New Scout, Old Soul

[00:00:20] 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 we have a full show for you again today. First up, I do need to make a correction. I was talking about the Volkswagen ID.4 lease. I kept saying $99. It's not $99 down. It was $999 down. So I listened back to the episode today.

[00:00:50] And I was horrified. So just so everybody's aware, it's $999 down, not $99 down. And then I talked about a rumor where production for the Model Y was starting in Europe. And that rumor is true. So Tesla confirmed that. And then just a little recommendation here. I follow this YouTube channel called Tesla Life. So I'll put a link in the show notes.

[00:01:19] And on one of their latest episodes, and again, I'll put a link in the show notes to this. They talk about Tesla being more open to right to repair. And they talk a little bit about the electronics part catalog that we talked about last episode. So I thought it was a good discussion. So I'm going to put that link in the show notes. And then of course, one of the hosts, Patrick, who listens to this show, he also runs the Cars with Chords blog, which you can go to carswithchords.com.

[00:01:47] And check out what he's doing. And check out what he's doing. Because honestly, I find him to be very thoughtful. The YouTube episode is about 15 minutes long. So it's an easy listen for sure. Full of good information too. All right, let's jump into our EV news. ChargePoint has rolled out anti-theft, or I should say theft-resistant EV charger cables. You know what? I was going to do a whole story about this. And then I watched Tom Malogny's State of Charge video.

[00:02:17] And I was like, man, I can't beat Tom's video because this guy's deep into this kind of stuff. So I'll put a link in the show notes. Tom Malogny actually interviewed ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer about the cables, about why they decided to do this. And honestly, if you don't know, copper thieves are kind of a big deal.

[00:02:40] I've talked about some calls that some of our crews have been on that involve someone trying to steal copper. The biggest one, and I wasn't on this call, but the biggest one was they got called out and multiple units got called to this warehouse fire. And people reported seeing flames 40, 50 feet in the air. And our crews, we're about a mile from that location, maybe a little bit more than a mile.

[00:03:08] And then there's another couple of stations that are about a mile and a half away. So we're kind of stacked on top of each other where this fire is located. Anyway, the crews roll out and they see nothing. There's no smoke. There's no fire. Nothing to reflect 40-foot flames in the air, you know. And after a while, everybody's kind of driving around this general area looking for the fire because an address wasn't given, just a rough location.

[00:03:34] But one of the units had found a transformer that was sitting on like a concrete slab and it had been pulled off that slab a little bit. And there was like a big chain around that transformer. And on the building, there was this massive, massive like char mark, like just a black mark on the building.

[00:03:57] And what had happened was is somebody got it into their head that they're going to steal this transformer, large commercial transformer, so that they could take the copper out of it. And what they would do is they would just pull it off its base, I guess, take the transformer somewhere and then take their time stealing the copper out of it. I don't know exactly what their thought process was other than they wanted to steal the copper for the money.

[00:04:20] But I think they learned a lesson that day because not only was there this massive char mark on the side of the building, this big black mark on the side of the building, there was also a sizable pile of vomit that was still there days after when my crew went to see what had happened.

[00:04:41] Because, you know, after a fire occurs, sometimes crews will go out and we'll just kind of talk about basically we use it as a way of just discussing tactics and strategy and familiarizing ourselves with buildings in the area. But there was still it was maybe a day or two after this incident had occurred. There was still a sizable amount of vomit that had that was still sitting on the ground. So whoever and I don't think anybody died because we didn't get any reports of that.

[00:05:11] And as far as we know, nobody checked into a hospital for these for burns for electrical burns. But the amount of energy released when they pulled that off the slab, pulled the transformer off the slab had evidently some of it went into at least one person's body and that person decided to vomit or that person's body decided to vomit all over the parking lot.

[00:05:38] So, yeah, it was probably a good lesson learned. And I'm really glad that nobody got hurt or seriously hurt, but probably not a fun experience if I had to guess. Now, I told you that story so I can say this. It's pretty common across the United States and I'm sure other places to roll up into a charging station and not find any charging cables attached to the chargers.

