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I know I promised you that Nicole would be back today and she will be,

because we're going to keep recording until she finally joins us, but

she had a little plumbing emergency in her kitchen and there's a plumber

currently underneath her kitchen sink trying to snake out the drain,

because she was away for so long that something climbed in there and died apparently.

So the snake is kind of noisy, so she will be joining us in progress, hopefully very soon.

Yeah, if you ever had a plumber come out and plumb your stuff with a snake, especially you

it's twisting and turning and it's working its way down, looking for the offender,

hopefully it's not loose. I had to do that a couple months ago,

a few months, probably three or four months ago, I think we had to do that again.

Yeah, I have a snake that goes out about 25 feet and I ran that all the way through to the end

and unfortunately it was about 30 feet out, the blockage, so I had to pay a plumber to do that.

I own a snake, I have not had to use it in our house, so it just sits in the garage.

It's probably all rusty, I should probably snake it out.

Do you have a professional one or just one that you buy from Lowe's or Home Depot?

It's like the Home Depot Lowe's, but it's in the big giant circle.

It's not like a little small thing, it'll go out forever.

I don't remember which apartment I bought it for, but I definitely did not need to use

the entire snake to fix the problem.

And now with our plumbing corner concluded for the moment.

Welcome to the stock some cars.

Plumbing corner.

What's going on?

Well, I mean, what's your problem?

Cars do have plumbing. I mean, you know, you got hydraulic lines for your brakes,

at least for now.

They're a series of tubes, to be honest.

Yeah, they have literally a series of tubes, yes.

Literally a series of tubes.

Yeah.

And, you know, your cooling systems and things like that.

So there's actually a surprising amount of plumbing in a vehicle.

So much plumbing.

So many tubes.

So what did you drive?

I drove, I went to Austria in Germany and I drove the 2027 Mercedes-Benz CLA Hybrid.

Now the Hybrid, now you probably heard about the CLA electric vehicle,

that's the one that's gotten all the hype.

That's both vehicles, they're the same.

If you look at the vehicle outside of like the grille and the rear diffuser,

because obviously the EV doesn't need exhaust, they look exactly the same.

You get inside, they look exactly the same.

There's like, yeah, for the average person, you're not going to notice

the difference between these two vehicles.

That said, I drove the Hybrid, I also drove the EV,

but I can't talk about that right now.

I drove the Hybrid next week.

I drove the EV, the EV embargo is later on, the Hybrid embargo is already passed.

So that's why we're talking about hybrids right now.

So what's interesting is that they're using a brand new motor for this, the FAME.

And of course, I forgot what FAME stands for, give me two seconds.

Ah, forget it, it doesn't matter.

I'll look it up.

Thank you.

It is a new, it's a new, I think, ish.

It's a 1.5 liter inline four turbocharged engine.

But it has a, because it's a hybrid, it has the electric motor inside the transmission,

which is really nice.

So FAME is very, very creative.

It's short for family of modular engines.

There you go.

It's a family of modular engines.

I apologize to David Bowie for that.

Yeah, so it's a 1.5 liter, it's got a turbo, it's got an EV.

Should be perfect.

It is really comfortable cruising.

The car is surprisingly nimble.

They did some really good work on the chassis.

They had us driving up a snowy road in Austria.

And then when we got to the top, we could see Italy,

which is a thing you can do when you're in the Alps.

All that, the infotainment system with the new NBOS,

it's essentially just an updated version of their zero layer.

They're still using zero layer, which I'm like, okay, thank God.

Because you don't want something that you've seen and used to go away

because they've changed the operating system in some way.

They've rewritten it.

They essentially just rewrote the operating system.

For their software defined vehicle,

but they didn't change how it looks and how it works for zero layer,

which is great.

It has the NASH cluster, works fine.

It has some buttons, fine, it's missing some HVAC buttons

or an HVAC, Climate Control.

Sorry, we're talking about houses.

I mean, they do use the term HVAC in the auto industry too.

They do.

All this sounds great.

It does have the passenger screen.

What I can say about the passenger screen is that it is huge in China

and in Asian other markets.

So everyone gets it.

That's it.

I've talked to them about it.

I've never had anyone get into the car in the United States

and say, ooh, passenger screen, longer than five minutes.

Everyone gets it.

The only time when we actually had the passenger screen

used in a vehicle for any extended period of time

was last year when my wife and I were vacationing in California

and we had the EQS SUV.

And it had the whole hyper screen thing with the passenger screen.

And she was using the passenger screen to manipulate the music

that we were listening to and the navigation.

That was the one time on that trip that week

and all the times I've had a vehicle with a passenger screen

that it actually got used.

So she actually did find it useful.

What it did is it stopped her from having to turn 10 degrees

and reach a little further.

If now, the thing is with Mercedes

is that screen is just flat across the front.

If that center screen was more driver-centric,

if it was turned towards you,

I could understand what the passenger screen is.

But the debate, we've lost the debate

because there's a huge market that really wants that.

And for that, we all get the passenger screen.

I played Angry Birds on it.

I watched some YouTube videos on it just because,

but I kind of got bored very, very quickly,

mostly because I was doing my job.

That's it.

All the sort of nice things about it said somehow,

now this car doesn't come out until next year,

the end of next year.

So this is a very long lead drive program.

So I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that they fix this.

That vehicle is a pain to get off the line.

You push your foot down on the accelerator

and there is a gap.

It's like turbo, that's turbo lag.

The turbo has an electronic to help spin it up.

There's an electric motor in there.

It's got an inline four.

It's got this new Miller compression system,

which is very efficient

but means it doesn't have a lot of low end torque.

So they added the turbo and it has the electric motors.

It should fill that gap,

but it really does not when you take off.

And when you come out of corners,

you stomp on that gas and you're like,

wait for it, go.

It is very, if you have any inclination

of any sort of spirited driving,

it's very annoying.

It sounds like it's like everything about this.

It's mostly a calibration issue.

Yes.

It feels like hopefully they can sort,

they can tweak it, they can calibrate it,

they can adjust so many things about it.

But at the end of the day, I'm just like,

you're like, I really like this car.

We drove an E-Class after we turned these cars in

to get from, I don't know,

to Germany from,

where are we?

Vienna?

Austria.

From Innsbruck.

From Innsbruck to Stuttgart.

We drove E-Classes.

And the E-Class wasn't as comfortable as the CLA.

The CLA was a more comfortable.

That's surprising.

Yeah.

That was very surprising.

Like ride comfort or everything?

Seat comfort especially.

Like ride comfort is pretty on par.

You know, they're both very, you know,

they're both, but seat comfort,

the seat in the CLA is very, very comfortable.

At least the ones that I was driving,

the hybrids, the European models.

Again, this vehicle doesn't come out for another,

I don't know, probably eight months,

nine months, 10 months.

You know, they have, they say until the end of 2026,

it could come out in, you know,

one year from now, it can come out 10 months from now.

Whenever they can, you know, they get it out.

That said, yeah, it's very,

there's all this tech in there,

and it's very interesting the way they're, you know,

they're doing the inline four engine with that sort of,

so what happens is the piston is going down,

they close the air intake earlier than anyone else would.

So it's creating more compression,

but it means it doesn't have that sort of oof at the lower end.

So they added a turbocharger,

and the turbocharger does have

the little electronic thing to help spin it up.

So the turbocharger has a little thing to spin it up.

The motor, you know, has within the transmission,

there is a, I'm sorry, how many, I think it's 30,

yes, 30 horsepower, 148 pound feet of torque,

electric motor inside the transmission is the 8 speed transmission,

no CVT because boo.

So yes, 8 speed transmission.

So it has all the elements where that shouldn't happen.

That's the crazy thing,

is I guess the motor is very much tuned

for just sort of once you're on the road cruising,

but it has the elements that should fill in that gap,

and it really isn't right now.

And again, I really want them to sort of,

like they just need to retune it, to be honest.

And so this was in comfort and in sport mode,

it does not have paddle shifters,

so you can't like just pa, pa, pa, pa.

Instead, the stock, you know,

how Mercedes Benz still uses a stock to shift gears,

you push it forward and back in order to shift gears.

The problem is, is because it's your right hand,

you're used to upshifting, like pulling towards you, right?

As you're going up, it's the opposite.

And I didn't realize I was doing it wrong.

My co-driver of like, you're, you know, instead of shifting up,

I kept shifting down because I pull,

like you, you push the stock forward to go upshift

and you pull it back to downshift.

And you're like, oh, that sort of makes sense

until you realize that traditionally paddle shifters,

you know, especially on the right hand side,

you pull it towards you to, to, to go fat, to shift up.

It's, it's very, yeah.

It's, it's a very weird.

Yeah. Well, I mean, usually, you know,

you've got your upshift is on the right hand side,

your downshift is on the left hand side paddle,

and you're pulling both of them towards you.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's, it's, it's a very, I don't know, this seems okay.

Yeah. And mostly I was using that in the snow,

but it's, it is very, it's a, it's a weird,

it's a very weird system.

Again, it's very comfortable to drive.

It's great cruising.

It surprisingly did well in the snow.

They didn't, you know, let the air out of anything or the,

it was the cars we were just driving.

And they were like, hey, we're driving up this, you know,

snowy hill with a bunch of switchbacks.

And they're like, hey, this is how you can do,

you know, they, they want us to do oversteer.

So that was fun.

That's always a good time when you get to

oversteer in the Alps on a closed road.

No one else is, it's a private road, no one's closing.

They, they plowed it so we could drive up to the top of this hill

and take a picture of Italy.

So this is a 48 volt mild hybrid system?

Yes. Yeah.

It's 48, but it's such a weird, it's weird that it's

mild hybrid because it's 30 horsepower.

So it's, it's, it's a hybrid, it's in the thing.

So it's still

like, yeah, I mean, but

You see that weird?

But the standards, yeah, it, it, but the standards of a lot of

current, you know, what we call strong hybrids or full hybrids,

you know, that, that is on the low side.

You know, like, you know, if you, like, I'm going to talk

kind of a couple of minutes about the Honda Accord,

you know, and that's got 181 horsepower motor.

Yeah. So it, and this, this, you know, this has a,

it's the, the battery is 1.3 kilowatt hour.

So it's not huge, but it's bigger than like

some of the smaller, you know, like it's bigger than like an

old hybrid system from, say, like a, like a Prius or something.

But it's not huge.

So you have to like, so that sort of low end,

like making sure you have that, that power in order to push

it forward for that, that, that low end torque issue.

There is, there should be enough in there to do that.

But it's, again, it's, it's a weird little system.

And you can drive an electric, you know, electric only

around town for the most part, which, you know, they need to do,

they need, they need to be able to do for in Europe.

But yeah, yeah, I think the MBOS operating system,

I think it doesn't seem like there's a lot of weirdness.

Software is super difficult.

You can ask literally any automaker.

So, you know, this, these are new vehicles.

They're not even on the road yet.

We'll see how, how, how it turns out, you know,

give them a year on the road to see, see what's going on.

But they did, you know, when you got those first, let's say the,

the first, the Cadillac, the Lyric, when you got in the Volkswagen ID3,

when you got all these vehicles, they had way more issues

than this vehicle does.

And it's still a year out.

So I feel like Mercedes has really done at least the work it needs to do

up until this point to make this work.

Hopefully within the next year, they don't mess that up.

Software is very easy to mess up.

It's hard to build. It's easy to mess up.

They talked a little bit about artificial intelligence, which is,

you know, it has, was it Microsoft and Google?

So if you ask the Mercedes assistant, which has always been pretty good

in relative terms compared to everything else in the market,

now it'll use those as well.

So if you ask it how tall is the Eiffel Tower,

it'll ask, you know, those two systems and it'll return the best answer,

which is, I mean, it doesn't make the correct answer.

