Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode four hundred and seventy eight of wheel bearings. I'm Sam Abuelsamid from telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:06)
I am Roberto Baldwin from S. I. International.

jill ciminillo (00:09)
And I am Jill Ciminillo. Um Uber freelancer at large and what did you say, woman around town? Something? I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:17)
That works.

jill ciminillo (00:18)
Yeah. Ha ha

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21)
Uh, all right. Um, well uh you know, it was a slow week I think. Not much happened this week, so you know, I'm not sure what we're gonna talk about. Uh

Roberto Baldwin (00:27)
Not a thing. Nothing.

jill ciminillo (00:30)
Nothing nothing happened at all.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32)
Not nothing exciting

Roberto Baldwin (00:33)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33)
in the news. So um so let's uh Yeah. All right.

jill ciminillo (00:36)
So let's make stuff up. oh

Roberto Baldwin (00:37)
Let's make stuff up. Let's make stuff up.

The Ford Taurus, it's coming back, people. The Honda S two thousand, it's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44)
It it yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (00:46)
coming back, but it's gonna be a full size truck.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (00:49)
That would not surprise me.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51)
Uh all right.

Roberto Baldwin (00:51)
Everything's a full size truck now.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52)
Um, Joel, what have you been driving?

jill ciminillo (00:55)
Um, well, I have been driving the Hyundai Santa Cruz and um I just literally right before this started walked in the door from Indianapolis. So just spent the last three and a half hours um in that vehicle. And you know, I I've I have always liked this vehicle. I competed in the Hyundai Santa Cruz in the Rebel rally in twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-three.

And I mean we we lifted it, we added front um recovery hooks, like we made some changes to it so it wasn't stock, but seats were comfortable. Love the heated and and cooled seats, love the powertrain, the turbocharged powertrain. Um and and you know, I I fell in love with the truck then. And so this was just kind of a reconfirmation of how much I like the the Hyundai Santa Cruz and how good of a job they did with that little truck.

And I mean I know it doesn't sell as well as the Ford Maverick, but uh

Roberto Baldwin (01:54)
It's

such a good little my neighbor has just

jill ciminillo (01:56)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (01:57)
bought his second Santa Cruz. He took his old he was at the dealership for I don't know why. And he had his used one that he had bought and they sold him a new one. He traded in his used one and bought a brand new Santa Cruz because he knew this was the last year because I told him. He's like, I love this truck.

jill ciminillo (02:14)
this isn't the last year. Um but I I I don't know. So th there were two things that I found problematic. Just two in the Santa Cruz and

Roberto Baldwin (02:23)
Tan tan

jill ciminillo (02:25)
one is the hand warmer. You know the um that that worked overtime, aka the wireless phone charger. Because I kept like having to take it out and put it in, take

Sam Abuelsamid (02:32)
Ha ha.

jill ciminillo (02:33)
it out and put it so like I I have no charge on my phone. um

Roberto Baldwin (02:39)
Oh

jill ciminillo (02:44)
But I have really warm hands and

Roberto Baldwin (02:48)
Ooh.

jill ciminillo (02:49)
um I know, right? And then the other thing that I don't like as a petite driver are the headrests. And and I those have always been a problem for me. Um when we competed in the Rebel Rally, I am not advocating, I am not advocating for this, but when we competed in the Rebel Rally, we actually turned the headrests around because they, you know, especially when you're wearing helmets. Yeah, they push your head around. And

Sam Abuelsamid (03:09)
Is it 'cause it sticks too far forward? Pushes against your head?

Roberto Baldwin (03:12)
Oh, that's a problem

for me 'cause it makes my neck hurt. And so then I have

jill ciminillo (03:13)
And so yeah, and so

Roberto Baldwin (03:16)
to put my seat back further than I feel comfortable.

jill ciminillo (03:19)
W what I ended up doing is just raising the headrests up so that my head kind of fell between the hole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin (03:22)
So it's above your head. Like a little hat. Like a little like a little headrest hat for your

jill ciminillo (03:28)
in in all of the video that I do, it just yeah, it looks like I'm I'm wearing a cone head or something. Um but

Roberto Baldwin (03:33)
that's a bummer.

jill ciminillo (03:34)
those are the only two things. I you know, I really I do like the powertrain and you know, I was helping my mom move this week and there are a lot of little trips we had to make to storage.

And it's great for the medium size uh box that you buy at Home Depot. It fits in the truck bed perfectly with the Tano cover closed. Um, you know, the the back seats, even though they they have um a nicer material, I was sliding things in and out, did not scratch anything. So they're very durable. Um and I I you know it was it it it did not fit my mom's king size bed. So I will I will say that. Um

Yeah, it's not it's not a king size bed hauler, but but it fit all of the little things that we needed to to get from like the apartment to storage. So um I I I don't know. I I love this truck. And it was um the limited all-wheel drive model. And uh it it really did not have any options on it. Um so I mean that the only option was really the the paint, which was the blue stone.

Paint, which was a premium paint for five hundred dollars, and then it had uh carpeted floor mats for two hundred and forty dollars. But the base price without destination is just about forty-three thousand dollars. And then with destination and the options that were on there, it was forty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety dollars.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:01)
the yeah, I mean the the only thing that has bugged me about the Santa Cruz really uh is that they they never put the hybrid powertrain in there. Yeah, 'cause this is based

jill ciminillo (05:10)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:10)
on the Tucson. Tucson's

Roberto Baldwin (05:11)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:12)
got the hybrid, also available the plug in hybrid. And they never put either of those options in the Santa Cruz. Um and, you know, I think if they had done that it I think it probably would have sold a lot better because I mean, you look at the percentage of Mavericks that are sold with the hybrid, you know,

jill ciminillo (05:27)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:28)
it's been like

fifty eight, sixty percent of all of the Mavericks sold to date have been hybrids. Yeah. People people I think people like that smaller size truck. Yeah, because it it gives you the utility that you know when when people think, yeah, it'd be nice to have a pickup truck. But for most people, you know, if you don't have something to big to if you don't have a big trailer to tow, that is like the perfect size truck. You know, it's perfect, you know, for putting a few

Roberto Baldwin (05:55)
You just wanna throw

Sam Abuelsamid (05:57)
Yeah.

few bales of straw, a dozen bags of mulch, you know, or, you know, the the the utility, the storage boxes that you're carrying. Yeah. And

jill ciminillo (06:05)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:06)
you know, and you know, for for those that have never been, you know, in a design studio um at an automaker, you know, it it's interesting you mentioned, you know, those boxes f fit in there perfectly. Yeah, because I'm sure that when they were going through the process and you know doing the design, they actually had a stack of those boxes in the studio

And they put into the clay model and make sure that they've you know, that they can maximize that space in there. 'cause you know, and they do the same thing with cup holders, you know, they have m

jill ciminillo (06:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:37)
cups, you know, of all different sizes, you know, and try and make sure as many of them fit as possible.

jill ciminillo (06:44)
Yeah, I know. I'm like all of

Sam Abuelsamid (06:45)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (06:46)
the cup holders with all of the things. yeah, and I mean I will say the one one thing that people should know is that Tanu cover is not like it does not seal in the truck bed. So like if you were driving through rain, you wouldn't want to leave your luggage in there. And so like if you are doing a road trip with people in the backseat, I mean, just pray for no rain. Um you know, and we found during the Ripa.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:09)
Maybe take a tarp

and you know, just wrap wrap the stuff up in a tarp

Roberto Baldwin (07:12)
yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:12)
or something. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (07:12)
waterproof it, saran wrap your luggage

and then put it back there. Um, you know, we found during the rebel what we did is we put our camping gear in the truck bed. So the tent, you know, our um the the um our sleeping mats are but the the sleeping mats were inside a waterproof bag and and everything in the back was completely covered in dust and silt.

So we put our clothes in the back seat. So things that we didn't want to get dirty or we were worried about, we put in the back seat. And then, you know, the stuff that was already gonna be dirty anyway, we put in the truck bed. So um that's just that's something to to be aware of, is that is not um it it is it is not the same as a trunk. Um so yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:58)
Okay. Yeah, I mean some some some hard tonneaux are you know, they they are watertight, you know, they will seal. This one is not. But it is it is very handy the way they did it, you know, 'cause it's it's it's a you know, kind of a roll up, um,

jill ciminillo (08:11)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:12)
you know, kind of like what you find, you know, on a Rivian or, you know, on a on a Cybertruck, uh, but it's not powered. So you just push it forward and it it rolls into the compartment and then there's a little strap that you can pull to pull it back.

jill ciminillo (08:26)
Yeah, I I mean it's super handy. And the other thing that they did that I thought was really handy is they have um steps built into the bumper and it's meant to be like you could step here and then there's like a like where the license plate is, there's like another step, and so it's like you could step steps into the bed and you know, they've just made it um super convenient to access the things in the truck bed and um you know it it's just I I don't know, I thoroughly I like this truck.

I'm biased though.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:58)
Okay, cool. Um, all right, anything else on the uh on the Santa Cruz?

jill ciminillo (09:05)
Um, no, other than like I I know that they were saying it was going away, um, but I feel like I've heard from Hyundai since then that maybe it's not going away, so

Sam Abuelsamid (09:15)
Yeah,

I've I've heard the same thing that it might be sticking around for a while and there might

Roberto Baldwin (09:17)
They've they've changed their minds.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:19)
then there might be a next generation version of it coming as well.

jill ciminillo (09:22)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (09:22)
Oh

jill ciminillo (09:23)
So T V D.

Roberto Baldwin (09:23)
maybe they were like,

oh maybe it's yeah. Maybe they're like, wait, you the Maverick costs just as much as this now.

jill ciminillo (09:29)
Yep, it totally does.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:30)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (09:31)
And I mean they've added all like the XRT option, you know, to it,

Sam Abuelsamid (09:35)
Mm-hmm.

jill ciminillo (09:35)
which I'm going to say is based off of the the stuff that we did during Rebel. Um, you know, with the front recovery hooks and, you know, some of the the lift that they've added. That was like all based on our experience that being as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:48)
So you you guys were the

the the you you and it was cr you and Kristen that did that, right? Yeah.

jill ciminillo (09:52)
Kristen Shaw, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:54)
So um you you were the prototype drivers for what became the XRT. You you did the durability test of of the

jill ciminillo (09:57)
We were? Uh I would yes. We did.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:03)
of what became the X RT.

jill ciminillo (10:04)
And I can neither confirm nor deny that we broke things. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (10:07)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:08)
Well, I mean that's what testing is for. That's why you do testing. You test

to find things that are gonna break and then you fix them so that when you get into production they don't break, hopefully. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (10:17)
Correct. And we finished. We finished both times.

So even if something broke, it didn't it didn't hinder our ability to finish.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:26)
There you go.

jill ciminillo (10:27)
So that's what

I'm gonna say about that. Okay, I'm really done now talking about the Santa Cruz. I like it.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:30)
Okay.

Robbie, what about you?

Roberto Baldwin (10:34)
Hi.

So I drove the okay, so I drove the Jeep Cherokee. I drove the uh what do you w what we what are we calling it? The Jeep the twenty twenty six Cherokee Overland four by four, which is I don't know. Overland.

This is the second time I've driven this vehicle. And here's here's the thing about the actual Here's the great here's the thing about the

jill ciminillo (10:58)
You don't sound overwhelmingly abusively positive.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:00)
Were were y were you as overwhelmed as you were the first time?

Roberto Baldwin (11:03)
Here's the powertrain. The powertrain is like, hey, good job, guys. It's like everyone I've talked to who's driven this car like, it's better than I anticipated. And that

jill ciminillo (11:12)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (11:12)
was that we we had we our bar was so low for this vehicle, for a hybrid, from

jill ciminillo (11:17)
It it was a little bit low.

Roberto Baldwin (11:18)
from Jeep installantis, that we were like, hey

per this isn't so bad. And I you know, I think their EPA, let me see their EPA is boop. Let's see, I think it's 37. I was getting about 35. Um but at the same time that you're like, okay, cool. Awesome. Good job. Then you get in the car and you sit behind the wheel. And the wheel is in a wheel and

It is some torture device that someone at Jeep has d has has dreamed up and said, this is what people want when they're driving their car, the world's worst steering wheel. Where no matter where you put your hand, you are uncomfortable. There is no comfortable position on the steering wheel. It is an octagon. It is a it is is

jill ciminillo (12:11)
It is kind of oddly shaped.

Roberto Baldwin (12:13)
it is an o it is a UFC octagon and it's there to grapple you and take

Sam Abuelsamid (12:18)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (12:18)
you down.

And suck all the fun out of driving this vehicle. Now you know, there's still the RAV Ford out there, there's still the CRV. The you know, there's still the, you know, Hyundai's myriad of now hun of hybrids. This is not quite as nice as those. It's definitely not as nice as the as the the Hyundai. but it's a y but but you like I wanna give prompts. I talked to the to the to the people there who who worked on it and they were very proud. I'm like, good job.

