Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-18-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

06-18-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clouser Drilling.com. Evening six to eight on KMED. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on southern Oregon's home for conservative talk. Mornings on KMED at 99.3 KBXG. Call Bill at 770-5633. That's 770-KMED.

Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peters will be joining me here shortly, and we're going to have a pretty good conversation on a lot of stuff happening in the automotive world and politics and how it's all combined in a big ol' mishy-mashy-moosh. Okay? And by the way, it's a great time for you to call in with your questions too about such matters. By the way, my number here, that's two by the ways by the way, seven, okay there we go, 770-5633-77-OKMED. I love this time of year and the

glow of the sunshine sunshine the early morning sunshine I just absolutely love June's Sun and the early evenings to of course It's a little bit late I go to bed later than I should because it's blazing sunshine till about 830 or so before it finally starts getting dark But a beautiful time of year still give me a warm day today And then we're gonna be cooling down into the weekend with showers and we could even have some highs like Saturday 68, 67, something like that in the 60s, quite cooler. And then we're gonna bounce back up into the 80s next week. So that's all right. I'm all right with that. A little bit of rain on the lawn and maybe a little less sprinkler water, that sort of thing.

Of course, I don't know if you've noticed, I don't know if this is the time of the year in which we start getting more rogue river water into the Medford system or not. I had to call the folks over there at some point, the Medford Water Commission, to find out because there's always a certain time of year in which all of a sudden I smell the tap water and the tap water has the smell of a wet dog. Have you ever had that experience? I'm just glad we have the water though and it's still relatively cheap. Well, relatively cheap in Medford. You go elsewhere. I'm going to share an email from someone who's still just really hot and bothered about what's been going on in Phoenix. We've talked about that challenge that they've had over in those unincorporated areas

being brought into their water system. But there's a fellow who lives in an apartment complex that's just saying, or just saying, wow, it's just going nuts on the cost of water. We'll catch up on that here in just a little bit. I'll dig that email out and at least share it. We are not going to have Facebook today. We have an internal network problem we're working on and I don't know if we're going to be able to get that fixed in time to

actually get Facebook Live back but sometimes that happens. You live by the internet and you die by the internet. Some of our local headlines that we have going on here. 11.4 billion approved yesterday. Lawmakers approving 11.4 billion. That's a record for Oregon schools. OPB reporting that the K-12 budget bill now headed to Oregon Governor Tina Kotec's desk. A number of school districts around the state are facing grueling financial constraints.

They're saying some lawmakers and education advocates say the budget is far from enough. That's fascinating when you know that public school enrollment has actually been going down. But anyway Senate bill 5516 passed easily on the House floor will increase the budget for Oregon State School Fund by more than 11 percent. Eleven percent more than the than the last two-year budget. And school districts throughout the state of course relying on this money. Doesn't solve every challenge but a clear statement of our value said representative Ricky Ruiz, a daemon cat from Gresham who carried the bill. It'll make investments in teacher retention,

special education, and dual language programs. Dual language programs. That sounds suspiciously like kissing up to the illegal alien folks again. Is that me? Or... Now, it could be dual language pro... Well, no. Normally, when I think about dual language programs, it's like, okay, we offer a second language that you can actually learn to speak. But no, in Oregon, in Sanct in sanctuary state Oregon, I think that translates as we have to spend even more millions of dollars to educate people, mostly likely Spanish speakers, for a long long time with English as a second language. Okay, that's what they mean. We're just kind of reading the code. KOBI reporting, we had an harmful algae bloom killing a dog. And a local couple doing what they can, spreading awareness.

Their four-legged companion died after apparent exposure to the algae blooms in Jackson County. Couple posted their handmade sign up at Lost Creek Lake, where they say their dog was exposed. After three days, dog passed away. Creek Lake where they say their dog was exposed. After three days dog passed away OHA updating its algae bloom tracker to reflect the dog's death placing Lost Creek Lake in a precautionary status. So stay away from that don't drop a Fido in there. Another story also a KOBI was up to Chris Peasey has left Providence after four years as a new chief operating and financial officer and he's moved over to RRMC and Asante.

I find that a very interesting move. Currently he's running Providence's operation and he's going over to Asante, chief operating and financial officer. You know, it's an interesting time to head over to the Asante company and be their financial officer, wouldn't you agree, given the, well, given the nurse lawsuits, the nurses lawsuits, maybe that comes out of a different pile of money. I don't know how that necessarily works, but maybe they figure they needed a sharper financial tool in their box. Don't know, just Maybe they figured they needed a sharper financial tool in their box. Don't know.

Just making note of it. State legislature is going to have a very interesting day because they're going to be starting out... Well, I shared this on Facebook last night. And this has to do with... And I got this from State Representative Duane Younger. And Duane Younger tells me, Bill, what's going to happen today when the session opens, they're going to have drag queens dancing and lip syncing to a song.

