2021 Hyundai Elantra Hybrid Test Results; Our Worst Car Buying Experiences _ Talking Cars #332

**Exploring the Hyundai Elantra Hybrid: A Comprehensive Review**

**Introduction**

In this detailed exploration of the Hyundai Elantra Hybrid, we delve into its features, performance, and the experiences shared by enthusiasts and experts. This article captures a conversation where the hosts discuss their insights, personal anecdotes, and expert opinions on the car and related topics.

**The Hyundai Elantra Hybrid: Features and Performance**

The discussion begins with an in-depth look at the 2021 Hyundai Elantra Hybrid, highlighting its standout features. The hybrid model boasts a sleek design, impressive fuel efficiency, and advanced technology. Key points include:

- **Design and Efficiency:** The Elantra Hybrid is praised for its quiet operation, capable of running on electric power up to 25-30 mph. Its independent rear suspension enhances ride comfort, making it superior to the non-hybrid version.

- **Fuel Economy:** With EPA estimates of 40 mpg combined, the hybrid offers significant savings. The hosts calculate a $750 annual saving at 15,000 miles, with a five-year payoff period for the additional cost.

- **Technology and Safety:** Equipped with a user-friendly infotainment system and advanced safety features like collision warning and lane-keeping assist, the Elantra Hybrid provides a seamless driving experience.

**Dealership Experiences: Tales from the Front**

The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes about dealership experiences. The hosts share stories of frustration and poor service:

- **Jen's Experience:** A memorable encounter involved being shown the wrong car and pressured into a purchase. The salesperson's attempt to influence feedback through a pre-populated survey highlighted the importance of transparency in the buying process.

- **Gabe's Story:** Issues with a Ford Edge purchase, including incorrect VINs and dealership incompetence, underscored the challenges faced by consumers during the buying process.

**Audience Questions: Expert Insights**

The hosts address questions from listeners, providing valuable insights:

- **Joel's Query:** The hosts discuss whether Consumer Reports' initial impressions of cars ever change post-purchase. They explain that while rare, discrepancies can arise between test drives and long-term ownership experiences.

- **Aaron's Dilemma:** Concerns about buying a Subaru Forester during the chip shortage are addressed. The hosts advise focusing on reliable manufacturers like Subaru and suggest waiting if possible to ensure quality.

- **Casey's Curiosity:** The fluctuating prices of EVs, particularly Tesla, Chevy Bolt, and Nissan Leaf, are analyzed. Supply and demand dynamics, along with market positioning, explain these price changes.

**Conclusion**

The Hyundai Elantra Hybrid emerges as a commendable choice in the compact sedan segment, offering a blend of efficiency, technology, and affordability. The hosts' experiences highlight the importance of thorough research and patience when navigating dealership processes. As the automotive landscape evolves, models like the Elantra Hybrid set a standard for practicality and innovation.

