The InEVitable Oct 3, 2025

We’re Back! State of the EV Industry + Deep Dive with Kyle Conner

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Concept

proving grounds

Proving grounds are places where car companies test their vehicles to see how well they perform. They can have different tracks and obstacles to mimic real driving conditions.

Company

Hyundai Kia

Hyundai Kia is a car company that makes vehicles under the Hyundai and Kia names. They are known for making reliable and affordable cars.

Car

Rivian R1S

The Rivian R1S is a new electric SUV that is made for outdoor adventures and can go off-road. It's getting a lot of attention because it has a lot of space and cool features.

Car

Rivian R1T

The Rivian R1T is a new electric truck that can drive off-road and has cool features. The latest version is better than the first one.

Brand

BYD

BYD is a car company from China that makes electric cars and batteries. They are becoming very popular around the world.

Brand

NIO

NIO is another car company from China that makes high-end electric cars. They are known for having cool technology in their vehicles.

Term

EV credits

EV credits are discounts you can get from the government when you buy an electric car. They help lower the price you pay for the car.

Brand

Ram

Ram is a brand that makes trucks and vans. They are known for being tough and good for work.

Car

Ford Got Ford

The Ford GT is a super-fast sports car that looks really cool and is built for racing. It's talked about because it's one of Ford's best cars and has a lot of history behind it.

Car

The Tesla Cybertruck is a new kind of electric truck that looks very different from regular trucks, almost like something from a sci-fi movie. It's made to be tough and has cool technology, which is why people are excited about it.

Car

Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster is a fast electric sports car made by Tesla. It's known for being one of the quickest cars and has a long battery life, making it popular among car enthusiasts.

Car

Tesla Model S

The Tesla Model S is a high-end electric car known for being fast and having a long battery life. It was one of the first electric cars that people really liked and talked about.

Car

Ford Taurus

The Ford Taurus is a family car that many people in the U.S. used to drive. It's known for being roomy and comfortable, making it a good choice for families.

Car

Toyota Tacoma

The Toyota Tacoma is a type of truck that is strong and can handle rough terrain. Many people like it for its ability to carry heavy loads and go off-road.

Car

Mini Cooper

The Mini Cooper is a small car that is easy to drive and park in the city. It's known for its unique style and sporty feel.

Car

Ford Maverick

The Ford Maverick is a smaller pickup truck that's easier to drive and park in the city compared to larger trucks. It's great for people who need a truck but don't want something too big.

Car

Chevrolet Colorado

The Chevrolet Colorado is a mid-size pickup truck that is larger than smaller trucks like the Maverick. It's good for carrying heavier loads and has more space inside.

Car

Ford Ranger

The Ford Ranger is a mid-size pickup truck that offers a good balance of power and comfort. It's suitable for work and everyday driving.

Car

Lucid Gravity

The Lucid Gravity is a new electric SUV that aims to be very luxurious and perform well. It's getting talked about because it's from a new company trying to make a name in the electric car world.

Car

Tesla Model 3

The Tesla Model 3 is a smaller electric car that many people like because it's cheaper than other Teslas and can go a long distance on a single charge. It's important because it helps more people consider driving electric cars.

Car

Dodge Charger

The Dodge Charger is a big car that looks sporty and is known for being fast. There's a new electric version of it, but some people think it didn't turn out very well, which is why it's being talked about.

Car

Dodge Nitro

The Dodge Nitro is a type of SUV that Dodge made between 2007 and 2011. It's designed to be tough and can handle off-road driving, but some people didn't like how it performed or how much gas it used.

Car

Dodge Challenger

The Dodge Challenger is a powerful car that looks like the classic muscle cars from the past. It's often talked about with the Charger because they are similar and both are loved by car fans.

Term

V8 engine

A V8 engine is a type of engine that has eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It's known for being powerful and is commonly used in fast cars like muscle cars.

Car

Dodge Hellcat

The Dodge Hellcat is a super powerful version of the Charger and Challenger. It has a special engine that makes it really fast and exciting to drive.

Term

burnout

A burnout is when a car spins its wheels while staying in one place, making a lot of smoke from the tires. It's a popular trick among car enthusiasts.

Term

electric car

An electric car is a type of vehicle that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. They are better for the environment and can be cheaper to drive because they use less energy.

Term

EV

EV means electric vehicle, which is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas. They are becoming more popular because they are cleaner for the environment.

Term

battery

A battery in a car stores electricity to make the car run. In electric cars, the battery is very important because it determines how far the car can go on a single charge.

Term

one-pedal driving

One-pedal driving lets you control the car's speed just by using the gas pedal. When you lift your foot off it, the car slows down, which can make driving easier in stop-and-go traffic.

Term

$80,000 car

An $80,000 car is a vehicle that costs that much to buy. Usually, these cars are more luxurious and have better features than cheaper cars.

Term

frunk

A frunk is a trunk at the front of the car instead of the back. It's useful for storing things, especially in electric cars that don't have an engine in the front.

Car

Lyric

The Cadillac Lyric is a new electric SUV from Cadillac, known for its luxury features and modern technology.

Car

Biggest pile of crap that I've ever been in is really bad.

Clearly, they didn't want to build it.

The car drives as if they didn't want to build it.

And the lease prices are amazing.

So when you evaluate it as an $80,000 car, terrible.

When you evaluate it as $100 a month, nothing down.

Now it makes sense.

Now we're talking.

Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motor Trend.

Hi there.

We're back.

Welcome to The Inevitable.

This is Motor Trend's podcast, our podcast about, well,

it's really about the future of the car.

Where are we going?

How are we going to get there?

What are we driving?

As always, I'm joined by Ed Lowe.

And Ed's got a lot to say.

Yes.

To say it.

Yes.

Where have we been?

The Inevitable podcast is brought to you by, well,

nobody right now.

We would love to have a sponsor.

So if you're interested in getting a sponsor,

so if you're interested in sponsoring our podcast,

you can do one episode, and you're three episodes,

and you need a whole season, hit me up,

edward.loweh, at Hearst.com.

You can also slide into our Instagram, DMs,

or wherever you see us.

Hit us up if you want to sponsor.

We're actively seeking one.

You'll notice I said Hearst.

So yes, Motor Trend is now part of the Hearst Magazine

family.

That explains the long pause, the break we took.

Last episode, part of this was, I think,

end of February.

And we've been spending the time sort of getting

acquainted to the Hearst system and getting this thing

back on its feet.

So there have been several changes.

We're no longer working with our good friends

at Podcast One.

We wish them well.

They were awesome.

They were the best.

They were super great.

Miss you guys.

Alistair, Sean, Gabby.

Gabby.

Miss Gabby the most.

Oh, you're fine.

Yes.

Great production partners.

But we're taking this one in-house and probably

more on the road, because our budget's

all smaller.

For instance, now we're at Hyundai Kia Proving Grounds.

Unless we get a great sponsor.

We're at Hyundai Kia Proving Grounds up near Mojave,

the Mojave Dungeon in California.

We're actually at SUV of the Year.

And we have a great triumphant return show for you today

with a great guest who's been on multiple times before.

The first time we had him on,

we actually broke it up into two episodes,

because he had so much to talk about.

Might happen again this time.

We don't know.

But let's get into it with our guest.

The one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend,

out of specs, Kyle Conner.

Hooray, Kyle.

How's it going?

All right.

All right, first question.

How many rivings do you own now?

Three.

You just bought the lowest, the cheapest,

the dual motor, $70,000?

Yeah, cheapest you can get an R1S.

No options.

And?

It's awesome.

You love it.

Yeah.

It's all that you need, right?

I've been saying, Johnny, you need a quad motor.

OK, we can discuss quad versus dual all day,

but that dual motor can do so much that the quad can do.

Not everything, but it's a huge price delta

to go up to the quad.

Yeah, hey, I'm not saying it's not cheap, but yeah.

Is the best?

I'm a cheap person.

I like to buy cars used.

I know you like to buy a lot of used cars.

I talk to, I won't name him, because I don't think he was

technically off the record, but it's a person we both

know really well who used to work for the company.

And he said the best Rivian to buy used is, well,

the best Rivians are the current, the latest,

the second generation R1T, R1S, and then R1T,

and then at a very far bottom in like fifth place out of four

would be the first gen R1S.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I totally agree.

Early R1S's knots are great.

Early R1T's awesome.

The suspension, the Pogo-wing suspension,

which you can't fix.

You can't fix it.

It's a hardware fix.

It wasn't even Pogo-wing, it was just weirdly stepping out.

Totally agree.

Yeah, they were awkward.

So in your estimation, get a first gen R1T.

First gen R1T, I have an early one.

Johnny has an early one.

Ours are actually pretty similar.

And they're freaking totally awesome.

Although, I will say, I watch you like the amount

of repairs years has gone through.

Yeah, recently, it's been a little buggy in my subject.

I mean, I can tell you exactly.

I mean, like 38,000 miles or something like that.

But I mean, knock on wood, air conditioning went out

at like 10,000 miles, and that's sort of been it.

But aren't those, because of what they did with the Gen 2s,

aren't they sort of, they're not feature-proofed, right?

They're not future-proofed.

They're not going to be updated.

Correct, they've kind of reached,

and I'm sure they'll add some features over time.

But Gen 1 and Gen 2 are pretty close right now

in the function.

Because I have both, I can get out of one and into the other,

almost no difference in terms of day-to-day living.

From here on, Gen 2 is going to kind of get-

The fork is coming.

Yes.

But they're in a good spot.

Like, if my truck never got any real improvements,

you know, the only thing I really want is rear steer,

and that's never going to happen.

That's never coming.

And it's like, it's in a good spot.

Well, I should say that they have a job opening

for someone who's an expert in rear steer.

I saw that.

I'm an expert in rear steer.

There you go.

No, I'm a mechanic.

A lot of jokes.

Philosophically.

There's a lot of jokes there about expeditiveness.

OK, that was not going to be my first question.

My first question is because we've been off the air

since late February.

And they actually recorded those earlier is,

what's going on in the EV industry?

Any big changes going on here?

Like, it's fine, guys.

It's all good.

In all seriousness, right?

