**The Impact of Chip and Part Shortages on 2022 Model Year Cars**

As car companies start manufacturing their 2022 models, one question is looming: will this result in lower quality builds? Our guest expert weighs in on the potential impact of chip and part shortages on the reliability of these vehicles.

Firstly, it's essential to understand that part shortages can lead to changes in the features that are included in a vehicle. According to Jake, our expert, "more than likely, it means they're going to have less features." This is because some car manufacturers may not be able to obtain the necessary parts for certain features, and instead, they'll have to remove them from the vehicle altogether.

One notable example of this was with General Motors, who removed auto shutoff on some of their bigger vehicles, a feature that would save gas. Our expert advises that if you order a car with a feature like this, "talk to the dealer about it." It's crucial to understand what features are included in the vehicle and whether they can be added back in at a later date.

Another important consideration is compensation for features that are removed due to part shortages. If you've paid for a feature that won't be available on your new car, you may want to discuss this with the dealer as well. Jake notes that "it's not just about getting the feature itself, but also about getting the value back that you originally paid for it."

The potential impact of part shortages on reliability is still uncertain. While some parts shortages might lead to more frequent breakdowns, our expert suggests that other shortages might result in fewer issues overall. The key takeaway is to carefully review your new car's features and negotiate with the dealer if necessary.

As a result of these changes, it's essential to take the time to thoroughly review your new car before purchasing it. Research the features you want and need, and don't be afraid to speak up about any concerns or omissions. Our expert advises that "you should pay for what you get," so make sure to factor in all the costs and features when making your purchase.

The 2022 model year may bring some challenges, but with careful planning and communication, it's possible to navigate these changes and find a vehicle that meets your needs and budget. As always, stay informed and take control of your car-buying experience by reaching out to us at TalkingCars@icloud.com or checking our show notes for more information on what we discussed in this episode.

**Cleaning Your Camera Sensors**

When it comes to maintaining the quality of your vehicle's cameras, one often-overlooked aspect is cleanliness. Jake emphasizes that "for any situation if you're having an issue with camera visibility, you need to clean your cameras." Inclement weather or bug swarms can easily clog up your cameras, leading to reduced visibility and potentially even safety issues.

So, how do you clean your cameras? Our expert advises that "if you end up driving and this could be a bug swarm or it could be inclement weather that might gunk up your cameras" pull over safely and give your camera lenses a good cleaning. The owner's manual should have instructions on how to do so.

If you're about to embark on a long road trip, taking the time to clean your cameras beforehand is also recommended. Additionally, our expert suggests applying a coat of wax to your vehicle to protect it from dirt and other debris that could potentially damage your camera lenses.

While this may seem like a minor detail, maintaining clear visibility through your camera lenses can be crucial for safety on the road. By taking these simple precautions, you can help ensure that your cameras stay clean and functional.

**The Importance of Researching Your Vehicle**

When it comes to buying a new car, research is key. Before purchasing, take the time to review the features and options available in your desired vehicle. Jake emphasizes the importance of "making sure that you know what's going on."

One crucial aspect to consider is compensation for features that are removed due to part shortages. As we discussed earlier, if you've paid for a feature that won't be included in your new car, don't hesitate to speak up with the dealer.

Another important consideration is checking the warranty and maintenance requirements of your new vehicle. Our expert advises that "you should check the owner's manual" to understand what's covered and what's not.

By taking the time to research your vehicle thoroughly, you can ensure that you get the best value for your money and avoid any potential issues down the road. Remember, it's always better to ask questions and advocate for yourself when making a car purchase.

**The Value of Feedback**

At TalkingCars, we're committed to providing the most accurate and informative content possible. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us achieve this goal. If you have a question or topic you'd like to see covered in an upcoming episode, send it our way at TalkingCars@icloud.com.

We also invite you to share your own experiences with car ownership on social media using the hashtag #TalkingCars. Your stories and insights can help shape our content and provide valuable information to our audience.

