Not Your Grandpa's Buick: The Electra L7!

[00:00:00] Every team, every topic, everywhere. This is Belief.

[00:01:09] I have a great interview with Sam Fiorani, who is the Vice President of Forecasting for Auto Forecast Solutions. Sam's a smart guy. First of all, let's talk about the most important

[00:01:33] thing. Sam is a very, very nice human being. I was on the Car Stuff Podcast. He listens and he's been on that show many times and is friends with Jill and Tom. Basically, he was like, hey, good episode. I was like, hey, I really like what you do. You're a really impressive person. He's an automotive historian and he's, like I said, he's Vice President of Forecasting

[00:02:02] over there at Auto Forecast Solutions. We just sat down and I didn't have any really prepared questions more than just I wanted to just kind of pick his brain on different things. Sam didn't disappoint. So I think you're going to really enjoy that episode. Let's see here. I got to find my notes. That was all off the top of my head, if you can imagine. Let's see.

[00:02:27] That's not the episode that we're on. We are on episode 726. Can you imagine? Next week on August 7th, I believe it is. That'll be the 10th anniversary of the Kilowatt Podcast, which is nuts. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Before we go into the episode, I do kind of want to shout out, if you're interested in, you know, automotive podcasts and things like that, and you probably

[00:02:55] are since you're listening to this one, you all know about the Car Stuff Podcast, which is hosted by Tom Appel and Jill Simonello. Jill's been on and hopefully Tom's going to be on soon. They had a great chat about the Lucid Gravity, and then they had Jamie Butters on, who hosts the Autotown Podcast. I had never heard of this podcast, and it's first, I'm not getting paid for any of this.

[00:03:21] I just really enjoyed the way that the podcast, the way that Jamie does this podcast. So the Autotown Podcast, the way they do it is they break the segment down as if you're walking around town. So there'll be like a coffee shop segment, and that'll be the interview. And then they'll be, hey, let's walk down to the dealer. And then they'll talk about different new cars that are coming

[00:03:45] out and that kind of thing. And this is the podcast where I found out that Chinese entities own just under 20% of Mercedes. And in the United States, that's complicated because I believe it's like 15% Chinese entities can't own more than 15% of a car brand, or otherwise it causes some issues like what

[00:04:08] Polestar was going through. So yeah, it is certainly an interesting conundrum. I think there's like 400 Mercedes dealerships in the United States, so I don't think they're going to kick Mercedes out, but it was a really good chat. So I'll put links in the show notes, Car Stuff Podcast, and Autotown.

[00:04:30] All right, next up, let's talk EV news. Buick has a new EV on the way. It's the Electra 7. This is a really beautiful car. I mean, I haven't obviously seen it in real life, but in pictures, man, is this a really nice car. It looks more like a sedan than it does maybe a crossover, but it does kind of have those little elements, bubbly elements that maybe it might be a crossover, but

[00:04:57] I believe it's more of a sedan. But this vehicle has an 800 volt architecture, 700 kilometers of range. And I always start with where the car is going to come out, like what part of the world it's going to come out. If I say, if I start with miles, then it's likely going to be here in the United States and then one other country that uses miles. If I say kilometers, you can bet that it's not going to come here to the United States first or at all, but it's going to be 700

[00:05:27] kilometers or 435 miles of range, which is pretty good. It'll add 450 kilometers or 280 miles of charge in 10 minutes. I would imagine that this depends on your state of charge or at least when you're, where you're starting with your state of charge. Let's see here. It's got some other cool features, like it will detect surface bumps about 20 meters ahead of it, of the car, which is great in adapting

[00:05:56] to suspension for when it's going to go over those bumps. It's got a nice 10.25 inch display for the instrument panel and then a 15.6 inch central display for the infotainment system in the middle. And then I, this is something I'd really like to see in person because I can't picture it in my head, but it's got a 50 inch panoramic augmented reality heads up display. I would imagine

[00:06:20] that this has got to probably be like along with the dash or possibly up high, but probably more along the dash, but I don't, I don't, that's something I need to see. Uh, I have seen, you know, different heads up displays in the past and not really something I've been super impressed by, let's put it that way. But you know, if done right, this big 50 inch panoramic augmented reality display,

