CarCast+Edmunds - Lamborghini Temerario track test and new Mercedes-Benz S-Class announced.

Hello, welcome to the EdmundsCarCast podcast. I'm math

the moderator, D'Andrea here with Alistair Weaver. Before we

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Hey y'all.

You think the slate got a Friday afternoon as always?

Yeah, maybe I'll add it a little bit of that beginning

in there. So maybe not.

Anybody driving a log is like, ah, that's that, you know, I

can empathize with that. I can relate to that, let's get it.

We were, we were just talking about, I don't know, just this

turned out to be just like a busy hectic week and just, I don't

know, just kind of, I don't know if it's an end of the month

thing or just an end of the week thing, but everything just

sort of be, just sort of like in the air and kind of crazy. And

if you heard the show earlier this week with Goldberg, I don't

know how he ended up, we did, you know, 15 minutes about him

trying to wrangle 200 animals so they don't freeze the death.

You know,

Oh, the storm hit Texas.

Yeah, he's in Texas.

And then he was like, we had a cold day, then you had like a

warmer day. And not only is it just the animals, but, but a

bunch of the animals were just supposed to be just like free

on the property. And then there was like a brand new like sheep

was born. So already at night, the, like the, the fox was like

stalking where the baby sheep was. They wanted to eat that

thing. So he's hiding in the bushes with weaponry trying to

Clarkson's farm. I don't know if you've seen that. It's a show

I love. Jeremy Clarkson, top girl in the grand tour. And he has

his Clarkson farm, which I absolutely love. And it kind of

reminds me of England stuff, but it, but I Goldberg's farm

it's the Goldberg version of it. Yeah, it's the Goldberg version

of it. You notice why she's such a sweetheart, but she's

sending him text messages that are kind of mad. She's just like,

the animals were being hunted by the other animals. And it's

just like, she's like, I don't need the circle of life

happening on my property at this moment. I'm trying to deal with

so many things right now. But yeah, so there's animal that

and yeah, believe me, she handles 90% of it. And he still has

to go out on the property, make sure the fences aren't knocked

over and things like that. So there's, it was just kind of a

fun, but interesting episode of, of how he's, you know, he's

all wrapped up like a, like the Michelin man and trying to

stay warm while he's doing that. But anyway,

have a lot of fat on him. Anyway, she's talking about cars.

Let's talk about cars. I think we just jump right into the fancy

goodness. You've been driving Lamborghini, new Lamborghini.

Fairly brutal. Like, you know, everybody's gonna listen to

this and say, Oh, you know, this is all you've done this week.

Reality is this was like a relatively short moment of light

relief and was being quite full on week. Just so people don't

think this is all I do. But yeah, we had the Lamborghini

Temarario, which is another type of fighting bull at the, at

the track down on the Edmunds test track down on Monday. And

that was, and this was the first time we've, we've driven this

one. We had the, we had the the V12 recently, but this is the

baby Lamborghini. So this is replacing the Huracan. This is

replacing the Huracan. So if you're a, if you're a kind of

historian of the brand, you went from the Gallardo, which

they built a ton off, which was kind of shared a lot of that

technology was shared with the Audi R8. And then they went into

the Huracan, which I think is the biggest selling Lamborghini of

all time, maybe the Urus SUV will overtake at some point, but

the Huracan was a big success for them. And now we've moved into

the Temarario, which I'm probably pronouncing wrong, as the

new baby Lambo. But Lamborghini is crazy to think about it, but

Lamborghini has now a purely hybrid lineup. The previous gen

previous generation car had that wonderful naturally aspirated

V10. They even bother with turbos. It was just a glorious V10.

And they jumped all the way from that into a V8 with three

electric motors, two massive turbos. So basically what and a

flatplane crank V8, which revs to 10,000 RPM, which I believe is

the highest revving V8 on the market today. So you've just got

this massive dump of technology. So you've got two massive

turbos, which in normal circumstances, you'd be worried

about turbo lag, the time takes for those turbos to spool up

before you get all the acceleration. But of course,

if you've got a hybrid system, if you've got the electronics

right, you can use the the torque from the electric motor to

fill in for that high, that turbo. So it is monstrously

complicated.

