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This is episode 430 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abul-Samid from Telemetry.

I'm Roberto Baldwin from SAE's Automotive Engineering Podcast and other SAE properties.

And I'm Perry Stern and I'm mainly freelance.

And Nicole will finally be back next week, so she can tell us all about her travels and

what the status is. We can get possibly a final status update on the wagon of your ass.

All right, let's see. Perry, let's start with you. What did you drive this week?

So this week I'm driving Honda Prolog, which I hadn't had a chance to try before.

So it's the dual-motor elite top of the line. And it's actually it's quite nice to drive.

I mean, I know it's basically a GM car. It shares the whole platform with the General Motors EVs,

but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And I just took it out in snow earlier today and

found that the all-season tires did just fine with the traction control was working over time

as was the all-wheel drive system. But I also did find that when you're in one pedal driving,

the ABS does kick in when you let off the throttle. If you let off too fast, it'll throw on ABS.

Or if it's icy, it doesn't matter how fast you let off. It just kicks in the ABS anyway,

which could be part of the reason that my battery was going quickly. But that and the fact

that it's about 20 degrees outside and I've got the heat going and all that. But that'll do it.

Yeah. But it's between the traction and stability control, it actually handled it just fine.

So if you have one of these and it's Michigan winter, unless it gets deep,

you could do pretty well. You throw winter tires on it and it would be unstoppable, I would

think. It is the pro log. It's not the amateur log. It's pro. Yes. This is the professional

log. It does have all the GM infotainment and everything else. The nice thing is that even

though it's an EB, it does have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which we know GM has been

slowly getting rid of. But it also has the Google Maps. It's the Google-based system.

So if you're an Android user and you want to log into everything, you can almost replicate

the Android Auto experience with the native system. So it's not a bad thing.

Yeah. And it's got a decent amount of ground clearance. On the Elite, it looks like you got

8.1 inches of ground clearance with Elite all-wheel drive. So that's,

if you've got some snow on the ground, as long as you've got less than 8 inches on the ground,

you should be able to get through. Okay. Yeah. And it did just fine.

And it's also with the EV, it's nice that it heats up so quickly inside.

I remote started it. By the time I had all the windows and everything cleared off,

it was nice and toasty inside. So nice added benefit. Heated seats, heated steering wheel,

all of that. And it's pretty comfortable to drive. The rear seat has got good room,

but the seat itself is a bit flat and stiff. So long trip in that. It's a GMC.

Yes. Yes. Front seats all very comfortable. And so the sticker on this one, well, this is a 25,

but if you convert it to a 26, because it's unchanged for 26,

the sticker on it is just about $60,000, $59,850. And that includes the extra scarlet red metallic

paint. Because you got to have that. Yeah, you know, that's, this has been my main problem

with the prologue. You know, the prologue drives really nice. I actually like the design,

the exterior design, I think it's a nice clean look. But it's kind of pricey,

you know, it's $60,000 for that elite. And, you know, when I first drove it, you know,

when I first got into it, you immediately notice that it's all hard plastics.

It is. It doesn't, it doesn't look premium. I mean, it's nicely laid out, you know,

everything's functional, it works well. But it looks kind of cheap. And for $60,000,

I find it hard to make the case for that. That's when you have something you buy a car

and then have to sell the car after you buy the car from another car company.

Yeah. I mean, I'd agree. It's not like it's unattractive inside,

but it is a lot of plastic if you, you know, if just a simple, you know, leather padded trim

along all the hard plastic on the dash and center console, because the center console

is big. I mean, it's, and it's got this big space for length, you know, for storing items.

It also has the wireless charger there, but if it is a lot of dark black plastic,

which isn't necessarily attractive. Yeah. And, you know, especially when you compare it to other

Honda vehicles, you know, that are considerably more affordable, it just, it doesn't come across

great. Yeah. They're paying a lot of money for 400 volts as well. Yeah.

Yeah. But you do get a 300 horsepower all wheel drive vehicle and it's got, this is the top of the

elite gets the lowest range. So I think EPA range is about 283, which is what I'm showing,

which is what I'm showing on the, when I've had a full charge. So it's, it does,

it at least seemed to be matching up. But as I mentioned, you know, it's this particular

tank of charge. Exactly. It's probably not going to go as far just because I can already

see my average use is about 1.7, 1.8 kilometer or miles per kilometer, miles per kilowatt hour,

sorry. And that's not going to equate to 283 miles. No. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, the prologue is an interesting combination for, for Honda because it's, it's a

mix of parts from the Blazer and the Equinox. So it's got the smaller battery from the Equinox,

but the long wheelbase of the Blazer, you know, so it's actually the same size as the Blazer EV,

whereas the Equinox is a little bit smaller. And so the Equinox EV gets a smaller battery

because it's shorter wheelbase, they can't fit the 100 kilowatt hour battery. So they go with a

10 module, I think it's, I think it works out to about 85 kilowatt hours. And so you get a little

bit less range than you might get out of the Blazer. But it's, it's also a bit lighter than a Blazer.

And so I think, you know, in most ways, it's a pretty good compromise,

but it's just that, that price point, it's just kind of hard to swallow.

Yeah, especially when you look at what else is out there, you know, what else is available.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's almost become expected that if you're buying an EV,

it's going to be, you know, it's going to be expensive.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's,

Well, it doesn't have to be, you know, look at the leaf.

The Ionic 5, you know, price is down to 35,000 starting price. The Equinox, well the

Equinox EV, you know, the Equinox EV starts at 30, I think 36 now for a model you're 26.

Is it really that low now?

Yeah. Yeah. The base, the base model starts at 36 and a loaded Equinox EV, I think, you know,

is under, under 50,000. I think it's about 48,000 for, if you get with pretty much all the options.

So, you know, and you're getting the same battery, the same motors as this, you know,

the only difference is it's, it's slightly smaller, but it's still, you know,

very roomy for its size.

Definitely. Well, the ProLoc, so the base price of the EX, which is the base model, that's a single

motor, that's 47.4 without destination. And so, you know, you're going to have a bit more range,

but you're not going to have all wheel drive. They have a reported 308 mile range on that one.

So, but obviously it's not going to be any nicer inside as the lesser model.

So, if, if that's what's, you know, what's important to you.

So, an Equinox EV RS with all wheel drive goes for 45,895. And let's see, if you...

So, is that the base, is that base level trim or is that?

That's the, that's the top trim level. So, there's the,

Okay, top trim.

LT1, LT2, and the, the, or LT1, LT2, LT, and the RS trims.

And let's see, if you add the active safety package that includes supercruise, that's $3,300 bucks.

Which can't get on ProLoc.

You cannot get that on ProLoc. And then, if you, you know, if you want the 19 kilowatt

charger, that's another $1295. But, you know, you don't really need that at home.

You know, for this size of battery, you, you know, the, the 11 kilowatt charger that's

standard is more than adequate. You know, if you want the fancy,

you know, bow tie, pedal light, puddle lights, that's another $1550.

And the trailer package is $1495. So, you know, that's, that's most of the,

the most expensive stuff. Oh, and if you want the dual pane power sunroof, that's another $1,500.

So, all in, you know, that's, that's $56,290.

Okay, so it's, so that's still less than the top of the line ProLoc.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I can say, if you, if you want to get it more, does the ProLoc have the,

the glass roof? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it does.

So, if you, if you drop the, the super cruise package, you know, that gets you down to $53,000,

including destination. And that, you know, that, that's pretty equivalent.

Yeah. You know, that's, that's about $7,000 less.

That's a big difference.

Yeah. Now, you know, are you willing to pay $7,000 to get carplay?

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's basically, that's the main thing you're getting with the,

with the Honda is carplay. You also, you also get a Honda badge,

which for some people, they don't want to be bad. They want a Honda badge.

Yep. Yeah.

So it's, they'll pay the premium for a Honda badge.

Right. Because not having to deal with a Chevrolet dealer.

Well, there's that. So, yeah, it's, there's clearly a market for them,

because they seem to be selling pretty well, relatively speaking. So,

I think it really, yeah, it pushed Honda to like sort of, oh yeah, we should make our own EV.

Yeah. And, you know, Honda does have its own EVs coming out next year.

You know, they've got the Acura RSX that's launching first in Q1.

And then the Honda Zero SUV is coming probably late summer,

and then the Saloon in early 27. So, and once the Zero SUV arrives, that's probably gonna,

you know, they're probably gonna drop the Prologue at that point.

Right. I mean, they've already dropped ZDX, which is the Acura version. So,

yeah. That didn't, that didn't last long.

No. All right.

So, there it is. Any other thoughts on the Prologue?

No. I mean, it's, it's, I'm taking a road trip in it tomorrow. So, that should be

interesting to see how it does for a 200 mile drive with a 280 mile range. So,

may do some fast charging along the way. And there's, there's an electrify America station

in Portage near Kalamazoo. It's not far off the freeway.

I saw that. There's actually, there's a slew of them all, you know, all along the

trail, the track. Yeah. Once you get past that EA station,

though, most of the other ones that are like out West Michigan area there are,

they're like 50 kilowatt chargers. So, they're DC chargers, but they're not fast.

So, you might want to top off at that EA station.

Yeah. I saw, I think, I don't know if that's the one or not. There's one that's about

140 miles from here. That's, I think that's the one. Yeah. It's at a Meyer grocery store. It's

right next to it. It's right next to a Tesla supercharger, but it's, it shows at least on

electrify America's site that it's a 350 kilowatt charger. So, so we'll, we'll see if it works.

You know, I've, I've had hit and miss experience when I've done road trips with

EVs and counted on a charger that didn't work. So, we'll see what happens.

It'll be fine.

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All right. Well, I also had a GM developed EV this week. She still have it in the driveway.

I have the 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss.

So it's practically the same car.

Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

Totally the same.

Well, I mean, the cells in the battery pack are the same. It's just a lot more of them.

All of the cells in the battery pack.

About two and a half times as many almost. And the battery pack weighs about 3,000 pounds.

So it's almost 1,000 pounds more than my Miata, just for the battery pack.

But for Model Year 26, Chevy realigned the Silverado EV lineup a little bit.

So when they launched Silverado EV, they launched initially with just the work truck

and selling those to fleets. And then a little while after that, they added the RST trim,

which is the really expensive and the luxury trim level with big 24-inch wheels,

air spring suspension, all the goodies on there for like $95,000.

And so what they've done is because GMC, because they don't sell enough of these

to justify so many different variations of roughly the same thing, GMC has the Sierra EV Denali

and the Denali Ultimate, I think, that was equivalent to what the Silverado RST was.

So they dropped the RST for this year, but they added in a mid-level LT trim

and also the Trail Boss, which is a more off-road oriented version.

So the Trail Boss has got a couple-inch lift compared to the other Silverados.

