Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-08-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

07-08-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday, 11 minutes after six, Eric Peters joins me, and we're going to have a good conversation. He wrote a piece about something we were talking about last week in which everything seems to be black and white or like a gray scale. when it comes to all the new cars. And he actually looked up the stats on it.

That 25% of all the cars that are being produced right now are white. So, yeah. We're getting out there. And then if you want to have anything that's even slightly colorful, they'll charge you $800 or more. And one of the most interesting parts about the story when his Eric went back and he looked at what you could get, the colors that you could get, on a 1980 Chevy Chevette.

Now, I am kind of sorry to admit that I actually bought a 1982 chevette scooter. I think it was a scooter on the side there. Brand new when I was a young man. I was able to get it for metallic blue, no extra charge. There were about 40 or 50 colors that you could get the 1980 Chevette, arguably a very low-end car at the time. and yet you can't get anything other than black, white, silver, gray, practically for the, you know, the stock color, the stock color costs, you know, these days. What is going on with this?

Well, I have a little conversation about that and a bunch more. And, of course, always your calls and opinion. Oh, there was another interesting story that I forget where it was. It was in California, I believe, but those Waymo self-driving cars, a Waymo self-driving car, ended up delivering a bunch of kids who were drinking in the back of the Waymo and causing trouble, I guess. The Waymo delivered them to the police department. Is this kind of a, I don't know, is this a little foreshadowing over our future? I don't know, but we'll have good conversation, get the latest reviews and a whole bunch more with Eric Peters.

Now then, what is happening in the Middle East? now this morning, President Trump, who is in Turkey. Now, the first question I have today, I don't know if we'll be able to get an answer or not. Why is it when we play Turkey in the World Cup, it's Turkey A, and then all of a sudden we're back to Turkey now that President Trump is there today. Yeah, he's in Ankara. And, yeah, it does look like things are starting to heat up in Iran again. If the ceasefire over, is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead?

It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people.

And they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people, Steve Whitkoff, Jared Kush. But they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time

dealing with them, they're liars. We make a deal. And they, if I make a deal with him, we have a deal and he goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone's agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press. They say, we never even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. We have to resume after we get through the funeral proceedings. What? Does this mean that talks with Iran will not resume? I don't care. They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys. I do it. My whole life, that's all I do is deals. My whole life is, that's how I became president, I guess. That's a deal too, right?

But I made a lot of money. I had a lot of great success. Tremendous success. Everything I did, I was successful. And I deal with these guys, and I say, this is from a different school. They're liars, they're cheats, they're sick people. They've hurt their people. They killed 54,000 people as of now. that were protesting. You know, when people say, how come they haven't taken over, they can't take over, because they're dead.

They killed them. Nobody's going to take over. They have no guns, and the other side has machine guns. Okay, there we go. So we're back into it. More attacks are going to be happening today. Of course, I know he's talking about them lying.

The thing is, I think we know that, you know, when you're a serious Muslim, a serious religiously Muslim-controlled country or government that you can lie to the infidel all you want and it's okay. Not a problem. Go ahead and lie to the infidel all you want.

That's all I would say. But actually, what triggered all this? This is what happened. Axios reporting that Iran's military fired at least two missiles at commercial ships that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz last night. And the Iranian Guard ended up attacking a third commercial ship this morning, rather, according to a U.S. official. The reported attacks threatened to unravel a memorandum of understanding signed less than three

weeks ago under which Iran agreed to halt attacks on the Strait of Hormuz. And given what you just heard from President Trump, he spoke about that a little bit earlier. Yeah, it looks like we're right back to it. Oil prices spiking 5 or 6% this morning. Sometimes it's a little bit more. I haven't checked it recently, but I know it was 5% or 6% when I was first waking up around 3.30 this morning hearing that. Now, I was checking AAA.

Gas prices, though, have not probably reacted, so maybe this is a good day to go and fill up. Not that I would, okay, no, I don't want to advocate a panic or anything like that, but gas, oil prices spiking 5 or 6 percent, but the actual gasoline pump prices still flat, still flat. It's about 445 a gallon here in Jackson County, according to AAA and 441 in Josephine County, just a few cents lower. And that's still about 50, 60 cents less than a month ago, but that's what we're looking at at this moment.

A little update on a story that I first mentioned yesterday in the news, and that had to do with that standoff. There was that guy who was arrested, the West Medford standoff the other day, all day. It was like one of those all-day stand-offs, and then they fired a bunch of rounds into the house, and then he came out. He was arraigned yesterday, seven felony counts.

and I didn't mention it yesterday because I saw it on preliminary reports online with Medford police and then it disappeared and now it has reappeared here. And Rogue Valley Times had this and had to do with the name of the suspect. And you wonder, what is it? What's in a name? What's in a name, right? Well, the guy who was technically arrested yesterday was Richard Estrada Jr. He was the guy that was accused and had to do with a bunch of Berkler.

is going on in Medford last week and they stole a bunch of firearms. It's what he's accused of. A whole lot of things. Richard Estrada, Jr. And I saw an early report and I thought I was going to mention it yesterday. I saw some reports that said that he had changed his name legally back in 2021 to dog face dog. Dog face dog, right? Okay. And then it went away.

