Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning and welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday for March 19th, 2025. About 39 degrees, gonna start drying up today and then getting wetter later tonight, that sort of thing. First off, I wanted to give you a quick update on the sports stadium socialism grift alert and the Eugene Emeralds which we talked about a few weeks ago

are not going to be in Eugene. This is going to be their final season. Eugene Emeralds baseball team. It's their 70th season high a affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, right? There was a meeting with Medford Parks and Recreation back in January. They had a little sit-down conversation. Not really sure what happened or if there was any conclusions brought, but they're trying to get the city of Medford to be a welcome home for them. And I just wanted to remind you of this. And the reason it came to mind again is because News Watch 12 updated the story yesterday, KDRV updated it and saying that,

yeah, we would like to do this work. We're going to be leaving Eugene. This is the final year officially. And it comes right down to it. My buddy, Bill London, of course, does news here. Of course, he's very well aware of what was going on with Eugene Emeralds in Eugene. And it is pretty solid that essentially what they wanted,

they wanted a free stadium paid for by the taxpayers of Eugene. And the voters there said, no, not just no, but heck no. Just told him, forget about it. And as it is right now, the Eugene Emeralds share the stadium with the Ducks, the Ducks ball team, I guess, for whatever reason. And the way it's getting reported though is, and I love this point of the story, Medford baseball fans have already rallied around the city's collegiate summer baseball team, the Medford Rogues.

Rogues co-owner and president Dave May, good guy, I've talked with him before here, he says, it certainly puts us in a weird position, Dave told NewsWatch 12. We could possibly have to relocate ourselves, fold up shop or potentially share a stadium. Who knows what that would look like? Just like with the city, it's still early in the process for us too. Despite the idea of a new baseball team coming into town, May says he supports the Emeralds in Medford under one condition. I am supportive of it if it's what the community will support," Dave May said. If the community is not going to get behind it, then I think another place would be more beneficial for that organization. Now, what do you think Dave May means? It's kind of like you have to read the code when you have sports team folks coming up

to city government, in Medford's case, Medford's Parks and Recreation. Now you know darn well the Good Ole Boy Network and there are members of the Chamber, I'm sure they would just be absolutely happy to have more sports stadium socialism for Southern Oregon. Well that's like four S's. Sports stadium socialism. In other words, socialized costs, privatized profits. You know when you hear the term public-private partnership. When you hear public-private partnership,

That's when you need to wake up and wake up really hard. Public-private partnership or... I have no doubt that the city of Medford or there are not the city, but there are many forces within the city of Medford that would absolutely love to hang yet another tax or fee, increase the the parks fee, whatever it would take. You know, if it was it's five bucks a month right now so that we can have subsidized birthday parties over at rogex for the 920 or so. Remember how they were crowing about this? I know I've lost that argument and this and that the other. But still, people are wanting to force you to pay for other people's entertainment and hobbies. And that's the bottom line as much as, hey, I love going to a baseball game too. I like that part about it. I just pay for it. But

when they talk about, when they talk about, well, you know, if it's right for the Emeralds, if the community will get behind it, right for the community and getting behind the Eugene Emeralds, that translates to taxpayers pay for a free stadium. That's what it always means. And it's always a bad deal. It is always a bad deal. Hey, it's a good deal for maybe an occasional hotel of the team and maybe the city likes the idea that they might get a little bit of more tax revenue

from the hotel motel tax and rental cars or whatever. But I think you also have to remember that this is a bus league sort of thing and it's not one of those kind of stories of a team in which, oh boy, people are going to be flying in to watch the Eugene Emeralds. They're not flying into Eugene to watch the Eugene Emeralds right now, according to Bill London. He's told me all about it. And so he continues to warn me, and I will continue to warn you, about the sports socialism subsidized stadium grift alert. And with Eugene cutting loose with the Eugene Emeralds, then chances are we might see a little more talk about this one. And I would not be surprised to see, well, you know, you're already paying pretty, you're used to paying 60 bucks a year for a for Rogue X so he can swim. Certainly you would love to have a semi-professional sports stadium come here because that would put us on the map there. It didn't help Eugene. It didn't help Eugene.

And as Bill London would tell me, he says it was the same 2,000 to 3,000 people a game, watching it every week. 2,000 to 3 three thousand locals would enjoy and do that, but that's not the reason to sit there and throw attacks or increase the fees on the rest of the community. So I'm just giving you a little update. News Watch 12 updated the story, so I'll update it with you too. Okay, alright. What else is going on?

We had a guy sentenced in Medford US District Court yesterday, 15 years in prison, carjackings at gunpoint. Wow. Wow, someone's actually going to prison and going to prison hard. Eastern Oregon man sentenced to prison. It was Gregory Escobedo from Ontario. 180 months. Okay, 180 months in federal prison, three years supervised release, and he'll serve

the remaining 80 months of his federal sentence in federal prison. He was at an apartment complex in Ontario, and Escobedo ordered a victim to exit the vehicle in Gum Point, drove away the stolen vehicle, then approached a vehicle parked on the side of the road, carjacked another one, brandishing a firearm. Well, I tell you, it's nice to see an occasional dirtbag actually get a serious, serious sentence. 15 years, that's serious. We'll take care of that. All right? Capitol Chronicle reporting this morning. They're at it again. They're at it again here in the state legislature to try to go for open primaries. Can hyper-partisan national politics convince both parties to support open primaries in Oregon? A bill to be heard in the legislature this week will help answer this question. Will events at the national level help break the hold that the Democrat and Republican parties

have over the selection of candidates in Oregon's closed primaries? That could be one effect of the chaos in Washington, D.C., that is disrupting party politics at the local level. I think the chaos at the national level is caused by the immune system of the D.C. blob reacting violently to the injection of Trump policies, I think is what's going on. That's what they call chaos. But what Capitol Chronicle is reporting here, support for open primaries has been growing steadily in Oregon as more voters opt for non- affiliated status. These voters who now comprise 37% of the electorate

outnumber registered voters in each of the two major parties. And you know what I would say? So what? If they're not affiliated, they don't want to be affiliated with a party, okay, then you don't get to choose my party's candidate. I've had it up to here with this kind of thought that we should have open primaries. This is what they're trying to do. This is a bill they're looking at this week, House Bill 3166. You know, and they're trying to do. This is a bill they're looking at this week, House Bill 3166. And they're trying to get non-affiliated then to get into the primaries. Well, if you're not affiliated, you don't care about the parties.

