Alex Lowe: I'm Alex, he's Jim. And this is the Charging Status EV podcast. You're right, mate. I'm not too bad. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. You're looking taller than me at the moment. You're on a higher chair. I'm on a high chair. How is the experience? It's it's elevating. Yeah. Yeah. Literally and fig figuratively. Yeah. ⁓ we're in a hotel room at the moment. ⁓ nothing strange about that. Couple of couple of men about town in a hotel room. but we're we're actually here for a car event. We're here for a K Gm event. Alex has has been with the car this afternoon. I'm doing tomorrow morning, but we're both staying here tonight. So we thought, why not bang a quick podcast out? Yeah. And we might as well start with that. What do you think of it so far? Tell us what it is first. So KGM have got two new pickup trucks. The existing musso, which we both quite liked when we drove it, they've given that car quite a big facelift. So it's got the same engine. It looks a lot different. I think it looks quite cool to be fair. Looks more like the Torres now, doesn't it? Kind of. ⁓ has it got a bit more of that front end to it? That's the E V one. Right. The D the diesel one looks like a bit more of a Maxis, maybe. ⁓ okay. It looks I think it looks really good. Yeah. On off road ties. ⁓ looks quite good. As long as that's the only similarity to a Maxis. All right. what else have they done? It's bit bit refreshed inside, got more buttons and that sort of stuff and it's a bit taller. Mm-hmm. ⁓ so yeah, I and we drove out off road. ⁓ so we drove down so we're actually in somewhere near Oxford and we drove about half an hour somewhere to an off road course and we drove that off road, performed very well. Then we we drove ⁓ back in the ⁓ electric version. Yeah. ⁓ the electric version for all intents and purposes is the Torres EVX underneath, albeit with four drive now, ⁓ and a pickup bed. So Yeah, the the very good. I'd say both of them are very good for the price. Cool. Yeah. ⁓ we're we're actually not doing video on these, are we? No. No. ⁓ so there'll be we'll both do a written review on our websites. ⁓ but we just don't have enough time to film. Quite often at these events you end up with someone else, you get paired up with someone else. More often than not, the person you're paired up with is like a written journalist rather than someone that does video and actually we've only got the car for cu well, we've got we did two pickups for what, a couple of hours or something. I drove Both cars on the road for an hour total. Like total. And then pick up truck for an hour off road, actually half an hour 'cause it was split and then that was it basically. I did a bit of towing as well, actually. Yeah. So I've never towed anything on the road and that was quite fun. Right, okay. You didn't have to reverse, did you? I did. ⁓ well yeah. So ⁓ I didn't I'm a bit embarrassed to say I didn't want to go up my own enough trailer because who knows what could happen. So I went to have one of the guys from KGM. ⁓ and we yeah, we it was fine. And then he said, Right, I want you to reverse into this bay. And he was like, ⁓ I'm actually quite impressed. ⁓ really? Yeah, I did quite well. Wow. Quite good. Jeez. So I towed with the electric one. empty trailer. ⁓ so it didn't really affect the emp the fuel efficiency that much. But yeah. That reminds me of your first press card 'cause you reversed that into a trailer, didn't you? I reversed it into a tree. ⁓ sorry, a tree. The the tree jumped out on you though, didn't it? Yeah. It's quite a long tree. Yeah. Yeah. I don't speak about that. No. I'd never bring it up as you know. No, not for a while you haven't actually. I do appreciate that. No. I haven't seen you for a few weeks though. ⁓ well I felt like the other week we were just spent all week together pretty much, didn't we? We had that BYD thing and something else and something else. Yeah. Yeah. And then it feels like a long time ago, knit. It does now. Yeah. So we haven't recorded an episode for a little while now. A little while here, but yeah. I thought you might have grown a bit since then, but No. And I've shrunk? Yeah? Yeah. Nice. Yeah. What have you what have you driven here in? I've driven here in the Volvo ES ninety in Hearing Aid Beige. Although I think they call it I don't know, Desert Sand or something. Desert Sand. ⁓ funnily enough, I took the video's coming out for that any day. I just it's all done. I just haven't released it yet. Nice. ⁓ but I took my friend's daughter and her friend to in fact they're both daughters of my friends. ⁓ okay. Not that anyone's gonna check up on this. But took them to their prom on Friday in that. And which is why there's a bit of glitter on the back seat in in the video. But, you know, these are two sixteen year old girls who I thought would be absolutely devastated about getting into a beige car for their prom. Yeah. And I mean loads of people are getting out of Ferraris and Bentleys and Lambos and all the rest of it. ⁓ and they were like, ⁓ I like the colour. It's sort of goldy. ⁓ okay. Yeah. I was like, All right, we'll go with that. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ that's a lovely car. I drove it briefly around Montmillbrook. Yeah. But quite hard. Right. Which wasn't the most suitable thing to be doing. It's not a car really to drive hard, I don't think. And it doesn't th there's nothing about it that makes you want to drive it hard. No. Having said that, ⁓ you do make reasonably quick progress on the motorway with it. And a lot of that is because it's a one of the quietest cabins I've ever been in, I think. It's very quiet. And it's so smooth and so comfortable. You know, like we we both had the EX five recently, didn't we? Yes. And we said like the suspension was really wallowy and bouncy and not that good. Like almost too comfortable. Yeah. Volvo have managed to do it properly, but they've made this thing that is cloud like. Yeah. And even if you go into s that's the only thing is you go into like sport mode, whatever it's called. I think it's called firm suspension. Okay. And it still doesn't feel very firm. ⁓ but that's quite clever in itself, I think. Yeah. I get it's so weird me being short and you I know. I'm gonna do this. There you go. Bloody hell. Yeah. ⁓ This must be what it's like for you in a restaurant. Yeah. If you sit on the cushion. Yeah. ⁓ dear. But that's a lovely car. They they the way they've integrated all the Google stuff's really good as well. ⁓ Yeah, I've got nothing bad to say about it really. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it really is phenomenal. Eight hundred volt architecture as well, so it can charge super, super fast. Really decent range anyway. Mm-hmm. Just does it all. One one bad thing about it is that review car I've got seventy eight and a half grand. Which is a bit spinny for a Volvo. Mm-hmm. But ⁓ Yeah. Well, I sort of look at that car and think, Mm, that's quite a S class sort of car. Yeah. I guess, isn't it? So it's it seems really premium. Yeah, I just I don't think it seems as premium on the outside. Hm. Do you know what I mean? That might be what some people want though. In interior is very premium, but exterior I feel like it doesn't look like a seventy eight thousand pound car. When the interior does feel like a seventy eight thousand pound car. By the way. I was getting a massage from my ventilated seat all the way down. Nice, nice. Yeah. Which is it's not a bad place to be. But some people want, I don't know, they want a car that tells other people they've got some cash. But not in an offensive way. Yeah, whereas the Volvo it it looks it looks quite sort of understated, I think. Yeah. But the interior's where you want the money to be spent, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and the interior is pretty much faultless. Yeah, apart from the fact that the rear visibility is shocking. That actually I've got the MGI ⁓ five this week and rear visibility's not great. Right. Something funny happened when I put my video out on that. I mentioned the rear visibility being pretty poor. It's actually worse in the Volvo. Right. Considerably so. ⁓ and a few people got the hump in the comments. They were like, Well, it's got a reversing camera. Why do you need blah blah. You know, you don't put the reversing camera on when you're going down the ⁓ twenty five. ⁓ you can though. Yeah, I know you do. But do you want to be sodding around with the infotainment screen to see, you know, if John Q Law's on hot on your tail? Not really. No, not not particularly. Like you should be able to look at that bit of glass and see what's behind you. I think. I think that's a fairly basic thing. Otherwise, what a brilliant car that is. Yeah. I I think that car's got so many screens. So when we s when I saw a Goodwood, I'll be honest, I looked at the interior last year and thought, hmm. Like 'cause I didn't really spend any I just looked at it. Whereas after as you use it, 'cause there's not many buttons in it, it actually all works. So like the screen that's in the center console, it's like a shortcut arrangement. So you can click on car play and it launches it in the big screen. Yeah. It works quite well actually. I'm quite impressed with that. The only thing I found a bit frustrating is because we're not like the owners of the car. Yeah. You're not logged in as such. No. And I I'm not gonna go in I couldn't do it. No, I would yeah. You see, I d I just don't ever do that 'cause I think I'm then gonna get ownership emails about a car I don't own. ⁓ but so there's a lot of stuff you have to like accept all every time you get in. But obviously if you are the owner of that car, you're not gonna have that problem. ⁓ but it would have been nice to have like the full experience and obviously the app and all the rest of it and but ⁓ I said to you the other day on the text, didn't I, that there aren't many Tesla