EV Review: Every Electric Vehicle That Debuted In US Showrooms In 2023

EV Review: Every Electric Vehicle That Debuted In US Showrooms In 2023

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We’ll be talking about all the electric vehicles that went on sale in the US for the first time in 2023 and of course much much more I’m Dominic Yoni host of the YouTube channel Drive electric with Dominic joining us today is the spectacular Mr Tom alogy

Senior editor at inside EVs and host of the YouTube channel stateof charge we also have The Mastermind Mr Martin Lee from The Av News Daily podcast which is available on all the best podcast platforms and of course Kyle Connor joins us from the Majestic practically palatial Halls of autospec Studios where

He produces high voltage videos for a number of YouTube channels hey there everybody morning good to see you all good morning so we have we had a good 2023 yes I think so up and down but it’s been all right okay well I mean it’s almost over so if

It sucked we it’s almost time to put it all behind us you know and look have a fresh look at next year but uh so yeah I guess in this episode we want to look at all the electric vehicles that kind of debuted in this past year uh but before

We do that I want to talk about Kyle you’ve put out a couple videos this week that uh I think we should kind of just touch on not you know too deep in dep because you have the videos up there so so people can go and and watch and get the full story

There but um see it’s not so it’s not no that’s not what we have okay I’m sorry I’m just looking at my things here all right so I was thinking about Ming because you have some reviewing videos but before I mentioned that you uh it’s not on our

List because it was it debut a few years ago but the Audi sq8 rron just got a refresh and you had a go in it with some of the out of spec crew and it a looks like a great video uh so this is the spicy Tri motor version of the Q8 so

People should check that out but uh I just want to hear what your Topline thoughts are about it because I think it was like a bit surprising in some ways yeah we discussed it on the show as well um I’m trying to think few month few weeks ago something like that we did

Like an sq8 episode but it um it’s quite expensive and it’s not that fast but it’s really goodlooking and it handles really well with the trotor system so it’s really for a very small subset of people that only includes me because you have to want you know a big SUV that can

Also absolutely rip in the canyons and is tuned unbelievably well and it’s really cool so we won’t spend too much time on it we did a whole video on it uh the summary was basically like this really makes me want to use rron S for half the price or

Less sure uh you say it’s not very fast but doesn’t have like a 4.4 second 0 to 60 is that what it is yeah and it costs more than a model X plaid that has a th000 horsepower so you know it’s it’s not fast comparably to its competition it’s

Just not it’s not up there so I wonder if these will be uh for sale real cheap on the Ed Market absolutely I mean just look at the first gen rron these will do the same thing so I kind of usually don’t recommend leasing but it might make sense for whoever’s getting it

First lease it uh assuming it’s got a good residual and uh go from there I they’re going to be in very short supply very limited production for our Market it’s really just for like the Audi Enthusiast and um yeah we won’t spend too much time on it yeah well they

Should kind of make it tight I guess to keep um just to keep the values maybe the value of it up possibly for after sales I don’t know be good for owners at least yeah yeah because it sucks to buy a car like an expense spend 100 Grand or

Whatever on a car and then you know a couple years later it’s like worth 40 Grand it’s like that’s that’s a lot to yeah luxury car Shoppers have have been accustomed to it it was just the last few years were crazy where that didn’t happen right and thank you Kon for that

Super sticker um let’s see so more importantly though you also put out put out a couple videos featuring The rivan r1t so first you did a 70 mph Highway range test with two fresh trucks one with the large pack that that we’ve had for some time and one with the new Max

Pack that they say uh we just we just started getting recently so what kind of results did you get this and why did this end up with uh why did you end up making two videos about it well and we have more coming as well I have charging

Tests and some other things coming um basically yeah we had a Max pack rivan to test I asked them for the longest range rivan on the market they sent us one and it’s an r1t on 21inch Wheels with the Tano cover um and of course

Spec with the max pack we have so much content on this truck on the out of speec reviews channel that we’ve really covered it so in depth but the highlevel overview is um you know rivan promised a 400 mile truck years ago and they’ve now delivered a 400 plus mile EPA rated

Vehicle the only problem is they did it in the the like lamest way possible by uh doing a chemistry upgrade to the large battery pack so they went from the Samsung 50g to the 53g which is about a 6% energy density increase and they charge the customer $10,000 for roughly 11 kilowatt hour

Benefit and you know that’s and you you know they promised a 400 mile truck they delivered it and and it’s all good I’m that I’m not saying anything’s wrong here I’m just saying you kind of have to be you kind of really we got a 22 and a

Half mile difference at 70 mes hour you have to really want that 22 mile range difference about 7% we found in the real world um to to make up that difference and that’s just a tough sell and ultimately uh I had to do a lot of

Digging and I had to do a lot of uh testing and research because just before we did our uh 70 m per hour Highway range test rivan called and said we think there’s an issue with your truck are you going to post your results and they they never specifically said don’t

Post your results I want to make that super clear they were just like you know there’s an issue are you going to do it we can get you another one at some point next year and I’m just like well what’s wrong with our truck and um they they couldn’t tell me

What was wrong with it and I I actually held the video I think I said two days in one of our content I think I waited five days um for a response as to um you know what what was going on with it uh and and then you know throughout that

Process I made sure nothing was wrong with it so I ran it side by side against our large pack which again the same trucks just a chemistry change efficiencies were identical so we knew there was nothing driv drain or Arrow related to our vehicle and then I wanted

To make sure that we got the correct battery capacity out of it and I referenced other Max pack owners as well as the EPA documents digging deep and I just put up a 50-minute video yesterday digging through all of the documents Dominic helped me a ton with all of this

That was we were up late one night digging through all these things and um you know we we basically pulled 143.5 kilowatt hours out of that truck uh out of 149 kilowatt hour gross pack and I just wanted to make sure that we weren’t missing 3 four five kilowatt hours

Somewhere and uh turns out we actually beat the EPA results in terms of how much energy we got out of it so I was I’m fairly confident and I’m you know pretty much 100% confident that we got all the energy the battery was supposed to have and we matched the efficiency it

Was supposed to have therefore we posted the results of our truck what that issue might be I’m not sure I took it to the rivan service center they couldn’t find anything I did as much digging as I could and no engineer still has called me to tell me what the problem was with

The truck which makes me think there was no problem that at least would affect our results so we posted everything I have to say it doesn’t look great for rivan but that’s the story I mean it doesn’t look great for people who maybe thinking the max pack was a I don’t know

It just not it doesn’t look as like a great value in in that light you know if you just look at as just purely as the range difference I’m not sure if there’s other way of looking at it besides looking at you know the range difference that it gets you over the

Large pack right and we we should say our test is a Highway range test which is where I think range matters in a vehicle if you’re driving around the city maybe if unless you’re an Uber driver the the total range you can get in the city doesn’t it actually to me

Doesn’t matter at all but to many people doesn’t matter as much and one thing we found digging through the EPA documents was that the max pack is more efficient in the and I wish I still had it to do some more tests but I couldn’t figure out

What out of this whole package would make it more efficient at low speed in the EPA tests until we had the idea that maybe rivan is putting the silicon carbide inverter on the rear motor of the max pack because they have two versions of their permanent magnet motor

They have a silicon and a silicon carbide silicon carbide is much more efficient especially under light loads um and again when we’re doing the highway portion the rear Motors disconnected the whole time because it has an automatic clutch disconnect on the rear axle so the highway difference

In the EPA test and in R test showed the same efficiency but in the city it might do better again does it matter I don’t know that again it’s 10 grand but it means that while Towing maybe while in sport mode you will get some benefit

With the max pack that I’d like to quantify at some point but we’re talking small percents here right uh Jordan P chimes in with some good information you know Kyle in the large pack finished range test at McDonald’s I had enough range in the max pack to get me a few

More miles to Chili’s definitely worth it always looking for the Silver Lining that’s great that’s really the difference between the trucks If we’re honest that’s how much range we’re talking about that’s worth 10 grand if you ask me that’s definitely easily worth 10 grand so I mean I think it’s

Like it’s good that we don’t get that by the way over here so uh I’m sure it’s a fine establishment I think it’s a good thing uh that um that they reached out to you and they communicated with you which some car makers do and some car

Makers don’t um it’s a shame they didn’t provide you know more details cuz I imagine a lot of the communications people that work in the Auto industry might be giving out cars to some Outlets or some mainstream press or you know whoever and they there’s a problem we’ll

Get you new one and they’d be happy with the answer whereas some Communications people are trained up to a level that they could you know they could come back and say I don’t know oh oh the engineers spotted a a pressure drop in the glycol coolant and you know Kyle’s going to go

Great tell me more whereas most people would be like I don’t care just give me a new car so it would be nice to have that you know a deeper level communication with the carmakers especially if you put out a video or review or any of us ever say anything

Negative about something it’s always going to be founded in you know an honest belief an honest opinion evidence or data that was collected and if anyone at rivan you know watched a video and thought oh man you know it could be in a you know that’s a could be seen in a

Certain light I wish it was more complimentary or whatever like I wish people were saying nicer things about the max pack well you know come on the podcast you’re going to get a friendly reception here the audience will be a friendly reception anyone’s welcome on this show anytime

Or any of the communications people can kind of just do what they do and just give us all the details because we don’t lap this stuff up we want to know more yeah my guess is there I mean I think we proved there was no fault with

Our truck you know to to way more than we needed to to actually post the results ultimately at the end of the day we could have just said here’s the truck you gave us and we’re going to post the videos on this particular truck but I didn’t want to post something that

Wasn’t representative again I don’t want to dig I did a whole podcast yesterday it’s on the outpec reviews Channel with Francy for an hour sh every bits of information that Dominic and I found and other friends and I found and I don’t know Tom what’s your opinion you’re a

Rivan owner as well would you sp you know there is a benefit to the max pack you do get more range it’s just seems minimal yeah so the interesting thing is I’m on team Mickey D’s um I’ll take the shorter range get my McDouble in a Diet

Coke and I’m happy I don’t need to go to Chili’s um but the the food aside uh we always talk about the you get get get the right tool for the job for me here where I live in New Jersey drive up and down the East Coast there are Chargers

That I I’ve said this before on the show a 300 mile range EV like my lightning or or or the rivan that the r1t I own the r1s is more than enough than I ever need and my my test is for me personally is can it make my in-laws up in Vermont and

Both the rivan and my uh lightning can do that with the the large pack the rivan large pack r1s I have so for me it’s nuts to even consider 10 grand for an extra 20 25 minut even if it was 30 miles if it was like a $2,500 option or

A $3,000 option I might offer it I might think about it just because I’ll say Hey you know you never know that one time two years from now where I needed an extra 15 miles to get to that charger but I don’t live out in the midwest I’m

Not uh regularly driving 300 to 500 miles and I understand for those people if might be worth paying a ridiculous amount of money for an extra 25 miles you know you have to use the right tool for the right job and you know as far as

Kyle um uh wanting to make sure that he was doing the right thing by posting this you know he did his research he he SP I he called me we were talking to me I think he called brandan flesh he called Dominic he was just like uh I I

Before I post this I want to make sure I’m not missing something here like am I doing rivan a disservice by posting this I think everybody told them no you’ve you’ve fully um investigated this you’ve done more than what you need to do more than what other journalists to other

Journalists they’re out tweeting before the you’re even plugging in the car to recharge it look what just happened you know so to to to to Kyle’s you know um ethics uh I think he went over and above this and I think he kind of proved that