But a great use for hybrid technology, like that's what you

want it to do is like fill in that low end torque.

Correct. And it is technically a plug in hybrid. But if it's got

a tiny little battery, so basically, I think it will do, I

forget the exact figure, but it'll do like less than 10 miles,

like six miles or something on electricity alone. So it's

probably enough to get you from your front door out of your

neighborhood before you fire up the V8 in somebody else's

neighborhood and wake everybody up.

Right. Just enough to get it. You're right. Just enough to get

it out of the driveway.

Basically, yeah. So you've got but the other thing about the

hybrid system, of course, is you've got two, two electric

motors at the front. So you've basically got best part of

294 horsepower and 442 pounds feet of torque, checking my

notes at the front axle. So you've got a kind of de facto

all real drive. So not everything's going to the rear,

you've got the rear, and then you've got the front, and then

you've also got all the electronics doing the torque

vectoring to move all the power around to not only help with

traction, but also it does things like there's a drift mode,

which will actually make the drift more consistent than it

would be if you didn't have this. There's just a massive amount

of electronics. But the overall figures are staggering in 907

horsepower, 538 pounds feet of torque. I mean, this is a, you

know, this is a monster of performance. But, and we should

probably get into that before too long, you know, just the price.

It's really expensive.

So Huracans were what I feel like, so I drove Gallardo Huracans

event doors, and I felt like the eight or the tense owner cars,

the baby cars were like 300 and something grand. And then the

event door was like 600 or the one that I drove was like 600.

But by the way, fantastic 12 cylinder, no hybrid, no

turbo, it's just naturally aspirated 12 cylinders. Like it

was just that car is amazing to drive. But so wide that it was

like in the canyons, like, you know, we got Santa Monica

mountains, Malibu mountains and stuff, and take a tight turn.

And I was scraping the front inside of that car. I was like,

it's too wide for the road.

No, that's that's that I completely agree with you. But

they, yeah, so the price, and I was just looking at the use

values as well. Yeah, I mean, I want to start thinking that

the Huracans and so guys, what was started in the twos, and it

went into the threes when you got into things like the Huracan

Puffer Manté, which is still one of my favorite cars. If you

have money to burn the used ones, I think are going for about

250 at the moment. Huracan Puffer Manté was basically the

engineers, Huracan. Yeah, and then they did the STO, which was

also mega, but a bit more kind of track focused.

Yeah, uncomfortable seat in that car, though, it's just really

like, I drove it for like a day and I was like, Oh, my gosh,

stuff.

I think basically it was all about like your buttocks. For me,

they were comfortable, but I was like the only person that I

know, because they were basically just carbon fiber with a bit of

padding. Yeah, if you were tall and reasonably thin like me,

then they kind of worked. But if you are anybody else, they

seem not or so. But 911 GT3 seats are a bit like that. So yeah,

I mean, you think two to 300 is kind of in that ballpark to get

to like the special editions. This Temarario, it starts at

three. Let me get the little let me get my little cheat sheet up

here. So without tax, obviously base base price 382. The car that

we drove 585. So by the time you've paid your tax, because

you're paying your tax on that 590 depending on where you live

and everything else, you're looking at the best part of 650

grand for the entry level.

Okay, explain how this car has $200,000 of options.

So I know we always like really cool Ferrari for this, but it's

got the Algarita package, which is a big deal apparently. So

that adds 67% more downforce. It's basically a ton of carbon

fiber. And they're obviously pushing this because I know

Jonathan, our chief tester, I went on the launch of this down

in down in Portugal, I think it was. And this was like a big

deal. You know, what else am I looking at Lamborghini real

logo in black that 700 bucks not too bad, I suppose. Lift system

you got to have that yeah, 1300 bucks. kick plate invisible

carbon fiber that's going to add to performance. That is 5400

bucks. Wheel cap, just a cap in carbon fiber 1000 bucks.

