Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back. Spring officially arrives this coming Saturday. Thought it would be a good time to talk about getting your vehicle ready for the spring and summer months. Who better to do that than the car? Dr. John Paul from AAA Northeast has agreed to join us today virtually and tell us a little bit more about that and everything else automotive related. John, welcome. Good to see you again.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Always good to be here, Joe.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Really appreciate the opportunity. We've tried to do this a couple of times. We initially were going to give folks winter car care tips but we had a big snowstorm, then we had a blizz. So here we are with a big rain and windstorm today. But we managed to get you in.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's, it's wintertime, it's New England, you kind of have to expect to make some changes along the way. And I think that's part of the, the joy of living in New England,
[00:00:47] Speaker A: if you called that. Yes. Actually it brings up a good point though. With this severe, brutal winter that we've had. What kinds of things should we be looking at our vehicles for now that you know may have happened to them over the winter?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, a lot of it really is preventative maintenance and if you've stayed up with your preventative maintenance, you'll probably be okay. But on the other hand, what may have happened was because of the weather you may have sort of put off some things that need to be done. So really keep an eye on things like, you know, when was the last time you had an oil change? Checking all the vital fluids in the car. When you start up the car, do you hear a whistling sound? That could be a belt that's loose.
Is the car hard starting? Maybe. And that could be anything from tune up related to a battery that's starting to go bad. And batteries really suffer in cold weather, but they actually fail because of heat. So you may have done some damage to the battery over the summer heat. And now the winter is starting to show up and starting to show more of that stress on the battery. And a lot of times what happens is somebody's car won't start, they'll get a jumpstart.
And really all you've done is, is you sort of fix the symptom which was a card and start. But you didn't really fix the problem which is probably you need a battery. The average life of a battery in New England is just a little bit under five years. So if you have a five year old car, it might need a battery. If you have a five year old battery, probably going to need to be replaced. So being a little bit proactive. Also, it's pothole season.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: You know, if you've hit, if you've hit a pothole and your car sounds a little funny now, all of those things can lead to some damage, whether it's tire damage, wheel damage, suspension damage, or even, you know, you could have loosened something up on the engine or the transmission and causing, you know, a potential long term problem coming up too.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got some doozies for sure. And with all the rain we're having today, it's going to only add to the situation, I'm sure.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Speaking of really, I mean the average person spends about, I think it's 6 or $700 on a pothole repair.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: So, you know, if you hit something, you know, figure it's going to be a little bit, a little bit of money. And sometimes it's covered by insurance, sometimes it's not. Depends on your deductible. So be, be aware if you hit something and your car just doesn't feel right, get it into a shop somewhere where they can check it out and see what kind of shape it's in.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Make sure you don't do any more damage.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Than already has occurred.
About tire pressure, John, when it comes to, you know, now things are slowly warming up. Do we do to be more concerned with changing the air pressure in the tires?
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Well, it's always a good idea to check your tire pressure once a month. Do it while the tires are cool, before you've done any long distance driving and air up the tires to whatever the manufacturer's recommendation is that's on the door of the car. Not the tire, the tire. You might look at the tire might say maximum psi 42. So 42 pounds of air that's fully loaded. You know, the absolute maximum you can put in the tire. Look at the, look at the car itself. The car itself might say 33 in the front and 31 in the back or something. But check it once a month. You don't have to get the fanciest tire gauge in the world. The five dollar tire gauge is usually good enough to do the job. The important part is checking it. And a lot of cars today have tire pressure monitor systems that tell you when you have a low tire.
Depending on the type of. They're not always that accurate. So it still makes sense to go out there and check. With a tire gauge, there's two different styles. One's called direct, one's called indirect. The direct style will actually read the tire pressure, but they don't work when the temperature is under 30 degrees.
So it doesn't really help you a whole lot. The other thing is the indirect style really just tells you if you have one tire that's low compared to the other three, realistically, you could have four tires that have 10 pounds of air in them, and the car will tell you everything's fine.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. Okay, so check it manually to make sure.
Okay. And of course, now air is not free. It was the only thing that was free. But even that's not free anymore.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Your best bet, really, go to a good tire store. Go to a big tire store. Most tire stores belong to a program called tire smart.
And as part of that program, they agree to, you know, if you come in, you know, can you check the air? My tires. Air them up if necessary. They'll give you. They'll give you tires a quick look.
You know, most of the major tire stores in our area belong to that.
And it's. I think it's be tire smart and play your part or some clever, clever marketing term like that. But most tire stores. Most tire stores will take care of tire pressure for you.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Okay. All right. And just because today is a big, windy, rainy day. Windshield wipers, right? Basics.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Windshield wipers. Windshield wipers are one of those things that we only think about in the raid, and then we go through a rainstorm and we decide, oh, my windshield wipers need to be replaced. And we don't do anything about it until the next rains.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: So if you, you know, if you're out and winter can be tough on wiper blades because you get all that salt film all over the windshield. And that's like having the windshield wiper blades run across sandpaper. So it wears them out pretty fast.
