Driving the Polestar 2 - almost, plus the WORST feature on a Tesla, and more!

Thank you for setting up the studio today. And when I got here an hour ago.

You said it to be ready and it wasn't. I've already got my grumpy pants on. Don't test me. Don't test me want to be on the wrong side of you anyway. I'm just going to practice checking things for Monday and I face some people. Have you been what's news with you? I told everyone I'm buying a Ranger Raptor yep, which is great. So could you get that June delivery July? Of course, by the way, for the rest of you who've got those on order, you'll get that July next year. Fall gets dodgy treat Now.

I'm going to clarify because I was concerned about this when I asked for I put it out on social line.

I said, look, I want to buy one.

If you're a dealer and you can get me one in your first allocation, hit me up.

And there's a lot of drug dealers that hit it up.

I had a lot of dealers get in touch with me, and we got to the point where I was like, I'm probably going to start pissing people off if I take someone's order, like an actual custom of it.

Like put an order in a year ago or something.

So what I ended up doing was I found a dealer who was willing to give me his personal vehicle and he will then go to a later allocation, so big shout out to him. I'll have some more details on that when I finally get a little closer to it.

But yeah, so I'm excited for that. Currently in the process of figuring out which color to buy. I'm going to get the beadlock rims. It should be good fun. Yeah, getting in black.

I'm thinking black or conquer gray, which is like a Narto gray style color.

And what color rims?

The rooms will be black? I think there are like a matte black with the beadlocks.

Yeah good. Are you going to get the whole just dip it brakes, the calipers. I'm not going to do that. Come on, bro, get something to match that Monster Energy flat cut you've been wearing in that gym beam shirt. Yeah.

I actually also conjuring up my registration plate because I want to get a toolish registration plate.

So PNSC a Penis car Noel. I was going to get SML DCK small deck. I don't know what is that? Yes, jeez, it is available so accurate.

But did you see in the news just quickly. I know I'm springing this on you now, but someone pulled a nineteen sixty eight Manara, like the Bathurst edition out of a shed. It had been there for forty five years, and it's going to auction in a few well as of recording this a few weeks time, I'll be interested to see how that goes, because the interior looked amazing, and they obviously cleaned it and all that sort of stuff, and the outside looked pretty schmid For forty five years in a shed.

I'm always dubious on those sorts of things because like the interior, especially like they've got hay and bloody mice and crap have been in them.

That's what I was thinking as well. Forty five years is a long time of floods, hot weather, ramole I mold. And I look at this and I'm like, this is unrestored, and it looks like it's in excellent condition.

I do wonder whether someone finds one.

Of these, keeps it dusty for six months and goes, hey, this was in a shed for forty five years.

I mean, how are you going to know? Wow? Yeah, that will be interesting. I want to get we should get a picture of that up. Is there a news article on that? There is? Yeah, I actually did a Channel seven US piece on it yesterday. Oh okay, mate, we all know you're sleeping with Jennifer Kaye. Come down.

Another one that I saw as well was a VS GTSR so you know the yeller yeh with the big wings. Colm had one of those that had been in storage for twenty odd years, as in car port for twenty odd years. It has five thousand k's on it, so they're currently sort of restoring it. Really, but with those things, they're so easy to dodge the odos on them that five thousand k's I would find it pretty hard to believe.

But yeah, do you know what they do?

They get lots of social media coverage and then goes up to auction all of a sudden and everyone goes, oh, that's the car that was in storage. I'm going to go throw some cash on it.

So is that what you did, your old AHSVS? You threw that on socials, isn't it? Unfortunately? Did you get good dollars for those? One has sold. The other is in an option soon look out guys, and you too could own a piece of poor memorabilia an SML dc CA. Oh my god. Speaking of news, the BMW seven series surfaced surface. I love the way you said that, like it's a deep sea creature. It does look like one literally is. And you know what we were touching on

It was an aston Martin, a V advantage convertible that my colleague Elbows, drove from Geelong to Adelaide. I drove it to Geelong and while it was in Geelong, we were at a servo and someone almost ran into it. This like actual ban in, an old falcon who didn't like wealthy people near him. He kind of like almost ran it off the road. So at that point we thought, okay, time for you to leave. This is enough time in Geelong for a Astin.

