Electrek at IAA, Model 3 Highland in person, electric GTI and more
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And we are live everyone for a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert-Rios and as usual I'm joined by Seth Weintraub, actually in the same room. Yes, so we can hit each other now when we have disagreement. It's very useful. Why we're in the same room together is because we're live in Munich for IAA, which is arguably the biggest mobility show in Europe.

We've been having a fun time checking out all the new stuff and all the stuff also that we don't have access to see normally in North America. So a lot of the Chinese automakers, for example, are starting to make ways into the European markets. And we never have an opportunity to check them in North America. Now we had. So we're going to discuss that. We had the opportunity to see the Model 3 Highland in person. And I think I'm going to start the show with that because I think that's a lot what most people are here for. They want to see. Well, we already saw the Model 3 Highland.

Ireland, but our impression in person where we're all a bit different.

And we had a hard time getting some time with the Model 3 with Tesla. But they squeezed us in at one point that we were able to film a quick video that you can see right now on YouTube. It's not the light, like the Tesla, Tesla is not very used to car shows. They do them sometimes, but not that often. It's going to become more common for Tesla. They were at IFA. Yeah, IFA and IFA.

IAEA or EAA? Yeah, in Munich. And we hear that it might be in Detroit even. So it looks like they're picking up steam and doing that. So their booth at IAEA

it was kind of understated you can see a little bit in the background here they had the new model three they had a berlin made model y and they had a tesla logo in white and that's it uh so the light thing is not great right now for what you see on the screen in terms of seeing the actual front end you see that the headlights very well and that's that's obviously one of the biggest new features but the front face shot was one these wheels i

very much love these wheels because they retain the look of the open wheels, but with the black strip that goes all around the wheel, obviously a lot more aerodynamic. So I like that a lot. I think these are going to be a winner for the Model 3, the new Model 3. I'm sure they're going to make their way to the Model Y too eventually. You think they're going to sell them standalone so you can get... It wouldn't make so much sense. Like a lot of people, like if you're due for... I love that look. And then of course, aero. Yeah. Both.

good maybe people that wanted to upgrade from aerodynamic wheel to an open wheel but they still want to retain that efficiency that would be a great solution for them uh we took a quick look at the trunk uh which is apparently like i think two dozen 20 uh liters are bigger uh it's we couldn't test it with with filling up with stuff the seats perforated seats coming to model three that was very cool uh i sat down in it for like

I don't know, a minute. We filmed that video in four minutes, literally. So we didn't have much time to really assess the quality of the seats, but apparently they're a little bit improved. Those steering wheels, the biggest change, visually looks great. Now you have like the force touch buttons and everything. Obviously the biggest difference, no stock. That's a very controversial change.

People, if you're a fan of Tesla, you're going to get used to it. It looks pretty clear that it's going to be the future, like Model S and X and now this. We thought the Yoke was going to be the future and now that's $1,000. Yeah, but that might be Tesla trying to squeeze some gross margin out of the Model S and X. That's a big price drop. So it's very confusing right now. But Yoke or no Yoke, no stock is for sure the future for Tesla.

We saw these ambient lights that that's a cool new feature that was highlighted. And I think that's what's going to move with that. You could change them like that. You can see on the screen with any color you want. I'm sure that with future software updates, that's going to have other things like

smart features to interact with the ambient light, whether it's music or I don't know. What about safety features like you need to stop, red, turn signals, stuff like that? Yeah, that's another opportunity. I'm sure this is going to think of something. And obviously the rear screen in the backseat, you have now a screen that you can control the climate control with it. And you can also have some entertainment apps. We just open up YouTube here, you can see.

I think that's pretty cool, but personally, in terms of the entertainment, this is a pretty small screen in the middle of the seats. It is useful. It is usable. But yeah, what we enjoy in person of this is the...

Like I said, the lightning wasn't great to see the front end, but you're going to get some good pictures of that anyway. The wheel, I really enjoyed the wheels because it gives you both the open wheel look and it's more aerodynamic because of the black strip that goes all around it. I think that's a big improvement. Hopefully, it goes to other Tesla vehicles, while mostly the Model Y, I would assume, because Tesla generally don't share wheels between the 3 and Y and S and X.

but um yeah and maybe they can even sell them after market in the back seat no sorry the the trunk um we like I said we didn't have much time with the vehicle we were really quickly so I couldn't really assess how much bigger it is or how much bigger it feels but in in Matrix it's apparently like 20 liter more um yeah the the front seat

Again, no time with them. We sat in it for half a second, so I couldn't really assess how much more comfortable they are. But you have the perforated seat, which is obviously a big upgrade for the Model 3. And when you sit in that seat, now you can get a very good idea of the biggest change, which is the steering wheel. Just like Model S and X, no stock anymore. Everything goes to four-stitch buttons. Or ideally, if everything goes well, everything goes through autonomously because of...