This is what you’re going to get with Max pack unless rivan comes back with something that we’re all missing and saying hey you know oh that problem we forgot to put 10 kilowatt hours in the battery you know like um you know there’s a big hole in your battery pack

The guy just forgot to put a whole bunch of sales in there but I mean obviously that’s not the case you know it’s it’s um I think it did you went above and beyond and you provided a great service here um you know what you do with your

Testing goes Way Beyond what like the established guy Motor Trend Road and track C all those guys you know you really provide a service doing these deep Dives and and and I knew you were serious when you were making the calls and saying am I missing something here

Or should I go with this so um great job on that and I you know I recommend every Super nerdy stuff but you’ll learn a lot about EVS listening to Kyle’s deep Dives when when he does stuff like this and it’s not for everybody you know everybody doesn’t want a 50 minute deep

Dive on battery chemistry and and EPA documents and everything let’s face it you know and um but but the people that do it’s the only place you could get it so um good good work on that it’s pretty interesting seeing it in those in those EPA documents you know

As spending like so much time looking closer it’s kind of fun to look at them with somebody else too because you know I looked at them and you can get lost in all these numbers and strange acronyms that you don’t really know but you know working with somebody else is kind of oh

Because I could maybe figure a little bit of something here then Kyle’s got some pieces over here and then all it all kind of comes together a bit it was kind of interesting to see that uh for one thing that we noticed that the the the battery because a lot of on these

EPA applications for certifications they always say how big the battery is right they give you the the the nominal voltage and then the the amp powers and you get you got to find those and multiply them and and get the actual you know capacity in in wat hours or in

Kilowatt hours and it looks like rivan actually puts out the gross pack capacity rather than it I because I’m pretty sure everybody else does the nominal you know capacity so that was just one of those little differences so that’s you know just kind of nerdy little things that it came

Across yeah yeah that was really fun and and you know like multiplying amp hour times nominal voltage isn’t the best way to get the most accurate result but it gets us close enough and we knew that was gross capacity because it was such a difference to what rivan was showing

They were getting out of their trucks and others and and we figured it out we got it sorted and uh yeah I feel feel pretty confident about it and I just want to post the charging test and then we’ll move on from Max pack I do at some

Point want to re get another Max pack and a large pack and do a a towing situation because that’s where you will if our Theory and this is just a theory a shot in the dark if that rear motor does have silicon carbide which talking to the rivian engineers when I went to

Normal to review the dual motor system is a possible configuration they didn’t tell me which ones will have it but they’re like in some trucks we’ll do dual silicon carbide and some will do it just in the front um and I’m like okay this kind of all

Makes sense you will get some benefit while either in sport mode or towing or around the city whenever that rear motor is engaged there there has to be something because the they can’t sandbag the EPA tests Kyle there has to be something there for some reason that it

Gets because the EPA doc show it gets a lot more range to be some situation I didn’t see your video on that there has to be some situation where performs well in the specific EPA test cycle right so uh the the r1s and the r1t have a different Gap

From large to Max pack and again we really should move on but Dominic and I actually found that they never tested an r1t 21in Max pack in their EPA testing and r1t is always slightly more efficient than r1s but they used the r1s range numbers for the r1t large pack

Sandbagging it by about 10 miles or so roughly and that makes the Gap to Max pack in r1t look artificially bigger than it actually is so you think you’re getting a almost 60 mile range difference when in reality it’s only about a 48 mile range difference if you

Were to run the same test truck for truck so the only way we can actually compare large and Max pack in terms of the EPA testing on 21inch Wheels is on r1s is the only way and there’s some other stuff too like they ran the two

Cycle on the 20-inch wheels it’s not a big deal it’s just an interesting thing that we found versus the five cycle on the other ones we’re talking maybe 1% difference doesn’t really matter but just little things and I I shared all of that so that’s in that video EPA needs

To standardize one test and have every vehicle do the same test it’s ridiculous that they could automakers can decide which test they want to run and they run one test on some of their vehicles and another test on their other vehicles so you’re like okay why was that like was

Does this specific vehicle perform better and under these conditions so they’re going to run that it’s it it’s it’s just it’s not transparent EPA just certify one freaking test to make all the vehicles do it I I don’t it’s it’s crazy that we don’t have that we need a

Good test here and then then we needed to send it to Europe for the Europeans I just spent a there was a post on thread yesterday this lady in Ireland had a had a w a VW ID3 it’s rated for 453 kilometers on the wtp and she had this

You know drive maybe 250 kilometers like a lot less distance than that it’s like and she couldn’t really make it she had to stop the charge like it was 5% but and it was just the difference is like just not acceptable really you know if

You’re thinking you if you put it in M mileage terms if you seeing can go 250 miles but you’re in reality you’re only doing 150 that’s a significant difference and you need to be able to plan for that so the thing is they’re just not comparable

We just need one that is every EV is run in this situation yes you get you will there are compromises by doing that but um I feel like we can mostly agree that range matters on the highway and so it should be more skewed towards Highway

And oh by the way Mr customer as a benefit if you drive in the city a lot you’ll get significantly more range yeah when if we heard ever heard of anyone getting a lot more range than EPA it happens very rarely it happens with the Germans sometimes BMW yeah tyon um but

Yeah it’s just yeah at least wltp is a bit more consistent of a test I agree with that right but like you said we should move on uh I just want to touch on this other thing that Kavon asked us earlier uh with a super question uh

Thoughts on the Audi Audi battery and charger recall so there’s two Audi recalls right now I guess uh one is a power outlet a power outlet may cause charging cable to overheat which doesn’t sound like it’s necessarily the cable’s problem but they do tell you not to use

The the portable cable on 110 I believe oh no yeah owners are advised not to use the 220 volt 240 volt compact portable charging cable and only use the 110 home charging cable on public charging station so yeah don’t use the big 220 portable charging cable only the 110 for

Now dealers will supply a new 220 volt 20 240 volt compact charging cable with an incorporated temperature sensor free of charge and you’ll get some letters about that uh in February sometime I’m not sure exactly how the uh that all works out and the the other one

I’m not really sure about the uh the battery recall I couldn’t really find anything it’s about 200 tyon I think affected you’ll hear from your dealer it’s not a huge deal sucks if you’re involved um but I don’t think I’m not sure anyone’s had any problems with that

It’s just a precautionary one it’s a it’s a small small amount of tyon tyon also rron had a sell the Ron RS or rron gt had a I thought it was fulls siize rron well fat rron that had the issue it might may have been but also the I know

The uh the Audi rron GT yeah that probably shares the tyon issue right it was like efficient sealant on the high voltage battery for that one yeah I mean I think nothing’s uncommon here cars break we see recalls they’ll be fixed Audi knows that there if there’s an

Issue there’s a recall it’ll get fixed at some point soon hopefully and uh you know you know you know happens I I it does though right it’s every machine will break one day and if it happens to you now if if yours is the food mix of the breaks on Christmas day

You’re going to be furious but um I hope no one’s de by sorry what was that Turner phrase sorry what yeah yeah well uh actually yeah Mach will break Bill is saying it’s a all Rons have a battery recall which means ours does and we’ll cover that

Story of course seems um interesting I wonder if they’re going to replace all the battery packs or put software limiting on there I think we just don’t know the fix yet and I don’t think uh you know I have heard of a number of rron cell failures in the battery pack

There was a short period of time where there were two of them at our local dealer that sat for like six months on like bricked air suspension you know they just look nasty like what’s going on they’re like waiting on new battery packs so um he’s got the I unfortunately

In our chat he shared it in our chat but I I we can’t copy and paste from our chat which is yeah I don’t know if we need to really do a deep dive into exactly what’s wrong with it you know but basically recall yeah yeah but I I

Think if it was super serious we’d have heard more about it like a batter recall it sounds like a big deal it’s we don’t hear a lot about it because it doesn’t have Tesla in the name yeah that’s also true that is also true if Tesla had a battery recall in

Two cars everyone would know it whoa I mean yeah and that’s and that’s not because there’s like a big conspiracy to get Tesla like some people think lightning rod there absolutely is Dominic no there absolutely is there are journalists I know them there are many journalists out there who hate Tesla and

Hate Elon with a passion andite negative story they possibly can I think but I mean there’s indry you get a you get a a a marker on your back I think the bigger thing though is that Tesla just gets a lot of clicks when you put Tesla in a

Title you’re you’re kind of guaranteed to have more clicks than if it was an Audi in the title like a lot more true and so online journalists they’re looking they want the clicks so they need Tesla problems do even better like type of Tesla recall Tesla fire Tesla

Whatever you know so so if you’re if you’re a news publishing and you get a Tesla problem you want to you want to get that out there because you’re GNA get a bunch of clicks and like you say and then and also some people have a you

Know huge dislike of Elon Musk and and also Tesla because of some of the procedures or perceived procedures or attitudes and they you know it seems like some people only cover one company like Tesla and they don’t they miss the whole the context of the rest of the

Auto Auto industry and so and so they make this all these stories about Tesla doing this or failing at this and that and just forgetting about you know all these other automakers have these same issues problems at the plant like the Tesla was sued for for a racism uh thing

Situation at the Freemont Factory other factories also have big uh HR problems say like fights deaths like like all kinds of things go on don’t hear about it you don’t hear about it uh I mean not to say that Tesla is you know in the

Right here or in the wrong there or not I’m just just putting that aside I’m just just saying I would also add having spent the last 25 years in traditional media I’ve never been I’m not an accredited journalist we have a a journalist Union over here and one of

The very few bits of the media that is unionized um you know for years as a you presenter or manager that was never an option for me but the journalists over here are unionized so um it’s very much a profession that you go and you study

And you do all the law bits um and Tesla very famously um don’t like to talk to them and so if you send a press inquiry to uh most organizations they have whole teams of people that are there to sooe journalists to pay them attention uh to give them statements because a joural

Needs to write the story give a right to reply um and then the the organization will come back with a often you know a pretty bland line but they can add that to their report and you know if you send an email to X or you try and get hold of

Uh a comment then you’re going to get a a turd Emoji sent back to you and honestly I know that puts journalists nose out of joint and so even if it’s never happened to you generally journalists don’t like Elon Musk and Tesla because he doesn’t like them and

So there is also I think an underlying if they’d never admit to it I believe it’s there that many journalists feel that some of them feel that they’re in a more privileged position than others that they sort of do an honorable profession and many of them do um but

When they have this company that is outspoken and says we don’t like journalists we’re not responding to you we’ll send you a turd Emoji if you ask for us uh you know for and some of them even put it in their report oh we we approach Twitter for comment and they

Sent this as if like they’re going to shame Twitter and like that’s a badge of honor for Elon Musk and so I think that also plays into it as well he doesn’t play their game and so they’re almost out to get him in a way um even if

They’re just standing up for their cohort and their profession so that genuinely that does exist people want to see Tesla and Elon a bloody nose whenever they can that that’s that that’s true that happens I think yeah I think it’s less likely they’re less likely to hold back you know yeah or

Just play the game like some journalists do play like play the game as it well I’m I don’t want to there’s nothing Sinister going on but there is a bit of a you know sort of they said this and they said that and you got a lovely report all written and everyone said

Their piece and and and you’ve ticked all the boxes and then Elon and tesler say well no although they did respond to Reuters over that big Reuters report pre- Christmas or whatever it was didn’t respond they didn’t respond to writers they didn’t like the report that

Came out so they went for them on social media and so it does it doesn’t happen very often but they did respond in that case with you know with their side as it were so there’s always two sides to every story right I it would have made a

