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TWC Podcast #41: Live-ish from the LA Auto Show

TWC Podcast #41: Live-ish from the LA Auto Show

Phil Royle
opinion

By Phil Royle – Nov. 18, 2021

We recorded this week’s The Watt Car Podcast live from the floor of the 2021 LA Auto Show! Following eight hours of walking the halls at the Los Angeles Convention Center, we present the highlights from this very electrified show. In fact, of the official vehicle announcements made at the show, only one vehicle didn’t have a plug. That one we won’t cover – the rest are in the podcast.

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EPISODE 41 TRANSCRIPT
Phil: I am Philip Royle the editor of Sports Car magazine and writer for Racer.com.

Ed: I’m Ed Sanchez, Senior Analyst for Strategy Analytics Global Automotive Practice

Phil: And we are here in person, live (sort of) at the 2021 LA Auto Show we walked around we've gone a ton of press conferences and seen a whole bunch of stuff and talked to almost nobody. We’ve been talked to, but there's been a lot of vehicle debuts or slightly more information from the manufacturers.

Ed: A lot of concepts.

Phil: This year is very different, there were more EVs, shall we say? Noticeably absent, reading between the lines no Honda, no Mazda, no Mercedes, no press conferences from them. Instead they were press conferences from Fisker, Hyundai, that was EV stuff, Subaru that was EV stuff, Kia, which was EV stuff or electrified in their case as well as EV. Porsche didn’t really have a press conference but they were there. Mullen which was EV, EdisonFuture, EV, VinFast, EV. This is not normal. What do you take from this? Is this the beginning of the beginning? Is this the beginning of the end for traditional auto shows? is it's going all EVs forever?

Ed: I think with a lot of the hype surrounding the IPOs around Rivian and Lucid, and if you watch the business networks like CNBC it's “EV, EV, EV!!” I don't mean to be too much of a wet blanket about this but I see a little bit of a repeat of the dot.com kind of craze of the early 2000s of a lot of intenders, a lot of companies that want to come in and kind of stake their claim and make their name the EV space. Sadly, I don't think all of them are going to make it. Some may, some may not.

Phil: There were a lot of buzzwords that I heard multiple times.

Ed: Sustainability?

Phil: Sustainability was one of them! Ding, ding, ding!! We’ve got a winner! Luckily, nobody said “paradigm shift.” So do you want to go down some of the new releases?

Ed: I’ll just kind of go sequentially off the top, the Fisker Ocean was publicly unveiled.

Phil: This was a lot of information that we already knew. In fact, it was so a lot of information that we already knew that while they unveiled the Fisker Ocean, right around the corner was already a Fisker Ocean prototype that looked exactly the same, other than some wheels and tires, and it had to wrap instead of paint on it, but it was basically the same thing. They basically didn't unveil anything, but Henrik Fisker was there, in-person, and he basically reiterated a lot of stuff we already know, a $37,500 price, that he can bring it to market cheap because it's a very “lean” company, and he kind of kept going to that is our small company is very lean he also brought up their payment plan which is different, so you can do instead of paying $37,500, you do like a down payment, he didn’t really get into that I read that somewhere else, you pay $379 a month for as long as you want, and you can return the car anytime you want, and I believe that includes insurance, if what I read previously was correct.

Ed: That’s actually a good deal if true. So it’s basically an open-ended lease.

Phil: It’s an open-ended lease. Some people were like, “Why would you do this?” When you could pay $379 to pay for 12 months and walk away, and the answer to that was and this is where he didn't go into it today, but I believe there's a big down payment so you would if you did $5,000 down whatever the number will be done $379 and you only wanted to do that for 12 months then you lose the $5,000. So some of the other points he brought up was sustainability was one of the big things that his customers wanted, so the car has a lot of sustainable elements, there was a lot of…I believe it was him that was reusing a lot of like bottles and t-shirts and stuff, like recycled stuff. There are three versions. The base one uses LFP batteries, and NMCs in the other two higher-up ones, the Ultra and Extreme, so the Sport is the base one.

This is an SUV. Did we cover that? It’s a little SUV. Solar roof on some models. The first Fisker Ocean will be delivered in 2022, he claimed, I heard him say 19,000 preorders already, which seems both good and bad. Oh, the coolest thing that you gave me a “What!?!?” when I pointed it out, the center screen, you know how some have vertical, some have it horizontal..This moves! So you get back to last week, where we were talking about the “orb” in the Genesis GV60, you’re looking for something that’s going to break? A giant, I’m guessing a 15-inch screen that rotates on a single point…Oh man! I don’t know about that. What was your takeaway from that?

Ed: It was kind of already announced that Magna was going to be the engineering partner for that and it was going to be built in Austria presumably?

Phil: That’s old news. Where have you been? There was Magna, and then he’s working with the iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn to make some other…

Ed: For what they call…the peach? The apricot?

Phil: Something like that. He also said the skateboard platform is “aluminum intensive” and then kind of backtracked a little bit, and said “there’s some steel in there.” The display of the ‘skateboard,’ I wouldn't say it was a mock-up, but it certainly didn't look ready for production. They painted the whole thing, including the coolant line, where like everything was painted it like they took that to Maaco to get it painted, and just blasted the whole thing.

Ed: I don't want to be too critical of like show bucks and chassis cutaways, because they are what they are. Overall, I mean you know, with the press scrum it was kind of hard to get really close to it, but I think you might have gotten a little closer to it than I did. But it looks nice, Again, not a huge surprise because they've been kind of teasing it for the better part of a year.