And if you don't care about the parties, why should you be in there selecting our candidates, Democrats or Republicans. If you want to be involved in picking Democrats or Republicans, then become a Democrat or Republican. Yeah, I want the people who don't really care about my party to choose the candidate. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Nothing's stopping the non-affiliated from becoming affiliated or starting their own party. You could join the Pacific Green Party if you wanted to do. Now, the one thing that I will, that I would admit, I don't think that we should have primary elections period. Because if you're going to elect, I don't think we should be spending taxpayer money to determine who a candidate is for a party.

So that's what I would support. I would support ending primary elections. And if you have Democrats and Republicans that want to figure out who their candidates are going to be, well then they can caucus or they can conduct their own elections themselves. I think that's what should be done. I don't like the idea of taxpayer-funded elections, but you can agree or disagree with me on that. But still, this idea of wanting to push to make sure that people who don't give a darn about your party end up helping choose your party's

candidate, I'm not a big fan of that. OPB, Oregon Public Broadcasting reporting this morning, thanks to AP, Oregon City's unveiling a new poll as they press for stronger anti-camping laws. Boy, I couldn't have predicted that, right? League of Oregon cities circulating data in this story, a pretty good one actually, suggesting that most voters disapprove of elected officials' attempt to stem the bum crisis,

the homeless bum crisis, and supporting stronger policies to restrict camping. Now the league is lobbying on behalf of Oregon's 241 cities, quickly running out of time. There are a bunch of proposals that are trying to get a hearing by this Friday. If it's not heard by this Friday, everything is pretty much dead. Among the findings by the polling of the cities, interesting, most voters not happy with how people are tackling homelessness. No surprise you would figure that out here in southern Oregon, and they take a really dim view of what the state of Oregon is doing because the state of Oregon has made it harder. Survey findings 68 percent of

respondents didn't approve of state leaders efforts while 62 percent disapproved of local leaders. 60% of voters support a ban on camping in public places, even if shelter space isn't available. Thank you. That should be the rule. Now that wasn't true of Democrat respondents or young voters. So young voters, the dim bulbs who have no life experience, and Democrats, which are much of the same, dim bulbs period, they don't

like this idea. They oppose such a policy. Three-fourths of voters said they support laws that allow cities to remove camps after giving warning to residents of the camp practiced currently allowed. And a big majority of respondents say restricting camps on playgrounds, near public schools and on sidewalks. Voters also overwhelmingly supporting policies requiring campers to pick up trash in their encampments, with 95% of respondents signaling support for such a policy. It would also be really interesting to see if they would support no drinking and drugs in these campsites too. I know a fellow can dream, right? these campsites too, I know a fellow can dream, right? Remember, it wasn't either NewsWatch 12 or KOBI that had that fellow that they didn't show in the

camera being held up by two homeless guys who said, we're not such bad people. Not saying you're bad people, God loves you, but you're drunk as a skunk at 7 in the morning and you can't stand up. If you have to be held up at 7 in the morning so you can do the stand up crying for News Watch 12 or KOBI television cameras, there is a problem in your life that you need to take a little note of and do something about that. All right? All right. Essentially, what's going on here is that the cities are saying that Oregon has made it a lot harder. Oregon did raise the bar. Now what's favored by the League of

Oregon cities would require anyone suing a city over camping rules to state specifically why the policy is not objectively reasonable. That's the challenge. The state of Oregon ended up putting a law in place that says that you have to have objectively reasonable standards, which is not a standard at all. It's just this nefarious thing. And then you have every liberal group in the world filing a lawsuit every other day in the city of Grants Pass, that kind of thing. Objectively reasonable.

Reasonable to whom? Now, if you're a drunk, drug addicted, homeless person, reasonable is that you just give me everything free and let me camp wherever I want and crap up the city. That's what they think of as objectively reasonable and the city or the state of Oregon seems to want to go along with that, kind of. It's 626 at KMED on the Bill Meyers Show. Joel here from Butler Ford and Truck Center and I'll show you something other dealers won't.

That's right, the invoice on any new Ford vehicle on the lot. Hey, if it's not posted on the vehicle, come inside and I'll show it to you. Once you see the invoice, let's talk about a price is fair to both of us. It's the simple, friendly way I like to sell new Fords. And since March is Ford Truck Month, I've got an F-150 lease deal where your monthly payment is only $275 a month and you get two years or 25,000 miles of maintenance included. All for $2.75 a month on a new Ford F-150. Hey, if I had more time, I'd also tell you about the $10,000 discounts on Escapes and Broncos and a super low lease deal that I've got on a Mach-E that goes from

0 to 60 in 3.3 seconds. Come on down and test drive that one. Invoices posted, $10,000 discounts, low lease payments where? Butler Ford in Ashland. Just 12 short minutes down the freeway, exit 19 where we've got your truck, your SUV, your pre-owned, and all invoices posted. 36-month lease with 75-letter cash or trade due at signing on VIN number E-52-552. We're selling price of $48,000 after all rebates and discounts on approved credit through Florida Motor Finance. Excludes tax license title and 250-dollar dock fees. See dealer for details. Hi, this is Bill Meyer and I'm with Charisse from No Wires Now, your Dish Premier local retailer. It's time to switch to Dish. If you have DirecTV or CableTV, call me today to see how I can save you money. Plus, I'll lower your internet and cell phone bills. And those offers in the mail from Dish, you can go through NoWiresNow for those.

