5 Grand Fizz Launches Now! We Bought These Cheap Electric Cars To Compete In A Series Of Challenges
Welcome to the out ofspec five grand fizz. We have bought $5,000 electric cars and we are going on a series of challenges including a 500mile road trip to our new office which we’ll be announcing to you in this series in North Carolina. We have our own racetrack actually back where out of spec started. We’re heading back to the track and then we will be conducting a series of challenges at the track. The formula’s been done a thousand times before, not with cheap electric cars. So, I’ve invited some of my friends along to go on the outspec 5 grand fizz. And in this episode, we are going to introduce to you the cars, the challenges, our backup charging solution, which will be really fun, and well, a little bit of the chaoticness that you can expect over the upcoming series of videos. So, join us for the start of the outspec 5 grand fizz. you join me behind the camera. How’s it going?
Good. Good to be in Florida, except it’s a little hot. Okay, we are in sunny and warm basically Amelia Island, Florida. We’re right outside of where we’ve spent so much time actually filming videos for this channel and we are going on a road trip from essentially the Jacksonville airport to the out ofspec track. It’s exactly 500 m pretty much on the nose in three $5,000 electric cars. Then we’re going to be doing a bunch of stuff with them, racing them. But Jordan, before we get into what we’re going to do with them, I want to introduce the cars to everyone and the teams of people that will be running the cars. And before we even get into all of that, I’m standing in front of a brand new Tesla Cybertruck. The reason is we’ve covered Cybertruck on this channel extensively. We cover a lot of expensive cars on this channel extensively. I’m interested in them. Jordan, you and I love new technology, pushing the boundaries. But the reality is most people, many people either are unwilling or unable to spend north of $100,000 on an electric car. Now, Cybertruck does start at less than that, but I’m just saying in general, we cover a lot of expensive cars. So, we thought it would be fun to do something cheap and cheerful with some inexpensive electric cars and maybe just spark some interest in our viewers to say, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I don’t need to drop 60, 70, 80, 90 grand on the new car that we saw Kyle and Jordan reviewing. What do you think?
And this is a bit poetic because we’re just a few miles away from where you got your Cybert truck, isn’t it?
Yeah, we actually picked this Cybert truck up this morning at the same place where I picked up my old Cyber Truck at the Jacksonville Tesla Center. And I want to say a huge thank you to Tesla for actually supporting this whole 5 grand fizz situation by letting us borrow this truck,
right?
And so that’s really cool of them. They they’re they’ve been great to let us borrow cars from them. We haven’t always been like incredibly kind to Tesla, but I think we’ve been fair and I think they recognize that and that’s why they were cool enough to let us use their Tesla Cybertruck dual motor to tow our mobile recharging solution. Now, you can see some of the cars. Just ignore that. We’ll get over to it because this is our basically power source for the entire trip. It is a 300 kWh battery pack on wheels with four 80 to 120 kW DC charging ports on it and it comes from Spark charge. So again, we have great friends of the channel that I called up all pretty much last week and said, “Hey, we’ve got a last minute thing. I need a trailer. I need a truck to pull it and we’re going to do who knows what.” And Spark Charge said, “No problem. This was in New Jersey. It got sent down to the track. We towed it down with a Rivian yesterday and this is our mobile recharging solution towed by a Cybert truck. That’s awesome. You know what we can do, Jordan? We can I think that Cybertruck has free supercharging cuz it’s a Tesla fleet vehicle
and I can charge the trailer off the Cybert truck. That’s right.
That’s going to have the biggest supercharging bill ever. Anyway, would be fun. Uh the cars and the teams. I think it’s really important to do that. So, you’ve seen the i3 over here. How the hell did we get an i3 for less than $5,000? I will let Scott and William explain. Hi, I’m Scott and I’m here with William and this is our 2015 i3 with a small battery. Um, it’s also the cheapest car here, right?
Yeah. And no range extender.