Phil: And he said all of the right things, but he basically they threw everything but the kitchen sink at this thing…

Ed: Sustainable? Vegan leather?

Phil: And it all looked about right. Okay so let's see, the Sport is $37,500, 250-mile range, front-wheel drive, 275 horsepower, 0-60 in 6.9 seconds sounds good. The Ultra $50,000, 340 miles, dual motor with a rear disconnect, and it had smart traction…whatever… 540 horsepower, 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, the Extreme is $69,000 350-plus miles, two motor, blah blah blah, 550 horsepower somehow only 10 horsepower more than the Ultra but 3.6 seconds vs 3.9 seconds, basically he said everything right.

Ed: I mean, the specs are suspiciously similar to a Tesla Model Y, I'm sure that's not coincidental. So yeah, more power to ‘em. I hope they bring it to market, and he’s successful with it.

Phil: They're saying the first car to be delivered in 2022 I'm guessing that means December and the first car to be delivered is probably going to be his, but…

Ed: All I can say is hopefully Fisker time is more reliable than Tesla time.

Phil: So one of the times that’s pretty good time is Hyundai. We were just commenting the other week about how Hyundai announces like their E-GMP platform and then they announce the GV60 and then boom! Like six months later, not even, like 3 months later whatever it was…

Ed: Asian Petrolhead drives it!

Phil: They are doing really well, so Hyundai was next up they had a press conference with their Seven Concept which is a honking huge SUV, interestingly, a 3-door like the Hyundai Veloster that I just drove, so it's dual suicide doors so it's only one on the passenger side and driver side is a single big door, the thing is massive! They say midsize SUV.

Ed: Of the two, and I know Hyundai and Kia don't like being spoken of in the same sentence…

Phil: They are separate companies!

Ed: Exactly, they are quite adamant about that. Anyway, of the two I think the Ioniq was or excuse me, the Seven Concept was the much more “concept-ish” of the two I would say. It had a joystick controller for presumably directional control, I didn't even see if it had pedals, so I don't know and directional control, but anyway…

Phil: How weird is the automotive world now that you have to look to see if it’s got pedals?

Ed: The interior was very kind of “Urban Loungey” so my guess is the production model is going to be quite a bit more conventional than the concept was.

Phil: Now this was the first of multiple unveilings or press conferences where they discuss the concept that I began to be like… “Seriously?” Where they talked about this is what they called it…”Space in a…man I can't even read my notes. Basically, space want to hang out in, and…

Ed: Personal space?

Phil: They’re creating a space inside that you kind of want to hang out in, that is part of bringing the living room into the house, and making it so you can hang out there. Several manufacturers mentioned that, and the interior of the Hyundai Seven Concept reminded me very much of the Canoo. It was like the sunken couch design of the ‘60s in the back of this thing, and it brought forth this concept of people wanting to spend time in their car, and I’m like, “Why?” Am I wrong? Why do I want to spend time in my car to hang out? Isn't a car transportation? Am I just old-school?

Ed: I don't know, like I said it was very kind of ‘out-there’ on a number of levels in terms of concept versus production, so…cool conceptually. You commented on the rear hatch being like this huge pane of glass that kind of looked in on the interior.

Phil: It was ‘60s ‘fishbowl’ design which went perfectly well with the interior design and the sunken couch conversation pit that you’ve got going on. I loved the concept. It looked a little large for my tastes, but I liked it.

Ed: It’s definitely not small. The one comment I have is the rear glass, I don't know if you even remember this vehicle, is the Isuzu Axiom SUV. It was kind of like a Trooper, but kind of a futuristic kind of Robocop-style. The third-row glass shape reminded me of the Axiom little bit. I think it's safe to say the production version is going to be a lot more conventional, but it kind of shows what they're thinking.

Phil: They talked about the Palisade in relation to this, and then they showed something that had nothing to do with it, so what I would expect is an electrified Palisade is going to be the Hyundai ioniq 7.

Ed: With kind of the what's becoming to be the Ioniq signature little Cube LED lighting.

Phil: You’ve got to go look at pictures. We’ll have links to all this stuff in the show notes. It was pretty cool. Behind Hyundai, I got distracted I’ve got to admit. A Canoo was there.

Ed: Was it the Canoo Canoo?

Phil: The Canoo Canoo. Which I forget the name of it. They gave it a different name.

Ed: The MPV, or whatever?

Phil: It looked smaller than I imagined in person, but I liked it. It was really nice. The one thing that concerned me that didn't concern you was…How long has this Canoo been around, like three years?

Ed: I remember seeing it two years ago.

Phil: Somebody was getting something out of back, and they hit the button and it opened it was a power hatch, and it opened up and they hit the button and it went to close, and it got like an inch or two from closing and then went, “WHAM!” Closed.

Ed: You were concerned about this loud clunking noise. I’m kind of like, “whatever.”

Phil: To me, if you've had a vehicle for two-plus years, and you haven't got a soft-close on a power hatch, it makes me wonder what else don't you have? You didn’t seem that concerned about it, I thought it was something of note, but I really liked it. I thought the size is good. I'm not a big one on the conversation lounge in the back, add 3 rows, call it a minivan, but I like the design. The way the ID.Buzz is going, which is kind of his direct competition, the ID.Buzz is turning more into a traditional minivan, as far as the outside design goes. This is still retaining that look. I am hopeful that they can get this into production, because the outside is a home run. I could see myself driving one of these.