And then the steering wheel. And then you so you have that. And then you have this sort of almost slap dash software. So I'm driving the car, and you have two little you know circular things in the dash cluster. One's for your you know speed, the other one's probably for IP RPMs or whatnot. And then you're like, oh, I have directions. So instead of replacing the left circle, it does an overlay over the circle.

But it doesn't completely overlay the circle. So you can see the top of the the top of the of the thing. So what they're doing, it's if they've they they're they're using they're they're creating a layer that goes over that and in some instances the directions will just disappear.

jill ciminillo (13:38)
Is this when you're using the native system or Apple CarPlayer? Android auto? Oh. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (13:42)
Both. I tried it on both. Um

and the fact that so it should a that shouldn't ha it shouldn't have they shouldn't have an overlay. They should either like turn that off and turn the other thing on. It just looks cheap when you're you know when you're driving the car and you look over like wait,

jill ciminillo (13:56)
Hm.

Roberto Baldwin (13:57)
this just looks like it's been slapped on. It disappears and then when I was driving, I was three blocks from my destination and the car's like, hey you're here

jill ciminillo (14:07)
And you're like, Am I?

I am not here.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:09)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (14:11)
I like no I'm not.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:12)
Uh that's

this GPS receiver's a little off.

Roberto Baldwin (14:15)
I'm not here. No, no, no. This was using CarPlay.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:20)
Yeah, but e even even w when you're using CarPlay or Android Auto, um, it's it's actually using the GPS signal from the vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin (14:28)
Oh, well it had no idea. It it was like you're here and well I still have turns to make. I still have at least one turn and three blocks before I get to thy destination. And it's like, oh guys Guys, what are we doing? What's happening here? So yeah. So it's

jill ciminillo (14:48)
Yes than a video.

Roberto Baldwin (14:50)
Yeah, so it's it's uh it's yeah. And you you you know you get in the car and you

y you know, again, the powertrain you're like, alright, cool. They're you know, good for the lots of room, comfortable and it's you know, it's pretty comfortable for a car. It you know, individuals, you know, your how you sit down, the shape of your body, that, you know, that determines whether or not you're gonna be comfortable in the seat. That was fine. That was fine for me. Um but it it's it's it feels like the backup camera just felt sort of like two gen like a generation ago.

And again, you you know, when you when you look at the in the broader scheme of things at w like what Jeep has to deal with as a comp as a brand, part as part of Stalantis, and you know, this this engine isn't like some new thing, you know, it was this is a an engine that's it's the Lantis group engine. Um but you're like, they worked so hard and they got this in here and they did all these other things, and I like the way it looks and then you're just like, Oh but then they're oh

Software and steering wheels and software is hard. Uh

Sam Abuelsamid (15:58)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (15:59)
you know, the car I'll talk about next week. man, you don't even w the software mess up that that happened while I had the vehicle this weekend was just like, guys. Um But the steering wheel, why? What are you doing? Do you Yeah,

jill ciminillo (16:14)
If it ain't broke, break it.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:15)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (16:16)
if it ain't yeah, what why do you hate your your your your your your people?

Sam Abuelsamid (16:20)
I have

I I ha I have Jeep recon for a couple of days uh this weekend with the same steering wheel in it and yeah, it's it's not good. And and also, um yeah, I was going somewhere yesterday and about mm five, ten minutes before I got to the destination, the system suddenly decided, Oh, Android Auto has crashed, it's w we can't show you anything. Um and

The you know, so I went to the native navigation, you know, instead of trying to fuss with the phone while I was driving. And it uh it did not have the place I was going to in its points of interest. And, you know, this is like, you know, not you know, not just some no name place. It's a you know, it's a county park, you know, that should it's

jill ciminillo (17:11)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:12)
been there

Roberto Baldwin (17:12)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:12)
for many, many, many years. And it should

jill ciminillo (17:14)
Be there.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:15)
have been in there and it was not, and it couldn't find

Roberto Baldwin (17:17)
It

Sam Abuelsamid (17:17)
it, had no idea where it was.

Roberto Baldwin (17:18)
It's such a weird I have video of the of the the directions just flashing on and off like a disco It's just like

jill ciminillo (17:29)
Strobe lighting.

Roberto Baldwin (17:29)
it's up which is you know not safe for some people. You know, you don't want strobe lights in your car. So yeah, so you're like you start at the base and you're like, Alright, cool. Good job, nice powertrain, you know, over thirty miles per gallon for

Four by four, you know, you have enough space to, you know, do your, you know, your your your minimal amount of, you know, your what most people would do in off-roading. This vehicle is more than adequate for 90% of people who are off roading. 95%. And then you go up a little bit more, you'd be like, all right, well the seats are okay. I mean there's lots of room. There's back seats. I can put some stuff in it. Alright, cool. And then you get behind the driver's seat and they're like, ha We tricked you.

And I'm like, oh, it's so depressing 'cause I so I I just hope that, you know, there's a refresh or there's a new steering wheel that just just get rid of the steering wheel. It's it just seems I don't know why they you know, they must have bought a lot of Someone thought it was a good idea. Um and then, you know, software again, software is really tough. You know, hire some more developers. Pay your developers more money. Wait before you push things live. Uh at

jill ciminillo (18:39)
Or use something

in a vehicle that already works.

Roberto Baldwin (18:43)
Yeah, don't I that's that's

Sam Abuelsamid (18:44)
Like a a s you mean like a circular steering wheel?

jill ciminillo (18:44)
I mean

Roberto Baldwin (18:46)
Yeah, use a s

jill ciminillo (18:46)
Like a circular steering

wheel, like software that already exists that works, that isn't problematic.

Roberto Baldwin (18:50)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (18:51)
I mean, I'm just I'm just gonna put that out there.

Roberto Baldwin (18:54)
It's I think that the the the I was talking to my my neighbor about this is that automakers think that the average person wants all these crazy like features and they kinda don't care to be honest. Like maybe there's one or two features that they want, but for the most part they just they wanna you know, they want directions. They wanna be able to charge their phone, they wanna be able to plug in their phone and listen to their, you know, their podcast or their music.

And then maybe adaptive cruise control. That's kinda Yeah.

jill ciminillo (19:28)
Definitely adaptive cruise control.

Roberto Baldwin (19:30)
That's kind of it. I know people who have adaptive cruise control, they never I'm like, yo, do you ever use the adaptive cruise control? They're No. I'm like, you don't? They're like, mm. I mean I use this of of all the

jill ciminillo (19:36)
Oh, I use I use it. well, I I I definitely use it on the way to Indianapolis all the time.

Roberto Baldwin (19:41)
ADAS stuff, like I use adaptive cruise control as like on the on the norm

Sam Abuelsamid (19:44)
I I I use it all the time.

Roberto Baldwin (19:45)
on the normal. But I think a lot of people are just like, Mm. Mm. Mm.

jill ciminillo (19:49)
Maybe they just don't do enough highway driving, but I love adaptive cruise control and stop and go Chicago traffic.

Roberto Baldwin (19:55)
Yeah, you're like I don't have to deal with this. I'm done.

jill ciminillo (19:57)
And I don't have to yep. can just

Roberto Baldwin (19:59)
But I think but everything else is like, we gotta have these graphics and we have these things and like I don't think people care. I think they care when they're like looking at the car, like as a selling possibly. Like it's like, Ooh, look how pretty this is. But I think at the end of the day, they just want I just want the things that work. I don't want things to look weird. I don't want things flashing on and off. I don't want I don't you know

Don't make things it's this is the the Hummer EV problem is that they're like we put in this GPU so we can tr you know we can create real-time graphics so

jill ciminillo (20:35)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (20:36)
every time you change the drive mode like now you're on the moon now you're cool? It's a cool video when you first get the car, but now you're like spinning through the through the drive mode. It's like

Sam Abuelsamid (20:51)
And waiting for all these animations to play.

Roberto Baldwin (20:53)
And when was like,

let's go guy, come on. Here we go. Come on. This is when it when it was just like Boo, green you know, a little there's a little icon in your dash cluster says, Hey, you're in sport mode. Hey, you're in or maybe the dash cluster changes a different color. We don't yeah. It's just like all this like, Hey, look at all this cool stuff. It's like a magic trick, but at the end of the day, you still don't get the quarter that the guy took out of your ear back.

So anyway, Jeep Cherokee Overland four by four, uh as a car. I enjoyed it. Um, but the as a as a steering wheel and as a software I was like, guys. Really the steering wheel. I could deal with the software to be like you're like, Alright, fine. I'm not gonna look at the dash cluster. I'm just gonna look at you know, I'm just gonna use car play and be done with it. Or or Android Auto. But the steering wheel, it's just like what I y yeah. Yeah.

Uh yeah. So there you go. Uh you guys wanna check uh uh pick destination? You wanna guess?

Sam Abuelsamid (22:02)
I'm gonna guess nineteen ninety five.

Roberto Baldwin (22:09)
Sam was on it, like boom, nineteen nineteen ninety five.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:11)
Still Stellantis

likes those big destination charges.

jill ciminillo (22:14)
Mm.

I just figured since

Roberto Baldwin (22:14)
Yeah. So it's it's a

jill ciminillo (22:16)
it was smaller

Sam Abuelsamid (22:16)
They

jill ciminillo (22:16)
it should be smaller.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:18)
Well, I

Roberto Baldwin (22:18)
Oh.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:19)
mean, compared to what they charge for, you know, a Ram fifteen hundred, you know, it is smaller. You know, 'cause

jill ciminillo (22:24)
Uh

Roberto Baldwin (22:24)
That's true.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:25)
they charge twenty eight hundred dollars on those now.

Roberto Baldwin (22:28)
It was like a cool

green color. I like the green color that they had. What what do they call it? Uh global no. Forty one exterior pain. Forty one is I guess it's supposed to be a reference to the year nineteen forty one?

jill ciminillo (22:43)
Probably like the Jeep Wrangler, um, the f like their uh I they're forty one, although I feel like they have a more clever color name. But yeah, it's probably a reference to Wrangler forty one. Will it

Roberto Baldwin (22:55)
The wi the w the willy willy. Anyway, I liked it I liked the

paint. The paint was nice. Again, I like the way it looks. I think, you know, um I think it's it but it's just gosh guys.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:06)
What what did you think of the the hybrid powertrain?

Roberto Baldwin (23:09)
It was fine. That's the thing, it was better than expected. I think it's fine. I think you have there's certain instances where if you just like tap on the if you tap on the accelerator, it'll gurgle at you for a while. Like it doesn't like you you like you've sort of confused it. It's not it's not nearly as nice as, you know, Honda, Toyota or Hyundai's, but from where they were to where they're going and the fact that they've had so much problem so many problems with EVs and and and and and powertrains that I'm like, you know what?

This is a this is a very good start for a company that feels um behind in a lot of ways. Okay, not a lot of ways, in most ways. Um

Sam Abuelsamid (23:50)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (23:51)
and again, not Jeep's fault. They're part of Stellantis, a larger group, you know, you only get so much I to me I think Stillantis should be broken up at this point. You're like you're not doing a very good job you're trying to run like seventy car companies and you're doing a horrible job running seventy car companies. How about you just run, I don't know, two or three each.

How about that? How about we just let let let Jeep and Chrysler and maybe Dodge? Maybe Ram. Or leave Dodge and Ram. They're their own whole like weird like I'm an angry dad uh deal.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:24)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (24:26)
Let the

jill ciminillo (24:27)
I'm an angry dad. That's funny.

Roberto Baldwin (24:29)
The angry dad brands and you know, let Jeep be the like, hey, we're outdoorsy, and Chrysler like, hey, we still got a van. And so, yeah. I don't anyway, so I mean I that's it and the thing at the end the day, like like Jeep is such a such a uh it's such a part of you know America. Jeep. It just feels like the Jeep Wrangler. I don't care how horrible the car is. If someone gave me, I'd be like, Woo! I'd be all excited about Jeep Wrangler.

jill ciminillo (24:57)
I gotta jeep.

Would you would you duck people?

Roberto Baldwin (25:00)
I don't know. We'll see. I don't I don't I don't like I don't like people if I can help it.

jill ciminillo (25:05)
You've got the the little ducks. Leave it you don't have to talk to anybody. Just leave a duck on the

Roberto Baldwin (25:07)
I mean chuck you know what I do is I I would

stick like o like uh like axle grease on and just chuck at cars at other jeeps and then they'd stick slowly. And then the person's like, I got a slimy duck on my car

Sam Abuelsamid (25:19)
Yeah.

Uh the misanthropes

Roberto Baldwin (25:23)
Anyway, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:24)
duck.

Roberto Baldwin (25:25)
No, then it's thirty seven you know, thirty seven miles per gallon is is really good, especially in the vehicle this size. Um so good job on that. I think the yeah. I think for for where they're where they started and what they're doing, I think it's great. I think it's it's it's it's it's there's there's a couple automakers where I feel like the engineers are doing such great work and then it goes along the line and then someone in management's like, Hey, what if we added this insane thing?

