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This is episode 418 of Wheel Bearings.

I am Sam Aboual-Sammet from Telemetry.

And I am Nicole Wakeland from Top Speed.

And I am Roberto Baldo from SAE International.

And, Nicole, what have you been driving?

I have been driving the 2025 Volvo EX30 in Moss Yellow, which is so bright.

It's sort of like a greenish highlighter yellow.

And I can see literally my neighbors.

I see people walking the dogs and stuff this week.

And they do this like, whoa, that's a car she's got this week.

I can see everyone giving a little side eye.

It is really easy to find in the parking lot, though, because it just glows like kryptonite.

So it's very easy to find.

So this is a compact crossover SUV.

I'd say it's a crossover.

It's a hatchback.

Hatchback.

I mean, you and I have had this discussion.

You can call it whatever you want.

The manufacturers call it whatever they want.

It's a hatchback.

It's a small hatchback.

And it's an EV.

So they've got, I think we've determined, because I got no information on this when it came to my door.

There's two trims.

I believe they're shipping both the plus and the other little chat.

Every car delivered to your house is like a brick thrown to the window.

Like, yeah, there's a note, but it's not signed.

You don't know who it's from.

I had lunch on Friday with the head of communications for one of the Korean brands that is based in Southern California.

And we got to talking about the press fleets and particularly the press fleet in New England and the gentleman that runs that press fleet.

And some of the prior attempts to, how shall we say, extricate that business from his grip.

It's complications.

Yes.

It's just a unique little situation we have here.

So, and sometimes I get a key that has a key fob.

I get the information off of that.

Sometimes they get it off of Ramone props to Honda.

They always send me stuff and Ramone via email.

Like, thank you, Chris Naughton, because I always have your stuff because you send it to me, which makes it really easy.

I have nothing on this one.

And I was trying to figure out which one I have.

We think we've determined I have the ultra based on the features.

So the plus starts at 46195.

The ultra is 47895.

So it is not an inexpensive electric vehicle.

Like, you're looking at almost $50,000 on this.

So it's not cheap.

Yeah.

Right.

Like it's a lot for how tiny it is, which I think is going to be, I think that's going to be a problem.

I think people are going to have a hard time sort of getting by that.

It does have some kind of neat stuff.

Like it has this, you know, beautiful panoramic roof.

So it says a lot of air and it looks very bright, which I think is nice.

You want a nice bright open airy vehicle.

It has neat trims inside that like aesthetically, it looks fantastic.

You know, there's a two zone climate control.

There's a 12.3 inch center display that's like a vertical display.

You don't have a, an instrument cluster.

So it takes a little bit of getting used to because it's the top, not even the top quarter,

like barely the top quarter of the screen across the top of that infotainment screen is actually where your instrument cluster is.

With your speed.

So it takes a little time to get used to looking right to see what your speed limit.

Like how fast am I going?

And you're like, wait, there's a thing in front of me.

You know, what are you shaking your head?

You don't like that, Robbie?

I don't like that.

We had that.

We had that on one of our minis.

Like you had a seat like over somewhere else to see what the speed was.

And it's, I think University of Ohio has data that shows that's not good.

It feels like, you know, shifting down is a really natural.

Like if you just do it with your eyes, if you look down, it's easy.

If you look right, it's, it's a different focus with your eye, right?

Even if you just sit here and do it.

It's not as easy.

So it's not this horribly cumbersome thing that you can't do, but I prefer.

It's not horrible.

It's just not, doesn't make any sense.

Doesn't.

Right.

It's not, it's not great.

So I'm not a super fan of that, but I didn't hate it.

I was sort of middling on that.

There's like fine.

I'm like, I can, I can get by with this.

Okay.

This is good.

And it is, you know, the interior has this funky.

So the cup holder is really cool.

It has this, the center armrest is very slim and it looks like there's no

cup holders, but you push at the front of the center armrest and it pops out

and there's two cup holders that go like group and sort of like extend

out and then you can push it back to one or you can push it back

entirely so that you don't have it at all.

So that's kind of nice.

I thought that was a neat, just a neat way to sort of tuck that in

there and keep it out of the way.

The glove box is also underneath that infotainment screen, but there's

no actual physical way to open it.

You have to open it in the infotainment screen, which not a fan of, right?

So your battery is dead.

Where's the bat?

Where is the battery?

Oh, wait a minute.

Let me check the, the, the, the owner's man.

It's in the glove.

Oh wait.

Yeah.

So I feel like with these and I at least you don't have to reach

far for the glove box if you do get it open.

Exactly.

But I, so some things became evident about why I, you just need a key.

You see a key and a start button people.

So this doesn't have a key.

You have a key fob that looks, you know, like normal key fob that

has absolutely no buttons.

It's just a little black rectangle.

And then you have a key card, like the credit card, like you

use it at a hotel room or whatever.

You can put the key card against the B pillar by the driver's

side and it will open the car.

But if for some reason you either don't have a key fob or if

the key fob for some reason doesn't recognize that you're there

because you just walk up and you open the door and you sit down

and you drive.

It also again, it's supposed to recognize the key that you're

in there and it should just drive, but the key card is there

because you can put it basically where you charge your

phone.

If you put it there for a minute, the car recognizes, oh wait,

you're driving this car and it will turn on to for some

reason it didn't.

So you kind of have like two ways to turn it on because

you don't have a start button.

There's no start button.

It's really weird.

There's also no off button.

Now you can physically turn it off if you go into the

info team and screen once again, but you just put it in

park and get out of the car and walk away.

Which can I just tell you that is so disconcerting.

It is, I just, the first time I walked away I'm kind of

looking over my shoulder waiting to see the like

blink blink to know that it has in fact turned off.

It's really weird to just walk away from a car and be like

see ya and just hope it does its own thing.

It did work every time.

I had one time that I walked up to it and it didn't

initially recognize the fob in my hand.

And I did put the card against the pillar and it

opened right up.

But the weirder thing is, okay so here's the deal,

I'm like well this is weird.

So I went grocery shopping.

Okay practical things about owning a vehicle that

opens up automatically every time you walk away

and walk back.

I went grocery shopping, had a whole trunk full

of groceries and I flip open the tailgate and the

key is in my pocket and I grab my first armful and

I walk away and I hear click click as the car locks.

And I bring it inside.

Then I walk back and I hear click click as it

unlocks and I grab another load.

Click click as it locks when I walk away.

That thing locked and unlocked half a dozen times.

Click click click as I'm just going back and forth

from the car for my groceries.

Which was just like well this just seems stupid.

And was the tailgate open the entire time?

Tailgate was open the whole time.

See that's kind of goofy.

You know on our car it will lock automatically

when you walk away with the key.

But it won't do that if any of the doors

or the tailgate is open.

If one of the portals is open it will just

stay unlocked until you close everything.

And then it'll beep and then lock.

And I don't know I didn't see a setting to

change this.

I mean it could have been buried in there

somewhere but I think this is silly.

And there is a setting.

It shouldn't work that way at all.

Like why every 30 seconds.

So also if you happen to have the key in your pocket

and you're anywhere near the car.

Like you don't have to be super close to it.

I walked outside to get the mail.

Click click walk back inside to get the mail.

Except when you actually want to get in the car

and then sometimes it doesn't unlock.

And sometimes it doesn't unlock.

Now yeah so it was so that was a little bit

weird.

Driving it is fine.

It's got plenty of power.

It handles nicely.

It's a tiny little thing.

So it you know very nimble.

Very smooth.

I enjoyed driving it.

But the living with it part was weird.

Like weirder than any other car that I've had.

The other so and also and I'm holding up.

This is the key.

See that little link.

That was where they attached a whole big

thing that had the key card on it.

Don't know where that fell off.

But I don't have the key card.

So I only have the key at the moment.

I have no idea where when I am in a panic.

So I messaged them like as it fell off.

I went to all the place.

I was in the grocery store.

I'm like I haven't told them haven't heard anything back.

So I don't have the key card.

But because they gave it to me like this and it was all

like tied together now.

But I did.

I walked up this morning and had a panic moment.

I'm like is it going to open.

But I just kind of held the key there.

And it opened up.

So I don't have the key card.

Which is like and now because I don't have the key card.

I don't have a thing that unlocks it.

I'm just so so sure that.

Even worse right.

So you can unlock and lock it and start it.

I believe even with the with the app,

if you download the Volvo cars,

app which brings you to an E30 app that will unlock it.

But so you have a backup.

So it's not like we're locked out.

But yeah.

So that's that's.

I'm not a fan of the setup as I approved with just one week

of use.

I cannot charge this vehicle at home.

I have a Grizzly Avalanche Edition charger

that we've had for, I think, three or four years now.

I was trying to remember exactly when I bought it.

It's charged every EV I've ever had in my driveway

without issue, all of them, F-150 lightening,

tiny little things, big little things, everything.

It will not charge the CX30.

As soon as I plug it in,

I get the charger faults

and starts blinking red and beeping.

And I thought for a second,

did I connect it wonkily or something?

Unplug it, plug it back in.

Nope, won't do it.

But I have to unplug,

because I have a plug-in one.

Mine's not hardwired into the wall.

I have to unplug it from the wall, plug it back in.

Then it will work fine to charge my personal car

to charge Russ's car,

but it will not charge this EV-30.

So I don't know why.

I tried to get it to charge it

a Tesla Supercharger near our house,

which is a relatively new generation one.

It is one of the ones that should have been able

to charge the EX-30.

Went into the Tesla app, did all the stuff.

Tesla's like, okay, it can take two minutes

before your car starts charging.

Like he gives you a little note, never charge.

Gave me the same message that he'd given me at home.

Like it never, it doesn't handshake.

It never recognizes that it's plugged in

and starts charging.

Then I went after that failed, leaving that plugged in

while I was at dinner.

I went across the street to the mall,

picked a different level two just charging company,

get it all plugged in for it to say,

sorry, we're having a network issue right now.

We can't process your transaction.

Like, gosh, dang it.

Go to a different level two charger charging bank.

And I think it was EA, I think it was Electrify America

at the mall, plug it in, charges.

Huzzah!