But oh, my fun story. When I was living in Geelong, I remember pulling out of a servo into you know, the sort of service lane. I guess pulled out of a servo into the surface lane and dude sped right past me. He was just like dodging traffic in the service lane. So I beeped him. And at the time I was in Oh, I was in my daddo two sixties ed. This guy literally foot on the brake, smoke everywhere, ran out of his car to my car with a

No offense to tolong people, but some long people are scary. Some are present company excluded.

Now. Ah, so, yes, the BMW seven series weird looking. We should have let's have a quick look at it. Yes, I'm looking at it right now.

So outside is weird looking, but I tell you what's not weird looking the interior.

The interior.

Yes, so I love what they've done here because they've got this enormous screen in the second row and the way they've been able to get away with this. The screen basically prevents your rear vision out of the car, but because they're using digital mirrors, it means that you can just see out the back with that whole thing in your way.

So it is really pushing the game. Weirdest thing ever.

Yeah, it's pushing the game forward. Though when you think that this is going to be used as a limousine. Most of the seven series sales are in China, so that is the biggest market for this car. The Chinese love the ability to basically be in the second row of their vehicle, so this is where that whole thing comes from. They've got screens inside the rear passenger doors, amazing wood grain. They've got that same glass set up they had in the IX.

As well, So this be the seventh series would traditionally you'd probably find at an airport, yes, or an executive of some description. God, that is polarizing, isn't it. Yeah, But just have a look at the interior. I think literally the outside is the worst part.

And then and also you probably don't care because you'll be inside, either in the front row or the second row.

But they've also launched the I.

Seven, which is the I Guess Electric version of the seven series, and it is loaded with all of the good stuff. It is huge as well in terms of its size. It's almost like five point four meters long, so longer than a ranger.

The Man of screen working this thing on the arm ress and all sorts, so it's incredible. The chairs in the back turn into kind of lounges, like you know, you can flip them back and almost get a tan from the summer.

In terms of the engines, it starts off with the seven thirty five, which is a three leater turbo six great engine used in the Supra, and then it goes all the way to the I seven X drive sixty, which is their electric version one hundred and two kilowatt hour battery. So it's a big battery, which means driving range for up to six hundred and twenty five k's.

A lot of these guys to the game. These guys traditionally had a V twelve in them at one point, didn't they.

Yeah, V twelve's dead, so BMW announced that they're not doing that anymore. So, And did you see in the in the interior picture as well, the screens in the back fold into the roof so you can see them shot there with the.

Fold out lounge.

By the way, if you're listening to this you want to see what this looks like, if you head to car expert dot com today you and just search BMW I seven you'll see the pictures there.

But maybe something on Drive Show Socials. Thanks thanks for the blug broight. It does look incredible. Hey, while we're on this, what's your take on screens being used as revision mirrors and side mirrors? No? No, right, what what a stupid idea? Yeah, look, it sounds such a bougie ridiculous thing. Like, it sounds cool in theory, right, but when you're using it, it's so much better to use a mirror like real life.

Well, the other thing with the mirror as well, is when you move your head you get different perspective, whereas with a screen, no matter how much you move your head, you're seeing the same image. And I tested it recently in the Audietron, and I found it really distracting, very bad.

At night time.

And the ironic part is that they use those slim line mirrors for arrow so you save sort of electricity because you're not having to push the car as much through the wind, But then you have to use electricity to the camera and then also the screen, so it's like it.

