WSIB: Ladies + EVs Edition!

• Carolyn – has been considering a new car, but cost is a factor; she even went and test drove a Tesla recently – thoughts?
• Let’s address the elephant in the room – is anyone here suffering from range anxiety? Is this even a “thing” anymore?
• Living with EVs today; what did you choose and why? What are the positives and negatives of owning an EV (pun intended)
• Let’s talk about “the car buying experience” in general. Do you prefer going to a dealership or car show or some other venue to check out new cars? Are dealerships still relevant? Should we move to online ordering?
• Kat – building her own supercar – how tough is the decision right now, petrol, hybrid or EV. Which direction are you taking the JZD in? 
• Cost is always a huge concern… Thoughts on what EVs are going for? Are they priced appropriately? Should they be cheaper?
• TESLA vs The World 
• Thoughts on EVs – which one, why?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports.

Oh, the dreaded car buying experience. No matter who you are, it’s probably a safe bet. This isn’t your ideal way to spend your weekend in and out of dealerships. The hassle haggling the decision making. When confronted with car buying and stays modern world, there are just so many more choices besides make model, and what color do I want?

Now it’s which power source do I want? To what level does it drive itself? Which creature comforts and gizmos are available for subscription? Am I Apple or Android? Even before so many choices, men and women have traditionally approached this experience differently for multitude of reasons. Some spanning use cases from the mom van to car enthusiasts.

Today we’ll be diving deeper into what should I buy from a lady’s point of view, focusing on the new car buyer versus car collector demographic, and even more specifically, EV buyers. Our group of extraordinary Petrolhead panelists range from [00:01:00] veteran car reviewers to prospective buyers, as well as ladies already living with EVs.

We’re here to explore what to look for in today’s EV car market. Joining us tonight, we have some returning break fix guests, please welcome Sarah Lacey from a Girls’ Guide to Cars, Carolyn Ford from the Tech Transforms podcast, Gran Touring Motorsports Club members Emily Fox and Chrissy k Crutchfield, as well as special guest Kat DeLorean from D N G Motors.

Welcome to the show ladies. Hello for having me. Hello. Thank you. Hi, we’re here to talk cars. Where are we in our car journeys? So I’ll start. I am not an EV car owner. That’s what our main focus of discussing is Tonight. I am, in fact, not even a new car owner. All my cars are aged, if you will. for historic tags, right?

Yeah, I, I got one on historics already. Another I could put on historics this year and my daily [00:02:00] driver can’t put on historics, but it would be ready in two years. So, , I’m right there with you. I don’t have an EV or any real new cars. I think my newest car is 2017. I’ve owned a hybrid before, but all of my cars are internal combes.

I own many cars. I actually own a new car. I own a 2022 XC 40 recharge, smaller size S U v, and I freaking love this thing. This is my daily driver and I also have a 1967 M G B G T, which has the interior pulled apart. Cause I’m currently in the middle of year two of redoing it. But, Buying the suv. EV was perfect for me.

I’ve got two girls I need to carry all their soccer stuff around and all their Girl Scout stuff everywhere, all over Maryland, every weekend, and it works perfectly for that. Going to the grocery store, whatever it is that I need, it does take a while to fill up. But for a daily task car and you’re only going maybe an hour and hour and a half out of your regular charting area, it’s not too bad.

So Emily’s winning [00:03:00] our oldest car prize. I was winning until Emily spoke. So , Chrissy, we have the Volkswagen ID four first edition and we just got a new Toyota tro, but obviously that’s off topic and we have two others, mostly older cars. I’m excited to share. and make suggestions even because there’s a few that I’m actually interested in.

I am not a new car owner either. My car is a 2016, but I did buy my son for his first car, a hybrid. He’s still driving it right now. It’s a 2005. I’ll have to ask him how many miles. I feel like it had almost 150,000 miles on it when I bought. and I live in Utah. We just got dumped on with snow, like 15 inches.

Like he gets to where he needs to go in this little Prius, which always shocks me. That was my hybrid, was a Prius. I loved it. It was my fun little clown car. . Yeah, he loves his And I drive a CRV because I do a lot of outdoor things and like I’m going up the mountain to [00:04:00] ski, so I need room for my skis and everything.

And I’m always worried that I won’t be able to get to where I need to go. But he doesn’t seem to have a problem. He snowboards, he’s taken it up into the mountains. So I’m very interested in a pure ev and I’m lazy and impatient and I don’t wanna have to wait at a charging station for 45 minutes. So I can’t wait to have you guys help me get over these big hesitations for an ev cuz I want one.

Sarah round us off. Okay. I have a 2021 Tesla Model Y, and I have a 1982 Porsche nine 11 sc. Oh. As we dive into this outdoors, . You wanna take it into the mountains, you wanna load your skier snowboard gear in it. You’re lazy, you’re impatient, you don’t wanna wait three hours at the charger station. . Well, and I go to the desert.

So my runs like to the desert from my house. It’s a three, three and a half [00:05:00] hour ride. I’m gonna have to stop and charge halfway there. Right. And how long is that gonna take Emily? Uh, a while depending on what kind of car you buy . And depends on what year it is. Cause if they actually do anything about the EV charging grid across the continental United States, it might get a little bit better, but right now it’ll take you a really long time if you can find a charger on your way there and back.

Exactly. So ladies and gentlemen listening, we are quickly devolving into what should I not buy And that’s an EV car. Scott has something to say here though. Talk me into it. You’re shaking your head No, I’m shaking my head because if you brought me on here to convince you to get an ev, he called the wrong guest

No, I think I wanted you to convince me because I wanna be a good global citizen and do my part. My question is, is with all of these requirements and concerns and your experience thus far with a car that was [00:06:00] purchased with 150,000 miles on it, why are you going EV and not hybrid? That’s what I wanna ask you guys.

Like right now, I just heard a story on NPR that totally trapped all over the hybrids and said, we gotta do better and go into the full ev. But I agree with you like the hybrid seems like a really good way to go. It’s not for everyone. There’s a lot of things that go into EVs being greener and there’s a a lot of things that are going into what’s happening with EVs right now.

While you may want to get an ev, eventually that’ll meet all the needs that you have. You’re not necessarily a bad global citizen for going hybrid because an EV right now doesn’t meet your needs. Also, in order for the electricity that’s charging your EV to be greener, it has to come from a greener. Than the gasoline or in some way.

That was another big question of mine. How do you know that what you’re charging with isn’t doing just as much damage? If you want to be a good [00:07:00] steward of the environment, work to offset the carbon you use until you can get something that can be a fully neutral vehicle. Don’t try and change your entire life just because you want something that everybody else will look at you and go, Ooh, look, she’s doing great for the environment,

That’s a great way of putting it. Well, and I think that that speaks to the idea that there’s a discrepancy between what is available and what people can manage in their daily lives, and there is something to wanting to speak via your wallet. You know, I’m going to purchase an EV because I know that maybe everything I want in an EV isn’t there yet, but I want to push that forward by purchasing an EV or a plug-in hybrid at this stage of the game.

There’s a lot of gray area to consider for this, and I do think that your feelings are valid. That yes, you do wanna be a global citizen and recognizing that it’s not maybe a hundred percent the right choice for you right now, but it [00:08:00] doesn’t mean that you can’t also find something that bridges that gap day-to-day.

We’re just seeing so many more models. We’re seeing so many improvements in infrastructure, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Charging stations are tough. Understanding and being a consumer in this environment is tough. We all have to become electrical engineers. All of a sudden. It’s a very early time in the life of EVs.

So you have to be patient with yourself and unfortunately, you have to do a lot of homework. I don’t want you to, uh, lazy shame yourself. It’s. A lot of information to take on right now. Yep. I have a question about the environmental impact of EVs. So I buy an ev, let’s say I buy, I think it was a Chevy Bolt, which is about $20,000.

And in eight years with an internal combustion engine, I would’ve turned around and sold that car or a hybrid with 150,000 miles on it, and it would’ve continued to live on. But in eight [00:09:00] years, it’s gonna cost somebody who spent $20,000 on a car, $15,000 to replace the battery. So you’re creating a bunch of throwaway cars.

