Richie & John | Substantial Saturday | Impact of Trump Legislation on U.S. Electric Vehicle Market

Richie Roy (: 00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Richie and John. It is a substantial Saturday. It is the day after the 4th of July. So hopefully everyone still has all their fingers ⁓ and your dog has emerged from under the bed and you are with us on a Saturday. So we are here of course with

John McMullen (: 00:13

you

Richie Roy (: 00:25

John McMullen, my wonderful co-host, and the wonderful Todd Bianco, our regular automotive expert. Todd, hello.

Todd Bianco (: 00:35

Hello, it's nice to be here.

John McMullen (: 00:36

You know what? I have to tell you that I was looking through our our backlog or our catalog actually of shows and Todd was here exactly one year ago this week with us. Yes. So we were we were talking about cars and EVs exactly one year ago.

Richie Roy (: 00:36

And Todd, I believe that you're-

No way!

Todd Bianco (: 00:53

time.

Richie Roy (: 00:56

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 01:00

Nothing's changed in a year, has it?

Richie Roy (: 01:02

Nothing at all. No way.

John McMullen (: 01:02

No, not at all. Well, the

big ugly bill passed this week, and I'm sure that that has some impact on vehicles, whether it be from the issue with are getting ready to deal with the, you know, the fees, the.

Todd Bianco (: 01:18

tariffs.

John McMullen (: 01:19

the tariffs or dealing with various issues where the president doesn't want to look at green energy related vehicles in the same positive light as those of us who are on earth one. So there's probably a lot to talk about in there.

Todd Bianco (: 01:36

He doesn't want to look at green energy at all apparently. mean like the solar subsidies are bye-bye as well.

Richie Roy (: 01:36

There is.

Hmm.

Yeah, mean, it's, it's, you know, it is drill baby drill, you know, let's more like let's let's, you know, make people mandatorily go get coal out of the ground. You know, it's, you know, he it's like he he's living in this kind of like early 20th century robber baron movie of his own, you know, in his mind, you know, where it's just not reflective of

modern reality because people generally I think are people like I know in states for instance where the states where they have hydroelectric power they love alternative sources of energy because their energy is cheap as hell

Todd Bianco (: 02:21

So do even red states like Texas. They have a lot of solar and a lot of wind energy. I a lot. I don't know what he's thinking, but yeah, I think that that's something that you should let the market sort out as well. But frankly, it's much cheaper to have solar and wind these days than it is to have coal or build even a new gas.

Richie Roy (: 02:30

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 02:50

you know, natural gas-fired plant. It's just cheaper. Plus, with battery backups being sold all over the world, which it's not just Tesla. There are other companies that sell these gigantic battery installations that are backup for when something happens or there's a peak energy that instead of firing up an entire power plant, you have a battery backup that works instead.

And that works very well. Australia has been doing it for years now. They like it so much they keep putting more in there. And this is Australia. This is far, far, far away from the United States. It's not the political issue there. But it's saved them so much money from having the peak power being mitigated by having the...

these gigantic battery installation backups, which are part of this whole ecosystem with not just electric cars, but with solar panels and with everything else that's renewable. It makes sense to have that. But.

I don't know what we're going to be doing here in the United States. have no idea. Part of it is tied into the mandate for – not mandate, but the credit for buying an electric car goes away on September 30th now because the bill was signed and that means I'm sure that this is going to juice.

temporarily, the sale of EVs, the ones that qualify for the $7,500 credit for the next three months, you know, up until September 30th. After that, I don't know what's going on. I'm sure they're going to say that, you know, it's falling off the cliff. It's just a matter of what the incentives are. If the incentives go away, I'm sure that sales will go down. But the trend is up.

th of: 2025

Richie Roy (: 04:48

And to be clear, none of it really is, it's actually not rational. It's actually sort of anti-business in a way, because there is a move towards EBs and having this credit makes people want to buy things, which is an incentive, which makes people buy stuff, in the same way that the Trump administration got rid of the Energy Star certification on appliances.

and manufacturers begged them to keep it. ⁓ know, environmentalists begged them. It was a huge moneymaker for everyone involved. It led people towards better choices. It was good for consumers because it got their energy costs down. It had manufacturers leading people to sometimes maybe more expensive products that people chose to buy because it was certified. It was a win-win-win.

Todd Bianco (: 05:16

they want it.

Richie Roy (: 05:37

But because it had a whiff of green about it, the Trump administration got rid of it even though no one wanted it gone.

