To The Cosmos and Beyond

Sam Abuelsamid (00:01) This is episode 444 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Nicole Wakelin (00:07) I am Nicole Wakelin from Test Miles.

Roberto Baldwin (00:09) I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International and the SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:15) I'm going to be really curious to see how Riverside, the transcript, transcribes my last name today because it always comes up, even though my name is like on there, it knows what words I said because it records each track separately. For some reason, it is completely useless when it comes to trying to transcribe my last name. It has no idea.

mean there's all kinds of weird shit. Anyway, as you can tell, ⁓ while traveling through six different airports in four days in three major cities last week, I picked up something and so I don't... Yeah, so...

Nicole Wakelin (00:41) Able sandwich, Samable sandwich.

week because Sam had no voice and he still has like, he still has sexy Sam voice. Sexy Sam. That should be the episode title, Sexy Sam.

I did get lucky on my red-eye flight on Wednesday night from San Francisco to JFK. I got upgraded to Delta 1 on a 767, so I at least got like four and a half hours of sleep. Yeah. So, anyway, what have you been driving, Nicole?

Nicole Wakelin (01:18) Nice! Okay, that's something.

I have been driving the Toyota Tundra Platinum TRD off road. I wanted to get the right the right wording. had to look. So this one sits, I guess, kind of. Yeah, I would say at the top it's it's the the base. There's so many terms of this. The base Tundra is the SR is forty one thousand two sixty. The top is the capstone. Yeah, the capstone is eighty thousand eight hundred.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:50) Isn't the capstone the top one? That's the one I had last time.

Nicole Wakelin (01:55) The TRD Pro, I didn't have a Monrone, so I'm looking at the list right now, is $72,565. So you're basically looking at a $70,000-ish truck the way I was driving it. It's a lot for a truck. So I mean, it's a great truck. It's powerful. It was fun to drive. ⁓ It actually handled really well. I had to drive it into Boston twice.

Nicole Wakelin (02:21) And this is the worst time of year in New England because the potholes are all there and they haven't fixed anything yet. I mean, they won't ever fix them all. It'll always be in potholes.

It's just like peak pothole season right now. ⁓ So you're hitting potholes. You're like the roads a mess from the frost teams. ⁓ It's it's bad conditions to drive a truck that does not have anything in it because the bounce factor of a truck with no load in the bed is like amplified by like 10 times.

these roads and especially can get this concerning in driving through cities because it's narrow. So if you're say, I don't know, coming in on it, you know, and one of the like through the tunnel or something where it always feels you don't have room to begin with.

And then you hit a pothole and you bounce. You're like, there's nowhere to bounce. Like, so it's a little disconcerting. But this is actually pretty nice to drive and considering this the off road and it has like an off road suspension and skid plates and all terrain tires and all these things that should make it even

more port less well mannered, I guess, on on this on the road. It did surprisingly well. I enjoy driving around. It was plenty roomy. It has a nice interior. It has that sort of, you know, it's it does a good balance between in terms of truck styling. They can get so rugged sometimes you're like, OK, cool your jets, gentlemen. It's just a truck. And this one does a good balance of having a certain amount of ruggedness to it. You know, it's it's everything's easy. The knobs are easy to grab.

without getting so far over the top that you're kind of like, it's stupid. Like when you look at the, when you, well, you know, like, you know how they can get a little carried away. What's the, the, the, the King Ranch, King Ranch? Is that the one from four that has a little, excuse me, it looks like a W. But everything is like leather, like you're cowboy all of a sudden. You're like, what has happened? Like, like cowboy.

Roberto Baldwin (03:55) Yeah, there's too many things. Settle down.

Nicole Wakelin (04:14) Right. But like suddenly cowboy boots appear on your

feet and a hat just shows up on your head and you don't know how it got there. Like sometimes they get a little overdone on the trucks and they do it with trims that they're trying to make look fancy.

Like they're like you're out in your ranch or trims that are off road. And I think this one did a nice balance. It is, it is, but still like somehow when I get in a truck and I, like I said, I feel like my feet just poof get cowboy boots and a hat shows up on my head.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:30) Well, Texas is the biggest market for these things.

Nicole Wakelin (04:44) too much cowboy styling. So, but I think this one does a nice balance with its off-roadness and it has things, you know, it has USB-C ports and you know, it has, so it has the tech and stuff that you want to make it still feel like it's it's upscale.

I think the standard screen is just an eight inch, but then it goes to 14 inch on higher trims, which is that I have, and there's a 12.3 inch digital instrument cluster. So you also get an instrument cluster that's nice and big.

I like how this truck is designed. I feel like it's a little expensive for that pricing. It's a little high. ⁓ So I think you really have to want the Toyota Tundra. You know, the truck wars between the F-150 and the Chevy Silverado and Ram and everything.

If I was going to get a Toyota truck, I'd want the Taco. If I was getting a little truck, I'd do that. But for a big truck, I don't know if I'd go Toyota. I don't know. Not because I dislike it, but I don't know that the dollars balances out.

with all the capability and everything. What do you think? Yes, exactly. Like I feel like he can get more bang from my buck. Thank you. He caught, he's like, poor Sam desperately trying not to talk because he has no voice, but yeah, you get more bang for your buck with a competition. So I feel like you could go with other brands that deliver similar, ⁓ you know, even with off road capability to what you can get and the TRD pro.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:45) Are you getting enough paying for your buck compared to the competition?

Nicole Wakelin (06:07) but that the pricing makes more sense. Not that they're cheap because every OEM has prices that are just, you can go bonkers with what you spend on trucks. ⁓ So in that regard, they're right on, right in line.

I just like that I think some trucks have a better balance. The price matches a little bit better, but overall I like this. I thought it was a good truck. I enjoyed it. I had a good time driving it. ⁓ Didn't have to drive it through snow, which was nice for a change.

a foot and a half of snow like the Midwest or two feet or three feet, guess it was, depending on where you poor people lived.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:43) We've only gotten a little dusting around here, but up north they've got like two to three feet of snow in northern, peninsula and upper peninsula of Michigan.

Nicole Wakelin (06:53) ⁓ In Wisconsin, my poor child said, I'm getting two and half feet of snow is what they told her. And she ended up with about a foot, which is still a lot considering that she doesn't have a snowblower. So she'd go out there and shovel. I'm like, you're young, you're fine.

Nicole Wakelin (07:13) Well, it was, it was just so you know, Braggor McBraggerson, it was 62 degrees in New Hampshire yesterday. I mean, it's like 30 now and windy, but we saw 60 yesterday. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:23) It was 68 here on Sunday and

Sam Abuelsamid (07:26) you know, was out playing with the dogs in the yard.

Roberto Baldwin (07:30) I think it's gonna be 85 or 90. It is way too hot. is, should not be hot. It's more terrifying than that. It's gonna be 87 today. It's mid-March. That's too hot for mid-March. ⁓ It's terrifying. It really is. You're like, it's nice. You go outside. It's a nice day. And then suddenly you realize, ⁓ this is, well, there goes the snowpack. There goes that.

Nicole Wakelin (07:34) not be this warm, more terrifying. Wow.

I don't know if I said this last week, but I saw a thing where someone called this season wrong coat season. No matter what coat you pick, it's the wrong coat because like we have reached wrong coat season because it's either, oh, that should have had a warmer coat today. Oh shoot. I should have had a cooler coat today. So we're in the thick of it.

curious, what kind of fuel economy did you get with the Sequoia?

Nicole Wakelin (08:17) I don't know. wasn't driving a Sequoia. Actually, you know what? I didn't check the fuel economy. Totally honest. I just completely didn't check it. I'm betting. mean, but I from what I've gathered, it's a little low for what it's rated.

I'm from what I've heard, not my personal numbers, but everybody who has gone and really tried to the people I know who very diligently measured fuel economy that are really not even letting the car figure it out, that are like trying to figure it out themselves.

Nicole Wakelin (08:46) They've said that it's not quite making what it's supposed to.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:50) Yeah. Whenever I drive a Tundra or Sequoia, it always comes up short of the official EPA numbers.

Nicole Wakelin (09:00) Is it by a lot or by a smidge? I'm going to look up the EPA numbers on that.

know usually by a couple miles per gallon at least Yeah, like I had you know just over 17 with the with the Sequoia last week and it's rated at 20 combined

Nicole Wakelin (09:17) looking to see if I can find the TRD Perf. That one is 17, combined is only 19. It's not very high to begin with. I mean, I'm looking at all of the Toyota Tundra and because the two-wheel drive, the four-wheel drive, there's all these configurations, trucks give you, I think there's like eight different possible fuel economy figures, maybe more on here. And basically the combined is about 19.

Nicole Wakelin (09:46) One of the couple of them are a little bit higher in the two or the that aren't four wheel drive. But 19, if you have 19 combined and your number goes down. That's not really 19 wasn't a great number to begin with. know. But yeah, so that was a Yolde Toyota Tundra, which has gone back because it's Tuesday at St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day in neither one of you is wearing green.

Nicole Wakelin (10:18) do you, do you celebrate like things you're not pagan, I bet. And you celebrate Halloween.

I live with my wife is Irish from Ireland. She doesn't work.

I am wearing green. I am wearing green. I'm just holding it to see my little green plaid. had,

Sam Abuelsamid (10:36) looking ⁓ here's a green bottle top well it would it would be green if it wasn't on a green screen but

Nicole Wakelin (10:40) I guess I can't. If it wasn't doing the thing, it turned into green screen when he held it up. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (10:47) We have, okay, so the coolest thing that I'm having after the show, because recording this at like four o'clock Eastern, I got a pretzel shaped like a shamrock.

Nicole Wakelin (10:56) It's like from a pretzel company in Milwaukee and they ship them to you fresh. So after the show, I'm gonna put my giant pretzel in the oven and we're gonna have a pretzel with some beer cheese and a green cocktail. It's actually called a Shamrock Shake Martini in case you're wondering. It's quite tasty.

Roberto Baldwin (11:10) Most of the people I know who are from Ireland are like completely confused by the US. They're like, what are you talking about? What? You're doing what? Why?

Nicole Wakelin (11:16) yeah, they totally are. They don't celebrate it half as big as we do. No. There's a comedian, there's

Nicole Wakelin (11:23) a comedian that I've just forgot, Garen.

Nicole Wakelin (11:27) Well, he makes fun of that even. He's like, poor Fisher probably like, man, I don't know what I had last night, but the world's looking crazy. Yes. Is it Garen? Garen Noon, I think it is. He was making fun of how ridiculous our St. Patrick's Day celebrations are again. that was when I found him last year when he was talking about the floats and there was this giant float that was St. Patrick and it was creepy. You know, sometimes floats with people are cute.

Roberto Baldwin (11:32) the guy on TikTok, or on Instagram. ⁓ Yaron, he is delightful.

Nicole Wakelin (11:54) And other times you're like, oh, it's like the uncanny valley of floats. And it was, he's like, oh my gosh, if I saw that when I walked out of the bar, I'd bleep my pants. he was, yeah, it was, so he was at it again, joking that we do more than they do.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:10) Anything else on the Tundra?

Nicole Wakelin (12:12) Now, that's it. That's it on the Tundra. It was great. It was lovely. I, you know, was nice to drive. Really well-mannered for an off-road truck. It was very impressive on-road. So if you're going off-road, great. But if you have to drive it on-road too a lot, I would say this is a nice one to pick because it actually was pleasant on-road and didn't feel like it was bouncing out of control over every bump in the road.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:32) I need to get myself scheduled into a pickup soon to pick up on take all the brush that has fallen down in the last week from these wind storms and haul it out to the compost site.

