The Benefit of Listening

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Coming up on episode 415 of Wheel Bearings, we got the Hyundai Ioniq 9, the Acura ADX, the Subaru Saltera,

the Jeep 2026 Jeep Cherokee. Mavericks are getting more expensive and cheaper.

Nissan prices out the new leaf. Charge points, Omniport conversion kits are now available.

Infiniti's bringing back the Q50. Tensor wants to sell AVs to customers. All that and more coming up next.

And this is episode 415 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abrual-Sammet from Telemetry

and I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International

and Nicole is traveling somewhere today. I can't remember exactly where.

The sky.

Well, she may or may not be in the sky right at the moment as we're recording. I'm not sure where.

I mean to be fair, we're all in the sky.

That's true, yeah. But just in various different levels of the sky. It's all sky.

Anything above the ground is technically sky.

Everything's sky.

But she will be joining us briefly, joining us later in a segment that she and I recorded

earlier this week to talk about the 2026 Subaru Saltera.

But before we get to that, Robbie, did you drive anything this week?

I didn't have anything at home, but I did go somewhere and drive something.

Oh, what did you drive?

I drove the 2026 Kia Sportage Hybrid.

So I accrued all the way to Louisville, Kentucky, which I'd never been to as far as I know.

There's been a lot of drive programs in Louisville. I'm surprised you have to at least one.

I don't think I've been to one. I'm 80% sure I've never been to Louisville, Kentucky.

I don't know. I'm pretty sure I've probably been to Kentucky, but driven through it.

I don't think I've ever just hung out in Kentucky.

It doesn't really matter, to be honest.

Do you wave at all the horses?

Uh, no.

It doesn't really matter, because most of the time, I didn't leave the hotel to do anything

other than drive a car down the Bourbon Road, Bourbon Trail, Whiskey Trail, Whiskey Road.

Some road by the Ohio River. It was very pretty. There was a lot of corn, I think maybe also

potatoes. And it was a nice drive. It wasn't too hot. It wasn't too cold.

And that's the Kia Sportage. No, I'm just kidding.

No, no. So the 2026 Kia Sportage. This is the hybrid version. I drove it. And

for what it is, starting at $30,000, I found it to be actually quite nice.

I will say that the seats felt a little bit stiff after a few hours behind the wheel.

Again, seats are very relative. You should, you know, drive a car, see if you like it.

Before you, you know, buy it. Just sit in it. Even if you just sit it, sit it, drive around.

Like, you know, you're thinking about the dynamics of the car and stuff.

But also, like, where's your butt? Where's your back? Where's your shoulders?

Where's your legs? Like, like, is it pinching anything that it shouldn't be?

Because everyone's body is slightly different from everyone else.

So that said, you know, the seats felt just a little, just a scooch, a scooch stiff, but,

you know, fine for, you know, if I had to do a road trip, I wouldn't be like, oh no.

Again, much better than the worst seats that I've ever sat in for me, which is the

Mini with the John Cougar Mellencamp package. I got like two blocks before.

I was like, I hate this car. And I shouldn't because I really love Minis,

but I hate this car because I cannot get comfortable. I don't know what I,

there's nothing I can or can't do with this vehicle. I'm going to die being upset.

That is always the worst feeling when you, when, when this, when you get in and after a few,

within a few minutes, you realize the seats just don't work or they don't work for your

body. Yeah, they just, they just, they just didn't work for my body in that, in that,

in that Mini Cooper. And again, I really like Mini Coopers because they're like,

everyone likes to say this, you know, they're like, what are you, go-karts?

It's small, it's nimble, it's quick, it's a fun drive, manual transmission, nope.

So anyway, so yeah, so the Kia Sportage Hybrid,

I was surprised, the suspension was nice. It corners well for, for, for a little, you know,

a little small SUV. But you are sitting pretty high, like the seat itself is high,

because people want to feel like they're, they're sitting up. I am not those people.

I like to sit low because I have a very tall body. And so when I'm sitting high,

it just makes me feel like I'm, well, yeah, it makes me feel weird.

The X-Type that we have, it sits high, it's a sedan, and it sits high. So I don't, I don't like

that. That's another thing I don't like about that car. So you know, if you're, if you are tall

or if you're not a fan of sitting high, it feels a little weird, a little awkward.

The motor and engine pair really well. It has the 8-speed automatic transmission,

not a CVT, it's a high-five to Kia for that. And if you, if you're just doing regular driving, it's

fine. But if you're pushing it, it has paddle shifters, and you're going to want to use those

paddle shifters, because the, the, the gear shifting feels a little on the slow side. It

shifts a little, you know, a few seconds later than I think it should. It doesn't sound

shift as much as it should. But again, aggressive driving, how many people are

going to be doing that? Depends where you live. Depends on where you live. Yeah. So if you live

somewhere with a lot of, with a lot of twisties, which they were not, you know, Kia was nice enough

to put us on roads, you know, nice roads with twisties on it, you're going to want to use the,

the paddle shifters as eco and sport. There's no normal mode. You know, they have an eco,

normal sport mode on, on most cars. It's just eco or sport, which to be honest, that's fine.

If you can, there's also my, you know, your own personal driving dynamics.

SETI, we can go everywhere and you can tell, you know, how much you want. So that could be

your normal eco and sport. Initially, I was like, well, this is kind of weird. And after a while,

like, no, not really. So yeah, eco and sport, the paddle shifters are good.

Oh, oh, here's, here's, remember back in the day when the EV9 and then the IONIQ 5

had that little panel for HVAC and for climate controls and to control the, like,

physical buttons. You could talk, like, you could talk between, between the

audio and climate controls. Yeah. Yeah. It's back in the Kia Sport.

I don't know. Kia, unfortunately, put that on a whole bunch of vehicles.

Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully in the next generation, when they do the next complete redesigns,

that will go away like it has on, you know, like similar things have gone away on the Hyundai side.

It feels like they bought a bunch of them and they're like, ah, no.

Gotta use them up. Gotta use them up. So that's there.

I remember initially being like, ah, this is fine. But then you're like, oh, wait,

let me do this. Let me do this. Let me do this. Let me change that. And in our Hyundai,

I have like that, there's a little star, like you hit your favorite. I use it all the time.

And then while we were driving, we were toggling between Kia's stuff and our stuff.

And we kept having like, oh, if we had the HVAC on, because it was like 80 degrees and humid

and overcast. And so, you know, you're doing a lot of climate control adjustments.

So you don't sweat through your clothes. But so that's back. Fortunately, they have,

you know, it's a $30,000 car. So it has a little, you know, you can just grab the

vents and move them around the way God intended. Yes.

With the way I Lord and Savior Dolly Parton intended, you just grab them and move them

around. Yeah. The rear seats, six foot three. If I'm just sitting like I normally sit,

I can stick my hand between, you know, my head and the roof.

If I try to sit up like a proper gentleman, I don't know, like a Mediterranean times,

like my head will like sort of hit the roof. So again, six, three doesn't mean that it's

going to be bad for you. It depends on your torsos. I mean, some people are shorter than

me, but they have longer torsos. So, you know, give that if, if you plan on, if you have tall

children, return on rolling around town with tall children, it's, you know, give that a look.

Leg room wasn't too bad behind some folks who were shorter than me.

What's cool is the in the seats themselves, they have USB-C ports in the back seat.

They also have a little hook for like your purse or your bag or your fanny pack or

whatever. And then they have another thing in the headrest for your jacket.

So you could put your jacket there. You could hang it on there or you shove your, your, your,

I stuck my iPhone in there. I mean, it cuts off half the screen, but I'm like, hey, look at this.

And when I told Kia that I guess not for that.

And it has like a little bit of rubber in there to keep your, your jacket from falling.

Just like this little, it's like these weird little touches that like,

get you excited about a car where it's like, oh, it's just a little bit of rubber.

So my, my, my jacket, we had a bump and won't slide off or whatever.

That rubber is not enough to keep your iPhone from flying out whenever someone goes around a corner.

Does the, does the Sportage also have the, the USB ports that are on the

inboard side of the front seats? So like along, along the side of the seat?

Yeah. That's where the USB ports. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're part of the,

the, that's, that's a cool feature to have, you know, to, because, you know, a lot of

times, you know, you'll find manufacturers will put the ports like at the, at the back end of the,

the center console and they're like right down by the floor. And you're, you're trying to,

trying to plug it in, you know, it's way down below your eye level and you're trying to,

trying to get it in there. It's a pain, you know, having it right there on the seat back,

you know, is, is very convenient. Because you're, you're, you're already problem,

if you're sitting in the back seat, if you're an adult and you're, unless you're in a large

sedan or a large SUV, it's already weird to sort of try to move and do things.

It's like being on a plane and they're like, okay, now try to find the thing way down here.

Exactly. It's the same, where you can't see it, it's dark. You're like, you get your phone out,

you get the light on. With this, you can just like, oh, it's right here. You just plug it in,

you can watch your, or ignore, or do whatever you do with your phone or just charge it really.

Yeah. So yeah, so the, it comes with a 1.6 liter engine. It has 268 horsepower, six-speed automatic,

2,000 pounds of towing. I don't know, that's, that's

It's better than 1,000 pounds or nothing. Yeah, yeah, more cycles, jet skis,

sea-dews. What else could you put back? Fun stuff. It's really a fun stuff for towing. It's not really

like, oh, we're going to haul a bunch of, you know, some horses. I mean, you could, but it would not

be a, you would not have a good time. There's a little bit more power, a couple more horsepower,

power from the, from the front motor. They've improved it. They got a couple more kilowatts

out of that. It has, for the front-wheel drive versions, 42 miles per gallon combined,

all-wheel drive, 35 miles per gallon combined. Again, it's a hybrid. They have a plug-in hybrid

that's coming out later this year. The hybrid and the gas versions should both be on sale

relatively soon. They're probably showing up in dealerships now. It has the same batteries last

year. The Kia Connect, you know, they're sort of, it's five years. I always forget to mention that

Kia will give you free access to their sort of mapping and all, you know, their online stuff

with your car for five years. After that, there's apparently a list of plans. What's really

interesting is they, I didn't realize, I don't know anything about sports. I'm just going to put

that out there. Kia is like an official sponsor of the NBA. I didn't know that. I'm sure some,

I'm sure I've seen it. I just, it doesn't register in my brain, but you can get NBA skins for your,

for your, of your favorite team for your infotainment system. So yeah, you'll be able to

buy like, if you like the Lakers or the other teams, Nicks. Pistons. Pistons. There you go. Like,

the Lakers or the Pistons are the, I'm pretty sure the Nicks are a team still as far as I know

they are. Yeah. I believe they are still a team. Yeah. Yeah. You can get, you can like,

do that to your car and asked about like, football, MLB and hockey. They said, and then they,

they, they, they informed me that yes, they are the official, they're an NBA partnership. So

you know, they'll still see how it goes. I'm like, oh, okay. Cause sports people like their

sports and I, you know, good for you to have something that you love and it'd be great if

you were like a huge Raiders fans. And that's what I know. Raiders fans are insane. If they

had a Kia Sportage and they ever, they had the option to get a Raiders scan, they would totally

make their car into a Raiders vehicle. So yeah. Starts at $30,290. We were driving the $40,000

prestige. Apparently, they sell, I believe it's more than 50%. They're like, of that, yeah,

the SX has teased top selling trim with over 50% of sales. Wow. That's, that's unusual. I mean,

usually the, the top trim. Yeah. It's like mid trim. That's like, that's most of the sales.

Usually it's, yeah, like, you know, 15, maybe 20% go for the top trim, 10 or 15, 10 to 15%

take the entry trim and then everything else is in the middle. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's,

I know the interior is really nice. They, they replaced it. There's like a little,

a scoosh, a teeny, tiny bit of piano black, but the rest, like all the other things has this like

sort of, it's like a gray silver and it has like a, this nice little lying texture to it.

So it's, it's a matte. And so it feels that the quality of the materials feels

again, Kia Hyundai better than what you would expect for, you know,

a Kia Hyundai at this price. I'm, I'm very, yeah, 40 people are like, you know,

I just want the $40,000 Kia. So good on them because those, those, you know,

the higher trends means more, more profits for them, to be honest.

And I think that is it. Yeah. 2000. Oh, I'm sorry. The, the increase is five horsepower.

So they got a little bit more. So the power train increase. Yeah. Yeah. So 232 horsepower estimate.

Yeah. No, it's a, it's a good little car. It handled better than I anticipated.

Acceleration isn't great. It's, you know, 1.6 liter, even, you know, we have the all-wheel drive

version. I mean, it's not going to, but it, but it's more than adequate to get on the freeway.

