CarCast+Edmunds - Munich Auto Show, Mercedes-Maybach SL, Lucid Gravity test and more.

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Hello, welcome to the Edmunds Podcast Podcast. I'm Matt the Motorator, D'Andrea here with Alistair Weaver as usual.

And welcome back to the show, Steve Yewing. How are you?

Doing well, thank you. Good to be back.

We were talking about you just a couple of weeks ago when we were getting into the German Big Three sort of design language, but you were still there. You were still overseas. You were at the event.

So we were talking about bringing you on to talk a little bit about what was going on out there.

The Munich show is really cool, and I think what's interesting about it that not a lot of people realize is that there's like two shows in one going on.

You've got the stuff happening at the convention center, which is sort of on the northeast part just outside of town.

And that's where you get a lot of the suppliers, a lot of the, you know, more like heavy in the weeds industry stuff, but all the automakers still have a display there.

But then crucially for the public, all of the big stands and all the big displays are in the city center in the old town of Munich, and they're just open to the public.

There's no tickets you have to buy. There's nothing. So you're walking around, you know, by the court gardens in the old town of Munich, and you've got the Mercedes display and, you know, Kupra and Renault and everything else.

So it kind of brings the show to the people rather than making them go to the show.

That's all new that hasn't been done in the past.

They've done it before. Munich is the first show that's done this as far as I can remember.

But this kind of ever since the, you know, what used to be the Frankfurt show move to Munich, they've done this sort of like, let's bring the show into the city, let's get a lot more foot traffic that way.

And so, you know, you get people just walking on their way to work or on their way to meet friends and suddenly they're in the middle of an auto show.

So I actually went on one of the public days after the press stuff was over and I mean, it was packed. It was great to see that many people there.

Detroit kind of tried that, didn't they? But did a pretty, in my opinion, pretty lousy job of it.

I think that was the whole point of moving it to summer that you're going to make more experiential.

I mean, I guess that people are learning also from car week up at Pebble, they're learning from, you know, how Goodwood does things that you need to make it a lot more experiential.

You need to, you know, bring people into it rather than stick it in a convention center, charge a lot for tickets and hope that people show up.

Right. And I mean, it helps that, you know, the weather is pretty nice in September in Munich.

And there's just a lot of cool interactive stuff you can do. And of course, there's gift shops and things.

So people are walking around with all their new, you know, Ford merch and beer sellers and things like that.

If you turn it into like a carnival of sorts, then I could see the appeal on getting people there.

But having like that public display and then sort of the, I don't know, industry display, that sounds more expensive for them.

So hopefully the trade off of getting that foot traffic is worth it.

Because that's what we've been hearing for for quite some time since COVID is going, you know, these booths are really expensive.

You know, I mean, we spend a little more time in the aftermarket space.

It's like, I hear from exhibitors, they're like, we're going to spend a million dollars on a booth.

Is it worth it? Like, do we need to be here for that much? What are we getting out of the show?

So they have to constantly go back to the organization, to the show runners and go, what are you going to do for me?

If I'm spending a million dollars being here and probably in some cases at shows like this, the car manufacturers spend more than that.

Oh, yeah.

You know, several million dollars. It's like, what are they?

Yeah, tens of millions, tens of millions of dollars.

Actually, just hold that thought and let's get some housekeeping done.

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I used to run events in my old life before I moved to Edmunds.

And it is staggering how much money you can spend.

I mean, it's when I started getting into the game, you start to look at, you know, what the basic sort of installations.

And it's like, well, that's going to be half a million or we ran an event in London, which was a million pounds.

And you kind of look and you go, God, I could build a pretty sizable house for this, you know, for this temporary structure.

And it is just the nature of the game. It's extraordinary.

I was thinking about it like when you walk around something like a trade show, like a SEMA show, right?

You see some pretty nice booths at speed railing, right? Just a lot of the railing bolted together.

They built sort of a little second level deck with some meeting space up there.

But it's just a bunch of, you know, pipes and some panels that come together and you're like, that's $700,000 or $500,000.

And then at like Monterey Car Week, you're going to the entrance to Pebble Beach.

And part of that entrance is you kind of have to walk through the Mercedes display.

And that's a building that's like a pop-up building, right?

I was like, that structure alone, I mean, obviously they can reuse that, but that's millions of dollars for a weekend.

And every time you want to put it up, it's $200,000 just to build a thing.

I remember years and years ago at the height of the auto show, if you like.

I remember Jaguar Landro, which, you know, it's not the biggest brand in the world or the most profitable.

They had three auto show stands, one in China, one in North America, one in Europe.

And they were all like $20 million each.

They had this, remember Steve, they had this waterfall?

Yes.

Like you went in and you kind of had to almost like step around this waterfall in the middle of the stand.

And these were $20 million stands and they weren't the poshest.

This was just like to get in the game and look like a luxury brand.

That was the cost of entry.

I talked to guys in Vegas for the SEMA show and they told me, so they buy a stand.

They do some tweaks on it, but they basically commit to that stand for a certain amount of years, like five years.

And they said it cost them more to bring it back home, even to California.

It's cheaper for them to just get a storage unit and keep it there.

And then the team goes out and they set it up and bring it.

That's the kind of hassle it is.

Like, can you imagine if you were like an F1 team, you got to load everything on to jumbo jets and fly it around to another country or around the world and take it apart and assemble the whole thing again.

