CarCast+Edmunds - New electric Ferrari interior, Toyota Highlander EV and more.

Hello, welcome to the Edmunds CarCast podcast. I'm Matt, the moderator,

DeAndre here with Alistair Weaver. Happy Friday the 13th as we record this.

Thank you. I was about to say happy Valentine's Day, which is slightly more positive or it's not

positive, isn't it? So we're recording today Friday the 13th and I went out this morning

outside the building to walk the dogs and there was a garbage truck that was picking up all of the

trash. They rolled the dumpsters out and they do it all in front of the other apartments and it

broke and then the back of it, it's supposed to smash everything in, that broke and it just looked

like a meme of the back of the truck vomiting out. It was just a huge pile of trash all over the

road. The guy was just standing there shaking his head and I was like, tough day, brother. He's

like, yeah. I was like, you know, it's Friday the 13th. He's like, oh, that's what it is. But

to their credit, like he made some calls and within like two hours, they got a giant record

tow truck out here to drag that thing away. They got like a bobcat out here with a big

scooper to get the track. And then they brought the semi truck and dropped off a giant dumpster

and it was dumping everything in and like they were just cleaning everything up as fast as possible.

Like they were doing a pretty good job getting it done. I was looking at this whole operation going,

this just cost $10,000 to clean everything up and then they had to have a cop there to block the

road and you know, it's just like, this is a $10,000 clean up, maybe $8,000 clean up,

whatever it was like. There was people everywhere, rigs everywhere, trackers.

They're probably on like a big liability contract. Actually, it's probably like,

you know, if that makes a mess, that has got two hours to sort it out.

And you know, these things with everybody just kind of suing for everybody. It's just like somebody's

dog is going to go out there and eat like a piece of trash or a chicken bone and they're going to

sue the, you know, somebody on it and it's just like they just had to get it. They just jumped

on it as quickly as possible. And I don't know, because that guy's truck broke, maybe he just

goes home for the day. Does he get the day off? Tough morning. If you're listening, sir, thank

you very much for clearing up. Yes, thank you. Thank you for the work. Before we get into it,

a quick word from our friends at FanDuel. We're heading into a big week of sports starting

February 16th. The NBA is back in full swing as teams make their playoff push. College basketball

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I saw some stuff in the news. I think you've seen this as well. More of the Trump administration

kind of backtracking on, you know, emission stuff and, you know, some of the regulations that were,

I don't seem kind of extreme. So we need, we sort of need a, I don't know, we sort of need a level

playing ground here. You know, the car companies sort of struggle to meet some of the standards

put in place by the previous administration. But now are we backtracking too much? I don't know.

But the other thing is, last year, over the last couple of years, this has come up a few

times talking with SEMA, talking to some of the aftermarket companies, the big crackdown of the

EPA, busting companies that were installing, you know, sort of emissions defeat devices is

what they were calling it. It wasn't quite that black and white. It was just, you know, it was,

like if you were an exhaust company like a Borla exhaust, they got hit with a big fine,

but they didn't really change anything that was emissions related. And it was just sort of like

got them on a technicality of making exhaust products. And it was an interesting conversation,

even when I spoke with Borla, because they said, never once during all of this stuff in lawsuits

was clean air even mentioned. It was always about money. It was just like, how much are you going

to pay? How much are you going to pay for this fine? But so now the Trump administration and

the EPA have said, we're no longer going to aggressively go after companies that are making

these, they're saying it's still illegal. But we think our point has been made. We busted a bunch

of people, a bunch of people, companies had to pay fines. Some people went to jail, you know,

but now we, you know, we're not going to invest the resources of going after that again and again

indefinitely. Like the point's been made, make clean products, get it,

carb approved, EO approved, all that stuff. So what's next? So picking through all this, this is

that was mostly for the aftermarket, right? But yeah, this is the aftermarket. I mean,

let's so let's go back to like what's happened this week and what it means because there's a lot of

BS, shall we say about, you know, oh, it's going to, every car is going to be like two and a half

crown cheaper or it's going to be three, you know, what there was a lot of stuff that instantly

made it sound like you go down your dealership and instead of paying 30 grand, you're now paying

27 or something, which is utter nonsense. So basically what they've done is kind of go back

to, I mean, really the early 2000s or whatever in terms of the, the emissions stuff. And it's

almost a statement that says climate change doesn't exist. Now, this is fascinating from a

manufacturer perspective, because the manufacturers were saying that the Biden administration had

gone too far, and that trying to meet the requirements was just too expensive, too draconian,

consumers couldn't bear the cost in a world where affordability is a big issue.

So now the Trump administration has gone like the other extreme and just got rid of it, got rid of

everything pretty much, or is seeking to get rid of everything. So those sorts of lawsuits.

And the idea being that like climate change doesn't really exist. And let's all go back to

polluting cars or let's, you know, let's get rid of stop, start systems that say fuel, because

frankly, people don't like them and the planet's okay. But when you, I mean, I admit though,

I don't like the Starks off you. It's annoying to me. It's, I don't like them, but they kind of,

they also, from a environmental perspective, kind of work as well. But when you dig into it,

it's kind of hilarious because all of the big players, particularly the US big three,

are concerned about climate change. So they're, they've all got in their kind of annual reports

and everything else concerns about, we have this vulnerability to increasing temperature,

this vulnerability to flooding or whatever. So all of them are basically saying like,

we're worried about, we're worried about climate change. And the one thing that the car industry,

we talked about this so many times on the show, I feel like I'm on a rant now, it's been a long day.

