I truly feel sorry for you if you bought an EV....and this is why you will not want to repeat their mistake

Hey folks, Lenny Lawson here.

I was doing my best to do a video version of the My Car Guru podcast slash radio show.

So what I did is I bought this microphone.

It's called a Maono.

It sounds Hawaiian, M-A-O-N-O.

And it's a wireless, well, basically you plug a little receiver into the bottom connection

on your cell phone and turn it on.

And then you turn on a little wireless microphone and clip it to your lapel if you have a lapel.

And I just clipped it onto my shirt.

And so it starts working just fine.

And I recorded, well, the last program that I did, I recorded it, had my iPhone propped

up and pointed in my direction.

And so I just kept kind of looking back and forth to the camera and then to my computer

screen.

And so anyway, I get it all done and I finally take my first break and I hit stop button.

And then I went back to see what I'd recorded.

And you could see me talking, you just couldn't hear me.

You could hear me for about 10 seconds and it was very crystal clear, it was nice.

High quality microphone, till it wasn't.

And so there I was talking for five minutes with no sound.

You know, electronic things can be some boogers sometimes.

It gets so irritating.

So when I try to do things on my iPhone or on my computer, I was in a new expedition

the other day and Ford decided to revolutionize the instrument panel when it didn't need

revolutionizing because it was fine before my wife has a 2024 expedition that I bought

for her and she really loves it.

My daughter, Abby has a 2025 expedition that has this new funky dash, kind of a rounded

square steering wheel.

It's weird.

It has little mouse pads that you have to use with with your thumbs.

I guess you could use it with your finger, but you know, when you're holding the steering

wheel, you don't want to be pulling your hands off and pointing at stuff and moving this

mouse around trying to figure out how to adjust your steering wheel.

I mean, if you want to adjust your steering wheel, you remember when you just had a tilt

steering, you just pull a little lever and it goes up and down.

That was fine.

Why mess with it?

But no, they had to make it electronic.

So then, which was okay, had a little button on the side, your car may have that where

you push a little, you know, like a window or mirror controller, you push it up if you

want to go up, you push it in if you want it to go in and out and that's a great, it's

fine.

Well, it wasn't fine for Ford.

So they decided to make the, instead of having the controls right there where you need them

on the side of the steering wheel, you've got to work with this little mouse pad and

you've got to look up on your dash and find, okay, what's up, what's out, what's in, and

figure it out and push the button.

I don't need those kind of learning curves at my advanced age.

I don't think you do either, but you know, what these manufacturers are trying to do

to the automobile is to make it 100% configurable.

What does that mean?

Well, if you want certain features, you can subscribe to them.

We talked about this several episodes ago.

Subscription based services.

I got an email from Ford the other day showing a complete menu of subscription based services

that I can pay them, you know, $7.99 a month.

One of them was $49.95 or $49.99 per month.

That's for BlueCruise.

It's already on my vehicle.

It's equipped to do it.

It did it for the first 90 days and then it stopped and I got a message that said, if

you want this to continue, we're going to hold it ransom.

You have to send us $49.99 a month or you can pay in advance for a full year.

I decided to tell them to stick it.

I'm not paying for that.

My wife doesn't like it anyway.

It's okay, but I like driving and I don't trust some engineer up in Detroit to steer

my car for me.

I can handle that.

I've done it for a long time and I'm not subscribing to that.

Another thing had to do with Wi-Fi.

I don't need Wi-Fi in my car.

Do you?

At home, that's plenty.

I mean, I've got my cell phone and it's got 5G or however many G's they have right now.

That's enough.

I don't need Wi-Fi.

I don't need to be a Wi-Fi hotspot for the 18-wheeler driving beside me.

I just think these engineers, they just need something to do.

They decide to start screwing with our lives and messing with our cars and trying to find

ways to charge us more for already expensive vehicles.

You know, if you're thinking about buying a new vehicle today, consider buying a base

model.

I mean, let's say that you like leather seats.

That's just one of your non-negotiables.

Then buy a base model and have leather installed.

