[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is episode 442 of wheel bearings.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I am Sam Mubuel Samage from telemetry.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE and SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Excellent.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And Nicole will be joining us in progress.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: She promised that she said go ahead and start with other.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: She's apparently tied up with a work issue.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, we're come on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, come on, it's after 6.30 p.m. Eastern time on a Friday night, who's doing work?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, it's only 3.30 for me, so whatever.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So anyway, well we're waiting for Nicole.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I had a couple of different vehicles that drove this week.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I had a Volvo XC90 B6 that I picked up from the airport when we returned from Mexico last week.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so, you know, this is pretty much like every other XC90, you know, not dramatically different from the XC90s that've been driving on and off for better part of the decade now.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, it got a mid-cycle refresh, but a year and a half or so ago, so it got, got an updated grill and refreshed version of the headlights.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and then in the interior they put in a bigger display and because they didn't really change the dashboard as a whole previously the display was embedded in the dashboard.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Now let's stick out and just just in front of the dashboard so they could fit it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it's got the latest version of all those Android-based infotainment system, which is as good, it works, boots up reasonably fast, all the stuff works on there, you can download apps on it, and it's still has support for CarPlay and Android Auto.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The B6 version of the XC90 is kind of the middle of the range for the XC90 lineup.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the base model is the B5, so all the XC90s are all wheel drive now.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the base B5 is a two-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder 48 volt mild hybrid.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: At the top of the line there's the plug-in hybrid, which has a turbocharged version of that engine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and 18.8 or so kilowatt-hour battery pack down the center tunnel and an electric motor like 140 a horsepower electric motor on the rear axle to make it a plug-in hybrid.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then the B6 is in the middle, so it has the turbocharged version of the engine, but it does not have any of the hybrid stuff, and it's all wheel drive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's rated at 295 horsepower, 310 foot pounds of torque.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It'll lose 0-60 and about 6.5 seconds.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's reasonably quick and quick enough.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, it does, it does all the things that XC90s have done for a long, long time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it does them, it does it just fine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, it's a, it's a handsome vehicle, you know, it's, it's not, it's not particularly outlandish in any way.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's not very sweetish.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's very sweetish.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yes, very restrained, refined, you know, it looks good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But, you know, there's nothing about it that is going to be, there's likely to be too offensive to anybody either.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a three-row crossover, but the third row is on the tight side, so you can put a couple of younger kids or a couple of Joel Simonello's back there, but probably not any robbies in the backseat in the third row seat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and then you know there's some some cargo space behind the third row you can fit a few roller bags in the back there certainly put you know a week's worth of groceries back there without having to fold down the the third row seat the the B6 now also has the the crystal shift knob that they previously was restricted to the plug and hybrid so that's a little
[Sam Abuelsamid]: touch a style to the interior, something slightly different, you know, that you won't find and I think pretty much any other car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, it's just, it's just really, it's a really pleasant place to be.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The one I had had the, the wool seats in there, which are very nice, and they're very comfortable, they're very supportive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's just a great place to spend time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, if you got a family to haul around and you want something premium that looks good, feels good, decent ride quality gets decent, you know, not tremendous fuel economy, but decent fuel economy.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's rated at 23 miles per gallon combined.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This, you know, this is a really good choice.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Is that cheap?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, they've gotten more expensive over the years, the B6 starts at $62,445.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The one that I had, let me find the tab here with them and early the one that I had was a loaded one, which was the Ultra.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so it had all the stuff it had, you know, the Volvo pilot assist system and the 22-inch wheels which you don't really need that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The air suspension system, the Bowers and Wilkins premium sound system, which is $3,200, sounds really good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Is it $3,000 worth of good?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't know.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But, you know, it's a really beautiful place to spend time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And the total suggested retail price on the Monroeney came to $80,445.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: cars are expensive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They are very expensive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't know if anyone's told our audience yet, you know, take everybody, you know, if you haven't heard yet, new cars are kind of really, really expensive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's kind of ridiculous.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you want to take a guess of the destination charge?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, 18.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No, it's only 12.95.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, it's a bargain.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's a, you know, they just put it right in the sticker price.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's like, here you go.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Uh, uh, so the other vehicle I had was the 2026 Kia K4 hatchback, uh, with a GT line turbo trim.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And when I first drove the K4 back in late 2024, I was really impressed with it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I liked the way it drove, uh, pretty much liked everything about it, except for the kind of the design of the back end of it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I wasn't crazy about the, the rear three quarter.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a little weird.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a little unusual.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's like a bunch of stuff kind of it feels like a kind of a couple things thrown together and they're like, Ta-da!
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You're like, are you okay?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Are you okay over there?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: What's going on?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, has the rear end styling team talked to the front end styling team recently, but apparently when it came time to do the hatchback version, they had proper communications or they just had the the people that did the front three quarters of the car just finish it off at the back and I think they did a fantastic job, I really like the K4 hatchback.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And all that I just said also applies to the EV4, which unfortunately we're no longer in the line to get where we're supposed to get that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That was the compact electric sedan.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, I'm warm.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And even before they shot their plans to bring the EV4 to the US market, for some reason they were only going to bring the sedan version.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They were not going to bring the hatchback, which is sold overseas.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I think it should have been the other way around.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I think they should have brought the hatchback instead of the sedan.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: As it is, we're not getting either one now, but so the K4 hatchback, I think is a really good looking little car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Actually, not that little.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a decent size.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is a competitor to like Civic and Corolla and various other things.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And the hatchback, you know, is kind of like a little mini station wagon, you know, so it's got, you know, long roof.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's not like the civic hatchback, which is almost the same profile as the sedan, you know, so it's a fast back profile.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This has kind of a longer roof for more vertical rear end.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it looks really sharp.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, I drove it around the GT line turbo has a 1.6 liter 4 cylinder turbo charge engine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Hello on the call.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Hello, sorry, first work and then my computer was mad at me.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I wouldn't cooperate, but I am here now.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Sorry guys.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So what which work was it was a Nick harassing you?
[Nicole Wakelin]: It was Nick harassing me, in fact it was Nick.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just tell Nick, you know, you got more important things to do in Friday night.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I gotta tell Nick that I just can't be doing job stuff.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I have podcasts to do for crying out loud.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know, he's such a task master.
