Can AI get you a better car deal? A AI and my review of the Toyota Tacoma TRD PRO

WATD presents John Paul, The Car Doctor, All Things Automotive.

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Now, here's John Paul, The Car Doctor.

Good Sunday morning everyone and welcome to another edition of the Car Doctor program on 959WATD.

My name is John Paul, The Car Doctor here to help you with your car problems, car questions.

Just want to chat about cars.

Every car does have a story sometimes.

It's always good when you get to talk to people about the cars that they've loved over the past, all kinds of different things.

But maybe you're thinking about buying a new car.

Maybe you want to replace the car you have.

A day doesn't seem to go by when we don't talk about artificial intelligence and how AI is just in our lives these days.

And with us on the phone is car edge co-founder Ray Shefska.

Ray, good morning and welcome to the Car Doctor program.

Well, thank you John.

Do I qualify as a scrub nurse?

You could.

I'd like to thank you more as a real nurse practitioner.

I like that.

Tell us a little bit about car edge.

What is car edge?

Car edge is a consumer advocacy organization that tries to help level the playing field for customers out there when it comes to buying cars.

We've been around for six years.

My son and I started this.

And we have probably in excess of 1200 help videos and blogs.

We have a website, caredge.com.

And recently in July, we came up with the artificial intelligence to well negotiate on behalf of the customer.

What was your background before starting car edge?

I remember talking to the CEO of iccars.com.

And he was a tech guy, but he was out car shopping and he got frustrated so he decided to start his own company.

What did you do?

Was any of that influential on starting car edge?

Well, I actually helped manage automobile dealerships for 43 years.

And my son, bless his heart, hated me for that because he never saw me. I was always working.

And when I retired, he was afraid that I would suffer from cognitive decline.

And he said, we need to figure out a way to help people be able to buy a car and make it easier for them.

Like when you helped me get my car.

And so that was what brought car edge to be.

Now Zach did work in tech, worked for a startup that helped businesses get to know what's the word I'm looking for.

We just helped businesses raise money, charities raise money.

And so Zach took that background, combined it with us doing YouTube vehicles and well it turned into something.

There you go. Perfect.

What are some of the surprises I guess that you've found in doing this?

I hate to say it because it's only the beginning of October, but we're sort of looking at the year end for the car business.

What are some of the surprises, maybe some of the data that you've uncovered?

First off, it looked like the last quarter was a very good quarter for the car companies.

They sold a good amount of vehicles. There was a little bit of a rush to buy EVs.

But what are you seeing as the year starts to wind down?

Well, everybody is expecting that for instance EV sales will fall off a cliff because we no longer have the federal tax incentives.

But the most amazing thing is happening and that is many of the manufacturers have volunteered to suddenly come up with 7,500 hours that they can continue to discount those vehicles in an effort to move them.

Which indicates to me that they always had that 7,500 hours and they actually could have reduced the price of those EVs a long time ago and perhaps EV adoption would have been even stronger much sooner.

What I would suspect we will see at the end of the year is incentives will probably be at the highest point that they will be this year.

Manufacturers are always pushing to get as many sales into the calendar year as they can.

The months of November and December, typically we see the highest amount of incentives from those manufacturers.

Plus the dealerships have set sales goals. The salespeople have set sales goals and everybody is trying to reach those goals by the end of the year.

And I don't think this year will be any different than any other year. I think there will be deals to be had and the best time to get them will probably be in December.

And the absolute best time in December will probably be between Christmas and New Year's.

Nothing like car shopping on New Year's Eve, right?

Well, I remember calling my general manager one time at 10.30 in the evening to let him know that we just closed our last deal of the day and we hit our objective.

Yeah, nothing like that.

Did you give that last car away? I mean not give it away, but was that a deeply discounted car to get that one last sale done for knowing that you made a profit the last 30 days of the month?

Yes, it is amazing. There is a frenzy that happens between Christmas and New Year's and you just get into this mindset that you must make a deal.

And sometimes the deals are good deals and oftentimes the deals are really bad deals for the dealership, but they're deals and you're always chasing numbers.

I mean that's the whole concept in the car business. Everything is based on monthly sales or quarterly sales.

So you're always chasing numbers and there seems to be more motivation to take a stupid deal at the end of a month or at the end of a year than there is say the first week of a month.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's the price of the car and then there's the price of the other stuff and some of that other stuff seems to be mystery accessories, lifetime paint protection, fabric protection, wheel and tire insurance, gap insurance.