Then have to kill time at the mall

and end up spending $200 at the mall.

I didn't need to spend.

But there was also somebody who was there

with a brand new Audi, I didn't catch which one,

but it's one of the e-trons.

It's like one of the SUVs.

She has a brand new Audi

and she can't figure out how to get it to charge.

And she says to me like, have you done this before?

Do you know how this works?

And I said, yeah, I do.

She said, could you help me?

I said, yes, a little second.

So I walk over to help this woman

and I'm like, what are you doing here?

And well, Audi, different,

like just more just complications of EV charging.

So she has a year of free charging at this,

at the Electrify America charging stations.

But to do that,

you have to apparently use the Audi app to use that.

There's an Audi app.

And she said, you have to go through the Audi app.

And I didn't research this.

I'm just telling you, either way,

this is what the customer thought, okay?

Through the Audi app to charge it.

And she's trying to use the Audi app

because that's what they said she had to use.

Now she might have been mistaken,

but that's what she thought.

But the Audi app was down

and the Audi app was giving her all these errors.

And she was thinking it was because

she was doing something wrong

because she hadn't charged it before.

But no, it was that the app was not working.

So I said, well, you can just sign up for,

just charge it like normal.

You don't have to use the app.

And that's when she's like, oh no, I have free charging.

I wanted to use the free charging

because I have free charging for a year.

So for her to charge it now, she's paying for it

because she couldn't get things to work

the way that she was told to get them to work.

I'm like, wow, this is just once again

a great experience for the EV.

It's weird, I'm not anti-EV

and I think I'm really coming off that way lately,

but it is complicated at times with these.

Like that was a positive experience.

It's too incredibly complicated.

That's the problem.

You should be able to plug it in.

You should be able to go into a service station,

give someone $10 and say,

I want $10 of electricity on charger four.

That's what we should be.

That should be the goal.

I wanted to be that easy.

I want the front of the EV station

just to look like the front of a gas station.

We just slip it a box on there.

That's not really made to be outside

in the first place for your credit card is not, yeah.

It should be, yeah.

So that was my, so driving the EX30,

it's, I liked driving it.

I enjoyed my time driving it.

I did not enjoy how the locking and unlocking feature

doesn't work and I had issues getting it to charge.

So I literally had to take it from my house

to we picked dinner across from a Tesla Supercharger

or Tesla Chargers so that we could charge this car

for nothing and then had to still go across to the mall

and kill some time, letting it charge right up.

So not an ideal EV experience.

And how much was the EX30?

So it was once again.

Keeping in mind before you answered that question,

this is a, it's really, it's a sub-compact hatchback.

Yeah, it's not huge.

It's a five-seater that's really four.

I mean, getting three in the back,

that would be tight even for average-

And even two adults in the back is snug.

It's, yeah, this is $47,895, that many dollars.

So it is not, it is not an inexpensive car.

So I don't know, it's,

I have a hard time with the whole making sense

of some of the pricing and things on EVs

and especially as the incentive disappears in,

where are we now?

You got two weeks to lock in just about,

to lock in your sale or you lose the incentive.

16 days as we record.

16 days.

So you lose that.

You know, it's, this is an expensive proposition.

I don't hate the car or anything

but I'm like, I don't know that I would want to pay

$47,895 for this.

Yeah, a couple of years ago

when Volvo first unveiled this car,

at the time, you know, there was, you know,

they said, yeah, it's going to start, you know,

around $35,000 in the US.

And, you know, the plan was

that there was going to be a single motor version

which had like 270 horsepower.

And, you know, that one,

I actually, I've had a chance to drive one of those.

It's actually a lot of fun.

You know, cause a small car, 270 horsepower,

rear wheel drive, it's a lot of fun to drive.

And, you know, $35,000, $36,000, $37,000

depending on options and stuff.

That I think would have been a more reasonable proposition

but in between that time and now, you know,

we've had, you know, cause originally those cars

were being built in China at a GLE factory.

And, you know, subsequently they've added production

at a plant in Belgium.

But first, you know, they imposed 100% tariff

on Chinese built EVs last year,

even before the current administration in Washington.

And then, you know, the whole tariff thing

has just gotten totally out of hand.

So even now with, you know, with tariffs

on European built vehicles,

you know, it didn't make the business case

no longer made sense for Volvo

to bring over that base rear wheel drive model.

So now the only ones we get are the dual motors,

you know, in the plus or ultra trims,

you know, which are in the upper $40,000 range.

And that price point makes-

It's too much for this car.

Yeah.

It doesn't work.

And, you know, I wanna say that it's not Volvo's fault

that the pricing doesn't make sense on this.

For everything that you've listed there,

this is a very changeable time

for the automotive industry in general,

but especially if you're trying to produce

an electric vehicle between the tariffs

and just public sentiment towards EVs

and the politicization, what's the word I'm looking for?

Politicization.

Thank you, couldn't say it.

That's a hard word.

Politicization.

Too many syllables.

Too many syllables of the entire issue.

It's tough for them to react.

And I feel like this is a case

where Volvo's getting their butt kicked a little bit,

like this, through no fault of their own,

this did not go the way that they had planned.

It did not.

But, oh, do you guys wanna take a,

and I should say that price I gave you includes destination.

So I'm sorry, it's 4,600 before.

So it's 12.95.

I'm just gonna tell you.

12.95 for destination on this.

That's exactly what I was gonna guess.

I knew you were gonna guess.

I just took away your win.

Sorry, you win, Sam.

Winner.

So, yeah, so that's,

so I feel like this is a case study

of why it's tough to be a car maker right now.

It's a decent car.

Especially for a brand-like Volvo.

It is a decent car.

It is not a bad car.

I mean, like I said, I enjoy driving it.

It's just, there's, as a value proposition,

it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

It just doesn't.

But you know, it's fun to drive that this fancy,

what is it, moss yellow exterior.

I'd really like that color, by the way.

Actually, I do like it.

It's funny when you look on their color thing,

you've got gray, vapor gray, onyx black, crystal white,

cloud blue, all these really calm, muted colors.

And then it's like, moss yellow, like, wow.

Like it's, I love this.

Inspired by the color of lichen on Swedish granite rocks

and uniquely designed for the EX-30.

That's where they came up with this color.

I can get behind that.

And yeah, one thing you didn't mention,

the EX-30 even has a reasonably sized frunk.

Yes, it does.

It does have a good frunk.

So it not everything has a frunk.

Which is interesting to me just because some OEMs

say they don't have a frunk because it's not safe.

Like there's, there's, you get varying reasons

for why they'll say, well, we don't have a frunk at this.

Oh, it doesn't withstand crash tests

the way we want it to in this and that.

I know, I've literally had OEMs say that I'm like,

what, what?

So, but yeah, I appreciate that they actually put a frunk

because that's one of the cool bonuses of having

an EV is that where you have an engine,

instead you have a place to put some extra stuff at a set.

And it has manual vents.

Despite almost everything being in the touchscreen,

the vent control, the vents are manual.

I thought that, you know, I literally was thinking,

I'm like, for how much they've shoved

in that touchscreen, somebody's like,

vents are a step too far, gentlemen.

Let's hold it there.

Let's give them manual vents.

All right.

Robbie, did you drive anything?

Nope.

Okay.

Well, we'll get back to, you did drive something,

but we'll get to that in a couple of minutes.

Oh yeah, I did drive something.

You're right, nevermind.

I'm a liar, I'm a filthy, filthy liar.

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All right.

Well, I also had a Volvo.

I had the XC90 T8 plug-in hybrid.

Actually, let me see the full adult rated name.

XC90 T8 all-wheel drive plug-in hybrid

ultra dark seven passenger.

But yeah, so this is a vehicle that a few years ago was

was not really in Volvo's plan for it to even still be

being built today.

It was it was supposed to be replaced by the EX90.

Volvo's target four or five years ago

was they wanted to be pretty much all electric by 2025.

And they designed the EX90.

And it was supposed to be effectively a replacement

for the XC90.

It's similar in size, but it's battery electric.

But things happened.

Things happened with the market for EVs.

Things also happened with Volvo's development of the EX90

and its SPA2 platform that got severely delayed.

It was more than a year late to market.

And they're still having issues with it,

with the software, mostly with software.

If you look online, there's people complaining

about software problems with the EX90.

But so given all that, Volvo decided

to do a refresh of the XC90, which is a fairly mild refresh.

It basically got a new grille, new headlights,

an updated version of the headlights.

So it's still got the Thor's hammer signature lights

that Volvo's been having for a number of years now.

The grille is now, it's this sort of crosshatched bias ply thing.

So looking at it from the front, the lower half

and right side of the grille are slanted in one direction.

And then the upper half and left side

are slanted diagonal in the opposite direction.

And it kind of overlaps.

It's a nice look to it.

And I have liked the XC90 for a long time.

Since this current generation came out in what, 2015, 16,

it was the first of the current modern generation

of Volvos built under Julie ownership.

It's the first one to use the SPA platform.

The scalable product architecture platform.

And I've always liked driving it.

I've always liked the way it looks.

And it's fairly roomy.

I've, over the years, I've driven a few different plug-in

hybrids a couple of years ago, but three years ago.

They did an update, a refresh of the powertrain.

It used to be, when it first came out,

it's always had a two liter turbo

charged four cylinder engine.

But they used to have it with a supercharger on there as well.

So you had a turbocharger and a supercharger.

And they would sell that.

So they had three different, there

were three different flavors of the XC90,

with different powertrain options.

So it was the T5, which was just the turbo.

The T6, which was the turbo and the supercharger.

And that did about 310, 320 horsepower.

And then the T8, which was the plug-in hybrid,

which had the turbocharged and supercharged engine,

plus the motor on the rear axle and a battery down

in the center tunnel.

They got rid of the supercharger a couple of years back.

And they switched that out with a 48 volt mild hybrid

system.

So now they've got two different powertrain options.

The B5, it has the turbo and the mild hybrid,

with about 300 and some horsepower.

And then the T8 is the plug-in hybrid.

They add the electric motor and the battery.

And they upgraded the size of the battery when they did that.

And they also upgraded the electric motor.

