Speaker 1: Pushkin. The Germans used to do this. They would charge
Speaker 1: like ten thousand dollars for horsepower, you know, to get
Speaker 1: the big engine. You'd have to spend sometimes double the
Speaker 1: price of the car. And it was just come on, man,
Speaker 1: Americans don't do that. Like you check a box on
Speaker 1: your Chevy Nova and you get the big engine and
Speaker 1: it's fifty bucks. And to me, that seems totally Unamericanand
Speaker 1: used to tell me about those days. They predate me.
Speaker 1: But I still think that value is a really big
Speaker 1: part of the American vehicle equation. John Vulker is the
Speaker 1: founding editor of a hybrid and electric car website, Green
Speaker 1: Car Reports. He's also a frequent contributor to Car and Draw.
Speaker 1: John has agreed to help me sort the wheat from
Speaker 1: the chaff when it comes to electric vehicles, and his
Speaker 1: thoughts on EVS are as well informed as they come.
Speaker 1: On this special season of Car Show, we're putting cars
Speaker 1: in four brackets to the test. This week it's EVS.
Speaker 1: At the end of our series of highly subjective tests
Speaker 1: and debates, we will crown a winner, the greatest award
Speaker 1: in the history of this business, the Car Show Car
Speaker 1: of the Year. I'm your host Eddie alternate. The four
Speaker 1: cars in our EV bracket are as follows the five
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty horsepower three hundred miles of range Ford
Speaker 1: F one fifty Lightning, starting at fifty four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and escalating steeply from there. Then there's the BMWi four,
Speaker 1: specifically in the five hundred and thirty six horsepower sixty
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars and fifty high performance trim with an
Speaker 1: EPA range rating of two hundred and twenty seven miles.
Speaker 1: Third up the Hyundai Ionic five, starting at forty three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and giving up to three hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: horse power or three hundred and three miles of EPA
Speaker 1: rated range. Finally, and this one's less expensive than you'd
Speaker 1: guess from looking at it, the sixty three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: Cadillac Lyric with its three hundred and forty horsepower and
Speaker 1: three hundred and twelve miles of range in single motor guys,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the episode will take you
Speaker 1: for a drive in the winter, So stay tuned. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's accelerate quickly. No sound, But first, a definition of
Speaker 1: terms that are important for EV owners and even would
Speaker 1: be ev owners. Well, probably the first one is kilowat hours.
Speaker 1: A kilowatt hour is just a measure of energy, and
Speaker 1: you can say a gallon of gasoline has roughly thirty
Speaker 1: kilowat hours of energy in it. The car battery in
Speaker 1: an electric car, a modern one, not a high end one,
Speaker 1: but a modern electric car of VWID four or one
Speaker 1: of the ones from Hyundai or Kia, etc. Has sixty
Speaker 1: to seventy kilowat hours of energy. And my rule of
Speaker 1: thumb has always been that on average, and of course
Speaker 1: this depends on how you drive, how fast you drive,
Speaker 1: what the temperature is, and so forth. You're looking at
Speaker 1: about three miles of range per kilowat hour plus or minus.
Speaker 1: So you may see the statistic in the brochure or
Speaker 1: online that says, okay, this car has sixty five kilo
Speaker 1: one hours of usable energy in its battery. Well, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Basically multiplied by three and you get
Speaker 1: to that car having two hundred or more miles of range.
Speaker 1: So the next one is EPA range. Like gasoline cars,
Speaker 1: the EPA has effectively an efficiency rating for these cars,
Speaker 1: and it's the same metrics as a gasoline car. It's
Speaker 1: roughly half and half urban and highway now on electric
Speaker 1: car because there's so much more efficient. Highway miles takes
Speaker 1: a bigger hit on range because you're pushing airside. So
Speaker 1: driving around town the range is much higher the EPA
Speaker 1: range driving on the highways. If you do nothing but
Speaker 1: seventy five miles an hour on the highway for the
Speaker 1: whole battery, you won't get that range. The EPA range
Speaker 1: is an average, and so you know a conventional internal
Speaker 1: combustion car is going to get better highway mileage than
Speaker 1: it does in the city. A battery electric will get
Speaker 1: better mileage in the city, and it does on the highway. Well,
Speaker 1: what I like to point out is that part of
Speaker 1: it with a gasoline car is that they're enormously inefficient,
Speaker 1: so they waste about three quarters of all that energy
Speaker 1: in your gasoline. If you took the energy in a
Speaker 1: twelve gallon tank of gasoline, which is about average, and
Speaker 1: put it in an electric car, because battery cars are
Speaker 1: so much more efficient, you'd have over a thousand miles
Speaker 1: of range. You get three hundred in that gas car
Speaker 1: because seventy five percent of that energy gets wasted as
Speaker 1: heat or noise. Gotcha, And let's talk about charging for
Speaker 1: a second. The new sort of buzzword is eight hundred
Speaker 1: volt architecture. What does an eight hundred volt architecture mean
Speaker 1: and why is it important? In one sentence, it means
Speaker 1: that your battery pack can charge at twice the voltage
Speaker 1: of the four hundred vold architecture that's been standard pretty
Speaker 1: much for all high voltage packs since the first Toyota
Speaker 1: Prius plus or minus. So you get reduced charging time
Speaker 1: in part because of reduced internal resistance. However, the reason
Speaker 1: that not everybody has done this is because it was