Yeah. In sport or in eco mode, even eco mode, it was like, oh yeah, this, this is fine.

That's, and that's the thing is that most cars, I drove a car in the 90s, they had like 80-something

horsepower and I was more in, I could get to 65 miles an hour, no problem, get on the freeway.

So you should be fine. Yeah. I mean, my, my car's got 116 horsepower or that did when it was new

35 years ago. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah. So these, these, you know, we, I think for,

especially car automotive journalists, we get sort of, we get used to sort of EVs or we

get used to like super, super quick cars. And then we get in a regular car and we're like,

oh, I don't know. I'm like, no, no, you do though. It's fine. Yeah. It's fine. Well, this, and,

you know, this is, this is why, you know, when we bought our EV6, you know, we, we bought one

with rear wheel drive, you know, which is 215 horsepower, but that is way more than enough.

You know, even, even that, you know, we'll get to 60 in, I think about six and a half

seconds, which is as fast as anybody needs. Yeah. You're, you're, you're fine. I think the,

the horsepower race of, you know, especially with EVs is a little out of control. I think it

creates situations where people who are getting into cars who don't have experience going that

quick are going to hurt themselves or others. So if you do get a car that goes really quickly,

please do, I don't, I don't ever just get into a car and just take off.

Like you can put me any car, super car, whatever, EV, I, I adjust my mirrors, I do the thing, and I

drive it very, you know, sort of cautiously for the first few miles and, and work my way up to

understanding the dynamics of the vehicle and how quick it is and, and this is, you know,

Sam and I and Nicole, we've been, we're in cars all the time. So we have a lot of experience

driving, just driving to be honest and, and understanding like what the dynamics are of

these vehicles and what happens when something goes a little sideways and how to correct its,

you know, because we're in cars so often and all the time that we, we know how to like fix,

you know, something that's going sideways in a vehicle. The average person, you know, you,

you have your car, maybe you drive a rental car every once in a while, just ease into it.

Well, I mean, even, even for us, you know, because we, we get in and out of

such radically different cars all the time, you know, it's, it's a lesson that we have to learn,

you know, early on is, you know, easing into it helps, you know, while you figure out, okay,

how does this car differ from the one that I just handed back to the fleet guy 15 minutes

ago? You know, and, you know, the two vehicles I've got to talk about, you know,

kind of fit into the hat, you know, that they are quite radically different in their

performance capabilities. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, and you know, it's, there's, there's,

this is how you end up with things, the cars and coffee, you know, something, they get them,

they get a Mustang, anything before like 2015, you know, they had the live axle on the back,

which is, that car is just made to do burnouts, really. And they, they, you know,

the wheels are cold. They don't think our tires are cold. They don't think about that. They don't

think about the fact that, you know, the most, most roads in, you know, suburban or wherever

are a little off camber. So because water has to go somewhere. So there's probably some oil

that's been dripped from trucks and cars, you know, that makes them make some slicker than

normal. So yeah, they don't think about the fact that, yeah, there's oil in the middle

of the road. You know, that's the other thing. And you've got a bunch of cars that

probably older going the cars and coffee. And they, you know, they, they pull out and they think

they're being cool. And they stomp on the accelerator and they go sideways and go,

you know, barreling into another car or into a ditch or God knows what, wrapped around a tree or

wrapped around a tree. And it's, it's, it's not worth it. You're not impressed

in anyone. Anyone, anyone can make a car do a burnout. Yeah. If you, if you,

if your right foot can stomp down quickly, boom, guess what? You have all the qualifications

to do in a burnout. It's everything that comes after that. Yeah. So, so be, be careful out there

people. Be careful. Be careful. All right. Anything else on the Sportage Hybrid for 2026?

I don't think so.

They sell a lot of cars. They have the, yeah, the PS coming out. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

12.3, dual 12.3 inch screens. Same thing. Wireless carplay, wireless Android auto

over the air updates. Yeah, there you go. So the thing that people want to be able to plug

their phone in without having to plug their phone in is there. Excellent. All right.

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Well, I had a couple of different vehicles to drive. I've had, I've been double booked a couple

times and so I'm getting some stuff out of the queue here. So first up was a crossover that

in terms of, in terms of its acceleration is, is actually on the, it's a little,

little more marginal, you know, still adequate, but, but you know, it's getting to the point

where it's barely adequate by modern standards. And particularly for a brand that, you know,

that likes to tag itself as, you know, precision performance, the Acura ADX is

totally underwhelming. It is the entry level model into the, into the Acura lineup.

It is based on the Honda HRV and, which means it's also based on the, the Civic and the Acura

Integra. And frankly, my recommendation would be, if you're looking for an entry point into the

Acura lineup, buy an Integra instead. Yeah. You know, the ADX is, you know, it's got

some Acura styling cues applied to what is overall kind of a relatively bland looking design.

It's not, not terribly exciting to look at. And that's, that's unfortunate.

It's not bad. It's just, it's a little meh, a little meh. And then on top of that, it's got

the same, you know, the 1.5 liter turbo four cylinder that Acura and Honda have been using

in a bunch of vehicles for better part of the decade now, which is a really good engine.

I mean, we had it, we had that same engine in our Civic for, you know, a long time.

But the Civic weighed, you know, a little over 2,900 pounds. The ADX does not.

The ADX compared to an Integra, here, let me find the numbers again here.

Let's see. Compared to a front, so the front wheel drive ADX is 300 pounds heavier than an Integra.

And then adding all wheel drive to that adds another 250 pounds. So you're talking a 550

pound weight deficit compared to an Integra. But for reasons that are unknown, the ADX has

10 fewer horsepower and 190 horsepower and 13 fewer pounds feet of torque at 179.

And all this is paired with a CVT, which all these things combined do wonders to sap all the

joy out of driving an ADX. Integra just a better car all the way around, like even just the numbers

of it. Yeah, you get a little, a little more power and torque, a lot less weight,

about the same amount of interior volume, you know, because the Integra is a hatchback.

So it has most of the practicality you have of something like an ADX, you know,

a small crossover. And it's so much more fun to drive, you know, civic or, you know, either a civic

or an Integra. You know, the interiors of the Integra and the ADX are quite similar.

But they, you know, when you take 550 pounds out of something, it makes a big difference.

Or when you add 550 pounds, it makes a big difference in a bad way.

And the Integra is cheaper. Yeah, and the Integra is cheaper.

So, you know, I, you know, I went out and, you know, did a couple of zero to 60 runs with the

ADX and, you know, in sport mode, it did zero to 60 in about nine and a half seconds, which,

which again, Acura, this is supposed to be the performance brand for Honda.

Yeah. So it is decidedly underwhelming from a performance standpoint.

And the one that the one that they sent me was as so many accuracy in the most

accuracy in the press fleet these days was this urban gray pearl color, which, you know,

if you look really closely, you can, you know, under certain lighting conditions,

you can see the pearlescent effect barely. But I mean, this is just such a boring, boring color,

which is unfortunate because they actually sell, you know, I mean, if you're, if you're going to

get an ADX, they have this wonderful Adriatic blue color, which looks great. And there's

the Milano red, which looks great. And then there's urban gray pearl, which is boring.

So I did not like the color, wasn't was unimpressed by the performance.

It other than that, you know, it generally drives quite well. You know, it's got the same,

it's the same platform, the same suspension, you know, obviously tuned a little bit differently

to handle that extra nearly 600 pounds. But, you know, the steering feels good.

You know, the ride quality is good. So the driving dynamics are good. No, no issue there.

But just, you know, if I was going to spend my money, I would take a pass on the ADX and get

an Integra. You know, because it's just you're just going to have so much more fun with it. And

frankly, it looks better, looks a lot better. So I was concerned because it's a small crossover.

Everyone loves a small crossover. I was like, regardless of what we say, people have been,

I was like, oh, I wonder if this is outselling the Integra, because there's a potential for it to out

to the Integra because blah, blah, blah. No one buys sedans, blah, blah, blah. Which key is like,

nah, our sedan sales are up like something percent 20 or I don't know. The Integra like

really does it more than double your month to date. And yeah, the Integra's winning over the ADX. So

I'm like, whew, good job. You're making the right choice. And I understand Acura is like what they're

doing because they're like everyone wants, everyone has this car and they're like, you know, everyone

has a segment in their lineup. We got to put this segment in our lineup and we're like,

we're not going to build something new. So we're going to build it off the tiny little Honda and

the Civic platform. But yeah, the Integra's still winning. So I mean, it's not meeting the MDX or

the RDX, which I really like the RDX. Yeah, I was just going to say, if you want a

modestly sized Acura crossover, get the RDX. Yeah, that's a good car.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we got to do something. We got to have something in that segment. So

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. I don't understand where Acura put all this extra weight

in this thing. Yeah, it's just, I mean, yeah, the all-wheel drive. Okay, I get that. That's a

couple hundred pounds. But where's all the other weight coming from? I don't know.

Every ADX comes with a case of the Bloons. You just have to find them. Oh, okay.

Like, oh, you bought this. Wow. Okay. You don't know much about our brand,

but you really want an Acura. Here's some of the Bloons.

There are some nice interior color combinations for the ADX as well.

Like they've got, you can get it in this red. They call the combination red with silver metal

film trim. But, you know, and this is the one that I had, which is, you know, it's a kind of a

sort of a burgundy, lighter, not as dark as a burgundy, but a really nice red, you know,

and the combination of the red and black and some silver on the interior of this thing

works really well together. There's also what they, the package they call Orchid, which is mostly off

white, but with some blue accents in there on the seats and the door panels, which also looks

really good. When I did the first drive with the ADX back in the spring, that's what I drove then.

And that's also a really nice color combination, but I'm always a little wary about, you know,

white leather seats, you know, it's over time, you know, it just, it doesn't feel like something

that's going to hold up very well. But, but the red that I had on this one looked really good.

You know, overall packaging, you know, it's typical Honda, you know, the packaging's

good. There's plenty of interior space, plenty of cargo space, you know, no, no real complaints

about the package, you know, the design, like I said, is not as interesting as other Accuras.

And the powertrain is just not, not up to snuff for what I would expect in an Accura,

especially, you know, for an A-spec. I would, I would expect, you know, I would hope for,

you know, if it's, if it's going to be as heavy as it is, I would, I would hope for a

little more, a little more power or, you know, put a regular automatic transmission instead of the CVT

in there. I understand why they did it for, for cost reasons, you know, they already had

this, this engine and the CVT combination certified for a bunch of other applications, fine, but,

you know, then just, just get the Integra. And if you opt for the Integra, you know what

else you can get? A six-speed manual transmission. Yeah. So even better.

Yeah. Yeah. You can get the CVT, or yeah, like the six-speed manual transmission,

just get the Integra. I felt like they're like, oh, someone's like, we really got to do this,

let's go, we need this for, we need this, we got to be part of this segment. And we're like,

fine. We're putting it together on the week, you know. Yeah. Right after lunch on a Friday,

like, let's put this car together. How many are you going to sell? I don't know. Everyone said

to sell. And look at the market. We've got a bit, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. Yeah. The,

just looking at the Minroni, that Urban Gray Pearl, which is such an incredibly boring color,

that's a $600 option. Wow. So just, just get the blue or the red. Yeah. You'll be,

you'll be much happier. I hope so. So what we're telling everybody is, get the Acura,

and get the Integra and get blue or red. The red is really nice. Yeah. And the blue and red,

they don't cost extra. The platinum white pearl and the Urban Gray Pearl,

they're 600 bucks extra and they're boring. Yeah. Just get the cool colors and don't pay extra.

So all in the one that I drove, which was an 80X all-wheel drive A-Spec with the advanced package,

45,950 bucks. You want to take a guess at the destination charge? 1500? 1350.

Wow. That's not too bad. Yeah. Oh, the destination charge for that Kia was... Hold on, I can tell you.

It's like 1495 or something. They're very upfront. They're 1445. That's what it is.

That's not bad. They tell you like right up the, right at the top of the thing, they don't hide it

or anything. It's like 1445, which is still, everything over a thousand dollars still feels

like I'm getting ripped off. Yeah. To be honest. All right. Let's move on to the other one that I had,

which was the Ionic 9. Also drove the Ionic 9 back in the spring. The first drive in Georgia near

the plant in Savannah was very impressed with it. And so I had a week with it. And the one I had

was the top end all wheel drive performance calligraphy design. And so this thing,

you know, it is the three row crossover. It has 311 miles of rated range. I, on my driving loop,

I averaged 3.4 miles per kilowatt hour, which is pretty good for a big electric SUV like this.

3.4? Yeah. Wow, that's pretty good. It is good.

And, you know, so this is the, this is the top end model. It's really nice inside.

