Car Stuff Podcast Oct 6, 2025

Jeep Drops Wagoneer, Cadillac Optiq Review, ChargePoint Hones Charging Network

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Company

The Drive

The Drive is a website where you can read about cars and the latest news in the automotive world. They write articles and reviews that car enthusiasts find interesting.

Car

Jeep Wagoneer

The Jeep Wagoneer is a large SUV made by Jeep, known for being comfortable and good for off-road driving. It has a long history and is often used for family trips.

Car

Jeep Grand Wagoneer

The Jeep Grand Wagoneer is a big, fancy SUV that is great for off-roading and has lots of luxury features. It's designed to be both tough and comfortable for families.

Concept

full-size SUV

A full-size SUV is a big car that can hold a lot of people and stuff. They're great for families and can handle rough roads.

Car

Chevrolet Suburban

The Chevrolet Suburban is a big SUV that can carry a lot of passengers and luggage. It's great for road trips and has a lot of room inside.

Car

Lincoln Navigator

The Lincoln Navigator is a fancy, large SUV that is very comfortable and has lots of luxury features. It's perfect for people who want a stylish ride with plenty of space.

Car

Chevrolet Tahoe

The Chevrolet Tahoe is a large SUV that can fit a lot of people and cargo. It's good for families and has the ability to tow trailers or boats.

Car

Cadillac Escalade

The Cadillac Escalade is a big, fancy SUV that has a lot of luxury features and space for passengers. People talk about it because it's seen as a high-end vehicle that makes a statement.

Car

Dodge Ram

The Dodge Ram is a big truck that's great for carrying heavy loads and towing things like trailers. People like it because it has a comfortable inside and can handle tough jobs.

Car

Ram 1500

The Ram 1500 is a large pickup truck that is great for both work and everyday driving. It's known for being comfortable and having a lot of features.

Car

Ford Expedition

The Ford Expedition is a large SUV that has plenty of room for passengers and cargo. It's built for families and can tow heavy loads, making it very practical.

Car

GMC Yukons

The GMC Yukon is a big SUV that has a lot of room for people and their stuff. It's popular because it's comfortable and can tow heavy things like trailers.

Car

Nissan Armada

The Nissan Armada is a large SUV that can carry many passengers and has a strong engine for towing things like trailers.

Car

Mercedes S-Class

The Mercedes S-Class is a high-end luxury car that many important people, like ambassadors, use. It's known for being very comfortable and having lots of cool features.

Company

General Motors

General Motors is a big car company that makes many different types of vehicles, like trucks and cars.

Term

EV

An EV, or electric vehicle, is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas, making it more environmentally friendly.

Term

incentives

Incentives are discounts or money offered to help people buy cars, especially electric ones, to make them more affordable.

Car

Ford Lightning

The Ford Lightning is an electric truck that is part of the F-150 lineup. It became eligible for a government tax credit that helps people save money when buying electric vehicles.

Term

EV tax credit

The EV tax credit is a way for the government to help people buy electric cars by giving them money back on their taxes. This makes electric cars cheaper to buy.

Car

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is a new electric car that looks modern and has a lot of cool features. It's designed to be efficient and can charge quickly, making it a popular choice for people looking for an electric vehicle.

Car

Nissan Leaf

The Nissan Leaf is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas, which means you can charge it at home. It's a popular choice because it's cheaper to drive and helps the environment.

Car

Hyundai Genesis

The Hyundai Genesis is a luxury car that offers a lot of comfort and high-tech features without being too expensive. It's made to compete with more expensive luxury brands.

Term

Corinthian leather

Corinthian leather is a fancy type of leather that was used in luxury cars to make the seats and interiors feel more comfortable and high-end.

Car

Mitsubishi Laser

The Mitsubishi Laser is a small car from the 1990s that is similar to the Mitsubishi Eclipse. It was made for people who wanted a sporty driving experience.

Car

Eagle Talon

The Eagle Talon is a sporty car from the 1990s that was designed for performance. It had a turbocharged version that made it faster and more exciting to drive.

Car

Mitsubishi GSX

The Mitsubishi GSX is a performance version of a car called the Eclipse. It has a turbocharged engine and is designed to be fast and fun to drive.

Term

Whether you drive a car, need a car, or just occasionally bummer ride with friends, you've

come to the right place.

Join Jill and Tom as they break down everything that's going on in the auto world.

New car reviews, shopping tips, driving green, electric cars, classic cars, and plenty of

great guests.

This is the Consumer Guide Car Stuff podcast.

All right, this is the Consumer Guide Car Stuff podcast.

I am Tom Appel.

Well, thank you for joining us today.

When you get a chance, do me a big favor, check us out at ConsumerGuide.com.

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And you can listen to back episodes of the podcast right there on our homepage, though

you should subscribe.

All right, in studio with me is Brendan Appel of the Sons of Speed, sitting in for Jill

who's getting a pedicure.

How are you, sir?

I'm great.

My pedicure was earlier today, so.

So you're good.

I'm good.

Yeah, that's why you're wearing sandals.

That's right.

And little tissues between your toes.

Yeah, they're free.

You know, they give them to you for free there.

You forget to bring yours.

How are you, man?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm good.

It's been a while.

Jill's been in studio a lot.

Yeah, she's been hogging the mic, you know, so.

She has.

But glad to be here, happy to be here always, and good to see you.

And then it's been a really nice summer.

It has.

Well, there's just been so nice.

And we're still kind of in summer here, even though it's October.

It's weird because it seemed like the extreme heat just disappeared one day and it was nice.

And we kind of, I don't know if everyone realizes that it's actually warm for the season right

now.

Yeah, we're kind of getting spoiled right now.

We are.

And that's about to fall off a cliff.

I think temperatures dropped like 20 degrees in Chicago, Chicago, where later this week.

Well, as an avid golfer, I don't applaud that change.

And I am actively, like my entire Facebook feed right now is telling people who want

fall to arrive to be quiet because summer is better.

I was actually just complaining today.

Nick DeGilio, whose show I do fairly frequently, he's got a podcast, the Nick D podcast, which

is excellent.

But he was complaining that it isn't cool and crisp enough right now.

Like we don't get enough autumn and that autumn is by far the best season in Chicago.

Okay.

Well, two things can't be true at the same time.

We don't get enough autumn.

That's true.

And summer is the best season.

My argument about Chicago, and it's getting worse, it seems not better, is that we don't

have enough windows open days.

Yeah, that's true.

It's always like just a little too humid.

Right.

Like you get in bed and you're like, uh, it's kind of sticky.

Honey, flip on the air.

Are you like my daughter who just came back to school, home from living in Texas for four

years and cranks the AC to like 62 and I'm freezing my tail off.

We, we feel like we're living in an igloo now in our own house and the bills come in.

Yeah.

I'm like, well, apparently everybody in Texas loves their air conditioning to the max.

So they live in Texas, but they love their air conditioning.

I know.

It's like they're, they're raging against the climate that they lived in.

Oh man, real quick, remind us about the sun's the speed.

