How to Survive High Gas Prices

[00:00:13] I'm Alex Nizek. And I'm Jake Fisher. And this week, we're going to talk about what everyone's been talking about automotively and, you know, just sort of in their own lives, gas prices. So it's the end of May when we're filming this. And right now, the Strait of Hormuz has been open. It's been closed. It's been open. It's been closed. Prices have gone crazy. We don't know what's happened in the days since we filmed this.

[00:00:36] But the word unprecedented gets used, like on the news, like every 10 minutes to describe something entirely different. So, you know, we headed to YouTube. We put a post. We asked folks out there, what do you want to know about gas? It's expensive. People want to save money. And we got a ton of questions for us. So we're just going to dive into them. Yeah, let's do it. First up, we got a ton of questions about ethanol. And ethanol is something up, you know, we're located in Connecticut.

[00:01:06] In the Northeast, we don't see, you know, gas pumps that have, you know, the E15 or the various, you know, some of the blends that are out there. But it's a real important question. So we're just going to throw it to our expert, Mike Crossan. Ethanol fuel is something you may have seen at your local filming station or heard about in the news recently. And here's what you should know. Ethanol is an alcohol-based fuel. It comes from sugarcane or corn. And that's one of the positives of it, right? It is largely renewable. But it is a double-edged sword. So let's talk about the differences here.

[00:01:36] It's a high-octane fuel. It helps lower tailpipe emissions. And it is largely renewable. We can grow more cord and make more fuel. All that sounds great, right? It does. But there are some downsides. So I'm going to talk about those. The first thing is that ethanol fuel is not as energy-dense as regular petroleum gasoline, meaning we need more of it. It's going to take about 30% more ethanol fuel to get you down the road as compared to regular petroleum fuel. So your car needs to be set up in order to use it.

[00:02:02] You need a larger fuel pump, larger fuel injectors, and the programming within your car's ECU to be able to do all the calculations to let your car run on this higher ethanol content fuel. Now, there are some other downsides. And this isn't just exclusive to cars. You may have encountered this on small power equipment, things like lawnmowers. You're going to start the lawnmower up for the first cut in the spring, and it doesn't want to start or maybe starts, but it runs terrible. You end up having to drain out the fuel, clean out the fuel lines, and possibly even open up the car grater and clean it out too. That's because ethanol absorbs water.

[00:02:32] There's water in the air in this room. There's water in the air outside. There's water in the air in your gas tank. That water settles in the fuel at the bottom of the tank, and you go start up your vehicle. It sucks all that water up. It can cause a drivability problem or maybe even actual damage. So if you don't use your car a lot, you want to try to use the least content of ethanol in your fuel as you can.

[00:02:53] Or if you do run E85, if you have a flex fuel vehicle, you want to make sure that you're either using some fuel additives if the car is going to sit around, or ideally just don't let the car sit around, right? Just use it, burn through that fuel, keep the fuel fresh, and you shouldn't have any kind of water intrusion or corrosion problems. Now, when we talk about ethanol fuel, it's typically represented by E, meaning ethanol, and then a numerical number. So E10, E15, E85. What that number is, that's the percentage of ethanol within the gallon of fuel.

[00:03:21] So E10 is 10% ethanol, 90% petroleum gasoline. E85 is 85% ethanol, and only 15% petroleum gasoline. So that's what it means when you actually see it at the pump. And E15 is actually out there right now. It's typically noted as 88 octane, which you may see. Some areas, though, in the Midwest where they grow a lot of core, it is quite prevalent. And that's where they sell these cars that are called flex fuel cars.

[00:03:45] But the nice thing about those flex fuel cars are that you can actually run E85 ethanol fuel one day, and then maybe you're on a trip, you're away from your area, you're up here in Connecticut where it's tough to get. You can put regular 87 octane in the car because there's a little sensor in line in the fuel system that can detect the percentage of ethanol in the fuel. Therefore, it lets the engine's computer make all the right calculations and control the engine in the way that needs to be controlled when you're running fuel that has different ethanol contents.

[00:04:10] If your car is a regular non-flex fuel car, you definitely do not want to put E85 in it. Let's keep all the corrosion stuff to the side. Just simply, your car isn't set up to run it, meaning the engine's computer doesn't know that it may have E85 in it. Your fuel injectors aren't big enough. The air fuel mixture is going to be off. You're going to have all kinds of drivability problems at best. If you keep running that fuel, you could have actual malfunctions and breakdowns and damage that could happen. So you want to be very careful of that.

