Okay, buddy. Good luck with that. So anyway,

Sam Abuelsamid (50:11)
Good luck.

jill ciminillo (50:11)
Good luck with that. We're all counting on you.

Roberto Baldwin (50:14)
Solantis, I don't know, maybe they'll just break it up. And then s because right now it just seems so overwhelming for a c as a company to like try to fix the you're like we gotta fix the business of thirty thousand automakers. Maybe we just cut it up. Maybe just go back maybe the FCA, you know

Maybe seven? Maybe just seven little companies and then you just work on yourselves instead of having a instead

Sam Abuelsamid (50:38)
Yeah, we'll see.

Roberto Baldwin (50:39)
of instead of have a thropple, just like just work on yourself for now.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:44)
Do some self care.

Roberto Baldwin (50:46)
Do some self care. You can't love someone until you love yourself.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:52)
and there was another new new car that was unveiled this week. the the Jaguar Type Zero One.

jill ciminillo (51:00)
Mm.

Roberto Baldwin (51:01)
Jaguar it's a Batman. It's remember Batman the animated series?

Sam Abuelsamid (51:06)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (51:06)
Yeah, the Art Deco design. That's what this car is. So it's

Sam Abuelsamid (51:08)
Yeah. Okay.

jill ciminillo (51:09)
Mm.

Roberto Baldwin (51:10)
so because of that, as long as it's black or gray, like I think it's I find it cool. I'm not gonna buy it. I don't think I don't know who I've you know, they're trying for a younger audience because they really don't have a choice. they're you know, the the their market is getting to the age where some of them don't have new cars, they're you they're

They can't buy cars, they're you know, dying. It just

Sam Abuelsamid (51:33)
The a the average age

of jack Jaguar owners has increased steadily over the last twenty years, thirty years.

Roberto Baldwin (51:40)
Yeah.

So they they need to find a younger audience. They don't have a choice. Like everyone's like Boo, look at they have all these kids. It's like a United Colors of Benetton ad. Fine, whatever, but they have to do something. I don't know if this is it. I don't I don't know if this is the answer. It's because like a

jill ciminillo (51:52)
Yeah, I'm like I I don't know that that says younger to me.

Roberto Baldwin (51:58)
but you know what, all the kids who grew up all the millennials, the forty somethings, maybe some of the Gen X who were younger, who all listen watched Batman, the animated series, are gonna be like, Finally. I got some money.

And now I'm gonna be Bruce Wayne.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:11)
They're gonna they're gonna need

some money 'cause this thing's gonna be a hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

jill ciminillo (52:14)
What, 133?

Roberto Baldwin (52:17)
Yeah. Hello.

jill ciminillo (52:18)
I

think it looks like a modern version of the Chrysler 300. That's what I think it looks like.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:28)
which three hundred? Like the the most recent one? The one that went out of production

jill ciminillo (52:32)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:33)
a couple of years ago?

jill ciminillo (52:34)
Yeah. Right. Am I I

Sam Abuelsamid (52:36)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (52:36)
I think I got that right, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (52:37)
More

it looks more like the

Sam Abuelsamid (52:38)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (52:38)
Magnum. I like I like the Magnum.

jill ciminillo (52:40)
Yeah, with the with the

Sam Abuelsamid (52:41)
It it yeah, it's it's got

jill ciminillo (52:42)
catch.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:43)
yeah,

it's got it's got elements of the magnum, you know, very flat front end, but you know, kind of broken up a little bit with some horizontal creases some horizontal lines in there. you know, I mean a couple of years ago I w I was invited by Jaguar to go to Formula E race in Portland and we had a chance to ch talk with their managing director. and you know, he

Tol he explained what their plan was at the time and this was a couple months before they showed the concept that became this car, the type zero zero. and they you know, he said going forward, you know, they're they're gonna move the brand up market. They're not going for volume, they're only targeting ultimately about fifty thousand units a year, which is a lot less than what they used to build. and, you know, this is you know, th this is this Ford Four

four seat G T cars, the first product, then the next one is gonna be an SUV and then a sports car. So that's that's all they're planning to do for the foreseeable future.

Roberto Baldwin (53:47)
You know what? When they went down market with the X type, it's what a junk car. And I know because I still have one. my god, that damn that damn X type.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:52)
And you would know 'cause you still have one in the driveway, don't you?

jill ciminillo (53:55)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (53:56)
Anyway, yeah, going down market like they need to yeah. They need it need they need to be iconic again, and they haven't been in a long time.

jill ciminillo (54:05)
Yeah. Huh.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:06)
The amazing

go ahead.

jill ciminillo (54:09)
I was gonna say I haven't seen it in person, so maybe it looks better in person?

Sam Abuelsamid (54:13)
It's it's different, you know. I mean the thing the thing that struck me when I when I first saw this thing was the profile is even though the details are all different, the profile is almost identical to the Cadillac Celestic.

jill ciminillo (54:29)
Huh.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:30)
Yeah, long kind of a long tail, long hood, sweeping roof line. It's very similar to the Celestic. And then I guess Johnny Lieberman

posted something online. He he actually compared it to several different vehicles that yeah, the other one he pulled up was the the Cadillac sixteen concept from like the early two thousands. Yeah. and

jill ciminillo (54:51)
yeah, I remember that. Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:52)
so this one, yeah, it's it'll be interesting to see how it does. you

know

Roberto Baldwin (54:58)
It's like the

Cor it's like the electric version of the Corella de Vill's car.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:02)
Yeah.

The

jill ciminillo (55:05)
that's not a huge selling point.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:07)
yeah, the interior, very minimalist. Yeah, a big spine down the center, you going all the way from front to back. Yeah, so it's strictly a four seater. I was

Roberto Baldwin (55:17)
Needs more buttons.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:18)
yeah, I I was watching a a video that Top Gear did the other day. you know, and they had a walk around and the you know, the back seats are not particularly spacious, and the the door openings are kinda small.

But yeah, very minimal you don't have yeah, only only a twenty four inch display here with the instrument cluster and the and the infotainment and then a sep

Roberto Baldwin (55:44)
Look at where that

Sam Abuelsamid (55:45)
seven inch touch cr touch panel for the controls.

Roberto Baldwin (55:48)
Look at where that B pillar is compared to the door. Come on.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:52)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (55:54)
What are you doing?

Sam Abuelsamid (55:56)
I know.

Roberto Baldwin (55:56)
What's happening here? So now whenever you get out, you gotta scooch forward. Unless you're Jill, whose seats are

jill ciminillo (55:58)
Fine for me. Yeah, fine for me in my far forward driving position.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:03)
unless you're you're shorting your seats all the way up at the steering wheel. When you get out, you're gonna have to like hold on, let me scooch forward and then get out of the car. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (56:12)
Testing your flexibility.

Roberto Baldwin (56:13)
Yeah. So come on. Come on, Jaguar.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:16)
The yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (56:16)
It's the Batman car. Don't don't mess it up.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:19)
Thousand and fifteen horsepower from three motors. hundred and eighteen kilowatt hour battery pack. they're they're saying you know it'll you know in mixed driving it'll do up to four hundred miles, but it's just straight up highway driving, it'll do about three twenty, which is not bad. Not bad for highway driving.

Roberto Baldwin (56:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (56:43)
Seventy five miles per hour, that's nice.

Roberto Baldwin (56:45)
That's a fifty it's eight hundred fifty volt architecture. So the architecture in addition to charging quicker, it's also more efficient. So

Sam Abuelsamid (56:52)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (56:52)
typically you get better efficiency out of the car, like top to bottom. So sure, three twenty at seventy five miles an hour. That's a pretty good that's a that's a nice I how f how far is that from you know at San Francisco to LA maybe all the way?

