Ground clearance is how high the bottom of the car is from the road. Cars with more space underneath can drive better over snow or bumps without getting stuck.
Touchscreen controls are buttons you press on a screen inside the car instead of physical buttons. They can be hard to use while driving because you have to look at the screen instead of the road.
Physical controls are real buttons or switches you can feel and press in the car. They help you keep your eyes on the road because you don't have to look to find them.
The Hyundai IONIQ 5 is an electric SUV with some real buttons for things like heating seats and temperature. This helps you use them without looking away from the road.
The Subaru BRZ is a small sporty car that is fun to drive. It has real buttons for things like temperature and fan speed, so you don't have to look away from the road to use them.
The Mercedes-Benz GLC is a fancy SUV that you can drive in the city or on rough roads. It comes in gas and electric versions and is made to be comfortable and easy to use.
MB.OS is the computer system inside Mercedes cars that helps control things like the screen, safety features, and how the car drives. It's like the car's brain.
A rear drive hybrid system is a way a car uses both gas and electric power to make the back wheels move. This helps save gas and still gives good power.
The kilowatt hour number tells you how much energy the car's battery can hold. Bigger numbers mean the car can drive farther before needing to recharge.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:00)
This is episode 443 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.
Hopefully you still are, you're not going anywhere. I'm Nicole Wakelin from Test Miles.
Roberto Baldwin (00:10)
am Roberto Baldwin from ⁓ SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast and SAE International.
Nicole Wakelin (00:17)
You gonna make it Sam? That was quite the intro there. He almost died.
Roberto Baldwin (00:19)
Sam almost died right before the injury.
probably won't hear that because I think I will cut that part out. But yeah, just as I was about to say my name, I started I started coughing from a little bit of a protein bar that I was nibbling on just before we started.
Nicole Wakelin (00:27)
He literally said, he's just.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39)
Health, that's the way these things go sometimes. Yeah, what are you gonna do? Nicole, what are you driving?
Roberto Baldwin (00:43)
Trying to be healthy. Dead.
⁓ I have been driving a, I've been driving a Range Rover. ⁓ I, fact, it was super fun to drive and I kind of want it. ⁓ I had, wait, let me get the full title. It is the 2026 Range, no Land Rover Range Rover Sport SE Dynamic. I got it. It's, it's a lot of name. It's a lot of name. So this is, I have the plugin hybrid version of this. It is.
Nicole Wakelin (01:15)
$95,100 before you start putting stuff on it. You want to start right off with taking a guess at ⁓ destination on this one.
Let's see. ⁓ Nick wins. No, not Nick. Roberto. ⁓ Sorry. He was texting me a minute ago. He wins because it is $18.50. Nick wins. Nick is in here. Nick wins. So $18.50. So this is, this is not an inexpensive vehicle, but I generally like Range Rovers and this one's
Roberto Baldwin (01:41)
You know what? Nick Wayne's fine.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:43)
I he usually does anyway, you know.
Nicole Wakelin (01:56)
Exactly. Which is what would keep me from owning one because I just think they're a little too expensive. The maintenance potential on these is high, but maybe it's one of those, if you're spending $95,000 on a vehicle, right? Maybe you don't care because you're already spending $95,000. So if you have to spend a chunk of change here and there to fix things that go wrong, that's okay. Um, it's also something where, you know,
Nicole Wakelin (02:22)
Maybe if you have a $95,000 car, it's not your only car. Maybe you've got other cars. You drive one of the other cars in your garage. I don't know. Like you have a Honda Accord as your backup, yeah.
But if you don't have a Honda Accord as backup, that would be my worries, the cost of the maintenance or repairs that you might have to make on this. However, this was super fun to drive. Sorry, I just realized my mic was very far away.
I had to drive this up to a program I'll talk about later. They did a Dodge.
Roberto Baldwin (02:27)
You get like a Honda Accord and a Range Rover.
Nicole Wakelin (02:49)
Charger winter drive up in Stowe Vermont, which is generally about two hours and 20 minutes for me to drive up there. So first I had this lovely long drive in this driving up to Vermont and it was super comfortable. Like that's a
most, this is the most Vermont thing is you could Vermont on the way to the Vermont.
Nicole Wakelin (03:04)
I know. Well, it was that it
was that or Subaru. You had to pick one. You had to either drive that or you had to drive a Subaru, right? I'd have been fine. So I was very on brand for this drive. So driving it up, super comfortable, nice, big infotainment screen, incredibly nice to drive and quiet, despite the fact that it has, it's very boxy looking. But I've liked the sport. I've always liked the sport. I think it's a fun.
Roberto Baldwin (03:08)
It's either this or Connecticut. If you went to either of those states and you're driving this, you're like, yeah, yeah.
Nicole Wakelin (03:30)
vehicle it has with the hybrid it's a three liter six cylinder pheav in there 454 horsepower five 487 pound feet of torque it moves you mash the gas and it moves so i thoroughly enjoy driving the handling the ride it's very comfortable plenty of room in the second row was great for handling all the mess that is the new england roads during the winter but that gets me to the gist of the story so because this was in vermont
It was two hours and 20 minutes from my house. I'm not going to fly up there. I drove, which means I'm going to drive home, which means I can leave whenever I want after the program. And I had
is why every event in Northern California is the best event. I'm like, well, I'll see y'all later. Let's just drive home.
I tried to do Robbie and say, see y'all later, because we were supposed to be getting snow and ice later that night. And I didn't want to be driving home in the morning and dealing with ice. And it was, you know, cause it was going to go into like early morning hours.
And so things would have still been a mess. And like, I'll leave before the storm. Cause the storm isn't supposed to hit Southern New Hampshire till about, you know, 10. I left just after eight. I thought it'll just be starting when I get home.
Sam Abuelsamid (04:42)
How'd that work out for you?
minutes into the drive, whoosh, right? And I'm like, ⁓ my God. And so there's a road that you take from Stowe down through New Hampshire. It's 89 is the route. ⁓ It's just a highway through the middle of nowhere. There is nothing on it. There's very few spots where there are lights over the highway. ⁓ There's no humanity, so there's no lights.
Nicole Wakelin (05:07)
from restaurants or businesses or anything along the side of the road. It is dark. It is dark on 89 during a good night. When you add in the fact that it was snowing like crazy, it's a little nerve wracking.
I'm not gonna lie. It was definitely white knuckle driving. In fact, I did not see a plow the entire time I was driving back. Now mind you, my two hour and 20 minute drive was almost three hours and 20 minutes.
So when I say it got bad, it got bad. Cause you just were at a crawl.
Um, there was a point on this highway where it's 65 and everyone's going about 30 cause there's just snow like everywhere. And I was, I was coming, but you know what? Also it, was very coming, but also it was.
Roberto Baldwin (05:42)
But you were comfortable, right?
Rover Sport SE Dynamic have sufficiently good tires on it to manage this kind of weather?
had not looked at the tires. In fact, I forgot to look before they took it back, but it did. It handled it beautifully. It was really good. And it was, if ever there was a test of whether or not you can drive a car in winter, this was it, man. This is the kind of weather that you try and avoid. This is why you buy an SUV in the first place. If you live in New England, because like, I got hours or I've got 20 minutes.
proper vehicle with proper AWD SUV? I mean, every SUV is sort of like, mm, it's like.
Nicole Wakelin (06:20)
That's true. would, but you want something.
Yeah. But that's why we do it. Like literally this is why I'm like, this is it. This is the, this is why you buy this because you want something with the ground clearance with you to get over the snow.
That's not going to get bogged down. You want something that has, you know, the all will drive. You want all that because you never think you're going to need it. But then when you do, man, you are really happy that you have it.
It handled all of it beautifully. So we went for it. I went through all of winter's very many varied.
Um, incarnations, had light snow. It was light and fluffy. Then it turned to practically like water. Like it was snow, but it was so heavy coming down. It was just packing under the wheels. Then it cleared up for a minute.
I thought I was out in the clear, but it turned into a freezing rain. It was so heavy that it was literally, I was hitting the wipers every five seconds. Cause as soon as it hit the windshield ice, just it was, and I think either I'm getting, gonna give this car the best test of its life, or I'm going to die trying.
⁓ and it was amazing. Now, the one thing I did notice in this is just because you're like, you drive for three hours in the snow like that. And when you get home and you release your hands from the steering wheel, you're like, my God, I was really gripping that wheel really tight.
I like little tents. my shoulders were actually stiff. was like, Holy, it was truly some of the worst winter weather that I've managed to drive in. And it was for a long time. The only thing. So here's my only gig against it.
So when you're driving in that kind of weather, remember how I said there's no lights.
Nicole Wakelin (07:47)
So when it's white out conditions like that and you can't see the edge of the edge of the road, you're basically just making your own lane. It's a two or three lane highway, depending on where you are there.
But you can't tell you're just like, as long as I'm on pavement, whether I'm in the breakdown lane or my lane or the right lane or in the middle, you're just aiming for pavement at that point. And you're looking at the edge of the bump that is the snow banks from the rest of the winter and the little tiny markers that mark out your mile markers and stuff.
just desperately trying to stay on the road. really is that kind of situation because the snow is so heavy you can't see. So it started to fog up and everything is on the touch screen. And when I had to check where things were honest to God to look away, it wasn't taking the hand from the wheel. I can drive one handed and still look at that few seconds trying to look at the touch screen was terrifying. I'm like, where is it? No, it's not there. I wait, I gotta try again. Hold the wheel.
Nicole Wakelin (08:41)
Okay, I gotta try again. Wait, can I still see the road? No, gotta try again. Because if you look away for more than three seconds, it's not like your peripheral vision can see where the road is. It's just white and you can't see anything. So I did find that a little nerve wracking and I don't know that I've ever run into that situation in a car with touchscreen controls before.
Sam Abuelsamid (09:00)
So what you're saying is touchscreens are a terrible idea in all cars.
Nicole Wakelin (09:03)
No, not touchscreens are terrible idea in all cars. What I'm saying is packing too many of your controls into your touchscreen is a horrible idea, which has always been my thing. Yes. Yes.
Roberto Baldwin (09:10)
All your climate control, all your volume control, anything
that involves drive modes, none of that should be in a touch screen. Your windshield wiper, your lights, all those should be physical controls that you can figure out where they are without taking your eye off the wheel.
Nicole Wakelin (09:19)
That should all be something right? Like if it had been buttons on the bottom, yeah, like if,
Sam Abuelsamid (09:29)
It would almost make you want to move to China where they're regulating that those things should be physical controls.
Nicole Wakelin (09:35)
We take a little bit more than that to get me to move to China. Let's be honest boys, but still, ⁓ yeah. So that was the, and you know, as it's getting hot and cold and you know, when you're driving like that, your windshield fogs up and then you got to turn it down because it gets you hot.
It was three over three hours in the car trying to use those controls to do the climate in that kind of driving. Not fun. So it's a gig against the car, but it's actually more so a comment on
Nicole Wakelin (10:01)
why we shouldn't put that stuff in the infotainment screen. It should be buttons that, you know, if you just had a little black buttons on the bottom of that screen that lit up, I could have glanced over and found it and like, yep, there it is.