The one thing the car industry can't cope with is constant change. And this is another constant

change. So it sounds like it's, oh, great. We just take the gadget off, save everybody a load

of money, save some manufacturing cost, everybody's a winner. Well, it doesn't really work like that

because all these things are however ever, you know, so carefully designed and interconnected

and everything else. So any sort of legislative change, it takes years to manifest itself and

be cost a load of money to reengineer or unengineer or whatever you want to do with the

technology already has. So what the industry destiny needs is a period of stability. And now

they're saying, okay, so all this has happened, whoever gets in in three years time, and it is

only what three years, isn't it barely that now, then everything might get tossed up in the air

again, and we go back to something akin to where we were. So it's just another example of this kind

of short term is political view, which ever side the political spectrum you you sit on,

this kind of like short term is view coupled with a headline that says to the consumer,

this is a massive win for you and you're going to save a ton of money.

It really, you're really not. And it really doesn't make an awful lot of sense. So I, you know,

when I'm somebody, you know, I don't know what I'm happy to say, I climate change climate,

we live in LA, we know what happened last year. You know, there's, there's reasons why

there's flooding and fires and, you know, significant climate change across the world.

It's, it's a, it's a real thing and vehicles are part of that. And we might not like all the

changes and perhaps some things went too fast. But I mean, chopping and changing is impossible.

Without like digging into all the specifics of climate change and people's opinions and this

whatever. But I mean, I feel like the auto companies get a lot of blame when there's like

also like a lot of manufacturing and stuff, but blaming manufacturing doesn't play well on the

news, right? Because we're like, I don't, I don't know. I don't care. Like what a factory out

somewhere blowing crap into the air, like it doesn't feels like it doesn't affect my daily life.

Whereas, you know, there's no pressure for me to put on any sort of a politician by going,

what's going on there? So it's a little different. But on the issue of the start,

stop feature, because that was in the news recently and Trump, I don't know, posted something and

he's like, I heard you, you guys hate that feature. I'm going to come up with a solution.

And you're right. The solution could be you don't have to have it in your car. If you're a vehicle

manufacturer, you don't have to have that feature in your car, but you're right. The manufacturers

may go, well, what is it going to cost us to remove it from future vehicles? And what if in

three, four years from now, things change again and it's mandated back, right? So in their heads,

they may be going, all right, if it's an annoying feature for somebody and we don't know what's

going to happen years from now, they go, is removing the start, stop feature the best option?

Or are there other solutions? Like right now, when you get into the car, it's sort of mandated that

it that start, stop feature is its default mode is to be on. So the start stop is on.

If they can control that in software, maybe they can go, you can get into your car,

you can turn it off and it stays off every time. And you only use it when you want to use it. You

can turn it on now. It doesn't reboot every single time. That way, you can make that decision, right?

You can make that decision. Yeah, you go into your settings in the same way that, you know,

you change all your other settings for, you know, whether you want surround sound or just

stereo or whatever it may be, just set it up to say, you know, and to be honest, it's also

something that you might, you know, if you're living in LA and you're sitting, stop, start,

traffic, sometimes the nice thing to have, you know, if you're off on your road trip and it

becomes a bit of a pain today off. So yeah, having that, but probably what it doesn't mean,

as you say, is you just strip it out. I mean, it's funny in Europe, I was talking the other

week about being in Europe, and now you have this always on gadget, which basically as soon as you

go like a mile an hour over the speed limit, it starts binging at you. Yeah, yeah, all the

thing, like a seatbelt chime. Yeah, I drive your nuts, but you have to, but now I'm like Mercedes

just made it one button on the steering wheel. So you just, the muscle memory, you turn, you know,

you press start on your car and you press that and it's off. So, you know, I think like stop,

start could be something similar. I mean, that's like, but also the other thing is for consumers,

right? Consumers, stop, start with, you know, for an, it might be an irritation. I get you,

sometimes it's irritating and some of them are better than others, but it also says fuel and

everybody's screaming about not just the environmental bit, but cars cost a lot of money.

So now fuel consumption goes up, cost of driving it goes up. So, you know,

I agree having it as an, as an option that you the owner can control, but the other side of like

controlling it through the software settings and leaving it in there, if something changes in three,

four, five years from now, right, regulation changes and usually would apply to new cars.