Does AI help eliminate or make sense out of that stuff?

Well, the wonderful thing about the AI agent is the AI agent never gets emotionally involved. The AI agent will stay on track and on purpose and just stays focused on an out the door price and will stay focused on having the dealership

remove any unwanted or overpriced dealer installed accessories.

Typically what we have found through the first three months of doing this is from the first proposal that the AI agent gets from a dealership to the last proposal, there's typically about a $1,500 savings.

Well, that's a pretty significant savings in this day and age.

We talked about how the car manufacturers have somehow found the $7,500 that are being made up from the tax incentives.

What are some other vehicles that have some pretty steep discounts kind of baked into the price that maybe you can negotiate your way into?

Well, every dealership operates where they don't actually pay cash for their new car inventory. It is what is known as floor plan.

So basically the dealership has a line of credit, multi-million dollar lines of credit and as the vehicles are invoiced to the dealership, the bank pays the manufacturer.

Well, the dealership starts paying interest on that money as soon as the bank sends it off to the manufacturer.

Longer a vehicle stays around, the greater the cost has become and most dealerships are looking to turn their inventory every 60 to 90 days.

They don't want to have new car vehicles get 120 days old, 150 days old, in some cases, 350 days old.

So one of the secrets is if you know the model you're interested in and you're open to color, when you contact the dealership, ask them about the oldest age model that they have in the color that you're interested in.

And they will be more motivated to move an old age vehicle as opposed to one that just came in 15 days ago.

So there can be significant savings just by doing that.

And how about, you know, we're still seeing it in popular models, you know, market adjusted prices or additional dealer markup or whatever the term is for the little thing that's next to the window sticker that says you're going to pay more than what you should pay for the car.

At least that's their hope.

Yeah. Are we still seeing a lot of that? And can your company help get through that nonsense?

Yes. We still see some of it. It's not nearly as prevalent as it had been.

One of the things you have to realize is whether you're selling something or you're buying something, you never get what you don't ask for.

So the dealership takes it upon itself to ask for more than it should, hoping that there's somebody out there that will agree to that.

Customers, your job as a customer is to, well, ask for less than you should, with the hope that maybe the dealership says, OK, this time we'll do that.

Usually there's somewhere in the middle that works for everybody.

So additional dealer markups, additional dealer profit, you might see it at some Toyota stores or some Lexus stores on really sought after vehicles that are in short supply.

But for the most part, if a dealership's asking for that, you can negotiate it off.

One of the things that I always try to remind people of is maybe in the average person's lifetime, maybe they're going to buy six or eight cars, and the average salesperson is hoping to sell six or eight cars a day.

They're better at selling than you are at buying, but with an AI partner, that all kind of goes out the window, right?

Oh, absolutely, because the AI agent is just focused on what needs to be done, and we'll just keep asking for it over and over and over again.

I mean, I might say things, hey, like, I appreciate the fact that you gave me the break down that we were looking for.

However, there's this charge or that charge. We need to make that go away. How can we make that happen?

And it'll just keep focusing on a bottom line number.

So the agent, it doesn't take any time off, and it doesn't get emotionally involved.

Right.

And when you take emotions out of purchasing something, it's better for the purchaser because dealerships always operate on the fear of you missing out.

They will use that psychological ploy every time they try to close the deal. That doesn't work on the AI agent.

AI agent just has no emotions at all.

Yeah, a good point because, I mean, I've used this worn out expression a lot over my lifetime, but it's like, buy with your head, not with your heart sort of thing.

And what you're describing is exactly that. The AI agent is, you know, not emotionally involved with it other than to try to find the price.

So take us through how it works. I want to buy a new car for Jesse, my producer, but I want to make sure I'm getting the best price.

How can Carriage help me do that?

Well, you can go on to our website. We actually have vehicle listings on our website.

We don't collect anything from dealerships for these listings. So they're not paying us to push in these cars.

But if you see a vehicle you like, then you just simply say negotiate this vehicle for me.

And you push a button. The AI agent costs $50 a month.

Typically it takes about 30 days in many cases to make the car deal happen.

So that's why it's on a monthly basis.

And the AI agent creates an anonymous persona and creates a separate email address so that the emails are coming back to Carriage, not to you.

Now you can follow the chat and see all the emails, but you will be notified as emails come in.

But you just say if your son's got a soccer game, instead of being at the dealership, you can be at the soccer game.