So it went from about 100 horsepower

on the rear electric motor to 143 horsepower.

So now you've got 312 horsepower at the front,

143 on the rear, and 455 combined.

So this is actually a pretty quick vehicle.

It'll do 0 to 16 in about five seconds.

And the bigger battery also meant

that it got more electric range.

And with the bigger, the more powerful motor,

it's now more usable than it was in EV mode.

So if you go into the drive modes in the screen,

there's the hybrid mode, there's the sport mode,

and there's what they call pure mode, which is your EV only

mode.

And so I went out and did my usual range test

on the same driving loop I use for most of the vehicles

I try out.

I fully charged the battery, put it in pure mode,

and drove its EPA rated at 33 miles of electric range.

I got just over 40 miles before the engine finally came on.

And that's a mix of city, highway, suburban, urban driving.

And it went just over 40 miles on a charge.

And you don't have to really feather the throttle at all

to keep it in electric mode.

You can drive it fairly normally.

It's not going to be a speed demon with that 143 horsepower,

but it's enough that you can comfortably merge onto the highway,

accelerate down the on ramp, merge into the highway traffic

without engaging the engine.

So it's a good powertrain.

And the other major thing that they changed

when they did the refresh last year,

and they brought it out as what they actually called a 2025

and a half model, although this is the one that I've got.

On the Minroni, it actually says 2026.

The infotainment screen got changed.

So previously, there was a 9-inch touch screen,

portrait orientation touch screen.

They replaced that with a larger, I think it's 11.2 inches now.

And so the previous screen was kind of embedded in the dash.

Now, because the rest of the dash is basically

stayed unchanged, what they've done

is they've pulled the touch screen panel out a little bit.

So it's now kind of sitting on top of where it was before.

So it's a little bit closer, a little bit easier to reach.

And it's still using the Android Automotive infotainment

with Google services.

So you've got Google Maps and Assistant and everything.

And you can download various other apps

from the Google Play Store, as you can

on all other Volvos and poll stars.

It's a pretty similar interface to what's in that EX-30

that you just drove, although the XC90 also still

has a traditional instrument cluster display.

It's a 12.3-inch display.

And you can toggle through different display modes on there.

So if you're using navigation, you

can have it actually show the Google Maps right

in that cluster display.

So it's directly in front of you, so you

don't have to look over.

But it also had a heads-up display.

So it shows you your prompts for when to turn and everything.

The XC90 doesn't have the largest third row.

It's a three-row utility.

It doesn't have the largest third row.

So if you really need that third row

for a lot of longer trips, this might not necessarily

be the best option for you unless your kids are small,

in which case they should be in booster seats anyway.

But it's manageable for shorter trips for adults.

The third row in this one actually feels a little more

roomy than the third row in the EX-90.

And one of the unique features that Volvo has,

something that they launched probably more than 20 years ago

now, is a built-in booster seat.

So if you've got a kid that is a little bit too big

for a car seat, they need a booster seat,

in the second row, the lower seat cushion,

if you pull up on the front edge, basically the lower seat

cushion is split.

And you pull it up, you can slide it back over the rear half

of the seat cushion.

So it sits up a little bit higher and acts as a booster

seat.

So the kid is better positioned relative to the seat belts,

especially the shoulder belt.

And then you can use the center shoulder belt.

And that makes it a little more convenient.

If you've got a kid to haul around,

you don't have to necessarily install a separate booster

seat for them.

You can use the one that's built into the car.

And that's unique to Volvo.

Nobody else does that that I'm aware of.

That's pretty cool, actually.

Yeah.

And this thing is large enough.

Last weekend, I went to the local big box store

to get a shed, get a big box full of a shed,

store shed from my backyard.

And this box was 39 and 1 half inches wide,

about 23 inches tall and 70 some inches long.

I folded down the second and third row seats.

And it slid all the way in there and fit.

And the tailgate closed, which is very handy.

So there's actually quite a bit of cargo room in this thing.

One other feature that I noticed when I was doing that

while I was waiting for them to bring the box out,

they brought it out with a forklift

because it was about 300 pounds.

As in the rear cargo area, there's a button you can press.

The one that I had had the optional active chassis

with air suspension.

And so there's a button back there

to lower the rear suspension

so you can deflate the rear air springs

and it drops the rear end down a little bit.

So you have a little bit lower loading height,

which is convenient for loading things

in or out of the back of the car.

And then once you close the tailgate

and start moving it lifts itself back up

to its normal height.

So it's quick.

It'll do 40 miles on a charge.

So for anybody who's maybe, you know,

is looking for a luxury three-row utility

but maybe isn't quite ready to make the jump

all the way to a full electric vehicle

but wants to do mostly electric driving, you know.

35 to 40 miles on a charge, you know,

which is enough for almost everybody's daily driving

in your daily commute.

You can do that with this vehicle.

Never use a drop of gas

or very rarely use a drop of gas

because once in a while it will run the engine

in maintenance mode just to keep the fluid circulating.

But other than that,

you can do almost all of your daily driving

in this thing purely on electricity.

Last year, I think I talked about a friend

whose 2017 XC90 had a catastrophic engine failure

and they ended up replacing it

with a new plug-in hybrid XC90

and they've been loving it.

They almost, except for when they take

a couple of vacation trips with the kids,

they pretty much never use any gas in the thing.

So.

That's kinda cool.

Yeah.

So this is not a cheap vehicle.

Total bottom line price, $89,695.

Ow, that's a lot.

Yeah.

$89,000?

Yeah.

That had two options on there.

This was the ultra model.

So the only options were the air suspension for $1,800

and the Bowers and Wilkins Premium Sound System

for $3,200.

You wanna guess at the delivery charge?

$1295.

That's what I was gonna say.

$1296.

Oh, Robbie got it.

So I guess Volvo charges the same delivery charge

on all their vehicles.

Who knew?

Yeah.

And yeah, so the XC90 is currently built in Sweden

and 40% of the parts come from Sweden,

15% come from Finland.

And the transmission comes from Japan.

There you go.

All over the place.

That's the XC90 T8 all-wheel drive.

You know, I mean, $90,000 is not inexpensive,

but if you compare that to say a Mercedes GLS

or a BMW X7, which I think are pretty comparable vehicles,

it's reasonably priced compared to those.

I mean, those can easily run up over $100,000.

Do you think it's, would you buy that?

Do you think it's a good value?

I mean, I don't personally have a use

for a vehicle like this.

You suddenly have two kids and a big dog, not a Corgi.

You know, when we had two kids,

you know, the largest vehicle that we needed

was a VW Passat station wagon.

That worked really well with a couple of young kids.

We didn't find that we needed anything larger than that.

So that's the biggest car.

No, that's just, now I'm thinking.

So when you had two kids, basically a station wagon

was the biggest car you needed and you survived.

You didn't need a giant SUV.

The biggest car we ever had with the two kids

was a Jeep Liberty, which again, isn't a huge SUV.

It's cool. No, the Liberty's pretty small.

Pretty tiny.

Look at that.

Both of us got through life with two children.

That's amazing how that works.

I did not have to get something the size of a tank.

Yeah.

And you know, if I had not had this particular vehicle

to drive last week, I would have just

had Lowe's deliver the shed.

I wouldn't see any compelling need to have a vehicle

like this, you know, a couple times a year

when I have something big.

And even for that thing, I'm assuming Lowe's

does the same thing, like you see the,

you can rent the little pickup truck-ish type thing

at Home Depot and stuff and you could,

whatever it's by the hour,

and you can load up your shed.

You can rent those for 20 bucks for 75 minutes

or something like that.

And just use it for the time you need it

and then go right back to your normal size,

much more affordable vehicle.

Yeah, I mean, I've never felt a compelling need

to own a vehicle this large.

I also don't have a trailer or a boat

or anything else to haul around, but to be honest,

most of the people who drive these things don't either.

Most don't.

Yeah, most don't.

That's true.

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All right, let's carry on

and talk about the thing that Robbie did drive this week.

I drove a car.

And I know he drove it because I was with him.

We drove a car together.

And I saw him in the airport.

We passed.

Lily were like walking.

He's coming.

I'm getting to see Diego.

It's when they kept moving the gate.

They moved the gate like three times in like 10 minutes.

So he's like, wait, no, go to 60, what?

Robbie's like, I don't know where I'm going.

OK, well, I'm going to meet my guy.

I'm coming in, so I'm out.

So yeah, all three of us got to drive the 2026 Nissan

Leaf this week.

Yes.

What did you think?

You know, I actually really liked it.

It's been a while since I've been in a Leaf.

And so it's been a few years.

And there have been so many EVs that

have come out in the time since I last sat in a Leaf.

I had this memory of it being very dated.

Like, oh, it has fallen behind in every conceivable way.

It doesn't.

And it had.

But the thing of it is it was introduced in 2010,

the first generation, when they were just like EVs.

What's this magic voodoo stuff?

Like they were just not EVs out there.

So it was really interesting that this is one of the first.

And yet it sort of got pushed aside.

But I think what they did with this, honestly,

I think it's far better.

I mean, it's a really competitive little teeny little EV now.

What did you think your first impressions, guys?

I'll let Robbie go first.

Oh, you didn't like it.

He liked it since the liar.

I just want to give him a chance to talk.

No, I thought the second generation Leaf

was a fine car for the time it came out.

But it was so boring, so incredibly boring.

It's just like you drove the car and you knew, like,

all right, this does the thing it's supposed to do.

I have no feelings for it at all.

Like it was just there.

It was just, it was like the tool when you're told

just you never pick up because you're just like, yeah.

This one in their hand, I think that they purposely,

I know that globally they wanted to make sure

that the chassis and the suspension,

everything was based on the US tuning.

So everywhere you get a Leaf, it's based on US tuning.

So if you don't like the way the United States

tames their cars, chassis-wise and suspension-wise,

too bad because you're getting it with the Leaf.

That said, when I first got in the vehicle

and I was driving, I was like, what is this steering?

Is it, it felt very twitchy?

And it turns out it was.

It's a little, it's a bit tighter, I think,

than most people would anticipate from a vehicle

in this segment.