What if we did something that would be so cool and no one else is doing it? Like, what if we put a you know, like in the 90s when everything had a just a giant X, everything was rad with an X extreme. It's like, yeah, there's a like a mid-manager's like, I got an idea. And he's wearing like sunglasses.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:09)
The octagon steering wheel.

Roberto Baldwin (26:10)
And then he's like, octagon steering wheel, boom. People love the UFC. Men grappling for 20 minutes. That's a thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:23)
Ah okay.

Roberto Baldwin (26:23)
Anyway,

Jeep Cherokee, if you have hands that fit the steering wheel and you're cool with the software, cool. But if you have, you know

Get a Santa Cruz. Get a Santa Cruz.

jill ciminillo (26:39)
problem with it because

my hands are so small. So I did find a place to

Roberto Baldwin (26:43)
Like it's yeah, like the little sections are so tiny. And so

jill ciminillo (26:46)
Yeah. It the they're

Jill sized hand position.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:49)
Well and and especially

if you're doing if you're on a longer drive, you know, sometimes you wanna

Roberto Baldwin (26:52)
I mean look at

Sam Abuelsamid (26:53)
move your hands around a little bit. You know, you don't wanna just be holding the sa exact same spot for multiple hours. And so you wanna shift around.

jill ciminillo (27:00)
Like hold up here

and then put your arm on the armrest and then put your arm on the side window and then down here. Yeah, see it's it's actually repositioning your hands.

Roberto Baldwin (27:05)
It's like eh eh But you can't like you you can't

nine and three is like a mess. That's the

Sam Abuelsamid (27:13)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (27:14)
that's the worst part 'cause that's according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Association, that's where you're supposed to put your hands. Nine and three. Two and ten you're gonna get your hands blown off when the airbag goes off. Just blown off. Maybe not blown off, but you know, you're gonna get hurt.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:31)
But you might get your arms.

Roberto Baldwin (27:32)
Yeah, you might break your arms, which is better than, you know, dying.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:35)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (27:36)
Anyway, that's a Jeep Cherokee. Four by four. Um

jill ciminillo (27:40)
than dying.

Roberto Baldwin (27:41)
Better than Dying.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:43)
There's there's a ringing endorsement.

Roberto Baldwin (27:46)
There's a ringing endorsement. Better than dying.

No, no. It's it's I just th that's

Sam Abuelsamid (27:50)
It's fine.

Roberto Baldwin (27:51)
the frustr it's frustrating because they've done such all this great work on this one h on the one hand, or the all good work. They've done this really great you know, good work but great work for them on one hand, and then on the other hand you get to like,

jill ciminillo (28:04)
Your your review just keeps getting worse and worse. So maybe we should do better.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:06)
Yep.

Have a sliding scale, you know. You're grading grading on a curve.

Roberto Baldwin (28:12)
If I'm grading yes, I am. I'm grading them on a curve. For Stellantis, this is a stellar uh powertrain. St absolutely magical.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:20)
Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (28:21)
In a vacuum. Ooh, awesome. Looking at the rest of the market, you're like, oh well, it's good. It's good. It's good enough. If you're y but people, you know, peop Jeep people are gonna be happy. If you are a Jeep person, if that is your your your whole deal, you're hey, I got a Jeep, it's a hybrid.

Awesome. But if you're someone who looks around, you're probably gonna be happier in a Hyundai, Toyota, Honda when it comes to the hybrid system.

It's not as loud as Toyota, so maybe if you don't like noise.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:57)
It's true.

It i it it is a lot quieter than the Toyota Hyper.

Roberto Baldwin (28:59)
It's quieter

than Teo, so maybe you're like, you know, I like I I want a hybrid system, but I also love hearing my music, so you're going for a Honda or a or a or a Hyundai.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:11)
All right. Well, I also had a hybrid crossover. Um, it was a bigger one. Um, I had the twenty twenty seven Kia Telluride hybrid X line SX Prestige all wheel drive. All the names. oh

jill ciminillo (29:27)
All all the words.

Roberto Baldwin (29:27)
What are we doing?

Sam Abuelsamid (29:29)
actually before I continue, I I wanna make sure I respond to AJ's question from the chat. Um he he asked, Is Rivian gonna keep building the R one T for the next couple of years?

far as I know, it's not going anywhere. It's it's gonna be around for the foreseeable future. So um so there's that.

Roberto Baldwin (29:45)
Yeah. It's I mean it's a least

selling vehicle, but it's also sort of like that's our brand, huh?

Sam Abuelsamid (29:50)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (29:51)
This is our first thing. At some point it'll I I think it it'll it'll probably go away and or it'll be refreshed at some point. But I don't think it's going anywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:54)
I mean Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, I think

they'll do a a major re engineering job on it probably in two, three, four years, um, to incorporate a lot of the changes they've done for the R two. Um, you know, to take a lot of cost out of it, you know, in terms of the way they the way they manufacture it. Um, but yeah, I don't I don't see the R one going entirely away. You know, so there'll probably be a next generation model. But

Um but back to the the Telluride. Um so the the one that I had, you know, it's basically the the top of the line telluride hybrid. Um, you know, the X line SX Prestige. Um and this one this one came yes, uh

jill ciminillo (30:39)
Th these names are getting out of hand. That's all I wanna say.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:44)
they absolutely are.

Roberto Baldwin (30:43)
We gotta s too much.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:46)
Um but the this this one um was painted in their black jade green paint.

which looks

Roberto Baldwin (30:54)
Ooh.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:55)
fantastic in the sunlight. And, you know, we had some sunny days while I had it. And yeah, it it really pops in the sun. Um it is a

jill ciminillo (31:04)
that is nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:05)
it's a fantastic color. Um I really, really enjoyed this. Yeah, the the black, you know, on on the X line, you know, the the black wheels, the black grill, maybe a little much, you know, a little little too much black there. But um yeah, can live with that.

And um yeah, it's you know, this this is a handsome looking big three row crossover. Um, you know, I mean when when it was first introduced last year, a lot of people talked about it um you know, having kind of a Range Rover look to it and it does. The the one the one quirk about the outside that not crazy about these little accents at the top of the wheel arches.

Roberto Baldwin (31:49)
the little Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:50)
You know, and when when we went to the first drive, you know, the designer was talking about this. And if you look, you know, there's this there's this crease along the the belt line that gets pulled down above the the wheel arches. And, you know, they talked about this, you know, kind of being almost like a binder clip to hold these two lines together, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. you know, and I I I thought about it, you know, um you know, I I I

don't know where what I did with it now. but I I had Gemini actually render a version of this

jill ciminillo (32:26)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:27)
um without uh without those and I thought it looked a lot better and hopefully when they do mid cycle update they'll they'll get rid of those. Um but uh you know other than that, you know, I I genuinely like driving this. And it's got it's got um the new Hyundai Motor Group, their their next generation

hybrid system which is a a two motor system so it's it's a lot um it's got a lot more um performance and a lot better efficiency than uh than the than the original one. actually let's see here. Um it's uh when I drove it, you know, I went and took it on my usual test loop. It's rated uh at thirty city, thirty two highway, thirty one combined.

Um and it's you know, three hundred and thirty nine horsepower or three hundred and twenty nine horsepower, three hundred and thirty nine foot pounds of torque. Uh and it you know, it feels good. It's got plenty of performance. Here it is if you're if you're watching the video version, here's the version I did without those little accents, without the binder

Roberto Baldwin (33:38)
Uh

Sam Abuelsamid (33:38)
clips. Definitely a a better look, I think. Um

jill ciminillo (33:43)
I don't know.

I don't mind the binder clips.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:46)
Yeah. Okay. I mean I it's not, you know, uh I I could still live with it. You know.

Roberto Baldwin (33:50)
He's like, okay, but you're wrong, Jill

Sam Abuelsamid (33:54)
I I I wouldn't I wouldn't disregard it just for those little accents. Um, you know, it's it's still a really good vehicle to drive. So

Roberto Baldwin (34:02)
It's

not like you have to grab the those hand those binder clips while you're driving, so

Sam Abuelsamid (34:06)
Yeah. So if you

you know, looking at a comparison, you know, this uh performance wise, um, you know, a a close competitor to this would be something like the Toyota Grand Highlander. It's roughly the same size, same amount of interior space. The the Grand Highlander is available with two different hybrid systems. It's the there's the standard Toyota hybrid system with their two and a half liter naturally aspirated four cylinder that makes a lot of noise when you accelerate, but is very, very efficient.

it gets about thirty four, thirty five miles per gallon combined. And then there's the hybrid max system, which is more like this one, you know, with a six speed automatic, turbocharged four cylinder engine. it's got a little more power. It's got about three hundred and sixty horsepower versus three hundred and twenty nine for the cat for the telluride, but it only gets twenty six miles per gallon. So this, you know, it's rated at thirty one. I got thirty two on my test loop. you know, so you know, very you know, it's a it's a

Really nice vehicle to drive. You know, for a vehicle this size, very efficient, got really good performance. you know, it's pretty much as quick as something like the hybrid max in the the Grand Highlander. Um with the the X line SX Prestige trim, you basically get all the stuff. you know, there was only uh only a handful of options on this. It had the black jade green paint, uh the towing package, all season floor liners and

carpeted floor mats, uh cargo net, uh rear cargo cover. Um everything else is standard on there. So you got all the ADS stuff. You got the dual 12.3 inch displays, plus you know the little five inch climate control touch screen in between that you can't see because it's right behind the steering wheel. you know the the Meridian sound system. The, you know, it's it's a big enough vehicle that, you know,

I can sit in any of the three rows. So I can set the drive, you know, 5'11, I can set the driver's seat for my height, get in the second row, set it so it's comfortable there, and then get in the third row, and I'm still comfortable in the third row. Um, and so you know, it's it's with the with the hybrid or at least the upper trim levels of the hybrid, it's only available as a six seater. Um or or maybe it's a seven seater. Um you get captain center center captain's chairs. I think it actually has three.

jill ciminillo (36:29)
Yeah, and they they do put

three in the back.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:32)
Yeah, it's got three seat belts in the back, but it's really only for for I mean, you could put three kids back there, I guess. Or or three Jills. No really?

Roberto Baldwin (36:36)
I don't know. Three very skinny children.

jill ciminillo (36:38)
No, no, you cannot. You cannot put three drills back there. I have video with

the Palisade where um it is y I'm like, you do not want to put me next to me next to me. I mean I would be fighting with myself. It would be very bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:48)
Okay, so so

so two people in the third row. But you know, they'll have sufficient headroom, sufficient leg room, they'll be comfortable back there. Um and so you you get all the all the good stuff back there. Um it's on this one's on the twenty inch wheels. Um, you know, uh it still has good um good ride quality even on Michigan roads. Um it does have a self leveling rear suspension.

Um, which, you know, when you if you load it up, you know, if you max out the number of occupants and stuff in the cargo space, you know, it's it's still it's not gonna be sagging the back end. Um so this was a a uh really nice vehicle to drive, you know, for for a large vehicle. Personally I don't have a need for such a large vehicle. I'm an empty nester, my my kids are long gone. Um, you know, so I I don't haul a lot of people around. But um if I you know if I still was

you know, if I had smaller kids, I would actually probably go for the carnival instead, uh, because minivans are better uh when you for

Roberto Baldwin (37:52)
True.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:52)
kids. but, you know, if if you can't deal with minivans, this is a great alternative. You know, I think it's it's a handsome looking vehicle. Um grand total on this one came to sixty one thousand one hundred and eighty dollars, which is not not inexpensive.

Roberto Baldwin (38:08)
That's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:10)
But you know, the the Tullyride hybrid starts forty six four ninety, not including the destination charge. You wanna take a guess at the destination?

Roberto Baldwin (38:18)
fourteen ninety five.

jill ciminillo (38:20)
Sixteen forty five.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:23)
Um let me see. Let me do let me do the do the

jill ciminillo (38:24)
We're gonna make you do math.

Roberto Baldwin (38:25)
we gotta do math.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:26)
math. Um you said sixteen forty five and you said fourteen ninety five?

Roberto Baldwin (38:32)
Think so.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:33)
Yeah, okay. Rob Robbie gets it. It was fifteen forty five. So

Roberto Baldwin (38:37)
Maybe. I might have

jill ciminillo (38:37)
Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (38:37)
said sixteen ninety five. I can't remember.

jill ciminillo (38:40)
No, you said fourteen.