It's like having displays, three or four of them around the world seems cheaper already then.

And I remember getting in all the details that people don't realize is, I remember like one brand I worked with, Joe Malone Soap.

You had to have Joe Malone Soap.

Joe Malone Soap is expensive, particularly when bought at bulk.

So you end up like having a budget of a couple of grand for Joe Malone Soap.

Then it's like flowers.

Flowers have to be brought in at the last minute.

And then it just sort of goes on and on.

I spent a ton of money covering it.

So it is kind of, this is the world that everybody lived in.

But if you wanted to be a luxury brand and you wanted to give the right impression, because if you get it wrong, you're wasting your money.

I remember when dear old MG Rover, the British brand that was, remember the Rover Stirling over here?

But they were trying to save money.

And it's like, we've got to turn up, but we've got to look like we're here, but not that we've been profligate.

And they brought like a concept car with a washing machine.

I kid you not, a washing machine in the back.

Somebody had a bright idea.

We're going to put a washing machine in the back.

Therefore, it will demonstrate versatility.

It just looks so crap.

They have like a car on a carpet with a washing machine.

Everybody's just like, yeah, Rover's in deep trouble.

They're going under, aren't they?

It's funny you say that though, because I mean, I remember the very, the dark days of the, you know, the 2007-2008 recession going to the Detroit Auto Show.

And, you know, Mercedes has this big, beautiful stand and, you know, BMW has this big, beautiful stand.

And then you go over to Dodge.

And I remember that.

Literally just cars on carpet with the generic convention center lighting.

No spotlights or nothing.

So it's, it's dark.

It's drab.

There's nothing over there.

It was almost kind of like, you felt a little frightened to walk through that convention center.

But it really shows that, you know, putting together one of these displays, putting together one of these stands makes an impact.

And that was the one with the Lotus, wasn't it?

Where they did the Lotus.

They like bought a Lotus and pretended they had an EV.

Wasn't it that year?

I think so.

It was a rebadged Lotus.

Hey, look, we're doing EVs.

And I do remember that.

And the Germans, you're right.

Certainly the Volkswagen group just had this very kind of probably arrogant attitude, which was, we're going to demonstrate the world that we are fine.

And so we just kind of continue to pour money into this.

Yep.

I still, I've always said to a bunch of different automakers that I want to go.

I just want to go to the warehouse where they keep all of the, you know, the stools and the cushions and the couches and just the tables and all of the just stuff that they use to make a lot of these displays look like homes or like studios or something.

I mean, even, you know, you guys see this too, you go on a press launch for a vehicle and there will be like a little hub where they have you stationed for, you know, lunch or coffee or something.

And everyone's in uniforms and there's all these curated chairs and couches and tables and stuff.

And like, that all has to go somewhere.

And I just,

It actually does.

My neighbor at where my warehouse is, she owned a real estate staging company.

So she's got a warehouse packed of furniture and she just stages houses temporarily.

And constantly just moving stuff back and forth has like three or four guys, two trucks, just moving furniture back and forth.

That part I get because it's just like couches and you can be like, yeah, just make it look the same, make it look nice and whatever.

But I don't know, I guess, I guess maybe you want to be like Subaru, like let's get some fake rocks, some fake trees, a bunch of puppies and we'll call it a day.

Yeah, I just, I like to imagine that there's some big warehouse just outside of Stuttgart where it's just full of like the most uncomfortable chairs you've ever sat on.

And then there's the food.

Here it's easy, Hollywood is easy, right?

There's warehouses all over the place of mock stuff that nobody's using.

You could probably just call like a filming company go like, I need a fake palm tree that's six feet tall.

Yeah, knock on any warehouse door by the Burbank airport and you're bound to find something.

But Mercedes one year, I think this is a true story.

We should probably get on with the show, but it's kind of fun to talk about this, but Mercedes one year, I think this is a regular thing.

When they did the Detroit auto show that the show basically dictated that thou shalt have this food that we will provide the food.

Right.

And the Germans came and said, ah, yes, but we want bratwurst and, you know, pickled cabbage.

So my understanding is that they bought the food that they had to buy gave that away.

And I certainly hope they gave it away rather than just junked it, gave that away and then brought in their own food.

So they basically paid twice so that now you now the the learned members of the of the, you know, automotive press could eat bratwurst and not.

I don't know, chicken nuggets or whatever the official.

There's a lot of rules around that.

I can tell you as a I can tell you as an aside growing up in Detroit and being to a lot of events in Detroit and to exactly who catered it and the food is terrible.

And that's all I'll say.

Yeah.

We would have rules and we say, hey, we're going to do an after party at the Las Vegas convention center.

They're like, no, you're not because everybody that's on display there has to buy from the convention center from their catering.

And if we want our product there, we have to go through the distributor to sell it to them to try to get it there.

It's like it's a it's a mess. It's a it's a mess for sure.

But anyway, apparently there were some cars there as well.

There were there were a couple of cars that I saw.

I know that you guys talked about, you know, a lot of the big German stuff, the GLC, the IX three, which I have to say internally in my head, at least the debate is still out on which one looks better.

Or I guess maybe the correct way to say it is which one looks worse.

Really, the IX three, I thought the IX three looked nice.

The GLC looked like a slightly confused dog.

You know, and it's interesting because I thought that too.

And then I saw them both in person and the IX three photographs a lot better than the GLC does.

