[SPEAKER_02]: This is episode 424 wheel bearings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am Sam Papuaal Samad from telemetry.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, um, well yeah, we have the podcast to...
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an automotive engineering podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm from SAE.
[SPEAKER_02]: Excellent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and I can't remember where Nicole said she is this weekend, but she's not here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just the two of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Somewhere rad, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, tomorrow, certainly by the time everybody hears this, uh, when it goes up on Tuesday, I will be...
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, getting close to Japan.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be on my way to Tokyo, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so jealous.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love going to Japan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Japan is the best.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone listens figure out a way to go to Japan.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very expensive to get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: But once you're there, it's not, it's really cheap.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is right now that the exchange rate between the yen and the dollar is very favorable to Americans right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: yeah so so do do that before that changes um but yeah it's very spitting a flying there it's gonna cost you an arm and leg but once you get there I think when I was in those soca
[SPEAKER_04]: I've paid like $40 for a hotel room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Ooh, wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was a good, it wasn't like scary, like motel six, where it's like the floor sticky, and it's gross, it was so nice hotel room.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have a small, you pull back the, the, the blanket and then you see all these nasty things on the sheet.
[SPEAKER_04]: You just hope it's water stains.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know the bet the hotel rooms are very small the ones, you know the traditional sort of Japanese ones But I mean you're in Japan.
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you gonna just stay here?
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you gonna just hang out in your hotel all day?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, move it and shake it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You just need someone to sleep and shower and use a special magical toilet
[SPEAKER_02]: I will be hanging out with Honda this week, going to the show on Wednesday, going to the Media Day for the Japan Mobility Show, formerly known as the Tokyo Motor Show, and then on Thursday we get to meet with the CEO of Honda, and then learn more about Honda's space program, and then on Saturday we go to Chigi.
[SPEAKER_02]: to drive the new prelude and also Honda's next-generation hybrid system.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantantant
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so that's what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I wish he would move it to cut Korea.
[SPEAKER_04]: Korea is also delightful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I love Korea.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just traveling in Asia in general.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm just going to Orange County.
[SPEAKER_04]: I lived in Orange County.
[SPEAKER_04]: You driving down or flying down?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm flying down.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a hell drive because you gotta drive through LA, so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's because it's on the on the wrong side of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, all right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you didn't have you driven you driven stuff this week, but it's all stuff that you can't talk about yet, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: There's stuff I can't talk about for like weeks and other stuff I can't talk about for months.
[SPEAKER_04]: months like like next year like welcome to next year That's that's all I couldn't say.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I drove some stuff Actually on Thursday.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was out at M1 concourse in Pontiac, Michigan
[SPEAKER_02]: with crew from CNBC.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were kind of a story on EV performance, you know, basically our EVs getting too fast and we had a trio of electric vehicles that we borrowed to do some evaluation with and some filming with.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had a Kia EV6 GT line, 2026 model, which went from 0 to 60 and like 4.8 seconds, we had a Porsche Macon 4S electric, which is the base version of the electric Macon.
[SPEAKER_02]: which did it in about four seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we also had a 2026 or actually it was 25 Audi RS E-Tron GT, which did it in 2.6 seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reporter from CNBC was running along was somewhat shocked at how fast these cars were.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was not expecting this.
[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't usually drive EVs, and so he was not expecting these levels of performance.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think people realize how fast under five seconds is.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think they're really under three seconds or under three seconds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Under three seconds is it makes it can make you very sick if you're not used to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: All your internal organs, your eyeballs feel weird, it takes a few launches before you you get used to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: The first time though, it's just like, oh, I think I'm gonna vomit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've had friends who have said, don't ever do that again.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't enjoy that.
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, it's one of those things that I think for most people, you know, when you buy vehicles like this, it's like, okay, you're buying it from bragging rights and, you know, you do it a few times to show it off for your friends and then you never use it again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just it's just it's just it's kind of pointless to have that much performance in the real world because you can't you can't use it I mean certainly if you live it in many places in California You know you're not gonna use that on the 405 or the 101 you know or 280 in the Bay Area It's and it's you know not only can you not do it, but even if you find a time when there's nobody around you shouldn't be doing it
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, there's no need to be accelerating that fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're even a lot of people a lot of power who have very little experience with that power.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, that's, that's, that's the scary part is that we, you know, it's such a quick, it's just a huge jump in acceleration and how quick these and how quick vehicles are is that, you know, the average person, again, is used to like six seconds, five seconds, seven seconds, and they've been fine with that and then they get in something with three seconds,
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's there's always the potential you know I you know I talk about this a lot where you know in the 80's and 90's 70's you know when a car broke free it would break it you could break a car for you like 20 miles an hour You can make a mistake where the car was going sideways at like 20 25 miles an hour in the rain or you know sometimes even on dry land
[SPEAKER_04]: But you were pretty bad in those days.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and tires are pretty bad, so you could like correct at a slow speed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you would learn how to correct at a slow speed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, because tires are so much better, and vehicles are so much better, keeping you on the road, which is great for safety.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for 90% of the people out there who are just driving like regular, this is outstanding, because I mean, fewer deaths, fewer injuries, fewer collisions,
[SPEAKER_04]: But the flip side of that is that things don't go wrong until the vehicle's really going very, very fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're doing things like 70, 80 miles an hour.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now you have it to correct in an environment without any previous experience correcting it at a low speed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that's when you end up with like, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's an accident, but it's catastrophic because you were just going so fast and things went wrong so quickly that you, you know, you don't have the, you know, the person doesn't have the experience to react and any meaningful way because they never experienced this because the vehicle and the tires have been have done such a great job of keeping you, keeping you and keeping the vehicle from breaking free and when it does, it's really, really bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and most people don't get the opportunity to practice those kinds of skills, you know, especially early in their, in their driving life.
[SPEAKER_02]: You generally don't get much opportunity to practice the kinds of skills, the car handling skills you need to be able to recover when your vehicle does lose control.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've been fortunate, you know, in the jobs that I've had.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know as an engineer you know spending a lot of time driving vehicles on frozen pads of you know frozen lakes and things like that for the work I've done to you know to be able to understand those dynamics and how to control the vehicle better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, as my kids, you know, got to driving age, you know, I made sure to take them out, you know, as soon as it snowed, you know, take them over to the local high school in the parking lot and, you know, practice some car control with them, you know, first get them used to what ABS feels like, what traction control feels like, and then to do some skid control, you know, sitting in the passenger seat and yanking on the parking break.
[SPEAKER_02]: to get the back end to break free and have them practice steering into a skit so that they know what it feels like and hopefully if they get into that kind of situation they are able to respond appropriately.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's it is a sort of it's a learned and something you have to be in the pen to do for shamanai like like you know exams that we've been very fortunate in that our jobs involve us doing these things pretty often Yeah, it's sort of and and we've you know I've we've had the benefit of
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, people like tracks who, you know, if I've had instructors like, oh, if you do this, you'll be better at this and I've had instructors like on ice driving me like, oh, you should do this and I'm like, oh, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm, you know, I grew up driving on snow in a rear wheel draw, you know, I learned how to drive on snow in a rear wheel drive.
[SPEAKER_04]: niece, not even niece on dots in 260Z.
[SPEAKER_04]: So zero weight in a bag, zero, you know, and so you just everything was a skid in that car.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I just, that's how I learned how to drive.
[SPEAKER_04]: And even then, you know, I still have, you know, you still have instructors like, oh, you know, I saw you're doing this, you should really do this and like, oh, and then you see, you see the benefits of it, and you see the benefits of like learning from people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the average person doesn't have that, and it's, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to have fun, do auto-cross, take some defensive driving classes, do some eye stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know it can be expensive sometimes, but if you really want to...
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, sort of explored the dynamics of vehicles outside of sort of the safety, you know, the safety, you know, all the implemented safety, which of course keeps you on the road from the end keeps you from dying.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to explore more of that, you take some classes, do it somewhere safe, so you know when things go wrong, oh, no, you hit some cones.
[SPEAKER_04]: who cares?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as opposed to, oh no, the consequences are minimal, but you learn, you'll learn some important skills and gain some important experience so that when it, if and when it does happen in the real world, and at some point in your life, it probably will happen in the real world.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you want to know how to respond to those situations when the car does start to lose traction.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and, you know, it's also nice about this, is that you know, you know, you maybe end up being part of a community, you know, you have to, you know, you go out with your your re-added or your BRZs or your M2s or whatever, and you, you know, you sort of meet people and, you know, now you have some new friends, which according to the internet and the world is very difficult for people to, to make nowadays.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, um, well,
[SPEAKER_02]: I did, you know, that was only a few hours at M1, you know, shooting that story that probably would be coming out in a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I did get to spend some more time with a 2026 BMW IX X-Drive 45.
[SPEAKER_02]: 45?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, 45.
[SPEAKER_02]: With the 22 inch wheel package.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, so the IX is BMW's mid-sized electric crossover.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, let's get the obvious thing out of the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, this is not a particularly attractive vehicle, especially the front end.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of my wife's out in the driveway, she says,
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, once you get past the front end, especially, you know, with the giant, this is probably the most egregious variation, or one of the most egregious variations of the twin kidney grill, especially given that, you know, since it's in EV, there's no actual grill there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think probably the only BMW that may have larger twin kidneys on it is the BMW M hybrid V8 prototype race car, which is that's a whole different story and the way it's done there actually works with that design.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once you get past that, you know, this is basically a tallest midsize wagon, you know, it's not this is not an SUV, you know, that in any form is going to be an off-roader, you know, there's not that much ground clearance.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, it works really well for what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, it's, they got, it got an update amid cycle refresh last year.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, got some new headlights.
[SPEAKER_02]: The, you know, the, for the most part, the front end state, design state largely the same, but it did get new headlights and, and tail lights.
[SPEAKER_02]: got some interior updates and it's now I think when it originally came out in the US at least it was available in a rear-wheel drive version and I think in Europe they still offer the rear drive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now they are only offering three different dual motor all-wheel drive models in North America.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there is the 45, which is the base model, there is the IX X drive 60, so the 45 gets 402 horsepower from two motors and we'll do 0 to 60 in about 4.9 seconds, which is as fast as anybody really needs to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: The X drive 60 gets 536 horsepower and does 0 to 60 in 4.4 seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's the iXM70 which gets 650 horsepower and goes there's 163.6 seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: The one that I had, as I said, at the optional 22-inch wheel package, so I think it comes standard on 19s or 20s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interior is very much kind of the modern BMW ethos, you know, the design direction they've gone across the board with BMW where you have one large display, you know, that spans from the, in front of the driver across the center of the dashboard.
