CarCast+Edmunds - New York Auto Show recap. VW Atlas, Kia Seltos, Kia EV3 and Hyundai Boulder Concept

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Back from New York Auto Show. How was it?

Yeah, pretty fatigued. I only landed back in LA about an hour ago. I don't know, maybe

I'm getting old, but I didn't sleep much. Hotel beds, time zone differences, going out in

the evening, early start. I'm feeling a little bit tonight, but it was a good trip. I loved

the Big Apple. It's always nice to spend a couple of days in Manhattan. The show is

not as big as it once was, but still plenty to see. Genuinely, a bunch of debuts and one

significant surprise from Hyundai. Well worth the fatigue, well worth the effort. Fun couple

of days.

I've been to New York Auto Show, but the New York trip is like, when you've got to do

the work trip and you're going to be there for 48 hours, it's like a little bit too far

for a short trip. It's not like like Detroit, you know, because we've been there a bunch

of times for car stuff. It's like, why don't you go to New York? It's like, ah, it's just

a little bit more, I don't know, sort of exhausting the travel portion of it.

Well, I think it's also like you've got to land, then you're at JFK and then you've

got to get your way into the city. But I love the energy of Manhattan. I went for a long

run. I had it like an hour window, so I went and did a lap of Central Park, and I actually

forgotten that that was six miles. So that nearly killed me. I mean, last time I came,

I was trying to eat training for the London Marathon. I remember doing like an 18 mile

training run around Central Park. This time I did one six mile lap and was like, oh, that's

actually quite a lot. So I'm still feeling it two days later. So that's not good. Some

mental know that I've got to try harder.

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All right, so lots of things happening actually at the New York Auto Show. Let's think about

where you want to start. So you went out specifically with Volkswagen. Was that the invitation initially?

Yeah, we had a couple of people on the ground. Myself, Nick Kicken from our news team was

out there. But yeah, Volkswagen took us out a little bit early and gave us a sneak preview

of the Atlas, which is a really big deal for them. I mean, that is their biggest, that

is their cash cow. That is their better work car. And a few years ago, Volkswagen, I mean,

the brand, if you like me, you grew up in Europe. The Volkswagen brand in the US has

always been a little bit confusing because in Europe, Volkswagen still maintains this

reputation of really being the default middle class choice. If you were affluent middle class

European, particularly German or perhaps British, the Gulf was the default hatchback. And yet,

when I moved to the US, suddenly Volkswagen is pitched very differently. It was very much

a value brand and it was all about how cheap can you get a Jetta, how cheap can you get

a Passat. And more recently, they've kind of met in the middle a little bit. And I think

what they've done well is to start design cars that actually are for the US market.

So they're for the US, they're built in the US. So we've seen that with the Tiguan, which

is, which is a really nice little small SUV. And now the Atlas, which is their three row,

you know, follows that trajectory. So it's built, it's built in Chattanooga in the US.

It's designed, developed for the US market primarily, and it also goes to Mexico and Canada

and a few others as well. So yeah, a nice, you know, a sensible evolution of what they had

before. A lot of the stuff underneath is carried over, but the whole every body panel is new. It

looks a bit more sophisticated. LED lights at the front that pretty much everybody has now. But

particularly inside, they've made a, you know, they've made a pretty big step in things like

cabin quality. It looks like a grown up Tiguan. You've got big focus on the center screen and

then another little digital dashboard in front of you. But it, it's, it now feels more at market,

which is what they were the telling us was the goal. So they've succeeded in that.

But it's also pitched into an incredibly competitive market. I mean, this is going headlong

against Kia Telluride, Hyundai Palisade, Ford Explorer. You know, there's a lot of really,

really good vehicles in that kind of three row, you know, 40 to 60 grand range.

I haven't really thought about, you guys probably have access to this data and not to put you on

the spot, but who are the best sellers like in volume of cars in that competitive group? I mean,

we've talked a bit about the Hyundai Palisade, that being an Edmunds top rated award winner,

but who's, who's dominating the sales in this segment, sort of this, this three row segment?