Like, you're one of the foremost experts

on the EV industry.

It's called the foremost.

I don't need that.

But like, all this.

He knows about charging cables.

I know, I know.

But let's do like charging cables.

The bigger picture here, which is the political climate,

the business climate, the rollback of the supposed EV.

Is it still inevitable?

We are.

Yes, is it still inevitable?

Thank you.

Are EVs, how do you feel?

Like, what's going on here?

So lucky enough to, at least since the last time

I saw you guys, traveled between China, Europe, and here

quite a bit.

And so each market has a totally different vibe now.

I mean, it was kind of two years ago,

everyone was on the same page.

OK, let's just keep pushing the electric thing.

And there was like, OK, some markets are ahead of the others.

But everyone knew, even just general consumers,

electric is coming.

Now in the US market, I would say the general consumer

feels like they probably have more choice, which,

in my opinion, a good thing.

If they want an electric car, let them buy an electric car.

They don't.

Don't.

That's my personal opinion.

In Europe, I don't think things have changed that much.

They're still feeling the electric push.

What Europe is feeling is a lot of Chinese influence right now.

You drive around Germany, and you

start seeing great wall motors or a funky cats.

And you're like, how is this in Germany?

This is crazy.

I was in England not long ago.

And I rode in several Chinese EVs, like SUVs,

just being transported around.

But several, I don't even know the names of them,

and they all seemed real good.

They all seemed at the level of what American consumers can

buy from Chevy right now.

And I'm literally, I'm staring.

I'm like, I've never even heard of that one.

I can't remember what it was.

Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of new brands.

There's 100 new car brands in China

that are still existing and going.

And they keep expawning sub-brands.

Like every five minutes, like a cell phone company

looks up with Geely, and they got a new brand.

Consolidation is coming.

This was right.

So then that brings us to China, which

was hardcore EV three years ago, even two years ago.

And now the massive competition has driven everyone

to price wars.

And it's rooted out a lot of the folks who couldn't compete.

So it's leaving some of the bigger, at least conglomerates,

whether or not specific brands, but the bigger car

organizations.

And to be honest, it kind of feels

like the Chinese market is actually

kind of stagnating a little bit.

Oh, really?

Which is unusual.

But it does feel softer than it was.

Which part is stagnating?

Sales of electric cars.

OK, no.

Not going to combustion, just car sales in general.

Yeah, I mean, we're probably heading globally

into some sort of recession-type-y thing.

But China was, I mean, they were selling over a million EVs

a month.

So the total car market in China,

so US is like $16,000,000, $17,000,000, something

like that depending on the year.

China was like $26 million, I think.

And like half of that was EVs or something?

Right.

Or I can Google it, but it was as big.

But I haven't heard anyone else say it's stagnating.

Yeah, I feel like the news and the conversation in the US

is always a year or two behind what

is actually happening in China.

Interesting.

And every time I go there and now I

have some really good friends that live there that

are like into the EV thing, I'm just

hearing totally different reports from them

from what the general consensus is here in the US.

And the general consensus, I mean,

what's the general consensus is?

Well, the general consensus is everything

Kyle said that in five years ago, right,

there was something like, I don't know,

even QQ can, very spun.

It said 200, 400 EV startups, big brands, little brands.

This is the great thing about authoritarian government, right?

They rule.

They can set a target 30 years out,

and then they'll do things like incentivize the populace

to switch to.

Oh, you say that's a thing about people.

I know, I know.

But not a great thing.

Not a great thing.

It's not like the US where we're changing our president

every four years, and there's a dramatic pendulum

swinging back and forth, right?

So China, the Communist Party, they master plan all this stuff.

They basically are making all these brands fight like dogs,

and only the strongest will survive.

And the strongest one currently looks like BYD.

You probably, X-pangs in there.

There might be a couple of state-owned ones.

NEO's got some pretty cool tech.

But then if you talk to some of our colleagues

at Western OEMs, they're like,

a lot of those Chinese brands that you love,

they are not profitable at all.

Actually, NEO's kind of maybe not gonna, I don't know.

We'll see.

It's not looking great right now.

I'm just don't know if to remember back in the 80s and 90s

when it was like Japan's taking over.

Japan, they're gonna destroy the US car market.

There won't be any more American cars.

They just bought Pebble Beach.

They're gonna buy the state of California.

We will now, it's all doom and gloom.

And then like 1996 happened,

no one even thinks about Japan anymore.

I think there's some parallels there.

The bigger picture problem as Kyle mentioned

is that the sales are way down.

There are macroeconomic problems in China

dealing with the aging population.

There are a bunch of college-aged college graduates

that can't find jobs.

They're all going back to school for graduate degrees.

Or there's this whole phenomenon of lying flat

where they're just deciding not to work.

They're gonna live at home.

So, and the population-

Is that still an option?

It's an option.

So, but let's pivot and focus a little bit more

about on the US side.

Because China's like, China's China.

I'm not really believing in any of their cars

until I come here.

But let's talk about cars.

And crash tests.

I want to see crash tests.

Oh, well they're looking great.

In Europe, the crash test stuff so far.

I want to see American crash tests.

I mean, yeah, your end cap's harder than IAHS, isn't it?

No.

Oh, no.

IAHS cranks it up constantly, yeah, yeah.

Well, let's start crashing stuff

because everything looks too easy to me.

Yep.

If everything gets five stars,

how do you know what's better?

Exactly.

That's why IAHS, not everything does get five stars.

They actually keep ratcheting it.

Well, yeah, but they're moving the goalposts,

not so much on the physical, the structure stuff.

They're moving it on the A-lights and the headlights.

That's important stuff.

Okay, but I want to talk about some recent to us news.

One is which I keep getting served.

Tesla Instagram ads about how the $7,500 EV credits

going away in like two weeks.

And then I just heard that Ram is going to kill

the Ram full battery electric.

Which doesn't exist.

They're only going to sell the EREV chargers look like.

They're all going to go back to being AME powered.

Like who's in the best shape from the U.S. car market?

Not just British, not just U.S. brands.

I mean, including Toyota and the Germans

and whatever, right?

And then who's in the worst shape?

Yeah, it's so hard.

I mean, I'm so in the weeds on this stuff

that it's a bit difficult to look at the actual sales numbers.

You always be near the weeds.

Like I'm into the actual product

of what is the right or wrong car.

In terms of what consumers actually do with that information

and how does it affect a brand,

that's not my area of expertise.

But I can guess and spit ball.

Man, I just want to know what's going to happen

in two weeks when the $7,500 credit goes away.

So they're also doing this thing

where you can get a binding contract

before the end of this month.

And your tax credit will retain

by the time you take delivery.

Right, but let's go with a year in the future.

You agree to buy one.

Yeah, like you sign something now

and you can't take delivery till November or December.

But let's go with it fast forward a year,

once the $7,500 credit is done.

I don't actually think it makes that much

of a difference though.

Yeah, I think the automakers

will just have to do what they do,

which is sell good products.

And again, it just opens up more choice.

I'm not a huge fan of deeply incentivizing

the sale of an electric car.

I understand combustion fuels are deeply incentivized

or subsidized.

It's usually a report where it was like over 31 billion a year

go to fossil fuels.

It's insane.

And then they're like,

then that's probably a way under number,

like if you actually look at everything else.

Totally, and I'm not a great macro economist,

but I would say, you know,

most people that are getting the $7,500 tax credit

may not really need it towards their next car.

Right.

So I'm okay that that goes away.

I think it means American automakers

and any automaker that's selling here

really needs to step it up and say,

not only are you going to get an electric car,

it's going to be a better experience

than having a combustion car.

Yeah, and they don't,

it's going to be hesitant to do that.

Yeah.

When they're still selling combustion cars.

A lot of that split brand right now is,

in short term, probably puts brands in a good position

because they can change the mix of what they're selling.

Right.

And that keeps them alive.

Which way is the limbo?

But then there's these new startup automakers

that are electric only.

Tesla Rivian Lucid come to mind.

Damn, I don't know what's going to happen with them.

I mean, I think Tesla probably should be okay.

They've weathered worse storms.

And, but then with Rivian and Lucid,

that's going to be interesting.

I would just say real quick,

most Rivians and Lucids aren't eligible.

They're too expensive anyway.

Unless you lease them.

Oh, right there.

That is right.

The lease is how everyone gets it.

No one is actually buying electric cars.

I forget the numbers,

it's like an insane proportion of leasing.

So then you just have manufacturer incentives

and hopefully, I don't know what that's going to do

to the used car market, but it's going to be interesting.

I'm going to be really keeping a close eye on it.

I don't think anyone can predict the short term effect.

The long term effect, I think stays the same.

We're eventually going to get to more EVs.

That's going to be a thing.

It just might get pushed a little bit.

Okay.

So you mentioned startups.

Those are the established startups.

I want to hear about three new brands.

Tello, Slate, and then also Ford's FUEV,

which I'd love to name.

What about Scout?

Do we care about Scout?

Well, really, no.

Well, let's start with Slate and Tello, or Tello first.

Do you have any spending time with those guys?

Yeah.

So my colleagues have done both of those cars.

So Slate, first of all,

that whole marketing campaign was based off

of having the $7,500 tax credit.

And so now it's quite a big percentage difference.

And then you've also got Ford making a direct competitor

to that with a much larger engineering team

and a much more established brand

that we know can get it through to production.

And also isn't, I mean, my problem with Slate,

if you're not familiar, here's our $20,000 car, right?

Or pick a truck, pick a truck, right?

But then it's like, oh, it's got 150 miles of range.

I don't want that.

I don't want the bigger battery pack.

There's no idea what it costs.

They won't say.

The one that probably nobody, except for you,

wants, the super cheapo one,

the actual one might be double the price.

Yeah, it might be 35, 38 grand.

60 for the two motors and a big battery in an SUV back.

Yeah, or like I actually want a speaker in there.

Right, so.

So you're making fun of the modular low-cost approach.

I think it's cool.

I just, why not announce pricing?

It just seems a little scammy to me.

How could they in this environment?

Well, or just commit to it, right?

I mean, they committed to a base price.

Also, let's recall the leading American EV manufacturer

and their claims of pricing and how true they've kept.