Sam Abuelsamid (57:07)
Little more than that, isn't it? LA? I don't know. You're from California. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (57:09)
I don't know. Three hundred and eighty miles. Three hundred and eighty miles. So pretty close.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:14)
Yeah. So so it's coming out in the spring. yeah, and I think they're gonna start taking orders soon. so you know, get your get your deposits in for your type zero one.

jill ciminillo (57:29)
Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (57:30)
Or you K five?

Sam Abuelsamid (57:32)
yeah, or or K five. Yeah. You could buy

Roberto Baldwin (57:34)
Yeah. Or you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:37)
what?

Four five K fives for price of one of these.

Roberto Baldwin (57:40)
Five K fives. Or you could buy what's it, one thirty? You could buy six slates?

Sam Abuelsamid (57:49)
and the th

Roberto Baldwin (57:49)
Anyway, yeah, five plates.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:51)
you know, the the other thing I noticed about this, you know, that I realized about this, is it's been almost exactly ten years since the last time Jaguar introduced a new product.

Roberto Baldwin (58:02)
Wow. See there's your problem.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:04)
The

the the and that was the IPACE. The iPace was introduced at the twenty sixteen LA Auto Show.

Roberto Baldwin (58:12)
Ten years? my gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:12)
Which is in November. That was the last

new product that Jaguar introduced.

Roberto Baldwin (58:19)
Wow. I mean I went

jill ciminillo (58:19)
That was a minute ago. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:20)
Yep.

Roberto Baldwin (58:21)
that drive program. That was a good the iPace was a good EV for especially at the time that was still being built by Jaguar, which meant that there were some weird issues with it. But like overall, like we took it to a track, we took it off road, we did a bunch of crazy stuff with it.

jill ciminillo (58:34)
Yeah, I remember

Sam Abuelsamid (58:35)
Yeah, it you

jill ciminillo (58:36)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:36)
know, it got it got really good reviews at first and then when customers actually start getting them they've started getting all kinds of software issues and battery reliability

Roberto Baldwin (58:46)
At one

Sam Abuelsamid (58:47)
issues and

Roberto Baldwin (58:48)
Yeah. I remember when they dropped it off at my house after I'd already written about it, I was like, I don't need it no, we want you to have it again. Alright. And they dropped it off and they're Whatever you do, don't charge it at home. I'm like, What? They're like,

Sam Abuelsamid (58:59)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (59:00)
There's a software thing, we gotta fix it, it's not quite ready. I'm like, You're selling these to people. What's going on? So yeah.

jill ciminillo (59:06)
Don't catch your house on fire.

Roberto Baldwin (59:08)
So anyway they've had ten years to fix all that, so cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:11)
Yeah.

So hope hopefully they learned something.

Roberto Baldwin (59:15)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:17)
all right, let's see. well, since we're talking about Britain a little bit, the do you know what the best selling car in Great Britain was last month?

Roberto Baldwin (59:30)
I do now. So now I feel like I'm cheap.

jill ciminillo (59:31)
I know, looking at your article.

Roberto Baldwin (59:36)
I don't just say it.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:36)
It it it it wasn't anything

it wasn't anything built in Britain. It was the JQ seven

jill ciminillo (59:41)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:42)
SUV. So JQ is one of the numerous brands from Cherry. and so it was it was a a Chinese electric SUV.

jill ciminillo (59:52)
It looks like a land rope.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:54)
it it does kind of look like a Land Rover. In the article here, you know, they they refer to it as the Timu Range Rover.

but almost eleven thousand people bought them in September in the UK.

So yeah, it it's it's kinda nuts. let's see. says Chinese Chinese automakers are seeing success as sales of electric vehicles more broadly boom in the UK. In September, battery electric vehicles made up twenty eight point three percent of the UK market, up five percentage points from September of last year. Plug in hybrids got another seventeen percent of the market increase of almost five percent. so the you know

This thing, the JQ seven has a starting price of thirty thousand pounds, which is about forty thousand dollars. which is about twenty six thousand pounds less than the Range Rover Velar.

jill ciminillo (1:00:54)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:54)
so yeah, so and you can get it as either a bev or a plug in hybrid. So it's been it's been quite popular in in in Britain.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:07)
Who well, you know. It's funny 'cause like ten year twelve years ago you go to the cherry booth, they kinda point and laugh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:15)
Well, you know, when when I s when I was still working

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:18)
But it everything looked like something else and you could tell like even opening door like, this is kinda janky And now they're like, Hey, guess what we become?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:27)
When when I was still working at well, I guess at that point it was still it was either Kelsey Hayes or Lucas Verity in the late nineties when I was still working as an engineer. we had gotten a a contract to do ABS on a cherry car. I f I forget what what it was called, what the model name was, but it was a little little subcompact hatchback. And you know, they they got sued because the car was basically

a Chinese knockoff of the Daewu Matisse, a little Korean subcompact. It looked almost exactly like the Daewoo. and so, you know, those those were never really exported from China and you know, that was before they got into doing E Vs. And let's just say it was it was not a great car.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:22)
They were

jill ciminillo (1:02:22)
Hm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:22)
just you could

feel how janky they felt. But also

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:25)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:25)
you would you would be at a c auto events and there'd be teams of like Asian gentlemen who would go and they'd be pr like learning. They were essentially doing homework on all

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:35)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:35)
the cars that were there. Like how do they do they're touching like the the the spring back on seats, like touching everything.

jill ciminillo (1:02:39)
crawling underneath the vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:42)
And like that's how you do it. I mean, especially if you're new, like what you know. If we want to be able to see a bunch of cars right now that sell really well in the United States.

Gonna go to the auto show and we're gonna bring out our our our calipers and our and our and our little machines and our our notebooks and we're gonna take notes on absolutely everything. And now yeah. Now they're doing pretty, pretty well.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:08)
Yeah, they're they're doing all right.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:09)
Follow follow your dreams. That's the that's the moral of the story.

jill ciminillo (1:03:14)
It says BYD. Build your dreams.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:14)
Or or be build your dreams.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:17)
Build your dreams.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:20)
all right. so BMW, we talked last week about the the new Three Series that just launched, from BMW, the the gas version of the three series. One thing that nobody really talked about that popped up the other day is in that announcement of the new combustion version of the three series, no mention of a diesel. the

jill ciminillo (1:03:44)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:45)
diesel three series used to be one of their the it was the best selling

BMW in Europe for many, many years. did did either of you ever get a chance to drive the three thirty five D that they sold here like you know, ten, twelve years ago?

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:01)
I mean Europe like gas is so expensive. The diesel version of anything was the best selling version of anything in

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:07)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:07)
Europe. When I

jill ciminillo (1:04:08)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:09)
when I was in the UK with or in Ireland with my wife visiting family, they like everyone's like, Well I'm saving up for the diesel because look at the gas it's so expensive, but the diesel gets X amount of miles and blah blah blah and then diesel gate.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:22)
Yeah. That that

jill ciminillo (1:04:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:25)
that killed it. And you know, I mean diesel sales have been declining in Europe, you know, ever since Dieselgate. and you know, they're they've they've really plummeted. But now for the new three series, you know, they BMW's just not even bothering with the diesel anymore. It's just it's gone.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:40)
Yeah, I'm sure they're not

they probably weren't selling in very many of It's just

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:44)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:44)
at some point you're like, it's like it's like manual transmissions. cool. I'm gonna get a manual transmission. No you're not because no one bought a manual transmission. And now there's no manual transmissions unless you get an enthusiast car.

jill ciminillo (1:04:59)
Or a Ford Bronco.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:00)
yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:00)
Or a Bronca.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:01)
Yeah, that's one of the one of the few left. I wonder I wonder how long Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:05)
Which is an enthusiast car.

