Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-17-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

09-17-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday. It is September 17th, 60 degrees on our way to the low 90s, and then we're starting to cool down a little bit more, a little bit more, a little more rain next week. Kind of how that is working.

Today, Eric Peters will be joining me. We've got a lot to talk about, a lot of things about EV mandates are getting Smackdown. There's other news that we need to talk about too. In fact, there's also a lawsuit over in Wyoming right now about this guy who has been deleting diesel emission

systems and the EPA was like charging him criminally and going after it. By the way, thanks to Brad for having popped me that information. I'm going to have to talk with Eric about this. But it would appear that the EPA is being backed off

of these criminal laws The criminal liability sort of situation. At least that's what it's looking like right now. I'll talk with Eric about that. Plus the latest reviews and, of course, taking your calls too. It's 770-5633. Always some great conversation here. What happened in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder last week,

still continuing to reverberate around the country here, even here in Little Old Southern Oregon here. Rogue Valley Times ended up reporting yesterday that Central Points, school employee, a central point school employee, is on leave following, once again, social media remarks about Charlie Kirk's death. And it apparently is a teacher's aide for special ed students over at Crater High. And she posted to her social media following Kirk's September 10th assassination. Now, I have a copy of what is the alleged post. The school district is not confirming this uh you know she's on leave right now she's not in the classroom nothing like that she's

not a teacher technically but a teacher's aide according to the road valley time story and i have what is alleged to be the person's social media post i don't want to share her name though because it's a copy of a copy you know that kind of thing and i think that's uh probably why uh road valley times didn't say anything about that either it's one thing if we can see it, but the social media account is now gone. And I can't see it myself. So for that reason, I think that's probably not a good idea to do this. But I will share what the alleged post said, which I think is quite interesting. And let me see if I can dig this up here. Yeah, there we go. You have to make it a little bit larger. This alleged person from

school district 7 said I think everyone has their own hard line right the hill that they are willing to die on my line my hill is that I will never support or tolerate or sympathize with a bigot, racist and or rapist

and they can fall into one or all three of those categories and I will never have sympathy for them no matter what happens to them. Not a zilch and just a foreshadow for all the view debating on whether you want to delete me because I don't feel sympathy for Charlie Kirk, know this about me. The day that the rapist in chief that is

destroying this country finally dies, I will absolutely be celebrating that death. I can't wait till he takes his last breath. But that's how I feel about rapists and sexual predators like him. I have no grace for that. And the post ends after that. Apparently it went farther down in the screen. So I would argue that once again, Again, yet another person within the government education system whose brain has been broken, I think, from a lot of the reporting and a lot of the democratic narrative of the last 15 to 20 years, just my opinion. And the school district may actually confirm that this is the person.

I don't want to share the person's name from this because, like I said, I'm getting it third, fourth hand, you know, that kind of thing. But interesting. Kind of sad that this sounds like something my sister could have written. It really does. And my sister, very hard left liberal. I don't know how she got to be what she is, but very hard left liberal. And usually ends up the few times that we do talk each year calling and just screaming at me about Trump

and how Trump is trying to kill her children. I'm telling you, that's the kind of world that we're living in right. now and my sister votes and this person who is under investigation over in school district three school district six rather uh also votes which i find very uh disheartening think that people that are uh that this rabid and this ill-informed a rapist well i think we know where uh this individual is getting your news from huh okay we can talk about that if you wish. I'm kind of getting tired of it, really. 770563-3-3-770 K-M-E-D. But, yeah, like I said, this is like breeding something my sister would have screamed at me on the phone.

Love you, sis. Love you, sis. You voted for a rapist who's trying to kill our kids. I mean, you know, those, that's kind of how the conversations go with my sister. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to really, really reach her or not. I mean, how do you reach people like that? that are that badly broken. Maybe that's a conversation worth having. I am going to be talking with Rob Schlaffert, a little bit later this morning, rather at 8.30. And Rob Schlaffers is an interesting thinker,

and he's been a part of defending education already again for a while. I don't know if that's what he's doing right now. But he sent out a piece that was talking about the differences between, you know, how we react to these sort of situations, our worldview, are not necessarily political in nature, but they are psychological in nature. And the left psychological point of view, the right's psychological point of view also, and that the worldviews and the experiences are just like completely different, not even on the same plane as far as the psychological experience.