Ed: Supposedly they have a plant they're going to build in Oklahoma and they claim they're going to I don't know if they gave like an availability date in terms of sales…

Phil: There are a whole lot of “supposed tos.” We left there, and we went to Subaru where are they had a floor that just about made me fall over…

Ed: It was moving LED kind of display…

Phil: You had a huge 20-foot tall by 50-foot wide screen in front of you, and then a floor that was moving. I was tripping over myself, I had to stand off of it. Good things were not going to happen.

Ed: And kind of an Ewok Village-looking kind of Pavilion.

Phil: It was nice. They pumped in some scents of pine.

Ed: At first you thought it smelled citrusy at first?

Phil: I thought it smelled a little like Soarin’ Over California Adventure. Anyway, they got there and unlike Hyundai, that did it all in a video. As the saying goes, “This could have been an email.” You get to Subaru, and it was all in-person, and I was very happy about that. And they unveiled the Solterra, which is basically the Toyota bZ4X, it's their EV, and I think it looks great. Okay, maybe my ‘it looks great’ is over-doing it. It looks like an acceptable vehicle that Subaru or Toyota would put out. They’re co-produced. And they got up there they talk about their partnership with the National Park Foundation, they talk about the Make-A-Wish Foundation, all of these things they give money to. Do you know they’ve given $65 million to the National Parks Foundation? It was more about feeling good about that then it was about the car. And do you know why?

Ed: Tell me, Phil.

Phil: Because they had nothing to say about the car! So the Solterra comes out as a 2023 model, all-wheel-drive to seems to be standard.

Ed: That’s kind of a Subaru thing, with the exception of the BRZ.

Phil: They also had some other front-wheel-drive models I thought, back in the day.

Ed: The Justy, but that was decades ago.

Phil: Maybe that’s what I’m thinking of, I don’t know. They said “it must be durable,” their catchphrase was “Love is now electric.”

Ed: Groovy.

Phil: They said this is built on the e-Global platform, which we all know is the e-TNGA platform. They said future models will use the same platform. Is Subaru now all Toyota?

Ed: Well, maybe.

Phil: They said 8.3 inches of ground clearance, glass roof, flat floor, blind spot detection. Did you hear that? It’s going to have blind spot detection!

Ed: Wow.

Phil: 220 miles of range, 12.3-inch screen, buzzword, buzzword. Basically, short of saying it had cruise control and power windows, they went through the general list of what’s on the Monroney sticker…

Ed: Of what most new cars have.

Phil: They all have these things. 80% charge, they said…in 1 hour. Womp, womp. I couldn’t believe that! We've not heard these numbers before, I hope he was mistaken. I should have raised my hand and said, “Sir! Sir!”

Ed: That would have good like 5 years ago.

Phil: Now they didn't give any battery information, but Toyota, not related to the LA Auto Show, did a press release this morning about the bZ4X, and they gave numbers that I found on InsideEVs that said the bZ4X in the US will have a 71.4 kWh battery in the front wheel drive version which is the same as Japan, the all-wheel-drive version will have 72.8 kWh battery, so they're doing a 1 hour to charge to 80 percent. That number is only acceptable to me if this is a 150 kWh battery. This is an average-size battery. I've got no problem with the size of the battery, but I have a problem with the 1-hour recharge rate, unless it’s Level 1. I feel like he didn't clarify because he didn't know or didn't care. I want them to succeed, I just feel like somebody at Subaru is sitting there looking at the numbers going, “Everybody's going electric. We don't have a product, we have nothing. Let me dust off my resume.”

Ed: “Hey Toyota, can you help us?”

Phil: I liked it.

Ed: The one thing I did not care for, and I think we're in agreement about this, is the unpainted front fenders that are just…

Phil: Front and rear…

Ed: Was it rear too? The black plastic looks a little cheap to me.

Phil: So we said, “Well, maybe on the Toyota you can get it painted, and that's how they're differentiating.” So we walk over to the Toyota booth, and it’s painted a nice sparkly metallic black! On the fenders, was it on a blue?

Ed: I think it was gray.

Phil: The vehicle, the fenders were gray, the Toyota…

Ed: Maybe like a bluish-gray.

Phil: Subaru’s going more for like a black plasticky, and Toyota is painting the fenders with the different color, so hopefully somewhere in Toyota option book is the same color as the fenders, and maybe you can order that, I don't know. I really wanted to like it, but one thing that was just a stark, stark difference we then went to Kia, where they unveiled the EV9, which I'm drawing a blank on what it looks like now, but they also had an EV6 there and we know the EV6 will charge in like 20 minutes or something, 20 to 30 minutes to 80%, so you literally, and they even said that in the press conference, it's like you just came from where they can do 80% in an hour, and it’s like “Why would you ever buy this car? As much as I want to love the Subaru, I can't. Because I walk over to the Kia, and there's a vehicle is going to cost the same or less, and charges in half the time!

Ed: Not that they're not directly comparable. It seems like almost all new cars are a crossover of some sort or another. Subjectively, I think the EV6 is much better-looking. I mean the Subaru is more kind of off-roady adventure-oriented, the EV6 is much more of a “street” crossover, I guess if you want to call it that, so it may be somewhat of an apples-and-oranges comparison. To me, the EV6 is much more attractive and compelling to me, charging time notwithstanding.

Phil: So Kia unveiled the Kia Sportage hybrid. Which was like, “Okay whatever, hybrid.” But interestingly, did you notice what they used for the term for hybrid?

Ed: HEV?