And if I hit the wrong one, I'm like, nope, I haven't hit it. I just, whatever, put it on auto mode and then you'd hear it when it went to, you know, the defrost. You can't even see if you're in the right spot without looking at a touchscreen.
Nicole Wakelin (10:24)
when there's physical buttons, even if you drove the car all the time, you're still gonna, you're gonna be in generally the right spot, but if you're not at exactly the right spot, you're not hitting the right thing and you can't feel it.
Right. So you'll know like, so if it's, know, if it's a touchscreen and it's your own car, sure, you'll know exactly where that is, but you still can't tell if you've hit it, nailed it because you can't feel anything.
If you're, you have little buttons, you're like, it's on the bottom. There we go.
Sam Abuelsamid (10:32)
Yeah, mean, you're going to build muscle memory.
I can, in my BRZ, I know the left-hand side is the fan, the right-hand side is the temperature. I don't have to look at that. In the key, the, in the IONIQ 5, I know that the, where the temperature controls are, the physical buttons, I know that just a little bit to the right of those is warmer, so I can turn on the heated seats, and a little bit right of that is like, you know, the defroster for the front and back. ⁓
Nicole Wakelin (10:56)
Exactly. You don't have to look.
Roberto Baldwin (11:17)
because they're actual physical things as opposed to having to go, ⁓ let me dive into here. ⁓
Nicole Wakelin (11:21)
Yeah. Exactly. The touchscreen
thing, like I love a touchscreen. I do like having them for a lot of functions and I think they give you a lot of versatility. But when it comes to climate control, I am not a fan. I want to just be able to reach out and touch buttons and see little lit up buttons on the bottom or on the side or somewhere so I can really glance over and go, okay, it's there and hit it. Because when you don't want to take your hands off the wheel, now hopefully you're not all driving in, you know, a blizzard.
⁓ really, you know, snowy nighttime conditions in the middle of nowhere, like I was, but anytime you're driving, when you don't want to take your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road is the more it's, it's having to make your eyes focus on something else.
So the same thing would happen if you were driving in heavy construction for some reason, you know, where you've got like cones and Jersey barriers and stuff and lane changes, you really need to keep your eyes on the road.
Nicole Wakelin (12:14)
So those are my thoughts. Loved it. Was brilliant in the snow. ⁓ Was nice and comfortable and just looks fabulous and roomy and plenty of power and handles well. But man, don't put those controls in your touchscreen.
Sam Abuelsamid (12:32)
I will have more to share on that.
Roberto Baldwin (12:40)
Yeah. All right. So like in November, I drove the G L C the electric G L C in some dunes and at the sort of the border of California and Nevada. ⁓ That article went up in like December or whatever. But on the way there, Mercedes had me drive pre-production versions of the GLE and the GLS. They were pre-production, so it's hard to sort of
I it's cool when they're like, hey, here's a pre-production thing. You can drive it. It's fun. Here you go. Like, oh, cool. But then you also like any sort of like weirdness, you kind of have to like, well, you kind of have to chalk that up to pre-production.
That said, the GLE was delightful. We drove it. These roads out to the dunes are a little curvy, not too bad. A lot of sort of sweepers, not a lot of super tight things. And a lot of up and down, you know, like at the end of, well, I'm not going to ruin a movie for
Anyway, so yeah, so these are, they're supposed to, both of these vehicles supposed to make the premiere in spring of 2026. They ⁓ both have MBOS ⁓ and so, yeah, so the GLE ⁓ very nice to drive. The GLS felt a little wobbly. It's a very large vehicle. It's, you know, it's essentially a giant SUV of the S-Class. It felt.
you know, the interior was nice, everything was nice, but it did feel like, like there was too much body roll. Again, pre-production, who knows what's gonna, what's happened in the last six, you know, six months between driving that car and then bringing the vehicle out, out to market. ⁓ That's kind of, unfortunately, that's kind of it. That's the weird thing about driving these vehicles months and months and months ago, ⁓ they're pre-production.
Roberto Baldwin (14:32)
Again, they're very comfortable. They're very Mercedes-like. There was nothing weird about them outside of the, know, a little bit too much body roll in the GLS, which again, I don't know. I haven't driven the production version, maybe. I guess. Yeah, we'll see when it arrives. We drove that out there and on the way back, one of us, like a couple of us had flights earlier in the day. So they gave us a G-Wagon. I didn't get to drive that.
Roberto Baldwin (15:02)
That was Daniel Goldson, which, you know, that's that's on brand for him, really. He's like, hey, can we're like, yeah, yeah, you can drive. But, you know, I think ⁓ they're Mercedes moved to NBOS. ⁓ They're they're sort of ⁓ software divine vehicle architecture is. ⁓ It looks like it's going well. ⁓ I, you know, I haven't.
Roberto Baldwin (15:33)
We drove the, you know, some vehicles with it. ⁓ But you know, with it, whenever it comes to new software, especially a brand new architecture, you kind of have to see how, what happens once it hits the market and see, you know, versus like, you know, here's a dozen of them that we've all driven for like a day or two.
Sam Abuelsamid (15:51)
gone wrong in between the engineers testing stuff and actual retail customers playing with stuff for a few weeks or months.
Roberto Baldwin (16:00)
Yeah. so it does, they have done better than others in the past where they give us a car and we get in the car as journalists and you're like, what is going on? So we haven't had any what is going on.
I haven't had any what is going on moments with their, anything that's been outfitted with MBOS. ⁓ But you still have to get it out into the public. You still have to get it, know, in the hands of thousands and thousands of people versus dozens of people to really sort of work out the bugs.
I would always tell people, I'm like, okay, you know, operating system is out and updated or let the nerds, let the people whose job it is to review these, let the people who are, you know, the first adopters, let them download it and find the bugs because these tech companies, you know, they do a lot of testing and they want to make sure that these things come out well, but they're going to miss something. And recently, I think I was talking to Sam a little bit,
before this, know, tech companies used to be really good at like two or three things, and now they're all really bad at like 15 things. Like the two or three things they were good at, they're bad at those two now. So. ⁓
Roberto Baldwin (17:13)
Yeah, it's, know, the, you know, so the first buyers, they're kind of, you know, they're almost like, I wouldn't say beta testers. These, you know, these systems typically go through a lot of testing, but I mean, we can look back at, not to pick on Volkswagen, but they're sort of the biggest example of, hey, we have this new software and we didn't quite do a very good job at it. Like we weren't, you know, it's really hard. Yeah. they weren't, was Volvo post Volvo.
Sam Abuelsamid (17:36)
mean, you know, they're hardly alone. mean, you know, Volvo and Polestar, General Motors,
everyone's had some, everyone's had issues with software. Software is really, really, really hard. And if you're an automaker and you're like, well, we've been building cars for a hundred years. We should be able to do this. You need to settle down because ⁓ not only is software hard, you have to build a software that's strengthened against way more instances and it has to be far more regulations than the software that's in a phone.
Roberto Baldwin (18:13)
And so it's not only is it hard, they have higher hurdles that they have to jump over in order to make this software work out in the wild and work with thousands and thousands of customers who are all doing something slightly different when they drive their vehicle. So that's it. Yeah, GLE, GLS. Once we get ⁓ some time with ⁓ the production vehicles, I'll have a better ⁓ idea.
for pre-production, they drove well, except for little, some body roll.
⁓ Well, last weekend, ⁓ went to, my wife and I went to Denver for a few days to spend a little time with our daughter before she heads off. Two weeks from now, she will be in Vietnam learning to teach English to Vietnamese people. But before that, we went to Denver. But actually, before we went to Denver, got to spend a few days with the latest Toyota Sequoia capstone.
Sam Abuelsamid (19:18)
⁓ I've driven the Sequoia before. It's fine. It is not, I don't think it's one of Toyota's best efforts. This is basically ⁓ SUV version of the Tundra. ⁓ And the Sequoia comes only with Toyota's ⁓ rear drive hybrid system. ⁓ So the Capstone is their equivalent of a Yukon Denali or
Silverado or like an RST from Chevrolet as does most of the market. ⁓
Roberto Baldwin (19:49)
Always forget the sequoia exists. Is this the sequoia?
cause there's like the Highlander and then like every other, and I completely forget about the Sequoia on a regular basis.
Yeah. You know, it's it's fine, but it's not great. You know, the hybrid system, I will say that the hybrid powertrain in there actually sounds surprisingly good. It's it actually sounds more like a V8 than a lot of other engines, you know, including those that actually have eight cylinders, because it's it's a three point four liter twin turbo with Toyota's hybrid system.
Which means it's like 430 horsepower and 560 ish foot pounds of torque. So it's got plenty of performance. Performance is not the issue. ⁓ What it doesn't have is great fuel economy. While driving this thing, I averaged about 17.2 miles per gallon, which is not great. 17.2.
I got better from the V12 in the Vanquisher. Of course it weighs way less than a Sequoia, to be fair.
Sam Abuelsamid (20:59)
Yeah. And, know, I was I was not
Sam Abuelsamid (21:03)
drag racing this thing, you know, I was just driving it around, you doing some city driving, some highway driving. I drove it out to where did I go somewhere for for something I can't remember now what. No, I it's hard to remember which day I was at what thing. So but, you know,
Nicole Wakelin (21:19)
It was that impressive, huh?
Roberto Baldwin (21:19)
I would, just, somewhere for
Sam Abuelsamid (21:28)
It's it's good But it's not great, you know when you compare it to a sub, you know Tahoe or suburban or an expedition Or you know a Wagoneer It's not that Impressive, you know it they strangely enough on the latest generation Sequoia the previous generation actually had an independent rear suspension They went back to a solid axle rear suspension on this one that basically took the the you know
Sam Abuelsamid (21:57)
the same stuff that was, I think it's probably because a lot of people forget it exists. And so the volumes compared to some of the competition are not huge. And so rather than creating a separate independent rear suspension just for the Sequoia, they went back to essentially what's in the Tundra.
⁓ And so that means, you know, the third row room is not, is not great. ⁓ And because it's a hybrid, you know, the hybrid battery extends back, ⁓ you know, back there. You have,
actually very little cargo room in the back. you know, going to the airport, you know, with just two carry on bags and two duffel bags or two backpacks, you know, could barely fit all that stuff in the back of this thing. Yeah. So this was, you know, not, not a whole lot of storage space back there. If you actually need to use the third row, you know, the capstone does have better interior materials and fit and finish than
compared to most of the other Sequoias, which tend to have a lot of more hard plastics. So they did cover it up with some nicer materials. ⁓ And it's got the 14 inch display and the Toyota multimedia system, which is good. Apart from my complaint about only showing one thing on the screen at a time, but that will probably get replaced at some point in the next couple of years with the new version that's in new RAV4. ⁓ So ⁓ it's just fine.
but it's a little pricey. Let's see, this one came to a grand total of $90,041.
Sam Abuelsamid (23:36)
You want to guess at the destination charge?
Sam Abuelsamid (23:43)
$2,095. So it's 500 bucks less than what you would pay for a similar sized pickup or SUV from the domestic automakers, but it's still 2100 bucks for this thing. the Capstone starts at 84, 435. Only a few options on this, the TRD Performance Package with dual air intake boxes, which is probably why it sounds so good.