Yeah.

So we are a automotive outlet that focuses primarily on how cars drive, how they make

you feel kind of eking out the performance from anything that we can get our hands on.

And you can find everything we do at WeAreMotorDriven.com because we are part

of the motor driven conglomerate that includes auto exotica, rides and drives

in the median, which are run by a great group of people and friends of ours and yours.

And yeah, so check us out.

We are motor driven.com and we are motor driven on Facebook as well.

And in, sorry, Facebook and YouTube is where I was.

And there is now the WeAreMotorDriven podcast, correct, which is very good.

It's very good.

So just search WeAreMotorDriven wherever you get your podcasts.

And all of our stuff, we'd like to say is relatively timeless.

So it doesn't matter when it comes out because we're just really podcast

topic oriented, it's all car topics.

And you'll it's a great thing to listen to when you're on a road trip as a media creator.

And you guys know this, that when you're creating stuff that's going to go up online

and be there forever or for a long time, you worry about whether or not you want

to be timely or have something that's going to be searched in 18 months.

Correct. And it's really tough to do that.

And there are some excellent outlets, The Drive, yes, for example,

which is an excellent automotive outlet.

They're really on top of the news.

They are. And it's tough to compete with that.

So I often write things that are either long term newsing, way in advance

or just classic car stuff that should be evergreen.

Exactly. You do a great mix of both of those.

The Drive is definitely a great news outlet.

So if you want to see what's going on today, that's a great email to get every every day.

We kind of take the opposite extreme where we're just talking about stuff

that's timeless, you know, kind of like best car chase movie scenes and cars

and things like that. Yeah.

You know, it's just it's just good debate topic material.

And we have a great time with the four of us debating.

So yeah, good stuff.

And your podcast is excellent.

Thank you very much.

So interesting automotive news.

There is a rumor going around.

And Jill and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago

and I thought this was what was going to happen.

But it looks like the Wagoneer, the Jeep Wagoneer is going to go away.

Really? But the Grand Wagoneer is going to stick around.

So those vehicles are relatively new for people who don't know about them.

They're large SUVs.

They compete with the likes of the Tahoe, the Suburban, the Navigator

and and the this would be the equivalent of the Tahoe going away,

but the Escalade sticking around. Kind of. Kind of.

That's kind of what that is.

And it looks like Jeep may have overreached a little bit

when they brought out both the care of the Wagoneer and the Grand Wagoneer

because they had a pretty broad price range.

So the Wagoneer was fairly expensive when they were a little ambitious

with their pricing when it when it came out.

And so it looks like and there's news coming down tomorrow,

though it may be embargoed that we're just going to see an expanded

Grand Wagoneer range with new, more affordable models and the Wagoneer will go away.

And if you're a dealership, you're probably happy about this.

Yes, because trying to explain this difference to customers has probably been a headache for them.

It is. And if you've ever passed a what do they call a Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealer,

you see that they don't have enough space for all their cars.

And it's mostly filled up with Wranglers and Ram 1500s.

The one by my house is next to a Costco, which has had an empty lot

somewhere on the general premises.

It wasn't their property.

They they acquired that just to put a whole bunch of cars that they couldn't fit

on their lot to your point.

And you're right, I think that the dealers are going to like it.

I think customers will in their mind,

they're thinking Grand Wagoneer when they're talking about Wagoneer probably isn't so minus.

Well, just like you said, bring some of the affordability into Grand Wagoneer.

You don't need Wagoneer at that point.

No, no, just just a kind of entry level based Grand Wagoneer will do it.

You know, and it probably doesn't help that Stalantis keeps having to recall the Wagoneer.

No, that does not help.

Three hundred twenty three thousand Wagoneer recalls like about 10 days ago.

So not good. No.

So I've got some numbers here.

Grand Wagoneer for the third quarter, thirty one thousand.

I'm sorry, Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer.

OK, so they lump them to sales together.

Yeah, thirty five thousand Tahoe and suburban ninety one thousand expedition and navigator.

What is that? Fifty nine thousand.

The Yukon, they call it Yukon.

Yukon, sixty seven thousand.

Yeah, that's a sell surprisingly well.

That's a moneymaker.

And you know, that's not a fleet vehicle.

You can't go rent one of those.

You can rent the Tahoe.

You can even rent a Grand Wagoneer.

I think Enterprise has the Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer and their rental lineup.

You may be able to rent.

I know you can rent the expedition because I rented one and I forget which company does that.

But I have never seen any of the GMC stuff in rental fleets.

So that's a more impressive.

They protect the resell value of that vehicle.

Oh, yeah, the Yukon and the Tahoe used to be pretty similar.

That's not the case anymore.

The interiors are different.

They are definitely Yukons are definitely upscale.

I like that.

I just the whole thing feels very much more like a cheap Wagoneer.

Ironically, it's just it's just a little more of an outdoorsy brand.

Even the name Yukon just conjures up that image.

And they do, you know, the professional grade label that they put on GMC,

which I think is good marketing.

It's great marketing.

Yeah, professional grade works.

It's like you're the you're the boss.

Exactly. At the construction site kind of thing.

Exactly.

And they play that up very well and it works very well.

Yeah. Escalade 36,000.

That's a total profit.

That is what you think about the price.

They're like up there.

They've got to be up there on escalades with horseship profit pricing.

I think they are. Yeah.

Many of those are IQs.

They're insanely profitable.

Yeah, because they'll start what, 140 now?

Yeah. Armada, Nissan Armada and Infinity QX80.

Those are essentially the same thing that is combined for 22,000.

Interestingly, the QX80 very close to the Armada in sales.

So they're both kind of premium.

I don't think the price difference is big enough.

Right. When I go Infinity,

get the better warranty, get the luxury brand.

And probably free lunches and some breakfasts at certain places.

There you go.

And then finally, the Sequoia with a very loyal, almost 20,000 units so far.

Yeah. So there you go.

That big market for those big SUVs is something that's very American.

You will not find that in a lot of other places.

It's just interesting to hear the sales.

And despite all the competition, they still command the big dollars.

Yes, they still get this money.

Yeah, you wonder why.

OK, so like 20,000 units, not that much you talked about.

I think last week, all of the sedans and what was it?

I think the seven series sold nearly nearly 20,000.

You wonder why does it stick around?

Because the profit margin is huge.

It's huge.

And it's those vehicles are completely amortized

because they still sell well in Europe.

So it isn't a big effort for them to sell them here.

And all of those, all those big sedans are important.

They have to sell them well in places like Russia, I got to think,

because the Middle East, Russia.

Yeah, markets like that.

Yeah, and and and it's it's the preferred

VIP vehicle, let's just say, some of those like the escalators and the navigators.

Do you remember the movie Coming to America?

Yeah, I love the movie Coming to America.

James Earl Jones comes to America and he's going to the Waldorf Astoria.

And he's just there's a chain of black Mercedes S-classes.

Yes, that used to be it.

They used to be like the, you know, the ambassador's vehicle.

And they had flags on the front frontiers and that just looks so badass.