That's only 250 per wheel. So 250 per wheel. That's not a bad

deal. Yeah, high fi system that you basically won't hear

because he's because he's already the VA is really noisy

6900 travel package net net for your bag, I guess. Yeah, flying

around 1000 bucks. What else we got sports seats 8600 sports

steering wheel in carbon with leather sides and red central

marker 4300. So presumably standard steering wheels a bit

rubbish. Oh, this is a good one. Events. I love these games.

Events in matte carbon events. Yeah, $6300. But the people must

buy them right? Otherwise, you don't you don't spend all the

time engineering and marketing. Yeah. The car that we drove,

which I'm sure you could go further than this. 6 that

basically 585 grand. It's just such an I know like now it's

like our GT threes 300 grand and everything's got so stupid,

but $600,000 and it takes it. It takes it away from being

something like, you know, you sold your house every money, I'm

just gonna have one of these to like, there is almost no world

in which I imagine spending 600,000 bucks on a entry level

Lamborghini sports cars just right. Right. I mean, it all the

things that you're talking about, it's like, all right, you

could save 28 pounds and you can dress up the interior with a

bunch of carbon fiber. And I get that the audience for this car

wants to get the unique package. But I think there's

something to say for just going just give me the base model.

It's not slower. It's not less performance. There's not like a

performance package or something that's, you know, doing a

thing or, you know, it doesn't have like, you know, get the

upgraded suspension or whatever, you know, like, it's I

probably straight down to the tires. It's all the same

performance wise. I can still hear the podcast because he's

still got a high five of some description. You're right. I'd

love to see go go and they go on like the the configurate and

see what's the what's the sort of absolute boggo the base. I

sponsored my racing back in the day. So, you know, I always

call him sir on that basis. And he, you know, he sold his

bills, the building company, a fairly affluent gentleman in the

UK. And he went into Porsche and bought a he's very man is

well, it is nearly 80 still drives around in a 991

target manual. And he went into the dealer and said, I'd like

basically a 99, I'd like a brand new 911 target manual. No

options. That's fantastic. I think he had red paint, but I

was like, these days, like if you go to Porsche dealer, you go

to a Lamborghini dealer and you order the base model. Do you

think the salesman just like weeps a little? He's just like,

this is the worst day of my life. There's all the margin in

this vehicle is gone. It's right, you know, like, whatever

bonuses they're trying to do, even Lamborghini and Porsche,

they're going, the last thing we ever want to do is send a

cell as a base model. Because there's so much margin. If

there's 30% margin in a 911, there's probably 130% margin

in the options.

Yes. I remember going into it takes me back to the pandemic

and going into a Land Rover dealership, because I was

genuinely interested in swapping our Tesla for a for a

defender. And I said, I just want, you know, standard car

steel wheels, because I love the steel wheels, they're cool. And

I want to add this and this option, basically. So almost

what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, I got no interest in selling

you that. I literally wouldn't sell me the vehicle. I'm not

going to sell you that. Yeah, wait, this was before the

pandemic. This is during the pandemic. They're in the city,

even if you wanted it to be a 10 grand marker, but I'm not

selling it. So I was like, okay, whatever, I bought Genesis,

but 10 grand markup because I need to get their money

somehow 10 grand markup. It's, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, those

