Should you buy a hybrid? This obviously depends on you - what you want and how you drive - and this report is inspired by common questions from people like you. Full details next.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

Toyota and to a lesser degree Hyundai have really inspired many mainstream new car buyers right now to consider a hybrid for the first time. Toyota with the hype surrounding the new RAV4 Hybrid (pity about the production botch there) but also with the company’s affordable Corolla Hybrid and the Prius, which has become the Coca-Cola of hybrids, owing to smart positioning and long-term market presence.

Hyundai also lobbing relatively recently with the Ioniq - which was just upgraded. As well as a straight EV version, Ioniq is available in two flavours of hybrid - the self-charging one that recharges the battery with regenerative braking, and the PHEV Ioniq, which also recharges by plugging into the grid (optionally). 

So, more people than ever are considering hybrids for the first time. Tim Bosher is one of them:

We live in regional Vic. My wife drives about 100k per week locally and has a weekly 250k return trip to the city at freeway speeds - so her annual k's are a bit over the average. I have asked a couple of dealers about the pros & cons of hybrid cars for the above type of driving mix and their responses seem to be largely bullshit. What is your take - and when does the price premium for hybrids make them a realistic proposition. - Tim Bosher

Here’s the answer that lines up with reality: hybrids do their energy management voodoo by regeneratively braking. When you brake or even just coast to slow down, they convert some kinetic energy to electricity and store it in a battery to help you get going again, presumably when the lights go green.

It is proper energy management voodoo - if you use Arthur C Clarke’s epic definition for magic. And if you don’t: look it up. It’s awesome.

Hybrids are therefore far more effective at saving fuel driving around town. Because that’s where you do all the voodoo-invoking coasting and braking. On the freeway, all the hybrid equipment - the battery and the motor, and the control and management architecture - it all tends just to become excess baggage. It’s just not very effective ‘out there’.

In Tim’s case, 70 per cent of his wife’s driving is on the freeway, so she’d probably get a better result on fuel economy and emissions in a small diesel car, like an i30 diesel. Because diesels really stretch their fuel economy legs on the freeway - and that kind of driving is just ‘Goldilocks’ for keeping the DPF (the diesel particle filter) happy and healthy.

PHEV is a hybrid with a bigger than usual battery that you can plug in overnight and recharge. So it’s kinda BEV + ICE as a range extender, as the good doc says, but I’d categorise it more as a Hybrid with a big battery that gives it additional, but still extremely short-distance, low demand battery-only operating capability. That’s generally how they roll.

You might get 30 or 40 kays of battery-only operation at low loads - but if you pull out to overtake, the internal combustion engine will kick in. Because the electric side of the plug-in hybrid is only good for low to moderate performance.

On the battery - in a PHEV it’s a big battery in the context of hybrids but still small for an EV. Batteries are so expensive, which is why, for example the PHEV Hyundai Ioniq is so much cheaper than the full-on Ioniq EV.

Supercar-shaped Corvette headed to Shitsville in 2020. Yesssssss! It'll cost about $170,000. 

Jesus. 

Same car in Retardistan: $60 grand US (which is about $90k ‘Strayan). 

So: Who’s gouging who?

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

This report is inspired by a dude named Chris Papa, by e-mail.

"Could you detail Luxury Car Tax and other hidden fees? The 2020 Chevrolet Corvette is set to arrive in Australia in RHD. Its estimated retail price here will be about $170,000. This is preposterous considering that in the US the 2020 Corvettes will retail for around USD $60,000 and converted to AUD that equates to approximately $87,000. 

"Why is there such an outrageous markup (of about 100 per cent)? How much of that is LCT? What would the rest of the cost be made up of? Why are carmakers (desperate to make more sales and some with very deep pockets) not lobbying the Australian Federal Government to abolish LCT?" - Chris Papa

Just to get the finances out of the way here: Australia has a free-trade agreement with Retardistan. That’s been in place for nearly 15 years, so to the best of my knowledge there’s no protective import duty on US cars. Nor is there import duty on cars from Japan, Thailand or South Korea - for the same reason. 

So the vast majority of cars on sale in Australia currently are import duty-free. 

Luxury car tax is indexed so the threshhold increases every year with the CPI. It’s currently imposed on conventional cars over $67,525, or allegedly green cars over $75,526. In both cases it’s an additional 33 per cent on the amount of that car’s value over the threshhold.

So if you run the numbers on that, ballpark, if the 2020 Shitsville Corvette is $170,000 - that equates to about $25,000 in luxury car tax. Meaning the cost of the Corvette minus LCT is about $145,000.

So, ballpark again: if the same car in Retardistan is $90k, there’s a $55k disparity between the Retardistan Corvette and ours. Part of that is going to be amortising the cost of gearing up for right-hand drive production over the number of right-drive units they think they’ll produce.

