The Future and Past of EVs with Sam Fiorani

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

[00:00:52] He's a automotive industry expert with over 30 years of experience in this, and he's also a historian. And we have a really fun conversation that just kind of starts off a little bit about electric vehicles, and then we just kind of dive into some different automotive history, and I think you're going to enjoy it. Oh, and that leads me to the next thing. Sam is also a board member of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles.

[00:01:20] And we get into that, but this sounds like a really, really cool and fun place to go and hang out. And I believe the tickets to get in are like $10. So if you live in and around Boyertown, Pennsylvania, I would highly suggest stopping by, because apparently they have quite the electric vehicle collection. And when I say electric vehicle collection, I mean like original, like back in the early 1900s, and maybe even further back, because I'm not sure how many people know this,

[00:01:50] but the electric vehicle goes all the way back to the 1830s. So, yeah, I mean, it's seen a little bit of a renaissance, but this is not new. The technology is new for sure, but yeah, craziness. EVs have been around for a while. All right, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Sam. And I think you're all going to agree with me by the end of this.

[00:02:17] Sam is one, a wealth of knowledge and two, just a really nice human being. So Sam, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. All right, Sam, you have, I would say a unique perspective on the automotive industry. You work for an organization called Auto Forecast Solutions. What exactly does Auto Forecast Solutions do? Auto Forecast Solutions provides production and sales forecasting by vehicle around the world.

[00:02:47] We do production forecasting in over 60 countries, and we do a new forecast every month going out to 2038. So we travel, we track every plant, every vehicle, and then we add powertrain on top of our forecast. So it's a multidimensional forecast. It covers every vehicle that any supplier, any financial house, anybody in the industry would need to know about. And we cover them in depth and regularly. We update them every month.

[00:03:17] How do you do that? That sounds like a monumental task. I just heard, I just talked about it, I think about it in my last episode, but there's like 260 new EV or new vehicles in China coming out in 2026. How do you keep track of all that? We have a lot of sources on the ground around the world and a lot of information and we're constantly doing research. So we need to know what, what manufacturers are bringing out new models, what they're replacing, when they're replacing it.

[00:03:47] The crux of our forecast is knowing the next generation of every vehicle or the new models that are coming out. So our, our product itself focuses on suppliers, financial houses, vehicle, vehicle manufacturers, any company that needs to know what's coming. What, how is the, the, the competitive marketplace changing? And in cases of the suppliers, they need to know what to get on next. So we need to be up on whatever the next product is.

[00:04:17] So we're there to tell them that General Motors is coming out with a new vehicle in 2029. You need to be ready for whatever part you make to go onto that vehicle. And so you can pitch it to them and get their, that business. Are you, are you finding that you're, you're, uh, uh, reporting more on or, uh, uncovering more of the, let's get back to buttons in the car versus buttons being taken away. Are you telling suppliers, get your buttons ready?

[00:04:46] We have a monthly newsletter that we put out that, that explains the depth of our forecast, what, why we made the changes we do. And every month somebody puts out a special report in there and it's on whatever topic is, is at the top of our head or our clients heads. And, uh, we cover that a few months ago. I covered infotainment systems and how bad all of them are and why nobody can get this right.

[00:05:14] There's gotta be a good balance between buttons and virtual buttons. Uh, if it takes too long for me, we get test cars all the time. And if it takes too long for me to learn how to change the HVAC system, find a radio station, adjust the seats that if it takes too long to do that, it's going to frustrate the customer. And, uh, I need to, to let them know this is not how it should work.

[00:05:39] We, we need to find a good balance between all the stuff that you can put onto the, the virtual system that won't necessarily take the driver's attention away from driving and then put redundant buttons so that I can change the temperature without having to go find out where the temperature adjustment is. It's, it's, it's a big problem within the industry and, uh, nobody has really solved it very well. No, no.

[00:06:06] Uh, so I, I have a model Y and my wife has a Kia carnival and, and she has a newer, uh, last year's model Kia carnival. And when I get in my car, you know, she doesn't know how to use the infotainment system. When I get in her car, especially when I'm driving, cause one of the buttons will be either volume or you can turn the heat, uh, higher. I think it's, you can turn the heat up or down, um, depending on what you're looking to do, but you have to know how to switch it. So you might get volume.

