Good morning, Grid Connections listeners.
Today we are thrilled to have John Volcker, contributing editor at Car and
Driver Magazine and host of Tempting Fate Tours join us again.
In this exciting episode, we dive deep into the LACE EV sales numbers, providing
you with the most up -to -date insights in the electric vehicle market.
John shares his first -hand experience test driving GM's Ultium vehicles from
their new electric crossovers to their large electric SUVs and trucks.
We explore the innovations and challenges faced by GM with their current electric
product
But that's not all.
John also takes us on a journey to England where he recently met with the team at
Polestar.
We discussed their current EV offerings and get a sneak peek into their future
products.
You can find a link to John's recent articles on Polestar and many other in
today's show notes.
If you enjoy this episode, we do have a small request.
Please share with at least one other person who might find it interesting as
well.
And don't forget to leave a pause review on our podcast page.
Your support helps us bring more insightful content to you each week.
With
Enjoy.
I know there's been a lot of great topics since we talked last, it's been about six
months and you've done some travels to all sorts of different events.
You've been testing new cars among other things.
So let's just kind of kick it off with, we might actually, I guess, be working
backwards, but I know one of the things we wanted to talk about today was just the
recent quarterly EV sales
Sure.
We don't analyze sales month by month anymore because a lot of car makers have
stopped issuing monthly sales.
They do them quarterly.
Made people like me very grumbly initially, but quarterly is not so bad.
And in some ways you may get less noise level quarter to quarter.
But EV sales continue to rise despite the headlines you may have read.
And I am at this point reduced to quoting Barbie.
math class can be hard.
A decline in the rate of sales growth is not a decline in sales.
And in fact, one of the big questions for analysts, we were at about 6 % EVs out of
the total market sold in 2022.
We were at about 8%.
Last year, 2023, we hit 10 % this year, 2024.
And...
I tend to think that one of the factors that we're not necessarily including when
we look at the second half of this year is GM finally, finally is starting to move
significant numbers of Ultium vehicles.
First out of, in Q2 really out of their factories into their dealers, although the
sales numbers ticked up, but I think in Q3 and Q4 we'll see some significant sales
from GM.
just as they've sort of washed out the last significant numbers of Bolt EVs and
EUVs.
So I look forward to that.
I'm actually driving a Chevy Blazer EV this week, and that's the last of the
Ultiums now on the market that I hadn't driven.
So Blazer EV, Silverado EV, most recently the Equinox EV, which I liked quite a lot.
And then prior to that, the Cadillac Lyric.
and the GMC Hummer EV in both of its body styles.
So there will be more Ultium vehicles coming.
They've already announced the Escalade IQ, Cadillac Celestic, the ultra luxury sedan
for $300 ,000, isn't really a major sales mover, although it's a prestige car, but
there will be others that GM hasn't announced.
There's a Cadillac, for instance, the Vistic, smaller.
So all in all, I
If the rest of the market continues doing what it did in the first and second
quarters and you add GM to that, plus there's Honda Prologues made by GM and
Acura ZDXs made by GM, then we should see some numbers.
What happened in Q2 is that most of the folks who are not Tesla were up.
Not all of them, and I won't go through the list.
Tesla, however, being roughly 50 % of the market in the US,
If, as the saying goes, if they catch a cold, no, if they sneeze, the entire
industry catches a cold.
And Tesla for the first time was less than 50 % of all the EVs sold in the US.
Now that's battery electrics, which is all Tesla makes, and plug -in hybrids.
I have an article on plug -in hybrids coming out within the next week or 10
days.
Watch for it.
But I remain...
Guardedly optimistic that 10 % of the market is not an unreasonable thing for us
to hope
By what time?
by the end of this
End of this year.
OK.
No, I think that's a pretty realistic expectation.
Looking at it's funny you mentioned the thing about Tesla sales because there were
two things that I noticed.
You're right that Tesla's
sales brought down the overall market, but then coincidentally, I forget not by a
whole lot, but then ironically, because of the cyber truck sales and the actual price
of it, it caused the average EV price to go up just slightly, which is kind of a
funny twist.
But you're right.
If you kind of take them out and you start looking at a lot of the domestic players,
especially, there's pretty positive growth signs with,
I think the Cybertruck is really one of the big unknowns for Tesla.
I was told I have now met the owner of the first Tesla Cybertruck in Woodstock, New
York, who told me that it was clear that everybody else was going to be driving
these five years.
Hence, it's so advanced that the Detroit truck makers had no idea what to do, can't
keep up and so on.
And he expects there to
many dozens of them in a woodstock three or five years hence.
That's one side of the equation.
The other side of the equation is, is this a vehicle once you get past Tesla's
existing audience, the early adopters and those people who really want to make a
statement driving what I have tended to describe as something that looks like a
dystopian movie prop.
Once you get past that set of people are the truck users
by hundreds of thousands of F -150s and Ram 1500s and Chevy Silverados going to
adopt something like the Cybertruck, especially given its price points.
Very much up in the air right now.
I have my own thoughts, but I'm gonna wait till the end of the year like everything
else and then we can sort out the pieces.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I think at the price point, there's definitely not going to be a strong room
for it to scale beyond where it's at right now.
