BMW’s Neue Klasse vs. Mercedes GLC at IAA Munich + AI Cars, VW x Rivian, Polestar 5 & 204-mph Lucid!
The InEVitable
BMW’s Neue Klasse vs. Mercedes GLC at IAA Munich + AI Cars, VW x Rivian, Polestar 5 & 204-mph Lucid!
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Car
Bmw Ix3
The BMW iX3 is an electric SUV that provides a clean and efficient way to drive. It has a roomy interior and modern technology, making it a great choice for eco-conscious drivers.
Car
Mercedes-Benz GLC 400e
The Mercedes-Benz GLC 400e is a hybrid SUV, which means it can run on both gasoline and electricity. This gives drivers the option to use electric power for short trips and gasoline for longer journeys.
Car
BMW 3 Series
The BMW 3 Series is a popular compact car that combines sporty performance with luxury features, making it a favorite among drivers.
Car
BMW 5 Series
The BMW 5 Series is a luxury car that provides a comfortable ride and high-tech features, appealing to those who want both performance and luxury.
Concept
electric vehicle range
Electric vehicle range is how far an electric car can go before it needs to be charged again, depending on the size of its battery.
Car
Tesla Cybertruck
The Tesla Cybertruck is a unique electric truck that looks very different from regular trucks. It's made to be tough and has cool technology, which makes it an interesting choice for people who want a modern vehicle.
Term
cell to pack
Cell to pack is a way of putting battery cells directly into a battery pack without extra parts, making it more efficient and saving space.
Car
Tesla Model Y
The Tesla Model Y is a small electric SUV that can carry more people and stuff than a regular car. It's popular because it has a long battery life and lots of high-tech features.
Term
4680 battery
The 4680 battery is a new kind of battery made by Tesla that is bigger and helps store more energy, which can make electric cars go further.
Term
pack sizes
Pack sizes are the different amounts of energy that battery packs can hold in electric cars, which affects how far they can drive before needing to recharge.
Term
kilowatt hour
A kilowatt hour is a way to measure how much energy a battery can store. It helps you understand how far an electric car can go before needing to be recharged.
Car
Tesla Model S
Term
externally excited synchronous motor
This is a special kind of electric motor that gets its power from an outside source. It helps the motor work better and is often used in electric cars to save energy.
Term
induction motor
An induction motor is a type of electric motor that uses electricity to create movement. It's often found in electric cars because it's efficient and dependable.
Term
battery floor plan
A battery floor plan is how the battery is arranged in the car, usually placed in the floor to make the car handle better and be more stable.
Term
ADAS
ADAS means systems in cars that help drivers stay safe and make driving easier. They can help with things like keeping the car in the lane or stopping automatically if something is in the way.
Term
400 kilowatts
400 kilowatts is a measure of power used to describe how fast an electric car can charge. The higher the number, the quicker you can recharge the car's battery.
Term
megawatt
A megawatt is a way to measure a lot of power—one megawatt equals one million watts. It's used to describe how much energy big machines or power plants can produce.
Car
Tesla Model 3
The Tesla Model 3 is a popular electric car that can drive long distances on a single charge. It's known for being fast and having lots of high-tech features.
Car
Cadillac Escalade
The Escalade IQ is a new electric SUV from Cadillac, known for its luxury and high-tech features. It's part of Cadillac's effort to make more electric vehicles.
Term
heat pump
A heat pump helps keep the car warm or cool by moving heat around instead of creating it from scratch, making it more energy-efficient.
Term
Taycan
The Taycan is a fast, electric car from Porsche that has a lot of cool technology and features, showing how the brand is moving into electric vehicles.
Car
Mercedes-Benz G-Class
The G-Class is a luxury SUV made by Mercedes-Benz that can drive over very rough and steep surfaces. It's famous for its strong build and off-road abilities.
Term
kilowatt charging
Kilowatt charging is how quickly you can charge an electric car's battery. The higher the number, the faster it charges.
Term
air suspension
Air suspension is a system that uses air instead of metal springs to support a vehicle. It can make the ride smoother and allows you to change how high or low the car sits.
Car
Lincoln Nautilus
The Lincoln Nautilus is a luxury SUV made by Lincoln. It has a nice interior and comes with many high-tech features, but some people find its screens hard to see due to reflections.
Brand
Volkswagen
Volkswagen, or VW, is a popular car brand from Germany that makes many types of cars, including the famous Beetle and Golf.
Car
Audi Etron
The Audi e-tron is an electric SUV made by Audi. It's designed to be a luxury vehicle that runs on electricity instead of gasoline, which is better for the environment.
Car
Polestar 5
The Polestar 5 is a new electric car from Polestar, which is a brand that makes high-performance electric vehicles. It's designed to be both fast and eco-friendly.
Car
Porsche Panamera
The Porsche Panamera is a fancy car that can fit four people and is super fast like a sports car. It's designed for people who want to travel in style and comfort while still enjoying a thrilling drive.
Car
Audi Rs
The Audi RS e-tron GT is a fast electric car that looks really stylish. It's designed for people who want a high-performance car that is also good for the environment.
Car
Aston Martin DBX
The Aston Martin DBX is a luxury SUV that looks really nice and drives fast. It's made for people who want a fancy car that can also be used for everyday things.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a famous sports car that is fast and stylish. The C4 version, made in the 1980s, was special because it had a cool feature that showed important information right on the windshield.
Car
Bentley Azure
The Bentley Azure is a super fancy car that can be driven with the top down. It's made for people who want the best in luxury and comfort while driving.
LIVE
Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motortrend.
Hi there and welcome to The Inevitable.
This is the Motortrend podcast, the video podcast, where we talk about the future of
the automobile, where are we going, and how we're going to get there.
Before we get going though, this guy, Ed Lowe, has got a message for you.
I'm Ed Lowe from Motortrend and I'm excited to tell you that Motortrend's software-defined
vehicle innovator awards is back for its fourth year.
Nominating is very simple.
Just go to Motortrend.com slash STV survey and complete the form.
Join us in honoring the Trailblazers, redefining what's possible.
Nominations are now open for the 2026 STV Innovator Awards.
Today's topic, IAA Munich.
It is a car show that happens in Germany.
I just got back.
You didn't go, but you went to the first one.
I went to the one at the height of COVID and our guest very humorously said, oh, you
went to the bicycle show because the year I went, I want to say there was seven
cars at a car show and about 1,500 alternate forms of transportation, which was so boring.
And then it was also Germany at the height of COVID.
Every single human being had a mask on.
They were so happy.
And it was, I haven't even thought about going back.
My favorite part was they had really nice lawn chairs in between the buildings and I
was just laid down, took a nap because after 10 minutes, there's nothing left to see.
Right.
Well, it's a slightly different show this year.
I haven't been to IAA since it was, I guess, the Frankfurt.
Frankfurt in Paris, yeah, they go back and forth.
Yeah.
So it was great for me to go.
And I ran into our guest on the show floor multiple times, also at one of the introduction
parties for Polestar.
So let's bring him on.
We're going to have real quick with Kyle Conner about his experience at IAA Munich
and then we'll go to a special segment that Frank Marcus, Motor Trends
Technical Editor, and I, that we recorded on the show floor at Munich after we
talked to Kyle.
But first up, let's get Kyle on.
First of all, great to see you as always.
Great to see you guys.
Second of all, I've watched about 700 of your IAA videos already.
Oh, damn, that's about how many we've published.
And you're wearing the same hoodie.
Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm still on the trip.
I haven't been home yet.
So it has been through the wash.
OK, I don't care.
Are you sponsored by a hoodie manufacturer?
No, but we need those just like the inevitable podcast needs a sponsor.
Kyle needs a hoodie sponsor.
You do.
I think there's a company called American Giant that makes really good hoodies.
You can also do something.
Aviator Nation would probably be a good one.