Call me at 541-680-5875. Call Cherise like I did or visit their showroom off Biddle Road in Metford. NoWiresNow.com. Restrictions apply. Call for details. Internet and cell phone service not provided by DISH. We've heard it all. The kids, they dropped the cargo box on the hood.

A three-car collision in the driveway? Yes, it's possible. I suppose that's why they call it a learner's permit. But the reason you need auto body repair doesn't matter to us as much as making your car look new again and the process easy for you. At Lithia Body and Paint, we've been getting Southern Oregon drivers back on the road since 1946.

Speed, service, accuracy. That's Lithia Body and Paint on Bullock Road in Medford. This is Randall with Advanced Air and I'm on KMED. 628, HF Merkley update now. Oh tiptoe to the window, by the window, that is where I'll be. Come tiptoe through the tulips with me. Yes indeed, Senator Merkley did attend, put on a couple of town halls here in Southern Oregon, Grants Pass and Ashland. Funny how he never comes to Medford.

Kind of surprised about that, maybe not really. Tom, you wanted to respond to something that Senator Merkley said at that town hall in Southern Oregon. What were you thinking? Well, I don't know Bill if it's something he said. Maybe he'd be closer. He said everything he said. I mean, so I point people to an article in the RV Times. So if you go on the RV Times website and scroll on down, I think it's available to people who aren't signed up. But anyway, yeah, so he came down and so forth. He called, you know, Trump is a tyrant because and a Russian agent because he wants to end the war in Ukraine, you know, wants to maintain the United States as being the world policeman. And out of curiosity, do the gray pony tail types that were at the event, do they volunteer to send their grandkids over to Ukraine you know to help Merck? Well I wasn't there Bill but would not surprise me and after all Jeff Gold and Pam Marsh were in the audience and so forth so it was the real love fest there and but he he talked about you know

Trump's cutting back everything for the protecting environment. And then he says that Lomakotsi, the local clearing brush and so forth, that many of them come from Latin America and they're no longer able to have the funds to keep on working there. So it's just terrible. Well, if that isn't too bad. Oh, gosh, if that isn't too bad. I didn't realize that I pay taxes to the federal government to make sure and keep Latin American workers employed here in Southern Oregon.

Yeah, exactly. And then he urged people to join Indivis and we have to just take us back to becoming a third world country in order to have this deal with climate crisis. I mean, the whole thing is insane and it sounds like the audience was just like... Oh, he was probably eating... They were probably eating out of his hands, I think is what's going on, right? The true belief. Mostly it's true believers that show up at the Merck. I get this, you know, it's hyper, there's a lot of partisanship on such matters. He, you know, Merckley is much like a stockbroker. He's going to talk his book. You know what I'm getting at here?

It's like whatever. This is the playbook and it's not unexpected. And I think that honestly, this is in reaction to a lot of Democrat anger that the fact that there is even a continuing resolution to keep things going. And Trump appears to be getting some wins, even though the whole system right now,

as you know, Tom, is throwing up. And everything we're seeing in the in the news cycle About President Trump is usually about yet another judge That is that is throwing a spanner in the wrench or a spanner a monkey wrench into the you know The system right and trying to do it. This is all they have. This is all they have. You know? Well, I'm really staggered trying to figure out where the typical Democrat mindset is, because it's sort of like war is wonderful if the perpetrator has a D after the name. You know, Biden's, you know, everything that billions of dollars.

Well, I have to tell you, that's a bit of a bipartisan thing You know the the anti-war right disappeared under George Bush, and I remember it right and just like the anti-war Democrats came out during Bush and The anti-war Democrats went away during Biden right and now they're back Yeah, I know it's a mind work over to say the least, but it's just I'm just staggered by somehow war is wonderful, you know, in this whole mindset. And there's no proof of a climate crisis, there's just none. I mean, if you think about the size of the globe

and how in the world do you measure the temperature of a globe and how it can be screwed up, it's sort of like my facts can beat up your facts. And it's just the insanity, the whole mindset that's prevalent in this country right now, it's just staggering. It's like we're just a bunch of mind-controlled zombies here in this country. Yeah. And the judicial rulings continue to astound me and it's like every day that you know the hits just keep coming and it almost seems like everything is designed and this is really like the immune system of the blob reacting. This is the hissy-fitting you know of the blob right, this is the hissy fitting of the blob right now, when you have a judge

that says that the president who is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and this happened yesterday, but that the orders said that we were not going to accept transgender troops, which by the way was a rule put in place by the former commander in chief. So the former commander in chief can change the rules and-in-chief. So the former commander-in-chief can change the rules, and the current one cannot. See how we're getting at here? The audacity of the judiciary right now, because we say that we're violating transgender people's rights. Listen, the military, when you are a GI, you don't got rights. You know, that's just the way it goes. If you choose to join the military, you are owned by the government. That's why they call it government issue, right? This

whole idea that you have a right to join the military just isn't so, Tom. Just isn't. Yeah, the way they've weaponized the legal system. I mean, here's the president, he's in charge of the borders and so forth, and he's going to ship out all these criminals, and these are really serious criminals, ships them out. Then you have some tinpot judge trying to countermand the president. Yeah, yeah, fly them back. It's kind of like that Babylon Bee had a great headline on this, federal judge orders prices of eggs to rise. Well, I'm a judge. It's supposed to

