Show Notes for Overland News Podcast #166
Summary:
Scott Brady and Brian McVickers launch a new series called Overland News, where we feature the latest from the overlanding industry, including new vehicles, camping equipment, travel gear and more. In 2007, Overland Journal launched the Overland News section of the magazine, and we are picking up the nameplate for the podcast, making this feature a quarterly (or slightly more frequent) segment. For this episode, we talk about the new Land Cruiser and GX 250, along with the ZR2 Bison lineup, and the new Ram Rebel 2500. Additional conversation includes Scott’s dumb phone, and the reMarkable II, along with new satellite communications, REDARC batteries, Garmin devices, and roof tents.
Overland News Host Bios:
BRIAN MCVICKERS
Chief Business Development Officer
A Chicago native, Brian has lived throughout the United States and Caribbean while traveling as much as possible. An accomplished racing and ocean sailor Brian is equally comfortable traversing large expanses of remote land in search of adventure. He has spent the last 17 years involved in the outdoor industry with magazines, newspapers, web, television, and ad agencies. You can follow Brian’s adventures on IG @mcvickers or directly on email Brian McVickers
SCOTT BRADY
Publisher and Chairman
Scott is an adventure driver and consultant who has worked on various specialty-vehicle projects for auto manufacturers, aftermarket companies, and television producers such as Top Gear. He is a passionate photographer and writer with international credits, the only American to have won the esteemed Outback Challenge, Morocco, and a Tread Lightly Master Trainer. Business ventures during the past decade include the Overland Society, Expeditions West, Expedition Portal, and Overland Journal. He has traveled through over 60 countries and across every continent. His most current project, Expeditions 7, is a round-the-world overland odyssey in two 78 Series Toyota Land Cruisers. After reaching the end of the road, he enjoys canyoneering, climbing, and mountain biking. Scott lives in Prescott, Arizona. Keep up with Scott and all of his adventures by following him on X @scott_brady or Instagram @scott.a.brady.
Kuat Bike rack
O3 Outdoors Ozone plug in odor eliminator
Transcript
*unedited*
Scott Brady: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am your host, Scott Brady, and we have a new segment for the podcast. We’re calling it Overland News. And in general, I’m going to be joined by Brian McVickers, who is a longtime friend and someone that I work with here at Overland International. He has a real finger on the pulse of the industry and a lot of the new products that are coming into the market.
So we’re going to discuss new products. These are going to be all high quality components that we’ve tested or that are just released and we want to share them with the audience. And we’re also going to talk a lot about some of the new vehicles. So this is going to be our overland news segment, and it’s all framed under the caveat of we are not recommending people go out and spend a bunch of money on stuff.
However, there are times that Equipment enables our adventure. It allows us to have maybe a little bit more comfort, a little bit more safety, or it allows us to work remotely in the field. So we’re going to talk about new Overland components that are available from the [00:01:00] industry, our experience with them and whatever we’re excited about at the time.
So please enjoy this new segment, Overland News with the Overland Journal podcast. This content is brought to you by Overland Journal, our premium quality print publication. The magazine was founded in 2006 with the goal of providing independent equipment and vehicle reviews, along with the most stunning adventures and photography.
We care deeply about the countries and cultures we visit. And share our experiences freely with our readers. We also have zero advertorial policy and do not accept any advertiser compensation for our reviews. By subscribing to Overland Journal, You’re helping to support our employee owned and veteran owned publication.
Your support also provides resources and funding for content like you are watching or listening to right now. You [00:02:00] can subscribe directly on our website at Overland Journal. All right, Brian, let’s go into the overland news. This is going to be a new segment for us. Thanks for being on because you get to see a lot of this stuff before it’s even available to consumers.
I see a lot firsthand. That’s right. And you’re doing more and more vehicle testing and you’re doing more and more equipment evaluation. So this seems like a great opportunity for us to. At least once a quarter, because there’s so much coming out. There’s so much new information. There’s so many new components, so many new vehicles, gear, all that premise in the fact that you don’t need these things to travel.
Some of them do empower travel and some of these things just can bring joy to your life, but we’re not. Suggesting that people go out and buy all these things, but I’ll explain the ones that have been really important for me in some of my recent travels and some of the things that I’m excited about that help solve problems.
We’re seeing more and more higher quality components come back into the marketplace. And we’re also seeing a lot [00:03:00] more innovation. Now we got into this kind of period of time when people are doing a lot of copycatting and now we’re seeing some refinement. Yeah. Now we’re seeing some quality coming back into the space, some refinement, some more intentionality.
Some bigger companies too, which is resulting in some pretty, pretty interesting stuff. A lot more recognition of that and
we can kind of get started with it is, is Kuat. So Kuat is this super high end bicycle, beautiful bike racks, rack company. And. I had no idea that they made an overland rack for trucks. I take a look at the link and it’s, it’s one of the best looking truck racks that I’ve ever seen. The way that they incorporated this, it’s kind of like this exoskeleton, but it’s all one piece.
So it doesn’t, it doesn’t look like. Legos or an erector set, it looks really refined. So you have this 2023 truck, you have this new, handsome, modern vehicle. It’s a modern looking rack. It’s a [00:04:00] modern, handsome looking rack. Now we have not tested this rack extensively yet. We do have one that’s gonna be showing up any day.
We’re gonna be installing it on one of our project Tundras. But I’m, I’m really excited to see companies like Kuat who makes these. Premium bicycle racks now introducing components specifically for overlanding. So yeah, take a, take a look at that, at that Kuat rack. They’re a good
Brian McVickers: example of what we’re seeing more and more in the overland space.
And so Kuat has made, they’ve always been known for very high quality products. And I think what they’ve done over the last few years is they’ve noticed that their customers. Are overlanding and they’re, they’re kind of, they’re not just riding bikes. They’re into this vehicle based adventure, probably three or four years ago, they decided to go to the overland expo in Colorado and Loveland at the mountain West.
Sure. And that gave them an opportunity to see these consumers firsthand. Yeah. And so they’re getting the [00:05:00] consumers, their customers kind of saying, Hey, here’s how we use Xerac. Here’s what we’d like to see different or changed or here’s what we like. And then they start going to the events and now. We start to see them making a very concerted effort towards this marketplace, towards this audience.
Well, and a
Scott Brady: perfect example of that. I mean, many people who Overland also mountain bike, but the thing that was really interesting to me is how they said how they basically made a surprisingly beautiful. Effective rack, but then they took the things that they’re really, really good at and they integrated it.
So one of the challenges is when you put a, when you put a roof tent on top of your truck, you now don’t have roof space to carry your mountain bikes anymore. Well, and to
Brian McVickers: clarify, we’re talking about their transition from an, a hitch mounted rack. That’s right. To a, a full truck. truck bed rack. Yeah. It’s a truck bed rack that’ll also have mountain bike and rooftop tent at the same time.
Scott Brady: And that was the thing that was interesting about it is you can mount the roof tent to the top, but then there are these super heavy duty brackets that mount to the side, the [00:06:00] side of the rack system and allows you to, to have a roof, a full size roof tent and two mountain bikes mounted to the same platform.
So. Again, we’re seeing this innovation quality. So that’s a, that’s a good example of what we’re talking about. The other one now in full disclosure, Rocky talkie has been a very generous supporter of the podcast. And I’m so grateful for that, but it’s important for us to note that they also make products that we intentionally use because we find them to be the best in class.
We’re grateful when we get the opportunity to work with companies that are helping us through taking care of things like the podcast, but then they also make a product that we’re really proud to talk about. Rocky talkie has made these, these very robust USB C chargeable, long life lithium battery walkie talkies for quite some time.