Lot of sense it would have been they would have looked a lot better if they had have replied to Reuters when Reuters got in touch with them looking for answers you know often I think people in certain cases will publish the story regardless so why would Tesla respond to something

Like that that was pretty it was it was pretty one way you know and it was all sure based in truth and so yeah there was an owner who had a very new car and they had a fault and Tesla told them to go do one sucks if they’re them and and

That’s why the courts exist so if you really want to take honestly there’s been so if you on the Tesla forums and stuff like that if you get to court day with Tesla they settle if you’ve had a really bad experience with Tesla and you unfortunately have to go like we call it

Small CL claims caught here and it costs some money and you get all the way to court dat I’ve never known anyone apart apart from the big famous cases when Tesla actually go to court and follow it through they they always settle if you go and say my paint job was rubbish my

Battery was knackered they’ll settle you just got to go all the way and again sucks I’ve never had to do it I’d be I’d be furious if I did right well let’s look at some cars first this like say so we had a lot not a lot so next week

We’re going to cover all the cars that are coming in 2024 and there are a lot of cars coming in 2024 like I’m not even sure how we’re going to do this we need to talk about how we’re going to do this because there’s like 20 there’s over a

Couple dozen cars because like for years we’ve been saying 2025 is going to be this big year well a lot of the 2025 cars debut in 2024 so it feels like it’s like the the the uh the Leading Edge of a flood basically it’s kind of it’s the

Next couple years are going to be the the retail Auto landscape is is going to really change when you walk in the dealerships there’s going to be like product available that you know customers are going to be surprised if they haven’t been in the dealership

In a long time and then step into one there’s going to be a lot more electric product to choose from so anyway let’s kick it off with the BMW I5 the sedan just is just started arriving at dealers at the end of October my local dealer doesn’t have one yet it’s a smidge

Larger than the Tesla Model S starts at 668 MSRP for the e Drive 40 real Drive Kyle you drove it you got some Topline Impressions on the I4 the I5 oh the I5 sorry I blanked out for a second BMW I5 e Drive 40 and also

The M60 I’m not sure which you drove or both yeah I’ve driven both and driven both at length and um that is probably the best compromise of a luxury sedan but but also not being hugely expensive or um you know hugely big because of course the i7 is that’s almost Rolls-Royce

Level of quality it’s got this long hood and and it is a bit of compromise to drive that car because a it’s just super flashy the i7 and it’s huge and if you want you know really good comfort you go for that but I think the I5 it’s the

Business class sedan is how BMW’s always referred to the Five series and it’s true it’s like a great daily around town it’s the right size you can fit four adults in there comfortably um you know I thought everything about the car was was really good I thought they toned

Down The Styling from the crazy massive grills I actually don’t like it as much but I think a lot of people do like it more and uh you know the the quality was awesome the driver assistance was incredible one of the best driver assistance systems I’ve experienced uh

On the highway was in this car it’s uh handsfree and even does Lane changes with an eye um gesture that you can basically confirm yes do the lane change without hitting a turn signal that was cool has a slightly smaller battery pack than I’d like I’d like to get it into a

Range test I think it’s somewhere around 80 kwatt hours if I remember correctly but um yeah they they left out like these divots in the floor like a tyon where your feet can sit down so your knees aren’t in your face and yeah very very impressive car all around really

Enjoyed this one and really enjoyed the Bas one more than the M60 the M60 overheated really quickly and wasn’t actually like crazy sporty I mean it had great chassis Dynamics but the power just overheats like crazy when you drive it hard okay so so basically this has to eventually replace the the internal

Combustion Five series do you think it kind of does that well they they sell an identical car with multiple combustion engines right so they sell the 530 the 540 and now the top you know what used to be the 550 is now the M60 electric version and they also have a plug-in

Hybrid with DC fast charging and like 20 or 30 Kow hours so this BMW and they’ve done this for years they’re taking the one platform for all of the solutions except what we thought that meant was everything’s going to kind of suck and I haven’t driven the combustion ones but

At least the electric ones don’t suck they’re magically efficient they’re extremely quiet they seem pretty well sorted and even though it’s not a groundup electric chassis what the engineers keep telling me is they built it as an EV first and then converted it to gas whether or not that’s true I

Don’t know but it does seem to work in the real world right on say Tom Martin do you have any thoughts on the I5 I haven’t had a chance to spend any time with one so not really I’m going to defer to Kyle the only thing that I that

That makes me chuckle a little bit is years ago talking to one of the BMW product managers told me bluntly there will never be an i5 the Five series is our bread and butter and you will not get an electric five and I’m like ever

And he said ever so there it is I forget who you were but um you were wrong right that’s I’ve had a lot of conversations with the BMW Executives that sound like that for future product and I’m like okay see you in five years I love the look of the I4 I love

The look of the I5 the i7 is different beast and we’ll get to that in a moment love the styling of these vehicles very conventional very conventional look um efficiency not you know not the greatest as Kyle says 81 kwatt hour um back they pick out 205 KW um fast charging but I

Can’t remember the curve on the I4 or the I5 um but yeah they do everything really really decently yeah I I didn’t I was really hoping to see this on the lot I just went so I just went and did this video this week on the driver electric Dominic

Uh Channel I visited all the uh dealerships in the Tallahassee area like all all of them except for Mazda because Mazda doesn’t have any EVS here in in Florida um and yeah no there was no BMW I5 but what there was was the i7 so let’s talk about

That for a second so I walked into the showroom and I see the i7 for the first time and this thing is huge like I I saw pictures of it but then there’s a big difference between looking at pictures all day and then going out and seeing it

In person and this thing is 17.7 feet long I I looked it up so it’s it it’s about the same length as the 1977 Plymouth Fury that I learned to drive in basically it’s like a honk and honk and Beast and yeah it was like and super you know luxurious inside you looking

Peeking the windows and it’s pretty sweet so this is an e that shares a platform with an internal combustion version like the I5 but it doesn’t seem to suffer you know because of that too much I don’t think um it’s expensive like you’d expect but I don’t know you

Drove this as well Tom should Tom trade in his Bol TV for this yes so yeah um I tell you the people I know you talk about expensive but the people that are interested in bmw7 series this is this is right in their wheelhouse and now they have an option

You know do do you know do they want the combustion version do they want to go electric and I tell you a lot of people that play in um uh this say Arena as far as driving they don’t particularly do extraordinarily long road trips they fly uh when they’re

Going more than three or 400 or maybe 500 miles so you know that that makes it even more uh attractive in my opinion for them to get out of a uh a you know a top-of-the-line seven series and go for the electric automakers have been spending years trying to make their cars

Quieter smoother you know they spend millions in you know um reducing noise and vibrations in their combustion vehicles and and and the the EV just makes it so much easier so uh you know I just think the the i7 is just a better seven Series yeah it’s quick too it’s like 5.3

Seconds 0 60 and and you said talking about range the range is like 300 miles up unless you get like the the MCM bad one which is you know a bit lower 274 to 291 depending on which Wheels you have on it but yeah Char nicely up to 40%

State of charge and it’ll do road tripping really nicely oh yeah okay that looks good yeah I’ve taken one on a road trip thought it was great really good efficiency great handling okay Power I mean it’s a seven series it has to be great they nailed it it’s awesome right

Man I’d love to go on a road trip with that that’d be freaking awesome I need to get some CCS road tripping under my belt yeah you you really should it’s uh it’s interesting and um but but the i7 oh I love the i7 and you know what the

Move is is in like three or four years by like a off leas or used i7 m 70 which is the real expensive top spec one because you don’t give up much comfort but you gain a lot of performance and like cool options and colors and all

This stuff and they’re really not going to be much more in the used Market is my guess sweet because that’s $168,500 to begin with base price you can probably touch 200 if you spec one up but they’re they’re just gonna hit a wall so and you know seven series owners

Are used to that they don’t care right right I mean if you yeah I think if you can spend that much money on a on a car you don’t really worry about money too much and listen D you said you got to spend some time on road tripping CCS

Vehicles I’ve got it I know we’re we’re we’re running behind here but that’s okay I think people will hang out with us today talk about the end of year cars but um I I have a terrible story about CCS road tripping that um I have to

Share with you guys so my C my wife’s cousin bought a uh a C40 Volvo C40 loved it in the blue color um you know it’s great looking car I know Kyle hates the the the the sport backs but um she got the sportback version she didn’t need

The extra uh storage area and just loved how it looked and she pretty much loved it and it’s interesting she lived in Washington D she lives in Washington DC area she doesn’t have the opportunity to charge at home so for the last six months she’s been living with um not

Charging at home and dealing with it but it’s been a little bit of a hassle you know she she H’s been a couple times where it’s been inconvenient but she’s dealt with it she did her first road trip two weeks ago to uh down in North Carolina but like Southern North

Carolina you know so it was a decent I think it was 2 70 miles each way something like that and it was a disaster and uh I wish she would have reached out to me I might have been able to give her a few H hints but she didn’t

And she’s own the car for six months she’s like I can do this I’ve been going to electricy America EO stations she knows she knows how to use public charging it’s not like she just got it and did a road trip so she she and her and her fiance who’s pretty techsavvy

Were like yeah we could do this you know and it was such a disaster she took the car back and made the dealer take it back after six months of ownership and got a uh a gas uh C uh C xc40 and uh no one in the family like

Wanted to tell me that this has been going on um but um they just they just over Christmas I I spent time with her mom and everything and her mom’s like I gotta tell you a story she’s like she’s afraid to tell you that this is what happened Not Afraid embarrassed to tell

You this would happened but she doesn’t own the Eevee anymore she she went and traded it in for gas so to make a long story short every station she went to there were broken stations there was a long line of people she had to stop four times each way um which is ridiculous

For a a 200 70 mile one trip because the the the the station one of the times it like kept shutting off Midway so she had to stop at another station and then of course you know when unless you’re Kyle and I and a lot of people you don’t feel

A lot of people don’t feel comfortable going under 10 miles 10% battery state of charge on a road trip in an unfamiliar area you know and um so to make a long story short it was a disaster in one time when she had to go far between Chargers she decided she

Wanted to charge to 100% And she’s sitting in her car waiting and a woman like walks up to her it’s like yelling at her for charging Beyond 80% which you know we all know that you know is not proper etiquette but when when you’re having a very difficult road trip and

You and you feel like I don’t know if I could make the next one the efficiency was terrible it was cold she was probably driving fast you know the car was loaded up with stuff and um everything was conspiring against her you know and um and and she just she

Said when she came home her mom said she was nervous and upset for a week and she’s like my car can’t make me upset for a week after I drive it for a week you know and uh so so that there’s an example of infrastructure holding back

Um you know EV adoption and someone’s asking me did they use plug share they know all the apps I’ve already told them better route planner plug share there these aren’t people that just have no clue how to use n they’re they’re not maybe on our level but they’re better

Than 90% of the people that get anev they understand how to use apps and charge and all this stuff and you shouldn’t have to you shouldn’t have to be a genius to drive a car yeah exactly so um this this is where we’re at guys and this is what why the whole industry

Bowed their head to Tesla and said we need your help can I also add it’s because she doesn’t do this regularly and that’s not her fault but that’s that’s why because if any of us turn up to a fast charger and there’s a queue we immediately think okay well I’ve got

To do that work I can check my emails edit that video in some of our cases or I can I can make that podcast I’ve you know I know how this works I’ve got stuff to do I factored it into my journey or maybe it’s part of the story