By engaging with us and sharing your thoughts, you're not only helping to improve our content but also contributing to a broader conversation about cars and the automotive industry as a whole. Thanks for being part of the TalkingCars community!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis week we review gm's enhanced super cruise automated driving system share tips for living with and driving your car during a heat wave and discuss the tricks we use to keep our kids occupied during long road trips next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm jake fisher i'm emily thomas and you know what summer's here uh you know as you probably have felt parking your car even in a 74 degree day like i did in vermont it can get hot after two hours let alone some of the people who are experiencing the extreme heat out west you know we have a couple things we want to talk about with with heat from going from jake who's done a lot of work in a previous life working on heating and ventilation and his experience but also you know what you could do to keep your car cool and avoid any kind of complications that come from that emily one of the things that you've worked on extensively is is heat stroke awareness uh you know for people who may leave a child in a car or even a child inadvertently getting into a car yeah exactly you know you hit kind of the two main circumstances of how we see these tragedies happening across the country and up front i want to address the misconceptions that it could never never ever happen to me right like we always think that these things are gonna be in somebody else's life but really it's that kind of thinking that makes us more susceptible to it because the way our brains are wired we require additional reminders you know at the base level when we're in our routine in the morning doing drop-offs or on our way to work picking up our coffees you know our brain kind of goes into this automatic routine mode and as a result if there's a change in that routine it's really hard for our brain to snap out of it and remember it can't prioritize how much we love our child and bring that to the forefront of like oh this is not the primary task you know and so it's really important for us to be aware of that and create these visual reminders so make a habit of always checking your back seat even if you're not riding with your kid put something of yours in the back like your laptop bag or your phone keep a reminder of your child up front with you if they're traveling with you their sippy cup their backpack a jacket you know something that your mind can see at the end of the trip and be like oh yeah you know they're back there because a lot of times they fall asleep or you know they're just being really quiet and so it can be easy for us to not have those triggers and the other really important um scenarios kids that get into vehicles by themselves you know it's really easy for kids to be like oh cars are cool i'm gonna go play inside and they can get in but they can't get out so even if you don't have kids it's really important to always keep your vehicles locked when you're at home and keep keys out of reach those are kind of the big messages that we want to make sure that everybody knows not just parents and caregivers well you know talking about routines and such i mean particularly with people maybe going back to an office maybe going back to dake taking their kids to daycare one day a week three days a week there's no routine so you're you're totally discombobulated coming out of a year of lockdown but so jake tell us i mean emily i know this i'm not you know discounting your work but since jake you spent a lot of time in the in the phoenix deserts i believe in the great north tundra freezing but climbing into super heat-soaked cars tell us a little bit about that and just you know how fast the car could heat up in the in heat so sure sure yeah i mean i so so life before consumer reports for me i was actually a development engineer and design engineer for uh hvac units for cars and um you know it's you know we did a lot of testing and like you said we went to the hottest places in the coldest places and it is kind of amazing how hot cars can get so i mean we would we call them thermal soak right so basically you put your car in the sun and you know okay it might be 80 degrees outside or 70 degrees or 100 degrees but i mean the heat that actually builds up in these cars is far greater than that i mean we're talking 150 160 degrees it's ridiculous and you and actually what we developing on there you know basically we have to get into the car don't start the car because you don't want to cool it off because you have uh you know thermal couples and you're basically measuring everything and see how quickly the car cools down for the tests and you know we had to go and we had we had laptops and we had to like hook them up to the instrumentation while we're just pouring sweat trying not to die because i mean we're in these hot cars trying to boot up the computers get everything hooked up before we turn the key and it is just amazing so i mean just like living that experience of like that that one minute of misery trying to get the computer hooked up to the instrumentation i mean it does not take much and and you know vehicle color does that play a part interior color does that play part i mean certainly big panoramic sunroofs you know if you don't pull the shade forward that's going to you know amplify or magnify you know let more more heat you'll let more sunlight in to heat the car correct yeah that's right yeah we see more of these big big sunroofs um uh certainly a dark interior is going to going to attract that temperature more it all uh heats up so does does preconditioning a vehicle for a regular gasoline conventionally powered vehicle versus an ev does it have a difference on either way because the evs you could pre-condition you know remotely but what about starting up a car and letting it letting the ac run um i mean really you can do that it's kind of very inefficient takes a while i mean the best the best uh you know you want to cool it off quick first thing you want to do is just roll down those windows get going and there's two reasons for it one get that get that hot air out of there as quick as you possibly can and the second thing is is that air conditioning systems just work better when you're driving you know they're really it's all about how fast that engine's moving you know in an idle it's it's moving really slow once you get going you're going twice as fast twice as fast engine speed or more so yeah a lot of information that we have on consumerreports.org about heat stroke prevention there is a heat shock prevention week each year but it's something that you really have to pay attention to no matter what time of the year and where you are in the country but you know particularly in the summer here with the long hot summer that we have coming up long hot summers also do mean road trips which is a kind of slick segue i have here to our next segment anyway um well we thought that you know because i just took my kids up to vermont and jake had a road trip but i believe emily's been been planning one for this summer but i'm not 100 sure on that we figured that we were going to talk about some of the things that we do to keep the family entertained keep the kids entertained because our children are of various ages we're across the spectrum right now emily you you're gonna go first because you've got the littlest ones of the crew what are the types of things that you like to do to keep them interested and engaged during the trip uh versus screaming yelling and constantly making you pull over and talk to them well so poor nemo he hasn't really experienced a road trip yet he's a baby so okay he hasn't had it yet but with micah we were able to do a bunch of traveling um when he was little and things that i try to do is one i try to plan around nap time so we we will try to leave just before nap so that the the smooth quiet lull of the vehicle will drift him into naplan and that usually gives us a good chunk of time to kind of like get as many miles going and get as far as we can before he gets up and you know maybe needs a diaper change or