And the AI agent is working on your behalf trying to secure a lower price.

So at the very beginning you're starting, you're looking at the MSRP, the suggested retail price.

And then the agent will send out an email saying, I'm so-and-so. I live in this zip code.

I found this car with this stock number and this VIN number on your lot.

Is it still there? And if it is, can you please provide me with a total breakdown of all costs, a total Alpedore price for that vehicle?

And you can imagine that most dealerships will send back an email that says, hey, great.

We still have that vehicle. When can you come in and look at it?

The AI agent will say, great. When can you provide me with the total breakdown of the cost of that vehicle?

I need to see the Alpedore price. And it just keeps going through that approach to get the dealership to provide numbers.

And sometimes it takes eight, ten email conversations to finally get them to do it. Some dealerships do it sooner.

And then once we have that first set of Alpedore numbers, then we can continue to negotiate the price based on what we have seen in that market area.

Can you click on more than one dealership and play them against each other?

Absolutely.

We would encourage you to do that.

So this is the car salesman's worst enemy, then, because it's not taking no for an answer.

Absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, our hope, I think, in the future is that our AI will negotiate with dealership AI.

And then both AI's will say, well, there's no point in continuing this.

And the dealership AI will just give you the best bottom line price that they finally can.

And it'll happen sooner rather than later because the cost for the dealership is minimal when you're using an AI agent to negotiate with a customer.

And the cost of the customer is minimal when they use their AI agent to negotiate with the dealership one.

Now, I've seen some dealerships use AI, but when the negotiations get kind of into the nitty gritty, you end up with a real person.

Are any of the big dealers just using AI now?

Not yet. I mean, what you see them use AI for at the moment is more towards service and just automated responses to an email or internet inquiry.

Any of the real pricing is either going to come from the salesperson if they are empowered to do that, or the salesperson will get that information from their sales manager.

And, you know, from what you have seen with your customers with this, is there an average what people are saving over what they expected to pay for a car?

You know, honestly, I don't have an answer to that for you. This is more Zach's domain than mine.

I just know that on average from where the dealership starts to where they end up, that average has been about a $1,500 savings.

That's pretty good. And, you know, I joke that this is, you know, the car salesman's worst enemy.

But on the other hand, isn't it true that, you know, the best customer for a car dealer sometimes is the person that comes in completely informed of what they're looking for, what they want to pay, and the deal becomes much quicker that way.

So having, I guess, the, you know, knowing the right questions to ask or having the AI ask it for you, in one way it's easier for the dealer because the dealer's just going, hey, whoever this person is, this is what they want to pay.

We can make a little bit of money. They can save a little bit of money. The deal's done and we move on to the next customer, right?

Exactly. The hope is that this speeds up the process for both the customer and the seller.

And realistically, once we can convince dealers that this is the way to go in the future to where they can actually handle more customers and sell more cars if they are willing to provide the actual information

that the customer first asks for, you know, the whole, I mean, I spent 43 years doing this. The whole concept has always been, well, we have to, every deal we have to maximize our profit per customer.

Well, my thinking had always been, if we know what the average profit is per model, then why don't we just drop down to that and be done with this in 10 minutes instead of 8 hours?

Makes perfect sense.

Well, so far, I guess your son's right. You know, doing this has, you know, stopped cognitive decline.

Yes.

Thank you for noticing.

Yeah, it's keeping you good and active that way. If people want to find more information about the program, about how it works, like you said, you have videos up, can they just go to Carage.com and find it all?

Yes, they can go to Carage.com, they can go to Carage.com forward slash AI. But yeah, just going to Carage.com, go to the website, 99% of the stuff on the website is absolutely free.

There's tutorials, there's videos, there's blogs, there's community forum.

It is a full service website that is there to help the people who want to do it themselves and the people who want to use an AI agent or people who want to use a full concierge white glove service that we offer as well.

And it's not just for new cars, it's also for used cars, right?

Yes, new and used cars. And purchase or lease.

There you go. Well, Ray, I want to thank you for taking a little time out of your Sunday morning and joining us on the CarDoctor program.

Well, thank you so much for having me. And if you'd like to have me again, I'm available.

Alright, thanks Ray. Take care. Have a good rest of your Sunday.

You too, John. Thank you, sir. Bye-bye now.

Bye-bye. We need to take a break, pay some bills. My name's John Paul. This is the CarDoctor program. You're listening on award-winning 959 WATD. We'll be right back.