But if you're using all of the same parts of the same technology, there could be something as simple

as an over the air update that switches it back to where the default is always on, as opposed to like

buying new switches and doing every, you know, like now the car company is going, you know what,

this is too confusing. We don't know where it's going to be years from now. Let's put the start,

stop feature in there. The default mode will be off instead of on, you can change it in your settings

or, or, or whatever. And then if something changes, we can just send out the over the air update and

go, you know, you wake up in the morning, look at your phone, it says, we apologize, but your

start, stop feature has been, has been taken over. It could be also you could end up in a world where

California, it's on, you know, Utah, it's not. And it's all very likely, you're right, very,

very likely California will have a different rule. That came out this week at the same time,

there was yet more talk of financial results and EV write downs. And I forget, there's like a

automotive news, which is the kind of insiders, if you work in the industry, this is like the

insiders newspaper. I can't, they have a running total, I think it's like 50 billion or something,

but Stalantis came out and said, yeah, it's a $24 billion, $24 billion. It's like, it's such a

amount of money, $24 billion write down. It's not all EVs, but a lot of it's EVs that basically

said, right, we're off on this strategy over here. Now we're junking that strategy and we're all

running over here. And so like in Europe, they're going to bring back, you know, it's all about

bringing back diesels. It's like, we're like, I don't know, I know Baywatch is coming back

because there was a casting call. Actually, when you lived, there was a casting call that I saw.

I didn't, did you go? I didn't go. I didn't go. I've aged out. I could be Mitch Buchanan,

I'm probably too old for that now. But yeah, I was like, we're just going, we're just going

backwards. It's bizarre, but if you want to understand why things aren't as simple as the

politics suggests, just look at how much money everybody's writing down, $24 billion. Everyone's

like, oh, I'm the only wrote down $2 billion. It's like, yeah, but because they didn't make

any, they made one EV. I will say on some level, I feel like, you know, the last

seven, eight years, the car companies have just been beaten up by by by policy, by legislation,

by media politics. That industry especially was just getting unfairly slapped around.

Once it started going, again, this is my opinion, the government started going,

we need to go to EV. The way we're going to do that is instead of really going to the car companies

and going, we should start making EVs, they went to the public and said, you guys should start

demanding EVs. And then they created some mandates and the car companies didn't have choices.

And then what they didn't do, if I add, is put the infrastructure in.

Right. And the infrastructure wasn't there.

If you have a really good infrastructure, a lot of the EV debate would kind of go away.

So they didn't do their side. If you accept that that was the government's job to put the

infrastructure in and, you know, that's debatable, but nobody else, apart from Elon Musk, was going

to do it, you know, not at the right scale. Then, yeah, it's a mess.

Yeah. Well, that being said, we still have EVs and there's nothing wrong with that.

I like EVs. Look, I'm, you know, you drive one. I mean, you have one in the family car.

I have my trucks in EV, you know, we've got gas engine cars as well.

My other podcast shift in Steve, which I haven't brought up in a while,

it's a fun show with Aaron Hagar and Brad Fanshawe. We talked a bit about Ferrari's move recently,

right? Ferrari has this luce, luce, I think it's going to be the first EV.

With a bit more flamboyance, yeah.

Yes. And some hand gestures involved. You say, hey, luce, you know, and they released, you know,

the interior shots. They went to Johnny Ive, who was the former Sir Johnny Ive, right?

The designer at Apple. Of the Royal College of Art, yes.

And, and we saw the interior and then I dug deeper into, like, what did they do? How did

they design it? What did they build? You know, what was the thought process? And it started

to make more and more sense of what they did. It was super smart. And interesting because he said

things like what Tesla is doing with everything on a touchscreen is easy and lazy, I think is what

he's like. For the guy who basically made modern day touchscreens, the norm.

Yeah, we should say, if you don't know who's the Johnny Ives is, this is the guy that were,

you know, it was Apple's design chief creative officer for a generation.

Yeah. iPhone, iPad, iPod, iPod. They were all, you know, he is the guy that led the design team

responsible for that. Yeah. And, you know, if you think about that Tesla has just been a giant

iPad then, yeah. And he was saying it has, it's not the right interface for a car. You need some

analog buttons. I mean, presumably everything is digital now. It's just how you have a tactile

feel on certain buttons. Yeah. Right. But you need, you need some buttons and he's sort of cleaned

up the steering wheel and, and honestly, it's like, you look at that vehicle, the interior for

that new Ferrari, it has the three gauge cluster in it. But behind it is a single screen. It's a

single like they source from Samsung screen and then they put a bezel over it and then they sort

of program what's in there. So he said it's more cost effective and customizable. But some interesting

things like, like that. And the other thing he mentioned though was he doesn't feel like carbon

fiber is useful inside a car. He thinks it's cheap. It looks like plastic. There's no real

functional reason for it. And, and he said if you want high quality touch materials,

he's still all in on like aluminum and glass. And if again, if you think of the iPhone,

aluminum and glass, it may be magnesium to some extent. And, and then his special coatings that

are like anti fingerprint coatings and stuff on it. But the part that I noticed at the bottom of,

of these stories was Ferrari was talking about a couple of years ago, like all the car companies

going, we don't have a choice. We got to do more electric. Our new lineup of cars in the future

is going to be 40% electric, 40% hybrid and 20% combustion engine. And a good thing they didn't

rush into that, like a lot of car companies did because now they're like, we've changed their

mind. It's going to be 40% combustion, 40% hybrid and 20% EV. And that still begs the question.

