Leafs Not Leaves

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Coming up on episode 406 of Wheel Bearings, we've got the Nissan Armada, the Lincoln Navigator, the BMW X5 Plug-in Hybrid, the Nissan Murano, An all-new Nissan Leaf finally after 15 years. GM is moving a bunch of vehicle production from Mexico to the U.S. The Corvette ZR1X is the car that should have been called Zora.

BMW and AAA have dueling EV surveys. The Mustang GTD costs almost twice as much as a Corvette ZR1. And the Republican Party is still at war with EVs. All that and more coming up next. This is episode 406 of Wheelbearings. I'm Sam of Wool Salmon from Telemetry. I am Nicole Wakelin from Top Speed. My name is Roberto Baldwin from SAE International. And Nicole, you almost missed most of tonight's show because of...

Apple giving you the runaround. Oh my gosh. The short version. Apple store shenanigans. I need a new battery in my phone because it's old and I'm desperately trying to just not buy one right now. I just want to hold off to the next generation, which theoretically is September. And I...

should have just put Ross on it originally to pick it up, but I wasn't thinking because I was, I left and then I couldn't check anything until I got home because don't have a phone. So I sat down and realized it was going to miss the show, but I called. Oh, I dialed my store and I only wanted was to change. Like, can you please put Russ Wakelin on this?

No, it'll give you the main Apple number. It gives you the main Apple. You've dialed a store. I don't get the store. I get somebody. I don't know where. They publish a number in New Hampshire that redirects directly to Cupertino. i apparently or some call centers tim cook's house so i'll tell me one funny about it was at one point she's like oh no it doesn't send you to the store it sends you to us

Like, but I called the store. She's like, yeah, it just redirects. And she said, well, after literally I'm on the phone forever. She finally says, well, let me redirect you to the store so you can help them. And she says, do you have their number? I'm like. for your store. And I said, let me Google that. And she still didn't get the sarcasm. All I had to do was look at my phone because I've already called it and it's showing on my husband's phone that I use to call the store, but.

call was 20 minutes and 40 seconds 20 minutes and 40 seconds to get myself to the store to just say can you put russ on that and they went sure nicole have a nice day click and how long did that take 20 seconds, 25 seconds. I've forgotten. I just told you guys I forgot. So once you so once you talk to the person, it took less than 30 seconds, but it took you a good 20 something seconds because they have an automated system that just redirects you.

around the world now the beauty of this is if they had replaced the people with an ai chat bot the ai chat bot would have just said yeah sure it's done we got we got got you covered and it would have hung up on you and that would have been the end of it and

nothing would have happened. And Russ would have gotten to his door and said, sorry, we can't let you have this phone. It's not, you know, it's somebody else's name. You are not Russ Wakelin. You're trying to abscond with Nicole's ancient 14th. Well, no, you're not Nicole Wakelin. Yes. You're not Nicole. Sorry.

yeah with my ancient phone who just needs to hold on like three more months come on baby hold together you can make it you can yeah so i was also like how like wait maybe i can add it on from afar oh my Gosh, that was a stressful part of my whole day. If you had your phone, you could have used the app. Aren't you clever? All right. What have you been driving, Nicole?

You'll find me slightly familiar, Sam. I've been driving the 2025 Nissan Murano Platinum that you drove, I believe, just last week. You were in exactly the same vehicle. Was it the same color? That blue. Yeah. I forgot the color of the blue. I want to say Murano blue because it's Murano, but it's not called that.

it's it's some it's some other name you keep talking and i'll it's really pretty blue yeah so it's pretty blue with a name that doesn't make any sense so what sam said last week there we go we're gonna um So 2025 Nissan Murano Platinum, which is the highest trim level of a lot of them. This is all new for 2025. They redesigned everything. Nissan Aria EV vibes going on here. It has a more premium interior. The V6 is gone. You now have a two liter turbocharged four cylinder.

that's plenty peppy uh you've got extra some enhanced safety stuff and on top trims you're going to get a standard all-wheel drive so driving it it's it you know it's not um this isn't an especially aggressive vehicle like it's not it's not something that's overpowered or especially heavily powered it's 240 or even adequately powered or even adequately powered 241 horsepower 260 pound feet of torque

Not a lot, non-speed automatic. I did take mine on an adventure this weekend and we went up to the White Mountains and I had... Most of the time I had two other people in the car with me. Sometimes I had... a full crew we had five people in the car were you just picking up random hitchhikers we had five people so we took two cars up there because you couldn't fit all the camping stuff

And five people in the car at the same time. But once we got there, the few places we went to to go hiking, we drove the car all together. And it was okay. I mean, on the highway, if you really accelerate, if you want to accelerate hard, it's like, well, give me just one second. It's okay. I'll be right with you. Can you give me the number of Nissan and I'll get the power upgrade.

Hold on. Let me Google that. So, but it's pleasant to drive. I mean, it was nice to drive. It's not underpowered in a way that it's disconcerting or you just feel like it's hard. merge into traffic there's some cars where it's just so bad you you think oh i've got plenty of time to merge and suddenly you think no i don't i i cut that guy off i didn't think i was cutting that guy off but apparently i am it's not like that actually is it's it's competent it's just not especially aggressive and

If you're really looking for that kind of power, you're not going to find it. We will find, especially in that platinum trim, is it is absolutely beautiful. It's a really nice interior. They did a good job making it.

look more upscale and there's you know you've got the 12.3 inch um screen now um you've got wireless apple carplay and android auto the only thing and this is funny i know i know this is the way the technology is going um there's only usbc charging ports there's no usba which is a good thing to realize before you go on a road trip where you're going to need to plug in your phone

to charge because you didn't bring the right i didn't have i didn't have a usbc cord with me i just didn't bring i was like ah shoot so um that needs to like for pretty much for most new cars now that

That should be the default cord that you grab. I know. Because most new cars don't have A's anymore. Most new cars don't have A's anymore. But what I always have been in the habit of grabbing forever is the A. And I had one that had like an A with a little C. dongle on it and somewhere along the way

i like went to blanket anyone's like well what happened it's gone so the dongle fell off don't go fell off because like you still need an a on a plane if you're getting on a plane they have a's in the back you know to plug in your phone to charge in a plane, you need an A. So that's the one I always have. And I, yeah, so, um, I did survive, but I thought, gosh, dang it. I need to go buy myself either a dual one or just get a little C cable. So yeah, that was my bad.

So your color was Aurora blue metallic, I think. Aurora blue. Yeah, it's sort of not really turquoise. Yeah, sort of almost a teal. Yeah, like a teal. And it's a very pretty car. Mine actually was not Aurora blue. Oh, it wasn't. They had the twilight blue semi-aniline leather interior. See, mine was not twilight blue. So inside, it was just more normal inside. Not super exciting.

normal yeah it was it was fancy blue outside normal inside uh and you get cool stuff you get like there's heated and ventilated seats and you even get heated rear seats which is like super cool um and they had they're very comfortable so i drove I drove and drove yesterday. I thought I was never going to stop driving. I drove to probably two and a half hours.

back from the where we camp and then immediately got home and then everybody that was leaving last night took a normal shower not at a campground before they got in a plane and i put them in the car and took them to the airport which is an hour each direction so i especially drove like

essentially drove like two three four and a half five hours yesterday super comfy like really comfortable that's good it'd be great on a road trip like i think okay that's so important i don't think people realize they're like oh you gotta sit down in the car yeah drive it around if you can't figure out how to get it to make to be comfortable there's a good chance you'll never figure out right and it's generally pretty good

what's up the nissan seats are generally pretty good they do they have that zero gravity seats which they designed with that like based with nasa engineers or something to mimic zero gravity Sam gave me a little bit of the engineering eye roll there and I agree with him, but they are comfortable. A lot of marketing. A lot of marketing.

Yeah. There's a lot of marketing who he happening there, but they did design a really nice seat. I remember seeing a thing where they were talking and I think it was for the Murano. They were talking about how important the way your hip isn't like your hip. angle is like the angle of your feet to the floor to your body and the angle that ends up at your hip once you put your leg out to push on the gas kind of thing

and how much they worked to get the angle just so, so that no matter how you position things, you're going to have ergonomically like the weight is distributed properly. I think they did it. It feels very, very comfy. I like it. So overall, I like the Murano and I do think it's much, it was a huge improvement from the last Murano, I would say. I think it's greatly improved from that. On the pricing front, you get four trims, SV.

comes in front wheel all-wheel drive then there's sl which is all driving the platinum which is all-wheel drive base trim is forty thousand four hundred and seventy dollars the platinum all-wheel drive is forty nine thousand six hundred dollars So it's, you know, in the 40,000 range, it just avoids being 50. However, once you add on the destination fee, gentlemen, would you like to guess? Ooh, destination, 1,300. I'm going to say 1395. I think that was it.

I have 1335 is what I've got. So Robbie, I just got a smidge actually. 1335. That's what it came up when I looked. That's a very interesting number. It's a weird number. So you're going to be the top trim. You're going to be just over $50,000. I don't think it's a $50,000 car. What did you think of the climate controls? The climate controls were okay.

The thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, as you push up and down on it. It was because you just you just it's not. How do you just what is what is that is? It's a touch surface with haptic feedback. And it's weird because it's not on the screen. It's on the trim. It's the same setup they have on the Aria.

It's weird. And here's the thing. It's weirdly loud or it was in my car. Like you could hear the, you didn't just feel the little boom, boom, boom, boom. It was like thunk, thunk, thunk. Like you could hear it. At one point I was trying to change the temperature at the same time as Russ. I'm like, ah, look, it's, it was weirdly loud, which is a straight, I guess a strange complaint, but it was loud.

And I did have one glitch while I was driving my Murano and I have no explanation for it. Zero explanation. I got in the car and I go to play audio and there's no audio. There's zero audio. I can't get the radio to play anything. Everything appears to be functioning as it should. Like there's radio station. I can play things. I can, you know, stream my phone or not stream my phone. I've unplugged my phone and plugged in my phone. I try all the things. I can't get any. You try control alt delete.

yeah i did if i could have um so i try everything doesn't want to work um it's give i have navigation i i say i said like you know hey sir whatever siri answers me i can't get the audio from the music, anything. And I've tried with my phone plugged in.