[00:06:08] So ChargePoint decided that they were going to take matters in their own hands and develop a anti-theft charging cable. So anyway, it's on Tom Malagny's YouTube channel, State of Charge. It's not actually that long. It's about 20 minutes long, maybe less than 20 minutes long. So I watched it. It was a good interview. So Tom does a good job. Amazon just ordered 200 electric semi trucks.

[00:06:36] And if you're a Tesla fan boy and you got excited, it's not Tesla semis. They didn't order Tesla semis. They actually ordered Mercedes-Benz E-Aktros 600 electric semi trucks. I almost said Tesla semi trucks. Amazon is going to use these semis for high mileage routes in the UK and Germany. These trucks are rocking a 600 kilowatt hour battery and have a range of 310 miles or 500 kilometers.

[00:07:05] Although I'm sure that varies based on the load that they're carrying as well as, you know, upgrade or downgrade. Obviously, if Amazon has these trucks rolling around Germany and the UK, they need to have the infrastructure to support it. So Amazon will be installing 300 kilowatt charging stations at key locations that will charge the semis from 20% to 80% in just over an hour.

[00:07:33] And this isn't Amazon's first electric semi purchase. They have about 50 of some other brand that I didn't recognize, but it's definitely their biggest electric semi purchase. A non-modified Volkswagen ID7 Pro S has a rated range of 709 kilometers or 441 miles based on Europe's WLTP rating.

[00:08:01] This particular model of the ID7 has a 86 kilowatt hour battery and a drag coefficient of 0.23. Now I'm telling you this because Volkswagen just achieved a range with this vehicle. It's completely not modified at all. They were able to squeeze 941 kilometers or 585 miles out of this vehicle on a single charge.

[00:08:29] Now they did it in probably the most boring way possible. They achieved this by driving an average speed of 29 kilometers, which is about 18 miles per hour, which they say is about rush hour traffic speed when commuting in the city. And if you are thinking that maybe you were behind one of these test vehicles, you weren't Tesla or Volkswagen did this actually on a closed loop in Italy.

[00:08:56] But yeah, that has got to be the most boring job to drive 29 kilometers an hour or 18 miles per hour for 941 kilometers or 585 miles. That has just got to be tedium. I'm sure they use different drivers throughout, but man, that sucks.

[00:09:21] But what Volkswagen was trying to prove here is that if you are like critically low on range, if you just slow down and kind of nurse the car to the next charging station, you will be able to get more range out of it. So I think that's what they're trying to prove. I would rather go as fast as humanly possible and then just drop it into neutral and glide as far as I can.

[00:09:46] Going 18 miles per hour or 29 kilometers per hour just sounds awful. Like I'll leave the car on the side of the road before I drive that slow for any distance. Like that just sucks. I'm not a speed demon by any stretch of the imaginations, but that just seems tedious. All right. Moving on. I'm only half joking. Moving on.

[00:10:14] James from True North EVs passed this along to me today. Canada's EV and hybrid rebate is no more. And I guess it would be more accurate to say that they put a pause on the program because all of the allocated funds have been used. But whether or not that fund, it's called the I-Z-E-V or depending on where you're from, I-Z-E-V. It's a zero emissions vehicle incentive program.

[00:10:45] It's kind of up in the air whether that money will be refunded or not. Not money should be refunded. I should say funded. It remains to be seen if they're going to continue the program. Initially, the program began in March of 2019. And since that time, a total of 546,000, actually more than 546,000 vehicles received rebates.

[00:11:08] If you bought a hybrid, then you're looking at up to, not guaranteed, but up to a $2,500 rebate. And if you got a full EV, you would get up to $5,000. Again, there is no word at this time whether or not they are going to continue funding this program. And, you know, at the moment, Canada is going through a little bit of a change in their government.

