Top five trends from the New York Auto Show 2022

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman and Pras Subramanian discuss their thoughts on the top five trends at the 2022 NY Auto Show.

Video Transcript

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PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So Rick, we're here at the New York Auto Show, 2022 edition. We're back after almost a three-year hiatus. And we're talking about the top five cars and trends and things that we're seeing here on the floor.

We've been here for a couple of hours now, Rick, and I want to start off with the car that's right behind us-- the new Nissan EV, the Ariya You know, Rick, I had a chance to drive this earlier this week. And I thought to myself, it's going to be like any of the regular EV-- pretty bland, whatever.

I'm actually pretty impressed with the entire package. I thought it was really quiet. I thought it drove really well, and the interior was nicer than I thought it would be. I think kudos. Good work.

RICK NEWMAN: So before you and I talked about this, I also thought this was the most interesting thing I've seen here at the show. So I was looking inside the car with some kids-- let's call them 20-somethings. And they were all fascinated with the screen because it's this wavy, contiguous one screen that waves-- I don't know what the right word for it is.

That's not what caught my interest. What caught my interest is there's no center hump. And the space where there would normally be that hump in the front is completely open, and the same in the back. So I was able to talk to one of the engineers about this, and he explained, well, there's no drive shaft, which you don't need in an EV.

But the interesting thing to me is that a lot of the companies that make EVs, they keep that hump there anyway and they use it for other stuff. So you've only got so much stuff inside of a car and you need to put it somewhere. So a lot of the EVs will still have that hump. And Nissan decided to take that out, and you can actually sort of sprawl out in the front seat. I tried it out. I'm a pretty good sprawler.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: And you can you know put your legs out, spread your legs out a little bit. And then in the back, you've got more legroom in the middle. So that's just one example of how the space inside of a car actually changes when you don't have a gas engine, you don't have to have a driveshaft running from the front to the back or whichever direction. Or maybe it runs from the back of the front. I don't really know. So that's actual innovation, and there's a lot more that apparently is coming after that.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, for fans of Rick and I, if you want to see Rick sprawling out--

RICK NEWMAN: We have fans?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Check out the Lincoln Navigator review from a couple of years ago. He's sprawling in the back. But back to the Ariya just real quick, you're absolutely right. I think you and I spoke to the same guy, the global head of design, Alfonso Albaisa. And if you remember, that console actually can move. It's motorized.

RICK NEWMAN: Right.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So you can actually create an actual console to re-familiarize yourself with, like, how a normal car is supposed to feel. But they allow you to kind of take that away if you want to go back to the future and--

RICK NEWMAN: And what we're actually getting at here is the next step, which is self-driving cars.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right, right.

RICK NEWMAN: And one of the things they did when they designed this car is think ahead. This could be a self-driving car over its lifespan. And they want you to be able to sort of look-- the passenger and the driver kind of look at each other.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right.

RICK NEWMAN: So you're having a conversation over here while you're keeping-- I don't know. Do you keep your eyes on the road? I mean, I guess you have to be ready to intervene is the way it's going to be. So anyway, a lot of-- we come to auto shows, and much of it's just more of the same. And this is something that's actually different, and you're going to see how cars are going to become different in the future.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Which sort of brings me to our second topic, Rick, which is, the EV scene now is getting complicated. I mean, you mentioned this before, Rick, about how basically what we're saying is that you have a lot of traditional OEMs that are bringing their EVs, right? We're seeing the Ford F-150 Lightning right here.

A lot of these OEMs are bringing out their EVs, but so are a lot of upstart companies-- the VinFasts of the world, the INDIs of the world, which is going to be called the INDI EV that's out here from California. A lot is happening, and I think what you want to say is that this could cause some confusion perhaps with consumers.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, I'm confused.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right.

RICK NEWMAN: I used to know all the EVs on the market. Of course, there were only two when I started paying attention. I think it was a Tesla roadster and the Nissan Leaf.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Mm-hmm.

RICK NEWMAN: There are now so many, and there's the PHEV. I think that's a partial hybrid electric vehicle. So it's part-- so that's basically a plug-in hybrid.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right.

