Live from Austin!

There’s a US car industry you don’t hear much about. Over 100,000 Camry hybrids have been manufactured in Kentucky. The State of Ohio has cited Toyota Motor Sales for environmental excellence. Over a billion dollars has gone into building a state of the art Tundra manufacturing plant in Texas. There are over 36,000 people working in the USA for Toyota. Yet somehow, there’s a perception that US vehicle manufacturing means Detroit.

True, General Motors employs a lot more people. In fact, they laid off 34,000 people between 2006 and mid 2008. During the same period of downturn, Toyota laid off… zero workers. Even while production has been halted, they’ve kept workers on payroll and used the time to train them. Ford, meanwhile, continues to shift production to Mexico.

True also, Toyota is non-union labor. All Toyota employees get medical coverage from day 1, plus tuition assistance, 401(k), paid vacation days, flextime, short-term and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and an on-site medical center with $5 co-pays and free generic drug prescriptions. With all that and no layoffs, I wonder why Toyota workers aren’t rushing to join the UAW?

For years, GM and Ford ignored the oil markets and the growth of environmental concerns, and filled dealer lots with huge gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. They lobbied for fuel economy standards to be relaxed. Chrysler actually opted to pay fines rather than comply with the standards, and classified the PT Cruiser as a truck so they could get away with 20MPG fuel economy that requires premium gasoline.

GM killed their EV1 electric car program. Ford pushed ethanol fuel, which was economically unworkable, and fuel cells, which require a hydrogen infrastructure that won’t work with current technology. Yet here we are, with GM and Ford angling for billions of dollars of taxpayer funds as a reward for their stellar work over the last decade or two, and Toyota to get nothing. If I were Toyota–or one of their employees–I’d feel a little aggrieved.

As with the $700 billion banking bailout, I don’t believe for a moment that the proposed auto industry bailout will actually solve the problem. I’ve seen what happens when government props up a motor car manufacturer; we called it British Leyland, and it was a running joke for a decade–albeit not a very funny joke for people like my dad who bought one of their cars and several of their gearboxes.

I think GM and Ford need to be allowed to file for bankruptcy. Maybe they can be restructured, the idiots in management can be removed, and a workable business can be salvaged. If not, then we should just let them shut down; there’s no point artificially propping up a business that makes cars nobody wants to buy. Shut it down and use the proposed bailout money to pay unemployment benefits to the workers while they find other jobs.

The "cell phone electromagnetic fields are giving you cancer" people have a new target: now it’s hybrid cars that are going to kill you. The NYT gasps:

While Americans live with E.M.F.’s all around — produced by everything from cellphones to electric blankets — there is no broad agreement over what level of exposure constitutes a health hazard, and there is no federal standard that sets allowable exposure levels.

Yeah, that may be because nobody’s ever managed to reliably, scientifically demonstrate a negative health effect from everyday electromagnetic fields applied to human beings.

Testing with a TriField meter led Brian Collins of Encinitas, Calif., to sell his 2001 Honda Insight just six months after he bought it — at a loss of $7,000. He said the driver was receiving “dangerously high” E.M.F. levels of up to 135 milligauss at the hip and up to 100 milligauss at the upper torso.

Who is this Brian Collins? Given the way the NYT quotes his verdict that 135 milligauss is "dangerously high", I hope he’s a scientist. Wouldn’t want to think the NYT was scaremongering, eh?

Let’s go back to 1995 and see what the NYT had to say about electric fields then:

The world’s largest group of physicists, the American Physical Society, has taken a stance on a contentious public health issue by saying it can find no evidence that the electromagnetic fields that radiate from power lines cause cancer. [...]

By comparison, at a distance of one foot, home appliances radiate fields from about 1 to 280 milligauss, the highest figure being for an electric can opener. [...] The earth’s magnetic field, which humans are constantly exposed to, is about 500 milligauss.

Oh well. I guess that means Brian Collins is just a random crackpot with an EMF meter then.

So, if you’re worried about the electric field given off by a hybrid car, make sure you do all your laundry by hand, leave the planet as soon as possible, and for god’s sake don’t use an electric can opener.