Todd Bianco (: 05:46

That's right. it's people, I mean, you know, just going through consumer reports or any of these other consumer related magazines or whatever, they all say that people want energy efficient appliances.

And the only way you can tell if they're energy efficient or not is to see if they go through the certification process because it's the certification process for everything. Whether it's a juiced up process or not, least they all have to go through the same process and they know what the certification says about them. I mean, if I buy a new refrigerator today, I would like it to be energy efficient, right? If I buy a new air conditioning system,

I would like it to be more energy efficient because these things cost me real money. I would think it's a win-win for everybody. And by the way, it also makes the appliance makers compete to make their products more energy efficient so that they can, you know, gives them bragging rights when they advertise. And they wouldn't be bragging about it if it wasn't something that they knew consumers were looking for.

Richie Roy (: 06:29

Mm-hmm.

John McMullen (: 06:52

You know what I want to be green? I want Donald Trump to have gangrene.

Richie Roy (: 06:57

Well, you know and and to go to the mandate thing or to you know, energy star, know another example of the sort of carrot and stick In terms of energy efficiency is light bulbs because you know, they are there's this certain very grouchy You know Trump and kind of right-wing thing for years has been they took away our incandescent light bulbs let's bring back the old light bulb, you know Edison blah blah blah and

For years, not for years, but for a time I understood a little bit about that sentiment because the options were at that time mainly compact fluorescent light bulbs, which were not nice to look at. But because of, because they phased out those bulbs, they, there was the move to LED, which now LED has beautiful light rendition ⁓ and is a fraction of the energy cost. The bulbs last longer. So

Todd Bianco (: 07:35

No, they weren't.

to us.

Richie Roy (: 07:52

You know, it was, I think, were it not for the kind of carrot and stick of phasing out incandescent high wattage bulbs, we wouldn't have probably ended up with LED bulbs because there wouldn't have been a market for them. But now, you know, it sort of goes to show that when you use all of those different techniques, you can lead towards better products that are cheaper and better for the environment that people prefer. So...

Todd Bianco (: 08:16

Right,

all the light bulbs that I've bought recently at Home Depot or at Lowe's, they all are now adjustable for the hue. In other words, bright white or not as bright. But it's actually on the light bulb now as opposed to even selecting. They don't even need you to bother to buy one or the other. You can buy one type and you just twist it or move a little.

Richie Roy (: 08:25

color temperature and mm-hmm.

Hmm?

Todd Bianco (: 08:45

switch and it automatically changes the hue of the light bulb. And also it used to be that you couldn't get an LED, you couldn't get anything to replace one of the, you like a flickering flame or, you know, a specialty type of light bulb. That's changed as well, but that came about because of these regulations. So, you know, thank you regulations for that. And I go back to this, you know, that they're trying to take away California's mandate for

you know, regulating emissions. I'm old enough to remember California when it was really, really, really bad. We had smog alert days. They would have on the weather forecast part of it was how bad the smog was going to be, you know, the next day or whatever. On the playground when I was a kid, we actually had to come inside because the air was so unhealthy.

that you felt it in your lungs, it was terrible. So California took it upon itself to do these regulations because of the size of the state, because of what it had. Now, thank you, the rest of the country can thank us for making the air clean everywhere, because without us doing these kinds of mandates that we've had for over 40 years here in California, the air wouldn't be clear.

in lots and lots and lots of other cities who now are just used to having fairly clean air. And it's because of the, you know, green mandates that California put on these cars, and now they wanna take that away too. But that's not gonna stop people from buying electric cars. It's not gonna stop people from wanting cleaner cars. I don't know what's going to happen with that, but I know it's gonna be in litigation, but...

who knows what it is, but these are the kind of things that have made a huge difference even in a place like Oklahoma or Missouri or Detroit. We've made the cars more efficient, better in the long run. Sure, there was the malaise era of the 70s and some terrible stuff that came out of Detroit in the 80s, but out of that, we got some terrific Japanese products and in order for everybody to compete, they all had to get better.

That's what competition does, but if you have to have a set of rules that everybody plays by, and once you have that, people can then play to that rule. In other words, they can come up, they can lift their game to be, now most cars today are fairly clean, and they're efficient, and they get pretty decent fuel economy.

And there's lots of new electric cars that are coming out all the time, which we wouldn't have had. Now, we don't have Chinese electric cars here, but there are Chinese electric cars in Mexico, there's Chinese electric cars in Canada, and there's Chinese electric cars in Europe and in all sorts of other places. China has learned. They're very smart there, and they play the long game.

