Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-15-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

10-15-25_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. Great to have you here. Wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters and I talking cars and a whole bunch of politics. You know the way it always ends up going and taking your calls.

It's time to take a break from just pure politics, although I have to tell you, transportation really getting involved in politics a lot, or there's more politics in transportation. all the time. So we'll have a good conversation about this, including latest reviews on some of the vehicles. And I'm going to have to ask him if he's hearing, I'm starting to see more and more people that are talking about big problems with the new generation of Toyota trucks in which they took the V8. He took the big V8 that was rock solid, reliable, but of course a little fuel-thirsty, you know how that goes, and replacing it with a double turbocharged V6. So two turbochargers on a twin turbochargers, and apparently we're hearing a lot of reports coming from.

I know the YouTube folks are going crazy. The mechanics are saying that we're seeing a lot of problems with these. And I don't know if it's at the point where they're going to be doing more recalls or not. But Eric is keeping an eye on this. But, of course, this is the problem when you have manufacturers that have great reputations. And Toyota certainly has had a reputation. of why did you buy Toyota because it was incredibly reliable, right? It's what everybody would do.

And then they take engines that have been proven and have all the bugs worked out of them. And then got to hurry up. Got to put out less carbon dioxide because, because climate, you know, all that kind of stuff. But anyway, we'll dig into that with Eric here in the next few minutes. Financial Brain, Todd Sheets, is going to join me. He's an interesting guy. I've talked with him a couple of times before. and he has a new piece out on his substack.

He wrote a book a couple of years ago, 2008, what really happened, and talked about how the financial crisis really ended up going. And I think it's good to talk with people like this. His latest piece is gold at 4,000. Of course, it's way more than 4,000 right now. Canary in the gold mine is what he calls that. So we'll dig into what this is really indicating because you're looking at the precious metals. And I think this is honestly, it's not that we're just looking for precious metals.

I think what's going on is they don't trust the fiat currency. They don't trust the U.S. currency. And it's very clear that more and more people are starting to figure out that the dollar is not going to be trusted. And I know for years and years and years people would be selling, you know, back when gold was at $2.50 or something like that, destroying the U.S. dollar. and people are going, oh, it's still just fine, and yeah, they're right, but now it appears that the rest of the world is starting to look at that. In fact, I read a stat the other day that said that for the first time there was more money

going into gold than into U.S. treasuries, and money that was going into U.S. treasuries to help pay for the government debt as they were having more trouble catching a bit. It's interesting. But anyway, I'll talk with Todd about that and get a little bit. into the financial weeds. And this is also purposeful, too, because part of President Trump's goal to get trade reactivated and working here is that you have to have a cheaper dollar.

But, of course, if you have a cheaper dollar, that means that we tend to have higher prices in dollars when anything we're importing, and then you put the tariffs on top of that. And anyway, it's as, well, it's complicated, you know, but we'll try to get some sanity. out of that. Talked with Captain Bill Simpson. He just called the show a couple of days ago and I said, hey, why don't we talk about what's going on with the latest in the wild horse?

You know, his wild stallion song, people really love that. I'll have to play that again this morning when he comes on. But it appears that what is going on right now is that the Wild Horse Fire Brigades deal about having wild horses and burrows and other grass-eating animals out there on the public lands just chewing away. rather than waiting to see if our governments around here will get with the plan, there are a number of people that are now just doing the Wild Horse Fire Brigade kind of thing to chew down the grass in their neighborhood. I ask them how that's how that's working out. He'll join me a little bit after 8 o'clock.

And, of course, I'm always happy to take your calls to 7705-633-7-7-0-K-M-E-D. All right. what do we have going on here? The old horse blanket's coming down today. Remember the old horse blanket building on Pine Street in Central Point? The one they had the horse on top of it for all those years? Nobody knows where the horse is, by the way. But, yeah, Buffy Pollock riding in the Rogue Valley Times today

that this is going to be going down later today. The destruction crew is going to be showing up. Apparently the new owners have not been able to. It just doesn't pencil to get that old building repaired, and so they're going to have to turn it into something different. But a bit of Southern Oregon history goes away. That horse blanket, I mean, every time you dry, everyone would say, oh, yeah, the one that has the horse statue on the top, the horse on the top. And now it's gone. Nobody knows where that is, though.

I don't know where the horse is. Maybe it's on eBay. But just know that that's going to be coming down. Interesting story. Buffy has that in the Rogue Valley Times. Now, that's our sweet story. Our silly story continues to be Portland on a daily basis in Oregonian doing some good coverage on that. And the top story in Oregon, O Live, Oregon Live, federal agents barrel into a band at the Portland Ice protest.

They arrest a clarinetist and they accuse her of assault. Yes, this is a clarinet player for a Portland. marching group that performs during the ice protests arrested Sunday. Federal agents barreled into the ban while pursuing another suspect and members of the unprecedented brass band

were playing the theme from Ghostbusters. Anyway, clarinetist Oriana Coral was arrested a 38-year-old child and family therapist and probably you know semi-crazy because

You know, that's the way psychiatrists are. But anyway, detained by ICE, taken to Clark County Jail. That is the silly arrest of the day. There was a more serious arrest here. We have a 19-year-old guy accused of kicking federal ICE officers in the groin during his arrest outside. And his name, Sam Westcott, he appeared in federal court yesterday, facing a charge of assaulting a federal officer. But remember, everything there is mostly peaceful. And U.S. Homeland Security officers were sent to clear a crowd that it assembled in front of the ice facility to allow vehicles to come in and out.

