Robin Leach and Jay de Marcken dive into the evolving landscape of car interiors, focusing on the shift from traditional buttons and dials to expansive touchscreens. They discuss the challenges these screens pose for drivers, including distractions and the learning curve associated with new technology. The conversation also touches on the design trends in modern cars, the performance of electric vehicles, and the importance of understanding dashboard controls. With insights on buying used cars and maintaining tire pressure, this episode offers a comprehensive look at contemporary automotive issues.
Topics:dashboard technologytouchscreens vs buttonscar design trendselectric vehicle performanceused car buying tipstire pressure management
"...ll you the pressure in each one of the tires. The Audi A5, which is in my family's holdings, don't do that ..."
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He is Robin Leach. He is Jada Markin. This is Car Keys.
We have been online all the time and changing every year and one of the comments that I think we've listened to or talked to about has been the increase in use of dash-wide or almost car interior-wide dashboards or screens that are taking over all the jobs that we used to do with simple things like dials, push buttons, and similar earlier technology.
I have noticed, and I will notice, and Jay I think will notice too, I don't know whether this technology has gone into the European cars or not because I'm not sure whether Jay drives anything other than his cars. He has available for him, but he does drive cars over here.
And we did comment on a recent show about this whole comment that I'm grouching about today, everybody.
The trouble with screens as I see it going forward is that they take a lot of time with your eyes and distracting you from driving to manage those screens and go through the menus and find what you want to do,
especially if you can't set those settings up before you start moving forward in the car for your drive to wherever you're going.
Examples. First of all, you've got to find the area on the screen that has to do with your climate control system.
And Jay may be able to clarify the simplicity of these better than I think they are because I don't think they're simple at all. Then you've got to go to a radio and set your station and hope you don't want to change channels,
which you have to do if you move out of listing areas in let's say I was leaving our listing area in the northwest corner and head towards
Fairfield County Connecticut or anywhere else that when you lose the stations reach that you have here when you're driving around our corner.
Then you've got areas for seat heaters, things like seat heaters, you've got to find the seat heater menu on the screens.
You know, all these things were earlier and are on all my vehicles because I don't have any of this.
Well, I do have a couple now but all these items these three items and more are simplified and most of the vehicles I still own in that you've got the dashboard with push buttons and seat and various pictures of what you want to do.
And it is a lot easier to find where those are for future use once you purchase a new vehicle that has these things in them so that you don't have to take your eyes off the road to access what you want to do while you're moving along.
Jay.
Well, I think, you know, we've noticed that manufacturers tend to try to, you know, find whatever they think is the best way to go and be somewhat consistent at least with, you know, their different models and from one model to another.
And but, you know, there are changes and there are manufacturers pulling back from the all screen and only screens and we can, you know, we can talk about this forever.
I do think, you know, we do agree that dials and buttons are great.
I think what's important what I find is how you can keep control of your hand hovering over a screen but even over, you know, a knob or a button and
Wow, some cars and I think of Mercedes, for instance, have a little hand pad where you can put the palm of your hand down and from there you can access a bunch of commands.
And that I find to be pretty, pretty useful and pretty.
Where are your eyes, Jay, when you're doing this thing with your palm of your hand?
It's like everything else, you just have to learn where these things are.
I mean, that's, you know, like if I teach somebody how to drive the first thing I will ask him to do is like put your lights on or put the flashers on.
How easy is it to find the flashers on a car?
It used to be in and Robin, you certainly remember that better than I do.
The flashers on the all American cars used to be on the steering column and you put your hand on the steering column and there was the flashers.
You mean you're talking about the turn signals.
Yes, they are in the steering column.
The four flashers are not on the steering column and weren't mine are all in the middle of the dashboard or on the corner of the dashboard.
Yeah, I'm talking about the 70s or, you know, way back about the 2019s and all that are still on the dashboard.
They're not on the on the steering column for the emergency plan.
But but what I'm saying is that, you know, it's the old added if it ain't broke, why are you trying to fix and make it better when I don't think it's being made better.
And I commented on earlier show about when you go rent a car now at an airport.
First of all, what car do you get.
If you've asked for a certain car, maybe it's because you own one of those and you know what to look for when you get into it to rent it for one, two or three days or a week.
If you don't.
You really need to sit there and if you want to use some of the features in the car, you really need to learn it you should for safety sake and this is could be a safety discussion about this.
You need to learn it before you drive out of the rental car place because once you get on the road and you suddenly want to turn the radio on.
If you're driving a Mercedes one time you're going getting your VW another time and also on and so forth. There's no commonality, or at least little commonality between the manufacturers.
Many screens that you know it's like the old VHS versus super eight film or something like that in the past.
I just don't think that this this and you talk about the manufacturers, the manufacturers higher designers design interiors all that.
