[SPEAKER_03]: This is episode 432 of Wheelbarings.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am Sam of Boyle, Sam, and from Telemetry.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I'm Nicole Wakland from Top Speed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have a special guest today.
[SPEAKER_03]: Robby's running a few minutes late.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got a work thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we got a special guest joining us today for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Harvey?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for having me on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been listening to you guys for a long time and glad to participate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Harvey Briggs is a longtime friend of the show and of all of us, you're, well, tell us, tell the audience a little bit about who you are, Harvey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I'll not go all the way back because that would be a long time, but I, I'd started this crazy career back in 1978 as an intern at Car and Driver magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... since then did some automotive advertising but other things and i now run the website rides and drives and contribute to rob report and a few other uh... outlets uh... doing automotive reviews travel stories that kind of stuff so um... one of the gang and you've written some books too i think right uh... a book i uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... one yeah i wrote it
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we had hope to do a second, but that one flamed out spectacularly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, we wrote, I'm a co-writer, I'm a Vemboi, and I wrote a book called Rolls, Royce, Motor Cars, making a legend.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still available on Amazon and any other platform where you want to buy a book, but we had a lot of fun writing that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, last week, you and I spent good portion of the week together, probably what about five, six days all together.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, to share with the audience what we were doing across 2,000 miles in multiple days last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were participating in what is known as Operation Frodo.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a rescue mission that was founded by our friend Nick Miles, where we rescue Beagles from Omaha, Nebraska and drive them to Portland and Seattle out on the west coast.
[SPEAKER_01]: It turns out that there are
[SPEAKER_01]: and not enough homes for them, but there are plenty of homes available for Beagles on the West Coast.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were able to move these 20 Beagles out of the Midwest and into places where they'll have there forever homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, basically save 20 Beagles live.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm really excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to do that together.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it also, you know, not just did we find some homes for those dogs, but it also opened up space at the Bassett and Beagle rescue of the heartland in Omaha for other dogs.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think we got a note from Kathy there on the second day that we were on the road saying that the 20 that we had taken had opened up space for another five that they had already taken in just
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, this is, I think, fourth year we've been doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've saved 85 dogs to this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you think about that, that means like you said, we open up space where they can bring in more dogs and those will get adopted out in other areas as a country.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really nice thing to be able to be a part of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, not all of the dogs end up in the Pacific Northwest, especially the last two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we, we, yeah, two two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then one, we started, we started working with the Utah Beagle Rescue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've dropped off dogs in Salt Lake City.
[SPEAKER_01]: But our friend Paul Eisenstein just can't seem to leave Operation Frodo without adopting a dog.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for the second year in a row,
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul has failed as a foster and and didn't let a dog get home.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he took it home with him and he's just been having the best time introducing his latest four-legged family member to the others in their household.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, if you're going to fail at anything in life, that's a good thing to fail at.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always dramatic though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's decides to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we have to figure out, because they aren't our dogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just transporting them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They either, before they get in our vehicles, they belong to Bassett and Beagle Rescue of the
[SPEAKER_01]: an amazing organization that does so much good in Omaha and throughout the Midwest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once there in our possession, then technically they belong to the rescues on the other, and that would either be the Asher House, Seattle Beagle Rescue, or Utah Beagle Rescue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when Paul says, oh, this dog and I have bonded and he must come home with me, well, then we have to call
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he spoken for?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it okay if Paul takes him home?
[SPEAKER_01]: This year it was fairly easy because the dog didn't have a permanent home yet But last year the dog did and so Paul had to take that dog home Then get another dog and fly him out to Seattle, so some young Some child could have his Christmas beagle
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a it was a whole thing, but it's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great to see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great to see everybody get so involved and it's such a great event for our community of automotive journalists to give back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a lot of fun and it's challenging, you know, I mean, it's hard driving 2000 miles and, you know, and also, you know, even for those of us that have the will power not to adopt every dog that we're with, you know, it's it's still tough when we have to hand them over after we've spent multiple days with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know you bonded with your, uh, one of the dogs that you had with that, yeah, care for and that that was really great to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, um, you know, I, I must be a heartless bastard because, you know, I just, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the dogs while we have them, but at the end of the trip I'm happy to see them end up where they end up in their homes and it's it is for me it's super gratifying to see people get that dog and have the pet that they're going to keep and know that this dog went from
[SPEAKER_01]: A really tough situation, whether it's a puppy and a puppy mill or a dog that was serving as a breeding dog in one of these places or medical research, you know, because they come from all different areas and end up in a loving home with other animals and maybe kids to take care of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, that's the best part about the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and this year looks like a second dog is also going to be coming back to Michigan, you know, Paul Paul adopted Clyde who is a Bassett and border calling mix, which is a very unusual mix, but there's there's another dog that is coming back dog named Liam that apparently one of one of our cohort has found a home forum here in Michigan.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so right after Christmas, he's planning to fly back out to the West Coast and drive back with Liam and bring him to his full time home here.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, some of you get everything sorted out by then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And bring one of the vehicles that we drove out there back to the Midwest, it turns out that the fleet in Chicago was expecting that key to come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oops.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we got the call, you know, an email saying, so when are you going to drop that car back at O hair for us?
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get back to you on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a note for next year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just make sure all communications on vehicle start and end points is clear for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that this is one of the things about this event is automakers loan us vehicles just like we get press vehicles to drive and review and you know in a few minutes we're going to do some quick reviews of the vehicles we drove last week.
[SPEAKER_03]: They loan us the vehicles that we're using for this event.
[SPEAKER_03]: In some cases, they want them back where they started from, like this particular key at Carnival.
[SPEAKER_03]: In others, they're wanting its vehicles that they,
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, maybe need to have repositioned, like, you know, some of them come from here and end up and stay in the fleet on the west coast.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, we definitely thank the automakers for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and typically the vehicles that they loan us are toward the end of their useful life as a press vehicle.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they get to that point where they've got 10, 11, 12,000 miles and they're going to be pulled from the fleet anyway in some cases.
[SPEAKER_01]: For them, it's a nice opportunity to give the vehicle one last hurrah, and for us, it really is a unique way to evaluate a vehicle because how many long road trips do you ever take in a press vehicle?
[SPEAKER_01]: How many dogs do you carry in your press vehicles?
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't happen very often, and this is a way for us to really talk about the vehicles and what they're capable of in a way that
[SPEAKER_01]: So in the call, you want to adopt a big, a big one?
[SPEAKER_08]: I would love to adopt a dog, but I just don't have my, my life does not support it.
[SPEAKER_08]: But in that of time, I'm on the road.
[SPEAKER_08]: I miss our dog so much, our little dog.
[SPEAKER_08]: I keep saying I want another one, because now, Kit has him because it was technically her dog, so she took him when she moved out.
[SPEAKER_08]: I can miss that little dog so much, so someday when my travel life slows down, there could be a dog, a big, or potentially in my future.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think we're the same way.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the reasons that I try to stay somewhat detached because I can't bring a dog home right now with our lifestyles either.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's too hard that my our dog would, if I, we had a dog that poor puppy would probably spend 75% of his time at a kennel, not at our house, you know, with our travel schedules, and that's not fair to a dog, so.
[SPEAKER_08]: No, not definitely not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's, that's important for people.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are adopting a dog,
[SPEAKER_01]: because that's what happens a lot of times is people get a dog, they realize they don't realize the commitment it takes and then they surrender it and we actually had a few surrenders on our troop of dogs this year too.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a lot of work like dogs are great fun and they bring you so much joy and so on.
[SPEAKER_08]: They're such loving creatures but they are responsibilities so not
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for, you know, I mean, dog can live 15, 16, 20 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a long term commitment for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, a couple of the dogs that we had, you know, were surrenders, you know, a couple of them were, you know, we came into the rescue because their owners were elderly and had died, you know, and so that's, you know, that's unfortunate, you know, and then it was one, you know, Kora, who was, I guess, was found out in the wild,
[SPEAKER_03]: Having just had a litter of seven pops and she's a little little beagle and she had seven pops Right, and they brought them all in and they're taking care of those puppies now at at Asherhouse in your Portland.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep Yeah, we should talk a little bit about Asherhouse too because that's a pretty amazing Pretty amazing set up out there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey Robbie hi everybody
[SPEAKER_07]: Hey there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi Robby.
[SPEAKER_03]: Robby was running a little late because he had some actual work to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got to go to pay some bills but thanks for joining us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just talking about Operation Frodo and the experience that we had last week transporting dogs.
[SPEAKER_03]: One other thing I want to mention about Operation Frodo
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's their Nick Myles, who you mentioned, you know, his friend of ours, he started a nonprofit organization called Animal Rescue Rakes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Operation Photo is just, it's one piece of a larger puzzle, you know, and we've, you know, we've transported 85 dogs now over the last four years, but there's, you know, half a million dogs that never come out of shelters every year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And moving those dogs around is challenging for the organizations for the shelters.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so one of the goals of animal rescue rigs is to eventually provide vehicles for those rescue organizations to help move the dogs to where they can get permanent homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm I'm actually on the board of animal rescue rig.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've been talking about this now and really putting the plan together this year to start building and delivering vehicles for specifically for animal transport because those half a million dogs that don't make it out of shelters, there's a home for every one of them if the dogs can be moved to where the homes are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's really what we're trying to do is to use our, you know, what, what little influence we have with the automakers to do things like operation Frodo and then also work with them to hopefully provide vehicles that can help move dogs throughout the year because while it's great to do it around Christmas time these dogs can be moved and need to be moved any time of the year.
[SPEAKER_06]: You're muted, Sam.
[SPEAKER_03]: But before we move on, one last thing on this, before we start talking about cars, tell us about Asher House.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Asher House is just came on as a partner with us this summer, and this is the second time we've been delivering dogs to them, but Lee Asher founded this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He actually started his life with animals as like a TikTok influencer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was going around the country to shelters just before.