[00:06:34] You might change the temperature in the car. It's a great idea that Kia has for that. And I recently had a Kia that had that and accidentally ran my finger across whatever it was to adjust between the two settings. Like, Oh, that's really neat. Now I need to know what I did to do that, to get back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's a, it's a global conspiracy to cause divorces is what I think that is. Well, imagine those of us who change a car every week.

[00:07:03] I got to relearn a car in seven days and then somebody else brings another car in. I got to relearn another car in seven days. Uh, I'm currently driving a, a BMW i5, which has a lot of those controls, a big screen. And, uh, uh, fortunately I had an i7 recently, so it's a lot of the same stuff. So I already learned it, but, uh, but finding how to, how to find, how to change the temperature is the, my first thing in every vehicle.

[00:07:31] How do I adjust the temperature in here and why is it so hot or cold and why can't I fix that? You know what? That brings up a good point. And this is something I've also been wondering a lot, especially from people who review cars. Like what are your bugaboos with, with different vehicles? Things should fall at hand and, and everything should be intuitive. Uh, back in the old days when you got in a car, everything was analog. There was a lever for the temperature.

[00:07:59] There was a, a dial for the fan. The radio had six presets on it. That was, everything was standard. All the things we knew, uh, then, uh, uh, headlight controls. Moved to a different place or windshield wiper controls moved to a different place. Every vehicle has it in a different spot. They should still be.

[00:08:23] Easy for you to come in off the street, sit in a car and figure out how to drive the car, how to put the windshield wiper on, how to turn the headlights on. Uh, and now with digital screens, it's difficult to change the radio. Uh, even if you have Android auto or Apple car play, it's still not normally automatic that it just picks it up right away.

[00:08:45] And I, I've found too many times where I can't get a radio station to play or my, my big problem right now is Android auto has, if I'm watching, if I'm listening to serious exam, the, the scrolling feature on there does not change screens. If I scroll to the next screen, if I scroll to the next screen, before I get a chance to select station, it goes back to the first screen.

[00:09:13] So I can't get to the second set of stations until, until I pick up my phone. I have to do it manually on my phone. It's very annoying. And it's with millions of cars on the street. Somebody Android should have been able to figure this out by now. Do you find that because Android auto should work the same on every vehicle? Do you find that it's every vehicle? It does it on every vehicle. It's, it's, it, it is a Android resident problem.

[00:09:43] I mean, the, the, the, I have so many mixed feelings on the connected cars and my wife's car has Apple car play. I love it. My car does not wish it did, but also, you know, there are just so many different ways to be tracked. And so data's like GM got in trouble for selling data to insurance companies and that kind of thing. Uh, yeah. Connected, connected cars are the future and, uh, everybody has to be aware of what is being bought and sold.

[00:10:13] What your information is being offered to, to the manufacturer, to the suppliers, to anyone outside of those, those companies. It's going to happen. A lot of these companies are going to sell your data. Uh, it's going to be the new revenue stream for every manufacturer. And that's why general motors is moving away from Android auto and Apple car play. That's why, uh, everybody is, is looking at how to monetize the driver, the passengers, the vehicle.

[00:10:41] And it's, it's going to be a new business case for all these manufacturers. And we, as the drivers and passengers are now the commodity. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, I don't know that this is going to happen, but it makes me nervous the way that John Deere looks at their products. Like you buy a, you know, $300,000 tractor and you don't really buy it. You, you just buy the ability to use it. Yeah. Yeah. We're not necessarily heading that way with the automotive industry, but we could very well could be.

[00:11:12] That, that could very well be the next step. Uh, I have farmers in my family and they were so proud of showing their GPS aligned tractors. But then you learn that they own the tractor and nothing else. All the software cannot be touched. Nothing can, can really be fixed by themselves. It's not like, uh, you know, buying a, a John Deere a hundred years ago where if it broke down, you went and got your tools and you fixed it. That can't happen anymore. Yeah.

[00:11:42] No, no. When, when I, when I was a kid, my grandpa, well, he's passed away now, but they lived on a decent sized farm. Maybe not for Texas because that's where they lived, but they lived in a decent sized farm for most normal places where I lived anyway. And, uh, he had tractors just to pull parts off. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. You still see them parked everywhere. Yeah.