respond to it. As far as I'm concerned, I know that they're saying they did not deny the judge. I don't care if he did. At some point, has to be pushback, otherwise we don't have three co-equal branches of government. Hey, Tom, I got a roll. I got Eric standing by. We're going to talk with him. Wheels up Wednesday. We'll catch you a little later if you don't mind. Thanks again. Okay. All right. 6.35. Afternoons. Yep. Eric Peters joins me. Tesla and China's BYB. is it BYB? Yeah, they're electric. They're teaming up. I'm sure that's a very, very good thing for America, but we'll talk with Eric about that and a bunch more and safety. If you've been injured in an accident, you've got Reid Law Firm on your...

Welcome to the Bill Meyer Show on 1063 KMED. Give Bill a call at 541-770-5633. That's 770-KMED. Off the road on a crazy train or out on the road on a crazy train. I don't know. Eric Peters welcome back to the program. I'm almost thinking about making wheels up Wednesday's opener, always themed around crazy train because every week it seems to be a bit of that. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Now let's see. Is this week Elon man good or Elon man bad? Let's see. Elon man in Oregon, very bad according to leftists as the Tesla dealerships continue to get... And by the way, this is absolutely horrible, the crimes being committed against Elon. But you and I will tend to look at Elon with a... We take a cautious view. I think that would be a way of looking at this.

I'm glad to see the astronauts rescued yesterday from the space station. You know, Elon good in that particular thing, doing great work with that. Elon bad though that he wants us to pay for trips to Mars, okay? So that's what you always have to view it through this. And then you look at, well, Elon's Tesla dealerships being attacked, horrible crime, and of course these are the hissy-fitters, you know, from the left, arguably the left that are doing this. But at the same time, I don't like the idea that Elon is buddying up with Communist China here. That's one of the articles that you featured this week on epautos.com.

So I think it's better to take a cautious view of the man. What do you think this morning? Well, I like a fact-based view of the man. You know, and again, I amen that property destruction, irrespective of who owns the property, is an outrageous thing that should never be tolerated. I in no way endorse that sort of thing. But I think it's very interesting that all of these angry leftists who are smashing and torching their Teslas, who said a couple of years ago that you have to buy Tesla because the climate is changing, seem not to care too much about that anymore. And particularly when it comes to burning these things up, how many emissions do you think are produced by one burning Tesla relative to what comes out of the tailpipe

of a modern vehicle with an engine? Yeah, probably equivalent of about 20 or 30 bad diesel buses in Mexico City, okay? Yeah. Just put it that way. It's pretty bad. But the article you reference, I titled it Our Common Enemy, has to do with something that the Financial Times reported on the other day. BYD is a very large conglomerate in China that makes electric vehicles, and they're working hand in glove, or want to, with Tesla against what they call Our Common Enemy, which is the combustion engine vehicle. And they want to figure out a way to dominate the so-called market, which of course isn't one because it's primarily driven by regulatory

fiat. But what the Chinese can offer is to essentially dump large quantities of their EVs onto the market, so-called, particularly in Europe, which already is farther down the green road than we are, to essentially drive the manufacturers of vehicles that aren't electric out of business. Volkswagen is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Mercedes is in trouble. Audi's in trouble. Part of the reason for that is gas costs, what, eight bucks a gallon over there, so

it's very difficult for people to afford to drive a car. Yeah, but remember though, gas costs eight or nine bucks a gallon there, but that is an artificial price. That is a government- Yeah, it's almost all taxes. That is a government-created price is what that is, like so many other things. So, you know, the other day we heard Trump talk about how Tesla is a great American car company.

Well, how's that exactly when it's partnering with these Chinese communist propped up enterprises? And that's why I say you have to be honest about what Elon is doing, the good stuff and the bad stuff, the partnering with BYD. And remember, like you have said before, Elon Musk has not gone back or repudiated his statements about the climate change arguments that have been going out there and pushing driving government policy for a long, long time. He was a beneficiary of that with the government tax breaks for his vehicles. Now he's okay, now he's okay without having tax breaks for these vehicles after he's already made his

hundreds of billions of dollars. Now he's okay with that, all right? Yeah exactly. You know I understand the frustration of the left. They're feeling very much burned by Elon Man, who is now very bad in their eyes. And I would warn the right, come on man don't get into bed. You know it's like it's like don't get into bed so cheaply. Which I think is what has been going on right now. Hey love the fraud and things being discovered by Doge. 100 billion dollars of it of it so far. And yeah

I think that he's performing a wonderful government service to root out a lot of that But you know, it's a mixed bag when you're dealing with the world's richest guy. That's all I'm saying. Okay, there's good things You know, and the left is also startling to starting apparently to discover that Tesla devices aren't exactly the safest vehicles on the road which might get us into our next conversation Yeah, and this was a very sad story and I think this could open up a conversation for this whole push to have vehicles with electronic locking systems and then you get into a wreck and stuff happens and this happened in California. It was the story of a cyber truck and what four

high school graduates in it. Three of them ended up burning to death in the cyber truck. Tell us what happened with this God knows how they were able to I guess they're one of their parents probably bought the thing but these are very young kids I guess 18 19 20 years old and somehow the the cyber truck piled into a tree and of course caught fire and before they could get out they were burned to death and the reason for that is twofold first the the locks in Tesla's are electrically controlled so if the power if the electricity isn't working the electric lock unlock buttons don't work the other