[SPEAKER_01]: COVID hit, and he would go into different shelters and highlight animals that were up for adoption.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when COVID came, he couldn't do that anymore, and he wanted to do something big.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he bought a 248-year farm outside of Salem, Oregon, where he keeps dogs, cats,
[SPEAKER_01]: farm animals that are rescued from bad situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we were there he had two Clyde stales that had been rescued from a slaughterhouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were going to be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had a hunt.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has 150 dogs in his pack right now about about a third of those are adoptable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other third
[SPEAKER_01]: aren't adoptable, but he cares for them so that they can live out their life in, you know, this amazing setting, the cat and X and his house was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the house is funny, it's like he bought this property and it had this beautiful, I don't know how many square foot that house was, but
[SPEAKER_01]: you know 20,000 square foot home on this property overlooking a lake and I'm going must be nice and then I walk in and he's converted it to an animal shelter.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's like there's I think there's about 110 or 115 of the dogs are living in the house.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, but we got we got to go for a pack walk with him with about 50 of the dogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's doing great work out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're happy to support him and happy he is partnering with us to take those dogs as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's, let's transition a little bit to talk about some cars and what's going on in the auto industry.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nicole, let's start with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've been driving.
[SPEAKER_08]: Excuse me, this course he asked me what I've been driving in a
[SPEAKER_08]: Which is just a silly name.
[SPEAKER_08]: No boo, um, just say, what do you, like I just do when you drive, I drive a new boo.
[SPEAKER_08]: Um, so it's a very specific version of the Maverick.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's sort of like their low rider.
[SPEAKER_08]: like street performance low rider, but it's not super performancey in terms of power, but they gave it a performance tune suspension.
[SPEAKER_08]: Excuse me, they they lowered it a little bit, so it's like got that low rider vibe.
[SPEAKER_08]: It has a specific 7 speed automatic and you get paddle shifters.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's a low bow drive mode, which I didn't try because it's like a track.
[SPEAKER_08]: mode kind of thing and I was not taking us on the track.
[SPEAKER_08]: I had this for a very limited window and nobody's taking anything on a track in New Hampshire right now because it is like 10 degrees out.
[SPEAKER_08]: If you are, it's probably a snowmobile.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's it that you're taking out there.
[SPEAKER_08]: But so, you know, if you want to go have some fun with it, you can.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's it's a fun vehicle to drive.
[SPEAKER_08]: but it's a little bit more about the style of it than the substance of it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like it looks really cool.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like you walk up to it and you're like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_08]: It has this...
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't even know how to describe the grill on this.
[SPEAKER_08]: It has this grill that is just, it's such a funky-looking grill.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the way it curves.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know, I just think the grill's amazing.
[SPEAKER_08]: And it has wheels.
[SPEAKER_08]: You guys, have you all seen the wheels on this?
[SPEAKER_08]: They call them, I wrote down what they call it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Turbo fan styled black painted wheels.
[SPEAKER_08]: or as some of you my family said, it looks like the wheels are dinner plates.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like they're just these big, flat, black circles.
[SPEAKER_08]: So it looks cool, but it either looks cool and you love it or it looks funky and you think, what, when were they thinking here?
[SPEAKER_08]: If you get that low rider vibe though, from that point of view, you gotta have that in your head when you look at this and suddenly it all comes together and kind of make sense.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know the, I, I try to imagine who's going to buy this, like, or there are that many people that want to low writer, maverick, truck, right at stock, like, I feel like if you're that guy, you want to mess with your own truck.
[SPEAKER_08]: You like want to do it yourself.
[SPEAKER_08]: If you're the guy who's going to take it to a show and,
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know, put the little, what do they do?
[SPEAKER_08]: What's the hydraulic things that the car goes to?
[SPEAKER_03]: The hydraulic suspension.
[SPEAKER_08]: Is it literally, you know, like a hydraulic system?
[SPEAKER_08]: You can't see me trying to mimic what a hydraulic suspension does.
[SPEAKER_08]: So like this, like this, this isn't TV.
[SPEAKER_08]: This is a baguette, but so it's very fun to drive.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was comfortable.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, I had four people in it.
[SPEAKER_08]: We did a good bit of driving on the highway and stuff.
[SPEAKER_08]: The only thing I would notice it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, it sounds has a nice little girl, a little bit louder, but it's not especially powerful.
[SPEAKER_08]: And it has a two liter four cylinder EcoBoost is 250 horsepower and 20 pound feet of torque.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, the fabric is in a huge truck, but the performance part of this is more that they have lowered it in sort of change the suspension is opposed to a giving it this outrageous amount of horsepower, so suddenly you can, you know, beat a test law offline or something.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's not what this is.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's I feel like it's a little bit more about the style of it.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's because it just looks really fun.
[SPEAKER_08]: It looks really cool.
[SPEAKER_08]: I saw people like, you know, doing that like, what is that like the wheels, especially those turbo fan style black paint wheels, they get people's attention.
[SPEAKER_08]: And they're going to love it or hate it, but you are going to attract attention for those wheels.
[SPEAKER_08]: The other thing about this that is not.
[SPEAKER_08]: friendly is the price.
[SPEAKER_08]: It starts at 35 9 30 according to what I just looked up online because I'm trying to get the most recent price.
[SPEAKER_08]: Also the most recent destination because it changed from was on the maroni that I had as we've noticed things have been changing a lot on that.
[SPEAKER_08]: Do you guys want to take a guess at what the destination is on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: 16 Harvey since you're you're I'm what'd you say?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean 16 he said six I would say 14 95 And what would you say Sam?
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe it's 16 95 if I recall from Sam with his like engineering man memory Yes, it's exactly it was 14 95 until a couple months ago And then on my money said 15 95.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's okay, okay
[SPEAKER_08]: So it said 15 of my money, but it was $16.95 when I looked at up, because I looked at up right there.
[SPEAKER_08]: So unless it's changed in the last 22 minutes, it's $16.95, but who knows?
[SPEAKER_08]: So I mean, so you're starting, you're looking at a car that's a truck that's $36,000 dollars.
[SPEAKER_08]: But there is an options list for this, like the number of options when you add that, like that.
[SPEAKER_08]: pick up box cover and there's different bed liners and there's an illuminating Ford logo badge that you can get and like all these there's a lot of options on this for the exterior options to make this look like how you want it to look I feel like when she start playing with this you're very quickly going to have a truck that's going to be over 40 grand and it's a compact it's a smaller truck you know
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have a 24 XLT hybrid that I got all in at 34, which felt like a stretch, 40 for the Lobo, and I drove the Lobo at the Mama Rally.
[SPEAKER_01]: We auto-crossed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, how was it?
[SPEAKER_08]: When you got a chance to drive it in its Lobo mode, how was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: it's fine you know but it's it's it's not an oh my god this is the coolest most fun you know pickup truck I've ever driven it's it's not like you know the old you know Chevy SS 454 SS or something right that they used to do with the Silverado this is it's a it's a trim package you know and and it handles better yes it is more street oriented
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but it's not it's not a light your heart on fire kind of way too saying this is a trim package and not an all new vehicle that argue we should not be included on car of the year lists Bingo
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, well, either way, it is.
[SPEAKER_08]: It is a finalist for Actoy, limited number of tracks in the mix each year.
[SPEAKER_08]: So we do some leeway based on what the truck availability is.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, but yeah, it is one of the trucks.
[SPEAKER_08]: We sometimes do allow trims, depending on the changes for the trim, which we've done for years now.
[SPEAKER_08]: We've done that because sometimes there's just not enough.
[SPEAKER_08]: straight up, 100% on new trucks.
[SPEAKER_08]: So it happens all the time.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's nothing unusual.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there goes my chance at next toy membership.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're out of it, not at all.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, but it was, and that's part of why I had it because Ford wanted to make sure that I had a chance to drive it before we finished our voting, which is finishes, I think, January 2nd.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, they were trying to kind of run through us, like, give you a couple extra days.
[SPEAKER_08]: We had it at the drive that we did back in,
[SPEAKER_08]: October in Michigan, but they like, hey, if we can get people a little extra time to see if they want to vote for it or not, they gave us a little extra time in it.
[SPEAKER_08]: But yeah, it's, and it's mostly, like it is, it's mostly a trim level.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's, there's not some significant change under the skin.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think it's more style than substance, like you're paying for the look of it inside it gets cool blue accents and stuff.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I don't dislike it, but I don't know that I feel like they're building it as a performance.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like the tremor, it's like a nice sticker pack, it's a nice tremor package, but you're like, well, if I was really going to get this vehicle, I would
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I would just buy like the XL and lower it and do my own stuff to it or if the tremor, I mean, given the whole theme of the Maverick when it launched was this whole DIY thing.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Shouldn't you be actually just be buying an XL?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then doing all this stuff yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Make all of you.
[SPEAKER_08]: And if you're the guy who wants to do this, like I say, the person who wants to do this to their vehicle, part of the fun of doing this to a vehicle is you get to do it yourself.
[SPEAKER_08]: You get to make it look exactly whatever weird wheels you want, and lower it how you want to, you know, you kind of want to play with that stuff yourself, if you're the person who's into that kind of car.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_08]: And if they do, they put sales numbers out for this specifically same, you always know that they, well, they don't break it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't know publish, but I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_08]: So we have no idea what they sell five or these are five millionities.
[SPEAKER_08]: I, I feel like this isn't going to be something that's going to sell huge numbers, but who knows?
[SPEAKER_03]: who knows only as as you were talking I went through the building price and just put on all the options or my gosh, what did they come up to?
[SPEAKER_03]: I got it up to 46,370 dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can just buy the XL and did do it we what people did in the 80s and 90s.
[SPEAKER_04]: It just cut the springs.