While harvesting all of the lithium from our planet and these toxic chemicals that create desna palm when they catch on fire to save the planet. See, you’re who I needed to talk to. I feel better about myself, . I’m telling you that I am not the person to convince you to buy an ev. Also, our electric infrastructure can support our air conditioning.

Do you guys know what happens when you bring three electric Cadillacs into a dealership at once? You can’t plug them all in, or the whole dealership goes dark. It’s not just the charging stations. We don’t currently make enough electricity to support every single person plugging car into their house. . So we can’t push EVs for every single person when there are other options that we had available to us to put our research towards, and they’re not available for us to buy now.

And I have feelings about the fact that they’re going to [00:10:00] be delaying them because I feel like too, that is yet another piece that’s moving along. You know, it feels like a snails pace for a lot of us. But when I was at the Chicago Auto Show and there was a woman there from ConEd speaking, and she was talking about how, what we have to remember is that every single person isn’t gonna plug in every single night.

and crash the grid. Granted, she’s in the Midwest, she’s not speaking from the standpoint of someone in California where you have to manage things like brownouts and whatever, and one of our writers on our website, she just bought this really cool solar generator. In the event of a brownout, she’s still gonna have the option to charge her car from the solar generator.

So it’s yet another piece that we’re seeing a lot of development taking place. I think it’s important that we recognize too, that that kind of information and those things change on a month-to-month basis. Things are changing, they’re figuring things [00:11:00] out. We still don’t really know for sure how recycling these batteries is gonna work, and we don’t know for sure what that cost ultimately will be.

We’re facing a massive, massive phase of early adoption. We just really haven’t seen that on this scale. So it’s hard to know. We’re not creating throwaway batteries, we’re creating throwaway entire cars. That’s my problem with it. It’d be one thing if we were just causing an issue with recycling the batteries, but it’s causing the cars to be something we just toss away.

I don’t know how much people on this call know. There is an existence, a hydrogen peroxide engine that was developed and quashed because of EV policymakers. So again, I have very, very strong feelings about what’s happened in the EV world. , you mentioned people probably aren’t gonna plug in every night. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

I plug in every night. I would. I do. I don’t have to. . But I do, I have to, you know, if they’re pushing the trend toward, you know, [00:12:00] everyone’s no longer building internal combustion engines by the year last year, you know, and it’s ev or die, you’re gonna have multi ev cars in your home. Someone’s gonna be plugging in every night.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. , you’re right, the grids can’t handle it. We’ve seen this in the last couple years, the huge outages in Texas where everyone was freezing to death because the grids couldn’t support it, and they’re their own special case of owning their own infrastructure and electricity. So we won’t go there.

But nonetheless, there’s always brownouts and blackouts in California and this, that and the other. That is a big problem. And Kat, to your point, what’s always seems to be missed is the life cycle analysis, which is literally from the very beginning of the smallest component that goes into the car to what happens when it is put in the crusher at the landfill and put it back into the earth.

I still haven’t gotten a good read on what that is versus your traditional ice engine car. I mean, a lot of the components are the same. You’ve got the frames and the body panels and all that, but you just have so many more [00:13:00] electronics that are specialized that we know aren’t. Great to just throw out into the oceans, right?

I’m not necessarily convinced either that EV is like the a hundred percent way that the future should go. I think there’s room for them and I think they have great use cases and there are great times they should be applied, but just like your finances, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You need to diversify.

So there’s still room for our hybrids, even more than regular ice engines, and there’s also homes for EVs as well as hydrogen engines. Hopefully, if they can, you know, solve the impending hindenberg issues and whatever other, you know, technology, Dutch are trying to put solar panels on the tops of cars and you can run ’em for an hour a day or whatever.

There’s all this going on. It’s a complicated answer. It is, but you bring up a really interesting point that I don’t think a lot of people actually think about when they’re talking about what kind of car should I buy is the ability of you to maintain or work on your own car. We’ve had gas powered motors for such [00:14:00] a long period of time, decades upon decades, culturally, in that era of growing up, there was a reasonable expectation that you as the owner of your car, were responsible for the maintenance of it.

And it wasn’t until you got mass market production of all of these kinds of vehicles in like the 1980s and the 1990s that you started to see this as cat put it, this throwaway kind of mentality associated with cars. You go to a specialty shop to do a repair on it, you’re not necessarily doing it yourself.

You’re not being taught those skills. The next natural iteration of that, as you modernize engines to be more efficient, to do more, to do amazing things of whatever anybody wants it to be in saving the environment. You’re taking away the ability to be self-maintaining on your own vehicle. You’re abstracting that and you see that today in a lot of technology concepts.

Going from writing on something with a paper, pen and pad to actually scribbling on your iPad with it, and how many G layers of abstraction and tactile difference you’re losing over the course of that. . And when that happens, there is no [00:15:00] lifecycle assessment because we’ve not been around long enough to say that there’s somebody that can actually work on EVs and recycle those batteries and reuse those parts and rebuild those parking sensors by themselves.

And then when it’s an uphill battle, because there’s, for years now, actually, I think there’s been groups that are trying to advocate the anti right to work. You’re not allowed to work on your car. You have to go bring it to a service station or auto dealer, whoever. It’s, I hate that. I hate that so much.

That’s terrible that I hope that never passes. That’s actually something that we’re working very, very hard on in the design of our car. I love working on my car for many reasons. My car is one of the best engineered cars ever. That C seven is just beautiful. And the weight distribution, it’s an incredible car.

I can’t get in there. It’s too. , my husband and I have been talking about this loss of a des desire. 50% of kids today, they don’t want cars. And we believe part of it is because you have that loss of tactile relationship with it. Yes, yes. You can no longer work on your cars. And so one of the [00:16:00] questions I said to my technology engineers was, can we Minecraft the car or Linux the car, make it open source, take it to somewhere where we can Yes.

Open source right. Start to actually work on our cars because not only do you have this battery obsolescence, you have planned obsolescence in the technology. You’re not gonna have these cars supported their computers on wheels. And so what happens when Windows goes end of life and it’s no longer supported, you can’t get updates And the what’s gonna happen to these cars?

There is a throwaway. Whereas you can still buy a 64 G T o today, there is an absolute death. On these cars where they will not be able to be revived no matter what you do. Now with hybrids, you have an interesting situation where if this hybrid dies, you can actually rebuild it with a mid engine internal combustion engine.

So there is an opportunity for at least some of these cars to be repurposed. And I do believe that if you start to think about that in these [00:17:00] EV cars, okay, when it dies, it’s going to die. How do we create something that can be turned into something? Is the throwaway thing true with all EVs or just the lower end, like Sarah’s Tesla, is it gonna die in eight years?

You’re gonna have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a new battery . The question becomes, do you at the end of that, however many 120,000 miles, do you wanna spend 10 or $15,000 to get a new battery pack? Or do you want to let the car go and get something different or a new one? Whatever you decide you wanna do at that point.

But one of the things I wanted to touch on about that was that there’s a debate going on right now too about technology and cars, and this goes a little bit beyond the EV discussion, but in Germany, B M W is creating. Subscription based features. Yes. Mercedes too? Yes. Swamp [00:18:00] boo . What do you mean subscription based features like, like radio.

You wanna go faster, you pay, you pay a monthly fee for your heated seats. What? No. Uhhuh. . That’s just one example. I’m curious what the real return on investment of that is because the infrastructure to support that has to be massive. Are you really making that much money? I guess? I don’t know. People have gotten so hooked in the last, I don’t know how many years you wanna call it, with this pay to play and the younger generation is like addicted to that because all your video gaming systems, it’s no longer I go to the store and.

Spent 50 bucks and I have a game and I have the entire game. No, it’s, I spend 50 bucks and I have a quarter of the game, and then like every two months I have to pay $25. I can level up to get like the next 10 minutes of playtime. And then on top of that, like dollar 99 here and a dollar 99 there. And the same thing on your cell phone’s like Candy [00:19:00] Crush and all this stuff.

And it’s like they keep tempting you and teasing you with these little bits of features that you want for, you know, little amounts of money. And as you do it little by little, it desensitizes you. And then they’re shifting that now into cars. It’s like, yeah, you want heated seats, it’s an extra 9 99 a month you want to turn your radio on.