That said, if you're young

and you want a relatively inexpensive EV

and you like cruising around and having fun around mountains,

cool, yeah, there you go.

If you, as you get older though, I think there's a,

I think there, at some point people over like 55

are going to be like, why is, this is really a lot more

than I anticipated when it comes to driving.

That said, I actually, I really enjoyed the Leaf.

I think it's, I like the way it looks.

It was comfortable to sit in for the,

the two and a half hours or three hours or however long

we had to sit in the car, four hours maybe.

And the rear seats, there is enough room for me

if the person in front moves forward.

My biggest issue with the drive is that we only

drove the Platinum Edition,

which is all the bells and whistles.

That's not the $30,000 Leaf.

The $30,000 Leaf is the S Plus.

I think there's a lot of caveats that come with this vehicle.

When you're thinking, when you hit that $30,000 mark,

you don't get, you don't get route planning.

You don't get a battery, a keeter.

There's a lot of little things that you don't get,

but it has wireless car playing, wireless Android auto.

You can use a better route planner.

You can throw a little, you can plug it in an OB, wait.

OBD.

See, I always want to say ODB,

like Old Dirty Bastard from Wu-Tang.

But OBD, it is not the same thing.

You can throw a two into the plug

and then you can get all your information

you need for like a better route planner,

or I'm sure there's maybe something else out there

that'll work with that.

That's the one that I think most people are using now.

Yeah, you know, there's,

and of course you don't get the weird glass roof

if you get the cheap one,

which probably is better to be honest,

because in the back seat at six, three,

like I gotta, you know, there's just,

I mean, I can stick my hand between my head and the roof,

and that's where I can feel the top of my head

and the top of the roof with my hand.

So it can, yeah, it can be a little tight back there

for tall people.

That said, every car in this segment,

it's tall, it's tight for tall people.

We're monsters and we shouldn't be allowed out in public.

Well, that's a little dramatic, Robbie.

That's a little dramatic,

it's got an actual knob for the volume, which is yay.

All the climate controls are either soft touch,

or they're in the screen.

That's better than, you know, only being in the screen.

That said, I really enjoyed it.

I think the Nissan's ProPilot is still like

sort of an undiscovered gem in ADAS to be honest.

I think it's, for a long time,

it's been good, but no one really knows about it

because no one's really, Nissan's been having issues.

It works fine.

It's, you know, when we're on the freeway

and there were some nice curves,

it centered the car good enough.

And I think that's really where you,

just keep your hands on the road,

hands and eyes on the road.

So it's a little helper.

One issue I do have is, and I think,

oh man, the journalists lost their minds about this.

And I think they forgot.

I don't remember them like, with the Aria,

there's no one, there's no one pedal driving.

They're like, oh, we're not doing one pedal driving.

Everyone's like, oh no.

And then they, everyone seemed to forget.

And then, when this car comes out,

and I can't, doesn't everyone pedal driving?

Everyone's like, what?

I'm like, we knew this, right?

Am I the only person that knew this?

So they had this thing.

I think most of us probably have not driven an Aria

in a little while.

We all drove it when it first came out,

and probably most of us have not been in one for a while,

and so we just forgot.

And most other EVs offer some sort of one-pedal mode.

I think maybe people were hoping they would bring it back

because everyone's like, what?

Instead, they have this thing called E-Step,

which is like a workout from the 80s.

And it's the highest level of regeneration.

So they have like four levels,

four to five levels of regular regeneration

that you can adjust with the paddle shifters.

So you're like, all right, I can adjust my,

and then there's E-Step, which has its own button.

You gotta push the button,

but then once you're in E-Step,

you can't adjust the regeneration.

You can't use the paddle shifters.

To turn E-Step off, you have to push the button again,

which is, and it's almost one-pedal,

like it gets down to a certain point,

and then it just looks like-

It's so close.

It's down to about 10 miles an hour.

And then it just lets the car roll.

You're like, ugh.

Another weird thing about E-Step is that,

like in the Mercedes, with the EQS,

when it slows down, it moves the brake pedal,

but it only does it in this setting.

And so you've always anticipated,

even with regenerative braking,

I want the pedal to be at its neutral position.

I don't wanna move it around,

because what happens is there's an issue,

and emergency or whatever,

and I go to press on a pedal,

if I miss it because it's been moved,

and it's only like maybe an inch.

You just know it's been moved.

If that throws that off, I don't like that at all.

I asked them, did you ask the engineer about this?

I asked them why they had this E-Step versus,

like why do you have paddle shifters to adjust the regen

and then the E-Step?

Did you talk to him about it?

Cause I did ask, cause I was curious.

We did, but go ahead and tell us what you got.

So what I got, well, I'm curious to see the same.

So what I got was that the paddle shifters

to adjust are just exactly that.

You adjusted how you want,

but that if you want it to be consistent,

they were trying to get this seamless experience,

especially for people who are new to EVs,

is that if, for example, your battery is fully charged,

the regen isn't gonna regen

cause there's nothing, there's nowhere to put it.

You're not gonna get that experience

because there's nowhere to put the energy

cause the battery is fully charged with it

because it uses mechanical brakes, that traditional,

which is why that brake pedal moves, they say,

and regen, it doesn't matter

if there's a hundred percent battery or 10% battery,

you're gonna get the same braking experience,

no matter what.

So it works consistently independent

of the actual vehicle state of charge.

See, I don't buy that cause it's not consistent.

It's, and I've, you know,

we've had EVs for now, like four years.

I've owned an EV and then like years and years

of driving them, it's very rare

that you're at a hundred percent

and the car's like, hey, regen doesn't work right now.

Like it's like, first of all, you're charging to a hundred

percent and so now you're like, okay,

for the first like three miles, the regen doesn't work.

That's it.

That's when it doesn't work.

Unless you're going down a big hill

and you've, you know, up to a hundred percent

or whatever, like if you live on a top of a mountain,

you fill up your car with a hundred percent

of electricity and then you roll down the mountain,

regen is not going to work for you at all.

Yeah.

But, you know, the thing is, again,

I think that this is, this is a nonsense argument

because, you know, every car on the road

that has regenerative braking, whether it's a hybrid,

a plug-in hybrid or battery electric

that has regenerative braking

also has an electro hydraulic brake system.

And this is, I know this because this is something

I worked on when I was still an engineer

the last three years I was working as an engineer.

This is what I worked on

was electro hydraulic brakes, you know,

that were being used the system that we developed at TRW

for GM and ultimately got used on other vehicles as well,

which is a system that is capable

of applying the brakes independently of the driver

because it's got, it's doing stability control.

It's also got to do the blending

between friction braking and regenerative braking

so that you get consistent behavior, you know,

so that whether the, if the battery's full

and can't take any regen, you know,

it uses more friction brakes.

So basically the brake pedal is just an indicator

of how much D-cell you want.

You're applying the brake pedal

and that's how much D-cell you want.

And then the car figures out, okay,

I can do X pounds feet of regenerative braking torque

and Y pounds feet of friction braking

and it just automatically blends those together.

So even if your battery is 100% full

and you are driving down the mountain

from your house into town, you step on the brake pedal,

the thing knows the state of charge of the battery

that it can't take any regen.

So it's just gonna do 100% friction braking

and it just does that in the background.

You don't have to manage that

and you don't have to tell people, you know,

I mean, if you set it for, you know,

that you want max regen,

you've got that capability there that says,

okay, the battery can't take any regen.

So I'm just gonna use this hydraulic actuator that I have

to apply the brakes when the person backs

off the accelerator pedal

and just use friction brakes for the same thing.

Just regular old brakes.

Yeah, I mean, like the brakes still work.

They don't stop working with it.

Right, right, exactly.

Mechanically and functionally,

there's no reason you cannot, you know,

no matter what the battery state of charge is,

there's no reason why you can't have

that one pedal driving mode.

It's just, it's a policy decision

that somebody at Nissan made

and Toyota made the same decision

with the BZ and the Salterra, you know,

they decided no, you know, in Toyota's case,

you know, Toyota says, you know,

we wanted it, we wanted to replicate

the experience of a combustion vehicle

for somebody that's transitioning.

You know, because most of our owners

are, you know, coming over from a combustion

or a hybrid vehicle and we want them

to have a familiar experience,

which is, again, kind of a nonsense argument.

Yeah, I mean, fine, if you want one pedal

to default off, that's fine.

I don't have an issue with that,

but you know, allow a driver that is familiar with it

and likes to use that to just go in

and enable one pedal mode, you know,

if they decide they want to use that.

There's no physical reason it can't be done.

They've just chosen not to.

Yeah, it's very much like,

especially because you have to reach

all the way over and hit that E-step button.

You can reach all the way over

and hit the one pedal button.

If you were like, I don't know about this one pedal,

I also don't understand why

I just can't be in the paddle shifters,

but that's a whole other,

that's all there, having said that,

I really enjoyed the car, I really liked it.

I thought it was fun to drive.

It's a heavy car, it's got a battery in it,

so it's heavier than your average

gasoline car at the same segment,

but it links the corners pretty well,

and it was a nice drive.

We, I think it extended what my thoughts were

from Japan when I drove it there

on a track in the limited capacity

where you're doing like 40 kilometers an hour

and they're like, don't go above 60

because that's the speed limit

and you have to watch about eagles

at the Grand Drive track.

It's a whole thing in Japan.

But yeah, no, I enjoyed it.

And then Sam, the whole time Sam's like,

this car sucks, no, I'm just kidding.

No, I mean, I too, apart from the whole one pedal thing,

which during the Q&A after the presentation

before we drove, it's like a whole bunch of people

all spoke up about that, and many of us also spoke

to their product planners afterwards separately.

They invented it, they introduced one pedal

to the world and they're like, nah.

I learned that the first time

we were experienced it was on a Nissan Leaf.

I remember trying to learn it and was like,

ew, it's freaky, and then you get used to it

and it starts to work.

Actually, even before the Leaf,

the original Mini-E from 2008 that BMW used,

they had a fleet of Mini-Es that they gave to people

to drive together, experience, gather data

about how people use EVs, that was actually the first one

and that was in 2008, that was the first one

that I had experienced with one pedal braking.