Roberto Baldwin (38:41)
A

Sam Abuelsamid (38:41)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (38:42)
six okay. Alright. Well there you go, I won. I'm a winner.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:45)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (38:46)
Finally.

jill ciminillo (38:46)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (38:47)
Call my call my parents. Tell it's finally happened.

jill ciminillo (38:49)
I'm a two time loser this week.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:51)
Yeah. Um after after the telly ride, uh I managed to get into the Kia E V three for just a couple of days. Um because you know, this is a busy time of the year, all the car of the year people are you know wanting to get into these and this one's a a candidate for car of the year. So the E V three is Kia's new um more affordable E V. you know, they they dropped the electric version of the Nero this year, so the Nero's only available as a hybrid now.

but they launched the E V three. Uh and you know this is yeah this this vehicle is pretty much almost exactly the same length as a VW Golf. Um it's a little bit taller, a little bit wider than a golf, but you know, pretty close in size overall. Uh and um it's available with two different battery sizes. There's like a 55 kilowatt hour battery and then an 81.4 kilowatt hour battery. So

The base version with that smaller battery is only in front wheel drive. Uh and that one uh starts at uh 29,890, not including the destination charge. So it's just under $30,000. that's the what they call the light trim. Um the one I think the the the one that you really want to get if you're gonna get an EV3 is the wind, you know. So that's that's a step up. That comes with the bigger 81 kilowatt hour battery.

And um, you know, you can get it in front wheel drive or all wheel drive. The light is front wheel drive only. Um, the light is two hundred and twenty one miles of range. which is not, you know, to be fair, I mean, you know, two hundred plus miles of range is actually fine for most people.

Roberto Baldwin (40:37)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:37)
Um, you know, it's not not necessarily gonna be a great road trip vehicle, but you know, for a daily driver around town, you know, general commuting, two hundred plus miles of range, you're gonna be fine. Even in winter weather, you're still gonna get

Probably 160, 170 miles of range. Most people drive less than 40 miles a day, so you're gonna be fine. Uh assuming, of course, you have somewhere to plug it in. Yeah, that's always the stipulation when we're talking EVs. Um the the wind, you get the the bigger battery, the wind front wheel drive is rated at 321 miles of range. That one's thirty-five thousand dollars. the one that I had is the top of the line, GT.

Roberto Baldwin (41:17)
Ooh.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:19)
Um and

This one um is a little pricier, but driving this thing around, the the thing that struck me about it was you know, this is this is kind of like if VW built an electric GTI um or an electric golf R. It kind of slots in between the GTI and the golf R in terms of performance.

Roberto Baldwin (41:41)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:42)
Um so two hundred and uh two hundred and eighty uh two hundred and sixty one horsepower.

jill ciminillo (41:48)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:48)
with

uh the EV3 GT. It's dual motor, all wheel drive. it's got a heat pump. all the EV3s have an Axe charging port which is mounted on the right front fender. So you if you happen to go to a supercharger, you can nose into a supercharger bay. It will the short cables on a supercharger will reach that reach that charging port. Um the the E V three is based on a 400 volt version of

Hyundai's EGMP architecture rather than the 800 volts, it doesn't charge as speedy fast as the uh uh as like an EV6 or Ionic 9 or Ionic 5. Um it's about 150 kilowatts, but like the other Hyundai Motor Group EVs, it's got a remarkably flat charging curve. So it will you know it actually holds you know 130 to 150 kilowatts.

for a most of its charging curve up until you get up to you know about 70 ish percent state of charge. So it um you know on a uh on a hundred on a three hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty kilowatt charger, um it will the the large battery version will charge from 10 to 80% in about twenty nine, thirty minutes, um which is about the same speed as a model three or a model

jill ciminillo (43:11)
Pretty

Sam Abuelsamid (43:12)
Y.

They both take up they

jill ciminillo (43:13)
yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:13)
all take about thirty minutes. Even though they have a higher 250 kilowatt peak, you know, they don't stay there for very long. So if you're gonna do that ten to eighty percent charge, it's gonna take up take you about the same amount of time. So about a half hour. Um and I really enjoyed driving this thing. Um the you know it's got the same display, you know, the same twelve dual twelve point three inch displays with the five-inch climate control display hidden by the steering wheel that you find in the

The Telluride and the IANIC9 and a bunch of other Kias now. Um it's you know got decent amount of uh rear seat room. I can sit behind myself in the in the back seat. It's got like twenty one, twenty-two cubic feet of cargo space back there. So it's it's got more cargo space in the in the back um than the Chevy bolt does, which is you know, the bolt is slightly smaller than this. Um and it even has a teeny tiny little front.

Um wh which is b

jill ciminillo (44:10)
Aw, a baby frunk.

Roberto Baldwin (44:11)
You can put

like you can put like a couple like trays of like deviled eggs in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:15)
Yeah, or I mean you can put your your char your C C S your NAX to C C S or C C S to NAX charging adapters and your J seventeen seventy two to NAX charging adapters in there. So you could put a couple of charging adapters in there. maybe an extra pair of gloves.

Roberto Baldwin (44:29)
And then a tray

and then a tray of of of

Sam Abuelsamid (44:32)
Deviled eggs.

Roberto Baldwin (44:33)
deviled eggs.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:34)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (44:34)
And my running shoes would fit in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:36)
There you go, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (44:37)
There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:38)
So

jill ciminillo (44:38)
But

I I'm I'm having a baby frunk moment. So baby frunk frunk frunk frunk funk fr So

Sam Abuelsamid (44:42)
Ha.

jill ciminillo (44:43)
Okay, sorry.

Roberto Baldwin (44:43)
don't d no, now you've ruined

everybody. Everybody's like, No

jill ciminillo (44:49)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:49)
Um

The other thing you get if you get the GT is there's an option in the settings um for virtual gear shift. So it's kind of like the Ionic 5N, um, where you know it makes kind of fake engine sounds and

jill ciminillo (45:07)
Well mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:09)
the the paddles, the steering wheel paddles, um, instead of adjusting your regen, it lets you do fake manual shifting. And it so it you'll hear at Rev the you know the the display the

gauge cluster changes and shows you a fake tachometer. And so as you as you rev it, you know, as you step on the accelerator, you hit rev and you tap the paddles to shift up and shift down. And just like the five N, you know, if you forget to shift, it'll hit the rev limiter and make make rev limiter sounds. So,

jill ciminillo (45:40)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:42)
you know, it's you know, it's a fun little gimmick. It doesn't cost anything extra. It's just some extra code in there that's running.

yeah, it's fun to play around with once in a while. but it's not something you're you're really gonna want to use most of the time. Um but um one one thing I really did uh appreciate about the paddles now is um when you're in in the normal mode, um on all the previous Hyundai and Kia and Genesis EVs, um when you when you tap the left hand paddle and you go to max regen, it goes it'll go up to level three.

And then you tap it one more time, it goes to iPedal mode, which is your one pedal driving mode where it'll bring you to a complete stop. Um, but every time you turn off the car and start back up again, it reverts back to level three, which is about the only thing that really annoys my wife and her EV6.

jill ciminillo (46:34)
Mm mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:35)
On the EV3, um to get into iPedal mode, and I had to actually have to look up how to do it because you know on the EV6, you just tap it one more time and it goes into iPedal mode.

On the EV3, you have to tap and hold for a couple of seconds on the left paddle, and then it goes to eye pedal mode. And then you know what happens when you turn it off and you turn it back on there? It's still in eye pedal mode. It holds the mode.

Roberto Baldwin (46:56)
it's

it survives through the

jill ciminillo (46:58)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (46:58)
power cycle. That's that's nice. Thank

Sam Abuelsamid (46:59)
Yes. So they they finally fixed that.

Roberto Baldwin (47:02)
God.

jill ciminillo (47:02)
They they finally

fixed it. Well so I'm gonna get the E V three tomorrow, but I'm gonna have the land version. So we will um be able to have another conversation about E V three next week.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:12)
Awesome. Um

Roberto Baldwin (47:12)
The land version.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:15)
so you know, I I like the way the EV3 looks. Um, you know, and the GT,

Roberto Baldwin (47:19)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:20)
you get some little splashes of their neon green that is their signature color for the all the the GT versions of the E V six and and other other stuff. So you get the sort of the neon yellow green brake brake calipers and

jill ciminillo (47:34)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:34)
some

splashes of the same color in the interior on the on the seats and on the steering wheel. Um so it's it's a fun car to drive. Uh handles really nicely. Um the uh the only downside um forty seven thousand five hundred and eighty five dollars

Roberto Baldwin (47:53)
Oh, that's a lot for what what started as a inexpensive car. Well that's a

Sam Abuelsamid (47:55)
Yeah. That well, that's that's why I

jill ciminillo (47:57)
It started out as something that was really affordable.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:00)
recommend you probably go with the wind or or maybe the land version. Uh

Roberto Baldwin (48:03)
Yeah. And it's they still

have the the climate controls hidden behind the steering wheel. They have not fixed that yet. Guys, come on.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:08)
Yeah. Right. Um but uh but

other than that, this this was a a really fun car to drive. Uh it's rated at two hundred and eighty miles. Um and uh like see thirty thing three um yeah, three miles per um yeah, three miles or three yeah, three miles per kilowatt hour. Um and I you know, I did my driving loop and

Yeah, a mix of highway and suburban and urban driving. I get three point eight. Um yeah, considerably more. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (48:41)
So So more That's a lot. That's a big that's a b

that's that's a Volkswagen level like of uh we're gonna you know, that's a that's a Porsche level of like, yeah, we're gonna go with the lowest number that they give us and then everyone against the car is like, what were you talking about?

jill ciminillo (49:00)
Like I did so much better. Well, you know what? I appreciate it when they do that because I mean, I feel like EPA tests at like fifty five miles per hour, sixty miles per hour, and then

Sam Abuelsamid (49:09)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (49:11)
uh most of the speed limits are not fifty five miles an hour, especially if you're traveling any distance on the highway. And so like going from Chicago to Indianapolis, you seventy miles per hour and you're gonna go seventy five or eighty to go with the flow of traffic, and then the next thing you know, you're getting like ten

miles per gallon worse than what the EPA estimated. And you're just like, what the what? Um, so I appreciate it when they're conservative.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:35)
Yeah, even even at highway speeds I was getting three point three, three point four miles per kilowatt hour. Um so you

Roberto Baldwin (49:40)
Wow, that's pretty good.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:41)
know, you you know un unless you are like, you know, constantly flooring it, um, you know, and using the the accelerator pedal like an on off switch, um, you're you know, you're probably gonna beat the label values, the the range range values. Um you wanna take uh guess at the um destination charge one one more time?

Roberto Baldwin (50:04)
fourteen no wait fifteen fifteen fifty.

jill ciminillo (50:04)
I do not because I just looked at my sticker sheet and I know what it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:07)
Oh, okay.

Go for it, Jill.

jill ciminillo (50:12)
I it's fourteen ninety five.

Roberto Baldwin (50:13)
What's the number what's the average?

Sam Abuelsamid (50:15)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (50:15)
I

always I almost said fourteen ninety five and then I said fifteen fifty. I was so close. I still I'm I'm gonna take it as a win. I was pretty

Sam Abuelsamid (50:18)
Uh all right.

Roberto Baldwin (50:23)
close. Just

jill ciminillo (50:24)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (50:25)
as a game of solitaire, I was doing alright.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:28)
um yeah, one one other thing. Um yeah, I I said earlier there was two hundred and sixty one horsepower and it is two sixty one normally. If you use um the uh the G T mode, if you put it in GT mode, you will get two hundred and eighty eight horsepower. So plenty of performance in this thing. Uh it'll do

Roberto Baldwin (50:46)
So more.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:47)
zero to sixty in about five seconds. Um or about five five one, five two seconds. Um and there's a there's also a performance timer built into the infotainment system.

so you know that's that's you know ki again kinda fun for a G T version. But you know, all stuff that you don't really need. Um, you know, if you're gonna buy one of these, just get a wind or land. you'll have most of the the stuff that you really need, um and get, you know, better uh better range and cost you, you know, a lot less money.

All right. Um so Robbie, earlier you were talking about, you know, the stuff that people actually want in their cars. And

jill ciminillo (51:29)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:30)
I

Roberto Baldwin (51:30)
yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:30)
stumbled across this uh this survey earlier this week that Bain and Company did. They surveyed twelve thousand consumers globally, you know, so they talked to

Roberto Baldwin (51:38)
I like that it's

Bane, like it's like We like to know about your cow That's a

Sam Abuelsamid (51:42)
Ha

Roberto Baldwin (51:44)
that's a that's a that's a that's a Dark Knight reference, everybody.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:47)
Yeah.

Um so you know they they asked them about asked people in you know in Europe and China and and the US and Japan and India and Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates a whole bunch of questions. And um found some interesting stuff. apparently Americans are the least interested in uh in using AI uh during their purchasing process for a car. Um uh or actually uh

Well, depends. No, actually it's Japan. Japan was slightly less. Japan, fifty-two percent of Gen Y and Gen Z uh used AI during the purchase process. Fourteen percent of boomers and Gen X. Uh it was fifty-five and twenty-three percent for Americans. In China it was seventy-eight and seventy-seven percent. Indonesia, ninety-four percent of Gen Y and Gen Z, and eighty eight percent of boomers and Gen X used AI in shopping for a car.