[SPEAKER_02]: very much simplified a bare minimum of physical controls on the dashboard, which is not the greatest, it's not certainly not my preference, but it does have manual vents, which is a good thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got manual vents, there's buttons in the middle of the dash for the hazard lights and the front and rear defoggers, and then there's buttons on the steering wheel and a few buttons on the, or actually, not so much buttons, but haptic controls on the center console.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is likely to be one of the last BMWs that comes up to market with the rotary I drive controller.
[SPEAKER_02]: It still has one.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a clear, I don't know if it's glass or you know, or if it's plastic, but it's a clear.
[SPEAKER_02]: crystal like knob and then there's a toggle on the center console to the left of that for the shifter to select your gears to go between reverse neutral drive and what the label is be or break where you get your max your one pedal mode.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the rest of the buttons there that surround the I drive controller are just haptic controls.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you press on them, you'll get a little bit of feedback, but there's no physical buttons there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Overall it works well, you know, the the screen is also a touch screen, the seats, you know, are really good, they're very comfortable, very supportive, had no no issues there, there's lots of cargo room in the back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you open up the rear hatch, it's got this clamshell style tailgate that kind of wraps around the sides, similar to the Audi Q5 and the Lincoln Corsair.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you open it up, there's actually auxiliary lights underneath there on the sides, on either side of the cargo opening.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that if, for example, you have to carry something long in here and leave the hatch partway or all the way open as you're driving, you still have lights on the back there, but you know, because the other lights are actually on the tailgate itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is touch screen interface for the infotainment that you can use as an alternative to the iDrive controller, but the distance to reach it is kind of long so it's a little awkward to use the touch screen so I actually prefer using the iDrive controller on this one.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, this vehicle has a set as plenty fast, you know, under 5 seconds or 60, it will depending on which tire and wheel package you get.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can get up to 312 miles of EPA-rated range with the 22 inch wheels.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's rated at 279.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, BMWs, you know, modern BMW EVs have generally been, you know, pretty good on their efficiency and, you know, they generally don't have any issues hitting their rated range numbers.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, you will, you know, even with the 22s, you will probably get close to 300 miles of driving in real world conditions, you know, unless you are using this like a sports car, which it is most definitely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: They ride and handling is good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, one more thing in the cargo area.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you open the tailgate, there is the floor is flat.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then when you lift it up, there is another storage bin underneath.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can lift it up and that's where you've got the tools for changing tires.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no spare tire.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can, it's got some, got a reflector there.
[SPEAKER_02]: tow hook so you can screw that in if you need to tow the vehicle, what else?
[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of room in the rear seat in the second row.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the back of the front seat backs there's USB charging ports there.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a wireless charger in the center console.
[SPEAKER_02]: yeah I mean it was it's this was you know if you can get past the looks you know this is generally a very pleasant card to drive you know if you need a five passenger crossover that will go at least 300 miles on a charge this isn't this is not a bad choice
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually turned hit a tab and that was the end of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the extra $45 starts at $75,150.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mine had a bunch of options on there, including the
[SPEAKER_02]: Interactive steering, four wheel air suspension for 1600 bucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: The driving assistance, driving assistance, professional package, which includes hands-free driving highway driving system, some more to super cruise or blue cruise, is 2550 bucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: This one had the M Sport package on there, which gives you, you know, some M badges and other exterior elements as well as the 22 inch wheels.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's $4500.
[SPEAKER_02]: most people do a lot for badges.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know that you don't need no stink badges.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you do get an M steering wheel, you know, so there's that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess the interesting will have the alkuts out.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's leather.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, thank god.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I hate alkuts hair so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's not a steering wheel, it's just, I feel gross.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I don't mind it, but, you know, I, oh, yeah, well, BBGB's all in the Drentotal, including delivery.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember I said this was $75,000, $75,150, base MSRP, including delivery.
[SPEAKER_02]: came to 96,275 dollars, which, you know, on premium vehicles, it's very easy to extremely inflate your price, you know, if you're not careful with the options list.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which we have badges.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you want to guess that the destination charge?
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... eleven hundred oh you're very close eleven seventy five yeah it's the luxury people are like we're already a charge you a lot why we're gonna you're gonna start charging a hundred almost a hundred grand for this thing you know we're not gonna lie about where the price increases are we're just gonna tell you right up front here's where the price is we're not gonna sneak it into some weird you know here first to live with your car is going to be forty thousand dollars like what
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, 279 miles of range for this variant.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're looking for a premium luxury EV crossover wagon thing, I think this is definitely, I think this would be right up there
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of say, I think I kind of like the, and the EQE, you know, having the, um, the, um, the zero, uh, zero later interface, I think actually works a little better than the BMW I drive interface.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know, there's, you know, there was, do we even talk about it?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but there was news about, you know, GM's, GM's going to get rid of car play on all their cars blah, blah, blah, which I'm like, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: The only car, the only system that I really barely ever use car play with is the zero layer.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I plug my phone in and like, oh, there's the map.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a little thing for music.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything else happens.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I test the infotemesis, but then I immediately go to CarPlay to do this stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: The Mercedes Zero Layer, I'm going to say it from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because with the Zero Layer system, it's basically the whole screen is the map.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have some widgets that are around, they're overlaid on top of the map.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the corners or the bottom level, you know, for things like media players and give you access to a few other things that you need that You know, don't take up a whole lot of space.
[SPEAKER_02]: They still have decently sized touch targets.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not too hard to hit those touch targets.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're not going back and forth between different modes all the time, which I think is really helpful.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, because in in car play, I immediately go to the mode where she was the map and music and all the other, you know, other widgets about things that are happening and that's what I think that's why outside of like text messaging through, you know, it'll pop up and say, Hey, you got text messages, you know, pop in the car play and then I can pop back out to zero layer.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, if you're a car automaker, GM and you want to tell people over not going to have car play anymore, you got to be as good or better than the zero.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we'll talk more about GM in a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the 2021 BMW IX XDrive 45 with 22 inch wheels.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, let's get into some of the other stuff this week.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the reason why the show is pushed back to, for publication is pushed back to Tuesday this week is because of the embargo on the 2026 cheap grand Cherokee.
[SPEAKER_02]: For some reason, cheap wanted to have it out on Tuesday morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's when the show will show up in your, in your pod catcher.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for 2026, the grand Cherokee is getting
[SPEAKER_02]: You're very mild, mid-cycle update, you know, most people probably won't even notice the differences visually from the exterior, you know, a little bit of change to the front fascia, not a whole lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, it looks pretty much like the the Grand Cherokee for the last three years.
[SPEAKER_02]: The current, uh, was it the, uh, WL version of the Grand Cherokee that came up three years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: The inside there is a change in the dashboard design so they've gone to a different dashboard layout that has
[SPEAKER_02]: has the larger screen, so it's a larger center screen, so it's a 12.3 inch infotainment screen in the center now, and it's integrated, and there's below that, they've integrated the same kind of haptic panel for the climate controls that they've been putting into other models,
[SPEAKER_02]: So they've gotten rid of some physical controls that are replaced with this haptic touchbar for temperature control, defoggers, direction of where you want the airflow.
[SPEAKER_02]: The vents are still manual, so that's a good thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not a huge change.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fairly modest change, but it is a change, and still has the optional passenger side screen, which again, you know, not really that useful for most people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone's out there is enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know when I know, but someone out there bought it, and they have a family member, and that family member is having the best time of their lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, probably, maybe, or maybe a Jeep employee for all you know, it's somebody, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something's having the best time with the, you know, passenger side screen to play or somebody of the suppliers, it's selling no screens to Atlantis.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that person's having the best days.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're selling it to Atlantis, Mercedes, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the big news, though, is under the hood, you know, so the the previous two power trains that were available on the Grand Cherokee for 2025 are carried over.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you still have the Panistar V6 and you still have the 4 by plug and hybrid system.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those go unchanged.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's new is the new hurricane four engine and so I think it was last week or maybe the week before we talked about Stalantis's big 13 billion dollar investment announcement and one of the things that was mentioned in there is that they're going to build
[SPEAKER_02]: What was referred to in that press release is the GME T4 Evo engine in Kokomo at their Kokomo engine plant starting in 2026.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that engine is the official public public facing branding for that engine is hurricane 4.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a brand new 2-liter 4-cylinder, and you might be thinking, why is still at this making a brand new 2-liter 4-cylinder when they have one that they just introduced in North America a few years ago, that's the so-called GME 4-cylinder, it's the global medium engine, is what GME stands for.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are similarities between these two engines, they have the same power and stroke but the GME, the current GME for cylinder, has 275 horsepower or somewhere they're about depending on which configuration it's and which vehicle it's in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the old the last generation Cherokee had this and I think it was like 265 or 270 In the alpha remains.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it gets up to 290 on some variance and then in the jeeps the jeep 4 by ease.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's 275
[SPEAKER_02]: The new engine that the new Hurricane 4 has, it's a completely different block, completely different cylinder head.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually based on the design of the 3-liter 6-cylinder Hurricane engine that is in the the rams and the grand-wagoners.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it has the same bore spacing as that, same bore and stroke, two liters, but now makes 324 horsepower, and 332 pounds feet of torque.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the cylinder head design, well the block design, the previous GME engine was a sandcast block with iron cylinder liners,
[SPEAKER_02]: This one is a die-cast aluminum block with deep skirts and lots of ribs on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes it nice and stiff so it doesn't vibrate too much and doesn't make too much noise.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's got the same plasma bore spray system that they use on the sixth cylinder and that's been used by various others going back to.
[SPEAKER_02]: the GTR and some of the former Shelby GT500 engines that Ford has made, so there's no liners in there, but they spray this really hard coating on the cylinder bore, so after it's machined, that gives them durability that they need, and then the cylinder head is where things get really interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the new engine has two fuel injectors per cylinder.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's direct injection and port injection.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's also two spark plugs per cylinder.
[SPEAKER_02]: And hopefully by the time this comes out there will be a little video that shows you how all this works.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what they've done is they've incorporated what they call a pre-chamber design.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a passive pre-chamber design into the cylinder head.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's similar in concept to what they did on the Mazurati Nettuno V6, there's 3-liter V6, but they've done it here in a way that's a little more cost-effective to manufacture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully we'll be proved durable.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the spark plugs is the top of the cylinder head right in the center between all the valves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a copper alloy insert that gets pressed in to the cylinder head below the spark plug.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the spark plug sits above this pre-chamber and the other spark plug sits off to one side.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what happens is when you have the...
[SPEAKER_02]: The piston going down on the intake stroke, sucking in air and fuel, and then the valves close, and goes up on the compression stroke.
[SPEAKER_02]: As it's going up on the compression stroke, this little copper insert has nine holes in it, eight around the perimeter, and then one in the center.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of that air fuel mixture gets pushed up through those little orifices into this chamber.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as the piston approaches top dead center, the spark plug goes off.