Phil: Have you ever heard that? I saw that and thought, “hydrogen?”

Ed: It’s kind of industry parlance. Variations you see, and just the acronym for electrifying in general is xEV, so battery electric: BEV, plug-in hybrid: PHEV…

Phil: I have never seen the hybrid one, so there you go.

Ed: They didn't announce it here, but in Europe there is a plug-in Sportage, I believe.

Phil: Well, they don't have that here, we have nothing to say about that, so that the Sportage hybrid is 226 horsepower 177 of that is out of a 1.6L turbo motor, and then they went to announce the EV9 Concept, and they also said that they are going to unveil a new EV every year starting next year through 2025 or something, which they really could have started with this year because they just announced a new EV this year. They’re going to be carbon-neutral by 2045, I believe we already knew that. They’re going to be sustainable. The EV9 comes out and it looked to me like a large Kia Soul, in a good way.

Ed: Size-wise It's close to the Telluride, which is their large SUV.

Phil: He did say on this one specifically that it charges from 10 to 80% in 30 minutes as well, not just the EV6.

Ed: That's the E-GMP platform in general.

Phil: But it’s larger, so we don’t know if it’s got more battery. Presumably it’s got a larger battery. The bigger the battery, the slower the charge rate is going to be.

Ed: Or the faster it’s going to have to charge, if that makes any sense. You have to put more juice through the firehose.

Phil: I think they’re kind of maxed. We don’t know. They still charge well. Hyundai is kind of the leader in that.

Ed: For mainstream brands.

Phil: So the EV9 had a glass roof, and pretty much all of them do. Maybe I'm the idiot in the room the glass roofs on EVs is because battery packs are on the floors, and you've got less headroom, so you’ve got to do the glass roof. This was the one that had the solar panels on the hood.

Ed: Was it this or the Hyundai?

Phil: I have it as this. I’m sure it’s all the same. Three-row SUV. I like it! They're finally making three-row, well, we know they're going to make this, so 3-row SUV that's great, if it comes out in the next year or two, I need these to come out, so then I can wait 5 years and buy one used. The interior looked like the Seven Concept.

Ed: Hmm…A little more conventional. It had a more conventional steering wheel, it didn’t have a joystick that I could see.

Phil: A lot of recycled stuff, and on this one it was less of the conversation pit, but the second row, so this was 3 row, but the second row folded flat, and then you could like pivot the front seats I believe, and then you can make it a conversation area with the table in between.

Ed: When parked, presumably.

Phil: When you chill and Netflix. I don’t get this! They even showed one of these, I don't remember which one it was, they showed the car in the living room!

Ed: I know you're talking about.

Phil: I don’t get it! I’m not gonna hang out in my car!

Ed: I do. ‘Cause I watch Netflix in my car!

Phil: But only when you’re charging, right?

Ed: Usually yeah, or when I get in a really bad argument with my wife.

Phil: I’ll edit that part out. We had some time between all of these things, these press conferences and we happened upon on our way from there to wherever we were going next…to Mullen, we happened across a couple other things, we stumbled upon Cobera.

Ed: Oh yeah.

Phil: Had you ever heard of them?

Ed: No, I hadn't.

Phil: They are basically a Shelby Cobra knock-off kit car-style vehicle. It looks just like it. Electric. And it's going to be $175,000, which okay, everybody may be going, “Oh my God, $175,000!” But that’s actually not that bad for a Cobra replica vehicle. It looked beautiful. Short of having no exhaust pipes on the side, but I was kind of what was missing, when the hood was down. The car was carbon fiber, it was fantastic.

Ed: It had a chromoly frame, I think.

Phil: It looked well-done. Interesting things.. You can get a front-wheel drive version.

Ed: Which seems kind of strange.

Phil: Or all-wheel-drive. With all-wheel-drive, you can dial the power, I guess you have a little knob or something on the inside, and it sounded like you can dial it back or front. It was a 600 horsepower total for all-wheel-drive and it seemed like it's dual identical motors on the version they had, so you could get 300 horse out of the rear of the car. A 30 to 40 kilowatt-hour battery depending on how you option it.

Ed: Which sounds small.

Phil: Which sounds small, but these are small weekend getaway, weekend drive cars. You're never going to take one of these across the country. That's even what he said. You're not going anywhere when you get in this car, you’re literally not going anywhere. You were going out for fun. You’ll drive a canyon road whatever, so you can get a hundred miles, he was saying 250 miles…Ehh…Especially not the way you’d drive this.

Ed: I think the important thing to note in this is their claimed weight, which was extremely light, especially for an EV. So 700 kilograms, which translates to I think about 1,500 pounds.

Phil: The number changed a little bit here and there, but it was sub-2,000 pounds. I didn't see it. I don't know. I also didn’t see…the batteries, you've got the motor in the front, motor in the rear, inverter and everything with the battery where the engine would go, the battery is underneath that in the front, and then down the transmission console. And then he said it has a 5-speed sequential transmission. Where’s that? How does that tie into the front and the rear ? I was unclear on that. So there were some questionable things here and there. He also didn't know a lot of things when it came to “do you need to shift?” He didn't know what the engines would rev to, or what the motors would rev to, so there were a lot of unknowns there. But this goes back to Enthusiast Vehicles in the EV market and this guy was from?

Ed: Hungary.

Phil: And that is great that you've got a company from Hungary coming in making your Cobra replica EV, trying to break into the American market. They were picking our brains out where they could set up a manufacturing plant and a home base.