But at the same time, it's supposed to come down.
Right, right.
You know, actually, I will I will push back on that, though.
What's really interesting is I was kind looking at this the other day, going
through the specs.
And yeah, the big thing was that the eighty thousand dollar one supposed to
have five hundred miles.
but the all wheel drive one actually has more than they said it was only gonna have
like 300.
So I, but I will say obviously that's what got everyone hyped up was this 500 mile
range one.
So it was just, it was just really interesting to kind of look at like with
inflation of these things since it's been announced, like it is a miss, but numbers
wise, I was actually surprised how close it was than some people have been saying.
It's still not one for one, but just, just a caveat, just a caveat.
Yeah.
it is not, I mean, it would have been the only pickup truck with 500 miles, right?
It is not the only pickup truck, battery electric, that has 300 miles of range.
So in that sense, you
Well, for sure, for sure.
And I think with the GM products you're seeing, I am curious to see, kind of
talking about the Ultium platform, how scalable the 200 kilowatt hour plus
battery packs will be.
And for those to scale at price point and parity.
But it is interesting you say that, not to go down the Cybertruck rabbit hole, feel
like that's something we've definitely done before here.
I have been, I think my surprise has just been
Impressions of people in real life versus online are almost night and day.
I don't have one personally, just to clarify.
But whenever I've been in public and one goes by, I feel like the last month,
especially I've seen a bunch of them go by and people are like, what is that?
That's really cool.
And then you tell them the price point or something like, okay, that makes sense.
Which is kind of ironic to me also because of like how basic it looks that they, the
general public, the non -automotive space seems to think that a very simple shape
means it's
expensive.
But no, I agree with you.
It'll be interesting to see if the average traditional gas pickup buyer also adopts
these.
But that could be a podcast unto itself.
Yeah, and my only only anecdote is you and I live in different places in the world.
Possibly the folks that you run into who are repeatedly saying that's really cool
are more forwarded looking.
I have seen probably a 50 50 mix and I did see one guy flip off a cyber
just standing on the sidewalk, saw it, and I won't do the gesture because you're
recording, but you know what it looks like, and it was not a respectful, that's
cool gesture.
So, we'll see.
The market will tell
Yeah.
And I think one caveat also to say to that is it does it does seem to be a
generational if someone is like under 40, there seems to be a much higher likelihood
they think it's interesting.
And I think you're 39.
Right, John.
So you're kind of right.
Just on the precipice there.
Yeah.
As a 35 year old, I'm kind of on the precipice, too, of depending, determining
whether I like it or not.
But I
I let's change the subject.
But no, I appreciate the the diversity and thought on that because I agree with you
like good or bad.
I think if you're in the if you're a car enthusiast, whether you hate or not, you
just kind of have to respect it for being so different with after like the last
decade and a half of kind of having more cars becoming a little bit more amorphous.
I don't know if that was the right direction.
But at least I think it's what's kind of opened the door for like companies like
Hyundai and others to do more kind of angular and edgier design and maybe make
something that is more approachable.
Really.
effect.
The question, I think, looking at automotive history is, in terms of
something really different, you know, is this a striking design?
Let's, I don't know, let's take the Chrysler 300 in 2006, which was that
square gangster looking sedan.
No one had ever seen a sedan like
before from an American maker, at least since the 60s, that was widely admired, I
think, as a striking form that a lot of people looked at.
Or is it the Pontiac Aztec?
See, not to keep this conversation going, I totally get the Aztec comparison.
I almost think it's like more Lamborghini Countach.
The Countach looks better, but it's like this absurd level of angular design that
just doesn't look like it should work.
And maybe it doesn't, but yes, yes, yes, yes.
No, let's, let's go back to Ultium though.
Cause I'm really curious since you've driven a lot more of those than I have
around the actual, let's start with the trucks, especially.
What has been kind of your experience talking about a truck that's got over at
least 400 miles of range, but has these heavy battery packs and they themselves
are pretty heavy trucks, even by large truck standards.
What has kind of been your experience with that product line?
And I guess to ask the same thing, do you think that that is something that the
traditional truck buyer is going to be open to?
Or is it just inherently going to be a still a huge hurdle for that market due to
it being EVs and EVs are bad
There's a lot wrapped into that question.
First thing, I continue to question GM's making what I think of as the Avalanche,
which is to say a single body with sail panels, four door truck, essentially like
the Chevy Avalanche from what was it?
2002 to 2011 or some period like that.
Yeah.
And
That was beloved by its owners, but the highest ever sales of the Avalanche in one
year, if I remember correctly, was well under 100 ,000 units.
So it was not a substantial portion of...
Yeah.
So, and as Ford will point out frequently and often is
their F -150 Lightning uses all the standard outfits that businesses have
taken, created, or bought for their existing gasoline F -150s.
And you can just drop those directly into an F -150 Lightning.
So it shows the two companies different approaches, really.
GM, Mrs.
Barra, the CEO, has maintained for years that EV sales will be additive.
They're not going to be substitutive.
they will get new people who would not necessarily have bought a gasoline or
diesel Silverado who will buy an electric one.
Ford says essentially some of it will be additive, some of it can be substitutive
because of all the fleet benefits to running an electric truck.