It's on 18-inch wheels with big all-terrain tires that have sidewall and everything,

which is nice. It's a nice change from the skinny little tires that were on the RST

and the 24-hurst with no sidewall, which makes them very susceptible to damage from potholes.

On the Trail Boss, you get the good all-terrain tires that are much more suitable for driving

on Michigan roads, especially in the wintertime. I've been driving it this week.

We've had a bunch of snow this week. And the one that I've got also has the four-wheel

steering. So you can turn off the four-wheel steering if you don't like it,

but I'm not sure why you would, because I took it in a parking lot and did a couple of circles

with four-wheel steering on and off and looked at the difference in the turning radius.

It's about an eight-foot difference in the turning diameter between four-wheel steering on

or off. And on a big truck like that, it's like, just turn on the four-wheel steering and leave it.

It's so much better, so much easier to maneuver the thing on this big truck.

Yeah. Or we're still using a game changer for big vehicles.

Yeah, absolutely. And they also, this year, they added Sidewinder Mode,

which is Chevy's branding for when you're off-road, having the wheels turning in phase.

So it's equivalent of what Hummer calls their Crab Walk Mode. So all the wheels turn in the same

direction. Robbie's doing little crab things. I'm doing crab heads, crab people.

I'm still waiting to see a situation where that really does actually make a difference.

Unless you're taking it off-road, there may be a few situations off-road where it might be

helpful. But for the most part, no, it's not actually. You kind of have to practice with it,

because it's unnerving and a little difficult to control. Yeah.

It feels like the truck is sliding off a hill. If you've ever been off-roading with like,

you know, silt or mud or snow or ice, and the trail is a little off-camber,

and you feel the vehicle sliding off-road, that's what it feels like when you're driving.

Yeah, pretty much. So it'd be interesting to be it, if you're in that situation where it's sliding,

you put it in phase, turning the other direction, would it balance itself out?

You just keep going, you just keep sliding slowly up the hill, I guess. I hope? Fingers crossed.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's more of a gimmick than anything else. Most people are

never going to, it's one of those things, you know, where you show it off to your friends

once or twice, and then you never touch, you never touch that button on the touchscreen

again. Yeah. Like the G-turn makes more sense, and even that's goofy. Yeah. Yeah. You're like,

the G-turn is a lot more fun, too. So on the trail boss, you can get the trail boss

two different ways with either the 20-module battery pack or the 24-module battery pack,

and I had the spec sheet open here, and I closed it. 205 and 170?

Yeah, approximately. That's the thing, yeah. GM doesn't actually list the capacity in kilowatt

hours, but you know, it's, people have figured it out. Someone told me 218 at GM,

but maybe that was a different. The gross capacity is actually somewhere around 225.

Yeah. Why? I've spoken to them numerous times about it, and they've always, they're like,

well, they talk around why they don't tell us the kilowatt hours, but none of the

reasons ever made sense. I'm like, everyone else does it. I have to share this with my readers.

I'm like, well, you know, every battery pack is a little different. I'm like, yeah, but it's

not like different by like 30%. Come on, just give me a number.

So they offer three different battery pack sizes. Yeah. Yeah, they offer three different

battery pack sizes across the Silverado EV lineup, the standard extended and the max.

The standard is a 14-module pack, and the work truck, it gives you 286 miles of range,

or an ALT, it's 283. The trail boss is only available with the extended or max battery packs.

The extended battery pack is rated at 410 miles of range. The max pack is 478 miles of range.

And the starting MSRP for the trail boss is $88,695. The base work truck starts at $54,895.

So it goes from about $55,000. So you can get a Silverado EV work truck with similar range

to the prologue that you're driving for about $5,000 less. And it's got a lot more payload and a lot

more passenger capacity. You can put stuff in the bed. You can put lots of mulch in the bed,

more mulch than you can use as a truck. You can use it as a truck. You can do truck fangs.

Yeah. The trail boss, like I said, is the more off-road oriented one. It loses a bit of

range relative to the ALT because it sits a little bit taller and it's all terrain tires.

It's got recovery hooks, but you might have a hard time. If you were taking it off-road and

you got stuck, you might have a hard time getting it out. You'd have to find,

you'd have to get a really big vehicle to tow it out of a mud pit that you're stuck in.

Because I took this thing to Wayscales yesterday, 8,760 pounds empty.

That's a lot of mass. Yeah, that's over 2,000 pounds more than an F-150 Lightning Platinum.

Jeez. That's the, you know, mud loves mass too. So yeah,

you just see like a dinosaur sliding into the amber. So, you know,

like I said, the one I've got is rated at 478 miles of range. It's been cold this week. We had a couple

of days where the temperature got, you know, actually one morning it was minus two, I think

on Wednesday morning or something this week. It was minus two or one of the days. So it's

been cold. So I've been using the heat and, you know, nice thing is you've got the quote,

unquote remote start button, you know, but unlike the old days, it doesn't actually fire up the engine.

It just powers everything up and turns on the heater and everything. So use the,

use the remote start to defrost it in the morning and get the cabin warmed up.

So it's been averaging about 1.5 miles per kilowatt hour this week. That's pretty good,

to be honest. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you're sort of preload, you're, you know,

you're warming up the battery when you start it up. So that's one of the nice things about

the sort of remote start is that it gets the, it warms up the battery before you start driving.

So you're using the grid in order to precondition the battery before you start rolling around. So

that's nice. Yeah, except I didn't have it plugged in. Oh, never mind then. So it's just

using the battery. So it's just using the battery. Anyway, if you're doing this,

if you should plug it in. Generally, you know, if you're doing this at home,

you know, you're gonna have it plugged in, you can use the grid powered, you know,

so you're not draining the battery. So that contributed to the relatively more modest

efficiency that I've had this week. Yeah, and that works out to pretty good for a little over

300 miles of range. Yeah. In cold, cold weather. You know, that's that's actually fine.

That's good. And you know, with the size of battery that's in this thing, it will actually

tow unlike other electric trucks. You know, this this thing will tow up to 12 and a half thousand

pounds. And it will actually tow that's pretty significant difference. I don't have a trailer,

I didn't have any to test to tow it with or to tow with it. But when the guys at TFL had one

couple of years ago, when it first came out, they had a Silverado EV work truck,

which has the same battery in there. And they were towing a big box trailer, which is, you know,

not particularly aerodynamic. Which is just a box. Yeah, a box with with a vehicle in the back. So

they were towing, you know, about 9500 pounds. And, you know, they went 232 miles with it,

which is, you know, a lot more than you can do with a lightning or with a cyber truck

towing a similar trailer. It's it's about more more than twice as far as you would get with the same

with the same trailer with those other vehicles. So it actually can tow

pretty significant different distances, just because of the size of the battery. Of course,

you pay for that, you know, and, you know, a big heavy battery and, and, you know, an expensive

truck. Like I said, you know, this thing's almost $89,000 before you add any options to it.

You know, and that does include GM does include the price does include the destination charge

and the pricing. But the the one let's see the one that I have had just a few options that had

a hard folding tonneau cover, which is $1850 for for a tonneau cover $1800 glass roof.

And the game day tailgate package, which, you know, so it's got the fancy multi flex tailgate that

can fold in six different ways. And part of that, it's got a package of speakers built into the

part of the tailgate. So if you're using it for a tailgate party, you can blast the sound out

from from the tailgate. And, and then 250 bucks for floor mats and, and 150 bucks for the roof

sunshade. So driving this thing around, you know, all told, it came to $93,940.

Which is by the way, if the regular public still thinks this vehicle starts at $100,000.

When I had this Silverado, I had a man come up to me and say, did you buy this? I'm like,

no, I'm a blah, blah, blah, you know, I tell him the whole spiel. He's like, yeah,

because these things started $100,000 and then walked away. And I was like,

that's a, yeah, they, GM's kind of sort of dropped the ball about.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can get, like I said, you can get that work truck for $55,000.

And, you know, the LT, which is a little, little better equipped than the work truck,

starts at 63. Of course, actually, those prices are actually going to be slightly higher now because

destination charges have changed since this was published. The Minroni I've got shows the

destination charge that is now out of date. Do you remember, guys, remember what the destination

charge is for full size trucks now? 18? I was going to say close to two, isn't it?

Uh, no, not close to two anymore. When this was published. No, it was at 22.

The Minroni says $2,095. Oh, 21. It's now $2,595. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, they, they raised all. $1,000 more than my first car. Yeah.

It's a destination charge. And this year, they have raised the destination charges on the

full size trucks and SUVs twice since the beginning of the year. They went from $1,995 to $2,095 and then

to $2,595 sometime around September. Wow. So they're hiding part of the tariff costs in the

destination charge. Huh? Guess you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. Again, you know, to their

credit, you know, I do give GM credit for the prices that they advertise for their vehicles

includes the destination charge. So you don't get any surprises. That's good. Yeah. They,

they're pretty much the only automaker that does that. Yeah. I mean, that's, that feels, I, the

pushing the prices up via the, the destination is not great, but at least they're saying, hey,

it's cost is right. As opposed to sort of hiding it and you're like, oh, I wonder how much this

is. Oh, dear. Yeah. So, you know, like you, like you said, Perry, the Silverado doesn't have any

smartphone projection. So no Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, it's just got the Google built-in

services. But GM gives you eight years of connectivity for that when you buy their EVs.

So you'll still have navigation and Google Assistant and stuff for at least eight years.

But, you know, it, it works pretty well. You know, and the Supercruise actually works works really well.

On Wednesday night, when I was coming back from Nashville, driving home, you know, it was dark,

the road was kind of wet and slick and it was snowing a bit when we arrived. And I put on

the Supercruise and, you know, it had no problem at all, driving hands-free from the airport back to

the exit from my house off the interstate. So. I was curious to see how it handled since I was

driving, I was driving a Honda Civic without any Supercruise or anything at that point.

Yeah. In that same, in that same weather.

You know, and, and, you know, I mean, the upside to weighing almost 9,000 pounds is it's

somewhat more impervious to crosswinds. True. It's not quite as sensitive to crosswinds.

There's some silver lining for you.

You know, aside from the lack of smartphone projection, the, the only other major complaint

I've got on this thing is I have noticed a little bit of a squeak coming from the, the

headline, you know, the, the top of the roof area in front of me where, I think, where the glass is

joining the steel, you know, going over some bumpier surfaces. There's a little bit of a squeak there,

which is not particularly confidence inspiring. Yeah.

All that mass. Something's gotta.

Yeah, gotta give somewhere. So, you know, other, other than that, you know, it's, it's a,

you know, for a full size truck, you know, it's very roomy. It's, you know, 725 horsepower.

It's stupidly fast. You know, when you enable the wide open watts mode, it does still

scramble a bit. You know, it's got some torque steer. And, you know, I haven't, I've only tried

it once a few days ago in between periods of snow when we had some dry pavement

to work with. And I tried it and, you know, just as when I drove the RST a couple of years ago,

you know, it does tend to crab back and forth a little bit when you're doing full throttle acceleration.