Roberto Baldwin (52:46)
I talked to you about this a little bit earlier. Um, I don't like that they like glommed baby boomers and Gen X together. 'Cause

Sam Abuelsamid (52:54)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (52:54)
these are two like these are two generations that kinda don't even like each other, to be honest. Like there are parents

Sam Abuelsamid (53:00)
No.

Roberto Baldwin (53:02)
and everything they did were like, no. And also Gen X is such a weird it's like for for brands and for marketing. Like I've talked to many a brand, they're like, We don't know what to do with Gen X. They're getting older.

But even when they were younger, like we can't figure out how to you know they don't have any brand, like they don't care. It's a weird That's the The Gen X thing is like

Sam Abuelsamid (53:21)
Personally, just leave us alone. Don't market to us at all. I'm happy with that.

Roberto Baldwin (53:25)
we don't we we were the first to like there to be realized like, we could we could market to them with like extreme and you know skateboarding and we immediately got angry about it.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:34)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (53:34)
And then, you know, everyone else grew up and they were already being marketed to for a absolutely anything that they enjoyed. And we were the first ones where they were like, we can figure out how to do this.

And we got so angry. And we've never stopped being angry. Just angry sitting in our room listening to Nirvana.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:51)
Yeah. The the the the one that really stood out to me among this though was um you know what matters most to buyers in different regions uh when they're when they're buying a car. Um in the US, um sixty eight percent said price. In Europe, sixty two percent said price. In China, the number one was technology and features at fifty eight percent. Only forty percent cared about price. It was down in third place. Uh which

When you think about it, actually is not that surprising 'cause, you know, you got a lot of cheap, you know, a lot more affordable cars in China than we have here. Here, you know, people are struggling trying to figure out, you know, how am I gonna pay how am I gonna make the monthly payments on this car? And um, you know,

Roberto Baldwin (54:38)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:38)
so they're they're much more concerned about price. Um, you know, technology and features was down in second, you know, with only forty nine percent for for Americans. Um and

Roberto Baldwin (54:49)
Forty seven

percent brand. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (54:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (54:52)
not that doesn't bode well for for a lot of automakers. Like, wait, what? No!

Sam Abuelsamid (54:55)
No.

Roberto Baldwin (54:57)
Like if you buy a Toyota, you stay with Toyota forever. That's the deal. If you buy a, you know, Hyundai, if you buy a Chevy, if you buy a Ford, you're supposed to stick with that brand until the day you die. And now it's like,

Sam Abuelsamid (55:08)
Do

Roberto Baldwin (55:09)
uh

Sam Abuelsamid (55:09)
do you two stick with brands?

Roberto Baldwin (55:13)
I I trust some brands over but mostly because of the job, but bef let's say before the job as a kid, as a as a young person, I was very much a Honda person. 'Cause I n because driving other peop other friends' cars that weren't Honda's I'm like, these feel cheap and then I would get my Honda. I'm this feels nice. I'm like, so I just kept buying Honda for years.

jill ciminillo (55:33)
And I would say no, but uh we are now on our third Volkswagen, so apparently yes uh

Roberto Baldwin (55:37)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (55:40)
Apparently yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:39)
What's wrong with you?

Roberto Baldwin (55:42)
our second we're so we're on our second Subaru and our second Hyundai.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:46)
No, it's your third Hyundai 'cause you had the Kona too, remember?

Roberto Baldwin (55:49)
you're right. This is our third Hyundai. So

Sam Abuelsamid (55:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (55:51)
it's our third Hyundai, our second Subaru. we had a mini once, and we probably won't do that again. Uh I had we had three Hondas. Is that th three? Four. I have four Hondas. Sorry. Yeah. Uh I've never had a Ford. I've never had a Ford or Chevy or we we did have a Dodge Neon that someone gave us and my god, that was such a I hated that car so much. It was so bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:17)
Well y

Roberto Baldwin (56:18)
And whenever peop

people online are like, remember the Dodge and Eon, how great it was? I'm all lies. Lies. It was a horrible car. It was very cheap, yeah. And it

Sam Abuelsamid (56:25)
It was cheap though.

Roberto Baldwin (56:27)
had a great like it looked pretty and it had a great ad campaign. You're like, oh, look at this cute little car, the Dodge and Eon. What was the the Plymouth one?

Sam Abuelsamid (56:38)
It was a neon too.

Roberto Baldwin (56:40)
It was a Plymouth as well? Oh lazy. Anyway. And so you're like,

Sam Abuelsamid (56:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (56:43)
Lazy. Yeah. No well

Roberto Baldwin (56:46)
we yeah, like when w when we got it, it was given to us. we were like, cool, we'll have a second car. We have this like, you know, it's a cool and and immediately just like We also had like a Delsol at the time, I think was it the the other car. and we were just like, This is this is this car is not and it was it was a mess. At one point when I was driving it, the computer just died while I was driving the car.

I'm just driving dot dot You see you p nothing. I'm like, no. Fortunately I was on a hill and I could pull over.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:20)
Well, technically you did have a Ford too and and you may still have it if uh if it hasn't moved out of your driveway. The X type.

Roberto Baldwin (57:25)
I still have that

stupid Jaguar. So I have had a Ford.

jill ciminillo (57:28)
god.

Roberto Baldwin (57:30)
I do have that stupid that stupid god. Yeah, that Ford Jaguar it's the thing is it's it's absolutely I got a car.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:38)
Yeah, we I've I've never bought more than two of the same brand. I've done that twice. So I've had two Mustangs. Um we had two Volkswagens. Um not sure if we'll ever have another VW 'cause the last one was the Jetta T D. I wagon that we sold back to Volkswagen. Um my my my my wife has basically

Roberto Baldwin (57:54)
Oh yeah. I know a lot of people who are like, Never again I'm like, it's okay.

jill ciminillo (57:56)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:00)
sworn off Volkswagens for life. Um

Roberto Baldwin (58:02)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:03)
but everything else, you know, we've had all the other cars we've had, you know, it's been

Basically one and done. Uh although, you know, that could that could change in the future. But

jill ciminillo (58:13)
Yeah. Well we're

Roberto Baldwin (58:13)
Yeah, we'll see.

jill ciminillo (58:14)
we're manual transmission drivers and so um we will probably

Sam Abuelsamid (58:18)
That narrows your choices down.

jill ciminillo (58:20)
it really does. Um I feel like so the next car will either probably be a Toyota GR Corolla or the Subaru WRX.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:28)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (58:28)
Yeah, those are both good cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:30)
Cause V W's

jill ciminillo (58:30)
So

Sam Abuelsamid (58:31)
not doing any manuals anymore.

jill ciminillo (58:33)
They are not.

Roberto Baldwin (58:33)
I love the

I love that GR Corolla so much. It is so

jill ciminillo (58:35)
I me too. That that well that's

Roberto Baldwin (58:37)
it is so bonkers. I like I love how bonkers it is. Like you go around the corner just

jill ciminillo (58:43)
And

it's a three cylinder engine.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:45)
I know. Well I'm I'm

Roberto Baldwin (58:45)
Yeah, I don't know what is what's happening in that car. There's wizards.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:48)
I'm I'm going I'm going to Texas later this week, um and we're gonna get to drive the the Corolla G R Men or German. I I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce it. Is it just supposed to be Corolla German or G R Men? I I don't know. But what whatever. but yeah, it's it's a more beefed up version of the GR Corolla.

Roberto Baldwin (59:09)
Because that's what we needed. It is the GR Corolla

Sam Abuelsamid (59:11)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (59:11)
'Cause we we totally needed it. Three hundred horsepower for that car was not enough.

Roberto Baldwin (59:16)
I love the WRX so much because that second gear is it's such a weird car because you have to like really s live with the car for like a month before you like figure out the the uh the the transmission and the shifting. But then once you get it, it's like bam. It's like oh it's like unlocking like, you know, uh experience points in your D and D game.

But the GR Corolla, I think about that car all the time. Just how insane it was. And I'm like, God, I miss that car.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:49)
no. Tangents are good. Um

Roberto Baldwin (59:48)
Hey, we got off on a tangent. Sorry about that.

jill ciminillo (59:49)
We did. Huh? Tangents are good.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:53)
all right. Let's carry on though. Um, so uh GM GM's got new trucks coming shortly. Um they

jill ciminillo (1:00:00)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:01)
should be arriving in dealers

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:02)
Srux, trucks, trucks.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:03)
pretty soon, I think. Um and uh this week uh information came out on the fuel efficiency of the new V eight engines, the new five point seven and six point six liter V eight in the Silver Auto fifteen hundred and

um and the um Sier excuse me Sierra fifteen hundred. Um and um they they make more power from the engines. Um but that you know as is usually the case that means they also consume more fuel. Um

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:33)
Um bum b

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:35)
yeah so um no uh no fuel economy numbers yet on the uh the new more powerful version of the two point seven liter four cylinder turbo that's the standard

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:45)
Yeah, the inline

four, that's the one I wanted to see.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:47)
Yeah,

th they don't have those numbers yet. But

Roberto Baldwin (1:00:50)
Well.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:50)
for the for the five seven, um, depending on uh on which versions you're getting uh of the five seven and the six six, they're they're generally about one to two miles per gallon worse than the twenty twenty six models.

jill ciminillo (1:01:06)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:08)
I mean, come on.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:13)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:15)
If they were the same I'd be like, Alright, fine. But it's worse and you're like

jill ciminillo (1:01:20)
Because they don't have to be better.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:22)
Yeah, I guess I guess that's yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:24)
Yeah, so the the

six point six in the the four wheel drive s high country uh silverado, fourteen city, eighteen highway, fifteen combined.

and if you get the Z R two with the six six, it's thirteen city, fifteen highway and fourteen combined 'cause that's got the big all terrains and taller and everything.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:47)
Yeah. I see people driving around in their lifted full size trucks doing like eighty miles an hour down the freeway. And the whole time in my head is like, How much are you paying for gas? Slow down. Slow down.

jill ciminillo (1:02:00)
A lot. But somebody who has that

car probably spent like seventy thousand dollars on it. So fuel is not the thing they're thinking about.

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:09)
Guess not.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:10)
Well, I I was I was talking to my neighbor this afternoon. It was a nice

nice afternoon and he he was out working on his truck. Um, yeah, he's uh yeah, he he's he's single, has no kids, um, and you know, he's been working all his life. And so a couple of years ago he started building an overlanding rig. He used to have a Wrangler, a T J Wrangler that he used just for off roading and he had an R V that he would

tow it around a Moab and northern Michigan and other places. Um and got rid of those and has been building up this overlanding rig. He bought an F five fifty chassis cab, had a bed put on it, put a liquid spring suspension on there and everything else. He's

Roberto Baldwin (1:02:54)
Man.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:55)
got this big camper that goes on the back. Um really, really cool. You know, it's kind of like, you know, the zombie apocalypse vehicle.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:01)
I was thinking like

I was thinking like the overland where he's just like a tent on top of like the cab and I'm like, this person's gone from like essentially sleeping in a hotel room to to to one step above just sleeping on the floor, but then you tell me everything else, I'm like, never mind, he's still gonna be comfortable

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:17)
yeah.