Ed: Not in California

Phil: Not in California was our advice. So he's looking to moving his whole family, it’s a family thing I thought it was great. I don't know if I would expect this vehicle to exist for a while. They have one. We looked at it. The next one is going to be bigger, because they were having a problem with fitting people in it because, I think they made it so true to the original.

Ed: Which is tiny, and Americans are bigger now.

Phil: But we went from there to Porsche where we saw the Taycan GTS Sport Turismo, which I loved.

Ed: I think we both loved.

Phil: And I don't know specs about it, so you can look it up online.

Ed: I think I read real quick, I think they said 590 horse 0 to 60 in three-point something I want to say 7 or 9 or something. Quick enough.

Phil: Now this is a lot of money. $130,000 something, so it's Model S Plaid money, but not as quick, and doesn't have the Supercharger network. Which would you buy?

Ed: Admittedly I'm a wagon nut. I’ve blogged about my ‘83 Regal, which at some point in the distant future I'd like to do an EV conversion on. As soon as they announced the Sport Turismo, I immediately fell in love. I was like, “That's my car if I win the lottery.” That's what I'll get.

Phil: But it doesn't have a yoke steering wheel? How can you love it?

Ed: I think that makes me love it even more. I really like the Taycan Sport Turismo. I like this version. In terms of pure practicality, it's a little snug. I mean it's still a Porsche, so style and performance over practicality, but that's kind of how they've always been. I’d get this in a second.

Phil: We’ve talked a little bit about EVs, what did you say, Soulless, not sterile? Sterile, not soulless? This, you looked at it, and it made you want to drive it. Elsewhere on the show floor was a Model S Plaid, and I thought it was fine. But the Porsche, you wanted to get in, it just made you want to drive the car. You looked at it, and it looked fast, you got in it, it made you want to drive. I loved everything about it. I would take that over the Model S.

Ed: Porsches have always kind of had this subjective magic of style, performance. I think if any company could pull off an emotional EV it's Porsche.

Phil: And they did. I would say they’ve pulled off a very emotional Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. Name aside, that I’ll never get right, was an enthusiast vehicle.

Ed: Through-and-through. Thumbs-up on that one for sure.

Phil: Then we were walking somewhere else, and we came across the Toyota booth. Have you ever heard of the Rhombus?

Ed: I have not.

Phil: The Rhombus is an EV concept, who knows when it came out. I'll try to find the link for the show notes. It had a center seat in the front, center vertical screen…

Ed: And kind of a weird, I couldn't tell if it was joysticks or yoke or something, for steering

Phil: I think it wasn't anything, but it looked like dual joysticks in a yoke-ish design, Canoo-style rear seats, which is what I'm going to call them from now on, and I know basically nothing else about the vehicle but it was an EV concept, so apparently it's a thing.

Ed: Alongside of it on stage with it was like a motorized wheelchair and some other random mobility concepts.

Phil: So we went from that, that will never come into existence, to Mullen. I don't want to laugh, but Mullen…

Ed: Has an interesting history…

Phil: So tell me a little bit about that. I didn't know any of this until you started telling me.

Ed: So earlier in the 2010-ish era, actually this company started as Coda Automotive and they brought over what looked like essentially a 20-year-old Corolla with an electric drivetrain, built in China. I think they sold like 20 of them to the city of Los Angeles. I think that's the extent of it pretty much. Then toward the end of the life of that, the company was reorganized and re-named Mullen, and so they kind of rebadged this imported Chinese EV as the Mullen something. I can't even remember, and then they just kind of went radio silent for the past six or seven years.

Phil: Well, they’re back, baby! They’ve got the Five now. Not to be confused with the Seven from Hyundai..

Ed: Or the 9 from Kia.

Phil: This one is going to be made a Mississippi they say.

Ed: They say they want to bring jobs to the area. I will say this: We may be a little incredulous or skeptical about its production chances, but it's very good-looking, it's very handsome.

Phil: I'll get to that in a minute. We’ll go through some of the specs. It’s a crossover EV, I think they only had the crossover there. They mentioned there was going to be a sedan as well, and a high-performance vehicle, they’ve got three in the works. I’m assuming this is like the full-version one…325-mile range, 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, that sounds doable. Zero-to-80% charge in 18 minutes. I say zero, they may not have said. The charging is a little optimistic, but the rest of the numbers 325 miles, if you were optimistic in your EPA ratings the way Tesla does it, you could make that number. If you're fine not hitting your EPA number, then you can you can fudge it.

Ed: As you've said many times, it's not hard to make impressive numbers with an EV.

Phil: Yes, especially when the EV doesn't exist. Their performance car is going to do 200 mph, good luck with that. And it's designed by a company named Thurner Design, not spelled the way we would spell it because they were German I believe. Were they?

Ed: It sounded German.

Phil: I don't know where they’re from, anyway they designed the car. He said that Mullen came to them, and said, ‘we need an EV,’ and ‘you've got 4 months to design and build one’ and they did it. Thurner has only existed for one year, so these are two companies that kind of came out of nowhere. They mentioned like everybody else, this will be “an extension of the living space” inside.

Ed: Here we go again…

Phil: The design looked great. They did give some specs, unlike Subaru. A 95 kWh battery, the target weight I'm really bad at math, a 550 kg for the battery.

Ed: It's a little over 1,000 pounds, I think.