So whatever it is, people are...

Define best.

Yeah, defined best.

Yeah, the, let's see.

Oh, it has electric gliding.

And you can drive an EV mood up to 60 miles an hour,

depending on drive.

So if you're slamming on it on the gas,

obviously you're going to fire up that inline four engine.

But you can cruise it, you know, up to 60 miles an hour in EV mode,

which is pretty, which is nice.

Let's see.

I think that's kind of it.

There'll be more.

I'll have an article over there on the old SAE about it.

But yeah, so much about the car that I really like.

And then there's that one.

And then there's just that like, oh,

I want to like take off from an intersection.

Hold on.

Give me a second.

It's turbo lag.

It's like, you're just driving around with turbo lag.

And there is no sort of motor that's going to, you know,

fill that gap.

Because turbo lag, you're like, you still have the motor there,

then the turbo kicks in.

Now it feels like there's nothing catching at the,

when you first take off.

Or when you're coming out,

when you're accelerating out of a corner.

I think for most people accelerating out of a corner,

that's really just an enthusiast thing.

Most people are just, you know,

they're going to cruise in and out.

Me on the other hand, I'm like, I cannot get,

Mike, you have to like really hit it early

and really give it the beans.

You got to give it the beans when you're coming out of the corner,

especially when you're trying to oversteer.

And get that back in swinging out in the snow.

But yeah, then when we got in those E-classes,

and you know, you hit the accelerator

and boom, the car just takes off.

And you're just like, okay, well, yeah.

So hopefully they can retune it in between now and then.

There's always the electric version.

There's always the electric version,

which again, I drove and I can't say anything about it

other than I drove it.

Not for, I guess until next week or the week after.

I don't know, but I can talk about it later.

Yeah, so that's the Mercedes CLA Hybrid.

Again, it's on the MMA,

the Multmix Martial Arts architecture.

No, it's the Mercedes modular architecture.

They're essentially doing what BMW's been doing

where you can build either a gas or electric version

of the exact same car on the exact same line.

So that's, it's a smart thing.

I remember when BMW was doing it,

it took them forever to get it going.

And at one point, I think most of us were just like,

well, are they ever going to do this?

They just keep talking about it and talking about it.

And then the I-4 came out and you're like, oh, this is nice.

Yeah, when BMW launched the I-4 and then the I-5 and the I-7,

you know, with those flexible architectures,

you know, the downside of a flexible architecture like that

is you're not necessarily optimizing the package.

Does he get advantage of the benefits of an EV?

You know, so like on the BMWs,

they still have the transmission tunnel in there

because it's the same floor pan,

whether you get the gas or the electric version.

So, you know, if you're in the backseat,

you know, there's a pretty substantial,

you know, or a driveshaft tunnel,

you know, down the middle.

And, you know, that's kind of wasteful.

On the CLA, you know, what's that like?

I mean, obviously the CLA is more front-wheel drive,

transverse front-wheel drive architecture,

which the most of the BMWs are not.

What's the backseat like in the CLA?

It's tight. I mean, I can talk about it.

Yeah, I sat in the GLB as well.

I saw the new GLB.

Lots of room in the GLB, whether gas or electric.

The CLA is tight just because it's a small car.

You know, it's one of the weird things.

Is there much of a hump in the back?

Gosh, I have to look.

I can't remember.

Like, I have, you know,

up in the mountains, half asleep.

Yeah.

It was a long program.

I think it really...

We don't usually bother getting in the backseat anyway, you know.

It ends up being...

Driving these things.

Yeah, I try to get into the backseat as much as possible,

but it ends up being one of those things where you're just like,

I got to do this. I got to do this.

Oh, wait, now we're taking this off to this.

Now we're doing this. Now we're going here.

Now we're going there.

And it was a long program.

It was from Monday to Saturday.

So, you know, on those programs,

you were just so dead tired by the end.

And sort of loopy, to be honest.

Let's see. I don't see any photos of the backseat in my stuff.

I'm sure there's probably something that'll just remind me to look at,

look it up in the future.

I know that the packaging in the front of the electric version,

there's a, there is a front.

So, there's something.

Like a proper front.

Hey!

The vehicle's here.

Hey! Can you hear me okay?

Hey, it's me. I'm still alive.

How are you guys doing?

We weren't, we weren't sure.

It's been a morning.

In fact, the plumber is still in my house trying to fix things.

I'm like, do you just knock on the door?

And I'm like, so, yeah, I, it's, it's been a morning.

Hello, everyone.

How are you after weeks?

We already did the plumbing segment.

You did the plumbing segment?

Okay.

We talked about our own experiences snaking out our pipes.

Well, my experience snaking out the pipes is that

the lovely gentlemen have come to do this this morning

on a Saturday morning,

and most plumbers don't do this,

so I'm very grateful for the plumbers I found.

Well, plum, plumbers are usually happy to do it

on a Saturday morning.

They just charge you three times a month.

No, I couldn't even get that.

First of all, these guys are really great.

Wait, and secondly, they, they, I could not find people

like, no, I'm sorry, I can't come out to money.

I'm like, I have no kitchen sink.

I can't, which also means I can't run the dishwasher

because they go together.

Anyway, it's not the plumbing show, it's the auto show.

But how are you doing, guys?

I went to Austria and drove the CLA hybrid.

Oh, how was that?

We're finishing that up.

It was a, a quick TLDR.

Everything, I like everything about it,

except the fact that it's acceleration is not,

there is a, essentially like turbo lag

when you stomp on the, the gas of the accelerator.

But I think it's something they can fix between now

and when the car comes out.

Okay.

The end of next year.

It's so long for now.

The end of next year.

That is what you call a very, very, very long lead.

Long lead.

Yeah.

One thing I did notice looking at the pictures

of the interior though,

it's got vents that you can reach out and grab

Oh yeah.

It's got just proper human vents you can use your hands with.

It's, that's, that's the whole,

I almost said something.

I was like, you know what they,

they were just like, what, what are you talking about?

I felt like

I had a conversation with people who are not car people

about things that we don't like in cars.

And I told them that that's a thing now

that you can have vents that you can't move.

And they're like, you're making that up.

I'm like, no, I'm not.

Like they literally didn't believe me.

They're like, wait, you're what,

what kind of car to like weird kind of like no regular

like mass market cars do that.

So, um, yeah, it was,

it was kind of funny that that was,

and they're like, oh no, I wouldn't buy that car either.

I'm like, you wouldn't know because that sounds

like a stupid idea.

You're correct.

It is not a sport.

We need, we need to get those people to talk to

Mr. R.J. Scurrange.

Yeah.

Like when we're putting AI in cars,

I'm like, I don't care.

Put some, how about putting some vent controls

in the car?

How about some air vents you can use?

You know, you need to find all those people

that have put down all their deposits on an R2

or an R3X and make sure that they understand

before they actually, you know,

before those vehicles get delivered.

Pull the trigger.

You know, you, you will have to go into the

stupid touchscreen to adjust the vents.

That would be crazy.

And, and no, no AI is going to fix that for you.

Yeah.

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So I had one thing when I was on my vacation,

I drove a Mercedes E-Class diesel wagon in Germany.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

I'm like, the things we can't have.

But the one thing that-

Was it-

The Journalist Special.

It was-

I was like, that is a Journalist Special.

I was like, oh, they're like what?

Do you like this car, Nicole?

The people I'm with, I'm like, yeah, this'll do.

Super fun.

But the stuff that turned on to tell you the speed limit

that you were like right at the edge of the speed limit,

like if you went from 30 to 31, and you had to turn it off

every single time you got in the car.

Every single-

That is the law in Europe.

I know.

I've decided I hate that.

That's right up there.

I knew it was the law.

They're like, why does this this way?

I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is European law guys.

So sorry, I just got to turn this off every time.

And first I was saying, hey Mercedes,

and getting it to turn it off.

And then it wouldn't always hear me.

So then I finally found the button to turn it off.

And then my passengers in the back took great joy.

They're like, no, no, don't turn it off.

And they're screaming, hey Mercedes,

from the back of the car.

And turn it off every time we got in.

Aw.

If this is amusement, you guys.

This is a fun game.

Yeah, it became a fun game every time we helped in the car.

So-

In Austria, apparently, they're very strict about speeding.

So when we were driving through Austria,

we were like, just leave it on.

Well, it was-

I was with Scott Evans from the motor trend.

And we were like, he's like, I don't know, man.

Let's just wait till we get-

When we get in Germany, we can turn it off.

Well, and it was also, sometimes it was off.

Like I would see a speed limit sign in front of me

that would say 70, and it's blinking at 30.

Like if it's mistimed or whatever, I'm like, hello.

I am not speeding.

I am not even at the speed limit yet.

Stop pass with me.

So, yeah.

So that's why I kept turning it.

Russ left it on when he was driving

because I don't want to get in trouble.

I'm like, well, I'm not worried about getting in trouble.

I'm worried about like road rage at the car

because I have to listen to this beep all the time.

It's the new European automotive equivalent

of cookie banners.

Yeah.

So anyway.

Well, anything else on the CLA?

Nah.

You can read it on the rest of it on SA something.

Nicole, give us an update.

What's been going on?

Well, I was on vacation for a while, as you've heard,

driving around Germany, driving on the Autobahn

super, super fast because it's legal

and it was so much fun.

I had to slow down a little bit

because my passengers, there's a couple,

and the guy was like, yee-haw!

And the woman's like, stop!

So I had to slow down a little bit,

not so much on the Autobahn,

but even just like taking turns.

Like, you know, there's wind roads they have in Germany.

Were they in the back seat?

They were in the back seat.

Oh, she might be.

I'll see her be getting sick.

No, it wasn't a car sick thing.

It was like the minute the car went faster than...

She's used to.

Yeah.

She was like, whew!

Or if I like floored it, yeah.

I'm like, oh, I'm freaking around.

I better slow this.

I'm gonna add a little bit.

If you're driving a car

and someone else in the car is not comfortable,

just slow down.

Exactly.

You don't just keep driving fast to be a jerk.

Yeah.

Yeah, don't be that person.

So I still had a good time, though.

It was totally fun.

So that was my vacation.

And then also whilst I was on vacation,

excuse me, I have a frog in my throat.

They gave me, when I got back,

they gave me an Accura Integra to drive this week.

And it is the A-spec.

I like the Integra.

I like it a lot.

You know what?

I forgot how much fun a manual transmission is.

Like, you don't get them very often.

You just don't.

And I've driven one forever

and I know how to drive one.

And Russ once had an Accura Integra back,

second gen, and it was a manual.

Nice.

I like that car.

And I forgot when I got in,

it was actually, I really forgot it was manual for a second.

I may have been a little jet-lacked.

I'm like, why would the car start?

I'm like, wait, are there numbers on that?

I'm like, oh, wait, I could put the other foot in.

Like, it didn't even catch it.

I'm like, what is wrong with this thing?

But so I have that this week,

which has been super fun to drive.

I've only driven it for a couple of days

because I got back a little bit late.

But it's just a fun, sporty little car.

It's not, some people complain about the Integra

because they were like, oh, the Integra, it has to be this.

I'm like, it was never like,

it was never a Porsche for crying out loud.

People have weird, they have enhanced memories

of the past when it comes to cars.

Of the Integra, which was like sporty,

but not a sports car.

And the Prelude, which was sporty-ish,

but not a sports car.

Exactly.

I was just going to say the Prelude's the same thing.

Why isn't this of Toyota Supra?

Because it never was the Toyota Supra.

They're all upset about it.

And I'm like, do you actually remember

what these cars were before now?

No, you don't.

It was always a slightly fancier, sportier Civic.

That's what the Integra was.

That's what it is today.

So I like this.

It's fun.

It's comfy.