I wish you'd asked that question before on there, because I don't have the,

I don't have the figure. Don't quite pull them from the back of my brain. But I mean,

you know, the big, the big place in this market, obviously you've got, you've got Ford Explorer,

GMC, Arcadia is a, is a, is a good vehicle. Telluride, Palisade, Honda Pilot, of course,

sells an awful lot. Atlas is, I think they did a hundred thousand a year of the old one. So,

you know, you're talking about significant volume. And I think what's good about the

Atlusum of Volkswagen perspective is it's a lot of car for the money. You know, it's a big vehicle.

So it's the, it is the American family hauler. Certainly for the front two rows, you've got tons

of space. I mean, I can comfortably sit behind myself. Even in the third row, I'd be okay for

short distances. There's plenty of headroom, legroom's a little bit tight. So it's a, you know,

it's a proper American sized SUV, front wheel drive, plus all wheel drive. The one big thing

that they haven't gotten, we talked about this, and I actually had a meeting at lunchtime with

Volkswagen's US CEO, and this is something that we were talking about, is they, they are going to

do a hybrid, but it's not, it's not till the mid cycle refresh at this car. So it's still two or

three years away. So at the moment, it's got a two liter turbo four, which has been updated. I think

it's now got 285 horsepower, I think it is, or 286 maybe? 282. I'm trying to pull it from somewhere,

which is about, I think, 13, 14 horsepower more than it had before, but it's got less torque than

the opposition. And one of the, one of our big criticisms of the old model was that actually

it was quite thirsty. They're saying because it's an updated engine, it's actually going to be more

fuel efficient, but they haven't got the official figures yet. But there's an argument that, yeah,

the bulk of this market remains, you know, normal gas. But in a world where everybody's

starting to try and save money and reduce gas costs, well, actually hybrid is feels like a

really big growth area, and they're behind the curve on that. And they know it. But, you know,

they, they can't do much about it though, it's in development, but it's still two or three years

away. And that, that feels like the, the big sort of gray area with this car. And also the fact that

the opposition is, is so good. But I've always, I've always liked the outgoing Atlas. And this one

just seems like a sensible evolution. Yeah. And I, one of the other specs is that it,

even with the 282 horsepower, it tows 5,000 pounds, which is about average. I mean, it's not

exceptional, but that's, I mean, that's going to be a must for most, most people's needs, right?

That's, yeah, it's a bunch of toys. It's not really your, your, your track car and trailer,

you know, maybe with a lightweight racing trailer, you're, you're getting right close

at the 5,000 pound range possibly, depending on what you're racing. It's a really,

depends how big your boat is. It's a, yeah, it's a, it's a speedboat, not a yacht, isn't it? So.

Right. Right. It's a couple of jet skis and some motorcycles and some fun off-road toys for sure.

Yeah. I mean, it's not trying to be like a big, it's not trying to be a suburban or something.

It's not a body on frame. It's a, you know, it's a monocoque. It's a, it's a, it's an SUV. It's not

like a big body on frame, you know, domestic built for off-road and things like that. It's a,

you know, the off-road bit they're not doing because I said, you know, everybody talked about

it with Keir and Hyundai. I was like, are you going to do like an off-road trim with knobbly

tires and go faster stripes? And they're like, no, you know, the all wheel drive works. It's got

some snow modes and stuff. It's good for skiing. It's good for snow belt, but we're not trying to do

you know, we're not trying to pretend it's an off-road one.

And the positioning is interesting, right? Because you look at something like Taluride or

Palisade and they also, they go for a gas engine and they go for hybrid and hybrid's the better,

probably the better option overall. It's a little quicker. It's a little bit better gas mileage.

Then something like a Ford Explorer, they, they do have kind of off-road versions and they have

the high performance ST versions. They have 400 horsepower. They have all wheel drive. Like

they're, they're going after something a little bit different there. Probably because of that

trickle down effect of Raptor as well going, we have high performance off-road vehicles.

So if you want a high performance SUV or you want any of the tremor lineup, which is something that

they've been growing as well across different models of vehicles that I think Ford is playing

more into that off-road capable, you know, version of things compared to

compared to Hyundai and compared to Volkswagen and this, and this.