Then they’re very small. They’re great for climbing and, and think of being on a motorcycle or. Or if you’re just a short distance away from the vehicle, but they just came out with a new one. Yeah. And to
Brian McVickers: [00:07:00] give you an idea of the quality and the robustness of these radios, they were originally designed by and for mountaineers.
Yeah. And it looks like it. Those are like, those are kind of no compromise environments. Yeah. And that’s why they developed these radios.
Scott Brady: And they’re, they’re waterproof, IP67 rated, they they’re drop rated. So like all this stuff that unfortunately happens. When you’re overlanding, like it starts raining when you’re out spotting, or you forget and you leave the radio in the back of the truck and overnight, or it’s sitting on the fender when you’re camping out and it gets soaked with rain.
It can handle that. But what they just came out with a new model and this is a, a five watt unit. So higher output for the range. That’s correct. So up to a 35 mile line of sight range. This does require to go on to the FCC website and you need to register as a GMRS user. Is there a cost with that or it’s just five bucks or something?
I think it’s a very minimal cost or it may now actually be [00:08:00] free, but you do need to go on and register because of the power of the unit. But to get a 35 mile range and now you don’t have to do this complex installation of anything inside your vehicle. So when we were, and we are using the smaller Rocky talkies in Africa, but you know, Joe could be way around the corner when we’re getting ready to do a video shoot or he can even be in the village getting some supplies while I’m working on the vehicle.
And he could be miles away and we’re still able to communicate. And it sounds, The clarity of the communication is really good, but I think the thing that stands out to me about the Rocky talkies is just the quality of the construction. It’s once you get a chance to actually hold one of these things in your hand that you’re like, wow, this is a different level of consumer radio.
And now we have five Watts and there’s also two different antenna. There’s, there’s a shorter antenna for when it’s on your person, maybe the person spotting on the, in the vehicle, you can have this taller antenna. And it also appears. To be [00:09:00] a standard antenna like a standardized antenna screw mount.
So you could actually use a little larger
Brian McVickers: antenna
Scott Brady: even, or maybe even a mag mag mag mount, or you could use this duck on a mag mount. There’s a lot of interesting developments around that. So new five watt Rocky talkie radio, which I think is pretty cool. The other thing
Brian McVickers: is the streamlined design. It doesn’t have any knobs sticking out.
Yeah. So nothing to catch, nothing to catch, nothing to break off. And then. They do have some sort of, I don’t know if it’s encryption or encoding that allows you to kind of have more of a personal channel. Oh,
Scott Brady: interesting. Yeah. That’s right. Between the group. Yeah. Between the, and the places that I’ve been using, Rocky Tiger radios, there’s nobody here.
There’s nobody that has another GMR, GMRs within a thousand miles. If you’re at the ski resort or at an Overland Expo, for example, Overland Expo, whatever that’s what we did. Yeah. That’s what we did at the Overland Expo. As we. Picked one of those private channels, but it’s also like for those that are on YouTube and you can see it, like when you fire these things up, the display [00:10:00] is actually behind this panel.
You can’t even see it. So there’s not a, it’s not a display to break or you can turn the
Brian McVickers: beeping
Scott Brady: off. That’s right. You can’t, it can be totally silent. Pretty cool product. It’s nice to see them continue to be successful and, and to also release new release, new products, new Rocky talkie radio. One of the ones that.
I was most excited about, and it’s also, we love to help support small businesses. And that is this unique componentry modification to the Starlink antenna. Again, for those on YouTube, you can see that this is 1. 9 inches thick. It converts the, the Starlink antenna, their new standard kind of home RV antenna.
Which normally has this, all these motors, and it has a rod that sticks out of it that can’t be removed, and they get very bulky. It removes all of that, and they actually machine off the bottom of the antenna, and then they, They, they [00:11:00] install, so all of the power supply, the router, all these other components, all the wire that you used to have to carry to go between them, it’s all integrated into one unit.
So do they take an
Brian McVickers: original Starlink
Scott Brady: Starlink. And then they disassemble it? They do. They do. And then they create new boards and they, they miniaturize several things. They also convert it to 12 volts. So the the antennas, like when I was traveling with it last year, the antennas were 120 volt. So you have all of that parasitic loss of conversion between the two.
They convert it to 12 volts. They integrate the Wi Fi antenna. It is 1. 9 inches thick now. Removes all the arms. And it can work flat mounted on the vehicle. And what I’m using, I was just using it on the RAM that I’m testing. They have these heavy duty magnetic feet. So I would, I just stuck it on the top of the Ram.
It has a remote control to turn it on and off. [00:12:00] It plugs into the 12 volt of the vehicle, or you can run it off at 120. It also comes with a 120 converter and just one cable to connect it, one single cable. And it’s like a heavy duty connector, weatherproof connector. I was doing 75 miles an hour down I 17.
With broadband internet connection on a
wifi network, broadband performance. I was on a phone call with Joe, who I was in Africa with this morning, just talking about some logistics stuff. And at the end of the, almost the end of the call, I’m like, dude, by the way, this entire phone call on WhatsApp. You couldn’t tell I was driving the Ram down, you know, in Prescott here, down Williamson Valley road at 60 miles an hour on the phone with him.
And you would never know it. It’s just going to keep getting better and better. It’s very rare that I say something is game changing, but Starlink is game changing, start to get smaller. And, and this, this thing is, I can carry it on. I’m going to [00:13:00] carry it on with me to go to Africa. So it’s a really, it’s a really significant new product.
I’m really excited like a laptop.
Brian McVickers: You’re going to have to take it out of your
Scott Brady: bag. No, TSA man, TSA pre check it’s going to raise suspicion. So I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to go ahead and take it out of the bag to begin with. But yeah, you know, it’s, it’s very, very cool. It just is, it allows us to. be in these remote, incredible places and still get work done when we need to.
It just, it enables a form of travel that I prefer because I like to, I love my job. I love what I do, but I also want to be in the middle of Rwanda while I’m doing it. And finally, there’s a way for us to do that. It reduces barriers. It completely does. And it’ll work on the sailboat. It works in motion. It works on, in a boat with sea state.
Now there are new marine versions that are multi antenna and they all, which allows for them to take into consideration the
Brian McVickers: pitch and [00:14:00] roll. So what subscription do you have to have for this to work in all the places? That
Scott Brady: is an important consideration and it is, it is necessary to get the global.
Roaming package. Okay. So it’s global mobile. There’s a domestic mobile version, which is around 150 I think a month. And then there is global roaming, which is 200 a month. And despite the fact that they list few countries that this is available so far, the people that are traveling overland with it. It is working everywhere.
So this is totally even in places it’s not supposed to work. Well, yeah, supposedly, yeah. From what we hear. So you’ve been working with the ionizer. So three, Oh, three,
Brian McVickers: three. So that’s a really probably simple to some degree, but it’s a, they’ve got three or four different versions of it. We
Scott Brady: all deal with stinky campers.
Brian McVickers: It’s stinky campers, stinky rooftop tents. I can’t remember the last time my vehicle hasn’t stunk after. You know, even a three to four [00:15:00] day little trip, I’ve traveled
Scott Brady: with you. I
Brian McVickers: know I got teenagers
Scott Brady: blaming on the kids. I see Brian.
Brian McVickers: These little units basically convert, they produce ozone and ozone will break down bacteria.