It's the it's the BRZ for people who like dirt.

jill ciminillo (1:05:11)
Fair, fair, fair point.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:12)
Dirty dirty

B or Z people. That's the Bronco people.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:18)
So as of as of September, for the first time ever, or at least since the very early days of the auto industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, gas gas only vehicles or internal combustion only vehicles for the f for the first time r accounted for less than fifty percent of global vehicle sales. They were down to only forty

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:44)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:45)
nine percent of global vehicle sales.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:48)
That's the tipping point.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:48)
So yeah.

So fifty one percent yeah. No.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:52)
I mean not here in America, but the other rest of the whole whole world.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:58)
Yeah. so the yeah, the re you know, the four fifty one percent of sales are now E V, plug in hybrid, E Rev or batter or hybrid vehicles. So and that you know, that includes, you know, markets where so far EVs have not gained

A huge amount of traction, like, you know, Africa and a l you know, a lot of parts of Asia, Latin America. but even there, you know, they're starting to gain traction in large part thanks to the Chinese bringing in cheap EVs.

jill ciminillo (1:06:32)
Mm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:34)
Yeah, well. I that's the thing is you if you want adoption of EVs, you have to you know at some point you can't just stop looking at the top end. You to stop looking at the lucids, the BMWs, the Mercedes. I mean th cool, those are great cars. But regular people need to drive. Regular people need to go somewhere. Regular people are, you know, they they you know, it's difficult to buy a car anyway 'cause everything's so expensive. And so if you want them to drive EVs, you have to give them cheap, reliable EVs. That's it. That's that's how you make adoption happen.

jill ciminillo (1:07:03)
Yeah. 'Cause I mean the early adopters have already gotten their lead

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:06)
Yeah, they already got their gun. They got their stuff.

jill ciminillo (1:07:08)
and now it's it's time for everybody else. And you know, a and and it's funny because my husband and I, we have a car that we share between us, but it's primarily my husband's car. And I'm like, What would it take for you to have an EV? And he was like, Well, we would need a house, first off, so I could charge at home and I'm like, Fair point, okay. Other than that

And he's like, I need at least four hundred miles of range. because he goes on a lot of client visits. And so, you know, and he'll be in like doesn't matter the weather. It could be snowing, it could be a hundred degrees. And so he just needs to make sure that he'll be able to get to where he's going and back without needing to charge. And sometimes he'll drive like 200 miles in a day. And I'm like, But really? Do you need four hundred miles to go 200 miles? And he's like, if it's, you know, four negative fourteen degrees outside, I do. And I'm like,

Okay, fair point. and y so I I don't know. I mean I've I've always said that if you're if you're gonna have one car, it's probably not gonna be an EV. because of those just in case you need to drive to Indianapolis or just in case you need to like take a road trip or just in case. But if you have two vehicles, one of them I think absolutely could be an E V and it makes a lot of sense to do that for your around town driving.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:23)
Well, I mean I think the BMW just released results of a survey that they did here in the US. Yeah,

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:31)
Good segue, Jill. Good segue.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:33)
very nicely done. And

jill ciminillo (1:08:34)
I got you. I got you.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:35)
and from that from that survey they found that sixty eight percent of Americans so they surveyed a little over a thousand people, sixty eight percent of Americans said that they would consider an E V. and respondents talked about lower operating and

And

ownership costs, better performance of driving characteristics, nineteen percent of them, new or advanced technologies, environmental benefits, among the reasons. and then one of the the challenges that they also found is that you know let's see, seventy-three percent of the respondents said their daily driving was less than seventy-five miles. It was either twenty-five, fifty, or seventy-five miles. That was so

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:18)
I feel like that number's

probably higher. It's just people think they're driving further than they really are. Except for

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:22)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:22)
Jill's husband, apparently. they drive further than they really

jill ciminillo (1:09:22)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:24)
are just 'cause they're stuck

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:25)
Yeah, and

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:25)
in traffic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:26)
yeah, I mean there are there are legitimately people that you know that do have to drive farther. But you know, I think the vast majority of people, you know, and we've this has been found time after time for for decades, yeah, eighty percent of daily driving for Americans is less than forty miles.

jill ciminillo (1:09:44)
Yeah. I mean my daily driving is like five miles to

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:46)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:09:46)
and from the gym or whatever. But you know, every other weekend I drive two hundred miles to Indianapolis and two hundred miles back. So

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:53)
Mm-hmm.

jill ciminillo (1:09:54)
I need, you know, I'm driving four hundred miles. but yeah, so but daily five miles.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:01)
Yeah.

well from from the survey they found that forty two percent of the respondents said they would want at least three hundred miles of range, and eighteen percent wanted four hundred plus miles of range. you know, and you know, this this is the the the classic thing, you know, that we find is that you know, people people want or they tend to buy for what they think is the worst case condition, even though they

jill ciminillo (1:10:30)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:30)
are

very infrequently going to use that. you know, I mean in your case, you know, right now, because you're, you know, every other week you're going to see your mom in Indianapolis, that, you know, that's a you've got a legitimate case there, you know, although, you know, if you had perhaps an E Rev, an extended range EV, that, you know, that

jill ciminillo (1:10:48)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:48)
could you know something like that could work for you. So you could drive it as an EV most of the time. You got the engine as a generator for those longer trips. you know, that that could be a reasonable use case for you.

And

it'll be interesting, you know, next year when Hyundai launches the the Santa Fe E Rev. Yeah. I'd love to hear, you know, s hear how that works out for you if you get a chance to try that one out. but you know, see they also found that fifty three percent say an EV capable of adding approximately a hundred and fifty miles of driving range during a ten minute fast charging stop would make them more likely to consider an EV. And you know that

That is something that is actually becoming pretty close to being common, at least on on a lot on a bunch of newer EVs. like strangely enough, the new BMW IX3 and the and the

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:42)
Ooh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:43)
I three. yeah, I wonder wonder why they picked those particular stats to ask about.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:48)
Who knows? It's serious the world's a crazy place. Who knows why things are the way they are? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:53)
I know. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:11:53)
Completely random choice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:56)
but and also, you know, younger people, younger consumers, definitely more interested. Seventy percent of Gen Z buyers, sixty five percent of millennials, and fifty two percent of Gen Xers say that that capability would increase their consideration. Only thirty percent of baby boomers. Yeah, they're they're dying off anyway.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:15)
My my my dad

my dad and his his wife I'll talk to him, I'll tell everything well straight up this is what here's here's what they're good, this is what's bad da da da da Right on the three. I'm never gonna buy one. I'm like jeez, I didn't tell you I'm not selling you one, you asked me. But it was there's a very there's there is a very like No I'm like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:36)
Why?

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:37)
Okay.

Like occasionally

jill ciminillo (1:12:43)
No.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:43)
one of will go fifty miles. And like and round trip is a hundred miles. So they could buy like the cheapest E V and still have no problem and then just plug it into the house. But it's it's very much a no. I'm from a small conservative town too, so I see a lot of like Facebook things are like, There's only you know, gas cars are only made for gas and I'm like, Well, you know, originally cars are both electric and gas yeah, steam powered cars. I mean if they don't wanna hear me going on.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:12)
yeah, and

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:13)
With my nerdiness.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:14)
fit fifty five percent of the respondents said that being able to charge in thirty minutes or less is acceptable. So it's inter interesting survey. the there's a link in the show notes, so you can check it all out yourself. but there's you know, I think there there's definitely interest in in EVs still. you know, and I think you know, as as we go forward, you know, especially if if fuel prices stay high.

Yeah,

we're we've obviously seen a lot of increase in hybrid adoption in the past year. but you know, it's now up to at least as of August it was up to or September it was up to fifteen percent market share for hybrids after being after sitting at like two and a half percent for better part of twenty years, suddenly jumped up to fifteen percent. and EV sales, you know, have stabilized at least after the the drop off last year after the tax credits went away.