Richie Roy (: 11:42

Hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 11:51

Basically China failed at the internal combustion era, but that's over in their minds. If you go to China, that's over. They don't care about internal combustion cars anymore. They're focused on EVs and they have a lot of domestic brands that are extremely good, very efficient, very sophisticated software-defined cars that we don't have here yet because of our tariffs. But

They are setting the bar that everybody in the rest of the world has to compete with.

John McMullen (: 12:26

So

let me ask this question. In light of the big ugly bill that was passed this past week, what is the long-term ramifications of what we lose as a result of that with regards to EVs?

Todd Bianco (: 12:40

I think that the long-term ramifications are that we're going to have a, there's going to be a reduction in demand, obviously, for the next few years. I still think it's going to ramp up. don't think that Californians and other states are going to just throw away their EVs and go back to a big pickup truck with a V8. I think once you've driven electric, it's very hard to go back to internal combustion. All three of us have electric cars.

I have a Tesla, John, you have a Nissan, and Richard, you have a Rivian. Would you go back now? I mean, once you've driven these cars that are powerful, quiet, softer defined, efficient, and once you've understood how you can charge the cars at home and all those kinds of things, it's very difficult to then say, nah, I'm going to go back. I'm going to go back.

John McMullen (: 13:17

on your life.

I've got to tell you, I have to tell you, was

Richie Roy (: 13:34

Mm-hmm.

John McMullen (: 13:35

driving down to Palm Desert the other day from Palm Springs and I had a Karen in a big old Ford F-150 and she was going to get the jump on me from the line when that light turned green. And I let her...

Todd Bianco (: 13:46

diesel.

⁓ huh.

John McMullen (: 13:57

I let her take off and about three seconds later I was in front of her by about four car lengths. And I was just like, eat it bitch.

Todd Bianco (: 14:07

Yeah, exactly. I just think that it will be slower without the incentives there and without other sorts of building out the infrastructure. I don't think Tesla's gonna stop building out infrastructure, but if they kill all the stuff that they had in the previous bills from the Biden administration about building out charging infrastructure, it's going to slow people's adoption. But I don't think Tesla's gonna

rger network. But starting in: 2025

Richie Roy (: 14:53

Yeah, have the adapter ⁓ and they are very good chargers. They tend to be properly located. They are usually near a service station or a little restaurant or a bathroom. So they're in good places. They're plentiful. Their uptime is great. They're not broken. ⁓ And so...

Todd Bianco (: 14:56

Yeah.

Right.

Richie Roy (: 15:18

Yeah, it is a great charging infrastructure compared to some of the other alternatives.

Todd Bianco (: 15:24

Have you started to use it yet, John, or is it?

John McMullen (: 15:26

No, I refuse to spend the money to buy the adapter and I refuse to spend any money with anybody who might own X.

Todd Bianco (: 15:35

Yeah, it's sort of become a cessful. But that's going to slow overall adoption, I think.

John McMullen (: 15:43

But I will

say that my house closes next weekend. And the minute that that's done, I am putting solar on the roof and going to replace the infrastructure at my home. So I will be able to generate my own, at least when I'm at home. And I don't travel that big of a distance anywhere, anyway, unless I'm going on a long road trip, in which case I would use

a network of chargers. But right now I have lived fully within my means being on just a trickle charge with 120 at home. So it's it and it has not made a noticeable difference in my energy bill. So I'm on a level pay anyway, because we want to, of course, not pay a shit ton during the summer for electricity, for air conditioning and so on. So

Todd Bianco (: 16:22

That's slow.

John McMullen (: 16:40

We balance it out over the course of the whole year and it's just really been negligible. I can tell you this, I love the fact that I have not had to deal with a gas station in.

eight, nine months and no oil changes. And it just it's such a convenience to do things this way. And it does not make me break down and cry ever.

Todd Bianco (: 16:54

No oil changes.

I think once people have made the switch, it's very hard to go back. I still think there's going to be, for a long time, there's going to be sales of internal combustion engine cars. I think that there's plenty of areas of the country that they need or want their huge pickup trucks. Most of them, most of them don't really need them. mean, Texas, I'm looking at you. You know, that...