But in person, I kind of lost a lot of the IX three love like the, you know, like the little middle parts of the grill don't quite look proportionate to the rest of the vehicle.

And then the GLC there, you know, you see in person, you're like, OK, this design is a little bit more cohesive.

It looks less like, you know, a bland Ford escape from the side or something.

So I don't know.

I think I think if I had to kind of like, you know, put a stamp on it, I would say I want the X threes exterior with the GLC's interior.

I think that's that's where I'm sort of leaning on that right now.

And you prefer the GLC because the GLC has these big, if you're not watching YouTube, it has these big sort of this vast screen that scrap, you know, which is obviously what Mercedes is doing now.

We saw it in the CLA that basically stretches from the left door to the right door and it's just one massive screen.

BMW has gone down a bit more of a kind of subtle route.

But that GLC works because I've yet to I've seen it on the CLA and it just looked like a hell of a lot of screen when you try and drive along.

Well, and I the thing that I will say that I appreciate about the I X three screen is it's seamless.

So, you know, with the CLA, it's basically like three displays with little breaks between them in one housing.

But the the GLC, it is one fluid display, which you don't think is going to make a big difference.

But then you see it on and you see the way the color kind of moves across and everything and it really does make a statement.

It's actually a better it's a better setup than I think Mercedes first launched the hyperscreen and like the EQS sedan.

That felt a little overwhelming.

And that was also one big panel with three screens integrated in it.

This feels just a little bit more cohesive, I guess.

The one thing I don't like, Steve, we talked about this in a show a couple weeks ago, so I like a value opinion on this, particularly in Germany where they love this sort of thing.

It's just the preponderance of badging like Mercedes just puts a three pointed star on everything now.

And I don't like being a walking advert for somebody else.

It just feels completely over the top.

I was looking at the daytime running lights.

There are three pointed star now.

I've noticed that one before.

So it's funny you say that I actually sat down with Gordon Wagner, who's the design boss for Mercedes Benz.

And we got on the subject of the the new SL MyBock, which if you haven't seen it yet is just covered in MyBock logos.

One product planner and Mercedes estimated at somewhere between 300 and 800 logos are on the car, depending on this.

And we were asking him like, you know, does that work?

Is that what people want?

Like, do you want a car that looks like a Louis Vuitton purse?

And he's like, yes, that is exactly what customers are asking for.

That is what they want.

They want the logos.

They want the flesh.

They want all this stuff.

I mean, all the grills of well, not all the grills, but a lot of the grills of the new Mercedes.

It's little tiny stars.

And now all the headlights, the running light signature will be these little three pointed stars.

And that's what people want.

I mean, if you're getting the MyBock, though, you don't want people to confuse it for the SL, right?

Which is true.

And I think that I got the good one or, you know, I paid the extra.

You should.

Yeah.

But this one goes a little, I mean, it goes a little over the top.

This is less like, I want you to know this is a MyBock and more like, I want you to know

that I have a purse that looks exactly like this car.

Because the thing is like growing up, like the sort of that whole, you know, if you wanted

to, we made a bit of money.

It's like the massive gold Rolex, isn't it?

Or the hoodie that says Gucci in as big a letters as you could possibly stuff on your

chest.

It's just, for me, it's a bit vulgar.

And so I don't know that like, I think like Range Rover, I think, does a really, I mean,

okay, a Range Rover is still vulgar.

I wouldn't say a Range Rover is vulgar.

It's still, it's still a statement of wealth because of its scale and everything else.

But they've gone and an interesting Audi seems to be going in that direction, not least because

as we talked about, it's the, it's the same guy in charge of design now.

But it is actually like how you take luxury.

Do you have to be this kind of over bling or can you be a little bit more discreet?

Because there's always this feeling like true luxury is having it, but not flaunting it.

You know, like real money is not needing to have Yves Saint Laurent like plastered across

your forehead.

I think there's, I think there's something to be said about that.

And I think that some brands are kind of exploring more of this, you know, quiet restrained luxury.

But at the end of the day, I mean, don't forget, you know, 10 years ago is when we started doing

light up badges for everything.

And it was, you know, all of a sudden everybody that bought up, you know, a base Mercedes Benz

CLA was like, I gotta have the light up star on the front.

I need people at night to know that I'm driving a Mercedes.

Yeah.

And so there's still a big number of people that are buying the car as a status symbol

and any way that they can flaunt the status symbol, they will.

I mean, look at it another way.

The Maserati Ghibli is an absolutely horrible car.

But the name Maserati still has some cachet to it.

And so people, they don't buy them, they lease them and they drive around in their Ghibli's

because people like, oh my God, that guy is a Maserati.

He must, he must be someone, you know?

Yeah.

And yet if you look at Hyundai, who probably don't feel like they have the brand, they're

doing everything they can to take the, take the Hyundai off it.

So that's why the badge on the steering wheel is now in Morse code.

And, you know, it's, and every car looks different.

It's, it's, it's fascinating, but I would just feel self-conscious in my back.

I just, I mean, maybe you can trim it differently.

You can tune it differently.

You can have a different feel.

But at the end of the day, though, it's not, this is not a car for us.

This is a car for someone who wants the logos and they want the look and they want the two

tone hood and all that stuff.

But I mean, we're seeing that with, you know, the new GLC that Mercedes had in Munich, you

know, the entire grill lights up in this kind of mosaic of stuff.