[Nicole Wakelin]: He is.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, welcome.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I was just starting to talk about the KKK4 hatchback that I drove.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Okay.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, and I guess I really like the way this car looks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I also really like the way it drives.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So with the hatchback or with the GT line, with the turbo 4-cylinder, it's about 190 horsepower.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it's just eight-speed automatic transmission.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's not a competitor for a Civic SI.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's not a hot hatch.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's quick enough, it'll do zero to 60 and mid-second range, which is good, it's fairly responsive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Not as responsive as similarly sized EV might be, but it's responsive enough because it's got the 8 speed automatic, instead of a CVT, it feels a lot more pleasant to drive than say the base.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, the standard engine, which is a two liter naturally aspirated four cylinder with the CVT, the GT line turbo, I think is much more fun.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's surprisingly roomy.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, you know, I set, you know, the driver seat for my position, you know, I'm about 5, 10, 5, 11.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then climbed in the back seat, I had several inches of gap, you know, for my knees to the back of the front seats.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I had, you know, decent headroom, gap, you know, to headroom.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The only issue is kind of, especially in the back doors, the roof, the roof line kind of curls over a little bit, you know, for the, for the door opening.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But then once you get inside, it's carved out, you have plenty of headroom when you're in the car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I just have to duck my head when I'm climbing into the back seat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But once I'm there, it was fine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I could easily stay back there for an extended period of time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I would not be uncomfortable.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And even what the headroom it's got, the seating position in the back is not like a real low seat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, you're sitting fairly up, you know, so it's not knees up in the air, which is also helpful.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's very comfortable to sit in.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Front seats are good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: A lot of the bits on the dashboard look very familiar from other recent keys like the EV9.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you've got a mix of some mechanical switches on the dashboard for temperature and a sort of other things and then also the other, some of the other volume knob and things like that, it doesn't have the
[Sam Abuelsamid]: the multi-modal panel that you have on a bunch of the recent keys that switches between climate control and media control and navigation, which is the one thing that my wife still finds a little annoying about our EV6 and they have that on a bunch of other keys.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The K4 does not have that, so that's definitely a benefit.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: As a general commuter car, if you don't need something to go off road and let's be honest, most people don't need to go off road.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If you just want a car to get to work, get to school, whatever, do the things you got to do.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The cave, you know, something like the K-4 size is actually a really fantastic choice.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: As I said, you know, there's mechanical switches for temperature, fan speed.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's the volume roller in the middle of the dash there, just below the touchscreen, like they have on the EV 9 buttons for home to pick the home screen, map, search, media, modes, things like that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then there's a drive mode button which is kind of unusually placed in the lower in the middle of the the lower spoke on the steering wheel and the steering wheel on this one is one of those like we find on a lot of cars now where it's sort of a slightly squared off wheel so it's not square
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But the top and bottom have been flattened.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And if you actually go through and measure everything, you find that what they've done is it's not so much that it's been flattened.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But better way to think about it would be, if they heated it up so it's softened.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then pulled from the top and bottom corners out a little bit.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So basically creating a larger,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: aperture so you can see the instrument cluster.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's less obstructing of the of the gauges that are directly in front of you.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it opens up that little window to the gauges.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: On the downside though, is that like the EV 9, it's basically got the same panel, the same display panel, it's in the EV 9.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you got a 12.3 inch,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: gauge display in front of you.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's a 12.3 inch touch screen off to the right in the center.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then in between those is another panel for some of the climate control stuff where you can select if you want it to blow on your feet or on your face or both or the defoggers.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And that falls right in your steering wheel is right right in the middle of your sightline for that part of the panel there.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: which I felt was strange on the eB9, it's strange on some of the other cars that they're doing it on, but other than that, ergonomically the rest of this car is really good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The one that I had has, let's see, what do they call it?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The exterior is what they call interstellar gray.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's basically a dark gray.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The interior is labeled as black, but I think let's see, so yeah, okay, so this is part, I had the GT line red interior color package So it's not all red What you have is on the steering wheel the center airbag module is red
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and then the inner portion of the top part of the steering wheel is red and then there's red accents and the door cards and the seating area.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So most of the seat is black but then red on the surfaces that you actually sit on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: which is it looks pretty cool.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a it's a cool look.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I like it in the back seat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's also vets for the back seat passengers and a pair of USB-C charging ports.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's a Qi wireless charging port in the front of the center console a couple of big cup holders and with the thing that Qi has been doing for a few years now where
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The cup holder can adapt to the size of what you're carrying, so if you've got a giant water bottle like my wife likes to have, there's a portion of the cup holder that basically rotates around into the side portion of the console, so you get a nice big opening for those big giant water bottles.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But if you've got a narrower bottle or a cup or something like that,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: you just press a button and nothing flips around and so it'll restrain it'll retain your smaller items as well.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's rated to 28 miles per gallon combined.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I got about 27 on my mileage loop that I did the other day and all in, let's see, the GT line starts at 28, 7, 90.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: uh... the one uh... that i had uh... grand total came to thirty two seven seventy guesses on the uh... destination charge uh... leaven ten ninety five
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Robbie Beach of Bifeye Bucks, it's 11.95.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Very close, very close.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, yeah, I like the K-4.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, I've like the K-4 since I first drove it, and the K-4 hatchback is just kind of perfects the formula of the original K-4 sedan, because it looks better, has more cargo space in the back, and it's just a good car to drive.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I liked it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I drove it to me and I thought it was good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: What have you been driving Nicole?
[Nicole Wakelin]: I have been driving living the minivan life.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I have the Toyota Sienna Platinum, which is the fanciest of the versions of the Sienna.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's a hybrid.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's only available as a hybrid.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's a 2.5
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's fine.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It gets good fuel economy, it's estimated at 35 cities, 36 highway.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's not a plug-in.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is just a straight-up hybrid.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And, you know, I've never been a big many fan fan, but they do have their place in the world.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The things I thought about that I know there.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But you know what they're just mean if you've got a band where you got kids Absolutely, or if you're a dog like I know people who do show dogs and they love it because you can fit these huge amount of stuff and like the dog crates That are giant can slowly Or if you're transporting rescue dogs across the There you go, you're just putting rescue dogs, but I do find you know I always find your friends you want to go somewhere
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, but here's with anything.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So if I drive like an F2, you don't want to lift some too high.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Great, big like truck, right?
[Nicole Wakelin]: And the truck's big, like, you know, more cumbersome.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Somehow it feels less bulky to me than a minivan.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Minivan's just to have this like, cumbersome kind of hold a whole thing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't know.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I've got a minivan fan.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's me.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That sounds like a mind thing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: No, I just, I just don't, and like the very, they all have the very long, like the dashboard that really goes to, like, you know, it's very, I mean that windshield is very, very long, like you can't reach where the dashboard meets the windshield, because it's.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So far, it just feels like I'm driving something huge.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't know why, but despite the fact that I don't like many bands as a whole, this is a good mini band.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like I like when it's comfortable, it's very quiet.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It has tons of storage.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I do like this so the store, you have so many cup holders.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's amazing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I forget that they just love the cup holders and many bands.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There's two up in the front, and then there's two more up in the front.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Their space is to put your water bottle, your wife will be happy, you can put your water bottle on the side of that.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There's a huge space under the center console not like that you lift up for storage But just a flat storage space that you could easily put like an entire tote bag underneath there But it's great because truly when you especially if you're using this and you've got kids which you probably do
[Nicole Wakelin]: You always have stuff in your hands.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You're always getting off the car with stuff.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You've got something, you've got a paper, a teacher, hand to do, you've got something, you've got someone's shirt that they took off for no reason, you've got your keys, you've got your wallet, you've got random snacks, the rock they handed you, because now you have to treasure this, what do you do?
[Nicole Wakelin]: You can throw everything in there.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I love this little space that they have there.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's nice and easy to access and just have a little lip to the edge.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So if you put stuff that's small in there, it's not gonna go like,
[Nicole Wakelin]: Uh, so I, you totally wise, many events are fabulous.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like they really do, they do everything that you want it to do for a family.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You can get the second row.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It has, you can get captain's chairs.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So you've got seating for six math, one, two, three, four, five, six, six, seven, seven, seven, seven.
[Nicole Wakelin]: If you get the second row bench, yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So if you get the bench, you get seven.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Ridiculous amount of like horrible seeding like yeah, like you can actually sit in the third row You can sit in like a yes you v third row.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You're like.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, okay.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, as you v's third rows We're hard to get to the chest.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yes, they're hard to get to your knees are in your chest
[Nicole Wakelin]: getting to them like around the rear.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The second row seats is always a little cumbersome.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You can get to these easy, you can walk right between the captain's chairs, practically kids can practically walk like standing up just because of how the car is situated.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You know, it has a nice low-low floor so you can easily lift stuff up into it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I utility-wise these things
[Nicole Wakelin]: Infotainment touch screen.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You've got wireless Apple CarPlaying Android Auto.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There's I think 7 USB ports.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So they're all over the place.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So it doesn't matter where you're sitting.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You're going to be able to charge your stuff.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And it is a comfortable and quiet ride.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And I don't think you can underestimate
[Nicole Wakelin]: how important that is when you have kids because there is nothing worse than getting a kid to finally nap in a car, only to have some loud noise outside your car, wake them up or random bump in the road, wake them up.