Nicole Wakelin (12:45) We'll have to, we have, well, and you'll need mulch. So, you know, make sure you pick some of that up, right? You gotta get the mulch.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:48) Well, I need that too. yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (12:55) So I drove something very odd and well, yeah. So it's a resto mod, an EV resto mod. So they took an old Land Rover. And then they made it, it's a Land Rover Electric Series 2A is what they call it. It's by a company called Everati. ⁓ So they had me go down to a local sort of high-end dealership. It's called a...

Isami? I-S-S-I-M-I. Anyway, the guy there, Christian, he was great. So him and I jumped in this car and I was only supposed to have it for an hour. We just drove for like two hours. ⁓ And it's, if you, these old Land Rovers you see, you know, in the UK, it's essentially one of those, which means it is restored. It's beautiful. It's, you know, everything is the way it should be. You know, the...

Roberto Baldwin (13:50) Obviously the dials are different because it's an EV. They put like a little stereotype thing in there, but there's no like screen. It doesn't have like carplay or any of that stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:59) It looks much better than it did when it came out of the factory in England.

Roberto Baldwin (14:02) It does it does look better and if and and actually the electronics I'm sure are much better. So I Drove this and it was fantastic the steering it had about five degrees of play At least at the very least five degrees like every time you had to do something he was like whoa It's like a lot of hand-over-hand steering like around corner like around just I'm taking a right turn and I'm like at a red I'm like whoa

Roberto Baldwin (14:32) at an intersection. ⁓ Trying to park it was really fun. like, didn't, I overshot it. ⁓ But having said all that, and the seats is, it's essentially just like fixed. Like that's cause that's how the car came out of the factory because I guess the British don't realize that people are different sizes. So I was a little too short. So it was like, kind of, it was kind of awkward for my legs, but having said that.

Roberto Baldwin (14:56) It was really fun to drive the brakes. put on the brakes and you're just like, Oh, hope we stop. It's better than the original, but it's still, you know, it's still, you know, a lot to, bring this thing to stop. Having said all that, um, I, I adored this thing. I had so much fun driving it around. does zero to 60 in under 15 seconds.

Not that we ever really got, I think maybe we got to 60 once. It cruises really well at around 50, 55. We never went on the freeway, because I didn't want to die. ⁓ It ⁓ has a range of up to 150 miles, which is pretty good for a resto mod, to be honest. Let's see, how big is the battery? I can tell you that. Boop, boop, boop. Let me scroll down. It has a 55 kilowatt hour battery pack. So yeah, that's fine. It has 250.

Roberto Baldwin (15:49) No, it was 150, up to 150. We drove it, I don't know how long, two hours. It is 215 brake horsepower, 258 pound-feet of torque. It's a 400-volt system. It's a Resto mod. If you're making 800-volt Resto mods, those are expensive. It'll charge, it's CCS charging 70 kilowatts, AC charging 6.6 kilowatts. This is not your...

daily driver, unless your daily driver is just cruising around and making people jealous of you and your cool green car. I'm gonna drop a picture. How do I drop a picture? Hold on, I got some picture. I'm gonna send you guys a picture of it so you can also be impressed by how rad my day was. Yeah, no, I had a great time with it. Can't do it like that.

And it's very, very expensive. I don't know how expensive. That's how expensive it is. It is very expensive. All these sort of Resto mods, because they do a lot to recreate the vehicle as it was originally. So you have that already going for it. And when you have that happening, that's when you know that things are going to be really, really, really pricey. Because if you just get a Resto, if you just have someone who

Nicole Wakelin (16:47) That's how expensive it is if you have to ask.

who gets one these cars and restores it, it's already, first of all, the car's already really expensive. So you got that. And now you're gonna have someone who's going to, gosh, what'd do? How do I do this? ⁓ I am having troubles. forget it. ⁓ It's already expensive. This vehicle's already expensive, because it's old, it's not very many left, it's in demand. Now someone has taken it and they've restored it.

Roberto Baldwin (17:43) So now it's already, now you've gotten already, you know, super expensive. Now someone's taken the engine, the transmission, taken everything out and replaced it with electric motors, batteries. It has three gears, reverse, neutral, and drive. And they still has the, like, sort of the original shifter, this tall shifter. It has low gears. It's got a little e-brake. It's got all the things that you want from this car. It's got the tire on top of the hood. ⁓

It's got everything. ⁓ But the issue is that having everything means ⁓ being very, very expensive. And so that's where it comes down to. That said, I had a great time. If I were maybe super rich, I might ⁓ get one of these. I like getting these. It feels like I'm gonna go solve crimes on the Moors in the UK.

Santa Mors. Okay, do you also get like a little hat and like a pipe?

You get like a tweed jacket and a ⁓ deerstalker hat. Yeah. No, was ⁓ a ⁓ really nice time. I had a good time driving an old car that was really hard to drive. It didn't break very well, didn't steer very well, but that's exactly what that car did. And it has all disc brakes, so the brakes have been upgraded.

Nicole Wakelin (18:47) Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. At least the tweed jacket. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (19:12) But it's you're like, whoa, it's it is not made to go over 50 50 miles an hour. That's that's what I'm trying to tell you. And to be honest, the original car wasn't made to go over 50. It's made to go over 20 kilometers an hour around windy roads and then up a hill while chasing a fox, I suppose. So, yeah, Everati Land Rover Series 2A. Sure.

these guys make they do resto mods of several different vehicles. They do Porsche 911s ⁓ Mercedes SL Pagodas and GT 40s and classic minis. So yeah, like you say the price is POA I guess price on ⁓ I guess on arrival or I mean they're all custom built anyway.

Roberto Baldwin (20:02) I guess, whenever you've...

Sam Abuelsamid (20:06) So it depends what options you want, what colors and everything.

Yeah, I think of I don't care about the Porsche to be honest because there's a billion Porsches of the billion things. I do like the idea of a pagoda. An EV pagoda sounds fantastic. I actually would probably pick the pagoda over the over the Land Rover just because it's a pagoda and it's a it's a it's a convertible. But at same time, you could take the cloth top off the Land Rover and you could take a lot more friends around.

Roberto Baldwin (20:38) Like jumping to the back of my Land Rover, we're going slowly to a place. We're going to have the best time. Or you could just build your own, find an old car. There's a Land Cruiser that I drive by all the time from like the 70s that's just sitting in a spot for last 10 years.

And one day I'm just going to be like, hey, I'll give you 500 bucks and see if they'll, they won't take it, but it'd be fun. It'd be funny if they did. So yeah, so that's what I drove this week. I drove a very expensive car.

Nicole Wakelin (20:43) But we're having fun with it!

Roberto Baldwin (21:08) that there's probably like three of them in the world because they're all custom built. yeah, Everardy Lang Rover, classic. Good times. Lots of fun. I love driving old cars. It'll just kill you.

Nicole Wakelin (21:22) You'll die, you'll have such a good time when it happens.

they're not fast like compared to like, you know, today's cars, but they have all these like little weird, it's just, to me there's something just utterly delightful about a really old car. Even if it's a gas car, I remember when I drove the Silver Pig, which is the red pig replica that Mercedes built up, it just smelled like the seventies. It just, because it's the gasoline and they're like.

Those cars do have a certain smell to them. Like you get into those old cars, there's definitely what is I think is it all that like toxic chemicals they use to make the comp-

seals aren't very good on any of those cars. So all the oils that are in the car, the gasoline, the oil, everything, it's all of it's just leaking out all over the place. You're like, ⁓ I can feel the cancer growing in my lungs right now.

Nicole Wakelin (21:59) Like everything, you smell everything, yeah. You just, ⁓ take a good inhalation of all that stuff.

Roberto Baldwin (22:13) So yeah, the EVs don't have that, which is nice. They also don't break down. mean, if I had ultimate money and I could buy the EV version or the gas version of this Land Cruiser, I would get the EV version. Because I just don't have the time to work on a British car with a million electrical issues. Not the mechanics. The mechanics are like, okay, that's fine. It's pretty simple mechanics. The electrical issues just feel like they would kill me. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (22:16) They don't. I mean, they won't...

Roberto Baldwin (22:44) Sam is in here. ⁓ he lost his voice.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:46) Not that a standard Land Rover of that era would have great electricals to begin with.

Roberto Baldwin (22:51) Yeah, it would just be, yeah, they'd rip all

that out. That's the best part about this. I mean, it's great that it's an EV, so you don't have to worry about the mechanics, but the fact that you get rid of all the electronics and put in, like, real electronics, that's, whew, that's best.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:02) All right. Well, I had the 2026 Mazda CX 30 S air edition. So the air additions and that's a high R E with an E. So ⁓ that's a new trim that they've added for 2026 on some of the Mazda models, which is basically like Toyota's night speed and

You know various others. It's basically the black trim package. So you get black wheels black grill, you know all that stuff. Yeah The ⁓ the the s CX 30s air You know that has the naturally aspirated 2.5 liter. You can also get it get the air addition on the turbo But the naturally aspirated 187 horsepower And ⁓ it's it's more than adequate

Sam Abuelsamid (23:58) It's quick enough. It's a very nice little package. I'm a fan of the CX-30. I'm generally not a fan of crossovers, but as crossovers go, I like the CX-30. This is, fact, not the Air Edition, but the CX-30 is what my daughter bought a couple years ago in Denver, because it's got just enough extra ground clearance compared to her old 2886 that it was actually usable in winter.

And it's a nice size. Backseat is a little on the snug size. ⁓ When I put the driver's seat from my position, ⁓ it's a tight squeeze in there for my knees, but I can get in there. This is more a car for either younger folks that don't have any kids or empty nesters that want something with a little extra utility.

You know, but still has that Mazda fun to drive character to it. You know, it's just, it's just, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a hoot to drive. The handling is really good. The, the S, the CX 30 S air edition has cloth seats, which I thought were really cool. It's a combination of gray, you know, sort of a medium gray and black fabric seats that look really nice.

along with the rest of the interior, which even on this trim level still comes across really well. ⁓ the one that I had, let's see, was, the CX-30 Air Edition starts at 29,850. So all the CX-30s come standard with all-wheel drive, and they start at like $26,000 for the base trim. The one I had was in the

the deep crystal blue mica. So it ⁓ was not ⁓ the red, the classic Mazda red, but it's still, it is the other really good color that Mazda has. ⁓ They also have some grays and blacks and whites, which are kind of boring on this, but this deep crystal blue mica looks really good in the sun as well. Not as good as soul crystal red, but it's the next best color.

Nicole Wakelin (26:23) It's pretty. just looked it up. Deep Crystal Blue Micah. It's described when I Googled it, AI says, a sophisticated dark blue paint option available on many Mazda vehicles. Sophisticated. It's sophisticated, Sophisticated. Yeah, it is actually pretty. I would still have to go with the red because it's a Mazda, but you know.

you know if if for some reason you have an aversion to red and you want something different that is not boring The deep crystal blue is an excellent second choice. Yeah So, you know as I said, you know, it's a fun little car to drive, you know, it's basically you know a Mazda 3 That's a little bit taller a little bit shorter overall So it has a little bit less rear leg room rear rear room than the three

Sam Abuelsamid (27:14) ⁓ But still a very nice little car

Nicole Wakelin (27:19) poor Sam you guys, he's like trying to do this and he's coughing, he's muting himself. Sam's not gonna make it, he's not dedicated.

you know, think with the with the all-wheel drive standard, it's good if you live in cold weather climates ⁓ The ⁓ it's rated at 24 City 31 Highway 27 combined I got got about 28 and a half with it, which is pretty good ⁓ and ⁓ the total ⁓ Bottom line price was thirty two thousand five hundred and thirty eight dollars

Sam Abuelsamid (28:00) It was fourteen ninety five. So Robbie was only five dollars off. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (28:03) Ooh, you're off by five bucks, you win. Wow. Nicely

Roberto Baldwin (28:08) look how excited I am for people getting fleeced for their destination charges.

they're not getting quite as fleeced as they would on a lot of other cars. So it is, especially on a small car like this. ⁓ So that is the 2026 Mazda CX-30S Air Edition. So let us move on. ⁓ Nicole, you and I were both in Santa Barbara last Tuesday. ⁓ So why don't you share with us your thoughts and I'll...

