It seems there are very few carmakers not getting into electric vehicles – in fact, even the super luxury brands like Rolls-Royce and Bentley are now doing it.
Trent Nikolic, Managing Editor of drive.com.au, talks to Sean Aylmer about the boom in luxury EVs and the increase in sports car manufacturers like Ferrari and Maserati producing SUVs.
Find out more: https://fearandgreed.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Sean Aylmer: Welcome to the FEAR & GREED business interview. I’m Sean Aylmer.
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Sean Aylmer: When I was in Europe recently, I’m boasting here, I
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Sean Aylmer: happened to walk past a Lotus dealership in Paris. Now
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Sean Aylmer: parked out the front of the dealership with five bright
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Sean Aylmer: yellow Lotus electric vehicles. Everybody was taking photos of them,
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Sean Aylmer: including me. Fantastic marketing for Lotus, just having these five
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Sean Aylmer: vehicles out the front. It got me thinking about high-
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Sean Aylmer: end EVs. We hear a lot about Teslas obviously, and
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Sean Aylmer: they’re high- end, also Chinese automaker BYD. It’s becoming more
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Sean Aylmer: prominent. But what about the luxury car makers like Lotus?
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Sean Aylmer: Where are they up to in the EV market? Whenever
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Sean Aylmer: we have a car related question, there’s only one person
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Sean Aylmer: we ask. Trent Nikolic is the managing director of drive. com.
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Sean Aylmer: au. Trent, welcome back to FEAR & GREED.
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Trent Nikolic: Good afternoon, mate. Thank you for having me.
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Sean Aylmer: You’re on the road, part of your broadcast efforts, is
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Sean Aylmer: that right?
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Trent Nikolic: Yeah. Well, not quite literally on the road, kind of
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Trent Nikolic: off to the side of it at the moment. But
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Trent Nikolic: yes, on the road out here, shooting one of our
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Trent Nikolic: Drive TV shows. So yeah, we’re down near the border,
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Trent Nikolic: along the Murray River between New South Wales and Victoria.
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Sean Aylmer: Fantastic. Now, luxury car makers, are they all getting into EVs?
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Trent Nikolic: Yeah. I could just say yes, and you could ask me
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Trent Nikolic: the next question, mate. That’s the short answer. But the
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Trent Nikolic: long answer is they absolutely are. And in many ways…
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Trent Nikolic: And I think this is fascinating, and you’ll probably touch
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Trent Nikolic: on this and I’m sure you’ve already thought about this.
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Trent Nikolic: In many ways, luxury car manufacturers are really, really well
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Trent Nikolic: placed to move into the electric vehicle space, and I’ll
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Trent Nikolic: tell you why. It’s really quite simple. The average car,
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Trent Nikolic: let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re going out to buy
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Trent Nikolic: a Toyota Corolla and you’ve got 25 grand to spend.
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Trent Nikolic: If you want that car to be electric, chances are
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Trent Nikolic: it’s going to be about 50, 000 bucks. So it’s going
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Trent Nikolic: to be almost double the price. Whereas if you look
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Trent Nikolic: at a Porsche Panamera, which starts at 160 odd thousand
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Trent Nikolic: and goes up to above 300,000, the reality is that
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Trent Nikolic: there’s no such thing as a cheap Porsche. So if
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Trent Nikolic: you are looking at a Panamera or a Taycan, which
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Trent Nikolic: is electric, the actual transition to buy an electric Porsche
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Trent Nikolic: is not dramatically more expensive. If it is more expensive
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Trent Nikolic: at all, than buying a Porsche anyway.
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Sean Aylmer: Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
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Trent Nikolic: It does.
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Sean Aylmer: Actually, it’s easier for them. Do they want to get into
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Sean Aylmer: the EV market? Now I’m thinking it was you that
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Sean Aylmer: told me this, so I might be wrong. I think
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Sean Aylmer: it was like Maserati or one of those. The problem
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Sean Aylmer: with an EV is it just doesn’t sound like a
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Sean Aylmer: Maserati, for example.