[00:04:38] So I think I definitely learned something from that, that's for sure. Yeah, always do, talking to Mike. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, this is corn. Yeah, this is corn. This is right. This is adding corn to your fuel with the idea of making it less expensive, right, is ultimately the goal of adding ethanol, right, to fuel. But the price on the pump doesn't necessarily correspond to, you know, great value, not necessarily.

[00:05:06] Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things with ethanol fuel, right? The energy density, if you will, is not as high. So there was a period of time where E85 was kind of all the rage, right? And we were seeing a lot of vehicles with flex fuel capabilities, right? But the fuel economy isn't as great usually when you're running E85 versus fuel with a lower ethanol content, right? So that's one problem. And as Mike told you about, there's corrosive aspects of this fuel versus regular gasoline and all these different things.

[00:05:35] So you don't want to put it into your snowblower or your small engine or anything. It's going to sit for a long time. Yeah, definitely, definitely not. Yep. Yep. So another way that you could save money, people are asking us questions, a lot of questions about premium fuel. And there's a lot of, I think, misinformation and people misunderstand a lot of things about this. So you pull up to the gas tank at the pump and you see, you know, regular mid-grade in premium.

[00:06:03] And then your car, you open the flap and it might say, you know, some of the cars we have out here will say 91 recommended or it'll say premium recommended or in some cases premium required. So can you sort of... Well, I'll add one other thing to the commercials for premium, like 93 octane, 94 octane, your car deserves better. And they almost make it sound like, you know, you're putting in rocket fuel under your car and somehow it's going to perform better and your cars are going to last longer. And it's... The name alone, premium.

[00:06:32] Premium, right? Yeah, premium. Like I want to get the premium car wash. Yeah. You know, I want to get the premium... If you bought a premium car. I got a premium car. I need premium fuel. Why would I do regular in it? Exactly. I want to have a premium lunch. Why not give my car the same? But octane doesn't... Octane doesn't make gas better. It is so strange that it even is called premium because it is... I mean, higher octane fuel is called premium for some reason, but it's just higher octane fuel. It actually kind of makes it worse.

[00:07:01] In worst case, it doesn't explode the same way. Well, that is octane do. Let's talk about NOC. Let's talk about all this fun stuff. But that's literally... The higher the octane, the less basically flammable it is. So the lower octane actually ignites easier. So you'd think like, I want gasoline that kind of like burns, right? You get the stuff that doesn't burn and that's the higher octane stuff. So it's just some engines are designed to work with that higher octane fuel.

[00:07:29] And if you have that higher octane fuel, because it's not explosive, you could tune the engine slightly differently. Maybe it can do more controlled burn or whatnot. And some engines can benefit from that. You get a higher compression ratio. You get a higher compression ratio and you could get more horsepower potentially out of a certain engine if you tune it for that higher octane fuel. It's not a premium burn. It's a higher octane burn. Right, right, right.

[00:07:58] But the truth is, is that if you have a vehicle that is designed for regular fuel, you're really not doing anything. You're just wasting your money. It'll probably drive fine on the higher octane fuel, but it's not going to be any better. Your engine's not going to last any longer. You're just going to be out of money quicker. I think people get confused sometimes because there is this thing called top tier fuel. And we talk about this a lot. Yeah. That's different.

[00:08:24] And this is a detergent that goes in the gasoline and can keep carbon deposits from getting built up in your engine. Top tier fuel can help any engine. Right. And top tier, I mean, generally it's like the name brand, like places are going to be that. Costco, which is another good way to save money on gas. Right, right, right. Well, absolutely. And the worst thing you would want to do is to get premium fuel, high octane fuel from a non-top tier brand. You're just throwing money away.

[00:08:51] Not only are you throwing money away, but also you're not doing the best thing for your engine there because it's not a top tier fuel. So your best bet is to have a top tier fuel. So get, you know, I mean, essentially a brand that you recognize. Right. Because otherwise you get to some of the other gas stations and basically they're bringing in gas from all different types of suppliers. They're not necessarily, maybe one day they will have a top tier fuel, but they're finding whatever's cheapest.

[00:09:19] Get something that you really know where that's coming from and get the right fuel for your car, which also could be confusing. Because yes, if your car requires premium fuel, do what's required. Got it. If it recommends it, it doesn't mean you have to use the premium fuel. It doesn't mean you have to use it. So Alex, what kind of, I mean, I know in our fleet of cars out here, most of the ones take regular. Some say premiums recommended.

[00:09:46] Occasionally we get in and it tends to be a real fun car that requires premium. So how do manufacturers decide essentially? Yeah. Well, I mean, Jake was talking about the design of the engine, right? If they're optimizing for performance in certain ways, fuel economy potentially, right? It's really the operation point, if you will, that that engine is designed to run at. And there are certain situations where you may want that higher octane fuel, right?