And it took me about two minutes to get used to it.

And then once I figured out, okay,

here's how much I have to modulate the pedal

to slow it down, it was fine.

I like one pedal driving.

And so does my wife, she's been driving an EV

for about two months now.

And in the EV6, every time she gets in,

she taps the left pedal to go from level three

to the i-Pedal Max, the one pedal mode and uses that.

And she really likes it.

But yeah, apart from that, the rest of the car

is really nice, it looks good.

It's basically a seven-eighth scale Aria.

And if you-

Seven-eighth scale Aria.

It literally is.

It's actually probably more like 15, 16ths,

if you do the math, but regardless,

amazingly enough, they actually made it slightly smaller

compared to the old leaf.

It's actually three inches shorter,

but it's a little bit wider, a little bit lower.

I like the proportions of it.

I would prefer more physical controls on the dash

for the climate control, but it's not too intolerable.

Just the soft touch, but at least they don't move.

Yeah, the interior was actually quite nice.

And we were in the Platinum Plus,

which has these softer touch plastics on the dash,

but then around the top portion of the doors

and across the top of the dash,

there's this fabric covering across there

that gives it a different, a little bit different look.

And none of the plastics, even the hard plastics are,

there's, we've often commented on Nissan's excessive use

of piano black on this car.

It is limited to just the stop-start button.

And then the four buttons right around the center

of the volume button in the center of the dash.

So you got hazard light switch, camera switch,

and then the forward and reverse buttons

that surround the volume knob.

And that's it for piano black.

There's none anywhere else in the car.

The rest is various matte finishes

and various textures that looks quite attractive.

And when I asked Nissan, it's like,

because we haven't seen the S plus trim, the base trim,

but apparently, it will also have that same fabric setup.

So it's mostly the same in the front and the front seat.

The back seat area, the door panels

have a little more hard plastic,

but that's not that big a deal.

Your passengers can deal with it.

You've also got vehicle to load capability on this thing.

So there's an AC outlet in the cargo area,

another one in the front,

that can give you up to one and a half kilowatts of power.

And then you can also get an adapter

that plugs into the AC charging port

that gives you another one and a half kilowatts of power.

So you can actually get a total of three kilowatts

coming out of this thing, which is pretty good.

And what else?

Let's see.

Yeah, I like the way it drove.

I like the stance that it has.

And the electrochromic coating

on the glass roof panel is kind of neat

because it doesn't, like on the Polestar 4,

and there was something else I was driving recently

that had this, when you press the button,

it just makes the whole panel go opaque all at once.

This one, as you press the button,

it goes opaque in sections.

So it's kind of like, when you have a moonroof,

a panoramic moonroof, and you've got the panel

that slides across, the shade that slides across,

it's kind of like that.

But then it, so it goes I think in like four or five sections.

So if the rear passengers want a little more shade,

they can have that and you can still have

the front half of the glass open.

And at one point, when we were getting ready to leave,

I think from the launch spot

or one of the driver change spots,

I opened up the back door to put something in there

and I noticed, along the leading edge

of the part that's opaque,

it also has the word leaf there.

And when the way the sun was coming through at that moment,

it made the shadow of the word leaf

show up on the top of the rear seatback

or the front seatback.

So that was a fun little touch.

It's kind of cool.

I thought that was a neat little,

nice little, fun, Easter eggy thing.

I thought that was cool.

The, Robbie mentioned, if you get the S trim,

the S plus trim, you don't get the battery heater.

Like all the cars, all the leafs now

have a liquid cool battery.

So you won't have the overheating problems

that they did in the past and degradation

when you're in hot weather environments.

But the battery heater is only,

it's standard on the Platinum Plus

and it's optional on the SV plus.

The SV plus is really kind of,

as usual, the mid-level trim is the sweet spot.

You lose the glass roof, which is fine.

You can deal with that.

But with the SV plus, you do get

the Android infotainment system

with the route planning built in there.

And you can also, as an option,

you can get the battery heater.

And they say that with the battery heater,

it will provide, if you precondition the battery,

you can get the same charging rate

at anything from about zero degrees Fahrenheit

to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit

or 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

So one of the problems people complained about in the past

is when it's really cold,

the battery doesn't want to take a charge so well.

You preheat the battery with this thing.

By the time you pull up to the DC charging station,

you plug it in, it'll go right to 150 kilowatts

and then at some point it starts tapering off.

And so you can do a 10 to 80% charge in about 35 minutes,

which is not as good as a lot of the Hyundai's

and some other vehicles now.

But it's about half the time it took

with the old air-cooled battery relief,

which is over an hour.

Because that one was limited to only 50 kilowatts

from Chatham-O.

The new leaf has a J3400 port for DC charging.

And it's on the right front fender,

so you can actually reach the charging cable

on a version three supercharger.

So yeah, I liked it.

I think for somebody that is looking for their first EV

or even their first new car,

at a starting price of just shy of 30 grand,

so 31.5 with the delivery charge,

it's 14.95 delivery charge for the S Plus.

The SV Plus you're at about 36 and about 40 for the Platinum.

And then there is an S trim that's coming sometime

next spring, which will have a smaller

52 kilowatt hour battery.

Should be somewhere on 220, 230 miles of range.

And that one will probably be around 27K.

Here you go.

Yeah.

So that is the 2026 Nissan Leaf.

Give it a look.

I like to say that the plural leaf is Leafs.

Yes.

I asked them in Japan, I'm like, what's the plural?

No, I asked them in LA, not Japan.

And is it Leafs?

They're like, no, it's Leafs.

And that's because it does Leafs stands for something

and I forget what it is.

Yeah.

Oh, I looked at that.

Low energy, awesome.

Yeah, it's actually an acronym.

Yeah, it's an acronym.

It stands for Leading Environmentally Friendly,

Affordable Family.

All right.

So you can get a cheap family.

And environmentally friendly is like hyphenated

so they can remove the F, so it's LEAF.

They cheated.

Yeah.

LEAFAF.

Should be LEAFAF.

LEAFAF.

So I did sit down for a conversation with Trisha Young,

who is the senior director of EV Strategy and Marketing

for Nissan.

And we talked about some of what they're doing

with this new leaf.

So I'm gonna drop that conversation in here

and we will be right back.

Trisha Young, you are, yes, in charge of marketing,

the marketing strategy for the new leaf,

which is launching in a few weeks time,

going on sale in a few weeks time.

Good chance to drive it today.

And since I wanna put this out

before the embargo lives on Thursday

for at least for our patrons at the podcast,

I'm not gonna talk too much about,

I'm not gonna talk about my driving impressions of it.

But what I do wanna get into is some of the strategy

around this car, particularly given the timeframe

and what's just coming out, coming to market.

It's an interesting time to be launching a new EV.

We're about three weeks away

from the end of the clean vehicle tax credits

at a federal level here in the US.

There's been some pullback in consumer demand for EVs.

And you're bringing an EV that at least in the S-plus trim

has a starting price, it's just under $30,000

and has over 200 miles of range.

Talk to me about kind of what was the overall thinking,

the overall strategy in creating this vehicle

and start there and then we'll go from there.

Okay, I think one thing that's really important

to start with is the fact that

the Nissan Leaf was the first mass market electric vehicle.

And our goal at that time was to make

electric vehicle technology accessible to the masses

at an affordable price point.

And so with the first generation,

we were truly seen as a leader.

We brought a lot of people into electric vehicle driving

and really opened the doors for that.

And since then there's been a lot of evolution

and we brought out a second generation EV as well,

Nissan Leaf.

With this third generation though,

I think it's really clear.

We wanna again demonstrate that leadership

in how we are able to bring together all of the key elements

that a consumer really is gonna be looking for

for an electric vehicle,

whether they're an experienced EV driver

or they're just thinking about it for the first time.

And that's bringing together great design,

incredible electric vehicle technology,

advanced technology that consumers that wanna have,

have been driving EVs for years will want

in that vehicle as well as intuitive integration

that consumers that aren't as comfortable with it will find

makes it a lot easier for them to drive

and move into that technology.

So all of these things coming together

with what you said, over a 300 mile range, 303 miles,

the 29,990 starting price,

what we think really what this does is set again

the benchmark for electric vehicle technologies

saying consumers here is an accessible electric vehicle

taking you to the next step of usability, design,

and technology all at an accessible price.

Yeah, and the first generation

even into the second generation of the leap

up from 2010, up around launch until 2017,

the leap was the best selling EV in the world.

You know, it didn't lose that title

until the model, step to model three came along.

Given where the market is today,

and especially here in the US,

but even in globally,

I think globally it's maybe a little less of a challenge,

but here in the US especially,

how do you move forward?

What are the keys do you think to getting Americans

to buy into the idea of something like the leaf?

So I think the good news is,

is we have moved into kind of the next stage

of this technology adoption.

Years ago when we found out the first leap,

it was really just the early adopters

and they were willing to take more chances

of risk and the product elements may not have been

as broad in terms of capabilities and offerings.

Today now we're moving into the early majority,

and these are folks that have seen it,

they have neighbors or friends

where electric vehicle technologies work for them,

but maybe it still hasn't been

that number one item on their list,

but as they're looking at the next tar,

they're intrigued and this product,

what we wanted to really make happen

is bring a product out that you have to look at.

You know, the design is there,

the technology, the price point, the range.

This is one of those vehicles where it's like,

oh, there's no excuse or there's no reason

where now it really isn't the right thing.

And so we have customers,

we believe a lot of customers who are,

you know, current ICE drivers or hybrid drivers

will be going, hmm, I think I need to check that out.

I'm not sure yet, and when they drive it,

hopefully they get a chance to really see how great it is

and they might just go, I think I'm ready.

You know, the Nissan Leaf for a lot of people

was their first electric vehicle

and we think, again, this vehicle

will be the first electric vehicle for many more

and probably also the electric vehicle

that many of our first customers came into.

We'll then go back into it and buy again

because we've really brought,

I think, all the pieces together for them.