You were that's an arrival.

Yes, it is. Yes.

And then if the guy getting out of the car is James Earl Jones,

like, that's a really an arrival. Yeah, I am King.

He is. I love that, dude. He's also Darth Vader.

So yeah, that's quite a resume.

Yeah, Lord King, you know, it's got the whole the whole royalty thing going.

Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a really good resume.

I know. Yeah, I mean, I would get a job if I had those on mind.

Exactly. So last month, Evie Madness,

as people, yeah, people rushed.

What happened to the cliff?

I actually came here with the express

intention of learning everything you know about what happened on October 1st,

because I unfortunately didn't get a chance to catch up on it.

Did prices stay the same?

Did they drop? What happened?

I get the sense that nothing has happened yet.

OK. And I think everyone's taken a deep breath.

And things will happen.

But the biggest story and my favorite story is that Ford and

General Motors found the greatest work around and you're an attorney.

You'll love this. I will.

They figured out that if they were to put down payments down on vehicles,

essentially buying them for their lease divisions, I think. OK.

They own those vehicles and can claim the incentives.

So it sounds like Ford and General Motors have essentially

leased to themselves every leftover outstanding 20, 25 EV prior to

the expiration. So they are.

General Motors is getting the seventy five hundred bucks,

which they intend to hand out to the customers.

Very nice. That's a good scam.

It is a very.

Oh, that's that's actually good lawyering.

Somebody thought that through real well, read the fine print and acted upon it.

The one thing that keeps going through my mind is do you remember when the Ford

Lightning finally qualified for the EV tax credit?

Yeah. And what did Ford do immediately upon that news?

Raise the price. Exactly the amount of the rebate.

So it seems to me if you could do that, you could do it in reverse.

And maybe these prices will come down by the level of or at least

approximately the level of the prior rebate.

And if that happens, I think it's a win for consumers and ironically,

taxpayers, if that if that happens, Hyundai did raise or sort of lower

the price of the Ionic five already. Yes, they did.

So that's that's an example of what can happen.

And since the incentives went into place, I think we can assume

that manufacturers have gotten better at building these things and they can

build them more efficiently and at lower costs.

Right. And so I want listeners not to forget that your state may offer

an EV incentive. I know Illinois does.

I don't know if California still does.

But Illinois is like it kind of comes and goes.

It's it's like the waning waxing moon.

Yeah. And I think it's it's coming soon.

It's a question of funding, but it's up to two thousand dollars often.

No, four. Four thousand. Yeah.

In Illinois. Wow.

However, they prioritize that by income, which so what that means is

the people who can afford it may not get and first in line to get it.

So I don't know how that plays out logistically or logically even,

but it's still there.

So there are potentially some other incentives,

even if the federal credit isn't there.

It's funny, too, when the incentives originally kicked in,

there was a lot of outcry about how this was just a tax incentive for rich people.

But in fact, there was no other way this was going to happen.

Manufacturers are not going to start losing money on small cars right away

when they can build bigger cars and bury the cost of the EV in the cost of the vehicle.

So that was just the way that was going to play out at first.

And ultimately, we did see far more affordable vehicles.

And I mean, Chevy did come up with the Equinox EV.

The new Nissan Leaf starts at 30 grand.

There's a lot of good news here for EV buyers.

And hopefully we can get through this rough patch without incentives

because they're not coming back in the next three years.

No. And what it will do is it will force the manufacturers

to streamline as much as possible their costs.

And some of that, unfortunately, for us is in the industry,

may come out of the marketing budget as it seems to always be the first victim.

But if it results in better vehicles, cheaper prices to consumers

and they can streamline things and make them better,

that's all the more better for it.

I just I keep thinking back to the the boat that I missed

when they first launched to EV, do you remember this?

The tax credit is that it somehow because of the wording of it,

applied to electric golf carts and people were getting free electric golf carts

for seventy five hundred dollars. I don't remember this at all.

And somehow I missed the memo and I don't have my free golf cart.

Not that I needed one.

But hey, if you're handing them out for free, I love a good loophole.

And I don't remember that.

They close that one pretty quickly.

I don't want to ask the movie. You're maybe too.

So speaking of EVs, you guys recently drove and then did a video about

the Cadillac optic. Yeah. Is it is it optic or optic?

I kind of like the optic. I don't know.

I want to say that I like the optic.

Isn't it sound a little more French?

Celestique. Yeah. Yeah.

It's got a little more panache to it.

And Cadillac French anyway.

Yeah, he probably was. I think he was. Yeah.

Like Chevrolet. Yeah.

So yes, we did drive that vehicle.

Our review is up on our YouTube channel.

Again, we are motor driven.

You can find that YouTube channel.

You'll find that is probably the most recent video.

And I got to say it was an interesting drive.

As sons of speed, we focus on the drive, not necessarily all the bells

and the whistles and the screens and things like that, which were all very nice.

It felt a little less Cadillac to me having grown up with Cadillac.

You know, I've owned of Cadillacs in the past.

My parents owned a Cadillac.

So I've kind of used to like the overopulence of some of those models.

This one was more kind of felt more like a nice

Hyundai or a Genesis vehicle in that it was using sustainable materials.

It was there wasn't a lot of leather in there.

The Corinthian leather wasn't in the vehicle.

But we stuck in a Cordova reference. I did.

I think that's like that's like 10 up.

I'm really good at that.

Randy's not looking to have you, but

but but the thing that got me about this vehicle, I don't know what it was,

but the steering was just weird.

It had this weird almost like a torque steer stick to it.

It wasn't like it was like a normal torque steer.

So if you don't know what torque steer is,

if you have a front wheel drive car that has a lot of power and not balanced

half shafts, you step on the on the gas,

especially when you're turning or even when you're not,

that the car wants to pull one way or the other.

Yeah. And it could be especially pronounced with a turbocharger.

Yes. And if you ever get a chance to drive a front wheel drive

turbo talent or GSX or laser, boy, did those things have torque steer.

Anyway, it wasn't yanking the wheel, but it wasn't returning to center on its own.

Oh, that's holding in weirds places.

It was very odd.

It was the only was was that a drive mode thing?

We tried in different drive mode that it seemed to stick around for all of them.

So I don't know if some of these vehicles we get are pre-production.

All I'm saying is that if you're going to look at this vehicle,

test drive it, make sure you test drive it, test drive it in different modes.

And just, you know, it may be this was a fluke of this particular vehicle

and not the whole lineup.

I haven't really heard much said about that elsewhere,

but that particular vehicle had some steering weirdness going on.

It's funny, I was just talking about what makes a car sporty with Nick DeGilio.

And one of the things I talked about was steering field.

Yes. And how steering field, no matter what, is largely artificial now

because all steering is electric. Yeah.

There's no hydraulic system anymore.

And that's for a bunch of reasons, including eight S systems and autonomous

driving and electric cars where you wouldn't have a hydraulic pump.

And it's a shame about that.

And it'll be interesting, you know, because there's a V version,

a high performance version of this car.