And no range extender. Uh, it’s repoed and had the odometer rolled back, so feeling really good about it.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So, the BMI i3, I tried to get this one under $5,000 uh US because of course that’s the limit we set and uh that was kind of difficult actually uh in the US. So, we made some compromises with the roll bank and the repo and everything. But, um the BME i3 is very special to me because it’s the first car I drove and I own a i3 home in Norway. It’s a really really cool car. It’s fun to drive. It uh drives amazingly well. I think it will do pretty great on track. I hope so at least. And uh it’s uh quite efficient and uh yeah, just has a very small battery.
And the AC runs cold. Yeah. And the AC works,
but
that’s a common failure point of the Bambi R3. So, we are very happy that the AC currently runs. Okay. We also have the 2016 Chevy Spark EV, which is, I think, pretty cool. Uh, nice bright blue color and super torque. 327 pound- feet of torque.
Jordan, didn’t the earlier ones have 400 lb feet of torque?
Yes. Uh, they did deto them, I think, because I don’t know who complains about too much torque.
Too many burnouts. This thing already roast the tires.
Yeah. And what’s funny, it’s a staggered setup, but the bigger tires are in the rear. You’d think they’d do the opposite, which we may move around for track. So on the track, you may put the the juicier ones on the front.
Right. Exactly. Burn the front tires up on the way there, then switch them. But this thing also a small battery. That’s the theme of today. Relatively small batteries. Um less than 20 kow usable, but a big buffer on them. So, and it’s liquid thermal management and a great charging curve,
right? We should just be able to hold flat. Not a big number, but also not a big battery. So, it’s
like 45 kW to 80% almost. It’s pretty good. It’s It’s 20 minutes to 80, which is like better than a lot of cars today.
There is a problem.
Yes,
the the sparks are known to not work with many charging stations.
I’m worried about interoperability. Um the older CCS standards that even then doesn’t seem to be super I I don’t know.
Yeah, it uses an old DSP spec for communication versus ISO and some chargers don’t support it at all. And this is technically out of spec. That’s uh but GM won’t fix it. Well, and I mean GM didn’t even want to build this car. This is a compliance car built in South Korea.
Yeah. Which is kind of cool, but uh yeah, it’s I don’t know. We’ll see if we even make it. I’m a little worried. We We’re lightweight, 2,800 lb. Um 82 mi of range when new, which is the same as the i3, by the way. So, about the same original EPA range. Some degradation, but being liquid cooled, we shouldn’t I’m I’m hoping the battery is in decent shape.
I’ve always been kind of intrigued by the Sparks. I think we found a great example. You spent $5,000 on yours. And we should also say Drew is with you. He’s working inside of
Yeah. He’s working inside. He He’s doing whatever he can to be here. So, you all know Drew from every previous race.
Yeah. Cannonball record holder.
He He just keeps winning races. And so, that’s why he’s on my team today.
Okay. So, I think on the road trip, you might have some issues getting this thing to charge, but I think if you can get it to charge and you get it on track, you’ve kind of got the pocket rocket here, dude.
Yeah. This thing rips. Literally. We spun a lot of tires getting here. We drove what was it? 25 miles to get here from the hotel.
Yeah, we’re less than half battery now.
Oh my god. So, granted, Drew was driving.
Oh, okay. So, you have 500 miles
to go just to start the challenges.
Yeah, the one big challenge is my concern.
The road trip
track’s going to be awesome if we get there.
We have brought along a beauty,
a 2012 Nissan Leaf, which has no liquid thermal management. We’ve got a fan.
We’ve got a fan.
And And you might think we’re done,
but we’re not. We’re not. We’ve painted it in a giant American flag, which we’ll show you. H because it’s Fourth of July.
Yeah, why not?
We’re celebrating America with our Japanese built Nissan Leaf. The later ones were built in the US. I thought this one was, but it’s built in Japan. Um, this is our 2012 Nissan Leaf back here.