There may be Johnny needs a bourbon sponsor.
All right.
So yeah, let's go.
Sponsorship to Galore.
OK, I guess my big question would be and you seem to really get into this
would be GLC, Mercedes GLC versus the newy class of BMW IX3.
Is that my say?
Those were two IAA Munich did.
And they seem like to me like the real hot product.
Am I wrong in saying that was the whole show?
I thought from my perspective was IX3 versus GLC 400E, whatever they call it.
GLC. Yeah, GLC electric.
Those two head to head.
They launched a couple days away from each other.
BMW went first, then Mercedes and BMW kind of took the cake specs wise.
So tell us about that.
What in terms of the specs?
Like what did what did what did BMW do so much better than Mercedes?
Yeah, so I think more than just the IX3,
the new Noya class situation, that platform will underpin like the next 40 BMWs
between now and 27 or 28, like a huge amount.
And so it's a bit like when they had the E chassis cars, then the F chassis cars,
then G now it's like, you know, this new platform that will underpin everything.
So I was really excited about it because it's not just IX3.
It's also three series.
It's the next five series.
It's the so on so forth.
It's the brand. I mean, it's it.
But the specs on that IX3 alone,
like that platform can support a bunch of configurations insane.
So it's here.
It uses a from a construction standpoint, a really big can of 4695.
So they've gone to cylindrical cells now, which is new for BMW.
Cool. How are they cool?
Yes, they're all in a water jacket.
So they each have like it's like early Tesla's used to do this,
but this is probably better thermal management problem.
And so we'll have to test it.
But each cell has like its own little encasing,
which isn't great for energy density,
but is great for repeated performance,
which is what BMW has been needing in their electric cars.
And so you have a cell to pack,
which means there's no modules in the pack.
It's just a battery pack filled with cells
and they're sort of wire bounded together
and they have their own bus bars and stuff.
Is it is it? Let me start to interrupt.
Is it would like the IX3 have a different size pack
than the three series?
Well, that's the thing, you know, without modules.
The module approach was always we could arrange these modules,
however we want to fit the platform.
That's what General Motors did,
where you have like that old TM brick and then they can arrange it.
Lucid does that, right?
Lucid does it.
Pull out two and you got a big back seat,
put them back in, you got more range.
Absolutely. BMW no longer.
And so they're going cell to pack very similar to Cybertruck,
very similar to 4680 Model Y.
It's a really interesting construction.
And so I don't know how they're going to handle different pack sizes.
That pack might underpin like all of that class of vehicle
and then they might have a bigger pack for five and seven series.
But it's a huge battery pack.
It's a hundred and eight point seven kilowatt hour usable battery.
So in a small compact.
So SUV just to give people context,
like I believe Model S is about a hundred and a lucid air is about one hundred and twelve.
Yeah, exactly. It's almost lucid air.
So that and that means if you make an efficient thing,
you could be in the five hundred miles of range neighborhood.
Yeah. So depending on IX3 is five hundred miles of WLTP range.
And it's going to be around four hundred EPA, which is huge, huge for every.
I mean, everyone kind of like clustered around three hundred is like
that's acceptable for the next four years.
But now, you know, like jam's has blown through that.
Well, yeah.
You know, and they did in a very unsophisticated but effective way.
But that's great if you can get four and probably more than four hundred.
It's probably like four twenty five or something.
Yeah, I would think we'll have to see how it does.
BMWs have always been super efficient on the highway.
That's thanks to a specific type of externally excited synchronous motor
that they use on the rear axle.
They are actually now using an induction motor for the first time on the front axle.
So no flux related losses while cruising.
I'm excited for it. Back to pack construction really quick.
This is really cool.
They're doing cell to pack and then pack to body.
So the whole underside of the car comes up with the battery.
So it's a hole when you pull the battery out, essentially.
So the battery is the floor plan, a four pan,
which is, again, really cool from a construction standpoint.
And I'm just thrilled that they've done it.
It seems to me that's the advantage of that construction cost is cheaper.
Are they going to be?
Is it the idea that they're going to also mount the seats, the floor
and everything goes in?
This is this was this is Tesla's model for construction, right?
So essentially copying that whole setup.
That's my understanding is on the production line.
I'm pretty sure you can build up the battery pack with the interior needed
and it all just slides in.
OK, and then any other stats that stand out about the Neue Classic?
Yeah, I mean, the electrical architecture is all new.
It's similar to like we discussed, I think,
previously the Gen 1 versus Gen 2 Rivian back in the day.
This is using a zonal architecture.
So they've gone from domain controller to zonal controller.
They now have four main ECUs for the Neue Classic.
One of them is called the Heart of Joy.
It handles all driving topics.
Sorry, that's such a German name.
Sounds better in German.
And but this will handle like, you know, take driver assistance input,
ADAS stuff, take human desirability, what the vehicle is doing
and then spit out through AI what the output of the vehicle should be.
And I have no idea how it's going to work.
But knowing BMW, I hope they tuned it well.
To me, it just feels like BMW skipped a whole generation.
Yeah. Yeah.
Are they now, would you say they're now leading or now competitive?
I think they're leading all German automakers right now,
which they were trailing for the longest time.
I mean, they put them on globally, though.
Do you think that they're you think that they're now in
in direct competition with the Chinese and Tesla or?
Yeah, so I think I think they're directly in competition with them.
The worry that I have is they've developed this entire new architecture
and it's coming out now as maybe being matching or slightly ahead.
But BMW architectures last seven, 10, 12 years.
Do they have the headroom in that platform to keep up with the innovation?
Like it's great that it charges at 400 kilowatts.
That's awesome.
But Chinese cars are going way faster than that, for example.
And switching to Mercedes before we get to the GLC,
I saw with whatever the orange thing, XX AMG.
Oh, yeah. That thing is sick.
They, yeah, they charge it at like a megawatt for like a couple of minutes.
Yes. Explain that like a thousand twenty four kilowatts
for two and a half minutes straight.
And how much power does that on board in two minutes?
It's like just over 40 kilowatt hours in.
So it's basically you can go zero to 80 percent on a model three
in two minutes is the way to think about it. That's crazy.
Yeah, it's insane.
So this and that's that's production intent.
I mean, I saw them dancing around you in the video
and they wouldn't answer a question,
but it sounds like that's like a production intent battery pack back
on the North classic because one thing you told me on the show floor was
huge battery pack, small vehicle styling.
You were like me, like you're in today.
Yeah, I'm not a design guy.
I mean, I leave you on the design guy.
We've been arguing out in the parking lot over, you know,
Escalade IQ versus IQL and you're clearly wrong.
But the the Noia class looks better in person than photos.
It's very like monolithic.
It looks strong and it's seen in person.
The the the new class of three series,
I think it's actually pretty sharp design in the eye three.
It's just another weird look.
The three series is going to if they put that battery in a three series.
Yeah, it's going to have huge range.
That's like lucid air range right there. Yeah. Yeah.
In the three series. Yeah.
So thoughts on thoughts on GLC. Yeah.
So if GLC launched first, we would have all been super excited
because it's, you know, 94 kilowatt hours.
And again, that's a pretty big battery
and a smaller model wise 81, 82.
So bigger battery Mercedes again, very efficient.
Super efficient. You know, they use a new architecture.
I think it's MBEA for that one.
But regardless, it should be a very efficient platform.
Heat pump, heat scavenging, two speed on the rear axle,
I believe, which is weird.
So they're taking G wagon technology and putting it on the street.
But it's an active shifter.
It's a bit like Tycon.
So you don't actually hit low range like the electric.
Yeah. But it was just another two speed for.
I mean, the Germans love to solve their electrical problems
with mechanical engineering, but there's some of that there.
And as you got to experience, again, I watched I watched that video
like the low range on the G wagon is insane.