There’s not too many right-drive markets - there’s us, Japan, the UK, Macau. But essentially the bulk of Corvettes are going to be left-hookers. So that’s part of it. The rest is just GM’s internal pricing structure and what they think they can get away with here.

You can look at it like a gouge if you want, but the Corvette is going to be faster - a lot faster, at least in a straight line - than a car like a BMW M4, which is about the same price. And it’s a lot cheaper than a proper mid-engined supercar.

Still got that legendary GM build quality, however. Which could be entertaining.

Just for perspective, the ‘poverty’ 911 Porsche (not strictly speaking mid-engined) is about $230k here in Shitsville. Exactly the same car with the wheel on the same side, in Brexitpotamia is $155k (including 20 per cent VAT). The povvo 911 is $60k more than the Corvette, as well as being more than a second slower to 100. So there’s that.

If you want that level of performance, it’s cheap at $170,000.

Nissan and Mazda - dead from the neck up, sadly. Kinda like a cockroach minus its head.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

Five or six weeks ago, I fired a broadside into Nissan when the company - through its local dealer - sought to dodge what I viewed as its consumer law obligations. It attempted to stitch up a shitbox leaf owner, Philip Carlson, to the tune of $33,000 for a replacement Nissan Leaf battery, which in my view should have been replaced for free under Australian Consumer Law.

Happily enough, 170,000 people just like you watched those two Nissan reports, to date. For a total of 1.4 million minutes. Which is, to me, a brain bender. It’s a total eyeballs-on-screen engagement of 2.6 years worth of cumulative watch time, distributed among 170,000 people. Potential car buyers.

Exactly one month later I covered the case of Mazda being dragged to the ankle-grabbing room - I mean: Federal Court - by the ACCC for alleged deception and unconscionable conduct. Also quite serious, if proven.

Two videos there. 130,000 viewers - eyeballs glued to the screen for a total of just over one million minutes. (That’s almost two years.)

In these reports, I urged you to write to Nissan’s and Mazda’s chief spin doctors, Karla Leach and Mark Flintoft, respectively, politely but firmly to deliver unequivocally what you thought about each company’s conduct.

And I know hundreds of you e-mailed these two PR types - because dozens and dozens of you CC’d me on those e-mails. And I was extremely gratified by the polite tone and well thought out, reasoned, rational arguments I saw.

You know what didn’t happen - to the absolute best of my knowledge? No response from Mazda or Nissan to you.

So, let’s say you are a PR type, and one day, without warning, your inbox fills up with critical feedback from the public. This is in your wheelhouse.

What do you do? Do you pretend it’s just not happening and concentrate instead on keeping your sinister clutch of tame journalists and influencers happy, and maintain your platinum frequent flier status, which, let’s face it, is quite important?

I really don’t think ‘deafening silence’ is an option. Here’s why: if somebody out there, in the public, takes the time to write what they think, to you, politely and respectfully, as the CC’d e-mails I received were, and they send it to you … then I’d suggest there’s a level of quite strong commitment behind that stated position embodied in those actions.

For the recipient - the spin doctor - it’s a binary proposition: You can choose to respond, or not. And hey - if you respond it doesn’t have to be bespoke. It can be canned, cut and paste, and the intern can filter your e-mails and send back the canned responses, but at least it’s a friggin’ response.

I’d suggest that every critical e-mail is the chance to turn someone around, and this is the business you spin doctors are in. ‘We understand your concerns, we hear what you’ve said, and here’s what we’re doing to address the issue.’ How f-ken hard is it?

Electing not to respond is a gold-plated guarantee of the sender inferring you are a worthless mother-lover who does not give a fuck what they think. And that’s exactly what has occurred here, I suspect. Because not one of the 300,000 people who viewed those reports sent me an e-mail with Nissan’s nor Mazda’s responses in it, nor posted the same in the comments feed. Conclusion: It didn’t happen.

BMW says: Stop driving our cars. Right now. Literally: Put down the keys and walk to the nearest taxi, and we’ll pick up the tab. Full details next.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

Here’s some confronting news for you, if you own an ageing 3 Series BMW: In an unprecedented move, BMW Shitsville is urging the owners of 12,663 E46 3 Series BMWs - built between 21 November 1997 and June 30, 2000 to stop driving those vehicles immediately. As in, today. Now.

According to Rod Sims’s henchman - henchperson - at the ACCC, Delia Rickard:

“Because of the critical level of risk, the ACCC urges people to stop driving their vehicle immediately and to contact BMW to arrange to have their vehicle inspected as soon as possible.”