I've quote I've suggested on this show before that I my first experiencing the latest iteration of the Q5 Audi is that they forgot the grab handle on the passenger on the driver side door that you could reach over to pull the door close when it's wide open.
You get in, you got to reach for something to pull the door close and there's no grab handle on this latest Q5 vehicle.
It's I don't know why anybody could have let that get out before somebody knew that was in my opinion, one of the stupidest things people looking at Bob and Robin.
Let's think positive. What do you really like about new cars.
Not much except that the quality is better. I'm not a fan of some of these similar designs where you can't tell a Chevy Malibu from a Hyundai Sonata or you know that kind of thing.
And in the SUV designs you've got all the same designs and now I'm watching similar designs in the front and rear lighting where you're seeing
front and wide car wide DRL drivers daytime running lights or and rear brake light rear tail lights full side to side in a Volkswagen Audi products.
You know, why don't you tell me what you like about all the new cars.
Well, like you said, they're much the build quality is much better than it ever was. I think they're a lot safer than they ever were.
The performance is much greater than it ever was. That gets to be a problem when you see I got smoked recently at a light and I was driving a powerful SUV.
I thought I'd be the king of the road at the start of at a green light and I got smoked by a little Polestar and at the next light the woman just gave me this little smile and that was the end of that.
Yeah, back to what we've said before, electric cars are wicked fast and that can affect, you know, it becomes in a world where speed limits are everywhere and rightfully so.
There's a contradiction there somewhere, but overall cars are way better than ever were.
It makes me a little sad because you look at, for instance, a Porsche Taycan, which is their electric sedan and the Panamera, which is their ICE or hybrid sedan.
And, you know, as great as the Panamera Turbo S is a Taycan will will be faster every day of the week and by by a long shot.
So, so, you know, as much as we like hearing sports car engines or, you know, it is a thing of the past in everyday driving.
So, well, I'm not, I'd like to let you brought up this word performance and how you got spoke to the traffic light.
I'm not concerned about that kind of differentiation between the cars, but I am.
I go, let's go back to what I like about some of the cars because I do like I actually like the Cadillac designs quite a bit.
Yes, I'm surprised that I like the Cadillac designs for quite a bit, but you know what, they are unique.
They do separate themselves from just about every other car, a manufacturer's line of cars across their model range board.
And I think they're doing very well probably as a result.
I'm not sure how many people really pay much attention to the design of the car, but go back to the lighting thing I just brought up a few moments ago.
You know, the Lucid has a whole front, you know, I I passed Lucid coming up to the broadcast area this morning, and I saw that Lucid way far away.
But now I think there's some, there's a Honda that has a Lucid front end look and another car that has a Lucid front end look with with full frontal wide,
fairly bright DRL lights across them.
And I can't tell that sometimes I can't tell whatever a Honda model is I'm referring to is from Lucid from a distance difference from a distance.
But you know, I don't know why they're all going to these full width DRLs and even full width tail lights are not brake lights necessary.
The brake lights you see the light up on the sides of the of the full lit rear lighting systems which are red, of course.
And I'm not sure why they are exciting part of the design advancement going forward.
It is, you know, when one manufacturer has it, and nobody else has it, you can tell that manufacturers vehicles, but when they all start copying each other.
And I happen to like looking at the vehicles that are coming at me.
Yes, it's a little distracting, but they are in front of me and I my eyes are on the road and you can see about a peripheral vision.
But yeah, that's about I like the Cadillac lineup and I'm surprised I'm saying that to everybody.
But that the cars are I think very good to Jay you you mentioned something about the Cadillac I think you drove.
I think I think they do have a pretty nice lineup.
I mean, I still, you know, I still have a quote unquote problem with that with with where they're trying to go.
You know, historically they were the comfortable big boat American car.
And it was all about luxury and comfort.
And now they've become very sports car minded.
They're they're they're about the only people only manufacturer that still put out a high performance four door sedan with a manual transmission.
And I can think of how many of the Cadillac purchases are buying them with the manuals.
Because you know, I actually think quite a few. I think quite a few.
That may be because they're keeping it in their in their lineup of options.
And like any car offered with a manual or or or a an automatic, the out the automatic will outperform the manual any day of the week.
That's true. But you know, us old geezers like to drive a manual from time to time.
Absolutely.
And, you know, but not in traffic, you know, again, road conditions these days are not conducive to to, you know, all cars and manuals and light cars.
And so, you know, this is the new world.
It is a new world. And I think that I don't know how many buyers really look at by by design.
You know, I recently the cars as I said that you agreed are so good across the board doesn't mean doesn't really matter what you start out looking at if you are not paying attention to a specific brand in your head and or a specific look in your vision.
Because if you walk in to any dealership, any manufacturer dealership and it's a truck about new cars now we're not going to use cars.