This article not only reviews the car but also provides insights into the broader considerations of car purchasing, emphasizing the need for informed decision-making and resilience in today's market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis week we talk about our test results in the 2021 hyundai elantra hybrid discuss the details of the new crash test results from the iihs and share our worst car dealership experiences next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm gabe shanhar and i'm jennifer stockberger and as things change we've got the changing leaves the changing seasons we've got the time change we also have a change from the insurance institute of highway safety and they came out with some news recently that automakers knew was happening but they announced new crash tests uh a more advanced crash test for their side impact safety um the first round of this testing they tested 20 small suvs and what was really interesting is that this new aggressive test only won the mazda cx-5 got a good rating and two models the honda hrv and the mitsubishi eclipse cross actually earned a really low score of poor jen can you tell us about this and why it's different than the current side crashes and what happened with all these vehicles yeah so so first of all ihs has a long history of kind of advancing their crash tests to the next level of safety so recall they started with their moderate overlap frontal crash then a few years later they added their side impact test then a few years later they added this small overlap test and they just keep inching away at the next thing that's causing you know fatalities and injuries and motor vehicle crashes this case they haven't added a new test but they've modified the side impact test and what they did is two things one they increased the energy a heavier barrier that goes at a higher speed to better simulate the larger vehicles that are on our roads and in real world crashes and in their own research vehicle-to-vehicle crashes they also noted that when suvs or trucks are hitting other vehicles the shape of that the vehicle kind of wraps around the b-pillar and there was actually more intrusion on the front and rear doors than their current side impact test was showing so they modified that barrier more energy more representative a current vehicle deformation and it's proven challenging as most times it does when they change something the expectation is that not all vehicles will do well and that's by intention again this is a consumer information program this is not a pass or fail vehicle safety standard like we'd have from the national highway traffic safety administration this is meant to inform consumers like you and i which vehicles are doing better they increase the energy on that side impact test by 82 that's a huge increase we don't expect all vehicles to do well and i want people to understand that you know say you're in the hrv or the eclipse cross you're driving it today just adding this test doesn't make your vehicle that you're driving today unsafe it just means there's a new test the next time that anybody goes to buy a small suv in this case they tested 20 they have some another piece of information to determine which vehicles are more likely to protect them in a side impact crash the old tests their estimates are that a vehicle that scored a good versus a poor the driver was 70 percent less likely to die than in one with a poor rating versus a good rating so it has impact it has real world again a differentiator for buying new don't panic if you see marginal or poor on a vehicle that you currently own so in a way it's advancing the market and pushing manufacturers right gabe because we've seen this in in the past with with other crash tests like jet alluded to with uh with some toyotas right absolutely and it's really interesting when you look at the ranking of all the 20 cars and uh it's pretty clear that uh whichever model was uh more recently designed redesigned it does better uh with a couple of uh surprises but uh for instance the uh the honda hrv that uh that car is long in the tooth it's about to be redesigned and uh and manufacturers uh had a couple of years of uh heads up on on that upcoming uh standard so they were um they were they were not caught off guard here and uh it's pretty uh pretty safe bet uh that uh the next uh generation of the honda hrv is gonna be designed with that uh new test in mind yeah and even ihs they don't make it a requirement yet for their top safety pick they know it's new they know it's challenging so so they will wait till more and more cars do better before making it you know a prerequisite for some of their higher awards if you will it's nice to see that the the mazda cx-5 which does well in our testing as well is uh stands out in this test what i want to throw out to both of you is that some some viewers some listeners may say well look last time this happened you dropped your recommendations you uh you know you pulled them back you then also said well we'll wait and see what's going to be the cr policy on incorporating this test where is that going to lead us yeah so we have certainly said the words critical mass we wait until there's enough vehicles that have been tested through this program and to gabe's point enough time for manufacturers to tweak designs to improve their performance before making it a requirement um for either our recommendation or theirs you know so so not yet we certainly will watch it it's certainly a piece of information for people buying new but not yet something we will make a requirement for our recommendation or our top picks coming early next year yeah for now the ihs has only done a group of small suvs and we'll see uh other uh vehicle categories and how they do i mean you can only know what you know you don't know what you don't know so when they start uh uh doing the the same test uh for sedans uh let's see what happens then and you know just like jen said uh as soon as we have uh critical mass and we we see a broad picture here then then we can uh figure out how to uh move forward in turn and how it affects recommendations for us well there's a full report on this on consumerreports.org a story covering it covering the results um and some some quotes from from cr experts on it so check that out that's going to move us to car of the week our segment on what we've got in the fleet and you know just like all of you uh we're finding a really you know hard time with cars getting vehicles in we're affected by the supply chain um just like everyone who's buying a car if you look at the list our internal list of vehicles we have coming in yeah they're all there's so many of them that are in the build process they're they went into into the build in october and maybe they went into the build even in september so we're waiting this week's we're going to go with one that's been online for a little bit it's the hyundai elantra hybrid uh so it's a little little older in our test suite but we haven't discussed that but what's really interesting is that it's part of hyundai's big push with hybridization and we'll get to that the model that we tested was a 2021 hyundai elantra hybrid blue 1.6 liter four-cylinder 240 volt lithium-ion battery system with a hybrid starter generator 6-speed dual clutch automatic 23550 was the msrp the 190 dollars for cargo carrying equipment 155 for carpeted floor mats and it comes out to 24 900 which includes the 1005 dollar destination charge um i i found it really interesting that the elantra seo we tested cost 23 000 out the door we added some packages to it to bring in some safety equipment but if you look at the epa numbers between two cars i know different testing than what we do but it's sticker to sticker the hybrid will cost 750 a year to go 1500 miles a nine non-hybrid 11.50 so the epa payoff time is five years for that two thousand dollar rough difference so okay you know we've had two elantra's a regular sel then we have the hybrid that we tested you know what does the hybrid bring to it um and then also what time they've been doing with with their other hybrid uh vehicles since they've been hybridization hybridizing hybridizing their lineup uh you know extensively for the for this model here yeah uh well let's start with the elantra hybrid uh which is kind of like an under the radar kind of car and it's quieter than the regular elantra it uh also uh is able to propel itself solely on electric power and very low speeds on low throttle uh which really works well in an urban kind of situation i would drive up to like 25 30 miles per hour and on electric only and not many people will realize that the hybrid comes with a different rear suspension and it's an independent rear suspension as opposed to a straight beam for the regular elantra and that contributes to uh better handling and better ride comfort the car just absorbs bumps uh better than the regular elantra and you already mentioned the price difference uh price difference is not uh so significant between the regular and the hybrid elantra so it's just a win-win now let me continue with the with the tucson and santa fe hybrids and in those two cases we tested the two tucsons of course the regular one gets uh something like 26 miles per gallon which is okay but the hybrid gets 35 miles per gallon it has a longer driving range and uh it's quicker and it's quieter and uh just all around a better car the same goes for santa fe so in our mind unequivocally uh the tucson and santa fe hybrids are superior vehicles to their regular ones so it uh it really uh makes a lot of sense for a lot of people you know jen this this hybrid performs better feels better is better is nicer isn't just exclusive to hyundai though because that's been kind of a trend almost reversing the way it used to be with early hybrids right yeah so so it's it i think we've gotten rid of the quirkies the quirky nesses of some of the hybrids you know the early early hybrids you know you had all the cbt noise you had the goofy region pedal feel you had all of that they've gotten so much better so into games point in most cases not all hybridization particularly with a small displacement engine tends to make it a nicer car it quiet it quiets it down it gives you better smoother power delivery even if the numbers in this case