I think they'll they'll gradually start climbing up. that you know, I think with yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:16)
All it takes is one guy in the neighborhood or one gal in the

neighborhood to get one. And

jill ciminillo (1:14:20)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:20)
then they well but I'm like, dude, I don't go anywhere. It's just like it's it's like I'm going to go on a road trip. Cool. When's the last time you went on a road trip? And they just sit there and they think and they think and they think and I'm like, It's because you've been flying southwest, isn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:32)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:35)
But yeah, they're like I'm like, if you're just driving around town and they get in the car and I'm driving around, they're like, Maybe they get you know

It's just, you know, it's just you gotta dri once you drive one you're like, But, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:48)
But, you know, again,

you know, it it depends a lot on, you know, on your your living situation.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:55)
Situation.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:56)
You know, like for for you, you know, living in an apartment is obviously more challenging. but public charging infrastructure is is getting better out there. you know, we're seeing more and more cities where they're putting in curbside level two chargers, which you know, if you if you park on the street, you know, that's great, you know, 'cause you your car most cars are still idle.

ninety

five ninety to ninety five percent of the time. So level two charging works great for that. and you know, the level three, the D C fast charging networks are continuing to expand. Iona's up to a hundred and eighty stations now. and you've got like almost thirty thousand superchargers out there. Walmart's expanding

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:38)
It's yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:39)
their network. you got got lots of other ones.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:43)
If the world ends up being more if the un if the United States ends up being more and more like my part of the world where the I can't swing a stick without hitting a charging station, then it yeah, it's kind of a no brainer at that point. 'Cause there's a they just they

jill ciminillo (1:15:56)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:56)
built there's a Tesla charge station, like two blocks from my house. And then four blocks from that, they built another one.

And then like and then like up like five blocks from that is the EA station. If you go the other direction, one one stop is there's a EV go. Another stop there's two EA stations on either side of the fr it's yeah. I got a lot I got a lot of I got a lot of charging going on here

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:16)
There within a mile and a half of my house. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:20)
in my in where I live.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:22)
Within a mile and a half of my house, there's five different DC fat DC fast charging locations. There's an Electrify America station. There's there's a a Tesla supercharger over at the Meyer store. There's a couple of charge point chargers behind a gas station in another direction. The nearby Stellantis dealer has a couple of chargers that they've put in, and the Ford dealer.

nearby has a couple of chargers that they've put in. So got lots of charging around me. But I we just charge at home, so

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:53)
Yeah, then I I

jill ciminillo (1:16:53)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:54)
I don't think we'd I don't think we've charged our our new Ionic

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:56)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:58)
five 'cause we haven't done any road trips in it. Like in the other one, like I was just constantly going down to LA and Bakersfield and Palm Springs for like s six, eight months straight in that thing. So I was always charging on the go. but the new one we I don't have to do that that try that those trips anymore. So now I'm just like, Mm. So we just charge it at home.

jill ciminillo (1:17:17)
Yeah. Not not so many charging stations in the city of Chicago just yet. I mean, there's probably about three miles from me. There's an Electrify America, and a Bank of America parking lot. So woohoo, I'd like being a sitting duck in the back of a Bank of America

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:31)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:31)
Ha ha ha ha.

jill ciminillo (1:17:33)
parking lot. but

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:34)
Put at the grocery

store, EA. Come on. The the new one th there's the two

jill ciminillo (1:17:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:39)
EI stations near my house, they're both at grocery stores. I'm like, well I gotta

jill ciminillo (1:17:42)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:17:42)
get groceries anyway. Boop.

jill ciminillo (1:17:44)
Well,

th there is a Tesla charging station they just put in at the Target that's within walking distance from my place. So in theory, if I ever needed to really like go from ten percent up to a hundred percent, like I could go over there and either, you know, play around at Target or walk home. so that that's that's definitely a bonus. But yeah, for the most part, like charging stations, like they're in not good areas or they're out in the suburbs.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:14)
all right, let's see. Rivian released a new feature for the R2 this week. so you know the the R2 has an interior camera that they use for the for the driver monitoring. And now if you have an R two, you can get a widget to put a live stream if your dogs are sitting in the car, if you've gone to the store and your dogs are in the car and you've turned on pet mode.

to

keep them nice and cool in there. you can have a widget on your lock screen on your iPhone, with a live video stream so you can keep an eye on your dogs.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:55)
telling you just do anything with dogs and you're just gonna get people to buy your your vehicle. That's it. That's all you gotta do.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:02)
Yeah.

let's see, what else? the the VW ID Tig one. We talked a little bit about the ID Tig one a couple weeks ago when they showed some release some images, when it was still camoed. They released it in full this week. so you know, we can see what it looks like. It's it's very much an updated ID four. You know, basically most

jill ciminillo (1:19:28)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:29)
you know, the structure's still the same. They've

made some mechanical updates for a little more efficiency. It's got an all new front fascia. But the really important thing is the interior. They they finally fixed the interior. you know we've we've seen them we've seen them do this

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:45)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:47)
with the ID polo, and now the ID four. it's got they've got a a bigger display for the instrument cluster. I I was fine with the smaller instrument cluster display that they had before. It didn't

You didn't really need a full size one. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:02)
I liked a small instrument cluster.

But you know what? This one goes like you can see through the steering wheel, like just a proper car. They're not going crazy. You can

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:10)
Yeah. And

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:11)
see the instrument cluster. I look down, there it is. Okay, cool. Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:14)
And you

can also get retro gauge designs so you can like the Mark Four Golf d gauges on there. but the really important part is there's this this row of switches below the below the the touch screen. yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:28)
Look at all those buttons.

It has it has window window little buttons for both the front and rear windows. Look at that. Yeah Look at that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:38)
Yes, you got you got four window switches on the driver's armrest. Just the way it should have always been.

jill ciminillo (1:20:39)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:48)
the way

jill ciminillo (1:20:50)
What you didn't like the toggle switch?

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:52)
No one liked the Togo switch. It didn't make any sense. Like what you were

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:52)
No. The toggle switch was dumb.

jill ciminillo (1:20:54)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:20:57)
saving what were you saving money on? Because now you have three switches instead of four and one of those switches has to like do a thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:04)
And it's gonna annoy your customers.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:07)
Yeah, it was it didn't I don't know. I don't know the the forty cents that they saved on one switch in every car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:16)
Yeah, so

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:16)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:17)
so they f they finally fixed the interior. and and the ID Tiguan will be coming to the US sometime in twenty twenty seven. it goes on sale in Europe I think early in the new year, and then coming here later in twenty seven to replace the ID four. and it also has a frunk now. Not much of a frunk, but you know, yeah, it's enough for your

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:37)
Yay. You can put your cables up there. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:21:37)
Huh. I'm like a fake

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:40)
cables and your adapters and stuff. So that's good. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:43)
It's y it's your cable home. For

home for your cables.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:46)
Yeah.

So first first VW with that. let's see.

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:52)
Yay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:53)
I think that one more. in Canada now, they have a new version of the Tesla Model Three that you can buy. and this is because of the deal that Canada did with China to allow some importation of Chinese built EVs. so now you can get you can get a version of the Tesla Model three.

for forty one thousand forty one thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars which works out to about twenty nine thousand five hundred dollars US so just under thirty thousand dollars US you can get a model three it's got slightly smaller battery than the base model three that they sell in the US and it's not quite as it's slightly slower than the the the base model three here which indicates that it's almost certainly got the LFP battery that they

Sold here for a while, and then discontinued. and most of the model threes and model wise sold in China use this C A T L L F P battery and that's almost certainly what's in this car. but you know, for for thirty grand, you know, two hundred and eighty eight miles. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:02)
You're just cruising around. You're not racing. Come

on.

