Hey, this is Matt Miller. You listen to me on the Tape podcast with Paul Sweeney. I've got a new podcast with my friend Hannah Elliott. She's the car reviewer from Bloomberg Pursuits. We call it Hot Pursuit. I'm gonna drop a little sample from the Hot Pursuit podcast here. Take a listen. If you like it, go to the Hot Pursuit page and subscribe. You can find it on Apple, on Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Miller and.
I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is Hot Pursuit.
All right. Today on the show, the headline story is gonna be the Portie nine to eleven st to Anadro last week, so she's gonna tell us all about it. We're also gonna talk about the Tesla recalls, which I think are fascinating for a couple of reasons. I normally think recalls get too much attention. Yeah, but this one I think is really interesting. And because it's kind of Tesla they made the cyber truck, it ties into the lightning story. The Ford lightning story, I think is fascinating.
So we're going to talk about that with the Tesla story. And finally we're going to talk about the seeming slowdown of ev demand is told through the Jili story that a great writer for US in Berlin wrote an opinion piece about Chris Bryant is always on top of these car stories for opinion from a financial perspective. And also Jilly has built this massive empire that I didn't some of them. I didn't even know about it.
I know, it's really interesting.
So a Chinese billionaire owns at least one brand that you probably want because he has so many. So let's kick it off with the nine to eleven story though, Hannah.
Yeah, here's the top note, here's the headline.
How many different nine elevens are there? By the way, there.
Are currently twenty six their twenty six versions of the nine to ninety two, the current current generation.
So many levels of trim it's insane.
I know, it's really difficult to keep straight. There are twenty six for sale, and there are a couple others that are not currently available but also in the same generation, so it's quite a lot. And it is like, you know, we've spoken about the st Obviously I was a little bit skeptical, like, do we really need another one. It's not even based on a real car that existed, but it.
Still is at the top. It's exactly the top.
Yes, this is the three ninety two thousand dollars nine to eleven. It's extremely lightweight, and really, here's what you need to know. I loved it, and I was skeptical because of all the reasons we're discussing, like, we don't need another one, it's gonna be just like all the rest, why do you need another of this? And then that I loved it. It was so fun.
I mean, even if we don't need something, yes, even if we don't need this nine to eleven, but it's one of the best nine to elevens Portia has ever built. I'm gonna guess after you drive it, you're gonna love it.
Yes, but I can say that I've driven, you know, most of the variants. I haven't driven all twenty six of them. But you know, if you compare it to a GT three or like a nine to nine to two Turbos, I would say still that I would prefer this at least over the GT three and even the GT three touring. And there are a couple of reasons
for that. The thing that I think anyone who gets in the car will notice right away is that it's a manual, obviously, but it's got a super short throw on the shifter, so it's six gears, super short, super quick, super punchy. It just feels a lot more engaging when you drive it, if that's what you want. But it's not so raw that it feels like a track car. This is not a track car. Doesn't come with a roll cage.
It's like a sweet spot.
That's the thing. It is the sweet spot, because I do think the GT three it's honestly best left on the track. I think I will. I don't want to drive a GT three every day all day. It's just like even a touring I wouldn't want to right exactly. But the the ST really it feels analog, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean it you feel that you're engaged with the car. It's a
little bit louder than a GT three. I actually was in a lead car for a moment that was a GT three, and then got back in the ST and it was noticeable right away that the ST is a louder car.
By the way. That's that's what you want. That's what the that's what the Weekend Warrior wants exactly. And on a track, a lot of times there are there are noise.
Limits exactly exactly.
I know for motorcycles on a track, people have to put in noise dB killers.
Yeah.
And but on the street, if I'm riding through Westchester, I want it to be as loud as I can.
Yeah. And and I don't even think that was on purpose. That's a byproduct of the fact that they really did to try to lighten it up quite a bit. Even they took they put in special lightweight carpet that saved four pounds. And you know, obviously carpeting helps muffle sounds, so some of just a natural u the result of making the car lighter.
There's no sound deadening material exactly.
There's not in the.
GT three either, but they probably have purposely made the exhaust choir or to meet noise restrictions, whereas with this they have flow cats and probably like basically straight pipes on.