they've gone, but yes, it's a challenge. This is where the a

lot of the time the marker appears. And to be fair to

Land Rover, I had some good experience with Land Rover

deals. Well, that was quite a unique, unique situation. But

the other thing about going back to to the to the Lambo about

it, it's just the sheer complexity of of it. Jonathan, who

had been on the launch, right, I'm going to have to talk you

through this. So we sat in this thing, and we've probably got

some pictures we can bring up, but it was like, right, look at

the steering wheel, you've got a little dial here by your left

hand. And that's got series of modes like strada, Corsa. Forget

there's a middle one before there's like, like street

performance, there might be one for like snow, then it's street

performance track track without ESC on. So you got like one

little knob knob here. And then on the right hand side, you've

got another dial for the hybrid system. So you've either got it

in like normal recharge, where you're basically asking the

engine to act as a generator and charge it up. Or you've got

performance, which is basically saying, just please give me

everything that you've got. So before you even start, you've

got to think about like, how you kind of blending these little

dials. And he's even like, john was saying, Oh, yeah, if you're

on an in lap, and you're going to do the warm down lap, stick the

hybrid system back into recharge, so you kind of boost the

batteries again. And it's like, Oh, I got that. And it's like,

okay, so now I'm in Corsa mode. But then in that, you've got to

flappy paddle it because the gearbox no longer does this.

And I was like, I'm way too tired. I've got way too much going

on to like absorb all this. So it's just like the complexity has

just gone up. It's like, you know, like a complete computer

game. It's like a Gran Turismo or something. And then when we

set off, it's, I've got the performance figures here,

actually, it's quite interesting that they comparing it with

the Roberto, which is was $750,000. So to give you context, we

tested this is the one that we tested. The Roberto, which is the

V12 we tested was 750 grand. The Temerario was 586 grand. And

the Temerario was faster. It gives away 100 horsepower 907

versus 1001. But it's also lighter by about just over 100

pounds. But we just think basically had better, it had

potential race tires. I think it's got grippier tires, and he

probably just hooks up better. So it did 2.5 to 60 quarter

mile in 9.6 at 146.6. That compares with the Roberto 2.6

or a 10th lowest to 60 9.9 at 143.7. So it's actually faster

than the V12.

Interesting. I'm surprised the Lamborghini like let that

happen. You know what I mean? You know how like Porsche was

like, the Cayman's good and so balanced, but it can't be

faster than a 911. You know, so they're like, we need to do

whatever we can to make it not as fast, you know, off the

showroom floor as 911, but

Or maybe they just know their customer base. And like, a lot

of their customers like, oh, I've got to have the fancy one

with the V12.

Yeah, you either want the 12 or you want the eight, I guess,

right? And that's been done with it. But I've also got the

numbers up in front of me that we ran the ZR1. These are all

the same track, basically the same conditions. Southern

California doesn't change much. So a ZR1, which of course,

1064 horsepower, only rear wheel drive weighs 3, nearly 400

pounds less than either the Lamborghini. So it's about 350

pounds less than the Temerario, obviously no hybrid system to

pull around. And 500 pounds less than the Roberto 0 to 62.7

despite just being rear wheel drive, 10 seconds dead for the

for the quarter. So pretty much as fast, but stopped a lot

quicker, six from 60 and 222 grand. I mean, the more you look

at this stuff, that cover is the performance bar. Yeah. I mean,

that's in the spec that you'd want to buy it as well 222

grand. It is, you know, it is not far off a third of the price

of the of the baby Lamborghini. And yes, it hasn't got the badge

and all the rest of it. But you don't even have the fancy doors

on the Temerario. You don't have the double hinged or triple

hinge, whatever they're called. You know, you don't have the

theater.