[00:12:06] You see a 70 or 80 year old tractor sitting off the side of a barn because they pulled something off of it and it no longer works. Yeah. With the big old hard metal seat that you sat on with the little spring underneath it. Yeah. I spent a lot of time on that tractor when I was a kid. Um, so yeah, I, I, I mean, we're kind of all over the place. I'm all over the place. You're, you're fine. Uh, in terms of, uh, topics, but there, there's just literally so many things that we could talk about.

[00:12:34] Um, what do you, there's been a kind of a lot of, um, quite a few articles recently that I've seen of the EV market kind of picking up here in the U S. Uh, and then also, you know, while it's picking up here in the U S it's still flagging behind the rest of the world. Do you have kind of thoughts on where we're going with EVs here in, in the U S? The EV market was juiced by, uh, the incentives that the government put in place.

[00:13:04] Everybody keeps saying that the incentives were encouraging people to buy electric vehicles. And it's not the case. They were encouraging manufacturers to build the vehicles. That way, if they wanted to, if any EV is going to sell for the price it's going to sell for. So if that price is $40,000 and that's the price that the consumer thinks that is worth, the manufacturer is going to price it. It's $47,000 because there's a $7,500 in a federal incentive. They're definitely not going to price it at $40,000.

[00:13:34] If that's the price that the customer is going to pay in the end. So when the incentives went away, the incentive to build the electric vehicles went away. So now they have to build them at the price that the customer wants to buy them. So now a $47,000 EV is now a $40,000 EV on the manufacturer side.

[00:13:57] That takes away all the incentives to build it if that padding was planned in for the idea of the business case for the vehicle. Chevy came out with the Bolt. We launched the Bolt. The Bolt was intended to get a $7,500 incentive. It was also intended to be built for multi-years.

[00:14:22] After the incentive went away, there's no reason to build it, which is why on their website it says for a limited time. They're only going to build them because they already have the assembly line set up. They already had the suppliers there. They're going to build so many, and then they're going to stop production. But the momentum towards electric vehicles is still building. And buyers have to realize how much they want to pay and what they can get from an electric vehicle on that.

[00:14:50] And the manufacturers have to realize what they want to build to fill that gap. So it's going to take a while to get us up to the volumes or the market share that we see around the world. Europeans and the Chinese are buying a lot more electric vehicles than we are relative to their market. And Americans are afraid of electric vehicles because they're still afraid of breaking down somewhere without a gas station nearby, without the ability to recharge.

[00:15:21] They don't understand that, in general, customers don't understand that your electric vehicle is going to work like your iPhone. You're going to plug it in at night. You're going to wake up in the morning. It's got a full charge. You can drive all day. And the pricing is still a little higher. We've seen the prices come down, and they're just slightly higher than the gas-powered equivalent. But consumers still think they're a lot more expensive. They think they're going to break down more often.

[00:15:49] They see the videos on the news of fires. All these things are scaring customers away. But little by little, they're being persuaded into the benefits of an electric vehicle, that their performance is much better than the equivalent gas-powered vehicle. They cost less to run if you charge them at home. It's a better vehicle on paper.

[00:16:14] But Americans want to be able to drive 600 miles in a sitting. And that 600 miles includes stopping 300 miles down the road, pumping the gas in five minutes, and keeping going. That's not how it works as an electric vehicle. You're still going to be able to do 600 miles in a day, but you're going to have to stop every 300 miles for an hour. It's a life change, but it's an improved vehicle.

[00:16:42] And most people can live with an electric vehicle, even though they don't believe they can. What do you think of, what are your thoughts on E-Revs then? E-Revs are a great idea, especially when it comes to trucks. When you have an electric truck and you use it as a truck, most trucks today are used as passenger cars.

[00:17:09] They drive to the office, they drive to school, they drive wherever it is, and the bed never gets dirty. If you actually use the bed or you actually tow something, then an electric pickup truck loses its benefit. If you can put a small gas engine in it and charge the batteries, now you've got the torque of a diesel, you've got the cheap gas of gas as opposed to diesel, which costs a dollar more,

[00:17:36] and it doesn't stop after 200 or 300 miles. You can refill the gas and keep going. It's got a lot of benefits. If consumers can see the benefits, then we might see these take off. But it's going to take a big learning curve for consumers to understand that you get the torque of a diesel, you get the cost of a gas vehicle, and in normal driving, it actually costs you less than a gas vehicle to drive around town. It's a good idea.