[00:10:14] If you're towing a load up a hill or a mountain in Colorado, right? So these really high demanding situations can help prevent something called knock, which we can get into. Or if it's unusually hot out, right? And you're going to be putting a lot of demand from both a heat perspective and a load perspective on that engine, maybe it makes sense. But most of the time on a vehicle where it's recommended, you can get away with regular fuel just in day-to-day driving.

[00:10:41] So if it's not recommended and you're going to tow, just put in regular because the engine's designed to do that. If it's hot, just put in what the manufacturer recommends because that's what it's designed to. But if it says recommended, maybe you put it in if you're going up a mountain pass, if you're taking a car on a track day. If it's very hot. If it's very hot. That's right. If it says it's required, that means that that engine's been benchmarked. You got it. And maybe even a warranty claim might even get denied if you haven't put it in. Sure, sure. Yeah.

[00:11:10] And it's, I mean, this can make a big difference in the cost of fueling that car over time. So knowing this up front before you, I mean, the worst thing would be to, you know, buy a new car and all that. And then you find out later that it requires premium fuel, right? Yeah. Definitely do your research first and understand what the vehicles require. It isn't that many cars that require these days. Required is really, it tends to be kind of performance cars. It's, you know, your Corvette, your, you know, a few other, you know, vehicles out there. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:40] The ones that are on the front page of car and driver that, that advertises spec and they're able to get two more horsepower than the competitor because they, you know, they designed that engine to work with 93. Yeah. Yeah. But, but generally, I mean, you're, you're paying about 25% more for that premium fuel if you don't need to use it. So I have a Civic Si that, you know, at home and it is a car that recommends premium fuel does not require it. What do you put in?

[00:12:08] And what I put in is top tier regular and I've been running on regular. And it's funny because I look at the, you know, in the forums or on Reddit and everyone's like, well, of course I want to keep this car for a long time. Of course I'm going to put premium in, right? Well, I've been running regular on it. I've never experienced any pinging or knocking or any kind of funny sounds. The car arrives fine. And knock is in it. Just to get back to that, knock is an issue where it used to happen on older engines a lot more.

[00:12:34] Knock is an issue where, where the, the flame detonates sort of incorrectly or too early. It's a free detonation. And you might hear something. That's where the name knock is coming from. But yeah, it's a detonation. Yeah. If you're, if you're younger than 75, you probably haven't heard knock on a, on an engine. No, you probably have. They all have the ability to correct for what you put in, right? Because we're talking, fill it up sometimes with this and then other times with regular. And ultimately, unless you drop every, you know, or take every drop of fuel out of your

[00:13:02] tank, you're going to have some mixture going on in there, right? So the vehicle can compensate and adjust for it. They have smart electronics that can go adjust for it. Now, Jake, if you were going to drive that car in the track and it was a hundred degrees outside, maybe you'd fill it up with the premium pump. Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure how many people, you know, are doing that and driving on the track. Oh, come on. At a hundred degrees. Yeah. With the air conditioning on, towing. So, okay. So we're just going to say it once.

[00:13:32] Check your owner's manual. If it says required premium fuel, put in premium fuel. If it says recommended premium fuel, most of the time you're fine with regular. Unless it's one of these conditions that, you know, like Alex was talking about. And again, your owner's manual may even describe those things like towing, driving real hard, that sort of thing. Your highway cruise, not a problem. So it's money in your pocket. Money in your pocket. And there's other ways of saving money. There are.

[00:13:59] Oh, and let me just, but if it, if it doesn't say, if it says regular fuel, if it doesn't say anything about premium fuel, you are completely wasting money. If you're putting anything other than 87 in that, in that vehicle. That's right. Now, I do like the ways that you actually can save. And we looked into this, you know, Costco, we mentioned, you know, I don't drive 50 miles to get to one of these places, but there are other loyalty programs that exist. You know, the Cumberland Farms, the Cumbies up the street from us.

[00:14:27] As if you sign up for the app and then you put the thing and some credit cards will give a percentage back to an amount. So just kind of keep that in mind. You know, it's not going to make gas a ton cheaper, but if it's something you have to purchase anyways, and it's more expensive than ever, keep these things in mind. I'll also say shop around too. So again, don't drive 50 miles out of your way to save a few cents. But especially when gas prices are volatile.

