I Forgot My Dry Cleaning Tag And Mercedes Got Cut Off: The Autopian’s Experience On LIVE Television

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Mercedes wanted to geek out way, way more than the interviewer allowed her to, so now instead of saying “Here’s a problem EVs have with towing, here are some solutions,” she was only allowed to say “Here’s a problem EVs have with towing.” Drat! Still, what a great experience having our very own Mercedes Streeter REPRESENTING on live TV. And hey, I got to go on there, too. But of course, I forgot my damn dry cleaning tag on my suit jacket.

Johnathan Gustin, who works at ABC12 out of Flint, is a true car geek. He’s one of us. As such, he was interested in chatting with The Autopian here at the Detroit Auto Show. So he put both Mercedes and me IN THE HOT SEAT. Mercedes talked about camping — specifically some of the drawbacks to electrification as it relates to built-out vans or tow-behind trailer campers. What Mercedes wanted to say was… well, let me just let her tell you:

What I wanted to say was that the Grounded G1 is one of the first fully electric camper vans to hit the market. It’s pretty neat with an IKEA-like modular interior, but the Ford E-Transit the van is based on goes just 108 miles on a charge. Stopping every 100 miles on a road trip means taking a very long time to get where you’re going. It also means you have to camp within somewhat close range of a charger. Another thing you can do is tow a traditional travel trailer with an electric pickup truck. However, that presents its own problems. Various range tests have shown that you can expect huge range losses when towing a 6,100 pound camper. Take Car and Driver‘s range testing, for example. Its testers hauled a camper behind a Rivian R1T, a Ford F-150 Lightning, and a GMC Hummer EV. The Ford and the Rivian both saw their ranges cut down to about 100 miles while the Hummer went 140 miles. Likewise, charging gets a bit weird as many charging stations are stalls, not pull-through spaces. So you’ll have to decouple the trailer, charge, then hook back up again.

A potential solution to this is already in development. A number of manufacturers are building fully electric travel trailers with lithium traction batteries and electric motors. For example, Airstream is developing what it calls the eStream, a camper with an 80 kWh battery pack and electric motors. The camper’s motors assist the tow vehicle and thus, eliminate as much range loss as possible. In theory, because the camper can haul itself, a 300-mile EV tow vehicle retains its range. Even cooler is the fact that the trailers also work with ICE vehicles, so your F-150 gasser also doesn’t take much of a range hit. This makes the aforementioned charging stall problem only worse as you now have to charge two EVs at the same time, a but it does get you further down the road. For now, it seems like burning fuel is still the best way to go camping, but maybe one day it won’t be that way.

Click the following link and see what Mercedes was able to say in the rather short interview titled “The Road Ahead For Camping.”

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She may not have gotten all her words in, but I’m proud of Mercedes. This is a big moment! Mercedes’ first time on LIVE television. She arrived at that interview prepared; she knew about the van’s platform, its price, its range, and just before being cut off (by a very nice interviewer who, of course, has strict time constraints), was about to let the world know about some of the clever solutions that range-anxious campers might soon have at their disposal. This is just the start, I feel; I’ve always believed that Mercedes needs to be in front of the camera more, as she has an incredibly infectious personality. We’ll make sure that happens.

Anyway, here’s a look at my interview. It was about some of the nerdy EV tech here at the auto show. I specifically talk about how electrification brings pretty much an entirely new vehicle philosophy; suspensions, braking systems, cooling systems, bodies, HVAC systems and on and on — it all changes when you go from an ICE to an EV. The typical person on the street maybe doesn’t realize that a power-source change from gasoline to wall-electricity completely alters the way the vehicle is built, and the Detroit Auto Show — with its copious cutaways and suppliers on site — gives folks a great opportunity to see those alterations. This is a step-change, I say in the video, when it comes to vehicle technology.

It wasn’t particularly insightful for a car nut like you or me, but hey, it was on LIVE TV. With my dry cleaning tag out for everyone to see.

