May 31, 2016 • 38 mins
This week, Scott and Ben bring back the Mystery Show with a twist: each of the guys has their own topic prepared, and the other one has no idea what's coming.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot Com. Hi, welcome
to our stuff. I'm Scott said I had been you
are you as always? We are joined by our illustrious
super producer no Um Noal Sherlock Brownlock is good. Yeah.
(00:26):
I think that's one who maybe have not used yet
because you know this is uh. This is another edition
of one of our mystery episode where you don't know
what I'm gonna ask you, and we're gonna do it
a little different this time. We're also going to ask
me a question or have a topic that I don't
know about, as well as we're gonna do two in
one here. And there's some precedent for this. We've done
this eight times already. I've looked up all the dates
and times we've done this and it started back in
(00:48):
June of last year and went all the way through September,
but we haven't done one since then. This will be
our ninth and I guess ninth and tenth if you
want to count it, um, you know you want to
want to be legit about it. Nine intense topics are
mystery topics. It's feature a double feature that's the best
way to put it. Maybe. So I guess since we're
gonna try to cramp two into this one, it we
should just jump right in with my my question to you,
(01:10):
and uh, I hope it it spawned some thought among listeners,
you know that they might write in with some responses
to this as well. All Right, so here's my question, Shoot,
should you ever buy a base model car? Not? Have
you ever? Not? Not could you? But should you ever
buy a base model car? Now this applies to new
(01:31):
and used, so think about it in a lot of
different ways. But here's here's what got me thinking about this.
My wife's vehicle, that that Jeeper Renegade, that just a
scarcity of options and features on that thing. It's a
base model vehicle. It's it's the lowest level Jeeper Renegade
you can get. And the problem with that is that
we're seeing, or at least I'm seeing the worst version
(01:54):
of that car that they can possibly make. Really, I mean,
it's it's not great. There's a lot I've complained about
up this vehicles several times. And you know the whole
process of going through to get this and why she
got it. She wanted a low monthly payment and you know, fine,
you achieve that, but now you've got a car that's
maybe something that you didn't expect it would be. I mean,
it's nice when you're there on a lot. It's nice
when you, you know, look at it compared to whatever
(02:16):
you're trading in. But later on you might have some
some regrets and buyer's remorses, like that you bought that
versus you know, paying a few extra dollars more and
getting a trim level higher that is a little bit
more comfortable in some way, whatever way that would be. Now,
things that you can typically expect in a in a
base model car, you can expect things like like cloth
seats now that used to be vinyl seats back in
(02:38):
the day, but cloth seats. You can expect steel wheels,
very plain steel wheels. As a matter of fact, uh,
no hubcaps. You can expect um, no window tint, no
floor mats. In some cases, like in my wife's case,
no sunroof. Of course, some cases, drum brakes on the vehicle.
There's there's still vehicles that have drum brakes in the
rear that are made here in the United States. That's
(03:00):
the Honda Fitt is one of those vehicles. Um, you
might have the fog light delete plastic cap that goes
on the on the front. You know that, so where
they're supposed to be flogg lights and they just put
a plastic cap there and you can tell that they're
supposed to be there if they're not there and your
console is gonna look weird? Did you know that? For
a long time? And the smart for to model, the
most base smart for two that you get, I think
(03:21):
it's called the Pure And I don't know how long
this supplied it because now they've changed it. But for
a while you could get those with no A C
and no radio. That was that was an option in
those cars. Can you imagine a no A C, no
radio car in let's say it was. That's crazy. So
there's a lot of things that you you do and
don't get with with with a base model car. And
(03:42):
what you do get I guess would be a low payment.
That's about the only benefit really I see. Um, there's
a lot of articles on this and a couple of things.
You know, there's some interesting things that were written by
Gelopnik about this, and the one from Auto Trader, another
one from Yahoo autos. Um before I get into this
too far. Yeah, do you have kind of a general
opinion about base model cars? Been do you do? You
(04:05):
do you support this idea because there's some people that
say that's the way to go. You get a you
get a base model car because you you get in
the door. That way, you get whatever it is, and
then you can upgrade it as you want. You can
add on to do it on your own, not at
the dealership. I see that, But that's that's kind of
a broad brush to paint with, don't you think, because
(04:25):
there's some things that are going to be more of
a hassle to do aftermarket than they would be just
you know, to get it done right from the factory exactly.
So it's strange because base model stuff has evolved over
the past the past few years, especially the past few years,
(04:45):
but overall for decades, you know, like once upon a time.
Of course, we know and and listeners, some of some
of us may be old enough to remember when a
C was a fancy option. You know, Oh yeah, I've
had I've had cars without a C of course, because
whoever bought the car new just simply didn't check that box.
And you know, years later when I'm buying a used
(05:06):
I'm not so concerned about that as I am about
the price of the vehicle, and I want something that's
economical or whatever, and I ended up in that vehicle.
But then I'm sitting there sweating, thinking like, why didn't
they check that box? Why didn't they get a C
in this car? Because I'd like it now, I sure
would like it, but I knew upfront that it didn't
have it when I bought it, So it's kind of
my fault as well. I mean that that gets passed on, right. Um, yeah,
(05:27):
there's there's some interesting things like that that you got
to consider though. Um, you know, trim options, I guess
in cars, you know, that's that's the thing is like
there's always gonna be you know, not always, not every time,
but there's always gonna be maybe I keep saying always.
Maybe sometimes there's often often there are two or three
other options, or four options, or maybe even more than that.
You know, you can go up to different trim levels
(05:49):
and that that offers different, um, you know, standard packages.
You know what used to irritate me when I was
far too young to buy any high value thing like
a laptop or a car or stuff like that we
used to irritate me as a kid was seeing varying
pricing options for different versions of the same product and
(06:09):
then thinking to myself, well, don't make me feel inferior
buying buying the Lewist. Just give me just only sell
the best one. Why can't you sell just the best one?
It just sells the GT model. Don't sell anything else.
Just give me the g T, which obviously, I mean,
obviously that's not the problem is when it's brand new,
getting that GT option in the car might be another
(06:30):
ten or twelve thousand dollars or more depending on what
they offer right when. But later when you saw, okay,
there's there's other thought processes going on later when you're
when you're trying to buy a used vehicle, but a
new car, sometimes those options are very very expensive. Sometimes
you can look at it and say like, well, I
don't need a six speaker sound system. I can add
an aftermarket so you can do Yeah, that's a great example.
(06:51):
That's a better version than what I would ever get
from the factory anyways, And you know, all costs considered,
you know that that factory, that factory radio is gonna
be I can put one in for six and have
somebody install it for another hundred bucks. I have a
buddy who will do it for beer. Yeah, exactly, that's
a That's the way a lot of people feel about this.
So what sound system? It makes sense? Okay, here's my
(07:12):
here's my thing. If I'm am I interrupting, all right,
So my concept of this relies on the following assumption
assumptions rather one. It really depends on the specific vehicle
we're talking about, too. The most general thing I can
say is that personally, I don't I don't put too
(07:37):
much stock in the cosmetic or esthetic stuff. While I
get that it might be nice, for instance, to have
the custom metallic gray paint or something like that, for instance,
if it doesn't affect the performance of the vehicle, then
to me, I don't care as much. They're they're the basics.
(08:00):
Of Course, I want to working radio or sound system.
Of course I want a c in a heat or Hey,
you want comfortable seats, you want you want air conditioning,
you want power windows, right, But I don't live in
an environment where I need a heated seat. I don't
live in an environment or in a lifestyle really where
I need to have a sunroofs. Sunroofs are nice, Yeah,
but wouldn't it be nice to have tinted windows on
(08:21):
a car instead of having just you know, flat, you
know plaine glass that's see through all the way around,
so you're not like driving in a fish bowl all
the time, and you know it's a safety issue. Is
we used to have some heavy tints on that Honda
able to? I do now on my new one too.
I guess you haven't seen in a while. It looks
a no, no, okay, I didn't see it because my
windows are so dark. There's something what I'm saying. I
(08:43):
totally get it. Anything that's cosmetic really is something that
you're not particularly interested in paying and paying a premium
for and I get that. So the question is, I mean,
there's a bunch of questions here, and I'm gonna get
to a couple other quick things that I'm gonna speed
through so we can get onto your topic too. But
um another question, in fact, I'm gonna have like two
or three along the way here. But um, so, why
do they why do manufacturers even offer a base model
(09:05):
at all? Why don't they just make one? Like you said?
The question? But the idea is. And I think this
is so that they can always advertise that starting price
so they can say exactly right, they can, so almost
everybody ends up spending more money when they get to
the dealer to get the you know, the nicer version
of the same car, you know, like a higher trim level.