Yeah. And then we have got something else. If you take the long stroll with us all the way up to the front of the car, this is also our 2012 Nissan Leaf, which is parked in another zip code because it’s a limo. So, we found this on Facebook Marketplace.
You found this?
I found it. $3,000.
Steal.
But because the cap was five grand, we have done some modifications beyond the limo. This was a Las Vegas stripper limo.
Yep. I don’t want to really touch the seats in there. But what kind of stripper rides around in a Nissan Leaf limo?
The ones that take pennies. Say no more. There is more though because not only does this Nissan Leaf have a battery pack in it, we have a lot of stuff in here we’ve got to transfer over to the Cybert truck. But if you take a look, there’s this giant white box in there. That is another Nissan Leaf battery, which means we have a dual battery limousine Nissan Leaf painted in a giant American flag thanks to you.
Yep. Uh, free labor, $100 paint job.
There we go. So, the whole budget for this car, we only spent $3 grand on the car, but the battery was $600. We found that online somewhere. And Alex wired it together and charged me, I don’t know, quite a bit in labor. Thanks, dude. He’s here with us. We’ll get into that. Uh, but anyway, we’re into this for exactly five grand. Perfect.
Not a penny over, not a penny under. So, this is, I think, going to suck for two reasons. One, no liquid thermal management. Y,
we have a huge disadvantage. So, on the road trip, we might actually have pretty good range. I’m thinking 80 miles.
Let’s hope,
fingers crossed, we can get 80 mi with the dual battery cuz they’re both degraded. Um, and then we have no performance because we’ve added all this weight. Yeah. So,
so we’re going to suck on the road trip and suck on track.
Yep.
That’s not to say we’re going to lose the whole 5 grand fizz though.
Yeah. We are better off than the Spark though cuz we can use the trailer.
Oh, yeah. The Spark because this thing won’t charge on a lot of things. They don’t have the option to use the mobile recharging trailer. We’ll get into all the rules. We’re going to try some more things, but we can’t get that to charge on the trailer. You might also think the Leaf has Cado, which it does, but A Toz sent us this awesome CCS to chatamo adapter, which I did not include in the $5,000 price,
but any team can use it, but we’re the only team that has Chattamo adapters. That was not included. That’s fine. They sent us that, so thanks. Didn’t cost us anything. Um, Timman, we are probably going to lose. This is a whole point system we’ll explain to everyone. We’re probably going to lose each category. However, we can still win if the viewers help.
Yes. by the best way possible, buying the best teams merch.
So, each team has their own merch on shop.specstudios.com. This is our merch. Jordan, if you can zoom in on that, it says, “Are you there yet?” And it’s, you know, because it’s so long. The front person’s there. The rear person’s not. Each team has their own merch. For every dollar that every person supports the team’s merch, um, you know, that’s a point,
right?
And so, while we probably will lose everywhere, if you buy our merch, we’ll win. If you hate us looking merch, too.
Yeah, I think so. But if you hate us and want to support the Spark, which is all Spark, no bite, apparently.
Yeah, that’s fine. They might just They’re down 1,000 points anyways cuz they’re not going to make it to
They might not make it to the track. We’ll see. And of course, the i3 team has their merch. We’re going to show everyone the merch, but uh this is the first time we’ve really ever gone into merch. A lot of our viewers have asked us to do it. I thought this would be fun and a collaborative way to buy our stickers and t-shirts with our cars logos. And if you have until Saturday, till the end of this challenge, which we’re posting pretty much in real time to get your orders in and to get counted towards the final score. So, I’m really excited about it. And um we’ve got merch for sale. So, go to the website, support your favorite team. Yeah, you can buy everyone’s merch if you want to as well. Just ours. Buy five of our t-shirts. Well, you know, the merch also will help to go to fund this event. So, uh even if you want to support everyone equally, just buy one of everything or 10 of everything. I got to call out of spec Dave and have him buy a thousand t-shirts. That’s how we win. No, we’re not going to cheat like that. So, let’s run through all the merch, then we’ll run through all of the um programs ahead and the point system. It’s really windy out here. Yep.