[SPEAKER_04]: Look.
[SPEAKER_04]: or heat them up.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the other thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then that person's car would always be like a little cock-eyed, like, like, like, one It's like, you can never get them quite even.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can never get them quite even.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like you would.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, well, if I heat them, it'll be better.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, I don't, you know, just by new springs, like, ah.
[SPEAKER_08]: So so that was my time in the logo and I do have another car that I'll talk about next week since I have it fourth three weeks because of Christmas So I'm gonna get to know that sucker really really well by the time the holidays are over.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay Robbie, what do you've been driving?
[SPEAKER_04]: So this week, I wrote the Verge TS Motorcycle.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you don't know what this is, it's a electric motorbike, a motorcycle, except the hub, they just made a motor out of the hub.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when you look at it, it looks like the rear wheel is just floating.
[SPEAKER_04]: but that's actually the motor and then there's just a wheel there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you don't have a chain of belt, you know, of any of that stuff that's going to the rear tire.
[SPEAKER_04]: They say has 737 pound feet of torque.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like a lot for a motorcycle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a dangerous amount of time.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got a very, very wide rear tire.
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of that has to do with the, with the motor, though, it's, you know, 0 to 16 3.5 seconds, except when you do 0 to 16 under 4 seconds in a car, you know, you have a chair or a seat.
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to do that on a motorcycle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, you're just holding on for dear life is, is what it comes down to.
[SPEAKER_04]: The verse says at the, the verge.
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep, see, I, I'm afraid I'm, there's the, the site, the verge.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, verge.
[SPEAKER_04]: says it'll do with the 217 miles.
[SPEAKER_04]: I only got to write it for about an hour.
[SPEAKER_04]: They just brought it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the the bike I was writing was a European spec.
[SPEAKER_04]: The U.S. spec is unavailable because they're making a T.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: two like version two ts2, I don't know how they're going to name it, but they're making a new bike, and that's the bike that's going to drop in the first quarter of 2020.
[SPEAKER_04]: Six, they just sort of wanted me to ride the bike to show, hey, we know how to build things.
[SPEAKER_04]: We actually have a bike, we're not just vaporware, and we are building bikes.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a lot of fun to ride.
[SPEAKER_04]: It has a regen on it, which it can be a little weird with motorcycles.
[SPEAKER_04]: My biggest, actually, my biggest issue with the bike is the regen because as you're rolling off the throttle,
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... when you get to zero that's when the regents starts and so there's no sort of it's very binary it's there's there's there isn't like sort of like come on it's just in now it's on uh... and you can adjust the different ride modes they had like a regular mode like a normal mode where the regent still felt a little
[SPEAKER_04]: extreme, but they have this chill mode where the region feels very, it makes a lot more sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a much nicer, you know, sort of slowing down experience.
[SPEAKER_04]: It did take me a good 10, 15 minutes just because where I live, there's a lot of windy roads and you know, right now, more cycles, so it took me a little bit to sort of get used to that sort of initial, you know, right off the throttle,
[SPEAKER_04]: So that is a little, you know, that's sort of my big issue with the bike.
[SPEAKER_04]: Other than that, it rides well, it feels very solid, I remember the first zero mortise cycles, those things were terrifying because now they make, you know, the mortise cycles are great, they're great mortise cycles just happen to be electric.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is one of those things where it's a great mortise cycle, I have to be electric.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the early days of electric mortise cycles,
[SPEAKER_04]: We're essentially because everything costs so much the motor costs so much the batteries cost so much So the the quality of the the rest of the parts wasn't always that great See it was like riding like a really powerful mountain bike Just putting on the brakes.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, yeah, the first generation Zero more like I wrote it in the rain in San Francisco and I'm ever coming trying to come to a stop on a hill and it's a bike which is like
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my god, I'm going to die!
[SPEAKER_04]: That said, the next version of the spike, I guess the rear tire is going to be smaller, not quite as wide, it's like 40, it's a 40, it's super wide.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that'll be great, it'll, you know, it helps, you know, with nimbleness.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, yeah, so it's, yeah, it was, it was really sort of like, hey, look at this, we want you to ride this before we put you on the next generation bike, which comes out next year.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I guess they're going to have, they're going to do all the unveil and all the fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: look out for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're a more cyclist and you're, you know, you're in the, you know, EV bikes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, check them out.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's, it's, you know, right now we have zero.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have canam or the canam's recently.
[SPEAKER_04]: Those are really nice.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think the, I think the,
[SPEAKER_04]: We've gone pat, we've come to a point where, you know, now the more cycles all differentiate themselves based on the company versus just like, oh, this here's electric bike, like, can't have as a very interesting way of regenerating, whereas you twist forward on the throttle, so you hit zero and then you twist forward up to, I think, five degrees and between zero and like five degrees, there is there are variants and how much recuperative breaking you get.
[SPEAKER_04]: which is kind of cool, unless you're really tall and you're trying to do the DS models find the origin, but the other one I'm sitting so far forward and I'm so tall that as I'm coming to the stop and I hit it, it's just sort of like pushes me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, yeah, so yeah, the T.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: Pro, the motor, they call it the donut motor, is really interesting just because it's part of that wheel.
[SPEAKER_04]: They do support DC, the next bike, the one I had had like DC, I'm sorry, had a CCS for Europe, because it was European bike, but the ones that come out will have NACs, so you'll be able to go and charge it at like a Tesla station, or at anyone who supports NACs at that point, and
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they do have a weird tablet that sits where the gas tank is.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they have a cluster, which with the information that you need.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you look down more.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have all this additional information about charging and some other things, which to be honest, you don't really need to be looking at it most time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just want to help fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going, if I'm going, my blinkers are working.
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you want additional information,
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I looked at it a little bit whenever you're on a new bike.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's always, you know, how is this ride?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm more concerned in that dying.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's my biggest concern.
[SPEAKER_08]: Good priority.
[SPEAKER_04]: When every red and new bike your first concern is don't die.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then after that, you can learn about all the little bits that it does.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Harvey, you're also a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you ever ridden any electric motor cycles?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a couple of years ago, I did have a zero for a month and wrote that and I, you know, it's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing I love about electric motorcycles is the silence when you're out on a country road and just, you know, riding and you can hear birds and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also like the instant torque.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember talking to the chief engineer at zero when I got the by a key said, when you first ride it, ride it in mild mode until you get used to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then go into the full sport mode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but he said, we even, we detuned that a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it could, they could put more torque more instantaneously on that right from zero, but they don't because they don't want their customers to die.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's not a resale market.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so easy to lift the front wheel on those things as it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they really have to modulate that right off the throttle acceleration.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking forward to hearing more about this verge.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just looked at it online and the engine and the motor concept is really cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, I actually wandered into one of their places, one of their sort of retail stores and San Jose area at a mall.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I really didn't know much about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I looked at it and the person behind the counter was just sort of, I don't know what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Facebook who knows.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was just kind of looking at it and like, well, okay, fine, whatever, and I walked out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you know, especially the hype, you know, the sort of performance bike.
[SPEAKER_04]: EV performance bikes, those companies have come and gone, and it's more the, like, the commuter bikes seem to be the ones that stick around for the most part, but this one, they, they keep going, they're selling bikes in Europe, it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, I think there's still that thing where a lot of, a lot of the guys who are riding the highest performance bikes, they like the visceral sound and feel of an ice motor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there is something to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my daily is a 97 Ducati S900 SS, which you can't get more visceral if that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just such a beautiful machine, but, you know, and so I think there's still a lot of that in the sport bike crowd that while electric may have a lot of advantages, that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: But and the other thing is range, you know, they're saying to 12, I can't remember what the zero was published, but the practical range on my sort of go out and have fun rides was closer to 50 miles.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you're really packing this rod all and stuff like that, you're not going to get a lot of range, because you can put what a 14 kilowatt hour battery on there, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't, since that's 20, you've got to have that on the verge.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's big for an electric motor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're just like, you know, you're riding a motorcycle, so you of course you want to go and ride a motorcycle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, you know, the commute.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the, I think right now, the majority of the bikes are great for commutes.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're great for sort of like if you have something around your house, where you ride around like trail.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think they're great for like, like Harvey's in.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're wonderful on trail, especially when you want like a nice quiet.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, especially if you're just kind of cruising a trail, you know, you're going to be okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you're really tearing it up, you can like, you can burn to that battery pretty quickly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this, the verge is, uh, uh, not inexpensive bike.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, they're all very expensive.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this one.
[SPEAKER_03]: $29,900.
[SPEAKER_08]: Well, it's a typical bike, like I don't know as much about bikes is compared to like a gas equivalent.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it's like a car, like what's how much is a typical car?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like all lower place depending on what you're starting prices, you know, or for a reasonable motorcycle is going to be under 10 of, you know, a little bit under 10, but like if you go buy a fully dressed Indian
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I mean, you do pay a premium for electric motor cycles, but it's something like this that promises top and performance, you know, the bikes that they're competing with, they'll be maybe not that expensive, but they'll be expensive.
[SPEAKER_07]: Still up there.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Much can get LR 7000 bucks for KLR bulletproof bike.
[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to bulletproof DS get a KLR
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Harvey, we had six different vehicles that we rotated through during our drive last week that we all spent several hundred miles in each day.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so let's see, we had the
[SPEAKER_03]: The Toyota Sienna, VW Atlas, Subaru Forster, and an NEO's Grenadier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and because no one else wanted to, I spent a bunch of time in the Grenadier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you that the car is lovely, but it is not designed for long-distance freeway driving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see, that's such a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they say they're working on the steering that it will be better, but it really does.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sam, you drove it, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not on this trip, but I drove the last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a type of thing where you start your turn, and maybe it's going to consider turning, and then all of a sudden it does, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it really, you constantly just have to mind it, because you guide it down the road.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of like driving something from the 1970s.
