In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor John Beltz Snyder. This week's big new is that Toyota officially confirmed the return of the Land Cruiser to the U.S. We also talk about GM adopting Tesla's charging standard, Porsche's Mission X electric hypercar concept, early issues with Tesla's Cybertruck, the possible return of the Chevy Bolt, some amazing barn find Ferraris and Le Mans. Also, we've been driving the Chrysler 300C, Toyota Sienna, Ford Escape and an electric school bus from Lightning eMotors.
Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: Podcast@Autoblog.com.
Transcript[MUSIC PLAYING]
GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to "The Autoblog Podcast." I'm Greg Migliore. We've got an awesome show for you this week. The Toyota Land Cruiser is coming back. Surprised? Maybe not. I don't know.
But hey, let's bring in senior editor for all things electric, John Snyder. We've got a great show for you. What's going ON?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Oh, man, just happy to be here.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It's beautiful weather. Got to roll those-- last time, it was roll the windows all the way down weather. Now it's roll the windows partway up. It's like in the 50s but sunny. I like it.
GREG MIGLIORE: It's 53 degrees right now. I-- literally, some sort of ventilation came on last night, and I turned to my wife, and I go, is that the heat? Like, what is this here? So we're getting kind of a wild June. I like it. The grass is flipped sort of to green kind of overnight. So that's good.
But yeah, so we're doing kind of an early podcast today, 9:30 Eastern time. We don't always do it this early. We were just talking about how hard it is for us to eat breakfast at our busy schedules, like inhaling a bagel. So anyway, so the Land Cruiser's coming back. That'll lead our news segment.
We've got news out of the supercharging network with Tesla, some Cybertruck issues as well. We'll talk about the Bolt coming back and a few other things. We have been driving. John's in our long-term Toyota Sienna minivan. He played some PlayStation, or someone did.
He also drove an electric school bus. And we've got the Chrysler 300c, the final edition, and the Ford Escape. So we'll get to that as many of those as we can. So let's just jump right in.
I don't know if surprised was the right word that the Land Cruiser's coming back because we kind of thought it might, but there was also that sort of note of finality that it probably wasn't going to come back for a while. And when it did, it wouldn't be sort of what it was. It might be different in many ways.
But this sounds like they're going to bring the Land Cruiser Prado over here, or tweak the GX or some combination of that recipe, and bring it here pretty quick. So I mean, I like it. You know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, the fact that they announced that they're bringing it back like right after they launched the GX, the new GX, seems a little too convenient to be a coincidence.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it makes a lot of sense too. I mean, the luxury SUV market for big SUVs, like why wouldn't you want to build a $90,000 SUV. That's pure profit, right?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Right, exactly. But yeah, I think, yeah, the Land Cruiser has mega fans behind it. Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of huge cars like that, but I grew up in a Land Cruiser. My dad drove Land Cruisers. So I-- that's what I was driving when I had my driving permit.
And man, it was fun. But yeah, something a little smaller, like the Prado, is a little interesting because it's been bumping up pretty close to the 4-Runner, if that's the case. But I mean, the-- and you know, the 4-Runner feels so kind of dated now.
But I imagine they'll update that at some point soon. So it'll be interesting to see how they position this within the new Toyota lineup.
GREG MIGLIORE: I could see them using some of the basic elements, like of their newer upcoming vehicles, and then like stretching the platform a little bit to make it a little more Land Cruiser-like. You know, but I mean, I guess we'll see. I mean, I think, at the end of the day, it's one of their strongest nameplates. You know, it makes sense to make-- just makes too much sense to do it.
And you know, I think we'll see this with the 4-Runner. They'll maintain the essence of what it is, but you're going to see way more modern infotainment, drivetrain, things like that. Like the last generation Land Cruiser, it was like driving an SUV from 2008, which it is. You know?
And that's kind of how the 4-Runner is now. So I mean, I think there could be some good things for people who want to buy a new vehicle, not buy a new vehicle that's actually like almost 20 years old. You know, frankly, a compelling reason to buy the outgoing Land Cruiser was a little bit of nostalgia. You know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, for sure.
GREG MIGLIORE: You know, maybe you liked how cars were 15 years ago. So--
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah. Well, yeah. The way it drove definitely felt sort of old, and really sort of squishy suspension. But yeah, the tech inside definitely needed some updating.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: So we'll see that for sure.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. And I hope they keep somewhat of the Land Cruiser vibe that they've had, as far as the design element. And I'm sure they will. I don't think this is a vehicle you go too far afield on. But I always liked that. I think it was the solid--
It's [INAUDIBLE] car, you know? The cartoon dogs, they drive a much older version down in Australia. But all right, so that's the Land Cruiser. I'm pretty excited to drive it.
