Better Late Than Never

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on today's episode we have some news, but I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I've been doing for the last week because it's been awful. Not awful in a way that like it's tragic or anything like that.

[00:00:48] And awful in a way that my wife and I are buying her a new car. And the car buying experience is awful at a dealer. And we're going to get into that in just a moment when we talk about our, one of our stories. I can't remember if it's the first or second, but because I work two jobs, do three podcasts each week.

[00:01:14] And, um, and, uh, and I'm trying to buy a car. As you can see, my brain is going and I'm trying to buy a car. I, this has been the most exhausting week I've had probably of 2025. And this has been probably my busiest year in my adult life. And this is the most exhausting week that I've had.

[00:01:38] And I lay it all at the hand of the, uh, I laid it all at the feet of trying to buy a car from a dealer. But anyway, I'm going to talk about that in a moment before we get into the news. I do want to give you a kind of like a public service announcement. Now, when I do these public service announcement, it's typically something that I saw at work

[00:01:59] and a cautionary tale that I am passing on to you because I think it's important, uh, to remind people of this stuff. But, um, without going into much detail or any detail for that matter, I would just say that if you are feeling off or if you're feeling sick, don't, don't put it off until the last minute because the last minute might actually be your last minute.

[00:02:27] So if you're out there and one day and you just don't feel right, go get checked. If you can't afford to go to the ER, which is very expensive. And I completely understand why people can't, um, if you can't afford that, then, you know, there are plenty of clinics out there that are either a free or B they have, um, you know,

[00:02:52] like the sliding scale pay scale for clinics. Um, but get checked because that's super important because like I said, if you wait till the last minute, it might literally be your last minute. So, uh, I didn't think this out very well and I don't know how to transition smoothly from this message to news. So I'm going to give like two or three seconds of silence and then we'll start the show.

[00:03:23] Okie dokie then let's start the show. Our first story is about the IRA tax credits and the IRA tax credits are set to expire September 30th, 2025. That information isn't new. We all knew that that was going to happen.

[00:03:40] What is new is we got some clarification from the IRS because we thought that you had to take delivery of the vehicle by September honor before we'll say September 30th. But the IRS clarified how it's going to actually work.

[00:03:57] And if you order a car and it's not going to be delivered before September 30th, as long as you have a binding contract with the auto manufacturer or the dealer, depending on who you're dealing with. And you put a deposit down the deposit part. It's really important. Like the binding, the binding contract obviously is important, but the deposit is really important.

[00:04:23] As long as you have the contract and the deposit down and signed before September 30th, you can take delivery after September 30th and you'll be okay. Now I want to give a little hat tip to my wife because like I said, we were looking for cars this week and we were looking at an EV and she gave me this information and I said, you know what? I don't know if that's true. And she's like, no, I know it's the case. And I was like, I don't think it is.

[00:04:51] And I talk about this stuff all the time, sounding, you know, trying to sound very confident. And I said, if, you know, if that's the case, I would get that in writing from the dealer just in case, because we don't, we don't want to get, you know, left out a $7,500, you know? And she's like, no, I'm pretty confident it is. And when we got home, she actually sent me the article. And then on, that was on a Sunday, on Monday, I started seeing articles, other articles being written about this clarification.

[00:05:20] So, so I got scooped by my wife. All right. Next up, this is a story submitted by Mark. In the first half of 2025, Europe's new car market slipped just under 1%. So new car sales fell under 1%, not really any growth. We can pretty much call that stagnation. However, that's all new cars in Europe.

[00:05:46] The electric car sales actually were up. Battery electric vehicles were nearly, were up nearly 25% year over year. Germany and the UK both posted more than a third growth in EV sales. France, sadly, they slipped a little bit, but they were the only big country in Europe to go backwards. Spain, interesting enough, was the fastest new EV growth.

[00:06:15] They had more than 80% growth despite only being like the ninth largest EV market. So it sounds like Spain has some room to grow, but there's some enthusiasm for sure when it comes to EVs. Volkswagen held on to the top spot as Europe's largest or biggest automaker. But the Tesla Model Y was the best-selling electric vehicle in Europe, despite all of the Elon feelings.

[00:06:43] So Europe's car market is definitely cooling a little, but EV adoption is heating up. All right, I'm going to break with format and I'm going to talk about my car buying experience. Without going into too much detail, it's not because it's secret, but because it's boring. We are going to replace my wife's 2017 Chrysler Pacifica.

