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This is episode 429 of Wheel Bearings. I am

Sam Abul-Samet from Telemetry. I'm Roberto Baldwin from SAE Media, SAE International, man, well

both actually. I'm from SAE Media and SAE International. I'm from all the SAEs.

And I'm Stephanie Brinley from S&P Global Mobility.

And something else, just make up something now.

And Nicole I think is still in Europe, I mean a couple of days ago she sent some photos,

she texted us some photos of Mercedes, CLA, EV, partially camoed somewhere in Germany so.

Somewhere in Germany, you know I'll be somewhere in Germany tomorrow.

Oh yeah?

Oh.

Yeah and I'll probably be driving those cars.

I think that's all I can say.

I don't know.

Tell me when I get there.

It's on future date.

All right, well Steph, since you're our guest today, why don't you tell us what

you drove?

I drove the Corolla Cross Hybrid this week. And you know when I was driving it,

I, you know, from Michigan people, right, I drove up to Trankin with Thanksgiving.

And I love how small and compact and just easy to live with it is. I found,

I was a little bit surprised that the midrange power on the highway was better

than I expected it to be. I mean, it's, it's, you know, a little hybrid with not

a ton of power. So it's not a super fast vehicle, but it handled pretty well.

And I was enjoying it. I was like, OK, this is kind of neat.

It didn't feel like it was quite as noisy as a lot of Toyota hybrids tend to be.

And then let's double check the price on this thing.

Oh no.

Yeah. I'm like, OK, maybe not.

And then I'm so I'm trying to figure out how upset I am about the price right now.

It's it's 35,999 dollars

before the $1,450 destination fee.

So it's 37,449 dollars.

Now, just for kicks, I compared the non hybrid

to XLE, which is similarly equipped to the one that I have.

And it was thirty four thousand eight hundred and ten dollars

before the destination fee.

So your hybrid was also an XLE.

It was similar.

It's XSE. It was XSE for the hybrid.

But so there's similar content.

A little bit different.

Couldn't quite get it to be exactly the same when you go from hybrid to gas.

And and so there's still a I was looking to find the gap between the two

and there's still a pretty good gap between the hybrid and the non hybrid.

And that's that's where your that's where the extra.

Oh, geez, that was more expensive than I thought came from, I think,

is the gap between the hybrid and the non hybrid.

And overall, it's probably, you know, if you think about an average

price of, you know, forty eight or forty nine thousand dollars,

it's still well low average.

But it's it still felt like a little bit of a surprise.

I was I was thinking closer to thirty three.

You know, which is before there's any options on this one.

The base price is thirty three thousand dollars.

But then you throw a couple of options on to it and the destination fee.

And all of a sudden you're at thirty seven five.

A lot of money for something with that has a Corolla badge, but no GR badge.

Yeah, well.

But you look at the at the Corolla with the good badge on it.

And you're not at that price either.

Let's look at that.

Yeah, the GR is like upwards of forty now.

Yeah, but that's upwards of forty base.

Yeah. So you're going to hit forty seven

before you're easily easily.

So you can get a Corolla GR for, you know,

ten thousand dollars more than this one.

Yeah.

It's not exactly.

Well, it's it's funny, you know, when the prelude pricing came out,

they sent it along with like, oh, based on inflation,

it's actually less than like the 2002 prelude or whatever.

And so when you look at like, you know, we can say, oh, well,

based on inflation, this car is actually cheaper than, you know, a car.

But that's based on inflation.

We pay hasn't increased based on inflation.

There's the there's the big issue is that the amount of money we take home

hasn't kept track with inflation for a very long time.

So it just keeps getting everything gets getting more and more expensive.

Well, we're getting a bigger and bigger percentage of our paycheck.

Yeah, it's if there's a larger and larger gap every year.

So when you say, well, it's only, well, according to inflation,

this car was only like, you know, eighteen thousand dollars.

I'm like, yeah, but I make less than I would have in the 90s.

Well, and I saw that that Honda comparison and it was clever

because they compared to the last year of the prelude.

So yeah, you're randomly comparing to 2001.

Sure. Yeah.

But a lot, a lot has changed.

And I mean, you know, a vehicle for ability is going to be a problem all year

line. It's not going to get any better.

Same with everything else.

But well, and I think they with the the RAV4, when they announced

the RAV4 pricing a week or two ago, you know, I think they did something similar.

You know, they compared the price of the base RAV4.

What S E trim, I think is the base trim, you know, to and compared that

to the cheapest twenty twenty five RAV4 hybrid.

And that trim was slightly cheaper by, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars.

But you know, that doesn't take into account the fact that you can't get a gas

only RAV4 anymore. And there was a cheaper RAV4 gas last year that is now gone.

And if you and the same, you know, the same thing happened with the forerunner.

If you go past the that base trim to any of the other trims,

they're all all the other trims are more expensive than the equivalent

twenty twenty five models.

And it was the same thing with the forerunner and with the Tacoma,

you know, so they have they get a cheap baseline price that for a version

that almost nobody buys. Yeah.

And then everything else is more expensive and in some cases by a lot.

Yeah, it's just like the huge, huge leaps in any trim below.

You get like four wheels and like some vice grips for a steering wheel.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, pricing is still going to be pressured all year.

Yeah. Now that the tariffs have settled down to a degree.

We hope. I know for the moment.

All you can do is know.

Fingers crossed.

It's pretty preoccupied with going to war with a country that hasn't done anything

to us yet. Yeah.

So they're almost settled.

But that does mean that the automakers can get a better grip

on what their pricing needs to be.

For next year.

So, you know, we do expect to see more impact

and and we'll see exactly what that translates into.

But, you know, consumers, of course, are facing, you know, everything else

is more expensive as well.

And and we do didn't double check our forecast for 26,

but we do expect 26 to be lower sales than 25.

But the weird thing about all this pricing conversation that we have,

we talk about pricing a lot, talk about affordability a lot.

Somehow or another, consumers were resilient enough in 2025

that they're going to buy almost as well a little bit more,

a few more cars than they get in 2024.

And in 2024, we kind of thought affordability might be a bit of a problem.

We've been talking about this for years and consumers just keep buying cars.

It is crazy what people are paying for cars

and their loans and how much they're paying per month.

And I'm like, that's insane.

I mean, I feel like the cheapest person on my block.

Yeah. I mean, you know, we've talked about this on several occasions,

you know, where was it 20% of all car payments are now over $1,000 a month?

Oh, yeah. You know.

And, you know, so many people now have seven and eight year car loans.

It's just insane.

So much money.

Like who I it doesn't help that I live in the Bay Area.

So there's that. And then we bought a house in the Bay Area.

So that like, you know, we already have the squeeze of that.

But even here in Michigan, you know, it's it's still very expensive.

Yeah, it's a lot of money.

I'm lucky, you know, we haven't had a car payment in.

Seven years. Yeah.

About seven years now.

That's that last set of car payment.

You know, both of our cars are paid off.

So, you know, and that that's part of the reason why this year,

when we when we did decide to replace our old car,

we bought a used car for the first time in a long time.

I've never been paid.

Mine's paid off, but mine's old.

And that's one of the things I'm not, you know, am I going to buy a new car?

Is here. I don't know. It's crazy.

I might could happen.

But yeah, my my man has been paid off for a while.

And it is nice to go without a car payment.

And historically, when I bought a car, I've gotten it paid off

well before the loan term and and only had car payments for a couple of years.

But I don't know if that's possible

with the way that pricing is right now.

Yeah, that's yeah.

You know, average transaction prices, you know, topped 50,000

and was it September or October?

Yeah. Well, there were there were some other factors.

Yeah, yeah.

And it dipped back down again in October, slightly just below.

But I'm, you know, my guess is that, you know, for at least the next year or two,

you know, it's going to be hovering right around that $50,000 mark for for a while now.

I don't even know.

It's probably it's not, you know, it's probably going to just bounce up

and down just around that that mark, but, you know, not really drop significantly.

So in that context, you know, $36,000 for a Corolla Cross hybrid

is not as crazy as it sounds.

But yeah, it'll it'll feel like

when you think about the economics that we're like, OK, 36,000,

OK, three year loan, right?

How much down or anything in 10%?

Oh, my God, it's a lot of money for a Corolla.

It's the interest rates amount, too.

I mean, that doesn't help.

Yeah, that's that's a big part of what contributes

to those $1,000 a month payments is the the interest rates

on a lot of these loans because you end up, you know,

just paying an exorbitant amount.

Yeah, it's it's been it's been nice lately, you know, looking at my

my mortgage statement and seeing, you know, that we're

we're we're in the approaching the final years of our mortgage.

And so now the vast majority of my monthly mortgage payment

is going to principal and not interest.

That's nice. Yeah, we're only six we're only six years in.

So I'm I'm I just bought us and tried to set things up.

I should be paid off in a couple of years.

But I did that I did a big lump payment the summer.

And so I saw that same thing, Sam.

It was really nice.

Yeah, it's really nice to see that that drive.

If I can pay less interest, that's better.

Yeah, we we pay every two weeks.

So twice a year, we're just paying directly to interest

instead of once a month.

Look at that. Look at all the financial advice we're giving to people.

Right. Yeah. Save up all your money.

Just pay off your house and buy a used car.

That's our that's the wheelbarrow's motto.

Well, no, be careful of buying.

Well, you know, Sam, you were able to buy your used car

without a payment, but used car financing can be higher.

The new car financing.

That's true. Yeah.

Get a little bit there, too.

Yeah, you do end up typically paying more

in interest rates on used car loans

because generally you're not going to get your used car loan

through the captive finance company, the automaker, you know,

and they they usually give the best rates, you know.

So if you have to go through your bank or credit union

or have them forbid through the dealer, you know,

you're going to end up paying a lot more in interest rates.

So that that that's actually another major challenge with used cars.

There's a there's an NC Miata for ten thousand dollars near me.

So I'm just, you know,

if I do decide to sell, there's one of my driveway.

I don't know how to sell it for, but I don't know.

Probably can fly here and drive and drive it home.

Yeah, I only I only fit Nandy's.

You fit in the N.D., but you don't fit in the NC.

Nope, because of the way the the cross member is for the the the.