Roberto Baldwin (28:17) That's true. It's still, I mean, over a thousand dollars is ridiculous.

Sam Abuelsamid (28:42) Maybe occasionally chime in with my thoughts on the on 2027 Kia Telluride.

Nicole Wakelin (28:44) You're going to, you're going to suck on a cough drop and take a sip of water.

Okay. And this is where Sam mutes himself and starts coughing and has a sip of water while I talk. Um, so you're not muted. We can all hear you coughing. You didn't hit the button. Okay. Are you muted now? Yeah. Okay. We got you. Okay. Now he's muted. Um, so we, the 27 kill you tell her, right? So this is the first time like tell her it came out. Oh my God. 18. So this is the.

Nicole Wakelin (29:12) 19, the second generation. So it's, this is a big deal because when the Telluride first came out, was such, it was so well received. Like everybody loved it. It's a big deal for Kia.

So you have that sort of, all right, can you live up to what you did the first time? Can you make it just as good as you did the first time? And they made it better. So the big news is that they put in a, excuse me, they put in a hybrid engine.

So now you have a hybrid. It's got 320 and a horsepower, 339 pound feet of torque.

and it's actually really nice to drive the Kia estimated fuel economy is 35 miles per gallon combined, unless they've just come out with it. We didn't have EPA official figures, the front wheel drive EX trim. So for all wheel drive versions, it'll be about 31, I believe is what they had said. So, you know, which is still decent. This is a big vehicle and they had

Sam Abuelsamid (29:53) That's for the front wheel drive one. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (30:08) The interior, they did really cool stuff. The interior looks really good. And what was this color, Sam? You were there too. It's sort of this, they called it like, it was like this blackberry. So what it is is, and it's not reddish, it really is this very dark, sort of slightly reddish dark color. You don't even necessarily think red when you look at it. Makes me think of black cherry. know, black cherry is so dark. You don't really realize that there's any red in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:16) ⁓ Blackberry and ⁓ some kind of beige, I think.

Nicole Wakelin (30:35) but and it's swayed all over the place like your swayed headliner, there's swayed on this, you know, on that like across the shoulder portion of the seats and the headrest. So it really looks beautiful, very comfortable, ⁓ really like driving it had tons of power. We floored it a couple of times to see like, okay, really will it move? And it does. Now we drove the hybrid on highway driving and it was lovely for the gas vehicle. That's what they let us take off road.

⁓ So you only got, we had a very short drive in that comparatively. It was just an off road drive on this ranch. And they did make, this is for the X-Pro, and they did make a decent little off road course. Like, you know, a lot of it was up and down hills, it kind of wet grass in certain spots. There's a little bit of mud. We drove up, I don't want to say up a river, up a small creek, I guess I would say, Sam, did you guys drive off the little creek? Like...

Nicole Wakelin (31:30) It was, it was definitely flowing water. It wasn't

like, it wasn't like it was, you know, four feet deep or something,

Nicole Wakelin (31:39) So we drove up this and it's just like a rocky, you know Creek bed underneath it Which is a slick surface and it handles it just fine ⁓ It was you know, it's this is like not what's the phrase they say now soft-roading? You're not gonna necessarily want to go off-roading the way you would in something that was super super capable that was you know had all the you know lockers and and a million things and like a Wrangler or something like that like it's not that car but

If you're someone who likes to get out there a little bit to a trail head to, you you go someplace where you go fishing or you put your kayak in the river or whatever, you can do off roading or even if you just live someplace where it's a little bit more rural, where you have like dirt roads, which doesn't sound like that should be that big of a deal.

But if you have a dirt road or you travel them a lot when the weather's bad, like rain can make those roads miserable to drive on. If you're in a span, suddenly you get a little nervous. So it's a soft roading vehicle.

I really enjoyed it. Oh, and also for towing, 5,000 on the gas, 4,500 on the hybrid. So you lose a little bit on the hybrid. Again, that's not unusual either. I thought they did a really good job with this. think it's a worthy successor to the original Telluride in terms of style. The only thing I was, the style on the front, it's all vertical lights in the front.

So and Kia's made a big deal there. Star map lighting is what they call it. This is very distinctive lighting signature because that's one of the easiest ways for an automaker to make themselves sort of recognize.

They have unique lighting, especially at night. Boom, you know what car company it is. And they have this star map lighting. The very vertical lights in the front. They're very vertical. It's a little bit.

I don't know, Sam, if you if you can talk for a moment, what do you think about the lighting in the front?

Sam Abuelsamid (33:37) It's an acquired taste. ⁓

I actually kind of like it. ⁓ It's distinctive. ⁓ I actually preferred the version that was on the Pro X or X Pro. ⁓ X Pro, yeah. Because what they do is they have basically two sets of trim levels. They have the core trims and their X trims or off-road trims.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:08) And on the core trims, the grill is flatter. ⁓ And then as you go up on the trim levels, know, so you've got these two vertical, the daytime running lights are these two vertical stacks that are amber colored. And then just inboard of that, you have a set of vertical lamps for your headlamps that when they're off, you don't even really see them. When you turn them on, you can kind of, you can see them there.

And then inboard of that on the one that we drove, the SX Prestige, they've got three like body colored stripes against. So it's the grill is black and then you get three body colored stripes. In this case, it was the, the ivory gray or ivory white color that they had. ⁓ the, then on the, the off-road versions, they have more of a

a blocky, chunky kind of thing. To me, it actually reminded me a lot of the IONIQ 5 XRT. That same kind of blocky, kind of grill texture to it. And then the other thing you didn't mention about the X-Pro ⁓ is that it, compared to the XRT Pro Palisade, which shares the same platform, the ⁓ Telluride X-Pro

Sam Abuelsamid (35:32) actually has about ⁓ three quarters of an inch more ground clearance. So they actually give it a slight lift. So both wheels and also suspension lift compared to the other trim levels. So you got 9.1 inches of ground clearance compared to 8.4 on the other trims. ⁓ So that gives it a little bit more clearance. You can also get it, ⁓ there's an available ⁓ skid plate that goes under the powertrain.

That's a dealer installed option. They didn't have pricing on that. I think it's a few hundred bucks for that. ⁓

Nicole Wakelin (36:06) No, yeah, and it wasn't part

of the X-Pro, like you could just get it put on. So the X-Pro doesn't come with it, that skid plate, but it is a dealer installed thing. So you still get an official, know, Kia thing.

pretty good off road. I was impressed with it. ⁓ Yeah. And that interior color on the Essex Prestige we drove was blackberry and sand beige syntax. ⁓ So you've got, you know, the upper portions of the seats are this blackberry as well as the headliner and parts of the doors. And then the lower portions are the sand beige, which is sort of a slightly, ever so slightly brownish.

Nicole Wakelin (36:46) It looks really good. I loved how they did

the interior that color. They were very excited about it and it did. It looked good. You hear the name. You're like Blackberry. Like what am I getting into? But it doesn't. It's I don't know. It's a cute name, but yeah, it doesn't look as somehow. thought that would be more striking, like a little too loud. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:05) Well, it depends on the light, how the light hits it. When you're out

in bright sunlight, it does look a little more red. It a little bit more red to it, yeah.

Cause I guess I was, it was very overcast, I guess, or we had a lot of, and I just don't remember the seeming bright, but I, you know. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (37:19) Yeah, after after lunch after Perry and I were

heading back ⁓ It got a little sunnier for a while and we stopped to take some photos of it And it definitely looked a little slightly. I mean, it's still a very dark dark red But you can you can see a little more of the red in bright light

Okay, so there you go. We like paints that are metallic. They change their color.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:42) Yeah. So, ⁓ yeah, so I mean, I like, you know, I like the ⁓ the X pro pro X or whatever, whatever the heck term it was called. ⁓ X pro. Yes. ⁓ Because they're yet XRT pro for Hyundai and pro 4X for Nissan and X pro for for Kia. It's like, come on, guys.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:09) This this hurts too much hurts my brain ⁓

well, and they also have X line and X pro and they're not quite the same at Kia. And then it's like, wait, X pro is the X year one than the X line is. So it gets confusing. It gets very confusing very quickly.

But they, you know, the, the pace trim starts at 39, 190. Um, the, uh, the hybrid, uh, doesn't come in the EX trim. I think the lowest trim for the hybrid is the, um, uh, or, okay. No, the EX, it does come in EX. The LX is what's not, is what's missing from the hybrid. That's the one that starts at just under 40 grand. Uh, so 46, 490 for the EX, uh, the SX Prestige was

Sam Abuelsamid (38:59) 56,590 with some options on it. Ours was right around 60,000 including the delivery charge.

Nicole Wakelin (39:06) Mm-hmm. I think it's a salva. think people are going to like it. I think people are going to be pleased with it. I think the hybrid is a big deal that they did that as a very good thing. It was a moment to do it. Like, good call on that.

Nicole Wakelin (39:18) Alright, so can you say your human your title for

Kurt Kahl (39:20) Yeah, my name is Kurt Kahl I'm chief designer at Kia Design Center in Marriott.

Nicole Wakelin (39:25) And you decide not just this Telluride, but the previous generation too.

Kurt Kahl (39:29) Yeah, our team worked on, yeah, both versions of Tuddy Rain.

Nicole Wakelin (39:32) And what was, if you had to pick something and say, was your biggest challenge, taking what you had to what you have.

Kurt Kahl (39:39) Biggest challenge. It was a challenge, I guess, but it was also we felt like it was a really great opportunity because I think we felt like we came up with an interesting formula that really responded to the customer in the first color, right? That big, bold and boxy, authentic SUV kind of feeling. So we also had Opposites United, our new design Fossey, come in after the first one was done. So we could integrate that and also really

Del again into this ⁓ boxy, functional, ⁓ tough, rugged ⁓ kind of SCB shape. incorporate thoughts that's united in these contrasting foreign elements. can see the defender and the body side. if you like distill and also exaggerate all the aspects that we think Telluride stands for.

Nicole Wakelin (40:33) So one of the things that I associate very much with Key now is that the star map, the lighting things that you do in the front and they're all a little bit different, but you can see how they're all sort of connected. This one has the lights, the one is very vertical. How'd you come upon that? Because that is very different.

Yeah, so it's an interesting story because the first tie-yuride has the strong tail-in shoes with two stripes. you remember from the initial tie-yuride had a square DRL, like a rectangular DRL. And then for the facelift, the PE, we had two vertical elements that started to tie into the rear fuel ring. And on this one,

The lighting technology has moved on. have great packaging for what we can do with the actual projector lamp and how we can showcase the DRL. So we really wanted the two strong vertical strikes to be in on what that works around the vehicle. So that's why in the back, they're actually separated with body colors. So you see a really strong, whether it's on or off, really strong twin bar vertical tail end. And now we'll cut it as well.

Nicole Wakelin (41:46) And making the changes between these. So you can still see it's tethered. It looks like enough detail here. It was still well received the first time around. How nervous, how scary is it to take something that people really, really liked and think, I gotta change this, but I can't mess it up.

Kurt Kahl (42:04) Yeah, think once again, I don't think we thought of it as scary, but like an opportunity, like exciting. As we had, like you said, we had this kind of strong theme to play off of and it was just a new way, a more modern way to interpret that theme. So I think the team was all really excited and early on, know, the designers are sketching and you see something that...

⁓ that could be a great direction and it was a really strong initial theme sketch. So it was exciting to then to realize that into full size sculpture.

