The Impact of 3G and 4G Service Connection Services on Consumer Safety

The shutdown of 3G wireless networks has left many car owners concerned about their safety features, particularly those related to automatic crash notification. These services, which were designed to alert emergency services in the event of a crash, rely on connected vehicles to communicate with the outside world.

One such service is Automatic Crash Notification (ACN), also known as AACN. This system is designed to deploy airbags and call for emergency assistance if the vehicle is involved in a crash. However, consumers who pay for these services are left without access to them once 3G networks are no longer supported. This is because automakers do not provide a seamless transition from 3G to newer technologies like 4G.

As a result, some consumers are left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers have responded by offering different solutions, ranging from free software upgrades to retrofitting existing vehicles with new technology. For example, Subaru offers this service as a way for customers to upgrade their vehicle's safety features without having to purchase a new car.

However, not all automakers are taking the same approach. Some, like Bentley and Mitsubishi, have chosen to rely on smartphone-based solutions instead of integrating 4G connectivity directly into their vehicles. This means that consumers must bring their own phone with them when traveling and ensure it is charged and compatible with the vehicle's system.

The implications of this approach are significant. While automakers may see these services as a profit stream, they also provide a critical safety feature for drivers who rely on connected vehicles to stay safe on the road. In an accident, it is often impossible to bring the phone with us, making embedded modems and systems like ACN more reliable.

Despite the drawbacks of relying on smartphone-based solutions, there are benefits to this approach. For example, smartphones can provide a wealth of information about the crash, including GPS data and vehicle speed. This can be critical in emergency situations where every second counts.

However, these benefits come with a cost. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

The shutdown of 3G networks has left consumers with a pressing question: what happens when 4G and other newer technologies become obsolete? As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, it is clear that automakers will need to adapt if they want to provide their customers with the safety features they rely on. For now, consumers are left with a patchwork of different solutions, each with its own pros and cons.

A Closer Look at Legacy Systems

The shutdown of 3G wireless networks has highlighted the challenges posed by legacy systems in the automotive industry. These systems were designed to work seamlessly with older vehicles, but as technology advances, they become increasingly outdated.

Automakers have been slow to adapt to these changes, leaving consumers with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. While some automakers offer free software upgrades or retrofitting services, others are relying on smartphone-based solutions that may not provide the same level of reliability and safety.

One area where this approach is particularly problematic is in emergency situations like crashes. When a vehicle is involved in an accident, it can be impossible to bring our phone with us, making embedded modems and systems like ACN more reliable.

However, even these systems have limitations. For example, some automakers are relying on cellular networks to provide crash notifications, which may not always be available or reliable. This is particularly true in areas with poor cellular coverage or when the vehicle is traveling at high speeds.

The Implications for Automakers

While the shutdown of 3G wireless networks has raised concerns about consumer safety, it also highlights the challenges posed by legacy systems in the automotive industry. Automakers must adapt to changing technology and provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions if they want to remain competitive.

However, this approach can be costly. Automakers may see these services as a profit stream, but they also provide critical safety features for drivers who rely on connected vehicles to stay safe on the road. In an accident, it is often impossible to bring our phone with us, making embedded modems and systems like ACN more reliable.

Despite these challenges, automakers are exploring new solutions that can help them stay competitive in a rapidly changing market. Some are investing heavily in software updates and retrofitting services, while others are relying on smartphone-based solutions.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

The Future of Connected Services

As 4G networks become obsolete, consumers will be left with limited options when it comes to staying safe on the road. Automakers must adapt to these changes if they want to provide their customers with reliable and safe solutions.

However, this approach is not without its challenges. Consumers must pay for their own phone service, which can add up quickly. Some automakers are starting to offer this service as a separate option, such as the $35 per month fee charged by some automakers for access to connected services like ACN.