I'm not retractable. Does it stop the retractable top? Yeah.

I drove my friend in his N.A.

He messed up his his knee.

We were at Taekwondo tournament and he got kicked in the knee.

And so I had to drive him to the hospital in the snow in his N.A.

And I was driving like that at my head all cocked like 45 degree.

It was horrible.

I was like, man, this car sucks.

Well, and you're you're quite a bit taller than I am, Robbie.

You know, and the last time I drove a monster was at the the Mama Spring Rally

last in twenty three and twenty four at Road America.

And I went to take an N.D. out on the track.

And when you go on the track, you have to wear a helmet.

And it was kind of a rainy day.

So had the top up at the top close.

It was an RF, so it was the hard top had the top closed.

And with the helmet on, you know, I was like that, you know, my head cocked over

because that's me and I could not fit with a helmet on.

Like that's me in the Lamborghini in the the Huracan.

I was at Willow Springs and my head was caught at 45 degrees

with with trying to drive on Willow at Willow Springs in the Lamborghini.

It was like not great.

Never being a little shorter than you guys.

Yeah, see that's

everyone's like, oh, you're tall, you can reach things.

I'm like, yeah, but most like fun sports car.

Like I my friend had an S 2000.

I wanted one so bad and I went to get in it and I'm like, well, this will never work.

That is never going to be part of my life.

So I have a small sports cars.

Yeah. So I have the BRZ, BRZ, the the the Miata for tall people.

Yeah.

Anything else on the crawl across?

That that was about it.

I mean, really comfortable and comfortable for it's no segment and in what

and more pleasant to drive than I was sort of expecting.

And knacked around a little bit.

I again, I like things that are small like that

and and ease abilities, ease abuse of that space.

A little quieter than I thought it was going to be from the engine

the the road noise and the tires was pretty high.

Yeah, just radio up.

That's typical Toyota four cylinder.

Yeah, very typical of that.

And again, the pricing was a little bit higher than I was sort of thinking.

But as we've talked about, it's it's it makes a little bit more sense.

And still, 42 MPG is is pretty nice

and and a good viable option for for the entry space.

It just the entry space is not what it used to be.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, Robby, tell us about your adventure this week.

So I drove to Palm Springs and back, which is over 500 miles.

And we took the dogs and we, you know,

usually drive the dogs around in the Onyx five, but that's so much time in a car.

So what we do when we go on long trips with the dogs, we will rent a minivan

and then I have to spend like an entire day when we get back cleaning

the minivan because you're not supposed to put dogs in your rental minivan.

Um, that's it.

So you almost always get a Chrysler Pacifica.

I got to say, you see, in a hybrid once

and I was so excited because I got a great gas mileage.

But not this time.

I got the Chrysler Pacifica S, which is like, ooh, it felt fancy.

There was like, you know, USB ports in the back for the second row,

which didn't matter because all the seats were down

because there's a big dog bed in the back for the dogs.

Um, that's it.

I have never had a car that dropped carplay more than this.

Just non stuff.

They used to be driving.

Is it wired or wireless?

Either wired and wireless.

That's that's why I was like, oh, I'll just unplug it.

Maybe there's something going.

Nope, USB C, USB A.

It had both, by the way, which was nice.

But still either it just kept dropping carplay.

So I'm not a hundred percent sure it was the car or if it was my phone.

But my phone has not dropped carplay in my car at all.

The entire time I've been back because, you know, there was an update

for the iPhone and God knows what they're doing over in Apple anymore.

So that was kind of a pain in the butt.

I got about 22 miles, 22 and a half miles per gallon driving down there.

That's doing like 80, 85 again, speeding the speed limit 70.

So of course, I'm going to go faster than that

because I'm a horrible person on the freeway.

It was comfortable.

It was, yeah, it was a comfortable, it was a comfortable vehicle.

Sto and go still like, you know, double thumbs up for Sto and go

for a second and third row, tons of room for all the random stuff.

Like just, you know, stuff starts sliding because there's so much room.

You don't have anything to like buy.

So you have to very carefully put things in.

The dogs enjoyed it.

They like being able to stand up, walk around, come put their heads

between the two drivers, the two front seats, because they are also

driving as far as they're concerned.

That is the way it works with dogs and cars.

Yeah, yeah, the transmission, man.

It is that's the nine speed.

Yeah, it's not.

It's it's everything happens about three seconds.

Later. But again, it's a it's a minivan driving around town.

Transmissions like that in order to like redo, you know, get you some better fuel economy.

I think for most of your driving, you're going to be fine.

But it is, yeah, I didn't sit in the second or third row.

I did clean those rows, which was nice.

So well, at least you didn't have to actually clean those seats.

No, I didn't have to clean the seats.

So that was good.

Overall, it's, you know, if you're looking for a used minivan, this is probably

about a twenty, twenty three, twenty, twenty four.

It's only like it only had like 60,000 miles.

But those are 60,000 rental car miles.

Those are some hard miles.

Those are a guy throwing his German Shepherd and his tiny German Shepherd

in the back of car and blasting down Interstate five.

That said, yeah, give it give it a look.

You know, if you want to go up a little bit,

you're probably going to, you know, look at the Sienna or the Odyssey.

But you can't beat Sto and go, right?

Especially if you if you haul a lot.

And I when we moved, we had movers because we used to live

on the fourth floor of a walk up in San Francisco.

So after living there for over 10 years and just carrying things up,

we're like, we're not carrying all this down because now we're old.

We had movers move all this stuff, except, you know,

there's always that extra stuff.

And I didn't rent a minivan.

I didn't I'm sorry, I didn't rent the SUV.

I didn't rent a truck.

I rented a minivan to get all that extra stuff into the, you know,

to our new house.

And that's the the the brilliance of a minivan.

You have the little doors slight open as you're walking up as low load height.

There's tons.

There's so much room that you don't think about that you lose

when you have an SUV, you're sitting lower.

You feel, you know, it's just it's kind of a nicer driving experience

on the on the freeway, just cruising.

It's a better, you know, touring vehicle than an SUV.

I cannot say enough nice things about minivans.

And no matter how often I tell people, they're like, you know, man,

but then you see the people who have minivans and you're like, they get it.

They get I have a cousin who has kids and they had a minivan for years.

It wasn't an unfortunately, someone's T-boned it.

But I remember when I saw it, I'm like, you get it.

This is he's a Mercedes dealer.

Yeah, he works at a Mercedes Benz dealership.

And so he could have like gotten anything.

Nope, got the Honda Odyssey.

So, yeah, Chrysler Pacifica S.

The S stands for sure.

Why not pay the extra money?

You probably don't need that if you're if you're hauling kids.

It's a little bit it's it feels like it's a little bit geared towards.

Oh, you know, you're going to pick up some fancy people from the airport.

It's like get shorty.

You know, everyone's yeah.

Yeah, the one thing to remember is if you if you go with the plug-in

hybrid version of the Pacifica, you lose the stolen go for the second row seats

because the seats go is where the battery is.

And you can't take them out.

I when it first came out, I took them out.

It doesn't take too long, but now you got to store these seats somewhere.

And if you're going on a long trip, like, let's say we decided

while we were in Palm Springs, we decided to take a bunch of people

somewhere. If we had the hybrid, it wouldn't have made, you know,

sorry, three people could sit in the very back.

Also, what's really weird is sometimes I don't know why rental places

will buy plug-in hybrids.

There's absolutely no reason in the world to rent

anyone a plug-in hybrid because they're going somewhere.

Yeah, typically, and they don't have anywhere.

You know, they're going to a hotel.

Where are they going to plug in?

So I've had more than a few people who like will call me or text me

or rent to the car and they're like, I got this hybrid

and it's not even giving me any extra.

I'm like, does it have a plug?

You're like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, you got hosed.

It doesn't make any sense why they're passing out plug-in hybrids

for rental cars.

It's like you either get a gas car or an electric car or a hybrid.

Don't get a plug-in hybrid when you rent a car.

There's the unless you have somewhere to plug in at your destination.

Chances are it's not.

You know, a lot, you know, there's, you know, if you're staying in an Airbnb

or something like that, there's actually a reasonable chance

that you might have somewhere to plug it in.

And, you know, if you're going to rent it and then just, you know,

drive around town, you know, use it to get around town every day.

That's that's actually not a bad solution.

But like for what you were doing, you know, which is driving

from the Bay Area to Palm Springs.

Yeah, it would make no sense.

No, it makes no sense. Try to get the hybrid.

You're going to be happier overall.

Or to, you know, yeah.

In the middle of all this conversation, passenger vans this year through September.

They're all 37,000 registered give or take

January through September of 25 January through September of 24.

It was 268,000.

So it's a weird segment that's it's picking up this year.

Yeah, we finally have talked to everybody into the awesome

like every I think almost every automotive journalist is like,

you know, vans are pretty rad.

Yeah, maybe you should get a van or a wagon.

And people are like, if you if you've got young to, you know,

teenageish, you know, preteen kids.

A mini van sliding doors, low load height.

You know, so it's easy to get, you know, especially if you got younger kids,

you have to put them into booster seats and things like that.

You know, the kids can climb into the vehicle themselves

and then you lift them up into the booster and get them buckled in.

It's so much easier than doing the lift up into an SUV and trying to do this.

I try to explain the scenario with, you know, they're holding the child.

They're walking to the car.

You can either try to open the car, you open the door,

you're going to hit the car next to you.

You're trying to squeeze in there or you walk up.

You hit the button, the door slides open.

You have this giant opening to shove your child into the seats

and then just like, you know, if your kids are old enough that, you know,

when you do park the car and it's time to get out, you know,

and they're going to open the back doors themselves because they're crazy.

You know, they're not going to take that care not to ding the car next to it.

You know, so if you got sliders, perfect.

Boom. You're done. You're golden.

If you're a parent, do you like when you're when you're parking?

This is a question for parents with with like young, youngest kids who could open the door.

Do you when you're parking, if you see a car that's very expensive,

do you go and find another parking spot?

Or are you just like so tired all the time because you have children?

That you're just like, well, roll the dice, buddy.

Hey, don't hit that car. Clunk, whatever.