Yeah. I think that's been their brand pitch, isn't it? Like Ford does performance and off-road and

it's like everything is quite alpha. Volkswagen is saying that we were kind of,

they sort of describe it as like socially aspirational. They're trying to be,

they figure that they're not like the default choice. So they're trying to appeal to people who

are kind of like looking around a little bit, you know, maybe people working their way up the

career ladder. So, you know, maybe people with young families, it's kind of me really, but it's

people with young, you know, young families who are, you know, active lifestyle, that kind of thing.

And then, you know, Telluride and Palisade and those things are, you know, just built such a

great reputation for, you know, perception and, you know, perception of quality and material choices

and everything else. So it's a really interesting market right now. And, you know, the Atlas needed

a refresh. It's got it. I think we're driving it later this year. It's going to go on sale in fall,

started about 40 grand. So, you know, that's pretty good value for a vehicle of that size.

Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the Kia's. There's an EV and there's a gas engine truck. Where you

want to start? Yeah, I mean, we were talking last week about what's going on with the EV market and

the fact that you can, you know, start leasing EVs for next to nothing. And then Kia popped up with

the EV3, which is a, in American terms, a small hatchback. I'll call it an SUV, but it's basically

a hatchback. It is a small, subcompact EV for, you know, probably for urban use if you live in

Manhattan or maybe it worked well as a sort of second car in, you know, in LA or something like

that. It's not your big family hauler, but it's going to be pretty cheap. It's tough to gauge the

size of the vehicle looking at it in pictures. Is this like Ioniq 5 or is this smaller? No,

it's Ioniq 5 big, so it's smaller than a, it's smaller than an Ioniq 5. I mean, they're kind

of peppering the market because you've got things like the Nero and everything else, but it's,

so probably bigger than a soul, smaller than, smaller than like the EV6. I mean, as the name

suggests, it sort of slips in there. In Europe, they've got an EV2, so they can go smaller still.

So it's kind of like, I haven't got the exact dimensions, but if you think like Volkswagen

Golf size, if you want to get some reference point, and it looks like a scale down EV9,

I actually think it looks really cool. It was funny because I was talking to the

some of their C-suite and we're asking questions about where Kia is and the sales and everything

else. And there was a video playing in the background and I was like, oh yeah, it looks

really good. Then I realized that it was actually an EV9 I was looking at, not an EV3. It does look

like a little facsimile, but I mean, I looked at it. I haven't had that much chance to sort of poke

around and find out how big like rear leg room is and things like that. But I did think it was

quite a cute thing and a really good car if you're in an urban area, in the Bay Area, LA,

New York, that sort of thing. Yeah, looking at some of the photos, looking at like kind of the back

and the quarter panel, it's throwing off a little Fisker vibe for me.

I can see what you mean. In fact, one of the weird things about being in New York is

there was a deal done when Fisker went bust to buy up a load of Fiskers and use them as

Ubers in New York. So I actually had a ride in a Fisker, which I hadn't been in for quite a long

time. So really, I mean, like I was staying around Central Park area, there was loads of Fiskers.

It was really quite odd. But this works better than the Fisker, I'm sure about that because it

uses a lot of the technology that they've got in the other Kia's. 81 kWh battery pack, that's pretty

big. You're talking about 300 mile range or over 300 mile range. So I'm quite excited about it. I

think they'll struggle to sell it because it's a small EV. And I think even they accept it's

going to be a relatively niche market because you've got the EV6, which is a bit bigger, the EV9,

which is a proper 3-row. So where is the US market for a subcompact electric car?

Right. But the two battery options are good because that effectively could lower the price. If you

don't need the larger amount of range, you can get the roughly whatever the 220 mile range

version of it is the 220, yeah, 220 mile range and the smaller battery and save some money.

But that's right. And I think that's the, that is kind of the appeal of this car that I've used

is something like me, you know, we have a long distance car or I tend to pull from the Edmunds

fleet to go on long distances. But then most of the time taking the kids to school, taking them

to dance class, that kind of thing, we use, you know, we use a small EV because that makes a lot

of sense. You can park it, you can nip it and out of traffic. So I think there is definitely a role

for it. And, you know, they are, they are persisting with the EV thing, both Hyundai and Kia are

probably more committed than most. BMW, I think is the other one and Mercedes to slightly lesser

degree who are continuing with the kind of EV charge. But Hyundai and Kia have said, you know,

we're in this for the long term, you know, we've got the production facility, but it's a flexible

production facility. So, you know, we're, we're going to do this because I think there's a lot of

talk of, are we actually going to see the EV three? Are they just going to cancel it because

they can't sell the EV six or, you know, the EV nine is a struggle as well. But I think, you know,

there's a lot of determination within that business that says, look, if the EV does park,

it does turn around, you know, we've got to be in the game. And I can see the merit of that.