And actually here, channel broadcast another $10 a month and so on. It’s, it’s ridiculous. Yeah, kind of doing this one to ourselves cuz we’re allowing it to happen. Even with streaming tv, it’s like we all complained about cable tv. We, I don’t have what I wanna watch. I wish I could ala cart it and now we can ala carte and there’s 15 streaming services and Amen.

We’re unhappy again. I wanna go back to what something you said though about the gamification. I’m labeling it now. You didn’t say gamification, but you put something in my head about the kids working on their cars. Like I totally had an Ironman vision of them able to like really. Are you going there?

Yeah. It’s something that I would like other people to adopt. That’s part of our whole model is yes, [00:20:00] I want kids to be able to interact with their cars again, and I’m not necessarily going to be able to get them to be able to interact with it the way I could. So instead of trying to give them the experience I had, how can I take it to their level?

And if you look at how profoundly successful anything open source is that allows them to get creative. That’s the whole thing. Everybody wants to get back to using their hands. I not only wanna create something that they can interact with that they could 3D print parts for, and that they can program their own little updates for whatever.

I wanna create something that will last forever. I want them to have a lifetime warranty on their car and I’ll just build it into the price of the car and put away a savings that goes with it. Sell it and then it goes away, whatever. But we have this cost of maintenance, this cost of ownership that is stifling.

Now, when my dad built cars, the thing that drove him crazy was the two biggest expenses you have in your life are your house and your car. Why are we paying for the second one forever? Literally forever. Soon as you [00:21:00] finish paying for the first car, either you are paying as much as a new car payment to maintain it, or you have to go buy a new car cuz it just died for whatever reason.

Why aren’t we investing a little bit more in making something people can actually own and afford to own? My dad was a car guy too, and he always said that it was designed that way on purpose. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be that way. That’s exactly why my father quit. General Motors . He, he wrote a whole book about it got him in a lot of trouble.

there’s no money in keeping cars. Yeah. He said, why are you doing this? I don’t agree and testified before Congress about it. It’s a big thing that has been in existence forever and it’s time that we do something to stop the bleeding. And it terrifies me that we’re not thinking about the fact that we might be creating fast fashion with cars by not thinking about the life cycle of these EVs.

I’m not anti ev, I’m anti. Rushing ev all overnight without actually thinking about the implications of our [00:22:00] future. That’s all. Yeah. I can’t wait to see the pendulum swing back to, oh, we’re doing research on ice engines again, , . Cause this isn’t panning out how we thought, like the return of vinyl. What people don’t understand about internal combustion engines is its internal combustion That’s not internal oil burning engine.

Yeah. You can do a lot of different things. What if you use some of the new carbon capture te. There’s carbon capture technology that now prints carbon fiber, stick it on your tailpipe and spit out carbon fiber and print a new car. I mean, like, there’s so many different things. You’re blowing my mind because now I’m sorry.

I’m thinking about back to the future. , your dad’s car and the professor put garbage in it. Go. Okay. So did you know that there’s an acid that if you put a an aluminum can in it, it turns to hydrogen gas? And I literally said to my husband, there you go, Mr. Fusion. Build it. Make it happen. . . But that’s what we should be looking at is alternatives, not just.

The one we should [00:23:00] be looking at, what are different fuels that we could use that could maybe balance things out? Also, my father, when he was building his car, he was investing research into a sterling engine, which is fascinating. Are we looking into flywheel and kinetic engine, gyroscopic technology, different batteries, all sorts of different, right, which that brings up a question for me.

Here’s gonna show my full idiocy with the hybrids. Why can’t the kinetic energy of just moving recharge. The engine. Why do we even have to have a hybrid? That’s a fascinating, wonderful, amazing question. It has a lot to do with the energy required to actually push the car forward in different situations.

A great way to answer that question would be to drive with your son and his Prius, because they have a screen that I was obsessed with. If I could watch all the time, you can coast and watch it recharge your battery. Yeah. We haven’t quite gotten to the point yet where we can [00:24:00] generate enough power, but we’ve done a lot of research into that, and that’s one of the things that my father and I were developing an engine that was based on the Sterling Engine concept that would go from New York to California on the teaspoon of gas.

It was hybrid, but it would only use a teaspoon of gas if you never shut the car actually off. It’s. . Up until this point, it was a lot more difficult because in order to do a lot of that, the computer efficiency, the programming, the timing has to be so specific and powerful that we hadn’t quite gotten there yet.

But technology has gotten to a point of where we’re probably gonna see some of those engines coming in the near future if we don’t spend all of our research dollars on ev. See, I thought you were just gonna say, because Carolyn’s science, that’s why you can’t do it. So No, you can, you can do it. That’s awesome.

I would be remiss if I didn’t speak for Eric since he’s being very good about not, uh, interjecting. He’s dying. Alternators on all the wheels. . Yes. Yes. [00:25:00] That’s actually part of what is in the design of the engine we were working on, because that’s important is the four independent alternators in the wheels generate the power.

Alright, so let’s circle back a moment. So Carolyn, how familiar are you with all the different brands of EVs out there on the market right now? You know of Tesla, you know the hybrid, that’s the Prius, but full electric vehicles. Do you have knowledge around what your options are when you’re trying to make this decision?

Not really. I mean, I Googled, I test drove a Tesla. It was really pretty. I liked the. I did not like when I would take my foot off the gas. It was like stepping on the brake. Didn’t like that. Oh, that’s the valve . Okay. Well I guess you get used to it, Emily. It really, I was like, wait, what’s happening? It was fun to drive and I drove a genesis, but I forget who, what’s, what kind of car is that?

That’s the brand gunk. It’s the luxury Yama Hyundai. Correct. There you go. Okay. Also fun and very pretty. I [00:26:00] liked the little ball thing in the middle. That’s about all I know. There’s a lot , the year 2023 available, and I didn’t fact check this number, but at least have a list of 43 different, I’m not surprised, EVs that are available and it spans and probably you don’t want a GMC Hummer, but nonetheless, there’s Hummer, there’s Ford, there’s Rivian.

Those are gonna be pickup trucks. You’ve got various different Audi models. You’ve got the out outrageously priced Porsches. You’ve got Jaguar has an entry Volvo. Emily has one. Cadillacs, BMWs, you know of the Genesis already. Tesla, of course the Nissans, cuz Nissan Leaf has been around for a while. Right?

They’ve got a few other models as well. You’ve got, Kia has entered the fray for a while now and VW got the ID four, the new id, seven, all that stuff. Toyota obviously is in the mix. I’m really impressed with the Prius. Like I said, my son’s Prius is almost 20 years old and he’s driving it in Utah, cold in Utah, snow, and it’s [00:27:00] still going same battery.

When they first came out with it, my dad told me to go buy one. That’s why I ended up buying one. He said they are selling this car for less than what it cost them to make, to get this technology out there, and he was really impressed with how I loved that car. I loved driving it every day. It was so much fun.

Very well. So what’s the hybrid I should buy? You should do what works for you. So you like to go to the cold. That’s another thing about Evie, your battery drains. Think about when you take out your phone or think about ghosts or it’s like, oh, it gets colder and my battery drained in my thing. So you have to consider your life right now and when it comes to what you buy, feel good about what you buy.

So you’re asking what hybrid you should buy. That should be based around what is it that you like to do and what’s going to fit your needs. And also you can consider how the hybrid functions when it comes back to the charging back of the battery in different things. Cuz there are different ways you can drive the car [00:28:00] to get a lot more gas mileage, different ways you can feel better about it.

The question I would have for you is you described that you wanna be going. Skiing and making these long drives, what’s more important to you? Having a lot more space so that if you have more stuff to take with you, you don’t have to worry. Or the ability to zip around and not have to worry. Do you want something a little more fun to drive or something that can fit all your stuff no matter what?

That’s where you start. Yeah. I would consider the Toyota Hybrid just because I’ve been so impressed with the Prius. That’s the one that I would lean. But it would need to be bigger because I got an 85 pound dog that takes up half the car and then I got the rest of my gear. Have you seen the bigger Prius’s?

Mm-hmm. ? Yeah, they have New, bigger Prius’s. They have like little mini SUV and the new one is so beautiful, like it got all kinds of press coverage for being just really cooling. How much? It looks like they start at 27,000 and the xle, the bigger one is about [00:29:00] around 40. That’s all . What’s your price range, Carolyn?