Generally, you don't have to have those but there's a lot of people that just have them because that's the image. Is that the right word? Image they want to portray that they're in a big pickup truck and this is what they want but wow, is it expensive to fill them up? mean, even I mean I know that no, well,

Richie Roy (: 17:38

Thank

John McMullen (: 17:49

and that's not gonna get cheaper. It's not doing

anything to reduce the cost of taking and maintaining and operating those combustion engine vehicles.

Todd Bianco (: 17:55

Right.

, you know, Ram just said for: 2026

Richie Roy (: 18:27

Yeah.

Todd Bianco (: 18:27

you know, for these, you know, these very fancy.

John McMullen (: 18:29

I'm gonna spend

that kind of money. I'm gonna buy the vehicle that Richie bought.

Todd Bianco (: 18:33

Yeah, well you know...

Richie Roy (: 18:34

Yeah, yeah, I it. Yeah.

John McMullen (: 18:34

No, am. I'm not

being funny about that. I would buy a much more, should I say, luxurious version of what I've got.

Todd Bianco (: 18:43

Well, it's a software-defined car. The difference is these are software-defined cars now. And software-defined means it's how well are the software systems that run the car, because that's what these things are now. And I think that when Rivian comes out with the R2, I still have one on order, but I don't know whenever that's going to be, but the R2 is the smaller version of what Richie has. Richie has the R1S.

Richie Roy (: 19:04

Hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 19:08

and which is the SUV version right. The R1T is the pickup truck version of the Rivian. ⁓

John McMullen (: 19:16

Well, I saw a Rivian

just yesterday on the road that was this color of blue that I love and I want that vehicle, but you know, I'm gonna have to wait a while. I'm gonna have to save up my pennies.

Todd Bianco (: 19:26

Well, know, the R2

will be in the $50,000 range. That's my guess. They originally said 45. My guess is in the $50,000 range. But these days, a Toyota Highlander is $50,000 if you've priced it. mean, a Toyota Highlander is a very good car. I have nothing against it. It's been proven to be a good car. It's very popular.

Richie Roy (: 19:43

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 19:54

Same thing with the Toyota Tacoma. These are very popular pickup trucks, whatever. Nothing against it, but they're not cheap either. mean, a Toyota 4Runner is $50,000 or more now. So all of these trucks that used to be affordable are now all over $50,000. I mean, the average transaction price is around $48,000, $49,000 now in the United States. That's the average transaction price.

And when some of these tariffs hit...

it's going to go up. I just got a raise in my insurance rates. My insurance was renewed on July 1st. So I whacked with an insurance rate increase at that time. But of course, part of that is because the parts, parts are now subject to a 25 % tariff. And many of those parts are coming from, pick a country, doesn't really matter whether it's coming from Taiwan or Japan or China or Germany or...

or England, wherever it's coming from, 25 % extra is going to mean that if you have an accident or whatever, that some of those parts that they're going to use, there's gonna be a 25 % increase in cost of that. Not every part necessarily, but some of the parts that almost anybody uses in their car. And it doesn't matter whether it's a Tesla that's mostly made in the United States or whether it's a Nissan, which...

Much of that, like your ARIA is probably made in Japan. Whatever that is, some of those parts are coming from somewhere else, not from the United States. And so all the insurance rates are gonna, when you start having it go up, people are gonna notice that the insurance rates are going up too. So that's not, you know, this is a reality of what's happening with these crazy tariffs that have no bearing of reality to anything. These parts,

These things are not going to be made some, you they're not going to start making them here in the United States. It's not going to happen. I just got done reading a book about Apple and China. my God, it is not coming back here. mean, the assembly of the iPhone, it's not happening. mean, basically, China and Apple are very intertwined and they really can't

Richie Roy (: 22:06

Hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 22:14

They really aren't gonna separate themselves from this. There is this gigantic ecosystem of suppliers all around all of these iPhone factories, which Apple owns nothing. Apple just sends their engineers out to train people, but there's like a thousand different little suppliers that are all coming together to make that iPhone happen. It's not coming back. Similarly, there's many parts of the...

of components of a car, they're not gonna just suddenly snap their fingers and make factories appear here in the United States. I mean, he's getting rid of the CHIPS Act, or trying to kill that. Let's talk about that, because CHIPS are very, very, important to any modern car. It doesn't matter whether it's an EV or whether it's an ICE car. There's CHIPS that run

every little part of your car these days. And many of those chips are coming from not just China, not just some in the United States, but TSMC, which is the big chip maker in, it's the biggest in the world. They're in Taiwan. They were going to open a, what's it called, a fab. They were going to open a fab in Arizona, but now that's in question because of their taking away these, you know, these incentives. But

Richie Roy (: 23:24

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 23:36

We wanted TSMC to come to the United States. We wanted them to open up business here because where they are in Taiwan, if China takes action against Taiwan, the guy who owns TSMC is going to essentially blow up the factory.