Almost everybody does that. I don't have the numbers, but
(09:26):
it seems like buying a base model for a lot
of vehicles is relatively rare. Well it is. And then
here's part of the reason. And I know that advertising
works like this in a lot of places, and and
pay attention to this the next time you see it.
And Warren listeners about this before. But when you see
a car advertise for a very low price, and it's
a base model car like that, the Nissan Ultima S
or whatever the model is, right, I don't know what
(09:47):
models they have, I forgot, but uh, a Nissan Altim
and they advertise it for a really seemingly very low price,
something you've never seen before, even like an Internet offer
or anything like that. It's very low. A lot of
times what you'll see is a stock number associated with that,
and that means they have one vehicle at that price,
and that's for all of southeast or north southeast Atlanta
(10:10):
or whatever you know the region would be, and like
all of West Texas or whatever. How is that even legal? Well,
they do, they do that, and they advertise that one,
but they might also say we have five available for
this price, and you have to get in there and
get one of those five they're available for that you
Otherwise it doesn't apply to everyone. And they might have
twenty other cars in the lot that are that are
then ultima but at higher trim level. It feels like
(10:33):
by the time you see that commercial, those five have
already purchased. I think that's the way it is, really.
I think that happens to a lot of people. They're
going to get that one, and then they say, oh,
you know what, that one was just sold, but let
me show you this, uh, the ultimate st or whatever. Again.
I don't know if they have an s T or not,
but they show you the one trim level package higher
and then they say, well, if you like that, then
(10:53):
we've got this right here, and then you take it.
Take you to another you know, I'll and they've got
five more of another one that's you know, ten thousand
more att Yeah, and it's always just a little bit more,
a little bit more. And that's the see, that's the thing.
My wife, this is good about this. She went in
not wanting to spend a lot on a monthly payment
and wanted a cheap lease payment. And she stuck to
(11:14):
her guns. She's stuck to exactly what she wanted, and
in that way she got what she wanted. But man,
was it? Man? Was it just devoid of any kind
of extras? I mean it really is. I mean it's
nice looking, Honestly, it's not. And that's a thing I'm
probably like, I'm probably comparing this vehicle to um. Maybe
(11:37):
I'm not making a fair comparison, is what I'm saying.
You know, because when you look at base models, as
you said, from years past, they were completely devoid of
anything and they had almost nothing in them. They were
really really just just rattle traps. They were just nothing.
Sparse vehicles. Stripper cars is what they would call it,
because they were they were totally stripped of anything of
value really just an engine and the stuff to make
(12:00):
the engine run, and a place for the driver to say, yeah,
exactly right. And and now I mean this thing is
for that, you know. Five years ago, this thing would
be loaded, but now it's like it's got blank buttons
and things like that, you know where there should be features.
So that that kind of leads us into this next
quick thing that I want to talk about. Gelapman had
an article about four reasons why you should never ever
buy a base model car, and I'll just I was
(12:22):
gonna read through a bunch of these, but maybe i'll
just read them off in order. Number four, the base
model is the cheapest car the company could possibly make.
It's like they, um, you know, are hunting for every
nickel and dime they can to save on the on
the things. So I think, as I said earlier, it's
it's like the worst version of that model and that
make of car that you can get. Why would you
(12:42):
put yourself through that. That's a that's that's one thing.
And now I know that there are instances where that's
what you need to do. You need to get a
short car, And a lot of times they will point
to small pickup trucks where that's the idea is that
you just want something to haul things. You don't care
about a c you don't care about power windows or
all that stuff. You just want a vehicle that's capable
of doing it. That's not the case with what we're
(13:02):
talking about. Um, the other thing, and this one might
require some more explanation, but I don't know. If we
have time. Uh, you likely won't miss the extra money
you'll spend on options. Now, that's a tough one to argue.
But the way that he does it is he compares
it to to a mattress. The author here for Jelotnik,
I think his name is Freddy Hernandez. Freddy took a
(13:23):
lot of heat for this article, by the way, if
you read the comment, if you read the comments, for
a lot of things. But he compares the money that
you spend on extra options in your car if it's new,
to a mattress, and he says, here's why, because you
spend a lot of time in your mattress, a lot
of times sleeping, you want to be the best mattress
you can get, even if it's a few dollars more.
Same thing with your car. If you're gonna be commuting
daily to and from work and you're gonna be in
(13:43):
the car for hours, and then hours multiplied out by
months and weeks or weeks and months and years becomes days, weeks,
months in the car, spent in the car, and you've
got to be comfortable. And he says, why skimp on
a few dollars if you're gonna be in this thing
for ten years commuting feeling miserable about not spending an
extra two dollars at the factory or the dealer years ago.
(14:07):
And that's that's the point that we heard raised in
our episode on p I cars. That's right, especially if
you're spending a lot of time driving, Like, yeah, the
comfort level was it was critical for that for that person.
I remember, UM, the number two would be a base
model is worthless at resale. And this one comes back
in another article here, But UM, later on when you're
(14:31):
going to sell that vehicle a base model, like let's say, UM,
you get the the the LX instead of the GT version, UM,
and it doesn't have power windows, it doesn't have UM,
it has a V six instead of a V eight.
That stuff is gonna come back to bite you later
on when you're when you're selling the vehicle. UM. In
some cases that actually works for you. We'll talk about
that too. But like the ghost of dealerships past, So
(14:53):
the last one and I know I'm not explaining that
well enough, but there's reasons for it. The article is
actually it does a good job of telling you, um,
dummy buttons and switches. Now, this is one that really
bothers me. Whenever you get into a car and you
see those blank plates, you know where there should be
an option or a feature that's not there for some reason.
That always bothers me. And I've had cars that have
had a lot of those. I've had other ones that
(15:13):
are fully loaded, you know that I bought used, and
none of those are are in place. Um. Trying to
think of my current vehicle, I don't think I have
any dummy switches right now or anything blocked out. Of
course it doesn't have certain features that a newer model
would have, but for that model year, I think everything
is there. I'm pretty sure there's one area that kind
of looks like dummy switches, but I think it's just
(15:35):
an aesthetic thing. It's it's there for designed to balance
out the look. There's I've tried looking to see if
there's an option that goes there, you know, like other vehicles,
and I've never seen one. Have you ever seen the
I'm sure you've seen the novelty switches that people drop
in where they've missed the options, smoke screen or something
(15:56):
like that that. All right, so you know I hinted at
you know, the prices, and here here's the thing. Um
Auto Trader also did an article called buying a car,
should you avoid a base model? And the answer and
this is a terrible answer initially, but I'll explain it.
It depends. And that's a terrible answer. I understand that's
that's that's so wishy washy, But they do they do
(16:17):
explain what they mean that the idea is short term
versus long term. And this is what I'll wrap up
with here. How about that short term the uh, the
general advice would be do not go the no frills way.
If you're gonna buy a car short term, you should
just go ahead and get whatever option, whatever version you want,
if you're planning to sell it soon, which makes I guess,
(16:40):
I mean the the idea is that you're gonna have
to sell it and then with other people in the
market with a car that has more options than you
do less, Yes, that's right, because the other ones to
appreciate more. And then you also have to um compete
with the other people that are selling the lower end
models and the higher end models, and you'll have to maybe,
you know, kind promising your price a bit. So the
(17:01):
resale thing is is big on this now. If you're
planning to keep your car long term, and I questioned
this one. If you're planning on keeping your car a
long time, like more than six or seven years, getting
a no frills base model may not be such a
bad idea, they say in this Auto Trader add or article,
whether and so you probably won't lose too much additional
value when the time comes to sell relative to a
(17:22):
seller who has a well equipped equipped car. And the
reason behind that is if you're talking about something that's
long term like that, not immediate, where in the last
example that I said, the short term was like maybe
a year or two when you're gonna sell it, or
three in this case, if you're six or seven or
eight years out and you're gonna sell it. Most of
the time, what people are looking for is um. They're
concerned about maintenance and um economy like fuel economy, and
(17:45):
you know the you know the mileage, how how good
is it a mileage? Is it burn oil? Does it?
You know, have you maintained, you know, the breaks and
all that actual functions exactly right. They're more concerned about
the simplistic things. Uh, you know, if you can call
it simplistic, I guess you know, the uh, the overall
running condition of the vehicle versus uh, you know that
it doesn't have the heated vibrating seats or something like that. Well,
(18:07):
there is, there's also there's a third thing. What seems
a third thing would be the exclusivity of a certain package.
