We're on the floor of the 2019 LA Auto Show
next on Talking Cars.
[THEME MUSIC]
Hi.
Welcome back.
I'm Mike Quincy.
I'm Jake Fisher.
I'm Gabe Shenhar.
So we're on the floor of the LA Auto Shows
the last couple days, walking around,
taking in all this that's cool and new about what's
going on in the world of cars, going to press conferences.
And the theme that we keep coming back to
is, no surprise, electrification.
Yeah.
Plug-ins, full EVs.
The whole thing's going on.
And we've got a number of notable cars here.
Most specifically, I think, what's getting
the most buzz is the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
I think it certainly looks the part of a Mustang.
What were your guys' take on this?
I think it's the star of the show,
even from before the show started.
Yeah.
I think Ford is totally in the right direction.
Their greatest possession is the Mustang name.
And it is a sub-brand that's what we should capitalize on.
And making that an EV and an SUV at that is a great move--
right price, the right kind of shape, definitely.
And do you think there's anything wrong
with them using the Mustang label on a vehicle like this?
It's funny, because that's kind of the most controversial
thing.
Right.
Like, how can it be a Mustang?
A Mustang's supposed to be a coupe and a sports car and all
this stuff.
And you know what's cool about it
and what we're seeing a lot is that they're
breaking the rules.
The rules is what a Mustang is.
Look, we have a lot of cars that are
offering these kind of like SUV-ish, crossover-ish electric
vehicles.
So OK, that's a market.
And they could've made it, like, it could've been a Lincoln.
But they're like, as Gabe says, there
is this equity with the Mustang name
and let's go break some rules.
Let's go call it a Mustang.
Let's give it some of that flavor to it.
Doesn't have to be a luxury vehicle.
It's sporty.
And when you get down to electric vehicles,
electric vehicles are sporty.
They drive really nice.
They tend to handle it really well,
because they the battery's down low
and they have a low center of gravity.
They're quick.
It's the torque.
Exactly.
So I think it's a really neat way to go, yeah.
And everyone has a soft spot for a Mustang.
I can't even tell you how many people, like, friends,
that rotate leases between Audis and BMWs,
and look at a Mustang, and they say, well,
maybe this time I should get a Mustang.
They're not saying, I want a Lincoln?
No.
But then two-door only and all-wheel drive, and then
their wife puts some sense in them, and it's a non-starter.
So now with that, it's a whole new ballgame.
And thinking outside of the box, you
could say the same thing about Corvette.
How come a mid-engine?
And that's not a Corvette really.
Oh, oh, let's take it further.
And result is that it's just terrific.
Well, I think we need a Corvette hybrid or full electric pickup
truck, and I think that we need a Dodge Viper hybrid minivan.
You guys could use those--
We laugh, but it might be in the future pretty soon.
But why not tum them into brands?
Right.
Why not?
Right.
People are excited to buy these names.
So, eh, more power to them.
Onto the next one.
We can probably talk about the Mach-E for hours.
Anyway--
All right, let's get back to the Mustang.
Right.
OK.
Mercedes-Benz EQC?
Talking about maybe 250-mile range?
Does this have some substance to it?
Well, let's be careful.
250-mile range, as far as I know,
is according to the WLTP, which is the European standard.
Whoa.
Let's just be careful here, because the EPA doesn't
have an estimate for it yet.
So I won't be surprised if it ends up
being around 200 miles when it lands here.
But Mercedes is not sitting on their hands.
They're jumping into this, too.
I was kind of dismayed to read that this
is going to have the same Mercedes controls that we
have issues with.
It's too bad that they couldn't have changed that up, but--
Well, it's basically a GLC, which
is a compact luxury SUV, which is a really nice car.
But yeah, it gets the MBUX infotainment system.
And while it has a broad range of capabilities,
it's a little frustrating to use.
It has its issues.
It's another one-- again, not like--
I'm going back to the Mustang--
a little bit different, a little bit exciting.
Look, everyone's doing this.
We got the Audi with the e-tron, we got the Jaguar
with the I-PACE, a luxury crossover-ish thing,
fully electric, that they want to play to.
All right, which you brought up Audi.
The e-tron Sportback, kind of stylish--
Yeah.
--you know, nice-looking, but again, another big name car
company saying we're into this EV market.
And what's interesting to me is it seems to me--
indulge me for a second-- they all seem to be kind of bowing
to the temple of Tesla, because--
hold on-- because they've got the big screens,
the big touchscreens.
They're really fast.
They're talking about the over-the-air updates,
this whole thing that has really been ushered in by Tesla.
And--
Sure.
--they're all taking a page from their book,
whether they want to admit it or not.
