Nissan’s New Leaf, NACS Isn’t Perfect, Toyota Corolla Cross, & The Electric TrailBoss

Hey everybody, welcome to another Auto Buyer's Guide podcast with your favorite auto nerds.

So Travis, what are you driving this week?

This week, while I just dropped off a Volkswagen Atlas and I jumped into a Toyota Corolla Cross.

So totally the exact same thing all the way across the board.

Yeah, one from holding up the world to crossing over to the dark side of Corolla.

Indeed.

And what have you got at home?

I've got a leaf and we have a Honda Odyssey and one, I like a tiny bit more than the other.

But before we get to that, we should roll the intro.

So Travis, have you crossed over to being a believer that the Corolla Cross is the best Corolla,

which I might add I would consider kind of a low bar.

You know, here's the thing.

I have a lot of miles to do on it this week and it may be not be something I'm looking super forward to.

And I think I'd actually prefer a regular Corolla for the money.

Give me a Corolla hybrid.

I don't have the hybrid engine here in this Corolla Cross, but I can understand why a lot of people are interested in them.

Really, what draws you more to the regular Corolla?

Because the Corolla Cross is definitely more practical.

It's also roomier inside.

I think it's more attractive, too.

And the interior, although Corolla themed is a little bit more premium and a little bit nicer feeling here and there.

It is.

So again, for the money, I go Corolla hybrid because I like the driving dynamics and I'd like to feel economy.

The Corolla Cross hybrid is going to be nicer to drive.

That's just that's just not the one that's just not the one I have.

Yes, the the regular old Corolla Cross.

Yes.

And you at list.

So do you feel like it has held up the world for you?

I think it's held up pretty well.

I have some some thoughts on the matter.

The driving dynamics are great, though.

Almost the exact opposite of what we're getting in the Corolla Cross.

It is it is just a couple tenths away from being a fantastic driving three row.

It's a very good driving three row by my estimation.

But I had the R line.

I want an R version.

Yeah, you and me both, but apparently nobody else.

It is it is a shame.

And you know what? It's not even about the power.

I just want that suspension dialed in a little bit more.

Now riddle me this Batman.

Why doesn't the Atlas sell better?

I think there are really competitive vehicles in the market.

And it does a lot of things well.

But one thing that drove me crazy was the touch interface.

The everything is touch.

Everything is capacitive or a slider.

And it's not like it doesn't have the features built into it.

But it also it also feels a little bit dated.

And I don't mean the interior.

I mean the exterior.

But actually, that's one of the things I like about it.

It's it's more conventional than we find in a lot of the current models.

Is it just too boring?

Palisade.

Is it just too boring to sedate?

Yeah, it might be too reserved.

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call it bland, but I'd say reserved.

Yeah, it doesn't stand out.

And I think I think more people should drive it for sure

and make your decision from there.

But I know it's a it's a it's a tough market.

There are the three row SUV is booming.

I mean, every crossover SUV is booming right now.

But but there are so many other options, especially like the GM triplets.

How do you feel about Volkswagen's two liter turbo?

That seems to be one of the more controversial aspects of the Volkswagen.

Seems like customers are saying, yeah, the touchscreen interface.

Maybe it's a little bit boring.

Two liter turbo seems to be of genuine concern for some people.

But even given that, I'm just not sure why it's selling so slowly.

I just think it should see a few more sales.

But about that two liter turbo.

Yeah, so I actually didn't have as many issues with the turbo as I did

with the transmission.

So understanding that the turbo is not the pepias, the zippiest.

You know, I felt like it was fine and had the power I needed for when I needed it.

The issue was getting that power to the wheels.

And the transmission felt like the thing that was holding me back there.

So, you know, more power wouldn't hurt.

And again, a lot of the competition has more power.

But for me, it was the transmission that ended up kind of let me down.

Interesting, interesting.

Since, of course, it is an ice and eight speed.

So basically the same transmission we find in the Highlander

and a whole boatload of other competitors.

It felt like programming not so much, you know, it's construction or anything.

Yeah, if you guys want to hear some of our thoughts on the bigger

and better family haulers, we think there's a video coming out soon on the main channel.

So be sure and check that one out before we get to the rest of the episode.

Let's talk about viewer feedback and viewer questions,

because we do have a bunch of questions and comments and and just information

flowing here from viewers and of course listeners as well.

The first one here is about EV routing.

So this is kind of a long question here, but he's basically asking

about how our blazer is done over the last year and 11,000 miles.

So we did have a real quick video on that.

We may dive a little bit into the blazer EV later in the video

and some of the issues we do have with it.

But essentially, he's asking about routing versus Tesla for EV charging

and road trips, because Tesla really set the bar for what an EV road trip

should look like as far as the computer assisting you in this process,

telling you here's where to stop.

Here's how long you need to charge.

Here's what charge level you need to get to.

And this is how you get from A to B and make sure that you end up at B

with the right amount of charge as well.

Or back at A from B, right?

Yeah, I would say that just about everybody that's using the built in

Google system, so Android automotive built into the car for mapping,

navigating, etc. That complete package deal.

They're all pretty darn good and just about the equal of Tesla

as far as that route estimation.

Yeah, but when you get to the manufacturer's system,

that's where things can get a little bit wonky.

And honestly, as much so much of that is just about the navigation they're using.

And not how ineffective it is, but how how dated it feels versus the Google system

or your Apple Maps or something like that.

That's constantly being invested in, right?

With time and money and resources.

And it just feels like these navigations are a way of the past.

And then not only do they not update particularly quickly,

they don't always run very fast.

And then it's an interface that's unusual to us, you know?

So it says, Hey, we're stopping here and you can do it for X minutes.

It doesn't feel like they've got the graphics, you know, dialed in

as much as we do on other systems.

There's a particular look to factory navigation systems

that we don't find in the Google systems.

I think it's mainly because Google has become so ubiquitous with smartphones

that we all see it there.

And that's what we want to see as far as how our maps look and interact with the world.

The built in systems from Rivian Volvo, Volvo Polestar,

General Motors, Honda Accura, the Nissan Leaf, etc.

Those are all the Google built in systems.

And they all work just about equally as well for range prediction, etc.

I will say the one weird twist here, though, is that even though

they may include supercharger stops in your routing,

Tesla apparently seemingly does not open status for those stations

to Google for this interface.

So they have no idea how crowded those stations are in the system.

They'll tell you how long it should take you to charge, etc.

They'll direct you there.

Some systems may even prefer the Google stops,

like the General Motors systems are definitely programmed to prefer Tesla

supercharger stops, but it doesn't know how used they are.

The Ford system is really well done.

Tesla will tell you how many folks are there in your Tesla

so you have a better idea.

Right. Ford will.

Ford does a pretty good job with their built in system that's not Google based

and they integrate with CarPlay.

So you can actually use CarPlay to do your range estimate, etc.

That actually works really quite well.

The Hyundai Kia systems, I just prefer to do my own routing

and my own estimation on the trip because I find the built in system,

it does work, but it's just clunky to use.

I just don't find it that useful.

Do you find any of them are being too conservative or too risky?

I mean, I can't imagine any manufacturer being too risky when it comes to charging.

But for folks who know, you know, you don't want to stop and charge it 50 percent.

If you can charge it 25 percent.

Yeah, and how, you know, how, how much extra battery you need

or how convenient it is, right?

If it's lunchtime and there's a stop across the street,

go ahead and plug in and go grab lunch.

But if you're trying to stop on a six hour trip,

then you want to make sure you're stopping at the right time to save extra time.

Yeah, the interesting part there, I've commented on this before,

especially with people with Teslas, because pretty much every manufacturer out there

uses some either, either the EPA's default

calculations for efficiency in the vehicle.

So the way that the EPA submissions have been done for range estimation,

when, when you look at the range gauge, like the gasometer, how many miles can you do?

Tesla has been accused of being a little too firm on that

rather than using a predictive algorithm based on how you've been driving.

Some EV is like Ford, Ford uses a predictive algorithm.

So if you drive your lightning hard, that range gauge may show really low estimates,

even when you have your battery completely full.

Whereas on a Tesla, generally speaking, it's going to be, you know,

whatever your car was rated for, EPA rating, right?

But then you type in your destination in the car and it will tell you you need to charge.

This is how you know that these EVs real world range figures may vary.

This is one thing I mentioned a while back with our standard range model three

once upon a time was that range is not realistic at all.

And the proof of point there was if it says, you know, 200 miles of range,

a lot of people think, oh, it can do 200 miles on the highway.

Not so punching a destination 200 miles away and see what the car's computer tells you.

Cars computer says, you know, you're going to need to charge

and you're going to need at least an extra 30% battery to do this trip or whatever.