Phil: That’s on-target for a battery, but maybe a smaller battery, so they're shooting for the stars on some of these, but it's within reason. It's believable. If you were to go to investors, you're not giving them a number of “we're going to have a 95 kWh battery, and it weighs 200 pounds, and the vehicle can go 400 miles.” These are believable numbers that they're giving. Two motors, three-motor performance version. I believe 316 kW of power, and I don't know what that number is, and I may be incorrect on that. There's a weird placement of the center screen in the backseat that was not down by your feet where everybody else puts it, it was like at the armrest…awkward placement. They use facial recognition to get in. I don't like that at all, and the more I think about it the less I like it. I think it's a safety issue. I don't like facial recognition. I don't think people have thought through the repercussions of it, or the fact that there's no question being asked. Key fobs work! Forget about it. Go with that.

Ed: Or even phone-as-key, I’d say.

Phil: Whatever it is, you don’t need to go with facial recognition. There’s going to be messages the car gives somehow, they never said how, but if you've got say a dog, maybe you have a pet mode, is what they were basically saying. and it would say you know, “Fido’s fine.”

Ed: Full disclosure, this is something Tesla has had for a few years.

Phil: You know what they haven’t had? They haven’t had a mode where it activates the cameras around your car, they say this is unique. If there’s a bad actor around the car then it can like alert you, and maybe honk the horn or something. Tesla should totally come up with something like that!

Phil: $55,000 for the low-grade car and $75,000 for like the middle-grade one, good warranty, 60 months with 60,000-mile warranty, 10 years on the battery, they're going to help with home charging if you need help. And I don't know why, but when they announced all these specs, and then when they announced $55,000 is the base price, some dude yelled out “WHAT!?!?” Very impolite, very unprofessional. Dude, if you're listening don't do that, but yeah I'll go to what he said and say “WHAT!?!?”

Ed: I mean it's a little ambitious to come out of nowhere, and like I said, I don't wish them ill. I wish every startup well, but the fact of the matter is not everyone's going to make it. I'm going to withhold judgment on Mullen. I'm just going to say the styling looks very nice, and kind of looks a little bit like a cross between a Porsche Cayenne and a Lamborghini Urus a little bit. Very sporty-looking. The interior, I really didn't get close enough to get a good look at it, but the CGI kind of images they projected on screen looked nice and stylish, with the exception of like you said the rear monitor display was kind of an awkward position.

Phil: The ergonomics were not key on that.

Ed: If they can pull it off, and convince people to buy it, more power to ‘em.

Phil: I don’t think the price would make me say “WHAT!?!?”

Ed: The fact they came out-of-the-blue from a rebadged Chinese EV.

Phil: The fact that they basically designed this thing in four months. Four months ago, this car did not exist, and now here they are with a huge display that took up what Mercedes used to have. Mercedes used to have this entire corner, and they rented that spot, now granted for just the press conference, they did have a spot, they just wheeled their cars over there.

Ed: Enough said.

Phil: EdisonFuture was here. EdisonFuture had a pickup truck that they unveiled a few months ago. It was all CGI, and I believe there were more pictures of a road in their release, than it was pictures of the truck. Well, guess what they had here?

Ed: An actual real vehicle.

Phil: Yeah, a bona fide truck, and a delivery van variant of it. Admittedly I got chatting with somebody else, and I missed the whole press conference. I got there just in time for deliveries start in 2025, and there were two vehicles on-site and they weren't CGI.

Ed: They were real. Whether they moved under their own power, I don’t know, but they had real interiors with real seats. I do know EdisonFuture is division of a Hong Kong-based company called SPI Energy, which I guess does like solar stuff.

Phil: There’s probably a lot of solar panel stuff.

Ed: It’s a “new energy company” if you want to call it that. I do know looking over the specs previously, the specs, and step-ladder of trim levels look suspiciously like those of the Cybertruck. The base motor single motor truck is rated at 0-60 in 6.5 seconds which I believe is what Tesla announced for the base Cybertruck. The dual-motor or higher performance variants, I'm looking it up now, Premium 0-60 in 4.5, range 380 miles, and the Super…okay, why isn’t this displaying. Okay, never mind, so to-be-determined on that. But the step-up version is 4.5, 380 miles range, so I don't these are aspirational or these are actual engineering benchmarks that they've actually tested an established. I don't know if you saw the kind of tonneau cover on the pickup, it’s a three-section presumably solar panels I guess, but it's like a three-section kind of camper shell thing.

Phil: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah! It was kind of funky, looked like a little alien covering thing.

Ed: It’s kind of unusual.

Phil: Design is subjective.

Ed: It's kind of blocky and industrial.

Phil: It's kind of a soft Cybertruck, but it's not as wide. It's long like the Cybertruck, but kind of narrow, and now I wish I would have gone to the press conference, and see what they said. But the fact that it was there, I did not anticipate them having a physical one after their CGI unveiling earlier. they didn't have a big booth, they had to kind of the under the escalators, you know what, I say kind of under the escalators, they were under literally under the escalators! But it's the same spot that 2-3 years ago, Bollinger had that same spot. Bollinger was not there this year. They were not here at all. So it’s interesting this auto show is very much a “Who is not here?”

Ed: And it should be noted in the past there were two days of press media days, this year there's just one today.

Phil: There's something going on the next day, but it's not press conferences, so they were lucky to fill the whole day with press conferences. One of the press conferences was a Barbie car. There was a Barbie car and they had a fullish-sized Corvette-ish looking car, and some models dressed like dolls. One of the press conferences spots was Biliti and it's this Indian company that's got like a last-mile delivery, 3-wheel van, and it goes 18 and 19 miles, costs $8-9,000 and 6-to-10 kWh battery, wasn't really interesting as far as we go but…

Ed: For emerging markets, it’s significant, potentially. India has a horrible, horrible pollution problem, so this could potentially be a game-changer for that market, and like Africa.