And I think that's interesting. I'm going to talk with him a bit about that a little bit closer to. to the end of the show. 17 minutes after six. To join in 770-5-633-770 K-M-E-D. There's some more headlines. We'll go over that next here on the Bill Maher's show. KMED.

Glad you're here, 19 minutes after six on Wheels Up Wednesday. We have an anonymous caller here. Hello, Anonymous. You wanted to weigh in on some of the controversy and turmoil, spooling around the system right now. What are you thinking? Yeah, and like I said, I didn't think. to set myself. I'm not even that smart, but I'd seen somebody read that Charles Manson

spent the rest of his life in prison, and he'd never killed anybody to do that. I got it all backwards now, but anyhow, he hadn't killed anybody spent the rest of his life in prison for inciting that. Yeah, what, and what he was actually charged with was a first-degree murder, and you see, and this is where they got him. It's conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people back then, including actress Sharon Tate. Gosh, what was that, 68, 69, I think is when that happened. And so, yeah, you're right.

He never directly held the knives or did things like that, but they did get him for conspiracy to commit murder. And so where were you going on that, though? But like I'll MoMA, I swear she's doing the same thing. and many others. There is a lot of protection, though, for a political speech in the House. They can probably do things that you and I couldn't get away with, I think. I could be doing a little bit of spitballing about that, but there are House rules,

but there's, I don't know if there's a lot that can be done about that, but you say they're tiptoeing right up to that edge, or do you think they're going beyond the edge? well i i feel like they are but um they're allowed i mean in congress they're allowed to lie i mean there's no repercussions for lying or anything hey i i political speech also you know the first amendment also protects a lie protects political speech yeah it is kind of funny that way i don't know if i would want to live in a world in which the government determines what is uh what is truth or protectable because of, you know, the First Amendment because we'll be the arbiters of truth because remember just a few years ago, we could be completely canceled or taken

down for not believing the safe and effective push. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, I got kicked off Facebook, everything else. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate the call, though. Thanks for that. 7705-633. Let me head to another call. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello. Good morning, Bill. Hi, Tom. How are you this morning? This wheels up Wednesday.

What's on your mind? Well, you know, I really think a great deal about this left-right divide. And your dilemma with your sister is kind of typical a lot of us are struggling with. Yeah, I feel like I'm dealing with a broken person every time I talk with her. And it's like I have sympathy for her, but at the same, I mean, I never yell back. I do not yell back because there's no point. I, there's just no point in me doing this. I try to just smooth this over.

I try not to talk politics, but yet she insists on taking it there every time. Oh, yeah? Well, yeah, she's using you to vent and, uh, I guess. So forth, but, but, you know, I think for, um, a lot of people, um, myself included, it looks like our big choice is, uh, and it's dealing with terms, but it looks like on the right, uh, you have the choice of fat, And on the left, communism, and of course, neither one is a good choice. They're both authoritarian regimes.

You're right. Exactly. There's more similarity than differences between those two. And when we talk about fascism, though, we're not talking about fascism. The way the leftists use fascism as a term or as a pejorative there is essentially, I disagree with you politically. And so everything that the right does that they don't like, it's fascism. but you could argue that the economic system and the government design of sorts is fascism with, well, the government partnering with business, in essence, right? Yeah, exactly.

Well, think of the military industrial complex and the endless wars. To me, that's fascism. And a lot of people think fascism means you're ghost stepping and you have Ilducci, you know, up there and doing that sort of thing or else. you know, National Socialist, and you've got the horse vessel playing in the background all the time. You know, it's not bad. You know, you look at classical, you know, we think of Germany in the 30s and so forth, but, you know, the government took over, quote, education, and got very militaristic and so forth and so on. And, you know, I often say that the right and left accuse each other,

you might say, of authoritarianism, and they're both right. If we're intellectually honest, we have to admit that. You're right. Yeah. And that's just it. Even my own team is more than willing to grab the reins of power. Well, I'll give you an example, though, of things which do trouble me, even about the current Trump administration here. Oh, yeah, I've got a list.

Well, this will grab a bunch of Nvidia's output. In other words, in order to export, where is that Intel? I think it's in video, wasn't it, that they agreed in order to export the chips. The federal government gets a cut of that. Remember that story? Yeah, just vaguely. It wasn't one I was really up on. Uh-huh.