So many factors are pretty good about that.

Yeah, I've always appreciated cars.

It'll tell you the minimum and maximum.

So let's say it says 250 and then it'll say, oh,

you can do up to 280 as low as 220, something like that.

If you're doing highway driving, just assume the 220 number.

But that just makes it easier for folks to predict, you know.

And if you get there with more than 220 or you're able to go more than 220,

then great, that's just kind of a bonus.

But you know, at least your baseline, it's it's also worth noting

that the reason we see General Motors and other car companies

wanting you to not use car plate is because they want you to do the routing

in their software and that makes their predictions better,

which is why Tesla's predictions have been better than other car companies before.

And it does show on the GM EVs when they launched their first

Altium platform vehicle, the range estimates were kind of wild around,

you know, sometimes they were good, sometimes they weren't good.

Now, this last weekend, we just did a road trip to see the in-laws

and the estimate was spot on, including the ultimate pass

and going up the snow grade to two mountain passes that you have to go over

because we have this predicted range data from all the other vehicles

that have been driving on those exact same roads, all feeding into the system,

going, hey, there's a mountain here.

It's going to take you more energy to go over the mountain.

So even including that, it was exactly spot on when we arrived.

So they've definitely gotten a lot better.

Seraph is asking us about buying or releasing vehicles.

How does our logic and our recommendation change

between owning a vehicle for two years to 10 years or somewhere in between?

He says, I know it's a crystal ball, but based on Blue Book values,

it might be a surprise as to which one might be better for certain use cases.

So this is this is an interesting question because we do get a lot of lease questions.

Yeah, and leases are really misunderstood.

I think the big point here, and I think I've touched on it before,

is that with a lease, you have a guaranteed value.

And I look at this more as a protection than a potential win.

So if I'm leasing a car that's $50,000, my residual value,

the value paid down to is $30,000.

But either the car gets in an accident, which will lower its ultimate value,

or it suddenly it's been given a residual value that is either not realistic

or just it comes in too high.

So all of a sudden my lease is due and I've used my mileage just as I'm supposed to.

But if I traded the car in, it's worth $25,000.

And now I'm giving it back to them for $30,000.

I didn't lose extra money, right?

That car is not worth what I thought it would be worth.

But that's to no harm of my own, right?

I don't care. I just drop it off and I move along.

There's a small world and it does happen.

But for most people, it's probably not even worth it.

Where that same $50,000 car is not worth $30,000 at the end of a lease.

It's worth $35,000.

And in that case, you do have equity somewhere.

But that is not one I would ever anticipate and go,

ooh, this is going to happen for sure.

It's just it's a great bonus if it does.

And by all means, use it.

It's more for me about if the car suddenly is devalued in some way.

You're not the one taking a hit.

Right. And remember that if you suddenly have equity in the vehicle,

it's basically because your lease payments were too high and you paid too much.

So you gave them some money to do something with while you had the vehicle there.

Generally, I would say if you plan on keeping your vehicle over three years,

it does not make sense to lease.

There are some leases that will go to 48 months, some very rarely that will go even longer.

But generally speaking, three years is your sweet spot.

Two years leases can be advantageous with certain vehicles, discount programs,

because manufacturers need to move some volume along.

Those are your best bets.

But generally speaking, outside that term, purchases are your better bet.

There can be times where lease deals and lease buyout rates are advantageous for certain vehicles.

Even if you plan on keeping them long term, just know that there are risks involved.

Say for instance, in the before times when we had a tax credit on EVs,

if an EV did not qualify for the federal tax credit because it wasn't built in the US,

you could lease it and then you could buy it out from the lease and you could get the tax credit

that way through the lease tax credit loophole.

But it's kind of a very limited case situation there.

Our next question here is from LetMeCook86 who's asking to hear more about the EV tax credit going

away and is there any interest or any benefit in the supposed writing off the interest thing

that the administration is offering now?

I'll cover the first part.

It's gone.

Bye-bye.

Will it ever come back?

Oh, not in the next couple of years.

There is a world where a political change happens and there's a refocusing on emissions

or production or that sort of thing.

But for now, that's it.

Adios.

There are a couple of manufacturers who are doing some sort of incentives as a small

carryover and maybe try to draw some attention to them versus others who don't.

And so that's just marketing on that end.

But unfortunately, it's all gone.

Yeah.

And I don't expect somehow it's going to come back.

That's my personal thought.

I don't have a Ouija board here.

But if I did, my Ouija board would be saying no on the coming back of the tax credit ever.

No, we're going Ouija board.

Yeah.

I think that that's just the timeframe.

Even if we had a massive polar shift in administrations in the United States in three

years, because remember, we still got three and a half years to go, right?

I think that it's just too long from now to just try and bring that back.

I just don't think that would fly somehow.

On the interest right off, it's a very limited value.

That's the key thing.

The average buyer out there, you have to meet specific income limits.

So the most benefit you'd get is a really expensive vehicle.

But if you somehow can afford a $100,000 car and you have a lot of interest on it,

I'm not sure how you buy that car under the income cap that the legislation requires.

So the average person is probably going to be buying an average car, quote,

unquote, average car.

And in that 40 to $45,000 range, you're talking maybe $200 to $400 a year in savings

for that interest right off.

It's really quite small.

It's going to be some help, but it's not going to be an awful lot of help.

And of course, remember, it is a deduction on your tax filing.

So you're not going to get it monthly or anything like that.

Moving on, our next question here is asking about the electric car future in North America.

I do not want to buy a used $30,000 car and not be able to sell it after an additional

five years while worrying about resale value there, basically.

Well, electric cars even still exist.

The answer there is yes, 100%.

The trend, and I had this conversation the other day, the trend is that the growth is slowing,

but slowing is worlds apart from going backwards.

We've seen manufacturers making changes.

For example, Ram said they're not going to build their full electric EV pickup,

at least not for the moment.

So they said, we're tabling that.

Okay, fine.

But that doesn't hurt current sales.

And that just means that if you want an EV truck, Ram won't be it.

It doesn't mean that they're pulling the whole program.

Chevy is not pulling vehicles off their assembly line.

We're no longer going to make Equinox or a Blazer or a Silverado.

No, they're all still in production and people still keep buying them.

I think the rate is slowing, but it's going to continue to grow.

And in this case, obviously $7,500 helped boost that.

I think at this point, it's going to be awareness.

Most people who switch over to EV, in my experience, really enjoy their EV and say,

I don't really want to go back to gas.

Yes, of course, there are going to be people who don't like plugging in at home

or if they didn't understand what it was before they jumped into it.

And that's how you're going to have a negative experience.

And we often go, oh, I didn't like that.

I'll never try it again versus what did I understand.

So they'll be there.

I have no problem buying a $30,000 car and in five years knowing I'll be able to sell it

for what I expect is pretty much the same value as any other car.

The resale value question here is important.

Generally speaking, EVs see a pretty typical resale depreciation after that first three-year window.

So they see an accelerated depreciation in the three-year window,

mainly because of cash on the hood and the tax incentive.

So it's really simple math.

If you buy a $40,000 EV and you get a $7,500 tax credit,

then immediately you roll that vehicle off the lot,

you get normal depreciation plus an additional $7,500 hit.

Because why would I pay $40,000 for that used EV?

Even if it only had one mile on it because it's used,

when I could literally go buy a brand new one for $7,500 less,

that's the core thing to remember with EV depreciation.

It's been bashed on the head a lot by people that don't understand that very significant part.

The second part of this is that when we're talking especially about

heavily discounted EVs that are discounted beyond those tax credits,

that has the exact same effect.

So when General Motors is tossing $20,000 of cash on the hood of a Blazer EV,

especially at the beginning there, that's going to have a massive,

massive hit on resale value in air quotes there over time.

But if you were to buy a, like we have right now in the back lot here,

a Volvo C40 EV that one of our employees now owns,

you know, the price we paid for it and the price that we got rid of it for

after a year and about 10,000 miles, it actually was almost exactly the same price.

It really had very little depreciation over the year because it had all already been done.

And now it's like a regular car.

Right, like a regular car.

Now it's just following typical Volvo trajectory for their smaller models.

So I wouldn't be overly worried about that on the used market.

Our next question here is about car reliability and EcoUld, or Ecooled93 is asking,

how do we truly know if a car is reliable?

I hear a sigh.

You rightfully cast my consumer reports and JD Power for reliability.

I am myself looking at an unreliable model like a Ford Escape Hybrid.

Is it truly unreliable?

You know, oddly enough, the Escape Hybrid has actually been pretty good.

Well, and my sigh is not because of the nature of the question.

It's just, it's a crystal ball.

You know, there's reference earlier about what about depreciation.

You want to know if it's reliable?