Yeah, it feels like, you know,

what starting with cars like the Leaf

and there's some other products

coming from some of your competitors

over the next 12 to 18 months

where we're finally starting to get to the point

where, you know, for a long time in consumer surveys,

the biggest barriers to EV adoption were affordability

and availability of charging and time to charge.

And, you know, it seems like

there's certainly the affordability equation.

You know, now you're really getting to the point

of almost price parity

within the shuttle combustion vehicle

of a similar form factor and size, you know,

in that $38,000, you know, $30,000 to $40,000 price category.

You know, that's kind of where the heart of the market is

for a lot of compact crossovers.

And, you know, for Nissan, you know, a company that,

let's say, things have been

a little bit of a struggle of late.

Is this a vehicle that, you know,

is a good business proposition for Nissan?

Can you sell, I mean, it feels like, you know,

this is the right vehicle

and the right price point for consumers.

Is it the right one for Nissan?

I think you can see that in terms of electric vehicles,

Nissan has been a leader for many years.

We started it, right?

When people were saying, oh, it's too early

or there's too many reasons why an electric vehicle

may be challenging for folks,

we said, we see this opportunity

and we wanna bring it and make it available to the masses.

I think, again, what this does for Nissan

is brings a vehicle that's a true value proposition

and winning element for consumers

and also demonstrates Nissan's capability

to bring so many pieces together very effectively.

And, you know, this is what you would look at,

maybe not as a volume core vehicle,

but definitely as a brand defining vehicle.

And I think this vehicle, again, demonstrates

how Nissan is a leader in electric vehicle technology

and can bring really great products to market.

So how, you know, what's your marketing strategy for this

to convince Americans to at least take a look at it,

try it out and then hopefully buy it?

Well, I think that when you look at electric vehicles,

you really need to make sure

you're targeting the right audience.

So you have people that are electric vehicle intenders.

We think the technology here

is gonna be very advantageous to them.

So absolutely, we're gonna go out to that

EV ownership base and make sure

that they know what's here and available.

And then we know that there's other customer groups

that are currently hybrid drivers,

ICE drivers and, you know, key markets

or key demographics that fit that idea

where they're looking for electric vehicle technology

and we're gonna market very closely to them.

And I think that really at the end of it,

you have to make sure that you are where

the consumer is shopping and where they're looking.

So it's targeted.

You know, there's no reason

to talk to everyone nationally,

not everyone's at that place.

But the folks that are at that early majority

who are now ready to start looking at electric vehicles,

we will be there making sure they know

this option is available to them.

And with all of the items and the fact

that it has no compromises,

we think they're definitely gonna come in and shop it.

Do you think the main customers for this

are people looking at their first EV

as opposed to, obviously there will be some people

that are moving up, you know,

moving from a previous generation leaf or some other EV.

But I guess, where do you see the split between

people looking at getting their first EV

versus moving from another EV?

So we think about 25% of our customers

are gonna come from current EV owners, right?

Folks that have driven EVs love the technology

and looking for great packaging, design, accessibility

and all of those elements, which we'll provide.

We think 75% of the sales though

are gonna come from people

that are currently driving hybrid or ice vehicles

who have been thinking about it,

but this will become their first EV.

So yes, a lot of people,

which is why we really designed the vehicle

to be quite intuitive and simple to transition

from a gas engine vehicle to an EV.

It's, I think very accessible

in terms of the technology and the layout.

It's a, you know, we didn't wanna make it intimidating

or overwhelming as a par.

It's here for people so that they can get comfortable

driving electric vehicles and how well it works

for their lives.

Do you think that, you know,

some portion of that customer base

will also be maybe people buying their first new vehicle

as opposed to, you know, maybe having relied

on a used vehicle before or, you know, maybe, you know,

recent college graduates, you know,

they're just getting out into the marketplace,

you know, getting into the workspace

and you see that as part of the,

a key part of the customer base too?

Absolutely.

So when you look at the heritage of the Nissan Leaf,

what's really clear to people is that it's always been

about accessibility and making sure

that that technology was accessible to the masses.

So absolutely, the pricing strategy is very focused

on being extremely compelling as a first statement

so that it's very clear to consumers.

This is accessible.

This is possible for you.

So yes, whether it's a, you know,

gas combustion engine consumer

who wasn't quite sure they could afford an EV

or somebody who might've been in a used car

is now thinking about going new,

the price point puts it very much competitive

with other gas vehicle offerings out there

and something that people absolutely should be considering.

And as they're hearing their friends

and family members and others that they know

saying EVs worked for their lives,

it's definitely something they're gonna be open to

saying, this could work for me.

Yeah, I mean, like in my own family,

you know, you've had cars for decades,

but we just recently bought our first EV.

And, you know, I mean, I've had a lot of experience

with EVs over the years and because of my job,

but this is my wife's primary driver.

And she, you know, in the first two months

has really fallen in love with driving an EV.

And what's been interesting is her friends

that are experiencing this for the first time.

Most of them have never been in an EV before.

You know, she goes somewhere and, you know,

she gives the funds a ride or, you know,

lets them even drive it a little bit.

And, you know, all of a sudden they're saying,

you know what, maybe I need to think about an EV as well.

And, you know, something like this, you know,

where especially for, you know, first time

or second time new vehicle owners,

this could be the sort of thing that really helps

to spur EV adoption among a big part of the audience.

This is one of the most exciting parts

about being a part of this vehicle, especially

because we have been able to provide

a no compromises vehicle that truly performs in excels.

And so you have consumers that have been happy

with electric vehicle technology in the past.

And so they're extremely motivated by it.

But maybe there's something that a consumer

might have been intimidated about

or their friend said, oh yeah, that'd be great,

but maybe it's too expensive.

Or maybe when they look at the interior they go,

oh, I'm not sure.

This vehicle is truly accessible in every way.

So if they've got friends who are talking

about electric vehicles or they become

the electric vehicle owner and then they're sharing

that Nissan Leaf exposure to others,

I think very quickly people are gonna see

how great it is and how accessible

and how easily it can work for their lives as well.

I think, you know, one of the things

that's been interesting to see is

where this vehicle's been priced,

given what it offers, you know,

particularly in the current environment

of tariffs and everything else.

And the Nissan is clearly being aggressive with this.

They, you know, you clearly want to sell a bunch of these.

And you know, this is not just a little hobby.

And I think that's great.

How many of these do you think he can sell a year?

Well, we're gonna be monitoring that closely.

And like you talked about, the market right now

is very unclear, but we believe that we're gonna have

very high demand for the vehicle

and that demand will exceed supply for the near term.

But we're gonna continue to monitor

and try to make sure that we're supporting

that demand as closely as we can.

Let me rephrase this slightly.

Do you think it'll be,

it'll sell better than the previous generations

by that rate?

I think it has tremendous potential.

I think, you know, you look at this vehicle,

I don't think we could say no compromises

unless we really felt that way

and believed that we had the proof points behind it.

I think truly it is a no compromises vehicle.

It has everything.

So, you know, I see this as being,

having a lot of potential for incredible success.

Okay.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share

or about the leaf that we have talked about

that would be very important for listeners to hear?

Oh, Lord.

I think really when it comes down to it,

this vehicle, the heritage of it,

the brand has always been about

great EV technology accessible to the people.

And I think we've taken this to another level

with this product.

And I hope people get a chance to come out

and see it, experience it

and make the decision for themselves.

But I think it'll be very pleasantly surprised.

All right.

And I agree with you.

And I think it's definitely something

that anybody that interested in an affordable new car

with a warranty and everything,

probably be taking a look at this thing.

It's got a lot to appreciate, son.

We hope so.

All right.

Thank you so much for your time, Trisha.

Thank you.

All right.

We're back.

And last week we talked about some of the stuff

that was being shown at the IAA Mobility Show in Munich.

But at the time we recorded,

there was another concept car

that had not yet been revealed,

which subsequently was shown.

And that is the Hyundai Concept 3.

And this is something like this

is expected to come to market as the new Ionic 3.

I, unfortunately it's probably not gonna come

to the North American market.

What do you think of this?

The deep suffering sigh.

We don't get any of the good stuff.

We can't have nice stuff.

Remember the Veloster?

Yeah.

This is the Veloster EV.

Basically.

Yeah.

It's the Veloster EV.

But with doors on both sides.

Rear doors on both sides.

The doors on both, yeah.

I mean, it looks fabulous.

It looks really cool.

It is so sat-fat inside.

And I see a little emoji guy on the side of it too.

Like the, what's the one?

The Casper?

That has a little...

It's all the friendly ghost.

The little friendly ghost.

Yeah, I'm like, it has,

but they call it the Insta slash Casper

is the name of the car depending on,

I guess where, what market you're in.

Yeah, I think it's Casper in Korea

and Insta everywhere else or the reverse of that.

And it has like a little emoji guy.

This has a little emoji guy.

I want a little emoji guy in my car

is basically where I'm going with this.

It's crafted with love,

according to the little tag on the driver's side.

How could that make you not happy?

Crafted with love, I mean, come on.

And it's got, you know,

retains the Ionic pixel theme all around.

And in the front, you know,

in the area that would be the grill,

you know, it's got a bunch of LEDs in there

so it can flash up little messages

like one of the images here has hello as the message.

Yeah, I mean, this is the cool looking little car.

I would really like something like this.

Yeah, no, this would be rad.

I would too, but.

You know.

Sadly, we would probably never get it on these.

Just a lot of heavy sighing.

How's the podcast going?

We just sighed a lot.

There's a new, there's a new Hyundai three concept

and it's going to come to market,

but probably not here.

We're all a little sad and we all just want little emojis

apparently on our car.

So yeah, it's too bad.

We won't see that, but maybe, you know,

maybe maybe for traveling in Europe or in Korea,

you know, we can rent one of these

and have a little fun with it.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

So remember the Ram 1500 rev?

Yeah, the battery electric version of the Ram 1500.

And then it was supposed to launch in late 2024

and we're now in September of 2025

and it's still not here and it got delayed

and delayed again and delayed again.

The most recent time that they said was mid 2027.

Well, on Friday, Solantis announced,

yeah, you know, we're just not going to do that.

We're not going to do that.

It's just not great.

Yeah, we're just, forget it.