It all vanished everywhere. Well, then the Royal Valley Times Times. came up and said, yep, back in 2021, he did change his name officially to Dog Face Dog. I'm thinking, okay, maybe they just, somebody just heard this and it wasn't really official. But yeah, officially he's in the Jackson County

Jail Doghouse under the name Dog Face Dog. I guess you can go look him up right now. He's still facing a million dollars bail. Hopefully your morning is doing better than a guy named Dog Face Dog. Okay? This is the Bill Myers Show, 19 minutes after

six. You ever wonder, if the judge at that case when he was going to him petitioning the court to change his name to dog face dog. Like, are you really sure about this? You know, you know, what's in a name? People, oh, he's rabid. You stay away from you. It's rabid. Do you ever wonder if they do something like that?

Do you really want to do this? Of course, I don't know. Maybe Dogface Dog is one of those furries. You know, one of those guys that goes out there and pretends to be an animal. Maybe that's, you know, the next mental illness we have to cover. in the jail system. I hope not, but I'm glad you're here anyway. All right, 20 minutes after six, this is the Bill Maher's show on KMED and KBXG. For precision and performance. Putting Genesis 912 through 16 on your hat while still playing baseball. That's a peaceful protest.

The Joe Pag Show, evening 6 to 8 on KMED. Hi, I'm Cassie from Clauser drilling, and I'm on KMED. 23 minutes after six. Appreciate you being here. a little bit cooler, at least not super hot, 91, getting a little closer. We're going to be in the upper 80s, low 90s here for the next few days. Still going to be very dry. No doubt about that. I know that last night was the recall election of the Shady Cove Mayor.

I don't know what the initial count of that is. No, a lot of people hadn't talked about this, but yeah, there had been a recall campaign against Shady Cove Mayor Lena Richardson. Eight o'clock last night was the deadline. I checked on the county site and the Secretary of State's website. I'm not seeing any mention of any preliminary count on this or not. And I also reached out to Jackson County clerk, Chris Walker, and we'll see maybe we can get an answer.

I don't know. I know it's one of those minor elections, a recall election, not considered important stuff, but in Shady COVID, sure is. And if you're in Shady Cove, let me know if you do know, because I've not heard anything official. Of course, there's not going to be an official, you know how it takes, you know, a few days. And up to, it takes up to a week or so for the Democrats to manufacture the vote to get things the way they want. Did I say that out loud? I really shouldn't say that.

Okay. Just ignore that I said that. It is work. After all, if I can't have a little fun with election law, who can you have fun with? right? But anyway, the whole thing is that the recall campaign centered around allegations of excessive spending on legal fees, poor management of the city's day-to-day business, delayed council appointments. And Richardson, in a story that I was reading in the Roeb Valley Times, said that the recall, she called a waste of taxpayers' money stemmed from the firing of former

city manager, Michelle Perry. So anyway, we'll see which side is going to prevail on that particular one, but I don't have an announcement, any kind of preliminary count at the moment. Over to Oregon Live, the Oregon Public Utility Commission yesterday ended up approving Portland General Electrics Plan. And this has to do with, you know, people have been concerned about the rise of data centers. Everybody wants to have the data center because we have to have artificial intelligence. You've got to have the server farms, and you better have, you know, a lot of electrical power to go with it. The concern has been, though, that we the people, we the sheeple that aren't necessarily caring about the data center coming to a town or a county or an area near you

are going to see power rates bump because of this, because of the data center is being brought in. What's happening is that Portland General Electric is going to raise rates for data centers by nearly 30 percent. 30 percent. So they'll pay a 30 percent higher rate. And the new rates which are taking effect today are actually congruent with Oregon's Power Act. This is a new law that aims to ensure that large energy-hungry, industrial users bear more of the costs incurred to meet that rapidly growing demand rather than essentially screwing, you know, regular homeowners and just people living around here. Hey, we just live around here.

I know we're not as important as a data center. That's how it's been treated in some areas. Yes, I know the data center is. is much, much more important. It's much more important to have the ability for artificial intelligence and being able to database everybody's movement. You know, you have to have some place to store all that flock camera information, right? Of course, that's the cynical side of me with the data center and the AI conversation.