Despite these drawbacks, smartphone-based solutions can provide critical safety features in emergency situations. For example, smartphones can provide GPS data and vehicle speed, which can be invaluable in emergency situations where every second counts.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign and this week we're talking about an EV a a big a big boy Evie uh it's it's the EV equivalent of the GLS SUV the S-Class of SUVs and Mercedes-Benz massive lineup I mean it's they make a lot of cars they make a lot of vehicles and they have a lot of trims and but but we'll we'll put that aside it's the eqs SUV um it's a high-end model like the eqs sedan which we have already tested right and uh it's current this is the current Flagship for the Mercedes-Benz EV effort which is eqs but of course that's going away they've decided they're not going to call eqs I think they're going to change it to something else as they mainstream EVS so anyway we bought a eqs 450 4matic it has 355 horsepower from dual electric motors with 265 kilowatts of output a 9.6 kilowatt onboard chain uh charger excuse me not changer Mercedes he says it takes 12 and a half hours to fully charge from empty on a home 240 volt charger though as we know most people are charging from zero and 31 minutes on DC fast charger if you go from 10 to 80 which is more likely if you're taking a trip right uh it's available two or three rows and we chose the optional third row so this hundred and seven thousand four hundred dollar 107 400 450 4matic uh also has 21 inch wheels on ours and the third row seat plus delivery totals at 111 580 I know that that is like we talked about some other cars not what a lot of people are buying it is for us the way of testing testing new technology right exactly testing long-range technology testing a long-range EV distance testing to to set the market so yes the latest and greatest from Mercedes oh 100 it's it's not indicative of what most people are buying but we do have to test some of the outliers so that we could then have a baseline for the more mainstream right and it trickles down to their more mainstream exactly eventually we'll have eventually anyway an eqc or in a QA right or whatever they call it at that point right right but the interesting thing we were pitching this the story was gonna you know the show was going to go this way and that but Mike who was so into doing this vehicle that he camped on Dave's front steps and said I have to be on this show has now flip-flopped on how he feels yeah like tell us about your your love hate love I immediately hated it from when it first pulled in the shop um for a variety of reasons but the big one was the second and third row functionality that was kind of the first thing I went to because this one has that third row right and we specifically wanted the third row to test that out and it was tough to find first third row EV since the model X that we've absolutely yeah so I was like let me check this out first and the folding situation there you have to use levers and buttons and different sets of buttons it's terrible and it takes forever so I immediately hated it I saw Dave and said I want to talk about this thing on the podcast and I love Mercedes-Benz um I was a Mercedes-Benz Tech and I've owned several of them I still own one so I'm passionate about them and I'm a little disappointed because they have done better in the past and I think they can do better but there are some good things about this vehicle okay it's similar to the sedan yeah the sedan's not bad but it's an argument it's classy let us down in terms of especially that rear seat of this day right if you're like expecting a limousine essentially and it's not just not no yeah um one nice thing about this SUV is the extra Headroom that you get um I drove this the SUV I went back in the sedan back to back just to kind of get a refresher and it feels really cramped yes in the SUV you have plenty of Headroom you're just more comfortable in the seat better seating position and you sit a little higher so I think you have better lines of sight and traffic sure yeah with big vehicles out on the road the driving position and visibility in the sedan are like notably bad I mean the sedan we have has the optional hyper screen which means you get this one giant piece of glass and it raises the top edge of the dash and then it's already low because it's the sedan and the pillars are way out there and they're really wide and the air like it's overly Arrow yeah so if you're looking through this little thing and the steering wheel's in a weird position so I think you're right like it's still not maybe amazing as far as the driving position and visibility but it is definitely better than the the sedan absolutely it fixes some of those really big issues that I had with the sedan and um ours has a few less options the SUV than the sedan the smaller screen some would say it's worse some would say it's better yeah I think we're all on the better front on that one um so it's cheesier to dash yeah we'll get there yeah but um I've driven it a bunch um I did a couple hundred miles in it one day I drove it again last night and it's grown on me a little bit um It's relatively quiet it's not as quiet as the sedan going down the road to get more wind noise but probably because it's taller yeah Reverb in the cabin absolutely um you'll get the smaller screen is easier to use I think for the most part and um I just enjoyed it last night it just I used it as a vehicle and um I turned off all the lights inside that helps at night we'll get to that we'll get to that too but um I use it as a vehicle it did everything I asked for and um but softened slightly okay slightly but to your initial point last night did you have to put anybody in the third row or even the second row did you I did you mad at anybody did you no I threw my bag in my jacket in the second row and drove it home right so yeah from the driving position and the as just the driver if you ignore everything else it was pretty good that's a big expensive vehicle for a single single yes it is but that's what most mini cars are okay all right right so so we've all spent time at Alex yeah um give us some information on the technology of this I mean it's it's air suspension standard rear wheels steering active Safety Systems yeah you're getting what do we get you're getting the latest from from Mercedes-Benz this is really just like the eqs sedan basically showcase right um so in terms of the EV technology you're getting the their latest and greatest batteries and Motors so 108 kilowatt hour battery which is pretty large by even today's standards um that's the usable capacity um all-wheel drive dual motor like you said and that onboard charger the 9.6 kilowatt um charger is I'd say it's like kind of average um it would be nice to see a bigger one because the battery is so big because what that really means is you're not so concerned about charging it overnight overnight is you know enough time whatever but if you you know have a shorter time at home where you want to charge it um it's adding about you know this is a calculated number but 22 miles of range per hour of charge right so if it was regardless of battery size if it were a little bit bigger of a charger you'd get more miles um and then the the 200 kilowatt DC charging though that's that's pretty decent that's above average so that's good um latest chassis technology at least in terms of a comfort oriented Mercedes right it's not a Handler but right um you're getting the air suspension the Adaptive dampers my favorite is the rear steering I mean that shrinks the car down it's kind of amazing it's really nice a rear steer it's huge like um small traffic circle you know um rotaries and stuff like that really it it tucks itself in it does um now it kind of gets a little weird because this is a big heavy really heavy SUV so you can't really get around that so it does kind of have this nice turn in response in these things um in the rear steer kind of makes it feel Nimble but because it's so big and soft like it kind of flops over on itself and like it just the the responsiveness of the steering doesn't quite match how big and heavy and soft the rest of the vehicle is in my opinion like it's good supplement and all these things but like when you start to push it especially compared to the sedan totally it's just a smaller foot that one lower yeah more Nimble exactly yep you have to add to that I might have overcooked a an intro change this morning a little bit got into a little bit it turns in pretty well and it was like a little porpoise action happening kind of mid corner like yeah exactly and it um you know that sort of then alerted me the fact that was probably going maybe a little quicker Through The Interchange than I should have or would have in such a a big heavy vehicle yeah yeah it kind of is a little misleading yeah in that way with the amount of response you get right away can you give us give us a little bit we talked about the hyper screen yeah yeah what's the what's the difference I mean in the sense of yes it's better I think we all agree like you said we all agree it's it's better just have the single screen with addition but you're not really utilizing that as the driver anyway the hyper screen but yeah it does pick up the car I mean it is a presence it's a massive presence and it's overwhelming so the reason I like the smaller screen and I think you guys would agree is you're getting 90 of the same functionality right you lose the passenger screen um so that's the thing if you really want that for whatever reason then okay you got to get the hyper screen but um not only does it fix the driving position a little bit because this by separating the screens the the gauge display is now lower um so you're not kind of contending with that and it's also at a different angle because they want to put the hyper screen under one thing of glass like there's kind of compromises with the angle of it relative to where you're sitting um that's fixed when you separate the two screens right um and then the hyper screen is so wide in our eqs that part of it's blocked by the steering wheel and there's just it's too much going on honestly so to get almost all the same functionality but to fix some of those issues I think it's kind of a no-brainer it's also less expensive to do it that way it certainly is less expensive I mean the the functionality of the of the current system and Mbox system is wonky it's it definitely takes time to to learn the only thing that that I don't you know and Mike if you want to step you know the fact that we have had so many Mercedes-Benz has come through recently just because of their EVS or because of the redesigns of the C-Class and stuff like that um getting more comfortable with it but there's still weird functionality and angles I find at least with the steering wheel oh yeah totally yeah the cerebral controls are not great yeah um I don't mind the little swipe for volume I've sort of got the hang of that but the rest of them I'm not so good at well it's all touch sensitive so instead of a real or anything yeah you just kind of slide your finger on like a little paddle right right right and um it does take some like fine dexterity to make that happen for small adjustments oh yeah and I've gotten pretty good at the volume but everything else not so much yeah the first thing you'll notice there's no like back forward and back or next track buttons right they want you to use this little d-pad and you have to select those buttons on the center screen with no way yeah no way is that happening no well even in the gauge cluster so you could do so maybe you've got ways going on maybe you've got the native system for maps so you want to go through and the gauge cluster and change that because it works it's it's you know the four-way button okay as you try to swipe you actually changed it so now instead of going horizontally on the station and moving it over a track you've actually gone down into the driver alerts function for example and all of a sudden the green ball shows up with your efficiency or something so it's so now you're focusing on making sure that you do this and you're less on the road yeah not only have you not done what you want but you're distracted by trying to figure out what you've done but I've done wrong exactly exactly yeah yeah um touch on the third row C I'll throw this open to either one of you sure you're very passionate yeah it was just terrible um you open up that done done episode that's it you open up the door and second road the second Road door correct and you have to obviously go in that way to get the third row so you need to fold that seat forward to move it forward and there's a button on the backrest that you just sort of click and the driver's seat and that middle row seat both move forward simultaneously so there's a lot happening but it doesn't really move forward enough there's more steps that you can take there's a um like a cable or like a ribbon cable that you can pull to release the seat and let it go even further forward but then you still have to unfold the third row if it was you know stowed to get back then you have to do that first so at that point you're around the back of the vehicle and there's some extra buttons back there but they don't control the third row right they control the second one yeah that's right so you're trying to figure out how to raise the third row and then you realize that you're not maybe tall enough and have a long enough reach to do it from the back so you have to go back around middle row and kind of lean back there and fold everything up and then you're dealing with the head rest is a separate folding option then you got to climb back there um and I can just imagine I don't have kids but I can imagine if you had some kids and you're in a parking lot trying to keep track of the kids and probably the reason you would be messing with the third record in the first place and I just imagine kids running all over the parking lot you know horns going off and and hopefully you have the same number of kids at the end when it started um and then when you put it all back like together to sit you then still have to readjust