[Nicole Wakelin]: When you want your kids to sleep and you're in the car, you want your kids to sleep.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Are you saying that it might not be a great idea to transport your
[Nicole Wakelin]: probably not.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I mean, yeah, could, but I don't think it would go well for you.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't think it'd go well for you.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like there's, because I remember when my kids were little and there would be like some random pavement that would vibrate through the, you know, the wheels, you get that road noise.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And suddenly the baby that you've been waiting to fall asleep on your road trip is like, uh, and you just want to stab yourself in the eye with the fork.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like,
[Nicole Wakelin]: it's just, it's terrible.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So I appreciate that this is comfortable, it's quiet, it has storage, it has all the little things that you need for just family life.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And it looks good, it actually's a nice interior, it doesn't look down market.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's, you know, making a mini van, it's the thing with some SUVs, there's SUVs that you can get that are very fancy, right?
[Nicole Wakelin]: That have seating for your whole family.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But there is always the risk that you have a family and they get the weirdest,
[Nicole Wakelin]: things kids I don't know they find sticky stuff everywhere they go and you don't even know what the sticky stuff is and like what is this stuff like I don't know where to come from don't know that either but I mean like in the car is you're traveling through life as an adult and you're like my hands are rarely sticky.
[Roberto Baldwin]: I hate it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But some child, everything is what you are.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You put them in a sanitized concrete room with nothing in it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You put them in it for five seconds.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They turn around.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Hands are sticky.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Right.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And what is it?
[Nicole Wakelin]: You don't know.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I think they just lose it out of their skin.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, because they're stickin' us.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So yeah, so it's it's nice to have an interior and a vehicle that is that looks nice that feels nice and That doesn't feel like something that you're afraid to have your kids in like they're gonna make a mess to your car They're gonna be hard on it, but this car is gonna survive it It's not one of those that you're gonna have it in after two weeks.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You're gonna look and say I made a terrible mistake My beautiful interior is stained at a mess and sticky and gross forever.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's easy to clean this so I in fact I got it
[Nicole Wakelin]: It was right after the one snowstorm we had that dumped about two feet of snow down where my car comes from so the guys drove it up here and when he opened it to clean it there was like was trying to get it all tidy.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Some of the salt slash sand, slash water snow dripped along the side of the door and when that dries it creates not sticky but this horrible crusty mass.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They can actually ruin leather on a car because
[Nicole Wakelin]: And I went inside and got a what paper towel and it wipes right off and you have no idea that it's there.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's the kind of durability you want in a car that you can put that caustic dripy water that comes on your and gets on your car during the winter and it just is like no problem.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Did the Sienna you have.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Have the the built in vacuum cleaner in the back.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I did not check for the built in vacuum cleaner.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I didn't open the back because if you open the back sand there's so much.
[Nicole Wakelin]: stuff, dirt, sand, salt, wet, everything if I open the back, I'm gonna wear it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I'm sorry, I wasn't willing to do that.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I didn't need to, I was not willing to.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Fair enough.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know they do, they do offer a built-in vacuum.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It tucked into the left rear corner in the cargo area.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I have seen that before, and it's fabulous.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's great.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Great, great for soaking up all those Cheerios and I sorted other detritus that the little ones leave around.
[Nicole Wakelin]: One of the times that I had this, a different time where I had the Sienna, it was fall and I got things at the farmers market.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It didn't realize quite how gross the bottoms of everything I got was until I took it out.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It looked at the back and I'm like, oh no, he's a little vacuum.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Cleaned it all up, it was perfect.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So apparently, the Sienna has 18 cup holders.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, and that means in the six-seat configuration that you had with the captain's chairs, you got three cup holders for every person in the car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I love this.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I like having lots of drinks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I will typically have at least two drinks on my desk.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'll have a water and something else, and then occasionally I end up with three drinks, and I will drink them all.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I won't finish one and start the other.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'll drink them all at the same time.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, and that's the thing, when you're driving too, you have the drink you start with, right?
[Nicole Wakelin]: And you have, like, for me, that will be a diet coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And you have the diet coke, and you drink almost all the diet coke, but there's a little bit left, and then you go in some place.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And then you realize your diet coke, there's a little bit left in the car, has a little, it's no longer drinkable, but you got a new diet coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But then you're bringing in, where do you put that old little bit, if there's not a trash can next to you?
[Nicole Wakelin]: Can now relocate it to a less convenient cup holder, leave it there until your near trash can, and you can take everything out.
[Nicole Wakelin]: because you don't want the cup just rolling around the floor because if you leave it anywhere on the floor, you're going to step on it or your kids are going to step on it, thus increasing the sticky we mentioned earlier.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So it needs to remain in the cup holder even if you don't have that little bit of soda or whatever.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, so Nicole on a typical road trip.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: By the time you get to your destination, how many cups of Diet Coke residue do you typically have in your car by the time you get there?
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, if there's normally two Diet Coke's in my card at any given time, two is normally my minimum.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I normally have the one that I just got that is fresh and cold and frosty, preferably from like Donald's, because they have the best Diet Coke, or second-class Diet Coke will be a can.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I like cans of Diet Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So there'd be like a can shoved in the door and it'd be a bottle.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, there's the bottle that grows.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The bottles are... First of all, first of all,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You could taste the plastic and also single, single, single use plastic is the worst thing on the planet.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So now you can buy giant, giant, like aluminum cans of Diet Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Those are the best, like when you walk into like the gas station, you've just gasped up and you're going, you're like, I hope they have a Diet Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Not only do they have like a little cake, but they have just a giant one.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yes, I come linked about the little cans sometimes on the dry programs.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They have the coolers at lunch and they have like the half-size cans and all the little baby ones the big ones I think it's a big one.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No, I'm like a little it's like a little snack.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I got you.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm going to drink it too much diet coke So I'm sorry
[Nicole Wakelin]: I'm like, no, this is, I can't say that word, can I in the show?
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is, this is bullshit.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You don't get tiny little cans of day Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You give me a full-sized day of Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I want a full-sized day Coke or don't even bother.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So, yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I've always hated day at Coke.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: On the rare occasion, when I actually drink a Coke, I prefer to drink regular Coke.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Actually, I prefer to drink Mexican Coke from a bottle.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Full sugar and no corn syrup.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: None of those corn syrup stuff.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If I'm gonna go there, I might as well do it properly.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But proper is the diet coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The diet coke is the best of the hoax.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I love all of it, all whatever secret herbs and spices chemicals that are in there that are gonna kill me, if I can't really, I'm a cancer.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm so excited.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Okay, I enjoyed every mouthful of the cancer.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I cooked, I saw a graphic online.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then it called a time to get another fridge cigarette.
[Nicole Wakelin]: fridge cigarette, yes.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's a fridge cigarette, yes.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I love that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I love the diet coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I will not give it up.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's the one that's not going to be my vice forever.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't care what they can't tell me I can't have, but I will die by my diet coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There we go.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Sorry.
[Nicole Wakelin]: We're talking with the center, which can hold lots of die cooks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, apparently at least 18.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And at least 18, I should go get eight plus plus one in your hand.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So 19, because you can have one in your hand and 18 in the come holders.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Exactly.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is perfect.
[Nicole Wakelin]: See?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All these fridge cigarettes, but Etsy are for women.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Come on, guys.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Dude, it's all there's one way down at the bottom.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Just looking at F.C.
[Nicole Wakelin]: stuff for Diet Coke.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I have some of you said, right?
[Nicole Wakelin]: People who send me just we communicate solely in Diet Coke memes, like, a member of the automotive media and some of the PR people.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Do you remember the ad in a couple of years ago where the guy, the taxi driver from the Deadpool movies?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: He was in a Diet Coke ad.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And the Diet Coke, I was essentially like,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: He's walking down the street.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: He's like, hey, you want to die a Coke?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just have a die a Coke.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was very much like a reaction to somebody somewhere Talk to the to the die a Coke marketing team and they were like, you know people are given people crap about that Coaching you know
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Tell them all that god-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
[Nicole Wakelin]: And if they don't have a diet coke, I probably have dragged you, I know I've dragged other people to the nearest McDonald's on the driver to go get.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Wow, I want to do that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'll just like, well, I guess this is what I got to get.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If they offer you diet Pepsi at a restaurant, will you take it?