Let me let me ask you this is maybe this is an interesting

question. Given all the the the rave reviews on the on the Corvette,

there's potentially markups. And if you want it right away, you

pay the markup. I'm not a markup person. You know how I feel

about that. So I'm a hard note. But would you pay $350,000 for

the Corvette or or just walk in and get the Lamborghini for

sticker price? Is you think the car that is I don't even know

the Lamborghini sticker price. But also, I would just wait a

little bit because I think the Corvette ZR ones will not be,

you know, I don't quite know where the market is for the

moment. But I don't think, you know, I think that's going to

be that is going to be huge, huge markup there in the in the

medium term. So, you know, you're paying for the badge, you

change the sophistication, it is a piece of art and anything

else. But the other thing and it feels exciting, you know, the

brake pedal is electronic but has a really kind of firm race car

feel about it. It's monstrously fast. I mean, like, way too fast

for our test track. And not intimidating to drive, but you're

always aware of just like how fast it is. But then beyond that,

I was a little bit, it's you got so used to those v10s and the

noise and how visceral it is and that screaming naturally

aspirated feel. Yes, this thing revs to the 10,000 but it

doesn't sound that good. It's crazy flat plane crank v8 doesn't

sound that good. And to rev it to 10,000 you've almost got like

one of the guys in the test team said to me, look, you'll

naturally change up because the engine feels like you want to

change up. So you've almost got to watch the rev counter and

like mentally hang on to it. And once you've done that, then

you kind of like you go to 10,000 and you and you shift it's

just over 10,000 but it's not like a crazy crescendo that you

used to get from the v10 the thing howling or like a Ferrari

v8. It's like a lot of modern engines. It's it's incredibly

powerful. But it's a bit like yeah. Can you tell them a little

bit underwhelmed? Well, I the issue is is when you when you go

from a base price of a of a Gallardo $220,000 let's say to a

base price of $385,000 and sure there's inflation a few years

later and all that but that's such a huge jump. You the car

has to be able to not just perform but just feel in every

way like it's worth that much more money. You know, if you're

going, oh, I love the sound of that naturally aspirated 10

cylinder but now I got a sort of a stifled v8 sound because of

the hybrid system or or you know, the turbos a flat plain

crank v8 sounds amazing but when you put turbos on it does kind

of muffle it. You know, I remember the first time I drove

one of the, you know, the when Lamborghini or sorry, when

McLaren started coming out street cars MP4 MP4 12C and you

know, I went to Auto Club Speedway when it was there and we

did a big whole thing on it and they showed the engine and we

got on the track and we drove it and and like in what your

feedback was like, it's great to drive. I love the car. It's

amazing. And just the sound isn't there. Like what are you

doing for like mufflers and stuff? Why can't we change it?

I'm like, there's none. It goes right from the turbos to

catalytic converters and there's no mufflers. It's like we can't

make it louder. Basically,

they had it. I mean, Ricardo, which is a big engineering

company did that engine for McLaren and then they used it

in everything like through to the center and you know, they

always had this this challenge with it and you know, they kind

of accepted quite early on that they'd misjudged the market

that in that very McLaren, this was the Ron Dennis, everything

was very clinical. We're just going to build a very clinical

car and actually everybody's like, well, we don't really want a

clinical car. We want something that's like so nervous and

crazy and and Lamborghini, that's what Lamborghini's always

been good about. And you know, the Temerario is a little bit, I

mean, the other thing is what else should we say about it? It's

a bit more space inside. So if you're a bit taller, it helps

to get a little design for like a weekend away. It's still not

a load of luggage space, but they've tried to be a bit more

sensible with that. I mean, I don't fit in the spider of a

hurricane. And it's, you know, it is fun to drive. Obviously,

it's incredibly fast, feels much more like a race car. It's

quite noisy and visceral. And I think traditional Lamborghini

owners are gonna gonna love it. But if it was me, what am I

spending? You know, what would I do? I'd go and buy either

something like a stick shift Gallardo or something because

it's stick shift or you'd buy like a Ferrari 458 and you're

never going to lose money. The last naturally aspirated Ferrari.

I struggle with I struggle with some of this stuff. But maybe

that's just me and I haven't got millions and millions in the

bank to spend on this sort of thing.

And you know, like if you want the 12 zone, you're again, we're

talking about options versus no options, you can get the fully

optioned Temerario for $585,000, where you get the stripped

down base model, if you will, Roberto for $600 for $20,000

more. Yeah. And it looks and it looks yeah, it looks epic.

And like you're like, Oh, maybe it's not as fast or this is

slightly faster. But like, I know, but it's the 12 cylinder

big car versus the eight cylinder baby car. Yeah, you know, in

the world of Lamborghini, you've still got the yeah, that's

the that's the engine, right? You know, you know, that's the

yeah, yeah, they saw a lot of those. See, I'm quite you haven't

quite forked out the fillet. So yeah, that's the that's the

every man. Yeah, it's not wagyu. So is it? It's not wagyu.