Like a Cybertruck for $39,000 or a Roadster, Roadster 2.

Go back.

Well, that's an amazing story.

How is he not in prison?

That's called theft.

But if you go back to,

remember when the Model S came out

and he was explaining how it was the same price

as a Ford Taurus.

And they're like, there were a whole bunch

of variables in there.

Like the value of your time at like,

was it like $500 an hour?

Nice.

Okay, great.

It's like, cause you don't have to go to the gas station.

Right.

If you value your time at $500 an hour.

Okay, so we think Slate,

Slate definitely has some problems.

Tello.

Tello, great design.

Really cool looking truck.

I mean, it should be fast.

The thing is there's like 12 people that work at Tello.

And I'm not knocking them.

They've done a lot for a really small team.

It just isn't Ford Motor Company.

You know what I mean?

I want to get through homologation, durability testing,

all of these things.

Where is they at though?

Cause we had them on the show home.

Oh, we just had, I think we had our world's tallest man,

Alex Lanz, go out and drive one.

I agree.

I also think the timing, I'm sure when,

first of all, look back on Slate.

Slate's rollout was awesome for a number of reasons.

A, they were like super stealth.

Nobody had like heard of them

and all of a sudden these cars started popping up

and they put a ton of them out on the streets

and they were all mocked up differently

in like different colorways.

When they did the rollout,

I think they pulled like nine different prototype Tello vehicles.

Sorry, Slate vehicles.

I went to the Tello launch in LA and they were like,

here's our one.

Yeah.

And it's, and it was-

Remember Kersh?

We had one Shelby, he just kept painting it.

So you can do it.

To your point.

At the end of the day, like I wish all of these well

because in fact, like for my use case,

the Tello, the Slate, the Ford thing,

that's actually kind of the car I want to have

to just drive around town and do stuff, you know,

at our spot and like move things around.

Like they're great.

The Tello seems to be the most interesting to me.

Like in terms of-

350 miles of range.

Yeah.

It's also the interior cargo capacity of a Toyota Tacoma

and the footprint of a Mini Cooper.

Right.

It's crazy short front end.

How's it going to pass crash?

And I know people want little K pickup trucks.

That's something to-

That's the white space.

Yeah.

Like a smaller pickup truck.

Yeah.

And then what's currently-

A Maverick.

Well, maybe just a little bit smaller Maverick

because Tacoma's Colorado's Rangers are all too big.

They're big but they also have no space.

It's weird.

It's like, like the interior of the Colorado

is like shocking to me.

It's like there's nowhere to put sunglass.

I know.

That is crazy.

Yeah.

So anyway, but so I, same thing.

Like I want all these things to succeed.

I'm just like, that Tello's like, where's it been?

Like what's-

Well, that's the thing.

It's hard to like get excited about something

that clearly is not on the market

and maybe a little bit farther away

than the brands would like you to think.

Right.

Because we've even seen, like for example,

startup automakers like Lucid,

I was driving the gravity.

Like that is unfinished software at the moment.

And so that's a pretty big established-

Why? Cause the Ares software finally made it decent enough

and say it's not what the first thing owners talk about.

I couldn't get the car to turn on

for 20 minutes last night.

So maybe I'm a little salting

but I was sitting in the back of a dark parking lot

trying to move.

You should be soft, so the car should turn on.

That's-

I'm like key card on the thing.

Oh, we'll get to the gravity.

The rest are gonna get into the gravity.

My thing is like,

I try not to cover them too closely on my channels

and I try not to think about them too much

because I desperately want any of them to work

and I will happily be one of the first customers

to get in.

Like I'll reserve the slate, like I'm in on that.

I canceled my Cybertruck deposit

and put it down on the Tello, so I'm in.

That seems like the coolest one of the bunch,

if I'm honest.

I just, you know, prudos until they're on sale.

Where are you on the-

Yeah, the Ford-

Where are you on the Ford?

Because you seem to be bullish on the fact

that Ford's got a lot of engineering might

but we've also discussed how some of these bigger companies

can't get out of their own way on some of this stuff.

Yeah, but I like how Ford locked

that whole engineering team

in a different building in California.

Yeah.

They just said, here's a check, blank check,

go do what you gotta do.

Right.

And then they hired like some pretty cool people.

Outfield, right.

And like they are,

I think going to have the best opportunity

to nail this one.

I don't know if they will.

Sometimes Fords are always like great

and then there's always the one, but-

Yeah.

But-

We're gonna recall everything twice.

Exactly.

No, I remember we had, you know, Doug Field on

and we asked, we said,

well, why do you have to have like two buildings

with Ford and he's like, look,

some of our guys wanna go to work in a bathroom.

Like, that's fine.

That doesn't fly in Dearborn.

Sure, exactly.

Well, I just, I'm a little worried

because honestly, I saw the press release

and it's come through and I was like, let's tune in.

I saw Farley get up there and talk about it.

Then Doug Field talked about,

this is now like, what, five years into Doug's tenure

since leaving Apple and Tesla.

Now he is, for those who don't know,

Doug is a guy who did Model 3.

Yeah.

And the iPhone.

And so, well, parts of the iPhone.

So like, or parts of the Apple car actually.

Where-

Yeah, but the iPhone.

Where's the thing?

Cause it's still not going to be out.

Two years?

Yeah, 2027.

That's the thing.

It's just gotta be good.

It's hard to get excited about it.

But I do think out of any of the brands you mentioned,

Ford for sure can get it across the goalpost

in terms of just money that they can throw at.

Sure.

So that's the big difference, I think here.

Slate also has some pretty strong financial backing.

They do.

And a lot of automaker executives working there.

So that's a very professional team.

And that means a lot of ex-Tesla.

Yeah.

A lot of people that kind of have left Tesla

for all kinds of reasons.

Slate is an anagram for Tesla.

Did you know that?

Yes.

In their presentation.

Sure, Slate.

There's a whole bunch of them.

I saw, you saw the IAA and I think,

I think they don't come online until 2027, 2028,

but Kia is sort of doing all this stuff.

And remember, they have the SV,

what are they calling it?

The little Kia work vehicles?

Oh, the PV.

PV.

So remember, they have a van body on it.

They can, and when I saw it at wherever I saw it,

they can draw, oh, see, yes.

They can draw a pickup body on it.

And so it's super modular.

And I remember, what I like about Koreans is like,

I kind of feel like when they say

they're going to do something, it just happens.

And I said, when are we going to see this?

And they're like, 2028.

You will totally, the crazy factory will be built.

And they will be level four autonomy on the roads,

on sale in the US, 2028.

But do any, did you?

Don't know about timing.

Did you learn anything about the PVs?

Yeah, I looked at the PV five,

which is the production one.

I think the first one.

It also debuts their new operating system,

which is very Tesla-like with climate control

on the bottom and map as the native home menu.

I thought it was a really nice van.

Storage was unbelievable.

Oh, that's the one that's just cubby holes everywhere.

Everything you touch opens.

The floor opens up.

It's just insane and looks great.

It's really a approachable, friendly vehicle.

I really think the Koreans with their EGMP stuff,

which isn't always high-voltage,

just that architecture, man,

they kind of nailed that thing.

It's really good.

Yeah, I don't really get excited about work vans.

Right, I do too, actually.

Yeah.

I mean, whatever.

It's something I don't really have a need for in my life.

But I remember looking at,

they told me the whole ecosystem of the PV

and how the big, giant van will go to one spot

and the little van will unload from it.

And I'm like, this is like a little kid.

You're just playing with trucks.

Let's bring it back to the original thesis,

which is where are we since we were off there?

And since that February timeframe,

Charger EV has come out.

Yeah, that was a disaster.

Any other thoughts?

The thing is, pilot crap that I've ever been in

is really bad.

No, hang on though, because, let me say,

biggest pilot crap, I actually go to the Dodge Nitro.

So, what was...

Another Dodge.

But what was so extra crappy

from your point of view about the Charger?

Yeah, I mean, I can go on

the nitty-gritty of details forever.

Five minutes.

But the Dodge Charger EV,

first of all, looks really cool.

I think they did a nice job on the design.

Do you like the two-door or the four-door there?

I prefer the two-door,

which is probably the only car I prefer a two-door in

over a four-door, okay?

Because I'm a four-door guy, I'm weird.

I also like the IQL over the IQ.

You've gotten yourself talking about design.

You're like, really, every video he does,

I'm not a design guy, no kidding.

Yeah, I'm really not.

But so from a fundamental standpoint,

the Charger and Challenger has always been, to me,

that is one of the last true muscle cars

that we got in our market.

I mean, big V8s, love Hellcats.

I'm a huge fan of all of that.

I know it's not for this podcast, but I'm a...

Oh, hey, they're great.

I haven't for a year.

Yeah, I'm a Hellcat enthusiast.

You love it.

So then you go and you say,

okay, this is our electric one going out.

So then it's gotta be like,

okay, if you had to make a muscle car electric,

what is the first thing it should be able to do?

Burnout.

And it does spin the tires, but it spins the wrong tires.

Oh, it spins the front?

It spins the front.

And so the weight comes off the front

because they did equal power front and rear,

and you're doing a front wheel burnout.

So I'm sitting at the launch,

watching all these content creators,

everyone going, wow, it spins the tires.

I'm like, no, it's the wrong ones.

What launch, were you on the video launch

or the generalist launch?

I think video launch.

Because they have no idea of everything.

Yeah, it is like, wow.

What did I say about the car again?

Okay.

That's what I experienced.

Anyway, it was just a, that's one thing.

The other thing is driving dynamics-wise,

if you dig into it.

I heard it was great on the freeway.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's a cruiser.

But then it, okay.

So you have to evaluate it.

Is it a muscle car?

Is it an electric car?

Talking about it as an EV.

As an EV, there are some qualities to it.

It's got a relatively big battery.

It's a low-voltage system architecture,

even though Stella Large can support high-voltage,

they chose to keep it low-voltage,

but it charges okay.

Like it does 500 amps around 200 kilowatts,

you know, pretty deep in the pack, it's fine.

There is zero route planning.

Oh.

Why?

I don't know.

