Episode: 3711
Title: HPR3711: Cars
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3711/hpr3711.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:29:46

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,711 from Monday the 24th of October 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Cars.
It is hosted by Zen Flotor 2, and is about 34 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is a short review of Cars today.
Hello to everybody from Zen Flotor, your favorite magical forest squirrel farmer human being
converted into squirrel by aliens in the 1960s and atheists.
As they knew Hacker Public Radio broadcast, it's been a year since I've done one.
I don't do them frequently in Hacker Public Radio, but I decided to do one on the subject
of Cars, and it is based on Hacker Public Radio 3542 done by Beezah over his worst car
I've ever had.
And also, I noticed that Dave Morris did one, Hacker Public Radio 3601 on May 23rd, 2022,
just a few days after Beezah did his.
So, we'll go ahead and start off with the Ford Motor Company and talk about what do
they have in the way of Cars today.
Okay, we start with Ford Motor Company.
And as soon as you open the website from link A in my notes, for Ford Motor Company,
and then click on the Cars selection, you'll see that Ford Motor Company is still selling
the Mustang.
It's price starts at $27,470, which is really just very high for most people.
If we have to click on, I didn't see, oh, here we are.
Click on all vehicles, and you should see that they have several selections of Mustangs.
They have one called the Ford GT, which looks like a sports car, which I don't even see
a price on.
And the Ford GT MK2, but really, I don't see any of the vehicles that look like Cars.
They used to sell the Ford Fusion, at least last year, I believe they did.
But it appears to me that the Ford Mustang is the only vehicle that you're going to find
in the Ford Cars that still exists.
Ford doesn't make any other cars, not even small economy cars.
They make a whole bunch of SUVs, but this podcast isn't going to be about SUVs.
So next we'll take a look at Chevrolet and see what they have to offer.
Okay, if you open the link I've provided in the show notes for Exhibit B, which is Chevrolet,
and then you click on the Vehicles tab, and then scroll over with your mouse or your
trackpad, and click on the Cars tab, you'll see that Chevrolet only has two cars.
They have the Chevrolet Spark, which is reasonably priced, starting at $13,600.
Now that's more like it for a car, even in today's environment.
That would be one that I would recommend you look into.
So I know several people that own a Spark, and they seem to like them.
They could be head for just a little over $10,000.
And then the Chevy Malibu, which is also not terribly priced at $23,000, $40,000.
You could probably get it for a lot less, and it's a nice looking car, so Chevrolet still
has two cars that you could possibly own.
But compared to yesterday, when Chevrolet dealerships were just filled with cars, they're
not filled with cars anymore.
No, I mean cars are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Now I think it's time we probably go to Dodge, so let me get set up for that, and I'll
pause the tape just a second.
All right, if we go to Bullet C on my show notes, which is Dodge Motor Company, we'll
be startled to find out that Dodge only really has essentially one car, even though they've
given it two different names.
They've got the Charger for $32,645, and they've got the Challenger for $30,940, which is
a little bit cheaper.
But I believe they're essentially the same frame car.
The styling is slightly different, they're kind of expensive.
They're not fuel efficient vehicles, they're muscle cars.
And you know, Dodge used to have a line up just like Chevrolet and Ford did of different
vehicles, but they don't seem to have them anymore.
I mean, unless you've got the money, you know, and you want to put down 50 grand or whatever
on a Mustang, or don't forget Chevrolet still sells, I believe, even though I didn't
see it on the website, I'm assuming they're still selling the Camaro, but don't hold me
to that.
And I'm sure the Corvette is still being sold, and it's probably a special order item,
you know, $60,000, $70,000, but really, unless you're just super wealthy, you're not buying
a car typically, still, that Chevrolet Sprite, the small vehicle for $13 grand, is the best
American bet we've seen yet.
And I kind of like the looks of that car, you know, for the price and everything, I would
recommend it if you're looking for a first car.
That would be about the only one that we've seen so far.
And you know, we can't review Plymouth because Plymouth is gone.
There's no point reviewing Jeep motor company, a subsidiary of Chrysler also, because they
have no cars, they're all SUVs.
So since we can't review Plymouth next stop, we'll be Chrysler, and then we'll work
back across the board and take a look and see what models, the other car companies have
that are tear up from the baseline.
All right, boys and girls, if we open show note link number D, or a letter D, excuse
me, Chrysler.com, we see that Chrysler has really, possibly two vehicles, but really
one, the Chrysler 300 is still being sold.