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Now, back to the car doctor.

And welcome back to the car doctor program on 959 WATD.

If you would like to join us, our phone number is 781-837-4900.

781-837-4900.

And since we were talking about AI, I thought I would let AI talk about the car that got me around today.

And that is the Toyota Tacoma TRD, so Toyota Racing Division Pro.

And so, while we were on a break, I said to an AI, write a review about the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro.

And this is what it said, the ultimate off-road taco.

Well, some people refer to it Tacoma as a taco, because you know, TAC,

then they blank out the OMA and put A at the end and call it a taco.

If you can stomach the sticker shock.

Hmm.

It says here, the Toyota Tacoma has been a gold standard for mid-sized trucks, bulletproof, reliability,

resale value that laughs at depreciation.

Boy, this sounds like just something not right.

An off-road pedigree that spawned a cult following.

But let's be real, the third gen Tacoma was starting to feel like a reliable old friend

who's great but hasn't hit the gym in a few years.

It seems kind of cruel.

I will say I like the Tacoma a lot.

I've always been a fan of the Tacoma.

I was a fan of the Tacoma when it was just called a Toyota truck,

back in the very beginning days when it was very basic.

It talks about the price here.

And it talks about the, it says it has a starting price north of $65,000.

I'm not sure, and it says pushing it towards $70,000 for the priciest Tacoma ever.

The pro badge, what's it say here?

Worth the premium or has Toyota finally priced itself out of its own fan base?

Well, I'm driving one that seems to have every bell and whistle and anything in it,

including a full array of LED lights, a light bar for at least four auxiliary light systems in it.

It has a 120 volt outlet in the bed, pretty much 62,000.

So I'm not sure where the 65 number came from.

It says gone is the dated boxy vibe of the old Tacoma.

Yeah, I don't know, I find the new one a little boxy.

I like the old one, actually.

This also has some of the craziest off-road features.

Fox shocks with the separate hydraulic reservoirs,

seats that look like they belong in a rally car.

I mean, the seats have suspension built into them.

It's up a few inches higher.

It's a good jump up to get into it because it's really made to go off-road.

It has a functional hood scoop for better airflow.

Under the hood is a little bit unique because it actually uses a four-cylinder hybrid,

where the AI program here says it uses a V6.

But no, it actually uses a four-cylinder hybrid engine.

It's called the I-Force Max Hybrid, according to the sticker.

It's a turbocharged four-cylinder paired with a 48 volt electric motor.

It makes 325 horsepower, I think, and something like 400 and changed,

450 pound-feet of torque.

That torque in the 48 volt electric motor is what...

I wish there was someplace where I could take this off-road

because I think the low-end torque from the electric motor

would make this a delight to drive off-road.

Because you're not having to wind the engine up to get it moving up over,

you know, steep rock climbs and things like that.

From what I have read online, you know, 0 to 60 in about 7.5 seconds,

you know, 20 years ago that was fast today.

It's average, I guess, but it's quicker than the V6 that it replaced.

And don't be concerned about towing with a four-cylinder.

This thing actually tows 6,400 pounds.

So, again, that electric motor, I think,

if you were towing a camping trailer, you know,

into kind of a hilly terrain area or pulling a, you know,

5,000-pound ski boat up a boat ramp,

this thing's going to do it without any problem.

Again, this is an off-road vehicle.

I don't drive off-road, you know, I guess I live on a dirt road,

but I can't call that off-road.

But this thing has real serious shocks with remote reservoirs.

You look at them, they just stand out.

It is a vehicle that has really gotten a lot of attention

as I've been driving it.

In fact, I was sitting at the local town hall here

and a guy pulled up in a 2017 or 2018 Tacoma

and he came over and said, hey, tell me about this.

And we were talking about it a little bit.

And then I was going into a store

and there was a guy in a Lexus driving around

and he pulled up and he said to me,

I've worked at Toyota for 23 years

and I've never seen that model in that color before.

Tell me about it.

I said, well, it actually belongs to Toyota.

It's not mine.

And he's like, I really love the color.

I really love the design.

And he kept telling me I've worked for Toyota for 23 years.

I've never seen one of those before.

So it does stand out.

It stands out in the kind of color combination it is.

It stands out in the suspension look.

That hood scoop really makes it look a little bit meaner,

I guess, than it really is.