And this song is going to be done in honor of House Resolution 3, which recognizes, I'm quoting from the bill here, I dug it up and took a look at it, HR3 recognizes and honors Oregon's rich history of black drag and congratulates all those whose spirited contributions have made Oregon's black drag community one of the most vibrant and vital in the nation. You can't make this stuff up, can you? That is considered something which is worthy of taking a bunch of time in the state legislature today celebrating black drag. You'll also be happy to know that State Representative Duane Younger let me know that he's not going to be there next week.

He's not going to be there next week. He's not going to be in the legislature, legislature. He's walking out and he says, there is nothing there left for me to sit there and just vote no on all the stuff the Democrats are going to pass. Would you like to see some other state legislators join him? Maybe all of the Republican legislators? A fella can dream, can't he? This is the Bill Meyers Show, 18 minutes after 6. If you want to join in, 770-563-3770-KMED. So I've been thinking about how not calm.

Click the Advertise Marketing tab. Hi, I'm Wilma from Orlease, and I'm on 106.7 KMED. Time to use and abuse me, 7705633. A little bit of open phone time before Eric Peters comes in here. Cliff is in Central Point. Cliff, welcome to the show. What is on your mind this beautiful Wednesday? Okay, since it's Wheels Up Wednesday, I thought I'd go over this bill that I happened on to yesterday and it is it passed out of the house it's in the Senate and the bill is

HB 2522 and it will require at any time when the wheel and shield wipers of the vehicle is in operation unless you're cleaning the windows. Your lights need to be on. What? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to look this up here as you tell me. What is this?

House Bill what now again? House Bill 2522, and I'll just read a couple of short sections. Okay, who's the sponsor of it first off? Okay, let me look here. Representative Evans, Edwards, and Representative Giobardi, Munoz, and Smith. Okay, all right, tell me what the take on this is. I've not heard of this one. Of course, there were thousands of bills submitted. It's impossible to keep up with all of them. Go ahead. Okay, well I'll read some of the stuff that's in the bill and I'll tell you the sentence that

they changed. It says, subject to any other provisions in this section, a lighting equipment, a vehicle is required to be equipped under blah blah blah, must be displayed when a vehicle is upon a highway within a state, and this is new law, at any time the windshield wipers of the vehicle are in operation unless the windshield wipers are being operated slowly for the purpose of cleaning the windshield. Okay, so what this sounds like then, if you want to spritz the the bird poo off of your windshield when you're driving, it's okay, but if you're keeping your windshield wipers on because there's rain, then the headlights better come on. That's how I interpret that, right? Well, that's what I'm thinking also. So, you know, the nanny

state is in full force at all times. And we are apparently incapable of turning our own headlights on then if it's raining and dark. I would imagine so. And it's even more, we're even more incapable of turning them on if it's raining and it's sunny. So even if it is it could be sunshine and we could be having rain coming down on us and the state of Oregon says that we're supposed to have our headlights on because the windshield wipers are working according to this new law? Yes. Gosh, I'm really glad that the state of Oregon is working on the really important stuff, kind of like the black

drag queen thing that they're doing this morning with the the dancing and the lip-syncing. Yeah, boys, this is big. This is very big. I know people's lives will be saved, Cliff. Just comfort yourself. I hope I made your day. Yeah, you did. You did. Thank you. Bye. Cliff. All right, Cliff. Let me go made your day. Yeah, you did. You did. Thank you. Bye. Cliff. All right, Cliff. Let me go to Vicki.

Hello, Cliff. Vicki, rather. How are you? Good, Bill. How are you? I'm fine. Can you top that one? The headlights have to come on if you're using your windshield wipers in the rain.

Okay. Oh my God. Yeah, I know. We are incapable. I have to tell Eric Peters about that. I'm sure he'll enjoy that. Yeah, I think we all need to go back to kindergarten because obviously some of us don't know. Yeah, the next thing that will be coming out of the state legislature is that, by the way,

when you go poo poo, you better be on the tweedie. You better wipe too and make sure you have two-ply. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I just had a couple comments. First of all, the drag queen thing. To each his own, but I hope I'm not paying for them to lip sync and dance around in dresses. Second of all, as far as the school, I totally agree with you. There's a lot more people yanking their kids out of Oregon schools. So I believe that

because this is a sanctuary state, that the benefit is more going towards the Hispanic. And I'm not prejudiced. I moved up here from San Jose. Well, no, no, you're not being prejudiced. You're just being observant. You see, that's just it. Now, they call bigotry or racism or whatever it is in the Democratic Party, noticing things, you know, essentially when you notice those things. But when we know, there has already been talk about most school districts have been losing enrollment for a number of years. I think that's where the language thing comes in because there's more Hispanic kids in school. If you drive by any of the schools in