Drive it and you can tell us if it's reliable or not.

There's just, that's, it's just, it's the hard, the hard facts.

You can go look on any forum and you're never going to find, oh my gosh,

this has been the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned.

Because no one thinks about that and goes, I should tell the world.

You'll only ever hear, this is the least reliable vehicle I've ever owned.

You won't know their circumstances because I can tell you,

I take great care of my car and that means I wash it twice a month.

But I never rotate tires and ever replace oil.

I am hard on acceleration.

You know, there's just so many of these variables.

But obviously you can look at the data and if there's a huge list of issues

that lots of people seem to be having, that's likely unreliable.

And we've talked about this, I think it's part of the question.

What is unreliable to you?

Is it stranded on the side of the road?

Or that switch tends to break for the back passenger window

and you have to go ahead and get that fixed.

But generally speaking on escape hybrid, it's going to be very similar

to regular escape for everything except the drivetrain.

And the drivetrain itself has been pretty reliable because the,

the core escape hybrid system also used in the Maverick,

been used in other vehicles before, is very closely related to the hybrid system

that we find in the Toyota product line, the core Toyota hybrid system.

Same design.

So intrinsically, very mechanically simple, not a lot of failure points there.

Batteries have also been pretty good as far as their, their lifetime in Ford vehicles.

They're now liquid cooled in most of their hybrids worldwide.

I think there may still be some hybrids lurking around somewhere in the world

that Ford makes that are not liquid cooled, but basically all the ones in the US are.

So battery lifetime has actually been better than other hybrids out there with,

with air cooled or non cooled battery packs, etc.

I would say go ahead and check out our video on consumer reports and some of the troubles around,

especially their data and the whole idea of forums.

This is something that we hear a lot on our Facebook page.

There is a core group of Facebook followers out there that that's,

oh, I would never buy a Hyundai Kia because of the ICCU issue.

Everyone blows up and that does not appear to be the case.

There is a NHTSA recall on it.

And based on the, the consumer feedback to NHTSA, Hyundai's investigation,

NHTSA's investigation, etc.

It appears that the problem is somewhere around 1% of certain model years of ionic vehicles,

Kia Hyundai and Genesis vehicles, I should say, that whole electric portfolio,

where the ICCU module that does a whole bunch of voltage conversion for the EV, where it does fail.

The problem is people are, oh, the forums are full of people that have a problem.

Well, of course they are because to your point, like you said earlier,

the other 180, 200,000 people out there or more that have bought these vehicles,

they're not hopping on the forum going, Hey, my, my car is still just fine.

That doesn't take long for the one post on the forum that says, Hey,

I'm having this issue to then be picked up by seven other people who said I have the issue

to then become a headline that says, Hyundai's have this issue to then be the guy who read the

headline in a comment section saying, all Hyundai's have this issue.

So it becomes fact very quickly.

And let me be clear, this is not a defensive Hyundai.

Hyundai needs to address the ICCU issue.

And I think the bigger problem with the ICCU issue is not its relative occurrence.

It's the fact that Hyundai has stumbled at least initially with the problem,

hoping, thinking whatever the answer was that maybe software fixes could solve the problem.

People still had issues after software fixes.

There were some hardware replacements.

The hardware failed the same way in these particular vehicles.

So there was kind of a rolling like, how do we fix this?

Is it a problem?

What happens?

This is, I hate to say it, but this is kind of normal with new vehicles and new technology.

Kind of why you don't want to buy the first model of your vehicles if you're truly worried

about reliability, because the manufacturer has to discover the problem.

The problem has to be identified, categorized.

They have to find a fix for the problem that will work.

And then they have to deploy that fix to however many vehicles have that problem.

I mean, that's why Toyota had to recall every single twin-turbo V6 they ever made.

That was big, big, big problem, right?

And bummer because it would have been lovely if it had been found sooner,

but it took a while and basically the same process happened.

Owners had failed engines.

They got blamed for it.

They were denied warranty claims, et cetera.

Then over time, it was like, oh, geez, well, maybe that actually was a warranty issue.

So that's the important part there.

Cesar Diaz is asking us what our input is on advertised 0% APR and how to qualify for it.

Generally speaking, on the 0% APR deals, we're talking high credit.

So most of these places specifically will tell you what your FICO score needs to be.

750 or higher for a lot of them.

800 or higher is probably your better bet.

But you also have to have the income to qualify, of course, as well.

Yeah, you have to qualify for the loan.

And then the only thing to be wary of is it'll say 0%.

Make sure it's a term that you're also looking at because that's going to be about your affordability.

Sometimes it's 0% for 36 months.

And for most people who are looking for a five-year loan

and much less a six-year loan is becoming much more common these days,

that's going to be nearly doubling your payment,

even though obviously there's no interest involved.

Yeah, and some of those can be even shorter term.

GM has done 24-month 0% interest now and then.

And that is definitely going to be trickier to cough up that kind of cash regularly,

but you will save a lot on financing.

If you were coming in with cash, that's a great way to do it.

You say, absolutely, why not put it in a separate account, start drawing from it?

That's your win.

But if you were coming into finance, that's going to get a little bit tougher.

Terin Cole is asking us what we think of the 2026 Hyundai Nexo.

Of course, we don't know whether we're going to get the Nexo yet in the US,

but it has already been seen in Korea and it's currently on sale there.

Yeah, honestly, Alex, this is your ballpark.

You're the former Nexo owner.

Yeah, I like the concept.

I think that hydrogen just lacks the support in California.

I think that the Nexo was a fantastic vehicle.

I think that the new Nexo builds on that.

It doesn't address all the quirks that I would have wanted to be addressed,

namely all-wheel drive would have been cool and bigger motors also would have been pretty cool.

It has a bit more pep, but we're not talking, we're not talking ionic five level of acceleration.

And I kind of wish they had just borrowed the ionic five's motors and jammed them in there

somehow, all-wheel drive, 320 horsepower could have been fun.

Yeah, they could have.

But the bigger problem honestly is just a lack of support, financial and physical support

in the United States for hydrogen.

We are seeing more in Europe and maybe over time if this continues in South Korea and Japan

and in Europe, then maybe there may be a future transplanted back into North America.

But we're having such troubles with EV adoption here that I don't know how much of a place

there is necessarily for hydrogen.

I think it makes sense in bigger vehicles.

Like for instance, instead of Ram doing a big electric Ram 1500,

again, fueling infrastructure problem, but this is the perfect use case for hydrogen vehicle

because you just have so much less mass on board because batteries are big and heavy in

these big, heavy tow vehicles and a fuel cell stack is going to be an awful lot smaller.

Hydrogen is an awful lot lighter.

And in these bigger, heavier vehicles, there are places to stick hydrogen tanks that could work.

And I love them as a plug-in hybrid alternative.

But we're so much farther away from that.

I think Honda has their prototype CR-V.

I mean, you can go get them, but they're a working prototype.

And I think something like that, you get the new extended range Ram plug-in.

I guess we'll call it the Ram Charger Rev as it carries over.

Give me a hydrogen option there, assuming there is much more charging or I guess fueling

capability than we have now, but we don't need it everywhere because you plug it in at home.

That's your main source.

And speaking of batteries, big batteries and plugging it at home,

you were recently driving the Chevy Silverado EV trail boss or is it a trail intern?

Is it really a boss?

It's a trail trier.

And you know what, it did better than I thought it would.

And I'll tell you what, props to Chevy for letting us really try things.

When I drove the Sierra 84 EV, GMC did not seem very open to us doing much,

much difficult off-roading type behaviors.

And Chevy said, hey, here we go.

And we had that truck up on two and three wheels at times,

which is not ideal for off-roading, but I'm just saying they really let us stress this thing.

There's no way getting around it.

It's heavy.

It is heavy.

And you get a two inch or so lift on the standard Silverado EV, but that's really it.

So approach angle and departure angle, not horrible.

The break over is a little bit tough.

It's an enormous wheelbase.

The same wheelbase as the entire Fiat 500E actually is.

So significant there, but it's a lot of torque.

It was a pretty good tire.

They do turn the power down.

So you cannot get the top end horsepower in a trail boss.

That's the LT and you have to get obviously the top end performance kit to it,

but the RST is gone.

So that's how you go ahead and get the higher performance.

It's an expensive truck and you can't get it with a standard battery.

That was also the mid range or what do they call it, the extended or max range.

Yeah.

And it's so extended range is at least $72,095.

The max range trail boss is $88,695.

We're talking pretty healthy numbers.

I do find it funny.

I saw some of the footage of you in the trail boss and other people driving the trail boss out there

and it immediately brought my mind not to throw any manufacturers under the bus,

but I'm going to do it anyway here, but it immediately brought to mind Honda

and occasionally Subaru in events where they're like, oh, look at this.