Speaker 1: a brand new concept five years ago. There isn't the
Speaker 1: parts infrastructure out there that automakers can go to and
Speaker 1: say I need an electric air conditioner and so on,
Speaker 1: and you have to have more powerful charging stations to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that. So it's really the kil awot
Speaker 1: rate that is the speed at which you can charge
Speaker 1: that shoppers buyers should pay attention into. So what's sort
Speaker 1: of the state of our charging time? Like how long
Speaker 1: should it take to get from twenty percent charge to
Speaker 1: eighty or ninety percent charge? Like what are the fastest
Speaker 1: charging cars doing on the hottest rigs? Well, we have
Speaker 1: the Porsche Taikon, and then a couple of new evis
Speaker 1: from Hundai and Kia and Genesis. And note to shoppers,
Speaker 1: you will see carmakers quote times for ten to eighty
Speaker 1: percent or fifteen to eighty percent. They are under optimal circumstances,
Speaker 1: the right temperature, a battery pack that's already warmed up
Speaker 1: so it can take energy, and so on. But to
Speaker 1: get from ten to eighty percent of a pack, which
Speaker 1: may be as much as two hundred more miles, it
Speaker 1: could be as little as eighteen minutes as compared to say,
Speaker 1: half an hour or forty minutes for one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty kilowat charging, maybe even more depending on Again, Watson
Speaker 1: asked Risks, gotcha, Well, let's move into the cars themselves.
Speaker 1: Now that's the short version of one hundred eight slide presentation. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll do that way. That'll be a detours episode. The
Speaker 1: first TV we're going to discuss is the electrified version
Speaker 1: of the four f one fifty full size pickup truck.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the biggie. The biggest news probably
Speaker 1: in the category since the Tesla models, and that is
Speaker 1: the Ford F one fifty Lightning. Now, the Ford f
Speaker 1: one fifty. The truck is sort of a car company
Speaker 1: unto itself. They sell more of these things than any
Speaker 1: other vehicle in the US, and so there's room within
Speaker 1: the f one fifty universe four things like a raptor
Speaker 1: four things like a lightning, because there's no real average
Speaker 1: flyn fifty buyer. And so I found it's sort of
Speaker 1: fascinating brand management that they decided to go into a
Speaker 1: category that's historically, you know, the average American truck buyers
Speaker 1: historically a little hostile to evs, and they like towing capability,
Speaker 1: and they like big vas and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: I found it really interesting to see Ford make this move.
Speaker 1: And what happened was they're getting new sorts of buyers.
Speaker 1: They're getting a lot of women buyers. They're really over
Speaker 1: indexing on women buyers because a lot of women buyers
Speaker 1: claim that they hate gas stations, they feel vulnerable there,
Speaker 1: and so they'd rather charge this thing at home. So
Speaker 1: really really interesting vehicle. What's your take on the fund
Speaker 1: fifty Lightning. I think it's fascinating that Ford decided to
Speaker 1: go that way after introducing their first real EV, the
Speaker 1: Mustang Makie. They dived right into their crown jewel line.
Speaker 1: The F series line makes for a prodigious amount of
Speaker 1: money and they make a million ish of them every year.
Speaker 1: The fact that they were able to make an F
Speaker 1: one fifty that is both a believable F one fifty truck,
Speaker 1: and if I heard one thing in the launch over
Speaker 1: and over, it was it can't be weird. They've made
Speaker 1: a truck that isn't weird. You look at it and
Speaker 1: you go, yep, that's an F one fifty. But it
Speaker 1: has an electric powertrain, It has range that is real
Speaker 1: and reasonable for the way Americans use. They have towing capability,
Speaker 1: but most important, it is in many ways a better
Speaker 1: F one fifty than anything else in the line. It
Speaker 1: has the is it called the power front Mega trunk?
Speaker 1: I forget they have some brand name for this. CHI
Speaker 1: thought the front. Actually I avoid using the F word,
Speaker 1: but as you wish, but this, you know, open the
Speaker 1: hood and there's this gigantic space that's lockable so you
Speaker 1: can put tools in it that you can't leave in
Speaker 1: the bed. And it has all independent suspension, so it
Speaker 1: rides far better than any other F one fifty And
Speaker 1: people don't look at you weird because it's not a
Speaker 1: weird truck. And there are ancillaries to being a large
Speaker 1: battery pack on wheels, like you can power your house again,
Speaker 1: a lot of asterisks there. But Ford, I think was
Speaker 1: really surprised how much people took to this notion of oh,
Speaker 1: if I have an EV, I actually have backup energy
Speaker 1: as a swap out for my Honda generator. And I
Speaker 1: know some of you in Michigan have told me fairly
Speaker 1: frequently that the power goes off there. I have the
Speaker 1: same problem up the mountain and the Catskills. And so
Speaker 1: that's a material benefit of an EV that doesn't come
Speaker 1: from a gasoline vehicle. So they have not only made
Speaker 1: an F one fifty that is electric believable and desirable,
Speaker 1: they have gotten a bucket load of people buying them,
Speaker 1: and the new buyers some of their existing buyers. But fleets,
Speaker 1: because the lifetime cost per mile of an electric vehicle
Speaker 1: is so much lower than gasoline and especially diesel, that
Speaker 1: a lot of fleets are looking hard and saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, No, for the truck that goes from San
Speaker 1: Francisco to New Orleans can't do electric right now. But
Speaker 1: all of our local fleets think a utility truck or something.