the Rogue Valley, the majority of them are Hispanic. So that, I think, coincides with them wanting... And this means they want even more money, and this $11.4 billion is the most that they have ever done. Right. It's 11% more than last time and of course RUE is saying the bill making investments like you had mentioned here Vicki, dual language programs. Now that is just like straight out of okay English is a second language and we're going to keep Hispanic kids speaking Spanish and not really learning English for 12 years. I think that's the goal. Now when my kids were in school, my

daughter is 40. She took French. You know, I know a lot of the other kids took some of the other languages. That's what I interpret as taking different languages, not solely for one part of the population, which it's very difficult to even for me. I took two years of Spanish and I came out with, I know how to count to 10, I know where you live and my name is Vicki. So, you know, if you're going to have languages, you should have, well first of all... Well Vicki, what you have to remember though is that there is an entire industry that has grown up around English as a second language or non-English native speakers. You'll hear all sorts of terms that are brought out about this.

But these students will end up, and I'm sure that the teachers union is happy about this too, because these particular students have more money assigned to them because of this, the way it has been explained to me. All right. Now, I'm doing a little spitballing, you know, with this. I'm not involved in the budgeting process for most schools, but these children are more valuable to the school district because more money comes in for them, attached to them for this very reason. So it would seem to me that, yeah, if the regular school districts are losing population, they're losing student enrollment for the most part, they're looking for a way to increase their market share and that is get the

illegal alien kids in there and get more money. At least that's how I'm saying this story. As far as the Rogue Valley, and I've always called it Rogue Valley Hospital, I've never called it really a saute unless I have to go there for a doctor's appointment. The nurses are the ones that actually do the majority of the work aside from doing surgeries. When you're in the hospital, your doctor comes in to check on you for whatever is wrong with you for literally five minutes and it's primarily the nurses that are giving you the care. So as far as the strikes and the nurses wanting more money, I believe that they deserve more money just like a lot of the teachers that want to teach English, math, science, you know, history,

they deserve more money to teach our kids what they're supposed to be teaching them. So as far as going over to Asante, I know that Providence had a big problem with the nurses striking last year. By the way, there are some nurses there that I know about who have confided that they are trying to get the Oregon Nurses Association decertified for Providence because they were real happy with the results of it. I thought it was interesting.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So those are just a few points. I think the legislature in this sanctuary state is ridiculous. I don't want to pay for drag queens. I don't want to pay for drag queens. I don't want to pay for everyone to speak Spanish and I don't want to pay for Overpriced doctors who don't take do take all the credit for the care when it's actually the nurses. Okay. I appreciate the call Thank you for that. All right, how about the Vicky from the Applegate?

It is a 629. All right some other headlines that came in here this morning before we ended up You know going in and get ready talking with Eric. US Attorney, this was in Breitbart, US Attorney has charged Alejandro Orellana for distributing face shields to Los Angeles rioters. He laid out the allegations against Orellana yesterday. On June 9th, he drove his truck downtown, unidentified woman, to hand out large quantities of face shields to individuals who appeared to be engaged in violence and vandalism. He was not handing them out to peaceful protesters. And the attorney, charging that the face shields protected the rioters from non-lethal anti-riot rounds employed by the cops to disperse people committing acts of violence.

U.S. Attorney for Central District of California Bill Esaill said on X that Oriana faces charges of conspiracy to commit civil disorders for distributing the face shields to suspected rioters, adding that his actions hint at the ample funding behind the rioters with prices starting at 35 bucks and up per shield. Yeah but that was just a grassroots, a grassroots action. The LA riots right? Yeah yeah all that money coming in as they hand out hundreds of those face shields. Yeah yeah. Follow the money folks and it sounds like the Trump administration and others are going to do that too. 631 KMED 993 KBXG, Eric Peters will join me. Wheels Up Wednesday is next. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on.

This is News Talk 1063 KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Meyers show. 634. Going up the rail, got a crazy train. Bill Myers show. 634. It's the unofficial theme now for EP Autos because it seems like everything about the news is kind of that way, just going off the road, going off the rails everywhere. But that's what we like about it. We still talk about it with Eric Peters, automotive journalist and genius. Eric, welcome back. How are you doing this morning, sir?

Well, thanks for having me, Bill. Yeah, we're kind of getting back on the rails sort of, or at least Stellantis says they're trying to by bringing back the Hemi. Yeah yeah I wanted to find out more about that because I'm cheered by it. I thought I heard something about them taking the warranty to five years and a hundred thousand miles for the for the drivetrain and such. Good move nothing wrong with that. They do that. Yeah nothing's wrong with that and I'm happy to hear you know Tim Konis, who's back now. He was the former head honcho at Dodge when then he retired after Stellantis, the parent company, pulled the plug on the Hemi V8.