that second row with the seat controls on the door the door yeah you're going like four different places to make this happen and it's a lengthy ordeal basically and they could do better I think not having a just a straight eleven thousand dollars well just a string you know just like you know Toyota has something where it's a velcro strap and you just pull it up I mean at least something to help you reach correct I look this is not a GLS in size the GLS you could fit an adult in the back and still have room for their luggage so yeah this is this is a compromise it's tight back there um so once you're done doing all that yes maybe you get back there right um I mean most of these midsize or even larger this thing is pretty large um SUVs these third rows are tight but this thing it was kind of disappointing Honestly by the time you climbed back there the seat's so low and it's really narrow um I'm gonna be really nerdy here for a second but like a lot of these EVS because aerodynamics are still important there's something called tumble home right where it's the curvature of the way the you know from the sides of the vehicle the greenhouse comes in right so they're trying to make them so aerodynamic that when you look at the car from the top view it starts to get teardrop shaped right and starts to come in and pinch towards the back which you know most cars have that to some degree but if you look at like Rix a BMW IX from the top or this thing it's like pretty dramatic right so that just makes the third row even tighter than it would be in a GLS or something for anyone Beyond a kid yeah yeah absolutely you're like you know sitting like this in there so and then at the same time you don't have really any cargo room so yeah with the third row with the third row yeah so I mean this is a okay it's fine for carpooling kids I mean I think taking my daughter and her lacrosse teammates around you know they can throw the sticks in the back or they can cut you know but you're not taking seven or six people on vacation with this I don't think so at all no there'll be no room for your stuff yeah that's what you're doing a rooftop rack which is killing the whole point of it so right you'll get 100 miles of range um let's get to uh Evie eviness of it yeah you're getting all-wheel drive but what about range of course it's winter here even we don't have midwest winter snow but it's cold it is yes what have you seen as far as that highway speeds Etc um you know of course like most EVS you wish there was a little bit more range um but I think they're making up with some of that on the charging speed so if you do have to charge you know you can get that range back quickly and get on with your day but um on the highway it is a bigger vehicle it's heavy vehicle it's taller if you're doing 55 60 which let's face it most traffic in most places don't do that unless you're in a traffic jam and the faster you go the worse it gets if you're keeping up with the traffic speed on the highway whatever it is they're going um it starts to Tumble pretty quickly you can sometimes see two miles come off it rains for every mile you drive especially when it's cold out um and that's flat not even going over absolutely and even trying just to manage temperature inside the vehicle like driver only using well this one doesn't have the steering wheel heater at least I haven't found it um but he the seat you're not trying to keep the whole big cabin that helps but if you have some people with you you're gonna have to eat the whole cabin yeah and that's just going to affect it you know more and more right um so I mean it has plenty of power doesn't have the power of the sedan the 580 but that's how you get it right yeah right right um that one probably has power buttons for the rear seats by the way yeah maybe at that point at 125 or whatever but it um it has plenty power you know for its size and things like that and it'll pull up a hill like the Hill's not even there basically flattens out any kind of a hill so that's great smooth smooth um you know a little bit of wind noise you know more so in the sedan but it's a bigger vehicle right so I think that's to to be expected it's not traumatizing the level of noise you can still talk on the phone you can still listen to music at a reasonable volume is all happy yeah it's still that's a luxury level interior as far as the you know absolutely yes um Alex we've talked on a couple different cars on on the show and also just at the office about the smart region and so there is a mode you know there are various modes here and you touch a bit about that because it is yeah it's good and bad or okay and bad okay and bad yeah I like that um okay so the what the system is trying to do is it's basically using the radar and camera system mostly radar to detect like vehicles in front of you or road conditions and automatically apply regenerative braking to like slow you down or manage your speed where it works well is when you come up behind a vehicle just in regular driving you're going a couple miles an hour faster it'll automatically kind of bring you down to match the speed you know you don't have cruise control set yeah you just have this mode turned on and it will do this uh where I found it to be less good or bad in fact was on like curvy roads or when you're approaching an intersection even it'll automatically start breaking and my problem with that is I'm already going for the brakes in most of these situations right so it like either on my way to the brake pedal it starts breaking and then you end up with kind of this two-stage braking or um you know or you're relying on it and it doesn't apply enough breaks um so it just kind of made for a little bit of a jerky Driving Experience I guess when you kind of want something to be really smooth in this type of vehicle and I found that if a car pulls away and you're doing it oh yeah yes all of a sudden it's back to speed right which I've noticed in other EVS with this type of thing not just the Mercedes but that's definitely yep a thing I think in the BMW we saw it as well yeah so it all of a sudden you're kind of wearing back yeah um I I also find we have a Road Route 2 here for the Connecticut people um but has a very kind of tight s and a lot of the cars like to all of a sudden notice the the whatever whether it's the the uh mapping whether it's cars around or whatever it is it they really begin to like Haul on the region yeah and slow you dramatically which I I find is worrisome for people behind yeah right I mean yes it's giving the brake lights but still it's maybe unexpected it's maybe not how you're driving and then all of a sudden it's doing that that you know separate from people who are using Hills and such to regen every opportunity right right um I'm gonna throw this on the table the interior screens so we have all the screens we have lights on the side they they change the lights change when you raise the temperature lower the temperature it's like a disco club in there it is turning on I mean most so if you're into this type of thing if you're really into ambient lighting and cars which most offer to some degree Mercedes is you know top of the top it's over the top so if you're really into this like get a Mercedes but um it's it is over the top and it's super bright and in This eqs SUV it's even brighter it seems than in the sedan I mean if you turn up the volume or the the volume the the brightness all the way on these things it's like alarming and then I discovered that it's got this mode where not only is it responding to like climate adjustments but it's responding to the speed at which you're driving so like at say 10 miles an hour it's like a slow pulse past your head and then the faster you go it starts getting faster and it just feels like they're maybe skirting around some kind of Regulation by doing that you know you're not supposed to watch TV while you're right which isn't that much different it's like ludicrous mode you know yeah you just sorry it goes to play out of it it was a little silly for sure um we've touched on a ton of stuff I want to I want to throw this out in who is this for okay so a it's got the third row seat is is this the new R class I mean if everyone remembers the R class it was my question 2006 to 13. but I mean we've got the model X yeah we now have just just gotten in a rivian r1s finally so a third three row SUV tell me tell me if it's the R class I think our class is a good a good sort of you know pass model to relate this to okay um I definitely think they're trying to build it as like the S-Class SUV but it's not really an S-Class if you sit in a current generation S-Class it is a very nice place to be really well thought out it's very sort of traditional car inside of there yeah um I remember when the R class first came out the middle row with the captain's shares was a great place to like a road trip you want someone else to drive I want to sit back here and you know I can have a heat AC whatever and it's a nice place to be I sort of wish this middle row had captain seats it might make a little more comfortable might make access to the third row easier you could like use the center aisle to get back there um so I think our class is very appropriate it is sort of uh almost like a minivan with Trinity additional doors um it's very much still a family vehicle absolutely spacious other than maybe the third row but in general it's quite spacious it's just the family that wants the latest and greatest and is ready for an Eevee or maybe already has an EV right right um but yeah I think uh I did want to touch on quickly anyway and this kind of leads into it what you don't get for a hundred and eleven thousand dollars definitely um and some of it is from an EV perspective specifically um even though it's Mercedes latest and greatest EV it's not that efficient compared to some of the others I mean of course compared to the sedan it's less efficient because it's bigger heavier and less aerodynamic but um so if you're just using EPA numbers it's uh getting 2.3 miles per kilowatt hour which is kind of an equivalent equivalent way to think about EVS in terms of like miles per gallon right how far can I go per unit of energy in the battery um the sedan is 2.8 which is kind of it's okay but it's better of course but it's average to put it in perspective the BMW IX which is pretty similar to This eqs SUV is 2.6 and Lucid air and Model S if you trust their numbers are at 3.6 so way more efficient um so that's one thing but then we touched on the um the fit and finish I think oh yes yes fit and finish and there's no heated steering wheel I think you know with a vehicle like this to try to keep their margins like in the realm of Sanity like they've got to cut some stuff out because batteries and motors and stuff is still so expensive sure that big plastic sheet on the dash is pretty cheap looking and if you start poking around and things aren't S-Class level right correct and that stands out especially since we also have an eqe we got in and it's just a slightly nicer non-hyper screen Dash slightly not not great but it's also 20 30 grand less right right yeah it that's it's like it's like that sound I mean it's awful it really is it's a surprise the sun visors they feel like they're made out of um like milk containers you know the headliner feels nice a lot of things feel nice but yeah the first time I reached up to grab that sun visor I was like ooh gross right some of the like secondary gross areas yeah yeah so so I'm getting the hook the uh the gong show is coming for us on this this episode's uh eqs talk so we're gonna have more online it's uh it's just going into test check out consumerreports.org we also have the eqs sedan uh final road test information up there already at this point we're going to uh be going to the questions but the only way we get to answer questions if you send them to us so send us your 30 second video clips send us text questions talking cars at icloud.com um if you include a little meme for Dave you might get pushed to the top of the list that's the trick that's the trick a little little gift for Dave um anyway today's question comes from Doug from Muskego Wisconsin Doug asks I have noticed that most manufacturers seem to be listing their connected Vehicles as requiring a 4G connection this shows up on their window stickers as well as on some Brands 2023 Lexus NX and RX for example given that we just went through decommissioning the 3G system which seems to make anything requiring 3G obsolete what are your thoughts on how today's generation of connected Vehicles will operate when the inevitable shutdown of 4G happens good question I mean yeah very very relevant we uh we did what we Alex Alex was part of a big story on consumerports.org about that so look it up Alex is going to talk about that in a second um for for the quick answer is it's not going to happen soon I spoke with one of our Tech writers Melanie Panola which he told me is that 4G is expected to be available until at least 20 30 even longer because carriers are building 5G on top of 4G LTE and they can share the same Spectrum called Dynamic Spectrum sharing 5G really is not replacing 4G the way 4G did for 3G um but it's important for you as the consumer pay attention to what the automakers are doing you know when you hear Rumblings about it and start thinking about the vehicle you have look to see if they are offering upgrades look to see if if it's a pay upgrade or if it's a free one because you pay for their services that's the big thing the connected Services if you for example had a Subaru and you were part of their had their connected Services they were going to give you the upgrade to the 4G system for free if you didn't you would have had to pay money right right um but Alex go and go a little more deep deeper into that because you worked with Keith Barry on yeah so talking more about like the 3G issue that came about but it is nice to see that at least for now 4G and 5G will be intact hopefully for a little while so we won't have to worry but of course nothing lasts forever So eventually they will go away and you'll presumably be in a similar position we were to last year when 3G networks shut down so Verizon and