[00:18:06] I'm leery about whether or not consumers will see that benefit. So recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking on different E-Rev uses. Like, where is it going to fall? And I really think initially, not with Scout. Scout is an adventure-built vehicle for adventure's sake. And I don't think fleets are going to pick up Scout trucks to be fleet trucks.

[00:18:34] But when Ford gets around to creating the F-150 Lightning E-Rev, when they finally get that, I think because they already have a built-in customer base for fleets, I think people who are driving those trucks around might start to see the benefit. And then that's, I think, how the word gets out about E-Revs. Yeah. RAM will be the first. And we're going to see a RAM E-Rev shortly. Really?

[00:19:00] And when that happens, like you said, the RAM has a lot of real truck buyers. And they're going to be the first measure on whether or not this is a good idea. If we can get consumers to understand the benefits of it. And we're going to see a RAM, and we're going to see a full-size Jeep Grand Wagoneer, both with the E-Rev powertrains. So it'll be a nice test to see if that works. Is that soon?

[00:19:27] I thought that Dodge kind of put everything on the, that kind of thing, or RAM, excuse me, because I'm an old guy. I still compare, I'm still thinking Dodge and RAM are the same company. But I thought that they put it, I thought they delayed that. Did they not delay it? They delayed the electric vehicle. And they have delayed the, they've taken the electric vehicle off the table at the moment. They have delayed the E-Rev, but it is still coming.

[00:19:57] They have a platform, they have a vehicle, they have an engine, and it's all ready to go. So Stellantis was oddly ahead of the curve when they announced all their electric vehicle platforms and then shifted those platforms to accept gas engines. And in the case of the, the frame-based truck, the truck EVs, it's an E-Rev. So it works out very well.

[00:20:26] Do you, do you know when the E-Rev RAM is coming out? They're already building pre-production models. No kidding. We expect them sometime next year. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I have, uh, I don't know, I don't know what it is about RAM, but if you drive into the parking lot of, you know, my station anyway, my fire station, it is RAM, RAM, RAM, RAM, RAM, and then maybe a Silverado or maybe an F-150. But most of the guys I work with are driving Rams.

[00:20:56] It, it seems that Ford and Chevy buyers and GMC buyers buy them for towing, for hauling, for traditional truck uses. Whereas RAM buyers tend to be, uh, a little more showy. They, they want other people to know that they've got a RAM truck. Uh, when they redesigned the RAM truck, uh, before COVID, uh, that came out the same year

[00:21:23] that, uh, that Chevy and GMC came out with a brand new truck and the RAM truck is, was so much nicer inside than the Chevy and GMC trucks that I was embarrassed for General Motors. And they did such a good job of making it a luxury vehicle in a truck body. And buyers liked that, that coddling of, from the inside, they were spectacular inside, but

[00:21:53] they also liked this noise that that V8 engine made. And when they took the V8 engine away, sales plummeted. And so that's why their sales are starting to come back now because there's, you can get a V8 engine back in them. That was the reason why a lot of those buyers wanted that truck. Oh, interesting. First, first, every single, uh, guy that makes fun of me for driving a Tesla that owns a RAM. I'm going to mention that you're not a serious truck owner. Oh, they're serious truck owners.

[00:22:22] They want big, they want loud, they want powerful, and that's what they want. And that V8 engine is, is the noise that lets everybody else know that's what you're driving. And, um, I've, I've had test Ram trucks and honestly, starting it up will wake the neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. My father-in-law has a Ram. Yeah. What do you think of the, what do you think of, uh, Dodge?

[00:22:49] And, uh, I would assume Ram would do it as well, but Dodge on the, on the charger, putting the fake motor sound in there. Jill Simonello told me she liked it. Uh, I was, I was ready to hate it because I've been, uh, I've been a motorhead all my life. And the, when you hear the sound of, of a particular part of a vehicle, even, you know, whether it's the engine that I was just talking to somebody the other day about, uh, I grew up

[00:23:17] with Chrysler sitting in my driveway and the starter on an old school Chrysler was unique and you could tell it a mile away. So the sounds of a car are very important to me. Making a fake noise on an electric vehicle on the surface sounds like a dumb idea. And then you get in the electric charger and there's something about it that is not as bad as you think it's going to be.