What's your opinion on this? Are Ferrari owners ready for a pure EV? Is that going to dilute the

brand? Because there's not a lot of resell value right now in EVs. So I, I think it's a really

interesting way that this is, this is kind of one of the great iron is that, you know, in a week

where everybody else is writing off billions of dollars, manufacturers are also going to say,

hey, here's our new EV. And the reality is because they started developing these,

and we talked about many times three or four years ago, and Ferrari is no different. What,

what interests me about this car? I didn't go and seat myself. There was an event up in San

Francisco because Sir Johnny I's now runs his own design consultant. And sometimes when you give

industrial designers or star industrial designers, you know, automotive projects,

it can be a bit of a disaster because they don't, you know, they don't understand the genre, but

Johnny I's, I believe, is a car guy as well. And, and, and I think they've done a,

they've done a really interesting job. And I, and, and then I think in itself, I think it's

quite smart from Ferrari, because if you like, I mean, Ferrari used to obviously how it used

pinning for Rena for all the beautiful Ferraris of the past, but it's quite a ballsy thing to

do is to say, actually, we're going to go to somebody who's synonymous with Apple to do our

interior. You know, you have to part the ego a little bit if you're going to do that, because

he's such a celebrity in his own right that you are kind of saying, hmm, we went, you know, we

felt like we needed some external help, which is, you know, in Ferrari went to America for this.

Yeah. And Ferrari is not bereft of ego as an organization. So that was kind of interesting

itself. But I think what they've done is beautiful and actually talks a lot to Ferrari's heritage.

So I think from the cool perspective, I think it's got an instant cool. And I think amongst the

kind of tech bro community, Lou, let's face it, are going to be on the in the market for this thing.

I think that counts a lot. I suddenly looked down here and like, oh, I'd like one of those. That

looks great. So I think it's very smart. And I think Ferrari of all the manufacturers, and also

just because the sheer wealth of their customer base will be okay, because I think the people who

buy them will also have, you know, half a dozen, six, 10 other cars. So I think of all the

manufacturers to get away with this Ferrari, you know, I'll have that as their San Francisco car,

the New York car or their Paris car, whatever it may be, in the same way that people buy their,

you know, purist anger, isn't it? The SUV. So I think they will be fine. But I thought it was a,

you know, we haven't seen the exterior yet, but I thought it was a really, really interesting

project. And it's so elegant and simple. And I think they've done a really sweet job. Retro,

but not too retro. I completely agree about carbon fiber. And, you know, I think that's,

I think it's a really interesting point. It does nothing to save weight, because it's purely

decorative. It's not structural. It is in the old car like a Lamborghini, but most of the time,

it's not structural. So I couldn't agree more. It does look cool. By the way, these switches,

we're looking at some of the photos again, these switches are fantastic. And this big screen that's

in the middle and has this handle on the bottom, that handle is so you can swivel the screen from

left to right or center or whatever. Oh, that's sweet. It's a, it's kind of a grab handle, if you

will. They added some controls to the steering wheel. But if you look at the steering wheel,

this is meant to be the classic style of steering wheel, just sort of flat, thin spoke.

Like an old, like an old mama, we used to be back in, you know, back in the day. And

it's like, yeah, to integrate the control. Oh, yeah. Ferrari's really naughty back in the day.

Yeah. Well, I think they use more, I think it was a Mamo in the, like the F40 and stuff,

because that reminds me a little bit of an F40 wheel, but they managed to get the airbag

small enough as well to fit in it. And you know, not these kind of crazy starship controls. It's

a real antidote to some of the current hypercars where you've just got switches everywhere and

gadgets. And yeah, I mean, the big, you know, it's a big challenge for Ferrari as it's been a

big challenge for Porsche in that, you know, how does it sound like and everything else? But I

think as an ad, it's going to be an additive car, isn't it? You're going to have this alongside

your other Ferraris or your Lamborghini or your Porsche, because that's the clientele.

Yeah. And you, they're going to do, I think Ferrari said they have six new cars in the lineup.

That are coming out soon. But when they say that, they mean like, we've got a Portofino,

we're going to do a Portofino Spyder. We've got the PureSanway with the V12. We're going to do

the V8 version as well, right? Like a, I don't know, a hybrid or turbo eight. So not completely

new vehicles. They just mean like convertibles and engine options and stuff. And that's part of

their lineup. But I'm interested to see what people are going to think of an EV Ferrari. And

what does that do to Ferrari's brand? What does that do to their resell value?

But that being said, I think this interior stuff looks fantastic. The use of glass and aluminum

and putting like the clock on the glass, like that's kind of cool. There's some interesting

things here. I think the other thing, Matt, is, you know, even Ferrari, you know, probably one of the

world's most strongest brands, even they have to think about like, you know, what does their

customer base look like in the future? And there has been a period where among certain communities,

you know, Ferrari was a bit too much, bit too gauche, everything else, this is an opportunity

to talk to a different market, you know, you've got a lot of very affluent tech people who maybe

don't want, you know, a noisy compromise supercar, but do want like something that's cool and

heritage. And I think it's an interesting, I think it's an interesting guy is kind of funny

that like a lot of the cars we've been talking about in our news channel this week have been EVs,

because we will see over the next two or three years, all the cars that people commissioned

when the world was turning. Yeah. Do you think an electric Ferrari is going to bring new people

to the brand? Yes. Because this has been an interesting conversation. Like when you look at

when Lamborghini released their SUV, I think that brought people to the brand that didn't

have a Lamborghini before. But when I spoke to Rolls Royce, I'm like, oh, they're, you know,

years ago, they're like, we're doing an SUV, we're doing the Cullinan. And I said, oh, that makes

sense. You're trying to bring people to the brand. And they said, no, all of our customers are asking

for an SUV. They want both. They want one of each. And they will increase sales, but not

necessarily like doubling the amount of new customers. They probably get 50% more sales

with 20% more customers. It was just, it's a different strategy for a company like Rolls Royce.