at D they shut off their 3G Towers at different times throughout the year um so cars that were relying on the 3G technology you know depending on which car you had some people were just out of luck entirely um the automaker had no solution and if you were paying for these things you know by this date that's it it's over so what did the 3G and now 4G service connection service get used for yeah so a lot of these were earlier systems with these kind of connected Services um some of them you know remote starting from an app on your phone is a big one or controlling various functions of the car what we're concerned about at Consumer Reports is more about the safety stuff so um something called ACN or aacn which is automatic crash notification you're getting into an accident and the airbag deploys if you have the system set up and unfortunately if you're paying the bill doesn't work if you're not um it'll automatically call emergency services so like a non-star General Motors have something similar um so that's the big one um so when you know the 3G Tower was shut down and automakers that had no solution customers who were paying for that and getting that benefit you know could no longer access that so but other automakers had something some were a free software upgrade that was done over the air which was nice to see others like you mentioned Subaru you could bring your car in and kind of get like a retrofit um so point is is that automakers were all over the map there's no regulation to say that they have to support these kind of Legacy systems as technology changes so um just extrapolating into the future will probably be in a similar position maybe around 2030 when uh you know 5G goes away or 4G so some Mitsubishi I believe Bentley maybe another they they relied on your phone they didn't have yeah it was the biggest one that does that as well um but Pro Con on that one I mean like automakers may not like that in a sense the green yeah correct I mean they are a business and they need to make some money um they want to keep their lights on so they put these Services together the software and the vehicle because they want you to use their stuff they want you to subscribe to their services and it's a Profit Stream for them it's all great that we can use you know Android auto or car play but you know that's why they still have their own native nav system and all their own stuff they would like us to use their things Mercedes would like us to have the Mercedes me account and use all that stuff and then you can choose yes I want to upgrade my car with whatever option is right there on the screen you know so again it's a profit Center um but the phones you know we all basically have the phones we probably get phones you know new phones sooner than we get cars so you get new phones that technology progresses you want to connect that phone um it would be nice if your phone just was sort of the end-all be-all you use that you know whatever it is the cell tower the satellite however your phone is communicating um that way when your phone updates it's like almost like the car's connection has been updated yeah so I think you know like you said um you know Bentley and Mitsubishi two brands that are sort of on different ends never saying them in the same sense that's right that's the way they chose to do it for whatever reason where others tend to you know no we're sticking with our Hardware our software and this is the way it is and it's not all cynical I will say like even though they are profiting from that there is a benefit to having these kind of built-in embedded systems is that your phone internet talking about Crash notifications specifically in an accident your phone could go flying you never brought your phone in the car if it wasn't charged it never set it up whatever yeah right the embedded modem is protected by the structure of the car it's powered by the car so like a much more serious thing would likely have to happen for that to not function compare to your phone there's there's more responsibility of you to set it up and bring your phone and all that stuff absolutely just having it turn on with the car well in having the this the crash notification if it was in a nominal fee is great it's the oh it's a it's a hot spot yeah 35 a month so you can stream like totally okay not not the necessary it'll be it's great if it's separate and it's great if it's a nominal fee so that you could at least you know and have that upgraded yeah um a lot going on check our story online if you uh search on 3G wireless network shutdown uh at consumerreports.org you'll find that story and a lot more information so that'll do it for this episode of course make sure you send us uh your questions in your short 30 second video clips talking cars at icloud.com uh this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by Andrew Balise and Anatoly shimsky and thanks for watching and we'll see you next time now foreign foreignforeign and this week we're talking about an EV a a big a big boy Evie uh it's it's the EV equivalent of the GLS SUV the S-Class of SUVs and Mercedes-Benz massive lineup I mean it's they make a lot of cars they make a lot of vehicles and they have a lot of trims and but but we'll we'll put that aside it's the eqs SUV um it's a high-end model like the eqs sedan which we have already tested right and uh it's current this is the current Flagship for the Mercedes-Benz EV effort which is eqs but of course that's going away they've decided they're not going to call eqs I think they're going to change it to something else as they mainstream EVS so anyway we bought a eqs 450 4matic it has 355 horsepower from dual electric motors with 265 kilowatts of output a 9.6 kilowatt onboard chain uh charger excuse me not changer Mercedes he says it takes 12 and a half hours to fully charge from empty on a home 240 volt charger though as we know most people are charging from zero and 31 minutes on DC fast charger if you go from 10 to 80 which is more likely if you're taking a trip right uh it's available two or three rows and we chose the optional third row so this hundred and seven thousand four hundred dollar 107 400 450 4matic uh also has 21 inch wheels on ours and the third row seat plus delivery totals at 111 580 I know that that is like we talked about some other cars not what a lot of people are buying it is for us the way of testing testing new technology right exactly testing long-range technology testing a long-range EV distance testing to to set the market so yes the latest and greatest from Mercedes oh 100 it's it's not indicative of what most people are buying but we do have to test some of the outliers so that we could then have a baseline for the more mainstream right and it trickles down to their more mainstream exactly eventually we'll have eventually anyway an eqc or in a QA right or whatever they call it at that point right right but the interesting thing we were pitching this the story was gonna you know the show was going to go this way and that but Mike who was so into doing this vehicle that he camped on Dave's front steps and said I have to be on this show has now flip-flopped on how he feels yeah like tell us about your your love hate love I immediately hated it from when it first pulled in the shop um for a variety of reasons but the big one was the second and third row functionality that was kind of the first thing I went to because this one has that third row right and we specifically wanted the third row to test that out and it was tough to find first third row EV since the model X that we've absolutely yeah so I was like let me check this out first and the folding situation there you have to use levers and buttons and different sets of buttons it's terrible and it takes forever so I immediately hated it I saw Dave and said I want to talk about this thing on the podcast and I love Mercedes-Benz um I was a Mercedes-Benz Tech and I've owned several of them I still own one so I'm passionate about them and I'm a little disappointed because they have done better in the past and I think they can do better but there are some good things about this vehicle okay it's similar to the sedan yeah the sedan's not bad but it's an argument it's classy let us down in terms of especially that rear seat of this day right if you're like expecting a limousine essentially and it's not just not no yeah um one nice thing about this SUV is the extra Headroom that you get um I drove this the SUV I went back in the sedan back to back just to kind of get a refresher and it feels really cramped yes in the SUV you have plenty of Headroom you're just more comfortable in the seat better seating position and you sit a little higher so I think you have better lines of sight and traffic sure yeah with big vehicles out on the road the driving position and visibility in the sedan are like notably bad I mean the sedan we have has the optional hyper screen which means you get this one giant piece of glass and it raises the top edge of the dash and then it's already low because it's the sedan and the pillars are way out there and they're really wide and the air like it's overly Arrow yeah so if you're looking through this little thing and the steering wheel's in a weird position so I think you're right like it's still not maybe amazing as far as the driving position and visibility but it is definitely better than the the sedan absolutely it fixes some of those really big issues that I had with the sedan and um ours has a few less options the SUV than the sedan the smaller screen some would say it's worse some would say it's better yeah I think we're all on the better front on that one um so it's cheesier to dash yeah we'll get there yeah but um I've driven it a bunch um I did a couple hundred miles in it one day I drove it again last night and it's grown on me a little bit um It's relatively quiet it's not as quiet as the sedan going down the road to get more wind noise but probably because it's taller yeah Reverb in the cabin absolutely um you'll get the smaller screen is easier to use I think for the most part and um I just enjoyed it last night it just I used it as a vehicle and um I turned off all the lights inside that helps at night we'll get to that we'll get to that too but um I use it as a vehicle it did everything I asked for and um but softened slightly okay slightly but to your initial point last night did you have to put anybody in the third row or even the second row did you I did you mad at anybody did you no I threw my bag in my jacket in the second row and drove it home right so yeah from the driving position and the as just the driver if you ignore everything else it was pretty good that's a big expensive vehicle for a single single yes it is but that's what most mini cars are okay all right right so so we've all spent time at Alex yeah um give us some information on the technology of this I mean it's it's air suspension standard rear wheels steering active Safety Systems yeah you're getting what do we get you're getting the latest from from Mercedes-Benz this is really just like the eqs sedan basically showcase right um so in terms of the EV technology you're getting the their latest and greatest batteries and Motors so 108 kilowatt hour battery which is pretty large by even today's standards um that's the usable capacity um all-wheel drive dual motor like you said and that onboard charger the 9.6 kilowatt um charger is I'd say it's like kind of average um it would be nice to see a bigger one because the battery is so big because what that really means is you're not so concerned about charging it overnight overnight is you know enough time whatever but if you you know have a shorter time at home where you want to charge it um it's adding about you know this is a calculated number but 22 miles of range per hour of charge right so if it was regardless of battery size if it were a little bit bigger of a charger you'd get more miles um and then the the 200 kilowatt DC charging though that's that's pretty decent that's above average so that's good um latest chassis technology at least in terms of a comfort oriented Mercedes right it's not a Handler but right um you're getting the air suspension the Adaptive dampers my favorite is the rear steering I mean that shrinks the car down it's kind of amazing it's really nice a rear steer it's huge like um small traffic circle you know um rotaries and stuff like that really it it tucks itself in it does um now it kind of gets a little weird because this is a big heavy really heavy SUV so you can't really get around that so it does kind of have this nice turn in response in these things um in the rear steer kind of makes it feel Nimble but because it's so big and soft like it kind of flops over on itself and like it just the the responsiveness of the steering doesn't quite match how big and heavy and soft the rest of the vehicle is in my opinion like it's good supplement and all these things but like when you start to push it especially compared to the sedan totally it's just a smaller foot that one lower yeah more Nimble exactly yep you have to add to that I might have overcooked a an intro change this morning a little bit got into a little bit it turns in pretty well and it was like a little porpoise action happening kind of mid corner like yeah exactly and it um you know that sort of then alerted me the fact that was probably going maybe a little quicker Through The Interchange than I should have or would have in such a a big heavy vehicle yeah yeah it kind of is a little misleading yeah in that way with the amount of response you get right away can you give us give us a little bit we talked about the hyper screen yeah yeah what's the what's the difference I mean in the sense of yes it's better I think we all agree like you said we all agree it's it's better just have the single screen with addition but you're not really utilizing that as the driver anyway the hyper screen but yeah it does pick up the car I mean it is a presence it's a massive presence and it's overwhelming so the reason I like the smaller screen and I think you guys would agree is you're getting 90 of the same functionality right you lose the passenger screen um so that's the thing if you really want that