[00:23:46] It, it's not only the, uh, I can't say the right noise, but it's a better noise than you anticipate, but you feel it. It's not just the stereo making a noise to you. There's a rumble to the vehicle and it, it feels right. It, it, it doesn't feel out of place. And, uh, I've been in enough electric vehicles where they've tried to, to bridge the gap between,

[00:24:12] uh, the, the sense you get from a gas vehicle to the, the lack of sense you get from an electric vehicle. Uh, one of the, one I'm thinking of in particular is the Hyundai Ioniq 5N, which not only pumps in noise to the passenger, but has shift points. It actually interrupts the power a couple of times. So you, and it has a fake tachometer. I thought I would hate that, but it was actually really nice. I really enjoyed it.

[00:24:41] I, I, when, when all the way up until recently, I thought putting noises in the car, car like noises was a silly idea and I've not heard it. I have seen when I was at CES in 2025, I think I saw the, uh, the charger there, but it, you know, nobody was starting it up. It was just like, you could just walk around it or whatever. But I just thought it was silly. Cause it felt like the CEO was just making a, um, an appalling.

[00:25:11] It was just like, this is a really cool electric car. I'm so sorry. It's an electric car. That's kind of how it felt to me. But I recently read that Rolls Royce is putting together an orchestra to make its car sounds when it drives out on the street. And I was like, okay, I mean, now we're getting really creative and we're, we're employing musicians and I don't know. I kind of want to hear what this thing's going to sound like.

[00:25:40] There are a lot of different levels to that. The, the, the, the driver of a charger wants the sensation of an engine of, of the power of traditional muscle cars. And that's fully acceptable. And this vehicle kind of bridges that gap. It, it's not exactly a Hemi engine, but it does feel good. Um, and muscle car buyers are going to hate it. That's just the way it is.

[00:26:05] Uh, the, the Hyundai version is more old school, uh, hot hatch type feeling to it. It was fun to drive. It was, it was a nice fake noise for me. And, and the shift points were really cool. But when you get to luxury cars, electric vehicles are naturally, uh, perfect for that buyer. I drew one of the first time I drove a Genesis G90 electrified.

[00:26:33] And I, I, I, before that I had had a bad taste in my mouth on electric vehicles because they, they lacked character. They were all fast. They were all smooth. They were all quiet. And I just, for me personally, I didn't understand it, but I got in this Genesis and I'm like, I understand the buyer of this car. This is a luxury car buyer who wants to be coddled, who wants to, to drive in silence. They don't want to hear the engine rev. They want to find every way to block out the outside world.

[00:27:02] So, you know, making the car a cocoon is enhanced by not having an engine noise to, to muffle. That made perfect sense. And the Rolls Royce that making its own sound is kind of like every appliance that you get. Every manufacturer has their, their trademark sound. If you buy, if you buy a, a, a washer or dryer, they have a particular noise that they have

[00:27:28] paid somebody to, to make for that brand of, of appliance. The same thing with your car. If it doesn't make any natural noise, give it a noise, make, give it, let people know that the Rolls Royce showed up because Beethoven's fifth symphony played or whatever you, as you, as you roll in, it makes sense at low speeds, but at high speeds. I want that car to be silent. If I'm driving a Rolls Royce, I want to hear nothing. If you're driving a Rolls Royce, you don't own the Rolls Royce.

[00:28:00] If you're driving, if you're driving the Rolls Royce, you're not rich enough. You need somebody to drive it for you. I mean, you might own it, but you're, it's not your everyday driver. It's somebody else's. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you're just driving them around. Well, that's cool. Um, is there any, do you see any trends when it comes to EVs kind of in the future that not enough people are talking about?

[00:28:25] Uh, I've been following electric vehicles a lot longer than, than I have professionally. And, uh, in addition to my professional job, I sit on the board of a museum that specializes in, uh, in, uh, among other things, electric vehicles. So we have over a hundred years of electric vehicles on display at the museum.

[00:28:49] And when you look at the history and the development, we are currently at the, we're just coming up past the infant stage of the modern electric vehicle. There is so much more that's going to be done. And I, I can't point you down a direction because there are so many directions we could potentially go down. Um, gas engines have been in vehicles for, they, they've been the mainstay of, of vehicles for over a century.