clones. No. And I'm gonna call it Tesla clone, but it's not a clone. It is a different thing. But obviously, on the outside there are similarities to it, but there aren't too many of those cars. In fact, there aren't any of those cars that I've driven that I would swap for my Tesla. And I think I probably would with the IM five, 'cause I thought it was bloody brilliant. I've done some quite significant miles on it this week already. and ⁓ yeah, I quite like it. It's very efficient. Yeah. Really efficient. Yeah, which you again you don't expect. No. Which makes me like the main main thing I thought was like, okay, I've done four hundred miles so far and it's got four miles per kilowatt hour. When I reviewed the Lotus and Maya, which has the same size battery, give or take a few kilowatt, it wasn't doing anywhere near that. Mm. I know it's a very different car, but like they've obviously done something quite different to manage to get this much efficiency out of this kind of car. So it's very good. I also think like for Fifteen, twenty years, I was the target audience for that car. I was like the company car driver in the A four doing a million miles a a year for business and stuff. And even from that point of view, perfect. Like absolutely, this is for this audience. Let's make it for this audience. Job done. You know, great thing. Yeah. I think you can even have can you have a Teams call in it? ⁓ You can have a tick you can look at TikTok in that. ⁓ some something I've had recently you could have a Teams call in buttons Mercedes. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's Mercedes you can do, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's very good. Yeah, very good. Like four hundred mile range, easy. Yeah. And it's not that expensive for what you're getting, like the battery size. It seems quite impressive really. I've I've got a a big Wednesday ahead. Big Wednesday? Yeah. ⁓ yeah? So When I finish here tomorrow, I'm driving down to Dartford because on Wednesday morning I'm going to Brands Hatch. And I'm going to be taking the Ionic six N around Brands Hatch. Nice. Yeah. Obviously I took it round at Millbrook. Yeah. But sort of Millbrook's not supposed to be a track, is it? It's it's a test facility. Yep. And it's there to road test cars. and ⁓ I happen to say to someone at Hyundai, I'd love to get the chance to take that round a proper track. And I'm by no means a track driver. I've never neither have I never done a track day before. ⁓ I've I imagine I've got very low skill level for that kind of stuff. ⁓ but I'm so excited about that I can't quite put it into words, especi especially brands hatch. I mean when I was a kid that was the British Grand Prix circuit circuit, you know. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait for that. I think they're gonna have some heritage stuff there as well. ⁓ I'm guessing they'll have like I thirty N, I twenty N, yep. That sort of stuff. ⁓ hopefully an INIC five N as well, because you know how much I love that. Is there any other cars they've got that I think they've only started really doing performance stuff, haven't Well back back in the day they had they had the coupe, didn't they? But that wasn't really performance performance. Wonder if the was the Velocitas ⁓ Veloc what's it called? Velociter. Fellow Star. That might be that, yeah. Don't know that was sold here. No, I think. I think it was a US owned. I remember seeing it on Thoughts of the game. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ And then but like the I twenty N, brilliant. I thirty N, brilliant. ⁓ I actually I've I love the I thirty N. I think that's a phenomenal car. Never driven it? No. No. It's got an engine in it though. Yeah. So we can't talk about that on this podcast. No. ⁓ But yeah, can't wait for that. And then of course we've got Goodwood. ⁓ yes. ⁓ this episode will probably come out after Goodwood. Quite possibly. Yeah. Yep. ⁓ so y you've probably already seen an episode with us at Goodwood. ⁓ but you're going up the hill and a JQ eight? I think a Moda seven. And a Moda seven. ⁓ Hmm. The plot thickens. I don't know. So I was supposed to be going up the hill in a cyberstar. ⁓ that's just literally ten minutes ago. Been push back until like six o'clock, which I can't do. ⁓ so I'm now not going up the hill, but I had also been invited at the same time that I was going up in the cyberstur, I'd been invited by JQ to go up in a JQ eight and I was told, Sorry, the place it has gone 'cause I said I can't do it, sorry, MG have already said yes. Blah blah blah. ⁓ so I've gone back and said I Actually, MG have just moved me to a different time, so I c I am available now. And they've said, ⁓ sorry, that space has gone to Alex Lowe. ⁓ sorry applied and said I'm gonna kick him in the ball. So ⁓ I haven't done that yet, but I will. Thanks. It's all right. Yeah. Yeah, I've I didn't I've never been up the hill at Goodwood. I've only been to Goodwood once and that was last time. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. But ⁓ just being ⁓ in ⁓ in position waiting for that start line. Like when you're on that start line you're like, ⁓ God, I've seen this a million times. It's it's quite surreal actually. And you'll probably have batch doing commentary while you're going up there. I hope I hope he's doing commentary again this year. He's he's brilliant. Yeah, absolutely brilliant at it. Yeah. If ever there was a man made to do commentary in Goodwood. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. That'd be quite fun though. Yeah, yeah. So hopefully it's not as hot last year, because we recorded an episode with Tish last year and I looked like a grapefruit. I think it's gonna be worse. ⁓ man. But ⁓ I looked earlier and it said twenty nine degrees and just full sunshine, I think. ⁓ so that's not good. We'll have to try and get a a guest on again. Yeah. This year. See who we run into. Hmm. It's worth doing. Yeah. There we go. what else is happening? I had the prelude last week. Yeah. Was it last week? It was last week. Yeah, that was really good. Mm. Yeah, it was very good. Yeah, I know it's not an E V, but it was a it's a half E V. Have you seen Honda have got a ⁓ concept car going up for Goodwood? I'm not sure what that is going to be. That's gonna be a prelude type R, yeah, I think. Like being it that it's some sort of prelude concept. Yeah. And judging by their timelines previously, that'll probably end up coming out this time next year. Yeah. Because the super N top. Yeah, but that that could be very interesting. Yeah, because this year they're taking the Super N production car up for goodwood as well, I saw so. Nice. Nice, yeah. ⁓ we should probably leave it there, shouldn't we? ⁓ there is one more bit of news. ⁓ is there? Yeah. ⁓ of course. Skywell. Skywell. This is breaking news today. ⁓ well it's not Skywell, is it? It's no importer. No. So Skywell themselves are are still doing well, ⁓ in other countries. ⁓ but The company that imports them to the UK, this is the Skywell was their third brand that they managed. D FSK, ⁓ Ceres. Ceres never happened. And Skywell s a D F SK the other day they announced that no one no customers are gonna get any support going forward. And then now Innovation Automotive, who imports Skywell, has gone a bit yeah. Yeah, this is actually a bit of a big flashing warning light people, you know, investing in a new Chinese vehicle, isn't it? Obviously we've got brands like MG who are massively well established here and a Moda and JQ are now pretty well established despite only being here for ten minutes. But, you know, some someone like Skywell, especially they come to market with a car that really, from everything I understand, wasn't fit for purpose when it was launched. I know that they've improved it. I mean just I just would never trust getting into something like that until it's mm established. And and particularly when they're working with an importer. Yeah. Because it could just go like that. Yeah. So the difference is the difference is everyone else really apart from one or two has done it themselves. Yeah. They've got the money behind it to sort of let's say lose some money to start with. Yeah. And make it work. And then you'll start getting people 'cause I don't know if you were telling me, but someone else was telling me that people don't buy wanna want to buy a car unless they see it on the road elsewhere. Yeah. I don't know who was saying that. Me, I think. Yeah, possibly. Because when when I was in ch when I was in ⁓ Scotland the other week, all the rental cars up there are BYDs. Yeah. You could tell their rentals 'cause they those stickers inside. And that's gonna help And I th I think there were a lot of JQs before. And MGs as well, no. And they've sold cartloads of JQs. Yes, that helps people see it on the road. So that that sometimes happens with the lease deals. Like you'll see there'll be a showroom price ⁓ over here and then actually the lease deals are phenomenal and it's because the manufacturers said, let's I mean, ⁓ Aura did it, didn't they, with the the funky cat. It was like thirty grand or something to buy one. Yeah. And ⁓ you could lease one for like hundred and eighty quid a month. And then people start to see them on the road and then they start to sell a few. ⁓ Obviously that came to an end, but they did have actually quite a good couple of years of sales. Yeah, they did. And you you do often see one around, don't you? Yeah. And that isn't that the reason the aura disappeared isn't because of any financial issues. Mm. 