I'm like, what the heck is happening? My friend gets in the car. She's like, you're doing something wrong. I'm like, feel free. Show me. She spends like, she can't get it to work either. We go to dinner. We come back out. I have done nothing. We go to dinner. We come back out. I turn on the car. Audio blasting.

at like volume 9000 yeah i just needed a reset hard reset the technical term for that is there's a software book there's a software bug and i found it yeah and i thought i have no idea what's going on but there was just one time um which would have sucked if i had to drive eight hours that way or something or a long drive, but it was just 20 minutes to go have dinner at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. So not so bad.

But overall, I like it. I mean, I think they did a good job making it better. I don't know how competitive that pricing is. I feel like it's not outrageous, but I don't know. What did you think? I can't remember what you said last week. How did you feel about pricing? there's there's too much stuff that is getting to that fifty thousand dollar price point um you know which means that it's not cute it's not more expensive than you know the competition

But the question is, are any of these vehicles actually worth 50 grand? Right. That's the rub. Yeah. I don't know. It's a lot for a car.

it's a it's i don't know what you do if you want a cheap car and i know like the i think the versa the cheapest car you can get right now by a mid-1990s nissan ultima right like there's there's not you can't buy a super cheap car no is the versa still under what was i think it was the versa if you can still find one with a manual transmission starts at about 17.

And the automatic starts at like a little under 19. So it still keeps it under 20. Yeah. I think that is like the last new vehicle you can buy in the U.S. for under 20 grand. Yeah. In the base trim. So I just, I just pulled it up real quick. The Googling thing. It's amazing. A 2025 Versa S $17,190, but the SV 20,000. So you can only have the base trim.

that's it that's it that's all you can get that's and and you know that that sv is actually probably kind of the sweet spot you know right at 20 grand you know you get enough features in that one uh that yeah it'd make him that's it's not that it's it's fairly still fairly reasonable price reasonably priced and it's a it's a decent little car it's weird so okay so the nissan versa

which I think we've all driven. I think the Nissan Versa does a better job of being an affordable car than the Murano does of trying to be the luxury car that it isn't quite. Yeah. I think this is not like, I know it's, I know it's cheap. I know the interior isn't something amazing, but the interior is also not bad. It's not bad. There's just still too much piano black.

But it's $17,000 car. So it's not super. Oh, sorry. You were saying the Versa. I was talking about the Murano. Yeah. I mean, on the Versa, you know, I mean, for $17,000, even $18,000, $19,000. Yeah. I can forgive a lot of the hard plastics. It feels okay. It feels okay with what it is, right? It feels really solid. The price that you have for what you're playing, you're like, okay, this is good. You look at the Marowner's like, oh, it's solid. Then you look at the price, you're like, mm.

Somehow it doesn't work as well. At 50 grand, you know, that piano black is and some of the other stuff is a bit much. It's not quite right. And frankly, the powertrain, you know, for. For what it is, you know, that variable compression turbo that Nissan has that they launched in Infiniti models and now they have several Nissan models. I've always found to be.

When I first heard about it, I got a technical explanation from one of the engineers. It's like, oh, yeah, this is a really cool idea. You're like, amazing. And then when I drove it, I realized, boy, is this underwhelming.

And especially originally, the miles per gallon difference was like one or two miles per gallon. Yeah, it was like no difference. I remember... what was the what was the i did the first drive for that infinity and i've forgotten which infinity it was in but i remember doing it in the qx50 first okay i remember doing that first start because i remember them talking about

the vc and all like everyone's like oh like you said what is this okay all sorts of curiosity and this and that and you drove and it was kind of like huh Okay. It was the weirdest thing. I've never heard so much buzz during a presentation and excitement. And you get in the car and you're like... Is there another version? Did I get the right one? Okay, I do have the right one. You didn't put the 1.5 liter three-cylinder version in here, did you? This is it? Okay, great. Thanks.

yeah that was weird it was weird and a little sad but it did they did give you a really cool i think that was the one they gave you this thing that was that ultra suede thing it was like a little folder thing and i love ultra suede it's cool I didn't go on that drive program. I think it was that one. It was really cool. I still have it in a drawer somewhere that I was determined I would use, and I have not, but I am keeping it because I like it.

I have a lot of those things in drawers. I try to get rid of those things. I try not to keep them. I give them to somebody. Or just see if anybody else in the program needs to give things away to other journalists. It's like water bottles and mugs and extra battery bags. Baseball caps. Yeah.

I don't need any more baseball caps. I did use one of my, okay, one of my favorite all-time things they ever gave us was from Toyota. I don't know, it was an MCN thing? I don't remember. They gave us a, like, a portable soft-sided cooler bag. that said Toyota. And like, I use that thing all the time when I go camping. I'm like, well, one of these, I used it this weekend. And they also gave you with the same thing, barbecue.

sat like tongs not super like just but there was a little flipper a spatula and i forget what else but there were also was the giant fork the with the really pointy bits oh yeah yeah uh-huh and i looked and i was like will tsa accept this if i don't have a uh check bag like the toyota people look at me like We're not entirely sure. Maybe it's very weird that they don't think about that. There have been times on drive programs where they give us something.

that you know then they realize oh you're not going to be able to carry this on here and most of us have if you want if you want to take it just let us know and we will ship it back to your home for you yep so they ship that and that one i still have that it became the barbecue little kit that we have and we use that all the time so more of those fewer hats pure water bottles

your ass of course i do i like advertising for toyota now everywhere i go with so i guess they get their kickback for it right like she's advertising i have a pretty nice one i got from nissan nissan yeah soft side cooler bag was it the backpack one No, this one's just like a big lunchbox.

Big soft side lunch box. I also have a Nissan backpack. I've got some backpack. I've got a couple of backpack ones. I have an insulated backpack one that also came with us this weekend from Nissan. I might have the Nissan backpack one. I can't remember. And they don't do those. That's like a weird...

I don't know what, I don't know. I have no idea how they decide. Like one time we're going to give you a water bottle, a charging power bank and a hat. And the next time we're like soft sided cooler. What? Okay, fine. All right. Well, we just had some really good olive oil that I brought back from, I think it was from the Lucid Gravity Drive from Los Olivos. We had that with dinner the other night.

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All right, Robbie, what did you drive? I drove a car. No, wait, lie. I drove an SUV. No, wait. That was a lie, too, because it's a sport activity vehicle. No, whatever. It's a 2025 BMW x5 x drive 50 E. It's the x5 plug in hybrid, all wheel drives. That's all those letters. That's all that. It's like a code. If you know the code, I have a little decoder ring that I use for all these vehicles. And this one is about the X5 with all-wheel drive. That is also a plug-in hybrid. It gets 39 miles.

in EV range only. In my test, you know, you hit about that. Yeah. BMW is really good about, the Germans typically are really good about hitting those numbers. And... and and and in some cases they're passing them so good on you i guess you know 39 miles uh i did something a while back you know the department transportation

uh figured out that people on on average drive 36 miles a day so that's three extra miles that you can go to like fast food with or whatever uh which are 39 miles of range per day um of course once you uh Once you deplete all that, it gets 22 miles per gallon. This is like, cool, I'm doing awesome. Piece of size SUV. Yeah, it's a big SUV. It's got sport, you know, it's sporty and whatnot.

what's nice you get in it's an it just it's like hey you got ev here's your ev mode you just drive around in that it's got a hybrid mode you can put it in or it'll put itself in once you deplete battery and then of course it has sport mode which is just like it's got a three liter let's let go again what's the sport excellent excellent it's got a three liter uh the uh

turbo inline six um you know the bmw inline six can't go wrong can't go wrong with the bmw inline six eight speed uh automatic transmission um Yeah, so you got that nice. You got that going for you. No CVT here. that all said um i really like bmw's evs i think they're really well uh engineered they drive really nice they're very pretty whatever are not pretty that's up to you when it comes to like the the ix um and

BMW's gas vehicles. Great. Vroom. Inline six. Way to go. Shove it in everything. Make the world a better place. Shove in more inline six. For some reason with this vehicle, and this is... only at like low speeds like 20 miles an hour 15 to 20 miles an hour this vehicle is not quite sure it's it's a little herky-jerky going between the motor and this is when the battery's been depleted

so now you're in hybrid mode and it's trying to figure out what to do because bmws don't live at 20 miles an hour going through going through uh uh you know uh residential areas there's like cruising kind of slow you're stopping it's like you're going it's kind of okay we're going it's electric no it's gas oh now we're like no it's gas um yeah yeah that was kind of weird

freeway driving no problem anything above the 20 miles an hour no problem whether you know again all ev mode no problem smart mode no problem hybrid mode it's very low speeds a few little weird quirks um you know just trying to get those things uh i guess they're trying to get those things worked out uh typically what i've noticed with bmws if you if if there's something weird with the car

like they usually fix it like within six to eight months. Like if I have noticed it, that means other people have noticed it. And one of those is adaptive, you know, they have adaptive cruise control, but they also have adaptive regenerative braking.

which the first time I drove it in the car, it just, I was not, no, this is not good at all. I did not like it. And what it does is you like adaptive cruise control. It judges, you know, how far you are from the vehicle in front of you. And when you, but when you lift. it'll apply the break it'll reply apply not reapply it'll apply you know

Yeah, it'll decinerate. It applies to regenerative braking. And so it figures out, oh, I need to slow down. You're on the freeway. There's a car in front of you. While we're doing that, let's do some regenerative braking. So it does that for you, which is great. First time on an EV, I was like, nope, this is not good.

this was on the i4 first drive in germany everything i liked everything about the car except that six months later i drove that vehicle again they i don't know what they did to it they tweaked it they tuned it i don't know what they made it much better um Yeah, works great on this vehicle as well. It can be a little weird for people who are used to a gas car having a plug-in hybrid with this.