Every input is an error for Tesla. Every driver input, everything should be completely autonomous. Okay, and also we have the dash. The dashboard itself has been changed. Still very much minimalistic, but minimalist, but with some upgrade, especially with the materials that now fit into the doors. And the materials basically feel exactly like the seats, at least for the white version. We haven't seen the black version.

and obviously the ambient light that you're seeing right now which are smart light that you can control. We think that Tesla would eventually release some kind of smart features that could match the music or things like that. That would be interesting and we know that Tesla likes to keep some things up their sleeve and release them through software updates. Finally, you have the screen in the back in the back seat which

You can use it for climate controls, you can use it for entertainment apps. You see Netflix, YouTube, Twitch and Disney+ was already on there. Tesla tutorials also.

I think the back screen is pretty good, especially for the controls. For the entertainment stuff, I think it's pretty small in the position center. I don't know how useful it is. For sure, if you have a high pad on your lap, it's going to be much easier than this. But it's still good to have. It's also not an option. It's going to be there anyway if you like the Model 3.

so yeah overall in person or impression of the update i was already a fan of the update i know it's not the biggest update it's a refresh it's still very much a model 3. it's now just a little bit more aggressive looking on the exterior i think in the interior the double down on the minimalist approach which works for me

The only thing that is questionable for me with this update is the stocks. But as we were talking when we were talking double audio earlier,

This is something I think that Tesla fans, Tesla potential buyers, current Tesla owners looking to upgrade. It's something that you're just going to have to deal with. You don't think they're going to backtrack on that at all? It would be weird for them to backtrack after doing the Model S and X, the flagship vehicle, going with that. Obviously, there was the yoke thing at the same time. So it was kind of forced down our throat with the...

We had the yoke to deal with, so we had some controversy about the yoke purely on the shape and with the lack of stock at the same time. Now they have definitely walked back on the yoke, but they seem to be doubling down on the no stock. Obviously, this is clear why Tesla is doing that. Tesla is doing that because they are highly confident about their self-driving approach. They think everything's going to be self-driving before you know it, which we are skeptical about that if you've been following our coverage of this. But

if it does happen, it does happen and Tesla did the right move. But if it still lags and the timeline still slips for years, you have a car that it's a suboptimal solution. Not for everyone. I know a lot of people are happy with it. A lot of like we're talking to motorcyclists which are used to like gear change in that way. That's not like a stock or anything like that. So there's

There's positive to it, but if I gauge the people's reaction, it seems like most people are not that happy with that change. Yep, I agree. But overall, a good update. I think a good update. And from what I'm hearing from the people at the show, it looks like there was a good reception. Online, it's different. Online, I see almost a 50-50 split. But...

I don't know. I think it's a mostly positive update. Yeah, I mean, bigger trunk, more aerodynamic, more range or more perceived range, cool stuff inside like the LED lighting. I think better overall look front and back. I think that the lights are cooler. So yeah, I'm on board. I like it. I think the stocks are probably going to be

something that we can live without eventually. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Yeah, another thing that was unveiled, well, sometimes they don't unveil on the sideline and then we see them for the first time at the show. That was the new ID GTI concept. Very much a concept. We took a look in person yesterday at the show. It was not the red one, the red vehicle that you see there.

I'm not that impressed by it, it looks very concept-y. I almost prefer those pictures here of that VW release.

it looks a little bit more advanced so it's a it's a gti that's all electric based on the id platform uh they say that it's based on the id not all two id2 all that's what they call it like they change the name of that car like half a dozen times used to be smaller yeah yeah it used to be the id life id2 and it's id all that's we know it as like the cheap the cheapest entry level uh

ID vehicles supposed to be around $25,000, $30,000. Well, inflation, everything changed when they announced that. I don't remember when they announced it exactly, but you can always expect a little bit more. And yeah, you're going to have a little bit more power, a little bit bigger, but not like different really, because I think it's shorter, but wider.

and higher but by inches like we're talking in one or two inches in each instance so it's not it's going to be very much a gti they call it um a subcompact yeah and in europe it's a b segment car yeah um so it's it's going to be small for sure like it's going to be short but it's going to be um you know it's going to be more of a sports car than a than a typical b segment car um

Well, obviously, it's something that we've been asking for for a long time. This is segments, the subcompact compact segments is an underserved segment right now in electrification, especially in North America. So one of the things we ask is like, is this thing coming to North America? Because obviously, the ID3 we were excited about never made it to the North American market.

This, they are like skating around the question. Like, it's like, well, it would be a great car for North America. Like, it's just they don't want to confirm it or anything. And in Europe, it's not coming until 2027, I think. Yeah, it's really far out. And this is kind of a theme here where we go to every booth and they're like, oh, 2028, 20... And we just want to grab them and just make this now. Like, you should have planned this way earlier. Yeah. Yeah.

But that's one of the good things about this show, though, because we were there. They do IA every two years. So two years ago when we came...

there was a lot higher percentage of gasoline-powered vehicles. It was still mostly electric show, but people were still trying to push some hybrids, some fully commercial internal combustion engine vehicles. This year it was like 99% all electric. Yeah, in fact, when we saw a gas engine, we're always like, oh, wow, there's one of those like steam things you

Yeah, it felt like it was a reversal of the days. Why did my Siri pop up right now? Like, that makes no sense. Sorry about that, guys. Siri's trying to chime in into the show. So yeah, it felt like when you go to a car show like 2013 and like every time you see an electric car, you're like, oh, wow, an electric car right there. And I was the other way around. Every time you see a gasoline car, it's like, oh, wow, there's still a gasoline car. Nothing still exists. It was pretty funny.