I don't. I mean, thinking back to when our kids were younger,

I don't think I specifically looked for

spaces away from more expensive cars, but just wider spaces.

You know, because a lot of times are, you know,

there's not a whole lot of room when you pull in.

And so finding a space that's got more room on the sides,

regardless of what's parked next to it, is definitely was definitely something we did.

Cool. Oh, I did the bill challenge.

I didn't pee for a really long time.

By the way, when we were talking, we were talking about pricing and stuff as well.

So see, I'm looking at numbers while we're talking here.

Yeah. Because why not?

And really, you know, it looks like from our data, about 49 percent

were in the 40 to $47,000 price range, give or take.

And 15 percent in the 46 to 50.

So 40, yeah, 40 to 46, 499.

And then 46, 500 to 49, 9, 9, 9, 9 is another 15 percent.

So it looks like most of these are really going in that,

in that 40 to 50 thousand dollar price range,

which is not that bad in the context of what we were talking about.

Look, roll across being at 37, including destination.

This would not include destination.

So 36, including destination.

You can you can step up a little bit more if you really need to get a minivan.

I'm looking at a youth price.

Increasingly hard to find, you know, a reasonably equipped three row SUV

for under 50 grand.

Right. And you fit in the back of a minivan.

Yeah. Like most three row SUVs, I get in the back and I'm like, well, I did it.

Can I go now?

It's like when someone gives you food that you know is not going to be great.

And you're like, well, I'll taste it.

That's a third row in most in most SUVs.

Like, well, I did the thing to say that I did it.

I'm never going to do this again.

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All right.

Well, I have

a Mercedes Benz, a Mercedes AMG G 63.

So the exact same kind of car that we had.

And, you know, I mean, this car,

you know, this this vehicle is

in principle, one of the most capable four wheel drive off-road vehicles in the world.

It's got three locking differentials, front, center and rear.

It's got a solid rear axle.

You know, so you get good articulation off road.

It's got all the all the good stuff that you want in an off road SUV.

And it's got twenty two inch wheels

low profile tires. Of course.

So this vehicle is never, ever, ever going to go off road.

Yeah.

How expensive is this one?

Oh, let's see.

The base price is one hundred and eighty six thousand one hundred dollars.

All in this one was two hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred dollars,

which you want to take a guess at the the destination charge.

Oh, it's three grand now, maybe.

Twelve hundred.

Ravi almost nailed it.

Eleven fifty. Yeah.

Oh, really?

Well, because that the you know, the the thing that we have come to realize here

on wheel bearings is that the domestic automakers,

they are hiding their price increases in in destination charges,

just cranking up the destination charges.

The Germans don't care.

Fine. We're going to raise the price.

We're just going to raise the sticker price.

You know, they're not going to screw around, you know, trying to hide it.

It's just there.

So one hundred and fifty bucks.

So the more expensive imports like this,

typically the destination charges, even if they're coming from Germany

or somewhere else, are relatively modest compared to, you know,

the twenty five hundred twenty six hundred dollars you'll pay now for

a full size pickup or SUV from Ford GM or Stalantis.

That makes sense. Yeah.

So the the AMG G 63

has the AMG four liter twin turbo V eight

with their forty eight volt mile hybrid system on it.

Five hundred and seventy seven horsepower, six hundred and twenty seven

pound feet of torque side exit exhaust.

So two exhaust pipes in front of each of the rear wheels.

You know, so this thing sounds fantastic when you fire it up.

And especially if you put it in sport plus mode,

it really sounds good when you when you step on the gas and you rev it.

You know, unlike, you know, an EV and this thing is, you know,

authentic rumbling thing, you know, got almost six hundred V eight horsepower

under the hood, you know, it's it sounds like fun.

But, you know, it's it's so weird, you know, looking down at the console,

seeing these switches for the three locking differentials and, you know,

all the other stuff, you know, that they all will the off road drive modes.

You know, there's a whole page you can flip the infotainment system to the to the

in fact, there's a dedicated button.

You don't even have to go searching through a menu.

There's a button that takes you to the off road interface

that shows you things like, you know, your roll and pitch angle, things like that.

So, you know, how far you're tilted up, you know, because you're never

nobody's ever, ever going to take this thing off road unless they buy one

that's like 25, 30 years old and they throw away those wheels and tires,

put a lift kit on it and put on some proper off road, all terrain tires.

You know, people get snow tires.

And this one is on so tires, they did put snows on it.

No, but you could get off spare off road tires, you know.

Yeah, you're going to 11000 dollars.

You could. You could.

But the people that are going to buy this thing, you know, people living in,

you know, Beverly Hills, you know, driving, you know, to the Gucci store

on Rodeo Drive, that's at the cars or that's the people's fault.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not blaming the car.

It is absolutely the fault of the people that are buying this this vehicle,

which, you know, is like I said, is has all these core capabilities

that make it great for, you know, going to Moab or, you know,

the Rubicon Trail, but, you know, then they put these ridiculous wheels

and tires on it that make it useless.

Yeah, you can.

I looked, you can get 20 inch tires for it.

Yes. It's 20 inch wheels.

The AMG G 63 does come standard with 20s.

OK, but they just gave you the 20 twos because.

Yeah, because that's what people are going to buy when they buy this thing

because they don't enjoy freedom.

When I was in Japan at the Tokyo Motor Show,

a few weeks ago, wherever that was.

And there were a ton of them.

8G classes all over the place.

It was it was kind of surprising how many there were in Tokyo.

Yeah, it was kind of a strange thing.

But I, you know, I probably would also be one of those people

that ever took it off road.

But, you know, guilty pleasure car.

Check, check, check. Oh, no, I I love.

I got the person

the head of this vehicle to admit that the EV version is the best one.

Yeah.

And so I had that I drove the EV one.

It comes standard. I kept taking it off road.

I'm like, yeah, it comes standard with these street tires.

You know, that that, you know, you don't want to take those things

on a trail where you're going to, you know, where the sharp rocks

are going to cut up those tires very easily. I do what I want.

But, you know, I mean, like there's some there's some really nice things

about this, you know, the seats, the front seats in this thing are great.

The back seats kind of tight, but, you know, for given the proportions,

you know, it's similar in size to, you know, a four door Wrangler or a Bronco.

And but the front seats, you know, you get these

front there's performance front seats, you know, heavy bolstering, you know.

So when you're cornering hard, you know, it's also got the the thing

that Mercedes does where it's it's got a dynamic mode for the seats.

So when you're cornering, you know, if you're turning to the right

you'll feel the left side bolster pushing you in trying to keep you in place

in front of the steering wheel. So, you know, those are cool little features

that the massage function in those seats works really nice to tip this thing

out for a drive for a couple of hours the other day before before the snow

started. And, you know, it was very, very pleasant to drive.

And, you know, again, because of the shape of this thing, you know,

it's it's a very upright vehicle. And it has, you know, it's there's a lot

of similarity in the design to it to a Jeep to a Wrangler.

You know, so the hood actually slopes down quite a bit.

It's got a very upright windshield, you know, almost flat windshield.

And so you have actually very good visibility in front of you and to the corners,

which if you were on a trail on an off road trail would be great

because you can see where you're maneuvering even without having to resort

to all the cameras and stuff. But again, on the tires that come from

the factory, the wheels and tires come from the factory, you know, you're

going to get about 20 feet on the trail if you're lucky. And that's about it.

He got about nine and a half inches of ground clearance on this thing,

which actually is better than the Jeep recon we talked about last week,

which is only 9.1 inches and different versions of that Jeep recon.

Take that Jeep recon.

Yeah, you know, various iterations of the the G wagon, you know,

depending on what configuration you get, some of them get up to 13 inches

of ground clearance, which is actually really good.

You know, it's the the MBUX infotainment system works quite well.

The voice control is good.

What else is on this thing? Oh, yeah, some of the the the options on there.

It had some of the manufacturer trim elements.

So you've got the there's a grab handle on the passenger side of the dash.

So when my wife was going to climb into this thing yesterday,

she saw the grab handle, you know, use that to pull herself up.

Because this thing is pretty tall.

And, you know, it had on the was this one, I think, Walnut, I think,

Walnut trim, yeah, so open pour Walnut trim on the dashboard and on

those grab handles, and it had the manufacturer script, you know,

spelled the German way with with a K and no E, you know, which

that's Mercedes personalization package, you know,

that they offer.

Oh, sorry, no, it's oak is natural grain oak wood trim,

which looks really nice in this thing.

You know, nice good sized cup holders.

So it fit my wife's big ass water bottle.

And so yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's it's surprisingly nice to drive.

It's very quick with almost 600 horsepower.

It's just it's this weird.

It's got this weird split personality.

You know, it's got all these capabilities that you can't actually

use just because of the wheels and tires they put on it.

There's a by spare wheels and tires put them on the garage.

Yeah, change that when you want to go off roading.

Yeah. I mean, if you're paying like a minimum

one hundred fifty five thousand dollars for 86 trims.

Well, for like if you get the cheap one.

Yeah, OK, get the cheap one.

Um, you know, you probably can afford an extra set of wheels.

I mean, you're not.

I mean, the people who are buying this car are not like I took the electric one.

I kept taking it off into the dirt and on a little trail and stuff.

And I was like, no one's ever.

This is in California.

This is like one of three of these that's doing this right now.

And California is the largest market for this vehicle because L.A.

And those things, every time I see one,

I cry a little little tear tear comes down.

It's like when I see a lower WRX or STI, I'm like, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

Stop it. Stop it.

It's the same thing with the G wagon.

I see a G wagon.

It's not and it's definitely never been off road.

Little tear.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm fully aware that, you know,

anybody who is going to spend 200, almost two hundred and twelve

thousand dollars on a vehicle like this can certainly afford to buy

an extra set of wheels and tires.

And they can also afford to have somebody that takes care of the

vehicles in their garage of multiple vehicles.

And, you know, when they, you know, just, you know, press a button on

their desk or, you know, somewhere in their smart, you know,

incredibly smart home, you know, it will send a message to that person

saying, hey, I plan to go off-roading this afternoon, you know,

put the off-road tires on the AMG G 63.

And, you know, it will just, it'll just magically happen.