That's true, So I know that's a minority of car sales,
but that that goes into the realm of collecting. Yeah. Well,
some people also say that if you have a car
with fewer features, like a base model, that's less things
(18:29):
to break, could it save you money on maintenance or
or would it cost you more money on maintenance? And
that well, like, yeah, like a sunroof is gonna cost
you money on maintenance if you own it for seven
eight years. That's true. I get Yeah, you're right, because
you know, the the channels will maybe fill up with
and it'll yeah, and then it'll leak into the car
and you know they're gonna they're gonna be problems with
(18:50):
stuff like that. I get it. The more features, the
more frills, the more options you have, the more things
can break. But then again, you know, like some people
will even argue this, we'll say that you know, if
you if you've got a car with a lot of
stuff like that, there's gonna be features and options that
you never will learn or that it will be very
difficult for you to learn. But I say, that's just
part of the learning curve, and you have to learn
(19:10):
that stuff if you want to use it along the way.
That's not really you know, something that you can't overcome
by any means. I mean, you can learn how to
do that, or you can just ignore it. If you
don't want the Bluetooth connectivity, you don't have to use
the Bluetooth connectivity. That's a that's the thing. You don't
have to use all that stuff. If you don't choose to,
it's it's maybe a waste. If you buy it as
a new option option for like you know, satellite navigation
(19:33):
or something, and you don't use it, that'd be kind
of silly. But if you buy it, you should plan
to use it, and then if you do use it,
then it becomes a value to you. Yeah, I completely agree.
We've always one thing we've always maintained on this show
is that if it's your money, buy the car you want.
And as far as if it's better, I mean, it depends.
(19:53):
Thing is not the most satisfactory answer, but I think
they explain it well when they say that this is
this involves a confluence of several factors. Right time owned,
the type of car, the type of function you wanted
to perform. Is this your road trip car? Then if
it's your road trip car, you might want to spring
for a little bit extra in the seats, right sure? Yeah? Okay,
(20:15):
So this leads to maybe the last question that I have.
Really are not going to explore this one too deep,
but maybe you just think about this one. Are these
types of cars, these base model cars, going to go
extinct eventually? Do you think that they're going to go
to a system more like what you talked about where
they just sell one vehicle? You know, why why offer
that base model car? And and the reason given in
(20:38):
this Yahoo Auto's article is that, um, well you're not
gonna believe this, Ben, maybe you will. The seven year
car Loan might be a reason that the base models
will go extinct, and the idea is that people can
afford a lower monthly payment on a car that they
finance for up to seven years now, and so they'll
go for the you know, the better term level, the
(20:58):
higher term level, over the base model any day because
they want they don't want to take a three year
car loan on a base model when they can have
a seven year car loan on the top end model
and have their payment be just about the same. That's
a really good point. Well, but man financing a car
for seven years, I mean, I think that I read
somewhere that experience found that the average car loan is
(21:19):
now five and a half years. That's the average car
loan is five and a half years. So that's the
way out from where it was. It used to be
that you could only get a car loan for four years.
Then they pushed it a little bit more and a
little bit more, and now we're out like seven years.
And I would bet that there's even more out there.
So manufacturers and dealers are selling a lot more high
end or loaded models than they ever were before, but
(21:41):
they still have to bring people in with those base
model cars. I mean, there's psychology to play there as
well as Scott listeners. You know this just as well
as I do. Often it's easy for us as individuals
to us sign up a tomorrow version of ourselves for
all sorts of obligations because we're all these ideal versions
(22:03):
of ourselves in the future, aren't we. Well, I guess
we're all in a little bit better shape. We're all
a little bit better off socially and financially, we've done
all those goals. We're committing in effect, psychologically, we're committing
someone else to an obligation. Yeah, that's the way it works,
I guess. And you know it's I just could not
strap myself with a seven year car long. I know
(22:24):
that it's it's uh, some people it's a necessity that
they do that just they just at the time can't
swing it. Yeah, but man, I I don't know. I
can't see financing and car for that that length of time.
It would just be really really difficult for me to
stomach that. I'm just saying that. I think we're going
to approach the time where you're almost gonna look at
it like a like a house mortgage, you know, like
where they gonna offer for student loan for fifteen year
(22:48):
options on these things. And that's crazy, I mean, especially
when you consider the depreciation of the vehicle over time.
At what point is it no longer feasible to have
a loan of that link? Well, I think we're already there.
I think that it's seven years is is. Uh, We're
we're past that point. So all right, So that's just
that's a lot to think about their I understand. And
that was a kind of a whirlwind tour of mine,
(23:09):
and I wish I had more time to go over that,
that lattic article. And if you get a chance, you know,
take a look at it. Bit four reasons why you
should never ever buy a base model cars the article
and if you really want to be entertained, going to
the comments section, because he caught a lot of plaque
for that article when he wrote that, and uh wrote
a lot of responses as well. And how many different
user names did you make when you're in the comments? No, no, no,
(23:31):
it wasn't me at all. I just I just stumbled
across this, but I thought it was an interesting question
and I hope it makes some people think. And it
goes back to what we were talking about at the
top of that the human element it's your vehicle, what
do you want, what are you using it for? And
how many of those how many of those upgrades are
(23:52):
cosmetic or esthetic? How many are oriented towards you as
a person, how many or are oriented toward performance of
the val Yeah? Absolutely, to each his own. I mean,
if that's if that's your thing, go for the base model.
That's fine. But you know they're their arguments for and
against that just about every turn. And here's the segue. Okay, no,
(24:12):
literally here in the studio is not kidding. Here. Here's uh,
here is our segue into the mystery topic for you,
my friends. This concerns racing. This concerns electric vehicles, This
concerns the news, This concerns darn near everything but human beings.
(24:33):
Recently announced or recently revealed the designs for the first
electric autonomous race cars. Okay, this's the this is the race,
this is the formula ething that right. Okay, So I'm
looking at the picture of the car, and I gotta
say that's a that's a cool looking concept. Yeah, I
mean I really like that it's created. I've got some
(24:55):
background for you here. This is created by a guy
named Daniel Simon who DESI mind that who designed that
flying pod in the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. He also
designed stuff for Tron, the Neutron. Now I can see
the employee man here. Yeah, so this is it's called
robo race, right, this is a driverless racing and if
(25:16):
they go with this design, that might just be worth
it to watch to see a bunch of these cars. Design.
That is the design they're gonna go with, this definite
design that it was pretty amazing recently announced. It was
in the the idea for this was in the works
for a while, but they hadn't published any photos. Now
have we talked about this in the past, only only
(25:37):
in passing, and that I think that I want to
say that it was Rudy wrote in again and said,
you know, if we're gonna do this, if we're gonna
go full robo racing, if we're gonna have um, you know,
just all electric and no human element involved, not at all,
why don't we just go Why don't we go full destruction? Yeah? Well, yeah,
you know, have a jam cargo on the opposite direction.
(25:58):
Why don't we uh, you know, just somewhere in the
middle plan for pile up. Yeah, the only the only
human element that I can see in these vehicles, which
look like stylized stuff you would see an anime. Honestly,
they look great. We'll post some pictures on Twitter if
we haven't yet, so you can check them out. But
the only human elements are going to be in the
(26:20):
actual assembling, engineering, and design of the vehicles, which will
all be identical in terms of their specs, and the
creation of programming of algorithms. Okay, So okay, that's that
was Maybe that answers my question. That's the ultimate competition.
Well okay, so the cleverness, the craftiness of the people
(26:40):
that that the program these that is where the benefit
is going to be. That's that's the real race. That's
the that's the racer's edge right there, right, I mean,
it's so okay. So so now when you know, a
racer sees a gap and they go for it, maybe
the electric electric version won't do that because it's senses
that now there's danger ahead, or you know, or will
it be programmed to go for every gap that it sees.
(27:02):
Will it be programed more like an aggressive driver would be.
I would guess that it's it have to write. That's
the interesting part, right, The thing is, if we looked
at these designs, what we see is that removing a
human driver allows for some potentially brilliant engineering moves. Now
(27:22):
we don't have to consider we being the engineers and
the designers don't have to consider the placement of a
human being in the vehicle. It means several things. It
can be much lower. It can also we can also
move batteries and motors again, because these are electric vehicles
(27:42):
to the place that's best for the cars, gravity best
for the tires. This thing now potentially it can become
a much better driver in some ways than a human
driver because reaction time may also change, right, and reaction
time may involve the The idea here is that these
(28:06):
vehicles will have a top speed of around a hundred
and eighty six miles per hour, which means it's faster
than the Formula E electrics that are on forty and
it's also faster than Audis self driving RS seven, which
is a little under a hundred and fifty. Wow, that's
a fast that's a fast, high spear a top speed. Brother. Um,
(28:26):
I gotta say I had not seen this design. This
is amazing really anyway, if you look it up Robo Race.
You'll find the first design here. It's supposed to come
out with UM in this year and next year. Okay, man,
I would maybe consider watching this. I I'm not a
big fan of Formula E. I just felt like the
electric grace kinda like with the sound or whatever. But
(28:47):
this is a This is like a different twist on
the I think this is different enough because formulaly had
something missing to me, Like I while I could intellectually
appreciate the idea, it didn't get me sited, you know
what I mean. But this, this is a little bit different.