Phil: That is all great, but of note was the LA Auto Show, this was on the main rundown like, “Kia, Biliti, Fisker.” So that was kind of funny, they were off in kind of the entryway area, and there weren’t a ton of people that went to that press conference, but I don't know if this is the new normal or if this is just the tail end of COVID, or what's going on but the LA Auto Show was kind of weird, and what was even weirder was the final press conference of the day, that was VinFast, which is from Vingroup, which they just announced that they were coming out with these cars like a handful of weeks ago or a month or so ago, and that they are fairly new. VinFast is new, I guess 4 years old. 2017 is when they created VinFast, Vingroup is a Vietnamese conglomerate that is a multibillion-dollar corporation and they are coming in to automotive stuff, they've got VinFast as their car, its all-electric, they're going to set aside $200 million to make a headquarters in LA, which sounds like a lot of money and even if they’re like in Riverside or somewhere, $200 million isn’t going to buy you a ton of stuff out here, but it’s not chump change. There are two SUVs. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this. They have the VF-e35 and the VF-e36, and their key marquee, how you know them, is they have a “V” on the front, and a “V” on the rear, and their lights are going to mimic that, they said the V stands for Vietnam, where they're from, is also for Vingroup, which is the parent company for the VinFast car brand, so it's kind of everything. Orders are going to start in Spring 2022. I guess they're going to start taking orders for these SUVs, and they're going to make deliveries in late 2022. The VF-e35 is a small 2 row SUV the VF-e36 was a 3 row SUV, didn't really give any specs to speak, of no battery size, no power, no motors, maybe that had been previously announced, but nothing was mentioned here.

Ed: Yeah it was kind of odd at the press conference, no specs, it was like, “Here they are! Okay, that’s it!”

Phil: The design of the cars was really nice, it was very much like we seen with the Mullen car, and that it looked surprisingly good in-person. They mentioned that these vehicles were designed at least in part by, I don't know how much, by Pininfarina. Which most people will know Pininfarina as the designer of the soda dispenser in Wendy's and some Jack-In-The-Box’s. Have they done anything else?

Ed: Uhh…Ferraris, for decades!

Phil: They did Ferraris as well? Most people know them instead as the soda machine dispenser with the touchscreen where you can pick a Coke in the make it a like a vanilla lime Cherry Coke, those are Pininfarina design, as well. Pininfarina also is doing helmets, they're doing design of helmets of the company that I totally spaced on my helmet that I use for racing, the new one is a Pininfarina design. So they’re basically a design firm, and they did the design of this which is cool. Inside, it looked great, they had a weird Park, Reverse, Neutral thing was pretty huge in the center console, I was like “wow that's so huge!” You were like, “Ehh, I kind of like it.” Give-or-take you might like it, you might not. Tell you what I got though…I got in trouble.

Ed: For the big one, yeah.

Phil: I went up… and went…because anybody who listens to the podcast or knows me, knows that I need to 3 row SUV because I’ve got too many kids. And this is for me. I see 3 rows of headrests. This is a 3 row. I wanted to go and look up, so they have these on display, I see people up and looking around the other SUV, so I just walk right up and start looking in this one and immediately get told I’m not allowed up on the stage where this is, and I can only go up two steps. Three steps to the top, I saw the reason why: There was no interior. They only had the top quarter of the seats installed, and then it was carpet from the top quarter down. So about you know, 6 inches below the beltline on this vehicle, it was just a carpeted piece of wood.

Ed: So the big one was a styling buck, essentially.

Phil: They didn't have time to finish it.

Ed : It should be noted that the VF-e35, the smaller one, did appear to have a complete interior. But not the big one.

Phil: Not the big one. So that concerned me a little for a multibillion-dollar corporation. Why do you bring forth something that doesn’t have an interior. I now question do either of them move under their own power?

Ed: Well I mean the point you made on the big one, is they could have just blacked out the windows and just said “this is what it will look like.”

Phil: “The interior is not finished, it's going to be a 3 row.” They could have done something instead of trying… I feel like they were trying to pull one over on us. “Here’s the car, it looks like this, we're going to put it up high on a pedestal, and then tell people that they can’t come up and look at it.

Ed: So I don't want to throw shade too much, they've been selling cars in Vietnam for several years. These are the initial models of they're going to sell in the U.S. so it's not like this is a fly-by-night out of nowhere company. They’ve actively been building cars.

Phil: Are the other ones ICE?

Ed: No. They’re EVs. They have a model called the VF-e34, I guess, that they sell in Vietnam.

Phil: They must have moved fast, because they said that VinFast came about four years ago.

Ed: Maybe that’s the U.S. division. Just going off in the weeds a little bit, quickly, their initial model it looked like a first-generation BMW X5 and it had a GM LS pushrod V-8 in it and it was just a really strange car but that was like their first car before they decided “Okay we're all in on EV's.” I think probably management kind of saw the direction of where everything was going with COP 26, Greta Thunberg and all that and said “Yeah, let's do EVs.”

Phil: Well, if you’re going to get into the car market now, and you want a niche. You want to be EV, and you want to be first and fast.