They're not, you know, the people that own this type of vehicle are not,

you know, if they care at all about going off-roading, you know,

they will, they will have someone that they employ to take care of

this stuff for them.

They got a guy.

Or, you know, they may, they may actually just have two of them.

They may have one with the, with the summer performance tires

and then a second one with off-road tires.

There you go.

Spare G class.

That's our, that's what we've been missing.

That's the double, the one, the thing is, you know, if you are going to

go off-road with this thing, you know, it's not just the tires.

You do have to be careful with those exhaust tips because, you know,

those exhaust pipes come out the side, just in front of the rear wheels.

And, you know, depending on, you know, where the obstacles are,

it would be very easy to crush those.

And I'm sure that would not be an inexpensive repair to replace

those exhaust tips.

Yellow.

All right.

Let's see.

Let's move on to some other stuff.

So remember the Dodge Magnum?

The Dodge Magnum, the coolest thing Dodge has done in 100 years.

Yeah, I, I miss the Magnum.

I miss the Magnum.

It's a shame they didn't sell more of those.

Yes, it is.

Because, you know, I thought that was a really cool looking vehicle.

It was, you know, it was a really cool design for a wagon.

You know, you could get it with a with a Hemi.

And, you know, it was, you know, it had all of the the same driving

dynamics as a Challenger or Charger, you know, for for good or ill.

You know, which is actually surprisingly good, you know, given

the size and weight of the car.

But, you know, it only lasted a few years because, you know,

Americans, you know, don't like to have the right kinds of vehicles.

They don't, they don't like to have good things.

There are, there were a lot of Magnums in the Bay Area.

Like it was, there were, yeah, I think maybe we bought all of them.

I don't know what the deal is.

Well, probably the Bay Area and Detroit were probably the only.

Yeah, that's probably, probably.

Because they could probably throw their bikes in it or something.

Yeah.

Well, anyway.

Well, it was just such a cool looking car.

And so, unapologetically, American and in your face.

I loved it.

Yeah.

So somebody, somebody did a render, you know, probably AI generated,

but it might have been, it might have been done with Photoshop.

Taking the current Dodge Charger, in fact, the one that they used

as the base for this image was the Charger Daytona.

And they put an extended roofline on it to turn it into a modern day Magnum.

And this, and they also put, you know, as if the Charger Daytona is not wide enough.

They put the wide body wheel fliers on there from the last generation charger,

Challenger. And this thing looks really good.

I like it.

Listen, I've I've posted on the internet dozens of times,

bring back the Magnum, you cowards.

And so far they have not.

At least someone's not listening to you.

No one's listening.

No, they're definitely, the Dodge is definitely not listening to anything

I've ever said.

You know, they're, you know, they, they, they, they saw the lesson

of the Cadillac CTS-V wagon, you know, that, you know.

Okay, maybe I like that one better than the Magnum.

You know, journalists said, yes, give us this, this cool looking wagon

with a big supercharged V8 engine and a manual transmission.

And then nobody bought it.

I know one person did it.

I tried it.

I almost bought that one.

Oh, did you?

Honestly, I could never afford it.

Yeah.

I wanted that car.

Ray, Ray Ward's the only person I know who has one.

And he bought, he bought his used.

So.

So, yeah, sadly.

The one that I knew of was purple with the manual transmission.

Oh, that dark purple.

I don't remember the purple.

Oh, I'll have to look that up later.

But I'm sure somebody will build one of these for SEMA one of these days.

But, but probably not an electric one.

They'll probably build one with a, with a helicad in it.

SEMA, yeah.

Yeah.

So, so do either of you have any subscriptions that you pay for in your car?

My car?

Yeah.

Because you want to use your car to subscribe to stuff, right?

No, I don't.

I do not.

No, I don't even, I'm even off, off serious right now.

I was on serious, but I'm even now serious at the moment.

Well, the state of New York.

Or at least one state senator in New York is sponsoring a bill

that would sort of kind of ban subscriptions.

Sort of.

You know, the quote here from the Jalopnik article is the automakers

building a feature into a car for as long as cars have been invented.

You've never had to pay a subscription to access those features.

When asked if he sees this as the next wave of corporate nickel and

diming, turning safety into a luxury.

Sculphless didn't hesitate.

There's no question.

Um, so, you know, we've, you know, everybody is complained about, you

know, BMW's experiments with charging the subscription for heated seats

and heated steering wheels and things like that.

Um, and, you know, those went nowhere because the, you know, the

market said, yeah, no, we don't want this.

We're not going to pay for this, but, um, you know, manufacturers

continue to try to experiment with trying to find ways to extract

money from their customers in perpetuity.

Um, and, you know, some of those efforts are working better than others

like, you know, getting them to pay a subscription.

Um, for, at least for, for connectivity, um, and then to, you know, use

that, you know, as a way to charge the subscription for some of the more

advanced driver assist features like, like supercruise, uh, or Ford's Blue

Cruise.

Um, and so the, the bill that, uh, is being sponsored in New York

state, uh, targeted subscription fees for accessing hardware that's

already built into the car.

Uh, but there are, of course, um, uh, exceptions.

Uh, the provisions of this section shall not apply to navigation system

updates.

So, you know, okay.

So you're still going to have to pay for your nav updates infotainment

features, satellite radio, in-vehicle Wi-Fi, telematic services, roadside

assistance, a software dependent driver assistance or other driver

automation features or vehicle connected services.

So basically they won't be able to charge you for heated seats.

Everything else is pretty much fair game.

Yeah.

They, they want to charge.

All right.

You know, the trick is, you know, is, is finding enough for the consumer

to find value.

I mean, some of these things that are, that are, you know, being charged

for subscriptions, there, there are over the air updates.

The things do change.

We talk about supercruise and blue cruise and maps change.

The way that it interacts in the, in the HUD changes are in the, the

driver information system changes for you over time.

So if you've, if you've got something that gets better or does

offer something different, a subscription makes sense.

Yeah.

Because there's a cost associated with developing and testing

now and deploying there.

And so, you know, somebody's got to pay for that.

You know, they either build it into the price of the vehicle

up front, but that's problematic because, you know, again, it's

that affordability issue.

And also you don't necessarily know how much you're going to

spend on that, you know, the manufacturer doesn't necessarily

know how much it's going to cost over the vehicle's lifetime.

And, you know, so trying to figure out what is the right price

point, whereas, you know, a subscription actually does make

a lot of sense for a lot of those things.

Yeah.

I mean, and so I would say in some respects, you know,

proposing a bill that bans subscriptions to heated seats,

which the market already killed by itself, but makes everything

that makes sense to have a subscription free still available.

It seems like a real waste of legislative time, doesn't it?

Yeah, but it, you know, gives them something to campaign on.

You know, they can go out, you know, when next election saying,

look, I got this bill through the bans subscriptions in your car,

except for this stuff.

And to be honest, at some point, they're going to try to

slip some, the automakers are going to try to slip something

like those seats into cars.

Yeah.

And they're going to, yeah.

Well, that's the only way you're going to get there.

They're going to wait until there's a lot of bad news and then

slide it on out there.

Well, slide it out there and then people don't pay it.

It keeps, it keeps moving.

I think that there is, because subscriptions are something

that that the people can push back on just by not buying it.

But I think that it'll find something.

But it is also true that automakers about having the

hardest time really trying to find that balance.

There are more and more subscription fees that are

associated with these services and with the capabilities.

And the take rights have not been high quite enough.

And some of the targets of, you know, 25 billion dollars of

revenue in 2030 from subscription services feel really far away.

They feel like it's not going to happen in the same way.

So it's been a complete struggle.

And on the other side, you've got constant discussions

about how we need to move to a software-defined vehicle

and we need to do this.

Well, this is what happens.

You know, if you move to something that you're going

to continue in the update by software, you're going to have to pay for it.

And it's still a big balance.

It's still a big balancing act.

And I don't think, for the most part, the target isn't

necessarily just to find a way to randomly get more money from you.

It's still realizing you have to provide a value for that money.

And again, the BMW heated seat example is one consumers clearly said,

no, that's not acceptable.

We got so angry and it wasn't even here.

It was like in some like test market somewhere else.

We absolutely all lost our minds.

We're like, no.

Yeah.

Well, they did, they did try to briefly charge a subscription fee for carplay.

Oh yeah.

Remember the carplay thing?

They charge $80 a year to get access to carplay.

I remember every, every review I did of a BMW made fun of that.

And then it went away.

Uh-huh.

Because it's really good.

Especially since their connectivity, their connection wasn't that good.

It was one of them that I always dropped.

You're like, there's a cable and then it's like, mm-hmm.

So, you know, it's interesting to have a piece of legislation kind of

looking at that, but it's going to continue to evolve.

And the world that we live in now, this seems like the lowest hanging,

boring, what, what are you doing?

Come on, there's some other things, get to work.

Isn't there something that matters?

I know, there's some stuff that matters.

It can actually be useful.

There's some really important things that we do right now.

And, and if it's just in New York, does it matter anyway?

I mean, it is one of the top five markets in the US, but still.

Well, okay.

So if you don't want to pay subscriptions, um, how about if we charge,

uh, how about if we run ads in your car for you and use that to pay for yourself?

That is even more annoying.

What was going on?

Whose head, whose brain was like, you know what I think?

So, yeah, I mean, you know, for years, there's been discussion about, you know,

having, you know, part of why, you know, why automakers want the connectivity

in the vehicles is so they can run ads in there.

Uh, you know, that's, you know, also one of the reasons that people

talked about, you know, why, why did Google, you know, get into the

business of trying to build self-driving cars?

You know, well, Google's revenue, you know, 80% of Google,

85% of Google's revenue comes from advertising.

What can you do in a self-driving car when you're not driving?

Oh, you could look at ads.

So it can put ads in front of you.

Plus the data of where you're going, what you're doing, who you are.

Oh, this person loves barbecue.

Looking out, serve them ads everywhere on their computer,

their phone, their TV about barbecue.

Well, I haven't seen an ad in a Waymo yet.

But, uh, but Stalantis on the other hand, uh, has, has started

experimenting with ads is this first popped up a few weeks ago.

And we didn't talk about it then.