Speaker 1: All of those they know how long they drive. The
Speaker 1: F one fifty electric is perfect there, and Ford has
Speaker 1: been swamped with demand. Oh yeah, we're going forty five
Speaker 1: miles in a day. There's so much excess capacity in
Speaker 1: that battery, you know, and that energy cost versus gas
Speaker 1: in that scenario or a lot a lot lower. But
Speaker 1: it must be said that if you want to buy
Speaker 1: the big battery pack in this F one fifty, it's
Speaker 1: really expensive. It's like another ten grand. We had one
Speaker 1: here to test and it was ninety four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And if I'm going to spend ninety about the price
Speaker 1: of a King Ranch, right, yeah, but the King Ranch
Speaker 1: doesn't have that play school interior. You know. That's like
Speaker 1: you know, off gassing, and it's the interior on these
Speaker 1: on these vehicles is like not a ninety four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars interior. And you know, I think four interiors are
Speaker 1: a real week point. And I would be pissed if
Speaker 1: I spent ninety four grand on an F one fifty
Speaker 1: and I had that you know, like lego style interior
Speaker 1: that they got going there. I'm curious to see overtime
Speaker 1: the knicks of truck buyers who by it for the
Speaker 1: cool points, the advanced technology, you know, first electric truck
Speaker 1: in their subdivision, that kind of thing, and how many
Speaker 1: expect luxury commends rate with the price point in a
Speaker 1: gasoline car. Tesla was able to do it. Ford arguably
Speaker 1: may be able to translate that into the truck world too.
Speaker 1: We'll see, Yeah, there's a lot of will see and
Speaker 1: we'll see what the second buyer set is for that
Speaker 1: if they continue to really go gangbusters or if there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of excitement about it. But you know,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about evs is when you drive a
Speaker 1: lot of them back to back, you sort of get
Speaker 1: the feeling that the ones you're driving are essentially obsolete
Speaker 1: because the next generation of the vehicle that you're driving
Speaker 1: is going to have more range, it's going to charge
Speaker 1: more quickly, so you're still on the sort of sharp
Speaker 1: part of the curve with a lot of EV tech,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. You know, the analogy is
Speaker 1: where between a conventional automobile and a phone. I think
Speaker 1: how often we replace our phones. But it is my
Speaker 1: hope that some of that advance comes if and when
Speaker 1: the car industry stabilizes after the shortages resolve, and we've
Speaker 1: been saying this for three years now, that some of
Speaker 1: that advance will be used to bring the price down
Speaker 1: so that in fact, instead of sort of a I
Speaker 1: don't know, fifty thousand dollars average or something for an EV,
Speaker 1: it might be thirty five. And certainly GM has aspirations
Speaker 1: toward that. We'll see when and how it happens. Before
Speaker 1: we get to the GM product, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about another vehicle that I found super great, super interesting,
Speaker 1: and another sort of under the radar EV if you will.
Speaker 1: That would be the BMWi four electric sedan, available in
Speaker 1: two single motor rear wheel drive trims that E Drive
Speaker 1: thirty five and the E Drive forty, and one dual
Speaker 1: motor all wheel drive trim, my favorite I four, the
Speaker 1: M fifty. That's when we come back. The BMW I
Speaker 1: four exists within the body of the BMW four series
Speaker 1: Grand coupe, so it looks just like a sort of
Speaker 1: normal four door coupe whatever that means that BMW makes.
Speaker 1: But this thing is proof that all the great engineers
Speaker 1: of BMW have been transferred to their electric vehicles because
Speaker 1: this thing is it rides better than an M three,
Speaker 1: it's quicker than an M three in the M forty trim,
Speaker 1: and it gets decent range. In this car I think
Speaker 1: is so well executed and so great it makes me
Speaker 1: like BMW's again. What's what's your take on the I four? Historically,
Speaker 1: BMW's interesting because their first EV was this massively complicated,
Speaker 1: highly engineered, extremely efficient car that Americans never really wanted
Speaker 1: to buy, which is a small hatchback the three, based
Speaker 1: on the bet the batteries were going to stay expensive forever.
Speaker 1: That turned out to be absolutely not true. BMW in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen totally corrected and said right, no more specialized
Speaker 1: cars were just going to make it as a power train.