I had to drive around in the snow a little bit

and it was pretty good in the snow, not a lot of snow,

but like that icy, black ice,

garbage-y junk that you get,

you know, New England would do time.

The good stuff.

And I do have a Monroni that does not appear

to have any pricing on it.

Like I said, I'm dealing with a plumber this morning.

I should have checked this ahead of time.

But it has been a morning, gentlemen.

So, but it's, you know, I enjoy driving this.

I think it's a nice successor to the old Integra.

Like if you actually own one, which I did,

you look at this and you're like, it's still fun.

It's still sporty.

It still has enough power.

It's a joy to drive.

It handles well.

It looks good.

So it kind of checks all the boxes.

It just moves everything forward.

You know, you don't really,

it should have been just like it.

I'm like, do you really want a car from 1992?

Because I don't think you do.

You know, the things that it changes,

it changed in a good way because it's 2025

and you have infotainment and you have fancier stuff

and you have better safety and all these other things.

But I thought it was really comfy

and Russ was in it too and he had enough room.

I don't know how much room anybody in the back seat

would have.

Really, once you push his seat all the way back,

I feel like you'd have to be really, really short.

Really, really, really short to sit behind Russ.

But so I enjoyed driving this,

but my favorite part

was just literally having a six-speed manual.

I forgot how fun a manual transmission is

is I'm just like shifting gears and downshifting.

There's something that you can't replicate

with paddle shifters.

You just can't.

Like the sort of rowing through the gears,

having your feet do the work, it is not the same.

I know that there's things that are more

and more effective and faster and snappier

and a dual clutch automatic design.

It's not about that.

It's about just the fun of controlling

what you're driving and it was a joy to drive this.

Occasionally, someone would be like,

well, the PDK is faster.

This is Porsche's automatic transmission.

Most modern automatics are faster.

That's not what I'm going for.

Yeah, that's what I'm not going for that.

I'm not going for that half-second of speed.

I'm going for that entire driving experience

of having a manual transmission.

That's what I enjoy.

If you're talking about numbers,

I'm like, you've lost me already.

Because most cars are much faster than my BRZ,

but I love driving my BRZ more than most cars,

which is why I have a BRZ.

It's the same thing with Miata.

The answer is always Miata.

Miata is a very slow car,

but it is absolutely fantastic to drive.

It's one of those things

that don't think you get if you're not really a car person,

if you really see a car as an appliance,

in which case you're probably not listening to the show anyway.

But if you are one of those people,

you don't get what we're talking about at all,

because you're just like,

well, it does the job, it needs to do the job,

I want it to be fast, I want it to do its thing.

But if you appreciate the car for the car

and the fun of driving and the engagement

and the connection that you can get

when you are really driving a beautifully done car

through a beautiful road, shifting through the gears yourself,

not the same as an automatic,

not the same as paddle shifter,

so it's a different connection.

So this made me miss having a manual transmission.

That's how nice this one was.

Also, it's just enough so if you're a noob

and you've never driven one,

you don't feel like you're fighting to find gears.

You know, it kind of guides you right in.

And it doesn't help.

Honda's manuals are great.

No, the second to none.

Yeah, it's just so effortless to drive it.

And even the clutch, the clutch isn't really heavy.

I remember having a manual Hellcat,

I think it was for some drive and got stuck in traffic

and I was like, I'm going to die.

I felt like my left leg by the end of it.

I'm like, my left leg is now beefier

than my right leg from going in and out

on that clutch so many times.

It was so heavy.

This one is so light.

You're just walking in circles because of it now.

Right, I'm unbalanced now.

I have a back issue.

Well, you know, you're going to have to pick

a new car soon anyway if you haven't already.

You know, now's the time to buy one.

I do have to pick a new car soon.

In fact, my current car is only my car

for a few more days.

And it is officially not my car anymore.

So it is going bye-bye.

So, yeah, which I'm really happy about

and really sad about because I loved that car.

I have to disappear for one second.

Okay.

Okay, she's so sad about the car leaving.

Yeah, I looked up the Integra A-Spec

with the manual transmission.

So you can get the Integra A-Spec with a CVT

or you can get it with a six-speed manual.

With the CVT, it starts at $33,400.

With the manual, it's $39,200.

So $6,000 more for the manual transmission.

Yeah.

Well, they mean they have,

they probably have CVTs lying around all over the place.

Manuals, you know.

That's the crazy thing.

It's like back in the day, back when we were young,

a manual was, that was the option you got

because it was less expensive

because automatic transmissions were more expensive.

And now it's switched because now the only people

who are getting manuals are enthusiasts,

which means there are fewer and fewer manuals being built,

which means you didn't have the economies of scale,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So, yeah, that's how you, we've flipped.

We're in the upside down.

Yep.

For enthusiasts, again, that's the thing.

And yeah, for enthusiasts.

And I always want to say,

if you don't drive a manual transmission

but you still enjoy your car, that's awesome.

You don't have to learn if you don't want to.

I'm not going to be like,

ooh, you're not a real driver because you don't drive a manual.

But if you want to experience a more engaging drive experience,

using the word experience too often there,

if you want to have a more engaging drive experience,

you know, it's worth at least trying out,

you know, like find somebody who has a manual transmission,

get them to teach,

if you don't already know how to drive a manual,

get them to show you how to do it and just try it

and see what it's like.

Find an empty parking lot, drive around for a few hours.

It's a little frustrated initially, but you'll get it.

And then once you get it, you'll either be like,

oh, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me,

or you might be like, eh, I'm fine,

which again, that's totally fine.

If you have a car, paddle shifter, DCT, even a CVT

and you love driving that car, that's great.

Good for you, I'm happy for you.

And you should be, don't feel judged.

With my kids, you know, when my kids were learning to drive,

the older one, you know, took her out,

you know, gave her some lessons with a manual transmission.

She figured, you know, she got the hang of it pretty quickly,

no problem at all.

The younger one went out one time, you know, tried it,

said, okay, I'm good.

Never wanted to touch a manual again.

Yeah, I'm good.

I don't need this shenanigans anymore.

I'm done with this.

Okay, I'm back.

So, while you're gone, I looked up the pricing on the Integra.

The Integra starts at $33,400.

The A-Spec with the CVT is $35,950.

Okay.

With the six-speed, which only comes with the technology package,

it's $39,200.

I would pay $39,000 for this.

Would you?

Which color do you have?

It's that beautiful blue.

It's double A-Pecs blue.

Oh my God, the color is gorgeous.

It's so pretty.

Actually, it's so snowy and gross here right now.

I have this bright blue car in the driveway.

I'm like, oh, look at a little bit of happiness.

I'm surprised they didn't send you one in urban gray pearl

because it always seems like that's the only color

that Acura has in the press fleet anywhere.

Oh, well, I'm lucky.

I got a blue one.

I'm excited about the blue one.

So it's really fun.

I even drove it yesterday.

It is a good color.

I had to take Russ into the airport

and we hit the world's worst traffic

and driving into Boston

because I thought, oh, this is going to be miserable.

Stop and go in a manual.

And it still, it was just great.

It's such a nice car to drive.

I like thoroughly enjoy this thing.

$392, I think I would pay $392 for this

because the interior also looks good.

Has like two-tone seats.

They have kind of like a blue accents on it

that sort of match that paint on the outside.

So it looks really slick.

When you open the door, you're like, ooh, nice car.

So they didn't, it looks good.

It feels good.

And you know, you get pretty decent reliability.

You got a Honda product there.

So you're going to have it for a while.

So I feel like $392, I mean, you can go cheaper,

but can you necessarily go better?

I don't know.

What do you think?

Would you spend it?

It's a good car.

I had one for a Monterey car week.

Yeah.

Of the Acura lineup, I think this is the car.

I think when they brought it back,

I think it was a big deal.

Rightfully so.

I think for years, Acura was a little bit lost

in who exactly they were.

They came back with this.

They're like, okay, this is who we are.

And since then, I think they've sort of gotten lost

a little bit again.

But I get, yeah, everyone wants a SUV.

That's the problem.

Everyone wants a crossover.

And Acura was not really a crossover company.

And so it has to sort of figure out

how it fits in the world of crossovers.

I wish we'd do all one crossovers.

I know.

When I drove the ADX last spring, I remember saying,

because the ADX is on the same platform.

And it's the Civic platform.

So it's a Civic, Integra, HRV, and ADX

are all on this platform.

And the ADX has the same 1.5 liter turbo four cylinder,

200 horsepower that's in the Integra.

It only comes with the CVT.

You can't get it with a manual.

And the ADX just feels so utterly lifeless compared to this.

But the problem is the ADX weighs like 600 pounds more.

So, yeah, you're getting a crossover body on there,

but you're adding 600 pounds to it.

And it just saps the life out of this vehicle.

And it's kind of sad, really.

And I remember saying at the time, it's like,

really, just get the Integra, because the Integra's

a hatchback.

So you actually get as much utility.

And it's actually, the ADX is a slightly shorter

wheelbase. It's more upright, but it's shorter.

So you're actually getting about the same amount of interior

volume in the Integra as you get in an ADX.

But it's so much more fun to drive.

And I'm sure the ADX probably out sales the Integra.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not going to look it up because it's too small to press me.

Don't look. You know the answer is that it sells,

yeah, that it out sells it.

Because the Integra's a small little sporty-ish,

what do we decide?

Sporty-ish, is that the correct word?

It's a sporty-ish sedan.

Sporty-ish sedan.

So it's not going to sell like the ADX is,

not even close, I would think.

I was like, there was that like a few minutes where I was

just like, you know, the original Integra was a two door.

And I'm just like, shut up, Robbie.

But there were four door Integras too.

Yeah, there were four door Integra.

We got a four door.

Yeah, I think most people had two doors back in the day,

but that's a different world when people were like,

happy with just two doors.

I also, I didn't want a two door because I just remembered

like my mom, weirdly, because I bought it a long time ago.

My mom always hated two door cars because she said

the doors were too heavy.

No, it's not like the Integra is exactly large.

But I think this was based on like two door cars of the 70s

where each of the doors weighed about as much as a mini.

Yeah, we're like 15 feet long.

Yeah, yeah, I'm like, so like when you open up one of those,

you're like, holy heck, I can see why.

But I'm like, an Integra, I've probably been okay

with two doors, it's not that big.

So, so far this year, since January,

the Integra has sold 18,462 units.

Okay.

The ADX is 17,313, but the ADX didn't really go on sale

till about April.

So that's like a sales rate.

Anyway, Integra, it's a niche car.

I really like it.

Buy the Integra.

Just buy the Integra.

Do the right thing for buying the Integra

because it's a fun little car.

Ask your friend if you can drive there whatever with a manual

until you learn and then go out and buy the Integra.

The way we convince automakers to keep building cars

like the Integra is by buying them.

I know.

Stop buying these ridiculous crossovers by cars.

No one's going to listen to you.

You realize that right now?

No one's listening.

I know.

Absolutely.

I mean, we're listening to each other.

I know.

I was talking to folks the other day.

We also buy manual diesel to a station wagon.

I was all excited about that.

So that tells you.

If there's a car that all the automotive journalists

absolutely love, it's going to have horrible sales.

That is sort of the rule.

Everyone's like, this is so great.

We love this car and the general public's like, no.

Because we don't buy based on or we don't love them

based on practical.

I mean, I can love a car because it's a practical SUV

and it can tow because it's a truck

and it can do all these things.

But to drive one, we love the ones

that are just really joyful to drive

and doesn't make them logical at all.

That's the problem.

Well, actually, I would disagree with that.

No.

It comes to station wagons especially.

We had a couple of Volkswagen VW wagons.

And the beauty of a wagon is it is basically a car

with a longer roof.

You know, you're not really sacrificing anything

from having the sedan version.