You know, Stalantis said, oh, no, sorry, that was a bug.

That shouldn't have happened.

Well, it's back again.

It's a bug.

Well, the first one was a bug.

The second one, they're like, now it's good.

Now we got it.

Yeah.

So apparently some, some Stalantis owners have been

seeing, you know, pop-up ads showing up on their

infotainment screen, but they're not even interesting ads.

You know, and there's certainly not ads that you

should be reading while you're driving.

You have this whole space, this giant, and there's like,

here's some text.

Yeah.

That you're going to like, click away from any way,

like when you get in your car and it's like,

lawyer, lawyer, lawyer, yeah, whatever.

Let me drive my car.

This is the same thing.

So it was like, A, it's a bad idea.

B, it was done just.

Execution was bad.

Yeah, the execution was bad.

See, the design was like, well, I don't know.

Well, and this one that Jalot meant posted,

right? This is just announced, $1,500 loyalty retail bonus cash.

So the ad is to buy another car.

Hey, do you own the car that you're driving?

Yeah.

And, you know, if you're driving around in a Stalantis product

and an ad like this shows up saying, hey, buy another

Stalantis product, are you going to think to yourself,

yeah, you know, I should go buy another Jeep or another Chrysler?

You're going to think, no, why?

If you're going to put ads up in there for me,

I'm going to go buy a Honda or a Toyota.

Literally anything that doesn't give me, serve me.

I don't understand that.

This is just indicative of Stalantis to be honest.

Yeah.

This is like their entire like marketing, like,

I'm surprised they didn't write the word Hemi in here, to be honest.

Right.

That sentence up to something.

And then just at the bottom, Hemi.

And the fact you have to call a phone number to opt out.

Yes.

Call this number to opt out.

Yeah.

You've been opted in.

The least they could do is make that, you know, a clickable button,

you know, so you don't have to, because as it is,

it's just a piece of text on the screen.

So you can't even just click on that number.

You actually have to find a phone.

There's a smarter way to do this.

So you're testing a bad idea and you're doing it with a really bad ad

that has multiple problems for somebody driving.

I feel like that's, I feel like somebody is putting this out as a test

who isn't necessarily keen on the idea.

So if you're not keen on the idea.

Maybe trying to sabotage it.

Do it really badly.

I feel it's just bad at their jobs, to be honest.

This isn't like, oh, I gotta, I'm gonna mess this up.

No, you're just, just top to bottom.

This was a bad idea.

No one said no.

There was like an intern in the media who was taking notes.

You're like, this seems like a bad idea,

but no one's gonna listen to that person.

Or you go, oh no, no, everyone's like, this will be great.

People will love this.

They'll be able to buy another Jeep or Ram with $1,500 loyalty,

which they'll almost pay for the, the destination fee.

And you have to call somebody to opt out.

Yay.

You know, see, apparently I keep getting told that I'm the

only person in the world listening to Pandora stuff,

but I do.

And I don't have the subscription.

And ads pop up when I'm listening to Pandora all the time.

I accept that.

If I'm paying for connectivity on a vehicle

and ads are popping up because I'm paying for connected

on a vehicle, that's a little bit different

because I've paid for something.

I mean.

It's like when Amazon started putting ads on Amazon Prime video.

Yeah.

And then they, you know, this is, you know,

a service we've had for years, you know, we're,

okay, got to watch commercial free shows and movies.

And now all of a sudden, oh, we're going to start

running these ads and running a really high ad load

on all these shows.

The same poor annoying ads.

Yes.

That Adobe creator ad.

Yeah.

And if you don't like this, well, you can just pay us

an extra $3 a month on top of your Prime subscription.

It's like, which no, that's a, so that's a weird thing

is that like when Hulu had to me, you could write,

you could subscribe to Hulu with ads and then Hulu with

ad ads and the same thing with Paramount Plus.

And so I just paid the extra money for Paramount Plus

because I was trying to watch all the Star Trek's

in order and I got tired of ads.

But I knew what I was getting into.

Like the, the, the Amazon thing, you were like,

pay us $3 more.

Like, no, no, bad Amazon.

And you like, you like pop them on the nose

with like a newspaper.

You're like, you know, you, you offered something

and then you took it away and then you want $3.

No, no.

I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever more.

I paid a Paramount Plus or the $10, I paid more to Hulu

when I upgraded that.

But for some reason, the idea was like,

now we're just going to put them in there

and it's going to be the same four ads over and over and over.

So clearly the ad sales aren't even growing that well.

You know, because.

No, actually, I think like for the streaming services,

the ones that have ads, and this is part of the reason

why they have like Netflix has continued to raise the price

of their ad free subscriptions because they are actually

making more money even at a lower subscription fee.

They're making more money from the ads than they,

you know, more margin per, per customer than they are

from the ad free versions of it.

Which is why like the cheapest ad free Netflix

subscription is now like, you know, $23 or $24 a month.

Yeah, it's insane.

No wonder I don't have Netflix.

Yeah.

But I mean, those ad sales, I mean, those are super, you know,

they have far more targeted data than you would sell on,

say TV, which is, you know, how we ended up with,

you know, the issues within publishing, you know, on,

you know, websites don't have the, you know, the,

the hover time.

You're not staying on that site as much as Google or Facebook.

And so they have, they get way better data

from Facebook and Google.

So the ads, you know, what they're going to sell

for inventory for, for publications is way low

compared to those other things.

And so now we can't afford journalists.

Yeah.

Crazy that.

Speaking of ads too on Pandora, like the,

I keep getting Nissan ads and, and my Pandora advertising thing.

And I've been really honestly kind of,

kind of impressed by the ads.

They're so product focused.

I don't know if you guys like, there's, there's one about,

it's Nissan Rolf or Frontier depending on, you know,

which date it is, but still the generic, you know,

you don't know the, you don't, you don't know the engineer

that did all of that leather testing.

You didn't, or the engineer that closed the door 13,000

times to make sure that it's good.

And I'm thinking, no, that wasn't an engineer with a

good number, but that's a point.

Look, I think I do know, you know who I am.

This is some bad ads.

That was, that was an intern.

That did that.

Still, like they, so they talk about some of the,

some of the, the testing that gets done.

And then they're like, yeah, we do all this.

So the vehicle that you have is, you know, it can go off

or everything it can do everything you want.

We've got a JV Power Award and blah, blah, blah.

And there's one for, you know, Pathfinder Rock Creek

Edition that really talks about kind of where you

want to go, where you want to take the car.

But they draw through some really great product

connections and it's not about the monthly price

and it's not, it really, I was having a little

bit impressed by the way those ads are.

I'm like, if you're listening to this,

if you're not really paying that much attention,

we're in the middle of this all the time.

If you're just a buyer who's thinking, maybe it's

time to get in your car.

I think it's a ad that actually tells you

something about the car and gives you a reason.

It connects the Rock Creek ads connect with

the lifestyle and they do it all, all

virtually because you're listening to

Pandora and then, you know, watching

something.

So I, the ads have been pretty good.

So you're saying that Stellantis needs to hire

the ad ad you can see that Nissan GC.

Right, yeah, maybe.

Or still, this is not a pop-up on my car.

It's still not good with the pop-ups.

Hey, you like going off-road?

Get a Jeep.

I mean, it seems like, they're just like,

hey, I just wanted some of these brands.

Yeah, you get some extra money.

Yeah, kind of crazy, but we'll see.

All right, well, let's stick with

Stellantis for a minute.

The Fiat 500, when, when they launched the

current generation of the 500, initially

it was only available as an EV, even

though the platform it's on is a, is a

multi-energy platform.

So, you know, they can do gas and

hybrids stuff on it, but they only

launched an EV version.

And here in the US, we still only get

the EV, but in Europe, they have just

launched a new version with a gas engine.

It is a one-liter, three-cylinder engine

with 65 horsepower.

And let's see, it does zero to 60 in 16 seconds.

And Jason Torchinski loves the idea

at the Atopian.

He thinks it's fast enough.

And, you know, generally I would agree

that, you know, most modern cars have

arguably gotten too fast.

You know, we don't need pickup trucks and

SUVs that go from zero to 60 in three

seconds.

But I don't know, do you think 16

seconds, zero to 60 is sufficient?

What was the old Fiat 500 specs?

Nine or ten seconds.

Well, you know, if you're talking

like old school, like not modern.

No, no, no, not the modern, the old modern one.

I'm not talking about something that takes

three days to get to.

I don't think it was quite that slow,

at least not the versions here in the US.

Yeah, because here, you know, they sold it

with, I think a 1.3 or 1.4-liter

turbo four-cylinder.

And yeah, it was probably in that 10-second range.

Well, let's find out.

Because we have a 500.

It was fine.

Yeah, at least for an urban commuter vehicle,

you know, it probably actually is enough.

Yeah, because you're never going to be

going 60 miles an hour at it.

And the reason I said not the US is

because the US doesn't have any very

many city markets that are really just

urban city vehicles.

We just don't have enough.

Manhattan, you know, average speed in

Manhattan is about eight miles an hour, so.

Sure, it is.

But I don't see a lot of Manhattanites

deciding that they want a fiat 500.

Yeah, it's logical there.

My friends in the city just bought a fiat 500,

a used one.

Oh, yeah?

In San Francisco, not in Manhattan, sorry.

So we had a fiat 500.

We leased a fiat 500 when the WRX,

when the motor exploded.

I mean, Jason does give the example here

of a 74 AMC Gremlin, which took 17.7 seconds.

And I remember when I, like back in like 2008 or 2009,

I drove a smart, a European spec,

smart 4-2 diesel.

And I did a 0-60 run in that.

It took 19 seconds.

I mean, you know, that, and I actually did

try driving that thing on the highway.

And it was terrifying.

So what happens, it's like I'm, you know,

getting up to speed is that this is an issue

that I have with the Vespa.

If I, because the Vespa will do 80 miles an hour.

12, small 12, 12 inch tires, you know.

I'm a bad man, according to motorcyclists.

And so yes, it'll get up to that speed.

You can get up to, you know, and it's also a motorcycle.

But at a certain point, there are situations where you have to break

or you have to accelerate to get out of them.

And that reduces one of those,

that reduces one of those options.