Oh, and a commenter says the original GTI didn't have a direct injection. The I stands for injection, which was the basic manifold ingestion. It's kind of like the Porsche high-canned turbo. We're not, we're using words correctly anymore, but I also think this is a great car. I like,

I can't believe that this is going to, we're going to have to wait like five years to get it though. It's unbelievable that it takes them this long to figure out that people are going to want this thing. Yeah. Especially since they have the ID tree since. Yeah. And they could just probably make it on that platform or make a, you know, ID three GTI or whatever. But it's probably pricing wise that the, they were basing this on the ID all that's going to be cheaper.

So it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to sit between the ID all and the ID to all, sorry. It's and the ID tree in terms of pricing thing and, and size really. Yeah. All right. Let's move on. Yeah. Let's move on to the next story. That's another concept that was unveiled at IAA. It's the BMW vision new class.

which is very much a concept. They are using it to showcase some of their latest electric technology. They do talk about the production version. Eventually, it's going to become an iModel from BMW. But what they unveiled this week was very much concept. However, there's another new class concept that they teased this week, an SUV version that looks a lot more

already, but it was all camouflage and everything. Also, no specs whatsoever. Did they release specs on this one, the Vision one? I don't think much, if any. Yeah, but even if they did, it's still very much concept because they don't expect acting for also like 2027 somehow. I think what I like about this most is that BMW isn't being precious with their beaver tooth front. They're kind of expanding that out. It's still the

the grill-ish thing but um it looks so much better than those big like beaver teeth front yeah yeah they've been like transitioning to that with the i7 being closer to this but still like you're right this is also an evolution like now they are higher up and longer um so yeah i mean some people love the beaver teeth some people love the new version the i7 i5 um but

To be honest, I'm not sure about this one because like now the grill almost melts into the headlights. Yeah, I mean, that's probably on purpose. And I don't know. I like this one. I think it looks a little bit like almost like a 70s car, like a 70s American car maybe.

Like one of those old Dodge Charger something or other a little bit. Yeah. But also a little bit like a Polestar 2. I don't know. Yeah, I can see that too. So I like this direction. The inside is obviously probably pretty far from what we'll end up seeing at the end. But you never know. I mean, this looks a little bit, kind of reminds me a little bit of ID4 inside a little bit. Maybe it's just the color. Yeah.

But yeah. Yeah. The color tone is something that was back in his use almost looked like the outside two tone of an ID buzz. Yep.

Well, yeah, it's another concept like this. Like this is the part that we like a little bit less about these shows. Like you see a lot of cars that they're like, oh, this is not really what's going to end up on the market. So it's not what we get most excited about. Like we were excited about seeing the Model 3 for the first time in person. And then we were also excited. We can talk a little bit about that. We haven't written an article on this because this happened literally like a few hours ago. But we got to see the Chinese automakers a little bit. Actually, I do have a post in there about that at the end. It's the Xpeng's expansion.

So Xpeng was at a decent presence here at IAA because they are announcing European expansion in, if you go down a little bit, in Germany, France, and the UK is also coming, I think, and Britain next year in 2024. And they had their lineup here at IAA, and we got to test out the G9. G9, I believe. Yeah. Something 9. It was an SUV. Yeah, the G9, I think it was.

And I didn't drive it, you drove it. What do you think about the driving experience? - So it actually felt pretty good, felt light. We didn't get to go on any, we were on the Autobahn for a little bit, but we didn't really get to push it too hard. - No, 120, no, we went over 120. - There was like one small spot where we didn't have a speed limit. And of course they have a driver with us. One thing that was kind of disconcerting is the hood. I don't know if you noticed this,

But the hood was like... When you told them, I like lift up the camera a little bit and try to get a look. And I could see a little bit what you were saying, but... It was just a little disconcerting that the hood, which is apparently aluminum, was like bobbling up and down a little bit with the wind, especially at the higher speeds.

uh you know obviously that's fixable you gotta reinforce that with steel or something i don't know um but the drive was pretty good like uh i don't know felt felt super solid i would say probably not like german car solid but

But it's not too far behind. That's the thing. And the price is like half the price. Yeah, it's half the price. And the interior, again, there's something a little bit off in terms of quality versus what you're used to. That's a good way to describe it. In the luxury segment in Europe and in the U.S.,

But it's not far enough to justify the price difference. You know what I'm saying? It's good enough that you're like, oh, okay, with the price difference, they have a place in the market. Because feature-wise, even though, like I said, it's