All right, shifting gears, Elon Musk opened up the Tesla Supercharger network to GM customers. This is an interesting move. It's like the second time in like two or three weeks a Detroit automaker has signed on. Mary Barra did a Twitter spaces interview with Elon Musk.
It's kind of surreal. We get like no notice these things are happening. Boom, he's on there, and it's pretty wild. I mean, I think the broader implications, and we were kind of talking about this offline, is like, yeah, we're moving toward a national charging standard. It's Tesla's, you know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, I mean, it's already pretty well named, that standard, the North American Charging Standard. It's like self-fulfilling prophecy. But I think that's a good thing for everyone. I, personally, like Tesla's charging standard.
Their plugs are nice, and small, and light. And you know, it's one for AC and DC. You don't have this chunky little extra glob on there to plug in for DC. And yeah, the sooner we get to just one standard across the industry, the better the charging experience will be for everyone.
There's going to be some growing pains in there with compatibility and things like that because Tesla is-- you know, if you're a Tesla charging a supercharger, it's really seamless. You plug in, and that's pretty much it. And that's the case with-- some of their vehicles have plug-in charge on CCS, but yeah, I don't know how well that's going to work with GM or Fords, if you plug into a Tesla Supercharger.
Or if a Tesla plugs into a non-Tesla charger, it's not going to be quite as seamless as that, at least at first, until they get it all organized under one roof, work out those kinks, and then yes, then it will be a better experience for everyone, in my opinion.
GREG MIGLIORE: No, I think charging has to be a thing where you just don't think about it. It just works. I've had some issues with ChargePoint stations recently, and it's been a little frustrating. And it's everything from the app, to the way you have to position the car sometimes, to just, randomly, they don't work, and that's frustrating.
So I actually enjoy charging the electric vehicles that come through our test fleet. I think it's an interesting kind of fun thing to do that-- you know, I don't have that same vibe about going to fill up like whatever car I've got to gas up at the end of the week. But it's kind of neat to do it.
Ford and GM have talked about adapters, which will make it easier, if you will. There's a lot of fine print here, a lot of sort of devil in the details that needs to be worked out. But--
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: I think another thing to consider is that Tesla is rumored to be coming out with a version four of its superchargers, in the near future, maybe next year. And those will be capable of 350-kilowatt charging and will have longer cords.
So you know, the problems right now of the way that the chargers are positioned, and which side the cord is on, and all that, and people having to park in the spot next to it to charge, that sort of thing, that will hopefully be addressed with this new supercharger version that's going to be coming out. And yeah, then 350 kilowatts, it will be right up there with Electrify America in terms of charging speed.
And I think Tesla, any Tesla owners that are out there, I think they'll probably say that, yeah, they probably have a better charging experience anyway. They tend to charge closer to their peak rate than other EVs do when you plug them in. A lot of times you plug in a 350-kilowatt charger in our EV6, and it just doesn't get anywhere.
It maxes out at like, what, 235 or something, but it doesn't even get anywhere close to that, especially if it's cold, you know, and if the battery's-- it takes a long time for it to actually get anywhere near that peak charging point, whereas Tesla, I think they have a little bit better, more the standard charging rate throughout the charge experience.
GREG MIGLIORE: It's interesting too, it seemed to almost catch the government a little flat-footed because a couple of days later, they announced a big plan for the CCs connectors. It was kind of like, I don't know, did you guys know that Ford and GM were going to do this? Maybe not because when you look at Ford, GM, and Tesla, the number I'm seeing is 60% of the EV market.
So that's a lot of-- when you think of American consumers, you've got Tesla for electrics and Ford and General Motors for everything else and electrics, as far as just pure household, domestic names. So you know, we'll see. And maybe-- you know you might get to a point where like--
And I think during the transition period, there'll be like a menu of chargers. You pull up. There will be CCS. There will be nacs, that type of thing, people will be having adapters. Long term, like you just said, though, I don't think that's the way to go.