Nicole Wakelin (42:43) And you were talking about on the, like the Fender flair, some little tiny little blab, little tab. Tell me more about that, because I find that, it's literally just decorative. There's no functional part of it. What does that do? Why you blabla?

Well, maybe I was mentioning before, we had the very angular geometry of fender shapes that almost come down to a point. Even the opposites united, of course we have opposing elements, but they still need to work together. So obviously we have a round wheel arch, a round cladding, but then we have these two angles coming together. And coming to a point, maybe at various stages we had a point and just didn't feel natural. We kind of wanted...

more of landing area and that gave ⁓ an area also to put this kind of a tab that is a geometric block on top of the round wheel cladding. And as ⁓ the lead designer on the project has described too, it's almost like a clasp or like an attachment point. So it kind of lifts the feeling of the fender because we have these downward elements, it kind of lifts it again.

So it's kind of a clay of geometry and shapes and it just, it felt right.

Nicole Wakelin (44:01) Is there any one thing that you look at it, all the different design decisions you've had to make when you did this, that you look at it and you say, I love that, that's my favorite thing, I'm so glad we did that.

Kurt Kahl (44:10) Yeah, it's something that I just saw the other day actually, because I was seeing the matte terrain brown like we have outside driving. And I was kind of the high angle and I saw the really sharp fender lines and then counter balance with the sharp edges coming off the rocker. And just those lines and the crispness and the kind of pure geometry and the way it blends into the body side. That's my favorite part. That's your favorite part. It was really...

Difficult to execute some of that sculpting where you have a edge that just dissolves into a smooth shape Yeah, but I think the way the modeling team Executed that and then with the amount of feasibility with the stamping all that came together. No, I'm probably

Nicole Wakelin (44:56) And so when someone looks at the Nutellier, a customer sees it a lot, customer sees it at the grocery store. What do you hope their first impression is when they see this now?

Kurt Kahl (45:07) Well, I think it has this rutted, almost opposing nature, but at the same time it has this refinement and this luxury feeling. I think that it communicates itself through the sculpting like I'm talking about, but also it has even more presence in its boldness and its more upright nature. So I think it's like a powerful feeling, SEV, for the customer, feeling protected.

At same time it has this luxury, cozy, inviting feeling, especially in the cabin when you get in. It's very spacious but it's ⁓ very comfortable.

Nicole Wakelin (45:49) So did you do the interior too or your exterior guys?

Kurt Kahl (45:52) So, done both. Now as my current role, I'm responsible for exterior, interior, and CMF. So, I did the interior way back in the early start of my career, a little bit, mainly exterior through the years. And then ⁓ now, yeah, interior as well.

Nicole Wakelin (46:10) So you interior and tell your then too? No, tell your the outside.

Kurt Kahl (46:14) Our team in Irvine at IQ Design Center in America did X-Cure and the team in Korea did Inter. But we all worked together, so at some point ⁓ the designers in Korea and we worked together to realize all the feasibility.

Nicole Wakelin (46:23) it so spread out across the

to the challenge because at some point they're in Korea and you're here and you're trying to do something. you travel a lot or are you back and forth a lot?

Kurt Kahl (46:45) Yeah, sometimes, yeah, we work together. We designers come here, we go there. So, yeah, it's all a big collaborative effort. That's great that way.

and one interesting detail that currently is different between the Palisade and the Telluride. The Palisade ⁓ base engine is a 3.5 liter naturally aspirated V6, and then you have the same hybrid system that's on the Telluride. But the Telluride base engine is a 2.5 liter turbo, four cylinder. And it turns out that I guess for model year 27, they're dropping the V6 from

Sam Abuelsamid (47:30) from the Palisade and switching to that turbo four cylinder. They haven't announced it here in North America yet, but they just announced it yesterday in South Korea. starting like anytime now, they're gonna switch over from 26 to 27 model year for Palisade and they will be dropping the V6 in favor of the turbo four. So you have the same engines again in both vehicles.

Nicole Wakelin (47:57) So that'll be good. we have, do we, mentioning the palestine, do we have the palestine in here for other news?

⁓ that was the only thing i had on the palisade yeah go ahead and talk about that

Nicole Wakelin (48:06) Well, I'm going to mention the other piece of the Palisade that I wanted to mention.

in a very sad incident, apparently a two year old was killed in a Hyundai Palisade because the rear seats and I'm not clear whether it was second or third row. I haven't been able to see that detail, so I don't want to say it, but one of the back rows ⁓ came down.

Nicole Wakelin (48:31) Right. I don't know which rose that the

child was in, but their power seats. And apparently there's something not quite right in the top two trims where it doesn't recognize that there's something in those rear seats and it closed on the child and a child got killed.

Um, so Hyundai has issued a stop sale, which means you can't buy it at the dealership right now. Apparently there's going to be an update that's going to take care of it, but something to just be extra aware of.

If you happen to have a Hyundai Palisade, I mean, you should never be putting the seats down.

when somebody else is in them, the power seats, because you could hurt someone, but just be super conscious of it. If you happen to have a Hyundai Palisade right now and you have kids in the rear seats, when you go to put the seat down, make sure you're putting the correct row down that does not have your kids in it, because the seat mechanism isn't currently recognizing that a child is there, just a little safety thing. Just came out within, I think Friday they came out with that. ⁓

i suspect that we may hear the same news from ⁓ from kia as well

Nicole Wakelin (49:28) I had, so in the trying to get confirmation, ⁓ I had spoken to secondhand, but someone who had said no, they reached out to Kia and Kia said we're not anticipating that. But we'll see, so far, maybe there's something different. Yeah, but so at this point, the Telluride, no problem, but the Palisade, it's an issue, but the Kia has not said anything about the Telluride yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:41) So maybe they have a little bit different mechanism in their seats.

Yeah. So I think the, I think it's all, I think it's just the top two versions of the Palisades. So the limited and the calligraphy are the only ones affected by this because the others don't have the power seats for the second and third row. So any of the other trims, you're fine. ⁓ but you won't be able to buy a limited calligraphy right now.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:13) All right. ⁓ Well, and in the course of getting sick last week, you know, I do a lot of traveling ⁓ and I went from Santa Barbara to San Francisco for a conference and then went to New York for Lucid's first ever investor day that they did in Manhattan because they are trying desperately to get investors to to buy more lucid stock instead of selling it. And

So, you know, um, Mark Winterhoff, the still interim CEO, uh, what almost 14 months, uh, later. Uh, I don't know how long he's going to keep the interim. Uh, yeah. End of January last year. Um, anyway, um, he and some of the other executives have gone through, you know, some of the things that, that lucid is doing to bring the cost down and, and.

Nicole Wakelin (50:52) He's been the interim seat is for over a year now. Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:10) improve a bunch of things in order to get to profitability and get to, you know, and they're anticipating getting to at least positive free cash flow, which is one of many measures of profitability by somewhere around 2028 or 2029. I'm not going to go through all of that stuff, but one thing, what after the they talked about some of the things that they're for

their next program. So they've got the air and the gravity out now. And at the end of this year, they are going to start production of the first of their midsize models. So these are their next a new generation platform that is smaller, ⁓ more cost effective to build, more cost effective to buy. ⁓ And the first of these go into production around the end of this year. And there are going to be right now the plan is for three different

crossovers based on this midsize platform. The first one is a sportier model that is called Cosmos. And then ⁓ later next year, there will be a ⁓ more mainstream model that they're calling Earth. And then after that, there will be a model that does not yet have an official name, but will, ⁓ they showed on the chart that they showed us.

They had you some of the competitors and yes, so for cosmos they had things like Maki and model model Y and for the mainstream they had things like the ionic 5 and for this unnamed model they had stuff like the Bronco and Wrangler and Rivian are too ⁓ So you can kind of guess where that model is going that's going to be their more off-road adventure model and

Sam Abuelsamid (53:03) They talked about some of the stuff that they're doing. But then they showed us a couple of things. They showed us a concept, ⁓ which right now is strictly a design concept. It's not currently slated for production, but that concept was for a ⁓ two-seat robo-taxi. Yeah, because they're doing a robo-taxi program right now with Neuro and Uber. They're putting the Neuro automated driving system.

excuse me, on the gravity. And that is currently undergoing testing in California. And they plan to launch commercial service with that by the end of this year. ⁓ But then after that, they're also going to apply the same system to the cosmos and start using that as a robot taxi in addition to the gravity. ⁓ And then ⁓ this concept that they showed showed a two seater.

based on the midsize platform, but shorter. It had no doors, no windows or anything, but it was just kind of a design concept of the basic shape, which looked pretty interesting. It's a little bit more practical looking than the Tesla CyberCab, but my guess is if they build that, it probably won't be until at least the latter half of 2028, maybe 2029 before we see something like that.

honest, two car, a two seat robot taxi is dumb. It's just dumb. It doesn't matter who makes it. This should have at least four or more seats. The idea like, now I gotta call two robot taxis to take me and my friends out to wherever.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:44) Well, but you know, you know, when, if, you're going to offer robo taxis like that, you know, in the app you put in, you know, how many passengers, if you've got three or four passengers, you get a bigger vehicle. If you'll, if it's just yourself.

Roberto Baldwin (54:56) Yeah, but why make the smaller

Sam Abuelsamid (55:00) because what what they find is that

most of the time people are riding around by themselves. vast majority of rides is just one passenger.

It's just more and more cars on the road for reasons that don't need to be. It's just, it makes no sense. I've got to, you can't convince me that like, well, most passers, but when there are three people, like, oh, we now we got to get four. Just make a four, you have cars at a four doors, current robo taxis on the road have at least three seats. Don't make it, don't make it. You know what, if you want to make a CRX, go for it, but don't make a robo taxi CRX.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:35) Okay, fair enough ⁓ Then after the presentation was done and they live stream that presentation after the presentation was done They turned off the cameras then they split us up into groups and took us around and we actually got to see the cosmos both the fault the whole the whole vehicle and Also all the stuff that's under the skin And we learned all kinds of stuff about this thing ⁓ so

Yeah, we were not allowed to take any photos of the vehicle. I can talk about it. I can describe it.

what did you think about how it looked? Let's start there.

still has ⁓ a lucid vibe to it, but it's different. It's different from the gravity and from the air. ⁓ It's a little more ⁓ curvy. The fenders, you know, got a little more curvature to them. ⁓ The Cosmos, you know, the roof line kind of slopes down a little bit ⁓ towards the back. So it's got a little sportier look to it. Got a big, big hatchback in the back.

And if you remember like the old Honda CRZ, ⁓ hybrid coupe that they did, know, where, ⁓ you he basically had almost flat rear window. And then there was the back edge of the hatch and then there was vertical glass in the back. ⁓ It's kind of like that kind of look to it. So you had two pieces of glass, one that was almost horizontal and then a vertical piece. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (57:11) You know as you would expect in a lucid really good packaging, you know lots of room in the pack for stuff Big you know good size front trunk and also a Decent amount of storage space under the back seat So the back seat is kind of like a Honda magic seat in a Honda fit You know it flips up you can put stuff under the back seat So that was really cool and you know the ⁓ in the back in the cargo area

Sam Abuelsamid (57:39) ⁓ There's floor panels that you can take out. By default, they are at the same height as the bumper height, so you've got a flat load. When you fold down the back seats, you've got a flat floor all the way through. But if you need more space in the back, ⁓ you can lift those out. You can either put stuff underneath them.

So there's a good, know, there's underneath like behind the rear axle just like in the air and the gravity There's a big bin back there where you can put a couple of carry-on bags back there There's about six inches or actually probably closer to about seven or eight inches Beneath the floor and that rear cargo floor in the back ⁓ the ⁓ In general, you know, it's it's got a lot of the things we've come to expect

of lucid, ⁓ mostly decent amount of ⁓ balance between physical controls and ⁓ virtual stuff. you physical controls for fan speed and temperature, four window switches on on the driver's door panel.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:54) I complained to Derek Jenkins about it. I let him know what I thought about that. ⁓ Derek is the head of product at ⁓ Lucid, head of design and product. ⁓ So I told him, thought that was a bad idea. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (58:56) Alright, will listen. Come on, Derek. Derek's a good guy.