[00:07:10] Now, we didn't know when we were going to do it, but in the U.S., tariffs are looming. The federal tax credit is going away. And it just made sense that if we were going to replace it, now would be a better time than, you know, three, four, five months from now. And we don't know what a $40,000 to $50,000 car in today's prices will cost in six months or even a year.

[00:07:37] So we decided to go ahead and start looking with no real intention on buying anytime soon. If we found the right car, we would buy it. But if we didn't, that's okay. And we put together a list of cars. And those cars were the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid. It's a plug-in hybrid. It gets about 32 miles of range, which was fine because my wife would be able to drive back and forth to work without having to touch the gasoline.

[00:08:07] Unfortunately, it's a CCS2 and J1772 charge port. So we don't have that in my garage. So we'd have to get her an adapter, which adds a little bit of complication to the charging experience for her. And then we looked at the Toyota Sienna. We looked at the Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid, the Kia Carnival Hybrid, and the Hyundai Ioniq 9. Very quickly, we decided the Santa Fe was not for us.

[00:08:37] It's a nice-looking car, just not for us. The same with the Toyota Sienna Hybrid, by the way. Just not a fan of Toyotas. And thank God my wife was also not a fan. But we did look at it, and the salespeople were very nice. And I will say, despite all this story, despite my story and the frustration that comes with buying from a dealer, all of the salespeople that we interacted with were super good and nice. And I have no complaints at all.

[00:09:06] So just getting that out there. So on Sunday, at the beginning of the week, we went out and started looking at these cars. The Hyundai Ioniq 9 was, at the beginning, it kind of piqued our interest. And it was a good-looking car, fully electric, met our needs in terms of seating.

[00:09:33] Unfortunately, when we went to look at that car, the salesperson, and this is not a slight at younger people, because I'm not one of those people that thinks the younger generation is ruining our world or our country or anything like that. I actually have a lot of hope in young people. I know a lot of young people, and they're doing a lot of really cool and amazing things. But our salesman was young, probably not far out of high school.

[00:10:03] And I don't think he knew how to sell a car yet. And the Ioniq 9 that we looked at, it just had a bunch of the accessories for the car just kind of thrown in random places around the car. It was hard to get in. We were in the showroom. The showroom was really busy, and people were also trying to look at the car. And because there was so much stuff in the car and people around the car, and it was kind of dim and dark in the showroom,

[00:10:30] and the interior of the car was black, that was not a positive experience. So we decided to go look at the Kia Carnival, and then we would come back to the Ioniq 9 a little bit later when there wasn't as many people there. Maybe we could look at one that's outside or whatever. But we went and looked at the Kia Carnival Hybrid, which is actually a really nice car. And that's the car we chose. We worked with several dealers to get what we wanted.

[00:10:57] And I will say, I don't know if this is a lie or if the auto manufacturer slash dealer websites are so terrible that when you submit a request for a particular car, the salesperson doesn't actually get that full request. Because multiple times, we would drive to a dealership that had the car that we wanted.

[00:11:25] Or I should say, they said they had the car that we wanted. We get to the dealership, and it was either the wrong exterior color or the wrong interior color or the wrong trim entirely. So in Arizona, because it gets so hot, we wanted a white car with light interior because the black seats get really hot. Like I have a dark gray car with black seats.

[00:11:49] I can cool my car off before I leave whatever building I'm in. But we don't want to be getting into an oven in the summertime. So that's what we wanted. We went to several dealers that said they had it, and they really didn't have it. So Sunday was a bust. We met some really nice people in terms of salesmen. We learned a lot about the car itself.

[00:12:18] But in general, it was a bust for buying a car. Then we found the exact car that we wanted, confirmed that it was there at the dealership, actually dropped my wife off at work, and then I took her car to the dealership so that they can give us a trade-in on it, price. And then I talked to two salesmen.

[00:12:43] One was the primary salesman, and then one was going to be helping us in the evening time because the primary salesman wasn't going to be there, which is fine. And I said, hey, we are looking at the EX and the SX Prestige. Do you have these cars? Just confirming. They said they did. I said, do you have them in hybrid, these colors? And they said they did. And I was like, great. Let's do this. I'm going to come back at 630.

