In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor James Riswick. This week, we discuss driving the Toyota Land Cruiser, Lexus GX, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and our long-term Mazda CX-90 plug-in hybrid. We also talk about the new Mazda CX-50 hybrid, Electrify America limiting charging, Porsche confirming the timeline for the electric 718, the upcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed, and the Caterham RAF Seven born from a decommissioned helicopter.
Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: Podcast@Autoblog.com.
TranscriptWelcome back to the auto blog podcast.
I'm Greg mcleary.
We have an awesome show for you this week, we're gonna talk about driving the new Toyota Land cruiser, the Lexus GX and this is gonna be a fun one.
The Hyundai Ionic five N. Uh I also have a long term update on our Mazda CX 90 which made I believe its first voyage to Michigan's Upper Peninsula lot going on in the news world.
We'll talk about some uh news also out of Mazda electrify America has a pretty interesting program I think about limiting charging percentage and a few other things with that.
I will bring in senior editor for all things up and down the west coast as well as features reviews and I think that's about it, James Rizzi.
Hello there.
You're back.
It's been a minute.
You've been on a lot of uh a lot of travels and uh it's been a minute since we've had you on the show.
I've been, I've been exploring my servicing my territory along the west coast, so drove all the way up to Oregon, went to Hawaii.
So, yeah, I was temporarily Hawaii's editor.
Um That's less useful, very, very difficult time zone to do any work from.
Um, so that, that only lasted a week.
Um, but otherwise I'm, I'm gonna be, I'm all packed up and going to Goodwood Festival of Speed for the first time this week.
So, uh I think you could expect uh big photo gallery coming soon of cool cars.
Many of which I will have no idea what I'm looking at.
I've never been to Goodwood.
It's on the list.
Uh One of these years I need to make it.
It sounds like it's quite the extravaganza.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I went to the festival.
I went to the revival last year and that was delightful.
I love that.
I would go to that every year.
Uh This is, this is different.
This is, I would say a more hard core like modern racing event and I wouldn't say that's necessarily my cup of tea.
So I will be, uh it'll be an interesting thing to an enjoyable thing to experience um for the first time.
All right.
Well, that sounds good.
Well, you have driven several things that I have not experienced uh yet, but I hope to over the course of the summer as some of these loans make their way uh across the country.
Uh But tell me a little bit about here, the new Toyota Land Cruiser that is certainly a big deal car, one of the most anticipated uh vehicles of the year.
It uh you know, brings back the, the icon that we didn't know it was going to come back.
But, hey, it is back.
And what do you think of this thing?
Well, I actually drove it in back to back weeks with its sister vehicle.
The Lexus GX.
Ok. Um, and I mean, the GX I drove, that's what I drove to Oregon.
So I'm in southern California.
That is a 13 hour drive.
Almost 25.
I put almost um like 2000 miles on, on the car.
And so I've driven that thing a lot and then I came back and swapped it for the land cruiser first edition.
In fact, the land cruiser cost more than the GX because the GX was one rung up from the bottom.
And as I discovered, I'd argue that's all you need because the bigger wheels on the premium or sorry, I had the premium version, the bigger wheels and the luxury I can't imagine would be anything other than worse.
And I did not find myself missing equipment in that car.
Um And then the Over Trail, which is the most, it's the, the new uh element for the uh the GX is the most off road capable.
Now, why did I request the premium?
Well, uh because the over trail only has two rows.
Uh This was because Lexus thought, well, we created this for Overlanders and Overlanders have traditionally removed the third row on their GXS for maximum cargo capacity, you pick up about five cubic feet, which isn't, which is significant because the, the floor is a lot lower, um, which is fine.
But yeah, but how many people actually buying the overlay or the over land are actually going to be, or sorry over trail are actually going to be over landing.
Uh, I would guess that that number is, is pretty low.
So I pretty much was told that the, uh, that that'll be an option in the future.
Um But for now, I could only get the three row problem with that is I wanted to use roof racks.
Um Only the over trail has traditional rail roof racks, meaning you could put on your existing equipment on them.
The uh the other trims do not, they just have like kind of these fake looking rails and then static mounting points.
So Lexus was kind enough to put on the um the accessory full roof, the full roof rack, big honking metal thing looks cool.
Um But as I would discover is actually quite functional for the purposes of putting a kayak, I put it on, I put the kayak up there and I actually asked the, the kayak uh rental person like, does that thing up there actually make a difference when storing things?
He said, yes, absolutely.
It does because not only do you have lots of different like tie and mounting points, the actual stability of having this whole thing support whatever you have up there is an advantage over just two old uh crossbars.
So that was good.
Downside is, oh boy, it's loud.
Um You go over 60 it's, you really start to notice it and then you go up to 7/70 it becomes very, quite booming and honestly not that different from like having a full on box on the roof.
Um So uh it, but by comparison, the land cruiser has a more platform um rack the first edition does and it's an accessory, but it starts after the sunroof.
This makes a big difference in terms of the amount of the, the amount of sound coming in through the, the sunroof.