Easy peasy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:08)
So yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:09)
Lemon's greasy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:10)
Seventy one seventy one kilowatt hours of usable battery.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:13)
Still no dash cluster.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:15)
Yeah, still no dash cluster, unfortunately.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:19)
think that's a good idea. I know why Tesla thinks it's a good idea. I got in a big fight. They they they call exactly. They they yelled at me on the phone once about something I said.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:25)
cheaper. Yeah. It save it saves them money. That's also why they don't

like any they don't like the switches. Switches cost money.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:34)
Yeah. Switches cost money.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:36)
Yep. so that's that's the main stories get for this week. also I I had a conversation, did an interview the other day with John Possum Possumato

who is the CEO of a company called Drive It Away and Benjamin

jill ciminillo (1:23:57)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:58)
Mayard, who's head of global head of mobility for Free to Move, which is part of Stellantis. And we we talked about Drive It Away. there's Free to Move is working with Drive It Away, which is a company that does month to month leasing on cars. and you know the the basic premise

is fine. They they want to make cars more available, you know, w because affordability is a challenge. They want to make c vehicles, you know, both new and used vehicles more available to people who may not well let's let's be blunt about it. To h the people that have bad credit or who don't want to or who maybe don't have enough money for a down payment or, you know, don't want to commit to something.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:45)
Twenties something

Robbie. So people So twenties something Robbie.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:52)
and so the the way it works, you know, you can you can listen to the interview after after we're done here. but the way it works is that you can go online, use their app, go to their website, and they work with a bunch of dealers around the country, and they've got both new vehicles and used vehicles. and they if you if you go to the if you go look at the the pricing

like I just pulled it up here. they they list you you gotta be careful when you're looking at the website because the first time I looked at it I didn't notice the per week under the pricing. yeah. and it's actually it's actually a rent to own. So for you know, for every month you rent the car, you get credit towards buying the car if you ultimately decide you want to buy it. looking here, a dark

A Mustang Dark Horse S C seven hundred and thirty dollars per week.

jill ciminillo (1:25:58)
Ooh.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:58)
That's a lot. I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:59)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:00)
mean if I mean you're also

jill ciminillo (1:26:00)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:01)
buying a Mustang dark horse, so maybe Maybe we just get the you know what, just get a n e c what it's we all

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:03)
True. But an F one hundred fifty Lariat. Th thirteen hundred

and twenty seven dollars per week.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:10)
We only have fancy cars. That's the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:13)
no, they they have lots of used cars too.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:16)
okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:17)
yeah, I I spotted I found one the other day. I found a camry the other day that had two hundred thousand miles on it. It was ninety-six dollars per week, so four hundred dollars per month for a camry with two hundred thousand miles on it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:29)
Yeah, but the motor's just broken in.

jill ciminillo (1:26:31)
The

car payment

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:32)
True.

jill ciminillo (1:26:32)
is less than that. Like why why

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:34)
Well that's the thing is

that you don't have you don't have credit. You can't get a car payment. Being poor is very expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:39)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:40)
That's what I learned growing up. And then just being poor f until like I don't know, my thirties. It's like everything is just built to like make to hold you down. Everything like you don't have credit? Well hey, you can buy this car for like twice the price. Everything is so expensive 'cause you can't because you're not tr you can't be trusted with money, apparently. so yeah. So this is you know, if you can't

get a loan because you have horrible credit, but you still need to get somewhere. And hopefully it pays more than what your monthly car lease is. then you can you can do this. Yeah, it's it's it's it's yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:17)
So here's

the 2022 Chevy Traverse with 165,000 miles on it for $155 a week. So that's $600 a month.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:26)
Yeah, that's too much.

Yeah. The Cambry on the other hand, that's that car's fine. Two hundred

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:31)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:31)
thousand miles, that pff easy peasy. It's that that that engine's just now it's really broken in. Now it's ready to go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:43)
yeah, there's a

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:43)
Yeah. Anyway, the

the the moral of the story is never be poor.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:47)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:49)
And follow your dreams. That's the morals the to two morals for today.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:49)
But you know, it's it's it's

you know, it when when you are poor it's hard not to be poor. And the the system the system makes it very

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:57)
It's very hard to to dig yourself out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:00)
hard to to transition from being poor to not being poor.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:05)
It took a long time. And a lot of loans. And a lot of debt.

jill ciminillo (1:28:10)
That's

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:14)
And a lot of like just Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, no one wants to hear about my sad poor person stories. My brother and I think they're hilarious because that's how we grew up and that's our life. And we'll tell stories and my wife will be like, That's the saddest story I've ever heard. And we're c busting up laughing about the time we didn't need for, you know, X amount of days.

And we're like, ha ha ha remember we didn't have food I

jill ciminillo (1:28:39)
Man.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:40)
was like, What? What is your life? I'm like, it's fine.

jill ciminillo (1:28:45)
That's fine. You're you're not there, no.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:47)
Yeah, I that's yeah. I'm also

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:47)
But you know, if

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:49)
my wife has learned also not to say that there's no there's no food in the house. I'm like, no. There's nothing

jill ciminillo (1:28:54)
There is food.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:55)
but food in this house. Look at all the food.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:57)
Yeah. so, you know, it's it's an alternative, you know, if you know, if you if you can't get a loan or you know, maybe you you don't necessarily want to commit, you know. And actually, yeah, and the thing is you can you can cancel at any time. which is interesting, you know, and there's no you know, there's no origination fees like you would have with a regular lease.

you know, it's month month to month leasing. the

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:29)
How how does insurance work?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:32)
you still gotta pay for the insurance separately. This does not include the insurance.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:34)
So you just gotta just keep adding things on and off.

jill ciminillo (1:29:34)
Wow.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:37)
You just gotta keep adding things on and off.

jill ciminillo (1:29:38)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:38)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:39)
You know, you should just get zip car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:42)
Yeah, that's actually if you live if you live in an urban area and you've got if you've got something like zip car available, that's actually probably a much more cost effective solution. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:51)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:52)
Or you know, if or you know, if you live somewhere where you got transit, you know, use use public transit, and

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:57)
Used to bust, man.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:58)
set some money aside every month, you know, until you get enough money for a for a down payment and you know, try and build up your credit a little bit. You know, take take a couple of years, a few years, you know, however long you need to.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:10)
It's

it takes so long. But

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:13)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:15)
yeah, zip cards zip cars why I fell why I fell in love with the Kia Sol. 'Cause I broke my I broke my ankle and I couldn't drive the BRZ, which was the only car we owned at the time 'cause we lived in the city. So we had that and the Vespa. And I couldn't ride either. And I I mostly

jill ciminillo (1:30:29)
Neither the

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:30)
just rode the Vespa around. So I had to like get zip cars to go around to to to do things whenever I need to get around that involved like not being able to take public transportation.

And once one time it was like, the only card available is the Key of Sol and I was like, Man and so I hobbled my butt down this four flights of stairs in my apartment, almost falling down three of four three or four times. And then I just with my crutches down the street and I got in the key of soul I was like, and within like two blocks I was in love with the key of soul.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:01)
Hey, it's a decent little car.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:02)
It's a g it's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's a glorious little box that you can shove a bunch of things in and it's not yeah, it's not flashy. It's just this is the car. Enjoy.

jill ciminillo (1:31:15)
And it's easy to get in and out of if you're on crutches. Been there done that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:17)
Yep.

There you go. Crutch certified.

jill ciminillo (1:31:22)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:23)
before we go, yeah, so we we had a comment from N Nolan three seven in the in the YouTube chat, didn't know about the Bronco having a manual option. and yeah, it's a it's a seven speed manual, although the first gear is a low speed crawling gear. So it's really it's really a six speed plus a crawling gear. But

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:45)
There you go.