It's the quality-wise that I feel it's just a little bit off. Feature-wise, it was, like, stacked with everything. Even the voice assistant was, like, pretty good with the directional mics. Like, Micah was sitting to my left in the back, and he had a request with the voice assistant, and it fulfilled that request. Like, he wanted his – That was cool. He's a little princess, and he wanted his back massage in the back. And the driver that was a test driver –

uh asked for uh the change the mode uh to get to sport mode i think it was or sport mode but he also wanted to ventilate the seats yeah yeah but then the the voice assistant detected that's like oh you're not the driver because you're on the right side so no you're not uh you cannot change the sport more than set requested it in the driver's seat and it did change then then he requests then the driver the test driver requested um

like you said, the ventilated seat and that work. It was really impressive. And the back was super comfortable with adjustable seat leg support in the back. Like I said, it's just a tiny little bit huff in quality, but packed with features that work very well. Yep. And it was kind of cool. The interface, like we kind of give them some...

because they kind of took Tesla's UI, but they

They did it well, I guess. And I mean, what'd you think of the UI? I think the UI, like it used to be a lot closer to Tesla. I think, I think the, the, the got a little bit shame into like, okay, we'll, we'll move a little bit away from that. It's still very much Tesla inspired. And I mean, you look at the autopilot, uh, settings, it's exactly all the same settings, which makes sense to a degree. Like you would have similar setting for sure. But the UI, uh,

I think evolved a little bit different than Tesla. But I think feature-wise, it might be more packed than Tesla at this point. It's impressive. Yeah, and I have to wonder how much the U.S. tariffs are keeping these things out of the U.S. The only thing that keeps keeping these things out because I think there's a 27% tariff on Chinese cars. And obviously, they don't get the $7,500 tax credit

So these things would be quite expensive in the U.S. or probably relatively expensive. But here in Europe, they're competing quite well, I think. So it'll be interesting to see what happens here and see how the U.S. kind of adjusts to that. So we did not get a chance to drive the BYD. Yeah, we were going to do the seal. We were going to shut down. We were a little bit late for the test drive and the wind let us in.

I mean, we'll take this one. We were a bit late. We were running around all over the place here. But BYD came out also with a nice lineup this year at IA. They had, I think, like six different models. Some of them, it's just like the upgraded version of an existing model. But the Seal looked very nice. The Dolphin looked very nice. They have a similarly competitive lineup as Xpeng. Maybe not as luxurious as Xpeng, but certainly more

better pricing too. And, um, I mean, I would like to say better quality or better like consistency and quality, but we didn't have the chance to, to test out the car just yet. But what,

We came out, at least on my side, I can say that I came out of IAA with a lot more respect for the Chinese automakers. And they're going to be more on the radar, I think, going forward. Because, I mean, even Elon Musk said it, like he sees them, he sees the Chinese competitor as a bigger competitor than a lot of the legacy automakers. And I can see why. I can see, like, especially like with the history and with Xpeng being heavily inspired by Tesla, you know,

you would think like the copycats, it's like, oh, a poor copy normally. Like this time, it's like, oh, they took a lot of what's best about Tesla and then had it on top of it, a few cool things. So yeah, they better watch out, I think. Absolutely. And yeah,

So what other Chinese manufacturers were here that we... I mean, we saw this new one, Aventor, Avent-T-R, Avent-R, something like that, right next to the Lucid one. Oh, yeah, it was like Avatar or something. Yeah. AV Avatar. We didn't even know what it was. We wandered in and we couldn't get inside the cars, though, so it wasn't...

and we couldn't test drive them. - I don't even think they were cars. They were kind of just like designed. - Yeah, they might not have been working prototypes. We could see the steering wheel though, which was completely rip off of Tesla's old Model 3 steering wheel. Model 3 before the update with the scrolls was exactly the same wheel. But yeah, and it looked pretty, to me what it looked like, it looked like if Xpeng was a copy of Tesla, then this is a copy of Xpeng. So it felt like it's twice removed.

Tesla copy basically. But yeah, there were quite a few. Leap Motor was there. Yeah, the Chinese are coming. They're coming for that EV market in Europe. And I think that eventually... They're going to get some of it. Yeah. Okay, we can go back maybe to the Tesla news with a few more Tesla items I want to discuss. The Yoke Stair Reveal that we discussed a little bit earlier...

lack of stock, but the actual yoke shape that was that is available on Model S and X is now a thousand dollars, which is interesting because it used to be standard. It used to be the only option in the Model S and X when they refreshed first launch, which was surprising to us because like when it happened, we thought that Tesla wouldn't do that without having a steer by wire system and sometimes a progressive turning steering system.

But no, like it's a regular, like I don't know what the ratio is, like 14 or 1.01 is the ratio, which is a regular staying room. So it makes it awkward in those like tight parking situation. Though the part of the car is supposed to park itself. But you know what I mean? If you're in a parking lot and you have to do some quick turning, it's not an ideal situation. But there's the luncheon anyway.

Then they started backtracking a little bit with introducing a round steering wheel for the Model S and X, which became optional. So you can either get the round one or the yoke one for the same price. Then they switched it up where it was $250 option to get the yoke wheel and the round wheel became standard. And now they switched it again. Well, they've not switched it, but increased the difference with $1,000 for the yoke.