needs to be fed or whatever it may be i also am a firm believer in um phasing things in so you know i will have a bag of snacks and so like you know you don't you never show your cards all at once as a parent okay you you have your snack bag and you have your activities bag and you bring things out slowly as like ooh ah look at this new thing because if it's all there at once then like it's no longer interesting right so that of course means that you have a lot of stuff up front with you or you know whoever is in the passenger seat has a big filled footwell of uh of goodies yes it does usually mean that so i try to keep everything contained well you know like there's individual bags for for certain things um but yeah snacks um planning things for the car in terms of activities that are um you know not a lot of pieces even uh there are these great coloring books that i found that literally just use water to color with and they're amazing it's called like water works by melissa and dogs if you have small children find them order them it's brilliant because it requires one pen that you constantly refill with just water and you always have it and the kids are amazed forever and it's wonderful but i'm hoping some of these tricks kind of like maybe you two can tell me because you're you're in the next phases if those tricks are still necessary well so i was gonna bounce it over to jake because we have the the opposite extreme almost from the the little car seats you know so we now we have almost the the sullen teenagers who don't engage so how do you handle that one when you're almost at the parent like no no let's engage we had a number of years we didn't want to engage now we will yeah that's exactly right so um my younger one just turned 13 um my older one 17 so i'm kind of the other side of that and you know it's funny i i didn't see you up in vermont you know it's pretty spaced out but i was there this the weekend too i guess everyone from connecticut goes up to vermont in the weekends is that kind of the rule i think they just opened the state up and everyone's like beer outdoors yeah it was amazing so so yeah so we actually went up to uh i've been wanting to go to kingdom trails up in vermont which is this crazy mountain bike park and it's about four miles out four hours up up up the road from me and um so it was me and the two boys and i'm kind of on the other side my thing is like you know keep me awake keep me occupied i'm like this is boring you know and i'm like because it's like straight up route 91 and it's like there's nothing to say so i'm just like talk to me make tell me a story or something and of course they're teenagers and they're boys did they talk to you jake so you kind of have to make it a game to figure out how to talk talk to that like put down the phones you know i mean basically it's that so what we wound up doing we were playing a lot of games and actually was their idea and it was working really good so like you know i mean you hear about like you know what the license plate game or whatever like that we actually started with um uh the alphabet game but with uh band names that was our first thing so we go around in a circle it's like okay start with an a break band and a b band and you go around and then you move on to food or you to your places or whatever that was like hours that's impressive that you got two teenagers to play the alphabet game for well it's got to be something you know we wouldn't go to like you know but yeah it's like it's about what they're into so i mean they're into bands they're into music so it actually worked out too and then of course spotify is always really good too because there's all types of games you could play there kind of like name that tune or you know choose the next song or whatnot but i mean to me it was just like it wasn't that boring because you know i was occupied i was talking with them and and that made the time go by really quick yeah i i i end up with the kids they're 9-11 so um you know break time kind of around bathroom time kind of around treat time so you know up to brattleboro is an hour and a half from here oh this is really cool place with you know pastries or whatever you know we got some stuff to eat we we held back breakfast so we could get something there we went up to the uh the king arthur flower company because my daughter's really into baking um so unfortunately no tours but you could go through and see a lot of stuff and of course purchase you know so that was a destination there was some outside time they have huge lawn so you know playing cartwheels chasing just hanging out talking my kids never had devices like their tablet with their little holder and such we we didn't have that our meals and stuff like that but car time they were able to use that a little bit so they download some movies um that they would like to watch i let them do that a little bit the one we used to play when i was little i date myself so much i sound like my quincy but the station we would find station wagons on the road and we would call them beavers i don't know why but what was it a station wagon well you know even back then going across interstate 80 from new jersey to ohio or something for family visits you know the station wagons were infrequent enough that you could you would have to hunt for them now i think if we did a station wagon game we could go the whole day you know you might never see one one person will win they'll see the one wagon well when i was good it was it was punch buggy and and i think we could say punch button well let me because we're all from new jersey i think you're slug bug in other parts of the country yes but you know punch back right yes yes but anyway what would be good is for you all and our audience to tell us some of the games that you do with your family uh either ones that you remember that you used to do and and look back fondly or stuff that you do to keep keep kids occupied because it would make good filler you know that we could possibly talk about bring some people up on the show you know explain the games tell us what's up so put it in the comments below or send it to us talking cards at icloud.com this brings us to the next segment we have the car that we've driven this week and it's an interesting model it's a little bit out of uh the the norm for us uh we bought we have purchased a 2021 cadillac escalade four wheel drive premium luxury yeah we know it's it's an expensive vehicle and it's we're trying to do more testing of cars for you know the average american you know looking at the price the fact that new cars are so expensive here we have this this quite expensive luxury suv but jake as head of auto test tell us the reasoning behind buying this this pricey suv explain yourself explain your explain yourself wait where's the light i'm gonna shine the light so yes we we got the uh the the gigantic cadillac escalade i mean actually you know it's probably the biggest one we didn't get the long one no we didn't we're we're conserving we're concerned about the environment so we got the smaller escalade you know it's a i mean look what's interesting about it first of all it's not that much of a small seller you know actually when it comes to cadillac actually it's right up there with one of the most sold vehicles from cadillac and a really important one for them so i mean we're certainly looking at that now obviously we're very concerned i mean we are you know i don't know how many times we say we're non-profit you know and you know we don't have we don't take advertising so i mean all these considerations are important the crazy thing about these vehicles and what we found is actually because we buy cars and then we sell them we actually don't lose a whole lot of money on vehicles like the escalade because they actually have a pretty good resale value when we're done we actually wind up losing more money on on some of the some much cheaper vehicles but that said that's not the only reason we bought this big vehicle uh that's a luxury important car and and all that a big piece that we bought this car was actually the first vehicle that has jello motors next generation super cruise so um we've talked a lot about supercrews on the show and then a lot of our content