[00:13:12] I'm paraphrasing this, but I'm going to come back at 630. I'm going to bring my wife and kids, and we're going to take a look at the car. Can you please have it on the lot? Because they took me to a spare lot, and the SX Prestige, they didn't even have the battery charged. You couldn't even open the side doors without using a lot of muscle because they're so heavy, and the battery was dead in that particular car, which is an expensive car.

[00:13:40] So we show up at 630, and it turns out none of the cars that we asked for were on the lot waiting for us to look at. And we were there from 630 to 830. They did not show us an EX hybrid because they didn't have one, which that frustrated me. And the Prestige, they took us to the lot where the Prestige was, where they took me that morning. It had rained in Phoenix the night before, so there was standing water in the lot.

[00:14:11] It's in between a Cane's chicken, a... And I've got my family with me, or my son and my wife. So it's between a Cane's chicken, a Jack in the Box, and a strip club. And so we go into this lot. You have to go three rows deep into a corner. There's not very much room to maneuver to look at the Prestige. And guess what? The battery's still dead. So that was a very frustrating experience. So around 830, we left, and the salesman's like,

[00:14:40] is there anything I can do to get you to buy this car tonight? And I said, no. We'll call you. And then we left. And he was very nice, though. I don't want to, like... He was also kind of a young guy. And I don't want to be, you know, besmirch him or the other salesperson that was helping me. It didn't work out the way that I wanted it to. And that was a bad experience for me and my wife and my son.

[00:15:08] Although I was the only one that had a real problem with it. Anyway, called several different dealers to get the car that we wanted. Now we decided we don't want the Prestige. We'll take the SX because it's got a lot of the same features and it's cheaper. And so that was a positive from that interaction, from that dealership. We are a motivated buyer. We would have bought... If everything would have been worked out right at the dealership that we went to, we just would have bought the car.

[00:15:37] Like, there's no, like... There's no, like, hemming and hawing. I mean, we're going to negotiate a little bit. But it's not like we're going to go home and think about it. Like, we're going to buy that car. We like that car. So, contacted in Phoenix. There's so many Kia dealers. So, contacted multiple Kia dealers that had the car on the lot based on their website. And I will tell you, I would text somebody. I'd get a call or a text back immediately. Especially, like, when you put your name into these databases.

[00:16:05] And they will call you at 8 o'clock the next morning. All of them. Like, I was talking to one salesman. And I got three or four calls and a couple of texts, probably by the same people, while I was talking to the salesman who called me at 8 o'clock in the morning. So, I was like, okay, we can get a deal done pretty quick because they're going to be responsive. So, I would text them the car that I wanted, the price that I want to pay.

[00:16:31] And then I would wait four or five hours for them to get back to me. And sometimes it was, I'm going to have to get back to you tomorrow. And sometimes it was, that price is too low, but no counter. And I'll go up one time without a counter offer, but I'm not going to negotiate against myself. And if you haven't countered after that, then that's that. And I just had one guy, they just kept texting me.

[00:16:59] He's like, what's the best deal that you've gotten so far? And I'll beat it. And I would send him the, you know, a copy without the personal information. I'd send him a copy of like a text that I was having with the salesperson. He's like, well, this isn't a contract. And every time I would say, well, thank you. Have a good day. And then he'd come back and he'd be like, I can do it for this. Just, it was just wasting my time. Anyway, long story short, very long story short.

[00:17:26] This has been a very frustrating week because I'm working two jobs. And in that time, in between my spare time, I'm going to dealerships. I'm talking to salespeople. I'm trying to get the car done. We have, you know, kids stuff and, you know, other family things that we need to take care of. And we have family coming in this weekend. So there's all this stuff going on.

[00:17:50] I am happy to say, though, I was able to make a deal with the car dealership that botched the demo of having the two cars there. Because I did like the salesperson. And he was, when I talked to him about it, he was super responsive to my frustration.

[00:18:16] So, and I wasn't trying to, like, bust on the guy or anything like that. But I was frustrated. And I think he made it right. So that's the car that we're going to go with. Or that's the dealership we're going to go with. And we're going to go pick up the car tomorrow. And I hope to have some more insights into how the, at least the infotainment system works for Kias and Hyundais. I realize, I realize that we didn't buy an electric car. We bought a hybrid. Oh, I do have a funny story.

[00:18:44] There's one Chrysler Pacifica hybrid in Arizona. And it's in Tucson. And we were thinking about going to look at it and making a quick trip down there. And it sold. And then we found another dealership that had one coming in. But it wasn't coming in until, like, June 17th or whatever. And I talked to the salesman at that dealership.