But again, you know, that's not something you're going to use most of the time.

So it's, it's, it's probably arguably too fast for what it is. But, you know, that helps,

that certainly helps in terms of towing capabilities. And, you know, it's, it's comfortable to drive.

It's just big, you know, and, you know, you, you know, you definitely want to work on your

parallel parking skills before you get something like this.

We get the slidey thing. You get the,

I was going to say, can it just like go sideways into the parking spot?

Yeah, sort of.

Yeah.

You still need a lot of space for, I mean, you know, this thing is actually the same. It's not

large, it's not any larger than a gas Silverado. So it's, it's like within an inch or two on all

the major dimensions of a gas Silverado. It's just, it's just electric. And it does, this one

does have the midgate. So, you know, if you need to carry longer stuff, you know, you can put

down that fancy tailgate and flip up the little stopper at the end there and put down the midgate.

And you can carry stuff almost 11 feet long inside.

Which is pretty cool. If you're building like a Cadio or some other cat related

like outdoor thing like me.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a pretty common use for us. Pick up truck.

I, I, so I bought eight foot long, like one, two by twos. And what I drew,

I put it in the BRZ. And so you can, so if you put them from the driver's side rear corner

out the window of the passenger side and you make sure you wrap your side mirror,

you're totally fine. That'll fit in your car.

And you can also do jousting on the way home.

Yeah, you can joust. I didn't, I did not get on the freeway driving home from,

from that trip to the hardware store. That was the one I'm like,

I should take the side streets.

Yeah, good call.

But you can do it. Or you can buy a giant Silverado.

Yeah. And you could carry the, you know, the BRZ in the back of it.

Yeah, I could put my BRZ in the back. I can fill the BRZ with wood,

put the BRZ in the back.

There you go.

All right, let's move on.

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So Perry and I were both in Nashville this week, actually more precisely in Franklin, Tennessee

with Nissan. Nissan brought a bunch of people down to drive a whole bunch of stuff,

some of which we can talk about, others we can't talk about entirely yet.

One that we can't talk about yet is the 2026 Pathfinder.

We can't talk about driving impressions, but there's one thing I do want to talk about

with the Pathfinder. It's got a mid-cycle update for this year.

And the Pathfinder and the Murano for 2026 are the first vehicles to get an updated

wireless charging system that has support for Qi2. So Qi has been the industry standard for

wireless charging of small devices like phones. And the Qi2 standard that they updated

basically incorporated a few years ago, Apple introduced what they call MagSafe charging

on the iPhone. And they contributed that technology to the Qi standard to make Qi2.

So what that means is it includes a magnet in there. So one of the complaints many of us have had

about wireless charging pads in cars is that, you know, the phones are all the phones are

different sizes and somehow you got to come up with a charging pad that fits all of them. But

if the charging, if your phone is smaller than the charging pad, when you go around

corners and stuff, the phone slides around and then it doesn't charge.

This is how I left my phone in the EV6 GT while drifting.

So it's just gone. And then I didn't realize it. And then an hour later, I'm like, uh-oh.

So and another complaint that, you know, is common with wireless charging pads in cars is

after a few minutes on the charging pad, you get a message popping up on the screen saying,

please remove your phone from the charging pad because it's too warm because it heats up.

And so the Qi2 pad in the Pathfinder and in the Morano basically gives you a little circular island

on the charging pad. And it's got the magnets in there. And so you put your phone on there

and it holds your phone in place and it'll charge now at up to 15 watts. And it's got a fan

built into the pad underneath there. So it draws away the hot air. So it keeps your phone from

overheating. Which is a great option unless you happen to have an Android phone without a

case that will actually stick to the magnet in which case you cannot use the wireless charger

at all because there's no place to put your phone. If you buy a new Google Pixel 10, it's got

support for Qi2. And the newer Samsung phones do as well. Or no, the Samsung don't yet.

The answer is, Perry, buy a new phone for your drive programs. That's what I'm gathering.

Yes. Or at least a new case. A new case would do it. But it was, you know, I imagine there

are plenty of people out there that have older phones that don't have that. And

where the other one charged slowly and occasionally overheated,

I could still use it. And I wasn't able to use this one at all. So that was a bit frustrating for

me. But I know that, you know, you have to look forward. And that's the future and all that

stuff. But it still was annoying. You need to be a better consumer. That's the only reason

we're alive, Perry. Come on. You're not spending enough money, Perry. You're not spending.

Clearly. Clearly. You've got to support the economy. Yes. I need to make more to spend

more. You've got to, you've got to, no, no, debt. Come on. Make more. That's the American way. You're

asking too much. No. Yeah. Clearly. Frank kept those credit card bills in. You'll be fine.

What could go wrong? Yeah, exactly. So I didn't actually get to try out the wireless charging

in the Pathfinder, but I understand that it does work well. Yeah, it worked perfectly. So

it was flawless. So I definitely liked that in the Pathfinder. Then we also got to drive the Nissan

Kashkai. So the Kashkai is a crossover that you cannot buy in North America, at least not currently.

The previous generation Kashkai was sold here for several years as the Rogue Sport.

And the current generation is not sold here. It's sold in Asia and in Europe.

It's based on the same platform as the Rogue, but it's a little bit smaller. But the reason why Nissan

brought over a few Kashkais is because they wanted to give us a preview of what is coming for model

year 2026. Sorry, 2027. 2027. Coming out in 2026 on the Rogue, because the Rogue is being

redesigned for next year. And, you know, one of the one of the challenges for the Rogue today

is they don't offer any sort of hybrid option. And most of the top selling vehicles in this segment,

like the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, the Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, they all offer at

least hybrids and in some cases plug-in hybrids as well. And so they next year Nissan is bringing

their e-power hybrid system, which has been available in Japan and some other markets

for several years. They're bringing it to the US market. And there's third generation of this

system. And it's kind of a unique system. It's a series hybrid. So the engine never drives the

wheels. The engine is completely disconnected from the wheels. It just drives a generator.

And all of the vehicle motion is provided by an electric motor and about a 2.1 kilowatt

hour battery pack. They brought over the Kashkai from Europe with the e-power system.

We both got a chance to drive it. What did you think, Perry? And I think you've driven

the e-power as well, right, Robbie in Japan? I did. I wasn't sure if I could talk about

until just now. Okay. We'll talk. You can talk about it. It's been like months of like,

can I talk about the Kashkai with e-power? It's a unique idea because you're basically,

you're driving an EV, but as you give it more throttle, you still have an engine that's coming

on to add more power to the batteries. And so it's, but you have that smooth power delivery

that you get with an EV. And obviously, you know, with the auto shutoff of engines

right now, it's seamless in that because the engine isn't actually driving anything. It's just

providing power. So if you're just cruising at a relatively smooth speed, the engine can shut off

and it comes on briefly as it needs to, just like you would expect of a hybrid.

But you still get that electric car performance. And they're saying that when the road comes here,

it will be a dual motor. So we'll have all-wheel drive. And they also said that,

you know, at least initially, that will be the exclusive powertrain. So it won't come with a

conventional gas engine driving the wheels, at least initially. So I think for consumers,

though, I don't know if you didn't tell somebody that it's doing it, you know,

that the gas engine's not driving the wheels. I think a lot of people wouldn't even know.

I think they would just think, this car is really smooth.

Yeah. I think that's the big, because we drove, when in Japan, we drove the old E-power system

and then the new P-power system and the cash cars. And it was like, oh, this is really nice.

It just feels like a much nicer driving experience. And yeah, like you said,

average person wouldn't realize that it's, you know, series and it's only electric motors

going. They will think, oh, this is really smooth. It feels premium as a hype. And that's

one of the nice things about, you know, any sort of electric motor powering the wheels is that it

always feels a little bit more premium than what people are used to with the gas car.

Yeah. And it's, you know, in sport mode, it's 205 horsepower, or 203 horsepower, I think,

and about 190 or so in standard mode. And, you know, because it's, you know, all electric drive,

you know, the engine doesn't have to work as hard. And one of the things that they did

with this third gen E-power, they did a bunch of things with the third gen E-power,

when they cut the cost of the system by about 30% compared to the previous version,

because they've done a lot more integration and they're using shared components

with their EVs. So there's a lot of parts from the Leaf and the Aria that are also in the E-power

system, like the power electronics are the same. You get this basically the same motor

and the reducer gear from the motor. So there's a lot of shared componentry. So that helped

them cut the cost pretty substantially. And because the electric motor is providing all

the propulsion, the engine doesn't have to work as hard, even under, like, maximum acceleration.

You know, you do hear the engine a bit, but it's not, it's a lot quieter than if you do the same

thing in a RAV4 hybrid. In a RAV4, you hear that engine. Yeah. This, it's not very obtrusive at

all. Yeah, they did some really cool stuff with packaging, like you said, and using shared

components. They were very proud of it when we were in Japan. And again, I wasn't sure if

I could talk about that until now. Yeah. There were so many crazy, the embargo on that Japan trip

was all over the place. So I'm happy I can talk about it now. It's interesting that it's not a

plug-in, at least initially, because I don't think at least that I can remember there's ever

been a series of hybrid sold, at least in America, that didn't plug in. So it is something

pretty unique. Yeah, no. Not a pure series hybrid. No. I mean, like Volt, Volt, you know,

I know there was some odd circumstances where the engine could drive the wheels,

but you also plugged it in. So that was, you know, different than this. I see.

Just had a generator. Yeah. So, you know, one of the challenges with a series hybrid,

because you're going, you've got an engine that's driving a generator,

that generator is producing alternating current. The battery store is direct current. So you have

to convert that alternating current to direct current for the battery. And then it goes back

through another inverter to back to alternating current for the drive motor. So you're changing

between AC and DC twice in there. And there's some inherent losses associated with that.

And under most conditions, it's pretty small. You know, under most driving conditions, it's

fine. You know, and you're still going to be better off overall. But at higher speeds,

those losses start to build up a bit. And so, you know, vehicles like the Honda hybrid system

is mostly mostly operates as a series hybrid, except at higher speeds at highway speeds, there's

a clutch that engages the engine to drive the wheels directly and blend in with the electric

power. And the Volt was the same way. This one does not do that. There's no clutch,

there's no mechanism at all for the wheels to drive the or for the motor, the engine to drive the

wheels. But what what Nissan has done is for this, this generation, they've actually gone with a

little bit larger battery. So because, you know, typically, you know, the demand as you're

driving down the road, the power demand cycles up and down a little bit. And they did some clever

things with calibration as typically a hybrid is somewhere between one and one and a half kilowatt

hour battery. This on the cash guy, it's 2.1. And on the road, because it's going to be all wheel

drive, it might actually even be a little bit larger than that. But it's still fairly, fairly

small. But it's enough that they don't have to they can make the overall system more efficient

by taking advantage of regenerative more regenerative braking. And that's that's one of the interesting

things about the the power is it does have the e pedal mode. So you basically have one pedal driving

just like in a leaf or an aria, except it doesn't bring it all the way to a stop,

which is a whole it's a whole thing that we've we've been hassling Nissan about this

here about, you know, since the since the aria came out, like, wait, what, you you sort of

you popularize this, this feature. And now you're not doing it. You're not even giving us an option.