But anyway, we'll leave that alone. But at least the data centers right now in Portland General Electric, 30% higher rate than they had just a few days ago, apparently. All right. There's another interesting story here. This is in Capitol Chronicle. Oregon regulators are proposing steep, well, these are the mushroom fees. Steep psilocybin fee hikes.

These are huge, huge hikes. And, you know, I had my doubts about this, but I've talked to some enough people around this that apparently treating post-traumatic stress with psilocybin, but they used to term, you know, the magic mushrooms and all. all the rest of its stuff. It's not a recreational drug in this particular case. They're actually using it for a legitimate treatment purpose.

And it seems to be successful for some people. And I had my doubts about this, but I've talked to a number of guests over the months, and it seems like it's a real thing. The first thing they're going to do here, Oregon Health Authority, has announced a proposed fee increases. It would affect practically every corner of the psilocybin industry.

and it's going to make it difficult, according to them, to make it pencil. The first thing they do is they would double the annual license fee from $10,000 to $20,000 for psilocybin manufacturers and service centers where adults 21 and older take supervised trips. So you go from $10,000 a year to $20,000 a year. I'm kind of wondering what service is Oregon Health Affairs. authority providing to actually double the license fee. That's $20,000 a year. That is not a small amount of money, is it?

Yeah. And these fee increases are coming after a whole bunch of service centers have already closed. And they're raising doubts about the viability of this legal psilocybin experiment. But, you know, that's kind of Oregon's way, right? If there's any way that we can find, especially with Oregon Health Authority, to screw something up, that could be another example of it. But I just thought at least keep you in the room on this particular story. I have to see if I can find anybody that is more in the know on this industry.

I know just enough about the psilocybin industry to get myself in trouble here. But it does appear that it is a legitimate thing. A lot of veterans have been going into these psilocybin centers and having treatment with this compound. That really seems to help him out. And I can't, I can't criticize that. How could I? 29 minutes after six, this is the Bill Meyer show, and you're on KMED. Man, I love this place.

The Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. Wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters is our highway star. Eric, welcome back from E.P.Otos.com. Good to have you on, sir. Likewise, Bill. I'm doing my best to not touch the touchscreen. Did you happen to see that one?

Yeah, I just laughed at that. You had some really great, interesting articles up there on automobiles, rather, the automotive world, the politics, the weirdness of it. And so for the longest time, of course, we're not supposed to touch the cell phone, right? And then they got to the point. And then they got to the point where, I mean, here in the state of Oregon, it's like, and of course, everybody keeps touching their cell phone. We just get pretty good at hiding it and, you know, slipping it in the point. pocket or, you know, whatever, you know, whatever it is. I know that people get around this all the time. But that being said, then they start turning the interior of newer cars into cell phones because you

just have the big touchscreen, right? And so you can't run the car without touching the touchscreen, but now you're telling us that the touchscreens are starting to say, well, you're moving. Now you can't touch us. What is the story? It's a great story. I can't believe it. It's catholic. You know, some of the features that the manufacturers love to tout, for example, GPS, you try to punch in a destination while you're driving and it won't let you. You try to dial up Alexa and it won't let you. The little warning comes up on the screen.

You know, function disabled. You have to stop the car in order to be able to use the function. So what's the point of the function? I know. It's like an annoyance tax. And of course, the presumption is that you are basically a kind of what they used to say about Jerry Ford, that he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. That's essentially the premise. That's the way they look at us. And fundamentally profoundly,

this gets back to something that you and I talk about often, which is, wait a minute, I bought the car. I bought everything that's in the car. I am the guy who should be in control of what goes on in my car. Something goes wrong. Something happens. Okay, but at least I have agency. I'm the guy who's in charge. This idea that you're going to be parented by your car, your car that you paid for is now going to be kind of like a nattering nanny that wax your knuckles with a ruler? It's insufferable. I can't believe. Well, I wonder, is there any pushback against this with the manufacturers? That's one question. And second of all, is this something which could also be happening because of liability? Because you got the trial. The trial lawyers are at this point where they'll go after

anybody who has anybody who has any money. And I'm still wondering if they're looking at this. Because I remember, when I first started seeing this, my wife has a 2006 Volkswagen Passat, right? And it has the driving center in the middle with the radio and all the rest of its stuff. But before it will let you do anything, it has a little warning on the screen that would say, just notice that you have to say that you're not going to do this and be unsafe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you have to hit the accept button before you're allowed to change anything on the radio or put anything in. And I guess what? That's not good enough any longer?

You have to just stop the car now? Well, apparently not. Apparently it isn't good enough. Apparently, they are concerned that there'll be some sort of fabulous, you know, glaring wreck somewhere. And then somebody will say, well, I'm going to put the screen in the car. And I was just trying to change the radio. And then they'll claim it's the fault of the manufacturer for the driver being incompetent.