Cancels each other out. Yeah, surely. And can you imagine in a car park someone nudging that, It's like, oh, we'll replace that for you. That'll just be eighteen thousand dollars. Yeah, what used to be something like you could kind of bend back into shape annoyingly. Yeah, oh, someone's har me. This is like, oh, someone's literally just killed off a camera on my car. Yeah, I'll have to wait for

Did you see Toyota and Lexus have launched their evs now with the option of a yoke. It is the dumbest thing. I looked at an Edmund's social media clip the other day. They were driving a Lucid, the big electric car over there, and a Tesla model ast around a track and every time they went to turn, the guy almost lost control.

Because I think they're dangerous. It's so dumb.

Look, it's fine for if you drive on a highway, but if you need to do U turns if you need to If you want to drive your car on a track, it's a fast car, it's designed to do that. You can get a track package. The yoke is the dumbest thing in the world because any track that has a sizable turn, you will need to just not use your car.

If you're wondering it, basically, yog is I guess something a steering wheel that you would find for the pit of of a cockpit of an F one or a bloody fighter pilot's steering wheel yeah, you know what I mean.

It's so stupid, and those none of those vehicles have any turn requirements that are beyond one turn, so.

Especially if you're looking at the power in a Tesla plaid, Oh, that's kind of dangerous. Yeah, a neglige.

It the other crazy thing as well, with stability control. A lot of people don't know this, but with stability control, if you lose control of the vehicle, if you keep the steering wheel at dead center, stability control won't do anything. It only activates when it knows that the direction of your steering is going contrary to the direction of the car.

Yeah, one hundred percent agree. I think it's a lot of it's there for a wow and cool factor, and they're putting that almost to market far too early. Yeah, look, I don't know.

I think that I love that Tesla's innovating and forcing others to innovate, but the technology. I think they're not admitting that it's not working. And they've been talking about this working now for five years and it's just never really worked the way they want to to work.

So speaking of Tesla, I guess they've done an iPhone where iPhone we're dropping the charging cables to save quote the planet, and now Tesla dropping their charging cables of their cars. It's so dumb.

I know where it sounds like we're ripping into Tesla this episode.

But we should do actually speaking which we will be doing a Tesla special. I reckon we'll have to.

So they're announcing that it's between two and four hundred US dollars as far as I can tell, to get a charger with your car, and according to Elon Musk on Twitter, usage statistics were super low, so it seemed wasteful to include it. Well, that's dumb because if you see that the usage statistics are low, that's because most people charge at home. I've used our mobile charger probably three or four times, and the times that I've used it, I've needed it because the place I've gone to hasn't

Or something whiless charging. Yeah, So it's just they make such stupid things.

And another thing they deleted recently was lumbar support for the passenger again because usage showed that it was low. It's like, obviously when you sit in the seat, you said at once you don't adjust it fifteen times per drive, So now that you can't adjust it, it's like, of course usage is low.

You know, it's interesting. They're literally going by data that they've been able to capture of your.

Car, but it's poor data. It's like, well, your airbag's really used, we're going to remove that. I mean, wheels don't wheels aren't used while the car stationary?

Do we just remove those? Ye? Cars park?

I mean it's just getting to the point now where they're just their penny pinching and it's getting a little embarrassing. They really need to stop around with the formula.

What is your take on buying a second hand Tesla? Because I saw one market and I was like, ah, it's not bad. I looked on the inside. Honestly, I don't reckon the interiors of these ages that well, there's something about it feels like the way Americans treat their leather. I get it. In a lot of American cars, it tends to look crunchy after a while. Yeah, it just tends to just look I don't think it's meant to.

I think that some of their earlier cars had issues with crunchiness. But as for example, when we sold ours, it had the white interior and it looked brand new, and you could wipe it down with it because it's not leather, so it means you can use chemicals and other stuff on it, whereas with leather there's only a certain amount of things you can do to it. So ours looked okay after two years. But my concern with buying any electric car secondhand is that you're buying outdated technology.

But I mean there'd be software updates, so it would be that would still be able to accommodate a lot of those cars though still right, I guess.