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Jason Torchinsky

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63 thoughts on “I Forgot My Dry Cleaning Tag And Mercedes Got Cut Off: The Autopian’s Experience On LIVE Television”

  2. Mercedes is such a natural communicator. She gave so much info on the electric transition for RVs/campers in such a clear way, and with such a great flow of discourse. Such a pity she got cut off, thanks for publishing the rest of her point, would’ve been very interesting to see on live tv.

  6. Wow, Mercedes & David are becoming TV stars. We can all say we knew of them back when they were common journalists using the written word. Congrats on excellent interviews.

  8. Great job, Mercedes! You definitely need some airtime on Autopian TV.

    I chuckled when the interviewer asked DT about the cooling system – not sure he had any idea about David’s engineering background at Jeep. Watching him try to rein it in rather than launching into a huge detailed explanation was rather amusing. That’s actually one of the things that any of us who have met DT in the flesh love about him; it’s that his enthusiasm is so infectious and genuine you can’t help but smile and get sucked right into it with him.

  13. This does raise the question; What is the correct pronunciation of Autopian? I have been doing Auto Pean. Auto car pean as in European but really I don’t know.

  18. David, I love your content here, but for the general-consumption audience you’ve got to dumb it WAY down. “The rear suspension of this EV truck is totally different” assumes viewers even know what “suspension” is. I mean, I’m sure they have heard the word, but I’d bet half the viewers of this piece couldn’t point it out to you. Even the reporter guy, who referred to “EV vehicles” probably has no clue.

    Something like “electric trucks look like gasoline trucks, but they are built differently from the ground up” is enough to drive the point home. Save the engineerish about drive belts and solid axles for us here.

    1. See, I was impressed at how David was able to rapidly adjust his word choice on the fly as he was speaking.

      You could tell in his mind, it was all the exact engineering terms; but as he spoke, he was thinking a thought or two ahead and realizing “nobody watching this will know that term” so he took things down a couple of notches as the words came out

      As it was, I for one appreciated the compliment that he thought someone like myself just instinctively understood for instance why the motor wants to be parallel to the axle.

      1. Spend 30 seconds on r/Justrolledintotheshop and you’ll see why it’s impossible to underestimate the mechanical intelligence of the motoring public.

        1. Our market is Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City where we have a fair amount of UAW workers, retirees, and car enthusiasts. If any general audience would have an inkling of basic car knowledge, I’d hope it would be ours.

      2. Yeah—this really struck a good line between “enough for the general public to understand” and “interesting technical information.” The camera guy did a good job zooming into the bits DT pointed at, and as John mentioned, this IS the one television market that actually makes these components. Keep in mind that newscasters doing interviews like this also often push back and ask for more info if their experts get too far in the weeds for their audience, too.

        tl;dr—I have very little faith in humanity and I still thought this was simple enough for a mass-market audience.

  20. Congratulations, Mercedes and David! I watched the ABC segments and think both of you did really well: your enthusiasm was clearly evident, as was your command of the facts/details.

    FWIW I don’t know how many people would have recognized that was a dry cleaning tag on David’s collar, or even would have noticed it at all.

  23. David has gone Hollywood flexing his dry clean only clothes on live TV and then ensuring to point it out here. Maybe we need a new Fancy David regular article. What’s next David? Eating shower spaghetti at a table?

    Mercedes keeping it real out there for the rest of us.

      1. “Some more oil in your tub sire?”

        “Yes. But only Trader Joe’s garlic infused olive oil. Now where is my finely grated mizithra and my homegrown cherry tomatoes?!”

        “I’m feeling bored, have one of our Vinyl members come fiddle for me.”

        “Yes my liege.”

          1. Well, no cats in the building but this is my remote manager Turtle. He’s a rescue and I could never think of a better name. The story goes he was found as a kitten in the middle of the road. A woman stopped her car and went to move what she thought was a turtle and the rest is history.

      1. I told Kevin about the slip so he corrected it for the 6 pm hit with David. Now I gotta get the web team to update the clips to include The Autopian, not just Autopian in our descriptions. Just like The Ohio State University or The University of Michigan. They may or may not roll their eyes at me.

        1. As a graduate of THE Ohio State University, I totally understand and approve.
          What’s that? What’s a “buckeye”? Oh you know, it’s a kind of a nut…

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