And so that's why they do it. But, you know, they back themselves into a corner with this. They decided to try to emulate the smartphone. You know, smartphone is all the rage of the last 20 years. It's the new technology. Tap and swipe everything, right? Tap and swipe everything. And so they, you know, the car companies looked with great envy upon the manufacturers of

smartphones. And they thought, okay, we're going to, we're going to do what they do. And they decided that they're going to incorporate all of the vehicle secondary functions that used to be controlled by knobs and switches into a smartphone-looking tablet that they've now put into the dashboard. The thing is people hate these interfaces. I mean, they really don't like them. They're very few people who like them.

In fact, you were mentioning last week that one of the cars you actually liked. Which one was that? The Mazda CX-30. Yeah, the Mazda, the CX-30. You actually really liked it and had a decent enough engine without a turbocharger for it. But even you were complaining about the interface of the radio or the touchscreen thing. What was the problem with that? Was it kind of similar to what you're talking about today?

Yeah, I mean, it's just needless perplexity or complexity or however you want to put it. You know, a dial knob that you rotate to increase or decrease the volume and then another dial knob that you turn left or right to change station. How do you improve on that? You don't. It's functional. It works really well. It's intuitive and it's ergonomic. Instead, what they've done is to take these simple functions and make them complicated by putting into a menu that you have to tap and swipe that's not ergonomic because you have to look at it.

You know, you have to keep your attention focused on the screen. Oh. You have to accurately push. You have to accurately type this tap this little icon. And then you have to go through various menus. It's ridiculous. Okay, so it's one of those things like, let's say you wanted to change the station that you're listening on the radio, right? So you're doing that.

So first thing you have to do is tap audio and then you have to go within. And then is it the connected services like the streaming service? Oh, you want the actual conventional broadcast? Great. All right. AMFM. Tap again, swipe, and then get down to it and then kind of, oh, boy, very complex, in other words. Yes.

And then there's the other related factor that when this stuff fails, it's going to be. expensive. I had one of my regular readers on EP autos who had bought a vehicle within the last couple of years. She just out of curiosity asked the dealer what it would cost to replace the tablet-style LCD touchscreen in her vehicle if it failed. And she was given a figure of $5,000. Oh, five grand. That's making the airbags look cheap. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is 10, 15 years from now, you know, when a vehicle, a 2026 model vehicle is as old as your PT cruiser is or my Nissan Frontier is, will you even be able to find a replacement touchscreen for the thing? Oh, man. That's the one thing I do love about the PT. I'm getting it out of the paint shop this

week. I went back and checked it last week. And it's looking great. They just had to finish up the fenders. I paid extra to do the fenders. I was questioning what I was going to do. And but yeah, I'm looking at that. There is no surveillance tech in that car, at least not that much that I'm really aware of, other than the fact it may record the last few seconds before our crash, you know, that kind of thing in the system. But that's about it. I'm all right with that, Eric. I really am. Yeah, I am too. I mean, effectively, you've got a brand new car now. Now it looks new. And it's, you know, functionally speaking, it operates as well or better than any brand new car, doesn't it? Yep. Now, it may not be as efficient. And it's probably not as safe as a new car, right?

Well, okay, but all these things are hypothetical. And yeah, okay, it doesn't get 40 miles per gallon, but you didn't have to spend $40,000 on it either. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking it that way. It's amazing stuff. By the way, speaking of that, the color of my PT is this really deep, metallic, bright blue, right? I remember that color. And it hasn't looked that good for years, right, because it's always been outside here. And I'm looking at this, and I'm so excited, you ended up writing about the colors that are available on the new cars.

and you actually got the stats for it. 25% of all the cars are white. Really? And 80% are some iteration of gray scale. Yeah. It's astonishing. I mean, if you go back in time, even to the 90s, not that long ago, it was exactly the opposite.

You know, you look at pictures and videos from that era and before, and cars were colorful, and I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose a specific example. So I looked up the color palette for the 1980 Chevrolet Chivalry Chivette, which was, you know, an economy car. Oh, my gosh. The Chevy Chvette, I mentioned that early on because I am embarrassed to admit that I actually owned a 1982 Chvette scooter with a blue metallic paint job. Scooter, you know, it's the scooter model, hey? But you could have got it painted just about any color of the rainbow that you wanted.

I know. I actually listed all of the colors that were available that year. It's astounding. And none of them were extra charge. Yeah, they were like 35, 40 colors overall. Yep. For a 19E, let's face it, a low-rent car in its day, okay? Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about a Cadillac.