You just want to pull up, not worry about the adapter, pull in, just like the gas station. You know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, it'll just be people with older EVs that will have to worry about the adapter, and everyone else-- all the new ones that you buy will be-- it'll just be easy.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, so this is just pure eye candy. We kind of got to talk about it, though, the Porsche Mission X. It's a hypercar. It's a concept. It's sort of like a signpost for the next Porsche hypercar, sort of following the footsteps of like-- remember the 1918 and things like that?
Yeah, Porsche is due. I think this works. For what it's worth, I've been looking at a lot of different hyper and supercars from a variety of different places. This one's tasteful. You know what I mean? Like, it looks pretty good, whereas like if you look at like [? Rimac ?] and some of the other ones that go way out there, like this looks, I think, pretty good.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It does look good. It is a little bit out there for Porsche, but they do have-- I mean, it's an electric vehicle. They have the opportunity to make it a little different, to position the batteries where you want it. And yeah, basically, it looks like sort of a mid-engine format, even though it's no engine.
But yeah, it looks at-- has that sort of format. And it's beautiful, very race, racey, race-ish, with all of the-- the coronagraph inside, and the lap timer is in that wild steering wheel very much. Looks like it's borrowed from one of the open-wheel racing series.
But yeah, the thing is really cool. And Joel's piece on it, some of the details about it, I like that it has an animal mascot. There's a little cheetah badge hidden very, very cleverly and sort of on the rear fender, sort of under some of the arrow. It looks really cool. And the way the doors open up, man, this thing is beautiful. The seats, the seats are something else.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, the headlights look pretty good, too. That's like their-- they go right across the fenders to like inches off the ground. It's really cool. It kind of brings back some of like Porsche's [INAUDIBLE] heritage thrown in here a little bit, which I think is good.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yes, very much.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. So check that story out. And Joel has a nice follow-up piece where he breaks down some of the key elements of the Mission X. Check that out.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, we don't really have--
GREG MIGLIORE: It's really good.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: We don't really have specs on it because it's a concept. But gosh, it's a beautiful design study.
GREG MIGLIORE: Indeed, indeed. All right, so maybe this is still a design study. It's apparently on the way to production. But we had a piece last week about how leaked documents show a significant early issues with Tesla Cybertruck, our breathless headline reads. So I'm just curious, you know, the Cybertruck, I feel like, is at a point where it kind of needs to get here. That's my take-away.
And this story just kind of reiterates that. You know? I mean, what do you think is up with the Cybertruck?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: I don't know. I think it might just be Elon Musk's sort of clean-sheet look at the process, the way he goes about developing cars. Combined with this being such a different vehicle, it's very much not like your typical cab and bed truck, total clean-sheet design.
Of course, you're going to run into problems, but this report makes it sound like the problems are pretty fundamental. They're bad. Like, not sealed, problems with the braking, suspension, and leaks, and noise. And it sounds like a lot of stuff that, at this point, those should be pretty well figured out.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. The report comes from a German newspaper, and then it was picked up again by Wired, and that's when American outlets like us kind of realized what was going on. It is like rudimentary stuff, like blocking and tackling, like body work seals, stuff like that, noise handling, braking, suspension, to read more from our story.
That's a little-- that's odd. And honestly, I think it's a missed opportunity, if that stuff is what's holding them up because that's not really something that has to be unique to the Cybertruck. Like, that's just a thing that you should have figured out for any new vehicle.
Now, can stuff go wrong with any new vehicle? Of course it can. Look at some of the launch issues Ford has had in the last couple of years, you know? So it's one of those things where I think context and perspective is fair.
But it's also like, the Revolutionary part of this is the design, some of the different like gee-whiz features, the fact that it's an all-electric pickup truck. Like, those are the selling points. The other stuff, it seems like you just need to kind of figure out.
It's like if you have some-- I'm going to use a football analogy. Like every now and then, maybe the team you like is really good, but they don't have a kicker. And you're like, how do we keep losing games because the guy misses wide right? You know? And it's like, it can be frustrating. So that, to me, is what this feels like.
I went to one of those Monroe-- they're like a local industry sort of analysis firms, such as it is, and they did a breakdown of a Tesla Model. And they were talking about just how sophisticated everything was except the build quality.
And take it for what it's worth. It was a walk-around. They had their own reasons for doing it. But they invited the press to come look at it. And I don't think it's like dunking on Tesla to say it's odd that they have quality issues with build quality.