So there's different ways you can approach this. You can see it as them backing away from the Yoke. But with the timing of the big price drop that we discussed last week, with Tesla just slashing the price of the Model S and X by like $30,000, it might be more about Tesla trying to capitalize on

I hear it's pretty popular. I don't have the take rate on it, but apparently a lot of people want that yoke when they get an ML and SNX. So maybe Tesla is trying to capitalize on that and getting some of that gross margin back from the big price drop by getting $750 more out of the yoke. Maybe that's how they should have come out with this in the beginning, is a yoke with $1,000 upgrade. Normally, that's what you do with a new feature, like with a premium feature or something like that.

But I think that Tesla was trying to see, can we just force that thing down their throat, that yoke? And then there was a strong pushback. So they were like, all right, we will let you get a round one. And then as they get a round one, maybe they start getting the data. They're like, all right, actually, the most people want the yoke.

Uh, and then I like, let's make some money off of that. And how much is the upgrade to a steering wheel? If you bought a yoke, isn't that something? Uh, I know that when it launched, it's in the article when it launched, it was like $700. Yeah. $700 when it launched. I don't know if it's still the case. I haven't checked the pricing, but, uh,

Yeah, I mean, it's not cheap, especially now that it's standard. I wonder if they're going to ever launch a Yoke for the Model 3 or Model Y. I would assume so at some point. But, I mean, the argument is not great right now because the argument that Elon had is, oh, it's better visibility for that instrument cluster that you have on the Model S, which you don't have on Model 3 and Y. So I think that...

They should wait for the drive by... Steer by wire system where they can do a progressive turning system in the steering wheel. I think that would make sense. And then what's the latest on the Cybertruck? Is that getting a yoke or... I mean, the rumor is that it is going to be steer by wire. So if it is...

It should at least be an option, I think. But we've seen several different wheels on the Cybertruck prototypes. More recently, we've seen the round ones. We've seen yoke ones. And then we've seen like halfway yoke ones where you still have a top part, but it is square. I don't know if you can call that a yoke, though. Maybe there'll be more than one option. Maybe they'll do that, what we suggested as the standard steering wheel, and then the yoke as an upgrade or something. Mm-hmm.

All right. The last piece of news about Tesla I want to discuss. It's a light one. It's just a fun one to finish with. It's kind of a dumb news, but I think it's funny. So let's discuss it real quick. So Tesla and Weibo announced, Weibo is like a Twitter for China, the Chinese version of Twitter. They announced that they have a partnership with McDonald's.

where they are producing a cyber spoon, cyber truck inspired spoon for the McFlurry. So if you ever had a McFlurry, it comes with a spoon in it because they use a spoon to move around the crunchy Oreo parts or whatever kind of McFlurries you're getting into the ice cream, which...

If you're with me on that, it sounds pretty dumb what I just said. So dumb that Elon, so when the news made it from Weibo to X, Elon commented on X calling it fake news. What's A-F-A-I-K? As far as I know. Okay. Well, as far as I know, he was wrong because it

It is on the official Weibo account, it's on the official McDonald's account and Chinese test owners are already reporting placing orders. So this looks like a very real thing but it's so dumb that even Elon was like this is fake news.

And it's not. It's not fake news. And as soon as he realized that it was not fake news, he turned around real quick. He was like, oh, actually, I'll get one of those. So, I mean, I'm taking this pretty lightly, to be honest. Some people are saying like, oh, this is Elon being disconnected with Tesla. They didn't even know that this was real and it was real.

I don't necessarily expect the CEO of a company being up to date with every single little promotional tactic that the company has. Especially if he's doing like three to five companies. Yeah, certainly that doesn't help. So that has been happening for a long time. I don't think that has proved that anything has changed. Not to say that not any...

that anything hasn't changed because it could have, but I don't think that's proof of it. I just thought he was not up to date with that. And Tesla China has been doing their own thing for a while now in terms of marketing, like in terms of like special accessories. I mean, I think this one is the dumbest yet by far, like a $4 spoon for McFlurry's come with a spoon already. So like,

It's basically the price that you're doubling the price of the McFlurry with a spoon. But anyway, the Tesla China launched like the Cyber Vault, if you remember, the kind of case for a wall connector that looks like a Cybertruck. The microphone for in-car karaoke, that's also like a Tesla China only product. So they've been known to launch their own products like that.