The whole thing is you can't stop the vehicles from coming in and out. Then they wouldn't. They want to try to arrest Sam reportedly. And then he kicks him in the groin and then ends up getting a face plant, I would imagine. Meanwhile, what is happening in the legal side of things, we may know a little bit more later today. 11 a.m. this morning, the judge involved, Karen J. Emigott, has scheduled an 11 in the morning a phone conference today to talk about whether she will be extending her temporary restraining order, stopping President Donald Trump's federal deployment of Oregon National Guard troops in Portland for another two weeks. And this has been done at the request of lawyers involved in the case, and they're wrangling over other scheduling issues. They're also waiting for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of whether they're going to grant the Trump administration's request to put a hold on the judge's order pending the appeal.

And so that is the latest from that sorry group. Okay. Now then, there are going to be more protests coming this weekend, or I guess it would be rallies, right? Rallies is what's going to be happening. No Kings Rally 2. No Kings Rally 2 We have the Indivisible folks We'll be getting all sporty again

On Saturday in Medford, Grants Pass, and Ashland Like 11 o'clock They're going to be, I think in Medford It's going to be over at McAndrews In Biddle, that same place they were today And there is another group Or a couple of other groups

That are talking about going out there for President Trump So we're going to have You know, Wabbitt season, duck season people He is screaming at each other across the streets on Saturday, just make a note of it, and we'll end up seeing what happens. Rabbit season, duck season. Of course, it always cracks me up that the indivisible types are saying, no kings.

Let me tell you, if Donald Trump really was a king, you probably would have lost your head by this time. Just saying, all right? I really think it's the way it would have happened. Give it a shot, anyway. It's 21 minutes after 6. This is the Bill Meyer show, KMED, 993KBXG, 7705633, if you'd like to join in. Whether you're building internet and cell phone service not provided by Dish. Hi, I'm Amber Rose with Sisk U Pump Service, and I'm on KMED.

23 minutes after 6. Other news going on, Daily Courier reporting. Grants Pass City Council earlier this week voted 5 to 2 to not give those big pay raises to non-union city workers. and what they're reporting instead they're going to pay for a handful of staff that might have legitimate reasons to file pay equity lawsuits what the hell is a pay equity lawsuit who that uh okay i i get irritated at public employee irritation or it's not irritation but a public employee compensation it's just

something about this now i know that uh working in the private sector you have to actually first off your business has to be doing well and nobody can say that any local government business is doing well here in southern Oregon all right first of in the private sector to get a raise you have to be usually doing well doing good things and being extremely productive and you know and showing your worth and I think what irritates me about the of the public sector world maybe this is because of the unions but these are the non-union positions, is that, oh, my gosh, it's another, you've been here another candle on your birthday cake, here's a big purse raise, you know, it's just, what?

Are you being more productive? No, you just, you continue to show up year after year after year. And I know you're working if you're in the, in the public sector, but the automatic raise thing, I, I'm having great difficulty rocking this, because in the, real world outside of government employment, you usually just don't have automatic raises just because, well, you've been here another year. Well, are you doing anything more? No.

Is there a cost of living? Yeah, I suppose. I guess if you want to do some colas, but even in the private sector, you don't necessarily get automatic cost of living situations. It's kind of the entitlement saying. It's the entitlement thing I think that bothers me more than anything else. That, well, I'm doing. I've been here another year. Come on. Where's the raise? Okay. As far as I know, the cost of your purrs is soaring every year. Your raise should be going into your purse pension.

I think that's really how it should be looked at. But yeah, everybody wants to do that. They want their, they want their purrs fully funded, which, by the way, is going to be a big struggle from the way it looks at. And you're supposed to be getting colas and everything else. meanwhile the tax money coming in doesn't necessarily go up to keep with it and then people are trying to figure out how the city is going to go why they can't buy a new fire

truck although they did buy a new fire truck so apparently there was enough money to do that but anyway good for you grants past city council non-union workers they're saying in the daily courier mostly department heads and supervisors could get a 3% cost of living and the council

could keep exploring the issue that's fine keep exploring the issue are these workers really doing more with less are they're getting more responsibilities or is it just yet another year you know see the way i'm looking at it if you're just there another year then okay a cost of living raise that's it just being there another year or two years or whatever i don't know maybe i don't understand how the public world works well that would solve all our problems wouldn't it we all become public workers we could all let's all get on purrs it's the everybody gets a chance now see that would be interesting i remember there was that guy used to talk to i i don't think he's alive

any longer but the uh i called him like the purrs vigilante lived over in um in the springfield eugene area i haven't heard from him in a long time and i know he was getting ill while back. Fred, Fred Starkey, was that his name? I think so. I'll have to look. Maybe he is still around. But Fred was always promoting that we should have the, everybody gets a chance at being a PERS employee kind of plan in which there is no such thing as a career public servant. And so if you're going to be in the, I think it was like nobody could collect a public check for more than five years. So you had like four or five years, you can make your, you make your deal. And then you had to go and cycle back into the public sector or the private sector.