They tried telling me there was route planning,

so I put in, you know, Colorado from where I was in Phoenix

and it's like, I'm at 80% state of charge.

You can charge in six miles at a level two station.

Like that is not how that works.

So zero route planning in a brand new electric car

that they're expecting a new audience

that's gonna leave everyone stranded.

Then in terms of driving dynamics,

the whole one-pedal driving was terribly tuned.

So you come off the throttle, the car decelerates,

then it smooths out, it coasts,

and then jams the friction brakes.

I'm like, wow, how hard can it be

to just tune a nice speed profile on the car?

And the list goes on and on and on.

Yeah, so it just seems, a general statement,

like not even in Stalanta specifically,

but like so many manufacturers are hesitant

to just do good one-pedal driving.

All you gotta do is copy what Tesla does.

They freaking nailed it.

You see a red light or yellow light,

you take your foot off the throttle

and by the time you get to the line, it's stopped.

And it's been doing that for a decade.

Yep.

Like how can that be hard to copy?

I genuinely don't know.

You know what I mean?

It's so crazy to me.

What I heard from you and then a lot of other people

that were on the charger launch was that

everyone who was employed by Dodge was like,

oh, we're really sorry about this car.

Like the good one's coming in a year.

Yes.

Like what the hell is that?

That was the whole I spoke to as many EV people

as I could on that.

And I'm like, guys, what's the deal with this?

I talked to the chief engineer who didn't know

the difference between kilowatt and kilowatt hour.

I'm sure she's a very nice person,

but I was just like, she didn't know the speed

of the capacity of the onboard charger

and then gave me the wrong units.

And I'm like, you just clearly aren't in it.

And I think in order to build one,

I even had a sidebar off the record conversation.

I think now it's okay to say it

with one of the powertrain engineers.

I'm like, why don't you go work for a company

that you can actually do good work at?

He's like, I know, I'm kind of looking.

So it was really rough from a,

like clearly they didn't want to build it.

The car drives as if they didn't want to build it

and the lease prices are amazing.

So when you evaluate it as an $80,000 car, terrible.

When you evaluate it as a hundred bucks a month,

nothing down, now it makes sense.

Now we're talking.

Early in this launch, I had one in LA, drove it around

and people, they love it.

They love the way it looks.

Yeah, it looks good.

Parts of LA, they're like, what's under the hood?

I'm like, it's electric.

My lunch.

With its optional front trunk.

Yeah, oh, that's so weird.

Yeah, why not just do frunks?

I don't like, there's so much weird hesitancy,

like do a frunk, like the Cadillac Vistik,

which is an awesome EV in every way.

Until you open the hood.

You open the hood and it's like Darth Vader's

chest plate got exploded, like you could.

So the Vistik is a bloated Lyric

and you can see where they stretch the metal

over the Lyric body, basically.

But like, again, Tesla, they figured out

like the real fundamentals of the EV game,

like have a frunk.

That's why they're so popular.

Yeah, just work.

And the software integration,

it's no longer about a car, it's an entire ecosystem.

Does it pair well with your phone?

Can you share it to someone else?

The fact that I have a dog mode

is like a mandatory requirement for my lifestyle.

And you still can't buy any legacy OE car with dog mode.

VinFast has it.

Oh, is VinFast on it?

I don't know, but...

I see a lot of VinFast on the Vistikers,

but I know they're free.

It might be now when this podcast airs,

like we don't know.

This is what kills VinFast.

All right, let me pivot here real fast

because then I want us to try hopping into this gravity

and go and then talk about that as we drive,

which will be a new feature.

But before we do that,

because you were talking about route planning

and how terrible it was in the charger,

can you just talk about what's the state of charging

in America?

I mean, you travel so much.

You're road tripping as a real part

of your content creation process.

I mean, it's gotten better, right?

Nax is, and that's actually a big one.

Nax is now on board and a lot of manufacturers,

we now have adapters coming out of both ends.

We have both, NACS and CC.

We live in an adapter society now.

What's it been like?

Is it gonna be better?

When does it get really good?

Yeah, when do we just stop talking about

how about a paving-ass charger?

I mean, I kind of feel like we're there.

I mean, except until you get to California,

then it goes to shit, which makes no sense.

I have a theory.

I was gonna tell you my theory of that.

Oh, backup, really?

Like what?

I don't even think about driving an electric car

anywhere else except California,

which is why I'm driving an M5 this week

and not an EV.

Let me give you the context of why that is though.

So California has massive EV adoption.

Over 20% of new cars sold in California.

We have too many years.

We have too many EVs for the last three years.

Every quarter it's been over 20%.

Like the peak, I think was like the end of 24

was 21. something percent.

Even the third quarter of 25 was over 20%.

So we've added three million EVs in the last three years.

The number of chargers have not a fast charger.

We're talking about fast chargers here.

Has not gone up.

The number of renters has gone up.

And so people that rent the landlord

never let you put in a charger.

That's what you mean.

This is the California problem.

You mean fast chargers suck in California.

Yeah, fast chargers suck.

I mean, if you have access to a home charger

in the state of California, an EV works perfect.

Because by the time you get to the range

of where you need to recharge,

you're out in the desert, you're somewhere else,

and you can charge easily out there.

Or you charge at night.

You get to where you're going

and you plug in on level two at night.

Totally.

It's when you're in LA and you're like,

I can go five days on this charge

and then you have to recharge.

That's when it doesn't work.

So I...

It doesn't work because...

When you do find an Electrify America or a Chargepoint,

it's full with someone else's on it

or 10 cores broken.

Yeah, because they just get hammered so hardcore.

And people don't treat charging equipment nicely.

It's not theirs.

So cables get either stolen or broken.

The connectors get knocked on the ground.

The actual power modules are not maintained

to the standard that they should be.

So you get derated or charged at lines.

And there's three.

Like where I live,

8 miles away is an EA station that has three...

Is that La Quenillada?

No, I'm near Glendale.

But there's three.

And then if you go the other direction,

about a mile, there's three.

And you go to anyone, 24 hours a day,

they're all full and there's like six to eight cars waiting.

Well, even one up in like Montrose or La Crescento,

there's no people.

But I want the latest.

The NAX adoption, the opening up of Tesla Superchargers

hasn't helped us at all.

No, no, it definitely has.

I just think also they're slammed

in Southern California as well.

You go to some of these big sites that they have

and they're pretty busy.

They're slammed, but also they haven't increased

the cable length at all.

So like, you know, lightnings and Rivians.

We can discuss that.

You know, and like, so like Tesla's dropping the ball there

because we're paying them.

They should be able to...

Well, let's talk about Superchargers

that if it makes sense.

So there's a couple.

There's essentially three or four major generations

of Superchargers that kind of fit in this timeline.

The first was version two Superchargers,

which uses one cabinet, 150 kilowatt cabinet

to feed two dispensers, one A1B to A2B.

And that was when you'd plug in two cars

and it would just go to shit.

It would go to 72 kilowatts.

The thing is, none of those are open

to other automakers.

So a lot of Tesla's early infrastructure

was centered around Southern California,

the desert getting around.

None of those chargers are open.

And there's a bunch of those, yeah.

There's a surprising number of them still around.

Then version three came out,

which was one 360 kilowatt cabinet feeding four posts

and then they can do site level load balancing,

which is nice.

But the cable's this long.

So the cable's this long.

They are liquid cooled, but they overheat like this.

They're crazy.

So you plug in a equinox EV that needs 500 amps.

You might get a little boost in warm weather of 500 amps

and then boom, now you're down to slow charging.

And the cable length is a real problem

because you have to pull the car right up on there.

You have to block two stalls.

These can all be retrofitted with version four dispensers.

I don't know why Tesla has been so slow

putting in the long cable dispensers to existing sites.

New sites are built with that same charging hardware,

but with the version four dispenser,

those work pretty well.

And those are up to 250?

Yeah, technically with Cybertruck,

they can do more with pretty much any non-Tesla.

They're around 200 kilowatts.

Tesla can do 250.

Tesla's need more than 500 amps.

Tesla will not deliver more than 500 amps

to a non-Tesla vehicle right now.

And that's for safety or just like no one knows?

Most adapters are rated at 500 amps, so it's all safety.

And the only cars that would request it would be like,

nope, that shouldn't do more than 500,

but Volvo EX90 and Polestar III want more than 600

or more than 500, Chinese stuff, yeah.

And then they have the new,

which we haven't seen installed yet, version four site.

So that is a version four cabinet

and a version four dispenser.

You haven't seen any of those yet?

They have not been installed yet

at the time of this recording very soon.

Those are high voltage supporting,

so those can actually do 500 kilowatt output then,

and they do one 1.2 megawatt cabinet

can feed eight dispensers.

You can link them all together,

do site stuff, it's really cool.

That's the future.

Do you know where the first one's gonna be?

No, but I know there's some big sites

planned up and down the I-5 corridor.

And I wanna talk about,

because I watch an ad for them every time

I watch one of your videos.

Iona, where the hell are they?

I want Iona's.

Yeah, I think they just opened their first one

on the West Coast.

Yeah, but in Vista.

You said it's a bad location, yeah.

There's 7P, who lives in Vista?

That's like a suburb of San Diego.

Yeah, huh.

Oh yeah, I want to be in there.

I know Vista.

There's an EV shop, I recommend their QC charge,

not sponsored, but they're good.

Lovely, what a beautiful quaint beach community,

but like, we're going to where the massive people are

if you're in the business of making money

off charging cars, go to where the EVs are.

Right, so that's the thing with Iona.

Right now they've been very much focused

on corridor charging and not so much

in inner city charging.

That is changing, and I think they will

obviously power both of those situations,

but the needs of inner city or urban EV charging

is totally different than corridor charging.

Totally different, yeah.

But just for the folks at home,

Iona is the new network with eight OEM partners,

eight car manufacturers, which include BMW,

GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz,

Stellantis, and Toyota.

And that's the bulk of the cars sold in the U.S.

or those companies, like you'd think like,

if you're trying to sell EVs, just start popping them everywhere.

Well they are, so they're going as fast as they can.

I think there's over 20 or 30 sites already

in just a few months, which is,

dude it's so slow and so hard

to put in fast charging infrastructure.

