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Insights On The UAW & Big Three Auto Strike
228 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to the Plug In For More podcast! Mike, Tom, and Bryant are here to help you on your journey to an Electric vehicle future. Each episode we discuss current events, trends, and a specific topic of education related to EV's. We bring together a diverse experience set, and pair it with guests who are experts in the field. For even more information on EV's, check out www.EVUniverse.com.
In this episode, the guys shed light on the implications of the current (as of 9-20-23) UAW strike. They also delve into why electric vehicles are central to the strike. Additionally, Tom shares his experience of riding in a 1925 Detroit Electric EV, Bryant prepares for another vacation, and Mike installs the manual tonneau cover on his Rivian.
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the plug-in for more podcasts. Today we're talking about Tom's ride in a very old EV, one of the first ever. My tonneau cover for the Rivian R1T and then the UAW strike and how that impacts EVs around the world. So Brian, super excited to have you back from yet another vacation. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. I'm glad to be back though. I'm not leaving on vacation for another day or two.
00:00:25
Speaker
And for those of you who have listened to this podcast before, we are not just replaying the same thing over and over again. That is really Brian's 27th vacation computer.
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to Plug In For More, brought to you by evuniverse.com. EV Universe is your one-stop shop for all things related to the electric vehicle. Here on this podcast, our goal is to educate, inspire, and hopefully make your transition into the electric vehicle marketplace a lot less intimidating.
Review of Rivian Tonneau Cover
00:00:55
Speaker
And now, here are your hosts, Mike, Tom and Bryant.
00:00:59
Speaker
So in our last episode, we were talking about Mike's tonneau cover that had just got delivered and he was potting because it was raining and he couldn't put it on. But now I'm assuming it's been two weeks. You've had a chance to put your new tonneau cover on. Yeah, it's the manual tonneau cover that's been just released by Rivian. It took a long time to come in and it works great. It's nothing's, you know, that crazy. It's four pieces. It snaps together really easy, really easy to throw into the, uh,
00:01:27
Speaker
into the rails for the, for the truck, um, comes with a really nice cover, um, and bag. And then you can store that in the gear tunnel. I mean, it's a, it's a tiny cover. It works. How hard is it to pull it back when you need to put some two by fours or plywood in it? Cause you do a lot of that in Rivian, right? Yeah. Yeah. Really. Uh, it's really easy. And so there's just a tab you pull and it pulls it right out and then it's, you know, maybe
00:01:54
Speaker
a minute to deal with it, so it's
Experiencing a 1925 Detroit Electric
00:01:57
Speaker
pretty easy. Last weekend, we went down to the Greenfield Village Old Car Festival. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it, but it's in Dearborn, Michigan, and it's a whole bunch of old vehicles that are all pre-1932, and they fill the village. There's more than 700 less than 1,000 cars. It's a lot of cars that are in this spot.
00:02:17
Speaker
I've seen this car in the years past, but to my surprise, there was a 1925 Detroit Electric. And this car is pretty cool. And it stands out much like a electric car does amongst gas cars today. And it probably did even so back then. I was able to talk to the owner of that car and even got to go for a ride in it around Greenfield Village, which is super cool. Tom, that's cool. I've seen I think there's a Detroit Electric in the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago, and I've seen
00:02:45
Speaker
the vehicle you're talking about and displaying in Greenfield Village, but I've never been able to ride in it. Like, what was it like?
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, it's, it's got a lot of older components as you'd expect from a 1925 vehicle, but it's super smooth and it's super quiet and driving around the village. People are walking out in front of it all the time because they couldn't hear it. And of course, then it's a guidelines are in place in 1925 to have the, the low hum that modern electric vehicles have, but we watched it happen right in front of us as, as we're riding around.
00:03:15
Speaker
That's cool. That's really cool. I've never written something that old, but your story just reminds me really quickly. If we have any listeners in the Boston, Massachusetts area, if you go to the Lars Anderson Auto Museum, they also have a very old, I think it's a 1910, I can't remember off the top of my head, electric vehicle, and they actually have the advertising for it as advertising towards women.
00:03:36
Speaker
because it's a really defined, like you said, it's like a refined, if you think about 1910 cars, cranks start, they're a belch and smoke, they're dripping oil everywhere, and they were, this car company, I can't remember the name of it, it's off the cuff, but this car company was really tailoring it towards women of like, hey, have a refined experience, have an educated experience, don't get your dress full of oil.