So to me, that's where you just get into this missed opportunity. And come on, I think this could be a real home run. I don't know. I don't know the reasons for them, though.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, it's one of those reasons why I wish we would see Tesla-- I mean, we're seeing them collaborate with Ford and GM on charging and stuff. I would like to see them collaborate with someone on manufacturing. You know?
They could give their technology to somebody and then in turn maybe get some materials from another supplier and maybe avoid some of these problems. I'd hate to see the Cybertruck released as sort of a half-baked product, and then Tesla sort of fixing it on the fly as the first owners are-- basically, they're Guinea pigs for what's going to go wrong in the real world, as Tesla seems to do with--
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: I mean, that was sort of the case with the Model 3, sort of the case with full self-driving. I just-- they need to get that part-- they need to get the part where they build something and it's complete before they put it out. And I think they might need help with that.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I mean, a certain someone like you wrote a column saying, hey, it's good when Tesla works with other automakers because in some ways everybody wins.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, yeah, agreed.
GREG MIGLIORE: They sort of have the secret sauce in many fronts, but then there's just these other almost very unthinkable mistakes they make, you know? And maybe that's what makes them Tesla is they can move fast, and reach these hills that other companies don't even go for, but then you kind of maybe miss sight of what's in front of you.
So yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll see. I think we-- I don't know if we will, but people will be driving the Cybertruck I think somewhat in the near future, you know? But we'll see how it goes.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: And it could be wrong. Everything could be hunky dory when it comes out. I know for sure that that people are going to love it when it comes out. I mean--
GREG MIGLIORE: I think I'm going to like it. This is-- I like that era of wedge-shaped design that the Cybertruck harks back to. Like, you want to show me like mid-'70s to kind of mid-'80s wedge-shaped cars, sign me up for that all day, whether it's a Lancia, or like an Escort or something. So you know, I'm on board with that.
But all right, so let's transition to the Chevy Bolt is coming back. And yeah, I think it's probably coming back. Mary Barra strongly hinted to NPR that the Bolt would be coming back probably with all-TM power. That's their new battery pack, their new sort of setup.
You've had an up-close look at it. The Bolt sort of went away for a few reasons. One, they needed a place to build some other higher value vehicles. Like I believe it's-- a factory in Michigan is going to build the-- Lake Orion is going to build the Silverado EV. And it's like, where are we going to make more money here, the Chevy truck EV or the Bolt compact car?
So somebody gets kicked off the Island. It also wasn't quite selling as well. They had an older battery setup that didn't charge as quickly, although the range was still very respectable.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It was, yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: And, of course, they had-- go ahead.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It was great to drive, too.
GREG MIGLIORE: It was great to drive, too. And then just real quick, they had some big issues with that, big recall, potential fires. So like, I mean just goes to show you any car company could really screw up. So it's like, anybody who's listening to this thinking, oh, are they dunking on Tesla, well, no, we dunk on everybody when they screw up. And the Bolt had some pretty unthinkable problems.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, that battery thing was a nightmare.
GREG MIGLIORE: It was bad, really bad. But it sounds like it's coming back. And I don't think the image of the Bolt was damaged so much that it's a problem. I think I still see a lot of them on the road. I've seen them in other parts of the country.
I think it did find an audience because people like the idea of a $30,000-ish compact crossover car. It drove great.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah. And yeah, when they came out with the Equinox pricing, saying it's going to start around 30,000, it's like, with the Bolt as it is, why did you buy the Bolt over that, unless you're confined to a small parking spot?
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. The new Equinox looks really good, I think, and it offers you a lot of functionality for what it was, for the price and for the size. I actually took it to a Bronco drive. This is a couple of years ago. Local drive, and I drove the Bolt up to Hollyoaks, just North of the city.
And I remember thinking, this thing's great. I am not as excited to drive the Bronco off-road because, come on, right? But it was still a very memorable part of that day. So the Bolt had its supporters. I'll be curious to see if they can carve out that almost like commodity EV.
And I think for GM, that would be a great move. There's not that many-- there really aren't that many options for people who are less affluent and don't want to spend a ton of money on a larger electric crossover car.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: For sure, yeah, especially if it's something that you don't drive very much. Like, I considered getting a Bolt just because I wouldn't drive it very much, but I don't have a personal daily driver myself right now. And that would be the perfect second car for our household, something to run the kids around town, that sort of thing. We've got the Palisade for the bigger trips.
But yeah, if they bring the Bolt back with Ultium technology, slot it under the Equinox and give it a nice low price, yeah, it'll be great.