Yeah. So we have privately owned companies. Now, see, there's two sides of looking at this, too. We have privately owned companies that bend over backwards to get along well with the government because they know that the government can really, you know, screw around with you and make it quite difficult. And then you also have private companies that, in essence, through lobbying and their connections within the system also control the government. So it's an interesting type of fascism if you're talking about the design of the government the way the Republic's working out right now. Well, yeah, to look at big pharma.

I mean, there's, you know, the drug and street, Pfizer, and so forth, the biggest controllers of, you know, lobbyists and so forth. Also, if you notice, if you watch conventional TV, during the news, they're all sponsored by the drug company. So do you think the news should ever criticize any of the drug companies, no? And it's kind of hard to do that. I mean, that's probably the worst example of the public-private partnership we have right now with the news media and its control or obey. Or they call it obeisance, obeisance to, how do you pronounce that word, Tom, you know? Basin's, O-B-E-I-S-A-N-C-E. I know what it means when you read it.

You're like me. You have a lot of words you read, but that you've never heard pronounced before. But it's like, you know, most news media will never really talk much about the truth with pharmaceuticals and the control of that because the paycheck depends on it. Yeah, so you look, I don't know, what I'd like to do with people like your sister and so forth, they start asking questions. And really, I'm very curious about their answers. So I just let them rant and so forth and really just keep asking questions, you know, and at a certain point they have a cause to kind of look at why they think the way they do and so forth. But also to kind of honor their point of view in that, you know, you're a human being and you think about things and so forth.

Yeah, it's kind of hard for me to honor someone that starts the conversation with, rapist in chief though you know what i mean it's just it's really that's really hard tom and that's why what i was looking at this alleged social media posts from the central media from the central point rather school district uh the teachers aid over at a crater high and uh i will be celebrating i can't uh and just a foreshadowing for all of you i have no sympathy for charley kirk but the day that the rapist in chief is that is destroying this country finally dies, I will absolutely be celebrating that death. How do we even dignify that?

Because it sounds like my sister. And apparently they're drinking from the same bottle of delusion water. It must be a special type of leftist bottled water out there. It must be pretty tasty. Yeah, they drink a lot of it. Yeah, well, I can see, you know, exactly. there's so, in this vitriol, it's going, coming endlessly out of the media. It's just fanning all this right-left division and so forth.

And I'd really like to see people stop fighting among themselves. And look at where it's, look how the control that's coming from the media and education, coming from higher up. Well, the other thing is that the more of this fighting, which continues then, If it starts getting sportier, you know, in scary air quotes, all that does is give the world improvers right now an excuse to get even more authoritarian, authoritarian, and you get more of what you claim you don't want in the first place. Just saying.

Exactly. All right. Tom, I appreciate the call. Thanks for making that. Always interesting conversations on the early morning risers portion of the Bill Myers' show. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome.

Good morning, Bill Deplorable Patrick. Hey, DP. It's on your mind. Tom is one of your best callers, and the word is obeisance. Obeyasance. Thank you. Thank you. I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced out in some video or something, but I thought it was a great word.

You know, obeisance. It's a great word, obeisance. Yep. And I got to run. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Keep it safe, truck driver. It is 630 at KMED, 993 KBXG.

We'll catch up on some other news here. We got Bill London, we got some town hall catching up, and then wheels up Wednesday with Eric Peters. Lots to talk about. I'm glad you're here. Visit few dogs fab.com. A lot of attention being paid to the precious metal markets these days. They have just been screaming for a number of months now. And especially as the U.S. dollar continues to shed its value, of course, the push is to make it go down even further with today's interest rate cut.

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talk to the recognized experts, Jay Austin and Company, gold and silver buyers in Ashland, at 1632 Ashland Street and 6th and 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass. By the way, Mark was telling me, and I ended up getting those flyers the other day, that the gold and silver road shows are back again. And the thing is, you're not getting the best deal. In fact, Jay Austin has priced. They've gone to these shows, too, and they've priced them, and they pay significantly more.

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635. Eric Peters is here. Wheels up Wednesday. We talk about life on the open road. I needed a bumper. Oh, there we go. Yeah, it's mountain, because you know it's mountain because it always has a cowbell in it like Mississippi Queen. You always talk about the bumper music, right, Eric? I appreciate you being back on, huh? Oh, absolutely. And it's also just brings back fond memories of the times when, you know, not everything was deconstructing alive and separating the truth from all the falsehood that are being thrown at us every single day.