[00:14:54] So what you got to consider is like each one of these, these gas stations are buying gasoline at different times. And when it's volatile because the prices are going up and down and whatnot, when they purchased it could make a difference. So you may find that even with a very close section, you know, within a few miles, you might see 20 cents here or there swings just because when they actually purchased that fuel. So, I mean, I was just doing, I took a trip this weekend and like, you know, I looked

[00:15:23] up and like almost even the same brands, you know, I mean, it's like the mobile, it's like they're swinging like 20 or 30 cents from station to station that are just along my route. So it's just worthwhile and it's easier than ever to kind of check those prices. I mean, you could look at, you know, Google Maps and you could see it. Gas Buddy. All those sites. But like you don't need those anymore because it's right there on the map applications. Yeah. Although do check because I have, I also took a trip recently and some of those were a couple, by the time I got there, it had gone up 15 cents. Well, this is it.

[00:15:53] It's very volatile. Yeah. When it's volatile, it changes all the time. They're out there changing the signs as you're pumping it up. Yeah, right. So another question we've been getting is from people who, and I've been getting this one, not just from YouTube, but sometimes journalists will call us up and they'll ask us, hey, I don't do an article on gas prices. What does Consumer Reports think that you should buy a car with better fuel economy or buy an electric car? And we're in this interesting period because all the subsidies for electric cars went away,

[00:16:21] both at the consumer level and also at the level for manufacturers. Kind of there was this sea change where the United States kind of decided we're going in a different direction than the rest of the world when it comes to EVs. And then all of a sudden gas prices go crazy and interest in EVs goes up. So the incentives, the government incentives went away, but the actual incentives just exploded. Market forces. That's crazy. Crazy. Exactly.

[00:16:49] But it is interesting though, because we, you know, you think about it and say, hey, I want to, I want to save a few bucks every week. So I'm going to go out and spend $45,000 on a new car. It doesn't. That math doesn't. I don't think so. I remember. So, you know, we see these shocks sometimes, you know, I remember after the, you know, some of the BP Deepwater Horizon situation gas prices spiked right before that. I had bought a Prius when it first came out and it was second generation Prius when it

[00:17:19] first came out. And the dealer asked to buy it back from me like six months after I purchased it because gas prices went crazy and they were selling them more than I paid for it. But, so are you saying I should, I should sell, we should sell our Prius now? Is this the time? You should have timed the market. Timing the market? Timing the market always works. Timing the market. Timing the market. You heard it. No, don't do that. Get rid of the Prius. Right. Yeah. It's the same mentality that causes somebody to sell at the worst time in the market, right?

[00:17:48] And buy it at the worst time, right? Panic. Absolutely. If you're selling your car that gets 15 miles a gallon, you're probably going to get a worse price for that than the one you're. Sure. Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So I don't know if you're already shopping for a car and you happen to just naturally in your cycle of car ownership, be looking now for something then. Okay. Yeah. It makes sense to maybe, I don't know, widen the options.

[00:18:15] Maybe we're only looking at the 15 mile per gallon cars, but maybe you change that. But to, to totally course correct and try to go buy something when you weren't shopping to save money on fuel. Like you said, the math doesn't necessarily. Well, I mean, I mean, I mean, what we've often said, I mean, in our testing, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to buy hybrids. Yeah. Even if gas was two bucks a gallon or gas was six bucks a gallon. Yeah. This isn't like my old Prius. These cars are sometimes better cars than non-hybrid versions. They are.

[00:18:45] And you're kind of almost a little bulletproofed for whatever happens in the future. Yeah. If there's a spike, the people who are driving, you know, their hybrid versions of their small SUV getting 36 miles per gallon instead of 27 miles per gallon are, are kind of better off. And if the prices go down, then they're still in pretty good shape because they're reliable and they drive well and they're not making any compromises. So, I mean, if you look at our advice, consumer boards advice over the years, like we were

[00:19:11] like hybrids are really nice, you know, back when gas was two or gas was six. Yeah. So, so it's kind of like it's, it's dollar cost averaging as opposed to like market timing, right? For our financial section of their show. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's what really this is about. Um, but yeah, I mean, we, if, and you saw that, right, with the demand for hybrid vehicles from Toyota, whatever the brand might be long before these gas prices went the direction they've been going later, um, the demand was really, really high just speaks.

[00:19:40] I think to what we're saying that they're, they're good vehicles regardless of the price of gas. Now, what about pure electrics? Because this is where things get, because we're losing some vehicles from the market, but also we're getting this kind of influx of used EVs hitting the market. And whenever I talk to you about this, you have a great thing you say about that sweet spot for the, for the EV is that like, it's like used under warranty, right? Yeah. I'm trying to remember what I said. That's a lot of pressure. I quoted you a million times. Exactly.