They're gonna have ten teams, each with two cars, and
(29:08):
they're gonna go on hour long races in the same
street circuits Formula E cars compete on the This replaces
some other things. But one interesting thing, one interesting thing here.
One of those ten teams will be a crowdsourced community team,
so just people who are software and technology experts. And
(29:31):
if you are listening to this show and you would
like to be involved with that, then I would say
right to robo Racer, see what the scoop is. Absolutely,
and I wonder if they're gonna be having like a
rotation so you wouldn't be working on this the whole
year long. You maybe work on one race. I don't
know how I'm interested in how that would work, but
how fun would that be to be involved in that? UM?
(29:51):
You know, if you add a talent like that for
for this type of vehicle or this type of programming,
that you could be a part of UM. I guess
I don't know if it'd be internationally recognized or just
nationally recognized at this point, but that type of that
type of level of UM visibility, I suppose you know that.
I don't know if they're gonna be UM air on
(30:11):
television or what. This is also new. I don't really
know a lot about this series early days of development,
really early days, but man, does it look cool. I
mean it's a it's a fascinating design, and I mean
it looks like one of those cars too that you know,
they always bring out these concept vehicles that they have
no intention of ever building. But if they can really
build it this way, if that's the actual design they're
going with, what a cool series to watch And what
(30:35):
kind of maneuvers will these be capable of? Yeah? Are
we gonna be watching like a race where there's no
passing at all. It's just gonna be because that's that's
one of the critiques that F one gets a lot,
is that there's very little passing. And other types of
racing get that as well, you know, like the Iraq
series where that's a little bit different, but like the
Irax series where they're so closely matched the cars are
(30:58):
that sometimes not all the time, but sometimes it becomes
almost a boring race, and that there's not a lot
of movement, like a lot of activity. The cars are
so so precisely matched that that really takes, you know,
the driver's skill in order to make them overcome that.
So in this case, it would be whoever's programming them
and deciding here's where I make my move every time,
(31:18):
I try this every single time, or maybe we wait
ten laps and then we make our move in this
spot on the track. And and but it has to
rely on everything else is happening to like, you have
to know the situation exactly. And man, what a what
a fascinating thing to to think about. There's a lot
of possibility. Here's here's one. I'm just spitball in here, folks,
but imagine this, so ten teams say each get two cars.
(31:42):
What if it's a you know, right now, these are
like support teams, you know, or it's a support race.
But what if there is big, big races out on
the track, right, and maybe different variations in the software
for each individual vehicle. But if one team does a
(32:02):
a suicide move, this rudy, This goes kind of in
line with what you were telling us earlier in that email,
um or proposing earlier in that email. What if the
team with two cars, what if they have one of
their cars purposefully wreck in a way that creates the
most chaos amongst the other eighteen vehicles and then leaves
(32:24):
vehicle number twenty or vehicle number nineteen or whatever. Uh
that's also on the same team. Is the only thing
with the programming to avoid this very specific sort of accident?
Is that illegal? Yet? Gaming the race is what they
would be doing, right? And are you kidding? They're costing
people millions of dollars. It's such a terrible move. Well,
(32:44):
that would be rough when I mean, I guess any
team could do that right now, really, I mean you
could cause you cause mayhem on the track. You would
be completely I mean, you would face the consequences I
think you would be banned. I think especially the driver
would be hated forever. The team owner would be hated forever.
If that was if that was a strategy, if that
was a plan of a of a racing team, they
(33:05):
wouldn't last long. That's the thing. Now in this series,
that would better be the same way, because you're right
there probably. I mean, I'm gonna guess it's a million
dollar car. It looks like a million dollar car. I
don't know. I don't really know how much it costs,
but um, just a ballpark somewhere around there, it's gotta be. Um.
I guess you wouldn't have to pay uh, you wouldn't
have to pay a healthy driver's salary, you know, like
(33:27):
they do now, like guys that are they're paying fifty
million dollars to race in Formula one or whatever. I'm
just I'm wondering, what would happen. Well, I don't know,
that's an interest. That's really interesting thought. I mean, I
suppose they could block. They could uh you know, they
could work together in that way, as long as it
wasn't the structure. Yeah, I suppose you're you're almost talking
about like how you hang back and you hang back
(33:49):
and then you take out the leader and then uh,
and then everybody piles up behind them, and but you
know that's coming, so that the teammate car slows down
and makes its way around and creeps around. Yeah, that's
how I used to play risk. I used to take
over Australia. So you still generate a couple of armies
every turn, and then just hold Thailand or Siam, as
is called the game, and then wait till it gets
(34:10):
down to maybe three people and make make an offer
surreptitiously to the other one team up and then betray
them anyway, I guess I can't play risk with anybody now.
If you listen to car stuff complete strategies out there,
it's it's public. It's over. I'm gonna have to make
up something new that's funny, man, But yeah, it's I
guess that's kind of the way that we're talking about here,
that they could work together on a team and do
(34:31):
it that way. Now, I wonder if the ten ten
teams two cars means that they raised ten vehicles on
the track at a time you have a backup car problem.
I think so, I don't think there's I don't think
there's a situation where a team has both of their
vehicles on the track at the same time. It is
an interesting thought though. It is an interesting thought. I
would if I were watching a film or fictionalized accounts
(34:54):
for this, I would love for that kind of just
morally reprehensible strategy to be in play once. But in
real life, I don't think it's sporting. Yeah, no, not
at all. It would almost be like something out of
a movie or something, you know, exactly. Yeah, that's all.
That's an interesting thought though. I mean, there's a there's
so many, um, so many possibilities with this, really, I mean,
(35:16):
you know Rudy's Angle, if you know, complete destruction and
running just crazy races where it's so metal that really
is it's a funny idea or or um you know.
I think when we first talked about this, we weren't
sure if they were going to have something where someone's
actually controlling the vehicle from the right, and that seems
like that's not the case with these vehicles. It seems
like it's going to be something that's just programmed and
(35:36):
they just let it run the race and see what happens.
They'll they'll probably be I imagine there would still be
a pit stop thing. It says, you know, their race,
their race times are gonna be one hour. But I
imagine there has to be something built in there to
check programming or if the you know, if there's a
function tire pops something like that. Yeah, I guess that,
but I mean all that stuff can be monitored. Of course,
(35:58):
they'll know if they have a flat tire, They're gonna
know if they're law on batteries or whatever. But I
would bet that that one hour time is based on
the battery durability. You know, that's probably their their full range,
if I had to guess, And that's that's typically how
they limit these races, although I think formulaly they actually
come and they come in for a car change in
the middle of a Formula E race. You know that.
(36:19):
Yeah I heard that. Yeah, the driver hops out of
the driver the vehicle that they're currently in, hops into
their their backup car with a fresh battery, and then
heads that heads out. That's one of the reasons I
don't like formually. Yeah, it was good to say. How
much of that is just the limitation of the battery technology, Yeah, exactly,
That's that's what it is. It just runs low and
then you gotta get a fresh battery. And rather than
(36:41):
swapping out batteries on the track, they swap out cars
and in current formula, I don't know what they're gonna
do with this, this robo racing, but it sure looks cool. Well,
they're all base models, yeah, I guess they would be right,
They're all exactly the same. I don't know if you
can call them base models though, they're all okay, they're
all the top end models. They're all the top end models,
(37:02):
you write, all the bells and whistles that are allowed
or probably in use. Yeah, Well, what do you think listeners?
Thanks for tuning into our mystery show, Scott, I think
we did pretty well, uh, being considering that both of
us were kind of shooting from the hip on this way.
We only knew half the show. Really, we only knew
half the show. That's right, of us knew half the
show for our double feature. Well, let us know what
(37:24):
you think. Do you feel that there are some things
manufacturers consider options that must be included when you buy
a car? Yeah? And uh, and what are your thoughts
on this whole robo race thing? I mean, is it
gonna pan out. Is it gonna be something that people
will really watch? Well? Are you going to watch it? Well,
we'll go to go to see or do you think
that maybe it will remain a support race, you know,
something that's just run along with another bigger form of racing.
(37:47):
I don't know. It's interesting, curious out, but we will
learn pretty soon what's happening. Also, just tell us what
you think about these cars? Do I mean the one
we're looking at is in the Verge and again it's
look up robo race and you'll see us get on
blue and yellow page very and I love the way
that they can't even talked about it too much. We're
(38:07):
out of time. Check in and let us know. Let
us know what you think of these vehicles, the future
of autonomous racing, and if you also have a story
about bait or advice for other listeners about options to
avoid or consider mandatory let us know. You can find
us on Facebook and Twitter. We get pictures of robo
(38:28):
Racer that will be up there shortly, and you can
also write to us directly. We are our stuff and
how Stuff Work dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is How Stuff works dot com.