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Trent Nikolic: Yeah. I think the question you’re asking has got two
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Trent Nikolic: answers. On one hand, when you talk to a manufacturer
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Trent Nikolic: like Maserati, like Alfa Romeo, another one that’s been very
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Trent Nikolic: vocal about it is Lamborghini, Ferrari is the same. The reason that
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Trent Nikolic: you get into a Ferrari and think that it’s amazing
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Trent Nikolic: is the sound, the noise, and the emotional response that
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Trent Nikolic: you have to the vehicle because of the sound. So
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Trent Nikolic: those manufacturers on one hand understand that the most difficult
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Trent Nikolic: thing they’re going to do generationally is transition across to
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Trent Nikolic: electric vehicles.
But on the other hand, the reality of
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Trent Nikolic: an electric vehicle… And it’s funny, I found myself writing
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Trent Nikolic: this reviewing a plug- in hybrid last week that I
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Trent Nikolic: did because it’s got a 50K range of pure electric. The
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Trent Nikolic: reality of electric vehicles is they’re very quiet, they’re very
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Trent Nikolic: insulated, they’re very refined. And I think one of the
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Trent Nikolic: things that people probably don’t even realize is a critical
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Trent Nikolic: element of luxury in their own mind is silence and
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Trent Nikolic: insulation. If you go into a room in a house
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Trent Nikolic: and you close the door and it’s insulated, it feels
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Trent Nikolic: expensive. If you sit inside the cabin of a car
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Trent Nikolic: and you thud the door closed and it’s quiet inside
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Trent Nikolic: and you can’t hear anything that’s going on around you,
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Trent Nikolic: you think to yourself, ” This is an expensive car. This
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Trent Nikolic: is a premium place to be.”
So the reality of
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Trent Nikolic: electric cars is there’s no driveline noise, there’s no gearbox,
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Trent Nikolic: there’s no traditional engine. They don’t run the same way
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Trent Nikolic: that regular cars do. Therefore they’re very quiet. So if
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Trent Nikolic: you were to sit in an electric Rolls- Royce or
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Trent Nikolic: an electric Bentley or an electric Maserati, it’s going to
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Trent Nikolic: be a very, very premium experience.
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Sean Aylmer: Okay. So are these sorts of EVs available in Australia
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Sean Aylmer: from these car makers?
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Trent Nikolic: Some of the luxury car makers have started to make
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Trent Nikolic: it viable, mate. So even the likes of Ferrari have
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Trent Nikolic: got the SF90 supercar that has a small electric range
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Trent Nikolic: because it’s a plug- in hybrid, and the Ferrari 296
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Trent Nikolic: is like that as well. So even the super luxury
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Trent Nikolic: car makers do it. But now we’re talking about the
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Trent Nikolic: likes of Mercedes- Benz, Audi, BMW, they all have electric
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Trent Nikolic: vehicles in Australia. Jaguar. Land Rover will soon because they’re
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Trent Nikolic: part of it as well, or Range Rover will. They’ve
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Trent Nikolic: got plug- in hybrids as well that have a certain
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Trent Nikolic: electric range.
So the luxury manufacturers are really starting to
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Trent Nikolic: dip their toe in the water. Lotus is one of
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Trent Nikolic: the other ones that more aligned with making affordable and
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Trent Nikolic: really fast sports cars, but they’re going down the electric
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Trent Nikolic: route as well. So not all of them have multiple
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Trent Nikolic: electric models for sale in Australia, but a lot of
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Trent Nikolic: them have either some form of electrification or at least
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Trent Nikolic: one electric vehicle available.
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Sean Aylmer: What are they like to drive?
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Trent Nikolic: Sensational. And this is the other thing-
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Sean Aylmer: In a word.
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Trent Nikolic: Exactly. Yeah. I’ll probably expand on that. One word answers
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Trent Nikolic: are pretty boring, aren’t they? But look, in a word,
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Trent Nikolic: yeah, sensational. And it’s funny that you mentioned Lotus in
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Trent Nikolic: your intro there because the reality is that a vehicle
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Trent Nikolic: like a Lotus, when you get in a Lotus sports
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Trent Nikolic: car, whether you’re driving it on the road or one
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Trent Nikolic: of their track days, what you’re looking for is response,
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Trent Nikolic: pace, a car that’s quick around a racetrack and that
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Trent Nikolic: does it seemingly easily. Electric cars, by their very nature,
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Trent Nikolic: do all of that. So they’re making peak power immediately.