Sam Abuelsamid (24:13)
the $499 dash cam, $325 connected services trial, and 388 bucks for all weather floor liners. Everything else is standard in this thing. So the seats are comfy in the first two rows. It's got all the stuff you want. It is pretty tall as a full-size SUV. So this one did have the retracting ⁓ side steps. So it was little easier to get in and out of for my wife.
But ⁓ other than that, it would not be my first choice for a full-size SUV. Unless I was a real hardcore Toyota fan and really wanted a Toyota.
Roberto Baldwin (24:50)
There's just, I mean they have the hot.
Roberto Baldwin (24:58)
It's so weird because you can get the Highlander if you want an EV. You can get the Grand Highlander if you want, you know, gas. There's the Land Cruiser. There's the 4Runner. It's just a weird, like it sort of slots between like the Highlander and the, ⁓ what's it called? I just said it. The Land Cruiser. So yeah, it kind of slots in between.
Sam Abuelsamid (25:20)
Grand Highlander, a Land Cruiser. Well, except the Land Cruiser
Roberto Baldwin (25:26)
Yeah, yeah. So it slots in between those, the Highlander, but it's just a like, that's just like, it's just there. Where is like the bottom end of that size where it's like CHR, Forerunner, know, Cro-La-Crosse, like all those, those seem to have found markets where Sequoia just feels like it's, yeah, the Sequoia. And I, you know, I talk about like how Toyota has an SUV and each of them is one inch smaller than the one before.
CHR, actually the Corolla Cross, all the way up through the Sequoia. And I think if Toyota really wants to steal some sales away from, especially the GM full-size SUVs, because they kind of dominate this market, they need to try a little harder.
Yeah, the Sequoia just sort of like gets lost in the shuffle. Like everything kind of looks a little different. Everything seems to have like a little bit of its own personality. And the Sequoia is just sort of like, well, you didn't get the Grand Highlander. That's what the Sequoia feels like. Well, you didn't get this and you didn't want something cool that looks kind of cool. Like the, you know, the, Land Cruiser. You didn't get, know, you didn't buy nostalgia. So, yeah.
So when we landed in Denver, ⁓ went to this parking garage and picked up a Polestar 4. And this is a car that really leaves me with very mixed feelings. Because I really like the way the Polestar 4 looks. I really like the way it drives. And I cannot, and I love the interior materials and fit and finish, but I cannot stand the way the interior works. Because
It's all in the touch screen, including the vents, including the climate control, all that nonsense is in the touch screen. And it's just, just.
That's just, it's, I agree. We drove that together, didn't we originally? And it was, it's just so frustrating not being able to move the vents. Again, stop with putting everything in the touchscreen, people. And I think that's huge.
fortunately for us, we probably won't have to move to China in order to get a better version of this because within the next couple of years, the Polestar force that we get here in the US are actually built in South Korea. ⁓ it's based, ⁓ Polestar along with Volvo are owned by the Geely Group.
And ⁓ so this is based on the same platform that was used for the Zekor 001 and some other Zekor models. And because of the new regulations that go into effect next January, at some point in the next year or so, Polestar is going to have to redesign this stuff because this does not meet those new requirements in China where they have to have physical controls for this stuff. ⁓ So hopefully those changes, those redesigns, including the door handles that have to pop out,
Sam Abuelsamid (28:33)
and all the touch screen controls on the inside, ⁓ all of that will get reworked ⁓ and we'll get an updated Polestar 4, hopefully for our market probably by 2028, hopefully, next couple of years. Because apart from that, I really like everything else about this car. I like the size. Like I said, I like the way it looks.
I personally, unlike Jason Torchinski, I'm not offended by the absence of a rear window ⁓ because having driven the Volvo C40 and many other cars that have this narrow little male slot of a rear window, it's pointless anyway. I'll just use the digital mirror. ⁓ Everything else about this, I really like.
your point about the digital mirror, I didn't realize because I too am fine with digital mirrors. And I know for some people that have vision issues that there could be genuine issues with, right.
Sam Abuelsamid (29:31)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Focus issues because you got to focus
Roberto Baldwin (29:35)
almost every automaker, I'm like, is there an eye, like put a diopter or something that you can adjust the focus for people who like may have focus issues because you you look in a mirror, you're looking into infinity if you're looking into, you're essentially looking at a display and they all like look at me like I'm an idiot. They all like, what do you mean? I'm like, so don't you have older people or don't you have people who can't see like?
Roberto Baldwin (30:01)
that close, like people, especially people who are shorter than me. So you're sitting closer and if you have to wear readers, like I have to wear readers now because I'm Also, I took some medication once they get like messed up my eyes. But so if you're short, that means you're sitting closer to the screen. And if you wear readers, now you can't see what's going on behind you. And they're all like, what do you mean? I'm like, ⁓ guys, come on.
Nicole Wakelin (30:27)
Yeah. well, it's, and aside from that though, I like them. Like there are people who, even though they can see them fine, like they don't have a reason why they can't use it. Think of that the worst invention ever.
They can't see, they don't like it. They think they're horrible. And like, you don't have to worry about the back seats. You don't have to worry about cargo in there. You see a wider view of the road than you would otherwise.
Roberto Baldwin (30:38)
can see everything. You don't have to see the back seats.
Sam Abuelsamid (30:50)
You see an unobstructed view of everything behind you.
Nicole Wakelin (30:54)
I don't know. They're just like, no, we should have a real mirror. And I'm like, I like the digital mirrors. I think they're better. And I know there's like you said, vision issues for some people, for the rest of us, they're great.
Roberto Baldwin (31:08)
Like none of these people have driven
a van is what I'm trying to tell you. Like any condo line van or a large like transit van to anywhere where they're just like, can't, there's, there's, there's, there just is no mirror because you can't, there is no mirror. There's nothing there. can't see.
Sam Abuelsamid (31:22)
There's no, no rear windows. There's nothing
Sam Abuelsamid (31:25)
except for the windows and the doors right beside you. That's as far as the glass goes. All the rest of it, solid steel.
Nicole Wakelin (31:28)
That's all you got. That's all you got.
if they have to like, I imagine if they have a trailer behind them, they must lose their mind not being able to look in that and having to use like side mirrors or something.
Roberto Baldwin (31:41)
I don't... I like the displays. like to switch back and forth sometimes. In some cars I'm like, this is nice. I'm going go back to this. But yeah, I'm not... I don't hate them.
Some people really hate them though. It's not a matter of they can't use it because they have vision issues. They're just like, no, this is the work of Satan. I'm like, is it really? Because I don't feel like it's that bad. I think they're kind of cool, but okay.
Sam Abuelsamid (32:03)
Actually, I will try to get ⁓ somebody from Gentex, because they make most of these digital camera mirrors systems. I mean, they invented them. ⁓ I will try and get somebody from Gentex on for an interview so we can talk about that.
And you can ask that question, because Robbie, they are the ones that actually make these things. So it's not going to be somebody from ⁓ an automaker that's going to think, yeah, yeah. It's going to be them that's going to figure out how to do that.
Roberto Baldwin (32:32)
Because I have it in my camera. When I look into my camera, I have to adjust the diopter. And that makes it so I can see when I take photos. I'm actually, my photos are in focus. Because if I didn't, I would have to use my glasses through my camera. That doesn't work well. ⁓ But yeah, so I'm always curious, how is it? Could they do it? How they do it? You set it up with a profile. Yeah.
Yeah. So the, the Polestar four I had 544 horsepower, ⁓ very comfortable seats, ⁓ a hundred kilowatt hour battery. It is officially rated at the, the version I had is officially rated at 280 miles of range, depending on which wheel and tire package you get. You you can get versions that are rated over 300, but you know, driving this thing around, you know, I drove it around Denver. we drove out to golden.
went out to Red Rocks with her daughter, ⁓ drove up to Boulder to ⁓ visit ⁓ TFL, had recorded a podcast with Roman and had lunch with Roman and Tommy. ⁓ So, drove around quite a bit with this thing and it averaged 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour, which actually comes out to well over 300 miles on a charge on this thing. ⁓
there were a few times when I used the, you know, a significant portion of that 544 horsepower to make a passing maneuver and then, you know, slowed back down again. But, you know, I this thing, I think, you know, in real world driving, you know, you can easily get 300 miles with this thing. ⁓ One suggestion, you know, since at various times, either my wife or my daughter was sitting in the back seat, you know, and they liked the glass roof that's in this thing, but,
Sam Abuelsamid (34:26)
There were some times, depending on where the sun was at, where they would have liked to trim, to cover that up a little bit or reduce the amount of light load. ⁓ And Polestar does offer ⁓ an electrochromic glass roof as an option that has a coating on there. If you've ever flown in a Boeing 787, ⁓ it has that where basically it'll go almost opaque. Actually, think the Nissan Leaf has that as an option now too.
Sam Abuelsamid (34:56)
There's a number of other vehicles that have that as an option. It's a $1,500 option. It wasn't on the car that I was driving, unfortunately, but that's something you might want to consider as an option if you're getting these. I probably wouldn't go with the Performance Pack. The one I had had the plus pack, had the 21 inch wheel options.
You know, which is pretty good the performance pack takes you up to 22 inch wheels and gets you Brembo brakes and ⁓ sort of other things ⁓ That's 4,500 bucks. I don't know that you necessarily need that in this car You know because it's gonna significantly degrade the ride quality ⁓ But you know it it does get you this the Swedish gold accents including the the gold the gold seat belts
Roberto Baldwin (35:53)
You know what? It's worth it. I
Roberto Baldwin (35:55)
drove a Del Sol with sports springs. I had ⁓ race springs that I could have put in it. And I think the sports springs were more than enough. it was because those even those were like kidney busters. And I didn't get yellow nothing. didn't get gold nothing when I put those on when those are on the.
I think the 21 inch is a good compromise. Even the 20s are good. But I think that that is sufficient. I don't think you need the 22s. And the 21s look really good. It's a very sharp looking wheel, as are the 20s, the base 20s. So yeah, drove it around quite a bit in a variety of different conditions, both urban, suburban, and...
you know, highway driving, ⁓ various speeds. ⁓ and was Jen, I genuinely really liked driving this car except for the human machine interface, which is just horrendous. ⁓ yeah, they do. They, they, they, yeah. And, my wife was scrolling through the menus, trying to see what else was in there. ⁓ and found the animal mode and, know, so I had to explain to her what that was for.
Roberto Baldwin (36:54)
⁓ They have an animal mode though, they have a dog mode. So that's cool.
Sam Abuelsamid (37:09)
You know, so that that's that's something that apart from some of the like, you know, Tesla Rivian You know some of the other ⁓ EV only companies that's something you don't typically find ⁓ in a lot of cars yet, ⁓ which seems unusual Yeah, because if you you know, if you're build an EV It's just a little bit more software. That's doesn't take anything to do it
the Hyundai, what I can do is like, can't lock the doors while the car is on if you get out, if it's parked. Like you can't just like leave the car on and walk away. The doors will just stay unlocked. What you can do is you can turn the car off, close the doors, and then with the app, just tell it to put it in climate mode and it'll turn that on. So essentially like dog mode. if I have to run in... ⁓
it doesn't say that like it's like my dogs are chilling for like the three minutes that I have to run inside because they are are they are very they are very attached to me. Like if I leave they're like what is happening?