Yeah. And man, I was in that car for like eight It was a very long day of We started in Napa and then drove through the Redwoods up the coast, up the one oh one ended up in Mendocino, so there were and it was partially rainy that we saw sun so there was a good variety of terrain in a way, I do think. And we were even on the interstate for a while too. I do think. It's sometimes when you are on a straight interstate you almost want a seventh gear. It's really fun. On curvy, windy roads,
you end up shifting through the gears really quickly. If you don't like that, if you kind of prefer a longer gear, this is not the car for you. This is one that you're going to be going up and down a lot. If you're just going to be driving on interstate most of the time, you're going to want a seventh gear, and this car doesn't have it.
So you show the GT three as well. The funny thing is, in my career I had a nine to nine to one one S and I always felt like, why do I have the seventh gear? I don't need this. But then my buddy I would always drive his GT three touring and I would be like, you need a seton.
Yeah, Well that's where you really feel it. I mean, it kind of depends on what kind of driving you want to do. The other thing that I thought was interesting was the fact that it comes with a watch. I know you're a watch guy. This is the accompanying thirteen thousand dollars Porsche design watch that goes with the car that you cannot get unless you also take a car. Now, to me, the watch is very cheesy.
But a lot of people don't like Porsche design. It's pretty specific.
It's very specific.
It reminds me of the Shprockets skit on SNL that they used to do. Yeah, it's touch my monkey.
I'm not familiar with that one. I must say, I must not have been born yet. Yeah. The thing is, I've heard some you know, rumblings that dealers are saying, well, you can't get an allocation unless you commit to also buy the watch. I don't know if that's true, yeah, or just you know, some pressure or leaning on people to take the watch too.
Strange.
Yeah, I mean, which would kind of feel like an upsell a bit, right, But I have to say, uh, it's such a fun car. I'm trying to think of what else. Oh, how it looks it really does? You know? There's a channeled roof on it. There is a gurney flap on the end, but it's real small. I do like that it doesn't have a huge spoiler, the air intake on the front and side. It looks specific and unique but not flashy, which I thought was really cool.
I was in the Ruby Stone or Ruby Star, depending on how you want to say it.
Red.
Oh, it's a super cool color.
I do not like that color really. Oh. I had the Carera Tea in that color.
That car just that color alone, if you try to resell it, it pushes the value up.
It's like a Barbie, a little bit slightly dark.
It's a raspberry. It's a raspberry pink and a pinstripe in tier, which sounds really bad on paper. But it did look kind of cool.
But you know what, do you know what it is? Part of this, I think is that I was just at lunch with the guys who run Nikam Auctions and they do obviously they're doing a massive event in Kiss Kiss Emi at the beginning of January, forty five hundred cars and a lot of it's American muscle, right. They
do have some Ferraris, but it's mostly American muscle. And I asked them about you know, recent model cars that sell well and also restromods that do well, and obviously something like a four GT is going to sell well. And they said like a Singer, a Singer will just off the charts, right.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
They than Porsa's leaving so much money on the table, which is why they have to do like the nine to eleven R or the STV, because this is they're doing Singer before Singer gets a hold of it.
Kind of yeah, I mean I know that they do watch Singer very closely and have observed that exact effect, which reminds me of you know, the special Heritage livery with the number sixty three on the side.
Which I is that sixty three So that was the.
First year of the nine to eleven. Of course they're going to make nineteen hundred and sixty three of them. But my point with this package is that alone is a twenty thousand dollars upgrade as well. So to your point, Matt, they're just you know, Porsia is offering more and more options to make the cars super specific to yourself and spend more money.
By the way, Lamborghini also uses the sixty three some of their special liveries. And that's because it was the year they showed their.
First sports car, so I mean glory days.
Yeah, I guess sixty three was a good year. Yeah. Speaking of that, there's going to be a sixty three Ferrari at the Kissimi Auction Ferris Bueller car that's going to go for sixteen to eighteen. There's a sixty seven two seventy five Spider that's going to go for they think twenty five or more. And there's a sixty four to two seventy five GTV that they think will go for more than thirty five.
Where are they expecting these buyers to come from, because let's be honest, Mikam Auctions are not known for their Ferrari sales. They do volume Americans.
You'll have ten Ferraris that they say are worth over one hundred million dollars. They say, but I don't know where the you know, I guess if you want this kind of Ferrari, you don't really care as much who's selling it, right, I think we do. If you're in the market for this, don't you you know who it's coming from? So like say, you're I don't know David Lee, and you know that jay Leno is selling his ferrari, You're going to go buy it from him, whether he does it through bottoms or true.