[00:19:12] And I was like, man, we're kind of looking to get it a little bit before that. And he said, well, I sell cars for Volkswagen and named a bunch of other companies. He's like, can I get you into one of those? And I was like, can you get me into a ID Buzz for $40,000? And he goes, I think I could do that. He said, no, no, no, no. I was just kidding. He's like, no, I'll call you back. I think I could do that.

[00:19:37] Just to give everybody an idea, like the ID Buzz starts at like $58,000. But they're not selling well. They're not selling very well. I'm actually going to look and see what the MSRP on the Buzz is. There's lots on the lot. Like this guy actually told me. He's like, no, I have five on the lot right now. And I can get you into one of those, I think, for $40,000. So, yeah, it starts at almost $60,000.

[00:20:06] It's $5 under $60,000. And while I love the ID Buzz, and actually, I think I'd be happy to have the ID Buzz. The range on the Buzz is not great. You know, 220, I think, to like 240 miles. And while that's fine for most of the time, it's, we take trips to San Diego an awful lot. And I don't think that would be a good car to take to San Diego with that little bit of range.

[00:20:35] Because here, in the summertime, you have to run the air conditioner. And I can't rely that that's not going to be the full range. And I don't want to be stopping and charging and all that stuff. But if they ever came out with an ID Buzz that had 300, 350 miles of range, that would be absolutely a car that I would consider.

[00:20:59] But anyway, I just thought it was really funny that I made a throwaway joke thinking that that guy would be like, oh, ha ha, not a chance. I'm going to sell you a $60,000 car for $20,000 cheaper. But he was like, no, I think I can get you that deal. And whether he could or couldn't, I don't know. I sent him a text shortly after it. And I said, no, no, we'll pass on the Buzz. But thank you. But anyway, so that is my car experience.

[00:21:25] And I can tell you, again, just the pressures of buying a car at a dealership suck. I thought it would be better. I thought the experience would be smoother and easier. And the last time I bought a car was in 2017. And that was pretty easy. Like, I did not have much of an issue. That was the 2017. That was our Chrysler Pacifica. And it was a pretty good experience overall. This experience, not great.

[00:21:55] And I don't blame Kia. I don't really blame the dealers so much, the salespeople. I blame the sales managers because I think they're maybe the folks that kind of hold everything up and play the game. But the salespeople were actually very nice and good to work with, every single one of them. So positive. Even when it wasn't exactly what I wanted, they were still really nice, respectful, kind, helpful.

[00:22:24] And when I texted each salesperson that I was working with to let them know that we had made a deal and they said, good luck on your new car. And it was a very cordial experience. Like, the first car that I bought as an adult, which was like when I was 18 years old, my wife and I were dating. And I said, hey, let me run this by my girlfriend because, you know, I value her opinion.

[00:22:52] And the guy goes, oh, so you need to ask permission from your girlfriend to buy a car? That was my first intro into car salesman. And that left a really bad taste in my mouth. And I didn't need her permission to buy a car, but I valued her opinion. And by the way, we didn't buy from that guy. We ended up buying a different car from a different person. But anyway, that's my really long and drawn out story. I hope that wasn't boring. Maybe I just used this.

[00:23:21] Maybe I just used my platform to vent a little bit. But I do have Tesla news for you. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm not throwing an ad in the middle of this because I basically just hijacked the entire show with my own nonsense. So no ad, mid-roll ad. This is going all the way through. But you're going to get a pre and a post ad. Or you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt. Or support kilowatt.com and not ever get ads.

[00:23:52] Anyway, let's talk about Tesla. Tesla is launching the Cybertruck in South Korea. Tesla is marketing the Cybertruck in Korea as bold, futuristic, and luxury. They're going to sell the all-wheel drive version and the Cyber Beast, the equivalent starting price in Korean currency, which I can't remember what it is off the top of my head. But it's about $100,000 U.S. Delivery should begin late 2025.

[00:24:22] I've never been to Korea, but I've been to a couple of different Asian countries. And there's some places where the Cybertruck would probably do okay in terms of its size. It's a big vehicle. But then there are other places like city centers that I would imagine be quite cramped. Again, I've never been to South Korea, so I don't know what the road infrastructure looks like in that country. But it's a big vehicle for Asia for sure.