Um So either way that was there, um that amount of noise was the main was reason one, I kept the GX to about 70 the entire way while, while to Oregon, even in areas where the speed limit was 70.
So I'm driving the speed limit.
Whoa, that's, that's, that's craziness in California.
Um So the other reason would be fuel economy, it ain't good.
Uh The, the fuel economy for the new GX is 21 highway 17 combined.
The old one that had the Arthritic old V Eight was 16 combined.
So like thank God they downsized now.
It has way, way more torque and it does make a big difference in terms of performance.
But the fuel economy I only managed 20.4 MPG.
So I I didn't even get the, the EPA city despite, or city, sorry, the EPA Highway, despite, um, granny the thing.
Um, of course, I did have the roof rack on so that could impact and I had a bike attached to the back and a whole bunch of cargo.
So I, I think that's probably what it gets and that's a real uh uh calculation too.
Um Even though the car actually said the exact same thing, um, so fuel economy is not great, but in terms of like the performance, that engine really is an advantage over the, the land cruiser, which is hybrid only.
It's a hybrid, um, four cylinder and it's not the Prius hybrid synergy drive one.
It's more of their truck style performance hybrid and II, I don't think the actual performance would be like, like you, I mean, you do have better passing power with the, uh, the GX with the Turbo V six.
But boy, does it sound better?
It sounds so much better.
It's incredibly smooth and refined.
Whereas, uh the hybrid is not those things, it's pretty gravelly to toy does, does not make the nicest sounding four cylinders.
And this, this, this follows that, um, that, um, that uh, trend.
Um, but then the other thing with the land cruiser back to fuel economy that has fueled, it's fuel economy isn't that great either.
I got like 21 on again on the highway now.
It was a different, it was less highway.
I wasn't going on the same roads.
I was in a, I had a stiff tail wind on the way out to Palm Springs in it and I had a stiff head wind coming back.
I don't know how much that evens out there.
Um, but it honestly isn't that different than what you get from the GX or from like the six cylinder land rover Defender, which gets like 20 combined.
So it you could get better fuel economy out of the defender than the hybrid four cylinder of the land cruiser.
Um Now, in terms the the big, now obviously these cars blank cruiser GX mechanically related.
Yeah, but it's, it's not quite a rebadge but um, you know, you can tell quite obviously that they are underneath the skin in the same vehicle, but I was most surprised at the difference in ride quality.
The land cruiser has kind of the tell tale body on frame, wiggle jiggle, uh over, over bumps, it feels like a truck.
Um The GX does not have this, I mean, if you hit like low speed big bumps.
Yeah, you, you do feel it but it is markably it is, it is markedly different.
Um And you know, I, I reached out to, um, Lexus asking, you know, what, what, what is the deal here?
Um What, what, what factors result in cars that have the same platform having like what, what and it really comes down to tuning, they just have that they have the, the same box of um tools and they just go through it and they, they changed various um elements.
I'm sorry, I cannot for the life of me find my story, that details all of this.
So you're just gonna have to stay tuned for my full story to tell you exactly why um what they did.
But it also comes down to Lexus wanting this, this Lexus quote Lexus driving signature.
So they want regardless of vehicle platform for a Lexus to drive, quote like a Lexus.
And I tell you, the ride quality is really excellent on it.
It's, it's very impressive.
Um Now handling, uh there's quite a bit of body roll and pitch uh in terms of accelerating and then uh breaking.
It's not the full Hummer ev like prepare for dive.
Um But it's, it's a subtle body motion.
I kind of like that.
I think it's kind of like a, it's an enjoyable throwback.
It's really fun.
Bend has a million roundabouts and boy, is it fun to go do quick, right left like, you know, urban Chicane.
Um So that, that was II I kind of like that.
Um It was, it was more than precise, steering was more than precise enough and the body control was, was perfectly fine and the kind of the winding highway that's through northern California.
Um So, and, and in terms of stability, yeah, I have a thing on the roof and, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a whole bunch of bike and rack hanging off the end.
But in terms of even when I had to pass someone and it gets up to speed real quick, um, the stability was like flawless.
So, um, I'm a big fan of the GX, uh, the land cruiser once again kind of underwhelms.
Um, I, I don't think it benefits as much as it should from the hybrid power train.
Not only is the fuel economy kind of mad.
It doesn't sound good.
You, you can't possibly have a third row with it.
So, um and the third row is functional in the GX, by the way, my, my wife sat there, she's very short but like not a problem with space.
Um Yeah, so II I was impressed with the GX.
It definitely served its purpose as even better than I expected for this outdoor adventure road test.
I was embarking upon.
That's what I wanted to do.
I'm going to an outdoor, the GX is they said marketed for small families who like to go on outdoor adventure road trips.
Well, that's literally what we were doing.
I heard that I said, ok, well, let's put these two together, let's do this and uh I very much enjoyed my time with it.
Uh More so than I did with the uh with the land cruiser and honestly, yeah, it was cheaper.
There you go.
So cus yeah, it's interesting when I look at this, my, my heart is sort of still saying Land Cruiser, but my head is saying Lexus GX, I mean, just for all the things you lay out, I mean, from a power train perspective, I know which one I would rather drive.