Let's see how we can, we can get the trail sport up there on two wheels or on three wheels.

And if you go to real off-roading events with, I don't know, Bronco Wrangler,

Grenadier, things like that, you will notice solid axles and articulation.

They don't have wheels in there.

Well, even a Grand Cherokee.

So like Grand Cherokee is a good example of a unibody with a lot of wheel articulation,

especially with the air suspension, depending on the mode you're in.

So if you don't have all of your wheels on the ground, it's more difficult to move.

Yeah, you can, you can have lockers.

You can have nice software to try and direct power around.

You can have fun pictures for sure.

Cool twin clutch axles like in your trail sport.

But like, you'll notice like, if you're, if you're seeing a trail sport on the road,

I mean, it's like the, the body has, has, has moved up like this and the axles,

like maybe like a millimeter of motion, because there's just not enough suspension traveled down

to get that wheel to contact the ground.

And you're always going to be better if you have all wheels on the ground.

Yeah, yeah, I, especially in that trail sport, but, but in this case, you know,

it's a dual motor setup.

So the, the power is able to get where it needs to go.

Obviously not quad motors, like a Rivian R1T, this is,

this is something that I would akin to like a Ram Power Wagon in the sense

that you are not doing highly technical trail driving probably in your power wagon.

You were saying, Hey, I'm going to go off road.

I'm going to go on this, this, this trail.

We're not rock crawling.

We're not doing this.

We've got ground clearance.

We've got, well, I would say protection, but they don't add any protection to the trail boss.

I don't think they need to, but I think the power wagon is going to be better at all that.

I know, I know it is.

I know it is, but I'm just talking about this, this hulking mass, right?

Yeah.

There's just more limitations to where you can take a trail boss or sorry,

a power wagon than where you can take a gladiator.

You know, that's, that's where I'm getting at on the truck and the things.

So, so this is something that if you want to do very light overlanding, go for it.

I think it'll be fully capable.

You'll be able to power your entire campsite so you can go,

you can go off the beaten path for longer, just not necessarily farther.

I'm looking this up.

The power wagon with a ton of payload in it is lighter than a Silverado Eevee.

Yes, 150%.

I mean, did I mention that it's heavy?

There's no way of getting around it.

This thing is, you know, right around 9,000 pounds.

I'm just, I'm just, I'm just going to go, uh, I'm just going to go Ram.

Ram would, would staunchly argue and I would agree with them that power wagon is a bad corollary

because power wagon is quite capable.

I would, I would rebel before power wagon.

But so we have solid axles, you know, we have lots of wheel articulation.

You have a frame that does have inherent flex in it as well.

And that's kind of the weird twist.

A lot of people don't realize this pickup trucks actually can have slightly better articulation

generally because the frame itself does actually flex and that's a somewhat desirable

characteristic in that situation.

Whereas a unibody vehicle cannot flex because you'd crack glass.

Right.

And, and you know what I was doing with the power wagon, right?

Just going big truck to big truck.

But, but yeah, trail intern is maybe a bit harsh, but the reality is it's not going to

do the off-roading that real off-roaders really want.

But I think it's fully capable for someone who is looking for a little bit more ground clearance

who has really nasty roads that they say, Hey, I don't want to worry about this or

not those wimpy stuber trails.

Well, you know, it depends on how you want to find it.

But if you're looking for the most conventional looking Silverado EV, that's the one because

it does get the front end that brings it much more in line with the conventional truck,

you know, almost the exact opposite of what we got in the RST, which is this big, you know,

this big front fascia and the kind of a sport truck.

But like it almost felt like a, like a bobsled, you know, like a full face racing bike mask,

you know, where it's just everything comes off from it.

Yeah, this one's very different.

Now, I might sound like I'm giving Silverado EV a hard time, but I actually think it's

truly fantastic. The GM did Silverado EV and Sierra EV, not just that they're both there,

but that they have stayed true to their word about creating more capable versions and importantly

less expensive versions, because it has become significantly less expensive than it launched.

And that's not what we see in the competitive trucks where Ford has kind of

bopped around on their pricing and Cybertruck, you know, they dropped the cheaper model, etc.

So you can get a $54,895, including destination work truck, standard range,

and the LT, which has a few nicer creature comforts is really only a small bump above that,

just under $63,000. You'll also be able to get a work truck in a custom trim,

and that's going to give you it's the same front end. So it'll still be a work truck,

but you get, you know, carpeted floors. And I think we get rid of the vinyl steering wheel

and you get 22 inch wheels. So you get much closer to the look without having to pay for all the

demands. But importantly also, though, GM has lots of cash on the hood. So nobody pays full price

for a Silverado. Nobody pays full price for Silverado EV. So this is really a redesigned

truck for the 21st century that happens to be electric and has some pros and cons because of

that. Now, the sad part is that midgate is not going to be found on the low end trims.

No, it definitely won't. And you know what? I love the midgate conceptually, but also ask

yourself if you are going to use the midgate, because otherwise, you know, it's just another

component. I see I would do, but you have to know if it does or doesn't matter to you.

The only thing that I think it's missing is a canopy. And that's where that midgate turns into

the ultimate little, you know, pop up camp tent. You fold everything down, you have your heat and

your AC and your whatever else going. I saw a commercial. I saw a commercial canopy the other

day. I'll send it to you. It was a fun picture I took. And it doesn't look right. It doesn't fit

right because it's not the right shape. But that's that's where Chevy needs to go ahead and jump in

on a canopy. I mean, I wouldn't buy that, but I would buy a standard range truck for the office

for pickups and deliveries and things like that. I think that would be all kinds of fantastic

because of that midgate. You have eight foot beds in some things, but people largely don't buy

eight foot bed pickup trucks anymore. They really want that, that two row capability.

And that midgate allows you to not just have effectively an eight foot bed, but basically

a 10 foot bed for some items. And that's really handy because you can go and get 10 foot lumber,

you know, four bite sheet supply would absolutely no problem in there. It just makes that truck

so much more practical than I thought it would. I almost don't care how squeaky it's going to

become later in life. And that is the one thing we don't know is, is that going to squeak and

the, you know, that they had. Yeah. Yeah. The hope is not, but time will tell.

Yeah. And of course, if you want the 400 plus mile of range model bearing in mind,

that's a ginormous battery. Almost 500. Yeah. Ridiculous battery size.

On the highway, we're more like 400 something, you know, mind you, but

91,003 for the max range LT and the cheapest max range is the work truck,

still at almost 77. So it's kind of a, kind of a pricey little one there.

Yeah. The work truck will get you closer to that 500 mile estimated range. Obviously, again,

that's going to be mixed driving. But that's kind of smaller wheels and that sort of thing.

You can get up to about 95,000 on the total pricing and that's not including accessories,

right? That's the stuff that has to be installed at the factory, which is generally how we do

those calculations. And I get you really close to where the RST was. So it's almost a shame that

we got rid of that as a trim level. I kind of, I kind of enjoyed having that, but it just didn't

seem to stick. Maybe we'll see it come back. But yeah, I mean, the enormous range, not just driving

range, but pricing on a Silverado EV is honestly impressive. And it gets it so much closer to a

folks wheelhouse. Yeah. And that brings us along to charging adapters, interestingly enough, because

I have received a number of questions asking why GM has not more fully embraced the new J3400

standard here. We're talking about this electron vortex plus adapter. And this is part of the

reason is because if you had a Chevy truck, they are 400 volt EVs that can charge at 800 volts.

So that's kind of an interesting twist. And that is what allows them to drag this enormous battery

pack around and still charge in reasonable times. If you were to plug them into a Tesla

supercharger station, if it had a native connector, so you could more easily access native Tesla

superchargers, you would be charging quite a bit more slowly because Tesla superchargers don't

support 800 volt charging. There is currently one exactly one 800 volt supercharger station

in the world. I know Tesla calls it a thousand volts, but in the general classification system,

it's an 800 volt station. At any rate, it's in San Mateo, it has eight stalls only, and it's only

open to Teslas. And the only thing that can use it to its advantage is a Cybertruck. But Cybertruck

actually has kind of the same problem. Basically, you're going to, if it had an X port, you'd have to

use this adapter, the CCS to NACS adapter, and not go to a supercharger station to charge your

truck as fast as possible. Although a lot of EVs are seemingly now, you know, sucking off the Tesla

Teat, shall we say, the supercharger, which is why Electron sent us this schnifty adapter here.

This is the first model to get a physical interlock and meet the new UL standards. So if you're

interested in a UL standard approved NACS to CCS adapter for your GM vehicle, your Volvo,

your Polestar, et cetera, you know, you can pick one of these little guys up.