but there's now enhanced supercruise and this is the next generation of that after it launched in the cadillac ct6 and this is really significant because first of all we've rated these driving automation systems or active driving assist systems or people call them different things but i mean essentially systems that will steer the wheel and do speed control at the same time we have said that this this cadillac system from general motors is definitely is the best it is better than autopilot that's on tesla which you hear a lot about and other systems that are on other cars so having the enhanced one that not just is better we wanted to evaluate that but also it's not just going to be on cadillac so they're going to be putting on chevys they're going to be going on other models in general motors lineup the way supercruise works right so you there's also like this green led on the steering wheel and everything when it's operating when you're not in the center of your lane it's it turns blue or if you're changing lanes now you can engage it and it'll start operating when it can so instead of saying like hit the button no hit the button no you're not perfect hit the button no you're not perfect hit the button okay we're ready and now just get in the center lane and now it's going to operate and in reality it's much easier to engage now which is really kind of the primary issue of the system the engagement used to be so frustrating i thought for sure that i was doing it wrong i was like maybe this thing just doesn't work and it would take me so many tries to get the version one to even turn on that i would just kind of give up at some point be like okay forget it i'll just use like regular super regular cruise control because i don't know how to engage this other one another thing to note is the supercrew system is very specific about where it can function it's not going to work on your local roads right right jk it only works on unmapped roads that are what like highway highway speeds well so so this is the funny thing about the systems that so like competitor systems you look in the fine print they're like don't use it in these situations don't use it in these citrate you should only really use it on highways and controlled things and all these things super goose actually just enforces that so if it's a situation where super cruise or a system like this isn't really designed to work and won't work well it's not going to work um in enhanced supercrews they're now allowing use on more roads but again it's like you know down down your street isn't a good place to do it if there's only one lane it's not a good place to do it it's not going to allow you to engage there at all i mean there's a couple of interesting things about that are very unique i mean one thing this is you know the only system it's hands-free so um and the way it does that is it's you know all these systems you have to be engaged you have to pay attention but almost all the other systems are just looking for hands in the wheel and you know i don't know how many times i've said it but you can put your hands on the wheel it doesn't mean you're actually looking where you're going this system says all right you don't have to put your hands in the wheel but you need to look where you're going and we're going to make sure you do and that system really does work quite well um i mean it's not annoying so the fact that like i can't set my radio or anything like that i could do that it's fine but if you're not looking where you're going for a little bit you know five seconds or something like that straight it's gonna be like hey uh-uh no you gotta you gotta get back in the game and it'll even penalize you if you start abusing the system it's not a hands-free napping enhancer um or watching a video you know on a on a mobile device or something like that right right when i drove it i had at the start of my trip it was really sunny and i was driving into the sun so i had my sunglasses on and um i was on the highway and it was it it had engaged it was working fine it could tell through my sunglasses that i was still looking at the road i mean this is not a system that is like on the way to a full self-driving car or an autonomous car this is actually a system that is designed to help you out on the monotonous boring parts of driving that we don't want to do i mean i could go drive around town like that's engaging that's fine i'm okay with that but that long trip to vermont that we took or that stop and go when you're in traffic these are actually easier for these systems to deal with and they do it quite well and this system really does it quite well so it does make you know at the end of the day you're just more stress-free and you could have that you know play the alphabet game with your kids or whatever it is without worrying about it well in in addition to the the super cruise evaluation uh we will be putting the escalade through full testing we have a first drive on consumerreports.org already up it's in our program now and i believe it's up to miles we're just finishing up testing so in a few weeks we'll have uh the full report on consumerreports.org so check out the first drive and then see what we say about supercruise as well as the full cadillac escalade at this point we're going to move on to our question and answer segment as always we remind you send us questions talking cars at icloud.com video questions definitely we want to see your smiling faces but text questions are totally fine as well so talking cars at icloud.com one of those video questions is the first one john from cedar falls iowa has a question about parts availability so we're going to roll the tape behind me is my 2006 chevrolet ssr definitely not a cr recommended buy definitely not practical in any way but i love it so i understand with an older low production car like this my parts might get hard to find and as you say the average car today is 11 years old almost as old as this one are there any brands out there that have a better track record of having parts for older cars thanks and keep up the good work cool so so jake that's uh that's a chevrolet ssr but it may not be as much of a worry uh for john as as it seems right so so so here's the here the short answer is this is that if you have a low volume vehicle you're going to have a harder time finding parts it doesn't matter if it's from a big company or a small company the interesting thing about the ssr is it's kind of a parts bin vehicle so certainly body panels and some of these things may be kind of a little bit weird and hard to get the top mechanism and whatnot but i mean honestly i mean the powertrain is basically coming from a silverado which those you know they made literally millions and millions of those um seed is from another vehicle um so i think just you know a lot of those parts bin will be you able to find them but you know if you're if you're getting something that's really rare or from a car company that is like you know just starting out or something like that it definitely can be an issue uh we're going to move to our next question thomas from baltimore i just got back from a cross-country drive to lawrence kansas and i want to talk cicadas specifically i received the warning for the first time ever that the cruise control on my 2020 mazda cx-5 was disabled due to a limited camera view this happened twice after going through cicada swarms in both indiana and ohio what could be done about this also what is this doing to my car's finish p.s i also noticed the cicadas in the midwest are a bit out of tune emily cicadas apparently i won the cicada we had some in new jersey but it certainly wasn't the same as the virginia dc maryland and midwest swarms i mean i remember those my cousins in maryland have been like on edge about the cicadas and i'm just like i don't recall being traumatized by cicadas in new jersey but hey um more power to you if you can get through that because i hate them but um since i won the lottery on the bug question the answer is that for any situation if you're having an issue with camera visibility you need to clean your cameras so if you end up driving and this could be a bug swarm or it could be inclement weather that might gunk up your cameras you