And this isn't EV specific. This is just them getting into an SUV. And I think a lot of that will

be true of Ferrari as well. As I said, you know, these people are good, you know, their customer

base has got multiple cars. You don't just own a Ferrari. So for a lot of people, even at the

price point that it is, it's going to be, we don't know, we don't know what it looks like.

We don't know what it's going to be. We don't know if it's $400,000. We don't,

wait, it's going to be a fortune. It's going to be. The price is announced, but I would be amazed

if it's not, what, what's the, I would be amazed if it's not like 400 grand or something. You know,

it's not, it's going to, it's going to have to be up there just because the sheer, you know, sheer

scarcity of numbers that they, that they produce. I mean, also, we were talking with just a couple

of weeks ago when you were testing the Lamborghini, just where were you all with Lamborghini prices?

You were testing a car that had $200,000 of options on it. Like, and now the entry level

Lamborghini is a ridiculous amount of money. $600, what was it? Just under $600,000.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think at that level of the market, you're going to, you know, Ferrari,

now whether it, you know, it'll be interesting, you know, what profit genuinely is the profit

margin on that less? I mean, or do you just, the thing that Ferrari has is just the ability to

price things so expensive that they just are able to, sorry, my daughter was about to walking

there. So you can see the little hand gesture that was a instant, instant, instant parenting.

My way was like, yes, Ferrari prices. I mean, they can probably just look at what the genuine

cost is and stick a margin on and it'll be okay. You know, they are the world's most profitable

car company by, you know, by volume, by per capita or whatever the expression is for car. So

yeah, it will be interesting. But at the same time this week, you know, we've had Toyota come out

with the Highlander EV, Highlander obviously like one of Toyota's mainstays, they still have the

Grand Highlander. So there's a lot of headlines that, oh, you know, Highlander's EV only, well

sort of, because they've got the Grand Highlander, which is gas and hybrid, but there's new and

now a three row Highlander. Before we get into that, I got a couple of questions about the EV

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physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary. Okay, so Highlander EV. Toyota has said for so

long that they're all in on hybrid. They were a little hesitant on EV. Probably saved them a

bunch of money to kind of ease into this slowly. But eventually, they needed to get into this

market. We have a Lexus. They have their EV, the BZ or something like that. Yeah, BZ4X,

which I think they renamed. Didn't they rename it the BZ? Yeah. They keep messing around with it.

I don't know that it's been particularly successful for them yet, but I'm not sure.

I just don't hear like a lot about it as far as like, it's a... No, I think it was a toe in the

market, which allowed... And obviously, it was a joint venture with Subaru, which... So Subaru and

Toyota basically did. And I think for both of them, it was like, okay, in the same way that

Honda did the joint venture with GM to produce their EV, it's like, we need to get into the

market. Let's test it out. And they're also, I think, talking to Toyota about this, there was a

bunch of Toyota customers who now wanted an EV, but didn't want a Tesla, didn't really want to step

out the Toyota ecosystem and didn't want something that felt like another world. They wanted a kind

of RAV4 in EV form. And if you look at the highlander, and I've just got the pictures in front of

me here, it looks like pretty much a Toyota in EV form. I don't think there's anything

here that's going to make it feel particularly extraordinary. It's a rival to the Kia EV9,

Kia's 3-row... Yeah, it's because it's big though. It's big 3-row...

Yeah, that's right. It's going to go up against the Ioniq 9, it's going to go up against the

Kia's EV9, both of which are great products. And I think for Toyota, it'll be interesting,

are they just going to take existing Toyota customers and convert them to EV? Or are they

really going to be able to conquest? But you look at the deals right now, the Ioniq 9 is a great

vehicle and it's pretty much brand new. And you can lease one for $3.99 a month in California,

without much down. So it's another one of those where you look at it and say,

yep, it's probably a good product. There's probably a lot of things in its favor.

But is there a market for them? I would expect it to be good. Toyota is good quality. They didn't

rush into this. So many car companies kind of released too early. And Toyota's got a lot of

experience with battery technology and by kind of waiting and getting this thing onto the market

after everybody else. And I would imagine it's going to be pretty decent.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting, like front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive.

We've sort of moved away a little bit from EVs being kind of radically different.

Everything was rear-wheel drive or it was this or it was a billion horsepower.

Reality of this vehicle and a lot of the newer generation of EVs is that

they're kind of gas cars powered by electricity. They don't do zero to 60 in three seconds or at

least the entry-level vehicles do. They are sensible family cars. And I think that's all

better for it really. I've kind of got a bit bored of saying this is a family SUV,

you know, 700 horsepower. It's a bit of a waste of time. We kind of it's about, isn't it? Like,

why do you want to do it? It's great for like chatting about it in the pub. But the reality

is what you want is something that goes as far as possible, charges quickly,

has really like nippy acceleration. And EVs all give you that because of the instant talk.