It is just a wild time. And my wife and I were talking about this yesterday, Linda and I, were a digging into how we're starting to see so much artificial intelligence, so much AI that is that is seeping into social media posts and people's blathering online, that more than ever we're getting to the point where I can't tell what's real and what's not. But all I can tell you is that half the time, if it fits my narrative, then I can almost tell you it's probably AI or someone trying to spin something to make it seem like. Because you can just take a video that people have done and completely redo it, redo it with artificial intelligence and have them say, and they're getting pretty good at it, Eric. It's getting very good.

Oh, they're getting excellent at it. I find myself trapped. You know, I like to watch YouTube videos sometimes with a distraction, particularly those having something to do with the historical event. Yeah. And as I'm watching it, I'm noticing this narrator is not human. It's an AI. There'll be a little bit of a glitch. Something you can tell, a word will be mispronounced in a way that a human would not do it, or the cadence isn't quite right. And It's getting to the point where, you know, I go back to thinking about one of my favorite novels, which is June by Frank Herbert, and the premise of it is in the new future. There's this war against what he called the thinking machines, meaning AI,

because humanity realizes we can't coexist with AI. They've got to be destroyed. We have to stop them because it's anti-human. And I agree with that, and I'm not a Luddite. No, I'm not a lot of either. And yet I'm still having sympathies here. And I remember there was a number of years ago. I forget which CIA director was saying, we'll know that we'll have accomplished our mission,

our mission rather, when everything that Americans believe that most Americans believe is total BS. I'm paraphrasing it, but there's a famous quote. It's true. And there's also the stuff that you and I talk about all the time with regard to vehicles, and the way the vehicles now are suffused with elements of this AI, i.e., you know, software and programming that's trying to constantly correct parent and monitor you, and it becomes suffocating. you know, get me away from this stuff. I don't want it anymore. And with regard to, you know, dealings with one another, it seems like the only way you can be sure of something is if you

have a face-to-face conversation with the actual person, because the tech is now so sophisticated that somebody could generate, for example, a video of you or I making all kinds of crazy statements online. It would be believable to most people who saw it. And I would be fired before the truth actually got out. Now I'm not hopefully saying that, We're just foreshadowing the future, but you could see days like that coming out. I know there was one example of this because anybody that is looking a little bit hinky right now or said the wrong thing, so to speak, about Charlie Kirk's assassination, his murder, which was a horrible, heinous crime, no doubt about this.

But I couldn't believe that there was a military person who was dismissed because Libs of TikTok went after her because of having pronouns in her bio, and that she was supposedly working in this transgender thing, except that that never happened. That had been proposed during the Biden thing, and then it never moved forward. But yet she had it on her LinkedIn profile anyway. So interesting times, my friend.

What bothered me even more than that was the Attorney General with the United States coming out and saying that she was considering going after people for hate speech? wait a minute. Hate speech is what got us to this point. You know, this whole thing. Yeah. Did we vote for that? Yeah.

I didn't vote to have my thought police. I didn't want a right-wing version of the thought police, did you? Yeah. No, exactly. And as bad as it is with regard to what Bondi said, what bothers me even more, frankly, is that Trump didn't repudiate it immediately and perhaps even consider firing Bondi for having said such an odious thing. Yeah, that's a pretty rough one. And that's a lead article you have on EP autos today right now.

It is hate speech, again. You know, because hate speech essentially has been conflated with, I disagree with you politically. That's how the left has been playing this game for a long, long time. And I don't want the right even dipping their toe into this sort of thing, too, Eric. I really don't. No, nor do why. Exactly. The whole point is to be in opposition to that sort of thing.

That's sort of suffocating, you know, police stateism, nannyism, however you want to describe it. The whole reason for the reaction against the left was just that. It was like, we don't want that in America. And now it's being given to us apparently good and hard by the people that we voted for. And hopefully people will pull back from that abyss, all right? Let us hope that cooler heads prevail over time. I know that we even had a teacher's aide here who was under investigation and has been removed from there. And by the way, have you noticed how many of the people are getting fired and or chastised for just heartless, inhumane comments, really about what happened with Charlie Kirk's murder.