00:03:57
Speaker
and having a reliable vehicle, just kind of funny thinking 100 plus years ago, electric vehicles being quoted as reliable. And your experience is just jogging that memory for me. Yeah. And this particular car, stat-wise, you hit the top speed on its 22 miles per hour, and it has a range of maybe around 80 miles.
00:04:20
Speaker
like crazy anything, but just a really cool piece of engineering of a vehicle that existed a hundred years ago. And obviously we got away from it at some point, but just electric cars aren't new. You know, I mean the 80 mile range, I think is pretty impressive for a hundred years ago. I mean, heck now, if you look at.
00:04:39
Speaker
You know, when we talk about used EVs, one of them is a Nissan Leaf, right? And that's something where on the, those early cars, you can get ones with a range now that's less than that.
Challenges of EV Road Trips
00:04:50
Speaker
So, I mean, it's obviously goes faster, but I mean that, that being said.
00:04:56
Speaker
It's pretty impressive for a hundred-year-old car. Yeah, and I did do a video on this car It's up on our EV universe Instagram and Facebook page if listeners want to go take a peek at it as well so I've been texting with my uncle a little bit who is an avid listener of our show as well, but he Just went across the country in his Ford Lightning. So he left from California back last Friday and
00:05:22
Speaker
and made it into Michigan here earlier this week and he's gonna be coming up to Traverse City to visit actually a little bit later here but he made the trip he went across the country and didn't have any real issues interesting reminds me of the article I teased a couple weeks ago about the gentleman from Winnipeg that abandoned his lightning somewhere in Minnesota and rented a car to make it to Chicago and
00:05:44
Speaker
I want to talk more about that one because that article I feel is very misleading. I'm not saying that gentleman didn't have trouble, but I want to talk about some problems that the article talked about and maybe some troubleshooting trips, tips for trips because I think you're right. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of EV road trips that I've done. And if your uncle can drive all the way from California.
00:06:09
Speaker
I think this guy can get from Canada. So the article, you can Google it, is a man ditches electric truck on drive from Winnipeg to Chicago after charging troubles. And so I was at first, I was surprised because he has some pretty big, quote unquote, charging deserts to go through. So I thought he's gonna have trouble in North Dakota or at Northern Canada. No, he had trouble in this little town, Albertsville. And I'm pulling this up on several of the apps.
00:06:38
Speaker
that we've talked about in some other podcasts, but Plugshare is a really good peer-to-peer app. And I have this pulled up, Albertville, Minnesota. And he said he tried to charge there and he got a faulty connection. And then he tried to go to another one in Elk River, Minnesota, and the charger there wouldn't work either. So with 15 miles left on his charge, he decided to just ditch his Lightning and talked to a Ford dealership, or towed to a Ford dealership, and then he rented a Toyota 4Runner to drive to Chicago.
00:07:08
Speaker
So I'm not saying this gentleman didn't have any trouble, but if you look up on plug share and the ratings on plug share is something I do when I go to road trip, there's some of the charges around here are rated pretty high. The one specifically he had trouble with is rated as a 7.4 out of 10. That's a pretty good rating.
00:07:27
Speaker
But there's a few other level two chargers around here. One has one about the best rating I've ever seen. It's got like a 9.4, 9.6 out of 10, meaning that thing is pretty darn good. And there's a third one that has a lower rating, but long story short, I would, if I could get this gentleman on a podcast, my recommendation would have been to him is have a, and when you're doing a road trip with an EV, if you're having trouble charging,
00:07:54
Speaker
Don't wait until you're gonna be at like, if at all possible, wait till you're like at five or 10%. Like he said he had 15 miles left. He's probably like 5% left. And he drove past quite a few chargers to get there. So I'd say step number one would be, you know, charge your vehicle maybe when it's more around 15 or 20%, especially if you're on unknown territory. That way, if you do have a charging fault, you still have some range to go to another spot.
00:08:20
Speaker
And then two, plan on charging at places that have pretty high ratings on plug share. Um, so like this plug share rating on this one's, like I said, in the high nines, like that one's pretty darn reliable. Um, and then I'd say number three is I'm shocked because he had trouble charging at some of these places that have the most chargers when he drove through charging deserts in North Dakota and Southern Canada.
00:08:44
Speaker
And maybe rather than just abandon this truck, could he have plugged into a slower charger? That's like my third tip.
Planning and Strategies for EV Travel
00:08:50
Speaker
Plug into a slower charger, maybe grab some dinner or a drink or a bathroom break and just get another 15-20 miles because just down the road is literally a ton of chargers on Plugshare. The map is just populated everywhere.