And that’s the primary cause of the smells and stinks that you, that you get in the vehicles or in the trailers, whatever it might be. So they’ve got one that’ll plug into a 12 volt outlet. And then they’ve got one that’s rechargeable. They also have this. Cool little duffel bag that you can take your stinky clothes or your stinky equipment and you can put it into this duffel bag, zip it up, throw the puck in there and an hour later you come back.
Everything smells like ozone. So if you’re not familiar with ozone smell, I have no idea what ozone smells like. It’s after a rainstorm smell. Oh, which I love that. Right. So rainstorms with all the electricity in the air and the lightning, they actually produce ozone. So that’s that fresh rain smell that you smell is actually ozone.
Scott Brady: So I had no idea. I just [00:16:00] learned something new.
Brian McVickers: And then you just let that smell dissipate. And then everything. And
Scott Brady: why do you have to let it dissipate? Cause it’s not safe. It’s not
Brian McVickers: the safest thing to breathe in. Got it. It’s also not, it depends on who you ask. We’re not scientists.
Scott Brady: We’re not trying to play scientists
Brian McVickers: on the internet.
Some people say that you shouldn’t breathe any of it. Some people say you can breathe a certain amount and it’s not a big deal.
Scott Brady: They have like a big. Well, you’re, you’re breathing it in after a rainstorm. So yeah, the, the
Brian McVickers: big unit that they have, they say, don’t be in the same room with it. Yeah. So it has to be smaller units are not a big deal.
Scott Brady: It has to be parts per million cause it’s displacing something. So, so there are other gases that we need to breathe that are being
Brian McVickers: displaced. When I went to the last Overland Expo in Colorado, I drove that new Wrangler, the four by the four by E. Yeah. When I was driving back, I had the little 12 volt unit that you just put it in a cigarette lighter and I did that.
You’re using this truck for a week. It starts to stink. And so I actually had it plugged in while I was driving a little bit and you’re, it’s just a little weavy down the highway. It was fine. A couple of [00:17:00] twitches. Yeah. It worked out really well. It’s, you couldn’t tell, you can smell it, but it doesn’t
Scott Brady: affect you.
Yeah. Well, and, and there are times like the one, the one solution that came to mind for me is In the scout camper, you know, it’s because it’s, because it’s compact, you have all of your living systems in there, including a shower that you’ve used where there’s a shower pan that’s drying out. And there’s also a composting toilet on the inside.
So lots of bacteria. Yeah. And it doesn’t. Like it normally doesn’t smell bad, like a, a composting toilet is, is, it’s an amazing thing how well it works, but it has this kind of earthy compost smell. And so that my thought was when you’re living out of this thing, it would probably be pretty nice. You’re going to go.
Go in to go to dinner or whatever. You just skip ozone thing kicking. Yeah. You zap it
Brian McVickers: for 30 minutes. You get back, you open the window and then, and it kind of neutralizes all the smells. That’s interesting. So it doesn’t smell like anything in particular once the ozone dissipates, which is really nice.
Scott Brady: Oh, [00:18:00] that’s cool.
Well, that was a, that’s like a totally out of left field product that I didn’t even think I ever needed, but I’m like, you know what, that would actually be pretty, that’d be pretty handy. Pretty handy. There’s some other impressive new developments like Nitto has come out with their Recon Grappler AT. New AT tire.
That’s right. And this is a particularly robust version of an AT with also, it’s got a very robust shoulder lug. One of the challenges with a lot of all terrains is chipping and chunking. So to see this. Heavily reinforced, robust shoulder lug, and it looks almost like a hybrid tire. So it’s a little bit more of an open pattern.
So I think it’s going to work really well for people that are in mixed terrain, like travelers, like overlanders, where you’re going from a dry climate to a wet climate back. So it’s, it’s cool to see Nitto has always been known for making very reliable, durable tires, but it’s cool to see them coming out with new technology and new tread patterns, particularly ones that I think would be very useful [00:19:00] for, for overlanders.
And it
Brian McVickers: looks like they have the standard sizes, you know, they equivalent to 32, 33, I think they had a 34. Yeah. Just under a 37
Scott Brady: as well. Yeah. And a bunch of different wheel diameters. And so that, that’s cool to see how well Nitto is adopting the overland space too. So the other one that I think is really interesting and you’ve used for a while is the remarkable.
I’ve used their
Brian McVickers: first generation.
Scott Brady: That’s right. So this is their second generation tablet with a keyboard. That’s correct. The reason why I’ve been using a remarkable is again, it’s distraction free creativity. So I write now all of my content on the remarkable because there is, I I’ll download some PDFs with some interesting or some important backstory information.
But I get my first draft out on the remarkable and my production of content at least 50 percent better, probably double. I probably producing twice as many words per [00:20:00] day using the remarkable than I would with any other device because an email comes through, some notification comes through. Now you’ve got a dedicated work.
Yeah. Or, or there’s some specific technical thing that you’re trying to articulate and it, it sends you down this rabbit hole. And then you have to get back into the creative space of writing. So now I just, I’ll just make a note to research something at the end of the first draft.
Brian McVickers: How has it changed?
So I, I have the remarkable one tablet, which I don’t use as much anymore because the reason that I got it was for notes. So I’ll have my, my laptop and I take a lot of notes along the way, whether for whatever calls, meetings and research. But the biggest limitation that I found with the remarkable one was it doesn’t transfer.
So they can’t transfer the files into say like a cloud very easily. So I couldn’t transfer the files anywhere. They would just kind of like live on that thing. It didn’t work
Scott Brady: as well. And it does, it does that now with the remarkable 2. So the remarkable 2 will do that. It has its own cloud service. It [00:21:00] syncs up with all of your other devices.
So or if I want to just grab all of the copy that I just wrote, as soon as I open up my laptop. And I open up the remarkable app on my, on my Mac book pro,
Brian McVickers: it’s all there. And you can take it and drop it into a word document
Scott Brady: or export it as a word document or import word documents and read them on the remarkable.
All right. So
Brian McVickers: the evolution to the version two is much more useful. That’s right.
Scott Brady: And one of the things that remarkable as a company has been. Quite remarkable. They’re very thoughtful and they take what they do very seriously. But when I got the unit one of the things they said was like, Oh, it’s just really important for you to know that this isn’t a Kindle device.
But I think they’re selling themselves short because yes, you do not have the Kindle app on the remarkable, but you can, it can use EPUB versions of books.
Brian McVickers: They’re talking about just for books. Yeah. Cause it seems like a totally different type of device. This is perfect
Scott Brady: for books. Because it’s not a backlit screen.
It’s an organic led screen. I read now most of the [00:22:00] books on the remarkable, but you’re not going to get like a book that was written in 2023 and read it on here. Not very likely because it’s not going to be available as an e pub or it’s most likely, or it’s not going to be available as a PDF. But what it forced me to do was come back to first principles reading.
So I’m bringing down books that are, that have been in print for a very long time and they’re available. As an EPUB or they’re available as a PDF, you know, like a Richard Feynman book that I just, just downloaded and others that are, they’re very much first principle thinking. And it’s forcing me to read in a different way instead of just whatever the book of the day is.
It’s like, let’s get back to this, these really original thinkers. And it’s not to say that there aren’t original thinkers in 2023, because there absolutely are, but there’s a lot of things that can be learned by reading. I’m doing that. I’m reading extensively now on the remarkable. And then the last thing that I think is what makes it really interesting for those of us that are creatives is the fact that they now have this folio, which is their [00:23:00] keyboard accessory.
It has a pen as well. It does. I’m left handed and I am a terrible penmanship. So I, I think I’ve attempted one note on here, but I can type like nobody’s business. But it’ll convert your handwriting. It does. Well, it tries. It does. Oh,
Brian McVickers: and everybody else’s case for years,
Scott Brady: I’m sure it works perfect for everyone else on the planet except for me.