You know, the exterior design is a little controversial. There's, you know, some people

not, not totally crazy about it. I don't mind it. You know, I kind of like the,

you know, the Volvo-esque look of the tail lights, you know, the old V70. I think it was the V70 that

had, you know, this kind of tail light shape. The, you know, all three rows, it's fairly roomy,

including in the third row. I, you know, I set the seats for, you know, for so I could be

comfortable and have some plenty of excess leg room in the first and second rows and got into

the third row and it was more than comfortable back there. Hyundai, excuse me, you know, is now

putting J3400 slash Nax charging ports on all their, almost all their EVs. I think by the

end of the year, they'll probably all be switched over, but the Ionic Nines definitely

have those and they are shipping two adapters with with all the EVs that have the Nax port on

there, including the Ionic 5, the 6, the 9. They, so you get an AC adapter for charging at home.

If you have a J1772 charger and then there's a DC adapter for charging at CCS

charging facilities, when, when you charge on CCS, it will charge at about 225 or so,

230 kilowatts on a 350 kilowatt charger. If you are using a supercharger, it'll charge about half

that speed because the, you know, 800 volt architecture and Tesla supercharger is only

being limited to 500 volts. So they don't charge as fast, but Hyundai, all the Hyundai, Kia, Genesis,

EVs have really amazing thermal management on their batteries. So they're able to hold that

close to their peak charging rate all the way up to like 65, 70% state of charge, whereas

most EVs start tapering off when you get to about 25 to 30% state of charge.

And so this is, this is an impressive vehicle. The, the one that I had was in the Gravity Gold

matte exterior with a gray interior. It has all the goodies on it. It's dual motor, all-wheel drive,

440 ish, or the spec page go, 400, sorry, 422 horsepower, 516 foot pounds of torque.

It will do zero to 60 in under five seconds. So it is plenty quick. It's 110 kilowatt hours of battery.

One of the things that, one of the few details that I'm not thrilled about is they're on this,

they're using the same stock that they're using on some of the Kia EVs now. And I think the Ioniq 5

might have got this this year, which is, so there's a third stock on the steering column. So

you have, on the, on the left hand side, you have the turn signal stock on the right,

you have the windshield wiper controls, and then down below that, there's a stock that is

fixed in place, and you twist the end one direction or the other to go into drive or reverse,

press the button on the end to go and put it in park. And then it has the start stop button

towards the inboard end of that near the steering column, which is a little awkward to get at.

The, the way the steering wheel is designed designed in this one, it's a little bit easier to see

than it was when they first did this on the EV9. But it's still, you know,

Kia, or Hyundai should, and Kia should probably consider just dispensing with the, the start

stop button altogether. Just move, you know, do do. I, I like to start, I like being able

to turn the car off or on, especially like, okay. So in the ID buzz, if you get out of the car,

it just turns off. If you're not in the front seat, if you don't have the seat belt on,

it just turns off. It's, it's, it's annoying. I want to be able to just be able to leave my car,

like to, to manually control turning my car and car off. I like to, I have, I have the stock,

I, but I don't, the power button for mine for the Ioniq 5 is in the dash,

but I like the little stock at the bottom where I just turn it forward and turn it back.

It's pretty easy to remember. I like that better than having to reach to the center console.

Yeah. I mean, the shift, you know, for, for shifting is, I'm fine with it. Just the

position of where the start, stop button is, is kind of awkward.

A little weird.

Yeah. So you got to kind of reach under the steering wheel and hit it with your, hit it with your

thumb. And I mean, you get used to it over time. On our EV6, the start, stop button is on the

leading edge of the, the center console. It's very easy to get at.

Yeah. Yeah. But other than that, the rest of the ergonomics in this thing are really good.

It's, you know, Hyundai is going with lots of buttons and knobs for all the climate control

stuff for volume and tuning. It's got a capacitor panel for some of the other climate

controls, things like your heated and cooled seats, the defoggers and the fan speed. But,

you know, it's got, it's a good balance of physical and touch controls.

The, the finish on the dashboard is a little unusual. And on one part of the dashboard on

the passenger side, it's got this sort of metallic, it's almost like a, you know, like a metallic ore

kind of look to it. It's, it's hard to describe. You know, I kind of like it, you know, it's,

it's something a little different. The granite sort of weird.

Yeah. Sort of like a metallic granite. You know, so if you can imagine a cross between

metallic and granite, that's kind of what it looks like. But, you know, they have done

the proper thing. Got manual vent controls everywhere. So that is good.

It, you know, this thing, this thing drives really well for, you know, for such a big vehicle.

You know, this is about a 54, 5500 pound vehicle drives well. It's quick.

It, as with a lot of the other Hyundai Motor Group products this year, it does have

driver monitor system on there. So there's a little camera module on the steering column,

infrared camera module on the steering column that will alert you if you are getting distracted

or appear to be drowsy or anything like that. It does not yet have hands-free driving capability,

but it's got Hyundai's highway drive assist to capability. And, you know, during,

during my driving with this and, you know, bring up something, a conversation that

popped up in our Discord the other day with, I think it was at the, was it the Sportage?

Was it the Tucson? Or Tucson, yes. You know, apparently some Tucson drivers

have been having some issues with phantom braking with the automatic emergency braking

system, where it's randomly slamming on the brakes for, for no readily apparent reason.

I, I have not experienced this either in a Tucson or in any of the other Hyundai,

Kia or Genesis vehicles that I've driven, including our EV6.

Have you, have you noticed it in any of these vehicles at all?

I haven't. The only car I've ever had phantom braking in was a Model 3 and a Model X.

Okay. But again, we only have those cars for a little while, and this person's had it had,

has it happened three times, which is kind of terrifying.

Yeah. Yeah, it's not good if that's happening. You know, I mean, we've had our, we've had the

EV6 for just over a month now. I mean, you've had, you've had the Kona and then now the Ionic 5

for a few years now. And so hopefully this is something that is unique to the Tucson and

hopefully they'll get it fixed soon. I mean, it's something that should be updateable with software,

although I don't think they can do an, I don't think they can do an OTA update for that.

But if it does turn out to be a real problem and then they, hopefully they'll do a recall and,

and update that software. Yeah. If you, if it's happening, you can go to Knitsa site and

say, Hey, this thing is happening. So the more people to do it, the quicker they'll

hopefully move. Knitsa is not great as an organization, but they do, you know, recalls are

important and this is a, you know, this is a safety critical part. So hopefully they'll

move pretty quickly on it. And, you know, hassle underneath your, your, the Kia people,

hassle in the Kia dealers maybe will have something will happen, but

Probably not.

Just hit up Kia directly. Yeah.

Just got to just jump over the dealer. The dealer's not going to do much because

they don't have control over that, to be honest.

Um, so yeah, if you have experienced that problem, uh, on your vehicle, uh, go to the

Knitsa office of defects investigation site and you can submit your issues there.

There's a button. I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

There's a button at the top right corner of the page to report a safety problem.

And so you can, you can submit that there if it has happened. And if there,

if there are enough reports, um, Knitsa can require Hyundai to, uh, to do a recall and fix that problem.

Um, all right. Uh, and then the, uh, price, uh, that, that is really the only

downside of this vehicle. Uh, it is a little expensive.

Um, the Ionic nine starts at about, uh, about $55,000, but the one that I had,

the all wheel drive performance calligraphy design, uh, $79,540.

That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you compare it to some, you know,

some other three row electric SUVs, um, you know, like a Rivian R1S, you know, that's,

that's the loaded trim. Uh, you know, that's, that's about where an R1S starts.

Um, or, uh, what else is out there? The, uh, lucid and lucid. Yeah.

Yeah. Assuming you can even get a lucid gravity. Uh, EV nine. Yeah. EV nine.

It's, it's a little, it's a, it's about the same price as an EV nine, pretty close to the same

price as an EV nine. Um, but, uh, so this is, this is the top of the line model. Um, and

I do, what you probably want to get, you know, if you're, if you're considering one of these

is get the mid level, the SEL trim. Uh, I think that is the mid level one currently. Uh, and you

can get that, you know, in the nicely equipped in the mid sixties. Um, so you want to guess at the

destination charge? Uh, 1400. Uh, 16. Oh, yeah. And, and the, the ionic nine is, uh, is built

in Georgia. It's built, uh, in Elabel, Georgia near Savannah at the new Hyundai Motor America meta

meta plant meta plant. Cool. All right. So that is, uh, what we drove. Um, I will drop in here,

the segment that I recorded with Nicole, uh, earlier this week, uh, about the 2026 Subaru

Salterra, um, short, uh, the TLDR. Um, it is way, way, way better. And, uh, we talked a little bit

about the, the difference in the, um, experience of the type of drive programs that Subaru and Toyota

do with essentially the same vehicle, because, you know, this is the same vehicle as a Toyota

BZ. And, um, we had a lot of fun with this thing. And some people on the drive even got to

see a moose. Oh, I saw a moose once. It bit my sister. Oh, really? Moose bit your sister?

No, it's a joke for money, Piper. Oh, okay. I missed that one. I forgot about that one.

I did see a moose though. I did in Colorado. Maybe Utah. Yeah. Colorado, right?

It was a Polestar event though. Okay. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Harvey and I didn't see the moose.

Harvey breaks together, but, uh, but some other folks did see it and it was just

wandering around, just stand by the side of the road. Um, all right, uh, so I will drop that

in here and we'll be right back. All right. And, uh, Nicole is absent this week, but

she's here, uh, because we recorded this earlier ahead of, uh, ahead of the recording of the

regular show and the Ibarrio and everything. Um, yeah, because, uh, last week you and I were both

in Denver, Colorado to drive, what? To drive the new Subaru Saltera. Yeah. And, um, you know,

we, we saw the, the 2026 Saltera at the New York Auto Show back in April. Yes. Got some,

some details on it then. And Subaru referred to it then and, and also last week as all new,

even though when you look at it, it's not really all new, but.

You know, and it was one of those things, everyone kind of asked them and said,

what do you mean it's all new? It's not all new. It's like, this is, it's, it's new bits,

but their, their argument is that if there is so much that has changed,

the enough has changed that it is essentially all new. Yeah. I mean, apart from the most of the

outer sheet metal, you know, and some of the supporting structure, almost everything else

has changed on this thing. Yes. It is pretty fundamentally a different car than it was three

years ago. It really is. And what did you think, a thumbs up or thumbs down overall impressions?

Absolutely thumbs up. You know, I mean, we've talked, excuse me, numerous times over the last

three years about how underwhelming the BZ4X and the Saltera were. And I think Subaru and Toyota

have addressed almost everything with this revamp. I think they have. They've, they fixed all the,

like one of the things that always drove me nuts and they kind of fixed part of it already

and they finished fixing it in this for this year is originally the steering wheel is round.

It was a circle. And the infotainment, I mean, excuse me, the instrument cluster was down this

sort of like tunneling kind of thing. It sort of had wings. And it was hard to view. It was

just awkwardly placed. Well, I think it was last year they flattened the top of the bottom

of the steering wheel, which made it better. And this year they removed the little wing

things. So it makes the dash. And it's also actually mounted up a little bit higher

than it was before. Yeah. Oh, okay. So all in all, it is greatly improved from where, like,

you can actually, you can actually see it now. You don't have to crouch to look under or lift

your head up to see over the steering wheel because it wasn't just adjust your seat or just

the wheel position. I could never find, in the original, I could not find a way to sit

that something wasn't locked and it would be crazy. Yeah. And, you know, everybody I've

talked to had the same problem with that. And I can only imagine that the only person that

ever actually evaluated that within Toyota or Subaru had like an extraordinarily long neck,

you know, so that their shoulder point was down low, you know, so they have the steering

wheel low, but their head was up really high. It's such a weird thing because, like, you know,

when these guys do, when they design a vehicle, when they do testing, they test everything.

Everything is looked at not once, not twice, multiple times. Is this right?

Ergonomically right? Safety right? You know, ease of use right? Is this all right? And how

many people looked at that and went, yep, this is good. I don't know how it got as far as it did,

but yeah. So it made me very happy that they had changed that. I, because I thought that, and

there's a lot of things that made the Solterra really lackluster before,

or frustrating, that was one of the frustrating things. They fixed that.

So I like that. And then they did some, they did some interior stuff to make it better too,

like you now have dual wireless charging pads. Yeah, they rearranged the whole center console.