So, so yeah, they're, you know, they're, they're estimating that the rogue

with e power, and that's this is going to be all wheel drive, as Perry said,

at launch, all wheel drive only. And then they'll probably add a front drive version at some

point, and also add a gas engine option. But the they estimate that the all wheel drive rogue

with e power is going to get around 40 miles per gallon, which is actually a little bit better

as 40 miles per gallon combined, which is a little bit better than what you currently get

with the RAV four and CRV all wheel drive hybrids, which are about 38 miles per gallon.

So, you know, I think, you know, I'm really excited to drive it, drive the new rogue

with with the system. I think, you know, I think I think people are going to really like this.

Yeah, it would be interesting to see how they market it, since it is something

so different yet. For the average consumer, it drives exactly like everything else that they

have. I mean, not that it doesn't drive us. But there's nothing else they have to do

different. It drives more like an EV. It does. You know, and better than most hybrids.

But there's no, there's nothing that I mean, you still fill it up with gas, you don't have

to plug it in. So for most consumers, it's just like buying any other hybrid.

But a lot more efficient. Yes. So it'll be interesting to see how much

Nissan markets the fact that this is something completely different, or just that it's

it's more efficient, it's quieter, it's smoother, which it is.

And then I can just say it gets better gas mileage.

Really, that's what comes out. The new Nissan, it gets better gas mileage,

and it's smooth like butter. That's it. That's your whole thing. There you go.

If you get too far in the weeds, sometimes people get a little, yeah.

It's like, if you try it, our rogue with the 1.5 liter turbo,

try this one, you'll like it a lot better. Exactly.

It's a lot more efficient. It's quieter.

Yeah, no, I think, I think, I think it'll, I think it'll probably do pretty well.

And then, you know, during the presentation we had before we went out to drive,

Tiago Castro, who's the VP of Infinity Americas, got up to talk a little bit about

Infiniti's future plans. And, you know, one of the things he talked about,

you know, the infinity is going to have four new models over the next four year each over

each year, a new model each year for the next four years,

starting with the QX65, middle of 2026, 2027, they're launching a new hybrid crossover

based on the rogue. We were shown some teaser images, but we were not allowed to take any

pictures of it. We had to cover, you know, get our cameras and everything covered up.

But, you know, that's, they're gonna have a rogue based crossover with e-power.

And that, if anything, is likely to be the first one with e-power to have a larger battery and a

plug. You know, I think, I think if they, if they, if they do that, you know, that's probably where

it'll show up first is in that vehicle before it shows up in a rogue. Yeah. All right, then

we also got to drive the rogue plug-in hybrid, which we briefly talked about a

little bit a couple of weeks ago when they, when they released images of it. And pretty much everybody

is calling this thing the rogue lander because it's basically a Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid

with Nissan badges on it. Yeah, I mean, they barely hit the design. I mean, it's, it looks

exactly the same. And I think that they're referring to it as a bridge product that will,

you know, hold the space as a plug-in hybrid until they can come out with their own.

But Stopgap bridge, whatever you want to call it, it's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, over dinner, the night before we drove, you know, one of the folks from,

from Nissan was saying, you know, the reason why they're doing this, because the thing is,

this is going to be a short-term play for them. You know, because the rogue e-power is coming

out next year. And this will probably only be for one model a year, maybe two, depending on how the

demand goes for it. But he said, you know, the reason why they're doing it now, instead of just

waiting for the rogue hybrid, is they found that from their research, you know, looking at the,

you know, when people were doing searches for crossovers, they were, you know,

if they just searched for compact crossover, you know, they would see rogue and CRV and RAV4 and all

the others. But if they searched for most fuel efficient crossover, they, you know, they would

get all of the hybrids, and the rogue would immediately not, not even show up, because,

you know, it didn't have, it didn't have any kind of hybrid option. And so they, you know,

they were losing a lot of sales because they didn't have this hybrid option. And by doing this,

by just taking the Outlander plug-in, putting Nissan badges on it, there's no engineering cost

for Nissan, you know, except for however much it costs to make a new mold for the upper grille

with the Nissan logo on it instead of a Mitsubishi logo. And they have, you know, they will at

least show up in those online searches for consumers. And even if they end up, you know,

and a lot of people, you know, search, they search for the most efficient, you know, crossover,

and then they end up buying a gas one anyway, you know, once they figure out, okay, what's

the monthly payment going to be? But at least they'll be in that conversation when people

are searching. And that's the main reason why they're doing this. So have you driven the

Outlander before, either of you? I've driven the Outlander. It's fine. I think it's my sort of,

I know it was huge in Europe. Yeah, it is. Huge in Europe. And then I drove it. And then I was

like, it's fine. It's fine. It's not horrible. It's not, you know, but I remember one of my

British colleagues, this is when I worked at Engadget, was like, how dare you. He was very

angry that I didn't give it like, like, like, like this really, I'm like, it's

didn't rave about it. Yeah, I'm like, well, it's, it's good enough. But this was a couple years

ago. So this is, gosh, probably seven years ago, maybe more. So it's, I haven't, I haven't

driven it since then, because

So you haven't driven the current generation?

I have not driven the current generation.

Okay. And I haven't driven the Mitsubishi version, but the Nissan version is basically the same

thing. Now that I've driven that. And so it's, yeah, I'm, I've assumed that they

would be the same. Yeah. And, and the, yeah, I mean, the driving experience is the same.

And it's fine. You know, it, it, okay, I'm glad that it's, it's evolved. Yeah. From fine to fine.

You know, the thing is, you know, I was looking at looking over specs the other day as I was

writing something up on this. And compared to the current Rogue, so the, the Rogue and the

Outlander, the current generation Rogue and Outlander are on the exact same platform.

They're the same wheelbase. They're the, the Outlander body is like two inches longer than the Rogue

body. And Mitsubishi, for some inexplicable reason, offers a third row seat option in the Outlander.

Quite tight.

Yeah. And I will, I will include a link to the video that Tommy Micah put up the shot with

with Safiyan Bay. They, you know, Tommy tried to climb into the back seat, the third row seat

on this Rogue. You know, and the default setup, there's basically, you know, you have maybe an

inch between the third row and the back of the second row seats. So, you know, if you've got,

you know, small kids with no legs. Like a baby, you can put a baby seat back there. Like

put the baby in the baby seat. But you don't want a baby seat in the third row.

No. You know, because sometimes you need to attend to the kid.

That's why you have other kids. Those, they're on the second row seat. They're the baby

sitters. If you've got four baby seats going, then I suppose that could work out. But,

but then you got other issues. Yeah. In that case, you probably want something a little

bigger than this. Yeah, probably. But, you know, the thing is, if you compare

the weight of the Outlander plug-in hybrid versus the gas Rogue, it's almost a thousand pounds heavier

because you've got a 20 kilowatt hour battery, you got electric motors, that third row seat.

And so it doesn't, it feel, when you're driving it to me, at least, you know, driving it on

some curvy roads, it feels a little softer and mushier than a Rogue does. It doesn't feel

quite as precise in terms of its handling. And, you know, the performance isn't really any better

because you got more power, you got about 240 horsepower, but it's, you know, a thousand

pounds more. You know, so 40, an extra 40 horsepower doesn't really do much to overcome a thousand

pounds of dead weight. And then the, you know, the Mitsubishi hybrid system is another one

that is mostly series hybrid, but has a clutch to bring in the engine that, you know, when you need

it for maximum acceleration. And it, you know, when the engine comes on, it's not, I found it not

as obtrusive as a Toyota hybrid. But strangely, driving in electric mode, there was a wine from

the motors. Did you notice that, Perry? I did hear that. Yeah. And it didn't, it wasn't bad.

But it was there. It was bad. It was, I mean, I liked it better than the fake noise that they

usually put in. So yeah, I'm not a big fan of that. But I thought it was also interesting when

you have an EV mode and you put your foot to the floor, it stays in EV mode, it will not

kick the engine on, which I thought was kind of unusual. But so if you're in EV mode and

suddenly you realize you need to get around somebody, you need to take it out of EV mode to do that.

Yeah. And then, you know, with the 20 kilowatt hour battery, it's got about 38 miles of electric driving

range. But once the battery, once the battery is depleted, and you're in hybrid mode,

the Outlander and Rogue are only rated at 26 miles per gallon as a hybrid, which is actually

pretty poor. That's worse than the gas Rogue. Yeah. Well, because you're still carrying around

that extra thousand of batteries, pounds of batteries. Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag.

You know, it drives fine. But, you know, I think it will fit the fit the need that they have,

though, that, you know, they need to have a hybrid and now they have one. So, yeah. And,

you know, it's temporary. Like I said, also the onboard charger that they use,

the AC charger is really slow. It's only three and a half kilowatts,

which means that even though the battery is only 20 kilowatt hours,

it'll take you about seven and a half hours to fully charge it. So, I mean, if you're,

if you're plugging it in at night, you know, you'll probably be fine. You'll probably have

a full charge every day. But it doesn't, it doesn't charge particularly quick.

You know, whereas other plug-in hybrids will typically charge at six and a half to

seven and a half kilowatts. So, you know, you can fully recharge the battery, you know,

from a 240 volt outlet in about, about three hours, three and a half hours. So,

all right. Any other thoughts on the Rogue Lander plug-in hybrid?

No. Like I said, it'll do what it has to do.

Yeah. All right. Thursday night, Friday morning in Japan, Toyota had an event to finally unveil

their new sports car, including the race version of it, the GT3 race version of it.

And there's been a lot of speculation, you know, back 2022, I think. Toyota showed a concept

for a GT race car. And then at Goodwood Festival Speed last June, they showed

both the sports, the road version and the race versions wrapped in camo.

And there's been a lot of speculation about whether this was going to be a Toyota or whether it was

going to be a Lexus as a replacement for the old LFA. And what they ended up showing was actually

a GR GT, the GR GT3, which is the race car, and an LFA concept. And the LFA concept,

we've actually kind of seen twice now, we saw it at the Japan Mobility Show with an interior.

It was shown first in August at Monterey Car Week with no interior. And now,

we know that the new LFA concept is actually an elect, and it's built on the same architecture

as the GR GT. It's actually electric. And, you know, so Toyota is using the GR branding

for their sports car. So it's not technically a Toyota, it's Toyota Gazoo Racing,

which is a race division. What do you think? It looks amazing.

It's always interesting when a car company comes out with cars like these that are

clearly, I don't know how you turn a profit necessarily on one of them, but you bring it a

lot. You know, you draw attention. I mean, they're the halo car. And halo cars are cool. There's

no question. And I like the fact that it doesn't really look like anything else out there.