Me, I use the phone in the car. I’m crazy that way. Yet my blood pressure has dropped over the last few years. You know what raises it, though? Stupid scaremongering.

Proposal:

Instead of giving hurricanes and tropical storms the same boring names time and time again, we should sell naming rights to the highest bidder. Tropical Storm Scion xA! Hurricane X-treme Cheddar Doritos!

Weather maps could show the corporate logo in the middle of the storm.

And here’s the best bit: money raised could go towards relief efforts.

You may think corporations wouldn’t want to be associated with life-destroying disasters, but we’ve already seen the Chevrolet Avalanche and Oldsmobile Tornado, no doubt soon to be followed by the Mitsubishi Tsunami, the Toyota HSN1, and the Ford Wildfire.

The story so far: some unknown git cracked the rear drivers-side light assembly on the Prius, scraped the upper surface of the bumper at truck height, and disappeared quietly without leaving any insurance details.

So, the car is in for repairs. While they fix it, the insurance company (GEICO) are paying for a rental car. The temporary car is a Chevrolet Cavalier, the sedan model which starts at $15,175. We’ve got a deluxe one, with the optional CD player and automatic transmission.

Now, I’m no conoisseur of fine vehicles, but I have driven a Toyota Corolla ($13,680). And I have to say, the Chevy is a shitty little excuse for a car. As Edmunds puts it:

Despite various revisions, there’s no hiding the fact that this car was engineered more than a decade ago, leaving it hopelessly outclassed by nearly every other car on the market.

But let’s try for a more detailed review…

The Chevy Cavalier has extra-low “sports style” seating. This provides valuable stretching to the hamstring muscles, and helps toughen them up ready for dealing with the brake pedal. The ergonomic headrests in wipe-clean vinyl nearly match the seats, and are set back far enough that you can easily wear a crash helmet in the car, which might not be a bad idea given its lowest possible rating in crash test results and lack of side impact air bags.

The steering is subtly power assisted, yet still does an excellent job of transmitting the vibration of every road bump to the driver’s hands, providing valuable feedback on road conditions. At parking lot speeds the steering automatically stiffens up to provide you with a complimentary upper body workout.

Touch the accelerator and you’re away. The high torque engine gives you instant extremely rapid acceleration for that vital 0 to 10 mph stretch, then switches into a far more sedate mode for accelerationless cruising. Hills are no problem for the 4 cylinder aluminium engine; just hold the accelerator down, and after a couple of seconds you’ll hear a noise like a lawnmower as the car suddenly shifts into hill-climbing mode.

The braking is smooth and gradual no matter how hard you push the pedal, so go ahead and give it all you’ve got. Dashboard lights bothering you at night? Simply use the steering column adjustment to lower the steering wheel to a comfortable position, and it’ll block your view of the speedometer.

So hurry and buy a Chevy Cavalier now—they’re discontinuing it after 2005, it’s that good.

Today was vehicle registration day. This is stage 2 of 3, the stages being (1) get TX insurance (2) get TX registration (3) get TX license.

A necessary prerequisite to the vehicle registration was another inspection. The Texas DOT web site suggested the closest place that would handle new cars, and we went there. It was a Honda dealership, and the technician was scared of the Prius. He said we might need to go to a Toyota dealer, but there was a place a couple of blocks away that specialized in inspections and might be able to handle it—something about the headlights needing to be set a certain way.

So, we went to Alan’s Vehicle Inspections (Best of Austin 2003), a small shed near what was once a gas station. Alan verified that the car worked, and gave us a sticker and a slip of paper. I took that to…no, not the RMV this time. In Texas, car registration is dealt with by the county tax assessor’s office. So we went there and registered the car.

Since Massachusetts hasn’t sent us the title yet, the car’s going to stay titled in Massachusetts. The poor thing must be quite confused by now—built in Japan, sold in New Hampshire, titled in Massachusetts and registered in Texas.

The new plates have a Z, an X and a K, which makes up for the fact that we were too lazy and/or uninspired to get custom plates in the end.