It's not wagyu. All right, let's stop. We got to take a quick

break. We'll be right back.

A quick betting note for racing fans. Fan duals got solid value

this week. If you're looking at NASCAR action, Joey Logando as

a race favorite is never a bad play. Keep an eye on Kyle

Larson as well for a top three finish. Odds can move faster.

Check fan dual sportsbook and get in before the green flag

drops.

Alright, so think we're just thinking about real quick, finish

up on that Lamborghini and the McLaren stuff. I spoke to a

friend of mine that I don't think I mentioned this, I don't

know if I told you this yet, but a friend of mine, very tragic

lost his house in the Palisades fire and had several cars in

this like really cool subterranean garage that he

helped there. I've been up there. It's really cool. Had this

little like turntable thing down there, mostly because the

garage wasn't designed for that many cars. And you couldn't fit

them in. And he came up with this really creative way of getting

the cars in there. But, you know, had an old Porsche 911 in

there that he loved something he had for like 40 years and meant

a lot to him and had McLaren and a couple of other things. I

think the McLaren, I don't recall what what model it was, but

obviously one of the newer ones. And he said, you know, it was

amazing was the Porsche being old when everything burnt, that

was just like a burnt metal carcass like with an outline of a

Porsche around it. He said the McLaren being so modern, so much

carbon fiber thing. It was like it was just like a little pile

of dust. It looked like something out of a cartoon, you

know, there's like, you know, a road runner in the coyote when

the bomb goes off and it's just like someone's like a pile of

dust or like coyote sort of burnt. And he's in a dust, but

he's like amazing seeing those things two parked together and

both of them burnt down to nothing. He's like, yeah, just

look

tough. The Porsche was a big loss. That one I really feel bad

about. That was a sentimental thing that he had that family for

a long time. That's a tough loss. But yeah, but he was sort of

explaining the difference of what burnt in his garage and what

was the carnage like the aftermath. But yeah, tough. Alright,

so since we're on the topic of fancy cars, we had mentioned I

don't know if it was last week, week before new Mercedes Benz S

class coming out. And we got the announcement about it. But

before the car was released, we knew there was going to be some

interesting features. You had brought up the like the AI cloud

based feature where the, you know, your car will learn a road

and then tell other Mercedes S classes around it in the future

going, Hey, adjust your suspension because the 405 has

potholes in it. You know, and that was kind of neat. And the

the heated seatbelt.

Oh, I'd miss that the heated seatbelt. I see. Is that the

first heat? I know there's a lot of heat seatbelts with airbags

in them. Is this the first? Yeah, it's a heated seatbelt tied

into the heat seaters. Right. So when you put it on and and and

you know, it's right up. There was like, it's like, it's a sort

of this warm hug. But we have to bring it up to see who wrote

your your article. But Steve, Steve, Steve, and they have, I

know that they've got into like where they heat the, you know,

the bit where your elbows sit. So sort of on the door panel and

on the, okay, often it's like a console that isn't like a little

bit of storage in the center console. I know you can have

heated versions of that. So like your little elbows keep warm.

And obviously heated steering wheels are nothing new. But like

heated seatbelt. I mean, it's this is the problem. And we again,

we're coming over Earl Grangs, we talked about it before on the

show, but you get into the world of like, what can we do on an S

class to differentiate it from a C class? And it's not like,

you know, everything's got carplay, whatever it may be. So the

only you really start to scrape the bucket and somebody's gone,

heated seatbelt, let's do a heated seatbelt. And that's

going to be the S class signature, you know, have you coming

back to the Lamborghini? This is not the V12. So this is the

heated seatbelt. It's, I mean, it's an S class, isn't it? It

looks like an S class. It's a kind of heavy tweak of what they

had before. Big screens inside like everything has now I'm

sure it's a lovely way to travel. They've always they just do

such an amazing job with those cars.

And in the in the article in the write up that you guys wrote

about it, we were talking about the the heated the heated

seatbelts, you know, like, hey, it's like a hug from a heated

seatbelt. But I love this line says, I bet it'll feel like a

nice warm hug on a cold day, though, a conversation with a

female colleague did involve the phrase boob sweat.