What is that? What you think? Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot Com. Hi, welcome
to our stuff. I'm Scott said I had been you
are you as always? We are joined by our illustrious
super producer no Um Noal Sherlock Brownlock is good. Yeah.
(00:26):
I think that's one who maybe have not used yet
because you know this is uh. This is another edition
of one of our mystery episode where you don't know
what I'm gonna ask you, and we're gonna do it
a little different this time. We're also going to ask
me a question or have a topic that I don't
know about, as well as we're gonna do two in
one here. And there's some precedent for this. We've done
this eight times already. I've looked up all the dates
and times we've done this and it started back in
(00:48):
June of last year and went all the way through September,
but we haven't done one since then. This will be
our ninth and I guess ninth and tenth if you
want to count it, um, you know you want to
want to be legit about it. Nine intense topics are
mystery topics. It's feature a double feature that's the best
way to put it. Maybe. So I guess since we're
gonna try to cramp two into this one, it we
should just jump right in with my my question to you,
(01:10):
and uh, I hope it it spawned some thought among listeners,
you know that they might write in with some responses
to this as well. All Right, so here's my question, Shoot,
should you ever buy a base model car? Not? Have
you ever? Not? Not could you? But should you ever
buy a base model car? Now this applies to new
(01:31):
and used, so think about it in a lot of
different ways. But here's here's what got me thinking about this.
My wife's vehicle, that that Jeeper Renegade, that just a
scarcity of options and features on that thing. It's a
base model vehicle. It's it's the lowest level Jeeper Renegade
you can get. And the problem with that is that
we're seeing, or at least I'm seeing the worst version
(01:54):
of that car that they can possibly make. Really, I mean,
it's it's not great. There's a lot I've complained about
up this vehicles several times. And you know the whole
process of going through to get this and why she
got it. She wanted a low monthly payment and you know, fine,
you achieve that, but now you've got a car that's
maybe something that you didn't expect it would be. I mean,
it's nice when you're there on a lot. It's nice
when you, you know, look at it compared to whatever
(02:16):
you're trading in. But later on you might have some
some regrets and buyer's remorses, like that you bought that
versus you know, paying a few extra dollars more and
getting a trim level higher that is a little bit
more comfortable in some way, whatever way that would be. Now,
things that you can typically expect in a in a
base model car, you can expect things like like cloth
seats now that used to be vinyl seats back in
(02:38):
the day, but cloth seats. You can expect steel wheels,
very plain steel wheels. As a matter of fact, uh,
no hubcaps. You can expect um, no window tint, no
floor mats. In some cases, like in my wife's case,
no sunroof. Of course, some cases, drum brakes on the vehicle.
There's there's still vehicles that have drum brakes in the
rear that are made here in the United States. That's
(03:00):
the Honda Fitt is one of those vehicles. Um, you
might have the fog light delete plastic cap that goes
on the on the front. You know that, so where
they're supposed to be flogg lights and they just put
a plastic cap there and you can tell that they're
supposed to be there if they're not there and your
console is gonna look weird? Did you know that? For
a long time? And the smart for to model, the
most base smart for two that you get, I think
(03:21):
it's called the Pure And I don't know how long
this supplied it because now they've changed it. But for
a while you could get those with no A C
and no radio. That was that was an option in
those cars. Can you imagine a no A C, no
radio car in let's say it was. That's crazy. So
there's a lot of things that you you do and
don't get with with with a base model car. And
(03:42):
what you do get I guess would be a low payment.
That's about the only benefit really I see. Um, there's
a lot of articles on this and a couple of things.
You know, there's some interesting things that were written by
Gelopnik about this, and the one from Auto Trader, another
one from Yahoo autos. Um before I get into this
too far. Yeah, do you have kind of a general
opinion about base model cars? Been do you do? You
(04:05):
do you support this idea because there's some people that
say that's the way to go. You get a you
get a base model car because you you get in
the door. That way, you get whatever it is, and
then you can upgrade it as you want. You can
add on to do it on your own, not at
the dealership. I see that, But that's that's kind of
a broad brush to paint with, don't you think, because
(04:25):
there's some things that are going to be more of
a hassle to do aftermarket than they would be just
you know, to get it done right from the factory exactly.
So it's strange because base model stuff has evolved over
the past the past few years, especially the past few years,
(04:45):
but overall for decades, you know, like once upon a time.
Of course, we know and and listeners, some of some
of us may be old enough to remember when a
C was a fancy option. You know, Oh yeah, I've
had I've had cars without a C of course, because
whoever bought the car new just simply didn't check that box.
And you know, years later when I'm buying a used
(05:06):
I'm not so concerned about that as I am about
the price of the vehicle, and I want something that's
economical or whatever, and I ended up in that vehicle.
But then I'm sitting there sweating, thinking like, why didn't
they check that box? Why didn't they get a C
in this car? Because I'd like it now, I sure
would like it, but I knew upfront that it didn't
have it when I bought it, So it's kind of
my fault as well. I mean that that gets passed on, right. Um, yeah,
(05:27):
there's there's some interesting things like that that you got
to consider though. Um, you know, trim options, I guess
in cars, you know, that's that's the thing is like
there's always gonna be you know, not always, not every time,
but there's always gonna be maybe I keep saying always.
Maybe sometimes there's often often there are two or three
other options, or four options, or maybe even more than that.
You know, you can go up to different trim levels
(05:49):
and that that offers different, um, you know, standard packages.
You know what used to irritate me when I was
far too young to buy any high value thing like
a laptop or a car or stuff like that we
used to irritate me as a kid was seeing varying
pricing options for different versions of the same product and
(06:09):
then thinking to myself, well, don't make me feel inferior
buying buying the Lewist. Just give me just only sell
the best one. Why can't you sell just the best one?
It just sells the GT model. Don't sell anything else.
Just give me the g T, which obviously, I mean,
obviously that's not the problem is when it's brand new,
getting that GT option in the car might be another
(06:30):
ten or twelve thousand dollars or more depending on what
they offer right when. But later when you saw, okay,
there's there's other thought processes going on later when you're
when you're trying to buy a used vehicle, but a
new car, sometimes those options are very very expensive. Sometimes
you can look at it and say like, well, I
don't need a six speaker sound system. I can add
an aftermarket so you can do Yeah, that's a great example.
(06:51):
That's a better version than what I would ever get
from the factory anyways, And you know, all costs considered,
you know that that factory, that factory radio is gonna
be I can put one in for six and have
somebody install it for another hundred bucks. I have a
buddy who will do it for beer. Yeah, exactly, that's
a That's the way a lot of people feel about this.
So what sound system? It makes sense? Okay, here's my
(07:12):
here's my thing. If I'm am I interrupting, all right,
So my concept of this relies on the following assumption
assumptions rather one. It really depends on the specific vehicle
we're talking about, too. The most general thing I can
say is that personally, I don't I don't put too
(07:37):
much stock in the cosmetic or esthetic stuff. While I
get that it might be nice, for instance, to have
the custom metallic gray paint or something like that, for instance,
if it doesn't affect the performance of the vehicle, then
to me, I don't care as much. They're they're the basics.
(08:00):
Of Course, I want to working radio or sound system.
Of course I want a c in a heat or Hey,
you want comfortable seats, you want you want air conditioning,
you want power windows, right, But I don't live in
an environment where I need a heated seat. I don't
live in an environment or in a lifestyle really where
I need to have a sunroofs. Sunroofs are nice, Yeah,
but wouldn't it be nice to have tinted windows on
(08:21):
a car instead of having just you know, flat, you
know plaine glass that's see through all the way around,
so you're not like driving in a fish bowl all
the time, and you know it's a safety issue. Is
we used to have some heavy tints on that Honda
able to? I do now on my new one too.
I guess you haven't seen in a while. It looks
a no, no, okay, I didn't see it because my
windows are so dark. There's something what I'm saying. I
(08:43):
totally get it. Anything that's cosmetic really is something that
you're not particularly interested in paying and paying a premium
for and I get that. So the question is, I mean,
there's a bunch of questions here, and I'm gonna get
to a couple other quick things that I'm gonna speed
through so we can get onto your topic too. But
um another question, in fact, I'm gonna have like two
or three along the way here. But um, so, why
do they why do manufacturers even offer a base model
(09:05):
at all? Why don't they just make one? Like you said?
The question? But the idea is. And I think this
is so that they can always advertise that starting price
so they can say exactly right, they can, so almost
everybody ends up spending more money when they get to
the dealer to get the you know, the nicer version
of the same car, you know, like a higher trim level.