You're getting some extra cargo space in the back.

And so it has all the joy of driving the car,

the sedan or coupe version, but just in a more practical shape

without all that extra mass that you're hauling around

for something you're calling a utility vehicle.

And so I mean, this is why we had a 2000 Passat wagon

and my wife loved driving that car.

She did not want a crossover.

She did not want a minivan.

She loved that car.

And when we replaced that, we replaced it

with a Jetta TDI wagon.

And she loved driving that car right up until September 2015.

And the diesel gate happened.

Driving the wagon, that was the thing I switched from,

I originally need to ask for a small SUV

just because you're thinking for people

in their luggage when we were on vacation

and they offered me the wagon instead.

And I'm like, I'm going to try the wagon.

It was so much easier than having an SUV.

It was easier to get around the streets.

It was easier to get around the cities,

to put in parking spaces.

It's easier to put things in.

It held all of our luggage.

And when we had that, you know,

barely under the airline weight limit luggage

that we were bringing back stuff from being there for two weeks,

it was so easy to load it in.

Like it was like you were lifting up.

It's nice and low, so loading cargo is easier.

It made me fall in love with wagons

in a way that I'm sad that we don't have more.

Like I was like, yeah, we should have more.

Now I'm sort of bitter about it right now

because I'm still loving that experience.

Little bit bitter.

I mean, there's a lot of reason.

People buy SUVs because we were essentially sold the SUV.

I mean, it's a propaganda thing.

It's a long story.

I've talked about it a million times.

There's no point in going into it again.

Oh no.

But yeah, we were essentially told,

you should buy this.

You should buy this via propaganda

because there's a higher profit margin at the end.

I know all the reasons, Robbie.

I don't have to like it.

I don't have to like it either.

That's why I'm driving around in a two-door BRZ

and a four-door really big hatchback called the Ionic 5.

I have to decide what my next car is going to be now,

guys.

I have a big opportunity, right?

Oh, you see the XRT.

I can get anything, right?

Well, not anything.

I'm probably not buying a Rolls-Royce.

But yeah, I got to decide.

Now I got to decide what I'm going to do.

Well, after the title for our replacement EV6

finally arrived after it was sitting in a FedEx warehouse

in Memphis for a month.

Of course.

We went to the Secretary of State's office on Monday

to get the title transfer and get a Michigan title for it.

And on the registration, it says EV6, it says station wagon.

It's not listed as an SUV.

It is, it says on the registration certificate,

it says station wagon.

Oh my gosh, you bought a station wagon.

Yeah.

I wanted to bring the back, the wood paneling.

I know it's tacky as heck, but I just missed.

Hey, I added.

You know what, you want wood paneling?

There's plenty of shops that'll do a wrap for you.

You can get a wood panel.

Yeah, because I mean, that's for the last 30-ish years

that they sold woody wagons in this country.

That's all it was anyway.

It was just a vinyl applique.

So just take it to a wrap shop and get a wood panel wrap on there.

That's right.

Or magnets, and then you can take it off

and put it on whenever you want.

Like you're a real estate agent.

Depends on your mood.

Yeah.

I could do that.

That would work, but I just said

what I'm going to put it on first.

I don't know what I'm going to buy instead.

This is, it's all done, what was it?

The 16th is my appointment to have everything said and done

on Yield's Wagoneer.

Asked that I'm very sad to give up,

but I'm very happy to give up.

And I just have to find out what I'm going to do instead, guys.

I don't know.

Everyone should, should, everyone who's listening,

I want you to email us and tell us what should,

what and why Nicole should get.

Oh gosh.

There you go.

You're joining us.

Definitely, definitely provide the why.

Why you think I should get the car I should get?

Okay.

Feedback at Wheel Bearings.media.

Tell us what and why Nicole should get.

You can also do this in our Discord.

You can throw it in there.

Yeah, that'll be interesting to see if anybody sends anything

in and what they say.

I want to see what people want Nicole to drive.

What are they going to recommend for me?

I wonder if it's going to be ridiculous or they're going

to go, I think she'd like this because.

And they're going to tell you to forward escape.

They're just going to like break down.

The escapade.

You're going to tell me Miata,

because it's the answer to everything,

but I'm going to get it off.

I feel like we're going to be in England most of the year.

Yeah, but no but rest is tall, so BRZ.

Yeah, because rest can hardly fit in a Miata.

Like when one ends up in the driveway, he's like, oh.

All right, anything else on your adventures with the Integra

or the E-Class wagon?

No, no more on the adventures with the Integra

or the E-Class wagon.

That's about it.

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All right. Well, I have had this past week a 2025 Honda Accord Touring Hybrid.

Actually, I also had a base Honda Accord with the gas engine

because they were supposed to deliver the hybrid on Monday.

And for reasons, a gas version showed up in my driveway.

You know, I needed to write a review on the hybrid.

And so I came back, drive shop and said,

hey, I thought I was supposed to get a hybrid here.

And I said, oh shoot, we'll get you one tomorrow.

So that one did show up the next day.

But the base one had the same 1.5-liter turbo four-cylinder

that was in your Integra.

But the Accord, of course, is a little bit larger and heavier.

And it had a CVT.

And so it was not quite as lively.

The Accord Touring Hybrid, on the other hand, very, very nice car.

I really like that.

I really like the Honda Hybrid system.

You know, I talked a bunch about it

when I talked about the Prelude a month or so ago.

But the Accord, you know, in the Accord,

it works really well as well.

So this is, you know, this is a hybrid system

that is really biased towards the electric side.

Most of the time, it basically acts as a series hybrid.

So the engine under probably 90% of driving conditions,

80% of driving conditions,

the engine is not ever connected to the wheels

and is not sending any power to the wheels.

So you get 181 horsepower electric motor

that is driving the car most of the time.

And for comparison, you know, the Toyota hybrids in the Camry

is only 111 horsepower motor.

So you're getting a lot more electric power out of the Honda.

And the engine is so much, the four-cylinder engine,

it's a two-liter four-cylinder,

it's so much more refined and quiet than the Toyota.

And because it's not an ECVT system like the Toyota,

they can manage the, you know,

so they're relying less on the engine for propulsion.

So when you go to accelerate,

it doesn't just immediately rev to 4,000 RPM

and sit there and drone for a few seconds

until the car catches up to it.

You know, it's a much more quiet refined drive

and very enjoyable.

It's much more like driving an EV.

And one of the things I hadn't realized about it before,

and I noticed a couple of days ago,

you know, it's got shift paddles on it

or, you know, what looked like shift paddles.

But it's actually from managing.

Hi, Nico. Or is that Bowie?

Bowie's in the room.

Nico's in the front barking,

so he's making Bowie in the room bark.

Oh, okay.

So we're having, we're having work done on the house.

So now they're here, apparently.

Anyway, so the paddles, you know,

like I said, this thing doesn't really have a transmission

as such.

So the paddles are for controlling the regen.

And because it's mostly electric power,

you can get a lot more regen out of this

than you can out of a lot of other hybrids.

So the left paddle gives you more regen,

the right paddle gives you less regen.

And when you have it in normal drive mode

or an eco, you know, tapping the paddle,

the left paddle will give you more regen.

You get almost, you know,

almost like one pedal driving at max regen,

although it won't bring it to a full stop.

But it only, the regen only stays at that level

until you press the accelerator down again.

Or you start to accelerate.

And then it immediately reverts back to mild regen,

you know, which is more like just coast down

that you get with a regular internal combustion engine.

When you put it in sport mode,

the regen goes to essentially, you know,

there's an M there indicating manual mode.

And so whatever regen level you set it at

when you're in sport mode, it stays there.

So if you want stronger regen in sport mode,

you just tap the left paddle a couple of times,

and it'll stay at that level of regen

until you tap the right paddle to reduce it again.

So, you know, it's in a lot of ways,

it's a lot more like driving an EV than most hybrids.

Um, the Accord is very roomy.

You know, it's a big car.

Plenty of room in the back seat for adults.

Although, you know, like most modern sedans,

you know, they've gone to this kind of fastback

coupe like profile.

So the headroom is not quite as enormous

as it would have been in an Accord

from a couple of generations ago.

But still, you know, there's plenty of room back

to lots of head room, lots of leg room,

a little bit less head room than it used to be,

but still very comfortable, lots of shoulder room,

good sized trunk, and I was surprised

the trunk opening is actually surprisingly large too.

You know, one of the problems with, again,

with a lot of modern sedans

that have that fastback profiles,

you end up with a very small trunk lid.

So you might have a very spacious trunk,

but a very small opening to get stuff into,

not so on the Accord.

It's the opening is nice and wide,

comes right down to the bumper.

So you can get bigger stuff in there,

the back seats fold down.

So if you wanna shove a big TV in there,

or you know, other stuff, you know, maybe 10,

you know, eight, 10 bags of mulch,

you can do that too.

And so it's very, very practical.

And the Accord Touring Hybrid,

which comes on 19-inch wheels though,

the other trims come on the 17s or 18s.

The other trims are rated at a combined 48 miles per gallon.

And the touring on the 19-inch wheels

is rated at 44 miles per gallon.

This was a particularly cold week in Michigan.

And so when it gets cold,

it doesn't matter if you're driving a hybrid,

an EV, a diesel, gas, whatever,

you're gonna get less fuel economy,

especially if there's a lot of snow and ice on the ground

because, you know, there's more rolling resistance

for the tires, more slip and everything.

So I saw about 35 miles per gallon,

which is about what I would expect

given the conditions.

I mean, we had a couple of days where it was down,

the temperatures were down into the low teens.

So that's, you know, that's what I would expect

in those conditions.

And, you know, warmer weather,

getting in the mid-40s is not a problem at all.

You know, I've had an Accord,

last time I had an Accord hybrid a couple of years ago.

You know, it was during the summertime

and very easy to get into the mid-40s.

Just as with a Civic,

you can get up to 50 miles per gallon

with the same powertrain.

You know, the Civic's a little bit smaller, lighter.

But, you know, it's a, you know,

it's a really fantastic car.

You know, and if you, you know,

if you are not obsessed with the idea

of having a utility vehicle,

but you want something that's practical

and roomy for four or five people,

and you still want really good fuel economy,

the Accord hybrid is really an excellent choice.

The base, the lowest trim level of the hybrid

is the Sport hybrid.

That one starts at 33,655.

The Touring hybrid, you know,

and this is the powertrain's 204 horsepower

in the Accord.

And the one I had was finished in radiant red metallic,

which is an extra 455 bucks.

Had a really nice leather interior.

Let's see, the grand total came to 40,950.

Guesses on the destination charge?

1300.

1495.

Robbie gets it.

It was actually only 1195.

Wow.

Cheapy, cheap.

So it doesn't, yeah, yeah.

Doesn't cost as much to deliver a sedan

from central Ohio as it does

to deliver a full-size truck from Mexico.

So yeah, 1195 for destination.

You know, just shy of $41,000 all in

for a loaded Accord Touring hybrid.

Oh, and the Touring trim is the only one

that gets the infotainment system

with the Google built-in.

So it's Android Automotive.

All the Hondas, their infotainment system

is built on Android, but they, you know,

many of them have, you know, their base system

is just a Honda interface on there

and you can't load any apps onto it.

And that's what was on the

gas Accord that I got at first on Monday.

But then on the Touring trim,

you get a 12.3 inch infotainment screen

and the Google built-in software.

So it's got Google Maps, Assistant,

the Play Store.

And it also still has support

for wireless CarPlay and Android Auto.

So you can use your phone, project from there.

The vents are fully manual, as they should be.

Got three nice rotary knobs on the center of the dash

to, you know, so the one for the driver

to adjust their temperature.

There's another one for the passenger

to adjust their temperature

and then one in the middle to adjust the fan speed.