Why are you out not in the car? So I don't go like I don't go to store. I'll usually pick up food is when I when I have the dogs with me. But I don't I won't go in a store because that seems like too far too long because they'll just be all sad.
Sam Abuelsamid (38:14)
I'm familiar with that problem.
Roberto Baldwin (38:25)
But when I do get out of the car, I can turn on the air conditioning. But it doesn't say, hey, by the way, these dogs are chilling in this nice car with plenty of room with air conditioning. Yeah, I slap on the window.
Sam Abuelsamid (38:34)
just need to have a little sign you can stick on the window and say, Hey, hey, my dog
chilling in the air conditioning in here. Just leave him alone. Yeah.
Nicole Wakelin (38:39)
My dogs are cool. Leave them alone. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (38:43)
I did discover one ⁓ peculiar thing, well, not so much peculiar, I discovered something by accident. ⁓ So this does have ⁓ radar sensors along the edges of the roof line inside the car to detect if there people left behind in the car. And so I got out at one point, my wife and my daughter were still sitting in there, I got out to snap a few photos ⁓ and.
As soon as I got more than about 10 feet away from the car, all of sudden the horn starts blaring full blast. Like exactly. Yeah, that's that's the point. ⁓ You know, you don't leave babies, you don't leave your dogs unless animal mode is turned on. You know, and, you know, I have no issue with that functionality in general, but
Roberto Baldwin (39:18)
yeah, so you don't leave babies in the car.
animal mode and all I can think of is the Muppets. But go ahead. I'm picturing a little angry Muppet on his drums. Go ahead. Animal mode. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (39:42)
But, you know, mean, like the horn was full blast and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on. was like, oh shit, go back and hand my wife the key, you know, put the key in the car, leave the key in the car.
You know, and so that was a little bit annoying just because of the sound, you know, how loud it was, not so much that it was doing it. You know, I think, you know, kind of a couple of, you know, shorter beeps, know, lower volume, you know, maybe half volume or something.
Roberto Baldwin (40:12)
Why do hate children, Why do you hate babies?
Sam Abuelsamid (40:15)
I do not hate children. We got a couple of them. I'm good with kids. ⁓
have been a first robotics coach, I've coached flag football, I'm fine with kids, I have no issue with kids. I just think that the horn didn't need to be quite that loud, that's all. So let's see. Sticker price, the Monroney on this one says $71,600. You wanna guess at the destination charge?
Roberto Baldwin (40:38)
It doesn't mean that's so loud. Settle down. Settle down, full star.
Sam Abuelsamid (40:58)
⁓ Robbie gets it by five bucks. It was $1400. ⁓ But ⁓ if you go to Polestar.com right now and actually configure this car, they actually have a $10,000 discount on this. So if you configured it exactly like this one, instead of $71,600, it would be $61,600. Which, again, think given what you're getting, I think, like I said, the interior materials and everything on this,
Sam Abuelsamid (41:27)
It feels much more premium than what you would get in say a Tesla or a lot of other vehicles. It feels like a very premium car. ⁓ It's just that whole interface thing that is problematic. ⁓ But 61 grand for this I think is not a terrible price. think it's fine. ⁓ So ⁓ let's see. While we're in Denver, something we haven't done very much of lately is
talk about like cookies and stuff. And so ⁓ that was actually a croissant. ⁓
Nicole Wakelin (42:01)
Is that what that picture is?
me a picture at the beginning of the podcast and it's just texted to me and I'm like, what is this? What is this picture? Where did it come from? ⁓ my God, it looks so good.
morning, my wife and I wanted to go out somewhere, get some breakfast, and get some coffee for her, and get some tea for me. ⁓ so she went, did a little online search, and found a couple of different places. We went to the other place the following morning, but on Sunday morning, we found this place ⁓ called La Croissanterie, Denver, ⁓ which,
Sam Abuelsamid (42:38)
actually shares its building. It's owned by the same people. They added on the croissantery, I guess about seven months ago. They hired a pastry chef, but it shares its space with a place called Ruby's Good Shoes, which does brunch all day. And so, you know, the croissantery, we went in there first and then we realized, oh, they also have this other place over here on the other side of the wall here.
And we looked at the menu and said, yes, we will have breakfast here. And it was outstanding. I highly recommend ordering the, that is it. That is a pistachio croissant and it's filled with this pistachio cream in the middle, but they have
What kind of croissant is that? it pistachio with the green?
bright green stripes like in the pastry doughs. So it looks like it's striped green. my gosh. It looks amazing.
Sam Abuelsamid (43:27)
⁓ it's it's it's beautiful.
All the stuff they have looks fantastic. It tastes fantastic. ⁓ They we also had ⁓ an almond croissant. didn't we didn't eat all of these while we were there. We had those boxed up to go and shared them with our daughter and her boyfriend.
Nicole Wakelin (43:44)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Sure. We believe you. We... Okay. That I believe.
Sam Abuelsamid (43:53)
yeah, there was a chocolate croissant and a whole bunch of other stuff. Highly recommend ⁓ this place. Like I said, if you are in Denver ⁓ and you're in the mood for some pastries, highly recommend the address, the website.
link will be in the show notes. Highly recommend you go check this place out. ⁓ Or if you just want to have breakfast, you know, I had what they call the international or what they call the American breakfast, you know, which is a typical, you know, couple of eggs and some smashed potatoes and other stuff. But the art, our, our waiter, you know, because I ordered it, you have choice of bacon, Italian sausage, chicken links or vegan sausage. I ordered it with the
Italian says, you're to have the international breakfast. So it was a fun guy. ⁓ But yeah, the food there is outstanding. ⁓ And the service is great. ⁓ And highly recommend it if you're looking for a place to have some brunch or just get a cup of coffee and a croissant ⁓ that is really, really yummy.
Nicole Wakelin (45:06)
Okay, next time I'm in Denver,
that's it. I mean, the name alone, Croissantery, I'm in, yeah.
so that, ⁓ that was our, ⁓ our, little visit to Denver. actually there was one, one more thing related to Denver, ⁓ which is, ⁓ while I was waiting on, ⁓ on Monday, to pick up our daughter when we were heading to, ⁓ I was waiting, you know, sitting outside her apartment, before we heading up to Boulder. I, ⁓ I was sitting there and
Sam Abuelsamid (45:40)
you know, in this area where she lives, which is not far from Capitol Hill in Denver, but you know, basically a lot of central Denver is like this. You know, get a lot of smaller apartment buildings, smaller homes that are packed in like one right next to the other.
Nobody's got a driveway. Everybody's parked on the street. And so most of these streets, you will find cars parked up and down curbside, both sides of the street. And there's generally barely enough room for two cars to pass each other.
And while we're sitting there waiting a couple of minutes for our daughter to come out, I grabbed a picture of this because I wanted to use it for a future presentation. ⁓ I often talk about autonomous vehicles to show, here's a potentially challenging situation for these things to come along. And I took a picture of the street with cars parked up and down both sides and barely enough room for two normal sized vehicles to pass each other.
⁓ And I think if there were like two Hummer EVs or two TRXs trying to pass each other it would be a non-starter. ⁓ Anyways, I'm sitting there looking and I see this vehicle coming towards us and as I closer I realized, ⁓ that's a Waymo Ohai. That's the little Zekr robotaxi that they are currently testing. Because they've been testing in Denver for a couple of months and they're going to be launching there sometime in the next few months. And so,
Sam Abuelsamid (47:07)
you know, saw this thing come by and as she, as the, I'm not sure if it was being driven autonomously or manually, cause there was a safety operator in the vehicle. But as she came by, she saw me there with my, my phone taking pictures of her and you know, then put up her hand in front of her face, I guess, did not want to be photographed. ⁓ But ⁓ so Waymo is ⁓ currently
They're testing in at least 10 cities. I think the number is actually more than that. By the end of this year, when I talked to them last month, ⁓ they want to be running commercially in 20 cities across the US and actually the UK, including London, by the end of the year. But ⁓ right now, they're testing in Denver, they're testing in Minneapolis, here in Detroit. They've been doing some testing in New York, in Washington DC, in Miami. ⁓
They're testing all over the place and they will be getting around quite a bit by the end of this year.
Nicole Wakelin (48:12)
interesting to see that roll out.
Sam Abuelsamid (48:17)
All right, next up, ⁓ Lexus. Lexus has announced pricing for the new ES. So, you know, that's their mid-size sedan that traditionally the ES has been based on the Camry. It's basically been a rebodied fancier Camry. ⁓ The new ES is something a little different ⁓ and ⁓ it's gonna be coming to market ⁓ as...
with a choice of either a hybrid powertrain or full battery electric version. guess which one is actually the cheapest?
Roberto Baldwin (48:54)
Well, I saw the headline, so it's not really fair.
right. It's the EV, the front wheel drive EV will actually be the cheap one that comes to market. So that's gonna be using the same powertrain that's in the Toyota BZ and the CHR, know, 221 horsepower, about 300-ish miles of range, and it's gonna have a starting MSRP of 48,795.
There will also be an all-wheel drive version, the ES500E, which will start at 51,8 plus the destination charge. That's pretty impressive. The hybrid, I think, is starting at 51,000, so a couple thousand more than the front-wheel drive battery electric version.
so no gas only versions of the new ES when it arrives later this year. Um, we'll I'll, I'll be driving the, uh, the ES in somewhere in California in may. It's Uh, it's, hard. It's hard to keep track of all the places we go to. I think it's, uh, it's, it's somewhere near San Diego and La Jolla. It's in La Jolla. That's where it is.
Sam Abuelsamid (50:25)
⁓ All right. Let's see. Next up, Scout. ⁓ So on Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week, there was an automotive process association event at Scout's tech center in ⁓ Novi, Michigan. And one over there, they had a presentation from Scott Keough, who's the CEO of Scout. And ⁓ then the
and he did ⁓ a fireside chat with Mike Whalen from CNBC and answered some questions and had some interesting details. you know, there's been some reports recently that Scout was pushing back their launch to 2028, ⁓ which is they initially denied, but ⁓ now it's kinda sorta true. So what it is is that
Sam Abuelsamid (51:24)
Production is still planned to launch in the latter part of 2027. So about 18 months from now, but the actual customer deliveries won't start till early 2028. so yeah, that's 2028. Yeah. But, know, Keough did say that, you know, the factory, you know, the building is done. They've started equipment installation.
Sam Abuelsamid (51:53)
They're gonna start the first of four phases of pre-production builds on the production equipment ⁓ in the second half of this year. sometime this summer, they will do a first batch of pre-production vehicles off that equipment. And then as they continue iterating, there'll be three more batches done over the course of the next 12 months before they start series production in the fourth quarter of next year.
Roberto Baldwin (52:23)
Did they give a reason other than Volkswagen?