Now they brought him back as the chief of Ram Truck because Ram Truck is having problems because they pulled the Hemi out of the Ram Truck. People want the Hemi. So they've announced that they're bringing it back and that sounds great, you know, they're apparently listening to customer demand rather than government demands, but the problem is that the regs are still there. So what I foresee happening is sure they're going to offer the V8, just like you can still get a V8 in an S-Class Mercedes, provided you spend another $15,000 to get it. In other words, it's not going to be a mass market

because for compliance reasons they're going to have to price it at such a point that only a relative handful of people are going to be able to get it. In other words, it's not going to be a mass market because for compliance reasons they're going to have to price it at such a point that only a relative handful of people are going to be able to buy it. In essence then, Stellantis would still have to continue to buy lots of carbon credits from people like Elon Musk selling cars that more people don't want necessarily in some cases, but it's a more compliant car, a politically compliant car, right? Yeah, you know, Koniski said, you know, we got it wrong. No, they didn't get it wrong. The former CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, was looking at the bleed, at the money that they were having to hand over to Musk to pay for these carbon credits because of, you know,

the fact that they were making all these V8 powered vehicles that were non-compliant. And that was causing them not only to lose money directly in the form of paying for the credits, but they had to jack up the prices of the vehicles that people wanted, the Charger and the Challenger and the Ram trucks. And they had to cover the cost then of the carbon credits, etc. See, this is the whole ridiculousness of this fake market, this so-called carbon credit market. And of course, the state of Oregon, he wants to go in these things, California, does these kind of things. These are false markets, this whole market

for the ability to emit carbon, which means that, essentially, Eric, if you follow everything they're trying to do with the carbon credit fraud to its logical conclusion, they end up charging us as humans because we emit carbon too. Our pets emit carbon. Everything we have, you know, the peat moss in the backyard that we put in there as it decomposes emits carbon. It's just nonsense. It's nonsense. Exactly. And that's why I wish that Caniscus and more broadly Stellantis or any other major

car company would simply challenge the lie and address this lie about climate change and how 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere that is carbon dioxide is some kind of apocalyptic threat if a fraction more percent of CO2 is added to that as a result of us driving cars with engines. Why do you suppose that the corporate heads are so loathe to actually go out there and say, you know what these people are talking about? It's just a fraud. The carbon credit thing is a fraud. Why won't anybody just sit out there and just admit that the

Electric Emperor has no clothes? Well, because how do you get to be the head of a major car company, or for that matter any corporation these days? You know, by being a babbit, frankly, and playing ball. You know, the only high-up official that I'm aware of at any car company who has publicly gone against the narrative is Accio Toyota. And the reason he could do it is because, you know, he's the grandfather of the founder of the company.

But now these corporations are all run by hired guys who, you know, don't have any skin in the game, so to speak, and who in fact are being paid a fortune to shut up and go along for the ride. Look at Mary Barrett. She's getting almost 30 million dollars from General Motors every year. And General Motors is not incredibly popular or profitable, is it? No. In fact, the entirety of what's left of General Motors today, I mean all of the brands that they still have, have less market share than Chevrolet by itself had back in 1970. Are we looking at the endgame

of what people have called the financialization of the United States economy in which people end up getting paid not for actually creating stuff as much as for shuffling money around and creating new financial articles to to sell and plug out there. It feels that way doesn't it? Yeah like well carbon credits is an example of that right? Yes. A carbon credit. Exactly. And you can shuffle the stuff around for a while, but a point comes when the cost can

no longer be supported, at least not on a mass scale. So now we're at the point where the average vehicle sells for $50,000. When it gets to $60,000, how many people are going to be able to even finance these things? It's not going to happen, and then the whole thing's going to come crashing down. Don't worry, Eric, because the state of Oregon is allowing us to buy those little itty bitty trucks we were talking about last week. Well, that's something, of course, if you can find one. And if you don't mind being able to tinker with and look for parts for 25 year old vehicles.

Indeed. All right. Hey, there's another piece you have on EP autos that I was reading yesterday, and you are calling it the engine cover conspiracy. Indeed. All right. Hey, there's another piece you have on EP Autos that I was reading yesterday, and you were calling it the engine cover conspiracy. And I think it was interesting, the engine on my wife's car, which is an 06 VW Passat, right? And it was the first vehicle I ever had that had a cover over the engine that you had to be able to pull off to really do any kind of real maintenance on it or any kind of work on the engine itself, anything with the injections and everything else. But every other car I've ever owned, you actually saw the engine.