It's going for about the same price as the Dodge Charger Challenger, $33,740, and they
don't even have a price into the Chrysler 300C, which I guess is maybe a step up.
And they have another vehicle called the Chrysler Airflow Concept.
There's no price on that, so I guess that's to be released or something maybe.
Oh, it's an electric vehicle, okay.
I'm going to try to exclude electric vehicles because I'm not covering Tesla in this.
I'm just looking for vehicles that people could afford and will be practical.
I'll talk about electric vehicles at the end of the segment.
And what I think of them currently considering what's going on with electricity and all the
government's telling you, you can't charge your cars now because we're overloading the
system.
So we'll get to that toward the end of this.
I guess we should move on to, we can't cover Pontiac, it also will be on anymore because
they don't exist in the GM line, so we'll go with Buick and Cadillac in the next segment.
So let me get set up for that.
All right, if we open Item E on my show notes that's Buick Motor Company, we'll find
that when we click on their current vehicles for 2023, for that matter even 2022, Buick
doesn't make cars anymore.
They're all SUVs, every single one of them, every single one of them.
So again, Pontiac and Elzobiel are gone, so okay, Google, open Cadillac Motor Company.
All right, if you go to show note F, we're going to review Cadillac Motor Corporation and
basically they have only one car.
It's the CT4 or CT5 depending on whether you're talking about 2022, 2023.
And I noticed one of their models starts at $33,695, which is the lowest price when goes
all the way up to like $84,000 in price for the CT5-V Black Wing.
So yeah, I just don't know that a car is worth that much money.
I mean, you can buy brand new houses in Oklahoma for that.
And I don't think there are many people in Hacker Public Radio that's going to want to buy
one.
I know I won't because if I'm going to spend that kind of money, 50 grand, they're about
to 60 grand on a vehicle.
It's going to be a giant Ford F350 or something like that.
In fact, I drive a Ford F150 right now and it's a 2012 model and I'm perfectly happy with
it.
But it's not exactly an economy car.
Even back in its day in 2012, it was a little pricey for most people.
So anyway, one car essentially, they just changed the model number for Cadillac out of
if we think back over the history of Fleetwoods and all the other vehicles that Cadillac
had, that's just simply amazing that they have only one car now.
Let's move on to Lincoln because Mercury is out of business.
Mercury doesn't exist anymore as a company, so we're going to jump to Lincoln Motor Company
and give the Ford Motor Company.
All right, if we go to show note, G, Lincoln Motor Company, we see immediately click on
whatever you want.
Lincoln doesn't make any cars anymore.
I guess 2020 was probably the last year, maybe, or 19 that they made a car.
They're all SUVs, every one of them.
And it appears that they're all hatchback SUVs.
And also, every one of them is a five-door, just different names.
And that's all you have, so you won't even find a car from Lincoln.
Let's take a look at Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, and then we might explore a bit more
before we conclude the searching for cars thing.
Okay, now going to show note H Toyota Motor Company.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Toyota is still making cars.
And I would gather, it's because people overseas don't necessarily want to pick up truck
like here in America.
You know, the F-150, I think, is the best-selling vehicle in America right now.
Ford F-150 vehicle, the pickup truck I am, and followed by Chevy Silverado, I think, something
like that.
And then dodges in there with their Ram Trucks somewhere too, I don't know if they're number
two yet or not.
We find, if we go to the car section of Toyota from the website, link I gave you.
The Prius Prime and Prius is there, and the prices aren't bad.
You could have one in the 20s somewhere, maybe low 20s.
Those are both hybrids, you know, they're part electric vehicles.
And then we have the Corolla, which is also available in a hybrid at $21,000.
That's still a pretty good price.
I would recommend the Corolla.
I know several people that have had a Corolla.
The Corolla hybrid is only like a grand more, a little over $1,000 more.
The Corolla hatchback, which I'll go ahead and include that one, because it's not an SUV.
For 2023, then there's the Camry for $25,945, $26,000, as they're asking price, you could
obviously get it for less than that probably.
However, that's an all-wheel-drive, also available model.
And then it looks like a car.
It's really kind of an SUV.
And then of course, they get Camry hybrid.
And then Avalon, which is also a nice car, but it's very expensive, $36,825.
And of course, an Abhybrid.