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Trent Nikolic: There’s no lag. You don’t have to wait. You put
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Trent Nikolic: your foot down and you are in a rollercoaster. It
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Trent Nikolic: is that fast.
So the reality is that an electric
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Trent Nikolic: performance vehicle does everything that we measure performance vehicles on
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Trent Nikolic: particularly well.
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Sean Aylmer: Wow. I want to drive one, Trent. I want to. I mean, I
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Sean Aylmer: will get there, I’m sure, but I’ll probably be part
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Sean Aylmer: of the masses that will adopt EVs at some point
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Sean Aylmer: in the next five years when I buy a new
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Sean Aylmer: car. What still worries me is about the infrastructure challenge in
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Sean Aylmer: Australia though. It still worries me that it takes a
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Sean Aylmer: long time to charge the car. How close are we
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Sean Aylmer: to getting past those issues?
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Trent Nikolic: Yeah, okay. So the first point you made there is
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Trent Nikolic: right. I think the majority of us aren’t going to
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Trent Nikolic: be out there spending three, four, $ 500,000 on a really
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Trent Nikolic: fast premium electric vehicle. But one of the things I
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Trent Nikolic: do say all the time, mate, is that even a
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Trent Nikolic: slow electric vehicle is fast in traditional terms. So a
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Trent Nikolic: slow electric vehicle might be six or seven seconds zero
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Trent Nikolic: to a 100. That is quick.
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Sean Aylmer: Yeah.
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Trent Nikolic: 10 years ago, that was supercar fast, right? So your
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Trent Nikolic: other point for me has been the issue from the
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Trent Nikolic: outset. I’ve said a number of times at Drive and
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Trent Nikolic: in reviews that I think it’s nonsense that the government
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Trent Nikolic: is trying to incentivize the purchase of these electric vehicles
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Trent Nikolic: that already have waiting lists and that people seemingly want
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Trent Nikolic: in greater numbers than we can supply. I’ve always said
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Trent Nikolic: that the government should have been spending that money on
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Trent Nikolic: infrastructure. Now, as someone who, and I say this through
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Trent Nikolic: grinded teeth, has had the privilege of driving all over
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Trent Nikolic: the countryside in electric vehicles for the Drive TV show
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Trent Nikolic: that we do, I can tell you that the infrastructure
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Trent Nikolic: is not even remotely anywhere near it where it needs
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Trent Nikolic: to be for you, me, or anybody else, to easily
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Trent Nikolic: leave the city with an electric vehicle.
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Sean Aylmer: Stay with me, Trent, we’ll be back in a minute.
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Sean Aylmer: My guest this morning is Trent Nikolic, managing editor of drive. com.
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Sean Aylmer: au. Okay. While I’ve got you, Trent, there’s also been
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Sean Aylmer: a big push by ultra luxury brands into the SUV
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Sean Aylmer: market. Well, I’m not talking electric vehicles here, SUVs. Lamborghini,
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Sean Aylmer: Ferrari, they’re now making SUVs. I know you’ve recently test driven the
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Sean Aylmer: new Maserati SUV. What are they like?
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Trent Nikolic: You know what’s funny for me, and I remind people
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Trent Nikolic: of this all the time, we had an interview with
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Trent Nikolic: one of the, actually I think it was the boss
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Trent Nikolic: of Ferrari at the time, about SUVs because there’d been
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Trent Nikolic: rumors that Ferrari was going to build one. And he
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Trent Nikolic: said to us basically, ” I’ll be dead before Ferrari builds
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Trent Nikolic: an SUV.” Lo and behold, he’s very much alive and
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Trent Nikolic: Ferrari’s building an SUV. And the next time that we saw
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Trent Nikolic: him, I said, ” Pretty sure you told us you’d be
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Trent Nikolic: dead before they’d build an SUV, and I’m pretty sure
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Trent Nikolic: you’re still alive.” Look, in many ways, I think, I
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Trent Nikolic: reckon probably the BMW X5 was the first SUV in a
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Trent Nikolic: modern sense that drove and felt more like a car.