Sam Abuelsamid (52:27)
No, it did not give any reasons.
it has to do with the increased complexity of making an EREV versus an EV because so many... Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (52:35)
I think that's part of it. ⁓
One of the questions that did come up ⁓ from Frank Marcus at Motor Trend was he asked about ⁓ trailering. The Scout is kind of unique in its e-rev. Most e-revs have the engine up front where the engine would normally go in a combustion version. The Scout's doing this a little differently. They're actually mounting the engine at the back of the vehicle, behind the rear axle.
And they're using the Toyota or the Toyota, the Volkswagen, the version of the EA 888 two liter four cylinder, which is in like almost everything that VW builds. ⁓ that, you know, putting it back there means, you know, it's got some advantages for Scout in that you don't have to run all the exhaust and fuel lines and everything else back and forth up and down the vehicle.
everything is mounted back there. It's the whole range extender system is essentially just a module that they can bolt into the back. So it actually makes it pretty simple for manufacturing. But the downside is now you've got this weight of several hundred pounds hanging behind the rear axle. And when you're towing a trailer, you have to look at two things, not just how heavy is the trailer, but what is the tongue weight? ⁓ And
you know, with this extra weight back there, you know, they, that is, that means that the EREV version, although it will be able to tow much further than the BEV version, ⁓ it's going to tow less. ⁓ They're not saying exactly how much less there's been some speculation that the tow rating for this thing could be as, low as 3,500 pounds. ⁓ I think right now they're looking at about 5,000 pounds.
Sam Abuelsamid (54:33)
⁓ versus 10,000 for the BEV version. ⁓ But he said they're actively working on improving that tow rating as much as they can for the EREV.
Roberto Baldwin (54:46)
What's nice is I had this big tirade on, not a tirade, I think it was just informational, saying on Blue Sky, it wasn't a tirade, it was just like, hey, because a lot of people from the Bay Area, it's Tahoe, and Tahoe just gets dumped on.
And then people go up and they're like with their summer tires and their RAV4, and then they're like stuck alongside the road. So was just sort of like, hey, be careful when driving up there, make sure you have, how important tires are, blah, blah, blah.
And then I had this little thing about pickup trucks are not as great as you think because there's no weight in the back.
Roberto Baldwin (55:16)
So even though they're rear wheel drive, there's no way they're just spinning around, flipping over. But with this, with the Scout, because you have the engine in the back, this is actually the pickup truck you can take on. Well, I was saying EVs because EVs weigh more anymore. So you're fine with an EV pickup versus a gas. But with this one, you're living the dream, I guess, for that one instance. As long as you're not towing. But you wouldn't be towing in this snow.
Sam Abuelsamid (55:39)
as long as you're not towing. mean, if you're throwing your skis, your snowboards
Yeah, but not towing, which, well, I mean, it's a light towing. mean, it's, mean, people are going to be towing more cycles and quads, whatnot with this. isn't, I don't know, maybe teeny tiny little trailers.
this, is a full-size truck. mean, this is, this is similar in size to an F-150.
Roberto Baldwin (56:03)
I always forget how big it is.
I always forget that it's full size and not mid size.
Sam Abuelsamid (56:07)
Yeah. You know, I mean, but even if it was a midsize, you know, even, you know, 5,000 pound towing that kind of like the only other midsize that tow that has such a low tow rating is the Honda Ridgeline. You know, most of the others are about 7,000 pound tow ratings. So, you know, that's that is potentially going to be a real challenge for Scout if they can't find a way to get more tow rating with the EREV version.
Roberto Baldwin (56:37)
That kind of yeah, I mean, yeah, it's still the damn thing. They're going for adventure. know, they're Rivian is their big competitor now ⁓ I don't think
Sam Abuelsamid (56:46)
And Rivian can tow 11,000 pounds. But it does not have an e-rev.
But does not have an e-rev. So you got that going for you, which is not nice, I guess. I don't know. So in the future, things are weird.
Sam Abuelsamid (56:57)
Yeah. But, know, well, there's, you
know, there's the RAM, there's the RAM EREV, which is coming out in the second half of this year. You know, that is going to be able to tow 12 a half thousand pounds.
Sam Abuelsamid (57:14)
And you know, it's not, it's not that much different size from this.
Roberto Baldwin (57:18)
Yeah, but I think Stellantis has really hurt themselves with anything that's electrified. I know a lady who bought a like a like a a Jeep era, like a Jeep electric Jeep, and it did not work out for her at all. ⁓ I don't know if things a lot of things went wrong. I felt bad. She's she's a real nice lady. Things do not go out. She did not deserve what happened to her. It's like.
Sam Abuelsamid (57:37)
She did not deserve what happened to her with that Jeep.
Roberto Baldwin (57:45)
when bad things happen to good people type situation.
see, what else did they share? Starting price is going to be around $60,000. They did not give any indications as to what trim levels you're to have. That's all coming later. So for $60,000, we don't know what you're actually going to get for that price. Presumably, that is at least a battery version. It's not an eRAV version, but we don't know.
Sam Abuelsamid (58:21)
Scott did say that about 87 % of the orders so far, 160,000 plus reservations are for the e-rev. And they expect it to be about three quarters SUV, one quarter pickup trucks, roughly. Which is similar to the split for Rivian between the R1T and the R1S. So, there's still a lot we don't know about.
Sam Abuelsamid (58:49)
you know, exactly what, you know, what you're going to get at any price point. ⁓ that's all coming later. ⁓ but just that they're still working on this. It is going to have, ⁓ you know, it's going to use the, the, the Rivian VW, ⁓ electrical architecture, ⁓ and, know, have the over the air software update capability. He did say that, you know, they are open to producing other non-scout branded vehicles.
in that factory in South Carolina, because there's been some speculation recently that there could be a new Audi that's based on an Audi G-Wagon competitor that's based on this platform. ⁓ And so that could be interesting. Although when they start production, the plant is going to have a capacity of 200,000 units on three shifts. They're going to start with one shift and gradually build up. ⁓
I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how much demand there actually is for this, depending on what the specifics, specific details are when it actually hits the road.
Roberto Baldwin (59:57)
The 160, do they have to put money down for this, their 160,000? Okay, yeah, it's like, you know, $50 for Slate. They have over $150,000. Like, what's the conversion rate on that? Is that 80,000 at the end of the day? Is it, you know, is it half of that? it, so it'll be interesting. Yeah, I just looked, I just launched the old Rivian site and their R1T dual standard starts at 73,000, so. So, you know, cheaper.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:00)
It's like a hundred dollars.
Yeah, but you know, I said, you know, for for that $60,000 price, for all we know, that could be a single motor version. You know, we don't know what that's going to be.
know what it's going to be. Anyway, yeah, I think it's, you know, I like the scouts look cool. It'll be interesting to see how it all works out for them. I think, again, I think it's one of those things where, you know, we have this idea, but now we're stuck. You're tethered to a legacy.
Roberto Baldwin (1:00:56)
that is currently like a little gun shy doing anything cool. And also now you're also dealing with the dealerships, which are not happy about the idea of the scout being direct to customer, which whatever. But you know, that means lawsuits and I mean,
Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:11)
was another question that Keo responded to, know, about dealerships and said, you know, it is still our intention to sell direct to consumer. ⁓ He didn't really say much about service. You know, so it's, you know, it's possible. think I've mentioned this before, you know, that we could, we could potentially see a situation where maybe, you cause there's a whole bunch of lawsuits from dealers right now against scout.
⁓ So we could see a scenario where maybe they reach some kind of settlement where VW Group dealers can sign up to be Scout Service Centers. ⁓ So Scout sells directly to consumers and then the dealers provide service. ⁓
basically a compromise to still give them a piece of the pie.
Roberto Baldwin (1:01:58)
Yeah, I think what'll probably happen is you can buy it direct to consumers, but you can pick it up at a dealership. That way you create that initial, like, that relationship, but you bought it from Scout, but you can pick it up at a dealer. And then the dealer will be like, yeah, hey, if you want, yeah, as you know, from a guy, like you're buying stuff from Craigslist and they're like, hey, let's meet at this dark parking lot at 3 a.m. I'm like, okay.
instead of picking it up in some random parking lot somewhere.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:26)
the parking lot and there's a tractor trailer there with you know half a dozen scouts on it just roll one off and say here you go.
Roberto Baldwin (1:02:32)
There you go, just peel one off the trailer, hand
it over, there's your scout, and you look around, you need anything else? And they're like, I don't know what you want, me, sir. Good times.
So as the market for ⁓ EVs has transitioned in the last six months, we're seeing various manufacturers make adjustments to their product plans. And most recently, has included Hyundai, Kia, or at least Hyundai and Kia. I haven't heard anything new from Genesis yet. But they're dropping a couple of models from their lineup.
It's interesting which models are dropping. So for Hyundai, they are discontinuing the standard versions of the IONIQ 6, which is the sedan, but they are going to import the IONIQ 6N, which is the high performance model that's coming. And the IONIQ 6 currently produced in South Korea, not produced in Georgia, ⁓ but only the low volume 6N.
which is also being produced in South Korea, is going to come here. ⁓ And then for Kia, they are dropping the EV6 GT, which also is the only version of the EV6 that is not produced in the US. The rest are produced in Georgia. We're at the Hyundai meta plant near Savannah. But the GT, which has same 641 horsepower as the IONIQ 5N, that comes from Korea. And that is also being discontinued.
⁓ so, ⁓ those are, those are going away for model year 2026.
Roberto Baldwin (1:04:19)
The IONIQ 6 is a great car. Like it drives better than the IONIQ 5. They didn't have to make it better than the IONIQ 5 and they did. ⁓ That said, the design of it just turned a lot of people off to be honest. I know people who are like, yeah, but I'd rather get the EV6 or the IONIQ 5. The IONIQ 6 just didn't, people just don't like the way it looks.
Roberto Baldwin (1:04:46)
to be, yeah, it's just that, and the
fact that it's not built here. mean, there's a lot of things working against that poor car. ⁓ The looks and the fact that it wasn't built here are too, but mostly the looks. Like.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:56)
Yeah. Especially, you know, I
Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:58)
mean, the back seat is definitely more snug than what you get in the five or the V6.
Roberto Baldwin (1:05:05)
did, uh, uh, me and, Mark Takahashi, when we drove on the drive program, we found a dog just wandering in the desert. And I opened the door and the dog that jumped in the backseat.
So dogs really enjoy the backseat of the Onyx 6 based on our, there's based on our drive program. Uh, we were able to find the owners. called them. had a, you know, put a phone number on your dog's tag.
Yeah. So we can call you when we find your dogs. Uh, and they came and picked them up and they were just like, what are you looking for?
Roberto Baldwin (1:05:30)
Anyway, yeah, the IONIQ 6, think it's, again, I really liked it. It's just that those looks and when we bought our IONIQ 5, I think my wife later on, she's like, oh, I'm so glad you didn't like the IONIQ 6. Because it looks, which I do like the IONIQ 6, but it's, yeah, the IONIQ 5 makes more sense for us anyway.
cool. Yeah, just, it was, it's unfortunate when that happens, but.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:51)
Yeah. mean, having a hatchback, you
Roberto Baldwin (1:05:56)
Yeah, yeah, it's, know, they could just redesign it. don't know. Just throw another body on that, that, that thing and it would be great. But yeah, that's yeah. It makes sense. I, I, yeah, I was, I was surprised it lasted this long. Cause it's people looking like the owner, like the numbers of it, sale numbers are pretty low.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:15)
Yeah, I mean compared to the five it was not doing.