And I still think EVs compete for range. And for me, that would be a big decision-maker on range

as somebody who's owned an EV and does have to drive pretty significant distances, you know,

based in LA. But I do have to go down to Orange County and San Diego and stuff like that. And

I am a little surprised that Toyota came out with this. I'm sure this is just a money thing.

They've come out with this Highlander. It's EV, front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. There's

two battery pack options. And the larger battery pack option is roughly 320 miles of range. I was

just kind of thinking, you know, Toyota was going to go, listen, you don't need to have a Lucid to

get 384 miles of range. Like, we can do it. We're at Toyota. We understand battery technology better

than anybody else. We know how to make it efficient. We know how to, you know,

they probably have more battery power, you know, buying power than most of the car companies do.

I'm a little surprised they weren't going, listen, we'll do two batteries. You'll get,

you know, a 290 mile range, you know, get like a 390 mile range, you know, or a 320 and a 390.

I think that would push a lot of people into the Highlander EV, but it doesn't quite have it.

Yeah, I just, I mean, I've just got the facts and figures in front of me here from my,

from my notes. Yeah, I'm kind of getting used to battery sizes. It's funny. It's kind of when

you deal with these things all the time, you get used to seeing how, well, like what the battery

size actually means. So the smaller ones, 77 kilowatt hours, larger ones, 95.8. So these are

still relatively modest batteries. You know, you're talking about Tesla Model Y sort of big,

certainly at the lower end there. And of course, it's a big three row heavy vehicle.

So you're always making this trade between cost versus miles. And then also you layer in

performance as well in that. So if you want to go really fast, that's fine, but you're going to

cost you range. So this, until the technology improves and it's getting incrementally better,

you're still looking at say a 70, what is it, 77 kilowatt hour battery pack and say, well,

that's all we can afford because we want to keep the price of this vehicle below 60 grand.

So that means we're going to get a range of nearly 300 miles in a vehicle like this. And

there is a school of thought at the moment that you've got to do 300 miles EPA.

And Toyota is obviously over for the all wheel drive, just under for the two wheel drive. But

there seems to be a kind of like a, almost a sort of normalization now in Tesla,

Tesla's people came out and told me this to my face. It's like everything we do must have over

300 miles. There's then an argument like just having 500 miles of range, make a difference.

Like maybe if it's like a truck or something and you're going to tow, then you probably need that.

But the reality is you look at those big GM trucks and they Cadillacs and everything else,

200 kilowatt hour batteries, massive amount of weight, massive amount of cost.

Massive amount of, what do you do with it later in its life cycle? So

it's all about getting the balance. Yeah, you could just bolting more batteries,

but you've got more weight. It's a bigger vehicle. It's tough. I mean, what needs to happen is the

battery density and whether we go to solid state or whatever, battery technology needs to evolve.

So we can now go 500 miles with less weight and less cost. But it'll happen, but it's taking time.

Yeah, and we keep mentioning technologies like that, like solid state battery and what does

that mean and how come we're not there yet because EV's been out for a while now, especially when

you look at a company like Tesla. Now, EV's been out for a long time before Tesla. And what's

happening with that technology, but also there's a handful of other things. I think it was Ford

that was talking about the Mustang Mach-E and they were like, we overdeveloped the first version.

And on the second version, we're able to cut 200 feet of wiring out of this thing and to

reduce some weight. And we overcompensated on cooling issues. So we don't need quite as robust

fans or radiators or whatever to make that happen. And then also it's like, how do you make it look

good, be aerodynamic enough that you get good range at highway speeds? So all of those things

come into play, but it just seems like all of those things add up to 10% more range on a 300

mile vehicle. Maybe it's 330 miles. Some software updates, but without significant

battery technology changes in that respect. And that's why we're going to get it.

And that's why we're also now getting into this world of now having range extenders,

going back to range extenders, because the battery technology hasn't evolved so fast.

So now it's like, okay, maybe we have a 77 kilowatt hour battery, because that's what we

can afford. And we stick in a little cheap internal combustion engine alongside it to top it up when

it's required. Again, but this is all what we talked about at the beginning. It's all expensive.

Now we've got range extenders. So now we're running a gas car,

gas engine, and a big electric battery pack and motors. So everything's just getting complicated.

And now all the legislative stuff is saying, you don't need any of this nonsense,

just go back to like, let's get an old diesel or let's get a, you know.

I like the idea of range extender, but I'm also on the fence about it. I mean, especially in LA

where your Costco gas line is huge and everything, there's just something to say about like,

why do you have an EV? Because I never go to the gas station. I never get the oil changed.

When I took it in for its 20,000 mile service, the service was like a cabin filter and tire

rotation. I'm like, well, I can do that myself. So why do we even need to go in for that service?

You know, and then once you throw the range extender in there, you're kind of adding back the

gas car. So now you have two things in one, maybe less, less maintenance, less oil changes,

less filling up at the gas station, but you still have to do all of those things.