Is this a conspiracy, you think, to condition us in one direction or another? I thought you had an interesting take on that. Yeah, I think it might as well be you know what we're talking about here is that there used to be something interesting to look at under the hood. That's why when you go to an old car show what you'll see are lines of cars with their hoods up. Yeah. People want to look at the engines because back in the day the engines were as distinctive as the cars themselves. They were painted different colors, they were shaped differently, they had different stickers, they just looked neat. Yeah and they had

different type of carburetors. It's like everybody's like, oh man look at that six pack! Right? You know the six pack on the three two barrels carburetors. It was true until relatively recently that new car dealers, you know if you drove by a dealer you'd see the hoods were up. You know because people would want to look and the reason they looked not necessarily because they were super pretty but you could tell the difference between a of the six of the four or eight by looking at the configuration of the engine well it don't weigh without with these these black plastic covers that are on

everything now and that make it all look homogenous and exactly the same and the only way that you can tell the difference now between a four or six or even in the eight uh... is by cutting from purple ribs that they've embossed into this black plastic cover whether the couple of reasons for that they've embossed into this black plastic cover. Now there's a couple of reasons for this. Yeah, I was wondering, you know, what was the reason for the cover? Because I don't remember people demanding that they wanted the engine covered up under

the hood. No, of course not. They're covering up the cheapening out. You know, they've gone to using plastics now for practically everything except for the cylinder heads and the blocks. You know, intake manifolds are plastic now. Everything looks cheap and tacky. So they cover it up with a cheap and tacky looking plastic cover.

No, no, no. That is luxurious. That is a luxurious car black plastic cover there, Eric. But the other thing is a little bit more sinister. All the new engines now and all the new cars, pretty much, there may be a couple of stragglers, but I'd say 99% of the engines that are installed in current model of your cars have direct fuel injection rather than just port fuel or throttle body injection. And that system operates at very high pressure. And if you take that cover off, you will hear tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And it'll sound, your engine in other words, will sound like it's a 200,000 mile clunker with bad valves. Oh, I didn't realize that that was that tick that I was hearing in a lot of those newer cars. Okay, so that's the high pressure, the dual. In other words, you have two injectors on each cylinder, that kind of thing? No, you have separate two fuel pumps.

You've got one from the tank and then a high pressure one that amps it up to between 2 and 3,000 psi, if you can imagine that. Typical, you know, regular fuel injection operates at around 35 or so pounds per square inch, so a huge difference. So anyway, they call these covers acoustic covers. They're insulations. You know, they're designed to tamp down the sound. Now to get back to your original point, I do think that ultimately this is going to

have the effect of making people stop caring about what's under the hood. You pop the hood, it's a black plastic cover. They all look the same. Well, EVs all look the same too. It's all about the same, same bleakness everywhere. This uniformity, this stuff, this stifling of any kind of expression of difference or creativity, I think. It's kind of like we're all just faceless drones out there in the automotive world. You don't care about what's underneath there. It's underneath the black plastic. By the way, you don't need to know about that, nor do you need to service it either, because

they have to leave that to the professionals at the dealership. That's a really good point too, because you know, particularly for somebody who's a novice and might be interested, and I'm talking particularly about teenagers and young people, it's a little bit more daunting. You pop the hood and you see this black plastic cover and it's kind of like, I don't know, do I want to fool with that? Do I want to take that off? I can't see what's under there. I don't even want to bother. Okay, Eric, I'll tell you what, if

anybody has a question for you about a vehicle they're looking at or anything else involving the automotive world, go ahead and jump on 770-5633. I want to find out more about that Range Rover. You told me that last week you were getting the Range Rover Sport and you'll have to tell me because everybody I've ever known who has had a Range Rover usually must be very wealthy because they have to keep it in the shop half the time. That's the general consensus that I've been getting. So if that's true with this one too, I don't know. But tell me what you think about the latest Sport coming up. Well that brings up the old joke about Jaguars, which is that Jaguars at least look better

on the lift than most other cars look on the road. Okay. Right. It is 645 KMED. It's Wheels Up Wednesday, 770-5633. Call Bill now. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED.

On epotos.com, Eric Peters is here and there's a story he had the other day that I chuckled at. It was inconsistent support. The market for battery-powered devices is flat lighting, not because they aren't selling but because of inconsistent support. Are you implying, Eric, that the lack of government grift going into them now, or at least being pulled away? is that it? Yeah, but I kind of wanted to dig into what I call the insouciant socialist premise.

This idea, it's just accepted that government should be supporting things as regards to what's being bought and sold out there in the economy. And supporting means forcing and subsidizing and picking winners and losers as opposed to, you know, the old American idea of, hey, I got an idea, let's see if people want this, and then offering it and if they buy it, great, you make money, and if you don't, you don't make money. But what are the experts going to do then? If they're not around there experting us and telling us what to do? I mean, we can't function. Oh, it's offerable, isn't it though? The way they talk about, the way they preach down to us, their super-silliest language, insufficient support.