GREG MIGLIORE: Cool. So speaking of things coming back from the dead, we'll run through a couple of items here real quick. Those barn find Ferraris that went up for auction, I mean, holy cow, man. Like the one that was designed by Pininfarina, and was just like a wreck.
It wrecked in a race 60 years ago, and then they left it. It's sort of our lead image. So you should check the story out. It's pretty wild. And then you can click through to some of the links in the RM-- the RM auctions catalog and see some of the-- the different more details.
Some cool stuff in there that you could definitely-- Concours ready. But that was the one that stood out to me. I was like, holy cow, this is just wild.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, it is. There's some really neat car in that collection, for sure. The, yeah, 20 lost Ferraris and some nearly destroyed.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, there's a wide variety of conditions there. And it's neat to see that. It's just a hell of a barn find.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, me too.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Such a cool, such an exciting thing.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, so check those out, click through the pictures. And it's definitely worth your time. That's the kind of thing I like to read when I had more time on like Saturday and Sunday mornings, is go into like retro kind of old Ferraris and different sites.
Like the New York Times Wheels blog, when it was a thing, was good at that. We like to think we're pretty good at that. So check it out. It's a pretty cool story. Did you catch any of Le Mans last weekend, speaking of old racers and Ferraris?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: I did not.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I did a little bit. And I just-- I don't know. I think it's-- I used to go to like some ALMS races back when I worked for Auto Week. And I saw some of the IMSA stuff more recently. I've seen that more recently.
It's just, it's kind of a cool watch, you know? It's on for 24 hours. You could come and go as you want. And I thought it was cool to see Ferrari come back and win. It was unfortunate that the Toyota race car got hit with a squirrel, or ran over a squirrel, or [INAUDIBLE] a squirrel. That sounded bad.
Such a cool race, though. And it's-- some of our correspondents were there. All the history, all the-- just such a high level of competition. The element of danger that goes into it, the way the automakers get so fired up about it.
Every year I try to watch some of it, a little bit of Sebring maybe a little bit of like the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Like, I'm not the biggest endurance car racing fan, but it's just, I really appreciate it, especially being in the business. And they're like little touchstones throughout the year. So I don't know. I think Le Mans is always a nice kind of kickoff to summer.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It is fun to have on, if you're just doing stuff, and then you just leave it on the TV and check in on it throughout the day. It was also pretty interesting how I feel like it made a little more noise this year. Automakers were using Le Mans as a sort of soapbox for upcoming products.
Like Ford showed its Mustang, that it's a Le Mans Mustang, and it's going to be racing in the future. And that was pretty cool. And Toyota took the chance to introduce Kamui Kobayashi as its new NASCAR driver, which I think is also pretty cool.
He's a great racer, a Le Mans winner, didn't do so well in F1, but it'll be interesting to see how he does in NASCAR. But yeah, Le Mans is a great world stage for any automaker to sort of make some announcements. And it's also a really good testbed for technology, especially hybrid and electrification and stuff.
So I've always wanted to go. I've never been--
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, me too.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: --to the race. I think that'd be fun. It'd be a challenge, too, to cover and to just stay awake and alert through the whole thing. But moving around from corner to corner, and just staying up for the whole 24 hours would be quite the experience.
GREG MIGLIORE: Sounds good. Sounds good. I would like to go, too. I'd like to go where-- that would just be on the bucket list of things to do, you know? And it'd kind of wreck you, I would imagine, for like a week. You'd come home and probably try not to do too much for a few days. But it's awesome.
So all right, so let's talk about what we've been driving. We've got some cool stuff. Going to lead things off with the final drive of the Chrysler 300c. It is-- you know, it's a car I have a lot of thoughts about. I've been--
It arrived-- this is Wednesday. It arrived later Monday, and actually arrived early Monday. And like, in one day, I burned through like a 1/3 of a gallon-- a 1/3 of a tank of gas. I've just been driving it. It's got that visceral sound, the rumble, even when you're just sitting there at idle. I usually back into my driveway and then gun the engine a few times.
In case you're wondering what exactly this is, maybe you missed the email, if you will, so this is the 300c. They haven't actually sold the 300c per se since 2020. You can still get the 5.7 liter V8, which is pretty big engine, like 363 horsepower, but that was more like available on the 300s, so it wasn't the C, you know, that iconic car that goes back to like the '50s even, as far as being like the real 300 muscle car.