And, you know, you wrote in one of your, you know, many stories you've written about this, that the differences are mainly cosmetic.
I, I think in the past the land cruiser did have some very, you know, distinctive styling that could separate it.
Now, I, these are like twins, I mean, and you know, it's like, even if, if you don't get the land cruiser in 1958 with the rectangular headlights, it's a little tough to tell them apart if you're looking at him pretty quickly.
So, uh it's interesting, kind of like 68 months out from all of this as we kind of look back.
Uh uh we'll see where the sales kind of land after a year.
Yeah, I mean, I, I wouldn't be that surprised if the, the, the Lexus could outsell it given, given the, given the price point.
Um, it could just come down to the availability really.
Um But I think it looks tremendous.
It looks cool.
I had Nori green, um which was just spot on for the outdoor adventure.
Uh It looked really cool in orange with a yellow kayak on the roof, I, I must say.
Um but it's a real, it's a real good looking, real good looking SUV.
Um, I, I think it's one of the best ones kind of ever.
I, I think it looks, it just in it, in terms of like applying Lexus's current design language.
It wears it so well, has adapted to it.
Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's really cool.
II, I am, I, I am a fan of that, of that thing.
All right.
Sounds good.
I two vehicles I can't wait to drive.
Uh Hopefully I can maybe get a Bronco and a Wrangler uh in the fleet around that same time too and uh benchmark them all.
So I would be really interested to drive the uh the GX and the land rover defender.
I think it would be, I think that would be super interesting.
Um Maybe throw in like the nicest Grand Cherokee trail hockey.
Oh, no, the Trail Hawks four XE only.
So maybe not that.
Um And yes, I, I have just, I've just sent you the photos of, of my outdoor adventure rig here.
So you can, uh see, so you at least know what I'm looking at.
Correct?
Yeah, that's the tricky part about a podcast with photos, but uh maybe we can find a way to build this into the post.
Yeah, that's a good look.
That's the right color.
Uh The kayak looks great.
Uh Kayaking is good, fun to do this time of year.
I just did some uh recently this looks good.
I'll make sure to send that to, uh, whomever.
So it can be part of the album.
But the album art, what the podcast art.
But there we go.
That's right.
We do have podcast art.
Uh, and frankly, we're probably due for a refresh, you know, mid cycle refresh, like 15 years in or something.
Get, uh, and I get some new album art on there.
Uh, a number of podcasts I listened to just updated so I don't know if it's a thing or what, but all right.
So, I mean, it's, it's hard to make a smooth fade to this.
But the Ionic Five N is Huge deal car for Hyundai from a performance perspective.
It gives them a bit of a halo in a segment that um you know, they, I mean, they're making an electric hot hatch.
How cool is that?
Uh Before I throw this off the rails of the Ionic five or the Ionic six or the Kia version, the EV six.
Do you have a preference of those three triplets?
Um I like looking at the key of the best but I like driving the Hyundai the, the ionic five the most, I guess I like the six as well.
I guess its body style just isn't that useful because it's not even, it's not even just like hatch versus sedan.
It's actually very useful sedan like the trunk is very small.
So um yeah, I'd, I'd, I'd say I would probably, if I, I would probably buy the, the ionic.
But uh yeah, I have not driven the EV six GT, I should say fair enough.
Everything I've written read uh this ionic five end.
It exceeded my expectations.
I think, I think this will be one of the first.
This is one of the first and only, or one of the first and few future classic evs like beyond just like Evie, sorry Dorks.
Um Like the, this thing is cool.
It, his head has character for days and it, it, I mean, a lot of it is kind of like by artificial software based means it, it makes fake engine noises and it does fake shifts and, you know, you could do all this fun, silly stuff.
But like, honestly, what is like, how much of a difference is someone programming the speakers to go versus them going out of their way to make the exhaust go boom on overrun?
Right.
It's that, that stuff is kind of recent in performance cars and once the, the F type started doing that all of a sudden, Benzes and every a lot it became more common.
So like, it's not like the car inherently does that they've gone out of their way to, to tune the car like that.
So I, I don't know how, you know, mechanically artificial versus software artificial.
It's artificial either way.
I don't know how much it really matters, but it just adds to so much character of that car.
It looks so cool.
This thing is, is the mat, I have the Matt Robin's Egg blue with the orange um orange accents.
It, it looks, it looks great so like I can see this car rightfully.
So being at a cars and coffee and drawing lots of tension for ages.
We will remember this car.
Um and it's also tremendous to drive.
It has 600 horsepower goes up to 641 when you press the go fast button and the way it doles out that power can be either like the full, like face flattening regular old silent launch or again, you can put it into fake shift mode with fake engine noises and all of a sudden it sounds like the most like powerful Ford Focus Rs like it's, it's so, it's so cool and you, it can, you can shift it, the car can shift it by itself like a, like an automatic quote shift or you can do it with paddle shifters and it'll even let you like, hit the quote rev limiter and screw up your launch without like blowing up the, the engine.
Um It's just goofy, silly fun and I like, shouldn't we all love those cars because that's what this is.