[00:20:10] At one time. Yeah. At one point. That's the story of my life. Every once in a while. Once in a while. Yeah. But we have these cars that are hitting the market that are still in a warranty. Correct. That are, they've been on the, on the, on for a while. So we know they're more reliable. Yeah. Yeah. Relatively. Yeah. Relatively speaking. They're, I don't know. EVs are tricky, right? Because the technology is moving really quickly. Yes. The reliability is generally not as high as, as certainly hybrids, right? Or gas cars in general.

[00:20:37] So they can be a trickier thing to buy, but we do see prices of them in the, on the use market being really low. Well, and part of that is demand. And there's a reason for that. And, and, and again, going to reliability, which yes, some EVs are actually improving, but it's, it's, it's, it's always this kind of like early disadvantage when something is kind of the first or something is that growing pains. And when you get into the used EVs, you're kind of getting more into like the early experiments

[00:21:06] into EVs. And not just that you're getting into, I mean, like if you look at the used EV market, you get a lot of, you could get a leaf very inexpensive for sure. For sure. The problem is, is that do it. Well, and there's reasons because, and it's not because they're horribly unreliable. Don't get me wrong, but it's like one, it's got a connector that you can barely find it anywhere, right? For a, for a fast charger, they're pretty much kind of going away. So you have a connector that doesn't connect with it, with anything out there. That's a problem.

[00:21:35] And also the way they cooled the battery on the early ones, they, they don't hold basically the charge, the amount of charge that could hold gets for those older ones. They, they, they, they get really short, short ranges. And, and Nissan for a lot of the used EVs, they don't make the battery anymore. So sourcing one, if you wanted to replace it to solve some of that is, is really difficult and if you do find one, it's expensive, right?

[00:22:02] So now you've almost totaled the car because of the cost of the battery. So if you go five years old, used EVs are basically Tesla or Nissan. And then if you go a little end, and then a crop of kind of weirdos with like 80 mile ranges that we just, you know, whatever. And then you get the slightly newer ones and then you get to those, what you're talking about, those, those newer ones that were, that were hot off the press and maybe they hadn't figured everything out. Right. Yeah.

[00:22:28] Which, I mean, again, you talk about like totaling it was with the battery. I mean, this is what we're seeing. It's not happening with older hybrids. So if you're looking at a older hybrid, I wouldn't really have a problem with it. And so recently, so I guess our older Prius, we have a 20 year old Prius that my son was driving back and forth to school and had 170,000 miles. Oh no, the battery failed. So it was like, oh no, well the car wasn't told.

[00:22:54] We found a guy, he wound up replacing the battery in half an hour, charges 500 bucks. You know, he replaced the cell. Yeah. Not a whole lot more than the 12 volt battery, by the way, on that car. I know those batteries are so expensive. They're very expensive. I think we were like 400 bucks for the 12 volt. It was 500 bucks with installation to get that. So I mean, there's people who've almost like created this cottage industry on these older Toyotas. So that's not a game changer.

[00:23:21] The EVs, yeah, that big lithium ion battery is a little bit. But most of them are warrantied for eight years and 100,000 or even more miles. So if you're getting that one that's just coming off a lease, that's kind of where you're at. Now, obviously look at our reliability scores. You know, some of those great Hyundais, they all, many of them, not they all, but many of them have had similar issues around the ICCU, which we've seen in our reliability surveys.

[00:23:46] Some of the earlier Mach-Es, some of the earlier Ultium platform, those are starting to get, you know, the Mach-E, we've seen it get sorted out over the years. They, you know, figured it out along the way. So if you're looking for a used EV, buy a new one. Wait. By the newest one. What's your point here? Buy the newest one you can afford that still took that depreciation hit, but that's still under warranty. Buy the one year old one. And I do think if you're only interested in it for the fuel saving part of it, which

[00:24:13] is, I'm not saying it's not legitimate, but charging it at home certainly is going to be cheaper than using public charging, right? Lower rates and all that stuff. But just make sure it's really what you want long-term because if you just in a, I don't know, some amount of time, right? The gas prices go back down and you say, okay, I'm done with this and I want to go back to what I had or what's your cost savings at that point, right? If you got to go sell that EV and buy something else. So just make sure you actually enjoy the experience of having an EV, which can be great.

[00:24:41] And also look at where you live because in some places like Connecticut, we have relatively low gas prices and as many places in the Northeast have very expensive electric prices. And cold weather, which shortens the range and all that stuff. Exactly. What you really need is, what was it? Was it Back to the Future 3 when he had like, he just put garbage in the DeLorean and it'll just work it out because he made modifications in the future. A biodiesel, old Mercedes W123, right? We just want to be able to kind of like go to like a dumpster and just like put everything.