I mean, I think pricing is going to be a big factor as well. If it starts around 35,000,

but that gets you the smaller battery in the roughly 220 miles of range, like what sort of

options can you get on it? How is it going to be equipped for 35,000? Is it going to go up to

45,000 for the fully equipped long range? Or is it going to be closer around that 40,

$41,000 range? Like, you know, the additional battery size. What does that do to it?

Yeah, I mean, I would have thought that they're going to be, it's going to start in the 30s.

And then, yeah, it's, I mean, that, that's the thing with something like the Nissan

Lee starts about 30 grand. And it sort of works for me at 30 grand. But when you get up to 40

grand, it starts to think, well, hang on a minute, now you're into IONIQ 5s and everything else,

we got a lot more space. And one of the things I said to the guy, you know, the, the team at

Kia, and I was talking to the head of sales, if you'll have such aggressive lease prices on an EV6

and even an EV9, if you're talking about, you know, 250 bucks a month to lease a EV6 and

350, 400 for an EV9, if you're in LA like I am, you're not going to like lease this for $150 a

month. So surely you've got a compression issue, all these cars on a, on a finance deal end up in

the same place. And they sort of agreed, but said, look, we need choice in the marketplace. And,

you know, this is, this is offering customers that choice. It's tough. I mean, I don't think

anybody is pretending that it's not tough to, to sell EVs at the moment. The only, the only caveat

being, you know, if gas prices keep going up, you know, people are looking at hybrid, yes,

but if people are going to, you know, look afresh at EVs and say, this is the way forward,

there'd be a great irony if, if Donald Trump ends up being the guy that saves the EV market,

wholly unintentionally. Yeah, right. Okay, so two more cars we want to get into that were

at the New York auto show, but let's take a quick break first.

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another Kia at the LA Auto Show. This is not the EV version. But no, this is the hybrid version.

This is the hybrid version. Yeah, the Celtos has always been one of those almost forgotten

Kiers. I think it has its little niche, but it's never really in the consciousness. So

the Celtos sits below the Sportage. So the Sportage is your small SUV, the Honda CR-V,

RAV4, that kind of size. This sits below that. But it's kind of got a little bit bigger. You know,

although small SUVs aren't really very small anymore, like you look at a RAV4 today, that's

a pretty big vehicle. Yeah. So there is definitely space underneath for something that's more akin

to what small SUVs used to be. Again, handsome looking car, has that sort of family Kia look

about it, looks very modern, looks very fresh. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it has. And that's deliberate.

But you don't look at it and go, oh, that's an entry-level car. That's a cheaper option.

Both inside and out, the styling echoes, the larger cars, interiors nice, big focus on the

on the digital dashboard, materials are good. Again, it's another Kia that you look at and say,

actually, this is pretty appealing. You'll now be able to get a hybrid as well. So, you know,

if you are looking at something that starts a lower price point where you want decent gas mileage

as well, then, you know, we're talking about a car that's going to start probably just over 30 grand,

sorry, 25 grand, and then the hybrid somewhere around 30. So when you think that the average

transaction price is 50, you know, this looks on paper at least, we haven't driven it yet,

this looks like pretty good value to me. So you can get a naturally aspirated two-liter four cylinder,

or you can get a turbocharged 1.6 liter smaller engine, but more power, or you can get a hybrid

version. Yeah, that's yes, I think that's that's yeah, so this tends to be does it need three engine

options? Well, it always sounds a little bit counterintuitive where it's like, hang on a minute,

the bigger engine is the slower engine, but that's yeah, that's because basically they tend to use

older technology, you haven't got like the turbocharging and everything else. And so you end

up with a larger capacity, older technology engine with it normally with a CVT transmission,

which a lot of people hate me included. And then that sort of brings the price point in really low.