I’d suggest that conservative corporations and regulators in this sphere, such as BMW and the ACCC respectively, do not use terms like ‘immediately’ and ‘critical level of risk’ frivolously. Safe to assume this message is not clickbait.

A new type of defective Takata airbag has been linked to what the ACCC is calling (quote) “an abnormal pattern of airbag deployments in Australia, Japan and the US”. 

Bottom line: the Takata airbag recall just got slightly bigger, and somewhat more serious. It’s being reported that these specific airbags have been linked to one death and one serious injury here - authorities are being a little cagey about the details surrounding that, however, because the death remains a matter before the coroner.

The ACCC and BMW are collaborating and co-operating on this. There’s no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of BMW. 

You can check the VIN code online to see if your ageing 3 Series is affected at recall.bmw.com.au (repeat). Or call 1800 243 675 (repeat) - that’s a dedicated BMW airbag recall hotline - or drop into (or call) your local dealer. In a taxi. Keep the receipt. Or, better still:

“BMW will arrange to tow your vehicle to repair facilities for inspection, or send a mobile technician out to your premises or vehicle’s location to inspect the vehicle.” - ACCC

And here’s my favourite part of this story:

“If your vehicle has been fitted with one of these dangerous airbags, BMW will arrange a loan or hire car or reimbursement for alternative transportation costs until airbag replacement parts are available or until other arrangements are made. You may also wish to discuss the vehicle being purchased back by BMW.” - ACCC

This is an example of rock solid corporate conduct - a rarity in the car industry here, I think you’d agree. 

These affected vehicles are two decades old, but nobody’s being left out in the cold, and BMW is picking up the tab. You want to see robust commitment to the customer? This is it. Even if that customer is the second, third or fourth owner.

I’m really not sure we’d see the same level of ethical conduct from the Monkey-gassers at the Volkswagen Group, or the three-pronged Swastika specialists at Daimler. So - complete respect for doing the right thing on this occasion. 

It could take the BMW as long as 18 months to replace any defective airbags - and that’s simply gotta be a supply issue. Hence the offer for loan and hire cars, taxi reimbursement, and/or buybacks.

In this episode I took my new YouTube live-streaming setup out of the blocks for the first time - properly out of the blocks, and decided to do a whole half-hour segment entirely ad-lib, answering your questions.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

This episode was an opportunity to test-drive my new live-streaming 3-camera video studio and also get inside the head of the kinds of issues that do new-car buyers' heads in...

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

Vlog-style report today - it's not every day you have to pick up a $350k luxury saloon, and deal with people who seem hell-bent on shooting themselves in the foot in the service department.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

"Regrettably, my 2015 Captiva has a (potentially) blown turbo. I am taking it to Holden next week for it to be assessed. Luckily my car is still under warranty. Will my turbo be replaced under warranty?"

So I’m not going to use the guy’s name here, because I don’t want to embarrass him or affect the drama playing out at the dealership. And in response to him, I explained that warranty covers manufacturing defects and premature failures.

So, if you have your car serviced on time and you don’t abuse it, these kinds of defects are almost certain to be covered under warranty. If you don’t get it serviced properly then they’re standing on a pretty strong foundation when they tell you the repair bill is going to be your problem. 

So I asked our hero about the service history - and the response I got made me feel a little like Neo, taking the red pill.

"I got the car regularly serviced at the kms but not in line with the months. For example, when it was due for the 75,000km/45-month service, it was serviced at 76,500km/50 months. Would that be a risk to a warranty claim? The car had never been abused just driven as a family car."

It’s the time or the distance - whichever comes first. That’s absolutely clear in all the documentation. ‘I didn’t know’ is not a defence. Most modern cars have a service indicator - a message pops up and says ‘service due now’.

There’s absolutely no ambiguity about what that means.

A massive five months late on the time. Jesus. Five months… (That’s owner abuse, even if you drive like Liz Regina’s in the back, every day.)

So this is the bit where I explain to the punter that bracing for significant financial impact seems prudent. If you’re ever in this position I wouldn’t mention the service history - but it’s gunna take a miracle of Biblical proportion for them to overlook that. 

You simply must get services done on time - meaning time or distance - whichever occurs first - otherwise it does constitute owner abuse. The average car in Australia drives just under 15,000 kilometres a year, and that means about half of all cars subject to 12-month/15,000-kilometre service intervals are going to have the time come up before the distance.

The other thing to realise is that the time component is not a rip-off. If you don’t drive that much, this is hell on earth for engine oil. Lots of impurities get into your oil, thanks to not very much full-temperature operation between each cold start. This is very bad for your engine. It’s why they engineer in a time component in the first place.

And you can’t negotiate this away, no matter how clever an orator you are. It’s not a debate. Servicing is a black and white obligation.