You can do that.

There's a place in Knoxville called American Radio.

I know that's weird, but they will install very high-quality cat skin with a K leather

interiors in your vehicle.

And then you can adjust your own steering wheel.

You know, you can just, you know how they have that little vise-like thing on the bottom

of the steering wheel?

You can tilt it up and down or push it in and out.

That's fine.

You can do that.

It's not going to strain your muscles too much to do that.

I don't need a mouse pad to adjust my steering wheel, thank you very much.

But we order these features or we choose these features or we can't buy the car without those

features and we end up never using them.

And then something breaks after the warranty runs out that's somehow tied to this thing.

For example, the body control module on your vehicle poops out and certain things aren't

working in your vehicle and because it has all these features, then you've got to buy

a new one and they're expensive.

And it's probably a good reason to buy an extended warranty.

You know, there's more reasons to buy an extended warranty or a vehicle service contract.

I use those terms interchangeably.

Now if you trade before the warranty runs out, the manufacturer's warranty, don't buy

an extended service contract.

But if you plan on keeping that car five, six, seven years, I recommend you buy one.

I didn't used to, but boy I do now because I have seen what happens not just in my dealership

in all brands.

I don't care what brand it is.

If it's a Mercedes or a BMW or a Porsche or a Honda, Toyota, whatever.

When those things break, it's like buying a new engine in some cases or when an engine

used to cost.

So just don't pay too much for them.

I mean the average extended service contract for just a typical small SUV, even for my

daughter's expedition, something like that, six years, 100,000 miles, it should cost no

more than between $2,500 and $3,000 maximum.

And you know, the manufacturer's warranty covers you for what, three years or $50,000.

So you're basically paying for three or four more years and another $50,000.

So if it was a seven year warranty and it was $3,000 and you're paying $750 per year.

And if you have one screen go out or one body control module go out or even if on a higher

dollar car that has special LED headlights, I mean you could easily spend $1,500 on one

headlight.

Isn't that nuts?

That's just the way it is though.

I remember we used to sell light bulbs for headlights and they were like $7.

But do you really need the fanciest headlights?

I know they're attached to that limited package that you really want or that one in Ford.

It might be the King Ranch or the Platinum.

Every car manufacturer has these higher end trim packages.

And they happen to call them limited or platinum.

You know, you probably need to own some Platinum to be able to pay to repair them.

Yeah, how much Platinum is going to take to replace the windshield wiper blades on this

thing?

That's what I want to know.

Okay, I'll be back in just one minute.

Okay, let's get on with it.

I'm thinking about you poor EV owners.

What has happened to the EV industry?

Of course, a lot of that depends on where you live.

And if you live in California, you know, they're kind of addicted to EVs, the large market

penetration out there, and to a certain degree in the Great Northeast in certain areas, but

not so much.

And I've got something to say to all EV owners.

I'm going to apologize for all of us car dealers who sold them to you because I don't know.

I think they were sold under false pretenses because the government told us that they were

going to fix the charging infrastructure, didn't they?

Remember that?

You remember back at the beginning of the Biden administration, they passed some type of a

big infrastructure bill and they were going to fund all the different states and all along

the interstates, you would have all these chargers that you could just pull into and

just this as easy as filling up with a tank of gas, but it didn't happen.

And it's still just kind of trickling out there.

I mean, in most small towns in America, there aren't any chargers.

The only chargers are at people's houses and they don't really appreciate you pulling

into their driveway and plugging in.

And so the chargers that are out there for the general public to use the level three

chargers, which are the fastest chargers, many of those still don't work.

The networks are very unreliable.

If you own a Tesla, then it's it's better, you know, because Tesla built their infrastructure

out before they really started selling a bunch of cars.

And but now see if you own a General Motors vehicle or a Toyota or Ford, you can go to

a Tesla supercharger and charge right up.

And those Tesla people aren't happy about it because they thought they had that network

exclusively to themselves.

So I'm even apologizing to Tesla owners because you were deceived.

I'll tell you something else you were deceived about the value of your vehicle and what it

would be worth when you were done with it.