You know, we're seeing more and more and more of this and it's certainly not going to go

away anytime soon.

We were just clicking through the image gallery on the Mercedes website of that SL Maybach.

Every single picture has the logo in it.

Everything, everything on that car has a logo on it.

That's amazing.

Just backing up for a second.

There's one thing that you said that I'm glad to hear you say this.

We talked about the BMW and the Mercedes, the new ones, and we disagreed.

Interesting.

Alistair likes the BMW and I said, I think the Mercedes looks better, the GLC.

I think it just looks more like a conventional, you know, SUV.

You know, and you said when you saw it in person.

Yeah.

So it's funny too, because again, going back to speaking to the Mercedes design boss, you

know, when they launched the EQS and the EQE EVs, they wanted to make a car that looked

very different and, you know, stand out.

Now they're kind of going back and it's because they don't need to do that anymore and they're

realizing people just want a normal conventional looking, you know, SUV, sedan, whatever.

They just, some people want it to be a hybrid.

Some people want it to be gas.

Some people want it to be electric.

BMW is sort of doing the same thing, but I think that they're going more on this scale

of we want everything to look a little weird.

You know, I mean, keep in mind like the seven series is not a very good looking car.

Yeah.

The IX is polarizing.

We'll call it that.

I think this design, which, you know, a version of this will show up as the new three series

sedan.

And then of course we'll have, you know, M versions of these vehicles and we'll have larger

and smaller versions.

I think that this design is a little bold, but keep in mind, 10 years from now, every

BMW is going to have a version of this design.

And so I wonder, will it still look as strange or as kind of, you know, out there, you know,

a decade from now when everything looks like this.

I don't know.

Just straight on this looks a little weird to me.

Yeah.

And this is, this is what I was saying, seeing it in person is the, you don't realize that

the little, you know, the kidneys in the middle of the grill are like, they're actually small.

And it's hard to see that from a photo, especially compared to the rest of the size of the vehicle.

So, yeah, the IX three photographs better, but it's, it's tougher to look at in person.

I think the problem is Steve, your eye has now got so used to these like humongous BMW

grills.

Yeah.

That anything that comes smaller is like, oh, I don't know.

I own his, I own his Z three.

I have a little tiny BMW grill in my driveway.

I'm used to it.

It's, but this BM, the new Mercedes grill looks like the Audi Trapezoidal grill.

It's like, it's, it's, that's very odd.

That's very odd.

And my kind of referenced it looking a bit like a dog because it looks like a dog's nose.

Yeah.

And the eyes and the nose, it's all, it's all, there's a lot going on.

And, but you can see what I'm talking about here with like the, the tail lights, you know,

they're all the, the star logo.

Yeah.

The headlight running light.

It's all the star logo.

You're right.

It is Louis Vuitton.

But that's what they want.

But like this picture, if you showed me this picture and took the, you know, the badges off

the wheels and said, what kind of car is this?

I'd say, I don't know, Lincoln Corsair or what is it?

Like a Nissan Rogue with like the platinum package or something.

So I think that you, Mercedes maybe has to do this to stand out when the rest of the

design is so conventional.

Yeah.

Cause by the time you put in the safety and then you put in the space for passengers plus

the safety requirements, the silhouette ends up being defined by the legislation to a certain

extent.

Right.

In this particular photo, you can actually see how the headlights are so much more lean

back and into the fender and a little less like a flat face.

You know, it's not big, giant, flat, like the seven series in the front.

So this is, yeah.

I do, I do encourage people, you know, when these cars, I think they'll make their public

debuts at the Los Angeles auto show and then they'll be around after that.

I encourage people to go see them just because again, I really, truly believe that the BMW

just doesn't look, the BMW and the Mercedes both just don't quite look correct in photos.

I'm excited about Audi.

I think Audi's lost its way in recent years inside and out.

I'm excited.

I will talk about excited by the TT.

I think, you know, I had a very talented guy as the design chief.

X Jaguar Land Rover and I think they go in a different direction.

I think going back to that kind of Bauhaus thing that they had in the late nineties

could be because there's no, where's the beautiful cars?

Where are the beautiful cars today?

Remember that it's not a TT.

It's a lot bigger than a TT.

It's closer to RA size.

Did you see the Ferrari Testa Rossa?

No, but I don't want to.

Yeah.

You're asking the wrong person about Ferrari's looking good because my opinion is that Ferrari

has not made a good looking car since the 458.

Now, I'd say the 355.

I'd go back even earlier.

Ferrari has not made a beautiful car since the 355, but Ferrari has not made an attractive

car since the 458.

The one car I think this age was the 550 Maranello, which wasn't seen as that nice at the time.

I agree.

The 599 was okay.

599 is a pretty car.

I like the 612 still, but any of the new Ferrari designs, every one that comes out is uglier

than the last.

The Roma's okay.

The Roma's the only one that looks like an F type Jag.

I keep forgetting about the Roma because it's so pretty that I think it couldn't possibly

be a Ferrari.

It's understated.

It's elegant.

It's understated and you don't look at it and think there's a Ferrari.

Maybe that is the rub.

Although, I did see, I was out in my local town yesterday and there was an 80s Ferrari

Testarossa parked in the street, just like in a row of cars.

I remember, like, great, I was a kid and I lived in Northern England and you might see

a Testarossa once a year.