And it's ava it's available in every trim but the outer banks trim. I just looked it up. That's why I have no that's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:51)
Is it? Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:52)
the only reason I know.

jill ciminillo (1:31:52)
Actually I I

think it's it's not available in the heritage or the Strop either.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:58)
Yeah, the heritage has it too. So it's in

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:01)
Does it?

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:01)
the bank,

jill ciminillo (1:32:01)
I'm like I'm

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:02)
big band. I'm looking at their site. The base, big bend, not outer banks, bad lands, heritage. wait, I'm sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:10)
But you can only get it with the four cylinder.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:12)
Sorry, Strop Strop and Raptor don't have it. I'm sorry. Those two I didn't I didn't click far enough over for the like super crazy

jill ciminillo (1:32:18)
But it it

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:19)
ones.

jill ciminillo (1:32:20)
it's also only available with the two point three liter turbocharged engine, so it's not available

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:24)
Yeah. Yeah, no.

jill ciminillo (1:32:26)
with the up level V six.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:27)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:29)
You don't need you got a manual transmission. You're gonna have a way more fun. Come on. That's

jill ciminillo (1:32:30)
So that is fair. You you are

you know, unless you're in stop and go Chicago traffic. But I will say my husband and I usually

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:39)
Okay, whatever.

jill ciminillo (1:32:40)
only own manual transmissions. so we are gluttons for punishment.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:46)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean we had a we have a BRZ

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:46)
I know that feeling.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:48)
and we lived in San Francisco.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:52)
And we had it before

jill ciminillo (1:32:52)
Lots of hills.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:53)
that we had a a mini countryman, which the the torque on that vehicle is not enough for the size of the mini countryman, man of transmission. For that yeah, we just had a series of manner transmissions until we bought our E V.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:06)
E every car that I've owned that's been primarily my car for the last forty years has been a manual.

All right. well with that, we will say goodbye and stay tuned. You know, just keep listening for the interview with the the folks from Drive It Now and and Free to Move. but we will talk to you all next time. Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:39)
All right, we're back and I'm now talking with Benjamin Maillard from Free2Move and John Possumato from Drive It Away, which is an interesting interesting venture I recently learned about. so gentlemen, why don't we start off with what what exactly is Drive It Away?

John F. Possumato (1:34:02)
So Drive It Away is a company I'm a background is all in automotive retail. I I was I was a a Chrysler dealer when there was still Plymouth right way back in retailing. And Drive It As Away is a company that I founded developing technology to make it very easy for someone extremely easy, all driven by tech.

to i i get a personal transportation of vehicle without making a long term financial commitment. or going through, you know, the kind of normal, cumbersome process of buying a vehicle, reducing friction completely. Now this was just a vision of mine, and then we built technology around it. so again, I I've you know in the in the late eighties, early nineties I was a dealer. I worked with the manufacturers in the mid to late

nineties and two thousands, and looking at retail, this was a evolutionary piece of retail in my in my mind, that what we're doing now was something that was gonna really i i be the equivalent of conventional leasing today. If you looked at the evolution of leasing, this is the next step, right? So so it's a company formed to be the next step in in retail for automotive.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:25)
And how how does Drive It Away fit in with Freedom Move? you know, Freedom Move was something that spawned out of Stellantis, well actually even earlier than you know, before Stellantis even existed. and so how how do those how do those two entities fit together in all of this?

Benjamin Maillard (1:35:43)
that that that's a good question. So f first, free to move has has always been about making mobility easy, smooth, and and and especially accessible for for everyone. So and how we fit together so we drive it away, we are doing we're doing that for a customer that the industry usually loathes.

So what I mean by that is we're talking about customers that are, you know, working into a dealership, love the car, but unfortunately walk out buying nothing. So and and and maybe, you know, that can come from okay, no credit history, I don't want to make the dumb payment, or I'm simply not ready, you know, for that six or even now seven years alone right now.

So and the partnership and how we make those things fit in together is we turn that can buy customer into a sort of not yet for the customer, but into a sale today for the dealer. So that's that's what we do. And what Free to Move brings is large network of dealer partners. we of course get all the cars online through different APIs, and at the end we buy those cars from the dealer. And what Drive It Away is bringing is that seamless customer journey through the

That makes you know really easy, simple for a customer ordering a car. I mean, just clicking on the button.

getting approved and driving out of the dealership with that car. So that's the combination of the two that really, yeah, I mean, facilitating the thing, approach on the the the freedom of side for the dealer, based on the network and on driving away, bringing all the the app technology and everything for making the customer journey as seamless as possible.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:33)
So as I understand, free to move is no longer part of Stellantis now, right? It was sold off to I believe a German private equity firm earlier this year.

Benjamin Maillard (1:37:45)
yeah, so I mean what what has been what has been sold is is is the freedom of car sharing part of the business.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:53)
Okay.

Benjamin Maillard (1:37:53)
so as as you know, we are now focused as a group on the twenty thirty plan, which is about refocusing on core activities. of course as a group we still see a lot of value in in car sharing, but taking it to the next level takes investment, time, dedication, all of that. And the decision was yeah, made to to find a new owner.

We can carry it forward. So that's the reason why the car sharing was sold. But this part of the business which we're talking about right now remains with Telades, and this is where we're focused.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:27)
So, I guess who what do you see as the the target customers? Well f I guess f let's let's back off a little bit. let's talk a little bit more about drive it away and exactly how that process works. you know, you've you this described on the on the website as a rent to own

for

vehicles for for new vehicles or actually I guess used vehicles too 'cause I was browsing through the site. so t tell us more about exactly how that whole process works of someone renting a vehicle from drive it away and and ultimately potentially buying that vehicle or some other vehicle.

John F. Possumato (1:39:08)
Sure. Exactly. And and you know, I I speak at a lot of organizations and I speak a lot of dealer organizations and I summarize it in a couple of sentences saying, like if if someone was interested in in getting a new vehicle from you, it still takes a lot of time. It still takes a lot of wedding signatures, it still takes everything.

anyone here in this audience could pull up the app, pick their car, right, and, you know, have it delivered before the my presentation's over. So everything is done on the web or in the app. It's very easy, very very liquid. It's not a sales contract so it doesn't trigger the regulations, but we like to say it gives the best of everything to the customer, right?

One is it's very easy, it's very neat, but they're not locked into a long term contract. Has the benefits of leasing, right? But they always have the option to get out at any time. On the other hand, if this is it it's sort of an extended test drive in one sense, in that you can see right in the app every usage payment reduces the purchase price of that vehicle. Right? So, i again, the ultimate flexibility i in this day and age, y you know, you can you can you

c if you choose to buy the car you haven't lost by driving it because it the the purchase price getting reduced. On the other hand, if you decide wait a second this isn't for me, right, you can get out of it. And again, because you know it's all digital, they they pay digitally, everything could be done you know, through the app or all online.

You know, and it's you know, it's the ultimate inconvenience. We like to say, look, not only does is the process all digital, which then you know is a big hot button today, but even that final decision of purchasing doesn't have to trigger, right? You can try out. And everybody old retail guys, you know, they all they all know, right you know, Sam is like, Take it home for the weekend. That

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:07)
Mm-hmm.

John F. Possumato (1:41:07)
that was the way to sell a car. Sometimes you got it back, but most of the time it's sold. For the dealer this is the same thing. It's like

Take it home as long as you want it, right? and try it out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:18)
So

do it does this work through dealers? You have a network of dealers that you get access to their inventory, post it on the on the app or on the website, and then you know, if if a customer wants it then the the dealer works with the customer to actually deliver the vehicle or, you know, to take it back at the the end of the term.