00:09:03
Speaker
I'm not saying this gentleman's lying in the article, but I think he made it a little more dramatic of just, quote unquote, abandoning his vehicle and running a gas-powered car because he couldn't get to Chicago. I think he made some mistakes. But Mike, Tom, what are your thoughts? There can definitely be hiccups with charging problems here or there. But if you're planning appropriately and you're paying attention, it's not an issue. And most of your apps aren't going to recommend you going down below 20% if it can help it.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think he's used to driving a gas car where you get the fuel light on and then you stop for gas on an EV road trip. You have to plan a little bit more and just maybe map out. You have to do a little bit of research, map out which chargers you're going to charge at.
00:09:46
Speaker
I go to a highly rated one and go to one, go to one, especially where he was. I understand. I was shocked. I mean, listener, I was shocked. I thought for sure it was going to be North Dakota because there is long stretches of highway in North Dakota where there's no chargers, but he charged fine in North Dakota. He had problems in Wisconsin where there's chargers like literally everywhere. And if he just planned like a tiny bit better, he probably would have had no problem.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to the mindset. And when you get an EV, you need to do a little more research until you're comfortable with what the process is. It's a mind shift. It's a different sort of mentality of when you go on these road trips, what you have to learn, how these things work.
00:10:27
Speaker
Um, I don't think it's a more difficult than dealing with a gas car. It's just, there's things that, you know, you're going to have to pay attention to where you didn't before. And other things with a gas car that you don't have to worry about now. You don't have to let the thing, you know, quote unquote warm up necessarily. Cause you're going to damage the engine. Like that stuff doesn't occur in cold weather. It's not going to be as efficient.
00:10:46
Speaker
Stuff like that. I mean, there's really just the way that the motors work, the batteries work, the way the charging infrastructure is, it's different than what you're used to. And so when you make that pretty substantial shift, you gotta do some research. And I wouldn't recommend buying your first EV, not doing any research, and then trying to drive across 3,000 miles. Don't do that. Do some research before you do it. I think that's my advice.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, go on a small road trip, go to like a four or 500 mile road trip, understand the apps you need to navigate, understand the apps you need to download before you go. You know, Plugshare is a good one, you know, ChargePoint, Electrify America, A Better Road Planner. We've covered these in other podcasts, but for newer listeners, those are like the most critical apps that I use for any road trip or those, those specifically.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of apps, I've had continued success with Apple maps and it pairing through CarPlay with the Mach-E and giving me a really good breakdown of what I could expect my battery levels to be when I arrive at my next charging destination or the final destination. Been really impressed with that.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, good point. And then for newer listeners as well, I've talked about this in the past, but go to our website, evuniverse.com and get yourself a Tesla destination charger adapter, because I've had extreme luck at charging at hotels overnight and road trips. Usually the hotels I've ran into have Tesla destination chargers and the connector for a normal, you know, a non Tesla, a different type of vehicle.
00:12:19
Speaker
It's super easy. You just literally connect it to the charging adapter and you plug in and Charge it charge overnight and on road trips. It's super critical to start off in the morning fully charged You can really save a lot of time by taking advantage of your car being parked overnight. So go get that adapter It's it's made my life so much easier. You can't charge the superchargers, but destination chargers It's worked 10 out of 10 times. I've used it awesome. Great point
00:12:46
Speaker
Um, one other thing too, since we're talking about the education piece. So we have a little announcement with EV universe that we have a, I think it's 37, 38 page EV guidebook. So everything you need to know about only electric vehicle, you know, the apps you need to download the differences between gas and electric cars, efficiencies, driving, that kind of stuff. It's a really in depth, um,
00:13:09
Speaker
guidebook. It's free and we're going to be pushing that out for anyone who wants to download it. It's going to be on our website and we'll promote that. So we'll also put it on the website for plugin for more so you can download it there as well. That will be ready very shortly. So if you don't see it when this episode drops, it'll be within the first week or so. So I think it's going to be something really nice. Take a look at it. If you have any further questions, just hit us up here. We'll be happy to answer them on the podcast.
00:13:35
Speaker
Can we stand the theme of road trips? I've got two other ones I want to talk about briefly before I get to our main theme. Absolutely. An influencer which I love is this woman called Lexi Alford. She's on Instagram as Lexi Limitless. She was the youngest person ever to visit every country in the world. She has Guinness Book of World Records. As a guy who likes to take vacation and travel, she's pretty cool to me.