I am. That's the first time I've read that.

And I was thinking about that too, going, um, I don't can you

control the heated seatbelt? I would be amazed separately from

the heat seats, but you can't. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let's take a

look at the car. We're looking at the car. I've no no no

comment on that. It's interesting as well. Mercedes

launched this S class on the same week that Tesla finally

called time on the Model S and the Model X. I was at the Model

S launch back in 2020, 2012, I think it was. It was like a

lifetime ago. I was like 12 years old. And it's, um, yeah, so

Mercedes launched a new S class and Tesla finally said that

they're stopping production of both the Model S and the Model

X. So, you know, Tesla's going to be focused on the three and

the Y and then all the Robo taxes and the self driving and

everything else, which is probably the future of the

company really, rather than selling. Yeah. So I dug into

that a little bit as well. And he was basically saying that we

need to move away from from products that aren't going to

show long term profitability for us. And the Model S, you

know, it, you know, it launched the company created some

revenue, but not a high margin vehicle, I guess for them, I

think it's more expensive. We weren't selling money as well.

Yeah. And they're not selling them. I mean, nobody was really

buying it. And the SUV with the the X. The X, right. The

Falcon wing door. The Falcon wing door with the Ka Ka with the

perfect bird wing doors. Not a big seller either, right?

Because and for that reason, they they're like, we need to go

into the, you know, more consistent revenue, more

consistent profitability. Because when you were crunching

the numbers on it, you had you, you'd explain the idea of

selling credits, the clean air like environmental credit,

which they're not, which also because the Trump

administration has rolled up back. So that's probably a big

revenue stream that's going away. Right. So when you look at

their net revenue, which is their basically their profit,

they were selling like 1.8 billion of those credits,

which is basically just a free product. They were just

selling off nothing, paperwork, and earning. And it was

accounting for like half of their total net revenue. Yeah.

Right. And so when you take a lot of that away, they're

going, oh, we just lost 1.8 billion in profit. Like that's

free money. And we're spending so much money on robotics and

other things that, you know, in factories for those things,

like we're going to be losing a lot of money for a while. So

we can't lose money on, you know, on a product like a

Model S or X, you know, we need to focus on the profitable

product. So interesting times. Yeah, interesting. It means

they've only really got two cars in the Cybertrick left. And

it's not like the Cybertrick's really selling. But you know,

the S and the good thing is for them, the three and the Y

are both still really good, really good vehicles. And the

FS, you know, the full self driving, I've been using more

and more and we should talk about that on on another show.

But yeah, interesting, interesting times. Right.

Interesting. And, you know, Tesla is an interesting company

because they have so much in, you know, the the vision of

that company involves so many things other than consumer

vehicles, other than just robots in every home. And but but,

you know, this this taxi thing, like I kept saying months ago

going, I don't know that that Elon Musk is even that concerned

with selling consumer cars because he just wants taxis

everyone wants to sell them to like governments and cities

and going or Ubers and whatever and going. Yeah, I can I can

imagine a will once the robot taxi gets properly established,

you know, is it conceivable that Tesla will not sell a

passenger car in 10 years time? Yeah, it's entirely possible,

I think, you know, and where the robotics goes and

everything else, it's, you know, and also if they're

licensing, I mean, the one thing that might keep it going

is the full self driving stuff. Obviously, the robot taxis do

it, but you know, are they going to license that software to

the manufacturers? There's a, you know, that if you're

wanting an off the peg solution, there's there's a lot of

there's a lot of just stuff going on that, you know, really,

and I think that's why the share price has always been what

it's been to a certain extent that it's not really a car

company. It's a technology company that's kind of

diversifying in all these these interesting areas. But you

know, they get things wrong clearly, but they get a lot of

things right too. You know, the Tesla charging network has

good long term potential profitability for them as well.