And of course they have Ford Pro, which is all of the telematics data.
They have a nice sort of way of charging, tracking, charging data, et cetera, et
cetera.
GM has now started something like that, but they are rather behind compared to
Ford.
So it's two different approaches, and I'm very much looking forward to driving the
Ram 1500, Rev, which is the battery electric one, and Ram Charger, which is
the series hybrid one.
Series plug -in hybrid.
So, whether or not all three of those variants, all of whom have really loyal
audiences remains to be seen.
know, good to have another entrant.
I do tend to point to the Japanese who have been trying for 25 years to break
into the US full -size pickup market.
builds them in Texas.
They have their truck development lab there.
The Toyota Tundra, after 20 plus years, is just not a major factor in volume.
I think it's 100, maybe 150 ,000, compared to selling about a million F -series
pickups for Ford.
Similar numbers for Chevy Silverado plus GMC Sierra, same truck, different clothes.
And Nissan gave up, and they're out of that market entirely.
So we'll see.
There is, of course, the meme that went around.
I don't know if you saw this.
A whole bunch of letters stuck to the back of a truck window that said, never mind
Cummins versus Powerstroke.
Forget about Ford versus Chevy.
We all have to band together and defeat this EV.
So, don't know how that attitude will play out.
Fleet makers will like the lower running costs, but you had asked me, umpteen
minutes ago, about driving the trucks.
You know, like most Americans, I actually drive small trucks.
I had a Subaru out back until recently.
So my main impression is they're really big and heavy.
They have a great ride.
They have good acceleration, good regenerative braking, and the Hummer,
which has rear wheel steering, is shockingly maneuverable.
It's really, I had not expected a 9 ,200 pound vehicle
to be quite as, I'm not sure nimble is the word, quite as easy to drive given that
you're several feet off the ground and you're driving something the size of a
small municipal hospital.
But I also took a photo at one of the roads that leads to my house that says
weight limit four tons.
Yeah.
Now, experience has told us quite frankly, the truck owners do not care about such
things.
When I asked GM about the weight of the Hummer EV as tested, I have in mind 9 ,240
pounds.
That was the top trim one.
Yeah.
GM said, oh, as it says in all of our documents and in the owner's handbook, it
is the responsibility of the owner of the vehicle to comply with all state, federal
and local ordinances regarding the operation of the vehicle.
If we go back in history.
Remember when there was that tax break where small businesses could write off
certain types of vehicles in one year and a whole bunch of people bought Hummer H1s
because they were over the three ton weight limit?
They often, using those for commuting, tended to live in pricey suburbs, which at
least where I'm from, often have little tiny winding 19th or 18th or 17th century
roads, which have three ton bridges.
Do you think they obeyed those?
hell no.
So we'll see.
Let us hope there are no bridge failures.
Well, and I think it's so funny too, because I believe like back then the H2
Hummer, whichever Hummer it was, like 6200 pound.
Like it just, it crossed the line, but just barely.
And then you look at the EVs in this space now, and it is good to see some of them
are coming down weight, especially the smaller ones.
But yeah, you've got the Rivians of the world and everything else.
They just go blow right past that on the weight size.
And I think it, I think it is definitely something that needs to be considered and
talked about more.
but it's definitely something I've also seen picked up already by the anti -EV
groups.
They're like, these things are so heavy.
Meanwhile, they are also driving their F350 that is in the same ballpark.
shocked at the sudden concern over the terrible cardiopulmonary effects of excess
thyroid particles from EVs.
I must have missed those folks' concern over that same issue before EVs
I know it's the I missed that news to John I'm not sure where it's being broadcast
but it's definitely not on a rater I did want to ask you you mentioned you recently
owned a super you talked about a pickup so I have to ask you was it the super Baja or
okay okay okay yeah
as my better half calls it, the BHAHAHAHA!
No, they are still running around and actually I guess they're reluctant to.
Yeah.
are a collector's item is so funny.
It's not my cup of tea.
But living here on the west coast, especially in Oregon, they are they are a
hot commodity.
If you have one, it's kind of bragging rights even.
And it just seems like they only ever made them in like red and a searing yellow.
That seems to be the only.
Yeah.
So I have somewhat less experience with the big Altium trucks than I do with the
passenger vehicles.
Lyric, I said I was fairly impressed by the Equinox.
The Blazer that I'm driving now gets a lot of looks.
I can't tell if they're favorable or not.
Haven't gotten any thumbs
but it's that really lovely sort of deep metallic, not quite maroon, but darker
red.
And it really pops.
I just find this dialing a little bit overwrought.
The Equinox is a much simpler, fairly, I don't want to say plain, because that
sounds like a...
you say the blazers almost over stylized and the Equinox is like under stylized?
I kind of feel like they're a little bit.
They're not bad, but it just it is kind of interesting that I think they're just a
little bit off the mark, at least in my taste, styling wise.
the Equinox shape actually works.
I spent a fair amount of time with it.
I took an absolute ton of pictures and it's color sensitive, but it's basically a
shape that's not going to scare anyone, which I think for the highest volume
entrant in GM's growing EV line is the right approach to
The controls are fairly understandable.