Yeah, we looked at, you know,

how lightnings and Silverados

and cyber trucks are selling

and decided, you know,

there's just not enough people

who actually want a battery electric full-size pickup truck

and it just doesn't make any sense for us to build this.

So we're not.

But if you have Solantis money, that's probably a smart,

but it wasn't like, it wasn't like

those other vehicles though.

You had a gas motor, it was a generator.

Well, that's the whole thing.

I'm talking about the battery electric version.

They are still going to build the range extended version

so that truck was called the Ram 1500 Ram Charger

for no logical reason.

Well, it has charger in it.

But you already have a Dodge Charger

and there used to be a Dodge Ram Charger

back before Ram was a separate brand.

And so they put the Ram Charger name

on the extended range EV version

which has a V6 engine and a generator

to keep the battery charged.

That one is still coming to market

in the first half of next year.

But it is now going to be called the Ram Rev.

Man, you should have just kept the Ram Rev Charger

because it has the word charger in it.

Ram Rev Charger.

Ram Ram Charger.

So the Ram Rev is what used to be called

the Ram 1500 Ram Charger.

And that I confirmed on Friday afternoon

with Nick Kappa that Solantis said,

yep, that's still coming.

That's still on the plan.

So no electric truck, which, all right, fine.

Yeah, I think for most people

the e-rev will make a lot more sense

for a full-size truck.

I mean, for most people, actually an EV would make more sense

but for most people think they want a truck fuller.

What they think they're going to do,

they're going to get the e-rev makes sense.

Yeah, well, and the reality is most people that buy it,

assuming anybody buys it,

will probably end up just using it as an EV

almost all the time,

except for the rare occasions when they actually have to tow

a trailer more than 100 miles.

Or they want to show it for their friends

and they turn the EV part off so you can hear the motor.

Yeah, except, you know, it's a Panistar V6, so.

They're going to probably put speakers in it

that makes this panelist sound like a Hemi.

Maybe.

Just call it a Hemi.

Just like, yeah, we put the Panistar Hemi in there, done.

If Ram just called everything they do Hemi,

everything would sell.

Just don't, just why?

Why, just everything's a Hemi.

Just play it.

Put a Fratsonic exhaust system on everything

and just call it all a Hemi,

no matter what kind of engines in it

and just give it a Hemi sound.

And, well, but tone down the decibels of the Fratsonic system

because we don't need deaf children.

But other than that.

Yeah, just call it.

Bring it down to like 85, 90 decibels.

Just, you can bring it down to 70 and be fine.

And just call it a Hemi.

Everything's a Hemi.

What's that?

A Hemi.

The windshield wiper engine,

the little motor, it runs your windshield wipers.

Hemi, there.

The little motor that moves you.

Everything's a Hemi.

Nothing can't be improved by making it a Hemi.

Yeah, just everything's a Hemi.

Everything.

Every Hemi.

All right.

Crats of Pacifica, Hemi.

I want that Crats of Pacifica Hemi.

Do you remember they did a race thing,

it was a Toyota Sienna and they had someone

who's a race car driver, driver ones

to prove how fun it was.

And they made this little video

about this like mom getting her kids to school

and she puts on the kids put on helmets

and everything and it looks like

she's careening around with them.

And people got mad because like,

how could you endanger those children?

And then they released it like it, okay, dudes.

And they showed the video

and like when it was the kids' video in the backseat,

it was really just like the car on dollies

and people like sort of like spinning it

to make it look like they were going fast,

like they were thrashing kids around to the race car.

Come on.

Come on, there's, there.

You know, they should have thrown Hemi on it

and everyone would have been fine.

No one would have had a problem with it then.

Nobody.

Hemi, it doesn't matter.

You do whatever you want.

Hemi.

American flag, boom, Hemi.

Okay.

I'm saving Ram right now.

I'm saving Stellantis.

You're saving Ram.

If they're listening, what are you doing?

Why isn't everything, that's your best brand.

It doesn't matter that the motor's been surpassed

by a better motor.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if that engine's not the best one.

Just say Hemi.

The new one, call it a Hemi.

I don't know why they're not doing that.

They should, they should just do that.

It works.

The brand should have been called the Hemi Six.

Yep.

It's branding that works.

Stick with it, man.

Hemi.

New generation of Hemi.

Oh my gosh.

Boom, one billion sold.

All right, maybe 10,000.

Okay.

So, Ford, if you look at their US lineup,

the only car that Ford still sells in North America

is the Mustang.

Everything else is some sort of SUV crossover or truck.

And they have continued to sell cars in other markets,

especially in China.

But even in Europe, they've been gradually

pairing away their cars.

They stopped selling the Mondeo.

They discontinued the Fiesta in 2023.

They're about to discontinue the Focus.

But AutoCars got a story that apparently

they're going to bring the Focus name back in 2027,

at least in Europe, on, guess what?

A crossover.

A crossover, what?

Oh gosh.

Oh no.

I don't, I just...

Bring back the probe.

Bring that back car.

Bring back the probe.

Sure, it had an unfortunate name.

Bring back the probe.

Yeah, it was somewhat of an unfortunate name.

It was immediately a punchline.

The AutoCar story actually has

a pretty interesting rendering though,

which I assume they probably used some AI tool

to create this.

But it's a small, it's a compact hatchback.

They're calling it an SUV, but this is like the Focus.

But it's like they combined something the size of the Focus

with styling elements from the F-150 Lightning.

Because it's got kind of the lights that angle around

the headlights on the front of the Lightning.

I doubt that whatever they build will look like this,

but it's kind of cool design, I think.

I mean, that looks pretty good.

I mean, it's a decent design.

I like how it looks.

I don't know if at all, I mean, oops,

I just got logged out of that site.

It's like, no.

I like how it looks.

I think it looks, it looks cool.

The AutoCar rendering, this is not the real car.

This is just one of those.

Right, I mean, that looks cool.

Yeah, we have no idea what Ford's actually gonna build.

If it looked like that, it would be cool.

That would be fun.

Will it pass all the pedestrian safety laws

they have in Europe?

Who knows?

You don't have to worry about that

when you're doing a rendering.

It doesn't matter.

It's like when people are like,

oh my God, this concept car, the inside,

they're like, that's not the real inside.

There's a lot of laws they have to follow.

There's no way that's allowed.

Settle down.

Right?

Calm down.

It will apparently be a multi-energy model,

so it'll be available as a hybrid,

plug-in hybrid and an EV.

Cool.

So that's good.

So, you know, they should think

about bringing that to the US.

They should think about it,

I remember when they were getting rid of other cars

and I was talking to somebody at Ford

and they're like, well, what is it?

What even is a car?

I'm like, what are you gonna, stop it.

Yeah.

Stop it, stop it right now.

I'm like, well, you're getting the only car

you're gonna have is the Mustang.

They're like, yeah, but this is kind of like a car.

I'm like, no, it's no.

Stop this, stop it.

I think anything that has less than eight inches

of ground clearance should be considered a car.

It's not an SUV.

Less than eight inches, is that your, it's okay?

Man, that's impressive.

That's maybe seven and a half even.

I mean, to be my Hyundai, Myonic 5 is still

just a hatchback.

It's just a big ass hatchback.

Yours and your EV6?

Wagon, it's a hatchback.

Yeah.

It's just a wagon.

Yeah.

We didn't buy it because Kia calls it an SUV.

It's a wagon and we like that.

I need a wagon.

Yeah.

All right, then the other thing that popped up

on my feed from AutoCars this week

was there's discussion in Europe

about introducing a new class of vehicles

for in the EU for small, affordable cars,

basically K cars.

They're calling it the E car category,

but yeah, what do you think about Europe

potentially getting something like the K cars,

like Japanese K cars?

I mean, they got tiny roads.

We've all driven over there.

They're really tiny.

Every time I drive like a mid-size,

I'm like, how would, and every once in a while

you'll see like a big American truck in Europe.

And it looks absolutely huge.

It looks monstrous.

It's like Godzilla just walking down the road

while everyone else is just a regular old iguana

like Godzilla is just like,

hey, how's it going everybody?

That's what it's, you know,

and I asked somebody from when I was at Nissan

in the UK, it's key car.

Key car?

So who knows what they're calling it in Europe.

Key car, K car, E car.

Either way, I want a Honda beat.

Yeah.

I don't think you'll fit in a beat though.

I will.

I've driven my Costin's beat.

Oh, okay.

So I do fit.

I mean, I take up most of the car, but I fit.

All right.

And then, you know, at IAA,

BMW showed off their first Neue-Class model,

the new IX3, but the guys at BMW blog

came up with a pretty cool idea

for a Neue-Class Z4.

So the current generation Z4

is going out of production soon,

but they basically took the same

two seat roadster idea

but applied the Neue-Class styling elements to it.

So, you know, it's kind of like the front end of an IX3.

What do you think about this one?

I can't get to the load.

I know, I'm actually doing the same thing.

I'm like having a little troubles here.

There we go.

I got it.

What do I think about the front of this one?

Look at the teeny, tiny little grill.

Yeah.

Tiny little kidney grill.

It's so neat.

Kind of like a traditional BMW twin kidney grill.

I kind of like it.

Not gonna lie.

I kind of like it.

Yeah.

What's the cat thing?

Whoever's cat that is?

Is that Robbie?

He's rubbing himself against my shoes

and then the dog is next to him

and he's just reaching out

and he's just kind of batting at the dog.

He's not hitting it.

He's just getting close to hitting the dog.

I don't know.

He's just smelling the dog.

And Bowie's like, I don't know what to put.

Now he's shoving his face into my shoes again.

Yeah, your cat's obsessed.

I was gonna say, what's your cat think

of the BMW Z4 New Class?

New Class, Neue Class.

I always say it wrong.

He's hassling the German Shepherd.

So who knows what he'll do to BMW?

Roy, stop it.

I really like this design.

I think it looks really good.

I think it looks very good.

I think it's.

I can't see it.

It looks really cool.

You just have to trust me.

I like how angular it is.

It's very angular, you know,

that there's lots of angles.

I like that the grill is not too giant beaver teeth

in the front of the car, finally, you know.