Because if you can't accelerate,

if sometimes you have to accelerate out of a situation

and if you really can't, that's where, you know, I'm like,

well, it's going to take this long.

I mean, I get behind people in cars

that are just never good to,

they take like a good 45 seconds to get to speed.

Not because the car can't do it.

That's just how they drive on the freeway.

And I live next to a freeway.

So there's that.

But I think there's, yeah, I think it's around town, cool.

I mean, even in LA, this would be fine, to be honest.

Because most of the time, you're not going that fast

in the freeway because you're stuck in traffic.

But if you're in the middle of like,

you know, a very car-centric, highway-centric,

like mid-size city, like let's say Bakersfield,

then this is going to be a little bit tough to get up.

The speed and, yeah.

I'm sad.

I wish the EV version had been, I don't know, $6,000 cheaper.

I really liked that little car.

I think it was great for around town.

But it was just like, here's the car.

Oh, cool.

It's 34.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I can get a proper, like, I'll make it, like, on one hand,

I'm like, oh, this is a fun little car.

It's got a small little battery.

You can charge it really quickly.

It's fun to drive around.

But on the other hand, like the logic of like,

well, that's so much money.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, $34,000, $35,000 for the 500E was just,

it was too much given, you know, what you got.

Yeah, so.

On the flip side of this conversation,

I think 0 to 16 seconds to 0 to 60 is too slow for the U.S.,

I think.

That doesn't mean you can't find specific use cases here and there.

Oh, no.

This is like four places in the U.S. it's fine.

Yeah, and the rest of it, it's not really fun.

Not so much.

But here, you know, not talking about EVs and the acceleration

that they have right now, how many people on the U.S.

really understand how fast their EVs can go from 0 to 60

and how many accidents are we going to end up having

from people who just don't quite realize how fast this car is.

To your point, Sam, not everything needs to go

to 60 miles an hour in three or four seconds.

That's not necessary either.

It's going to be interesting and I'm like driving around 75

and I feel like it just gets to be 85 in an EV.

Just you don't even notice.

Like you sneeze.

You're like, oh, I'm doing 90.

Yeah.

And it's going to be interesting kind of watching drivers

figure out really how to work with that

and see how many speeding tickets happen,

see what we really do when we get more and more EVs on the road.

Yeah.

I mean, we talked about this last week, I think.

You guys weren't here, but new regulations in China

that would mandate that the default mode,

whenever you start the vehicle,

the vehicle couldn't accelerate to 60 in less than five seconds.

You could have a performance mode where it would go faster than that.

But by default, every time you start the car,

it has to be limited to no more than five seconds, 0 to 60.

Which I think that's fair.

I think that's reasonable.

Even that is arguably too quick for a lot of people,

especially in conditions like we have today here in Michigan.

I think that's too fast for most people to handle safely.

But I agree.

I think here in the US, for most US driving conditions,

there's exceptions like driving on the 405,

driving in Manhattan where you're not really going anywhere.

But other than that, 16, 17 seconds is probably a bit too slow for most people.

Oh, no, it's incredible.

It took me a couple of minutes to look this up while we were talking,

but the Fiat 500.

Going to make it.

All right, we're going to get there.

With the 1.4 liter, it was 10.5 seconds.

Okay.

And then it was 12 seconds.

Yeah, see, that was perfectly reasonable.

That is an absolutely reasonable 0 to 60 time.

The abarth was seven seconds.

So 10 seconds, I think you might be able to work with.

You know, it still feels pretty slow, right?

We drove it on the freeway all the time, no big deal.

It only feels slow because we've gotten used to cars that are so absurdly fast.

It's actually a very reasonable acceleration rate for most people.

It's just those on-ramps that get to be,

short on-ramps get to be uncomfortable when you've got 10 seconds.

Hey, you get a convertible.

Hold on, 17.3.

I think I can live with that.

Where are you going?

I'm going to, it's like whenever you see someone driving a VW,

like a Beetle, like an old Beetle around, you know, like a Super Beetle or before that.

And you're like, okay, everyone expects that guys, you know, or that gal.

It's going to be a while.

They're going to do 60, 45 minutes or so.

But I don't, yeah, when you, when, if you're stuck behind this car, you're, you know,

and there are some big, there are some jerks and some big cars, I can tell you that.

I think this is, it's fine for a very small portion of America and totally not fine for a

very large portion of America.

There we go.

That's my, that's my take.

And Jason does live in Southern California now.

So, you know, he knows what it's like to drive on the 405.

So that's probably why he takes it.

And Jason just likes to poke people.

So, yeah, I mean, Jason's also into very weird cars.

So, yeah.

Did St. Eastern power, didn't he?

No, did he have a pal?

Yeah, I think he did have a pal.

And he had this weird little Chinese EV called a candy.

Oh, they built at home or something?

No, he didn't have to build it at home.

But it was like, I think it was like what, a thousand, maybe $2,000.

You know, it's not really street legal.

They actually sell though, not that particular one that he has, but they

Lowe's sells, you know, candy, electric,

you know, kind of off-road vehicles, utility vehicles for like farms and stuff.

They sell them there.

Side-by-sides?

Yeah, they're kind of like side-by-sides, but not, not as off-road capable as,

you know, like a, you know, the, you know, the Honda.

No one's throwing up the horns in a, in a.

No.

They're like, go ahead and play.

All right.

So one of our.

16, what if you have two friends in there?

That goes down to like 25 seconds.

Yeah.

Everybody put your foot out.

We're going to change the size.

It's not going to make much difference.

Yeah, Jason's, Jason's not, yeah, he's not me.

He's not tall.

Jason's great.

I love Jason.

So, you know, and another thing I'm sure that we all love is U.S. car dealers, right?

The best.

Well, okay.

So I know I talk a lot about U.S. car, but the car dealer that I go to,

they're actually, especially the service center, service center,

outstanding, wonderful, nice people, and the dealership when I,

but I'm going to caveat this is that when we walked in,

my wife's like, he writes about cars.

He's been on car and driver.

He's been on auto.

And then that, like she just walks in like that.

See that guy?

Don't mess with him.

Don't mess with me.

So I think that, I don't think that means that everyone else is Kevin

at a great time like I am.

Yeah.

So one of our favorite topics over the last several years was,

you know, especially when there was a shortage of supply of new vehicles available to buy,

was dealers taking that opportunity to, you know, use the law of supply and demand

to their advantage, to their financial advantage, particularly,

you know, the lack of supply and high demand.

And apparently some dealers are starting to do that now with the New Honda Prelude.

There's at least one dealer somewhere that, you know, I mean, the Prelude is not

inexpensive to begin with.

It's $43,000, including delivery 43 and change, including delivery.

And this dealer is adding almost $20,000 to that.

$62,000, almost just shy of $62,000.

And then people are like, wow, every, every time a dealer gets angry that someone wants,

someone's like, well, why can't we just buy it directly from the automaker,

like Tesla, Ravian, et cetera.

And they're like, no, you can't do that.

I'm like, because our state legislatures are owned and operated by the car dealers.

Yeah, they got a pretty strong lobbying arm.

Yeah, there's other things involved.

So you asked about that, or we talked in the rundown that we were going to talk about this.

I was trying to find, we have what we call a retail advertised index.

And so far, we don't really see them out there.

So I'm trying to figure out if this is, how much of a one-off this is.

When clearly there's photos of the window sticker and all of that.

But are there enough to know that how many dealers are really going to try and push this?

I think $63,000 round of Braille, it is a little bit crazy.

Well, it's like the $13,000 markup for the BRZ when it first came out.

It's a $30,000 car and you're making it $43,000.

And we saw that my friend was at a super dealership in the peninsula in the Bay Area.

And he's like taking pictures and send me that.

I'm like, what are you doing?

Stop.

But someone's going to pay for it.

That's the thing, they're going to find one person who's going to be like,

I got to have this car now.

But I don't mind paying all this money.

This is what drives me crazy about affordability problems.

We keep talking about affordability problems and then people spend $53,000 on a prelude.

That's supposed to be $42,000.

To be fair, given the number of preludes that are expected to be sold,

this is probably not going to have a huge impact on the average.

But still, it sucks to see dealers taking advantage of people like this.

Like this one particular window sticker that somebody posted here

includes $1995 for paint and fabric five-year protection.

Another $1995 for the protection package, which is a set of wheel locks,

splash guards, and a cargo tray.

You can go to AutoZone and buy a set of wheel locks for 20 bucks.

Go to WeatherTech and get a nice real quality leather.

Yeah, for a couple of hundred dollars.

The Cardock Connect, who knows what that even is,

six-year service plan, $1,700.

The clear shield package protects door edges from dings and chips

and protects door handles from scratches, $795.

The little plastic strip they put on the door.

$199 for nitrogen-filled tires.

Do not waste your money on nitrogen in your tires.

It's not a real thing.

Well, it's a real thing if you are running a Formula One race car.

So it's not a real thing.

Or you want to get high for your tires.

The rolling diameter of your tire is crucial

and you don't want it to change as the tire heats up.

For everybody else, don't waste money on nitrogen for your tires.

Because when you put air in your tires,

80% of that is already nitrogen to begin with.

Because the atmosphere that we breathe is 80% nitrogen.

Like crazy pills.

$400 for all-weather floor mats.

Again, you could go buy a set of really nice

weather tech floor mats for about that same amount of money.

And they will actually probably be really good ones,

as opposed to probably the garbage that this dealer is putting in.

They're probably buying some for $20 from the local car parts store.

$400 for a bumper shield, protects rear bumper from scratches.

And $395 for infotainment shield,

protects the infotainment screen from smudges and scratches.

Again, you could go to Best Buy and buy a $5 screen protector

and put it on if you must.

And then a $10,000 just general added markup on top of all that.

I saw a Prelude on a car carrier drive down the Palm Springs.

So that was the first time I've seen one in the wild.

I saw a carrier with three of the new postal delivery vehicles the other day.

Oh, that's way cooler than the Prelude.

Yeah, sorry.

I love the Prelude, but yeah.

I mean, the postal carriers are dope.

Yeah.

Oh, we should have talked about the John Drove one.

Like a production.

John, it's on car and driver.