We're not talking about a high-end car where you would expect to be able to get all these different colors. But that was common practice back in the day. Now, you know, you've got a very limited color palette for a lot of these manufacturers. And, you know, the colors that have some pizzazz cost extra and in some case astoundingly extra. Yeah, I posted some examples of that in the article. So a lot of people, you know, it's already a stretch to have to buy the car. I'm not going to throw in another $500 or $800 or $1,000, you know, for this paint color. I just can't afford it.

so they don't. Yeah, maybe that's why they're just defaulting to the white. Now, I know that one of your commenters on the site was saying, the one thing about white is that it tends to not show a lot of the flaws like many other, like many other colors do it. Maybe that's what people are thinking long term. Maybe, but I think we've just kind of gone Soviet. You know, it's not just cars.

You see this dreary gray scale and everything, don't you? Yeah, dreary gray scale on the color, and then there's the angry catfish face on the, on the design too, right? Yeah, that's sort of that desperate scow that these otherwise completely boring and homogenous vehicles have. It's almost like a keening wail of, uh,

help me. I wish I had a personality. That's all right. You don't necessarily have to have the catfish, the angry catfish face if you want, though. Hey, we're talking with Eric Peters, though, and we'll get his latest reviews coming up here, and he's actually been driving some really great cars here as of late. And if you have a question or comment,

anything that's on your mind about the open road and automotive stuff. Call me up. 7705633. We'll continue. Wheels up Wednesday next. Craving hot pizza without breaking the bank. We have Eric Peters, Automotive Journalist, and Genius at E.P.O.O.S.com,

and he's on the Zoom call this morning, and I love going to your calls. See what's on your mind. John, you're on with Eric Peters. What do you think of? I am thinking, how's your crystal ball, on how long we'll be able to drive all of these cars that don't have spyware? That's a pretty darn good question, Eric. What would you say, you know, looking in the automotive crystal ball?

Well, I foresee that depending on the outcome of the 28, 2008 elections specifically, that we might only have a few years left. I think that there is a very, very good chance that they're going to come out and say the vehicles that don't have connected technology, that don't have specifically things like automated emergency braking, that don't have drowsy, distracted drunk driver monitors, are on. unsafe. And you can't, you won't be able to use these things on public roads unless you get your vehicle fitted with those things, which of course is a technical and economic impossibility, effectively for vehicles that didn't come with that stuff originally.

So a few more years, depending on where they take this. Well, could they put us all in jail, John? What do you think? Well, maybe an add-on camera system that would tack on to not be connected to the car, it hanging off the mirror. It's not going to work. And I think another venue that they're probably going to exploit will be the insurance one. They'll make it so expensive to continue to drive a vehicle that doesn't have what they'll frame as safety technology.

They'll say, sure, you can drive it. And, of course, you have to buy insurance. And then they'll tell you you have to pay $5,000 a year to cover your unsafe car. That's the kind of thing they're going to do. That would seem to me the pathway, John. John, I appreciate it. It's a good question. I'm glad you asked it. Phil's in Rogue River. Phil, good to have you here. You're on with Eric Peters. Go ahead.

Morning, Eric. And Bill, this kind of pertains to you, too, in your radio station. Sure. You know, if you see a big blue Dodge rammed diesel pickup on the top of Blackwell Hill pulled off to the side of the road, I'm having to change my radio station. Really? Because of the touchscreen. Yeah. So his blue, so your blue, Dodge Ram pickup truck won't let you tune while you're driving? It won't? No, no, no. If my Dodge Ram had that.

Oh, if your Dodge Ram had that. Oh, okay. Some vehicles do have that. And it gets even creepier because of the eye movement monitor system, which I've personally sampled now in a number of new vehicles, it will temporarily disable the entire thing. It'll just kind of put you in a timeout room for 10 or 15 minutes, and then it will begrudgingly allow you to use some of the functions again. And if you try, then they'll stop. You know, that's where all this is headed. Well, Phil, I hope we're not getting to the point where if you want to change your station, you're just going to start carrying around a vintage boom box in the front seat, right? Yeah, because you have actually, because we're a different station here in Rogue River than you are in Medford.

So, you know, I'd have to pull over to change the station. That's crazy. Oh, you can't get the 1063 in your section of Rogue River? No, I think I'm 105.9. I don't know. I'm actually. streaming you. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, 105-9 is in, uh, it starts in Rogue River and Grants Pass area, you know, for the city of Grants Pass. All right. Well, Phil, thanks for letting me know, okay. Appreciate that. Just crazy. And Bill, you know, we've talked about this is related. I've had a number of late model vehicles where if you try to back the thing up with the door cracked so you can look behind you, maybe and look at the curb because you want to get fine detail, the, the, the,

the computer will put the transmission into park. Oh. Well, I had this happen with, uh, we have a, a 2006 Chevy Tahoe in the station stable here. And the only thing it does is that it just beeps horribly if you're trying to, you know, back up with the door open. Because I've tried doing that one time for that particular purpose, being able to look to try to back up more accurately. And it doesn't like it. So now they just put it in park now. Okay. Yeah, some of them do.