Speaker 1: It may have a battery, but otherwise it's totally, completely,
Speaker 1: absolutely just like your gasoline car. Other makers from other
Speaker 1: places don't do that so much necessarily. I like the
Speaker 1: I four For whatever reason, I found it much more
Speaker 1: convincing as an EV in its higher end two motor trim,
Speaker 1: the fifty, rather than the forty. Maybe it's because I've
Speaker 1: driven so many evs. The forty didn't feel significantly better
Speaker 1: than a bunch of sort of midrange evs to me,
Speaker 1: But the fifty was clearly the BMW you mentioned single
Speaker 1: motor versus dual motor. If you want to make an
Speaker 1: EV all wheel drive, you just put a motor on
Speaker 1: an axle, right, So these ifs are rear wheel drive,
Speaker 1: rear motored vehicles in their kind of entry level forms,
Speaker 1: the thirty five and the forty, and then you make
Speaker 1: it all wheel drive by putting another motor on the
Speaker 1: front axle. Absolutely convenient. And it actually one piece of
Speaker 1: trivia which I'll keep to one sentence, is there's an
Speaker 1: EV coming out that has a front wheel drive version,
Speaker 1: a rear oil drive version, and an all wheel drive version.
Speaker 1: You can put the motor on either both ends, and
Speaker 1: there are reasons for doing each of those things. Evs
Speaker 1: are interesting because people are rearranging the shape of the
Speaker 1: car and taking advantage of the smaller power train with
Speaker 1: a battery under the cabin. Or some of them are
Speaker 1: BMW is not BMW has the exact same proportions as
Speaker 1: the gasoline car, but I like the I four the
Speaker 1: The German approach to evs has been interesting because they
Speaker 1: were really late to the game, so were the Americans,
Speaker 1: but there were some some expeditions on the American side,
Speaker 1: with the exception of Tesla, but that's its own show,
Speaker 1: if not its own series. Oh yeah, absolutely, But no,
Speaker 1: it's a great driver. It does what a BMW should
Speaker 1: do and has the benefit of being really quiet, silky smooth,
Speaker 1: just all the things that you want a luxury car
Speaker 1: to do. Low noise, very very quick acceleration. You know,
Speaker 1: luxury and performance are sort of intertwined now in the
Speaker 1: public mind, I think the buying mind and the ipord
Speaker 1: does that really really well? Agreed. Yeah, you know, you
Speaker 1: also raised a good point about the package itself, Like
Speaker 1: you don't have big engine up front with a transmission
Speaker 1: attached to it, the battery, the energy storage is really
Speaker 1: in the floor and situated between the axles, so you
Speaker 1: have this really nice low center of gravity height that's
Speaker 1: great physically for the car. It helps it handle really
Speaker 1: really well. So the sort of packaging scenario, the envelope
Speaker 1: of the car, even though it might be the same,
Speaker 1: is really really different underneath, and that allows certain manufacturers
Speaker 1: to really play with it because if all your energy
Speaker 1: storage is in the flour and you have these two
Speaker 1: motors on the axles, you can change the interior dimensions
Speaker 1: of the vehicle. You can play with the space and
Speaker 1: the proportion of the thing. And the next vehicle I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, I think, does that really really well.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Hyundai Ionic five. And there are
Speaker 1: three ways to get it. Single motor rear drive format,
Speaker 1: two motor all wheel drive trim, or with the long
Speaker 1: range single motor setup good for more than three hundred
Speaker 1: miles on a full charge. Now, if you look at
Speaker 1: it in pictures, it looks like it's the size of
Speaker 1: a VW Golf. And I think vehicles that are really
Speaker 1: really well proportioned look smaller in photos than they do
Speaker 1: in real life. And conversely, vehicles with bad proportions, bad
Speaker 1: stylistic proportions look bigger in photos than they do in
Speaker 1: real life. So this Hyundai Ionic five, this thing has
Speaker 1: a wheelbase that's larger than the Palisade three row suv.
Speaker 1: It looks like a small compact, but it's really really
Speaker 1: interestingly packaged, and it's styled in a really really cool way.