Software updates, yes, But the problem is your battery capacity. Once it starts degrading, you don't get that back, no, So you know, the more you fast charge it, the more it degrades. So yeah, look, I mean, obviously the prices will come down after this whole semiconductor thing, but yeah, I am more a fan, especially with electric cars having

It would be interesting if you could recondition your car like EV like you can pretty much recondition an iPhone or phone.

Eventually we'll get to that, because the battery cells in these vehicles are all clumped together, and in theory, you should be able to swap them out for a new battery. If that happens, then you could have effectively infinite life out of your EV. It's kind of like reconditioning a car, except you have a whole lot less moving parts. A

I think it'll have to I mean, I think Pressura will mount up. I mean, if you've got an EV that's over five years old, and that's gonna happen, you know, when the e waste kind of built up, generally we're like, look at all these shitty old mobile phones. Just put them in this thing at there's been at the servo when we'll give them to poor people in Africa. Yeah, there's going to have to be this. I mean, shit, when you're talking cars, it's a big deal. You know where they wind up.

I did a couple of trips to India and it was very depressing to see kids melting plastic cables to expose the copper that they can then go and sell. Yeah, a lot of that stuff and ethically gets sent over to third world countries so that kids can inhale toxic fumes to go earn someone a bit of money.

So ye, anyway, anyway, thanks different for putting a bit of a positive spin on the body. Thank you, hey, charge Fox. This is big. We're still on EV's and we're still sitting over EV's at the moment, but it needs to happen. Charge Fox they basically own all the charging, the charging network across Auscharlitia.

Right, Australia's biggest charging network. So there are other providers, but these guys are the biggest.

They're topping up their prices by fifty percent.

Yeah, so on their three hundred and fifty Kilowa charges, the prices that you pay for electricity there are going up by fifty percent. Now, if you've got your last electricity bill, it didn't go up by fifty percent. So these guys have artificially increased the prices here.

Now, it's not an issue. It is a business. So you've got to make money.

And if it's by increasing your prices by fifty percent, that's fine.

That's massive though in Jump, but there's two big issues I have.

Number One, A lot of the time their network isn't working, so a few of the times I've been to their charges they've been faulty, so I've had to wait for other people to leave to actually use a.

Charger, say six available, and two of the six could be working.

Yep, exactly, and that's obviously not their fault. They're using third party hardware, but they're not fixing it, and often it'll be down for weeks or months before actually get it sorted. Second part is that there is a huge government investment. It's in the millions, if not tens of millions of dollars. So you're telling me that me as a taxpayer, I'm helping fund your EV network while you guys go and jack your prices up by fifty percent.

And won't up keep as well? Yeah, and won't up keep.

It's like, I don't think so, So I think I don't know if the government's aware of this.

But whoever's funding.

This, it's a broad group of investors that includes the government, there are private investors as well. It just puts a bad taste in your mouth. This early in the development of evs, it doesn't make any sense. And the other thing that I find very bizarre, they spent a lot of time harping on it. At one of their sites. You roa where it's entirely solar powered. Solar power charges batteries on the site. The batteries then charge your car. So it means that they rarely have to go to

This is clearly like a bunch of people sitting around a boor and making this decision. It does like it.

Yeah, with the uptake of EV's at the moment, it seems very strange that they would be jumping to jack prices up, and then, on top of that, if your network is as bad as it is, get it fixed before you put your prices up. It just makes no sense to me why they're doing this.

I feel like they've almost gone Hey, the popularity of evs is growing more than faster than we first imagined. We need to jack these up while we can. The less people that know about it the better. While it's still low, especially when they're dealing with federal cash, a federal cash allowance. It's beyond shitty. It's kind of it's shifty.

Well, here's the thing I also found strange. So we run a story on this because I got sent an email. I subscribe to their network, we use it when we charge and all that sort of stuff.

So I got the email and then we run a story based on the email. Now one of our old.

Site, Car Advice, which is now Drive, they basically ran the story, except in their story they obviously copied ours because they didn't have that information, but they contacted charge Fox for a comment, and charge Fox wouldn't supply a comment.

So it really just amuses.