And now, it’s time to make up for the work I missed with an all evening caffeine-fueled orgy of productivity.

During the Great Prius Hunt, I joined several web forums to try and pick up leads and get advice. I noticed that a lot of the discussions ended up resembling the Monty Python “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch…

SFGuy14: Lovely car, the Prius. Of course, it wasn’t easy to buy one.

carguy30: No, and a lovely car because it’s hard to buy one.

mpg55plus: I remember waiting 8 months for my dealer to get my Prius.

green14: Ha! You were lucky. It took my dealer 6 months to get me on the waiting list, and then I had to wait another 12 months.

carguy30: But we were happy to wait.

SFGuy14: Yes, we were…but when my Prius came in the dealer sold it to someone else, and made me start waiting all over again.

mpg55plus: You got off lightly. When my Prius turned up at the dealership, it only had three wheels.

green14: What, three wheels? Luxury. Our Prius had no wheels. We had to carry it home on our backs and wait for the wheels to be shipped to us. And we had to pay extra for the shipping.

SFGuy14: We had to pay extra, and we had to give the dealer a non-refundable deposit of $4000 in small unmarked bills in a brown envelope.

carguy30: At least you only had to pay extra. My Toyota dealer wouldn’t let me take delivery until he’d slept with my wife.

mpg55plus: I’ve met your wife and that’s a bargain.

SFGuy14: Well, here in California it’s not that easy to get a Prius. My dealer made me toss his salad.

carguy30: Made you what?

mpg55plus: Right…let’s see…My great grandfather put me on the waiting list to get on the Prius waiting list just after Otto Benz invented the 4-stroke internal combustion engine in 1867. After that I had to wait four years and pay a non-refundable bribe of half a kilo of finest Columbian. A year after that when the car arrived, it said “batteries not included”, so I had to buy 1,000 nickel metal hydride batteries at Radio Shack and fit them myself. And when I took delivery of the car, the dealer gave me a golden shower.

green14: Yeah, and you tell people you went through all that to get a midsize car, and they call you a lunatic.

So for my birthday, I got my Prius. Which means I finally got to drive one. Believe it or not, I hadn’t even test driven a Prius before buying one and taking delivery. My reasoning was that I wasn’t choosing the car on the basis of its performance or handling, and I was prepared to make any adjustments necessary to work with its eccentricities.

That said, some first impressions:

• I thought the smart entry system was a bit of a gimmick, and I would have been happy to go without—but in fact, it turns out to be really useful. You can walk out of a store with your arms full (in my case, full of packing supplies from U-Haul), and just open the trunk. No need to find the car keys at all.

• The steering has a really light touch, compared to a Corolla.

• The navigation system is complicated; definitely not something you can just use. One problem is that the interface is modal in places, without clear indication of what mode you’re in.

• Considering how many other luxury options the car has, the seats don’t have much in the way of adjustment. That said, they’re comfortable enough.

• The acceleration feels a bit odd sometimes, which I think is because of the gasoline engine kicking in. It’s not a problem, just unexpected.

• Rear visibility is better than I expected, given the rear spoiler. The two pieces of the rear window are tinted differently, which is seems slightly odd.

• The beep when reversing is a bit loud. I don’t object to it on principle, I just wish it was a bit quieter.

• It took some reading of the manual and experimenting to work out exactly how the ignition system worked. The information is rather spread out, considering how fundamental it is.

• When on the Interstate, the nav system seems to feel the need to remind you to stay on the road you’re currently on, every time you pass an exit. I guess I might welcome that if I had no idea where I was, but it gets annoying quite quickly when you know you just have to drive straight for half an hour. I imagine there’s a setting to tell it not to do this, but I haven’t messed with the preferences yet.

We started out with a cold car and switched drivers a few times so we could both check it out and verify that everything seemed OK, so initial fuel economy was poor. Once we made the journey home, we averaged just under 50 mpg according to the graph.