Sort of. Yeah. We had a, when we first moved to America with our first car,

because we're one of the carpool access in LA, was the, was, was a BMW i3 with a little range

extender. And I think it was like a 600, if memory serves, a 600cc engine, I think three cylinder,

which they'd pulled from some sort of Moto scooter in Europe. But it was great. The only

had a 30 mile range. My wife was commuting 100 miles a day down to DuPont Beach and she plugged

it overnight and it basically ran the battery drive every day, but she always made it. But in her

mind, it was always there. And the reality is we never used it. And one day driving back down

in 405, this thing kicked in just to kind of like, you know, circle the pulleys and stuff.

She's like, and like, well, the hell, she rang me up. What's going on? There's some,

like some noise coming out. And I say, yeah, that's the, that's the engine. Just, you know,

keep yourself alive. So I think it makes a, for me, it makes a lot of sense how I use a

vehicle makes a lot of sense. Cause at the moment it's like, you have your EV, but then when you

road trip, you've got an anxiety attached to it. This takes away that anxiety. And the reality is

you're probably not going to use it much because all the data suggests that majority of people

don't go very far. But when you want to do that ski trip, when you want to tell your U-Haul,

it's there for you. So done right. I think done, done right. That's the key thing. It's like,

if it's done right, if it's, if it's not, you know, constantly kicking on and you can

have it sort of in EV mode, or is it, if it, if it drives more like an EV and you use the range

extender sort of like at your choice when you need more range or when you're towing, but if it's

kind of like a hybrid, but we're just sort of flipping the powertrain, then having that thing

kick on all the time, like if you, you know, getting onto the freeway and you need to accelerate

and you can't do it unless that range extender creates power fires up, then I don't, I don't

need it to be like a hybrid. I need it to be like a range extender. You know, so if it's done right

and it's smart enough, you know, and again, that's software and, and, you know, a number of other

things, but, you know, could, could be interesting. We'll see how it gets executed.

It was the other EV, the other EV this week was the, the McCann GTS, which again, it's, you know,

it's a slightly nicer version of McCann EV, but it's just same old problems. There's a load of

money and it's not very big, particularly inside, but I'm starting to see a few of these on the road

around here. It's a pretty looking car. And if you're not that fussed about interior space, it's,

I mean, it's not like it's small inside. It's just for the money,

you just expect a bit more and, and, and the, you know, and the packaging isn't,

the packaging isn't great given how big the vehicle is. It should have more interior space,

but we're driving the Cayenne EV very shortly as well. So that, I think we're going to, I'm not

sadly, but somebody's off to Spain to drive that imminently. So I mean, I like a portion of design

is great. The interior is great. Like I like, you know, the quality is a bit, it's beautifully

built, but there are areas where you just go, you just penny pinched a little bit. So I mean,

and, and the GTS, you're spending over $100,000 on this thing to start with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

This is going to be $120,000, $130,000 car, which is a lot of money when you can get something like

Ioniq 5, which is an awesome car for, you know, 60, 70,000. Yeah.

But it's not a Porsche. It's not a Porsche. It's an Ioniq 5.

Yeah, but it's a very cool Ioniq 5. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting. I mean,

there's still a lot of talk and a lot of rumors about Porsche dropping, you know,

there are a long way down the development line for the Boxster EV and the Cayman EV

and there's talk of them not bringing into market. I mean, that would be extraordinary

because that vehicle's been, they've been developing that thing for years.

Yeah. They're billions of dollars into these vehicles. And if they, if they release it with

a gas engine and it wasn't intended to have a gas engine, like what's sort of

how much backtracking in the, in the engineering and the design. Yeah. Yeah. How much time it takes.

So it's a, yeah, I don't know. I mean, personally, I looked at it and thought, well, the Boxster EV

could be quite a nice, you know, quite a nice thing. But yeah, who, who knows? It's an interesting

decision and I'm not as close to it, obviously, like I'm not running a car company, but it's a

big decision. It's the same with like the electric Ram truck, when you spent all these billions of

dollars getting to, and you're almost there. And Jaguar did it with their last XJ. The car

basically existed and then they pulled the plug, you know, to get all the way to birth basically

and then say, we're done. Yeah. Just write all that money off and just basically junk it. Yeah,

you'll keep a bit of the technology and you'll keep a bit of the learnings. But that's a, that's

a massive decision. Let's try to figure out like what's going on with, with Range Rover. Range Rover

debuted their new flagship, maybe four or five years now, and they said it's going to be gas

engine hybrid or plug in and then the EV. And now we're seeing designs or we're seeing the, you

know, sort of the camouflage test vehicles of the new Range Rover. And I'm going, well, where's

the EV? Is it going to be the new Range Rover? Like did they just skip it? Am I wrong in that?

It feels like. Well, I drove the Range Rover literally this time last year. I went to the

Arctic Circle to drive the Range Rover EV and it was due to go on sale. I think end of last

year. And, you know, again, very sorted car. But then that's been, you know, that's been put back.