Yeah, hashtag not sponsored. There's a huge amount of these adapters coming out and the

questions, you know, are they certified? Do they lock? How do you access them? I'm sure we're going

to get some that are pretty gimmicky in some way. You know, it'll be the no theft, the never burned,

just going to get some weird stuff out there. At this point, I would buy pretty much exclusively

from the manufacturer just to make sure that you're getting the right thing. And I was, well,

I will dive into it probably a little bit, but I was at an event where I saw the first Chevrolet

vehicle who can plug in to the GM energy program with an adapter. And that's the question that we

had is, are you going to be able to use your car's battery for home backup through the GM system

with an adapter? The answer officially came through as a yes. Yeah. But I actually would go

the opposite direction and I probably would not get the adapter from the OEM unless it's forward,

because interestingly, this is actually the same adapter that Ford ships with theirs for two key

reasons. The UL certification is part of it, but mainly that had to do with things like durability,

because this is heavy, this is over a pound. And if you drop this guy, damage is a real possibility.

So that's one of the main changes. They put a metal latch mechanism here, and it's a big heavy

duty latch mechanism there. There's also a locking pin on the inside, which is not obvious.

That allows this to be locked onto the vehicle. So you don't have to worry about someone stealing it.

That's an important one. So if you, it also prevents accidental disconnection, because in

the regular electron adapter, the one previous to this or any of the others, you can just pull out

the NACS or J3400 plug from this end. And hopefully the car will stop the charge in time,

but maybe it will, maybe it won't. This one actually firmly keeps that in there until

the car has stopped the charge and it's been removed from the vehicle, because the vehicle

will unlock the connection when the charge has stopped. But it also prevents theft. So when this

is on the vehicle and the vehicle is restraining this latch pin right there, it will prevent the

removal of the J3400 or NACS end from that side. So you can't actually run off with it. If you're

DC fast charging and you're going to run in and you're going to go eat lunch quick for 20 or 30

minutes, you don't have to worry about coming back and finding that someone has, has ripped off

your plug there. But I don't think that's going to be the next hot thing is stealing adapters, but

people will, will grab anything if there's an opportunity, you know, and they're in a spot

they need it. But I think that sort of, oddly enough though, I have heard of that. I have heard

of adapter theft. Oh, I'm, like I said, I'm sure someone somewhere is going to go, ooh, I can grab

this and, and you know, they figured out the vulnerability and maybe they sneak around the

same charger for a couple of days and then they got to move on, you know, because someone will

figure it out. But I also don't think it'll be long before the OEMs are using that, basically

that exact adapter. And that's, that's where my thought is, you know, yeah, something at least

carefully when you're looking at this, these third party adapters and the ones that are way

cheaper. In this case, way cheaper is probably not the way I would go. Yeah. And that brings us

along to kind of the, the, the interesting talk here on charging and charging realities. We are

in a world now where we have mass adoption or mass pledges to adopt, maybe I should say,

massive pledges to adopt the J3400 connector. And we also see huge growth in CCS, which is

intriguing and strange at the same time. So the important thing for shoppers out there to remember,

if you are on a fence buying a new EV and you're thinking to yourself, well, this one has,

this one has this port on it, this one has that port on it, which one do I get? You should know

that especially for non-Tesla EVs, you are going to have to have both of these adapters around.

And for non-Tesla EVs that are 800 volt, so Hyundai Kia Genesis Porsche, the new Polestar,

the new Volvos that are coming out 800 volts, you're going to want one of these if you're going

to want to charge as fast as possible, because connecting to a Tesla supercharger station,

especially for a Lucid, is going to be a painfully slow experience. But also,

not as widely available as you might think. So if we just go down the numbers here,

we just looked this up because we had a video on this on the EV channel, so be sure and check it out.

Tesla currently has 2,800 stations in North America, sorry, in the United States,

I should say, we're excluding Canada, and almost 34,000 charge ports. But those are not all open

to non-Teslas, because a decent number of those only speak Tesla's original communications protocol,

the earlier charge stations. So open to all is somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 stations,

approximately 21,000 charge ports. Those are basically V3 and V3 plus. Now, if we compare

that to the CCS network in very, very broad air quotes, because it's absolutely not a network,

but CCS plugs out there, 10,884 stations, 28,500 plugs, essentially. So it's a very

different kind of spread. But at this point in time, we have actually seen an increase,

a dramatic increase, oddly enough, in CCS plugs over the last few years. Reliability has improved,

but not as much as some people might like, which is generally the attraction for superchargers.

And again, up to this point, it's been Tesla's ability to track and use these superchargers for

your route planning, that sort of thing. And now these are going to be built in and integrated

into other manufacturers as they adopt on with NACS, the J3400, and working with Tesla to make

that all happen. That's going to make things a little bit easier. I do think that Tesla will

continue to obviously put in supercharger locations. They're literally being built every day,

different locations, and even ones within close proximity, but putting in a lot more stalls.

For a while, the largest stall installation was like 12 at one spot. And I have seen multiple

with like 40 plus stalls at this point. Some of them are huge. There are actually two

supercharger stations near me. I was telling you about this the other day. The two supercharger

stations near our office, they are a block away from one another, literally one block away from

one another. They're both huge. They both have over 20 charging stalls. And oddly enough, they

charge different prices and have different peak times for the power. Because of course,

it depends on where their power is coming from there. But it is just kind of funny how that

slots in there. The one thing I would caution though is the Tesla network's reliability is down to

one major reality. And that is that Tesla controls the software and the hardware on both sides of

this charging experience, the car and the charger. They build their own hardware, etc. So it's a very

simplistic world there. They've only got a few models of car, few generations, but only a few

models of vehicles, right? So that is the core here. The other part is of course, better maintenance.

Tesla does definitely unquestionably respond to broken things here and they're much faster.

The trouble here is, and we have noticed this lately actually because

because of the proximity of the supercharger network over there, when we're supercharging

vehicles here in this office, or DC fast charging, I should say, vehicles in this office, most often

we will snag an adapter and run over to the supercharger or I'll go use the Magic Dock one

in Scots Valley because it's easy, quote unquote. And mostly it's because there are so many stalls,

you can be sure you're going to find one in short order, as long as it's not a holiday.

Yeah, and that's because the business models relied on it, right? And it's not like electrifying,

well, there's an interesting conversation about electrifying America, but if their

stall is down, I feel like it's going to cost them more money to hurry up and fix it than it is going

to save them money by, oh, we're losing chargers, charging usage at the moment. And Tesla says,

hey, they might be in the exact same situation, but they've sold their car based on this existing.

Right, right. So they'll lose customers, not just a charge session.

Yeah, the availability is a feature, whereas Electrify America, even though being just a

charging network, they have to make sure that the volume at those stations is high, the utilization

is high. Otherwise, it does not make sense for them financially for that to work. That's why IANA is

an interesting twist because it's being supported more broadly by other car companies. And so we'll

see if they are able to make higher stall count stations work to try and solve that problem,

but it's way too early to tell. But anyway, back to the supercharging, though, the interesting

thing that we have noticed is that supercharging is not as reliable with a non-Tesla as it is

with the Tesla. So there is this fallacy among people out there, rather unfortunately, a fallacy

that they want to buy vehicle A, B or C, Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Bolt or a whatever,

because it has a native NACS port on it, IANA 5, because it has native supercharger access,

quote unquote, native supercharger access. But because it's not a Tesla, A, it does not have

access to all superchargers. B, the software will not tell you how available those superchargers are

because Tesla does not seem to open that API to anybody but themselves. So the car won't know

how occupied that place is. And C, the charging is not in fact going to be as reliable as a Tesla.

And that's something that I have noticed directly firsthand here. About a third of our charging

sessions do not start properly at the charging stations over here in Milpitas. And so we end

up having to move stalls or sometimes actually just go to a different station, a station that's

one block away. Is that activated via the app or is that on screen? Has to be activated via the

app. Because even though these are magic dock stations, and this is the weird twist with Tesla,

so they are the magic dock station hardware, the V4 looking things, right, with the actual

integrated part. But if it's not a specifically listed magic dock, that adapter does not come out

of the station. I don't know if it's a shell, and it's not really one, but it is the exact same

mechanism and the exact same adapter housed in there. It just will not come out. So you have to

pull out the NACS plug, put it in your own adapter and start charging. I will say the magic dock

station in Scotts Valley is a little bit more reliable, but not that much more reliable with

non-Teslas. And that's all stuff that people aren't going to be able to access because it's

anecdotal or it's regional. And if you're driving through, you're not going to know.