[SPEAKER_02]: It ignites that little bit of air fuel that's inside there, and then it sprays out and what you end up with is nine flame fronts that spread out from this pre-chamber.
[SPEAKER_02]: And gets you much more uniform combustion across the cylinder, so you make more power and the thing's more efficient.
[SPEAKER_02]: And has cleaner emissions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you get almost to achieve what they call homogenous combustion.
[SPEAKER_02]: So basically almost all of the air fuel mixture in the cylinder ignites simultaneously.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a much more efficient system that also makes, you know, so it's 20% more power than before and 10% better fuel efficiency.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll see, you know, how the fuel efficiency actually does in the real world, but it's a pretty cool set up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, you know, 324 horsepower from a four-cylinder turbo.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't complain.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of spark plugs when it comes time to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, yeah, I mean modern spark plugs generally last 100,000 miles anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there you get spark plugger.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, with modern, modern, high, high voltage ignition systems, you know, you can generally go at least a hundred thousand miles before changing spark plugs.
[SPEAKER_04]: I still have so many, I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have so many feather gauges, just billions of, because, you know, you set the pre-gap, you just have to get them to spark plugs and now they're all pre-gripped.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I got so many, I was just checking them before I put them in anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I check them stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or it's a little coin spark plug gap gauges or yeah, it's a little circle or the I have the ones that and then I have the ones all with the one million iterations It's a slide that the little metal.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, slants.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that was so those were the days don't have to do that for him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I do that on my on my Miyado because it you know, it still doesn't it has You know, it's it's a distributor of the ignition system, but it's not quite as modern as current systems I'm gonna do you know, I'm gonna be getting my feet or gay job and then you can't fight it like I guess I go by another one number 12
[SPEAKER_02]: So the hurricane for is starting production now.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually already in production at Stellantis a Dundee engine plant here in Michigan.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about 20 miles south of me here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the next year, they're going to add production in the second facility.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're going to be using this across the board on a lot of Stellantis products over the next several years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would expect that we will see this.
[SPEAKER_02]: come to the Wrangler and also the Cherokee because remember that the new Cherokee is launching only as a hybrid but you know they've said that eventually there will be a combustion engine in there so I'm guessing that there will be a version of this engine in the new Cherokee.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know 300 horsepower Cherokee that can be fun and and you know a sort of other still antist products so this will gradually initially the the GME engine will stay in the plug in hybrids but I'm guessing at some point they will transition over to this engine as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so speaking of trucks, scout, and when it was announced that scout was coming back to Volkswagen was gonna revive the scout brand.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people got really excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was gonna be electric.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, by the time that they actually showed us concept version of the truck in the SUV, said, yeah, we're going to do an extended range EV version as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, with the way the market's going, it's like, yeah, I think based on our pre-orders, we're going to start out building just the E-REV version.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the full battery electric version will come along at some point,
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, in Hebrew I've tried to make sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I liked the idea of electric scout, but also Volkswagen has issues.
[SPEAKER_04]: Money issues.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's, let's, let's see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, that's what's driving this, you know, is, you know, VW group as a whole has been having some struggles, they're not selling as much as they did.
[SPEAKER_02]: Certainly not selling as many EVs as they hoped.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think they figured, well, we can sell a lot more of these e-res, because I think the last number I heard was about 85% of the pre-orders were for the e-rev version.
[SPEAKER_02]: The big question, though, is, you know, when it does come out,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, how much, you know, what kind of capabilities it actually going to have as an E-RF?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because rumors are that, you know, it's going to use the Volkswagen E8, E8, E8, E8, E8, E8, uh, four-cylinder, which is the one that they use.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pretty much everything, you know, two liter four cylinder turbo.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be mounted in the back somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, it's unclear, you know, there's been some reports that the E-REV version mainly have like 3,500 pounds of toning capacity.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if that's the case, that's not going to go over very well with truck buyers.
[SPEAKER_04]: I wonder how many people who are looking at this are towing that much though, I think those folks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whenever someone, they're always going to buy that, you know, a diesel.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the best way to feel people.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's people who are just like, I'm going to, they're going to over buy for what they want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, and no, I mean, you know, this, this is basically a full-size truck and full-size SUV.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is roughly the same close to the same size as an F-150 or Silverado.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not a mid-size truck like the, the Rivian R1.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, if you look at, you know, people that are buying, you know, even the F-150s and Silverados, the light duty F-150s and Silverados, you know, they're often towing campers or boats, you know, that way, 6 to 8,000 pounds, yeah, they may not be using the full 10 or 12,000 pound capability.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, water-mortowing, you know, five to eight thousand pound loads.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them, is that a truth?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, this year in Michigan.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, that's what you're seeing.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is, I mean, it's...
[SPEAKER_04]: I always want to see the data and no one's ever going to give us.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like the plug data.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I want to know how many people are actually using their truck to do truck things.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I also want to see how many people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think those folks who are buying those, you know, I don't think they're...
[SPEAKER_04]: They're very smart about what they're buying.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is essentially like a ridge line.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just a big ridge line.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but bigger.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a big ridge line.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, this is sized like a full-sized truck.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's going to be real interesting to see how that plays out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, that does makes it, you know, full-sized trucks generally have that capacity to do the full-sized truck thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Where the mid-sized, you're like, okay, I understand that I'm getting a mid-sized truck, so I shouldn't be expected to be, you know, again, carrying a fifth wheel or a giant boat or whatever, not carrying
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, let's continuing with the EV theme for a couple more minutes, Prague, the City of Prague in the Czech Republic, has been on a splurge of installing lamp post EV charging.
[SPEAKER_02]: This, this is what I like to see.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is what we need more of more of this, you know, not not so much emphasis on DC fast charging, because especially in cities, you know, it's just parked, just park it, it's bringing your cable plug in any plug in in there, that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, if you live in a city, you know, a lot of people who live in urban areas, you know, park, have to park on the street, and, you know, this is perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you just pull up to the curb, take out your cable, plug it in, and you're good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's very, you know, from an installation standpoint, it's very easy because street lamps, they already have power, you know, they're already running, you know, they've already got lots of power and, you know, here in the US, you know, many of them are running, you know, a single phase of a 480 volts circuit so they're running like, that was at 277 volts.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the new SAJ-3400 standard supports that, so it's much easier to install a charging outlet on those poles without having to put in a transformer or anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just tap right into the power that the lights are using, and you're good to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so far, in 2024, they probably began their program last year, they put in a 143 street new street lamps that had EV charging ports on them.
[SPEAKER_02]: By 2026, they hope to have 1500 installed and 6000 by 2030.
[SPEAKER_02]: So these are all across the city.
[SPEAKER_04]: and says here in this jelopnic article two years ago there were only two thousand four hundred evey charging points in the entire check for public wow that's not yeah well you know you got it you move quickly if you're smart if you're smart about it i i i i i don't understand why america so slow and bring your own cable thing but i also understand why i'm here
[SPEAKER_04]: Like part of me is like why aren't we doing the thing that everyone else is doing that makes sense and then also part of me is like, yeah, I know why.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah I got a close door.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so I also drove the Twitter RAF 4 2020 6 Twitter RAF 4 last week
[SPEAKER_02]: And the new, you know, the new RAV4 is based on the same architecture as the previous generation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not really all new, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's same dimensions, same 100 and 6 inch wheelbase, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the same size 183-ish inches long, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it hasn't grown larger, hasn't grown fatter, but, you know, gotten new styling, all new styling.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for 2026, there's no more gasoline versions.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all hybridized, either regular hybrid or plug-in hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
[SPEAKER_02]: they have they do have a couple new trim levels so you know the design you know which we first saw in May at the Toyota van at their headquarters is you know little chunkier looking a little blockier looking them before it's got a variation on the what they call their hammer head had like theme that they put on the on the latest Prius and the
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like someone said, hey, can you make a RAF 4, but with Legos?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, hey, take the RAF 4 and I'll build it with Legos.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Boom, that's what you're getting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're kind of splitting up the trims.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's like seven trims altogether now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Spuiting those up across three different groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they've got their core group, which is kind of the most mainstream variations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then there's the premium group, I'm sorry, no, the rugged group, which is the new woodland trim, which replaces the former TRD version.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because TRD is now being reserved for body on frame trucks and utilities, so they're calling the RAV4 woodland is the off-road version or off-road E version.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's the sport group, which includes the new GR sport.
[SPEAKER_02]: The basic RAF4 hybrids drive pretty much like the current generation RAF4 hybrids.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not mechanically all the different.
[SPEAKER_02]: They've got a little bit more power.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because there's no gas version now and no previously on the 2025 RAV.
[SPEAKER_02]: They only had the hybrid with all-wheel drive and it used an electric rear E-axle system to provide on-demand all-wheel drive and then front drive.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was no mechanical all-wheel drive system on there and you couldn't get a front-wheel drive only RAF4 hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want a front drive you had to get a gas version.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well now since the gas version's gone, they're offering a gas RAF4 hybrid, front wheel drive hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, they're offering a front wheel driver RAF4 hybrid, which has 224 horsepower, and then there is the
[SPEAKER_02]: or 226.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then if you want all wheel drive, they add the rear e-axle and you get a total combined output of 236 horsepower.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's about 10 more than before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the plug-in hybrid has the batteries been bumped up from 18 kilowatt hours to 22.7 kilowatt hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it'll now give up to 52 miles of electric driving range, and has 324 horsepower.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the GR Sport version is only available as a plug-in hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's four different trim levels that have a plug-in hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Driving, first of all, driving around in the plug-in hybrid with just EV mode, it's got plenty of performance to get around.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can easily drive this as a daily driver, 203 horsepower from the electric motors alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're driving with the engine off in EV mode, you get 200 horsepower, which is basically
[SPEAKER_02]: version.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you've got 52 miles of electric range to play with.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for the vast majority of people, it's going to be fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: This would meet your needs as an EV.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as with other plug-in hybrids, when you want to take a longer trip, just keep going.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it operates as a hybrid once the battery is depleted.
[SPEAKER_02]: So performance, not an issue here, one interesting thing with the plug-in hybrid that I noticed is that, you know, we've complained in the past about the sound of Toyota's four cylinder engines with the hybrids, you know, they're not the most refined sounding engines in the world, you know, tend to be a little, you know, they're good, they're strong enough, you know, they're durable, but they just don't sound very good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's not a problem with the new plug-in hybrid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it's way quieter now when it's running in hybrid mode, and the reason why is they actually, the, the, the, the, the plug in hybrid actually has a completely different block that has been significantly stiffened, compared to the, the regular block, so it's a little more expensive, but it,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, it's a lot stiffer, vibrates a lot less, makes a lot less noise, and then they've also added some other noise insulation throughout the vehicle as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now there's a lot less difference between driving in EV mode and driving in hybrid mode with the plug-in hybrid
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we had no issues with performance or anything else like that during the time we were driving it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The biggest issue I had with the new RAV4 is the interior feels kind of cheap.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's interesting because there was another car.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's the materials, so, you know, there's not much, you know, there's not really any, there's no piano black anywhere, which is good.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so we can plus one for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but if you, if you look at the, at the dashboard, you know, you'll see that there are.