Some of the manufacturers do that. All right. And it just highlights that all of these functions are now electronically controlled by the computer. You have the illusion of physical control because there's still. in many cases, a gear handle that you move up and down to get it from park to drive. But it's as disconnected from the physical act as it is if you were playing your PlayStation. It's just an illusion. Well, isn't that why Ford had a recall because there was, what, the F-150s?

There was a series of the F-150 trucks in which they got a command in which the transmission would just go into park at highway speed. Yeah, it wasn't just the F-150. It ran the gamut. It was explorers. It was a number of Lincoln models. And yeah, exactly. People were driving down the road with the transmission in drive and the system glitched and the computer threw the transmission into park. So there's been a recall involving nearly a million of these vehicles and lawsuits and some of them alleging emotional trauma, which I actually get. I mean, imagine being driving down the road on the highway and you're going 70 miles an hour and the car suddenly decides it's going to put itself into park.

And then it has that parking pole, which is probably making a racket as it's being torn up, right? Yeah. It doesn't exactly give you confidence in the vehicle, does it? Yeah, I imagine not. Okay, let me go to Glenn. Glenn, you're in Rogue River. What's on your mind today? Question for Eric Peters, E. Piano's.

Hello, both of you. Eric, I have a question about that will allow compression, ignition on gasoline engines. I was wondering, you've been exposed to that, and what do you think of that? It's pretty technical, but I'm just wondering how practical. Boy, so kind of a gasoline diesel? Is that what you're talking about, Glenn? My guess. Yes.

Yes, and I've heard about it. It's not anywhere near production ready, but they are fiddling around with it because their efficiency gains to be had that way, obviously. The question is whether they'll be able to get it compliant with all of the emissions wrecks. That's the thing that's kept them from bringing back the rotary engine. It's the thing that has basically snuffed the life out of a lot of promising engine technology because it's just so difficult to make them compliant with the just completely pedantic

emissions requirements in the United States in particular and also Europe. Yeah, Glenn, that is a great question. You're going to make me want to look that up now. I'm intrigued at how they could actually get compression up so high and then spray gasoline into it without it knocking or just detonating. Did you read up anything on that on how they solved that problem? I'm just curious. I know it's got a geeky, but it's geeking me out. Just wondering. Yeah, me too. I actually need to go back. I remember reading a paper about it. I didn't get a chance to look at it at length. But yeah, I'm going to make a note to myself to check into it. Yeah, could you hang? Could you add to that, Glenn? I'm just curious what you read.

Well, they didn't tell you how, but they're saying they're running at ultraline and although it pre-fires, they're squirting in the vapor, I think, so fast that it still ignites, kind of like a diesel does it idle, where you have the rattle, but as you speed it up, it runs smoothly and they're running mixed mode. Part of the time they're going to have spark. Part of the time it's going to be compression. Boy, that is amazing. Glenn, thanks for sharing that story.

You know, Eric, that kind of brings me to, you know, it's like we have these competing truths and both things can be true at the same time. On one hand, we've never seen more attempts to put restrictions on people's abilities to drive their cars. On the other hand, there are some of the most amazing tech, which has come. out of these engineers that are just one example of something that's actually coming out in a few months. Sure. Nissan's got a series hybrid coming out version of the rogue.

And what that means is it's like a volt. In other words, the gas engine does not do anything in terms of directly propelling the vehicle. It operates exclusively as a generator that produces electricity that then in turn powers the motor. And essentially, it's the best of both worlds. it enables a person to have a vehicle that, like an electric car, can be powered on electricity for, I think they're going to say 40-something miles, but it doesn't force you to stop and wait for a charge. You pump a little gas in the thing, and that runs the generator, and off you go. So phenomenal gas mileage, potentially, and without all the detractions that come with buying a purely electric car.

And this is a Nissan Rogue, which is coming out. And is that going to be the 2027 model. Now, here's an issue, though. I've been writing a lot, and I know you've written about this, too, that Nissan has been having huge financial problems. Is this something that is real that will be supportable? You get a little bit concerned that. Do you want to buy into a car manufacturer that could be finding itself out of business soon? I know.

Well, that is an issue. Now, luckily, Nissan, it has a brand that's worth something. It might take an infusion of cash, a partial buyout or something. something from another car company. They have some good products. And I don't think that they're necessarily a goner. Like Chrysler, I think, is a goner. Well, Chrysler only has one model, like you just mentioned. That's it. That's right. Exactly. And they've just, they've got nothing to offer any longer. Nissan has a lot of things to offer that are desirable. So I'm still pulling for them. I don't see them as necessarily getting ready to sleep with the fishes just yet.