This, but I think very significantly this isn't jay Leno's ferrari. I think what I mean. What I mean is you know that Cowliborough Ferrari would not be sold at Amkam auction. And this is not a mark against Meka met All. I just think in general, and I'm not familiar with the cars that they told. Yeah, if you do have that, if you do have really that caliber ferrari, you would probably tend to go to Southerb's or Gooding.
They know that too.
Yeah, it's not a knock on them at all. People have specialties.
Well, I think they might be trying to move into that area because they're so focused. They will be so focused on the ferraris. Anyway, I don't want to get too drawn away from the ST. I think it's so cool that they're making this, which most people aren't going to be able to afford it. Even people who can go pick up a nine to eleven aren't going to be able to really afford or make financial sense of
the ST. But you have to have something in that price area because singers are only a couple hundred grand more, right, and then it's even cooler and even more exclusive. My favorite of all of the different I guess trim level would be because I live here in New York, and I don't know how the roads are in LA, but
they're bad here, really bad. Eno. The the car I think is so great, but I just wish instead of the turbocharged three Leader they would put the same motor that they use in the GT three or in this. And I don't know why, maybe it's you know what.
This is another thing I wanted to say about the ST. This four Leader engine is the same one that they've had for over a decade that they've used, and you know, every year they're getting incremental bits more power out of it, you know, five percent here and there.
But how much how much does the ST.
I think it's five to eighteen. But I do wonder is this sort of the topping out of what they can do on that particular four Leader, especially with the missions, because this, you know, I don't see big jumps and what they're getting out of that power plant in general, but the engine specifically, So that was something you make they.
Do ten to make like at the end of a generation of cars, they'll make like the Crowning Glory exactly.
Yes, this feels a little bit like that, which interesting, which yeah, And then that now makes me think, you know, we've talked a little bit about what is the car market going to be for internal combustion cars. If at some point you can't really buy them newes, does that make them valuable? And yet again this plays into your whole plan with some of the cars that you want to get.
Right like the BMW. I want to get the last V twelve they made, the seven sixty. And by the way, my wife is like on board.
Again, oh great, thank god.
I think I'm moving in that direction. And really, and that's one that's like my Dodge Challenger with a six point four liter V eight that's going to be very much not made anymore. But they sell fifty thousand of those a year. I don't think it's going to appreciate in value. No, probably not, But the twelve cylinder BMW
maybe because they don't make that many of them. On the other hand, I've looked back at previous generations of the seven series, the V twelves and you can pick them up for like ten or fifteen thousand.
Yeah, I mean even nineteen hundred and sixty three as a production run, it's not that rare. Going back to the Ferraris, you know, when there are two or three or four of them that were ever made, or even one hundred. You know they're gonna make two hundred of the Bagatti Sharon whatever, right, you know, that's actual rarity. But almost two thousand of something to me isn't ultra rare.
No, not at all.
It's limited, but it's not ultra rare. And I did ask Porsche, are you guys sold out? You know, what are the allocations looking like? And the answer was, you know, it's a bit of a rolling thing. And the answer.
Out right because if they were sold out, they would say, yeah, we sold out, I think after we announced it.
Yeah, if you want, if you want one, nineteen hundred and.
Sixty three is a lot. I feel like a limited edition normally, and in the motorcycle world it's usually like four hundred, right, you know, right, and some times they'll make like fifty. Yeah. You know, if Lamborghini puts out a limited edition, they'll have like five, yeah, or the rolls Royce share. Wasn't there like a thirty milli dollar rolls raced like Jason, Yes, a boat or something.
Yes, there's like the boat tail, the droptail, the and the other one.
By the way, I brought this also, I brought up with the Meekham guys because I'm like, you know, Hannah's always talking about the sixty million dollars for ours, and there's never a sixty million dollar kudah.
And they say, yeah, good what they say.
They said, true, but there are a lot of three or four million dollar kudahs. And remember that they made a one hundred thousand of those.
They made two, so good, that's a good argument. Actually, So why are those ones in particular so expensive when there's so many, Well.
They're different trim levels that make it like one of one or okay three, Yeah, I don't know.
Were those after aftermarket or those are phono factory factory trim level factory.