So the C is back, and it's got a big badge on the grille and on the seats to let you know that. And they didn't just say, hey, we're going to give you the letter. They dropped in the 6.4 liter Hemi V8, naturally aspirated, 485 horsepower. It's a riot.
You know, I think there were some rumors they might do Hellcat. I don't think you need to do it. This is the 300. It's a little bit classier, a little bit maybe bougier. Like, you don't need all that. It sounds right. It's a ton of power. It's basically a Chrysler Scat Pack. So that's the big engine and not much else, aside from some design stuff, which to me is all you need.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, it's the best setup, I think. The Scat Pack is the way I would go.
GREG MIGLIORE: 100%. Very few people I have actually-- there's a couple, but like usually in the podcast, I would always do Scat Pack over Hellcat or any Demon, if you will. To me, this is it. And it's a very fitting send-off for a Chrysler icon.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be weird to see it go. But it's funny, Wally, my son, was asking me over the weekend, he's like, what cars does Chrysler make? Because he could only think of the Pacifica.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Well, yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Well, there's the 300. He's like, I don't even know what that is. I'm like--
GREG MIGLIORE: Right. Right.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Kind of forgot that it exists, you know?
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. And that's kind of like-- that's kind of what I'm writing too is like, you may forgot about the 300 because Chrysler seems to have forgotten about the 300, quite frankly.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: But yeah, I remember seeing this at the Detroit show and taking a look around it, and it looks fairly normal. There's some badging and some embroidery inside. But when you open the hood, that's when you realize that this is something different. But yeah, it is a really cool sendoff for the 300.
GREG MIGLIORE: 2000 for the US, 200 for Canada. I believe they're all spoken for. My guess is that they will bring back the 300. We don't know what it's going to be, but the Land Cruiser is back. We think the Bolt's coming back.
It's actually somewhat rare for very successful names to totally disappear. So I mean, Chrysler has used the 300 name. They used it in the '50s and '60s. They've used it for years. Sometimes it takes a couple of decades off. It's too good of a name not to use.
So I imagine it'll be back. And just driving it, it reminds me just how significant this car was for Chrysler. You know, it's that LX platform that they ended up using for the Charger, the Challenger, the Dodge Magnum Deep Cut. And I think it was really the first successful thing that the Germans and the Americans came together and made after that Daimler-Chrysler merger because you remember, the first try was--
One of the first tries was the Chrysler Crossfire, which didn't go right. Not great, Bob. So-- although some people did like that SRT version of it. So this was-- not only did this go well, it was a home run. It won every Car of the Year Award you can think of.
It totally reset the industry. I remember how annoyed GM and Ford execs were. They're like, well, great Chrysler has one car. I remember reporters would be like, well, how many do you have in 2006, and the answer was not many. You know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Right.
GREG MIGLIORE: So it's a good send-off. Let's put it that way. I'm having fun driving this thing. Yeah. So all right, check out the site. This story probably won't be up by the time this publishes, but likely in July I'll probably have a pretty good write-up.
And I think I'm going to-- I might try and go into some of the older neighborhoods in the Metro Detroit area, try to get that kind of old feel flair. There's this like 1920s mansion that was listed in, I think, Palmer Woods, that I kind of just want to like--
You got to drive the car. You might as well drive it somewhere. Try to go take some pictures over there, maybe.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: That'd be cool.
GREG MIGLIORE: So we'll see. We'll see where the week takes me. Maybe a cars and coffee. All right, so you've been playing PlayStation on the clock, apparently, in the Sienna. How's that going?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Well, let's see, I wanted to test out the rear seat entertainment because I hadn't.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Rear seat entertainment systems. I don't know. Nowadays, when tablets and your phone can play movies, it doesn't seem all that practical. So I tested it out. And the rear seat entertainment in the Sienna, it's a single screen that comes down from the ceiling in the middle.
And then there's an HDMI input. There's an inverter. So there's a plug on the back of the center console. So I took my PlayStation out there, and plugged it all in, and opened up the screen, and I couldn't get the PlayStation to power up.
There's a little button to the left of the steering wheel on the dash that you have to press to turn on the AC plugs in the back. There's one on the back of the center console, and there's one in the cargo area. And you have to press it every time you want to activate those plugs. It turns off every time you turn off the car.
So once I remembered that that thing existed, I was able to fire it up, and it fired up and worked just great, no power issues. There is plenty of power. I think there's 1,500 watts available through the inverter. And the quality is OK, but it's 1080.