How many of them are in the educational system? Could you help but notice that? Sure. Yeah, well, that's, you know, what was it, Gramsci's Long March for the institutions, unfortunately, particularly government schools, you know, what they call public schools, but really government schools and a lot of the universities and colleges are suffused with these people who have extroids. ordinarily anti-American points of view, at least in terms of what most people consider to be what defines America.

And they've been enormously successful in propagandizing and propagating their point of view, particularly with the kids. And I think that was why Charlie Kirk was so hated by those people because he connected with them. He did. He was relevant to them. I'll be curious to see which hosts end up taking over Turning Point USA, you know, to see where this ends up going for the long term. because one thing that has not been talked about very much is that over the last couple of months, Charlie Kirk has been kind of backing away, was backing away from his Zionist viewpoints and was asking a few questions that were causing some panicking among the conservative circles out there.

And also walking back some of the kind of reflexively pro-neocon, pro-war stuff as well. You know, he struck me as a thoughtful guy and as a guy who had a heart as well as a mind. And I think he was beginning to become uncomfortable with some of those positions that are being a spouse. You know, maybe because he was dealing with kids and he had kids. And he started to think, you know, I don't want my kids or anybody else's kids, you know, sent to some foreign war for the sake of Boeing and Raisi on. Yeah, well, you and I have also talked, though, off and on about how anti-Semitism has been conflated with criticizing an Israeli government action or point of view, which I have

when that started happening wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute it's a big difference between hating Jews and disliking

what another government supposedly our bestest buddy ally you know is doing yeah I know it's part of it's a general trend it's of a piece

with the way the left if you raise a question about well you know I really don't want boys going in the girls bathroom oh you're transfo you're transphobe

you hate trans people right your motive you know what they do this is the this is a tactic They impugn your motives in order to avoid having to deal with your substantive question to try to make you seem like a bad person rather than deal with the bad thing that you want to talk about. So like I said, it'll be interesting to see where Turning Point USA goes because they're getting a big infusion of cash. People are starting to join and join up.

And I'm just curious what direction it will go if it will be more of what used to be or if it will continue to be a true. truly free speech platform. I guess we'll just have to watch it, see what happens. I think it's going to be binary. I think they actually backed themselves in a corner in a way in that if they try to replace Charlie with some neocon, pro-war, reflexively red hat, shill guy, the youth, the college kids are not going to want anything to do with that, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it's either going to die or it's going to flourish under somebody who will take that mantle that Charlie had. and run with it. I don't know who that person will be. I mean, I'm not aware of anybody who could

actually fill his shoes right now. No, not right now, but eventually there will be someone in there, like, you know, someone is technically replacing Rush Limbaugh, although it's a kind of a thin simulacrum of Rush, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. All right, let us move forward here. I'll tell you what, Eric, why don't you tell us what is going on here with the EV delivery, the EV delivery, the EV delivery schedules. We've been told by everyone from Stalantis and Volvo that we're going to keep force-feeding EVs that you don't want because either you don't like the inconvenience of it or it's just too darned expensive.

But what's happened with that? Because there are some changes coming down the pike, right? You know, big changes. Actually, Stalantis just the other day, you know, Stalantis is for those listening. It's the parent company that owns Dodge Chrysler Jeep and Ram, among other brands. They announced that they're cutting date on the electric version. of the RAM 1500 pickup that was supposed to come out for 2026, they realized there's no market for these things. They're in a pinch. They practically destroyed the Dodge brand because of the

replacement. So essentially, nobody wants to charge. Nobody runs to really charge a charger, right? No, I mean, it's just antithetical to the type of the type of car that people who buy Dodges like. They don't like that. If they did, they would have gone to Tesla. And the idea that Dodge was going to somehow convert Tesla people over to the Dodge. Grand was just just retarded, but they went ahead and did it anyway. And now Dodge is on, is like on a death watch. They literally can't sell these things. It's a disaster for them. They have no products that people want. And RAM, you know, RAM is their cash cow, you know, selling the RAM truck. That was like, you know, trucks are where the money is. And they were going to, you know, they're now thinking,

they were thinking about bringing out an electric version and they called it the rev. You know, again, notice how they appropriate the terms of engine vehicles because they understand that people like that. Yeah. I'm trying to like make it seem that an electric car somehow is an equivalent, which it is that nobody's buying it. They can't afford to do it. They just can't afford to mass market these things or try to mass manufacture them,

I should say, offload them on dealers, and then just have them sit there. It's not going to, you know, it's going to bleed them white. So if you wanted it, let's say if you wanted an electric ram or a rev or whatever that is, is that on the market yet? Did they actually exist? No, that's just it. They decided they're not going to produce it. You know, on schedule, they were going to build it for 2026.