[Nicole Wakelin]: I do, but I take it and it hurts my heart a little bit.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Sometimes I'll just give up and be like, no, I don't want it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Just give me water.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I have to be, it has to be the right wing, so don't like, diet Pepsi.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I can stand behind it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I am not a Pepsi person either.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, so how much should this thing cost?
[Nicole Wakelin]: Oh, two.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I just accidentally closed this thing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Wait a minute.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Let me open this stupid thing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Hold on a second.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Let's see.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Shoot.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I totally, you know what, it's, it's been a, I need the Diet Coke now, not, not for five minutes ago.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Um, I can't tell you, it's a secret because my document won't open back up.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It is.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So the price on the Platinum, the MSRP is $57,810.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So it's not treat cheap, treat treat, it's if you really love your children.
[Nicole Wakelin]: or yourself because of friends.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You can buy one.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's one for 40.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It starts at 40 in a half.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You can really love your children.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You get the platinum.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Exactly.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you guys were kind of loving, we're like, you know what, they're around.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, you gotta get them from one place to another, we're gonna get into different places.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And that's been too much money on gas.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't wanna get carried away.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm gonna take into the random sport, band of the week, sport, the impact of stance, but of it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They gotta go to their D&D, like game, or they have to go to their football game, or they have to go to, I don't know, whatever, I don't have any children, I don't know.
[Nicole Wakelin]: What do we want to retake each now?
[Nicole Wakelin]: So you guys want to get a destination?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Uh, thirteen.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Fourteen.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Sam gets it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Fourteen nine five.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Uh-huh.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You were so close.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Like this close.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's pretty close.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: that they were there I got to think about the day I just bought thirty five day coax yesterday at at a Costco so thirty five will be coming a big giant thing of thirty five really I don't know why okay it's thirty six I don't know they're just a big palette of tight coax and I'm like I guess I better buy a palette of day coax
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, you know, they used to come in like six packs and 12 packs.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so that's how we do some multiple six.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's Costco, so you have to get a bunch of them.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But I also thought like the vegetable drinks.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Wait, wait.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: you have caffeine free what's the point because it's late here it's later here it's late and I was just I had the the coke machine in our practice space last night I had band practice and it works 20% of time and 75% of time when it does work it gives me multiples of what I've paid for so I got four diacoces last night during the practice for a price of five it was a
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So I'll all carry them back to the practice space.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm like, look everybody and everyone's like, what's wrong with you?
[Nicole Wakelin]: I got all these free-dicards.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Sorry, sorry.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: We should get a, we should call Coke so we can even sponsor this.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's he's just sponsored by Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: When I get unlimited, I would just do it for unlimited lifetime diet Coke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It would be bad deal for them because it costs more than whatever they pay us.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I'm sure.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And these are all rotted.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't care.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: We isn't.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's some news, right?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the other day, Honda put out a press release because the EPA put out their annual automotive trends report.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The EPA has been publishing this for decades and beyond some kind of surprise that they're allowed to continue publishing it under the current regime.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But they still, they still put it out and it's got all kinds of interesting data in there, including the corporate average field economy numbers for every automaker.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so among full line automakers, it saw both combustion and electric vehicles.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So overall, the company that had the highest average fuel economy was Tesla, but of course they only saw EVs.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so their average was 117.1 miles per gallon equivalent.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But among all the other car makers that saw both combustion and electric vehicles, Honda came out on top.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Last year, for Modlier 2024, which is the last full year of data, there's still waiting on preliminary data for 2025.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They averaged 31 miles per gallon across all the vehicles they sold.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Okay.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so that's that's pretty good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's pretty impressive.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So it's funny.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They were number one, but let's give props to number two.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Hyundai came in 29.8.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They're very close.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And Kia right behind them at 29.2 Toyota at 29.0.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Actually Toyota Nissan, and BMW, BMW, all got 29.0 miles per gallon.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You know who did not do so well?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Ford, GM, and Stalantis.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Stalantis has been at the bottom of this list since like 2011.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, they told me, so it's chargers.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And it's like, it's a big difference.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's not like, oh, we went from 31 for Honda to just a little bit lower.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Stalantis' number is 22.8.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so the overall average for the industry was 27.2 and then Mercedes-Benz was at 26.1 and then it drops down to Ford at 23.4 GM at 22.9 and still answers at 22.8.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You have this bear, it's the last, it must be like, oh, if we had always sold like something else.
[Nicole Wakelin]: One more Daytona, one more, something.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, to be fair, Stalantis has improved from 21.2 to 22.8 because they sold a bunch of plug-in hybrids and a few bavs, so that, you know, that moves to plug-in, but you got it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's all based on the numbers that are on them in Roney.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's what counts.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: As long as it gets through the certification testing without catching on fire, it's good to go.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: What happens once it's in customer hands?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Not their problem anymore.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's not the EPA's problem.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's a little embarrassing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I mean, credit for jam and still antists, you know, between them, they sell a lot of full-sized trucks, a lot of full-sized SUVs.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a lot of them, which nobody else does.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And big and, yeah, vehicles, they sell a lot of gas because we're in giant machines.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And nobody else in the industry sells those.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But still, that's a pretty sad number.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You're like 22.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I think you're like, wait, what year is this?
[Nicole Wakelin]: Say no.
[Nicole Wakelin]: When you look at it, like, man.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I mean, I guess they would get props for being better, but it is kind of, it is kind of scary space there that the automakers in the U.S. are so low.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, like I said, you know, Stalantis has been it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Let's see.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Stalantis has been at the bottom of this list every year since 2015.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Oh, sorry.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's me so frustrated.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I spent the microphone sorry.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and then even before that they had multiple years, you know, when they were at the bottom of the list.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But yeah, so, you know, apparently Detroit doesn't really care about fuel economy.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Lump lump.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, let's move on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'll have a link.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There'll be a link in the show notes to get the the transfer port.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You can download it, at least until somebody in Washington figures out that it exists in, you know, wipes it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So just flip it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So like, it's like America.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: We're using all the oil.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Wait, what?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No, that's we don't.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a finite, you know, that's not all.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Okay.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So apparently Range Rover is planning to launch their first EV sometime in the coming months and it will apparently be an electric version of the Valar, the next generation Valar.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And AutoCar, the British publication has some spy photos of this.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, kind of, you know, wagon-shaped, but it looks like this new electric Valar is ditching that and going for a fast back shape, going on electric SUV coupe.
[Nicole Wakelin]: All right, okay, that's different.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Okay, I mean, I mean, it's all right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's the thing that everybody's doing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, when it comes to the bar, it was like, oh, yeah, that's there.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's the thing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, yeah, they still make that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a product to line up.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, we started the blur.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I would say make a, you know, the, the, the,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: the defender, but you know Mercedes didn't sell a lot of electric G wagons even though it is in fact the best G wagon and I got Mercedes to admit that it is and it's it's fantastic by the way the electric G wagon I had it for a week and I got to write it up but yeah I guess people you know I mean when you're rich you're like I want to be the rare
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, I mean, the what those cars are are Instagram cars.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you want to like the most Instagram video Whatever, but you can still the spins you can spin in the G-wake.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Anyway, sorry Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah level ground.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's still like whee It's a helpful.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't know
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But it's fun, if you get enough money to afford a G-wagon, you know, you have to have some Roger Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret, Ferret
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, the, you know, the current generation Valar is basically Range Rover's version of the Jaguar F-PACE.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's on the same platform as the F-PACE.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, be interesting to see, you know, assuming the Jaguar ever actually launches another vehicle into production.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, if we see, you know, an electric version of the, or version of this electric Valar as a Jaguar in the next 10, 15 years.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I-I-Pace was a good car outside of the weird, you know, issues that they had with it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like, drive it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I was like, this isn't a good-this isn't a good EV.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, and they were so early to it, too.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I think they made a really big leap before most anyone else.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The car was actually good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was fun to drive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They took us to a track in Portugal to drive and put a track.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Then they took us off road, and we forwarded through water, and up a hill, and besides the usual Jaguar electrical stuff that they had, it was a good car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, it's the car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's pretty old.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, it's a little bit of an Austrian, but well, it should have been fine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, well.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, it's fine for a way.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's a good car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I like the car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it's, you know, just, you know, it's Jaguar.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yep, this Jaguar.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So Toyota, do you guys remember the Celica?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's just talking to someone about that today.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I said, uh, there was a Celica in the parking lot.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, the other day, and I took a picture and sent to some friends.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was like really clean.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Someone's a fan of the lecture of a 1977 Toyota Celica that was actually a Star Wars edition, created by a company called Delphi Auto Design, and it was part of the space fantasy sweep takes sweepstakes.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's a Star Wars edition, Salaco, wow.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yes, it's the Star Wars, it was, yeah, in 1977 Toyota Salaco GT Star Wars edition, and it was for 20th century foxes based fantasy sweepstakes to promote a new hope, a custom hand-painted air-brushed graphic on the hood.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It actually is incredibly cool.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is the Salaco I want.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I wonder who won it and whatever happened to it.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Oh.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is really cool.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You can Google and see it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I've looked at it up.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I want that one.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Star Wars.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm not even interested.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Send you guys to say, like, hey, did I saw that after this?