What? Yeah, I know.

I mean we can do a whole episode on that.

I actually know why they're like, yeah, come on.

It's transformer upgrades, it's permitting,

it's actual getting the chargers there,

laying the lines of some AMG video you did.

Yeah, they had to put in their early substation at Nardo,

which is crazy.

So yeah, getting power to the location is really hard.

So then you see innovative solutions

like battery integrated charging,

which we have one right over here actually.

And that type of solution starts to make sense,

but not when you need a lot of throughput.

When you have to charge a bunch of cars,

you need big power, and that's what Iona is planning for,

which is why it takes a minute.

Kyle's talking about, for our SUV of the year program,

we talked to a vendor, Electric Fish,

who brought basically a giant battery

that you can plug into an outlet, fill it up,

and then it will, up to 350 kilowatt output,

can charge up very quickly.

I think we were estimating three and a half F-150 lightnings

before you would need to fill it up again.

But this is a solution because it won't be,

to your point, only works if you're just charging,

topping off, doing occasional charging,

not if it's a busy corridor and you have multiple cars.

So I have a solution like this at our office in Colorado.

I have a 230 kilowatt hour battery with two dispensers,

it's from X-Charge, similar idea,

and that very rarely hits 0%.

And for that type of use case,

we do like four or five sessions in like the morning,

and then maybe 10 or 12 in the afternoon,

but like most people aren't going zero to 100,

they're going with 70 to 90 or 30 to 80 or whatever.

So that works pretty well.

So I want to start with just one thing you said.

So when you draw, again, you road trip everywhere.

You have your trip all over America.

You're saying, and you're based in Fort Collins, right?

Just go to North Carolina.

Just to say, yeah, you're back in North Carolina.

Yeah, but still have the office in Fort.

But in those, so in those different areas,

you're saying it's really easy now to get around.

You don't have a problem,

you don't have a problem basically anywhere.

Yeah, it can get Key West to Alaska, no problem.

California.

California, Southern California, big problem,

Northern California, it's still a kind of problem.

It's urban areas that are the problem.

So because I was going to say,

Vegas is also, Vegas is a disaster

because everyone's got a model Y

and they are also Uber drivers.

And all they do is live at EA station.

Yeah, but the opening of the supercharger network

really helped get throughput spread

across the entire networks right now.

And we can discuss, like you mentioned, NACs.

Did NACs make the difference?

No, but opening up access to the network

made the difference.

And so that's the bigger thing

than the actual connector itself.

Oh, speaking of connectors,

because you were talking about

how much power you can send through them.

You trust the ones you get on Amazon?

Are there any ones you would like not?

Yes, some of them are really dangerous.

There's with no temperature monitoring.

And yeah, would you make sure you're,

I think what should the guys at home look for?

Like, is there any like brands to avoid?

My official stance,

I still think even from a recommendation standpoint,

it's just use the adapter

that your automaker recommends.

I think buy the OEM accessory if you have to.

Yeah, I mean, you'll see in my videos,

very, I'll test some adapters,

but in general, I try to use

the manufacturer recommended adapter.

And that's smart.

It just covers you.

One of the brands,

Electron makes it for a lot of OEM.

Yeah, of course.

But the OE ones are different

than the actual one they sell as well.

Okay.

Yes, like the Ford branded Electron one

has extra safety stuff in it,

then just the regular off-the-shelf Electron.

Not knocking them.

And I'm sure it'll work fine.

And most of them will work fine

for like the first year or two,

but then they'll get corroded,

they start to build up resistance.

And the way most of these adapters stop charging

is they'll say,

hey, we have over temperature prevention.

Okay, that's great.

But they literally have like a thermistor in there

that just stops the communication.

And so the car has to blow the contactors open,

the charger's under a huge back load,

and it's super rough on the equipment

when they stop charging.

The proper way to do it

is to do a D-rate based off of temperature,

if you have really good temperature monitoring,

usually requires having a powered signal intercepting device.

But I'm starting to see some adapters

that can do D-rates

rather than just straight breaking the whole thing.

I just think, you know,

because it's a known weak point,

use the OEM one

because you just don't want a fire,

you don't want your whatever to break,

like just use the OEM, it's easy.

And with, you know,

however many millions of EVs there are in the road,

there's gonna be issues.

So if you just use the factory stuff,

then you can just blame the factory.

Right.

So nice and it's such good peace of mind to say,

hey, insurance company,

I used the recommended thing

following the recommended procedure.

The likelihood of an issue is very low,

but when one does happen,

that's the most expensive thing you own.

Yeah.

And you don't really want to mess with that, I think.

Okay.

Well, that was great.

Let's go and do something we've never done before

on this podcast.

No, didn't we do it with the Nicola Sunway truck?

Oh yeah, we did a little bit then.

Oh, those are pretty fast actually.

They're rad.

Yeah.

We never did it with a consumer-grade roadway.

Let's go hop into...

Around Beverly Hills.

Oh, nice.

Let's go hop into the Lucid Gravity.

Gravity is inevitable.

I wanted to make that joke.

Was it good or not?

No, that's a bad joke.

Let's get into the Lucid Gravity grand touring

and go for a drive

and just continue the conversation.

All right, so to give you guys an idea

of how far my star has fallen,

career-wise, I was the very first non-Lucid Employee

to drive in air

and I'm just driving at gravity now

for the first time ever.

In the pouring rain?

In the pouring rain.

On the oval, the six-mile oval,

at Hyundai Proving Grounds,

this is Kyle's first time here.

We are sharing with some Hyundai drivers,

so let's not freak them out too much.

I'm going in 85 and the 90, so speed up.

It's raining.

You can hear the little tic-tac-tic-tac.

It's weirdly raining here during our SUV-to-air program.

Almost never happened.

Yeah, I didn't know it rains in the middle of the desert.

Oh, flash flood.

It's going to be awesome.

Just wait till you switch away.

Drifting laps.

Here we go.

While I'm riding in the back,

I actually have driven this.

I drove it with a bunch of Lucid Volts

around their headquarters a couple months ago.

I met the new CEO with their PR guys.

And then, Kyle, had you driven this prior to showing up here?

Yes, I've spent quite a bit of time with the gravity.

Yep.

In the Grand Touring and the Touring?

Only the Grand Touring.

For the Grand Touring.

We're in the Grand Touring now.

Yes.

This is like 123,000.

And it's got.

Pretty juicy spec.

828 horsepower.

How big is the battery?

It's 118 kilowatt hours, if I remember correctly.

It's bigger than the air.

Yeah, it's basically a similar layout,

but the chemistry is a bit more energy dense.

So they got a few more kilowatt hours.

And they're also charges.

Not only did they go up in energy density,

they went way up in charging performance.

Now, which is crazy, because in my mind,

for stuff you can buy in the States,

Lucid is always the best in terms of charging performance.

Like, or I should say that by like speed.

Yes, they have huge kilowatts on the air.

And then it would crash.

Oh, OK.

And so Tycon was always like not as big power as the air,

but would hold it pretty deep.

Right.

And air was also incredibly thermally sensitive.

So if you did a lot of charging, driving, charging,

driving, it would suffer a little bit.

It seems like this new Panasonic cell

is just a little bit more up to the task of handling stuff.

I've done three or four zero to 100% charging sessions

with gravity.

And it's been so stable, so predictable,

which I could never say about the air.

What is the charge curve like?

Dude, it's really good, actually.

So it's 405-ish kilowatt peak.

Oh, wow.

And it kind of sits wide-opened for like the first 20% or 30%.

At around 50%, it's still doing over 200 kilowatts.

I want to say 0% to 80% is around 20 minutes.

So, wow.

From zero, which is really good.

That's insane.

Considering how much of an energy cell this is.

That's insane, actually.

That's great, because we'll wait.

So for people listening who maybe aren't.

All right.

What is the gravity, right?

No, no, no, no.

Gravity's a lucid SUV.

No, I want to say like 400 kilowatts in is rad.

Yes.

What is 200?

How do you rate that?

It's like, yeah, that's the most Rivians can do,

for example.

And it's a little weak sauce.

Yeah, OK.

So that doesn't really work.

Like, Rivians on a road trip take a minute.

But if you have families, like it's still fine.

Totally OK.

It's just, I think this is the level in 2025

where we need to be for charging.

And I think more than just the numbers,

it's the repeatability, the predictability.

Sure.

And then also the software to help

manage the battery temperature ahead of the charging session

that this really works well at compared to air.

For American consumers, who's doing the best charging

right now?

If I want to buy a vehicle just based on all I do

is road trip, I'm Kyle Conner Jr.

I just need fast charging on the road.

Who's the best?

So it's a J12 Tycon or e-tron GT.

Yeah, hell you have it.

And this.

OK, they're actually pretty close.

Wow.

This is probably considering the size and space

and everything you get.

This is probably the best road tripper

from an on paper standpoint you can get.

Also rides really well.

It's quiet.

Software needs some work.

Right.

But that's been the lucid story from day one.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about the package first

before talking about the software.

So as I was trying to interject,

for those who are not familiar at all,

this is the second vehicle from Lucid.

This is the three-row SUV.

And a lot of water.

I'm going to slow it down.

It's all over a certain place.

Full hydroplane with some hydroplane.

Yeah.

I saw ESP kicking on there.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like I'm slowing it way down.

Massive amount of room.

Second row is great.

I sat in the third row during a stint around North

of California.

Very comfortable environment.

I do want to say it looks like a meeting day.

I get some strong kind of sienna vibes.

Yeah, the design is.

How do you guys feel as a, you know,

you guys are Rivian homers and they have a pretty good hero.

Rivian's way better.

As a.

As a what?

Looks or package?

It looks, looks, looks.

Oh, looks.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, R1-T.

Come on.

No, it's funny because I'm a real big fan of the air.

I think it's like basically a Citroen came out with a new DS.

I think it would be the air in terms of design.

I'm not from the A-pillar forward.

I'm not crazy by the way it looks.

It's, I wouldn't say minivan, but you know what it looks

like. Remember the Chrysler Pacifica, where it was like

in between, not a minivan.

Oh, you mean the original?

Oh, OK, OK.