They're pretty much the same screens as in the latest combustion engine, GM cars and
SUVs and trucks.
so unlike the Model 3, which has gotten even less understandable if a newbie sits
down the first time and we expect the Model Y to go that route at some point.
The Equinox is relatively understandable for someone fresh to get in it, figure out
how to drive it.
And I like the package.
It's not light, but it's lighter than the Blazer EV.
Still has a lot of room inside.
I can sit behind myself.
It's pushing the upper limits of the compact SUV designation, but everything
has bracket grepped.
I mean, it's probably the size of a Toyota Highlander 20 years ago, but...
The Toyota Highlander 20 years ago would be tiny today.
Exactly.
I know one of the concerns or reviews of it has just been overall good and then
kind of where it fell apart was around the charging.
I was just curious if there was anything or if in your experience you'd seen that
too.
So it seemed to charge well over a hundred kilowatts.
don't, I didn't get a chance to charge it personally.
Somebody else who did said he was in the 138, 145 range.
It was never realistic to expect that it, the Blazer TV and all the rest, we're
going to have 800 volt charging.
GM's take is that the, given the range of charges at which people start, you
Some people are like, oh my God, 50 % battery, need to charge immediately.
You're not gonna get the benefit of 800 volt charging if you're charging from 50
to 80%.
You're just, you know, one or two minutes maybe.
When I charged the Blazer yesterday, I saw a consistent 154 kilowatts.
I started with 24%, I think, and you know, it took...
What did it take?
It took probably 12, 15 minutes.
I'd have to look at the screen to get to the point where I was well over half.
had comfortable range and there was no reason to sit there and pay 64 cents a
kilowatt hour any more than I needed to.
But, yeah.
So I think the challenge comes and this is really something that no automakers have
dealt with because they don't have
The challenge comes not with the first buyer of these new EVs because four out of
five, I've said this before, I think I said this last time, four out of five
households that have the income to be able to buy a new car of any sort at an average
price of $48 ,000 have dedicated off -street parking.
Only one in five really don't have a place to charge, whether they street park or
whether they're a really expensive condo or whatever it may
So those people will find their ways to charging at home, overnight, and or at
work.
the automakers are kind of, you know, that's how our data says people will
charge.
It's just that they don't have to, car makers sell new cars.
They don't have to care about the used car market, which is two and a half times as
large.
It's a much harder problem for the used car
Yeah, it's, it kind of reminds me of a, recently went to a dealership to help with
Kevin education thing and it was very.
interesting approaching them on both and talking to them about not just the new
used car sales of EVs but, I'm sorry, selling new EVs but then also how to price
it against like a used EV and then the idea of the $4 ,000 credit that you can, a
lot of people would qualify for it just gets to a point, unfortunately, where it
just seems like they don't want to deal with it.
It makes it too complicated in the sale but you're totally right.
I think that that is a market that's really under
I just talked about and kind of built for the right support to get people who may be
Interested or even have a lifestyle that would work for an EV and don't fully
appreciate that or understand that And it's just the resources when you go to buy
a car definitely do not incentivize that kind of conversation Unfortunately, it
seems like to me at least right
Yeah, the folks who think most about this are the ones who are involved in questions
of charging equity and making public EV charging available to those households
that are not necessarily wealthy suburban or urban households that can buy new cars.
But how do you make it possible for lower income families, people who are much more
likely to live in multiple dwellings to own an EV practically?
And you
a single public charging station eight blocks away is probably not that.
So these are tougher questions.
Used EV prices seem, they plummeted at one point, they seem to be returning, and
there's a lot of variation depending on what the car's range is.
We now see a lot of used Tesla Model 3s, so that's a range over 200 miles.
use Nissan Leafs that started out at 76 miles or 115 miles or whatever and have
battery degradation, that's an entirely different piece of the market and
justifiably many, many people simply won't consider
Well, I think it's really interesting to the price point that a lot of those are
like you can easily get one for like six thousand bucks.
And if it kind of goes back to exactly what you're talking about, if you have two
or three cars and you just need a round town vehicle and you have that luxury, why
not?
It's kind of it makes a lot of sense.
But if you're in the situation where it needs to be your primary vehicle to get
around day to day, you're totally right.
There's definitely a struggle there.
And I think there is data that shows that lower income households put more miles on
their vehicles than do higher income households.
I don't know that's because higher income households can split among more vehicles.
I think the average American household has two point something vehicles.
The average high income U .S.
household has three point something vehicles.
But especially if they're living in a place and they have to drive a long way to
get to a job.
a what we in the northeast call a commuter car or a station car probably isn't going
to cut it because that could be a 30 to 60 mile trip each way every
Right.
Now that's kind of the area where I'm at too.
It's like it's easily in that bracket where just unless you unless you want to
really risk it in the winter and you have charging at work, it just doesn't seem
feasible for a lot of people to have that stress of it.
But enough about the challenges of used EVs.
Let's talk about the Polestar 5 that you recently drove and did an article on.
Oh, OK.
Oh, got you.
So I give Polestar credit.
They've been extremely quiet because they really only had one vehicle for four years
now, three years now, the Polestar 2, which to their credit, they have
continuously refined.
I think the industry was quite shocked when they said, nah, the single motor one
front drive, that's for low end economy stuff.