[00:06:46] that might be very cool. Uh, we're quite a bit, we're quite a bit more advanced than we were. I think it was like Oldsmobile had a heads up display back in the day that would show the speed in the bottom left-hand side of the windshield screen. We're significantly past where, where they were back in maybe the nineties, or it could have even been the late eighties when that was out. Like I said earlier, it's not likely to come here to the United States. It will go on sale in China

[00:07:14] though. And you can reserve it for a very affordable 147 us dollars or a thousand Chinese one. Um, if you pre-order it before August 19th, you'll get an additional 6,001 off the purchase price, which, you know, that's a 6,000 times 147. That's a number that's higher than my brain. I, I tired and don't feel particularly great today. So that's an, that's a number, uh, higher than

[00:07:44] 147 dollars. But, um, right now we have like three people and it's probably more than three, but we have like three people that live in China who might benefit from this information. Here's what my hope is when, when I was flying to Thailand last year, um, the man next to me was Chinese and he was flying back home and we were going flying from LA to China. I think it wasn't Beijing. I think it was Shanghai we were going to, but it doesn't matter.

[00:08:10] Anyway, he was flying home and he got sick and then he slept on my shoulder for a significant portion of that trip. I am not a person that liked to be touched, but he was clearly going through it and having a bad time. And I felt like it was more important for him to sleep than me to feel comfortable. So anyway, but we talked about EVs afterwards when he felt it started feeling better. So I want to think that that guy actually is listening to the show because I did tell him about

[00:08:39] digital.com and tell me in the email what you did. Cause we talked a lot about what your business was. Um, that way I know it was you. All right, moving on the Mercedes G L A E V. We have some leaked info. So I did mention that this is, I'm recording this on July 28th. And that is because the Mercedes G L A debut will actually take place on July 29th. So I'm recording this a little bit early. Um, but like I said,

[00:09:08] I want to make sure that this gets out. So some of this information may be correct, may not be, we'll, we'll find out more tomorrow, but the G L A is built on Mercedes modular architecture. So the MMA platform. Now, uh, the thing with car, car, um, models is sometimes, you know, they can sound very

[00:09:34] close to the same. So if you're like, well, didn't the G L A come out a couple of months ago, that's the C L A. Um, that was announced a couple of months ago. That was the C L A. That was a smaller, more affordable vehicle, but it's built on the same platform. This is a, uh, slightly larger SUV type vehicle. Um, but it's built on the same platform as the C L A. It's going to be 800 volt

[00:09:58] architecture, 85 kilowatt hour, uh, nickel manganese cobalt battery pack, which is a more energy dense battery pack. However, um, it's going to have close to 400 miles of range. That's that's, if it has 400 miles of range, that's a pretty efficient vehicle. Like the model Y long range has an efficiency of,

[00:10:23] uh, 4.3 miles per kilowatt hour. This vehicle would be 4.7, excuse me, the model Y long range would be 4.3 miles per kilowatt hour. This would be 4.7 miles per kilowatt hour. So this would be not a lot more, but more efficient than the model Y, which, uh, you know, based on legacy automakers and their track record with these kinds of things, I don't think it's going to be the case, but maybe, uh, I would

[00:10:52] not be surprised if this 85 kilowatt hour battery, the real world range was more like 330 miles. You know, this is based on WLTP range estimates, and those can be pretty generous. We'll say, uh, when it comes to ranges estimates. So I would, I would imagine it's probably closer to 330 miles in real life. Uh, we don't yet know what the interior is going to look like for sure, but we can,

[00:11:22] assume that it's going to be really similar to the CLA interior, which is really nice. Uh, overall, you know, I'm, I'm not a fan of, I really liked the CLA. I'm not a fan how the GLA looks in, at least in the pictures that I saw, but that does not mean that this isn't going to be a nice car for somebody. It's also not going to be cheap. We don't know price, but I would imagine it's going to be pretty expensive because it's a Mercedes and an electric vehicle.