[SPEAKER_03]: early night.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I learned to drive in a 1974 international scout, too, and the feeling the steering felt just like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, no, it was, it was, but surprising, I mean, maybe not surprising.
[SPEAKER_01]: The engine was phenomenal.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got that nice in line 6, BMW motor in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't as loud as I anticipated.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could hold a conversation at 80 miles an hour when we were driving 80.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we were driving in Nebraska.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you're driving across in Nebraska.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, across like most of Wyoming, the speed limit is 80.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so so we were and and in Wyoming, we were driving 80 miles an hour and a 40 mile an hour crosswind and it was surprisingly, you know, it, it was surprisingly controllable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was worried that I was going to get blown all over the road and it wasn't that bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what, what would you say was, or what is, did you have a favorite of the six vehicles that we used in that context, in the context, I'm a big fan of many vans for these kind of trips.
[SPEAKER_01]: So long distance road trip or you're having family or a lot of people in them, I, you know, the only thing that could have skewed my opinion on that would have been if we had gotten some typical winter weather.
[SPEAKER_01]: there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, driving the Ciena, the Carnival, and the Pacifica, I think all three of those were kind of really ideally suited for the mission of loading up two or three crates of dogs, a lot of gear, two or three people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They served really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Toyota, you know, it was the mileage champ because that was a hybrid version.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we average over 30 miles per gallon on that thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Over the 2000 miles to the trip and a lot of those were miles above 70 miles an hour.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that one did really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think overall though my favorite of the three mini vans would be the carnival, even though they don't want to call it a mini van.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an NPV.
[SPEAKER_08]: Multi-purpose V. I see them around.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, oh, carnival, carnival.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, good job.
[SPEAKER_04]: Good job.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because everyone who buys one is tricking everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I, you know, it was interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because initially we thought we were going to get the tellier ride.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was really happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got the carnival.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because
[SPEAKER_01]: with all the people and all the gear and one of those vehicles being a forester, which doesn't have a lot of room.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Ineos, while it's a fairly large vehicle, it doesn't have a lot of cargo space either.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were happy, I was glad to have more minivan.
[SPEAKER_03]: make sure you got there last year last year we had a Mercedes Sprinter that we were able to put a lot of the extra stuff into that you know so things like puppy pens and you know everybody's luggage and you know extra food and everything for the dogs and so we put a we loaded a lot of that stuff in the sprinter but that you know that one also had a lot of challenges with those really strong crosswinds as you drive in across northern Colorado
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing I noticed this year, you know, the Pacifica that we had was the pinnacle trim.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's the top trim level with the second row captain's chairs.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I like the Pacific a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really good minivan, but if you get that trim with those second row captains chairs, they don't do the stone go with those.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you get the other trims, you get the stone go second row seats.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you open up a cover, and those things just drop right down into the floor and you got a completely flat floor behind the front seats.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the seats in the Pacific are that we had, don't stone go and they don't fold completely flat.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the seat backs were still angled.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you kind of limited in what you can load up on there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we had to put things like, you know, some duffle bags in the suitcases and things like that backpacks on there that, you know, and then push the crates up against the kennels up against the back of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the stuff didn't move around.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, the minivan is, I think, you know, in general, you know, are really great for this, this kind of, if you've got a haul a lot of stuff or a lot of people, um, they're, they're great for our dollar trip like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we rent minivan.
[SPEAKER_04]: We went to Palm Springs a few weeks ago and we rented up minivan.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we could put the dogs in the back so they can relax.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, you know, I,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guilty of it back when I had kids at home and all that we bought the Chevy Tahoe instead of a mini fan at the time because of the you know the image thing of it but looking back at it now it's like hot every time I do a long distance road trip with family or that is those are the best vehicles for that mission for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things I do want to call it is, I really did like the seats in a Chrysler.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought the front seats on that were the most comfortable of the three minivan.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, but they each have their strengths.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, that one wasn't a hybrid.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just had the V6 on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you couldn't even do snow and go, so it would have been,
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, when when you're asking people to loan you, I know, I still loan you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, apart apart from, well, I know two of the vehicles had to get driven down from Detroit and Chicago.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the Chrysler was one of them, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Kia was the other one.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the Chrysler, the Kia and the Sienna all came in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Sienna all came in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no and and the Subaru right because the Subaru from Chicago.
[SPEAKER_01]: So three of the vehicles came out of the Chicago fleet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I drove the Ciena And there's some nasty weather.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we had a full lot of lizard and and I 80 was closed in Eastern Iowa because of the snow and wind and and some some crashes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we we
[SPEAKER_01]: We're lucky.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got all the vehicles there.
[SPEAKER_01]: All in good shape.
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps to have experienced pilots behind the wheel of those tanks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, one thing that was very much obvious was because the speed limits were fairly high on these roads, you know, interstate, it's not a lot of traffic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we had very strong winds, you know, fuel economy was not great, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, you always know that, you know, the faster you go, your fuel economy is going to degrade pretty rapidly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the same thing is true for
[SPEAKER_03]: for EVs, you know, that your range is going to degrade rapidly because the aerodynamic drag goes up with the square of the speed.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's an exponential difference.
[SPEAKER_03]: That, you know, what we saw, I'm not sure what they got for, I think you said what about 30 in the CNN.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the carnival in the Pacifica, we were getting closer to 20.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the in the forester on the last day, I was driving the forester hybrid and it was a forester hybrid and we only got about 24 with that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we were going up some pretty big grades across the end to Oregon and and of course, the NEO said, I think we were around 13.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's essentially a break.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's a break now or attached to another brick.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Eric, it's that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Error dynamics and fuel economy are not a high priority for the announced going to deer.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a fantastic off-road vehicle, but it was not the ideal use case for that vehicle in this trip, but it got ultimately got the job done.
[SPEAKER_03]: We got all the people and all the dogs that are safely and that's what matters.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to fill off for an option for like an upgraded steering, like you can still get the heart from like somebody who somebody was talking to the owner, we had dinner the night and when we were in Boise with the at the NEO's dealership in Boise, which was the very first NEO's dealership in the US.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they apparently sell more grenadiers there than anywhere else.
[SPEAKER_03]: Apparently people in Idaho really liked them.
[SPEAKER_03]: But somebody, Kimmer Hoot was a Tonya, somebody was talking to the owner of the dealership or the gentlemen of the dealership and they said, yeah, for 2026, they are revamping the steering to make it better on road.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we don't have details on that, but apparently next year,
[SPEAKER_03]: it will it will get better for on-road driving.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want them to keep the the old steering though as an option.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe maybe maybe maybe there'll be some kind of switchable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who knows?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I guess in a lot of people who live in the Boise area have places up in the mountains because Boise is kind of down in a valley and so they have grenadiers and landrovers and other stuff that they used, you know, that they used to go up into the mountains to their places and the hills and, you know, once they get up off the interstate, you know, it's a perfect vehicle for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: While we were there, the dog I was looking after, I had to take him for a little walk to do his business.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when I was driving walk to round the dealership building, there actually was an old classic defender sitting out back, not in the back of the dealership.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, so yeah, I would agree, I think the carnival was my favorite overall of the four vehicles I drove, I drove the Pacific out of the carnival, the Atlas and the forester, the Atlas was also surprisingly, really good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tony and I drove that on the first day, and the only issue I had with that was the engine seemed louder than I remember it from prior times driving to Atlas, but maybe it's just because of the speed we were going.
[SPEAKER_03]: But other than that, it was a very stable on the road.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was great at high speeds driving down the interstate, and we were comfortable, the dogs were comfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it was a good representative fleet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gave us a lot of variety of different things to drive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did drive the forester one day with Paul.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had two guys well over six feet in that car and dogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a little crowded.
[SPEAKER_01]: You realize very quickly that that is a compact SUV, you know, when you when you spend it that much time with that much stuff in the vehicle.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so next next June we're going to do this again but we're going to do with the EVs this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that should be a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, looking forward to that one.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got we've got three of four vehicles already lined up.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to have an
[SPEAKER_03]: Hyundai ionic nine, we're going to get a Rivian, hopefully in R2, but if they can't get this one of those in June, then we'll get an R1S, and then still working on the fourth.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it might be a lucid gravity if they're still in business, but that's not going to want them to give you a car.
[SPEAKER_01]: although it's it gives them an incentive to prove that they can that they can keep going and they can be succeeded or or maybe a key a V nine we'll we'll see yeah maybe we should talk to the folks involved over the yeah it's 90 yeah that might be a good one for fourth rather than doing the same platform with
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's talk about some of the stuff that's happening across the industry this week.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a couple of years ago, there was a lot of people got upset when GM announced that there were no longer going to support smartphone projection in their EVs, because they've got an Android-based system in their Google services.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, starting from this was in March of 2023, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: They said, going forward, we're not going to put Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in our EVs anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're still not doing that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They may or may not remove that support from their gas engine vehicles.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they now have Apple Music available.
[SPEAKER_03]: So for those people, do any of you use Apple Music as your streaming choice of streaming service of choice?
[SPEAKER_04]: I use Apple Music.
[SPEAKER_04]: I use Apple Music and Spotify, I use Buzz.
[SPEAKER_04]: I use Spotify because I have to deal with a bunch of people for playlists and an Apple Music for regular, Robby stuff.
[SPEAKER_05]: right here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, now on GM vehicles with the Google system, you can get out there, pushing out the Apple Music app to those vehicles so you can use Apple Music.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's just a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it
[SPEAKER_03]: Since they launched Apple Music, they are shortly after they launched Apple Music.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have had an Android version of the app.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you use an Android phone, you can still use Apple Music.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's what they're pushing out for.
[SPEAKER_03]: For whatever reason, most of the other streaming services like Spotify and YouTube Music and others are all in the Google Play Store on Android Automotive.