Yeah. It's not your typical swoopy sports car that kind of all look about the same.

I mean, it's got its own look. It's cool. I want to drive one.

I like it. And this is saying this is from someone who hasn't been excited about Lexus

vehicle in, I don't know, 10, 15 years. I'm like, okay, fine, for the Lexus brand.

You like the LFA. What about the GR GT? The GR GT, you know, it's great to have a car

that you can land a helicopter on. It does have a very long hood.

Like they even have a cut out. They even have a cut out or sort of where it shows where the engine

begins. And it begins like right at the midpoint of the front wheel. So there's like just a good

mile of like extra hood after that. It just feels, I don't know, I like the, I'm sure it's

going to be tough to see out of because it's just so long. And you do sit very low in this

thing. You know, there's a diagram somewhere. I feel like I wouldn't fit. Yeah, like the diagram

shows like with the helmet on, it looks like the head is like just within like... It's actually

practically in the roof. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would fit in this car, to be honest.

Well, don't wear your helmet. I know. Well, that's a problem I have with like

Lamborghinis where I can't like get in the Lamborghini with a helmet. Now I'm driving

around with my head all crooked. So I'm like, well, this is not... I hate it when it happens.

Yeah, when I get my Lamborghini.

But that's beyond first world problems. Yeah, that is first world problem. But it would be the

same if I were in a Miata, to be honest. Even the new ND, I guess not new, even in the current

ND, I would have that as soon as I put a helmet on, I'm off.

I'm only 5'11". And with a helmet, I cannot fit in a Miata RF with the top closed and a helmet

on. Oh gosh, I don't even get me starting the RF. I don't even know if I'll fit in that at all.

That's it. I mean, it looks cool. It's for folks who like a vehicle with the hood that is like half

the size... Let me see. It's almost half the size of the car. It's a pretty long hood.

And you could... Yeah, you could put a lot of things on that hood. So many things.

I do like the idea of landing like a drone on it.

Yeah, like a giant drone. You can just for touching goes, you know, when jets land and then take off,

so they can practice getting on aircraft carriers. So yeah, no, I don't know why the...

I mean, I look at the Lexus and Lexus is pretty long.

Yeah, this is basically designed as a race car first.

Yeah, the Lexus has a long hood, but it has a big like angle at the end. So it feels a

little... It's probably just as long, if not longer, but it feels less. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Toyota needs a replacement for the Lexus RCF GT3. That car is definitely getting old

and the current RC is going away soon. And so they developed this basically from the ground up

as a GT3 race car. So it's got an all aluminum structure. It's got a rear transaxle, eight speed

automatic rear transaxle. There's a four liter twin turbo V8 up front that is behind, completely behind

the front axle. So when you look at it in profile and you see the diagram here, you realize that

basically half of the distance from the base of the windshield to the front of the car,

there's no engine there. That's just for the cooling system, the radiators in the front.

And then the engine is behind the front wheels. And it's a hybrid. So 650 horsepower.

At least that's what they're saying now. And the race version, the GR GT3

is going to debut in the World Endurance Championship and in IMSA and other series

for 2027 season. And then the LFA is basically an electric version of this.

Yeah, like I said, we saw it. It was shown at Monterey as a concept.

Then they showed it at the Tokyo Mobility Show, the Japan Mobility Show, without talking at all

about any powertrain. And now they're saying it's going to be electric.

Cool. I mean, I think the GR GT3 is something like a Kia too. I didn't want a new race car.

That's what it really comes down to. That's really, whenever there's like any GR

anything, a Kia was like, yeah, let's do this. Listen, you can get two. You can probably fit

the GR Corolla on the hood. I just looked at the new one is about two feet longer than a GR86.

There you go. Two feet. Yeah, you could definitely stick a GR Corolla on this hood.

So you stop and then you jump in your little girl. Exactly. It's the getaway, getaway car.

So let's stick with long hoods for a moment.

Do you remember the Jaguar Type 00 concept that was unveiled last year at

Art Basel, I think, in Miami? The Batmobile? Yes.

Jaguar's concept version of Jaguar's new electric GT car. That thing had a long hood,

even though it's electric. And it was somewhat controversial. I think half the controversy is

that people didn't like it, that it was pink or light blue. I made a gray one with Batman standing

behind it. And I think people love that a lot more. So I'm fine with the colors. Yeah, I like.

I thought the blue one looked good in person. Yeah, I think.

That was the first time I'd seen it in person because all the images look like AI.

They don't look real. The fact that we are fine with it.

Yeah, it's quite that. But it's the fact that we're fine with it means nobody will buy it.

Exactly. This is like Batman, the animated series car, which I'm like, oh, cool. And everyone's like,

I mean, I think that it is definitely, it's not the whole thing, just essentially old British men.

Nah. Yeah. The people who've been buying Jaguars.

They're all dying off. Yeah.

The people that were buying Jaguars are dying off. And so Jaguar needs new kinds of customers.

That's true. That's why they're going.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of customer that brings in, though, because it is pretty

different. Yeah. Well, the guy who is overseeing the design of this and all of the other

Jaguar Land Rover products for the last decade plus is a guy named Jerry McGovern.

And Jerry is now, as of this week, unemployed.

Yes. It's somewhat surprising. I mean, I've heard that he can be difficult to work with.

I've heard, yeah. I think that's...

Having met him in person, I could see how that would be.

Yeah. I don't think anyone, let's... I don't know him personally, but I don't think people

were like, oh, boo-hoo, Jerry's gone at the Jaguar.

Yeah. I haven't seen a lot of that, no. I mean, I think there's been a lot of...

I think there's been a lot of good designs that have come out during his tenure,

both from Jaguar and Land Rover, stuff like that.

Definitely. The I-Pace, the F-Type, even the F-Pace,

and then the current generations of Range Rovers, the Defender.

Yeah, Defender is definitely really good designs.

I mean, he's definitely talented. There's no question.

Yeah. But talent doesn't give you a license to be a... Yeah.

Again, I've never worked with a guy. I have talked to him.

I have been at events with him, and he seems pretty prickly.

I don't know what it's like to work with him, but from what I've heard...

Well, if he's prickly...

Maybe he's the...

If he's prickly in person at events like that, that's probably not a good sign,

because there's people that I have talked to that are very pleasant, cordial to talk to.

They're delightful.

I have also been described as toxic to work with, so who knows?

None of us have worked with McGovern, but JLR just got its fourth CEO in six years,

a couple of weeks earlier. A guy named... He came over from Tata.

He's the Chief Financial Officer of Tata Motors, PB Biology,

and two weeks later, McGovern was fired.

Well, you know, you get a new boss.

Somebody did get along with somebody.

Maybe he's cleaning house. Maybe you need to change everything.

Tata probably is like, your job is to go in and clean house,

and right now it's not working.

And I mean, the Defender is beautiful. I love the Defender, but that's...

It's the only thing it's selling?

Yeah, pretty much.

Which is... It doesn't matter how beautiful your cars are if no one's buying.

And it might be beautiful to us, which if we like it, we know it's doomed.

That's just the automotive journalist way.

Everyone should buy this car, and then no one buys it.

Yeah, I mean, we all wanted CTSV wagons with manual transmissions.

And brown.

And I think they sold about 500 or so of those, and then GM discontinued it,

because nobody else bought them.

We all loved the V60 and the V90 when Volvo was like,

hey, Ron, I keep doing wagons.

We're like, cool. We all drove them.

We're like, these are rad.

And then no one else bought them.

My cousin got one.

So at least my family is doing the right thing.

One cousin bought that, a V60, and then the other one bought a Honda Odyssey.

And these are both people.

So you're supporting two dying breeds, many vans and wagons.

Yeah, I got good family.

I got good car family vibes.

So speaking of wagons, the Trump administration made an announcement this week

that they're basically rolling back corporate average fuel economy standards to about 2020 levels.

And but what was particularly surprising about that announcement

is apparently Donald Trump has fallen in love with K cars

from his most recent trip to Japan.

And they also want to bring back 70s style station wagons.

That's right.

Okay. So a stopwatch is wrong.

It's correct twice a day.

Twice a day.

Yeah. And of all the things, you're like, well, this isn't enough.

This isn't justify all the horror.

But also, I don't know if Americans, I think outside of like, people have been buying K cars for,

you know, these either automotive enthusiasts or people who are like, oh, I can just buy this

from my farm because, you know, farmers and ranchers love these things because you can

get them for like five, 6,000 bucks.

And then you can do all the, you know, F-150 stuff with it around, you know, just on the

farm. So I don't think the average person wants a K car, to be honest.

I mean, I do. I want one so, so bad.

If there was a market for them here, they'd be here.

I mean, if the car companies, if there was clearly demand for something like that,

then there would have been more of a push to get something like that here.

And, you know, there's a reason that it's all crossovers and SUVs out there because

that's what people are buying.

Well, that's also like a lot of marketing because they marketed crossovers and SUVs

like a moho for years because they get more money.

And then, you know, it's, you know, sort of sideline, yeah, it's propaganda people.

We're buying crossovers and SUVs because of propaganda.

But they're still buying it, whether you like it or not.

Well, then you don't have a choice, especially if you're buying a Ford.

At some point, it's like, well, and then that lie that like, oh, they're more,

they're safer because they're taller, blah, blah, blah.

It's, you know, there's a lot that went into it.

But at the end of the day, how we got here doesn't matter because,

Because we're here.

We're here.

And the K car is not that, which again, I would love a little, the Sakura,

the Nissan Sakura EV.

I love that little EV.

I drove it around Tokyo or Yokohama.

Loved it.

Tiny little car.

Yeah.

I mean, the big guy in a tiny car.

You know, on my most recent trip to Japan, I got to drive the Honda Super 1.

And that's actually technically not a K car because it exceeds the width limit

for a K car.

But, you know, it's based on a K car with wider fenders.

But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things I said during this announcement was,

we want, we want these tiny little cars to be built and sold here in America.

You know, we have approved them, you know, we cleared the decks for these things.

Which, what exactly does that mean?

I mean, the only thing that was, besides the market potential,

the only thing that was actually preventing K cars from being sold here

was federal motor vehicle safety standards, crash requirements.

Yeah, they're not great on crashes.

Yeah, these cars are only 134 inches long.

That's the maximum that they're allowed to be.

Or as a point of reference, a current Mini Cooper hardtop is 152.6 inches long.

So it's it's about 18 inches longer than a K car.

And a fee at 500 is 143 inches long.

So it's almost it's over nine inches longer,

almost 10 inches longer than a K car.

They're also less than five feet wide.

Yes, that's that's the other thing about K cars.

So as the as it stands, there's no way these things would meet,

you know, crash requirements here.

So if they are, if they're approving these things for sale in the US,

does that mean they're basically just waiving all the occupant protection standards?