Generally, you're going to replace wiper blades probably once a year, and depending on how you take care of them, you can clean them. You know, take some windshield washer stuff and wipe the blades off. Use some alcohol, like an alcohol wipe. That will help a lot, too. But, you know, windshield wipers have gone up in price, like everything has. But on the other hand, being able to see properly is money well spent. So spending, you know, 30 or $40 on a set of windshield wiper blades is money well spent. So you can see where you go in the rain.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Let's not avoid the, you know, the big white elephant in the middle of the room right now. The cost of gas, John.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Yikes.
Yeah, yeah. This morning, the triple a gas survey showed gas at 355 a gallon on average in Massachusetts, that's up 24 cents since last week.
Crude oil prices bouncing all around the $100 barrel mark.
West Texas crude I think is just under 100. North Sea oil is up over 104 I think as of this morning. So we are seeing, we are seeing high oil prices. And every time oil prices go up about $10 a barrel, you can expect gas prices to go up about 20 cents a gallon. So you can in gasoline, a barrel of crude oil, about 40% I believe is, is used to make gasoline. The rest is used to make other things. The big concern as much as for you and I, the cost of going back and forth to work and filling our gas tank is diesel fuel. We're seeing diesel at well over $5 a gallon right now.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Really.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: And the, the thing of it is, pretty much everything you touch was delivered by a truck and that truck probably ran on diesel.
So with diesel fuel prices going up pretty dramatically, you have to think the trickle down is going to be everything else is going to go up because as transportation costs go up, everything else is going to go up. And that also includes things like airfare. You know, if you're thinking about going away somewhere over the next couple of months, you might want to check the prices now because that same fuel price could affect jet fuel. And as a jet fuel prices go up, gasoline, you know, ticket prices could go up too.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Right, right. Actually, just this morning the US Energy Secretary said this is a temporary situation due to the geopolitical conflicts that are going on in the Middle east right now, in the Strait of Hormuz. But that's not where most of the oil in this country comes from, isn't that right?
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Well, we get, we produce, we could actually, we use about 20 million barrels of oil a day in the United States. We produce about 12 million. We could probably produce close to 18 million.
So we could be somewhat self sufficient. The problem is our refineries are pretty old and they're designed to refine certain weights of crude oil. And some of what we produce here in the United States, we can't refine it fast enough. So we actually send it out and buy other crude oil. It's kind of complicated the way it all works.
So yeah, we're one of the, if not the largest oil producer in the world. But on the other hand, you know, it's sometimes is not enough. And the other part of it is where it gets used and how it gets used can make, can make a real difference. So there's a lot that goes into this also.
This is kind of the height of spring break, which tends to get more people on the road. It's also the time of year we switch over from winter fuel mixes to summer fuel mixes. So there's a little extra cost in that. Refineries are running tighter. The other thing is a lot of the refineries in the United States, we haven't built any new refineries and.
Or we've remodeled some, but we haven't. I don't think we've built any in the last 20 years.
And the refineries are running at like 90% capacity. And the issue with that is just like your computer, if your computer is running at 90% capacity, it starts not working that well. And that can kind of happen with refineries. When they're running at sort of full tilt, they're more likely to break. And when they break and go down for emergency maintenance, that can cause some disruptions.
One thing I try to warn people about, though, it's very easy to cause spot shortages by just panic buying of gasoline. Most people drive around with a quarter of a tank of gas or a half a tank of gas. If, you know, everybody in Quincy went out and filled up their gas tank today, it would. It could cause some shortages right in the Quincy area because people aren't doing that. So, you know, kind of just status quo. Do what you normally do with your, you know, as you use gasoline, if you want to try to save some money. Usually the beginning of the week, gas prices are a little bit lower. They tend to go up more towards the end of the week. Shop around when you can, you know, look at the, you know, membership stores and places like that where you can. Where you can get a little bit of a discount.
You know, I think the days of wacky Wednesdays are gone with gas prices. But, you know, there's, you know, you can sometimes save a little bit of money by paying cash for gasoline, too. So, you know, and drive reasonable.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: I was going to ask you about driving habits and what to do with our vehicle to extend our mileage.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Easy on the gas, easy on the brake. Old saying, been around forever and ever. You know, when you accelerate hard, you use more gas. When you break hard, that also means you've used more energy and you're wasting that. You know, you wasted that acceleration energy because you needed to break harder. Also, if you have more than. If you're lucky enough to have more than one car in the household, drive the most efficient One, whenever you can, make sure your maintenance is all up to date. We talked about tires. Make sure they're properly inflated. If you're driving around with a check engine light on, chances are something's wrong with the car impacting fuel economy. Me also think of your, you know, plan your trips. Think of your car more as if it's on a bus route rather than on a, you know, more of a taxi cab. You know, if you're going out five times a day to do errands, you're wasting fuel. If you can kind of combine your trips together, you're going to save fuel. So a bunch of little things like that. Also, lighter cars are more efficient. If you're using your car like a storage locker and you have, you know, you have everything from your, you know, sports equipment to beach stuff in there, get that stuff out of there. You know, it's just that extra weight is what takes away from fuel economy. And if you're still driving around with a ski box on the roof or some storage container on the roof, those suck up gasoline too. So, you know, be, you know, take care of your car, but also try to use it responsibly. And that's what's going to help really save fuel and make the most out of a gallon of gas. You know, stretch that dollar the most you can.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Curious. Do you think this, this current spike in energy prices will affect the EV market?