That's good. That's good to hear. Because, you know, people will ask those kind of questions to themselves. All right, you know, is it circling the drain? But that sounds fascinating. In fact, that technology is essentially the way that, well, train locomotives haven't running for a long, long time. You don't have a transmission in the standard sense. You always had a big diesel engine and with a generator or an alternator. And essentially, you were just controlling that going to the wheels all the time. But they would combine this then with a battery in the Nissan Road. That's not the best of all worlds. That would make sense. A lot of sense. Yeah, it's similar to the, You remember the Chevy Volt?

Yeah. Similar to that. And, you know, people who own those vaults, sometimes they didn't have to put gas in their cars for like a couple of months. And they ended up having to use fuel stabilizer because, you know, the gas would go bad before they used it. Yeah, the gas would go bad. I know.

I love that idea. I would also imagine that this is a mechanically simple vehicle when you're doing it this way, because there's no transmission in the conventional sense, is there? Yeah, correct. It's direct drive, just like an electric car. So they eliminate the transmission altogether. So no worries about a grenading CVT. Very interesting. Good story here. Thanks, Eric.

Atopatos.com, we're talking with Eric Peters. Let me go to the next line here, and we're always happy to take your calls. Morning, who's this? Welcome. Hey, good morning. It's deplorable Patrick, and I'm always railing about these out-of-touch engineers that are obviously looking for some way to distinguish themselves by coming up with some idea or invention that will, you know, make them get some applause. this thing about the inability to tune the radio while driving that was brought up, how do they get away with making the assumption that there couldn't be somebody in the passenger seat tuning the thing while you're driving? You know, that's a really interesting question, Eric. What would you say to it?

And you're right. I mean, you're absolutely correct. Why would it be a problem for a passenger? This has actually happened to me. No, Don and I have been out for a drive. and we're going somewhere, and I'll ask her to punch in the destination in the GPS. But no, we've got to pull over first and come to a stop. It's absurd. Well, I guess, well, once again, it is the car as parent.

All right, Patrick. I'm not in the market for a new car. All right. Appreciate the call. Eric, I just have to go into one story that I just really loved. First off, you just added the story today that now the typical car loan is up to 84 months now. Yeah, well, it's becoming a lot more common. People could get those loans previously, but it's kind of becoming a mainstream thing. And no surprise, you know, the average transaction price, meaning, you know, what the average price paid for a new car is now up to $52,000.

So, you know, if you put that over the course of six years, not even including interest, it's like an $800 a month car payment. So, you know, add another year to that and you can get it down to 700, so it's manageable. And so that's one of the ways the finance department of the dealership is, you know, trying to deal with this problem of affordability that everybody's talking about. The difficulty is that this is like getting to the point where you can't push it out any farther because, you know, cars depreciate. They're not like a house. You buy a house and the house are good. It's going to be worth more down the road than what it was when you bought it. Speaking of depreciation, you had an article I was reading a few days ago,

had to do with the luxury electric vehicle that was 140,000 brand new, I guess. And this sets a new record, Lucid, which hasn't made any money ever. It's like the greatest waste roll of the entire EV boondoggle. If you had bought a brand new Lucid four years ago for almost $150,000, it would be worth $44,000 today. Ouch. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that. And so, and I laughed when you said you could have bought a new Honda, a Honda Civic each year and thrown it away, you know, at the end of the year. You could have bought a Honda Ford every year for four years and thrown it away at the end of each year. And then you would have still had more money.

Oh, well, I guess like we say, well, the Tesla's weren't a whole lot better, right? That Tesla model, was it the S, the $120,000 one? Yeah. Yeah, the depreciation on these things is just halting. It's so awful. And as people figure this out, they are not wanting to buy in. You know, there are not many people who have money that are that dumb that are interested in buying something that is going to hemorrhage value that quickly.

It's a real problem for the electric vehicle industry. A couple articles you do need to watch folks here. The forgotten Trans Am. I love that story when you discussed this iteration of the 1979 Trans Am that had four speed, right, had the Hearst Four Speed, I believe. Annual, yep, just like my car. Yeah, and a 301. I don't even remember the 301 Pontingack engine.

Yeah, it was what they called a credit option in the Transam that year, meaning they actually cut some money off the price tag if you elected to get that engine rather than the other two engines, which were the ones that everybody's familiar with, the 400 Pontiac and then the 403 olds. And, you know, people probably know about the 6.6 liter on the on the shaker scoop, which was part of the thing. You know, you got a car with this big engine in it. So, you know, who would want one with a 4.9 liter, which is what the 301 was. The 301 was going to be Pontiac's next generation engine. It was a total redesign. It really doesn't have anything directly in common with the other Pontiac V8s. It's much lighter.