We're going to make it rear drive.
Which, to be fair, Volkswagen had done.
Some of the Hyundai's are that way.
But the Polestar 2 has indeed been upgraded multiple times.
And I had the interesting experience.
I have driven right -hand drive cars, and three weeks ago I drove one for quite a
long distance.
excuse
I drove in a right -hand drive country in a left -hand drive car, but driving a
right -hand drive car in England for a couple hundred miles really, it took a
while for the, you'll never forget how to ride a bicycle skills to come back.
I've found I have to turn on a little voice just behind my left ear that
constantly says, stay left, stay left, stay left, stay left, stay left.
And it worked, didn't hit anything and actually,
The nice gentleman from Polestar the second day said you're fine.
I'm gonna ride with some of the other people so but Polestar finally has a
product line the Polestar 3 which is their SUV same platform as the Volvo EX90 both
of those vehicles are now entering early production in South Carolina in a plant
built for that purpose and Polestar will also have the
which is one of those peculiar coupe crossover hatchback, fastback, somethings,
and doesn't have a rear window.
But those two cars will pad out the lineup.
So you'll have the two, three, four, and now it's time for Polestar to talk about
what's coming next year, which will be a 2026 Polestar 5.
It is in simplest terms,
their competitor for the Tesla Model S, the Porsche, Panamera, and Taycan, and
cars of that category.
High dollar, luxury, sporty, four -door sedans.
And they built an R &D facility in England because while England just has the remains
of an auto industry, Jaguar Rover Triumph is, or excuse
Jaguar Land Rover is allowed to dispute that, there's not what there used to be.
England still is stuffed with really good automotive engineering.
It's where most of Formula One comes out of, enormous amounts of motorsport, and
that's all centered in the Midlands around a town called Coventry.
And so they opened an R &D shop there three odd, maybe four years ago, and
they've just expanded it and taken another property
more than twice as big because they found their engineers were spending a lot of
time just playing Jenga and parking cars.
And so we got to tour both shops.
The Polestar 5 is a bonded aluminum structure.
So in the new facility, they have a gigantic oven that they simply put the
prototype in to test out different glues, different temperature cycles, none of
which they'll talk about in detail.
A lot of IP there.
But they are developing the car, some of the materials, and all of the handling and
what they call the integration, is making sure all the different pieces, the
interior, the powertrain, the suspension, the fabrication, all play well together.
That's really interesting.
I had kind been reading a little bit about that.
I'm curious in your kind of take and experience of someone
seen a lot of different automakers kind of position different cars and their
manufacturing styles.
What about this really stood out to you?
And was there anything that good or bad that you're like, this should this will be
the way moving forward.
A lot of EVs are made.
Or is this still kind of like, yeah, this would work for a four door high end saloon
like you're talking about, but we're not going to be seeing more kind of entry
level vehicles made this way.
It is not a very high volume process.
Stamping stuff out of steel is known and above a certain volume of production.
It's cheaper and easier.
The Polestar 5 has a combination of cast, milled, and sheet aluminum components
which are bonded together.
They didn't say glued, they always said bonded, so I noted that.
But it is inevitably a more step -intensive process than stamping an entire
side of a vehicle and simply having robots welded all together.
What it does allow, according to them, is once you get the basic platform, you can
do different vehicles, new top hats as they call them, really, really
And so, the Polestar 5 is the four -door luxury sedan.
They talked a little bit.
They acknowledged the Polestar 6, which is going to be their sports car, but on the
same platform.
Shorter, no foot garage in the battery, as we discovered.
But it'll have the same 111 kilowatt -hour battery pack, 800 -volt architecture, et
cetera.
They expect the 6 to take only a fraction of the development time.
that the five did to develop the whole platform.
And I think it is inevitable there will be Volvos and some other Geli brands on that
architecture as well.
As the CEO, name is Engelman, last said, it would be selfish of us to keep it all
for ourselves.
Translation, yep, they're gonna use it too.
But they are, is Polestar's
a unique platform, dedicated platform, because the 2 was on the same platform as
the, let get this right now, XC40 recharge and C40.
And the 3 is on the EX90 platform and the 4 is on, I'm forgetting the numbers, but I
think it's a variant of the EX30 platform.
So, this is for the moment unique to Polestar.
It was fun talking to British engineers.
I have a little bit of Britain in my background.
one of the great things of all of those engineers have worked on a prodigious
variety of vehicles over their professional careers.
A portion of their team actually came from a different consulting on a different G
-Leap product, which was the plug -in hybrid EV London taxi.
Those black taxis are now plug -in hybrids.
You couldn't get more different than
and the Polestar 5, but some of the underlying technology, including aluminum
bonding, same stuff.
And the London taxi by nature is a fairly low volume one.
So I discovered that one of the engineers as a very young man had worked on
suspension tuning for my very own Isuzu Impulse from 1991.
Who knew?
It's a car
You know, I can show it to auto industry people or other auto journalists.
Even a lot of them don't really know what it is because this is just not making cars
32 years ago.
And he grinned and he said, oh, I spent a lot of time on that car at Fujisawa.
So that was a nice little connection.
That is quite the small world connection there.
But yeah, it is really interesting.