And then you have like a more sophisticated turbo engine, which tends to be not only faster,

but often has better fuel economy. And then on top of that, the layering on the hybrid,

I think maybe in this market, they're saying is, you know, is the hybrid really going to sell? Is

this you know, is it too early? Are people really going to pay extra for it? Because yeah, the hybrid

is the 1.6 gas engine, but has a six-speed dual clutch automatic transmission. So you're talking

about actually something that's now quite sophisticated and therefore quite expensive to

produce. Yeah. Okay. That's the problem now. I see the two-engine lineup. I don't know if it's

necessary for the three-engine lineup, but certainly someone over there in the accounting

department of Kia knows better than I do. I could see the 1.6 turbo and the hybrid lineup having

the two-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder with less power overall, like unless there are

some significant cost savings. Obviously, naturally aspirated doesn't have turbos,

doesn't have intercooling, doesn't have a lot of things that add to the cost of just putting

turbos on the engine. But you know, maybe it just comes along in the price tag.

Well, that's it. I think you've got to remember with all these vehicles, and it was exactly the

same with the Atlas. They always do a stripped out base model to get the entry level price

point down. So they can say to us, oh, it's going to start at less than 40 grand, or in this case,

it's going to be under 25 grand. And then you look at what actually sells. And in the Atlas's case,

as they were saying, the base model doesn't have, it hasn't got some of the LED lighting. It is quite

stripped back. And they're like, well, it's 10% of sales if that, because what happens is people go

into dealerships and either dealers don't stock them a lot of the time, or if they're going to

deal. It's like, well, if it's on a finance package, or you're leasing it, or it's actually,

sir, it's a madam, it's only an extra 20 bucks a month, and look, you're going to have extra

LED lights, and your bottom will be ventilated and all that sort of thing. So a lot of these cars

barely exist. They put them into the market, get the price point in. If you're doing higher cars,

or Uber cars, or whatever it may be, there's a place for a base model. But the vast majority

of business is done in that kind of mid-range spec.

Yeah. I mean, looking at the interior, they're definitely playing on the theme that they've

been using recently, kind of that Range Rover-esque steering wheel going on, and the big screen that's

sort of connected and goes across from the gauge package to the entertainment system,

which we've seen even in the Palisades and stuff. They're using that kind of format.

It looks good. It seems to look good.

Yeah, and a lot of time now, we talked before about democratization of technology. They put

these screens on everything from the tell your ride down, and then you can layer on all the

functionality, wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and now you can also get things like

YouTube and Netflix and everything else. So basically, it's an Android screen. So it's like

just going to Best Buy and buying an Android tablet, really. So when they start hooking it

up with all the Google Ecosystems and everything else, then you can download these things as apps,

and suddenly, you can sit in your 25 grand car and watch telly. So this sort of thing's just

got better and better, really. And it makes sense to the manufacturing, because what they don't want

to do is have 20 different infotainment systems, 20 different pieces of switchgear. If they can go

to a supplier and say, right, we're going to buy millions of these screens, it makes a lot more

sense. Well, then you end up getting the same components from your $60,000 Palisade in your 30

or 28 or $27,000 Celtos. And they want to cut corners someplace to keep that cost down. But

like we've said, there's a few things that where you want to hide it, right? You don't necessarily

want it on some of the touch gear and your steering wheel and shifter and some of the buttons and

AC vents and things like that, where like, hey, if you can save the money someplace else and give

us those items that are front and center, then yeah, it's nice to see if you can get a $25,000

to $30,000 vehicle that feels much more luxurious. Yeah. That's been the big, for me, the big

progress in recent times is just that that sort of now everything has gone, the digital interface

is so much better and you know, they're fast responsive reactive screens. And I think there's

also a level of customer expectation because everybody pretty much everybody has a smartphone

now and they know how that operates and know what that costs or you have an iPad and that's a few

hundred bucks. So in your $30,000 car, it's perhaps not unreasonable to have a screen that

you know, feels like it's worth a few hundred bucks.

Okay. So moving on to the big surprise of the show from Hyundai is an off-roader.

They're going after Bronco, going after Jeep.