Um And meanwhile, it's so it's practical, big, big old back seat and great interior storage.
Um And you know, fuel economy, hey, you know, is it runs on electricity?
So I you know, I don't have to go to the gas station.
So it's like that, it's, that only car you'd ever need is what classic hot hatches have always been about.
And that's what this is.
I, and it is a hatchback.
I, I don't, it's a jumbo one but in what world I can't, how someone could go.
Oh, yes.
That is an SUV.
No.
Um, the, the, the, the only thing that prevents it from being the only car you'd ever need is that it, it, it's an electric car.
So, uh, road trips will be difficult at, at today.
Uh, it's all electric range is 221 which is like 30 miles worse than my Kia Nero.
Um, so, um, but whatever, if you own $66,000 car, I'm thinking you have something else or can afford a, rent a car when you, because you definitely don't want to drive on a road trip, especially on a holiday weekend.
We, we, we reported on and heard some horror stories, uh, of people trying to charge their electric cars.
Uh, this weekend.
Yeah, I, I will get to that in a minute during the news segment.
A little bit of people got a little hot on the hot weekend.
But, uh, you know, this to me really is like the highest evolution of Hyundai's, uh, like performance chops.
You know, they, they hired Albert Beerman, Beerman, uh, from BMW.
I remember I met him over in Munich.
Uh when he was still in charge of the M division and really cerebral guy answered all the questions the journalists had at the time.
I think it was like a three series launch or something, an M three or something.
And he was just so calm, so like almost soft spoken.
So it made perfect sense that, you know, Hyundai and Kia would bring him over here to try to like who better than to give them this kind of edge.
And then you add the fact that this is an electric, uh you know, it's, it's everything, you know, they really check all the boxes here.
So they also hired Peter Schreyer who was, I wanna say an oi uh disaster Kia and that, you know, I think for a minute he may have even been president of Kia.
So, you know, they know how to go out and get talent and it's cool to see it directly reflected in the cars.
Sometimes, you know, you see these big name execs go into certain places, you never really know what the end result was.
I mean, this is the end result for, you know, one of his several very successful projects.
So there's another one can't wait to drive.
It's wildly good and you know it for the money like name on electric, like I would drive this all day, every day over a Mercedes EQE, the AM G or the I five or whatever.
Uh it's, it's just better.
It's so amusing.
And the thing is there's, there's, you can't even call it a duality because there's like a multiplicity because of all the different ways it can go about driving manual, not manual.
No, no shifting at all.
Three different sounds or four.
Fourth being silence.
No sound at all.
Um, like I just, you know, I, I don't put anything on, it's just a silent easy electric car and I drive my son to school.
No big deal or I pressed the right buttons of which there's way too many, but like the engaging your correct driving mode is non set.
They need to work on the U I because it was, it's very confusing to know what the hell you've selected at any given time.
But that said once you figure it out, boom, it's a totally different car and it's making crackles and pops and my son's giggling in the background in the backseat because it's, it's, it's making all these fun noises and it goes fast.
And so it's like, it, it is, it is, it greatly exceeded my expectations.
And, uh, I, I love it.
It's, it's, it's wonderful.
It's, it's on the podium for me.
Wow.
Ok. Well, that's kind of a tough segue to a short, long term update for our long term Mazda Cx 90 which I would say has not greatly exceeded my expectations.
Just that, uh, the power train of the transmission.
They, they all just can't quite seem to get sorted out.
They don't seem to play together.
Well, we've talked about this on the podcast in the past but, um, they did do a software update that maybe did something but it's still a little, it's a little dicey.
It seems like when, you know, you start up, it wants to be an EV mode, then it kind of clunks into, uh, ice mode and it's, you know, acceleration and gear hunting remain to be a challenge for this, you know, for this power train.
I think it's, it's among Mazda's first plugins and I think it sort of shows, uh, aside from that though, I mean, the solution is pretty easy.
Get the straight six, which I think is a gem of an engine, um, for this week for like mini report, I took it up north.
I took it to a place.
Some of you might be cons, uh, familiar with, it's called the upper peninsula of Michigan.
So it's about four hours from Detroit.
Uh, it's, uh, is next to Canada and Wisconsin.
Uh, for lack of a better way to describe it.
So kind of into the woods, took a ton of stuff, tents, fishing poles, uh, you know, everything, you know, a family of three plus a, we'll say 65 pound golden retriever would need for, uh, you know, almost a week in the woods.
So, I mean, from a three row perspective crossover perspective, it's it's robust.
It's big, it's comfortable.
Um, you know, all the things several other editors have weighed in on and generally, like, uh, it's just, it's very functional.
It's just a little, you know, the, the plug in hybrid is not quite what I was hoping it would be.
I haven't had a chance to charge it in this stint and I, but I have before and it charged reasonably well.
I actually charged it at a uh Ford mobility hub in downtown Detroit.
So I got 26 ish miles of range out of it.
So no real issues with the charging.
Uh, a road test editor, Zach Palmer while we were on this very call, uh appeared and took the Mazda and replaced it with the Lamborghini Ubers.