Where do you live? In your mind? Where would you wanna be? Because that’s going to exclude a lot of your choices. Yes, it is straight at EVs. Honestly, Kat, what you just said about the Prius is shocking. I paid for my CRV and I got like the top of the line, brand new like no miles on it, and I paid 48 for it.

Now that was in 2017. So to get a Prius hybrid, I’m surprised that it’s about the same price. What do I wanna pay? Like, I don’t know, 5,000 or something. , $5,000. Nothing. , there’re Radio Shack around, still gets you a little remote. Control car batteries. Dura, Energizer. I paid 8,000 for it, but used. But yeah, no, I expect to pay about 50,000 to get like all the comforts.

And I don’t wanna pay a subscription for my heated seats. That’s not here yet. Right. So the heated seats super important to me. Like these are the things I look for is the heated seat kind of [00:30:00] thing. You have narrowed my field of 43 significantly by saying you wanna be, we’ll call it between 40 and 60.

Yeah. There’s a chunk of cars that sit there. And then I think the next question has to be based on your passions and hobbies and, and use. , how far do you want to go on a charge? Because that’s gonna narrow your window even further. There’s a place in the desert that I go to fairly often. It’s about three and a half hours from here.

So it’s not fair cuz I do stop for gas halfway. I don’t wanna stop and charge. If I could stop and charge as fast as I could fill up with gas, no problem. But I’m not gonna stop and charge for 45 minutes. So let’s say you need to at least hit a 300 mile mark. Yeah. In the 40 to $60,000. We’ve narrowed it down.

That’s a small group, , seven cars, , and it will fit my dog. There’s seven that will fit the criteria. I’ve got the MA e, the Ford F-150 that’ll fit your dog in the back. The [00:31:00] Cadillac lyric, the BMW I four, which I don’t think would fit your dog. I’m not sure which size that one is. That’s the little one. I’m not the Ion.

EQ five, which is small. Probably won’t fit your dog, but it’s a nice car. The Aria, which is the Nissan, and then the larger Kia V six, which apparently we just learned costs less than the Ion EQ five. Well, but I’m also very concerned about what you’ve brought up, Kat. If these cars are really only gonna last eight, 10 years, that makes me sick to my stomach.

That feels worse than burning fossil fuel right now. To me. We haven’t gotten there yet, but there is no plan for what’s gonna happen to these cars if we’re not talking about it. We should be because, yeah, that’s it. If we’re creating a bunch of throwaway cars, what’s gonna happen to them? Are we recycling them?

Are we reusing the parts? By the way, the $40,000 included a $5,000 markup, so the highest MSRP is only $35,000, which is wow, kind of mind blowing. I wanna go buy every now . I [00:32:00] do too. There’s so many pieces to this. It’s bonkers, but basically you have the federal tax credit. It used to apply to any EV that you bought, and then as of the summer, it became any EV that was made in America.

And so a lot of these credits. are being shifted away from the Hyundais and the Kias and all this, and I think that it is provided incentive for those manufacturers to start wanting to build back in America. I think that’s the lofty goal there, but it’s also important to be mindful that you cannot take that credit for granted.

You have to determine whether or not the car that you are looking at is eligible for that. And then you might have some state incentives and whatnot. Again, it’s not as black and white as we’re used to. Everything being just a regular internal combustion car purchase. There are more factory options. BMWs building in this country, Volkswagen, [00:33:00] Toyota, they actually are gonna be building EVs in a Kentucky plant.

I heard breaking. Mercedes have plants. I think there’s even plants for more manufacturers to do that cuz it is more beneficial to be near your markets. , Michigan actually just started a whole initiative to try to get more manufacturing in state from some of these automotive manufacturers. They’re not the only ones either.

This is a whole big push that’s happening across the industry. That’s actually the entire business model we have is to rebuild Detroit. It’s all built around bringing manufacturing back and providing jobs and taking the hit so that the manufacturers who wanna keep making their own money can, and I’ll just do my not-for-profit thing over here.

See, but there again, I will go back to the home maintenance thing. Like if I blow a tire, if I crack a windshield, My Tesla, my husband was driving it and got in an accident. So I am also the current owner of a 2022 Nissan Rogue [00:34:00] Sport as my rental car, . Okay, so Sarah, you just brought up some stuff like when you get in an accident or blow a tire, what the hell do you do?

Or even crack a windshield, aren’t they like super expensive and even hard to replace? So this is actually the second time that my car’s gotten hit. Neither time has been our fault, so the other people’s insurance paid for it. The second time is definitely going to be more because the impact ruined some parking sensors and some other sensors, and it was just more extensive before that did not have a whole lot of repairs on my old car, so when I did have repairs, it was very inexpensive.

So I would have sticker shock if I were to be paying for this repair myself. The problem that I’m experiencing currently, and I’d be curious to know, I haven’t done a whole lot of homework about it, is taking an extraordinarily long time even to just get into the shop. The administrative piece of it, it’s been [00:35:00] frustrating once it’s in the shop.

Like the first time it took them about a month and a half and it was just basically a bumper and a new lift gate repair. That took a significant period of time. I think that was. Six and a half weeks. Isn’t that usually just because Tesla is the only company that’s manufacturing those bumpers and those parking sensors, they don’t have sources that can manufacture it for them after market.

They’re so tightly held on that. It’s not surprising it’s taking that long. I think there are more of them out on the road now, so there’s just more volume of cars to be repaired. Yep. So I think that they’re having a tough time keeping up. Now, the caveat to that is that we did want to go to the Tesla shop and not to one of their approved vendors.

So I was being very picky about that, just because I’m so nervous because there’s sensor damage here I was feeling like, Ooh, I’m just really not sure. I wanna navigate that and worry about whether or not that’s gonna be a repair. [00:36:00] Not up to snuff. So when you say sticker shop, like how big of a sticker shock?

My current estimate. Just what the insurance estimate the damage to be before even getting in the shop and having them get in there and look at it. It’s already at $4,800 and the estimates tend to be lowballed as well. Right. And it is not a car you can work on yourself. I mean, maybe there’s somebody out there who could, I am not someone who would feel c.

Doing that. And of course then there’s warranty issues. There’s too many cameras and sensors. Yeah. Probably requires special Tesla proprietary computers to hook up and disabled this, that and the other. Yeah, to unlatch the lumber screws or something ridiculous like that. I had a former coworker that had a similar experience in the before times, so there was no ship shortage or things like that.

Supply chain issues. And he had just bought a model three or whatever. I think he had it two days essentially, or a week at most. And he got rear-end by like a city metro bus. It was at very low speed apparently, [00:37:00] but still the rear end bumper damage. It was months that he was back on a rental car and it was just like, wow.

If it was a Toyota, you would’ve been in and out and you know, eight days on your way. I heard from someone they had something wrong with one of their Tesla doors and it took ’em months and months and months of trying to source one and get it painted and they ended up buying a busted up Tesla out of a junkyard or off of the towing company and ended up reinstalling the door that way.

And they got it paint matched, but that was the only way that they were ever going to get a door for it. Cuz doors are going towards new manufactured cars. You have to buy one that’s totaled to get them. You guys are totally talking me out of an ev . No, no, no. There’s so many options. A certain brand. Yeah.

Tesla’s not the only one. Tesla’s not the only one. Am I six weeks out like Sarah? No. These days you are pain an arm and a leg. If you crack a windshield , no matter what it is because these windshields with the fancy sensors right, are [00:38:00] ridiculous. Speaking of windshields, back to Carolyn’s question, is that not covered under your comprehensive deductible?

So like two 50 or even zero deductible? Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, so it’s like that seems sort of. . Well other than getting it in, and so I wanna say it was within a month we had to replace the windshield on the ID four because a truck kicked up a rock and took it out. Oh, well, safely It claims they can repair it and do the programming.

They couldn’t. Right. So what had happened was we had to take it to Volkswagen. , they had to reprogram it. We had to pay $700 for them to reprogram it, and then we sent the receipt for that back to safe flight and they reimbursed us. How long did that whole process take though, too? Again, lazy. It was about a month.