So it's way better than it was. It's, and they have, because there's now radiant heat available,

sort of, it's sort of like where the, where the glove box would be, essentially,

on the front. I don't think it's every trim. I think it's select trims and I

forgot which trims. I think it might just be the top, but it's radiant heat there,

which is great because it helps warm you up and it gets the car warm a little bit faster,

but that means there's no glove box. So instead of the glove box, that rework center console now has

the usual storage bin that you lift up. Actually it lifts like left, right. It like doesn't actually

lift straight back, but there's also space underneath that center console that has a fairly

deep edge to it. So you could put your wallet, something small keys, and they're not going

to like slosh out and end up underneath your feet. So that was, so you know, they made

a big change there by doing the radiant heat, but then they decided, okay, we got to give them back

storage somewhere. I was talking to Garrett Goh, who's their car line planning manager, and he said

that if you look at the amount of space that they had before for a little storage,

and you look at what they have now, there's actually a little bit more now than there was

with the old glove box. Awesome. And you know, I mean, those things are nice convenience

features, but you know, there were also some pretty fundamental functional flaws with the car

too before. There were. The range was short, you know, relative to the competition.

The charging times were extraordinarily slow. It was awful. Yeah, it originally, and they did

subsequently make some changes to the charging curves that made it better, but originally,

in its original form, it would take an hour, almost an hour to get from 10 to 80 percent

charge, which is an insane amount of time where you've got cars that will do it in like

28 minutes, 22 minutes, whatever you're like. 18 minutes. 18 minutes, like 18 minutes or an hour,

and it baffled me that they, when they, and I don't know what the sales have been on this,

I don't know if sales have been good or bad. Yeah, so so. Okay, so so. Not great.

It makes sense given that it wasn't so much that it was bad before, it just had so many

things that were not as good as they should have been to be competitive, and now they fix that. It has,

it charges in 30 minutes now, I believe, 30 to 35 minutes. Yeah, 10 to 80 percent in 30 minutes.

In 30 minutes. And they added preconditioning. They basically, they completely revamped the

thermal management system. Yeah. For cooling and heating the battery, so that now, you know,

they say that it'll go from 10 to 80 percent in 30 minutes anywhere from 14 degrees Fahrenheit

to 70 degrees Fahrenheit ambient temperature. Yeah. So even in cold weather, it will still charge

just as fast. They were, when I was talking to Gary, he was saying one of the things that they

really focus on is so most OEMs, like the sweet spot is 70 degrees, that's what those batteries

like. They like that 70, just nice, happy, like humans, they want that temperature. When it gets

too hot, when it gets too cold, they get cranky and they don't charge as well.

They charge more slowly. So there's issues. So they wanted to focus, instead of that

number that everybody gives, you know, the performance numbers, when you're at the perfect

temperature, they wanted it to perform perfectly when it was colder, when it was hotter. Because

they said, you know, people buy Subarus, not because they're going to hide it in their garage

when the blizzard hits. They're going to go out to the grocery store, go skiing,

or go hiking, or whatever. So they need to know that their customers are going to have the

right experience. So they worked really hard to get that preconditioning. So if you're

using it, he even said, you know, I said, what if you forget? I said, I was just kind of

curious, what if you're forgetting like, oh my gosh, I didn't think precondition the battery.

And you haven't had it in nav, because if you have it in the native navigation, it will automatically

precondition before you get to your charging point. But if you just stop on your own, and he said,

even just turning it on, like doing the preconditioning that you can activate

manually, just doing that even will help reduce that charging time, not as much as if you

done it fully before you got to the charger, but at least improve it. So that was a big thing

that they focused on, which I think is important. Nobody wants to sit around in charge forever.

Nobody. Yeah. And, you know, so they, you know, as part of that, part of the changes around the

battery, they also reconfigured the battery a little bit, so they managed to squeeze in a few

more cells. They bumped the capacity up from 72.4 to 74.7 kilowatt hours, I think now. Yeah,

so they've got, and the thing is, they, you know, that's all, they only increased the battery

capacity by about 2.5%, but they got 26% more range because it's gone from about 222 for the,

or 228, I think, for the, with the 18-inch wheels to 288 miles. So they got 26% more range,

and then 278 if you get the limited with the, or touring with the 20-inch wheels.

Mm-hmm. So that is, you know, right in the ballpark with most of the other all-wheel drive

crossovers now, you know, with Ionic 5, 86, the ID4, you know, all of these, if you get them with

all-wheel drive, those are the kind of range numbers you're going to get with those as well.

So it has suddenly gone from also ran to being very competitive, at least on paper.

And it did, it also, in terms of horsepower, it was originally a whopping 215 horsepower,

which now it's, it's up to 338 horsepower. That's this, because there's two different options

for the power, so you have 338 or 233 on the base, but even the base 233, you're still getting

extra horsepower. So they fixed the, how the battery charges, they fixed your range,

they fixed the horsepower, they fixed some interior gripes. They really did, they checked

off all the things that I think somebody who owned it might have complained about,

and that journalists would have complained about because it just wasn't up to snuff.

Yeah, and I sat down and recorded a conversation with Garrick, which I'll run after this,

and we talk about some of the, some more of the details of what they changed, like the

magnets, they redesigned the motors, putting the gears in the oil of the motor so that there's

less friction, polishing the gears. Oh, there's a whole bunch of cool stuff that they did,

a whole bunch of little things that all add up to that 26% improvement in range just to get

more efficiency out of it. And I think what you said there, it kind of sums up the Salterra.

It's a whole bunch of little things. They've done little things all throughout through the

design, through the comfort, the convenience, how it handles, how it drives, it's much smoother and

quieter. They just touched every single part of that vehicle and improved it a little bit.

So overall, it's a huge change. Yeah, so one thing that was fascinating was

looking at the difference in the, when a manufacturer brings the people out to drive

their vehicle between different manufacturers, and particularly in this case, because you have

effectively the same car, the 2026 Toyota BZ and the Subaru Salterra, aside from some slight

differences in the styling of the lights at the front, they are the same vehicle.

Right. But the experience that we got, our first opportunity to drive them,

was so totally different. Back in 22 when they launched, Toyota did their drive program

in Encinitas, California, and we drove around just on roads around Encinitas and Carlsbad and a

little bit up into the hills. The closest we got to going off-road was if we happened to stop by

the beach to take some pictures. Exactly. There was no off-roading at all. Right.

And when Subaru did their original one, they did a two-part drive in Santa Barbara and then

they took people over to Catalina Island to go off-roading. This one for this drive,

we went to Denver and we drove out into the mountains and I would say close to half of the

drive route was on dirt roads. Yeah. And not just dirt roads, but winding dirt roads

through the mountains, we climbed from about 5,280 feet elevation in Denver,

up to over 9,500 feet and then back down and back up a couple of times. And one of the roads in

particular actually turned out to be quite rocky. And you see the reason why the benefit of the

8.3 inches of ground clearance that the Saltera has compared to on the Ionic 5,

the standard Ionic 5s are only six inches. And on the XRT, which is their off-road version,

it's seven inches. This has another 1.3 inches on top of that. And even the Maki rally, which is

supposed to be their off-road one, it only has 5.8 inches of ground clearance. Oh Lord.

Yeah. This one, it was interesting because they had us on this, for this off-road,

the drive, for like you said, half of the time we drove, we were driving in the dirt.

And some of it was very easy dirt road stuff, but there was some of it that there was enough

bumpy rocks. You had to sort of slow down and you weren't going to take that at 30 miles an hour.

Like you had to slow down and make sure you were paying attention a bit to where you were

placing your wheels. And it was fine. It performed beautifully. And they had a section

where they took us where they had some spotters, like one real more aggressive,

I guess off-road section. We went very steeply down and back up and you're trying

everything and it performed beautifully. They had a little course set up, there were moguls,

so you can have the one wheel in the air thing. And I always feel like one of the things that

lets you know that it's doing it well is when you look at it from outside the vehicle and you

think, holy cow, because you see what the car is doing and inside, it's like, you don't feel it.

You don't really feel just how much is moving. And that was a little bit what this was. You

don't feel it in a good way. You don't feel it. You feel very secure and you feel very confident

driving off road. Yeah. And again, one of the interesting differences in how Subaru sees their

customer base for their cars, they feel their customers, they're going to take their cars

everywhere. They're going to drive them around town. They're going to take them

out to the trailhead to go hiking and camping. And they're going to go all these different

places with the same vehicle. Yeah. And so many other times, like earlier this year,

when we drove the Ionic 5 update, we drove around the on-road driving portion was with the

limited trim, the high-end trim with street tires. And then we did off-road with the XRT on all

terrain tires. This, we arrived at the quote-unquote off-road course at this ranch. And instead

of having us park those cars and get into something else, it was prepped for that with some off-road

tires or anything. They said, okay, go there. And we just keep on driving. Literally, yeah.

Which is your point. That's huge because normally when they, the number of times that

they have you get out of the car, you've been driving all day, take these. There's five

of this one that we've done just tricked out for off-road. You guys are going to take turns

and you're all going to drive it. It was like, no, just hop right back in there. Get a bottle

of water from the cooler. Hop right back in and go. I mean, I'm not sure which one you were driving,

but we had a Touring XT, which was on the 20-inch wheels with Bridgestone Taranza all-season tires.

So these are like the most street tire of street tires. Right? Yeah, they're not.

This is the kind of stuff anybody's going to buy and put on their car.

It's actually perfect for the Subaru customer because it's not like

you're a hardcore off-roader who needs this gnarly stuff to do what you need to do,

but you're going to get out there and adventure a little bit. You're going to go a little bit

further. You like the outdoorsy thing, so you want to be able to take the car that rides just fine on

the highway, just fine on the pavement. It's nice to drive around that and just drive it right off

the road and have an adventure. You can do it. You don't have to suddenly like, oh, I don't

have the right tires. I don't have the right this. I don't have the right that. It was very,

very easy. I liked it. It was sort of because I was not a big Solterra fan before. I really

wasn't because of all the little things that weren't quite right and I also didn't think it

rode especially well. I think it's incredibly quiet now. It's much quieter, much more relaxing,

more comfortable car to ride in, and they fixed all the problems. Now, the one thing we don't know,

and by the time this airs, we might, is we don't have pricing. We did not have exact pricing,

and they've said in their presentation that it was not going to be significantly different.

They were talking like double digit numbers, like under $100 per trim.

Less than $100 difference, either plus or minus. Plus or minus. It's going to be priced pretty close

to what it is for the 2025. You, Sam, you might have that by the time this airs and you can

tell people, but yeah, as of recording this, they said they don't have it yet. They were

still going back and forth a little bit. That makes it not an inexpensive vehicle,

but it makes it, let's assume the price is for 25 close enough. It makes it a much better deal

than it was before. Before you looked at what it was, you looked at how much it costs, and you kind

of thought, I get a lot of other cars that are in this range that are way better. Now, this has

things recommended, especially that 8.3 inches of ground clearance. That's not a small thing.

Yeah. I mean, look, right now for the 2025 Salterra Premium, which is their base model,

which is always strange to see the base model dash as a premium, starts at $38,495.

And the Touring Onyx Edition, which is the top end, is $45,495. So they've hinted that it's

going to be within $100 on all those. And Subaru only sells the Salterra as a dual

motor all-wheel drive. They don't do a front-wheel drive version like Toyota does.

But going back to what you were saying about the ride quality, I think one of the things that really

impressed me the most, yeah, it is very quiet. But on some of the dirt road sections,

we were on some washboard road that was really knocking around. And it was amazing how well

it did, just soaking it up. I wouldn't call it plush, but it did such a great job with

wheel and body control. So you weren't getting that head toss that you often get in these kind of

off-road scenarios. The body felt very smooth and minimized the body motion while allowing the wheels

to do their work. And again, that was one of these, Garrick explained, they made a bunch of changes

to reinforce the structure so they could retune the suspension, the springs and the dampers

and allow it to do that better. So you have a much smoother ride on these really uneven

surfaces. And on some of the rocky sections there, it did, even with these 20-inch all-season

wheels and tires, it did really well on that. And it was comfortable. The only thing,

because of the low profile of the tires, you had to be very careful of where you placed

the wheels to try and avoid sharp edges and cutting a tire, which can happen when you're

off-roading. Yeah. I truly was impressed with this. I thought, I think it's a nice way,

you're looking for an EV and you want it to still be Subaru. It is. It's an EV, but at its heart,

first and foremost, it's Subaru. And I think that's brilliant. And I think they did a really

good job. I think Subaru deserves a lot of credit for looking at what was not working well

and looking where it was lacking and saying, we got to step up our game in these areas. And

they did. They really did. They listened and they addressed the problems. It's a good thing. I feel

like it's, and it's not like this car's been out for seven years or something. Like this would

normally be just a little mid-cycle refresh at this point in the car's life cycle. Nope,

they're like, we're going to do the whole thing all new. It's all new, guys. We're

going to fix it all for you. Yeah. At least all the important parts. All the important parts.