even if the numbers don't say it's quicker it's the way the power gets delivered it's a bit more linear a bit more um a bit less i should say a bit less disconcerting when you're off the line it feels a little better so and i love that we're talking about this card that is sub 25 000 um because we're always talking about high end and high tech because that's the new stuff but i love that we have this car hybrid i mean i i this morning i was out with gas at 3.65 this morning that's what i saw it's really satisfying when you're looking at a version of this inexpensive elantra that's you know not to give too much weight 15 miles per gallon better than the gap than the purely gas version right um that's a lot of range and convenience of maybe you stop twice a week instead of three times a week or maybe you go that much further between fill-ups those are some very nice conveniences now i will say this hybridization didn't take away all the noise this is the kind of a noisy car um there's there's engine noise and there's quite a bit of road noise from this car that no hybrids just gonna fix that maybe a tire change might but it's kind of a noisy vehicle so you do have to work around that but combined with the the hybridization and the gas or the fuel economy lots of safety at some 25 000 standard for collision warning automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection standard lane departure warning and lane keeping assist even the ability to tailor some of that like for your lane departure you can shut off the audible part and just have the vibration if you don't want all your passengers hearing every time you cross a lane line you know things like that um the basic interior and i'll use that basic seat comfort basic controls somewhat refreshing if you will standard gear selector pretty easy to navigate controls touch screen but easy to navigate screen um so things like that i think people will be happy if they're okay with a little bit of road noise and pretty much not a super generous seat and things like that for sure it doesn't take away what a small car is the smaller car is because of weight savings because of just the investment you know the price point that they're they're going going to you're not going to have it be silent inside and with a hybrid when you're when there's no engine noise masking the outside noise you're going to hear that outside noise um but yes you're not asking for a forty thousand dollar interior because you're playing in the twenty thousand dollar space but it still is quality feeling it may not it may be more plastic than soft touch or hard plastic and soft but yeah everything's at hand it's a very nice vehicle to drive the lack of having hyundai not making it a luxury a high price four or five six thousand dollar price point to get there you know really makes the selling point for this vehicle over like you said over the regular version a blind spot warning standard on this one as well so you know a very very full uh a full complement of safety features yeah in the context of small sedans that cost typically between 20 and 24 000 hours at the elantra hybrid is just a very well-rounded kind of car yep and with the the lack of popularity of of small cars cars in general sedans in general uh it'll open and we talk about this on other parts of other parts of consumerreports.org and maybe you know in other other areas look you may have your eye right now set in a tough buying market i want an suv i want that tucson or something okay the tucson is popular you may you may need it but if you don't desperately need that suv especially if you're getting a front-wheel drive suv look look at look at the look at a sedan like this i mean you may have a better chance of getting this than getting something else at the dealer you know if you need a new car and it's going to save you a ton of money especially like you said you have a gas price is so high what a great car for a young driver i mean we'll wait and see what reliability turns out to be but what a great car great fuel economy they don't have a lot of money to pump into the gas tank what a great car and full safety awesome is is hyundai becoming the king of hybrids gabe well traditionally it used to be toyota and ford were the real uh leaders in hybrid now ford uh still uh has a really good escape hybrid and hyundai thinks that hybrids are going to play a role because not everyone is ready to jump to an ev and the hybrid is just gets you great fuel economy long driving range ready to go at any time it's certainly a very uh very practical uh solution for a lot of people well we've got uh full test reports for all the vehicles we discussed from the ford escape hybrid up to the hyundai elantra hybrid in between so check that out on consumerreports.org we're going to bounce to a little little segment here uh you know kind of experiences that we've had in the buying process or just in car ownership and this one this week we're going to talk about what each of us felt were our worst dealership experiences now it's not the pick on dealers but you know people are having you know a lot of interesting dealership experiences particularly the last year you have can i go in with covid can i only do it online do i do it outside you know now it's you know am i back in maybe we're not at we're not inside but the experience just isn't fun for people and in fact i i remember writing a story where the head of hyundai at one point john kraft chick i believe said that the only thing worse than going to a dealership is getting a root canal you know that that the people have equated dental visits with with going to the car dealership so jen what is your in your worst dealership experience uh so far so so first of all i'm gonna say and i've always said this and you've probably heard me say it i don't believe it's a dealership experience it's a salesperson experience because you can have a really crappy salesperson and a really great salesperson in the same dealership and if you're really unhappy ask for a different one even if you're not altering the dealership but i unfortunately had to narrow it down a little bit because i've certainly been in situations with it like don't you need to go home and ask your husband if you can not my favorite but my worst one had to do with um kind of that follow-up survey you know i've been at consumers a long time and it used to be you got an um a piece of mail that said oh please rate your dealership experience um and i got the impression gabe you'll have to win that the dealerships get some kickback from having very very high um results on those series on those surveys very very good results so i had i was buying a vehicle and the sales person actually was showing me the wrong vehicle you know we've always said we're very specific gabe gives us very specific specs in the vehicles we're buying for consumers reports and they were showing me the wrong car like he pulled me in there said i got one on the lot for you it was a total um bait and switch gets me there it's not even the right car eventually we get to the right car and um again we're going in anonymous at this point so at the end of the whole transaction and i'm just frustrated he slides across the table now it's all done by email this survey and says i hope you give me a good rating it was pre-populated with all high marks i said i'm not he goes if you could just sign it that'd be great he had filled in his own check marks and wanted me to cycle i'm not signing that and he said why not and i said because this was not a good dealership experience and when i fill out the real one you're gonna hear about it and then ultimately it got even worse um when we tell them at the very end that this car's for consumer reports he says to me if i had known you were from consumer reports i would have treated you so much better i was just at a loss like are you kidding me you don't treat all of your potential customers well it was it was my worst experience ever he wasn't good at his job and he was very entitled and felt he deserved this great survey regardless it was horrible and i don't think i ever went back to that um dealership just because we bounced around but he personally was probably the worst sales person i've ever experienced he probably wanted you to put your own stamp on it too right he wasn't going to give you the stamp oh yeah right all right gabe up to you to top that one what's your experience that you uh lie asleep by recounting oh there's no chance i can top that one but uh probably our experience buying cars at this point i mean we've got it down packed uh it is not uh so similar to a regular customer but i can remember a few years ago i think i ended up taking over a buying process from someone else and uh that was a ford edge and and the dealer didn't didn't even have the certificate of origin which allows them to sell the car so i had to get the car on the dealer plate uh not only that uh the vin number and the documents was at the wrong vin number everything from there was just a disaster that required uh you know some extra time at the dmv and um and it was just not uh i mean the whole dealership was just a very incompetent and uh not uh not not a great experience there i think that your experience there really highlights the challenge that people face because we do this and it's almost automatic yeah you know it's a process and it's all the paperwork and it's very rigid like you said we bring the check it can't be different than the check we're not getting up sold we're not adding we're not there's nothing that goes on there but all for so for the you know the average buyer making sure that there's not an error here or that they're not charging five dollars extra you have a lean fee on your you know that's actually incorporated into the registration fee but they have the lean fee in as well it's hard it's really crazy and when you're there and you want to just get the heck out of there it's not again saying that all dealerships are evil but it's very easy to miss something and that's you know especially now if you're doing it all virtually and you're going back and forth and it's you know it's emailing attachments and stuff it's a challenge it really is a challenge and our way is pretty easy because we pay uh we just write a check and uh we're done