Of the journey if she road trips infrequently and her muscle memory is road tripping every six months with a gas vehicle she absolutely expects to load up her vehicle get to her destination and it’s not that far I mean she’s right not to go deep into the

Volvo pack because when you super low on that will it’s scary on the highway but it’s not her fault like she she shouldn’t if you’re doing it week in week out you can cope with these things but over the holiday period it’s busy and that the reason why she suffered so

Much is because she wasn’t prepared for what the worst case scenario could be and by the sounds of it she had worse than worst case yeah it’s it’s I didn’t get all the details but every stop she made there was a problem One Stop she couldn’t charge because the the the

Charges didn’t work and and and you know and then to top it off she had like this woman yelling at her because she was charging to a high percent we all understand how talk about that for a second though because I feel like we so

Whenever I see like a bolt on a 350 kilowatt charger at like eight kilowatts right I roll up to a station I’m like ah look at this bolt being a bolt but I would never go up to someone and be like you you can’t charge here now if they

Were plugged in and collecting Idol fees and not charging I might if there’s no other stations you know like tap the window be like hey sorry I don’t know if you realized but you’re not actually charging we got a couple cars here waiting would you mind moving you know a

Few spots but if they’re accepting juice they have a right to charge we you know we can only educate through our online platforms it is of no use unless you strike up a conversation with them at the charger over something else to to like scream at someone for charging

Above 80% well from what I understand Kyle the so the person pulled next to them and and got out of their car and was leaning against the window like this and looking at them in their car for like 20 minutes you know before they said anything and she’s like I this is I

Can’t live like this I can’t have like be afraid when I’m refueling that someone’s going to attack me or you know or I’m not going to make what I’m going and that’s all understandable I mean it reminds me at the time and I’ve talked about this on the show where the BMW uh

I4 owner a woman in an i4 pulled up to an electric fire America station and it was all filled and there were two people waiting and and she was like in a panic she’s like I have to pick up my kids from school I don’t have enough to make

It and and she asked them would you let me charge in front of you I just need to charge and they’re like we’ve been waiting for 30 minutes we got somewhere to go too you know and she was like crying and like I I’m taking this back

This is it you know and that’s when I made my free EV charging sucks video because the people that were charging there were were were there for like an hour and 10 minutes there were ID fors they were inside Target shopping and the cars were at like 98% and nobody was in

A rush to go and you know and and you know and she’s like my dealer said I I could charge anywhere you know and uh it’s it’s it’s you you once you get out there and you’re using the infrastructure today you learn quickly it’s not like pumping gas you know and

Um it’s going to be a while before we get to that point I think we’re gonna get there but it’s going to be a while before we get there yeah I I should also add maybe we’ll talk about it in another episode but Alyssa’s sister Michaela who

Bought an id4 uh was also frustrated with the not able to charge it home but um and and was okay charging at work um until the work chargers went down and they never fixed them and they’re still not fixed and then she was relying on public infrastructure and then she would

Go on a road trip and just similar just like I’m not dealing with this anymore and just got a gas car and I was like I was like I’ll pay to upgrade your house so you can put a level two there it’s a rented house it was we got a $55,000

Estimate so she could put level two in and I I offered to pay I was like you know what if you want to keep your car like I talk to you into this thing I’ll put a level two in your house it’ll make an interesting video to show worst case

Anyway um and then ultimately she decided we’re not you know don’t want to put money into a rented house I’m just gonna get a subar Outback and moved on yeah so let’s talk about another car sh the plat it’s platform with an internal combustion version The Genesis

Gv70 so this is a premium midsize SUV that’s being built in Alabama it’s not being built on the egmp platform like a lot of the new Hyundai group uh Brands but it does share that powertrain so it has the 100 volt 77 kwatt hour battery charges like the Kia ev6 ionic five or

Six is great starts at 66450 which I kind of think is pretty good so K you’ve driven this is as well I guess so just Top Line impression really nice car surprisingly quick surprisingly well bit built surprisingly luxurious for the price surprisingly small battery which means low range but but amazing charging cures

Same battery out of ionic 5 ev6 Etc 240 kilowatts deep into the pack um and that makes up for a lot of the the small battery stuff You’ really get a lot of great driver assistance good sound system uh stealth styling no one knows it’s electric and um It’s a good-looking

Car I mean overall we were really impressed with this one especially after like it just showed up at the office and we’re like they made this thing electric like we didn’t even realize it’s like here we go and it was great and they really they did a nice

Job on this one so it’s got 235 miles of range which is seems kind of low but do it how I don’t know how you’ve did it seem to perform better than that or or no that feels about right 200 miles it felt rron levels felt like our rron uh

But charges way faster than our rron and what about the interior material I this sounds but for this price the at least in the pictures the materials look it looks really good like for 66 that’s like in Cadillac kind of territory it’s visually nice but all Genesis interior

Materials use this like waxy leather or waxy materials and cheaper buttons and stuff where it is not a BMW leather you know one of their nicer ones or a Mercedes nice top leather it’s it’s definitely a step down it’s it’s how someone would imagine it’s a luxury car

If they’ve never been in a luxury car before and for most people that’s more than enough that’s fair okay let’s keep moving along then uh there’s let’s talk about another SUV in similar oh and Tom and Martin feel free to jump in anytime with if you have thoughts on this

Because I know Kyle’s driven a lot of these things and a lot of us haven’t but uh but we still have thoughts and want to hear them uh another SUV in similar midsize vein that’s also built in Alabama is the Mercedes-Benz eqe SUV it’s available in four trims if you

Include the AMG version which just came out more recently uh so the because has the rear wheel drive eqe 350 plus a couple all-wheel drive trims starts at 779 for the 350 plus it goes all the way up to 10,300 for the AMG so the EPA range

Isn’t exactly superb here either uh with the rear drive trim getting 279 miles of range but uh is this another case of the car outperforming it’s official range though because I think outp Jordan took it on took the 500 formatic version of this that’s the all drrive version on a

70 M hour range trip and got 304 miles we’ve range tested a few different versions of eqe SUV I think maybe three different ones and um it’s one of those cars that it didn’t leave like a lasting impression to me it was like a nice I

Was like yeah cool so you know someone who had a a Mercedes GLE before and is getting this they’re going to love it it’s a very low pack voltage it’s like 320 volts nominal or something because they remov some modules out of the eqs battery and it’s like super low so it

Needs 500 amps to only charge at about 150 kilowatts so you do have to use 350 kilowatt stations to get 150 kilowatts so that’s like a knack a Nick against it but um they have unbelievable thermal management you can rip on this thing all you want won’t overheat and my colleague

Ryan who like randomly we did a end of year out of speec podcast that hasn’t gone up yet he said that this was his favorite car ever driven and I was like what it you know I thought it was great like it was an SUV it was fast you could

Like drift it around like it was okay you know whatever it’s not like fast in a straight line but I thought you know nice and then it went and I didn’t think about it after it got picked up and Ryan was like that eqe AMG SUV was the

Coolest car I’ve ever driven and I want one if you could have one car for the rest of your life that’s the one he would want I don’t fully understand it but he loved it um I I kind of understand it a little bit I’m not going

To say it’s my favorite EV but there’s I just have a sweet spot for that vehicle and I don’t know if I ever mentioned this on the podcast I almost bought one when I when I had my rivan r1s uh uh I guess my um reservation came up uh and

They said okay you’re ready to you know you can configure it or no you can take delivery in a month or so I had that second where I’m like okay before I get this is there anything else that I want to get I can cancel my reservation it’s

Refundable is there something else I would like and um I I remember driving the eqv and I’m like I really that was really good let me go check one out again so I went and checked it out again and I’m like I might get this I might I

Might not get the r1s and get this and um then honestly what the what what pushed me back into the r1s was I had ordered it back before the uh the federal tax credit change so I had the documentation that my order was in place so I still qualified for

The $7,500 federal tax credit on it and I wouldn’t on the eqe and I’m like they’re similarly priced but there’s the there’s that $7,500 that’s that’s uh dangling in front of me do I like the eqb SUV you know $7,500 more than the r1s and I said

No I don’t it’s kind of a push for me at this moment and I already owned the rivan so I’m like do I need another rivan and I like trying different vehicles but as you know I ended up with the r1s but there was a few days where I

Was I couldn’t make up my mind and so I I get um uh you know why um why Ryan feels that way I I love it I think it’s a great vehicle it’s the right size I liked how it drove um I I think it’s a good that would be my electric Mercedes

If you said take one electric Mercedes now that’s probably what I would take you know I should also add that Mercedes nails their software no one realizes actually like I have no issues with the look of the software everyone thinks it looks like Windows 2000 or whatever but

The integration for the EV driver is so so good they have unbelievably accurate route planning plugin charge and preconditioning and it will tell you at any given time how fast you can charge so people can learn oh it’s my battery’s cold it’s only going to get 80 kilowatts

And then as they drive in precondition boom now I can get 200 kilowatts and um yeah really really cool and actually I think it’s the perfect car for my mom and once they put KNX on this thing that’s what I’m going to recommend that she gets an eqe 350 whatever the big

Battery small motors luxury one and you know she’s always driven Mercedes she loves Mercedes it I think the eqe uh SUV looks better than any other Mercedes EQ model and it is and should be the default choice and it’s built here in America it’s pretty cool sorry I’m just typing the little

Notes to here in the background go um you can tell me unless it’s the thing that we don’t talk about but otherwise you can tell me know what that is but uh Hey so let’s talk about the Chevrolet Blazer EV and oh boy so first deliveries have begun on the

Blazer EV I think they actually started coming out a while ago they been like trickling out um so I just found one at my dealership uh last week but now unfortunately you cannot buy one because there is a stop sale GM’s put a stop sale on them after some very public fails in

Public um so it’s stranded you say public fails in public public I did I like it that’s good I did I didn’t even think about it that’s great that’s the best kind of public fails gez when they’re out there in the public like like that fail just there

Right no that’s funy that’s great so it’s stranded Uh Kevin Williams say he’s a inside EVS reporter he got stranded in a in a Blazer EV left him at a charger would basically bricked on him and then Edmonds had reported they had 23 different issues in over with his had

His long-term vehicle loner after but after two months they had like 23 different issues so that all went public and around the same time and GM was stop sale let’s get this software sorted out so so when these are misses are sorted in sales restart basically I think we’re

Looking at the Chevy version basically of the Cadillac lyric um it starts at 44 995 for the 1lt base trim which is a front wheeel drive and smaller battery and 247 miles of range so I don’t know the one LT doesn’t really sound super attractive to me but it’s not for sale

Yet anyway and same with the uh was it the SS performance trim that is a top spec and pretty attractive actually it’s a a lot more expensive at 65 $66,000 you might as well say but it has like the zero to 60 in four seconds

And still has 290 M miles 290 miles of range on 22inch Wheels which is kind of amazing uh like range kind of numbers for big wheels for that I think it’s got a like a 99 kilowatt hour battery I believe I don’t have that written down

Here but just off top my head I believe that’s what the number was um yeah I don’t know Chevy Blazer Martin I don’t we don’t you don’t really get these over there in England but uh I don’t know what do you when you look at it you have

What do you think I mean look this looks great I can’t wait for them to get the Altium cars out it’s no secret uh that when you guys have tested any of the Altium stuff really it’s not covered itself in glory just in terms of being predictable and knowing that a certain

State of charge a certain temperature when you plug in you can R you know reasonably expect a certain something from your car and so it’s definitely a work in progress and I think these cars do look great I can’t wait for more of them to you know to be on the roads I’m