[00:11:31] So I'm sure we won't see any real information on this anytime soon, but maybe in a couple of months. But I do have good news. Hyundai has stepped up and started offering an additional $5,000 rebate off of their 2024 models. And Hyundai already has a $3,000 rebate. So you stack those two and you get $8,000. On top of that, there are some provincial rebates in some of the provinces, depending on where you live.

[00:12:00] So I'll let you figure out if you have those or not if you live in Canada. But not too bad. Then, you know what? I have a couple more Hyundai stories here. In late December of 2024, Hyundai announced that they were almost done establishing a solid-state battery production line. And according to Electric, which is the article I got this from, Hyundai is expecting to start testing EVs with solid-state batteries in late 2025.

[00:12:28] But don't get too excited because I would not expect to drive these bad chickens until sometime around 2030. But they are testing. So this is not immediately good news. It's good news for five years in the future. And then finally, in our EV news segment, Hyundai will launch its first EV minivan in 2025. It's called the Staria.

[00:12:56] There are already ICE, petrol and diesel versions of this car, as well as a hybrid version. It kind of takes a couple of different shapes, this van. It could be a minivan. It could be a business vehicle. It can be, you know, a commercial vehicle. Like, there's a modified version of this called the ST1 that actually has an option for a refrigerated van option.

[00:13:24] So if you delivered flowers or groceries or whatever, this would be a good option for you. But since my wife really wants to buy a minivan as her next vehicle, I'm more interested in the minivan side of this. It looks like it'll be introduced in March of 2025. I don't really know when it's going to be built. We do know it's going to be built in Korea, so it's unlikely to come here in the United States. And it's rumored to have an 84 kilowatt hour battery. All right, everybody, that is it for our EV news.

[00:13:53] I've been doing a lot of Patreon plugs lately. So I'm just going to say go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com if you want to support the show. There's also a link in the show notes for Acast if you don't like Patreon for some reason. And, you know, all the money goes back into the show. Moving on to our Tesla news. Tesla is pausing part of the new Model Y production in China for three weeks. This pause will allow the company to upgrade the lines.

[00:14:23] And kind of a good news, bad news situation here. The shutdown will take place over the Chinese New Year, which it sounds like, and I'm not super familiar with the Chinese New Year. That celebration lasts a week. So industries are typically and companies are typically shut down during that time. Obviously not all companies. So this really means that the lines will be shut down for about two weeks or two regular business weeks so that they can get this up and going.

[00:14:53] I actually was kind of surprised that we got news that China was going to start production without hearing that they had shut production lines down to retool for the new car. Same thing with Giga Berlin. I thought that was also, I thought the rumor was credible, but I also thought it was odd that we didn't hear that they had retooled the lines for this. So I would expect that Giga Berlin is doing something similar if they haven't already done it.

[00:15:23] Let's talk about Cybertrucks. Tesla is offering up some discounts on Cybertrucks. Some of the discounts could be up to $2,630, but it looks like most of the discounts are $1,600 off the price of an in-stock Cybertruck. It doesn't look like you get this price if you order it online. You do a custom order. These are for in-stock Cybertrucks only.

[00:15:51] And then if you want to save a little bit more money, sometimes you can find a demo unit and save a little bit more money as well that way. And here's the thing. I guess sometimes maybe I'm not doing a very good job describing how I feel about certain things. I've had quite a few conversations over the last couple weeks about me being anti-Cybertruck. And I don't know where I've given that impression because I am not anti-Cybertruck. I love the Cybertruck.

[00:16:19] I can't afford the Cybertruck, but I love the Cybertruck and I want it to succeed. And I am a little bit bummed, if I'm going to throw my biases completely out there, I'm a little bit bummed that the prices that we have for the Cybertruck are nowhere near to the originally announced prices. But I understand why it's more expensive. And, you know, I don't know if Tesla really thought that they could hit those original prices or not. But that doesn't make me bummed.