But we’re in beautiful Florida and we’ve got to be in North Carolina tomorrow evening.
Okay. First of all, I designed all of our merch, so you should definitely support our team. Go ahead and flip around. It says, “I believe we will make it eventually.” Play on words. Very witty, very funny. Comes in all sizes.
For the spark, we have all spark, no bite, which is kind of a dog pun for you dog lovers. And u now that I think about it, kind of makes us sound weak. Yeah, it’s not a good one. Actually, your guard dog is all bark, no bite. That’s not not a good sign.
But you’re all spark, so you can zap them.
Yeah. So, I think uh
yeah, a lot of Spark puns to come. We should also mention the the t-shirts on the website are way nicer than these,
right? Yes, these were these are quick mockups we had to get just to get the challenge done. Uh I put some slightly nicer shirts on the website. Again, shop.specstudios.com. Link right here. And uh stickers as well. If you don’t want to do a shirt or if you want to do a shirt and sticker to really support your teams
or a thousand stickers
or a thousand, you could sticker bomb your car, which would be really cool. Then your car would look kind of like this if you buy enough Leaf stickers.
I just can’t wait to show everyone drifting the Nissan Leaf Limo. I I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m going to put some trays under the rear tires.
Keep that handbrake pulled. Welcome to the inside of the support truck with uh Alex from Out of Spec Renew Driving. Thank you, Alex, for supporting everyone but myself cuz the Smart can’t use the trailer,
but can charge off the Nema 1450.
I can charge off the Cybertruck with my big 16 amp charger.
Yeah, you only get three three and a half kilowatts or so out of that thing.
Yeah. And Dom is also here supporting
batteries included.
Hi there. Batteries included. And Kyle, what happened to your face?
Okay. Well, driving an electric car can be pretty dangerous. And I was just plugging in my Nissan Leaf and uh tripped over the cable last night and face first into the ground, into the pavement.
That was intense.
They were You were there for it?
Yeah, I was there. I was like, “Holy crap, that was so fast. No one could have caught you.” And you were like, “Wow, that was like slow-mo.”
Slow-mo. I was like, “Whoa.” Well, I thought my knee hit hurt first and my hands got caught up in the cord, too. So, I couldn’t like reach out to get myself and then it was just a
I can’t believe how much charging you’ve done in the last 7 years or 8 years, whatever it’s been, and haven’t done that.
Yeah.
Think about how many You’ve charged more than the average person will in their lifetime,
probably.
And you’ve never once tripped.
Well, my Nissan Leaf is out for revenge. I can tell that thing’s either going to end up on fire or split in half or both.
Right. Those are the three possible outcomes. So that’s for the viewers at home wondering why I’m all messed up. I just keep finding new stuff like all over. But it’s all good. You know, charging’s dangerous.
I thought it was maybe from a sketchy deal picking up the leaf. You like, you know, the guy tried to
No, at least from a viewer. He was really cool. Uh so I want to run through the point system roughly for everyone. We’re going to calculate at the end and run through everything. But um you know, we’re going to have a series of challenges across the outspec channels. So the road trip we’re going to leave, you know, basically the next morning. We’re prepping today out of Jacksonville. That’s going to be on out ofspec motoring and that will be a two-part series on out of spec motoring. I can’t wait to share that for you. We have out of spec renew where Alex has a video on what he did to put the double battery in the Leaf. We have batteries included where you’re going to hear Dominic tell tell the behind the scenes outcome of everything. We have Drew from Martian Wheels uh over here trying to ask for some loose change and we buy buy some Martian wheels. maybe he wouldn’t have to ask for a loose change. And um anyway, yeah, so this channel, motoring, aspect renewed, those are the three main uh channels you’ll find this on. So, okay, here’s the point system. We’ll calculate it all at the end, but essentially, you got a point for every dollar you spent less than five grand. You lost a point for every dollar you spent over five grand. So, there’s a money monetary value. The merch is every dollar someone spends on merch goes to the team. Yeah. We don’t make all the money. Like if you buy a $30 t-shirt, we’re not making 30 bucks because it’s got to get printed. It’s got to get shipped, but uh we’re calculating it off of the total revenue of the merch sales. So that’s that’s that. Then we also have some prizes for the road trip portion, such as who gets to the track first, who gets to the track last, who can’t make it to the track. That’s a deduction. Everyone gets one free charge off the Cybert truck or trailer. And if you need more support charges, cuz again, we’re going up I95, 500 miles, and these cars, some of them don’t even have 50 mi of range, Jordan.