But it's a functional hood scoop, so it works.

On normal roads, normal little twisty roads

seems to handle really well.

The ride's firm, you would expect it to be, and it is.

But Toyota didn't leave out all the safety extras either.

It has a Toyota Safety Sense System, adaptive cruise control,

lane keeping assist and automatic emergency braking,

blindspot monitoring.

It's got both front and rear cameras, which is nice.

As trucks are getting bigger, sometimes pulling into a parking space

becomes a little bit of a challenge

because you're like, where is the front of the vehicle?

The camera really helps do that.

Again, if you're looking for some serious off-roading,

this thing can do it.

It's got great torque, hybrid smoothness.

Yeah, it shuts off at a stop, but you don't notice

because you just take off with the 48-volt electric motor

and then it switches over to the gasoline engine.

Works out good.

Fuel economy's pretty decent.

It's got all the tech that you would expect in a Toyota.

Toyota's had a few issues in the past with some of their vehicles

way back when they were building Tacoma pickup trucks

and maybe even some of the folks, the beds were rusting away

and then they had the issues with frames rusting away.

But in general terms,

Toyotas have great resale value and long-term durability.

I know somebody who has a Tundra.

It's 10 years old.

He never wants to get rid of it.

It's been a perfect vehicle for him

and it's done everything he wants it to do.

And again, he never wants to give it up.

Again, if you're looking, if you're somebody who wants to go off-road

and not somebody who off-road is just a speed bump

in a mall parking lot, this is it.

This is the vehicle you want.

You can get a regular Toyota that's pretty good

that will do okay in most off-road situations.

But if you're somebody who wants to be a serious off-roader

and not a pretend off-roader,

this Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro is the one you're looking for.

There you go.

Not a whole lot.

I can find wrong with it.

I liked it a lot.

But I wish I liked it for the reasons I wanted to like it,

which was going off-road somewhere

and a little bit of a challenging off-road course.

I just don't have that availability.

But anyway, if you would like to join us

and talk about cars, car problems, whatever's on your mind,

give us call at 781-837-4900.

And we can talk to you about sort of what's on your mind

about those things.

And we can let you know what's going on.

Kind of funny.

And if you watch TV, you're online,

you probably have seen the ads for

findmassmoney.com, see if you have any money hidden anywhere.

Well, I look every once in a while just to see

and there's never anything there for me.

But I did see somebody who used to live in my neighborhood

and he actually had two entries.

So I sent him a message, I think, on Facebook and said,

hey, it looks like you have some mass money here to be found.

So if you're kind of, I guess, a public service announcement

if you're thinking about looking at that, look, you never know.

You might have some money there waiting for you.

Some of the questions that came in this week,

some of them were pretty interesting.

Somebody says they're interested in an electric car

and the Tesla Model 3, they look good,

but somehow they just don't like Elon Musk.

And they said they're generally not political

but they just don't like Elon Musk

so they don't think they want to buy or lease a Tesla.

They want to know what they think.

I think the Tesla Model 3 is a really good car.

No question about it.

In fact, we have one at work that we use

for training purposes.

We bought it used from Hertz and it had almost 100,000 miles on it.

The battery failed on it and it went to the Tesla dealership

and they said we got good news and bad news.

The bad news is it's going to need a battery.

The good news is it's still under warranty

so they're going to put a brand new battery in it.

So there you go.

But I'm not a leasing fan

but when it comes to an electric car,

I think leasing makes the most amount of sense

because the technology is changing pretty fast.

I keep reading about faster recharging,

500 to 800 mile range now.

It doesn't look like it might be that far off in the future.

So leasing is probably the thing I would do

rather than buy an EV outright

unless I was going to buy a former used one from Hertz

where I think the one we bought was like $20,000.

So it was pretty affordable.

But if I was going to buy an electric car

or lease an electric car, I would lease the Hyundai Ionic.

I think it's a great electric car.

It does really well.

It does everything you need to do.

It's comfortable.

It's weirdly good looking, I guess.

It's a little bit futuristic looking

and I kind of like it.

Way back when when electric cars first came out,

they were weird looking.

They looked like a wedge of cheese in some cases.

They were kind of golf cart conversions.

They just didn't look like cars.

And I kept saying,

well, an electric car should look like a regular car.

Now I kind of like it when they look a little bit futuristic, I guess,

and I think the Ionic does a pretty good job of that.

Someone wrote to me and said,

have you ever considered a mobile car inspection service?