This was a surprise. There was lots of rumors about, you know, Hyundai were going to show

an EV concept and then they were to talk that actually they're not going to show an EV concept

because the EV market's a mess at the moment. So what are we going to do? Then there was like,

it's going to be a pickup truck and it's quite rare these days to go to an auto show and have

a genuine surprise. And Hyundai had a EV concept at the EV sort of off-road concept

at the LA Auto Show. But then this is quite different. They weren't talking about power

trains or whether it was going to be EV gas, whatever. This was all about debuting the body

on frame concept. So they are going, they've looked at the market and if you look at the U.S.

today, and this is something Volkswagen were talking about as well, you've basically got 60%

SUV, 30% truck, 10% everything else. And if you're not in that 30% or not in that 30% at scale,

you're missing a lot of the market. Now, Hyundai has the little truck, the Santa Cruz,

which is kind of like an SUV with a bed. But this is very different. This is them saying,

right, we're going to build a body on frame chassis. This is a, we're going to do a, you know,

we're going to do a Bronco, a Wrangler, a F-150, a Ranger, whatever you want to call it.

And it's funny, like every out of the world is saying, I've got to be the EVs and it's this

and it's that and it's software defined vehicles and blah, blah, blah. And then the biggest news

of the show is actually we're doing a lot of frame chassis. It's going to be a proper like

American off-roader headlong at Bronco, headlong at Jeep. And then it'll also spawn probably a

midsize and I would have thought in time, probably a full size truck as well. So, you know,

that's such an ambitious company and they just want a foot in every, a foot in every camp.

But off-road is, is what's happening right now. Like, I mean, obviously what Ford is doing with

things like Raptor lineup and Tremor lineup, but everybody has some sort of like little kind of

off-road trim package. You have a Mazda CX-5 and CX-50, which is just sort of some plastic cladding

and maybe different tires, but it is leaning into that audience like, hey, do you want to get away

for the weekend? Do you want to get off the grid a little bit? You know, Ram, of course, with TRX

and RHO and Toyota now doing what I guess the truck maybe is going to be called Hammer, sort of a

Raptor and TRX competitor. I don't know what the power plan is going to be, but some sort of hybrid

not necessarily a big supercharged V8, but with something off-road competitive. So,

it makes sense for Hyundai to kind of lean into this going, you know what, we're going to get you

something that's similar to a Bronco or a Jeep. It's going to be their take on it. You know,

a little bit of FJ Cruiser, a little bit of, yeah, it's got a few things. A little bit of

a Land Rover Discovery, right, with the little windows above the doors.

Well, you say Discovery, there's also like quite a lot of Defender, both original Defender and

current Defender in it. So, yeah, you can look at it and say, yeah, my only first impression,

look, I think it looks cool. It has that sort of Tonkatoi vibe about it. It's the sort of thing

you push around your living room when you were three years old. But the flip side is it's maybe

a little bit generic. I don't think you'd look at it and go, that's obviously a Hyundai. It could

have come out of Ford. It could have come out of Land Rover. So, that was the only slight

disappointment for me that it felt a little bit generic. But it's not even about what it looks

like. It's about what it's saying. It's basically saying, we're serious about this. It's going to

be built in America. We're building this big facility in America to do this. We've also

got about the steel in America. I think they're talking about like $29 billion investment or

something. So, you know, your Ford or Chevy or whatever, you can't even fall back on the,

hey, we're a domestic blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, hey, this is built here for the

American market. Body on frame, we're coming for you. It's a very, very sort of,

then, you know, it's a career company. They never sound very aggressive. They always sound

very kind of sweet and charming, but it's a pretty aggressive statement that we're coming for you.

Now, this one, this concept, right? First of all, interesting that it was silver, because I think

that was the Ford Bronco concept from like 04 or 07 or whatever it was that looked a lot like this.

But what do you think? How much of this do you think is going to end up in the production

vehicle? We got 37-inch tires. We got massive fender flares. We got suicide doors in the rear.

We've got a very kind of, there's not a lot of images right now up on the interior, but some

very, very cool, interesting interior with gauges on the dash and sort of exposed, not quite like

full Pagani, but like kind of exposed looking type of shifter, you know, treatment going on.