All right, let's move on from Tesla news to a few non-Tesla news items and then we can jump into the comment section. I know we lost quite a few of you guys because of the beginning of the video. We apologize, like we are using this traveling setup right now. So we screwed up the video at the beginning. We're going to see what we can do about the non-live version if we can crop that out.

apologies again uh but yeah if you guys have questions for us any subjects you want us to discuss you can put in the comment section right now when we get to them in like five minutes or so after we get through these uh few news items starting with the kia ev5 uh we have more video of the more images of the interior and exterior of the of the car that is launching in china only for now

I'm going to play the video, but it's going to be muted. So hopefully I'm not playing sound here. Yeah. It's a good looking car. We saw the EV9 today. Mm-hmm.

that's a big car uh this is like a shrunk up version of it yeah this is like the mini version yeah a non-third row version of it i mean it could be a competitor in like the crossover segment too like uh competing with the mackey with the tesla y when it comes to those market too because right now it's china only and the good thing about uh what we learned from it from the china launch is that it's going to be quite cheap couldn't even believe the pricing we're going to have to go i'm sorry

to the articles to see it because I don't remember it that hard but oh let's see I think at the bottom of it there was the pricing okay yeah 36 000 no no that's the model why 22 the so 160 000 yen which is about 22 000 that's crazy yeah that's insanely low but so that's the Chinese price in China

Right now, Kia is only talking about producing it in China, but they're talking about exporting it to other markets. Again, don't expect it to make it to North America. I would assume that eventually it's going to make it to North America through other means of production. Hopefully, Made in Kia, where's their plant? Yeah, I don't know where it is. I mean, Hyundai has a plant in the south somewhere. Yeah, and they do share it, I would assume. They produce on Kia malls.

Yeah, and they're going to be EGMP vehicles. So a new electric vehicle in the very popular small SUV slash crossover segment, whatever you want to call it. It looks just like a shrunk up EV9. Yeah, it's a good looking vehicle. All right. Moving on, we have an updated 2024 VW ID.4.

which supposedly has greater range, though they haven't released the range yet. It's going to be enabled through a new 82 kWh usable capacity battery pack, which is up a few percentage points from the old one. Again, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive version available.

They haven't released a range on that new 82 kWh version. We expect it to be a little bit higher, though the energy capacity improvement is going to be countered a little bit by more power. So now you have the rear wheel drive at 282 horsepower and the all-wheel drive version is going to be 330 horsepower.

which if you're familiar with the id4 one of the complaints if you haven't been too many complaints but one of them has been the power output so this this is going to be an improvement over that right so it used to be 295 and now it's 330 so 10 percent more than 10 increase yeah other than that you have a new 12-inch display uh well 12.9 versus 12 inch

More intuitive climate control interface and revised infotainment menu. I mean, I think this all kind of centers around the software and the user interface, which VW has been getting hammered for. Yeah. Especially early days in the ID4, it was pretty bad. Right. So it's good to see them coming around here. They got some momentum out of it with updates, but now with the 2024 version, I'm sure that they're going to try to start a little bit stronger. Ventilated front row seats. We love those.

The S+ models will have premium 100k audio, 9 speakers, subwoofer, 16 channel amplifier. Wheel size, the ID.4 standard all-wheel drive models, 20 inch aluminum alloy wheels. I think these are probably the same. And of course no pricing. Pricing and range closer to the launch in 2024.

So that's a good improvement. All right. Moving on, we have a little sell update on the Mustang Mach-E, which, you know, has had this up and down this year, early in the year recalls and all that. Production stop was harder on the popular crossover, electric crossover. But now there's been some momentum lately with production ramping up to around the 13,000 unit range per month since May.

And now that's production and sell-wise. So if you scroll down a little bit, you have the actual numbers on the sales. A big upgrade to 61% up year over year last month in August with 5,000 units delivered. So there's still a big discrepancy between sales and production. Something to keep an eye on for sure. But like I said, production just started getting some momentum. So it makes sense that

The cars make it from Mexico to the US and to the dealership and all that. It takes a while. So while there may be potential sales issue with the Mach-E, like there is for most vehicles these days just because of the microeconomic situation, we're seeing a little bit of momentum here out of the Mach-E that's good to see.

Also, some news from the e-transit world. They had the record month in August with 889 units sold. I would have thought more by now, but that's up 120% for the month.

And then Ford F-150 Lightning slips 75% year over year in August. Ford tells Electric that F-150 Lightning production is starting to ramp after a six-week shutdown to expand the Rouge Electric Vehicles Center with limited deliveries across July and August. So they're blaming that on a factory shutdown.

Which is true, but at the same time, we're also seeing some significant price cuts this year on the F-150 Lightning. So there's arguments also that there's been some sales issues at the same time. Yeah, and the American Automaker says that the Rouge EV facility is going to triple production as it targets 150,000 run rate by this fall. So that should be pretty good.

Yeah, they've been aiming for that for a while now. Yeah. We have a comment. Andrew C. says, are you guys hearing anything about the reliability quality of the Ford Lightning now that they've been out for a bit? I've heard mostly good things personally. What about you? I mean, it's been the big recall. So I don't know if you put that in the reliability quality issues. There's been some issue at charging too that we heard, especially at the beginning. But nothing that is like...

like a frequent like that like you can get a lemon like any car obviously or trucks but so far we've been there's no big red flags at least but it's still very early normally you see you start seeing like reliability quality issues come out well quality and quality you can see right away but reliability issues give it a few years before you get some good data out of it

Especially like a first year of production, lightning was very low production. It's just now as like 150,000 units by the end of the year or this fall. You're going to see some volume starting to come next year. Yeah, most of the complaints I hear about it are from people who don't really understand how electric vehicles work.