and that without the whole complication of uh of uh loans and financing or at least uh which you know just uh makes the whole thing a lot more complicated exactly interest rate bumping and such so that's that's that's a challenge i i was i was going between two different ones and i think that the key the big the bigger headache i had was more just disgusted the way it was handled um i was buying a nissan i was buying an ultimate it was very popular and they were there was a you know the way a lot of the cars roll out they roll out you know some high level high trim models at first and of course we want to get an early one but we're not buying the 3.5 sr with the leather and you know the panoramic roof you know we're buying the one that's gonna sell one percent we're gonna buy a regular you know a mid-level one that that the regular consumer is going to buy in mass that they're planning to buy so i found one at a dealership in connecticut that had a amazing price it was it was it was actually below msrp and it was the end of the month and i thought well you know maybe they want to they want to get it out and um there weren't any incentives or anything like that so paperwork and i verify oh it's a new car oh it's a new car yeah okay and it's you know it's on site yeah it's on site here's a picture of it and okay and great send me all the information and i said um you know can you verify you know the mileage that's on it when when delivered and such yeah yeah we'll get that look at that and they sent over the paperwork and i sent over the information from cr and then they said oh by the way it was a demo and it's got 3 500 miles on it but it was the sales manager's wife so we'll see you later this afternoon and they hung up the phone literally and of course we're not gonna buy a car that has anything besides just the delivery miles on it and it was just that thing because of course i finally found a deal and while there was the spidey sense going it's just not right yeah look it was reasonably below msrp in the sense of negotiations yeah and it wasn't the coveted buying experience where it's forty percent over it was five percent and and that was a mess because i had already cancelled two other orders yeah yeah because you feel not orders but feel outs you know so i said the two other deals oh i'm not i'm going in a different direction so it taught me not to do that to hold the other one unfortunately it's a little mean but to make sure that the one goes before i cancel the others it's just an annoying morning experience and i hear those commercials in that deal where i just cringe every time i hear that i know yeah just just uh just one more thing before we change the subject here uh we're as we know we're in a bit of a drought in terms of buying cars because of a chip shortage and whatnot and uh well that also means that uh we have been uh so great on getting discounts on cars whereas uh up until a few years ago you'd be getting 1500 off the uh list price right off the bat uh no no sweat now i'd be lucky to pay uh the msrp or the list price and not um be charged over sticker right i mean owner loyalty or conquest was always an option i mean for us we have a lot of 30 or 40 cars we're loyal owners we're being conquered they're conquesting us no matter what you just have to provide the registration proof and yeah those are gone any money on the hood's gone you know jen you were gonna add something in no i was just gonna say you know gabe you both said it you know because we're desiring that car as soon as we can get it we sometimes don't walk because we want the car and we're willing to go through the these horror stories so but still if it's you walk if you don't like the person or the dealership walk and that's why you don't wait to the car if you know your car's on it's time to be replaced right don't wait till it dies in your driveway or dies at the dealer when you drive over to look and kick tires it's it's it's important to plan ahead the flip side of it all is that uh we our resale value on the cars is great i mean we're getting great prices uh on our used cars yeah for instance we sold the rav4 after a year and a half of ownership ownership for 300 hours less than what we bought it for which was amazing it's crazy which is great yeah so when that guy said to me if you if i knew you worked for consumer reports i would have treated you better i said and i should have said if i wasn't buying this for consumer reports i would have walked out here a long time ago definitely my answer today definitely well give us give us some feedback and tell us in the comments below what your experience has been or send it to us at talkingcards icloud.com and maybe it could be part of a viewer question uh listener question uh session uh in an upcoming episode so we're just gonna pause one second to talk about the talking cars donation program if you're not aware consumer reports is a non-profit organization and everything that we do is funded by memberships and donations so if you're able to give it really does help keep us do the work we do including the show so you can find more information about this at cr.org give talking cars and so now we're going to move over to audience questions as always send us video or text questions talking cars at icloud.com and hopefully we'll get you on a future show our first our first excuse me question comes from joel who says as will rogers once said you never get a second chance to make a good first impression to that point not infrequently cr will do a first impression review on a new car after all these years and thousands of reviews has cr ever substantially changed their thoughts on a car after these initial ones if so what car was it what were the circumstances so gabe for for people who may or may not know you know how and why do we you know do these these first impression reviews you know you know and do we end up ever switching or do they do we change and under what circumstances so very often uh we'll do a first drive on a new car that's uh just just out and not even before it even goes on sale will rent slash borrow one from the manufacturer i mean we pay for these loans as opposed to other outlets and uh we'll get the car for a week or two and uh we'll rotate it among uh staff uh one um there will be a writer that uh will gather all of our collective thoughts and uh and we kind of uh we know that this is just a kind of a little bit of a a taste of uh the car and it's not gonna be instead of the full instrumented road test that we're gonna do that's based on our um very own car that we will have purchased it's very rare that we change uh we do like a full 180 degree uh change of mind on a car but uh most recently we we drove the uh we got the honda civic uh this past summer it was a touring uh with a turbo engine and um with all the sound deadening material and when we got our own car which was uh the sport which is a more uh more common trim line without the turbo engine and without the sound deadening uh installation the car made not such a you know not such a positive impression as the the car we borrowed jen are there ones that you've thought of over time that that have fallen into that that category of like yeah it sounds great oh the one we bought not not quite on what they delivered to us at first right and i think the direction gabe's talking about is typically where we would go where the the rented vehicle will be better equipped either by its trim line stuff we know or things we may not know that they've done to you know like sound deadening to make it just a better experience the one i think of and we talked about it last week is the lexus nx we just had the top top powertrain non-hybrid powertrain the top regular uh powertrain we had the f sport version which brought nicer seats probably better handling you know even controls and things like that you get all the amenities in this rented vehicle will our impressions of the mainstream whatever that might be lexis nx be the same probably not will probably be lower i also think you know sometimes we have these rented vehicles for a pretty short period of time depending on the popularity and where else they need to go and not as many people get in them so when we have our tested vehicle now you have this whole jury of drivers with different preferences different statures all that stuff that makes our rating so comprehensive that the rented vehicle may not see so typically we go down um i can't think of one gabe or john off the top of my head where we've gotten the rented vehicle and then been actually much more pleased with the car we bought i couldn't think of one in that direction yeah i would have to go back and really yeah really really dig through yeah because rarely is the car that's provided a rental you know a base model or something and we just happened to get one that was just nicer so yeah the only maybe it's a sportier one that the ride got better because i will and the tires and that thing i don't think of one the tire feel i think is a key one also because many other publications will say well it looks great it's not the big wheels and it fills out the wheel well but yeah the ride degradation is is horrible so joel hope that answered your question uh we're going to move to our next question from aaron who says in march 2020 after much research on consumer reports i decided i would buy a subaru forester but that didn't happen because of covid in the end i will buy a car it's just a matter of when but in the news i've heard it's not a great time to buy a car due to shortage of parts would you recommend buying a new forester right now or wait should i be concerned about part shortages impacting the quality and reliability of cars being made now so jen from the supplier side you know what from your history your your previous jobs uh does aaron have concerns that are valid right so i you know and again you're absolutely right i was putting on my supplier hat i used to work for a fuel system supplier and and we actually i spent a lot of time on the production line so i i think aaron i would be cautious and and i say that in to me the best running highest reliability quality production line is the one that's tuned in you know the people know what they're looking for if it's a manual labor line be it a part line there's