Like I'm sure they're still investing in it. I don't think

they really are though. That's, I mean, they shut down a lot

of that. I mean, that's kind of like that was their big and

again, maybe this talks to the same thing that if you're

saying my long term bet is not selling billions of passenger

cars, then, you know, Dave, yeah, the parlor problem in the

US is Tesla stopped investing too much in it. But, but opening

that network up to other manufacturers and charging

them a fee for it, you know, when I take my truck to a

Tesla charging station, it's not cheap. It's actually more

expensive than any other charger that I go to pretty much.

You know, I mean, you know, Elon is clearly a very

controversial figure and there's a lot of things he said and

done recently I wouldn't necessarily always agree with,

but you know, having a building their own electric

infrastructure, you know, genius. Yeah. I mean, you know,

they to have but not only the vision but also the will to

force that through and say, yeah, I mean, may not just be

Elon Musk. I'm sure a lot of people around him that were

advocating for it, but every other manufacturer said, yeah,

that's not what we do. We build products and the government or

Shell or whoever will take care of this and the reality is

nobody was going to take care of it and and Elon came along and

said, I need my own infrastructure and you know,

there are things like that which you think, you know, we should

take singular vision and money obviously, but yeah, it's pretty

pretty impressive. Could you imagine if he if he if he

starts releasing all these like robots, these humanoid robots,

but they require so much power that they need to be plugged

into Tesla charging stations. So in the middle of the night,

thousands of robots would be walking down the street to your

Walmart parking lot to plug themselves in just thousands and

thousands of robots walking in the middle of the street every

night. And we're about the same age and we've got probably what

30, you know, 30, 30 years of like reasonable life left in us.

I think it's probably. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting.

I worry about my kids. It's going to be an interesting run, but

okay. Anything else we need to touch on? What's coming up

next for you guys? Next week, I'm off to the North American

dealer association show. We're announcing the finalists for

Edmunds Top Rated. So we're announcing 17 finalists. I'm

doing that on Wednesday morning. So I'm excited to be doing

that, doing that as a live announcement. Where is that show?

That is in Vegas. Didn't it used to be like in Orlando or

something? It moves around. So I think next year's in Orlando.

Last year was supposed to be in New Orleans and then pretty I

couldn't make it because of all the storms. I think before that

was in Dallas. So anyway, I mean, just to get a sense is it

just to get a sense of the scale of the auto industry? I mean,

that is a massive, massive show. So I'm going there. There's

also a bunch of you know, I've got a bunch of meetings there

and everything else. I'm going to be there through Tuesday

through Thursday. So that's a busy week. We just launched another

fun new drags. Dark. We maybe talk about next week's show Dark

Horse against Mustang Dark Horse against BMW. M4. M4.

Competition. Competition. There we go. Another car with crazy

options on it. Check that video out. Yeah, another update we're

doing on our long term test fleet. Yeah, it's just a lot going

on and we're entering that period of the market where a lot of

people are launching stuff and announcing stuff and

everything else. So yeah, come back and talk about that next

week. We talked about the finalists for the for the

awards. Yeah, that's right. We're going to be heading into

that final announcement, right? Like the winners. What does

that come in February? February the 18th. A little bit later

this year. Yeah. 6am set your alarm. 6am Pacific. Okay. Well,

we should probably cover it here as I'm sure we will. As I'm

sure we will. I'm sure we will. A lot of work I tell you. It's

a lot of work. I'm looking forward to it. Me too. No, I'm

excited to be going there. I've got my little speech written.

Got my little presentation going on. Okay. A few videos to

share. So a lot happening. Did you did you film it on? It's

all in editing or you still got to do the last bit. We filmed

it back in a lot of it. Most of it back in December. So yeah,

it's a big we have 131 pieces of content attached to these

awards that we filmed in a week. So yeah, it's a big

undertaking. Well, good job. I'm looking forward to it. All

right guys, we're going to wrap things up for today. We'll see

you next week and until then keep the air in the spare and the

bag in the wheel.

CarCast+Edmunds - Lamborghini Temerario track test and new Mercedes-Benz S-Class announced.

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