Yeah. I think everything’s just gonna take longer with EVs because Yeah, the tech is so much deeper and [00:39:00] there’s just not an abundance of it. Mm. And then there’s not an abundance of workers or shops to go to that are certified or understand the technology and can do all those replacements. So at this juncture with it’s still being so new and sort of in its infancy, it’s just gonna be a lot harder than my Toyota Corolla, blah, blah, blah, on the Civic.

And I, you know, a week later I’ve got it fixed with parts from Advanced Auto. A lot of the new cars with all like the distance control and whatever other crap that’s in the windshield, they’re all taking just as long to get that stuff. And they’re probably going through that same process. So that’s not exclusive to EVs.

Mm. Well my CRV just has plain glass. Yes, I like that. Mine do too. , they don’t sense the weather. . Yeah. Your tires are gonna be regular tires. Yeah, you might wanna get like a, a low rolling resistance tire, but you can do regular tires and especially since you’re in Utah, you can put on Oh, weather. A winter tire.

Now you’re not gonna be as [00:40:00] efficient with a winter tire and all of this, but you can do that. So some of the basic things you’re okay on, and that is the benefit of going with an EV from a known manufacturer and an established manufacturer. So those parts are gonna be much easier to come by and much easier to replace versus something new like a Rivian or a Tesla or Alpha or Fisker or Lucid.

Right. So Chrissy, cuz you’ve had regular Volkswagens, we’ll call them. Yes. Gasoline powered, and now you have the electric Volkswagen. Do you feel like you’re in a Volkswagen when you’re in the ID four or was it something totally different, meaning to say a Volkswagen’s, a Volkswagen, so you can have that comfort and know what you’re getting?

It’s a Volkswagen. Absolutely. It’s comfortable. We like it. I still have problems with getting used to the things that the car wants to do for me. . I still like to have control. It’s the worst part. Yeah. . Wait, what do you mean? What does it wanna do for you, ? Well, to conserve energy you’re supposed to use like [00:41:00] adaptive cruise control, and so it spaces the vehicles for you based on whatever the camera’s telling you.

My CRV does that too, and I don’t like it. And I hate it because even though Mike has it sort of like as close as it can be, because we might be a little bit of the tailgaters, but people can still cut you off. Well, and that too and so it’s like, I don’t wanna drop five miles per hour because I’m just getting ever so.

Slightly too close to a car, so I hate that. I love my adaptive cruise control. It took a lot of getting used to and it was terrifying for a while, but it’s much nicer. Yeah. I will say though, just generally the adaptive cruise control technology, even in EVs or whatever kind of car it is, has a long way to go before like some of that gets smoothed out so that the experience as a driver is a little bit more friendly and less terrifying and an association with whatever your kind of like principles are.

But your point, Carolyn, about somebody cutting you off. That is the most [00:42:00] irritating thing, and my dad has made comments about how much he loves cutting off EVs that have adaptive cruise control on, because the driver gets all frustrated and flustered. It is what it is, but you can certainly disable those things.

I don’t drive with really any of that enabled because I don’t like cruise control on an internal combustion engine. I makes me crazy. I don’t like to not feel like I know exactly what the car’s doing at all times. There’s a lot that you can work on that with, but that would be something that you would wanna pay attention to when you do a test drive.

What can I turn off? What can I adjust so that I feel comfortable and confident? I love cruise control. I cruise control through traffic. I do too. It’s amazing. Again, lazy. My ankle gets tired, but also I will get a ticket if I don’t put on cruise control. . Emily, same question because you’ve got the Volvo EV right now, and I believe you have past history with regular Oh yes.

Volvos. So we have a lot of Volvos. Are you getting the [00:43:00] same Volvos of Volvo? Same experience. You’re comfortable, you were, you’re recognizing what you have or is it something totally disparate? So let’s be clear. A Volvo is not always a Volvo. We have a Volvo 40 Turbo, and that looks nothing like any of the other Volvos that exist in the.

It is a nice interior. It’s well made. It meets kind of like my style expectations on the interior. I don’t look like somebody’s super glued an iPad to the dash and it doesn’t look like I’m sitting in the middle of a cockpit with just glass Everywhere that you see with the Mercedes EQ s like it’s a little insane, but it’s nice, it’s comfortable.

I’ve definitely get the safety features that one would expect from Volvo and they’re very noticeable and I enjoy them. So I wanted to say and emphasize that a plug-in hybrid might really be a nice middle ground for Carolyn to consider. It’s kind of the best of all worlds. You’re gonna have an engine, so you’re gonna have the safety of not having range [00:44:00] anxiety that a lot of people perceive as a hurdle towards EV ownership.

You’re gonna have the regenerative braking. , even when you drive and your battery depletes, you can charge it up again. You can plug it in at night. It’s gonna be a, a small amount of charge, but you can plug it in just to a regular outlet and get a few miles each night and you know enough to maybe get a couple of errands done and get out on the road.

So, I. Really advise you to consider that if you kind of feel like the full EV may not be right for you, but you still wanna consider something different and kind of new frontier ish, sort of stepping stone to ev. If you’re not fully ready to commit yet, go that middle ground where you’re slowly kind of getting into that EV range without fully committing yet.

Right. And like Kat said, if you have these long trips that you’re taking all the time and you don’t wanna. Sitting at a charging station for however long [00:45:00] during those trips, it’s really potentially a, a good option. All right, so we’ve narrowed your field down con considerably. , I’m sorry, but Kat’s already convinced me.

I’m going for the . Alright, so we’re done. We’re done. Switching gears. So now on to what should I buy? Hybrid edition. Oh, pen per go. About starting this journey, this process. Any recommendations? I mean, obviously if you’re looking for new, new, you’re going to a new car dealership, but these days, is that still have the same relevancy it once did.

Are there other means When we bought the tundra, back in July. They’re not taking custom orders for Toyotas, and that may have changed since then, but it’s basically you go to the dealer, you tell ’em what you want, and they’ll try to get as close as they can with it. Like they took what colors we wanted, what features we absolutely needed, and it’s like, Hey, we’ve got this coming in on the truck and the next couple of weeks does this work for you?

That’s how Toyota did. Very similar with mine. I ended up [00:46:00] placing two orders for the same car through two different dealers to try to get the car I wanted because Volvo shut off the ability to build your own custom car with whatever package options you wanted, an extra features. So I was. Talking to two different dealers to see which one was gonna get here first off of the boat.

And one of ’em, I had an order in with Volvo usa and that was the one that happened to come in like just a few weeks early. It was incredibly frustrating. It took 68 weeks after I placed the order, but some people, they were waiting six months at least. Yeah. So just like shopping for anything else, go to the store to look at it, then go home, get online and buy it off Amazon.

Yeah, that’s about right. That’s not uncommon for any car right now. It’s just been that way. But I would say that because you are looking at making a change from your current car to potentially a hybrid, some type of ev, I do think auto shows are still good for that because you’re [00:47:00] gonna find that the cargo space and the seating space is gonna feel a little different.

Hmm. Because you know how you use your space. It’s not always a thing where you can say, oh, this car has. Such and such cubic feet of cargo. You know, maybe you’re carrying a, a dog kennel, maybe you’re carrying skis. All of those different pieces, they, to me that maybe an auto show would be a good fit for you and you could walk around and you may not be able to order that car just yet, but at least you can have a sense of how that’s gonna work differently for you.

I agree. That’s a great way when I’m looking for a new type of car, and it doesn’t matter, the manufacturer, the auto show is the first place I go. You said you drive a c. Yes, so the hybrid CR-vs. It’s 40 grand. There you go. You could just go with the same car you drive. Sold . I finished my last payment on the CRV maybe six months ago.

It’s been so nice cuz I don’t have maintenance fees yet. and no car payment has been just [00:48:00] like so nice. So the idea of getting a car payment again kind of makes me sick to my stomach, and that was my father’s point. Why is this a thing that we are married to? Why is this normalized? Why is your second biggest payment something you just accept making forever?

Forever until the end of death. Yeah. I’m enjoying no car payment right now. The screw the planet. No, I’m sorry. . , basically. Yes. Hashtag team Dead. Dinosaurs all the way . No, I’m actually looking at how to convert my diesel to like used cooking oil, save the planet and you know, save my car. The other problem in all of this that always gets glazed over it too, is the big bad oil.