Ed: I'm willing to give him a chance. I kind of agree with you that the big one I don't know why they kind of did that fakey kind of top of the head rest, but you know…

Phil: All I wonder is..How fast did you rush things that you couldn't build the interior? You couldn't get a full seat? it concerned me. But there are other things like I don't know if I’d buy a Vietnamese car unless they had a good dealer network or service network, like Tesla doesn't have a good dealer network because they don't have dealers. But they've got a good service network, so they compensate for it. I don't know what they're going to have in America, it's concerning because you're also buying something that, as the old adage is in automotive land forever is you never buy the first year model of the car because they’ve got to work through the bugs. And here you’d be buying the first year model of a car that has no stake in America with anything. So hopefully VinFast, Mullen and everybody else that announced any kind of startups, and also like Fisker, and them, that they come up with this service. If they can’t do the dealer network, then come up with a good solid servicing scheme, anything, because otherwise like if I'm given the choice of like a Fisker Ocean or a Kia/Hyundai, I’m going to go with the things that I know I can get it serviced, even though I might like the Fisker Ocean better.

Ed: These startups, I think especially the lesser-known ones, are going to have a tough time getting consumer trust. You know, Lucid and Rivian have been plastered over the headlines lately. I think the consumer recognition, I mean I don't know if you went to Minot, North Dakota if maybe they didn't heard of them, but I would say if you're in a major urban area, chances are you probably heard of Rivian or Lucid by now. So I think they have a viable path toward scale and larger production. These smaller guys like VinFast and Mullen, I'm not trying to sandbag them, and say they're going to fail, but they have a lot to prove, and I don't say that negatively. I'm just kind of making a statement of the fact.

Phil: VinFast has the money to do something. I wasn't super impressed with I believe it was the president of VinFast USA who said “Why did I take this job?” It was “because my kid likes EVs.” And then he followed that up with… and if you're looking for a company that can actually… he worked for a lot of other startups in EV's space, and none of them came to fruition… Great track record…So he saw VinFast, and was like “this is a company that can actually bring one to market” and I think I've got the money to do it, I just kind of wonder…If you go longer term like you own it…the average age of an ICE vehicle on the road is about 12 years right now. So probably 13 now that nobody can buy a car. So EVs are hopefully the same way. I really want to hope that people own their EVs for 12 years before they trade them in to get the next model, and that we're not having to dump them because at 8 years, the batteries all crap out. That shouldn't be the case, they should last plenty long. Is VinFast going to be around in 12 years?

Ed: I hope so. I mean, I think whether or not they're in the U.S. I think they've already established themselves in Southeast Asia.

Phil: I’m not going to ship my car to Vietnam for service.

Ed: No, I think you bring up a good point that service and support, the post-sale service and support is a big part of the ownership experience, and that's where these companies are really going to have to prove themselves is with the customer service and vehicle support.

Phil: Now my favorite part of the show, ‘cause we’re on the showroom floor, and they're going to kick us out eventually…My favorite part of the show was getting to see the EV6 and Ioniq 5 in person.

Ed: I keep forgetting that was the first time for you.

Phil: They shocked me. They were smaller than I imagined. The Ioniq 5 was a little smaller than I thought. It was about on target. They were very nice cars inside. I think I prefer the EV6 over the Ioniq 5, that was a surprise to me to see those two. They were very nice cars and it that part left me very positive about the coming EV world when it comes to things like VinFast and maybe Mullen, “WHAT!?!” and the Fisker Ocean, I really want that to succeed.

Ed: We'll see.

Phil: But there were so many buzzwords from so many of these kind of things, that you've got the establishment of Kia and Hyundai saying end Subaru saying the “sustainability, living quarters inside your car,” is it's all because they all know something we don't know, and we're all going to lose our homes pretty soon? What was your favorite part?

Ed: The one I'd most like to have my garage is probably the Taycan Sport Turismo.

Phil: Ooh yeah.

Ed: Definitely liked that. My takeaway from this is I see a lot of repeating themes like the dot.com era of the early 2000s, of a lot of people just rushing into the tech space, and there being a lot of casualties after a few years, unfortunately. I don't say this with mirth or schadenfreude, I think we're going to see the same thing here, I think you're going to see a few players stick it out and be successful, and you're going to see a lot of them fold or just pull out of the U.S. market, unfortunately. I hope they'll succeed, but statistically it's probably not going to happen.

Phil: Time, as they say, will tell, but I think we'll know by the time the L.A. Auto Show rolls around in 2022, as to who’s back, who's not. Is it all going to be back to normal, is Stellantis, going to have a press conference, and Toyota and Honda, and they going to go back to normal?

Is this the COVID-infused L.A. Auto Show where nobody showed up, or is this the new normal? I don't know. But yeah for now, before somebody comes knocking on our door, we’ll wrap up. If you want to email, email us at hello@thewattcar.com. Show notes, I will assemble a bunch of show notes for all of these cars and the press releases that the manufacturers did, I’ll put those in the show notes, you can click on them, you can see all of these things and the weirdness that we saw in person today, and you can like us on Twitter and Facebook at TheWattCar, and you subscribe to us on the podcast player that you’re listening to this on, unless you’re listening on the website, in which case click one of the links right below the player, and if that allows you to do a review, review us, give us a star rating, everybody says give us 5 stars, I'll take really anything. If we're bad, tell us, and we will make it better for you. Next week is Thanksgiving, so we're planning something a little bit different, but we don't know what that is yet, so we’ll see you again maybe in person, Ed at some point. It’s been nice hanging out with you in real life, IRL, as they say.

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