Almost everybody does that. I don't have the numbers, but
(09:26):
it seems like buying a base model for a lot
of vehicles is relatively rare. Well it is. And then
here's part of the reason. And I know that advertising
works like this in a lot of places, and and
pay attention to this the next time you see it.
And Warren listeners about this before. But when you see
a car advertise for a very low price, and it's
a base model car like that, the Nissan Ultima S
or whatever the model is, right, I don't know what
(09:47):
models they have, I forgot, but uh, a Nissan Altim
and they advertise it for a really seemingly very low price,
something you've never seen before, even like an Internet offer
or anything like that. It's very low. A lot of
times what you'll see is a stock number associated with that,
and that means they have one vehicle at that price,
and that's for all of southeast or north southeast Atlanta
(10:10):
or whatever you know the region would be, and like
all of West Texas or whatever. How is that even legal? Well,
they do, they do that, and they advertise that one,
but they might also say we have five available for
this price, and you have to get in there and
get one of those five they're available for that you
Otherwise it doesn't apply to everyone. And they might have
twenty other cars in the lot that are that are
then ultima but at higher trim level. It feels like
(10:33):
by the time you see that commercial, those five have
already purchased. I think that's the way it is, really.
I think that happens to a lot of people. They're
going to get that one, and then they say, oh,
you know what, that one was just sold, but let
me show you this, uh, the ultimate st or whatever. Again.
I don't know if they have an s T or not,
but they show you the one trim level package higher
and then they say, well, if you like that, then
(10:53):
we've got this right here, and then you take it.
Take you to another you know, I'll and they've got
five more of another one that's you know, ten thousand
more att Yeah, and it's always just a little bit more,
a little bit more. And that's the see, that's the thing.
My wife, this is good about this. She went in
not wanting to spend a lot on a monthly payment
and wanted a cheap lease payment. And she stuck to
(11:14):
her guns. She's stuck to exactly what she wanted, and
in that way she got what she wanted. But man,
was it? Man? Was it just devoid of any kind
of extras? I mean it really is. I mean it's
nice looking, Honestly, it's not. And that's a thing I'm
probably like, I'm probably comparing this vehicle to um. Maybe
(11:37):
I'm not making a fair comparison, is what I'm saying.
You know, because when you look at base models, as
you said, from years past, they were completely devoid of
anything and they had almost nothing in them. They were
really really just just rattle traps. They were just nothing.
Sparse vehicles. Stripper cars is what they would call it,
because they were they were totally stripped of anything of
value really just an engine and the stuff to make
(12:00):
the engine run, and a place for the driver to say, yeah,
exactly right. And and now I mean this thing is
for that, you know. Five years ago, this thing would
be loaded, but now it's like it's got blank buttons
and things like that, you know where there should be features.
So that that kind of leads us into this next
quick thing that I want to talk about. Gelapman had
an article about four reasons why you should never ever
buy a base model car, and I'll just I was
(12:22):
gonna read through a bunch of these, but maybe i'll
just read them off in order. Number four, the base
model is the cheapest car the company could possibly make.
It's like they, um, you know, are hunting for every
nickel and dime they can to save on the on
the things. So I think, as I said earlier, it's
it's like the worst version of that model and that
make of car that you can get. Why would you
(12:42):
put yourself through that. That's a that's that's one thing.
And now I know that there are instances where that's
what you need to do. You need to get a
short car, And a lot of times they will point
to small pickup trucks where that's the idea is that
you just want something to haul things. You don't care
about a c you don't care about power windows or
all that stuff. You just want a vehicle that's capable
of doing it. That's not the case with what we're
(13:02):
talking about. Um, the other thing, and this one might
require some more explanation, but I don't know. If we
have time. Uh, you likely won't miss the extra money
you'll spend on options. Now, that's a tough one to argue.
But the way that he does it is he compares
it to to a mattress. The author here for Jelotnik,
I think his name is Freddy Hernandez. Freddy took a
(13:23):
lot of heat for this article, by the way, if
you read the comment, if you read the comments, for
a lot of things. But he compares the money that
you spend on extra options in your car if it's new,
to a mattress, and he says, here's why, because you
spend a lot of time in your mattress, a lot
of times sleeping, you want to be the best mattress
you can get, even if it's a few dollars more.
Same thing with your car. If you're gonna be commuting
daily to and from work and you're gonna be in
(13:43):
the car for hours, and then hours multiplied out by
months and weeks or weeks and months and years becomes days, weeks,
months in the car, spent in the car, and you've
got to be comfortable. And he says, why skimp on
a few dollars if you're gonna be in this thing
for ten years commuting feeling miserable about not spending an
extra two dollars at the factory or the dealer years ago.
(14:07):
And that's that's the point that we heard raised in
our episode on p I cars. That's right, especially if
you're spending a lot of time driving, Like, yeah, the
comfort level was it was critical for that for that person.
I remember, UM, the number two would be a base
model is worthless at resale. And this one comes back
in another article here, But UM, later on when you're
(14:31):
going to sell that vehicle a base model, like let's say, UM,
you get the the the LX instead of the GT version, UM,
and it doesn't have power windows, it doesn't have UM,
it has a V six instead of a V eight.
That stuff is gonna come back to bite you later
on when you're when you're selling the vehicle. UM. In
some cases that actually works for you. We'll talk about
that too. But like the ghost of dealerships past, So
(14:53):
the last one and I know I'm not explaining that
well enough, but there's reasons for it. The article is
actually it does a good job of telling you, um,
dummy buttons and switches. Now, this is one that really
bothers me. Whenever you get into a car and you
see those blank plates, you know where there should be
an option or a feature that's not there for some reason.
That always bothers me. And I've had cars that have
had a lot of those. I've had other ones that
(15:13):
are fully loaded, you know that I bought used, and
none of those are are in place. Um. Trying to
think of my current vehicle, I don't think I have
any dummy switches right now or anything blocked out. Of
course it doesn't have certain features that a newer model
would have, but for that model year, I think everything
is there. I'm pretty sure there's one area that kind
of looks like dummy switches, but I think it's just
(15:35):
an aesthetic thing. It's it's there for designed to balance
out the look. There's I've tried looking to see if
there's an option that goes there, you know, like other vehicles,
and I've never seen one. Have you ever seen the
I'm sure you've seen the novelty switches that people drop
in where they've missed the options, smoke screen or something
(15:56):
like that that. All right, so you know I hinted at
you know, the prices, and here here's the thing. Um
Auto Trader also did an article called buying a car,
should you avoid a base model? And the answer and
this is a terrible answer initially, but I'll explain it.
It depends. And that's a terrible answer. I understand that's
that's that's so wishy washy, But they do they do
(16:17):
explain what they mean that the idea is short term
versus long term. And this is what I'll wrap up
with here. How about that short term the uh, the
general advice would be do not go the no frills way.
If you're gonna buy a car short term, you should
just go ahead and get whatever option, whatever version you want,
if you're planning to sell it soon, which makes I guess,
(16:40):
I mean the the idea is that you're gonna have
to sell it and then with other people in the
market with a car that has more options than you
do less, Yes, that's right, because the other ones to
appreciate more. And then you also have to um compete
with the other people that are selling the lower end
models and the higher end models, and you'll have to maybe,
you know, kind promising your price a bit. So the
(17:01):
resale thing is is big on this now. If you're
planning to keep your car long term, and I questioned
this one. If you're planning on keeping your car a
long time, like more than six or seven years, getting
a no frills base model may not be such a
bad idea, they say in this Auto Trader add or article,
whether and so you probably won't lose too much additional
value when the time comes to sell relative to a
(17:22):
seller who has a well equipped equipped car. And the
reason behind that is if you're talking about something that's
long term like that, not immediate, where in the last
example that I said, the short term was like maybe
a year or two when you're gonna sell it, or
three in this case, if you're six or seven or
eight years out and you're gonna sell it. Most of
the time, what people are looking for is um. They're
concerned about maintenance and um economy like fuel economy, and
(17:45):
you know the you know the mileage, how how good
is it a mileage? Is it burn oil? Does it?
You know, have you maintained, you know, the breaks and
all that actual functions exactly right. They're more concerned about
the simplistic things. Uh, you know, if you can call
it simplistic, I guess you know, the uh, the overall
running condition of the vehicle versus uh, you know that
it doesn't have the heated vibrating seats or something like that. Well,
(18:07):
there is, there's also there's a third thing. What seems
a third thing would be the exclusivity of a certain package.