How much do you think ends up in a production vehicle? Well, if you, the way I tend to answer

this question is look at what they've done historically. So Ioniq 5 came out as a concept,

do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not going to look like that. That's like just like an 80s

tribute concept. And it basically looks exactly the same. Ioniq 6, now they're not going to build

like a 30s inspired streamlined. Well, actually they did. You know, and they're quite open the

fact that they don't tend to do concept cars that don't see the light of day in some form. So, you

know, some of the, you know, I don't think you're going to see suicide doors, for example. And if

you don't know what suicide doors are, they're the ones like on a Rolls Royce that where the rear

doors are hinged at the back. I think that's highly unlikely. But you look at the rest of it,

you know, the wheel size will go up and down, depending, you know, like they have

Sasquatch, Sasquatch isn't it Ford? You know, you've got so, you know, inside you've got all

these little, as you said, like individual dials, which look a little bit like those like plug-in

and play things you get when you, you know, when you go hiking. Yeah. But there's nothing really

in there that looks like it couldn't make production. It's got sort of dashboard. It's got

like a kind of projection on the bottom of the dashboard. Now we've seen that with BMW. So,

that technology already exists. Yeah, right. There's not a lot in here. When you look at it,

there you go, that looks, that's not going to happen. It's got proper wing mirrors.

You know, it hasn't got little cameras. Yeah. There's not a lot there that you look at, Matt,

and you go, that's like wholly unrealistic. Right. Yeah. This kind of shifter linkage here

that you can see in this photo, if you guys are looking at it on YouTube that I was explaining,

it's cool and I like it. I don't know that the production version would be so exposed,

because especially when you're off-roading or driving it all the time, you're always throwing

gear around, right? You're throwing phones, you're throwing change, maybe your wallet,

and I just think it's going to get jammed up in this area if you're just throwing items in this

area. Like without fully seeing it in person, how they're going to solve that problem. But

it's cool looking. It's very cool looking. It is cool looking. Actually, there's one thing going

back to the Atlas, one feature that the Atlas has got, and actually the new Rivian R2 has got,

which I was like, finally, somebody's doing this. You know, like when you charge your iPhone at night

or around, you have that MagSafe technology where it holds your phone. Well, cars haven't had that,

and so you chuck them into the wireless charging, they fly around, then you get to the end of your

journey and realize it hasn't really been charged at all. The Atlas actually got MagSafe now and

it's got two, because I don't know about you, but I've had fights in the car about who's charging

their phone, who isn't, and it's got, I was like, this is great. It's got two chargers,

his and hers, if you like. MagSafe, so your phone stays in place and you know that it's charging.

So I was like, Rivian's got it. Atlas has got it. I was like, why does not every car have this

featured out? I think we were talking about this when we were talking about Rivian the other day.

Every charge pad in vehicles, they're terrible, right? They never seem to work. They heat up the

phone. It looks like your phone's charging, and then when you touch it, it comes up with some

alert and it's like overheated, charging ended. Like it doesn't work well. So doing a MagSafe version

is music to my ears. I'm glad that somebody's trying to do it. And hopefully it works well,

like with a case on your phone. And if you're doing a lot of off-roading, sometimes you have

that bigger case. That's why you want the MagSafe version. Yeah. And I remember talking to,

you know, years ago, doing a thing with like a UX UI, I think it was from Audi. I was like,

why does it take you so long to do things that seem like such common sense? Like, you know,

I've had a MagSafe charger for my iPhone for probably like three or four years now.

And it's like, oh, it's all to do with like electromagnetic compatibility within the cabin

and crush. So it's like, so it just gave me a list of like a hundred things that you have to do if

you've got a moving vehicle that you don't have to do if it's on your bedside table. And I suspect

it's something like that where putting a magnet in the center of the car has certain ramifications

for the components or something. But it just feels like such an obvious thing. So I was like,

well done. Well done, Volkswagen. Yeah. It just made me think of it when you're talking about the

exposed lever there. Because yeah, that'll never make production. Right. Okay. What else did you

get to see? Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else just sort of top of mind that you

were, you know, through the halls? I know you're trying to get a bunch of meetings and presentations

and stuff to attend. Yeah, I'm just looking just looking at my notes. So like Subaru had a forest

of wilderness hybrid, which is kind of again, like trying to do the off the wilderness thing,

like we're talking about everybody's trying to do these off road trims and wilderness is Subaru's

equivalent. Their styling is always for me a bit challenging. And to do the wilderness,

they've like put a bunch of extra colors on and stickers and it's got a bit of plastic here and

there. And they've like shoveled off the front end to presumably improve the, the approach angles

and stuff. And Subaru just know their audience. You know, it is the pat of go any of a gate,

everybody, everybody a hello dog, everybody. Subaru owners love them. And there's enough