Speaker 1: It sort of looks like if you know, the launch
Speaker 1: a Delta integrally hatchback from your it looks like a
Speaker 1: Minecraft version of that. It's sort of like a it
Speaker 1: was sort of the future we were promised in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, very very cool sort of eight bits styling,
Speaker 1: really really tremendous road presence. When you see this thing
Speaker 1: in the road, like what the hell is at and
Speaker 1: it's big inside, and it's quick, and it's got that
Speaker 1: eight hundred volt charging architecture that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: This thing, to me is just such a home run
Speaker 1: all the way around, even if the interior, in keeping
Speaker 1: with the eighties theme, looks like one of those cubical firms.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think the interior is quite that bad,
Speaker 1: but you drive a lot more high end cars than
Speaker 1: I do. Let's got that like, you know, that grayish
Speaker 1: fabric and it just sort of looks like you're you're
Speaker 1: working for IBM. Well, there is there is this trope that, oh,
Speaker 1: you're driving electric car, it has no emission, so you
Speaker 1: have to use all sustainable materials, and a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of vehicles, regardless of electric or gasoline, do
Speaker 1: actually use sustainable materials? Gotcha? Now you hear a lot
Speaker 1: of EV skeptics say, well, yeah, the cars themselves are
Speaker 1: zero emissions, but the round trip on the energy is
Speaker 1: pretty dirty because in this country, two thirds of our
Speaker 1: electricity is produced from coal or natural gas. So if
Speaker 1: you're driving the EV, you're driving a coal or natural
Speaker 1: gas powered car two thirds of the time. We call
Speaker 1: this the coal tailpipe argument. It is categorically false. And
Speaker 1: here's why. In the US, with the latest data from
Speaker 1: the Department of Energy, coal is only twenty percent of
Speaker 1: our generation mix, and it is being replaced by a
Speaker 1: mix of renewables or far far, far more efficient and
Speaker 1: lower carbon natural gas generation. Even on the dirtiest grid
Speaker 1: in North America. An electric car has the carbon footprint
Speaker 1: of a forty mile per gallon passenger car, and you
Speaker 1: will notice that we sell very few of those these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, but that's not exactly apples to apples, because
Speaker 1: the well to wheel on an EV includes the mining energy,
Speaker 1: which is significant and done properly. Those wells to wheels
Speaker 1: comparisons include not only the energy, but also the manufacturing
Speaker 1: burden of the car. So an EV definitely has more
Speaker 1: what they call embedded carbon to build it, but that
Speaker 1: is fairly quickly offset depending on the vehicle, how big
Speaker 1: its battery is and so forth. It's from fifteen to
Speaker 1: forty thousand miles where you cross, and because it's using
Speaker 1: so much less energy per mile, everything after that is great,
Speaker 1: and so we're drying the dirtiness down. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: no question that battery electric cars have more carbon embedded.
Speaker 1: But as the grids that they are charging decarbonize, an
Speaker 1: electric car gets cleaner per miyath. And you can't say
Speaker 1: that about gasoline. Grids all over the world are moving
Speaker 1: to more renewables. They're swapping out coal for natural gas,
Speaker 1: and so electric cars over their lifetime get continually cleaner.
Speaker 1: But what I will say is I think Hyundai has
Speaker 1: hit a good balance between completely duplicating a conventional interior
Speaker 1: set of controls and going off on the far end,
Speaker 1: as Tesla has done with the Model three and Model
Speaker 1: Y and some of the other startups have where in fact,
Speaker 1: to do very simple, basic quick things you have to
Speaker 1: go into menus and screens and sort of expand or
Speaker 1: drop down or find an option, which I think is
Speaker 1: not only annoying and adiotic, but dangerous. I think Hunday
Speaker 1: hit the right balance in terms of it's got knobs
Speaker 1: for the thing you expect knobs for. My grumble about
Speaker 1: the Rivian is that you can't adjust the air events
Speaker 1: without going which I just ridiculous, idiotic. So you can
Speaker 1: adjust the air events on the hunday and so on.
Speaker 1: But it has a lot of the features that you
Speaker 1: will use less or you will need to find in
Speaker 1: a decent menu structure to my way of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does have great user interface and Hyundai Kia Genesis products.
Speaker 1: If you want to get to the map, there's a
Speaker 1: button for the map. If you want to get to
Speaker 1: the radio, there's a button for the radio. There's a
Speaker 1: volume knob, there's a seek button. And one of the
Speaker 1: coolest adaptations from a convention no internal combustion car to
Speaker 1: the Ionic five are the so called shift panels on
Speaker 1: the steering wheel. Now in Antic five they don't control
Speaker 1: any gear set, but what they do is increase the
Speaker 1: amount increase or decrease the amount of regenerative braking. And
Speaker 1: there's a term maybe we want to define. Let's sidebar
Speaker 1: for a second, what exactly is regenerative braking? John In
Speaker 1: a conventional gasoline car, when you lift off the accelerator
Speaker 1: these days, to improve fuel economy, you pretty much glide,
Speaker 1: but there is drag and so over time you slow
Speaker 1: down with the engine on you're still burning gasoline. You're
Speaker 1: still essentially wasting energy even as you slow down, and
Speaker 1: then when you hit the brakes, more wasted energy because
Speaker 1: generated by heat. In an electric car, the bulk of
Speaker 1: the braking in day to day driving is done by
Speaker 1: instantaneously turning an electric motor into a generator that puts
Speaker 1: energy back into the battery. And there are various ways
Speaker 1: to tune the generation. And if you said what we
Speaker 1: call regenerative breaking at a higher level, the car slows
Speaker 1: faster and puts more energy back into the battery. The
Speaker 1: average is about thirty percent of the energy you use
Speaker 1: to move the car comes back in through regenerative braking.