It's working in Safari.

There we go.

Oh, this is nice.

No, this is cool.

All right.

Whew, that was close.

Yeah, right now.

I felt like I wasn't part of the conversation.

I felt left out.

No, this is rad.

Are you back now?

Well, I'm back on in Safari.

Chrome is like, I don't know.

It seems hard.

All right.

And then, oh, one of our favorite new car features,

probably our, I would say, you know,

our second favorite feature

after software-controlled vents

is motorized door handles.

Would you both agree with that?

Oh.

Yes, it is probably second on my list of things

that why must we do this?

So apparently, China, Chinese regulators

are having discussions about potentially banning them.

Getting rid of motorized door handles.

They should all be mechanical.

They would allow, apparently under discussion

is allowing traditional door handles

and semi-retractable door handles.

Those would still be permitted.

But anything that fully retracts

would be verboten in China.

I mean, I can get why.

I mean, they're nifty looking

and it's cool that they retract flush into your car

and it looks slick.

But, you know, the more you think about the safety

of electronic door handles,

I know that there's mechanical means

of opening these things,

but in a panic, are you gonna remember

what to hit to open a, you know what I mean?

It's just-

Well, and that's for people inside the car.

Well, first of all, in most cases,

most people probably don't even know

where the mechanical backup is.

Exactly.

Right?

A lot of times they're kind of hidden away

because if you've got this electronic switch there,

you don't wanna have a really visible

mechanical backup right next to it.

So it seems kind of pointless

if you have to have a mechanical backup.

Why not just use that all the time?

But the other thing in this article

is they mentioned that crash tests in China

showed that when they did the side impact tests

that with mechanical door handles,

98% of the tests,

they found that mechanical door handles still worked.

But with the electronic door handles,

they only actually ejected,

they only opened up 67% of the time.

So if you are stuck in a vehicle after a crash,

if you're injured and you can't open the door yourself,

a first responder can't get the door open

in at least a third of cases, which is, that's not good.

That's not good.

I shouldn't have to use the,

someone shouldn't have to use the jaws of life

to get me out of the car

because a designer was like, hey, look at this.

Bzzz.

I'm like, I just wanna be able to grab the door handle,

open it, and they keep saying oil drag coefficient.

It's such a minute, teeny, tiny little thing.

It's like the EQXX when we asked about why

they had side mirrors instead of cameras.

They're like, it didn't even matter.

Like the power that we had to pull

to run the little monitors, it doesn't matter.

It's a parlor trick.

I think it's the same thing with...

The last thing you want is anybody panicking.

You know, if there's an accident, right,

and your door handles are flush,

and average Joe, you're knocked out in your car,

is trying to help pull you out of your car

because they're a good Samaritan,

and they're fighting to figure out

how to get the heck out of your car

because your door handles won't pop open.

So now they're having to break a piece of glass

to get to, you know, it causes a complication

that does seem sort of like,

seems unnecessary to be having

this added complication in our lives.

You don't have 0.8 miles extra range in your EV.

That point, I mean, okay.

No.

Yeah.

I think everyone, you worry about your range

and blah, blah, blah, when you first get your EV,

and then after about like a month,

you just drive it like a regular car,

like you've destroyed any sort of like efficiency.

If you're like, I'm just driving this,

and I'm not trying to get the high score,

I gotta get to work.

The other thing that's mentioned in here

according to the China Consumers Association,

complaints of children's fingers being pinched

by these retracting door handles

increased by 132% year over year in 2024.

And one brand even resulted

in a child's finger being broken.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, they are pretty strong.

And if you're a little kid,

little kid, they're tiny little fingers, you know?

They show their little fingers and everything

and they're putting things in their mouth constantly.

It's amazing that we're as a species we survive,

to be honest.

What does this taste like?

I don't know how much longer that's gonna last, but.

Well, at least we can get the week,

at least China's like, yeah,

no more of these stupid door handles.

And everyone else should be like,

yeah, maybe we, do you know what?

They're right.

All right.

And then two more things.

I wrote an article the other day.

A couple of weeks ago,

I saw one of the former Cruz Chevy Bolt AVs

driving down on I-94, not far from where I live here.

And I was talking to somebody,

but GM's failures with their investments in startups,

whether it was external startups like Cruz

or internal startups like Breitrop.

And got thinking that,

perhaps what they should do,

because one of the interesting potential business areas

with automated vehicles is middle mile deliveries.

Because last mile deliveries don't really work great

with autonomous vehicles,

because you have the problem of the last 10 feet.

How does, if someone's not there to accept the package,

when your Amazon packages show up,

guy gets out of the van,

walks over, drops it on your porch,

takes a picture of it.

And so it's there until he drives away

and the porch pirates steal it.

But except for cases like where you're ordering a meal

and it's coming by one of those little sidewalk delivery bots.

Last mile deliveries,

how do you get the packages to the door?

But middle mile deliveries are a really interesting thing.

There's a company called Gaddick that's doing this,

where they're focused on doing basically

business to business deliveries.

So between warehouses, distribution centers

and retail stores, and with that kind of use case,

there's always somebody at either end of that trip

to load and unload the truck.

Well, BrightDrop is,

GM's having a hard time selling their BrightDrop vans,

but they've got this technology from Cruise.

They've got BrightDrops.

What they should be doing

is putting the Cruise automated driving technology

on the BrightDrop vans

and using that for middle mile deliveries.

All right, yeah.

I mean, that makes sense.

It's weird cause BrightDrop was like,

hey, look at this vehicle.

And then they sell them to regular,

you could buy a BrightDrop van, but like no one knew.

Like they just didn't, it's the Chevy Bolt problem.

When the bolt first came out,

they were like, hey, look at the bolt.

And then they did zero marketing for it.

And the only time you saw our Chevy Bolt in an ad

was when Volkswagen was forced by the government

to do an ad about EVs.

And there was a Chevy Bolt in the video in the ad.

I think it's the same weird thing with BrightDrop.

We're like, oh, here's this cool saying.

And then we're just not gonna tell anyone.

Yeah.

Like I didn't even, I guess my job to know.

And I was at a charge point, like shooting video

and a BrightDrop van showed up

and they were like charging it to do something.

They're like, and on the side of the van,

it's like, you can rent this van.

I'm like, what?

I mean, okay, cool.

So, check out the article.

I think there's something there.

I'll be having some conversations with people

about that one this week at the car,

the Center for Automotive Research

Management Briefing Seminars in Detroit.

See if anybody's interested in the idea.

And then last thing, hidden price increases.

I was watching a TFL video the other day

and they were reviewing the new 2025 or,

yeah, 2025 Ford Expedition.

And at the end of the video,

they were going over the pricing.

They pulled out the Minroni

and they showed the delivery charge on there.

And I was shocked.

I mean, we were just talking about this

a couple of weeks ago, right?

You had, I think it was two weeks ago,

you had the Expedition.

Yeah.

And the delivery charge on the Minroni

for the one you had was $2,195.

It is now $2,595.

Wow, that's a heck of an increase.

And I checked for the F-Series trucks as well

for the F-150s and the Superduties.

They have also gone up by $400.

So, since the beginning of this year,

Ford has raised that,

because at the beginning of this year,

in fact, I think as recently as March or April,

the delivery charge on those trucks was still $1,995.

And they have raised it by $600 in the last six months.

Wow.

Yeah.

But they're not gonna raise prices, it's tariffs.

Well, they're raising the prices in a way

that doesn't attract quite as much attention

from folks in Washington.

It's a secret, a secret raise.

So, yeah, that sucks.

Yeah, $2,600 now for delivery

on an Expedition or Navigator or F-Series trucks.

And I'm sure it's only a matter of time

before they raise the delivery charges

on Mavericks again, too.

Yeah, probably.

It's all going up, little bits and pieces.

It gets you a hundred bucks at a time,

hundred, hundred, hundred, suddenly it's $400.

Yeah, $400.

This time it went up by $400 from $2,195 to $2,595.

And then we didn't, we got one email this week.

I forgot to put it in the rundown,

but I just sent you guys an email.

Brad wrote in, said,

I enjoyed last week's podcast conversation

about smaller trucks with dually setups.

My company uses Google Workspace,

which includes a robust version of Gemini AI.

That, I was using Gemini and it was not having

nearly as much success as Brad did

in generating a dually version of the slate.

Wait, where'd you put it?

Did you just email this to me?

I emailed it to both of you.

So there's some images,

and I'll put these images in the show notes.

But he used it, Brad used it to merge

the Maverick and Ranger trucks

with the bed of an F-350 dually.

And attach the results.

They actually look pretty good.

There's, yeah.

I love it.

I got some great results from that, by the way.

Some people were sending me some stuff.

I have people on my LinkedIn that's like,

here's your dually.

I had the best, it was like the best week.

I'm like, every time I open something up from a listener,

I'm like, ooh, more ridiculous trucks, this is perfect.

The first one here was a Maverick with a dually bed.

But if you look at the grill,

you notice that it's got the orange bar

from the Tremor trucks.

But it's kind of a skew

and it's down lower than it should be.

And just make sure you check out the show notes this week.

And you'll see all these.

Oh, these are great, I love those.

Oh, and also-

And there's one with mulch.

He put mulch in the back of one.

Well done, you.

That Maverick is towing like a 30-foot

fifth wheel camper trailer.

Sure.

And it's driving down.

The extensions on the camper are out.

I don't know what they officially call those,

but a lot of these big campers,

when you park them, you can pop them out

so you have more room inside.

And so it's driving with all that stuff sticking out.

Oh, that's not good for your aerodynamics at all.

No.

That's more than a door handle.

There's also one of the dually Maverick

pulling a big horse trailer,

and again, a fifth wheel horse trailer,

and the mulch.

My favorite is the mulch

because if you get a truck,

what do you have to put in it?

Mulch.

Or even doing truck life

if you don't drag some mulch around.

Yeah.

Mulch.

Who's this from, Brad?

Thanks, Brad.

I love these.

Yeah, these are great, Brad.

All right, that's it for this week.

Thank you, everybody,

and we will talk to you next time.

Bye, everyone.

Bye.

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