[SPEAKER_03]: but Apple for whatever reason never decided to put that in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so now they're pushing it, it looks like they're doing deals with individual automakers, because they've had it in Rivians for a little while.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now they're putting in GM vehicles, and they'll maybe they'll get it into other vehicles going forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think, does that make you any less, or does that,
[SPEAKER_03]: overcome any of the issues you have with lack of car play support.
[SPEAKER_08]: Not really.
[SPEAKER_08]: I feel like it's not just about the music.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's all the other.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think that would I said well.
[SPEAKER_08]: Car play, that's not what that is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't think it really solves the problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, I think the bigger issue is that you can't tell everybody, hey, we're doing this thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we're not going to do it because because we're going to make our infotainment just as good.
[SPEAKER_04]: You make the infotainment just as good, then you make the change, and I think that's the big issue with this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And most of the GM infotainment systems I've dealt with, or the past few years are very slow and buggy, and when you're halo vehicle, the humber, whenever you change the drive mode, you've got to wait a few seconds for the car to do whatever it's weird thing it's doing,
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't vote well for the idea that like we're gonna get rid of Apple music and like well, just I think a company that could be an unreal engine to do all those cool graphics on this.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's graphic.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that the only if attainment system that I think that when I get in the car, I rarely use car play is Mercedes is and bucks.
[SPEAKER_07]: Really?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's just like, it's just like here's the map and here's the widgets for the things you want.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, my god.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want the map.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's the widgets.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: Easy.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the whole point of bringing your device into the car is so I don't have to program a whole other system.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I've got to learn it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to learn it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to put all my
[SPEAKER_01]: stuff in there and this is just you we want to make life easier for people right people want to just walk in plug in or pair and go and you know making people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Learn a new system isn't making their lives easier.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think there's a lot of apps that they don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: They still don't support.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're like, oh, well, well, this isn't here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, this isn't here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they get in a car that previously are a car, you know, a car from a car maker that previously supported that ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now that ecosystem is just taking away with the promise of a better ecosystem that's not ready yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's where you read into the issue.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're taking away your we're taking away something that that works for something that we're going to make eventually.
[SPEAKER_07]: But not yet, suffer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so apparently Ford is, for Marlita, 2026, for the mochi.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when the mochi first came out, Ford made a big deal about how big the front was.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the shrimp had it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, they loaded it with ice and shrimp and it said, we've got a drain plug in the bottom.
[SPEAKER_03]: So as the ice melts, the water can just drain out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it'll be real easy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, now apparently for Molly or 2026, the front is going to become an extra cost option.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is going on at that company?
[SPEAKER_06]: What is happening?
[SPEAKER_06]: What are they got to save some money?
[SPEAKER_04]: They've already moved it all the plastic for the thing that goes in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're like, you know what, we're going to mold new plastic to cover it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I haven't actually seen a picture of it yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: So my guess is that they're actually just going to leave the plastic off.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be like, when you open the hood of a, you know, of a Chevy Equinox EV.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the whole, there's the motor and the inverter and everything sitting there.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's just not going to be any plastic.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's saving that plastic.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't get it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Why would you get rid of it?
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, it says it gives you a slightly lower entry point by about 1,000 bucks.
[SPEAKER_08]: I...
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, so the base price of the the Machi for 2026 is going down a little bit apparently.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then as part of that, you know, to they're taking out some contact content, you know, the thing we know about so far is the frunk, but there's probably going to be some other things that they get taken out as well to.
[SPEAKER_04]: get to that lower price line like the front or is it I like to think from the weirdest decision from a company that makes non stop weird decision yeah there's like a great thing and then they'll kill it
[SPEAKER_04]: Ford just makes weird decisions.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like there's a big, they have a giant dart board.
[SPEAKER_04]: And on the dart board, they allow children to just mix things up and then stick it on the dart board.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the executive comes in and throws an arrow and then boom, get rid of the front.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, okay, Frank is gone.
[SPEAKER_08]: To me through a dart at it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that's a strange, I guess.
[SPEAKER_08]: Most buyers weren't looking at it in the first place.
[SPEAKER_08]: Looking for it, no one, you know, just trying to do the cool things about having an EV that you have a little funky, can like stuff stuff in there?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's nice if you have a big frunk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the frunk in the in the lightning, which is going away.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, the frunk in the lightning was useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but most frunks are just okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got some place I can put a extra thing, but yeah, this I mean, for hatchback, it's good to have somewhere you can lock something.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's that's what's nice for the the the Maki is like if I had something like oh I have my backpack Do you don't leave your backpack in a hatchback anywhere on the planet, right, but you can walk it You could look it in the front like the the the the that's so rummaged
[SPEAKER_04]: So my onic five has a frunk, it's like the size of a laptop, like a really big, like, you know, mid-2017, it's MacBook laptop, so you can stick a cable up there and then just sort of forget about it because you don't need it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's kind of like just there for, you know, every once in a while, if you need a cable.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like to have like a real, like, frunk.
[SPEAKER_04]: And to make a big deal about it, and to fill it full of shrimp, and then to say, you know what, if you want to have a, if you want to have a sweet, a sweet cocktail party with your with your with your EV, it's got a caution of the thousand dollars.
[SPEAKER_08]: What's the fun to see?
[SPEAKER_08]: I think the whole front thing if I still had maybe I might use the front kind of like I don't have one now, but like if I wouldn't use it, I don't know I I think about like when kids are little and you have stuff that's like grossing when I just throw in the front keep it away from your other stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you had a little front in your and your EV that you had for about eight months.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, did you ever use it?
[SPEAKER_08]: I own the car for eight months.
[SPEAKER_08]: I drove it for all of like 1,200 miles Sam I didn't have a chance to use it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, they got me in the cold over a good use case
[SPEAKER_08]: I feel like I'm not the use case, and I had a chance to have it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I had it in February when it's freezing cold or what a maybe March.
[SPEAKER_08]: But the time it was nice weather and I couldn't, I didn't have a car anymore.
[SPEAKER_08]: So it was never, ever worked long enough for me to see if I needed the frunk.
[SPEAKER_08]: So yeah, meh, so what have though I think it would have been awesome camping or something like throw ice in there, look cooler, look a little frunk cooler.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the swag and air is officially gone from your life now.
[SPEAKER_08]: This fucking year's officially gone last week.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, I have, it has been turned in and the good folks at Jeep figured things out enough to say we need to get you out of the car.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, yes, so I no longer have, you oldie swag, I do have a license plate though in my garage, I'm sad, I liked that car.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was the whole going part of it that was a problem, but otherwise it was great.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: On the rare occasions when it worked, it was great.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was brilliant when it worked.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was fabulous when it worked.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was a pretty radar red interior and great audio system.
[SPEAKER_08]: It went really, really fast when you matched the accelerator, but not always, which was the problem sometimes that did the exact opposite when you matched the accelerator.
[SPEAKER_08]: They're in-lies the problem, but yeah, so it's officially gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, speaking of EVs going away for Ford made an announcement, while we were on the road last week, I got a call from somebody at Ford saying, hey, we're going to be having a briefing call in a couple of hours, can you join?
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was to announce a bunch of changes in their EV strategy.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Ford, as has been rumored for a while, the F-150 Lightning is now officially out of production.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's no longer being produced.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ford, they also previously announced that they were breaking up their joint venture with SK on for battery production, so they had two plants, one in Tennessee, one in Kentucky, and the
[SPEAKER_03]: Tennessee plant is going to SK, the one in Kentucky is Ford is keeping and they are they have now ended production of nickel manganese cobalt cells there laid off all 1600 people and they're going to spend a couple of billion dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: to retool the factory, to build LFP, lithium-ion phosphate cells to be used for energy storage systems instead of EVs.
[SPEAKER_03]: They've also canceled plans for the next generation electric transit van what else.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bunch of stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: and altogether for it is taking a 19 and a half billion dollar charge this quarter with a B yeah But there's gonna be a new lightning someday eventually But it it's not gonna be a pure EV it's gonna be an extended range EV what do you think about that?
[SPEAKER_08]: I feel like they just tried to keep the name.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like we don't want to say we're canceling my lightning, but we cancel the lightning.
[SPEAKER_08]: So we're just going to have a new lightning coming.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's not like the old lightning, but we're not getting rid of the lightning because we still have the name.
[SPEAKER_03]: that they say it'll have 700 miles of range altogether between the range extender and the battery.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not saying how much electric range it'll have from the battery, but 700 in total, which is pretty good.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that shiny new plant that they're building that they built in Tennessee, the blue oval city plant that was supposed to build the next generation lightning, that's gonna build gas trucks instead.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, I mean, it comes down to Ford, they looked it like, oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, God, Tesla's making a truck.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to make a truck.
[SPEAKER_04]: and it all went downhill from there.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a good, the thing is the F-150 lightning is the best lightning for 80% of lightning owners to be honest.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the best, oh, I'm sorry, it's the best F-150 for most F-150 owners, it's not the best lightning for lightning owners, it's a McKinney sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think for most people, that's the safe, it drives better than the gas vehicles, it's more stable, it's just a better truck to be honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not towing with it,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's and you're not doing any long distance driving with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, round town, landscapeers, etc.
[SPEAKER_04]: But somehow for and but they've like they changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: The price scenery like three weeks it felt like and then, you know, no one knew about it and then you know, it became too expensive for for, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
[SPEAKER_04]: for what he caught those people who buy a lot of trucks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Please, thank you very much, please.
[SPEAKER_04]: Meanwhile, I see Silverado EVs in a lot of government fleets up here in Northern California.