Right. And the problem here, and the important thing for everybody to remember is

the reason that CCS has been the way that it has been. If you're limited mobility and you have

problems plugging this guy in, then yeah, NACS is better. On a fully functional technical level,

there is no difference really between the two because this thing does the same thing as this

thing over here, right? There's two things do the same thing. And not only that, they talk the same

language. Previously, Tesla used a heavily modified version of Chathamo to communicate vehicle to

charger. Now they use the exact same ISO and DIN standard as CCS or they can, I should say. So the

stations, V3, V4 stations can use both. So full compatibility on all old Tesla models.

Teslas can talk both standards because they can use the older stations and the newer stations

both, right? They haven't orphaned any Teslas. But importantly, your vehicle with this adapter,

and also importantly, a J3400 car, which is why we have to be real clear, this is J3400,

not Tesla's NACS. J3400 cars only speak the same communication as CCS. They do not support that

modified Chathamo protocol. So they cannot use a V1 station or any of those older, non-upgraded

Tesla supercharger stations, which is why- Even if the shoe fits. Exactly. Which is why that number

of ports goes down from 34,000 available ports to just 20-some-odd thousand available ports,

because those are the ones that can talk CCS for lack of a better term. But as Tesla continues to

put stations in, you're not going to see that differential do anything but get smaller because

everyone going in now will be available for both. But it really comes down to, you know, good.

But the important part here, though, is that the communications, the ISO and DIN protocols that

define how CCS communicates, they're a set of agreed upon standards. And there's no independent

testing or validation, et cetera. So a car manufacturer builds their car to the specifications,

the charger builds their charger to the specifications, and you hope that everything

works as planned. And Tesla does do some validation with car companies on their cars initially,

but software changes on cars, software changes on chargers. And if you don't control both sides

of this, it's a very Apple-like experience over at Tesla, if you don't control both sides of this,

you are going to encounter errors. See, that's exactly where I was going, is it's the Apple versus

Android. And so your Tesla is going to be locked into what it can do. And let's say, for example,

it can't do 800 volt charging, and the charger can't do 800 volts out. But you can still use

your AirPods with the Samsung, and you can Samsung AirPods with an Apple, but they're not doing the

same. So if you want the more feature rich, you're looking at the CCS connection at all these other

third-party charging sites, but just know you're going to run into some hiccups. And I think that

is what has made Tesla so successful from the jump is that people weren't having the same sort of

issues they were with other brands, where it was a lot of a scattered, how do we build the vehicle,

how do we market it, how do we charge it, who's who's putting in the charging. IANA is going to

be a huge thing once it really rolls out. And I was excited, but we've been talking about this for

years and years, and it does not take that long to get things moving unless what they've been doing

is making sure that all of their software speaks to those charging stations in the most seamless

way possible. And they're trying to, and at that point, obviously, have way too many people at the

table, cooks in the kitchen, whatever you want to call it, trying to get to a point that works for

everyone. In the meantime, don't buy a car based on the charger unless you're looking at like an

IANA 5 or a 5N, because the 5 will come with the NACS, J3400. The N won't at this point. In that

case, you should get the N because it's way more fun to drive. And I would say if you're buying a

new EV, just remember, you're going to want one of these two adapters really for pretty much any EV

out there. And you are going to want, if you buy any Tesla, you're going to want also a J1772 to

Tesla charge adapter, because this is the interesting part, which leads on to the leaf that we're

going to talk about here in a second. There are 15 times the number of J1772 public chargers out

there as Tesla destination chargers. And those are only the publicly accessible ones that are

available for payment. So private industry, like us here on the back of our office, where we have

three J1772 chargers, that doesn't even include us because they're not publicly accessible. So

private commercial charger installations that are available for employees, hundreds of thousands

of J1772s are in the wild. So it's a big, big deal. You're going to need that adapter in your

Tesla. You're probably going to want one of these, especially if you have a Cybertruck.

Cybertruck, the only way you're going to charge at that fastest rate is with a CCS adapter at

an Electrify America or EV co-station, or that one supercharger in San Mateo. If you have every

other Tesla, though, I would say you could probably skip this unless you really want to be able to

charge anywhere, anywhere, then you can then you can snag one. For any other NACS equipped vehicle,

that you're going to buy that's not a Tesla, you definitely want this, especially if it's a Hyundai,

a Kia, a Genesis, the upcoming Lucids that are going to have the NACS port, anything that's 800

volts, you need one of these. Otherwise, you are going to be stuck in a really slow charger.

And I'm right where you're at. My car came with a J1772 adapter, so perfect for all the

level two charging. I can pull into any Tesla supercharger and plug it in without issue. I have

not gotten the NACS to CCS or, again, whichever way you want to call it, adapter. But I also know

that my route pretty consistently, and I know where my superchargers are, and I just haven't run

into that issue. And it saves you 150 bucks, I'm ballparking something like that to get to not

have the adapter, and you'd have to carry it around or worry where it's at. But the one time

you need it, you're going to really wish you had it. You go, oh my gosh, I'm somewhere that's

too far away, and is it your AAA call to come get your car, or could you just pull the adapter out?

The main reason I would say to snag a CCS to NACS adapter, if you had an S, an X, a 3, or a Y,

the main reason for this would be sort of, I guess, opportunity charging in suburbia. If you're

wondering around urban or suburban America, especially on the West Coast, in the Bay Area,

there are thousands, literally, I'm almost, I'm sure, probably hundreds, if I'm not being hyperbolic,

at least hundreds of CCS random stations in the Bay Area. They're all small onesie twosies, some of

them are slow, some of them are not slow. But if you're going to roll into Bank of America, and

you're like, I'm only here for 10 minutes, but I want to, I want to get some power.

The grocery store, the gas station. Every Whole Foods has got a whole slew of old,

old CCS starters, et cetera. So kind of handy on that front, not essential, but

find your Walmart over there. And that is kind of the weird twist, though. I think with Hyundai's

a little bit cart before the horse transition. I understand why they did it, because they wanted

to be ahead of the game and really advertise native supercharger access. We're forward thinking,

we're on this, someone else might have beat us to the supercharger access, but we're going to

beat everybody to the real game, which is native. They had some of the biggest problems with super

charging. Yes. And they're the ones that are most affected by this. So you as an Ionic 5 shopper,

and if you are an Ionic 5 shopper, I want to hear your stories. Be sure and call us,

email us a voice memo, hey at AutobuyersGuide.com or 669-842-1947. Give us a jingle.

I want to know how do you decide to charge? Do you go into this going, I'm going to go to that

supercharger. I know it's going to take 50% longer, but I'm going to do it because it's more reliable

and I don't have to use an adapter, or do you go, I really only want this to take 15 minutes or 18

minutes. So I'm going to whip out my adapter, pray to the EA gods that there is not a brick

station out there, which I honestly have to say doesn't happen very often anymore to me, but

could still happen. Do you pray to that EA God and use the adapter so you can charge as rapidly as

possible? I want to know. But it turns out that some of the least expensive EVs in America, at least

coming into this next year, don't need the adapter because we've got a bolt. Bolt is back with NACS

charging. It's the first Chevrolet model to do that with the native plug, which is, well, to dive

into that because that's a whole weird situation. And on the equally weird, but differently weird

situation, we have the Nissan Leaf that has two plugs, one J1772, one J3400. Yeah. And I'll touch

on the leaf first, but trust me, we have to go drill you with questions about the bolt because

Travis actually went to go see the bolt, which is very handy. But it sounds weird that the leaf

has both, but this is the exact situation that we're going to find in the Porsche Cayenne EV.

It is coming with the exact same thing, by the way, the leaf in the Cayenne, you heard it here

folks, the exact same same problem, same, same, same reason that they have two ports, same thing

going on. So both many fact, well, Porsche was actually more upfront than, than Nissan. Porsche

said, you know, hey, we have to redesign the entire electronic charging module, the AC charging

module on board the vehicle in order to fully support J3400. We don't want to do that now because

we wanted this port on the car as fast as possible. Also, North America is the only place that is

going to get the J3400 connector. They're never going to sell a Porsche Cayenne or anything

else outside of this area with, with the NACS connector because it just doesn't make sense,

either legislatively or power realities in other markets just doesn't make sense. Any rate. So

the reason they have to redesign the connector is the importantly in a J3400 vehicle or any Tesla,

the onboard charger, and remember the actual charger is on the car. It's not that thing on the

wall. The, the charger is always connected to the two pins, the two main pins here, the AC charger.

So there's a reason for that. The reason they don't use a relay is reliability because if you

had a relay, maybe it's open, maybe it's closed, you always want to be able to charge somehow

more reliably and effectively. So there is a contactor that will connect and disconnect

the DC side to those same pins. So it can DC fast charge, but the AC side's always connected.

And the AC charger has to be able to have DC power there, high voltage DC power there

up to 1000 volts without frying itself. That's the important part of a J3400 compliant vehicle.