Me how you're jacking up your prices and then you're refusing to talk about it for whatever reason.

So I don't know, it just doesn't feel great. The other thing as well, that I'll point out at this stage is that Tesla with their superchargers, their supercharger network is basically faultless. Every time I've gone to use a supercharger, it's worked perfectly.

Fine, and then when they haven't, you know about it through the car before you actually get there, so you don't waste your time getting there and figuring out that it's not working. So it really is just a case of needing to spend more effort on fixing their network, getting it all working, and making sure that you know you are jacking prices up when required, not just because you feel like it.

Should we talk Polster too, Yeah, let's do it usually do yes? Yes? Now I should say you lucky enough to drive one of these, and I'm going to just sit back, get my pie out of the microwave because I was not able to jump in one of these at all. Thank you Polster Marketing, who I don't know if they even exist. By the way, before we begin, Pollster sounds like something from a strip club. That's what I thought.

If you put a space between Pollard stars, it's like.

That dance Dance Revolution in Time Zone. You know that one where the little kids trying to dance on the lights on the floor. This is like the pole dancing version, but electric. The Polestar too. Prices start from sixty three nine hundred dollars for the standard range single motor to seventy three four hundred dollars for the long range duel motor. Yeah, I find it really odd.

So the Polestar two is a Tesla Model three sized ev It competes with the Model three in terms of pricing and all that sort of stuff.

But if you go to the Pollstar website in Australia.

And try and configure one, it says due to high demand, we're currently closed for your orders. Pre configured cars may still be available. Should you wish to be contacted when orders reopen, please leave your details. I just want to see how much it costs. You know, you can't even get basic information. And I think it's such a bizarre strategy. What is to stop some unjust figuring out how much the car costs so they can go and do their things.

So it's odd. It's like, uh, we're really inundated. We're just going to close shop. Yes, that's literally what it's done. We're closed up. You can't do test drives, you can't go into a dealer and even look at one of these. You can't even see what it looks like on a computer. We're just we're cooked. We're done.

Gearly bought Volvo. Gearly as a Chinese car brand. They bought Volvo, Volvo started Polestar. Polestar has been ipo'd, so it is its own entity on the stock market, and that means that it has its own sort of profit loss, all of that sort of stuff. It's basically their EV division two right, yeah, exactly, So it is all all just all just evs.

Now. The interesting thing with Polestar.

Being all evs is that you would think that they would develop an EV chassis and all this sort of stuff. But the Polestar too, which is the Model three competitor, is actually based on the XC forty, which is an internal combustion car, So they both share a platform there, which means it's not quite an EV from the ground up, and you can kind of tell when you hop inside it. It's got this huge drive line hump that shouldn't exist

It's a real will drive. It's a punchy little thing. It's fun to drive. One hundred and seventy kilowatts of power three hundred and thirty meters of talk and it'll do zero to one hundred and about seven and a half seconds. The problem is how bad figure is the average?

Yeah, look, the problem is more just the options. So basic features like adaptive cruise control, rear cross traffic alert, eruptional so you have to get them as part of this three thousand, four hundred dollars package. If you then want to have a few extra bells and whistles. There's another six thousand dollars package that adds like a fancy stereo,

Generally, when I've stepped into an EV, like whether it be the cheap one or the top of the range, you almost just automatically want to shell out for top of the range, you know what I mean. It feels like it should feel like everything is just put together the way they wanted it to, rather than go let's cut back and cut back and put like the basic sort of features which you'll probably get in a basic combustion car. You know it Just I feel like at this point, if you're going to go for an EV,

So as part of a six thousand dollars plus pack that ours had, it had the vegan postry. So I know that you you're quite a proponent of that.

I've been saying no to your leather clad river's shoes for a long time. Do you know how the cows that died for your Swede river shoes are probably crying in their graves? Well, I probably ate them before I wore them as well. We probably cooked them on your bloody electric barbie. And then that's it. The slip the slippers on. Now.