should always you know pull over safely and clean your cameras your owner's manual will have instructions on how to do that you know if you're about to go on a big trip you should make sure your cameras and your sensors are clean beforehand and as far as your cars finished it should not have that much of an impact but the advice that i got from big john our chief mechanic is just to make sure that there is a really good coat of wax on your car which i think would probably be good advice regardless of whether you think you're going to go through a swarm of bugs or not but like if you're planning to go on a cross-country trip or you know a really long trip all kinds of things are flying around on the highway you know like you're kicking up dirty kicking up rocks it's probably just good advice in general for your vehicle finish yeah at regular bug splatter or or bird poop uh you know definitely eats through the finish so it would be good one of those types of pre-trip things is to give it a good coat of wax when you're also checking the tires and checking the oil so our next question is brett from long island who sent us this uh this little ditty as car companies start manufacturing their 2022 models during the massive chip and other item shortage do you think this is going to result in lower quality builds for the 2022 model year what do you think the chances are that we will feel sorry for people who bought those 2022 models so jake is it going to have an impact on reliability and are we going to see that in our survey it might it might but not the way that you might imagine the truth is is that we do see changes in these cars with part shortages and chip shortages but more than likely it means they're going to have less features so we see in some of the cars companies that um you know there's a certain thing that they're just not going to be putting on the vehicles just because they can't get the parts um you know whether or not it's a power passenger seat or a navigation system or or or something else another feature and they figure okay we got to get these cars out the door we're just going to pull pull that part off what that could mean is actually less things that go wrong so i mean i don't think it's going to be like a quality problem we're going to see cars that are breaking down but potentially if that part isn't on that vehicle in that feature maybe there's less things to go wrong one of the key things i think people really should pay attention to we've talked about this on on some content on consumerreports.org is to make sure that you know the car you order the car you plan to buy if it doesn't come with those features you need to talk to the dealer and see what you can do about that with your price you know don't pay for something when you're not going to get that feature you know right now general motors for example not having auto shutoff on some of their bigger vehicles uh for for gas savings the one where the the engine start stop system uh will turn on you know stop the vehicle at a stop the engine excuse me at a traffic light talk to them about that i mean it's a fuel savings feature it's probably not the prime reason you're buying maybe a silverado or something but it's a feature that you paid for so do that that's yeah and and bmw i mean they were they pulled like the passenger um power something or the lumber support and they want to give money back to the people who would order those cars so so just think that through so if you order the car you paid for the car and then also you're going down the list and it's like oh we pulled this out and that out well okay well i shouldn't have to pay as much and it doesn't matter if you were going to use that feature or not the point is that you paid for something you're getting less there should be compensation for it yep yep and on the back end if you trade it in or sell it down the road it might be affected there as well so definitely definitely talk to the dealer about that and with that that'll do it for this episode of talking cars as always send your questions to us talking cards at icloud.com check the show notes below for more information on what we talked about in this episode send us your questions send us your videos thanks for watching and we'll see you next timethis week we review gm's enhanced super cruise automated driving system share tips for living with and driving your car during a heat wave and discuss the tricks we use to keep our kids occupied during long road trips next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm jake fisher i'm emily thomas and you know what summer's here uh you know as you probably have felt parking your car even in a 74 degree day like i did in vermont it can get hot after two hours let alone some of the people who are experiencing the extreme heat out west you know we have a couple things we want to talk about with with heat from going from jake who's done a lot of work in a previous life working on heating and ventilation and his experience but also you know what you could do to keep your car cool and avoid any kind of complications that come from that emily one of the things that you've worked on extensively is is heat stroke awareness uh you know for people who may leave a child in a car or even a child inadvertently getting into a car yeah exactly you know you hit kind of the two main circumstances of how we see these tragedies happening across the country and up front i want to address the misconceptions that it could never never ever happen to me right like we always think that these things are gonna be in somebody else's life but really it's that kind of thinking that makes us more susceptible to it because the way our brains are wired we require additional reminders you know at the base level when we're in our routine in the morning doing drop-offs or on our way to work picking up our coffees you know our brain kind of goes into this automatic routine mode and as a result if there's a change in that routine it's really hard for our brain to snap out of it and remember it can't prioritize how much we love our child and bring that to the forefront of like oh this is not the primary task you know and so it's really important for us to be aware of that and create these visual reminders so make a habit of always checking your back seat even if you're not riding with your kid put something of yours in the back like your laptop bag or your phone keep a reminder of your child up front with you if they're traveling with you their sippy cup their backpack a jacket you know something that your mind can see at the end of the trip and be like oh yeah you know they're back there because a lot of times they fall asleep or you know they're just being really quiet and so it can be easy for us to not have those triggers and the other really important um scenarios kids that get into vehicles by themselves you know it's really easy for kids to be like oh cars are cool i'm gonna go play inside and they can get in but they can't get out so even if you don't have kids it's really important to always keep your vehicles locked when you're at home and keep keys out of reach those are kind of the big messages that we want to make sure that everybody knows not just parents and caregivers well you know talking about routines and such i mean particularly with people maybe going back to an office maybe going back to dake taking their kids to daycare one day a week three days a week there's no routine so you're you're totally discombobulated coming out of a year of lockdown but so jake tell us i mean emily i know this i'm not you know discounting your work but since jake you spent a lot of time in the in the phoenix deserts i believe in the great north tundra freezing but climbing into super heat-soaked cars tell us a little bit about that and just you know how fast the car could heat up in the in heat so sure sure yeah i mean i so so life before consumer reports for me i was actually a development engineer and design engineer for uh hvac units for cars and um you know it's you know we did a lot of testing and like you said we went to the hottest places in the coldest places and it is kind of amazing how hot cars can get so i mean we would we call them thermal soak right so basically