Okay, it's the rest of them. Ods don't go for that much unless it's a singer, right, unless it's somebody who really knows what she or he is doing. Let's talk about Tesla's. So there's recalls all the time, every car make retails recalls, and Bloomberg goes crazy and flash his headline and the stock will move on the day because investors have no idea that it's a common thing.
But this Tesla recall, I think is more interesting than the traditional Like there's a screw loose on your right rear, you know, uh, break out.
The steering wheel might come off at any moment in time.
So this is what they're they're autopilot driving feature, which they've touted and pushed so much. I think they charge extra for it on certain cars as well.
Yeah, and it's not even there like driver level two. It's not even they're autonomous, it's not it's not even like close to what Mercedes has done for us.
But they've had to fix it because Nitsa has done years long investigation on whether they whether or not they've done enough to ensure the driver is paying attention. And I guess Nitsa has decided they don't have they haven't done that, and now Tesla's doing this recall. But I think it's so cool because it's a huge recall, right, isn't it two million? Two million cars?
Million cars?
Okay, I think it's so cool. Because usually a recall is a giant pain in the butt for the consumer the dealer, because the dealer this is over the air.
Yeah, that's cool. I mean I will, I will one hundred percent give Tesla that. That's great. Can you imagine the pandemonium people I didn't go down to the dealership.
Usually what happens if people don't do it.
I mean, LA would shut down because half of LA is Tesla's so which would be kind of great because then traffic would be a lot better.
Also, this is a recall that I don't want as a teslowner. Why do I want something that's going to make me pay attention more? It's going to ding more, Well, it's going to flash more.
I guess there is there no consequence for not having your car for not I know you have to actually opt in push the button on the screen that accepts the.
Right, but you have to have your fingers, your hands on the wheel, and if you take your hands off the wheel for too long, most systems realize that and will say like, okay, auto pilot is off.
Now.
I don't know specifically how it works in the Tesla, but what they want to do is like make it harder for you to keep the system.
I understand that. I mean, in order to accept the software update for the recall, you do have to actually push a button to accept and to initiate and accept the recall. So if you don't do that, what's the If you don't do.
That, then you can't get any updates.
But after that without having and eventually it's like your cell phone.
Right, So exactly, it's like a new iOS because.
I'm like many updates behind on my cell phone, right, to be honest.
And you know that when you do the update, like your alarm won't go off.
Oh yeah, it ruins everything. It ruins everything. That's why I haven't done it.
Right, But you have to eventually because you want.
Because and then emoji start looking weird and that bugs me.
So yeah, So this recall I think is mildly interesting because of that, but.
It is, and I will say just on that topic, it's interesting because Tesla makes such a big deal about this kind of technology, and like the very thing that they always brag about is the thing that they're now having to adjust.
Right.
So that's like because in the end, you're right, honestly, it's not a big deal. You just do the software upday and then it's fine. But it is kind of a big deal because there this is like one of their main selling points about how amazing.
Also, I hesitate to, by the way, I hesitate to say anything bad about Tesla's for two reasons. Number One, most importantly, I don't really know very much about Tesla's. I haven't driven very many and I have definitely not spent time with really anybody who's who's obsessed, So I don't know much.
Well, we should, Tesla, if you're listening, send us something.
Yeah, we really should. Yeah. Number two, I hesitate say anything because they're so passionate, right.
Tesla, Well, I don't know if that's the word I would use. I would say, you don't want to get docsed right, and you don't want the cult members coming after you, because you've I have experienced some of that myself, and it there is something primal of the Tesla enthusiast, and I use that word generously where if you dare to say something critical about a Tesla vehicle, it's as
if you've questioned their identity, their manhood. They're very intelligence as human, it's and the response is visceral and way out of proportion to whatever perceived infractions has happened, and that to me is a bit weird.
It is, but that is how it is, which is why I would Otherwise I would say I think BMW has a much better self driving system, but I'm not gonna say that because they'll kill me. Yeah.
Well, it's just you and me talking, so don't worry.
I was talking to CEO of the North American CEO of BMW a couple of days ago, and he was like, yo, I take my hands off the wheel, right. The only thing I have to be doing is watching Yeah.
Of course, of course that's Level three that they have. BMW has that in Germany currently, Mercedes has it in the United States. I've driven it, I've used Level three. It's wonderful. You can watch video, it's fantastic, it's very relaxing.