The overlap
a lot of these Chinese car brand, Chinese EV brands, especially that are kind of
doubling down, in the UK for your, you're totally right.
Of the kind of high density of, very skilled automotive engineers.
And some of that being from kind of racing and formula one that I think not only is
it platform building at scale, but it's also trying to kind of get out a lot of
the weight that have plagued some of the traditional EVs.
I'm, I am kind of curious on your thoughts.
I mean, you, you were having the same issue I have all the time
Polestar and Volvo making some really interesting products, but there just seems
to be a lot of gray area as to remembering which is which and the kind of like how
they divert.
mean, it used to make sense.
Polestar was Volvo's like in brand.
So that was like the high end stuff.
And now you're starting to see this kind of more and more overlap.
Some of that due to the parent company, Gili.
But I'm kind of curious in what you saw and kind of touring the factory and having
the kind of more hands
experience.
How would you define the Polestar brand versus Volvo right now?
Is it still kind of trying to be more of a premium drivers car brand?
Because it seems like both Volvo and to some extent Polestar are kind of like
Polestar is less about the hardcore driver and it seems like Volvo with some of their
products they've almost been pushing the driver experience and I feel like there's
been more and more overlap in that space.
I think that's on the right lines.
This is a question that I pressed in the marathon fairly hard.
When the Polestar 2 was introduced, I took a picture of a slide that sort of said,
here's what Volvo is, here's what Polestar is.
Volvo, both of them have versions of clean, modern Swedish design.
And Polestar is not a Chinese company, as he said about 90 times, it is a Swedish
and European company.
that has chosen to manufacture in China, but it is rapidly diversifying its
manufacturing footprint all over the world because trade tensions, obviously.
Volvo, essentially, at least in 2021, was more about the sensual feel, woods,
leathers, making things interesting, intuitive, and easier for its customers.
Whereas Polestar was a much techier audience, if you like, a lot on
sustainable materials.
The comparison was made between the interior of a Polestar 2 and a really
expensive running shoe.
Lots and lots of sort of mesh weaves out of recycled plastics, things of this ilk.
Not the pastels so much.
Many, many, different shades of black and gray and silver.
right.
Polestar wants to be seen as a performance brand in the traditional European vein,
which is to say you can customize suspension settings, steering settings,
power delivery settings, etc.
as much as you want.
Volvo, think, is not going to let you do that.
Volvo has a sense of how its cars work, how its drivers should use them, and it's
all about cosseting.
Whereas, if I had to put it in one word,
much more about interacting.
Interesting.
Okay.
And you mentioned that I know it had been talked about, I believe, South Carolina is
where Polestar's North American facilities will be.
Does that mean it qualifies for the IRA or parts of it?
Or are the batteries still imported so it's not fully, do you know?
Okay.
Volvo and Polestar clearly are going to be highly aware of the rules around those
incentives.
Volvo for a while, I think, was planning to use the Get Out of Jail Free card,
which is the tariff offset for exports program.
But they have now essentially suspended
the arrival of the EX -30, the small cheap one, which I drove last summer, or last
fall I think, until they can be built in Europe and exported to the U .S.
because they might have been able to swallow a 27 % tariff or offset it.
Offsetting a 100 % tariff is a somewhat different kettle of fish.
And so in that sense, the U .S.
will not have
a cheap Chinese EV from a European brand, the X30, until it can be made in Europe.
And the question is, will it remain as
for sure.
And it's kind of interesting to see the X 30 launch because I've I've heard overall
positive things about it as a car, but it does seem like it's also suffered at least
talking to some people in Europe, some of the similar issues with a lot of the
recent EV launches of software bugs and kind of the day to day experience of it.
But I guess I'm also curious.
Yeah.
driving a test fiscar when the company declared bankruptcy.
That has never happened before.
I'm kind of curious.
What is there anything for those listening that you would like to share in your
experience of not only just driving the Fisker Ocean, but like literally reviewing
it while that was all kind of happening in real time.
Luckily my contacts still answered my texts the day after.
That was the question for about 80 people.
You're going to keep the car?
No, they took our back.
So a couple of things.
It's a perfectly adequate SUV.
It has some interesting features like every single window, including the third
window that's fixed on every other SUV in the world.
rolls down into the door, you can open the glass roof so you have, I forget what it's
called, beach mode, ocean mode, something like that.
California mode, thank you.
I knew it was something like that.
It's an interesting feature.
I kind of chalk it up as a gimmick because how often do you really want to put down
all six windows, all seven windows, because the tailgate one drops too, in
your SUV.
What's the use case for this?
But the powertrain worked fine.
My problem, and I had version two of the Fisker software, I think they didn't
really give out a lot of cars till that was there.
But my problem was that still it randomly flashed, things are not working lights.
And of course, while I was driving with my better half, who seems to be with me
whenever a British car fails to proceed and an electric car melts down, I was
driving with him when every single light on the dash lit
and it said basically pull over now.
So I pulled over now and having had virtually the same experience in other
cars, go online, on your phone, look on YouTube, how do you do a put it to sleep
and do a full cold reboot?
Luckily I found it, took less than 10 minutes and then only one or two of the
lights lit up at random for the rest of my three weeks and most of them went away
after a
If you're looking, apparently used Fiskars with not a lot of miles are going in the
mid -high 20s at the
Which is wild.