thing is that Tesla's on the exterior of the door they pioneered the use of these flush mounted door pulls that extend you know you walk up to the car in the car senses that you're there and the door handle pops out the problem is again when the electricity isn't working that doesn't work either. And then the final thing, one kid tried, you know, who's following them, tried to get them out of there but couldn't because the side glass is laminated like a windshield. So it's extremely difficult to smash that. And you know, when you're dealing with a fire it's literally a matter of seconds between life and death. And so these three

kids burned to death inside the Tesla. And the thing is, this is not necessarily unusual for the more modern cars to have electrical locking systems. Now I have a 2010 car, you know, the Chrysler here, it has an electronic locking system, but it has the same old-fashioned, gosh, what do you call it, the, you know, the posts or the, you know, the rods on there that you can pull up in a pinch. So even if for some reason the electronic lock doesn't work any longer, you can still

get it open or lock it as the case might be. Yeah, the mechanism was fundamentally mechanical, whereas what we're talking about now is an almost entirely electrically driven apparatus. So it's just relays and solenoids, things like that that control the entire process now, right? Now they do include an emergency release. The problem is that in an emergency, if you haven't planned for that

and you don't know where it is, you've never tried to use it before. And let's face it, how many people read the owner's manual? How many people know where those kinds of things are? Might be fine if you're just sitting there at a truck stop, hey, let's see what's going on here. But if the car's on on fire you need to get out right this second and you may not have the time to figure out where it is and

that seems to be what happened here. Is there a way that this could be redesigned to to make it a bit safer like let's say in a default like all right you lose you lose power or the system loses power the doors unlock? Sure that was invented something like 60 years ago. It was having a mechanical pull in tandem with if you want to have power door locks you can have an actuator so that you can push a button, you know, that unlocks the mechanism but at the same time there's still a mechanical pull that's right there and obvious that you would

use to open and close the door. But they don't have these on the Teslas. And they don't have these on a lot of the other newer cars too. Isn't that the case? Or is Tesla the only one that has? Yeah, it is. It's really unfortunate. Tesla has popularized a lot of really dumb features, including those flush-mounted door

handles I was telling you about. There are several other manufacturers, including GM vehicles. I think Cadillac does it. Hyundai does it with some of their models, some of their electric cars. And you know it's like one of these things that I guess it entrances people and they walk up to the dealer and they see this oh look how cool that is it's flush mounted there's no ugly you know keyhole there or handle. I mean yeah I suppose as a matter of styling they do they do work but there are times that you just really need a mechanical something to pull the door open as an example

When it's crashed and there's four kids inside it and it's on fire, okay Well, there ought to be you know, I as you know and everybody listening to us knows I am probably the farthest thing from a safety Nazi, right? No, but you know having a way to quickly get into the car and out of the car. I think is pretty important You know there as a number of years ago if I recall it was some kids having suffocated in trunks of cars that ended up leading to you know how the newer cars all have that glowing tag that you can pull. The emergency catch release.

Yeah the emergency catch release here. Where is that in a Tesla? Do they have things like that? You said there's an emergency release. Where do you go? Where do you go to get that? Good question. I'll look into it. I don't know offhand. But it would seem to me that if you can have something like that, and that seemed to be of all the regulations and things like that, I didn't think that was the worst one. Okay.

All right. I could see a reasonable somebody gets trapped inside the trunk or maybe you're in the mob section of a New Jersey and you get thrown in the trunk or maybe you're in the mob section of New Jersey and you get thrown in the trunk and they forget about it, then you can... No, it's not a bad idea. And things that are not bad ideas tend to organically propagate. It's the bad ideas that tend to have to be forced on us by the government. Yeah, okay. All right.

But isn't it time to maybe do something about this and have the ability, you have the right to be able to be saved from your burning vehicle? You ought to be, but you know people don't understand that. Particularly people in that age group, like the ones who died, they have no idea because they've grown up with this. They've been conditioned and taught to regard it as, oh look how cool that is. They're the cell phone generation. So tap, swipe, tap, swipe.

That's what they're used to. You know, older people remember what things used to be like. And so they have this point of comparison that makes this whole business look both stupid and dangerous at the same time. Yeah, I hope we don't all die inside our electric vehicles at some point, but you also kind of explore that further. Another great article up there today.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet But it's the software defined vehicle. It's so funny because I see a lot of this Terminology in the electronics world like well even software defined radios in which you don't put parts together discrete parts anymore Like when I was a kid, you know getting into into broadcasting and ham radio now You just have a chip and you define it via software, but now they're doing that with entire cars in essence, right? Yeah, exactly You know we have talked you and I about Modern cars becoming increasingly like cell phones well, they're literally becoming cell phones just big heavy ones that that share a common architecture and computing power and

That's on purpose because they want to turn these things into essentially the same thing that your cell phone is that is a device to track and control you that's entirely under their control and don't forget though to also sell you advertising right or to sell advertising and products to you as you are you know sitting in the back seat you know enjoying the driverless luxury right you know by the way you're not exaggerating they're actually beginning to do that. They're beginning to, you know, the touch screens that all the new cars have now when you start the thing up or you push the start button, I should say, and the screen lights

up. They're actually starting to explore the possibility of pitching you ads while the thing boots up just like some of those gas stations you go to where you're trying to fill your tank up and the thing starts pestering you with ads. Yeah. And walking down the wall or the aisles of Walmart same sort of thing happening right? Yeah by the way I wanted to mention something that I thought was really really interesting too with regard to Tesla again you know on the one hand they're beginning to recognize

that these things aren't the safest car in the world and the same thing is they're starting to similarly they're starting to lose their affection for the full self-driving technology. Oh, really? The YouTuber. Did you see the YouTube video? There was a guy who, I guess he took a bed sheet or something, and essentially he made ... Remember those old Wile E. Coyote cartoons where the Road Runner would paint the opening

to the tunnel entrance and the Coyote would smack into the wall? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember those. So basically, he did something like that, put this bed sheet thing depicting something in the road ahead or an object. And of course the Tesla, auto driving Tesla drove right into it, proving once again that this stuff is far from infallible and in fact is very dangerous.