I will point out as well that inside the cabin they've gone a bit of a unique approach with the infotainment system.

Eleven point two inch, so really nice and easy to use. But it runs on what they call Android.

Automotive, which is basically a Google based infotainment system. So it has Google Maps and all that sort of stuff. You can add apps from the Google Play Store. It's quite an intuitive system, very easy to use, and I thought it was a really cool feature that comes with this.

So they are working on a.

Full EV platform that will move them on to that sort of next era of full EV's, so I'm keen to see what that's like. They also do the Pollstar one, which is like a sports car. It's like a hybrid type thing that is that is pretty cool as well. So yeah, look, I don't know I think that it's an interesting brand, interesting to watch because they're made in China.

They are properly crashed. Yeah. Yeah, I quite like the interior. The interior looks really smart, really really forward thinking. Generally, there's a few it's weird. We own a XC forty at home, and it shares a lot of little bits and pieces, yes, from the door handles to the conditioning outlets and even the even the screen kind of looks like it's possibly the same sort of part as well. Yeah. Look, I think generally like it's a smart, tidy looking car. Yeah,

It sort of does all the EV stuff pretty well. So yeah, look it's nice. So yeah, would you buy it over a Model three? Model three is more efficient.

Because it's lighter.

This ways two thousand kilos in the midspec, which is pretty heavy. So yeah, look, I think that it's it's nice, but there are some things that they can improve, and I think that's stuff that they're working on at the moment.

Yeah, And I think if you were comparing this to a Model three. Go the Model three because you've got the Tesla network, the Tesla super Network, supercharger network. Right, it makes a hell of a lot of sense, just with the fact that you can't even you can't even book a test drive. You can't see this car physically. You can't even see this car online. I guess one's a shortlist for now, right, Yeah, for the moment.

If you can fight one to test drive, give it a shot. Or if you can find out how to order one, give that a shot as well. But yeah, it just seems odd to me just having a look at their website now, I'm just seeing on a hold on, they have booked your test drive.

Let me just see do with that.

Let me see what happens. So okay, and then select a date and time. Let's go fifth of May. Yes, I can do that.

When I type in Gordy, it says no, you're not allowed to do that, right. Let me just read the email like, thank you, thank you, Gordon, thank you Paul. This has tended. And if you've just joined the program, it's the Gordon and Paul talking or a bild program. Oh that dickhead Daniel who doesn't like my sense of humor. Maybe he'd like the Gordon and Paul program. I hope you're listening, Daniel. I still remember you. I'm reading my email I tried to organize after getting the test drive

Yes, yeah, yeah, I agree with you on that. Actually, that would be so cool to have here. They're bringing the f one fifty, so the've answered that one. But yeah, I think Ford Bronco would be amazing to have here. That would be sweet. And the Rivian.

It's weird that if one fifty is coming in because we talked about this and you know how much I love those cars, and it was just going to be an absolute, not definite no go. But the fact that the fact that they're making it right hand drive and they're putting it through all that sort of stuff, to me, it feels like it shouldn't be too hard to do that with the Bronco as well.

Absolutely, it shares a platform with the Ranger, so it makes perfect sense. I think they're doing a sucket and C with the F one fifty if that works.

Sorry or what what is that? A sucking in C? You tell me?

But yeah, when if the F one fifty works, which it will, I think they'll do the Bronco next.

Definitely sucond and C. Sorry, I don't know what you've got up to on Saturday night. I guess it's a second and C sucket while it's soft. What okay, real quick. This is a great question and I want to spend heaps of time on it, but we don't have time

I'd love to see a Model three with an air less three engine in.

It really just forget yours? Why not? Yeah, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. That's that's a really hard one. That's a good one. Can tell you what. Let's think about this, okay, and let's come back with our ideas next episode. But Dom has a good one, hits with a great one. Basically build a dream car from bits and pieces. I like it. Well, if you like this program, the Gordon and Paul program, please leave a rating. We would appreciate it rating five star. Like share, Tell your friends, Tell