[00:16:48] The thing with me, the thing that bugs me about Tesla and the Cybertruck right now is I don't think Tesla is being honest about Cybertruck demand. And, you know, it's okay if the Cybertruck is this kind of boutique vehicle. That's totally okay. You know, Tesla can use this as a loss leader and they can still make plenty of money on the Tesla Model 3 and the Model Y.

[00:17:19] I don't know that they make a ton of money off the Model X or Model S. So it could be like kind of in that category. But, yeah, I love the Cybertruck. I just don't think Tesla is being honest about the Cybertruck's demand. Like there was an article that came out in like October or something like that. I didn't bother covering it. Tesla is saying that the Cybertruck was the best-selling pickup truck. It might have been EV pickup truck, but it didn't matter.

[00:17:46] Like there's probably a lot of qualifiers for them to make that statement. Maybe it was the best-selling truck for one day, one hour, two minutes. I don't know. But they made the statement and I was like, there's no credibility here. You know, the Ford F-150 Lightning almost certainly sells more in a quarter than the Cybertruck sells in two at this point. But we don't know because Tesla doesn't release those numbers.

[00:18:13] All right, let's move on to our next story. And this comes from Not A Tesla App, which I am a very big fan of that blog and you should go definitely read it. NotATeslaApp.com. Tesla is set to expand access to the supercharger network to seven additional manufacturers. Now, we've already talked about some of these manufacturers, but I'm just going to throw them in anyway because maybe somebody hadn't heard.

[00:18:41] So these manufacturers are BMW, Genesis, Hyundai, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lucid, Mercedes-Benz, and Kia. Now, the thing I will say about Kia is Kia was supposed to get access on January 15th, but that date has been pushed to early spring because there was a technical issue. All right, let's see here. We got two more Tesla stories for you.

[00:19:05] According to a European Union filing, some automakers plan to pool carbon emissions with Tesla so that they can comply with the European Union's 2025 CO2 emissions rules. So the companies that are going to pool – and I think this is kind of the same thing that happens here in the United States. We call it selling them credits or whatever.

[00:19:30] So the companies that are going to pool with Tesla are Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru. Something I found interesting was that Volvo, Polestar, Smart, and Mercedes, they're all pooling their carbon emissions together outside of Tesla and these other companies. So just kind of an interesting thing.

[00:19:55] All right, get really excited if you live in a cold climate and you drive a Tesla equipped with LFP batteries because I have good news for you. Tesla superchargers can now heat your LFP batteries before you charge. So if you roll up to a supercharger or any charger if you have any kind of EV and your battery is cold, it's like charging an ice cube, right?

[00:20:20] It is going to charge very slow and it's going to take a super long time for you to get any significant amount of energy into your battery. So what this does is it uses an AC ripple current to create heat in the battery and warm it up. And once the battery is sufficiently toasty, it switches from AC to DC and begins to charge the vehicle like normal.

[00:20:49] Tesla says this is about four times faster than not warming up the battery, which that doesn't mean that it's super fast, but four times faster. I guess it would depend on how low you are, how cold your battery is, how cold it is outside and all that good stuff.

[00:21:08] Now, with your car, if you say, I'm going to leave my house and navigate to a supercharger, when you put that in, the car recognizes that you're going to a supercharger and it will already precondition and warm the battery up for a charge for you.

[00:21:24] But it is possible that some people might forget to do that or maybe your battery is so low, you don't want to risk using any extra power for whatever the reason that you haven't preconditioned your battery. Now you have a good charging experience when you get there if you have a Model 3 or a Model Y equipped with LFP batteries. Oh, by the way, this only works with version 3 and version 4 superchargers.

[00:21:54] Version 2 superchargers, this will not work. So plan accordingly. All right, everybody, that is it for our news today. But it's not it for our show because I have an interview with Jamie Vondruska, who is the Digital and Community Development Senior Specialist at Scout Motors. So when I was at CES, I was able to go to the Scout booth. I was able to look at both vehicles.