I’m All forgiving uh teething problems and sure if a car Reviewer is going to get one and it bricks itself then like that’s the dream headline for many car reviewers I don’t I don’t know the chat who who it failed on but for many they’ll be like well you know I was

Write a certain story and I got another one so um maybe not the dream you know dream review I’m not saying that sound came out worse than it was but um you know like oh now I’ve got an angle because the car is completely dead and

They got to come put it on the back of a flatbed so that becomes a whole new thing right so I I feel it’s unfortunate and I would add as well here is the danger of talking a big game unless you can deliver cuz boy oh

Boy GM have talked a big game with EVS for a long time some of it’s it’s not their fault you know the whole Biden stuff with Mary you know you electrified the car industry or that whatever that quote was um which gets thrown up a lot

Uh but so that’s not all their fault but I’d say 99% of it they’ve promised us you know de development of great products and these might be great products but um there is sometimes something to be said for more of a quiet launch or a soft launch difficult when you’re keeping shareholders happy

Enormously difficult for these established car companies that are navigating their way over to EV um they’ve all talked a big game and most of them have delivered and there are some great products out there unfortunate when you have such a public fail as this I really want them to get

It sorted out as soon as possible because these cars need just to be built and in people’s hands and driveways because otherwise I think they look great now we don’t get them over here we might be getting some um some more GM stuff over here in Europe but um but for

Now no so I man it’s difficult isn’t it when you have such public Fails Like This yeah it was it was nice to see it in person though after all this time of hearing about it and waiting for it to come it’s like this one of the higher

Volume Vehicles you know or should be a higher volume vehicle for GM but I guess we’re gonna have to wait and see I don’t know Tom you what you have any Blazer EV thoughts well I’m gonna pull up a comment that Brad made that GM will hash

Out the ases and move on Growing Pains yeah I’m sure that’s the case Brad but how long is it going to take this isn’t just um happening you know ever since ultium vehicles started coming off Hummer ev even LC um there’s there’s been issues with these vehicles and and

GM’s been talking about ULM for so long how it was going to be you know their own dedicated uh B you know platform and how that they were leapfrogging even Ford because you know Ford was converting Vehicles we have this dedicated platform I’m sure it’s going

To but this isn’t a month or two now this is a year of of production Vehicles having problems and uh it’s crazy that they haven’t been able to sort this out yet Jim’s got to get these these vehicles de delivered in volume which they still haven’t been able to ramp up

Any kind of production volume on on on Alum Vehicles they have a lot of reservations and uh they they can’t ramp up production and now this disaster with the Blazer where they’re they’re giving vehicles to journalists and they’re dying on them that’s nuts that that these vehicles went out to be fair there

Is some glitch with GM vehicles and Abbe EA Hardware that is causing them to fault which I think is you know EA isn’t GM’s technical partner when it comes to providing charging but I still think it’s up to the GM team to make sure the vehicles are you know I’m trying to

Think like almost homologated but that’s not the right word but you know fit for our market conditions and including charging infrastructure yeah I mean Kyle you’ve been to let’s say electri America’s um what what do they call it their Excellence lab yeah but it’s it’s called like the

The something Excellence okay and and and these companies the companies send uh Electrify America Evo all the infrastructure companies their vehicles sometimes a year before customers are going to see those Vehicles I’ve been there where they’ve had to put canvases over the vehicles because they’re like

That car is not coming out for a year you can’t see it and uh so so you know I don’t I this should all be tested even GM I’m sure GM has ABB Chargers in their facilities too to to make sure that there’s no issues because you know it’s

Yeah the senator of EX MCO election’s been there also um it’s just it’s it’s inexcusable to me at this point in the game you know I know there was a lot of charging uh problems six seven eight nine years ago when EES were really new there was all kind of compatibility

Problems but from where we are now and for how long GM been working on ultium I I can’t I can’t say that that I’m going to give him a pass on that I really can’t it’s if they’re giving these vehicles out to to journalists and they’re showing up in showrooms that you

You can’t plug in any readily available charging equipment and have it mess up the vehicle right interoperability is something that you know automakers have a responsibility to work out with the infrastructure out there or create your own infrastructure and the automakers decided they didn’t want to do that

Right left it at Tesla to do their own thing and then played around threw money at Electrify America and EO and say build us this thing but and it just is not working out really well I have a Blazer scheduled for the 18th of January

I’m looking forward to it well I mean if there’s a stop sale you think they’re gonna let us borrow it especially knowing what we’re gonna do with it I don’t know that’s not happening get on the 18th well first of all they don’t like GM in invited us to

A bunch of stuff on like Hummer and Silverado and we had some of the top performing videos on those cars and then has gone silent for any new vehicle launch um because I think they know what we want to test we want to test all the stuff that doesn’t

Work well hopefully it would work but I mean if they have stuff that doesn’t work then I’m gonna of course plug it into an charger I’m going to find one you know I’m gonna go see if it bricks there there there’s your warning you got GM years yeah I I think and if

There was any chance of Kyle getting a vehicle now it’s it’s done they don’t from our dealer he can still borrow one he can still have like a viewer could could you know loan him one there’s all kinds of sure knowing that they’re gonna brick his car yeah take my car Kyle go

Brick it on if a viewer is listening just tune out for a moment and uh yeah I have some I have some sympathy here for the people who whose job it is to make sure this is right because of how much is on the how much is on the line and

How much is at stake and these these car companies that employ tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people and you know livelihoods are at risk and you’ve got the CEO next to presidents talking about how many hundreds of billions are being invested and it’s really hard to be The

Whistleblower sometimes to put your you know just to put your hand in in the air or your head above the parit and say we can’t sell this car you know it’s not ready I’ll tell a famous story um from over here you know back in the you know

A lot of our local radios all Consolidated it has over there for you as well but back in the day when local radio stations were local radio stations um I’m going back when I you know 20 years ago when I worked in it uh and they had one of these crazy stunts on

The breakfast show like you know who can set on a block of ice for longest um and they ordered dry ice not ice now that causes serious Burns and nobody along the chain of command because I gather people were just too scared to put the

Hand in the air and at no point did anybody have uh the the ability the guts the balls the you know the oh my goodness I need to pay my mortgage at the end of the month will I be fired to go someone’s made a mistake and of course they did it

And it and people got hurt and he went to court and all that kind of stuff and it I always think of that example because at any point in the chain somebody could go we can’t sell the Blazer we can’t sell the car like this because the software it’s going to take

Six months to fix I am not going to be the person if I’m paying my bills at the end of the month to say that I’ll maybe raise an issue here or do it in a certain way I I I have some sympathy when products aren’t ready whatever that

Product let alone an EV this product doesn’t sound like it’s ready and it’s a disaster for share prices for jobs for board members ultimately for CEOs when you got to go we need one more year like that’s a disaster it’s what should happen because you shouldn’t sell

Something to a customer and they’re hard earned and it’s not ready but I have sympathy for these these big companies because you know if you’re the one person in the meeting room there’s 20 people in a boardroom and you’re going we can’t sell this car like that doesn’t

Go down too well and you got to be a big old set of kahunas to do that now I think I’d like to say that I would do that but man big call yeah someone’s asked bride cook asked why isn’t the lyric doing this uh I don’t know the

Lyric has had some issues but had issues but I have also seen you know a lot of very happy lyric owners on on threads act right now I’ve come across this people are really happy but really enjoy their lyrics and it’s kind of nice to

See you know that PE I like seeing when people buy buy an EV and they really enjoy the experience of it so it’s been kind of nice to see that but you know the lyrics still has that like like the Blazer has that big charging port door

When it opens it still like it did on the on the first drive program it shutters as it opens up now I tested the Blazer one and it doesn’t do that but it’s really slow the Blazer has the slowest we did it a whole LA Auto Show

Tour and we sat there for five minutes just and then one time after like doing this a hundred times it went Wham closed oh really it was like you’re done get away from us yeah the question about why isn’t the lyric doing this I’ve rented lyrics and

Done some videos on them and I experienced software issues in the vehicle the one one time I was driving it it just kept giving me warnings that the front camera’s blocked so the uh the automatic cruise control is canceled there was no block I pulled over cleaned

It off I mean it was a beautiful clear day um you know and uh and and I had various glitches come up on the screen and I mentioned it to the guy I rented it on turo and I mentioned it to the person that that rented him and he goes

Oh yeah um I got to bring it in there’s a whole bunch of of glitches on the vehicle and then as far as charging I put out my videos on that um to see the charging curve where it’s kind of all over the place it it it’ll charge like

Hell for three or four minutes and then it drops down to like four kilowatts for a couple of minutes then it jumps back up and um you know so at my experience with lyrics and I’ve rented them twice to do range tests and uh charging is

I’ve always had some sort of an issue with with the vehicle so you know I I I don’t follow the lyric message boards and so forth but the one that I had definitely had issues Matthew says LC came up before altify was ready so I’m not sure they

Have altify yet like the blaz yeah I’m not sure what that means but we should move on to another vehicle because uh big story this year actually that we don’t really talk a whole lot about but it’s kind of a big story I think Fisker uh relaunched itself after you

Know it’s a whole long story so Henrik Fisker is a has been a auto designer for a long time he’s got some pretty you know big cars in his in his past in his in his uh portfolio and he launched a car company back in the uh I don’t know late

2000 late 2000s and he sold the Fisker Karma which was a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and yeah that all kind of fell apart in in many different ways and so you know he he was out of that company for a while and he restarted another company

To do a similar thing you know a very very designed strong electric vehicle company and you know and he’s got a different he’s us a different approaches he’s gone with Magna as a contract Builder and I think they had a lot to do with the develop development as well of

The vehicles and they’ve actually produced and sold and delivered their first vehicle this year first Vehicles they have a bunch of them out of course um so I you know there’s there’s knocks back and forth you know it’s a new company is a it’s a startup so they’re

Not going to get everything necessarily right but I just want to take a moment to to say that’s like quite an accomplishment and congratulations basically so I just did a podcast with Francy with um a new friend a longtime viewer who owns a Fisker ocean and was a

Longtime Tesla guy and has a rivan and other Eves and is very familiar and I thought it was interesting he’s also a Fisker investor uh but was very candid about his experience with the ocean and what he experienced was essentially the the quality of the

Product like when I drove it a year ago the the door shuts the seat materials the cabin The Styling is great you know the hard stuff on the vehicle the the physical Hardware is awesome but the software is kind of really not great at all it had interoperability issues with

Charging on major charging providers uh Hardware Delta units uh which are is mostly Evo as an example they had um you know major software glitches I’ve heard of uh like I think in my dad’s video my dad went to make a video on the out ofpc Dave Channel and the screen rotated

Which is this really cool center rotation thing but then it got stuck in the other orientation and it just seems like major software here and what’s interesting is I did my I have to go back and check but when I drove the Fisker ocean for the first time a year

Ago at CES so very early this year was a pre-production car I sat down with I thought a very high up software guy maybe even the head of software and he didn’t really know like half the things that I wanted to know about the user experience and route planning and plugin

Charge and so on and so forth um but um yeah I mean I think we all know Magna built some pretty hardcore stuff yeah they’ve sponsored us but like that regardless they build G wagons so there’s no concerns around the like they haven’t sponsored us but hey if they

Want to here well that would actually not be a bad idea maybe I’ll I’ll pitch them on that but um you know ultimately I think most of the Magna stuff is good here I still think there was some production constraints my just hearing rumors like