They got time to change it. Derek, if you're listening, come on.

Who are you impressing with this? Who is excited about virtually going into a screen to adjust their vents? Nobody. Like four bros, our tech bros are really excited, look at this, I go on my screen. And the rest of us are like, you know, I could just go over here and do this in my car. And I could do them one at a time. They're all individually controlled.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:39) What he did say is that they actually, they've got, he said they've got some pretty interesting camera stuff that they're using ⁓ to ⁓ help with guiding the airflow. We'll see, we'll see how that plays out. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (59:58) we're gonna make it more expensive. We're gonna take a hardware vent that people use and like, and we're gonna replace it with a servo and a sensor.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:11) that's so far, at least from what we saw last Thursday, that was the one thing we saw wrong with this. Everything else about it is actually really cool. Like the electronic architecture, going from the air to the gravity, they simplified it, and now they've simplified it even more. So now there's just one central compute box, and it's actually mounted in the front bulkhead. ⁓ And so there's connectors on both sides of it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:37) So instead of running a big harness through the bulkhead and wrapping it around to plug into the thing, you mount this thing in the bulkhead and stuff coming from the passenger cabin plugs in on one side, stuff coming in from under the hood plugs in on the other side.

It's actually some really interesting ideas there. And then there's two ⁓ aggregator units. So not quite zonal control units like you're seeing on a lot of cars. It's more like what GM's doing with their aggregators.

where it's just power distribution and signal distribution. It's not really doing any compute in there. ⁓ And there's one in each front fender, like below the A-pillar. And for the driver's feet, it'll be to the left of your feet for the driver, to the right of your feet for the passenger in that area. But both of them are identical. So there's actually only one part number. So there's two pieces, one part number. So you can put it in either side.

That's how you save money. That and getting rid of a servo and a sensor for a vent. Come on. It's really easy to make an expensive car. It's really hard to make a car that people can afford.

funny, you know, a couple of years ago, ⁓ Lucid hired a guy named Corey Steuben, who used to be at Monroe and associates. was a president at Monroe and associates. They brought him in as like, ⁓ senior, senior VP of cost savings or something like that. Basically he kind of oversees a lot of the engineering stuff and helps make a lot of decisions about how they're going to do stuff to figure out how to make this thing cheaper to build.

but also serviceable for customers. So like the body structure, there's some interesting stuff. And the battery pack, they didn't get any details on the battery pack except that it'll charge from zero to 200 miles in 15 minutes. It's an 800 volt system. It is a structural battery pack, but that's all they would tell us. But like in the other room where we saw the body in white without all the body panels or interior on it,

You can see that unlike a Tesla where they ⁓ have the entire floor is missing and they use the battery as the floor in this one, they still have a couple of like the in the middle, they have a big section which is structural section for side impact protection. But then, you know, there's big chunks of the floor that are gone where they don't need that extra metal. ⁓ And then the battery fits in there. The body structure itself.

is a mix of the, it's a mix of steel, aluminum, ⁓ castings, stampings. So instead of doing the big unicastings like Tesla does and what some of the Chinese are doing and what Ford's doing for their Universal EV program, they're using, ⁓ like in the front, they've got two large castings for

the front suspension and everything. ⁓ But then the ⁓ crash rails are separate ⁓ steel panels, ⁓ steel extrusions, ⁓ so they can collapse. So in the event of a crash, it makes it easier to repair. So it reduces repair costs, hopefully reduce insurance costs. A lot of interesting details that they did in this thing to bring the cost down. ⁓

the motors, they use the exact same drive unit for the front and the rear axle. ⁓ mean, literally, they're interchangeable. You could take out the rear, put it in the front, and vice versa. So there's not even any different connectors or anything else. Everything is exactly the same. So they really, they cut down on the total number of parts by, I forget how, I think it's like 30%. ⁓ They took out a lot of wiring. You know, it's like,

2.1 kilometers of wiring so about 1.3-1.4 miles of wiring compared to a typical modern car that might be 3-3.5 miles of wiring. ⁓ Even a Tesla is about 2-2 plus miles of wiring. ⁓ So they did a lot of stuff like that to take out cost. ⁓ So I think, mean they said a lot of the right things, but now like every time, now they got to execute on this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:05:12) That'll be the challenge. What'll it?

Nicole Wakelin (1:05:14) Yeah. What'll actually will we get? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:17) Well, what's interesting is that production is starting late this year. They have a second plant now in Saudi Arabia. And the initial production of the midsize is actually going to happen in Saudi Arabia first. And so ⁓ for, you know, it's going to be a mix, you know, so that plant is going to supply the Middle East, it's going to supply Europe, and initially it's also going to supply the U.S.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:46) But then eventually ⁓ like about six months after they start production in Saudi Arabia They will start production of this vehicle in Arizona where they build the air and the gravity as well And so that will give you know, so they don't want to start both of them at the same time They want to do one plant at a time get everything sorted out and then do the other plant so they decide to start with Saudi Arabia and then they'll start with the with the US plant sometime middle of next year and

in around June-ish timeframe, ⁓ the rest of the world should get to see the cosmos and the Earth. So, yeah, it looks promising. I think it's gonna be interesting to see. I can't wait to actually try it out.

Mean lucid has some of the best engineers in the world really and when it comes to e-building and packaging EVs ⁓ They mean even their boss was the engineer until they yeah until some Until someone happened to talk to somebody in Saudi Arabia and then suddenly they were like, we got to rid of Which was yeah anyway beyond that ⁓ Weirdness, ⁓ no, they're there. There's some there are smart cookies

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:07) ⁓ Outside the vent thing sounds great.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:14) Let's do this. ⁓ So Taffin was Zach Walker, who I guess, what is your title?

of bunch of engineering stuff at Lucid. Yeah, so ⁓

Zach Walker (1:07:27) I was the chief engineer for the Lucid Gravity. ⁓ When that was launching, I got pulled over to help lead and be the chief engineer for the Lucid midsize platform. looking over that entire platform, I'm now doing one, I'm in charge of our product management team, which is like the customer experience.

How do we expand the customer experience and how do we like breathe experience through every single little part of the vehicle? And I'm leading advanced product creation, which is all the next concepts.

leading what we're doing next, how do we ideate? Like my team was one who like we concepted and thought about lunar and built that from the ground up. ⁓ And so that's kind of my, my story through illicit.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:06) Okay. Well, we're here today. Today was Lucid's first, I think the first investor day that they've been. Yeah, it was. And, ⁓ you know, a big part, you know, obviously there's a lot of discussion about financial stuff and not going to talk about that, but the, is the first time that we've, ⁓ gotten more of a deep dive on the midsize. and, you know, it talked about three initial models coming up, two of which have names now, Osmos and Earth and then a third.

And, um, you know, we, we learned a bunch of stuff. There's obviously still a lot of more, a lot more grass and we're, I'm going to. Every God the next nine months.

Zach Walker (1:08:41) lot of stuff to go super excited

Yeah, we're super excited to get to show you all that in the next nine months, right? ⁓

mean, I've, I've always been fascinated by, by Lucid as, as a company and the products that the team has created. ⁓ starting with the air when I first saw it several months before, but shown publicly. and you know, the gravity, think is a great vehicle, but this, this, the cosmos is really interesting. what, let's, start off, you know, for the listeners of wheel bearings, you know, what, what was the, the theme?

What was the overall strategy of what you tried to do with it?

Zach Walker (1:09:25) I think it was be true to who Lucid is and our DNA, right? So like we hit that up on right energy efficiency space efficiency performance efficiency, right making a car that is bigger on the inside than the outside making a car that goes further with less energy than anyone else and making a car that has this Engagement of driving right we call it the giggle factor, right? My goal is not

how fast can you set lap times when you drive the, any loser vehicle? My goal is how much do you laugh when you drive the. Exactly. Right. so, so that's that it's when we talked about the midsize, was how do we take that mentality and breathe it in to a more obtainable vehicle.

Right. So we see this as like this huge market. It's for both Europe and us. It is just one of the largest markets you can imagine. And that correlates very well with our mission, which is like really driving the world forward.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:58) How much does it make you see?

Zach Walker (1:10:21) ⁓ by using our technology and creating these amazing experiences. So our goal was those three pillars of efficiency, but then taking it to the next level to make it more attainable, which is this radical new efficiency with how we're using software and a radical efficiency when how we're doing manufacturing to achieve what we would call a product superiority and cost efficiency of a vehicle that we think is going to lead to success.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:43) Yeah. And that whole concept of radical efficiency across the board, had five areas there, including the energy efficiency, the software efficiency, the performance efficiency. Two of them were really new. The software efficiency and manufacturing efficiency. for a startup, manufacturing in particular has obviously been a challenge for you guys. Building cars is

It's it is the most fun and gut wrenching thing you'll ever work on. is the most complicated product that everyone expects to work perfectly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:22) Exactly. And I mean, I, I, I'm an engineer by training. This is about 17 years of product development myself in the auto industry. So I know what you speak of. ⁓ but, ⁓ so let's talk about energy efficiency or the performance manufacturing efficiency. you know, you've done a lot of things very differently with this car versus what was done in gravity and air. Talk about some of the highlights of that.

Zach Walker (1:11:47) Yeah, so first I'll talk about the theory where like, so Peter did this thing and I believe in his vision so much, which was every millimeter counts. Like every engineer who was next to Peter would hear, every millimeter count, it would be pushing your brain over and over and over.

And what I think we've done for midsize is take that methodology, but say, it's not just every millimeter that counts for the customer. It's also every millimeter that counts for manufacturing. And you have to make.

the manufacturing efficiency a priority when you're going to make this many jobs per hour, how you're to hit this market and hit this efficiency. So when we talk about what we did differently, right, we can hit a couple of big points, but one we obsessed on park couch.

And that's one of the things we're most proud of. ⁓ if there was a single part that did one job, I would want it out of the car, right? We were, when we would do design reviews, it was like, how much does that do?

Does that do this? It's like, are you doing structure? Are you doing this? Are you doing that?

If it did one job, it's like, why is it doing one thing? So the entire mentality was jobs that did multiple parts that did multiple things. One of my favorite examples is actually our woofer box. So if you go to the center of the car, ⁓ we have our subwoofer or sorry, our woofer in the center of the car, right under the front occupant.

What a lot of companies will do is you'll add up this big woofer box. It's this volume piece. It's how you let the subwoofer breathe. You have not having back pressure and let's him move.

Well, what we did was we took the structure we already had from the body and then the battery is closing out that body. So we already have no floor. have the battery is the floor. What we did was we added the seal that then was enclosing battery to body and we put it into that section, which was body and battery together. And now we made that the volume for the woofer. So now we didn't have to add a box. We already had a structure.

We already have the top of the battery and now we have this huge volume which allows us to have this amazing audio experience without adding cost. So that is the epitome of manufacturing efficiency. ⁓ We also talk about specifically as a software defined vehicle electrical architecture.

And so what happens is what you find is let's talk about the wire harness first, right? The wire harness sucks. Like I, like, just frankly, if anyone's like, I apologize to all the wire harness engineers out there, but your job is the worst. I remember you.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:18) ago, ⁓ working on a research project for a supplier who was working on next gen zone architectures. And they described an example of one of their customers, a large German luxury car manufacturer and the wire harness in this thing, the wire harness for each car came in its own crate and it took nine people to install it into the vehicle. But before they could do that, they took it out of the crate. They would run it through an oven, viable enough that they could then

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:46) 9 people can maneuver it into the body.