And then somebody else gets a chance to go in there. And so all of us, by the time we're at retirement age, we get a four or five years stint as a public employee. And then we're all in person. Then we're all going to be wealthy and everything is perfectly happy. A felican dream, can we? I'm going to find out what happened to Fred anyway. Let's see. I saw this headline.

And I said, wait a minute. They're air-dropping vaccines. It was in the epic times today. And, yeah, it's legit. I'm thinking, oh, okay, those people that are pro-COVID vaccine are so upset. They're just going to start seeding the air with the COVID vaccine. Now, they do have, you know, ability to do that, you know, airborne vaccines. No, this is about rabies.

Yeah. Department of Agriculture is dropping oral rabies vaccines all over Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, and they're not sure where they're going to start this, Epic Times continuing, it's about 630,000, like, oral bait things. It's something that they hope the animals eat and then it inoculates them with rabies. They've been having more problems with rabies over there. And some other states, including Pennsylvania, Maine, Western New York, and Ohio started getting them in August, and a bunch of other states are looking for that, too, try to tone down the rabies problem. You know, the raccoon.

and the wolves and such. 629, we'll catch up on the rest of the news. We've got to Bill London here in just a moment, and then Eric Peters with Wheels Up Wednesday, so much more. Now then, $4,200 gold, I'll be talking with that an hour from now with Todd Sheets. That is a true thing.

It's actually about $4190 this morning, and silver at $52.40. It just blasted through 50 and just it keeps going. In fact, some people are talking about getting, having difficulty having physical silver being delivered. Hmm. So much for those paper silver shorts in the market, right? But, hey, anytime you're looking to either sell out

and you look at that old silver service that you're not going to do anything with and going, hmm, 5250 an ounce, time to call Jay Austin. Their number 4827-15, 482-3715. If you want to sell the family silver that no one's going to use or scrap gold, all the rest of it there. They're the people to talk to either side.

Maybe you want to stack some more, too. That's all right. Maybe you think it's going to go to the moon. I don't know. But it does appear that gold especially is fulfilling its long-time goal of protecting wealth. And that's why even the central banks are going whole hog into buying gold hand over fist right now. And, of course, China has way more gold than they're claiming, too. It's been a lot of demand, a lot of demand.

Maybe you'd like to be part of the supply or the demand. And either way, talk to the recognized experts. They'll help you out there. And by the way, avoid those golden silver shows that'll send you a little postcard saying, hey, we're going to be over here. Jay Austin shops those and they pay more. The recognized experts, Jay Austin brokers in Ashland and Grants Pass. Fortune Reserve.com.

That is Fortune Reserve.com. From the KMED News Center, here is what's going on. Oregon's Department of Transportation is continuing its hiring blitz in an effort to staff up for winter maintenance. Applications for some positions closed this week. ODOT says there's an abnormally high number of vacancies after a hiring freeze earlier this year, and it led to numerous staff departures. Around 60 members of the Oregon National Guard are on their way to the southern border

to help with security operations. The 1249th Engineer Battalion will provide logistical support, including vehicle recovery, maintenance, refueling, and parts distribution. Mount Ashland Ski Area is jacking up ticket prices this season, citing rising insurance costs and other factors is the primary reasons behind the decision. A large portion of the price hike stems from escalating liability insurance. It follows the failure of legislative efforts that were intended to protect recreation providers from excessive liability claims after the Oregon Supreme Court said liability waivers were essentially moot.

Bill London, KMED. I'm Taylor Riggs, and this is the Fox Business Report. There's an encouraging report on manufacturing. The New York Federal Reserve says activity picked up this month in improvement after a decline last month. Both orders and shipments improved, though the survey was taken before the start of the federal government shut down. Wall Street Bank Morgan Stanley is reporting upbeat earnings. It was helped by strong gains in the stock market, which helped its investment bank and wealth management unit. Shares are up 4.5%. Bank of America's profit jumped.

23% in the summer quarter compared with a year ago. It's also raising its forecast. B-O-A shares up 4%. Another investment firm is offering you a chance to put private equity in your 401k. Blackstone is launching a new unit with the investments. That's your Fox Business Report. I'm Jenny Koselda. Invested in you. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gowdy podcast. You're on me every Tuesday as we cover the full range of topics that are on your mind and speak with some brilliant, talented, thoughtful women and men who have excelled in their respective fields and careers. Plus, every Thursday is your turn. You get to be the lawyer and you get to ask the questions about whatever is foremost on your mind. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com

or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. President Trump warning Hamas to hold up its end of the peace deal with Israel, phase two. They will disarm. And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them. And it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently. But Hamas not living up to phase one, turning over the bodies of only seven deceased hostages. Israel's forensic exam shows one other body was not a hostage, but a Palestinian. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker condemns border patrol agents for using tear gas to disperse a violent anti-ice protest crowd. And violent rhetoric may get your visa revoked.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, there have been examples of hateful rhetoric posted to social media. And now the State Department says the United States will kick out foreigners who will hurl these kind of invectives and has to revoked the visas of six individuals. Fox's Lucas Tomlinson, President Trump awarded Kirk the Medal of Freedom posthumously. America's listening to Fox News. Furnace on the Fritz, this is Randall at Advanced Air. and your family stay warm and cozy all winter long. Advanced Air provides preventative maintenance on your furnace so you don't have to worry about costly repairs

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So get ahead of the game and get your water tested now. You'll get the immediate peace of mind that comes with knowing what's in your water, plus you'll be able to close the deal faster. The team at Grants Pass Water Lab are ready to help. Look us up online at thewaterlab.com or GPwaterlab.com. Get ready for Grange After Hours, presented by Georgia Boot. Join us on October 18th from 630 to 8 p.m. at the Central Point and Grants Pass Branch Co-op only for an evening of exciting deals and prizes.