00:14:00
Speaker
So anyway, what I wanted to show or talk about was she just put up a story on her Instagram where she's driving across the world in an EV. And I think it's pretty cool because she says 100 years ago, a woman set off on a journey, the most epic and daring ever taken to drive a gas powered vehicle around the world.
00:14:22
Speaker
And she's going to do it 100 years later in an electric vehicle. So I'm really excited to follow her. She's doing it in a Ford. Ford, I think, is the new Ford Electric Explorer. And she just dropped like, hey, this is what I'm doing. I have to go across five continents, 100% electric. I mean, I'm really curious to see. We're talking about charging deserts in North Dakota.
Epic EV Road Trip Stories
00:14:45
Speaker
I want to know how she's going to get it across some of the charging deserts in Africa, in Russia, and some of these other places. I can't wait to watch her and follow her as she drives across the world. It's going to be really cool. So being a Tesla Roadster owner and enthusiast, I have to bring up the first EV to do this to go around the world was the original Tesla Roadster. And there's a gentleman. He did it back in 2012 and he's doing it again. And I'm going to butcher this name. It's Raphael De Maestri.
00:15:17
Speaker
Maestro, and I know he was just in Seattle not too long ago at the Carl Medlock, Medlock and Sons shop, getting some tune-ups on his way, but he's doing it for a second time. I don't know about you guys, I like road trips, but I don't know if I would want to go to every single country. That sounds a little much to me. I mean, the roadster is not that super comfortable either,
00:15:44
Speaker
Cheers to all those people going from country to country in an EV. I think it's pretty dang cool.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, she says 18,000 miles and she has to start and stop in the same location. Uh, ocean, ocean crossings do not count. So yeah, Mike, I'm curious to see if she's like the first woman to do this or if she's the first person to drive further. Like she's saying she'll be the first person to get a Guinness Book of World Records to circumnavigate the world. So I don't know if that's different. We should, we should dive into that and see how that's different from the roadster.
00:16:16
Speaker
chose the map. I mean, basically he went from California, all straight across to New York. And then obviously he went across the, the pond and then, yeah, so he, he didn't go to every country. He just circumnavigate is what he did the first time. And that's,
00:16:32
Speaker
Pretty cool, pretty cool map of what he did. Back in 2012 though, that would have been, that would have been a slow trip. There's, you know, you can't supercharge number one out of that vehicle and there weren't really any to speak of. Um, at that point in time, there was a handful, but not enough to get them across the whole world. Interesting.
00:16:50
Speaker
So speaking of road trips, our, uh, our energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, who Tom knows really well, cause she used to be the governor of Michigan. Um, she did a road trip and she learned a few things about charger etiquette. Um, where was she going, Mike? Uh, it looks like she was going from Charlotte, North Carolina to Memphis, Tennessee. Okay. So not the biggest road trip in the world, right? No, no, it's a, it's a decent road trip, but nothing like going from New York to LA.
00:17:19
Speaker
But she had a staffer that was ahead of her that pulled in to hold an EV charging space so that when she got there, she would have it. Ooh, that's, that's probably a no-no. You probably don't want to do that. Yeah. And it's, according to different news sources on this, it, the sheriff's office, this happened in Georgia, um, where there was a kind of an issue with this. Uh, it's not illegal for a non-EV there to claim a charging spot.
00:17:49
Speaker
I am of the, um, opinion that it should be illegal any place. Um, you know, most any place, because if you need to get gas, you're not sitting there and just blocking that gas station. Same thing with an EV charger. Um, but yeah, so they would block the charger and let her, you know, pull right in and get it. So there'd be absolutely no waiting, which, um, yeah. That's not okay. Don't do that.
00:18:19
Speaker
Don't do that. I mean, this speaks to my heart. Tom, Tom's helped me on this one because this is, this has happened to me a couple of times and it makes me so angry. Um, so I've thought about, I've thought about letting the air out of the tires of people that do this, but I've never done that, but I've thought about it. No, no, no, bad, bad, bad, bad stickers on people's windows.
00:18:41
Speaker
I might have done a big sticker on a window, maybe. In theory, maybe. Tom tells me I shouldn't do that either. I think everyone tells you not to do that. Your wife, me, Tom, your dog, most creatures on this planet. Bad Bryant.
00:19:00
Speaker
I did have some signs made up that are not sticky. And they're just this paper that says, I don't block your gas pump. Don't block mine. This is my gas pump. And I put those on people's cars.