The paperwork arrived from NH, signed by Mr Toyota^† (or at least, his US representative), saying that there exists a Prius with a certain VIN. I’m still not entirely sure what essential purpose the Certificate of Origin serves, since it doesn’t have a price marked on it or anything; did they once have a lot of trouble with people maliciously paying tax on nonexistent vehicles?

Anyway, I went down to the RMV. There, I discovered two things: firstly, that they take credit cards for payment of everything except vehicle registrations; and secondly, that I had used the last check in my checkbook when I purchased the car, and in the delirious excitement I had been too excited to refill the checkbook holder when we got home.

Passing sailors blushed as I stormed back to the T station. One round trip to Cambridge later, I returned with a new checkbook. My bank account was graciously lightened further, and I was given two Massachusetts license plates. I was also informed that I would need to get the vehicle inspected.

I looked at the woman behind the counter incredulously. I reminded her that it was a brand new car, already certified to meet the toughest emissions standards in every state of the USA. She reaffirmed that nevertheless, I’d have to get it inspected. So, that’ll be a task for next week.

The truck with the transport containers arrives tomorrow. Everything’s now packed except cookware, china and cutlery. The air conditioners are sold, someone’s coming to buy one of the desks tonight, and once we have the car we’ll take all the junk to Goodwill and other similar emporia. The truck returns on Monday to pick everything up.

I’ve reserved us a ‘deluxe’ apartment at an extended stay hotel in Austin. It works out to cost about $400 a month less than we’re currently paying in rent. The location is described as ‘Arboretum’, which in fact means it’s near the junction of Route 183 and Burnet Road, a fairly grotty place to spend any significant amount of time. However, it does mean it’s about 5 minutes from IBM; I could even get the bus there if sara needs to go somewhere in the car. Supposedly there’s broadband Internet in the room if you pay a one-time connection fee, but who knows how flaky it is?

As the things to worry about get crossed off the list, my brain naturally finds new things to fret over. Currently I’m worrying about whether all our stuff will fit in the three containers we ordered, whether we’ll have time to load it all in, and whether I’ll destroy my back in the process.

^† Actually, his name’s Eiji Toyoda with a ‘d’.

My Prius arrived! Three days ahead of the most optimistic estimate! Now it’s purchased, time to tell the whole story…

I started the search on September 16th. Calling the local Massachusetts Toyota dealers quickly established that they all had ridiculous wait lists; the best wait time I was quoted was a year. However, the situation wasn’t completely hopeless—according to the online forums like priusonline.com and priuschat.com, dealers often get cars that are a color or a package that nobody on their wait list wants, or nobody on the list who wants the car can get financed at that particular moment in time.

Because we wanted the high end package with the GPS navigation system, I had a hunch that the legendary thriftiness of New Hampshire residents would make it a promising place to hunt for unwanted Priuses, not to mention that you can’t fit a gun rack on one. Another point in our favor was that we weren’t too fussy about color—we’d take silver, gold, green, red, maybe even black. So, I started checking every single New Hampshire Toyota dealer that had a web site, searching their inventory, and calling or e-mailing all the ones that actually had a 2004 Prius listed.

Almost the first response was from Autofair Toyota in Manchester, NH. They called me back about half an hour after I sent an e-mail. They said that the 2004 Prius they had on the lot was being shopped to their wait list, and that someone would likely take it even though none of them had said they wanted the BC package. However, they were expecting two more BC package cars in October, and could put my name down for one of them. The incoming cars would be brand new 2005 models, and they expected them to be at the dealership around October 10th-14th. Price would be MSRP—no special markup.

I should explain that unfortunately, a lot of dealers are taking advantage of the constrained supply of vehicles by adding $3,000-$5,000 to the price. Since the MSRP already includes a healthy profit, and the dealers get a bonus from Toyota for selling the cars immediately, people on the Prius forums have been rather scathing about the practice. I have no real ethical problem with pricing up—after all, it’s just supply and demand—but I had already decided I would rather buy a second hand temporary car than pay over MSRP.

The Autofair sales associate told me up front what the total price would be, including their processing and admin charge—a mere $121, whereas I’ve been quoted up to $500 elsewhere.