added to it because that this is definitely not something that's going to be on the regular x5 um and so um i was a little surprised they had added it to be honest i didn't realize it was there first time i used it i'm like oh oh hey that thing i hated but i like now is working

so yeah so it works really well um talk the seats i have i am comfortable in those m2 with that thing that comes up between in between your legs in the crotch protector i don't know what that is uh those support seats they have yeah the the carbon seats i am comfortable in those seats i've been i i've sat in other x5s been plenty comfortable ix for some reason the seats in this x5

I could not get comfortable. It just felt weird. No matter what I did, 17,000 ways you can adjust the seat. I could never get it to where I felt comfortable. Maybe my spine is out of whack between the last time I drove the X5 and now. So, and again, like, you know, we've, we always say sit in the car, drive it around, especially if you plan on driving this a lot, uh, make sure you can get that seat comfortable. Cause if you can't.

you're going to have a bad time the first time you do a road trip or if you're one of those super commuters that goes you know sits in the car for two hours every day to drive 10 miles uh that's you're not going to have a good time If you're sitting in a car for two hours every day to drive 10 miles, you should be riding an e-bike. Right? Well, you probably live in Santa Monica. Santa Monica is notoriously difficult to get into during rush hour.

i have a long story about that that i won't borrow uh yeah yeah that's true um let's see driving assistant i had the driving assistance uh uh at some points the same thing we've talked about again and again i don't know what uh it has a sport i had the sport package with uh was it and threat anthracite headliner you're gonna say anthrax i don't i didn't notice it i didn't really i didn't realize it was even a thing until i just read it uh m steering wheel

sure why not uh roof rails and high gloss okay roof rails are great i don't think i need it in a high gloss shadow uh shadow line exterior trim if you say so uh and then 20 21 inch uh wheels this was 2750 uh no there you go how's that um parking assistance package we all know no one uses those anymore but you do get you do get the parking viewed at 3d view

that's actually that is genuinely helpful that is generally helpful active parking like assistance that's that no one uses that anymore but the but the the three three uh 360 degree view that looks like you have a drone over your car though that's actually quite helpful especially when you're you're if you're parallel parking you're not used to parallel parking

if you are used to parallel parking it's like you just like oh man you don't even need a second try uh so yeah so that that that is pretty cool um overall no it's you know it's it's a bmw it was quick uh it handled really well seats Again, I don't know why I was not comfortable in the seat. It was very weird. I was very sad. Plugged it in. charge it overnight. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. They still have the turn up the volume gesture control.

they still have it and sometimes you'll move your hand in the cockpit and something will happen to the to the media they still have it so if for for folks who aren't aware if you put your hand right about where the infotainment screen is and you twist it counter your finger, your pointy finger, your index finger counterclockwise or clockwise, it'll turn up or turn down the volume of your music.

There's also an actual knob. Yeah, which is like two inches away from your finger when you're doing that gesture. Yeah, there's an actual, like it's all by itself. There's an actual volume knob, which is outstanding. It gives you much more precision. Loud, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, quiet.

Or you can do the thing with your finger. The price for this vehicle with all the bells and whistles that they dropped off at my house, $90,025. It starts at 73,100. So if you want the X drive, you know, P have or I'm sorry, the. x5 x drive 50e the p have uh you can get it for probably like 75 000 as long as you don't want these weird things like drivers you don't need driving assistance uh m sport package

There's an executive package. That's where the gesture controls come in. Yeah, I don't know. Well, you can get this car. And still be very happy with the features that come with it for less than $90,000. Or you can get all the fancy bits because that's what they send us because they want us to try out all the features. If you want to try all the features. And then complain about them.

yeah you have to give them the best car and then you complain about it um it did have front and rear it had front ventilated seats which is just the best Those are great. I love ventilated seats. So if you want to feel a little bit better about that 22 miles per gallon you got with that lovely BMW 3 liter inline six, the Murano is rated at 21. with its inadequate variable compression turbo four-cylinder. Oh, with a four-cylinder, man. Yeah. So you get better fuel economy with the X5.

i thought that just goes to bmw's engineering they they're the honda of japan of germany you know honda loves to like engineer things and so they're like magic and i think that's what bmw does they does some really good things with their motors and Even their EV motors are pretty spectacular. So, I mean, three liter, you know, 22 miles per gallon. It's a big, it's a big, it is not, it is a big.

again, SUV that's going to run you down. And yeah, you're going to feel pretty, pretty magical in it. You know, you still have the BMW, even the handling, you know, it's still a big SUV. So, you know, it's not. you know it's not an m2 uh but you know the what they're doing over there is pretty uh pretty spectacular except for that weekend that weird 15 to 20 miles an hour

I don't know what's going on. The pairing, maybe I also live on a hill. So maybe that doesn't help as well. I noticed some, some, I like, I live on a hill and then next, if I turn right at the end of my, it's like a really steep hill, but if I turn left.

kind of a gradual grade so when i come down like some like breaking systems get a little like freaked out it is it is i mean having worked on that, you know, during the tail end of my engineering career, it's actually really hard to blend regenerative breaking and friction breaking to do that smoothly. You know, when you've got that transition point between the two, making that work consistently is really tough.

Because sometimes you're breaking really easy and it's on a nice flat surface, but sometimes you're breaking really easy, but you're also on a hill and sometimes you're breaking hard or you're one of those people who breaks easy and then goes hard. You have to take all that into account plus the...

with the asphalt. Is it wet? Is it dry? Is it a little slick? Is it snowy? Is it, you know, all those things that they come into? And yeah, I don't know how they do it. Magic wizards. Are there wizards? There are. Yes. there that's that's one of the reasons why these vehicles are so heavy because there's actually a wizard wizard yeah in the back that uh you know is controlling all this stuff you know and you know that

you know, that wizard, you know, he needs, needs a little bit of space, you know, needs some, some food and other supplies and drinks, you know, little house. Yeah. Got a little wet bar and is exactly. Yeah. So, you know, that adds to the weight of the vehicle.

we're breaking this wide open what's happening within the the the secret the auto industry doesn't want you to know every car with regenerative braking has a little wizard living inside tiny little wizard they're all named and they're all named tom for some reason Anything else on the X5? Oh, I don't know. Let's see. Oh, oh, oh. What do you think was the destination charge? I'm going to go with $11.95. Oh, I was going to go higher. I'm going to go one lower. I'm going to go $11.94. $11.75. Oh!

It worked. You won. It took a moment because I had to do the math. Just in my head, I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah, my delayed reaction. Math, math, math. I haven't had dinner yet. I'm on green. My brain's not functioning. Meanwhile, Sam's like on the ball. He's like, oh, darn. He's like, dang, I lost. The rest of us are like, oh, Nicole. winner one free wizard tom for you all right

You know what? Maybe we don't want Robbie driving cars. We think about that. We're giving him grief about cars. He's talking about wizards. He's really taking everything. What do I have for next week? Oh, next week will be fun.

I had two big giant SUVs in my driveway last week because I had one scheduled and then Lincoln sent over a new Navigator because they wanted me to try out the... again the their latest the latest as of last week version of blue cruise which was version 1.4 which i had some issues with when we did the first drive out in california um with it disengaging for inexplicable reasons on the highway.

Just because. Yeah, just because. And, you know, this is not a new phenomenon with Blue Cruise for me. And around the area where I live here, there's a couple of spots along I-94. to my east and to my west, where there's a couple of curves where Blue Cruise has always disengaged.

for me on those curves where other systems like supercruise and and even nissan's pro pilot version two they work fine but Blue Cruise has always had an issue with those two curves, and one of them is on the west side of Ann Arbor around Jackson, near Jackson Road, where there's a relatively sharp curve there. And so I took the Navigator and the one they sent me was the 2025 Navigator Reserve with the jet appearance package. And it was in this incredibly boring gray mist metallic clear coat.

Did you go to DTW to pick someone up? I did not. No, because it wasn't all black. So, you know, they wouldn't have been able to see it. That wouldn't have worked. Yeah, that's right. But this was in, you know, in the gray mist metallic clear coat, you know, which, you know, is a light gray color, you know, which is it's fine, but it's boring. All.

Frankly, all the colors on the Navigator now are kind of boring. Although, actually, on the black... the black label package there is one that's sort of a pale copper color which is really nice but all the other colors are boring uh anyway um the the the navigator is a big suv A really big SUV. And the jet appearance package gives you a black grille and black wheels and black painted pillars and a lot of black trim around the vehicle.

You know, one of the new things for 25, you know, besides the new front fascia, it's got the same split tailgate that's on the new. the 25 Ford Expedition, which, you know, if you're doing tailgate parties and stuff like that, or, you know, just, you know, at the beach and getting ready, you know, it gives you a little place to sit in the back and load stuff up.

But the main reason I was driving it, like I said, was to try out some things with Blue Cruise. And for the first time, I took the Navigator out there.

And it went through those places where I've had problems with Blue Cruise before. Just fine. They engaged. Didn't tell me to put my hands back on the wheel. They fixed two curves. Well, they fixed some other areas too, but those were the two most prominent ones where I've had problems. So Blue Cruise is definitely better. It's absolutely better than it was, which is a good thing. Can't complain about that. And there's even another version 1.5 that's coming out shortly on.

I think on the Mach-E and the Lightning. But, you know, that's not on here yet. It's still version 1.4 that's on here. So they've made Blue Cruise better. Sadly, you know. There's still all the other things I complained about after we did the first drive, like having the vent controls in that little touchscreen in the center stack.

and you know that touchscreen in the center stack being mounted down kind of low and kind of vertical and you know if you actually need to adjust anything on there it's just a pain in the neck to use it's yeah but they have this giant screen half of which you won't actually use while driving yeah because you know you can put three widgets up there um that are you know you can select from six different bits of information none of which are especially useful. So you can see the time like.

and other places yeah there's like four different places where you can see the time You can see a big clock over on the left, or you can see the time directly in front of you. Or if you look down away from the road, you can see it on the center touchscreen in like two different places on the center touchscreen. It's very like the photo they have of about the enhanced ambient lighting. It's shot from above and you can't see the top of the touch screen because of the trim. Yeah. The deep sigh.

i just i just feel like some yeah there's a lot of time this is like the i don't remember the cherokee the one where the buttons are above the uh the infotainment screen And you can't see what the buttons are. There's like four buttons above it. And so you just like, I don't know what this does. I'm not sure. And when I see that, I'm just like.