You could be a new case study. Yeah, exactly. But I, I can type really fast, so I don’t know what my typing speed is, but it blazing, like the thing has smoke coming out of it because that’s what I do all day, most days. So the, and the keyboard is really good. It’s very responsive. It works really well with, it feels Yeah.
I just like, we just did that today doing the notes to get ready for this podcast. So for the traveler, you can read books, you can write your daily journals, you can write notes, but do it in this undistracted way where you’re able to just really focus on the craft, on the deeper work. So I, I’ve really appreciated the remarkable.
Yeah. That’s [00:24:00] great. That was one that I personally have been using more recently, the potato and the remarkable. All right. So the other thing that’s come out recently is came in out in the news is the new red arc lithium ion batteries are now available in North America, 150 amp hour battery. Yeah.
And they have a couple of different sizes that are available in other markets. primarily in Australia, but for the United States, at least initially there is this very compact lithium ion battery that is 150 amp hours, which is going to meet the needs of the vast majority of overland travelers. Unless you are trying to run an air conditioner or you’re trying to run a very large complex camper system.
A hundred and fifty amp hours is a great number. If you were to put two of them in there, then now all of a sudden you’re running Starlink no problem. You’ve got plenty of power. Exactly. But the reason why I think these are notable is, RedArch is almost always notable because of the quality of their components, and the fact that RedArch specifically makes electronics for overland [00:25:00] travelers.
But what makes this, this battery really unique is that, is, It has 70 percent higher energy density, which means if you just translate that into 150 amp per hour battery it is now going to be 70 percent smaller for the same power output. So you end up with this very compact, very high output battery from, from Red Arc, which I think
Brian McVickers: is really cool.
It looks like a normal size, relatively normal size battery compared to, you know, the thing with the rope. It’s,
Scott Brady: it’s just a, it’s just a compact, massive amount of power in it at 150 amp hours. So, and then the other thing that’s really relevant, because sometimes when you’re traveling from campsite to campsite, you don’t have a lot of time to recharge, especially a battery that big.
So if you had two of them, if you had 300 amp hours in there and you’re trying to charge quickly under a short period of time, it now has, it has a much faster charge rate than most of the other batteries on the market. So. The fact that while you’re Wrangler’s main lining 220 [00:26:00] amps into the system, it can actually consume that and charge very
Brian McVickers: quickly.
Can it do that spliced into an existing system or does it need a red arc system to do? It
Scott Brady: looks as if the, all the information that I’ve looked at, it has a charge profile that’s similar to other lithium ion batteries, which means if you have an existing system that is not. Or a solar charging system that is not a Red Arc, but it has a lithium charge profile available, then you can set it to work for that.
That’s great. Yeah, so really cool to see Red Arc making those batteries available in the U S and they just keep adding new products, which is really exciting. The other thing I thought was really interesting was to see ARB announced their new trailer. So they announced the earth camper. This is looks like a gigantic injection molded.
Yeah, it does. Injection molded. It’s very cool. A lot of people in the U. S. don’t know that ARB has tons of experience with truck toppers. So they’re used to working with injection molded components. Molding these complex shapes and very modern designs. So they just [00:27:00] found a way to do that. That’s in
Brian McVickers: Australia.
A lot of the, a lot of their catalog doesn’t make it to the US. That’s
Scott Brady: correct. And it makes sense. I mean, trying to ship a truck camper, a truck capper to the US, you’re just not, there’s not gonna be enough margin to make that work most likely. Whereas this trailer with it, having all of this, Years of a r b experience built into it.
They literally built their ultimate overland trailer. So it’ll be interesting to see if the earth camper comes to the United States ’cause it looks really suitable to
Brian McVickers: the task. It does, and it’s, it has enough style differences to it that I think it would, it kind of. Stand out. And it meets
Scott Brady: my first requirement of the trailer, which means you need to be able to sleep inside of it.
If you’re just using a trailer to haul around a roof tent, doesn’t make any sense to me. It may make sense to somebody. It makes no sense to me. You might as well just put the roof tent on the car and save yourself different use cases. Yeah. But for the most part, if you can sleep inside the tent or inside the trailer, you’ve now added a level of capability that’s difficult to employ with a typical.
Pickup truck or SUV. So this is [00:28:00] a large sleep inside teardrop style, but robust off road camper, which is kind of cool. So I liked, I liked that. Like to see ARB just like trying totally new
Brian McVickers: stuff. So they, they, every year they’ve got something, a couple of new products. Yeah. And
Scott Brady: a lot of times they just come out of left field in a way that you don’t expect.
And then you’re like, Oh, that totally, totally makes sense in hindsight. So that’s very cool. Another product I’ve been using recently is the Garmin tread. So I took that with me to Africa. In my experience, traveling around the African continent, you have to have a Garmin device because you need to have tracks for Africa.
So tracks for Africa is available as an app on your phone or your tablet. It does not work very well. I use it as a worst case scenario backup, but the one best on the garment, it’s a totally different solution. So like the one that they have in the app, I’m sure it’s even a different development team.
It feels like a totally different experience between the tracks for Africa app and the tracks for Africa
Brian McVickers: tracks for Africa. Like user information
Scott Brady: based, a lot of it is they do a lot of ground [00:29:00] truthing, but they also collect information and they’re smart about it. So they wait until they get a couple tracks in the same area and then they ground truth them by, by basically taking a larger sample set.
And then they add those, they add those tracks to the database and they also do fairly regular updates of their data. I mean, literally Joe and I are driving the Grenadier down this track in Mozambique and, and here very clearly on the tracks for Africa, it says landmines. Oh, so like, that’s a different day.
You don’t want to go. Yeah. You don’t want to go over to where the landmines are, but like that, that’s something that a, you know, a Google map would never show you or a sat map would never show you. And it was
Brian McVickers: all the, have all the tracks been fairly accurate? Yeah.
Scott Brady: Like it’s just so good. It’s so good. Now, their, their data gets a little less robust in the Northern parts of Western Africa.
But it’s, it’s, there’s nothing like it and it displays best on the Garmin device. The other reason why I always use a Garmin device is [00:30:00] because I need the reliability of track recording. I’m sure everybody that’s listening has experienced this, but then it happens with all of them, Gaia, all of them.
They just randomly stop tracking stuff. And the way that I understand it is it’s not a Gaia problem. It’s an edge of service problem. So like the phone gets just on the edge of service and it causes some disconnect between cell phone towers and the internal GPS. And it just. Stops recording your track.
Everything
Brian McVickers: shuts down. I’ve had that happen a few times, especially when you get to the edge of their mapping.
Scott Brady: That’s right. Area. It’s have to have a backup. I still use an iPad. I still like Gaia because of the different layers I use, use it for some sat map stuff. But when I’m traveling in Africa and when I’m traveling anywhere, I, I always run a Garmin because I know I’m going to get this reliable track Recording and reliable track recording has two really beneficial outcomes.
You can share the track with others that want to do the same trip or keep it for your own memories and referring back to. But the other reason why you [00:31:00] do it as a safety reason is that you want to be able to breadcrumb, turn around and follow your track back out. And if you
Brian McVickers: tried using your watch, your Garmin watch as a redundancy,
Scott Brady: I use it all the time for hiking because now that I have the potato I no other, I have no other way to, to like check a map.