Now they've decided that, no, we're done. We're not doing this. So it's off the radar screen. And good on them, because, you know, it's just another thing that conveys that this thing is a loser, a stinker, and nobody wants these things. And let's just get back to where we had a market where products were driven by demand rather than by government demands. And I want to make it clear, Eric, and I know you're not anti-electric vehicle, nor am I anti-electric vehicle. Because electric vehicles have, there are really parts of the transportation.

industry that they could actually work pretty well in. But the idea that it replaces, you know, your one car that you can take for, you know, across the country without too much concern about how you're going to get there, that's not one of them. That's still not really one of them right now. The platform is, in my opinion, particularly unsuited to trucks because for the most for people who buy trucks need a vehicle that is useful for work and for doing things like pulling a trailer for a few hundred miles. You can't do that with these things because their range is so short and it's further shortened when you try to pull something with them. It's just, it's not acceptable to people in that kind of a demographic.

On the other hand, I agree with you that in terms of, you know, a city car or somebody who really doesn't need anything more than a vehicle that can take them, you know, 15, 20, 30 miles one way. Hey, that could be a perfect solution for you if it's available at a reasonable cost. And that's an interesting way of, well, the particular way of looking at it, how much does it cost? I think we lost Eric. Let me get him back and we'll continue. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Wheels up Wednesday with Eric Peters.

You want to talk, 7705-633. Before we lost your phone there, we were talking about the suitability of EV for certain transportation worlds. And as long as it's affordable and the affordability aspect has not yet been addressed. That's the problem I have with it. No, affordability and practicality. You know, if you make it for short range and not high speed, you don't have to worry about having an 800-pound battery pack so that it can go 300 miles down the road. So you can concentrate on the EV strengths.

Unfortunately, manufacturers really aren't allowed to do that because they are constrained and pigeonholed into making these one-size-fits-all equivalence for the cars that people ordinarily would buy to do anything. And that's just not a viable strategy, and it's all because of the mandates. instead of letting the markets say, hey, you know, build vehicles that people want to fit various niches, in which case we would have probably a $15,000 city car, easy, which I think a lot of people would want to buy. Yeah, here's an example. Classic example. It was a number of years ago.

It's no longer offered, but the Chevy Spark, you know, the Chevy Spark EV, and it's only, I don't even know if the spark is still on the road or not. They may have changed it or changed the name about it. But I test drove a Chevy Spark that was an EV. and as a city car, it was a great little city car. I thought it was very comfortable, and it was, you know, kind of sporty. It would get you here and there. But, yeah, the range was going to be 90 to 100 miles.

But I have to tell you, for a city car, something like that, would be great. But not at $30-something,000, which I think is what it was at that time, right? Right, exactly. You know, go back 100 years to the Baker Electric. A lot of people don't know that electric cars were actually pretty abundant about 100 years ago. The Baker Electric was very much like that vehicle, and it had an additional attribute that I think was very intelligent and that we could have again today. Instead of these complicated and highly expensive lithium ion batteries, it had deep cycle 12-volt batteries that the owner could very easily take out and just put up on a charger and replace. Very simple, very easy, you know, whereas it's not easy at all to take, you have to take the body off the typical EV in order to get at that lithium ion battery pack that's underneath of it.

And it's specific to that vehicle. It's shape and a specific way to fit the floor plan of that particular vehicle as opposed to, you know, a square or rectangular battery that's basically one size fits all. What are they ask you, Eric, are any of these EVs starting to come with lithium iron phosphate batteries? I noticed I got one of those power, one of those power blocks, Jackery, and they have a different formulation on the battery now, which is lithium iron phosphate, which is supposedly much safer than the old. older lithium ion, do you know? Not to my knowledge. They're not as far as I'm aware of being installed yet in any of the electric vehicles that are currently available.