Speaker 1: People have different preferences on how their EV drives. Some
Speaker 1: want it to drive just like a conventional automatic car,
Speaker 1: lift off and it just rolls. Others and often more
Speaker 1: experienced EV drivers like a higher degree of regeneration up
Speaker 1: to what we call one pedal driving, which means you
Speaker 1: mostly don't even touch the brake pedal. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things that you've got to do it to understand it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it takes a little skill, but once you master it,
Speaker 1: I think you don't want to go back to moving
Speaker 1: your foot between the accelerator and a brake pedal. And
Speaker 1: also I think it's a boon too aggressive driving, because
Speaker 1: it slows you down sort of automatically, very quickly for
Speaker 1: a turn before you turn. And I find that I
Speaker 1: use the highest regenerative setting on those paddles almost exclusively.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be sailing around and coasting around.
Speaker 1: I want to, like if I want to accelerate and
Speaker 1: I want to stop, and never the twain shall meet,
Speaker 1: as do why I consider one pedal driving to be
Speaker 1: a benefit once you learn it. And one of the
Speaker 1: great ironies I think about this Ionic five is is
Speaker 1: probably the funkiest looking, but it's sort of the most
Speaker 1: conventional driving, and you know, it really is satisfying and
Speaker 1: it's terrific. When we come back another entry from Detroit.
Speaker 1: I want to move on now to the last vehicle
Speaker 1: in our set, and that is the Cadillac Lyric. The
Speaker 1: Lyric is Cadillac's first all electric vehicle, but certainly not
Speaker 1: its last. On the heels of the Lyric, Caddy just
Speaker 1: announced its flagship, a customizable three hundred thousand dollars EV
Speaker 1: called the Celestic. The thing that I love about the
Speaker 1: lyric is it looks like a Barcelona chair turned into
Speaker 1: a car. It is so amazingly beautiful when you see
Speaker 1: them on the road, maybe not in a photo, but
Speaker 1: when you see it from the chair height of another car.
Speaker 1: You see these things on the road, they're just endlessly
Speaker 1: fascinating and I think they're going to look good for
Speaker 1: a very very long time. You know, they are pretty
Speaker 1: utre in terms of their styling, but they also seem
Speaker 1: pretty timeless too, and I think an ev like that
Speaker 1: that is very highly styled, timelessly styled, but also isn't
Speaker 1: going to set any land speed records. It's not super fast.
Speaker 1: It's just quiet, luxurious, beautiful, great to be in, and
Speaker 1: really kind of affordable. I mean, that's that's like the
Speaker 1: Cadillac sweet spot. That's what that brand should be. And
Speaker 1: I think the lyric is a great execution, a great
Speaker 1: representation of what a modern Cadillac could and should be.
Speaker 1: What's your take on the lyric? The lyric is interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm going to defer my decision on the styling for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades, and here's why I'm now pretty
Speaker 1: much convinced that the Tesla models is going to be
Speaker 1: one of the defining designs like the Citron Das or
Speaker 1: you know, the those handfuls. Even though it's totally boring,
Speaker 1: I would say classic. Okay, you couldn't say boring because
Speaker 1: it set the mold. People thought it was a Jaguar
Speaker 1: before people knew what a Tesla was. Everybody said, essentially, God,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful, that's a Jaguar. And the models I'll I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you finish. But the model, as to me,
Speaker 1: I always looked like one of those cars that they
Speaker 1: would have in like a Chevron ad. There was like
Speaker 1: an amalgamation of different cars that you couldn't You couldn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't have like a recognizable grill, but you could see, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe they're trying to make it look like a Benz
Speaker 1: or a Jag or something. It was just like a
Speaker 1: mishmash of a bunch of styling ques that yeah, it
Speaker 1: said a little bit lower, but like, come on, man,
Speaker 1: like go for it a little bit. Well. I think
Speaker 1: I understand why it trended toward the Classic because Tesla
Speaker 1: did the traditional way of launching new technology at the
Speaker 1: top of the market, and they made a car that
Speaker 1: was desirable and also had electric power or put more
Speaker 1: cynically desirable despite being electric. But desirable is the most
Speaker 1: important things, quick and desirable, right. Tesla built them on less,
Speaker 1: Nissan built the Leaf. Which one do you want to own? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But the Lyric I want to wait and see. I've
Speaker 1: heard really mixed reviews on its styling. Many people, I
Speaker 1: think yourself stunned by it, and others really disliked the
Speaker 1: back end, the front. No one seemed to have a
Speaker 1: trouble with the back end, that sort of slightly curved hatch.