If I’m out hiking, I intentionally don’t really look at the Garmin. I track every hike on the Garmin, but I intentionally don’t. And look at it because I’ve enjoyed like this kind of feeling of having to pay attention where I’m walking now, just so you don’t get lost. Yeah, sure. Whereas for years I’ve always had my phone on me and I just completely, I’m like, yeah, I got to turn left on the FR three 20 something.
And you just, you just go out and you 12 miles later, you end up back in your car and you really have no idea where you were. I’m enjoying having to stop and look at signs or think about the route or research it ahead of time. But I do always have the Garmin watch map available if I had, if I had to, I mean, and the Garmin watches are, they’re pretty insane.
Yeah. It’s [00:32:00] amazing how much
Brian McVickers: they put into
Scott Brady: that. Well, and the reason why they work way better for travel than an Apple watch or anything else is the amount of days that they, that they last. The battery life is
Brian McVickers: significant. It’s the one. Well over 25 days.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s well, and if you do a lot of. Hiking and where you’re doing GPS stuff, it’s much less than that, but it’s still like seven, eight, nine days of battery power.
And there, you don’t get that in an Apple watch. And also like the intrusive parts of the Apple watch don’t exist on the Garmin. And you don’t feel like you, you gotta be like answering a text on your watch. It’s like the watch works really good as a watch. It does a good job of tracking my sleep. It does a good job of tracking all of my exercise and.
And other things, but then it has these overland related tools on it, like maps, compass, elevation, speed over ground, all these other things that are unique to a Garmin watch. So yeah, it’s kind of become the watch of choice for me. Yeah, it’s a nice backup to the tread. I have not used my Apple watch since I [00:33:00] got the Garmin on my wrist.
There are times that I’ll run an analog watch because I just prefer it sometimes. But like for travel. It’s now, it’s a total game changer. It’s another game changer product. It’s really good. It’s really good. Oh yeah. And, and like, didn’t, when we were on the sailboat, didn’t Rusty like have a way to like track the boat data on his
Brian McVickers: watch?
He’s got one that interfaces with the autopilot and all the, boat,
you know, clicking things on his watch to make the boat turn. Yeah, that’s pretty good. That’s pretty amazing. I think they do a really good job of having all their products talk to one another. Yeah.
Scott Brady: So the one thing that I’ve noticed from getting deeper in the Garmin ecosystem is every interaction that I have with the product feels very professional.
Whereas a lot of other tools that we integrate with. They feel very consumer grade, whereas that’s one thing I’ve been really impressed with on the Garmin stuff is it all feels very professional, very professional grade [00:34:00] tools, which means that it doesn’t do some of the whiz bang stuff that people get used to with other devices, but it does all the important things perfectly every time.
And that’s the
Brian McVickers: rarity. Yeah. I haven’t hit any dead ends with it. Yeah. So I think what you’re talking about is some consumer products, you’re, it does everything except what The thing that you should think that it could do and stuff or it just doesn’t do it
Scott Brady: well tells you that it’s going to do and it does it well, and it does it like at a level of a professional activity, just tracking exercise on the Garmin is a better result.
Like I get more consistent results from that and it doesn’t. Lock up. It doesn’t,
Brian McVickers: I’ve got some friends who swear by the athletic training components that they have. Yeah. So that’ll monitor your sleep. It’ll monitor all your workouts and then it tells you when to rest. Yeah. I tell you today, don’t let your heart rate go over one 15.
It’s pretty accurate. I
Scott Brady: use it. I use the app on the iPad and I upload everything to the watch and I do not Do any [00:35:00] physical exercise without running it through the Garmin because it has been so effective. Like if I don’t sleep well, it helps me adjust those goals to make sure that I’m not overstressing my body and you know, I’m not, you know, 20 years old anymore.
So like I want my body to perform recovery time. I do. I need a recovery time. Garmin watch is pretty good too. Another one that you brought up was that new intrepid roof tent. Tell me about
Brian McVickers: that. Yeah. You know what I, one of the things I like about the Intrepid is it’s another example of innovation in the rooftop tent market where I think you see a lot of regurgitated ideas, right?
A lot of recycled ideas where, you know, they’re either doing something that’s already been done or they’re ordering from the same factory and just putting a different logo on it. The Intrepid, if you can imagine, it looks like a wedge tent, but. Instead of just a, a kind of 45 degree angled wedge, the roof has an extra hinge in it.
So when it opens, it kind of kind of opens like that. So this, this entire area becomes your living space instead of just
Scott Brady: [00:36:00] this. Oh, got it. So you end up with a lot more usable space,
Brian McVickers: a lot more usable space. You could, you know, instead of like, and is it a hard shell or is it soft shell? It’s a hard shell.
Wow. Cool. It’s a hard shell that opens up. With two hinges and then it’s got soft sides, three soft sides. So you can actually sit two people the length of the tent, whereas a lot of wedge tents, you could maybe sit two people side by side. Yeah. It just gives you a lot more space with a, it’s innovative, but it’s a, looks like a fairly simple innovation.
I mean, they just added a hinge and it completely changed the amount of usable space. Yeah. That’s
Scott Brady: cool. Yeah. And it looks, it looks good too. Yeah. It’s nice to see people coming up with new ideas instead of just copying others. So let’s switch topics into vehicles. You’ve been doing some more vehicle testing and most recently you were on the Chevy Bison launch with a bunch of the different.
Brian McVickers: Yeah. That was the kind of the, there was the ZR2 Bison family. So it included the Colorado and the the [00:37:00] Silverado. HD, which is 2500 HD.
Scott Brady: Did it also have the 1, 500?
Brian McVickers: Had the full size. 500 with the new diesel engine. Yeah.
Scott Brady: What’d you think of that new diesel? I liked
Brian McVickers: it. It was, I only got to drive it for probably about 30 minutes and they let us drive that.
They let everybody have a turn to drive that for about 30 minutes on the first day. Sure. It wasn’t a very heavy focus. Right. The only thing different about the vehicle is the engine, but as far as the, the engine goes, I did. And that’s a three liter diesel. Mm-hmm. , I did about 15 minutes of highway speeds up to about 75 and then did a, a very soft sandy dirt track, a sandy track in the desert with some hard embedded rock.
Yeah. And it was effortless. I actually kept it in four high ’cause four low with that diesel had so, so much torque that it was, yeah. For what we were even, we were flat. Yeah. Sure. You like really couldn’t drive it because it had so much low end torque. Yeah. And so I just [00:38:00] kept it in four high and it. It did every, I mean, it was effortless to drive.
Scott Brady: Yeah. This is the evolution of the three liter that’s in the AT4 project vehicle that we’ve got. And it’s, it’s so encouraging to see Chevrolet and GMC continuing with that power plant because it’s the best motor I’ve ever had in any vehicle I’ve ever owned. Like I, just to get 20, 21 miles of the gallon out of a full size truck on 35s was, is just unbelievable.
And it does it.
Brian McVickers: They really seem to be there. I met with their whole engineering team and their design team. They seem to be doing a, an exceptional job at not just listening to the consumer, but seeing and understanding how the consumer is using their vehicles. And then providing solutions that not just because they look good on a design board, but because they’re going to be functional in a day to
Scott Brady: day use.
And it’s, and it same thing applies to, to GMC, but to see like an AEV edition, either ZR2 [00:39:00] or an AT4X, so front and rear lockers, the 35 inch tall tires. AEV bumpers front and rear and a three liter turbo diesel in a half ton truck is just like, that’s so cool. The only thing that I would love to see improve with some of those, those trucks is the payload.