You know, oh, we hate them, blah, blah, blah. . Well, the problem is gasoline and diesel, especially nowadays, are byproducts of all the other stuff that everyone’s not [00:49:00] willing to give up in life. Plastics, makeup, all sorts of adhesives. The asphalt on the road that we drive our cars on, that is all result of crude oil transformation in a refinery.

And I don’t believe there’s a world where you could possibly never have gasoline and diesel because you could keep destroying those down into smaller components that then could be chemical feedstocks to make all our plastics and stuff like that. But there’s a cost associated with doing that, and it doesn’t make sense at a certain point.

So then suddenly my pen here is gonna cost me $30 because my raw material goods is so expensive. Right? So that goes back to this balance of don’t put all your eggs in one basket. We can significantly decrease volumes of things, but I don’t see where you’re ever gonna get rid of it entirely. Has anybody considered evaluating whether or not their older classic car is worth an EV upgrade?

Eric’s very happy with that. What do you mean a EV upgrade? You can [00:50:00] do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have been some people that have taken older, like Jaguars and things like that, and they’ll go buy a Tesla battery pack, motor, whatever, and. , stick it in there. Or there are people that are crazy enough to do that, and I just saw an article about the, I forget what it was he was converting, but I just sort of, I was like, oh, cool.

Bye, . It’s a neat way of getting it back to that tactile and still being able to work hands-on on your car, because if you’re the one that’s actually doing the work and putting it in, you’ll know those systems very well. Ideally, they’re ones that you designed or ones that you worked with a company to make sure that you had all the parts for.

That market is so young. I know that there’s a shop EV West in California that will take. Classic older cars and they’ll convert them to EVs for you. I think they’ve been popularized with Volkswagen bugs from a really long time ago, doing Porsches for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a neat alternative if you can get over how you’re getting that electricity to the car to charge it in the first place.

But for some of those smaller cars, you [00:51:00] can get great performance out of them. There’s also a new three-wheeled EV coming out made by Malcolm Brickland. That’s a whole lot of fun to drive, you know? You should check that one out too. All right, so now that we’ve solved Carolyn’s next purchase, Debacle , have we have we, I dunno, I don’t know.

I’m probing. I’m probing the Honda Drv hybrid that does exist, so that there’s already 20, 23 models for that. So that might pique your interest, but I guess, would that satisfy what you’re looking for? It’d. More of the same of what you already have, it’d be very comfortable. Or are you looking to further branch out?

Actually, that feels really good to me. Other than the car payment, maybe I’m just really justifying my part in screwing the planet. . Think about all of the carbon that went into manufacturing the new car, and you’re keeping your old car on the road, so you can’t say, I am being a bad steward of the environment because I’m not doing this thing.

There’s also other things you can do to get better gas mileage out of the car that you’re driving, and again, other ways [00:52:00] to offset the carbon that you create. Just drive responsibly and respectively do the best you can with what you have. Understand that it’s not all black and white. There’s return on investment in intangible things in corporate world.

So if you think about people equate things to dollars and cents, this iPad costs a certain amount of money, and if I break this iPad or if something happens to it, I can put a dollar amount on it, but people don’t think about if my system goes down. I also have people hours for every person that I pay, $15 an hour, whatever that adds up.

Just like I wonder what it costs for b BMW to charge people for those heated seats. They have to pay people to support them and to charge people and the infrastructure. People don’t think about those dollars and cents, so it’s not all black and white. I have felt really guilty about driving the car that I’m driving.

It’s kind of a gas guzzler. I checked it today. It averages 25 miles to the gallon. I don’t feel as guilty. [00:53:00] All of your points, I’m hearing you guys. It’s not black and white. I wanna let you off the hook a little bit about that too, cuz to Kat’s point, there’s a lot that goes into this. And as you move forward through this process, maybe the right thing to do is to keep your car that you have right now and either just proceed as normal or figure out if your driving habits can create more fuel efficiency.

You can also determine a threshold for you as you learn, for example. I went to the launch of a Toyota BZ concept and they were talking all about zero emissions and their new goal of being carbon neutral. To Kat’s point, we want every piece of this car to be something that will either be reused or will be offset in some way, shape, or form.

They obviously don’t have a timeline for that yet. It’s kind of the lofty goal, but you can also decide as a consumer to do your homework and figure out how important that [00:54:00] is to you. And when you’re ready to pull the trigger on a new purchase, you can make that decision a part of your purchase. You know, when I bought my car, it was only in 2021, but it felt like there were no other options, and the luxury of this right now is that you do, including the option not to buy, you can move forward in this process thinking about what is the thing that makes me feel the worst?

Is it. The perception that I’m a horrible person. Yeah, that’s the one I guess in my car. Or is it really that I’ve never taken care of the car and there’s a big black cloud coming out of the bag or whatever. I think you need to understand that it’s okay to maintain status quo, and even if you decide that you want an internal combustion engine that is more efficient for your new car, that’s a good thing too.

Yeah. You guys have made me feel really good about myself. I’m not gonna lie. , . You know what’s amazing is, is there’s so much in our lives that we [00:55:00] do, decisions we make and choices. , the way we treat ourselves that are based on these ideas we have in our head about what other people think about us. I had this really profound experience with this lately where I was struggling with something at work, and then I heard my curriculum director describing her struggles with the same exact thing.

And then I said, you know, it’s really nice that you shared that with me because I felt a little less alone. And she said, you know, I said to myself, if this badass hacker who did this for 20 years is getting stuck on the same thing, maybe I’m not so bad. I said, wow. I said, if Mike Badass, curriculum director who can learn all these things is getting stuck, maybe I’m not so bad.

So here, both of us were beating up on ourselves thinking the other one was the coolest thing on the planet. It was all in our head. You’re making decisions based on what you think is outside of your space, examine your whole life. I guarantee you that there are things in your life that you’re doing that are causing far more damage to the environment than driving your car that you can actually take action on now to feel better about what you’re doing, and then take [00:56:00] this.

in stride. Make a decision based on what’s good for you. Understand the implications of changing the car that you have. Maybe buy a used CRV hybrid that has a lower car payment and is something that somebody already had, the carbon that went into developing it and now you’re just swapping one for the other.

There’s a lot of different things and you have to first forgive yourself for what’s in your own head that nobody else is thinking about you. Absolutely, because I have done some research, but to listen to each one of you who actually are pretty passionate about this, have experience in this, your experts in this area, and to hear the different angles and to hear all the considerations that each of you have taken has been very helpful.

You know, you can rat hole on the research and looking at the different cars, and then I’m like, I don’t know. Is the CRV hybrid good? I don’t. , but it’s been really helpful with listening to all of you and your experience since we seemingly solved her car debacle. Going back to EVs [00:57:00] in general, and we’ll take your criteria off specifically and use the criteria of kind of a general everyday car, what would we recommend to somebody looking for a pure EV that kind of meets your going to work every day, whatever we wanna call normal mileage commute is I go to the grocery store and a couple extra things during the week.

I’ve got 2.1 kids and a dog. Maybe, maybe not. What would be that all around? Is it the Volvo? Is it the ID four? Is it something else? Is it the Tesla? I think it all depends on your price range and what you need to do with it. How big does it need to be? Really? Give me a lucid. I know. Oh my god. Have you seen the alphas too?

Those are gorgeous. The FI ocean that looks like a fat beluga whale. It’s so adorable. . Okay, so I think what I would say the other significant question is, and it’s so counterintuitive, but how are you going to charge? I think the [00:58:00] answer is different. If you are going to be able to charge at home, it’s not wildly different, but you are gonna have a different experience of EV ownership if you are charging out in the world.

And it’s a serious part of the EV conversation right now because so many people don’t own their homes and they may not live somewhere where they can just plug in when they get home at night. For me, that would be a number one thing you have to ask yourself. I would add on and say, , do you enjoy driving?

I think driving is one of those things that everybody can fall in love with, with the right car and with the right time and the right set of things off of their mind. I love my XT 40 recharge and I would buy another one because I enjoy the experience, but as of late, I’m looking at whether or not a pole star is in my future at some point, or an alpha or a lucid or something that’s newer cutting edge to, to kind of push the envelope of what EVs could be in [00:59:00] America 20 or 30 years from now.