A few of them were coming down the line early on I’m like why aren’t you building more I don’t know if that was a magna or a supplier thing or if it was Fisker saying we I don’t know what’s going on we got to like sort the software But

Ultimately yeah it’s uh seems like a software need needs to wait a bit and what’s crazy is journalists got them originally and then they were like I think like Matt Farah had one returned it after a day and Edmonds had issues with theirs and um and so on and so

Forth and we asked for one of course they’re like you’re on the list you’ll get it you know like what you know I’m like I’m gonna come to California I just need the car for a couple days I want to do all the stuff and they’re like you’re

On the list and the list sounds like once the next major software update comes and it’s proven that it’s reliable I’m thinking then we’ll start to see them out for reviews right I’m seeing them around here I saw two of them on the roads recently so they must be delivering them

So they’re definitely a few in New Jersey yeah so it’s kind of a like the specs on this are kind of interesting so it has like 106 kilowatt hour battery which is you know that’s a chunky battery 360 miles of EPA range on 20inch tires and in the extreme trim that’s the

Top trim I believe and the 0 to 60 for that trim is also impressive at 3.7 seconds but you can expect it down to it starts at 37 4.99 for the front wheeel drive base sport trim that comes with a smaller battery 250 mil range so if you

Want all-wheel drive you need to start with the alra trim it starts at basically 50,000 and fisar sells direct to customers I need to check if they lease but they so there might be a wait time but you can also go under and buy invent they have inventory cars that you

Can buy they had at least like a dozen on them I they didn’t have any they do it by location so I put in my location and they didn’t have any in their inventory for Florida but I put in 902 2 and0 because it’s only California postal cold that I

Know what kind of TV shows you were watching back in the day I mean I didn’t even watch that show but it was like 90210 was everywhere right so yeah but they had like a dozen in the I guess that’s a Hollywood area you want to get a plastic surgery reconstruction of your

Face man I don’t know if I can do anything with this at this point yeah uh but anyway see so Fisker is uh out there interesting you mentioned the production so the production just sped up and then more recently it slowed down again it’s I’m not really sure there’s like

Inconsistency maybe maybe it’s a matter of getting their software worked out I’m not sure it’s it’s hard to say I don’t know exactly how that Magna uh relationship works with Fisker I don’t know if um Fisker pays Magna to like build in batches uh or if Magna builds

Them and then has to sell them to Fisker I imagine I I I know it’s on a shared line with some other vehicles that mag producing so they can slide in oceans uh when needed um and I was just in that factory last year actually it was really

Cool before they were building the ocean but I did see them driving around on test tracks and stuff and I couldn’t really talk about it but I thought it was pretty neat now I can they make the Jaguar iast there too right yeah they do

I did a whole video on on how they transport the ipace body and whites from their Factory to the other side of the facility on an electric truck it was so cool but so capacity straining for production they like cannot build that many of them and honestly I don’t even

Think Jaguar knows they make the ipce anymore so it’s probably not a bad idea that down in my video I did find the find one on on the lot at the Jaguar dealer or a couple actually great I forgot like they look great the gray one you found in Tallahassee looked awesome

With that light interior and it was debadged it didn’t really like say ipce anywhere anywhere I was like is this I had to look make sure there’s no uh exhaust pipe underneath you know just just cuz it’s been so long since I even i’ sat in in Chicago 2018 auto show or

Something like that you know it’s been a while so I wasn’t even sure if that is that the I looked for the badge no badge anyway they’re built so well they’re just they’re such a great oh the ey pce is great uh I hate to think if they go

Wrong what it costs to fix out of warranty that’s the thing there’s going to be no support for that vehicle out of warranty scary the first is fisa ocean sport was delivered just before Christmas uh in the UK a rightand dve which I’ve never fully understood fisker’s um strategy of everything

Everywhere you all get them and I just no just do California and then get a bit bigger and just do the US and North America however um a friend of mine close friend actually had an order in for a very long time since they launched actually and he ended up spending some

Holiday time just before Christmas in the US and finally enough in his hotel I think he was staying next door to the guy who runs the FIS karati website I think that’s where he was CU he saw the he saw his vehicle in the park the car

Park and we got chatting like oh my goodness I mean I read your website can we have a go and he yeah come out and he took it in uh took him out on it and came back and canceled his reservation he was deeply unimpressed the good thing

Is um the money arrived back instantly well I think within you know a week or so into his account there was no messing around or you know he like here’s your deposit back no problem so that’s a good sign that they’re um you know they’re acting ethically and things like that

When people cancel and they get their money back straight away but it he wasn’t impressed with yeah the overall finish of of of how the vehicle was integrated he was like well maybe maybe one day not yet interesting well we should move on to uh more cars we just

Got more um and we’re running a little bit low on time so another nice midsize sedan from Hyundai this year the ionic 6 on the GMP platform like the ionic 5 Base M MSRP 42450 that gets you the r drive with an awesome 360 miles of Range man if you’re

Looking for range I mean that seems like the spec that’s a lot of range um the top limited spec has a that’s the top yeah limited is 50,50 so only $8,000 spread there a little less and that’s available actually that’s available also in rear World Drive and dou drive the

Rear World Drive gets 300 305 miles in that’s in the top spec but it’s really it goes down a will drive 270 miles I got to drive this car last summer actually in Savannah Georgia and I really liked it it’s got a I didn’t get a good sense of the performance

Abilities I had people in my car so I took it kind of easy but I did think it had a nice Supple ride is very mature car I thought and just you know lovely to spend time in but Kyle you got to push a little bit harder what what what

Do you think of your Topline thoughts yeah fantastic car truly fantastic car The Styling is weird on first glance and at Second Glance also weird uh so it’s it’s a little bit a little bit funky I love the front end and I particularly love this specification

That I got to drive which is that green with the whsh interior uh really cool combination on that one you know whatever I see an ionic 6 on the road which I have to admit is not that often here in Colorado a lot more often in California I go you know what that’s

Interesting and different and I’m glad they did that and that’s different thing that I’m used to seeing on the road um I would personally get an ionic 5 give up some of the range and get the boxy shape and you know I love the ionic 5 it’s awesome but still Hyundai Kia and

Genesis are struggling massively in their software integration of everything you know I just reviewed the Kia ev9 I’m sure we’ll talk about that in a little bit but even on their latest and greatest Tech it’s just these segmented screens with weird looking things and nine menus deep like like I just love

The rivan approach or the Tesla approach or the Neo approach where you just get everything on a screen and I never hear people you know some people complain okay lack of buttons you can still have buttons and have a nice screen uh and so I feel like that’s what all of these

Vehicles need is just that last you know total you know software integration but the ionic 6 is the unique Choice it charges really well it doesn’t have quite the peak speed of a model 3 but it holds it longer so it’s technically a faster Road Tripper and I really want to

Get one of the long range ones in our spec the problem with the ionic six is the reason you go for the six over the five is for the range I think and and your efficiency of road tripping uh however you can only get the arrow Wheels on the base base base trim

Even mid trim and top trim come with the big wheels that were pictured in my thumbnail there and um yeah I I feel like if you get a top speec one and then buy a set of the arrow wheels off eBay you’re in for a a freaking awesome Road

Tripper yeah maybe that’s maybe that’s the car I should go on a long road trip with no you need a car to stop at Chargers as often as possible so you can experience yeah bolt but bolt doesn’t really push the Chargers you need something that can

Do at least 150 kilowatts yeah for I’m not sure why but for some reason I’m really hyped on Volkswagen ID fors right now like the 2024 I’m so excited for it uh you keep bringing it up oh man I don’t know what it is I need to try and

Just maybe get it out of my system maybe it’s not it’s not what you’re thinking it’s nice I’ve driven it it’s not it’s a nice update but it’s not worth any mental mind share right I mean the new software is a huge Improvement right yes I just enjoyed the driving feel of the

The original one that I you know re D rear World Drive dve yeah that’s iove the real drive and yeah I just enjoyed the feel of it the the ride just everything about it I I just kind of liked it and I liked the the kind of cheerful interior uh

Software issues of course I didn’t really I remember trying to figure out how to uh turn off the radio was you just swipe to the left yeah I mean but that should be a little more obvious I mean everyone everyone knows how to turn down the once once you spend although

I’ve heard people sometimes they’re like in the dark they’re like having ISS journalists in the dark okay that don’t live with the car okay that’s probably Fair I’ve never owned one but I’ve put I don’t know 50,000 miles on id4 or something stupidly crazy like that and I

Can just Boop I know all the shortcuts and it’s no problem but the new software like Tom mentioned whatever it is operating system four or five whatever they’re up to yeah yeah freaking epic so good it’s as fast as you can hit a button bam that screen is loaded up it’s

Still not as intuitive as rivan I think rivan almost sets The Benchmark for software they really nail it um but Tesla as well is is amazing um but it but they really you know did some homework and dialed that thing in cool Kia ev9 is a large three SUV that a lot

Of people have been waiting for also built on the egmp platform has a rear whe Drive entry trim called light which can be had with a smaller 76.1 Kow hour battery as well as the regular 99.8 Kow hour pack that’s in all the other trims

Uh so this gives it a better range than the other versions with 304 EPA miles uh in the light trim right rear wheel drive big battery 304 is your top mile range it starts at 56395 but with the bigger pack starting at just over 4,000 more at 60

6,695 that seems like the more likely starting place for most buyers the GT line is the top trim right now and it starts at 75395 five so aside from the price this thing kills the T the Kia teleride which it gets is it teleride it gets compared

With well tell you R is their combustion equivalent right but it gets comp it gets even not gets compared to it’s a similar size right three row yep yeah right and and I was watching the Edmond’s review of it that Clint Simone did and uh he was said he said it just

It killed the T ride every every possible way except for price because that thing starts at $ 35990 which explains why they sold like 100,000 of them last year but most of them were top speec ones and I actually in my review borrowed this from a dealer and they

Gave me the leaste numbers on it and for in Colorado three grand down 560 a month on a lease really not bad okay that’s for the ev9 you’re saying yeah and typically I don’t recommend leasing cars but you can actually roll in all the credits and then buy it out after the

Lease and you’re still ahead Okay so you have a video on review video of the ikia ev9 that just came out this morning like it wasn’t there last night I was like I was thinking you had the ev9 I was going through all the looking around where

Where did I see a ev9 on with Kyle somewhere but here it is now on the internet we’re looking at the frun right now it’s decent not a bad frunk and the rear wheel drive gets a double the size frunk oh okay so this is all-wheel drive

Yep this was a top spec every option went up just before the podcast went up this is gtline with the Rel pack and everything air suspension in the rear uh this was an $80,000 build 789 or something like that wow so that’s that’s getting up there in price that’s uh is

It though because when you compare it to three row r1s and when you compare it to model X it’s right in that wheelhouse and you get so much more in many ways with this one okay materials or equal kind of close materials I’m also thinking about the elcid gravity coming

That’s going to be is that certain 80 or is that 100 start starts at 80 7 starts at 80 so basically what what this car is is the maxed one starts where most of its competition starts and then goes up from there so you can get heated and

Cooled rear seats that power recline with this massive double sunroof thing with great driver assistance Meridian sound system all in that top spec one and I think we’re going to see a lot of existing Chevy Tahoe drivers um or even Mini van drivers where you know a lot of

People drive minivans who have all the money in the world there isn’t like an Uber premium minivan that you can go and buy and spend a lot of money on other than really a model X um and I think we’re going to see a lot of that high-end buyer base actually come here