So, speaking of expectations, that's got some, I can't wait to go drive that after the show here.
Um But yeah, I mean, we, we'll talk about that on a future podcast.
Uh So what have you driven the CX 90?
Uh What do you think of it?
Uh Yeah, I, I drove, I guess I did drive the plug in hybrid but it was a long time ago.
And yeah, it was, it's just kind of fine plug in hybrid.
It, it's, it's hard to keep it in, it's all electric mode as I recall.
Um Yeah, and, and I, and I drove the CX 70 most recently, which it's the same car.
Um, but I think I was I was driving, that was the turbo.
I was just driving the turbo, the turbo s actually.
So.
Um, no, but I mean that I'd, I plugged, I only plugged in my electrified vehicles until I got my charger with the, the regular garage plug.
Here here at my, my current house.
I had to actually plug it into the electrical outlet in the roof because the charge cord wouldn't reach the back wall where the other electrical car is.
So I had to like, plug it in like next to the, um, like the garage door opener and in my old house, I'd, I'd plug it into the wall and, uh, I was charging a pulsar too once.
And, uh, the, the house cleaners were there and they turned on a vacuum cleaner and the vacuum cleaner almost exploded like it, it, it, it left a big black scorch mark on, on the concrete floor in my basement.
Uh, so that's something to keep in mind when you're charging your electric car, um, or a plug in hybrid.
Um, but yeah, for plug in hybrids, there's not a lot of, even if it's slow, it should be able to do all most of the capacity overnight.
The, uh, one odd note, despite going to a, one of the roughest, rawest parts of, you know, the continental U SI didn't have any real off roading experience other than just going down the driveway basically to the campsite.
However, uh, upon taking a, basically a wrong turn on the way home because there was a, an accident on I 75.
I was able to, I just find myself on this pretty rough dirt road.
So I got to try off road mode for the first time in a week or two with the car.
So that was kind of cool.
I guess it did, it made very little difference, but as you would expect, yeah, you did more off roading than I was gonna do in the GX.
Sadly, the, uh the, the, the road uh that I could have taken well now up in Oregon, uh which is pretty pock marked and pretty off road ish, like the kind of like road that having an off road vehicle would be helpful for.
I was not yet open when I was up there.
It was still snowed in.
So I couldn't, I couldn't do that.
My, my planned off-road activity with the, uh the GX.
So that was one outdoor adventure that I, I could not accomplish.
All right, sounds good.
Uh Let's move over to the new segment.
We'll stay with Mazda 650 hybrid with a pretty impressive uh uh MPG rating 38 MP G. Uh You also get all wheel drives with that.
You can check out the story.
Uh Our, what our associate editor Byron Hurd wrote uh that went up.
So if you want to dig in, there's some decent press photos they, they tried with this some shots at sunset or, uh, they did some things to make it look like they shot it at sunset.
Let's put it that way.
Uh, I think this could be an interesting, you know, uh, option for people.
It's, uh, it's basically a very similar system.
I don't know if it's 100% identical but pretty close to the Rav Four.
So you don't think Mazda works on this one and gave it.
So, I think, no, I think they tweaked it but it, it's the same, it's the same, uh, it's the same hardware.
I think this gives a nice, it's, you know, almost to sound like a dealer here.
This gives Mazda some new metal to push and I think there's a fair amount of people in this segment that might look at a Rav four and also might look at this thing and think, well, hey, this is, this is kind of cool.
This could work for me.
Um It's got a little bit of that Mazda kind of uh styling that DNA.
So that kind of, you know, if you're in the segment, it's just another choice and the fuel economy is pretty impressive.
What do you think this thing?
Oh, well, the Ac X 50 is so enjoyable.
It's, it's great.
It looks fantastic, lovely interior, fantastic to drive.
But unlike most of its competitors, key competitors didn't offer a hybrid and that's a big thing.
Like it's two engines were exceptional probably.
I mean, the two of the most, um, agreeable in the segment, but you don't have a hybrid and I would want a hybrid in the second, even though I would otherwise be like, I would choose AC X 50.
Um, but now this does give it that option.
My question is, you know, part of the reason those Mazda power trains are so exceptional is just because of response, re response throttle response of the six speed automatic transmission.
Um, it's just, it's, it's Mazda, they, that's what they do.
So, well, so what happens when you're, when they now have a Toyota Hybrid Synergy drive with an electronically controlled CV T that's, that's totally different.
Now, they can a throttle response, I'm sure they can work on.
Um, but in terms of noise and shifting quality, like that's the big question.
And it's a question, I'm not, I'm not pooh poohing it because I haven't driven it and let's see what they can do.
Um, so yeah, that'll be, that'll be interesting to see what, what that results in.
Um, because otherwise on paper, I mean, this could be a, a class leading vehicle like with, with the hybrid, like we, we currently are our top vehicles in the class are the, the CRV and the Kia sported hybrid.
Both of those hybrids largely on the strength of how good their hybrids are.
We really like the CX 50.
It's very enjoyable.
It's not as practical as those other ones but what you lose in practicality, you, you gain in driving verb and style.