It's insane. It'll go up anything.
It'll go up anything.
It's mechanically advantage. Yes, it's so cool.
It's really wild.
So OK, but so are you so you're sounds like you're kind of like
the BMW is like kind of pants Mercedes a little bit.
Totally. Small SUV. Totally.
And well, and that's just a spec sheet compare.
The spec sheet compare is IX3 smokes the GLC.
I mean, GLC is 330 kilowatt charging with a 94 kilowatt hour pack.
Still impressive.
But then IX3 for the same money.
Yeah, that's 108 kilowatt hours and, you know, 400 kilowatt charging.
Mercedes gets rear steer and air suspension optional.
BMW does not.
Yeah, the other thing is allergic to air suspension.
It's very strange. Very strange.
But their interiors are where the biggest difference are.
So I sat in the new GLC and I think it might be the worst modern interior.
What? Really? It really do not like it.
Can you compare it to any other Mercedes that are on the market?
It's a bit odd.
So, you know, they took the approach of let's put a giant screen across the car.
Sure. And so I'm generally OK with big screens.
What I'm not OK with is in all the photos, I thought it looked pretty good on the inside
because they have this low angle looking at the screen.
But when you sit and I can send you a photo, maybe we can overlay it here.
When you sit from the POV of the driver, you're looking down on a screen
that's completely vertical.
It's not angled towards you at all.
And then the software that went in it, at least in the car I played around with,
super laggy.
It's like this little window that you're operating in this big screen.
I hate that.
And it is like not optimized.
If you're going to have a big screen, have big software.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's that's that's Lincoln did that with Lincoln Digital Experience.
No, with what was that thing that one SUV of the year last year?
Oh, Nautilus. Nautilus had that one screen that was like, I hate that.
It was it was all the other screens were fantastic.
Yeah, one screen that was like, could not see it.
It's like it's always reflectiony.
And so I thought the same from BMW.
Yeah. So from Mercedes.
Interesting that BMW had like a really cool infotainment.
Well, hang on real quick.
So if you haven't seen Google IX3 screen right now,
because it's like it's a Decahydra.
What is that shit?
I don't know.
It's like the looks terrible in photos.
Yeah, OK. It's cool in person.
Yeah, because the wheel perfectly fits with the curvature.
So I went on the thing you went on where we played around with the software early
and I was like, oh, this is fine, whatever.
The screen's ugly. OK.
But like sitting in the car, feeling the materials,
the seating position was great.
I'm like, damn, BMW is kind of back.
So what about because I know I saw you talking with
you talking with Wasim Benzai in front of the VW.
So let's talk about VW group in general.
So you said BMW just maybe pantsed or I said pantsed Mercedes,
but you said Leapfrog the Germans.
We were out here with some Audi's.
We had some Audi's their car of the year, the new e-tron, blah, blah, blah.
Like what's the what's the perspective on Audi and also broader VW group?
Yeah, good, good topics.
I don't know if the show can go that long.
But but in general opinion of Stalantis.
We need six hours.
Just at just a high level on VW group.
Yeah. And I'm going to talk a little about Polestar five.
And then this thing you did also in Germany, which was you had a sapphire.
Yeah, we'll get to that.
OK. And then. OK.
So let's let's talk software in Volkswagen group.
Yes. So to paint the picture
about four years ago, Volkswagen created a division called Kariad.
Yeah. And what they basically did was they took the software guys
from Skoda, from Volkswagen, from Audi, from Porsche, from Lamborghini,
Bentley, blah, blah, blah, and they stuffed them all in one building.
And culturally, this did not work.
Shockingly shocking.
And so I have some friends that work there
and that anecdotally were like, you know, the Porsche guys were like,
do I have to drive a golf company car?
And so it was a real.
It was like that was the biggest problem.
Right. And then you've got to get all of those guys to talk to each other.
The end goal, essentially, of Kariad was to create a uniform
user experience and electrical architecture for the entire group.
Clearly, that failed or could not happen
because they went to an American startup, Rivian,
to essentially purchase their newly developed
zonal architecture that they did for Gen two and future Rivian products.
That's for US and Western facing markets.
Correct. And they went to X-Pang for everything in China.
Yes. And that is an interesting conversation we should dig into.
So all of my comments will be geared towards the Western.
Yep, yep, yep.
And so with the Rivian Volkswagen collaboration,
the first I heard of it was, I don't think that's going to work
because you've got a scrappy, fast paced startup
dealing with the weight of the Volkswagen group organization,
slowing things down.
There's nothing more that Germans love than having meetings.
And that doesn't mean.
They really like it.
Sure. I mean, I was over there during COVID, too.
I agree. And, you know, it's just the culture clash
was the biggest thing I was worried about, because clearly,
technically, Rivian has and Waseem's team.
I have nothing but the most respect for Waseem.
It's incredible software.
They can do that.
The architecture and the software, they've proven it in their vehicles
and it's great.
Can they do that scaled up for the entire group,
which means all brands, all classes of cars.
The Gaudi, the Skoda. Yeah, it's crazy.
So the answer is they kind of have done it.
And the first cars launching, it's called the ID Everyone.
And it launches in 27.
So that uses one ECU for the entire car.
That's wild.
I heard you say that in the video with Waseem, like that.
So if a car, real quick, can use one ECU,
why does any other car need two?
I've asked this question before of some of these experts.
And some of it is while you it's a good idea
to have a lot of it centralized, there are certain things
you would want to have at the corners of the car
and you don't have to run a cable back and forth to.
So wiring length is one big one.
Then you can run like a high speed.
The ID Everyone is like polo size.
It's a small single motor.
It doesn't need torque vectoring.
It doesn't need air suspension control.
So there's just a lot less going on with that car.
But it's just car.
Cool looking car, isn't it?
Great. Really?
I mean, I was looking at that.
I'm like, what BMW should have been doing?
You know, they bought a towel design 15 years ago.
Where's that been?
And Andreas Mint is the lead designer.
And I talked to him about the ID One.
I actually talked to someone about design.
He said it's going to it's like 90 percent there.
That's a great idea.
It's already A minus right of the gate.
It sounds like the early success of the Rivian tie up
has really has led to more investment
by VW Group in Rivian.
Yeah, I think it's 5.8 billion total,
but they still have to hit certain benchmarks.
At what point did they just feed in?
Buy them.
Well, that's the thing.
What do they need Rivian for?
Yeah, that's also the thing.
I think the original partnership between Volkswagen
and Rivian is intention was just on the hardware.
It sounds like they're becoming a little bit more closely.
They're doing sourcing together now.
Well, that's what Rivian wanted out of the deal
was like instead of paying, I don't know,
$100 for a chip,
they'll pay the Volkswagen price, which is $7.
Sure, sure.
Scale.
But we're hanging on briefly.
Polestar 5.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
What'd you think?
You were at the party, you did the sheet drop.
Cool party.
I mean, so like the whole theme, great alcohol.
Wow.
The theme of Polestar has been trying to push up market,
which I don't think actually works.
They're charging Porsche prices for cars
that don't warrant that much cost, I think.
I've been saying that since the two drop.
Like the one was neat.
The two is like, we're a luxury performance brand.
Oh, by the way, this car doesn't have luxury
or performance and it looks weird.
Yeah, so I mean, I love the one, I own a one.
It's one of my favorite cars.
One's great.
But it's a weird thing, which is cool.
The Polestar brand in general,
the whole theme of the party was like anti-everyone else.
So you walk up the staircase
and it's like no hybrids, no diesel gate,
no blah, blah, blah.
And so they're like pushing it back
against the whole industry.
Meanwhile, they're part of Geely Group.
I was gonna say,
they have range-extended vehicles.
Or they're human rights abuses.
Like on other issues, but they're just ignoring that.
It feels very Chinese or like this one's doing that.