Yeah. No. He's uh you know, this this is like the zombie apocalypse rig. Um but the problem is what once he started once he put all this stuff on there, he realized um, yeah, I mean he always knew it was gonna have shitty fuel economy, but the fuel tank, the main fuel tank is not big enough. Basically it only had

like two hundred and seventy five miles of range 'cause this thing gets like eight, nine miles per gallon.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:45)
Um

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:46)
Um ah

And so, you know, the thing he was doing this afternoon, basically kind of the like the last step to finishing this thing, is um adding an auxiliary fuel tank. He had, you know, did he's an engineer,

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:59)
Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:00)
you know, did all the measurements, found a guy in Ohio that could fabricate a fuel tank for him. So he's adding a a second twenty five gallon fuel tank to this thing, which will get

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:09)
my what's the

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:11)
him to about five hundred miles of range.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:13)
Okay. For some reason like like a ten mile a ten gallon fuel tank. I'm like, nope, nope, that's not getting like that's not getting him like twelve mile.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:17)
No, twenty twenty five. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:21)
That's just gonna get him to the next stop, to the next uh gas station, uh three blocks away. That's I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:27)
But yeah,

but eight eight, nine miles per gallon with with this thing. So which is better

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:31)
Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:32)
than the six to seven miles per gallon he used to get with his Winnebago. So

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:37)
That's true. A couple extra bucks in his pocket every d every time. And it's an easier car to drive. It's good s yeah. It's not

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:42)
Yeah, absolutely.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:43)
it's not made out of I don't know, cheap fiberglass.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:49)
yeah, fiberglass and balls of wood I think.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:51)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:53)
Um so, let's see. Um Buick, um, you know, doesn't it's not selling nearly as many cars in China as they were back when GM went through his bankruptcy. but, you know, still doing okay. Um they are launching yeah

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:08)
They were killing it in China, but now not so much.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:12)
yeah, I mean back in two thousand nine, you know, they wanted you know, when they were going through the bankruptcy, you know, the the government

task force said, you should get rid of Buick 'cause they only sell like a hundred and fifty thousand cars in the US. But yeah, they were selling one point two million in China. Well now that's kind of changed a little. They're only selling about two hundred and fifty thousand in China now. But

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:31)
Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:32)
but they still have they're launching a new Electra G S plug in hybrid sedan uh in China. And uh it's a I don't know, I

jill ciminillo (1:05:42)
That's pretty.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:43)
think a pretty pretty sharp looking car.

jill ciminillo (1:05:45)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:45)
It's

it looks cool in green. Then when I see it in white, I'm like, It's like the green is is is fantastic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:49)
Yeah, it's definitely more bland and white. Yeah. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:05:50)
It still looks good in white, but the green isn't lovely.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:56)
The white is fine.

jill ciminillo (1:05:58)
is fine. But you know white in any car is fine. I mean white is just like the I didn't sh

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:59)
It's fine. That's true. That's the that's it yeah, that's just uh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:59)
No. Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:06:05)
feel like shelling out the extra money for the bougie paint. That's what white is.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:08)
Yeah. You get the bougie

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:09)
No

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:09)
paint.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:10)
no no specs for this thing yet. Um but, you know, probably you know, it'll probably get somewhere around fifty miles of electric range, you know, if it's typical of

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:19)
Nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:20)
most of the newer um plug in hybrids out of China. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:24)
Cool out of a sedan. That's nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:27)
Um so Waymo, uh, you know, they're expanding rapidly. They're o now operating services in like fifteen cities across the US and

add planning to add several more soon. Um but one of the challenges all the Waymo cars are all their robo taxis are electric and um they're apparently causing some uh irritation for in some cities because they have been using public chargers to charge these things.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:01)
Uh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:02)
And yeah, there's quite quite a few of these things. Um and

uh I guess drivers in Nashville and St. Louis have accused Waymo's of hogging public chargers. Um and you know this earlier this summer I was out uh at a new charging station here in in Ann Arbor and I was testing out the the Rivian R one T and spotted a pair of Waymo Ohs uh ch you know getting charged up at this charging station in Ann Arbor. so you know I think

as as Waymo grows their fleet and they're planning to grow it substantially next year. Like right now they have about four thousand vehicles in service. They're targeting getting to twenty thousand by the end of twenty twenty seven. Um and if they don't have, you know, like their own charging facilities, um, you're probably gonna start to see a lot more people getting annoyed at Waymo.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:57)
This is

also these are all I mean, Waymo doesn't make money. It's not gonna make money for ever, to be honest, at this point, when it comes to the amount of money they've they've poured into it. The break even is like trillions. But they must be paying they must have like a deal because Electrify America stations are v expensive. They're not

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:14)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:14)
as expensive as Tesla, but they're not cheap.

jill ciminillo (1:08:17)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:18)
And it just seems like if they had I feel like all these vehicles they should have wireless charging, they should have a you know, a place you know, a place where they can go and they hit a you know, it's wireless charging is eleven kilowatts now. And

Especially when you have, you know, th the the Ohio and then you have the the uh the Hyundai coming out and I don't know, it feels like they're this is a weird like sort of fix to a problem that they haven't really thought about. Like you know what, just go to the public charge and take up all the spaces. Like when you when I get like the the the when you go to like a big like airport, like they have gas at the the rental car place.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:55)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:57)
They're not they're not

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:57)
But

Roberto Baldwin (1:08:57)
cruising down to the seventy six station.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:01)
No, well, I mean when when Hertz started putting all these EVs into their rental fleets a few years back, that was the mistake that they made. They didn't most of their outlets did not put in any chargers. And you know, so people would bring back the cars, you know, you know, less than you know, you know, not fully charged, and then they would have to send staff with the cars out, you know, especially at like big airport locations.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:27)
Start the middle of nowhere.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:27)
They would have to send staff

out to somewhere to charge the things and come back. And at

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:31)
This is no.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:32)
at airport locations, you know, Hertz was turning you know, turn typically turns around cars in about twenty minutes. So from the time somebody returns a car till it goes back out again with another customer, it's usually twenty to thirty minutes tops. And yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:47)
Now you're talking like hours.

And then they didn't like quite understand that like they I remember picking up an EV and they were like, okay, we gotta bring it back at a hundred. I'm like, I you have to understand that's physically impossible. They're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I can't bring it back at a hundred. It's not like a gas tank where it's like, it's just a little thing and I can go like twenty miles before the little the little like the little arm moves or the gauge moves. Like as soon as I go three miles, it goes ninety-nine percent. I'm like, there's no physical way. They're like, oh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:15)
And the charger's

always going to be some number of miles away from the airport. So you're you're

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:19)
Yeah, it's always like fifteen miles away. That's I'm

never gonna have and they're like, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:25)
Fortunately, you know, last year when I did um rent an E V from Hertz in um Palm Springs, yeah, they said, you know, just bring it back with at least eighty percent. So

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:35)
Yeah, I think they've

jill ciminillo (1:10:36)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:36)
learned eighty percent and then a lot of them, like all those poles that are in the parking garages that have power, they're like, Oh like you just pull up they're like yeah, they're like they're level two chargers or level even level one, it's like better than a kick in the teeth. Didn't Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:48)
Unfortunately, you know, Hertz just dove into that whole thing and really did not prepare. They didn't prepare their

jill ciminillo (1:10:53)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:54)
staff, they didn't prepare their facilities, and they didn't prepare their customers.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:58)
Yeah, it was kind of a mess. They would just give people cars and be like, Here's your car and they're like, What? Like, I enjoy driving an EV like and they're I don't know how to drive any Anywho. Good times.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:09)
Uh yeah. So

um so a couple of years ago, um when uh Lincoln did their last refresh on the aviator, they they dropped the plug in hybrid version that they used to offer. Um but in China, um they have a new aviator with a plug in hybrid, uh and it looks completely different from

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:35)
It looks like a tank.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:36)
yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:11:37)
It it looks like a like a almost like the navigator, but smaller. But a

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:42)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:11:43)
tank. We weird upright proportion.

Roberto Baldwin (1:11:46)
Like it's ready to take on take you into battle. It's like a

jill ciminillo (1:11:49)
Well it's like the the front is very different than the like the back looks like a Range Rover and then the front looks like it's going to like bull you down.

Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:01)
So the aviator EX eight that they're selling in China, um the the the aviator plug in that they sold here used the twin turbo three liter twin turbo V six and had like five hundred horsepower all together between the the engine and the the electric drive. This one uh has a one point five liter uh I think a four cylinder engine, they don't say, uh one hundred and forty eight horsepower.

they don't say what the electric range is. Um, but uh it's uh you know, this this is not gonna have the kind of performance that the aviator grand touring offer here in in North America.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:42)
And to be honest, that's fine. Like and sh the the most people who have cars in China live in cities and

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:49)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:49)
they just they can't go fast. Like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:52)
they never like you know, you have people who you know, you have you have people who are in drive programs who've never gone over thirty miles an hour because they've lived always lived and driven in the city. They've never gone, you know, gone somewhere with it and that's that's it. That's that's how f you know if your car doesn't need to do eighty miles an hour because it'll never do eighty miles an hour.

You don't need to buy a car that does eighty miles an hour in three seconds.

jill ciminillo (1:13:16)
This this is why the Topolino works in other markets that aren't ours.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:21)
Or on a or or or in Palm Springs where everyone just drives around in their little golf carts.

jill ciminillo (1:13:26)
Around. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:27)
Yeah, I just hope you know.

jill ciminillo (1:13:29)
Gonna

go to the grocery store in the Topolino.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:31)
Gonna go to the trader Joe's.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:35)
Um so Andrew Frick um from Ford uh recently talked to the Detroit Free Press and um one of the questions he was asked, you know, was about pricing on the Fathom. you know, we know that the Fathom, when it launches about a year from now, is uh going to have a starting price, um, even with delivery of like twenty nine thousand nine hundred and change. so it'll be just under thirty thousand dollars delivered. Um but

Um what we don't know, you know, and that w you know, and that one is not gonna have three hundred miles of range. That's gonna have a smaller battery. We don't know what the range is gonna be on that. It's probably gonna be around two thirty, two forty. Um but uh you know, the question was how expensive is the high end version of the fathom gonna get? And what what Frick told the the free press was it is going to be you know, the the maxed out version of the fathom is gonna be under the

under forty thousand dollars. So it's gonna be the high thirty thousand dollar range. Um at launch, yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:36)
At la at large. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:39)
That's that

jill ciminillo (1:14:39)
And then one year

later they'll add eight thousand dollars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:42)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:42)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:44)
Yeah. Um yeah, I mean that's you know, what

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:45)
Ford, no. Please. Please, Ford, don't hurt him.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:51)
I mean, you know, when they when they launched the the father or the the Maverick at twenty thousand dollars and you know, basically maxed out it was like cl around thirty thousand dollars or so, uh or just over thirty thousand dollars. You know, then they were getting all the dealers that were putting these, you know, four or five thousand dollar markups on it. so Ford said, uh tack with that. We'll

We'll take those markups for ourselves. And they just raised the price and took all that extra money for themselves. I know.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:15)
That's but that's so messed up.

I get I don't know, people buy the car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:22)
Uh yeah.

Um all right, Robbie, tell us about the Mercedes AMG GT Ford or that you drove.

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:31)
I went to Spain.

And I drove that crazy weird AMG GT4 door. It's like the first real for real real mass produced proper AMG for real real AMG, not like something with the AMG like trim level uh EV. And it's the one with the crazy V8 sound. And of course, everyone who you know there's a lot of AMG people, a lot of you know V8 purists are like, This is dumb. And I'm here to tell you it is not dumb. It is insane, and it is it is a weird, fun car.

And it's it's weird in the nerdiest the nerdiest way. Like they threw every everything they learned from the EQXX, everything they learned from the EQS, everything they learned from all these other vehicles, everything they learned from F1 when it comes to electrification, they shoved into this car and then they said, Let's go crazy. And that's what they did. Um it is So for me the Tycon has been sort of the bar of how an EV handles.

Because you're you're dealing with weight. There is a tax on every vehicle that is an EV, and the tax is not that you can go from zero to sixty in like two seconds, three seconds, or whatever. It's that when you want to turn left or right, that's when you're like, no, the laws of physics, damn you. They it for so for me the bar was the Tycon, and now that has been surpassed by this vehicle. It is the amount of work with the they have the three motors, the axial flux motors, which sounds made up.

It's it's not. They have two in the rear, one in the front, the chassis control, the air suspension, the the the the the the arrow, all these things come together to make it feel like it doesn't have that big, you know, 106 it's probably about one eight one eight or one nine, I forget the number, kilowatt gross battery. So it's a big battery pack. You know, you still got cylindrical cells that are about yay big. Um so it's a it's still a big heavy battery pack, but they've done so much work to sort of

uh sort of reduce the feeling of that when you're driving the vehicle. So when you're driving and you're going around corners, it doesn't feel like you're driving a big heavy EV. It feels like you're just driving a sports car. Um and so we we drove it I drove the 55 on the streets around Spain, back roads, etc. And we drove the 63 on the track. And they give you because they have all this control in order to keep the car, you know, from from feeling heavy or from over steering, under steering,

They give you access to all the control via three knobs in the vehicle. And you can turn like the response, which which adjusts the the acceleration mapping. Um there's what's the other two? Hold on, let me look at my my pictures. Do do do do do. There we go. Uh there is response, there is agility, and then there is traction. And if you turn those up to nine, they go up to nine. I don't know why they didn't make go up to eleven, because everything about this car is like

jill ciminillo (1:18:27)
Right.

Roberto Baldwin (1:18:28)
It like on one hand it's like insanely nerdy, but on the other hand, it's like, hey, let's have some fun. Like German style. So nerdy German fun. So I don't know why they didn't go to eleven. They went to nine. But if they wouldn't let us turn it up to nine. Cause because then it's just sort of unc it's just an uncontrollable mess. It's just like all the power, zero traction, all the agility. You're just sitting there doing you're just melting tires. But they did let us go up to seven.

So you got some nice turn, you got some nice, you know, came c you know, drifting out of corners with this vehicle, which is really it was it was really fun on on the track. And then, you know, but first they had us go to a one where it's it's it it ends up with having um understeer and like when you hit the stuff it'll you it'll give you full power in like a minute. But

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:17)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:19:18)
it's like it is like nanny mode for the vehicle. So it's just like okay, you can kinda

Get used to it, kinda, you know. And what I found is interesting is that the people who buy this vehicle and who may or may not go on to who may go onto the track, because some of this stuff is like definitely track only, they're gonna go on the track. And if you get a big powerful V8 and you put a person behind the wheel of that vehicle who doesn't know what they're doing, which happens a lot with these vehicles. Someone comes into a lot of money, they sell a business, they get a job.