And you get in and go for the, well, the standard four corners for rights in your back dealership which you should never do if you're really serious.
They all drive nicely.
And the only thing you're not going to have there easily to deal with and you won't have time by the time you've taken four rights out of a dealership.
And you're back in the parking lot to try any of these earlier topics of dashboard technology and menus to do anything because you're not going to turn the radio on probably you're not going to turn the heated seats on probably.
And you're not going to do anything that you're going to do if you end up walking out and buying one of these cars and then you and then you learn about what you purchased in the technology department, but all these cars are good.
And that is one of the probably the best things that's happened with our manufacturers and car development over the last three decades.
You know, they will go properly maintained probably almost quite easily to 200,000 miles if you wanted to keep one that long.
And we talked there I talked about the, the length of financing that you may have to go to get your payments down on some of these cars because of the prices up to up to as long as eight years.
If you want to keep a car eight years they'll certainly go eight years, and you'll have to change tires and you'll have to change brakes and if you're still in a fossil fuel vehicle you'll have to change oil and lubricate more than the electric options alternatives.
A long time ago, Jay, you mentioned about how many miles people were getting on their Tesla's in California.
And then and electrics electric cars were mostly Tesla's back when you made these comments on the show and I can remember it and you said they were going for a long period of time than they barely know they might have to change a motor here and there but they were very durable.
And I think most electric cars are very durable.
Absolutely.
We don't really know.
You know, electric batteries seem to have warranty periods of some time or something around a certain number of years or 100,000 miles.
But I have known and I think you probably have Jay, known that the batteries and some of these electric bills have gone double that mileage and still they're still on their original batteries systems.
So, I don't think that's something for people to be concerned about too much.
You know, somebody asked me about extended warranty purchases on electric bill should they get it because they know the battery packs are very expensive, should you have to replace one.
But, you know, I have this Hyundai Sonata, which has got it.
It's a hybrid.
So it's got the fossil fuel engine and the battery pack.
And it came back in 2013, which is the year of this vehicle that I have with a lifetime battery.
But I've never needed a lifetime.
You know, I now have 135,000 miles and I'm going strong with it.
That's more miles than you put on any of your cars.
That's correct.
Because I drive it more.
But that's absolutely correct.
And yes, I do have to change the oil because of the fossil fuel engine and it does take, you know, other things like the fossil fuel vehicle needs in periodic maintenance services.
But other than that, I had no real problems with the car.
As I go towards 150,000 miles.
So you're going to keep it for a while.
Our audience should be comfortable buying a new car.
We go to the use car situation.
And Jay, we've talked about that and there's a good use cars around to Jay.
What do you think about buying from just independent use car dealers versus new car dealers with that can offer you the pre-owned warranty situation on the same cars.
You might find that an independent non dealer supported vehicle.
I don't know.
You know, I've said it before, you know, I always start with the, with the, you know, the buying sites like car gurus, auto trader and the likes and
And now I forget the one that even that aggregates all the others.
But, you know, one of the things they do is rate dealers.
So all the car, whether it's a new car dealer or an use car dealer, you know, one of the first things I'll do is go and read the dealer ratings.
And you quickly see if the ad is a scam, you know, the pricing sometimes on those in those ads are like, you know, they seem too good to be true.
But it's based on, you know, ask the risk, you know, a trade in value of so many dollars and, you know, whatever other condition or, or financing the car with them at exorbitant interest rates.
But all that just just a quick read of the reviews of dealers will give you an indication if you should even place the call or go there.
And lots of times you'll see bad reviews on dealers where people have called and not gotten any callbacks or called and they say, oh yes, come and see the car and they drive two hours and there's no car there.
They're trying to sell you another one.
So it is an unfortunate regular problem that seems to be happening.
A recent relative of mine went to looking at Toyota Tacomas and he was doing exactly what you said he was online at maybe a dealership.
I think it was a Toyota dealership who was advertising it's two or three specific used vehicles.
And when he actually called to say he wanted to come down and talk to him, those cars were mysteriously unavailable.
Oh, we sold it yesterday, but sometimes they say that too.
They just weren't available to be seen.
And the worst or the ones that make you drive there anyway.
And then you drive and then they, you know, they corner you in the lot and they want to get you in.
And so you will be a Google before you drive off, which is fine.
But this situation is something on a website and you call about it.
And they say, I want to come in and drive this 2021 Toyota Tacoma that has had 32,000 miles and is blah, blah, blah price.
And they say, oh, they never know where they are when you're talking to a sales person at the place.
And they have to look at, they have to go to some kind of sheet or some kind of source of an inventory situation.
And they come back and say, well, that car is not around.
And then you go, what about the 2024 that got to 10,000 miles?
But that's not around either.
They say this happened to this relative.