Oh, it'd be good to know if that feels better.

I would love to drive that and figure it out because we were looking for a V button

because sometimes even though you're not in a vehicle, it'll have a V button on it.

And the V button will sort of just perk it up and give it a little more goose.

This thing did not have a lot of power and

but otherwise it handled really well.

It was kind of had that nice sport tune suspension you get

typically in an Audi of BMW.

So it handled twisty roads.

Well, but for that steering issue that might be an anomaly,

I would cross shop this thing with a Genesis G V 60, for example.

OK, something along that line, which is approximately the same price

was mid fifties to start with about high fifties to finish with.

Cadillacs got five electric vehicles right now.

So which is a lot, which I think is the most of any retailer in the United States.

And I think to a large extent, what they're trying to do with these vehicles

is really replicate the gas vehicle experience 100 percent.

I don't think that they're stepping out further.

Now, I just drove the Volvo X 30 and that's kind of a new age vehicle

that that felt new and it felt electric and it was wonderful.

I was going to say, I have a feeling you liked that vehicle.

I love that vehicle like crazy.

And that had light steering, but it was good and progressive steering.

And we drove the X 90, which is the very big brother to the 30 and loved it.

Yeah, I mean, and I this is I had an XC 90, which is the gas version.

And this thing was nothing like that vehicle.

I mean, it might have looked the same from the outside similar.

It was such a good vehicle.

I couldn't believe it.

Given how good Volvos electric vehicles seem to be,

I think that Polestar, though, they've had a very rough launch.

Yes, has a bright future.

Yeah. And I'm driving the Polestar three soon.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Let's plug last week's episode where you have a nice discussion with Polestar.

Yeah, the Polestar folks and they seem to be ready to go now.

And they got, you know, they got kicked in the butt by by tariffs

and having to move production.

So the X 30 is not coming in as affordably as it could have, right,

which is a bummer.

But it's still, I think at forty six grand, forty eight grand, a good deal.

Yeah, we drove the three at Polestar three at the rally back in May

and really enjoyed it.

In fact, we drove it back to back with the Volvo X 90

and a lot of the same sort is in there.

But it so it felt like a very sporty version of the X 90,

which we already loved the dynamics on that vehicle.

And it just got better when it got into the Polestar.

Yeah. All right.

So you've got the the optic video up.

How can people watch that?

Yeah, go to YouTube, search we are motor driven and just pull up the list

of videos that should be right there on top.

I need to watch that. I think I did watch that.

Yeah. It's been up for a little bit.

A little bit. A couple of weeks.

Yeah, I think I've seen that.

All right, we're going to take a break when we come back.

We talked to Rob Newton, senior director of marketing at Charge Point,

the the level three charging people.

Yes, the very important part of this whole project.

And given things I've said about Charge Point, it's really good of them to join us.

Yes, indeed. All right, let's take a break.

We'll be right back.

Questions or comments?

Drop us a line at carstuffatconsumerguide.com.

That's carstuffatconsumerguide.com.

Welcome back to the Car Stuff Podcast.

And we're back.

This is the Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast.

I'm Tom.

He is Brendan Appel, sitting in for Jill Simonillo this week.

How are you doing, sir?

Good. He almost called her Jesus.

I did. I did.

I was actually going to say the word Jesus.

You caught that, which is really weird.

If I had a long list of Jesus like people,

I don't know if Jill would be on it.

We love you, Jill.

Yeah. Yeah, it's not just a gender thing.

No, no. All right.

We're going to talk a little charging now.

Excellent. We're charging.

We just talked about EVs.

Now we're going to talk about EV charging.

The four biggest networks right now in the U.S.

are Tesla, Electrify America, EVGo and Charge Point.

All right.

And going back in time, I've been driving EVs for a long time now.

I've had trouble with all of these, but Tesla.

I've never had the opportunity to use a Tesla network.

But I'm hearing good things that that that Charge Point is doing a lot

about quality and a lot about expanding their network.

And I think they're good sports being down the show.

Yes. And I appreciate that.

On the phone right now is Rob Newton,

the senior director of marketing at Charge Point.

Rob, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks, Tom.

Thanks for having me.

And it's not fair to make me start laughing right before you.

I was giggling to myself and had to mute really quick

just in case you guys hear me in the background.

I have, in fact, had bad experience with most of the charging networks.

And I'm glad to hear not only that that Charge Point is doing stuff

about quality, but I've also had some experiences locally,

not with Charge Point, but with a different brand.

And my last three experiences have been perfect, absolutely perfect.

They couldn't have gone better.

And you've got lots of news about not only quality,

but also expanding the network.

And one of the most interesting things, if I can quote your CEO,

combined with Eaton's end to end grid capabilities,

Charge Point is delivering solutions to help EVs win on a pure economic.

I'm pure economics, regardless of tax incentives or government support.

Well, that's darn good news, sir.

Yeah, I think, you know, as we look at what we're doing with Eaton,

we've kind of been throwing out this 30, 30, 30.

When you're doing these deployments, we're looking at 30 percent lower capex.

So, you know, what you're going to spend up front,

30 percent lower operational expenses for when you've got it in the ground

and then about 30 percent smaller footprint.

So you want to make it sit everywhere.

You want to make it make sense from an affordability perspective.

That, you know, what what was kind of just good for the planet before.

We really think it's going to be good for business

and we're going to be able to see a lot faster returns on investment,

which hopefully needs more charges and more places for more people.

So talk a little bit about the business.

Is this a profitable market to be in right now,

providing electricity at the fast DC pace?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think what we the way that we look at this

is a little bit different.

So first of all, we we actually aren't technically network operators,

ourselves, many of our customers, what you'd call a charge point operator, right?

And we what we do is we enable them with the charging hardware,

the software and the services for them to be able to take full advantage of that,

whether that's a business that's going to be driving, you know,

bringing drivers to their place of business in order to drive more revenue,

whether that's a workplace who is going to offer it as an amenity

in order to get better people into their companies and ultimately,

you know, have a higher quality employees that they get a better,

you know, they have a better business outcome from that respect.

Or it's a fleet, right?

And a fleet is a little bit different.

They're thinking a lot about cost and we're able to help them bring

their total cost of ownership of their vehicles.

And of course, their fueling costs way, way down.

So for all of those reasons, we really believe that we can actually help.

A lot of those folks break even on their charging very quickly,

while also allowing them, you know, in the case of the retailer or the workplace

for when they're in off hours, you know, the charge for charging

and make some money off the electrons that are transferring to the vehicle as well.

Interesting.

So will consumers see charge point equipment and charge point service

under other brand names?

You can.

So we offer our chargers to a number of different businesses.

And then we also allow them to rebrand them, right?

So you might go out to say a love truck stop and you'll see a bunch

of charging DC fast chargers with a love skin on them.

They'll still usually have a charge point at the top and you'll know

that it's going to carry that.

But we allow folks to rebrand the chargers in order for them to, you know,

because a lot of these folks want to want to have, you know,

have it show up in an environment where their brand is very important to them,

right? It still will carry the charge point branding as well

on the on the on the on the cables and usually at the top of the station,

depending on which one we're talking about.