[SPEAKER_02]: panels that are just flat, almost completely untextured, and I asked, you know, because these were pre-production vehicles that we were driving, you know, is this production representative?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, because oftentimes what you'll find on pre-production models, you know, if they don't have all the tooling quite ready and installed, you will find panels in pre-production models or in prototypes that don't have the draining.
[SPEAKER_02]: that you will find on the production models, or textures that you'll find on production models, so just be smooth plastic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I asked specifically as Toyota, is that the case with this one?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, nope, this is production representative.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the fit and finish was good, or the fit was good, but it just, the materials just look kind of cheap, you know, it's like hard plastics everywhere, and it just didn't,
[SPEAKER_02]: Feel didn't look and feel great and you know, there's another car that I drove earlier this week that is I can't talk about yet But that is considerably less effective less expensive than this vehicles likely to be and It has a much nicer feeling interior than this does
[SPEAKER_04]: Even the Nissan Leaf, which is, you know, it's short, yeah, even the Leaf, the cheap Leaf at Ford EV, the cheap Ford EV Leaf, even that you're like, oh, this is nice in here.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Maverick, even though it's not using like premium materials, feels, yeah, the textureing that they put on those materials, you know, it's still hard plastic, but the grinding and the textureing they put on it feels and looks a lot better.
[SPEAKER_02]: yeah it's a texture goes a long way so we're saying yeah it does a little bit of texture goes a long way like very flat just kind of me just kind of feels yeah I mean I don't I don't need the top of the dashboard to be you know all padded you know covered in leather you know especially on more affordable vehicles yeah but you know I do want it to you know at least have some texture to it you know that looks like there was some thought
[SPEAKER_02]: It just looks cheap, you know, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just the way it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does not look, you know, for for vehicle and Toyota has not released pricing yet for the new RAF4.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it will probably be a little bit more than what it was last year.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the 2025 RAF4 hybrid started at 33 32 850.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm guessing it's probably going to be at least 33 in change, maybe 34 for a base, and then the plug-in hybrid will probably start somewhere around 44, it's the last, the previous one started at 44, 800.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm guessing it'd probably be at least 45, and maybe a little bit higher for the plug-ins, although I think there's different trim levels, so there's actually lower trim levels now available for the RAV4 plug-in.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like the GR support, you know, which is the top trim level, you know, that thing is probably going to cost somewhere around $55,000.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that has the same dashboard materials that are in the base RAF4.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of unfortunate, you know, I'd like to see Toyota put a little more effort into the interior materials that they put in these vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it hasn't hurt their sales yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Last year, the RAV4 was by far the the most, the best selling single nameplate in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, GM Ford likes to talk about the F-Series being the top selling vehicle in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when they say that, they're talking about F-150s, 250s, 350s, every F-Series up to like the F-600 medium duty trucks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they had fleet sales.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you can imagine how insanely well the RAV4 is actually selling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the F150 itself is somewhere around 400,000 units last year, the RAV4 sold 475,000 units in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would expect that this one is going to sell just as well because it has all the things that people like about a RAV4.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, it's, you know, good size, it's, you know, it's got, you know, basically the same powertrain, it's got all those features, and it, you know, despite my complaints about the materials in the interior, one big change that they made is this has their next generation infotainment system.
[SPEAKER_02]: which is the first thing that they've built on their new arena software platform that is, that's their platform for their next generation software defined vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the ADAS and the the infotainment on this RAF4 are all built on that software platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the biggest change from a functional standpoint
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we were talking earlier, but you know, a lot of infotainment systems, you know, you've got to go, you know, to do different modes, you've got to switch modes, you know, and the previous gen, uh, Toyota multimedia system was overall pretty, it was such a huge improvement over the, the prior and two systems.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and two is not great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you know the my biggest complaint with that system with the with the Toyota system The last current generation of Toyota system was that you couldn't display Multiple things on the screen at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you were if you were navigation mode you got no media player controls Or vice versa, you know, or if you're in settings you couldn't see any of the other stuff
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, it gives you two screens that you can swipe through and on the main screen, you have two windows on there and so you have about two thirds of the screen is taken up by the navigation screen and you can switch these around, you can switch what displays in which window but so the first screen has two windows, two thirds of it being nav by default and the other third being
[SPEAKER_02]: And then one swipe to the left, you get a second window that has three more widgets on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you get three pains on there showing different functionality.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's very easy to have access to all the things you want without having to switch around between different modes very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, I think that was a big improvement to this vehicle.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also got a new voice control system that worked pretty well, we're pretty reliably during the time we had it for a few hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's overall, you know, it's definitely an improvement.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's a, I think it's a better vehicle except for some of those interior materials.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and then there's the woodland, which, you know, like everybody else, you know, Toyota's got to have an off-roady variant of the RAF4, and you know, on this got their trail sport, CRB trail sport, and, you know, you've got the wilderness additions from Subaru and various others.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like most of these off-rody versions, it's mostly off-road in appearance.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no skid plates on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do have the front fascia, the lower part of the front fascia, is molded so that it looks like it's skid plate wrapping up from underneath, but it's just plastic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does have more ground clearance than a lot of these vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's 8.3 inches of ground clearance.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's got a reasonable amount of ground clearance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And with what they did, they did some interesting stuff with the ADAS, with the new ADAS system, with controlling the wheels.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, to get you better, better control on the off-road stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we, we did a a light off-road course, you know, no really big rocks or anything because, you know, it's not what this thing's designed for, but it was, you know, it was more than just a dirt road.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it did good, it did fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it was quite reasonable to drive, you know, on the types of things that you're going to use a RAV4, or you just want to be, you know, take a little bit of care to make sure you don't go over, you know, anything that's sticking up more than eight inches because it could tear up the underside of the vehicle.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, could go enough for a dish.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it'll get, you know, it'll take you down trail to a cabin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Things like that, you know, or to a... Well, the same scenario, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: The things that most people are actually going to do with these vehicles, as opposed to, you know, what, you know, what, you know, the hardcore off-roaders are going to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the hardcore people, they know what they're going to buy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they're buying old, they're buying old, old ranglers and rickering everything out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, ranglers or Broncos or a four runners, you know, that's, you know, or old Nissan exteriors, you know, that's, that's what they're going to use.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're, they're not even going to consider a rap for.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one's knowing me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a figure rap for the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, don't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so yeah, as I said, pricing is not available yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing is going on sale late this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll probably hear pricing sometime later in November, maybe early December, before it goes on sale.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, Twitter this week also showed off the new Land Cruiser FJ in Japan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Man, okay, so remember when they had that big event where they showed off all these EVs in the background And we're going EVs like this was like one of those in the background and I lost my mind Because I was like, I want a baby FJ EV
[SPEAKER_04]: What am I going to do it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't need it, not do it any off-roading.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the problem with, you know, I think me, to be honest, a lot of people who buy off-roading.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is like, you don't need that car.
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't need that.
[SPEAKER_04]: What am I doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: What am I doing with this?
[SPEAKER_04]: I live in the East Bay.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know where am I driving over.
[SPEAKER_04]: That said, I want the baby FJ.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I mean what do you think of the design of this thing I really like it I like the little baby it's very it's very blocky yes it's another it's another Lego car yeah it's a Lego car it's it is
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's reminiscent of all, essentially, every, you know, off-roader, which are just, you know, a square and a rectangle.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the four wheels.
[SPEAKER_02]: The portions are a little interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it looks like it's a little, I mean, the ones that they showed, you know, the wheels, you know, foreign off-roader, the wheels almost look a little small.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it looks a little top-heavy to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I like the fact that they show one with a snorkel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, yeah, this is, again, this is sort of, it is a Suzuki Samurai.
[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's bigger than a Samurai though.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but this is, it's, this is generation Suzuki Samurai.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't get the chimney.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we're not going to get this either.
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, I think about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we probably won't get this one either.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there's a lot of chimney's in Japan, so I can see why they would make this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or, or whenever I go to Japan, I'm just looking for Jimny's one of the other.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, you know, again, if you're actually going to do some real off-roading, this is a much better solution than the, uh, than the rap four.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's still unibody, but you're going to have some underbody protection on this thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: In a lot of ways it's better than the bigger vehicles like a four-runner or the bigger land cruisers because you can go into spaces where those vehicles are going to struggle.
[SPEAKER_04]: you know having a smaller vehicle like this actually makes a lot of sense yeah that's why the two-door wrangler makes so much sense that two-door defender makes you know there was a defender 90 outside the GM event did you see it yeah yeah yeah I told somebody that someone about the right they they purchased a correct defender but this this one is a four-door though
[SPEAKER_04]: yeah yeah but it's so small yeah it's like four doors in a way that like you know like the the uh what he called the Honda Fit was a four door I mean yeah it's four doors you know it's pretty small but you could put so much stuff in that car
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I'm a big fan.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not going to get it, so I don't know why I care.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's about 10 inch shorter wheelbase than the 250 series Land Cruiser, which is the one that we get here.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what's sold here as the Land Cruiser and the Lexus GX.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the 250 series.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's considerably smaller.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it has a 2.7 liter gas force owner.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's Japan, Japan, there's there's there's there's a lot of issues around like just seeing Japan, you know earthquake The nuclear paying they've there little a little shy on the electricity to be honest when it comes on well That when you drive around there's like electric charging.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like yeah I'm like yeah, I could just drive my car here, or did it at the gas station.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah All right, so you know if they do offer this you're gonna get one
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, mate, well, it feels electric, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: That time this comes out the night the R2 will be out and the slate will be out and the blah, blah, blah, there's so many small vehicles that it's hard to live in Northern California for me and think about buying a gas-solid meat car when you know the other day where like it smells like smoke and then we walk outside as you do and you look around on their horizons to which way the fire is because you want to make sure it's not near your house that's the reality that we live in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of the R2 and the R3, R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R
[SPEAKER_04]: When you have that type of company, do one job and do it well.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really what it comes down to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Find another marketer, a chief figure out something.