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636 with Eric. Wheels up Wednesday. I kind of like bringing back that Ozzy one for the introduction because a crazy train seems to be where the world is. We might as well play along, right? Just to, you know, when in Rome. How you doing, Eric? Welcome to have it.

Oh, I'm good, Bill. And Ozzy is a perennial favorite, but I think in this case I want to channel something from that great movie office space. I'm sure a lot of people know what I'm talking about. There's a character in there who's kind of a nevish, but they said there would be cake. They said there would be cake, and, of course, he doesn't get any. Oh, is that, though, that guy, they said there'd be cake, right, that guy?

That's him, exactly. Okay. And so the reason I bring that up is because they said we'd be saving money by buying electric cars. And as it turns out, not quite so much. There was a great piece in the New York Times, and great because the New York Times, you know, generally would not publish something like that. Oh, they have been such a. suck up for the electric vehicle agenda. And once again, we preface this with, I seen, there is nothing wrong with having electric vehicles in the mix here. It's been the forced feeding of it and

under false pretenses that has irritated me about it. Exactly. And this is another false pretense. You know, they told people, hey, don't worry about the fact that you're going to be spending substantially more to buy the electric vehicle because you're going to save so much money over the course of the years that you own it by paying less for electricity as opposed to what you'd be paying for gas. Well, guess what? That's no longer true. And as anybody for power bill lately already knows this anyway, but the Times details how utility costs are just going through the roof all over the country pretty much. And one thing in particular, you know, these fast chargers that are essentially essential to making an EV practical, otherwise you're stuck waiting for

hours to try to get some charge back in the thing. The cost of fast charging electricity works out to being comparable to fueling up an SUV that gets 25 miles per gallon or stuff on average. So what's the upside here? Huh. Okay, it's not particularly more convenient, as you've just noted, because time, you know, that sort of thing. And it's not exactly like it's easy. Well, I guess maybe it's just because you're feeling good about saving the planet. Maybe that's what it's all about.

Well, you know, that was a superficial virtue signaling window dressing, But I do think a lot of people got suckered into it thinking, oh, I'm only going to be spending, you know, the equivalent of $6 or $7 to gas up my EV, so to be, as opposed to gassing up a regular vehicle. And that's just no longer true, you know, and this is a function of the fact that the capacity, the grid capacity in this country has never been substantially increased to accommodate all these electric vehicles. And never mind that they're building these power-sucking data centers all over the place now that are drawing more power. Hey, by the way, speaking of those data centers, where have all the climate weenies gone? Where have they indeed? Yeah, you know, that we're all complaining about, you know, the heat that was going to be generated. I mean, what's happening here at these data centers, it says it's about the disposal of waste heat, climate change, warming, all the rest of it.

Where are those people now? Well, sure, it's always orchestrated and a double standard isn't. You know, you make this point constantly to people who are kind of a useful idiot shock troops at this. agenda, and they either look at you blankly or they try to change the subject. You know, it's just the hypocrisy of it is so blatant, so apparent, and yet nobody wants to discuss it. But I do think it's quite revelatory that the New York Times is beginning to discuss it. And I think they're just trying to get ahead of it because it's become so, so obvious. And now, you know, from the point of view of the EV manufacturers, you've got the double compounding problem of the federal

tax cut, you know, rebate, the $7,500 tax rebate going away. So now, you know, people are having to pay full price for these things and they're going to have to pay the going rate for electricity so you know they're really getting hit hard and it's just really no longer any kind of an economic case to be made for an evie so then what's the purpose in buying one other than to show your virtue and that gets expensive yeah well in southern oregon the power rates have gone up uh what 13 15 percent roughly and uh and by the way Warren buffets people they want more and I think they were kind of held off a little bit, but you know, they're right, the main issue, though, is that

they continue to add more intermittent and chaotic, renewable sources at the expense of any real baseload power, but then they say, we'll do that, we'll get you the baseload power by creating all those Tesla battery outlets, you know, where there are big Tesla batteries, or I forget exactly what they call it, but it's utility-scale

battery operations in which, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. They then store the electricity, then to feed it back into the grid. But you don't get that cheap. Those kind of operations are insanely expensive, although it is coming down in price, but still at utility scale. It's insanely expensive, Eric. And this is not cheap at all. Very much so. And again, they just kind of circle back to the point here. Everybody knows their power bill is going up substantially. I'm personally paying about twice now what I was paying a couple years ago, just for my normal regular monthly bill. And that's without an electric vehicle plugged into the house. The high draw thing, if you were to charge up an electric vehicle

regularly at your house, you're already doubled electrical bill, probably triple. And at what point does it become overwhelming to people financially? People talk about squealing because it costs too much, it cost me $60 to fill up the tank of my SUV. Well, what happens when it costs you $70 to charge up your EV? What do they actually charge when you go to a commercial fast charger because something tells me they can't just give it to you for the price of the charger. I don't think there's any way they could do that. They couldn't afford to do that. You know, they have to cover the cost to some degree of the infrastructure itself. And you're talking about very high voltage operations and, you know, the physical stuff that has to be there.