I just hope that most of you had the sense to lease your your electric vehicles as opposed

to buying them.

Because if you bought them and financed them for any period of time or paid cash, the depreciation

is astronomical on those vehicles.

The used car market is not good for EVs.

Because we just we just don't know how long the batteries are going to last.

I mean, would you want to buy something that you know that is only going to possibly work

about 50% as well as it did when it was new?

You know, if you buy the average used car, you know, if you put gas in it, put some new

spark plugs in it, it's probably going to be fine for another hundred

thousand miles.

But with EVs, that's not the case because the battery gets depleted.

Well, it not only gets depleted, its ability to charge to 100% goes away.

And over time, it's going to keep going down and down and down.

And so the range that that you thought it would get when when you bought the thing,

what they told you would go 320 miles on a charge.

Well, now it's only 200 miles on a charge.

And you still have to get where you need to get.

And it just doesn't work with your life.

But then you're going to go to, I don't know, some Chevrolet dealership and you

sound just by me an equinox and you pull up and they see you wanting to trade that

vehicle and they start shaking their head.

We don't want that thing.

What are we going to do with that?

And then you get an appraisal and you owe, you know, $50,000 more on your vehicle than

it's worth, like if you bought a Rivian or one of those other oddly named a

Polestar.

Yeah, you're really in bad shape if you bought a Polestar because, you know,

you might as well have driven in a UFO because they don't have a clue what

that's worth.

Oh, but you were an innovator, you know, you wanted to be a groundbreaker.

You knew that these EVs were going to take over.

Well, they're not.

And it's not going to happen anytime soon.

I was reading automotive news.

Ford is probably, well, they say they're probably, which means they are going to

scrap the F-150 Lightning pickup truck.

We had really good luck selling the first one.

Some guy from California called us and said, I'll pay you $30,000 over when a

sticker for your Ford Lightning.

You know, what's a little car dealer in East Tennessee going to say if somebody

offers that, how soon can you get here?

We're not going to try to talk him out of it.

He wanted it.

That's, they were charging more than that out in California.

So that was a pretty profitable deal right there.

But then they stopped selling and they were just sitting out here.

Weeds, they're tumbleweeds blowing across in front of them.

And so we had one left and I ended up having to buy it.

I bought it from a nephew Max to drive.

Well, I didn't buy it.

Let me rephrase.

We leased it.

And so Ford has decided that, you know, it, well, originally they said, OK,

this is going to be the new Model T, but it turned out being more like the

Edsel than the Model T.

So Ford has racked up 13 billion in EV losses since 2023.

I know the government, you know, hear all these numbers, billions, trillions.

You know, it doesn't sound like a whole lot of money.

That's a lot of money.

I mean, that is, um, that is earth shattering money.

Ford was able to save itself back at the Great Recession by borrowing

about 30 billion and they socked it away.

And that's the reason they didn't have to take the bailout money from the

federal government, like General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation did.

And then you look at a company like Honda.

So they're rethinking their electric vehicle strategy.

Why?

Because the shifting US policies and weaker demand.

You take away a $7,500 rebate, it's going to have a big impact, but it was,

it was bad before that too.

The only thing that really caused the surge at the very end, you know, they

talked about, well, a lot of the manufacturers just bragging about how

many EVs they were selling right as the subsidies were expiring.

That's the only reason they accelerated is because there are some people out

there that say, well, you know, we might as well go ahead and get one because

these are going to go away and they are not going to be happy because of some

of the other things that I've been talking about, depreciation, charging infrastructure.

Maybe you have one and you're just elated with it, but you're rare.

So now even Honda thinks that if you can get an electric vehicle for under

$30,000, people will buy them.

That's kind of when all the manufacturers are thinking in the United States,

that is, as far as developing vehicles.

Hyundai is saying that Ford General Motors, we got to get EVs under $30,000.

Cause then all of those young people will be able to afford them.

All those unemployed young people who live in apartment complexes.

Where are they going to charge them?