Just reach out, give it a little twist,

one way or the other.

Amazing!

Yeah, it's shocking, you know.

It just, it's so incredibly easy to use.

And, you know, I don't know why

more automakers don't do that.

So, that's the Accord Touring Hybrid.

But I also spent a couple of days this week

in Silicon Valley.

I went out there for a Rivian event.

And so when I arrived at SFO,

I picked up a Land Rover Defender X,

which is, so this is the four-door.

It's based on the 110,

mid-level, the mid-size Defender.

And there's a bunch of different trims.

You can get it with a four-cylinder turbo engine.

There's one with a supercharged V8.

There's the Octa.

The Defender X is kind of in the middle of the range.

And it has turbocharged three-cylinder,

three-liter inline six-cylinder engine.

395 horsepower.

It's a 48-volt mild hybrid.

So it'll stop the engine when you come to a stop.

And basically it'll stay, the engine will stay off

for most of the time while you're sitting there in the intersection.

It doesn't really seem to do much in terms of fuel economy.

Over the two days I was driving it,

averaged about 14 miles per gallon.

So the Defenders are decently large and heavy

and tall, so it's not a big deal.

And heavy and tall vehicle.

But one thing that really surprised me

when I fired this thing up was for a six-cylinder engine,

this thing had quite an exhaust tone to it.

At first I thought it was a V8.

It had a nice growl to it, a nice rumble.

And it's quite quick.

It'll do zero to 60 in about 5 seconds, 5.1 seconds I think.

And it's all-wheel drive.

You know, the Defender has a very nice interior.

It's a nice big center screen.

It's got carplay and Android Auto support, wireless.

Although interestingly, but midway through the second day,

it, the Android Auto disconnect,

you know, the wireless Android Auto disconnected.

It wouldn't, it didn't, it wasn't seeing my phone,

wasn't connecting, so I reached into my backpack

and grabbed a USB cable and plugged it in.

And it worked fine wired as well.

The Defender X, you know, has these black aluminum wheels on it.

It's got the fake diamond plating on the sides of the hood,

you know, like on the old-school Defenders,

you know, where they would have had that on the top of the Defenders.

It has that on the sides of the hood, you know,

not really somewhere where you actually want to, you know,

strap anything down to.

But, you know, it's more just for looks than anything else.

But, you know, this thing is quick.

It actually handles pretty well.

You know, I had a little bit of time on Wednesday afternoon

and took it for a drive along Skyline Boulevard,

which, you know, if you're from that area,

you know, this is a very nice twisty mountain road.

That runs for quite a few miles from South of San Francisco

down towards the South Bay area.

And, you know, even though this thing weighs probably

close to 6,000 pounds, you know, it's fairly wide.

You know, it did reasonably well.

It's not, you know, it's not a sports car.

You know, it's not like driving, you know,

any kind of sports car along this road.

But it didn't embarrass itself, you know.

On some of the bumpier roads that drove on,

it did, there was a little bit of head toss.

You know, but, you know, for what it is,

you know, which is a very capable off-roader,

it did okay.

And I said, you know, I like the way the Defender looks.

The 110 is definitely the best looking of the three, I think.

I like the 90.

You like the 90 better?

Yeah.

I mean, the 110 is a little more practical,

you know, if you need to take more than one passenger with you.

Yeah, I don't have friends.

Yeah.

Yeah, so if you don't have friends, you know,

then, you know, the 90 is a good choice.

But if you want to take extra people along,

then the 110 is a good choice.

You can get it with a third row, but, you know, don't.

If you must have a third row, get the longer 130.

Yeah.

I mean, the third row in this one, you know,

in the 110 is going to be pretty much useless,

because there's just not enough room back there.

But if you get, if you get, if you want,

if you must have a third row, get the 130,

because you got more room back there.

So there was no Manroni for this one.

But the 110, or the Defender X starts at $95,500.

The, let's see, it's got an 8,200 pound towing capacity.

The one I had was finished in what they call

Gondwana stone, which is sort of a brownish-bronze color.

Looked really good.

See what else.

There's the black roof, the wheels, 22-inch wheels.

You know, again, if you're actually going to go off-roading with this,

you probably don't want to get the 22-inch wheels.

You probably want the 19s with some tires that have more sidewall.

But let's face it, you know, 99% of the people that are buying this thing

are taking it, you know, to go to the mall or, you know, go to the gym,

you know, go to their, you know, their Pilates studio, whatever.

They're not, they're not, you know,

they're not driving this thing on, you know, on the Rubicon Trail.

Let's see what else.

The, this one also had the Windsor Leather and Cavadrat textile seats.

Are you saying that right?

Probably not.

How do you spell that?

What's Cavadrat?

K-V-A-D-R-A-T.

Cavadrat.

Textile.

The global textile company.

Oh, it's a company.

Oh, okay.

I'm going to go with Cavadrat.

Cavadrat?

Yeah.

Okay.

God.

Continue.

I'm like, what is he trying to say?

Let's see, what else?

Let me find the total bottom line.

Let's see.

So the total was $97,850.

Guesses on the destination charge.

$14.

$12.95.

Robbie again, $18.50.

I was going to go higher, but then I'm like, I went higher last time and it didn't work out.

Still pretty.

There was one other, there was one particularly odd ergonomic issue that I had with this,

which was, you know, so you got this nice big center, center touch screen,

and there's some knobs and buttons below that and the shift lever.

And then the volume button, for some reason, the volume button is placed all the way over on the

left hand side of this panel below the screen.

So it could be a little bit of a reach to get to it.

But, you know, you can also control the volume from the steering wheel.

So you don't really need to reach over.

So, you know, it could mostly be, you know, just there for the passenger.

But I just thought it was a little bit peculiar.

But, yeah, you know, I like the Defender X, you know, would I spend, you know, $100,000 on one?

Probably not for me, you know, but then again, I'm not an SUV,

I'm not somebody who's going to buy an SUV of any kind.

If I was going to buy one, if I was going to buy a Defender though,

I think I might actually go for the Defender Trophy Edition.

Oh, that's cool.

Which, you know, it's in the Deep Sand Glow Yellow.

And this, you know, this is sort of a tribute to the 1980s Camel Trophy landrovers that

ran in these amazing adventure races back in the 80s and I think into the early 90s.

So that is the Defender X, 2025 Defender X.

Very cool.

All right. Yeah. So let us, oops, I don't know.

Having challenges, John?

Let's, yeah. All right, let's talk about some of the other stuff that happened this week.

So Kia unveiled the second generation Seltos.

Do you have a chance to take a look at this thing yet?

I did. I think it looks good.

I did. It looks good.

I think it looks better than the Telluride that they showed off, I think.

Oh, you like it better than the Telluride? Yeah.

Yeah, I take the design language.

Again, the Telluride looks better in person if you've seen the photos and you're like,

it does look better in person.

That said, it's still, I think, a polarizing design.

I think the Seltos does look much nicer.

Yeah, it falls in line now, I think more, especially the lighting,

because Kia is having such distinctive lighting on their vehicles.

It matches the other ones now.

Like, I feel like it falls in line.

It still looks like a different vehicle.

It's not like a copy, but I'm like, okay, now it looks like it fits.

So I think the design looks fabulous.

Yeah, I think, you know, the overall design language of this, you know, is very much,

you know, in line with what you get.

You know, we start with the EV9.

The EV9 was the first one to get this kind of look to it.

And then the EV5, which is not sold here.

You know, and then this is, you know, this is the next one to get it.

You know, so it's a kind of a blockier look with a bunch of sharp creases.

And like you said, the lighting signature and more vertical front lighting signature.

You know, so it's a very substantially different kind of look

than the first generation Seltos.

It's only, it's about two inches longer.

So it's not, it's not, it hasn't grown very much.

But I think it's a really interesting design.

Yeah, I think they did a nice job.

I think if you like, if you don't like where Kia has been going,

you're gonna feel like this is still a messed up

because you're not gonna like it.

But if you've been pleased with their trend the last couple of years,

last couple of vehicles, this is spot on for them.

So I think people will be happy.

Yeah, and, you know, it's, they show it, they have the global press release.

You know, they did an online reveal earlier this week.

They, globally they're gonna have, they're talking about three engines,

three power trans here, two variations of the 1.6 liter turbo with 178 or 190 horsepower.

And then a two liter naturally aspirated engine with I think about 146, 147 horsepower.

I've seen somewhere, it's not in this press release, but I've seen

somewhere mentioned that it's also going to be offered with a hybrid powertrain.

So that would probably be the same 1.6 turbo hybrid system that's in a lot of other Kia vehicles,

like the Niro, you know, a lot of new tech in here, you know, all the latest driver assist

stuff like the highway driving assist to lane following assist, the safe exit warning.

And that's, that's a really good one.

That's actually one of the best features that Hyundai and Kia launched in recent years,

which is, you know, it's using the radar sensors in the rear corners that are normally for blind

spot monitoring and cross traffic alert. When you pull up to a curb and you park the car,

if the radar detects that there's either a cyclist or a car coming up in the adjacent lane

next to you, it will prevent the rear doors from opening. So you can't open the door

in front of in front of a vehicle that's coming along. So until it's clear, you can't open the

rear door, which I think is on the on the street side of the car, which I think is a really good

feature to have for safety purposes, especially if you've got kids that might want to hop out

of the car real quick. Yeah, I think that's a great teacher. You're not going to door a

bicyclist and you're not going to die from getting hit by a car or have your door ripped off.

Yeah. So, okay, so that's the, that is the new Salto's that's coming sometime in 2026. I'm not

sure exactly what the launch timing is going to be for this one. It doesn't really say,

but eventually 2026. Yeah, it'll show up. Yeah. And, you know, this, the Salto's is the

most affordable car in the Kia lineup in the US at least, at least most affordable crossover,

I should say. I think the K4 is actually probably still a little bit, a little bit cheaper than the

Salto's. But the current generation Salto's, see, okay, yeah, the current generation Salto's

starts at 23690. So, you know, it'll probably be around the 24 to somewhere between 24 and

25,000 to start with for the new one. Cool. All right. And then let's see. Oh,

so in Europe, let's talk about Ford for a second. In Europe, back in 2019, Ford announced a

partnership with Volkswagen to use the VW MEB platform. So this is the same platform that VW

uses for most of its mainstream EVs like the ID4 and the ID3. And Ford was going to use that to build

a couple of new EVs, which finally came out in like mid 2024. The first one was the Explorer,

the European Explorer, which is a very different vehicle from the Explorer that we can get here.

It's a compact four door crossover. It's electric. And then they added the Capri,

which is looks very much like a Polestar 2. And those haven't been huge sellers.

I was looking up the numbers the other day. Since the since they launched in the middle of 2024,

they sold about 60,000 units in total. And this is after they spent a billion and a half dollars

to completely retool their Cologne assembly plant to build these. And this is a very large

factory. So so Ford this week announced a new partnership with Renault to get a couple of new

electric vehicles based on the Ampere platform from Renault. So Renault a few years ago launched a

separate business unit called Ampere that's focused on building EV platforms. And so they're

going to use Ford's going to use that for a couple of new EVs. And those are coming out in 2028.

Oh my gosh, that's so far from now. Yeah, I know these partnerships and things take time. I realize

this isn't like you, you know, flip a switch and suddenly everything happens. But it feels like

it's just, I don't know, making big plans on EVs that far in advance is tricky. I feel

like right now, you know? Well, you know, there's always a long wait time for yeah. Yeah, if it's

tricky if you're for because you're a start, stop, start, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,

start, start, start, EV, EV, a strategy hasn't been great. Right? I guess this is a start.