Sorry, sorry.

I meant the Chrysler Pacifica from 2003.

I know what you mean.

It's got some of those vibes.

It's it's like it's like a smashed SUV.

Yeah, it kind of looks a little.

Yeah, I mean, I think from my perspective,

the design is one thing.

I think the packaging is clearly amazing in this bar.

Yeah, we would all agree.

The thing is in the EV space that I live in,

this has been kind of the holy grail

everyone's been waiting for.

OK, and so I've driven it a few times

throughout its production cycle.

And so now really getting to spend more time with it.

I drove one last night, for example,

spending time with this car.

The driving quality, the range, the charging,

that all stacks up.

What I'm a little bit disappointed with

is the actual bugginess of the software,

which this car went on sale.

To be fair, I know Lucid's a small company

and they started small deliveries.

This car has been on sale for nine months.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And it to me, no excuse to be this buggy.

But that was sort of I remember, you know,

I actually talked a lot of people

into buying dream editions, believe it or not.

Yeah. And I would talk to all of them.

They're like, I just the software sucks.

And I'm like, I hate hearing that because, like,

you know, I did I did that big road trip with Peter.

Yeah. And it was awesome.

And the car was fun.

There was one thing they're like, hey, this doesn't work.

And it was like, I don't know,

it like cruise control or something.

All right, I won't mention cruise control.

Fine, whatever it was.

And OK, and it seemed fine.

And then every Lucid I got after that for a while

was like just a disaster.

Like, but air is pretty solid now.

Now it's super solid.

Yeah. And I just like the way is it?

Like, shouldn't it be the same software

at a totally different at a core level?

Not that there's no there would be no sharing.

There's there's almost no sharing between this and air.

Maybe some of the logic and graphics and design,

but the system is totally different.

This is way more powerful, way more headroom.

And it actually like has very fast route planning

and it has dog mode and it's got great features.

It's enough where I would feel comfortable

as a content creator to buy it and make videos

about what they need to fix, of course. Sure.

But it's like they really need to break this.

Tell us what's broken.

Well, you have an issue.

They even started a list last night.

Actually, and you know, I only drove this car for two hours.

And I've got, hold on.

That's a different list.

I've got this was everything that went through the camera.

Through the camera.

So I will also say this.

So Kyle seems to have bad luck with these.

I'm also a bit picky.

Like you are very, yeah.

Like there's some edging around the screen

that didn't line up.

Give us give us the big ballpoint.

What needs to be fixed.

There was a couple of things

where like the nav was completely freezing,

where like unless I pulled up nav

on the bottom screen, the top screen wouldn't refresh.

The headlights still make noise,

which drives me insane.

What do you mean?

The air has this problem too.

And it because of their high tech headlights.

Yeah, like the ECU drivers

or they explained it to me at one point what it was.

But for wherever you sit in the driver's seat,

I can audibly tell when the headlights are on or off.

Oh, that's which is not appropriate for a car.

You might have a little bit of like

P under the mattress princess syndrome.

Yeah, there's something going on.

That's not right with me.

But you know, the the the average age of a lucid owner

will never hear that noise.

Right, right, right.

It still shouldn't be there.

No, I agree.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of annoying.

All right.

Yeah, they're like the power meter.

If you go on cruise control, which we can set.

Sorry, I shouldn't have done that.

No, it's like.

Is that button there?

Active.

Why is it dropping to click that bottom right button again?

OK, how do you you're good?

But like this is a bit awkward

as it's like centered with the road,

but doesn't fit with the screen.

So there's some things that I want them to design stuff.

Yeah, stuff like that.

But then real functional things like I genuinely was stuck

in the back of a parking lot for 20 minutes

trying to get the car to turn on.

Now those things have what did just not recognize wouldn't

recognize the key itself or the key card

both on the B pillar or down here.

And the car was just on like, but wouldn't go into gear.

No, we'll say my my biggest pet peeve was with the air

was that weird meter, which is like

showed you what your throttle was doing.

Yes.

And it was constantly doing this the whole time you drove

unless you had the cruise control on standby.

Yeah. And we're like, they got rid of that.

So that's my biggest gripe.

Hey, next time. Yeah.

Let's try the ride road.

Oh, OK. Let's go.

Let's see. Are we in the most comfortable setting?

No, we can go here to smooth.

Let's get into smooth.

And then we got to raise up to standard.

So this should be this is optioned with the performance package

or whatever they call it, triple chamber air suspension now.

And so the ride quality of this car,

I think, is unmatched in the segment.

OK, bouncing around a little bit,

well, we're we're we're on a something

that hasn't been repaved in 20 years.

Yeah, but you know, I mean, it's the back seat

might be totally different than the front as well.

But I least in my limited experience driving this car

from an evaluation standpoint, the car I took yesterday

did not have the performance dynamic handling package.

I thought that was great, too.

So let's let's ask Johnny just this is now you've been

what, seven minutes or so first time driving.

What are your initial questions to make sure you get in the right

way to get on the right?

Yeah, don't worry.

We'll go a while for the record.

I'm the key. I can dive on.

I mean, you know, I roll down the window, it feels

and you said it's been a production nine months.

It feels kind of, I don't know, like startupy

like the window kind of went down

and like a non OEM way, in my opinion.

Yeah, they ramp speed with their windows

so they start really slow and then pick up Volvo does that.

OK, yeah, it feels fine.

It feels like I'm just on an oval.

So it's hard to say anything.

The steering feels a little more numb

than I remember from airs.

But I remember it's also tough because, again, we're on an oval

and we're in the rain.

Yeah, I remember with airs, like getting in them

and just being like, God, damn, it's a good car.

It's amazing. It's amazing.

You know, I remember the one that blew my socks off was

I had it for a week.

It was I think it was just called the touring.

It was it was two motor, six hundred horsepower.

It was like, you know, almost 100 grand.

And I'm like, I this car rules like this is six hundred horsepower.

By the way, it's like M five power.

Yeah. You know, it is like totally what you need.

Squirting through traffic.

All right, here's the.

This is supposed to mimic various freeways around the 110, the 10, the 710.

710. Yeah, sometimes people.

You should get some tire slap here.

Just as also for Kyle's edification.

Yeah, yeah.

You got some pretty wicked.

And we are on the biggest wheel and tire.

Yeah, as we hydroplane over everything.

Yeah, you know, we'll see.

It's crazy. Yeah.

This is actually not bad.

This is not bad at all on bad cars.

You can literally you can hear the fuck.

Yeah. OK, now we're switching freeways.

So I think now we're on the four or five.

That was the 110.

Somebody told me this like 15 years ago and no one's ever confirmed it.

But the last one is supposed to the 710.

And that's all the port traffic all semi trucks.

So it's just like the worst freeway surface in the universe.

And you can you can see how bad it is.

Yeah, this is really good suspension.

Yeah, this is very good.

You're very isolated.

Yeah, take put the Macon in like sport mode and race over this.

Oh, yeah.

Actually, Macons on their suspension, too.

It is. I don't know what that's terrible.

So find something that back to suspension.

Yeah, there's a few cars out there.

Back to the back to the sort of user experience.

I know the software's got some bugs.

A couple of the other guys mentioned that the screens are freezing

or blanking on them. Yeah.

But just in general, I spent time in a Lucid air over the summer.

And this is after I driven a bunch of Chinese cars.

And I'm struck by, you know, Lucid's premium.

They got a lot of style.

They got the California aesthetic.

It's very the pallet, the color pallet interior is so cool.

It's very but is it enough like you went to you spent a lot of time

in China driving Chinese.

Is there enough G whiz, whiz bang, cool features?

You mean like quirks and features?

Just just. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know to answer that question.

I think that is drawn by the consumer.

But I think Lucid needs to work on a little bit more.

And I think they're close with the gravity, like a lot of the bugs

that we're experiencing clearly doesn't seem to be a hardware problem

with the car. It is just software.

So I feel like give it another six months or a year.

This should be dialed in and all of our points will be moot.

But the problem is it's a hundred twenty thousand dollar car.

You shouldn't have to wait for it to be good.

Yeah. And that's why, like, you know, again,

I was going to accuse of working for ribbing.

God, I wish they would pay me anyhow.

Like it was good from day one.

And then every time they do an update, it gets better.

But like, you never really had buggy software, you know?

Yeah. A lot of that is thanks to a seams team.

I mean, like I've had my fair share of

Rivian problems and software bugs and things, but it's been nowhere

near the level of what Lucid has gone with.

As someone who, you know, like my dad had an early air, for example.

OK. And so we're pretty familiar with that car.

I'm actually really impressed with the stability over water with this car.

I was on the hundred twenty, by the way.

It was I've seen it's face.

I'm serious, kid. I'm like, yeah, maybe we should maybe we should make it back.

Well, no, you know, what I think in general, the gravity offers

is Lucid to really show the world that they are now a big boy automaker.

The leniency that we gave them with the air is now kind of used up.

Yeah. And it was used up through their process.

And so I think it's fair that everyone's a bit more

I don't know, nitpicking on this car because it really needs to be good.

And little things like the headlight making noise drives me insane.

But then you look at the overall package, so zoom out and you go, wow,

this is probably the best driving electric SUV on sale.

It's certainly the best road tripping.

It's an incredible space offering.

And to me, it is still the top choice.

All right, let me ask you this, though.

Well, I mean, I'm a pusher.

So really, like you would take this hands down over in R1S.

Yeah, absolutely.

You parking next to each other, I'm taking this.

What about?

And I know this is a little bit unfair to tell us

because that car is so old at this point.

Yeah. But model X.

Yeah, this all day.

No, no, no, no.

One thing model X has that I enjoy.

I know I'm a nerd is Tesla's FSD system.

I really do like driving around town and just showing up in places.

It's like I have my little space pod.

It's cool.

If this had that level of autonomy, it would be so perfect.

And the last question before, because I don't want to jump in there.

Where who is doing the mobile app experience the best of those three?

Or is anybody else even in contention or just still Tesla Tesla?

You think Riven even rose?

Oh, yeah, I could share a phone key to someone right now.

Now, that's a problem.

Riven supposedly can do that.

Never words. No.