That's not nothing that, that is a choice I would probably make.
Um, but the power trait, you know, what, what, what does it, what difference does it make?
So, um, yeah, we'll, we'll see.
That'll be, I think that is, will be one of the more intriguing, um, stories to come.
I, I would, I, I would raise my hand big time to go on that, on that press event because I'd love to talk to uh their engineers and because they're, they're usually very open about like, even to the point of like crazy minutiae about what they did.
And then, and then the, this, the, the efforts that they go to in terms of driving feel and just teeny tiny, subtle things that you wouldn't even think of to answer the questions like, well, how come Mazdas seem to just drive better?
They just feel better and it's actually they'll go on a laundry list of little tiny things that they do from the, the exact seating and control placement to um more advanced, like crazy advanced systems that you can't really wrap your head around.
But yet actually does this kind of small but ultimately effective thing.
It, it's, they, they're always enjoyable to talk to.
So be interesting to know what happens when that mentality gets together with somebody else's uh equipment.
So, um Yeah, be cool.
That does sound like a press trip that would be out your way and your, uh, your neck of the woods.
So we'll see.
Yeah, that, uh, um, well, this is a bit of a segue here.
Speaking of your neck of the woods, California, the, uh, electrify America is gonna cap charging at about 80% 85%.
Uh, the idea here is to keep people moving through the chargers not filling, filling all the way up to more than frankly, even some manufacturers recommend.
Uh It sounds like it was tough uh for the long holiday weekend with people trying to drive uh in California, it's a pilot program, 10 stations.
I, so I without having had too much of a problem with this myself, I think this is a good idea.
I mean, the chargers around here, there's a lot of evs in Michigan but compared to like California, it's, you know, no comparison.
So it seems like as far as managing the current relatively small infrastructure, this is a good plan to do it.
I we have no issues if they rolled this out.
How do you feel this?
And this is the scenario, this is why they are doing it.
So I drove the Hyundai Ionic six to Las Vegas in January for CE S I had no problems um charging on the way there.
The I 15 corridor was fine.
I mean, sure, I got lucky at one and but the other one was told.
But, you know, it's still a bit of a crap shoot.
But in that case, really no problem.
Once there though, in Vegas, I did, my hotel did not have charging.
Um So I had to find a charging station in town.
They were all full.
I had to wait in line to then charge and wait to charge.
In other words, I was wasting the time I have on earth.
And there's few things I hate more than that and sitting there.
And so I finally get to charge after like 45 minutes of waiting to wait, finally get on the charger.
And I'm, it's, it's cruising along.
It's going fast.
Actually, my experience is fine.
I look over and, and, and this guy in a pole star two which has free charging, free charging.
There's your problem.
He is sitting there and the, and the charger is at over 90% and it is just inching a lot, just tiny little trickle like we talked about plugging your car into just the regular toaster plug in your garage.
At one point.
It was basically at that level.
My home charger was smoking.
It's, it's charge speed because it's so slow.
And that guy is just sitting there, lean back watching his life disappear.
Meanwhile, there's a line of cars in front of him just looking to get just enough to get the hell out of Vegas and, or it, and the same thing happens.
Um, it, it's really these free charging cars or it's like bolts that take forever if you do have a slow charging car, hole a cow.
Um, it, it's, this is why, so you don't deal with that.
People taking advantage of the, uh, the, the, the free charging or just wanting to eke out as much as possible.
It's, it's just so inefficient to do that in, in terms of time and they're doing it around cities, I think for this reason.
Um, now road trips, I, I wouldn't hate that too, but there, I guess there is a scenario where you need to go to 100 in order to get to your next charge station.
So I guess they don't want to screw around with that just in case you have like a car with a rinky dink range.
Um, but so that's why the pilot program is really only in the greater Los Angeles area.
Um, neither of which are the ones that are closest to me by the way.
Um, but I, I think it makes all the sense in the world and, you know, if you have an issue with that, like, uh I'm sorry if you can't charge at home, then that's a different scenario entire entirely.
But let's, let's, let's be fair to people, you know, you taking advantage of every ounce, every last drop of free charging.
It is not the same as me waiting just to put like, just to get my car on the road again.
So that's not, you know.
Yeah.
So, I think it's, I think it's wonderful.
I, I think that's smart and I should be said it comes directly from customer feedback so it's not like some draconian corporate thing.
Like they wanna churn people through it.
It's because people were complaining so good thing.
No, I think it makes sense.
I think, you know, as we try to, you know, as electric vehicles become more uh commonplace, we need more chargers and that means making them more usable.
You know, if you go to a gas station, worst case scenario, you're stuck behind some dude gassing up his excursion or something and there's a finite amount of time and he's gonna be done, you know, with, you know, ev charging, it could take some time, it can take a minute and there, I mean, frankly, it's almost like sometimes you feel like you can't have nice things.
Like if you're gonna have guy trying to top off at 100% at the expense of the line backing up, that's just, I mean, I don't know how you legislate against boorish behavior like that, but it's also a thing like, well, I think you gotta do it.