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Nicole. And I will let you get back to wherever it is you're

going to be on Sunday. Okay. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye.

All right. So, Gary, you are Carline Product Planning Manager at Subaru, right?

Close enough, yeah. For the Salterra. Yep. So, today we talked a lot about

what's changed on this Salterra presentation this morning, but I'd like to go over some of that again

for the listeners of Wheel Marings. You're at the point where it would traditionally just be

a mid-cycle refresh for our product, a new product like this. But you made some pretty

fundamental changes. Can you talk about some of those changes? Let's go over some of the

highlights of what has changed and we'll get into a few of the more interesting details.

Sure. Yeah, we looked at what was holding people back from not only Salterra but from

electric cars in general. And a lot of you probably know what that is, right? It's

driving range, charting speed, cars too expensive. So, by addressing those and also

improving a lot more aspects of the car in general, we think we'll be in a pretty good

place. Turn the knob the wrong way. Sorry. Hopefully your

music cancellation technology is good. But yeah, hopefully we'll be in a very good

spot with this new generation of Salterra. So, since the car launched in 2022,

you've already addressed pricing. Pricing come down from the original launch price.

But what are some of the biggest changes that have been made for the 2026 model?

Probably enhancing efficiency and performance. So, it's easy to like the thing that sticks out to a

lot of people is the range is now up by 26-ish percent. So, it goes 288 miles on the full

charge now as opposed to the 227 from last year's car. And on the way there, we made a

lot of improvements to get there because the aerodynamics is more, it's better than the

last year's car. Even the drag from the wheel bearings is down by 18 percent.

The motors have been redone significantly. They're smaller. They're lighter. They're more

powerful. They're more efficient. The battery pack has more capacity, but we didn't just

go in with the sledgehammer approach and just fill it with like 90 kilowatt hours worth of

batteries. We wanted to improve efficiency and use that electricity capacity that we have,

electric capacity that we have more efficiently. So, along the way there, we have an all new

dashboard. We have a new structure. The way the subframe is welded together is different. It's

been reinforced. The roof structure is improved. What else? We also have Andrew Strong here.

He also works on the carline planning team here for Solterra. Feel free to jump in with anything

that I'm missing here. Like you were saying, Sam, this is about the time where we do the

mid-cycle refresh, and that's when the wheels change a little bit. The grille changes a little

bit. There's a new color. Price goes up a little bit, but in this case, we changed the

battery, the motors, the interior, the exterior colors, interior colors. There's a leather option now.

Styling, you name it, like bigger screen, better infotainment.

Yeah, so we saw the styling in New York, the New York Auto Show. You announced it there,

and that's a nice improvement. It looks sleeker. The new lighting signature for

Subaru going forward with the six-element lights corresponding to the six stars of the logo

is a nice update. It was interesting to hear about some of the detail

mechanical improvements. One of the things you talked about was the gears. Every EV,

while they typically don't have a traditional transmission, they still have a set of reduction

gears to go from the speed of the motor down to the speed of the wheels. Talk about what

was changed with the gears on this car. Yeah, sure. The Japanese have a word for it,

Kaizen, so continuous improvement, and I think that was the mentality in going into

updating the motors. Yeah, we wanted to make them more efficient, so big changes to the inverter.

It uses a silicon carbide now, so it's able to use electricity much more efficiently

and handle heat so much better. But even like the gears that you talk about, the final drive

output is basically the same as last year's car, but the shape and location of the gears,

that transmit power from the motor to the differential, they've all changed. And that's

because we found that it was more efficient to make the gears all along the same plane,

along the bottom, so that they sit in essentially the oil pan for lubrication,

so we don't have to work the new electrical oil pump so hard to keep them lubricated.

And even down to the surface of the gear teeth, we're polishing that to

more of a mirror finish than it was last year. So even little things like that

add up to a big change in range and efficiency. Yeah, and when you have a whole stack of these

things that you've done, that's where you get that 26% from. It's not one thing. Yeah, so

a bunch of things. And the motors were another one you mentioned, changing the position of the

magnets and the motors. And the motors are actually physically smaller than before, right?

That's right, even though it makes more power. Yep, so the stator in the rotor

got a little bit smaller. We were more efficient with the windings, where we found that

relocating the magnet position on the rotor, like separating them a little bit,

allowed us to not only have a higher output, but also made it more efficient.

And even the inner diameter of the rotor got bigger, so there's less rotating mass,

it's more efficient, it's lighter. And integrating the inverter, which is also smaller,

into the motor case itself helped shrink that whole package of the motor,

which actually helps with handling quite a bit because these,

you bring everything closer to the center of the bus on the vehicle and it makes it more

willing to rotate because you don't have a larger motor that's hanging out over the front axle,

or a larger rear motor that's hanging out over the back axle of the car.

And you now have slightly more battery capacity than before. It's not a huge jump.

It's a lot less, a lot smaller increase than the increase in range that you got.

Where did that extra capacity come from? Was that a change in the chemistry?

And the change in the configuration of the battery itself?

Yeah, we are adding a couple more cells. We found a way to squeeze a couple more cells into the pack.

So the pack itself is slightly larger. So the frame of the car had to change

around it to make that work, but it's pretty similar in kilowatt hours to last year's car.

Okay. And yeah, one of the big complaints with the original version of this car

was the charging speed. It was, shall we say, leisurely compared to a lot of the competition.

And it's a lot more competitive now. It's not top of the segment, but it's a lot more

competitive now. You can get 10 to 80% in 30 minutes. And what had to change to achieve that?

We improved the way the cooling works for the cells. Each individual cell is heated and

cooled more efficiently than they were before. There's also additional insulation to keep those

cells separated in case one gets warm. It doesn't affect the other one nearby.

And something that we really paid attention to was not just getting that

overall charge time rating down, which we did by five minutes. But since a lot of super

customers like your endeavor, especially like they don't stay home when it snows, right?

Like they go skiing, they go hiking, they're still out and about, and they bought these cars to be

able to use and all kinds of weather. So they are saying like, hey, okay, like the 30 minute

rating and 70 degree weather is one thing, but what happens when it's freezing like below 32?

So we focused on really improving the battery preconditioning system, such that

charging even at like 14 degrees Fahrenheit, it's still 30 minutes. Yeah, which is

a big change from not only last year's Salterra, but compared to a lot of our competitors as well.

Yeah, I mean, I was certainly last, I can't remember, last winter, I think it was last winter.

We were seeing news reports of when there was a polar vortex that hit the Midwest

of people in Chicago with EVs not being able to charge them because it was so cold.

And now you can, at even at 14 degrees, it'll charge just as fast as it does at

more temperate temp. Yeah, with the preconditioning activated. Yeah. Okay.

So propulsion system for an EV is obviously a key component. It makes it a lot more usable. You've

got much more range now than you did before. But you've also changed a lot of other things in

the car, in the structure of the car and the suspension and everything. Let's talk a little

bit about that. What changed with the suspension in terms of what you did to improve the ride and

handling, improve the capability off-road? And even this particular vehicle, the Salterra,

is not necessarily the most off-road capable EV that you're going to have in the lineup,

as we were discussing earlier. But it's still surprisingly good. Yeah. It still has to

be a Subaru. Like when we were finding this car a long time ago, like we considered, should we make

it like everybody else in the segment and have like five inches, six inches of ground clearance?

Do we need all-wheel drive? Like we could probably squeeze out like five more miles of range if we

made compromises there. But like I was sharing you earlier, Sam, in the presentation, that

if you look at purchase reasons for Salterra, for I want to drive this car off-road and compare

it to literally every other car in the segment, Salterra is all the way at the top. Because

if you're looking for a Subaru EV, you want something that can do Subaru things, right?

And so because of that, we improved. We wanted to improve the all-wheel drive system even beyond

what we had last year. So it reacts more quickly than it did last year. It's more predictable.

You might have noticed us today if you were sliding it around on gravel roads,

like there's less course correction needed. And even if you don't drive like that, even

if you're, because you can drive like that, none of us would ever drive like that.

Hey, well, hypothetically, if you were to drive because you can drive Salterra like that,

it makes driving to the market in a snowstorm like a breeze because the car just handled it that much

more smoothly. And speaking smoothly, we did make a lot of

reinforcements to the structure. We changed the suspension completely. The front strings,

shocks, bushings, they've all been stiffened up. And same with the rear, they've been

softened a little bit. So we found that by doing that, the car turns in quicker. It handles better,

but it also gives you a better ride, which is what a lot of the feedback has been so far,

that if you drove it back to back with the last Salterra, not only is it more fun and

playful to drive, but it's more comfortable. And it's a lot quieter too. Like even the door glass

is different. The way we attach the window glass is different. There's a lot more sound

insulation all over the cabin. So that's probably one of the first things people say when they come

back from driving this car. Is it how much more comfortable the bite it is? Yeah. And that was

something that was particularly impressive. And especially on, you know, we had a lot of dirt

roads on the drive route today, including quite a bit of washboard road. And, you know, the

car that my driving partner and I were in was the Touring XT that has the 20 inch wheels,

fairly large wheels. And even on very rough, unpaved roads, we weren't having a lot of head

toss. It was very comfortable. And it was more that we were kind of hearing rather than feeling

what was going on below, that the body was very stable. But you could tell that the

suspension was working and doing this job, even with the relatively low profile tires.

It's funny that you mentioned head toss because that actually is a metric that we have at Subaru.

Like we have a camera and we compare cars and we measure how much, literally how much head toss

there is. And that's because we focus on details like that, like I think it's not something that

somebody goes when they test drive the car and they're like, oh yeah, my head doesn't move around

a lot. But what they will say is, man, this car is really nice to drive. And that's what it

translates into. Yeah, it was very impressive. And then the interior environment was another thing

that got a very thorough makeover this year. Again, for what would, at a point in time that would

normally be some mild updates, did a pretty major tear up and changed the entire dashboard,

entire center console. And addressed a lot of the complaints that most of us had about the

previous generation. Yeah, it really, lowering the center console really opened up the cabin.

Like it feels a lot more airy. And having the dual wireless phone chargers that are sitting there,

like that's something a lot of our customers actually have been asking for.

I guess they don't like flooding over who gets to charge their phone with the front passenger.

And since it is an electric car, we might as well use some of that electricity for other

fun things too. So like the USB-C ports on the back, they now are up to 60 watts. So you can run

your Nintendo Switch or your laptop. And on some of the trims, they even have a 1500 watt

power outlet in the back. A lot of our customers like to go car camping. You can run your

Andrew, you could run your coffee maker. You could run a skillet or small fridge tailgating.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, the big thing, you know, looking at the going from 2022,

23, 25 to this 2026 model is the attention to all the little details.

As you said, it's the Kaizen, you know, continuous improvement of not just one thing,

but literally everything. I mean, you know, the basic body shell is the same,

but almost everything else has changed. Even the charging port. He adopted

the J3400 Nax charging port. But you didn't just swap out the CCF port that was there

before. You actually moved it to the other side of the car.

Yeah. And that's because a lot of those charging stations are set up,

intended to be backed in with the driver side of the car. But we're talking to our customers.

A lot of them don't like backing into parking spaces. They'd rather go nose and

so in order to be able to charge more easily, we moved it to that side of the vehicle.

And while we were at it, we know that Nax is not the only charging standard out there at

the moment. So we're throwing in J1772, Level 2, and CCS, Level 3 adapters with every Salterra,

and also upgrading the included charger that Salterra has from Level 1 to Level 2 this year.

Okay. That's there. You can't charge anywhere. Yeah. And I know we're not ready to talk

about pricing yet, but from what you hinted at, sounds like it's going to be a very positive

message there. Yeah. It'd be right about the same. So all right. Well, fantastic.

Is there anything else about the changes to the 2026 Salterra that we haven't talked about that

like listeners should be aware of? There is just so many little things like

things that we didn't mention today. Like even they all come standard with headlight

washers because super customers drive in the salt on the snow and a lot or an off road

a lot. So you can just wash that off. Just all those little items add up to a very big change

in the overall feel of the car. And I think that's what you noticed today. Yeah. Makes it

much more usable. Makes it from what was, I'll say, and also ran before to something that

is very much fully competitive in the segment. Yeah. And it should be on people's list for

consideration now. We're thinking about an EV in this size. Yeah, we're looking forward to it.

All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Please, sir.

All right. We're back. And let's talk about the 2026 Jeep Cherokee.

Cherokee. Did you watch the backgrounder?

I did not. I think I was somewhere. Okay. Probably. Well, I went to it in person.