I will say that the interior materials in the Navigator are really nice. You know, I didn't use the spa mode or whatever it is they call it. you know, or the rejuvenate, the rejuvenate. Yeah. The rejuvenate mode. You know, I tried that out before and it was fine, but you know, I, you know, when I get home and pull into the driveway, if I want to rejuvenate, I'll just go jump in the hot tub.

This is for the drivers who are waiting at the cell phone lot or the nearby parking lot for your plane to land that has now been delayed 45 minutes. That's true. Yes. This is for those. It is very good for them. And I think for them, cool. Yeah. The fact that you have to go into the screen to adjust the screens, less cool. Less cool.

Yeah. The, the second row seats, you know, seats have heating and cooling, you know, heating and ventilation and, and I think massage on there too. So, you know, the, the seats are, the seats are fairly comfy. You know, the ones that were in the. And the one I was driving had the 300-way adjustments, or it seems that way. But again, only a few of those adjustments are actually with physical controls on the side of the seat.

the rest you have to go into that touch screen to adjust it and you know if you want to adjust certain things or even just turn on the the massage function you have to go into that touch screen which again is mounted quite low relative to everything else. And it's quite vertical and it's just not very convenient to use. Can you yell at the car to tell it to turn it on? No. Oh, you can't.

not not for not for the massage you can change things like you can change the uh the temperature uh but you can't change where the air is blowing by voice that you have to go in the touch screen So I was yelling at that G-Wagon nonstop about the massage seats. I'll do this, do that. People will get in the car and I'll turn on the passenger side. And then people are like, oh gosh, what was, oh.

So, you know, that's the Navigator. You know, I like it less than I liked the previous generation Navigator. The previous generation was really good. Interesting. That was a good car. Yeah. Especially for what it is. Yeah. I was less enamored with this one. And the fuel economy was pretty mediocre. You know, got like 16 miles per gallon. Yeah, but it's also like the size of like my first apartment. Yeah, maybe bigger.

It is pretty big. It is large. Grand total came to $106,740. Guesses on the destination? Ooh, $1,700. $1,699. $2,195. Oh, my God. Sorry, I swore. I thought I might get it twice. Oh, my. No, that was worth the swear. Sorry. Anyone whose kids just heard we swear. Sorry. Sorry. I thought it would work twice. I had such high hopes. That was a good gambit, though. I was like, oh, Nicole's bested me. Almost $2,200 for delivery. Wow. So I was like $500.

Oh my God, you're still $500 off, but you won. I'm still the price of what it costs to replace the engine for my 90 Honda Civic. Yeah. I could buy an engine for 450 bucks. Wow. Yeah.

It wasn't new. It was like a used engine, but still. So the other big, big honking SUV that was in my driveway. Well, like the Navigator, it was powered by a 3.5 liter twin turbocharged V6 engine. This one had 425 horsepower. I think the Navigator was like 440. But, you know, they're roughly the same. Nine-speed automatic transmission. It was the 2025 Nissan Armada Pro 4X with intelligent four-wheel drive. It's the Pro. Yeah. So both of these are based on like boats. Yeah.

They're just boat cars. I mean, they're not even like pretending. Remember when we make fun of cars for being boats? Now they're just like, you know what? It's a boat. They're not hiding it. They're reclaiming boat status. Yeah.

You know, so globally, this vehicle is sold as the Nissan Patrol. And the Patrol, you know, is kind of like the... you know toyota land cruiser you know it has a global reputation as being you know a bulletproof go anywhere suv um and uh you know the the pro 4x is the most

go anywhere-ish version of the Armada that is sold here. And it's pretty good. And you know what? It has these two bright orange things under the front bumper that... Unlike the Nissan Rogue Rock Creek, it's not just, you know, orange accents painted on the bumper cover. It's actual recovery hooks. Oh, for real, real. Yeah, real recovery hooks. With the Armada Pro 4X. Yeah. So the Armada, you know, is it's a big three row body on frame.

It's a Nissan, so that means it's got a whole bunch of piano black plastic on the dashboard. It's got a couple of big... 12.3 inch displays uh one or sorry not 12.3 inch 14.3 inch displays, one for the instrument cluster in front of the driver and the other one for the infotainment screen. It's got cameras all around. You can press and you can see.

It basically lets you look, you know, because, you know, you're so high up and the hood is long enough that you can't actually see what's up in front of you if you're going off road. So the cameras basically let you see. You know, transparent hood shows you where the wheels are and which direction they're pointing and what's underneath you. So you can kind of maneuver around the obstacles on a trail, which is pretty nice. You know, I didn't do any.

off-roading with this thing, but I've seen the guys at TFL did some off-roading with the Armada and it did well for a big SUV. You know, it's got big all-terrain tires on it. It has air spring suspension, so it can... lift up or drop down. So when you're driving on the highway, it drops down a little bit for better aerodynamics. And when you're off-road, it lifts itself up, you know, to give you a little more ground clearance.

It, you know, it has nice, comfy zero gravity seats like the Murano. You know, everything about it is generally pretty good. I did notice so many buttons. There's a lot of buttons. It's surrounded by piano black, but you know what? I'd rather have the buttons. If that means I get buttons, I have to live with piano black. So be it.

and knobs for the climate control, for the heated seats, for the temperature, for all your different drive modes, you know, to go over rocks and snow and sand and everything else. And to.

turn on the cameras or raise the ride height or lower the ride height. All these things, you know, have physical controls, which is great. One, you know, I'm not crazy about the... the four push buttons for the uh transmission selector uh you know because they're all pretty much the same you know you gotta look at it like There's a teeny teeny little nib on drive and then a big one on reverse. Like on your keyboard, you know, at the J and the F.

There's a little, so you know where you are on your keyboard. It's just like that on the D, but on reverse, there's a giant like hump. There is like the Armada and the Murano and, you know, a lot of the other newer.

Nissan vehicles now have an Android automotive based infotainment system.

um you know that's got google services in there which is nice you know you can download uh apps from the google play store and one of the things i do whenever i get one of these is i sign in and i download pocket casts which is the app that i use for listening to podcasts And on everything but the Nissan vehicles that I've driven recently, the Murano and this Armada in Pocket Cast, I can go in and log into my Pocket Cast account and it downloads.

all the podcasts I've been listening to and it syncs, you know, with my account. So if I'm listening to something on my phone and I get in the car, you know, then it. refreshes and syncs up to, to where I was in whatever podcast I was listening to, uh, in the car. And then when I get out, it, it resyncs that back. So my phone can pick up from the same spot in the Armada and the Murano.

For some reason in the interface, because one of the things, you know, the automakers can do when they when they use Android automotive with Google services is, you know, they can create their own skins for it. So everybody's got their own unique interface, same apps, but get your own unique interface for the media players, things like that. And it appears for some reason that.

on the media players you know for pocket cast they neglected to put any kind of link to the setup screen where you can log into your pocket cast account And there's nowhere to actually select the shows you want to listen to. Yeah. And I, you know, is it just that app?

just that is that the only app you really use when you say just just that app because i can i tried you know with uh youtube music and that worked fine and other stuff you think it's a a a versioning issue like android automotive like that version like the app that runs on that version there's a weird glitch maybe But, you know, I had the Navigator at the same time, which also has the same operating system and had the same app running on it. It was fine. I could go in, you know, and I could.

Click the settings icon on there, the little gear icon to take me to settings and log into my Pocket Casts account. That just did not exist in either of the Nissans. There must be a versioning issue. Like Nissan is like running like a point zero zero zero one below what other people are running. And so the podcast app for that version has a glitch. That's the only thing.

That's possible. I shot a little video of it and sent it to Steve Parrott at Nissan. He was going to investigate and look into it, but I haven't heard back yet.

on that so i don't know if they've figured out the problem uh because what i did was i shot the video i went in the the navigator and showed this is how it works in the navigator and every other brand of vehicle i've driven that has this system in there and here's how it works in the murano and the armada you should say it's a podcast as well i i may do that i'll do that

Get everyone in on it. Yeah. Bring the whole gang in on the situation. Get the whole gang on the thing. Right. So the Armada is rated at 16 miles per gallon combined. because it's a big, heavy, full-size off-road SUV. And it got about 17 during my time driving it. So it did a little better, you know, about one miles per gallon better than the Navigator.

um which was you know still pretty mediocre um for for both of them uh they i i could the net the the third row seat the the navigator is a little bit longer than the armada So the third row seat in the Navigator was a little roomier, a little more headroom, a little more legroom. And this was not even the long wheelbase Navigator. You know, there's, there's two versions, two lengths of the Navigator, just like there is with like a Suburban or Escalade.

But the Armada third row seat is a little bit tighter. I can still sit in there, but it is definitely a little bit tighter than the Navigator or some of the other. three row suvs although it is it's definitely better than a toyota sequoia uh because the sequoia you know for this generation went back to a solid rear axle Whereas the Armada has an independent rear suspension. And so it's definitely got more, you know, it's got a flatter floor in the back. So definitely more third row space.

Not a huge amount of cargo space behind the third row. But if you need to, excuse me, if you need to, if you put down the second and third row seats. I found that it's almost long enough to carry an eight foot long cow panel. It was about six inches shy. So I did have to go to Tractor Supply to get a couple of cow panels to use as trellises for our beans in the garden.

That's what we use it for, too. We use it for trellises for vines. Yeah, because they're nice and stiff. Just drive a couple of stakes into the ground, zip tie it to that, and it works great. So I went and got those. folded everything down, you know, and the cow panels are like 50 inches wide and eight feet long. And it was like hanging over the hinge by about three or four inches. So you can almost fit a four by eight sheet of plywood.

into the back of the armada nice yeah uh so it it is it is pretty big um and um Other than that, if you need a big three-row SUV, it's not a bad choice. It's not a cheap choice. It's not very expensive. I mean, compared to the Lincoln Navigator. Yeah. It's a lot less expensive. Yeah. But the Lincoln Navigator is like fancy schmancy. Yeah. Well, you know, this one was the Pro 4X. So it was $80,980. Do you want to guess on the destination?