[Roberto Baldwin]: Haha.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, wow.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is cool.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This got, got you back on the hood.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, it's, no, it has the, it has the, the like picture from the, oh no, wait, that's not real.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The, the one on the car and driver thing you're looking at, that's not it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, for the one that has Darth Vader, Darth Vader R2 and C3PO standing by the real car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, here we go.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And it's like the cover of a new hope.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, it's the movie poster.
[Nicole Wakelin]: The movie poster.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And then it looks like it's got a lot on the side.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: In the middle of what his lights are up for.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, with his lights.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, I'm actually mimicking Luke.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is what this was in case you guys are wondering.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This was the poster with her.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I was holding my hand like there's a lightsaber.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They're probably holding lightsaber and this is the cool doing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And there's a photo here of Darth Vader, C3PO, and C3PO looking under the hood and R2D2 with this, with this Star Horse edition solica.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Right.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And it looks like there's that where you'd have racing stripes, it almost looks like, and it's hard to see, because there's exactly one photo of this, that there's a stripe along the side, that it looks like X-Wings and tie fighters duke in it out, like they're fighting along the side of the car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Very cool.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I want to say.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Well, anyway, so I'm probably going to go ahead.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's been speculation recently that Toyota is bringing back to Salika.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's been the name plate has been out of production for like since the late 90s, I think, was when they discontinued last year or maybe early 2000s.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so, they're supposedly bringing it back, and yesterday, as we record this, Toyota, on some some apparent social media site that I've never heard of called X,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They posted some couple of photos and also some video clips of their next generation rural rally championship car, undergoing testing, it's wrapped in camo, and apparently there's speculation that this is the new Celica.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I would be kind of cool if they bring it back, but she's just a rally car, just a rally car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, I mean, there's got to, in order to run it in a rally championship, there has to be a car car, right?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's got to be based on a real product.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Is this this one that's wrapped in chamomile looking the right picture?
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's like red and black and white.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, yeah, the overhead views.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So kind of a fast back coupe.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Cut, you know, when I first saw that I thought, oh, you know, it looks kind of like a CHR, but with big bulging fenders, but then when you look at it, you know, the proportions are a little different from a CHR.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There's a massive wing on the back.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, yeah, so that should be, we may see that in the next 12 months or so, because I think 2027, 2027 season, yes, when these next generation cars, new set of regulations for world rally championship go into effect.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, this car will be running next year.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, probably by the end of the year, we should see the production car that this is based on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, so the Nissan Pathfinder has been one of Nissan's better selling vehicles in North America.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's got, you know, it's kind of changed a lot over its history.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It started off as a body on frame SUV based on the pickup truck to compact pickup truck.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Eventually evolved into a unibody crossover.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And now there's reports that from from model year 2029 so like possibly is early as 2028 the Pathfinder will be split into two separate vehicles with the same name that both called Pathfinder.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: One will be an updated version of the current generation pathfinder.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The other will become a 3-row body on frame SUV based on the new X-Tera that's coming.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: What do you think about that?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, the pathfinder when it came out, it was, you know, it was like, oh, my god, like offroading, it was like this rugged machine that everyone wanted, and then it just sort of morphed into like, you know, essentially, I mean, SUVs are mostly in many vans to be honest, especially big ones.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They're just, they're less practical minivan.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, that's practical, yes.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, and so, you know, and then the exterator took the place of the pathfinder and then it went away because Nissan, you know,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they're like, well, we can't have to.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It must pick.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So yeah, it would be interesting to, like, you know, this idea of splitting up the pathfinder to from to sell the more calm.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: one the cell the one to like the regular folks and then the the the the off-roady pathfinder to the folks who will also drive it to the exact same place as these squishy version but they'll up they'll up they didn't like like there's no tomorrow
[Sam Abuelsamid]: We're going to put a snorkel on this, they're like, all right, so apparently, you know, it wouldn't be the first time that they've had to distinctly different pathfinders because when when the original our motto was introduced back in the mid 2000s based on the first generation Titan.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: it was originally like for the first model year to it was actually called the pathfinder our modda and then they dropped pathfinder from the name and just called it our modda from that point forward.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But you know this this will be a little different you know because that was you know that was a substantially bigger vehicle than the regular pathfinder.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the big
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Interesting to see what they do with us, you know, to kind of take the pathfinder back to its roots as a body on frame offroader.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, by the second generation, this styling was already like, yeah, the first day was like, oh, this is right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, the first-gen pathfinder was cool looking.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it was like it was that and that was like when they were like it was based on like the the hard body trucks and there's a deserve documentary called hands-on hard buddy everyone go watch it but um But yeah, but that was based on the when before they change a name from dots into Nissan in the US the truck was called the Nissan So it was very weird.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I remember I remember the the little theme song and everything but it was the Nissan truck sold by dots in here
[Sam Abuelsamid]: that's that was their their way of sort of easing people into the Nissan name so yeah anyway little Nissan trip maybe maybe they can change the name back to dots and that'd be fun yeah called the Nissan dots and the Nissan dots and the dots and truck by Nissan the dots and truck yeah
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Let's move on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the week after Toyota had their drive program for the Beesie Woodland and the CHR in Ohio, California.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Subaru had their own drive program a little bit further south of there with two basically identical cars with different names
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so those reviews are out, basically, they're exactly the same as the Toyota's, they drive the same, because they are the same vehicles, but there are a couple of distinctions.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: First of all, the CHR is only being offered in a dual motor all-wheel drive version with 3308 horsepower.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And Subaru is actually doing offering a single motor front wheel drive version of the uncharted, which you can't get from Toyota, which is weird for Subaru by the way, which everything is all will drive except for the BRZ.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And now the uncharted.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And now the year.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But the the all wheel drive uncharted will have a little more range.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It'll have 388 miles of range.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it'll have a lower starting price than the CHR starting at 35 349995 plus destination charge.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it'll be, it'll be Subaru's least expensive EV and then for the, um, for the, um, the trial seeker, which is basically an electric outback.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That one is also cheaper than its Toyota Equivalent.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The trail seeker starts at just over $40,000, so it's about $5,000 cheaper than the cheapest version of the BZ Woodland.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Which is weird.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But if we know with that $5,000, you can buy so many dogs for your Subaru.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So many, you can do so many by a couple of dogs.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I get the real things so the dogs will scratch the the, I would think the car predictors, that's actually a little bit of a effect.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's just to put on your door and to put on the seat.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You got the real things so they can't scratch everything up.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's what you do if you ask for many things.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Get the Subaru and the dogs that come with it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, you know, I haven't seen specifically what equipment is on the base version of the Trail Seeker compared to the Beesie Woodland.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But you know, it does have the same all-wheel drive 375 horsepower set up as the Toyota.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So the important parts are identical.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, from, I've seen photos, I've seen some photos from some of the reviews.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The trail seeker did not have the all weather floor mats in it, so maybe the base version doesn't come with the all weather formats, meaning you can buy really nice weather to weather floor mats for a couple hundred bucks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If you go to weather tech, anytime you buy anything from weather tech, I mean weather tech's really the only thing keep in magazines go, you open any automotive magazine, they're like half the pages or weather tech ads.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So go buy some weather tech stuff, I guess.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, but yeah, you know, so if you know, if you're interested in, you know, an electric slightly off-roady wagon, um, you know, probably get the trail seeker better value than Toyota.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, so apparently this year, workers, full union workers at Stalantis will not be getting a profit sharing check for the first time since the company, you know, since the, the company merged, since FCA and PSA merged to become Stalantis, no profit sharing checks is Stalantis because Stalantis lost the 26th
[Sam Abuelsamid]: billion dollars last year.
[Roberto Baldwin]: We're profits to share.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just come here.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All those little edges workers are at home and a guy just comes in.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It just starts picking things up to like expensive.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You've got any rings.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You've got any like, hey, the profit should go away.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But he goes away.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That was way.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You chose five grand.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But my grandmother gave me that ring.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, that's probably good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, see you next year.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yes, the last is supported in that loss of 22.3 billion euros.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Do 25.4 billion euros of unusual charges, Sikha.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't know how to describe it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Full years of unusual charges.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's the miscellaneous you put on your entire time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's what you're trying to do.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's like when you look at your bench, they mean you're like, what the hell is this?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And just like hose and let it come back.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You become Columbus trying to figure out like okay the date like what was I doing on that date and you realize it's like some stupid thing that you bought like Or something you pay for all the time or like oh, oh, oh, just the name is weird Okay, but it's Russell always does kick starters for games They've had the weirdest names and then he forgets about it because kick starters you do it today And you pay for it and whenever the heck the thing it Yeah, so four years later something shows up and it's like and it'll be the weirdest names because it's some like pirate game And it's like arg media.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I'm like what is this like
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't need that.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like, what's did you buy something?
[Nicole Wakelin]: He's like, oh, it's a kickstarter, I bought like eight years ago.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's my, that's my, my digging through trying to figure out what random charges are for sure.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I got a $29 like credit from ticket master the other day.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Why?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I like what the hell is this?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is from tickets that I sold in September.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They didn't pay me until a few days ago.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Wow.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The show's already happened.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The show happened to September.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I was probably sold them in August to be honest.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So I sold it on August the show happened in September.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I just got my $200.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So yeah, I should charge him like a like a convenience fee for that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, there you go That should work both ways definitely.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, anyway, poor yeah, that sucks for the scientists employees Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean at least you know, Ford and GM even with their their losses I think they're still getting profit sharing checks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, but Yeah, that that does suck
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So speaking of paying weird fees, a woman in Florida, it figures this would happen in Florida.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's been getting fees from her local town for parking cars in her driveway.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, I mean, this is a common thing if if you live in a neighborhood with an H.O.A.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, I'm almost sure.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But this is not an H.O.A.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is in Atlanta, Florida.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Apparently, it's, you're not allowed in, in Atlanta, Florida.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You are not allowed to park cars on your lawn at all.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so, you know, they have four cars in the household, you know, her and her kids, you know, they all, they each have a car and they, you know, they need them to get to work into school and everything, you know, she owns the home, it's not a renter, and so the way, you know, and the diagram they showed here from the Institute for Justice, which was trying to defend her.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, shows the four cars parked side by side in the driveway and the two wheels of one car are slightly on the grass, which apparently in Latin is illegal and it's a $250 day fine for parking your car with wheels on the grass, which is just insane and so that's awful.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So she has now racked up fines of $165,000 while we've been fighting this.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Oh my god.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And yeah, because her house is at the corner a lot of a four-way intersection.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So, you know, it's not practical to park on the park one of the cars on the street.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Wow.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is insane.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That is so petty.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There is like... Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That is just way level insanity.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Wow.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is poor women.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is nuts.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And they took it all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And the Florida Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: why because they technically broke the law and not broke the law broke the rules so yeah i mean the institute for justice representing uh miss martina's uh said in court that uh they're trying to get the egregious fines reduced under florida's excessive fines clause florida's supreme court recently refused to hear the case
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The senior attorney, Erie Bartel, told CBS News, six figure fines for parking on your own property or shocking.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: The court's refusal to hear Sandy's case is a disservice to all Floridians.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I agree, this is ridiculous.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If you live somewhere that charges fees like that, it's time to get involved in politics and start running these people that make these laws running them out of town.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is insane.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: $165,000 in fines for parking their own property.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, that's ridiculous.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, continuing along, new research study from University of California Santa Cruz found some interesting results that they did this simulation and they were simulating autonomous vehicles.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it found in the simulations that if you put someone in the scenario holding up a sign you could fool the autonomous vehicle driving logic to ignore the rules.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they simulated this at a crosswalk, you know, had a crosswalk in this scene where you're supposed to stop.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And they put someone in the scene holding up a sign that said, proceed.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And when they did this, the car, the system just drove right through, drove right through the crosswalk without even stopping.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Wow.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So what it thought it was, did it think it was like, what am I trying to say, like a road sign?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, yeah, so it's, you know, it's reading as if it's a road sign, you know, so, you know, they called this command hijacking against embodied AI.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So basically, you know, when you're using, you know, a camera-centric system like this, you know, it's trying to, it's trying to read the text of signs.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, it doesn't, at least the system that they were testing, you know, I mean this is certainly something that can be overcome, you know, if you're know, if you're aware of it, you can put things into the software, you know, that, you know,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Every time it depended on, you know, they had to do it certain ways like when they did it with black text on a green sign It was unsuccessful and the card did stop it didn't it didn't process it But when they put white text on a green sign which is actually what you typically find on the highway sign Yeah, that's a highway sign then those colors.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, yeah
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It assumed that it was legit and it just carried on right through the crosswalk.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So there's still a lot of things.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is one of the reasons why we can't rely entirely on end-to-end AI systems for this type of thing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, you know, I think I can't remember if I talked here on the show about what Nvidia announced at CES in June, you know, they announced their new end-to-end AI driving model called Apple Mayo.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But what they do in their system is, you know, they have an end-to-end AI model, but they also have what they call a safety and policy evaluator that basically has rules in it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And if the AI model tries to do something that violates those rules, then they have basically a complete secondary automated driving system that is more rules-based, and it switches over to using that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So in a situation like this, I would think that hopefully what it would do is the safety evaluator would say, no, that's wrong, you know, use the output from the classical model instead of from the AI model.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: right somehow well that you know what they didn't somehow figure out to say it's somebody's trying to mess with things make sure you you default to this you don't get fake doubt basically yeah well this is that this is the issue with with literally any system is that no system is hacker proof nothing everything can be compromised everything could be hacked everything could be which you know when you
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's just, somebody said, hey, what if we just held up a green sign with white letters?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's kind of like social engineering for AI.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's the idea, every time some military grade, that's not a real thing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Whenever someone says military grade security, that's not real.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's not a no one had.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's not a thing that's ever, that's real, whatever.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If you get pitched anything, this says military grade security, turn around and walk away.
[Nicole Wakelin]: run, I don't think walk is the right thing run run away, run away very quickly.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just, you know, hit report spam, block, block sender.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so yeah, so it's, you know, the, the, the idea that these systems can be confused, hack, taken over, I mean, this is going to be, the more these systems are going to be used, the more that people are going to figure out how to, uh,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: How to get around them and if you if you call if you follow in for a second any like real way There is some really interesting ways people have gotten around systems over the years that I mean The idea that you could read what's on a hard drive via sound
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's something that some Israeli security researchers have been doing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's like 10 years ago.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you could figure out, which is because they could hear the hard drive moving.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: If you hear the hard drive, you could recreate what the hard drives, right?
[Roberto Baldwin]: Yeah.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Oh my God.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: One of the interesting things that I heard recently was about Wi-Fi, using Wi-Fi to detect the presence of someone in a room, or something or something moving around in a room, because, you know, as basically bags are 70% water, humans interfere with radio signals.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Our bodies interfere with radio signals.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so by looking at the Wi-Fi signals and seeing how the signals fluctuate, if somebody moves around the room, you can see what you can figure out what they're doing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's nothing more terrifying than becoming an infosec reporter because the first like three months you're like I kind of know what's going on and then around month four you're like oh dear oh my god wait what oh no and then by months six you're like yeah nothing's real
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And you meet these people and they're just 99% of them, security researchers, hackers, whatever.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They're just really nice people who just think in a different way from how the average person thinks.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it's great because it kind of teaches you to start thinking in that way.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's a wonderful experience.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But it's also one of those things we're at the end of the day.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: We're like, oh yeah, nothing's secure.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like nothing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they become paranoid like me.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They all turn into Robby.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's when they all turn into Robby, which is not great to be on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, you definitely don't want to get too deep into security.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It will make you feel very sad.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: it can paralyze if you're not careful.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: When I was a security reporter, um, people, I don't know why.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Um, I think if there's, there's, there's some sort of like, hey, I hack this journalist, who's a security journalist.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so people would, would try to hack me, they tried to break into my accounts.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like I had people at like deathcon, which is the big hacker conference every year, try to trick me into things and like come on, man.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And one of them was like a like user like reporter like air quotes at like one of this the at a site and he was trying to trick me and I'm like Dude come on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know better.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: He's like all right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: He's like no no no they're doing this.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm like no they're not man
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I might do try to try.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Come on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Let's share it here on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So a recent rumor I've been seeing this past week is that Ford wants to build a Lincoln SUV based on the Bronco, because you know, they want to have their own G-wagon.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: A Lincoln G-wagon.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: and uh... so and uh... and uh... the atopion bransal vastro wrote a piece said for it's rumored braco based link in sounds like it might be the link in blackwood all over again uh... blackwood which blackwood was not great it was just like hey we put some pin stripes on a truck
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Boom, luxury.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That was the, well, pin stripes.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so it, the cab was, you know, was basically a standard F-150 crew cab, except it only had four seats inside, no bench in the, in the back seat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I had the front clip from a first gen Lincoln navigator.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then it had this tiny little bed on the back that had a hard flip up tonno cover and side hinged doors for the tailgate and it was lined with with aluminum or stainless steel and it was carpeted and it was shallow it was just it was stupid
[Sam Abuelsamid]: because they didn't want you to see the the hump for the for the the the rear tires the rear wheels.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they just so instead of giving you that space they just squeezed it all in.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's like a teeny tiny little bed that you don't want to put anything because there has carpet for some reason.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like I
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was basically a big truck.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, it was actually very, very nice, very large trunk.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But it didn't have the tonneau cover.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it wasn't like you could get in to the truck as you couldn't put people back there, like hang out, unless you'd like set it to very end.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was just weird thing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I think four people may have bought it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So I had Gemini do a rendering.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's a link in the chat and a call if you haven't looked at it yet of a Bronco with basically the front end styling from a nodalous and the wheels from a nodalous black label.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't see it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Uh, going to, or, or you can click on the, the, the drive link that's, uh, right next to the atopium link, and, uh, Oh my god.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Uh, yeah.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Uh, see it.
[Roberto Baldwin]: Thank you.
[Roberto Baldwin]: It's kind of cool.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Kind of cool.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I, no one should sell it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No one should buy this.
[Nicole Wakelin]: But somebody would, and it's kind of, the ridiculous, this is ridiculous, but also kind of amazing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I swear those wheels are almost the wheels they have on the exact Lincoln's, don't they?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, well, that's what I told it to do.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I uploaded a picture of a noddle of black label, so and you know, put these wheels on it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Because originally it had, it had made the, the wheel arch extensions black and it's like, you know, if you're going to do a Lincoln, it's not going to have black, the large extensions, they're going to be body color, like other, definitely like on a G wagon.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, it kind of has a G-wagon vibe to it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You know what?
[Nicole Wakelin]: It has a vibe.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like, I don't hate it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I don't hate it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: If they built it,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like that they might sell at least three or four of them three or four.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, maybe five even I mean, you know, they did sell like 3,400 blackwoods So you know, it could probably sell at least as well as the blackwoods.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I mean, it's not the worst thing that they've done
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I did the current crop of Lincoln's are very, just mad.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, there's a lot of faith.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They had this such a great run for like five years.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like everything they were pulled out, like this is amazing.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then they're like, hey, that's me.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Hold my beer.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It was strange, right?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like they started doing this nonsense with the touchscreen control vents.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: As long as they don't put that in the Bronco, you know.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Literally, they just grabbed a regular Bronco and just slapped the Lincoln logo.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Like, didn't change anything else.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just slap the Lincoln logo and make the inside a little bit prettier.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'd be like, ah, that's fine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, speaking of premium off-roaders, Rivian has launched a new department called the Rivian Adventure Department, or what we like to call rad.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's a good name.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Okay, guys.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm gonna give someone a high five, I Rivian, if you ever talk to them.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It literally says that, or what we look, I thought you were just being sarcastic Sam with your description.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[Sam Abuelsamid]: uh... so basically the the point of rad is to uh... as they say should we push this further the answer is always yes so you know this is kind of gonna be there you know their amg their m division their t rd pro uh... so yeah you know the high-end versions of ribbons
[Sam Abuelsamid]: the off-rody high and whatever.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Okay.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, that's kind of cool.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I think it's neat.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I do like the color scheme.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There's an R1S here.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This is with the green and yellow and red and white.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, that's pretty dope.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's actually really cool looking.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I would, if that was offered, I would buy that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I've been a lot of people.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And if that was offered an hour Rivian rich, I am not a Rivian, I get out, I think I've said this before.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's the Patagonia.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It's the Patagonia.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That's an apt description.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But you know, you might be able to afford a used Rivian.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There you go.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Maybe.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, maybe.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Maybe that's the way to go.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Maybe it should look.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Which do you use regular ones?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No one.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Look up.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's true, yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Harvanna has a used R1-T from 359-90.
[Nicole Wakelin]: They have 4-4 in Staling.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: 3-5.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's pretty good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There we go.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I wish they'd had...
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I wonder if I could hack it, just put a stick in.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, that shouldn't be too hard.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I guess, really print new vents and just unplug the stupid, they could just put a little thing at the moment.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, you could figure what you did to make it work.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm hacking the ribbons so that they have vents because for the love of, no, no, I don't know.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Yeah, do it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Let's see you do it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Let's see you.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I'm not convinced to make their vents work the way you want to work.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know that's that should be my next career thing where I just buy cars and hack them to make them less Less annoying less annoying like you know what I'm gonna take this door and I'm gonna hack in and I'm gonna put a regular door handle That's my job.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'll sell kids to people.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm gonna hear you go.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Now you're living in doesn't you have to wait for a door to pop out You just open it like a regular car regular old car
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's just I don't understand what we're trying to fix things that aren't broken.
[Nicole Wakelin]: This is a life-challenging.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They just they just want to annoy us.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, they know we're out here that we hate stuff like that and they just
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They just want us to be annoyed every time they update like any like I complain a lot about Adobe products and I use a lot of Adobe products because they never fix anything We just add new features that no one wants and I'm just like to please just fix this one error and the latest Photoshop breaks save for web something has worked for decades
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And they're like, oh, it just doesn't work now.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so the other way to save doesn't have nearly as many options for fine tuning your images for the web.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And I'm just like, what are you doing?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: your jolly job is to like make images and then save the images for for either prints or web that's all you need to do that probably 99.9% of the images generated in photoshop or going on the web they're not going exactly yeah I don't know what they're I don't know that anyway that's that's that's that's that's car makers are doing that too they're like what are you doing we just want to door handle
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't need it to pop out.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't need a sliding magic opening charge your port gas ports don't do that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I just click it or I pull it open.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Just do that with the EV port.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I don't need more complications.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Don't add more motors when you don't need to exactly.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Don't make things that can break.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's clever for the sake of clever.
[Nicole Wakelin]: What's the thing, kiss, keep it simple, stupid?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Keep it simple, stupid.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm just, that's how me, Johnny Applesy, going from car maker to car maker.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Hey everybody, how about like, where we're gonna think I'm gonna know?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No one wants that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know you're all excited about it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know like some tech bro is really excited about it, but the rest of us don't want that.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, sorry.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's been a little damn I'll hopped up on caffeine.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Sorry.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I'm used to these these days.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I should have gone with the caffeine free diet coke like Nicole did.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Free diet coke, see?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: There you go.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I just had a little baby diet coke earlier today.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They're giant one.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It's there's not very much left in this since we sat down.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So you know how I like to complain about Toyota's four cylinder engines not sounding very good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, yeah, they're very loud.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well compared to some engines, they actually sound great.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I mean, I remember reading about this thing before it came out, you know, it's like everybody was all excited.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh yeah, GM's going to do a new twin cam, four valve persona or four cylinder engine for their smaller cars.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, finally going to have something to compete with the best European engines and Japanese engines.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And then they introduced the quad four.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it was not good.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: it was pretty damn awful oh yeah and everything oh yeah you know it was originally it's supposed to you know it was originally developed for for olds mobility use and olds did a really cool couple of really cool concepts called the arrow tack
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, so it was basically, you know, this really aerodynamic, you know, kind of a race car.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And they put high performance turbocharged, quad four and they used it to set all kinds of records, AJ Floyd used it to set a close course land speed record with it, you know, went like 260 some miles an hour around the Texas World Speedway.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They set all kinds of records with the
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was a really, really unpleasant experience.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was a 2.3 liter or 4 cylinder.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: When they first launched it, it had no balance shafts.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it was kind of shaky.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's just jumbled around in the engine bay.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And, you know, they put a milkshake in there.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They put it back.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They used, you know, instead of a timing belt, they used timing change to, a timing change to drive the cam shafts, which is actually good for durability, because, you know, timing belts typically last about 50, 60, 70,000 miles in the other place, and if you don't add in rigidity to that, do you don't have any, yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But the reason why most companies just having bots under to drive their camshafts is they're a lot quieter.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so it was noisy.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It was harsh, and it took seven or eight years before they finally fixed most of the problems with it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: When my first job at a college, I was working for Dalcom Marine, part GM's
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it was a project that I wasn't working on.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But I got a chance to drive the prototype one time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Do you remember the dustbuster mini-vans, the Pontiac transport?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Well, they were going to sell a version of the Pontiac transport in Europe as an Opel.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But in North America, they only sold those minivans with a 2.8 liter V6 and an automatic transmission.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And for Europe, they wanted a four-cylinder engine and a manual transmission.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they put the quad four into this minivan.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it had a five-speed manual and I got a chance to drive it at the May-Supproving grounds one time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That was something.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That was nothing you want to repeat.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You don't want to do it like that again.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: No, no, no, thank you.
[Nicole Wakelin]: No, no, no, thank you.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So anyway, the Ethiopian's got a good article about the, let's see what's the title of it here.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Three decades ago, Pontiac managed to offer more noise vibration and harshness per leader than any other sports sedan.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And that's something you hope that your company can claim someday.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So there's a bit of history of the X cars and how that evolved into what eventually became the Pontiac Grand Dam and the development of the quad four.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So it's a fun story to read if you're interested in some of the historical stuff.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: By the time the clock that time the clock for putting the engine like every young person did not want a paniac Like the arrow and that's it.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: That's the only thing that Kaniac made anyone can and then never did put the quad four in the fero I know they didn't which is what they should have done Well, it kept fire catching fire.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, well, there's that yeah
[Sam Abuelsamid]: All right, we have, we've got a question this week, came in from Tom B, from Patreon.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so Tom asked, as I listened to Nicole's interview, of Mazda Inv vehicle Technology Project Manager, Matthew Valboino.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Is there any talk in the industry about being able to upgrade the infotainment computer?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: This Matthew said the average age of a vehicle is 12 years and average consumers keep their smartphone for less than 3 years.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Wouldn't it make sense to upgrade the infotainment computer after 5 to 10 years that would have faster processors and support new cellular Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: What about security upgrades?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Since new cars can get updates on their infotainment system over the air, will the manufacturers keep sending out security updates for 15 or more years?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I know I wouldn't want a ten-year old phone or tablet running my car and for ten-man system.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Did math not you didn't say anything about that, did he?
[Nicole Wakelin]: No, that he didn't talk about.
[Nicole Wakelin]: He didn't say it.
[Nicole Wakelin]: I mean, what do you think realistically, Sam?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Slim to none.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, I mean, one of the few instances where this has happened was with Tesla on the early Model S's and some of the Model X's, they did upgrade.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: They did offer an upgrade for the multimedia computer, is it the infotainment computer?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: But that's more because they were failing than because they actually wanted to upgrade it and they didn't want to keep putting in the old parts.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So they, you know, they had upgraded it, but you know, they were having a lot of warranty claims with the original ones.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And so they did replace a lot of those and they did offer, you know, even four ones that hadn't failed, they offered an upgrade to customers for
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I want to say it was like, you know, $1,000 or something, $1,500, it was not cheap.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I think that the chances of this happening are very slim.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And they're likely to get slimmer as we move to vehicles with centralized computer architectures.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Right now, you know, most cars, you know, they have a separate box that drives the infotainment system,
[Sam Abuelsamid]: power train and another one drives other body controls and your driver system systems and so it's one thing to replace just that but you know they're moving to system architectures where everything is going to be in one box and that's going to be a real expensive box upgrade.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So, and it's a big difference between sending you a download, downloading stuff, woosh, through the air, as opposed to bringing your car in and physically putting something in your car that has to now work in your car and be connected in your car and not make any mistakes about and not have any issues with, and yeah, make sure that the new thing works with the 10 year old everything else.
[Nicole Wakelin]: That seems like that would be a big ask.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So realistically, you know, for stuff like that, you're probably going to get, you know, software updates for, at best, maybe five to seven years, you know, and then, you know, after that, it's basically going to be static, which, you know, is kind of what you get with an iPhone.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You just say your phone does the same thing.
[Nicole Wakelin]: There's a point where it gets old enough that they say, okay, guess what, we don't support it anymore.
[Nicole Wakelin]: You're going to have apps that start stop working because the apps are designed for newer generations of stuff and they aren't making it backward compatible with older iPhones.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So it happens with an iPhone.
[Nicole Wakelin]: It is a certain point too, you know.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Just a little easier by the way, I found the news is to buy a new car, but.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, that's true.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Although, you know, even now, you know, we're, you know, we're used to driving older cars that have older systems in there.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You know, at some point, you know, in the life of a car, it'll just become static.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Yeah, I mean my 2014 BRZ doesn't I mean the infotainment thing you I can plug a phone in and it'll play the music It doesn't have car play or anything but I can like pick like forward and backward Yeah, I go backward.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: I can just to that's pretty much as I just pluck my phone in and use that But it also has a CD player so I can listen to CDs A CD player.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: It does have a does have a map a mapping software, but it I don't it doesn't really do anything
[Sam Abuelsamid]: And it's based on an SD card.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: So if I take this card out, yeah, which just has.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Oh, remember having an navigation system I messed up at a program once, because the SD card wasn't right.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Like, take that out and put that in and I did.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And then it wouldn't read anything.
[Nicole Wakelin]: And then like, well, everything we need is on that navigation that you can access something.
[Nicole Wakelin]: So, other plans?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: You got one printed on a piece of paper?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Exactly.
[Nicole Wakelin]: Can you print something for me?
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Alright, well, that's all we've got for this week.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Thanks everybody for listening and we'll be back next time.
[Sam Abuelsamid]: Bye.