No, it's true.
Look, Tesla innovated in a lot of different ways.
And now we're seeing the rest lot
of the industry kind of catching up to that
and trying to steal that excitement.
Whether or not they are or not, I'm not sure,
because I think Tesla still kind of has
a different aura about it--
Yes.
--than these companies that have been around for 100 years.
But that's almost why they're like the temple,
because they preside over almost everything,
it seems, these days in the automotive world.
It's no secret that Tesla has been a wake-up call
for the rest of the industry.
And Tesla completely threw out the rulebook
and reinvented a lot of things.
And when traditional automakers are seeing that and seeing
what kind of a coveted brand that Tesla has become
and what kind of a cult following it developed,
they are saying, hey, we're not going
to just sit idly by and see Tesla siphoning our customers.
We're more established.
We can do it even better.
But with that in mind, EV sales in the US
are probably less than 2%.
And one automaker specifically is saying,
I'm not sure if we're going to be drinking the Tesla Kool-Aid,
and that would be Toyota.
Yeah.
And Jake, you brought up a really good point--
I did?
--when we were talking about this.
Imagine that, yeah.
Every once in a while.
You actually do have to earn your paycheck.
But Toyota, their approach isn't all about EVs.
Right.
So Toyota is distinctly not kind of following everyone else
and kind of like, OK, let's do that, too.
They kind of go their own way.
And you go back in time, they've been doing the Hybrid Synergy
Drive or whatever-- that's been, like, over 20 years.
And they just keep on refining that.
And they're devoted to hybrids.
They're talking about just a few years, 25% of their products
are going to be hybrids.
And we test them.
And yes, they're reliable.
And yes, they're affordable.
And yes, they get incredible fuel economy.
Super fuel efficient.
Yeah.
Every generation is more efficient
than the previous one.
And they're not going down this road of battery electrics.
What they did show was the RAV4--
The RAV4 Prime.
--Prime, which kind of took me for a curveball,
because I thought it was like, oh, OK, we've
got the hybrid RAV4, and now we're
going to have a little plug-in and whatever,
just like the Prius Prime.
But no, this is a performance model.
Zero to 60 in up to 5.8 seconds, which
makes it the second fastest Toyota after the Supra.
According to Toyota.
That's exactly what they said.
Yeah.
So that's kind of really interesting.
So do the performance and do the environmental stuff
all together.
But they are not giving up on just no powertrain, no engines.
Right.
And there, we got the second generation
of the Toyota Mirai, which is--
A fuel cell car.
--fuel cell car, which is an electric car.
And actually, very attractive.
I thought it was really good-looking.
It looks a little bit more mainstream and less
a science project.
But they're devoted.
They think that's the long-term.
We're not there, because obviously you
need an infrastructure to get hydrogen to the vehicles.
But it does have a lot of promise.
It does make sense.
Just to give you a kind of perspective, when you're
talking about, what, was it 400 miles range and five minutes
to charge, if you will.
It takes five minutes to fill it with hydrogen.
Hydrogen.
So you can't do that with battery electrics.
Right.
I think that you've got to give Toyota credit for,
as you said, sticking with these things.
They didn't, for example, right out of the box,
have a formidable off-road pickup truck.
But they stuck with the Tacoma.
They kept making it reliable.
Actually, it's fallen on slightly hard times.
But they have this reputation for being a strong off-roader.
And the resale value of even used Tacomas
is really-- so Toyota just keeps with the first.
The first Prius that they put out
was just kind of a dumpy little car.
And they're just sticking with it.
Clearly, Toyota is a very careful and conservative kind
of company.
And it's tiptoeing its way into the electric world.
It's very established in hybrid.
And it's been on the record a few times
saying that, hey, we're not thinking that the battery
technology and the--
The speed.
--the length of charging is there yet.
And we're not seeing any--
Toyota's a company that--
nobody at Toyota gets up in the morning
if they are doing something that doesn't
bring an immediate benefit and makes money.
So they are--
Right.
But--
--very calculated and very measured.
--they think long-term.
I think that's it.
They definitely think long-term.
And they're thinking long-term, and they're
thinking customers, and what our customers going
to embrace as Toyota customers.
Right.
And you said, if battery technology does
take this big jump, they can just
start dropping those into a lot of their existing vehicles
anyway.
So in some ways, they're almost leveraging their situation,
because they're going to be ready for whether the battery
revolution comes or it doesn't come.
Right.
So anyway, EV sales, I think, are likely
going to grow in the future.
They're not there yet.
But certainly, the car companies are making steps
to make sure that they're ready--
They're getting more affordable.
They've been growing.
--when they start ramping up.