We're back at start again. Is it? We're back at start. We're back at start. Okay, or go,

stop, go, stop, go. So we're back at go. Okay. We'll see. We got three years to

change their minds. Yeah, so, you know, yeah, they've got about two and a half years. They said

early 2028. So they've got time. And this time, Ford is not going to retool one of its own factories.

They, Renault is actually going to build it and build these cars in one of their factories.

Cool. I mean, that could be good. I'm assuming that the between now and then the,

that it remains go and not stop and that the climate for EVs in terms of enthusiasm and politics

and everything else. And if the sun doesn't change 85 times between now and two years,

you know, because it could. You see some companies. These are for the European market.

So yeah, there's a whole other difference. Yeah. And you're battling an incursion of

Chinese EVs into Europe. So, and then you have places, you know, you have companies

like Hyundai. They're like, no, we're just going. We're just going. Yeah.

It's going to be a little weird sometimes, but we're just, we're not, no,

never, never stop not stopping. That's the, seems to be working for them. I see a lot of,

you know, Kia's and Hyundai EVs rolling around town. So,

just rolling around, just rolling around.

So, speaking of Ford's stop, start approach to EVs or should that be start, stop?

You know, back in 2021, I think or 2021, they announced a joint venture with SKON, Korean

Battery Manufacturer, to build three battery plants with a combined total of 143 gigawatt

hours of battery capacity, which would be enough for somewhere north of a million EVs a year.

They subsequently, you know, two of those two of those plants were going to be in Kentucky.

One was in Tennessee as part of the Blue Oval City project down there in your Memphis.

And then when things started to not go so well for Ford and their EV sales,

they said, well, we're going to put a pause on that second Kentucky plant.

So the first Kentucky plant is running and is producing batteries for Ford now for,

that they use in the lightning. And the second, the Tennessee plant

is not up and running yet. It's built, the equipment's installed, but they're not producing

anything there yet. And this week, Ford and SK announced that they are going to dissolve their

joint venture. And each one of them is going to keep one of the two battery plants.

Ford is getting the Kentucky plant, and SK is getting the Tennessee plant,

and they are going their separate ways. So this is part of the stop part, thanks.

Yes. So, you know, my guess is, you know, that SK is probably going to convert the

Tennessee plant, switch the Tennessee plant, instead of building batteries for EVs,

they're going to do what LG did when they expanded their Holland, Michigan plant,

and they're going to use Holland instead of building batteries for Toyota there,

and MC batteries for Toyota, they move that production to another plant in Lansing,

and they use the Holland, Michigan plant to build batteries for energy storage systems

for stationary storage. And my guess is that SK is going to do the same thing,

because there's just not enough demand for EV batteries in the US.

But everybody wants to build giant data centers everywhere, and those things need

reliable power. And so they're putting huge energy storage systems on these data centers

to make sure that they have reliable power. So my guess is that SK will build LFP batteries

for storage systems there in Tennessee. They also have the Slate partnership,

SK on, I kept trying to say SK. I interviewed the North American president of SK on,

and I said SK one at one point, and I was just like, come on, let me get it together.

But yeah, they are, you know, I think even in that, they were talking about energy

storage, and they were talking about, you know, what's going on with Slate,

but Slate hasn't built the car yet. Right.

And that's another year. Yeah, and SK still has, you know,

two other battery plants in Georgia that, you know, originally one of those was supplying Ford

before the Kentucky plant opened up. That now supplies Volkswagen for Chattanooga for the ID4.

And, you know, they, they probably have more than enough capacity there to also support Slate.

Yeah, so I would guess that's what they're, that's where the Slate batteries are going to

come from is from their Georgia factory. All right, this week, Nissan made a very

interesting announcement, a partnership with a UK company called Wave. Wave has been developing

automated driving software. And they're, they're an interesting company. You know,

they started off in the UK, they opened up an office in Sunnyvale, California last year.

I actually visited them a couple of days ago, and went for a ride in one of their development

vehicles. But, you know, when, when we went to Japan in 2023, for the Japan Mobility Show,

I went with Nissan, and we went to their R&D facility, and they showed us what they're

working on for automated driving for the future. And they were, they were focused on

doing the whole thing in-house, all by themselves doing the entire software stack for

level three hands-off, eyes-off systems, starting in about 2027-ish.

Now they've decided to partner with Wave instead and use some of Nissan's software,

the Perception software, and then use Wave's software for the driving system,

starting in, in 2027. And that's going to be, you know, that's going to be their next generation

ProPilot. So that's going to replace all their ProPilot stuff right now, from their hands-on

stuff, all the way up to hands-off, eyes-off driver assistance, starting in fiscal year 2027,

which in Japan runs from April 27th to March of 2028. So.

I will say that ProPilot has always been weirdly, uh, capable from a company that wasn't doing,

you know, hasn't been doing great. For some reason, ProPilot's always like,

wow, this is actually really nice. Good job, Nissan.

It is kind of funny because you think about that because everyone talks about Supercruise

and BlueCruise as being like, and they're, which are the big ones and they're great,

but it's like, wow, here comes Nissan, the product that actually works too. It's kind of surprising.

You might be surprised, or not surprised to learn that most of what's under the hood in

ProPilot comes from Mobileye, not from Nissan. Well, they made a good choice then.

I mean, they were smart about it. Yeah, exactly.

Just because you get stuff from another company doesn't mean it's going to be

integrated correctly. I think we've done a lot of that.

No, I think they did a good job with it. And I've been, I mean, the variations,

because it's gone through a couple of like releases over the years and it really is quite good.

It's always been quite good. First gen, second gen.

Every time there is something, this is actually really good given wherever the technology was

at the moment, you know. Yeah. The hands-off version that's in the Aria,

I thought worked pretty well, but have you tried it in the Armada or the QX80?

Because they have that hands-off and those vehicles as well.

I haven't had those vehicles. I feel like it. Did I try it? I just had a QX80.

Now you're just dealing with heft. Yeah, right. That's just like the thing,

ways. I don't think I actually tried it, to be honest. I can't remember if I did or not.

I only had a brief time. I did and it was a lot less consistent.

Yeah, it didn't perform as well as it did in the Aria.

Just burst my bubbleway, don't you? Well, that's what I'm here for.

But yeah, you know, I visited Wave and went for a ride in one of their

development vehicles and it was surprisingly impressive.

We didn't have a chance to do any highway driving because we got stuck in some traffic

and we were running out of time. But driving around Sunnyvale, it did really well,

except for one minor incident where it was supposed to do a U-turn at an intersection.

And you know, a lot of most intersections in California, you can do that.

But they, for some reason, it did not do the U-turn where it was expected to

and went halfway down the next block and then did a U-turn.

And then, you know, there was a car stop there in traffic and there was another car parked at the curb.

And we got really close to that parked car and it wasn't clear from, you know, from inside

the car if we actually had enough room to make it. But, you know, the safety driver did not

intervene. We let it go and, you know, as soon as the other car moved, it crept forward

and it actually got through. And, you know, it had a few inches of air, but it went through and did it.

So it worked.

All right. Another automated driving story, Aurora Innovation, which is a Pittsburgh-based company

started by Chris Irmson and Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell.

They're focused on automated trucking and they've been running driverless automated trucks

in Texas since May. And they just did a deal with a company called DeTmar Logistics.

And they are selling some of their trucks to DeTmar to haul fracking sand in Texas.

And so these are going to be driverless operating on a mix of highways and also off-highway

operations. So on dirt roads, you know, out to the fracking fields in the Permian Basin.

There's another company called Kodiak that has also been doing similar operations with a different

company. But there's only been operating off-road. I think you need to acknowledge

what Robby just did. You did Kodiak and suddenly Robby is like,

doing like bare clothes in the background. Oh, I do have a bear.

So this is kind of neat, though. I like the idea of using this kind of stuff for this application,

you know, just it's going to go in these straight routes back and forth. It goes,

probably not a fun thing for humans to have to drive. So.

And they're, you know, they're running these trucks 24 hours a day.

So, you know, we're starting to get some, you know, some real driverless

trucking operations going in Texas and elsewhere now.

Let's see. So it works out. Trucking sucks. Being a truck driver is not great.

And there's not enough of them. So probably because it's not a great job.

Actually, it's hard. It's not an easy job.

All right. Subaru. We hope this for you. No, wait, is this something else? Oh no,

never mind. That's something else. No, that's the next one, the Mazda.

The next one, sorry. Never mind. Ignore me.

So Subaru announced pricing this week for the new Uncharted, which is their

their name for the Toyota CHR. So this is based on the same platform as the

Salterra and the Toyota BZ. But it's, you know, a fastback coupe like crossover.

And it's unlike the Salterra, which is only available in all-wheel drive.

The Uncharted will also be available in a front drive version.

And it's going to start at just $34,995 plus delivery charge of some unknown amount.

Let's see. How much does it say with the delivery charge? Oh, $1,600 for delivery.

No, $1,450, everywhere except Alaska. Where's $1,600?

Oh, poor Alaska.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, cost a little more to ship stuff to Alaska.

So yeah, so this thing's going to have a range of more than 300 miles on a charge.

338 horsepower for the dual motor version. It's got a SAE J3400 charging port.

150 kilowatt charging. So 35 grand. Yeah, that's pretty reasonable.

That's pretty good. Yeah.

Charges at 150. Oh, wow.

You know, it's better than 50.

That's true. So there you go. It's always better. It's better than 140.

Well, yeah. And you know, it's better than the nominal 100 kilowatts.

When they first launched the Saltero VZ4X, you know, it would peak at 100, but you know,

its charge curve would drop off really fast and just dive. And so most of your,

I think on average, charging was closer to about 50 or 60 kilowatts most of the time.

So, you know, this should be a lot better.

All right. Let's talk about Mazda.

There we go. I know that, I know, I know, Nicole, that, you know, the Mazda infotainment

system of recent years has been your favorite in the industry, right?

It's totally been my favorite. I stopped us talking about this last week.

I'm like, we gotta hold this for Nicole.

And I'm looking at it now. I admit to being behind the curve.

Are you telling me they got rid of this stupid rotary thing as I'm reading this?

What are you calling stupid?

The rotary thing in the Mazda. A little tiny.

Yes. Yes. Starting with the new CX-5, the 2026 CX-5,

the rotary controller for the infotainment is gone.

You got a nice big 15 inch touchscreen.

Oh my gosh. I'll buy Mazda now. I've answered my problems.

I would actually consider a Mazda. That's like deal breaker territory for me, that old system.

Hated it guys. Hated it. I know you didn't know that.

Hated it. But I'm so excited for this new one.

Yay. Well done Mazda. You and your code of design philosophy

has finally given us decent infotainment. Woo-hoo.

Damn. Sorry.

Oh, look how happy we've made Nicole.

I'm very happy about it.

So are you glad we saved this, Sam?

I'm glad you saved this. We could have just done it with them.

This is fantabulous news. I'm really genuinely excited about this.

That was my big beef every time someone asked me about Mazda.

I'm like, well, whatever the Mazda was, well, it's great, but.

But. No more buts.

No more buts.

And the best part is even though it's got this big screen and, you know,

Google built in, it still has, wait for it, manual events.

Oh my God, it's like my dream company now.

My dream car is a Mazda CXI.

I'm happy about this because I do think that that was,

and I know they were, they held tight to that.

Gosh, how long have they had that?

100 years.

And it was, first it was no touchscreen at all and just the rotary controller.

Then it was touchscreen for Apple.

At least the early 2010s.

Yeah, so it has been a long time before they finally said,

you know what, nobody likes it this way.

But that took some time.

Like kudos to you for finally getting rid of the system

that wasn't great to begin with.

And also for not making your events part of the system.

Well done.

Yeah.

And the new CX5 will have a hybrid powertrain coming in 2027.

So, you know, I'm not sure.

So this year the 20, it comes out, this is a 26.

So initially just a gas engine.