[SPEAKER_04]: uh the the there's a lot of external issues with any you know EV start-up there's like external issues that they have to deal with in the United States right now um but as the CEO that's your job um maybe don't split your time now maybe you know double down on that CEO position and working to to figure out like ways around the word no yeah um and then you know hire someone who can do your marketing um
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they're, they're not cheap vehicles.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, that's, that's the one, you know, one thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: But they have money from, from Volkswagen, you know, how that works out, you know, what, you know, essentially, you're, to vote, I'm sure the many Volkswagen developers there have a bunch of kids that are coming in and telling them how to do their job.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they've been building cars for,
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're Volkswagen.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've been building cars for one million years, and I'm sure there's probably pushback When it comes to that there typically is especially in large corporate Entities when you you bring someone in to help you out.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's always gonna be people who are like, boo, you don't know what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, well So I think there's the CEO position for Rivian is You know three full-time jobs.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's not let's not become the marketing ahead of marketing as well
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when I saw RJ at a lot of more press association event here in Detroit a couple of weeks ago, he did confirm that the R2 is scheduled to start production in the second quarter of next year.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's going to be a crucial vehicle for them because the R1 is just as much as a lot of people like it, it really hasn't sold very well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's they sell about 10,000 of them a year yeah, I mean it's it's not cheap
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, the EV 9 exists, so you're, you know, you're going up against, that's sort of the problem that a lot of the new companies have is that until you're established, um, like what, okay, I'm going to put my, you know, if you have somebody with a lot of expendable cash, this is your second or third car, okay, yeah, it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: But for someone who's like, you know what, I really want a large EV, a large SUV, that's an EV,
[SPEAKER_04]: But I don't, you know, this is going to be the main car.
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you going to, to, to, to gamble on a startup that in, and you see startups disappear all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And really, it's been around for a while, so it's, you know, it's kind of tough to call them a startup at this point.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you gamble on a new company or do you get gamble on a company that you know isn't going anywhere?
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's, that's, I think that's a lot of, especially now with, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: inflation's going back up, you know, recession's always on the horizon, you know, job cuts, the government's shut down.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's fight, you know, it's a bad economic time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you, but you still, you know, I need to get this car, what are you going to get?
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you going to get the more established, the car from the more established company that's been around for a billion years and also makes giant boats, or are you going to get it from the folks who, you know, that's great that they're, you know, it's American built, American made,
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, am I going to gamble on that?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the, yeah, it's going to be real interesting to see how the R2 does, you know, that one's coming next spring, you said, you know, and it's supposed to cost around $45,000.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, the R1s are expensive enough that most of them, you know, unless you least them, you know, did not qualify for the tax credits anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: The R2s likely would be, you know, it's at a price point where the people that are inclined to spend that kind of money are going to be much more sensitive to the absence of the tax credits.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I will be really interested to see how that one plays out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the R3 is that, you know, that's the one that most people actually seem to want.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's a smaller one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that one, you know, is probably going to start in the upper 30s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, you know, that's not coming till 2027.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have people like text me about the R3.
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually had someone text me this week about the R3.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, okay, well, the R2 is coming out first and then I don't know if coming out with the R3 first would make more sense because excitement doesn't mean sales.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, that's the, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, but you'd also want to back yourself in the corner.
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't want to pull a VWID buzz situation where, you know, you got people excited and then you made him wait for seven something you, yes, and by the time he comes out, I was like, and then it was, you know, two expensive and two-and-a-half range.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's, it's, it's even with the range issue if you just, if it wasn't as expensive or if you gave like some good lease offers on it,
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, Hyundai does great with these lease offers, if you give it some good lease offers, just get them on the road and then people will see them and then they'll want them right now I don't see very many ID buzzers on the road, which is unfortunate again, I really like the ID buzz even with all it's like
[SPEAKER_04]: weird problems, you know, no second year, second row thing, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We call it a couple holes, you know, really about 245 miles of range, you know, it's it's 400 volts, so it's as efficient.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it'll still charge it up to 200, but you know, it's it's 400 volt 200 is peak and it doesn't stay as consistent as any 100 volt system would.
[SPEAKER_04]: And
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of like little weird things that you're just like, oh, there's all this cool stuff that this thing does, and then there's a lot of like, oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: So hopefully there are three doesn't end up falling into that that trap.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you and I were both in New York this week for a GM event.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to talk about that?
[SPEAKER_04]: So we flew out to New York and GM had an event where they had a bunch of executives stand up and tell us a bunch of things.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's going to be 2028.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're going to have their new like software to find architecture, which they really didn't save software to find vehicle very often in the
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think they said it at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: They said it afterwards when you talk to people, yeah, I don't think in the main presentation they did.
[SPEAKER_04]: They never said the words software defined vehicle, which was kind of weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're going to have a level three SAE level three autonomous driving, which is eyes off hands off in certain situations on the highway,
[SPEAKER_04]: In 2020, a lot of things are coming in 2028, and then after the little presentation where it just felt very, it was very corporate, then we had a very, then we had the opportunity to talk to engineers and that was way, way better, yeah, questions were asked or in the Q&A, and none of the answers were very satisfying, because we weren't, because you weren't talking to the engineers.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_04]: At the end of the day, I mean, I know it's great to say, oh, I got the CEO of this company to talk to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've talked to a lot of CEOs in one-on-one, and some of them are great, and some of them are very media savvy, they're media trained, so they're going to say the thing, which is completely worthless and not helpful to me at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you talk to the engineers who are building it, and then those folks, they know what's going on, and it was really great to talk to them.
[SPEAKER_04]: after that presentation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if I had flown out there for that, just for that presentation, I would have been sad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think you were standing there when we were talking to Senaz afterwards.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's one of the PR people from GM, and she was asking, you know, what we thought, you know, we both expressed our thoughts that, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Frankly, talking to CEOs most of the time, not all that useful or interesting, you know, because, you know, they're so, they're so media trained and they tend to be, most of the time they tend to be so on message that you don't really get anything useful insights from them very often.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think someone made the remark during the conversation that
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, Mary Berry gets very, very, very, very, very, very, very good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Say something that knocks the, you know, that destroys the stock.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just to get inadvertently say something.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, as a CEO, you'd be very, very careful as an engineer.
[SPEAKER_04]: you're not going to affect the stock price.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the engineers have a little bit more leeway in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Unless you have to get to seal.
[SPEAKER_04]: Unless you contradict the CEO and then there's always there's always that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then there's a lot of a lot of emails with PR people and you're like, okay, what's real?
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to tell me what's actually real.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't lie to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was great.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think when they talked about level three, I think they said all the correct things, that doesn't mean that it's, you know, everything's going to be perfect with the launches, but I think they were very smart about, you know, our customers and our beta testers, we, you know, there is no real way with level three that you can just tap someone on the shoulder and say, you have to take over right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: which is true because you're telling people that they can watch a movie, they can read a book and then expect them to within seconds take over the control of the vehicle.
[SPEAKER_04]: And within seconds, whatever the issue is, it's too late.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: By the time the car tells you to take over and your brain decides you're taking over and you're dropping what you're doing, it's probably too late.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not probably.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's too late.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's happened very fast on the road.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're you're moving pretty quickly.
[SPEAKER_04]: So.
[SPEAKER_04]: it's it's pretty it was it'll be interesting to see what the launch is in 2028 it's going to be on highways they're very adamant that's it it's not going to be in the full domain that like supercrews has right now because supercrews us you know you know some other roads but so it's yeah and then you know the new batteries
[SPEAKER_04]: that they're working on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, the, the, the, the software defined vehicle architecture they're, they're talking about was was, was interesting because it really does give them a, it, it gives on to make her more control over what is getting put in their car and how it is controlled.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, I, I've talked to Mercedes about this and it's the same thing where it's like,
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, every time something new gets added to a regular car, you're like, okay, well, now this person has talked this person has talked this person has talked this person has talked this person now this component is talked to this component to talk to this component and it's it's a huge pain in the ass.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I think it was, overall, I think it was a good presentation.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think having the folks there that we could talk to was huge, and then being very sort of, you know, telling us what's, you know, all these events are always like, we're the best, this is the best, the thing we're doing is the best blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_04]: But when, you know, you sort of cut through that, you know, as, you know, we've been to a lot of these things, and this one feels like GMs doing the right thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, the key now, as I've told the number of people in recent days, they set all the right things, now they have to execute on it and make it reality, because most of the big stuff, you know, is still three years away, the new electronic architecture, which is.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know they're they're moving to a central compute architecture so it's not even zonal like for example what Rivian does you know with the zonal architecture you know today you know traditionally most vehicles have anywhere from 50 to 100 or more electronic control units scattered around the vehicle that are all connected together over a can network and you know it's it's very difficult to do updates on that
[SPEAKER_02]: and to manage all those different bits of software.
[SPEAKER_02]: A zonal architecture centralizes most of that into typically, you know, one to three ECUs, you know, in the vehicle, maybe one that manages the
[SPEAKER_02]: powertrain and chassis, another one it does body control stuff and another one does infotainment and then has some usually three or four zone controllers at the corners that handle power distribution and also do some signal processing so the raw signals coming off the sensors there's some compute in there that processes those and then sends those filtered signals back to the the central compute.
[SPEAKER_02]: This system is not going to do that, instead of the zone controllers are going to have what they call aggregators that don't have any compute in them.
[SPEAKER_02]: All they do is the power distribution to the sensors and the actuators, and sending the raw signals, the raw sensor signals back to the central compute.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you just get one central compute box that's running on an Nvidia Thor system on a ship, which is a ridiculously powerful.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be liquid cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's going to be like your home gaming rig.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, this is purple.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just, yeah, this is the same, you know, the Thor's built on the same black wall architectures into our Nvidia's latest, you know, high end beat B-100 and B-200, GPUs that are running in all these AI data centers.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it's a very powerful chip, but it is power hungry, and requires a lot of cooling.