'Cause ⁓ what are they called now? I've forgotten what the the importer for Subaru and the import International Motors. That's it. They're doing really well 'cause they've got Subaru Izuza. It just so happens that well, the actually the main reason is the fact that production has actually ended of the Aura ⁓ in Thailand, I think it is. ⁓ so they're actually bringing out a new one, but no one was buying them anyway, were they? Towards the end. Sadly not. I think they sold like five thousand last year or four thousand last year and twenty-six this year. Yeah. So But yeah, so not only is Skywell not great for ⁓ customers, but it's also a lot of the dealers that signed on with Skywell, they're independent family dealerships that you get rent. That's that's the people gonna be hit the worst because They've invested so much money and time into the brand. Yeah. And then they're sort of left like, well, no one's gonna buy these now. Yeah. Like And like what I mean the the few of them will set up as like specialist service places and stuff, I'm sure. But who's gonna want under warranty? I don't know. And that kind of stuff. Yeah no. ⁓ apparently Skywall are looking for a different importer to the UK. Well it might be that it might I am or Stellantis or someone takes it on. Yeah, it might be okay. ⁓ but yeah. But yeah, it is just a ⁓ yeah. But Unfortunately, like the the the PR hasn't been great from the off, has it? So ⁓ no. No one's gonna think, ⁓ yes. No can't wait to get my hands on that one. No. Where if something like ⁓ G came up in the open market or ⁓ even an X Peng or something, you could see people thinking, ⁓ yeah, actually we'll get behind that. Just because other Chinese brands are doing well here doesn't mean that everyone's gonna have that success. Yeah. There's only enough room for some of them. And we've always said that we've always said that ⁓ eventually these brands are sort of gonna it's gonna narrow, isn't it? So So I think like n end of next year we'll be close to a hundred different brands in the UK. A hundred different car brands. Wow. And you think there's only the market's only what, two point two million cars a year, something like that. And that split across a hundred looks a lot worse than when it's split across seventy. ⁓ so I I don't think it's just the Chinese brands that will go though. I mean, there will obviously be some old establishment names that will will go as well. ⁓ but it will make people think twice. I would have no worries personally about a lot of them because I know the company behind. ⁓ but someone like Skywell and I don't know, the pr probably one or two others where you think, ⁓ jeeze, am I gonna do that right now? I know. Yeah. And as I as I was saying, a lot of like JQ Cherry Moda ⁓ MG, it's it's the brand itself that bought it here. Yeah. So they've always got that resource behind them. And like Cherry waited, was it twenty one years? Yeah. You know, they s decided twenty one years ago that they were gonna come to the UK and they've spent that long. ⁓ waiting for the right time and and planning and everything and looking at everyone else in the market and thinking, let's take that bit from them, that bit from them and learn from this. Yep. And it's not just a case of, well, here's a car that's on sale in China, so let's let someone import it and you know. ⁓ but yeah, interesting times. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. If you've if you've got a Sky World, by the way, f firstly commiserations, but secondly, ⁓ I would be writing to everyone you possibly cla can, including the dealer you got it from, asking who's going to honour your warranty, ⁓ where you go for servicing and stuff. And if they say mm n no one, not you're on your own, ⁓ I would possibly ⁓ speak to ⁓ a lawyer and see where you stand. Yeah. I mean with Fisker, I think I listened to the I was actually listening to another podcast as one talk about Fiskers. ⁓ there's been like owner groups that have all set up that they've Yeah, it's quite Quite cool, but th so they've ac they'll actually s I know there are actually a couple of Fisca specialists in the UK now, but they were the owner groups were like sending over Fisca techs, weren't they, from the US and from Europe and stuff. Yeah, there's a bloke who's the I think the these people in the UK have re engineered the software. Yeah. Or like reverse engineered it, I should say. Yeah. Which means they can provide updates for it and so yeah. Yeah. But yeah, anyway. Hmm. Bit of a sad note to end on. It is. But yeah, ⁓ thank you so much for watching and listening. ⁓ if you like this podcast, please subscribe on YouTube, please subscribe on Apple Podcast as well if you're listening on there. Be greatly appreciated. And share it as far and wide as you can and please leave comments. Yeah. Because all these things help to boost the various algorithms. We've been doing this for a while now, haven't we? Yeah. And ⁓ it'd be nice if a few more people got to see it, stroke, hear it. ⁓ in the meantime, you can find my channel, ⁓ The Interface Cars. There's regular car reviews on there. And your channel, definitely not a guru. Yep, yep. More regular leasing content, car news and other car reviews. Car reviews and yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for watching, then listening, and we'll see you again next time. Bye-bye.