I accidentally saw it just now. Like a few seconds ago, I was looking through features. So I'm just going to let Nicole pick and see if she won or not. Let's just see if I get it. 1295. See how close you can get. 1295? Oh, man. $2,010. Oh, Jesus. Well, I started off strong, but I'm not finishing so strong. That is what it is. One thing I did like, I like, I was looking through features, like at the different preferences. I accidentally scroll down. It's all destination. I'm like, oh,

Wow. One thing I really did like about this Armada, the paint was this deep ocean blue. It was this dark blue. Oh, it's really attractive. Far more attractive than that light gray on the Navigator. Whatever. weird colors they have. And then you get this cool little orange accent on the D pillar that says Armada embossed into it or debossed. That is a nice blue. Yeah. So that is the 2025 Nissan Armada. If you need a big three-row SUV, it's not a bad choice. Cool. Yeah. All right.

let's move on to some other stuff stuff yes um well let's stick with nissan yeah by the time by the time this is published the news will be out about the 2026 nissan leaf and so you know this is the first time since it launched that the leaf has actually been really fundamentally redesigned because when they did the second generation there was 2017 or so yeah all they did was partially reskin it and

Change the dashboard. It's like a little tweak. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Still had the same doors, the same glass and everything, but you know, this, this, they've completely redone it. Start started from scratch and it's now crossover. you know crossover coop um and uh what do you think have you you've seen it uh nicole haven't you oh you have not seen it i have not seen it okay well hold on a second and i will uh

I went all to Japan to sing it. Yeah. You went all the way to Japan. Aren't you the fanciest? I am. I got to eat ramen and candy and I don't know, some other things. Just ramen and candy. How is Japan? Ramen, candy is good. Ramen, candy, quality public transportation, trains. Oh, I got to drive the Nissan Sakura while I was there as well. oh that's cool the little electric uh yeah yeah was that fun

It was fun. I got to drive around in Japan, which I got. I kept getting off on the wrong exit. And apparently they track the cars while you're driving them. They're like, hey, Robbie, you made a wrong turn. I picked it up from one of the... from a place where they handed out to people and uh they were like you got when i got back they're like you took the wrong turn a couple times i'm like yeah yeah i did so so

Let Nicole look at the car. So back in October of 2023, when we went to the Japan Mobility Show with Nissan, they actually took us, they showed us.

prototype back then and it has not changed i mean it's basically a mini aria why um let's see where do i have to click here to give you approval i know right i'm like wait you can't look at things which says approval i probably got this google drives to be honest google can drive things when you share it maybe i have a picture no i didn't take a picture oh wait i do have a picture i'll find one on my phone hold on everybody you can't text it to me i have no phone

I can. No, I can just show you. Oh, OK. Hold on. Hold on. Wait, is anybody watching this? Are we breaking an embargo? No, because it's not going to be published until afterwards. Yeah. What is going on? Maybe I didn't. You know what? I don't think I take pictures of my phone. Did I go to LA? Let's hold on here. Let's see. Because I went to LA to look at it again. Because that's my way.

I'm sure I probably got an email with this and it's terrible that I missed it. Oh, I got a lot of videos of the car. Let's see. This is a good one. oh look at the back that sounds like it's good okay so yeah you should you should have You should have an email now with a link to the Google Drive. Okay, we're getting there, guys. It'll just take... Oh, wait. Let's see. The photos I have are the teal. Folder shared with you. Folder shared.

folder so basically this is a like a three-quarter scale aria uh so if you like the aria you'll you'll probably like this I like it. It looks better in person than it does on the photos. But I like it. It's very weird. I like the photos, but it looks better in person. Does it have the funky?

more thing that's like higher up is the handle high up on the rear is there a door yeah it's on the c pillar it didn't used to was it that way before uh no it was not it just had standard door handles before that's what i thought so now you got pop out door handles on the front doors. You get the, the hidden door handles in the back edge of the rear glass, the C pillar. Um, and then, um,

you know, the interior, you know, is also, you know, kind of, kind of vaguely ARIA like, you know, and interestingly, they did, they did not, they did not make it bigger. It's actually like. a couple inches shorter than the current generation leaf, but it's got about the same amount of interior room. One of the interesting design details, if you, if you look at the taillights, they have this theme that they call two, three.

which, yeah. So if you look at the taillights, you'll see there's two horizontal rectangles and three vertical. They look like smartphones, the vertical ones.

maybe just because i'm yeah i mean they're kind of shaped like smartphones but you know the horizontal ones kind of look like the the lights on the nissan z but the reason why they they did this theme is apparent i guess in japanese two three is pronounced as nisan so it's got this two three theme oh my gosh it is this was the itchy you'll find that same iconography in several places around the vehicle okay that's cool yeah

that's not what what is nissan's name has nothing to do with that though does it is that like okay no but it works out which just happened yeah you know they found they found some iconography that happened to align with the with the brand name That's really cool. So it, you know, it's a, it's a pretty cool little crossover. You know, I think it's a, it's a nice size. It's it no longer has an air cooled battery.

So that should be the last. Yeah. So, so liquid cooled battery from LG now. And it's what is it? 54 kilowatt hours for this. 52. 52 for the. base model and about 75 for the uh for the the everything else all but the base model yeah yeah i really like how this looks yeah do you guys like it or do you hate it is it no i like it yeah it's i like it oh my gosh it looks so my gosh it's such a departure from the old one yeah it looks so much so wow the old one was so boring

like driving everything about the old one was boring it wasn't a bad car it was so boring like it was such a solid little car but it was so had zero personality yeah like you got out of it and you forgot that you drove it like everything in the car of course the car i was driving and no personally this is actually cute this is yeah this the the base model with the small battery 174 horsepower 214.

with the, uh, the big battery, uh, cause you got a little more energy out of that one. Um, range, uh, will they're, they haven't said what the range is going to be for the base model. Uh, but it'll probably be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 210, 220 miles. But the other ones, the S plus trim, 303 miles of range. 288 for the SV plus and 259 for the platinum plus, you know, which have bigger wheels and tires, which have more drag. And then what was the other thing? Oh.

If you look at the pictures, you'll see that there's a charge port on both front fenders. No way. Is there really? Yeah. So they did something a little unusual. the uh the charge port on the driver's side front fender on the left front fender you open that up that has the j1772 port in there so like the the first two generations of leaf both had two charge ports but they were in a under a cover

On the front of the car. On the front, yeah. And you had a 1772 and a Chathamo for DC charging. But, you know, it can only charge at 50 kilowatts. Now you have a 1772 on the driver's side. And on the passenger side, there's a NAX port, a J3400 port. But it's still AC and DC. The NAX. Charging port does not support AC charging. It only supports DC charging. And I talked to Nissan today about it. And he explained, Kevin Rafferty explained that...

The decision to incorporate the NAXPort was kind of late in the program and most stuff was already frozen and they didn't have time to do the hookup from the NAXPort. to the AC onboard charger and get that all validated. So that right now, it's only DC. They do plan to update that in subsequent model years or at some point. along the way they will change that hardware so that it can do both ac and dc from the next port but you can you can charge ac uh from on the from the j1772 port

with a NAX charger with an adapter. So if you have a NAX to J1772 adapter, you can plug that in and do charging from that, AC charging from that. you just but you can only do dc from the nax port and um and then you can get ccs to nax adapters so you can charge it for the or you can charge it from the um from the a tesla charger or anything like that only 150 kilowatt charging because you know it's a four um 400 volt system uh but you know that's a lot better than 50 kilowatts yeah

Yeah, the AC will do up to 7.2, which is sort of middle of the road. It's not the better than 6.6, which is what it is, which again, it's overnight charging, so it's not really.

yeah it's and it's not you know it's not a fleet vehicle um what's interesting is on the with the ac you can do a vehicle you can do vdl you can do vehicle to load you get a little adapter you know like the hyundai has the adapter you can plug it into the ccs part you can do that on the 1772 side you can't it doesn't have vtl or vth with the knacks um i asked them about that and then um everyone like huddled and then they're like i think they were like we got to figure this out

so they were just like um well um yeah well you know there's a bunch of stuff that you know because of that late decision to incorporate the nax port that you know they're gonna fixes running changes as they go along. Yeah. What is interesting is that it will support plug and play with Tesla superchargers. And they're actually their Nissan app. You should be able to use it on a bunch of different charging networks. So you only have to use one app to pay for everything.

So you don't have to have, you know, like a Tri-America app, ChargePoint app, EVgo app, Blink, some weird new one I saw like a few weeks ago, which name I can't remember.

uh so yeah so that'll be nice and uh i think some of those will also support uh plug and charge uh yeah i drove it in japan i drove a prototype which they made sure that i i say that every time i talk about it it was camouflaged we had just seen the car in the design studio.

the interior and the exterior. And then we went to Grand Drive, like their sort of their testing facility. And they're like, the car was camouflaged. And then the interior was also draped. You know, they put these brakes in the car. You can't see anything. You can't see the entertainment system. All you can see really is where you're sitting and the instrument cluster. That's it. That's it. I drove it. It's so, again, this is only a few laps around a track.

prototype vehicle so much better just so like the the the acceleration curve is better the braking was better the handling everything felt better of course it was also a prototype so they might like tweak it down or whatever but they're they're doing the steering setup for the u.s market for everywhere so that's so

I think they kind of know what they're, they want to make sure this does really well here in the US. They also have a three-in-one system for their motor and the reducer and the introverter. The introverter. You don't know much about him because it just sits in the corner and doesn't say anything. The inverter. Yeah, they're pushing for efficiency. They're still quite not as efficient as, say, Hyundai is right now.

um but they're you know they're getting better i think it's it's you know hyundai's a pretty you know that's a target a lot of people need to start to be aiming for when it comes to efficiency hyundai and lucid um Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it. I'll, you know, we're going to be able to drive it in September, like the proper car on proper roads. Again, I drove it on a track.

um it the track had a bunch of like little weird scenarios like oh the road's kind of rough and like oh and now you're driving through town like oh here's a little mountain road and and it's fun because you're like i'm driving on track in japan um But overall, no, I think...