This would be a great service for your listeners

that are thinking about buying a used car.

No, I did actually get...

I thought about that.

I've been at AAA for 40 years.

A little bit more now.

And for the first 20 years,

I ran the AAA Diagnostics Center in Rockland.

And it was a two-base shop.

It was myself and a couple other people that worked there.

And all we did was check over people's cars.

And they could be used cars and people were thinking about buying.

They could have been cars that, you know,

I've had the car for a year, how's it doing kind of thing.

And we'd give them this whole three-page report

and a computer printout of the battery

and starter system and all that sort of stuff.

And when AAA merged together

and they moved the headquarters,

we closed the Diagnostics Center.

And it was getting near the time to do that

because the technology made it in such a way

that you really couldn't do the same sort of testing

and inspections to cars that we did then.

We had this big bear ace analyzer,

I think in the 20 years that we're there.

We went through three of them.

I actually bought one of them once.

And it was perfect for what we did.

You plug in, you do a computer scan.

You do this whole system check.

It worked out great.

But you can't do that anymore.

And now you can do some stuff with handheld scan tools.

We'll get to that in a minute.

But did I ever consider it?

Yeah.

I thought about doing it as kind of a part-time venture

because when I worked for the Diagnostic Center,

I worked Tuesday through Saturday.

Then when my job changed,

I worked Monday through Friday.

And I'm like, well, if I have Sundays and Mondays off,

I can, or Saturdays and Sundays off,

I can go maybe have this little part-time job.

So I had the diagnostic equipment.

My hand tools from when I worked as an actual mechanic.

I had a good little portable jack that was a high-water jack.

It was a great little jack.

It was lightweight.

Back when jacks weren't lightweight, it was solid.

I had some ramps.

I had everything I needed.

I even lined up a former one of the little post office vans.

I found one that was in pretty good shape.

The post office was selling.

And I'm like, well, this wouldn't be perfectly little,

maneuverable, low-speed.

I'm not going to go any real distance with it.

There's probably be a good little vehicle for it.

But then I looked into things like insurance and licensing

and all that stuff.

And the insurance was staggering.

So I said, you know what?

I don't think I'm doing it.

So I bailed out of the idea.

So I decided to leave it to somebody else

to see if somebody else did it.

And then over time, you know, he pretty much gave away

the analyzer.

I gave away a gas analyzer plus a regular engine analyzer,

scan tools, all that stuff.

I'll get given away.

So anyway, it was something every once in a while

it comes up and people ask about it.

Someone, they kind of had something cute.

They said, my beloved 1997 Nissan Maxima GLE

recently succumbed to rust and had to be permanently retired.

After searching for years for a car I liked more than Mad Max.

I got a light thing called their car Mad Max.

I found I really enjoyed the new Toyota Crown.

What do you think of the car?

I haven't driven the regular Crown.

I've driven the Crown Signia, which is kind of a station wagon.

Toyota calls it an SUV.

I think it's a station wagon.

We've reviewed it back some time ago.

I really liked the car.

I thought it was comfortable, well-crafted interior,

good performance.

Thought it had really good fuel economy.

I think it was up in the 40s somewhere for fuel economy.

And it had some of the nicest interior of any car,

not just any Toyota that I've ever been in.

So I think based on my experience with the Crown Signia,

I think the regular Toyota Crown, good choice.

I think there'll be no issues with that.

Our phone number is 7818374900.

Phone lines are open if you would like to join us.

Why don't we take a quick break, pay some bills.

My name is John Paul.

This is a car doctor program.

Give us a call at 7818374900.

We'll be right back.

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Tonight from 8 to 10 on 959WATD.

Honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award

from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

He's John Paul, the car doctor on 959WATD.

And welcome back to the car doctor program on 959WATD.

781-837-4900.

Phone lines are quiet today.

They've been quiet the last couple of weeks.

Um, don't know why.

Everybody, Jesse, when's the Patriots game today?

Uh, one o'clock versus saints.

Well, that could be it. Maybe that's it.

We do have Mike from Hingham on the line.

We do. Well, let's talk to Mike from Hingham then.

Michael?

Hey, doctor, can you hear me all right?

I can hear you just fine.

Can you hear me all right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, good.

Hello.

Oh, good.

Doctor, can you hear me?

Can you hear me just fine?

Good. Okay. I don't know what's going on here.

I don't know either.

Yeah, it's one of those days, you know?