Then one they call the Mirari, I guess it is, for nearly $50,000, hydrogen-powered vehicle,
which I don't know if you could even get that in America, but they're claiming you can.
It's a hydrogen-powered fuel cell, zero-emission car.
I guess if I was going to get one, I'd get a hydrogen-powered car considering the state
of batteries, which we'll talk about at the end of the podcast for electric cars, currently
it isn't too terribly good.
And then they have a GR86, which looks like a car coming out in 2023 for high 20s.
Don't have any information on that.
GR Super, which looks like some sort of a sports car for $44,000, roughly.
The CNF for $35,385, $35,385, which is sort of a hatchback car hybrid.
And that's about it for Toyota.
Anyway, Toyota's still got a few cars.
If you want a back car, you can get one there.
I still think the Chevy deal for what was at the spryte, the little bitty car for 13 grand
was probably still the most attractive to me, though.
All right, if we open show note, I, for Nissan Motor Company, and we'll click through
the vehicles, and we'll take a look at the car subcategory.
We find that they've got a lot of cars.
You've got the Nissan Versa for $15,580, which is a good price.
You can probably get it for less than that.
The center, which is also a nice car for under 20 grand, it's $19,950, asking price.
Ultimately, again, not out of price range horribly, it's $25,290.
Nissan Leap, which I guess is probably, I don't know if that's across ever or not.
And of course, Maxima for $38,140, and I own to Maxima once they're nice cars.
But I didn't pay $38,140 for it.
So yeah, there are five separate car models from Nissan.
They're still going strong.
Now we'll open the next link, which I believe is J, and J will lead us to Honda Motor Company.
So let's go to their official website.
I'm just opening this.
There we go.
Honda.
And Honda's going to have some cars.
You know, they'll have the Civic and the Accord for sure, and I forget what else.
They even have a pickup truck now that they're trying to sell.
Just waiting for it to come up.
All right.
So under the menu for Honda, we can click on Honda Autos, and let's see what that brings
us.
Okay, clicking around there, I see that they still have the Civic sedan for $24,650.
The price has just gone up incredibly because you know, the Civic sedan used to be a full
$10 grand less than what I'm seeing here.
They just become so popular.
A new one called the Honda Insight, which I haven't even heard of yet, $25,760.
The Accord, which I've owned a couple of those, $26,520.
As I recall, I paid like $18.9 or something for my Honda Accord back in the 90s.
They were pretty damn expensive, even back then in 1992, I think it was, I bought it.
So they've gone up a little bit in the last 30 years.
Of course, they have an Accord hybrid and then the Civic SI sedan, which I'm not sure
what it is.
Maybe that's a hybrid as well.
Then they have a couple of hatchbacks, which I'll include, include the Civic hatchback,
which would be attractive to me, you know, for someone that might want to have to haul
up a brand new hot water tank into the house or something.
And then the Civic Type A TC, which is a race car for $89,900.
So we'll kind of look over that one.
Anyway, the hatchback gets 30 to 38 miles per gallon.
Actually it gets a little better high-well mileage than the Civic sedan does.
But if the Accord gets the same mileage, just the stock Accord, I like the Accord so much
I probably have one.
But you know on their website, they also listed Accra on here, I believe, which is there.
I didn't bother to go into Toyota's either Accra or Infinity, either one of them, because
you know, they're just more expensive models of the same cars.
They'll have cars.
So if you want a car, my recommendation still is to buy the Inexpensive Chevrolet, because
I believe it has a very efficient engine and its fuel mileage is probably very comparable
to that of a Honda for the price.
You save a lot of money.
And then of course we could go to Hyundai and, oh, who's the other one.
I forget who the other car company is from Korea.
Key I think it is, yeah.
And there are several models there that you could buy that are inexpensive.
I'm not going to cover them all.
I'm sure Volkswagen still makes a few cars.
Let's get on to the next subject, the next couple of subjects, which is Terrorism.
And they actually have a terrorist organization that's attacking SUVs here in America and electric
cars.
So let me get ready for that.
All right.
Sorry about that.
Go to show note K, which is a New York Times article that briefly talks about a terrorist
organization that's been running around destroying burning other people's SUVs, because that's
all they sell anymore for the most part.
American car manufacturers is SUVs, that's it.
And SUVs are less fuel efficient, they're more expensive.
They cost more to buy, but it's what everybody wants to buy.
They all want to buy them.
So anyway, there is a group that's running around attacking people's SUVs in America and
torching and burning them.