They Jeep did a background briefing on it a couple of weeks ago, and then they finally

released all the details on Thursday this past week. So the Jeep has been out of the sort of

compact-ish, mid-size crossover segment for a couple of years now since they discontinued the

last Cherokee. And they're back with a brand new Cherokee. They've been promising this for a little

while. And it's interesting. You know, they've gone in a different direction with the design

this time. Last time when they launched the last generation Cherokee, the design was kind of

controversial. You know, it was a very different kind of design direction for Jeep.

And they did not carry that over to any other Jeep products after the response they got.

And this one is, you know, more, in a lot of ways, more traditional Jeep looking. You know,

it's a lot boxier. You know, it's got a few things that kind of slightly hint back at the,

back to the 1984 XJ Cherokee with, you know, so the XJ Cherokee had square headlights or

rectangular headlights. And this one doesn't have rectangular headlights, but the LED running lamps

that go around the headlamps, you know, are done in sort of a rectangular shape.

You know, give you a little bit of a cue back to that. You know, you got the seven-slot grille

and sort of other things. What do you think of the design?

I like it. You know, I think it's closer to a Jeep, to be honest, than the last version.

The, let's see, I'm trying to look at the, the back looks like a Honda Passport a little bit.

But, you know, the lights are, what's going on with these lights? Yeah, they're fine.

The headlights are the tail lamps. The tail lamps. Yeah, the tail lamps, you know,

they kind of incorporated sort of an X shape in there that's supposed to kind of give you the

cue of the molding on a jerrycan. Okay. All right, sure. Okay. It, what's it,

it reminds me of something and I cannot, it's, it's not a jerrycan. It's definitely not

actually something that it reminds me of, but it feels just, and you know what the problem is?

I think here's the issue, is that the top lamps are closer to the, the sort of middle light that's

not turned on versus the side LEDs. So there's like a little bit of a, so it feels a little

uneven, unbalanced. Yeah, it feels unbalanced. There you go. Because

either you go for it and you move them out further or you just line them up. Yeah. Like you

can't like do halfway. This is why I learned in design school. Like don't kind of like make something

off. Like if you're going to go off, you have to go all the way off because if you don't, it's going

to create this weird tension that people don't understand and it's going to make them feel weird

and they don't know why. That's what's going on with these rear, with these rear tail lights.

Okay. That's fair enough. That's, that's, that's a reasonable explanation. I can love

with that. There you go. So it's funny you mentioned the passport because this thing is quite a bit

larger. It is almost six inches longer than the old Cherokee. It's almost the same size as a passport

now. It's like just under an inch shorter than a passport. So this makes it several inches longer

than, you know, vehicles like the RAV4 and the CRV. It, and it's actually almost the same size

as the previous generation Grand Cherokee. So the Grand Cherokee when it was redesigned

grew bigger. And now this one has grown bigger and is basically taking the size of the old Grand

Cherokee. Which means it's got a lot more room inside than the old Cherokee. Although

strangely enough, when you go through the spec sheet, it's not really much roomier than a,

than a RAV4. There's something, something about the packaging where it's got

almost the same dimensions inside as a RAV4, but it's bigger on the outside. So it's kind of

the opposite of a TARDIS. Oh, hmm. It's, it's, it's interesting because I've been asked,

we're going to start doing reviews on SAE, on the media side. And people are asking, people are

saying, well, you know, could you, we see, well, these cars are bigger, but they're not bigger

inside. So one of the things people are asking about is like, give us like the real dimensions

of the interior versus the outside of the car. Because yeah, like this, this vehicle versus

like the RAV4 is a perfect example of that where yes, it's bigger on the outside, but

it doesn't mean you have more passenger space on the inside. Yeah. So one of the,

the interesting things about this, this vehicle, so it's built on the Stella large platform,

which is the same platform that they're using for the Wagoneer S and the Dodge Charger and

also the upcoming Jeep Recon, which are, you know, three quite different vehicles from this.

You know, through the first of all, all three of those are battery electric vehicles, although

the Charger is now being offered with an internal combustion engine as well.

This one, the Cherokee is not going to be an EV. It is actually going to be launching as a hybrid

only. And unlike the Charger with the hurricane six cylinder, which is longitudinally mounted,

this is a transverse mounted powertrain. And then it's got different front suspension from those

vehicles, which have a multi link setup. Although we actually, we don't actually know what the

suspension is on the Recon. But the Wagoneer S and the Charger have a multi link front

suspension. This has a strut front suspension. And at launch, there'll be four trim levels.

And the only available powertrain is going to be the Stalantis is new hybrid. So it's a

1.6 liter turbo with a hybrid drive unit, two motor hybrid that's similar in architecture to what you

get from Honda and Toyota and Ford. So it's an ECVT and 210 horsepower, 230 foot pounds of torque.

It's a mechanical all wheel drive. So it's not using an E axle. So there's a driveshaft

running to the rear axle. And it's all wheel drive is standard. So there's no front wheel drive version

of this. And they're projecting 37 miles per gallon combined, which is about the same as the

combined for all wheel drive RAV4 and the CRV. Cool. I mean, 37 miles per gallon.

In a Stalantis vehicle. That's pretty impressive for Stalantis. Good for them.

And right now, the trim levels range from the base to the overland. There's no real

hardcore off road version of this. But they did say that there will be a Trailhawk version

coming next year. And there will be other powertrain options. So we're guessing that

the Trailhawk will use the two liter turbo that's in a whole bunch of other Stalantis products. So

it'll probably be around 270, 275, maybe 280 horsepower. The versions they have now have

eight inches of ground clearance. Trailhawk will probably have a little bit more, probably have a

two speed transfer case like the old Jeep Trailhawk hat or the old Cherokee Trailhawk hat.

And yeah, I mean, I think it's some interesting decisions they've made with this vehicle.

That's, you know, I think we'll see how it sells. We'll see how it drives.

I think Stalantis needed a win. Oh, and pricing is actually surprisingly good.

It starts at $36,995, including the $19,995 destination charge. Oh, cool.

And then the overland tops out at $45,995, including destination. Alrighty, not too bad.

Yeah, it's competitively priced. It's not significantly more expensive than anything

else. I mean, it's in the same ballpark as a RAV4 or a CR-V hybrid. And my guess is that

even in the forms that it is right now, you know, which is, you know, we don't have the Trailhawk yet,

that it will, it'll probably do better off-road than either the RAV4 or the CR-V.

I would hope so. Yeah. We're going to call this a Jeep. How's the Google floor? You know what,

don't ask. It's okay, you know. Yeah. It'll handle dirt. No, no, I'm sure it'll be fine.

It'll be fine. So yeah, it's, you know, and it's supposed to launch this fall.

So in the next, sometime between now and November should be going on. So we'll see how it does.

It's going to be, you know, it's going right up against, you know, an all-new RAV4

that is also launching this fall around the same timeframe and will also be hybrid only.

At the, at the background, or I asked Mickey Bly, who's the senior vice president for propulsion

systems at Stellantis, whether, you know, because they're talking about, you know,

other potential for other powertrain options. So I asked him, you know, since this is a

transverse mounted engine, will a hurricane fit sideways in this thing? He just smiled and laughed.

Didn't say no. He didn't say no, but I'm pretty sure it won't fit.

I'm going to say that it looks, I like it better design-wise than the RAV4,

but it also still just looks like a passport with a Jeep, with the front of a Jeep slammed on front,

which, which I guess means I like the passport more than I like the way the passport works

more than the RAV4. Yeah. I mean, you know, this, at least from the front, you know,

this has got a Jeep look to it. And, you know, from the back, you know,

apart from the slightly unbalanced tail lights, you know, it looks enough like a Jeep. I think

people will be happier with this one than they were with the last generation Cherokee.

Oh yeah, I'm sure they will be. Yeah. The RAV4 looks too much like the,

the Prius, which I like the way the Prius looks, but it's sometimes,

some designs just shouldn't get bigger. Does that make sense? Yeah.

The Lucid going to the, the air to the gravity, I'm like, oh, that looks, that looks really nice.

Like that design language, it like works really well to me. I think the Prius to the RAV4, less so?

Okay. Yeah, there you go. That's my hot take on the RAV4. All right. It's going to last you

a thousand years, but you might want, you know. You might get tired of looking at it.

Yeah. Yeah. You might like it. Who knows? Yeah. No one, no one bought a Prius in the

early days because it was cool looking. Yeah. That's true. All right. So we mentioned

price, you know, some price, did we mention prices going up? Or I don't know, I can't remember.

Anyway, Ford Maverick has gotten a lot more expensive since we, since it first arrived.

Since my neighbors bought their XL Hybrid in 2022. So three and a half years ago.

They paid $20,000, $19.95 and 21, 21.5, including the destination charge is what they paid.

The, the TFL guys just sold their Maverick. They bought, they bought a Maverick in December.

They got the new 2025 model. They got the hybrid with all wheel drive that launched this year.

And when they bought it, you know, they bought an XLT with some options on there. They paid $37,000

for that. It has since gone up by about $2,000. And the Maverick now, at least for 2025 models,

the starting price for the Maverick is $28,145 for the XL Hybrid front wheel drive.

That is a 37% increase over three years. And adding to that, the increase is actually more than that.

It's actually now probably closer to 40% because sometime in the last three or four months,

they also increased the destination charge for the Maverick from $14.95 to $16.95.

So it's now $1,700 for delivery on this thing. So you're going to be paying,

you know, if you're buying a 2025 Maverick, you're going to be paying basically $30,000

at a minimum for this thing.

Yeah, it's such a, this is where I get, when people are like, oh, Ford's going to kill Slate.

I'm like, are they though? Because how long is that $30,000, you know, Maverick size

electric pickup going to be $30,000 a week? Two weeks? This is a company that's taken some

pages out of Tesla's playbook and said, hey, let's just raise prices and lower prices willy-nilly

until people just don't know what they're, you know, like, how much was this again?

It was, if you tell somebody who's buying a Maverick, if you walked into a Ford dealership

and said, you know, these used to be $20,000, you're not going to be super angry.

Well, for what it's worth, on Friday, I did get an email from Ford with pricing for the 2026

Model Year Mavericks, which basically stays unchanged, fortunately, because they just

raised the prices a few months ago. With one exception, when they brought out the 2025s,

they did a refresh for the 2025 models. When they brought out those 25s, they dropped the XL

EcoBoost front-wheel drive version. So you used to be able to get it with the two-liter EcoBoost

250 horsepower and front-wheel drive in the base XL. And they dropped that for the Model Year 2025.

Well, it's back for 2026, and it is $1,000 cheaper than the hybrid. Of course, you will make

up that $1,000 pretty quickly in your fuel costs, because the front-wheel drive hybrid

gets about 42 miles per gallon. The EcoBoost, maybe about 26.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, still, every day, what are we doing? What are we just, don't do that.

Yeah. So you can pay a little bit less upfront. You'll have a little more power,

maybe a little more towing, I'm not sure. But you will pay a lot more in fuel.

Over the life of your vehicle, that extra $1,000 isn't going to be that big of a deal over the

life of your... It still doesn't excuse them for, again, 30-something, 37, almost 40% price

increase. Imagine if the F-150 had a 40% price increase over the course of three years.

Just like if... That's insane. Yeah.

The F-150 now starts at $80,000. What?

Let me see. Let me do a quick comparison here. So I'm pulling up the 2024 Maverick,

and which had that front-wheel drive EcoBoost combination.

Let's see. Maverick, where's Maverick? Maverick, front-wheel drive. There we go.

We're doing maths. According to FuelEconomy.gov, they've got a calculator on there.

Yeah. The Maverick was officially rated by the EPA at 37 combined with the hybrid and front-wheel drive,

and the two-liter EcoBoost front-wheel drive was rated at 26.

And so your annual fuel costs for that $1,300 for the hybrid, $1,850 for the EcoBoost.

So over a five-year period, you're going to pay about $1,250 more in fuel for the EcoBoost,

at least, because most people are actually getting better than that 37 MPG with the hybrid Maverick.

So you will make up that $1,000 difference in fuel costs pretty quickly.

And depending where you live, if you live in California or somewhere where fuel's significantly

more expensive, then you'll make it up a lot faster. Yeah.

All right. Speaking of $30,000 EVs, there's another one that's coming shortly.

The 2026 Nissan Leaf. I was really surprised when I saw this release the other day.

The new Leaf, which they're offering, they're going to offer it with two different battery

sizes, but at launch, it's only going to have the larger battery, which will give you 303 miles

of range. It's I think a 72 or 73 kilowatt hour battery. That'll give you 303 miles of range.

And in the Leaf S Plus trim, which is the base trim with the big battery,

that is going to be priced from $29,990.

Yeah. They just threw this sword down hammer, something. I don't know what the, I can't remember

with it. Anyway, take that forward and slate. I guess I don't.