And they buy these big powerful cars that they've always wanted. They have no clue what they're doing. And they end up hurting themselves. They end up like wrecking their cars. And so if you get this and you go into track, you can turn like the three. Let's have it, let's put it in race mode and put on three. You can kind of get used to it. Okay, now let's turn everything up to four. Alright, let's okay, I'm feeling a little good. Let's turn everything up to five. Alright, okay. The back end's kinda the back end's coming out, but I'm not like, you know, it's I'm not losing complete control.

So I think on that end for the people who would buy this car, the people who have way more money than I do, and it starts at one forty five. They send me the the numbers like right as I was filing my article. Um I think it one forty five and one seventy five I think are the are the prices. Yeah, one forty five and one seventy five. Um so yeah, you gotta have money to buy this vehicle. But if you are that person who buys this vehicle and

And even if you had a a more powerful vehicle before, if you take this to the track, you take this somewhere and you like you turn it up and you're you're able to adjust how this vehicle drives in a way that is really impressive for for car nerds and impressive for you know just nerds in general. And then for you know drivers, I think it's it's it's uh it's a it's a fun vehicle. And then you have the V8 sound, which I'm like, all right, fine, whatever. But then when you listen to it, when you have it, you're like, this is kind of fun.

It is a fun, weird, like and it has actuators in the seat. So it feels like you're driving a VS like bop bop bop. You shift gears, just like the Ionic 5N. Um but what's funny is that because all the sound the sounds inside the vehicle are, you know, their speakers and and actuators, it actually feels like the vehicle is a mid engine V8 versus a front engine V8. So it's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:30)
so they biased the sound towards the rear?

Roberto Baldwin (1:21:32)
Well, it just feels that's just how it sounds to me inside the vehicle when you're in the vehicles. Like I'm so used to everything just being up front.

That's where the sound is. And because it's their speakers and their surround sound speakers and the actuators, it it it push it pulls the sound backwards in in in my experience. When you walk up to the car, it'll vroom and when you turn it on, it'll be like and you can hit the revler, bop, ba, bop, bop. And we are doing it so much that someone at at someone on the support staff is like, Okay, that's enough.

We weren't breaking anything. It's not real Um But yeah, there's all these crazy things that they did to it. there like the the um the carbon fiber frunk is actually uh part of the the s the vehicle support. It's it's it's like a a load bearing frunk. Um like everything about the car is like and then we did this. and then we did this and then you know, the way we're cooling it is we're doing this and we have this proprietary oil that we're using in order to cool the

cool the cylindrical batteries, that's why we can, you know, do boost mode for, you know, a minute. If you have the fifty five, boost mode lasts for fifty five seconds. If you have the sixty three, it lasts for sixty three seconds. Which is okay. Nerds. And

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:49)
Hm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:22:49)
but you can do it again and again and again. You could just keep doing it. And we had eight laps on the track with the vehicle and then of course driving it around I I just kept doing boost mode and it there's you don't lose that power because typically, you know

when you push it beyond, you know, its its regular horsepower to the peak horsepower, the batteries will heat up and so the engine's like wo it you know, the whole car's like, slow down, you're gonna cause a problem. So it's sorta you know, it it doesn't go into lip mode, but it does, you know, uh reduce the amount of power. Nope. They're just like that their whole thing was like they just want you to be able to keep doing things over and over and over and over again in this vehicle. And so it's like yeah, again, it's like they threw everything, all the nerdy stuff at this vehicle and

It could have been a outright mess. That's

jill ciminillo (1:23:35)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:23:35)
like what happens when you throw every nerdy bit, every every engineer gets like to have fun. And then you end up with the homer. Um, this isn't the homer. It's not the you know, it's not it's not an absolute trainer. It's it's actually uh it's a really fun car. That's the and at the end of the day, that's course sort of what you want an AMG to be, is a fun vehicle. Uh

So yeah, so I was, you know, I went out. I'm like, all I'm gonna drive an A G, it'll be fine. And then, you know, driving, I was like, This is it's one of those things where this is exactly what this car should be from this automaker who's been working an R and D in order to make this car. It's like it's like the same feeling I got with the Kia Sol where you get in the car and like, oh, this is exactly what this car should be. It's the same thing, this is what this car is should be is this this technological achievement from this German automaker who's been working really hard to bring EVs.

And you know, sometime you the EQS was a weird looking, you know, Tylenol pill shaped vehicle. But

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:24:31)
the CLA and the GLC are actually people seem to you know, those are actually look nice and they actually drive really well. So they're learning from what they've done. Um, and and they're they're they're they're they're iterating on their EV technology, and then they just went whole hog on this vehicle. So yeah, no, I I I really liked it. And I did find finally the only reason for a passenger screen.

And that is this vehicle, and that's because you can s because again, super nerdy. You could see uh information about the car in both the the driver's screen, the mid the infotainer screen, but also in the passenger screen. Like you can see the newton meters of each motor, like how many newton meters and the RPM

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:11)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:12)
of each motor. And then as you slow down the regen, it does negative newton meters to show you how much it's sending back. And then you can show the the uh the the

The electric so that's mechanical, then they have electric where it shows like where the power is going. And it's and because it's it's not just like, here's the little you know, it's like the green and the blue that you have and like, now it's kinda g it's going to the battery. now it's going to the wheels. now it's going to the battery. No, it's got numbers. It's got like real math and real numbers. And so

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:41)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:41)
as a nerd you're like, Oh, this is kinda I I I'm never gonna watch a video on those screens outside of testing them.

I'm never gonna play Angry Birds outside of testing it, but I will sit there and stare at Newton meters

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:53)
Ha ha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:25:54)
from a car. So I found the one good thing for for for those things. Um yeah, and it shows arrow. You know, that's something they showed off in the EQXX where they showed like where the wind was flowing over the vehicle. They can use they'll show you arrow and it has two it has arrow where the the rear slides out a sp rear uh diffuser and it increases um efficiency. Then you have other

thing that that sucks the car down, I forget what it's called. Uh additional arrow will it'll pull the car down. Not like it'll do a loop like the you know the fake car that that Tesla showed us. This is an actual yeah. So yeah, no and and I fit in the rear seat behind myself.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:35)
Ooh. Wow.

Roberto Baldwin (1:26:37)
I was like, I'm gonna sit in the back. I was driving with Daniel Golsen from Jalopnik. I'm like, I'm gonna sit in the back and he was like hey I'm gonna drive he's like you wanna I'm not no no I'll just sit back here for a little while and I was like

actually quite it had like adequate bolst side bolsters which is something you need for a car like that and so it had yeah so and it has a the trunk is weirdly large um and of course the load bearing frunk where you can stick you know at least eight trays of of deviled eggs it's still a baby it's mostly a baby frunk yeah it's a it's a it's

jill ciminillo (1:27:04)
Mm. It's not it's not a baby frunk. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:09)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:10)
a it's like a toddler frunk

jill ciminillo (1:27:13)
No baby.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:15)
No baby. Anyway, so the fifty-five is the end of this year, $145 $145,000. The $63 next year, $175,000. I don't have the money for these vehicles. Um if you're a listener and you do, um, cool. Tell us how you how

jill ciminillo (1:27:28)
I

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:29)
you like it. Yeah, no, I I really yeah, it's I I'm I'm you know how I'm I'm sort of a pain in the ass when it comes to cars. because I I hate everything, apparently. But uh no, I really like this car. I it it has AI in it, which

Psh, whatever. I don't know.

jill ciminillo (1:27:47)
So that would be the thing that you don't like, you like everything else?

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:50)
I don't it's just like uh I d I don't need that's here's the thing is like I'm driving down the road. This is what I want the car to do. Hey car, I would like to go to this location. Cool. Here's directions. Thank you. Hey car, what's a could you know I you know how much range to the next thing? Hey car, can you make it colder in here? Sure, no problem. I got you. Hey car, can you text this person or call this other person? Cool. I don't want hey car, I would like a talkeria

That has four stars but only sells like bean burritos that are rat and wheat tortillas and it's like, here are four pla no, I don't trust that I don't trust the Yelp you know, no.

jill ciminillo (1:28:29)
You don't trust

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:29)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:28:30)
the Yelp reviews?

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:31)
I don't this is like I don't that's not a thing. I hey hey, what's the what's the height of the be the the building I'm next to? The height of the building you're next to is forty I don't care. That's

jill ciminillo (1:28:41)
So

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:41)
Mm-hmm.

jill ciminillo (1:28:41)
I

you know, if you have Apple CarPlay, you've already got AI in your car because Chat

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:45)
Yeah, that's it

jill ciminillo (1:28:47)
GPT appears on the icon and how I've been using it is like if I'm passing like uh like on my way to Indianapolis, there's like the Shrine de Jesus or something like that. And I'm just like, Hey, can

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:59)
Ha ha.

jill ciminillo (1:29:00)
you tell me about this shrine?

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:00)
I think those are just called churches.

jill ciminillo (1:29:02)
No, there's like literally s and I've never I've never stopped, but there's like a shrine, like

off the highway to s something and but so like

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:11)
Yeah.

jill ciminillo (1:29:11)
I'll ask it about things as I'm driving.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:12)
It sound it sounds like the giant uh Jesus statue

in front of a church, uh or it used to be in front of a church in Finlay, Ohio, off of I seventy

jill ciminillo (1:29:19)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:20)
five. I don't if you ever I don't know if you ever saw that one. Um but it it actually got struck by lightning about ten years ago and burned to the ground.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:27)
ma

that seems weird. That's uh So okay, so

jill ciminillo (1:29:29)
That's a sign of some sort.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:32)
I I think there are people who are like, Hey, tell me about this like national whatever. But I don't

jill ciminillo (1:29:36)
Tell Tell me about this town.

Tell me about this thing. I don't know. I my husband and I have arguments in the car and I'll be like, Hey, Chat GPT, can you tell me and like I will have it settle arguments between me and my husband.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:50)
What if it's wrong though? As long as as long as it's on your side, it doesn't matter.

jill ciminillo (1:29:52)
It could be wrong. As long as

I'm winning, I'm totally okay if it's wrong. And it's my chat

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:57)
Alright, that's fine then.

jill ciminillo (1:29:58)
GPT, so it's leaning in my favor.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:01)
Okay. You you're at at night you're training it. Only say yes to my when I

jill ciminillo (1:30:06)
Yeah, exactly.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:07)
whatever the first question is, it's correct. The second one is not.

jill ciminillo (1:30:11)
Yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:12)
Anyways, yeah,

AMG GT fifty five sixty-three. Um it's it's a lot of money, but it's a lot of fun. here let me see what I they yeah, the rear is really you know and the design is like the front, like the piano black um no. I told him like the sort of piano black on the grill and on the on the back. I when they when they asked me when they unveiled it in

Germany? I don't know, I was somewhere. And they were like, What do you think? I'm like, you gotta get rid of the piano black man. And they didn't, but you know, they just like, I don't know, get some sandbaker.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:50)
I mean, you the piano black's gonna look great with

all the bugs the dead bugs stuck to it, you know.

Roberto Baldwin (1:30:54)
Get some

sandpaper on it or something. I I yeah. And the the rear is I'm fine with it, but I j I could see where people are like, no.

jill ciminillo (1:31:04)
I like the rear. The rear looks really good.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:07)
I think it's it the rear I feel like is the the people like are very split on the rear of this vehicle. So the design is where people are like, I like it, I don't like it. And then of course the people who are, you know the people who hate who absolutely hate the idea.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:20)
You get a you get all the stars in the in the rear.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:23)
Yeah, yeah. I think people there are people who do not like the idea of the stars and the lights. You have you have in the rear, you have in the headlights. You know, it's it's a star, you know, it's it's it's it's two thousand and ten um the you know, it's full of stars, you know, that thing. There you go. I thought no, it's I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:40)
Wasn't that in two thousand one? Or was it in twenty ten?

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:43)
think it's the beginning of two thousand ten. I don't think it's in two thousand one. Um

I think it's the beginning of two thousand ten, but it's references but it

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:50)
It was right at the end of two thousand one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:51)
references two thousand one. Hold on, I'm not looking up. Let's do let's let's

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:54)
Yeah. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:56)
go to the next thing. You guys my god it's full of stars. Here we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:01)
all right. Well uh the the the next one was kind of for you too, Robbie. because

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:06)
no.

jill ciminillo (1:32:07)
But uh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:09)
apparently yeah, it's like right at the very end I think, isn't it? Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:10)
I guess it is in two thousand and one. Never mind. Okay. Yeah, it's I think it's right at the end. Alright.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:18)
Um anyway, uh the uh uh there's appar apparently people are now putting taking old Subaru BRZs uh and

Taking out the uh the two point four liter four cylinder boxer and putting in six cylinder boxer engines.

