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.
The Future of Auto Manufacturing?
Over four decades, MotorWeek has toured our share of automotive design studios and assembly plants. And the end-to-end process is basically the same as it was a hundred years ago. Well, one young American automaker is out to change all that, with hypercars, 3D printing and artificial intelligence-aided design as just a teaser. Our Stephanie Hart got an inside look at the coming revolution.
STEPHANIE HART: It’s pretty incredible to be here inside the Divergent factory in Los Angeles, CA. Not many people are allowed back here, let alone allowed to record video, because it’s top secret, so we are really lucky. You’re looking at the 21C, the world first AI-designed, 3D-printed hypercar.
LUKAS CZINGER: It features many high-performance specs. For example, 1,350 horsepower; the world’s first 3D-printed gearbox, seven-speed electronically actuated; and in-line seating, so you see pilot in the front and co-pilot in the rear, just like a fighter jet.
STEPHANIE HART: Very cool! This V8 hybrid hypercar goes from 0-60 in under 2 seconds, giving us a rolling peak into how vehicles could be manufactured in the future.
LUKAS CZINGER: The 21C is the world’s fastest production vehicle today on the track. It has track records at Laguna Seca and at Circuit of the Americas. It also represents the first vehicle that is digitally engineered, so generative design with the help of AI has actually engineered the structures, the chassis, the suspension, the frames that make up the structural backbone of the 21C.
STEPHANIE HART: Lukas and Kevin Czinger founded Czinger Vehicles in 2019 after the father-son duo invented a very advanced set of manufacturing tools. As a result, several cars were created, including the 21C hypercar.
Globally, nothing like this had ever been done before, completely reimagining how to design and build a car.
KEVIN CZINGER: If the auto industry is still in the typewriter era, which it is from a manufacturing standpoint, those tools are like Mac desktop publishing. Instead of using tooling of a car, you use a digital system that generates a structure and prints that structure and assembles it.
STEPHANIE HART: Everything about it sounds, looks and feels very futuristic. A kind of Westworld for cars. Many of us are familiar with plastic printing, but metal 3D printing is fundamentally different.
Components of the 21C were 3D printed right here; that’s one of five 3D print rooms here at the Divergent factory. Let’s head inside and take a closer look.
Think of metal 3D printing as a highly advanced laser welding process. To see it in action, up close and personal, is really fascinating.
LUKAS CZINGER: So, you have powdered metals, like aluminums or steels; in our case, a patented aluminum, meaning we have actually created that material. It’s in powder form and it sits on a print bed flat, and you have got your lasers overhead. In our case, we have twelve lasers. They’re melting that powder and the rate at which they melt that powder layer by layer, like a cake, a layer cake, essentially makes that part.
You actually don’t need a tooling and fixturing stage at all. So as soon as you release that design in the digital world, and you have a CAD image of that chassis part, suspension, frame, etc., you are able to print it immediately and assemble it immediately.
STEPHANIE HART: On a bigger scale, such revolutionary new techniques could completely change car design and manufacturing as we know it. As you may expect, Czinger is working with several OEMs including Mercedes and Aston Martin with more on the horizon.
STEPHANIE HART: What is your ultimate goal here?
DAVID O’CONNELL: It’s sort of this holy trinity of technology, performance and design that’s all rolled up into one package, and that’s what the 21C and V Max represent.
STEPHANIE HART: A limited 80-car run of Czinger’s 21C and 21C V Max, the high downforce version, are now being delivered to customers. But, this high-performance luxury American rooted brand has big plans to go beyond hyper cars one day, infusing the 21C’s flashy, feisty and futuristic spirit into every car segment, forever changing what’s inside what we drive.