[00:11:50] Speaking of electric vehicles and luxury brands, BMW has already built 50,000 IX3s. And I'm going to say in most pictures, I really liked the look of this car. But when I opened up the Inside EVs article to read about, you know, the story, which is Inside

[00:12:12] EVs is where I got the story. Um, the first picture is like this silver blue IX3 and the picture is taken like from the side. And I was just kind of scrolling through it. And then when I popped across that picture, I was like, Oh, this is gross. Like not my favorite color does not, is not flattering in my opinion for that, that IX, that, that body style of the IX3. I actually think the IX3 looks pretty

[00:12:42] cool. Not in that color. It, it, it, it looked pretty bad. Anyway, uh, the IX3 has not been, has only been in production, excuse me, for nine months and demand remains strong. BMW says that they have their orders are approaching a hundred thousand. So not too shabby. BMW added a second shift back in February of 2026 to keep up with demand. And that's pretty impressive when you

[00:13:09] consider this vehicle starts at $61,000. Now is $61,000 ridiculous nowadays? No, but it's not, you know, cheap. It's still pretty expensive. Um, and that kind of brings us to our next story, actually, uh, cause new cars are more expensive. And some of the things that they talked about, I believe on the car stuff podcast that I was listening to this morning is that that is also,

[00:13:37] you know, because new cars are more expensive, that's bringing up demand for used cars, which is bringing up the price of used cars. So again, go listen, I'll put notes, uh, links in the show note because there was lots of good information in there. Anyway, uh, recurrent put together a list of the top five EVs or used EVs based on range and charge speed. So, uh, we're going to go over

[00:14:04] the top five used EVs based on range, and then we'll move over to the top five used EVs based on charge speed. Now there are tons of other features that you might find important, but you know, they have like a list somewhere. So this is, this is their list. I don't know if these are in order, uh, of impactfulness. So I I'm just going to read them and you can decide which ones are important to

[00:14:31] you. Also, I think their range estimates might be a little bit high, but you tell me, you tell me what you think. First up, we got the Hyundai Kona electric starting or the average used price for that is $20,000, just a bit more than that. And the range is around 300 miles of real world range. That seems high for a Kona electric, but again, you tell me. And then we have the Hyundai Ioniq 6

[00:14:59] average used price is 24,000, just a bit over that. Um, and they give an average range of 340 miles. That seems high for a new Ioniq 6 that for a used one, man. I don't, I don't know what real world range. Um, I don't know that that's correct. And then we have the Hyundai Ioniq 5

[00:15:23] around $26,000 average price and around 350 miles of range. Are you, are you picking up on this? Does that not seem high to anybody else? Anyway. And then we have the Chevy Bolt, which is average used price is 21,000. This is not the new Bolt that came out that costs around $30,000. This is a, the one that they discontinued, I believe in 2024 or maybe it was 20, no 2024. Um,

[00:15:51] but the average used, uh, excuse me, the average range on that is 280 miles. That seemed high even when that was new. So maybe they're just saying this was the average range when it was purchased. I don't know. And then we have rounding out the Kia Neuro EV, which is just above 23,000, 23,000 average used price and 300 miles of range. So Hyundai motor group, obviously killing it because

[00:16:18] every one of these is a Hyundai product or Hyundai motor group product, except for the Chevy Bolt. Recurrent did mention that Toyota's used EVs also, uh, over deliver on range. So if you're looking for a used EV and you come across the Toyota, if it's, you know, it could over deliver on range. Now, if we move to charging speed, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, I'm not going to go over the used price again,

[00:16:44] cause we already talked about that, but the Hyundai Ioniq 5 can add a hundred miles of range in around six minutes. It does have that eight or 900 volt architecture. So that makes sense. If you're on the right charger, the Ioniq 6, it can add about a hundred miles in around nine minutes. Again, this all depends on your state of charge. The Kia EV6 is around again, nine minutes to add a hundred

[00:17:08] miles. The Tesla model three, uh, average price used price on that is 27,500 and 13 minutes to add about a hundred miles. And then the Polestar two is about 15 minutes to add, uh, around a hundred miles. And that would be a average use car price of 27,900. So I know lots of folks are out there