I'll have to look into that some more. Okay, just thought it to ask. Now, as far as reviews, what have you been driving lately, huh? What's the story? Well, we still have the big Ford expedition, and that goes back tomorrow, and I'm getting a key of Sportage, which is just another one of those little crossovers, but the Sportage has two big things in its favor. One is that it does not come standard with a turbocharged micro-engine.

called the big enough to not need a turbo, 2.5-liter engine. And instead of the dreadful CVTs that are ticking time bombs in so many vehicles, it comes with a conventional 8-speed automatic. Wow. Okay, so the Sportage still has the standard engine. You know, it used to be that, now, that used to be thought of as pretty small as contrasted with the old V-6s, but I guess today, that's the luxury vehicle choice, right, to actually have a 2.54, huh?

Gosh, it's not even an inappropriately sized vehicle for, I mean, an engine for a vehicle that size. We're talking about a compact crossover. So, you know, basically, it's the same size of something like a Corolla, just with a, you know, it's got a taller body. So if you got, you know, 20 years ago, if you got a little economy-type car, you know, you'd get a four-cylinder engine. And it's just big enough to move the thing down the road. It's a fine idea. It's appropriate for the vehicle. It doesn't have all this additional extraneous stuff that potentially is going to bite you in the rear when it,

begins to break down after the warranty goes out. What did you think about last week's review, the Ford Expedition? We didn't have much of a chance to talk about that. I don't think we ever did get to that. Well, it's a great rig. You know, the thing that struck me about it most, though, was what it costs now, particularly relative to what it used to cost. I was shocked when I looked up with the base price of the Ford Expedition is,

which is about $62,000. That's for the base one. If you went back five years ago, five years ago, it was essentially the same thing that it is now. It made some changes. The new one has a big touch screen like they all do. But fundamentally, it was the same vehicle, and it cost $5,000 less. You know, I'm just kind of curious. What do you see happening with the EV sales?

I'm kind of flip-flop back to that because did I tell you how my brother bought one? My brother bought a Tesla truck? Yeah. Yeah, he's doing his best to convince himself, but it was like $72,000. I thought those were over $100,000 at first, weren't they? Well, yeah, it depends on much. when you're talking about, but he may have gotten discount, but the bottom line is the numbers don't fly. The market is stagnant and retreating. I think it topped out at about 8% with the vast

bulk of that being out in California and Arizona and then a few other spots that are affluent spots around the rest of the country, but they never make significant inroads and flyover country among the deplorables for the obvious reason. They're too expensive and they're too impractable. The point being, though, is that EVs work really well, especially in areas that don't get too hot or too cold, one way or the other. They're great intemperate. And also stop and go. You know, if you're living in L.A.

And you're basically, you know, going, you know, creeping along at five miles an hour and maybe you get up to 20 miles an hour for a brief moment before the traffic stops again. That is the ideal environment for an electric car. It's a terrible environment, on the other hand, when it's 18 degrees outside and you get out on the road and you want to go 70 miles an hour and you want to have the heat on. You know, at that point you're sweating. Oh, my gosh, the range is plummeting. And what am I going to do?

I might not make it. And then I'm going to have to sit at sheets and hope the sheets is open and hope the charger works for 45 minutes before I can get back out on the road. Exactly. Speaking of 18 degrees, I want to go over to 18 degrees country to you. This is over in Wyoming. And this is an article I just saw, listener Brad, sent it to me this morning from CowboyStatDaily.com. And this has to do with a diesel delete case. You know how you talked about how there are sometimes people in states that will go out there

and they'll take out the emissions systems for diesels because they end up getting better drivability and higher fuel mileage in this. Yeah, particularly they get rid of a diesel exhaust fluid thing. Yeah, the deep, the death thing, yeah. But Cowboy State Daily is reporting that Wyoming's diesel delete case has been delayed, rather, and the person who is being prosecuted is hoping that it's a sign that the EP is backing off. Apparently, what has happened, this guy has been busted for doing a lot of these deletes.

I think he made it part of his business, too. And the EPA has been ordered by the Trump administration, apparently through the channels, to back off on the actual criminal prosecution of these kind of situations. So there's a chance that Trump administration's EPA may be looking to back away from this kind of stuff and maybe start working on real pollution out there instead of the fake stuff? Well, I hope so. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but I really would like to get the nitty-gritty, which is, you know, the old common law principle of proving harm. And, you know, the assertion is made that, well, you know, these people who are disabling or defeating the DES system in these trucks,

you know, this is just an outrage? Well, okay, what does it mean? Who's being harmed by this? Can you establish that this guy, you know, who does this to his vehicle or even a lot of people do it? Is it causing any meaningful harm? You know, in a tort-type situation, like in a court, I think that that's how this stuff ought to be handled. I don't care that the government is affronted, in other words. Yeah. Who cares? Well, most of the crimes that we're fighting these days is that you're offending the government in some form or another. For a long time, like, you know, with regard to the VW cheating thing, you remember that, it's been about 10 years.