Oh, this is going to be terrible.
It’s going to be like 10 charging stops minimum. You probably won’t be able to make it. So, we have to deduct points for every time you got a charge, and it’s quite a bit, quite hefty. It’s $500 for every emergency charge. 500 points,
right,
off the total. And um yeah, there’s there’s a bunch of provisions which we’ll go into in the road trip. After the road trip challenges, we will then do a bunch at the racetrack. For example, who has the fastest lap time and we’re going to do an endurance race with all the cars as well. Two sets of them. One set of drivers against the other set of drivers. And that’s going to be instead of, you know, like a typical endurance race is 24 hours of lemon or 24 hours of Nurburg Ring, we’re doing 24 minutes of sadness or whatever we’re going to call it. So, we have a 24minut two 24-minute endurance racing, uh, which you can earn points for winning or not. You also lose a ton of points if you don’t get the car across the finish line cuz you’ve got to do the endurance race fast, but also you can’t run out of battery.
So, that’s going to be really interesting. It’s going to be hot as hell on track. Things are going to be overheating. It’s going to be hilarious. We have an acceleration test, a moose test, a braking test, and a bunch of other challenges, including range and charging, all the typical stuff. So, by the end of it, by Saturday, we will have the final tally and a winner. It’s anyone’s game at the moment. I think everyone’s taking a nice different approach. The i3 is consistent, though. That seems like maybe the what I’ve got my money on, but I’m hoping the Leaf pulls through with the merch sales cuz that’s the only way we’re going to get this thing done. But, Alex, nice job putting another battery in it.
Yeah, for sure. It’s a it’s a sketchy modification to say the least, but it’s uh hopefully it works out well. Yeah. Do you think we’re going to catch on fire?
No, I think it’s pretty safe, but uh Yeah, definitely not the proper way to go about that sort of modification.
Yeah. And and they’re just wired together in parallel, right? Right. The two packs are just connected together in parallel. The battery management system on the secondary battery is is has remained intact and it’s connected to a 12volt battery so it can continue to balance and stuff. Uh but yeah, the two packs are just connected in parallel with each other. Okay. Well, um, we have an exit strategy if we do catch on fire. Uh, well, that’s that’s the five grand fizz. I mean, it’s so cool that Tesla’s supporting us by letting us borrow this truck for the week or even longer. I don’t know. They haven’t said when they want it back. We’ve run into this with them before,
right? We just had to buy one. So,
yeah. Don’t don’t tell them anything. I I love having the Cybert truck back. I really do miss my truck. And then, uh, Spark Charge for letting us have the support trailer. That’s awesome. We’re going to make some videos with that as well. And then the three cars which took a lot of logistics, Danny for hauling them all the way out here. All the cars came from pretty much the west coastish. I the i3 was Chicago I guess. But with those had to go all around the country to get here and it really wouldn’t be possible without our viewers and our sponsors for making stuff like this happen. So that’s the five grand fizz. I’ve got to get some stuff to put on my face and you guys will see a bunch of videos rolling on the channel very soon. So shop.specstudios.com outspecstudios.com, sparkcharge.com, I guess if you need mobile recharging solutions, and three very cheap electric cars. Doing a bunch on the East Coast over the next week. If you see us on the road, say, “Hey, if you see us at a charging station, please help us. We need it.” And we’ll see you all on another one again soon. Bye-bye.
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