And now of course the left is waking up to it because Elon man bad. Right, well only because he's politically unfavored by them right now. The problem always was there, which we've been talking about for years. Literally for years, literally for years these cars have been running into things and killing people but it's been very blase because, oh you know it's all for the greater good, you know you got to break some eggs if you want to make an omelet, but now apparently the left is beginning to notice these things, which I think is just hilarious. Oh my goodness. All right, at 653, Wheels Up Wednesday

with Eric Peters, automotive journalist at epautos.com. Great site, great people there and commenters. And if you have a question or comment on what we've been discussing or want to bring something else, well something else that you're experiencing on the road, join in. 770-5633 and we'll take some calls coming up. If you're, appreciate you being here for Wheels. Up Wednesday, Eric Peters, automotive journalist is with me and we're taking your calls at 7705633. Tony, you had a question about the Tesla door handles here and you're on with Eric. What you thinking? Yeah, good morning, Eric.

Good morning, Bill. Morning. Morning. My question was, well, you talk a lot about drive-by-wire, where not long ago there was actual throttle cable that would go to the carburetor or the throttle body that connected with mechanical connection. Do these newer Tesla's electric cars, they're an actual rod or cable that connects the inner door or outer door handle to the door latch, or is that all electric now, too? My understanding is it's all electrical, there's got to be some some sort

of mechanical interface for that emergency release. I haven't personally looked into it yet but the issue is that the basic system is set up to be operated electrically so if the electric system doesn't work you're in a pinch. Yeah because every car I've ever dealt with has had a steel rod going directly from the outer door handle and the door handle. Hey Tony, do you remember when it used to be that we were concerned about having roll-up windows or electric windows because, well, what happens if our car dives into the lake,

right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And now we're running everything that way in these vehicles from the sounds of it and no electricity. Yeah, I'm compounding the sounds of it. And no electricity. I'm looking at pounding the problem with those roll-up windows. You remember when the Dirty Turtles sister-in-law, I think it was Ellen Chow, if I'm remembering her name correctly, backed up her Tesla into a pond and they couldn't get her out because

they couldn't smash the windows out of the car. And of course the power windows didn't work because the thing was in the water and all the electrics fried out. Okay. Yeah. And I'm looking at this 2021 Chevy I'm driving right now and there's a button on top of the door panel, but it's flush with the door panel.

I've had a pair of needle nose pliers or something with me, I could probably pull up on it, but you know, there's no. There's no button on your, there's no button on your, there's no button on your door really to be able to lift up. Well, yeah, there's a, there's a unlock button on the door. But like you said, an emergency power's not working. Y'all your days, you're confused. You can't find the button. It's reach up and grab the,

grab the little kind of mushroom shaped door button on top of the door panel and pull it up. Well, this one here, you can't, I can't even with the 10 foot fingernail on it, I can't even open it. So anyways. Yeah, well, thanks for letting me know and sharing your story. You know, I wonder if the insurance industry

had something to do with this too, Eric. And the reason being is that, well, of course I can think of the 4Runner, the 4Runner that I drive for the radio station, my engineering vehicle. I did something that I haven't done in 40 years. I slammed the door with the keys inside it. I locked myself in there, right? There was just no way for me to do it.

And so I actually, hey, any of you guys have some wiring or a cable or something? And they helped me do it. We pulled the frame away and we popped up the button popped up the button with a little bit of work on that I can't help but wonder if the insurance mafia because of car theft ended up getting rid of that kind of stuff too or was it all the plan of the General Motors and the Chrysler's and the Tesla designers? I think certainly that was a factor you know if you go back to the era when my Trans Am was built back in the 70s, I mean any teenage kid could break into a car. It was very

simple, very easy to do that with a coat hanger. On the other hand though, the factor I think that's driving it for the most part is this obsession with safety. That you know it's safer because you get in the car and the thing automatically locks the doors. And you start moving five miles an hour or whatever it is and automatically. They've sold that to people and the people don't understand that all these electrically controlled things are hackable in the first place. Yeah and really annoying at times too. I was over and we had a, gosh what is it, Chevy Tahoe and a colleague's trying to back it up and I'm trying to open up the rear hatch

to put something in it the other day, right? And of course, it will not allow the hatch to be opened up because it's in reverse at that time. You know, all those kind of interlocks, safe, and I'm sure it all probably started because somebody got sued after getting killed, right? Yeah, Shakespeare was right about that. A lot of this does ultimately have to do with lawyers, and it also has to do with, I think, sort of a lack of introspective shame on the part of people

who screw up. You know, you do something stupid and you end up getting hurt. You know, you ought to look at yourself and say, well, gee, I did something stupid. Well, you're victim shaming. You say, well, sometimes the victim's pretty stupid, okay? Yeah, you know, like that woman who put the coffee between the hot coffee and in the McDonald's, right between her legs, and then sued McDonald's because the stuff spilled all over her AT bar. Well now then, the same thing happened the other day with Starbucks guy. Get $50 million for that one. $50 million.