It was this incredible occasion and you had one in your bedroom wall and it was an outrun

and everything else.

I was shocked by how small it looked because you used to think of that as being incredibly

wide and massive.

These days, it actually doesn't look that big.

Also, it looks cool now in a way that it always looked a bit over-designed and a bit like

try-hard.

I looked at it and I thought, oh, that's really cool.

Especially with the poppy-up headlights and all the rest of it, they're not the 512, the

original one.

They're not as much money as you'd think.

You'd think of a Ferrari Testarossa.

Lamborghini Kuntax are a fortune and Testarosses are still around 100 grand, which let's face

it, it's an awful lot of money, but it's not half a million that the Lamborghinis are.

God, this new one that you're pulling up on the screen right now, it's just not.

First of all, they hide the design, right?

When you go to the Ferrari website, they don't even want you to see the car.

They know that this isn't great.

Also, I just don't get how you do an eight-cylinder hybrid and call it a Testarossa.

Look at that back, the part over the rear wheel, how it ticks up like that around the

whole side.

Oh, God, it's like, it looks good.

I want to see it in reality.

I don't mind that.

I actually, I'll be okay.

Here we go.

This is why design is so subjective.

I actually looked at this and thought, I actually prefer that to a lot of the recent

Ferraris.

It feels a little bit simpler, a little bit more elegant.

No, not into it.

I'm sure it's all got a story behind it and super functional, but I don't know.

It just doesn't do it for me.

What do you think of the 12-cylindry?

No, I actually prefer this to the 12-cylindry.

I actually think this.

I'm going to put my neck out and think there are bits about this Testarossa that I don't

love, but I actually quite like it.

I actually quite like it.

I'm sorry.

This is why design is so subjective.

Would I feel self-conscious driving around in it?

Probably because it's such an overt statement, but then the original Testarossa was.

So I don't know.

Just give me a beautiful car.

The F430, I remember when that came out, everybody was like, ah, that's not pretty.

Not pretty.

Today it looks quite simple and elegant because everything else around it has got so crazy.

But when you layer on all the aerodynamics, this is where you end up.

I'm sure it drives beautifully, but ugh.

I'm sure it's a beast.

A while ago, I was talking about pretty Ferraris with Dario Franchitti.

And then he said, the 355 is the last of the pretty Ferraris.

And then I said, oh, have you seen this new company that's doing like a modern take, like

a singer version of the 355?

And he's like, yeah, I don't like it.

I was like, why is that?

He's like, I have a 355 at home.

I was like, oh, OK.

He did win the Indy Car Championship a few times.

Yeah.

He's all in on 355.

I would love a 355.

And there was a point in life where they came cheap enough to potentially that I could genuinely

look at and think if I scraped around a bit.

But then the cost of running those things, I talked to somebody who has one.

And the worst Ferrari you want to be is the one who's scraped to buy it and then cannot afford to run it.

And every time you change the clutch, the engine has to come out and all the rest of it.

And I just cannot imagine turning around to my wife and saying, yeah, I've just updated the clutch and it's 15 grand.

Can you imagine what that conversation goes like?

You know, you wanted to go skiing and we were saying it's six grand and we can't afford it.

Well, I've just spent 15 grand on a new clutch.

Yeah.

But that's why we can't afford.

Yeah.

And forget braces for the kids.

We're just going to have to.

We're not doing that at all.

Yeah.

They go to put.

Yeah.

They want it.

Okay.

Actually, their college fund went on a clutch.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be right back.

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Okay, so we kind of went off on a tangent.

We started off with the Munich show and we went from Booth to Ferrari Testarosa.

But aside from the new polarizing designs from Mercedes and BMW, what else did you get a chance to see?

Or did you have some great conversations out there? Who did you talk to?

Had some good conversations.

I went over with the group with Mercedes-Benz, so we got to talk to a lot of executives there.

There's a lot coming from Mercedes in the next few years, which is very exciting.

And this GLC kind of is the first part of that.

But I mean, next year we'll have a new C-Class. There's a new E-Class coming.

There's a new S-Class, new small SUVs.

There's a whole bunch. And then of course you have all of the AMG variants as well.

Plus, don't forget, AMG is doing a production version of that wild GTXX concept.

It's got like 1300 horsepower and it's got this crazy powertrain that sounds like a V8, but it's electric.

And everyone at Mercedes is super stoked about it.

I will reserve judgment until I drive it, obviously.

It's another 0-60 in 2 seconds, 0-104 seconds.

I'm past it. I'm over it, I'm afraid.

So it was interesting. I was having a conversation with the AMG guys and we were talking about how Mercedes is going to put into this EV sports car,

the kind of fake shifts where the car will work with you.

Sort of like what's found in the Hyundai IONIQ 5N, where you can shift it like it's a real car and it'll sound like it's a real transmission.

It'll even kind of cut the power in a way where the car will buck a little bit to make you feel like you've shifted gears.

And I remember asking if they had driven it and they kind of were like, we drive all of our benchmark products and competitor products.

And I said, did you ever think in your years working for Mercedes AMG you would be driving a Hyundai and using that as a benchmark vehicle?

And they all kind of laughed at me, but it's kind of cool to see that this technology that Hyundai introduced is now something.

The Germans are like, oh, we have to put this in our sports cars.