Speaker 1: Remember the first Art and Science Cadillacs two thousand and
Speaker 1: three four. I thought that was a stunning design at
Speaker 1: the time. It was it was blocky, it was aggressive,
Speaker 1: it was the new direction for Cadillac. I saw one
Speaker 1: recently and I thought, God, that looks old and dated, right,
Speaker 1: And so I want to see if that happens with
Speaker 1: the Lyric, And I think great styling needs to lead
Speaker 1: the market a little bit. The former BMW designer very
Speaker 1: controversial Chris Bengal. He said, our cars are going to
Speaker 1: be on the road for thirty forty years. They need
Speaker 1: to look good in thirty and forty years, and they
Speaker 1: can't be too trendy. And I think that the lyric
Speaker 1: just absolutely hits that long term style. I think it's
Speaker 1: going to age very very well. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it drives like an SUV should. It's quiet, it's easy,
Speaker 1: it doesn't snap your neck bank, but you know, come on,
Speaker 1: it's comfortable and soothing. It doesn't necessarily have all those
Speaker 1: ev advantages. But GM has really good regent. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to think twice about how the lyric would behave
Speaker 1: getting into it fresh. Here's my question, though, You and
Speaker 1: I and this continent are not who matters as to
Speaker 1: whether or not that car is a success. Cadillac has
Speaker 1: sold more vehicles in China for five years now. The
Speaker 1: gap is growing and the Celestic there are three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars super low production luxury car. That's the halo
Speaker 1: for over there. It doesn't matter whether Americans want it
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, agreed, the duomotor lyric is coming. And yes,
Speaker 1: there is that connection between performance and luxury that we've
Speaker 1: come to expect that the you know, the European cars
Speaker 1: have taught us to expect, like the Bmdwes and Mercedes mgs.
Speaker 1: And I believe the Cadillac has done certain cars that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about also in this series. That
Speaker 1: beat the Germans at their own game, but here like
Speaker 1: this one is unapologetically American and I sort of love
Speaker 1: it for that. And now John and I will rank
Speaker 1: all four cars to pick our top choice. I would
Speaker 1: put the lyric last on our list of best EV's
Speaker 1: most interesting evs of the year, because, Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it's an SCUV that gets pretty
Speaker 1: good range, it's pretty comfortable. There's kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of those The styling sets it apart, but not as
Speaker 1: interesting to me as the Flin fifty or the BMW
Speaker 1: or the Ionic. So that's my fourth pick. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you agree or not. I would actually put
Speaker 1: the BMW in fourth because, given how far BMW took
Speaker 1: the I three some of the interesting facets of that,
Speaker 1: the I four feels to me like an over correction.
Speaker 1: They got scared. It drives beautifully. It is a predictable BMW.
Speaker 1: Where's the specialness of being an EV? Besides accelerated responds, quietness,
Speaker 1: and weight distribution. The significance to me of the BMWi
Speaker 1: four is that they were able to impart the BMW
Speaker 1: values and traits onto an EV and actually exceed some
Speaker 1: of those of their gas powered cars. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what's significant about it is that BMW offers it's
Speaker 1: buyers the choice. You can get this with the gas motor,
Speaker 1: you can get it with an EV. And I think
Speaker 1: ultimately that's where we're going to be, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: the electric motors might replace like the V six version,
Speaker 1: and I kind of like that world where we've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of different takes on sort of the same
Speaker 1: overall envelope, the same styling statement, the same aggressive sports
Speaker 1: dan kind of vibe. And so I'm going Lyric four
Speaker 1: BMW I four in the third spot, even though I
Speaker 1: really I'd swamp the Lyrica into three. Okay, but let's
Speaker 1: talk about runner up in this bracket. For me, it's
Speaker 1: the flyn fifty. I can make a convincing case for
Speaker 1: either the Ionic or the F one fifty. I think
Speaker 1: the Ionic is more significant globally, and I think it's
Speaker 1: technology is more advanced. And it shows how deadly serious
Speaker 1: Hyundai Kia are about electric cars, about setting themselves up
Speaker 1: for the long run in evs and aggressively ramping up
Speaker 1: their production. They may well be the first global car
Speaker 1: company to introduce a three row, battery electric three hundred
Speaker 1: mile suv, which thus far only Tesla has done. And
Speaker 1: you know, we'll see where GM comes in on that.
Speaker 1: The F one fifty, to me, because I'm an American,
Speaker 1: is equally significant just because it was so unexpected and
Speaker 1: quite frankly, I think it's so good at doing the
Speaker 1: truck things that buyers of that segment and that vehicle expect.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone expected the F one fifty to
Speaker 1: be quite as well thought through as I found it
Speaker 1: to be. And I agree with all that, and I
Speaker 1: think it is such a huge gamble and so well played,
Speaker 1: so well executed, and a significant, significant entry because they
Speaker 1: are going right for the heart of the market with
Speaker 1: a technology that people still haven't embraced. And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: even though you know EV sales have doubled during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: there's still only six percent of the market. So for
Speaker 1: four to push its chips in this way and make
Speaker 1: this huge bet really really impressive and significant. But look
Speaker 1: at the demand. They expected to sell forty thousand of
Speaker 1: them a year, and they cut it off at two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand orders before a single one had been built.
Speaker 1: And sold. Yeah, I hear that. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's the tsunami of initial demand and if that's going
Speaker 1: to continue, we'll see about that. The thing that keeps
Speaker 1: it in the number two spot for me is just
Speaker 1: the The price is so ridiculous, man, Like to get
Speaker 1: the Germans used to do this. They would charge like
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars for horsepower, you know, to get the
Speaker 1: big engine. You'd have to spend sometimes double the price
Speaker 1: of the car. And it was just come on, man,
Speaker 1: Americans don't do that. Like you check a box on
Speaker 1: your Chevy Nova and you get the big engine and
Speaker 1: it's fifty bucks. And to be that seems totally Unamerican.