[SPEAKER_02]: But everything is going to run on that, and then there's also a communication module that is the gateway to the outside world.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: All the infotainment, all the driver's system, automated driving stuff, all the power train control, everything is going to be running on that box.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's going to be interesting to see if they can how well they can execute that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it looks like a set, you know, so when you do a driving assistance system, you have all these sensors, and they have a thing called sensor fusion, where it's just raw data, and it comes in, and then you have the system that sort of,
[SPEAKER_02]: Deco's a dad and tells the car what's going on in a real time this if this is like center fusion for like me a tire Yeah, I know the GM is one of the companies that works with a company called synopsis that does simulation and virtualization Tools for chip design and You know, they've expanded that you know, so that you know
[SPEAKER_02]: companies like Nvidia and AMD and everybody else that designs chips, they use synopsis tools to simulate the chip before they actually make any silicon.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they have the ability to run all that, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: in on the cloud or on a local machine and run the entire chip and what they're doing now is they've actually got tools that can emulate the entire control unit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So not just the core that core chip, but all the other parts, all the IO and everything and if you've got multiple ECUs and a vehicle,
[SPEAKER_02]: you can simulate all of those and have all of those running in simulation and then run your software platform is on that simulated version of the electronics before you ever build any prototype hardware.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe the GM is actually using that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know they're working with synopsis and I believe that they are actually running this platform already in simulation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's, you know, hopefully that will help
[SPEAKER_02]: to get them to a better place when they launched this three years from now, then they were when they started launching vehicles like the Hummer and the Lyric and the Blazer EVs where they had a lot of software issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, again, that's, you know, they've got to execute on that and that's not going to be easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, it was interesting, you know, during the video demo that they showed us of the hands-off eyes-off system, you know, they showed a few different scenarios, you know, so all they had was rent, you know, video renders, but one of the scenarios that they showed us was, you know, cars driving down the highway and there's a police vehicle on the shoulder with another vehicle.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, their system is designed to actually recognize emergency vehicles like that, classify those separately from other vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when it sees something like that, it will actually move over to the left one lane to give extra room, you know, around emergency vehicles on the side of the road, you know, which is what you're supposed to do when you're driving.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're supposed to move over and give them room.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so their vehicle is going to, you know, their system is going to be designed to specifically do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and they didn't mention Tesla, but clearly, I think the reason why they showed that scenario is because, you know, Tesla autopilot and FSD have regularly had problems with running into emergency vehicles on the side of the road.
[SPEAKER_02]: So hopefully they can get that right.
[SPEAKER_04]: They also mentioned that they're using, you know, light-r radar and camera.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're using this whole, the whole sweet versus, and then they, they purposely called out like camera systems, like how they're, they don't have the, the ability to see in every situation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's, there isn't that redundancy that's there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that was very much a, you know, they didn't say, who?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but everybody knew.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, see what else, oh, the other thing that they talked about at this event, they had some folks from the GM energy team, you know, and GM energy sells, you know, a vehicle to home, enablement kit, you know, somewhere to what Ford has offered since the lightning launched where you can get a smart inverter, a transfer switch, and a charger, a bidirectional charger
[SPEAKER_02]: off of your EV battery if your power goes out and what the problem with these systems is they are quite costly and they you know they can it's not just a hardware I mean the hardware
[SPEAKER_02]: kit can cost four to six thousand dollars and you know if you want us to home battery as well that's you know several thousand dollars more but then you have the cost of installation and you know it's basically an insurance policy and you know things if you spend you know anywhere from eight to fifteen or twenty thousand dollars to get this installed in your house
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, then what happens if you have to move two or three years from now?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you spend all this money, you haven't, you know, you haven't really gotten necessarily gotten the benefit out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they're launching a leasing program for this.
[SPEAKER_02]: That, you know, similar to like the solar leasing systems and programs where, you know, instead of paying upfront for all this hardware, you sign a contract and you pay some number of dollars per month, you know, they put solar on your house and you pay some number of dollars per month and you get the power from the solar and, you know, the rest, you know, the company that does it, you know, gets the, any excess power, they get to sell back to utilities and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're doing it's going to be a similar kind of thing with this, where you pay some amount per month, and they cover, you know, the hardware, the installation, everything, and it's transferable.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, if to her three years from now, you have to move, you know, the new owner can pick up that contract and continue to use that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's helpful, so you're only paying for the time you actually have it in use as opposed to, you know, forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's other stuff that we'll talk about next week that Ford is doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's pretty interesting, and I'm sure GM will probably be doing before long as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that one next week.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's, you know, I've, I've looked the, the GM and energy system and you know, I, I keep pushing them every time I see them like when will this work outside of GM vehicles, because right now everyone has a walled garden and there was, um, there was a standard from UL.
[SPEAKER_04]: like a couple months ago that i think that lots of people are working towards that all that it's that the that the yeah the problem is all these systems like into the the one with wallbox and kia works with a kia the one the four builds work before the one-of-gm builds work the gm and so
[SPEAKER_04]: Once we get to a point where, okay, I bought the GM one, but I own a Hyundai, or I bought the, you know, the, the wall box one, but I have a Ford, like, or I bought a Ford, and then, you know, because you might, you know, if you're, especially if you're leasing these vehicles, if you're leasing the vehicle for, you know, so many years, but you spend like another $20,000 on this, like, VDAH, like, you know, mega system, and you can't do the VDAH part, that's sort of a bummer, you know, because I was like another five grand just to do that, and if you can't do that, then,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, that's that's definitely a problem that needs to be resolved is to have interoperability between different brands And then after the event was done, I got a chance to sit down with Sterling Anderson who's now for the last several months.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been chief product officer at GM before that and he was
[SPEAKER_02]: Had that same role and he was a co-founder at Aurora Innovation company is doing autonomous trucks down at Texas and and then he was Chief Engineer the first Chief Engineer for autopilot at Tesla before he left there in 2016 And so we had an interesting conversation about what you know what he sees as the challenges and his vision for for GM and what his role is there
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to drop that in here and we will be right back a couple last things.
[SPEAKER_01]: How about GM out past next to us?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm going to five months in now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a really fun intellectual journey for it kind of expanded the horizons quite a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite a change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tesla to Aurora.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, a very different, yeah, that's right already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there's there's there's a lot of opportunity right now in the disruption that is time everything has happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think thatologically in particular, right, but, you know, the layer on top of that every day feels like a new, you know, regulatory environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to work in a territory, you know, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been fun to kind of navigate and learn the business.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming into GM is Chief Product Officer.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you see as the strikes?
[SPEAKER_01]: And where things that you're going to try to evolve and progress for GM?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see a company that's really, really strong at turning the crank on a massive supply chain and manufacturing outpress.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the rest falls in this of our supply chain team to disruptions is extraordinary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't seen that anybody, including in the Valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of scale at which the manufacturing team has managed over years the home kind of to production chops really, really powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been really impressed by all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I came to GM, I actually pinged Mark and Mary and say, I'd like to spend some time with the product we're full of, just to kind of understand where you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and we just lined up all the cars in the portfolio, which is not a small line up for the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to Milford, or yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Mark and I went for drive in just a bunch of different cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started the tracks and just kind of worked all the way through the portfolio.
[SPEAKER_00]: really impressed at the just level of refinement, the team is achieved in driving dynamics right handling, et cetera, really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, $20,000 tracks that drives like this car is extraordinary.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the way up to the cellist, it's the Celeste, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mark and I weren't trying to drive in that and I mean, it's like driving on a cloud, it's a pretty sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: So the team is really strong at this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's so much of the core automotive stuff that I don't have expertise in, they're really good at, which to me feels like a really synergistic juxtaposition of strikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are areas of opportunity in software, in user experience, and evolving our electrical architecture to enable us to get a ray of bulk which we're quickly that have seen kind of enormous potential to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, certainly, you know, software, I agree has been one of GM's biggest challenges from a product standpoint over the last several years, you know, that I know when they washed the lyric, when I did the first draft of the label, it was, it had a lot, it was not quite fully baked, you know, then, you know, the blazer blazer problems on others, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've talked to Dave and some of the other members of the software team over the last
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been through this long lab a couple of times.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you feel GM is progressed on that front?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that GM is made the right moves?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's making the right moves?
[SPEAKER_01]: Going in the right direction?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or there's still things that need to evolve?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've made a lot of barris on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that started with a refresh of the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: As it, you know, Avastardo and Richism's continued.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it continues with good practices across the company and how we test and develop our software.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sir, introduction of such as, you know, a much more exhaustive, virtual test suite and, you know, for regression and progress testing, but use of our install base rate vehicles sitting in garages at night that are owned by our employees that we can just be running
[SPEAKER_00]: like as a like massive think of it as a massive hardware and loop testing suite.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the best practices for how you do software for really the team has been up against game on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we're in a much better position.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still getting better, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That I wouldn't call us done yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I think what we're doing on the centralization compute is the next kind of major discontinuous step to improving how software does.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so much easier to target a single central compute system that's common across platforms.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get back to that, but you mentioned running stuff on employees, vehicles, doing hardware to load testing, I know GM and other automakers have always had a capture test fleets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty production model.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: before they start delivering to customers.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it sounds like this is something we're doing on going basis now, pushing, or where you push an OTA updates to the cars to running tests on there, and then we're working them back to what they had.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we can run, so when I say employee vehicles, I mean GM on vehicles, or employees use that includes capture test suite vehicles, that includes CBOs, familiar with that program.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a pretty massive install base of as on these things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a huge opportunity for us to use it to run these tests and, you know, you've got massive distributed infrastructure is a vector of what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the new BER architecture, which, yeah, it's been talked a little bit about in the past, talked to the divergence in about before.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is the first time that's kind of been shown publicly and get a central compute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that goes beyond what's being done with zonal architectures at some other companies.
[SPEAKER_01]: This, you know, both designing the electronics in house and developing a whole new software platform.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you, as Jim ready for that is, you know, it sounds like, you know, you think that you made a lot of progress, you know, the organization is getting nice, but, you know, that's, you know, the way that software modern software is developed, you know, this fundamentally different from the way it was done when I was doing it in the 90s and early 2000s, and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, those old has been that challenge over the last decade or so, especially of melding, you know, the kind of 51st mindset, you know, of, you know, get get something, you know, whatever you have ready for job one.
[SPEAKER_02]: That has to be complete.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now it's more
[SPEAKER_02]: more like a minimum viable product to job one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then continuing to evolve that and getting the right mindset the right process as a place, you feel like you're at the team is getting there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're saying very, I'm saying very close to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm at Mark Mary, David, I go out to Millford's Monty for specific detail
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're the, as far as I know, you're the first person of GM to have that title of chief product officer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think anybody's had that form and had a product development in either art art or at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, but this is on, this is on the EVP Air Product Adolments type.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is the, so I've technically, EVP Air Product Adolment and Chief Product Helps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is all that a tail for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your remit within GN?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's our products.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's their development.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's their success.
[SPEAKER_00]: So across ICE, EV batteries, user experience, software and services approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always forget stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always feel bad for the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I forgot.
[SPEAKER_00]: design engineering, manufacturing engineering, all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kessa, how do we turn this in the machine that homes that turns out and extraordinary products?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for the last, most of the last decade.