Wow. All right, let me go to Wild Sam and Steve. Steve, you're on with Eric. Do you have a thought here about the kids and the Tesla and your comment on that, go ahead. Well, the Tesla's and the sale point on a lot of these electric vehicles is how quick they are. And I don't know, a Model S will do zero to 60 in two seconds. I don't know how fast the truck is,

but let's say it's three seconds. And you put a kid in there who doesn't know anything. And the first thing they're gonna do is floor floorboard the thing and then you come to a corner and you run into a tree. Yeah. You know it's not a safe thing for kids to drive. Well I get the impression that and once again I don't want to blame the kids or victim shame in this particular case. It was tragic what ended up going on.

But again, I would say, what are parents, it would have to be wealthy parents. What are wealthy parents giving a vehicle like that to kids to hop around the streets on for in the first place, is what I would wonder. The helicopter parents, they protect their kids, but they don't think anything about putting them in a vehicle that has that kind of acceleration. And, you know, when I was very young, I had my first car in the freeway. It just got in. There was a wreck we came upon just below the manor and a Corvette had run into the

back of a station wagon. The Corvette was doing 140 miles an hour and the station wagon pulled into the fast lane in front of the Corvette. Of course he couldn't stop and it really shocked me. He's still going 70 miles an hour faster than the car he ran into. Yeah, and still lots of impact. Hey Steve, I appreciate that. You know, I have mixed emotions about all of this because I will be the first to admit that I drove like a man she for a long time when I was a teenager. If you were to go back and follow me, Eric, I don't know about you if you were that way or not, but... Guilty. Guilty? Okay. And it seemed to be a rite of passage, but at

the same time it's like I survived my stupidity. But what is your overall impression about even giving a Tesla Cybertruck with that kind of acceleration ability to 17, 18 units? The thing that has interested me about this touting of speed and performance is that all of that is premised, supposedly, on this idea that we're facing an existential crisis because the climate is changing. Well you'd think if the climate was changing the last thing that people would be concerned about is how quickly something gets from zero to sixty. It's like worrying about what the dinner menu is

on the day after the Titanic sank. You know if there really is a crisis then the object should be to get as many of these devices into as many people's hands as possible. And the last thing you'd want to do is put a thousand pound battery pack in it so that you can get to 60 in three seconds. In fact, if everything was about the climate, you would probably have, gosh, what was that EV I test drove a few years ago? Chevy Spark, the Chevy Spark EV, remember that?

Yep. Gosh, they were practically giving them away at the end to it. Not too fast, got there, basic transportation, you know that sort of thing. I thought there was nothing wrong with it. It wasn't something that fit my needs, but I got that one. I haven't gotten this whole idea that everything has to be a $120,000 speed machine, but that's just me. Because these affluent leftist virtue signalers want to signal their supposed belief in this climate change narrative but they don't want to have to suffer driving a little box that gets to 60 in 15 seconds hey wait a minute wait a minute Eric okay

I'm thinking counterintuitive here now that the electric vehicle man Elon Musk is now supposedly on orange man, the conservative or the Republican side of the political aisle right now, or at least more friendly to that, maybe the electric vehicles will become practical and kind of like putting on the automotive hair shirt. What do you think about that? Well they might, but I think it's going to take a wholesale upending of the entire auto industry because Tesla has completely distorted the incentives and the market, if there is one, for these things.

Notice that all of the EVs just about that are available that aren't Teslas emulate Tesla. They all tout opulent luxury, ultra-high performance, all kinds of stupid excessive capabilities that result in them being $80,000, $ dollars and more. Cadillac's got an electric version of their Escalade coming out that's like a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to start. Wow, that's very affordable and sustainable for that matter. Do you ever see, I don't know if you ever page into YouTube or YouTube shorts or Facebook reels, things like that, have you ever seen some of those ones in which they show they have computer simulations of various vehicles

Jumping off a cliff and then trying to get over a bridge to the other side. Have you ever seen those kind of videos Eric? Oh, yeah. Yep. Okay, it's all stupid But sometimes I'll watch it just for fun and they'll have different brands of vehicles The funny thing is is that when they have the Tesla's jumping off the bridge, it almost always falls down, hits the wall of the canyon and they always have it bursting into flames like an electric car. Kind of like Evil Knievel trying to jump the Snake River Canyon. Exactly, exactly. Cracks me up. Let me go to another live before we get to your review. Good review this week by the way too. Hi, good morning. You're on with Eric Peters, who's this? Good morning. Hey, Deplorable Patrick here, you guys.

Are I on? Hey, DP, you're on. You bet. They related to locking and unlocking doors in the good old days. I want to take you back to 1964, when I graduated from high school at Poly High in Riverside, California. It was graduation day and everybody was having fun. School was—we were all there, but school was let out and all the rules went away. I was coming back to the school from, I don't know, getting a burger and I couldn't find a place to park anywhere except right where there was a teacher's parking spot And I nosed in there it had her name on it, but I thought you know those in here. She's not here

I'm gonna be here for just a little bit and so I came back a Little bit later into her car was parked exactly behind me Pinning me in there. So she thought, well, a little bit later, she came back and she found her car in her parking place and my 55 Chevy Pickup was gone. Now, how did you manage to accomplish that? I'm just curious. It was the easiest thing I ever did in my life and I talked to her several days later. She had me do that. Her car was a 64 Chevy with an automatic and it had no inside hood latch. 64 everybody trusted and the only hood latch was to go around reaching reach in the grille and open the hood.