And so then they had a third one that was around.
And the person went down and drove it and bought it.
Both people were happy.
The buyer, the looker, buyer, turn buyer and the dealer turned seller of one of the vehicles that the buyer had inquired about specifically before he got in his car and drove to the dealer.
So that's just for people who want to buy used cars.
You really need to do some homework and you really need to ask the questions, especially if you're a distance from a particular dealership or a particular seller of used cars.
Make sure if you, if you're looking at a particular vehicle online, either pictorially or at a list that you call and find out if it's actually available to be seen and test driven before you drive the number of miles you might have to go.
Not listening area. They're not, you know, you have to go roughly 30 miles to get to any place, any city of substance that has used car dealers, whether they're manufacturers dealerships or whether they're just ABC used cars and the like along a street where the dealership
the dealers may be located.
All good words.
Yeah, I mean, buying a car can be stressful. And it can also be fun. And it also, you know, it depends how urgent is your need for the car and
I'd like to go through a new subject.
That is, let's let's talk. I'd like to talk about tire air pressures.
Oh, yeah, you do higher air pressures are interesting because seldom do all four tires run at the same pressure during the course of a trip or drive your car.
And I found this to be the case. I have two.
I've had, I have two chief Cherokees that recently had their tire pressure lights come on and the jeeps are very good because their indicators are four corner indicators.
The outings are useless as far as knowing which tire is low. I had a low pressure light on one of our outings come on recently, and it came out of the form of an orange moniker of a tire, but it didn't tell you which tire it was so you have to get
the tire gauge and go around each tire to find which tire in the Audi.
Robin, I find that hard to believe and I'm not saying this is not true.
It's true.
Audi and Volkswagen come out, you know, a lot of the parts are behind the scenes the same and I know my Volkswagen will tell you the pressure in each one of the tires.
The Audi A5, which is in my family's holdings, don't do that unless there's a place and you can find it in the menu and I have not found it in the menu, which has a knob to locate things like that as to show which tire is down.
It just has an orange tire light growing up in the center of the dashboard.
The point is when you go and fill up a tire with a air pressure with a tire filling place at a station, or if you happen to have one portable one in your car that you can attach on to each tire, and then you can sometimes set the pressure on the device, 33 pounds or 34 pounds and wait for it to go off because it will go off when each tire reaches that.
And then you go in, in the Audi, you have to reset it so that that orange tire goes off because it does not reset itself, whereas on the Jeeps, each of the corners it shows you what the pressure is at the point and the needing air monitor on that has gone off on its own.
It reset itself so there's no problem.
But the funny thing about the Jeep is then you're going to see that, oh, the left front 33, the left rear 33, the right front 34, the right rear 34, and then you drive it and if you leave it on, they change as the tires heat up.
But you do not want to worry about a tire that may vary in pressure from another tire on the car by as much as two or three pounds per square inch per square inch, whatever, because it's not going to affect the wear of the tire.
In my opinion, to be enough to worry about if you if you see those four corners and they don't jive just because you thought you put 33 in each of the tires.
Yeah, you should do that once you've driven the car for a few miles anyway.
That is true.
Okay.
Jay, you have anything new about European stuff?
No, I'm a little in the fog right now.
I my my brain is in the fog.
We had fog when we landed here this morning.
But yeah, I haven't been out on the roads much.
A lot of construction work a little like in in.
Oh, yes, back at home.
A lot of a lot of new roads.
You know, we know the ones around, you know, our neck of the woods.
But if you go into New York, you see new roads and it's a little all over the country.
Where did I go yesterday?
Oh, yeah, we were down in New Jersey going down to side roads onto Newark Airport and there to a lot of a lot of construction, a lot of new roads.
So, you know, it's very interesting.
The new roads and broadcast area that's a 41 between Lakeville and Sharon has been paved.
I would say what halfway to Sharon or two thirds of the way to Sharon for before you go off the new paved area onto the current older paved area.
First of all, the noise goes up quite a bit.
The higher noise that is that you can hear goes up quite a bit when you go off the newly paved smooth at asphalt surfaces onto the older worn asphalt surfaces.
It's rougher so you can feel it through the car as well.
I want to bring up passing zones, new stripes, new passing zones.
It just reminds me that some passing zones are very short.
Others are longer before making a pass should make pretty darn sure you're going to be able to pass the car.
But you should also, you know, nobody should panic.
If somebody's making a move that a car's coming at you and looks like it's in the middle of the road.
Yeah, slow down and pull to the side and be aware, be aware, keep your eyes peeled.
For this week's show, it's time to say goodbye from J. DeMarken and Robin Leach.
Car keys with Robin Leach and J. DeMarken is produced at the facilities of WHDD 91.9 FM, RobinhoodRadio.com, Sharon, Connecticut.
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