When you get them optioned up that way, it can be around a thousand pounds of payload, which people will say like, Oh, that’s a half ton. Well, it’s actually a five passenger half ton. So you have to take 150 to 175 pounds. Each manufacturer. uses a different metric or there are different standards for what an occupant weight is considered standardized to.
But if you used 150 pounds as that number and you have five passengers in there, so you’ve got seven, you have 750 pounds, you have 750 pounds of passengers. So it really should be 1, 750 pounds of payload. In that vehicle to make it a half ton because it needs to be able to carry a [00:40:00] half ton of payload and five passengers.
So,
Brian McVickers: and every passenger is going to have, it’s more than 150. Cause everybody’s
Scott Brady: got a bag. It’s okay to make it, it’s okay to pounds a person. It’s okay to make it like whatever the standard is, you know, like Chevy doesn’t need to reinvent that. And this apply, this is not unique to show everybody. All of the manufacturers of these half ton trucks are not making half ton pickups.
They are making like you and I could not. Go in most of these half ton trucks with the two of us and two motorcycles. We could not carry it. You think we’d tap out? Guaranteed. Yeah. Like if you and I had two, you know, KLR 650s in the bed and you and I both weigh a svelte 205, 200, 200 ish. Like you couldn’t do it.
Yeah. You could not carry two motorcycles and two, two buddies. To go out for the day and a half to, and that just doesn’t work. So you gotta be, you gotta have the payload needs to be based upon the standard, which is either 150 or 175 pounds, depending on the standard per passenger, five [00:41:00] passengers, plus a thousand pounds, which is a half
Brian McVickers: ton.
But we’ve seen this from. Every manufacturer, every manufacturer struggling,
Scott Brady: not, not with, not with Ford. You don’t think like Ford, Ford does a lot of things. Average. They do payload really well. Like they get it. If you get a new Raptor are 1, 750 pounds of payload. Okay. Five passenger thousand pounds of payload.
They get it. So it can be done and it is being done. Yeah, it can be done for sure. And it looked like a really challenging route. Johnson Valley,
Brian McVickers: right? It was Johnson Valley. And, and, you know, a few of us were talking about it, but the coolest part about this, and I asked a couple of the spotters and a couple of the guys who pre ran, they didn’t manicure the route that we’ve been on vehicle drives before where they, They can the experience, right?
Everything is preplanned. They know what you’re just barely fits. Right. And so we went out into Johnson Valley. We, we, we based out of it’s called laser town. Okay. Which I had never been to. I have no idea where that’s at. It’s a [00:42:00] collection of containers out in the middle of the desert and, and it’s, it’s pretty cool.
Right. And they’ve got a bunch of art. Little art installations, and I think for King of the Hammers, it’s kind of Party Central. Sure. So we started out a laser town and so we took both trucks. Up, it was called the short bus. It was pretty, pretty steep, getting up steep and loose. And then going down the backside, every truck was on three wheels going down.
So that was the first little trail that we did. Then what I was really impressed with. Was the, the second trail, I think it was lower Johnson Valley. It was just, it’s a little shoot of a trail, but when you look at it from the bottom, it looks like a rock field, but there’s a little track that kind of inter, interweaves the, the big rocks and the best example of what they were trying to showcase.
And so I was driving the Colorado. Colorado ZR2 bison. They’re really proud of the [00:43:00] rock rails and the skid plates. Yeah, all these,
Scott Brady: yeah, boron steel. Yeah, it’s
Brian McVickers: really well built and really well put together. So we’re going up, there’s a shelf, probably about a four foot shelf. And to get to the four foot shelf, there’s this Big boulder that could have very easily been moved, but they chose to just leave it there.
It had been crossed so many times it was, it was getting unstable. So it would roll around a little bit. You get up over it and the other thing is you could probably have gone to the right of it. You probably could have sneaked around the big boulder. Sure. But they’ve got their spotting team and they spotted it straight over.
So driver’s side front right over this boulder and you drop down. We’re on 35s and we drop down the other side of it. And now you’re sitting on the rock rail on this boulder. And we, you know, when we go drive trucks, we don’t do that. We don’t do that. We’re very, very careful of did not touch anything.
Yeah. And I even looked at the guy and I said, I don’t really don’t like touching stuff with the trucks. Yeah. And he [00:44:00] goes, no, no, no. I want you to do what you’re doing. That’s why I put you here. And I was like, all right, now what do you want me to do? He goes, drive it. And so I drove it and that boulder scraped the entire length of that rock rail.
Wow. And, and then you get out and you, you go up the, the ledge. And part of the reason that they had it there is when you, when you did get the front up front end up the ledge, you’re now your backend is right on top of that boulder. Sure. Right. And then you go the rest of the way and everything’s fine.
And I got out. And I looked at the rock rail and it was like, it never happened. Wow. So not only the finish and the coating was incredibly durable cause it didn’t have any. Really visible damage to it. It had some dirt and dust on it. But it didn’t flex. It didn’t bend. And that’s, and I, you know, I looked at him, I was talking to him and he’s like, I purposely want you guys to see how thoughtfully we’ve built these
Scott Brady: vehicles.
Yeah. They’re just, they’re made from the beginning to be like really exceptional Overland vehicle. I mean, again, like we talked [00:45:00] about a few minutes ago, but Factory 35s, factory AEV wheels, factory AEV bumpers, boron steel skid plates, front and rear lockers, full length rock rails. It’s insane. Yeah, it’s a full pack.
It’s
Brian McVickers: insane. It’s like getting so insane. And then we, at the same, the same day, you know, then we swapped around a little bit and we drove the 2500 And we took it on the same trails as the Colorado. Wow. So you’ve got this, it’s a much bigger platform. The interesting thing about that truck is when you walk around it on the outside.
It doesn’t look that big when you get into it to drive it, it feels quite, it’s a big truck from the inside. It was big enough that, you know, I had the driver’s seat, you know, Jack as far up as I could to see over the hood. And, but then they have this great camera system. On both trucks, they have a front and rear camera mounted to the chassis underneath.
So you can, you can scroll through all the, the video feed. You can see a front view, a rear view. You can see [00:46:00] side views to see all four corners and it doesn’t time out. So you could be driving 50 miles an hour. And the camera feed is still, a lot of vehicles we’ve seen before. They’ve got the see through hood, whatever it is.
And it shuts off at five, six miles, you get up you know, barely to 10 miles an hour, and now it goes away. This’ll stay on until you turn it off, which was great in the desert. And it was great going downhill and that 2, 500 HD, because you can’t see, you can’t see anything. And so now you can see. It’s like looking through the front of the vehicle.
That’s
Scott Brady: cool. That was pretty neat. That’s awesome. A couple announcements, BMW just announced the new 1300 GS, which is exciting to see 25 pounds lighter, which is also encouraging to see. So they keep getting lighter and more effective.
Brian McVickers: The 1300 is 25 pounds lighter than the.
Scott Brady: 1200 than the 1250. That 1250, it’s leaving.
They are being a little more conservative on horsepower, which I do not see as a bad thing. Mm-hmm. , I think it’s 140 or 147 horsepower. It’s plenty. It’s plenty . It is [00:47:00] plenty. So like, I’m so glad they finally like, like one of the manufacturers is just like not trying to pursue horsepower numbers and an adventure bike because after about a hundred horsepower in almost every off-road condition it’s not an advantage.
You just don’t need it. It’s, it’s a disadvantage. So it just ends up just tearing up the rear tire that much faster. So, and then triumph has some updates to their new 1200. I’m a huge fan of the 1200 XC, a bike that I rode around South Africa and into Swaziland really liked that bike. So it’s great to see them continuing to innovate.