And the thing is the screen, when you fold it down, it blocks your view out the back through the rear view mirror. Now, you can get a digital mirror, the camera feed through the mirror, but our tester doesn't have that, so you're driving around kind of blind, as though you're full up of cargo with that.
And then it comes with a couple of wireless headphones, so you can either play it through the speakers or through the headphones. And if you do it through the headphones, then whoever's driving can still listen to whatever they want. But you know, when a package like this costs $1,700, it just-- it doesn't make sense, really, to me anymore.
And especially like the one screen. Everyone wants their own screen. And you know, I like having the screens on the back of the headrest. If you're going to have fixed screens at all, having them on the back of the headrest is a little better. If you want to watch anything from the second row, both passengers are going to be craning their necks to look at it.
But everything did run seamlessly. I didn't have to troubleshoot anything to get the-- except for that button, to get the display to work. And yeah, it was just pretty seamless, pretty plug-and-play, but it just seems-- I don't know.
I wouldn't spend my money on a rear seat entertainment system, especially this one. Maybe some of the other ones that have apps built in, like YouTube, and Netflix, and stuff, like some of the other-- Kia Carnival, I think, has some of those. And that seems like a better fit for today.
But yeah, I just went up North in it, and Wally just had a tablet that he watched a movie on rather than watch anything on that, that you have to plug things into.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, we had the BMW 760 with the fold down theater screen, which was insane.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Oh, yeah, that's--
GREG MIGLIORE: It's a lot, man.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, that's a whole different ballgame there.
GREG MIGLIORE: For what it's worth, though, I tend to agree with you. You can get like 60% to 80% of your entertainment value with an iPad or something. It almost seems like automakers don't need to invest as much in some of these-- like the hardware and having defined hard points for them know. I think a lot of people are very happy just having phone time, you know? So I don't know. Cool.
So you've been driving the Escape. That is-- I haven't driven an Escape in quite sometime. I remember like-- so this is like the Refresh, and you had the-- it's the ST-line, right?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yep.
GREG MIGLIORE: That's kind of gnarly. How was it?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: It was good. I like the looks of the Refresh. And then the ST line, I think, really makes this look better. You know, body color, cladding, and this one had the black wheels, had the red paint and the black wheels. It just looked a lot sportier than any other Escape I've ever driven.
So I mean, the Escape is a pretty fun crossover, compact, crossover drive. compared to some of the other mainstream compact crossovers, it's pretty tight handling. And then with the EcoBoost Four, the 2-liter EcoBoost, plenty of power on tap.
So it was nice to have some of the looks to go along with it. You know, a bigger spoiler in the back, and then the updated front fascia with the new headlights and new grille. And then the ST-line had this nice black mesh on the grille. So yeah, the looks of the ST-line a little better vibe with how the car actually drives.
The ST-line Elite, which this was, there's three different ST-line trims. The ST-line Elite has a light bar that goes across just underneath the hood, between the headlights, and it looks really good at night. And it kind of reminds me of the F-150 Lightning, only shrunken down.
And then it's got the new front fascia. It looks a little more like the Ford Edge. So it's sort of borrowing DNA from other Ford vehicles and tying it all together. And then inside, the Refresh gets this new 12.3-inch infotainment display running SYNC 4, and it's quite the improvement.
Man, that screen is really, really crisp, just one of the clearest screens I've seen, and pretty easy to use. But yeah, it was nice to drive. It was nice to reacquaint myself with the Escape. The interior, this ST-Line Elite had nice leather seats and some nice carbon fiber looking trim.
It sort of distracts you from the black plastics that sort of are all over the Escape. This seems a little less of a desert of black plastic. So yeah, it was nice. I still like the Escape. It's a little on the pricey side, but every time I get in one, I enjoy driving it, and yeah, I like it a little bit better now with the updated looks and the availability of this ST-line appearance package.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I think the update is a good move for them. And I think adding that package makes a lot of sense, too, because I think there's a lot of people who-- I'm always surprised how many people check that box for crossovers. Like yeah, I'll take the sporty-ish package, even if it's just an appearance. But good way to make a little more money, and I think the consumers like it too.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, and on this one, it really just makes the car look a little less drab. And yeah, it gives a little bit of personality, which I think the Escape needed.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, so you drove a school bus this week. That's pretty wild. Tell me about that.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, so it's this company called Lightning eMotors. And they basically have three products right now. They have a Ford Transit van that they electrify. They have a GM Class Four chassis that they electrify, that they use for school buses, shuttle buses, things like that. And then they have a mobile DC Charger.