The second part is it has to be able to support 277 volts single phase AC charging video on the

channel about that. But those are the two things that have to be done. And that means a complete

redesign of these power units in the vehicles. Nissan and Porsche didn't have the time or the

wherewithal or whatever reason to do it. So we have the two plugs. Although because of what we

just talked about with the ubiquity of J1772 in the wild, I'm strangely okay with that.

I mean, I think it's a fun, quirky little thing. I think you guys remember which one's which,

but it's easy enough, right? Then you can do a little AC-DC thing in your head, you know,

which side's which, right? Whichever way you need to do it. And I think it means that

you have a little bit more flexibility, at least for the moment. So it's strange that

you can't use both of them. There have been some vehicles that came out where you had

charging on either side or both sides and you could do DC on one and AC on the other.

Or, you know, you could do DC AC on one or you could do AC on the other. So they've been able

to do that. And they have it a select DC DC, but very rare. Right. And this one's, this one's,

I don't know, you can park a car in whichever way you want, headfirst or back it in. I guess you

have a little flexibility there. But I think for the main thing is get the car out, get it going.

Like if there's a weird little hiccup, this is an easy weird hiccup. Also, on the leaf,

the location is correct. If you want to do a DC charging, a DC charger, you know, they've got

that, that way they've got that one right. That's an important piece of the puzzle. And then for

market, for cars that are global, yeah, the NACS, the J3400 is not going to take off and take over

the globe, not today and probably not tomorrow. So being able to swap those components in and

just not have to do a whole unit. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, it's, I am, I am personally intrigued.

Side, sidebar here, it's worth noting that one of the reasons that the charge module also has to

be redone is you don't find 277 volt power in a lot of places in the world, including most places

in Canada. So Canada is going to get the ability to do that, but it's going to be real rare because

generally 480 volt three phase is not as common in Canada and commercial installs as it is in the

US. Anyway, back to the main topic though, I am sad that we don't have AC charging as well on the

leaf on the passenger side, because for curbside charging, that would be the most convenient.

But again, the cost of this, there is some cost in having the two connectors and the two doors

and the extra cabling, but they didn't have the some cost and time of redesigning the module.

Now, I would not be surprised if when they do give us a fully J3400 compliant vehicle,

that we end up with like the Chevy Bolt, where you have only the one plug. And on the bolt,

I do understand why it is where it is because survey after survey, including our own survey of

viewers has indicated that drivers by and large prefer the charge door to be on the driver's

front quarter panel. And they also kind of like it in the very, very front of the vehicle,

they basically want it up there somewhere because they want to be able to nose into the parking

spot and connect. They don't want to walk around to the other side of the car. So

I kind of understand why they put it there, but it does present a challenge for the promise of

Tesla supercharging. Yeah, but I can tell you the reason the 2027 bolt has it up there is because

it's very similar to the bolt that disappeared. Yes, I mean, they did redesign some pieces here

and there and they could have relocated it if they truly wanted to. But it is also, I mean,

brand new car designs, design after design after design where it could have gone anywhere.

That's where they stick it varieties of reasons, not just customer preference. If it's a front

wheel drive vehicle, their drive electronics up there. So it does make more sense to put it where

the charge controller could be, et cetera, for, for the onboard charging, et cetera. But also

customer preference just plays a big role there. But speaking of customer preference,

bolt versus leaf. Oh, kind of a tough one. And I say that because the bolt did so well for so long.

Like I, I, I, my, the, the place I'm at right now is my, my friend's place and, and he had a bolt

for years and we went and looked out at the bolt together. And it's, it was such a great little

car. And it was what the leaf was conceptually, but more capable. Now those roles have reversed

because the bolt we're getting back is minimally more capable as far as driving range. And the

leaf is certainly better and is going to have better equipment capable and, and more fun and

interesting. Ultimately, both front wheel drive and cheap and tearful. I think, oh, it's a little

bit tough. I think I like the form factor of the bolt better. But if it was my money, I would likely

end up with a leaf. Yeah, we should talk about the pricing because the, the bolt is now technically

the least expensive EV in America. It will start at 28, 29, 95. The next trim up, which is going to

be the first one to happen is 29, 990. The leaf starts with destination. Yep. Leaf starts at

31, 485. So the leaf is more, but Nissan has promised a $26,800 Nissan leaf, the regular leaf S

with no plus that is coming later. And this is where things are interesting. So you get,

you pay more for the leaf, but you get about 50 miles more range, 303 miles versus 255.

Four more horsepower. Who cares about that? Same charging speeds looks like, but the cheaper model

has a smaller battery and we're estimating about 200 miles of range on that one. So 50 miles less

range. So it's really this interesting fork, same size and form factor to the leaf, but either end

cheaper or more expensive. Yeah. And that's, that's where it would get tough. So if I was on the cheap

end of the leaf or like the, or an LT bolt, I would probably lean towards the bolt, but if I

was spending plus or minus 30, then it would probably go to the, the, the S plus leaf, I think

is where I would end up. And probably decent discounts on both. We don't know exactly what

the cash on the hood situation is going to be because leaf's too new, bolt's not on sale yet,

but both these manufacturers have a history of some pretty solid negotiating and cash on the hood.

I am curiously optimistic that both will be ultimately almost exactly the same price.

Yeah. I mean, effectively you're looking very close. I will, I got to tell you though, I'm

disappointed that this bolt looks so much like the outgoing one because I don't understand this.

It's like they shut down the assembly line and then went, uh, oh, hold on. Let's just fire it

back up and we're going to make it, we're going to make a point about it, but they were, there was

an obvious point and, and you know, the little crowd went, what, when they said the bolt is back

and this 20, 27 model is here for a limited time. And we went, what, what limited time, limited run,

the word limited was used. And so they're making this big fuss about bolt is back and they brought

out owners, which was awesome. I talked to a lot of folks who had their bolts, loved it, you know,

two, three, four bolts, that sort of thing. And I said, why are we doing all this for a car that

you don't plan to keep around for very long? Why don't you throw the big party for the new bolt,

which I have to, I have to assume at this point there is a new bolt down the road. Otherwise,

why would you bother doing all this? It was, it was strange. It is, it is curious and we don't know

all the details behind the scenes. I've tried reading the tea leaves and I come up with an empty

cup. So lessons, lessons on tea leaf reading. That's why people tune in Alex. Yes, from, from

Nana Alex. But it's logical because it does lower the cost of bolt and bolt is supposed to be an

affordable vehicle. So the more you can base on the previous generation, the less expensive,

intrinsically, it can be the lower the R and D costs are. But what's also odd is that it's not

like they went super cheap and just gave us a rehashed original bolt because it's got new batteries,

new motors. It's got basically a motor, an ultium heart transplant. Well, multiple bolts have

multiple motors. It's basically has an ultium transplant. They snag bits and bobs from,

from equinox, jammed them in there. And then they gave us what is assumed to be the next generation

ultium battery pack is an LFP pack. And it does appear that this is the, the, the direction that

ultium is going to go as well for some of their lower end vehicles right now. They're, they're

nickel chemistry lithium ion backs packs rather. So LFP also has the promise of being able to charge

to 100% without long-term degradation the same way and lower costs as well. So, and also less

reliance on, on rare materials. Right. And, and I will say, you know, they did restructure the front

end or the interior, right? So the front dash is different. You got bigger screens. It does feel

a little bit more updated, but they took something away. And this one I am a little bit bitter about.

They got rid of the, the regen paddle. And that one I feel, I don't even know why you touch it.

I don't know why, why you wouldn't just leave it as is. If you're making changes, that's one that

oh, I'm, I'm disappointed. I really am. Yeah. I think I'm more disappointed that they're not

giving it carplay to try and satisfy, especially the segment or shopper that's interested in bolt.