[00:17:35] who are, um, looking for used EVs. Hopefully this is helpful. Again, I don't, I think their numbers are a little off, but the, at the, at its core, like if you're looking for a good EV, I don't think you can go wrong with any of these EVs used, you know, aside from some weird factory problem or aside from some, you know, maybe the, the owner, previous owner didn't take care of it. In most cases,

[00:18:03] I think you're going to be in a good shape with any of these cars. Also, if you're looking for an EV James from true North EVs, I'll try to remember, but man, there's so many things I have to put in the show notes now, but I'll try to remember, but, uh, James's, uh, podcast. It's just true North EVs. Uh, you can go look it up, but James does some consulting if you're looking for an EV and, and putting you in the right direction. So again, not, not, I don't get money for this. It's just,

[00:18:33] I like James. All right. That is our EV news. You can support the show by going to supportkilowatt.com. I won't give a big long pitch just because, you know, the show's already a little bit longer than I thought it was going to be in total. And we're only halfway through, but if you support the show, all the money that you, you pledge through Patreon or supercast goes back into the show.

[00:19:00] So I'd appreciate it if you give it a, uh, a look support kilowatt.com. All right, let's move into our Tesla news. I'm going to start with a kind of negative story first, and I'm going to present this as fairly as I can. Javier Madrano is a former manager at Tesla. And what he was the manager of is the FSD test fleet in Houston, not robo taxi, but full self-driving, uh, test fleet to validate

[00:19:29] full self-driving. So Madrano filed a lawsuit in Houston federal court that complains that Tesla's or claims, not complains, claims that Tesla's Houston operation, uh, in terms of FSD validation was understaffed and that the cars became rolling hazards on public streets. So let's go back,

[00:19:52] uh, picture it, 2024. Uh, at that time, Madrano claims that he was the sole operational manager for, uh, the operation in, in Houston. So there was nobody else helping him out. He claims that he was the only one. He claims that he had a double workload. He had 15 vehicles, 38 different operators

[00:20:15] in three shifts, uh, operating 24 hours. The suit claims that 38 people was, is too many people for one person to supervise. And I would agree to that. Uh, according to the suit, Tesla's own safety standard is 15 to one, and this would be 38 to one. So if true, then yes, he's probably over, um,

[00:20:39] committed on managing people. Madrano was the sole person, according to him, responsible for auditing camera footage. He performed weekly ride-alongs. He investigated incidents. He claims, and I would imagine if this is all true, that, um, he was, that there was a breakdown in safety and oversight and he, there was just extreme exhaustion. So, you know, some of the test drivers were working

[00:21:08] 60 to 80 hours on average a week. They stayed on call through the weekends just in case they needed to come in. And then, you know, Madrano was kind of always in this yellow slash red alert state. You know, he was not able to fully relax. And I would imagine if you have employees that are working 60 to 80 hours a week, they're also exhausted. Now on March 30th, 2025 at 2.05,

[00:21:38] a.m., one of Tesla's autonomous vehicles hit, I believe it was a pedestrian. Uh, Madrano received the notification or the phone call at night. He was asleep and was woken up. He gave unsafe advice or guidance. And then he claims that later he had no recollection of the call, which can happen when

[00:22:01] you're sleep deprived. Uh, when he brought this issue up to HR, the HR representative suggested that he just turn his phone on, do not disturb rather than correcting the issue by adding the, uh, amount of proper amount of staff to correct the problem. So the incident occurred on March 30th, 2025

[00:22:23] on May 1st, 2025, Madrano was fired by Tesla. And this was just a few days before his stock was about to vest. So he lost his job. He lost his stock. And after Madrano was fired, Tesla promoted one of the team members that was already working in Houston and then transferred two more team leads

[00:22:48] from Dallas to Houston to take his place. Madrano filed the lawsuit against Tesla and he wants to be reinstated, which is weird because he already works for another EV company, but he wants to be reinstated. He wants back pay and he wants damages. Now the reinstatement might be in order for him to get the back pay. I don't know. Then he can quit and continue working for the other EV company. I think it's important to pay attention to these kinds of articles, but it's also just his story.