Subaru owners who love Subaru to make it work. But they you just make sure what listening on

on the podcast, well, Matt's dog just appeared on screen. And one thing Subaru do every auto show,

they give away puppies. There's dogs. It's not a prize. There's always dogs. And they've done

this thing for years now and they have an adoption scheme. It's, you know, it's all done properly.

I'm not suggesting that like go like the old days of goldfish where they just like hand them out.

But it you have like this adoption thing, it's become their little signature and it's genius

because even on press days, everybody goes to the Subaru stand to see the dogs and then checks out

the cows as well. Yeah, I like I've been saying for years like Subaru sells love, not cars. And

the byproduct of that is the vehicles that are commercials, everything that they're doing,

like they found a niche for this brand and it seems to be working well for them. And you're

right, every auto show that we go to, they always have like a really cool display and there's just

kind of this wilderness environment kind of thing on the display and and they've got the little,

you know, the little playpen of dogs.

Somebody said to me, we've got a dog over there, it looks like you should adopt it. I was like,

what does that mean? Is that like, is it like, is it like old and gray and stumbling around? I mean,

what does that mean? Yeah, it barely walks around Central Park. It's getting real. All right, guys,

we're going to wrap things up. I think my kids were nearly charging in your dogs came charging

in my kids. I haven't seen me for four days. So they were just they were just at the door. So

now they'll be wondering why I was shooing them away. Everyone's getting anxious. This one's

getting anxious. Everybody's trolling for their for their dinner and stuff as well. They can,

I swear they can read a clock these these dogs. Right at five, they started climbing and pawing

and getting ready to go. But you should be a Subaru owner. That's what you need. But this is it.

This is the brand, you know, they know all the manufacturers that genuinely

Subaru, I feel like it's just got a much better handle on who they are, their audiences, what

they're manufacturing. They don't look the coolest things. They don't necessarily have the ladies

technology, but they're just absolutely nailed on every time. Yeah, they do 100%. My dog loves

my truck because it has a huge center console and sits up there and just stares at the world.

All these new cars are so small and he only does his push buttons and heaters going on and the

auto start stop goes on and off and windows go down and all kinds of stuff. But in the F

150, he's got this big platform to sit on and loves it. But okay, thanks guys. And we'll be back

next week. We'll figure out the schedule on that one. But yeah, we'll be back next week.

We didn't even talk about GLE and GLS as a whole bunch of new Mercedes. It's been a really big,

it's been a really busy news week. But yeah, lots to lots to talk about next week.

In the meantime, definitely check out Edmunds.com slash news and you can get info about all the

stuff that we've been talking about here as well as the Mercedes and a bunch of other

New York auto show things. And likewise on our YouTube channel, we have all of the,

I did a little video of the new Atlas and we've got the Hyundai and all sorts of things as well.

And we've run cars even more from New York. You'd be mad to miss it.

All right guys, thanks so much. And until next week, keep the air in the spare and the bag in the wheel.

CarCast+Edmunds - New York Auto Show recap. VW Atlas, Kia Seltos, Kia EV3 and Hyundai Boulder Concept

About this episode

New York Auto Show

Volkswagen Atlas

cash cow

Volkswagen I

Volkswagen Jetta

Volkswagen Passat

Volkswagen Tiguan

three-row SUV

Kia Telluride

Ford Explorer

Hyundai Palisade

Ford Got Ford

Gmc Arcadia

two liter turbo four

Kia EV3

Kia EV9

81 kWh battery pack

Kia Seltos

hybrid

democratization of technology

Mazda CX-50

Body on frame

37-inch tires

massive fender flares

BMW

off-roading

approach angles

Subaru

auto start stop

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