for whatever reason then okay you got to get the hyper screen but um not only does it fix the driving position a little bit because this by separating the screens the the gauge display is now lower um so you're not kind of contending with that and it's also at a different angle because they want to put the hyper screen under one thing of glass like there's kind of compromises with the angle of it relative to where you're sitting um that's fixed when you separate the two screens right um and then the hyper screen is so wide in our eqs that part of it's blocked by the steering wheel and there's just it's too much going on honestly so to get almost all the same functionality but to fix some of those issues I think it's kind of a no-brainer it's also less expensive to do it that way it certainly is less expensive I mean the the functionality of the of the current system and Mbox system is wonky it's it definitely takes time to to learn the only thing that that I don't you know and Mike if you want to step you know the fact that we have had so many Mercedes-Benz has come through recently just because of their EVS or because of the redesigns of the C-Class and stuff like that um getting more comfortable with it but there's still weird functionality and angles I find at least with the steering wheel oh yeah totally yeah the cerebral controls are not great yeah um I don't mind the little swipe for volume I've sort of got the hang of that but the rest of them I'm not so good at well it's all touch sensitive so instead of a real or anything yeah you just kind of slide your finger on like a little paddle right right right and um it does take some like fine dexterity to make that happen for small adjustments oh yeah and I've gotten pretty good at the volume but everything else not so much yeah the first thing you'll notice there's no like back forward and back or next track buttons right they want you to use this little d-pad and you have to select those buttons on the center screen with no way yeah no way is that happening no well even in the gauge cluster so you could do so maybe you've got ways going on maybe you've got the native system for maps so you want to go through and the gauge cluster and change that because it works it's it's you know the four-way button okay as you try to swipe you actually changed it so now instead of going horizontally on the station and moving it over a track you've actually gone down into the driver alerts function for example and all of a sudden the green ball shows up with your efficiency or something so it's so now you're focusing on making sure that you do this and you're less on the road yeah not only have you not done what you want but you're distracted by trying to figure out what you've done but I've done wrong exactly exactly yeah yeah um touch on the third row C I'll throw this open to either one of you sure you're very passionate yeah it was just terrible um you open up that done done episode that's it you open up the door and second road the second Road door correct and you have to obviously go in that way to get the third row so you need to fold that seat forward to move it forward and there's a button on the backrest that you just sort of click and the driver's seat and that middle row seat both move forward simultaneously so there's a lot happening but it doesn't really move forward enough there's more steps that you can take there's a um like a cable or like a ribbon cable that you can pull to release the seat and let it go even further forward but then you still have to unfold the third row if it was you know stowed to get back then you have to do that first so at that point you're around the back of the vehicle and there's some extra buttons back there but they don't control the third row right they control the second one yeah that's right so you're trying to figure out how to raise the third row and then you realize that you're not maybe tall enough and have a long enough reach to do it from the back so you have to go back around middle row and kind of lean back there and fold everything up and then you're dealing with the head rest is a separate folding option then you got to climb back there um and I can just imagine I don't have kids but I can imagine if you had some kids and you're in a parking lot trying to keep track of the kids and probably the reason you would be messing with the third record in the first place and I just imagine kids running all over the parking lot you know horns going off and and hopefully you have the same number of kids at the end when it started um and then when you put it all back like together to sit you then still have to readjust that second row with the seat controls on the door the door yeah you're going like four different places to make this happen and it's a lengthy ordeal basically and they could do better I think not having a just a straight eleven thousand dollars well just a string you know just like you know Toyota has something where it's a velcro strap and you just pull it up I mean at least something to help you reach correct I look this is not a GLS in size the GLS you could fit an adult in the back and still have room for their luggage so yeah this is this is a compromise it's tight back there um so once you're done doing all that yes maybe you get back there right um I mean most of these midsize or even larger this thing is pretty large um SUVs these third rows are tight but this thing it was kind of disappointing Honestly by the time you climbed back there the seat's so low and it's really narrow um I'm gonna be really nerdy here for a second but like a lot of these EVS because aerodynamics are still important there's something called tumble home right where it's the curvature of the way the you know from the sides of the vehicle the greenhouse comes in right so they're trying to make them so aerodynamic that when you look at the car from the top view it starts to get teardrop shaped right and starts to come in and pinch towards the back which you know most cars have that to some degree but if you look at like Rix a BMW IX from the top or this thing it's like pretty dramatic right so that just makes the third row even tighter than it would be in a GLS or something for anyone Beyond a kid yeah yeah absolutely you're like you know sitting like this in there so and then at the same time you don't have really any cargo room so yeah with the third row with the third row yeah so I mean this is a okay it's fine for carpooling kids I mean I think taking my daughter and her lacrosse teammates around you know they can throw the sticks in the back or they can cut you know but you're not taking seven or six people on vacation with this I don't think so at all no there'll be no room for your stuff yeah that's what you're doing a rooftop rack which is killing the whole point of it so right you'll get 100 miles of range um let's get to uh Evie eviness of it yeah you're getting all-wheel drive but what about range of course it's winter here even we don't have midwest winter snow but it's cold it is yes what have you seen as far as that highway speeds Etc um you know of course like most EVS you wish there was a little bit more range um but I think they're making up with some of that on the charging speed so if you do have to charge you know you can get that range back quickly and get on with your day but um on the highway it is a bigger vehicle it's heavy vehicle it's taller if you're doing 55 60 which let's face it most traffic in most places don't do that unless you're in a traffic jam and the faster you go the worse it gets if you're keeping up with the traffic speed on the highway whatever it is they're going um it starts to Tumble pretty quickly you can sometimes see two miles come off it rains for every mile you drive especially when it's cold out um and that's flat not even going over absolutely and even trying just to manage temperature inside the vehicle like driver only using well this one doesn't have the steering wheel heater at least I haven't found it um but he the seat you're not trying to keep the whole big cabin that helps but if you have some people with you you're gonna have to eat the whole cabin yeah and that's just going to affect it you know more and more right um so I mean it has plenty of power doesn't have the power of the sedan the 580 but that's how you get it right yeah right right um that one probably has power buttons for the rear seats by the way yeah maybe at that point at 125 or whatever but it um it has plenty power you know for its size and things like that and it'll pull up a hill like the Hill's not even there basically flattens out any kind of a hill so that's great smooth smooth um you know a little bit of wind noise you know more so in the sedan but it's a bigger vehicle right so I think that's to to be expected it's not traumatizing the level of noise you can still talk on the phone you can still listen to music at a reasonable volume is all happy yeah it's still that's a luxury level interior as far as the you know absolutely yes um Alex we've talked on a couple different cars on on the show and also just at the office about the smart region and so there is a mode you know there are various modes here and you touch a bit about that because it is yeah it's good and bad or okay and bad okay and bad yeah I like that um okay so the what the system is trying to do is it's basically using the radar and camera system mostly radar to detect like vehicles in front of you or road conditions and automatically apply regenerative braking to like slow you down or manage your speed where it works well is when you come up behind a vehicle just in regular driving you're going a couple miles an hour faster it'll automatically kind of bring you down to match the speed you know you don't have cruise control set yeah you just have this mode turned on and it will do this uh where I found it to be less good or bad in fact was on like curvy roads or when you're approaching an intersection even it'll automatically start breaking and my problem with that is I'm already going for the brakes in most of these situations right so it like either on my way to the brake pedal it starts breaking and then you end up with kind of this two-stage braking or um you know or you're relying on it and it doesn't apply enough breaks um so it just kind of made for a little bit of a jerky Driving Experience I guess when you kind of want something to be really smooth in this type of vehicle and I found that if a car pulls away and you're doing it oh yeah yes all of a sudden it's back to speed right which I've noticed in other EVS with this type of thing not just the Mercedes but that's definitely yep a thing I think in the BMW we saw it as well yeah so it all of a sudden you're kind of wearing back yeah um I I also find we have a Road Route 2 here for the Connecticut people um but has a very kind of tight s and a lot of the cars like to all of a sudden notice the the whatever whether it's the the uh mapping whether it's cars around or whatever it is it they really begin to like Haul on the region yeah and slow you dramatically which I I find is worrisome for people behind yeah right I mean yes it's giving the brake lights but still it's maybe unexpected it's maybe not how you're driving and then all of a sudden it's doing that that you know separate from people who are using Hills and such to regen every opportunity right right um I'm gonna throw this on the table the interior screens so we have all the screens we have lights on the side they they change the lights change when you raise the temperature lower the temperature it's like a disco club in there it is turning on I mean most so if you're into this type of thing if you're really into ambient lighting and cars which most offer to some degree Mercedes is you know top of the top it's over the top so if you're really into this like get a Mercedes but um it's it is over the top and it's super bright and in This eqs SUV it's even brighter it seems than in the sedan I mean if you turn up the volume or the the volume the the brightness all the way on these things it's like alarming and then I discovered that it's got this mode where not only is it responding to like climate adjustments but it's responding to the speed at which you're driving so like at say 10 miles an hour it's like a slow pulse past your head and then the faster you go it starts getting faster and it just feels like they're maybe skirting around some kind of Regulation by doing that you know you're not supposed to watch TV while you're right which isn't that much different it's like ludicrous mode you know yeah you just sorry it goes to play out of it it was a little silly for sure um we've touched on a ton of stuff I want to I want to throw this out in who is this for okay so a it's got the third row seat is is this the new R class I mean if everyone remembers the R class it was my question 2006 to 13. but I mean we've got the model X yeah we now have just just gotten in a rivian r1s finally so a third three row SUV tell me tell me if it's the R class I think our class is a good a good sort of you know pass model to relate this to okay um I definitely think they're trying to build it as like the S-Class SUV but it's not really an S-Class if you sit in a current generation S-Class it is a very nice place to be really well thought out it's very sort of traditional car inside of there yeah um I remember when the R class first came out the middle row with the captain's shares was a great place to like a road trip you want someone else to drive I want to sit back here and you know I can have a heat AC whatever and it's a nice place to be I sort of wish this middle row had captain seats it might make a little more comfortable might make access to the third row easier you could like use the center aisle to get back there um so I think our class is very appropriate it is sort of uh almost like a minivan with Trinity additional doors um it's very much still a family vehicle absolutely spacious other than maybe the third row but in general it's quite spacious it's just the family that wants the latest and greatest and is ready for an Eevee or maybe already has an EV right right um but yeah I think uh I did want to