But we don't white label them out to other other brands.

The only partnership that we have where there's something similar to that is

that many of our chargers will now carry the charge point powered by

Monica. And that's because we are creating a joint solution with Eden,

where they're providing the power distribution, power distribution

equipment and we are providing the chargers.

And it's all sort of part of one big package.

You know, I think what you've done in this space since 2007

is got to be difficult.

And I think what most people don't realize is how hard it is to start

something that is brand new, like a new charging network.

But when they get to a charger that isn't working, they're not thinking about that.

They're not giving you any grace whatsoever.

They're just knowing that they need to get their vehicle charge.

And they're mad that it doesn't work.

What would you say are some of the top reasons why,

just so people understand how difficult this is or what the issues are,

what are some of the top reasons why a charger might not work when you want it to work?

Yeah, I know there's a ton, right?

But I think number one is bad install.

And I think, you know, you can test these things as much as you want

when you put them, when you build them in the factory.

But if you don't put them in the ground, right,

whether you set them up with the wrong type of power set capabilities,

whether you haven't done a good job on the make ready,

there's just a whole bunch of things that can go wrong.

So a few things we've done there, we actually offer our own deployment services

so we can go out and work with our partners in order to get those put in the ground the right way.

We also have created a training and certification program for all those partners

so that you have to train on general EV charging install.

And then also for each one of the stations that we offer,

you can train on that specifically so that you're certified to install that particular station.

So again, we want to make sure that we're empowering the industry

to actually do this right and to make sure that those chargers go into the ground effectively.

The other big thing we're seeing out there is vandalism, right?

Like so many of you put in an appointment and two weeks later, all the cables are cut.

I've seen that.

So there's two things for that.

One, yeah, it's crazy.

And the cables as they are today, most of them, you get a decent bowl cutter.

It's just, you can take out 10, 15 in a minute.

It's really bad.

So what we did was we created a cut resistant cable.

Resistant, not going to prevent the cut.

In fact, that particular one, once it's got a little cut, it's not usable anymore,

but it's going to take you instead of one second, it's going to take you 15, 20, 30 seconds.

And then on top of that, we built something called charge point protect,

which is taking the heat sensor in that cable.

And once it detects that something's trying to cut through it, an alarm goes off.

Not just on that station, but on all the stations around it that you deem,

you want to have that alarm go off.

It'll tell them, hey, the owner of the station, the authorities have been notified.

And so, you know, you can imagine, instead of just walking up, having nobody notice that you're

cutting 10, 15 cables, all of a sudden that you're trying to get through one, you're struggling,

all of a sudden the alarm's going off and noise is going off, the lights are going off.

So we hope that that's going to offer a really strong deterrent that, yeah,

you'll lose one cable, but you're not going to lose 15 on your whole site and take the whole

thing out.

So those are just a couple of the things we're working on in order to really increase the

reliability and ultimately the durability of the station.

Rob, in terms of quality or reliability, do you have any numbers that sort of express how

things have gotten better in, say, the last five years or even just the last two years?

I don't have great hard numbers.

What I can tell you is that we used to have so many issues that it was hard for us even to

respond on some of these things, but now we do offer a number of different support services

that allow for you to be able to take care of these things with a lot greater certainty.

For example, our Assure Pro Service offers 24-hour resolution times and then a 90%

uptime guarantee.

So that's really, really helpful in assuring that there is some reliability to those.

And then on top of that, we've also created this new service called Safeguard Care,

which is just a group of people that come out and check on your stations.

So we've got a ton of stuff in the background.

We've got a network operation center that's tracking a lot of things.

And we didn't have this in the past.

It can track almost everything at the digital level that might be going wrong with your

stations so that we can not only roll a truck out to those stations when we see it,

even proactively, we can tell that something's about to happen.

And we can go ahead and take care of that.

Excuse me, now we've got people that are coming out to the station so that anything

that they don't pick up digitally, we're able to actually see, so you can see a cut cable,

a broken lens, a broken latch.

And those things can also be seen every couple of weeks or every month,

depending on your plan, so that we've got people out there.

So I'd say that while I don't have hard numbers, we have a lot of different use cases

that we started to account for to make sure that no matter what is actually going wrong

with your station, we're able to address it quickly and proactively,

and then get those stations back up and running fast.

So why is charging an EV hard?

You get the sense, I think, if you're a regular consumer, you want to buy an EV,

you think it should be as easy as plugging your car in.

Like, how complicated can that be?

You know, you plug your TV in and that works.

So what is it about charging an electric car that is actually complicated

and actually causes these issues that result in unhappy customers?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things is that the standards are different, right?

So a lot of people will show up to a station, maybe they just show up to a station that's

nearby, they didn't use an app to find one that's compatible with their vehicle.

That's what I do.

They'll look at it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And you might find that the standard on that one is different,

and that you got to drive around a little bit to find one.

So one thing that we created is something called Omniport.

And Omniport carries both the J1772 standard, which was the original standard in North America,

and then the NAX cable as well, which was, for lack of a better way to describe it,

it was a long time known as the Tesla Charger.

And now many other OEMs are starting to adopt the NAX standard, but we don't want the station

owner to have to be sort of prognosticating on who's going to adopt what and when.

They shouldn't be doing that.

They run a business that does something completely different.

So with this, they don't have to guess anymore.

They put this in, and we still offer Chatham-O cables as well, but basically almost every

vehicle on the road now is one of those two standards.

So every port is going to be able to charge almost every vehicle on the road.

It also, that also makes it super easier for drivers.

They just pull up, if they have it in their phone and they tap their phone on it to charge,

it's automatically going to deploy the right one.

But they also, on this station, can choose which one is right for them.

I think that that's going to take away from a lot of that confusion and a lot of that difficulty

being able to find a place to charge, because ultimately it's just about port availability.

I mean, even when we talk about reliability, we really are talking about like, if I pull up to

this thing, is it going to work, is it going to work for my car?

And so between the reliability things that we talked about earlier, and also the stuff that

we're doing with things like OmniPort to make it, you know, every port makes it can charge every

vehicle, I think we're going to make it a lot simpler for folks.

But, you know, acknowledging it's hard.

And I think that, you know, people need, are sort of moving into a world where it's not like a

gas station where you can just pull up.

Sometimes you might need to do a little bit more on the front end to make sure that you're

going to be able to find the charging.

So talking about ChargePoint specifically now, does it make sense then if you own an EV

to sign up with you guys and have a ChargePoint account, or is it just the same experience

if you just flash your credit card?

Yeah, I think it does make sense.

Within the ChargePoint app, you're able to find over a million charging stations between,

you know, the ones that are ChargePoint stations and about 860,000 that are on our roaming partner

networks.

So there's over a million places to charge across North America that you're able to,

that you're able to find.

And, you know, I think when you, when you use that, you're also able to see, you know,

as I said, sort of what type of charger it is, what the, what the charging standard that

they're using on every charger is.