00:19:15
Speaker
It makes me feel better, okay? Also, if you've received one of those and you're listening to the podcast is I Mean Mike I will I will say you you talked about maybe hooking up I know you haven't done this but you talked about hooking up your ribbing and towing them out of the spot I mean, I don't know if that's any better. I
00:19:37
Speaker
No, well, one, I mean, it was a joke. I've never even had to deal with that situation before. I'm just saying that the Rivian could. That thing has 835 horsepower, 900 pound-feet of torque. That thing could yank most vehicles right out there without too much problem. But no, I have not. I won't. Maybe let's
Etiquette at EV Charging Stations
00:20:00
Speaker
copy this flyer idea and sell them on the website just like in a booklet, like a 50 page booklet.
00:20:06
Speaker
Could be easy enough. Yeah, I like that. Listener, if you would buy that, send us a note. We will make it for sale on the website. Sticky version or non-sticky version. Let us know what you want to say and we'll take it under advisement too. If you've got certain thoughts, you know, different.
00:20:22
Speaker
You know, we've got children's ears as far as what we can read so don't make it too nasty Yeah, so anyway, we digress Shame on you energy secretary for blocking chargers. Do not do that But Tom thinks you're a nice person. So I'll give you the benefit out. I am a fan. I
00:20:44
Speaker
you're listening to the plugin for more podcast. If you're looking for information on electric vehicles, electric vehicles, components, or information on how to reduce your carbon footprint, look no further than evuniverse.com evuniverse.com is your one stop shop for all things related to electric vehicle.
Impact of UAW Strike on EV Industry
00:21:03
Speaker
So I want to segue if we can into the main topic here, which would be the UAW strike that's currently happening against the big three automakers. Um,
00:21:12
Speaker
We're not going to get into the wise. We're not going to get into what the demands are, what the rejections have been, or the politics around what's being asked for, because that's not our place. That's not our fight. What we want to talk about is, as you, the potential EV buyer, the consumer, what it's going to mean going forward for the next six months to a year if
00:21:35
Speaker
The strike continues now as of this recording on Wednesday, September 20th, it's entirely possible things get resolved before it even airs. But we want to have this conversation because there will be ripple effects even from what exists to this point. So we are also well aware that this isn't going to be evergreen content. And if you listen to this podcast in six months, it may not mean anything, but it could be the precursor for something more.
00:21:56
Speaker
I would say that there's a couple sound bites I want to talk about that I heard from the UAW president. This is their perspective. This is a quote, and I can say we're not getting into the politics of it, but this is the quote from the president. We will not let the EV industry be built on the backs of workers making poverty wages while the CEOs of these big companies line their pockets with government subsidies.
00:22:19
Speaker
So that's their perspective. And then the automakers side, the big three feel like they can't compete already with automators, automakers like Tesla, who have a cost advantage over the Detroit big three because Tesla workers are not unionized. So it's really interesting how EVs are taking center stage of this bigger, bigger, broader strike. Very interesting.
00:22:44
Speaker
And so you've got, you mentioned Tesla, Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Kia and Honda. They're all non-unionized car companies for their production. And so you look at, you know, there's a powerhouse in Kia and Tesla for producing EVs. And I know Jim Farley had made
00:23:07
Speaker
a comment in regards to EV production and the money that they have allocated for trying to move towards a sustainable future of being compromised if they meet the demands of the workers. So EVs are definitely central to the argument, but it could have far reaching impacts if that occurs. Yeah. So let's unpack that a little bit. So.
Future of EV Market Amidst UAW Strike
00:23:34
Speaker
for the folks that haven't paid too much attention to where the margins are with EVs for the big three versus Tesla. So this comes down to sort of the argument is with Tesla right now, their margins are really, really good. They have been traditionally over the last couple of years, they've been getting better and better. And that's allowed Tesla to actually make some of these price cuts that says angered a lot of used car dealers and a lot of
00:24:00
Speaker
buyers of these new Tesla vehicles because Tesla will go and in turn drop the price of a new car, thousands and thousands of dollars. People lose equity immediately on those vehicles. Now, what's happening with some of the big three is they don't have the economies of scale yet on their EV manufacturing. They're actually breaking even or losing money on a lot of their EV production right now because they haven't ramped up to the point that Tesla has.
00:24:27
Speaker
So I think the point that Jim Farley from the CEO of Ford's trying to make is that they have to invest in the production of the EVs, their whole production line to make it profitable and that investment
00:24:42
Speaker
is instead going to go to the UAW workers and not going to go into that transition. So it's going to put them even further behind Tesla and some of the other manufacturers out there. Right. And so as of right now, there's 13,000 UAW workers that are striking out of the 150,000 that are there.