You know, if you don't own a house or access to a 240 volt outlet, then

you're going to have a problem.

You're going to have to use superchargers.

You can't plug it into a 110.

If you take an EV and plug it into a 110, it takes about five, six days to fully

charge. You know, if you do it at 240, depending on the amount of amps that it

has, it can take anywhere from six to eight hours.

Fast charger, maybe 30 to 50 minutes, but you can't use fast chargers all the time.

Why?

Because it can damage your battery if you do that all the time.

So I don't think young people are that ignorant.

Personally, I think they're going to be able to figure that out.

I don't care if they do get them under, I don't care if they get them under 20,000.

They can't and build them profitably.

So the EV thing is pretty much dead.

And if I were you, I'd either look for just a nice high mileage gasoline engine

made by, you know, Ford, Toyota, Honda, General Motors, whatever brands that you

like, hybrids are okay if you want to pay over sticker form.

But I don't, I don't see that as a great return on investment because the

difference in the fuel economy between a hybrid and a high mileage gasoline

engine is not that great.

And you probably won't own it long enough to be able to make it to break even

for the extra costs.

So these are things you need to consider.

I will be back in just one minute.

Do you remember in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy got caught up in that tornado

and then it landed and it landed on top of the wicked witch of the, let's see,

of the East.

And she was there with the Munchkins and she looked at, I think,

and the good witch pointed out to Dorothy that she had landed on the

wicked witch of the East and then the wicked witch of the East legs curled up

and rolled back underneath the house.

That really used to freak me out.

Well, that's what happened to EVs.

A big house landed on them and the house had a Trump sign on it.

And really it brought sanity to the market.

Now, one thing I think is crazy is that now the Trump administration is

saying, okay, well, let's do 50 year mortgages.

See, that's what they've done to the car business.

I mean, since houses have gotten so expensive, 50 year mortgages, since

cars have gotten so expensive, 84 month financing, 120 month financing, 10 years

to pay for a car.

You should need 10 years to pay for a car.

The cars are too complicated.

They become too expensive.

Let's go back.

Let's start buying basic cars, the base model.

It's all we really need.

But I am biased.

I mean, I was selling cars when a car was loaded.

If it had an eight track tape player and intermittent wipers.

And, you know, the intermittent wipers were not variable.

They would just go like every 10 seconds or so.

So as things have gotten more complicated, they have gotten more expensive.

How come it didn't work that way with computers?

You know, when computers got a lot more complicated, they got cheaper.

It's just like my first laptop.

I'm embarrassed to say what I paid for it.

Well, I leased it because it was too expensive to buy.

It was almost $7,000 for my first laptop.

I ended up leasing it for, gosh, I think it was $200 a month for 36 months.

And then you give it back to them just like a car lease or had a buyout.

So I don't know why that doesn't work with cars.

If I find out, I'll let you know.

If you want more information to help you buy, sell, trade, deal with body shops

and service departments and car dealerships and find ways to save a bunch of money,

just send me your email address and I'll send you a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook.

It's 32 pages long and it's packed full of even how to negotiate a deal.

I mean, a salesperson walks up to you and says, how much you want to pay a month?

You know exactly what to say and what not to say to get the best deal.

It's all in the My Car Guru guidebook.

You can send me your email address if you want to to Lenny Lawson 2020.

At gmail.com, which is my email address, or to my cell phone at 423-552-2020.

And I'll see you on the next edition of My Car Guru.

I truly feel sorry for you if you bought an EV....and this is why you will not want to repeat their mistake

About this episode

Ford Expedition

tilt steering

subscription based services

BlueCruise

body control module

vehicle service contract

extended warranty

extended service contract

BMW

Toyota

Honda

Mercedes-Benz

Porsche

manufacturer's warranty

LED headlights

limited package

Platinum

level three chargers

Tesla

General Motors

electric vehicles (EVs)

leasing

depreciation

Chevrolet Equinox

Ford F-150 Lightning

Ford Lightning

Ford Model T

Ford Edsel

fast charger

battery damage

hybrid

financing

intermittent wipers

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