Sam Abuelsamid (00:01) This is episode 431 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry coming to you today from Omaha, Nebraska. Roberto Baldwin (00:10) Omaha, can you see the one tree? No matter where you are. Sam Abuelsamid (00:13) Yeah, it's right out there. In fact, it's literally right outside my window. Roberto Baldwin (00:16) Yeah, but it's really 400 miles away because Nebraska is so incredibly flat. Sam Abuelsamid (00:19) Yeah. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (00:23) Anyway, I'm Roberto Baltimore from SAE International and the SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast. Sam Abuelsamid (00:29) I know I promised you that Nicole would be back today and she will be because we're gonna keep recording until she finally joins us But she had a little plumbing emergency in her kitchen and there's a plumber currently underneath her kitchen sink Trying to snake out the drain because she was away for so long that something got something Climbed in there and died apparently ⁓ So the the snake is kind of noisy. So she will be joining us in progress. Hopefully very soon Roberto Baldwin (01:00) Yeah, if you ever had a plumber come out and plumb your stuff with a snake, especially if you're like, it's twisting and turning and it's working its way down, looking for the offender. Hopefully it's not roots. Sam Abuelsamid (01:06) yeah. I had to do that a couple months ago, a few months, probably three or four months ago, I think we had to do that again. I have a ⁓ snake that goes out about 25 feet and I ran that all the way through to the end and unfortunately it was about 30 feet out, so the blockage. So I had to pay a plumber to do that. Roberto Baldwin (01:37) I have a, we, ⁓ not gonna lie, I own a snake. I have not had to use it in our house. So it just sits in the garage. It's probably all rusty. should probably like snake it out and. Sam Abuelsamid (01:46) Do you have like a professional one or like just, know, one that you buy from Lowe's or Home Depot? Roberto Baldwin (01:53) It's like the Home Depot or Lowe's, it's in the big giant circle. So you like wind it out and stuff. It's not like the little like, you know, like a little small thing. It'll go out forever. I don't remember why, where I, why, which house I bought it, which apartment I bought it for. But I definitely did not need to use the entire snake to fix the problem. Sam Abuelsamid (01:55) Okay. okay. And now with our plumbing corner concluded for the moment, uh-huh Let's talk some cars Well, I mean car cars do Cars do have plumbing. I mean, you know, you got hydraulic lines for your brakes at least for now Yeah until they go to electric brakes. Yeah, a series of tubes. Yes Roberto Baldwin (02:17) Welcome to the Willowberry's plumbing corner. What's going on? Bruce Coller, what's your problem? There are series of tubes, to be honest. literally a series of tubes. Sam Abuelsamid (02:38) Yeah, and you your cooling systems and things like that. So there's there's actually a surprising amount of plumbing in a vehicle Yeah So, where did you drive? Roberto Baldwin (02:44) So much plumbing. So many tubes. I drove, went to ⁓ Austria in Germany and I drove the 2027 Mercedes Benz CLA hybrid. Now the hybrid, now you've probably heard about the CLA electric vehicle. That's the one that's gotten all the hype. ⁓ That's both vehicles. They're the same. If you look at the vehicle outside of like the grill and the rear diffuser, because obviously EV doesn't need exhaust. ⁓ They look exactly the same. You get inside, they look exactly the same. There's like Yeah, for the average person, you're not going to notice the difference between these two vehicles. That said, I drove the hybrid. I also drove the EV, but I can't talk about that right now. I drove the hybrid. Next week, I drove the EV. The EV embargoes later on. The hybrid embargoes already passed. So that's why we're talking about hybrids right now. So what's interesting is that they're using a brand new motor for this, the FAME. ⁓ And of course, I forgot what FAME stands for. Give me two seconds. forget it. It doesn't matter. It's their new motor. Sam Abuelsamid (03:35) Ha! I'll look it up. Roberto Baldwin (03:48) Thank you. It is a new, I think, ish. It's a 1.5 liter inline four turbocharged engine, ⁓ but it has a, because it's a hybrid, has the electric motor inside the transmission, which is really nice. Sam Abuelsamid (04:07) So, fame is very, very creative. It's short for family of modular engines. Roberto Baldwin (04:15) There you go. Fame, fame. It's a family of modular engines. I apologize to David Bowie for that. ⁓ Yeah, so it's a 1.5 liter, it's got a turbo, it's got an EV, should be perfect. It is really comfortable ⁓ cruising. The car is ⁓ surprisingly ⁓ nimble. They did some really good work on the chassis. They had us driving up a snowy road in Austria. And then we got to the top, we could see Italy, which is a thing you can do when you're in the Alps. ⁓ All that, the infotainment system with the new MBOS, it's essentially just an updated version of ⁓ their zero layer. They're still using zero layer, which I'm like, okay, thank God. Because you don't want something that you've seen and used. to like go away because they've changed the operating system in some way. They've rewritten it. They essentially just rewrote the operating system for their ⁓ software defined vehicle, but they didn't change how it looks and how it works for zero layer, which is great. It has the dash cluster, works fine. It has some buttons, fine. It's missing their... ⁓ Some HVAC buttons, sorry, HVAC, climate control. Sorry, we're talking about houses. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (05:45) I mean they do they do use the term HVAC, you know in the auto industry too Roberto Baldwin (05:49) They do. ⁓ And all this sounds great. It does have the passenger screen. What I can say about the passenger screen is that it is huge in China and in Asia and other markets. So everyone gets it. That's it. I've talked to him about it. I've never had anyone get into the car in the United States and say, passenger screen, longer than five minutes. Everyone gets in. Sam Abuelsamid (06:14) The only time when we've actually had the passenger screen used in a vehicle for any extended period of time was last year when my wife and I were vacationing in California and we had ⁓ the EQS SUV and it had. the whole hyper screen thing with the passenger screen and she was using the passenger screen to manipulate the music that we were listening to and the navigation. So she actually did, that was the one time on that trip that week that in all the times I've had a vehicle with a passenger screen that it actually got used. So she actually did find it useful. Roberto Baldwin (06:53) Yeah, and what it did is it stopped her from having to turn 10 degrees and reach a little further. ⁓ Now, the thing is with Mercedes is that screen is just flat across the front. If that center screen was like more driver-centric, if it was turned towards you, I could understand with the passenger screen. you know, we've lost the debate because there's a huge market that really wants that. And for that, we all get the passenger screen. Sam Abuelsamid (06:59) Well, yeah. Roberto Baldwin (07:22) I played Angry Birds on it. I watched some YouTube videos on it just because, you but I kind of got bored very, very quickly. Mostly because I was doing my job. ⁓ That's it. All the sort of nice things about it said somehow, now this car doesn't come out until next year, the end of next year. So this is a very long lead drive program. So I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that they fix this. Sam Abuelsamid (07:25) haha Roberto Baldwin (07:51) That vehicle is a pain to get off the line. You push your foot down on the accelerator and there is a gap. It's like lag, the turbo has an electronic ⁓ to help spin it up. There's an electric motor in there. It's got an inline four. It's got this new Miller compression system which is very efficient but means it doesn't have a lot of low end torque. So they added the turbo and it has the electric motors. It should fill that gap but it really does not when you take off. And when you come out of corners, You stomp on that gas and you're like, wait for it, go. It is very, if you have any inclination of any sort of spirited driving, it's very annoying. It's like everything about this, yes, it feels like hopefully they can tweak it, they can calibrate it, they can adjust the, so many things about it. But at end of the day, you're just like, You're like, I really like this car and then ah. Sam Abuelsamid (08:31) Hmm sounds like it's mostly a calibration issue Roberto Baldwin (08:51) It's, we drove an E-Class after we turned these cars in to get from, I don't know, to Germany from, where were we, Vienna? Innsbruck, from Innsbruck. From Innsbruck to Stuttgart, we drove E-Classes and the E-Class wasn't as comfortable as the CLA. The CLA was a more comfortable, yeah, I was very surprised. ⁓ Seat comfort, especially. Sam Abuelsamid (09:03) Austria. That's surprising. Like ride comfort or everything. Roberto Baldwin (09:20) Like ride comfort is pretty on par. know, they're both very, you know, they're both, but seat comfort, the seat in the CLA is very, very comfortable. At least the ones that I was driving, the hybrids, the European models. Again, this vehicle doesn't come out for another, I don't know, probably eight months, nine months, 10 months. You know, they say until the end of 2026, it could come out and, you know, one year from now, it can come out 10 months from now. Whenever they can, you know, they get it out. That's it, yeah, it's very, there's all this tech in there and it's very interesting the way they're doing the Inline-4 engine with that sort of, so what happens is the piston's going down, they close the air intake earlier than anyone else would. So it's creating more compression, but it means it doesn't have that sort of oomph at the lower end. So they added a turbocharger and the turbocharger does have the little electronic thing to help spin it up. So the turbocharger has a little thing to spin it up. The motor, you know, within the transmission, there is a, I'm sorry, how many, I think it's 30, yes, 30 horsepower, 148 pound feet of torque, ⁓ electric motor inside the ⁓ transmission is an HB transmission, no CVT because boo. ⁓ So yes, there's HB transmission. ⁓ So it has all the elements where that shouldn't happen. Sam Abuelsamid (10:39) You Roberto Baldwin (10:46) That's the crazy thing is I guess the motor is very much tuned for just sort of once you're on the road cruising, but it has the elements that should fill in that gap and it really isn't right now. And again, I really want them to sort of like they just need to retune it to be honest. ⁓ And so this was in comfort and in sport mode, it does not have paddle shifters. So you can't like just pop up, pop up. Instead the stock, know how Mercedes Benz still uses a stock to shift gears. you push it forward and back in order to shift gears. The problem is, because it's your right hand, you're used to upshifting, like pulling towards you, right? As you're going up, it's the opposite. And I didn't realize I was doing it wrong. Like, code-driving, like, you're, you know, instead of shifting up, I kept shifting down because I pull, like, you push the stock forward to to upshift, and you pull it back to downshift, and you're like, that sort of makes sense, until you realize that Traditionally, paddle shifters, especially on the right-hand side, you pull it towards you to shift up. It's a very weird. Sam Abuelsamid (11:54) Yeah, well, I mean, usually, you you've got your up shift is on the right hand side, your down shift is on the left hand side paddle and you're pulling both of them towards you. Roberto Baldwin (12:03) Yeah. Yeah. So it's a very, I was like, this seems okay. Yeah. And mostly I was using that in the snow, ⁓ but it's, is very, it's a weird, it's a very weird system. Again, it's very comfortable to drive. It's great cruising. It surprisingly ⁓ did well in the snow. They didn't, you know, let the air out of anything. It was the cars we were just driving. Sam Abuelsamid (12:06) And yeah, so yeah, can see how it would get confusing. Roberto Baldwin (12:32) And they're like, hey, we're driving up this snowy hill with a bunch of switchbacks. And they're like, hey, this is how you can do, they want us to do oversteer. Sam Abuelsamid (12:32) Mm-hmm. Roberto Baldwin (12:42) So that was fun. That's always a good time when you get to oversteer in the Alps on a closed road. No one else's. It's a private road and it was closed and ⁓ they plowed it so we could drive up to the top of this hill and take a picture of Italy. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (12:56) So this is a 48 volt mild hybrid system. Roberto Baldwin (13:01) Yes, yeah, it's 48, but it's such a weird, it's weird that it's mild hybrid because it's 30 horsepower. So it's, it's, it's a hybrid. It's in the thing. So it's still. Like, you see the weird, it's, yeah, it- Sam Abuelsamid (13:16) Yeah, well, mean, but but the standards. But the standards of a lot of current, you know what we call strong hybrids or full hybrids, you know that that is on the low side, you know, like, you know, if you like, I'm going to talk in a couple of minutes about the Honda Accord, you know, and that's got 181 horsepower motor. Roberto Baldwin (13:37) Yeah, and this has a, the battery is 1.3 kilowatt hour, so it's not huge, but it's bigger than some of the smaller, it's bigger than an old hybrid system from say like a Prius or something. ⁓ But it's not huge, so you have to, so that sort of low end, making sure you have that power in order to push it forward for that low end torque issue, there should be enough. ⁓ in there to do that, but again, it's a weird little system. And you can drive it in electric ⁓ only around town for the most part, which they need to be able to do ⁓ in Europe. ⁓ But yeah, I think the MBOS operating system, I think it doesn't seem like there's a lot of weirdness. ⁓ Software is super difficult. You can ask literally any automaker. So these are new vehicles. Sam Abuelsamid (14:35) Mm-hmm. Roberto Baldwin (14:37) They're not even on the road yet. We'll see how it turns out. know, give them a year on the road to see what's going on. But they did, you know, when you got in those first, let's say the first, the Cadillac, the Lyric, when you got in the Volkswagen ID.3, when you got in all these vehicles, they had way more issues than this vehicle does and it's still a year out. So I feel like Mercedes has really done at least the work it needs to do up until this point to make this work. Hopefully within the next year they don't mess that up. Software is very easy to mess up. It's hard to build, it's easy to mess up. ⁓ They talked a little bit about artificial intelligence, is, know, it has, what is it, Microsoft and Google. So if you ask the Mercedes assistant, which has always been pretty good in relative terms compared to everything else in the market, now it'll use those as well. So if you ask it how tall is the Eiffel Tower, it'll ask, you know, those two systems and it'll return the best answer, which ⁓ doesn't mean get the correct answer. So whenever people like, yeah, the fine best. ⁓ Let's see. it has electric gliding and you can drive an EV mood up to 60 miles an hour depending on drive. So if you're slamming on it on the gas, obviously you're gonna fire up that. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (15:43) Define best. Roberto Baldwin (16:06) in lane four engine, but you can cruise it up to 60 miles an hour in EV mode, which is pretty, which is nice. Let's see, I think that's kind of it. There'll be more, I'll have an article over there on the old SAE about it. But yeah, so much about this car that I really like. And then there's that one, and then there's just that like, oh, I want to take off from an intersection. Hold on, give me a second. It's turbo lag. You're just driving around with turbo lag. ⁓ And there is no sort of motor that's going to fill that gap. Because turbo lag, you still have the motor there, then the turbo kicks in. Now it feels like there's nothing catching at the end when you first take off or when you're accelerating out of a corner. I think for most people, accelerating out of a corner, that's really just an enthusiast thing. Most people are just, you know, are gonna cruise in and out. Me on the other hand, I'm like, cannot get my, you have to like really hit it early and really give it the beans. You gotta give it the beans when you're coming out of the corner, especially if you're trying to oversteer and get that back in swinging out in the snow. But yeah, then when we got in those E-classes and you hit the accelerator and boom, the car just takes off. And you're just like, okay, well, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (17:15) Ha. Roberto Baldwin (17:31) So hopefully they can retune it between now and then. I don't see why they wouldn't. Sam Abuelsamid (17:35) You know, there's always the electric version. Roberto Baldwin (17:37) There's always the electric version, which again, I drove and I can't say anything about it other than I drove it. Not for, I guess until next week or a week after. I don't know, but I can talk about it later. ⁓ Yeah, so that's the Mercedes CLA Hybrid. Again, it's on the MMA, the Mixed Martial Arts architecture. ⁓ No, it's the Mercedes Modular Architecture. They're essentially doing what BMW's been doing, where you can build ⁓ either gas or electric version of the exact same car on the exact same. So that's, you know, that's, it's a smart thing. I remember when BMW was doing it, it took them forever to get it, to get it going. And at one point where I think most of us were just like, well, are they ever going to do this? They just keep talking about it and talking about it. And then the I4 came out and you're like, Ooh, this is nice. Sam Abuelsamid (18:24) Yeah, when BMW launched the i4, and then the i5 and the i7, with those flexible architectures, the downside of a flexible architecture like that is you're not necessarily optimizing the package to take advantage of the benefits of an EV. So like on the BMWs, they still have the transmission tunnel. in there because it's the same floor pan whether you get the gas or the electric version. So you know if you're in the backseat you know there's a there's a pretty substantial you know or drive shaft tunnel you know down down the middle and you know that's you know that that's kind of wasteful. ⁓ On the CLA you know what what's that like I mean obviously the CLA is more. Roberto Baldwin (18:49) Yeah. hump. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (19:13) ⁓ front wheel drive transverse front wheel drive architecture which the most of those BMWs are not. What's the backseat like in the CLA? Roberto Baldwin (19:15) Mm-hmm. It's tight, I mean, ⁓ I can talk about it. Yeah, I sat in the GLB as well. I saw the new GLB. Lots of room in the GLB, whether gas or electric. The CLA is tight just because it's a small car. ⁓ know, it's, one of the weird things, gosh, I have to look. I can't remember. Like I have, you know. Sam Abuelsamid (19:37) But is there much of a hump in the back? Roberto Baldwin (19:47) up in the mountains, half asleep. It was a long program. think everyone. Sam Abuelsamid (19:49) Yeah, we don't usually bother getting in the backseat anyway, you know, when we're driving these things. Roberto Baldwin (19:55) It ends up being, I try to get into the backseat as much as possible, but it ends up being one of those things where you're just like, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. wait, now we're taking this off to this, now we're doing this, now we're going here, now we're going there. And it was a long program, it was from Monday to Saturday. So on those programs, you were just so dead tired by the end. And sort of loopy, to be honest. ⁓ Let's see, I don't see any photos of. Sam Abuelsamid (20:20) Ha Roberto Baldwin (20:25) the back seat in my stuff. I'm sure there's probably something that'll just remind me to look at, look it up in the future. I know that the packaging in the front of the electric version, there is a frunk. So that's something, like a proper frunk. Hey, Nicole's here. Sam Abuelsamid (20:41) ⁓ okay. Hey, who's Nicole (20:44) Hey, Sam Abuelsamid (20:44) that? Nicole (20:45) can you hear me OK? Hey, it's me. I'm still alive. How you guys doing? It's been a morning. In fact, the plumber is still in my house trying to fix things. like, dude, just knock on the door. I'll like, so yeah, it's been a morning. Hello, everyone. How are you after weeks? You did the plumbing segment? OK. Sam Abuelsamid (20:47) Yeah. We weren't we weren't sure. Roberto Baldwin (21:00) ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (21:01) Well, we already did the plumbing segment. you know, we talked Roberto Baldwin (21:03) Yeah, I did. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (21:05) about our own experiences snaking out our pipes. Nicole (21:07) Well, my experience sinking out the pipes is that the lovely gentlemen have come to do this this morning on a Saturday morning and most plumbers don't do this. So I'm very grateful for the plumbers I found. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (21:16) Aww. Sam Abuelsamid (21:17) Well, plum plumbers are usually happy to do it on a Saturday morning. They just charge you three times as much. Really? Nicole (21:22) No, I couldn't even get that. First of all, these guys had a really great week. And secondly, they they I could not find me like, no, I'm sorry. I can't come out to Monday. I'm like, I have no kitchen sink. I can't, which also means I can't run the dishwasher because they go together anyway. It's not the plumbing show. It's the auto show. But how are you doing, guys? Roberto Baldwin (21:34) Yeah, because they go, yeah. I went to Austria and drove the CLA hybrid. We're finishing that up. It was a quick TLDR. I like everything about it except the fact that it's acceleration is not, there is essentially like turbo lag when you stomp on the gas of the accelerator. ⁓ But I think it's something they can fix between now and when the car comes out. The end of next year, it's so long from now. ⁓ Nicole (21:41) How is that? Hmm. Okay. ⁓ the end of Sam Abuelsamid (22:04) The ⁓ Nicole (22:04) next year. That is what you call a very, very, very, very long lead. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (22:07) Long lead here. Sam Abuelsamid (22:10) One thing I did notice looking at the pictures of the interior though, it's got vents that you can reach out and grab and move. Nicole (22:16) Yay! Roberto Baldwin (22:17) yeah, it's got just proper human vents you can use your hands with. That's the whole... I almost said something, was like, know, they were just like, what are you talking about? I feel like... Sam Abuelsamid (22:25) haha Nicole (22:26) I had a conversation with people who are not car people about things that we don't like in cars. And I told them that that's a thing now that you can have vents that you can't move. And they're like, you're making that up. I'm like, no, I'm not. Like they literally didn't believe me. They're like, wait, what kind of car did like weird kind of like no regular like mass market cars do that. So ⁓ yeah, it was it was kind of funny that that was and they're like, no, I wouldn't buy that car either. I'm like, you wouldn't know because it sounds like a stupid idea. You're correct. Roberto Baldwin (22:37) you Sam Abuelsamid (22:39) You Nicole (22:56) Ha ha. Roberto Baldwin (22:56) It is not a smart idea. Sam Abuelsamid (22:57) We need to get those people to talk to Mr. RJ Scourge. Nicole (23:01) Hmm Roberto Baldwin (23:01) Yeah, yeah, like when we're putting AI in cars, I'm like, I don't care. How about putting some vent controls in the cars? How about some manual? Sam Abuelsamid (23:04) Yeah. Nicole (23:06) How about just air vents you can use? Sam Abuelsamid (23:09) You know what? You need to find all those people that have put down all their deposits on an R2 or an R3X and make sure that they understand before they actually, know, before those vehicles get delivered that, you know, you will have to go into the stupid touchscreen to adjust the vents. And no AI is going to fix that for you. Roberto Baldwin (23:23) Pull the trigger. Nicole (23:30) That would drive me crazy. Roberto Baldwin (23:34) Yeah, no, that's not good. Nicole (23:35) So I had one thing when I was on my vacation, I drove a Mercedes E class diesel wagon in Germany. ⁓ yeah, exactly. And like the things we can't have. But the one thing that it was, I was like, ⁓ they're like, what? Do you like this car Nicole? The people were with them like, yeah, this will do. ⁓ Super fun. the, the, ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (23:42) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (23:43) Ooooo The journalist special. Roberto Baldwin (23:47) Was it? It wasn't true. That is a journalist special. Nicole (24:00) Stuff that turned on to tell you the speed limit, that you were right at the edge of the speed limit, like if you went from 30 to 31, and you had to turn it off every single time you got in the car. Every. Single. Time. Roberto Baldwin (24:05) ⁓ yeah. Yeah, that's regulatory. Sam Abuelsamid (24:11) That is the law in Europe now. Nicole (24:13) I know I Roberto Baldwin (24:13) That's the law. Nicole (24:14) decided I hate that. That's right up there. I knew it was the law. They're like, why does this this way? I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is European law guys. So sorry. I just got to turn this off every time. And first I was saying, Mercedes and getting it to turn it off. And then it wouldn't always hear me. So then I finally found the button to turn it off. And then my passengers in the back took great joy. Like, no, no, don't turn it off. And they're screaming, Hey Mercedes from the back of the car and turn it off every time we got in. Like if this is amusing, you guys became a fun game every time we helped. Roberto Baldwin (24:38) Aww, it was a fun game. Nicole (24:43) the car so Roberto Baldwin (24:44) In Austria apparently they're very strict about speeding. So when we were driving through Austria we were like, just leave it on. ⁓ I was with Scott Evans from Motor Trend and we were like, he's like, we should turn. I'm like, I don't know man. When we get in Germany we can turn it off. Nicole (24:48) Yeah. Well, it was, it was... Yeah. Well, and it was also it was sometimes it was off like I would see a speed limit and sign in front of me that would say 70 and it's blinking at 30. Like if it's mistimed or whatever, I'm like, hello, I'm not speeding. I am not even at the speed limit yet. Stop hassling me. So yeah, so that's why I kept turning it. Russ left it on when he was driving because I got over to get in trouble. I'm like, well, I'm not worried about getting in trouble. I'm worried about like road rage at the car because I have to listen to this beep all the time. Roberto Baldwin (25:10) ⁓ So. Sam Abuelsamid (25:26) It's the new European automotive equivalent of cookie banners. Nicole (25:34) Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Roberto Baldwin (25:35) Mwah, Mwah. Anyway, that was the CLA. Nah. Well, you can read the rest of it on SAE something, career, whatever. Sam Abuelsamid (25:38) Well, anything else on the CLA? Okay. Nicole, us an Nicole (25:45) Yes. Sam Abuelsamid (25:47) update. What's been going on? Nicole (25:48) What's been going on? I was on vacation for a while, as you've heard, driving around Germany, driving on the Autobahn super, super fast because it's legal and it was so much fun. I had to slow down a little bit because my passengers, there's a couple and the guy was like, yeehaw, and the woman's like, stop. So I had to slow down a little bit. ⁓ Not so much on the Autobahn, but even just like taking turns, like, you know, those windy roads they have in Germany that are just, they were in the backseat. Roberto Baldwin (25:56) Fun fun fun, I'll you at the hotbar. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. We're in the backseat. she might be also be getting sick. Nicole (26:17) No, it wasn't a car sick thing. was like the minute the car went faster than she. Yeah. She was like, woo. Or if I like floored it for, yeah, I'm like, I'm freaking around. better slow that sucker down a little bit. Yes. Yes. Exactly. You don't just keep driving fast to be a jerk. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (26:21) ⁓ she's used to. Yeah, it's always, if you're driving a car and someone else in the car is not comfortable, just slow down. Be a nice person. There's no, yeah, don't be that person. Be the nice person. Nicole (26:37) So I still had a good time though. It was totally fun. ⁓ So that was my vacation. then also whilst I was on vacation, excuse me, I have a frog in my throat. gave me, when I got back, they gave me an Acura Integra to drive this week. And it is the A-spec. ⁓ I like the Integra. I like it a lot. You know what? I forgot how much fun a manual transmission is. Like you don't get them very often. You just don't. And I've driven one forever and I know how to drive one. And Russ once had an Acura Integra back Roberto Baldwin (26:51) Cool! ⁓ yeah. Nicole (27:07) second gen and it was a manual. I like that car and I forgot when I got in it was actually I really forgot it was manual for a second I may have been a little jet-lagged and like why won't the car start? I'm like wait are there numbers on that? I'm like wait I gotta put the other foot in like I didn't even catch it I'm like what is wrong with this thing? But so I have that this week which has been super fun to drive I've only driven it for a couple of days because I got back a little bit late ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (27:09) Nice. Nicole (27:34) But it's just a fun, sporty little car. Some people complained about the Integra because they were like, the Integra has to be this. It was never a Porsche for crying out loud. Sam Abuelsamid (27:45) People have people have weird, you know, they have enhanced memories of the past when it comes to cars. Nicole (27:50) Yeah! Roberto Baldwin (27:52) of the Integra, which was like sporty, but not a sports car, and the Prelude, which was sporty-ish, but not a sports car. And they're like, why isn't this, why isn't this a Toyota Supra? Because it never was the Toyota Supra. Nicole (27:59) Exactly, I was just gonna say the prelude's the same thing. They're all upset about it. I'm like, do you actually remember what these cars were before? No, no, you don't. Sam Abuelsamid (28:07) Yeah. It was it was always ⁓ a slightly fancier sportier Civic. That's what the Integra was. That's what it is today Nicole (28:16) Yeah. So I like this. It's fun, it's comfy. I had to drive around in the snow a little bit and it was pretty good in the snow. Not a lot of snow, but like that icy, black ice, garbagey junk that you get, know, New England winter time. The good stuff. ⁓ And I do have a Monroni that does not appear to have any pricing on it. Like I said, I've been dealing with a plumber this morning. I should have checked this ahead of time, but it has been a morning, gentlemen. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (28:30) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (28:31) the good stuff. Roberto Baldwin (28:40) Free. Free. ⁓ Nicole (28:46) So, it's, you know, I enjoy driving this. I think it's a nice successor to the old Integra. Like if you actually owned one, which I did, you look at this and like, it's still fun. It's still sporty. It still has enough power. It's, it's a joy to drive. It handles well. It looks good. So it kind of checks all the boxes. It just moves everything forward. You know, you don't really, it should have been just like, and I'm like, do you really want a car from 1992? Cause I don't think you do. Um, you know, the things that it changes, it changed in a good way. Cause it's. 2025 and you have infotainment and you have fancier stuff and you have better safety and all these other things But I thought it was really comfy and Russ was in it too and he had enough room I don't know how much room anybody in the back seat would have really once you push his seat all the way back I feel like you'd have to be really really short really really really short to sit behind Russ but ⁓ So I enjoyed driving this but my favorite part of was just literally having a six-speed manual. I forgot Roberto Baldwin (29:31) Yeah, is that... Yeah. Yeah. Nicole (29:42) how fun a manual transmission is, is I'm just like shifting gears and downshifting. There's something that you can't replicate with paddle shifters. You just can't. the sort of rowing through the gears, having your feet do the work, it is not the same. I know that there's things that are more and more effective and faster and snappier and a dual clutch automatic. I don't it's not about that. It's about just the fun of controlling what you're driving. And it was a joy to drive this. Roberto Baldwin (30:10) Yeah. Occasionally someone will be like, well, know, the PDK is faster. You know, this is Porsche's automatic auto transmission. I'm like, yeah, but it's not, that's not what I'm going for. Yeah, that's what I'm, I'm not going for that. I'm not going for that half second of speed. I'm going for that, that entire driving experience of having a manual transmission. That's what I enjoy. If you're talking about numbers, I'm like, you've lost me already because Nicole (30:19) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (30:20) mean, most modern automatics are faster. Nicole (30:23) Yeah! Exactly. Right? Roberto Baldwin (30:40) You know, most cars are much faster than my BRZ, but I love driving my BRZ more than most cars, which is why I have a BRZ. It's the same thing with Miata. The answer is always Miata. Miata is a very slow car, but it is absolutely fantastic to drive. Nicole (30:44) See? It's it's that part of driving. Yeah, always. Mm It. It's Sam Abuelsamid (30:48) Yeah. Yeah. Nicole (30:55) one of those things I don't think you get if you're not really a car person, if you don't really. Like if you really see a car as an appliance, in which case you're probably not listening to the show anyway, but if you are one of those people, you don't get what we're talking about at all because you're just like, well, it does the job. It needs to do the job. I want it to be fast. I wanted to do its thing. But if you appreciate the car for the car and the fun of driving and the engagement and the sort of connection that you can get when you were really driving a beautifully done car through a beautiful road. shifting through the gears yourself, not the same as an automatic, not the same as paddle shifters, just a different connection. So this made me miss having a manual transmission. That's how nice this one was. Also, it's like just enough so like if you're a noob and you've never driven one, you don't feel like you're fighting to find gears. You know, it kind of guides you right in and it doesn't ever. Right. Roberto Baldwin (31:27) Yeah, it is. Sam Abuelsamid (31:41) ⁓ Honda's manuals are great. Roberto Baldwin (31:43) No, second to none, just such good manner transmissions. Nicole (31:45) Yeah, it's just so effortless to drive it. And even the clutch, the clutch isn't really heavy. I remember having a manual Hellcat, I think it was for some drive and got stuck in traffic and I was like, I'm going to die. I felt like my left leg by the end of it. I'm like, my left leg is now beefier than my right leg from going in and out on that clutch so many times. It was so heavy. This one is so light. Right, right. I'm unbalanced now. I have a back issue. Roberto Baldwin (32:05) You just walking in circles because of it now? Sam Abuelsamid (32:11) Well, you ⁓ you're gonna have to pick a new car soon anyway if you haven't already, you now's the time to buy one. Nicole (32:17) I do have to pick a new car soon. In fact, ⁓ my current car is only my car for a few more days. And it is officially not my car anymore. ⁓ So it is going bye bye. yeah, which I'm really happy about and really sad about because I loved that car. I have to do this for one second. Roberto Baldwin (32:40) Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (32:40) Okay, gotta go pay the plumber. Roberto Baldwin (32:42) she's so just, she's so, so, so sad about the car leaving. I don't think that's. Sam Abuelsamid (32:46) Yeah, well the ⁓ I looked I looked up the Integra A-Spec with the manual transmission so the ⁓ You you can get the the Integra A-Spec with a CVT or you can get it with a six-speed manual With the CVT it starts at thirty three thousand four hundred dollars With the the manual it's thirty nine thousand two hundred dollars So $6,000 more for the manual transmission. Roberto Baldwin (33:17) Well, they probably have CVTs lying around all over the place. Manuals, you know, that's the crazy thing. Back when we were young, a manual, that was the option you got because it was less expensive, because automatic transmissions were more expensive. And now it's switched because now the only people who getting manuals are enthusiasts, which means there are fewer and fewer manuals being built, which means you didn't have the economies of scale, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, that's how you, we've flipped, we're in the upside down. Sam Abuelsamid (33:30) Yeah. Yep. I know. Roberto Baldwin (33:48) Four enthusiasts again, that's the thing. And yeah, four enthusiasts. And I always want to say, if you don't drive a manual transmission, but you still enjoy your car, that's awesome. You don't have to learn if you don't want to. I'm not gonna be like, ooh, you're not a real driver because you don't drive a manual. Sam Abuelsamid (34:01) No, if you want to experience a more engaging drive experience, using the word experience too often there, but if you wanna have a more engaging drive experience, it's worth at least trying out. ⁓ Find somebody who has a manual transmission, ⁓ get them to teach, if you don't already know how to drive a manual, get them to show you how to do it and just try it. Roberto Baldwin (34:10) do it. Experience. Sam Abuelsamid (34:31) and see what it's like. Roberto Baldwin (34:31) Yeah, give it a try. Find an empty parking lot, drive around for a few hours. It's a little frustrating initially, but you'll get it. And then once you get it, you'll either be like, oh, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me, or you might be like, eh, I'm fine. Which again, that's totally fine. If you have a car, paddle shifter, DCT, even a CVT, and you love driving that car, that's great. Good for you. I'm happy for you. And you should be, don't feel judged. Sam Abuelsamid (34:35) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that. That that's what happened with with my kids You know when my kids were learning to drive the older one You know took her out. You know gave her some lessons with a manual transmission She figured you know she got the hang of it pretty quickly. No problem at all the younger one went up one time Yeah, tried it said okay. I'm good Never wanted to touch a manual again so Roberto Baldwin (35:22) You're like, yeah, I'm good. I don't need this. I don't need this shenanigans anymore. I'm done with this. Nicole (35:29) Okay, I'm back. Yes. yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (35:29) So, while you're gone, I looked up the pricing on the Integra. The Integra starts at 33,400. The A-Spec with the CVT is 35,950. And with the six speed, which only comes with the technology package, it's 39,200. Nicole (35:46) Okay. Yes. I would pay $39 for this. Would you? It's this, beautiful blue. It's double, double apex blue. my God, the color is gorgeous. It's so pretty. Actually, it's in it's so snowy and gross here right now to have this bright blue car in the driveway. I'm like, look at a little bit of happiness. Sam Abuelsamid (35:59) Which color do you have? ⁓ the double apex blade double apex. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't send you one in urban gray pearl because it always seems like that's the only color that Acura has in the press fleet anywhere or for the drives. ⁓ Nicole (36:24) Well, I'm lucky I got a blue one. I'm excited about the blue one. So it's really fun. I even drove it yesterday. I had to take Russ into the airport and we hit the world's worst traffic and driving into Boston because I thought, this is going to be miserable. Stop and go in a manual. And it's still it was just great. It's such a nice. It's such a nice car to drive. I like thoroughly enjoy this thing. Thirty nine to I would I pay thirty. I think I would pay thirty nine to for this because the interior also looks good. Like it's an upgrade has like two tone seats. They have kind of like a blue Sam Abuelsamid (36:30) It is a good color. Nicole (36:55) accents on it that sort of match that paint on the outside. So it looks really slick. When you open the door, you're like, ooh, nice car, you know? So they didn't, it looks good, it feels good. And you know, you get pretty decent reliability. got a Honda product there, so you're gonna have it for a while. I feel like 39, I mean, you can go cheaper, but can you necessarily go better? I don't know. What do you think? Would you spend it? Roberto Baldwin (37:22) It's a good car. had one for Monterey car week of the Acura lineup. think this is, this is the car. I think when they brought it back, I think it was a big deal. ⁓ rightfully. So I think for years, Acura was a little bit lost and who exactly they were. They came back with this. They're like, okay, this is who we are. And since then, I think they've sort of gotten lost a little bit again, but I get, yeah, everyone wants a SUV. That's the problem. Everyone wants a crossover and Acura was not really a crossover company. And so it's, it has to like sort of. Nicole (37:24) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (37:43) Well... Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (37:50) figure out how it fits in the world of crossover. Nicole (37:53) I wish we didn't all want crossovers. Sam Abuelsamid (37:53) Yeah, what when I know, you know when I drove the the ADX last spring, you know, I remember saying, you know, because the ADX is on the same platform. It's you know, it's the Civic platform. So it's a Civic, Integra, HRV and ADX are all on this platform. And the ADX has the same 1.5 liter turbo four cylinder 200 horsepower that's that's in the Integra. Nicole (38:07) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (38:21) It only comes with the CVT. You can't get it with a manual. And the ADX just feels so utterly lifeless compared to this. But the problem is the ADX weighs like 600 pounds more. So yeah, you're getting a crossover body on there. Roberto Baldwin (38:30) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (38:41) but you're adding 600 pounds to it. And it just saps the life out of this vehicle. And it's kind of sad really. And I remember saying at the time, know, it's like, really just get the Integra, you know, cause the Integra is a hatchback. You so you get, you actually get as much utility and it's actually, the ADX is a slightly shorter wheelbase. You know, it's more upright, but it's shorter. So you're. you're actually getting about the same amount of interior volume in the Integra as you get in an ADX, but it's so much more fun to drive. Nicole (39:18) It really is fun. Roberto Baldwin (39:18) And I'm sure the ADX probably outsells its Integra. I'm not even gonna look, I'm not gonna look it up because it's just gonna depress me. It outstalls it. Sam Abuelsamid (39:21) yeah, by huge margin. Nicole (39:24) Don't look. You know the answer is that it sells. Yeah, that it out sells it because the Integra is a small little sporty-ish. What do we decide? Sporty-ish? Is that the correct word? Sporty-ish car? Sporty-ish sedan. So it's not gonna, it's not gonna sell like the ADX is. Not even close, I would think. Roberto Baldwin (39:32) Yeah, it's a sporty-ish sedan. Yeah. It's a I will say there was that like a few minutes where I was just like, know, the original Integra was a two door and I'm just like, shut up, Robbie. That's not how I play. Yeah, there were, like you could, yeah, think most people had two doors back in the day, but that's a different world when people were like happy with just two doors. Sam Abuelsamid (39:43) So. Nicole (39:51) Hahaha! Sam Abuelsamid (39:51) But there were four door integrals too. There were four door integrals. Nicole (39:56) We had a four door. We had a four door when we hit her. I also, didn't want a two door because I just remembered like my mom weirdly, because I bought it a long time ago. My mom always hated two door cars because she said the doors were too heavy. No, it's not like the Integra is exactly large, but I think this was based on like two door cars of the seventies where each of the doors weighed about as much as a mini. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, so like when you open up one of those, you're like, holy heck, I can see why. But I'm like, an Integra, I probably been okay with two doors. It's not that big. Roberto Baldwin (40:21) ⁓ suck it. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (40:22) Yeah, we're like 15 feet long. Yeah. So far this year, since January, the Integra has sold 18,462 units. The ADX is 17,313, but the ADX didn't really go on sale until about April. So the monthly sales rate is, yeah. Nicole (40:42) Okay. Roberto Baldwin (40:43) Alright. Nicole (40:50) Yeah. So that's like essentially, yeah. Roberto Baldwin (40:50) ⁓ so it's outselling it. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Integra, it's a niche. It's you know, it's a fun niche car like the. By the Integra manual transmission. Ask your friend if you can drive their whatever with a manual until you learn and then go out and buy the Integra. Nicole (40:56) Yeah. I love it though. I really like it. Just buy the Integra. Do the right thing people, buy the Integra. Because it's a fun little car. Sam Abuelsamid (40:58) Yeah. But by the Integra, it's good. It's a good car. Yeah, it's good. The way we convince automakers to keep building cars like the Integra is by buying them. Stop buying these ridiculous crossovers. Buy cars. Nicole (41:21) No one's going to listen to you. realize that, right, Sam? No one's listening. Absolutely. I mean, I appreciate. I know. Roberto Baldwin (41:23) No one's Sam Abuelsamid (41:23) I know. Roberto Baldwin (41:25) I mean, we're listening to each other. I was talking to folks the other day. I'm like, Sam Abuelsamid (41:29) Of we also buy manual diesel to station wagons, so what the hell do we know? Nicole (41:33) Right? I was all excited about that. So that Roberto Baldwin (41:33) Yeah, if there's Nicole (41:35) tells you. Roberto Baldwin (41:35) if there's a car that all the automotive journalists absolutely love it's going to have horrible sales. That is sort of the rule. like everyone's like, this is so great. We love this car and the general public's like, no, no. Nicole (41:41) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (41:42) Yes. Nicole (41:49) Because we don't buy based on or we don't love them based on practical. mean, I can love a car because it's a practical SUV and it can tow because it's truck and it can do all these things. But like to drive one, we love the ones that are just really joyful to drive. It doesn't make them logical at all. That's the problem. Sam Abuelsamid (42:07) Well, actually, I would disagree with that. When it comes to station wagons, especially. ⁓ We had a couple of Volkswagen VW wagons and the beauty of the wagon is it is basically a car with a longer roof. You're not really sacrificing anything from having the sedan version. You're getting some extra cargo space in the back. Roberto Baldwin (42:07) Yeah. Nicole (42:10) No? That's true. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (42:33) So it has all the joy of driving the car, the sedan or coupe version, but just in a more practical shape without all that extra mass that you're hauling around for something you're calling a utility vehicle. you know, so, I mean, this is why, you know, we had a 2000 Passat wagon and, you know, my wife loved driving that car. She did not want a crossover. Nicole (42:37) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (43:00) You know, she did not want a minivan. She loved that car. And when we replaced that, we replaced it with a Jetta TDI wagon. And she loved driving that car right up until September 2015. Yeah. And that diesel gate happened. But, you know. Roberto Baldwin (43:09) Whoops. Nicole (43:12) I was driving the wagon. was the thing I switched from. Originally we'd asked for a small SUV just because you're thinking for people in their luggage when we were on vacation and they offered me the wagon instead. I'm like, I'm going to try the wagon. It was so much easier than having an SUV. It was easier to get around the streets. It was easier to get around the cities to put in parking spaces. helped. Sam Abuelsamid (43:27) Mm-hmm. Roberto Baldwin (43:32) It's easier to put things in. Nicole (43:33) It held all of our luggage. And when we had that, you know, barely under the airline weight limit luggage that we were bringing back stuff from being there for two weeks, it was so easy to load it in. Like it was like you were lifting up. It's just it's nice and low. So loading cargo is easier. It made me fall in love with wagons in a way that I'm sad that we don't have more. Like I was like, yeah, we should have more now. I'm sort of bitter about it right now because I'm still loving that experience. A little bit bitter. Sam Abuelsamid (43:34) Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha ha ha! Roberto Baldwin (43:59) Well, I mean, there's a lot of reason people buy SUVs because we are essentially sold at the SUV. ⁓ I mean, it's a propaganda thing. It's a long, it's a long story. I've talked about it million times. There's no, there's no point in going into it again. but yeah, we were, we were essentially told you should buy this. You should buy this via propaganda because there's a higher profit margin. The end. I know, I know, I know. I don't have to like it either. That's why I'm driving around in a, in a, in a two door BRZ and a Nicole (44:04) Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know all the reasons, Robbie. I don't have to like it. I don't have to like it. Roberto Baldwin (44:29) four door really big hatchback called the Ionic 5. Nicole (44:32) I have to decide what my next car Sam Abuelsamid (44:33) Yeah. Nicole (44:34) is going to be now, guys. I have a big opportunity, right? Because I can get anything right. Well, not anything. I'm probably not buying a, you know, Rolls Royce, but ⁓ yeah, I got to decide. I got to decide what I'm to do. Roberto Baldwin (44:37) you should get the XRT. Sam Abuelsamid (44:46) Well, after the title for our replacement EV6 finally arrived after it was sitting in a FedEx warehouse in Memphis for a month, ⁓ we went to the Secretary of State's office on Monday to get the title transfer and get a Michigan title for it. And, you know, on the registration, says EV6, it says station wagon. Nicole (44:51) gosh. Of course. Does it really? Sam Abuelsamid (45:10) It's not listed as an SUV. It is. It says on the register on the Michigan registration certificate. It says station wagon so. Roberto Baldwin (45:13) Dun dun dun. Dun, dun, dun, because that's what it is really. Nicole (45:19) my gosh, you bought a station again. Yeah. I wanted to bring the back the wood paneling. I know it's tacky as heck, but I just miss the. Sam Abuelsamid (45:21) Yeah. Hey, you know what, you Roberto Baldwin (45:26) You can add it. There's nothing to stop you from putting web paneling. Sam Abuelsamid (45:28) want wood paneling? There's plenty of shops that'll do a wrap for you. You can get a wood ⁓ panel, know, because, I mean, that's, you know, for the last 30ish years that they sold woody wagons in this country. That's all it was anyway, it was just a vinyl applique. So just take it to a wrap shop and get a ⁓ wood panel wrap on there, on the doors on the fenders. Nicole (45:32) Exactly. Roberto Baldwin (45:32) Yeah. Nicole (45:40) Mm-hmm. Right. That's what I mean. Roberto Baldwin (45:48) Or magnets and then you can take it off and put it on whenever you want like you'd like your like your real estate agent. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (45:52) Well, there you go. Depends on your mood. Yeah. Nicole (45:55) I could do that. That would work. But I just I'm going to put it on first. I don't know. I'm going to buy instead. This is it. It's all done. What was it? The 16th is my appointment to have everything said and done on yield. Wagoneer asked that I'm very sad to give up, but I'm very happy to give up. And I just have to find out what what I'm to do instead, guys. don't know. Roberto Baldwin (46:15) Everyone should, everyone should, should, everyone who's listening, want you to email us and tell us what should, what and why Nicole should get your choice. Sam Abuelsamid (46:16) Kav6. Nicole (46:24) gosh, what and why? Sam Abuelsamid (46:24) There you go. Yes, yes, definitely, definitely provide the why. So feedback feedback at wheel bearings that media. Nicole (46:27) Why you think I should get the car I should get? Okay. Roberto Baldwin (46:27) Yeah, we have. Yeah. Also in the deacon Nicole (46:31) Hahaha Roberto Baldwin (46:32) feedback at Wilberry's that me, tells what and why Nicole should get. You can also do this in our discord. You can throw it in there if you don't feel like using email. I want to see what people want Nicole to drive. Nicole (46:38) Yeah, that'll be interesting to see if anybody sends anything in and what they say. Hmm. What are they going to recommend for me? I wonder it's going to be ridiculous or they're going to go, I think she'd like this because and give a logical reason. The escape. They're going to tell me Miata because it's the answer to everything, but we cannot if you live in New England most of the year. Yeah, yeah, because Russ can hardly fit in a Miata like when one ends up in the driveway, he's like, Sam Abuelsamid (46:44) Ha ha. Roberto Baldwin (46:50) They're going to tell you to Ford escape. They're just going to like break your heart. Miata is the answer. Yeah, but no, but Russ is tall, so BRZ. Sam Abuelsamid (46:58) Heh. ⁓ All right, anything else that on the your adventures with the Integra or the E-Class wagon? Okay. Nicole (47:16) No, no, no more on the adventures of the Integra or the E-Class Wang and that's about it. Sam Abuelsamid (47:23) All right. Well, I have had this past week a 2025 Honda Accord Touring Hybrid. Actually, I also had a base Honda Accord with the gas engine because they they were supposed to deliver the hybrid on Monday. And for reasons, a gas version showed up in my driveway. You know, I needed to write a review on the hybrid. Nicole (47:32) Mmm. Sam Abuelsamid (47:53) ⁓ And so I pinged back, drive shop and said, hey, I thought was supposed to get a hybrid here. And ⁓ shoot, we'll get you one tomorrow. So that one did show up the next day. ⁓ The base one had the same 1.5 liter turbo four cylinder that was in your Integra, but the Accord of course is a little bit larger and heavier and it had a CVT. And so was not quite as lively. Accord Touring Hybrid on the other hand, very, very nice car. I really like that. I really like the Honda Hybrid system. ⁓ I talked a bunch about it when I talked about the Prelude a month or so ago. ⁓ But the Accord, in the Accord it works really well as well. So this is a hybrid system that is really biased towards the electric side. it most of the time it basically acts as a series hybrid. So the engine under probably 90 % of driving conditions, 80 % of driving conditions, the engine is not ever connected to the wheels and is not sending any power to the wheels. So you got 181 horsepower electric motor that is driving the car most of the time. And for comparison, you know, the Toyota hybrids in like in a Camry is only 111 horsepower motor. So you're getting a lot more electric power out of the Honda. ⁓ And the engine is so much, the four cylinder engines, the two liter four cylinder, it's so much more refined and quiet than the Toyota. And because it's not an ECVT system like the Toyota, they can manage the, so they're relying less on the engine for propulsion. So when you go to accelerate, it doesn't just immediately rev to 4,000 RPM and sit there. and drone for a few seconds until the car catches up to it. It's a much more quiet, refined drive and very enjoyable. It's much more like driving an EV. And one of the things I hadn't realized about it before, and I noticed a couple of days ago, it's got shift paddles on it or what look like shift paddles, but it's actually for managing. Hi, Nico, or is that Bowie? Nicole (49:51) Ha Roberto Baldwin (50:09) Sorry. Sam Abuelsamid (50:18) Is that Nico or Bowie? Roberto Baldwin (50:18) Bowie's in the room, Nico's in the front barking, so I was making Bowie in the room bark. Sam Abuelsamid (50:23) ⁓ okay. Roberto Baldwin (50:25) We're having work done on the house, so now they're here apparently. Sam Abuelsamid (50:30) Okay. Anyway, so the paddles, you know, like said, this thing doesn't really have a transmission as such. So the paddles are for controlling the regen. And because it's mostly electric power, you can get a lot more regen out of this than you can out of a lot of other hybrids. So the left paddle gives you more regen, the right paddle gives you less regen. And when you have it in normal drive mode or an eco, know, tapping the paddle, the left paddle will give you more regen, you get almost like one pedal driving at max regen, although it won't bring it to a full stop. ⁓ But the regen only stays at that level until you press the accelerator down again, ⁓ or you start to accelerate. And then it immediately reverts back to ⁓ mild regen, which is more like just coast down that you get with a regular internal combustion engine. ⁓ when you put it in sport mode, the regen goes to essentially, there's an ⁓ there indicating manual mode. And so whatever regen level you set it at when you're in sport mode, it stays there. So if you want stronger regen in sport mode, you just tap the left paddle a couple of times and it'll stay at that level of regen until you tap the right paddle to reduce it again. ⁓ in a lot of ways, it's a lot more like driving an EV than most hybrids. ⁓ The Accord is very roomy. It's big car. ⁓ Plenty of room in the back seat for adults, although like most modern sedans, they've gone to this kind fastback, coupe-like profile, so the headroom is not quite as enormous as it would have been in an Accord from a couple of generations ago, but still, there's plenty of room back there. Lots of legroom. Roberto Baldwin (52:17) ⁓ yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (52:26) Little bit less headroom than it used to be but but still very comfortable lots of shoulder room good sized trunk ⁓ and I was surprised the trunk opening is actually surprisingly large too You know one of one of the problems with again with a lot of modern sedans that have that Fastback profiles you end up with a very small trunk lid So you you might have a very spacious trunk but a very small opening to get stuff into not so on the accord It's the openings nice and wide comes right down to the bumper So you can get bigger stuff in there the back seats fold down So if you want to shove a big TV in there, you know other stuff, know, maybe 10, you know 8 10 bags of mulch you can do that too And so it's very very practical and the the Accord Touring the touring hybrid which comes on 19 inch wheels though. The other trims come on like 17s or 18s The other trims are rated at combined 48 miles per gallon. And the touring on the 19 inch wheels is rated at 44 miles per gallon. This was a particularly cold week in Michigan. And so when it gets cold, doesn't matter if you're driving a hybrid, an EV, a diesel, gas, whatever. you're going to get less fuel economy, especially if there's a lot of snow and ice on the ground because there's more rolling resistance for the tires, more slip and everything. ⁓ So I saw about 35 miles per gallon, ⁓ which is about what I would expect given the conditions. mean, we had a couple of days where was down. The temperatures were down into the low teens. So that's, you know, that's what I would expect in those conditions. you know, warmer weather. getting in the mid 40s is not a problem at all. I've had in a court, last time I had in a court hybrid a couple of years ago, it was during the summertime and very easy to get into the mid 40s. Just as with a Civic, you can get up to 50 miles per gallon with the same powertrain. The Civic's a little bit smaller, lighter, but ⁓ it's a really fantastic car and if you are not obsessed with the idea of having a utility vehicle, but you want something that's practical and roomy for four or five people and you still want really good fuel economy, the Accord Hybrid is really an excellent choice. The lowest trim level of the hybrid is the Sport Hybrid. That one starts at 33,655. The Touring Hybrid, and the powertrain is 204 horsepower. in the accord. And the one I had was finished in radiant red metallic, which is an extra 455 bucks. Had a really nice