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:36)
Wait, where where are they grabbing these from?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:38)
U apparently you can get them pretty cheap, at least the engines anyway. Um according to the Topian article, uh a good low mileage Easy thirty six D, which is a three point six liter version, uh is only about fifteen hundred bucks. Uh

Roberto Baldwin (1:32:53)
that is pretty good.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:54)
yeah. And then you know, the kit with all the other parts and everything to actually make it work, is about will run you about eight thousand dollars altogether. So

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:04)
Oof.

jill ciminillo (1:33:05)
So you

can get the engine really

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:05)
So let's go.

jill ciminillo (1:33:06)
super cheap, but everything else not so much.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:09)
That's a l Do you really need the kit? 'Cause I remember we would

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:11)
Still you know, for

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:13)
do you could do like, you know, swaps and Hondas where you could grab

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:16)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:17)
the you know, out of C R Vs and out of larger, you know, and throw into a Civic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:21)
I mean, you know, if you've you know, if you can do some fabricating and stuff, you could probably do a lot of this stuff yourself. You know, the

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:27)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:28)
the eight thousand bucks, you know, basically gets you something ready to install.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:34)
Yeah. And and what's the I'm curious about the these the the the hm I'm thinking way too much about this right now. I'm gonna I'm I should close this tab because I

Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:40)
But it looks like it fits pretty nicely in there.

jill ciminillo (1:33:43)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:46)
think uh um it there was there was always I think with the Honda engines they're we're gonna put supercharged chargers in

And they're like, because the engines are so cheap, like I could get a new punt a Civic or a new Del Sol engine for like four hundred bucks. So even though the engines weren't built for superchargers, you would, you know, just they would explode at some point. It didn't matter because you just went out and got another one. Especially if you lived in like a coastal town. So you could get like L especially on the west coast, like LA and San Francisco. So you could just go down to a place. There was a guy who had a big warehouse that just had tons of motors and you walked in, you're like,

I'll take that one. I have four hundred bucks and he's jump in the back of your truck and you just drive away.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:32)
Alright, last item. Oh.

jill ciminillo (1:34:32)
I just have to say, I love

the headline on this where they're like, some lunatics are making a kit to swap a dirt cheap flax into a Subaru BRZ. And then you scroll all the way down to the end of the article and it's like, yeah, you can do this for thirteen thousand dollars. And I'm just like

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:46)
Well,

that that includes the dyno time and everything. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you're g if you're gonna tune the engine.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:50)
Dino time. Oh, 'cause you gotta get a c tune it in.

jill ciminillo (1:34:54)
Today.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:55)
Yeah. If you wanna just take a straight, you know, like what is it? two hundred and fifty six horsepower, you know, just straight out of the box, the uh the six cylinder, you know. And you know, you've got more t more torque than you're gonna get and it's still sounds really good. Um

Yeah, and that yeah, that would be a nice improvement over the over the stock BRZ. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:17)
It's a lot. It's a that's

a lot of money for a car that it's already so, you know, wonderfully balanced. And they're like, Hey we're gonna throw a big heavy uh we're gonna put a heavier engine in there. You're like, What? How's that gonna do? Uh it doesn't matter. It's got a lot of power.

jill ciminillo (1:35:31)
It'll be fine. It'll

be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:32)
I mean,

it this this would be for one, you know, where, you know, if the engine's done, you know, if it's dead, it needs a new engine anyway, you know, then it would might be worthwhile doing this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, this is definitely like whoopsie.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:44)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:45)
I mean they're all gonna die anyway, as a p owner of a b a WRX and now a BRZ. You know, they yeah, yeah. That th those boxer engines are once you hit a hundred thousand now you're just you're just living on borrowed tax. Like, you want the oil out of the pan? Come on. That's crazy talk.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:03)
Um,

all right, last item. Um, so uh Elon Musk tweeted again the other day. Um and uh he tweeted, Tesla will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Giga Factory, Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased cyber cab production. So um get your cyber trucks while you still can. So,

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:26)
Get now.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:27)
yep.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:28)
Get now, divorced ads.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:32)
Uh so yeah, the Cybertruck is officially going away. Um and

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:37)
no.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:38)
you'll

jill ciminillo (1:36:38)
I'm so sad.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:41)
you know, you'll you can you can still get uh get a bunch of used ones out there. They're they're out there. So if if you must have one

jill ciminillo (1:36:46)
I th actually you know get a whole bunch

of new ones that haven't been driven yet that now have used car prices.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:52)
Yeah, that's true too.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:53)
there's that as well. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:57)
Uh so the RIP Cybertruck.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:59)
It

I really though? I mean it's just just like no. I don't even think it gets a RIP. It's just I I said when I'm in the car with other people and they're like, What is that? Ooh Like non car people are like, What is that?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:14)
I mean ev

every every time I I find you know, see one on the road, um, I find myself compelled to lift my hand and lift my middle finger in its general direction. Um

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:30)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:30)
Like this afternoon.

I was out driving to Miata nice sunny fall day. There was one and

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:36)
You saw s

you could you're like, no. We I live so I live in the Bay Area, so a lot of cyber trucks 'cause you know, a lot of just rant

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:44)
Tech Bros.

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:45)
tech bros with lots of money. And then I also live like within a stone's throw of a Tesla charging station. So I see a lot of st uh a lot of cyber trucks. Which makes it feel like there's a lot of them on the road. But the reality is just this I yeah, it's like a very I'm just in the the perfect um storm of cyber truck uh yeah.

So I I mean let's pretend like all the other Elon stuff didn't happen. Um and it's just a vehicle. Like they it was just a bad idea.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:18)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:19)
Especially w

jill ciminillo (1:38:19)
Like I I

don't feel compelled to flip it off, but I just every time I look at it I'm just like, Why? Why?

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:27)
It always feels like it's an undone thing.

jill ciminillo (1:38:30)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:30)
Like, hey, I just got this from the uh me and my friends are building a car in our friend's shop and it's not done yet. But we wanted to drive it around. It's like when your friends have a car and they're like it doesn't have like fenders on it yet. Things are hey, the fenders are off getting painted. But we wanted, you know, it's it's Friday night, man. It's Friday night, we've gotta drive the car around. We've got, you know, we've gotta drive the car around, we've gotta cruise. That's what the cyber truck is like, hey

Hey, it's just like a bunch of metal stuff sh you know spackled onto a triangle. But hey, you got it's Friday night. You gotta cruise.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:04)
It's a shame 'cause there

I mean there actually is some interesting technology in that thing. Yeah, the forty eight volt electrical system and and you know, the the steer by wire and you know, there's a few there's a bunch of other things. But just you know, the end product was just not good.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:20)
It was and and it was the the the the pr the promise of the price was that was the thing, is they could have like made the really expensive Cybertruck, which this is really hard to build, to be honest. This is an incredibly difficult vehicle to build because of how they're building it. They could have made like a cheap one that was like more like a truck. Ta da and sold a bunch of because it's Tesla. But instead they made a crazy one that's too expensive for anyone to afford and a lot of people just sort of hate it because it looks like

You know,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:49)
Ridiculous.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:50)
it looks like a yeah, it's a polygon. It's you know, you remember the Super Nintendo?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:55)
Yeah.

all right. Well oh

jill ciminillo (1:39:59)
Wait, wait, wait, I have a question.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:01)
yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:01)
Ooh,

is it about uh two thousand one? Okay.

jill ciminillo (1:40:02)
This is this is for Robbie, but Sam can also answer it.

Which do you like the least? The steering wheel on the um Cherokee or the Tesla Cybertruck?

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:16)
Oh you know, so the the the Cherokee

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:19)
You know, it's a lot easier to change a steering

wheel than it is to change the entire design.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:23)
There there are redeeming there are re there are a lot of redeeming qualities about the Cherokee that make it Again, it's Oh just the steering wheel, which I which do I hate more? Which

jill ciminillo (1:40:29)
No no no, that's not what I asked. I asked specifically about the steering wheel. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:35)
is g so I feel like the Jeep Cherokee steering wheel is going to impact more people. That's what

jill ciminillo (1:40:41)
Wow,

so you hate the Jeep Cherokee steering wheel more than you hate the Cybertruck. That's what I'm hearing you

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:46)
Actually, no.

jill ciminillo (1:40:47)
say.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:48)
So it's impacts but I think the Cyber Truck what it what it stands for as a vehicle. And on many uh but it do I hate it? I think I hate the Cybertruck more. Because I think

jill ciminillo (1:40:58)
Okay, okay.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:00)
I hate the Cyber Truck for what it stands for versus the impact that the steering wheel because you know what? Short people with tiny hands are still gonna drive the Cherokee, like Jill. And they're gonna be fine. They're not gonna be all whiny about it like I am.

They're gonna be like, Look at this tall, whiny weirdo. Whoop dee dude, you can grab things off the top shelf. Yeah, but you can't grab a steering wheel.

jill ciminillo (1:41:21)
Nor can you stand up under the bulkhead of an airplane. I'm just gonna put that out there for you.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:26)
Yeah, no. I've hit I hit these

when you see tall people kinda hunched down, that's our natural reaction to just living in a world where we've hit our heads so many times.

jill ciminillo (1:41:35)
Hm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:38)
Jill's I n I don't know what you're talking about. That sounds th

jill ciminillo (1:41:40)
I have no idea what you're talking about.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:42)
this is a insane p what is this insanity? It's coming out of your mouth, sir.

jill ciminillo (1:41:46)
Duck

and then I'm like, Why did I do that?

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:50)
What are you d are you ducking when you're like changing the oil? Like what are you

jill ciminillo (1:41:55)
an airplane and like I'll duck and I'll be like wh why did I do that? Or like a a

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:57)
Oh that's cute.

jill ciminillo (1:41:58)
doorway that's like low and I'll be like, I didn't need to a branch, a tree branch when running. No, I don't actually need to duck.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:01)
That's that's cute. I

I I've hit my head on the shuttles. So I you know, I park my car and then I get on the the plane, you know, then they have the little shuttle. I've hit my head on that shuttle door at least seven times. 'Cause I'm in a hurry and I'm like I'm like half asleep sometime

jill ciminillo (1:42:20)
Nope, never had that problem.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:23)
Lucky

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:23)
I

it in in my case, our our garage door is relatively short. It you know, our garage is relatively short. So the garage door is only seven feet tall. And um with the E V six, because of the way the hatchback is shaped, I you know, it it goes up it doesn't open all the way, uh, when it's in the garage. Um, you know, it goes up against the garage door.

which is why I have strips of rubber on the gar on the inside of the garage door so it doesn't get scratched. but um that that said, um I have hit my head on the corner of the lower corners of the hatch so many times in the

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:05)
Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:05)
past year.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:09)
So okay, quick question, one more question before we leave since um uh if you're driving a large truck in a parking garage and it's just barely do you duck? Are you like ducking in the car? Is it just an

jill ciminillo (1:43:18)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:20)
anxiety filled like train wreck? Even though you know like logically they wouldn't let you in the garage. You would have hit the little thing that says, Don't come in here

jill ciminillo (1:43:28)
No, no. so like there's a garage in Chicago that I used to go to. Um, it was at the corner of like what, Clark and Diversey and maybe Lincoln, um, in Lincoln Park area. And um the and I would go in there because it was where I'd get my hair cut. And I drove, I think it was a Toyota, maybe a Sequoia, in there with the roof rack, and it let me go in, but then there

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:54)
no.

jill ciminillo (1:43:54)
were these things that were hanging down, and I went, ooh.

Every single one. And then it would like they they would swing. They were like moving. But it I was

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:58)
Oh the little they sh shh.

jill ciminillo (1:44:03)
able to get in okay. And I'm just like, thank God those things are swinging. Otherwise, like I would have taken off the roof rack. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:09)
You're doomed. see now that's

jill ciminillo (1:44:13)
But yes, I do. Like it duck and and grunt.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:15)
You're like,

like it's gonna make a difference 'cause I ducked. And you're like making

jill ciminillo (1:44:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:20)
sure that the the car's not gonna lift. You're like, wait, where's the where's the thing that lifts the car? Down, down, down, down,

jill ciminillo (1:44:25)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:26)
down.

jill ciminillo (1:44:26)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:27)
A f a few years ago I was um helping our daughter move into her new apartment in Ann Arbor and had a parking garage there. Um and I had borrowed a Ford Transit um from Ford and it was a tall roof transit cargo van. And had all got all her stuff packed in there and got there and went to go pull into the garage door to go up a couple of levels to be at the same level as where her apartment was, so we wouldn't have to

all slap too much stuff up too many levels and it uh the the transit was too tall to go in there. So we had to schlep stuff up the the ramps a couple of floors.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:07)
no. Uh ah

jill ciminillo (1:45:10)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:12)
was a pain in the ass.

jill ciminillo (1:45:14)
Ha ha ha.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:15)
Alright, on that note, thanks everybody. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:21)
Bye.