[SPEAKER_04]: So for to really drop the ball on that, that's, you know, that's potentially thousands of trucks that GMs just selling, EV trucks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think they didn't quite realize that full-sized truck owners, one of them,
[SPEAKER_04]: that's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's where it comes down to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, the telling thing is a big deal, but a lot of them just want room room truck.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is the official luxury vehicle of Americans who want to spend over $1,000 a month on their car payments.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the E-Rav, yeah, I'm fine with full size vehicles as E-Ravs because most of the time those people are going
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, yeah, no, I think it's, it's a sort of level.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think, but I think that, that Ford's EV, their whole EV strategy has been scattered shot and it's, it's very much like they, they don't want to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It totally reactive, they reacted to Tesla in every move, they have never led from an EV standpoint.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it even shows, cancelling the transit program.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there isn't a better use case for electric vehicles than that kind of last mile delivery vehicle.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's 35,000 Rivian vans out there now in the Amazon fleet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that that use case where you where your depot charging and you're driving 200 miles maybe a day, a lot of stop start and you can have that vehicle just sit there and now it's not idling, not contributing to greenhouse gases, things like that that you see with a lot of the ice-powered delivery vehicles.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure what they're thinking.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like there was vehicles that they didn't like really try hard selling, especially with the transit.
[SPEAKER_04]: When we talk about Rivian, like I see Dodge, the Dodge Ram, Electric Vehicles, there's a couple others that are on the road that I see out and about and I very rarely see the e-transit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had the e-transit for a week, it was awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: started around, filled it with electricity, plugged in, I saw, I think, you know, I think the problem that Ford had, you know, like you said, I think Harvey said, you know, that there's, there's, there's been totally reactive to everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: they can't they they seem to have been completely unable to stick to a plan uh... you know when they when they did the lightning you know when they decided to do the lightning you know and this was around the time that uh... you know that must announce the cyber truck uh... so okay we can we can do that we can do it better and arguably they did do it better than the cyber truck and in most ways
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, the original plan for the lightning was they were going to build their planning to do capacity for about 25,000 units a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then they bumped that up to 50,000 units a year when they saw that was some interest in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when they showed the truck publicly, they said, oh, man, we need to build more.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so right as they were starting production, they said, okay, we're going to build 80,000 a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then a few months later, they said, okay, we're going to double that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to build 150,000 units a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was around the same time that, you know, the Ukraine war started.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nickel prices went through the roof, battery prices went up, and they had to raise the price of the truck.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then people realized, oh, yeah, this thing can tow 10,000 pounds, but it can only go 100 miles doing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they decided, okay, we don't want electric trucks.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what they should have done, instead of putting all of that money into building extra capacity, production capacity that was going to go unused, and getting their suppliers to build more parts, it's a tool up for more parts that ended up going unused.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that ends up costing the car maker a huge amount of money when they've got unused capacity.
[SPEAKER_03]: they should have kept the capacity lower no more than 50,000.
[SPEAKER_03]: And put that money, put that investment into actually improving the product and making the product more appealing for customers.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if they had done that, they probably could have been using that 50,000 unit capacity.
[SPEAKER_03]: That, you know, using all of that capacity, selling 50, you know, or 60,000 units a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they might have even made money on it, but they did it completely wrong, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they could, I mean, they could have like, second, you know, three years had a hard Volt version, you know, a hundred volt architecture, you would teach you more efficiency and work on the battery chemistry to get you more range and, you know, this, but it just felt, it felt like, yeah, we're going crazy, I'm like 160,000, I'm like, that's so many of these.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I really think they like, oh, well, a lot of people like it and look how many people signed up for the cyber truck.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to get all those cyber truck people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, that's not the same people now, you know, in hindsight, the cyber truck is, you know, you can, yeah, they're not, they've only sold about 50,000 of those total over two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm not great.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much for their million pre-orders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they heard a million pre-orders like, well, if we just do like 16% of that, we're gonna be... We'll be in the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the F series.
[SPEAKER_04]: No one's gonna say no to the F series.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, Tim Caniscus has the solution for all of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, which is just throw a hemi in or a Hellcat in everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything's a hemi.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But during a call of briefing a few days ago, they talked about a bunch of stuff that we can't talk about yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: But one thing that he did talk about,
[SPEAKER_03]: is he confirmed that the 2027 mid-sized truck that's going to build is going to be called the Dakota.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they're going to build a mid-sized truck in 2027 called the Dakota.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bring it back to the Dakota.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not the rampage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Ooh, that must be great.
[SPEAKER_04]: You need a Maverick fighter.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the rampage.
[SPEAKER_04]: If they don't have the money for that right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, beginning getting a mid-sized truck makes a ton of sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, seeing how big full-sized trucks are now.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But apparently it's going to cost about $40,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, that's not out of line with a, you know, dialed-up Ranger.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much is that time?
[SPEAKER_03]: How much is that time?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a combaternity pro, you know, or a trail hunter's like $67,000 now.
[SPEAKER_04]: But would just a regular Tacoma.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they start around 37.
[SPEAKER_04]: 32 145.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that's a, that's an unobtainable vehicle.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the 35, that's a real little drive.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I'm reading through this story.
[SPEAKER_08]: And it says that the,
[SPEAKER_08]: that the, the, to may have been suggesting that the volume trim of the Dakota before the not the base model.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're, they're probably be, you know, a work truck special little probably be somewhere around 35.
[SPEAKER_08]: Right.
[SPEAKER_08]: So we don't know, like, that's just what most people are going to spend 40 grand on this, but you can get it for less.
[SPEAKER_07]: Which is still get for less.
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot cheaper than a gladiator.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, it's cool.
[SPEAKER_07]: They need it.
[SPEAKER_07]: They need that.
[SPEAKER_07]: They need this size truck.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's good that they're going to do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is a ramen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So speed limits, you know, we saw speed limits last week that were quite a bit higher than what we have here in Michigan.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Harvey, I know you got to leave, but yeah, thank you so much for joining us and we're definitely going to have you back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, happy to hop on any time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you Sam for joining us on Operation Frodo last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking forward to the summer rescue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thanks guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you later.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk speed limits in a legislator in Arizona wants to, let's see, wants to remove speed limits from certain roads in Arizona, because there's already some roads in some, some interstates in, I think Montana that have where the speed limit is whatever is prudent during daylight hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: Does it say, and on the thing, because I would love that speed limit, whatever is prudent.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's actually what's in the law.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think they put that on the side.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, that's the law.
[SPEAKER_08]: The Rapid Act reasonable imprudent interstate driving act.
[SPEAKER_08]: So they do use that reasonable imprudent.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so what do you think?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is this something that should be happening?
[SPEAKER_04]: If it wasn't the fact that I'd driven on American roads in Arizona with American drivers, with American drivers who
[SPEAKER_04]: Untana, there's like 12 people in that state.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe 14.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of people in Arizona.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there are a lot of people who have their vehicles registered in Montana, who don't actually live there.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's that as well, that whole thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: feels like a one-way ticket to people getting hurt.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, it's not that, because the vehicles are unsafe at those speeds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Speed does kill, just so people know, you know, the faster you go, the more likely you're good to die.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's the sudden, the sudden stop that kills.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the speed it kills.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the speed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the sudden when you don't have any reduction in velocity.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I mean, if they make it illegal to pass on the right, if they make it illegal to just hang out in the left left lane, like if they if you add a bunch of other provisions that make it so this this, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: how to drive correctly through laws, then, okay, yeah, you can do this thing, I guess.
[SPEAKER_04]: But at the same time, I don't think that's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_08]: Actually, you know, when it, having, I know we talked about this when I was in, um, you're up in driving on the autobahn over my vacation.
[SPEAKER_08]: They drive very, very fast, and they drive very, very differently than we do, they get out of the way.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're in the left lane.
[SPEAKER_08]: You very rarely have to wait for someone to tell you to move, because the weight you get to somebody in the right lane, you pull to the left, you go around them, you pull to the right.
[SPEAKER_08]: There is it is very organized and it's very not to antagonistic in the, someone's going fast, don't get ticked off why are they going so fast.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm not moving, get out of the way.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think we have that attitude here and that like Robbie was saying, you'd need to get people to change how they view how they drive, how what what's speeding.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also a lot harder to get licensed in Europe than it is.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're much harder.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: So there's a lot of things that
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love driving past.
[SPEAKER_08]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_08]: When I can go to Germany and drive as fast as I want, but I don't know that I be keen on this idea here as a rule.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what happens is you're driving fast on a left lane.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you don't care about the rule, or you don't understand, or you're just a jerk, and you're a person who gets in the left-hand lane, even though you're doing the speed limit for a less,
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a problem because now you're you know if someone is doing a hundred because they can Coming up on someone who's doing fifty five because they and they fill in title to be in that left lane because you know They just got in the freeway and You are moving so quickly people that realize how fast you're you know you're really moving when you're going
[SPEAKER_04]: that quickly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And especially when you're encountering traffic that is moving slowly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, it's, you know, auto bonds, it's, you know, when you come up to like an interchange, like it goes back to like a hundred kilometers or 120 kilometers.
[SPEAKER_04]: And everybody slows down.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's really, really pays attention to that reduction in speed limit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like, yeah, four lanes wide on each.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's not like it's like a two lane road and I'm doing 95 miles an hour.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a very wide, okay, this is where to slow people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's people who will less slow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here are people who are driving regularly and then there's the left lane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Where people are passing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or there's one person who's doing 150.
[SPEAKER_03]: At 100 miles an hour, you are covering 150 feet every second.
[SPEAKER_03]: Was that football field?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, that's about half a football field.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there you go.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're doing half a football every second.
[SPEAKER_04]: A second.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, people look.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you, you, you, if you haven't driven really, really fast, you don't It's hard to understand.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very much you become a tunnel because you can't look down at the
[SPEAKER_04]: and the idea that we're going to sort of get people all on board on that in Arizona kind of scares me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, if they make it so like, okay, it's only on four five lane roads, it's only out in the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone has to fall into special rules.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's got to be a lot of police officers now, like pulling people over for passing on the right or for just hanging out in the left-hand lane, that it's just seems like because we do
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the driving culture, you nailed it.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's a great way to put it, Robbie.