Is it like a motorcycle, would it be like a more like if a motorcycle is less than 200 cc,

you can't put it on the freeway?

Will a K car be like, oh, you can only drive it around town?

It's essentially a golf course.

Nobody knows.

Right, because we don't have anything like that right now.

Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, in Europe, you know,

you have these little smaller than K cars, you know,

when I was in Amsterdam, there's quad motorcycles, right,

which are street legal in the city.

But they're limited to, I think 30 or 35 miles an hour.

Right.

And you apparently don't need a driver's license to drive them.

They're like a 12 year olds driving them around.

Exactly.

Because they're about the size, you know, for a 12 year old.

But we don't have anything like that here.

So to have, you know, to have cars that are certain,

you know, designated for certain places that you can drive them or not.

I mean, no one's going to listen to that.

Yeah, that's the.

K cars are marvels.

They are marvels of packaging efficiency.

Yeah.

See, seeing Bank, Bank Talverson sit comfortably in a K car,

you know, and banked is six foot eight inches tall.

Banked is so tall.

He can fit comfortably in both the front and back seats of a K car.

You know, I mean, they are remarkable little vehicles.

And you know, they typically the gas K cars typically go for about 10 to $12,000 in Japan.

And the EVs go for, but I think the Honda N1 E is about 18,000 in Japan.

And this is this is why, you know, I mean, in Japan, in most of the major cities,

they have regulations, you cannot register a car in a place like Tokyo,

unless you can demonstrate that you have some place to park it.

You know, you have to have documentation that you have some place to park it.

And before you can get a license plate for it, you know,

an inspector will go out and actually measure the space and make sure you have space for it.

That rule does not apply to K cars.

And they also get breaks on insurance and taxes.

So, you know, this is why K cars represent more than 50% of the market in Japan.

But here in the U.S., you know, I can, you know, I think, you know,

no matter what the regulators do, I have a hard time seeing insurance companies

even being willing to register to ensure these things in the U.S.

Because someone's gonna take it on a freeway.

It's not for the freeway.

You drive it around town.

But there's I mean, there's also, you know,

one of the reasons for bringing them would be the added fuel efficiency

when at the same time they're just lowering the fuel efficiency requirements.

And so another reason that the car company really isn't all good,

all that's incented to bring it here.

Yeah, less than a liter displacement.

Yes.

A real little K car.

Essentially, you're riding around with a motorcycle engine.

Zero to 60 on a good day.

Honda and Toyota even discontinued the Fit and the Yaris here.

They don't even sell those anymore.

The Fit was so great.

I remember when I asked about that and they're like,

well, when we look at the sales, the CRV is higher and we would rather just,

you know, and then eventually they essentially just said,

we'd rather just push people toward the CRV because we're going to get more.

It's a higher profit margin.

Yeah.

So these are going to have low profit margin.

Very few people like me are going to buy them and that's it.

And then and then same things with the station wagons.

I mean, there's a reason that car companies don't offer station wagons anymore

because nobody bought them.

There's only so many automotive journalists in the world.

I know.

There's only so many of us.

I don't find them.

There's only so many of us out there.

Like, well, there's those 50 automotive journalists.

That's 50 sold, used in four years.

I remember when the last generation Audi RS6 Avant came out

and I was at the Geneva show with Audi to see it.

And I asked if they would be bringing it to America

because, you know, I wanted them to bring it to America.

And he said, well, if I could find 50,000 of my friends,

they would consider it.

That would want to buy the car.

But yeah, Audi journalists don't.

Amazingly, they do offer the current generation RS6 Avant

and BMW sells the M5 Touring here as well.

I wonder how many they sell.

Not probably not very many.

Not many.

That's amazing.

Oh, I love that RS6 Avant though.

That's like, that's one of my dream cars.

Yeah.

That's the best.

See?

Anyway.

But we don't have RS6 Avant money.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

No.

That's also the other issue.

All right.

What else?

Oh, have either of you ever driven a Lotus Esprit?

I don't think so.

Any Lotus ever.

I drove the Evora a long time ago,

but I have not driven an Esprit.

I was fortunate enough early in my,

at the beginning of my engineering career

to get to spend a bunch of time with the Esprit.

That was with the S4, the Series 4 Esprit.

After it had been, the styling had been updated by Peter Stevens.

But there's a company in the U.K. called,

what the heck was I called again now?

Encore?

Yeah.

Encore.

That is creating a sort of restomod.

I mean, typically a restomod is you take an old body

and you put new hardware under it.

In this case, they are taking a newer set of hardware

and recreating, essentially recreating an older body

to put on top of it.

So they have created what they're calling a reimagined Lotus Esprit Series 1.

So if you remember.

This is just any out-scranted deer.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's kind of like that.

It's just a low production any out-scranted deer.

Yeah.

So the first generation, the first, the Series 1 Esprit,

had a cleaner design.

It was done by Giorgetto Giugiaro.

Came out in the 1970s.

And a lot of people prefer that design to the later S3 and S4 Espris.

And so what Encore is doing, they're planning to build 50 of these.

They're using the last generation Esprit V8, which was based on the Series 4,

but with a V8 engine, twin turbo V8 engine,

instead of the turbo four cylinder from the earlier Espris.

They're buying up a bunch of those to use as donor cars.

And they've created a new body that is inspired by the S1 Esprit,

but it's all made out of carbon fiber now.

It has some modern updates to it, but it looks a lot like the Series 1 Esprit.

Putting it on this twin turbo V8 platform, they've upgraded the engine in production form

between the mid 90s and about 2003 or 2004 when they stopped production of the Esprit.

The V8 made about 350 horsepower.

They're rebuilding the engines, getting them up to about 400 horsepower.

And this thing looks fantastic.

I mean, it's even got the pop-up headlights.

It's got the, I have to say, tail lights.

Tail lights keep reminding me of a Dodge Challenger.

Yeah, kind of.

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw them.

Oh, we have the Dodge Challenger.

That's cool.

But then you're right, the interior is gorgeous.

Yeah, the interior is really nice.

And if you want one of these, like I said, they're planning to build about 50 of them.

It weighs just 1,200 kilos, so about under 3,000 pounds with 400 horsepower.

And it will cost you 430,000 pounds, not including the donor car.

So you have to find one first?

Or they'll find one for you.

They'll find a suitable car for you.

So you have a flat windshield?

Yeah.

That was what I always found interesting with the Lotus Esprit was that the windshield was perfect.

I mean, it was, it had slight curve to it.

No, there was some curve to it.

Okay.

It wasn't completely flat.

But I mean, it was for all intents and purposes flat, but not exactly.

So yeah, I mean, this Encore Eswan Esprit, I think this looks fabulous.

If I had half a million dollars, I would definitely consider one of these.

Well, I'd have to pay off my house.

And I'd have to sell my house.

I guess I could pay off my house or buy this.

And then when it breaks down, I'm just, oh, I guess I better fix it on my own.

Or I can get like 50 K cars.

Put them all on churro because now K cars are in the United States.

They've also, they've upgraded the gearbox.

The original gearbox was a five-speed gearbox they got from Renault,

which that was always one of the weak links on the Esprit.

That was best.

Yeah.

Made out of gas.

Second gear in particular.

Yeah.

Second gear was weak in those things.

So whenever you're driving a Esprit.

It was just the most important gear.

That should be the hardiest gear.

And they're like, I said, gear went out.

Yeah, it doesn't need a second.

When you're driving a Esprit, you have to be careful.

Be delicate.

You don't want to jam the thing into gear.

I'll keep that in mind.

Yeah.

And next time you get to driving a Esprit, just remember that.

But yeah, plaid upholstery on the seats and on the door panels.

That doesn't look good.

All right, let's see what else.

Oh, Jason Fenske.

You guys know who Jason Fenske is?

He does the channel Engineering Explained.

Yeah, does a really good job of it too.

He does do a very good job.

Does great work there.

Big fan.

Yeah.

Well, he bought himself a Lucid Air about six months ago.

It's not been a great experience.

Interesting.

I haven't watched the video, but I was reading some of the stuff.

Because some of the comments, like there's reply,

is like, no, but yeah, but it's not working.

It doesn't matter.

It's not working for me.

He's had a lot of issues that are mostly related to software.

It's, yeah, it's been a big disappointment.

That's unfortunate.

Yeah.

Like when he first got it, it said that he needed a software update

and it kept failing the update for like the first six weeks or so.

He could not get the software to update.

And he finally managed to get it updated.

But even then, he's still having all kinds of issues with it.

He's having the infotainment screen go blank on him.

He's got issues with using the phone as a key.

He's got issues with using the key card.

You know, you've got an NFC card with it that you can use as a key.

And when I had the gravity a couple of weeks ago,

I tried using the key card and it didn't work most of the time either.

You know, I ended up having to use the key fob most of the time to unlock it.

You know, sometimes it would lock, sometimes it wouldn't lock.

You know, so he would try to lock the doors and walk away from the car,

you know, go in the store, come back and it was still unlocked.

That's not great.

Yeah, all kinds of problems with this thing.

Which is really unfortunate.

Too bad.

Yeah.

Because they're great cars to drive.

Yeah.

I mean, the opportunities I've had.

But, you know, it's unique to be able to get to live with one for that long.

Yeah.

So I guess you learn all sorts of things.

Software is hard.

That's what it is.

Ask BMW, ask Volvo, pretty much every car company,

but those two in particular.

Software is difficult.

I know that Lucid had hired the guy away from Apple,

but he's no longer there.

So who knows?

I think they did some cool stuff with the latest update,

but that doesn't mean that, you know, new things mean new bugs.

Yeah.

I mean, even.

Again, software is hard.

Yeah, even CarPlay was a thing he's had a lot of trouble with

where it keeps forgetting the phones that are connected to it

or, you know, it will connect to the wrong phone,

you know, regardless of which driver profile you're using,

you know, between him and his wife.

It's, you know, he's had to do a full factory reset on the system,

at least a couple of times now and then have to go back in

and change all the settings.

And, you know, when you when you pick a driver profile,

you know, it saves things like your mirror position,

your seats and everything else to your driver profile.

And he would get in the car with his key, his phone,

and it would, for some reason, decide,

nope, I'm going to give you your wife's driver profile

and set everything for his wife.

And so he'd go in and manually switch it to his driver profile

and it might move the seats but not change the mirrors.

It's just been a nightmare.

Yeah, that's not great.

I'm sure Lucid has already reached out since he's such a.

I would imagine.

They're like, oh, hey, so here's the thing.

Yeah, here's your new Lucid.

This one's better than the other one.

Yeah.

But it still has the same software.

Yes.

It's not the hardware that's been the problem.

It's the software.

Yeah, that's that sucks.

Yeah.

And so there's a new Mazda CX-5 coming for model year 2026.

And Mazda has finally given up on the central rotary controller.

They've got a 15 inch touchscreen.

