Smart Car Shopping
So, you want to buy a new car. You know you are likely to own it for at least 7 years or longer. That’s pretty typical these days. So, you not only want to get the best deal today, you also want to make sure it remains a smart choice for many miles and years ahead. Our FYI reporter Lauren Morrison knows the ins and outs of smart car buying, and she’s up next to give us the lowdown.
LAUREN MORRISION: Today’s savvy car buyers know that spending quality time online, researching models, specs and prices...
... ”will save time and money here, on the dealership lot. Doing your homework ahead of time is key, and there are plenty of shopping tools available to help guide your decision.”
Stephen Dupal and his fiancee Sherryn Daniel are in the market for a small, economical commuter car to replace Stephen’s aging Corolla. Before heading to commercial web pages for option packages and pricing info, several federal government sites helped narrow their search in the areas of fuel economy, safety and alternative fuels, three of their key parameters.
The joint Department of Energy and EPA Fuel Economy website provides convenient, one stop shopping for everything most buyers will ever want to know about maximizing mpg in their next car.
Here, consumers can compare up to four different vehicles at a time, and their fuel economy ratings, energy and environment scores, basic engine and transmission size, driving range, and annual fuel costs, along with real-world fuel consumption data provided by actual owners. The web-site had over 25 million user sessions last year!
STEPHEN DUPAL: I like to have like those charts and plots and graphs to kind of compare things in a numerical basis so I know what I’m looking for and then I can verify..oh yes, this car will have what I need based on these metrics..
LAUREN MORRISION: Other useful content on the website, and free fuel economy mobile app, includes driving and maintenance tips to help you get the most out of your vehicle, easy-to-understand descriptions of new vehicle technology, information about available tax incentives for advanced-technology vehicles, trip calculators, and more!
In the area of safety, you can start with the government’s “safercar” website (safercar.gov) for how a car fares in mandated crash testing and rollover ratings. The site spells out which vehicles go beyond requirements, and have cutting edge safety technology.
SHERRYN DANIEL: What I like about the safercar website is there’s just so many little applications, where all we have to do is enter the make and the model of the car, and we can see if it was recalled, we can look for certain safety features, I even learned about rollover that this is the most lethal type of car accident and that with the best type of car, you can prevent damage.
LAUREN MORRISION: But, you’re a consumer or a fleet manager that is up to date... Maybe even ahead of the crowd. So, perhaps a plug-in hybrid or even full electric car fits your lifestyle or business. Or, a vehicle that runs on another non-traditional fuel like e85, bio-diesel, natural gas, propane, or even hydrogen.
Now, you need to know not only the specs, but the pros and cons, and practicality of each fuel. Well, for that, more than 1.5 million users a year check out the Energy Department’s “Alternative Fuels Data Center” website (afdc.energy.gov).
The afdc website and alt-fuel app are designed to eliminate your confusion over the various types of alternative fuels and their vehicles. And now that plug-in and alt-fuel vehicles are being sold with ever increasing range, the website’s fueling station database is enjoying increasing popularity as well.
SHERRYN DANIEL: …there’s this link where you can just type in your state so, if we bought like a hybrid, or a car that uses natural gas or something like that, we can look up stations nearby ahead of time when we travel.
LAUREN MORRISION: The end game in all this is to be the best informed new car shopper you can possibly be. And ultimately, to buy or lease a new car, SUV, or truck, you can live with today, and way into the future. These commercial-free, dot-gov websites can help you to avoid costly mistakes and surprises, before and after you visit the dealership.
Airbag Safety
In 2014, we were all shocked when we first heard about the massive Takata airbag recall. Roughly 40 million vehicles on our roads had defective and potentially deadly airbags. Now, a decade later, about 85% of those suspect airbags have been replaced. But as our Stephanie Hart reveals, there are still millions of defective units out there; and spreading the word is key to saving lives.
STEPHANIE HART: It’s extremely important to create awareness around the Takata airbag recall. That’s because right now in our streets there are 6.2 million defective airbags that need to be replaced.
Here’s the problem: When they’re deployed, they can explode, sending sharp metal fragments flying at 200 miles per hours throughout the cabin which could cause serious injury or death.
This defect, so far, has caused at least 400 injuries and is linked to 27 deaths. This is particularly alarming since an airbag is supposed to save your life, not take it.
FAISAL HASAN: There’s a chemical reaction that takes place in an airbag that allows that airbag to deploy and save your life or the passenger’s life. There was a drying agent that needed to go inside the airbag that did not go into some of these airbags. So now when you have these airbags in states like Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, California, where you have high heat and humidity and you don’t have that drying agent, those airbags now will explode with incredibly more force.
STEPHANIE HART: Even more troubling is the fact that about 40% of all the malfunctioning airbags are located in states with high heat and humidity, which is a recipe for disaster.
They are: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas; that’s according to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
A total of 19 auto makers are involved in this recall. The defective airbags were installed in specific vehicles between model years 2001 and 2015. As you may recall, this massive recall started a decade ago, affecting 67 million airbags.
FAISAL HASAN: Those 19 manufacturers all responded very quickly, whether they had a few cars or a ton of cars in. Some of the manufacturers have actually been sending people to your house, knocking on doors. They funded and worked with non-profits, anything to close out the rest of these recalls.
Right now, we need to create touchpoints, we need to create awareness. People need to go check their VINs and get these airbag recalls closed.
STEPHANIE HART: Essentially, this is a life-or-death situation. However, it had to be handled over time.
FAISAL HASAN: Whenever there’s an open recall, uh, sometimes the parts are not immediately available, and that does make it difficult because the OEMs are ready to close it. But if the parts have not been made, and the problem was this was such a massive recall, there just weren’t enough airbags and airbag parts to fix the recall, so it had to be done over time.
STEPHANIE HART: To find out if your vehicle is involved in the Takata airbag recall, head over to Carfax.com/Recall and enter your VIN number. You will find out immediately if you have a faulty airbag that needs to be replaced. If so, head over to your local dealership and they will fix it for free. The whole process should only take two to four hours, not very long considering this could potentially save your life or your family’s life.