Zach Walker (1:14:48) And so now that's what it could be. The negative of how bad it is. What we did was we said, okay, you can't solve that problem by changing one thing. You have to change everything.

So literally we would have entire design reviews like days upon days about why is that wire there? Basically every single person who was asking for a wire had to prove it to me as the chief engineer. We like, so Matt Bachman who's downstairs, he's was my assistant chief engineer.

He would run these reviews, we'd all come together and it's

You must prove every single why in the car. And so what we did was we, we really cut down, we caused efficiency, we caused commonization, we pushed things together. We did a lot of these advanced methodologies of, okay, can we get rid of that component and replace it by a virtual component, a machine learning component to give the same experience, but get rid of extra wires.

We did these things where, one of my favorite things we did was we use the super gateway, which is our main intelligence. And we use that to cover the hole in the deck.

So if you've ever seen someone in another OEM, they do that, they have to warm up the wire, and then they have to pull all those wires through the dash. We don't do that. What we do is we left a huge hole that we then cover by the Super Gateway.

Most of the wires go directly in the Super Gateway from both the dry zone and the wet zone. But what we do is the few wires that need to pass, you put it through this huge hole for the Super Gateway, you press it into the side of the dash panel, that D panel, that D shape holds it there, it's a seal, and then you put the Super Gateway on.

bolt it up and make all the connections. Literally when we talk about the way that everyone was shocked when like we literally able to put a wire harness in in four minutes when we were expecting it to take a day. We we surprised ourselves we were in awe that we could achieve that because of this mentality of radical efficiency.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:33) Yeah. Another example of, you know, when you talk about with having the same part do multiple things. Yeah. ⁓ in addition to that super gateway, you've got these two aggregates. And normally what you would find is these things would be, it would be non symmetrical and you would have one that goes on the left, one that goes on the right. The other not interchangeable, even though they're doing the same thing, you guys designed it so that

Zach Walker (1:16:42) Yeah, boxes that do power exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:59) Same one part one part number goes in both spots and does the same.

Zach Walker (1:17:04) So that that right so we this is when we talk about full system Yeah, that probably made my body engineers more mad than they've ever been because we literally were like reshaping the door P1 opening So down low we we basically have it where my foot swings I want that to be amazing then that's where the aggregator goes we were reshaping the P1 and then above Sorry P1 is the door opening at the steel and then above where you have visibility we then ⁓

crook the basically opening around that. So we give you the what you want as a customer, which is the foot swing and the visibility. And we had to reshake the body in the middle, which is where you don't care about it, but so that we could mandate we had the common aggregators, these common two parts.

And so when we talk about this obsession, that's, that's, that's the level it's like, body engineers were being affected to force ECU common alamy. That was like, that's how we went deep. And everyone had to be a part of this entire discussion about how do we minimize every single part.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:01) And, think another interesting example is around looking at total cost of ownership for the customer. Yeah. Yeah. And, and what is the customer experience like? Not just what is it like for, Lucid to build this thing, but what's the experience like for the customer as they own this thing for years on end. And, you know, as part of that was the whole front structure of the car. And, you know, one thing you haven't done is you didn't use just a single large casting there.

Can you talk about what you've done there and what the strategy you took?

Zach Walker (1:18:33) Yeah. So let's say as Lucid, started with not assuming materials and not assuming manufacturing. We designed a structure first that we thought was the most efficient and we found where we thought the most efficient thicknesses, most efficient materials were in each one of those spots, right? You start with a clean sheet. That's the benefit. You don't have to come in with assumptions. And what we found was castings in the corners of the vehicle. Super important.

That's where tons of things come together. There's all these joints. You have to bolt on the shocks. You have to bolt on braces. You have to wear the windshield. It's, it is just one of the most locally ⁓ dense areas on all cars.

It's where loads transfer. It's a, it's a big deal. So we put castings in those corners, but the two things we didn't do one, we didn't connect the left and right casting. We could have, but what we saw was that the left and right castings were only connected by one dash panel.

stamping. So I could remove that dash panel and get rid of those joints. But in reality, that's not many joints because all you're doing is connecting three parts together, right? A dash panel into two castings.

But though that dash panel super thin, a casting has to be thicker, right? Because there's you have to have it this material is flowing, it has to be a lot thicker. So one, we're able to make that dash panel way thicker, thinner, and reduce weight, which leads to radical efficiency because we didn't just arbitrarily say it has to be a gigagastic.

So we did what we thought was right for us and for the customer. And then finally, when you talk about that front end, we didn't bring the casting all the way out to the front. We basically made these two separate bolted in zones, one for very low speed and one for medium speed.

The low speed, you basically don't have to change anything. Like if you have a low speed incident, you have to take off the bumper beam. have to basically fix up the fascia, but really not much. This other one, yes, maybe if you went into this crumple zone, maybe you're going to damage like hood.

but you're not damaging the main part of the body. That area is body drive unit, subframe, super gateway. That's like the most expensive area. So what we did is protect that area at all costs, let it absorb energy so that we can really prove and get these insurance costs lower so that we can help our customer. Because I think one of the biggest predictive things that like brings customers into EVs in this space is insurance, is cost.

We want you to not be that, have that be a worry. You want to get rid of that barrier. So we obsessed about every dollar of insurance we could save you when you buy the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:08) Yeah, that's yeah, I think, you know, that's, that's the thing that often does get ignored is, know, what are the other costs that the customer has to face, you know, down the road?

so it's good, good to hear that you've, you've thought about that and, taking a real systems approach to this and pick the right materials, the right processes for every single part. ⁓ so, ⁓ you know, some of the, some of the other, ⁓ things about this, ⁓ yeah, it looks like you've got a structural battery pack, but unlike

For example, the Tesla Model Y with the structural battery pack look, the body has no floor. The battery is that whole floor. And then all the interior is bolted to that battery pack. actually Ford is doing the same thing for their new EVs. You'd taken a little bit different approach there again.

Zach Walker (1:21:56) We called it a semi hybrid, like a hybrid approach. we thought we, we did a lot of calculations. We saw that we could save a bunch of weight and cost by letting the floor where your feet go be the top of the battery.

But we saw personally, and again, I think this is according to your, our manufacturing line. be focused on. We saw that we still wanted a structural brace, uh, was the most efficient thing for the body anyways, that connected the front of the, where the, basically where the seats go.

He still left that as a structural phrase that was way more efficient for us.

goes back to what you said earlier. Now you've also got that space to use for

and now we can use it for the woofer. now exactly like we would have had to have a structure there anyways. So what was the savings of putting that on somewhere else for us? didn't add up. So we did a semi like a hybrid approach, which was yes, places that were very flat and could just be the battery top.

It did that places that were going to need to have big structure. Anyways, we put that as a part of the body. So it was the basic, the most efficient overall structure and achieve what we see now, which is our radical efficiency and

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:02) And then, know, you've also, you know, one of the things right from the air onwards, you know, every, every Lucid vehicle has been really great when it came to cargo space. mean, having a lot, the air, you know, you look at it, it's not that big of a car, but it's, it's got a ton of triabase, you know, plus you've got a big frunk, same thing with the gravity. And you've done some, some cool stuff here with, with this vehicle as well to, to, to make it again, both.

a lot of space that's available for customers to use, but also to make it as going back to that efficiency thing.

Zach Walker (1:23:39) Yeah, it's, it just goes back to like our job is to give value back to the customer and make them realize that like they can't get that anywhere else. so everything we've done right is when we talk about miniaturization dragons, that aspect unlocks tons of efficiency in the vehicle. When you miniaturize the drive unit of the front drive unit, you can push the front occupant forward. When you fight to push the front occupant forward.

You increase the space for a same exterior size to exterior size. have much more interior size. When you do that, you can choose how you distribute that between occupant space and cargo space, right? When you build everything in a system around hand and glove drive unit to battery, the body structure being integrated, you pushing everything out. You get that, that space. And it's just about who Lucid is of we, the compromise, nothing mentality.

is about you don't have to choose between the sports car and the car with all the cargo. You get both. You can giggle and look behind you and say, my gosh, how is all this in my car? And that's what we believe in. And that's what we're trying to get.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:48) So, ⁓ all of this, you know, of course has also led to a lot more energy efficiency. And so, what, what kind of energy efficiency are Cosmos customers going to expect?

Zach Walker (1:25:00) Yeah, I think I'm gonna, I'm not, gonna stay away from the normal mile per kilowatt hour. Cause a lot of people get confused by that. So I'm going to, I'm going to talk about it. Assuming 300 miles of range, right? If we assume 300 miles of range that you're trying to get, which is not necessarily the range of the vehicle. I'm just giving you a normal, guess 300 miles range is a threshold.

For 300 miles of range, you basically need about 69 kilowatt hours. It can be even less than that in certain configurations, but let's say for an all-wheel drive, about 69 kilowatt hours. You can compare it to some other very advanced new coming out platforms. And what they're given for that same 300 miles is like 82 to 86 kilowatt hours. That can equate to about like $2,000 of battery costs. That's $2,000 that the customer has to spend

to get the same experience. And actually it's worse because now the vehicle is heavier and you have to go deal with it. So like radical efficiency isn't just about this random number and we care and it's, just believe us, it's good. It's literally money that if we're trying to sell the vehicle for the same cost, we can distribute to other experiences. And it's all about radical efficiency leads to a product superiority and a cost efficiency for us. So it's like that.

That $2,000 delta that I can give to other things because we did this is what radical efficiency is about.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:23) I'll see. so anything else, you know, we've talked a lot, a lot about this. course, people aren't going to be able to see this hard part. I haven't yet to do it now, but I can't, you know, we can't talk about that, but any other highlights of the, cosmos that, ⁓ you know, or, or the platform that you want to talk about, or we haven't touched on.

Yeah, I think for me, I think we've touched on a lot of it, the radical efficiency, everything we were trying to achieve. ⁓ I'm just super excited for people to see this vehicle. think when we show it, people are going to be blown away. It is just next level. So I'm and everyone at Lucid are so excited to get to show this to the world and like start taking the next step in with midsize and show it off. So that's, I think we're just all like that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:14) Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time. Great to meet you today.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:20) ⁓ Anyway, let's move on. ⁓ Honda also had some EV news on that very same day that Lucid was doing their thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:37) Somebody want to tell us about it so I can stop talking for a minute?

Nicole Wakelin (1:27:41) go ahead. Your turn, Robbie. You talk.

Roberto Baldwin (1:27:42) I went and I saw, I went down to Honda's HQ in Torrance, California to look at the Honda Zero Saloon and the Zero SUV. And the SUV especially, I was like, wow, this is really cool. It has the Honda name because the prologue did so well, even though it's essentially a Blazer. But because there's a Honda badge on it, people want to buy it because people want a Honda EV. And then Honda decided,

We're gonna make our own platform. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have, you know, we're working on solid state batteries. We're doing all this great stuff. And then last week is like, oh, you know what?

We're not doing that now. We're not building SUVs. We're not building these EVs for the US. We're not gonna do that. Who knows what's gonna happen to Ophelia? Because they were gonna build it in the Ohio plant where these EVs were gonna be built.

Instead Honda just pulled back, did a huge multi-billion, 1.5, whatever, 15, I don't know. They did a huge write down.

Roberto Baldwin (1:28:35) which means they spent a lot of money to do something and then at the last minute decided not to do it. And it also happened to be at the same, not just at the same time that Lucid was happening, but the same time that gas prices started spiking and people started searching for EV, EV searches went up 20 % for like low cost EVs. And so it's just the absolute worst timing to sort of do this. It's disappointing because Honda had the Honda Yi in Europe.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:47) What could possibly go wrong?