[SPEAKER_01]: your, you know, at Aurora, you know, he would focus on automated driving and, you know, what we saw today, the announcement today of the development of a hands-off eyes-off system is targeted for 20, 28 introduction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: what you know are there things from what you learned over the last nearly a decade with Aurora and and and work on autopilot because of for that that you're bringing to this team you know what what lessons of you learned that are being incorporated into what's what's being worked on now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I should have barrier to that one, because that's a really important question we get right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'll go off to top the dome and then I'm sure I'll think about things that we talk, so I'm not sure it's all the more down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, the imperative of having extraordinary talent in the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like just the foundation for the rest of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: second, the importance of creating a culture of kind of we can do this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And one that instead of asks, instead of suggesting, hey, you know, that can't be done or how could we possibly it suddenly ask the question, if we had to do that or what would we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what would we have to believe for it to be true and in PASCA?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, kind of cultural foundation of really being willing to do things that we haven't seen any mallets do before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had so many people this morning ask me questions like, well, the sterling are people asking for this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, what are customers asking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's all that every one of them is the customers don't ask for things they don't know they could have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the whole faster horse thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: engineering teams can get stuck in a rhythm of doing the thing they've always done and looking out there kind of side view mirror at competitors and being like well or with the like how are we relative to competition and that's good enough one of the things that is important to me and I talked with the entire product organization about when it started was
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want us looking at the side of your mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you're looking at what our competitors are doing, like A, so we're not going to be the source of all good ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we should absolutely ingest them when they come and they'll come through different avenues, but I want your eyes on what's ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I want competitors watching us through their windscreen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want them looking at, oh, that was a really interesting approach to an electrical architecture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a really compelling way
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what they just did with the body architecture or their AV system or whatever, we hadn't bought of that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's culturally, that's what I'm pushing assorts is a world where invention is celebrated and risk-taking is rewarded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Traditionally at GM's, that was the case for most of its history until the last couple of decades.
[SPEAKER_01]: but Jim invented so many things, Jim R&D, and a lot of that over the last two decades has been paired back as Mark sounds like trying to get back to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that really innovative spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we've found a lot of really good people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been really encouraged by the, like, I suppose I shouldn't have questioned it quite so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a natural human tendency to want to be inspired by something bigger, to want it like, and if you're an engineer, being unshackled by the, like, you're to an engineer from this catalog and being told, hey, go figure out like the best way to do this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: and come up with a new inventive way of doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's really compelling and motivated for an engineer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think by imbuing that cultural expectation, there's a natural kind of self-selection process that happens among the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And those who are content with sitting still and effectively plotting along and catalog engineering or products.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to find their way, ultimately kind of a clip by those who are willing to push for their investor.
[SPEAKER_01]: One last one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The integration of the cruise team with GM, you know, I've heard, you know, and the past when Ford did that with a lot of the artificial engineers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of...
[SPEAKER_01]: friction there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how true it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard some reports from various places that, yeah, not everybody is meshing entirely.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's that integration doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Good now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really messy for a while, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just to put no bone to like add or to kind of put any bones around that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was tough for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the last few months, we've really
[SPEAKER_00]: To the point that we brought on quiet few new people that are super excited about this many of whom are former Departic cruise people Okay, who left a gummy bag who left over concerns are now coming back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, now that the that ship has been turned around at free Big way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, one last question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask you during your presentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: We mentioned that first car You never said what it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that first car?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's way to curl and I think I'm six to eight of curl and build in the new me factory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, which is not as little as.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything last thoughts you want to share?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've been my never in giant.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got my first car.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, look, I think we are really excited about what we're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're excited about what we're going with user experience with the AI companion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really excited about what we're going with its robotics with LMR battery chemistry is with our product generally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like my goal here is to build exceptional products, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are a number of ways that we can make them exceptional in ways that people today don't even know to ask for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's the goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of promising stuff we're hearing about and I'm just now
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll watch the execution.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's as you should right like but but what's important to us and to me I don't know if you have to go to C. Yes, and I say ours today the church or use of the word have to is delivered there
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had to, for the last decade, like it's so tired of the future is now, type wrong formations, and everybody talking about the future and never actually showing, like, okay, here's what we've said last year and here's what we've done.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important to me that we deliver on our
[SPEAKER_00]: promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is this part of why it mattered that we had LMR cells there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They should have the design prototype for the IQ that you've got.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the modules as they lay out for STB 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's actively in development and we're hoping to make a real nice couple of years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be watching carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah,
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, and the other night I went to a dinner with Tiago Castro, who is the new VP of Infinity, and it's very interesting conversation there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things that he did tell us, he did confirm, is, you know, for the Infinity brand, they planned to launch four new vehicles
[SPEAKER_02]: It's starting in 2026 with the QX65 which was shown in concept form at Monterey this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's basically a fast back 2 row version of the QX60 and then in 2027.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a hybrid SUV coming across over, and in 2028, there's going to be a new sedan.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, yeah, it's going to be like a mid-sized sedan, you know, along the lines of, you know, the old G35, Q50, that type, you know, that kind of form factor.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is definitely coming, they say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so we'll see him.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think about Infinity bringing back as a Dan in the lineup?
[SPEAKER_02]: Listen, if it's cool, I'm down with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what it really comes down to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, fingers crossed.
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, I mean, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like like Volkswagen, Nissan's having issues with Volkswagen, Nissan, Salantis.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're all like,
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, it's challenging.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think Nissan as an automaker is making some smart choices.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see if the infinity line can expand on those.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think the Nissan Sakura or Sakura Solar Accender is a smart choice?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the Nissan Sakura Solar Accenters dope, but I live in Japan, so we've talked about a lot of electricity.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've talked about the Securo before, it's actually the best-selling EV in Japan.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is a K-Car, so it's a little tiny compact hatchback, you know, tall hatchback, very cute, a lot of fun to drive, and for the Japan mobility show, they're showing a new concept called the AO Solar Extender.
[SPEAKER_02]: that basically is a pod that goes on the roof and when you park the car you know there's on the top of the the pod you know this is a flat pod on the top of the pod is a solar panel and then when you park the car there's another panel that extends out from the front over the front end of the car to basically double the size of the solar panel and they claim that
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got to watch.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not the sneeze at.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't have a, you know, a mile or so an hour, probably a mile or two an hour, but it's like free.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the, that's the, that's when it comes down to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, well, it's not free because you got to pay for the solar panel in the car, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_04]: But once you get it there, you know, they say it'll go up, you know, it's potential to add 3,000 kilometers, which is 1800 miles.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you got 1800 miles of free gasoline every year, you'd be pretty stoked.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I'll not, again, not really free because you thought the people are paying for it up front, but yeah, but yeah, you don't, it's maybe better to think of it as not necessarily, you're less, less reliant on finding a plug.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you just parked the car, you go to, I don't know, don't you don't park it in the garage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you got a Tokyo Japan or a Tokyo Disney Park it out in a lot.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're there for like 12 hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got like another, you know, you get 8 miles and you get out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, drive home.
[SPEAKER_04]: someone just put like a couple of gallons of gas in your car for free like a little wizard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it would be great to have a car like the Sakura here in North America, you know, especially if you lived in a city, this would be an awesome little car to drive around the city.
[SPEAKER_02]: Easy to park, you know, it's it's fun to drive and it is shockingly roomy inside.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is really weirdly roomy and so yeah, it's just a box by just a roomy and you can do it's really easy to pull U-turns because I kept getting off on the wrong exit while driving around Japan I drove my around Yokohama and I just kept getting off on the wrong exit because they had They had set up Google Maps and Google Maps in Japan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not great
[SPEAKER_04]: When I drove their big van and I think that used a different mapping and I didn't have any issues.
[SPEAKER_04]: But of course I drove the big van second so I've already made all the mistakes I was going to make.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you already knew your way around that.
[SPEAKER_04]: When I got back with the Sakura, because it's from a place where you can test drive cars, they're like, you...
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to freeway a lot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, yeah, they knew they tracked, they're tracking you because, you know, again, it's, if they're, you're going to get cars out to the general public, they're going to track it so you don't just like drive off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that nice thing about this is because the solar panel is flat, it's horizontal, it's on the roof.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even while you're driving, it's still generating some energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So with the extender closed, with the panel closed, you can still get up to 300 watts of energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then 500 with the thing fully extended.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're just driving around powering your radio.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, or you climb a control, you know, heater, air conditioning, it's enough for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, yeah, yeah, decent security.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you have a chance to go to Japan and get an international driver's license, drive international driving permit, you can get him a AAA because you're not going to let you drive a car if you don't have that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then maybe as you could go to Neesons, I was in Yokohama, I think, and I think the public can drive a car.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know how much they'll let people from other countries drive it, I was, you know, I'm a journalist, so they let me do whatever I want.
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you can do it, turn it around and then just be really disappointed in America for choosing gigantic trucks over fun little cars All right, let's do a couple of listener emails Let's start off with a follow up on last week's bill challenge
[SPEAKER_02]: Bill challenge.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Bill wrote back to us at the Bill Challenge, huh?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cute.
[SPEAKER_02]: Glad you guys had some fun with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we were asking, you know, what kind of car Bill drives?
[SPEAKER_02]: So as he drives a late model, Lexus hybrid, has a total range of about 500 miles, but Honda Accord from 15 years ago is easily capable of getting between 300 miles.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had one and did the road trips the same way back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: my age let's just say i'm retired and have been on medicare for several years i am much older than robby uh do i dehydrate myself before stand starting out on a road trip well i certainly do not drink a 32 ounce big gulp before starting a road trip see this is where bill and i are already like deviating in our lives
[SPEAKER_02]: And I start out with an empty bladder.
[SPEAKER_02]: So not necessarily dehydrating, but not filling things up before you leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: I usually take a coffee drink in an insulated container and just sip it, sip on it during the drive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Slowly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man, I'm not, again, deviating so far from me.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you need to drive 10 to 12 or even 15 hours to go visit your family for the holidays, you don't want to waste any time without necessary stops.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the case for us for many years.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nowadays, we only do road trips once or twice a year, and I don't even drive more than a few miles per hour over the speed limit.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's usually only 70 miles an hour, but we have been doing these long holiday trips since back when the speed limit was only 55 miles an hour.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was rough.
[SPEAKER_04]: okay have some more fun have some more fun with this one now yeah that's there there's there's huge deviations in Bill's lifestyle in mind yeah I'm like I am as constant as I would have before I I will stop at like the 7 11 I can pick up and I'm just big gulp about dude yeah and before I've even left I've already had a red bull
[SPEAKER_04]: And maybe a T, and so I'm already like at maximum capacity and then I'm just drinking a big gulp.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do understand the long family trips, my dad, we're not stopping.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's go, if you gotta go now, because once you get on the road, we're not gonna stop.
[SPEAKER_04]: But those were only like three, four hour road trips we didn't do.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did like one cross country road trip as a whole family from California to Pennsylvania, where we really didn't stop.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then me and my dad drove cross country when I was a high school against a Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we stopped to use the restroom.