I just thought I'd make you aware of that.
All right.
If we go to the wrap up here, Item L has a couple links to an auto-week story and a
Washington Post story about solid state batteries.
All the electric cars had been built using some form of battery that's like what's in
the cell phone, an nickel cadmium, whatever battery that can catch fire.
If you charge it too fast and get it too hot, it might catch fire or it definitely destroys
the battery life.
And they've got a rule here in America that you can't sell a car unless you put a brand
new battery in a different electric car.
If you buy a car, electric car, just remember you're going to have to put out the 30 grand
or whatever it costs, it may be more to replace the battery in it when you sell that vehicle
to buy your next electric car, whatever you're going to buy.
And in California, they just passed a law I believe that states by, what is it, 2026
some time, they're going to outlaw gasoline powered vehicles.
So you won't be able to buy a gasoline powered vehicle in California, it'll be all electric
so there's a couple of problems with it right now and I'll just go down through the
list of them that I know of.
They're trying to develop a solid state battery for all these electric cars, first of all,
that won't catch on fire and you can charge it in 30 minutes or less.
And these solid state batteries are supposed to have more capacity than the nickel cadmium,
whereas you'll have vehicles that will be able to travel 500 miles, 600 miles on a charge
instead of what we currently have, which is a vehicle that would be lucky if you could
do 200 miles.
I know the Tesla is, they're range may be a little bit more, but nobody has a solid state
battery yet.
So we're waiting on the technology for solid state batteries and these two articles cover
that in the dangers of it.
The other problem is that we don't have the electrical power currently.
All of our electrical power is either provided by nuclear or depending on where you're at
coal or natural gas-fired power plants and all three are dangerous.
We haven't developed fusion yet and fusion still won't be commercially viable for at least
another decade.
In fact, they're hoping that by 2026 they'll light the fire on the very first prototype fusion
plant that works for real and then they're going to figure out how to make more of them.
And of course, once we figure out how to make mass quantities of electrical energy through
fusion that won't hurt the environment, then we have to rework the nation's entire electrical
infrastructure to handle like 20 to 30 times the power that it currently does because
everybody's going to have an electrical vehicle.
They're all going to want to charge them and the wattage that's going to be flying across
these lines is going to be out of sight.
They're probably going to have to use technologies that will include conductors that are less
resistive to electricity, superconductor technology and all kinds of things that we haven't
seen yet that will come out in the future.
So realistically, we're 20, perhaps 30 years away from actually being able to run a society
in electric cars and fusion, but it's coming.
It's coming and so we have to rework all that and then we have to consider one other thing.
I don't know how many of you have seen a video, but you might want to Google on YouTube
what happens to a hot dog when you hook it up to 220 volts, 3-phase power, 440 volts, 3-phase
power, and watch the hot dog explode.
Now if you've got a family of five or six and everybody's charging a car, let's say
there's four or five cars out of the driveway that have these long black extension cords
running out to them from the garage, charging, you're going to have to have some sort of
an inspection system to make sure that they're safe for the people to use because if you
don't, after being used for 10 years, a dozen years, they might get frayed and 3-phase
power is what's going to be necessary to charge these new vehicles in the future.
You could literally lose a foot or a leg.
You could die some kid running a bicycle cross, a tricycle, one of these power lines touching
it with their foot or hand if it's not properly insulated.
So we're going to have to have a whole new form of inspections to check these systems
over to make sure that they're safe.
I mean people are going to have to have their homes inspected virtually every year, maybe
twice a year, if you're charging electrical vehicles just to make sure that your system
is safe to charge so you don't kill your family with it or neighbors and end up at a
huge velocity.
The other point I wanted to bring up is while the nation reworks the power lines, the overhead
power lines for every neighborhood, for every city because of fusion and the power that
it's going to bring, we also have to rework every single house in America with 3-phase
power because there are almost no homes that have 3-phase power today.
You have 2-phase power and that's all you've got.
Which you can split up into 2 banks of 110 volts.
120 volts, whatever it is.
And 240 is 2-phase power.
You have that in every home in America but you don't have 3-phase power.
So every house will have to be rewired and they'll have to be inspected every year because
when you start dealing with 3-phase power and that kind of power, you run into extreme
danger.
So it would be my guess that they'll probably just put charging stations out on the street
that you can drive your car up to and charge them in your residential neighborhood.
There might be one in front of every house and you're just going to have to take turns
charging from that one station.