Roberto Baldwin (1:06:18)
Yeah, so. well, just weren't you just you're just too good for this world IONIQ 6. We did it, but yeah, it's a great like if you like the design, you're going to love the car. But most people don't like the design.
Nicole Wakelin (1:06:25)
We loved you, but goodbye.
the design. It tells you how important something is. It sort of sometimes gets sort of like a, you're just interested in how it looks. Everybody is. ⁓ Right.
things. mean, we think we're logical when we buy things, but the reality is we're not. There is a sense that there is some logic, for most, especially cars, so much of it is emotion. So much of it is like, I've always wanted this car.
you saying that people make irrational buying decisions when they're spending a lot of money?
Roberto Baldwin (1:07:02)
Yeah, on cars they do. So, yeah. I know someone who had a...
Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:06)
Yeah, I mean, you knows them?
They might do something like buy an electric Jeep. Yeah. No, I mean, we've we've all been there.
Nicole Wakelin (1:07:12)
Right? I'll take it. No, I...
Nicole Wakelin (1:07:18)
I knew it was gonna be perfect, I'll say it a million times, but I didn't think it was gonna be.
Roberto Baldwin (1:07:22)
Yeah, and like, yeah, felt like the, like the four by E, like I really liked the four by E. And I was like, if I had, you know, if had the money and if it was, especially if it was a two door as opposed to a four door, I'd be like, I'd be all over this.
Even though there's no reason for me to have a Jeep. Jeep is like, you know, one of those things where I know they're a bad decision, but I really would like to have a Jeep. And yeah, it's just, there's so many things that when it comes to cars, even the car people who should be like, well you should definitely buy this car because you know, it's.
Roberto Baldwin (1:07:52)
It's efficient, it hits the market. The people who buy this car, this is exactly what they want. All the things, all the logical things that we should bring to every decision, even we're like, I'd really love a Carmen Ghia.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:13)
Well, Nicole, when you were up in Vermont, was Matt McAleer there?
Nicole Wakelin (1:08:17)
He was and you know, I was there on Monday, Monday, Tuesday, August, Tuesday. He was an extremely busy man, which is kind of unusual because normally they're there for us. And we thought, gosh, it was really hard to snag that interview. He seems a little bit like he's going in 20 directions. Then lo and behold. Right. And well, now there was some news. I have a feeling I know why he was so busy now. So there was this very abrupt
Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:33)
Yeah. Cause I mean, you know, Dodge only has two models now.
Nicole Wakelin (1:08:46)
announcement that over at Yieldy Chrysler that Chris Fuel, who was the CEO of, was she just Chrysler? She was just, I think she was just Chrysler, right?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:57)
⁓ Yeah, she was briefly
So she's now she's gone. Booth effective instantly. ⁓ So she stepped down. They didn't say what happened. And now Matt. Personal reasons, so mean, personal reasons, but doesn't like we don't know what happened, you know. ⁓ And now it's going to be Matt's going to be doing Chrysler and Alpha and Dodge.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:14)
I saw one story where it mentioned personal reasons for
Roberto Baldwin (1:09:21)
Who knows what that means?
Nicole Wakelin (1:09:30)
So I'm thinking there were some conversations happening while I was in, in, in on Tuesday. And now I'm like, now I get it. You were going 20 directions. Sorry,
CEO of Chrysler is a funny thing because they have one car, one vehicle.
supposed to be adding a whole bunch more eventually, someday.
But they have one, they've had one vehicle for how long? 10 years.
rid of the 300? How long has it been, not the 300, well the 300 and the 200, 300 stuck around longer, right?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:07)
The 200 went away in 2017, I think, and the 300 went away at the end of 2023.
Roberto Baldwin (1:10:16)
Alright, so not as long as I thought. I forgot to... I didn't realize the 300 lasted that long, to be honest. I thought it would... I thought it would have...
Nicole Wakelin (1:10:18)
It's only been a couple of years they've officially... Which is why it went away.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:24)
Well, I mean, it was being
built along alongside the Challenger and Charger. And so, you know, yeah.
Roberto Baldwin (1:10:28)
⁓ yeah, okay. Once those got updated, they're like,
Roberto Baldwin (1:10:36)
Well, now he's in charge of all these things. And every one of them, everything has like two or three. Just make it one company. I don't know. Apostio, but it's still like four cars.
Nicole Wakelin (1:10:37)
So now he's got a whole little.
Yeah, he has a whole little posse of stuff that he's in charge of. It's, know other companies
that's like part of their brand. like, no, that's, that's all of it. That's the whole brand there. So yeah. So yeah. So that's kind of big news. And I hope everything on the home front, the personal front, so to speak is okay for her. Cause that's unfortunate. I liked Chris.
Yeah, I I interviewed her several times for the show. you can go back in the ⁓ archives, you can find those. She was always very friendly. ⁓ think she had big plans for the brand, ⁓ but those plans kept getting ⁓ changed. And I don't know how much of that was from her versus ⁓ from changes above her pay grade.
Roberto Baldwin (1:11:38)
I feel like being a CEO of any of the brands is a tough gig when Stellantis overall isn't doing so hot. So you're like, let's do this thing. They're like, hold on, buddy. We got $7. You think you can launch a car with $7? Because that's what you get.
I need 750. Nope. Sorry. Seven. That's all we got for you. ⁓
to pull an extra fifty cents out of your own pocket sorry
Nicole Wakelin (1:12:00)
50 cents, we're not springing for it. Yeah.
Roberto Baldwin (1:12:02)
we're gonna do a GoFundMe to launch a new Chrysler.
all doing it. I mean, as much as Chrysler's having a lot of, you know, undeniably having some challenges over in the Stellantis house, so are other brands, you know. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:15)
Well, I mean, I think the biggest challenge with Chrysler
Roberto Baldwin (1:12:15)
Yeah, but they're a little bit worse.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:18)
in particular, though, is just trying to figure out what the brand is supposed to be in the 2020s. Yeah. I mean, we know what Ram is. Ram is trucks and eventually a big SUV. ⁓ Dodge is muscle cars. ⁓ Jeep is off Jeeps. Yeah. But what is Chrysler supposed to be?
Roberto Baldwin (1:12:23)
Yeah, because right now it's just the minivan brand.
mean, originally it was like Lincoln. It was like the Lincoln, you know, it was a Lincoln competitor. Now it's not. It's,
was that time where that what was it that one of the original founders great grandson or something was like, just let me buy it back and save it. Remember that?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:58)
Yeah, yeah, Walter Chrysler's great grandson, I think. I think so, yeah.
Nicole Wakelin (1:13:01)
Yeah, great-grandson, is that what it was? Was like, just let me have it.
Roberto Baldwin (1:13:07)
That wouldn't have worked out, to be honest. Yeah.
Nicole Wakelin (1:13:09)
No, no, but like that's where we are. Whereas great-grandson's like,
Nicole Wakelin (1:13:13)
let me buy it and save it. And that can't happen.
they saved him so much money and heartache to be honest.
said no, I'm sure he wasn't happy, but dude, be lucky. Count yourself lucky.
you're pet. We can't always get what we want, but we try sometimes. We get what we need. And you need to not buy a
Nicole Wakelin (1:13:28)
Yep, we try, doesn't always happen the way we hope.
it's it's kind of it's kind of like buying Warner Brothers. You know, if you if you ever listened to the verge cast, you know, one of ⁓ Neil I Patel's, you know, perpetual alliances. The one way to destroy your company is to buy Warner Brothers. You know, it happened with AOL, you know, AOL bought Time Warner.
⁓ It happened to, you know, almost happened to AT &T. You know, they managed to offload it onto Discovery just in time. know, Warner Bros. Discovery, not great. You know, and now, you know, an $11 billion company is trying to spend $111 billion to buy Warner Bros. And I got a feeling that, you know, even if it goes through, results aren't going to be great for anybody.
Roberto Baldwin (1:14:22)
I worked for AOL Time Warner and let me tell you that was a train wreck internally. like having to deal with, yeah, we were launching a site, we were launching a video platform, we were launching all these things and dealing with AOL Time Warner was like dealing with two like...
Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:30)
Yeah, so did I, when I was at autoblog.
Roberto Baldwin (1:14:44)
fighting siblings. Like one of them was like, are Warner Brothers. We've been around since the beginning of, you know, movies. And the other is like, we got mail. And so it was kind of a mess and both, both companies were sort of, and so we, we sort of, I would say that the place that I worked at, we would just bought, we would just hire people to do the job that they were supposed to be doing for us.
Like we, their developers were so, was such a mess that we just hired a developer on site. We're like, we're just going to hire somebody do this. So,
Roberto Baldwin (1:15:14)
Yeah, I guess, you know, if you got money and you want to burn it, buy the brand that owns Batman.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:20)
Yeah. Or, or, or in this case Chrysler.
Nicole Wakelin (1:15:20)
Is that the brand that owns Batman now? That's how I'm going to think of them.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:28)
All right. So when, you know, when, when you have factories in places that have storms, you know, one of the, especially when it's a car factory, you know, one of the things that can happen is sometimes storms will come along and cause huge amounts of damage to the cars, you know, that are waiting in transit outside the building, you know, waiting to be picked up and transported to dealers. This happened in 2023.
⁓ at Kia's factory in West Point, Georgia. There was a huge hail storm that damaged more than 13,000 vehicles parked outside the assembly plant waiting for transportation.
Roberto Baldwin (1:16:12)
Either the all state insurance agents just think, what?
Nicole Wakelin (1:16:16)
Add that to our list of commercials.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:18)
Yeah. ⁓ So after that, you know, dealing with that little issue of 13,000 hail damaged vehicles in one parking lot. That's a lot. That's a lot of hail. ⁓ Speaking of which, there was ⁓ big storms that went through Western Michigan the other night and somebody posted video showing this ⁓
Tornado that was whipping around, you know just on the other side of this little lake and I'm my wife sent me this link I'm looking at this I'm thinking This is a 90 second video of somebody watching this this tornado moving very very rapidly and tornadoes tend to change directions on a whim and I'm thinking
that I can see a tornado, I'm not seeing it because I'm hiding.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:10)
Yes, exactly. Why are you standing there filming this instead of getting down into the basement of a building somewhere? Anyway, ⁓ after the storm, Kia went to a company called Vehicle Protection Structures ⁓ and they built a 3.2 million square foot overhead canopy system over this parking lot to protect
Nicole Wakelin (1:17:12)
That's... There's no way! I'd like, what's the innermost room in my home? ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:40)
the vehicles that were coming out of the factory from storms. But they didn't just build a roof over the parking area. They also installed a whole bunch of solar power. They have 17,000 solar panels on the columns of the structure that is designed to protect about 15,000 vehicles from the elements until they're loaded up for delivery. The panels aren't all connected yet. They started construction in 2024 and they're working on,
plan to finish it up this quarter, within the next few weeks. But some of the panels are still being installed. ⁓ And this is pretty cool.