With that, with that platform, but the one that I really want to talk about and we’ll spend a few minutes on that is the new Toyota 250 platform. So it’s going to be available in a Land Cruiser 250, and then it’s going to be available in the new Lexus GX. The powertrains are different. The price points are also quite a bit different.
When you look at the two of them, you can tell that they are very much built upon the same platform. I’ve seen the
Brian McVickers: Land Cruiser firsthand and you got to see the Lexus firsthand. I [00:48:00] did.
Scott Brady: Yeah. What did you think of the Lancreger? I
Brian McVickers: think it’s going to be a great addition to the marketplace. I think it’s going to be a really nice mid price solution.
Yeah. I think from a functionality side, it does everything that you’re going to want it to do. Yeah. From a price tag starting around, I think they said it starts at 55,
Scott Brady: 000. In 2023, all of a sudden seems cheap or it just, it seems affordable. Yeah, but that’s still so much money. I think
Brian McVickers: the reason it feels affordable is everything else in that class is gonna be, is gonna start 75, 80.
Right. Right. I mean, even the, you know, in some ways, in many ways it’s, it’s replacing the, the 200 Yeah. That we had available in the us. The 200 started at
Scott Brady: 88, right. Thousand dollars. And I wonder how it’s gonna impact, or if it just replaces both the 200 and the forerunner, it seems like that that would be, That would be something that would make sense because the only other platform, I mean, they would build the forerunner on the two 50 platform because the forerunner has always [00:49:00] traditionally been built on the Prado platform, which the Prado one 50 is the precursor to this vehicle.
That was the land cruiser two was built on the Prado two was the Prado was built on. And then the most recent forerunner was also built on. So I wonder if. If this new Land Cruiser is going to
Brian McVickers: replace both. All I can say is that these guys think about this stuff a lot more than we give them credit for.
There were quite a few people who asked direct questions in person about the Forerunner and, and there were no answers given, but what I, what I did pick up when you look at Historically, over the past few years, when the, when they took the 200 series away, they knew what they were doing in the sense of they took the 200 series away knowing that they were going to have the 250 launching now.
Right. They, they kind of got, they got beat up a lot in social media and just from the consumer side, they got beat up a lot by taking the 200 series away. Okay. Good. There was kind of this grand plan the entire [00:50:00] time. Yes. It’s Toyota. They always have a grand plan. They got a grand plan. I mean, when they took the 200 away, they knew that they had the two 50 coming.
Yeah. Right. And so they would have
Scott Brady: to, it already would had to have been in, into design stage. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I
Brian McVickers: don’t think the forerunners going away. I think there’s some Yeah. But it would be really difficult. There’s a plan for the four Oh oh
Scott Brady: yeah. Something else is gonna happen. Yeah. It would have to be, it would have to be, and it would have to be such a departure.
But the two 50 is a departure from the 200. The 200 is the. It is the big body J series global landcruiser. The
Brian McVickers: 250 is quite, quite smaller than
Scott Brady: the 200. Well, in some ways it’s a little bit narrower. A couple inches here or there. Yeah, it’s a little bit narrower.
Brian McVickers: But the feeling you get when you walk up to the 250, the 200 and even the 300, if you, if you’ve had the chance that you’ve seen the 300.
Yeah, I’ve driven it. It’s amazing. And those vehicles have. To me, that’s, it’s kind of this bulbous larger vehicle feeling for sure. Right. And just the way that the sheet metals formed and everything else, the, the two 50 [00:51:00] feels smaller and it feels, and it, it presents smaller when you walk up to it. I
Scott Brady: would agree.
And the Lexus is the same way but it’s, it’s just really important. Like some people are saying, Oh, it’s not a land cruiser. They, they don’t understand Land Cruiser history if they say that, because there have been lots of Land Cruiser twos. So these are vehicles that are called Land Cruisers. They’re a Land Cruiser two or they’re called a Prado in some markets.
But they are still a Land Cruiser, but they are not the heavy duty Land Cruiser. So that is the Land Cruiser 300 which is the most robust, durable global platform that they make in a passenger wagon. The 250 is. saying a Prado or saying a land cruiser too. So, but that is not to take anything away from it.
It is deserving of the land cruiser name. It is going to be an, in no doubt in my mind, it’s going to be an exceptional vehicle for North American overland travelers. And the fact that it might be available actually in the mid fifties is pretty impressive. The GX is going to have more power. It’s going to have more luxury, but they also [00:52:00] Lexus has taken overlanding serious too.
So they’re going to have this over trail version that is got. 33 inch tall tires and rear locking differential and crawl control. And you know, these high clearance bumpers. And so it’s just awesome to see. They’re bringing
Brian McVickers: a lot more attainability
Scott Brady: out of it. I love it. And, and I’m, I’m such a fan of Toyota.
I’ve literally trusted my life to this brand and around the world and to see them like the director of marketing for Toyota to say we’re all in on overlanding, that is so cool to hear from. A brand that really has made world class overland vehicles for many decades to see that their Toyota North America is all in on overlanding is so exciting for us, you know, and it’s just a really important thing to see that that vehicle is available.
It leaves a lot of questions around the forerunner. It also clearly tells us that their intention is not to bring in the 300 other than in the Lexus LX 600. So we’re not going to, [00:53:00] not likely to see a 300 series Land Cruiser here. No,
Brian McVickers: I don’t think it’s on the, I don’t think it’s on the plan for them.
Scott Brady: But again, it’s like, it would be so easy to just, for like someone on some troll on the internet to just say like, Oh, it’s not a Land Cruiser or you didn’t bring us the right car.
They brought us exactly the right
Brian McVickers: car. Yeah. I granted none of us had the chance to drive it yet. But on paper and in person, when you get to poke around it, it’s got everything. It looks great. It looks great. And it’s comfortable. I got to sit in it. You know, everything about it. The upright
Scott Brady: uprights. Yeah.
The upright seat seating position and the good clearance. Like it’s just going to be awesome. And the fact that it’s. In 2023 terms, it’s reasonably priced. It’s just so good. It’s so good. So props to Toyota for that. I’m really excited to see how they come out, how it’s optioned. And then of course, the chance for us to drive it.
The other vehicles that I’ve been spending some time in the, in the new Ram Rebel 2500. They now have a rear locking differential in the [00:54:00] vehicle. This is also available in a solid rear. It’s solid front axle, solid rear axle, but the rear axle is a five link coil sprung suspension system. The truck is showing its age a little bit.
The engine is definitely showing its age a little bit. But the interior is just very well done rams because of AEV are really the full size truck of choice For most people and the fact that you can now get it with a factory rear locker Is another really important and
Brian McVickers: this has all the AEV goodies
Scott Brady: on it.
It does not it’s just a it’s their ram rebel package Okay, but that is the package that you would use as the baseline for building an AEV truck. Okay Yeah an AV prospector, but The problem with prospectors in the last couple of years was the lack of availability of a rear locker. So it’s not that they were incapable off road because they were on, they were on 40.
Like they were fine. They were fine. But that a rear locking differential, it allows us to go slower. It allows us to show more mechanical sympathy to the vehicle. And [00:55:00] most important in most cases, it allows us to do less trail damage. There’s any time we can introduce less wheel spin. We’re doing less damage to the trails that we want to keep open as a community.
So being responsible and activating a rear locker when you have the opportunity to, and as travelers, we’re oftentimes super remote. So we want to have as much capability as we can get, especially in, in areas that are really challenging. So surprising
Brian McVickers: how just turn on the locker. It kind of settles everything down, gets rid of the drama.