Because I wanna see the market do well and I wanna see us to be more economically responsible with how we’re developing and building these cars for consumers. When you say Alpha ev, what are you talking about? The Alpha Motors ace and the wolf that they have. Those are some pretty awesome things. They also have the saga.

I wanna see that. Oh yeah. They’re classic retro design. They’re beautiful. Not talking about Alpha Romeo, unfortunately. . No, oddly not. Oh, look at that. Aren’t they cool? Yeah. They’re the ones that have the pickup truck that looks like the one from Back to the Future that Marty drove. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I’m not a pickup truck person, but that one’s pretty cool. . That is really neat. I like it if I don’t bring this one up, Eric, we’ll be very sad cuz his current answer is machi. Machi, Machi. What do people think about Ford’s Machi value for money? It’s fully loaded. I think it’s more closer to the 50,000 range.

So you’re somewhere between 40 and 50,000 for this. You get a little bit over 300 miles of range. It’s a [01:00:00] Ford that could deter you, that could make you happy. I don’t know. I will never date somebody who drives the Mustang period. End of conversation. Oh, oh, shots fired . That’s just it. My girlfriend, she would never speak to me again.

So I mean it’s an F body thing. However, I met the guy in charge of the new Mustang launch and on my board is a key chain cause he was a fabulous. So there is that, but that’s my response to the Ma ladies and gentlemen, the only Ford Cat will own that key chain . That’s actually not true cuz I drive a Ford F two 50.

I love my Ford truck. I love Ford Truck, so I just can’t drive specifically a Mustang or date anybody who drives a Mustang. It goes back to my first car was a Z 28 in the nineties and that was the, the heat of the Mustang Camaro Shootout. It’s like ingrained in my teenager, dumb that I can’t . I must hate [01:01:00] all Mustangs.

I think the Machi isn’t a bad purchase. It’s not like my taste. Ford is Ford. If you like Fords, go with a Mackey. If you’re trying to look for an ev, they have a good range and they’ve got some good pep scene that they handle well. But I have not personally driven one. I’m looking at one right now. It says it’s $80,000, like there’s a range.

Of course you find the $80,000 one. I personally really want the F-150, the lightning. I just passed one on the road the other day. I got married in a lightning version, so the Harley Davidson F-150, it was a lightning edition F-150. So that has a little bit of something to do with it, but that’s the one ev that sparked my true interest.

So no cyber truck? No. No. Making cars out of stainless steel, stupid . I just think the cyber truck is stupid. Little known fact. It was because he couldn’t afford a paint factory for 3 billion and he knew somebody who could actually forge the stainless steel and then Nice. His genius was making it [01:02:00] seem intentional.

Oh, and who knows if that figment of Musk’s imagination will ever actually . I can tell you from trying to actually make it one car out of stainless steel, there’s no way. When my dad made it out of stainless steel, stainless was actually cheaper than aluminum because aluminum was only provided to the aerospace industry.

So he would’ve made it out of brushed aluminum if he could have. It just was way too expensive, making something out of stainless today, especially when it’s so much harder to come by when all appliances are made by it. I can’t even get a sheet of it. So how he’s gonna build many cars, I don’t know.

that’s a great question. Nobody knows already four years behind. Allegedly it’s this year, but probably not. They still haven’t figured out the laser beams for the windshield wipers yet, so they can’t, you know, go to production yet. , let’s to start closing out and I’m gonna point at Sarah. So are there any new features that are really cool that people should be looking for in their new car, EV or otherwise, really?

[01:03:00] And you know, what are some tips and tricks or do’s and don’ts about going on this journey? People are looking for new cars every day from anything from two years ago, you know, beyond. That’s what I’m thinking of when you’re thinking of new features. I came back to this world of actually buying a car after owning my car for 10 years, and I had stepped away from riding for a while, so I was just really surprised at how tech heavy everything was.

You know, new features that you should look for in a new car that might help ease that transition to me are something like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Pat had kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, but every manufacturer has their own kind of in-house multimedia system. Some of those are easier to use than others.

So I find that using something like Apple CarPlay can ease that transition. If not be something that I use completely, depending on the car [01:04:00] that I’m driving. You know what I would really like. Have they solved the problem of using my nav on my phone, putting it on my display in my car? That’s what Apple Car play will do for you.

Ah, the only caveat is that if you are driving somewhere where you’re gonna lose coverage, like where your phone would drop off or where you don’t have service, you’re not gonna be able to see that navigation happening. So the benefit of it when it’s. In the car system is that it’s usually a downloaded map that’s in the system, so you can go through the desert and still get the directions directly from the car.

More advancements in that particular feature set because Mercedes just revealed that they’re joining a partnership with Google and specifically to use their navigation technology in their new vehicles. Yeah, the Android Auto, right. It’s the interface that I don’t like in my car. It’s just enough different than what I use on Google Maps.

Oh, right. I have never used the navigation system in my C R V. because I can’t figure out [01:05:00] how to use the damn interface. . , right. See, that’s really funny because that’s one of the things that I asked when trying to design our cars. I said, why does anybody put all this tech in the car anymore? Nobody uses it.

Why don’t they just create something that will magnify your phone screen? Absolutely. Hello . Because I don’t know anybody who uses the navigation in their car, especially since it goes like you have to update it after a while, so what’s the point? Why do we spend all this money in navigation? Nobody uses.

I will say a lot of cars now will have a wireless charging pad for your phone and that, I’ve seen a lot of innovative ways of doing that in the new Corvette. There’s like a vertical charging pad back here, which is so. So sometimes it’s vertical. So if there’s a space saving issue, you can use it that way.

But oftentimes it’s a flat pad, but it creates a space for your phone, and then you can connect via Bluetooth and have everything talking to your phone, which [01:06:00] is really fun. So is there anything unique to EV car buying when you walk into the dealership and you just feel like you’re gonna get swindled every time you go into those places?

Sometimes. Is it the same? Same. Does it matter that it’s an internal combustion engine? Doesn’t matter that. running off pixie dust or are there certain things they try to trap you with? Things that can be confusing that a first time EV buyer should be more mindful of than maybe what they’re used to?

Depends. If you talk to the dealer , if you just go online, like you just go and try out the car at like an auto show and then go buy online, I would say it’s the same last minute add-ons that they get you for. Anything else that you walk into the dealership with? I don’t think that there’s anything I recall from my buying experience that was unique to the ev.

They wanted to gimme the fancy extra paint protection. Did they try to sell you the oil change kit or something? ? Yeah. Like all those stupid add-on features? Yeah. You know the guy who. Doing the financing. It’s like, well if you get this for an extra $700 and it’s like, yeah, it’s an ev. I don’t gotta change that

[01:07:00] That’s all ice crap. . What about home charging stuff though? I would think that would be different. Cause they’ll try and sell you a home charging station. Right. So I didn’t get that with mine. I got a package of like credits with ChargePoint or whatever. The other one is like one of the popular ones, like a free year of charging anything like that, like a $50 gift certificate off of ChargePoint, whatever it was.

I had taken the time to figure out what kind of charger I wanted to install at my house. I watched YouTube videos based off of temperatures and how those cables wrapped, mines outside that I was gonna be able to plug it in and. Zero degree weather outside when it’s snowing and not fight a cable that’s stiff.

And being aware of those types of programs, like most manufacturers right now are partnering with Electrify America. That’s one. There might also be some with EV go, but it’s like get three free years of charging. So you wanna be sure that if you do purchase that car, that you are getting those kinds of service.

are you able to finance your home [01:08:00] charging station when you buy your car with the car? I don’t think so. Or at least it wasn’t that way. With Volkswagen. We had to buy it separate, but then we got a tax credit from the state. Yeah. Yep. And said for the purchase of the charger and install 40% backed from the state just for the inside cost.

That is such a terrible barrier entry point to EV ownership that is so absolutely discriminatory. And like how much is a charger? Depends. Tens of thousands of dollars. Are you serious? Serious. You can’t afford and you can’t finance it with your car. You are automatically shutting out an entire segment of our population that cannot afford to do the upfront cost.