There's too many people named John.

I can't remember everyone's last name.

Yeah, real quick.

That's a long list of silly add-ons.

Yeah.

And they've already done it.

So it's hard to get out of it.

John Volcker.

It's really easy.

You just don't buy it.

Volcker drove the postal vehicle?

Yeah, I'm so jealous of him.

I will have to contact my friends at Oshkosh and see if I can get a drive.

But gosh.

Sorry, I can't.

I remember seeing at some auto show, I don't remember because our brains are much

because everything just gets slammed together.

But yeah, John got to drive it.

And I'm just like, man.

So the folks at Edmunds have been doing some research on car prices as well.

But this particular report was on used car prices.

And they found that the average transaction price for three-year-old used vehicles

reached $31,067 in Q3 of this year, which is up 5%.

But what was interesting about this was the turn times.

The time it takes to sell the cars.

The average overall was 41 days, which was up from 37 days in 2024 in the same quarter.

But the average turnover rate for EVs, for used EVs, actually went down.

It was only 34 days.

And I think as the tax incentives for EVs have gone away, apart from some state incentives,

I think this is an area where a lot of people that are interested in buying an EV

are increasingly going to start looking.

Because one of the downsides of EVs is they've had very high depreciation,

which depending, if you're selling, that's a downside.

If you're buying, it's an upside.

It's radical.

That's why we bought a used EV6, because you can get it for half the original price

on a two-year-old car with 13,000 miles on it.

This is an interesting trend and it's going to be interesting to watch over the next year or so

how this evolves, whether we continue to see faster sales of used EVs and of course the prices

on those used EVs, as the turnover increases and the demand for the used ones goes up,

we'll probably start to see those prices creeping up.

But I think there's still a really good deal right now.

Yeah, we're seeing more of the less, for years it was a lot of

compliance vehicles that were in the used market, but now you're seeing the dedicated EVs and people

who are like, well, I can't afford a new EV, even with the tax credit or whatever.

But I can't afford a used EV, especially when they're stupid cheap because Tesla keeps

fluctuating the price and there's a bunch of other reasons why EVs are less expensive.

It's pretty great. I mean, you can just look at Sam's buying his EV6 for like a nickel.

When we turn it around like five, when we turn it around like five, I'm like, well,

the payoff on the aesthetic five is higher because we have a lease, then we could just

buy a used one. It's like $10,000 less expensive than what the payoff is on the

Scionic five. So we'll just do that. And maybe we can get a color besides white.

And that higher price, that higher payoff kept your lease price lower. But I think that there's

a couple of things I think that it does fully support that there's, well, EV sales have been

struggling a little bit. There is interest and the more people that are exposed to them,

the more curiosity there is, the more understanding of it is and the more experience

keeps coming up. So we're still in that direction. EVs are expensive because they're expensive to

build, expensive to produce, because all the parts in them are expensive, at least the battery,

because the battery is really expensive. So they're not, I mean, we still have automakers

losing money on them, they're not overpriced from that manufacturing perspective,

but they're more than what consumers are willing to pay. But I think the increase

and the interest in used EVs does reflect that if you can get it to a price that consumers

see value and they're going to try it more rapidly than they are right now, the question is,

how do you do that? And how quickly can we get better? It's lost down, Sam. This has been

a first thing that we're talking about for years. And it has gotten better, but it's not better

enough. Yeah. And, you know, there's going to be a lot more progress on that in the next

two, three years. You know, as we start to get domestic production of LFP batteries ramping up,

also, you know, bringing LMR batteries, the lithium, the manganese rich cells to market,

that's going to help. That's going to be a significant help in allowing manufacturers to

build these vehicles profitably at a lower, a significantly lower price point.

You know, but, you know, there's, you know, even right now, you know, there's still some

great deals out there on used EVs, you know, like I just pulled up AutoTrader.

You know, here's a used 2023 EV6, 15,000 miles on it, 19,500 dollars.

What? I think this one might be the base model with the shorter range, though.

Cheers. Was it a 230, 250? Yeah. But, you know, there's one, there's one pretty much like.

Stephanie's going to buy that car. You guys sent her the link. Hold on.

There's one pretty much like the one that we just bought, you know, an all-wheel drive.

You know, I paid 27 for it with 13,500 miles on it. This one's got 15,000 miles. It's

$29,000. You know, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of them here for between $20,000

and $30,000. You know, for, you know, one to two-year-old EV6.

And, you know, Ionic Fives are similarly priced. Because they have a two-year,

because Hyundai does two-year, the Hyundai Motor Group does two-year leases.

Like our group car is a two-year lease. The previous was three years.

So, you know, you're getting these, you know, two-year-old cars for like almost half.

With a huge discount. 40-something percent off. And it's still an 800-volt vehicle.

It's still, you know, that means the charge is quicker. Even if it has lower range than

something that's new, you're going to probably charge quicker than most of the new cars.

Interesting. I pulled up Carvama because we're doing this, right? And they're,

I'm just scrolling through quickly. We've got one, two, three, four EV

Nero's and EV6's with price drops. So, a 2022 light, you know, was $22,990. Now it's $22,590.

You know, another one with 93,000 miles was $18,990. And now it's $18,590. So,

it's kind of interesting in this conversation to see that there's a bunch of price drops on these.

By the end of this episode, we're all going to buy new cars.

What'd you guys do? We all bought new EVs or used EVs. Why? Because they were so stupid cheap.

Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, you know, the thing to keep in mind, you know, if you're buying,

you know, two or even a three-year-old EV like this, you know, these things have

10-year, 100,000 mile warranties on the batteries. You know, and one of the key,

one of the people, one of the reasons people give for not wanting to buy used EVs is not

knowing what the battery condition is. Well, if you've got seven, eight years of warranty on the

battery, what are you worried about? Just, just go for it. You know, and, and Hyundai and Kia have

five years and I think 60,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty on these things. You know, so,

you know, in our case, you know, we bought a two-year-old car, you know, had three years

and 40,000, over 40,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper warranty, eight years and 80,000 miles of battery

warranty on it. And it's, we're loving it. It's doing great. So, you know, I think now, you know,

if you have any interest in an EV, you know, in buying an EV and you looked at the prices of new

ones, you know, there's certainly more affordable new ones coming to market now, the new Nissan

Leaf, the new Bolt coming first of the year. And, and there's going to be other stuff, you know,

and even some of the others, you know, have had price drops like the Ioniq 5, you know, is down to,

starts at 35,000 now. But, you know, these used, these used ones are, you know, still

some screaming deals on them. And I'm not surprised that, you know, in a lot of cases, I don't

know about what's going on at Carvana, but certainly a lot of other dealers are turning

them around a lot faster. I can get an Ioniq 5 for 35 or 25. That's an SE. Let's see. But here's

an SE with green. That's green. Oh, here's the SEL. That's what we have right now. It's black.

It's 25, which is $10,000 less than the payoff when we turn in our, our, our vehicle. So,

it's just like, so what are you going to do? I'm like, well, what do you got on the lot

that's used that's $10,000 cheaper than what you're trying to sell me this car for?

As long as we're talking about Kia EVs, the EV5 Weekender, last year Kia that's at SEMA showed

the PV5, which is their van, their electric van, in Weekender form, which was, you know,

an off-road, you know, lifted off-road kind of overlanding version of it. And at the Guangzhou

Motor Show in China, Kia showed off a concept version of the EV5, which is their mid-sized

electric crossover. It's, you know, it's about the same size as a Sportage or Hyundai Tucson or RAV4.

And it's, you know, it's an off-road version, you know, kind of like a more, more, you know,

more than what you get with something like the Ioniq 5XRT. You know, this thing is lifted,

it's on big all-terrain tires, it's got all kinds of gear. This thing looks pretty cool for, you know,

for an off-road crossover. But no plans to sell the EV5 in North America.

In the North America, yeah.

It's Asia only right now.

Oh, boo! I guess it's Asia.

It's kind of like a scaled-down version of the EV9.

Yeah.

You know, it's in Canada, and I'll double-tuck that.

It's Canada. We're all moving to Canada.

There you go.

Yeah.

That is Canada.

Do they sell the EV5 in Canada?

Double-tucking, but I thought so.

And it's got recovery hooks on it, too.

So, you know, it's a real off-roader.

Yes. Yes, Kia EV5 is going to be sold in Canada in 2026.

Oh, excellent.

This is from going to the Toronto Motor Show last year.

Ah, okay.

So, just go over the bridge to Windsor and buy one there and bring it back.

As soon as I get over the whole home-allegation stuff, because I still think you have to,

maybe you can.

How hard is it to import a Canadian spec car to the U.S.?

A Canadian spec is usually pretty much the same as U.S. spec, but not always.

Not always.

Most stuff sold in Canada is built to the same spec other than having this

pedometer set in kilometers per hour instead of miles per hour.

Yeah.

But sometimes they sell stuff there that does not meet U.S. spec, so.

There's a, we looked up.

You could just move to Canada.

Yeah, you could just move to Canada.

You know, not the worst idea in the world.

My brother and I looked up cars, like bringing cars over from Mexico,

and when you bring the car over, you essentially have to be the owner of the car,

and you have to have an address in Mexico in order to bring it into the United States,

which isn't that, I mean, it's not difficult for me and my brother,

because we have family in Mexico, we have homes and so on.

I mean, we could just buy a house in Mexico so we can get a Jimny.

There you go.

And then you're like, you know, you just have to make sure that your local police

department doesn't give a, you know, and give it care.

The only problem is, you know, right now, you know, if you did that and brought it over,

you'd be driving it around on Mexican plates, right?

Yes.

And so that would potentially make you a target for certain federal agencies.

Yeah, so, but they can pull me over and I can be like, oh shoot, just a white guy.

I'm like, wait, wait, wait, what about this Roberto?

I'm like, well, what about it?

What do you want from me?

Last name is Baldwin.

That doesn't sound Mexican, does it?

Come on, I'm a habsi.

See, what else?

Oh, Euro NCAP.

So Euro NCAP is the new car assessment program in Europe.

You know, it's kind of similar to the NCAP program here where they, you know, do

safety evaluations of new cars and give it a rating out of five stars.