John F. Possumato (1:41:44)
yeah, I don't know that where they don't want to take that, but it from the dealer's perspective, it's as e actually it's way easier than doing a sale or a lease contract. The dealer's inventory is listed in the app and on the site. customer sees it. the dealer doesn't take any risk, residual risk, the the you know they put

it's still the dealership's customer. We do all the back end. It's it's just as easy as putting a lease contract through, right? it's still a customer of the dealership, but we take on all the financial responsibility and the payment and all of those things that would make it clunky. And and that was you know, yes earlier, like what is drive it away? Drive it is the way is the technology to make all this stuff work properly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:28)
But the dealer throughout this process up until you know, if a customer d opts to buy the vehicle, the dealer still owns that vehicle during during this period or

John F. Possumato (1:42:36)
No. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:37)
or does Freedom Move buy it from the dealer once a customer selects

Benjamin Maillard (1:42:41)
Yeah, we we

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:41)
it?

Benjamin Maillard (1:42:42)
yeah, that that's that that that's I think that I I think that's the crucial point that that sets us completely different than the others. That the thing is that it's it's not it's not rantal for the dealer. I mean we are

We're not asking the dealer doing anything else that what is was is doing the best. So it's it it's really about winning a customer. and the dealer sells the card today to us, free to move. and later, as John said, the customer buys it or the dealer buys it back to city that used. So that that's the which works. So basically it's but for the dealer, that's that's a sell from the very first day.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:20)
Okay. So so the the it's it's off the dealer's books then once once the customer has selected it. Okay.

Benjamin Maillard (1:43:26)
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And no

operation, nothing. And and the way that you get the customer on board is as simple as getting the customer on boarded into a lease. Even even even simpler.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:38)
So,

you know, how does how how does the the the pricing model work out for this? I notice, you know, on the site, you know, you the prices are listed per week, but I think the the the terms, the lease terms or the rental terms are month to month, is that correct? And and how do you

how do you work out, you know, what the the lease price is going to be for a particular vehicle? What what is the you know, I guess what what is the you know, the what are the interest rates that you're charging here or you know, the the equivalent interest rates that customer would be paying for this?

John F. Possumato (1:44:16)
And if you want to take that or I'll take that. It it from from our perspective, what happens is free to move is gonna buy the car. they put it on a long term lease rate, we put it on essentially you're right, month to month, although you can actually get out. You know, it's really week to week. the customer can get out at any time. But the pricing is all automatic based on free to move's purchase lease price.

And, you know, we're we're taking in the payments and and putting that back out to the customer. So it's an automated process and of course it's gonna vary vehicle by vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:55)
and is there you know, does it also vary you know during this process, you know, do you do a credit check on the customer and you know, may the may the is the could the price vary from what's posted here based on the customer's credit?

John F. Possumato (1:45:09)
Well, that that's a very key point and and you mentioned before, who are the customers, right?

First off, it's a whole gamut, right? You you've got a a generation coming up that really doesn't want to lock into a long term contract. And and frankly, given the rates and everything today, I I I don't blame them. I you know, I just read the stats that the prices are the highest, the the the term loans are the longest they've ever been. but this is a key element of it. No, there is no credit check. The price doesn't vary by credit. There is no down payment, right? So this really opens up and I think this is a key element.

element and Benjamin can speak to this that you know we're not substituting customers, we're expanding the pie inside the retail dealership. Because if someone A doesn't want to buy today or B doesn't have the down payment by today or C maybe their credit is a little shoddy, right?

That's usually an inhibitor, right, to to doing a transaction. In this case it isn't for us. We don't even check credit, right? we're looking for income to payment ratio. Obviously we don't want to set up anybody to fail, but anybody can go in and get, you know, anything today and the price doesn't vary by the by the credit check. Again, we don't we don't even look at FICA score.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:22)
Okay. So yeah, for the the credits that customers get towards purchase price, how much you know, how much of that monthly or weekly payment are are they getting toward as credit towards the purchase price of the vehicle? So for example, I'm looking here at the site, you know, it's a twenty twenty two Chevy Traverse listed for a hundred and forty eight dollars a week. you know, how much of that

Would they get credited towards the purchase price if you know, if after a month or two months they decide, Okay, I wanna I wanna buy this vehicle.

John F. Possumato (1:46:58)
It it will vary based on the vehicle. What we do is back out all of our our costs, right? And whatever's left goes to lower the price of the vehicle. Now what's interesting too is they get a set number of miles a month, right? If they go beyond that, there's a charge per mile. But the charge per mile goes to reduce the their purchase cost of the car directly. So, you know, in a in a normal lease you get a big bill at the end of the you know, it doesn't really vary the purchase price, right? But you get a

you might get a big bill for miles. In this case, if you're paying extra miles a month, it goes immediately that that money goes immediately reduced the purchase price over the allotted miles. So it will depend on the unit and the carrying costs and all of those things. it usually works out to be thirty to fifty percent again, depending on those miles. That can that can drive it down cheap pretty well. We have we have one vehicle right now, that we leased new

Frontier this is this is a great success story. Nissan Frontier was least new in two thousand twenty four. The purchase price at the time was

I think just under thirty thousand dollars, right? That person's buying the car inside the dealership at eighteen thousand right now. Now they ran a lot of miles to run that down. but it it what it did was make it affordable, right? They probably couldn't float a twenty eight thousand dollar loan, right? It was very difficult for them and with you know, you know, sort of not great credit. But eighteen thousand in equity they could buy that immediately. So we're expanding the pie of folks in in in a time and I and I think this is this

this interview's very timely right now because you know everything's strained, right? And

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:44)
Mm-hmm. No yeah.

John F. Possumato (1:48:46)
and and it it keeps falling downhill, right? It it's like, okay, well guys that bought new now are buying new right. In this case someone can get into a brand new car, right? And write it down themselves, right? To the point where they're they're able to buy it.

And and it runs the gamut from trucks to to anything. But you know, this this this sort of evolution, the way I see it, evolution of flexibility, right? is is is going mainstream. I mean in other countries it already is mainstream and it's it it's got a big underlying chunk of the market now and projected to grow very rapidly over the next few years.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:23)
So, you know, if I s when when you have the the mileage charges, when when is that billed? Is that billed on a monthly basis as well? Is that added to your like to your next month's payment or?

John F. Possumato (1:49:36)
No, what

what we do is we allocate fifteen hundred miles and if you're above that again everything's allocated by the week. So we're keeping track. You're never gonna be hit with a giant bill. That's important for a lot of folks, right? so tickets and tolls and again this is where the technology comes in. Tickets and tolls,

mileage fees, they're prorated by week. If you're over the proration, you're gonna pay that week. What what we don't want to do is surprise people with a giant bill. It's like, you know, here and and and for a lot of folks that's important. They can pay, you know, weekly in increments, but you know, the the the bigger picture, it's it's really a easy way for someone to buy the vehicle of their choice that may not want to make that decision today or are unable to make that decision today.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:25)
And you know, going back to who the customers are, you know, obviously, you know, people who might not have great credit, you know, that seems like an obvious one. but you know, who who who else, you know, are your target customers for this and you know w when I guess when when did all this start and you know how how much you know how much volume do you have right now? How many vehicles are currently being leased through drive it away?

Benjamin Maillard (1:50:57)
So that that that that that's a good question because when when we when when we started, yeah, as you said, we thought that we're gonna certainly address a certain category of customers, but we discovered that we have more and more and more customers that are sort of financially responsible customers. What I mean by that is it's not I mean, I can have good credit, but it doesn't mean that I'm gonna get necessarily a good offer on the front of me. And or by good

Offer, I mean an offer that's gonna please me, and or you know that I'm gonna say that's the right one, and that's really the one that I want you know to sign in for the next five, six or seven years. And you can really see that product as well as something that's gonna help that sort of customer, we which are good customers, and we're not talking about customers that cannot make it down or anything like that, but

At the moment, I mean, even as a good customer, I can I can be in a situation not being satisfied with the deal that I have in front of me. So and that product can definitely help transforming those customers instead of once again living in customer, you know, living with something, which once again is a sell for the dealer. So that's the type of customer that we are finding more and more and more.