[00:25:10] Well, and the closest thing we probably have to that is the plug-in hybrids. Yeah. Which is basically like, you can put gas in, you can charge it at home, you know. And the math on those doesn't always math as you can see on our... Well, and actually check out, you know, our hybrid EV, you know, area where you could actually put in your fuel rates and you could actually do a calculator and you could actually figure out what is going to be cheaper for you in your area because electricity is all over the map.

[00:25:39] And actually, you know, hour to hour gas prices change. But, you know, in a way those plug-in hybrids are kind of insurance to whatever happens. So you could go, if you have a plug-in hybrid and suddenly the EV, you know, electric rates spike in your area, I'll put you more gas in. You know, suddenly the gas prices spike. Well, I'll run out of electricity. You're kind of covered. The math is a little more... You folks are engineers. The math on those and figuring out the payback period, that's more in...

[00:26:07] For me, it's like I have to sit down with a spreadsheet and it takes me all afternoon. You know, it's not just, you know, multiplying and dividing by miles per gallon or something. I love, you know, we're talking about hybrids and also, you know, these, especially Toyota hybrids, Priuses. Another shortage that we've heard of is this incredibly lightweight oil, the 0W8 and the 0W16 that we've talked about.

[00:26:36] Again, Mike Crossan has a great video on those. And if you look at them, this stuff looks like someone's, you know, doing the Pepsi challenge. It's this like light, light brown. It's a special oil that's used in a lot of newer Toyota hybrids. And unfortunately, due to where the refinery is located in the process, we're expecting a shortage of them, maybe of availability through like 2027 is what we're hearing. Well, I mean, the good part is, is that those hybrids, I mean, the oil change intervals are

[00:27:06] very, very long now. Yeah. I mean, the days of like changing your oil every 3,000 miles are pretty much gone. And a lot of times you're changing your oil 10,000 miles. So they do last long. And there's these, you know, part of it is they're, you know, there's a lot of synthetic, there's a lot of good stuff. And the tolerances on these engines are very, very, very tight. So they can use this kind of like lightweight oil. So it's not like, you know, I mean, 2027 in terms of oil change intervals isn't actually that far away. For the average driver, it's two or three.

[00:27:36] Or maybe one, depending on if you're hybrid work, to be honest with you. But yeah, I mean, so far they have made some changes. So they have said, you know, even in the manual where you can use slightly higher viscosity oil, maybe every other one kind of do it. So you're not going to destroy your engine if you're not going to be able to use that exact one. Yeah, that's right. But just something to keep in mind, if you have an oil change coming up, you know, if

[00:28:02] you're at 9,000 miles, you might want to bring that up just a little bit, just ahead of time to get that in. But we also, you know, we got a lot of questions about diesel. Yeah, yeah. It feels like it's like 2014 again. I wish I still had my hairline from then. But yeah, Volkswagen, clean diesel, all of that stuff. And then all of a sudden, diesel is... I owned a diesel passenger diesel car. I owned one of the last...

[00:28:31] It was introduced. It was the Ingenium engine from Jaguar Land Rover. And they put it in the XE and they sold about a couple hundred of them. And I remember I went to the introduction of it. And it was kind of the... It was like the week the diesel gate happened when they introduced this car. And I thought, oh, this isn't going to go well. And it didn't, which is why I was able to lease one for less than a Corolla. But my biggest issue with that car was...

[00:28:59] Well, first of all, I think we found particulate emissions are still an issue with diesel. And that's why a lot of European car makers have gotten rid of them. And then also finding a diesel station that isn't somewhere where trucks go. Finding one in sort of a neighborhood is, you know, it's a bit of an issue. So I mean, just a little diesel 101. I mean... Yeah. Not to get into like the cycle and stuff like that. How it does. We're off diesel in 1850s. Well, in 1850s. No, but I mean... Peanut oil.

[00:29:29] Volumetric efficiency. Yeah. Okay. So just diesel engines are more efficient. They give off less heat. So what happens with these diesels is you can get better miles per gallon with a diesel. And certainly Volkswagen showed that with all their small diesels and stuff like that. They were literally too good to be true. They were literally... But they were very, very fuel efficient. They were very fuel efficient. What they were not good is about emissions. So the reason why they're kind of like gone for the most part in passenger vehicles is because

[00:29:59] they put out a lot of particulates and stuff that causes cancer and whatnot. Also, they're not super great in terms of carbon dioxide because of the diesel cycle or actually more carbon dioxide. What they're good about is miles per gallon. But that's not necessarily the measurement you should be looking at. Which the measurement you should be looking at is kind of like your cost. And actually right now, and a lot of times diesel...