And then in addition to that, of course, they're going to charge you to, you might call it a convenience fee, you know, because you're paying extra for that. And it winds up being comparable to paying, you know, for premium lead at the pump, except, of course, You can fill your tank with premium unloaded in about three minutes as opposed to sitting at the sheets for 20 to 30 minutes to get a partial charge. Yeah, as the challenge, as you know, though, is that the system, when I'm talking about the elites, and we really have a poor class of elites in this country, but be that as it may, they never look at our time as being of any value, right? You know, because time is money, too, like they say, time has value too, and to even wait for a half hour on a fast charge. That's a long break for most people. Oh, sure, absolutely. It's an opportunity cost, and it's just a cost generally. You can't recover time. You have to be similar. You've got a job that says, hey, you need to be here at 9 o'clock. You've got a kid who's got a practice that ends at a certain time. You don't want your kid to be standing there waiting for you for 45 minutes while all of their friends have already been picked up and gone home. It's just, it's a compounding hassle. And of course, these elites, as you put it, they are so affluent that they can afford to have multiple vehicles to get around all of this stuff.

You know, if you're President Trump, you don't think too much about it, although he might because his people may be telling him. But, yeah, when you're limoed everywhere, so what, right? Well, and if you can afford two $120,000 EVs, you know, keep one plugged in all the time, and the other one is available. You can cycle them back and forth. Maybe then it works. But most people can't afford even one of these things, let alone too. Yeah, you have to have one vehicle that's able to do everything. And for most people, unfortunately, I wish it weren't the case, though, but electric and an EVs,

is not the do-all for everybody, usually in all situations. It's difficult to do that. Just the nature of the beast. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. All right. It is, but they said we'd save money, and it's over on EPATOs.com, and I'm going to break you here.

And then we're going to take calls for you, too, Eric. You want to talk to Eric? You got something the way in on this or something else involving the open road and a vehicle. 7705-633. This is the Bill Meyer show. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, and I'm with Cherise from No Wires Now, your Dish Premier local retailer. It's time to switch to dish.

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Join me for Fox 26, First News at 10. I'm Andrea Boyd. Tune in every night at 10 for late nights first news and weather. Fox 26 First News at 10. Local news and weather are important. You can watch Fox 26 First News at 10, the encore playback at midnight, or online 24-7 at Fox26 Medford.com.

When you want the news first, tune in to Fox 26, first news at 10. Because local news and weather matters. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. But not with ZipRecruiter. Its powerful technology actively finds and invites qualified candidates to apply to your job. So while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, ZipRecruiter finds you the needle in the haystack.

See why four out of five employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash free. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash free. This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. Got something on your mind? Give Bill a shout at 541-770-5-633-7-70-K-M-E-D. The wheels-off segment with Eric Peters, E.P.O.O.S.com.

Eric, let's head of the phones here. We've got Brother Brad. Brad, you wanted to talk about affordability, repairability, whatever it is. You're on with Eric from the EP. Morning. Yeah, Bill, good morning. I love this segment with Eric. So, you know, you look at these older vehicles that we used to drive, they were affordable, they didn't cost that much to buy, they were durable, they would run for a long time, and then the big rock in the jar that people don't like to talk about is repairability. This is, to me, this is one of the most problematic aspects of these modern vehicles, especially these modern EVs is nobody can work on them. My understanding is that if you have a Tesla, the only entity that can work on the Tesla is Tesla.

Is that true, Eric? Could you just confirm that? Yes. Yes, and as a practical matter, the same applies to pretty much everything else, because unless you have access to the proprietary software, the diagnostic equipment and so on, that you need in order to service any modern vehicle, you respectively can't. Maybe you can change the oil, you can change the air filter. But anything beyond that, pretty much, you're going to have to schlep to the dealer and pay them to fix the car. Okay. And what else did you want to say? So you had repairability. What else was going on there?

Yeah, wait, the initial affordability, the durability, the parts, the repairability, and then the last thing, which you guys are talking about a little bit, is the cost of electricity, especially this high-volage electricity, is going through the roof. The availability of these superchargers to the average homeowner is nil, unless you're a millionaire, and you can afford to put one in. Right, absolutely. Yeah, it's not. You can't have commercial grade, but three-phase, electricity, a residential thing,

at a residential property. That's a big scale up. Yeah, half the time you're just happy to get reliable single-face power to your house. Isn't that right, Brad? It's just not. Well, electricity is three things. It's generation, transmission, and distribution. It's those three things. And right now, we've got a shortage of all three. We don't have enough generation. We don't have enough transmission, and we don't have enough distribution, even for our normal electrical loads. And then, like Eric said, they're building all these data centers that are gigantic electrical sucks. Nobody knows how this is going to work.