I am. So do not like That’s true. You can get a home charging kit. It totally depends on the manufacturer. So the prices are different per manufacturer, so they’re usually around $2,000, give or take. But then you also have to consider whether or not you have the electrical foundation, like you have to make sure that you [01:09:00] have the ability to power that charger.

So you need the right kind of amp, you have to have your house redone by an electrician, which is a cost that I already assumed you had to absorb, which is significant because I had to do it when I wanted to install a kiln. It’s also one of the cost barriers if you wanna look at how much it might cost.

there’s a lot of information on installing the tankless water heaters. Mm-hmm. , they also require the same type of power to your house, so you can estimate how much it’ll cost. And it’s significant because they have to actually run the power from the power line, but you’ll pay more money at from the power company.

Yeah. So it’s not the charger itself, it’s getting the infrastructure to be able to use the charger. Yeah. Usually the only exception to that is if you already have like a two 40 volt outlet in your garage, you can retrofit that to make it work with your charger. So now that we’re talking on an extra 10,000, $20,000 to your EV purchase, you have now moved your choice option to still hit a 50,000 target.

Do the [01:10:00] Chevy Bolt , it’s, it’s a fun car. Actually. The Chevy Bolt has a really high satisfaction rating, probably because it’s a $20,000 ev. Your standards are down here. Yeah. Yeah. You could also get a Nissan Leaf, a mini, or a Mazda MX 30, but you are getting 150 mile range at best. And the thing about the leaf is depending on where you live as the infrastructure, especially with Electrify America builds out.

They’re not doing the EV charger that’s compatible with the leaf anymore. They’re eliminating the chatty bow. Good call. So we’re talking about like an Apple Android charger situation here with these EV infrastructure? Pretty much, yeah. Wow. Most are ccs. Then there’s the Tesla network and then there’s Chatty Mo, which was Mitsu and Nissan.

There’s usually one at each of the Electrify America stations I’ve ever been to and some jerk parks in front of it in their [01:11:00] whatever, and they block it and then the Port Nissan Leaf pulls up and it’s just like, well, we’re gonna wait because I have no choice. Any closing thoughts for our Intrepid EV purchases out there?

You know, I started considering some of the things that all of you guys were throwing out. It’s an important consideration that I even consider keeping my car right now because like I looked at the C R V hybrid, I Googled it while we were talking, the gas mileage. I don’t know if the gas mileage on the hybrid.

justifies getting a new car. It’s not that much better. It’s better. It’s not that much better than the one that I’m already driving. So do I. My viewpoint on that is you’ll never justify a new car purchase if there’s nothing already wrong with your current car. Right. If your current car died, then you have full justification.

Everything makes sense. You need a new car. So true. But if your car is still gonna go another 10, 15 years and your car’s paid for and all you’re doing is regular maintenance and you go turn [01:12:00] around and you go $60,000, $70,000 for a car, I don’t care what the fuel economy is on that thing, it’s going to take you years to break back even.

That’s such an important point to consider and I, I hadn’t thought about that. So I’m just keeping my CRV take the money that you save on the car payment and invest it in supporting climate science. Yeah, I like that. Just do something that makes you feel better. Also, I would do the math. because I think if you looked at the numbers and saw exactly how much extra damage you as one human would be doing by not buying a new car.

Now again, I’m all for saving the environment. Like I’m all for EVs and all for, but it has to make sense for you. We can’t make decisions based on what we think other people think of us or what’s going on in our own heads. That isn’t reality. So just examine what the reality of the situation is, and if you’re making up things that aren’t real, yeah, you’ll be a lot happier if you keep your current car and then just go plant some [01:13:00] algae.

And it’ll suck up all the CO2 . Definitely just put a pond in your backyard that algae come all on its own. No worries. , don’t do it. Okay.

resounding. Hybrid is the answer. Hashtag dead dinosaurs. It’s entirely based off of like how you would buy a normal car. You need to consider all of the things that your lifestyle needs, the things that you can afford, and what you’re willing to put up with. Maybe an EV is part of that category. Maybe you just don’t want to deal with that headache, so filter it out of your next internet sort.

I agree. I think they’re great for the everyday day to day and you have access to your charging station for the situation we’ve present. Going on long trips and not wanting to stop. Definitely not an ev, but there are situations where they were unique to everybody. Depends on who you are and what you need.

So, last question, money’s no option. You sleep on piles of cash. What EV would [01:14:00] you buy when they may come out? One of which you stood at next to that technology show. Yes. Yes. The buzz. So cool. No, the other one visit you. Oh, which other one wasn’t there? The ID seven. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I went inside the The Reveal booth.

Yep. That’s what I want. . Nice. E Ray Corvette. E Ray. Lucid Air I think was Emily’s answer, but, or do you wanna change it? Lucid Air or the brand new whole star, one of those two whole star one would be really fun. Yeah. The new Pole Star is amazing. I’m Googling all of these. I don’t even know these names that you guys are throwing out.

Are you happy with your model Y, Sarah, or would you upgrade? I would say I am happy with the EV experience. My problem that I’ve had with my Tesla is it’s all screen based. And I realized that more and more as I got out and started testing other cars, again, a lot more, I need more than just a screen. So I’m stuck in this space where the Tesla charging [01:15:00] network is great and super reliable and fast, but the car itself, uh, it’s such a frustrating situation.

I don’t know that I would buy that car again just based on my in-car experience, especially since there’s so many choices. Now, good news. Apparently the US government made a deal with Tesla to open up 7,500 chargers on their networks. I know it’s exciting and now we just have to, now we wait. , now we have to see how that plays out.

So, good point Emily. For sure. I’m excited about that and I think obviously it opens a, a ton of options up for, for me going forward, but if money was no object, what would you buy? I feel like I had a really great experience with the Mercedes-Benz EQ s like if I just didn’t have a care in the world and I could drive whatever.

It was beautiful. It was [01:16:00] customizable. It was the frontier of Ev Everythingness. But I’m also super curious about the F-150 Lightning. I’m in Colorado, so I feel like I would love to have a truck. Experience and see what that’s all about. I also drove the B M W I X M 60, so that’s a performance version of their ix, kind of an S U V.

It was really interesting in that I always thought like, A performance version of an EV is ridiculous cuz like really is, is it diminishing returns, the power and the speed. Could you really tell? And that was a yes , but it’s also an EVs. It’s still not the same as driving a super powerful internal combustion engine cars since money’s no object.

I’m gonna go a different route and I don’t want any of the cars listed on my, uh, list that I curated [01:17:00] and I’m gonna build my own cars. And I am going to create a retro Fiat Panda, Evie . Cause Fiat Panda is always my answer. If you do that, you have to sell schematics and make parts for everyone else to do it.

I’m just putting that out there. into the universe. Love it. I love it. We hope you enjoyed our, what should I buy? Ladies and EVs edition. And if you’re excited for more, well then keep up with all the latest car trends and vehicle reviews, and not just EVs by visiting a girls guide to cars.com where you can catch all of Sarah’s latest car news.

Fire up your favorite Podcatcher and Tech out with Carolyn while listening to Tech Transforms. Learn more from folks like Emily and Chrissy by joining the Gran Touring Motorsports Club. And finally, hop over to dn g motors.com to check on all of Kat’s Progress and starting up her very own car company.

And Perus the online Tribute Museum to her father at DeLorean Legacy Dot. Ladies, I gotta say, this has been a [01:18:00] stellar episode. It’s been awesome to watch you guys debate EVs. And you know what I have to say? I think you did a better job than the guys normally do, where we get up on our soapboxes and pontificate about spending other people’s money in cars that are absolutely unobtainable.

But you know what? I learned a lot from this, and I hope our listeners did too. And if I can just add one little extra thing. I think if money was no object and I had to buy an alternative fuel vehicle, there’s two on my. One of which keeps playing the hokey poke on me, which is the Hyundai concept. And then I think I might just wait for this new super card that’s coming out and we’ll see when it becomes available as an ev.

So I’ll just leave it there. But thank you all for joining us yet again. You know the difference between the male and all female is that I believe you were all sober.

It makes a huge difference, . But this was really fun. Thanks you guys, and thanks for all the advice. It was very helpful. No, thank you all for coming. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.[01:19:00]

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew, chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra Goodies and GTMs swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our [01:20:00] developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s gummy bears, and. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.