RICK NEWMAN: So you can have ones that plug-in and are still hybrid with the gas engine. But those go further than they used to on an electric charge. And then for all the models that are out there, I can't keep track of all the models anymore.

But for the ones that are there, many of them have two or even three different configurations based on how much range you want. And they're-- as we've been talking about with the "A-rhy-uh?" Did I say that right?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: "Aria."

RICK NEWMAN: "Aria." I don't know why I can't get that right. You know, it's not on sale yet. I don't have to know until summer. And you're going to look at EVs and they are going to be different inside. So people are going to have to do a lot of work educating themselves.

I mean, a lot of people find buying a car complicated already. If you want an electric, you're just going to have to educate yourself. It's not impossible, but you're just going to have to do some work.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right, and speaking of some brands-- like let's say Hyundai, they have the Ioniq subbrand, which is all they're EVs, and their sister brand Kia has the EV subbrand for all their EVs. Oh, but there's also an EV Niro, which isn't part of the EV brand.

RICK NEWMAN: Right.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So this is part of that confusion. Maybe it's just a way to get consumers, their foot in the door, and then say, oh, this car is an EV, too, and it comes with the plug-in hybrid. Or it can go straight to the full-on EV car that's the dedicated architecture. Not that they know what that even means, but I guess we're kind of telling the same thing here.

RICK NEWMAN: And one other thing, just the way you started talking about this, you mentioned two, I guess, future automakers I think no one watching this video has ever heard of. Vin?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: VinFast.

RICK NEWMAN: OK, I wasn't familiar with it until I got here-- VinFast, and the other is INDI.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: And this is on top of the other new companies that people are starting to get familiar with, such as Lucid, Lordstown, Rivian. I'm sure I'm forgetting some there. So this market is just getting very full and very complex.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Faraday Future, Mullen, I mean, we saw a bunch of these in LA. VinFast-- interestingly, we spoke to the global deputy CEO earlier today. And you know, they're coming to the states. They're bringing those cars to the States.

RICK NEWMAN: Tell everybody where this company's from.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So they're from Vietnam. They're Vietnam's first global EV maker. They have two cars that they've created so far. I think they're called the VF 9 and the VF 8, two SUV crossover-type vehicles.

Those are going to come to the States at the end of year. They're going to do an IPO here. They've already filed a registration IPO, and they're going to build a factory here in North Carolina.

RICK NEWMAN: So just to be clear on this, we have no Vietnamese-made cars in the US--

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Period.

RICK NEWMAN: --at all right now, no gas-powered cars. I don't think there's-- I've never heard of a Vietnamese-based car or a Vietnamese company selling a car in the United States.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: It was the first company I've heard of from Vietnam that's a global automaker.

RICK NEWMAN: And you mentioned this other one-- INDI? What is INDI?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: INDI is a California-based EV maker, and they just debuted a car here at the show right down that way, which maybe will show you some of that footage right now. Ah. Anyway, that brings us to our next topic Rick-- EV cars everywhere. And we're seeing this new trend here within the auto show, and its EV test tracks.

RICK NEWMAN: Right.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: And maybe you might hear a little squealing. That's what's going on right now. I'm actually kind of, like, annoyed by it. What do you think about it?

RICK NEWMAN: OK, so if you go to an auto show this year or next year, you're probably going to run into this. There's going to be a test track with a few different types of electric vehicles. But don't get excited because it's not what you might think.

You don't actually get to drive, at least this is how it works here at the New York show. You have to sign up. You have to sign a waiver.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: There it is.

RICK NEWMAN: That's the Mustang Mach-E. That's a better test track than some of the others. So if you want to ride in an electric vehicle with a professional driver, you have to sign a waiver because you could get hurt. And the things mostly go about nine miles an hour around this little thing that's surrounded by plastic gates.

So maybe some people will find that exciting. I guess you get to get inside the car and at least see what it looks like, and notice that it doesn't make any noise. And you can drive these around inside because there's no exhaust. That's pretty cool. So they have a couple of those set up here, and they look completely boring, honestly.

However, this sound that's coming from over here at the far end of the floor-- so there's nothing on the other side, Ford was able to set up kind of a sprint track, where they have an F-150 Lightning pickup and a Mustang Mach-E. And all they do is launch it. You go fast for about two seconds, and then it comes to a braking halt.