Which is, believe the price they were saying they were gonna originally launch
at and then it kinda came up to 60s, 70s and unfortunately, we'll never know.
Right.
% out of the price.
yeah, it is the definition of an orphan make at this point.
Yeah.
I guess speaking of just EVs again in general, we were just talking about the
tax credit.
What in your experience or what kind of are your thoughts on is that really
helping to move the needle or is it kind of overcomplicated?
Because it really does seem, I haven't been checking it too closely the last few
months, but it seems like the main company that's probably getting it right now still
is Tesla due to I think
some Mockeys or some of the Ford products maybe are getting a little bit more.
But do you think that that is a benefit or is that really like a motivating reason to
go to an EV or is it a program that needs to be maybe rethought about?
I just look at it through the lens of price.
One of the concerns of late, and it's a valid concern, is that EVs are more
expensive still than vehicles in their same segment with gasoline engines.
True, in most cases.
And the whole goal of the incentive was to knock that down.
So there were changes a couple years
Good changes and bad changes.
The best change was that instead of having to wait somewhere between, you know, two
and 16 months to see if you could knock it off your taxes, it is now a point of
purchase rebate, which dealers will call cash on the hood.
And cash on the hood is always a good thing for buying a car.
The tougher part, however, is that now there are increasingly stringent
requirements on where the car was built.
has to be a NAFTA country, where the battery is built and where the minerals
for the cells come from.
my personal opinion is that those are necessary requirements to build a domestic
industry, cell industry, mining, et cetera.
Things we haven't really done because we were quite happy to outsource to China
almost everything for.
30 years.
And unless we want China to control the bulk of the cars that we buy, which I
think is a bad thing for America, I think these are appropriate measures.
you know, my friends in Washington did not call it the IRA.
They called it the mansion bill because he was behind a lot of those.
there is of course the leasing loophole which you could drive semi through.
So those requirements on sourcing and minerals assembly and so on only apply if
you're buying the car.
If you are leasing the car, every single EV qualifies.
dealers are ramping up their explanations of how does the lease work for a whole
bunch of people who never thought about leasing but want an EV.
So I don't have data
talk about the effect, you're right that Tesla's highest volume model qualifies for
that incentive.
Some of its other models do not.
And I've almost given up trying to track Tesla's spec changes, price changes,
battery tech changes, et cetera.
But clearly the trend is for more and more automakers to onshore production.
Hyundai and Kia have their EV plant.
coming online later this year.
Volvo did it, et cetera, et cetera, et And so that's one of the components, sourcing
minerals elsewhere and so on.
I think three years from now, many, many, many more vehicles will qualify for that
credit on a purchase basis than do
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that and one, just want to say that was
very articulate and well said breakdown of its not only evolution of where it stands
today.
So if there is anyone listening that didn't know the details, I'm sure they
know all of it now.
But yeah, I know a lot of you advocates were actually really annoyed as you say by
the mansion bill or kind of the addition to it.
I thought that that was personally a good thing.
I think it kind of gave more value to give that sort of discount in addition to it
being a UV.
But I'm just kind of curious.
Have you
What have you like reviewed any hybrids or even just combustion vehicles in the last
year or two that Maybe I don't know you did the new Prius right like anything
that's under anyway 35 ,000 and I think there's something to be said that new cars
have become so expensive anyways but when you look at the delta between most new
cars and evs especially now with like the Equinox and some others really coming out
of the market right now like
look at a lot of the new prices even without the tax credit and EVs are already
kind of cheaper and so I think that's where it's been just kind of interesting
to see and I don't know if that's due to kind of the price war we're just seeing
across the space in general but I'm kind of curious on your thought as someone who
reviews a lot more cars than I do around the kind of current prices of not just EVs
but also combustion vehicles.
I so one of the things is that the cheapest vehicles in America by and large
are the smallest.
It would have been small sedans and hatchbacks.
Now it's some small sedans and some small SUVs and they're they're crossovers.
A lot of them.
A few of them you can't even get all wheel drive, which for me is the defining
utility benefit.
But those vehicles don't have direct straight across.
equivalence in the EV world yet.
You're really moving up a segment to the larger compact crossovers where the
Equinox comes in along with some Hyundai Kia entries and I suppose the Mustang Mach
-E sort of in there as well.
But the bulk of the EVs available today are luxury or premium or mid -sized or
full -size.
My standard lecture on this is
Traditionally, new technology in automotive vehicles comes in at the top of
the market in either luxury or performance because it's really expensive.
And then over time, auto engineers are extremely good at making it smaller, more
reliable, more compact, less expensive.
And over time, it filters down.
Tesla understood that.
They started with the Roadster, which was six figures.
Then they came in with the Model S, which is 75 grand.
Now they have the Model 3 and Model Y.
I continue to be disappointed that they do not appear to be pursuing the $25 ,000
Tesla anymore, but we'll see.
And I've learned not to make too many predictions about Tesla.
So I think it's a case of comparing apples to apples.
You can definitely get a car for 28 grand.
It may be a Toyota Corolla sedan.
There is not.
an electric equivalent of a car in that package at that price.