Yes, yeah, I think that's interesting. But I'm sure that Tesla. I just don't know enough about Tesla's systems because I'm sure you can cheat them as well. Otherwise people wouldn't be able to sleep, of course, and have horrible accidents. By the way, then this investigation is because of at least fifty accidents that they say, or caused by autopilot. That's a little bit scary, right, You shifted to autopilot with no hesitation at all in other cars.
I don't even use cruise control, if I'm honest, I I but yes, when I'm forced to. If I'm in a press car and I need to actually try something or test something, I don't. I'm not worried. I'm not worried because I feel that you can override it. But I don't even like the nannies that keep you in your lane, you know, they just to me it's actually less safe because when I need to make a quick move and I'm feeling resistance on the steering wheel or pre breaking, it feels like you're out of control of
the car, and that's not a good feeling. As a driver. I want to feel like I'm in control.
I mean, I only use it on long autobond drives. I'll set it and forget it, and or if I were doing cross country drive in the US, but if I have my wife and kids in the car. I was in the Escalade V and I had my wife and baby in the back, and of course it has supercrews.
Supercrew Yes, I like I love it.
But my wife's like, no, no, no, she doesn't want you.
Oh. Interesting, Well, I remember I used Supercrew's last in the Electric Hummer, and it made me miss my exit and get off because I was so relaxed that I just like, I didn't get off the freeway and it was and I was like, oh, but it's for me. It's scary how quickly I get very relaxed.
You think that stuff I miss exits when I'm paying attention. Yeah, let's talk about the Ford Lightning production cut, because I think this is the most interesting story in a long time in the automotive sort of industry, because it's just one more sign that there's not as much EV demand as we may have thought there was going to be. Ford was going to lose three billion on EV's this year. Then they said they're going to lose four and a half billion on EV this EV's this year. The Lightning
was you know, there electric f one fifty. There were hundreds of thousands of reservations for it, right.
Well, it's the best selling F one fifty is the best selling car.
You know, you would just would have thought, you know, when I heard they're going to cut production in half, from thirty two hundred a week to sixteen hundred a week. I thought, but surely there are people that are waiting like two years to get it. I don't.
It doesn't and honestly, to me, doesn't make sense. And then you know, I see the executive saying we're not worried. We're just we're adjusting to output and demand. It kind of doesn't make sense. I don't really believe them when they say this is this is just a natural adjustment and we're not worried, especially when Jim Farley has said he wants to focus on ice and hybrids for the four trucks.
Yeah, righting on the wall looks so smart right now, and everybody else knows to do evs in a major, major crazy way, and toylets like now, I'll stick with our.
No. And I know I've been like very sort of hybrids are not the way in this in our podcasting relationships since day one. But I admit, I do admit I'm slowly kind of seeing, Wow, I'm seeing. It's not like I have an opinion either way, but what I'm observing is maybe hybrids are coming back around.
I have an opinion hybrids are the way forward. It's so smacky on the face obvious. If you want to be green around town, you just leave it on the battery power only, and then when you're doing a real trip, there's no need for range anxiety because you have a motor. It makes total sense to me.
But they're heavy. They're heavy. They're heavy.
I like a heavy car. I like a heavy bike. There's a place in my life for light vehicles. My neighbor has an M two. I love to cane it around the Bronx River Park.
Great looking car, Yeah, they're.
Great, But I like a big heavy cruiser, like a land yacht that I can pile it. I mean, I had a nine to eleven, but also really enjoyed driving my G class for a while.
Oh we should discuss I didn't. I had forgotten you how to g wagon.
Yeah it was at year and what it was the culmination of like forty years of wanting.
Yeah, that's so cool.
I got a twenty twenty G five hundred and emerald green.
This was Berlin. Yes, so cool. That is nice. I have just such an icon. I could talk about that forever. It's so unapologetic. It's a diamond.
I also think the color emerald green, it's tamarocked Groen. It's so great because everybody thinks it's black until it's a very sunny day. Yeah, and then they realize No. My point is, hybrids are the way forward. I've been saying forever. Now. I talked to Keith Naughton, our Ford reporter in Detroit. He told me the time to turn around or whatever, the metric that measures how long a car sits on a dealer's lot before it selfs uh huh. In full evs it's fifty one days. Regular cars, ice
engines forty three days. Hybrid's eighteen.
Oh wow. Interesting.
So they fly off the lott telling.