[00:22:20] And I'm going to tell you right now, I thought the Terra looked in pictures. I thought it looked way too much like a Rivian. In real life, it doesn't look that much like a Rivian. There's some elements there, but it doesn't look that much like a Rivian. And the other thing I thought about the Terra was roughly the size of a Rivian R1T. And it's not. It's a regular full-size pickup truck. It's a good-sized truck. So it's much bigger than I thought it was.

[00:22:50] The Traveler, on the other hand, was much smaller than I thought it would be. So that was interesting. Now, one of the interesting things about Jamie is he's actually the founder of VW Vortex. And I don't know how many VW fans we have out here in this podcast land of the Kilowatt community. But I am a Volkswagen fan. I am not afraid to admit that.

[00:23:17] Even during the Dieselgate, I was like, man, that's shady, but that's super clever. You know, I don't agree with what you did there. But I respect the game because that was a super clever way to get around some things that maybe you shouldn't have gotten around. And you definitely paid the price. But I want to be clear. Jamie wasn't a part of that.

[00:23:38] He's actually the founder of VW Vortex or one of the founders of VW Vortex, which is a forum for VW enthusiasts. And I was on this site constantly when I owned a Volkswagen. There was a ton of questions that I had answered. I honestly can't remember if I was recording when we had this conversation or not. But when he told me, my whole demeanor changed and I turned into a fanboy pretty hard.

[00:24:06] And I was already kind of fanboying over the scouts just in general. So one of the things I should let you know about the interview is Jamie and I were having a conversation while I was trying to get everything set up. And the conversation kind of rolled into the interview. So FYI, despite my best editing efforts, it's probably going to feel that way. All right. Let's go ahead and welcome Jamie to the show. What's your position at Scout?

[00:24:31] At Scout, I am by position a digital and community specialist. And I was brought initially on board. I'm on the marketing side of the organization. So I was brought on board to run the online community, which is a little unique for most car companies. They don't have their own discussion forums. And I am also running the blog and overseeing some of the social media efforts as well.

[00:25:00] So being a new company, we're trying to get this all up and running. So one of the things that we were talking about before I started recording is your fellow former firefighter over here. Yeah. And we were kind of talking about a little bit about our experience when we were younger with Scout. What does the brand mean to you? Because I brought up the things that I remember fondly about the brand. What are some things that you remember? Yeah.

[00:25:28] Like I said, my grandfather was an international farmer. And so, you know, when you buy a combine or a tractor, very often you get a deal. Or the rumors are even sometimes they throw a Scout into the package. And so he had a few Scouts before he moved on to international pickups. But I think I was 12 or 13 years old and got to drive one around the farm. And, you know, it's just ironic as life goes on later in life. I ended up buying a 79 Sunburst Yellow Scout 2.

[00:25:58] And I love that thing. It's a four-speed with a granny, first gear. And then all of a sudden this opportunity came along to get involved with Scout. I had done a lot of work in the past. I've been in automotive for 20 years. I've done a lot of work with Volkswagen and Audi and Porsche in the past. And when I discovered that Volkswagen had purchased Navistar and got the rights to Scout name and they made that announcement, I kind of beat the door down to get involved because that opportunity doesn't happen very often. Yeah.

[00:26:28] When I heard Volkswagen was bringing back Scout, I was positively giddy. Now, I will say, because there are diehard fans out there that have these old vehicles and they restore them. They put a lot of love into them. Some of them just leave them patinaed, which is great. I have a friend who bleeds gasoline. And when I said they're bringing back Scout, you can see his face light up. And I said it's an EV and you can see his face fall. How are we reaching out to those folks? Yeah. Part of my job is to do community outreach all the time.

[00:26:58] That includes in-person events. So we, Chris, who I work with, the two of us get around the country to all the original legacy Scout events like nationals in Ohio and western regionals. We've been to almost all of them at one time or another. And, yeah, sure. I think, you know, history in this country, you know, change doesn't always come easy. You know, and I like to joke sometimes. I'm like, show of hands, who wants to go back to a corded drill?