So, uh you know, there's a lot of charging companies out there right now too as they all try to figure out uh the rules of the road and this would make me more likely to seek out an E A station.
Yeah, we do.
We don't really have much of a choice around here.
There's a couple of other companies but it's electrify America or, or bus.
We have charge point around here and they're not Great Bob.
They can, they're tricky.
I feel like it's a little bit, it's better than a coin toss that they're gonna work.
But they can be tricky.
Let's put it that way.
That's more podcast.
I mean, to speak to some of the, the, the charging issues.
I mean, I own an electric car.
I would not take it on a road trip.
There's no way in hell, I would have driven it to Oregon.
Could I have literally done it?
Yes.
But the crap shoot in terms of does the charger work?
Is there an hour line or worse?
Like II, I can't stop where I want to stop.
I have to now stop at this place and then to the next one for lunch because this one's in a terrible grocery store parking lot like you.
It's just like amount of it.
It's not there yet, right?
It doesn't mean it's not going to get there.
That's the important thing, you know, we're not there yet, but, you know, so many people own a nice car anyway.
Or even if I just own that Ionic Five N I'd rent a car because, um, I don't know if you saw this on Instagram, I posted it on.
But motor trend Scott Evans, he drove, uh, their new long term Fisker Ocean, which he got like earlier in the week.
That's a whole good luck buddy.
Um, he drove that and ended up on some Central valley I five electrify America from hell in the line of electric cars.
He waited two hours and 45 minutes just to charge because there were only six stations and just backed up forever.
That is my nightmare.
If I showed up and I saw that he had like six miles of range were left.
So he had no choice.
But I think I would abandon the car.
I would find the closest train station or Greyhound station within six miles and just leave the car there and get to it someday.
Pay to ship it.
I did.
There's no way I would wait that long.
I, I could not do that.
I just couldn't, that, that is, that is my absolute nightmare and I don't think I'm alone and until they get, you know, yeah, there's a station that's nice.
Apparently five of them were working, which is good.
Right.
Um, out of the six.
But the volume, the volume is not there.
Even if, even if they had like the 12 station thing that they have in Baker, California, which is like a huge for an EV charging station or E A, it still wouldn't have been enough.
Uh, so it, you know, again, that's not to say they can't get there because Rome wasn't built in the day.
But I hear you when you say right now, this doesn't make sense for me.
All right.
Yeah, I'm not sure if, how you feel if this makes sense or not.
But we know Porsche's uh legendary line of the seven eighteens, the boxer and the K men are gonna go electric and we've known this for a while.
Uh but we had a recent Reuters report that essentially confirmed the timeline.
Uh I take a bit of a, I'm of two minds on this one.
I just drove a 718 Boxer and really enjoyed it.
It was to me like the perfect start to summer, I wrote a column that got so long winded.
I think it turned into a road test.
I was very much taken by the car.
I, I went on the launch of uh whatever the addition was in.
Uh I wanna say Majorca back in 2014.
Uh So I got to drive uh both of them on tracks, so on a track.
So really to me, a memorable car and one of the reasons I think you're attracted to the Porsche brand.
Um So I'm a little as much as I think evs have a great place in the new automotive landscape and I think it makes sense for them to do this for this model line because I think it'll make some really interesting driving dynamics, having those batteries mounted in a way that will make for an outstanding center of gravity if anything, this opens up more styling opportunities for these.
And I think it could be as significant as when they first rolled out that original Boxer concept, say 30 years ago.
So I think, you know, it's definitely progress, but I'm a little sad to see the ice, you know, option go away, uh, be faded off.
Uh, the way I look at it is there's some cars that I feel like are so just cars, they're automobiles that I would have zero issue if they carried on, uh perhaps at a small volume, uh internal combustion engine.
And this to me is one of them, you know, driving that six speed manual.
Um, you know, I, I literally wrote, I noted the time it, you know, struck me 907 on, let's see, March or it's not March, it certainly wasn't warm enough then.
Uh Thursday, uh looks like early May 24th.
So there you go.
I mean, to me that's like when summer kicked off.
So, uh if I'm asking for stuff, I wish Porsche would find a way to make, uh, make these figs, uh keep their engines around for a while.
What do you think?
Is this blasphemy?
Am I wrong?
Are you, am i crazy?
Are you crazy and sad?
I mean, it's being killed by some German or eu regulation?
I don't understand.
Right.
Um I'm of the opinion that cars like the 718 boxer 22 seaters name a Ferrari, like exotic third or fourth sports cars.
Virtually no one's commuting in do not matter.
This is like who like going after them and not allowing them to exist like is just pointless.
That's not what like keeping them around is not gonna be like the straw that destroys the earth from climate change.
It's all of the mass market cars, luxury and mainstream.
It's the boring cars that no one will miss when they're gone.
Those are the ones that need to go electric.
If all of those go electric great or even if they go hybrid, whatever like they, that's the difference.
The 718 does not matter.
They sell so few of them and they are ultimately driven so little.
I have a two seat Roadster.
The damn thing has 46,000 miles on it and is 25 years old.
That's your bar.
Who cares?
Like it?