But if you say no diesel gate, it's like, oh, hang on.
They had quotes from every like automaker CEO
that was like, we are going back into combustion cars.
You'll have a choice by 2030.
Walking back all their EV.
So they launched Polestar 5, which is there.
Think of it like electric Panamera type vehicle.
It's a GT.
Big Tycon, yeah.
Big Tycon should actually do okay in terms of specs.
Like it's gonna have 350 kilowatt charging.
It's 112-ish kilowatt hours somewhere around there.
How much power?
800 horsepower.
It's like, you know, it's all good
until you hear that it's 160,000 US.
And then you go, well, you could buy a plaid
for 70,000 less on that.
The US pricing now released,
but that's converted from Euro.
But also you get an Audi RS e-tron GT,
which at 160 is like one of the nicest things used for 40.
Well, yeah, sure.
There's a reason why I was like, new first.
Polestar sells in 28 markets
and they're launching in 24 of them first
and the remaining four US, Canada, Korea, and China.
And you think about it,
because I was on the Polestar trip.
It was a great trip.
The great people, the car looks really cool.
I also went to the X-Ping press conference
and I was looking at their new next-generation T7.
Looks amazing.
Which looks also similar-sized class.
Well, probably not be $160,000, right?
It's gonna be like 40 grand.
Right.
And I think that's Polestar's biggest problem
in the volume markets.
China, definitely.
And the US, because I don't know the US
is gonna pay that much money for it.
My big question is, why wasn't this an SUV?
And I know that was a long time ago
when they made this decision,
but you know, maybe a volume model.
Polestar's kind of like, okay,
ignore the numbers on paper.
It should drive well.
And so that's the thing though.
So if they're gonna make a driver's car,
$160,000 in whatever the number is,
say it's 150.
Enthusiast driver's car,
there's no way to fully defeat ESP.
There's no limited slip differential.
And so I'm going, my buddy Chris-
Wait, like brake?
Brake-based torque vectoring on $150,000
plus vehicle performance vehicle.
So they're like, the steering's gonna be amazing,
chassis's gonna be good.
They left some room.
They said they might have
the high performance version coming.
Like they had the Polestar-
That should be that number.
I don't think they can get to under grand for it.
And again, I mean, if you're gonna be a luxury performer,
they wanna be an electric Porsche competitor.
Like you gotta have the basics are
everything can be turned off
and some kind of differential taming or something.
And thermal management, it needs to be,
lap after lap, it needs to be consistent.
Do you know anything about the thermal management?
Yeah, I heard it's okay.
And when the engineers tell you it's okay,
you know we're gonna run into limits.
And I'm like, I really, I saw it.
I thought it was beautiful.
I thought it was gonna be 90 grand, 85 grand.
I'm like, that could be my next car.
I can do it.
But then I was like, oh, it's twice that price.
All right.
Last thing you did, or last thing,
last topic on Munich,
you somehow got your hands on Lucid Air Sapphire.
Yes.
And went and did some top speed run.
Did you hit 200 miles an hour?
Yeah, 204.
On the Autobahn.
Yeah, allegedly.
Remember when we used to do cool stuff like that?
Okay.
Okay, sorry.
Why?
What was the reason?
And did you run, what do you why?
Did you run with something else?
Did you outside something?
Yeah, I had an Aston DBX as well, 707.
That moved pretty good actually.
Something like that.
Probably top to, I'm gonna get top to like 190.
Yeah, it was on winter tires.
Oh, so.
I did like 180.
But you shouldn't do that on winter tires.
Well, winter tires are good to like 275 kmh.
It was like a buck of 75.
So you're right there.
I didn't check the rating intentionally.
So I played Ignite.
You know, tires have a lot of bandwidth.
Yeah, I figured, you know, if I did one run,
they wouldn't have been overheated.
We should be okay.
Yeah.
Check the pressures.
But no, the Lucid was cool.
I had never really spent time with a Sapphire.
And there was one there and I talked to Lucid and I'm like,
hey, one of my colleagues is with me
who's never been in Germany,
never like experienced 200 miles an hour.
Let's boogie.
And yeah, 204 and the thermal management
was way better than I expected.
I thought it was gonna overheat after one run
because they use the same battery
that's in the Grand Touring.
Which is like an energy dense cell, not a power cell.
They do the cooling on like the bottom, right?
I mean, I remember Peter Rawlinson
talked to me for hours about that.
He's like, that's the solution.
Whatever anyone else tells you for performance,
it's bottom cooling and it'll hold.
Whereas when the cells generate their heat.
So you want to cool that,
but they still get gradient temp up top.
And once the top of the cells get hot,
then there's nothing you can do.
Well, also, can I ask, what were you checking?
Like when you're checking the pack performance
after a 204 mile run,
you have like a, where are you looking for the?
For temperature data?
Well, you can tell by the way the vehicle derates
if it's battery or motor.
Motors tend to hold very little heat.
So they'll spike in heat and recover very quickly.
Very fast, yeah.
So inverter would be typically the weakest link.
Motor stayed nice and chill,
and I'll tell you how I know that.
And then the battery pack,
after, you know, on the Autobahn,
you never just can get on and go rip.
You have to find a space,
you get up to like 170,
then you got to back off, wait again.
Yeah, live search rate.
And so we were trying to be as gentle
on the car as possible.
Before we knew we could get it up to top speed.
Sapphire also comes with a track preconditioning mode
to cool down the battery pack for endurance driving.
We had it in that mode as well.
But after we hit 200 miles an hour, which was great,
we then put it in full power mode,
ripped it back up to 170, gave full power,
then launch controlled it back onto the Autobahn,
full power, and only after that,
and many attempts of high speed did it start to derate.
Once it derated, it was a slow recovery.
It recovered, but it was slow.
This is the pack cooling down, it was slow.
So my buddy pulled the logs off the car,
it works for Lucid.
He's like, motors were cold the whole time,
batteries, what got hot?
And I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what we experienced.
And then when you go in from 170 to 204,
was that, did it take a while,
or was that like pretty much like...
So if we had it in full power mode,
which we did later on, it rips right up there.
It's insane.
So it's so powerful.
Yeah, we had it in the smooth,
the standard key up setting,
because we wanted to, in case we couldn't hit it,
we were trying to limit the max output
of the motors to keep the battery cool.
Was 204 max?
No, I heard 205 is max.
But did you have to get out of it because,
or was there was an error?
I was traffic, okay.
But also it's like, the 204 was off the speedometer,
not off GPS.
Yeah, so it's probably like 200 GPS.
There's always a bit of sway.
It can go, it depends.
Sometimes it goes over under.
Lucids are at least at 70 miles an hour.
I think we go 71, GPS, 71 indicated go 70 GPS.
So it's pretty close, but there is some sway.
And so yeah, kids,
if you're ever trying to go 200 miles an hour,
you want more horsepower.
Like I did it in a Bentley Continental,
and I forget how much it made, six something,
but like rip up to 185, and then 185 to 200
was just like, dude, come on, come on.
Cause it's just, Lucid did not feel any of that.
It was just like...
1200 horsepower, yeah.
It was insane.
And the stability of the air chassis.
Like it, I was through a corner.
Yeah.
And things just locked in.
You through a corner?
Not like a hard corner, but you know.
On a one corner, yeah.
Yeah, no, no.
When I hit, when I was 201, yeah, it was.
And you're just like a little bit of steering angle
and you're just matted.
And the whole thing is just dead stable.
That's awesome.
It's the most stable experience I've ever had.
Don't try this at home.
Well, unless you live in Germany.
Right, then it's safe.
Just make sure no one's around.
Check tires, check brakes, make sure the car is happy.
We did a full thorough check,
put everything away in the car.
Not saying it's safe, but it's not illegal.
All right, so just to wrap on IA Munich.
Is it really now become CES for Europe?