Hey, quick question for you.

Maybe not quick, but I'm thinking now for my next,

maybe my last car is getting one that has automation.

I think that would be helpful.

Uh, what do you think?

I mean, our Tesla, I'm going to guess,

is probably the best.

I think Cadillac has some good stuff.

Should I wait a while or what?

Yeah, it's not, it's not quite.

I was just talking to an unfortunate soul

that got run into by a Tesla across in the street,

and Tesla is supposed to have technology

that's supposed to keep that stuff from happening.

So, um, yeah, it isn't there.

For some reason, Teslas can't seem to distinguish

a fire truck very well,

because that seems to be one of the common things

they tend to run into.

But, you know, having things,

and I don't know how much of the new tech you've driven,

but things like lane departure correction,

like you drive down the road,

and if you're on the highway or a road that's marked,

it'll kind of let you know

when you're drifting around a little bit.

Consumer Reports likes the GM system

better than the Tesla system,

because they claim it tracks you better

than the Tesla system does.

I think these systems are still a bit in their infancy.

You know, the, you know,

what's going to be common on most cars soon

is automatic emergency braking.

So, if somebody stops in front of you

when you're not paying attention,

the car will slow down and stop or stop completely,

and you'll see something on the system that's in the car.

At AAA, now this was two years ago,

we tested a bunch of these systems,

and we took them out to a racetrack in California,

and we were only going 35 or 40 miles an hour,

and we had basically a foam car

that was designed to test these types of systems,

and we got pretty good at putting the foam car back together,

because of the 10 cars we tested.

Some of them minimized the crash,

some of them, you know, it slowed way down.

The only one at the time that really came

to a full and complete stop was a Volvo,

and it was just one of those things

that it was, you know, it did slow down,

it did work, but for instance,

they do false once in a while, you will get false warnings.

I was driving a car last year sometime,

somebody started to go around a corner in front of me,

they slowed down to go around the corner.

Well, if you were following them,

all you would have done was just turned a little to the left

and a little to the right and gone right around their car.

Well, the car came to a screeching stop,

which is something I wouldn't have done,

and I don't think most drivers would have done,

so it was one of those things that is like,

you know, that's not real world,

and that's where sort of the problem is.

I think in a few more years,

the technology will get that much better.

I'm just hoping for this automatic emergency braking

to really be smoothed out.

The idea that, you know, Mike,

you're going to be able to get in your car

and say you want to go to, you know, Bangor, Maine,

and then take a nap and wake up three hours later,

we're not going to see that for a while yet.

No, I agree.

I agree.

But it's getting, like I said,

I know the Tesla updates itself,

you know, almost every month with more information.

Yeah, and Tesla got in a little bit of trouble

a few years ago.

They put, I forget what they call it,

shadow mode, I think,

where they put out the cars with the fully self-driving setup,

but when it made mistakes,

it would make, it would make,

it was building a correction library.

And people are like, what do you mean?

My car makes mistakes

and you're using me for a guinea pig

to try to, you know, jump in.

And that's where I think, you know,

there's different levels, you know,

they call it level one through five vehicle autonomy.

And, you know, one is like

the car really doesn't do much of anything.

And then, you know, five is a car

doesn't have a steering wheel.

And then somewhere in the middle is level three.

And level three to me is what I think Mercedes

is saying they have now,

which to me is the dumbest one there is

because basically what it is,

is the car will drive itself till it can't.

And then you have to, like, jump in and take over.

Well, I wanted to,

well, that doesn't let me relax.

You know, if I'm, if I want a car

that's going to drive itself,

I want it to drive itself in, you know,

make up for if, you know, all of a sudden

I, you know, didn't see something

or a box fell off the back of a truck

or something like that.

I want the car to be able to make up for that.

The idea that I have to be, like,

posed over the steering wheel, ready to take over,

you know, that to me sounds like a dumb idea.

I want it to either do it all

or do nothing, one or the other.

Well, I appreciate your

experience

and giving me the heads up.

I mean, I wish it was a little sooner,

but we'll see. I'm trying to drive this beast

for the whole years.

And the other thing is the best

like self-driving cars

have LiDAR

which is, you know, which

the LiDAR units are basically, you know,

it looks like a radar arch on the roof

of the car. Not exactly that appealing.

You know, if you look at it and go,

yeah, that doesn't look like such a great idea.

And, you know,

kind of look at that and go,

I'm not ready to have

that ugly a car yet.