To be fair, the main chassis guy, I think he's retired now, but the main chassis guy from Hyundai Kia was XBMW.

So there's been a lot of transfer between the AMG.

This is AMG thing was actually, I saw it at Pebble Beach and I was a bit rude about it when I saw the pictures.

And it does look to your point about modern cars don't photograph well.

I do think it looks better in real life than it photographs.

I mean, it still kind of looks like a catfish from the front.

But it's just another one of those cars that I don't know whether I'm getting old and cynical.

But some of the cars are a bit like, yeah, 30 under horsepower EV, ton of money.

Well, you know, my issue with like the EV supercar and the hybrid supercar LaFerrari P1 is we've just seen even already with those cars like the battery has to be replaced.

They kind of die and then they don't get driven.

It's because you're selling this super expensive car that people are going to buy and collect.

But if it's not like used and like a normal car ish and brought in for maintenance and, you know, like, does it do the parts just stop working?

Like what happens to it?

You know, do you have to get your battery replaced like on the LaFerrari?

Like how many how many times does that need to happen at something like 250,000 a pop if it's not under warranty?

It's like that's the issue with sort of the longevity of some of these crazy supercars.

Like RIMAC seems cool, fast, incredible technology.

What have they sold like 10?

Yeah, like it's like, you know, it's I mean, I think it's it's what's what's hard for me.

And maybe this is like my inner Luddite speaking.

But I mean, you think about a lot of the big historic collector cars and so much of what made those cars special was the engine.

And, you know, I understand that there's, you know, there is a way to make a emotional EV.

I mean, I'm certainly not anti EV by any means.

I like driving electric cars a lot.

But I'm just saying, you know, there's no like, there's a character that a V eight has versus the character of an inline six versus the character of a turbo for whatever.

But at the end of the day, every EV kind of has the same character, you know, it's it's quick from a start, power is instant, it's quiet, or maybe it makes some weird noise.

You know, maybe we'll get more variants of that as time goes on.

But for me, like cars that I've always wanted and cars I've wanted to buy on the used market and cars I think are collectible.

That powertrain is such a big part of it.

And like for me, that's just not really a selling point for a lot of this new stuff.

Well, we talked about it before that the parallels with the watch industry.

And we're talking about this at Pebble Beach.

The parallels with the watch industry are strong that a quartz does the job better and much cheaper.

But everybody wants the mechanical movement, either a windup or an automatic or something or a tourbillon for, you know, enormous sums of money because it's about craftsmanship.

It's about feeling that that sense of design.

I think there's something inherently human about that.

So, yeah, it's, you know, we talk so much on the show about this situation that we're in.

And if you look at the moment, EV sales are, I mean, what are we?

We're two weeks away from the end of the tax credit and EV sales are booming.

But there's a big feeling that they're then going to, you know, nobody's going to buy an EV in October.

Or do they go to used EVs?

Oh, you get it.

Yes.

Is that going to drive up the price of used EVs?

But Stephen, I agree with you, right?

I like driving an EV.

I think the performance there, I don't have to go to a smelly gas station or wait in a Costco line if I'm doing that.

But am I collecting them?

Probably not.

Right.

The only car I'd like is the one I had that we actually owned as a family car was a BMW i3, which I just think is such a cool and interesting piece of design.

I do love the i3.

The i8 is the same way.

Yeah, those two actually, yeah, because they're also hybrids, so they're probably a bit more usable or they have a range extender.

So, yeah, it's interesting time.

So what else was new at Munich, Steve?

Anything else we should talk about?

Or should we go on and talk about the Lucid?

I mean, we can, on the subject of electric sports cars, there was the Polestar 5, which is kind of...

Very beautiful.

The same bayonet, a four-door, kind of a Taycan fighter.

I mean, the specs on the Polestar 5 are cool.

It's 884 horsepower, three seconds zero to 60.

It looks a lot like that precept concept from a few years ago, and it doesn't have a window.

What was the coupe?

The really good looking two-door hybrid.

The Polestar 1, which was the really weird one because it looked more like a Volvo and it was also a hybrid.

I mean, it launched an electric... I mean, Polestar's got a lot...

That was gorgeous.

I thought that thing was great looking.

I drove that too.

But they were launching an EV brand with a hybrid, but it was very pretty.

This thing looks killer in person.

I mean, it's really low, it's wide, it's long, it's sleek.

I love seeing this in person when I was in Munich.

But I mean, the bigger question remains, and we were just sort of talking about this,

Polestar hasn't said one way or the other if this is going to come to the US or not.

I mean, all indications point that it could, but it's sort of hard to say if that's actually going to happen

because it won't apply for the tax credit.

It'll have import tariffs put on it.

It's going to be a very expensive vehicle to begin with.

So it's like, is it worth it for Polestar to bring over what would be a very low-volume car anyway?

It's built in China, right?

So the tariff situation is going to make it probably untenable.

But we just spent half an hour talking about fussy, overstated design.

This thing is actually, in modern terms, simple and elegant and beautifully proportioned.

It's really good, and I'm glad that it translated to being as beautiful in person

and as I hoped it would be based on the photos.

This is the one that has no, also like their other one, no rear glass.

Yeah, so the Polestar 4 is the small SUV and that's what launches first and that has no rear window.

This is the same way you just have, you know, your rear view camera and your side cameras and everything.