I don't know. I didn't do that. Maybe it's more interesting than just the putt-putt in the other courses. But, you know, if you want to get inside a couple of EVs at a show, that's how you're going to be able to do it.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well, you know, I don't want to pooh-pooh this test track stuff too much because, you know, Rick and I are privileged.

RICK NEWMAN: It looks really boring.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Rick and I are privileged individuals who get to drive in EVs all the time.

RICK NEWMAN: True.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: People who come to the show, and they don't know what these cars are, maybe they want to have a taste of what it's like to be driven in one. And here's one thing you don't hear-- no engine sound, no exhaust. All you hear is the wheels, right? So that's another eerie thing that you kind of get--

RICK NEWMAN: And in the other tracks, other than the one that Ford's running over here, you don't even really hear the wheels. It's going so slow.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: It looks like a bumper cars type deal.

RICK NEWMAN: But you can see how everything works.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: And you see the cars in motion. And I think that's one of the big things here, Rick, is seeing the cars in motion, how they operate, how they-- oh, that's a normal car.

RICK NEWMAN: There's not much motion.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, they're going--

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: They're going 10 miles an hour.

RICK NEWMAN: But anyway,

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. OK, so test tracks, I find them annoying. But I guess they're a necessary evil now. The future of auto shows is test tracks.

Another thing that's a future of cars that we're seeing, regardless of EV status or gas-powered cars, screens everywhere. The Nissan Ariya we've mentioned has an actual piece of curved glass that goes across the entire dash. It looks really cool. But Rick, what we're finding is that there's screens everywhere, and maybe they're distracting.

RICK NEWMAN: We're going to find out, because you're going to have wall-to-wall screens in your car, in the car you buy, one of these years. So I looked inside a Jeep-- it's the Grand Wagoneer. And so there's the usual set of instrument display in front of you.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Mm-hmm.

RICK NEWMAN: Then there's the usual-- what's now a large console in the center stack. And then the passenger has another screen, which in the version I saw broken down into three different screenlets. And then in the second row, because it's a third row vehicle, each of the outboard passengers has a screen.

That can be your own network for whatever you want. There's another screen in the middle with some controls on it, and each of those, all of those screens, you can break down into subscreens. So really, it's the equivalent of having, like, 15 smartphones in your car, different phone screens--

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: What happened to just, like, driving a car, and you have a focused, nice experience? Now it's like we're just-- like, our worlds are just being distracted wherever we go.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, I guess we always need technology to complain about. So this is what people are going to complain about. We cannot escape the screen. But we asked for it.

We actually love our screens. They're not-- I mean, I think you can turn some of these screens off. So I'm sure that if you have kids in the backseat, and you don't want them looking at a screen, you can turn that off. But look--

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You have kids. They'll never turn it off.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, mine are grown up. They wouldn't listen to what I told them to do anyway.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: It's also a game of one-upmanship, right, where it's like, oh, the Navigator has how many screens? Cadillac's going to say, we're going to add 20, you know. They have a 20 inch screen? We're going to have 25 inch screen, right? It's all this-- the horsepower wars come to screen wars.

RICK NEWMAN: I'll tell you what. I mean, as a driver, and as somebody who actually has to spend money on a car every now and then, there's an optimal screen level that is not the same as the maximum screen level. You don't need that much information when you're driving a car.

Now, if you're not driving and the car is driving itself, I guess you want to-- maybe at some point, you can watch a video. But how many screens do you need to watch a video? I mean, it's overkill from a driver perspective.

You know, as a driver, you need some information. It's sometimes convenient if you can flip through on it. But I think those big screens are-- I think they're ugly.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: They don't seem, like, artfully designed or artfully integrated into the dash. I mean, there's no, like, cohesiveness to the dash. It's just you have a sculpted dash and a thing sticking out at you like this.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. If they're still kind of developing the language for screen usage in the development in a car.

RICK NEWMAN: For now, they think that the bigger the screen, the better.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So let's talk about focused driving cars. This is our last topic, Rick. There's-- there's some cool cars here that are still gas-powered cars.