That is not what this, that, that's not what this is about.
So the fact that like these regulations are gonna kill cars like this, I just think defeat.
It's, that's, that's, it is sad.
Like I don't, I guess, I guess I, I see how it's, it's very elitist to write some regulation that has a loophole for two seat Roadster.
Like if it has two seats, it can have a internal combustion engine, but again, it still has two seats, right?
Like it doesn't, it's, it's so, it, it doesn't matter.
Um, it's not gonna be driven enough to make a difference.
That's a really interesting argument too when you look at, like, I know Sima has, uh, you know, advocated for special loopholes in the way cars can be restored and different crash test ratings, things like that because their argument is, these are toys, you know, they are not daily drivers.
Your 1973 cut list that was restored with a crate motor does not need to meet the same standards as your 2023 Toyota Camry.
No idea why I pulled the 73 cutlass out of thin air.
But as an example, and I think, you know, to your point, I think there is some practical considerations, you know, it's, I don't think these cars are quite to the point of like horse racing or owning a pony, but the uses are very narrow and there's a reason, you know, I mean, this captured my attention.
I was driving the four cylinder 718.
We're not even talking about the GTs or something, you know.
So I think it's, you know, it's not like this car is putting the hole in the ozone layer.
You know, I think, you know, we should still be able to have fun in some senses.
Now, it's a slippery slope, you know, with this car four cylinder, you know, Porsche.
Well, how do you account them for like a Hellcat or something, you know.
I mean, what do you could do?
Make them all drag racers and remove the back seat so they can still be around, you know, it's, it's tricky.
That's what you would be looking at.
Yeah.
But, I mean, two seat suburbans.
It's, yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, he, he, he has some, like, you know, some coach builder who puts in seats after the fact.
I mean, yes, you would have to be a little more smarter than just that, but there's a world in which that exists and I mean, it's not gonna happen but otherwise like a miat is dead.
Right.
Like, if you go to that extreme of like, not everything must be electric and I don't think that should be the thing.
I think an intel, I think a smart way to do it is to go for the meat of the market.
You go for the meat of the market.
You change as much as humanly can make it either as efficient as you can or you make it go all electric and there you go.
That's what you need to do.
You do not need perfection 100% switch over.
That's, you know, it, but there are bigger fish you could fry in terms of uh co2 be it.
Power generation, commercial shipping.
My God.
Aviation, you know, uh computing power from A I.
That's a big one you don't hear a lot about, but the amount of CO2 that it goes into creating the power to do all these A I generators.
Holy cow.
Um, yeah.
Um, not A I generators.
The, the, the, the computing power that's required just for like a little A I widget in Google.
Um, so, yeah, I, I don't think that the, the 718 is really the one there is the thing that will doom us.
All right.
So we've got Goodwood, we've got, uh, kind of a pretty, uh, well, speaking of niche sporting cases, uh, the Caterham Huma, which I think is super cool.
It's, uh, we'll start with the Caterham.
They use like basically repurposed uh Royal Air Force helicopter metal to make this, uh uh, well, it's green sporty looking little kind of, uh, uh go Kart sort of thing.
Uh, it looks awesome.
I mainly throw this on because last weekend with Silverstone upcoming is Goodwood.
It just kind of was in the, seems to be in the zeitgeist this week.
It's in the ecosystem.
Pick your cliche.
Uh This is cool.
I think it's got tail numbers on it.
Uh, other than just wild and cool.
There's no real reason we're talking about it but, you know, I don't know if you get a chance to drive one when you're over there next week.
Uh, I think we take a review.
Yeah.
Well, no, if you Google Cater and Puma, you come up with a, uh, a youth football team in, in the UK.
Um, that's a great name for a football team.
Yeah.
Um, but if you look, if you look a little closer than it is, yeah, it's inspired by a, uh, a decommissioned Puma helicopter.
So it's Matt Green.
Um, so it looks, it looks pretty cool.
I think the helicopter looks cooler frankly.
Um, but, uh, yeah, the, the Caterham, you get those in England.
Uh We, we do not get those, obviously.
Um, looks, looks kind of wild.
All right.
Well, any final thoughts as you get ready for Goodwin, not really should be, uh, should be fun but uh yeah, um, gonna be a busy, busy couple of weeks.
I, when I get back I'll be driving New Hyundai or the Hyundai Santa Fe that, that wild looking thing.
I'll be driving the new fidgety qx 80 which is apparently much better than the old one.
New Nissan kicks.
Be going on up the road to drive that and then, uh eventually uh uh Pebble beach.
So, yeah, it'll be a busy, uh, month and change.
Be interested to hear what you think about the Santa Fe.
I drove that uh six weeks ago and got a lot of attention for that.
Six weeks.
What is time more like three months ago?
But it was, it was pretty gnarly.
It had that kind of bronze copper paint on it.
A couple people thought it was an EV which I thought, uh, speaks to the moment and yeah, Well, while you're over there, have a full strength Guinness for me.
Uh I hear it tastes better over there.
At least it did the last time I was over there.
So, uh that's all the time we had this week.
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Be safe out there and we'll see you next week.
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