[00:27:25] You know, and I realize there's always the fringe use case of, like, concrete or whatever that, yeah, you might want a corded drill. But more the idea that it's technology and it's moving forward and it's in everything, right? My hand tools, my yard tools, like batteries are just part of our life. And more money is being spent on battery research right now than ever in history. So we'll see how this evolves. But what I would say is that we did listen.

[00:27:51] We read all the comments online and sometimes even get involved in it. And I manage our community forum, so I directly answer the questions in our community forum. And we seek out everybody's opinions on what they want and what they don't want. And so it was a major factor on us offering this range extender with a gasoline engine as an additional configuration or alternative to the BEV version. So that brings up kind of a good point.

[00:28:21] When Scout brought the brand forward to EVs, you left a lot of the nostalgia in the truck. I mean, when I first, I don't want to say I got emotional, but when I first saw the unveil, it was like, oh, man, that looks like it's supposed to look in 2025. You didn't. And we appreciate that. You didn't just take the brand and you didn't just say, you know what, this is our brand now.

[00:28:48] And we're going to put out a truck that looks like, you know, whatever, a Toyota Tacoma, which is that's not a bad truck. But this looks like its own vehicle. Some people have compared it a little bit to Rivian. It's much bigger than a Rivian. Yeah. And this is like just part of clarifying these kinds of things. But, you know, I appreciate and our design team appreciate you saying that because we felt the pressure to not mess this up, essentially. It's probably the best way to put it because you could easily over style the vehicle.

[00:29:16] And I think if you look at it and especially compared to a lot of vehicles on the market, this is very simple lines. You know, it doesn't have all the creases and and flares that a lot of sheet metal and things do. And that and that goes ties it back to the original scouts around the market. Right. The other nice thing is that, you know, we have a clean sheet platform. This is a brand new platform. So it is a body on frame platform. You can put a lift kit on it on it if you want to.

[00:29:42] It's not based on any other like Volkswagen Group platform or even Rivian platform at all. So it's nice. It gives us an opportunity to do it the right way to build the approach angles and departure angles and integrate that in. If you notice, we the bumpers are removable. They're not all molded in plastic like you'll see on the front of a lot of SUVs with the intent that we want the aftermarket involved in helping support the vehicle.

[00:30:07] So, yeah, we've been really careful to, you know, respect that past history and the ruggedness and the work truck ethic that they were used for in a modern package. Can I tell you this is this maybe doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Scout, but it it definitely has to do with people who design and engineer these things.

[00:30:26] Every time I talk to a product designer, every time I talk to an engineer, they will they will point out the things that most people will never notice about a product and they will they will lovingly tell you what they put in. And I don't mean to fawn all over this. That's not my intention. But when you guys announced and just talking to some people around the trucks, there is so much level of detail that maybe the, you know, average person is not going to notice. Can you talk about some of that stuff?

[00:30:55] Like we got the lights and we got the front grill and all that stuff. It just it harkens back to another time while still being in the present. Yeah, our head of design, Chris Benjamin, came on board and it's kind of an interesting story. They had a they had a big meeting to show something to our board. And I think Chris had less than two weeks to give his own spin on it. And so, you know, they initially start out with renders, of course, on a computer.

[00:31:24] But what's interesting is, you know, he carried that what they call the mask on the front. But, you know, the Scout front end was interesting because like Scout 2, almost every single year they had a different style of grill on the vehicle. And I don't think you can find any Scout enthusiasts out there that will agree which grill is their favorite because there's a two bar grill and a three bar grill. And then there's the metal, all metal grills and the chrome plated ones.

[00:31:51] So I think for our design team, you could only imagine like the pressure to do something in a modern way. So that front end is really unique. You know, those headlamps are inspired by a pair of binoculars. You know, the idea of Scout scouting ahead and Scouts always return. So I think you see a little bit of that in this vehicle.