I haven't driven the Polestar 4 myself, but people I know who have say that once you kind of just get used to it,

you don't really mind not having the rear window and you don't really rely on it that much.

But it's still like, I don't know, it's still weird to me.

I'm still getting my brain used to the little cameras in the rear view mirrors inside the car

because the fact that the focal length is different and you have to kind of,

your eye has to adjust from one to the other.

It's a gimmick, isn't it? That's the thing.

It's just, you know, you wonder what purpose it's really serving.

But I think this is a pretty good...

I think a lot of Polestar's actually are, you know, I think they're struggling because they're an EV brand with Chinese ownership

and it's almost like the worst of all worlds at the moment.

You're a startup EV brand that nobody's really heard of, some of which are made in China, Chinese parentage and your EV only.

So it's a very, and they got rid of their CEO not too long ago, so it's a very tough place to be.

But their actual product, I think, is really appealing.

Yeah, it's cool.

I gotta say, though, looking at this design and I like the design, I like it's got kind of some haunches in the back.

But there's nothing really standing out on this profile, this design that makes it seem like you have to have the camera and no rear glass.

You know what I'm saying? Like, looking at it going, well...

I mean, it's not like there's more headroom and there's a big hatch or something like glass would have been fine.

Yeah, I think that it's more of just a we did it because we could.

Yeah.

You know, I think that might have something to do with it.

But I mean, I could certainly imagine it with a glass panel back there, but I don't think it really changes things either way.

You've got to have something about your car that says this is like what we do.

And obviously they sat down and said, what can we do that's different?

They said, ah, we can get rid of a real window.

You know, on the issue of the camera, though, so I have a 95 pickup.

I have a 95 Ford Lightning standard cab and I put a camera on the rear glass that goes to my rear view mirror, right?

So my rear view mirror now is the screen like you see, like you can flip it back and forth like in the Toyotas and stuff like that.

I think it's Toyota or Nissan. I don't know.

A couple of them are doing it.

And yes, when I got into some of the new SUVs that have that camera, because the camera is in the back of the SUV and your mirror is close,

you're not getting like the perspective of seeing like through the vehicle.

But when I installed it on my truck, which is a single cab truck, I wanted a little bit wider view and to be able to see a bit of what's in the bed of the truck as well as vehicles.

And because the camera is right behind my head, it's a standard cab, the cameras, you know, it's it's a foot there like up in the air behind me.

The perspective in the on the monitor, you get used to it quickly because it's not skewed.

It's not the camera is not six feet behind you.

And it's fine.

I could just use the camera all the time.

And I think that's where the technology is becoming different.

Like they need to fix that weird perspective because you're right.

When you Alistair, when you when you look in your side mirror and then you look at your rear view mirror, which is a camera.

If they're not the same, if what you're looking at is not the same distance back, your brain's like going, what's going on?

Why is one thing seem like it's two feet away and the other things 10 feet away?

Like we just got used to using a mirror.

So anyway, matching up my camera rear view monitor to be almost the same distance as the rear view mirror would be made a difference to me.

So maybe they can adjust for that in the camera.

Otherwise, I don't know.

It's going to be a little awkward.

All right.

So you want to jump on Lucid real quick.

Yeah, I guess we got fun.

So if we just did an interesting test, let me just bring up the bring up the details.

So we could talk more about the gravity.

So we've got a big test coming up against the review on R1S.

I don't think that's giving the worst.

I have high hopes for this car.

So we talked a little bit about some of the causes.

I don't want to get into that again, but I just want to focus on one thing because I know we've only got a handful of minutes left.

So we ran two tests, one with all season tires and then Lucid came to us and said, look, we kind of get a bit annoyed that you run these performance tests or you run these range tests and they're on all season tires or they're on the summer tires.

We like to offer the summer tires as an option.

Basically, can you test it twice because then it gives consumers a better sense of how to specify their car and it will help us show off the best attributes of the vehicle.

So we did.

We ran it as a on all season tires, then we fitted performance summer tires and we did two range tests, which was a big effort for us.

And then we also run it twice through the track.

And the results are on edmunds.com slash news, which Steve is most expertly in charge of.

But when you look at the numbers, they're super interesting because they're not necessarily what you think.

So zero to 60 is actually faster on the all season tires, which is counter-intuitive.

But I remember talking to somebody about Michelin about this and super high performance tires aren't always the best because apparently they're too many to do with the sidewall construction at actually launching off the line.

Quarter mile identical, 10.9 seconds.

The big change is breaking.

So on the summer tires, 107 feet from 60, all season tires, 125 grip, pretty marginal 0.91g on the all seasons 0.95 on the summer tires.

And then on the range, it didn't actually make a huge amount of difference, a few miles difference as well.

So for a long time, we've been led to believe that, you know, put your EV on all seasons, you're going to lose a ton of grip, you're going to lose a ton of performance and range and all the rest of it.

But the reality is when you look at this, it's kind of marginal.

Breaking is the only one where you'd say, well, that's, you know, that's actually material.

The rest of it is, you know, not much difference.

Interesting, but I'm not too surprised by this.

If the car already hooks up or if it's all wheel drive or whatever, like if it, if it's hooking up, having a grippier tire is not going to make that much of a difference.

So that zero to 60 in those quarter mile times, that extra grip, like you're saying, slight advantage in the handling, but in the braking is where you see it when you're trying to stop 6,000 pounds.

I can, I can see that being the difference.