Yeah, and you would think that we'd be a little more careful about moving forward on something like that. Brad, very good call. I appreciate that. All right. We have Vicki, and you're talking about the energy price, though, differently. You're actually talking about the gas price. You're on with Eric Peters. Morning. Yeah, good morning, guys. I just had a quick question. You know, when they're selling, or when the barrel of, I guess, oil or whatever. Yeah, a barrel of crude oil, sure. Yeah, is like $79 a barrel or higher. Now it's at $59 or maybe even less.

Why are the gas prices still almost $4 a gallon? Well, it depends where you are. I mean, it's highly variable depending on where you are. In my area, it's considerably less than that. If you live, say, in California or some of these other states where they have very, very high taxes and also compliance costs for refiners and so on that are folded into the cost of fuel, I think here, how much is regular unloaded at my local sheets? It's really quite, it's like $2.40 and $0.40 a gallon. $2.40 a gallon. Vicki, doesn't that sound like a dream for us here in South of Oregon?

Oh, my God. I just, like, passed out and fell on the ground. I couldn't even imagine paying that much. Yeah, regular at most of the stations around here right now. Eric's about $3.89, $3.90, something like that. That's what we're looking at right now. My sister and her family, they live in Southern California. And last time I asked her about it, they were paying, I think, about the same four, maybe close to $5 a gallon. So, you know, in past years, when it's been under $60 a barrel, our prices have went down to like, you know,

3.30, 320, sometimes even three. So I'm just wondering, how long is it going to take for the prices of gas to reflect the price of the barrel of oil. Well, again, it depends, and it may be, it's going to vary depending on where you are, because, you know, the cost of the barrel of oil is one thing, regulatory compliance costs or another thing. And that is also the, now out here on the West Coast, there, Vicki, and by the way, thank you for the call. Appreciate that. One of the issues out here on the West Coast is that we also have unique formulations for gasoline.

It's not like we can take gasoline that's cheap over in Virginia, where Eric lives and get it out here, because that's not the formulation we're allowed. We're allowed to have. Once again, that's part of that what you term compliance costs, right? The regulatory state. Absolutely. And, of course, taxes, you know, the taxes on motor fuels,

it's ironic because you hear the left constantly talking about how iniquitous it is, iniquitous it is to have what they call regressive, i.e. disproportionately high taxes on things that average people have to buy. Well, the tax on motor fuels is exactly that. If you look at state and federal taxes combined, it's typically, what, 60, 70 cents out of every gallon that you're paying, at least, goes to those taxes. I wanted to talk about your latest article here about the 2025 Toyota Tacoma, because this is great. What's called the last one. Is this the last truck that has, that we Americans can buy, that you can still get a stick shift in it?

Yeah, that's available with one. Jeep used to offer a manual in the Wrangler. but that's been canceled. So they're all automatic only now. And effectively, so is the Tacoma. You can still get a six-speed manual in it, but only in the higher trim ones, which start around $42,000. Wait a minute. You have to pay more? I mean, when we were growing up, it was always the manual was the cheap one. And if you wanted the automatic, that was the option that you had to pay more for. You have to buy the double cab, i.e., you know, the one that has the four full-size doors as opposed to the extended cab, just to, you know, get to the point where they let you have that option. And it sounds

perverse, but, you know, the reason, again, circles is right back to the government. Toyota doesn't want to sell too many of them because the manual gets slightly worse mileage than the automatic. So, you know, they're trying to winnow down the number. They want it to be available because they know people who buy trucks like that, but they don't want to sell too many because it hurts them in terms of their cafe corporate. Oh, it's the fuel standards. Okay, because the reason why they all wanted to go to the automatic in the first place is because they're able to computer program it for the perfect shift every time for the maximum gas mileage, right? That's what they...

And, you know, as you've noticed, and we've talked about, modern automatics typically have eight and even ten speeds. So they can really, you know, like just fine-tune that. You can just have these constant shifting up and down to complete, to optimize mileage. And now, from the standpoint of the owner, it's really not particularly relevant. You know, you're talking about maybe a two or three mile per gallon difference, but that matters a lot when you're calculating a cafe compliance. Now, this manual stick on Tacoma, is it five, six speed?

How many speeds? Six. Six. Okay. All right. I would think that would be a lot more. Well, I mean, it's a lot more fun to drive, I suppose, if you like saw them through the gears, like when I'm driving my old Volkswagen.

You know, that kind of thing. It's more fun. Gives you something to do other than look at the touchscreen, I guess. Well, yeah. And with that number of ratios, it also lets you take advantage of leverage. You know, you could have a pretty aggressive first gear, and then you can have a pretty deep six-gear overdrive so that once you're rolling on the highway it cuts the engine revs down a lot so you know engine noise and wear and terror reducing of course gas mileage is better too but then you still have

you know that initial off-the-line pumps that people like yeah i've got all right interesting article the last one so is this the last year for it or they're going to keep this option for a little while longer what do you think looks like it'll at least be available through 26 now you know after that Who knows? Are there any cars left that you can actually still get with a manual transmission? But, you know, they're mostly niche vehicles like the Toyota Corolla GR, which is the high-performance version of the little Corolla. And, you know, if you can imagine it, that thing is like $35,000 or $40,000.