That's true, So I know that's a minority of car sales,
but that that goes into the realm of collecting. Yeah. Well,
some people also say that if you have a car
with fewer features, like a base model, that's less things
(18:29):
to break, could it save you money on maintenance or
or would it cost you more money on maintenance? And
that well, like, yeah, like a sunroof is gonna cost
you money on maintenance if you own it for seven
eight years. That's true. I get Yeah, you're right, because
you know, the the channels will maybe fill up with
and it'll yeah, and then it'll leak into the car
and you know they're gonna they're gonna be problems with
(18:50):
stuff like that. I get it. The more features, the
more frills, the more options you have, the more things
can break. But then again, you know, like some people
will even argue this, we'll say that you know, if
you if you've got a car with a lot of
stuff like that, there's gonna be features and options that
you never will learn or that it will be very
difficult for you to learn. But I say, that's just
part of the learning curve, and you have to learn
(19:10):
that stuff if you want to use it along the way.
That's not really you know, something that you can't overcome
by any means. I mean, you can learn how to
do that, or you can just ignore it. If you
don't want the Bluetooth connectivity, you don't have to use
the Bluetooth connectivity. That's a that's the thing. You don't
have to use all that stuff. If you don't choose to,
it's it's maybe a waste. If you buy it as
a new option option for like you know, satellite navigation
(19:33):
or something, and you don't use it, that'd be kind
of silly. But if you buy it, you should plan
to use it, and then if you do use it,
then it becomes a value to you. Yeah, I completely agree.
We've always one thing we've always maintained on this show
is that if it's your money, buy the car you want.
And as far as if it's better, I mean, it depends.
(19:53):
Thing is not the most satisfactory answer, but I think
they explain it well when they say that this is
this involves a confluence of several factors. Right time owned,
the type of car, the type of function you wanted
to perform. Is this your road trip car? Then if
it's your road trip car, you might want to spring
for a little bit extra in the seats, right sure? Yeah? Okay,
(20:15):
So this leads to maybe the last question that I have.
Really are not going to explore this one too deep,
but maybe you just think about this one. Are these
types of cars, these base model cars, going to go
extinct eventually? Do you think that they're going to go
to a system more like what you talked about where
they just sell one vehicle? You know, why why offer
that base model car? And and the reason given in
(20:38):
this Yahoo Auto's article is that, um, well you're not
gonna believe this, Ben, maybe you will. The seven year
car Loan might be a reason that the base models
will go extinct, and the idea is that people can
afford a lower monthly payment on a car that they
finance for up to seven years now, and so they'll
go for the you know, the better term level, the
(20:58):
higher term level, over the base model any day because
they want they don't want to take a three year
car loan on a base model when they can have
a seven year car loan on the top end model
and have their payment be just about the same. That's
a really good point. Well, but man financing a car
for seven years, I mean, I think that I read
somewhere that experience found that the average car loan is
(21:19):
now five and a half years. That's the average car
loan is five and a half years. So that's the
way out from where it was. It used to be
that you could only get a car loan for four years.
Then they pushed it a little bit more and a
little bit more, and now we're out like seven years.
And I would bet that there's even more out there.
So manufacturers and dealers are selling a lot more high
end or loaded models than they ever were before, but
(21:41):
they still have to bring people in with those base
model cars. I mean, there's psychology to play there as
well as Scott listeners. You know this just as well
as I do. Often it's easy for us as individuals
to us sign up a tomorrow version of ourselves for
all sorts of obligations because we're all these ideal versions
(22:03):
of ourselves in the future, aren't we. Well, I guess
we're all in a little bit better shape. We're all
a little bit better off socially and financially, we've done
all those goals. We're committing in effect, psychologically, we're committing
someone else to an obligation. Yeah, that's the way it works,
I guess. And you know it's I just could not
strap myself with a seven year car long. I know
(22:24):
that it's it's uh, some people it's a necessity that
they do that just they just at the time can't
swing it. Yeah, but man, I I don't know. I
can't see financing and car for that that length of time.
It would just be really really difficult for me to
stomach that. I'm just saying that. I think we're going
to approach the time where you're almost gonna look at
it like a like a house mortgage, you know, like
where they gonna offer for student loan for fifteen year
(22:48):
options on these things. And that's crazy, I mean, especially
when you consider the depreciation of the vehicle over time.
At what point is it no longer feasible to have
a loan of that link? Well, I think we're already there.
I think that it's seven years is is. Uh, We're
we're past that point. So all right, So that's just
that's a lot to think about their I understand. And
that was a kind of a whirlwind tour of mine,
(23:09):
and I wish I had more time to go over that,
that lattic article. And if you get a chance, you know,
take a look at it. Bit four reasons why you
should never ever buy a base model cars the article
and if you really want to be entertained, going to
the comments section, because he caught a lot of plaque
for that article when he wrote that, and uh wrote
a lot of responses as well. And how many different
user names did you make when you're in the comments? No, no, no,
(23:31):
it wasn't me at all. I just I just stumbled
across this, but I thought it was an interesting question
and I hope it makes some people think. And it
goes back to what we were talking about at the
top of that the human element it's your vehicle, what
do you want, what are you using it for? And
how many of those how many of those upgrades are
(23:52):
cosmetic or esthetic? How many are oriented towards you as
a person, how many or are oriented toward performance of
the val Yeah? Absolutely, to each his own. I mean,
if that's if that's your thing, go for the base model.
That's fine. But you know they're their arguments for and
against that just about every turn. And here's the segue. Okay, no,
(24:12):
literally here in the studio is not kidding. Here. Here's uh,
here is our segue into the mystery topic for you,
my friends. This concerns racing. This concerns electric vehicles, This
concerns the news, This concerns darn near everything but human beings.
(24:33):
Recently announced or recently revealed the designs for the first
electric autonomous race cars. Okay, this's the this is the race,
this is the formula ething that right. Okay, So I'm
looking at the picture of the car, and I gotta
say that's a that's a cool looking concept. Yeah, I
mean I really like that it's created. I've got some
(24:55):
background for you here. This is created by a guy
named Daniel Simon who DESI mind that who designed that
flying pod in the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. He also
designed stuff for Tron, the Neutron. Now I can see
the employee man here. Yeah, so this is it's called
robo race, right, this is a driverless racing and if
(25:16):
they go with this design, that might just be worth
it to watch to see a bunch of these cars. Design.
That is the design they're gonna go with, this definite
design that it was pretty amazing recently announced. It was
in the the idea for this was in the works
for a while, but they hadn't published any photos. Now
have we talked about this in the past, only only
(25:37):
in passing, and that I think that I want to
say that it was Rudy wrote in again and said,
you know, if we're gonna do this, if we're gonna
go full robo racing, if we're gonna have um, you know,
just all electric and no human element involved, not at all,
why don't we just go Why don't we go full destruction? Yeah? Well, yeah,
you know, have a jam cargo on the opposite direction.
(25:58):
Why don't we uh, you know, just somewhere in the
middle plan for pile up. Yeah, the only the only
human element that I can see in these vehicles, which
look like stylized stuff you would see an anime. Honestly,
they look great. We'll post some pictures on Twitter if
we haven't yet, so you can check them out. But
the only human elements are going to be in the
(26:20):
actual assembling, engineering, and design of the vehicles, which will
all be identical in terms of their specs, and the
creation of programming of algorithms. Okay, So okay, that's that
was Maybe that answers my question. That's the ultimate competition.
Well okay, so the cleverness, the craftiness of the people
(26:40):
that that the program these that is where the benefit
is going to be. That's that's the real race. That's
the that's the racer's edge right there, right, I mean,
it's so okay. So so now when you know, a
racer sees a gap and they go for it, maybe
the electric electric version won't do that because it's senses
that now there's danger ahead, or you know, or will
it be programmed to go for every gap that it sees.
(27:02):
Will it be programed more like an aggressive driver would be.
I would guess that it's it have to write. That's
the interesting part, right, The thing is, if we looked
at these designs, what we see is that removing a
human driver allows for some potentially brilliant engineering moves. Now
(27:22):
we don't have to consider we being the engineers and
the designers don't have to consider the placement of a
human being in the vehicle. It means several things. It
can be much lower. It can also we can also
move batteries and motors again, because these are electric vehicles
(27:42):
to the place that's best for the cars, gravity best
for the tires. This thing now potentially it can become
a much better driver in some ways than a human
driver because reaction time may also change, right, and reaction
time may involve the The idea here is that these
(28:06):
vehicles will have a top speed of around a hundred
and eighty six miles per hour, which means it's faster
than the Formula E electrics that are on forty and
it's also faster than Audis self driving RS seven, which
is a little under a hundred and fifty. Wow, that's
a fast that's a fast, high spear a top speed. Brother. Um,
(28:26):
I gotta say I had not seen this design. This
is amazing really anyway, if you look it up Robo Race.
You'll find the first design here. It's supposed to come
out with UM in this year and next year. Okay, man,
I would maybe consider watching this. I I'm not a
big fan of Formula E. I just felt like the
electric grace kinda like with the sound or whatever. But
(28:47):
this is a This is like a different twist on
the I think this is different enough because formulaly had
something missing to me, Like I while I could intellectually
appreciate the idea, it didn't get me sited, you know
what I mean. But this, this is a little bit different.