It does. You can get, you can get through the obstacle and then move on. You know, this is like you said, the travel, the remote travel, it’s a, it’s not, you’re not doing it for sport. Nope. So
Scott Brady: it’s adventure. Yeah. And you want to get to the other end. You want to get your family. Preserve the asset. Yeah. You want to get your family to the other end.
Quick note. Cause we’re getting to time here. Grenadier has announced their dealer network, so that’s exciting to see. It looks like they’re going to have deliveries as soon as the end of 2023. So those that took the risk and put their deposits down and got the vehicle reserved, they’re going to get them pretty soon.
The vehicle has [00:56:00] performed, has exceeded my expectations in Africa. We have not had any failures with the vehicle. Yeah, so far it’s just built, clearly built for Africa. It’s performing well. So it’ll see people, it’ll be cool to see people finally getting them in the U S. Yeah. And the reports
Brian McVickers: from Australia has seen
Scott Brady: a lot of delivery.
That’s right. So is South Africa and Europe seeing deliveries. So yeah, it seems like and they’ve got some recent updates that they did that you know, just over this, at the dealership, like anything else, they’re continuing to update the vehicle and offer new, new options and just improve performance.
So that’s good to see that in the Grenadier, but any other. New vehicles or new things that you wanted to chat on? I think we’ve covered
Brian McVickers: a lot. We’ve got another couple of drives coming up. There’s a G M C drive we’ll be on in a couple of weeks. Yep. Yeah. It’s been a, it’s been a busy year for, for new vehicles and, and vehicle launches.
Yeah.
Scott Brady: It’s like the golden age of, of overland vehicles. We thought for sure. That was in the 1990s with an 80 series Land Cruiser. No, it’s a lot. And a Land [00:57:00] Rover defender. But if you were to drive. 300 Land Cruiser and compare it to an 80 series like, yeah, there’s, there’s so much better
Brian McVickers: now. The one thing I’ve noticed is there’s a lot more vehicles that I think you could be completely fine driving off a lot without, you know, it used to be, okay, we’re going to drive that.
I’m going to get that as a platform and then I’m going to swap out. I’m going to re engineer everything and I’m going to add all these things to it. And now it seems like the OEMs have been listening and watching and now you can do so much more with the vehicle right off the lot and just saves, it saves in the long run, whether it’s time and effort.
So look
Scott Brady: at that, like, look at that Bison Colorado 35, 35s and lockers front and rear and an available winch. It’s just literally, it’s like unbelievable. And
Brian McVickers: it’s a snappy little truck. Yeah. No, they’re cool.
Scott Brady: 300 horsepower. Fun to drive. Yeah. 300 horsepower. They’re sweet. They’re super, super
Brian McVickers: sweet. The only interesting thing from a usability standpoint is they had to take that, that 35 inch tire and mount it in the bed of the truck.
So [00:58:00] they actually came up with a. factory mount. It’s vertical in the front driver’s side corner of the truck. So it’s going to reduce your capacity a little bit when it comes to loading things into the, into the bed of the truck. Somebody will
Scott Brady: come out with a swing out tire or AV will probably release a swing out tire carrier for their
Brian McVickers: bumper.
It didn’t impact driving at all. You don’t even notice
Scott Brady: it that it’s there. Yeah. Cause it’s behind the driver. So it doesn’t block the driver’s view. Right. Or not much of it with the room, but from
Brian McVickers: using the bed, that was,
Scott Brady: you know, that’s it. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. But feedback, a
Brian McVickers: lot of consumers wind up doing that
Scott Brady: anyway.
So, well, things just keep getting more exciting in the Overland space, which is why we’ve announced this new Overland news segment of the podcast. So look for these to come out about once a quarter. If you’re looking for the newest, most interesting stuff to come on the market. In the overland space, we’re going to continue to provide these.
We love your feedback. You can reach me scott. a. brady on Instagram. Or you can reach out to Brian, [00:59:00] which your Instagram it’s a at McVickers and what was your, what’s your what’s your cell phone numbers? They can call you directly with any questions you can go to our
Brian McVickers: website. So we also do, we got the weekly newsletter.
That’s right. We do. And we’ve got the news of the week on expedition
Scott Brady: portals. That’s true. Yeah. Go to, go to expedition portal. com for the overland news of the week. And then you can also subscribe to our newsletter. If you go to overlandjournal. com, you’ll see the prompt to subscribe to the newsletter where we do provide a lot of these, these updates too.
Scott Brady with Guest Paula Burr
But, and one of the things that we want to do real quick is actually bring in the, the cornerstone of the Overland Journal podcast the person that makes all of this possible, Paula Burr. Paula has been involved with the podcast front since almost the very beginning, a longtime friend and Overland traveler.
But the reason why we’re bringing Paula on is one of the organizations that we really believe in at Overland International is the Rebel Rally. It is an incredible event that gives the [01:00:00] opportunity for travelers to go out and test their skills, their navigation skills, working as a team. They’re not able to use a GPS.
This is all paper map, compass, dead reckoning, triangulation, and operating usually mostly stock vehicles throughout really rugged terrain in the United States West. So Paula, congratulations on being able to participate in the Rebel Rally. Yeah, I’m really excited. Well we’re excited to have you go because you have had this as a bucket list item for a very long time.
And we were so lucky because Scott Brown from Jeep reached out and said, Hey, we think we’ve got a slot in the rebel rally for someone to participate. And I said, I’ve got just. The right person. So you get to check off a bucket list item and you’ve also been doing a bunch of training for it. So what are some of the things you’ve been doing to prepare for the event?
I’ve been trying to do as much as possible. I know it’s not the full rally that I get to do, but I would like to be [01:01:00] prepared as much as possible. So I’ve driven a couple places and. Some plotting and some roadmaps and. No, you’ve been doing great. All the maps, all the plotting. That’s right. All the math.
All the math. I remember you saying, Scott, I can’t math anymore right now. Yeah. But it’s, and you’ve gotten a lot of help from people that are very experienced with the event. Nina Barlow is a friend of both of ours. She’s been a big friend of the industry. She’s been a hugely successful participant in the rebel rally.
And if I remember you went out to the glamorous dunes and you’ve done some training with her there, you’ve also done training in Sedona. And then recently you’ve been working with some of her team on some of the mapping and plotting. So what are you going to be driving during the event? I think it’s a four by e, a jeep four by e.
Yeah. So a jeep Wrangler Rubicon four by e, I believe is the one that you’re going to be driving and what a capable vehicle for that. And jeep has been a big supporter of the rebel rally. And I’m grateful for that too. I’m seeing a lot of manufacturers [01:02:00] participate in the event. Which I think is a great way to empower people to get out and explore in this way.
It’s a really important event for the industry. And Paul, we’re so excited for you to go do the rebel rally. What are you most looking forward to in the event? I think just being outside and off the grid and just being reliable with my partner. Out in the middle of wherever we are. Yeah, I mean you’re going to be able to totally disconnect from work.
Well Paula, we’re so excited to have you do the event and we’re going to get an update from you when the event is over and here’s some of the things that you’ve learned along the way, but have such an amazing journey on your way out to the Rebell Rally and Participating in such a wonderful event. Yeah.
Thanks. And thanks for being on the podcast. Yeah, exactly. And thanks for being on the podcast, Paul. I’m sorry to turn the cameras on you, but we’re just so excited for you to be able to go. I’m really grateful for this opportunity. Yeah, we are too. Awesome. You’re welcome. We’re grateful to have this on the podcast and we thank you all for listening and we’ll talk to you next time.
Thanks everybody.[01:03:00]