Is that the fair?
Or what's the equivalent?
It's no longer like just a car show.
This year felt like a really nice show.
I think we're back from the days
of the weird mobility stuff, the bicycle show,
which I'm glad I skipped that one.
But I've been to IAA, this is probably my fourth IAA.
And this was the best one.
From actually having cars, launches.
Because it's a ton of other suppliers,
a lot of technology, I mean, Mobilizer, Qualcomm,
like all the big...
All the CES players.
All the CES players are there.
The booths are smaller.
They're not like whatever Frankfurt used to be
or Paris or Tokyo.
Remember Mercedes at Frankfurt?
Right, yeah.
Frankfurt shows were insane.
They had escalators and their stuff.
It was crazy.
I was gonna ask, did they do the thing
where there was tons of off-site stuff
or was everything still kind of in the...
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, downtown to get to other stuff.
So that was cool.
A lot of it is open to the public.
And you could see you go and look at cars
and all that stuff.
But we're gonna transition now.
And we thank Kyle for coming on for this,
this special guest here,
because we're at the Motor Trends SUV
the year program rush yet,
on the approving grounds here,
recording in one of their conference rooms.
Shout out, Hyundai.
We're gonna go to a clip that I recorded
with Frank Marcus, Motor Trends technical editor,
from the halls of IA Munich.
Actually, we were right outside Qualcomm's booth
in a steel case little privacy pod
that we had hijacked for about 30 minutes.
For a chat on something Kyle talked about,
which was sort of a zonal architecture in vehicles
and basically what's happening
in software-defined vehicles,
especially as AI is now like the hot topic.
So let's go to Frank and I at IA Munich.
We are coming to you live and direct from Munich, Germany.
We're at IAA Munich 2025,
which is a big show devoted to mobility,
devoted to automotive, the industry, OEMs, suppliers.
I went with an OEM, our colleague Alisa
went with a different OEM.
You, however, were invited due to our coverage
of all things automotive tech, STVs, et cetera.
So that's what we're gonna talk about.
Right, I've been a frequent guest of theirs at CES.
I used the right forks and said the right things
so they invited me again.
Right, so big deal because quite expensive
to get all the way here from the US,
but this is a very interesting show.
I haven't been here in a long time.
I actually was trying to figure out the last,
what are these that call the show?
Is Frankfurt?
It was the Frankfurt Motor Show.
It was always the IAA,
but we always call it the Frankfurt Motor Show.
And then for a while then it switched back and forth.
I think this is maybe the second or third year here.
Okay, so I was telling my wife
that I'm going to basically the CES of Europe,
which is what IAA has become,
which is perfect because, as you all know,
we're really into covering the future of automobiles,
the future of mobility.
So let's dive in.
Obviously for our listeners who are interested in cars,
there were a couple of really big debuts here,
all of which you can go to MotorTrend.com and check it out.
I think the two stars of the show
were the Mercedes-Benz GLC and the BMW IX3.
We saw those make their stunning debuts.
Actually, we went to events prior to their debuts here.
So we got the down and dirty.
Yes, I drove it in Southern France
at their approving ground some months ago.
Drove what?
The IX3.
The IX3.
And I mean, it's a stunning car.
But it's also kind of a ground breaker in some other ways,
especially in the software-defined vehicle space.
And we're learning more about that at this show
where Qualcomm has made it public
that they have been a development partner
co-developing all of the ADAS and infotainment
and so forth systems with BMW.
Okay, that's great.
That's a great lead in.
So there were several other OEM launches,
not a lot here other than those two vehicles
we mentioned, the GLC and IX3 from a U.S. market perspective.
Several Chinese manufacturers.
I attended like all the Chinese-
On Europeans reductions of Chinese cars.
Yeah, so I went to Ito.
I went to X-Ping and I checked out BYD.
And they all covered.
I didn't do Leap, but Leap is here.
There's a couple others.
And they all kind of said the same thing.
Hey, we're coming to the European market
with these vehicles that you've all seen
and been super impressed with in the home market.
So that was kind of the shtick
and they gave their old business update.
So overall been a great show.
Super interesting, lots to learn.
But let's dive deep into some of the things
you have covered with Qualcomm
because I only saw their booth
and actually their booth is literally
about 20 steps that way.
And they're getting prepared
to have a very special visitor.
Chancellor Mertz is gonna stop by today.
I actually saw the police dogs going through the rooms.
I think sniffing for strange stuff.
Anyways, none of it was me.
Yes.
Frank, let's dive into what Qualcomm
showed off here at IAA Munich.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that's kind of different here,
Qualcomm is essentially a chip manufacturer.
But with the BMW,
and so quite often they're not a tier one.
So in most cases,
their chips find their way into cars
by way of a Vallejo or a Magna
or one of these other companies.
Yeah, another supplier.
Right.
But BMW, because they're a full line manufacturer
and they've got a lot of experience
in ADAS tuning and infotainment tuning and all that,
they felt comfortable doing that development
directly with Qualcomm.
So this is kind of an unusual situation,
the way it worked out.
And it's especially interesting
because a lot of those systems,
the future of driver assistance systems
is machine learning and it's not rules.
When you come to this kind of intersection,
you do this, that and the other.
It's learning from doing and whatever.
So it's millions of miles of testing,
data going up to the Amazon web services,
cloud, flywheel, data flywheel they call it,
because it gets a lot of momentum from this data.
And so they have some,
an unusual data sharing situation.
So Qualcomm and BMW both own all of that data.
But, and Qualcomm has the ability to sell
the ride, a Snapdragon ride elite
to other manufacturers.
And it will benefit from the development data
that was developed with BMW.
So they don't have an exclusive ownership
of that ADAS data.
So that's very kind of unusual.
And it's the wave of the future going forward
as we, the IX3 is not a centralized compute.
They talk about having four brains.
And Qualcomm is in at least several of them.
The ride is doing all of that ADAS stuff,
the Snapdragon digital cockpit is working the,
you know, the cockpit, that cool screen they have
at the base of the windshield, the sound system,
all that stuff.
Okay.
So that seems like for the casual listener,
that's like, oh my God, what are you talking about?
You've been covering the industry for a long time.
But we've joked how you're a mechanical engineer
by training and a lot of this stuff is,
well, if it's flying over your head,
it's about 10 feet above mine.
So, you know, for the lay person,
and I feel like we're gonna be talking
to multiple different levels here.
At one end, hopefully it's a bunch of automotive,
you know, auto curious consumers who are super
into the state, the current state of the automobile
and where it's going.
But also I think we're starting to attract
another audience of more technical people,
hopefully within the industry.
How do you talk to that first layer?
Like, what's the best way?
Cause you just talked about, they're not central compute.
They have Ford, you know, systems.
And like, this is something we've,
we've been trying to talk about like domains and.
Right, and that's a huge step forward from,
you know, the anti-lock brakes had their own little brain
and the parking sensors had their own little brain
and the, you know, the power windows
had their own little brain, everything.
There was a zillion brains in the car.
And the more you get those centralized,
but more critically, and the BMW message here
at IAA is we developed all of this ourselves
with help from Qualcomm and some others.
But all of the things you feel when you drive that BMW
are BMW.
It's no supplier designed the way the ABS works.
No supplier designed the way the stability control
controls you in a corner.
BMW did that.
And for where the rubber reached the road,
there are some interesting things.
I've done a story on how a lot of their driver assist systems
are vastly less annoying, right?
I mean, so many ADAS systems,
we've paid for this stuff like automatic parking.
Do you ever parallel park with those things?
Never, because it seems to take too long.
If I pull up, now I've got to go in the screen
and I've got to do some things
and someone behind me is honking and you know,
I never do it.
I'm a good driver, I can do that.
Their system, since it always knows,
all those sensors are always looking,
it always knows when you slow down
and you're going kind of slow,
it'll say, do you want to park?