[00:29:18] While we've had electric vehicles for actually longer than we've had gas powered vehicles, we haven't had modern ones since the nineties. Uh, when they decided to shift from DC to AC motors, the world opened up, the cars were faster, they were much more efficient. And now we're only 30 years in since the GM EV one. This is the beginning of the curve.

[00:29:43] We have so much more to go and we're going to see wild steps forward in battery technology and motor technology in everything, uh, removing a rare earths, uh, finding ways to get away from, uh, dangerous chemicals in the batteries, uh, getting to solid state batteries. All these things are coming in the next 10, 15 years. And it's going to be a great step forward for, for EVs.

[00:30:10] And it's going to make it much more, uh, appealing to people who said, you know, you're, you're not going to get me into an EV before you pry them out of my cold dead hands. You know, that kind of thing. It's. Do you, do you have, uh, well, first we should probably promote the museum because if anybody's in that area and they want to go see it, I, for sure, anybody listening to this show would be interested in that kind of thing. Absolutely. Which museum is that? It's the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles.

[00:30:40] It's in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. It's about an hour outside of, of, uh, Philadelphia. And, uh, it's, it, it, it specializes in Pennsylvania built vehicles, but we have a second specialty of, uh, alternative fueled vehicles. So we have a hydrogen vehicle, we have a number of electric vehicles. We have a electric truck that was delivering rolls of paper from the train station to the

[00:31:05] printing press in Philadelphia from 1912 when this truck was built till 1962. Wow. Uh, granted the truck did 10 miles an hour, but it still was serving, uh, paper deliveries for half a century. Uh, and we have that on display and it's a beautiful big truck. Um, but the museum itself was a truck factory. They built truck bodies and before that they built carriages.

[00:31:33] The, the, the museum itself, the building, uh, started as a carriage factory in the 1870s and has been building truck bodies since from the like 1920s into the 1990s. The museum opened 60 years ago and it's been on display to show Pennsylvania built vehicles and alternative fueled vehicles because the, uh, in the sixties, the, the factory built electric

[00:31:59] vans from the late sixties to the early eighties. And we have a couple of those on display where they were engineered in-house and built, uh, for, uh, government use for, uh, uh, utilities. Uh, we even, the museum, the company even built, uh, electric Volkswagen rabbits. There were a line of 300 Volkswagen rabbits they built. They shipped bodies from Western Pennsylvania to the, uh, to Boyertown, took out all the

[00:32:28] drivetrain and put in this electrical drivetrain in them and sold those, uh, to, uh, utilities for a couple of years. So it's got a lot of history. The museum has a lot of history. And then inside the museum, we display a lot of history. We're about to open our second gallery, which will double our space. So before the end of the year, we'll have twice as much display space. And it's, it's just a spectacular museum to see. And the people that I have brought in to see it, their jaws hit the ground. Like this has been here all the whole time. Like, yeah, come in and see it.

[00:32:57] It's, it's fantastic. There are so many cool different museum. My daughter does work with museums and social media and stuff like that with, through her business. And she's caught like, there's a tank museum in, I think, Tucson that is just amazing. And there's just, she's always telling me about when she goes to these, uh, whatever conferences museum folks go to all these cool things. And it's just like stuff that you never even would have thought of could be a museum.

[00:33:24] And they end up having all of this cool old stuff or cool futuristic stuff that we're just not seeing. There's words that there, we need to get more word out, I guess. Absolutely. I've been an automotive historian for decades. And through that, I have been privy to a lot of collections and a lot of museums. And you see some of these museums from the Peterson museum to the Henry Ford museum to,

[00:33:48] to the Boyertown museum, which is, uh, a fantastic collection on its own. Um, they, these people have put them together with such love for the automobile, for the history of, in cases of, uh, Boyertown and Henry Ford, the history of the United States, um, placing them in historical perspective. So you can see what, what this is, uh, like the Henry Ford museum, Boyertown.

[00:34:17] And has, uh, parts of the displays that are outside of direct vehicles. So they're vehicle related. We have a diner. We have an actual dining car fully restored inside the museum. We have a travel cabin inside the museum that we fully restored. We have a gas station out front. That's an actual gas station that we use to restore cars right now. So it's, there's a lot more than just the vehicles themselves.