And you can't really you can, but you can't like remote activate the car.

So, like, for example, my model S is sitting in front of my garage in their office

and we had like someone go to do a delivery and I'm like, oh, just move the car out.

I had the key on my phone.

Right. I just unlocked remote started.

Toe testing. Unlocked remote started.

And then, you know, they were able to get in with the car.

There's dog mode.

There's which Riven has.

But yeah, Tesla still has the best ecosystem by far.

Second bet. Second is Riven.

Yeah, probably Riven and Lucid is has a pretty good new mobile app as well.

They have like, you can view the cameras remotely.

Yeah, Riven can kind of do that for Ford or Hyundai at all.

Yeah, they're really bad.

Like the Hyundai Kia app is really bad.

That's bad. I want to know the Ford app can't do anything really.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, Tesla, it's so simple, though.

The formula has been there for years.

I'll just look at what's there and do that.

How hard can it be?

What's weird is because I know how automakers build cars

and they benchmark and they actually literally say they make the decision

and it's just it's just on a spreadsheet.

Do we want to be best in segment or average in segment one with our new product?

And again, they literally are people who make the decision.

Let's be average. Let's not be best in segment, which is weird.

But like none of this is hard, like like pet mode.

Yeah, not a hard thing, right?

Totally. It's it's weird.

You know, I want to get back to one.

Wait, did I hear that? Was that was that water?

I just thought I just heard some noise off of the note.

Never mind. I think that was rain or something.

All right, one thing to say, then a question to ask you.

But so like I happen to have a Mercedes on Halloween last year.

So we're being with absolutely bananas for Halloween.

Yes, you had Knight Rider, you had the Back to the Future Time Machine

or you had the creepy thing with bugs coming out of the screen.

It made noises and had new colors.

The front would turn green Mercedes.

You know what their Halloween thing was?

I had a little pumpkin on the screen.

Little pumpkin on the screen that was the size of my thumb.

Yeah. And it's like that graphical goodies

they call them. But like it was literally it was like it looked like it

looked like a like the Internet in 1996.

Yes. Pumpkin GIF.

Well, that's the difference between building a car that has a screen

versus a software experience that has wheels.

OK. And if you can make the software experience fantastic,

which almost matters to consumers more than the car these days

to some consumers or in China.

It matters in China.

They really care about this stuff.

But then if you can also make the car not even great, but good.

And passable.

Then you have yourself a sales success.

And the thing with Rivian is they have really great software

and an amazing product.

And that's why that car works so well.

It's still a premium price.

It's still exclusive. You can't, you know, if they're expensive.

But yeah. OK, so you're saying this is over the R1S.

Now, my new king of electric SUVs in terms of like,

I just want to have this Escalade IQ.

Hell, yeah, I love that thing.

Would you take these are parked next to each other?

You can't sell them.

Just grab the key and go. Yeah. Which one are you taking?

I'm taking this. OK. Yeah.

The reason is, yeah, I think on the highway,

the Escalade just makes you feel like a boss.

And I love that thing.

You put the sound system on and you're just, you know,

you're the king of the road.

The thing that it lacks that this surprisingly has

is this insane athleticism.

This car is an absolute monster on a back road.

OK. And it's unbelievable.

I haven't got to experience that yet.

I do value that as one reason I like Rivian so much.

Yes. And this will smoke a Rivian. Oh, yeah.

Sure. Sure. But yeah, I've done a little bit.

I think the small Escalade IQ.

Yeah. I took it on Angel's Crest.

You're right. The non-L. Yeah.

It's it's fine, but it's not.

You never said athletic, but but like looking down

on a Ford F-250, while the car is driving itself,

well, you know, it's just that's a different kind of.

Yeah. So it's the American Lamb.

Price point, but price point.

Not really. Right.

They actually are competitors and I shot in my

when I first drove the Escalade IQs,

I went ahead of the media launch and stolen from a dealer

because dealers got them before me.

That's Cadillac's new thing.

That's the way they launch cars.

Yeah. And I'm not here to play game with that.

So I went to a dealer and then I took it to Lucid's

headquarters and they pulled up a gravity.

And dude, it looked like you could drive over

the gravity with the escalator.

And we were with all the executives were driving

both of them like, this is hilarious.

Yeah. I love the escalator.

Yeah. This is better.

How does the conversation go with the dealer?

Yeah.

You ran into one.

No, they're like, they, we know a lot of like our

viewers work at dealers and stuff.

And they're like, Hey, we just got an escalator in.

I'm like, great, I'll fly there.

You've got an amazing viewership.

Because like I, I'll make a video, not me,

okay, Motortran will make a video about an electric car.

Yeah. And you read the comments.

Will this get murdered?

It's just, it's just insanity.

I'm just like, what, what plan are you guys on?

You'll be like, oh yeah, like the nerdiest, weirdest thing.

And your commenters are like, be nerdy or you didn't,

you only talk for 30 minutes about like a charge port.

Yeah. Some of them, some of them like shorter videos,

but it takes me a while to explain anything.

So that works well.

But I mean, I just, so shout out to your viewers.

Totally. Very like, wow, this is a,

we have found our niche.

They are, we have the coolest viewers.

It's really impressive.

Well, they're like, I, a lot of them are in

market shoppers who just want more information,

but a lot of them also are engineers

or just people that care about the little details and stuff.

And one thing I'm trying to do a little bit more

that you guys are really good at

is like zooming out bigger picture stuff.

I'm just so into like, oh, this little thing is annoying.

So I hate the cart.

Oh yeah. See, I, it's, it's funny.

So like, I started my YouTube channel,

but my partner that is this guy Rylek

and he's got his own channel, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, but we had this thing.

It's called, it's called a good off topic for a second

but it was a McKellows.

There was this little like Porsche tuner in San Diego.

Yeah. They need an identity,

but my God, they make good stuff, right?

Yep.

And they had a 915 transmission.

So it's, that was a period correct transmission,

that's what I used.

And you got to be intentional.

Like that's where third gear is.

And I'm going to third gear and it takes muscle.

Cars awesome, right?

And I let Riley drive it and he's like,

I don't know, man, like the transmission.

I'm like, okay, that's the one thing like,

I mean we're not used to that,

anything else is like, I just can't get past it.

I'm like, what about how rad it is?

It's so great.

Like, yeah, but like.

Yeah. So there's a few things that are like deal breakers

for me, pet mode is one of them.

Like I just can't understand how you can launch a car.

Yeah. Someone who has like dogs and stuff.

I got dogs.

Yeah, but I bring them with me places

and I want to leave them in the car.

That's like such a needed thing.

Okay. That's a weird deal breaker.

Other things as phone is a key.

I don't want to carry a key file.

I just want myself to work like this.

It works great on Fords.

It works great on Tesla.

Let's get this on the record.

How about start buttons on EVs?

Yeah, I'm okay with that, but I think it's dumb.

Okay.

So I think Porsche does it best actually,

which is you can choose to use the start button or not.

But why have it?

Right, why have it?

What about, what about this new Model Y

junior for the predictive shifting?

You like that?

Yeah, I use that on my car.

I think it works like 99% of the time.

It works most of the time.

But the problem is you always have to look

because the one time it doesn't work,

you're now into someone's mailbox.

Right.

Okay, okay.

But even more than that is FSD.

Go ahead.

The new, like the last six months,

I hated people going on about FSD forever.

Now I'm one of those people.

Dude, I do not drive anymore.

Like I love to drive for fun.

Like give me a back road.

Yeah, yeah.

You've been with me on roads.

Yeah.

That's my tear.

Tear it up.

Love it.

To go to like Starbucks in the morning,

I just sit in my Tesla now.

I go, boop, in the driveway.

And then I'm like, oh, I'm there.

So you're literally hitting Starbucks on the nav.

Yeah.

And it pulls itself out of the driveway.

It gets me to Starbucks.

I'm rapidly on board with that, too.

I just took over on our Model Y.

The FSD is, I know our colleague, Alex Lienz,

had some several issues with it.

Alex did, yes.

But so far it's been very, very impressive,

especially when you consider it is camera only.

Yeah.

And the things it can do in Los Angeles

are crazy.

And the camera only thing is proving out

to actually kind of be the right way.

Did you see this big, D-car Chinese driver assistance

test?

The Teslas did better than anyone else?

Yes.

And all the guys who had lied are crashing to the trucks,

crashing to the areas.

So similar in the Tesla, because I want to stay with this.

And this also goes back to our early question

about what's new in 2025.

Where is out of spec tile on AI?

Are you using Grock in the car?

Do you use AI for your content creation?

Are you on board?

Are you also kind of a naysayer?

Yeah, not a naysayer at all.

I think I'm not using AI to its full capabilities

for what I do.

I think there is in the video space,

so from a business perspective, I think

there's going to be a real desire

for genuine natural content.

And what I mean by that is not AI, editing, crazy.

And we already see that in a sense

where heavily produced cinematic videos do way worse

than a dude with an iPhone.

Yeah, I mean, some of my biggest things that I've

done is literally just shooting vertical with an iPhone.

I forgot to even set the frame rate correctly.

And people want that authenticity.

Yeah, so there's an inverse relationship

between effort and views.

And so that's why my stuff is always just iPhone,

because it works.

And it's just a dude with a phone, which is me.

I'm not a big top gear video producer.

It's just Kyle's interested in a weird car.

Let's film that.

And I've been trying to get more people to understand

you don't need to go crazy.

With AI, I think it's going to be even more desirable

to see just a dude experiencing cars in our case,

or whatever it might be that they're reviewing.

And I agree.

What I do use AI for is when I am like, here's a car.

You have 10 minutes to go film it.

Get the gist of stuff.

You always have to check the specs.

But just to get an idea of where it stands up,

and I use that.

What are you using?

Are you using Proplexity or Gemini?

So Proplexity is amazing.

I use ChatGBT and Grock quite a bit.

Grock I use in the car, because it's built into my Tesla now.

And I can have full-on conversations with it.

As an example, I bought an R53 Mini Cooper S

for a fun project for my channel.

And I'm a huge mini enthusiast.

Love it.

It blew up 10 minutes after buying it for my best friend.

And I was like, Grock, what should I do?