Do you want to park in that one when it's right behind there?
You just say yes, and boom, it just goes right in there.
Probably faster than I would do it myself
because it already knows where everything is.
It doesn't have to turn its head and look over its shoulder.
It just goes right back in there.
So it's stuff like that.
It's things like, okay,
I think we can make a lane change over there.
Are you okay with that?
All you have to do is look at the mirror.
When it sees that you've looked at the mirror,
it says, okay, we're going.
I know it's clear.
I don't want to do it until you say,
you know, you're happy with it.
Okay, let's go.
You know, things like that
that just make it so much more user friendly.
Symbiotic is the word they use.
Right.
And actually this brings to mind a story
you did recently with on the,
on some RoboTax evaluation that we did.
And I think the key line that from,
we compared two systems.
Can anyone with Tesla, the other was Waymo's.
And I think you and our colleague in the cars,
you noticed that the cars are actually surprisingly aggressive,
particularly in the vehicle,
the Waymo that had LiDAR plus camera because,
and this was a unique insight from the story.
You know, unlike a human, we got two eyes,
but you know, they're on our,
Always facing one direction.
Always facing one direction.
And if you need to check a mirror,
check another mirror,
maybe if you're a good driver,
look over your shoulder before you make a lane change.
You know what doesn't have to do that?
The autonomous vehicle,
because it's got a spinning array that's seeing,
it has a point cloud for several,
like 100 meters, right, going all around.
So there's none of this half a second,
second and a half delay of checking
whether it's safe to go.
If it's clear to go, you can go.
Yeah, it whips out our parking lots,
you know, startlingly fast.
And this is kind of the future that we're all looking at
as we get more and more of these
software defined vehicle systems in the car,
but also more tailored to what we actually want.
Right.
And another thing on that one,
we've all felt like that the Tesla seemed to accelerate
and break more smoothly and more like a human.
And that's another thing that you get
when you have all this really good,
large language model learning,
all this redundant data on the flywheel
in the cloud or whatever.
You get all those little cases
and the car is never, it's a lot less jerky.
Now oddly enough, the Waymo seemed to be a little jerkier,
but there's probably other things involved.
They probably just didn't program it to try and do that.
Right.
You know, it's all a matter of priorities and whatever.
Right, right, right.
So back to this, the IX3 and with Qualcomm on board,
you mentioned the head up display,
which I went to BMW's reveal of that,
which was at CES.
And it was as big doctor,
if they have this whole theater, shtick.
Did you get to, did you sort of explore with Qualcomm,
how what their involvement is in the HUD?
Not a ton, because really all of that is,
BMW decides what they want that user interface
to be like and whatever, they just power that.
They make it all possible and they give you
the compute power to be able to move
a million different things up there
and tailor it the way you want it.
Right, so that's part of, again,
back to the layperson that's listening.
You know, when we talk about software-defined vehicles,
fundamentally we're talking about how,
and I've heard this analogy a lot,
and actually on this trip, somebody said,
it's not a great analogy to say the smartphone on wheels,
but it's the easiest thing to understand,
like the cars are becoming a lot more
like your mobile phones, you get over their updates,
you can add apps to them and all this functionality
based on the sensors that is equipped in the hardware.
When we talk about HUD, when we talk about
Qualcomm powering systems like the head-up display,
some of the other things you were mentioning,
that's one domain of digital cockpit, right?
And we were talking to the larger editorial group
about this, there's some elements now
that we're coming into, which we've been promised
for a long time, into digital cockpit,
augmented reality.
Like AR, right?
Which is, I just experienced
in another German manufacturer in Audi.
You know, we've had HUDs for, what,
I think Corvette, what's the first one?
C4?
Was it C4?
Maybe, it's like cheeseball, like blue light
shining up onto your windshield.
But now, I was actually surprised to find
in these newer vehicles, they're getting a lot better,
a little bit more useful, things like
showing you what the coming speed limit in,
what zone you're entering into,
so you can slow down and not get a ticket,
but in a very elegant kind of way,
like the Audi system will put,
like if you're in a 35 mile an hour zone,
it'll have a little white sign that says 35,
but when you head to a 30 or a 25 zone,
you will see it pop up sort of offset
and behind the 30 mile an hour sign,
then as you approach the 25 or the lower limit,
it comes forward and then it replaces it.
And it's quite, right.
And it's really useful on those places
where there's a couple of optional turns
and it puts the little arrows directly on the one
that you want, you know, in threat,
superimpose on exactly the one you want.
Lane to be.
And it shows you the buildings sometimes
that are right there, some kind of landmarks
and whatever, it's really useful
because a lot of times, regular navigation,
I'm like, which of these is it?
I don't know.
And that makes it clear.
My wife has a, we argue, I'm a big Waze user,
she likes Google Maps, but one of the things
I think Waze is better at is telling you
which exact lane to be in when you're gonna make a turn,
but that's eyes on the infotainment system.
The AR in the augmented reality
in the head up display,
what literally put it on the dashboard,
which is super useful.
And again, all of this requires
a lot of computing power.
It requires massive amounts of data
and then a lot of fine tuning
from very clever UX engineers
to make sure it actually works well
and not super annoying.
And some of that, the job of those people
is made a little easier by the qualcoms of the world,
which when they design this digital cockpit,
Snapdragon package or whatever,
it can come with Bose Centerpoint loaded on there.
What is that?
Bose Centerpoint is a branded audio DSP situation.
Did you signal?
Digital signal processor.
You don't have to use it,
but if you decide to use it, it's a lot easier.
If you don't do that, it comes with a thing,
I had to look it up, audio weaver.
Quite often that's built in,
which just makes programming a DSP simpler.
It's like a toolkit that's already in there
and now you just use the graphic interface
of the computer and you don't do it from scratch.
But I'm missing something.
What is the Bose Centerpoint?
What does that mean?
Is that for the audio?
Yeah, it's one of, if you've got a branded audio system,
that is their latest one.
Although the forthcoming one is Dolby Atmos.
Bose with Dolby Atmos.
They're working on that
in the next generation of these things.
So they somehow build that into the chip
so it's easier for a manufacturer to turn it on
or program the speakers that they have
and the amplifiers that they have
based on what's already in the silicon.
Okay, okay.
So what else, what else did you see with Quarkoff?
Well, we should also mention that some of these things
are in those Mercedes products also.
One of the things I really like too,
that I found on the BMW,
which I think we'll probably see in these other cars,
I hate nothing more than I've just started driving
and maybe I've had to look around
and I've strayed a little bit and it says,
are you ready for a coffee break or whatever?
You know, I am not ready for a coffee break.
I want that turned off for sure.
And a lot of that is because it's not paying attention
as well, but these systems,
and I use a thing called Toby,
I guess is a driver monitoring software system
that they build in,
that uses these driver monitoring cameras
quite often they're in a rearview mirror, whatever.
That's another set, a hardware set that's in there,
but the software or the chip integration looks for that.
And it tracks your eye focus.
What are you looking at?
Because you know what?
If I'm looking at the rearview mirror
because there's an ambulance coming up behind me,
that is not distraction, or it's not bad distraction.
That's useful, helpful distraction.
If I'm looking at the mirror
because a lane splitting motorcycle is coming along,
that is also not bad and it will allow you
that that BMW won't tell you
to put your eyes back on the road.
If you're looking at something,
a high value target, if we will.
Right, okay.
So this is for those who haven't been in a modern car
in a little bit of time.
Frank is talking about,
I think Mercedes pioneered it first,
which was the, they had some crazy German name for it,
attention, something, something, awareness thing.
Basically, a camera looking at the driver
and noticing when you got drowsy or sleepy.
And also I think was measuring the duration
of your journey.
And then it would give you a little coffee cup icon
and say, hey, why don't you pull over, take a break?
