I’m Julie, the Managing Editor of Car Talk. I wanted to formally introduce myself to the Community.
I’d love to know what topics the Community would like Car Talk to cover in the next few months. You all are the long-time listeners and readers of Car Talk. What do you want us to write about? Is there anything you’re dying to know more about? Any topics you’d like us to discuss in more detail?
Let me know! Feel free to drop me a note on here and let me know your thoughts.
I just posted about how a brick and mortar insurance store used to be a factor in decision making for a company. They are still there, but refer most things to an 800 number. Is this the new norm? Customer service from the 800 numbers, homeowner claim has been really bad, 2 months until brick and mortar helpers helped, I see their future as dismal.
How about an article on cars as a subscription service rather than ownership? John Gorham touches on that in his article about subscription services on top of leases or purchases so let’s go all the way…
Pay a fee and the car arrives, licensed, insured and all, much like from Hertz or Avis with a long term monthly pay structure.
I can give you my anecdote. Several years ago we had a bad hail storm that punched holes in our shingles and siding. The insurance company only wanted to replace the siding that was damaged and leave the undamaged sections alone. But the 12 year old siding on the house had faded, so it was impossible to color match which would not only look terrible, but bring the value of the house down. They fought us for awhile until we called our local insurance agent, who must have threatened their children or something because the about-face was almost instant. $60k in repairs approved less than a day later.
We’d been his customer for many years before this happened, and he was motivated to do the right thing not in small part because he didn’t want to lose our business.
But it works for them as well, because our agent has in the past recommended coverages we didn’t have, but decided to buy. The insurance company is making more money off of us because there’s a local, real human working to make that happen. So I don’t think brick and mortar agents are going to be obsolete any time soon.
I’m interested in reporting on options for EV charging. We talked about it here and I saw a short report on last week’s Motorweek. This would be for both home charging and commercial charging. How to choose a home charger and installation information. This might also include whether to install inside a garage or outside, given charging safety issues with lithium-ion batteries. We talked about whether there are enough commercial parking lot charging options available now. This would be influenced by geographic location and the number of chargers normalized for population. Another possible issue is at what point overnight charging will tax the electrical grid. Lots of opinions on that point.
That’s why I use an auto insurer through an agent (no names mentioned here). Call a big company and you get a different representative each time who doesn’t give a flying….because they are making a hourly wage no matter what.
How about an article about the cost of batteries for electric cars, cradle to grave. There is a huge environmental impact caused by the entire life cycle of batteries. An unbiased article would be nice to see. Buy @cdaquila a coffee (or more) some time, she is a gem and can provide a lot if intel on us.
Hey Julie, welcome. An article about diy’er friendly automobile design would be interesting. In the 1950-1970s era, if a diy’er could service and repair one car, they could do the same for any of them on the road, without requiring very many specialty tools. The technical documentation for these procedures was relatively easy to obtain, for example by purchasing the manufacturer’s repair manual for that specific vehicle, make/model/year . For Fords the book “Fix your Ford” would provide most of the info you would need to repair any Ford of that era. These days, not so much. So are car companies even interested in designing their car’s to be diy’er friendly, for maintenance and common repairs? Or do they instead go the other way, and purposely make such a thing difficult? If the latter, what’s the motivation?
We’re dinosaurs: they don’t want our business. Not only do few people want to fix their own cars but it’s cheaper to make modular parts that are irreparable. I remember de-soldering components from my first PC to replace them. Now they’re all surface-mount. I’ve repaired gas stoves and furnaces - they’re probably irreparable now too. I’d measure the time I took to fix something (building a bicycle wheel, for instance) and see that my saving wouldn’t have recompensed me at minimum wage.
They don’t have to make them hard-to-repair: the logic of modern technology makes it cheaper to replace. People on NextDoor ask where they can get their microwave oven repaired; the logical answer is that it’s cheaper to replace. I ditched a breadmaker when I broke the paddle; Consumer Reports recommends it; I tried anyway, failed.
It appears I am the lone tire expert. Lots of people on this website have some level of expertise, but I’m the only one who worked for a manufacturer.
Tom and Ray have made some faux pas over the years regarding tires, and it might be good to try to avoid that in the future. If you have a question, please feel free to contact me. I visit every day.
To @George_San_Jose1’s comments… How about an article on the current Right to Repair arguments being discussed in the automotive and farm equipment industries?