But listen, if it already hooks up, then I do, do you need it?

Right.

What does it do to range?

It's, it's on the margins.

Let me just pull up there.

So with the all seasons fitted has an EPA S at 450 miles, but we actually didn't, didn't achieve that.

This isn't the first time we've tested an early lucid and it's not hit the range figures that they claim.

So that is 400 miles on a single charge.

And then on the performance tires, it did 388,

which is actually much close.

The EPA estimate comes down to 407.

So actually we only saw a 12 mile difference.

And we are religious about, we even have little gadgets, race logic gadgets on board to make people drive the same way.

I mean, we are fastidious about making sure that these are, these tests are comparable.

I can tell you that having 12 mile difference.

Yeah.

Having run a range test myself before it is very strict and specific.

So, okay.

It's not, not, not in any way exciting.

No.

You have to have a good tasting podcast and you also like to have to sit at 72 degrees because that's all you're allowed.

Yeah, that's all you're allowed.

Okay.

If you've ever wanted to see a really great tour of Orange County, it's a nice way to do it.

But I am, I'm a little disappointed that the range wasn't quite there when they're saying 450 because to me, that's the big selling point of Lucid right now is they've, they've got this incredible range.

And I know I've said this many times, it's like, we should be looking at max range, 80% range, and then like max range on the freeway, like for your road trip, right?

Like those should be the numbers we should be looking at.

So if you said, Hey, it's 450 in my head.

I'm like, I know, but 80% I got to take 20% off of that.

And then what's my ideal range?

Well, I think you've actually got to take 30% off, right?

Because you're never going to run it to lower than 10% unless you are, you know, a huge gambler.

So your realistic range is 70% because anything above 80% takes too long to charge.

You're never going to run it below 10% because you'll start to panic or I would.

So you realize that you've got 70% of the range.

Because that's a thing.

That's that when you're like from here, we're in LA, we go to Monterey car week.

It's depending on where your wheels up from, it's 310 miles, 320 miles, depending on let's just say 320 miles.

But you're right.

You're like, that's the total.

That's real miles.

You have to drive 320 miles.

How much range in your vehicle do you need to comfortably make that happen?

Even if you do go, I am doing a road trip.

I'm going to top it off.

I'm going to charge you 100%.

But I'm going to do everything at 80 miles an hour pending.

You've got to be north of 400 at that point.

Yeah, you've got to be north of 400.

That's where you're going to be.

And the one thing to be fair to Lucy, like we always end up caveating these stories.

We always say it's a really good result, but not quite what they claim.

But at least they're not doing it.

The battery is 123 kilowatt hours.

If you think that a Model 3 from Wrongsteed, that's somewhere in the 70s these days, isn't it?

So it's a big battery, but it's not the 200 kilowatt hours that you get in like a Chevy truck.

So they haven't just thrown lots of cells at it.

But for me, this is still a good result.

It's just that not what they claim.

And I suspect what will happen is it'll get better and better as they finesse the physical production and the software.

But you're right.

I mean, it is a almost 6,000 pound vehicle.

But again, it's not a 9,000 pound Cadillac with a 205 kilowatt hour battery.

You're just throwing battery at it.

It's not efficient by any means.

And then it takes six weeks to recharge it.

All right.

I think we're going to wrap it up on that note.

By the way, is the Lucid Gravity, are they being delivered yet?

Are they out now?

Oh, no, they've been out there for a while.

I think they started delivering a buck in March or something.

Yeah, they've been around for a while.

It's just that they've, I think they did a bit of a soft launch of them.

So I haven't seen.

I don't even know if I've seen one on the road yet.

I've seen a few.

They're around.

Yeah, they're knocking around.

There's a couple in my neighborhood.

I probably didn't notice it because it doesn't have badges all over it like the Maybach.

That's right.

Or the giant light up grill in the front.

Maybe it needs a giant.

I was about to say it hasn't got a two-tone hood, but it kind of has actually.

It kind of does.

Yeah.

The Lucid air I do see around.

I'm starting to see even more of them now, probably because people are finally caught

onto those lease rates and realize the tax incentive is going away soon.

Yeah.

All right, guys.

Thanks so much.

As always, the website is Edmunds.com.

Edmunds.com slash news, car news, which news.

Edmunds.com slash news.

I see it both up there.

Yeah.

And check out the YouTube channel.

You can find out Edmunds up there.

And of course, CarCast, the YouTube channel.

You can get this podcast.

You can see Steve while he's chatting with us on the podcast on the CarCast channel.

All right, guys.

Thanks so much.

And until next time, keep the air and the spare and the bag and the wheel.

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CarCast+Edmunds - Munich Auto Show, Mercedes-Maybach SL, Lucid Gravity test and more.

Mercedes-Benz GLC

Ford Escape

Mercedes-Benz EQS

Land Rover Range Rover

Maserati Ghibli

Lincoln Corsair

Nissan Rogue

Ferrari 550 Maranello

Ferrari Testarossa

Ferrari F430

Testarossa Testarosa

Mercedes-Benz Eclass

Mercedes-Benz Cclass

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

Hyundai Ioniq

Ferrari LaFerrari

BMW i3

i8 (I12)

Porsche Taycan

Polestar 1

Polestar 4

Ford F-150 Lightning

Rivian R1S

Tesla Model 3

Lucid Gravity

Lucid Air

About this episode

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