He won't let China take it.

I mean we're talking about multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollars of fabrication that goes on at these places, but he doesn't want China to get a hold of it, but why wouldn't we want them to open in the United States?

John McMullen (: 24:05

Can I ask something?

How can one human being have so much destruction of everything that matters on earth? Our environment, our economy, our supply chain. I mean, how is this person still alive?

Todd Bianco (: 24:32

He's been enabled.

Richie Roy (: 24:34

Yeah, that's the thing.

Todd Bianco (: 24:35

I

don't think we have much to... Reality is that Congress has completely abdicated their authority. He has no real authority to do these tariffs because these are supposed to be emergency, national security related, only at that point. Congress could have slapped it down at any time and they did not. The courts have simply said he has all powerful, he has all power to do whatever he wants, whether it's...

No one stopped him from doing the tariffs. No one stopped him from doing any of the immigration things that are going on. No one stopped any of that thing.

John McMullen (: 25:10

I thought we had some serious laws against treason.

Todd Bianco (: 25:14

Well, when you're immune from those laws, it apparently means that you can do whatever you want because he's been immunized as far as I understand from ruling from their last term that said that, you know, he's essentially, if he considers it an official act, it's therefore immune from prosecution. well, but they're the end. I don't have an answer for that.

John McMullen (: 25:34

full shit.

I know, I know, they're the final arbiter,

yeah.

Todd Bianco (: 25:42

I don't have a good answer for that, but Congress could have stopped, Congress could have said at any time, this is bad for business. You don't have the, under the authority of this act from 30 years ago or whatever it was, you don't have the authority to just slap tariffs on everybody for everything. They could have done it, but they didn't. And now the problem is we have businesses, and this is across all...

categories of business, but especially in the car business where they simply cannot switch overnight a factory. If they're making a transmission in Mexico, they can't just say, we're gonna make that tomorrow in Detroit. They can't. It's a multi-year thing. They're gonna wait it out because they think it's ridiculous. they prefer to wait it out because they figure he's only got another three and a half years.

And that's where think that's where businesses are looking at it at this point, because they don't want to make a long-term investment when these things could change or go away at any time based on the whim of one person. So that's how I read what businesses are doing.

John McMullen (: 26:58

I think

this is all the more reason why we need to encourage everybody who listens to this program and everybody who they know that listens to them or has a conversation with them to try and hold people.

or not hold them, but pull them back from a position of apathy around voting, because the midterms could save us a lot of grief. It's going to kick in now. Some of it, a lot of it doesn't kick in until after the midterm elections. And and they're hoping that people will have forgotten once again what they're feeling right now and that that's how this will happen. But at the midterms, we have a chance to really.

Richie Roy (: 27:26

Correct. ⁓

Todd Bianco (: 27:27

That's

our purpose.

John McMullen (: 27:39

turn this around and put roadblocks in the way and remove and replace this legislation if we remember what's happening right now and get these scoundrels out of public office who have enabled this. So it's very important not just if you like your

green vehicles and green energy and a green future. But, you know, if you value your life and especially in the LGBTQ community, you're fucked if we don't stop this. So you have to be involved. You cannot sit back on the the sidelines or sit on your hands and not say and do something about this. Right now, it feels like it's hopeless, but it's not.

ve an election in November of: 2026

had one of Nissan's little get about town cars, their Leaf, which you couldn't really go very far, know, to very much with. It was, you know, kind of like the old Nissan Civic or I mean Honda Civic. so I was really excited to see that Nissan and their conglomerate of manufacturers are really committed to the EV game now and that they're actually going to

Todd Bianco (: 29:10

Right. But it had a really limited range. Yeah.

John McMullen (: 29:27

do something new with sheet metal when it comes to the leaf in 2026.

Todd Bianco (: 29:33

Right, the new Leaf looks terrific. It's morphed into a little SUV now, which it wasn't before, and it's got a better range, it's going to be affordable. Approximately between 35 and 41,000 was what I'd read about that. Yeah, obviously, a smaller SUV is at the heart of the market, at least in the United States. And I think a lot of the world

John McMullen (: 29:47

more storage space, you know.