Well, you could take a load off.
These are now everywhere in modern vehicles
because of the advanced ADAS,
the advanced driver assistance systems,
the adaptive cruise control.
We're getting into like things like supercruise
and blue cruise where you can be hands off the wheel,
but they still want your attention on the road ahead.
So there's a camera, I just saw it in the Polestar,
there's a camera, the A-pillar,
but like Ford puts it just off the corner
of the giant multi-information display.
I think that's where most manufacturers have it.
Occasionally, I think, I think like Subaru iSight
might be a little bit higher in the rear view mirror array,
but it's always looking at your face,
it's always looking at your eyes,
it's always figuring out that you're not looking
at your phone, that you're not,
did you even close your eyes and go to sleep?
And then it will send you alerts and warnings
somewhere in the car.
It might sound an alarm, it might vibrate the seats,
it might threaten to pull you into the lane
and turn the car off,
because it thinks you fell asleep for a minute or two.
And on the even the eye-closing thing,
BMW is interesting there.
We'll see if it comes to the US, it's not confirmed,
but if you're in a traffic jam, stop and go situation,
and you come to a stop,
it will allow you to close your eyes
and rest for a moment.
When the car ahead of you goes,
it will not go until, and it may buzz the cedar,
it might do something to say,
we could go now, but only if your eyes are open.
But it won't turn off and it won't holler at you
while you're stopped, it's like, hey, take a moment.
This has been a long trip,
you'll be better if you've rested your eyes
for a few minutes.
It's that kind of neat.
Other things, like if you're on cruise control,
sometimes, okay, I can see there's a lane merge up there
and I need to slow down a little
to merge in behind this guy over here.
You can use the brake,
and it won't unset the cruise control.
Light brake, and then you pull over in there,
take your foot off the brake, it just goes again,
because it knows, okay, I see what you're doing,
I get it, let's keep going,
if you stab it or if you push cancel or whatever, okay.
So they don't have a resume button,
there's just an on-off button,
it hit the on-off button again,
it resumes if you're still driving.
So there's a lot of this smarter, more symbiotic,
less annoying.
Also, they have steering wheel sensors
that do not ever require you to put torque on the wheel.
We need to get away from that as soon as possible.
Either watch that my hands are on there with a camera
or sense them with a capacitive touch.
All of these systems support that,
so they know when your hands are on the wheel,
because the message at IAA this year
is still level four, level five for consumers,
way off in the future.
Level two, two plus, two plus plus,
we're gonna still need to know when your hands are on,
we're gonna need to know what your eyes are doing.
So here's all the neat stuff we're doing
in terms of hands and eye monitoring.
And just for the, again, for the layperson,
Frank is describing the SAE standards related to
ADAS systems all the way through,
autonomous where level five is fully autonomous,
no steering wheel needed in the car.
Robotaxi.
Robotaxi, essentially you could go to sleep
when I drive to San Francisco or turn the seat around
and talk to your mates,
because there's no steering wheel in the car.
That would be level five.
The current goal I think in the US is level four.
Level three plus four.
Four is only in certain conditions.
So you still have a steering wheel
because if the rain, there's certain times
and places where it won't do it.
So you have to, yeah.
It's funny because that's funny for you to say that
that was what the message here
from I think predominantly the German manufacturers,
because a lot of the Chinese manufacturers
like we got an L4 coming next year,
which is like maybe.
Okay, covered a lot of ground so far,
but we surprisingly have not talked about AI.
Was there anything AI related to IAA
or Qualcomm that you ran into
that was particularly interesting?
Well, the new word that I came to learn here
is agentic AI, right?
So this is artificial intelligence
that will do things on your behalf.
Now can act as an agent.
Yes, act as an agent, agentic AI.
So Qualcomm did announce a program
with Google Cloud and Google Gemini.
And it's an integrated system
to make it easier for companies to deploy this.
So Gemini is an agent,
an artificial intelligent agent that lives
generally in the cloud,
although with the Qualcomm,
they've got enough compute power
and enough large language model programming,
you know, storage space on the chip
to do a lot of that on the edge,
they said, which means in the car.
So if you have lost your connection to the cloud,
it'll still answer questions and so forth.
Only with whatever it was programmed with,
if you ask up to who's the mayor of Seoul,
you know, and you don't have a connection,
it's gonna give you whoever it was when it was programmed
or last updated or whatever.
So yes, that is an interesting,
Mercedes introduced that on the Google booth,
but their system was not done with Qualcomm.
It uses the Qualcomm chip,
so it's entirely in the cloud.
But that one, you know, they did some demos where,
you know, instead of saying, you know,
can you recommend a restaurant near such and such
where it will go and just do a Yelp look,
you know, for who's around there,
you can ask it more, you know, in-depth questions like,
I'm looking for a high-end restaurant to take a client
and one client is vegan
and another is an enophile wine snob.
And it will read all that conversational stuff
and figure out what it wants and say,
well, here are three recommendations
and then you could pick one.
You could ask it and this is where it'll really be handy
for people, you know, with modern cars.
A light might come up on your dash,
like the turtle light on an EV that's getting low on power.
And you could just say, hey Mercedes,
what's that turtle light on my dash?
And it will explain all of that
and it can also put up the owner's manual page
on your infotainment screen explaining that.
If you've got a malfunction indicator light,
it'll tell you it can query, you know,
the OBD2 sensors or figure out what it is and go,
you know, okay, yeah, it's this.
It's not mission critical.
I can make an appointment next week for you.
Do you want me to do that?
So it can do those kinds of things on your behalf.
Right.
So this is a gentic,
this is sort of the current state of a gentic AI.
And just again, if you're sort of new to AI, right?
The one that everybody knows
is the previous hot news in AI, which was generative AI.
Right, generative AI is like mid-journey.
It was the original chat GPT.
It was like, hey, write an email for me.
You know, I'm tired of do a drawing
if you're in mid-journey, like you explain a scenario,
draw a picture of me and Frank in a booth in Germany
recording a podcast and we had spit out
sort of a clunky image.
The next level of AI has been a gentic,
which is take the ability to generate,
look up and generate stuff and respond to your queries,
but then act as a virtual agent for you,
which is what like these assistants
that are coming to cars can do.
And then the next level after this appears to be,
I've heard it explained a bunch of different ways.
The most recent term I heard is embodied AI,
which is basically robots.
So you're putting the agent,
which is either on your phone or in your car
or on a computer on your desk.
You're putting it into a robot walking around,
which everybody has.
A lot of the Chinese guys are showing off
these really wicked robots.
So is Tesla.
But a gentic is the sort of the hot button phrase
right now within automotive
because the AI, I guess the power of AI
has been developing so rapidly
and a lot of it now is sort of filtering into the vehicles.
Have you though personally been impressed
with any AI assistants in the cars?
Cause I've been, I've had very, very mixed results.
Well, sort of they want to make cars your friend, right?
And so my China trip, driving around in that Neo ET9
with the, they've got a little round screen on the top
that turns and looks at you and blinks its eyes
and blushes and strums a guitar to the music
and all this stuff.
Those things are very endearing.
I mean, it's half exciting, half depressing.
Though I'm afraid there's like a generation here
that has grown up on a phone
and has not interacted with people
and has gonna be more comfortable
interacting with these avatars.
And the IX3 actually has one of those too.
I think it's just built into the screen,
but it looks at whoever's talking and it blinks also.
So it's trying to do some of that too.
Does that have a name?
I'm not sure, yeah.
Okay.
Maybe you can name it.
Yeah, same.
I played around with the Neo system.
It's pretty clever.
I think that some of the interesting the example you gave
about asking for a restaurant recommendation
and providing more depth.
I think some of the hardest challenges
with some of these AI assistants doing that
is actually the general one.
And you go the other way.