I explained up front that I wanted to continue to look for a car actually available, and they said all they wanted was a $100 deposit, which would be fully refundable if I managed to get a car somewhere else first. Again, other dealers are asking for $1,000 deposits, and some are even demanding non-refundable deposits. Autofair seemed completely reasonable and up-front about everything, so I agreed.

There then followed a couple of weeks of anxiousness about whether the car would actually turn up in time for our move to Austin, TX. During that time I believe I checked every single Toyota dealer web site for Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, plus I e-mailed and called a few places that didn’t even have web sites.

As of this morning, I still had no lead on an actual Prius available any time before the last week of October. And then Autofair called. My car had arrived.

Of course, it’s not as simple as it ought to be. Massachusetts makes the whole process as difficult as possible, in an apparent attempt to stop people buying cars in New Hampshire and dodging tax, or not getting insurance. Since I didn’t manage to find a description of the process anywhere, even on the RMV web site, here we go…

I have to:

1. Get the money from the bank as a bank draft.
2. Go to New Hampshire, exchange the money for the certificate of origin and an RMV-1 form. Don’t collect the car, because Massachusetts doesn’t allow any kind of temporary plates, and has no grace period for vehicle registration.
3. Return to Massachusetts and physically go to a state-authorized Massachusetts insurance agency, certificate of origin and RMV-1 form in hand. Then I bend over and take it, and get the RMV-1 form stamped to say I now have insurance.
4. Take the stamped RMV-1 form and bill of sale to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in downtown Boston, pay tax on the car, and exchange the form for a Massachusetts license plate. (Hopefully the USPS will successfully redirect our mail, ’cause we probably won’t be here by the time the title deed arrives 4 to 8 weeks later.)
5. Take the license plate back to New Hampshire, and pick up the car.

Not that I had any intention of committing any kind of tax fraud; the only question was whether I could wait and register in Texas rather than go through the paperwork twice. In fact, MA is cheaper than TX, so I suppose I’m winning, but…

One added wrinkle is that the certificate of origin is transported separately from the actual car, and hadn’t arrived today, so they’re going to FedEx it to me. In the mean time, I can read the user manual. The car itself had only just been removed from the car carrier; they obviously called the moment it came in. Its audio system hadn’t been connected up and tested yet, it hadn’t been fueled, and there was still plastic film on the wheels. But, I did get to sit in it. Very nice, extremely ergonomic driving position. The sales guy seemed as excited as us.

Once we get to Austin, I have to get new insurance from a non-Massachusetts agency, because the MA agency don’t deal in out-of-state insurance. The new agency has to fax the Massachusetts one to say I’m insured with them, and then my MA policy can be cancelled. Only then can I get my MA license switched for a TX license; apparently if you switch the license before switching the insurance the police computer will flag you as uninsured.

We also went for the Toyota Platinum Warranty: 24/7 roadside assistance to the nearest Prius-trained Toyota dealer, and they’ll pay for a replacement rental car while they fix the Prius. I got the 6 years of extra coverage from Autofair, because the price they quoted me wasn’t much more than the ultra-cheap price I’d seen on the Internet, and I was obviously feeling very well disposed towards them!

So anyway…Prius! Prius! Prius!

No news from the car dealer, though they answered my call and haven’t forgotten me. I’m watching various web forums on the off chance I can find a Prius within a day’s travel. If not, well, hopefully Toyota will ship on time and the car will reach the dealer on time and I’ll be able to buy it just in time for us to leave for Austin.

One effect of Prius demand exceeding supply is that some local dealers are selling second hand cars for more than the MSRP of a brand new one. Though I hasten to add that they stand no chance of selling me a second hand car for more than the cost of a new one.

Nor, for that matter, am I prepared to buy from a scalper. eBay has quite a few of them—people who buy a Prius for MSRP from a reputable dealer, and then immediately turn around and try to sell it for a few thousand over MSRP. And there are people who’ll buy, which is the sad part.

Me, I’d rather drive across the country in a second hand Subaru wagon than put $3K of my money in a scalper’s pocket. But if you see Priuses being sold in New England for MSRP or under, please do let me know…