And to give you a sense of scale, so now we have 70 what we call hubs. So hubs are dealership out of which we get different of mobility solutions that are offered. So subscription drive either way is a part of them. we are present in twenty twenty-three major metro arrears in sixteen states. And talking about sketch, we're talking about hundreds of cars that have been already delivered to customers.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:52:45)
Okay. And you know, do you are you know, I I assume you're looking at growing that, you know, to pretty much nationwide over the the coming months and years?

Benjamin Maillard (1:52:59)
Yeah.

Absolutely, because we we truly believe that demand one side and supply on the other already exist together. So it's just a matter of matching. What what we mean by that, and you ask about the pricing construction and everything, the the way I mean the way we build the pricing is as well based on how we're gonna find deals, of course, with the dealers. goal is to support dealers to basically avoid two things. facing aging inventory, that's point number one. And

For a fraction of my sales volume in a year going to brokers. Because basically, if I go to brokers, the average loss can be, I mean, is in the scale of thousands. So what you want is if you have that sort of supply one side, and if you're just assuming that a few, I mean, a certain portion of your lease.

Get not transforming two customers and are leaving your your dealership on a daily basis, buying nothing. I mean, it's you you just need to match those two together and to understand why those ones are living in order to avoid you setting two brokers and once again being in that aging inventory situation. So yeah, we truly believe that's true. Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:54:16)
It's it's kinda like the the it's kinda like the classic

sales thing. What do I you know, what do I have to do to get you in this car today? You know, and you're you're offering dealers yet another option, you know, to besides

Benjamin Maillard (1:54:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:54:28)
just, you know, discounting the car, you know, here's here's one other way that you could potentially move this metal.

Benjamin Maillard (1:54:34)
And I appreciate you saying that because that's exactly the goal and the thing is

Thank thanks to the connection that we do have with the dealerships through the API and that live stream about the inventory, you can literally leave the dealership with the car that you just got

John F. Possumato (1:54:50)
Mm.

Benjamin Maillard (1:54:51)
a test drive with. So we're not talking about, you know, another VIN that is not the car you know that you fell in love too with. It's it's it's really that VIN that you got a test drive. Say, you know, hey, I love the car, but you know, not enough for the next six, seven years. Once again, the same thing. Say, look, there is an alternative. You can go that way. And that's

gonna lead to a cell the exact same way for the dealer.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:13)
So

how long does the process typically take for a customer? You know, they've they've found a car, you know, until they until they have possession of that vehicle. How what's what's the time frame there?

John F. Possumato (1:55:25)
Well, it it can be very fast. It it can be twenty four hours, right? Depending on the vehicle and I mean the paperwork has to go through to buy the car and everything. so i it's i it's usually much faster than a purchase or a lease. And I I wanna mention one thing too. We're in unprecedented times right now. From the consumer's perspective, right? Over twenty five percent of the loans are eighty four months. And I now just read that leasing companies are going sixty months on a lease, right? If if if you're offered that versus here, you can get into this

And get out of this, but if you want to buy it, it it reduces the purchase price. And as Benjamin said, it's the it's the same car you came in on. It's the one that you wanted, right? this is a great alternative to to a consumer that maybe steps back and says, Well, do I really want an 84-month loan? Do really want a 60-month lease, right? Maybe I do, but but but maybe I don't. So the process can be very, very quick, typically way quicker than a purchase or or a lease. again, you know, we have to shovel some paperwork around and buy the

vehicle and and and do some things to it. But it's it's frictionless, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:31)
Okay. anything else that we haven't talked about with drive it away and and free to move that that you'd like to discuss?

John F. Possumato (1:56:43)
Well, I I'd just like to emphasize and we mentioned it that again, this is unprecedented times, right? you know, some folks feel they're shut out of the new car market, right? And they're going to use and they keep falling down. I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:54)
Yeah, I mean it's a a significant portion of

peop you know, who people who would have potentially been new car buyers, I think it's like on the order of about forty percent of people who would have been new car buyers a decade ago are simply out of the new car market now.

John F. Possumato (1:57:10)
And and this this expands that nuclear market because a lot of these folks have the cash flow, but they're worried about that loan, right? I mean, again, they're worried about, you know, interest rates, worry about a whole bunch of things, right? And this level of flexibility, this easy off ramp is the key to the whole process, right? and and that's that's that's really where I see this growth. Now if you look at other countries where affordability has been a problem for a long time, right?

Like Germany, the percentage of of what we do, this flexible lease, is is is very large. And another element of this that we didn't mention yet, but if you look at like Australia, right, there's a much bigger element of of the personal car market is is this flexible lease.

But even small commercial customers, right? it's like look, you know, I have a commercial business, I have the cash flow to support a fleet, but yeah, I I I

What's business gonna be like six months from now, I'm not quite sure. So in addition to the consumer market, there's a large small business market as well, and that's propelled places like Australia. and and we see that coming here, quite frankly, because they've they've had you know, it's been tough to buy a new car there, way earlier than it is here, but the same conditions are are developing here and that's why, you know, Benjamin and I think look, everything is poised towards dramatic growth today, right now, in the conditions that we look at.

'Cause we don't I mean, I don't want to speak for Benjamin, we don't see them changing any time soon, right? you know, we're not gonna wave a magic wand and affordability is gonna be you know, solved, right?

Benjamin Maillard (1:58:51)
Yep. And

Sam Abuelsamid (1:58:51)
All right.

Benjamin Maillard (1:58:52)
s Sam to to your to your point about you know less and less and less customers being in that new new co buyer segments, I I think that there is another side effect which is

In increasing the cost of acquisition per brand new car sold, if that makes sense. And and that's definitely something that, you know, that product can help, because once again, we're not talking about replacing, you know, anything. We're just talking about increasing conversion. And we do believe that, you know, in in that environment where your your cost are under pressure, and basically you need to invest more and more and more to keep the traffic going into your dealership for making sales.

Nobody is against increasing conversion. Nobody is against saving some money on that cost that are huge. And nobody is against something that is just as simple as John said as a leasing. You just have to mention it as a salesperson. I mean, the customer is there, is almost living, just mention it as an option. And then, I mean, it works like any finance product. I mean, you get paid, you hand over the key.

And what you're gonna get after will be that car coming back for service because of course we do service with our dealers, and you're gonna get that car back as well as used at the end of the process or sending it to that customer. So we truly believe that it's really a win-win-win business model that is in place here, and that can help, you know, ease a bit some tension that you mentioned on the on the market.

John F. Possumato (2:00:32)
No, that's a great point that I forgot to add. The customer's always the customer of the dealership, right? We're the you know, we're sort of the back end thing th th that makes it all work, but

Sam Abuelsamid (2:00:40)
You're an enabler for for the yeah.

John F. Possumato (2:00:43)
if they want to buy that used vehicle, they don't buy it from us. They go back to that dealer, right? so you know, for all intents and purposes, you we're kind of like, you know, in conventional leasing, we're like sort of the back end of that conventional leasing. But that dealer always retains that customer. I'm not sure we emphasize that enough, right? It it's it's

You know, we're the technology, we're the the enabler, but the dealer is gaining a new customer.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:01:09)
Alright, well thank you both so much for your time today. I appreciate it. And I'm gonna hit stop right now and then if we can just keep your browser window open for a moment.