Speaker 1: Train man used to tell me about those they predate me.
Speaker 1: But I still think that value is a really big
Speaker 1: part of the American vehicle equation. And the people who
Speaker 1: do value better than anybody else right now because they're
Speaker 1: vertically integrated, because they have such an eye toward the
Speaker 1: future is Hondai Kia Genesis. And look for the price
Speaker 1: of the average car. The transaction price for the average
Speaker 1: car now is forty eight grand, and it's inflated because
Speaker 1: of part shortages and supply chain issues. But for around
Speaker 1: that price. For fifty grand, you can get this incredibly stylish,
Speaker 1: well realized, state of the art charging infrastructure, great to drive,
Speaker 1: great to be, an really really huge interesting package. You
Speaker 1: can get really a concept car for the road, if
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it, in the Ionic five for
Speaker 1: fifty grand, and to me, that's just like bring it on.
Speaker 1: I take your price argument. On the other hand, you
Speaker 1: can get a perfectly serve sabol F one fifty Lightning
Speaker 1: for that same sixty grand. It won't be the top trim,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they just jacked the base price, so I
Speaker 1: think that has some headway yet, but I do take
Speaker 1: your price argument. I think in the end I go
Speaker 1: for the Ionic for two reasons, one sort of industry
Speaker 1: analysis and one purely selfish. The industry analysis is that
Speaker 1: that's a globally important car. They are selling them in
Speaker 1: all the major markets. They're selling them here, they're selling
Speaker 1: them in Europe, they're selling them in Asia, and it
Speaker 1: has been well reviewed accepted all of those places, So
Speaker 1: that makes it more significant than the F one fifty
Speaker 1: versus say the Maki, which is in fact being sold
Speaker 1: in other markets. The other, frankly, is that I and
Speaker 1: we would prefer to drive an Eye five N one fifty.
Speaker 1: Now that may or may not be at all relevant
Speaker 1: to the people, is totally I mean, um yeah, I
Speaker 1: would be happy to own an Ionic five. I'm really
Speaker 1: don't see any need to drive an F one fifty Lightning.
Speaker 1: It's overkill, man, it is. I mean, for the three
Speaker 1: days a year that you're gonna buy a huge TV
Speaker 1: for the Super Bowl or take some wood around, I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't need an you don't need a pickup truck.
Speaker 1: They're gargantulan. And that's one of the kind of hilarious
Speaker 1: things about the FUND fifty to me is how performatively
Speaker 1: oversized it is, like, oh, yeah, it's a big old truck,
Speaker 1: but it's really good for the environment. So can you
Speaker 1: have your cake and eat it too? Maybe, so we
Speaker 1: go lyric BMW F one fifty Ionic five makes it
Speaker 1: to the next round. Here we are in the Ionic
Speaker 1: five to give you a sense of what it's like
Speaker 1: to drive. Really doesn't have a ton of grip, but
Speaker 1: it hustles. It really moves like olivs. You know. The
Speaker 1: acceleration is just instantaneous, but the brakes are decent, even
Speaker 1: if they're a little. They're not maybe aggressive enough. You
Speaker 1: have to be intentional about your breaking in this vehicle.
Speaker 1: One of the great and really intuitive things about this
Speaker 1: Ionic five is you can adjust the level of regenerative
Speaker 1: breaking via little paddles mounted to the steering wheel. You know,
Speaker 1: in a normal internal combustion vehicle, those might be paddle
Speaker 1: shifters that control the transmission. Here it adjusts how much
Speaker 1: the car automatically slows down based on regenerative rather than
Speaker 1: friction breaking in the system. And that is one of
Speaker 1: the great advantages of evs to drive with one pedal,
Speaker 1: and it's great for lazy people. You can just lift
Speaker 1: off the throttle and come to a complete stop. You
Speaker 1: don't have to go through the anguish and agony of
Speaker 1: moving your right foot from the gas pedal to the
Speaker 1: brake pedal. It doesn't for you. Okay, let's accelerate quickly,
Speaker 1: no sound. I went started with a range of one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty five miles, ending with a range of
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty one miles, But I did not
Speaker 1: go twenty four miles. I only went about fifteen, so
Speaker 1: a high degree of inaccuracy from the projection in the computer.
Speaker 1: But I was also driving like a complete maniac and
Speaker 1: sapping as much juice as humanly possible. But I was
Speaker 1: also using full regenerative breaking and here I am at
Speaker 1: a complete stop using the intelligent pedal setting on the
Speaker 1: region Next time on Car Show, The Best SUVs of
Speaker 1: the Year with Ezra Dyer. Car Show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's produced by Emily Rosstek
Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Karen Shakerjee. Original music
Speaker 1: and mastering by Ben Tolliday. Our executive producer is Mia Loebell.
Speaker 1: Our show art was designed by Sean Karney and airbrushed
Speaker 1: by Greg la Fever. Our patron saints as always are
Speaker 1: with Tom Allad and Justine Lane. Car Show is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and
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