I forget where the IONIQ 6 starts, but that's really more of a Camry competitor
than a Corolla.
And I like like you said, it's so hard to keep track of where Tesla stuff is now.
And I just know like one of their long range model threes now is 35 because of
the tech trend magic and all that stuff.
So it has just been really interesting to see.
And I do agree with you, like a lot of the entry entry EV sedans are more like a.
decent entry premium because you kind of have that added benefit of it being
electric.
It's just quieter vehicle.
It's kind of these other kind of tech features that would be traditionally
reserved for a higher priced combustion vehicle.
I do want to realize, I realize we're kind of coming on the end of our time, John.
I don't want to be too selfish because I could, feel like I can always catch up
with you and talk about this stuff for so long, but I really want to talk about what
you're doing with the Attempting Fate tours on YouTube and some of that and try
and squeeze that in.
I apologize.
We didn't give it more time,
I've really enjoyed the videos you're doing and so for anyone listening, please
just kind of share a little overview and then I would love to talk with you about
it as much as we can before you have to go here.
We got about 10 minutes.
So Tempting Fake Tours grew out of me and a friend in New Hampshire having really
bad cabin fever after pandemic lockdown.
And it was one of those late night emails with a really stupid subject line that
said something about awesome Sterling trip, a Sterling being a badly built
British rendition of the Acre legend.
Suffice it to say we...
wanted to take a Sterling from Portland to Radwood, the show in Austin.
And then we doubled down and bought two of them.
And we filmed the process.
Somewhere in New Mexico, we discovered Radwood had been postponed for four weeks,
but we ended up making it to Radwood.
People seemed to like the videos.
We had fun doing goofy car trips.
And so it has sort of sped up from there.
The latest one is clearly our most ambitious one.
I found my first genuine barn find, a Morris Minor Traveler, which is a genuine
woody wagon that had sat in a garage in West LA since 1968.
Seriously, that was the last tag, had not moved.
Tom decided to buy that one and I have a 1949 very slow, very Art Deco Morris Minor
with 27 horsepower.
Yeah
Condensing down a very long story that's still slowly rolling out, Tom got the
Traveler running and we are taking both of those cars overseas to a drive event in
Holland, which has the great advantage that it's flat and is not very high speed
because these are two really, really slow cars.
And we're in the process of rolling those videos out.
There's some explanation.
Surprisingly,
What really seemed to take off was the one on my 49 minor.
I guess a 1949 car with 19 ,000 miles that has this really sort of late 30s Art Deco
styling hit a nerve.
But there's lots more to come in that adventure.
We also ran the Lemons Rally last fall in a Rally 1 .5, which most people have never
heard of.
My friend Scott's MGB.
We actually won a prize.
Our evil plan worked.
But you can find us at Tempting Fate Tours, that's Tempting Fate Tours on
YouTube.
subscribe, we love subscribers, we love comments, we do actually answer all our
comments, but check it out.
This is fun because it's so unlike what I do professionally with electric vehicles.
I went from driving a 1949 Morris Minor in England on the left of the road to driving
a 2024.
Polestar 2 and you you would be hard -pressed to get too much more different
than those vehicles
you're not even sure there's vehicles like it's like is this comparing it to a steam
engine versus and I have to admit I get a sick satisfaction out of watching your
videos because I our daily is an electric vehicle, but then what our weekend vehicle
is and I don't know if we talked about this, but it's a 1987 Land Rover Defender
90 and
already contaminated.
Got it, got it, got it.
so I mean it's like oh yeah, I mean this look at this look at what John's driving
right now This thing is so unreliable compared to a Land Rover.
I don't know what and then the speed so I'm just like oh, he's in the double
digits This 140 horsepower we have just seems overpowering but no that it's it's
always
of a Landy of that vintage?
Well, no one's really known.
just keeps going.
You just never have enough road to get to that top speed is the issue.
those help a lot.
But I mean, like I always say, it'll go 40 miles an hour over anything.
It just takes a while to get there sometimes.
yeah, and anyone listening, the links to the Attempting Fate tours will be in the
show notes today, along with John's recent articles on the Pulsar 5 and more.
But John, I just want to say thanks again for coming on and I need to have you on
again soon.
think we could probably do double the time and I appreciate it.
just have another event, but good talks and more to come.
The nice thing is I'll have more to talk about until the end of my so -called
career in the EV world.
And it's nice to see it playing out after 15 years where there are cars.
I got a lot of questions.
I stopped to charge and people ask me questions.
and how long does it take to charge?
Oh, I'm gonna spend 15 minutes.
Oh, I could never do that.
It's like, okay, so you're gonna go pee and you're gonna go buy salty snack foods,
then you're gonna play with your phone.
How long did you take?
And you just gotta sort of connect the dots for people.
So that's what I view my job as doing, you too, in your own arena.
So thanks, and till next time.
Thank you, John.
Talk soon.
Take care.
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Grid Connections podcast.
We hope you enjoyed our conversation with John Volcker, contributing editor at Car
and Driver Magazine and host of the Tempting Fate Tours on YouTube channel.
From Lay's DV sales numbers to John's thrilling experiences with GM's Ultium
vehicles and his insightful trip to Polestar in England, we covered a lot of
exciting ground today.
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