a steady flow of of parts that have been manufactured when you start to talk about stops and starts and restarts on a production line or in another vein there's typically an alternate supplier maybe the alternate suppliers just ramping up their production to cover that's where some issues may arise again the people aren't knowing necessarily and it could be you're talking fuel systems it could be so simple as that o-ring doesn't look like it's seated quite right you know in our case that was a fuel leak you couldn't have those things um so to me there's risk in these stops and starts on these productions line with that said i think it's paramount even more so than normal to pick a manufacturer with good quality practices because those quality practices checks and balances checks along the line sampling of parts make even deviations in the production they find them more quickly they don't get out to the consumer so you know the the manufacturers that have a really traditionally good reliability record the toyotas and the kit aaron's case the subarus of the world are probably the better option and the forester in particular it has some some years that were not particularly great in terms of reliability but the more recent ones have been very very good so when you combine subaru with forester you're probably fine aaron just falling back on subaru's reputation and reliability but it's a caution maybe if you don't need that car right now maybe give it a little bit yeah i was gonna say to gabe you know is there other concerns that erin would have to have uh with the buying of maybe not being satisfied with everything that's available well this is uh in general and not specifically uh for the forester uh there are you know because there are dozens of chips and microchips in every car uh there are some cars that uh not only are delayed but cars have come with the missing features like for instance bmw announced that uh they're not going to have uh wireless charging pads for many of or some of their models because of the the shortage so uh yeah make sure you you know that coming in just to avoid surprises later well on that i hope uh aaron you get what you want let us know let us know the buying process um but also let us know if it's if it's delayed or anything like that tell us tell us your experience we'd like to like to hear a follow-up so it brings us to casey and casey asks what is going on with eb prices tesla seems to be upping their prices at random meanwhile chevy took about four thousand dollars off the price of a bolt when it updated the car and nissan quietly took around 5000 off the msrp of a new leaf depending on the model and was apparently trying to keep it a secret for some reason any idea where ev prices are headed in general and why they're suddenly moving around with ferocity and randomness gabe can you uh can you give us a quick a quick hit on this well the short answer is supply and demand and uh tesla can basically do whatever it wants because uh it has uh an audience uh and there's a whole aura around the tesla brand so it's uh it's almost a movement uh if you will uh at the other end of the spectrum i have the chevy bolt and the nissan leaf which are uh you know they're with all due respect were launched uh in the days when when manufacturers thought electric vehicles were supposed to be um very small and efficient runabouts rather than high-end sexy high-tech stylish fashion statements so so you have to discount these and uh and in order to to move them even though the chevy bolt has a pretty robust range uh it's it's just not a it's it's not such a fresh car anymore at this point and the nissan leaf second generation although it improved over the first generation but uh you know it's not a car that uh you're gonna look at and uh you're gonna set yourself oh gotta have it yeah it definitely has a limited appeal and a very interesting point on the sense of the uh style of the time of planning it and then where we're going with vehicles like the aforementioned ionic 5 and futuristic uh futuristic looks so that's going to do it for this episode though we do have a little bit of internal cr news totally anatoly chumsky who edits in these episodes and does a lot of video shooting for us his family has expanded by one and that's the family that lets him come home at night what else we haven't expanded by one um so he is the proud father of a new baby boy david chomsky is a new member of the family a big bouncing baby boy and we congratulate him for that uh and we also wanted to let everyone know that with the holidays coming up with people taking time off for newborn babies with people taking vacations and using it up uh we're going to make a change for the rest of 2021 for the episodes there are we're going to talk a little bit more about the cars and what's going on at the track but the episodes will be shorter so watch for that going for the rest of the remainder of 2021 give us feedback tell us what you think about it what you like what you don't like um you know let us know if that's something we should continue in the new year or just for the time being so that's it for this episode thanks so much for watching remember send us questions to talking cars at icloud.com um keep on watching and we'll see you next timethis week we talk about our test results in the 2021 hyundai elantra hybrid discuss the details of the new crash test results from the iihs and share our worst car dealership experiences next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm gabe shanhar and i'm jennifer stockberger and as things change we've got the changing leaves the changing seasons we've got the time change we also have a change from the insurance institute of highway safety and they came out with some news recently that automakers knew was happening but they announced new crash tests uh a more advanced crash test for their side impact safety um the first round of this testing they tested 20 small suvs and what was really interesting is that this new aggressive test only won the mazda cx-5 got a good rating and two models the honda hrv and the mitsubishi eclipse cross actually earned a really low score of poor jen can you tell us about this and why it's different than the current side crashes and what happened with all these vehicles yeah so so first of all ihs has a long history of kind of advancing their crash tests to the next level of safety so recall they started with their moderate overlap frontal crash then a few years later they added their side impact test then a few years later they added this small overlap test and they just keep inching away at the next thing that's causing you know fatalities and injuries and motor vehicle crashes this case they haven't added a new test but they've modified the side impact test and what they did is two things one they increased the energy a heavier barrier that goes at a higher speed to better simulate the larger vehicles that are on our roads and in real world crashes and in their own research vehicle-to-vehicle crashes they also noted that when suvs or trucks are hitting other vehicles the shape of that the vehicle kind of wraps around the b-pillar and there was actually more intrusion on the front and rear doors than their current side impact test was showing so they modified that barrier more energy more representative a current vehicle deformation and it's proven challenging as most times it does when they change something the expectation is that not all vehicles will do well and that's by intention again this is a consumer information program this is not a pass or fail vehicle safety standard like we'd have from the national highway traffic safety administration this is meant to inform consumers like you and i which vehicles are doing better they increase the energy on that side impact test by 82 that's a huge increase we don't expect all vehicles to do well and i want people to understand that you know say you're in the hrv or the eclipse cross you're driving it today just adding this test doesn't make your vehicle that you're driving today unsafe it just means there's a new test the next time that anybody goes to buy a small suv in this case they tested 20 they have some another piece of information to determine which vehicles are more likely to protect them in a side impact crash the old tests their estimates are that a vehicle that scored a good versus a poor the driver was 70 percent less likely to die than in one with a poor rating versus a good rating so it has impact it has real world again a differentiator for buying new don't panic if you see marginal or poor on a vehicle that you currently own so in a way it's advancing the market and pushing manufacturers right gabe because we've seen this in in the past with with other crash tests like jet alluded to with uh with some toyotas right absolutely and it's really interesting when you look at the ranking of all the 20 cars and uh it's pretty clear that uh whichever model was uh more recently designed redesigned it does better uh with a couple of uh surprises but uh for instance the uh the honda hrv that uh that car is long in the tooth it's about to be redesigned and uh and manufacturers uh had a couple of years of uh heads up on on that upcoming uh standard so they were um they were they were not caught off guard here and uh it's pretty uh pretty safe bet uh that uh the next uh generation of the honda hrv is gonna be designed with that uh new test in mind yeah and even ihs they don't make it a requirement yet for their top safety pick they know it's new they know it's challenging so so they will wait till more and more cars do better before making it you know a prerequisite for some of their higher awards if you will it's nice to see that the the mazda cx-5 which does well in our testing as well is uh stands out in this test what i want to throw out to both of you is that some some viewers some listeners may say well look last time this happened you dropped your recommendations you uh you know you pulled them back you then also said well we'll wait and see what's going to be the cr policy on incorporating this test where is that going to lead us yeah so we have certainly said the words critical mass we wait until there's enough vehicles that have been tested through this program and to gabe's point enough