you put your car in the sun and you know okay it might be 80 degrees outside or 70 degrees or 100 degrees but i mean the heat that actually builds up in these cars is far greater than that i mean we're talking 150 160 degrees it's ridiculous and you and actually what we developing on there you know basically we have to get into the car don't start the car because you don't want to cool it off because you have uh you know thermal couples and you're basically measuring everything and see how quickly the car cools down for the tests and you know we had to go and we had we had laptops and we had to like hook them up to the instrumentation while we're just pouring sweat trying not to die because i mean we're in these hot cars trying to boot up the computers get everything hooked up before we turn the key and it is just amazing so i mean just like living that experience of like that that one minute of misery trying to get the computer hooked up to the instrumentation i mean it does not take much and and you know vehicle color does that play a part interior color does that play part i mean certainly big panoramic sunroofs you know if you don't pull the shade forward that's going to you know amplify or magnify you know let more more heat you'll let more sunlight in to heat the car correct yeah that's right yeah we see more of these big big sunroofs um uh certainly a dark interior is going to going to attract that temperature more it all uh heats up so does does preconditioning a vehicle for a regular gasoline conventionally powered vehicle versus an ev does it have a difference on either way because the evs you could pre-condition you know remotely but what about starting up a car and letting it letting the ac run um i mean really you can do that it's kind of very inefficient takes a while i mean the best the best uh you know you want to cool it off quick first thing you want to do is just roll down those windows get going and there's two reasons for it one get that get that hot air out of there as quick as you possibly can and the second thing is is that air conditioning systems just work better when you're driving you know they're really it's all about how fast that engine's moving you know in an idle it's it's moving really slow once you get going you're going twice as fast twice as fast engine speed or more so yeah a lot of information that we have on consumerreports.org about heat stroke prevention there is a heat shock prevention week each year but it's something that you really have to pay attention to no matter what time of the year and where you are in the country but you know particularly in the summer here with the long hot summer that we have coming up long hot summers also do mean road trips which is a kind of slick segue i have here to our next segment anyway um well we thought that you know because i just took my kids up to vermont and jake had a road trip but i believe emily's been been planning one for this summer but i'm not 100 sure on that we figured that we were going to talk about some of the things that we do to keep the family entertained keep the kids entertained because our children are of various ages we're across the spectrum right now emily you you're gonna go first because you've got the littlest ones of the crew what are the types of things that you like to do to keep them interested and engaged during the trip uh versus screaming yelling and constantly making you pull over and talk to them well so poor nemo he hasn't really experienced a road trip yet he's a baby so okay he hasn't had it yet but with micah we were able to do a bunch of traveling um when he was little and things that i try to do is one i try to plan around nap time so we we will try to leave just before nap so that the the smooth quiet lull of the vehicle will drift him into naplan and that usually gives us a good chunk of time to kind of like get as many miles going and get as far as we can before he gets up and you know maybe needs a diaper change or needs to be fed or whatever it may be i also am a firm believer in um phasing things in so you know i will have a bag of snacks and so like you know you don't you never show your cards all at once as a parent okay you you have your snack bag and you have your activities bag and you bring things out slowly as like ooh ah look at this new thing because if it's all there at once then like it's no longer interesting right so that of course means that you have a lot of stuff up front with you or you know whoever is in the passenger seat has a big filled footwell of uh of goodies yes it does usually mean that so i try to keep everything contained well you know like there's individual bags for for certain things um but yeah snacks um planning things for the car in terms of activities that are um you know not a lot of pieces even uh there are these great coloring books that i found that literally just use water to color with and they're amazing it's called like water works by melissa and dogs if you have small children find them order them it's brilliant because it requires one pen that you constantly refill with just water and you always have it and the kids are amazed forever and it's wonderful but i'm hoping some of these tricks kind of like maybe you two can tell me because you're you're in the next phases if those tricks are still necessary well so i was gonna bounce it over to jake because we have the the opposite extreme almost from the the little car seats you know so we now we have almost the the sullen teenagers who don't engage so how do you handle that one when you're almost at the parent like no no let's engage we had a number of years we didn't want to engage now we will yeah that's exactly right so um my younger one just turned 13 um my older one 17 so i'm kind of the other side of that and you know it's funny i i didn't see you up in vermont you know it's pretty spaced out but i was there this the weekend too i guess everyone from connecticut goes up to vermont in the weekends is that kind of the rule i think they just opened the state up and everyone's like beer outdoors yeah it was amazing so so yeah so we actually went up to uh i've been wanting to go to kingdom trails up in vermont which is this crazy mountain bike park and it's about four miles out four hours up up up the road from me and um so it was me and the two boys and i'm kind of on the other side my thing is like you know keep me awake keep me occupied i'm like this is boring you know and i'm like because it's like straight up route 91 and it's like there's nothing to say so i'm just like talk to me make tell me a story or something and of course they're teenagers and they're boys did they talk to you jake so you kind of have to make it a game to figure out how to talk talk to that like put down the phones you know i mean basically it's that so what we wound up doing we were playing a lot of games and actually was their idea and it was working really good so like you know i mean you hear about like you know what the license plate game or whatever like that we actually started with um uh the alphabet game but with uh band names that was our first thing so we go around in a circle it's like okay start with an a break band and a b band and you go around and then you move on to food or you to your places or whatever that was like hours that's impressive that you got two teenagers to play the alphabet game for well it's got to be something you know we wouldn't go to like you know but yeah it's like it's about what they're into so i mean they're into bands they're into music so it actually worked out too and then of course spotify is always really good too because there's all types of games you could play there kind of like name that tune or you know choose the next song or whatnot but i mean to me it was just like it wasn't that boring because you know i was occupied i was talking with them and and that made the time go by really quick yeah i i i end up with the kids they're 9-11 so um you know break time kind of around bathroom time kind of around treat time so you know up to brattleboro is an hour and a half from here oh this is really cool place with you know pastries or whatever you know we got some stuff to eat we we held back breakfast so we could get something there