[00:30:27] That green number on the sign is the way higher number. So it's very possible that the diesel, the cost of diesel might be so much more. I mean, especially for us where we're using basically the same fuel to heat our homes a lot of like the Northeast. It may not be a savings even at the higher miles per gallon. Yeah. Yeah. So there are very few passenger vehicles left selling or offered in diesel, right?

[00:30:51] I think it's like the Silverado 1500 and Tahoe, like some of these GM trucks. GM, I think is... But really then it's just the heavy duty stuff and then agriculture and things like that, right? So... I remember we got a Chevy Cruze diesel in. We got an Equinox diesel when I, you know, and it was sort of, that was where things were headed. But I think a lot of that, there was a, oh gosh, the Stellantis, well at the time FCA with the VM Matori engine that was in the Grand Cherokee diesel. Oh, yeah.

[00:31:21] Which was another nightmare for these, a lot of these. And I think some of that, that just became a dead end for development. Yeah. Yeah. So... Unless you're hauling cargo or towing. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. On a totally different question, we got some questions about, you know, cars will have an eco mode button or, you know, what does that do and can it actually help you save fuel? Yeah, we've done some testing on eco mode and other drive modes for that matter.

[00:31:49] And eco mode in particular, we didn't really see much of a difference in terms of fuel economy when we measured it using our regular test cycles out on the highway, out on our track, that type of thing. What it's really doing is encouraging you in various ways to kind of drive, let's say, in a more fuel efficient way, right? It dulls the throttle response so you're not accelerating maybe more than you need to. You can override that just by pressing the accelerator pedal more, right? But it changes the tuning a little bit of the vehicle.

[00:32:18] But ultimately, if you just, it doesn't really save you that much fuel. So we have regimented fuel tests that we do here and we measure the fuel intake with a fuel meter that we splice into the fuel lines. And, you know, when we do our tests, we're like, okay, in this area you have to accelerate from like 10 miles per hour to 30 miles per hour. It's a drive cycle. It's a drive cycle. Or we go on a highway and we're going steady 65. Doesn't affect any of that.

[00:32:48] What it may affect is the driver needs to put their foot down a little bit more in order to make those things. And actually, alternatively, we see very similar stuff with sport. So usually the sport, it almost encourages you to drive it faster because you hit the gas and all of a sudden it's giving it full throttle. You're only putting in partial throttle. It feels faster or it feels slower. It's how it encourages you. But it's really not going to go and save you much. And it's not going to necessarily make the car faster if you do sport. Yeah.

[00:33:16] Some sport modes will cause the car to hold a higher gear, right? Yeah. So it won't upshift into, it'll keep it in six instead of upshifting to eight, which could have some effect if you're driving long. If you floor it, it's going to go down. It's going to go down no matter what, right? So it kind of depends on how you drive. But by and large, you know, maybe avoid sport mode, but it's not going to make a huge difference whether you put it in normal or eco. Yeah, just lay off the throttle. Yeah. Same advice. Yeah. There you go.

[00:33:41] There are other ways to kind of adjust the way you drive or take the stuff that you have on your roof that you're not using off to improve your aerodynamics, take the weight out of your car that you don't need in there, right? Some of these other things that help stretch your tank, right? We can link to that article to help save fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Don't pick up your, don't give your friends rides. I would never. Yeah, never, never, ever. For a host of reasons. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah.

[00:34:05] So, you know, I think the question that everyone's asking is kind of what happens now? Because we've been through, we've been through fuel spikes, some of us more than others. And, you know, we've watched the auto industry respond to these things. And we've seen, you know, small cars get popular. And then as prices go down, they start to get larger and larger and larger again. And the same thing kind of happens. We see these kind of incremental gains in fuel economy.

[00:34:35] What is next? What is happening? And, you know, another question we get is there's a new crop of highly efficient EVs coming from China that aren't for sale in the United States. Right, right. Yeah. I don't know. I see. I mean, there's some probably amount of fatigue. This is all speculation at this point, right? But fatigue in terms of reacting to the incentives being there and then being away and EVs this. The CV isn't going.

[00:35:01] Like, it's been a lot between regulations changing and all that. So, I don't know. We were talking earlier about time in the market versus time in the market, right? To bring it back to our financial discussion, right? Is, I think, in the long term, if you can zoom out a little bit. But, yes, along the way, there's going to be spikes of certain automakers bringing back V8s and things like that in the short term. But longer term, still going to go more towards fuel efficiency. Electric vehicles, I think, have their place, right? And maybe there's a dip now.