We're just too dumb to get into these EVs. The government has to make sure there's more support for them, meaning more wasting of our money that they take from us to build out things like these EV fast chargers that, per our conversation of a few weeks ago, nobody's using. If you want to be hiding out someplace and you want to be lonely, just go to a charging station in most places. All right, no one will bother you. All right, let me go to, let's go to Peter. Peter, you had a question about a Toyota. Fire away, you're with Eric and I'm glad you called. It's on your mind. Yeah, so the other night on,

I don't know if you're familiar, Eric, with coast-to-coast radio in the middle of the night. Of course, no, please. I used to listen to Art Bell back in the day. Oh, okay, okay. So you can appreciate this, that maybe you've heard this guy, there's a guy in Northern California who's written a book called, let's see, Alcohol is a Gaff. Is it a gas? And he basically contends that we could all we could easily be solving all our problems if we basically somehow we're distilling alcohol and had that anyway the the point of my call was that he had mentioned that Toyota is coming

out with the new electric I guess it's a hybrid but it's using a fuel cell and he seemed to think that it was really the cutting edge and wondering if you've heard anything about that. Well yeah it's already available, it's called the Mirai. Unfortunately like other vehicles of this type it's very expensive. It's similar to the Toyota Crown which is a conventional hybrid, it's very expensive. It's similar to the Toyota Crown, which is a conventional hybrid. It's about the same size, but it costs about $50,000 to start.

So obviously it's a limited market vehicle. Now, to your point, earlier point, I think it's Brazil that primarily runs its vehicles on alcohol based on, I think, sugarcane production. And they can do that because they have an immense capacity for that. They have a lot of it and I think it's the leftover mass after they get done cutting the sugarcane. There's a lot of biomass that's available which is still sugar rich and great for making alcohol

apparently. Yeah and if you get to the point, remember alcohol has a lower BTU than gasoline does, so you're going to have to compensate for that. So if it works out, so you're going to be burning more alcohol relative to gas is what I'm saying to go a certain distance. But if you can compensate for that by the fuel itself being significantly less expensive, then sure it makes sense. But in this country, it doesn't work out that way.

And also in this country, we've got plenty of oil. It's not a problem. So I don't know why we're looking for alternatives when we have the best alternative. We're just not using it. So what do you think of the Mirai? Well, I think the technology is interesting. The question comes down to does it make sense? Why would you want to buy a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid electric car for $50,000 when you could buy a $22,000

Camry. Yeah, that kind of thing. Hey, Peter, I really appreciate the call. By the way, how does a fuel cell work, Eric? Is there such a thing as an alcohol fuel cell or is it always something where it is a hydrogen gas put through a catalyst of some sort. Do you know how that works? It separates the hydrogen, which then of course becomes the fuel.

And certainly it's a doable thing. They've been doing this sort of thing since the Apollo program. The question is, is cost no object? Does it make sense? Is this something that's practical? And the answer, it seems to me, at least right now, is no. You ultimately have to come down to where you've got a vehicle that is at least cost equivalent to manufacture versus, say, a gas car in order for it to make any sense.

Talking with Eric Peters, epautos.com, Wheels Up Wednesday, 7705633. Happy to take your calls. I think this is Dave. Dave, you're on with Eric. Go ahead. Yeah. I was going to say, as my dad, when I was real little, worked for a GM dealership in San Gabriel, California.

And he quit over the Opel because he hated him working on them. The Opel, huh? So you understand the Opel, the unibody cars? Yeah, Opel is General Motors, is a European brand that is owned and controlled by General Motors. And for a while there, they were actually cross-pollinating. You might remember, what was it? The Cadillac Seat, I forget the name, the Catera, the Cadillac Catera, they marketed that as the Caddy that zigz, and it was an Opel. Yeah, and what was your point about that, Dave, about the Opel?

My dad said he couldn't make any money fixing it because he was a mechanic and he said they were horrible because they were always in the shop and he hated them. That was also true of the North Star V8s of the same era. Unfortunately General Motors durability and reliability in that period. And I'm talking about the late 90s, early 2000s, just wasn't that fabulous. By the way, thanks for the call, Dave. I read up on the Northstar V8. It was actually an interesting idea, interesting concept. Wasn't that the aluminum block, I think, is what they were? Yeah. Double overhead cam, high output for the day. I mean, back in the 90s you could get the North Star, I think it was a 4.1 maybe, I can't remember

the leaders, but it made 300 horsepower in the Seville SCS and back around 95, that was a big number. Yeah, you were a lot better off in 1995 just to get yourself on a Pontiac Bonneville with the 3800 CC, you know, the V6. Yeah, the 3.8 V6 that ran forever. Yeah, exactly. And you still see those engines out there in the Buick Regals and the Pontiac Bonnevilles around here. People are all, they'll sell those cars and they fetch really good money because they are looked at as just an investment. Okay, oh, okay, there's 130,000 miles on the 3.8 V6. Don't worry about it. It's barely broken in. It's amazing what they've done. It's a crime that they destroyed so many of those things under the cash for Clunkers thing.