Really the biggest question mark is price. The Leaf has always been like a kind of a deal, kind of, you know, compared to other vehicles. Especially recently, they've been, you know, trying to get rid of the last of the current generation. And so in places like Colorado, where they've also got big state incentives, they've been doing lease deals for like $10 or $20 a month for a leave.

so yeah and you know again it's not that the the second generation leaf is bad it's just boring it's just you just don't care that was it it was just so lackluster there was nothing remarkable about it okay it's doing the thing and this was the number one selling ev for a long time until the model three came out yeah 2017 the leaf was the best-selling ev in the world it 15 years 15 years it's been on the market i think it beat the model s to market

Yeah, because it came out and the first ones were delivered in like December, November, December of 2010. Yeah. So, you know, it's a long history of this vehicle. But I think now it feels like a proper competitor to everything else on the market. Again, the price is, you know, hopefully they won't price themselves out of that. But when the leaf first came out, it was.

you know kind of the first mainstream ev you know the initial msrp was like base price was like under 33 000 and with the 7 500 tax credit then you know you're looking at 25 grand you know it only had like 73 74 miles of range but You know, it was it was a real car that, you know, for if you needed a short range daily commuter, it worked and, you know, it was reasonably affordable. And, you know, it got.

a little better over the years uh you know the the current you know generation with the bigger battery you know does a little over 200 miles of range but you know the rest of the industry just you know leaped ahead of it And like you said, it was, it was, and it is boring. You know, this one should, is a lot nicer to look at. You know, it looks like it'll have a much nicer interior. It's comfortable. You'll have 50% more range.

you know, 300 miles of range. It should be much more competitive. But again, it comes down to tariff pricing because the current generation leaf has always been built in Tennessee. at the Smyrna assembly plant. This is going to be coming. I'm not sure if it's coming from Japan or from the UK. It's coming from Japan. Is it? Okay. Yeah, I checked today. It's coming from Japan. It's built at the same line as the Aria.

Because they're both on the same CMFEV platform. Yeah. I wasn't sure. So Tochigi, that's where it's being built in Japan. So you had the tariff issues that kind of. Yeah, so that's a big question mark for absolutely everybody. And, you know, again, when it's everyone should build everything United States. I'm like, it doesn't you just you can't snap your fingers and make that happen. That's like a three to five year.

like investment yeah to change to build to retool to you know to create you know uh supply chains or two years if you're gm but we'll get to that well that's it yeah well All right. Anything else you want to discuss about the leaf right now? No, I'm excited about it. Oh, the plural of leaf is leafs. It's not leaves. I asked. Yeah. Because LEAF is actually an acronym for – I forget what it is. Okay. There's another embargo, which is why this episode is not coming out until Tuesday morning.

The LEAF embargo is at 8 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. At 10 a.m. is the embargo for the 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X. All the embargoes. Yeah. So the ZR1X is not, well, it is the car that has been widely rumored to be called Zora for Zora Arcus Duntov, who was the first chief engineer for the Corvette.

uh arkus duntov was the guy who convinced gm to put a v8 in the in the original first generation corvette because you know when it came out it had this kind of lame six cylinder engine in it with a two speed automatic transmission don't have convinced them to put in the small block and changed history at least for Corvette anyway and so this is

at this point, the ultimate Corvette. Like I said, there's been a lot of speculation this would be named after Zora, but it's ZR1X. And what it is, is the ZR1 that we've talked about previously.

with the addition of the hybrid system that's in the E-Ray. So now you get five different variations of Corvette from Stingray, E-Ray, Z06, ZR1, and ZR1X. um so this has 1250 horsepower wow which is a lot yeah and zero to 60 less than two seconds uh quarter mile less than nine seconds i'm looking at some of these numbers in here too in addition to that just chevy says it can pull 1.3 g's of acceleration in a straight line yes so so so so to put that

that hurts people. Yes. Like I have, I have friends that I've had Tesla's where I did ludicrous mode and they're like, don't ever do that to me again because it makes everything in your body. hurt. Like it feels weird and it adjusts the size of your eye. So there's potential for people to like pass out when you, when you're going this quickly. And it will also do. one G simultaneously longitudinal and lateral. Wow. Oh my gosh. So yeah, it's, it's pretty bonkers. You should explain what one G is.

So that is the rate of acceleration, the rate of change of direction or change of velocity. And it's equivalent, it's 32 feet per second per second. acceleration, which is the same as the force that is pulling that earth is pulling you to down to the ground. I love that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

And what else? Oh, so, yeah, you got the hybrid system there. It has the same battery. and a slightly upgraded version of the motor, but the same battery that is in the E-Ray, so 1.9 kilowatt hours. But what they've... done is usually on hybrids, they only use about 50% of the battery capacity. So it usually cycles between about 30 to 50, 30 to 80%. And they said they're now using 26% more.

of the battery capacity, which allowed them to get more energy out of the thing. So they've bumped up the power output from the electric motor from 160 to 184 horsepower and bumped up the torque as well. And so, because you've now got that instant torque on the front wheels when you accelerate, it leaps off the line even faster. That's how you get that sub two second acceleration.

to 60 miles an hour uh and and then you know it's doing that as the engine is building up its power and torque and then it just takes off from there uh same 233 mile an hour top speed is the zr1 it's the same body work as the zr1 so when you look at it except for the x on the badge it looks exactly the same as the zr1 at least from the stuff you can see the one thing that is different is they did change the underbody

So they they recontoured the underbody because it's generating downforce from the the the under underbody of the car. And, you know, it. with the aero package it will generate 1200 pounds of downforce pushing the car down to the ground what they've done is because this is an all-wheel drive car now instead of just front wheel drive they move the center of pressure

So they changed the balance of the downforce to move it a little bit further forward. So you get more downforce on the front wheels now, in addition to the rear wheels. So, you know, this thing is, you know, you can turn. This is so people know you want downforce so you can turn. Yeah. Turn and accelerate at 1G. Yeah. So you want to be able to pull 1G.

laterally and accelerate at one g at the same time um you know so think let's put it this way The Z06 GT3 race, GT3R race car that they run in the World Endurance Championship, like met Le Mans this weekend, finished third in class at Le Mans and in the IMSA WeatherTech series. That car only has about 600 horsepower. That race car. This has 1,250 horsepower. Of course, the race car weighs about 2,700 pounds versus 41 for this one. But, you know.

Details. They're not talking about pricing yet. It'll be on sale this fall. The ZR1 Coupe starts at about $178,000. And the... The E-Ray is like about a $15,000 price premium over a Stingray, a comparably equipped Stingray. So if we assume it's going to be about the same premium, it's probably going to be somewhere close to 200 grand. for a zr1x but you know when you compare the performance of this you know to say a mclaren artura or uh you know a ferrari 299 or you know

any number of other cars, those cars all cost a minimum of 250 and up to upwards of $400,000. So it's still a bargain, even at 200 grand. $200,000. Wow. And you can get it in Roswell Green. Oh, well, there you go. Never mind. It's kind of a deal. jeez louise i mean it's very cool if i had two thousand two hundred thousand dollars to just you know set on fire that would be a fun way to do it yeah i mean you know i've driven the e-ray i haven't driven the zr1 yet

You know, the problem with all of these cars is you can't really use what it's capable of on the street. You have to take it to a track to get the most out of it. The McLaren drive programs typically have you drive in the middle of nowhere.

and then they take you to a track yeah that's because you can't like driving a motorway okay this is fine but you have to go on a track to actually drive the mclaren yeah and that's what they did with the zr1 drive they went to coda in austin a couple months ago or a month or so ago um so you know this is you know this is insane levels of performance um and this is

One thing they did say during the backgrounder last week is there will not be an electric Corvette anytime soon. So this is going to be the... the ultimate, probably the ultimate version of Corvette for this generation, for the C8 generation. It'll probably be C9 before we see anything with higher levels of performance than the ZR1X.

But, you know, they did, you know, from the beginning when they were working on the C8, you know, in the latter half of the 2010s, you know, before they launched it. You know, this was part of the plan from the beginning, you know, having... The Stingray and the ZR1X as the bookends to the lineup. So this is the top of the line. Simply the best.

And it also has the new, the new interior for 2026, which gets rid of the wall of buttons. Doesn't have the wall. That's good. No more. Because if you're in the, if you're in there and the, let's say the, the passenger and let's just say. The seatbelt doesn't catch while you're taking a right turn. Smack right into the wall. Yeah. Like you're a hockey player. Like you've been checked. All right. Let's.

Let's stick with GM for a second before we move on. GM also made an announcement last week that they are going to spend $4 billion to shift vehicle production. from mexico to the u.s they're investing four billion dollars in three assembly plants they're putting money into spring hill tennessee to build the next generation gas engine blazer The Blazer EV and the Equinox and the Optic and this and.

something else, are staying in Ramos. Yeah, all the EVs are staying in Ramos. But the Spring Hill plant that builds the Lyric and the Vistic. And the XT5 is also going to build the next gen blazer, gas blazer. And then they are moving the gas Equinox from Mexico. to the Fairfax, Kansas assembly plant, which, and they also confirm that Fairfax is going to start building the new generation bolt in fourth quarter of this year.

So that is still on track for production this year. And then the gas Equinox is moving there in 2027. And the Blazer is also moving in 27. And then also in 2027. the Orion, Michigan assembly plant, which they had previously planned to use to build electric trucks, but...

You know, given that they are not selling very many of those, they don't really need to tool up another plant. So the Detroit Hamtramck plant will remain as the exclusive source for the electric Silverado and Sierra and Hummer and Escalade IQ. And Orion is going to build gas Silverados and Sierras and add more capacity for full-size SUVs like the Tahoe and Yukon and Suburban and Escalade.

It's a little shuffle up and deal to try to stay with the moment. So it's probably going to be somewhere around half a million units of production that is shifting from Mexico to U.S. assembly plants where they have capacity. And that goes in line with the announcement they made the previous week about putting $800 million into the Tonawanda, New York engine plant to build the next generation of small block V8s.

Those were originally planned to be built in Mexico and Canada. They're going to build those in Tonawanda now so that they can put them into more of those US built trucks and SUVs. Big changes. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's primarily because of tariffs. Yeah. So not really surprising. Yeah. No. All right. Oh.