Todd Bianco (: 29:57

even Europe, wherever else they're going to be sold, that a lot of people are looking for an SUV format. I like to be able to go to the grocery store or to a bigger store and stuff as much possible into the back of a car and you need sort of an SUV form to do it. Now, it's not an off-road vehicle and most people are not taking their SUVs off-road. Now, yes, you can, but most aren't. mean, Rivian is made for that, but I mean, as far as

Most people are not taking their Nissan Rogue or their Tesla Model Y or whatever it is. They're not taking them off road, but they're for handy run around cars for busy people who want enough storage space for going to Costco or whatever else it's time. Right, exactly. But I think that the new Nissan Leaf is finally in a format that people want.

John McMullen (: 30:39

taking the family to grandma's house.

Todd Bianco (: 30:50

It looks a whole lot nicer than it did before. It's a, know, Nissan is part of a, mean, people may not realize it, but Nissan is part of a worldwide conglomerate of it's, ⁓ what?

John McMullen (: 31:01

Is it Mitsubishi

and Renault?

Todd Bianco (: 31:04

Renault and Mitsubishi are all together in this. They're all part of this alliance. So they can use each other's platforms and they can use each other's software. I mean, they can share these things and the whole idea in, it's a weird sort of a Japanese form of doing things. Toyota owns a lot of little, they're not subsidiaries, but they're affiliates like.

John McMullen (: 31:08

Right.

Todd Bianco (: 31:29

Aison is their big transmission affiliate and they own enough of Subaru's with Subaru and Toyota share things and Daihatsu and there's many other things within the Toyota orbit. But they're not necessarily subsidiaries of Toyota. And in that sort of format, they cross-own shares of each other. So Nissan owned shares in Renault, Renault owned shares in Nissan and Mitsubishi's part of this little

conglomerate so they can share basically technology, platforms, engines, those kinds of things. So hopefully Nissan will be using more of these things because Renault has lots more EVs in Europe because this is what Europe wants. So they can trade on some of that technology to help themselves and to grow their

you know, their portfolios to sell in the United States and other locations.

John McMullen (: 32:30

Speaking of Subaru, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Richie Roy (: 32:30

But what I was just actually

I was just reading though, because I'm curious about this, that Nissan has been delaying payments to suppliers because they are running out of cash. And I believe I heard a while back there was like sort of talk of maybe Nissan getting acquired. So I mean, Nissan Leaf, the new one sounds great. Will Nissan be around in a year to make this car?

Todd Bianco (: 32:54

Well, yes, but it depends on whether they're going to be on their own or whether they're going to be owned by Honda. Because it was going to be like a forced marriage. know, hi, you're going to Honda is going to acquire you because you don't have enough cash to pay your bills. So Nissan is doing everything they can to cut costs right now so that they can survive on, you know, as as the alliance that they currently have, which is between Renault and Mitsubishi and that stuff.

Richie Roy (: 33:08

Mm-hmm.

John McMullen (: 33:21

But would that be the

worst thing in the world to have a Nissan and Honda alliance?

Todd Bianco (: 33:27

No, Honda has money and Honda has engineering expertise. It wouldn't be a bad thing per se, but Japan Inc., which is the sort of, again, it's a very weird cultural thing in Japan, they don't like it. It's kind of like a forced thing. They would do it because they would want to save Japanese ownership of Nissan couldn't go to, and it's not anything other than a Japanese company. So.

John McMullen (: 33:54

I see.

Todd Bianco (: 33:56

it would have to stay Japanese. It's just it's a very, very cultural thing here in the United States. Nobody seems to care. But in Japan, you know, Toyota, it could not happen. Right. It couldn't happen. So, yeah, I just don't I don't know if that's going to happen at this point, but I do think that they would have cash one way or another to bring LEAF to to market. looks it looks like it's ready right now. In other words, it looks like it's

John McMullen (: 34:04

Just don't be from Mexico. And if you are, then don't tell anybody that's where the parts are made.

Todd Bianco (: 34:24

production ready. So I think that they're ready to do it now. It's just that the EV, you know, getting rid of the credits and whatever else, that's going to hurt the demand, I think, for any EVs. So after the 30th of September, you're going to see a plunge in EV demand because of that.

John McMullen (: 34:26

Yeah.

Richie Roy (: 34:49

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 34:50

it'll pick up again, but it may take another quarter or two for people to start going back to buying that. And they'll say, it's the end of EVs. It's not gonna be the end of EVs, but it is going to, it's gonna juice sales up until the 30th, and then the sales are gonna plummet after that because of that.