You say, like, hey Mercedes or I was in an Audi,
I'm hungry.
And then it starts listing.
And then you can have a conversation and say,
okay, what do you want?
No, no Mexican food.
I'm feeling kind of like a hamburger.
And then I can list them off and then you can pick one.
But it's, we're a long ways from the current
sort of mass market vehicles
having that level of ability or availability.
It seems to be coming out with a lot
of the luxury manufacturers first.
No doubt because it requires a lot of computing power
but also software designers,
UX designers to make sure that stuff works
because it's been very spotty.
And we've all heard that AI involves these server farms
that require all this power and so forth.
So even in the car, it takes a lot of computing power.
And of course, a lot of these that we're talking about
are EVs, so they've got a lot of onboard power.
And a lot of that happens in the cloud.
So we're offshoring that power consumption.
But yes, it is not dirt cheap
for affordable little light cars.
Right.
Anything else in the AI realm that caught your eye here?
Is it mostly authentic?
No, that's been the biggie.
Yeah, and it's multiple, you know,
I'm going to talk to a competitor later today
that's got a whole different system
based that uses the Microsoft world.
So Azure for the cloud instead of Google cloud, you know.
Gotcha.
Yeah, the cloud piece is something
that we're very curious to explore
because it is, I think it's something
that most consumers don't realize is it's, you know,
if you're at all connected, not just to your car,
but with your mobile phone, if you're buying things
on Amazon, if you're going to any retail spot,
if you're using common apps like Apple Maps
or Google Maps or even things like Yelp,
like you're sending vast amounts of data to the cloud
and it's enabling these great results
that you're getting back.
And to your point on edge compute, right?
If you think about, I mean, we might think
of it's just the stuff I am consciously doing in the car,
like inputting a destination or looking up a restaurant
or even tuning like some music or infotainment.
But there's actually a thousand,
I don't even know what the proper term is,
megabits or whatever, kilobytes, not kilobytes,
megabytes of information going back and forth
from all the systems within these vehicles, right?
People from the GPS, navigation,
anything related to keeping the car between the lines,
cruising down the road, it's just constantly
going back and forth.
And this is part of that, the edge computing
that you were talking about, which again,
I wanted to explain when you said it, right?
Like there's so much data going back and forth
and not all data is equal, right?
You don't need access to page 204
in the user manual that's now on three folders in
on your infotainment system.
That is not gonna be necessarily in the edge.
The edge is gonna be sort of mission critical stuff
that you want instantaneous access.
Although they did say may or soul
whenever it was trained on board, I mean, you know,
they did mention too, like if you're driving along
you can say if there's a prominent billionaire
that's obviously a landmark, you can just ask what it is
and the car has the camera view and it'll tell you.
And they said a lot of that stuff is on the edge.
It's on the car, you know, the large language
which was also photo libraries and whatever built in.
I mean, I just can't imagine how many ones and zeros
are stored on that car.
But that makes sense to me because having
and this is, I can't remember the manufacturer
that told me this, but like, you know,
I just looked at this Polestar, it's got 11 cameras
on the car just for the eight ass system
and then another two exterior
because there's no rear glass
and they have a virtual rear window
and then there's another one on the car looking at you.
So there's so many cameras, right?
And the cameras are all outward facing.
So in the future there's a,
you could be traveled to a new place,
like here I'm in Munich, I've been here a long time
and you could just ask the car to give you a tour.
And the car, based on the cameras, can point out,
oh, that building, that's the government building over there.
This is a famous, whatever used to be like,
whatever famous thing that's going on.
That makes sense to me,
that you would want that information on the edge
because it's gonna be anywhere you could actually go.
And that doesn't change.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Okay.
Fascinating stuff.
You, we are recording this sort of midway
through your journey here at Munich.
I, Munich, you're gonna talk
to Qualcomm's president, Nikul Degal.
Yes.
And we'll have to catch up with you after that.
Right.
But what are you most curious to ask?
Well, one of the things I want to talk to him about,
you know, in Shanghai,
we saw Neo and Expan show off chips
of their own design and manufacture.
And so I have been curious about, you know,
is that a trend or, you know,
was that just based on, oh, there's a chip shortage
and whatever, you know, is that gonna kick in, you know?
And my sense of it is,
from talking to a few of the other people,
it's not really cost effective to do that.
To build your own.
No, it's easier if you're a Neo
and your car, your products are mostly all upper end
so you don't have a giant, you know, line of,
you know, long line of different car types
that you have to satisfy.
But if you're a Volkswagen with everything from polos
to, you know, Bentley's and whatever, very difficult.
Right.
The one thing I'll say,
I think Nikul may not be able to answer is
why the Chinese manufacturers are doing that
is the chips act, right?
Like we're supposed to,
US supposed to be only US hardware and software
within the car.
And the Chinese have sort of implemented their own plan.
So a lot of these companies
are putting their own systems in it.
I do think what's interesting about
the Chinese vehicles,
the manufacturers that we've talked about,
they love bragging about the number
of chips at top.
Yes.
1,200!
Terraflops per second,
floating point operations per second, right?
But also the number of chips and who make them
because that audience is very savvy
to the highest tech.
I got, we got this many LiDARs,
we got this many radars, this many cameras.
US consumer doesn't really see the care at all.
No.
Okay. Well, we're about to be kicked out
of this beautiful recording space.
So we'll have to catch up with you, Frank,
after you chat with the president of Qualcomm
and see how that goes.
So thank you so much for listening.
This has been Ed Lowe and-
Frank Marcus.
Frank Marcus and we've been at IAA Munich 2025
talking all about the latest
in the future of mobility.
Thank you very much.
About this episode
The episode dives into the highlights from the IAA Munich auto show, featuring a comparison between BMW's Neue Klasse and Mercedes' GLC. Guests Kyle Conner and Frank Marcus discuss the innovative specs of the BMW IX3, including its impressive battery technology and efficient design, while also critiquing the GLC's interior and performance. The conversation expands to the role of AI in automotive technology, touching on collaborations between automakers and tech companies like Qualcomm and Rivian. The episode captures the excitement of new electric models and the evolving landscape of automotive technology.
Original notes
Ep116 - Welcome back to The Inevitable by MotorTrend—where we dig into the future of the automobile. Fresh off IAA Munich 2025, we compare BMW’s Neue Klasse / iX3 with Mercedes-Benz GLC Electric, talk mega watt charging, battery design, interiors, and who’s really leading right now. Guest Kyle Conner (Out of Spec) joins us first, then Frank Markus and Ed go deep on Qualcomm x BMW tech from the show floor: zonal compute, ADAS that’s less annoying, AR HUDs, and on-device vs. cloud AI agents. We also hit VW Group’s software reset (Cariad → Rivian/Xpeng), the Polestar 5 reveal (and its pricing problem), plus Kyle’s Autobahn run in a Lucid Air Sapphire to an indicated 204 mph.
***MotorTrend Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator Awards — nominations for the 2026 SDV Innovator Awards are open now.***
SUBMIT NOMINATIONS HERE: https://www.motortrend.com/sdvsurvey Topics covered
- IAA Munich highlights & how the show has “become CES for Europe”- BMW Neue Klasse platform: 4695 cylindrical cells, cell-to-pack, pack-to-body, zonal architecture (“Heart of Joy” ECU)
- Mercedes GLC Electric: big battery, 2-speed rear unit, 330 kW DC—how it stacks up
- AMG prototype mega-charging (~1 MW burst)
- VW Group software pivot: Cariad’s struggles, Rivian partnership, ID.1 single-ECU concept
- Polestar 5: specs vs. price, missing performance basics
- Lucid Sapphire at 200+ mph: stability and thermal takeaways
- ADAS/UX done right: AR HUD, driver monitoring that understands intent, Level 2→4 reality
- Agentic AI in cars: what can run on-device vs. in the cloud
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