I just reached in and opened the hood, reached down in there and grabbed the shift linkage on the inside the engine compartment and manipulated it out of park. It was level ground. We pushed it back and I got my pick up out of there. And we pushed her car back up in there in her spot, put it back in the park, closed the hood and left. But there was nothing to it and she was mystified and it was just one of the most fun things at least for a while. But I guess, you know, today, I love a story like that, but I guess today that wouldn't

match with the safety Nazis. You couldn't do something like that now and the insurance mafia and all the rest of it. All the other mafias here. Well, not only that, it's impossible because unfortunately, even the transmission, the engagement is also controlled electronically, as in drive by wire. When you move that handle that's on the console from park to reverse to drive and so on, that's just to give you the illusion that you're doing something. What you're actually doing is sending a signal to a computer and the computer then tells

the automatic transmission to move from park to reverse to drive and so on. Which is fine as long as the computer is working. Yeah, yeah. We digress, okay? If not, you lose. There's no putting it in neutral to push the car around. All right. Hey, Eric, I want to wrap up though with a great review that you had. In fact, you talked about the Kia K4. And you say you don't use the term very much, but that it could be a game changer when it

comes to the reestablishment of some actual sedans on the road. And it's a pretty reasonable, in fact, is one of the most reasonably priced cars available right now, isn't it? Yeah, now of course the K4 sounds like the latest Soviet submarine, but it actually refers to this new car that Kia's just put out. And it is a car, first of all, which is refreshing, but more to the point, it's an affordable car. It's the replacement for the Forte, the sticker for just over $21,000, which is astounding today. for the forte sticker for just over twenty one thousand dollars which is astounding today but the really important point is that it's not just

another small car that's primarily for single or a couple or people without kids in other words because it's too small this thing has three inches more backseat legroom than the old forte had and it's if you look at it dimensionally on the inside even though it's not as big overall as a car like a camera or an accord it has as much or even more interior space than those cars and it costs about $8,000 less to start. So this could be the thing that begins a return back to cars rather than crossovers. I think it's going to do well. Okay, what about the difference in

the engines because there's a, I think it's a 2.4 liter base engine, right? Oh, 2.0. 2.0, I'm sorry. 2.0. Yeah, but it's not turbocharged, which again, I think is a good thing for a car like this. It's big enough to move the vehicle as it is just without the turbocharger, right? Yeah. Turbos come with a price, not just in terms of the literal price you pay, which is more, but also in the stress it imparts to the engine and the likelihood that down the road you're going to end up having to spend money on repair and maintenance that you might not otherwise have had to spend.

So that's great. Would you recommend the high performance version for one reason and one reason only that comes to mind? Because the base Kia K4 has the CVT. It does. Okay. And I've heard all sorts. People tell me that they've had great

reliability issues, other people are saying hey take care of it, they're just fine. What are your thoughts about this? Because if you do the upgraded Kia K4 which costs what seven eight thousand dollars more, you have a 1.6 but then it has a turbo so that there's a downside but it has an eight speed transmission you were talking about. Yeah, and that implies something, doesn't it? The fact that they would put that conventional automatic with eight speeds in it rather than the CVT with the stronger engine is suggestive to me that they're a little bit concerned about the durability of the CVT behind a more powerful engine. And this is, this jives with what's been true of CVTs ever since they started putting them

in cars. They just don't seem to be as strong as geared automatics. They tend to have a higher rate of failure, so that's something to keep in mind. Though they have gotten better. And in this case, when you're dealing with a vehicle that has a not overpowered engine, it's got 147 horsepower, and if you don't abuse it, probably it'll be okay, particularly if you do service the CVT and change out the fluid every 30 or 40,000 miles, which I think is really important. Yeah, I would almost say over-service them, given what I've been reading to some of the issues there. But overall, pretty good driving experience,

right? A fantastic one, you know, and I did a whole other article about it. When I first got into the car, I was like, wow, I feel like I'm back in 2015 and just got into a new Mercedes S-Class, because the thing literally has this full-length LCD dashboard that literally looks like they rated Mercedes-Benz parts bin and and yet this car doesn't cost $100,000 you know back in 2015 to get something like that you had to spend Mercedes S-Class money now you can spend Kia money and that's not a slam on Kia it's something that should worry Mercedes, Audi, BMW and all these high-end brands. I wonder if that is making it more of a challenge for a high-end brand because the high-end

brand it seems like it's almost being turned into well it's just a name and an image rather than you know is the engine that much better? Is the transmission that much better? Is it worth you know $40,000 more? Have you detected some of that going on out there? I do. Well I think they you know they made a mistake. I don't think they foresaw how inexpensive these screens would become and I don't think they appreciated how catastrophic it would be for them to go from V8 and V12 engines to these little turbo four-cylinder engines. Really good case in point, there's an AMG which

is the high-performance version of the Mercedes C-Class called the C63. It used to have a V8, now it comes with a twin-turbo hybrid four and it's very powerful but it's not selling because people who have 80, 90, 100 thousand dollars to spend don't want a four-cylinder powered car. They want the V6 at least, preferably a V8. Yep. Alright, there we go. Kia K4. Good impressions from that one. What do you have for next week? Actually, I've got something interesting. Can you believe there is still at least one station wagon available on the new car marketplace? Really? Yeah, Audi Allroad. Oh, okay. I don't know if I've seen one of those but You don't seem very often for whatever weird reason the American marketplace doesn't seem to be

particularly enamored of station wagons Which I don't get because station wagons are enormously useful and they allow you to have a car without having to get a crossover or an SUV Yeah, maybe it's because of the image of the National Lampoon family truckster or something like that I guess that's like 40 years old who even that? A lot of people still talk about it. Maybe there's just the...but it was the kind of the whale look, especially you know the late era wagons did kind of have that whale look. Yeah, the pre-chamu, the whale body style. Yeah, yeah, the Buick wagons, all that sort of stuff. I think they may have something to do with it, but they're very practical. I can't wait to hear more about it next week. All right. Thanks, Eric. You bet, Bill. Thank you. EPautos.com. Join the site and I think you'll have a great time there. This is KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford, KBXG

Grants Pass.