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:51) could possibly go wrong. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:04) They never brought it to the US and there's a story out there about it. I can just give you the rough details. One person said no, Honda Japan said okay, and then when it came out, Honda America was like, this looks cool. And then there were the Honda Japan's like, no man, we already built the car. We'd have to homologate it for the US. We'd have to change all these things. One guy said no, and so we didn't. So it seems like a...

Roberto Baldwin (1:29:31) that a lot of just very weird weirdness when it comes to Honda EVs. They had the Clarity EV, which they'd sold as sort of like, it's like a luxury car, but it's really, ⁓ you know, it gets like 80 miles of range. was was it was a weird sort of like, hey, here's our EV for the US market. ⁓ And then they were like, we're going to have these cars. And it felt like Honda was going to do the thing that they were going to do the thing that they brought me to Japan for.

two years ago to talk to the CEO of Honda. I talked to the Honda's new brand new CEO, talked to their new head of ⁓ EV and they were both like, we're making EVs. It was the whole point of the trip was to tell us, was to have this conversation. They did not, ⁓ no they didn't, but they were very much on board. I was like, all right, good Honda. Honda has some really like Lucy. They have some great engineers.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:01) I forgot about that, that you went all the way Japan.

Did they clap and cheer? Did it was a, we're making EVs, we're making EVs.

to have their own, you know, platform. They're working on solid state battery. And now I...

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:36) All of that, all of that for naught.

went away just suddenly and weirdly. Honda's a very conservative company. I don't think people realize that. ⁓ Far even more conservative than Toyota, which Toyota now has good EVs after years of me being like, what the hell is Toyota doing? We're all in. And then Honda's like, nah, we're out. And that is so disappointing, especially as someone who's owned multiple Hondas. Cause you're like, these are good cars.

Nicole Wakelin (1:30:53) Right? Now Toyota's like, wait,

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:06) If you make an EV, I'll probably end up buying it. Nope.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:11) Yeah. Well, at least, at least this probably tells us the fate of a Fila, which was almost certainly going to fail anyway.

Roberto Baldwin (1:31:18) It wasn't a good idea ever.

but you know the afila was you know going to use a bunch of the components from the zero series the motors the battery a bunch of other stuff ⁓ And it going to be built in a honda factory, but a different honda factory from where the honda and acura models were going to be built and And when I you know as soon as I saw the news that honda was dropping their evs I sent a note to afila and said so What's the deal? ⁓ and ⁓ so yeah, I got it got a note back from the ⁓

⁓ from the PR person at a feeler ⁓ said see exactly say said sony honda mobility is aware of on the motors decision deposits eevee business in north america our parent companies group corporation in honda will hold discussions on how this affects SHM there is foreign therefore there is no more information we can speak to at this moment we are operating as usual they don't know where they're get motors from batteries

Nicole Wakelin (1:32:20) Totally as usual, nothing's changed folks, nothing to see here. Nothing to see here.

They were so proud. They are making solid state batteries at like a test line right now in Japan. What, what, what? I mean, I think maybe they could, they talked about how hard it was for them to do business in China. I mean, the press release is very much like, we messed up or we're not doing what we're doing. We're gonna take a price, know, all the bosses are gonna lose money. There was like...

There's a lot of like, really sorry type of thing. And I'm like, okay, but also you're like three quarters of the way there and you got spooked.

they're developed. You've tooled up the factories. You've got all the equipment.

Roberto Baldwin (1:33:06) I think if they just looked at the US market, which again, the US, it's a thunderdome over here right now in the United States when it comes to trying to figure out what you can and can't sell, if people can afford anything. But the fact that gas prices have gone through the roof and that people are looking up EVs means, Ford, Honda, everyone's of giving up their EV market and any.

to now, well, it Hyundai and GM, now it's Hyundai, GM and Toyota? Outside of like the luxury market, outside of the BMWs, which are great. The new BMW, people seem to really like the new iX3, I haven't driven it. The CLA is great, I drove the CLA EV, it's a great little EV. Outside of like luxury, like for regular people, it's essentially those three companies.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:02) Hyundai, Toyota, GM, and then slight? If this small company from Indiana, who hasn't even built a vehicle yet, it has 160,000 reservations, if they take off like gangbusters, everyone in the traditional auto world should feel embarrassed. Just, should, ugh. Because you could have done this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:30) But instead you're like, we're going to add AI to everything. no one wants that.

Nicole Wakelin (1:34:34) What is a strange, strange world in automotive? Like I feel like the last like five years or six, I guess it is now ever since COVID things went sideways. No one knew what to do. Everything went crazy. What are we going to build? What are we going to ship? What do we have? Wait, we're going to go with EVs. No, we're not. Wait, no, we are. No, we're going to go with self-driving. ⁓ it is. Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:34:50) ⁓ It's a lot of turmoil and it's turmoil

because leadership won't just stick to a plan. If they just said, this is what we're going to do and everyone, that's what we're going to do. And so I've asked Hyundai multiple times. I'm like, how do you get everyone just like, that's what we do. If we said, we're going to make EVs, everyone in the company is like, fine, we're making EVs. That's what we're going to do and we're going to keep doing it until we make money. That's it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:20) we're gonna do this thing. And then everyone else was sort of like, know, I know GM had issues with software and Volkswagen had issues with software and Ford was sort of, but Ford was sort of like, we're doing it. we're not, we're kind of, know Ford was always like one foot in and made two really great EVs. They weren't the Mach-E is a great EV. The F-150 Lightning is a great EV that truck people kind of don't want. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:35:43) but they were never like all in, you gotta go all in. And that's, I think that's what's happened. And right now it looks like Toyota has gone all in, GM's gone all in and they've sort of solved some of the issues they had with software early on.

And so the people are going all in, know, Hyundai's making money on their EVs. And I asked them like years ago, I'm like, how do you, you know, how do you rectify, know, losing money? And they're like, what are you talking about?

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:10) They were just like, they thought I was a crazy person for asking them that question. Of course we make money on our cars. What are you talking about?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:18) So the Hondas aren't the only EVs going away. There's also the Volvo X30.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:27) I feel sad by the, about the Volvo EX 30. It was such a, come on little car. Come on. You can do it. It, that's what I mean. It was coming out. wasn't right. And then they did, they did, I remember they did a launch in Spain for a bunch of people in Spain. You drove it. Then it was in the final three for an act toy. That's how good it did because we all drove it. They're like, yes, we're not going to have it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:36:31) It had such a weird history. it came, it was like, my God, everyone was so excited.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:55) Right. They're like, we can't,

we're not going to get it to you in time. So we're really sorry, but we have to withdraw at the last minute. We're like, okay. So I mean, it was that on track at one point that, and then it never, it never seemed to figure itself out. Like failure to launch. I'm sad about it. Yeah. Womp Womp.

reservations for this car. Like they were excited to get it. And then like, of course, you know, it was delayed. And then that person went out and bought something else. I think they bought a Chevy Bolt.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:26) And now, you know, I know I know there's an ex 30 cross country in the Detroit press fleet At least there was as of last Thursday because I saw it at the airport ⁓ And so I'm probably never gonna get a chance to drive that one

Roberto Baldwin (1:37:40) yeah, they probably took it out of the fleet.

they'll take it out because they're not going to even. Yeah, it's a goner.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:50) So ⁓ there is an EV that is launching, and that's the Rivian R2, but it's not going to be quite as ⁓ affordable, at least for a while yet, for anybody that wants one.

Nicole Wakelin (1:38:04) The pricing on this, that was the big promise of this. So it's disappointing because the big promise was Rivian is a premium vehicle. have to, know, the R1S and R1T are expensive vehicles, but they're premium vehicles. Really, it's just something you can afford for Rivian. And the R2, and I pulled it up just to verify, it starts just under $50,000. $48,490. That's not... I know. 2027.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:29) Yeah, but look at the date.

Roberto Baldwin (1:38:38) So they're doing the thing.

that it feels like a lot of companies did like five years ago where they bring out the very expensive EV. This is the one you can get. Lucid did this. Mercedes, you know, the first with EQS. Everyone had the big expensive EV.

That way people, you know, they would use that as like, the rich people would buy this and then we could use that money to build everything else. ⁓ But when you say, we're gonna have, would, this, yeah, this is sort of, this is a disappointment.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:12) So the one that is launching this spring is the R2 Performance, which has 330 miles of range, 656 horsepower, all-wheel drive, 0-60 3.6 seconds, and cost $58,000 before options.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:30) We don't have enough $60,000 EVs.

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:33) Exactly, because we don't have enough

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:37) I'm sure he's doing well to be honest. There's for what it is. People like the Rivians. I think this is cheaper than what they already have on the market.

to do well enough to really get Rivian to a scale that they need to be at to actually to make money?

Nicole Wakelin (1:39:53) That's the key. That's it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:39:53) the weird balance. Like if you had the inexpensive one, you came out with all of them, then you could say, okay, well, you know, people are gonna buy this. But if you only have the expensive version, you're gambling with it because now you're like, well, what happens if we can't sell enough because it's too expensive? What happens if we create the ID buzz of Rivians?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:13) Yeah. And, you know, it would, you know, it'd be one thing, you know, if you, you know, when, when you're launching, you know, if you want to stagger them a little bit, you know, to do one trim at a time, make sure you can build it right. Yeah. But, you know, make that like six weeks, eight weeks, you know, or, you know, couple, well, however long, you know, until you, until you start building them right, then add another trim and another trim. But.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:37) The premium, the mid-level trim, isn't coming till late this year at $54,000. And then the standard won't be till sometime in 2027. That's a rear wheel drive, single motor rear wheel drive for $48,500.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:55) Yeah, and then it's talked about fit to 45 and they, yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:41:00) Yeah, it's a little disappointing. I don't think anybody's going to be excited about this. Like not about the car, just about the price and how long it's going to take. Like I think everybody had higher hopes for it than like we'll see it sooner and it will be more affordable. It is neither.

happens is you end up with the situation that GM had with the Silverado, whereas it came out, the first version came out was $100,000. And guess what's in everyone's brain going forward for the Silverado? It's $100,000 truck. People come in up to me while I had the Silverado EV, was 70,000, 80,000 version, but they were like, you know, this truck costs $100,000. Like just.

I didn't ask them about this, they just came up to me and told me, they informed me that I had paid $100,000 for this car and I'm like, that's what happens when you come out with the high end version is that everyone has that price stuck in their brain forever now.

Yep. And it's, that's what you're perceived as forever. It's very hard to change that once a perception of your brand is set, very hard to change it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:04) Speaking of people buying the cars that we drive ⁓ on Sunday afternoon. I was outside doing something in the driveway and This guy pulls up to the end of the driveway and says hi and I turn around and look he's driving a blue Kia k4 hatchback and he introduced himself and You he said hi, you know, I live, you know on one of the streets one of the other streets in the neighborhood here ⁓

I've seen the cars you drive, I was curious what you do. So we chatted for a few minutes and he said, yeah, I saw the K4 hatchback you had a few weeks ago and I liked it, I stopped by and I looked at it and I liked it so much that I went and bought one. So he went to the local Kia dealer and bought a K4 hatchback.

the K4 is a good car and it's a thousand times better.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:54) And I didn't even have to get him a, I didn't even have to get him a discount code.

Nicole Wakelin (1:42:57) I have the K4 hatchback, actually it's what I got for this coming week, so I'll be talking about it next week. But that's what I have in my driver right now, and I was just driving it and thinking how much fun that little car is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:07) Yeah. All right. Let's move on. ⁓ So we talked a while back about somebody who bought a GM EV1. It's the only private owner of a GM EV1 outside of General Motors. And there was a video, there's a YouTube channel called the Questionable Garage. And they've had a series as they, know, this EV1 had been abandoned.

The windshield is broken and they've been tearing it apart, getting it ready to do a full restoration on it. And the latest two episodes that came out over the weekend, at the end of the third episode that came out, I don't know, three, four weeks ago, it ended with a message. Somebody walks into the scene and says, guys, we just got this letter. It's from Detroit.