we went up to the uh the king arthur flower company because my daughter's really into baking um so unfortunately no tours but you could go through and see a lot of stuff and of course purchase you know so that was a destination there was some outside time they have huge lawn so you know playing cartwheels chasing just hanging out talking my kids never had devices like their tablet with their little holder and such we we didn't have that our meals and stuff like that but car time they were able to use that a little bit so they download some movies um that they would like to watch i let them do that a little bit the one we used to play when i was little i date myself so much i sound like my quincy but the station we would find station wagons on the road and we would call them beavers i don't know why but what was it a station wagon well you know even back then going across interstate 80 from new jersey to ohio or something for family visits you know the station wagons were infrequent enough that you could you would have to hunt for them now i think if we did a station wagon game we could go the whole day you know you might never see one one person will win they'll see the one wagon well when i was good it was it was punch buggy and and i think we could say punch button well let me because we're all from new jersey i think you're slug bug in other parts of the country yes but you know punch back right yes yes but anyway what would be good is for you all and our audience to tell us some of the games that you do with your family uh either ones that you remember that you used to do and and look back fondly or stuff that you do to keep keep kids occupied because it would make good filler you know that we could possibly talk about bring some people up on the show you know explain the games tell us what's up so put it in the comments below or send it to us talking cards at icloud.com this brings us to the next segment we have the car that we've driven this week and it's an interesting model it's a little bit out of uh the the norm for us uh we bought we have purchased a 2021 cadillac escalade four wheel drive premium luxury yeah we know it's it's an expensive vehicle and it's we're trying to do more testing of cars for you know the average american you know looking at the price the fact that new cars are so expensive here we have this this quite expensive luxury suv but jake as head of auto test tell us the reasoning behind buying this this pricey suv explain yourself explain your explain yourself wait where's the light i'm gonna shine the light so yes we we got the uh the the gigantic cadillac escalade i mean actually you know it's probably the biggest one we didn't get the long one no we didn't we're we're conserving we're concerned about the environment so we got the smaller escalade you know it's a i mean look what's interesting about it first of all it's not that much of a small seller you know actually when it comes to cadillac actually it's right up there with one of the most sold vehicles from cadillac and a really important one for them so i mean we're certainly looking at that now obviously we're very concerned i mean we are you know i don't know how many times we say we're non-profit you know and you know we don't have we don't take advertising so i mean all these considerations are important the crazy thing about these vehicles and what we found is actually because we buy cars and then we sell them we actually don't lose a whole lot of money on vehicles like the escalade because they actually have a pretty good resale value when we're done we actually wind up losing more money on on some of the some much cheaper vehicles but that said that's not the only reason we bought this big vehicle uh that's a luxury important car and and all that a big piece that we bought this car was actually the first vehicle that has jello motors next generation super cruise so um we've talked a lot about supercrews on the show and then a lot of our content but there's now enhanced supercruise and this is the next generation of that after it launched in the cadillac ct6 and this is really significant because first of all we've rated these driving automation systems or active driving assist systems or people call them different things but i mean essentially systems that will steer the wheel and do speed control at the same time we have said that this this cadillac system from general motors is definitely is the best it is better than autopilot that's on tesla which you hear a lot about and other systems that are on other cars so having the enhanced one that not just is better we wanted to evaluate that but also it's not just going to be on cadillac so they're going to be putting on chevys they're going to be going on other models in general motors lineup the way supercruise works right so you there's also like this green led on the steering wheel and everything when it's operating when you're not in the center of your lane it's it turns blue or if you're changing lanes now you can engage it and it'll start operating when it can so instead of saying like hit the button no hit the button no you're not perfect hit the button no you're not perfect hit the button okay we're ready and now just get in the center lane and now it's going to operate and in reality it's much easier to engage now which is really kind of the primary issue of the system the engagement used to be so frustrating i thought for sure that i was doing it wrong i was like maybe this thing just doesn't work and it would take me so many tries to get the version one to even turn on that i would just kind of give up at some point be like okay forget it i'll just use like regular super regular cruise control because i don't know how to engage this other one another thing to note is the supercrew system is very specific about where it can function it's not going to work on your local roads right right jk it only works on unmapped roads that are what like highway highway speeds well so so this is the funny thing about the systems that so like competitor systems you look in the fine print they're like don't use it in these situations don't use it in these citrate you should only really use it on highways and controlled things and all these things super goose actually just enforces that so if it's a situation where super cruise or a system like this isn't really designed to work and won't work well it's not going to work um in enhanced supercrews they're now allowing use on more roads but again it's like you know down down your street isn't a good place to do it if there's only one lane it's not a good place to do it it's not going to allow you to engage there at all i mean there's a couple of interesting things about that are very unique i mean one thing this is you know the only system it's hands-free so um and the way it does that is it's you know all these systems you have to be engaged you have to pay attention but almost all the other systems are just looking for hands in the wheel and you know i don't know how many times i've said it but you can put your hands on the wheel it doesn't mean you're actually looking where you're going this system says all right you don't have to put your hands in the wheel but you need to look where you're going and we're going to make sure you do and that system really does work quite well um i mean it's not annoying so the fact that like i can't set my radio or anything like that i could do that it's fine but if you're not looking where you're going for a little bit you know five seconds or something like that straight it's gonna be like hey uh-uh no you gotta you gotta get back in the game and it'll even penalize you if you start abusing the system it's not a hands-free napping enhancer um or watching a video you know on a on a mobile device or something like that right right when i drove it i had at the start of my trip it was really sunny and i was driving into the sun so i had my sunglasses on and um i was on the highway and it was it it had engaged it was working fine it could tell through my sunglasses that i was still looking at the road i mean this is not a system that is like on the way to a full self-driving car or an autonomous car this is actually a system that is designed to help you