[00:35:29] But catch on more later, whether it's things coming in from different countries or our own automakers, you know, continuing to refine that technology. And part of the reason I'm saying that is because when we ask consumers, fuel economy is always up at the top in terms of what they care about when they're buying their next car, right? Regardless of the price of gas at the time we ask or which regulation is or isn't in place. It is important. And I think that's going to continue to be important regardless.

[00:35:57] And the other thing is that, you know, the regulations are still ongoing in other countries in the direction that the U.S. was going. Automakers are global. These product cycles are decades. I mean, I can only think of one automaker that chases year to year. Well, look, yeah. And even they have a bunch of EVs coming out. I mean, they can't. I mean, we're not necessarily going the same way in the same direction of the rest of the world. I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we're kind of like the Australians. We've got, you know, our kangaroo vehicles.

[00:36:26] Well, everyone else has got different species going on. And China has gone and said, yeah, EV is the way. Europe is kind of still going that EV is the way. The answer for America may be different. And there's other reasons why the American lifestyle, the fact that we don't have, I mean, you look at how much high-speed rail that they have in other parts of the world. How much driving we do. We have none. We drive. We've created our entire infrastructure around the car. Yeah.

[00:36:53] So it may develop differently. And I think, you know, where the issue is is that politics change, but the consumer doesn't change that much. So the politics, I mean, again, we talk about diesels. Well, Europe basically decided that diesel's for everybody and then decided, oh, never mind. We're not going to go for diesels. So and now it's EVs. And that changes, but the consumer doesn't. So going back to what you said exactly right, that consumers are like, I like good fuel efficiency.

[00:37:21] They're not all begging for a pure electric vehicle. And that's where it really comes back to hybrids. You know, I think that's where we're going. You want to be speculative. I think in five years from now, we're going to see a lot more hybrids. We're going to see a lot of these automakers that are getting into the hybrids and they're making them so well. Look at Honda. I mean, Honda, I mean, they were one of the first ones in hybrids, but they didn't quite get it right. You know, right now, I think they're getting it right the same way Toyota was.

[00:37:50] And I think we're getting to the point where like you look at Toyota and Honda or some of these major automakers, it's like everything is going to be hybrid. Yes. Because the new default. It's the default. And it's right. I think I think that's exactly it, because you get that fuel efficiency, but you don't get the compromise. You don't have to change your life around it. And you also talk about hedging your bets, too, because as we start to see these longer range, you know, EV batteries, we start to see prices come down. We start to see more places to plug in.

[00:38:18] You know, someone picks up a three-year-old, you know, used EV and says, you know, I really like this. And maybe their next new car is, you know, I think electrification is where things are going. And electrification includes hybrids, includes. Yeah. And I think what American consumers want is they want options. They don't want to be told what their options are. And no one told them what to do in the past, but people heard. Well, they were told what to do. Well, I mean, again, you know, what doesn't help is like, we're going to make internal

[00:38:48] combustion engines, you know, illegal or whatever it is. And that is like, well, no, if I want an EV, I want an EV. Let me go do that. And Tesla figured that out too, just make them desirable. So people want options. And you know what? If a couple of people buy V8 engines, you know, not every car is going to have a V8, but having that as an option is, you know, not going to end the world. I also don't think that's where the majority of the American market is headed either. Absolutely not. Yeah. No.

[00:39:16] I think people are getting back to our smaller, more powerful engines, getting back to our hybrids. I mean, you know, the loudest engine might not necessarily, it might also have the loudest proponents, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's where things are headed. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Right. So if you want more information on fuel economy, how to save money, investment tips from Alex. No, no, no, no, no. We're not going to know. We know. It's legally obligated to say no investment tip.

[00:39:44] But if you want any, any more information, head to cr.org. We have a whole bunch of information about, you know, everything from, from ethanol, best EVs, best hybrids. I update this article about a hybrid payback period. It feels like every week I'm going in there and changing the gas price to show how much quickly the difference in cost between a hybrid pay and, and spoilers, some of them are, it's instantaneous. As soon as you buy the car, you're saving money, any information you need, head over to cr.org.

[00:40:13] And also if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see that there's this donate button and that's because we're a nonprofit. So if you, you know, get our old fashioned paper magazine or go to cr.org, you're not going to see ads from car manufacturers or ads from, you know, fuel companies. We are an independent voice out there and we're funded by you. So, you know, help us do that job and keep being who we are because there are precious

[00:40:39] few folks like that out there who are still able to do what we do and we do it with your help. So really, you know, I believe in the mission. I hope you folks do too. So make that, make that donation there. If you have any questions, sending them, send them to talkingcars at iCloud.com. And thanks so much. We'll talk cars again soon.