They're gonna have ten teams, each with two cars, and
(29:08):
they're gonna go on hour long races in the same
street circuits Formula E cars compete on the This replaces
some other things. But one interesting thing, one interesting thing here.
One of those ten teams will be a crowdsourced community team,
so just people who are software and technology experts. And
(29:31):
if you are listening to this show and you would
like to be involved with that, then I would say
right to robo Racer, see what the scoop is. Absolutely,
and I wonder if they're gonna be having like a
rotation so you wouldn't be working on this the whole
year long. You maybe work on one race. I don't
know how I'm interested in how that would work, but
how fun would that be to be involved in that? UM?
(29:51):
You know, if you add a talent like that for
for this type of vehicle or this type of programming,
that you could be a part of UM. I guess
I don't know if it'd be internationally recognized or just
nationally recognized at this point, but that type of that
type of level of UM visibility, I suppose you know that.
I don't know if they're gonna be UM air on
(30:11):
television or what. This is also new. I don't really
know a lot about this series early days of development,
really early days, but man, does it look cool. I
mean it's a it's a fascinating design, and I mean
it looks like one of those cars too that you know,
they always bring out these concept vehicles that they have
no intention of ever building. But if they can really
build it this way, if that's the actual design they're
going with, what a cool series to watch And what
(30:35):
kind of maneuvers will these be capable of? Yeah? Are
we gonna be watching like a race where there's no
passing at all. It's just gonna be because that's that's
one of the critiques that F one gets a lot,
is that there's very little passing. And other types of
racing get that as well, you know, like the Iraq
series where that's a little bit different, but like the
Irax series where they're so closely matched the cars are
(30:58):
that sometimes not all the time, but sometimes it becomes
almost a boring race, and that there's not a lot
of movement, like a lot of activity. The cars are
so so precisely matched that that really takes, you know,
the driver's skill in order to make them overcome that.
So in this case, it would be whoever's programming them
and deciding here's where I make my move every time,
(31:18):
I try this every single time, or maybe we wait
ten laps and then we make our move in this
spot on the track. And and but it has to
rely on everything else is happening to like, you have
to know the situation exactly. And man, what a what
a fascinating thing to to think about. There's a lot
of possibility. Here's here's one. I'm just spitball in here, folks,
but imagine this, so ten teams say each get two cars.
(31:42):
What if it's a you know, right now, these are
like support teams, you know, or it's a support race.
But what if there is big, big races out on
the track, right, and maybe different variations in the software
for each individual vehicle. But if one team does a
(32:02):
a suicide move, this rudy, This goes kind of in
line with what you were telling us earlier in that email,
um or proposing earlier in that email. What if the
team with two cars, what if they have one of
their cars purposefully wreck in a way that creates the
most chaos amongst the other eighteen vehicles and then leaves
(32:24):
vehicle number twenty or vehicle number nineteen or whatever. Uh
that's also on the same team. Is the only thing
with the programming to avoid this very specific sort of accident?
Is that illegal? Yet? Gaming the race is what they
would be doing, right? And are you kidding? They're costing
people millions of dollars. It's such a terrible move. Well,
(32:44):
that would be rough when I mean, I guess any
team could do that right now, really, I mean you
could cause you cause mayhem on the track. You would
be completely I mean, you would face the consequences I
think you would be banned. I think especially the driver
would be hated forever. The team owner would be hated forever.
If that was if that was a strategy, if that
was a plan of a of a racing team, they
(33:05):
wouldn't last long. That's the thing. Now in this series,
that would better be the same way, because you're right
there probably. I mean, I'm gonna guess it's a million
dollar car. It looks like a million dollar car. I
don't know. I don't really know how much it costs,
but um, just a ballpark somewhere around there, it's gotta be. Um.
I guess you wouldn't have to pay uh, you wouldn't
have to pay a healthy driver's salary, you know, like
(33:27):
they do now, like guys that are they're paying fifty
million dollars to race in Formula one or whatever. I'm
just I'm wondering, what would happen. Well, I don't know,
that's an interest. That's really interesting thought. I mean, I
suppose they could block. They could uh you know, they
could work together in that way, as long as it
wasn't the structure. Yeah, I suppose you're you're almost talking
about like how you hang back and you hang back
(33:49):
and then you take out the leader and then uh,
and then everybody piles up behind them, and but you
know that's coming, so that the teammate car slows down
and makes its way around and creeps around. Yeah, that's
how I used to play risk. I used to take
over Australia. So you still generate a couple of armies
every turn, and then just hold Thailand or Siam, as
is called the game, and then wait till it gets
(34:10):
down to maybe three people and make make an offer
surreptitiously to the other one team up and then betray
them anyway, I guess I can't play risk with anybody now.
If you listen to car stuff complete strategies out there,
it's it's public. It's over. I'm gonna have to make
up something new that's funny, man, But yeah, it's I
guess that's kind of the way that we're talking about here,
that they could work together on a team and do
(34:31):
it that way. Now, I wonder if the ten ten
teams two cars means that they raised ten vehicles on
the track at a time you have a backup car problem.
I think so, I don't think there's I don't think
there's a situation where a team has both of their
vehicles on the track at the same time. It is
an interesting thought though. It is an interesting thought. I
would if I were watching a film or fictionalized accounts
(34:54):
for this, I would love for that kind of just
morally reprehensible strategy to be in play once. But in
real life, I don't think it's sporting. Yeah, no, not
at all. It would almost be like something out of
a movie or something, you know, exactly. Yeah, that's all.
That's an interesting thought though. I mean, there's a there's
so many, um, so many possibilities with this, really, I mean,
(35:16):
you know Rudy's Angle, if you know, complete destruction and
running just crazy races where it's so metal that really
is it's a funny idea or or um you know.
I think when we first talked about this, we weren't
sure if they were going to have something where someone's
actually controlling the vehicle from the right, and that seems
like that's not the case with these vehicles. It seems
like it's going to be something that's just programmed and
(35:36):
they just let it run the race and see what happens.
They'll they'll probably be I imagine there would still be
a pit stop thing. It says, you know, their race,
their race times are gonna be one hour. But I
imagine there has to be something built in there to
check programming or if the you know, if there's a
function tire pops something like that. Yeah, I guess that,
but I mean all that stuff can be monitored. Of course,
(35:58):
they'll know if they have a flat tire, They're gonna
know if they're law on batteries or whatever. But I
would bet that that one hour time is based on
the battery durability. You know, that's probably their their full range,
if I had to guess, And that's that's typically how
they limit these races, although I think formulaly they actually
come and they come in for a car change in
the middle of a Formula E race. You know that.
(36:19):
Yeah I heard that. Yeah, the driver hops out of
the driver the vehicle that they're currently in, hops into
their their backup car with a fresh battery, and then
heads that heads out. That's one of the reasons I
don't like formually. Yeah, it was good to say. How
much of that is just the limitation of the battery technology, Yeah, exactly,
That's that's what it is. It just runs low and
then you gotta get a fresh battery. And rather than
(36:41):
swapping out batteries on the track, they swap out cars
and in current formula, I don't know what they're gonna
do with this, this robo racing, but it sure looks cool. Well,
they're all base models, yeah, I guess they would be right,
They're all exactly the same. I don't know if you
can call them base models though, they're all okay, they're
all the top end models. They're all the top end models,
(37:02):
you write, all the bells and whistles that are allowed
or probably in use. Yeah, Well, what do you think listeners?
Thanks for tuning into our mystery show, Scott, I think
we did pretty well, uh, being considering that both of
us were kind of shooting from the hip on this way.
We only knew half the show. Really, we only knew
half the show. That's right, of us knew half the
show for our double feature. Well, let us know what
(37:24):
you think. Do you feel that there are some things
manufacturers consider options that must be included when you buy
a car? Yeah? And uh, and what are your thoughts
on this whole robo race thing? I mean, is it
gonna pan out. Is it gonna be something that people
will really watch? Well? Are you going to watch it? Well,
we'll go to go to see or do you think
that maybe it will remain a support race, you know,
something that's just run along with another bigger form of racing.
(37:47):
I don't know. It's interesting, curious out, but we will
learn pretty soon what's happening. Also, just tell us what
you think about these cars? Do I mean the one
we're looking at is in the Verge and again it's
look up robo race and you'll see us get on
blue and yellow page very and I love the way
that they can't even talked about it too much. We're
(38:07):
out of time. Check in and let us know. Let
us know what you think of these vehicles, the future
of autonomous racing, and if you also have a story
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(38:28):
Racer that will be up there shortly, and you can
also write to us directly. We are our stuff and
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