77056337770K, ABD, we'll get back to some calls here in just a moment. I promised a look under the hood at what's going on with the latest Range Rover because you're going to tell us and I mentioned to you before reliability has been a problem when you look at the ratings of it but maybe they fixed that. What do you think about the latest? Well okay there's a couple of things. At least for once you're getting more than 2.0 liters when you're spending $80,000 to start, which is the base price of the Range Rover Sport. You do get a really nice three liter in line six.

You can also get a V8, and you can get it in up to 620-something horsepower in the top of the line trim. So that's refreshing. Also refreshing is that it's a real-deal SUV that's also remarkably comfortable and luxurious. You know, this is the tradition of the Range Rover that, along with the Jeep Wagoneer way back in the day, took that concept of taking a 4x4 that could really do stuff off-road and yet wasn't crude, clunky, and primitive. In fact, it was exactly the opposite of that.

So this one does all of that. As far as the long-term reliability, God only knows. You know, all these high-end cars now are so elaborate, I'm not sure whether it's better just to lease them rather than to buy them. Yeah. It astounds me when you watch the TV ads for them. They'll come by on cable channels and you'll see like $5,000 down and $900 a month to lease something.

I'm thinking to myself... The other point about it is that I think was interesting and I made this in the article and they're probably going to get mad at me for pointing this out but like all new vehicles this rugged incredibly capable 4x4 has these very fragile flimsy plastic front and rear bumper covers with all this technology embedded in it the cameras yada yada you know you you misjudge a little dip in the road when you're going off-road you're going to rip that whole fascia off and it's probably going to cost $10,000 to repair it.

No kidding. Where did that trend come from? Was this something involving safety standards and you have to have flimsy plastic on it to absorb some impact in some form? No, no, no, not exactly the opposite. It's the fuel economy stuff. You know, it's so paradoxical. They have had to figure out ways to lighten up the vehicle while retaining its ability to absorb impacts. So the

underlying structure of the vehicle, the cage, protects the passengers. But the exterior stuff is designed to crumple. It's designed to be super lightweight. That's why they don't have heavy external bumpers anymore and all of the stuff that you used to have on cars like that because it's heavy. Think how much weight they save. They just put a thin sheer little plastic fascia over the front and rear ends of the vehicle and that saves some weight. Do they put any crash test data out on vehicles that you're aware of, Eric, that involve how much it costs to fix something if it hits a pole let's say at five miles per

hour? Wouldn't that be interesting? That's brilliant and I'm's brilliant. And I'm going to do an article about that. How about crash damage testing? That would be a fine thing for the government to get involved in. No, no, I take that back. How about some kind of private consumer rating organization? Just so you know, if you buy this vehicle and you hit a shopping cart

while you're backing up at the store, if you're looking at a $5,000 repair bill. I know, because that's serious. I hear people talk about serious money from just bumping someone in a parking lot accident or they backed up into the power pole with a light on it at Food for Less, things like that. Yeah, no, this is no joke. It's terrifying.

There are some vehicles out there, and these are mass-market vehicles. We're not talking about Ferraris and Lamborghinis that have head and tail light assemblies that cost anywhere from $500 to $800 a piece for one. Yikes! And all you have to do is get in a minor accident they're both gone and then you're at $2,000. Totally vulnerable they're not protected you know nothing there except this this headlight that's sticking out this plastic grill that's sticking out whatever you bump into is going to damage it. Oh by the way I ended up buying headlight assemblies for my wife's Passat, like I talked about, because they were getting cloudy. I'm thinking, all right, instead of just buffing

out the cloudy plastic, I'm going to replace these because I'm thinking, no big deal. You just get these headlight assemblies and you just bolt them in. And then I got them and I looked up what it would actually take to replace it. About eight hours of labor you practically you have to disassemble the entire front end of the car to replace the headlight assembly. In order to get at the bulbs you know my buddies is a professional mechanic and he does state inspections and you know I've been in a shop with him when this sort of thing happens just replacing a turn signal now can be an incredible ordeal requiring requiring special tools and skills because you just can't reach your hand

in there and get it. You know, you have to take the assembly out and in order to take the assembly out, you have to take other things apart and off. So it basically renders the car practically unserviceable for somebody who isn't a professional mechanic. Yeah, what a difference a few years in the model makes. My 82 Vanigan which has sealed beam headlights on it still, that sort of thing, it takes me two minutes to change a headlight and plug a new one in and slap it back in. So pretty easy. Yeah, by the way, speaking of this, I know it's a long time ago but my Trans Am that's 50