Okay.

Yeah.

And they're doing a drive program in late January.

So, you know, it should be on sale probably by February or March,

which maybe is not soon enough for you, Nicole.

But they will have a hybrid system for the second model year.

I'll have to see.

I'm not going to rush to buy a car

because I want to get what I want to get.

That's probably a wise choice.

Right?

I'm just, yeah, I'm just going to wait and see what.

Don't forget, everyone.

Please send us your, please send Nicole your advice on the car,

on the vehicle to purchase and why you think Nicole should purchase.

And you can now put Mazdas in there

because they're changing their screens.

Yeah.

You can put a new CX5.

And feel free to, you know, give us, you know,

your reasoning why Nicole should buy the new Jeep Recon instead.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

No.

I'm not doing that.

It's so expensive.

It's expensive.

Like, who's that car for?

It's not for, I don't want that.

It's very nice.

It looks lovely, looked lovely.

When I looked at it, it looked lovely.

I mean, that's all anyone says.

Anyone driven yet?

No one's driven yet, have they?

No, nobody's driven yet.

Okay.

Nobody outside of Stalantis anyway.

Okay.

Just Stalantis.

Okay.

It looks lovely.

I don't have anything against Jeep or the Recon.

You know, knock yourself out.

It's expensive.

It's very expensive for what it is.

Well, yeah, but you can take the doors off.

And you can.

I can take the doors off any car.

And you can take the, what am I trying to say?

Not the windshield.

The windows, the quarter windows.

The quarter windows in the back.

You can take off.

And all that keeps them off.

And it's got the Sky One Touch roof.

Sky One Touch.

And you have that tremendous 230 miles of range.

Bah, bah, bah.

Well, you have to do two range runs.

You have to do one with everything on

and then one with everything off.

So it's like 230 to 260,

depending on how you actually

love your vehicle for a given day.

With everything off, it'll probably be about 120 miles.

Yeah, because you're creating so much turbulence.

Yeah.

Oh, that's true.

I was thinking weight, not turbulence, but you're right.

Yeah, you create a lot of turbulence.

Oh my God, the turbulence.

Where can you go?

Five miles.

All right.

And then finally, Rivian.

I mentioned that I was, I was at Rivian's

Palo Alto facility on Thursday.

And the reason I was there,

they had their first ever AI and autonomy day.

And they made some pretty big announcements.

They, you know, last year, middle of 2024,

when they launched the second generation

of the R1S and R1T,

they completely revamped their electronic architecture.

And they adopted NVIDIA chips for their ADAS system.

And then now the R2 is coming in next spring,

spring of 2026.

But those first R2s are going to have that same system

in there, the NVIDIA based system.

But towards the end of 2026,

they're going to change again.

And they have designed their own custom chips

for their ADAS that are significantly more powerful

and they claim much more power efficient.

So about two and a half times the performance per watt,

which, you know, on an EV is really important

because, you know, all the watts used to drive your computers

are watts that you can't use to actually drive the vehicle.

And so they are going to have more performance,

less power consumption.

And they're going to have a LiDAR sensor,

they're adding a LiDAR sensor to the R2.

And they are going to eventually have

hands off, eyes off driving capability on the R2.

Sometimes later in 2027, maybe 2028,

that, you know, they're going to put the hardware

in starting at the end of 2026.

The software is going to come at some point after that.

That's, I mean, that's everybody's promise.

We're going to put the hardware in

and then we're going to do this software.

Eventually we'll let you have it, yeah.

Drive in the future when you're not driving.

And we'll, yeah, it's again,

it's a really hard problem to solve

and good luck.

Yeah.

The crazy thing is that these things,

like to be honest,

these things are really like shareholder plays.

Like shareholders love this.

It doesn't matter.

If we had been told a million cars,

everyone would be like, man,

but as soon as they say AI and autonomy,

shareholders lose their minds.

Yeah.

It's in money, better spent elsewhere, probably.

But before they get to that,

before they have their own custom chips

and LiDAR and other stuff in the car.

Right now on the R1, they have,

I think sometime this summer,

they added hands-free driving,

hands-free hands-off eyes-on system

like Supercruise that works only on divided highways.

So about 130ish thousand miles of highways.

Sometime in the next few weeks,

they're going to push out a software update

that enables what they're calling universal hands-free.

So you will be able to go hands-off eyes-on

on pretty much every road in North America

that has painted landmarkings.

So about three and a half million miles of roads.

The universe of North America.

Where do you put your hands?

Just Ricky Bobby in the car.

What do I do with my hands?

It still won't be point to point.

So you can't yet put in just put in a destination

and have it do all the stuff to get you

to do all the turns and everything.

You have to do the turns and intersections

and stuff for yourself

and stop for traffic lights

and things like that yourself.

But in between that,

you can take your hands off the wheel.

The point-to-point navigation is coming

towards the end of 2026.

And that's what's going to be on the R2

with the new stuff from as soon as they launch that.

And then some point after that,

you'll be able to go eyes-off as well.

What do you think?

Do you want to go hands-free

but you still have to stop for stop signs

and traffic lights?

That's the thing about the hands-free but eyes-on

is that I end up just driving anyway.

Like my hands are just there.

So it's, you know, sure.

I mean, it's almost like a director

when they make their first short film.

That short film isn't going to make any money,

but it is a calling card for that director.

It's just, look what I can do.

And then later on when I'm going to make my giant movie,

this is sort of the same thing.

Like the hands-free eyes-on is like,

look what we can do.

And then later on,

look at our giant level three system.

I feel like that's where we're at with these things.

It's like, this is what we can do.

Shareholders, again, they love this stuff.

Individuals, I don't, you know,

I don't know what the take rate is on it.

Maybe it's really good.

Maybe people are like, hey, this is nice.

It's really nice when you're on a long,

if you're driving through, say, Nebraska.

This is an outstanding system

because you're just like, oh, God, Nebraska's so long.

That's what you're, this is where it's great.

Do I want someone with their hands off the wheel

while they're driving through town

and children are running around?

Maybe just leave your hands on the wheel.

Just keep them there.

Just a little backup.

Just keep those hands on that wheel.

Yeah.

You're still in charge.

The most important thing is that you're the boss.

And, you know, for all these systems

until they get to a hand or to an eyes-off system,

you will remain the boss.

You are responsible.

So if anything goes wrong, it's on you.

It's not on Riviera.

All your faults.

If someone comes along and they make a chalk drawing

in the middle of the road and it forces your car

to drive into a taqueria, yeah, you're at fault.

Into a taqueria?

Oh my goodness.

That's very dramatic.

The scenario you've created.

These are just my life.

This is all the places I go.

It's taquerias and Costco now.

It's just taquerias and Costco.

That's all I do.

Taquerias and Costco.

Getting $5 chicken, picking up tacos and burritos.

Isn't it the hot dogs that you get at Costco?

I think that's a big thing about Costco hot dogs.

You can get a dollar, it's like a $1.50 hot dog with a drink.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

I just saw someone freaking out about the possibility

they were going away and there you go.

15 years ago, I had a Costco membership from work

and I mostly just used it to get the tires.

This one I had the WRX.

So I just mostly used it to get new tires.

So I'd always just be wandering around Costco

for an hour and a half when we lived in a small apartment

so we didn't have anywhere to put anything.

And I would get the pizza and it would make me sick every single time.

I got the pizza recently.

I don't know because it's pizza, Nicole.

It's the heroin of foods.

It's like, oh, pizza.

No.

You just keep eating it.

That is the heroin of foods.

It is.

He's right.

He's not wrong.

Yeah.

So I got the pizza recently.

It did not make me sick.

So good job, Costco.

So it's that great pizza.

You've developed a tolerance.

Yeah, some time over the last 15 years.

I've created some sort of like, my stomach's been preparing.

Like they've been building up.

All this time.

It's like we are ready now.

All this time.

Bring on the Costco pizza.

Anyway, Costco.

OK.

There's a lot of stuff you can get.

$5 chicken and $1.50 hot dogs are pretty great.

Well, the rotisserie chicken is actually really good.

Five bucks.

We had one last week.

Five dollars.

And you know when I get that chicken,

all the animals know and I don't give them scraps

from anything.

The animals, except for when I'm de-boning a chicken,

then they all just wait around.

Because that's when they know.

They know they're going to get some Costco chicken.

It's pet Christmas when the Costco chicken comes into the house.

Well, you know, whenever we have a chicken

or a turkey or something, you know, after we're done,

after I'm done cutting off as much of the meat as I can,

I always throw the carcass in the instant pot to make some broth.

And then whatever is left,

whatever little pieces of scraps are left on the bone

when I threw it in there.

When we take it out, pick out all the bones,

just get all the little scraps of meat,

and put those in a container and add those to the dog food

when feed the dogs.

Pour it on top.

It's a delight.

It's a little treat.

Oh, they love it.

Yeah.

It's a delightful little treat.

But back to Rivian.

That's what we're talking about.

Sorry.

Part of what they're doing is they are launching

a new autonomy plus package,

which, you know, once they launch the universal hands-free

in January, that's going to be complementary

for Rivian drivers for until March.

And then after that, if they want to continue using

the universal hands-free, they will have to either pay

$2,500 one-time charge for the life of the vehicle

or $49.95 a month to use the universal hands-free.

And I'll have to wait.

You know, I've already requested to get an R1 to test

as soon as they have the universal hands-free

software update available.

I want to see how well that actually works.

I'm trying to figure out if it's actually worth

$50 a month or $2,500.

That's a lot of money.

It is a lot of money.

If you can turn it on, turn it off like you do

with streaming services, if you're going a long trip,

you're like, I'm just going to pay $50

for this really long trip.

But then turn it off, I would not pay as a me.

I would not pay $2,500 for this because even I barely

you like I use like a look.

I just turn off link keep assist.

I just want to and then in my personal car,

when I'm testing it, obviously I leave it on.

But you know, I got to do my job.

And then adaptive cruise control.

I use that sparingly.

I don't really use it all that much to be honest.

Sometimes on long road trips, I'll use it.

Sometimes I'm stuck in traffic.

But most of the time, I'm just like driving.

I'm the tech guy.

I should be testing all this.

I test it all.

And then at the end of the day, I'm just driving my car.

One thing that was good, I spent a bunch of time talking

to the software guys working on this stuff

and tried to extract as much information as I could.

One of the things I asked them was around safety.

And unlike a certain other company that only makes

electric vehicles and claims to offer full self-driving.

One of the things that the Rivian engineer said is that,

as part of this software stack, most of it is AI.

They've got what they call a large driving model,

which is training.

So most of the perception and the control is handled by that.

But they also have rules-based software

that's running around that to provide guardrails,

to try to prevent it from doing anything stupid.

So hopefully, at least based on what they've said,

hopefully this system should be safer than that other system.

But we'll see.

And at least they are committed to multimodal sensing.

So they've got cameras and part of the upgrades,

in addition to the chips, they're getting even higher.

They already have fairly high resolution cameras,

but they're increasing the resolution of the cameras,

adding even better radar sensors and the LiDAR sensor.

And they said, to go eyes off, you really need to have all three types of sensors.

See, that's the right thing to say.

And for a company that whenever they have an event, it feels like joy.

I'm glad that they're concerned about safety and having the correct amount of,

the correct redundancy to make this happen.

Yeah, a little bit of inside baseball.

Usually when you go to these kinds of events,

the media, when companies make announcements, people in the media,

they don't applaud or cheer.

I mean, one exception was when Honda brought back the volume knob on the CR-V

a few years ago after having a touch volume control.

That one absolutely got a cheer from everybody in the room.

But generally, the media do not cheer or applaud for these announcements.

There was one guy sitting two seats over from me from who will remain nameless,

but he definitely, he's a YouTuber and definitely falls under the category of influencer.