And then they don't go far enough or they don't know how to charge right and they go to level 2 chargers and it takes 16 hours to charge. Yeah, it's a big battery pack. You have to take those things into account. But all the complaints I see on YouTube or on Fox News that this F-150 is horrible.

um so sorry about that uh let's move on to uh the next piece of news which is about lucid uh so there was an interview this week with uh lucid ceo uh peter rawlson which if you've been listening to the news lately uh he was in the news because of his uh salary huge yeah he used a stock award of 300 million worth of stock that he received uh but anyway the

He expertly managed to divert from that news with the announcement that, well, it's not, I mean, it was kind of a dull announcement. Like, obviously, this is going to do that. But he confirmed that the next series of vehicles, so right now they have the Air, luxury sedan, Gravity coming, luxury SUV, and that the next generation is going to be a $50,000 vehicle.

which I think the exact quote is that if you go down a little bit, the exact quote is we are targeting a price and don't, don't own me to this. That's a good old, like Elon Musk type of comment around $50,000. That's the vision. Yeah. Right in the art of the Islam, all three more white territories. So that's his own quote here. But obviously the language is kind of a, it's not the strongest language, like vision. Don't hold me to this. It's not, it's,

It's not what I call strong news, to be honest. And it's also kind of obvious, like obviously lucid. Yeah, another part of this interesting quote, if you go up a little bit before that, he said, where is it?

is that that part yeah yeah so that is exactly where i go to work i'm not here to build an expensive car that only rich people can afford that the only way i could make the business so the premium product like the the expensive car for the risk that's the only way i could make the business work financially so that's kind of interesting comment because you could make the argument that the business doesn't work financially right now because they are losing money uh gross margin wise and

with operating expenses on those luxury vehicles right now. I'm not super worried about it because

I think the product is great. We actually went last night and saw Lucid. They had the launch of their Midnight Edition here in Munich of the AIR. So it's the AIR sedan, which I think is a great car that have great technology in it. We know the big range, that's a big marketing point that they have. They have a 500 mile version. It's over 800 kilometers of WLTP here.

which actually in Germany they have some argument to make it. We're not big here on electric with huge range. We think like sometimes it's just, you're just carrying a big battery around for nothing because most of the time you just use a small percentage of that and then you charge overnight. So you don't really need it. You need it for like the long distance travel you do every few months or whatever. And then even then normally you're gonna wanna stop after a few hundred miles and charge to stretch your legs and go to the bathroom and whatnot.

here in general they have the great hotoban that in some section doesn't have any speed limits which is awesome but with an electric car or any other car it is less efficient to go at high speed much less much less efficient so with an electric car that has a bigger impact if it has a shorter range but with a lucid if you already have 800 kilometers of range and yeah you're going to go through it a lot faster but you you still have a ton of range so

we were talking to a lucid salesman there and they said that he tested it at what did he say 160 kilometers an hour i think he said i think it was 160 miles an hour it was like oh no no i was talking kilometers now it was german so this is about 160 is fast like 160 is uh 100 something miles yeah close to around 100 miles per hour here which you don't do in u.s roads on this year

a maniac or you don't care about uh very expensive tickets there are they are there tickets in the US based on how much speed over it depends on the state okay yeah yeah because I don't think Canada and Quebec that would be like crazy to get probably lose your license anyway he said that they managed to do 100 I think it was 600 kilometers that he did 160 kilometers an hour which that is impressive and that justified a little bit more than having a crazy long range on the car if you're going to use it often in the Autobahn for example

So that's very much a very German problem, obviously. But so coming back to what I was thinking about Lucid, they have some great technology. Just look at their drivetrain, look at their battery pack. It's very nice, small, light design. And it just so happened that they use that technology in the air first, which is having some issues selling in the US right now, their main market.

High prices. Yeah, again, microeconomics problem, high prices and all that. Model S flag, dropping in price. Yeah, a lot of competition in that segment, like the i7 from BMW, the IQS. There's a lot of competition in that segment. And Lucid is a new brand. And I would argue that they have a lot of advantages over those brands in a lot of features. But

It's a tough market to get into. They have the Gravity coming soon. It's going to be unveiled at the end of the year, coming next year. That is obviously going to be easier to sell in the U.S. It's a big SUV and all that. But all that same technology is going to come to that SUV, and then it's going to come to also the lower-priced version that he's talking about here, the 50,000 version. So I think they're well set up.

to have a successful company here. They just need to survive this tough time of losing money on the air right now, which I think they might be able to do with that Saudi money coming. Yeah. I mean, they, they just kind of have to outrun it. And, uh, we talked to an executive last night at the party. And by the way, thank you, Lucid for inviting us to your, uh, midnight, uh,

Although we only stayed until 10, I think. But they're kind of looking toward that. And that's done. They're done designing that. They're just like... Yeah, he said that was Derek Jenkins is the chief designer. And he says, pencil down on this. The gravity is really, at least on spec-wise, design-wise, he said he expected to be the most aerodynamic

aerodynamic SUV out there which Lucid has already proven some skills in aerodynamic performance with the air. They're going to try to transfer that to an SUV which is obviously a little bit more difficult. But yeah, also third row, there's going to be a lot of cool things about the Gravity I think. And we're going to eventually see that into most likely like a smaller, cheaper sedan and crossover.