years old, I put a new set of spark plugs in that thing a week ago, took me 15 minutes with basic hand tools and I could do it with my eyes blindfolded. My sister has a Lexus RX older model and it has the V6 and three of those plugs are up against the firewall. They couldn't do it. They had to take it to a shop. It was $800 to replace the spark plugs. Do they have to like loosen up the motor mounts and rock it forward or something like that? No, they take off the intake manifold. Oh my God. Because you literally can't get to the plugs without taking off the intake manifold because

it's up against the cowl. Don't you sometimes want to find the engineers, the design engineers and smack them upside the head when you see that kind of stuff? Well, I want to smack the government. You know, the only reason that all of these transverse engines are out there and all this complexity is because of the government. If it weren't for that, just like when you and I were young, probably the majority of cars on the road would be rear-wheel drive and they'd have their engines mounted front

to back. So whether you had an inline-4 or a V6, all of the engine would be readily accessible. Easy to get this stuff. Let me go to, I think this is Bob. Hello Bob, you're on with Eric. You got a question or comment this morning? Go ahead. Good morning Bill, good morning Eric. Talking. Talking about under the hood marketing, in 1963 GMC had the industrial 302 V6s under the hood, which really weren't known for their economy, and they painted the valve covers plaid to kind of indicate that they were a thrifty engine. They were a thrifty engine in one's hilarious. Well, you know, they were a thrifty engine in one respect. You're right, fuel economy was not really good on those old V6, but they would

go 500,000 miles before needing total rebuilds for some people. They were very durable. Yeah, they were kind of like the old dust train 6. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Good stuff there. Hey, thanks for the reminder. Yeah, the plaid, the Scotsman the Scotsman look right? I love it. There you go. Thank you very much. Hey Eric, who are you going to or what are you going to review for next week? What do you got in the driveway? Huh? Not yet. I still have the Land Rover The Land Rover goes back tomorrow and they're bringing me of all things a Ram 2500 Which is the heavy-duty version of the big truck that Ram makes. I'm pretty sure it's going to have a V8 and I'm kind of hoping it's

going to have the diesel. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Are you going to be rolling coal down the highway? Of course, they probably don't do that stock from the... No, from the factory they don't do that. I have to take it over to my buddy's shop to do that. And I don't think Ram would be very happy with me if I did that. Yeah, you don't want to cut out the catalytic converter and do all the other things and then send it back to Chrysler that way or Ryan. Okay, Eric, thanks.

Lot of fun, lot of great journalism going on there and I would highly recommend that people check out COVID and climate. That is your latest one you just put up there and give me just a little taste of what that's about. COVID and climate. You know, you've heard the old adage, you know, that attributed to Dr. Goebbels about telling a lie often enough and people will accept it as the truth. I think there's actually a deeper meaning there and it is that if you take something and give it a little and tell a little bit of truth, you can use that to sell a big lie.

And that that theme was common with both COVID and the climate change thing in that, yeah, people were getting sick. Yeah, the climate does change. So, you know, people hear that and they accept it because that's true as far as it goes. But what they don't tell people is that, you know, 99, what was it, 98.9 something percent of the people who caught the bug didn't die from it. And while the climate does change, it doesn't mean that we're all going to die because the climate is changing. Well, the climate sometimes changes. In fact, well, I even look at the West Coast.

When you look at the history of the West, the experts, I don't like to use that term, the experts, that kind of marks it already. But a lot of the scientists have indicated that what's happening out West with warming and drying trends here, for the most part, is the West returning to more of its traditional take, the way that the climate normally is. It's always been an arid, relatively speaking, not tons of wetness kind of area. The only problem is though, is that we had a bunch of people settle out here in the 1800s

during a much cooler and wetter period. Imagine that. Yeah, what they do is they cherry they cherry pick data and then they deliberately suppress other data that might contradict it and they deliberately foment fear and panic. The best example of that during the pandemic was when you would hear on the hour, the cases are on the upswing. Remember that? You know I'm having an aspirin flashback here as you as you talk about this. Man it's a little bit of PTSD but you know I remember though especially in the early part of that though with orange man's first term and I ended up getting this paper from the Trump administration that was going to authorize me as a maintainer of

broadcast facilities for communication the ability to purchase gasoline if they were going to shut it down further. I have to tell you though, that sort of stuff was kind of getting your attention at that point. It's like, wow, this is more serious than we were thinking at that time. Fortunately, it never got to that, but it could have and it's something to keep in mind. So COVID and climate, read it up on epautos.com. Eric, always great talking with you. We'll see you next Wednesday. Thank you Bill, I appreciate it. Four minutes after seven and we

have town hall news coming up here in just a moment and then we have open phone time on Wheels Up Wednesday on the Bill Meyer Show. For precision.