The Straight Shift with The Car Chick

Those little solar-powered Flock cameras are popping up everywhere, and depending on whom you ask, they're either an incredibly powerful crime-fighting tool or a terrifying surveillance network. So which is it? The Car Chick goes down the Flock Safety rabbit hole to find out what these cameras actually know about your car (and you), how law enforcement uses the data, how AI can get it impressively right and hilariously wrong, and what happens when the humans with access to the system abuse it...

Would you pay thousands more for a new car just to avoid the traditional dealership experience? Carvana is now selling brand-new Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles, and some buyers are paying significantly more for them than they would at competing dealerships. Yet Carvana is moving those cars at a staggering rate. In this episode, The Car Chick looks at why Carvana's new-car experiment is working, why today's consumers aren't necessarily “tech savvy” but tech normal, and why dealerships ...

Distracted driving isn't just texting, eating, or screwing around with your touchscreen. After The Car Chick got a ticket for running a red light she didn't even realize she'd run, she learned firsthand how emotions and cognitive distraction can affect even a highly trained, attentive driver. In this episode, LeeAnn looks at what distracted driving really means, why your eyes can be on the road while your brain is somewhere else, and some simple exercises to improve your situational awareness...

Everyone wants to know which car is the most reliable. But what if that's actually the wrong question? In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick takes a deep dive into what reliability really means in today's automotive world—and why simply looking at a Consumer Reports score or a J.D. Power award isn't enough. Inspired by a real client trying to choose between a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Subaru Forester Hybrid, and Hyundai Tucson Hybrid, LeeAnn explains how she evaluates reliability w...

Episode Summary Could your car become a battlefield in the New Cold War? It sounds like the plot of a spy thriller, but it's actually one of the biggest stories quietly reshaping the automotive industry. This week, The Car Chick® connects the dots between several recent episodes—including vehicle data privacy, EV tax credits, tariffs, and "Made in America"—to reveal the much bigger picture behind the U.S. government's upcoming ban on certain Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles...