10 Years After Dieselgate

This is episode 418, 19, 19, 419 of

Wheel Bearings.

I am Sam LaBouille, Sam it from

Telemetry.

And I am Nicole Wiecklin from

Car Talk. Let's do with that this

week.

And sadly Robbie is busy throwing

up right now.

We're going to say he ate

gas station sushi, though we

don't know that that was the

cause this week.

But it feels like a Robbie

thing to do.

I'm pretty sure Robbie is smart

enough not to eat gas station

sushi.

Unless it was desperation.

Although he might do tacos.

So let's blame gas station

tacos.

Yeah.

Gas station tacos I can believe

but gas station sushi I think

he would avoid anyway.

Let's hope.

So what have you been driving?

I have been driving the

2025 Toyota Prius Night Shade

Edition in this color.

Here it's saying that's not the

name of the color.

It's funny my memory does not

give the actual name.

It says it's mustard and black

but that's not what it's called.

There's an official name for

this yellow color that is very

mustardy and I thought it would

be on my memorandum.

I just realized it's not.

But it's this very bright last

week I had an EX 30 that was so

it was a moss color that you

could see from space.

I'm like now you swap me for this

mustard color that you can also

see from space.

Could I get a black car?

I just got to say one thing.

I should have mentioned it last

week but what the name of the

color on the EX 30.

Moss.

I have never seen moss that

bright yellow.

Moss is green.

Right like other than maybe in a

sci-fi movie on another planet

maybe moss is that yellow but

that is I'm like what natural

moss is this?

Yeah.

All right.

Sorry to interrupt.

Continue.

No you're right.

So okay I'm trying to get the

name of this color.

I'll look up the color.

It's called Karashi.

I got it.

They describe it as mustard

yellow but it's Karashi.

K-A-R-A-S-H-I and only the

night shade addition either with

all wheel driver without is

available in this Karashi color

which is kind of I mean if you

want to stand out it will.

I saw people looking at me much

like in the EX 30 they're like

hmm she made a choice and I kind

of want to be like not my car

not my car I didn't pick this

not my car.

Well according to Wikipedia

Karashi is in fact a type of

mustard.

Yes.

It's a Japanese mustard.

This is a condiment or seasoning

in Japanese cuisine.

So it at least has so looking

like a mustard yellow and Japanese

company it makes sense.

I don't know how I feel about the

color.

But in general the Toyota Prius

so they this is like a light

refresh I guess of the of the

current generation and the night

shade more just a new trim level

new trim level.

So they don't change anything.

They change anything else but it

gets like all this blacked out

bits and there's like 19 inch

alloy wheels that are black and

it's it's just it's supposed to

I kind of know it's kind of the

moody like I'm still hip and

trendy but I'm driving a Prius

that's what I think it's trying

for.

But you're still driving a Prius

that said I do actually think

this is a pretty decent car

like I've never been a huge fan

of a Prius anyone knows me knows

I that's not my favorite vehicle

this one I like this the last

gentleman they changed the styling

it went from this weird like we

have to show you that we're a

hybrid like back in the day when

it was you know this and what

there was a Honda Civic hybrid

or something I think at one point

and that was it this was

like look at that that's the

hybrid like because it had to

stand out for being different

than everything else now hybrids

are just everybody's got one you

get them in small cars a big car

is an SUV you're going to trucks

you got them in everything so to

have your Toyota literally has them

in every model in everything

truly so to make your Prius

which it like once upon a time

it was the hybrid well now it's

not so it I think it makes sense

if they toned this down it still has

Prius design it still has that hatchback

it's still Prius see in a lot of ways

but it no longer looks a little bit weird

like you wouldn't necessarily see this

on the highway and immediately don't

that's a Prius which is before

there was no way you would miss it

and you can get up with front-wheel-drive

or all-wheel-drive and it has

194 horsepower

for front-wheel 196

for all-wheel

it's not

it's the engine is responsive enough

it'll get up to speed

you mash that gas pedal to get on the highway

it gets on the highway no problem

so the power

even those little numbers that are low

that's not really a problem but it is loud

like when you mash the gas

even if you're not being aggressive

say you're just in a traffic light

in regular city driving

it sounds like it is working

very very very very hard

it always sounds like it's working hard

especially in the highway and even

once you're up to speed and you're no longer

accelerating it's still kind of loud

that was probably my biggest gripe

with this is that it was just

I took a friend out for dinner and they're like

whoa I'm like yeah it's kind of loud

they literally thought like what are you doing

I'm like I'm not doing anything it's the Prius

this is just how she sounds

so that was my big complaint about this

have you driven the Prius

what did you think about the engine

I have driven the Prius

and the Prius plug-in hybrid

it's no longer called the Prime

it's just the plug-in hybrid now

and yeah I agree

and this is a phenomenon

that is common to

all of the

front drive

Toyota hybrids

all the transverse engine Toyota hybrids

Toyota's got two different hybrid systems

there's the

system that they use on the

the trucks and SUVs like the

Sequoia and Tundra and Tacoma and a forerunner

and then there's

what's on all the others

and so this is their

ECVT system

and

I know I have complained about that in the past

here

Toyota's four-cylinder engines and

actually in all their applications

even on the longitudinal engine applications

their four-cylinder engines

do not sound very good

they sound

I mean they're great engines

they make plenty of power

they're very efficient

generally very reliable

but they sound bad

they sound awful and it was

the sad thing about it was

if you could make this not sound like this

or if you could just add

more sound deadening material between me

and the engine so I didn't hear it sounding like that

it would be a much better car

and the way

the hybrid system works

the ECVT because it's

revving up

basically when you're accelerating it'll rev up to about

4000 rpm which is where the peak torque

of the engine is

and then the engine will just sit there

and it'll be changing the ratio

continuously as you accelerate

and they call it a motorboating effect

because that's kind of the way motorboats work

you rev it up

and eventually the boat catches up to the speed

of the engine and it's just not

a pleasant sound and this is

as good as Toyota's hybrids

are in every other respect

this is why I prefer

Honda's hybrid system

because it is much more pleasant

to drive

I think it's something

that

once upon a time way back

when the Prius was

only a couple of hybrids

it wasn't so bad because you didn't have a lot of other hybrids

to compare to you didn't know how hybrids

sounded you didn't have a lot of other options

right you couldn't go and buy

10 other vehicles that sort of accomplished the same thing

now you can

so I think it's one of those things

that it doesn't have enough power

yes it doesn't handle well

yeah it handles fine

it's a pleasant car to drive

aside from that sound

and it seems like a small factor

but when you hear that every time you accelerate

when your passengers hear that

that noise

it's like

annoying and it's almost

to me it becomes stressful

I know that I can merge into traffic

I know

in my logical brain that I have plenty of power

to merge into that heavy highway traffic

that's going like 70 miles an hour flying down the highway

but it sounds like I don't

yeah so you have that

it sounds like it's about to blow up

and you're going plenty fast

the sound doesn't match the performance

so you have a sense that

you are going to not accelerate quick enough

and someone's going to be right on your rear bumper

that's not the reality

but that's how it sounds like every time

so to me it's a stressful sound

like that really takes away from things

which is unfortunate

because it does have enough power

it just doesn't sound like it does

and it was comfortable

I mean I found it comfortable inside

I had the 12.3 inch

touchscreen there's an 8 inch screen that's standard

I think it's

only on higher trims of 12.3

and I think it's even an option on the nightshade

so you either have an 8 inch screen

which isn't super large or you have the 12.3 inch

you get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto

you get a couple USB-C ports

front and back

you have a decent amount of cargo room

not as much as the last gen

and I don't have the number off the top of my head

but the last gen had more room than this one does

this is 23.8 cubic feet

with rear seats up

still a good amount of space

still that hatchback so you can wedge in there

stuff that wouldn't fit into a traditional trunk

and it still gets

good fuel economy so that it

varies a lot there's a lot of numbers

because there's front wheel drive, all wheel drive

there's different trims which means the car's all way

a little bit different so everything's getting

there's a couple of different fuel economy numbers

for the one that I had

it is 49 city 50 highway

for 49 combined

that's solid fuel economy for

pretty well equipped all wheel drive

sedan right you can do better

but you've got to lose the all wheel drive

lose some features whatever

so I don't think that it's

it does what a Prius is supposed to do

and that it gets good fuel economy I feel like

where I would like to see Toyota step up

and like you said Sam this engine the sound

of it you got to do something

because it detracts significantly from the drive experience

and it makes you think that it's

it makes you think that it's less than it is

in terms of the performance and the capability

of you know emerging so that

was my big dislike otherwise

I like this I thought it was good and it

is one I take let's see

35

695 and

the only thing that was added on to mine was

the there's the glass I had a fixed glass

roof that's like a thousand dollars

and it was an extra seven

35 for the 12.3

inch screen

so that's the nightshade plus those

two little things added on you

win either way you want to take a guess at delivery

um I'm going to go with

1295 again you're close

it's a weird number 11

35 is what Ronie

says which I'm almost distrusting

that this is strange number but that's

literally say I have an official one to this week

1135

is delivery processing and handling fees

so all told 36

830 for this

not bad you know you're getting great fuel economy

you're getting Toyota which you know the

reliability is great and a Toyota you have them forever

uh you know you you don't

totes don't give up on you you give up on it

and just say I'm moving on somebody else gets it

uh so you know it's a solid vehicle

you just have to be

prepared to deal with that sound

you have to it's a sound

and it's not a pleasant one

yeah I think uh you know what I

would generally recommend

you know for anybody considering a Prius

uh is

if you have if you're able to plug

in at home just get the plug

in hybrid because

then you know you're getting

45 miles of electric

driving range so you're going to end up doing

pretty much all your

driving on electricity

and uh you know and it's got

more electrical power so I think

if I recall correctly even you know

when you're accelerating the engine

doesn't feel like it's working as hard because

it's using more of the electrical power

to accelerate and

it's just I think it's a it's a more

pleasant driving experience

which is a shame because I really

like the design of the the new

current generation Prius

yeah it's so good yeah it's a

good looking car you know the the only

the only other complaint I have about it

is it still has that

tunnel style

instrument cluster display like they had on the

bz4x and

I'm guessing that

you know like the the

current Prius came out two years ago

so probably

next year

we'll see a mid-cycle update

for the the Prius

and at that point they will probably

update the interior with the same

kind of stuff that they did to the bz

this year yeah and

and get rid of that that style of

instrument cluster so

you can actually see the

see the cluster display in front of you instead of having

the bottom half of it cut off by the steering wheel

yeah it's so that and that's

that is a wonky thing weirdly that didn't

bother me as much as the sound like every time I

hit that gas pedal wait it's

the worst sound it reminds me

my rust had a Honda Civic

hybrid back in the day

when um

the girls were little like they so I'm gonna say

maybe like I don't know 18 years ago so it was a

long time ago and I just remember

the first time I drove it was the first time I'd ever

driven a hybrid in my life

and I got in like is this okay

is this car okay is it

gonna make it so it reminds

me of that and that is a very old hybrid

you know yeah and that was really

more of a mild hybrid system anyway

it wasn't as powerful as

as the Toyota hybrid

systems the current generation the last

couple of generations of Honda hybrids really

um with their their

two motor hybrid systems are a lot

better and they're they're basically

much much more similar

mechanically to

the Toyota system than they are different

um but the way that Honda

controls it it's

it's a much more pleasant driving experience

plus Honda's four-cylinder engines are just

generally more pleasant to listen to

than Toyota's even even on

the non-hybrid versions like

you know if you get uh if you get a

Corolla um you know

with you know Corolla comes with a CVT

uh if

you don't get a the hatchback

with a manual and

you know just the gas Corolla

um you know

very very similar kind of experience

to the hybrids and it's just

they're not great sounding engines you know

same thing to the Tacoma

and the 4Runner those four cylinders

don't sound great

yeah they just don't

alright excellent

um so that's the that's the Prius

that is the Yieldy Prius yeah

yeah the the latest Yieldy Prius

um did you know you can support

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alright

I had

the 2026

genesis gv70 3.5

t sport prestige all wheel drive

again too much name

too much name

so this is the

this is the top of the line

top of the top of the line

gv70

which

I have

liked the gv70

ever since it came out

there's two engine options available

two powertrain options available now

the 2.5 liter turbo

four-cylinder or the

3.5 liter twin turbo v6

and

the v6

is

I don't remember how much power

it has

that's it usually you always have everything ready

I'm the one who's like our horsepower v6

so 300

300 horsepower

is it 300? 300 and then

the 3.5 turbo is 375

okay yeah that sounds right

yeah so

you know the four-cylinder turbo

is plenty of power

300 is a lot yeah

but you know 375

is more

and this is a

quick little beast that's a little

I mean you know it's a midsize

two-row

it's in the same class

as say a BMW

X3

or

let's see an Audi Q5

something like that

so it's a two-row

five-passenger crossover

it's a rear-wheel drive

all-wheel drive platform

so the engine sits

longitudinally in the engine compartment

for 2025

I think I think last year

the GV70

got a mid-cycle update

where they

and over the last year and a half or so

most of the Genesis models have gotten an interior

update and most most of the update

is to the interior there's not really

anything notable changed on the exterior

but on the interior

they have

given it a significant upgrade

they replaced

the separate screens

with the infotainment screen that was sort of embedded

in the dash and then

the more traditional instrument cluster

displaying under a hood

with just the single

long curved panel

that we see on a lot of

the Hyundai Motor Group

vehicles now

although in this case here

there's

there are

let's see two

there's two 12.3 inch displays

in there

but there isn't

a seam

like you would see in a Hyundai

or Kia where it looks

like two separate displays and in fact

I think it's actually a single display

with the right hand side

of it being having a touch sensor

on it touch surface

on it and then the instrument cluster

area is

obviously no touch because it's behind

the steering wheel you don't need to be touching

that part

that would be weird

and they went to

the new center console

design with a rotary shifter

and then there's also

a rotary control knob

that you can use to

interface with the infotainment

as I said the infotainment is a touch screen

but you can also control it from the rotary controller

which

can be a little

more convenient sometimes

because it can be a bit of a reach

because of the way the touch screen

is set up there

and

it's got support for wireless

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto

the default

Genesis

system is also pretty good

one of the

couple of main differences

between the top two trim levels

of the GV70

and of course, oh there we go

like my screen just went black for a second

you're in troubles today

so there's the sport advanced

all wheel drive and the sport prestige

all wheel drive

I had the prestige

probably the most notable differences

between the two

are 19 inch wheels

on the advanced

versus 21 inch alloys

on the prestige

and also

there's Napa leather

upholstery

in the prestige

and the driver's seat in the prestige

also has an adjustable thigh support

which I always like to

I was just going to say

do you actually use the adjustable

thigh support? I do when it's available

because my

proportions

longer thighs

shorter calves

the way my body is

proportioned

my hip to knee length

is on the longer side

so I like having that little bit of extra support

under my thighs

I use that whenever

it's available

fair enough

the nice thing is

depending on the shape of your body

or how the seat feels to you

you have the option not to extend it

to ignore it, you don't have to use it if you don't want to

exactly

so the

GV70

it's a very attractive vehicle

as with all the other current

Genesis

the split lighting theme

so you get the split horizontal

headlights

in the front and then the split horizontal

tail lamps in the back

and that's a theme that they're extending

to their new race cars

inside

there's some carbon fiber trim

in here

there's also by the

media controller knob

there's a fingerprint sensor there

so

if you own the vehicle

I didn't have a Genesis account

set up for this car so I couldn't

program the fingerprint sensor

but

using the fingerprint sensor

you can start the car

without having the key fob on you

so that gives you another way to get in and out

there's also a bunch of

drive modes

and also

terrain modes

which there's off-road

terrain modes

with 21 inch wheels

and

low profile tires

you don't want it

there's no need for you to ever mess with the terrain modes

this is not the car to buy if you're going to go off-roading

no, definitely not

other cars, not this one

in fact

this is the car

I don't know if I mentioned it on the show last week

when this car

was delivered I walked out in the driveway

and I could immediately

see that the right rear tire was flat

oh right

and it on the way

to being delivered here it picked

something up and had a notable

gash in the tread

from the tread into the sidewall area

so I put the spare tire on it

and waited for

the guys from

DriveShop came over the next day

with another car

another GV70

that had been used the previous day

by some executive from Hyundai

who was in town for

a conference

and so

the wheels look really nice

they're these nice five spoke wheels

and they have two red stripes on each of the spokes

which gives it a little bit

a little bit sportier looking

they're a dark gray painted wheel

and then the red stripes just give you that

extra little accent there

so they look really sharp

but

I genuinely enjoyed driving this car

it's not

necessarily the most

fuel efficient car

out there with the 3.5 turbo

but it's not bad, I did about 22 miles per gallon

I had to drive back and forth to Detroit

a couple of times

the back seat

with the driver's seat set at my position

I had plenty of room in the back seat

so that wasn't an issue, there's good cargo space

one of the things

that they have on a lot of the

Hyundai Motor Group vehicles is on the

inboard side

of the front passenger seat

there's a couple of switches there

so that

if there's nobody sitting in the front passenger seat

somebody in the rear seat

can actually slide the front passenger seat

forward and back

or actually flip it downwards

if they want more room

so if this vehicle

is being used to drive people around

as opposed to driving it

you can do that

fairly easily from the back seat

so that's a nice little detail

for a luxury vehicle

what else?

one thing I did note

when I put the spare tire on

I pulled out the spare tire and put it on

the spare tire is actually also

a mini spare but it's an alloy wheel

it's not a steel wheel

it matches the rest of the wheels?

it's smaller

but it's still

an alloy wheel

which was an interesting detail

that's kind of cool

in sport mode

this is a genuinely fun

car to drive on some curvy roads

when you're using

your phone projection for navigation

normally

you can show

if you're using the built-in infotainment

and using navigation

you can flip through a couple of different modes

on the

cluster screen

and one of them

shows the map

so it shows the gauges

on top of the map

so you see the map with your route

right in the middle there

and then if you're using

Google Maps or Apple Maps

it will actually display

that map in the cluster screen

so you don't have to look away

plus with the heads-up display

that's on the Sport Prestige

it'll also show you the navigation prompts

in the HUD as well

and one other detail

when you

put it into

when you go through the different drive modes

in

comfort mode

the virtual needles

on the gauges

show up as sort of a

sort of an orangey salmon color

as you flip through the modes

when you go to sport mode

the needles turn to red

and then when you go to sport plus mode

they

go to

sort of a glowing

almost a fiery red

so if you watched any of the Star Wars

sequel trilogy

Kylo Ren

clearly whoever did this

design was a fan of Kylo Ren's

lightsaber

because that's what it looks like

it looks like this fiery

red

for the gauge needle

so it was a fun little touch

so you're saying red

and apparently I'm on to new movies

and all I could think of was

the new Tron movie that's coming out

Tron Aries and it's all red

all the blue lines from Tron turn red

so in my head it was Tron

and

the GV70 does not yet have

a hands-free driving mode

it's got the Hyundai Motor Group

Highway Drive Assist

which is a hands-on

lane centering and adaptive cruise

but it does have a driver monitor

camera on the

steering column so it's an infrared camera

so it will

give you alerts

if it detects that you're looking away

from the road for too long

or if you appear to be drowsy

or inattentive for some reason

or if you're having

a medical emergency

and you're not

watching the road then it will start

to give you alerts and eventually

bring the vehicle to a stop

if you don't respond

which is good

so the one

that I had

let's find the right tab here

was finished in mono red

paint which was a $650

option

and this is

a very red

not quite like

Sol Crystal red but a very attractive red

the only other option

that was on here

was the optional $30

NFC key card

so you can just put that in your wallet

and tap that on the door

when you're

ready to go

grand total

let me say

the base price

for a GV70

with the 4-cylinder engine

is $48,985

as delivered

the one that I drove

was $72,225

which is a lot

but that is a deal for what that is

if you compare this to

say

like an X3M

or an SQ5

which would have

comparable performance

similar size

those are going to be more expensive

so it's not an inexpensive car

but it is

a not

insane amount

given the segment that it's in

compared to its direct competitors

and these are now

the GV70s are now built in Alabama

they're built in Montgomery, Alabama

they started off building just the GV70 electrified there

and they've added the gas

versions there as well

so they're built in the US

so not as much

tariff

content

there's going to be some tariff

because 64% of the parts are still coming from Korea

right

but it's not

the full amount

so you want to guess at the destination charge

$14.95

so close

$14.50

I was really close

that's about as close as I ever get

I don't even win when Robby's not here

I still can't get it

so that's the

2026 GV70

I like that car

that car was on my list when I bought

my car

that was one of the ones I was considering

to be honest that was on there

were you considering the gas one

or the electric one?

it was going back and forth

I was uncertain

I had not gotten that far

but I was looking at it

that was part of it

it comes as gas or electric

so you can get either one when you get it

but that was on my list

so much I like that car

it's a really nice car

one of the nice things about the

EV version

is that the

the charge port is in the grill

which I love

either because it is funny

you drive up and having to back in

or having to pull in

if you could pull in and charge cars it would be easy

but backing up

I hate backing up the charging ports

you're always doing this like

am I straight or am I going to hit it

and sometimes there's random stuff

the actual units on some of them are very close

to the curb and others are a little further back

from the curb

how close am I to knocking over that giant

expensive electric thing behind me

makes me nervous

especially if you're going to

use a supercharger

most of the superchargers have very short cables

they do so you have to get close

having it up front

makes it a lot easier

you can usually reach it

I like that I think that's a great idea

I wish they just did that

I don't know why Nissan did that on the leaf

and then they changed it because now they have two ports

but the front thing

that was the way to do this everybody

alright

let's move on

so this week

the Center for Automotive Research

which is a non-profit organization

here in Ann Arbor

they've been

holding this conference this year

was actually the 60th year

of the management briefing seminar

and this year they moved it

they used to do it in Traverse City

every summer at the beginning of August

and in recent years

especially since the pandemic

that's been

more of a challenge

it's been more of a challenge for people to get

time off and get budgets to travel up there

so this year they moved it

to downtown Detroit

actually not so much downtown

it's actually in Corktown in Detroit

to the Michigan Central Station

which is a fantastic venue

I still need to get to see that

I have not been there yet somehow

I drove by it once I was like oh there it is

and I did not have time to stop I still want to see that

when you're in Detroit you definitely got to stop by

and take a walk through the lobby area

I've got to take a walk through because everyone says

it's just phenomenal

anyway the MBS

was at Michigan Central

and I did

a bunch of interviews with various people

which I'm going to save for next week because

both Robbie and Nicole are abandoning me

next week so

Patrons, Patreon supporters

they've already got it

they've already heard these interviews

but next week I will be including

these interviews in the show

and so that includes

a conversation with Michael Dunn

I love Michael Dunn, he's amazing

yeah we talked about China

and I also talked

with a couple of folks from

Brembo about Breaks

and

and Mike Dowsett

from

Magna about what they're doing with

he's the chief engineer

head of eDrive systems at Magna

so we talked about hybrids and plug-in hybrids

and eRevs and battery electrics

and what Magna is doing

so those will all be on next week's show

but for this week

I

didn't get a chance to talk to Gil Pratt

Gil Pratt is the

I've talked to him before and there's a couple of interviews

with him in the archives

somewhere but

Gil

is the

chief scientist for Toyota

and he's also the head of the Toyota Research Institute

and TRI does a lot of

interesting stuff

one of the things that he talked

about in his keynote this week

was some work

that they've been doing with behavioral

science

Toyota has long been

about trying to reduce

carbon emissions from vehicles

and

that's why they were the first to bring

a modern production hybrid to market

and this is why

apart from

the BZ

which is just battery electric only

every other model, all the other models that

Toyota currently sells in North America

have a hybrid powertrain option

and many of them are hybrid only

but they also offer

a couple of plug-in hybrids

and one of the challenges with plug-in hybrids

of course is getting people to

plug them in

because

you and Russell on a plug-in hybrid

we do

do you plug it in regularly?

we do actually, we trade off between

the Wagoneer

his car and if I happen to have an EV

for a press vehicle but we do plug it in

at home we do

we actually do

we bought our level 2

charger before we had any electric vehicles

so yes, we're in the minority though

because

a lot of people apparently buy plug-in hybrids

and then don't plug them in which is

kind of wasteful because now you've got

several hundred pounds of dead weight

that you're carrying around

which means you're going to have worse fuel economy

and your handling is going to be worse

you're not getting any benefit out of it

plus there's the wasted

materials and energy that went into

building that battery

and you're getting

worse fuel economy than if you just drove

a regular hybrid so

if you live somewhere

if you are not able to plug in

your car

don't waste the money on a plug-in hybrid

just get a regular hybrid

don't get that parrotard there's no reason to do it

there's absolutely no reason to do it

but if you do buy a plug-in hybrid

Toyota's been doing some research on how to

get people to plug it in more often

and what do they come up with?

well one of the things they came up with

was trying to

adjust

driver's behavior a little bit

that sounds scary

like you're going to

we're going to adjust your behavior

basically they're just

all they're really doing is

they're just trying to remind people

hey you got a plug-in hybrid

plug it in

and then you're going to save money on gas

because you're going to

both the RAV4 and the

Prius plugins

get 40 plus miles of electric driving range

which

that covers

more than 80% of

daily driving for Americans

80% of people drive less than 40 miles a day

so if you've got 40 miles of

electric range you plug it in every day

you're not going to use any gas

yep

Russ hardly ever puts gas in his car

in fact it periodically gets to a point when it says

you must use the gas

we're not letting you use the

use some gas for a change buddy

I'll plug in hybrids

have what they call a maintenance mode

Chevy was first with this with the Volt

where

every once in a while it will run the engine

for a little bit with the goal of

being able

going through

at least one tank of gas a year

so you don't want

the gas sitting there in your tank

for a year or more

it's a good reminder not complaining

but that's how

how often he doesn't

use the gas engine is that it's like

hey you need to use that buddy

so what

TRI did was they came up with

a modified version of the Toyota Connect

app

and they did it with a couple of different

vehicles and some vehicles they had

the smartphone app

and others they had

the prompt in the car

so that when you

when you get in

when you park the car

when you're about to get out

if the battery level is low

it will prompt you

to plug in the car

okay that's fair

that's all it took

did it work

did it get people to actually plug in

it did

they had a control group

and they had a group that got these prompts

and

let me find

the numbers here

but they found that

with these prompts

that increased the charging by 10%

for plug-in hybrid drivers

it's not a huge amount

10% okay

it's better than nothing

okay so in the US

yeah charge up by 10%

in Japan

and drivers shifted to charging

to peak renewable energy

this is a different experiment

yeah that's different

so the other thing

that Dr. Pratt

talked about was

that

for years

we've been told it's best to plug in your car

at night

because that's when there's the lowest demand

on the grid

which is true

but

as more and more renewables

have been added to our

power generation ecosystem

and we've got more

especially solar

we've got a lot of

especially in places like California, Arizona

Texas

we often have a lot of excess solar capacity

available during the day

this past year

in California

from spring all through the summer

we've generally had more

solar

generation

capability

than demand

so basically

it's been almost 100%

solar use during peak

periods of the day

so you might as well

in that case

plug in during the day

when you've got that renewable

energy available

and then

so

in most cases that's probably going to be

workplace charging

if you're going out shopping

if you're not at work

but that sort of

behavior is better

because you can take advantage

of renewable energy

so what they found from that

was with both plug-in hybrid

and battery electric drivers

that the pumps

shifted

charging to

daytime charging by 59%

and added

about 30 minutes of daytime

charging per vehicle overall

which is significant

yeah that's definitely

definitely an improvement

and the

other thing that they found overall

was

by getting more plug-in hybrid

drivers to actually

charge their vehicles

so that they weren't using gas

as much

they found that the satisfaction

of American plug-in

hybrid drivers with their vehicles

increased by 16%

that's a pretty good

improvement

now these drivers realized

oh wow I'm not using any gas

so they were more satisfied with their cars

which is funny because it's like

all you had to do is plug it in to begin with people

but like remind people

that's a funny thing though

when you really think about it it's like

I'm going to go buy a plug-in hybrid

because if I plug it in I can just use

electricity and eliminate gas

dang it I'm still having to use gas

because you're not plugging in

it's such like a logic disconnect there

if you're not getting the satisfaction

you think try using the car

the reason you bought it

the way that it was designed to be used

I paid more for this thing

why am I not

getting benefits out of this

you gotta do is plug it in

you good

see

so some interesting

stuff that they found

and I think they're going to be rolling this out

to

their production

apps in the next year or two

probably

doing these just in time reminders

has had

a notable impact

relative to the control group that didn't get

the reminders

that's good

alright

how do you feel about

having all virtual buttons

having everything controlled through your touch screen in your car

I hate the idea

hate it

do you really hate it

I really hate it

I really hate it Sam

apparently more and more automakers

are hearing that message

because Mercedes Benz

is

they're one of the companies

in fact it was their head of software

that was speaking

with AutoCar at the IAA show

in Munich

it was Magnus

he acknowledged that

yeah

we're here in the message from our customers

they don't like

having everything being

touch controls

and they are moving back

to putting more physical controls in there

and it starts off with the new CLA

and the GLC

that they're launching this year

and

for those

because

the GLC

has this

coast to coast display

and they're starting with

putting more of the controls back

on the steering wheel

getting away from the capacitive controls

that they've had on the steering wheel in recent years

going back to

rollers and rockers

and buttons on the steering wheel

and in

upcoming models they will gradually be adding

more physical controls

back in the center stack

and other places

at least for the most commonly used

stuff because

they don't want to clutter things up too much

physical controls I'm all for

bring them back

I don't know where we thought this was

everything in the

touch was a good idea

I was talking with

Adam Ismail from the drive

this week he called me up

for a story he was doing on this

and where

a lot of this came from

is starting with Tesla

when they did the Model S

they were trying to take cost

out of it because it costs a lot

to engineer all those physical controls

and then to manufacture

to assemble it that's a lot

of extra manufacturing complexity

to put all these pieces

together

and so

they

they also wanted some flexibility

to make updates and changes

when you do it as virtual controls

you can change the interface up

it doesn't have to stay the same

which in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing

because in the interface

that you're using to control the vehicle

you probably want it to be familiar

you don't want to be looking around

for stuff

but that's a whole other

issue

and then when they did the Model 3

and then the Model Y

they wanted to take it to an extreme

and eliminate the visible

vents in the dashboard

they wanted a very minimalistic looking interior

and then they did something stupid

that too many other automakers

yes we're talking to you Lincoln

and Polestar and Porsche

and now BMW

actually have copied

which is

having the vent controls

in the touchscreen interface

bad bad idea

but at least

Mercedes Benz kept the physical vent controls

so

I think last year

we saw Hyundai

do a mid-cycle update

of the Tucson and the

Santa Cruz

and they went from that

all-cutch center panel

to adding more

physical buttons back in there

Volkswagen is starting to move back to physical controls

so I think

hopefully this is a trend we're going to see across the industry

to find the right balance

in there between physical controls

for the stuff that you use most often

especially things that you're going to be using

while you're driving

and then having some touch controls

because part of the reason why we went in this direction

because we have

this is where iDrive started

25 years ago with BMW

they came up with the iDrive system

because there were so many features

being added into the car

that

the buttons became overwhelming

and

so they came up with iDrive

as a way to

try to find a balance

and it's kind of shifted too far

in the opposite direction of decluttering

so hopefully we'll see more

of this in the coming years

yeah that would make me happy

put the buttons back people

alright let's see

what was next on the list here

IHS

the insurance institute for highway safety

every year

they buy a whole bunch of vehicles

and they crash test them

they do all kinds of testing on these things

and

they've just done a round

of testing with seven different EVs

and

one of the things they do is

periodically they update the tests

they update the way they do the tests

because the industry follows

what IHS is doing

they want to get top safety pick

top safety pick plus

companies like Hyundai and Kia

they heavily advertise all the top

safety pick plus vehicles

the big deal

yep

and so the industry

doesn't want to get left behind

so as the tests are

done and they see that

they didn't do so well on this thing

they make design changes to do better

on those tests in future years

a notable one in recent years was

the small offset rigid barrier test

where

the vehicle is crashed into a rigid barrier

with where it's

set so that it overlaps

25% of the vehicle's width

so if the vehicle is

six feet wide

the barrier

will be overlapped by one and a half feet

when they first started doing that

about 10-12 years ago

most cars did really poorly on that

and that's actually a pretty

realistic test

very representative of what often happens

in the real world

because that's the moment

you see like oh my gosh you're going to hit someone

in one of your gears

and you're clipping each other

you're not like smack head on

you're partly head on

it's a really hard scenario

to design for

but cars have gotten

so much better with that

and so

what IHS does

every few years they update

some of the tests and raise the bar

make it tougher and tougher

and this year they

did a new moderate overlap

they updated their moderate overlap test

so they've been doing the moderate overlap for a while

in the past they only measured the impact

on the driver dummy

now they also

have a passenger in the rear seat

behind the driver

or at least a crash test dummy

behind the driver

not a real human they don't test with real people

and so now

you've got the impact

on two people

in the vehicle on that side

and

not everybody did so well on this

so they tested the BMW I4

the

Blazer EV the F-150

Lightning

the Nissan Aria

the Cybertruck

Model 3

and the ID Buzz

the

the BMW

the Chevy

the Cybertruck and the ID Buzz

all got good ratings that's the

highest rating for the moderate overlap test

the F-150

Lightning got a poor

which kind of surprised me

yeah I know I was not expecting

that when I saw poor I'm like oh gosh

that like of these vehicles it was

it got the worst rating in the bunch

yeah

the I4

also

you know one another thing that they

evaluate is the headlights the quality

of the headlights the I4

depending on which trim level of the I4 you get

get different headlights

and on the base level headlights they got

a poor rating for that and a marginal

for the upgraded lights the Cybertruck

got a poor for its headlights

most of them got

acceptable

and so

check out the

the link in the show notes

you can see all of the test results

but definitely some mixed results

for all of these

which is

the thing is even now

where they've got

poor results if you compare these

to vehicles from 10

15 years ago a poor today

is vastly better

than the results would have been 10

or 15 years ago it's because

you're exactly right so if you look at this

you're like well I had a you know this old car

and it was rated great yeah but if you tested that older car

today it probably would not do well

because they're constantly sort of raising

the bar for what they want

automakers to do and that's not necessarily a bad thing

it encourages them to continue

to develop vehicles

that are safer to come up with

new ways to make it affordable

to build a car but still build a car that's safe

so I think it's a good thing as they sort of slightly

adjust these all the time it makes us all safer

honestly it was one of the reasons that I decided

to get rid of my last car

because it was a 2010

very low mileage nothing really wrong with it

but I just like gosh that is like

that is so old that like safety wise

that 2010 is

things practically new compared to my car

we didn't know what year is yours

your Miata 1990

yeah so yours is ancient mine was just old

yours is ancient 36 years old

yeah but like that

if you look at the technologies that were on those older cars

and you think oh well I used to try this all the time

yeah but if you knew what it had

if you knew them what you know now

the newer cars are so

so much safer so that even when cars

don't perform as well

they're still much safer than cars were

like you said 10, 15, 20 years ago

yeah and

according to IHS

the Lightning got a poor

for that moderate overlap test and Nissan Aria

got a marginal

in the case of the Aria

they said the restraints worked well

to control the motion of the rear dummy during the crash

but injury metrics showed a high risk of

chest injuries for the Lightning

measurements

you know both of them offered good protection

for the driver

but for the for the rear passenger

measurements taken from the rear dummy

showed a high risk of not only chest

injuries but also injuries to the head or neck

in addition to the rear dummies

lap belt moved from the ideal position

on the pelvis onto the abdomen which increases

the risk of internal injuries

wow so my guess is

that

probably

in the next year or so

I don't think that they have tested the

gas F-150

with

this new moderate overlap test yet

and you know it uses

it's got the same structure it uses the same

same belts and everything it's the same cab

you know and even though

the Lightning sales volumes are not

huge

I'm guessing that

Ford will probably do an update

to these systems probably

you know by next year

because a lot of times the automakers do

when they when they receive kind of feedback

on this the IHS

is like this doesn't work

this isn't quite what you thought they will adjust it

they're like as soon as we can fix this

we're going to go forward we have adjusted

this little thing or that little thing to make it

safer and they'll even sometimes have it retested

so that's how you get these things sometimes

what we'll say like

the 2025 measures this way but

2025 is built after

you know July 3rd

have this rating because they

literally change it if it's something they can change

they'll do it as quickly as they can

especially for safety stuff like this

yes

I'm going to skip down though

what do you think is going to happen with ARIA do you think anything is going to change

with the ARIA

I suspect that the ARIA

will probably not get any changes

and why is that

well actually I shouldn't necessarily

say that because

for model year 2026

which is starting

roughly about now

there will be no ARIA

in the North American lineup for Nissan

it goes poof

it was revealed this week that the ARIA

is going away it hasn't been a huge

seller for Nissan since it launched

although this year has been its best year

to date

but it hasn't

done particularly well but it's still going to be available

overseas

so it's still going to be in other markets

so we could see Nissan

make some updates to the ARIA

that's true

just because it's not here

we just won't benefit from it

we won't know it

it actually doesn't

really surprise me ARIA is going away

because it wasn't

doing well here it didn't get

I think the buzz and the traction they were looking

for when they first

announced it and first put it into

production but the new leaf

is getting incredible buzz

people really really like the new leaf

so it feels like a pretty solid

strategy I can see why ARIA

would go and leaf would stay

and Nissan only sold

9,345 ARIAs

last year in 12 months

which is not great

although through July of this year

they sold 11,600

but this year is such a weird number

because of all the

because the

tax incentives are going away

I feel like it pushed

stuff earlier

in the year

so I feel like this is a weird year to look at EV sales

because they were

heavily front loaded I guess

and you don't know what's going to happen after

it will be interesting to look at the numbers for the whole year

right and to see if they

literally fall off a cliff in September

which might even or after September 30th

which might even not necessarily mean

EV sales have really declined if they stay

whole it's just you wonder if they're just going to

like everyone bought them

where you might have had

somewhat more even sales over the course of the year

right you'll see it compressed

mostly into the first 9 months

into the first 9 months because we have now what

you have 9 days

9 days to secure

your EV

purchase and still take advantage

and September 30th is when it's

you have to have it all signed

on the dotted line

so you have to have a signed purchase contract and make at least one payment

by September 30th

so even if you haven't actually taken

possession of the vehicle yet on September 30th

as long as you've made the first payment

on your

signed purchase agreement

the IRS will still let you claim the

7500 bucks

so 9 days people

move it or lose it

yeah

and

just for comparison

with the ARIA

Ford sold

21,785

Mach-E's through the first 6 months

so that's

almost double the number of ARIA's

huge difference yeah when you look at that

I mean you see

that's huge you can see why they didn't

you can see why they didn't keep it

it makes sense it was a nice car

was decent enough but yeah you can see why

it didn't make it but I think the leaf

is going to have a very different

sales trajectory because

the way they've priced it

300 miles of range for the S-plus model

as we talked about last week

starting at

31 and change with delivery

it's going to be very interesting

to watch sales of

that and then the bolt

starting around the end of the year

beginning of January

and then as we get into next year

the slate

and then at the end of next year

the Ford truck

and I think we'll be seeing some other

lower cost EVs

coming to market as well

yeah I agree

Kia's got the EV3 and EV4

coming

Hyundai's going to have some additional

models so

you know I'm still

super excited about the leaf

I just

it was really good

I don't know what I was expecting

I think I thought well it's going to be fine

the leaf but it was good

it was genuinely good

I'm super impressed with this little car

if you're looking for an affordable

electric vehicle

goodbye leaf I love that thing

maybe you can get a Nissan dealer

to trade you for the wagon here

I could get two

alright

let's see

so let's stick with Nissan for a moment

yeah

as we've talked about

Nissan's having some challenges

with their business

sales globally have not been exceptional

they've been

losing a bit of money

and

earlier this year

they

replaced their CEO

their global CEO

with Ivan

Espinosa

who is formerly their head of product planning

he's now running the whole business

and

in addition to ditching the Aria

they

have also decided to

make some organizational changes with their

design studios

so

Nissan has

a bunch of studios around

the world

several in Japan

as well as

actually two studios here in the US

and in Brazil, in the UK

in China

and

they

they're closing two of the studios

Nissan Design America

in San Diego

which is, I mean that one's been around

for

decades, this is at least the 1980s

I think maybe even back to the 70s

and they're also closing Nissan Design

Latin America and Sao Paulo, Brazil

so they're shutting down those

studios

Nissan does have another studio in LA

which they call Studio 6

which has been an advanced creative studio

which is focused more on

exploring emerging consumer trends

with a focus on the evolving global lifestyle

and technology cultures

that shape the long-term

experiences of Nissan and Infiniti

that will become

the primary US design hub

so I think they're probably going to take

on some of the

responsibilities

of what the San Diego studio was doing

although I think

they probably won't be doing as much as what

was being done in San Diego

does that mean a lot of people are going to be out at Nissan?

Do you think so?

I mean I don't think it's a huge number

of people

and typically in these studios

you're not talking about thousands of people

right

the numbers are probably

I would guess probably

no more than a couple of hundred people

and

I think if they're going to take on some

of the responsibilities of the San Diego studio

you'd probably see some of those people

shift over to the LA studio

and some will go elsewhere

I mean it's kind of a sad thing

but it also

what makes me weirdly happy about that

is knowing that Nissan is having

trouble

but you're happy that Nissan's having trouble?

No, knowing that Nissan's having trouble

I'm happy to see they're taking action

to try to get themselves out of it

knowing that Nissan's having trouble

knowing that they need to do something

knowing that things have to change

I think it's a sad thing

they're laying people off

they're closing studios

but I'm happy they're doing something

they're not just sitting

and waiting for

the winds to change and suddenly for it to get

better

That doesn't usually happen very often

It does not but sometimes companies just sit around

and wait for it and don't really do anything

and I feel like Nissan is trying to do stuff

so a lot of credit to Nissan for actually

doing something

All right

Hyundai

had

Investor Day in Seoul

this week

and they talked about a whole bunch of stuff

they unveiled their

bold 2030 vision

and their product roadmap

and

that included a number of things

they are doing an expansion

of the plant

near Savannah, Georgia

which will add production capacity

and additional 200,000 units by

2028

so that will put that plant

at about half a million units

of capacity

and

no mention of

how

the recent

immigration raids

might have an impact on this

but it sounds like

they are moving forward

they are having conversations

with

the US government

about

because

whenever companies start

new factories or do expansions

or do retooling

they typically will send over some of their

people from the home office to

work for a while overseas

to help with

things like installation

calibration of equipment

getting things up and running

and

this was the issue

a few weeks ago

when there was an immigration raid

at the adjacent battery plant

near Savannah

which is a joint venture of Hyundai and LG

and actually

at the management briefing seminar

this week Bob Lee

who is the CEO of LG Energy Solutions

North America

actually did address this

beginning of his keynote

he took a couple minutes to talk about this

and said

they are in active talks

with US authorities

to make sure that going forward

they have the right

paperwork for everybody

to make sure there's no issues

with any of this

it's important to make sure that you're going to bring a whole bunch of people over here

a clerical area

and have what was it

400 and close to 500 people

that were somehow

their papers weren't right

and I'm like okay guys I feel like I should be able to figure this out

yeah I know

it's unfortunate

it's unfortunate the way the whole thing was handled

you know

with a company

with companies like LG and Nissan

Hyundai

that are investing tens of billions of dollars

in the United States

instead of just going in

and

taking people that are just doing their jobs

and

cuffing them and putting them in cages

for a week

before finally letting them go

and flying home to South Korea

maybe

sit down with management and figure out

what's wrong, what do we need to fix here

to get through this

do we know they didn't ever talk to anybody

it doesn't sound like it

you know it sounds like

well I guess Jose Munoz

who's the CEO of Hyundai Motor Group

acknowledged

that

he's in charge of all this

he said

he was not aware of the raid

until he saw it on the news

well I can believe that

they're not going to tell you they're going to raid you

if you have an immigration issue

so he was not aware

that there was any issue until he saw it on the news

yeah

anyway back to products

last week we mentioned

the IONIQ 3

which was shown in concept form at IAA

that's

going to be going into production

for Europe

no mention of us

ever seeing that here unfortunately

of course not

they're also doing

locally designed EVs

for

India

and then a couple of new models

that are being produced in China

for the Chinese market

their first EREV models are going to launch

in 2027

with more than

600 miles of range

no word on what these are

or what vehicles these will be

just that they're coming no idea what they are here

my guess is

we might see perhaps

an EREV version of something like

either the IONIQ 9

or the Palisade

those larger vehicles

are the most likely to go EREV

they expect electrified vehicles

to reach 3.3 million units

by 2030 including

more than 18 hybrid models and a comprehensive

EV lineup

and that's global sales

3.3 million global sales of electrified models

and then

expanding into new segments including

mid-sized pickup trucks and like commercial vehicles

and there will apparently

be a mid-sized pickup

coming to the U.S. market

mmm

that will be interesting I mean curious to see that

yeah

and then some next generation

battery technology that is debuting

next year

and

Genesis is also going to be

adding EREVs and hybrids

to their BEV powertrains

for the complete lineup

their flagship SUV

the GV90

is expected

to be the first one to get

an EREV powertrain

oh cool

and they're targeting annual sales for Genesis

of 350,000 units by 2030

what are they at right now do you know what the current is

I think it's

probably somewhere around

175

that's a lot

but it's also

considering how strong Genesis has been

with their offerings and is their name

get some recognition because a lot of people

still really don't know who they are

I think it's doable

and they can keep introducing good

products and new products and increasing

the variety of options for people

I think they could do that

I think that is absolutely

possible given

all three

Hyundai Motor Group brands

Hyundai, Kia and Genesis

have been

doing steady growth for years now

almost every quarter

they've got year over year growth

and

I don't see

based on what we're hearing so far

I don't see

any reason for that to let up anytime soon

it would have to be a gigantic fumble

on their part to really

see that go the other direction or to stall

they've got

fantastic products across the range

there's really

nothing right now

in the Hyundai lineup

that

is really kind of weak

no it's a pretty good lineup

pretty much everything they've done

has been a hit

so we'll see

we'll have to see in five more years

a couple weeks ago

I had a chance to

have a conversation with David Salters

who is the president of

Honda Racing Corporation US

unfortunately I had a

technical issue

with the recording

so I can't

include the recording on the show

otherwise I would that was my plan

but we had a really good conversation

about

how Honda is using software

in its race cars

and

you know we focused on

two main areas probably the two

areas that HRC US

is focused on which is

their IndyCar program

and then also

their GTP car

which follows the LMDH

rule set so it's a prototype

endurance race car

it's the Acura AR-X06

in that class in the LMDH class

there

there's some

the rules specify some basic

dimensions for the cars

they have some aerodynamic regulations

for how much downforce

they're allowed to generate

and then

they're allowed to use

whatever engines they want

so the engines are open

it doesn't define

displacement or configuration or anything else

what they do have though is a

spec hybrid system

so they have to use the same

motor generator

unit and gearbox

and battery

on all the LMDH cars so right now

the LMDH class includes

BMW

Porsche

with the 963

Acura

and

what else is in there

Lamborghini

there's

seven different ones

and there's three more coming

Genesis is starting next year

they're testing their car right now

in 2027 Ford and McLaren are both

joining LMDH

and oh Cadillac

I forgot Cadillac that was the other one I was trying to think of

so there's a whole bunch of manufacturers

participating in this

and they all have very different looking cars

and very different engines

Cadillac's got a big naturally aspirated V8

Porsche and BMW

and Lamborghini

are using turbocharged V8s

Acura

has

a turbocharged 2.4 liter

V6

they all have the same hybrid hardware

but they're allowed to do whatever they want

with the electronics and the software

and so

what Acura is doing

is

they're actually using

the ECU

the powertrain ECU from the Formula 1

program which has a lot of

extra computing capacity

and so they have a whole

team of software engineers

and Honda has always been

about motorsports right from the very beginning

back in the 1950s

so Kiro Honda

got involved in motorcycle racing

and Honda has been involved

in motorsports ever since

and it used to be that

they would regularly rotate engineers

through the motorsports

programs you know spend a few years doing motorsports

and come back to production programs

they don't do that so much anymore

because motorsports has gotten

so specialized

but what they do is they have

an annual tech conference in Japan

and they bring in engineers

from Honda operations all around

the world including race engineers

to present some of

the stuff they're doing and you know they've had

last year they had

engineers from HRC US

present about what they're doing with the LMDH

program and with the IndyCar program

in Japan

and sharing that

knowledge with the production engineers

so

in the

Acura

the endurance race car

they have

the core software that controls

the hybrid system but it doesn't just

control it for fuel economy

or anything else like that

like production hybrids do

but they're actually running

a simulation model

alongside the control software

side by side in the same ECU

so it's running simulations in real time

as the car is driving

as it's being raced

and sometimes making adjustments

to some of the control

to optimize the control

and

the software team

is doing

software updates releasing software updates

to the race program

sometimes

multiple times a week

and even during the course of a race weekend

they will

release software updates

based on the data they're getting

they'll make changes and then push that back

into the race cars

and

if you look at the steering wheel

of a modern race car

there's a picture in my

story that I wrote

of the cockpit of the ARX06

on the steering wheel

there are 20 different buttons

and then more

off to the side

that takes our I like buttons

thing a little bit too far

yeah but the thing is

typically in endurance racing

you will have

two or three drivers that share the car

and not all drivers like their car

set up exactly the same way

and in the past they always used to have to

find a compromise

between the setup for different drivers

that everybody could get along with

some drivers

like it to be a little more tail happy

some drivers like it to a little more understeer

and so what they can

do now with the software is the drivers

can make adjustments

as they're driving so

the system, the control

software even when it's not being

manipulated by the drivers

they've got high precision

GPS on the cars

and the system will change

the way it's controlling the hybrid

system from corner to corner

so

if it's a long sweeping corner it'll control it one

way if it's a tight corner because it knows

where on the track the car is

and it will make adjustments and they're using the hybrid system

to do things like preloading the differential

to change the handling balance

and changing the brake by wire

control to change the front to

rear brake balance and doing all kinds of

cool stuff with it

and then the other thing

we talked about was the IndyCar program

where Honda

and Chevrolet collaborated

on developing the hybrid system for the

IndyCars and there they don't get

quite as much freedom

they can't

be changing the software

for the hybrid system

the way they do on the prototypes

but

different drivers are using the hybrid

system in very different ways and this year

Alex Palau who won the IndyCar championship

he won 8 out of 17

races and

he clinched the championship with

3 or 4 races to go

he

Salters was talking about the way

that Palau was using

the system versus the way some other

drivers are using the system

harvesting energy

to

into

on the IndyCar because they didn't have

enough room they don't actually use a battery

they use supercapacitors for energy storage

and it's all

the whole system is packaged into

the

bell housing in the back of the car

with the clutch

and

Palau

he seemed to really

be able to utilize that software

and use the settings that he

had available to him

to really get the most out of the system

more so than any other driver because there's been

some drivers that really complain that they don't like

the system very much but Palau

he just flew away

he just ran away with this year's championship

with the way he was using the car

using the system that's very cool tech

that's a really neat way to make it

to give everybody what they want

yeah

alright

so this past week was the 10th

anniversary of dieselgate

has it really been 10 years

yeah 10 years

10 years ago that I got a call from a reporter

saying

so there's this

thing with Volkswagen

and their diesels and the EPA

and the EPA is not happy

and

so I had to start doing some

research to find out what the hell was going on

that was crazy

over the next year

and a half

Volkswagen got sued

by everybody everywhere in the world

everybody you could hire a lawyer

cause they

had been cheating on their diesel

or emission controls

they had been advertising

for years clean diesel

and

my wife and I bought a Volkswagen

diesel we bought a Jetta TDI sport wagon

and

turns out it wasn't so clean

I knew people

who did the trade

cause you were offered money

for your not clean diesel

that you thought was a clean diesel

that actually were sort of thrilled

either they were thrilled because they got way more

than what they thought

or they were horrifically bummed

cause they really just wanted the diesel

and didn't care so much about the clean

bar

and they were just like I like it the way it is dang it

I don't want to have to trade it in

you didn't have to sell the car

you were allowed to keep it

but then you had to get updates to the car

to make it compliant with the regulations

which reduced the performance

in the fuel economy

exactly they just wanted it

I like it how it is I don't want you to mess with my car

and that like you said was not an option

you had to

you had to get things changed up with your car

you had to trade it in

we took the buy out

I remember driving

it doesn't feel like it was very long before dieselgate happened

Audi did a whole big

diesel program

in Washington DC

and we all had white Audi's

and they all had a decal

a low along the side that was like

Audi's clean diesel

all these pictures

I got a lot of mileage out of those pictures

when that scandal broke

we were just going to use the pictures I have of that

as the header image forever

yeah

back in

2008 in the fall of 2008

when Audi was getting ready to launch their

quote unquote clean diesels

they did a drive program

usually when they do media drive programs

they bring people in

to some location for a day

you fly in you drive the car the next day

and then you fly home

for this thing it was a two week program

where

we drove across the country from New York

to Los Angeles and they

everybody was on waves

of three or four days

I actually did

ended up doing two waves I did so I was on this

for a week so we drove from New York

to DC to Cleveland to Chicago

to Memphis to Dallas

to Amarillo and then

I flew home from

Denver

and then the second week ended up going all the way

to the west coast

and they had dozens

of Audi Q7 diesels

and that was

a shockingly expensive

program for Audi

they spent a lot of money promoting clean diesel

they used diesel engines

in their Le Mans race cars

won

the 24 hour Le Mans multiple times

the world endurance championship

and then when diesel gate happened

they canceled that entire racing program

and went into Formula E

Volkswagen Group made a huge pivot

towards electrification

designing

all kinds of new EVs

part of the settlement that

Volkswagen of America did

with EPA and the California

Resources Board

was they had to invest 2 billion

dollars in charging

infrastructure and

the result of that was electrify

America they built

electrify America with that 2 billion

dollars

and now a decade on

at that time

diesels were

still really popular in Europe

in a lot of European markets

like in Italy and in France

diesel engines were

had like 70-80% market share

and even in Germany

it was over 50% market share

and I was just

looking up

the numbers

2025

as of

July of this year

gas vehicle registrations

through July

in Europe had declined by 20%

from the previous year

and

gas vehicles

accounted for 28.3%

market share

in Europe this year

compared to 35% last year

diesel

dropped from 26%

last year or dropped by 26%

to just 9.5%

wow

through July of this year

diesel got hammered by this

it so did

this was like the kiss of death for diesel

this entire situation

with what happened with the Volkswagen group

I remember back in the late

2000s they were

projecting that

with clean diesels

that diesel would get

like-duty diesels would account for

somewhere between 10-15% market share

in the US

by 2020

yeah no

no

not so much

never got past about 2%

before it went away completely

basically the only

one of the only light duty clean diesel

one of the only light duty diesel

still available in the US market

is the GM

3.0L inline 6 that they have in the trucks

in full size SUVs

that's the last one

everything else is pretty much gone

that was a huge impact far beyond

Volkswagen

entire

scenario

everybody

dropped their diesel engines

yep

alright

let's see

sticking with VW

for a moment

we mentioned tariffs earlier

apparently Volkswagen

is going to increase prices

on most of their imported

Volkswagen's

by nearly 7%

from all year 2026

yikes well I think we knew this was coming

though you know

yeah it was more a question of when not yet

right exactly

exactly so we all knew

that was going to happen it was just that was

again the sort of rush that people were having

I mean you even saw as I want to say it was

was it Mazda?

someone actually advertising you know

tariffs have not affected

impact of our vehicles

or on lots today kind of thing

everyone was trying to buy it out

or you know you're in trouble later

we can't guarantee what it's going to be in another

two months so here you go

so far

Audi is only raising their prices

by 3.7%

that's not bad but that's

an increase of as much as $4,700

compared to a model year 25

it's a chunk of change extra

it's going to add on

it's not

$4,700 that's going to

change it's going to either you can't

get it or you got to go down to trim

that's a trimmer too depending on the vehicle

well the base

Jetta S is up by

$1,050 for

$26 compared to $2025

and

the Taos crossover

is going up by $1,055

for the base trim

see

the Atlas

which is built in Tennessee

is only going up by

3%

yeah so

things even though it's and that's the interesting

thing about it like you know some vehicles

aren't made here some vehicles are made other places

even for the same automaker

they have multiple plants so it's not like they're

only going to necessarily up the price

on the one that technically comes from another country

they up the price of a lot of them to

sort of keep any of them from getting

prohibitively high you know

well also

even for those that are built they're assembled

here you know they're often using

a lot of components from

outside of the US like you know the

powertrains for the Taos

or for the Atlas

are you know VW doesn't have an engine

plant here in the US so

you know engines and transmissions come

from overseas

yeah it's a very it's

incredibly complicated

situation because of the fact that cars are made up

of more than a few parts

more than a few places

many thousands of parts

thousands and thousands of parts

alright Ford

is moving their world headquarters

they announced this week

that they are going to close

and demolish the glass house

which has been their

building in Dearborn that has been

their world headquarters since 1956

I used to work there

did you really? I did

I worked in the building

for

about a year and a half before they moved us

across the road to another building

but still spent a lot of time

there I spent a lot of time in that building

over the years

and so Ford

has been building a new

they've been essentially revamping

their product development center campus

for the last several years

so they

they demolished

their old design studios

their engineering center

and they've been

demolishing it in phases

and then building new

new buildings

so the new

product development center campus

now has about

2.1 million square feet

of space

and

2.1 million

square feet which is about

a little more than double the

950,000 square feet

in the glass house which is a 12 story

tower

the glass house is about

a mile and a half away from

the main PDC campus

and so now

everybody that was working in that building

is going to be migrating over

to PDC campus

excuse me PDC campus which is

much more modern

space

all the design studios are in there

fabrication shops

of conference rooms

individual workspaces

open concept collaboration space

and then

it's also right across the street

from their proving grounds

so it's just going to be a lot more convenient

for everyone

it actually looks much more modern too

the old glass house had this very like

hello 1950

it was a cool building

but it was very just a giant

rectangle essentially

and the new one has

an actual design to it

it feels more modern so I think

it's a nice but it still has a lot of

glass so it's sort of a nod

to the original in some ways

and it's nice that it's going to be so much bigger

it's going to be much more

modern in terms of

what people expect or hope to have

in an office space rather than what they were

just given in 1956

instead of mid-century modern

it's now going to be 21st century modern

21st century modern exactly

I like it I think it looks great

there were about 2,000 people that worked

in the glass house building

and the new building

has capacity for

4,000 people

and it's across the whole campus

including the research and innovation center

and the engine labs

and the track and everything

you're within walking distance

of about 14,000 employees

that work in that whole

campus area

and so

I'm actually

hopefully we'll get a chance to go through there

and get a tour of it

because it's opening up in November

I'm guessing that

we'll probably be getting an invite sometime

in the not too distant future to

get a look at it

but yeah I bet you will

yeah

but it's a shame

they're going to redevelop that property

they're working with the city of Dearborn

they're going to drop

bring the building down

and then

use that as open space

parkland and maybe some other things

going forward

they'll do something neat with it

they won't let it just be a mess

they'll come up with some other interesting proposition

for what to do with that space I'm sure

yep

so our friends over at TFL

we talked about earlier this year

when they bought

several of the members of the team there

including Tommy, Micah, Roman's son

and Case

and Tommy's father-in-law

all took advantage of this

insane lease offer that was available

to residents of Colorado

right it was crazy

Fiat was offering

a two-year lease

10,000 miles a year

on the 500E for

nothing down and zero dollars

a month

and

just go drive the car for two years

please

don't drive more than 20,000 miles

it's all good

so

the 500E is a nice car

it's a fun little car

if you don't need a long distance

road trip car

you just need a local

or regional commuter

it's great for that

at its MSRP

it's a little bit expensive

but for nothing

for two years

of course

no good deed goes unpunished

they published

video

they periodically do videos

with updates of what the TFL

has in their fleet

in addition to the press cars that they get loaned

they buy a bunch of vehicles

to use for longer term testing

and so Tommy did

their fleet update today

and he talked about the 500E

it's mostly his wife that drives it

it suffered

two stone chips

one of which they were able to repair

but the other one started to spread

before they were able to get it

filled

in the windshield

and

usually

these things aren't that expensive

to replace a windshield

back on that Jetta

when I had to get it

it had a crack that developed

from a stone chip

I think I paid

$250

safe light

replaced it right in my garage

and

it was no problem

the windshield for this Fiat 500E

pretty small car

tiny little car

how much did you figure that windshield cost?

like you said

$250, $300, maybe $400

if for some reason it was kind of pricey

it does have

front facing camera

for the forward collision alert

so you've got to mount that

that adds to the cost

okay let's go crazy and go 5

okay

$2,000

what the heck

I didn't have a chance to watch the video

although I saw about this

was there any reason why they said it was going to be

$2,000

to replace the windshield in a Fiat?

nope

I'm baffled

my guess is

probably has something to do

with

limited volumes of this car

in the US

they don't sell that many of them

they've got to report the windshields from Europe

and

there's probably

tariff costs associated with that now

so

that's nuts

but I think they're still making out on the deal

they've got, if you only paid $2,000

to repair the windshield

and you're paying nothing to have the car

to buy that over two years

your net is still pretty cool

you're still pretty good

you're still definitely coming out ahead

but if you have a 500e

if you get a stone chip in the windshield

get it repaired immediately

before it starts to spread

crack starts to spread across your windshield

just take it right away

and get it filled

because

you don't want to replace this windshield

especially if you didn't

get it for free for two years

I know if you didn't get it for free then you're just stuck

alright

last item for this week

is Stalantis

had a briefing call on Thursday

morning

to tell us about

a new battery design

that they came up with, new battery architecture

so typically

on EVs today

your

electric propulsion system

consists of your battery pack

your motors

a power electronics unit

which does the conversion back and forth

between the DC, the direct current of the battery

and the AC required for the motor

and then back

in the other direction when you're regenerating

to go from AC of the motor back to

DC for the battery

and then an onboard charger unit for

level 2 charging

which again takes your AC

converts it to DC for the battery

what the

team at Stalantis did

in partnership with

Total Energy

which owns SAFT, a battery manufacturer

as they came up

with what they're calling

IBIS

which is

uh

where is it now

integrated battery

intelligent battery integrated system

okay

and so what they

what they've done

is instead of having

a separate power electronics module

they have on each of the modules

of the battery

they've put a little

integrated a little inverter

right on the battery module

and you know

when you have the separate

power electronics unit

what happens is

when it's generating the sine wave

for the alternating current

you end up with a sine wave that looks

kind of jagged

it looks noisy

it's not a real smooth sine wave

and what happens from that

is that

you end up

it's less efficient

you lose efficiency from that

and

what they've done is

they've eliminated that power electronics module

they're doing the inversion

at each module

and they can control each module

independently

and then combine the outputs

of those

and because each module is

doing its own thing

they can actually

arrange it so that they're getting

a three phase AC output

from the full battery pack

instead of just a single phase

which overall makes the whole thing

the whole system more efficient

and each of

each of the modules is running at lower voltage

and it can generate a clean sine wave

a much cleaner sine wave

the bottom line

is that you end up

with about a 10% improvement in efficiency

you

have saved some volume

for packaging

the discrete power electronics module

they got about 15%

more range

out of it

they claimed to have reduced the cost

and also made it

safer

not just the upfront cost but also reducing

the total cost of ownership

because they can make the battery

pack last longer

because what happens

now is each module is controlled

individually each module is only

48 volts

whereas typical battery pack

for an EV is anywhere from

350 to 900 volts

and so when you're servicing

a battery pack a high voltage battery pack

you've got to have specialized equipment

specialized training and processes

to do any servicing on that

in this case

because each of the battery modules is only 48 volts

it's much easier

and safer to handle

so now if there's a problem

if there's a bad cell in there somewhere

they can go in and technicians

just at any dealer or service shop

can go in and pull out that one module

and plug in another one

and because they're all controlled individually

you can also

you can have modules

with different cells in them

different chemistries

so you can mix and match different chemistries

and balance it all out

through the

final control system

so it's a pretty slick

solution

they're hoping to have it in production

they did it first

on a stationary energy storage system

and now they have a prototype

running on

a Pujo E40-08

and they're

targeting getting this design

into production by the end of the decade

that's really cool

I love to see this sort of next gen stuff

coming up these things they start to

try to move EV technology forward

and improve on the things that were

that worked but weren't the best designs ever

you know it's neat to see

these kinds of evolutions happening

what do you think?

I think it's pretty clever

what will be

interesting to see

is

we're now starting to shift

towards structural battery packs

that don't have any modules

I asked them

if a solution like this

would be compatible with

a system like that and they said

they think they can make it work

with that type of architecture

because that's what's going to be

in the new, in the BMW

Neue-Class battery pack it's a structural battery pack

no modules

Ford's upcoming LFP battery packs

are structural like that

Tesla is doing it that way

a lot of Chinese are doing that

and so they say it should be compatible

with that

as well as working with things like LFP

or LMR

cells

so we'll see

it's

going to be interesting to watch

yeah I feel like

that EV technology needs to grow and change

so I think this is neat

like okay guys we can happen

alright I think that's all

we've got for this week

we do have one email that came in

from Andy from Melbourne

about the Tello truck

I'm going to save that one

for when Robbie's back because I think Robbie actually

has seen the Tello

so we will save that one

let's get Robbie's little opinion on that one

yeah

and he's definitely seen the slate

up close

I've seen the slate, that I have seen up close

but I think Robbie's the only one of us that's seen the Tello

so we will come back

to that one

in an upcoming show

yes

alright anything else

we didn't cover?

no that's it and I will see you not next week

but the week after I guess

yeah

and I'll be back next week with

a bunch of interviews

there we go

so stay tuned for that

bye everybody

10 Years After Dieselgate

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