[00:34:43] It's, it's the life around the car that we have, uh, because we're in Pennsylvania and we do Pennsylvania history. We have a Pennsylvania turnpike display. And in the coming months, as soon as we get the time and the money together, we're going to assemble, uh, toll booths. We actually have Pennsylvania toll booths that we're going to assemble. Uh, one of them was one of the last ones we just got from them dismantling it on the turnpike to one of the early ones that we got from the Smithsonian. So we're going to have all this stuff on display.

[00:35:13] It's, it's, it's a spectacular place to go just to, to see American history. That is nutty. And you know, there's like the, of course there's tons of stuff through route 66 and all that stuff. And especially here in Arizona, you know, uh, if you go up near flag or Sedona or you're going to hit a bunch of different little, um, places to stop and visit. But, you know, obviously there are lots of other places. If, if anybody who, even if you live in the United States, if you haven't been to different

[00:35:43] parts of the United States, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, that, that area in, or in Iowa and stuff like that, it is a completely different country than what's here in Arizona and California. Like, and the same thing with the East coast, the East coast is completely different than the West coast. It is just such a, um, wide variety of just different stuff. One of the things that struck me when I was in Ohio a couple of years ago was like how many

[00:36:10] cool old factories were just sitting there and just, I mean, they looked amazing. Just these big old type four heavy timber buildings that nobody's building anymore just simply because it doesn't make sense financially, but they're beautiful. Yeah. When I was active in the society of automotive historians, we used to take tours of automotive things around the country. So I was given a nice tour of St. Louis or, uh, Massachusetts that cause prior to world

[00:36:39] war two, the auto industry was not entirely focused in Detroit. There were car companies all over the country. There were 5,000 automotive brands in the United States alone, uh, from 19 from 1890 to the world to world war two. So when you go around the country, you'll find all those factories, you'll find these things still standing. We had a tour of Ohio and we were going to see, uh, a Packard factory in Ohio. Nice.

[00:37:09] And the day we showed up, they were dismantling it. And our tour guide said, it was here. Honest to God, it was here the other day. And we were literally watching them pulling lumber out of this, this building from a hundred year old factory. It was, it's, there's so much around the country that you just don't know until you get that local expert to tell you they built Fords in that fact. And Ford plants are everywhere.

[00:37:34] There I'm in Eastern Pennsylvania and I'm about half an hour away from a former Ford plant. The, uh, when we were in Ohio, we were staying in an Airbnb and the people who own the Airbnb, the, uh, the guy's business, his actual business, not his Airbnb stuff, but his actual business was going in to these older houses and factories and pulling that, reclaiming that, that wood and then selling it. Yeah. And a tidy profit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:03] The, the Packard factory we sold this manly, they had the, the lumber, the timber that they used for, uh, supporting each floor. And they were, as I recall being three foot by three foot pieces of wood, beams of wood. And it just amazingly large pieces of wood that, that factories just don't use anymore. They use steel now, but when you saw this piece, it was, it took you back to another era.

[00:38:33] Well, Sam, I've kept you for right around 40 minutes now. So I don't, I know you probably got other things going on your day. If you, if you had one cool automotive history fact that you wanted to share, and it doesn't have to be about EVs. I very much enjoying our conversation and I can honestly talk to you easily for another 20 or 30 minutes, but I want to be respectful of your time. But if you had one cool little automotive tidbit throughout history that you'd like to share, what would that be? I've been, I've been doing this for a long time.

[00:39:02] And, uh, as a, an amateur historian, as a professional historian, all the, these different parts, I've heard all kinds of stories and they're all little, there's so many that I couldn't elaborate on all of them here. I had a friend one time who wrote a book he called car lore. It was all stories about cars that had been passed down from generation to generation. Most of them were fictitious, but they were always the, the story of, uh, Rolls Royce hoods being sealed shut because they were never to be fixed.

[00:39:31] Uh, things like that, that had come along, uh, always made a good story. But my, my favorite one of that was, uh, a gentleman granted, this is a story, so I can't validate the facts here, but the story was a Rolls Royce owner had purchased, had, had his car break down and he sent for service and Rolls Royce sent a guy out, flew him out, fixed the car and sent him on his way.