And get fully specked uh ev9 and be thrilled with them I was very pleased overall with the car there was some material stuff yes uh ultimately they still have like a little plasticky buttons here and there and some stuff feels a little chinsy and that’s that

That is on very minimal trim pieces is but uh to be honest I think um you can also get this from the $60,000 range up and we took a look and there screenshots that will come up here soon of a very lightly optioned wind trim still had the

Glass roof still had nice material still had the cool headrests and you are getting so much vehicle for your money and it is finally a it’s larger than r1s it’s way more usable on the inside has way better um air conditioning in the back you know uh forced from the roof

Which is really nice especially for us we’re always thinking about the dogs how do we keep them cool in the summertime and um right yeah damn this this this is the new Benchmark in the three row SUV category it is so good I was so blown

Away with it that was just on initial glance right after this podcast as soon as we’re done the Fort Collins Kia dealer was kind enough because the Press cars haven’t really arrived unless you’re a North American Car of the Year journalist which is like you know whatever um but like you know

For for us lowly people who are just making YouTube content we can’t get access to the cars yet so the Kia dealer was cool enough they said um you know what we have another one they have a few that are available they’re selling at sticker and they’re like why don’t you

Just take one we’ll use it as our demo car but go do a range test charging test 10% Challenge and so I’m gonna do all that today and put you know five or six hundred miles on their car um that that really ultimately benefits the entire country worth of Market this is

Something that KIA typically would do but our dealer is just so awesome and cool to work with what’s the name of the dealer it’s Fort Collins Kia Fort Collins Kia big shout out thank you very much yes so this this thing looks pretty good oh Brandon was saying the rear reclining

Captain’s chairs look great I want to go on a road trip in the back seat someone was saying they were going to they wanted to spec the inner mind they wanted to spec a bench seat in the back but then they went to check one out in

Person and they fell in love with the captain’s chair totally the problem with the captain’s chairs is I think a lot of people yeah Captain’s chairs are probably going to be the most popular and the third row I actually fit in the third row it’s tight

But I fit unlike model X or model y this has a usable third row um but I actually prefer the bench seat because when you fold everything flat then you get a truly flat floor and in our case with the dogs you know they’re going to be like in and out that middle

Bit and you know the way we drive flying all over the back anyway Dumb and Dumber style so you know we got to keep them contained inside the car I’m just joking we we drive really slow with the dogs we would never do that to them Walter’s so huge you I don’t know

If you could pitch him back and forth because he fills up the actual whole space back there anyway but yeah yeah but no it really as soon as alysen I got in this thing to review it we drove it we like looked around it opened everything we’re like this is just it

This is the car right to me it looks like I I see this and as a musician I’m thinking oh this is a road trip this is like a touring vehicle you know this is like we want to go to play a gig in Texas this will fit the

Upright and a bunch of gear no problem with all those Heats folded down and without costing like $100,000 right it’s amazing the value that you get yes it’s a $78,000 Kia the one that we tested but when you compare it to what’s else is on the market I’ve

Never seen cooled second row seats in anything under $70,000 and it reclines power reclines and they fold flat unlike the model X6 seat which my biggest issue with the Plaid that we have in the driveway now my dad’s car that I’ve been borrowing I can’t fold the six seat down and they

Look great they’re fun to sit in but they don’t fold here you can fold the captain’s chairs and uh you know it just is such an expansive amount of room it’s really amazing let’s take a little side DeTour for a second Martin how’s the new car replacement coming uh done purchased

At AU Au this week got a bargain um it’s do we need a drum roll no it’s easily the cheapest version of this car uh on sale in this spec in the UK because I’ve been checking all the retail prices so um very happy to do that I like a little

Bit of value um I don’t mind if things go wrong uh because everything can be fixed and it’s all part of the story anyway uh and I’ll tell you it’s not a car that we have discussed on the podcast yet this week and I won’t hold things up now by talking about it

Because I haven’t gone to get it yet um but it’s uh it’s currently on charge so I got to go set the app up and um uh you know it’s up with a friend of mine who lives near where it was near the auction house so I’ll tell you more next week or

Maybe the week after because next week is all the cars coming in 2024 um no let’s start the show next week okay we’ll do that because I have it that’s your car coming in 2024 yeah this is M so well I might go get it next Friday

Yeah we can do the Handover live on air or something so I might go up and get it next Friday it’s from near Manchester which about uh 5 hours north of me on the south coast that’s up in the the Northwest so oh that’s nice drive yeah

Well I I’ll be getting the train up to drive home again and um ni it be uh yeah we we have public transport train rides train drives race great isn’t it um so uh um yeah looking forward to it really happy delighted to get a bargain um and

I’m trying to think of anything else cryptic I can say and one of the out of speec Team owns this car that is correct true that’s true there you go that is true so oh big shout out to EV KX who for great contct this year we we love those Norwegian

Croners think that’s how you say that let really appreciate it thank you so much um so we should move on real quick cybertruck Tesla cybertruck big year for Tesla because I mean they haven’t had a new product in some time and this is like a big high volume product um super

Controversial got some great new innovation happening Tesla push pushes Innovation I think harder than maybe anybody else really they’re For The Better or For Worse sometimes it’s for the worse you know sometimes they tell you that your car will drive itself by the end of the year and then it doesn’t

But sometimes they you know put in 48 volt you know systems and then reach uh just completely change the networking architecture from a canus to a whole different system drive by wire this you know without an actual physical this is not so the Cyber truck has drive by wire

Steering uh it’s not the first vehicle to have it but the the only one that had it before also had a physical steering column in case things went wrong it would still you know work and then they stopped making that I believe too as well so cyber TR is the only steer by

Wire thing available now I think except for maybe canoe which is not going out to it’s only been it’s not even really been delivered yet I think they yeah on on the verge of shipping some to some government contracts or something but anyway cyber trck Kyle you were there at

The uh the first Handover event and got to see the factory which we’re looking at now on our screen there’s Colton with you being very excited looking at the production line man that’s what a great experience I’m kind of jealous actually that was a blast really fun uh really

Cool to actually meet the engineers of the cyber truck and you know go through all of the you know cut I guess cut through the BS of all the speculation I hate speculation on you know future product and you know I hate it on both ends I hate the the the Tesla people

That are like this is going to end the game it’s the best thing to ever happen in the world and you know that that’s just so annoying and then on the other side I hate the people are like cybertruck will never work it’s a failure from the gate and like that’s

Also so annoying how about we just figure out what the heck this damn thing is and to be honest I haven’t driven it yet but I am going to Austin Texas in two days and uh we’ll see what happens we’ll see what happens but uh ultimately

I am very excited about the cybertruck I still think um I I have to give massive props to Tesla for literally going out on a limb and making something insane whether that’s insane in a great way or a terrible way is totally up to your perception of it but I love weird

Interesting Corky cars and this is Peak it is absolute Max weirdness and you know we don’t know how it charges it doesn’t look great on first analysis we don’t know but again we haven’t seen it on a 800 volt charger we’ve only seen it charging in Split pack on version two

Version three superchargers um but still that’s not looking that promising we have not seen any range or efficiency tests we have not seen any Towing tests and I’m not saying I’ll be able to do any of this in Austin I just hope at a minimum I can share a walk around full

Tour um a lot of the ear cybertruck owners are employees and my understanding is they’re running on non or I guess pre-released software that would alter our testing and so they won’t let us do a lot of these employees won’t let us do range charging blah blah blah because of pre-release software I

Had another guy tell me yeah you can come do whatever you want in my truck but you can’t say anything bad about it and I’m like what the heck do you care so you know these are the people that we’re kind of trying to cut through all

This BS so that we can find an owner who’s just like yeah go take it or here’s one for sale so many people have offered up reservations or vins to us and I really appreciate everyone reaching out but until you have one that’s either at the dealer that you’re

Going to transfer to us or one that’s in your possession that you can sell to us I’m not it’s there’s just so many I just need to go with whatever one comes in first and to be honest most of the early reviews have been of the trotor version

And they’re only delivering the dual motor version so we don’t actually know how that drives or how it performs or anything well this will might be for sale pretty soon KL yeah this was interesting this happened yesterday uh where Corolla um lost control and uh flung into the

Oncoming Lane where the Cyber truck happened to just be driving so there crawler on the it was a Fronton slight overlap Collision which which cars are kind of built to the handle and the cor handled it quite well absorbed all of that right up to the a pillar basically minor

Injury so old Corolla right like a like a 15year old Corolla or something like that I’m not sure I thought it was I thought it was like a 2008 or something like that or 200 looks like an 0809 generation it’s this one oops there you go yeah and then the back

Over a Reddit and I don’t know if that’s a better picture see the airbags have gone off in the uh in the Cyber truck as well so I did before we showed this we did check by the way a minor injury but we wouldn’t show something that we

Didn’t know so we checked all the new sources on this that we could see um and it said one minor injury so felt okay sharing the pictures in case you were worried by the way what kind of damage was to the Cyber truck I didn’t see that

Though not see a picture not seeing a picture of that can’t see oh really yeah yeah I don’t know but someone took a picture of the whole side of it it just looked like someone scraped the side of it okay it looked pretty good I mean it

Seems like the car didn’t hit it head on it looks like it hit it in the rear door I see so it it hit the front corner of the Cora but didn’t hit the front corner of the so it wasn’t really a head on it was more of a head to the

Head yeah the Cyber truck seemed like they were just cruising maybe they avoided a little bit I don’t know but it didn’t it seemed like most of the hit was on the side like it ripped all the body clanic off the the back the charge port stayed on so you can still charge

It that was the biggest question was like you’re gonna put the charge port there and someone’s gonna crash in it h it held on and the Aira ex point so this will this end up on at an auction somewhere oh damn uh well so this is a Tesla owned manufacturer vehicle my

Guess is they will keep it in house for parts or for something they probably don’t want this analis right going they probably don’t want this going to auction to be honest oh no if it did prob to buy it yeah yeah as far as I could tell the plates were

Texas manufacturer so I don’t think uh yeah I don’t think this is going to auction hopeful let it happened and hopefully everyone is okay with that I mean it’s not a huge amount of damage on the Cyber truck the B panel is pushed in you know that that’s definitely you know

Crumpled in oh yeah that’s where it looks like it took a big something and we won’t it’s since it’s not an owner’s car we probably won’t find out if it that’s fixable in way because you know repairability is you know something that people talk about when they talk about

Cyber truck well people talk about everything when they talk about cyber truck you know pedestrian safety and all you just has a lot of sharp edges so yeah anyway well and um the other thing we should mention is repairability on a brand new car is always

Annoying sure there will have to be a supply chain built up and a knowledge base and a training base around this where it might be repairable at some point in the future but I think we can know without a surprise that if you’re going to crash one of these going to be

A pain in the ass early on and you’re probably not going to find parts readily available so that’s not unbelievably unknown smidge 204 here with with the jokes are you sure that’s not a factory P Gap well the production ones looked pretty good to be honest yeah no no I

Just like you know traditionally you know course panel gaps right yeah yeah anyway nice one anyway should real quickly Lexus RZ um first one first all electric Lexus arrived this year Kyle you titled your visit your review I drive the electric Lexus RZ 450e for the first time is this a

Joke like kind of sums up your feelings about it so you know decent looking car decent materials inside I guess but it’s lit down by its charging experience in range is that basically the the high level view of this vehicle yeah charging range integration overall performance value for money

Software yeah terrible not hitting it out of the park on his first go round you expect more from Alexus basically too you would think the leader of electrified Vehicles hybrids plug-in hybrids would know how to build a quality battery electric vehicle they have enough money to do research to say