[00:32:13] And it's not strictly a concept, which you see here and see in pictures is, let's say, 90 percent of what you're going to get as a production vehicle. We really wanted to make sure that what we were showing everyone was not a pie in the sky concept vehicle that we weren't likely to build. So, yeah, I think, you know, the cleanliness of the lines in the vehicle, the smoothness of the sheet metal, the nods like in the pickup truck.

[00:32:39] There's a little indent that runs the length of the top of the bed that was on the original Scout 80, for example, that we carried over into this. So there's a lot of these interesting design cues that are all over the vehicle and even the interior, you know, the brow that kind of came out on the Scout 2. We've integrated that into the interior of this vehicle. So, yeah. Yeah, there's also like there's like a laptop shelf or just a shelf in front of the passenger seat and the driver's seat. And then you have some mounting brackets in the back on the on the pickup.

[00:33:09] And I would assume there's options that have that in the SUV as well. Yeah, we want to explore as much, you know, anytime you build a new vehicle from scratch, you start out with a spreadsheet that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger with everybody's ideas and everything you want to do. And the next thing you know, you could end up with a hundred thousand dollar vehicle.

[00:33:27] But the good thing is, is that, you know, we recognize the fact that we are building this to be a rugged vehicle with, you know, locking front differentials, locking rear differentials, a pretty impressive approach and departure angles and even the breakover angles on the traveler in particular. So, you know, and we want it to be rugged. And so that means heavy duty, everything underneath the chassis. It means tie downs and places to mount things.

[00:33:55] It means roof ratings that are significant so people can go overlanding with them. So, you know, these are it's it gets complicated really fast when you start, you know, you go to like Overland West and you look at some of these rigs that are out there, especially that on vehicles with removable roofs. And, you know, the load rating of the roof and you can see that there's three times the load rating sitting on top of the roof. So those are all considerations for us when we build these things. And, you know, we want to try to keep as many as many people happy as we can.

[00:34:23] Yeah, I try to get to Overland Expo every couple of years in Flagstaff. Yeah. And it is absolutely like nutty. Like it's not it's not anything to see somebody demonstrating a five hundred or six hundred thousand dollar vehicle. Yeah. And people are like, oh, yeah, I'll take two of those for my farm in Montana that I never go to. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about because I don't want to take up a lot of your time, a little bit about the differences between the some of the highlights of the pickup truck.

[00:34:50] And then we'll do some of the highlights of the SUV and we'll talk about some of the differences after that. So actually what I'll start with is they're both built on the same platform. So the only difference is, is that, you know, we've designed the platform to have a wheelbase that can be variable. So the nice thing is the Traveler is essentially just a shorter wheelbase version of the pickup truck. So the good news is, is that the wheels, suspension components, you know, like I mentioned, we want the aftermarket involved.

[00:35:17] So you'll be able to put a lift kit on it. You'll be able to put different suspension on it for off road use. And I think long term, what you're going to see is that there will be a wide variety of aftermarket parts that will be available for these because we're already in discussions with aftermarket companies. And we'll, we'll actually start sharing CAD information for the front and rear end so they can start to develop parts for it before we've even got the vehicle on the market.

[00:35:45] Um, differences between the pickup and the, you know, other than the styling is the most obvious one. You know, the Traveler parkens back to the original Scout 2 with the upswept rear window lines that you see. And then the rounded front fenders. We carry that over to the truck. You know, the, the Terra was the original, um, Scout pickup truck that was on the market, but they didn't sell very many of them. In fact, they're fairly rare to see even at shows these days.

[00:36:13] And so there's a little less design to fall back on, on that vehicle. Um, so we look towards both the Scout 80, 800 and the Scout and the Terra original Terra for design inspiration on the vehicle. The wheelbase is longer on this vehicle. Um, they're both about, they're both the exact same width. Um, so that, you know, because there's been a lot of misinformation, I think it's a full size truck at the end of the day. That was our competitive set. So it's, you know, the pickup truck's bigger than the Rivian pickup truck, for example.