[SPEAKER_08]: We just don't have that driving culture here, and it would be a complete change.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're all very important people.
[SPEAKER_08]: We're all so important, everyone needs to get of our way out of my way.
[SPEAKER_08]: We are in the right spot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not moving over.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing 70, exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why should I move over?
[SPEAKER_03]: There are, you know, the average age of cars in this country is now 13 years old.
[SPEAKER_03]: Almost 13, just shy 13 years old.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are a lot of cars on the road that should not be being used anywhere near of those kinds of speeds.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a lot of an argument, which shouldn't be used at 60 miles an hour, but you know, certain amount of 100 or more miles per hour.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, maybe part of that should also be, you know, annual inspections of vehicles, and, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: In order to drive at those higher speeds, your vehicle has to get inspected, maybe a new special license plate or a special tag and your license plate, that to make sure that the vehicle you're driving is actually safe to operate at those kinds of speeds too.
[SPEAKER_03]: But again, that I know that sounds utterly un-American, you know, that's, you know, just.
[SPEAKER_08]: And we're getting rid of, in state inspections in New Hampshire, they're just hearing, yeah, we've had them, I don't know, forever.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then we never had them here in Michigan.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just have a small check here in California.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, it was always state inspections.
[SPEAKER_08]: And since as far as I've ever known, and I think the end in February, if you register, I think it's February March, it's a spring.
[SPEAKER_08]: We had a small inspection thing for a hot minute back in the 80s, and that was about it.
[SPEAKER_08]: We don't have that anymore, but now there's no state inspection.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I got to say, as frightening as it is, you hold your breath, especially if you drive a old car or like, oh, please, God, please, God, please, God, please, God, please, God, that you, like you want it to hold together.
[SPEAKER_08]: But I truly would rather know my breaks are about to fail, or my tires worn, and I don't know it, or belts about to snap, then find out harder ways.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, you know, I'm like, wait a minute, I got to, I feel like I just want to now make an appointment with the mechanic once a year to just check it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, I sort of think I'm missing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So then you check the the the the roadworthiness of your vehicle to make sure that like you said you're breaks aren't bad I wrote her to metal Right, I just want someone to check and make sure like am I missing anything I can't see you know But yeah, nothing new hamster's gonna be like okay go for it.
[SPEAKER_08]: See what happens if it starts you good to go Yeah, start you good to go God
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, apparently more people are starting to realize that modern door handles on cars are really stupid.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're just terrible, terrible designs.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want a firefighter who comes to my car when something bad happened or a police officer, whoever, and can just grab the door handle and open it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need to them to like, oh, did you read how to open up the door on this certain vehicle?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because they decided to do an electronic door.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need that stress in my life.
[SPEAKER_08]: I just went to our handles and the new door handles that you just read.
[SPEAKER_08]: I want it to be something that like the ones that come out and are like a little just thing you grab when it's cold and snowy and wet.
[SPEAKER_08]: The number times like my hand slips off of those, like this is what I'm open.
[SPEAKER_08]: Just keep me the little thing and I can grab and pull open.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_03]: yeah Bloomberg had a big piece uh... they focused on Tesla but you know Tesla's by no means the the only company doing these bad door handles you know a lot of legacy automakers are doing it now uh... you know the the likes of uh... lucid and and riven are all doing it a lot of the chinese are doing it the chinese chinese regulators are now starting to ban those types of door handles
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think we really need to consider that doing that everywhere because it's just a terrible idea.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, like even the like the the Hyundai the Honoric 5.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not electronic like you can just put you can push a little side and pull them open They're actual mechanical door handles, but the fact that their flush just makes just makes me knock Bakers because again does make it more annoying a firefighter comes up and they're like, I don't know I don't need an instruction manual for someone to save me with my if I get in a car
[SPEAKER_04]: That's all.
[SPEAKER_08]: Before we, before we save him first, let's figure out how to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't know where's the manual.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's 95.
[SPEAKER_08]: Let me just check.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, it's, it's, stop.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I go over saving.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like 0,000, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 on grader coefficient.
[SPEAKER_04]: I might, that's not worth it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'll pay that extra a little bit of whatever reduce that efficiency to be able to be safely extricated from my vehicle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like the on the five rear windshield wiper and their their first reason was like, well, drag coefficient, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: The next wing the next wing came out and it had it and then it has more range.
[SPEAKER_04]: I might look at see.
[SPEAKER_04]: Look at look at what you did there.
[SPEAKER_04]: The technology got better.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got better at making the car bits that make the car go a long way.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you could add a windshield wiper.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now add like just a regular old.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to grab the door handle open it.
[SPEAKER_07]: And uh, just really don't handle.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a handle.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was some nasty weather in the Bay Area this week.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Rally, Robbie.
[SPEAKER_03]: You might be able to toss a little something about that, but I guess it was a tad windy.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all of the leaves felt like one day the leaves were on the tree.
[SPEAKER_04]: Next day the tree is completely bare.
[SPEAKER_04]: things are falling over.
[SPEAKER_04]: I will rebuild, which is just I don't know, I'll probably trim the tree later.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess apparently, you know, there was a lot of power outages in San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_03]: like half the city.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And apparently, that caused way most fleet to just freeze because they lost, you know, they, they don't need power while they're driving, but I guess they do need connectivity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And without power, the connectivity just went away.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was no no sell signal in large parts of San Francisco for a while this weekend.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so without connection back to home base, all these waymo rubble taxis just, okay, I'm gonna stop right here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right in the middle of the street.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's like a really bad way to have like, okay, if you're like pull over.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like if they're supposed to, like if they come to a light, that's kind of like a traffic light.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're supposed to,
[SPEAKER_04]: Revert to a four-way stop, you know, like a human would and they couldn't figure that out because they're like, we don't know what's going on And it's like, oh, well, that's Okay, and this isn't like a crazy edge case Well, that's the thing, like I feel like what do we do to power goes out that'll never happen?
[SPEAKER_08]: We don't need to worry about it Northing, California
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a power ever go out in northern California.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, what does that have ever happened?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just pulled like it was taking a right, this is in traffic, and then it just stopped.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're all like, what is going on?
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I pulled around it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the whole time I'm pulling around it, I'm terrified that the car's going to decide to just go, because I don't have, there's no one I can look at.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, I don't know what the car's going to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no, you know, there's no eye contact, there's no.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm like, I'm here, I'm going, get out of here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you see me, okay, cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I'm pulling around really slowly, and a couple of other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, like the fort, I'm looking at every mirror, it starts to pull forward again.
[SPEAKER_04]: wait it's awake and that's just a regular day in San Francisco with the cart now the fact that they're just like shut down powers out we're done union break what happened to the people in them people I think people like some I saw some people online are on on social media who were like they just got they ascended where I got out of the cart got a new bro
[SPEAKER_04]: They ordered a human to come pick them up.
[SPEAKER_08]: Ah, they went to Uber.
[SPEAKER_08]: Give me my reliable Uber.
[SPEAKER_03]: Give me this.
[SPEAKER_03]: When there's no power, then like you say, you pull up to a traffic signal in the lights are out.
[SPEAKER_03]: You just treated as a four-way stop.
[SPEAKER_03]: Humans know how to do that.
[SPEAKER_08]: You make it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that should be a no-brainer.
[SPEAKER_04]: for an automated system, which terrifying is if this had happened because of say of an actual dissat like a fire like something had fallen over and now there's emergency vehicles trying to get somewhere and people in their cars like oh I know them will pull over the way most are already confused or like man.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just going to sit for just, they're just, yeah, and they were all like bunching up because they, you know, they all work in a geographic region.
[SPEAKER_04]: They all typically will take the same route because they know that route.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they all got bunched up at certain intersections and you're just like,
[SPEAKER_04]: Now imagine a fire truck or, you know, police sirs.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to get that man.
[SPEAKER_04]: And ambulance trying to get through that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're like, oh, well, we can't get by because the way more is are confused because they can't understand the camera.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there's no redundancy.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the same thing we, we grilled the guy at cruise.
[SPEAKER_04]: The CEO end up quitting.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, well, there's no done.
[SPEAKER_04]: He did not end up quitting.
[SPEAKER_04]: He got fired.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: He ended up getting fired.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, talk to asking him about redundancies in network connection because all those cruises got stuck and they blamed a music festival that was on the other side of town.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, well, the network, I'm like, so you don't have redundancies for the network and then me and Sam kept asking him questions till he got angry with us.
[SPEAKER_06]: Anyway, yeah, stuff driving cars with future.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's all good.
[SPEAKER_07]: Bring it on.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So last week, we put out the call for suggestions as to what what Nicole should get as her next car.
[SPEAKER_08]: Did someone and we actually did get some suggestions.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that, you know, we're still looking for more suggestions, but remember, you can't just suggest a vehicle.
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to justify it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm Andrew, so let's start off with C-Rose who actually provided several suggestions.
[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe two minutes I think.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I like that she their explanation.
[SPEAKER_08]: She wants an EV number is number one two mid size issue.
[SPEAKER_08]: We three horsepower exclamation point.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: She is buying out right not at least inside.
[SPEAKER_08]: I looked at those for a few reals.
[SPEAKER_08]: It just tells them and not at least so I can't can't it's really intercan't be meata.
[SPEAKER_08]: Very well done.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is one of those rare instances where Miata is not the answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not the answer.
[SPEAKER_08]: OK, so it was Genesis, GV60, and Trump, so green.
[SPEAKER_08]: It was a really dark green.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think so.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a good color.
[SPEAKER_08]: With Robby and Leannick and Sam, the EV6, you complete the picture with the fancy Genesis.