Well, actually, the first one has got to take that as GM. So that kind of sets the bar for the

new Chevy Bolt. I think when this news came out, everyone at GM was like an hour before,

they're like, all right, we're going to probably, there's much for the Bolt. And then the Leaf came

out. They're like, oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, this is going to look bad if we cannot do Nissan. Oh,

man. We're just making the exact same car with different underpinning. Yeah.

Yeah. So 75 kilowatt hours. There is going to be a 52 kilowatt hour version coming

next year, sometime next year. And that one will probably get somewhere around 220, 230 miles of

range. And it'll be cheaper. Yeah. And that'll probably be around 25,000. And keep in mind that,

you know, this is, you know, this car is not going to be eligible for tax credits because by the

time it, the time it goes on sale, the tax credits will be gone. Plus it's built in Japan

anyway. It's no longer being built in Tennessee. So that's one of the things that really surprised

me was that they were able to get that pricing, even though they're bringing it in from Japan

and they're dealing with tariffs and everything. Yeah. No, it's a bold move by Nissan. I've

driven it a little bit, a teeny tiny bit on a track in Japan. It does not feel like the previous

generations of Nissan LEAF were fine, but boring. There's nothing, there was nothing exciting about

the previous generation Nissan LEAF. This one feels like, oh, this is nice. I like this.

It's like a mini Aria. Yeah. A few rounds, a few laps around a track

with some curves and some bumpy bits and straight. It is not the quickest vehicle out there

for EVs, but it is more than, it's still an EV, which means you're still going to get from zero

to 30. The thing you really care about quickly. It handles well. It felt comfortable.

They did, everything felt nice. What they did do is they set the suspension and everything

for this vehicle for America, for global. So you're not going to get that weird sort of

squishing issue we get if you got a vehicle from another country or more rigid if it's in Europe.

So yeah, no, I think Nissan has a winner here if people are interested in it.

And good for that. Again, good for them for seeing what needs to be done in this segment,

having a relatively inexpensive EV and just being like, yeah, all right, sure.

No matter what, they were not going to get any sort of deal.

Tariffs are probably going to kick them in the teeth. But the thing is you're trying to

react to those things because they change every week. At some point, I think they just

had to say, this is where we're going to charge it. Hopefully things work out. Who knows?

Of course, what they haven't told us is that the destination charge will be $5,000.

I know, it's $50,000 destination charge. I'm going to watch I can see if I see destination

charge. I think it is in here somewhere. Oh, it's $1,500.

Yeah. So it's still, by current standards, not unreasonable.

All right. So, yeah, we're going to be doing a longer drive in a couple of weeks

down in San Diego. Are you going on that drive program?

I will be on that drive program. It's an important car, especially if it's an

important car because of the price point. It's a really important car for Nissan.

And it's a very interesting car because of everything that's going on. Because again,

it's still built in Japan. There are no more EV credits by the time it comes out.

Who knows what the tariff is going to be? There's a lot going on around this vehicle.

And it's actually nice. The pictures don't, I don't feel like the pictures do adjust.

I saw it a couple of years ago in Japan when we went to the Japan Mobility Show.

I was there with Nissan and they took us to the design studio and showed us

all the stuff they were working on. So we saw it a couple of years ago.

And it's a sharp-looking little car. It is, yeah.

It's about the same size as the old leaf. Yeah, it's about the same size,

but it's, yeah, it's actually quite, I like the way it looks. I like the design of it.

I think, again, I still think the photos don't, it's one of those cars where the photos don't

quite tell you the full story. But yeah, it's because it does look a little weird to squire,

which it's cool because the lights in the back are, there's two horizontal lights

followed by and then three vertical lights. And there was supposed to, and now this Nissan

is the name, but they're like, oh, knee is like two and son is three. So they're like, huh,

knee, son, Nissan, get it? And I was like, oh, that's clever.

Yeah, it's a fun little touch, you know, that, but, you know, and it also, you know, is,

at the same time, is a little bit of a callback to the, to the Z as well.

Because the Z's got those two horizontal lights, you know, which goes back to the,

the 90s 300 Z or 300 ZX. So yeah, it's, it's, it's an attractive, attractive little car.

And it'll be the cheapest EV in America with 300 miles of range.

Yeah, which is a big deal.

Yeah, 300, 300 and three miles of range starting at under 30 grand.

And so I think, I think this could actually be more successful than the last generation leaf was.

Yeah, yeah, fingers crossed for Nissan. They need, they need some wins like Stalantis,

but maybe more so than Stalantis. They need some wins.

Yeah. All right. Next up, ChargePoint. We talked a few months back, maybe it was even last year,

when ChargePoint first announced their Omniport, which is kind of the opposite of Tesla's Magic

Dock. You know, so the, the Magic Dock allows you basically builds in an adapter into the charger.

So depending on what car you're charging, if you're charging a vehicle with,

with a Nax port on it, you just pull out the cable, plug it into the car. If you're charging

anything with a CCS port on it, with a Magic Dock, then it comes out with the,

with the adapter already connected and you plug that into your CCS port on the car.

Omniport is the opposite because ChargePoint has had CCS cables on their chargers. And so this provides

an adapter to plug into a car with an export on it. And they now have the conversion kit available

to retrofit existing chargers. Cool. So hopefully this means that we will see the operators,

because ChargePoint has got kind of a different business model for most of the other charging

networks. They don't, they sell the chargers, they run the back end, they build, they manufacture

the chargers and they run the back end software platform that handles payments and authentication

and everything, but they don't actually own and operate the chargers out in the field. That is

whoever the site owner is. That's why you often find these things at like stores and parking

lots, things like that. You know, people buy them from ChargePoint, install them and then

ChargePoint provides all the back end service for it. So the site owners will have to make the

investment to do this upgrade. They don't say how much it's going to cost, but they have the

kits available now to upgrade most of their existing chargers. Yeah, it's, I went down,

I tried these out. They're pretty great. I think it's, I do wish ChargePoint was like EA or EVGo,

where they did actually, but yeah, because every once in a while there's a ChargePoint near my house

that's in front of like a school or a library and like the initial cost to just plug in is like

five bucks. I was like, what? What is happening? Because there's an EV, there's an EA station

like two blocks away, but I just needed video of an AC charging station. So I'm like, oh,

and then I look at my bill. I'm like, whoa, I should have looked at this before I started to bill me.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's part of the problem with having the site owners running the thing,

running these things is they get to set their own pricing. So ChargePoint doesn't set the pricing.

So a lot of stores and stuff, they do it as a convenience for their customers. And they,

you know, there's no, no charge for it. You can charge for free. And like here,

Washtenaw Community College in the parking garage there, they have some ChargePoint

level two chargers and it's just free of charge. I used to use those from time to time.

And across the street from the college, there's a fitness center there. They just installed some

ChargePoint chargers. There are a couple of AC chargers and also a DC charger and they do charge.

I'm not sure what the pricing is. I'll have to go and look. But so the pricing is kind of all

over the map with ChargePoint because of that. Yeah. The EA, sorry, SAE, we have ChargePoint

in front of the building in Warrandale. But it's only for SAE employees. So you have to,

someone has to unlock it for you. Essentially, they have to set up your account.

You know, they have to unlock your account so you could use them. So,

which is great because then it's free. Yeah. But I mean, I'm charging rental cars,

so it doesn't really, I thought, yeah, whatever. But yeah. So it's nice.

You know, I think people try to get there early just like,

all right. Oh, let's go back to Nissan for a minute, speaking of wins. Apparently,

Nissan or Infiniti has told their dealers that they're bringing back the Q50

on the sedan, which they recently discontinued. And they're going to offer it with a twin

turbo V6, 400 horsepower, and a six-speed manual transmission.

What? Yeah. All right. Okay. That's two bits of good news out of Nissan.

Yeah. I'm feeling good about that trip I took to Japan where they were like,

yeah, in a very nice way. We kind of messed up. We're figuring it out. We're going to, you know,

we're going to do this right. Yeah. No, that's pretty cool.

Well, I mean, their new CEO was formerly their head of product planning.

You know, and so I think, you know, he knows the thing or two about what to do.

So. I mean, it's a niche car. It's going to be like a niche little halo.

Yeah. I mean, right now, Infiniti is a pretty niche brand anyway. So.

That's true. I have not been excited about Infiniti until now for like the last 10 years.

It's like 10 years of me like, okay, you're making cars. Good for you.

This is the only car I'm like, yeah. So I look forward to driving the Q50 twin turbo V6 with a

manual gearbox in the hopefully not too distant future. Yeah. Fingers crossed.

So this week, the US and the European Union announced a framework trade agreement, which will

lower the tariffs on imports from the EU and eliminate tariffs on imports from the US into the

EU. So EU will set their tariff rate at 0%. US is still going to charge 15%, which doesn't really

seem fair. But as part of, you know, one of the complaints has been so-called non-tariff barriers,

which, you know, in some cases, it's legit. But, you know, sometimes, you know, when you have

different regulations, different standards, you know, that adds costs for companies that are

bringing products in. And that's, you know, generally considered a non-tariff barrier.

And one of the complaints about from the administration has been non-tariff barriers in

the EU. And so reading that when I read through the agreement, the framework agreement, there was

an interesting statement in there to the effect of the United States and the European Union commit

to work together to reduce or eliminate non-tariff barriers. With respect to automobiles, the

United States and the European Union intend to accept and provide mutual recognition of

each other's standards. Okay. So, I mean, that's all it says right now. It's very vague. Yeah,

it remains to be seen exactly how that's going to work out. But in principle, that should mean

that if a European vehicle has been certified to European regulations, that the US will accept

that and manufacturers could bring that vehicle here and sell it here without modifying things

like the lights or, you know, other, you know, the crash structure and things like that.

And the same goes through the in the opposite direction. Anything that is certified to US

standards should be able to be sold in Europe, which makes for potentially some

interesting opportunities. All right. Here's what I'm thinking. This sentence is essentially to

placate the administration. That's it. There's no, there's so, we were talking about multiple

countries, multiple, they're all going to stop this. They're all going to fight this for the

next couple years. So they're like, let's just put it in there. Nothing's going to happen.

We just put it in there. We'll placate the man. And then, you know, when he's gone, hopefully,

they, you know, the next administration will figure it out from there. I don't,

I don't see people, I don't see European countries allowing an F-150 that doesn't have to do any

sort of passenger, you know, or I'm sorry, pedestrian safety tests into their countries.

Well, you know, and I actually, you know, I wrote a blog post for the telemetry blog about this.

And I don't actually think that that is going to be a problem anyway, you know, because nobody,

almost nobody in Europe is going to buy a full-size pickup truck or SUV.

Are you going to drive that thing? Exactly.

On the, on the Autobahn and that's it. So technically they could, Ford could, you know,

or GM or Stellantis could sell those big trucks and SUVs in Europe, but they're not going to

because nobody's going to buy them. The market is, is pretty fundamentally different. However,

I think where there's an interesting opportunity is with EVs, because, you know,

Ford could potentially, you know, could take their new $30,000 electric pickup truck,

send those to Europe and let Ford of Europe dealers sell those things.

You know, Cadillac, you know, has talked a lot recently about, you know, wanting to expand their

global presence, particularly because sales in China, you know, for anything that's not a Chinese

brand has been tapering off. And, you know, Cadillac is investing heavily in, in Formula

1. They've got a launching Formula 1 team next year. They're in the World Endurance Championship.

You know, they're spending a lot of money. And this is, you know, this is not money that

is probably going to have much impact on Cadillac sales in the United States.

It's the rest of the world. And, you know, they, you know, they are selling, you know,

a bunch of EVs here. And, you know, they could offer vehicles like the OPTIQ

and the Lyric. This will make it easier for them to sell those vehicles in Europe

without having to do a lot of re-engineering.

I still think it's mostly the play case.

You're right. No, I think it is, it is mostly, you know, playing politics.

But I think it provides some interesting opportunities.

I think it'd be great if we could get some cool, like, you know, vehicles from Europe

over here. I don't know how that works with our 25-year... I guess that just goes away.

We don't have to worry about, which is cool. I'll be like, oh, cool.

We can get all these cool cars that are in Europe over here.

But I think, especially going over there, it feels, I don't, it's just so many,

there's so much red tape that isn't, that has to be like gone through.

There's so many, there's so many countries that you're dealing with in Europe

and so many organizations that you're dealing with where they're going to be like, whoa, whoa,

whoa. Even though there is potential for, you know, Lyric or, which makes sense in,

or at OPTIQ, which makes sense in Europe, they're going to look at the worst case

scenario and try to block this. And so we're going to, it's going to be years before,

if this even does happen, yeah. And again, one line, one line, it's so vague.