That one comes only with a manual. What else? And, of course, there's the Mustang GT. The base Mustang is automatic only now. You can imagine that. You have to buy the GT, which is a $44,000 car to get the manual. I was talking with my son, Will, yesterday because it was his birthday, and he was mentioning to me because we were talking about the stick shift and things,

because he used to sell cars, and now he's doing something different. But he was saying, yeah, I know you taught me how to drive the van, you know, that one time, but there aren't many times I had to use it. So I was joking with him that I said this is like a Gen Z club, you know, in which it's anti-theft device. He says, yeah, most of us don't know how to drive them. It's just the way it goes. It's circular, isn't it?

You know, because there are so few of them available now in a new vehicle, the up-and-coming generations, as they're learning how to drive, they never drive them, because most cars, probably 98% of them are, you know, automatic. So that's what they learn. So when it comes time for them to buy a car, they're going to buy an automatic because they're not going to buy a car that can't drive. So then that, in turn, results in less incentive for the manufacturers to offer new vehicles with men.

Yeah. One of my favorite bucket list items that I still want to get in there is to someday get into a Detroit diesel, you know, some kind of a Detroit diesel, big truck with the twin sticks or the three sticks on them and just try to learn how to do some of that. I watch some of those videos. I'm just intrigued by what they're doing, what they used to have to do. And when you are truck driver, man, you were working your butt off in those days. You know what, though?

I wish they still had those because it requires a degree of a great degree of confidence to handle something like that. Now all these big race are automatics. And as we've seen, you know, pretty much anybody who's got a 98 degree temperature can be put behind the wheel of one of these things to do U-turns on the high. highways and that sort of thing. Yeah, I was reading in Revolver News that there was yet another, shall we say, migrant truck driver who probably had one of those name withheld on request kind of driver's licenses. He was going the wrong way on the freeway with a semi. It's like

minor detail. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, again, I understand the convenience factor of it, and it's easier for the big companies that run these big trucks to basically not have to, it requires much in terms of skill and training from their drivers. But at the end of the day, it means, in my opinion, I think this is valid that the run-of-the-mill driver out there is probably less confident, less skilled, and therefore less safe behind the wheel than one of the guys who knows how to handle one of the trucks that you and I are talking about. Oh, yeah, those people that used to saw through the 18 gears, it's just like, man, you know that they were working. They had to know their, well, they had to know their machinery. They had to have a good instinct on it, too.

And they had to be paying attention. You couldn't not pay attention driving a truck like that. You got it. 677 talking with Eric Peters this morning, wheels up Wednesday. The last one is that article we were talking about. And we'll grab another call, and then I want to get to one of your latest reviews, and then we'll see what else is going on. Hi, good morning.

Who's this? Who's this? Hey, good morning. This, Chris, I have a question for Eric. Sure. Last week I was in L.A., and I rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee. And driving at night, at first I thought the mirrors were tinted, tinting, or something electronically. All the headlights.

appeared to be either an yellow or an orange. And then once I got out on a road, I said, no, wait, it's not the mirrors. It's the windows appear to have a tint on them. And it would vary. Some car lights would appear orange-ish, and others, it wouldn't. Is there something out there that does that new cars? That's interesting, not that I'm aware of. you know, there are specific tint standards, you know, in terms of what they're allowed to do from the factory.

I mean, all automotive glass has some degree of tint into it. I don't know whether the one you've, the one you driven may have had some kind of aftermarket thing applied to it by the rental car company. That's my best guess. Yeah, I don't know. That's really interesting. So it actually changed the color, though, of the actual life. At first, I thought this is really neat. It's some beers doing it.

And then I realized when somebody was driving towards me on a two-lane road, no, it's the actual glass, it appears. Anyway, I'm just wondering, I thought, I'd love to have that on my cars. All right, well, hey, I appreciate the call. The tip, maybe somebody that knows about the Jeep can tell us about that, all right? Thanks for the call. Yeah, thanks. All righty. Hey, Eric, latest review.

Is this the Ionic that you did, that you had? Yeah, the Ionic 5, which is an electric vehicle. It's a little electric crossover, and I will say that it's probably the best EV that I have ever driven in the sense that the range indicated. You know, I've carved about this a lot. It did not vary that much from the actual amount of driving that I could do in the car, and that was very nice. Oh, so it was actually accurate. It's one of those vehicles that you don't have to have a lot of range anxiety about us. Like, yeah, it says I have 60 miles, but do I really have 60 miles?

You know, I'm always a little bit nervous whenever I get an EV. and the EV range indicator, which is equivalent to kind of a gas tank in an electric car, so as I can drive 200 miles. And then I get out on the road, and I find I can only actually drive about 140 miles. And, oh, I better find a place to charge up the thing. So it was nice to find that this one actually is pretty accurate in that respect. And another thing that I appreciate is that it actually did come standard with charge cores. Oh, what a miracle.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, as you and I have talked about it, the last several EVs I've had, amazingly, they did not include a charge cord. And when I dug into it a little bit, sure enough, like, for example, the Volkswagen ID Buzz, which is the electric microbus that they're trying to sell right now, which they're not selling very well, by the way. It's a $700 option that wasn't included with the one that they sent.