We should have waited until Nicole was back to talk about this in that case.

Okay, I'll leave it for next week then.

I just want to see her reaction, her excitement.

They're like, what?

The thing's gone?

All right, we'll talk about this one next week then.

That one was pretty annoying, I have to say.

Nicole has it.

I personally didn't have a problem with it.

It's not great.

I don't know.

The turning tank.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that's it for this week.

Well, actually, there is one more.

Do you guys want to rant about Mercedes-Benz charging you for subscription for features that

are in the car?

I mean, haven't we been down that road before?

Yeah.

I mean, isn't that the Tesla model?

They just build the car with everything in it, all the hardware, and then you just pay for it?

Yeah.

So Mercedes wants you to pay $50 for a front seat massage function,

even though the hardware is already built in the car that you bought.

$50 per month, $50 per month.

I think it's a one-time, it's not clear.

But the thing is, they're charging you $50, and all it's doing is manipulating the lumbar support.

Yeah, which is pretty lame.

It's that fake massage that you get sometimes in the car where it's like, oh, and it just

sort of moves you back and forth every couple minutes.

Right, yeah.

And $200 to use dashcam functionality.

The car, all the CLA's have a front camera.

They have the ability to record, but you cannot actually get that functionality

unless you pay them an extra $200.

I mean, that's the-

So why not just raise the price by that much and call it good?

I mean, so if it's a subscription, it must be a continuous charge, I assume.

Is it or is it just pay once?

Because if it's just a pay once, then you're just paying $200 for a camera, which,

you know, that's-

It's doing other things.

Again, it's a Tesla model where they would build the cars with all the hardware

and then say, hey, do you want to turn this on?

Do you want to turn this on?

Because it costs less money in theory and sort of having a bunch of different vehicles on the line.

Just streamline everything.

Yeah, streamline manufacturing.

Yeah, this is just Mercedes doing something.

And to be fair, it does cost money to develop that software.

Yeah, you're adding software in there.

There's a cost associated with that and manufacturers have to figure out a way

to recover those costs, especially if consumers increasingly expect to get

new features over the life of the vehicle.

You know, it's not like in the past where whatever was in the car

when you drove off the lot was what you had for the life of the car.

Now, you know, they've got thanks to Tesla and Rivian and others,

they've gotten used to getting new functions over time,

but that costs money to develop that and maintain that software.

And now, you know, this is really the only way that you can realistically cover those

costs over the life of the vehicle.

I don't know. I think, you know, it's whether it's there or not,

if you want a product you should have to pay for it.

And if they don't, you know, if they want, you know, everybody to pay for it,

they just increase the price of the car and everybody has it.

So I don't know. It's, I understand the principle of not, you know,

it's already there. Why should I, you know, I've already bought the car.

It's already got all the things I need. Why do I have to pay more?

But like you said, it's, you know, and we know that software is important

because, you know, look at what Jason's going through, you know, is.

So I don't know. I don't think it's that big of a stretch for, you know,

especially if you're making these transactions at the time of purchase anyway.

Yeah. Maybe you don't want it. Maybe you want it later. Maybe, you know, whatever.

It's, I don't know, like ADES stuff. And I think, you know, if it's top-end ADES, yeah.

If it's a one-time thing, you know, it's probably not so bad

than compared to if you have to pay a subscription for it.

Yeah. Subscription would be different. I mean, if you're paying, you know,

$20 a month so that you can have a seat massager, you know, that would be, you know.

That's the BMW thing. And they got in big trouble for that.

I don't know, trouble. They got a lot of pushback. That's what I wanted to say.

They decided not to do it because of all the pushbacks.

Yeah. It wasn't even here. It was in Europe and like one market and everyone's like,

they're like, fine. Gosh, okay. We tried it out.

We just, whew. This is, yeah. I mean, they're, I guess they're ADES.

The subscription for the ADES is more expensive than other systems ADES,

which I'm like, it's the Mercedes.

I mean, you have a subscription for Supercars.

Yeah. It's just more expensive than those other ones. But again, it's a Mercedes.

So yeah, it's going to be more expensive, even if it's not as robust.

It still says Mercedes.

You bought a Mercedes. I'm sorry.

I'm not sorry. I mean, I like to say, I'm sorry that you don't realize that a premium car,

everything on it's going to be premium. If you buy a Mercedes, guess what?

It's going to cost you more to get it fixed. Everything costs more.

That's what happens. You buy a German car. It's going to cost you more.

Yeah. Everything's going to cost more. That's why we're like, I'm thinking about buying this.

I'm like, well, you know, do you have the money to have it for upkeep?

Because you might be able to buy it upfront. But you know, when it's 75%

more, 50% more, yeah, cost of ownership is higher than that of, you know, an escape.

All right. The last thing is, I recently, a few days ago, I spoke with Mark André Fourje,

who's the co-founder and CEO of a company in Montreal called Decibel Energy.

A couple of weeks ago, Decibel announced a partnership with Volvo and Polestar

to offer their and to integrate their home energy management system. It's calling it this

because it is more than just a charger. We've seen systems like from Ford and GM to do vehicle to

home capabilities, to use the battery in your car for home power backup and do other stuff.

The Decibel system can do that, but it's all integrated into one box. So it's easier to install,

but it also has more stuff in it. Like one of the things, one of the key things is that

it has DC charging capability built into it. So it's got two cables on it. So you can actually

charge two cars at home at the same time. But if you have a solar system on your house,

you can connect it to this Decibel Aura home charging system. And your solar panels put out DC direct

current, your battery takes direct current. And with most systems, most most home charging systems,

like the Ford and GM ones or anything else, they're all doing AC charging. So if you have

a solar system, it's got to go through an inverter, get converted from DC to AC,

go through the charger. And then when it gets back into the car, into your battery, it's got to be

converted back to DC again. So you've got some losses associated with that. So you're wasting

electricity when you do that. With this system, it goes straight through as DC from your solar

panels through the through the machine, it's got a CCS connector, or you can get it with an

axe connector on it. And it goes straight into your battery as direct current. So it's going to

be a more efficient system. And it can do a bunch of other stuff too. So I talked with Mark Andre.

And after we say goodbye, you can listen to that conversation. And we'll be back next week.

And guess who will be back next week? Nicole. I'm guessing Nicole.

Yeah, Nicole's going to be back from her adventures. So

talk to you all next time. And stay tuned for the conversation with Mark Andre Forge.

Bye. Bye. All right. I'm here talking today with Mark Andre Forge. I hope I got that

pronunciation correctly. The co-founder and CEO of decibel energy.

And welcome, Mark Andre. It's nice to meet you and talk to you.

So a few weeks ago, your company, you're based in Montreal, right?

That is correct. Okay. Hold on. I'm not hearing your voice. Can you just say something?

One, two, three. One, two, three. Oh, okay. There we go. Looks like it muted

automatically for some reason. And Sam, you can call me MA. Mark Andre Forge.

But call me MA. Much easier for everyone. Okay. MA then. So your company is based in

Montreal, I believe. And you are in the home energy business. And you recently made an

announcement in partnership with Volvo and Polestar. So let's talk a little bit about that.

Well, actually, let's start with a little background on decibel and kind of how long

the company's been around and what you're doing, what your focus is on. And then we'll

get into your partnership with Volvo and Polestar. Absolutely. The company was born out

of a series of ideas by people like me that's get around. We work from the energy sector

surprisingly, not the automotive sectors. And we find out that energy for home was too complex,

too expensive, not reliable. And we say, how can we put the customer, the homeowner,

in the middle of the equations? So 10 years ago, we looked at solar energy. Storage was

around the corner. Tesla, with the EV, start to go on. And it says, how can we make something

that's going to make sense out of this? So we're a serial entrepreneur. We say, well,

three years in the process, it will be done, of course. Now we're 10 years later. Product

is in the market right now. Customer happy. I suppose it takes 10 years to make an overnight

success. But that's mostly the genesis of decibel. So you've now started delivering products to

customers. And you've got, I guess, a couple of different things that you're offering.

But the key, as I understand it, with the Volvo Polestar partnership is your Aura

home energy station. And so tell us about this and what makes it different from some of the other

solutions that are in the market for vehicle-to-home integration?

Aura is a home energy station. So it's all about the home and your energy. Surprisingly,

of course, home is the gas stations for electric vehicles most of the time, right?

So of course, you cannot be a home energy station if you are not also providing faster charge at home,

better charge at home. And at the meantime here, using the energy from the car to borrow your home

during a blackout or selling your energy. But it's not only that. This is a true

solar to EV product. We take the energy from the sun, DC energy. Hey, I don't want to start

a new current war between Edison and Tesla, right? I don't want to go there. But the point is solar

energy is DC. Cars, battery, DC energy, grid, AC. So we take the energy in DC from the sun

straight to your car and we keep it in DC. Better efficiency, safer, faster, simply.

The big difference with current product out of the market is also the intelligence.

The Disdevelopment Energy Station just learned from you. You start to learn when you

use your car how much energy you need, how much energy you need for your home. You know

your electrical contract, access to weather forecast, solar forecast, know when the sun shines

and it basically deliver you energy so you can live a life without compromise.

Simply, just that. So it's interesting what you mentioned about DC straight from your solar

to your car. So would it be accurate to describe, you know, this is, you know,

on your website you say never call R a charger. So it's obviously much more than that. But,

you know, for at least that part of the functionality is what is what you're providing

here essentially a DC charger for your home, at least that component of the functionality,

a DC charger for home. That absolutely correct. So ARA is a fast DC charger for your home.

You can reach a miles a minute of charging with the Disable ARA.

But ARA can charge two car at once. We have one DC port and one AC port. So if you have a plug-in

hybrids, for example, that only accept the AC port, the ARA sidekick on the AC port can keep

and manage two cars at once. Both side or bi-directionals, what we're launching obviously

with Polestar and Volvo DC bi-directional, fast DC charging at home, charged with the sun at home,

that's really this part that is truly different from everything in the market right now.

Okay. And it looks like you also offer integration with a home storage battery as well.

So presumably again takes it directly from your solar, if you have that,

to the storage battery without the losses that you get typically of having to go through

power electronics to go from DC to AC and back to DC again.

So it's a more efficient process, whether you're charging your home battery or your vehicle

battery right? Absolutely correct. And there's another little things about the battery also.

As we know, residential storage may be quite expensive. We see people starting to stack

20, 30, even 40 kilowatt hours of battery, that's super expensive, $50,000, $60,000 worth of battery

for blackout purpose. But think about it, Sam, now you got a Volvo EX90 with a 111 kilowatt

hours battery in your driveway for blackout. Therefore, your residential storage may be

much smaller. You may need it only for your solar or the blackout when you're not at home,

reducing the cost, improving the return on investment for every single customer.

Because we don't realize this, but our cars, our EVs, is probably the second most expensive

investment for any family, right? And now you have it in the driveway and you don't use it.