Yeah. No, I just, I just want to get a Honda e over here, like on the used market

with like, you know, with its tiny little battery and it's, it's, it's like, it's driving around.

Can park it anywhere. Park it anywhere.

All right. This is a bad deal. I'm like, I don't care. I want the Honda e.

So I want this to be true is what I'm saying. Yeah.

All right. One last one, which is Tenser. This company, I first became aware of them

about two or three weeks ago when I got a note from Andy Hawkins at the Verge.

He asked me if I knew any about these guys. I'd never heard of them.

They had a website up that had no information. And then this week, this past week,

they announced what they're doing, which is kind of bonkers. They,

they plan to sell a level four Robo card to consumers.

You know, so this, this is a car that is in many ways much more akin to a Waymo than,

say, a Model 3 with FSD and full self-driving. This thing has some, they say over 100 sensors on it.

It's got five light ours, all rotating light ours. It's got six high definition radars,

seven or what? No, more, I think more than 20 cameras. There are 17 megapixel cameras.

It's got microphones on the outside. If you're, if you were going to do a Robo taxi, you know,

this is kind of the way you do it. But you know, we have no idea where this company came from.

Although Andy did some digging and he found the, in the US patent trademark database,

he found the trademark application for Tensor, which seems to indicate a relationship to AutoX,

which is a Chinese automated vehicle company. And because of the ban on Chinese

software and hardware for connected and automated vehicles, you know, perhaps this is a spinoff of

what, what AutoX was doing. And the car itself, which is a four-door sedan,

is going to be built by VinFast in Vietnam. What do you think of this?

I, I don't know.

I mean, we don't, I mean, we don't know, again, we know very little about this. Automaker

building one test car that drives around autonomously on a track, you know, on a predetermined,

that people were, people were shoving me in cars for the last 10 years, especially like

eight years ago. I was in a car like every week that was an autonomous level four car

that was, you know, here we're going to go on this drive and you go on the drive

and you know that it's a, you know, it's a, it's, it's a planned route. The car knows where it's

going. The car does its thing. It has all the things attached to it. And you're like,

okay, I guess, I don't, I mean, it's, it's a slot car. It's a, I'm riding around the slot car

that knows that other things exist. Like a Roomba. It's a Roomba. Yeah, I'm riding around

slot car Roomba that knows that my cat's coming near. Yeah. So, you know, so, you know, this

company seems like, you know, they have all the bits on there that you would want on a vehicle.

That means it's going to be very expensive. Building one car, building one car is impossible.

Building at scale is, I don't know, try to jump from your house to the moon. That's

what's building at scale is like. I mean, every startup, it doesn't matter, you know, Slate,

Rivian, I mean, I wouldn't even cover Rivian. I made someone else that in gadget cover Rivian,

because like, I don't know if they're going to make it, because like, you don't know. That's

the thing is like, you know, for every Rivian, for every Lucid, there's like 10 other companies

that whose names you don't even remember, because they just fell apart. There's so much

they have to do to make this work. And it's at all that it, we still don't know how much

it's going to be. What's this $300,000 car? I'm guessing at least $250,000 to $300,000

for this thing. And for the computer in this thing is using eight NVIDIA Thor chips, which,

I mean, this is their high-end chip for automated driving. You know, this has

a thousand teraps of performance, each chip. So they've got eight of them.

Aurora, which is doing self-driving trucks, they use one. This thing is so,

it seems to be so over-engineered. It's just, you know.

Well, here's the thing. It's like, the A, they had to sell the car, but B, now they have to

you don't have to pay either. There's going to be subscription or they're just going to be losing money

because you need someone who is watching these vehicles. You need someone to fix those issues

where the car gets confused. And none of these cars understand a turn signal. None of these cars

understand police officers standing in the road waving you forward or telling you to stop.

None of these cars understand a lot of, they just know object, object, object, object, object.

It doesn't understand the context of what that object may be doing or might be telling

the car to do or the driver to do versus, you know, thing. Thing in the road, stop. Now what?

If you're a human, thing in the road, that's telling me to just go around. Oh, all right,

yeah, yeah, I'll just go around. That's fine. I understand that's telling you, look,

all right, there's no one coming. The person's telling me to like waving me forward,

cool, whatever, versus, you know, a lot of, you know, we've seen this a lot in

San Francisco where they just all get trapped somewhere. Yeah. They all get confused. I

watched two, I watched a cruise and a Waymo, both trying to get like, what was on the left

lane? What was on the right lane on Van S in San Francisco? They both wanted to be in the other

lane and they both kept slowing down, trying to let the other one pass. And it was the funniest

thing they both had their blinkers on, but they didn't understand the other one had its

blinker on. So they just kept, it was just like, oh, but, you know, you think, oh,

well, I'm just driving from here to here. That's, that's pretty easy. But the reality is

the human brain understands so much about what's going on that we don't even think about,

that we don't think that we don't think about it when it comes to these, these, these vehicles.

And I'm saying all this as someone who, you know, when there are autonomous vehicles that

make sense that are safe, that's going to be amazing because there's so many people who

just don't want to drive. Yeah. Or just can't drive or so if people can't drive and maybe

public transportation doesn't serve them in a way that it does everyone else.

Yeah. The, you know, the specs for this thing are just so insane compared to everything else

that's out there. I don't know who's going to be making all this stuff. Others in VinFast,

apparently building the car. Yeah, I don't know where. That hasn't worked out to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. VinFast not doing great. So yeah, it's, it does have sensor cleaning

systems though. So it does, it does have the capability to keep its sensors clean. So that's

good. I mean, I applaud them for doing all the things that it looks like you should be doing.

That said, this is going to be a very expensive vehicle to build. It's going to be a very

expensive vehicle to own. It's going to be a very expensive vehicle on there and to operate.

So it'll, yeah, I mean, if they, if everything works out, you know, in five years, it's

going to be awesome. So, so who gets to 20 customer deliveries first?

Tenser or Faraday Future with the FF 91? Oh my gosh. So real customers, not, not employees.

That's, that's a huge, because I think there's been like 13 like Faraday Futures delivered

to customers. But I think those are the 12 mules that they were using before.

Just like to finish them. Oh, I'm going to say Faraday, which is bonkers.

Again, they might only deliver 20. I'm not saying that Faraday is ever going to go to scale.

And given the way this thing looks, you know, with all the sensors sticking out of it and

everything, you know, if you had two, $300,000 to spend, would you choose this?

Yeah. Well, you're talking about Silicon Valley. So that's true.

There will be some, some billionaires that'll, that'll buy this.

Oh yeah. They'll buy it. They're, they're fine. Again, I think

kudos to them for doing the correct thing and shoving as many things on there as possible.

But this is, this is a very, very difficult problem to crack.

I'm always amazed whenever like GM's like, Hey, we're going to start doing it again.

Is that really where you want to put your money? Could you just, I just feel like there's,

unless you have a team that this is their entire life, let those people do it and then just

license it later. I actually did see one of the cruise bolts on I-94 not far from here a

couple of weeks ago, but a week and a half ago. Oh, they spun that back up.

They're, they're using, they're using the, the car, the, the former cruise car, some,

using some of them for testing purposes and mapping and things like that.

Oh, okay.

So,

Well, it was going the opposite direction, but yeah, I saw someone on the road for the first

time in a while. I wish we could pick one up real cheap.

Probably not.

I don't think so.

They're very expensive.

All right. That is it. Oh, wait, sorry. I forgot. I got one email from John W.

and I already replied to John by email, but I wanted to talk about it here.

So, right, right in, but so despite Nicole's recent horror stories with her wagon-ear S,

I went ahead and leased one anyway. Feared I'd beat the clock before the EV tax credit

vanished. My local dealership apparently called in a favor from the dark arts department

and somehow got me out of my Rubicon four by E lease eight months early, ended up with the 2024

launch edition in white. And I've got to say the ride comfort and tech are pretty impressive

so far. That said, my very first charging experience was less magical. Oh no.

The freedom move app showed two stalls in use, even though the cars had pulled out 10 minutes

earlier. Long story short, I had to pony up with Apple Pay instead of tapping into the

$600 charging credit Stalantis gave me. Naturally, I went down the dark rabbit hole online,

looking for an adapter that would let me use Tesla's network. Only to learn those adapters

are stuck at level two charging. I specifically asked my dealer if I could plug into the Tesla

Supercharging Network and they swore I could. So, is this actually coming down the pipeline

or do I need to order some secret part that isn't being talked about yet? Love the show

and really appreciate any help. So, what I told John, I gave him an explanation. We've

talked about it here before, but with the adapters for CCS and J1772 and Nax, there are,

there's two different types of adapters. The first adapters that came out, the CCS, the Nax to CCS

adapters, those only handle DC charging. So, if you've got one that's got the full CCS

port on there, it will not pass through the AC lines. And there's a bunch of reasons for that

that we don't need to go into right at the moment. And then there are also separate adapters

for AC charging. So, if you want to do Nax to just for AC charging, so if you've got a,

you know, if you go somewhere and there's a Tesla destination charger, which is a level

two charger, and you want to charge your CCS or 1772 equipped car, which is what the wagon

your S is, then you need this different adapter that uses the pins, the AC charging pins.

And I think what John was found when he was looking was the Nax to J1772 adapters. And so,

I sent him a couple of links and I will include a link for the Electron Vortex adapter that I've

been using, which is the DC charger. But Electron also makes an AC adapter. And then there's, there's

also other brands that are selling AC adapters. There's more of the AC adapters out there right

now than the DC adapters. A to Z EV is probably the other best known brand, third party brand

for the CCS, Nax to CCS adapters. Both of those have been tested by a variety of people,

including Tom O'Lagney on his state of charge YouTube channel. They both, that and the Electron,

both work well. They're both pretty reliable. And, you know, I haven't had any issues with Electron.

And so you can, you know, what you might want to do is get one of each of those,

like get, get one AC and one DC adapter and keep it in your car.

That I will say that you might, like, so how many supposed to, but they said this

summer, summer is not quite over yet, right? No. Yeah. September.

The area a few more weeks. Hyundai is supposed to have their, their, their adapter for the

CCS enabled vehicles. I'm still waiting for mine. That said, you might want to be

some automakers, including Hyundai will void your warranty if you're using a third party

adapter and something weird happens. So just, just throwing that out there. So we have not,

so I'm waiting for my free Hyundai one for my IONIQ five. I think it's free. I can't remember.

It's been so long since they told us about it. I think they, I think Hyundai, I think Hyundai

is shipping them free of charge to customers. Yeah. So just, you know, check with your, your

automaker just in case if you're like, you know, you're concerned about, you know,

warranties and whatnot. Well, I mean, for, I mean the Electron, the Electron, I mean,

Tom O'Lagney, you, you know, anything he says, I'm like, all right. Yeah. Best

things right. Yeah. Tom does his stuff. And both Ford and GM and also Honda are now

shipping Electron adapters for their vehicles. So I think, you know, if at least at least those

three OEMs are using Electron as their vendor for their adapters, it'd probably be fine with that one.

Yeah. Hyundai said that they're building their own. Yeah. I talked to them. So we'll,

that's probably what's taken them so long, I guess. I don't know. Maybe they, there's

also, you know, 1772 is still not 100% finalized. And I think most of what you need to build an

adapter is done. So they should be fine with that. But there's still, there's some really

cool stuff coming for 1772 that I need to finish writing a story and editing a video. Sorry.

So, yeah. So I haven't had a chance. Oh, wait. Did I try to remember if I, I did,

I did use the Electron with the charger at, at the supercharger station here. So I used,

used the Electron adapter with the Dodge Charger Daytona and it worked. So you should be fine

with that one. Cool. Yeah. Because working on that should work for, I wouldn't see why they would

have different, I don't know, Stellantis though. The only thing is, you know, if you are,

you know, if you're, if you're using a supercharger with a non-Tesla vehicle and it doesn't yet

have the plug and charge capability built into the vehicle yet, if you haven't gotten enough,

the software update for plug and charge, then you will need to use the Tesla app to

initiate the charging and do the payment and all that stuff. But it's, it's pretty easy to do.

Yeah. It's like, every time for Tesla, the only, the biggest issue I had with their charging station

was I am, I hadn't updated my credit card from the last time I had reviewed a Tesla, which at

that point had been a very, very, very long time ago, back before, back when they had people

there and the CEO wasn't yelling at me over the phone. On that note, thanks for listening

and we'll talk to you next time. Bye.

If you're a podcast host, listen up this once for you. My name is Ali Jackson. I'm the host

of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now,

sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience.

And I wanted to share another experience that I've had, my secret behind monetizing my show.

It's called Red Circle. And I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform

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