You can actually enter in your vehicle and then it will just show you chargers that are

going to work with your vehicle.

So you don't have to, you don't have to, you know, deal with kind of the guesswork of trying

to figure out whether this one's going to work or that one's going to work.

That's right.

And we've got a lot of really cool stuff coming.

So in the very near future, we're going to have a lot of enhancements to the app that we're

looking forward to sharing.

It's going to be, you know, think things that essentially make it more of an experience

as opposed to just being able to find a place to charge.

And having a ChargePoint account, does that affect the price you pay?

Do you get a discount for membership?

So having a ChargePoint account does make the service fee reduce.

The other thing is, you know, if you're charging at a workplace, for example, that

account is going to be part of your credential that can potentially put you in a group that

charges for free, right?

So if one of our larger customers who has, you know, a thousand chargers in their parking

lots across their large campus has set up a group for the workplace customer, they will

then be able to charge on those chargers for free.

Whereas if you and I went to visit that office, we would then have to, we most likely would

have to pay a certain fee in order to be able to charge those charges.

I got you.

I want to go back to the press release a little bit that you guys shared about Eaton,

your cooperative effort with Eaton.

And one of the most interesting things in there to me was the capability to deliver

up to 600 kilowatts of power, which sounds a little futuristic and gee whiz, because right

now I think the fastest networks out there are about 350 watts.

And we keep hearing about cars coming out of China, you know, that can charge in three minutes

and all that, but 600 watts is getting you pretty close to, I hope, I think the same

time it takes to fill your car with gas.

How realistic is that?

Because right now I don't think there are that many vehicles on the road that can accept power

that quickly, but do you see those coming down, coming down the pike?

And how soon will you get those chargers out there?

You're absolutely right.

And that it is a relationship between what the vehicle can accept and what the charger can

output.

And we are seeing vehicles doing this.

So we just actually had a lucid gravity come, come over to the, to the, to the headquarters

to charge and we were able to get it up to 400 kilowatt output, which is awesome.

And that was actually on our existing platform.

Yeah, really fast.

We were really, really excited.

Now, lucid, obviously very high end vehicle, like, you know, talk about, it is quote unquote

a futuristic vehicle, right?

But we are seeing these come out.

The other thing I'll say is like, you know, charging deployments take time, right?

So when we announced a charging, you know, a charger that's going to be able to do that,

you know, once we start selling that charger is still going to take a while for those deployments

to happen because it's part of new construction, et cetera, et cetera.

So we've got to be ahead of the vehicle with the capabilities that we can do as a charger.

And I think, you know, when in a year's time, when you start seeing those come out,

you're probably going to see the first few vehicles be able to actually charge close to

that or, you know, 500, 600 kilowatts.

So I think that's that, you know, it will be, it will become more prevalent as those

chargers are out there.

You know, we also want to keep in mind like the chargers need to be ahead of the curve

because they're going to stay on the ground for 10 years or more while the vehicles continue

to grow and sort of evolve.

So again, we want the chargers to be, you know, slightly ahead of the curve in terms

of charging capability.

And then when the vehicles are ready for it, we're going to be ready for that.

Rob, we've run out of time, but where can people find out more about ChargePoint

and ChargePoint chargers?

Check us out at ChargePoint.com.

You can find all of our different charging capabilities there.

We're, you know, super excited to continue to deploy more and continue to build out this

great thing that I think is now just as good for business as it is for the plan.

Yeah, it is great stuff.

Thank you for sharing today.

That was Rob Newton with ChargePoint.

We're going to take a break.

And when we come back, quiz time, quiz time, quiz time.

Questions or comments?

Drop us a line at carstuff at consumerguide.com.

That's carstuff at consumerguide.com.

All right, we're back.

This is the Consumer Guide Carstuff Podcast.

I am Tom.

He is Brendan.

We've been talking a lot about EVs today.

Yes, and we know what we forgot to talk about.

What's that?

Your prodigious online presence.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, I am CarGuyTom.

And that's on Twitter X and on Blue Sky.

I'm really far behind again on my car spotters from the weekend, but I will get those up.

Hashtag CarSpotter.

You know, I just put up a CarSpotter on our...

What'd you find?

Well, it's kind of a mystery.

I know what it is, but I want everyone else to go guess.

So if you go to our Twitter is Sons of Speed on X.

I keep calling it Twitter.

You will see a covered vehicle that I found in Houston that it's pretty cool.

I was hoping it was a Daewoo or an Asuzu.

No.

I'm pretty good at those.

It's a little cooler than those.

If you want to have a skill that pays no money and never will,

it's being able to identify Daewoo's and Asuzu's at a distance.

Do you remember the days when we could identify vehicles by their headlights at night?

I have talked to my buddy Dave about this a lot.

We could drive around at night on the highway and based on tail light signature or headlight

signature, we knew what they were.

Exactly.

And that's how you knew the cops were coming.

Yeah, especially back when it was the diplomat and the grand fury were most of the cop cars.

They were really easy to identify.

I'm a little younger.

So when I was driving, it was the Caprice Classics and I could nail them from

a long ways away.

Those were easy.

Unless someone messed with you and it was the rare Pontiac.

Right.

Which was very similar, actually.

Speaking of Pontiac, I heard last week's quiz.

Jill, you did very well.

I'm surprised.

Yeah.

But because, you know, it was it was it was older cars, you know,

or she's typically not her strong suit.

How can people follow you guys?

Yes.

So we are at on Facebook.

We're Sons of Speed Red Line Your Soul.

You can find us there.

We are motor driven everywhere online as well, including Instagram.

And I don't think we are motor driven.

It's not on TikTok and it's not on Twitter.

So there in those two places, just search Sons of Speed and you'll find us.

There you go.

Yeah.

I know you guys are on Twitter X or just go to our website.

We are MotorDriven.com and all the links are there.

There you go.

All right.

Are you ready for a quiz?

I am.

You haven't done a quiz in a long time.

I know.

Let's hope it goes well.

I came up with one that I thought would be a little obscure.

Okay.

But but kind of up your alley.

Okay.

The quiz today's the quiz topic is did it have a V8?

Oh, I like it.

All right.

I've got five cars for you right here.

You just have to tell me if there was ever a V8 installed in that vehicle.

You can't see me perking up at the dimension of V8s, but I did.

All right.

Number one, the Toyota 4Runner.

The 4Runner has had a smooth V6 for ever and ever.

A big, smooth, torquey lump.

Yeah.

Low horsepower, lots of torque.

And they just just just got rid of it in this latest iteration.

I don't think it ever got a V8.

I would say no.

It did.

Oh, no.

We're kidding.

And I completely forgot about this.

But between 2003 and 2009, the 4Runner was available with a 235 horsepower, 4.7 liter V8.

I was going to say it's a 4.678.

Yeah.

Because that 4.7 was available in the Tundra for a while too.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

That's a weird one.

Well, good on Toyota Ben on me.

I'm sorry.

All right.

Very similar vehicle.