Yeah.
So the other theme that we were talking about was performance.
It's definitely not dead, but it really looks different
than it used to.
Yeah.
So look, here's the amazing thing.
In a time of fuel efficiency, cars
are getting more fuel efficient, and the environmental standards
are increasing, we've got powertrains and performance
like we never have.
Everybody's like, oh, think about the '60s and the muscle
cars.
They got nothing on today's vehicles.
We got so many vehicles--
600, 700, 800 horsepower.
It's unbelievable.
But now they're putting them into SUVs and crossovers
and everything.
And the sports cars of today are like--
Mercedes-AMGs and the Audi--
Yeah--
--SQ whatever.
--but not like the coupe, but like the AMG GLS, which is,
like, the big three-row SUV.
And it's amazing.
So BMW.
We saw Mercedes-Benz, the Ms. It's
phenomenal the amount of performance and power
that they're getting out of these vehicles.
Yeah, the people have worked hard.
They say, well, I've kind of earned a sports
car at this stage in my life.
What am I going to get?
A Porsche Macan, right?
One of you guys brought that up yesterday.
I was like, well, that's perfect.
Exactly.
That's what people are going for.
They need--
Well, who says sports car needs to be low to the ground,
that you have to crouch in there?
And who says it has to have only two doors?
Right.
Well, just over--
Break the mold.
--our shoulders is the Audi booth and all
those Audi RS series.
Almost all of them have four doors
and hatchbacks design and stuff like that.
Four-door coupe.
Exactly.
I was over at the Toyota--
there's a TRD version of the Toyota Avalon.
How crazy is that?
Who would have thunk?
I know, right?
A driving excitement.
Yeah.
But no, there's still some buzz over the new Supra,
the new Corvette.
So it's not 100% dead.
But I just thought it was so interesting that what--
the three of us grew up, what a sports car was,
and how completely different it is now.
Yep.
So that kind of brings us to our next segment, which
is kind of other show notables.
We don't want to do short shrift to other vehicles.
And some of them that we've covered on ConsumerReports.org,
including the Nissan Sentra, the Land Rover Defender.
What other vehicles kind of jumped out at you guys?
I was stuck on the Defender for a second.
That's kind of an interesting vehicle, right?
Yeah, I love the way it looks.
Nothing has more swagger than that Land Rover Defender.
There are a few questionable details about it
that Jake is going to tell us about, right?
You could read my mind.
You're clairvoyant.
I have no idea.
Because we never talk before the show,
so it's amazing how you do that.
Well, first of all, yeah, it's really interesting.
And first of all, you got to get past the fact
that Land Rover has 30,000 SUVs that are all these luxury SUVs.
They're all on top of each other--
They're all on top-- and a lot of them--
--in the price ladder.
--share platforms, and they all overlap.
So you get past that for a little bit,
I think that the interesting thing
to remember about the Defender is
it's kind of like the Wrangler.
This is kind of like bare-bones, back to the basics.
And they have the Defender 90 and the 110.
So the 90 is this short wheelbase, like,
really stubby--
A two-door.
--two-door.
Yeah.
That blew me away.
And you look at the approach angles--
Well, the 90's always been a two-door.
But I mean, when was the last time--
It's the the wheelbase in inches.
--a two-door anything was introduced?
Wrangler.
Yeah, but the Defender--
Yeah.
--hasn't been around for, like, 20 years or something.
So you got these short approach angles.
And it's kind of interesting-looking.
Something I just can't get over is this weird square of plastic
that they smacked over the back of this car,
just to make sure you can't see out of the car,
just to make sure you got that--
because you don't want to have, like, 3/4 view,
so you could change lanes or anything like that.
And it's really hard to see out of it.
But you look at that vehicle.
So there's the two-door and there's the four-door, the 110,
and there's some interesting things about it.
One is you could get three across seating--
Three across.
--in the front.
So you could do, like, a six-seater.
You could also get one with a third row, which I actually--
Seven-passenger.
Yeah, which I actually got back there, which I think
I almost needed the jaws of life to get back out of.
Did you say jump seats?
Jump seats, right?
Well, no, no.
Well--
Did it have the jump seats?
It used to be these jump seats that--
Yeah.
--went on the side.
Right.
But it's like a normal flip out third row that's normal,
but it's really, really tiny.
That was the worst part.
You have to be a gymnast just to get in there.
But you can't see out.
So you get back there, and there's really no glass for you
to see out.
So I would get nauseous back there, other than, you know--
But you have heated seats there.
You can get heated seats.
Well, but I totally agree, the styling looks great.
It's square.
It's different.
It's blocky.
There's, like, aerodynamics.