Speaking of expensive cars. Oh. The Mustang GTD. Somebody. Got, I guess, one of the first customers took delivery of their Mustang GTD recently, and they posted the Monroney online. This thing. is insanely expensive. The MSRP for this Mustang, this is kind of loosely based on the Mustang GT3 race car, $318,760.

It kind of makes a $200,000 Corvette seem cheap, doesn't it? Wait, look at the destination. I know we're talking about the car, but look at the destination. Guys, guys, guys, look at the number. $5,500 destination delivery. Why did it need $5,500? It costs a lot of money to ship a car from near Toronto to anywhere in the U.S. That destination thing. The whole bit. That's just some...

Yeah. Well, in this case, you know, Mike, I'm assuming that they are shipping these, you know, one at a time in special enclosed carriers. These are not going on regular car carriers from the Multimatic factory. Right. I've had Ferraris delivered to me. It didn't cost Ferrari five. How much is this again? $5,000 to ship me a Ferrari in its own little car. It does look really, really, really cool. So $328,000 before you add any options to it.

And this one has an exposed carbon fiber roof for 10K. Yep. $1,500 for red brake calipers. It also has a $3,700 gas guzzler tax. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of thirsty. because it's so sporty i mean as it should be when you just read the monrony it's so funny the number of words that like there's so few real words like everything's abbreviated or fancy like they try to put every last little fancy thing in there acro acro povic yeah titanium exhaust acro povic titanium exhaust

it's like it's like a marvel movie we're just making up things now right you look down some of this you're like what the what now that was the one that got me akrapovic i don't even know what that means it's from the It's what Wolverine's made out of. Acropovic titanium. Wait, I'm looking it up. What's an acropovic exhaust? manufacture premium exhaust system for motorcycles and performance cars. It actually has a little funky thing over the sea.

like uh i don't know you know like different languages yeah yeah it's not english so it has a funky little thing what is akarpovic it's slovenian according to my googling wow so yeah That's where I was born. Hey. Oh, there you go. So you should. Why aren't you talking about this? It should be Utah. So they. They set a Nürburgring Nordschleife of time with this thing of six minutes and 52 seconds, which is the first American production car to ever lap the ring in under seven minutes.

That's quite the thing. This is something you should be proud about. They're preparing to do their ring runs with the ZR1X, and I suspect it's going to be quicker. It's going to be quicker. I love the fuel economy. And like when you look at fuel economy on this kind of stuff, you're like, why? If you're spending upwards of $320,000 on the car.

So it gets 10 cities, 17 highway for a 12 combined, which of course, yeah, what you're saying absolutely doesn't matter in the least. Still, you look at it, you're like, oh gosh, just to see it on the big bold paper, you know, on the Monroney. 42 point font, whatever it is. Wow. Yeah. All right. Enough of that nonsense. USA. Yeah. So recently there have been a couple of consumer surveys done.

about evs one was done by aaa and one was commissioned by bmw and they had um surprisingly different results in the aaa survey what they found, and AAA has been doing this survey for four years now. In 2022, 25% of respondents, American respondents, said that they are likely or very likely to buy an EV. And another 24% said, neither likely nor unlikely. So they're undecided. And then 51% said unlikely.

In 2025, the same question asked, only 16% said they were likely or very likely to buy an EV. 63% said unlikely or very unlikely. So the number, according to AAA, is getting considerably worse. On the other hand, BMW's survey had a little bit different results. Where's BMW's? Triple A's is way easier to read, which kind of feels on brand. BMW doesn't actually show you the charts. They just have a whole lot of text. But let's see.

Where is it here? So as the perception of EVs as a niche is fading, in 2025, 62% of Americans consider EV buyers first early adopters, dropping from, I think that's a typo, it should be 75%. in 2023 um where's the uh the big number here oh uh 55 of consumers expect to purchase an ev in the future compared to 16 from the aaa study both of them did about so triple a did 1128 people uh bmw did 1007 people so they both only a thousand people yeah and yeah

And so I'm curious, because these surveys, I'll get these sometimes. And then they'll ask you, like, random. I'll usually just, like, I'll get out of it by saying I'm a journalist.

but the triple a one i feel like they're like hey we're triple a and then the other one's like hey we're just random people are going to ask you some questions so i'm wondering how mythology is always like really weird especially a thousand i i really feel like you gotta let's get up to ten thousand yeah all right five thousand well i mean from from statistics you know what they've found is that once you get past about a thousand it doesn't make a whole lot of difference

I mean, there's a certain percentage of the overall population, but generally about a thousand is statistically significant. And beyond that, it tends to not change very much. But there were some other interesting details in the BMW survey. You know, 40% still cite cost as a main reason they haven't purchased one. 58% of Americans are open to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Now, if only there were any hydrogen fueling stations open to the public. Well, they're open, not the stations. Yeah. But one of the, let's see, where is it here? One of the interesting details was about the mileage expectations. Let's see. Ah, 75% of respondents said that 75 miles of daily range was sufficient. And 50 miles, 29% said 50 miles was sufficient.

i don't really people believe that i don't believe that i think that is but i don't think people think that yeah i mean it's absolutely true that that that love that amount of range is adequate for most people driving but people don't think where is it which who who had that one was that bmw one under evolving range expectations i don't think that that seems weird

I mean, if that is true, if people are really starting to recognize that, yeah, I can get by with less range, then if that's true, then it's actually a really good sign. that people are recognizing, oh yeah, I don't actually need that much range. I don't need 500 miles or 400 miles of range. And that means that they would be more willing to buy EVs.

that have less range, but are more affordable. This is my hold on 23. That seems I mean, I think that's an attitude I would love to think is correct, but. Who exactly did they talk to? It doesn't reflect what people's general sentiment seems to be. Yeah, I know. I feel like we need to do our own survey because most of these are very weird.

This was 1,007 adults, 18 years of age and older. And it's an online omnibus study conducted from May 7th to 9th, 2025. Okay. AAA stuff is also... i used to i love triple a like as a service but their stuff is usually a little weird like i remember i did a an article for for for car and driver and we were trying to figure out like the yearly cost of a vehicle and triple a was like yeah the yearly cost of maintenance on a on a on an ev is like three thousand dollars i was like well

Wow. Okay. And then I'm like, all right. So I put it in the article, but it just didn't make any sense. I'm like, where are they getting this number? Yeah. Where does that come from? I think, you know, I think the reality is probably somewhere in between these two studies. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it's quite as negative as AAA made it out to be. Do you think it's gotten better? What do you think?

I think there's a lot of political reasons. Yeah. Political reasons for some people being like, I'm not going to buy an EV for political reasons. That's it. Yeah. There's just. I don't know why. I think like forever. Some people are like, I'm not going to be.

it doesn't make any sense um and so yeah there's i mean there's no logic to that reasoning but that that but that's the reality is that like there are people who are like well i'm not ready because um and then there's people who are like well

The fire thing seems to have gone away. Fear and fear people ask me about fires. But I don't think there's been a very good... People aren't understanding that Naxx... uh opening you know everything moving the next means more charging so people don't quite it's you know and it's one of those things i'm trying to like deal with at sae i mean not deal with but help solve is just sort of putting information out there like this is what's really happening

This is how it's going to happen. Is it perfect? Nope. It's not perfect. But neither is the fact that we put gas in cars and gas has to be mined and transported and then put to a place, you know, all the things people kind of forget about. But yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons why the people are sort of anti-EV. I have family who are anti-EV for zero reasons other than.

then it's it's because it's a political it's only political it's literally a political reason so it was interesting when i bought the um wagoneer as people's reactions that knew there was an EV were either like, oh, that's so cool. You got an EV or they literally were like, why would you buy an EV? EVs are terrible. And this, like, it is a very polarizing thing. And I think I didn't realize it until people know what car I got. Like it was.

no one's just like oh okay cool that's nice whatever they're like amazing or how could you like what do you mean how could i like it was very weird it's it's very weird and then it's Yeah, it's, I think, and it's less, you know, if it becomes more mainstream, like in the Bay Area, like, you know, you got any, no one cares.

because like you know we have a pretty high you have so many right you have so many everyone just has one now which is like what'd you get oh i got an ev oh which one oh okay cool yeah like in my hometown it would be

Like, you know, I show up in Mionic 5 and there are people who are like, what is that? I'm like, it's my electric car. And I'm like, how? How were you able to get here? And I'm like, the magic. I'm like, what do you mean? There's a little wizard in the back. There's a little wizard in the back. his name is tom tom the wizard runs my ev he does a fabulous job he does so many nice things uh yeah Well, speaking of California and EVs, back during the first Trump administration, he tried to revoke.

California's EPA waiver, California, under the Clean Air Act, California is allowed to get waivers to set some of its own standards for pollution standards and emissions and things like that. And, you know, so California since the 1970s has had its own separate. set of emission standards from the federal standards that were tighter than federal standards. Although in the 2010s, late 2000s and 2010s, they've actually tried to align those between.

the federal standards and the California standards. But California also had a waiver to that allowed it to mandate EVs, you know, EV only sales by 2035. And during the first Trump administration, he tried the only new sales like you can still buy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can still buy used combustion engines. I got so many people yelling at me. I will be able to make you so many of you. And there's actually even with that, there's still a lot.

to sell plug-in hybrids you know it's only 20 so you could still sell plug-in hybrids um so anyway he tried to revoke it during the first administration And, you know, California sued and he tried to just do it by fiat, you know, just did an executive order saying I'm revoking this waiver. And, you know, so California sued. And by the time before it got to court, you know, the 2020 election had happened and Trump was out of office. And so.

The Biden administration dropped that and let California move forward. Now, what they've done is this time around, Congress actually passed a resolution repealing the California waivers. And Donald Trump signed it last week. So, you know, I'm sure this is still going to go to court and there's going to be battles over this for some time.