If you fail to meet these obligations and you’re looking at a massive bill, about all you can do is think about getting a decent independent mechanic to do the repairs, because that’s gunna be thousands of dollars cheaper than a dealership, and you could also think about fitting a quality, aftermarket turbo for the same reason.

Should you still buy a new Mazda in light of the ACCC’s unconscionable conduct consumer law court case?

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

Lot of response to Friday’s report on the ACCC’s festive Mazda-reaming legal preparations. 

"Weren’t you recommending Mazda over other brands? Or is it a case of do you want to be shot once with a 22 or six times with a 357 magnum?" - Anon Amos

To those of you who are confused or uncertain about where I stand on this, and whether or not to buy a new Mazda, now, or in 2020: I’d say decide for yourself, but to me it plays out like this:

The engineering from Mazda is typically first-rate. Mazda today is what Honda was in the 1990s - the BMW of the east, essentially. BMW would probably disagree there. Whatever. 21st Century Mazda is a real driver of mainstream automotive innovation.

The ACCC’s allegations point to a culture of poor customer service within the organisation, here in Arse-trailer, and if true, that is a serious problem. This is yet to be determined by a court. You might infer a line between smoke and fire here, but sometimes smoke is just smoke. We’ll have to see.

Mazda is reacting to the ACCC’s court case now. It’s inconceivable that, in addition to making defensive bullshit public statements in respect of the pending court case, that a series of far more serious commercial meetings and confidential communications is not also taking place at Mazda right now.

One of those meetings would be about making sure the ACCC does not get any more cannon fodder from customers who get stiffed this week, next week, and into the future. Like, let’s not give the regulator any more ammunition.

If you were Big Bhindi - boss of Mazda Shitsville - do you think you might send an urgent communique to all your dealers directing them to be model citizens of customer compliance and complaint resolution, henceforth? I think you probably would. I certainly would.

So, in short, because of the excellence of the engineering, the high-level regulatory scrutiny, and the perfect storm of depressed sales generally compounded by what I’m sure will be a stampede of customers away from Mazda following the ACCC’s high profile press conference last week, I actually think it’s a pretty solid time to buy a Mazda. 

The product has always been pretty good, and recent events suggest to me that consumer law compliance is likely to improve dramatically from today. 

I know that’s counterintuitive - or at least that’s how it might seem to you - but I don’t want to punish Mazda. Mazda’s commercial success or failure is a matter for them. 

I think compliance will improve from today, and the product remains excellent.

The icing on the cake here is: If you give it a couple of weeks, and there is a profound drop in enquiry across Mazda dealerships, the end of this month will be a real opportunity for you to secure an excellent deal on a new Mazda.

Triton's a quiet achiever with decent performance and a proven track record of good reliability and support - unlike most other utes in the market

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

The Triton is number three 4x4 ute in the country behind the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger, but is ahead of the Holden Colorado.

Since the Triton began production 40 years ago they’ve managed to sell 4.7 million units. It’s a profound automotive success any way you carve that figure.

The first thing about Triton is its nice, tractable 2.4-lite turbo diesel engine

Pricing and features make the Triton worth a good look, as does the long warranty and extended service interval. I get complaints about plenty of utes, from owners getting hung out to dry - typically Rangers and Colorados. Triton is the exact opposite. The few complaints I've had over Triton in the past few years were mainly dealers behaving badly - once they were made aware, Mitsubishi Motors resolved them pretty quickly.

In breaking news: the ACCC just woke up. Amazing. Plus, they’ve invited Mazda to a public ankle-grabbing contest. Act now, because front row seats to this one are certain to sell out fast.

Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): https://autoexpert.com.au/contact

Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url

The ACCC has decided to sue Mazda Australia Dickheads Proprietry Limited for alleged breaches of consumer law and behaving like unprincipled cocks generally in relation to customer support.

Apparently the ACCC has assembled a conga line of disgruntled customers - I think they call them ‘witnesses’ now - stretching over the horizon, back to 2013, and the watchdog says Mazda Dickheads could not fix the problems, fobbed them off to case managers who were completely ineffective, lied about the severity of faults, and told the affected owners they were not entitled to refunds - which is such bullshit, but pretty typical for the Shitsvillian car industry.

“We allege that Mazda repeatedly refused to provide a refund or a replacement at no cost to the consumers and pressured them to accept lesser offers which were made by Mazda only after multiple failures of the vehicles and repeated attempted repairs.” - Rod Sims

This is the one that does my head in: The ACCC says in cases of protracted problems, instead of offering a refund or a free replacement vehicle, which is what the law demands, Mazda customers were offered less money than their cars were actually worth as a buyback - and then, Mazda arseholes put owners under extreme pressure to accept their bullshit offers, by claiming the offers were short-term and final. 

The mafia does business this way.