time for manufacturers to tweak designs to improve their performance before making it a requirement um for either our recommendation or theirs you know so so not yet we certainly will watch it it's certainly a piece of information for people buying new but not yet something we will make a requirement for our recommendation or our top picks coming early next year yeah for now the ihs has only done a group of small suvs and we'll see uh other uh vehicle categories and how they do i mean you can only know what you know you don't know what you don't know so when they start uh uh doing the the same test uh for sedans uh let's see what happens then and you know just like jen said uh as soon as we have uh critical mass and we we see a broad picture here then then we can uh figure out how to uh move forward in turn and how it affects recommendations for us well there's a full report on this on consumerreports.org a story covering it covering the results um and some some quotes from from cr experts on it so check that out that's going to move us to car of the week our segment on what we've got in the fleet and you know just like all of you uh we're finding a really you know hard time with cars getting vehicles in we're affected by the supply chain um just like everyone who's buying a car if you look at the list our internal list of vehicles we have coming in yeah they're all there's so many of them that are in the build process they're they went into into the build in october and maybe they went into the build even in september so we're waiting this week's we're going to go with one that's been online for a little bit it's the hyundai elantra hybrid uh so it's a little little older in our test suite but we haven't discussed that but what's really interesting is that it's part of hyundai's big push with hybridization and we'll get to that the model that we tested was a 2021 hyundai elantra hybrid blue 1.6 liter four-cylinder 240 volt lithium-ion battery system with a hybrid starter generator 6-speed dual clutch automatic 23550 was the msrp the 190 dollars for cargo carrying equipment 155 for carpeted floor mats and it comes out to 24 900 which includes the 1005 dollar destination charge um i i found it really interesting that the elantra seo we tested cost 23 000 out the door we added some packages to it to bring in some safety equipment but if you look at the epa numbers between two cars i know different testing than what we do but it's sticker to sticker the hybrid will cost 750 a year to go 1500 miles a nine non-hybrid 11.50 so the epa payoff time is five years for that two thousand dollar rough difference so okay you know we've had two elantra's a regular sel then we have the hybrid that we tested you know what does the hybrid bring to it um and then also what time they've been doing with with their other hybrid uh vehicles since they've been hybridization hybridizing hybridizing their lineup uh you know extensively for the for this model here yeah uh well let's start with the elantra hybrid uh which is kind of like an under the radar kind of car and it's quieter than the regular elantra it uh also uh is able to propel itself solely on electric power and very low speeds on low throttle uh which really works well in an urban kind of situation i would drive up to like 25 30 miles per hour and on electric only and not many people will realize that the hybrid comes with a different rear suspension and it's an independent rear suspension as opposed to a straight beam for the regular elantra and that contributes to uh better handling and better ride comfort the car just absorbs bumps uh better than the regular elantra and you already mentioned the price difference uh price difference is not uh so significant between the regular and the hybrid elantra so it's just a win-win now let me continue with the with the tucson and santa fe hybrids and in those two cases we tested the two tucsons of course the regular one gets uh something like 26 miles per gallon which is okay but the hybrid gets 35 miles per gallon it has a longer driving range and uh it's quicker and it's quieter and uh just all around a better car the same goes for santa fe so in our mind unequivocally uh the tucson and santa fe hybrids are superior vehicles to their regular ones so it uh it really uh makes a lot of sense for a lot of people you know jen this this hybrid performs better feels better is better is nicer isn't just exclusive to hyundai though because that's been kind of a trend almost reversing the way it used to be with early hybrids right yeah so so it's it i think we've gotten rid of the quirkies the quirky nesses of some of the hybrids you know the early early hybrids you know you had all the cbt noise you had the goofy region pedal feel you had all of that they've gotten so much better so into games point in most cases not all hybridization particularly with a small displacement engine tends to make it a nicer car it quiet it quiets it down it gives you better smoother power delivery even if the numbers in this case even if the numbers don't say it's quicker it's the way the power gets delivered it's a bit more linear a bit more um a bit less i should say a bit less disconcerting when you're off the line it feels a little better so and i love that we're talking about this card that is sub 25 000 um because we're always talking about high end and high tech because that's the new stuff but i love that we have this car hybrid i mean i i this morning i was out with gas at 3.65 this morning that's what i saw it's really satisfying when you're looking at a version of this inexpensive elantra that's you know not to give too much weight 15 miles per gallon better than the gap than the purely gas version right um that's a lot of range and convenience of maybe you stop twice a week instead of three times a week or maybe you go that much further between fill-ups those are some very nice conveniences now i will say this hybridization didn't take away all the noise this is the kind of a noisy car um there's there's engine noise and there's quite a bit of road noise from this car that no hybrids just gonna fix that maybe a tire change might but it's kind of a noisy vehicle so you do have to work around that but combined with the the hybridization and the gas or the fuel economy lots of safety at some 25 000 standard for collision warning automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection standard lane departure warning and lane keeping assist even the ability to tailor some of that like for your lane departure you can shut off the audible part and just have the vibration if you don't want all your passengers hearing every time you cross a lane line you know things like that um the basic interior and i'll use that basic seat comfort basic controls somewhat refreshing if you will standard gear selector pretty easy to navigate controls touch screen but easy to navigate screen um so things like that i think people will be happy if they're okay with a little bit of road noise and pretty much not a super generous seat and things like that for sure it doesn't take away what a small car is the smaller car is because of weight savings because of just the investment you know the price point that they're they're going going to you're not going to have it be silent inside and with a hybrid when you're when there's no engine noise masking the outside noise you're going to hear that outside noise um but yes you're not asking for a forty thousand dollar interior because you're playing in the twenty thousand dollar space but it still is quality feeling it may not it may be more plastic than soft touch or hard plastic and soft but yeah everything's at hand it's a very nice vehicle to drive the lack of having hyundai not making it a luxury a high price four or five six thousand dollar price point to get there you know really makes the selling point for this vehicle over like you said over the regular version a blind spot warning standard on this one as well so you know a very very full uh a full complement of safety features yeah in the context of small sedans that cost typically between 20 and 24 000 hours at the elantra hybrid is just a very well-rounded kind of car yep and with the the lack of popularity of of small cars cars in general sedans in general uh it'll open and we talk about this on other parts of other parts of consumerreports.org and maybe you know in other other areas look you may have your eye right now set in a tough buying market i want an suv i want that tucson or something okay the tucson is popular you may you may need it but if you don't desperately need that suv especially if you're getting a front-wheel drive suv look look at look at the look at a sedan like this i mean you may have a better chance of getting this than getting something else at the dealer you know if you need a new car and it's going to save you a ton of money especially like you said you have a gas price is so high what a great car for a young driver i mean we'll wait and see what reliability turns out to be but what a great car great fuel economy they don't have a lot of money to pump into the gas tank what a great car and full safety awesome is is hyundai becoming the king of hybrids gabe well traditionally it used to be toyota and ford were the real uh leaders in hybrid now ford uh still uh has a really good escape hybrid and hyundai thinks that hybrids are going to play a role because not everyone is ready to jump to an ev and the hybrid is just gets you great fuel economy long driving range ready to go at any time it's certainly a very uh very practical uh solution for a lot of people well we've got uh full test reports for all the vehicles we discussed from the ford escape hybrid up to the hyundai elantra hybrid in between so check that out on consumerreports.org we're going to bounce to a little little segment here uh you know kind of experiences that we've had in the buying process or just in car ownership and this one this week we're going to talk about what each of us felt were our worst dealership experiences now it's not the pick on dealers but you know people are having you know a lot of interesting dealership experiences particularly the last year you have can i go in with covid can i only do it online do i do it outside you know now it's you know am i back