And for me, I'm all about that GR Corolla. I mean, Corolla, yeah, sexy name, right? But this is an actual car that's going to be made for the US market. They're taking the Corolla Hatchback, souping it up with a thinner horsepower, three-cylinder, turbocharged engine, all-wheel drive that you can actually control the amount of control you want in each axle. And it's got, like, race-inspired suspension.

It has a forged carbon roof, Rick, to keep that low center of gravity. It is a hatch that is really the spiritual [GARBLED AUDIO]. I think it's awesome. If it's going to be around $44,000.

RICK NEWMAN: You're not a simple guy. You care a lot about the quality of the stitching in the leather trim and the quartz pertinences, the dial knobs and all this. I mean, a Toyota Corolla?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: [INAUDIBLE] Sorry.

[CHUCKLES]

So Rick, yes, OK, have my tastes changed a bit? Sure. Has my wallet changed a bit? Yes. Is my wallet a little more realistic speaking. Yes. This car, I think is a--

RICK NEWMAN: Did you get demoted or something? I mean, what happened to your wallet?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well, I just realized I couldn't buy all the cars that I tested.

RICK NEWMAN: We should tell everybody, if they don't know, what happened to your wallet is you actually bought a car for a while.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I did, I did.

RICK NEWMAN: And it didn't work out the way you wanted exactly.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I liked owning it. It just got too expensive in terms of parking in the city, all this nonsense. I got rid of it. It was a good, sound, financial decision.

RICK NEWMAN: So you now have a thriftier way of thinking about automobiles.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well, also, you realize, like, how much utility can you get per dollar, right? Like, how much better is a $1 million car versus a $100,000 car, right? It could be a lot better. But back to the Corolla, I think the Corolla is awesome. I know you're a fan, Rick. Tell me you're a fan.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, thank God they're bringing this. This is exactly-- I'm a hot hatch guy, so I can't wait to drive it. It comes with a manual transmission.

You know, there are hardly any manual transmissions left. We're talking about the-- the last manual standing are going to be the ones that are coming out right now. There are only going to be five or 10, and I think they're going to be collector's items.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, certainly.

RICK NEWMAN: I'm sure the performance is going to be great. You know, the hot hatch rivalry is not completely dead. There's a new Golf GTI and there's a new Golf R.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Mm-hmm.

RICK NEWMAN: Subaru has a new WRX that's not in a hatch model yet, and there's some question about whether they will bring a hatch to the United States. They may not.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: It's a manual, too?

RICK NEWMAN: Also a manual. So this is, I think, like, the last generation of these sporty, gas-powered, manual transmission, affordable sports cars.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I want to add one quick thing about that Corolla if I may. So the CEO of Toyota, it's basically his gift to America. His signature is on the actual manual transmission. The knob, it's actually on there.

And they're saying this is going to be the last kind of high-performance, hot hatch gas-powered car that we're going to get. Here you go. Thank you to America. Thank you to the CEO of Toyota. I'll take it, but I think that Golf R, Rick, that you mentioned is-- I mean, it's probably going to be a bit more expensive than that Corolla.

RICK NEWMAN: It is. Sure.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: But it's a pretty insane performance value.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, well, I mean, the Golf R, which I'm interested in perhaps buying as my last gas-powered automobile and keeping for the rest of my life, or as long as there's a mechanic who will work on it, that's probably around $45,000?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: So that's expensive for a hot hatch. But that's cheap compared with a Corvette, which is, you know, itself a bargain compared with some of the higher end performance cars.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well, you know, Rick--

RICK NEWMAN: Last gasp. Maybe it's worth a splurge.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Maybe for the sports. You know, Corvettes, Golf R, what are the ladies going to like? I don't know. I'm just kidding-- or the men. I don't know. Anyway, I think that's it, Rick. Anything else on your mind?

RICK NEWMAN: I wonder how many more auto shows we're going to go to.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, that's the big question.

RICK NEWMAN: They're a little bit endangered.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hopefully, one more in us next year, 2023. Anyway, 2022 in the book. Thanks, guys. I'm Pras, he's Rick. We'll see you later.

RICK NEWMAN: See you.

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