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Trent Nikolic: So I think you could say that BMW probably created
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Trent Nikolic: the segment. I think the standard setup so far has
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Trent Nikolic: been the Porsche Macan. So the Porsche Cayenne is the
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Trent Nikolic: larger SUV, but the Porsche Macan being smaller is a lot
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Trent Nikolic: faster, more nimble, drives more like a car. As you
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Trent Nikolic: mentioned, I recently test drove the Maserati Grecale Trofeo, which is
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Trent Nikolic: their fastest version of their medium SUV. And I believe
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Trent Nikolic: Porsche has got a fight on its hands to keep
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Trent Nikolic: the Macan above it. This thing is unbelievable.
Now, the
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Trent Nikolic: reason they’re so impressive, despite the fact that I’ve been
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Trent Nikolic: on record multiple times saying I wish the likes of
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Trent Nikolic: sports car manufacturer Porsche just kept building sports cars while
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Trent Nikolic: also understanding that the Cayenne saved Porsche, because without that,
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Trent Nikolic: the company wouldn’t have been economically viable. I get all
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Trent Nikolic: of that. But I wish sports car manufacturers just built
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Trent Nikolic: sports cars. But the reason these are so good is
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Trent Nikolic: because they are being designed and engineered by people who
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Trent Nikolic: build sports cars. So therefore, they’re delivering an SUV that it
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Trent Nikolic: can’t quite hide everything about it that makes it an
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Trent Nikolic: SUV, and that it is a bit bigger, it is
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Trent Nikolic: a bit heavier, it does have a higher center of
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Trent Nikolic: gravity.
But if I was to take you out on
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Trent Nikolic: a couple of hot laps of a racetrack with that
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Trent Nikolic: Maserati Grecale or Porsche Macan, you would be gobsmacked by how
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Trent Nikolic: fast they are and how capable they are and easy
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Trent Nikolic: they are to be driven quickly, given they’re something that
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Trent Nikolic: we would just drive to and from work in the city.
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Sean Aylmer: Okay. I mean, what you’re talking about… Because you’re a
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Sean Aylmer: serious car driver, obviously. For most people though, they do.
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Sean Aylmer: They just drive it around the city. But obviously the
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Sean Aylmer: demand for SUVs is there, because these guys wouldn’t be getting
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Sean Aylmer: into it if the demand wasn’t there.
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Trent Nikolic: Oh, spot on. Absolutely. And a country like Australia is
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Trent Nikolic: as SUV crazy as anywhere in the world. And even
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Trent Nikolic: the shoot I’m out on at the moment, I’m driving
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Trent Nikolic: a Nissan X- Trail, which is a medium SUV. So
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Trent Nikolic: RAV4 and that segment. And I said just in a
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Trent Nikolic: piece to camera about an hour ago that 20, 30 years
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Trent Nikolic: ago, you would’ve been driving out here in a Commodore
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Trent Nikolic: or a Falcon. They were the default primary Australian vehicles.
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Trent Nikolic: Now, Australians want SUVs. And the next step beyond that
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Trent Nikolic: is that people with more money want a luxury SUV.
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Trent Nikolic: So they want a high- end luxury, expensive SUV. And
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Trent Nikolic: that’s why Bentley has one, Aston Martin has one, Rolls
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Trent Nikolic: Royce has one.
Obviously, range Rover and Land Rover have
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Trent Nikolic: been doing it for years. But you mentioned Lamborghini and
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Trent Nikolic: Ferrari as well. And car manufacturers are not stupid. They
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Trent Nikolic: don’t build cars that they know nobody’s going to buy.
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Trent Nikolic: So they absolutely know that they can sell a lot
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Trent Nikolic: of these. And there’s no coincidence that, in the case
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Trent Nikolic: of Lamborghini, for argument’s sake, that released the Urus, their
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Trent Nikolic: SUV, it quite literally overnight becomes their biggest selling model
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Trent Nikolic: as soon as they release it.
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Sean Aylmer: Wow. Trent, I love talking to you about this stuff, but we
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Sean Aylmer: have run out of time. Thank you for talking to
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Sean Aylmer: FEAR & GREED.
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Trent Nikolic: My pleasure, mate. Thank you for having me.
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Sean Aylmer: That was Trent Nikolic, managing editor of drive. com. au.
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Sean Aylmer: This is the FEAR & GREED business interview. Join us every
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Sean Aylmer: morning for the full episode of FEAR & GREED, Australia’s best
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Sean Aylmer: business podcast. I’m Sean Aylmer. Have a great day.