But interestingly, even though their California's waiver that allowed them to set, you know, to mandate EVs by 2035 is revoked, at least through 2030, Stellantis. still has to follow those mandates. Because last year, Carlos Tavares, when he was still CEO of Stellantis. declared that Stellantis was no longer going to pay any fines for noncompliance and they weren't going to buy Zev credits from companies like Tesla.

um and you know to do that you know they were going to make a bunch of changes to their product lineup you know introduce a bunch of evs um and do things like drop the hemi from the the ram you know which is you know now Now that Tavares is no longer CEO, some of those things are being reversed. But it looks like Stellantis is still going to have to sell a bunch of EVs because I think right now. The threshold is like 28% of sales have to be EVs. And by 2030, it's like 40-something percent.

this is 68 by 2030 the final year yeah you're right by the which is the last year the settlement agreement so i guess after 2030 they just do whatever they want yeah so stelantis you know was you know for more than a decade. If you ever look at the EPA Fuel Economy Trends Report that gets published every October.

It has the data for CAFE compliance and has all the numbers for corporate average fuel economy that each manufacturer gets. Stellantis has always been way down at the bottom of the list. You know, far and away the worst fuel economy of any manufacturer. And, you know, they were, you know, running afoul of the standards for California and the EV mandates. And so...

They did a settlement with California that said, okay, California said, okay, we're not going to make you pay the fines for past noncompliance, but you have to comply going forward through at least 2030. Part of that agreement was Stellantis agreed that they would be compliant with the ZEV mandates, regardless of what happens with federal regulations. So even though.

the uh even though the federal government has with has repealed that waiver stelantis still has to sell evs in california that's really i mean like They do have to honor to make sense. It wasn't, they were, it was for past infractions. So just, but how are they ever going to do that? They're like, not even. They'll just put a Hemi and everything. No, wait. Yeah. yeah they're gonna sell a lot of a lot of waggoner s's and apparently and charger daytonas they they

There's some new video they put out. And so I was like, I wonder what the comments are. And the comments are all like super hardcore Ram people. And they're like, the Hemi's back. And I was just like, oh, people, I don't think you, you know what? Brandy, you know what?

they got some good branding on that that engine they brought the hemi back i'm like i don't think you understand all right it's fine yeah everyone was very excited you're like um well actually oh you know what fine do you know what Just let it go. Let them have their moment. Let them have your moment. Yeah. Well, they still have, again, 2035 is, let me check my calendar. 10 years. 10 years away.

But they got to be selling 68% EVs in 2030. That's five years. Oh my gosh. It's not that long for them. Yeah. Well, I mean, for other places, I'm like, if it was like Hyundai, they're like, you got to be so. Yeah, we can do that. Maybe forward if they figured out what they're doing with stuff. probably gm um but at least likely of all of them yeah it feels like so that's this is like we're gonna put a hemi and everything you know you have to make an electric car we're gonna call her they just

Call the motor HEMI. That's it. Just one HEMI motor at each axle. Yes. Yes. Just tell it a HEMI. Put a big HEMI badge on the electric motor. Yeah. Put sound inside the car. Don't tell them. Just don't even tell them. When they go to the gas. We program the Fratronic exhaust so it actually sounds like a Hemi. Yeah, so it doesn't sound like whatever it's supposed to sound like now. A swarm of bees attacking a goat. I don't know. Tell us what you really think, Robbie.

A swarm of bees attacking a goat. A swarm of bees attacking a goat. Well, good luck, Stellantis. Good luck, Stellantis. Good luck, you. I like the Fiat 500e. I like that little car. I don't like how much it costs. It's too expensive for what it is. It's $5,000 too expensive. But if you can get one of those crazy lease deals like they were doing in Colorado, you can basically get it for free. Yeah, that's true.

It doesn't, yeah, I can't put, which is a great way for a company to make money. I mean, that's a solid strategy. Yeah, you could do it. I believe in you, Stellantis. I believe in you too. Come on, you can do it. Little engine that could.

Little Hemi that could. You can do it, sort of. Some of the other things that Trump tried to do in his first term was roll back the corporate average fuel economy standards. and the co2 emission standards but again you know during the first term they tried to do it through the normal rule making process which there's a whole process around that where you've got to do all these studies and publish reports and everything on what the cost

You can do the cost benefit analysis of making these rule changes. And, you know, they did a bad job of that and they never got it done and never, never got it through. um and so it was a it was a mess i remember writing about it like and you talk to the automakers like what are you doing the automakers like that's too much that's too much what's going on what's going on yeah you're making things happening what's happening what's happening making this work for us

So so they never got it changed. But now, as part of the big budget bill that is going on, one of the things that the House of Representatives put in there is they basically repealed. all of the emissions fuel economy and emission standards beyond model year 2023 so they're basically you know they're doing this through a legislative process instead of the rule making process

And so they're going to freeze CO2 emissions and fuel economy standards at 2023 levels. And if this passes, the manufacturers won't have to. update anything until 2032 so from everything from 20 model year 2024 to 2032 gone and uh you know if they if they do that you know they're gonna end up being even further behind the rest of the world well you can't sell those cars anywhere else that's the other crazy thing like i try to explain to people i'm like if you're building a car you want to like

especially if you want to sell other regions you kind of want to make sure everything sort of works everywhere that way you don't have to have so many you know different parts for different places i mean you're lucky if you if you're selling really well in the united states because it's a big market

But if you're selling everywhere else, you're like, okay, now we're on two different tracks. We have the track where we don't do anything. And we have the other track where we have to deal with the rest of the world and the rest of the world wants to be able to breathe those weirdos.

Won't they just do it the same for everybody? I mean, I think they just then say, well, we got to do it for everybody. Like, it'd be easier to do the one than try to have two. That would be, you know. Ask Atlantis about that. That would probably be the better solution. Would that make financial sense? It seems like that might make sense. Oh yeah. That would make financial sense. But.

who knows what they're going to do i mean it certainly seems like you know gm's intent on selling as many v8 trucks and suvs as they possibly can for the next several years yeah they're gonna pump out those things as much as probably because those things are just giant money machines they just make so much money yeah

And outside of a few automakers, most people can't figure out how to make EVs profitable because they sort of stop, start, stop, start, start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. It's like if you have a store in your town and it's new and it has posted hours, but then...

Sometimes instead of closing eight, they close at four, but then it's close at eight. Then maybe they close at four. Then sometimes they close at three. You're kind of, kind of not good to that store anymore. We had a new store and they had posted ours and I tried to go there three times. and they were not open when they were supposed to be i'm like guys i give you three shots to get there and you get you can't just keep no

Yeah. And when you're an automaker does that, like when, you know, we're doing EVs. No, we're not. We're doing EVs. Okay. Nope. We're going to raise the price. We're going to lower the price. If you're sort of erratic, like consumers are like, I don't know. I feel like a lot of automakers are just handing the Hyundai Motor Group, you know, long term sales. Yeah, no, absolutely. Which is sucks, really, because, you know.

More car companies means more, you know, what's that word? Competition. That's the word competition. Innovation. Innovation. All that fun stuff. All the big long words that are important. All the things that make your car better. I hope. Hopefully. You would hope. That's kind of the principle behind competition. That it is. And a free market. And then there was something else that.

came to my attention from that budget bill. And I talked about this. Actually, I should mention, I also have another podcast that I started doing recently for work for my company for telemetry called the Telemetry Transportation Daily. It's a two-minute... little hit and I pick something every day, talk about it for two minutes. Um, you know, so it's kind of like the opposite of this show.

That's what happens when you get rid of Nicole and Robbie. It's just two minutes. The other thing is, you know, this show. is completely unscripted. I mean, other than having a list of things that we're going to talk about, you know, for the telemetry transportation daily, that one, I actually have to write myself a script and say, this is what I'm going to say. And I read that script.

And that's how I did get do it in two minutes, because otherwise there's no way if I was just rambling off the top of my head like I do here, then, yeah, it would go on forever. Anyway, the other thing I talked about on today's episode.

was in the budget bill, they put in a prohibition on states doing any regulation of AI for 10 years. You know, the actual language is, you know. What? Yeah. Exactly. States, for 10 years from the date of enactment of this bill, you know, states are not allowed to regulate AI models, AI systems. or automated decision systems. Because we've all used AI and it's all perfect. Yeah, exactly.

um and so you know i've heard you know on a bunch of other shows you know people talking about the the effects of this you know for for ai but one thing that nobody's mentioned is you know an automated decision system and An autonomous vehicle? is nothing more than an automated decision. That's all it is. It's the sensor signals and is making decisions about when to accelerate and brake and steer. It's an automated decision system. So effectively what this will do is it will prohibit states.

from doing any regulation of AVs or AV performance for 10 years. Which is terrifying because you know who lives on these roads? You, me, kids, old people. Well, me and you know who else is not going to regulate this, at least for the at least for the next four years, federal government, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was barely doing its job.

No, they were not doing their job at all. They haven't done anything for a decade. Yeah, they just sort of hang out. I went to a department of transportation. National Transportation Safety Board thing once in D.C. I have not seen that much fire thrown at NHTSA, but it was just like ripping them apart.

I was like, wow, yeah, this is awesome. This is like one of those reality shows that I don't watch where people are just like talking, yelling at each other. Nitsa wasn't there, but I wish they'd had been. because everyone else was everyone else who was there was like reporters were like yep notebooks yep yeah um so so yeah so if this if this passes as is you know if this if this ai regulation ban passes um we're not going to have any regulation on ev on avs for a long time

which is unfortunate. All right. That is it for.

on that downer good news everyone look what the husband brought home yeah you got your phone i have my phone again yeah i'm so excited oh let's all text her come on let's all everybody send me a text right now i'm so happy to have a phone again her phone number is yeah i'll kill you right my phone number got got uh posted on gizmodo once

I worked at Gizmodo for a hot second and my friend worked there as well. And we would take, I don't know why we were texting each other. So he wrote an article about an iPhone thing that was about texting. And I guess the last text he had gotten was from me. And so he had forgotten to, to.

to blur out my phone number did you get a million junk things and suddenly i started getting text messages within like seconds of it going live like oh is this a real number i'm like oh my god so i had like call him i'm like can you please blur that he's like yeah yeah yeah yeah fortunately it was like blurred out within a few minutes but within that few minutes it was yeah that would be not good i was just like oh yikes anyway All right. On that note, we'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye.

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