touch on quickly anyway and this kind of leads into it what you don't get for a hundred and eleven thousand dollars definitely um and some of it is from an EV perspective specifically um even though it's Mercedes latest and greatest EV it's not that efficient compared to some of the others I mean of course compared to the sedan it's less efficient because it's bigger heavier and less aerodynamic but um so if you're just using EPA numbers it's uh getting 2.3 miles per kilowatt hour which is kind of an equivalent equivalent way to think about EVS in terms of like miles per gallon right how far can I go per unit of energy in the battery um the sedan is 2.8 which is kind of it's okay but it's better of course but it's average to put it in perspective the BMW IX which is pretty similar to This eqs SUV is 2.6 and Lucid air and Model S if you trust their numbers are at 3.6 so way more efficient um so that's one thing but then we touched on the um the fit and finish I think oh yes yes fit and finish and there's no heated steering wheel I think you know with a vehicle like this to try to keep their margins like in the realm of Sanity like they've got to cut some stuff out because batteries and motors and stuff is still so expensive sure that big plastic sheet on the dash is pretty cheap looking and if you start poking around and things aren't S-Class level right correct and that stands out especially since we also have an eqe we got in and it's just a slightly nicer non-hyper screen Dash slightly not not great but it's also 20 30 grand less right right yeah it that's it's like it's like that sound I mean it's awful it really is it's a surprise the sun visors they feel like they're made out of um like milk containers you know the headliner feels nice a lot of things feel nice but yeah the first time I reached up to grab that sun visor I was like ooh gross right some of the like secondary gross areas yeah yeah so so I'm getting the hook the uh the gong show is coming for us on this this episode's uh eqs talk so we're gonna have more online it's uh it's just going into test check out consumerreports.org we also have the eqs sedan uh final road test information up there already at this point we're going to uh be going to the questions but the only way we get to answer questions if you send them to us so send us your 30 second video clips send us text questions talking cars at icloud.com um if you include a little meme for Dave you might get pushed to the top of the list that's the trick that's the trick a little little gift for Dave um anyway today's question comes from Doug from Muskego Wisconsin Doug asks I have noticed that most manufacturers seem to be listing their connected Vehicles as requiring a 4G connection this shows up on their window stickers as well as on some Brands 2023 Lexus NX and RX for example given that we just went through decommissioning the 3G system which seems to make anything requiring 3G obsolete what are your thoughts on how today's generation of connected Vehicles will operate when the inevitable shutdown of 4G happens good question I mean yeah very very relevant we uh we did what we Alex Alex was part of a big story on consumerports.org about that so look it up Alex is going to talk about that in a second um for for the quick answer is it's not going to happen soon I spoke with one of our Tech writers Melanie Panola which he told me is that 4G is expected to be available until at least 20 30 even longer because carriers are building 5G on top of 4G LTE and they can share the same Spectrum called Dynamic Spectrum sharing 5G really is not replacing 4G the way 4G did for 3G um but it's important for you as the consumer pay attention to what the automakers are doing you know when you hear Rumblings about it and start thinking about the vehicle you have look to see if they are offering upgrades look to see if if it's a pay upgrade or if it's a free one because you pay for their services that's the big thing the connected Services if you for example had a Subaru and you were part of their had their connected Services they were going to give you the upgrade to the 4G system for free if you didn't you would have had to pay money right right um but Alex go and go a little more deep deeper into that because you worked with Keith Barry on yeah so talking more about like the 3G issue that came about but it is nice to see that at least for now 4G and 5G will be intact hopefully for a little while so we won't have to worry but of course nothing lasts forever So eventually they will go away and you'll presumably be in a similar position we were to last year when 3G networks shut down so Verizon and at D they shut off their 3G Towers at different times throughout the year um so cars that were relying on the 3G technology you know depending on which car you had some people were just out of luck entirely um the automaker had no solution and if you were paying for these things you know by this date that's it it's over so what did the 3G and now 4G service connection service get used for yeah so a lot of these were earlier systems with these kind of connected Services um some of them you know remote starting from an app on your phone is a big one or controlling various functions of the car what we're concerned about at Consumer Reports is more about the safety stuff so um something called ACN or aacn which is automatic crash notification you're getting into an accident and the airbag deploys if you have the system set up and unfortunately if you're paying the bill doesn't work if you're not um it'll automatically call emergency services so like a non-star General Motors have something similar um so that's the big one um so when you know the 3G Tower was shut down and automakers that had no solution customers who were paying for that and getting that benefit you know could no longer access that so but other automakers had something some were a free software upgrade that was done over the air which was nice to see others like you mentioned Subaru you could bring your car in and kind of get like a retrofit um so point is is that automakers were all over the map there's no regulation to say that they have to support these kind of Legacy systems as technology changes so um just extrapolating into the future will probably be in a similar position maybe around 2030 when uh you know 5G goes away or 4G so some Mitsubishi I believe Bentley maybe another they they relied on your phone they didn't have yeah it was the biggest one that does that as well um but Pro Con on that one I mean like automakers may not like that in a sense the green yeah correct I mean they are a business and they need to make some money um they want to keep their lights on so they put these Services together the software and the vehicle because they want you to use their stuff they want you to subscribe to their services and it's a Profit Stream for them it's all great that we can use you know Android auto or car play but you know that's why they still have their own native nav system and all their own stuff they would like us to use their things Mercedes would like us to have the Mercedes me account and use all that stuff and then you can choose yes I want to upgrade my car with whatever option is right there on the screen you know so again it's a profit Center um but the phones you know we all basically have the phones we probably get phones you know new phones sooner than we get cars so you get new phones that technology progresses you want to connect that phone um it would be nice if your phone just was sort of the end-all be-all you use that you know whatever it is the cell tower the satellite however your phone is communicating um that way when your phone updates it's like almost like the car's connection has been updated yeah so I think you know like you said um you know Bentley and Mitsubishi two brands that are sort of on different ends never saying them in the same sense that's right that's the way they chose to do it for whatever reason where others tend to you know no we're sticking with our Hardware our software and this is the way it is and it's not all cynical I will say like even though they are profiting from that there is a benefit to having these kind of built-in embedded systems is that your phone internet talking about Crash notifications specifically in an accident your phone could go flying you never brought your phone in the car if it wasn't charged it never set it up whatever yeah right the embedded modem is protected by the structure of the car it's powered by the car so like a much more serious thing would likely have to happen for that to not function compare to your phone there's there's more responsibility of you to set it up and bring your phone and all that stuff absolutely just having it turn on with the car well in having the this the crash notification if it was in a nominal fee is great it's the oh it's a it's a hot spot yeah 35 a month so you can stream like totally okay not not the necessary it'll be it's great if it's separate and it's great if it's a nominal fee so that you could at least you know and have that upgraded yeah um a lot going on check our story online if you uh search on 3G wireless network shutdown uh at consumerreports.org you'll find that story and a lot more information so that'll do it for this episode of course make sure you send us uh your questions in your short 30 second video clips talking cars at icloud.com uh this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by Andrew Balise and Anatoly shimsky and thanks for watching and we'll see you next time now foreign foreignforeign and this week we're talking about an EV a a big a big boy Evie uh it's it's the EV equivalent of the GLS SUV the S-Class of SUVs and Mercedes-Benz massive lineup I mean it's they make a lot of cars they make a lot of vehicles and they have a lot of trims and but but we'll we'll put that aside it's the eqs SUV um it's a high-end model like the eqs sedan which we have already tested right and uh it's current this is the current Flagship for the Mercedes-Benz EV effort which is eqs but of course that's going away they've decided they're not going to call eqs I think they're going to change it to something else as they mainstream EVS so anyway we bought a eqs 450 4matic it has 355 horsepower from dual electric motors with 265 kilowatts of output a 9.6 kilowatt onboard chain uh charger excuse me not changer Mercedes he says it takes 12 and a half hours to fully charge from empty on a home 240 volt charger though as we know most people are charging from zero and 31 minutes on DC fast charger if you go from 10 to 80 which is more likely if you're taking a trip right uh it's available two or three rows and we chose the optional third row so this hundred and seven thousand four hundred dollar 107 400 450 4matic uh also has 21 inch wheels on ours and the third row seat plus delivery totals at 111 580 I know that that is like we talked about some other cars not what a lot of people are buying it is for us the way of testing testing new technology right exactly testing long-range technology testing a long-range EV distance testing to to set the market so yes the latest and greatest from Mercedes oh 100 it's it's not indicative of what most people are buying but we do have to test some of the outliers so that we could then have a baseline for the more mainstream right and it trickles down to their more mainstream exactly eventually we'll have eventually anyway an eqc or in a QA right or whatever they call it at that point right right but the interesting thing we were pitching this the story was gonna you know the show was going to go this way and that but Mike who was so into doing this vehicle that he camped on Dave's front steps and said I have to be on this show has now flip-flopped on how he feels yeah like tell us about your your love hate love I immediately hated it from when it first pulled in the shop um for a variety of reasons but the big one was the second and third row functionality that was kind of the first thing I went to because this one has that third row right and we specifically wanted the third row to test that out and it was tough to find first third row EV since the model X that we've absolutely yeah so I was like let me check this out first and the folding situation there you have to use levers and buttons and different sets of buttons it's terrible and it takes forever so I immediately hated it I saw Dave and said I want to talk about this thing on the podcast and I love Mercedes-Benz um I was a Mercedes-Benz Tech and I've owned several of them I still own one so I'm passionate about them and I'm a little disappointed because they have done better in the past and I think they can do better but there are some good things about this vehicle okay it's similar to the sedan yeah the sedan's not bad but it's an argument it's classy let us down in terms of especially that rear seat of this day right if you're like expecting a limousine essentially and it's not just not no yeah um one nice thing about this SUV is the extra Headroom that you get um I drove this the SUV I went back in the sedan back to back just to kind of get a refresher and it feels really cramped yes in the SUV you have plenty of Headroom you're just more comfortable in the seat better seating position and you sit a little higher so I think you have better lines of sight and traffic sure yeah with big vehicles out on the road the driving position and visibility in the sedan are like notably bad I mean the sedan we have has the optional hyper screen which means you get this one giant piece of glass and it raises the top edge of the dash and then it's already low because it's the sedan and the pillars are way out there and they're really wide and the air like it's overly Arrow yeah so if you're looking through this little thing and the steering wheel's in a weird position so I think you're right like it's still not maybe amazing as far as the driving position and visibility but it is definitely better than the the sedan absolutely it fixes some of those really big issues that I had with the sedan and um ours has a few less options the SUV than the sedan the smaller screen some would say it's worse some would say it's better