leather interior. Let's see, the grand total came to 40,950. Guesses on the destination charge. Roberto Baldwin (55:40) 1300. Nicole (55:41) 1495. Sam Abuelsamid (55:43) Robbie gets it, it was actually only $11.95. So, yeah, know. Doesn't cost as much to deliver a sedan from central Ohio as it does to deliver a full-size truck from Mexico. Nicole (55:46) Wow. Cheapy cheap. Roberto Baldwin (55:47) ⁓ I know. I don't have... Dun dun dun! Sam Abuelsamid (56:02) So yeah, 1195 for destination. Just shy of $41,000 all in for a loaded cord touring hybrid. Oh, and the touring trim is the only one that gets the infotainment system with the Google built in. So it's Android Automotive. All the Hondas, their infotainment system is built on Android, but many of them have their base system. is just a Honda interface on there and you can't load any apps onto it. And that's what was on the gas accord that I got it first on Monday. But then ⁓ on the touring trim, you get ⁓ a 12.3 inch infotainment screen ⁓ and the Google built in software. So it's got Google Maps, Assistant, the Play Store. ⁓ It also still has support for wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, so you can use your phone, project from there. ⁓ The vents are fully manual, as they should be. ⁓ Get three nice rotary knobs on the center of the dash, so there's one for the driver to adjust their temperature, there's another one for the passenger to adjust their temperature, and then one in the middle to adjust the fan speed. Just reach out, give it little twist one way or the other. Nicole (57:22) Amazing! Sam Abuelsamid (57:23) Yeah, it's it's shocking. You know, it just it's so incredibly easy to use and you know, I don't know why more automakers don't do that ⁓ So so that's that's the accord touring hybrid ⁓ But I also spent a couple of days this week in Silicon Valley. I went out there for a Rivian event and so when I arrived at SFO, I picked up a ⁓ Land Rover Defender X ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (57:24) Crazy! Nicole (57:52) Mmm. Sam Abuelsamid (57:52) which is, so this is the four door. It's based on the 110, mid-level, the mid-size Defender. ⁓ And ⁓ there's a bunch of different trims. You can get it with a four cylinder turbo engine. ⁓ There's one with a supercharged V8. There's the Octa. The Defender X is kind of in the middle of the range. ⁓ And it has a turbocharged three cylinder, three liter inline six cylinder engine, ⁓ 395 horsepower. ⁓ It's a 48 volt mild hybrid. it'll stop the engine when you ⁓ come to a stop and ⁓ basically the engine will stay off for most of the time while you're sitting there at an intersection. Doesn't really seem to do much in terms of fuel economy. ⁓ Over the two days I was driving it, Nicole (58:23) Ha Sam Abuelsamid (58:49) averaged about 14 miles per gallon. So, you know, the Defenders are decently large and heavy and tall vehicle. ⁓ But one thing that really surprised me when I fired this thing up was, you know, for a six cylinder engine, this thing had quite an exhaust tone to it. You know, at first I thought it was a V8. You know, it had a nice growl to it, ⁓ you know, nice rumble. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (58:53) Okay, there we go. Sam Abuelsamid (59:19) It's quite quick. It'll do zero to 60 in about five seconds, 5.1 seconds, I think. And it's all wheel drive. The Defender has a very nice interior. a nice big center screen. It's got CarPlay and Android Auto support, wireless. Although interestingly, midway through the second day, the wireless Android Auto disconnected. It wasn't seeing my phone, wasn't connecting, so I reached into my backpack and grabbed a USB cable and plugged it in, and it worked fine wired as well. ⁓ The Defender X ⁓ has these black aluminum wheels on it. ⁓ It's got the ⁓ fake diamond plating. on the sides of the hood, like on the old school Defenders, where they would have had that on the tops of the fenders, has that on the sides of the hood. Not really somewhere where you actually want to strap anything down to, but it's more just for looks than anything else. But this thing is quick. ⁓ It actually handles pretty well. I had a little bit of time on Wednesday afternoon and Nicole (1:00:32) Ha ha ha. Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:45) Took it for a drive along Skyline Boulevard, which if you're from that area, this is a very nice twisty mountain road that runs for quite a few miles from south of San Francisco down towards the South Bay area. And even though this thing weighs probably close to 6,000 pounds, it's fairly wide. Did reasonably well. It's not, you know, it's not a sports car. You know, it's not like driving, you know, any kind of sports car along this road, but it didn't embarrass itself. You know, on some of the some of the bumpier roads I drove on, it did. There was a little bit of head toss. ⁓ You know, but, know, for what it is, you know, which is a very capable off-roader, ⁓ it did OK. ⁓ And I said, you know, I like the way the Defender looks. The 110 is definitely the best looking of the. Roberto Baldwin (1:01:39) Thank Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:43) the three, I think. Roberto Baldwin (1:01:44) I like the 90 so we can fight later. Nicole (1:01:46) You like the 90 better? Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:46) Yeah, yeah, I mean the one the 110 is a little more practical, you know, if you need to take more than one passenger with you. Yeah, yeah, if you don't have friends, you know, then, you know, the 90 is a good choice. But the but if you want to take extra people along, then the the 110 is a good choice. You can get it with the third row, but, don't if you must have if you must have a third row, get the longer 130. Roberto Baldwin (1:01:54) Yeah, I don't have friends. Nicole (1:02:11) Don't do it. Roberto Baldwin (1:02:11) That's Yeah, I Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:15) Yeah, I the third the third row in this one, you know is good and the 110 is gonna be pretty much useless because there's just not enough room back there But if you get if you get if you want if you must have a third row get the 130 Because you got more room back there so there was no monroney for this one, but the The 110 are the the the fender X starts at 95 thousand ninety five thousand five hundred dollars The Let's see, it's got an 8200 pound towing capacity The one I had was finished in what they call gondwana stone, which is sort of a brownish bronze color looked really good See what else there's The black roof Wheels 22 inch wheels You know again if you're actually gonna go off-roading with this you probably don't want to get the 22 inch wheels You probably want the 19s with some tires that have more sidewall, but let's face it You know 99 % of the people that are buying this thing are Taking it, know to go to the mall or you know, go to the gym, you know go to their You know their Pilates studio, whatever they're not They're not you know, they're not driving this thing on You know on the Rubicon trail Nicole (1:03:38) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:44) Let's see what else the this one also had ⁓ the Windsor leather and kevada textile seats Probably not Kva dr. At quad rat textile Nicole (1:03:58) Are you saying that right? How do you spell that? What's cavadra? K-V-A-D-R-K, Kavadrot? Kavadrot, the global textile company. it's a company. I'm gonna go with Kavadrot. Kavadrot, yeah, okay, go ahead. Continue, I'm like, what is he trying to say? Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:14) I okay. Okay. Let's see what else. We find the total bottom line. Let's see. So the total was $97,850. Guesses on the destination charge. Roberto Baldwin (1:04:47) 14. Nicole (1:04:49) 1295. Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:53) Robbie again, 1850. Nicole (1:04:54) Dang it. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (1:05:00) ⁓ it's still pretty. Yeah. Not cheap. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:01) There was one other, there was one particularly odd ergonomic issue that I had with this, which was, so you got this nice big center touch screen and there's some knobs and buttons below that and the shift lever and then the volume button. For some reason, the volume button is placed all the way over on the left-hand side of this panel below the screen. So it could be a little bit of a reach to get to it. But you can also control the volume from the steering wheel, so you don't really need to reach over. So it could mostly be just there for the passenger, but I just thought it was a little bit peculiar. ⁓ yeah, I like the Defender X. Nicole (1:05:27) Hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:48) Would I spend $100,000 on one? Probably not for me, you but then again, I'm not an SUV. I'm not somebody who's gonna buy an SUV of any kind If I was gonna buy one if I was gonna buy a Defender though I think I might actually go for the the Defender Trophy Edition Which yeah, it's it's in the deep sand glow yellow and this you know, this is sort of a tribute to the 1980s Camel Trophy Land Rovers that ran in these amazing Nicole (1:06:08) that's cool. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:23) Adventure races back in the 80s and I think into the early 90s So that is the defender X 2025 defender X All right. Yeah, so let us Nicole (1:06:34) Very cool. You're having challenges, Jeff. Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:45) Okay, let's yeah All right. Let's talk about some of the other stuff that happened this week So Kia unveiled the second-generation saltos Do you have a chance to take a look at this thing yet? Nicole (1:07:00) I I think it looks good. Roberto Baldwin (1:07:01) I did, it looks good. I think it looks better than the Telluride that they showed off. think the design, yeah, I think the design language, again, the Telluride looks better in person. If you've the photos and you're like, eww, ⁓ it does look better in person. ⁓ That said, it's still, I think, polarizing design. I think the Seltos does look ⁓ much nicer. Nicole (1:07:06) you like it better than Nutelluride, yeah? Yeah, it falls in line now, think more, especially the lighting, because Kia's having such distinctive lighting on their vehicles, it matches the other ones now. Like, I feel like it falls in line. It still looks like a different vehicle. It's not like a copy, but I'm like, OK, now it looks like it fits. So I think the design looks fabulous. Roberto Baldwin (1:07:34) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:42) Yeah, think the overall design language of this is very much in line with what you get. You we started with the EV9. The EV9 was the first one to get this kind of look to it. And then the EV5, which is not sold here. And then this is the next one to get it. So it's kind of a blockier look with a bunch of sharp creases. And like you said, the lighting signature, the more vertical front lighting signature. ⁓ So it's a very substantially different kind of look than the first generation Seltos. It's only about two inches longer. So it's not, it hasn't grown very much, but I think it's a really interesting design. Nicole (1:08:29) Yeah, I think they did a nice job. think if you like, if you don't like where Kia has been going, you're going to feel like this is still a messed up because you're not going to like it. But if you've been pleased with their trend in the last couple of years, last couple of vehicles, this is spot on for them. So I think people will be happy. Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:43) Yeah, and ⁓ it's, ⁓ they show it, they have the global press release. ⁓ They did an online reveal earlier this week. ⁓ globally they're gonna have. They're talking about three engines three power trans here two variations of the 1.6 liter turbo with 178 or 190 horsepower And then a two liter naturally aspirated engine with I think about 146 or 47 horsepower I've seen somewhere. It's not in this press release, I've seen somewhere mentioned that it's also going to be offered with a hybrid powertrain. So that would probably be the same 1.6 turbo ⁓ hybrid system that's in a lot of ⁓ other Kia vehicles ⁓ like the Niro. You know a lot of new tech in here, you know All the all the latest driver assist stuff like the highway driving assist to lane following assist the safe exit warning and ⁓ That's that's a really good one That's actually one of the the the best features that Hyundai and Kia launched in recent years which is you know, it's using the Radar sensors in the rear corners that are normally for blind spot monitoring and cross traffic alert when you Pull up to a curb and you park the car ⁓ If the radar detects that there's a either a cyclist or a car coming up in the adjacent lane next to you it will prevent the rear doors from opening. So you can't open the door ⁓ in front of a vehicle that's coming along. ⁓ So until it's clear, you can't open the rear door, which I think is on the street side of the car, which I think is a really good feature to have for safety purposes, especially if you've got kids that might want to hop out of the car real quick. Roberto Baldwin (1:10:35) Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a, it's a, you're not going to adore a bicyclist and you're not going to die from getting hit by a car or have your door ripped off. Nicole (1:10:41) That's a great feature, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:46) Yep. Nicole (1:10:47) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:47) Yeah. So, okay. So that's the, ⁓ that is the new saltos that's coming sometime in 2026. I'm not sure exactly what the launch timing is going to be for this one. ⁓ it doesn't really say, but, ⁓ sometime in 2026. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:11:03) Eventually. Nicole (1:11:05) Eventually, it'll show up. Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:07) Yeah, and you know this the seltos is the most affordable line a car in the the kia lineup in the us at least At least the most affordable crossover. I should say uh, I think the k4 is actually probably still a little bit a little bit cheaper than the the seltos But the the current generation seltos Um, see. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, the current generation seltos starts at 23 690 uh, so, you know, it'll probably be around the 24 to somewhere between 24 and 25,000 to start with for the new one. All right, and then let's see. ⁓ so in Europe, let's talk about Ford for a second. In Europe, back in 2019, Ford announced a partnership with Volkswagen. to use the VW MEB platform. So this is the same platform that VW uses for most of its mainstream EVs like the ID.4 and the ID.3. And Ford was gonna use that to build a couple of new EVs, which finally came out in like mid 2024. The first one was the Explorer, the European Explorer, which is a very different vehicle from the Explorer that we can get here. It's a compact. four-door crossover, it's electric. And then they added the Capri, which looks very much like a Polestar 2. And those haven't been huge sellers. I was looking up the numbers the other day. Since they launched in the middle of 2024, they sold about 60,000 units in total. And this is after they spent a billion and a half dollars to completely retool their Cologne assembly plant. to build these and this is a very large factory. So ⁓ Ford this week announced a new partnership with Renault ⁓ to get a couple of new ⁓ electric vehicles based on ⁓ the Ampere platform from Renault. So Renault a few years ago launched a separate business unit called Ampere that's focused on building EV platforms. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (1:12:55) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:18) And so they're going to use Ford's going to use that for a couple of new EVs. and, ⁓ those are coming out in 2028. Nicole (1:13:31) my gosh, that's so far from now. I know these partnerships and things take time. I realize this isn't like you flip a switch and suddenly everything happens, but it feels like it's just, ⁓ I don't know, making big plans on EVs that far in advance. It's tricky, I feel like right now. Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:34) Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's, there's always a long lead time for, yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:13:49) Well, it's tricky if you're forward. Yeah, Nicole (1:13:52) Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:13:53) if it's tricky if you're forward because you're a start, stop, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, Nicole (1:13:58) Right. Right? I guess this is start. We're back at start again. Is it start? We're back at start. Okay. Or go. Stop, go, stop, go. So we're back at go. Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:17) ⁓ Yeah, so, you know, yeah, they've got about two and a half years. They said early 2028. So they've got time. And this time, Ford is not going to retool one of its own factories. They, ⁓ Renault is actually going to build it and build these cars in one of their factories. Nicole (1:14:23) Okay. Roberto Baldwin (1:14:23) Okay, we got time Nicole (1:14:35) I mean, that could be good, assuming that between now and then that it remains go and not stop and that the climate for EVs in terms of enthusiasm and politics and everything else under the sun doesn't change 85 times between now and two years from now, because it could. Roberto Baldwin (1:14:36) Renew. Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:36) ⁓ Maybe. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:14:43) The thing is that Yeah, mean, you see some companies that just. Yeah, so there's a whole other difference. Yeah. And you're battling an incursion of Chinese EVs into Europe. So and then you have places, you know, you have companies like Hyundai. They're like, no, we're just going. We're just going. It's going to be a little weird sometimes, but we're just we're not. No, never, never stop not stopping. That's the seems to be the Hyundai thing. Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:54) These are for the European market, so. Nicole (1:14:55) Yes, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:10) Yeah. Nicole (1:15:12) We're just, we're just doing it. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:17) Ha Roberto Baldwin (1:15:18) which seems to be working for them. I Nicole (1:15:18) Go, go, go, go, go. Roberto Baldwin (1:15:20) see a lot of, you know, Kia's and Hyundai EV's like rolling around town, so. Nicole (1:15:28) Just rolling around. Roberto Baldwin (1:15:29) Just rolling around, making that weird noises. Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:32) So speaking of Ford's stop start approach to EVs or should that be start stop, back in 2021, I think, 2021, they announced a joint venture with SKON, a Korean battery manufacturer, to build three battery plants with a. Roberto Baldwin (1:15:38) ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:55) combined total of 143 gigawatt hours of battery capacity, which would be enough ⁓ for somewhere north of a million EVs a year. ⁓ They subsequently, two of those plants were gonna be in Kentucky. One was in Tennessee as part of the Blue Oval City project down there near Memphis. ⁓ And then, when things started to ⁓ not go so well for Ford and their EV sales, they said, well, we're gonna put a pause on that second Kentucky plant. So the first Kentucky plant is running and is producing batteries for Ford now that they use in the Lightning. ⁓ And ⁓ the second, the Tennessee plant ⁓ is not up and running yet. ⁓ It's built. ⁓ The equipment's installed, but they're not producing anything there yet. ⁓ And this week, Ford and SK announced that they are going to dissolve their joint venture. ⁓ And each one of them is going to keep one of the two battery plants. ⁓ Ford is getting the Kentucky plant and SK is getting the Tennessee plant. ⁓ And they are going their separate ways. Roberto Baldwin (1:17:16) Dun dun da. Nicole (1:17:17) So this is part of the stop part of things. Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:20) Yes. ⁓ so, you know, my, my guess is, you know, that, SK is probably going to convert the Tennessee plant, switch the Tennessee plant instead of building batteries for EVs. They're going to do what LG did when they expanded their Holland, Michigan plant. And they're going to use Holland instead of building batteries for, ⁓ Toyota, their, ⁓ NMC batteries for Toyota. They, ⁓ move that production to another plant in Lansing. and they use the Holland Michigan plant to build batteries for energy storage systems for stationary storage. And my guess is that SK is gonna do the same thing because there's just not enough demand for EV batteries in the US. ⁓ But there's, everybody wants to giant data centers everywhere and those things need reliable power. And so they're putting huge energy storage systems on these data centers to make sure that they have reliable power. So. Roberto Baldwin (1:18:07) Dun dun dun! Nicole (1:18:13) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:22) My guess is that SK will build LFP batteries for storage systems there in Tennessee. Roberto Baldwin (1:18:29) They also have the Slate partnership, SKON. I kept planning to SK. I interviewed the president, the North American president of SKON and I said SK1 at one point and I was just like, come on, Robbie, get it together. But yeah, they are, know, even in that they were talking about energy storage and they were talking about, you know, what's going on with Slate, but Slate hasn't built a car yet. So you got along, that's another year before they even start. Sam Abuelsamid (1:18:33) Yeah, but you Right. and SK yeah, and SK still has, you know, two other battery plants in Georgia that, know, originally one of those was supplying Ford before the Kentucky plant opened up that now supplies ⁓ Volkswagen for Chattanooga for the ID four. And, ⁓ you know, they, they probably have more than enough capacity there to also support slate. So I would guess that's what they're. Roberto Baldwin (1:19:21) They'll be fine. Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:23) that's where the slate batteries are gonna come from is from their Georgia factory. All right, this week ⁓ Nissan made a very interesting announcement, a partnership with a UK company called Wave. ⁓ Wave has been developing automated driving software ⁓ and they're an interesting company. ⁓ They started off in the UK, they opened up an office in Sunnyvale, California last year. I actually visited them a couple of days ago and went for a ride in one of their development vehicles. But ⁓ when we went to Japan in 2023 ⁓ for the Japan Mobility Show, I went with Nissan and we went to their R &D facility and they showed us what they're working on for automated driving for the future. And they were focused on doing the whole thing in-house all by themselves, doing the entire software stack for ⁓ level three hands-off, eyes-off systems, ⁓ starting in about 2027-ish. Now they've decided to partner with wave instead and use some of Nissan's software the perception software and then use waves software for the driving system Starting in in 2027 and That's gonna be you know, that's gonna be their next-generation Pro pilot So that's gonna replace all their pro pilot stuff right now from their hands-on stuff all the way up to hands off, eyes off, driver assistance, starting in fiscal year 2027, which in Japan runs from April 27 to March of 2028. So. Roberto Baldwin (1:21:11) I will say that ProPilot has always been weirdly capable from a company that wasn't doing, that hasn't been doing great. For some reason ProPilot's always like, wow, this is actually really nice. Good job, Nissan. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:19) Yeah. Nicole (1:21:19) Hahaha It is kind of funny Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:24) Well... Nicole (1:21:24) because you think about that because everyone talks about Super Cruise and Blue Cruise as being like, they're which are the big ones and they're great, but it's like, wow, here comes Nissan with a product that actually works, too. It's kind of surprising. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:36) Yeah, well, you might be surprised or not surprised to learn that ⁓ most of what's under the hood in ProPilot comes from Mobileye, not from Nissan. Roberto Baldwin (1:21:45) ⁓ well there you go. Well, smart, Nicole (1:21:48) Well, they made a good choice then. Yeah, exactly. Roberto Baldwin (1:21:48) I mean they were smart about it, you know. Just because you get stuff from another cup, doesn't mean it's gonna be integrated correctly. I think we've seen a lot of that over the years. Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:50) Yeah. Nicole (1:21:55) Yeah, there you go. No, I think they did a good Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:55) Yeah. Nicole (1:21:57) job with it. I mean, the variations, because it's gone through a couple of like releases over the years and it really is quite good. It's always been quite good. Yeah, like every every time there is something, this is actually really good, given wherever the technology was at the moment, you know. Roberto Baldwin (1:22:04) They're all, yeah, first gen, second gen. Yeah, it's always been like. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:09) What? Roberto Baldwin (1:22:12) Yeah, exactly. Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:13) The hands-off version that's in the Aria, ⁓ I thought worked pretty well. But have you tried it in the Armada or the QX80? Because they have that hands-off in those vehicles as well. Roberto Baldwin (1:22:24) I haven't had those vehicles. ⁓ Nicole (1:22:28) I feel like I did I try and I just had a QX 80 a month. Yeah, right. That's just like the thing ways. I don't I don't think I actually tried it. To be honest, I can't remember if I did or not. I only had a brief brief time with it. Not so great. Roberto Baldwin (1:22:31) Now you're Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:34) Yeah. ⁓ I did and it was a lot less consistent. Yeah, it didn't perform as well as it did in the Aria. Nicole (1:22:45) Just burst my bubble, why don't you? Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:48) Well, that's what I'm here for. ⁓ But yeah, you know, I visited WAVE and went for a ride in one of their development vehicles and it was surprisingly impressive. ⁓ Nicole (1:22:49) Hahaha! Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:01) We didn't have a chance to do any highway driving because we got stuck in some traffic and we were running out of time, but driving around Sunnyvale, it did really well. ⁓ except for one minor incident where, it was supposed to do a U-turn at an intersection and, know, a lot of most intersections in California, you can do that, but they, ⁓ for some reason that did not do the U-turn where it was expected to and went halfway down the next block and then did a U-turn. And then, you know, there was a car stop there in traffic and there was another car parked at the curb. And we got really close to that parked car and it wasn't clear from, you know, from inside the car if we actually had enough room to make it. But, you know, the the safety driver did not intervene. We let it go. And, you know, as soon as the other car moved it. crept forward and it actually got through and you know it had a few inches of but it went through and did it. So it worked. All right, ⁓ another automated driving story, Aurora Innovation, which is a Pittsburgh based company ⁓ started by Chris Ermson and Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell. ⁓ They're focused on automated trucking and they've been running driverless automated trucks ⁓ in Texas since May. ⁓ Nicole (1:24:02) Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:27) They ⁓ just did a deal with a company called Detmar Logistics ⁓ and they are selling some of their trucks to ⁓ Detmar to haul fracking sand in Texas. And so these are gonna be driverless, ⁓ operating on a mix of highways and also off highway operations. So on dirt roads, ⁓ out to the fracking fields in the Permian Basin. Nicole (1:24:48) Huh. Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:55) ⁓ There's another company called Kodiak that has also been doing similar operations with a different company, but theirs have only been operating off-road. Nicole (1:25:03) Wait, I think you need to acknowledge what Robbie just did. You did Kodiak and suddenly Robbie is like, doing like bear claws in the background. Roberto Baldwin (1:25:10) I don't- like, wait, do I have any bear? No, I don't have a- I do have a bear-like thing. Nicole (1:25:17) So this is kind of neat though. I like the idea of using this Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:18) Yeah. Nicole (1:25:20) kind of stuff for this application. know, just it's gonna go in these straight routes back and forth. It knows where goes. It's probably not a fun thing for humans to have to drive, so. Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:29) Mm-hmm. And they're, you know, they're running these trucks 24 hours a day. So, you know, it's, starting to get some, you know, some real driverless trucking operations going in Texas and elsewhere now. Roberto Baldwin (1:25:45) Let's see. See how works out. ⁓ Trucking sucks. Being a truck driver is not great and there's not enough of them. So probably because it's not a great job. Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:46) All right. Yeah. Nicole (1:25:53) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:53) Yeah. Nicole (1:25:55) Exactly. It's hard. It's not an easy job. Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:59) Alright, Subaru. ⁓ Subaru announced pricing. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:26:03) We held this for you. No, wait, is this something else? no, nevermind, that's something else. Sorry, sorry. The next one, sorry. Nevermind, ignore me. I'm drunk. Nicole (1:26:07) What? Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:08) No, that was, that's, that's, that's the next one, the Mazda. Yeah. ⁓ so Subaru announced price, announced pricing this week, ⁓ for the, the new uncharted, which is their, ⁓ their name for the Toyota CHR. So this is, based on the same platform as the, Soltera and the Toyota BZ, but it's, you know, a fastback coupe like crossover. and it's. Unlike the soltera, which is only available in all-wheel drive the the uncharted will also be available in a front drive version and it's going to start at uh at just 34,995 plus delivery charge of some unknown amount Uh, let's see. How much is it doesn't say what the delivery charge. Oh, look 1600 for delivery Or 1450 everywhere except alaska where's 1600? Roberto Baldwin (1:26:43) Weird. Nicole (1:26:58) Okay. Roberto Baldwin (1:27:02) ⁓ poor Alaska. Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:04) Well, mean, you know, cost a little more ship stuff to Alaska. Um, so yeah, so this, uh, this thing's going to have a range of more than 300 miles on a charge, uh, 338 horsepower, uh, for the dual motor version. Um, it's got, uh, a SAE J 3,400 charging port, um, 150 kilowatt charging. So 35 grand. Yeah, that's, that's pretty, pretty reasonable. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:27:08) Yeah. Nicole (1:27:30) That's pretty good. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:27:30) Charges at 150. Oh wow. Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:35) You know, it's better than 50. Well, yeah, and you know, it's better than the nominal 100 kilowatts when they first launched the Soltera and BZ4X. You know, it would peak at 100, but you know, its charge curve would drop off really fast and just dive. so most of your, I think on average, charging was closer to about 50 or 60 kilowatts most of the time. So, you know, this, this should be a lot better. Roberto Baldwin (1:27:37) That's true. So there you go. It's always better. It's one, it's better than 140. Nicole (1:27:37) Hahaha! Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:07) All right, let's talk about Mazda. ⁓ I know that, I know Nicole that, you know, the Mazda infotainment system of recent years has been your favorite in the industry, right? Roberto Baldwin (1:28:09) There we go. That's what I'm. Nicole (1:28:20) It's totally been my favorite. I've loved it forever. Roberto Baldwin (1:28:20) I stopped us talking about this last week. I'm like, we gotta hold this for Nicole. Nicole (1:28:25) I'm looking at it now. I admit to being behind the curve. Are you telling me they got rid of this stupid rotary thing as I'm reading this? Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:32) What are you calling stupid? Nicole (1:28:34) The rotary thing in the Mazda, Roberto Baldwin (1:28:35) everything. Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:35) Yes Yes start starting with the starting with the the new cx5 the 2026 cx5 the rotary controller for the infotainment is gone You got a nice big 15 inch touchscreen Yeah Nicole (1:28:50) my gosh, I'll buy a Mazda now. I've answered my problems. I would actually consider a Mazda. That's like deal breaker territory for me. That old system. Hated it guys. I know you didn't know that. Hated it. But I'm so excited for this new one. Yay. Well done Mazda. You and your Coda design philosophy has finally given us decent infotainment. Woohoo! Roberto Baldwin (1:28:54) Da da da Damn. look how happy we've made Nicole. Are you glad we saved this Sam? We could have just done it without it. Nicole (1:29:16) about this. I'm glad you saved this. Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:17) Yeah, yeah, Nicole (1:29:19) This is is fantabulous news. I'm really genuinely excited about this. That was my big beef. Every time someone asked me about Mazda, I'm like, well, so whatever the Mazda was, well, it's great, but, now I just save it anymore. No more buts. Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:19) and even. If No more butts. And the best part is even though it's got this big screen and Google built in, still has, wait for it, manual vents. Nicole (1:29:38) Mm-hmm. Roberto Baldwin (1:29:42) Ta-da-da! Nicole (1:29:43) Oh my God, it's like my dream company now. My dream car is a Mazda CX-5. I'm happy about this because I do think that that was and I know they were they held tight to that. Gosh, how long have they had that? Though and it was first it was no touch screen at all and just the rotary controller. Then it was touchscreen for Apple CarPlay. And yeah, so it has been a long time before they finally said, you know what? Nobody likes it this way. But that took some Roberto Baldwin (1:29:50) Oof. 100 years. Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:03) at least the early 2010s. Yeah. Nicole (1:30:11) time, like kudos to you for finally getting rid of the system that wasn't great to begin with and also for not making your vents part of the system. Well done. Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:21) Yeah, and the new CX-5 will have a hybrid powertrain coming in 2027. I'm not sure what. Nicole (1:30:29) So this year, 26, comes out, this is a 26. So initially just a gas engine. Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:33) Yeah, yeah, and they're doing a drive program in late January. So, you know, it should be on sale probably by February or March, which maybe is not soon enough for you, Nicole. ⁓ But ⁓ but they will have a hybrid system for the second model year. Roberto Baldwin (1:30:45) yeah. Nicole (1:30:49) ⁓ I'm not going to rush to buy a because I want to get what I want to get. I'm not going to be pressured. Right. I'm just yeah, I'm just going to wait and see what. Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:54) That's probably a wise choice. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (1:30:58) Yeah, and don't forget everyone. Please send us your your please send Nicole your your your your advice on on the car to on the vehicle to purchase and why you think Nicole should purchase this drink Yeah, so you can put a new CX 5 Nicole (1:31:01) You Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:05) And feel. Nicole (1:31:10) And you can now put Mazdas in there because they're changing their screens. Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:11) And, yeah. And, you know, and feel free to, you know, give us, ⁓ you know, your reasoning why Nicole should buy the new Jeep Recon instead. Nicole (1:31:21) Oh, gosh. I'm not doing that. It's expensive. It's Roberto Baldwin (1:31:22) my gosh, no. It's so expensive. Like who's that car for? Nicole (1:31:28) not for I don't want that. It's very nice. It looks lovely. Looked lovely when I looked at it. It looked lovely. I mean, that's all anyone says. Anyone driven yet? No one's driven yet, have they? Did they do any early drives? OK. OK, just still in this. OK, it looks lovely. Roberto Baldwin (1:31:37) No, no one's driven it yet. Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:38) No, no, no, nobody outside of Stellantis anyway. Nicole (1:31:45) I don't have anything against Jeep or the Recon. You know, knock yourself out. It's expensive. But. Well, yeah, but you can take the doors off and you can. And you can take the you can take the the what am I trying to say? Not the windshield. What's the other the windows, the quarter windows in the back you can take off and all that can come off. Mm hmm. Sky one touch. Roberto Baldwin (1:31:48) It's so expensive. It's very expensive for what it is. I can take the doors off any car. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:01) The windows, the quarter windows. and it's got the sky, one touch roof, and Roberto Baldwin (1:32:07) Alright, that's not worth that much money. Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:10) you have that tremendous 230 miles of range. Roberto Baldwin (1:32:15) We have to do two range runs. You have to do one with everything on and then one with everything off. Nicole (1:32:16) BAM! Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:17) Mm-hmm. Nicole (1:32:21) So it's like 230 to 260, depending on how you actually have equipped your Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:22) yeah. Well, no, mean, with everything off, it'll probably be about 120 miles. Nicole (1:32:25) vehicle for a given day. Roberto Baldwin (1:32:29) Yeah, because you're creating so much turbulence because you've removed everything. Yeah, you create a lot of turbulence when you take all that stuff off. Nicole (1:32:31) Yeah, that's true. I was thinking weight not turbulence, but you're right. ⁓ my god the turbulence. Where can you go? Five miles. Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:33) Yeah. Yeah. All right, and then finally, Rivian. I mentioned that I was at Rivian's Palo Alto facility on Thursday. And the reason I was there, they had their first ever AI and Autonomy Day. And they made some pretty big announcements. last year, middle of 2024 when they launched. Nicole (1:32:55) Ooh. Sam Abuelsamid (1:33:05) the second generation of the R1S and R1T, they completely revamped their electronic architecture and they adopted NVIDIA chips for their ADAS system. And then now the R2 is coming in next spring, spring of 2026. But those first R2s are gonna have that same system in there, the NVIDIA based system. But towards the end of 2026, They're going to change again. And they have designed their own custom chips for their ADAS that are significantly more powerful and they claim much more power efficient. So about two and a half times the performance per watt, which, you know, on an EV is really important because, you know, all the watts that you use to drive your computers are watts that you can't use to actually drive the vehicle. ⁓ And so they are going to have more performance, less power consumption. and they're gonna have a LiDAR sensor. They're adding a LiDAR sensor to the R2 and they are going to eventually have hands-off, eyes-off driving capability on the R2 sometime later in 2027, maybe 2028. They're gonna put the hardware in starting at the end of 2026. The software is gonna come at some point after that. Roberto Baldwin (1:34:34) That's, I mean, that's everybody's promise. We're gonna put the hardware in and then we're gonna do the software and then you're gonna be able to drive in the future when you're not driving. And we'll, yeah, it's again, it's a really hard problem to solve and good luck. The crazy thing is that these things, like to be honest, these things are really like shareholder plays. Like shareholders loves this. It doesn't matter if, if we had sold a million cars, everyone would be like, meh. Nicole (1:34:39) eventually we'll let you have it, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:49) Mm-hmm. Yeah. yes. Nicole (1:34:59) Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:35:03) But as soon as they say AI and autonomy, shareholders lose their minds. Is it money better spent elsewhere? Probably. Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:09) Yeah. ⁓ But before they get to that, before they have their own custom chips and lidar and other stuff in the car, ⁓ right now on the R1, have, I think sometime this summer, they added hands-free driving, hands-off, eyes-on system like Super Cruise that works only on divided highways. So about 130-ish thousand miles of highways. Nicole (1:35:38) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:39) ⁓ sometime in the next few weeks, they're going to push out a software update that enables what they're calling universal hands-free. So you will be able to go hands off eyes on, pretty much every road in North America that has painted lane markings. about three and a half million miles of roads. Roberto Baldwin (1:36:00) the universe of North America. Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:02) Yeah. Nicole (1:36:04) Everywhere important. Roberto Baldwin (1:36:08) Where do you Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:09) It still won't be. Roberto Baldwin (1:36:09) put your hands? Just you're just Ricky Bobby in the car. What do do with my hands? I don't know what to do with my hands. Nicole (1:36:14) Hahaha Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:15) It still won't be point to point. you can't yet put in, just put in a destination and have it do all the stuff to get you, to do all the turns and everything. ⁓ You have to do the turns and intersections and stuff for yourself and stop for ⁓ traffic lights and things like that yourself. But in between that, you can take your hands off the wheel. ⁓ The point to point navigation is coming towards the end of 2026. And that's what's going to be on the R2 with the new stuff from as soon as they launch that. And then some point after that, you'll be able to go eyes off as well. What do you think? Do you want to go hands free, but you still have to stop for stop signs and traffic lights and turn. Roberto Baldwin (1:37:00) I mean, I- Nicole (1:37:02) Bye. Roberto Baldwin (1:37:03) That's the thing about the hands free but eyes on is that I end up just driving anyway. Like my hands are just there. So it's, you know, sure. I mean, it's almost like a director when they make their first short film. That short film isn't gonna make any money, but it is a calling card for that director. It just, look what I can do. And then later on when I'm, you know, ⁓ I'm gonna make my giant movie. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:10) Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:37:32) this is sort of the same thing. Like the hands-free, eyes-on is like, look what we can do, and then later on, look at our giant level three system. I feel like that's where we're at with these things. It's like, this is what we can do. ⁓ Shareholders, again, they love this stuff. ⁓ Individuals, I don't know what the take rate is on it. Maybe it's really good. Maybe people are like, hey, this is nice. It's really nice when you're on a long, if you're driving through, say, Nebraska. Nicole (1:38:01) Ha ha ha! Roberto Baldwin (1:38:01) This is an outstanding system, because you're just like, God, Nebraska's so long. That's what you're, this is where it's great. Do I want someone with their hands off the wheel while they're driving through town and children are running around? Maybe just leave your hands on the wheel. How about, just keep them there. Just, you know, yeah, you're still in charge. The most important thing is that you're the boss. Nicole (1:38:17) Just keep them there just in case. Just a little backup. Just keep those hands on that wheel. Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:17) Yeah. And for all these systems, until they get to an eyes off system, you will remain the boss. You are responsible. So if anything goes wrong, it's on you. It's not on Rivian. Roberto Baldwin (1:38:36) yeah. Nicole (1:38:40) It's all your Roberto Baldwin (1:38:40) Yeah. Nicole (1:38:41) fault. Roberto Baldwin (1:38:42) If someone comes along and they like make a chalk like drawing in the middle of the road and it forces your car to drive into a taqueria, yeah, you're at fault. So. Nicole (1:38:50) Into a taqueria. my goodness. That's very dramatic. The scenario you've created. Okay. Just accidentally drive into a taqueria. Okay. Could happen. Taqueria is in Costco. Roberto Baldwin (1:38:55) These are just my life. This is all the places I go. It's taquerias and Costco now. It's just taquerias and Costco. That's all I do. I'm getting $5 chicken, picking up tacos and burritos. Nicole (1:39:08) Isn't it the hot dogs that you get at Costco? I thought it was a big thing about Costco hot dogs. Isn't that a big thing? Roberto Baldwin (1:39:11) Oh, you can get the dollar. You can get a dollar. It's like a dollar 50 hot dog with a drink. Nicole (1:39:16) You know exactly what I'm talking about. just saw someone freaking out about the possibility they were going away. And there you go. ⁓ Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:19) Ha ha ha. Roberto Baldwin (1:39:19) Now, and, and so 15 years ago, like I, we, had a Costco membership from work and I mostly just used it to get the tires. This one had the WRX. So I just mostly used it to get new tires. So I'd always just be wandering around Costco for an hour and a half. And we lived in a small apartment so we didn't have anywhere to put anything. ⁓ And I would get the pizza and it would make me sick every single time. I got the pizza recently. I don't know because it's pizza, Nicole. Nicole (1:39:44) Would you get it? Roberto Baldwin (1:39:48) It's the heroin of foods. don't know, you know, it's not, just, you just keep eating it until you see it. Nicole (1:39:48) Pizza. It's like, ⁓ pizza. No, I understand. That is the it's the heroine of foods. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (1:39:56) ⁓ and so I went, it's the heroin. Yeah. So I got, I got the pizza recently. Did not make me sick. So good job Costco. It's not great pizza. Yeah. Some time over the last 15 years, I've created like some sort of like my stomach's been preparing, like they've been building up all this time. Sam Abuelsamid (1:39:57) It is. He's right. Nicole (1:39:59) He's not wrong. Yep. Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:05) ⁓ So they've either fixed it or you've developed a tolerance. Nicole (1:40:09) You've developed a tolerance. All this time, it's like we are ready now bring on the Costco pizza. Roberto Baldwin (1:40:21) Anyway, Costco. There's a lot of stuff you can get, but $5 chicken and $1.50 hot dogs are pretty great. Nicole (1:40:22) Okay. Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:23) So. Nicole (1:40:25) You Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:29) Well, the chicken, their rotisserie chicken is actually really good. We had one last week. ⁓ Roberto Baldwin (1:40:33) Five bucks, five dollars. And you know when I get that chicken, all the animals know and I don't give them scraps from anything, the animals, except for when I'm deboning a chicken, then they all just wait around. Cause that's when they know. It's pet Christmas when the Costco chicken comes into the house. Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:43) Yeah. Nicole (1:40:46) They know they're gonna get some Costco chicken. It's pet Christmas. Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:53) Well, you know, whenever whenever we have a chicken or a turkey or something, you know after we're done after after I'm done cutting off as much of the meat as I can I always throw the carcass in the instant pot to make some broth And then whatever is left, whatever little pieces of scraps are left on the bone. When I threw it in there, we take it out, pick out all the bones, just get all the little scraps of meat and put those in a container and use the, you know, add those to the dog food when, when feed the dogs. Yeah. ⁓ they love it. Yeah. but back to Rivian, part, part of what the. Roberto Baldwin (1:41:20) pour it on top. ⁓ It's a delight. It's a little treat. Delightful little treat. Nicole (1:41:29) Nothing were sidetracked at all. Roberto Baldwin (1:41:31) They do not have... Sorry. Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:34) Part of what they're doing is they are launching a new autonomy plus package Which you know once they launch the universal hands-free ⁓ in January? ⁓ That's going to be complimentary for Rivian drivers for until March and then after that if they want to continue using the universal hands-free they will have to either pay $2,500 one-time charge for the life of the vehicle or $49.95 a month to use the universal hands-free and Roberto Baldwin (1:41:58) Cool. Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:05) I'll have to wait, you know, I've already requested to get an r1 to Test as soon as they have the the universal hands-free software update available. I want to see how well that actually works I'll try and figure out if it's actually worth 50 bucks a month or $2,500 That's that's a lot of money Roberto Baldwin (1:42:27) It is a lot of money. you're going to, if you can like turn it on, turn it off, like you do with like streaming services. If you're going on a long trip, you're like, ah, I'm just going to pay 50 bucks for this really long trip and then turn it off. would not pay, I would not pay as a me, I would not pay $2,500 for this because even I barely like I use like a little, I just turn off lane, keep assist. just don't know. And then in my personal car, when I'm trusting it, obviously I leave it on, blah, you know, I got to my job. Nicole (1:42:28) It is a lot. Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:32) Yeah. Nicole (1:42:35) That's true. Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:37) Yeah, that might be worth it for that. No Roberto Baldwin (1:42:56) And then adaptive cruise control, I use that sparingly. I don't really use it all that much to be honest. Sometimes on long road trips, I'll use it. Sometimes I'm stuck in traffic, but most of time I'm just like driving. I'm the tech guy, should be testing all this. I test it all and then at end of the day, I'm just driving my car. Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:14) Yeah, one thing that was good, you know, I spent a bunch of time talking to the software guys working on this stuff and, you know, tried to extract as much information as I could. One ⁓ of the things I asked them, you know, was around safety. ⁓ And unlike ⁓ a certain other company that only makes electric vehicles and claims to offer full self-driving, ⁓ one of the things that the Rivian engineers said is that, you know, as part of this, you know, this software stack, you know, most of it is AI, you know, they've got what they call a large driving model. which is a training. So most of the perception and the control is handled by that. But they also have rules-based software that's running around that to provide guardrails to try to prevent it from doing anything stupid. ⁓ So, you know, hopefully, you know, least based on what they've said, hopefully this system should be safer than that other system. But, you know, we'll see. And at least they are committed to multimodal sensing. So they've got cameras and part of the upgrades in addition to the chips. getting even higher. They already have fairly high resolution cameras, but they're increasing the resolution of the cameras, adding even better radar sensors and the LiDAR sensor. They said to go eyes off, you really need to have all three types of sensors. Roberto Baldwin (1:44:45) See, that's the right thing to say. And for a company that whenever they have an event, it feels like joy. ⁓ I'm glad that they're concerned about safety and having the correct amount of, the correct redundancy to make this happen. Nicole (1:44:47) Mm-hmm. Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:48) Mm-hmm. Nicole (1:44:51) Hahaha Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:51) Yeah, well. You know what a little bit of inside baseball, you know, usually when you go to these kinds of events, you know, the media, when they when companies make announcements, people in the media, they don't applaud or cheer. I mean, one exception was when Honda brought back the volume knob on the CRV a few years ago after having a touch volume control. That one absolutely got a cheer from everybody in the room. But generally, you know, the media do not cheer or applaud for these announcements. There was one guy sitting two seats over from me. Nicole (1:45:20) ⁓ There was some cheering. Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:37) from who will remain nameless, he definitely fall, he's a YouTuber and definitely falls under the category of influencer. And every time, RJ or one of the other people made announced something, he just had this loud hooping and hollering and cheering. It's like, Jesus, shut the, shut up. If it wasn't for the woman sitting next to me, between us, I would have just. Roberto Baldwin (1:45:45) Mm-hmm. Settle down. Nicole (1:45:58) Hahaha! Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:05) giving him a big elbow in the ribs every time he did that. Yeah. Yeah. Nicole (1:46:07) elbowed into the gut. Roberto Baldwin (1:46:07) You should settle down. Settle down. I once had a someone shooting video at an event asked me to stop typing because they could hear my typing in the video and they looked at me like, hey, can you, you, can you not type? I'm like, no, I cannot not type. This is, this is my job. I I'm sorry. And the person's just like, okay. When it was, I'm, I'm, I'm a very nice person, I think. But when I'm doing my job, just let me just. Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:16) Ha! Nicole (1:46:23) This is my job here, is typing. Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:24) That's my job. Nicole (1:46:35) I'm very nice person really, but... Most of the time. Yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:46:36) I think, but when I'm doing my job, I'm doing my job. Yeah, most of the time. I'm very nice. Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:39) Most of the time, yeah. Roberto Baldwin (1:46:42) Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid (1:46:44) So the other big thing that was part of this announcement was what they called Rivian Unified Intelligence. There were lots of acronyms the other day, the Rivian Unified Intelligence, they're incorporating AI pretty much, yeah. They're putting Skynet in your new Rivians. Roberto Baldwin (1:46:59) This is like Skynet. That's a bad name. Nicole (1:47:02) I know, right? I don't know how I feel about that. Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:05) Uh, you know, they've, they've put together a platform to orchestrate and basically can use a bunch of different LLMs, uh, large language models like chat GPT and Gemini and various other things. Um, and so it can pull in information from different places, depending on what you're doing and what you ask for. And they've also created what they call an agentic framework that allows stuff to work together. Um, And this is also launching in January, coming to the R1 as an OTA update. ⁓ And the first thing that they demoed as part of the agentic framework ⁓ was integration with Google Calendar. So the the demo that they did, you know, they had one of the guys sitting in an r1 and Wasim Ben Said who's the head of software at Rivian was up on the stage And they were doing a chat back and forth Rivian was a text chat was seen was texting to the guy in the car The car was reading the text messages out to him, you know Just like you can do today on any car with car player Android auto where it'll reach your text messages to you. And he was replying back, you know, with voice, which is all great, you know, all stuff you can do. Then they were trying to, uh, they had, you they, on the calendar, they had a meeting set up where they were supposed to meet somewhere and said, Oh, can we change the time of the meeting? So he said, you know, told the Rivian assistant to move this meeting on his calendar to a different time. And it did that. And, know, you can kind of do that with Google assistant today. You could least try to do that with Siri, I think, but it may or may not work. ⁓ Nicole (1:48:51) Mayor may not listen to you. Roberto Baldwin (1:48:54) The whole thing is that they're like Google Calendar and I'm like, whoa, hold on. No one cares. This is what I want like a smart assistant to do when I'm driving. Hey, smart assistant, make me a playlist of these three, like the top songs from these three artists. That's what I want when I'm driving. I like, know when my stuff's coming up. Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:59) Yeah. Nicole (1:49:16) I would like that. Just make the playlist you want. Roberto Baldwin (1:49:18) I can tell Siri or Google Assistant to like do Google calendar stuff. It's such a weird like flex like, guys, Google calendar. Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:24) Yeah. Well, the one. The one thing out of the demo that actually was unique that I hadn't seen done before was, ⁓ he find me restaurants near this meeting. so you can do that in Google Maps today. ⁓ Pulled up a list of restaurants. And then he said, okay, text the top three restaurants to Waseem. And that's where it got interesting because it did actually take the top three restaurants from that list and dropped it into a text message and send it to Waseem. you know, Rivian's not going to be the only one that can do this, you know, probably within the next six months, but it was kind of interesting. Yeah. But. Roberto Baldwin (1:50:04) That's cool. Nicole (1:50:05) Okay. Roberto Baldwin (1:50:12) Yeah, I mean that again, but again, that's such like work stuff. I didn't buy a Rivian for work. I bought a Rivian to party. I'm sorry for adventure. No one's like, hey, you know, hey, can you on my Google calendar, can you update my camping schedule? That's Rivian for camping. I mean, sure, that's that it was such a weird like da da da da and all this stuff like, OK, OK. And Google calendar. And I'm like, wait, what? Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:16) Yeah. Nicole (1:50:19) I don't want useful stuff, I want fun stuff, dang it. Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:19) for adventure. Nicole (1:50:29) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:29) Ha Roberto Baldwin (1:50:40) Okay, I mean, and I will tell you that my calendar, use, you know, I have a robust calendar app that I use. I have tons of things that are going on all the time. Like this should speak to me. And then at the end of the day, I'm like, I want the thing to do fun things. Nicole (1:50:40) That's where they really lost you there, didn't they? Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:58) Yeah. Nicole (1:50:59) That's fair, that's fair. Roberto Baldwin (1:51:01) Maybe I'm a weirdo. Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:02) Ugh. Well, after all the demos, I did have a chance to chat for a few minutes with James Philbin, who is the Vice President of ADAS and Autonomy at Rivian. And I will include that ⁓ at the end of the show here. ⁓ Anything else you guys want to talk about before we wrap up? Roberto Baldwin (1:51:29) Don't forget to email or put in a Discord what Nicole should buy. I cannot stress this is the most important thing. This is the most important holiday task. It's the holidays. At some point you're gonna be sort of annoyed with family or friends. Just like, you know what? I'm just gonna shoot a quick. Nicole (1:51:32) ⁓ I'm really curious. Help me figure out what I'm gonna get for a new car. There you go. Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:39) Yeah. sit down and write out a long, write a couple of paragraphs explaining what Nicole should buy, why she should buy it. And if there's no, and so if there's no, if you don't provide a justification, there is no reason for Nicole to buy it unless it's a Miata. Roberto Baldwin (1:51:55) Yeah, this is homework. Nicole (1:51:55) You guys, I was just gonna say you guys have homework today. Roberto Baldwin (1:52:04) Yeah, we need, we need, regardless of how insane the justification, you gotta give us justification. Nicole (1:52:05) You might justify it. Maybe I'll buy the car you suggest. Sam Abuelsamid (1:52:12) Well, welcome back Nicole we missed you All right, talk to you all next time bye Nicole (1:52:13) Thank you, missed you too. Bye. Roberto Baldwin (1:52:19) Bye.