00:25:02
Speaker
nothing. It's not a complete shutdown. It's very partial, but obviously things could continue to get worse as they move forward. And I've heard about layoffs from the big three in different areas to try to combat the problems, but it's going to be messy for them. And obviously once we
00:25:21
Speaker
Pull workers out of the factories production is going to slow down or stop. We know what the, how that's going to look, especially coming out of COVID where we had a significant decrease in new vehicles. And we all know what happened there on prices and availability and wait times myself included waiting on the Machi.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think if this strike lasts longer than four or five weeks, it's going to be a body blow to the EV ambitions of Ford, GM, the Ram trucks coming out. All of these automakers have big plans in 2024 to push out new EVs, while Tesla and Kia and all the other brands that are not striking can just flood the market and
00:26:04
Speaker
And let's face it, if you gain familiarity with the Tesla or you gain familiarity with the Kia or Hyundai, will it hurt you then going back to a GM or Ford product? I don't know. So right now, it's kind of like first one to the market who gains the most
00:26:20
Speaker
Um, comfort level might own the market for a while. So like, I think the automakers are in a tough spot here. If they don't, um, go to the man's of the UAW, then they're going to be late to market. Well, a lot of these other companies will have multiple vehicles out in market. And if they do.
00:26:37
Speaker
If the UAW doesn't doesn't not negotiate then the UAW I mean the Ford is Ford Jim Farley saying it's it's Basically gonna put the jeopardy of Ford in in jeopardy for it to actually as a viable company So I don't know it's interesting to see and sit in the sidelines and watch this which side kind of like blinks first no matter what Tesla and the other manufacturers come out ahead on this one I mean they they've got
00:27:04
Speaker
They're getting the benefit because I think with the big three, no matter what happens, they're going to lose in some way, shape or form. And I, we saw with the, with the COVID scenario with all these manufacturers and how that delayed like Tom's car and many others in the industry. What we're also going to find out is.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I think we've all seen this is not only is it the production of the new cars, but it's also the parts availability. So if you get in a car wreck, how long does it take to get that car fixed? If you have a piece that just breaks and it's under warranty, is that car going to be sitting at the lot for six weeks or two months to get fixed for something that's relatively simple just because they don't have the parts? There's so many spider web of issues that come with this.
00:27:50
Speaker
I mean, it does factor into some buying decisions, I think for a lot of people.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I was just about to say, you know, Tom's Mackey was made in Mexico and delivered, but a lot of the parts that I think, I'm just speculating, I haven't researched this, but a lot of the parts I think are still made in the US, possibly for cars that are made other places, even if they're assembled in Mexico or whatnot. So to your point, just because the car is assembled in Japan or Mexico or wherever, a lot of the parts are still sourced from the US.
00:28:20
Speaker
if the strike goes broader than right now, it just sounds like it's a small version, but if it goes into part supply, another thing, it's going to really hurt, you know, not only parts availability for new cars, but for existing cars as well. So regardless of how this stuff works out with the UAW strike and the big three, obviously we're keeping tabs on it and we're hoping for a resolution that is satisfactory to everyone involved because we don't want to see anybody
00:28:43
Speaker
having to deal with the heartaches for not having employment or taking forever to get their EVs or whatever it's going to come with this. Cause nothing really good.
00:28:52
Speaker
is going to come for a strike. But, uh, looking ahead to further episodes, we are looking into, what is it Mike? A special guest who was in one of the first Tesla employees and who I know fairly well. And he, uh, has some interesting stories to tell. So I'm really excited for that. He shall remain unnamed until further notice.
00:29:16
Speaker
Okay. And we are also going to be bringing an episode in regards to subscriptions that are being applied to a lot of new vehicles, whether it be like my Maki that has a blue cruise subscription that allegedly is going to end in December or BMW in their heated seats or whatever else. But that's a trend that's happening in all automobiles, but we're going to talk about how that applies to electric cars.
00:29:39
Speaker
I'm excited about that one. And sometime late October, we're going to talk about I'm getting new tires for my vehicle. And so talk about the whole EV tire landscape, because we did a podcast on that a little over a year ago, but a lot of good information for our newer listeners. And you get to hear my experience as I get new tires for the winter on my car. Awesome. Thanks, guys. All right. See you. See you.
00:30:01
Speaker
Thank you for listening to plug in for more. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, check out the one-stop EV Marketplace, evuniverse.com. Until next time.