The Nissan Pathfinder was the Nissan Pathfinder ever equipped with a V8 engine.

Wow.

Again, Pathfinders.

It's a vehicle that's moving four-cylinder.

Well, the Armada always had the V8.

Boy, that is a tough one.

The Pathfinder ever have a V8.

I don't think it did.

Please don't tell me it did.

It also did.

Oh, god.

This one I sort of remember.

Japanese brains are killing me.

Well, we talked about the V8 that used to be in the Armada.

Same V8, the 5.6 liter V8 between 2008-2012.

I'm not sure what years in that range it had to put that generation of the vehicle.

Those are not that big of vehicles that have V8s in them, so.

No.

And I don't know why they thought they needed to do that.

But you know what?

If you go back that far, Ford was cramming V8s in the Explorer.

Jeep was putting them in the Grand Cherries.

Yeah.

And Chevy was crowning them in the Trailblazer GMC and the Envoy.

And this is why Tom is the test guru because he comes up with the vehicles that like,

even if you know this stuff, you don't know this stuff.

Well, you forget it.

Yeah.

The Buick Reneer, for example, was available with a V8.

Oh, no.

No one remembers the Reneer.

No.

Much less that it had a V8.

It's actually a nice car.

So I need like, you know, three out of the next five questions.

Or, well, there's six questions total with the bonus.

I need three to get away.

Five questions total and you need three for a win.

Down to zero now.

All right.

The Buick Lucerne.

Gosh, I don't even remember what the Lucerne looks like.

My dad owned a Lucerne.

Was it in well?

Is this it, Dan?

It was.

It was sort of that.

All the brands that I don't pay attention to, Buick, Nissan,

I mean, I do pay attention to Toyota.

I should say.

The base engine in Lucerne, if I'm correct,

was a Chevy 3.9 liter V6.

Well, did it ever have the irons?

Not the Iron Duke, but the 3,800 that honey of a six.

Lucerne never did.

Okay.

The previous Buick did.

Yeah.

What am I not thinking of?

Well, the Park Avenue had it.

Or Lucerne.

Yeah.

That was a great engine.

The Lucerne doesn't.

Buick even have a V8 after they jettisoned them in the 70s.

Geez.

All right.

I you got to have a no in there somewhere.

So I'm going to say no.

It did.

You can't have three yeses.

That's not fair.

In a row.

Yeah.

It was the 4.6 liter North Star V8.

And since they were cramming that in the North Star in a Buick.

Only because I guess because basically technically that vehicle

was the same as the Bonneville and the Cadillac DTS.

So as long as they were cramming V8s into the other ones,

they knew it was going to fit here.

You've got to maximize your investment dollars, I guess.

I guess.

You need to get the next three, sir.

Oh boy.

Hey.

The Oldsmobile Trofeo.

That's me growing my eyes.

The Trofeo was such an interesting car because it was really a doodied up.

A doodied up.

Wasn't that.

Toronato.

Yeah, exactly.

It was the size of a Toronato.

Yeah.

And it was basically a Toronato.

I remember the Toronato was a really nice vehicle back in its day.

I love the Toronato.

Yeah.

Especially the first generation.

And then that really boxy generation that kicked in around 79.

Did the Trofeo have that like abbreviated trunk?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

It's kind of gangly.

It was weird looking.

It was a bit weird looking, but in like,

in like an affectionate way, almost.

Mechanically, it was related to the Buick Riata.

Okay.

And a lot of people think that that was a beautiful car.

And to me, it's like, it's a little weird looking.

Yeah, yeah.

Little misshapen.

That thing was not well put together.

Well, if it's related to the Riata.

I've heard that.

Never had that.

Never had a V8.

I'm going to say no.

It did not.

Okay.

Finally, we get to a no.

Fourth question.

Only powered by the Buick 3800.

There you go.

Ever.

And not even the fun supercharged version.

Well, yeah, but still that engine will last forever.

All right.

You probably know this one off the bat.

The Plymouth Proller.

No, and it should have.

See, this is the question I was thinking I was going to get.

Number one.

There was a Plymouth concept car.

And I forgot what it was called,

but it was based on the Proller stuffed full of V8 goodness.

So I forgot what that was called.

Was it the Venom?

I don't know.

The Venom was like the baby viper.

And it did put a 5.2 in there.

And it was a concept and they should have built it.

Because people would have bought it.

And they just didn't for some reason.

And that was the one concept that from the 90s

that lots should have built.

Yeah.

So we're going to miss on that one.

Plymouth Proller, crazy little roadster.

Sold by Plymouth for one year before Plymouth went out of business.

Yes.

And then became the Chrysler.

Yeah.

I didn't realize they skipped a year.

Learned this today.

Oh.

So 1997 Proller 1999 through 2002.

It was Chrysler Proller.

Which doesn't have the same alliteration, does it?

No.

And then it was powered by a 3.5 liter V6.

That was only 214 horsepower.

And stuck with a five-speed auto-stick automatic.

Yeah.

Well.

When it became a Chrysler, it did pick up a lot of horsepower.

And it went to 253.

All right.

You need to get the bonus question.

Wow.

It matters this time.

Here we go.

It does.

Yeah.

Chexmix.

Okay.

I love Chexmix.

I don't know if my mom ever made Chexmix.

But you've been able to make it.

You've been able to buy it since 1987.

As a mix.

Yeah.

You could just buy it that way.

And it was just their way of selling like all four versions.

Is it rice, corn, wheat?

Yeah.

What was he on?

I don't know.

Sennelina?

I have no idea.

Oh.

Which I learned what that is actually.

Sennelina?

Yeah.

It makes pasta.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

Oh.

I didn't know that.

That's what they used to make like pasta in Italy.

Because I took an Italian pasta class in Tuscany.

Oh.

I was lucky I knew the word.

I didn't know what the word was.

So you're going to learn something, dude.

Because I've got nothing to do, I was at the Chexmix website today.

And I've got four different varieties of Chexmix here.

You have to tell me which one is the fake.

Okay.

Are you ready?

I am ready.

Identify the fake Chexmix.

All right.

Because we're adults, this is what we do with our time.

Spicy dill.

Okay.

Strawberry cream.

Bavarian bratwurst, cheesy pizza.

So the only one that sounds off, what was the second one?

Strawberry cream with an accent over the E.

Like Chexmix is not supposed to be sweet.

And that is a savory type.

You know, they never put candy in it, at least that I know of.

It always had the pretzels and the mustard powder and the onion powder.

And you know, they had that.

So okay, one more time.

I think I have my choice.

All right.

Spicy dill.

Sounds about right.

Strawberry cream.

Bavarian bratwurst, cheesy pizza.

Yeah.

So the last two sounds exactly correct.

The first one was spicy dill, which also same flavor category.

So I'm going to say the strawberry is the fake.

It is not.

Oh my.

Nope.

The bratwurst is the fake.

Womp, womp, womp.

Yeah.

They didn't make an Oktoberfest bratwurst.

They did not.

There was a time when, like, I think their primary outlet is 7-Eleven.