Yeah, in fact, I wanted to take attention to that one because you wrote an article the other day about the VW situation 10 years later. What have we learned from now, or from that time, rather, to now? Well, you know, what we've learned is that affordable, inexpensive, high mileage vehicles are no longer available. You know, and I think that's specifically why that's one of the reasons why Volkswagen was targeted. If you went back to around 2015, you could have bought a brand-new jetta with a TDI engine for about $22,000 that got 50 miles per gallon that went 700 miles on a tank and probably would last you for 300,000 miles of relatively trouble-free driving. And right around that time, remember around 2015 or so was when this push to elect, everything began to get underway, and Tesla became the darling of the media, and they were constantly

talking about Tesla this and Tesla that. Yeah, and the TDI Jetta and the similar type cars, they could get 60 miles a gallon and 700 miles on a tank. That was a threat to that agenda, wasn't it? Sure, it was for half the cost. I mean, $22,000 for a TDI-powered Jetta versus $50,000 for a model free. It made the whole electrification thing look stupid. And Volsklaug and uniquely was the only manufacturer that was offering multiple vehicles with that engine. You could have gotten the TDI Gulf, a TDI, uh, a TDI, uh, in Beatle, they're, you know, pretty much every one of their models was available with that TDI engine. And as such, it represented a threat because we weren't talking about low volume, high cost diesels like the ones that are made by, uh, BMW and Mercedes. We're talking

about mass market vehicles. And I think that was one of the reasons why Volkswagen was targeted so aggressively. And the other was, of course, that they affronted the authority of the government, this whole hullabaloo about how Volkswagen cheated the federal emissions certification test. No, they didn't. They made it so their vehicles would pass the test is the whole point. Which is what all the rest of the people do, too. They designed their vehicles to pass the test. Isn't that the case? And they also, all these vehicles that Volkswagen sold past the state level tailpipe exhaust emissions tests as well. So what they had to do is get an independent lab that you use a different test to establish it, yes, under certain conditions,

such as wide-open throttle, you know, pedals of the metal acceleration. The thing produced slightly higher NOX emissions then are allowable under the federal standard. But the key thing here, the thing that I harp on is, does this cause any meaningful harm to anybody? The government wasn't required to produce that. No victims. Simply say, well, you know, they cheated. They violated the law.

And for that, we're going to break them over the coals. And apparently, Volkswagon, to date, has bled about $30 billion, billion, not million dollars over this thing and effectively been neutered and destroyed as a car company. You know, they're terrible. Well, I think that destroying Volkswagen was part of the agenda because it was one of the few companies that was actually putting out an affordable high mileage car along with a Toyota like the Prius, et cetera. Yeah, that sort of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. And now, you know, they're trying to sell these electric vehicles, which aren't selling. You know, I recently had a couple of weeks back. I had the ID buzzed, which is the electric version of, you know, the latter-day reincarnation of the old microbus. And they're not selling because the things start at $60,000. And, you know, leaving aside that you've got, I think, $240 miles of best-case driving range in the thing, $60,000.

It's insane. Volkswagen can't sell $60,000 anything electric or not. Yeah. Well, that's a story of, gosh, we're seeing challenges in the automotive lending world because of what's been going on. You know, high cost and low credit rating for a lot of the people buying right now. Another story for another time, okay? Absolutely.

All right. Hey, Eric, thanks so much for the update, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the Kia. So it's the Sportage, the new Sportage, 2.5, the 2.5-liter luxury engine, right? You have to look at it from a positive point of view. That's the way it is. Whoever thought we'd be talking about 2.5-Lead 4s as being, you know, the luxury, great conventional engine these days, and rather than... You remember, I'll shut up after this, but you remember the great, I think it was a demolition man, where the great treat for Sylvester Stallone was to be taken out for an evening at Taco Bell. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I remember that.

Maybe that's Taco Bell Nation, wherever you are, my friend. Hey, thanks again, E.P.O.O.S.com. Read up more. Eric's got a lot going on there. Thank you so much, Eric. We'll see you then. You bet.