So effectively, when you don't have that charge cord, you're forced to travel to one of these fast chargers and hope that the fast charger is actually operational and that it will accept your credit card. And if not, well, then you've got to figure out how you're going to get. to where you're going, either by foot or flatbed. All right. So the bottom line, though, the Ionic is something you actually appreciated.

Not a bad EV at all. That's what you're saying, right? Not a bad EV, however, now that the $7,500 tax kickback is gone, you know, you're talking about spending. It's about $42,000 to start for something that's very similar in every other way to a Subaru cross trek that you can pick up for $27,000. Okay, fair enough. Well, we appreciate that.

What you're going to be looking at for next week? They are dropping off a Lexus LX-700H, which is basically a very fancy version of the Toyota Sequoia that I had a few weeks back. And holy cow, if you can imagine, $145,000 for this thing. $145,000. Okay, well, get two. Get two. Now, the neat thing is, you know, it is a hybrid, but the interesting thing in the luxury segment is the hybrid stuff isn't really about saving money. That would be preposterous when you're talking about $145.

thousand dollar vehicle if you're worried about how much you're spending on gas there's something wrong with your your ability to do math um but what it is about is adding more power and performance so you know with the hybrid system it gets something like a hundred foot pounds more torque it's approaching 600 foot pounds of torque oh that's a lot of torque that's a lot of twisting to get you yeah a lot twisting and it's exactly what you want in a big full-sized SUV particularly if you're thinking about pulling an RV or some other kind of a heavy thing behind it well especially if you have your LX, what is it, the LX 7, what is it again? 700 H.

Yeah, the LX 700 H and then you're towing the spare LX 700 H, you know, for your, you know, your jetting around town, that kind of thing. If you're going to buy one, might as well buy two, really. Absolutely. Okay. The final thing I wanted to mention, though, I love this story you had in which we may have finally reached peak touch screen, right? In fact, we're starting to now see a reversal of this idea.

in which they're all putting an iPad, frankly, in the dash of every vehicle. And the problem with that is that, you know, they're proprietary. And when they break, you know, the car is not going to run. You can't turn anything on and off and all that kind of stuff. So what's going on? I guess Mercedes is leading the charge on this? Yeah, well, ironically enough, you know, Mercedes, which is one of the first of the luxury brands to decide to put these huge swaths of LCD plastic touchscreen inside the dashboard

and replacement for the gauges that they used to come with, has finally realized that It just makes the cars look cheap, even though they're still expensive, particularly when you can go out and buy, you know, a $28,000 Hyundai or Kia that has essentially the same thing that a $100,000 Mercedes S class has. It's just, it's not wearing very well. So they've come out with this really interesting concept car called the Vision Iionique, and its theme is 1920s Art Deco style, you know, that era when they really put a lot of effort into making cars beautiful. Oh, yeah. You know, for those not familiar with that period, I really recommend going to look at, say, the Concor, Pebble Beach, old car show, you can look it up online. Look at Duesenberg's. Oh, yeah, yeah, the Duesenberg, just rolling pieces of artwork, right?

Yes. That's really what they were. So they're going that direction, then, with this Mercedes concept car, right? Yes, they have, one of the pictures I've included it with my article, it shows what they call, I think it's the terminology, super analog. They're going back to this look of chronograph, which I, you know, I suggested that to them. whether they were listening to me. But, you know, like the really high-end watches that just are gorgeous things to look at and watch, the movement, the precision of that. They're going back to that with instrumentation and just trying to recover that elegance and beauty. And frankly,

the difference, you know, if you're going to be spending $100,000 on a vehicle or even $50,000 for that matter, you kind of want something that's a cut above the El Chippo special touchscreen that a $20,000 car has. Yeah. And maybe we'll see this creep into the other vehicles at some point with manual switches. And I know it's a little bit more expensive to do this, but it's much more durable for the long term, the life of the vehicle. Well, it's more emotionally satisfying. You know, you feel connected literally and also emotionally to a car when you can touch something, you know, not tap and swipe, but actually feel something in your hand, particularly if it's legitimately metal, you know, if it's some nicely plated or chrome

piece of metal, that's just appealing on an emotional as well as a functional level. All right. So we're at peak touchscreen right now, but maybe starting to go down and getting back to a little more analog. That would be welcome, I think, for a lot of people, especially when you have these touch screens that have in the cars, lots of nested menus. You tap here and then you have to go down a few levels and you have to do this to find out. And all you're trying to do is turn the fan on, right? Yeah, it's super frustrating. And, you know, it's also dangerous, obviously. You know, there are laws in practically every state that say it's illegal because it is unsafe to be piddling around with your cell phone while you're driving. in the car. But somehow it's okay and perfectly legal to be tapping essentially a bigger cell phone that's embedded in the dash of your vehicle. Great talk, Eric, is always looking forward to more of that. EP autos.com, the website, always a lot going on there. Great commentary, too. Eric Peters, thank you so much. We'll catch you next Wednesday on the wheels up, okay? You bet, Bill. Thank you.