[IMITATING EXPLOSION]
So the Nissan Sentra.
This is not a totally exciting car.
But Nissan's not giving up on regular passenger cars,
are they?
Yeah, and it's lower and wider, and looks much less dowdy
than the previous generation.
And interestingly, they have a rear independent rear
suspension in that car in an era where the Mazda 3,
which was the sporty of the bunch there.
It's an entry-level car.
Yeah.
And now Nissan Sentra has that.
They're taking it seriously.
And we just were in it just a few minutes ago.
And you get in the interior, I mean,
obviously, it's the high trim version or whatever,
but it's like, they have some pretty nice interiors
in this Sentra, with all these pleated fabrics and stuff
like that.
I'm like, wow, OK.
Yeah, and they have a whole bunch
of safety features as standard, including blindspot warning.
So Toyota, take notes.
You think the Corolla is pretty comprehensive about that?
They have blindspot warning.
Well, standard.
Standard.
Right.
So you can get it.
Right.
And we remember when the Sentra SE-R was actually
a cool, affordable, fun to drive car.
I'm wondering, with this more expensive suspension
system they're putting in it, maybe
one of those in the future?
Any guesses?
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe--
We'll have to drive it.
--an affordable car that's actually fun to drive.
So any other notables?
Yeah, there's another theme here in this show,
and it's all the tiny SUVs that keep cropping up
like mushrooms here.
It's the Mazda CX-30, the Kia Seltos, the Buick Encore GX,
the Chevy--
Trailblazer.
--Trailblazer.
Exactly.
So these are all kind of slicing the SUV
spectrum in all kinds of ways.
And so it's like between the subcompact
SUVs and the compact SUVs, somewhere in between.
And that's a pretty sweet spot of the market.
They're all going to be in the mid 20s, low to mid 20s.
It is, but there are just so many of them.
I shot the video for the Trailblazer this morning.
And we did a comparison.
It's between the Chevrolet Trax and the Chevrolet Equinox.
And the cameraman, we were walking around,
it was like, which is which?
There's the Traverse.
No, that's not it.
And again, you almost have to go to the backside of the vehicle
to see the label to make sure that you're
talking about the right one.
It's almost difficult for us.
We score all these vehicles and we have all these ratings.
We sit there, and put our heads together,
and it's usually just all SUVs and mid-sized SUVs.
Subcompact--
There's, like, small--
--SUVs.
--and a half, and a little bit compact,
and compact and a half.
Compact-plus.
It's a whole continuum now.
It is.
Yeah.
It is.
We always have to really rethink the way we even rate these,
because there's so many slices of that.
Yeah.
So we've covered this SUV saturation.
They're just everywhere.
But stepping outside of the SUVs,
literally, what was the favorite vehicle
that you saw at the show?
So look, there's a lot of stuff here.
But I think I really appreciate innovation, something
different.
There's lots of SUVs and high-performance SUVs,
and there's sports cars that are fast and all that.
For me, it's the Mustang Mach-E. It is breaking the rules.
It's doing something different.
It's a sports car, SUV, electric.
It's kind of a different take on stuff.
And I'm actually really looking forward
to getting my hands on one, and driving it, and purchasing one.
I guess we're going to have to get on the waiting list right
now.
Yep.
Gabe?
I'm really pumped about the Mach-E as well.
But I'm a little cooled off by the interior of it.
It's a little drab there.
But if I were Ford, I'd use the 10 months
that they have until it goes to market to spruce up
the interior maybe.
And I also--
I'm really excited about the Land Rover Defender.
That car has such an attitude that it's hard to ignore it.
And I can't wait to put our hands on that one, too.
Well, I mentioned before--
thanks for asking.
I mentioned before--
How about you, Mr. Quincy?
What do you think?
What do you like?
I mentioned before, I like the Mirai.
I like the styling.
But then I looked at it, and I said, this kind
of looks like an Avalon.
So I'm backing back from that.
And I do appreciate--
You're waiting for the TRD Mirai.
Right.
Exactly. that's what you're waiting for, right?
I do appreciate that they are--
Sport.
--going into the fuel cell and that whole technology push.
Yeah.
But I got to tell you, I was blown away
by the Audi RS6 Avant.
I was like, I want something new.
I want something innovative.
You want to go back.
I want something old, like a really, really cool hot wagon.
Yeah, yeah.
Everybody loves wagons these days, right?
I sat in there, and I felt the Alcantara steering wheel,
and like, oh, this is--
Did it have rich Corinthian leather or something?
Oh, it was so cool.
OK.
All right.
I really, really liked it.
All right.
Well, listen, that's about all the time we have.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
We'll see you next time.
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