So it's a trailer with up to four or five charge points on it, that-- for rescues, or for-- if you need to set something up at a job site, or something like that, or a temporary installation. But yeah, I actually got to drive the Transit and the GM one, which was the-- in this case, it was an electric school bus, one of the smaller school buses.
And yeah, I haven't driven a gas or diesel-powered school bus before, but I was really shocked at how easy it was to drive this one. They even set up some cones, and [INAUDIBLE] do a little slaloming in this parking lot on Belle Isle. It was pretty neat.
GREG MIGLIORE: Nice.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah. So I think right now is a tipping point for electric school buses. It's been sort of ignored for too long, but it's a way a lot of fleets could save money in the long run.
You're paying probably close to double up front when you buy an electric school bus as opposed to a diesel one, but you know, your costs of operating are far, far, far less. And you know, it's a big area of concern for a lot of states and municipalities, is air quality and climate.
So yeah, moving to electric buses is sort of an underserved niche in the market. And yeah, lightning is aiming to serve that, at least for some of the smaller operations. But you know, some of the long-time makers, like Bluebird and stuff, are going electric now, too.
So I think we're going to start to see a lot more electric school buses. But yeah, driving that was really fun, pretending I was a bus driver. And you know--
GREG MIGLIORE: Nice.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: You have that weird handle that you pull to open the door. It's just-- it's always fun to get to drive something like that that you don't get to drive every day. And the fact that it was electric made it even more fun. It was super quiet.
They have basically one level of regen baked into it. Customers can sort of specify what they want, and you can get over-the-air updates. And one thing this company does is they have a really good fleet management system.
And they take all the data from all the cars that they have out on the road, and if you go to their website, you can sort of plug in what your fleet would be doing, your route, your uptime, downtime, all that stuff, temperature of where you're going to be, and it will tell you which vehicles would work for you.
And it's kind of neat just that using that information in real time every time they get-- it's constantly updating the algorithm. But yeah, that was neat.
GREG MIGLIORE: It's interesting because, when you think of the use cases for a lot of school buses, they go, they put a lot of miles on between, say, 7:00 AM and like 9:00 AM. Most of them sit for a while. They go back somewhere. Many districts have like holding yards or places they refuel.
You don't have to put diesel in them. You could just go to a big charging bank. You know? And then from like 3:00 to say 5:00, they get used again, come back, charge them up for another, whatever, and away you go. In some ways, it's a very, very ideal use case.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah, and they've got vehicle-to-grid technology. So when they're just sitting there, they could sell money-- I mean sell energy back to the grid, and takes for your cost of operation's even lower. And so they've got-- they've got--
In San Diego, at the airport-- I think San Diego. They're running these Lightning eMotors shuttle buses from one of the parking lots. And then DHL is a customer for their transit. And they've got modular batteries, you know, scalable batteries.
And so DHL's California fleet has three of these 40-kilowatt hour packs in their trucks. But in New York, they only have one in there, which is about, I think, 60 miles of range because New York is built very vertically. So they're not driving very far, which I thought was kind of an interesting thing.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see. Like, different automotive executives who I've kind of interviewed over the years have often said, cars are important, but doing buses, heavy duty machinery, those things are big, they drive a lot, and they put out a lot of pollutants.
If we could kind of do that, you're like-- you're taking a big swing at things. And arguably it's more important to make a school bus electric than it is to make somebody turn in a Chevy Cruze that's getting 30 miles to the gallon, you know?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: It's taking a big swing and a problem and can be interesting.
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: And there are some interesting use cases, like mining, where, if you fill something up with a load at the top of the hill, and drive it down the hill, it actually gets more in regen going down the hill than it needs to go back up empty. So it's like almost-- it's free energy, it almost seems like. So--
GREG MIGLIORE: Free energy. I think that's what we're all going for, right?
JOHN BELTZ SNYDER: Ideally.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. So that's the drive section. And that's all the time we have. It's been a good show. I think we've run through a lot of different things. Please send us your Spend My Moneys. That's podcast@autoblog.com.
If you enjoy the show, we'd love to get five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get the show. Please tell a friend about it. We try to get the word out. I hope a lot of enthusiasts enjoy the "Autoblog Podcast." That's it for this week. Be safe out there, and we'll see you next time.
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