yeah I think we're all on the better front on that one um so it's cheesier to dash yeah we'll get there yeah but um I've driven it a bunch um I did a couple hundred miles in it one day I drove it again last night and it's grown on me a little bit um It's relatively quiet it's not as quiet as the sedan going down the road to get more wind noise but probably because it's taller yeah Reverb in the cabin absolutely um you'll get the smaller screen is easier to use I think for the most part and um I just enjoyed it last night it just I used it as a vehicle and um I turned off all the lights inside that helps at night we'll get to that we'll get to that too but um I use it as a vehicle it did everything I asked for and um but softened slightly okay slightly but to your initial point last night did you have to put anybody in the third row or even the second row did you I did you mad at anybody did you no I threw my bag in my jacket in the second row and drove it home right so yeah from the driving position and the as just the driver if you ignore everything else it was pretty good that's a big expensive vehicle for a single single yes it is but that's what most mini cars are okay all right right so so we've all spent time at Alex yeah um give us some information on the technology of this I mean it's it's air suspension standard rear wheels steering active Safety Systems yeah you're getting what do we get you're getting the latest from from Mercedes-Benz this is really just like the eqs sedan basically showcase right um so in terms of the EV technology you're getting the their latest and greatest batteries and Motors so 108 kilowatt hour battery which is pretty large by even today's standards um that's the usable capacity um all-wheel drive dual motor like you said and that onboard charger the 9.6 kilowatt um charger is I'd say it's like kind of average um it would be nice to see a bigger one because the battery is so big because what that really means is you're not so concerned about charging it overnight overnight is you know enough time whatever but if you you know have a shorter time at home where you want to charge it um it's adding about you know this is a calculated number but 22 miles of range per hour of charge right so if it was regardless of battery size if it were a little bit bigger of a charger you'd get more miles um and then the the 200 kilowatt DC charging though that's that's pretty decent that's above average so that's good um latest chassis technology at least in terms of a comfort oriented Mercedes right it's not a Handler but right um you're getting the air suspension the Adaptive dampers my favorite is the rear steering I mean that shrinks the car down it's kind of amazing it's really nice a rear steer it's huge like um small traffic circle you know um rotaries and stuff like that really it it tucks itself in it does um now it kind of gets a little weird because this is a big heavy really heavy SUV so you can't really get around that so it does kind of have this nice turn in response in these things um in the rear steer kind of makes it feel Nimble but because it's so big and soft like it kind of flops over on itself and like it just the the responsiveness of the steering doesn't quite match how big and heavy and soft the rest of the vehicle is in my opinion like it's good supplement and all these things but like when you start to push it especially compared to the sedan totally it's just a smaller foot that one lower yeah more Nimble exactly yep you have to add to that I might have overcooked a an intro change this morning a little bit got into a little bit it turns in pretty well and it was like a little porpoise action happening kind of mid corner like yeah exactly and it um you know that sort of then alerted me the fact that was probably going maybe a little quicker Through The Interchange than I should have or would have in such a a big heavy vehicle yeah yeah it kind of is a little misleading yeah in that way with the amount of response you get right away can you give us give us a little bit we talked about the hyper screen yeah yeah what's the what's the difference I mean in the sense of yes it's better I think we all agree like you said we all agree it's it's better just have the single screen with addition but you're not really utilizing that as the driver anyway the hyper screen but yeah it does pick up the car I mean it is a presence it's a massive presence and it's overwhelming so the reason I like the smaller screen and I think you guys would agree is you're getting 90 of the same functionality right you lose the passenger screen um so that's the thing if you really want that for whatever reason then okay you got to get the hyper screen but um not only does it fix the driving position a little bit because this by separating the screens the the gauge display is now lower um so you're not kind of contending with that and it's also at a different angle because they want to put the hyper screen under one thing of glass like there's kind of compromises with the angle of it relative to where you're sitting um that's fixed when you separate the two screens right um and then the hyper screen is so wide in our eqs that part of it's blocked by the steering wheel and there's just it's too much going on honestly so to get almost all the same functionality but to fix some of those issues I think it's kind of a no-brainer it's also less expensive to do it that way it certainly is less expensive I mean the the functionality of the of the current system and Mbox system is wonky it's it definitely takes time to to learn the only thing that that I don't you know and Mike if you want to step you know the fact that we have had so many Mercedes-Benz has come through recently just because of their EVS or because of the redesigns of the C-Class and stuff like that um getting more comfortable with it but there's still weird functionality and angles I find at least with the steering wheel oh yeah totally yeah the cerebral controls are not great yeah um I don't mind the little swipe for volume I've sort of got the hang of that but the rest of them I'm not so good at well it's all touch sensitive so instead of a real or anything yeah you just kind of slide your finger on like a little paddle right right right and um it does take some like fine dexterity to make that happen for small adjustments oh yeah and I've gotten pretty good at the volume but everything else not so much yeah the first thing you'll notice there's no like back forward and back or next track buttons right they want you to use this little d-pad and you have to select those buttons on the center screen with no way yeah no way is that happening no well even in the gauge cluster so you could do so maybe you've got ways going on maybe you've got the native system for maps so you want to go through and the gauge cluster and change that because it works it's it's you know the four-way button okay as you try to swipe you actually changed it so now instead of going horizontally on the station and moving it over a track you've actually gone down into the driver alerts function for example and all of a sudden the green ball shows up with your efficiency or something so it's so now you're focusing on making sure that you do this and you're less on the road yeah not only have you not done what you want but you're distracted by trying to figure out what you've done but I've done wrong exactly exactly yeah yeah um touch on the third row C I'll throw this open to either one of you sure you're very passionate yeah it was just terrible um you open up that done done episode that's it you open up the door and second road the second Road door correct and you have to obviously go in that way to get the third row so you need to fold that seat forward to move it forward and there's a button on the backrest that you just sort of click and the driver's seat and that middle row seat both move forward simultaneously so there's a lot happening but it doesn't really move forward enough there's more steps that you can take there's a um like a cable or like a ribbon cable that you can pull to release the seat and let it go even further forward but then you still have to unfold the third row if it was you know stowed to get back then you have to do that first so at that point you're around the back of the vehicle and there's some extra buttons back there but they don't control the third row right they control the second one yeah that's right so you're trying to figure out how to raise the third row and then you realize that you're not maybe tall enough and have a long enough reach to do it from the back so you have to go back around middle row and kind of lean back there and fold everything up and then you're dealing with the head rest is a separate folding option then you got to climb back there um and I can just imagine I don't have kids but I can imagine if you had some kids and you're in a parking lot trying to keep track of the kids and probably the reason you would be messing with the third record in the first place and I just imagine kids running all over the parking lot you know horns going off and and hopefully you have the same number of kids at the end when it started um and then when you put it all back like together to sit you then still have to readjust that second row with the seat controls on the door the door yeah you're going like four different places to make this happen and it's a lengthy ordeal basically and they could do better I think not having a just a straight eleven thousand dollars well just a string you know just like you know Toyota has something where it's a velcro strap and you just pull it up I mean at least something to help you reach correct I look this is not a GLS in size the GLS you could fit an adult in the back and still have room for their luggage so yeah this is this is a compromise it's tight back there um so once you're done doing all that yes maybe you get back there right um I mean most of these midsize or even larger this thing is pretty large um SUVs these third rows are tight but this thing it was kind of disappointing Honestly by the time you climbed back there the seat's so low and it's really narrow um I'm gonna be really nerdy here for a second but like a lot of these EVS because aerodynamics are still important there's something called tumble home right where it's the curvature of the way the you know from the sides of the vehicle the greenhouse comes in right so they're trying to make them so aerodynamic that when you look at the car from the top view it starts to get teardrop shaped right and starts to come in and pinch towards the back which you know most cars have that to some degree but if you look at like Rix a BMW IX from the top or this thing it's like pretty dramatic right so that just makes the third row even tighter than it would be in a GLS or something for anyone Beyond a kid yeah yeah absolutely you're like you know sitting like this in there so and then at the same time you don't have really any cargo room so yeah with the third row with the third row yeah so I mean this is a okay it's fine for carpooling kids I mean I think taking my daughter and her lacrosse teammates around you know they can throw the sticks in the back or they can cut you know but you're not taking seven or six people on vacation with this I don't think so at all no there'll be no room for your stuff yeah that's what you're doing a rooftop rack which is killing the whole point of it so right you'll get 100 miles of range um let's get to uh Evie eviness of it yeah you're getting all-wheel drive but what about range of course it's winter here even we don't have midwest winter snow but it's cold it is yes what have you seen as far as that highway speeds Etc um you know of course like most EVS you wish there was a little bit more range um but I think they're making up with some of that on the charging speed so if you do have to charge you know you can get that range back quickly and get on with your day but um on the highway it is a bigger vehicle it's heavy vehicle it's taller if you're doing 55 60 which let's face it most traffic in most places don't do that unless you're in a traffic jam and the faster you go the worse it gets if you're keeping up with the traffic speed on the highway whatever it is they're going um it starts to Tumble pretty quickly you can sometimes see two miles come off it rains for every mile you drive especially when it's cold out um and that's flat not even going over absolutely and even trying just to manage temperature inside the vehicle like driver only using well this one doesn't have the steering wheel heater at least I haven't found it um but he the seat you're not trying to keep the whole big cabin that helps but if you have some people with you you're gonna have to eat the whole cabin yeah and that's just going to affect it you know more and more right um so I mean it has plenty of power doesn't have the power of the sedan the 580 but that's how you get it right yeah right right um that one probably has power buttons for the rear seats by the way yeah maybe at that point at 125 or whatever but it um it has plenty power you know for its size and things like that and it'll pull up a hill like the Hill's not even there basically flattens out any kind of a hill so that's great smooth smooth um you know a little bit of wind noise you know more so in the sedan but it's a bigger vehicle right so I think that's to to be expected it's not traumatizing the level of noise you can still talk on the phone you can still listen to music at a reasonable volume is all happy yeah it's still that's a luxury level interior as far as the you know absolutely yes um Alex we've talked on a couple different cars on on the show and also just at the office about the smart region and so there is a mode you know there are various modes here and you touch a bit about that because it is yeah it's good and bad or okay and bad okay and bad yeah I like that um okay so the what the system is trying to do is it's basically using the radar and camera system mostly radar to detect like vehicles in front of you or road conditions and automatically apply regenerative braking to like slow you down or manage your speed where it