Should I sell the car or scrap the car?

Should I fill your best friend?

Yeah, should I put a new engine in it?

What type of engine?

Should I build a race motor?

And I was just going to Starbucks one day,

and it walked me through the options.

I said, here's the aftermarket parts you should consider.

Here's the rough cost that you can expect to pay.

And I'm just sitting in the car anyway.

And I hate voice assistants with a passion.

They don't work.

Grock worked amazing driving there.

The thing is, it has no vehicle function.

What I think would be cool is to be like,

Grock, what kind of car is that there?

Or what is this building?

Or once it starts tying in with the vehicle.

All that's supposed to be coming.

So you weren't into problems.

This is even my problem.

Whatever I do with AI, I do it wrong.

It's horrible and frustrating, and I hate it.

But do you get bad information?

Because now, constantly, when I do a search on Google,

you get the AI answer.

And I know I have a good brain for torque specs.

And I got nailed, actually, on Spikes Car Radio,

another podcast I do.

For the Thor's Hammer Mode and the GMC Sierra EV-84.

Right before we went on, I did a quick AI search.

And it said 885 pound-feet of torque.

And it's 775.

And I was like, and I didn't save it,

but I remember it said 885.

And I'm like, that makes sense, because the Hummer's

1,000, like, you know.

Seems in the ballpark.

Yeah, but like, did you worry about getting it wrong?

Yeah, I don't really quote hardcore power figures.

And if I do, I grab them from the manufacturer's snacks

or from our test numbers.

I think it's more just to get the general idea of a car

right now.

Yeah, AI is like, it could be so good it

can get you in the sticky situations.

I think for anyone out there who's

wanting to make content, keep it genuine.

That's the future of what people

are going to want to consume in the future.

Oh, well said.

Well, on that note.

Oh, we got another six miles.

Well, yeah.

Want to see top speed in the wet?

Top speed sideways.

Just kidding.

Well, I can review the gravity a little bit more.

Yeah, is your massage still going?

No.

Why do massages turn off?

I hate that so much.

No, like, 20 minutes.

This is the most entitled of, like, one, she's every complaint

the hot rod guys ever had about motor turns.

Why do massages turn off, ever?

Yes, you're welcome.

Yeah, I was just in a car that doesn't shut off.

And what was it?

Because it was a reason to buy that car.

BMW?

No.

God, I can't remember what I was driving.

But it doesn't shut off.

Oh, it's my super duty.

I bought a Ford super duty.

This is my own car.

And it stays on the whole time.

Is that feature?

That's still the weird air bladder massages.

Yeah, but it feels like this.

It's like a little rollers in there.

I got a limited, a nice one.

Wait, wait, wait, F-250?

350.

Dualy?

No, I really wanted a 450, a dualy.

Why didn't you get one?

Because it would put me over CDL with my trailer.

So you actually have to get a less capable truck

to be safer, which makes no sense.

I've seen you the way you do for fun.

You don't want CDL.

No, no, you do not.

So I don't want to.

So that's commercial vehicleized.

And what that means is, like, if you're one mile and over,

and you get pulled over, you go to prison,

or you've got your hands off or something.

Insurance goes up, like, 500%.

Yeah, if you get caught, like, you know,

legal limit is, like, 0.08.

If you get caught, like, 0.001, you'd just die.

So I got a truck and trailer combo that's one pound under CDL.

OK, what is the CDL limit?

It's 26,001 pounds, gross combined vehicle weight

rating, which means the maximum payload of both.

Sure.

And I'm 26,000.

OK, and so an F-350 single-wheel.

It's 12.

No, no, no, what's the truck weight?

It's like 6.

Yeah, the truck itself weighs 8,000,

but you go off of the GBWR.

So it's 12,000 on the truck and 14 on the trailer.

OK, OK.

Yeah.

It's crazy how a Dually adds 1,000 pounds.

Oh, yeah.

Dually could add more, honestly.

Yeah, it's insane.

But the four-fifties look great.

But I'm, I know it's an EV podcast,

but I'm a diesel truck guy, too.

Right.

Because you've got to tow those.

You've got to tow those damn electric cars.

When you run them down to zero for fun.

I got a mobile DC fast charger for that.

Shout out, ChargeRigs.

They sent me this, like, a couple hundred

kilowatt-hour battery with two DC ports on it.

So now I pull up, I can tow it behind my R1-S.

I can run a car out of charge and charge it off

the side of the rim.

I do love a good heavy-duty pickup.

I got light-duty pickups, but a heavy-duty pickup.

There is kind of like we're talking about the Escalade,

where you're just in your own world.

Absolutely.

It's your own universe.

You see a trailer on the side of the road?

I can tow that.

No problem.

I love it.

I love big diesel V8s, anyway.

I just think they're great.

Dying breed.

Totally.

All right, so let's finish up with, because we are at SV

the year, Carl's about to drive a bunch of vehicles.

Johnny, you drive a bunch of vehicles.

You get anyone in your driveway every other day.

Every day.

What are you most interested that's coming soon,

or you're about to drive?

Something we haven't talked about yet.

Is there any particular vehicle?

EVs.

Yeah, whatever.

I was going to say Ford Expedition.

I was going to say Ford GTD.

There we go.

OK, so we'd love to have a go on that.

I also love the big Corvette.

I haven't got a ZR1 or the horribly named Fax Machine,

ZR1X.

Right.

There you go.

All right, Johnny's all performance.

Yeah, so for SUV the year, I think

it's hilarious how a leaf is included in SUV of the year.

But Nissan classifies it as an SUV.

Against the criteria, I actually

think it's going to do really well,

because it's an incredible value.

It's efficient.

It's a huge upgrade for the leaf.

And I'm sort of a leaf apologist.

I think it's a great car.

I have three leafs.

Look, the Aria.

I think the Aria is a great car.

The Aria just today.

Did you see the news?

Did you hear about this?

The Aria is not a great car.

Oh, I like it a lot.

What's wrong with the Aria?

Wait, wait, you like the leaf and you don't like the Aria?

Yeah, the Aria, driving wise,

is actually surprisingly good.

But it's about the ecosystem of the car.

And it has zero.

No, no, no, no, I'm not saying it.

I was shocked.

I was like, I really like this thing.

Yeah, I mean, I agree.

I drove one.

I'm like, wow, the all-wheel drive has

torque vectoring on the rear axle.

Pretty good.

So Kyle's in the leaf.

Anything else?

Yeah, leaf.

I have not spent any time with Q6 e-tron.

My colleagues have done that.

So I think that will be interesting.

I've driven that.

I forgot I drove the A6 e-tron.

Oh, this is a great story.

Tell the story.

This is wonderful.

I went on the first drive of the A6 e-tron,

and I shot a whole video, a nerd video.

And then three months goes by, and I'm like,

I saw someone else post an A6 video.

I'm like, oh, I forgot.

I drove that car, and I forgot to post the video.

It just had completely escaped my mind.

So sorry, Audi.

I've had that happen.

I mean, years ago, I almost wrote like a me a couple of,

I call them dead soldiers, like where I was going to write

something just kind of never happened, and nobody cared.

Yeah.

Nice.

The only thing cared.

You know, I did that with a Macan when COVID hit.

Oh, yeah.

Or our photographer rents his first

photo shoot with me driving around in the refreshed Macan.

And then I never.

You know what I think is a secret?

Let's actually drive up over here.

You know what I think is kind of a secret competitor here

that no one really expects is the Cadillac Vistik.

Just spent a lot of time with the Vistik.

It's real good.

It's stable.

Real good.

Like from a software perspective, it looks good.

It drives really well.

It just is a battery and charging curve away

from really being this.

So what's funny is.

I'm going to just do the VDA for a second.

Hell, yeah, charging troll off.

Oh, hold on.

That's the back.

That's all right.

Back to the left.

Hold on.

So I just want to do shout out to General Motors.

And I'm seeing this from the perspective of driving around

LA constantly, the amount of Blazer EVs, Equinox EVs.

Everything is off, by the way.

OK.

Justin Kessler, wondering.

Blazer, blah, blah, blah.

Whatever.

The prologue is the electric one.

The Acuras, the Cadillacs.

Like GM EVs have silently sort of taken over Southern

California.

There's still a lot of Tesla, of course.

The thing is, they're so good.

They're not particularly great, but they're very good.

Yeah, they're very, very good.

Yeah, and they're less than accused.

Where's the figurine?

You just passed it.

They're starting to be priced according to you, too.

Yeah, the police deals are pretty good on them.

Oh, that's the figurine.

I will just say, the vehicle I'm interested in,

on only because I'm a consumer car nerd,

is the RAV4.

Because I'm hearing not good things.

It is quite.

This is not the figurine.

You were to the right.

Oh, all right.

It's like a waistline of cones out here.

Yeah, it's hard.

Oh, now I kind of see where we are.

Yeah, great.

Same for the opposite cone.

The yellow cone?

There you go.

Yeah, go to that cone.

OK.

That's your gate.

Oh, brakes, yep.

Quick steering ratio.

Yeah, it's good.

OK, hang on here.

Oh, yeah, in the wet.

Yeah.

That was ABS.

That was full pedal to the floor.

Hell, yeah.

Yeah, just nail it.

She should slide.

There we go.

Yeah, buddy.

Nope, nope.

That's where you're improving driving.

Now throttle, throttle.

We got it.

Nope.

Didn't do it.

360s in the gravity.

That's how we end the five tests.

So.

Yeah, a little wet for that.

It's the way to do it, bro.

Like to thank our guest, Hal Connor, for coming on.

Test the cars, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

This has been an amazing.

Wow, I haven't looped a car in many years.

It's awesome.

I love that you can do it, though.

They let you turn everything off.

Yeah, no, that's a great point.

Yes.

All right.

Take us home.

Thanks again to Hal Connor for coming out,

both to help guest judge on the SUV of the Year program

and also help us kickstart our new season.

New season, reverse under new management.

This has been the inevitable.

I don't have my belt, but ding.

Thanks, everybody.

Catch you on the next one.

See ya.

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80:29

We’re Back! State of the EV Industry + Deep Dive with Kyle Conner

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$80,000 car

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