It's better than the housing market right now.
Yeah, well there are some for sale, right yeah, yeah, yeah and so and a lot of them obviously are like toyotas if you want to rav four hybrid.
Yeah, here's their question. Look, here's a question for you that just came into my mind. Now, I did listen to your interview with the head of BMW, and I you know, he's saying they're not slowing down on anything. You know, the I seven, all of their I cars are full speed ahead. They're not adjusting anything.
Yep.
So my question to you is do you think there is going to be a divide between luxury and premium evs and mass market evs.
Well, one of the points that Keith made to me when I was talking to him about EV demand is it's not because people necessarily don't want evs.
Yeah they do.
Some people want evs. There are compromises to be maybe. You know, you obviously need to figure out if you're going on a trip where the charging points are. If you keep it at home, you're gonna want to install something. It's inconvenient, so you're willing to do that, but you're not willing to do the inconvenient thing and pay eighty five dollars.
It's actally bridge.
The thing about VMW that I think is interesting is the IX, which is their eighty thousand dollars plus ev SUV. I don't that's not flying off a lot.
No, And I kind of liked it when I endove it. I love it, but it's too expensive, I think, I even said.
Meanwhile, the I four, which is considerably more affordable, that's flying off lots. So the cool thing about the BMW picture is they're selling sedans, even the EB sedans more than they are selling SUVs. In the last quarter they had growth in the car segment, and they had a ten percent drop in the suv segment, which is so much backward.
That's very backward exactly.
BMW is the coolest electric sedans. They have the I four now the I five seven, which is a big fan beast, and.
We need a new Some of them are not attractive.
Though, The I seven and the I X I think are horribly.
I'm going to stand with my I seven looks okay in certain colors.
I don't like the squinty eyes at all. I don't like it.
They did it right X seven In the I do kind of like where the girl's going because I feel like it's going more into a bow tie shape. Yes, like less beaver tooth, more bow tie.
That's correct.
The kidney grill hasn't been around for years. Let's just be honest. Now it's like a sort of a cutesy bow tie, which.
Right, But even if it's a kidney, the kidneys should be horizontal, not vertical.
You know, hey, you know that's actually authentic. If you look at old, old, old BMW's they had big yes, start to look I gotta I gotta look at that the oldest BMW's big vertical grills that you can see the lineage here. There is a connection.
All right, Let's talk about Chris Bryant's opinion piece, which is really a story of a Chinese billionaire who started Gillie and now has collected a ton of brands, some of which he wants to bring to market even here in the US, not in terms of just selling the vehicles, but also listing his stock. And he's finding a lack of investor interest, let's say, or less investor interest than he may have expected. Yeah, I was shocked by the amount of brands that Jilie owns. I knew that they were.
I knew that they owned.
Volvo Sure, which includes Polestar.
Which includes Polestark as Volva owns like half of that. I knew that they had a minority stake in Daimler, in Mercedes.
And Mercedes and Aston Martin, and.
They own Smart.
Yeah.
So I guess they Yeah, I.
Guess I'm aler that would make sense.
Yeah, they must have bought it when they when they got.
That, and then they have all those Chinese brands that we know the names.
Like One's called Fleiker or something Zeker I think it is. They also own the Lotus brand.
I think I knew that, but I forgot. I never think about it.
Well, I never think about the Lotus brand has been owned by in Asia. Yeah, by a lot of people, but it's been in Asia for a while. I think I thought it was Malaysian. But now so, uh, this is a lot, This is a lot.
I mean it does feel like they are going for a Volkswagen in terms of owning a very wide portfolio of brands. Yes, you know, is this world domination at time?
I mean it seems like they're trying that, but I'm not sure if any of those brands really really goes for it. So Volvo, for example, I'm I've always been a lover of vols.
Love it.
Yeah. My first car was a two forty wagon in baby blue. You know.
Oh that's so cool.
You called it the blue suede. Is that lacked any kind of originality or creativit?
Is that what your parents got you? Because it was very very safe. You know, that was like a high school.