[00:23:17] We don't know. One of the things I read in this story was like Tesla said, one of the reasons why they fired him was because he didn't delegate. And, you know, as a, as a supervisor delegation is super important, but if you don't give people the time, like if you delegate them a task and then you don't give them the time or the resources to complete that task, I don't know that delegation's

[00:23:42] really all that useful. But, uh, it could be that maybe that was built in and Madrano just didn't know it. You know, I recently, I recently conducted some training at work and, uh, it was, we just did this, like, it's a hot, it's really hot here in Arizona. So we did this little game trivia style game. And in the game, I said to the, the two people who were competing, who are the two news people at the,

[00:24:09] on our shift, I said, you have all of these people, uh, meaning the rest of the shift, the people on their truck, we had, there was a chief there. You have all these people for resources. And one of the people use the resources and they, they killed, they, they, they destroyed, they, they won the game. The other one was too proud to use the resources and even said, it is like, I I'm going to win this

[00:24:34] on my own. And I don't know which one of these two people Madrano was, you know, I don't know if he adequately used his resources or if he was just too proud and just sucked it up and tried to do it on his own. In either case, you know, we'll, we'll find out and we'll keep an eye on this story or at least on the lawsuit to see where it goes. But, um, you know, there are certainly people out there

[00:24:58] who will not ask for help and, you know, and maybe he did and maybe Tesla didn't give it. We'll just have to wait until all the facts come out. All right. Moving on to the positive Tesla news story here. Tesla is offering free supercharging to all EVs in Europe in order to evacuate from areas that

[00:25:22] are affected by wildland fires in France and Spain. Again, I want to repeat, this is all EV owners, not just Tesla, but all EV owners. So through July 29th, which is tomorrow and August 5th, there are, uh, Tesla's making their supercharging free in those affected areas. So it's not everywhere. It's just in the areas affected by the wildfires. You know, Tesla also has this really cool, uh,

[00:25:50] trailer that they roll out with mega packs on it and you're able to charge your car from mega packs and they deploy all these solar panels on the ground. When I went to that training in Scottsdale earlier this year with Tesla, they had that out there and they're showing us how to shut it down and how it worked. And it's pretty cool. And then they have even smaller, uh, you know, uh, deployments with the different power walls attached to it for a variety of different things, right? You can,

[00:26:19] you can use it for a bunch of different reasons, but, but the point is there, there's there, they have these resources that they can deploy in natural disaster type, uh, scenarios that will either allow you to charge your car so that you can flee, or if you're sheltering in place and you have, I don't know, you need to charge your phone cause the power's out or you need to charge,

[00:26:47] you know, a medical device. They have these, like I said, the little power wall devices where you can go in and you can connect and you can charge your device up. Uh, especially if it's, if it's medical related, I think this is a good thing that Tesla does. I'm often critical as many of you know of Tesla, but this is definitely one of their better programs. So kudos to Tesla.

[00:27:11] All right, here comes our final story. Tesla signed a deal to buy 90% of a solar and battery plant or farm in Arizona. Now it's not buying the farm itself and it's buying the capacity. It's buying 90% of that capacity. It is a 509 megawatt hour solar array, or excuse me, 509 megawatts. It's

[00:27:37] 509 megawatts of solar and 350 megawatt hours of battery storage. It's expected to go online in 2028 and then along the same lines. And on the same day, Tesla signed another deal to get another 140 megawatts of solar power at a farm in Texas that is set to go online in 2027. And Tesla's made similar

[00:28:03] deals in recent months as well. So interesting. Well, we'll see what they decide to do with all that energy capacity over, you know, the coming years. It seems like they're getting pretty aggressive with it. All right, everybody, that is it for me. If you want to send me an email, it's Bodhi, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. I'm going to be honest with you because I'm recording this on a Tuesday

[00:28:28] and likely releasing it on a Wednesday. I may not, or I might forget to include one of the many links that I promised. If that happens, please send me an email. Again, it's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. I don't often promote this, but I do have a website address and that's 918digital.com as well. And you can see all the stuff that I'm doing on that. What else? What else? What else?

[00:28:58] Oh, you can follow me on LinkedIn. It's just Bodhi Grimm. My first name, Bodhi, B-O-D-I-E and Grimm with two Ms. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you soon.