What’s important to have an electric car I even put up a video making it easy for everyone to learn what are the three things you need in every longrange electric car it’s route planning it’s plug-in charge and Battery preconditioning it doesn’t have any of that um so you know this thing and it’s

More money than than other comparable EVs and and you know there will be plenty of Lexus owners who buy this car and charge it home and drive to their retirement Golf Center community and back to their house and they’ll be pleased with it because you know that’s

That’s just it does the Lexus thing but if you’re going to use it as a car and compare it you know in the the automotive landscape this would be such a dumb purchasing decision right so doesn’t get your your seal of approval is you’re that’s what you’re saying really I think I’m reading

Between lines here okay yeah Will Tesla will a typical sorry Alexus buyer like Subaru buyers they’ll buy the brand and they’ll Overlook the the negatives will Lexus buyers buy this and be like well I know it’s not great but I’m a Lexus buyer you know will they

Will they buy it and like it that is the the epitome of the Lexus buyer okay they do zero research they go because they have a truly fantastic sales and service experience when you go to Alexis deal you have your sales guide that you’ve bought your last 15 Lexus rxs from and

Like you know them and they know that you’re going to come in you’re going to pay sticker they give you a coffee he’s got the gold chain on have a nice day Karen enjoy your Lexus rzu gone electric and they’re gonna charge at home and they’re goingon to be very happy with it

And uh that’s that’s just how it’ll be yeah Lexus RZ is the is the official car of The Villages that is what this car is I was gonna say I’ll have to take a trip down there and and check it out for myself but I actually don’t really

Want to it kind of kind of creeps me out down there but well the vill yeah but but actually like the the the if you sit in the Lexus RZ at like a show it’s actually kind of cool it’s like got coolish materials and like it’s not it’s

Not all bad it’s just in the context of the car it’s not good right so let’s that’s another another car in that same sort of vein you you did a a f a brand new car review this year and and you called it I drive the vinfast vf8 for

The first time and I really wish I didn’t so that’s the new car from a new manufacturer almost like a you could almost say that they’re a startup basically I mean they’ve been around for a few years making cars combustion cars in Vietnam on platform BMW platforms or or

Something but this is like their first you know getting it all together kind of being making it being an electric automaker this is their first and it’s a bit of a Miss we got to say vinfast vf8 uh designed by pinina so some people you know will enjoy The Styling I guess

And I think it’s better than what so I went to to Vietnam uh vinfast you know paid for us to go over and spent a wonderful week there it’s incredible country you know great people at the vinfast as well and you know wasn’t the

Car was not at all ready to even be prot type tested really and it doesn’t seem like it’s Advanced you know enough to really be on the retail market now but I don’t know we’ve heard you know you talk about it Tom do you have any thoughts on the

Vf8 real quick so I haven’t spent any time with any vinfast vehicle um so it’s hard for me to really comment on it I know pretty much most of the people that I’ve spoken with that have spent extended time with them have said that you know they just they’re not ready for

Prime time yet that said somebody just reached out to me yesterday and asked me if I wanted to drive the vf9 evidently there’s one here in New Jersey um that I can have access to if I want to so uh I might take him up on that sometime after

The new year but yeah I don’t have a lot to say about it because I haven’t spent time with it I didn’t go on the The Press drive that so many people did uh over in Vietnam I’ve never asked to borrow one here I haven’t had a lot of

Interest in it uh to be honest with you until until I get some feedback that it looks like these vehicles are are really rock solid and ready to be uh driven because everybody I’ve spoken with that have spent time in them have said like you know it’s interesting but um it

Seems like they’re giving us cars to drive before they’re really fully baked and uh I don’t really want to waste time with something that I’m gonna have the same opinion on so sure but maybe I’ll maybe I’ll check out this this uh the nine yeah I’m be curious to hear about

The vf9 to see if it’s much of a progression maybe you should see if you can get an eight just so you can compare it with the nine see what kind of you know Advan any like I don’t think they have like press laner cars here or anything

Like that so I don’t know where I’d get an eight I’ve never seen one on the road yet never not one don’t see them here yeah my friend works at a dealership in Ry North Carolina well actually carrye just south of Raleigh and they got I think a

Hundred vf8 dropped off at their new vinfast dealer I think owned by leth I could be wrong but one of the big dealer groups down there okay and uh so you can go down there and test drive on check them out that’s true that’s true they have their first it’s their first kind

Of retail outlet they’ve they’re going they say they’re going with a hybrid sales model which I don’t know how they’re gonna make that work because I don’t think that that I don’t think that works well poar does that no uh pstar has their own stores they don’t sell at

Dealerships right yeah no that is sold through technically like when I bought my pul star I dealt with McDonald Volvo employees that happen to be stationed at the pul Star Center that day H and then you know every all of my paperwork said McDonald Volvo okay they didn’t argue

With me on the price of anything but I also was buying a pollstar one that I pre-negotiated the deal on and everything so like I don’t I don’t know but Max bought his pollstar from a pollstar store they didn’t he couldn’t negotiate but it was all done through a

Dealer and like dealers have to buy the cars and hold them in inventory and they discount the ones that are test drive models yeah and it’s Le vinfast and Raleigh I don’t recommend going to buy one but go check one out I definitely check it out yeah and yeah if you do buy

One at least talk to Ben first okay right I can like to jump into the can of worms about their dealer model but maybe we can do that on a future episode when the vf9 comes out which should be not before too long uh but anyway let’s talk

About something else kind of nicer real quick built on the plat form architecture of luxury the rolls Roy Spectre is something else you got to drive this year and this is amazing I think you know I mean it’s $420,000 so it’s got to be nice right that’s the base price you’ll never find

One that cheap anyone you’ll ever find will have a five or six or seven in front of it right only 264 miles of range can you believe that prob enough for an entire year of driving now this thing is pretty amazing though it’s got so it’s it’s probably

The most powerful Rolls-Royce ever I’m not sure if I saw that claim it’s got 584 horsepower 664 pound feet of torque uh 0 to 60 is 4.4 seconds pretty sure it’s the quickest Rollo ever um I don’t know the well the coefficient of drag is definitely the

Best because I that’s something I took off of their site it’s the most aerodynamic shape Rolls-Royce has ever created at still that massive freaking honk and Grill on the front of this thing right well the little what do you call the little uh lady on the front

The spirit of ecstasy the hood ornament they they rest they restyle that so it would be more aerodynamic so that’s the that’s the the detail the amount of detail that r r will go get into in a vehicle yeah I’m not sure if we really need to say a

Whole lot about this because none of us are ever going to be able to afford it but it’s freaking sweet that rollsroyce is uh doing this and yep and Kyle you got to drive it first time testing charging efficiency Comfort this is basically a BMW platform though or is

It not uh no this is a Rolls-Royce platform with the BMW’s sort of Next Generation battery that’s only used in the Spectre so it is really Rolls-Royce stuff and um yeah I think I’m the only person to ever pull into a Electrify America station at z% in a spectre so

That was pretty fun and it was a fun timeo yeah 3′ in the morning wasn’t it or something like you were driving it through the night yeah we had it overnight in the middle of this event and I were like we are not sleeping we are only driving the Spectre for the

Entire night and so Francy was there and Brandon flash drove over from North Carolina and we’re all just cruising around in the Spectre doing efficiency testing charge testing uh you know the looks we were getting around in the middle of the night of Greenville South Carolina driving the Spectre it was so

Funny people were like what is up with these people my favorite story about that Spectre is uh one of the Rolls-Royce owner who wanted a DC fast charge at home so they had to just get all the electrical work done and put a was it 50 Kow charger just because he

Wanted to just why do you want it just because I do and I can afford it and I love that that’s Rolls-Royce owners for you why do you want a DC fast charge at home because I want to all right sir we’ll make it happen all right so that’s

Pretty much everything I think so um a couple shout outs to a couple super cars we’re not really sure what’s going on with them the Lotus EV uh is limited to 130 units worldwide the wikip Wikipedia says as of 2023 July cars have not yet been delivered but they should have been

Out there by now but we don’t know any evaa owners and we haven’t seen any Evas on social media so it’s hard to say I guess we could call the we could call Lotus and ask them but I didn’t have a chance to do that last night but it’s 2.3 million also

So yeah I’m sure not many of our our viewers are going to have one or have that on their list of possible cars it does have four Motors um 93 kilowatt hour battery under under 3 second 0 to 60 doesn’t it doesn’t seem like it has like

The the you know the crazy two second uh 0 to 60 but I’m sure it’s plenty I would love I like like the looks of this thing it looks like a proper Supercar wait Dominic did we did I’m sorry to interrupt your talk about the $2 million Lotus OFA did we mention

The Nissan Arya uh we did not was that it because I believe it was first deliveries happened at the end of last year oh okay someone had just commented they were really mad that we forgot the Arya oh no no we I definitely didn’t I man I went to I

Spent many hours yesterday mythically going looking through every stay on Focus you know from like 9 9:30 in the morning till like 2:00 in the morning except for a couple hours I was pretty much focused on looking up cars and and people think that we might just throw this show together Dom

Prepares this show meticulously and this week is you know an exceptional case and next week will be as well um just so we ruin it for him and then we do yeah this is perfectly produced and then we just talk crap but yeah so if you haven’t hit

The like button yet um and you haven’t supported the show then that’s always an option if you want to and if not that’s okay as well sure uh so right so moving on one last last one last car so this has been up for a while but the first

Delivery in the US which is kind of the the the metric I’m looking at here is the ready for this my favorite car ever the remac Nara you gotta say remat you’ve gotta say REM I did I do well I was like being American there for a second remat naara remat

Yeah I didn’t even put any information down about this car it’s like also 2.3 million they’re all sold out but how does it feel to be the first customer Dominic to take delivery of your DEA in the US are you enjoying I would have to

Ask uh what’s his name Tom no that was the um first okay let me pull up this but there have been a few delivered in the US because I was there for one of the deliveries and it was a black and green sort of special edition one was that the

One at the in Ohio uh I think that went to the Hamilton Collection I was at one in Pebble Beach where it was delivered and then they went out with mate and did Donuts in the parking lot which was great it’s great oh man remas is really

Like you know well mate is just great because they’ll do donuts in a in a multi-million dollar car because you know cars are for driving right they’re not Museum pieces and uh yeah I you know right I don’t know what Ste say about nvar you know but it’s it’s an amazing

Car it’s like the peak basically of uh EV electric vehicle Innovation I think in many respects also Lucid air Sapphire launched this year yes pretty cool pretty amazing performance I have not driven one but seems like almost it’s not quite Nea but almost n maybe beating Nea in certain

Ways levels for like an eighth of the price well there’s a video Yeah naara versus gra uh versus Lucid a sapphire that’d be cool yeah so if anybody out there happens to have a naara or matte if you’re watching you know we got some video ideas we like to

Put together anyway so I guess it’s we’re like this is probably our longest show ever um yeah we should probably put the end of the show uh but you know thanks for hanging up with us in 2023 and uh hang helping us get a a start on our new

Batteries included platform uh and yeah you you all been great really appreciate you’re watching and viewing and clicking and sharing and all that stuff we need to we need to really grow in 2024 to make this work and uh some challenges ahead but you know let’s let’s let’s do

This thing I think is what we’re going to do and we’ll start next next week in 2024 by looking at everything that’s coming yeah but if you have any comments or questions about this show please leave them below uh if you have or if

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