So, you know, there's some things out there

but I remember the

head of Highway Safety in Massachusetts

I ran into him at a

self-driving technology

conference in Boston. He said to me,

what do you think about all the self-driving stuff?

I said, I would love

the idea that at least something, somebody's

paying attention on the road and if it's a computer

to me, that's even better.

You know, so,

and that's kind of, I mean there's

so many times I've been out

driving lately that people just

they're going through stop signs, they're not

paying attention. You know, they're still

spending too much time looking down at their phones

and if the car paid attention

well, that would be good, you know.

And to

make up for, you know,

you know, we're not all,

you know, I don't know if anybody's getting any younger.

So, the idea that your car

can make up for

us as we age, I think

it's kind of a pretty good thing.

That's what I'm looking for. There you go.

Okay, thank you very much.

Alright, thanks Mike. Take care.

Bye bye.

Our phone number is

781-837-4900. If you want to join us,

we have a few minutes left of the program.

This question

comes up a lot. You mentioned before that Toyota

does not have a service

interval for transmission fluid changes.

Does this truly mean the fluid

lasts a lifetime?

Hmm.

Toyota claims it

is a lifetime fill,

but any fluid, I don't care if it's

transmission fluid, power steering fluid, engine oil,

it can break down

and fail over time.

Toyota does recommend checking

the fluid at certain intervals

and if the fluid's burnt,

change it.

By burnt, think

burnt toast maybe?

You'll know it

when you smell it, what it smells like.

And also, if the fluid is

brown, varnishy color

rather than reddish, it's time for fluid change.

Then the question comes up,

do you do a complete fluid exchange

or do you do a drain

and refill?

I'm a drain and refill

person and people say

why?

I think there's some benefit

of having

the friction material

inside of automatic transmission.

There's friction clutches

and I think there's some benefit

to having this little bit of friction material

suspended in the fluid.

I think it helps

improve the shifting and as the

transmission wears, that

friction material kind of makes up in the fluid

sort of makes up for the wear.

I could be completely crazy on that

but

that's what I've seen.

Also, I remember when I went to

transmission school years and years and years ago

the transmission

teacher

we rebuilt and it was probably

something like a

power glider

some simple transmission

and we filled it full of burnt

ugly, miserable

transmission fluid

and it shifted fine

and did it shift fine because the fluid

had some particles in it?

Maybe.

Where I think flushing a transmission

if you have a transmission that is

sort of at the end of its life

and you're trying to squeak out a little bit more life out of it

then I think try a flush

but I have seen

sometimes where a flush

moves some of the material around

and the way a flush machine works

it sort of flushes it backwards

and I've seen some cases where the

flushing material

the flushing of it

loosens up some of this varnished

junk inside the transmission then it ends up

getting stuck in the valve body.

So, I'm not a huge flush fan

but I have seen some

transmissions that really

seemed at the end of their life

flush out the transmission fluid

put 10 or 12 quarts

of fresh fluid in it

another year out of the transmission where

prior to that it may have been slipping

and acting weird and not doing what it should

doing but I think for regular

maintenance a drain and refill

is really all you want to do

unless there's some kind of serious

contamination

the torque converter came apart and there was pieces

of metal and junk floating inside of it

then that's a different story.

The one that I heard just recently

was from a Honda technician

and they have some

issues with

their transmissions

that are actually

self-destructing in some of their cars

and

the test is

you take a magnet

and you attach it to the bottom of the

transmission pan

and if the magnet

sticks

because it's

sensing metallic pieces

in the pan

then there's a transmission

if it doesn't stick

if the magnet basically falls off

the transmission is good

hmm

well it's good for a while until whatever

goes wrong with it goes wrong with it

so whenever you think the Hondas are perfect

they aren't perfect

I think Honda transmissions have been

the downfall of Honda products

most Hondas are really good

absolutely but

since time began it seems like

a lot of Hondas.

If you have a question

and we didn't get to it on the program

you can always send me an email

at jpaul

at aanortheast.com

I answer every single email

I get

even the ones that say

I know this might be a stupid question

no such thing as stupid questions

email me at jpaul at aanortheast.com

Until next week make sure you wear your seatbelt

drive safely be good to your car

by the side of the road

slow down or move over it saves lives

talk to y'all next week bye bye

Can AI get you a better car deal? A AI and my review of the Toyota Tacoma TRD PRO

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