[SPEAKER_04]: We only stopped to sleep once.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I had I had broken my left arm, so my and it was we're driving a two 70s 260 z with a manual transmission.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was fine on the road, but at one point we were in a draw a parking lot and I realized I couldn't like I had like I was shuffle steering and then trying to shift gears and shut the steering.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to shift gears.
[SPEAKER_04]: My dad's like, why don't we before next time before we stop in a big parking lot, we we switch drivers.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got my first ticket on that road trip as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: 70 miles an hour drive into the middle of nowhere in Utah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like the only car we saw for an hour happened to be a cop car.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, and then we also got a couple of follow-up emails from Bob with the BMW I3 that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bob was having an issue with the seat belt latch in his car, and we had recommended, you know, he had gotten it replaced at the dealer, and he charged him some exorbitant amount of money.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, it might have been upwards of a thousand dollars.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we recommended that, you know, he filed complaint with the, the Netza Office of Defense Investigation, and of course, you know, right now, as we're recording this on October 26th, the government has, the federal government has been shut down for just over three weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so not much is going on at nits of these days.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not that much goes on and it's a most of the time it seems But I Mean things the department transportation said about nits at a test love and at a Tesla here in once was Oh, you mean NTSB.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry NTSB.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, NTSB did not have any in the kind words for nitsa
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was talking to somebody from NTSB at another event a few weeks ago and yeah, he was he was pretty harsh on it's as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so Bob sent some follow-up emails.
[SPEAKER_02]: First up, after we had recommended that push BMW for a refund on that, so he said,
[SPEAKER_02]: He will be pushing BMW for a refund, we'll see what happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the next one was looked up, some information, and says from Nitsa, the vehicle manufacturers responsible for repairing a seat belt system that fails during normal operation, especially if the failures do to a defect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Under federal law, the manufacturer must fix any safety related defects at no cost to the owner, and Nitsa can require them to recall and remedy the problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then for manufacturers responsibility, manufacturing defects.
[SPEAKER_02]: If the failures caused by a designer manufacturing flaw, the car manufacturer's liable and must cover the repair costs.
[SPEAKER_02]: For recalls, if the failures considered a safety defect, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can require the manufacturer to notify owners and fix the issue for free.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then warranty, while not all manufacturers provide a lifetime warranty, they are required to correct safety effects, often under a specific vehicle warranty.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though something like the seat belt latch may not necessarily be covered under the warranty, most vehicles have a bumper to bumper warranty of about three, usually three to four years, some are a little
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, even though, you know, that warranty may be expired, you know, for something like a safety defect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this, and it certainly sounds like what Bob had with a safety defect.
[SPEAKER_02]: They probably have to replace it free of charge anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then final response to an email, I said to Bob, says, thanks, I'll catch the show tomorrow morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have had the utmost respect for BMW, but when I, when given, I already tried to resolve this matter with a customer service person once, I now have to contact them again.
[SPEAKER_02]: They should know that this is a nitsa requirement and should not be putting me through flaming hoops.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they refuse, I guess I will reach out to Nitsa, but I can see that getting lost in the shuffle is a distinct possibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will keep you posted, and then the final follow-up was, I hope balls, well, I want to have the facts from Nitsa regarding my issue before I pursue any further with BMW.
[SPEAKER_02]: Using AI, I'm finding conflicting information as to whether or not the manufacturer is required to fix safety related issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a shock.
[SPEAKER_02]: The vehicle age may be a factor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I read that the car needs to be less than 10 years old, which mine is.
[SPEAKER_02]: With the government shutdown, I've not been able to reach anyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they have a direct contact, you can send my way.
[SPEAKER_02]: This would be helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will look Bob to see if I have any contacts and try and send them your way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, I will update you as soon as I can.
[SPEAKER_02]: So ongoing, nothing resolved yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's crossed out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, good luck, Bob.
[SPEAKER_02]: And finally, from Wes and DFW, a couple of quick questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me wrap this so I can read it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I forgot to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hate it when I forget to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.
[SPEAKER_02]: When range is defined for an EV, is that assuming no regent is used?
[SPEAKER_02]: If it isn't, what is a good percentage average for additional mileage that one can get from using regent?
[SPEAKER_02]: If it is, is it just averaged into the numbers?
[SPEAKER_02]: So this one, every EV is using some amount of regent by default, that's just the way it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: When they define a range, they run the vehicles on the same test cycle that's used for combustion vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a couple of standard city and highway test cycles that have been used since the 1970s and then there's also several other different cycles that are meant to be a little more realistic real world driving.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, what they do is they put it in whatever the default mode is for the vehicle when you start it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, you know, typically going to be some normal mode.
[SPEAKER_02]: And depending on the manufacturer, you know, like BMW's often had, you know, strong region is their default on some of their vehicles on others.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's been an optional mode.
[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever the default driving mode is, that's what they'll run, you know, and whatever amount of,
[SPEAKER_02]: energy recovery you get from the region during the test cycles is what gets integrated so they don't they don't it's it's it's gonna vary you know so if you've got a vehicle where the default is low region but there's an optional one petal mode
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're depending on your driving conditions you're probably going to get some additional mileage and it's hard to say for sure how much that's going to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to depend a lot on the vehicle and what your driving conditions are.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, urban driving, you're going to tend to get more benefit from it or, you know, where you've got more stop and go.
[SPEAKER_02]: As opposed to highway driving, we're probably going to get a little or no benefit from it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I think there's, yeah, I think they're definitely using the region, I think the, yeah, the sort of, I mean, BMW's sort of automatic auto smart region where it takes into account where you're driving like what row you're on in the vehicles ahead of you and adjust its region.
[SPEAKER_04]: The first version of it I drive I drove it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hated it the second version and since since I've had it quite useful He uses the last street gen. Let's say on the freeway because you know maybe you want to you want to Roll for a while, you know, so
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's difficult to determine how much of your range is extended by region, especially dependent on every car has a little bit different region, some cars are a bit more aggressive than others and driving styles.
[SPEAKER_04]: The weird thing is if you really stop on the gas and then you have more region, but you're also using it more, you know, it's not a, it's not an equal comparison.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I mean, you, and what's funny is that you can sort of get used to region and then when you get in a gas car, my brain, I get sort of irritated that when I'm driving my BRZ air to my lift, I'm not making gasoline.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like obviously energy right now and then you what happens is you you become accustomed to Region as a you know additional source of breaking so then you when you you get in a gas car and you use the brakes The brakes don't feel that great.
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't feel nearly as as good as those in an EV so that's another weird sort of like one of those weird things you get from
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and for us, you know, that are jumping in and out of different cars all the time, you know, making that adjustment between a combustion vehicle and EV, you've got to reset your brain every time you get into a different car.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, and that is very true.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's even gas cars, you go from gas car to gas car, but when you get from gas to EV, especially if you go from like a little EV to a giant gas truck here, it's like, ah,
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, why isn't this stopping?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, oh my god, I got so much mask.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it depends.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's hard to give you a specific number.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you do a lot of urban driving, I would expect maybe 10% more range if you have like full one pedal mode available.
[SPEAKER_02]: 10, you know, in extreme cases may be 15, you know, and then, you know, last on the highway, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, and then the other question that West had was from what you've seen how do the stats for vehicle thefts of EVs compared to those of gas vehicles if less is this because they're harder to steal or just not is in demand yet So I looked up and I found a story from Axios from but a year ago based on Data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau and also from I
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a national insurance crime beer sounds like a made up thing, but also they're like solvent insurance crimes, yeah, and so, and they will also use data from IHS, the insurance Institute for Highway Safety based on insurance claims, analysis of insurance claims.
[SPEAKER_02]: Overall, between 2021 and 2023, about 49 of every 100,000 insured cars are stolen each year.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's actually not that much.
[SPEAKER_02]: The rate of car theft overall is pretty low.
[SPEAKER_02]: And among the selected vehicles that they have in the chart here, the GMCC era, so that was 49 out of 100,000 insured cars.
[SPEAKER_02]: The GMCC era, 227 out of 100,000 were stolen every year.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Chevy Silverado 96.
[SPEAKER_02]: And interestingly, the Hyundai's and Kia's had the problem with being easy to steal, don't even show up on this chart.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, not sure what that says about those.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're going to like do a crime, it's like you want to get the largest return on your investment for crime doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a giant pickup truck is definitely, because you can sell those in other markets, other countries.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can rock them apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that's the thing, you know, most stolen vehicles are, I mean, some are stolen, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: But the vast majority of stolen vehicles, they go straight to a chop shop and get torn apart for parts because you can, you can make a lot of money selling individual parts, you know, to body shops, to independent repair shops, even some dealers, you know, that's where, that's where the money is in selling the parts, you know, so the, you know, it's kind of the opposite of, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: more than the sum of the parts, the sum of the parts is actually less than the parts themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, things like a Sierra, a Silverado, or a Wrangler, you know, lot of demand for parts for those things because they sell in high volumes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Tesla Model 3, during that time period, from 21 to 23, one theft per 100,000 vehicles.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now a lot yeah, and I know people don't know what to do like what am I going to do you take it through a chop shop You're like I don't what what what I mean the batteries worth a lot of money Yeah, you don't you don't have the yeah, okay Hold on we got to hire a bunch of new new you know hired goons, who we know how to work with high voltage batteries Yeah, who aren't gonna get you know electrocuted and killed
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think I think these vehicles are inherently probably a little more complicated to steal, you know, it's not, it's not the same as just hot wiring them like you could with older vehicles, but also, you know, trying to find the market for these things and actually my guess is that over time, we will see those numbers for EVs go up because one of the things you find is that, you know, the cost of repairing EVs,
[SPEAKER_02]: tends to be high enough that when they're in a crash, they're more likely to be totaled by the insurance company than repaired.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when that happens, there are often lots of good parts on those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: that you know when they go they'll go to a wrecking yard they'll pull the battery out you know they'll test the battery you know if it's still good you know it may get sold as a as a refurb for service part or you know or recycled and then you know other components will get sold and I think you know as the volume of EVs goes up and there's demand to fix vehicles that might
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, you'll start to see some increase in the number of EVs that get stolen, but it's going to be a little more complicated to steal those, you know, so what you might see is, you know, EVs getting stolen, not by somebody hopping in and hotwiring them, but, you know, actually hauling them up onto a flatbed and taking them away, you know, everything is like nearly every EV though has some sort of tracking device.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I know where my Hyundai is at all times.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, they're all connected, which makes it easier to track where it is and recover it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that, and not even track where you're, and recover, that's track to where your chop shop is.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now you're taking a huge, you know, you're taking a huge gamble to sell like some battery packs to somebody.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because your whole, you know, your whole criminal enterprise can be, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for at least for the foreseeable future, you know, you're, you're probably less, less at risk of having your EV stolen than a conventional car.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's it for this week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be back next time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.