That's probably the way they're going to do it because I can't see them rewiring every
house in North America for 3-phase power.
It's not going to happen.
Unless they provide these people with an option of charging these new vehicles at 110 volts
in which case, if you're going to have a 5 or 600-mile range in a car, I guess you
better be planning on having that thing plugged in at 110 volts for 18 hours or something.
Because power is power, but if you've got a solid state battery, it's going to take
a very long time to put the energy necessary to make a vehicle move down the highway 500
miles before it runs out of power.
So there's a lot of caveats in electric vehicles.
There's also caveats with these hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles and that hydrogen is very
explosive.
If you have a leak on any of these vehicles, it will blow your house away.
Just like propane, I've had neighbors have propane tanks explode and it will literally
blow huge Ford farm tractors up on the top of Oak trees, you know, 3,000 pound farm
tractors and pickup trucks will be blown into the air and lodged into the top of Oak
trees that they have to take down with cranes after they put the fire out, all the residents
killed of course because there's no surviving, something like that.
So there's a huge danger with hydrogen-powered vehicles in that regard because hydrogen
is much more explosive than propane is today.
And propane tanks are what they use to clear heliport pads and Vietnam, you know, they
drop a propane tank in with a parachute and a detonator and it would make a big circle
after it exploded, it'd burn all the trees and vegetation up so they could land the helicopters
in there.
They would drop 6, 7 of these tanks in with a C-130 and set them off and the next day
they could land helicopters at this site.
So, yeah, that's very expensive and very dangerous stuff compared to gasoline.
It's too bad that we can't make a gasoline fuel that we could just use in our conventional
combustible vehicles that would not put out CO2 in the air, you know.
It's too bad we can't do that.
Our find a way to make hydrogen fuel less explosive, you know, I know they're working on technology
to try to make the hydrogen gas leak out of tanks slowly but none of that's ever happened.
None of that development has ever gone forth because they push forward with electric cars.
So, and of course, the other problem with electric cars that I see like, especially with
the Tesla is that you may buy the vehicle but if you get an auto navigation where the
car steers itself, you know, drives itself down the freeway, that is a rent to use option.
You know, you don't actually buy that.
You pay for it just like you would a service to your Google Chrome browser and you pay
so much a year for it and when you quit paying for it, they just turn it off in the vehicle.
You know, it's not their permanently.
For instance, I understand the electric heated seats and the Tesla are optional.
The heaters are there, you just get used them unless you pay them the money.
In other words, it's a rent to own type of deal and I'm personally kind of turned off by
that.
I don't like it.
I don't like what they're doing with cars.
They're turning them into rent homes, you know, apartments basically where you don't
actually own a vehicle, you're just renting it.
That sucks.
It does.
I mean, it's, it's, ah, the problems that you run into that.
Anyway, that pretty much concludes this podcast with the conclusion that you're not going
to have to worry about complaining about your car in the future because cars are going
away.
In fact, they've already gone away in several of the motor companies and even the SUVs
will be going away.
I believe there are quite a few Tesla's that are four-wheel drive, you know, they have
a motor in each axle or maybe each wheel.
But you know, the idea of cars is just going away.
I mean, we've had decades of beautiful cars, like I still remember my dad's 1960 Chevrolet
wagon with the crank up and down rear window and the sideways seating we had in the back
as kids.
It was awesome.
All that's going away.
Even the concept of owning a big Chevy or Dodge van, you know, a party van is going away.
The only place you can buy a Chrysler minivan is Chrysler now.
Dodge doesn't even make one.
I don't remember if I saw one on Chevy's site, but I don't think that Chevy has a van
anymore and I don't think Ford does anymore either.
They used to, but you know, now you've got the Honda Odyssey.
You've got Nissan's got one, Toyota's got one.
They all have these mini-mans.
And like a Chrysler minivan, I believe starts in the low 30s somewhere for the all gasoline
power version.
For me personally, I won't even think about buying an electric car until another decade
has gone past.
They solve some of these problems because when they get the solid state battery, you
won't have a need to replace it anymore.
You shouldn't be able to wear that well and you can charge it rapidly for a much longer
range to where it becomes practical and will beat a gasoline-powered vehicle, but until
it beats that gasoline-powered vehicle, I just won't own one.
So anyway, I've had fun.
I hope you enjoy it.
That concludes this Hacker Public Radio broadcast.
Thank you.
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