And I think part of the problem is, you know, that's going to be 200 grand. It's a lot of money. So,

you know, we, we, we still don't have an on sale date for that. Discovery, we don't know where that

is. You know, there's obviously a lot of focus on the Jaguar, but that's a 150 grand EV and,

you know, what, what, I think I'm going to have to do it. But, you know, they're going to be launching

that with a great deal of, you know, apprehension. So that company's had a, you know,

there's a lot of margin in those Range Rovers and stuff. And, you know, they've, they've got,

still got an epic following for the big daddy Range Rover. They defended as well. Discovery,

they barely sell any anymore. So they've got almost like a two brand, you know,

a folks too small for over here. Yeah. Range Rover Sport has been around a long time now. So,

you know, they, they have still have this kind of very loyal following, but yeah, they need to

launch. I mean, I, I think it's smart if Range Rover feels like they couldn't get it right to delay

it as opposed to releasing it and then having a bunch of warranty work and flaws and. I'm not even

sure it's that much, to be honest. I think it's just that they don't know, they don't know how

many they're going to sell. And I had a, you know, conversation with some of their leadership last

year at Car Week and, you know, they were saying, look, you build an EV, you've got to commit to a

certain number of batteries and they're really expensive. And how do we know? Yeah. Maybe that's

why Jaguar was going to EV. They want to share that technology Jaguar Land Rover. They're saying,

you know, we, we need, you're right, we need the cost savings. How many new Jaguars can they sell

with probably a shared battery, you know, supplier and going to make, to make the sense?

How many Jaguars do we need to sell to make the Range Rover profitable?

And then in Europe, they probably still do need, you know, they still talk about having an electric

defender and electric discovery in the future. And, you know, then you have a family of vehicles,

but now if nobody in the US wants them, you know, can you afford just to do it for Europe?

Do you have to do it just for Europe because of all the legislative stuff?

So this is, this, we come full circle at the beginning of the show. This is the big problem

today. US is going in one direction, China and the, China and Europe are going in completely

the other direction. So if you're a company like Jaguar Land Rover, which isn't very big,

you can't develop a fleet of electric cars for Europe and gas cars for America and

something else for China. It just doesn't, the economics don't work.

If, if an electric Range Rover comes out and it's got 300 miles of range, I'm going to be

slightly disappointed for a brand that has been known for going off the grid and it's literally

got range in the name. It's a Range Rover. It's a bit like the Ferrari. It'll be bought by Range

Rover customers. You know, a lot of people have multiple Range Rovers, you know, one for the,

you know, one for the lodging Aspen, one for the place in LA. And I think it will be bought by

yeah off multiple Range Rovers. Okay. So real quick, before we wrap up,

Edmunds, you drags, there's a fun video up there that that I was watching. We were just

talking about electric SUVs. You have Cadillac versus Cadillac.

This was, we try, we've tried it. We decided like, should we do something eccentric and

just see if it sticks. And actually the response we're getting on YouTube is really strong.

People are like, this is the best you drag. So partly because it was close. It was a good race.

And partly just because it looked really silly. So we had an Escalade V, which is the

CT5 Blackwing engine and sounds absolutely insane. It's loud. It's awesome. It's out of

tons of horsepower. And then we had the Escalade IQ, which has got even more horsepower, 750 of

memory saves. Yeah, 750 horsepower. So when we did all the numbers at a test trial, like this is

going to be really close. And honestly, it was so funny. If you watched the video, like you put

your foot down and they go, you know, as described it in the film as like a powerboat, you know,

when it gets on the water and it planes, because the nose comes up in the air. So you're sort of

staring at the sky. And then these things sort of projects itself forward. And then even under

acceleration, it's sort of moving around a little bit. And I think on the EV, the EV breaks our

scales so we couldn't weigh it. So I think it's like 10,000 pounds, we can only waste up to eight

and a half thousand. So this is 10,000 pounds plus the rear tires, we talk about it in the in the,

in the, in the film, I want to say they were like 60 pounds of pressure. So they're like

truck tires, they're enormous, twice what a normal car would be. And then when you break and accelerate

like so, everything feels like you're almost like floating on water, you know, suspension and the

nose goes up and you saw off you go and then you're breaking and everything's just sort of floating

around on you. And it was, it was really fun. And the thing, but the bonkers fast, I mean,

like zero to 60 in under five seconds. And yeah, we're getting a really, really strong response

to it, which is kind of kind of interesting. A lot of people are saying we should do more

eccentric races. And so we're going to have to, I got a few, I've got a few ideas that might not

be easy to pull off, but I thought it was cool. Yeah. All right. Well, guys, definitely check

that out. It's at the Edmunds YouTube channel. All right. I think we're going to wrap things up

for today. Any, any last thoughts? Anything else we need to add? Big shows next week.

Big launch. Edmunds talk rated on Wednesday. Yeah. Just dealing with press release or the

back end, press releases, images, jelly beans for the page or the bit that you don't see and we

don't talk about. It's a big undertaking. I know you guys put a lot of work into it,

but yeah, looking forward to going through it next week and seeing who the winners are.

We ran through the finalists last week on the podcast, so you can go back and listen to that.

And you can probably bet on the winners at FanDuel. I'm not sure, maybe.

I don't know. Different side of trading on whoever it is.

All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week. Until then,

keep the air in the spare and the bag in the wheel.

CarCast+Edmunds - New electric Ferrari interior, Toyota Highlander EV and more.

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