[00:24:51] A new study from the IIHS, which is the Insurance Institute Highway of Safety. The Insurance Institute Highway Safety. Anyway, they revealed that the Model 3 and Model Y are the least likely vehicles to be stolen. And like the Model S was like the fifth least likely vehicle to be stolen. So all that technology being put to good use to recover these vehicles.

[00:25:17] Because, you know, thieves know that Tesla is going to be able to find wherever those cars are. I would also imagine that it's a little more difficult to sell a Tesla. But as we have learned from these hackathons, not impossible. Let's see. Oh, this is neat. Tesla is building a tool that will allow owners to request features, which I love this.

[00:25:43] So prior to this, you would, you know, basically tweet to Elon and be like, can we add this feature? And we're like, sure. And then it would get added, which is a cool thing to do. Probably not the best use of a CEO's time. Now you'll be able to, you know, request a feature or post a feature. And then the community can vote it up. And then if it gets voted to the top, I would imagine that Tesla will implement it as a feature. So that's a cool thing.

[00:26:14] And our final story here. Tesla will offer a new feature called low power mode. And this is going to help cut down on phantom power drain. Which if you don't know is slow battery loss when your car is just kind of sitting there. Normally Tesla's key features like sentry mode, summon standby, you know, the cabin climate options running in the background. Which is great if you need them, but not so great if you're sitting at the airport for a couple of days. And that's where low power mode comes in.

[00:26:44] So once you turn low power mode on, the car automatically shuts down those extra features like sentry mode, summon standby, outlets, accessory power, climate control, camp mode, scheduled preconditioning, cabin overheat protection. All of that stuff gets turned off. Some of that stuff will stay on like sentry mode and accessory power and the climate control stuff if you are plugged in. So that's a positive.

[00:27:14] The update probably, if I had to guess, is inspired by the Cybertruck owner who left their truck at an airport. I believe it was in the Bay Area. Only to find that the vehicle had, the battery had drained to a point where it was getting very low. And Elon said, hey, we're going to send somebody out to charge your vehicle and we'll look into this. So I'm guessing that's a direct result of that interaction.

[00:27:44] So the good news, if you're leaving your Tesla parked for a while or you're on a multi-day road trip and you pull into, let's say, Motel 6, they don't have a charger. And you want to make sure you have the most amount of charge for your next day. Maybe you got a couple miles before you hit the next charger. You can turn low power mode on and you're good to go. And you can do this in the app. So I think this is cool. You can do it on the car or in the app. So I think this is really cool.

[00:28:13] One of the things when I go away, like when I went to Thailand earlier this year, I was a little bit nervous because, you know, I was leaving my car for two weeks in the garage. And I was like, man, I don't know what this looks like because this is really kind of the first time that I've left it for that long. And I don't like to keep it plugged in if I don't have to.

[00:28:35] So this would have been nice only because it would have just given me a little bit of extra reassurance because, you know, you're going out of the country and all the other stuff that comes with the worries about going out of the country. Having your car nerfed when you get back or find out that's nerfed when you get back is just a little bit more of a concern. So anyway, turns out it was fine. I don't think I lost but like two or three percent battery in the entire time I was gone. It was great.

[00:29:05] All right, everybody, that is it for me. I hope you all had a wonderful week. I hope I hope my personal story wasn't too boring. I do think it's relevant to this show because we talk about legacy automakers, their EV efforts, and we applaud them right for for and most of the time we applaud them for what they're doing. And I think legacy automakers are really coming around to building the EVs like they're getting good at it is what I'm saying trying to say there.

[00:29:36] But I fall into that trap of, oh, it's easy to buy an EV. And in reality, you still got to deal with dealers. And whether you're buying an EV, a hybrid or an ICE car, that's largely going to be the same experience no matter what. And again, I did not have one negative interaction with a salesperson.

[00:29:58] But yeah, it was four days to allow to be allowed to spend a tremendous sum of money at their establishment, which just seems so odd to me. You know, my Tesla. You know, Elon says it takes five minutes. It probably takes a little more than five minutes to buy a car, but it's not very long. It seems like the dealer model can still exist and not take four days to finally buy a car.

[00:30:29] If I had to guess, that should be a thing. All right. That's really it for me. I hope you all had a wonderful week. I'm still going to put out the Rivian episode, but I've got family members coming in on Friday. Today is Thursday, the day I'm recording this, which is two days late. But I've got family members coming in on Friday, so I'm going to have to record the Rivian episode in between doing things with family. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you soon.