Roberto Baldwin (1:18:21)
I mean, if you're gonna build like overhead anything, just throw some solar panels on it. Get some money. Get some electricity out of that. Like they...
Nicole Wakelin (1:18:25)
I mean, why not? Yeah, you make a few bucks. Yep.
car factories use a lot of electricity. Yeah. You might as well. Yeah.
one of the Safeway, Safeway, I don't know, one of the supermarkets, they put like, like canopies over like the parking spots after they, you know, this has only happened the last year and the place has been there for a couple of years. And they just threw solar panels on it. They're like, well, I mean, why wouldn't you throw some solar? Just throw the solar panels.
Nicole Wakelin (1:18:52)
Go ahead, just do it, why not?
is cheap enough now that, especially if you're putting it on a facility like that that's using quite a bit of electricity, it makes sense to do it.
Roberto Baldwin (1:19:05)
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, and the sun, you know, it's just there. And if it goes away, I mean, we're all doomed anyway. So if that happens, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
Nicole Wakelin (1:19:11)
The sun is right. If it goes away, we have other things to worry about.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:12)
Yeah. Yeah, it's the least of our problems.
So yeah, let's see. Yeah, apparently, 2025 weather and climate disasters cost about $115 billion in damage, including 23 events that cost over a billion. They don't give the price of this particular installation, but I think compared to writing off 13,000 vehicles from hail damage, I think this will probably, you
Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:46)
this'll probably ⁓ so probably pay for itself you know within a few years
Nicole Wakelin (1:19:51)
gosh, I can't even imagine the expense on that. I wonder if the insurance is like, must protect these. We're not doing this again.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:00)
⁓ BYD, ⁓ for the last several years, they've been selling a battery system in their vehicles that they call their Blade batteries. So these are lithium iron phosphate cells, and they're long, skinny cells that stretch basically all the way across the vehicle, ⁓ hence the name Blade. And they have just introduced the Blade 2.0 battery, which is still LFP. ⁓ And this one,
charges, among other things, charges much faster than before. These batteries can now be charged at 1500 kilowatts.
Roberto Baldwin (1:20:38)
That's a lot of kilowatts.
that's almost, it's about four and a half times faster than the ⁓ Electrify America station down the road.
Nicole Wakelin (1:20:49)
Is there any place you can get that kind of charging right now?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:52)
You know what? In China, they're... No.
Nicole Wakelin (1:20:55)
in China, but not here. In the U.S. should rephrase that. There's
no place in the U.S. you can actually take advantage of that.
well you can't actually buy a BYD car here either, so. ⁓
there like a place that has like a thousand kilowatt for trucks or something?
some megawatt charging systems that have been installed for use with electric trucks. I think Tesla is in the process of installing a bunch of megawatt chargers to support their fleet of semis. think they've got 14 that are either installed or in process of being installed right now. ⁓ But again, those are targeted towards truck applications, not towards cars. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:37)
BYD is putting these Blade 2.0 batteries in their cars. So these things can charge from 10 to 70 % state of charge in five minutes and from 10 to 97 % in nine minutes.
So that's just getting gas. That's just getting gas.
Nicole Wakelin (1:21:54)
That's just getting gas. That is
Nicole Wakelin (1:21:57)
absolutely just going to get some gas.
gas, a cup of coffee. you know, I mean, not even the time it takes you to go to the restroom. Probably. Yeah.
Roberto Baldwin (1:22:04)
You're not gonna be allowed to pee anymore. Sorry.
little urinals right next to the charging stations.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:17)
So BYD is planning to install 20,000 of these 1500 kilowatt flash chargers in China this year.
Roberto Baldwin (1:22:30)
So when I started at SAE, I ended up talking to one of the former like head guys at CATL and he was very upfront. He's like, you know, China's about 10 years ahead of us when it comes to EVs. And I'm like, do think we're going to catch up? He's like, well, you know, we're closing the gap. And then now I'm like, well, now China's like nine years, six months ahead of us.
talking to, I had the same conversation. I was talking with someone about it. Who's a big China expert. And he said, I said, can we catch up? He's like, Nope. He was not that optimistic. He's like, Nope. They're so far ahead of us. We'll get to where they are, but we'll keep. They will. They're not going to stop. They're going to keep going. So we're always right. So we're going to be chasing. We're going to be.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:06)
but they will have already advanced beyond that.
Roberto Baldwin (1:23:10)
Yeah, they're not going to slow down and wait for us. They're not the big
brother, like racing their little brother where they slow down, let them catch up. So like, Hey, look, we're both racing and we're both doing well. So it was like, nah.
it's just look at us kicking your butt. ⁓ Dang it, that's not what I wanted to happen. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:29)
Yeah, mean, another part of this is that, you know, the system is also designed to work even when the batteries are very cold, you know, which has traditionally been one of the problems with EVs is, ⁓ you know, charging, charging cold batteries.
Usually you have to, you have to get the battery heated up. You know, the, when they're cold, they've got a lot of resistance and they won't take a charge very quickly. And so, you know, these things, you know, these flash chargers, you know, they,
The whole system is designed to ⁓ allow the batteries to be heated even when they're like ice cold. I think I saw something, you when they're like minus 22 degrees, you know, it only raises the charging rate by about two minutes.
Roberto Baldwin (1:24:14)
Like if I, so sometimes I'll go to the store and I'm like, oh, I'm on the way to the store that has the EA station. We get free EA charging with the IONIQ 5. So I'm like, all right, so I'll put it in there.
And I'm like two minutes from the store. So the car doesn't have time to like heat up the battery. Sometimes you'll see the little heater coils in the battery icon where it's like, oh, I'm up the battery.
Now I'll get there and I'll plug it in. And instead of like the 230 that I should be getting, it'll do like 110, 120 or whatever. Now I'll walk in the store, buy what I need, get out.
Roberto Baldwin (1:24:44)
It never gets to the temperature because I've decided to wait to the last minute and remind it, yeah, I should ⁓ precondition my battery. This two minute, yeah, this is, ⁓ yeah. I did a whole video about preconditioning batteries and preconditioning EVs and then BYD is like, nah, you don't need to that no more. And that's, think at the end of the day, like there's a lot of sort of nerdiness that goes into owning an EV.
Nicole Wakelin (1:25:04)
You don't need to that, forget it. Forget it.
Roberto Baldwin (1:25:12)
which for some people like myself and for others, yeah, that's like awesome. I think the charging at home makes EVs like for a regular person like outstanding, but there is still a lot of little nerdiness and this kind of like reduces all that nerdiness where you're like, oh, you know, if you heat up the battery before you charge it, like regular people are like, what are you talking about, man?
Nicole Wakelin (1:25:33)
I'm so confused man, what's happening?
your EV charges in five minutes anyway, why bother? ⁓ One thing they did ask the CEO of BYD about, obviously these chargers take a lot of power, ⁓ 1500 kilowatts. ⁓ If you've got 10 of these chargers, you're talking 15,000 kilowatts, so 15 megawatts of power.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:01)
And said, yeah, the ones that they're installing, these 20,000 chargers they're putting in this year, they're all gonna be backed up by battery systems so that, so those things will be charged at a slower rate and they will be able to put out the full charge directly from the battery instead of pulling it all from the grid all in one shot.
Yeah, that makes sense because yeah, that's smart because then you, yeah, you can push it and then slowly someone else had something like that. ⁓ not nearly like as cool as this, obviously that that I talked to. They're like, yeah, we'll have a battery that helped like charge. we're not pulling. it was the company that has the swappable battery company. That's right. Where they, charging. No, no, the, the, the, the, I've talked to them twice.
yeah, ample. they have a like sort of where they slow charge the batteries. And then when you come and do the swap, but just not nearly as fast as this, to be honest.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:06)
All right, and then one last story. ⁓ I was looking at TFL this morning and I saw the latest video that they put up that Tommy and Case and Andre put up. And they acquired another vehicle for their fleet, which I think is rather unfortunate in this particular case. ⁓
They get some really fun vehicles. While I was there, I had a chance to drive their latest Porsche 911. They bought a 1999 or 1996 911 and had a chance to drive that one to lunch. And then on the way back, I drove their Fiat 124 that Tommy had just picked up from the shop. Very fun little car. This one, they got a 1993 Isuzu rodeo.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:00)
Either of you ever to ever drive one of those things?
was, someone in my family died and they had an Asusio rodeo, which I don't think was working and the people who, no it wasn't a connection, they didn't die because of the Asusio rodeo but they didn't.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:12)
Was there a connection between those two things or is just coincidental?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:18)
Because I know somebody who almost
Roberto Baldwin (1:28:22)
So but yeah that they did ⁓ So the people after this person died like their friends were like hey we have an Isuzu rodeo that belonged to them I'm like I do not want that Because I would have had to go across country to pick it up and then drive it home And I was like I don't think it's gonna make it so I almost For a brief moment was almost the proud owner of an Isuzu rodeo that probably wasn't getting good shape It's proud owner.
I don't think there is such a thing. I don't think you can be proud and the owner of a rodeo.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:53)
Yeah, I mean my own experience with the rodeo came in like the early 90s. know, Isuzu, you know, they sold these things, you know, the rodeo was the four-door version. It was also a two-door version called, that they called the Amigo, but they also supplied these things to Honda. The original Honda Passport was just a rebadged rodeo. They also provided them to GMs at that point.
European divisions, Opel and Vauxhall, ⁓ where they were sold as the Frontera. ⁓ And when I was working for Kelsey Hayes, we had a contract to develop our ABS system for the Frontera. So the Japanese built versions that Isuzu sold under their own brand and for Honda had a different ABS system on it. for Opel, we had to put our system on it. And boy, these things
Yeah, you could just look at it funny and it would flip itself over. It was.
like, so we ⁓ had some, I didn't graduate from regular high school. I got kicked out of high school. So I went to like a special, like a continuation school is what it was called. And there was a kid there who had an Isuzu trooper. And so the school was like outside of town next to the cement factory. And it was like an old one, like room schoolhouse type of thing situation. And one day they were leaving and it was a dirt road up into like the.
the asphalt and one day we just walked out and they had flipped the Suzu trooper just driving out of the tree and it was on its it was on its roof it was like
just reach over and pull it back over? mean, it's not flip it right back. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:39)
It took a little more work to flip
it back over. ⁓ In the course of about 18 months, ⁓ my colleagues, some of my colleagues and I, ⁓ working on the Frontera, I think we had at least six rollovers with these things. Six. I almost flipped one.
Roberto Baldwin (1:30:43)
Yeah, so Isuzu's, ⁓ yeah.
Roberto Baldwin (1:31:04)
I don't know what... Isuzu I think actually had...
I think they had hydraulics that helped flip them over. I think there was like a little like...
Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:09)
I think that may be the case.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:14)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was in fact the case. ⁓ I just dropped a ⁓ photo in the chat of one of them ⁓ up in northern Sweden. This was in the winter, like in January of 93. ⁓ I was sitting ⁓ in the office doing some work, going through some data, some testing data. And one of the guys came on the radio and said, hey, anybody in the office, come out here with some toe straps? I said,
Told my center mark. Where are you said just before the entrance to the track? And said what do you need? So well got the got the frontera and ⁓ all four wheels are up in the air Yeah And this this was not the one I mean, you know, he wasn't going mark wasn't going that fast in this one ⁓ But one of my other colleagues he was testing in Japan
Nicole Wakelin (1:31:58)
my gosh, completely upside down.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:10)
and he actually flipped it over one evening and he was injured pretty severely. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. ⁓ So I sent a note to Tommy and Andre this morning and said, hey, you guys should really be careful with this thing. like driving these things on a slippery surface on snow or ice, just lifting your foot off the brake pedal, it'll start to spin. You don't even have to touch the brakes. Just lifting off the accelerator, it'll start to spin. ⁓
Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:40)
very interesting test session with one of the engineers from ⁓ from Isuzu, you know, trying to explain to him, look, this is not something we can fix with ABS. This is a fundamental problem with the suspension of your vehicle. It's, it's bad.
And to be honest, like a lot of the SUVs at the time weren't great compared to now, but the Azuz's were particularly, yeah, the Azuz's were particularly, they were the poster child for like, you want to flip something over? Cause I remember a lot of friends ⁓ flipping their Toyota trucks and whatever, because you know, back to my pickup story where you're driving it and you hit ice and the truck just starts going sideways and then it hits asphalt. Bloop.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:02)
Yeah. No, but these were particularly bad.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:28)
All right, so we have ⁓ we have one ⁓ did we talk about the charger? Did you talk about driving the charger? ⁓ No, go ahead. Go ahead and talk about the charger. Yeah. I mean you did drive all the way to Vermont. You might as well talk about it
Nicole Wakelin (1:33:36)
We did not, but we can save it for next week. We can save the charger. I want to talk about the charger. Okay. So I also, did, I
did drive all the way up to flipping Vermont to, to drive the thing. So Dodge ran a drive. was sort of a full line drive, which is Durango charger and the charger Daytona, which is the Evie, but it was the first time you could get behind the wheel of the charger RT, which is the normal one. Like there's a scat pack and there's the RT for the gas engines. RT is like the normal.
person driving and the Scat Pack is the crazy one. So this one, it still has a six cylinder, it's 420 horsepower and 468 pound feet of torque. So it's not like it's ⁓ a tiny little nothing car, it has plenty of power. But the point they were trying to show is that all of these are the, all the whole charger lineup is all wheel drive. Yes. And that's one of the big things that they talked about with this is it's like, you, you think you're like, my gosh, my eight cylinders gone. Who cares?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:25)
I mean, there's more power than the Hemi.
Nicole Wakelin (1:34:34)
Who cares? It's got more power. Like just let it go guys. It's all right. So it has more power. It is super fun to drive. So I drove the scat pack, which is 550 horsepower. I drove that back in the fall. had a thing at tail of the dragon and it was ridiculously fun, but it's a lot that the RT is a little bit tamer. And I think between the two, now mind you, I had a charger and used it as a family car in its most team form ever for years with the girls. And I loved it.
But you kind of don't want that overly powerful, overly rough and ready thing. If you're driving it every single day you put your kids in there, I think the RT is like a sweet spot. It's also, you can get it as two door or four door because there's no challenger anymore.
Right? So this is your one size fits all version of Dodges muscle car. It starts at 49, nine, nine, five for the two door and it's 51, nine, nine, five for the four door. So it's not cheap, but when you look at the amount of horsepower you're getting,
the style, the handling, the standard all-wheel drive, the features. It's actually a really well-priced car. And it was incredibly fun to drive. They let us take it on a track, Team O'Neill Rally School in New Hampshire. They let us take it there and do stupid things, which is the best. Right? It was like, come to Team O'Neill and do stupid things. Like controlled stupid things, but still stupid things. They had a skid pad, they had a little slalom course, and they had a little tiny whoop.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:49)
That's the best place to do stupid things is on a rally course.
Nicole Wakelin (1:36:00)
through the woods. ⁓ and then eventually you could do that for a while and then to see how it drove. But then they let you do a hot lap with one of their instructors when, and that's when you realize you don't know anything and you're like, gosh, okay, this, this is how you drive it.
I should catch air, which was fun. ⁓ so you know, the thing is like, you can really get it sideways in the snow and have a really good time with it, but it also handles really well. Like it's not, it's less likely to get away from you for other vehicles.
What was neat about it is that when you think of performance, when you think of muscle cars, when you think of Dodge, you don't necessarily think this is the vehicle that's capable that I want in the winter months.
It's what you think of when you want to have some fun. And this lets you actually is to have your cake and eat it too situation. You can have a car that's fun. That style is fun. They have their jailbreak program.
They call it. And I don't know. There's like six million different combinations.
that you can do for the various things to customize it and make it look very uniquely your vehicle and not just look like any other Dodge Charger that's out there. It lets you have fun. It lets you have the power. It has the capability with all wheel drive to manage actual winter weather and winter conditions. So you don't have to relegate it to being something you can only buy if you live, you know, in the sunshine states. You don't have to relegate it to being in the garage.
for, you know, six months out of the year. ⁓ so I, I had a great time driving it and I thought that, know, I've driven the scat pack a bit. I've driven the Daytona a bit. I think the RT is my favorite one.
The scat pack is fun, but the RT I just feel like is the more practical version and it's still plenty fun and it just looks fabulous and it sounds fabulous. So I was impressed though. And, and, and everybody there was interesting talking to everyone, you know, cause they even have the Durango out there.
take a Durango out there in the snow and uniformly everyone said, yeah, you can get it. It can get away from you if you want it to, but it was very easy to keep it from getting away from you, which, know, in the rally school environment, you know, yeah, you can let it slide.
There's enough room that you would have to be an absolute fool to manage to bonk it into a snowbank. There's plenty and plenty of room there, but it also is, is confident enough that you thought, okay, if I was on an actual road and I was just trying to drive responsibly,
and not slide off of said road, I'm probably going to be able to manage that in this, which is an, it's a nice, it's a nice mix, two doors, four doors, gas or electric, all wheel drive, no matter what. ⁓ and, and a reasonable price, that starting price. So I had a really good time up there, froze my butt off. but it was a really fun car to drive and it actually is really surprisingly a car you would not think of recommending for the winter, but I would.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:56)
All right, we have one listener question this week from David R. And says, my wife and I are considering the Lexus TX, the non-hybrid, non-plugin, as her next vehicle. We have great respect for the 3.5 liter V6 that is in her current 2019 RX350L. For over 100,000 miles, it's been smooth, powerful, reliable, and it even runs on regular unleaded gas.
we are a little concerned about the 2.4 liter four cylinder turbo and the standard TX. Well actually this engine is also in the hybrid, because I think they have the hybrid max system in the TX if I recall. Or is it the, I can't remember now. Could be. Anyway, the TX is a bigger, heavier vehicle and Lexus and Toyota have been having teething problems with their new powertrains. We drive her RX350L.
Nicole Wakelin (1:39:41)
I can't remember, I think it's the max?
Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:53)
all throughout the sparsely populated desert southwest with our dogs, Pembroke Welsh Corgis, excellent choice, see below. ⁓ So reliability is at the top of the new vehicle equipment list. ⁓ What are your opinions on this 2.4 liter turbo engine? Is it up to the task of powering the big TX for 100,000 miles? Is there any chance of Lexus putting the 3.5 back in the TX as the cafe finds are being ignored? ⁓ The TX has a
Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:22)
As appears appears to have enough room in the engine bay or should we be looking at competitors such as the Acura MDX? ⁓ So I think the answer your your core question of will they put the v6 back in the tx almost certainly not ⁓ I Don't see that engine coming back. It's that engine has been around for a while You know it is reliable, but you know I don't see it coming back the the 2-4 turbo
does make more power, more torque than the V6, ⁓ especially torque, a lot more torque than the V6. ⁓ It hasn't had, compared to the 3.4 ⁓ twin turbo V6s in the Tundra and Sequoia and some of the other trucks, I don't think that the 2.4 has had any major issues. There's been a few minor things that a few customers complained about, but I think it mostly comes down to
You know, in most cases, you know, things like, you know, doing regular maintenance, you know, getting your oil changed and things like that. I don't think there's any major issues that I'm aware of with the 2.4 like there are with the 3.4 liter twin turbo V6. ⁓ So I think you're probably okay with this one.
Nicole Wakelin (1:41:44)
wouldn't be nervous about it honestly. think you'll probably finally agree with what Sam said. You're probably going to be good. No guarantees in this life.
Plus, you know, it's Lexus, you know, Toyota. If there's a problem, they're going to take care of you.
Roberto Baldwin (1:41:58)
Yeah, they're gonna, they don't wanna hurt their, their, their, not responsibility. What's the word? Reputation for being, you know, the company you buy a car and then you can shoot it with bullets and drop it off a building and it'll be fine.
Nicole Wakelin (1:42:21)
I don't know that they perform that testing, but.
a, there's there's a, ⁓ not grand touring top gear episode where they try to kill a, a Helix.
Roberto Baldwin (1:42:36)
Nope, still keeps starting up.
about as close to indestructible as you're going to get.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:48)
So that's it for this week. ⁓ by the way, ⁓ while you were talking, I did look up the plug-in hybrid does use the, the plug-in hybrid TX does use the 2.4 liter turbo.
I think, or is it? No, no, nevermind. I got confused by the way this is written. ⁓ You can get the TX with the 2.4 turbo. I think you'll be fine. Lexus will take care of you.
Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:22)
Lexus, Texas. All right. Thanks, everybody. We will talk to you next time.
About this episode
The hosts discuss a long winter drive in a 2026 Land Rover Range Rover Sport SE Dynamic plug-in hybrid, focusing on its performance in harsh New England winter conditions. The vehicle impressed with its power, comfort, and handling on snowy, icy roads, highlighting why SUVs with AWD and ground clearance are essential in such climates. However, the episode also critiques the heavy reliance on touchscreen controls for climate and other functions, which proved distracting and unsafe in whiteout conditions. The conversation blends practical driving experiences with broader reflections on vehicle design and usability in extreme weather.
This week, Nicole tells us about driving home in a remote area of New England in the Range Rover Sport SE Dynamic while Robbie shares some thoughts on the new Mercedes-Benz GLS and GLE. Sam shares thoughts on the gas guzzling Toyota Sequoia and has mixed feelings on the Polestar 4.
While visiting his daughter in Denver, Sam saw one of the new Waymo Ojai robotaxis in her neighborhood. Lexus announces pricing of the new 2026 ES which will start cheaper for the electric version than the hybrid. Scout Motors CEO Scott Keogh provides updates on the brand's progress toward production. Kia is dropping the EV6 GT from its US lineup and Hyundai is dropping standard versions of the Ioniq 6. Chris Fuell is out at Chrysler and replaced by Matt McAleer. Kia added a solar canopy to its West Point Georgia factory to protect cars from hail and make some power.
BYD has launched a new version of its Blade battery that charges at up to 1,500-kW. Our pals at TFL have acquired a very dubious vehicle and Nicole shares thoughts on the base R/T version of the Hurricane-powered Dodge Charger. Sam recommends a croissant place in Denver.