John McMullen (: 35:08

I I started to mention earlier, you mentioned Subaru and I saw that there is a reworking of the WRX for those people who like the little Speedsters. Do you have any detail on that?

Todd Bianco (: 35:22

I don't, I know that people love the little WRX. It's basically, the STI is the fast version of the WRX. They haven't been selling the STI here in the United States. They just sell the WRX. We will see if they sell the new WRX STI here. I don't think they're going to. think there's, the problem is that the market for that is a very slim market.

John McMullen (: 35:25

Mm-hmm.

Todd Bianco (: 35:45

I believe they're only made in Japan as well. I don't think they're made here. So they're going to be, not only is there a small number of people who want it, it would probably be subject to tariffs at a fairly high rate. I don't know whether it's the full 25 % or a portion of that, but my guess is that if those are gonna be manufactured in Japan, which I think they are, that they would be more expensive.

And if you start adding 25 % to a $40,000 little car, it gets expensive. so the number, it's already a small number people who want it. As compared to the, you know, the Forester or the Outback Wagon, which are their big sellers. I don't know what's gonna happen with it. And again, I think a lot of that is, part of that problem is the tariffs and what's gonna happen with it.

because I think there's always gonna be a market for that. I think there's always going to be people who want it. The question is, is there a big enough market for them to bring it here? Because it's expensive to homologate it here and make sure it meets all US requirements.

John McMullen (: 36:50

has super maintained its really positive marketing relationship to the LGBT market.

Todd Bianco (: 36:57

I think so. I still see lesbians driving them.

Richie Roy (: 37:00

You know, a company that hasn't done such a good job of keeping anyone interested is Jaguar. just read an article that last year, know, sort of for June, I think last year in June, they sold 2000 cars across Europe. This year in June, they sold 49 cars in the European market.

John McMullen (: 37:26

Holy smokes!

Are you kidding?

Richie Roy (: 37:30

49.

Todd Bianco (: 37:30

Well,

okay, well, they don't have any cars to sell. I mean, they stopped making them. They just stopped. So, right, there's only one Jaguar for sale right now in the United States and it's, you know, it's an SUV. So the reality is that they were doing a reboot of the brand to make it all expensive EVs.

Richie Roy (: 37:35

it would. Yeah.

And the reboot also is generally getting kind of drubbed in terms of just the look and feel. is like they've changed their logo. It's now this kind of like blip-o font that looks like something that would be on a cosmetics carrier. The actual Jaguar itself is nowhere to be seen. I don't know exactly what they're doing there, but people aren't super excited about it.

Todd Bianco (: 38:15

We've only seen some concepts from Jaguar. We've seen the new brand logo. The leaping Jaguar seems to be gone. We've seen some test mules out in the wild. But we haven't seen the actual car yet. So we'll see. But right now it looks like it's a big, expensive...

electric sedan, which isn't the core of the market right now.

Richie Roy (: 38:44

I mean, Mercedes, if I'm not

wrong, Mercedes has the EQS's sitting around and no one wants those.

Todd Bianco (: 38:51

Right, they'll sell here in California or they'll lease here in California. But the EQS is not as popular as the SUV version of the EQS or the EQE version. those are at least moving. But those are kind of overpriced. So they have to lease them at a good rate is what it really comes down to. ⁓

John McMullen (: 39:11

As Mercedes

finally reached that point where they're basically just an expensive bucket of bolts, like, you know, other brands that have, you know, like Jeep, like you're going to spend forever. You're going to spend three times what you paid for the vehicle in maintenance and, you know, just putting it back together.

Todd Bianco (: 39:32

I would be curious, you might be right, I would be curious to know what the rate is of purchase versus lease. My guess is that the lease rate is through the roof, that people are leasing these cars for three or four years, never longer than the warranty. Same with BMW, just because these these cars nobody wants to have once the warranty is up, because they're very expensive to repair.

So I think what they're doing is they're artificially inflating the resale value for lease purposes, but they own the leasing companies. They all own the leasing companies. So they just eat it on the end when the car comes back off of lease and it goes back to the dealer to re-lease to somebody else as a certified pre-owned Mercedes or BMW or whatever else. Jaguar on the other hand is

Richie Roy (: 40:21

Yeah.