And like most of these programs, you know, the IHS is top safety pick and NCAP and others.

From time to time, they raise the standards for what it takes to get a five star rating.

Because, you know, once, once everybody starts getting four or five stars,

you know, they, they make it tougher to earn those top ratings, you know,

because they want to keep moving safety forward.

So for 2026, they're updating the end caps, the Euro NCAP standards.

And there's several things that they're, that they're changing.

And among those is that, let's see, to get top scores, they will have to have

driver monitor systems that track eye and head movements of the drivers and use that

information to adjust the sensitivity of driver assist functions.

So, you know, if you are paying less attention and, you know, you want to make it more sensitive,

so it can respond faster if you're starting to get into trouble.

But let's see what else there.

There are also changing the scoring to evaluate the accuracy of speed limit

recognition functions. So, you know, these are, you know, cameras that are looking at speed limit

signs and, you know, adjusting in Europe, they're required to now to have automatically adjusting

cruise control that adjusts to the speed limit, the local speed limit.

And they're also evaluating the real world performance of some of the crash prevention

technologies like automatic emergency braking and lane keep assist. Because, you know, if you've

ever used those systems, you know, they can be a little flaky and oftentimes be more annoying than

helpful. And so they want to make sure that these systems actually work so that drivers will

trust them and leave them turned on instead of turning them off. And then, what else,

post crash safety. Electric door handles must now remain functional after an accident

and EVs must correctly manage the isolation of their batteries to mitigate any fire risk. So,

you know, if it crashes detected, you know, it's got to isolate the battery so it's not

sending power to the rest of the vehicle. But things like the door handles must remain

fully functional to get top safety marks. And then there's also, let's see, there's also something

about physical controls. Oh, yeah, here we go. They will evaluate the placement, clarity and ease

of use of essential controls and a new scoring system will emphasize the importance of physical

buttons for commonly used functions in response to consumer feedback that suggests they can

reduce distraction. Yeah. Yeah. Ribbon is going to be so angry. I know. R.J. is not going to be

happy about that one. What? I have to pay money? There's an interesting one in here, too.

Automated Urged Emergency Response Functions will now need to be able to tell responders

how many occupants are in the car. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. So if you

get into a crash, there needs to be sensors in there that can let ambulances know how many

people are going to have to deal with. I mean, I think that's a good thing to have because

if they have that, if there's, let's say you've got five passengers in the vehicle,

maybe you have to send out two ambulances or three ambulances instead of just one

to make sure you can take care of everybody. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense.

The speed limit recognition is really not very consistent, at least in my experience here.

Yeah. I remember one time. It was very difficult. A few years ago when we were doing a first drive

for the Lincoln Corsair and there, you know, was driving along and, you know, the speed limit

was 55 or speed limit was 65 and then it passed a sign that where it was dropping down to 55

and all of a sudden the cruise control switched from the speed I had it set at to 85. It had

misread the sign as 85 instead of 55 and adjusted the speed upwards by 20 miles an hour.

Woo, parties. Yeah. It had the Robbie mode.

It's ready to party. And I remember talking with Lincoln at the time and talking,

and Ford on a different vehicle that was having a similar issue and they're interested. It's like,

you could just turn the system off if you don't like the way it works. I'm like,

yeah, but you expected somebody to make it work. Maybe, make it work. How about just

make it work correctly? If you're going to put a feature in the car, make sure it works.

Especially the thing that doesn't work off. Well, why did you release something that doesn't work?

And, you know, some sort of calibration between what it reads and the,

you know, the navigation of being able to tell what GPS being able to tell exactly where you're

at. There's Mercedes had, there was a consistent issue on 696. Just going certain part and it picked

up four lanes on 696 and it would pick up the 40 mile an hour sign for the service drive.

Oh, that's adjacent to the highway. So I've got cruise control 75 and all of a sudden it is

heartbreaking in the middle of the freeway. The first time it freaked me out. The second

time I'm like, okay, I know what's happening, start cruise control really quickly. But only that,

that was dangerous. And I'm sure they've improved it a bit since then. I remember calling and saying,

what's going on here? And they're like this kind of known issue. But it was weird. Like,

I'm in the, you know, three lanes away from where I'd even read the sign at. And I mean,

Volvo's were, you know, but oftentimes I, you know, would come out of the street that's 25

miles an hour and turn left. And the new street is 35 miles an hour. But there's three quarters

of a mile till it's a new sign. I mean, I was control on at that point. But for that,

that three quarters of a mile or a mile, like it was telling me that I was going to

fast for the candidate that I was speeding and I wasn't, you know, those those sign systems

aren't quite ready to be fully reliable yet. I don't think. Yeah, definitely.

All right, a couple of charging related stories. Despite the fact that our federal government

has tried to kill all the funding, all the federal funding for the Navi program for the,

which is $5 billion from the 2021 infrastructure act that we're supposed to help fund

deployment of charging stations, DC fast charging stations across the country.

The courts have said, nope, you cannot block that funding. You have to keep spending it.

So last week, the Georgia DOT, you know, which is, you know, that's a state that is run

by the same party. They awarded $24 million for 26 new EV charging stations across the state of Georgia.

You know, they're also getting a plant. Yeah, a little lot. Multiple plants.

So there's, there's there, and Georgia was one of the states that had,

that had a pretty decent state level and center for a while. And of course,

as I pulled it out, sales and the EV sales on that state dropped like a stone, but

and so the point being Georgia has been a little bit more aggressive on this than some states already.

Yeah, so they're putting these stations in a bunch of different locations around the state

with quite a few different vendors that are operating these stations. So there's,

you know, pilot travel centers, Silver Comet Energy, Power Up America,

what else? Love's Travel Stops and Virus Park. So there's a bunch of different ones. So they're

spreading the money around and, you know, all this, all this is good, you know, helps get more

infrastructure, more high speed charging infrastructure. And, you know, part of the

program is, you know, requirements for reliability and uptime, you know, if they

want to get the money. So hopefully that part is being enforced. So that, you know, when they

put these chargers in there, they don't just get put in and then abandoned. You know, hopefully

they will actually take the make the effort to keep them running properly over time.

Yeah. That was one of the good things about the program to begin with was that it set aside

a bunch of sort of consistent requirements that had to happen in order to get your federal

funding, which was stopped sort of making it mandated that charging stations had to

have plug-and-play and we have the uptime and all that. But by putting it as a requirement

to get funding, it certainly drives incentive to build them that way to make sure that

they're viable. And then, you know, robotexies, all the robotexies that are out on the road

today, particularly the real ones, you know, that actually drive unsupervised, they, they're

all electric vehicles right now, including Waymo's Jaguar I-paces and Zeekers and soon

their Hyundai Ionic Fives. And in Santa Monica, Waymo has two lots where they bring their

vehicles for cleaning and service and charging. Well, the city of Santa Monica recently issued a

new regulation that effectively bans Waymo from overnight charging at those two lots that they

own for their robotexies, which is not very helpful. It was a six to nothing vote.

And they, they have to cease overnight operations at those two facilities because they got a lot of

complaints from the neighbors that, you know, the vehicles were making too much, the vehicles

are making too much noise, these are EVs, but yeah, they had backups, backup beepers,

and the chargers themselves, you know, they're from the, from the transformers,

there's a hum from that. And so people were just, the locals were complaining too much. And so

now they are no longer allowed to operate from those two facilities between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.,

which is not helpful if you're trying to. I mean, it's not helpful, but if you live next to a

place that before didn't do that, and now, like, if you move next to the airport, I don't

want to hear you complain. Yeah. If you move next to a club, I don't want to hear you

complain. But if you live next to, like, just a place and then suddenly all night,

that's, yeah, that's, and that's to be, to be honest, that's how Silicon Valley works,

is they don't take an into account anything about the community when they, when they, when

they deploy, they don't think about the unintended consequences of their actions,

which has been a problem with them for 15, 20 years at this point. So, yeah, that was,

I mean, there's a lot of space. Also San Monica is so expensive. How do they, where are they paying?

They own a lot, so that's interesting too. It doesn't say how many chargers are in

each lot. Yeah, this article says they own the lots. I'm guessing they are probably

actually leasing. I doubt they actually own the properties.

But yeah, that's, yeah, so they're gonna have to find somewhere else to do their charging that is

not going to be annoying to neighbors. Yeah. Which might be difficult in a place like Santa Monica.

Well, I mean, Santa Monica, yes, but there's a lot of areas around that, you know,

there's a lot of industrial zones that they could be, especially when they're,

you know, close to the airport. Yeah. You just, you get a place close to the

airport and then no one cares because guess what? You're close to the airport.

But, you know, the thing is, I mean, well, they're trying to close Santa Monica airport.

So, you know, you would have to, you know, I guess the next closest airport would be LAX.

The thing is, you know, if you have to go long distances like that, you know,

from Santa Monica to LAX, you know, drive to LAX to recharge or to get the vehicle

cleaned and things like that, that, you know, that's a challenge for the economics of running

the service. It's 11 miles from Santa Monica to LAX. Okay, it only feels like it's 100 miles.

Yeah, it only feels, I mean, if you're already on the west side, I used to be a runner for

a studio. If you're already on the west side, it's fine moving around, especially at night.

It's getting from the east side to the west side where it's a problem.

Santa Monica is a giant cluster no matter what. But if you're in Santa Monica and you go to the

airport, you're never, you know, cruising over to the 10 to the 405. We're just taking surface streets

and it takes like 30 minutes. Okay. It's not the end of the world if they have to move to

an industrial zone. All right. Well, with that, I think let's call it a show. And we'll be back

next week. Thanks for bringing it back. Thanks for joining us, Steph. Appreciate it.

Talk to everybody next time. Bye. Say what you want about AI, but it's here. And it's helping

businesses get more done in a day. Wix's website builder is infused with AI so you can stay ahead.

Create a beautiful, functional website just by describing your idea. Track how your site

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a matter of minutes. Wix gives you AI wherever you need it. Try it now for free at wix.com.

Bring the whole family and be part of the legacy. This game is once in a century. Be there at

Moda Center on January 24th. Go to HarlemGlobetrotters.com for your tickets to the 100 year tour.

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