[SPEAKER_08]: Go for the advanced trim or if you need more horses that performance trim.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't like five.
[SPEAKER_03]: You like one?
[SPEAKER_03]: I was going to suggest my personal suggestion is that you should get the GV60 magma.
[SPEAKER_08]: the magma oh that magma just so I can say it's liquid magma yeah that would work and then what's the number two is ionic five and no explanation needed prices on these just came down a lot you should be able to get three to four under sticker
[SPEAKER_08]: Cadillac optic great value.
[SPEAKER_08]: I've had mine now for two months and really enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's out to me.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'll get you a great deal for my dealer.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, I'll get that in mine.
[SPEAKER_08]: Look at that.
[SPEAKER_08]: Chevy Blazer SS are Cadillac Lyric.
[SPEAKER_08]: If optic is too small, but I like the drive of optic more, especially get a 26, which is where we'll drive a rear biased all-wheel drive.
[SPEAKER_08]: Ford F-150 Lightning.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's almost like forbidden fruit.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks again for the amazing contact.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, I have a contact of a great broker in the buster that could really get you All right, I'm getting that email for this person from C Rose from from St.
[SPEAKER_08]: I will send that over to you Then I had so those okay, so I like all those I think of my list on that list the GV 60's my favor because I was actually looking at a Genesis that was That's on my list.
[SPEAKER_08]: So that's that program that's on the list
[SPEAKER_04]: the the the holy Trinity of HMG if you get the tp60 right we're just gonna get all their products So I chose this is on my list.
[SPEAKER_08]: I like I really like China.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah Robby's got a rear wheel drive by on a five We have an all-wheel drive EV six you could get the the JV60 magma
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, do you see 60 magma?
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, problem solved.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Unfortunately, I think a couple of these suggestions, you know, the Cadillac Optic and the Lyric and the Blazer SS while they're great vehicles, I think you would probably disqualify them because of lack of car play support.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I wouldn't, I, because I do want car play on mine, so that would be, that would be in now.
[SPEAKER_08]: The other five then I would be that would be a lot, yeah, no explanation needed.
[SPEAKER_08]: That would be super duper fun times.
[SPEAKER_08]: I would like that one.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'd all be very well.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the, the JV60 magma is basically a five-an in a fan to your suit.
[SPEAKER_08]: fancy.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a dressed up.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's wearing a talks.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the Tuxedo version of the five end.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: James Bond version.
[SPEAKER_08]: The James Bond version.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: Then Scott Dick said, I should buy a mini a 26 mini Cooper for door.
[SPEAKER_08]: I call it.
[SPEAKER_08]: We bought the 20, the 2,5 and 2,000, six voter check waited a week, would back in drove it away.
[SPEAKER_08]: look for any of our 40k they have most trick parts.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's no spare that costs $1,200.
[SPEAKER_08]: We put it in the back seat when we drive out of the city.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a great little car and it's been the next year attempting to figure out most of the software features.
[SPEAKER_08]: What makes it even more fun is the software updates of that every 60 days so you can start over again.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm not sure that that's what I want is a constant sense of having a new car in terms of not knowing the infotainment, but it's not what's after the five vehicles are all about.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's evolving like a Pokemon in your driveway.
[SPEAKER_08]: Pokemon.
[SPEAKER_08]: And then we have one more from Stephen, who said, I think her next car should be a Porsche Taycon or an Audi E-Tron GT, the justification to say, oh, used, yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: And the justification one, I recall the reasoning behind the wagon here was because it's an ornament of journalists.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's a value in having perspective on the EV ownership experience.
[SPEAKER_08]: This is still true.
[SPEAKER_08]: He is correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you've got some perspective on the experience now.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, let me tell you, so no, that is true.
[SPEAKER_08]: I did want that.
[SPEAKER_08]: The number two 75% of all car sales are used car sales.
[SPEAKER_08]: So likewise having perspective on the use car buying process.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: Number three.
[SPEAKER_08]: The sensible choice would be an onic five or EV six, but the co-host have those perspectives.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm glad to buy the car we have.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_08]: By what you have.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's tough.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: Dems the rules.
[SPEAKER_08]: And number four, the Tycoon and its platform made our generally regarded as the best EVs in the market.
[SPEAKER_08]: CPUs.
[SPEAKER_08]: We have for less than the MSRP of the wagon here with factory power, turning more and T's still in effect.
[SPEAKER_08]: Looking forward to hearing what you've said to do, thanks once again for all that you do and best of luck on the road ahead.
[SPEAKER_08]: I was looking at Porsche's, I was actually looking at the Tycoon was not my list, but I was looking at a Macon or a Cayenne.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you can get the tycon like the the the cross trism
[UNKNOWN]: I could.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's the touch.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of like the same form factor as a wagon or something.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a wagon or something.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a wagon.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the same thing as a car.
[SPEAKER_08]: Talk with the same thing.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_08]: I appreciate these.
[SPEAKER_08]: I like these.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think there's a couple on this list that are on my list.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like I said, the genesis is on my list.
[SPEAKER_08]: And I was looking at Porsche, but maybe I'll not the Tycon, maybe.
[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe I should be looking at the Tycon.
[SPEAKER_08]: You know, I have never driven one.
[SPEAKER_08]: What attack on it ever once ever I've never had the opportunity to drive a tie-con I think everyone is driven to tie-con loves his high-con.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I didn't sell as well Because I don't journalist if auto-journalist you universally loves something It's gonna bomb.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's gonna bomb.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's gonna bomb.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it is such a wonderful vehicle.
[SPEAKER_04]: I drove the last one I drove as a I think it was a sport trismo in Germany was purple
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't driven the tie-con, but I've driven a couple of E-tronged GTs, including in October I drove an RSE Tronged GT when we were shooting a thing per CNBC and all the cars so good.
[SPEAKER_08]: the tie-con so pretty though.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a good looking car.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm looking at it now.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm scrolling through portions website.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have a comment coming in a couple of weeks right after CES?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you really?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I've driven it briefly during that same day we were shooting with the Audi, but I'll have it for a week and we'll see what it's actually
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, well, see, don't mean all if it goes, that's my main priority.
[SPEAKER_08]: Does it go when it's supposed to go?
[SPEAKER_08]: Because that's that's the higher my list of things.
[SPEAKER_04]: The car needs to do things, please.
[SPEAKER_08]: The most car thing a car needs to do is go.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would like my car to do car things.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of which, last week, during the final day of Operation Frotto, we were just pulling into Portland, and I got a text from my wife that the electric system fault came on and the EV6, and then it went into turtle mode.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fortunately, she was only a couple of locks from the house, and I had this suspicion of what it was that it was the low-voltage system.
[SPEAKER_03]: Before we bought it, before we bought it, I had checked on the NITSA recall website, where you can put in a VIN number for a particular vehicle.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can see if it has any open recalls on it, or if they've been addressed, and when I put the VIN in, it actually said there are no unrepaired recalls on this vehicle.
[SPEAKER_03]: However, it turns out that the way the recall was worded is that they were pulling in all the cars and they were inspecting the integrated charge control unit, but not necessarily replacing every single one, so if it was working they weren't replacing it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's working at that moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was working at that moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what I ultimately, you know, when I got home on Thursday, I plugged in the, you know, the OBED dongle and open up the car scanner app on my phone and read the codes and sure enough it had the fault code for the ICCU.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was also showing the the low voltage battery was only a but just shy of 10 volts Which is why it wouldn't go and The dealers only like less than two miles from my house.
[SPEAKER_03]: So fair.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me see if I can You know drive it very slowly over to the dealer.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can stay on side roads.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll give it a shot, see if I can get it over to the dealer to check it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: I got about two blocks before it came to a complete stop and would not go any further.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then I called Triple A and they, you know, they towed it over to the dealer, you know, this was on Thursday afternoon.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fortunately, you know, they were able to get it in, check it out, confirm that, yeah, the ICCU had failed and they immediately ordered a part.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when they were checking, you know, they checked in the, the Kia system in the service system.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they saw that it had been inspected twice.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ICCU had been inspected two times, but there's no indication of whether it has actually been replaced.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, while they ordered the part and got, you know, and they told me that, you know, this was on Thursday afternoon that it might, it probably wouldn't come in till Tuesday, which as a recording Monday evening, it wouldn't come in till tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if it didn't shut by Tuesday,
[SPEAKER_03]: then because of the holiday this week it wouldn't be till Monday so we would have been without the car for over a week.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fortunately the part showed up this morning, Monday morning, and it's only a 20 minute job to replace it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they got it done and you know, we've got the car back and it's all good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I set a note to one of my contacts at Kia and asked him to check and he verified that yeah, this one had never had the ICC replaced.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so now it has, so it should be good to go for forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a holiday miracle.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's a holiday miracle.
[SPEAKER_04]: Praise Lord Kia.
[SPEAKER_04]: Praise Christmas Christmas.
[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, so our EV six is just back running again.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's all good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, only a few days.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's always the best.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that wasn't that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a couple days, just a long weekend and it was all good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a time and effort.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, Lafante and Kia, here in Epsalani, did a great job.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when they were done, they washed the car.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's all clean and shiny.
[SPEAKER_03]: So.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a nice service center in my hand to do their ship.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're really nice Gonna get me in to get me out.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're very they're very no nonsense and they're also very nice Which I'm a big fan of no nonsense nice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: No nonsense That's the best cat.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the best service department.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just like we go.
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you need?
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, we got it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, cool
[SPEAKER_03]: just fix it, you know, and then, you know, sign here to acknowledge that, but did the work, and nope, no charge, all under warranty, I'll get out of here.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, with that, let's say goodbye for this week, and we'll talk to you next time.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, everyone have a good Christmas.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's Christmas week.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, happy holidays, everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.