works well is when you come up behind a vehicle just in regular driving you're going a couple miles an hour faster it'll automatically kind of bring you down to match the speed you know you don't have cruise control set yeah you just have this mode turned on and it will do this uh where I found it to be less good or bad in fact was on like curvy roads or when you're approaching an intersection even it'll automatically start breaking and my problem with that is I'm already going for the brakes in most of these situations right so it like either on my way to the brake pedal it starts breaking and then you end up with kind of this two-stage braking or um you know or you're relying on it and it doesn't apply enough breaks um so it just kind of made for a little bit of a jerky Driving Experience I guess when you kind of want something to be really smooth in this type of vehicle and I found that if a car pulls away and you're doing it oh yeah yes all of a sudden it's back to speed right which I've noticed in other EVS with this type of thing not just the Mercedes but that's definitely yep a thing I think in the BMW we saw it as well yeah so it all of a sudden you're kind of wearing back yeah um I I also find we have a Road Route 2 here for the Connecticut people um but has a very kind of tight s and a lot of the cars like to all of a sudden notice the the whatever whether it's the the uh mapping whether it's cars around or whatever it is it they really begin to like Haul on the region yeah and slow you dramatically which I I find is worrisome for people behind yeah right I mean yes it's giving the brake lights but still it's maybe unexpected it's maybe not how you're driving and then all of a sudden it's doing that that you know separate from people who are using Hills and such to regen every opportunity right right um I'm gonna throw this on the table the interior screens so we have all the screens we have lights on the side they they change the lights change when you raise the temperature lower the temperature it's like a disco club in there it is turning on I mean most so if you're into this type of thing if you're really into ambient lighting and cars which most offer to some degree Mercedes is you know top of the top it's over the top so if you're really into this like get a Mercedes but um it's it is over the top and it's super bright and in This eqs SUV it's even brighter it seems than in the sedan I mean if you turn up the volume or the the volume the the brightness all the way on these things it's like alarming and then I discovered that it's got this mode where not only is it responding to like climate adjustments but it's responding to the speed at which you're driving so like at say 10 miles an hour it's like a slow pulse past your head and then the faster you go it starts getting faster and it just feels like they're maybe skirting around some kind of Regulation by doing that you know you're not supposed to watch TV while you're right which isn't that much different it's like ludicrous mode you know yeah you just sorry it goes to play out of it it was a little silly for sure um we've touched on a ton of stuff I want to I want to throw this out in who is this for okay so a it's got the third row seat is is this the new R class I mean if everyone remembers the R class it was my question 2006 to 13. but I mean we've got the model X yeah we now have just just gotten in a rivian r1s finally so a third three row SUV tell me tell me if it's the R class I think our class is a good a good sort of you know pass model to relate this to okay um I definitely think they're trying to build it as like the S-Class SUV but it's not really an S-Class if you sit in a current generation S-Class it is a very nice place to be really well thought out it's very sort of traditional car inside of there yeah um I remember when the R class first came out the middle row with the captain's shares was a great place to like a road trip you want someone else to drive I want to sit back here and you know I can have a heat AC whatever and it's a nice place to be I sort of wish this middle row had captain seats it might make a little more comfortable might make access to the third row easier you could like use the center aisle to get back there um so I think our class is very appropriate it is sort of uh almost like a minivan with Trinity additional doors um it's very much still a family vehicle absolutely spacious other than maybe the third row but in general it's quite spacious it's just the family that wants the latest and greatest and is ready for an Eevee or maybe already has an EV right right um but yeah I think uh I did want to touch on quickly anyway and this kind of leads into it what you don't get for a hundred and eleven thousand dollars definitely um and some of it is from an EV perspective specifically um even though it's Mercedes latest and greatest EV it's not that efficient compared to some of the others I mean of course compared to the sedan it's less efficient because it's bigger heavier and less aerodynamic but um so if you're just using EPA numbers it's uh getting 2.3 miles per kilowatt hour which is kind of an equivalent equivalent way to think about EVS in terms of like miles per gallon right how far can I go per unit of energy in the battery um the sedan is 2.8 which is kind of it's okay but it's better of course but it's average to put it in perspective the BMW IX which is pretty similar to This eqs SUV is 2.6 and Lucid air and Model S if you trust their numbers are at 3.6 so way more efficient um so that's one thing but then we touched on the um the fit and finish I think oh yes yes fit and finish and there's no heated steering wheel I think you know with a vehicle like this to try to keep their margins like in the realm of Sanity like they've got to cut some stuff out because batteries and motors and stuff is still so expensive sure that big plastic sheet on the dash is pretty cheap looking and if you start poking around and things aren't S-Class level right correct and that stands out especially since we also have an eqe we got in and it's just a slightly nicer non-hyper screen Dash slightly not not great but it's also 20 30 grand less right right yeah it that's it's like it's like that sound I mean it's awful it really is it's a surprise the sun visors they feel like they're made out of um like milk containers you know the headliner feels nice a lot of things feel nice but yeah the first time I reached up to grab that sun visor I was like ooh gross right some of the like secondary gross areas yeah yeah so so I'm getting the hook the uh the gong show is coming for us on this this episode's uh eqs talk so we're gonna have more online it's uh it's just going into test check out consumerreports.org we also have the eqs sedan uh final road test information up there already at this point we're going to uh be going to the questions but the only way we get to answer questions if you send them to us so send us your 30 second video clips send us text questions talking cars at icloud.com um if you include a little meme for Dave you might get pushed to the top of the list that's the trick that's the trick a little little gift for Dave um anyway today's question comes from Doug from Muskego Wisconsin Doug asks I have noticed that most manufacturers seem to be listing their connected Vehicles as requiring a 4G connection this shows up on their window stickers as well as on some Brands 2023 Lexus NX and RX for example given that we just went through decommissioning the 3G system which seems to make anything requiring 3G obsolete what are your thoughts on how today's generation of connected Vehicles will operate when the inevitable shutdown of 4G happens good question I mean yeah very very relevant we uh we did what we Alex Alex was part of a big story on consumerports.org about that so look it up Alex is going to talk about that in a second um for for the quick answer is it's not going to happen soon I spoke with one of our Tech writers Melanie Panola which he told me is that 4G is expected to be available until at least 20 30 even longer because carriers are building 5G on top of 4G LTE and they can share the same Spectrum called Dynamic Spectrum sharing 5G really is not replacing 4G the way 4G did for 3G um but it's important for you as the consumer pay attention to what the automakers are doing you know when you hear Rumblings about it and start thinking about the vehicle you have look to see if they are offering upgrades look to see if if it's a pay upgrade or if it's a free one because you pay for their services that's the big thing the connected Services if you for example had a Subaru and you were part of their had their connected Services they were going to give you the upgrade to the 4G system for free if you didn't you would have had to pay money right right um but Alex go and go a little more deep deeper into that because you worked with Keith Barry on yeah so talking more about like the 3G issue that came about but it is nice to see that at least for now 4G and 5G will be intact hopefully for a little while so we won't have to worry but of course nothing lasts forever So eventually they will go away and you'll presumably be in a similar position we were to last year when 3G networks shut down so Verizon and at D they shut off their 3G Towers at different times throughout the year um so cars that were relying on the 3G technology you know depending on which car you had some people were just out of luck entirely um the automaker had no solution and if you were paying for these things you know by this date that's it it's over so what did the 3G and now 4G service connection service get used for yeah so a lot of these were earlier systems with these kind of connected Services um some of them you know remote starting from an app on your phone is a big one or controlling various functions of the car what we're concerned about at Consumer Reports is more about the safety stuff so um something called ACN or aacn which is automatic crash notification you're getting into an accident and the airbag deploys if you have the system set up and unfortunately if you're paying the bill doesn't work if you're not um it'll automatically call emergency services so like a non-star General Motors have something similar um so that's the big one um so when you know the 3G Tower was shut down and automakers that had no solution customers who were paying for that and getting that benefit you know could no longer access that so but other automakers had something some were a free software upgrade that was done over the air which was nice to see others like you mentioned Subaru you could bring your car in and kind of get like a retrofit um so point is is that automakers were all over the map there's no regulation to say that they have to support these kind of Legacy systems as technology changes so um just extrapolating into the future will probably be in a similar position maybe around 2030 when uh you know 5G goes away or 4G so some Mitsubishi I believe Bentley maybe another they they relied on your phone they didn't have yeah it was the biggest one that does that as well um but Pro Con on that one I mean like automakers may not like that in a sense the green yeah correct I mean they are a business and they need to make some money um they want to keep their lights on so they put these Services together the software and the vehicle because they want you to use their stuff they want you to subscribe to their services and it's a Profit Stream for them it's all great that we can use you know Android auto or car play but you know that's why they still have their own native nav system and all their own stuff they would like us to use their things Mercedes would like us to have the Mercedes me account and use all that stuff and then you can choose yes I want to upgrade my car with whatever option is right there on the screen you know so again it's a profit Center um but the phones you know we all basically have the phones we probably get phones you know new phones sooner than we get cars so you get new phones that technology progresses you want to connect that phone um it would be nice if your phone just was sort of the end-all be-all you use that you know whatever it is the cell tower the satellite however your phone is communicating um that way when your phone updates it's like almost like the car's connection has been updated yeah so I think you know like you said um you know Bentley and Mitsubishi two brands that are sort of on different ends never saying them in the same sense that's right that's the way they chose to do it for whatever reason where others tend to you know no we're sticking with our Hardware our software and this is the way it is and it's not all cynical I will say like even though they are profiting from that there is a benefit to having these kind of built-in embedded systems is that your phone internet talking about Crash notifications specifically in an accident your phone could go flying you never brought your phone in the car if it wasn't charged it never set it up whatever yeah right the embedded modem is protected by the structure of the car it's powered by the car so like a much more serious thing would likely have to happen for that to not function compare to your phone there's there's more responsibility of you to set it up and bring your phone and all that stuff absolutely just having it turn on with the car well in having the this the crash notification if it was in a nominal fee is great it's the oh it's a it's a hot spot yeah 35 a month so you can stream like totally okay not not the necessary it'll be it's great if it's separate and it's great if it's a nominal fee so that you could at least you know and have that upgraded yeah um a lot going on check our story online if you uh search on 3G wireless network shutdown uh at consumerreports.org you'll find that story and a lot more information so that'll do it for this episode of course make sure you send us uh your questions in your short 30 second video clips talking cars at icloud.com uh this episode was produced by Dave Abrams and edited by Andrew Balise and Anatoly shimsky and thanks for watching and we'll see you next time now foreign foreign\n"