out on the monotonous boring parts of driving that we don't want to do i mean i could go drive around town like that's engaging that's fine i'm okay with that but that long trip to vermont that we took or that stop and go when you're in traffic these are actually easier for these systems to deal with and they do it quite well and this system really does it quite well so it does make you know at the end of the day you're just more stress-free and you could have that you know play the alphabet game with your kids or whatever it is without worrying about it well in in addition to the the super cruise evaluation uh we will be putting the escalade through full testing we have a first drive on consumerreports.org already up it's in our program now and i believe it's up to miles we're just finishing up testing so in a few weeks we'll have uh the full report on consumerreports.org so check out the first drive and then see what we say about supercruise as well as the full cadillac escalade at this point we're going to move on to our question and answer segment as always we remind you send us questions talking cars at icloud.com video questions definitely we want to see your smiling faces but text questions are totally fine as well so talking cars at icloud.com one of those video questions is the first one john from cedar falls iowa has a question about parts availability so we're going to roll the tape behind me is my 2006 chevrolet ssr definitely not a cr recommended buy definitely not practical in any way but i love it so i understand with an older low production car like this my parts might get hard to find and as you say the average car today is 11 years old almost as old as this one are there any brands out there that have a better track record of having parts for older cars thanks and keep up the good work cool so so jake that's uh that's a chevrolet ssr but it may not be as much of a worry uh for john as as it seems right so so so here's the here the short answer is this is that if you have a low volume vehicle you're going to have a harder time finding parts it doesn't matter if it's from a big company or a small company the interesting thing about the ssr is it's kind of a parts bin vehicle so certainly body panels and some of these things may be kind of a little bit weird and hard to get the top mechanism and whatnot but i mean honestly i mean the powertrain is basically coming from a silverado which those you know they made literally millions and millions of those um seed is from another vehicle um so i think just you know a lot of those parts bin will be you able to find them but you know if you're if you're getting something that's really rare or from a car company that is like you know just starting out or something like that it definitely can be an issue uh we're going to move to our next question thomas from baltimore i just got back from a cross-country drive to lawrence kansas and i want to talk cicadas specifically i received the warning for the first time ever that the cruise control on my 2020 mazda cx-5 was disabled due to a limited camera view this happened twice after going through cicada swarms in both indiana and ohio what could be done about this also what is this doing to my car's finish p.s i also noticed the cicadas in the midwest are a bit out of tune emily cicadas apparently i won the cicada we had some in new jersey but it certainly wasn't the same as the virginia dc maryland and midwest swarms i mean i remember those my cousins in maryland have been like on edge about the cicadas and i'm just like i don't recall being traumatized by cicadas in new jersey but hey um more power to you if you can get through that because i hate them but um since i won the lottery on the bug question the answer is that for any situation if you're having an issue with camera visibility you need to clean your cameras so if you end up driving and this could be a bug swarm or it could be inclement weather that might gunk up your cameras you should always you know pull over safely and clean your cameras your owner's manual will have instructions on how to do that you know if you're about to go on a big trip you should make sure your cameras and your sensors are clean beforehand and as far as your cars finished it should not have that much of an impact but the advice that i got from big john our chief mechanic is just to make sure that there is a really good coat of wax on your car which i think would probably be good advice regardless of whether you think you're going to go through a swarm of bugs or not but like if you're planning to go on a cross-country trip or you know a really long trip all kinds of things are flying around on the highway you know like you're kicking up dirty kicking up rocks it's probably just good advice in general for your vehicle finish yeah at regular bug splatter or or bird poop uh you know definitely eats through the finish so it would be good one of those types of pre-trip things is to give it a good coat of wax when you're also checking the tires and checking the oil so our next question is brett from long island who sent us this uh this little ditty as car companies start manufacturing their 2022 models during the massive chip and other item shortage do you think this is going to result in lower quality builds for the 2022 model year what do you think the chances are that we will feel sorry for people who bought those 2022 models so jake is it going to have an impact on reliability and are we going to see that in our survey it might it might but not the way that you might imagine the truth is is that we do see changes in these cars with part shortages and chip shortages but more than likely it means they're going to have less features so we see in some of the cars companies that um you know there's a certain thing that they're just not going to be putting on the vehicles just because they can't get the parts um you know whether or not it's a power passenger seat or a navigation system or or or something else another feature and they figure okay we got to get these cars out the door we're just going to pull pull that part off what that could mean is actually less things that go wrong so i mean i don't think it's going to be like a quality problem we're going to see cars that are breaking down but potentially if that part isn't on that vehicle in that feature maybe there's less things to go wrong one of the key things i think people really should pay attention to we've talked about this on on some content on consumerreports.org is to make sure that you know the car you order the car you plan to buy if it doesn't come with those features you need to talk to the dealer and see what you can do about that with your price you know don't pay for something when you're not going to get that feature you know right now general motors for example not having auto shutoff on some of their bigger vehicles uh for for gas savings the one where the the engine start stop system uh will turn on you know stop the vehicle at a stop the engine excuse me at a traffic light talk to them about that i mean it's a fuel savings feature it's probably not the prime reason you're buying maybe a silverado or something but it's a feature that you paid for so do that that's yeah and and bmw i mean they were they pulled like the passenger um power something or the lumber support and they want to give money back to the people who would order those cars so so just think that through so if you order the car you paid for the car and then also you're going down the list and it's like oh we pulled this out and that out well okay well i shouldn't have to pay as much and it doesn't matter if you were going to use that feature or not the point is that you paid for something you're getting less there should be compensation for it yep yep and on the back end if you trade it in or sell it down the road it might be affected there as well so definitely definitely talk to the dealer about that and with that that'll do it for this episode of talking cars as always send your questions to us talking cards at icloud.com check the show notes below for more information on what we talked about in this episode send us your questions send us your videos thanks for watching and we'll see you next time\n"