And it was designed to be much more efficient. Pontiac was trying to figure out how to improve the performance of it as well. And so in 1980 and 81, they slapped a turbo on it, literally slapped it on. It wasn't really designed with turbocharging in mind, and it still had a carburetor, didn't run that great. And then General Motors pulled the rug out from under them. And it's a shame because I think if Pontiac had had time to massage and tune and develop that engine, by the mid-1980s, it probably would have been something. Yeah. And there would have been aftermarket parks to, you know, make it more power.

all that sort of stuff like that, you know, the regular Chevy V8s or the Ford V8s. I mean, there's all sorts of aftermarket parts for those classic V8s and not a problem of all. But that's why I don't even remember the 301, and that's why there were only a few thousand, I guess. So if you ever... Very unusual. If you see one of those in 1979, the transams, there's still a bunch of them around, but you would think that the ones with the 301 might be more valuable because of rarity, but then again, maybe not. I don't know.

Oh, absolutely they are. And I think as awareness percolates out, that will increase, particularly because of the four speed. The four speed makes a big, big difference. Take two transams, all else being equal. And the four speed one will be worth at least 20% more than the automatic one. Good to hear. All right. We'll grab one more call before we take off here.

And you are on with Eric Peters. Good morning. Who is this? Welcome. Yeah, good morning. This is Jim over in Colono Valley. Hey, Jim. I wanted to go back a bit back to the gasoline engine that you were talking.

about as far as firing on compression. Yeah, the diesel. It reminds me back in 1998, midway through 98, Dodge dispensed with the Bosch manual injectors and went to a electronic ignition, you know, injectors with the four valves set up. And they had programmed the injectors, what they called. called a triple shot, which was they shot a small amount of diesel on the upcoming compression stroke, then another shot at the top for the beginning of the par stroke, and then a trailing shot as the compression stroke was going down.

Oh, and that's really interesting. So that was, so it wasn't just one big burst of or shot of fuel, right? It was three. Yeah, they called it a triple shot. Huh. You know, I thought that was pretty clever how they did that. It sounds like there's a little bit of that with this gasoline, this gasoline diesel, so to speak, or something like that, Eric? What?

Very, very much so. And, you know, you just prompted a memory. Something just percolated upward in my mind. A long time ago, I had an 80 Camero Burlinetta with a 305. And I used to play, I can't believe I did this. This is a horrible thing to confess. But if you shut the ignition off and forward the gas pedal, you could keep the engine dieseling. It would run.

Did you ever do that back in the day? Yes, I did. I did that. I had a 1977 Chevy Impala that you could do that. Turn the key off and keep it running. But, Jim, I appreciate the memory. Thanks for bringing it up, okay? Great story.

Okay, we'll do. Okay. I love that. Yeah, we don't like admitting the abuse sometimes we hand out to our automotive friends here, okay? Hey, Eric, before you take off here, you did review the 22. 26 Honda pilot. What's your overall impression of that, huh? Oh, I love it. It's a great vehicle. It's one of the last vehicles, unfortunately, that Honda still sells with their excellent 3.5-Liter V6 paired with an actual automatic, not a CBT. It's just, in my opinion, a great versatile vehicle that is an good

alternative to a traditional SUV that gets a lot worse gas mileage and is not as manageable to drive. Very pleasant vehicle to drive. And also, just very blue chip. You know, one of the reasons people have bought hondas and toyotas is that they're known for being long-term long-haul reliable. And that's chiefly a function of engines like that 3.5-liter v6. You change the oil regularly, you'll get a quarter million miles out of it. And that is a value proposition in my eyes. Needless to say, get the V6 while it's still there. Yeah.

Yep. Eric, thank you so much. You have anything in the driveway for next week that will kick around? Yes, indeed. What is coming is the current Toyota Tacom. which they heavily revised, as you know, no more V6 in the Tacoma, turbo four-cylinder and turbo-hybrid drive trains only. However, you can still get it with the manual,

but the asterix is only in the more expensive terms. Isn't that interesting that the manual, which used to be the inexpensive option, is now an expensive option? It's quite interesting because, you know, they used to be sort of synonymous when you said manual, that was standard. Yeah. The standard transmission was manual. Now it's like an option in a handful of high-end vehicles, which is bizarre, particularly when it comes to trucks.

Trucks used to always come standard with manual transmissions. Yeah, well, for all the grunt. Great talk is always, Eric. And if you haven't gone over to the site, folks, you really enjoy this. E.P.O.O.S.com. I read it every day. And thank you so much. And we'll catch you that, Eric. Be well.

Sounds good, Bill. Thank you. Eric Peters on Wheels Up Wednesday. This is KMED, KMED, H.D. H.1. Eagle Point. Medford KBXG grants pass. Well, the ceasefire is out. We'll get the latest on that with Fox News. We'll have a hand of the update, too, and then more of your calls. A huge part of health care plan.