Because if you're trying to lure people away from a regular hatchback, which,

which I think is actually a really good goal for these under $30,000 leaf potentially at $27,000

basically now that, now that Kia Soul has sailed off into the sunset, you know, we're, we're talking

competitive sets in the subcompact crossover segment that don't by and large get purchased with

all wheel drive. So the lack of all wheel drive, I don't think is as big of a deal as some people

might think, because if we're looking at Kona or Corolla Cross or some of these other options,

the average one going off the lots, unless we're talking about the Northern States is

high 20 drive. Front wheel drive. Yeah. Pretty similar pricing, but the, the Chevy Trax or Chevy

Bolt, they get really close. They get really close, but one of them's going to give you carplay

and the other one is not. And that's where I'm wondering, it's like, hmm, that shopper, especially

I could see being more in tune. If they're trying to go for a younger, more, more phone

integrated shopper, things like that are pretty important. Luckily you will, you will be able

to get supercruise in that bolt, but it sounds like it's going to be bolt RS and they're not going

to be doing supercruise right off the gate. You're going to have to wait for those to be available

later. So do not know if it's very interesting to roll out and we don't know if it's the new

supercruise or the old one. Right. Because they have lots of that. I asked a lot of questions

and I left with lots more questions than I had answers and it was hard to find the right people

to talk to. So, um, yeah, I haven't looked at all the reporting on it, but I'm sure things are a

little bit scattered, but on the comparison front here. So, uh, dimensionally in a nutshell,

leaf is a little bit lower in roof line. It's about 10 inches longer and it's wider. So the cabin

is notably wider feeling than the bolt. Both are a little tight in the back seat. Legroom is,

is not the most generous in either. I was surprised though, we got double the number of 24 inch roller

bags in the back of the leaf as we could in the bolt, but I also discovered a quirk in the back

of the leaf. I don't know if you noticed this when you were driving it. If you pull up those,

those dividers in the back, the sort of the, what are they, the flip and fold or whatever they call

that thing, divide and hide cargo system, whatever. Yeah. Pull off those things. You'll notice then

there's that huge foam divider under the floor where they got the knickknacks, right? And then

behind that, there's this strange foam block. It looks like it's like it has this multi-tiered

nature to that, that cargo floor. Well, we removed everything from the back. So we pulled out the

foam divider. We pulled out that big block in the back and we discovered that all that is back

there. It's not some sort of weird hump in the unibody like I had expected to maybe accommodate

battery modules or something. No, there is one little, little, maybe the size of this camera,

electronic module in the back corner. So it's very much like that Corolla cross where there's like,

there's one tiny thing back here. Guys, couldn't you have moved it somewhere? It could have been

hidden under the rear seat because the rear seat bottom cushion doesn't flip or do anything.

Why is that module not in there? They could have given us a significantly bigger cargo area. I

measured it out. That Nissan Leafs cargo area could have been about nine inches deeper than it is

if they had simply moved that model. Or they could have given us a spare tire.

Right, right. One or the other. Pick one, but one or the other.

A dinky temporary could have been in there. Now, what did you think about the interior

design of the bolt? Because I thought it was a little bit drab on the black on black. I'm assuming

they're going to have other colors, but I think the Leaf presents better, actually much better than

I thought admittedly too. Yeah, I mean, even the Leaf with the smaller screens, which we haven't seen,

you know, I haven't seen in person, but you know, it'll be out there. It feels much more modern,

and it feels much more open. The bolt is fine and functional. It's got lots of little cubby spaces.

They have sort of a gray interior. So it's like black on gray, but you have room for your phone.

You have room for your passenger's phone. There's cubby areas around. I was actually pretty impressed

with it. But the Leaf is much more pleasant. It's more open. It feels more EV in that way.

I have to admit, I am surprised that Nissan didn't really strip down the base Nissan Leaf S,

which is the base model. It does get smaller screens, but they're 12 inches rather than 14.

So it's not a not a huge loss. And it gets the twin screen set up still, just ever so slightly

smaller. Yeah, it's the same design, and it'll feel very similar. And there are a lot of base

models that feel cheap compared to the next level up. And that is not what we're going to find in

the Leaf. You'll get the same screen layout in both of the bolts so that there's some simplicity

there and some consistency, honestly, just in manufacturing more than anything else. But yeah,

and I really do think the Leaf is a good deal. And I first got to look at it and went for the

first drive. For me, it was really, do I go bottom end or top end? Not that there's not good value

in the middle because I think there is, but they've added such fun components to it, which you are

certainly not going to find in the bolt. You know, nothing against it. But now you're looking at,

you know, the electrochromatic roof, you've got the holographic rear lenses, you've got the upgraded

stereo system. I mean, and some really cool colors you get on the higher end as well.

The Leaf is one that really stretches, but I could see myself getting a base model.

It doesn't feel stripped out. And I don't think we need to go into it if we don't want to. But

obviously, the Tesla just released their standard models, the three and the Y. And those feel very

stripped out comparatively. They definitely do, yeah. In a number of ways, but at the same time,

then still not that much less expensive versus the other models. So I feel like the Leaf actually,

from a value proposition there, has probably smashed a nail on the head. And I'm someone who

doesn't love enormous batteries if we don't need them. And I think most people don't need them.

So the 52 kilowatt hour battery in a Leaf should be perfect for so many people. The question is,

will it take off? You know, will folks go, this is enough and be comfortable with it?

And it'll still be an active cooled battery, which is important. So I know a lot of people

are concerned because Leaf has had a reputation for battery degradation over time. But even the

highest most expensive Leaf you can get, $41,585, including destination, which is what we're driving

this week. I think it's an interesting good deal. There is just one little bitty thing. DC fast

charging has really ramped up. It's much better than before. But I actually think I could have

handled slightly slower DC fast charging for faster AC charging. And the onboard 7.2 kilowatt

charger is just so slow. I actually thought it was 11 and a half. And that's gonna that's gonna

be noticeable. Even my Tesla, which has the slowest AC charging of any Tesla you could buy,

is at 7.7. And that's a little slow. But I've got, you know, I've got even less range than the

top end Leaf does. So yeah, crawling ish or crawling by today's standard. So if you if you

and this is this is the origin of my confusion. If you have a bolt and you drain your batteries

to zero and you plug it in to an AC charger that can handle 48 amp AC charger, which is pretty

common these days, you can charge your bolt in under six hours from zero to completely full.

It's actually pretty darn quick. A leaf will take almost 11 hours.

And I think importantly, to get the same mileage as you would on the bolt is still going to take

more time than yes. Yeah, even though admittedly that full battery in the leaf will get you 50 more

miles, efficiency is relatively similar between these two vehicles just has a bigger battery,

but the bigger battery is going to take longer to fill. We actually had to put a new EVSE in

in the back. And I thought something was wrong with it because I plugged in the leaf and I was

like, no one no one makes an EV that charges this slow anymore. And yeah, what is this? A plug-in

hybrid? Yeah, it's like, what's happening here? Is there a plug-in hybrid tool charge faster?

There are not that I can think of off the top of my head. There probably are somewhere, but not

that I can think of off the top of my head. It's a few seven seven without DC fast charging. There

are some DC fast charge capable ones, but 6.6 to seven kilowatts is what we've seen most most

plug-in hybrids topping out. But yeah, it's that part is just a little on the sluggish side.

It's probably not a deal breaker. You can still charge most of your battery at night at home

and in eight hours. But if you are really planning on using a lot of range every day,

then keep that part in mind. The big win for both of them, but both of these affordable EVs is that

they now have 150 kilowatt charging. And that is that is a life changer from crawling at 50

max, which means you're floating around 30 kilowatts, you know, for a decent portion of your

charge rate. Even even when your rate has declined on something like the bolt, you'll now be charging

probably at or above that 50 kilowatts, which was the old peak.

And the last part to remember, of course, is, and this is probably a bit more critical for some folks,

the bolt will have an LFP battery, which means it is generally considered okay

to charge to 100% and use all 255 miles of range. The leaf has an NCM battery,

nickel manganese cobalt battery. So you should not charge it to 100% all the time. The more

acceptable charge range is somewhere between 80 and 90%. So it's like 300 miles of range.

Because my math skills are bad, you know, we're talking 240 miles of range at 80%. So your daily

driving is actually really close to the bolt. So with that bombshell, where can everybody find us?

Well, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on both of our

YouTube channels. And if you're listening to this, you can find it on YouTube. If you're watching

this, you can find it on Spotify and and Apple music and wherever you listen to your favorite

podcasts. And if you want to reach us personally, give us a ring or shoot us an email at hey at

auto buyers guide.com. Yep. And always remember to give us five star reviews on Apple podcasts,

because that's where you can give written reviews and we love seeing them. In fact, we have a brand

new one here from David just dropped a few days ago. He says he was in the market for buying a

new car found our channel now that he's not in the market. Your podcast is the only one that has

retained my interest. Oh, I love that you discuss industry news ownership issues such as maintenance,

tires, charging, etc. general car buying advice, as well as quick report on what we're driving.

Well done. Please keep it going. Well, thanks for watching and listening, David. And of course,

thanks for that wonderful five star review. So get out there. We can only keep it going.

We can only keep it going with five star reviews. Otherwise, what's the point?

And if you want to make them humorous, you know, we may read those as well,

just as long as they're not dirty. Yeah, we gotta be careful.

We'll still read the dirty ones, but you know, we can't put it all on, you know.

All right, everybody. See you everybody next week.

Nissan’s New Leaf, NACS Isn’t Perfect, Toyota Corolla Cross, & The Electric TrailBoss

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