And every time RJ or one of the other people made, announced something,

he just had this loud hooping and hollering and cheering.

She's shuttledown.

Shut that. Shut up.

If it wasn't for the woman sitting next to me between us,

I would have just given him a big elbow on the ribs every time he did that.

Settle down.

I once had someone shooting video at an event ask me to stop typing

because they could hear my typing in the video.

And they looked at me like, hey, can you not type?

I'm like, no, I cannot not type.

This is my job.

I'm sorry.

And the person's just like, okay.

I'm a very nice person, I think.

But when I'm doing my job, just let me just...

Just a very nice person really, but...

I think.

But when I'm doing my job, I'm doing my job.

Most of the time.

I'm very nice.

Yeah.

So the other big thing that was part of this announcement was what they called

Rivian Unified Intelligence.

Yeah, there were lots of acronyms the other day.

But the Rivian Unified Intelligence, they're incorporating AI pretty much.

Yeah, they're putting Skynet, they're putting Skynet in your new Rivians.

You know, they put together a platform to orchestrate and basically can use a bunch

of different LLMs, large language models like chat GPT and Gemini and various other things.

And so it can pull in information from different places depending on what you're doing

and what you ask for.

And they've also created what they call an agentic framework that allows stuff to work together.

And this is also launching in January, coming to the R1 as an OTA update.

And the first thing that they demoed as part of the agentic framework

was integration with Google Calendar.

So the demo that they did, you know, they had one of the guys sitting in an R1 and

Westin Ben Said, who's the head of software at Rivian was up on the stage.

And they were doing a chat back and forth.

Rivian was a text chat.

Westin was texting to the guy in the car.

The car was reading the text messages out to him, you know, just like you can do today

on any car with CarPlayer Android Auto.

Where it'll read your text messages to you.

And he was replying back, you know, with voice, which is all great, you know, all stuff you can do.

Then they were trying to, they had, you know, on the calendar, they had a meeting

set up, they were supposed to meet somewhere and said, Oh, can we change the time of the meeting?

So he said, you know, told the Rivian assistant to move this

meeting on his calendar to a different time.

And it did that.

And, you know, you can kind of do that with Google Assistant today.

And Mike, you could at least try to do that with Siri, I think, but it may or may not work.

It may or may not listen to you.

The whole thing is that they're like, Google Calendar.

And I'm like, whoa, hold on, no one cares.

This is what I want like a smart assistant to do.

When I'm driving, hey, smart assistant, make me a playlist of three's, three,

like the top songs from these three artists.

That's what I want when I'm driving.

I like, I know when my stuff's coming up.

I can tell Siri or Google Assistant to like do Google, to do calendar stuff.

It's such a weird like flex, guys, Google Calendar.

The one, the one thing, the one thing out of the, out of the demo that actually was

unique that I hadn't seen done before was, you know, said, okay,

he said, you know, find me restaurants near, near my, near this meeting.

And so, you know, you can do that in Google Maps today.

You know, pulled up a list of restaurants.

And then he said, okay, text the top three restaurants to Waseem.

And that's where it got interesting, because it did actually take the top three

restaurants from that list and dropped it into a text message and sent it to Waseem.

So, it's cool.

Rivian's not going to be the only one that can do this, you know,

probably within the next six months.

But it was kind of interesting, you know.

Yeah. I mean, again, but again, that's such like work stuff.

I didn't buy a Rivian for work.

I bought a Rivian to party.

I'm sorry.

For adventure.

I don't want useful stuff.

I want fun stuff.

Dang it.

Well, it's like, hey, you know, hey, can you, on my Google Calendar,

can you update my campaign schedule?

Rivian's for camping.

I mean, sure, that's, that it was such a weird like,

all this stuff like, okay, okay.

And Google Calendar.

And I'm like, wait, what?

Okay.

That's when they really lost you, didn't they?

I will tell you that my calendar I use, you know,

I have a robust calendar app that I use.

I have tons of things that are going on all the time.

Like this should speak to me.

And then at the end of the day, I'm like,

I want the thing to do fun things.

Maybe I'm a weirdo.

That's fair.

After all the demos, I did have a chance to chat

for a few minutes with James Philbin,

who is the Vice President of ADAS and Autonomy at Rivian.

And I will include that at the end of the show here.

Anything else you guys want to talk about before we wrap up?

Not me, not especially.

Don't forget to email or put in a discord what Nicole should buy.

Yes.

I cannot stress.

This is the most important thing.

This is the most important holiday task.

Help me figure out.

It's the holidays.

I'll give you a different new card.

There you go.

At some point you're going to be sort of annoyed

with family or friends.

Just like, just, oh, you know what?

I'm just going to sit down and write out a long,

you know, write a couple of paragraphs

explaining what Nicole should buy, why she should buy it.

Yeah, this is homework.

I was just saying you guys have homework today.

And so if there's no,

if you don't provide a justification,

there's no reason for Nicole to buy it.

Yeah, unless it's me.

We need, we need.

Regardless of how insane the justification,

you got to give us justification.

Well, welcome back, Nicole.

We miss you.

Thank you.

Missed you too.

All right.

Talk to you all next time.

Bye.

Okay.

So, you know, with the things that you announced today,

with especially rolling out an L3, L4,

so ISOF, brain-off capability, what do you see is the probable

timeframe for that?

Like, do you expect to have ISOF capability at roughly the same

time that you launch the R2 with the LIDAR and the ACM3?

Or is that something that will probably come at a later date?

Yeah, we're not adding any dates on the ISOF today.

I mean, it would be later than point-to-point,

which is, I mean, what would be the talent the next year.

Okay.

And yeah, I think, you know,

part of that is like, we need the fleet, we need that flywheel

turning so that we...

So, you want to have some vehicles with LIDAR out in the field

to collect that data before you're...

Yeah, let's come with ISOF.

And you know, I mean, no one has actually really achieved

this yet, except for in very restrictive...

Yeah, you've got the BMW 7 Series, some Mercedes.

Yeah.

So, we would want to do it in...

We would want it to be actually used.

And then to do that, you really need to build that

confidence through simulations or apprentice mode

through all of those, you know,

making sure you can essentially get to a human-like level

in the ODDs that you cover.

Okay, that's kind of the process.

So, yeah, so we kind of need that flywheel out there

so that we can start to gather all that data

with those statistics that gives us the confidence to ship.

So, as you do start to roll that out,

do you expect that to also be kind of a staged rollout

of the ODD, so ISOF perhaps on highways only first

and then gradually expanding that ODD over time?

The same thing with the purple L4.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Now, I think the only thing I would say is,

I think the ODD is so sort of carved off

and difficult to reason about.

It customs very many like a feature

because it needs to be understandable,

like where should we use it.

So, but yeah, so as long as the ODD

is sort of relative to the standard,

then I think we would definitely do that,

that staged state.

As we gain a confidence in one area

and have always the data flight rules

continuing, right?

So then we get building the confidence

of the next area that we can expand over the years.

So for the ODD, as you launch ISOF capability,

do you expect that to be whatever degree that ODD

is, whether it's divided highways

or something beyond that?

Is your target for that to be a nationwide rollout

or like what Mercedes has done

where it's California and Nevada

and then maybe adding other states over time?

So, I'm posting right now,

both ISOF is actually regulated differently

about each state.

So you would today, and this has done

federal version that comes in before that,

you would have to go state by state

and all the states are slightly different

of what they expect, but she's right.

So yeah, we would go state by state.

So it would be a geographic area

as well as probably a particular

area he reshalled a bit.

And then for the personal L4 ODD,

again, presumably that will start

more restricted ODD, same as what you

fail free, gradually rolling that out.

Dude, with this hardware suite,

with one LiDAR sensor, one forward-facing LiDAR,

your radars, your camera's full,

how far do you anticipate that getting?

You mentioned in the presentation,

dropping the kids off at school.

So putting your kids in the car,

have the car, drive them to school,

they get out, and then the car,

drive itself back.

Do you expect the car to be able

to drive itself around with no one in the vehicle at times,

or is it more that somebody would be in the vehicle

but they're not responsible for any supervision

or intervention or anything like that?

Yeah, so I think there's probably

to be a staging of the pinning machine,

the latch-up piece that you mentioned was though,

because initially, if you think about the part

from the level from the eyes-off

to the customer of four,

so essentially it would be

expanding the ODD to the point where

you could do a useful pull, Germany,

but we still may require even intervention in some cases.

For example, there could just be a mechanical pull,

would it be?

Then you need it.

Or when it reaches the limits of the ODD.

It reaches the limits of the ODD.

I think there's a staging where you have

driver in, but eyes-off,

and then maybe you have,

but you drive out of that seat,

but still around.

If the vehicle is up, it just gets stuck.

It's going to make progress,

so you could get out, you could drive it the rest of the way.

So then like a full-on driver of course,

so I think there probably is a staging.

Okay, and then one last question on the eyes-on part of it.

As you reach the limits of the ODD

and the driver has to take over control,

what is the philosophy that you're taking

in terms of the hand-off,

in terms of timing, how you handle that,

do you have an approach that you're going to take to that?

Yeah, so we have something called an MRM,

which is basically,

so we try to hand back to the driver,

and then if you're not responding,

then we ask you something called an MRM,

which is a minimum risk you remove that.

And typically today you could try a blood and nail,

and then slow it a bit gradually.

So that's kind of our MRM.

And then in future, we'll probably expand that

to like pulling over onto a shoulder if it's clear.

So yeah, so that's kind of the philosophy, right?

So if you want to be,

you know, safer for those users,

say it's basically you always,

you try to hand back to the driver,

they're not responsive,

then you sort of buzz a vehicle,

which was safe, safe, you smell the BC.

Yeah, I guess what I was asking was more,

say your initial ODD for IZOP is divided highways,

and you've got navigation on,

it knows you're coming up to your exit,

and the system wants to alert you to

get ready to take control back.

What's your timeframe for providing that alert,

making sure the driver has got situational awareness

and is actually ready to take control?

Yeah, it's difficult to answer because it depends

what we're demanding of the driver in that case.

So obviously, in the limit,

you could be asleep or you could be,

so then we need to provide a much longer period of time

when we try to wake you up.

All right.

Or your eye, you might be awake,

but if you're focusing on something else,

that would be a different case.

Or your eyes may have to run a road,

for whatever reason, it might be a different case.

So maybe you're monitoring the driver in real time,

we will obviously you're monitoring in real time,

and if you see that the driver is alert and ready,

maybe you cut that timeframe down,

if they're not, and then you're not alerting sooner.

In fact, it's an obvious situation.

So if you're on a European road with no one there,

and you can wait longer,

versus if you're coming up to a complex intersection

and something like that,

you really feel like the driver needs to take tension.

So I think it's difficult to answer

because it's actually at all still levels,

even today that come back

that we have universal mandatory.

It depends on speed,

you're going the upcoming curve,

it should have our tendency of you being

in the recent a few seconds.

So it's not like I said, one simple rule

that we're going to tell you about.

Oh, you mentioned it reminds me,

for universal hands free,

if you are driving down the highway

and there's a construction zone coming up,

is the system going to be able to say,

you know, see that okay,

there's a work zone of a C signs for a work zone

and left lane is closed

to automatically switch over to the right lane

and continue on in that,

or is that going to be a handoff situation?

That's a driver situation.

So that's why universal hands free

is a level two system.

It's a hand system.

We make sure that we're looking at the roads,

but this is some of that,

for example, those types of roads,

something like a construction zone.

And actually I would say the universal hands free

can handle many types of construction zones well,

but I would want the driver to be in the loop

in those cases.

Okay.

So it's not a gap.

If, you know,

we need to build more confidence

in construction zones,

obviously through our days of labor,

we're adding new spheroes.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

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