Though the exact wait time can vary depending on the make and model, the typical wait time from buying a new car to actually getting to drive it is somewhere around five months, due to an ongoing global shortage of microchips coupled with high demand.

Kijiji has released a podcast to give people something to keep them occupied during that wait, dubbed “Wait Listening” – a podcast that is a full five months long. Instead of subjecting someone to the task of writing and reading a podcast that long, ChatGPT was used to create the script, with a text-to-speech platform serving as the AI host.

The podcast is a cheeky way for Kijiji to point out how ridiculous it would be to wait five months for a new car. It is driving Canadians to the 200,000 pre-owned vehicles currently available on the Kijiji Autos platform, which has recently added and updated features for finding, comparing and buying vehicles.

“There’s as much reason to wait five months for a new car as there is to listen to a five month long podcast,” said Adam Jardine, CMO at Kijiji, pointing to the fact that only 16% of Canadians in a recent Maru Public Opinion survey said they were willing to wait that long.

Rather than being available on typical podcast platforms – we assume the file size for a 3650-hour podcast would be too much for any phone to handle – the podcast will be continually streaming at a dedicated microsite, alternating between English and French every hour.

While the podcast is meant to highlight how ridiculous the wait time is, there has been some utility built into it, covering informative topics ranging from the intricacies of electric vehicle production to the history of car manufacturing. As we write this, the podcast is currently diving into in-car entertainment systems.