I think they're going to do, like right now they're doing a lot like Tesla, like the air is the equivalent of Model S, the gravity equivalent of Model X. I think they would be smart to maybe skip the Model 3 and go directly to Model Y and do a crossover. For sure. Tesla has proven a lot of success with the Model Y. Yeah, there's just so much more demand there. It's such a bigger market. That said, everybody's got a Model Y out. So maybe change the game a little bit. All right, let's move on.

We talked about Xpeng in a bit. Yeah, and BMW, when we talked about earlier the Vision new class, then there's the Vision new class SUV that they teased this week. Is that the only image that they released? I think it might be. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the only image. But the fact that it's camouflaged is almost like a good sign. Like it's normally it's closer to production. Pretty far along. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think they said though that this one is actually going to debut next year and the production version is going to come after the...

the sedan one that we saw earlier. They talk about more range, they talk about 30% more range than the iX3, which would mean 270 miles, almost 600 kilometers, that's WLTP. But yeah, it would be welcome. The iX3 was very much like, I don't know, it's technically the fifth generation electric powertrain from BMW, but...

it felt late, the iX3 in terms of the actual performance versus what was on the market. So the new class is the next generation of electric vehicles from BMW.

It's like Saved by the Bell, new class. It's not really a new class. But it is for the cheaper version, the cheaper, the more entry-level, I think, BMW. Because when you go to the i5 and i7, these are more fully-fledged vehicles, I think, than the iX3 was.

Yeah, I mean, and so I wonder how is this going to compare or live with like the iX? It's going to be a little bit bigger than the iX maybe? Or is this more of a shooting brake sedan, hybrid wagon? How do you see this in their lineup? Yeah, I mean, to me, it looks like a midsize SUV, maybe crossover. Yeah, I guess the iX would be a little bit bigger. Yeah, I think the iX is going to be bigger and more expensive.

All right. So our comment section this time was a little bit broken up. So at the beginning, we got a few comments and then we were talking about the audio over the audio. So we'll just hit those real quick. We got a hello from Brunswick, Canada. New Brunswick, Canada. New Brunswick. Sorry, not old Brunswick. And then let's see. We got a Facebook comment. Why is no one making a $25,000 entry level electric vehicle in North America?

BYD has multiple vehicles at or below this price point in China. A lot of people have vehicles below that price point in China. But we discussed that a little bit earlier where import duties right now from China to the US doesn't make this very much viable.

I don't think that's going to change. And to be honest, it's hard to make an agreement for it to change because China does the exact same thing on their way. So it's both a protectionist approach right now. So until no one budges, I don't see anything happening on that front.

Obviously, Volkswagen has talked about vehicles in that price range. Tesla has talked about vehicles in that price range. Them coming to the US is likely, but these are next generation vehicles. From the VW side, they're talking about 2025, but that 2025 is probably Europe.

If it comes to North America, it's going to come later. Maybe you're going to have to set up shop also in America to do it. I mean, VW already has Tennessee, but it's probably going to need to be another plan for that. Just like Tesla. Tesla has Gigabyte factory in Mexico that is supposed to produce that next generation cheaper. But that is behind schedule right now, too. So don't hold your breath on that.

Even if everything flies like Shanghai did with nine months from groundbreaking to production, you're still right now in late 2024, most likely. Best case scenario. Yeah, safely 2025, I think. So it's around that time. Also, like...

i want to people to keep in mind like i don't know about your situation greg and but did like do you buy new cars because like new the new car price in the us right now is insane like 25 000 cars it's not it's not a thing anymore like the average last time we checked was 48 000 was the average sell price of a new car in the u.s i think that's come down a little bit but yeah maybe 45 and even like uh toyota corollas are in the high 30s they start there

So it like, what is a $25,000 car anymore? It's like, uh, I don't even know what one is, but, uh, I do know that the Chevy bolt was going for 26,500 and you could get $7,500 cash back. And those are still available and they're still being made, uh,

And the Model 3 in a lot of markets in the US, if you're in Colorado, if you're in New York and in California, these are basically $25,000 cars for the base version. Yep. And then you get the electric versus gas savings and all the other stuff. Oh, yeah. When you add the gas saving, now you're completely in a different game. Most EVs out there are starting to be affordable. Yeah.

So, yeah, then we have a lot of people complaining about the sound. Again, we're very sorry about that. That's on us. We discussed that one already. And you can have a vision to land on the gas planet. I'm not sure what that means, but we'll take it. Yeah, we'll take that as the end of the comments. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for tuning in. We appreciate those who tune in for the special episode. We know it's not usually official.

Our Friday episode at 4 p.m. Eastern time because it's later here in Germany. It's our last day at IAA. But we're going to see you back on Friday, not this week, but next week at our usual time. And have a safe week. In the meantime, bye-bye. Bye.