Well that's what my parents got, Okay, my mom got in nineteen eighty four. And then when I started to drive in I don't know, nineteen ninety Oh you inherited, Yeah, so I inherited that one, and then my brothers got it. We put two hundred and fifty thousand miles on that. But my parents have always had Volvos, both of them, and so I've grown up with the brand. Lately, they've been doing some things that are annoying, like so they
capped the speed their car. None of their cars are going to go more than one hundred and I think thirty kilometers per hour. I did not hear about this announcement like two or three years ago, and I was talking to Hawkan Samuel's and the CEO about it. I was like, dude, do you not want to sell cars in Germany? And he said, basically, they're the adults in the room, is what they want to prove.
You know. Well, let's be honest. There are many portions of the Autobahn where you actually can't go fast. True, those cameras are horrible, and it's worse than American highways where if you just think you're lucky you're not going to get pulled over. True, it seems so unsporting.
There are ways around it, but.
I mean so You're one of those guys that I always see like going you know, you're you have to go a certain speed between the cameras, but so I will do that. But then sometimes I do see people that are clearly going far faster than me, and I'm like, do they just not care about getting tickets or do they have a secret that I don't know about it?
There are some ways to deal with those cameras, and there are some ways to deal with German tickets.
Hmm, okay, well maybe I can't wait to hear.
More super legal, let's say, or maybe sub legal anyway, spirit of the law. I just thought it was a bad idea that Volo did that. And now they've got these, you know, two liter four cylinders in their hybrids, which are super boring motors in any car, even in not a hybrid.
But Bovo never cared about being boring. That is one thing we should say.
And they have amazing design, like I loved it, I know, and the XT ninety that we have now beautiful.
And there is the car the most miles on it in the world is a Volvo. It was owned, Oh, it was owned by h IRV Gordon. Is this fing he was a teacher and he drove this Volvo back and forth to school for his entire career, and he would drive it all over the country. And his car ended up having over a million miles on it. It's like it sets the record. I think it might have up to three million miles.
They're awesome. I just don't feel like they're fully going for it. Uh you know that the in car technology isn't quite there. Polestar is another one where I feel like they had a great chance. They had an amazing first No, I.
Know, I was so excited, so excited, and it's completely it's underwhelming. I think, yes, if you, I mean, I'm waiting. I'm like, guys, what is taking so long?
I feel like they want to be an audi of evs, but they're just there's way too slow. And Lotus hasn't done anything.
No, Lotus hasn't done anything, And I mean no, it's really a shame.
It's a still and that I feel like they had a chance to really take off. And there are some people obviously that Lotuses and there's some amazing Lotuses. I'm sure they're super fun to drive, a little like Waight cars, right, Yeah, But they had such a massive opportunity after James Bond drove one and then Jason Alexander drove one A Pretty Woman, and I think Roberts exactly.
So, I mean I've driven some of the old ones there, I've driven some of the new ones. They drive great. I mean they drive very elementary, rudimentary, but that can be really fun. And there's such heritage, like they have a thing that all of these new brands won't have for another fifty to seventy five years, which is heritage and history and story.
True Colin Chapman exactly. I then, apparently Gelie has a brand in China that's top of the line like Zeeker.
That's okay, I need to.
Supposedly at least aspirational, not luxurious. Now, I was reading the story that Chris Road and I thought, they'll never sell Chinese evs over here. I realized they already do. Pole stars that sell here are made in China.
Oh wow, there we go.
Okay, Yeah, anyway, great story. Check it out if you have a chance on Bloomberg dot com or if you're a Bloomberg client, just bio Chris Bryant for that. That's all we have time for today.
But are you doing this weekend?
Matt being a dad again? That's good for another weekend. Yeah, I'm preparing for Christmas, you know, So you're.
Gonna have an American Christmas, aren't you?
My daughter's first American Christmas because we usually spend it in Spain, and it's the first time that she's also like conscious. She's three going on fifteen, perfect, and so I am going. My wife is getting her like an easel and an apron, right, But I am, unbeknownst to my wife just going to go all out and spoil the hell.
I love it.
I love it. Going to get her like an electric Ducati that she can ride around the driveway.
You know, good, start them young.
Not going to get her the little Bugatti. But that's very cool.
It's like, how much does that cost? I was gonna say it's got the price of a normal car. Really, it's very.
Much fun though. Thanks even for me. You can catch us again, same time, same place, next week. You can follow me if you like, on Instagram at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three.
And you can follow me on Instagram at Hannah Elliott XO. That's Hannah with an H on the end and Elliott with two l's and two p's.
Thanks for listening. I'm Matt Miller, I'm
Hannah Elliott, and this is Bloomberg