in maybe we're not at we're not inside but the experience just isn't fun for people and in fact i i remember writing a story where the head of hyundai at one point john kraft chick i believe said that the only thing worse than going to a dealership is getting a root canal you know that that the people have equated dental visits with with going to the car dealership so jen what is your in your worst dealership experience uh so far so so first of all i'm gonna say and i've always said this and you've probably heard me say it i don't believe it's a dealership experience it's a salesperson experience because you can have a really crappy salesperson and a really great salesperson in the same dealership and if you're really unhappy ask for a different one even if you're not altering the dealership but i unfortunately had to narrow it down a little bit because i've certainly been in situations with it like don't you need to go home and ask your husband if you can not my favorite but my worst one had to do with um kind of that follow-up survey you know i've been at consumers a long time and it used to be you got an um a piece of mail that said oh please rate your dealership experience um and i got the impression gabe you'll have to win that the dealerships get some kickback from having very very high um results on those series on those surveys very very good results so i had i was buying a vehicle and the sales person actually was showing me the wrong vehicle you know we've always said we're very specific gabe gives us very specific specs in the vehicles we're buying for consumers reports and they were showing me the wrong car like he pulled me in there said i got one on the lot for you it was a total um bait and switch gets me there it's not even the right car eventually we get to the right car and um again we're going in anonymous at this point so at the end of the whole transaction and i'm just frustrated he slides across the table now it's all done by email this survey and says i hope you give me a good rating it was pre-populated with all high marks i said i'm not he goes if you could just sign it that'd be great he had filled in his own check marks and wanted me to cycle i'm not signing that and he said why not and i said because this was not a good dealership experience and when i fill out the real one you're gonna hear about it and then ultimately it got even worse um when we tell them at the very end that this car's for consumer reports he says to me if i had known you were from consumer reports i would have treated you so much better i was just at a loss like are you kidding me you don't treat all of your potential customers well it was it was my worst experience ever he wasn't good at his job and he was very entitled and felt he deserved this great survey regardless it was horrible and i don't think i ever went back to that um dealership just because we bounced around but he personally was probably the worst sales person i've ever experienced he probably wanted you to put your own stamp on it too right he wasn't going to give you the stamp oh yeah right all right gabe up to you to top that one what's your experience that you uh lie asleep by recounting oh there's no chance i can top that one but uh probably our experience buying cars at this point i mean we've got it down packed uh it is not uh so similar to a regular customer but i can remember a few years ago i think i ended up taking over a buying process from someone else and uh that was a ford edge and and the dealer didn't didn't even have the certificate of origin which allows them to sell the car so i had to get the car on the dealer plate uh not only that uh the vin number and the documents was at the wrong vin number everything from there was just a disaster that required uh you know some extra time at the dmv and um and it was just not uh i mean the whole dealership was just a very incompetent and uh not uh not not a great experience there i think that your experience there really highlights the challenge that people face because we do this and it's almost automatic yeah you know it's a process and it's all the paperwork and it's very rigid like you said we bring the check it can't be different than the check we're not getting up sold we're not adding we're not there's nothing that goes on there but all for so for the you know the average buyer making sure that there's not an error here or that they're not charging five dollars extra you have a lean fee on your you know that's actually incorporated into the registration fee but they have the lean fee in as well it's hard it's really crazy and when you're there and you want to just get the heck out of there it's not again saying that all dealerships are evil but it's very easy to miss something and that's you know especially now if you're doing it all virtually and you're going back and forth and it's you know it's emailing attachments and stuff it's a challenge it really is a challenge and our way is pretty easy because we pay uh we just write a check and uh we're done and that without the whole complication of uh of uh loans and financing or at least uh which you know just uh makes the whole thing a lot more complicated exactly interest rate bumping and such so that's that's that's a challenge i i was i was going between two different ones and i think that the key the big the bigger headache i had was more just disgusted the way it was handled um i was buying a nissan i was buying an ultimate it was very popular and they were there was a you know the way a lot of the cars roll out they roll out you know some high level high trim models at first and of course we want to get an early one but we're not buying the 3.5 sr with the leather and you know the panoramic roof you know we're buying the one that's gonna sell one percent we're gonna buy a regular you know a mid-level one that that the regular consumer is going to buy in mass that they're planning to buy so i found one at a dealership in connecticut that had a amazing price it was it was it was actually below msrp and it was the end of the month and i thought well you know maybe they want to they want to get it out and um there weren't any incentives or anything like that so paperwork and i verify oh it's a new car oh it's a new car yeah okay and it's you know it's on site yeah it's on site here's a picture of it and okay and great send me all the information and i said um you know can you verify you know the mileage that's on it when when delivered and such yeah yeah we'll get that look at that and they sent over the paperwork and i sent over the information from cr and then they said oh by the way it was a demo and it's got 3 500 miles on it but it was the sales manager's wife so we'll see you later this afternoon and they hung up the phone literally and of course we're not gonna buy a car that has anything besides just the delivery miles on it and it was just that thing because of course i finally found a deal and while there was the spidey sense going it's just not right yeah look it was reasonably below msrp in the sense of negotiations yeah and it wasn't the coveted buying experience where it's forty percent over it was five percent and and that was a mess because i had already cancelled two other orders yeah yeah because you feel not orders but feel outs you know so i said the two other deals oh i'm not i'm going in a different direction so it taught me not to do that to hold the other one unfortunately it's a little mean but to make sure that the one goes before i cancel the others it's just an annoying morning experience and i hear those commercials in that deal where i just cringe every time i hear that i know yeah just just uh just one more thing before we change the subject here uh we're as we know we're in a bit of a drought in terms of buying cars because of a chip shortage and whatnot and uh well that also means that uh we have been uh so great on getting discounts on cars whereas uh up until a few years ago you'd be getting 1500 off the uh list price right off the bat uh no no sweat now i'd be lucky to pay uh the msrp or the list price and not um be charged over sticker right i mean owner loyalty or conquest was always an option i mean for us we have a lot of 30 or 40 cars we're loyal owners we're being conquered they're conquesting us no matter what you just have to provide the registration proof and yeah those are gone any money on the hood's gone you know jen you were gonna add something in no i was just gonna say you know gabe you both said it you know because we're desiring that car as soon as we can get it we sometimes don't walk because we want the car and we're willing to go through the these horror stories so but still if it's you walk if you don't like the person or the dealership walk and that's why you don't wait to the car if you know your car's on it's time to be replaced right don't wait till it dies in your driveway or dies at the dealer when you drive over to look and kick tires it's it's it's important to plan ahead the flip side of it all is that uh we our resale value on the cars is great i mean we're getting great prices uh on our used cars yeah for instance we sold the rav4 after a year and a half of ownership ownership for 300 hours less than what we bought it for which was amazing it's crazy which is great yeah so when that guy said to me if you if i knew you worked for consumer reports i would have treated you better i said and i should have said if i wasn't buying this for consumer reports i would have walked out here a long time ago definitely my answer today definitely well give us give us some feedback and tell us in the comments below what your experience has been or send it to us at talkingcards icloud.com and maybe it could be part of a viewer question uh listener question uh session uh in an upcoming episode so we're just gonna pause one second to talk about the talking cars donation program if you're not aware consumer reports is a non-profit organization and everything that we do is funded by memberships and donations so if you're able to give it really does help keep us do the work we do including the show so you can find more information about this at cr.org give talking cars and so now we're going to move over to audience questions as always send us video or text questions talking cars at