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Well, if it does, the EV markets almost a little bit in trouble. I just read the other day that, you know, Honda was going to come out with three new EVs that kind of put them on hold right now. GM has put their electric vehicle, their electric vehicle sort of marketplace on hold right now.
It's interesting to see what will happen. There has been, you know, if you believe things like Google searches, there has been more interest in electric vehicles since the gas prices shot up pretty dramatically. And that happens, you know, that happens pretty often when this, these kind of things. Electric vehicles are fantastic if you can charge at home.
Even though Massachusetts has some pretty high electric rates, you're still going to save money on compared to a gasoline car in most cases.
But you also have to look at the cost of the vehicle. You know, today's average vehicle is in the $50,000 range. Electric vehicles are right there, if not a little bit higher, depending on what you got to buy. You can, you could go out and buy a Chevrolet Bolt. It's pretty, pretty good deal. Or, or Nissan Leaf. They're pretty reasonable costs. But just yesterday I saw commercials for zero interest loans on some Hyundai and Kia electric vehicles and $5,000 cash back. Those, those kind of things certainly help offset the cost.
But the most economical way is being able to charge at home.
Using public charging, unless it's free, can get pretty expensive. I know I was in, I think I was in Hyannis and I used a public charging and at the Hyannis mall they have great.
The problem is it gets pretty expensive. I think I, you know, added 150 miles to an electric vehicle. It wasn't, I mean it wasn't too bad. I think it was like 10 or $12 and it did it in 20 minutes which was good. But if, you know, but still it can get, it can get more expensive, especially at places like hotels and some other public charging, you know, and then there's other public charging that's slower but it could be free, which is kind of nice too.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Right, right. You'd be curious to see if the manufacturers start to take another look and invest more in this technology.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's interesting. It's, it's still.
Electric vehicles have, have, the technology has changed so dramatically in the last 10 years.
Batteries have gotten better and we're really just still in the infancy of electric vehicles. Even though electric vehicles have been around since the turn of the last century, really nothing happened for 100 years.
Now we are seeing more development. I saw some, a new solid state battery that's going to be able to recharge quickly. It's going to be safer. We are starting to see more development in these, in this electric vehicle space and more competition too, which is, which is good. I mean it was, you know, it was Tesla and just about Tesla was the only thing now, you know, every manufacturer has some electric vehicle hybrids. Last year or the last six months, hybrid vehicles, especially plug in hybrids got pretty popular where you could, you know, if you didn't have any place to plug in, it still ran on gasoline. You could drive hundreds of miles, but maybe you were able to plug in and you could charge your car at home and be able to go 40 or 50 miles on most weeks. 40 or 50 miles is probably the most I'm going to drive. So I could, I could charge up an electric hybrid on a regular 110 volt outlet every night.
Save myself some money on gas and on those long trips that plug in hybrid could get me wherever I want to go because it's just going to be a gasoline hybrid when the big battery runs out of electricity. So it will be interesting to see what happens if anything. I think this is if we are only looking at a short term spike in fuel economy, fuel prices. So if prices are going to settle down in the next couple of weeks, probably any interest in electric vehicles may start to fade away again.
But it's really hard to say. And you know, keep in mind, at a retail level, the retailers don't make money when gas prices go up. They make money when the gas prices come down.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Because the longer they can hold the prices up, the more profit they can see. But when the gas, when their wholesale price jumps 20 or 25 cents per gallon, they're chasing that market. And even though they paid less for the gas that's in the tank, they're not making money when the prices go up. They make it when it comes down. So what you may see, even though wholesale prices of gasoline, you know, if the geopolitical tensions settle down, wholesale prices of gasoline may come down. The retail price may stay elevated for several weeks after that.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Until it makes sense financially for the retailers to start to lower their price.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: No, I understand. Yeah. John, it's always great to catch up with you. We've been putting up your website, your email folks have direct questions they can get in touch with you. But really, always great to talk to you.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: I answer every single email. So if anybody has a question, email me. Always happy to answer them.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Great. Thanks again.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: All right, take care, Joe.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: All right, you too.