And I used to walk into 7-Eleven's a lot for Diapepsie.

Yes, you did.

I remember.

And if I found a new variety of Chexmix, my daughter and I would sample those.

But there's like extreme flavors.

There's bold.

And there is another sweet one.

Is there?

What do you think?

Is it, what is that chocolate marshmallow thing?

Is it like muddy buddies or something?

It's like a s'mores thing.

It's not called s'mores.

Yeah.

But it's good.

But it is, it is sweet.

Yeah, that's something from my childhood that I would never associate with sweetness.

So unfortunately, yes, I have lost the quiz.

I apologize.

I let everybody down.

You know, the thing about Chex and Chexmix, when I was a kid,

and I'd be having breakfast, and it would usually be like rice Chex or wheat Chex.

Not that exciting.

But I'd be reading the box.

Yes.

I'd be reading the box, and it was always a recipe for Chexmix on the side of the box.

There was.

And my mother never made it.

No, they never made it like that.

They just make their own recipe.

This is what we did before we had phone's children,

as we used to read cereal boxes while eating.

Or the thing about that is you'd have a whole box of cereal,

five or six or seven breakfasts lined up, and then there'd be a maze,

sometimes on the back of the cereal, which you did once.

And it was too easy.

Well, and if you wanted to cheat at the maze,

it was really easy.

You just started at the exit and then fortuated at the beginning.

Yeah, so the maze wasn't good.

The games on the box weren't good.

You needed stuff to read.

Yes.

Yeah.

And the ingredients weren't that interesting.

No.

Although now they're getting longer and longer,

it would probably take you an entire time to eat a bowl of cereal

to read the ingredients on a bowl of cereal.

All right, I got this here for you.

I drove here today.

In a taxi cab.

Oh, it looks like a taxi cab.

It does look like a taxi cab.

I didn't get the name of that color yet, but I'm in the new Prius.

I've always been a fan of the Prius,

and now the Prius looks good, which is weird.

I do question the Prius' position in the Toyota lineup

because Toyota does a hybrid everything.

Right.

And the Camry is all hybrid.

The Corolla is available as a hybrid,

and those vehicles rival this vehicle for space and efficiency.

So I'm not 100% sure, and I don't get it from their marketing,

what this vehicle is supposed to be.

Is it the virtue signal vehicle now still?

I don't know.

Maybe it is still that.

Maybe there's still people who just want people to know that they're doing it.

It's very good looking now.

And I've talked about this before,

that from the front bumper to the top of the windshield

is about the same rake as you get in a Lamborghini Countach.

It's one angle.

Yeah, and so it looks good.

Clearly super aerodynamic.

Yeah, and you can get the solar panel roof charger,

which never worked for me when I had it in the dead of winter,

but maybe it works in the summertime better.

But yes, it's this obnoxious yellow color that looks like a taxi cab.

If they don't call it obnoxious yellow, they should.

It's so funny because when my daughter was looking for a car,

she wanted a different color.

Like she didn't want a common color.

Oh, okay.

And the color she got was different-ish.

It's nice.

It's kind of a nice clay kind of thing.

It's a good-looking color, but it doesn't quite stick out.

No, she probably wanted a lime or a yellow or an orange.

She did, and when we were test driving,

she drove an Nissan Kix that was yellow.

Like she wanted that, but she didn't like the Kix.

Life is too boring to always have the same color car.

It is.

And sometimes you got to put a little spice in your life.

Years ago, I interviewed a dealer about ordering cars

and why cars are the colors they are,

and for the exact reasons we think.

It's simply that dealers don't want stuff on the lot

that are going to take time to get rid of.

So there's a very famous story from the early 70s,

and it's speaking of just cars that are hard to get rid of.

And we think back now to the 1970s, and you're like,

oh, if I could go back, the cars I would buy,

and the colors I would buy them in, right?

There was a dealer who had a 70 Superbird.

It was either a Superbird or it was a 69 Charger Daytona.

Those were famously difficult to sell, anyway.

Yes, so it had this huge wing on the back, six feet tall.

They had the nose cone with it.

Most of the reason it was difficult to sell.

And now they're worth a million dollars.

But back then, they had to de-sportify this thing.

They had to take the spoiler off and take the nose cone off

and put the regular Charger slash Plymouth,

what was that based off the satellite or the road runner,

and make it basically into that and change the color

from the bright green that it was to some pedestrian color,

just so they could sell it.

And that's the kind of thing.

Like at the time, nobody, at least nobody,

wanted that car in a bold color.

And now that thing rolls across an auction line at Meekum

and it'll fetch a million bucks of it.

That's funny.

It's crazy.

When I sold cars in 1991, I sold Fords.

And this was when the Explorer had just come out.

Yes, big seller.

And if you couldn't sell an Explorer, that was on you.

The demand was huge.

It was.

Huge, huge, huge.

And we somehow managed to get, and I'm sure the owner

of the dealership I was working for didn't order this thing,

we had the Unsellable Explorer.

Oh.

And it was a two-door, rear-drive, crystal-blue Eddie Bauer.

Like everything about this thing was wrong.

Eddie Bauer was popular.

I thought the Eddie Bauer's were all green.

Green or red.

They had a red too.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't know where this crystal blue came from,

but it had Eddie Bauer trim.

It also didn't have the bigger wheels.

Like everyone got the bigger wheels.

So this thing was just Unsellable.

Oh, and it was stick.

I'm sorry, it was stick.

Oh, I would have liked it.

But yeah, we couldn't give that thing away.

It was the only Explorer that we couldn't sell.

Wow.

People just wanted to explore it so badly,

and we sold it off a lot of green Eddie Bauer's next health case.

Yep. Oh, yeah.

Like crazy.

That was such a new big with his car back then.

And Paul's brother, Anthony, had a 91 probe in that nice dark deep blue.

It was just with a gray interior.

I remember second generation probe.

Really nice vehicle.

Slick car.

Yeah, basically a Mazda underneath, so it drove really well.

There was a version of that car, and we're running out of time here,

but the probe could be had an LX trim as a mid-trim level with a Ford V6.

Yeah.

Just the three liter V6.

And you could get that with stick, and it was kind of smooth.

And if you, that turbocharged engine was a little edgy.

Yeah, and Paul's brother had the six with the stick, so.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, it was nice.

Yeah, it was kind of smooth.

I liked that car a lot.

Thought about buying one, but I never did.

I did like that vehicle.

All right.

Guess what we did, sir?

We had a great show today.

We did.

Thank you so much for jumping in and filling in.

Always a pleasure.

All right.

Big thanks to Rod Newton of Chargepoint for joining us today.

Thank you to Brendan.

Thank you to my friend Steven Johnny for having me on the show this past weekend.

Big thanks to producer Randy and the good folks here at TalkZone.

Let's talk more about cars again.

Next week.

0:00

56:25

Jeep Drops Wagoneer, Cadillac Optiq Review, ChargePoint Hones Charging Network

Mitsubishi Laser

Mitsubishi GSX

About this episode

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