icloud.com and hopefully we'll get you on a future show our first our first excuse me question comes from joel who says as will rogers once said you never get a second chance to make a good first impression to that point not infrequently cr will do a first impression review on a new car after all these years and thousands of reviews has cr ever substantially changed their thoughts on a car after these initial ones if so what car was it what were the circumstances so gabe for for people who may or may not know you know how and why do we you know do these these first impression reviews you know you know and do we end up ever switching or do they do we change and under what circumstances so very often uh we'll do a first drive on a new car that's uh just just out and not even before it even goes on sale will rent slash borrow one from the manufacturer i mean we pay for these loans as opposed to other outlets and uh we'll get the car for a week or two and uh we'll rotate it among uh staff uh one um there will be a writer that uh will gather all of our collective thoughts and uh and we kind of uh we know that this is just a kind of a little bit of a a taste of uh the car and it's not gonna be instead of the full instrumented road test that we're gonna do that's based on our um very own car that we will have purchased it's very rare that we change uh we do like a full 180 degree uh change of mind on a car but uh most recently we we drove the uh we got the honda civic uh this past summer it was a touring uh with a turbo engine and um with all the sound deadening material and when we got our own car which was uh the sport which is a more uh more common trim line without the turbo engine and without the sound deadening uh installation the car made not such a you know not such a positive impression as the the car we borrowed jen are there ones that you've thought of over time that that have fallen into that that category of like yeah it sounds great oh the one we bought not not quite on what they delivered to us at first right and i think the direction gabe's talking about is typically where we would go where the the rented vehicle will be better equipped either by its trim line stuff we know or things we may not know that they've done to you know like sound deadening to make it just a better experience the one i think of and we talked about it last week is the lexus nx we just had the top top powertrain non-hybrid powertrain the top regular uh powertrain we had the f sport version which brought nicer seats probably better handling you know even controls and things like that you get all the amenities in this rented vehicle will our impressions of the mainstream whatever that might be lexis nx be the same probably not will probably be lower i also think you know sometimes we have these rented vehicles for a pretty short period of time depending on the popularity and where else they need to go and not as many people get in them so when we have our tested vehicle now you have this whole jury of drivers with different preferences different statures all that stuff that makes our rating so comprehensive that the rented vehicle may not see so typically we go down um i can't think of one gabe or john off the top of my head where we've gotten the rented vehicle and then been actually much more pleased with the car we bought i couldn't think of one in that direction yeah i would have to go back and really yeah really really dig through yeah because rarely is the car that's provided a rental you know a base model or something and we just happened to get one that was just nicer so yeah the only maybe it's a sportier one that the ride got better because i will and the tires and that thing i don't think of one the tire feel i think is a key one also because many other publications will say well it looks great it's not the big wheels and it fills out the wheel well but yeah the ride degradation is is horrible so joel hope that answered your question uh we're going to move to our next question from aaron who says in march 2020 after much research on consumer reports i decided i would buy a subaru forester but that didn't happen because of covid in the end i will buy a car it's just a matter of when but in the news i've heard it's not a great time to buy a car due to shortage of parts would you recommend buying a new forester right now or wait should i be concerned about part shortages impacting the quality and reliability of cars being made now so jen from the supplier side you know what from your history your your previous jobs uh does aaron have concerns that are valid right so i you know and again you're absolutely right i was putting on my supplier hat i used to work for a fuel system supplier and and we actually i spent a lot of time on the production line so i i think aaron i would be cautious and and i say that in to me the best running highest reliability quality production line is the one that's tuned in you know the people know what they're looking for if it's a manual labor line be it a part line there's a steady flow of of parts that have been manufactured when you start to talk about stops and starts and restarts on a production line or in another vein there's typically an alternate supplier maybe the alternate suppliers just ramping up their production to cover that's where some issues may arise again the people aren't knowing necessarily and it could be you're talking fuel systems it could be so simple as that o-ring doesn't look like it's seated quite right you know in our case that was a fuel leak you couldn't have those things um so to me there's risk in these stops and starts on these productions line with that said i think it's paramount even more so than normal to pick a manufacturer with good quality practices because those quality practices checks and balances checks along the line sampling of parts make even deviations in the production they find them more quickly they don't get out to the consumer so you know the the manufacturers that have a really traditionally good reliability record the toyotas and the kit aaron's case the subarus of the world are probably the better option and the forester in particular it has some some years that were not particularly great in terms of reliability but the more recent ones have been very very good so when you combine subaru with forester you're probably fine aaron just falling back on subaru's reputation and reliability but it's a caution maybe if you don't need that car right now maybe give it a little bit yeah i was gonna say to gabe you know is there other concerns that erin would have to have uh with the buying of maybe not being satisfied with everything that's available well this is uh in general and not specifically uh for the forester uh there are you know because there are dozens of chips and microchips in every car uh there are some cars that uh not only are delayed but cars have come with the missing features like for instance bmw announced that uh they're not going to have uh wireless charging pads for many of or some of their models because of the the shortage so uh yeah make sure you you know that coming in just to avoid surprises later well on that i hope uh aaron you get what you want let us know let us know the buying process um but also let us know if it's if it's delayed or anything like that tell us tell us your experience we'd like to like to hear a follow-up so it brings us to casey and casey asks what is going on with eb prices tesla seems to be upping their prices at random meanwhile chevy took about four thousand dollars off the price of a bolt when it updated the car and nissan quietly took around 5000 off the msrp of a new leaf depending on the model and was apparently trying to keep it a secret for some reason any idea where ev prices are headed in general and why they're suddenly moving around with ferocity and randomness gabe can you uh can you give us a quick a quick hit on this well the short answer is supply and demand and uh tesla can basically do whatever it wants because uh it has uh an audience uh and there's a whole aura around the tesla brand so it's uh it's almost a movement uh if you will uh at the other end of the spectrum i have the chevy bolt and the nissan leaf which are uh you know they're with all due respect were launched uh in the days when when manufacturers thought electric vehicles were supposed to be um very small and efficient runabouts rather than high-end sexy high-tech stylish fashion statements so so you have to discount these and uh and in order to to move them even though the chevy bolt has a pretty robust range uh it's it's just not a it's it's not such a fresh car anymore at this point and the nissan leaf second generation although it improved over the first generation but uh you know it's not a car that uh you're gonna look at and uh you're gonna set yourself oh gotta have it yeah it definitely has a limited appeal and a very interesting point on the sense of the uh style of the time of planning it and then where we're going with vehicles like the aforementioned ionic 5 and futuristic uh futuristic looks so that's going to do it for this episode though we do have a little bit of internal cr news totally anatoly chumsky who edits in these episodes and does a lot of video shooting for us his family has expanded by one and that's the family that lets him come home at night what else we haven't expanded by one um so he is the proud father of a new baby boy david chomsky is a new member of the family a big bouncing baby boy and we congratulate him for that uh and we also wanted to let everyone know that with the holidays coming up with people taking time off for newborn babies with people taking vacations and using it up uh we're going to make a change for the rest of 2021 for the episodes there are we're going to talk a little bit more about the cars and what's going on at the track but the episodes will be shorter so watch for that going for the rest of the remainder of 2021 give us feedback tell us what you think about it what you like what you don't like um you know let us know if that's something we should continue in the new year or just for the time being so that's it for this episode thanks so much for watching remember send us questions to talking cars at icloud.com um keep on watching and we'll see you next time\n"