[00:36:42] But our SUV is actually smaller than the Rivian because that Rivian is a third row version. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And when, when people, when people are like, oh, this looks a lot like the Rivian, they obviously stole the design from Rivian. I was like, no, no, no. Rivian stole the design from Scout. That's, it's not, it's not the other way around. Like they just took it back. Yeah. I think if you look around in the car market, I mean, you see this. Ford Bronco. Exactly. And you see this in car forums and online and on Instagram and everywhere else that people said, oh,

[00:37:12] everything always looks like something. And it is with a hundred years of plus of automotive history, hard sometimes with the, the, basically the packaging constraints you have to really do something unique. But I, I personally, and I, you know, feel like this stands on its own, particularly if you see it in person compared to the Rivian, you know, and I could walk you around both vehicles side by side and show you a million things that are different, but you're right.

[00:37:40] What's probably the, is that character line where they kind of upsweeps on that, on the rear window that, that probably gives it the closest tie to what looks like a Rivian. But I think this front and rear end are completely unique. And then I think it's presence with the wheel flares and the way it sits on the wheels is just a lot different than the Rivian. No, no, it is a hundred percent true. You see this truck in person and in the SUV, there's way more people around the SUV. It was harder to get a good look at that one, but you, if you, when you see them in person, they are not the same.

[00:38:10] They, you, they have, they have elements that are similar, but this is its own vehicle. The, the traveler is its own. This is the Terra, right? Yeah. Correct. This, this one's a Terra and that's a traveler. That's a traveler. So this, this is totally its own vehicle. Now in terms of, since we're talking about Rivian, has it been officially announced whether you, Scout is working with Rivian just like they're working with Volkswagen and the that we're utilizing the zonal architecture that's in the most recent version of the Rivian

[00:38:39] products and the software base. Perfect. Is there anything else, Jamie, that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? No, I don't think so. I, I, you know, I feel like half my job is clearing up, you know, the, some of what we've said and what we haven't said. And I think we covered a lot of it. It was great that you mentioned those similarities with Rivian, um, thousand foot pounds of torque, you know, it's a two motor setup. It's yeah. Um, we've said zero to 60 time of 3.5 seconds.

[00:39:07] Um, and these are, these are just targets for now. Um, on the battery electric vehicle, 350 miles of range. And on the range extender, uh, you're looking at 500 plus. And that range extender is called the harvester, right? Yeah. We're calling that the harvester. It's essentially an option on the vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a, I mean, I don't want the, I don't want the range extender, but I want the badging on the side of it because it looks so good. It looks so good. Yeah.

[00:39:33] Our design team is incredibly talented and to take that inspiration, you know, from agriculture and that history and carry it into it. I thought it was pretty nice touch. Oh, I, I, I mentioned, I can't remember the lady's name of this up here, but I mentioned to her, I was like, Oh, I like that. She goes, Oh, did you notice? You know, there's a, here's the little tractor and then here's the, I was like, yeah, I did. It's brilliant. All right. Uh, thank you so much, Jamie. I really appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Okie doke. I want to thank Jamie for agreeing to be interviewed.

[00:40:04] Honestly, I am so excited about what Scout's doing. As a general rule, I don't think I'm going to be able to afford a $58,000 pickup truck base model, $58,000 pickup truck. But boy, would I like to, if you'd like more information on what Scout's doing, I will put a link in the show notes. And then on Scout's website, they have a forum. If you're interested in joining the forum forum and learning more about what they're doing.

[00:40:33] All right, everybody, that is it for me. So if you have feedback, you can send me an email, Bodie, B O D I E at 918 digital.com. I'm also on Twitter or X at 918 digital. And yeah, I hope you all have a good weekend, holiday weekend coming up here in the U.S. Hope everybody has a great weekend and I will talk to you on Tuesday. Oh, and if you're looking for the Scout Motors community forum, I'll put a link in the show notes.