Todd Bianco (: 40:24

They literally stopped making all their cars. They sold whatever the remaining I-Paces that they had to Waymo. Waymo is outfitting them with $60,000 worth of sensors to become RoboTaxis. And they are rebooting all Jaguars in the new look of, we will see. It's gotten generally terrible.

reaction from the press and from automotive enthusiasts where they think that Jaguar's basically squandered their entire, you whatever goodwill there was in the brand, whatever cache there was in the brand to...

John McMullen (: 41:02

Didn't they

lose all that basically when Ford owned them?

Todd Bianco (: 41:07

Ford did a very good job of destroying them, but when they were purchased by the Tata Group of India, which is who owns them now, they purchased Jaguar Land Rover, which is what they own now. And Land Rover is making all the money because they're big overpriced SUVs that are all leased. They're all leased too.

Either that or they're purchased by somebody's production company and every two years they get a new one. And of course they're never used for business purpose whatsoever, but I'm sure they're written off 100%. That is what I'm sure is happening. But very few people are buying and holding Land Rovers because the tech inside them is not good and the repair...

bills are astronomical. They are at the absolute bottom of the repair chain, you know, as far as, you know, the reliability. I think they look good, but that's what's selling. People are buying, you know, Land Rover products.

Richie Roy (: 42:00

Mm-hmm.

John McMullen (: 42:03

Todd, if there's one.

Todd, if there's one headline remaining that people should know about right now with regards to automotive stuff and as we're going into this, you know, the summer with regards to cars and trucks and everything that's going on with our economy and so on, what do they need to know?

Todd Bianco (: 42:27

think they need to check first to see what's happening with the prices of anything they're looking at to see if the tariffs have hit yet for any of the products that they're looking for. And we have to be careful because if tariffs hit and prices go up by 10 or 15%, we were already looking at really unaffordable cars, which means that that means that the used market is going to be

ver model it is, whether it's: 2025

and it depends, some car companies can kind of absorb it, but others may not be able to. So I would check to see what's happening very carefully first and be careful when you go to any dealer because they are gonna try to screw you one way or another. mean, dealers are notorious for that. So.

John McMullen (: 43:40

Should

we all just go buy an e-bike?

Todd Bianco (: 43:42

They're terrific except when it's 110 outside, But I like an e-bike, and by the way, those should be subsidized. If they're gonna subsidize something, subsidize an e-bike. Give people a $500 rebate for buying an e-bike because that's a whole lot better than buying a car at this point, but they're not subsidizing that market either.

but I would be very careful about anything that I would buy right now. There could be some deals out there, and I know that there's gonna be a lot of really good deals that are gonna be pushed before the end of this quarter, especially for EVs, but for regular cars, for ICE cars, watch for the tariffs, because the tariffs could very well impact what you're looking at, and if you can buy a pre-tariff car, better, if you buy one after that.

Okay, and one other thing, I believe that in the big beautiful bill there is going to be some deduction allowed for the interest on car loans. So that might help some people but it's still not enough. I mean if you're only paying at a 10 or 15 percent tax rate, know, you know, overall rate, it may not be worth that much if you have ten thousand dollars of interest expense and if you have ten thousand dollars of interest expense on a car loan, what did you buy?

le, you know, plan for it for: 2025

watch out for dealers taking advantage of it and saying, the new car is $5,000 more, so we're gonna charge X more for the car. So watch out. Consumer beware, use all your internet tools, know exactly what it is before you go in there. Do it, even if you just talk with the internet sales manager, make sure that you have exactly what you want.

know the color, know the option packages and get them to give you a firm price before you go in. That's what I would

John McMullen (: 45:54

Sounds like today

is a better time than ever to be a member or join consumer union or consumer reports, especially when you're talking about things even being affected like the Energy Star rating and those kinds of things.

Todd Bianco (: 46:07

They'll help with that. They'll have some good ratings on any product that you buy, including cars. They have some fairly, they have fair reports on all the various cars. They buy them themselves and they test them. They're not beholden to anybody per se for their reviews. just think it's, I think we need to be really good consumers right now and really watch out for what's happening.

And the whole thing in car land is in flux because of the tariffs and what's happening in Washington. And everybody's still very nervous about making any decisions business-wise.

John McMullen (: 46:45

Todd, thank you for joining us this week on our substantial Saturday edition of Richie and John. It's been a pleasure to have you as usual. And Richie, I will see you again on Newsday Tuesday.

Richie Roy (: 46:58

Yep, definitely. All right, well have a great weekend everyone and we will talk to you soon.

Todd Bianco (: 47:02

Bye bye.