No, it should be powerful even when parked. So your blackout power from the Volvo,

from the Polestar right, smaller battery, blackout where you're not home, or basically to absorb

too much solar when the car is in prison. So one of the things that appears to be different

with the system compared to solutions offered by Ford or General Motors is it's all in one box.

The other solutions, you've got a wall box, a wall charger, a bi-directional charger,

and then a transfer switch and an inverter and a control box. It looks like you've integrated

all of that into a single unit, is that correct? It is correct, but yes, we still have a transfer

switch and islanding devices that are going to be installed by your breaker panel. It's more

convenient, so you can basically put it in the right place. The battery, the DC battery,

is also external to the box, but smaller and we have a partnership with LG. So it's great LG battery

that can be installed with it and you can position it everywhere in your house. Excite this, everything

into a single box, faster installation, easier for everyone. And then obviously an inverter in

here as well so that if you're charging your vehicle at night, don't have solar available,

you're taking power from the grid, or even if you just don't have solar at all, you can still get

so is it taking the AC and still doing DC charging on your vehicle? Of course, absolutely. In the

case of supercharging, this is where the operating system came at play. Orchestrate OS, look at

basically where's the power should come from and where it should go. A good example, I have

excess of solar, I don't need it for my house, price on the market is depressed, don't need to

export right now. It's going to go from DC to solar to your stationary battery. Oh, I need to go to

the movie theater, catching up the kids, the car is super low on charge. I go supercharged,

supercharged in DC, then I'm going to use all the power from the home in DC, convert it

in DC, bypassing the onboard inverter so I can really zoom in at the miles per minute of charge

so I can go and take care of the kids. So what is the maximum charging rate that's possible with the

aura? So right now, this unit of models can go as high as 16 kilowatt hours at DC,

but we measure it at the DC port, not at the entrance. So this is the equivalent of 20 to

22 kilowatt AC. Okay, so that's, I mean, that's much faster than most other home charging solutions.

And then of course, you said it's got two cables on it. So you have an AC and a DC connector.

Is that presumably since you're partnered with Volvo and Polestar right now, you've got CCS

and a J1772 on there? That is correct, but we also support an ECS and the Shadymo for people

having the Mitsubishi Outender. All right, so what would one of these units cost? What was that

aura cost? So the aura unit itself started at $5,000 US, but right now to be honest,

everyone bought it all dressed up. So with solar, with stationary storage and so on. So we're

talking about $20,000 with solar on the roof installation, stationary battery, two charger,

blackout kit. So in average, people are going to spend about $20,000 with installations to have

the aura fully functional at their home. Depending where you live, depending you replace your

generators and so on. So the return investment is between three to seven years for a normal customer.

Is that those prices are those in Canadian dollars or US dollars?

US dollars. Is there's any other dollars available on the market right now?

There's no US dollar. So obviously you've got the partnership with Volvo and Polestar,

but can this unit, if you own a different EV from some other brand, can you also utilize this?

Answer is absolutely yes. We are universally compatible from a charging point of view. Any car

that basically can be charged, we can charge it. And we can afford the supercharge on it.

On the bi-directionality point of view, now we took the decisions to work with manufacturers

to make sure that we preserve the battery warranty, that we make the experience seamless.

So we are launching alongside car manufacturer one after another with this key user experience

one after another for the bi-directionally part. If you buy it today, the decibel definitely

compatible with charge and supercharge with every car on the market, then bi-directionality,

it's just going to go as more manufacturers basically announced their bi-directionality on

their car. Okay. Let's see, what else? So if you have the bi-directional capability on a Volvo

Polestar in a power outage, the Aura unit automatically detects that the power flow has stopped from

the grid and then triggers the transfer switch to start the flow back from your vehicle battery

back into your home? Absolutely. You want a funny story here. About 18 months ago, we started

working with Volvo, with Polestar, about to make everything work flawlessly. From a technical

point of view, it was fast. We go into it and then all of a sudden we start thinking,

what if the outage happened in the middle of the night? The customer is asleep, right?

No one wants to wake up the car for that. So now we start to think and say,

so the Aura can even wake up the car for you, go into bi-directional modes,

you're never going to see it. And then, boom, at the end of the outage, in the middle of the night,

if so, Aura is going to start to think it says, well, I suppose you need your car to go back on

the road. So we're going to go start supercharging to make sure you're going to have enough

energy in your backup. This is all done automatically. If you don't have, for example,

solar installed or stationary battery installed, you're awake. Let's say you have a secondary

house. The power electronic of Aura is always on. It's powered by its own internal battery.

As soon as you're going to connect a car, Aura will figure it out. This is bi-directionals,

engage with the car, and we're going to start to power your residence right away.

It is seamless. I'm going to say it's not. To the point, it is boring. It just works.

So that's the way you would want it. And that's one of the advantages of an EV,

a both an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage of an EV compared to a gas vehicle. A gas pump

never really talks to the vehicle. There's no communication. With an EV, the charger and the

vehicle are always talking to each other to manage charging anyway. So that makes it

relatively straightforward to send a signal from an Aura into the vehicle to say, hey,

wake up. I'm going to need some of your power out for a little while.

And to manage all of that fairly seamlessly, of course, as many EV owners have experienced

when doing public charging, that can sometimes be a downside if the software isn't quite right.

But that's something that hopefully is getting worked out.

So if a customer wanted one of these today, it's available now to customers and they can order

it and get it delivered fairly quickly and then get an electrician to install it all.

So we are doing a rollout right now. We start with California. If people want to order in

California, something that is interesting right now, there's a rebate. There's a discount

up to $14,000 available for people of California that want to install a disabled Aura right now.

So this is basically an incentive that has been done by the state of California that people

in California have available for them. So if you order right now in California,

you may be eligible to that discount. Making the Aura wide affordable, I should say this.

And then we start also a rollout in both Texas, Florida, and we're going to be available in all

the 50 states probably by mid time next year, by the summer of 2026.

So for that maximum rebate, is that for a complete system with solar and the

storage battery and everything? That's the beauty of it. No, it starts with just

the bi-directionality, the supercharging, the blackout and helping the grid with your car,

of course, into it. So it's really an amazing, amazing program for anyone in California right

now that want to go with bi-directionality, that want to engage in the future of warm energy.

It's really reduced the cost. It's mostly risk-free. Okay. So for the maximum speed capability

on this, you would probably want to have this on a 100 amp circuit in your house?

So, yes. The way it is, is intelligence. So, of course, we are North America Electric Code

certified in that. So you install that 100 amps breakers over 200 amps breaker panels. You

don't need to upgrade your breaker panels at 200 amps. It just worked. And the intelligence

in the Aura just going to manage the energy. So make sure we're never going to trip any

circuit in your home and make it absolutely safe all the time. Okay. And then, of course, it looks

like we've got an app to manage all of this remotely. So if you want to schedule when you

want your vehicle to charge, that sort of thing can handle all that fairly easily.

Absolutely. And I can talk about my own experience here with the app. We're so proud of our

app. We have an app store. People can install different indicators and information into it.

And I show it to my own family and so on. And I must say something, Sam, because of the artificial

intelligence that just learned from you, after probably two weeks, no one used the app anymore.

They just plug the car in the RF light out usage and learn and the price of electricity

and just find out the way to provide you the energy at the lowest possible price.

Honestly, we want to manage energy price at home, to be honest. So we, the Aura is quite smart on

this point. Just plug, let it go and it just works. So are you working with utilities to

be able to communicate with whatever the local utility is and find out what their

rate schedules are and then manage the charging optimally to get the lowest rates?

Absolutely. And even in some part of the country right now, we're discussing with the

utilities to have access to real-time energy market. So basically, the Aura will know when

the price of energy is super high, you have access, why not exporting and have the homeowner

make money helping to grid, right? And when the price is very low, why not using this moment

in time and basically bring the energy back home? We are working on different projects with

utilities that will really change the way we're going to interact with utilities in the future.

Yeah. So I mean, recently I was talking with another automaker that has

integrated their system as part of a larger home energy management solution.

So that even when the power is on, even when you don't have an outage,

especially during the day, if you have solar or even if you don't have solar hooked up,

you can use for some period of time, use the battery in the vehicle to power your home,

reducing the load on the rest of the grid so that there's less risk of an outage for

other people in your area, in your neighborhood. Is that something you can do as well?

It is something that is done automatically. Good for the grid, absolutely reducing the

outage, but think about the money saving aspect of it. In some part of the country,

people pay at dinner time up to 80 cents per kilowatt hours. And in low peak periods,

middle of the night, some place 10, 15 cents and down to 5 cents. So most people use their AVs

this way, right? They charge it up to 80, 90 percent, never pull completely full right to

preserve the battery, go to work, get back home. Battery is still at what? 70, 80 percent.

This is a great moment where we're going to use about 10 percent of your battery to help you

cook dinner and prevent you to buy the energy at 70 cents or 85 cents. And then during the

middle of the night, we're going to charge it back then at 10, 15 cents. So just by doing

this automatically, the ARRA makes you save thousands of dollars for years. And again, very

boring, just works. Just do it automatically. And that's something that ARRA can do right now?

That is correct. Okay. Is there anything else that we haven't covered

that either the ARRA system is doing now or interesting things that you might have coming

up in the near future? I think we are at the end-fancy of this transformation of home electrification,

to be honest, right? Everything was built kind of in silos. We have multiple product in our home,

intelligent thermostat, intelligence, EV charger, intelligent breaker panels and so on.

ARRA, we just want to simplify everything. We just want to think that at some point

in time, you just have something that should manage your energy on your VF. You know, Sam,

I'm an electrical engineer. I have a lot of degree. I'm a serial entrepreneur. But at home, I'm just

that. Even myself, I don't want to manage my own energy. Nobody wants to be constantly fiddling

with all that stuff in their house. That's exactly correct. And then the utilities

try to engage with us at the home levels. But there's no CFO at home. There's no

engineers at home, right? And so when they call, no one answer, this is where ARRA is going. And I

think that we're going to see more and more. It's the collaboration between the homeowners

automatically with the utilities altogether is to be just better. Better energy, lower energy costs,

more reliable energy. And that's just really where we're heading with the ARRA product.

Great. Well, I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today. And this sounds like,

a next generation version of some of the things we started to see in recent years, but a higher

level of integration that can potentially do even more and be simpler in a lot of ways and provide

a lot of advantages. And certainly some efficiency advantages, especially if you have

solar and you're able to not have to be constantly switching back and forth between

AC and DC. I think there's a lot of potential benefits to that to consumers over the long run.

Absolutely. The goal is to make it simple, just provide more affordable energy,

reliable energy to all. If we achieve that, if we can deliver energy so we can live a

life without compromise, then we're going to be in a good place.

All right. Well, thanks so much for your time, MA. I appreciate it. And I hope to

talk to you again soon when you have other things to announce. Absolutely. Thank you. All right.

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