[00:40:00] And the owner of the Rolls Royce waited for the bill and time had passed and no bill. So he called up Rolls Royce and said, uh, but you can fix my car. I'm waiting for the bill. It goes, sir, Rolls Royces do not break. And they hung up on him. Apparently they just didn't charge him because Rolls Royces just don't break. But again, I can't, can't say that this actually happened, but it was one of the best stories I had ever heard. That is a great story. Can I tell you a story that involves me?

[00:40:31] Yeah. Can I turn this back onto me? Um, when I was a brand new firefighter, we had this helmet, it was called a Cairns helmet. It's thermal imaging helmet and it was a regular fire helmet. And then it had this big screen that came down and it fit over your, your thing. It costs, I believe it costs $25,000 in like 1999. So whatever that is in today's numbers, it was a lot of money. The community actually bought it for the fire department. A women's organization got together and they fundraised and they bought it for the fire

[00:41:00] department, which is super cool. It also had this giant battery pack because you couldn't fit everything in the helmet. So it had this giant battery pack that you had to sling around. And, um, when it was, there was two different trucks in the station I was at. And when one truck would get dispatched, whoever got dispatched to a fire would grab that or, or whatever called would grab that and take it with them. And it got tied up on something that was on the hook.

[00:41:28] And I yanked the cord out and it was, it ended up being a $5,000 fix. But Cairns, the company said, we've, we've actually never seen anybody do this before. So we're going to go ahead and fix it for free. And then they engineered some safeties in there. So it couldn't happen again. But yes, uh, as a brand new probationary firefighter, and when you're on probation, you can be fired for any reason. And breaking a $25,000 helmet that costs $5,000 to repair.

[00:41:57] I was sweating it for a little bit. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's good customer service right there. Absolutely. Yeah. You hear stories about that once in a while that, that somebody goes out of their way, but, uh, uh, in the automotive industry, it does, it doesn't happen as much as, as you would hope it would. Uh, it's a, it's a business and they're making hundreds of thousands of vehicles that they cannot come to every customer. Your piece of equipment was rare.

[00:42:25] It was, there were only a handful of people who had them. So catering to that customer is easy. But when you build, you know, 10,000, a hundred thousand vehicles every year, every month, uh, it's very hard to keep track of every customer and make them all happy. True story. True story. Well, Sam, how would people find you if they want to catch up with everything that you're doing at auto forecast solutions and just general your, the museum stuff, whatever, whatever you're up to.

[00:42:55] AF auto forecast solutions is on all the social media, but we do most of our, our stuff B2B. So we're on LinkedIn a lot, uh, come across the LinkedIn and we do videos. We have a YouTube channel as well. Uh, as far as the museum goes, museum has a very active YouTube channel. Uh, the website is boyertownmuseum.org. And we're always welcome to a walk-ins. The museum is relative to museums. It's $10 to come in $9 if you have triple A.

[00:43:25] So it's, it's a, it's a good, uh, use of your money because, uh, $10 will take you through that museum for two hours at least. Nice. Nice. Well, I'm going to make sure to put everything in the show notes as well. Sam, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Hey, anytime. This has been great. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the

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[00:44:53] All right. I want to thank Sam for coming on the show and being so generous with his time and being a great guest. You know, when we kind of first started, I had some things that I kind of wanted to talk about, but I was like, really, I just kind of want to have a conversation. And he was like, good, let's go. And we did. And I thought it was, it was fun. Uh, I really enjoyed listening back to it and, uh, hopefully you did as well.

[00:45:18] If you want to follow more of what Sam's doing, I will make sure to put his information in the show notes and I'll include his LinkedIn and, you know, auto forecast solutions and things like that. If you are interested in learning more and yeah, Sam, thanks much. Really appreciate it. All right, everybody. That is it for me this week. If you want to email me, you can do so. It's Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital.com.

[00:45:47] You can find me on LinkedIn just under Bodie Graham B O D I E G R I M M. And, um, yeah, I think that's it. Uh, getting this episode out on time. Like we got two episodes this week that were kind of, kind of out on time. This is the weekend edition. So don't expect anything Saturday or Sunday because I'm actually getting it out on time. All right, everybody. Uh, have a great weekend and I will talk to you soon.