They pull out the letter and it just says, we're watching. And it was obviously somebody had GM watching. And so the latest two episodes pick up from there and turns out GM was watching. They had actually been watching the auction for this thing and they did not intervene. They did not try to buy the car. They were just, they just wanted to see what would happen. And once they saw the videos of, you know,

doing, GM reached out and they're actually going to help these guys with, because they've got some stock of spare parts and whatever they have, they're going to help them with it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:46) Well, think it's, mean, they couldn't do, they would have to, if GM was gonna do anything with this, it had to be error on the side of helping them because there's a whole documentary about who killed the electric car, which does not paint GM in a good light at all. So yeah, so them helping them is great. mean, GM, again, this is a company that will ⁓ create an amazing car and then just kill it for no reason whatsoever.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:15) even if it's selling well, in favor of a truck. ⁓ So them working with these guys on this is great. ⁓ The bolt reviews seem to be really good. Everyone seems to like the bolt. They're like, it's the bolt, but better, yay. But it's only on sale for 18 months because GM is a weird company. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:37) because again, to the like folk, just say you're gonna do a thing and do the thing. Stop half-assing it. Stop it. I don't want GM to like decide, make the decision to the bolt because everyone on the internet got mad. We're gonna kill the bolt. Everyone on the internet gets mad. Okay, we're bringing it back.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:59) Yay. Here's the bolt. Everyone's like, it's great. Yeah, we're only going to have it for 18 months. Everyone on the internet gets mad again. ⁓ maybe we won't. Maybe we'll keep it around for a while if people buy it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:11) gee, yeah. Make the bolt into a pickup.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:17) ⁓ VW ⁓ has bringing out a second generation of the ID3 and they're going to start putting actual names on their EVs now. So the new ID, you know, they've got the ID2 Polo and the ID3 is now going to be called the Neo and it's getting a bunch of, a bunch of upgrades ⁓ which, you know, includes, you know, some of the stuff that they did on the ID2.

⁓ including, you know, more physical controls and all, all the good stuff, the stuff that we want.

Nicole Wakelin (1:46:57) I'm literally like, wait, wait, it looks cute. This seems cool. Wait, we're not getting it. Dang it, Sam. It's like dangling a carrot. Come on. ⁓ yeah, that would be nice if that if that rules out to other if they say, wait, we got to make this go everywhere. The ID form again.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:03) It's too cute for America. Too cute for America.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:08) But hopefully we will get these upgrades on the ID4.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:11) Yeah, we'll probably get to things.

want Volkswagen to succeed at EVs. I want them to just sort of like step back and just say, you know what, let's bring the buzz back, but at a reasonable price and let the rev, it's not going, it's not a waste. It's just they're not building it for a year for us. It's just a little break, probably for to be fixed and.

Nicole Wakelin (1:47:27) Well they say technically...

They're not just, technically it's just taking a year off. It's taking a sabbatical from being a car and then it'll be back.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:41) Yeah, you could probably, I'm waiting for one that come down to like 40, 35. I'm sure there's one.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:48) You might be able to find one for that price now.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:50) Yeah, so now maybe that's our next TV.

looking for, 45? No, no, I can't find one that cheap. I just looked, not near me.

buzz for sale. I see it keeps up 40, I see him like 47 is like, yeah, high 40s and then.

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:01) We're still got a little ways to go there.

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:15) the bass 48 8 8 48 8 no 48 8 86

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:15) That was the top trim, I think, wasn't it?

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:18) It's the rear wheel drive.

Yeah, there's one for 47, 632 near me. But it's one color. What's the point?

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:28) So it's not quite at year 45. Wait,

I found, no wait, fifth must wrong number, nevermind, 48. 48's the cheapest I can find when near me. That's it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:40) I'm sure they'll look. Yeah, we'll wait a little bit while. We'll wait a little while. We'll see. Is it one or two? All right, sorry. We're shopping for Robbie.

Nicole Wakelin (1:48:42) Right? 47! I found one for 47.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:53) so, ⁓ Cadillac is changing their naming convention again.

But actually, they're making it Remember a few years ago, they started putting numbers on the back of the vehicles that represented a rounded off version of the ⁓ torque in Newton meters.

Yeah, because, you know, Americans love Newton meters. If you're an engineer...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:17) yeah well let me know there were

no new there were no units on anyway it's just a number you know it's like on the i on the escalator iq is a thousand e what the hell does that mean

Roberto Baldwin (1:49:26) That doesn't make any sense at all.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:30) but they're dropping the numbers. So that's all.

Roberto Baldwin (1:49:34) Yay, good. That doesn't make, why? rearward optic 450E, what? I don't understand what's going on. 350, five, yeah, just enough. And only engineers love Newton meters. I have to put Newton meters on all my SAE articles. Cause engineers, yo.

Nicole Wakelin (1:49:50) Because engineers, exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:54) So ⁓ the ⁓ Federal Trade Commission, ⁓ which I find this really unusual given some of the other things that the current administration in Washington has done over the past year. But the FTC has sent out letters to 96 auto dealership groups about advertised prices that they have to

when they advertise prices for vehicles, they have to actually advertise, you know, what is it? What does this actually cost for someone? You know, including all the fees and everything except taxes, basically.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:33) Yeah. ⁓ you know, cause some of the stuff, you know, they will advertise the price of a car with various rebates that are only for certain groups. Like there might be something that is, only for retired teachers or only for the military or, you know, whoever it might be. And they'll advertise that price and then real fine print somewhere. It'll say only if you happen to fit in this, this particular group. It's like, come on.

if you've saved children from a fire, you can get this.

Nicole Wakelin (1:51:03) You save children from a fire.

uh... so hopefully hopefully that will not get uh... thrown by the wayside hopefully they will actually force dealers to to actually spend the money to uh... well not mean there's not even like that you have to spend money but just at the force them to actually advertise real prices but and the reason i find it strange because prior to the election the f t c had also put out uh... thing for airlines that they had to advertise the price including

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:37) all of the various fees for your airline tickets. And airlines pushed back against that. And once the new administration came in and said, no, no, you don't need to do that. That's adding too much cost. No, not really. But yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:50) What? Same cost. We just now

Roberto Baldwin (1:51:53) we know what the cost. ⁓ nevermind. I don't even.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:52:01) And let's see, and then finally, ⁓ one more. ⁓ The ⁓ Volvo or Volkswagen has apparently been doing component locking on components. I don't know if you've ever seen, this is something that Apple started doing some years ago for the components on their phones and tablets and stuff where when they build it,

the serial numbers for all the major components like the chip and the battery, screen, and various other components. That was all basically burned in and a chip in the device. And if you went to replace a component, ⁓ like if you tried to do it at a third party and they got a part, they took...

You know, they had another phone that was broken and just wanted to take the battery out of it or the screen off of it and put it on your phone. They couldn't do that because the components were locked together. You had to have a special tool from the manufacturer. And this is apparently Volkswagen's been doing this. ⁓ Yeah, very bad, bad, bad Volkswagen. You should not be doing this. Yep.

Nicole Wakelin (1:53:10) Ugh. Really? That's not stinks.

shouldn't have to fight with, you I should be able to fix the things that I pay for. If I bought a thing, I should be able to fix it, you know, within reason. Obviously, I'm not going to try to swap the battery on my own, but if I know a shop that can do it, I shouldn't have to pay some sort of weird ransom to Volkswagen to, for them to unlock something so that can stick a new battery pack on or change the steering wheel or it's just like every day.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:53:47) Yeah, I mean, some of these

things, they call it component protection, requires a three to $500 fee for salvage part installation, even if you do the work yourself. So you still have to, if you go and find a wrecked car, take the part off, put it on your car, you still have to take it to a dealer and pay this fee for them to unlock the part.

See? But yes. When I was, I remember in the 90s and in the 80s, know, old timers would come to like, I'd be working on my car and they're like, it's like, you can't even work on cars nowadays. Cause they had a little ECU that was essentially just took care of your, your ignition timing and your fuel mixture.

⁓ You can't even fork on cars anymore. I'm like, you're seeing me, I'm working on my car right now. And as years go on, people are like, you can't, you know, they've been saying this since the 70s, ever since.

Roberto Baldwin (1:54:38) you know, fuel injection, essentially. You can't even work on your cars anymore. And now the automakers are running like, you know what, maybe you can't, maybe we should make it so you can't work on your car anymore.

is basically what John Deere tried to do with their tractors.

you couldn't do anything with it. Your John Deere tractor was everything was locked. Yeah, it was a big the right to repair and ⁓ Was the farmers were trying to figure out hacks in order to do it and if they got caught they get black It was a huge huge mess and they sort of they finally were like, okay fine. You can fix your tractors

Nicole Wakelin (1:55:11) Go ahead, fix your own stinkin' tractor.

Roberto Baldwin (1:55:13) Yeah, I get I think they thought that no one would notice it's like well, it's just the farmers They're not no one's gonna listen to them with the farmers have to say

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:23) All right. Well, I think that's enough for today. ⁓ I've also got three interviews that I'm going to drop in here. We got Kurt Call, ⁓ who Nicole talked to. He's the chief designer on the Telluride.

⁓ Actually, if you've gotten to this point in the show, you will have already heard this because I'm actually going to stick that in after the section on the Telluride. And then ⁓ there's also a ⁓ conversation with Zach Walker, who was the chief engineer on the Lucid Cosmos.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:53) and I'll put that after the lucid section. And then at the end here, I will put a roundtable session that we did with Mark Winterhoff, the interim CEO.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:56:05) And with that, we will talk to you next time.

Well, what excites you most about the midsize butt?

Marc Winterhoff (1:56:24) Well, first of all, think that I can't wait to get this.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:57:46) That's been one of biggest challenges for Lucid up to this point is you get wonderful cars, but building them has been harder than it should be. it looks like you've really tried to address that.

Stephanie Brinley (1:58:55) at a different price point of course than gravity.

that you think that you might have to do and going to market and talking to a little bit of a different consumer.

talking to the person and what sort of changes do you think you'll need to make in that environment?

Marc Winterhoff (1:59:16) We did a lot of research on that.

I'm not talking that much anymore, only about range.

speaker-5 (2:00:20) Big pivot happening in the US like Ford and GMR.

Ed Kim (2:00:57) biggest one of the biggest stories ever.

Is there concern about competitors catching up and what can Lucid do to maintain that edge and advantage?

that we have is actually the system approach and the knowledge that we have built over the years.

Frankly, Chinese cars don't drive. Might have changed, the last time I checked, even the ones that have fantastic suspensions in there, they actually don't ride.

focusing very much on the digital experience, where they have a leg up.

speaker-5 (2:08:46) same bio obesity at the same time.

Can you speak to how long that gap is going to be? Are we looking at six months or are we at a year? It doesn't make sense to put people on the same planet at the same time.

Marc Winterhoff (2:10:10) because of the producing of North American...

Sam Abuelsamid (2:10:40) what what you have production going in arizona vehicles from saudi arabia ⁓

John Voelker (2:10:59) Production starts in Saudi before the end of the year. Cars on sale at some point early in 2027 in the U.S. possibly among other markets because North America's market view and then six months to a year production will start in North America for North American cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:12:03) I presume they have not been sourced for the cosmos.

Stephanie Brinley (2:13:04) themselves, the longer they sit, the more difficult it will be.

Sam Abuelsamid (2:13:08) You've made fundamental organizational changes in how you manufacture and also for this vehicle changed the design to help facilitate those organizations.

supply chain in Saudi given that they don't have an auto industry. There's not a lot in the region. ⁓

speaker-3 (2:14:03) By the way, there will be... ⁓

Marc Winterhoff (2:14:10) right next to the whole facility. But that's not everything.